[Music]
so the United Nations have predicted
that we need 70% more food by 2050 70%
how are we gonna achieve this when only
10% of the Earth’s surface is suitable
for agriculture we use a third of that
to grade livestock feed then there are
the warnings that we have 60 years of
harvest left due to soil degradation and
then there’s the issue with water
agriculture uses a staggering 67% of
global freshwater supplies annually and
then there’s a prediction that 80
percent of the population will live in
cities by the middle of this century we
have a problem we need to think
differently about the future our food
production and this will involve finding
cost-effective centrally located
commercially sized spaces to farm
especially in cities and this is how I
ended up here talking to you today ten
years ago at the height of the economic
crash the business that I’ve been
running since my early 20s was on the
brink of collapse
after it was all over I was left with
quite a lot of time on my hands and it’s
enabled me to rethink my last path and
decide what I wanted to do for the
future and before I knew it I was
filling out student loan and university
applications and moving to the capital
to embark on a film degree which is
something I really want to do when I was
younger much the amusement of my friends
who thought I was having a midlife
crisis which I think I probably was when
I arrived in a capital I had a real
thirst for knowledge I have no idea
about a film about hidden London I was
fascinated with what was going on
underneath my feet the history and
things like Crossrail were being built
at a time when it seemed like a great
idea for a film as well as this I was
really interested with what was going on
above-ground the future of cities how
are you going to manage the
sustainably and the technology what
technology we use to use them
efficiently this led me to the futurist
and author
Jeremy Rifkin whose ideas around the
future the the democratization of energy
and the third Industrial Revolution
really resonated with me for my final
thesis I produced the film and for this
film I asked the question how our cities
are the future going to feed and power
themselves with a growing population an
extra two billion people expect on the
planet in the next 30 years
this passion went beyond finishing the
film and I found myself doing lots of
research and I found it was possible now
to grow food without the aid of natural
sunlight using LEDs I also realized it
was possible to grow large amounts of
produce in a small space with the right
equipment I spoke to my friend Steve who
had just received his pension renewal
letter saying it would mature in 2036 he
said I don’t want to wait there until
then I want out of this I want to do
something different so we did some
calculations one thing led to another
and like you do we started looking for a
tunnel the first place we looked at was
underneath the city of London underneath
Holborn this was the former mi6
communications hub between the former
Soviet Union the USA during the Cold War
totally classified until the 1990s very
difficult to gain access to we also knew
about the tunnels in Clapham there
weren’t by Transport for London and we
approached them and they were quite
intrigued with our idea and they invited
us down to have a look when we got there
and we saw the space for the first time
we realised what this was the the
correct places the right place for us it
was of commercial size and around this
time we brought in another director
called Chris who had a wealth of
experience in hydroponics and he said
you just need to get in there and start
growing something and do a trial so we
asked TfL
we put a basic agreement together and
hey presto we had ourselves a tunnel and
growing underground was born great
underground is an urban farm situated 33
metres under the streets of Clapham
London in the world war ii air raid
shelter the tunnels were built between
1940 and 1942 they’re a family of seven
stretching from Belsize Park in the
north of the castle all the way through
to clappin site from the southwest they
has 8,000 people during the war
TfL inherited the tunnels from the
government in the 1990s and some of them
we use for paper and document storage
the two tunnels are a half a kilometer
in length and there’s about 65,000
square feet of space which is about six
thousand square meters and the Northern
Line and the tube network actually
travels four storeys above us so the
trains actually travel above us and we
have a mezzanine floor that goes through
the center of the tunnel and that
creates two floors we use the top level
for a growing and the lower level for
water tanks pumps utilities that sort of
thing during the war they have had
this is my business partner attending to
our first harvest we use hydroponics and
LEDs to produce microgreens which are
tiny herbs packed full of flavor some of
the micros we grow include pea shoots
coriander salad rocket fennel
wasabi mustard we tailor light spectrums
according to our crop some crops prefer
more red light some prefer more blue
tailoring light spectrums allows us to
do precise tweaks in sugars and starches
and allowing us to create the optimum
plant in taste nutrient and yield after
we trialed the first meter by a meter
unit we move to Phase two we needed to
know that growing in redundant urban
spaces stacked up financial
and this base enabled us to do some see
