Very sobering image.....

jkforde

I thought this image from today's Guardian is very sobering....

The caption is "Tokyo, Japan: A man works at a plant factory at Ozu Corporation. Vegetables produced in the plant factories have completely controlled lighting, temperature, humidity and water, that enables the growth of safe foods and guarantees stable production throughout the year with stable quality"

http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/gallery/2009/jun/02/1?picture=348267224


.. Ozu Corporation's plant factory??! jasus

bladespin

It's amazing.

RandolphEsq

Excellent! Growing vegetables on top of each other saves so much precious space

SeanW

they do all kinds of weird stuff in Japan :cool: square watermelons, anime cartoons and Toyota cars and a whole lot of very refined culture all came off the Japanese Archipelago.

If the vegetables are grown to the same quality as farm grown veggies and are not nutritionally inferior in any way I don't see a problem, and the fact that it's indoors means there's no need for pesticides :cool:
they also have very little land in Japan which is why traditional Japanese food is very much seafood based. If this kind of production means more veggies for Japanese people, that's a double bonus.

Judgement Day

They also do a mean line in War Criminals, Kamikaze pilots and railway builders (using forced labour) but as long as they eat these vegetables themselves and don't want to export them to the EU, leave them off.

luckat

Pft, looks just like your granny's greenhouse, only on a bigger scale. What's the deal?

Macha

More proof of our addiction to fuels other than the sun for growing our food.

Whatever about lettuce, I dread to think what they do to animals.

Edit: TreeHugger have picked up on this. Interesting back story:

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/06/is-this-the-future-of-food.php

astrofool

taconnol wrote: »

More proof of our addiction to fuels other than the sun for growing our food.

Whatever about lettuce, I dread to think what they do to animals.

Edit: TreeHugger have picked up on this. Interesting back story:

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/06/is-this-the-future-of-food.php

Ah, cmon now, in theory this saves on pesticides, fuel used to plant and harvest the plants, potentially transport (this can be inner city if needs be), the power could also come from wind, solar, or any number of renewables, or even be piped sunlight using fibre optics. That's just a dig for the sake of it (referring to your first sentence).

Macha

astrofool wrote: »

Ah, cmon now, in theory this saves on pesticides, fuel used to plant and harvest the plants, potentially transport (this can be inner city if needs be), the power could also come from wind, solar, or any number of renewables, or even be piped sunlight using fibre optics. That's just a dig for the sake of it (referring to your first sentence).

As you'll see from my edit, I wasn't aware of the back story when I wrote that.

Even still, fibre optics are incredibly expensive and I doubt would be involved when the company in question is in financial trouble. On the issue of renewables - given that solar PVs have a conversion efficiency of 23% tops, I fail to see how using solar PVs for internal growing would be of benefit. Fair enough if they're using other renewable sources but tbh, you still have to factor in the fact that they're missing out on 100% free solar energy that doesn't require any major infrastructure ie the sun.

On issues of transport etc - I wasn't addressing these. I was addressing the form of energy used to grow the plants only.

Edit: I'd also add that the system is entirely dependent on imported fertility ie fertilisers - the vast majority of which are petroleum-based.

astrofool

I was hoping to respond by posting an image of the Gary Larson cartoon of the stacked cows and sheep and how envious the neighbouring farmer was, to show how awesome this idea is. Alas, Google fails me.

Macha

You mean along the lines of:

positron

I saw a TV report on that factory growing vegetables a few months ago - and one of the facts they were stressing was that 'zero human touch lettuce'. Effectively you will be the first person to touch the lettuce when you bite into your sandwich. I thought that was pretty neat.

usemyillusion12

that is an excelent idea , nothing wrong with that at all !

more humans on the planet than there used to be , so we need these smart factories with ideas like that

but weird syuff does comoe out of japan , i saw a programme on tv about the fake industry there where they make fake clothes , dvds ect .
But i swear no word of a lie , they discovered that people make fake eggs , fake chicken eggs !