Can strawberries grown inside a building taste sweeter than those grown in a field? Farming entrepreneur Hiroki Koga explores how his team is combining solar-powered vertical farms with AI, robotics and indoor bee colonies to grow delicious strawberries year-round — and how this practice, if widely adopted, could deliver a harvest of benefits for the future of food. After the talk, Sherrell dives deeper into the impact of vertical farming.
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[00:00:00] TED Audio Collective
[00:00:11] Farming today looks different from what it did centuries or even decades ago.
[00:00:15] Instead of needing dirt and acres of land and perfect weather conditions in order to grow our bounty of berries or vegetables,
[00:00:23] we now have office buildings and shipping containers that are well-suited for our Garden of Eden.
[00:00:28] The secret is something called vertical farming.
[00:00:31] Developed and popularized in 1999 by Dr. Dixon DesPommiers and his students at Columbia University,
[00:00:38] vertical farming and the usage of hydroponics, aquaponics, and systems that recycle water
[00:00:44] are much more eco-friendly compared to traditional farming.
[00:00:48] And these systems are also scalable.
[00:00:50] Vertical farming is said to be the future of agriculture, and it's only gotten smarter in the years since.
[00:00:58] This is TED Tech, a podcast from the TED Audio Collective.
[00:01:03] I'm your host, Sherelle Dorsey.
[00:01:05] Our speaker today is Hiroki Koga, co-founder and CEO of vertical farming company Oishi.
[00:01:12] He's here to discuss how vertical farming can unlock its potential with AI.
[00:01:17] Globally, indoor farming, powered by AI, is expected to reach over 35 billion U.S. dollars by 2032.
[00:01:26] The possibilities of how this tech can change agriculture are also yet to be uncovered.
[00:01:32] But before we dive in, a quick break to hear from our sponsors.
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[00:02:48] And now, Hiroki Koga takes the TED stage.
[00:02:51] So here's a strawberry.
[00:02:54] But not just any strawberry.
[00:02:57] This one can be up to three times sweeter than a regular one.
[00:03:01] Just like the ones I grew up eating in Japan.
[00:03:05] As a child, when I came home and I saw strawberries on the table, it meant we were celebrating something special.
[00:03:12] Holidays, birthdays, anniversaries.
[00:03:16] Strawberries are considered the king of fruits in my culture.
[00:03:19] And they're never sold just as strawberries.
[00:03:21] They always have their varietal names.
[00:03:24] Amao, Benihope, Tochiotome.
[00:03:26] Any Japanese person can name a few.
[00:03:29] Up until now, these strawberries could only be grown under very specific Japanese climate conditions.
[00:03:36] But today, you can grow them anywhere around the world using a vertical farming technology.
[00:03:44] So today, I'm going to try to give it a shot and try to convince everyone here that this technology is no longer some futuristic idea,
[00:03:52] but something that is going to mainstream very quickly.
[00:03:56] Much, much sooner than you'd imagine.
[00:03:59] By sharing some of our secrets.
[00:04:01] So, how did I get here?
[00:04:04] I grew up in Japan.
[00:04:05] I came to the U.S. in 2015 to pursue my MBA.
[00:04:09] On the second day of my arrival, I went to the local grocery store in California.
[00:04:14] I was amazed by the beautiful produce aisle.
[00:04:17] Green, red, yellow, paprika side by side.
[00:04:20] Everything was huge and shiny.
[00:04:22] The color was incredible.
[00:04:25] But the taste...
[00:04:28] Mm-mm.
[00:04:29] I was especially disappointed with strawberries.
[00:04:32] I thought I was eating a cucumber.
[00:04:35] I'm sorry.
[00:04:38] I later learned that this is because the U.S. agriculture system had optimized everything towards mass production as opposed to quality and flavor.
[00:04:47] But this was the moment that I immediately realized that there's a huge opportunity here if I could grow Japanese-quality fruits and vegetables on U.S. soil using vertical farming technology.
[00:04:58] But back then, experts told me that vertical farms were expensive and they could only grow leafy greens.
[00:05:04] So your lettuces, your kales, your spinaches.
[00:05:07] Because anything beyond that requires bee pollination.
[00:05:10] Bees were known not to operate well in a sunless vertical farm environment.
[00:05:15] But regardless, my partner, Brendan and I, we decided to tackle this problem and started building our first farm in 2017 with our own hands.
