Adelaide puts food, not developments at the top of the city-fringe menu

Henry Liu is one person investing heavily in South Australia's food future. Mr Liu had one of the first greenhouses in Virginia north of Adelaide 18 years ago.

Now he has eight hectares of hydroponic vegetables growing in state-of-the-art, climate-controlled glasshouses.

That number will rise to 12 hectares when his new glasshouse starts production early next year.

"The future is great, very bright," Mr Liu said.

Glasshouse crops use 95 per cent less water than those grown in the field and carbon dioxide can be captured and used to boost plant growth, he said.

"The advantage of glasshouses over field production is that you can control the growing conditions," Mr Liu said.

But they are energy-hungry and solar power is not yet enough to run them.

Mr Liu believes hydroponic cropping will increase, but there will always be a place for soil-based growing and that however food is produced, being close to water, markets and labour is reason enough to protect city food bowls.

^{Image: (ABC News: David Sciasci)}