Space farming refers to the cultivation of crops for food and other materials in space or on off-Earth celestial objects – equivalent to agriculture on Earth.

Farming on the Moon or Mars share many similarities with farming on a space station or space colony, but would lack the complexity of microgravity found in the latter. Each environment would also have differences in the availability of inputs to the space agriculture process: inorganic material needed for plant growth, soil media, insolation, relative availability of carbon dioxide, nitrogen and oxygen, and so forth.

A variety of technical challenges will face colonists who attempt to do off-Earth agriculture. These include:

the effect of reduced gravity on various greenhouse crops,

reduced lighting in some locations; for example, Mars receives about half of the solar radiation as Earth does, and any pressurized greenhouse enclosure will further reduce the light reaching plants. Moon locations or orbital colonies would likely receive more sunlight due to the absence of a humid atmosphere as on Earth and therefore would have more solar energy available to reach the plant,

effects of dealing with the higher radiation without the protective effect of Earth's atmosphere and the Van Allen radiation belts will require shielding or mitigation.

See also:
Space Farming
Terraforming of Mars

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