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Does Toshiba hold the key to the future of factory farming? The massive tech giant recently unveiled their incredible “clean” factory farm, which is capable of growing up to three million heads of lettuce every year without using sunlight or soil. The factory farm, which is operating in a 21,000 square-foot electronic factory in Yokosuka, Japan, is to be used in the company’s new healthcare business and has the perfect germ-free environment for producing bagged lettuce, according to Toshiba and Science and Health.
What’s inside the factory is the stuff of science fiction; a completely isolated environment, with temperature and humidity control, monitored by lettuce inspectors who wear full body suits and face masks and use tablet devices to make notes about the quality and health of the plants. The plants themselves are constantly irradiated with artificial light to make them think it’s sunny, while being injected with vitamins and nutrients directly into their roots, removing the need for soil.
Science and Health reports that Toshiba’s goal is to produce the world’s highest-quality lettuce that’s free of any bacteria, fungi or insects, and shipped in a sealed bag to give it a longer shelf life than other lettuces. Each bag of lettuce is expected to cost about $1.60, and will require absolutely no pesticides to produce – making it akin to organic produce with an extremely long shelf life. Its new farming venture is a serious one for Toshiba, which aims to build similar factories around the world in years to come, while selling the high tech equipment to others so they can fund similar factories to produce similar produce.
Read more here. (Science and Health)
What’s inside the factory is the stuff of science fiction; a completely isolated environment, with temperature and humidity control, monitored by lettuce inspectors who wear full body suits and face masks and use tablet devices to make notes about the quality and health of the plants. The plants themselves are constantly irradiated with artificial light to make them think it’s sunny, while being injected with vitamins and nutrients directly into their roots, removing the need for soil.
Science and Health reports that Toshiba’s goal is to produce the world’s highest-quality lettuce that’s free of any bacteria, fungi or insects, and shipped in a sealed bag to give it a longer shelf life than other lettuces. Each bag of lettuce is expected to cost about $1.60, and will require absolutely no pesticides to produce – making it akin to organic produce with an extremely long shelf life. Its new farming venture is a serious one for Toshiba, which aims to build similar factories around the world in years to come, while selling the high tech equipment to others so they can fund similar factories to produce similar produce.
Read more here. (Science and Health)
