We Use Hemp and Now Recycled Carpet: An Inside Look at Urban Farming

As I walked through the entrance of this underground urban farm, I couldn't help but feel a sense of excitement and curiosity. The team had been working tirelessly to create a self-sustaining ecosystem that would produce fresh herbs and salad greens in a controlled environment. Richard handed me over to Daniel, who was the chief supervisor today, and explained my role in the day's activities.

My first task was to shoot the floor to make it shiny. I watched as they used a machine to clean the floor, which was lined with recyclable carpet. The team explained that this type of flooring is not only eco-friendly but also provides an ideal environment for their micro herbs and salad crops. The carpet's moist surface was perfect for hydrating the seeds, which were sown on top of it.

As I began to learn about the process, I discovered that the pea shoots were just one of many varieties of micro herbs and salad items being cultivated. From garlic chives to fennel to coriander or purple radish, every plant had its own unique requirements and benefits. The team explained that controlled environment agriculture allows them to control the environment consistently, which leads to better growing cycles and yields.

The process began with chitting, where the seeds were hydrated in water to speed up germination. They then spread the pea shoots out over the recyclable carpet, creating a perfect habitat for growth without contamination. The benefits of this method are numerous, including reduced waste and increased efficiency.

As I watched the crops begin to grow, I was amazed at how quickly they flourished under the LED lights and hydroponics system. Within three days, they had grown significantly, with roots starting to emerge from the matting. Daniel demonstrated how to harvest the pea shoots using a long, straight-edged blade that sliced through them with ease.

The final step in the process was packaging, where the harvested crops were carefully placed into boxes and weighed. The team used a machine to measure out precise amounts, ensuring that every box met their quality standards. I watched as they expertly trimmed the pea shoots to remove any excess, followed by a precise weighing process using a digital scale.

As I finished my day of work, Daniel praised me for my efforts and encouraged me to continue learning from the bottom up. He reminded me that this was my first experience with urban farming and that every job is an opportunity to learn new skills. As I left the underground farm, I couldn't help but feel a sense of pride and accomplishment.

The Urban Farm: A Model for Sustainable Food Production

This underground farm in London is a prime example of urban agriculture, where crops are grown in a controlled environment using hydroponics and LED lighting. The team's focus on sustainability and efficiency has resulted in a highly productive system that produces fresh herbs and salad greens with minimal waste.

The farm's use of recyclable carpet and precise watering systems creates an ideal environment for growth, while the LED lights provide optimal light conditions for photosynthesis. The controlled environment also allows for precise temperature control, reducing the risk of pests and diseases.

By using this method, the team has reduced their carbon footprint significantly, making them one of the most sustainable urban farms in the city. They are not only producing delicious food but also setting an example for others to follow.

The Benefits of Urban Farming

Urban farming is a growing trend in sustainable food production. By growing crops in controlled environments, farmers can reduce their reliance on pesticides and other chemicals, creating a healthier product for consumers.

Controlled environment agriculture also allows for increased efficiency and productivity. With precise temperature control and watering systems, farmers can optimize growing conditions to produce higher yields with minimal waste. This not only benefits the farmer but also reduces the carbon footprint of transportation and storage.

Urban farming is also an excellent way to address food insecurity in urban areas. By providing fresh produce directly to consumers, farmers can create a more sustainable food system that promotes local economic growth and health.

