In the Netherlands, the transformation is not shaping up as the sum of many small improvements. Here, researchers are going for the big leap. At Wageningen University, Ernst van den Ende explains what it's all about: So we are now in our greenhouses, and what I really would like to show you is the way we try to optimize tomato growing under controlled conditions. One of the opportunities we have in controlled conditions, is that we can be very precise in the use of water, the use of fertilizers. We control the environment in such a way, that we also can use a lot of biological control agents to control pests in these crops. That makes tomato growing in greenhouse conditions really a champion in circular agriculture. Because we try to optimize everything, we try to reduce the waste streams and in that way we are able to grow a lot of tomatoes per square meters in a very sustainable way. Just to give you an example, if you grow tomatoes in an open field situation in Spain, you will end up with four kilograms of tomatoes per square meter, at the end of the growing season. If you grow tomatoes under such conditions, you will end up with eighty kilograms per square meter after one growing season, which is twenty times more. But the best part of the story is that we do that with four times less water and that we do that fully under biological control, which means that although we produce more we use less inputs. That again is of course a very important part of sustainable development. Although the Netherlands is a small, densely populated country, with more than 488 inhabitants per square kilometer, they have the second largest export of food in the world, measured by value. Only the United States earns more money from food export, and they have a landmass, which is 270 times larger than the Netherlands. One aspect of this multifaceted agricultural approach in the Netherlands is the use of LED lights. So, what you see over here is that we nowadays use a lot of LED lightning in the production of vegetables and flowers under glass. With these LED lights you can really influence, not only the growth of plants, but for instance also the resistance against pests. So we have experiments in place, where we with LED lightning reduce the susceptibility of plants for certain pests, and in that way you can really lower the amount of pesticides that you use in the growing of plants in greenhouses. Another aspect of these LED lights is that we can also influence the quality of the product. So we have examples where we double the amount of vitamin C in tomatoes, with red LED lights. And you see this whole new development in greenhouses, where we can really control the growth of plants and the quality of the products. Precision farming under controlled conditions entails a more individualized way of taking care of plants. So one of the issues is of course to reduce the amount of nitrogen and fertilizers in general, that you use in in the production of your crops. And because we are under controlled conditions, you can really come up with the optimal gift. So we have no emissions from nitrogen or any other fertilizers. And you really try to come up with the perfect fertilization for each plant. So, nowadays we are even working on individual plant sensors, to really do the next step in optimizing fertilizers in relation to the need of the plant. The emergence of precision farming is not limited to indoor farming, as the development of new types of sensors and data processing is happening across the field. So one of the very important strategic themes for the future, is digital agriculture and precision agriculture. This is one of the big investment themes for Wageningen University & Research, and as you can see on this slide, is that we focus on different aspects of precision agriculture. So, in the open field situation we work with robots and drones, to really optimize the censoring, looking for possibilities to reduce the amount of labor, with robots. Within the greenhouses, we started to use a lot of sensors in order to phenotype plants, during the whole day - 24 hours a day. And of course, then we collect an awful lot of data and later on, we can use these data in greenhouses that are using artificial intelligence to grow your crops. And this is a future way to go to, and to optimize again, the way we are producing food, in order to do it in the most sustainable way. Machine learning in the cultivation of plants, is yet another example of how future food systems will be managed by trends, that are emerging today. These trends are not developing in a vacuum, however, and food production will always be guided by the ethics of the society, within which it occurs. In no area is this more clear than with the use of GMOs - genetically modified organisms. As long as humans have grown plants, they have selected plants with beneficial traits for further breeding. These traits have reflected naturally occurring genetic variations, and could for example help with an increased yield or resistance to diseases or environmental pressures. GMOs are plants that have been altered this way, not through breeding, but through laboratory changes in the genetic material of the plants. Primarily, the use of genetic modification in plants, has so far been to increase insect resistance and herbicide tolerance. So the use of GMOs in agriculture has to a high degree been associated with supporting systems of unsustainable, highly industrialized mono-crop culturing systems. In the United States, more than 93% of the corn and soy planted is genetically modified in some way. Worldwide areas with genetically modified crops have been expanding since it became commercially viable two decades ago, but over the last decade this growth has stalled and in 2015 there was the first ever drop in genetically modified acreage globally. This is partly due to American saturation, and partly due to public resistance. In Europe especially, genetically modified products are a hard sell, as consumers prefer to buy food with labels stating that they are 'GMO free'. This is often due to a perception, that GMOs are unnatural. CRISPR is a new and more effective method of doing genome editing. Critics say that CRISPR represents uncharted territory and should only be used with extreme caution, as there has been too little time to study the potential side effects and consequences of its use. Proponents argue that with CRISPR, human interference is more limited than with coarse-grained, traditional methods of breeding, radiation and chemical treatment of genetic material. Now, it is possible to alter just a single DNA letter at a specific place in the genome with CRISPR. At Wageningen University they use CRISPR and are allowed to do this under very controlled conditions. In one line of research, they are trying to improve chicory, so that its roots contain more inulin and terpene. The first can be used for improving gut health, the second for antibiotics. We choose this project, because CRISPR is a technology, we can alter very precisely the genome of chicory roots and that can not be done yet for chicory, because chicory cannot be bred. You can not easily cross them to each other so for CRISPR classes really for chicory almost sole solution to do good chicory breeding. And we make products, that are good for human health and also in the project, which is very relevant, is that we have not only technology there, but also we look very much on - how does the public - how do the different stakeholders look at this? How they conceive CRISPR roots? Would they like the product? So, we have a large stakeholder group with which we consult, we use communication channels like artists to get people at