In Japan, High-Technology Plants Now Include Vegetables
Idled Factories Find New Life in Farming; Swapping Computer Chips for Lettuce
Wall Street Journal
Updated July 7, 2014 2:06 a.m. ET
AIZU-WAKAMATSU, Japan—Haruyasu Miyabe used to oversee a computer-chip production line at a Fujitsu Ltd. 6702.TO +0.26% plant here. One day last year, the plant manager told Mr. Miyabe to prepare for a career change.
"Starting tomorrow, you are going to make lettuce," he recalls being told.
Amid troubled times in the Japanese electronics industry, Fujitsu shut one of the three chip-making lines at the plant in 2009. Now, in a sterile, dust-free clean room that once built the brains of high-tech gadgets, Mr. Miyabe and a staff of about 30 tend heads of lettuce.
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Holland, Sweden and other countries are trying out vertical agriculture on a grand new scale - in new and converted factories. Is this the future for land scarcity? Maybe in Megacities... If people need to live in dense cities, should we waste any land at all on urban community gardens, or even small farms?
Be careful what you want, you might get it.
DUTCH PLANTLAB REVOLUTIONIZES FARMING: NO SUNLIGHT, NO WINDOWS, LESS WATER, BETTER FOOD
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