AQUACULTURE
Floating farms aim to feed cities from the water
Platforms bring food production offshore to save land and shorten supply chains
Floating Farm. Photo by Ruben Daio Kleimeer.
Traditional agriculture near cities struggles with limited space and rising costs. Floating farms—modular pontoons equipped with greenhouses, livestock stalls, or aquaculture tanks—are testing a new way to supply fresh food directly from the water.
Developers are showcasing projects with major advances:
Dairy on water: Rotterdam’s Floating Farm operates on a three-story pontoon in the city’s Merwehaven harbor. Forty cows live on the upper deck, milked by robotic systems that also clean and manage manure. Rainwater is collected for use in the barn, and food waste from nearby businesses is recycled into cattle feed, creating a circular urban farm cycle.
Hydroponics offshore: Italy’s Jellyfish Barge is a solar-powered floating greenhouse designed to grow vegetables without soil or freshwater. The platform uses solar distillers to produce up to 150 liters of clean water per day from seawater or polluted sources. Its modular design means multiple barges can be linked together to scale production, making it ideal for coastal cities with limited land.
High-tech aquaculture: Singapore’s Eco-Ark is a floating closed-containment fish farm that produces up to 20 times more fish than traditional open-sea cages. It uses water filtration, oxygenation, and automated feeding to improve efficiency while reducing disease and pollution risks. With space for 1,200 tonnes of fish annually, it supports the country’s goal of meeting 30% of its nutritional needs locally by 2030.
Floating aquaponics & urban integration: Beyond individual farms, urban planners and nonprofits are blending aquaculture with plant production in aquaponic systems that recycle fish waste into nutrients. These systems offer compact, climate-adaptive food production near cities.
Floating farms today are demonstrations of resilience and local food systems. The Semaan-backed technology expands beyond Europe to megacities where land is scarce. Researchers are now exploring integrated models: fish nourish vegetables, solar powers growth systems, and rainwater irrigates greenhouses. Such models could soon reshape urban agriculture.
With two-thirds of the global population projected to live in cities by 2050, floating farms could become a strategic part of feeding urban communities—especially as climate change raises flood risks and supply chain uncertainty.
—TFI
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