Brazilian Company Takes Farming Innovation In An Upward Direction
Paulo Cabral | Paulo Cabral@PCabralReporter
October 9, 2019
A vertical farm in Sao Paulo has been experimenting with indoor vegetable growth and it uses artificial pink lighting, also known as Pink Farms.
CGTN’s Paulo Cabral reports.
This is a farm but not your usual kind. Everything here happens indoors and since the plants don’t have sunlight inside to grow.
They are supplied with 100 percent artificial pink lighting also known as Pink Farms.
The principle here is hydroponic agriculture: the plants don’t grow in soil but in a kind of foam soaked in water and nutrients.
After the seeds are planted they move to a first stage of growth in a dark room.
Eventually, they are transferred to these rooms setup with pink lights- made of 80% red and 20% blue- ideal for plant growth.
“We think this is important because we will have in the next years a huge growth in the population so we need to find better ways to grow food for them,” Rafael Pereira, the founder, and partner of Pink Farm said.
“And controlled environment agriculture is one of the ways we have to increase this productivity.”
The products in this farm cannot be considered formally organic because they are not planted on actual soil. But since they are grown in a confined and controlled environment there is no need for the use of pesticides. And the vegetables are totally clean: ready to be eaten right after being picked.
Some shops in Sao Paulo are already selling Pink Farm products. These so-called baby greens – similar to sprouts – are attracting some buyers here.
“This is a totally innovative method,” Marcel Honda, manager of Natural da Terra said.
“We had never seen anything like this. We had already seen hydroponics Sales are still picking up because people still need to get to know these products. So we have been organizing tastings here at the shop and once people try it they buy it.”
“I had never tried this and really liked it,” Rodrigo, a customer said. “Tastes great with this mustard sauce.”
“I am very strict about the quality of food I bring home, Jarbas Pereira, a lawyer said. “And I see this is great. My wife has already bought some.”
For now, this vertical farm is a small scale project that’s just begun to show some commercial results. But as demand for food grows and space to produce it becomes more scarce, opportunities for high-tech farming may become more important to fulfill people’s needs in the future.