The future of salad is so bright you’ll have to wear shades
Or so they say at Thanet Earth this week, where workers are putting the finishing touches to England’s largest complex of hydroponic greenhouses. The greenhouses will cover an area as large as 10 football pitches, if you’re a sporting fan. For the animal lovers among us that’s 6 London Zoos.
Thanet Earth is located at the Isle of Thanet in Kent, and is being built by the Fresca Group, the UK’s largest fresh produce supplier, and a consortium of Dutch growers at a cost of 80 million pounds. Their aim is to fulfill the desire for homegrown fresh produce all year round, reducing the need for imports by 15%.
Thanet Earth say they will produce a staggering 2.5 million tomatoes per week for 52 weeks a year, and in the weeks between February and October, 560,000 peppers and 700,000 cucumbers will be harvested weekly. That’s pretty impressive.
Also impressive are the growing methods employed, computers will control every aspect of the growing conditions including lighting, nutrients and water. The water will come from reservoirs being built on site, pumped directly into the greenhouses and warmed along the way, how neat is that?. This really is the agricultural equivalent to the factory production line.
The real test however is the quality of produce Thanet Earth will deliver, will hydroponic salads taste as good as their soil grown counterparts? I’m looking forward to finding out.
You can see pictures of Thanet Earth here
