Vertical Farming: A New Food System | Viviana Correa Galvis | Escaped Sapiens Podcast #51

Most of us live nowhere near where our food comes from. which means that the food that we have access to is dictated by conderations like does it travel well, and does it have a long shelf life. Our supply chains also lead to sprawling monocrops, pesticide overuse, and agricultural runoff, as well as biodiversity loss, and a range of other problems. But this might all change in the near future with vertical farming.
In this episode of the Podcast I speak with Dr. Viviana Correa Galvis about the future of Vertical Farming. Vivian is Head of Crop Quality at Infarm, which is one of the worlds largest vertical agricultural company. The idea we discuss is simple but dramatic. We might one day be able to return vast amounts of land to nature by bringing crops back into the cities and stacking them vertically in controlled environments. The benefit of controlled environments is the ability to decide on the cultivars that we want to grow, and we can also control runoff and water usage. There are even ways of controlling how fast plants grow, their size, shape, nutrition value, flavor, and colour without altering their genetics.
►For more information about Vivian:
scholar.google.de/citations?h...
►For more information about Infarm:
www.infarm.com/
►Thumbnail supplied by infarm. Note, that this episode is not a paid advertisement for infarm. Infarm, however, very kindly allowed me to visit their premises in Berlin for this interview.
These conversations are supported by the Andrea von Braun foundation (www.avbstiftung.de/), as an exploration of the rich, exciting, connected, scientifically literate, and (most importantly) sustainable future of humanity. The views expressed in these episodes are my own and those of my guests. This episode covers sustainable resource use in agriculture.
Menu:
0:00 - Introduction
1:17 - What is vertical farming?
4:00 - Why is vertical farming happening now?
8:00 - Artificial light.
14:20 - Do plants sleep?
17:35 - Re-wilding.
20:23 - Substrate.
22:00 - The system.
26:40 - Infestations.
33:10 - Tough act to follow.
38:30 - Will we only have 1 tomato?
41:20 - The matrix.
46:50 - GMOs.
50:27 - Pollination.
1:00:35 - Who will dominate?
1:05:51 - World peace.
1:07:45 - Jobs and automation.
1:11:11 - New cultivars.
1:18:45 - Choice without genetic engineering.
1:23:25 - The future.
1:30:00 -
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[@annarose3123]

I was very lucky enough to be in a food studies class to learn about this topic as well as various other aspects of the impact that your food has on your health. During my time studying, I got the ability to learn of some really awesome stuff that a company in the Netherlands is doing. Not only do they utilise greenhouse growing in a more sustainable way but they implement advanced technology in a way that works directly with humans to provide the best output possible. If you have a chance and are curious it would be nice to see an update on the World Horti Center in the Netherlands.
A few names of the workers from the 2019 video I saw were …
Erwin Cardol - World Horti Center CEO.
Jeroen Sanders - World Horti Center Researcher.
This other person was also in the video but not directly in the company but must be over seeing many operation in Plant Sciences throughout the Netherlands and may be just as interesting to look into.
Ernst van den Ende - WUR Head of Plant Sciences.

[@EscapedSapiens]

Thanks for your comment. I've taken the names down and will look into it. No promises :).

[@annarose3123]

@@EscapedSapiens of course totally understand, it would be cool if it’s possible but either way just though it would be nice to share some info. Also very thankful for the consideration. ☺️

[@christopheraaron2412]

I suspect that this would be the most economical for the growing of certain herbs that one country would have to import from another region of the world and that the economy of scale that implementing this type of agricultural system to more expensive verbs closer to the point of sale within give us the economy of scale which will bring down the cost of this technology so then far more different varieties of agriculture could of course be implemented using this system.

[@EscapedSapiens]

I've wondered about this myself: What is the appropriate way to scale this idea. With tesla the idea was to start with a high end race car to make electric sexy. With vertical farming it will probably be, as you say, to start with extremely select crops in each region. A lot of these companies seem to be going bankrupt thought, so they don't seem to have worked it out just yet...

[@christopheraaron2412]

@@EscapedSapiens over the next few decades we are going to need this because of the fact that we're using up 50% of all the available land that's good for agriculture and that could go up to nearly 100% in another couple of decades so therefore we will have to go vertical

[@christopheraaron2412]

One big thing about this is the fact that everything can be grown without pesticides.