As I walked away from the underground farm, I knew that I had gained a new appreciation for the power of urban farming. With its focus on sustainability, efficiency, and community involvement, this model is poised to revolutionize the way we produce and consume food in the future.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enwelcome to another week here on sorted food this week it's all that work experience learning new skills now I like to think myself as having slightly green fingers but I want them greener so I chose this place so we're here in Clapham which is like southwest London and that's because in a couple of weeks is this thing called food tech week it's an amazing enterprise that basically looks at the future of food the sustainability of food and all the important things that we should be looking at it's run by people call white food it's a Monday morning and I've come to coffee shop to meet them find out a bit more about them and they're gonna hook me up for my workers boots why food began in 2016 as a small group of people who wanted to combine the minds of companies trends and community members who are transforming the food ecosystem so why feeds on a mission to drive innovation in the feed industry using technology so we think there's like this massive opportunity to innovate and solve some of the global challenges within food using tech why do we do this by creating opportunities for startups investors and brands to connect and tackle the huge food waste issue facing the world right now two ways to verify the scent of food food farm-to-fork we're growing population urbanization to get food into the cities and that's not going to be a sustainable process for us their amazing work cultivates in an event called London food tech week which happens once a year in central London it's the largest food tech celebration in the world come on in impact week and brings together all those different people a series of really exciting innovative collaborative events we do talks we do networking where you do dinners and Domitian is connecting all the people that need to come together to be able to change and innovate as a food system so then we're super excited we've organized some work experience for you based on the fact we love your herb garden you're gonna be working with growing underground - you're part of London feet set week and it's basically a farm under the ground so there's a series of World War two air raid shelters that run from South London to North London there are mainly used for storage some some there's a recording studio for this once I hear empty after the old source storage document storage company moved a and it's a it's a 17,000 square feet World War 2 air-raid shelter so the first thing that happened was Richard one of the owners helped me to get up so this is like Farm meets food manufacturing and therefore there's lots of rules that's but the weddings on had to put the hairnet on wear a jacket keep the right side of the yellow and white line wash your hands and then we're into the actual farm there was a whole world of herbs but not as you ever imagined it because it's kind of this weird pink light and light tinge to the whole air it's kind of warm but also quite humid it's kind of perfect for going for herbs but a bit odd underground downstairs within the tunnel we have four layers of hydroponic growing system with LED lights in between hydroponics is simply water with the nutrients within it taking those nutrients to the substrate which we use a recycled carpet so it's not like we grow in soil we we use the lowest carbon impact product we can find we use hemp and now we're using this recycled carpet and then from there under the LED lights we were also he will put it on a watering cycle and a light regime and between six and twelve days later we start to get fresh herbs and salad we're 11 stories underground how cool is this he's like like a bunk bed for salad Richard handed me over to Daniel who was chief supervisor today and he was going to put me to work and that started right in the bottom I guess that's what work experience is you've got to learn the ropes from the bottom first job of the day for example today is to shoot this floor make it shiny this is the machine at the moment they're going ten different types of micro herb or salad items everything from garlic chives to fennel to coriander or some purple radish but the one that I was focusing on today was pea shoots so you can see the whole journey from like seed sowing through to where they grow and then the harvesting and then the packaging so you get to see the whole thing and hopefully I can help so the pea shoot process starts at the chitting and that's where the seeds basically are put through water to hydrate them they're oxygenated it speeds up the germination and they go from really quite small and hard to kind of almost pulpy and they begin to have the shoes at that point we spread them out over recyclable carpet and these are really already very moist and damp and it's perfect habitat for these to grow without contamination in the soil the benefits of controlled environment agriculture are are the fact that you can control the violent environment consistently so under glass in Pali tunnels and obviously in fields it's a challenge whereas within the environment we can dictate pretty much exactly what the plant wants all the time inevitably that allows us to get better growing cycles and allows us to get better yields and that's where the efficiencies of urban farming comes in three days they look like this so basically we came prick the crops so they they believe they're in the ground usually we are we are how deep down here is it hoary meters 40 B is under London under Northern Line and under the Northern Light yeah under lights above us oh that's how we got here this morning and then underground they start to germinate exactly Daniel was a bit of a taskmaster he made me stack all of the pea shoots into the shelving units so they could spend six days there under all the LED lights and the hydroponics so you can already see the roots coming through the matting first time a perfectly fine perfectly fine let's now see cut them how long do the Pete Meaden lytics days is paid up the paint now harvest all day long Daniel demonstrated how to harvest the pea shoots a really long straight edged blade that slices wonderfully through the pea shoots at about 10 centimeters we were looking for I had to go as well he said I didn't alright trim so that was okay these predictors I'm not sure if they're actually safer or making more of an issue of it so good job mate we've done a good job so far so since oh yes the triggers in the light your harvester is now back at the final process packaging just pick it from there and the machine will kill you on the spot so the scale is basically you put the whole box on and then you set your limit with the tolerance in this case three percent and as you take it out machine tells you when you've got it right so if I'm looking for a hundred grams go take out as soon as you get it close enough not quite there ninety seven kill Timmy greenlight carry on my stuff somebody will buy this so for today you on top of everything you've done a good job and we ever happy back if you really shoot yes yes if well set it if we're really really really short I will call you back I had no idea this place existed and I don't think anybody walking along Clapham High Street would it's forty meters below them and yet they're farming incredible herbs I mean you know I like my herbs micro crest things that this was perfect for me because it marries kind of farming and growing herbs to science and it is future proof from food this is an urban farming space so the future of food is really important for everybody to start becoming aware of because we all eat food three times a day we all love it we love the taste of it but there's massive problems that are happening with it so the first step to really educate yourself on what's happening in the food industry go have a look at our website there's lots of amazing resources and blogs on there or check out our social channels