Farming Fog for Water
Credit: Life Nieblas
Due to climate change, a lack of usable water is becoming a problem in areas where it wasn't before. Locals on the Canary Islands, however, are finding that fog can make up for shortfalls on the farm.
Since 2018, farmers in La Vega in the Canary Islands have relied exclusively on fog to water their 3.7 acres of land – which includes lemon and plum trees, artichoke plants, and 50 chickens – when rain is in short supply in the summer months.
How it Works
Having won a local award for the best initiative in rural farming, the couple built their system with their bare hands and paid for it entirely with government subsidies.
The system:
Is a 397m long wall of collectors – vertical U-shaped nets cemented into the ground by metal poles;
And on a good day, can harvest 1798L of water. (The suspended fog droplets fall from the nets and flow through rolls of black tubing, which snake down the back of their property into a storage tank);
The 360,000L storage tank resembles a giant waterbed.
Other Fog-Water Ventures
Although unique this is not a stand alone project. In 2020, a partnership between the European Commission and the local government of neighbouring Gran Canaria funded Life Nieblas*, a fog-collecting initiative to reforest areas decimated by drought and forest fires.
And even better, the harvested fog water meets the World Health Organisation’s standards on drinking water safety, providing a much-needed resource to isolated communities for many years.
During the early 1900s, South Africa became the first country to experiment with fog as a water source. The "mist traps" invented by Chilean physicist Carlos Espinosa were patented in 1963 and offered to UNESCO for free use worldwide.
The green technology has undergone significant developments since then, and research sites can be found in Chile, Peru, South Africa, Morocco, China, the United States, and Spain's Canary Islands.
Tenerife and Gran Canaria remain at the centre of fog harvesting research due to their high altitudes and abundance of fog, along with their unique water supply challenges.
Aside from the initial materials and construction costs, fog collection is a low-energy operation. Structures like netting can blend in more seamlessly with natural surroundings than wind turbines or solar panels. Upkeep involves a combination of clearing away overgrown plants and cleaning the filters.
Limitations to Fog-farming as a water supply
While fog is often called "horizontal rain," capturing it requires certain conditions and has its limitations. Wind must be strong enough to push the droplets through the nets, but not so strong that it collapses the entire structure. And, of course, there has to be enough fog.
Weather patterns have become less predictable as a result of climate change in recent years, making harvesting efforts more unpredictable when it comes to the quantity and quality of fog.
Axel Ritter Rodríguez, an agroforestry engineering professor at the University of La Laguna and a researcher with the Life Nieblas project adds, “Fog collecting can only be done in very specific conditions. Mountain ranges are best. I don’t think it’s the remedy to all of our water problems, but it’s very useful on a small scale.”
New, energy-efficient technologies are becoming increasingly important when it comes to finding water solutions. Similarly, horizontal nets are being used in research on dew collection, which uses a similar system of catching condensation.
For local farmers the overarching goal is to stay one step ahead of the game, which means anticipating water and soil needs before they become a problem. And using the collectors to farm fog now means the farmers can exist and grow crops in that region without support of the local water authorities.
Photo Credit: Colette Davidson
Farmer Jonay González Pérez shows off some of his fog collectors in La Vega, Spain, on Oct. 26, 2022. He and his wife, Sara Rodríguez Dorta, rely on fog to water their 3.7-acre farm.
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References in this post:
* Life Nieblas www.lifenieblas.com/project
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