Paper Title: To the farm, Mars, and beyond: Technologies for growing food in space, the future of long-duration space missions, and earth implications in English news media coverage

Author(s) and Year: Ryland Shaw and Tammara Soma (2022)

Journal: Frontiers in Communication (open access)

TL;DR: Space exploration generates great headlines, but when the technology sounds too good to be true… it often is. Shaw and Soma found that media coverage of space agriculture technology is overwhelmingly positive and uncritical, typically echoing the company line without critiquing the cost and potential inequalities that could arise in the future.

Why I chose this paper: Over the past several years, much of the public has started to sour on “Big Tech,” as its original promises (connection, convenience, more leisure time) have given way to commercial interests, with users and their data turned into the product. With this in mind, it’s troubling to see a similar pattern emerging when it comes to space exploration; with corporations promoting technologies that will benefit the world (their words) and media coverage generally taking them at their word. While new technology can be – and often is – exciting, I believe that it needs to be met with a healthy dose of skepticism and implemented with intentionality, so that the benefits may be shared with as many people as possible, not just the company that created it.

Over the past century, advancements in agriculture – most notably the invention of nitrogen fertilizer – have resulted in a population boom. While a remarkable achievement, this technology has also come with some costs, including, but not limited to, environmental degradation, loss of biodiversity, and continued caloric inequality. Now, as our species is looking to venture beyond this planet, we again find ourselves at an agricultural crossroads, in which choices made today could have an outsized impact in the future. Recent research investigates whether news media coverage is conveying the full range of impacts of the future of space-grown food. 

The Background

Food on the Final Frontier

In 2021, NASA launched the Deep Space Food Challenge with the goal of promoting research into growing food in space. Freshly grown produce would not only improve the diets of astronauts today, but will be a necessity for long-duration habitation in space (such as, say, a trip to Mars). Meanwhile, many in the growing industry are quick to point out how innovations that conserve resources scarce in space could also be used on Earth to curtail current resource mismanagement on our home planet. 

Space agriculture is a relatively small industry at the moment, largely restricted to academics or private companies willing to absorb losses today for potential profits tomorrow. As companies and governments continue to promote travel to Mars as a plausible expedition in the near future, the field is set to take off (pun intended), with early successes including a space garden (Figure 1) and “cultivating” meat. 

Despite the growing interest, many in the media have been slow to cover the topic and what it could mean for the future of our food, both in space and on Earth. With this in mind, Shaw and Soma set out to understand how the news media portrays the issue of food production in space, including the common themes, technologies, and stakeholders discussed in its coverage.

Figure 1: NASA astronaut Shane Kimbrough harvests lettuce from the Veggie growing system. Image credit: NASA via Flickr.

Alt text: Amidst an array of scientific instruments at zero gravity (many of the wires are floating in midair), a small cupboard of lettuce is alight in bright pink (UV) light. In the foreground, the astronaut smiles for the camera as he begins to prune the vegetable.

The Methods

In order to investigate news coverage of the field, the authors of this study used Google Search (for web) and Factiva (for print) to find English language articles published between January 1, 2019 and April 15, 2022 that discussed food production in space. They found 170 articles published by 67 unique publications based in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom.

Next, they used a mixed methods content analysis to identify common themes across the articles. A computerized word frequency analysis was performed to determine the most discussed technologies and stakeholders within the sample. However, since computers still struggled to parse and understand deeper themes within the sources, a smaller sample of 40 articles was randomly selected and read by the researchers. These “intensively read” articles were qualitatively categorized by the researchers as having positive, negative, or neutral tones, and were used to determine deeper themes within the media presentation of the field. The three most common themes were distinguished as “connection to Earth,” “private/public collaboration,” and “a soft news approach.”

The Results

Space Agriculture? That’s “Soft News”

The researchers found that news stories about food production in space varied in the technology discussed. For example, hydroponic plant production and lab-grown meat were the two most cited stories in the sample, with each identified in ~25% of articles. Similarly, the news stories mentioned a variety of people, often including the work of astronauts, researchers, and/or company leaders in the field. 

In addition, several common themes in the articles emerged. Nearly half (48%) of the articles in the sample mentioned public/private partnership, which seems likely to become the new paradigm for space exploration. Within this theme, NASA (77%) and SpaceX (20%) received by far the most attention, bearing in mind that this is an English-language sample. In addition, almost three quarters (73%) of the news pieces highlighted impacts that the potential technology could have on Earth, with the general understanding that growing less resource-intensive food could alleviate some of the burden we’ve been putting on our home planet.

A concerning theme uncovered by Shaw and Soma is that an overwhelming majority of the articles (88%) were positive in tone and lacked a line of critical questioning of these potential new technologies. In contrast, they found only one article of the 40 they “intensively read” was negative in tone. The authors categorized many of the positive articles as “soft news,” in which statements from industry experts are taken at face value with little to no scrutiny. Such pieces are more akin to entertainment, or even advertisement, than investigation into the field. In this way, the authors argue that the press largely regurgitates an “attitude that a multiplanetary humanity is inevitable – a position that benefits industry stakeholders.”

The Impact 

Good Journalism Requires Critique 

For many of us, especially those in science, space exploration is an exciting prospect. It  piques our curiosity, offering almost endless possibilities for exploration and discovery. However, history suggests that such opportunity also poses the risk of exploitation and widening of inequalities if the wrong priorities prevail. To attempt to avoid these traps, the media can facilitate and frame the public discussion by responsibly conveying both the positive and negative potential impacts of contemporary and near-future research in the field. 

This research suggests that, at least for now, science communicators aren’t asking enough tough questions when it comes to space agriculture. For example, while growing more food on less resources should be positive for the planet, past innovations have promised similar benefits but the actual results have been more mixed. Even now, Shaw and Soma point to research that new growing practices could allow humans to expand their agricultural reach into more extreme environments such as the desert or arctic regions, potentially disrupting these delicate ecosystems and increasing our overall resource consumption. 

Similarly, the cost, timeline, and efficiency of space-grown food is uncertain at best, but the authors did not find that the press appropriately conveyed this doubt. Instead, most articles took companies and governments at their word. Like other long-promised technologies (carbon removal, anyone?), we might end up waiting for a solution that could “save the world,” but there is more likely to be a slow, unsteady evolution of the technology.

Without a critical eye, the public may be misled into understanding the future of space exploration (and food eaten along the way) as inevitable. As Shaw and Soma point out, this narrative is largely set by stakeholders already invested in the field, many of whom stand to profit handsomely. Worse still, folks may grow disillusioned when reality falls short of original excitement, or is only available to the wealthy who can afford it. 

Science communicators are constantly walking a fine line between keeping audiences engaged and delivering clear and critical scientific context. When it comes to space agriculture, this study found too much of the former and not enough of the latter. I echo the authors’ call for more “responsible framing” in the science news media when it comes to space agriculture (and all new technology!) so that their audiences can be better equipped to discuss the technologies that will shape the future. 

Written by Clark Hickman

Edited by Alex Music, Madeline Fisher, and Crystal Koralis Coló

Featured image credit: RDNE Stock project on Pexels