Lettuce from thin air: Chile's fog catchers grow crops in the world's driest desert where rain never falls
'We are growing hydroponic lettuce entirely with fog water in the driest desert on the planet,' Orlando Rojas, president of the Atacama Fog Catchers Association, told Reuters near Chanaral in the Atacama, where some areas do not see rainfall for years.
'We have had other crops that have not yielded results, which is why we have tended towards doing lettuce.'
A drone view shows fog catchers, meshes suspended between two poles that intercept small bits of moisture to collect water from the air in the Atacama Desert, in Paposo, Chile June 13, 2025. — Reuters pic
Researchers at the UC Atacama Desert Centre are launching an open-access web mapping platform to show the location of the areas with potential for fog-water harvesting in the country, trying to open up these arid areas for cultivation.
'We know its potential and we know it can be an option and a solution for different scales of water needs in different territories where there is significant water scarcity,' said Camilo Del Rio, director of the UC Atacama Desert Centre.
A set of fog catchers, meshes suspended between two poles that intercept small bits of moisture to collect water from the air in the Atacama Desert, stand in Paposo, Chile June 13, 2025. — Reuters pic
Amid barren rocky hills and dry, white sand, the system works by using a mesh suspended between two poles that intercepts the small amount of moisture in the air, turning it into droplets that are collected and stored in water tanks.
'We are able to collect 1,000 to 1,400 litres of water in these inhospitable places, where we are clearly not favoured by nature in other ways,' said Rojas in a region where lemon trees were also growing from the collected water.
Orlando Rojas, president of the Atacama fog catcher group, removes a net from a greenhouse to uncover a lemon tree grown with water captured by fog catchers, meshes suspended between two poles that intercept tiny bits of moisture, to collect water from the air in the Atacama Desert, in Chanaral, Chile June 10, 2025. — Reuters pic
'We have the potential for life, which is this water resource. Once we learned about this project, we haven't stopped because it is vital for human subsistence.'
Mario Segovia, also from the fog-catching group, said that the water collected from moisture in the air was pure.
'The harvest doesn't look bad, it's a super healthy food, pure nutrients that are organic,' he said. 'They're in a state of water with nutrients, because this fog-catcher water is completely neutral, it has no minerals, no chlorine, nothing.' — Reuters
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