UK: This high-tech robot farm could change our food supply forever
Join the BBC’s Planet Earth III crew and go behind the scenes in the city farm that’s transforming fields into towers and running almost everything with robots.
By Ceri Perkins
BBC
December 27, 2023
Excerpt:
At Plenty’s Compton farm, every step of the process, from seed to shipping, is automated. From the moment that a worker tips a bag of seeds into the drum of the seed-sowing machine, the machines take over.
First, the seed-sower drops seeds into trays filled with a soil-free coconut husk substrate. The trays are sprinkled with water and whisked away on a conveyor belt for a two-day stint in a darkroom, where they’re kept in humid conditions to encourage the seeds to germinate.
Once the seedlings emerge, the trays are sent to a vast propagation room. Here, the baby plants spend a couple of weeks stacked in horizontal racks, bathed in a carefully curated spectrum of LED light and receiving a bespoke cocktail of nutrients that kick-start the growing process.
Within two weeks of being sown, the young plants have a robust set of first leaves and their roots have wound their way down through the substrate, forming neat little plugs.
A bank of white robot arms, each fitted with a row of pincers, are surprisingly gentle as they pluck the plants and their plugs from their trays. In unison, the arms turn and nestle the plants into evenly spaced holes along a skinny 10m (32ft) section of metal track.
Except this isn’t a track, it’s a tower – a fact that suddenly becomes clear as an enormous yellow robot arm grabs it, swings it through 90° and hangs it from the ceiling.
