| dc.description.abstract | Agricultural operations and the agri-food system is essential to the continued survival of the human species. The maintenance of reliability, safety and security from farm to table is essential to any society. There is, however, a new kind of agricultural system emerging from the combination of innovations in LED-lightning, artificial intelligence, automated air condition and water-nutrient delivery systems, and a roster of sensors. These systems are in this paper collected within the acronym CEA (controlled environment agriculture), which serves to categorize agricultural systems such as vertical farms, high tech greenhouses and aquaponics. These agricultural innovations are finding their foothold within existing agri-food systems and recent research interest in the topic has gained momentum. There are several papers which outline their potential to have impacts on food safety, security and reliability. Even so, there are quite few papers which direct their research topic toward these aims. Therefore, the objective of this paper is to investigate how the implementation of CEA could affect the reliability of the agri-food system in Norway. The research has been conducted using an abductive method involving theory matching and literature review development alongside interviews with actors involved in the expansion of CEA systems in different countries. I have found that CEA has the characteristics of increased requisite variety, built-in passive controls and reduced negative externalities from their input and output compared to OFA and GH operations in Norway. However, CEAs are also geographically, policy and energy-grid contingent, which could hamper their scaling in areas which are not optimized for their development. This master’s thesis has been developed with anyone interested in controlled environment agriculture, societal planning, societal safety and agricultural stakeholders in mind. With this thesis my wish is to contribute to the elevation of knowledge pertaining to the development of CEA systems and how they can be relevant in order to increase agri-food system reliability. | |
