Tamás Mehlhoffer, Head of Communication at Tungsram
Utilizing modern indoor farming technologies, Hungary would have the capacity to become self-sufficient the whole year round in terms of vegetable and fruit horticulture. Closed-system farms, lit with LED-lamps, stand ready to produce in every season and every time of day to help achieve local self-sustenance, promoting export and job creation at the same time, thus having a key potential in the new world of the post-COVID-19 pandemic, states Zoltán Sejpes, manager of the Tungsram Agritech business unit.
Closed-system farming offers a solution to the biggest challenges in the future of the global food supply. Soil contamination, the depletion of areas suitable for agricultural production, extreme weather conditions, the rising volume of food waste, urbanization, and the growing demand for quality food all point towards the increasing importance of local indoor farming and urban vertical farms, says Zoltán Sejpes, manager of the Agritech business unit at Tungsram. Research by the consultant group McKinsey shows that to meet the food, feed, and fuel demand in 2030, 175 million to 220 million hectares of additional cropland (arable land & permanent crops) would be required in the traditional agriculture, although the process is just the opposite: Globally, five million to ten million hectares of arable land are lost each year.
Light is the alpha and the omega of indoor farming, Zoltán Sejpes says.
The proliferation of LED technology has brought about a veritable revolution in vertical farming as it allows for energy-efficient light that mirrors the solar lighting conditions necessary for plant growth.
Besides, the technology ensures that less water and virtually no agricultural land is needed for crop production, there is no waste generation while pests and contamination can be avoided due to the closed system.
While closed-system farming has already acquired a role in more distant phases of space exploration — let us just recall the claims that Elon Musk, Tesla’s CEO, made in delineating similar models of vertical farming for food production on Mars — here on Earth, moreover, in our own country, we can (or could) observe the tangible advantages of the revolution in indoor farming. Zoltán Sejpes cites one example: in the Budapest agglomeration, at Veresegyház, an indoor farming complex has been in operation for some time where tomatoes grow through artificial lighting; this complex provides several supermarket chains with its tasty produce, and this through 365 days, 24 hours a day, independent of season, time of day, or weather.
As it is, local supply is (would be) of key importance in a situation of a pandemic,
when it is extremely difficult to acquire (frequently tasteless and overpriced) vegetables and plants grown in indoor farming, from the area of Morocco and Spain, the two countries that supply the global market. (Actually, the Italians, with their favorable climate, also started to recognize this advantage during the COVID-quarantine; thus, they constructed container farms to be able to produce crops for themselves — for example, tropical plants.)
Moreover, these farms produce a healthy, GMO-free crop, adds Manager Sejpes; after all, to yield tastier, accelerated-ripening, more succulent vegetables, and fruits, they do not experiment via manipulating the genome but rather with the light spectrum, i.e., the proportion of its colors and with other, more natural factors. A modern indoor farming module is more like a 4.0 industrial unit than an agricultural one; this is the world of sensors, monitors, drones, software, and artificial intelligence, with still a lot to discover to understand the “language of plants”. No wonder that with Tungsram lamps, experiments are already underway in the MTA Science of Agriculture and Biological Research Center at Szeged, at Szent István University, the Debrecen University, and beyond Hungary at the University of Reading, which is world-famous for its horticulture, as well as the Fraunhofer Institute, which is well-known for its standard-setting certificates.
Actually, the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) highlights the endeavors of the Hungarian company on their home page as one of the tokens of secure food supply.
Furthermore, the first actual vertical farms of the region will be established in Újpest, Tungsram’s center, becoming, as Zoltán Sejpes put it, the “playground” of every interested researcher, where they can complete all the eventually world-class experiments that have the potential of globally influencing the Earth’s food supply.
All this is not an exaggeration: thanks to our expertise, controlled, closed-system farming indeed gives a chance for Hungary to gain back its prior position of being among the five greatest countries of agricultural research on the planet. The technologies established in this manner are premier export articles, in harmony with the Hungarian government’s “invented in Hungary” endeavors. From an economics perspective, indoor farming also fulfills an important role in the area of job creation: after all, all-year-round harvesting provides a continuous job opportunity, which is even available for the less skilled workforce. According to the stance of Zoltán Sejpes, thanks to the modern indoor farming technologies, Hungary would have the potential to attain an all-year-round self-sustenance in the fields of vegetable and fruit production.
More on agrotechnology products on agritech.tungsram.com
