INDOOR FARMING -- (FELICIANO/GREEN) PBS NHWE NOV 12, 2017
UPDATED
FRI. NOV 10 2:00 PM, TRT: 9:04
(SUGGESTED ANCHOR LEAD)
THE UNITED NATIONS
ESTIMATES THAT BY 2050, THE WORLD’S POPULATION WILL HAVE GROWN TO NEARLY 10
BILLION PEOPLE, WHICH BEGS THE QUESTION: HOW DO WE FEED THEM WHEN RESOURCES
LIKE FARMLAND ARE ALREADY BEING STRETCHED THIN? ONE COUNTRY IN EUROPE
THINKS IT HAS A SOLUTION. NEWSHOUR WEEKEND’S IVETTE FELICIANO LOOKS INTO NEW
AGRICULTURAL ADVANCES THAT MIGHT HELP FEED THE WORLD, AND WHETHER THEY MIGHT BE
ADOPTED BY THE U.S.
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(PKG)
IVETTE FELICIANO: Just
south of The Hague, in the Westland region of the Netherlands, miles upon miles
of greenhouses are spread across the landscape. They’ve been built by Dutch
farmers as part of a 20-year movement by the country to pursue sustainable
agriculture by growing indoors.
Dutch farmer Hans Zwinkel
grows tomatoes in two greenhouses that cover 20 acres of land. His annual
harvest of two-and-a-half million pounds of tomatoes is more than double the
average yield of an outdoor farm.
HANS ZWINKEL: The plant started over
there as a small plant, stands about five meters, six meters further.
IVETTE FELICIANO: Zwinkel
and growers like him achieves high yields by controlling the climate and water
for their crops under glass. Filtration systems allow them to collect and
recycle the plants’ water supply. Crops receive direct sunlight -- supplemented
as needed by artificial light -- and are protected from unpredictable weather
events and insects, which almost completely eliminates the use of chemical
pesticides.
HANS ZWINKEL: It’s nice to see the
plants grow. You--it gives you energy.
IVETTE FELICIANO: These
growing techniques have helped foster an indoor growing boom in the
Netherlands. Greenhouses now produce 35 percent of the country’s
vegetables--despite occupying less than one percent of its farmland.
The Netherlands’
Wageningen University has led much of the research on how to best grow crops
indoors. Leo Marcelis--a professor at the university--says that in the era of
climate change, the Dutch agricultural revolution needs to move beyond
greenhouses, which still rely on some outside forces like sunlight.
LEO MARCELIS: We wanted to control the
production process, that we can control the yield, the quality, that we can
give guarantees towards the consumers. Although we can control a lot we're
still dependent on the outdoor conditions. So the next step would be to have a
further control. So we can in fact guarantee how much produce we will have tomorrow,
or on any date of the -- of the year, of a guaranteed quality.
IVETTE FELICIANO: Marcelis
is now experimenting with indoor vertical farming--growing plants
stacked on shelves to maximize space--and completely cut-off from the outside.
As in many greenhouses, water for the plants is drained, collected, and reused,
reducing their dependence on an outside water source. And instead of sunlight,
the researchers use l-e-ds -- light bulbs that can replicate solar light in a
variety of colors and intensities.
LEO MARCELIS: Whether we are growing
tomatoes, whether it's about getting fruits, or whether it's a lettuce, or a
leafy vegetables. You can imagine that you want a different type of plant. And
that may require therefore a different light. With LEDs, we can also put them
in between the plants. And that's very good. Because usually there is maybe too
much light on the top, but insufficient at the bottom. So we can have a much
better distribution of the light in the plant.
But growing indoors
isn’t cheap. Marcelis says a quarter of the expenses for indoor growers in the
Netherlands relate to construction--something farmers who grow in fields don’t
have to worry about. Then there’s the energy costs of round-the-clock climate
control and artificial lighting.
But Marcelis says a key advantage to indoor
farming is that by creating ideal growing conditions and maximizing space, it
can produce much higher yields, in some cases, up to 350 times the yield of a
conventional farm of the same size.
LEO MARCELIS: What
really matters is if the income is larger than the cost. So if the investment
costs are high, and also the other costs are high, well, if the income is then
also very high, then it is about the balance.
IVETTE FELICIANO: Marcelis
says one important part of their work is developing techniques that can be
replicated anywhere, even in arid climates like the Middle East or sub-Saharan
Africa. The United Nations estimates as the world’s population grows, global
food demand will rise 70 percent by 2050, even as the amount of water and
farmable land shrinks due to the global warming.
