Is Vertical Farming the High Tech Future of Food?

sponsored by surf shark alert with global population that's expected to hit 9.7 billion by 2050 and have less arable land to grow food on what do we do how about putting robots ai and some really cool technology to work to grow food in three dimensions let's take a look at the future of food and the growth of vertical farming and a little bit of six degrees of separation to elon musk i'm matt farrell welcome to undecided [Music] technology is making massive advancements to help us combat climate change when it comes to things like electric vehicles energy generation and storage but there's another form of energy that's important to consider food as i mentioned the world's population is expected to hit 9.7 billion by 2050 with about 68 of people living in urban city centers that means we'll need about a 70 increase in food production from what we produce today in stuart otta's great ted talk on the subject he pointed out that we'll need to produce more food in the next 30 years than we have in the previous 10 000 years combined and as if that wasn't a big enough problem to tackle we also have a shrinking amount of arable land to grow crops on we've already lost about one-third of arable land over the past 40 years from erosion or pollution and arable land per person is expected to drop 66 percent by 2050 compared to 1970. not to keep piling on the concerns but agriculture uses about 70 of our global fresh water supply keep in mind that only about three percent of the water on earth is fresh water and about 2.5 is unavailable because it's too far underground or frozen in glaciers and that it's not evenly distributed around the world i don't bring all of that up to panic anybody but to give some context as to why so much effort is being put behind technologies being used in vertical farming when you see a vertical farm it looks like something out of a science fiction movie that's meant to be growing on a space station which makes sense since aeroponics spawned from nasa but the basic concept is quite simple and ingenious the original concept for vertical farming comes from dr dixon de pommier a professor at columbia university in 1999 he challenged his graduate students to see how much food they could grow on new york city rooftops and how many people they could feed the students came back with the answer of 1 000 people which is clearly not great so he told them to push further and flirted the idea of thinking in three dimensions grow vertically and indoors the graduate students ended up designing a 30-story vertical farm that included artificial lighting hydroponics and aeroponics which in the end was calculated to be able to feed 50 000 people and that's where the seed of vertical farming took root yeah i said it vertical farming is really made up of different techniques used in controlled environment agriculture basically take any space like a greenhouse or a building so you can have complete control of lighting temperature and humidity and then use hydroponic aquaponic or aeroponic techniques to feed nutrients to the plants hydroponics and aquaponics are both methods that don't require soil but involve either submerging a plant's roots in liquid or solid material like polyurethane sponges or peat moss to deliver the nutrient mix aeroponics on the other hand doesn't require any soil standing at all instead it mists the plants and the roots directly with the nutrient mix so what are the benefits of vertical farming well you get year-round production without any seasons which means you could have fresh strawberries year round the highly controlled systems mean you get far more consistent quality it uses 90 to 99 percent less water and fertilizer and remember it's indoors and controlled so there's no bugs or pesticides and it uses 90 to 99 percent less land plants grown this way have an accelerated growth since the roots can get extra oxygen and with less land use you can grow crops much closer to where they're being consumed like a city center and typically produce travels an average of 1500 miles or about 2 400 kilometers from farm to market the shorter distance of transport wouldn't just help with pollution and energy use from shipping but it also helps with nutrition fruits and vegetables experience rapid nutritional value loss as soon as they're cut and refrigerated some can lose as much as 50 of their vitamin c and other nutrients within a week growing local and getting food in your hands quicker means more nutritional food but there are some downsides right now there's limited crop options available that can be grown in this manner it's mostly centered around lettuce some vegetables and fruits there's no grains like wheat or corn that are grown this way the overall costs are still very high which is mainly from the much much higher energy use that's required you're talking about having to run artificial lighting 24 7. even with custom designed high efficiency led lights it still consumes a lot of power if you're supplying that power from fossil fuels you lose some of the benefits of growing with vertical farming in the first place but that's where some companies are trying to put technology to work to solve those problems and this is where we can play some six degrees of separation with elon musk well more like two degrees of separation to elon musk but before i get to that i'd like to thank surf shark alert for sponsoring this video and this is a great online tool that detects if your private information has been leaked online or is part of a data breach it covers emails passwords credit cards or even your social security number you can track as little or as much as you want now i've had my information breached several times my data was compromised from the sony playstation and target breaches both of those exposed over 100 billion