In this series lets talk about the future of farming: indoor farms. We already talked about how vulnerable our food production is, and that indoor farms will save us all. But we gotta talk about what an indoor farm is. Is it just a normal farm with a roof? What are indoor farms? It’s crazier than you’d expect..

Be sure to check out Part 1 & 3!

Nerd Punch!

Actually indoor farms are pretty much the most unnatural and artificial looking thing you could grow plants in. Looks like a mix between a rave, car factory, and a science lab.

These places are sealed off from the outside world to prevent any contamination of the plants. You have to go through decontamination clean rooms, slide into white bodysuits, slip on disposable shoe covers, don some food-safety gloves, and step through secondary decontamination clean rooms before actually entering the indoor farm.

Purple/pink LED’s flood the indoor farm, providing the necessary light for photosynthesis.

Plants are grown vertically in towers instead of horizontally, which is why indoor farms are often referred to as vertical farms.

Soil isn’t actually necessary for plant growth, so to better optimize plant growth, synthetic polymer film gel membranes or special recycled cloth are used, in a farming method called aeroponics.

Data is king, and indoor farms utilize tens of thousands of cameras and sensors to collect data about the plants. Machine learning artificial intelligence is implemented to optimize based on all this data, and.. probably better understand how to kill us with our food supply when skynet takes over, oh well.

Irrigation is gravitational and feeds into vertical columns of plants.

Tuber vegetables, like potatoes, are grown suspended in the air.

Automation and robotics are being implemented more and more in indoor farms to plant seeds, transplant them, raise them, and automatically carry the produce to a packing line to be shipped to consumers.

Genetic engineering is used to manipulate plant attributes.

This is the epitome of taking an old traditional industry, and sciencing the science out of it. The technology it uses derives partly from systems designed to grow crops on the moon.

The interior space is its own sealed-off world; nothing inside the vertical-farm buildings is uncontrolled. Every known influence on the plant’s well being is measured, adjusted, remeasured.

Now we know what indoor farms are and all the tech that goes into them, but how much does all this science and tech help? What are the distinct advantages of it over a conventional farm? Hit the like button to find out in the next video coming this Saturday.

Do you think the agricultural artificial intelligence will contaminate our food supply to exterminate humans? Let me know in the comments.

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Watch previous video – Why We’ll STARVE Without Indoor Farms

I’ll see you, in the next Nerd Punch.

Discover how a diverse team of innovators are using design thinking to make indoor farms part of our future.
We are the organisation behind innovation. We provide grants, investment and support to UK innovators. Learn more at https://bit.ly/3dy2QXp.

Transcript:
Redesigning the future of indoor farming
Did you know that by 2050 we’ll need 70% more food to feed 10bn people?
What’s more, we’ll have to contend with 25% less farmland, degraded soils, and an unstable climate.
Thankfully, innovative companies, such as Bristol’s LettUs Grow, are leading the way by moving farming indoors.
Their innovative aeroponics technology grows food, quite literally, out of thin air.
In 2020, Innovate UK awarded LettUs Grow £400,000 in seed funding to help them cultivate their market.
But that award was built on a previous grant from Innovate UK of £56,000, which they used to revolutionise their design.
With their biological and engineering backgrounds, the team at LettUs Grow would have instinctively taken a plant focussed approach to product development.
But thanks to the grant, they enlisted the help of fellow Bristolian product designers, Crux Design, who helped them put the user at the heart of product development decisions to create a more user-friendly product.
It encouraged them to consider aspects of their products that they may have otherwise overlooked, such as the manual handling of the growing trays.
And a lot of the material they generated at the design discovery stage has also gone directly into their investment pitch.
The new design process helped LettUs Grow solve some of the big problems standing in the way of indoor farming.
And they’re now on a mission to tackle some of the greatest challenges facing the world today: CO2 emissions, waste, ecosystem collapse and water shortages.
LettUs Grow’s modular, aeroponic irrigation and intelligent control technology improves the efficiency, sustainability, and ROI of indoor farming.
These systems are nozzle free, easy to clean, completely automatable, and can be run without the need for pesticides.
Most importantly, they reduce the operational cost of indoor agriculture. And compared to hydroponics, they increase the growth rate of a range of crops by an average of 70%.
Which means that the indoor farming industry can now scale globally.
By helping you integrate a similar design process, Innovate UK can help you boost your return on investment, and ultimately the economic and social value created for the UK.
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What Are Indoor Farms: The Future of Farming