density and yield trials as well as
Clayton our own data we also use this
space to attract investment which came
in the form of 600,000 pains in our
first round of the crowdfunding website
we wanted a farm sustainably and
efficiently producing hyperlocal food
for the city from within the city
reducing food miles distribution models
pollution and shelf life by giving our
customers a longer shelf life growing in
this environment is actually a very
efficient way of growing we have a
year-round temperature about 15 degrees
my crates prefer between between 20 and
25 degrees as well as producing lights
our LEDs produce heat using that heat
and some ventilation from both ends of
the tunnel and some air movement within
the tunnel we can create the optimum
environment for for growing and create
that year-round we also produce more
harvests and conventional outdoor
agriculture and greenhouse with the same
crop so if we took pea shoots for
example outside you’ll get five to six
harvests a year in a greenhouse about 25
to 30 but in our farm or in controlled
environment agriculture you can get up
any business starting today really think
about its impact on the environment and
this was one of the key drivers for us
when we set the business up so we use a
hydroponic system which uses 70% less
water than conventional agriculture
methods we create electricity from our
waste which we send into southeast
London to a waste-to-energy sahb
converter and electricity’s produce and
we use that to offset our carbon
footprint we are working towards carbon
neutrality anything we purchase for the
farm any product any service has carbon
embedded in it and we tally that up and
offset that it was really important for
us to stick a flag in the ground and
make a stance on this issue we live in a
carbon economy and we all know we have
to evolve out of that into a more
sustainable circular economy and this
was our way of making a stance on that
issue we also power the site entirely by
renewable energy we use off-site wind
solar and some hydro which we get across
in 2015 after closing the investment
round we built the farm we have today we
pack the produce on-site we ship it into
new Covent Garden Market which is
London’s largest wholesale food fresh
produce market which is lesser than mile
down the road from the tunnel and from
there our produce is distributed over
the capital to hotels restaurants and
retailers we’re now supplying some of
the major supermarkets within the
capital and this method of farming
locally reliably and with little effect
on the environment enables us to create
food security for a city or a state we
also don’t use any pesticides on our
these are advancements in technology and
agriculture are inspiring a younger
generation which is needed when the
average age our farmer is now 60 years
of age across the world automation will
also play more of a role in the future
of agriculture and food production over
the next few years
but we’re gonna see exponential growth
in technology and that’s across the
board in general but you’ll see this
with LEDs their efficiencies like
spectrums and like recipes client
computing the Internet of Things and
sensors are going to play a significant
role in the future of Agriculture
currently there are 14 billion sensors
in operation around the world by 2020
that would have doubled to 30 billion
but by 2030 is predicted there’ll be a
hundred trillion and that’s that
exponential growth curve and technology
that we’re seeing across the board try
of computing and sensors and able us to
recreate agricultural environments in
Italy in 2009 there was a perfect
vintage year for basil amazing flavor
taste texture and yield and an urban
farmer looked at the weather conditions
for that year and said about recreating
that perfect vintage year in a shipping
container in New York City he looked at
what time the Sun came up what time it
said the amount of co2 and oxygen in the
atmosphere the temperature humidity
everything he now produces an optimum
crop he supplies into his local
community consistently and in the future
this could see us producing Peruvian
coffee beans in a warehouse in the UK
somewhere or replicating the perfect
vintage year for wine consistently for
us we’re not going to change world we’re
not gonna address world hunger by
producing microgreens for high-end
retailers but we do believe this is one
small step towards achieving this in the
grand scheme of things LEDs and
controlled environment agriculture are
in their infancy but the real
game-changer comes in the
not-too-distant future when we have an
abundance of cheap renewable energy
battery storage and this exponential
growth curve in technology and we can
start to produce
the full spectrum of vegetables and the
staples like wheat soy a maize and then
this will see ourselves and other
companies building large vertical farms
inside under on the outskirts of major
conurbations and this will in turn allow
current threatened agriculture land from
soy degradation or other environments
such as rainforests to replenish and go
back to their natural form and hopefully
this combination will enable us to
achieve that additional 70% more food
required by 2050 whilst being mindful of
the planet and its resources and the
growing underground we’d like to think
we are playing a small role towards
achieving that thank you very much [Applause]
so the United Nations have predicted
