We humans are able to cope relatively easy with different climate conditions: we are all over the globe, adapting to all kinds of ‘weathers’, trying to get the most out of our lives. When it rains we step aside to remain dry.
Plants cannot do this. They are stuck in the soil and need to adapt, all the time, everyday, everywhere. As a matter of speaking, they hate nature. It is not kind to them. The result is that almost all plants cannot reach their full potential. Not even in traditional and highly controlled glasshouses.
State-of-the-art indoor farming technology and know-how allows the total control of breeding, propagating and growing for many different crops and purposes, from Greenland to Ecuador. And from stevia to medicinal crops.
Total control is not a dream anymore – it can be your reality.
We are now able to balance the growing parameters for each kind of crop, achieving the best possible quality, taste and nutritional levels.
The sugars that plants produce through photosynthesis, are first being used to stay alive. Generally, plants produce more sugars which allows them to grow and make new biomass, quantitative growth. In traditional farming plants can hardly produce more sugars than that.
Indoor farming realizes much higher levels of photosynthesis and sugar production. This opens up new possibilities for qualitative growth; plants are now able to make the compounds we need in healthy food: the secondary metabolites. All in a controllable manner, creating the quality we want, when we want it – on a level rarely seen before.
Famous Miles Davis played his composition ‘Seven Steps to Heaven’ magnificently – with only three valves on his trumpet.
By controlling only three main variables – light, temperature and evaporation – we can compose our environmental ‘tune’. Read more here…
Many people in favor of classic organic farming are surprised to hear that – in terms of process and yield – indoor farming outperforms their favorite ‘natural’ method. Where they prefer the reduction of pesticides, we don’t use any at all. And we use 90% less water.
Grown locally in order to reduce transportation and pollution. Talking about local-for-local: shop owners have far less waste or insecure buying prognoses.
The same goes for nutrition and taste: indoor farming scores higher ratings as food is harvested at the perfect time, fresh and ripe. Accessible, nutritious, tasty and affordable.
We are witnessing nothing less than the re-invention of farming.
It will be an amalgam of food production, logistics, health care, physics, mathematics, new forms of financing and more. The curriculum of universities should follow this dynamic synthesis. Students should be offered a new mix of knowledge fields.
Concrete new market oriented opportunities will be leading the dance of selecting and combining insights from these academic fields, like solution oriented designs. Think of a patient’s medicine in a vegetable.
Students at our workshop held in Luanda, Angola (December 2016)
In order to produce a daily portion of 200 gram fresh vegetables 365/365 in an indoor farm, we need less than one square meter of growing space. In order to feed a city of 100,000 people, it takes a five-layer indoor farm with a footprint of 20,000 m2.
Or, on a smaller scale, a community farm of 300 m2 could feed 60 – 80 families. This farm can be jointly owned and operated in a local district. It will supply local needs for food and provide a meaningful contribution to the society in the form of jobs, connectivity, ownership and reward.
All in all, instead of constantly solving growing issues, our clients can now focus on new business opportunities in breeding, propagating and growing.
For example, while we were solving the edema problem with your tomatoes in an indoor farm, you could have been thinking of…
- new markets
- new products
- new applications
- new outlets
- new distribution channels
- new types of customers
- new taste varieties
