Dyson’s pioneering new strawberry growing system

James Dyson, best known for inventing a new type of vacuum cleaner, is applying his inventive nature to growing strawberries. He wants to grow strawberries year-round and is conducting research at a greenhouse in Carrington where the plants are tended in a series of vertical wheels that resemble a carousel, each about 78 feet long and 16 feet tall populated with 1,225 plants.

Sensors measure photosynthetically active radiation, humidity, carbon dioxide, and temperature and determining when to supplement sunlight with LED lighting and when to adjust the growing environment.  Robots patrol the aisles emitting ultra-violet light to suppress mould so chemical pesticides are not needed.  Machine s detect ripe berries which are harvested by 16 robot arms. The farm harvests 200,000 strawberries a month.  The whole operation runs on a closed-loop energy system: crops from surrounding fields are fed into onsite anaerobic digesters that convert organic matter into biogas, which powers turbines generating enough renewable electricity to run the facility.  The excess heat from those turbines maintains the greenhouse temperature.  Rainwater captured from the roof irrigates the plants. The vertical growing system has increased yields to two and a half times conventional methods.

Almost half of the food consumed in Britain is imported, and the UK produces only 16 percent of the fruit it eats. The same instinct that led Dyson to spend years redesigning the vacuum cleaner because he thought the existing one was needlessly inefficient is now pointed at a food system that imports strawberries from Morocco in February when the engineering to grow them fifty miles from their point of sale already exists.  He owns 36,000 acres across Lincolnshire, the East Midlands of England, and Scotland and grows wheat, potatoes, and oilseed rape. Plus strawberries.