Translator: Emma Gon Reviewer: Denise RQ
Hello.
Sad.
They're all dead.
I wonder if anybody knows why this could happen?
Is it because a) of a meteorite impact,
b) a super volcano exploded,
c) not enough food?
Laurens Trebes: Anybody knows? A, b, c? (Audience) A!
LT: C, of course. Not enough food. Thank you.
Will it also happen with us, human beings?
I don't think so.
I think, if you see this chart,
the growth of the human population is going quite up.
It was quite stable until the last millennium,
and then we went to 3 billion.
Now, we share our space with more than 6 billion people,
and we go up, the trend goes up to 9 or 10 billion people.
I wonder, if it is possible to produce food by then.
The problem is that producing food is not easy.
Normally, on land we grow horizontally,
but if we want to live in a city, it's also one of my concerns,
we have to produce more vertically.
Go up.
This is one of the first vertical farming projects that I know of.
It's like 600 years before Christ.
It was a king who designed and built a garden for his wife.
It is the Hanging Gardens of Babylon,
the first vertical farming project ever.
Nowadays, architects design futuristic buildings
where they integrate living, working, and production of food
in one ecosystem.
Will our future look like this?
I think it might be happening, but not until now,
because urban farming projects are not quite successful.
I've visited some in Shanghai, in New York,
and all I see is some rooftop farming or recovery of lost spaces,
where some of the happy few can produce some veggies.
But it will be unable to produce food
for large masses of hungry humans.
So, there needs to be another solution.
Urban farming, I think it is the future, but there are no solutions,
it is technically not feasible yet.
But I became inspired, and I think I found a solution,
and I'd like to share it with you.
What you see here is the jungle or the rain forest in Venezuela.
I lived there for quite a while, and the rain forest also inspires me.
I think the rain forest is how the world began
some billion years ago.
Plants that develop in a quite misty environment,
they grow and produce many secrets that we still don't know.
Many medicines, for example,
come from the Amazon.
I think it could also happen with the food.
One of the things in the Amazon I think that's very special is orchids.
I'm not a flower expert, but if you see an orchid,
it doesn't have its roots in the soil, the roots are just in the air.
An orchid hangs and grows, how is it possible?
In a misty environment, the orchid is able,
thanks to many years of evolution,
to get nutrients and water out of the air, out of the misty environment.
And I wonder if this possible with other vegetables, fruits, or herbs?
For example, can I put a lettuce in the air and just let it grow?
Or strawberries or some herbs?
And I think it's possible.
Time for testing.
I went to Venlo, in the Floriade,
I rented this small space in a greenhouse, and we started with some tests
to see if it's possible to grow vegetables in the air.
So, I made some vertical pods,
bought some machines, some vaporizers,
and contracted a professional farmer, because I'm not a farmer,
to help me out with the production of the first batch of lettuces.
And as you can see in the picture,
it works, the roots grow out.
They just develop themselves inside the columns.
They think they are orchids.
But then, I tasted them, and I didn't like them so much.
Because they look nice, the weight was good,
everything went well,
but when I tasted them, it was like eating some water
- I don't know, I didn't like it -
but I decided to hire another expert,
a very famous worldwide about testing.
This guy [does] animal testing.
This is Dr. Fluffy. It's very expensive, but OK.
Animal testing is not the correct word, I think;
I think we should say animal tasting
because animals have the sixth sense that we don't have.
A rabbit, for example, if he smells the lettuce,
his body, his sixth sense, his gut feeling tells him,
"Hey, this is good for me, I can have it."
We humans have lost that.
We just put some dressing or some salt, we eat it and don't care.
But he can die.
So, I provided him with the lettuces from the pod
and some lettuces that I grew in the soil as baseline.
And he didn't eat my lettuce, he just hopped, hop-hop,
to the lettuce I've grown in the soil and he ate it.
And I said, "Why? Why Dr. Fluffy? What did I do wrong?
Help me out, what is the missing link?"
And when he finished his meal, he said,
"Laurens, my friend, the missing link? It's called full spectrum."
And that needs some explanation.
Full spectrum: many people can claim
that they hear the difference between vinyl music or CD music.
(Music: Vivaldi, "Concerto No. 1 in E major, Allegro")
And the full spectrum.
(Music)
I think it's clear, you can hear the difference.
Not only for sound but also for light.
It's a full spectrum of light plants need.
There are growers that say we can imitate the sunlight,
and just use the LED lamps;
blue for example, or red,
but in fact, you need the full spectrum of light, like this,
so plants can grow.
But not only with light,
a plant also needs the full spectrum of nutrients, OK?
How can a plant become healthy
if the grower only provides -they called it- the essential nutrients?
Five or six you can see it.
A plant, a tomato, for example, needs
at least 60 different nutrients to become healthy.
And healthy means nutritional for us.
It's not possible for a plant to be healthy for us,
if we don't provide it with a complete scheme of nutrients.
Not only the elements,
I'm also talking about [finding the] nutrients, alkaloids, acids,
everything a plant can find in the virgin soil.
This is me in Venezuela drinking some water.
I needed enough for my throat, but anyway...
The complete spectrum of light,
the complete spectrum of nutrients in a good environment
is the only way we can produce healthy food.
So, it was testing again.
I made some changes in the set up.
I changed the chemical fertilizers for biological fertilizers,
and I added some nutrients I made an extract, like a stimulant,
I extracted from the Amazon river and the sea.
Together with this complete nutritional spectrum,
I was able to produce quite good lettuces.
They were very healthy lettuces, it was a good yield.
And you can ask for example, Doctor Fluffy who [tasted] tequila or something.
Afterwards, I came to the conclusion
that at this moment, if we can manage to grow in a misty environment,
and we can produce healthy affordable food,
then it's time to bring the farm to the city.
Vertical farming will be our future farming.
And future farming, I call it full spectrum farming.
Thank you and excuses for the slides.
Thank you very much.
(Applause)