[00:05:25] As two non-engineer MBAs, we nearly lost a few fingers just trying to cut PVC pipes.
[00:05:31] Almost electrocuted ourselves a few times.
[00:05:35] But we were really determined to solve one of the world's largest problems that mankind is facing this century.
[00:05:41] The failing agriculture system.
[00:05:44] Extreme weather.
[00:05:45] Lack of water.
[00:05:46] Lack of arable land.
[00:05:47] Heavy use of pesticides.
[00:05:49] And just not enough workers to keep up with a growing population.
[00:05:52] All of these things have contributed in the global agriculture production cost.
[00:05:56] Vertical farms can actually solve all of these problems.
[00:06:00] We don't use any pesticides.
[00:06:01] We can recycle most of the water that we use.
[00:06:04] We don't even need arable land.
[00:06:06] In fact, one of our farms used to be a Budweiser factory.
[00:06:11] Imagine if you could turn all beer factories around the world into strawberry farms.
[00:06:14] We'd be much healthier, right?
[00:06:16] Yes?
[00:06:17] No?
[00:06:18] Some people think beer is healthy.
[00:06:20] That's okay.
[00:06:23] But despite all of these benefits, skeptics still say,
[00:06:27] well, vertical farms are too costly of a solution.
[00:06:31] It's not a viable business model.
[00:06:33] I get it.
[00:06:34] They're not entirely wrong, right?
[00:06:36] We are still sort of expensive today.
[00:06:40] But think about where computers or mobile phones started, right?
[00:06:43] The real question is, can vertical farms get there?
[00:06:47] And can we get there quickly enough?
[00:06:49] What I can tell you is that a pack of our strawberries, they used to go for $50 per pack five years ago.
[00:06:58] Now, they're $10 available in more than 100 grocery stores on the East Coast.
[00:07:06] So we came here in five years.
[00:07:08] So you can probably imagine at this pace where we could get to in another five years.
[00:07:12] We might even be cheaper than conventional products.
[00:07:16] But how, right?
[00:07:17] How is that even possible?
[00:07:19] Vertical farms look expensive.
[00:07:20] I hear you.
[00:07:22] The short answer to that question is that we can innovate so much faster in a vertical farm,
[00:07:28] and we can also do things traditional farms simply can't do structurally.
[00:07:32] For example, in a traditional farm, you can only experiment once a year.
[00:07:37] During the season, under climate, you have no control over.
[00:07:42] At Oishi, we have dozens of grow rooms where we can control every aspect of the environment
[00:07:46] from things like temperature, humidity, CO2 levels, all the way down to even light spectrums and wind speed.
[00:07:53] So we can conduct experiments so much more efficiently in a controlled manner.
[00:07:59] And on top of that, we can start these experiments any time during the year
[00:08:02] because we're not impacted by the outdoor seasonality at all.
[00:08:06] And using this approach, we were able to go from just a few berries on a plant
[00:08:11] to five times of that in just a matter of five years.
[00:08:15] If you try to accomplish something like this in a traditional farm where you can only experiment once a year,
[00:08:21] it could have taken us nearly 500 years to get to the same outcome.
[00:08:26] And using this hyper-speed experiments, we were also able to accomplish three major breakthroughs.
[00:08:31] Bee pollination, AI, and robots.
[00:08:36] Let's start with bees.
[00:08:37] I know this is everyone's favorite topic.
[00:08:39] You need bees to grow most produce, strawberries, tomatoes, melons, peppers, you name it,
[00:08:44] because the bees will pollinate the flowers that then become the product.
[00:08:49] But bees, they need the sun and the natural environment to navigate.
[00:08:54] So on a vertical farm, they wouldn't even come out of the hive.
[00:08:58] Even if they did, they will drunk fly and can't find the flowers.
[00:09:03] Just like how drunk humans are completely useless, so are drunk bees.
[00:09:07] They just can't get the job done.
[00:09:10] On top of that, you need somewhere between 6 to 15 visits by a bee to fully pollinate a strawberry flower.
[00:09:18] Anything less or more will result in mispollination, meaning you won't have product.
[00:09:24] So for these reasons, an average Japanese farm, a traditional farm,
[00:09:29] is said to have a pollination success rate of somewhere between 60 to 70 percent,
[00:09:35] meaning three to four flowers don't even become products.
