Cows in Rotterdam harbor, seedlings on rafts in India; are floating farms the future?

abcnews.go.com:

Visitors walking along the river that flows through downtown Rotterdam might be surprised to see a three-tiered structure moored in the water, with a top level occupied by brown and white cows grazing on hay dropped from a conveyor belt

ROTTERDAM, Netherlands — On the top deck of a three-tiered structure moored near downtown Rotterdam, brown and white cows graze on hay dropped from a conveyor belt above their heads and rinds of oranges salvaged from supermarket juice machines in the port city. Canopies overhead protect the cows from sun and collect rainwater they will eventually drink.

Sometimes the Maas-Rijn-Ijssel cows — named for three Dutch rivers — walk over to a machine that automatically milks them, or they shuffle out of the way of a robot trundling past to mop up manure that will be turned into organic fertilizer.

“We call our cows upcycle ladies,” says Minke van Wingerden of the Floating Farm, which sells the milk, cheese and buttermilk produced by the cows in a small shop on dry land next to its harbor berth.

The Floating Farm, which has been operational since 2019 and bills itself as the world's first such farm, isn't on entirely new terrain. Efforts to put agriculture on or in the water are as old as the Aztecs, who built artificial islets to grow food long ago in what's now Mexico.

But it's an idea that is getting new attention as a way of tackling both food security and the challenges of climate change. And it doesn't have to be as sophisticated as the Dutch farm, which came about after Van Wingerden's husband, Peter, witnessed the food shortages that hit New York after Hurricane Sandy slammed the city in 2012.

In coastal and low-lying areas of India and Bangladesh, a non-government organization is