that we need 70% more food by 2050 70%
how are we gonna achieve this when only
10% of the Earth’s surface is suitable
for agriculture we use a third of that
to grade livestock feed then there are
the warnings that we have 60 years of
harvest left due to soil degradation and
then there’s the issue with water
agriculture uses a staggering 67% of
global freshwater supplies annually and
then there’s a prediction that 80
percent of the population will live in
cities by the middle of this century we
have a problem we need to think
differently about the future our food
production and this will involve finding
cost-effective centrally located
commercially sized spaces to farm
especially in cities and this is how I
ended up here talking to you today ten
years ago at the height of the economic
crash the business that I’ve been
running since my early 20s was on the
brink of collapse
after it was all over I was left with
quite a lot of time on my hands and it’s
enabled me to rethink my last path and
decide what I wanted to do for the
future and before I knew it I was
filling out student loan and university
applications and moving to the capital
to embark on a film degree which is
something I really want to do when I was
younger much the amusement of my friends
who thought I was having a midlife
crisis which I think I probably was when
I arrived in a capital I had a real
thirst for knowledge I have no idea
about a film about hidden London I was
fascinated with what was going on
underneath my feet the history and
things like Crossrail were being built
at a time when it seemed like a great
idea for a film as well as this I was
really interested with what was going on
above-ground the future of cities how
are you going to manage the
sustainably and the technology what
technology we use to use them
efficiently this led me to the futurist
and author
Jeremy Rifkin whose ideas around the
future the the democratization of energy
and the third Industrial Revolution
really resonated with me for my final
thesis I produced the film and for this
film I asked the question how our cities
are the future going to feed and power
themselves with a growing population an
extra two billion people expect on the
planet in the next 30 years
this passion went beyond finishing the
film and I found myself doing lots of
research and I found it was possible now
to grow food without the aid of natural
sunlight using LEDs I also realized it
was possible to grow large amounts of
produce in a small space with the right
equipment I spoke to my friend Steve who
had just received his pension renewal
letter saying it would mature in 2036 he
said I don’t want to wait there until
then I want out of this I want to do
something different so we did some
calculations one thing led to another
and like you do we started looking for a
tunnel the first place we looked at was
underneath the city of London underneath
Holborn this was the former mi6
communications hub between the former
Soviet Union the USA during the Cold War
totally classified until the 1990s very
difficult to gain access to we also knew
about the tunnels in Clapham there
weren’t by Transport for London and we
approached them and they were quite
intrigued with our idea and they invited
us down to have a look when we got there
and we saw the space for the first time
we realised what this was the the
correct places the right place for us it
was of commercial size and around this
time we brought in another director
called Chris who had a wealth of
experience in hydroponics and he said
you just need to get in there and start
growing something and do a trial so we
asked TfL
we put a basic agreement together and
hey presto we had ourselves a tunnel and
growing underground was born great
underground is an urban farm situated 33
metres under the streets of Clapham
London in the world war ii air raid
shelter the tunnels were built between
1940 and 1942 they’re a family of seven
stretching from Belsize Park in the
north of the castle all the way through
to clappin site from the southwest they
has 8,000 people during the war
TfL inherited the tunnels from the
government in the 1990s and some of them
we use for paper and document storage
the two tunnels are a half a kilometer
in length and there’s about 65,000
square feet of space which is about six
thousand square meters and the Northern
Line and the tube network actually
travels four storeys above us so the
trains actually travel above us and we
have a mezzanine floor that goes through
the center of the tunnel and that
creates two floors we use the top level
for a growing and the lower level for
water tanks pumps utilities that sort of
thing during the war they have had
this is my business partner attending to
our first harvest we use hydroponics and
LEDs to produce microgreens which are
tiny herbs packed full of flavor some of
the micros we grow include pea shoots
coriander salad rocket fennel
wasabi mustard we tailor light spectrums
according to our crop some crops prefer
more red light some prefer more blue
tailoring light spectrums allows us to
do precise tweaks in sugars and starches
and allowing us to create the optimum
plant in taste nutrient and yield after
we trialed the first meter by a meter
unit we move to Phase two we needed to
know that growing in redundant urban
spaces stacked up financial
and this base enabled us to do some see
density and yield trials as well as
