1/4 The tomatoes have their own perfect paradise in Amsterdam. (Photo: PlantLab)
With the nitrogen crisis, the increasingly unpredictable climate and the growing world population, we have to look for new ways to grow our food. Fortunately, we are already doing that in Brabant. Omroep Brabant visits companies that are working on the food of the future every day and gives a look behind the scenes.
Today we take you to PlantLab. With their technology, fruit and vegetables can be grown anywhere in the world, without having to take the weather or climate into account. And not in the traditional way outside in the fields, but inside in a kind of vegetable flats.
Eelco Ockers, CEO of PlantLab since this year, enthusiastically shows us around. He is not a native of Brabant himself, but he describes the company as pride of Brabant. “It started at the Higher Agricultural School (HAS) in Den Bosch and later we moved to the Gruyter factory. Our research department is still there, where a lot of people from Brabant work.”
The large factory hall has dozens of special enclosed spaces, the so-called ‘plant production units’. With purple light and other smart systems, the climate in those rooms can be completely determined. In this way PlantLab creates the perfect climate for each plant in which the plant can grow best. A paradise of its own for tomatoes, basil and lettuce.
PlantLab does not use pesticides against weeds, pests or plant diseases. It also requires 95 percent less water. The parsley, mint and oregano are so happy in their own perfect world that they are harvesting at a rapid pace. So don’t harvest lettuce twice a year, like in the field or in a greenhouse, but 23 times a year. It almost sounds too good to be true.
“Nature is hard on plants.”
How was that seed planted? Ockers: “Nature is tough on plants and not super efficient. Sometimes there is plenty of sun and other times there is so much rain that the crops were washed away. That could be different,” the PlantLab founders thought twenty years ago.
It started with the question: what is the ideal climate in which plants can grow to the maximum? “After years of research, we at PlantLab know what their ideal climate is for a lot of vegetables, fruit and herbs and we imitate that in our plant production units.”
“If we can do it in the Bahamas, we can do it anywhere in the world.”
The units are stacked on top of each other and that’s why they call it ‘vertical farming’ (vertical farming). Since 2019, the first three vertical farms taken into use: in Amsterdam, in the United States and in the Bahamas.
Many of us would be happy to book a one-way ticket to the latter destination, but why did PlantLab choose this location? “We decided to open three farms, one of which is in an impossible place, where everything is difficult: getting enough electricity, a fierce climate and very high supermarket prices. Basically to prove that if we can do it there, then it can be done anywhere in the world. world,” says Ockers.
“It tastes just like old times.”
What does a tomato, basil leaf or lettuce taste like? “Very different. We had research done by Wageningen University and our lettuce contains eleven times as much vitamin C and four times as many nutrients as in normal lettuce. You can taste that and you have to get used to it.”
Once you get used to it, you don’t want anything else, according to Eelco. He proudly says: “When I talk to older people, they sometimes say: ‘It tastes like the old days’.”
Eelco’s own favorite? “Basil. You really don’t know what you’re tasting. It’s such a different, intense taste. I really love Italian food and I often do it in it. It’s so delicious.”
“We want to be very close to the consumer.”
If you were to completely fill the provinces of Friesland, Groningen and Drenthe with PlantLab’s technologies, you could feed the entire world population, according to the plant builders. But that’s not their plan for the future.
“What we do is local. We want to be very close to the consumer. When the lettuce is harvested at four o’clock in our farm in Amsterdam, it is cut at half past four and taken to the distribution center eight kilometers away. At half past five, the chopped lettuce is on their plates at people’s homes. That’s what we’re aiming for.”
The company recently secured a substantial investment of no less than 50 million euros. That money is used to buy new farms to be built in America and Germany.