people each and once it's out there anyone can find it but that's where surf shark alert comes in they'll not only show you if your private information has been involved in a data breach but what's been leaked and found like passwords so you know what to change and take action on when i ran my information through surf shark it found one of my emails and 11 breaches it's just absolutely nuts use my code to get 75 off plus three extra months and a surf shark vpn subscription for free surf truck alert offers a 30 day money back guarantee so there's no risk to try it out for yourself link in the description below and thanks to surf shark alert and to all of you for supporting the channel so there are a lot of companies trying to solve the challenges around vertical farming for instance japan is one of the early pioneers in the space and has the largest share of vertical farming in the world the japanese companies spread produces 30 000 heads of lettuce daily that's daily it's a great example of vertical farming because it's the first company to become profitable the price of a head of lettuce has dropped from 2.34 cents in 2008 to 1.52 it's still pricier than a typical head of lettuce but they've been driving down costs using ai and robots to automate cultivation robotic arms place seedlings and panels and tracks deposit those panels into growing racks not only does this reduce space but it reduces their labor costs by 50 percent another company using ai and robotics is plenty which has a two acre farm that out produces an equivalent 720 acre farm their approach grows columns of produce hung from the ceiling and in between each row of columns are leds that can be tuned to mimic full spectrum sun the ai systems manage all of the care from water temperature and how much light the type of light and learns and optimizes to grow bigger and better crops plenty has received 400 million dollars in investment capital from softbank eric schmidt and jeff bezos it has a deal to deliver produce to 430 alberts in stores in california if you're interested in finding produce near you you can actually find where it's sold on their website and then there's the last company i wanted to call out and the six degrees of separation connection to elon musk that i mentioned freight farms which is right here where i live in boston their approach is different from spread and plenty which are building out multi-story setups inside of buildings to grow instead freight is using 320 square foot or about 30 square meter shipping containers to make pods that can be scaled depending on need their customers currently grow more than 500 varieties of produce year round and only use about zero to five gallons or zero to 19 liters of water a day you might have heard of freight farms because of elon's brother kimball musk kibble co-founded square roots which is a vertical farming company that's goal is to grow urban farming and empower more young farmers kimball partnered with freight farms to provide the technology and shipping units to make it happen and freight farms just recently announced a plan to address the clean energy supply needed to make vertical farming more sustainable they've partnered with arcadia if you don't know who arcadia is they're an energy supplier that's mainly focused on residential customers sign up with them and they'll source energy on your behalf from solar and wind generation now that freight farms has partnered with arcadia it makes it easier for farmers to source their electricity needs from solar and wind and looking a little further off into the future there's a lot of interesting research to improve things like lighting using lasers and higher efficiency leds is one area but also using fiber optics to channel natural daylight to the plants during the daytime which means you'd only have to provide artificial lighting during the night time so is vertical farming going to be the future of food perhaps but definitely not all of it right now it's still too limited in what crops you can grow this way companies like plenty are spending time now perfecting how to grow strawberries but there aren't any grains grown this way yet and even though there are challenges with energy use the cost and climate improvements that you get by powering from renewables and not needing to transport produce long distances can be hugely beneficial add to that the ability to get food closer to the people who need it most not just urban locations but areas around the world that have non-arable land being able to grow foods in areas that have never had access to these types of foods in the first place there's a reason why so many companies and countries like the usda here in the u.s are investing heavily in researching commercial solutions for vertical farming and trying to get the production costs down now jump into the comments and let me know what you think about vertical farming have you tried any of the produce from one yet if you like this video be sure to check out one of the ones i have linked to right here and be sure to subscribe and hit that notification bell if you think i've earned it and as always thanks to all of my patrons and to all of you for watching i'll see you in the next one

Channel: Undecided with Matt Ferrell

Views: 156,313

Keywords: vertical farming, vertical farming business, vertical farming plenty, vertical farming strawberries, vertical farming technology, aeroponics vertical farming, what is vertical farming, vertical farm, vertical farms, aquaponic farming, future farming, hydroponic farming, aerofarm, aeroponics, aquaponics, artificial intelligence, climate change, engineering, future agriculture, hydroponic, machine learning, robotics, the future of food, undecided with matt ferrell, elon musk

Id: 2tGQXRYgKBI

Length: 9min 49sec (589 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 02 2021