2 November 2020

10:30am - 12:00pm - Hong Kong Standard Time

Online via Zoom

Hong Kong today remains counted to be among the world’s most “food-vulnerable” places, importing approximately 90 percent of its food supply and thereby maintaining an exposure to recurring volatility in food prices as caused by such vicissitudes as the deleterious impact of a changing climate on agricultural production and, more recently, via the Covid-19 pandemic.

Hong Kong, for instance, produced about two-thirds of the vegetables that it consumed around 1950; today, however, it produces vegetables that only meet less than two percent of its total demand, and importing approximately 92 percent from mainland China.

Meanwhile, in and around many cities around the world, vertical farms have recently been emerging as a form of local food production designed to foster local food security, resilience and sustainability.

A type of controlled-environment crop production employing vertically stacked shelves using liquid nutrient solution and typically light-emitting diodes (LEDs) for lighting, vertical farms provide safe, dependable and consistently high crop yields and quality throughout the year independent of season, climate and geography -- and without the use of pesticides, at less than 20 percent water consumption relative to open-field cultivation, without the need for arable land, and while significantly curtailing both food wastes and food-transport greenhouse-gas emissions.

Vertical farms constitute an innovation that is part of an inclusive portfolio of solutions designed to meet the increased planetary demand for food by 2050 in the face of dwindling resources and a disruptive changing climate. The application in vertical farming of Industry 4.0 technologies, including data analytics, artificial intelligence (AI) and automation, among others, are helping transform vertical farming into an exponential innovation.

This presentation will delve into vertical farming and the multifaceted promises that it holds for Hong Kong in the context of food security and resilience, types and paradigms of vertical farms, Cuello’s Law of resource sustainability, and the social sustainability of vertical farms related to community building.

WHEN:

2 November 2020

TIME:

10:30am - 12:00pm

WHERE:

Online via Zoom

EVENT FORMAT:

Seminar, Lecture, Talk

SPEAKER:

Joel L. CUELLO

Professor of Agricultural & Biosystems Engineering Vice Chair, International Association for Vertical Farming (AVF) The University of Arizona, U.S.A.

Joel L. Cuello is a Professor of Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering and Director of the Global Initiative for Strategic Agriculture in Dry Lands at The University of Arizona. A globally recognized expert in the engineering of sustainable biological and agricultural systems, his technical expertise in both engineering and biology provides the platform for engineering designs in various agricultural and biological systems with emphasis on optimizing biological and agricultural productivities while fostering resource sustainability and environmental protection.

Prof. Cuello has designed, constructed and implemented varied types of engineered agricultural or biological systems, including those applied in bioregenerative space life support, hydroponics, tissue culture, and industrial mass production of algae, plant cell and microbial cultures for production of biomass, nutraceuticals, pharmaceuticals, etc.

He is the Principal Inventor of the patented algae photobioreactor series -- the Accordion photobioreactors -- and is the creator of the Minimally Structured, Modular and Prefabricated Vertical Farm design that is considered an archetypal design for Vertical Farming 2.0. Prof. Cuello conducted his postdoctoral research in the Controlled Ecological Life Support System Division at NASA John F. Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida as a U.S. National Research Council Postdoctoral Research Associate.

He earned his Ph.D. in Agricultural & Biological Engineering, with Minor in Chemical Engineering, from The Pennsylvania State University in 1994. He also earned two M.S. degrees (Agricultural & Biological Engineering;  Plant Physiology) from The Pennsylvania State University. He obtained his B.S. in Agricultural Engineering (cum laude) from the University of the Philippines at Los Banos.

He is a lifetime Visiting Professor at Zhejiang University in Hangzhou, China, a Faculty Fellow at the Innovation Center of the Ateneo de Manila University in the Philippines, and a Visiting Professor at De La Salle University in Manila, Philippines.

LANGUAGE:

English

RECOMMENDED FOR:

Alumni

Faculty and staff

PG students

UG students

MORE INFORMATION:

Meeting Link : Here

ORGANIZER:

Division of Environment and Sustainability

Interdisciplinary Programs Office

Division of Public Policy

CONTACT: egchristine@ust.hk

Tags: BUSINESS & MANAGEMENT ENGINEERING SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY ENVIRONMENT & SUSTAINABILITY