Watch: The future of farming takes root underwater in Italy

euronews (in English)

Luca Gamberini and his team are exploring a new frontier for farming without harming the environment.

Transcript

00:00We want to access a fraction of that huge surface of the planet that is blue.

00:0714% arable land is what the agriculture system uses for 8 billion people.

00:14We cannot create new arable lands.

00:16What are we going to do in the future?

00:18We must explore alternative means of agriculture that do not affect that use of land.

00:24We need to explore different frontiers.

00:26My name is Luca Gambarini. I am vice president and co-founder of Nemo's Garden.

00:41Nemo's Garden is the first and only instance of human testing of controlled agriculture underwater.

00:51We make greenhouses, but we place them underwater.

00:56It's an air environment where plants grow.

00:59It's air inside and water all around it.

01:07Within the biosphere, there is a hydroponic system, a vertical farm.

01:11There is no soil inside and plants grow with different kinds of reservoirs that hold pods.

01:19These pods are a mechanical means to stabilize the seed and then have roots.

01:24Water streams flow through them, bringing them nutrients.

01:30Nemo's Garden was not easy to begin as a project.

01:34It was very hard to explain to anybody what we wanted to do.

01:37It was kind of ridiculous.

01:39Why would we want to grow plants underwater and what's the benefit?

01:44Water has a heat capacity retention which is very different from air.

01:48And we leverage that.

01:54You can have maybe 2°C or 4°C during the winter, but in the water it never goes below 12°C.

02:02During the summer it can be 35°C and plants might suffer from that.

02:07But inside the biosphere, we never go above 30°C, which is much more comfortable.

02:13That cooling effect is done without consuming resources.

02:17It's natural.

02:18Other benefits are that saltwater surface will naturally evaporate.

02:25Then fill up the volume with condensation, with humidity.

02:29This humidity is then harnessed from us.

02:32We collect it and use it for our plants.

02:36It's freshwater, which is basically rain.

02:40That's why we call it a biosphere because it mimics anything that happens outside in the larger scale environment.

02:47Within ImoxGarden we use absolutely no pesticides, no chemical treatments because we don't need that.

02:52No pest can reach our plants.

02:54We are underwater, between 4 and 10 meters deep.

02:58And that's again another resource that we have for free.

03:01No consumption of resources, of energy and no negative CO2 emissions.

03:07We're still very grounded in the idea that it is controlled environment agriculture.

03:13So it has to be data-driven.

03:18It's cabled from the biospheres directly to our land base, which we call control tower.

03:23We have data from sensors inside.

03:25And what we do is we collect water temperature, inside air temperature, humidity,

03:31CO2 levels, O2 levels, the illuminations in terms of measures of light and the spectrum.

03:37We have cameras so that we make sure that everything is fine,

03:41both for the divers and the underwater farmers.

03:44We can also monitor the plant growth.

03:46That visual data can also be streamed and fed to an algorithm

03:51that can actually give us information of how the growth is going.

03:54That information can be blended together with the data that we collect.

03:58We can see it from anywhere we are with a smart device.

04:02We don't need to attend the structures as much because we can remote control much of it.

04:09We have utilities such as pumps, which we can activate from remote wherever we are.

04:15We've had plenty of setbacks.

04:19Nobody has done that, so there is no book to go by.

04:22You can't read anything about it.

04:24We had to discover along the way.

04:26We are commercializing the idea,

04:28which means we need to make sure that the price is as low as possible.

04:33We need to rationalize it, we need to scale it.

04:35It's not easy.

04:36We need to confront ourselves with a market that is heavily subsidized.

04:40The price is low and we are used to it.

04:44We need to try the cost out.

04:46The price is low and we are used to it.

04:50We need to try the cost out.

04:52We are doing exceptional stuff, but we're still selling plants.

05:02I fell in love with Nemo during the years.

05:08We made the leap from something that was just fun

05:13to something that actually could help humanity.

05:19It also solves so many issues. They're so beautiful.

05:22It's really hard to put into words what it feels like.

05:26Underwater is a different environment.

05:28You are in space, so it is like being an astronaut.

05:32It's really hard to describe the relationship that you start to have

05:35with all the flora and fauna.

05:38It's really special.

05:41Nemo's Garden is a technology that can be replicated

05:44wherever there is a body of water.

05:46I like to think that Nemo's Garden can be the agriculture of the future.

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