CEA? Controlled Environment Agriculture? Let’s Re-define it. PLEASE!

The term CEA, Controlled Environment Agriculture is trending. It seems like everybody uses the abbreviation CEA these days. Investors drool over it and technology companies have quickly embraced it. Why did all the CEO’s, CFO’s and COO’s suddenly decide to use CEA?

I decided to get to the bottom of this by making some interesting looking charts, using fancy words and even resort to ancient languages ;)

?Okay, I get it; CEA is short, the term sounds interesting and can be used to describe poly- and glass greenhouses, indoor farming, vertical farming. But why? Didn’t the term horticulture suffice anymore? Perhaps even a better question; where do we draw the lines in terms of “controlled environment”? Is my backyard hobby-greenhouse CEA? After all, I do exert an amount control over the environment the crops grow in…

Let’s get our jargon on par

Venn diagrams are your best friend to illustrate relationships and differences between concepts. Starting off with agriculture, touching the subject of horticulture to finally figure out how CEA fits in. When we should use it and when we should call a greenhouse a greenhouse and spade a spade ;). Pun intended.

What is agriculture?

Throughout history, #agriculture has been the backbone of many economies. Food-security facilitates all other economic developments and urbanization. Here in The Netherlands, the Golden Age in the 17th century was fueled by a reliable grain supply, called the mother of all trades! It allowed for a focus on export, exploration but also exploring arts and sciences. All forming inspiration and the subjects for the famous paintings by the Dutch Masters ;) ?

Even in the European Union today, the food and beverage industry employs more people than any other manufacturing sector. According to the FAO, agriculture is divided into four main subsectors. These are crop- and livestock production, and forestry, both for food and for non-food products. For the type of Agriculture that produces food, we have the -very interesting sounding, and quite helpful- term Agrifood. To get a better sense of non-food agriculture, think of sheep wool, hemp fibers and the roses you either buy, receive, or happily decline on Valentines Day. ;)?

Culture - Etymologically its roots go to “pertaining to the raising of plants or animals”. The word “culture” comes from the Latin “colere” meaning to “tillage, cultivate, tend”. ?

Agri- Both agri and agro are prefixes of the word meaning “field, arable field, pasturage, open-land”.? The Greeks used the word ?γρ?? (pronounced as agros).? In Italy and surroundings, they used the latin “ager”. Having the same PIE-root, the ancient Sanskrit, Persian and Germanic languages all used they used similar worlds for “field”. Just like the Dutch “akkers”. In English, the word “acre” originating from the proto-germanic “akraz”.

Fishy business

After this bit of research, I would personally define agriculture as: “The development and caretaking of plots of land for food and non-food production“. Something fishy is still going on with aquaculture and fisheries… How did they squeak that into agriculture?

Well, the only thing that I could come up with is that activities are pretty much similar to farming. Naturally, I did some browsing to test that hypothesis. The English word “Farming” originates from the French and earlier Latin “fermer”, and developed from a taxable unit. A dead end there. However, in Dutch, the word for farmer is “Boer”. This originates from the Middle-Dutch word “Buer” meaning small house or shed and was used for both the house as the “farmershouse”. Both in Dutch and in English the word for neighbors (in Dutch: “buren”) descend from the Germanic “būr” meaning shed, hut or house. The “Boer” was, and as a matter of fact still is, used as a close by ‘product specialist’. ?

So how does Horticulture compare with Agriculture?

According to Liberty Hyde Bailey, one of the most famous American scholars of horticulture, "Horticulture is the growing of flowers, fruits and vegetables, and of plants for ornament and fancy." The term Horticulture, dating back to the 1670s, means the cultivation of a garden, derived from the Latin “hortus”.

Horticulture - 1670s, "cultivation of a garden," coined from Latin?hortus?"garden" (from PIE root?*gher-?(1) "to grasp, enclose"), probably on model of?agriculture.

Horticulture is a subclassification of agriculture. It focuses on the cultivation of garden crops, both for food production and ornamental plant growth (agrifood & non-food). In the universal set of Crop-agriculutre, horticulture includes both non-food and food produce.?

In horticulture, there are distinct areas of specialization:

Pomology: This area deals with the cultivation of fruit and nut crops. Think apples, oranges, grapes, as well as walnuts and olives.

Olericulture: This is all about vegetables: herbaceous, non-woody plants used in the kitchen, translating best as “vegetable cultivation”.

