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Japan’s Food of the Future

Vertical Farming is the key to revolutionizing indoor urban farming and a crucial step in solving the global food crisis. One main issue to understand when discussing food shortages is the uncontrollable elements that are part of the farming equation, such as soil quality, sufficient sunlight, adequate rain,  abundant space, and enough farmers to tend to and distribute crops. In these vertical farm units, all of the food is grown inside huge bunkers, where those conditions are controlled via digital technology.

Since these crops are grown indoors, seasonal produce is now available year-round thanks to the controlled environment in which they are housed. Wouldn’t a ton of water need to be used to maintain all of the crops? Not necessarily, as these vertical farms use drained and evaporated water and recycle it, essentially reusing water the crops naturally expel. But if the crops are indoors, what about sunlight? Inside the bunkers, the farms use LED lights to grow crops at twice the speed that traditional farming takes.

 

 

Currently in Japan, different companies such as Spread, Fujitsu, and AeroFarms have mastered this farming technique.They are producing lettuce, other leafy green vegetables, and organic herbs (a variety of 250 crops in total) and all without the worry of food safety and pesticides. These facilities cultivate the crops by way of aeroponics, a type of hydroponic growth using a mist environment.

Looking at these vertical farming facilities from a numbers perspective, these farms produce 12,000 to 20,000 heads of lettuce per day. They are bagged at the source–the sterile environment where they’re grown–and then distributed to nearby cities, including Tokyo, so food miles are never a concern. Japan is an innovator of sustainable agriculture, and this new way of farming will hopefully be introduced in more cities all over the world, so energy will be saved and food will be produced sustainably with little to no waste, making food shortages a thing of the past.

Check out the video below for more info:

 

Are there any amazing sustainable commitments that other countries are making? Let us know! And don’t forget to pin!