If you’ve been to Epcot, you might have ridden Living with the Land, or as some families
like to call it, “No Jayden, we’re not waiting 75 minutes for Soarin’.
We’ll go to that boat ride over there instead.”
It’s about a fifteen-minute long ride that teaches guests about the importance of, well,
living with the land.
The first half takes them through a series of scenes that teach them about some of the
different biomes on Earth as well as how the right lighting can make a scarecrow look creepy.
The other half brings guests through a real functional greenhouse where Disney grows a
wide variety of fruits, vegetables, and flowers.
It’s mainly to show off how technology can be used to improve farming methods, but as
the ride proudly proclaims, the food grown at Living with the Land is actually harvested
and sent off to different restaurants across Disney property.
So, how much food do they grow, and what’s that amount look like in the big picture?
The answer is both “a lot” and “not much at all”.
According to a 2017 interview with Disney’s greenhouse operations manager, Laura, Kleiss,
around 40,000 pounds of fruits, vegetables, and flowers are harvested every year at the
land and used at around 20 different restaurants at Disney.
On its own, 40,000 pounds of food is quite a lot.
According to USDA data, just looking at food consumption pound for pound, that would be
able to feed twenty Americans for a full year.
However, anyone who has ever been to Disney World knows that you’ll probably pass twenty
people just walking to the bathroom.
That same operations manager went on to speculate that the food sent off to the restaurants
on property makes up less than one percent of what they need.
Now that’s a bit vague because it doesn’t specify if it’s less than one percent of
what they need in terms of fruits and veggies, or food overall.
However even if we assume that the 40,000-pound figure makes up half a percent, that would
amount to needing eight million pounds a year, or 21.9 thousand pounds a day.
Again, a large number on its own, but for a resort that sees tens of thousands of people
at each theme park every day, that’s still small potatoes.
So it’s likely they were talking about the resort’s fruit and vegetable needs, which
makes sense.
That number also doesn’t account for the fish that are farmed in the attractions “aquacell”.
It’s also worth noting that not all of that food is grown right in the parts of the greenhouse
you see while on the ride.
Beyond the attraction space, there are additional greenhouses backstage where “non-show”
plants are grown and cared for.
So while The Land isn’t necessarily feeding most of the guests at Disney World, it’s
still helping.
And besides, the greenhouse at the land is used for more than just that.
The facility works in partnership with the US Department of Agriculture on research projects.
So if you’ve ever ridden past that lab that gives off Jurassic Park vibes and wondered
if it was real or just for show, it’s legit.
Gennaro: Are these characters auto-erotica?
John Hammond: No, we have no animatronics here.
These people are the real miracle workers
According to the USDA website, they’re currently aiding in the research of a project called
“Improving Disease Resistance, Fruit Quality, and Growth Habit of Temperate Fruit Crops
through Genetic Engineering”.
Between the research and experimental growing methods, the greenhouse has been able to put
out some pretty impressive crops.
According to their horticulturalist at the time, Les Frey, they’ve grown everything
from 200-pound pumpkins to nine-pound basketball-sized lemons, to a tomato plant that holds the Guinness
World Record for producing over 13,000 tomatoes in a little over a year.
So sure, Living with the Land might not be as popular as Soarin’, or Test Track, or
Mission Space, or Spaceship Earth, or Frozen Ever After, or The Seas with Nemo & Friends,
or Grand Fiesta Tour, or Journey into Imagion.
OK that last one might be 50/50 these days.
In any case, it might not be the most popular attraction, but this 15-minute-long boat ride
not only sets out to educate guests about the science of farming, but it practices what
it preaches by growing tens of thousands of pounds of food a year that get put to good
use, and it goes a step further by being a real research station that helps in pushing
that farming technology even further.
So in a way, Living with the Land is the most quintessential EPCOT Center ride there is.