Are indoor vertical farms the future of agriculture Stuart Oda
Translator: Joseph Geni
Reviewer: Joanna Pietrulewicz
So if you live on planet Earth
and you’re one of seven billion people
that eats food every day,
I need you to pay attention,
because over the next three decades,
we will need to address
one of the most critical
global challenges of our generation.
And I’m not talking about climate change.
I’m talking about food and agriculture.
In 2050, our global population
is projected to reach 9.8 billion,
with 68 percent of us
living in urban city centers.
In order to feed this massive population,
we will need to increase
our agricultural output
by 70 percent over current levels.
Just to put this number into perspective,
we will need to grow more food
in the next 35 to 40 years
than the previous 10,000 years combined.
Put simply, not only is our global
population becoming bigger,
but it’s also getting denser,
and we will need to grow
significantly more food
using significantly less
land and resources.
Complicating our current efforts
to address these major demographic shifts
are the challenges facing
the agricultural industry today.
Globally, one third of all the food
that we produce is wasted,
acquitting to 1.6 billion tons of food
that spoiled on the way to the market
or expired in our refrigerators
or were simply thrown out
by supermarkets and restaurants
at the end of the day.
Every single year,
up to 600 million people
will get sick eating contaminated food,
highlighting the challenge that we have
of maintaining global food safety.
And, maybe unsurprisingly,
the agricultural industry
is the single largest
consumer of fresh water,
accounting for 70 percent of global usage.
Now, you’ll be relieved to know
that the agricultural industry
and that the global movement
by universities, companies and NGOs
is putting together comprehensive research
and developing novel technology
to address all of these issues.
And many have been doing it for decades.
But one of the more recent
innovations in food production
being deployed in industrial parks
in North America,
in the urban city centers of Asia,
and even in the arid deserts
of the Middle East
is controlled environment agriculture.
Controlled environment agriculture
is actually just a fancy way of saying
weather- or climate-proof farming,
and many of these farms grow food
three-dimensionally in vertical racks,
as opposed to the two dimensions
of conventional farms.
And so this type of food production
is also referred to
as indoor vertical farming.
I’ve been involved
in the indoor vertical farming space
for the past five and a half years,
developing technology
to make this type of food production
more efficient and affordable.
This picture was taken outside
of a decommissioned shipping container
that we converted into an indoor farm
and then launched into the heart
and the heat of Dubai.
Indoor vertical farming
is a relatively recent phenomena,
commercially speaking,
and the reason for this is that consumers
care more about food safety
and where their food comes from,
and also, the necessary technology
to make this possible
is more readily available and lower cost,
and the overall cost of food production
globally is actually increasing,
making this type of food production
more competitive.
So if you want to build
an indoor vertical farm,
you will need to replace some of
the conventional elements of farming
with artificial substitutes,
starting with sunlight.
In indoor vertical farms,
natural sunlight is replaced
with artificial lighting like LEDs.
While there are many different types
of LEDs being used,
the one that we decided to install here
is called “full spectrum LEDs,”
which was optimized for the type
of vegetables that we were growing.
Also, in order to maximize
production for a given space,
indoor vertical farms also utilize
and install racking systems
to grow vegetables vertically,
and some of the biggest facilities
stack their production
14 to 16 floors high.
Now most of these farms are hydroponic
or aeroponic systems,
which means that instead of using soil,
they use a substitute material
like polyurethane sponges,
biodegradable peat moss
and even use inorganic materials
like perlite and clay pellets.
Another unique aspects about these farms
is that they use
a precise nutrient formula
that is circulated and recycled
throughout the facility,
and this is pumped directly
to the vegetables' root zone
to promote plant growth.
And lastly, these farms use
a sophisticated monitoring
and automation system
to significantly increase productivity,
efficiency and consistency,
and these tools also provide
the added benefit
of producing food that is
more traceable and safe.
Some of the obvious benefits
of growing food in this way
is that you have year-round
vegetable production,
you have consistent quality
and you have predictable output.
Some of the other major benefits
include significant
resource use efficiencies,
particularly water.
For every kilogram of vegetables
grown in this way,
hundreds of liters of water is conserved
compared to conventional farming methods.
And with the water savings
come similar savings
in the use of fertilizer.
One of the highest-yielding farms
grows over 350 times more food
per square meter than a conventional farm.
And weatherproofing
means complete control
of incoming contaminants and pests,
completely eliminating the need
for the use of chemical pesticides.
And not to be mistaken,
these farms can produce
enormous amounts of food,
with one of the biggest facilities
producing 30,000 heads
of vegetables a day.
However, as with any
new technology or innovation,
there are some drawbacks.
As you would imagine,
growing food in this way
can be incredibly energy-intensive.
Also, these farms can only produce
a small variety of vegetables commercially
and the overall cost of the production
still is quite high.
And in order to address these issues,
some of the biggest
and most sophisticated farms
are making significant investments,
starting with energy efficiency.
In order to reduce the high energy usage,
there are efforts to develop
higher-efficiency LEDs,
to develop lasers
optimized for plant growth
and using even
fiber-optic cables like these
to channel sunlight directly
into an indoor vertical farm
during the day to reduce the need
for artificial lighting.
Also, to reduce the labor costs associated
with hiring a more sophisticated,
more urban and also
more high-skilled labor force,
robotics in automation is used extensively
in large-scale facilities.
And you can never really be
too resource-efficient.
Building indoor vertical farms
in and around urban city centers
can help to shorten
the agricultural supply chain
and also help to maintain
the nutritional content in vegetables.
Also, there are food deserts
in many countries
that have little to no access
to nutritious vegetables,
and as this industry matures,
it will become possible
to provide more equitable access
to high-quality,
highly nutritious vegetables
in even the most
underprivileged of communities.
And finally, and this is
really exciting for me personally,
indoor vertical farming
can actually be integrated seamlessly
into the cityscape
to help repurpose idle, underutilized
and unused urban infrastructure.
In fact, this is already happening today.
Ride-sharing services have taken
hundreds of thousands of cars off the road
and they have significantly reduced
the need for parking.
This is a farm that we installed
in central Beijing
in an underutilized
underground parking structure
to grow vegetables for the nearby hotels.
Underutilized infrastructure
is not simply limited
to large-scale civil engineering projects,
and they can also include smaller spaces
like idle restaurant corners.
This is an example
of a farm that we installed
directly into the partition
of a hotel entrance
in order to grow fresh herbs
and microgreens on-site for the chefs.
Honestly, if you look around,
you will find underutilized
space everywhere,
under, around and inside
of urban developments.
This is a farm that we installed
into an empty office corner
to grow fresh vegetables
for the employees in nearby cafes.
I get to be a part
of all these cool projects
and working in the agricultural industry
to improve access and affordability
to fresh and nutritious produce,
hopefully soon by anyone anywhere,
has been the greatest joy
and also the most humbling
and intellectually challenging
thing I’ve ever done.
And now that I’ve convinced you
that agriculture can be quite sexy,
you’ll be surprised and shocked to know
that I still have trouble
fully articulating how and why
I decided to work, and continue to work,
in the agricultural industry.
But a couple of years ago,
I found a rather unique answer
hiding in plain sight.
You see, I read an article
about how your name,
particularly your last name,
can have a strong influence
on everything from your personality
to your professional career.
This is my Japanese last name:
Oda.
And the characters translate literally
into “small farm.”
(Laughter)
Thank you.
(Applause)