so if you live on planet earth and
you're one of seven billion people that
eats food every day I need you to pay
attention because over the next three
decades we all need to address one of
the most critical global challenges of
our generation and I'm not talking about
climate change I'm talking about food
and agriculture in 2050 our global
population is projected to reach nine
point eight billion with 68% of us
living in urban city centers in order to
feed this massive population we will
need to increase our agricultural output
by 70% over current levels just to put
this number into perspective we will
need to grow more food in the next 35 to
40 years then the previous 10,000 years
combined put simply not only is our
global population becoming bigger but
it's also getting denser and we will
need to grow significantly more food
using significantly less land and
resources complicating our current
efforts to address these major
demographic shifts are the challenges
facing the agricultural industry today
globally one-third of all the food that
we produce is wasted acquitting to 1.6
billion tons of food that spoiled on the
way to the market or expired in our
refrigerators or we're simply thrown out
by supermarkets and restaurants at the
end of the day every single year up to
600 million people will get sick eating
contaminated food highlighting the
challenge that we have of maintaining
global food safety and maybe
unsurprisingly the agricultural industry
is the single largest consumer of fresh
water accounting for 70% of global usage
now you'll be relieved to know that the
agricultural industry and that the
global movement by universities
companies and NGOs is putting together
comprehensive research and developing
novel technology to
all of these issues and many have been
doing it for decades but one of the more
recent innovations in food production
being deployed in industrial parts in
North America in the urban city centers
of Asia and even in the arid deserts of
the Middle East is controlled
environment agriculture controlled
environment agriculture is actually just
a fancy way of saying weather or climate
proof farming and many of these farms
grow food three-dimensionally in
vertical racks as opposed to the two
dimensions of conventional farms and so
this type of food production is also
referred to as indoor vertical farming
I've been involved in the indoor
vertical farming space for the past five
and a half years developing technology
to make this type of food production
more efficient and affordable this
picture was taken outside of a
decommissioned shipping container that
we converted into an indoor farm and
then launched into the heart and the
heat of Dubai indoor vertical farming is
a relatively recent phenomenon
commercially speaking and the reason for
this is that consumers care more about
food safety and where their food comes
from and also the necessary technology
to make this possible is more readily
available and lower cost and the overall
cost of food production globally is
actually increasing making this type of
food production more competitive so if
you want to build an indoor vertical
farm you will need to replace some of
the conventional elements of farming
with artificial substitutes starting
with sunlight in indoor vertical farms
natural sunlight is replaced with
artificial lighting like LEDs while
there are many different types of LEDs
being used the one that we decided to
install here wore is called full
spectrum LEDs which was optimized for
the type of vegetables that we were
growing also in order to maximize
production for a given space indoor
vertical farms also utilize and install
racking systems to grow vegetables
vertically and some of the biggest
facilities stack their production 14 to
16 floors high now most of these farms
are hydroponic or aeroponic systems
which means that instead of using soil
they use a substitute material like poly
urethanes
sponges biodegradable peat moss and even
use inorganic materials like perlite and
clay pellets another unique aspect about
these farms is that they use a precise
nutrient formula that is circulated and
recycled throughout the facility and
this is pumped directly to the
vegetables root zone to promote plant
growth and lastly these farms use a
sophisticated monitoring and automation
system to significantly increase
productivity efficiency and consistency
and these tools also provide the added
benefit of producing food that is more
traceable and safe some of the obvious
benefits of growing food in this way is
that you have year-round vegetable
production you have consistent quality
and your predictable output some of the
other major benefits include significant
resource use efficiencies particularly
water for every kilogram of vegetables
grown in this way hundreds of liters of
water is conserved
compared to conventional farming methods
and with the water savings come similar
savings in the use of fertilizer one of
the highest yielding farms grows over
three hundred and fifty times more food
per square meter than a conventional
farm and weatherproofing means complete
control of incoming contaminants and
pests completely eliminating the need
for the use of chemical pesticides and
not to be mistaken these farms can
produce enormous amounts of food with
one of the biggest facilities producing
30,000 heads of vegetables a day however
as with any new technology or innovation
there are some drawbacks as you would
imagine growing food in this way can be
incredibly energy intense also these
farms could only produce a small variety
of vegetables commercially and the
overall cost of the production still is
quite high and in order to address these
issues some of the biggest and most
sophisticated farms are making
significant investments starting with
energy efficiency in order to reduce the
high energy usage there are efforts to
develop higher efficiency LEDs to
develop lasers optimized for plant
growth and using even fiber-optic cables
like these
to channel sunlight directly into an
indoor vertical farm during the day to
reduce the need for artificial lighting
also to reduce the labor costs
associated with hiring a more
sophisticated more urban and also a more
high skilled labor force robotics and
automation is used extensively in large
scale facilities and you can never
really be too resource efficient
building indoor vertical farms in and
around urban city centers can help to
shorten the agricultural supply chain
and also help to maintain the
nutritional content in vegetables also
there are food deserts in many countries
that have little to no access to
nutritious vegetables and as this
industry matures it will become possible
to provide more equitable access to
high-quality highly nutritious festivals
in even the most underprivileged of
communities and finally and this is
really exciting for me personally indoor
vertical farming can actually be
integrated seamlessly into the cityscape
to help repurpose idle underutilized and
unused urban infrastructure in fact this
is already happening today ride-sharing
services have taken hundreds of
thousands of cars off the road and they
have significantly reduced the need for
parking this is a farm that we installed
in central Beijing in an underutilized
underground parking structure to grow
vegetables for the nearby hotels under
utilized infrastructure is not simply
limited to large-scale civil engineering
projects and they can also include
smaller spaces like idle restaurant
corners this is an example of a farm
that we installed directly into the
partition of a hotel entrance in order
to grow fresh herbs and microgreens
on site for the chefs honestly if you
look around you will find underutilized
space everywhere under around and inside
of urban Urban development's this is a
farm that we installed into an empty
office corner to grow fresh vegetables
for the employees in nearby cafes I get
to be a part of all these cool projects
and and working in the agricultural
industry to improve access
and affordability too fresh a nutritious
produce hopefully soon by anyone
anywhere has been the greatest joy and
also the most humbling and
intellectually challenging thing I've
ever done and now that I've convinced
you that agriculture can be quite sexy
you'll be surprised and shocked to know
that I still have trouble fully
articulating how and why I decided to
work or and continue to work in the
agricultural industry but a couple years
ago I found a rather unique answer
hiding in plain sight you see I read an
article about how your name particularly
your last name can have a strong
influence on everything from your
personality to your professional career
this is my Japanese last name hold on
and the characters translate literally
into small farm thank you
[Applause]