where we're putting out snippets of news and opportunities from you click on the left if you missed our last video or click on the right video for one of our favoriteswelcome to another week here on sorted food this week it's all that work experience learning new skills now I like to think myself as having slightly green fingers but I want them greener so I chose this place so we're here in Clapham which is like southwest London and that's because in a couple of weeks is this thing called food tech week it's an amazing enterprise that basically looks at the future of food the sustainability of food and all the important things that we should be looking at it's run by people call white food it's a Monday morning and I've come to coffee shop to meet them find out a bit more about them and they're gonna hook me up for my workers boots why food began in 2016 as a small group of people who wanted to combine the minds of companies trends and community members who are transforming the food ecosystem so why feeds on a mission to drive innovation in the feed industry using technology so we think there's like this massive opportunity to innovate and solve some of the global challenges within food using tech why do we do this by creating opportunities for startups investors and brands to connect and tackle the huge food waste issue facing the world right now two ways to verify the scent of food food farm-to-fork we're growing population urbanization to get food into the cities and that's not going to be a sustainable process for us their amazing work cultivates in an event called London food tech week which happens once a year in central London it's the largest food tech celebration in the world come on in impact week and brings together all those different people a series of really exciting innovative collaborative events we do talks we do networking where you do dinners and Domitian is connecting all the people that need to come together to be able to change and innovate as a food system so then we're super excited we've organized some work experience for you based on the fact we love your herb garden you're gonna be working with growing underground - you're part of London feet set week and it's basically a farm under the ground so there's a series of World War two air raid shelters that run from South London to North London there are mainly used for storage some some there's a recording studio for this once I hear empty after the old source storage document storage company moved a and it's a it's a 17,000 square feet World War 2 air-raid shelter so the first thing that happened was Richard one of the owners helped me to get up so this is like Farm meets food manufacturing and therefore there's lots of rules that's but the weddings on had to put the hairnet on wear a jacket keep the right side of the yellow and white line wash your hands and then we're into the actual farm there was a whole world of herbs but not as you ever imagined it because it's kind of this weird pink light and light tinge to the whole air it's kind of warm but also quite humid it's kind of perfect for going for herbs but a bit odd underground downstairs within the tunnel we have four layers of hydroponic growing system with LED lights in between hydroponics is simply water with the nutrients within it taking those nutrients to the substrate which we use a recycled carpet so it's not like we grow in soil we we use the lowest carbon impact product we can find we use hemp and now we're using this recycled carpet and then from there under the LED lights we were also he will put it on a watering cycle and a light regime and between six and twelve days later we start to get fresh herbs and salad we're 11 stories underground how cool is this he's like like a bunk bed for salad Richard handed me over to Daniel who was chief supervisor today and he was going to put me to work and that started right in the bottom I guess that's what work experience is you've got to learn the ropes from the bottom first job of the day for example today is to shoot this floor make it shiny this is the machine at the moment they're going ten different types of micro herb or salad items everything from garlic chives to fennel to coriander or some purple radish but the one that I was focusing on today was pea shoots so you can see the whole journey from like seed sowing through to where they grow and then the harvesting and then the packaging so you get to see the whole thing and hopefully I can help so the pea shoot process starts at the chitting and that's where the seeds basically are put through water to hydrate them they're oxygenated it speeds up the germination and they go from really quite small and hard to kind of almost pulpy and they begin to have the shoes at that point we spread them out over recyclable carpet and these are really already very moist and damp and it's perfect habitat for these to grow without contamination in the soil the benefits of controlled environment agriculture are are the fact that you can control the violent environment consistently so under glass in Pali tunnels and obviously in fields it's a challenge whereas within the environment we can dictate pretty much exactly what the plant wants all the time inevitably that allows us to get better growing cycles and allows us to get better yields and that's where the efficiencies of urban farming comes in three days they look like this so basically we came prick the crops so they they believe they're in the ground usually we are we are how deep down here is it hoary meters 40 B is under London under Northern Line and under the Northern Light yeah under lights above us oh that's how we got here this morning and then underground they start to germinate exactly Daniel was a bit of a taskmaster he made me stack all of the pea shoots into the shelving units so they could spend six days there under all the LED lights and the hydroponics so you can already see the roots coming through the matting first time a perfectly fine perfectly fine let's now see cut them how long do the Pete Meaden lytics days is paid up the paint now harvest all day long Daniel demonstrated how to harvest the pea shoots a really long straight edged blade that slices wonderfully through the pea shoots at about 10 centimeters we were looking for I had to go as well he said I didn't alright trim so that was okay these predictors I'm not sure if they're actually safer or making more of an issue of it so good job mate we've done a good job so far so since oh yes the triggers in the light your harvester is now back at the final process packaging just pick it from there and the machine will kill you on the spot so the scale is basically you put the whole box on and then you set your limit with the tolerance in this case three percent and as you take it out machine tells you when you've got it right so if I'm looking for a hundred grams go take out as soon as you get it close enough not quite there ninety seven kill Timmy greenlight carry on my stuff somebody will buy this so for today you on top of everything you've done a good job and we ever happy back if you really shoot yes yes if well set it if we're really really really short I will call you back I had no idea this place existed and I don't think anybody walking along Clapham High Street would it's forty meters below them and yet they're farming incredible herbs I mean you know I like my herbs micro crest things that this was perfect for me because it marries kind of farming and growing herbs to science and it is future proof from food this is an urban farming space so the future of food is really important for everybody to start becoming aware of because we all eat food three times a day we all love it we love the taste of it but there's massive problems that are happening with it so the first step to really educate yourself on what's happening in the food industry go have a look at our website there's lots of amazing resources and blogs on there or check out our social channels where we're putting out snippets of news and opportunities from you click on the left if you missed our last video or click on the right video for one of our favorites\n"