Clayton our own data we also use this
space to attract investment which came
in the form of 600,000 pains in our
first round of the crowdfunding website
we wanted a farm sustainably and
efficiently producing hyperlocal food
for the city from within the city
reducing food miles distribution models
pollution and shelf life by giving our
customers a longer shelf life growing in
this environment is actually a very
efficient way of growing we have a
year-round temperature about 15 degrees
my crates prefer between between 20 and
25 degrees as well as producing lights
our LEDs produce heat using that heat
and some ventilation from both ends of
the tunnel and some air movement within
the tunnel we can create the optimum
environment for for growing and create
that year-round we also produce more
harvests and conventional outdoor
agriculture and greenhouse with the same
crop so if we took pea shoots for
example outside you’ll get five to six
harvests a year in a greenhouse about 25
to 30 but in our farm or in controlled
environment agriculture you can get up
any business starting today really think
about its impact on the environment and
this was one of the key drivers for us
when we set the business up so we use a
hydroponic system which uses 70% less
water than conventional agriculture
methods we create electricity from our
waste which we send into southeast
London to a waste-to-energy sahb
converter and electricity’s produce and
we use that to offset our carbon
footprint we are working towards carbon
neutrality anything we purchase for the
farm any product any service has carbon
embedded in it and we tally that up and
offset that it was really important for
us to stick a flag in the ground and
make a stance on this issue we live in a
carbon economy and we all know we have
to evolve out of that into a more
sustainable circular economy and this
was our way of making a stance on that
issue we also power the site entirely by
renewable energy we use off-site wind
solar and some hydro which we get across
in 2015 after closing the investment
round we built the farm we have today we
pack the produce on-site we ship it into
new Covent Garden Market which is
London’s largest wholesale food fresh
produce market which is lesser than mile
down the road from the tunnel and from
there our produce is distributed over
the capital to hotels restaurants and
retailers we’re now supplying some of
the major supermarkets within the
capital and this method of farming
locally reliably and with little effect
on the environment enables us to create
food security for a city or a state we
also don’t use any pesticides on our
these are advancements in technology and
agriculture are inspiring a younger
generation which is needed when the
average age our farmer is now 60 years
of age across the world automation will
also play more of a role in the future
of agriculture and food production over
the next few years
but we’re gonna see exponential growth
in technology and that’s across the
board in general but you’ll see this
with LEDs their efficiencies like
spectrums and like recipes client
computing the Internet of Things and
sensors are going to play a significant
role in the future of Agriculture
currently there are 14 billion sensors
in operation around the world by 2020
that would have doubled to 30 billion
but by 2030 is predicted there’ll be a
hundred trillion and that’s that
exponential growth curve and technology
that we’re seeing across the board try
of computing and sensors and able us to
recreate agricultural environments in
Italy in 2009 there was a perfect
vintage year for basil amazing flavor
taste texture and yield and an urban
farmer looked at the weather conditions
for that year and said about recreating
that perfect vintage year in a shipping
container in New York City he looked at
what time the Sun came up what time it
said the amount of co2 and oxygen in the
atmosphere the temperature humidity
everything he now produces an optimum
crop he supplies into his local
community consistently and in the future
this could see us producing Peruvian
coffee beans in a warehouse in the UK
somewhere or replicating the perfect
vintage year for wine consistently for
us we’re not going to change world we’re
not gonna address world hunger by
producing microgreens for high-end
retailers but we do believe this is one
small step towards achieving this in the
grand scheme of things LEDs and
controlled environment agriculture are
in their infancy but the real
game-changer comes in the
not-too-distant future when we have an
abundance of cheap renewable energy
battery storage and this exponential
growth curve in technology and we can
start to produce
the full spectrum of vegetables and the
staples like wheat soy a maize and then
this will see ourselves and other
companies building large vertical farms
inside under on the outskirts of major
conurbations and this will in turn allow
current threatened agriculture land from
soy degradation or other environments
such as rainforests to replenish and go
back to their natural form and hopefully
this combination will enable us to
achieve that additional 70% more food
required by 2050 whilst being mindful of
the planet and its resources and the
growing underground we’d like to think
we are playing a small role towards
achieving that thank you very much [Applause]
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