[00:09:38] In order to solve all of these bee problems,
[00:09:40] Brendan and I, we interviewed many, many apiologists, experts.
[00:09:45] We spent so much time in the farm observing the bees ourselves,
[00:09:49] getting stung at times.
[00:09:51] Ultimately, we mapped out every environmental parameter of outdoor farms
[00:09:56] versus our indoor farms and went one by one.
[00:09:59] And after two years, finally figured out the bee recipe.
[00:10:05] So today, we have bees, sober bees, in our farms doing all the pollination for us.
[00:10:12] And what's more, with the help of data science and AI,
[00:10:17] our pollination success rate is above 95 percent,
[00:10:21] meaning more than nine flowers out of 10 become berries.
[00:10:24] So we're much more efficient than conventional methods.
[00:10:31] We have these self-driving camera carts that's taking real-time visual data
[00:10:36] of every single plant in the farm,
[00:10:39] which helps us not only to determine yield and plant health information,
[00:10:43] but also how much bee activity is needed that day to help with the bee pollination.
[00:10:49] These AI-powered robots can automatically detect only the ripest berries,
[00:10:54] pick them automatically, and they can work 24-7.
[00:10:57] So when data is coupled with AI and robots, you can do so many things,
[00:11:02] you simply can't in a traditional farm setup.
[00:11:04] We even figured out how to extend our plant's lifespan.
[00:11:09] So our strawberry plants can keep on producing berries 365 days a year,
[00:11:14] as opposed to just a couple months in a traditional farm.
[00:11:18] This means we're generating four to five times more revenue per plant per year.
[00:11:23] So here again, we're significantly more efficient.
[00:11:26] So these are all the reasons why,
[00:11:29] even though outdoor farming may seem cheaper,
[00:11:32] because we can innovate so much faster,
[00:11:35] and because we can do things and achieve efficiencies
[00:11:38] you possibly can't in a traditional farm,
[00:11:42] vertical farms can actually become cheaper than conventional farming,
[00:11:46] especially considering how conventional agriculture costs is only to go up from here.
[00:11:52] And guess what?
[00:11:54] We are already doing this at a massive, massive scale.
[00:11:59] This building, which used to be a plastic factory,
[00:12:03] is now refurbished, is solar-powered,
[00:12:05] we're recycling majority of the water that we use,
[00:12:08] this farm is already producing strawberries every single day as we speak,
[00:12:12] and this technology can be used to grow so many more things beyond strawberries.
[00:12:18] Vertical farming is no longer some fluffy, futuristic concept,
[00:12:23] but it's already here as we speak today
[00:12:26] to change our lives and our planet for the better.
[00:12:31] Imagine if these delicious, pesticide-free, sustainable strawberries
[00:12:36] were available at your local supermarket every single day just for a few bucks.
[00:12:43] Isn't that a sweeter future?
[00:12:48] Thank you.
[00:12:54] That was Hiroki Koga at TED 2024.
[00:13:01] Vertical farming is an exciting development.
[00:13:04] It promises better pesticide management and GMO-free food year-round,
[00:13:09] regardless of weather conditions.
[00:13:11] But vertical farming is not without its challenges.
[00:13:15] For instance, critics consider the high costs of energy required
[00:13:19] to operate indoor farms to be problematic
[00:13:21] and still pose a threat to greenhouse gas production.
[00:13:26] Water conservation is a big win,
[00:13:28] but there's still more to be done
[00:13:30] in the way of reducing the electricity required
[00:13:33] to operate the artificial light used to grow the produce
[00:13:36] that will eventually make its way to our plates.
[00:13:39] Even though it's not perfect,
[00:13:41] Koga and others building in this space
[00:13:43] are on the right track towards greater sustainability,
[00:13:47] growing better food,
[00:13:48] and meeting the needs of a changing planet.
[00:13:54] And that's it for today.
[00:13:56] TED Tech is part of the TED Audio Collective.
[00:13:58] This episode was produced by Nina Bird-Lawrence,
[00:14:01] edited by Alejandra Salazar,
[00:14:03] and fact-checked by Julia Dickerson.
[00:14:05] Special thanks to Maria Ladez,
[00:14:07] Fer de Grange,
[00:14:08] Daniela Belarezo,
[00:14:10] and Roxanne Hilash.
[00:14:12] I'm Cheryl Dorsey.
[00:14:13] Thanks for listening.