The Netherlands is
already doing its part to feed the world. Propelled by indoor farming, it’s
become the second biggest food exporter in the world, accounting for nearly 90
billion dollars last year. This is all the more astounding given that the Netherlands
is less than one-percent the size of the United States, the world’s number one
food exporter, where indoor farming is also gaining a foothold.
Here in Kennett
Township, Pennsylvania, mushroom growers have been practicing indoor farming
for over a hundred years, and today produce half the U.S. mushroom crop.
An hour outside Philadelphia,
this small community of eight thousand people harvests half a billion
pounds of mushrooms every year -- all of it indoors and at a low cost of about
one dollar per pound.
CHRIS ALONZO: We invested nine years
ago into a Dutch-style farm.
IVETTE FELICIANO: Chris
Alonzo owns this indoor farm that uses the vertical farming methods seen in the
Netherlands.
CHRIS ALONZO: We put in aluminum
shelving instead of wooden beds, we invested in equipment which made the job
less labor intensive. We have heat in the room, air conditioning in the room,
and air flow. And we use those tools to make sure that the room environment is
specifically controlled for what the mushroom likes.
IVETTE FELICIANO: Using
these techniques, Alonzo’s facility alone
is responsible for more than one percent of the nation’s mushroom crop --
growing 11 million pounds of mushrooms a year -- protected from potentially
harsh outdoor conditions.
CHRIS ALONZO: The only day we take
off is Christmas. And the consumer wants fresh produce year-round. So we're
able to meet the needs to have locally grown produce all year-round. As opposed
to some crops where they're only grown seasonally.
This is our
environmental control unit…
IVETTE FELICIANO: Alonzo
says the difficulty with indoor farming--as with outdoor farming--is finding
the balance between your harvest’s revenue and its expenses.
CHRIS ALONZO: Mushrooms has been
sustainable for-- for generations. However, land is – is -- affordable, because
Mother Nature provides rain, Mother Nature provides sun. Growing indoors is
very capital intensive. You have the building, you have the infrastructure, you
have energy costs. But if you can maximize productivity and having consistent
quality year-round, yes, it’s economically viable, but the margins are still
very tight.”
IVETTE FELICIANO: Most
indoor farmers can’t grow at the same scale as mushroom farmers in Kennett Township.
But where they -- and some venture capitalists -- see the future of indoor
agriculture lying is in small-scale urban production in areas with no farming
industry of their own.
MATT BARNARD: The place where we're
stepping in now is to serve demand that is unmet.
IVETTE FELICIANO: Three-thousand
miles west of Alonzo’s farm, indoor farming pioneer Matt Barnard heads a major
agriculture project in San Francisco called “plenty.” Its farm is a retrofitted
former warehouse, now with walls of fresh vegetables that stretch for
100-thousand square feet.
Currently it grows leafy
greens like spinach and kale--the easiest and most affordable crops to grow
indoors--but it will soon start growing tomatoes and strawberries as well. The
plants grow directly out of vertical columns. Similar to Dutch researchers, the
company also uses l-e-d lighting, water recycling, and climate control.
No genetically modified
seeds or pesticides are used in production. Instead, it’s the environment
that’s modified, carefully crafted around each type of plant to give them the
ideal conditions for growing.
MATT BARNARD: The advantages that we
find are because of that control-- we, for example, don't have to use
pesticides. Instead of using 15 gallons of water to produce one head of
lettuce, we use less than one-fifth of a gallon to produce that same head of
lettuce. So we're saving a significant amount of water. We can actually
influence the way the food tastes by making sure it has exactly the right
nutrient recipe, the right light recipe, the right water recipe.
IVETTE FELICIANO: Plenty
hopes to become an industry leader in indoor farming. The company recently
received 200 million dollars of private funding, which it plans to spend on
building farms in the ten most populous American cities and hundreds more
worldwide.
But, as in the Netherlands,
plenty has to overcome certain challenges -- the upfront cost of building or
retrofitting indoor spaces suitable for farming...and the energy costs of
indoor lighting and climate control.
But Matt Barnard
believes that the advances that have been made in indoor agriculture will make
it a key player in feeding the world’s ever-growing population.
MATT BARNARD: We’ve added, you know,
six billion people since the tractor came around, and so we believe this is one
of the core innovations that’ll help us, you know, serve the next two to three
billion people that we add to the planet.
|
TIMECODE |
LOWER THIRD |
1 |
02:37 |
Leo Marcelis Wageningen University and Research Centre |
2 |
04:39 |
Kennett, Township, PA Ivette Feliciano @IvetteF_News |
3 |
06:18 |
Chris Alonzo Mushroom Farmer |
4 |
07:49 |
Matt Barnard Plenty, Inc. |