least attracted to what we are doing, so that we can come into discussion, so in this sense this project is quite multidisciplinary. Not only technical, but also communication and stakeholders and then also, of course we want to analyze whether these products can make a business, so there are also companies present in the project and we will try to develop business cases, that not only analyze the business and the economics, but also the impact on nature - on the environment - what does it do to nature? While Ernst van den Ende doesn't see CRISPR as a make or break it technology, he does see it as a big mistake if government regulations and policies are not amended, so that CRISPR can help speed up the overall transformation of global food systems. So, first CRISPR cast is a very interesting tool to work on for the future. It will not be the golden bullet to feed the world in 2050, but it will certainly be a part of that, and if we can use this technology, we will speed up plant breeding, we will be more precise in creating for instance resistant cultivars or protocols that are more tolerant to abiotic stess, like drought, and as we all know with the climate change and with the enormous pressure on pesticides, there is a strong need to come up very fast with new cultivars that can meet these different demands, I'm talking about. I think, therefore we should really work with science and public together to judge the technology, to make people aware of the opportunities of this technology, and to see whether we can use it in the future. The future of GMOs and CRISPR is probably a question of the setting in which they are used. The biosafety concerns of negative impacts of surrounding natural ecosystems are still not fully addressed, and therefore open environment use can be questioned as a sustainable approach. CRISPR could perhaps make a better fit with the advanced closed system farming, displayed at Wageningen University. A niche under greenhouse production is vertical farming, and this is also one of the specialized areas of the university. The man in charge of this research at Wageningen is Leo Marcelis: My name is Leo Marcelis, I'm a professor of horticulture and product physiology at Wageningen University in the Netherlands. Leo sees vertical farming as an answer to the question of urbanization: In 2050 up to 2,5 billion more humans are going to live in big cities - where will they get their food? What you see nowadays is more and more people are living in big cities, so worldwide there are already many cities, where more than 10 million people are living. They are living on a small area, the food is coming from all over the world, but more and more, there is a demand that people would like to have fresh food which is produced very nearby. Well, that is where this vertical farming is possible, because you don't need much land, because on one layer, you can grow already at a very high rate. But you can imagine that - here we use a lot of space, because it is an experimental setup - but every 70 centimeters or 75 centimeters you could have a new layer of leafy vegetables. So think about a tall building, you can have many layers above each other, so you need only very limited area, so you need a small space - and you can grow enormous amount of food very nearby where the consumers are located and it can be on places where the outside climate is very cold, because that's usually difficult to grow plants in - it can be very hot outside. Also, you're independent of the soil, because not everywhere there is a good soil. So, this can be done everywhere in urban areas, and that's where you see the demand for the vertical farming is mainly coming from areas, which are very much urbanized. Vertical farming will often be based on hydroponics, aquaponics or aeroponics - the methods, where plants are grown without soil. We do a lot of research on plants grown indoor in vertical farming on many layers above each other, so the plants do not have natural light, but we grow them with lights of lamps. We control all the climate conditions like the temperature, CO2, air humidity - but also the water and the nutrient supply. The advantage of those systems is that you can exactly control how much growth there is of the plant, every day of the year - independent of the outside climate - and that you can control its climate. Now we have just here one experimental setup, where we are studying some aspects of the water and nutrient supply, and then we often grow in soil, so we don't grow anymore in the soil, but we grow in this case directly in the water and I can show that: You see here the roots, you see here the water and this is for aeration, because there needs also to be oxygen, so this continuous oxygen supply or air supply to the rooting system. So, this is just growing regularly on water, in the water there are all the nutrients, that the plant need. We also have systems which is also not in the soil, but where there is a substrate and the substrate can be, for instance, of roku which is often used. The advantage of those systems compared to the soil, is that we exactly know how much of the nutrient supply, how much of the water is supplied to the roots, exactly what is needed by the plants and that way you can control it, but it's not just the advantage of the plant - it's also the advantage of the usage. If you supply water to plants in the soil, often a lot of the water will drain away, so that's a loss of water and with the water there are also nutrients and nitrates and phosphates - and those phosphates and nitrates, they might come then in the groundwater or in the surface water and of course from an environmental point of view that's not what we want. Also, the water use is an important thing. Worldwide scarcity of water is a very big issue, and then if you think about for instance, vegetables grown in the open field in the Mediterranean, even if you have a lot of technology you will need at least 60 liters of water per kilogram of vegetable. If you grow in a Dutch greenhouse, that's usually already soilless, we use about 16 liters of water per kilogram vegetables. So you go down from 60 liters to 16. In these vertical farming systems you can go even much further down, if we recollect the transpired water of the plant. The plants transpire a lot water vapour. That water vapour can be regained and well, then you can go down the water use to just a few liters of water per kilogram vegetables. Of course, vertical farming does not come without costs, but Leo feels confident that the advantages will prevail and the challenges be overcome. Advantages of this vertical farming is: very high production rate you don't need much land area, so that also means that you need less land area for food production, you can give that land back, for instance to nature. We need very little of water, very little nutrients, if we keep all the pests out, we don't need pesticides to control them. So that makes it on many sustainability criteria very good. Are there also some less good points? Well, it is still quite expensive and it uses a lot of electricity, in particular for the lamps, and that also partly relates it to why it is still expensive. Then you have to realize it is also a very new system, so new system means there are still a lot to further improve and to optimize, so we expect that it will get cheaper in the coming years and that's what we are working on in our research, but in particular on making more efficient use of the light, because if we make more efficient use of the light we need less electricity, and that's why if we are saving on electricity, I think that we can make very big steps forward, so that the energy use is going down.
