Because Mars is so far from the sun, even on the' equator, where sunlight is strongest, the amount of light plants would receive would be similar to what they get in Alaska. When it comes to crops, concept art of Martian settlements usually features greenhouses, but those may not prove practical, the researchers said.

Related: How Living on Mars Could Challenge Colonists (Infographic) The large amounts of money that investors have poured into refining such technology has already driven down the costs of a cultured meat burger from $325,000 to $11 per patty in two years, they added. Everything from algae to meat and fish to cow-less milk and chicken-less eggs are now possible, they said. 'Bugs are the way to go, if people can get over the gross factor,' Cannon said.įor those who do not fancy insects, 'cellular agriculture' - that is, food derived from cells grown in lab dishes - could help people on Mars eat a somewhat more familiar diet, the researchers said. Crickets in particular are one of the more promising examples of edible insects, with cricket flour potentially incorporated and hidden in many different recipes, they noted. Insect farms are well-suited for Martian cuisine, as they provide a lot of calories per unit land while using relatively minor amounts of water and feed, the researchers said. The solution? Insect farms and lab-grown meat, they suggested. At the same time, they noted that most people do not want to go completely vegetarian. The researchers noted that raising farm animals for dairy and meat would not be practical on Mars in the near term because of the challenges of shipping them across space. We asked the question: Instead of a short NASA-style mission to Mars, what would it take to feed a city of 1 million people, like what SpaceX is imagining?' 'It turns out most of the focus has been on very low-calorie vegetables, and the latest innovations in alternative protein sources were not being considered. 'We were working with a lot of people who wanted to grow plants in the simulated Mars soils we create, and this led us to look at what research was being done in terms of producing food for future human missions to the moon or Mars,' Cannon said. Given this challenge, the scientists wanted to see what it might take to reach the radical goal of producing enough food on Mars to feed 1 million people. 'Food is probably going to be the hardest thing to make locally on Mars, and you can't just import it all if you want to have a self-sufficient settlement,' study lead author Kevin Cannon, a planetary scientist at the University of Central Florida in Orlando, told.

In comparison, there is no food naturally available on Mars, and there is no easy way to create it from any raw materials on the Red Planet using, say, a simple chemical reactor, the researchers said.

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