Name: When food becomes scarce – high-tech farms of the future | DW Documentary
Uploaded: 2021-09-26T07:59:36.000Z
Duration: 25 min 57 s
Description: VoiceTubeの動画で発音を聞きながら英語表現を覚えよう！学べる英語：

Is this what the future of agriculture looks like?

Vegetables and lettuces stacked on several floors,

様態の副詞

artificially lit. Fully automated farming. Protected from

drought, frost and storm. This isn't a futuristic vision. In

In this system we can produce food under optimal

conditions with high nutritional content and good

taste all year round. That's the big difference to working

Working the fields in Brandenburg. These thick dust

Without massive artificial irrigation, there would be no

harvest. Are these fields facing an imminent collapse?

As the conditions are currently, I would have to

recommend my children look for a different profession.

Devastating drought here, heavy flooding elsewhere.

Food production is in danger, and catastrophic famines

wreak havoc. Throughout the world, researchers are

A typical harvest in Japan. The workers wear protective suits,

The environment is clinical, these lettuce heads are

cultivated — without soil, and free of pesticides.

In this room, the temperature always remains the same.

I find it pretty good that I can always work indoors,

regardless of the weather, it's better than in the rice fields.

"Vertical Farming" is the name of this method from Japan as

seen here at the company Spread in Kyoto. The roots

thrive in a liquid nutrient solution, without topsoil but

with the same natural ingredients, such as sodium

and potassium. Lamps, with a similar color temperature to

Solar collectors and the building's green façade

indicate that progress is at home here. The University of

Chiba in Japan. In this futuristic-looking greenhouse,

experiments with vertical vegetable cultivation are being conducted.

Professor Toyoki Kozai invented this method in the

1970s. Back then he initially had problems finding the right

light and had high electricity costs. The breakthrough came

Originally I wanted to help the small farmers who own

small land parcels. Vertical farming enables one to

achieve 100 times more annual harvest, on a single

area, than with conventional farming. So it's worth

investing in such vegetable factories. These facilities can

be set up anywhere. It is an important step towards

sustainable agriculture. There are no losses during

the harvest, and we use less energy for transport.

Productivity and profitability can be increased

even further, with the latest technology.

This method is mainly used for vegetables and salads.

As far as staple foods go such as cereals or potatoes, more

In Japan, after the Fukushima catastrophe,

there was a lot of interest in these new greenhouses,

because it is possible to produce all year round,

regardless of external influences. Thanks to our

methods, the farmers have a stable production without

damage from insects or worms. And of course, the

system is sustainable. You can run these vegetable

factories in the middle of the city and produce local food

The contrast: agriculture in the fields. Once again the farmers

lack water. A lot of water. And the weather is much too hot.

Temperatures of up to 40° can dry up the soil to two meters deep.

Large parts of Germany are affected by drought in the

summer. The result can be the total loss of the harvest, with

Hans-Heinrich Grünhagen in Brandenburg is one of the

farmers who suffer. He grows potatoes and corn. His farm is

located in an area with light, dry soil. Without the help of

expensive irrigation systems, nothing would grow on his farm.

The water already needs to be pumped from deep

underground. And climate experts predict that even more

If you look at the ground here, there is no moisture.

No plant can survive. That's why there's not much on this.

Here are two miserable potatoes, here are a few

more, which might have been okay, if they had

enough water. Like last year, we are having a very dry

year again. It's only rained half the amount that we

normally would have had, at this time of year. The soil is

so dry from last year that even the little rain we've had

over the last few days, is not enough for the plants.

But how can the farmers' problems be solved, how can

we ensure that food supply in the future is safe?

Wageningen University in the Netherlands is looking into

these questions. At the renowned agricultural

university, scientists are working on using new ideas

and methods to finally defeat hunger in the 21st century.

They are working on the assumption that in just 30

years, twice as much food will have to be produced as today.

But the conditions for this have become worse. In order

not to exacerbate the climate crisis, the area available for

food cultivation should not increase. New methods are

therefore needed to produce food in the future.

Ernst van den Ende is head of the Plant Science Department.

He understands how grave the situation is.

So, if we change nothing, and we keep on consuming the

way we are doing, if we do not optimize the way we

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When food becomes scarce – high-tech farms of the future | DW Documentary

thrive

sustainable

artificial

consider