with massive innovation in lighting
technology over the last few years
vertical farms have all of a sudden gone
from science projects to legitimate
businesses capable of feeding lots of
people but as lighting costs go down and
the technology improves
it's actually the future of these farms
that i'm so interested in some people
are turned off by the pristine
mechanical growing conditions like it's
something out of the matrix
but that's actually what makes it so
exciting companies like bowery farming
have the opportunity to re-engineer
every aspect of the growing process
even down to the seeds they use which
are optimized for flavor instead of
having to worry about insect
and weather resistance using a system of
robotics and automation
all running through what they call the
bowery operating system
bowery is able to use 95 percent less
water than traditional farms
use zero pesticides and chemicals be 100
times more productive per square foot of
land and most importantly build farms
right next to cities to avoid the
environmental impact of freighting food
across the country
and the world so today i'm here at
bowery's r d
facility to find out how they use
technology to make every step of this
process
as efficient as possible
so what what's the point in the whole
thing like why why bother
why bother uh it's actually a legitimate
question right
when you look at farming today it is the
largest
consumer of resources globally 70 of the
world's water every year goes to
agriculture and because of the
chemically intensive way that we farm
now
we've actually lost 30 of our arable
farmland
in just the last 40 years one of the
things you always hear about vertical
farming is it's like
hey we have a power source it's called
the sun
why are you wasting that about eight or
nine years ago
you actually saw the cost of lights
dropped by over 85 percent
and you saw the efficiency of the lights
more than double but before that
this wouldn't work what is the first
thing that you guys think about
when it comes to growing more efficient
crops the seeds themselves are where
everything starts right it's where
everything starts with any plant i i
just have my negative test i'm
negative for all stds and covalent so
this is the cedar it's like
it automates the seeding process so this
is where it starts so what do you
actually need this material for
so when it's the seedling it's growing
roots so it needs something to anchor
itself on
and then there is this drum here that
will dibble it so it pushes the soil
just a little bit
lower right what this does it kind of
creates like a cone so it falls here it
kind of rolls into the hole
how is this different than a seed that
like a farmer would plant well
a farmer could could also plant a coated
seed there's a vacuum inside the
cylinder that's going to pull the seed
as this spins
and so every hole will have one seed if
we were to not coat the seed
the machine might pick up three or four
seeds because it's not that accurate
but where you have this larger seed the
machine is going to have an easier time
pulling pulling that one seed and then
dropping it into the plug what would be
the downside of having multiple seeds in
a plug yeah you wouldn't have nice
uniform heads you might have more loose
leaf for example
this is so cool
okay so what happens from here well from
here we will take it and then we can
transport this to the germination
chamber germination is the stage where
seeds sprout out into seedlings
typically you'd need to cover the seeds
in topsoil to prevent them from drying
out
but because bowery can guarantee almost
100 humidity
they can leave them uncovered these
flats will stay in here for anywhere
between
two and maybe six days from seed to
seedling like
in the wild on a on an open air farm how
long would this process take
germination rates are highly dependent
on temperature so here we keep it at a
constant temperature so
for the most part it's pretty much every
x number of days we know how many days
but in a perfect world outside probably
a few more days longer so at every stage
of this process you guys are saving time
right
yeah so we will transport them from the
germination chamber too yep that's okay
wow
i had one job i don't mind sharing you
know these
were in here a little too long probably
and they're slightly elongated
what's wrong with the fact that these
are elongated they redirect
resources towards stem to make more stem
we don't want them to do that we want
them to produce more leaf
i can notice something that's going on
here which is this last row didn't get
seeded properly so that would mean that
this tray
is 10 or
5 less efficient more like two percent
but yeah it'll be about two percent
lower than a
lower mass we can we can even uh
speculate
all right so this is like a completed
tray then i mean because we're in the
development facility
not everything is the same thing if
you're in production in production you
would see
like basically the entire thing filled
with seedlings like just one one of
these so
so now we send this down the line
into the mother ship into the growing
operation right yep that's right
yeah it's pretty [ __ ] cool
from here the trays are moved into any
of the farm's growing positions where ai
scans crop information through imaging
and qr codes and gives each crop its own
customized plan of water and light
so all these trays have like a built-in
drain system right so the water
is continuously flowing that's right so
the water passes through
we treat the water give it back the
nutrients that it needs one of your
talking points is that you guys use
95 less water than a
conventional farm a large part of that
is because we're constantly
recirculating
okay our aim is to make sure that really
the water that leaves the facility is in
the plants and i keep coming to this
point that
we give this tray what it needs when it
needs it
is very different than a blanket
irrigation across
you know an acre of farmland and what
does that mean do you think of that in
terms of the height of the water height
plays a role
turnover plays a role will there always
be water
touching the bottom of the base or will