Floriculture: This branch focuses on the cultivation of flowers and ornamental plants.

Landscape Horticulture: This category includes the cultivation of plants for landscaping purposes, from a golf course to your backyard shrubs and trees.

Loving a good glass of wine, I can’t help to mention viticulture when touching this subject. Viticulture is the cultivation of grapes to eventually produce wine. Vinification is actual wine-making process through fermentation. Both a science and a fine art, but only viticulture fits within the definition of horticulture.

Size does matter

Noteworthy is the scale. Horticulture is a form of agriculture on a manageable size.

It is positioned between your kitchen garden and larger-scale open field agriculture, such as a potato field. ?Where agriculture can be called the developments of fields, horticulture can be called the development of gardens. That size intrinsically allows for the implementation technology!

Introduction of Controlled Environment Agriculture (CEA)

Now, let's dive a bit deeper into Controlled Environment Agriculture, or CEA for short. CEA is a relatively new term and only has become mainstream in the last 2-3 years! It is being used for a range of activities, from high-tech vertical farms to high tech greenhouses, but in some cased also the lower tech traditional greenhouses.

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Controlled Environment Horticulture?

Having clarified the difference between horticulture and agriculture, and looking at the way CEA is used, it is simple to state that Controlled Environment Agriculture is in fact Controlled Environment Horticulture. The crops being grown, the size on which they are grown and also the locations make CEA fit into the realm of horticulture. With horticulture being a subset of agriculture, CEA is not wrong, it’s just not as accurate. But let’s be honest, CEH? Would that ever catch on?

Potential for more than marketing term

CEA certainly is a marketing term and does not represent a new technology or a shift in agricultural practices, or does it? Well, after doing the research for this article I now dare to make a case for both:

It certainly is a marketing term. Nothing new happened that suddenly got named CEA. The terms horticulture, greenhouse horticulture, high-tech greenhouses, growing facilities, indoor cultivation solutions et cetera, all still suffice… ??

Critically analyzing the time were in today, post-covid and a

midst a revolution in artificial intelligence, I certainly believe there is an ongoing paradigm shift. The speed at which cultivation technology is currently developing, “CEA” will have little to do with outside production or production in low-tech greenhouses. In the coming five years there will be a great change in the way we fill the shelves in the supermarket with fresh vegetables. But how should we name this change?

Easy, let’s use CEA!

Re-defining Controlled Environment Agriculture?

We live in a time in which AI is being adopted and is becoming more and more accessible to the greater public. If we would link the term CEA to the technical transformation era we live in today, CEA would much more than a marketing term. Currently, CEA only makes pitch-decks and LinkedIn headlines look interesting or inflates consultancy costs, but doesn’t draw a line in technology, nor the level of control. ?So let’s draw those lines!

With an outlook over the coming 10 years, I would like to extend the phrase CEA to mean AUTONOMOUS Controlled Environment Agriculture. This will make sure we can use it for the years to come for high-tech greenhouses and indoor cultivations.

Conclusion: Autonomous Controlled Environment Agriculture

In a definition of Controlled Environment Agriculture that will be relevant for the coming years, the environment should be controlled autonomously. It’s an easy, but crucial fix.

Unmanned aircrafts are called drones. They rely completely on software, sensors and computing power to perform their basic functions. Nowadays, with modern industrial and military drones equipped with deep learning technology, drones can detect irregularities and friend of foe. In a centralised control center or remotely only direction is given and executive level decisions are made. With that reference in mind, let’s use CEA as the encompassing definition for greenhouse and indoor growing facilities that are operated similar to a drones: autonomously.

While it’s crucial to get our industry’s jargon right, it’s even more important to understand the concepts behind the worlds and the time we live in. As we’re progressing in agriculture and in horticulture our language evolves with it. CEA may be a trendy term now, but it could also represent a significant shift in the way we produce our food. I would be a missed opportunity not to draw the lines where they should be today.

Languages do evolve and CEA is here to stay, hopefully.?

Fun fact, but far off topic: Cultura Amini

It was Cicero who introduced the concept of “cultura animi” (amini meaning self/soul) as metaphor. This is an agricultural metaphor for taking care/developing yourself, just like you would nurture crops. Only in the 19th century “culture” became the to-go-for word in the context of a group of people sharing similar history, values, ideas, and traditions.

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