Future Farm Factories

Perceived risks regarding pesticide residues and climatic change have led to the design of some advanced horticultural systems.  Near Camarillo in California between Highway 101 and the Pacific Ocean in Ventura County are two mammoth, greenhouses.  The farming company behind this $50-million complex sees it as insurance against perpetual drought, volatile fossil fuel prices and resilient pests.  The facility generates its own renewable power.  It stores rainwater.  It hosts its own bumblebees for pollination, and it requires fewer agrichemicals than field-planted crops.  The movement to grow food crops in closed, sustainable environments could become as revolutionary to farming in the 21st century as California’s development of massive farms was in the 20th, agriculture experts say.  “We are doing all of this not only because it will be good for our business but because it will be good for everyone else," said Casey Houweling, president of Houweling Nurseries, the Canadian farming company that is cultivating tomatoes at the facility, which is now fully operational.  The son of a Dutch immigrant farmer, the 51-year-old Houweling has helped build his family’s agricultural business into one of the largest greenhouse-based growers in North America.

On a recent afternoon, Houweling was eager to show visitors clusters of plump, sweet tomatoes hanging overhead from vines that reach high into the rafters.  This arrangement allows the farm’s 450 permanent employees to climb ladders to pick the fruit instead of stooping.  The plants, which are fed individually through tubing that looks like intravenous hospital equipment, produce 20 times more fruit per acre than in conventional field production.  Virtually nothing is wasted in this ecosystem. Workers have dug a four-acre pond to store rainwater and runoff.  This water, along with condensation, is collected, filtered and recirculated back to each of the 20-acre greenhouses.  That has cut water use to less than one-fifth of that required in conventional field cultivation.  Fertilizer use has been reduced by half.  There are no herbicides and almost no pesticides, and there is no dust.  Designed by Kubo Greenhouse Projects, a Dutch company, the temperature- and humidity-controlled glass-sheeted farm is expected to produce 482 tons of tomatoes per acre, 15 percent more than Houweling’s previous generation of greenhouses.  The plants live far longer than field crops and are replaced every six months.

In Japan, clean room type factories have been constructed exist where everything is controlled: lighting, temperature, humidity, carbon dioxide and water.  The plants are not even exposed to the air outside, nor are they exposed to any dirt or insects.  These factories, such as the Ozu Corporation in Tokyo, claim to be able to meet the demands of consumers who want “safe” foods.  This newer form of agriculture takes the hydroponics idea even further by producing produce that is as close to sterile as possible.  Sterility and total absence of pests and hence, pesticides, are important benefits not the least of which is that the end customer does not even have to wash the vegetables.  They can be eaten as is.  Another benefit is that production can continue 24 hours per day, 365 days per year.  This vastly improves productivity.  Lettuce, for example, can be cropped up to 20 times a year.  (Los Angeles Times, 5/14/09 & Digital Journal, 6/6/09).