it sometimes
shut off not necessarily okay yeah we
assume
that crops need sunlight but that's not
exactly the case right there's a
spectrum of light and the plants
don't exactly need every part of that
crops need energy
okay and so we've done an immense amount
of experimentation looking at different
color or spectra of lights
what we've honed in on are these white
lights outside you have shading and not
shading you have clouds
and so for us to be able to provide a
consistent lighting experience
is what's really integral do these crops
have like bedtime
there's night time there's night time
but what we can do
which we're constantly looking to
explore and understand and exploit
really is how do we take advantage of
providing more light
so now this will stay here for a number
of days in this
these smaller plants these smaller
plants in this configuration and then
we'll move it to a
place in our farm for it to continue its
its life cycle
um as it reaches adulthood so this is
the next stage
how far how far in are these crops i
would say they're about
10 to 12 days after planting
okay and this is where growth really
starts to accelerate
and they they start to look like what we
what we eat every day so these trades
are are holding the plants they're
holding the
little block of of peat right yep
and so it doesn't really matter what
this material is
no it's just a holder for the plant yeah
right and in fact the grow media
is really just a holder that connects
the roots together with the plants
this this grow media isn't giving any
nutrients no
it's not providing any much value other
than just keeping things together
just just like this structure here so
from here how many how many weeks out
are we
from harvesting these plants generally
speaking our growth cycles are anywhere
from like
17 days to 32 days so these have about
anywhere from about 10 10 to 20 12 days
yeah
all right let's send this guy back uh
okay so we're on the third of
five levels of the farm in this
operation why even bother with a
vertical farm
why bother why bother why bother with
the vertical
well if you think about it we could be
growing in this warehouse
yeah and we'd be using one one slice
right
and so we can be upwards of a hundred
times more efficient with land use
because of how we stack plants
vertically in a fire but it's
essentially a real estate question it's
a real estate question
how high could you go like what it
what's the limit there's no limit
there's no limit it's just how high is
the the ceiling of a warehouse
the fact that this growing position
morphs into whatever this crop needs
lets us grow this here or grow it you
know one or two levels up higher
if things are kind of moving on their
own a little bit why would a human being
need to get up here when typically these
trays are brought down for
processing and kind of intervention we
don't really think about how people are
involved in the growing process
but how do we take people out of the
growing process yeah our goal is to
actually have as few people walking
around our plants as possible
sorry about that yeah we're here for a
reason to spread the word spread the
seeds
probably not that's part of the trust in
bowery is that
we're not no one's touching these plants
while they're growing all we can do is
ruin things
all we can do is ruin things this is uh
our red leaf lettuce when it reaches
maturity they've grown up
you know like we said about seven to ten
days since we last saw them
so this is the same crop in the middle
of harvesting i just was hoping you
could show us the
root system yeah let's lift this up wow
look at that
look at that root development it's so
different than those seedlings right
you want all the water in the farm to go
out in the boxes that's the ideal right
so now we'll drain this tray get it out
of here and then it'll be harvested and
sold to the public that's right
untouched untouched
all right so we've made it we've seen
the way that the romaine gets from
seed to this point um obviously this is
not how you guys would harvest
it in the real world i know you have a
deluxe
line of machines that they may or may
not give me the b-roll access to
but um for i just yeah i mean i would
i'd love to try it with you right now
you've been in the farm all day so the
last the most important thing you can do
is actually try the product you've been
a part of that's why one
that's my one leaf that i get well i was
giving you one to try i guess you have a
mask on so it's a little trickier
see you got the sweetness it's got the
whole spectrum of flavor in there
it's as if it grew in someone's you know
countryside farmland just using a lot
less water a lot less chemicals a lot
less in general
so not to get like doomsday-ish but if
we didn't
figure out these new ways of farming
what would our food supply look like in
50 years
you know nine to 10 billion people
that'll be on the planet in the next 30
years
right and according to the u.n you need
somewhere between 50 to 70 more food to
feed that population
and all the while 70 to 80 of the
population is actually going to be
living in and around cities so there's
this real move towards urbanization
figuring out how do you feed and how do
you provide fresh food to urban
environments both more efficiently as
well as more sustainably
is a very important question today and
an even more important question in the
years to come when you've spent
so much time obsessing over proximity
and how close am i to the source of what
i'm
consuming when you leave do you just
want to like really mess
it up and order like a whole tuna in
from japan
for better or for worse the more you
understand the food
supply chain the more you realize how
convoluted and complex it really is
and i think if there's anything covid
showed us it actually was just that i
think
we took for granted for a long time the
fact that you could walk into a store
and find anything you wanted whenever
you wanted it
and that wasn't true for a period of
time and i think it shined a light for
people on how reliant we are in other
parts of the country other parts of the
world for that matter