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Showing posts with the label percolation

Indoor farming – Is Japan pioneering the new face of agriculture?

Imagine a 25,000 square foot factory farm that produces 10,000 heads of lettuce per day. Shigeharu Shimamura’s indoor farm in Japan boasts of being the largest of its kind in the world. Indoor farms consume less water than outdoor farms as they do not lose water by percolation into the soil. This cuts  food  waste as well. Nor are indoor crops threatened by pests or inclement weather. The indoor farm uses vertically-stacked racks in a pest-free environment using LED lights. A conventional agricultural setting results in more than 30% of lettuce being wasted whereas Shimamura boasts of only 3% wastage. That’s a big deal, with over 1.4 billion tons of global  food  wastage every year. Shimamura and his Mira Company plan to set up indoor farming factories in Hong Kong and Russia to support  food  production on a global scale. In early 2014, a unit of Japan’s famous Panasonic Corp started growing ten types of vegetables in one of its factory buildings in Singapore. It curre