Bioregenerative Food Production System: Using Integrated Food Production Systems To Feed the Future

Abstract

The challenge of feeding a growing population requires increased production efficiency, especially when production is extended into suboptimal production environments. In such areas, resource conservation is increasingly important and innovative linkages between waste streams and food streams can significantly impact total system efficiency. Bioregenerative Life Support Systems (BLSS) for space have been designed in which plants and mushrooms are grown in tandem, maximizing total food produced, minimizing inedible waste, and maximizing energy and space efficiency. The purpose of this work was to evaluate application of BLSS for food production on Earth as Bioregenerative Food Production Systems (BFPS) For this project, a model was created to predict productivity of a BFPS with production components for plants, mushrooms, insects, and fish, while feeding a single person for one day, and a specific population for a specific set of time, according to the NASA BVAD document. The waste outputs of one production module become the inputs for the subsequent module, ideally creating a closed nutrient cycle. Input for this model relied on data from primary literature, government agencies, and industry websites. Input data was accumulated in a cornerstone data page and all component production pages referenced this cornerstone page for calculations. The first production page included only plant components; subsequent components were added onto prior production runs in an iterative process. Each production run was compared to previous and subsequent production runs for water, energy, and growing space efficiencies, and net waste products.