An industrial estate in Scunthorpe is not a likely birthplace for an agricultural revolution, but that may be just what I am witnessing. Inside a corrugated iron shed covering an area the size of 26 tennis courts are neatly stacked rows of basil, parsley and lettuce all growing without soil or natural light. This is the site of Europe’s largest vertical farm, the first using hydroponic technology to grow produce on a large scale. It is one of the cutting-edge technologies that could herald radical change to traditional farming methods and offer a ray of hope for the future of the planet.
The fields of North Lincolnshire have been farmed since the Iron Age, but James Lloyd-Jones, 33, the chief executive of Jones Food Company, which runs the site, believes they could soon be returned to the wild because this lab is the farm of the future. Here plants grow on shelves — 17 rows of them — filling a 53,000 square foot space, all basking under the glow of LED light bulbs.
Security is controlled by iPad; the facility is airtight to prevent bacteria from entering. Visitors must walk through air showers before entering, to blast off specks of dust. A handful of “growers” move silently between the shelves, wearing sterile overalls and hairnets. The walls of this former cold store, which once held halal meat, are ice-white to maximise the light. Above my head a machine filters out ethylene from the air. This chemical causes the breakdown of plant cells; removing it tricks the plants into thinking they are fresh until the moment they leave.
They are grown using hydroponic technology. Instead of soil, they germinate on Rockwool insulation — a rock-based mineral fibre — and are fed nutrients through water. This means that everything can be controlled to optimise the plant’s growth and the farm’s efficiency. The advantages are clear. While traditional farmers battle increasingly unpredictable weather conditions, Lloyd-Jones can control his at the touch of a button.
“We’re giving the crop its best holiday and then we’re harvesting it,” he says. I eat a sprig of basil and can hardly believe how different it tastes: a shot of flavour, not a sad hint of it. Not bad for Scunthorpe in January.
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The year has started with a flurry of interest in alternative farming techniques being developed as a response to environmentally conscious consumers. Last week a Silicon Valley firm unveiled a pork substitute made from soy and flavoured with heme, an iron-containing molecule that simulates the flavour of meat, while environmentalist George Monbiot raised the prospect of wheat grown from bacteria as a way of halting the damage traditional farming is doing to the planet.
Vertical farms, however, are already becoming a reality. Start-ups here and in America are racing to tap into the market. San Francisco-based Plenty plans to open vertical farms from China to the Middle East, funded by the Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. Professor Sir Ian Boyd, a former chief scientific adviser at Defra, the agriculture department, began the year by advocating rewilding large segments of Britain’s farmland, pointing to hydroponics as a potential new source of food for our growing population.
The concept of a vertical farm has been around for decades, but technology has come a long way, thanks largely to progress in Japan, where the demand for produce grown indoors soared after the Fukushima nuclear disaster in 2011.
There are 196 commercial vertical farms in Asia. Lloyd-Jones — who before moving into the industry ran a business hiring out mobile climbing walls and did a stint at Foxtons estate agency — visited one in early 2017. He planned to buy its machinery but decided against it at the last moment. It had “first-mover disadvantage”, he explains. “I was able to take a lesson from them and go, ‘Right, I’ve got to make sure I’m as renewable as possible and have as few people as possible running these facilities’.”
The big problem, he realised, had been one of scale. “I decided to go as big as possible, to make sure that we could grow in volume.”
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Helped by a drop in the cost of LED lighting, Lloyd-Jones began construction of Jones Food Company in 2018. Last June, Ocado came on board, and in November he harvested his first crop. This was sold to Greencore, which makes sandwiches for Tesco, Morrisons and Sainsbury’s. Most of the machinery is British-built, and Lloyd-Jones believes the UK can pioneer hydroponic vertical farms in Europe.
Sustainability is a big part of the appeal. Hydroponics uses 70% less water than traditional farming, because water is purified and reused, and the company gets much of its supply free: it has captured more than 20,000 gallons of rainwater in the past five weeks. Solar panels on the roof provide 30% of its energy in the summer, with the rest drawn from the grid. Lloyd-Jones has plans for more solar panels and a fleet of electric delivery vehicles, and believes the operation can be carbon neutral by the end of the year.
Some feel the environmental impact is still too great, and that “aeroponics” may be the solution. As with the Scunthorpe venture, no soil is required. However, plants are grown using natural light in a greenhouse or on rooftops and misted with a fine spray of water containing nutrients. In May, the world’s largest urban farm is due to open in Paris using this technology. The 160,000 sq ft farm, on the roof of a pavilion in the Paris Expo Porte de Versailles, will produce up to a ton of 30 kinds of fruit and vegetable a day, providing produce for local residents and the in-house restaurant.
For Lloyd-Jones, the environmental aspect is important but only if the money works. “I always think it’s not for the person in London to buy at an expensive market or to have the story behind it, it’s for the bloke in Preston who’s going to do their shopping and buy it because it’s the right price.” This, he believes, is where the limits lie. “People don’t want to pay the price for hydroponically grown potatoes.” Fruit and flowers are both realistic prospects.
If Lloyd-Jones is to be believed, we will soon be eating fresh, locally sourced strawberries every month of the year.
