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Chinese Urban Agriculture · Hydroponics Daily

• 0:00
  Hello there, ni hao. I'm Dr. Russell Sharp, the presenter for Hydroponics Daily.
• 0:07
  And today we are talking about some interesting Chinese hydroponic installations.
• 0:14
  These are not commercial installations, but they are interesting.
• 0:17
  So I thought I'd go through them in today's episode.
• 0:20
  I've been to China a few times, but I've never seen
• 0:23
  any hydroponic buildings or production facilities
• 0:27
  so always interested to know that the first
• 0:31
  one is vertical farm heng shui and
• 0:35
  designed by van bergen colper architects so
• 0:38
  they sound dutch and it's an innovation center for
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  metropolitan food production so urban farming
• 0:45
  in heng shui china i have no
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  idea where that is so let me just google that it is
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  below beijing roughly halfway between
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  there and Qingdao where the beer comes from so it's
• 0:58
  the reason I'm talking about this innovation center is
• 1:01
  it looks amazing so it's
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  like four stories high and it looks almost corrugated
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  I shall put a picture on
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  the podcast artwork it's the
• 1:16
  top layer is fruiting crops
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  so it's like a really tall sort of like penthouse with
• 1:24
  what looks almost like sodium lamps in there but i bet
• 1:27
  they're not sodium lamps and big vents
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  and so therefore the tomatoes and the cucumbers grow and then there's a layer
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  below that that looks like it's for propagation and then a multi-story bottom
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  layer which is like vertical crops so like leafy veg and obviously there's a
• 1:45
  big entrance and And it's really interesting.
• 1:49
  So it's using water recycling, passive heat recovery, natural cooling to show
• 1:54
  how cities could produce food in the future and also to teach people about vertical farming.
• 1:59
  It's been built at the International Horticultural Park. So the sort of the
• 2:04
  showcase area in Heng Shui.
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  Thinking around that area, there is big horticulture industry.
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  So the Shandong province has, that's where all the garlic, loads of the world's
• 2:15
  garlic comes from, things like that.
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  So very very we think of china as being like a consuming country but it also
• 2:20
  produces a lot when it comes to horticulture obviously we think of it as a producing
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  country when it comes to goods and things like that but often we think of it
• 2:27
  as like importing things like sorghum and,
• 2:30
  and rice and things like this from america and stuff but it is actually an exporter
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  as well certainly fruits and horticultural products it's 12 800 square meters so that is a,
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  just over a hectare isn't it that's massive for an indoor thing with this basically
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  a demonstration unit really automated vertical cultivation of leafy veg and
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  fruits under leds the rooftop greenhouse so that they get natural light but
• 2:57
  also what appears to be extra lighting in there as well.
• 3:02
  So the lower two floors automated vertical cultivation without daylight so although
• 3:08
  you can see in through the windows the windows are there just for people to
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  look in i think to them rather than for you to actually get that light in for
• 3:17
  photosynthesis there's also some beautiful rooftop.
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  Classrooms in the rooftop greenhouse for schools
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  to go and visit and universities to go and visit and do
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  experiments almost like lab type classrooms
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  so that's an interesting addition so that
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  is a fantastic facility there's some serious money gone
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  into unless i'm looking at an ai generated model of
• 3:41
  it but looks to be fairly looks like
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  it's the real deal so be interesting to see
• 3:47
  when that opens the other one is a really
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  bizarre one it's a group of canadians
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  who are of chinese descent
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  or i don't know if they're first generation second generation
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  chinese and they have set up a hydroponic
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  indoor grow in a
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  retired warship in canada so
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  in british columbia in the traditional territory the squamish people never heard
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  of those but i guess they are indigenous canadians and so this particular boat
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  in the burud in inlet was once a bay-class minesweeper,
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  braving the Arctic ice and Pacific storms.
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  She served in the Canadian Navy through the Cold War, but now she's now grown
• 4:36
  food inside her hull. So a really...
