Gone are the days of farmers tending to crops out in the field from dawn until dusk. Well, almost, at least in Japan. Right now in Kyoto there are plans to begin construction on a large-scale, fully-automated lettuce factory that will cost up to 2 billion yen to build (which is equivalent to $16.5 million). Yes, it’ll be monstrous, and according to the company behind it all, Spread Co., its automated process will be able to produce 30,0000 heads of lettuce in a single day, beginning in 2017. And you better be hungry for leafy greens, because the company has set a lofty goal to put out 500,000 heads of lettuce within five years.
Spread Co. wants to produce 30,000 heads of lettuce per day. Image source: Digital Trends.
It will be a challenge, but this is nothing new for Spread. The company already has years of experience growing vegetables at a factory level using an indoor vertical farm system and artificial LED lighting, but the larger automated plant will take the growing process to a different level. Seeding and germination aside (which requires visual confirmation), the majority of the growing process is done with minimal human intervention.
So how does it work? The automated process uses stacker cranes that will carry the seedlings to robots who will transplant them into their final growing spots. After reaching maturity, the plants will be harvested and moved to the packaging plant, without outside intervention. This is all done automatically, even down to the environmental controls, which adjust themselves and are capable of working in any climate the world throws at them.
The majority of Spread's growing process is done automatically, without human intervention. Image source: blogs.wsj.com.
Of course the investment in machinery for this kind of system is costly, but the way Spread sees it, the complete automation of the cultivation process will improve output by maximizing growing space, and labor costs will be reduced by nearly 50%. The company believes it can recoup its investment by increasing its lettuce output and lowering the cost of production.
Currently Spread produces 20,000 heads of lettuce in its factory that it sells in 2,000 stores throughout Japan under the brand name Vege-tus. Spread makes sure to match the price of lettuce from local farmers, and says its crop tastes the same as local lettuce grown outdoors.
It's likely that lettuce is the first of many vegetables to be mass produced in an automated factory. Maybe we'll get the same for cheesecake sometime in the future.
Source: Digital Trends
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