• 4:40
  I don't know what to make of this story really it's really weird so
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  there's a guy called or i don't know rong gi might
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  be a man might be a woman i don't know because it's chinese names always struggle
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  they say canada doesn't need more weapons on
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  the water we need food we need resilience and
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  that might be true but i can tell you something china.
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  Has got weapons on the on the water their navy
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  is increasing dramatically the number of boats has overtaken america
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  in the number of boats they've got ships even in their navy.
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  So these chinese people or chinese descent
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  people saying that canada doesn't need a navy
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  with weapons i think you'll find china does
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  and china and russia have got a
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  lot of interest in canadian water especially around
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  the arctic for arctic passage and things like this so i
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  think canada will be foolish to turn more many more
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  of their boats their ships into floating hydroponic
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  farms but it doesn't have to be naval boats i
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  guess it could be any boat and it could get people to could
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  get to people in remote areas of
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  canada especially sort of ice breaking type vehicles ships
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  and obviously in very
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  isolated communities where it's cold in the winter they really
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  do struggle to get fresh fruit fresh
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  vegetables and if they can the prices are
• 6:01
  very high so hydroponic vertical farms have.
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  Good potential there we talked about that when we
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  talked about north dakota which is in a very similar situation perhaps
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  a little fewer indigenous people that
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  are might struggle with their diets but certainly
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  logistically there's an issue there and there's
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  even more of an issue in canada because the area we're
• 6:24
  talking about is even higher not sure
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  how successful this one will be it doesn't seem it's very commercial it seems
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  more of like a demonstration project and a sort of cultural project they've
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  got a library full of chinese books for people to read which sort of doesn't
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  tally with the fact that they would be going to indigenous restaurants.
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  You know places places where the the native canadians like
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  the inuit am i allowed to say inuit i'm you
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  know trying carefully here inuit people probably can't read
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  chinese so that's a bit wasted on them but yeah
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  i don't they're the in the article they're
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  complaining about the regulations in canada for crops and
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  how they are optimized for soil grown
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  crops and they're a problem for getting crops
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  out of a hull of a ship and selling them without you
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  know breaching a load of regulations so i
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  don't think it'll be i think it the scale is too small
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  for it to be a massive commercial success
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  but certainly as a novel and interesting
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  thing that people can go and look at and you know almost like a
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  museum then yeah it holds real potential and
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  it could go around sort of communities on
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  the coastline and so it's um and showcase
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  that i think it would be really interesting to to
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  visit so if you are anywhere near
• 7:46
  the burud inlet let's have a look where the burud inlet is.
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  It would appear that it's near vancouver so
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  not that remote a location really but certainly
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  of interest go say ni hao
• 7:58
  to the chinese speakers in
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  the in the ship that is the hydroponic ship
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  yeah really weird if you've ever grown hydroponic crops on
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  a ship get in touch if you know of any novel chinese
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  or canadian hydroponic setups let me
• 8:14
  know i've always wanted to go to somewhere in canada called uranium city
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  i saw on a map when i was a kid it's like what the hell is uranium city
• 8:21
  but that's cool something like you know something like
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  the simpsons some sort of nuclear powered city i
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  would imagine it's just a place with a massive quarry where they take uranium ore
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  but yeah i bet they don't have many fresh fruit and vegetables
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  in uranium city maybe i'm wrong i don't know if you're
• 8:36
  a canadian and you've been to uranium city let me know i've
• 8:39
  gone down a wikipedia wormhole i'm now looking over the population
• 8:43
  history of uranium city as of 2021
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  the population of this city was 91
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  people that's a shame isn't it at its height
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  in 1981 it had a population of 2500 so
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  in the uk that wouldn't even be a village that would be a hamlet not even a
• 9:00
  town but yeah if you're up there in the middle of nowhere in uranium city then
• 9:04
  fresh fruits and vegetable would be near impossible to get hold of so maybe
• 9:08
  hydroponics is for you whereas today It's a very off topic because we talked
• 9:13
  about Chinese hydroponics today.
• 9:15
  But yeah, I will post a picture and a link to this vertical farm heng shui because
• 9:20
  it is something to behold.
• 9:22
  Thank you very much for listening. Until tomorrow, goodbye.