Vegetables and lettuces stacked on several floors,

artificially lit. Fully automated farming. Protected from

drought, frost and storm. This isn't a futuristic vision. In

Japan this is already the reality.

In this system we can produce food under optimal

conditions with high nutritional content and good

taste all year round. That's the big difference to working

in the field.

Working the fields in Brandenburg. These thick dust

clouds are due to the drought.

Without massive artificial irrigation, there would be no

harvest. Are these fields facing an imminent collapse?

As the conditions are currently, I would have to

recommend my children look for a different profession.

Devastating drought here, heavy flooding elsewhere.

Food production is in danger, and catastrophic famines

wreak havoc. Throughout the world, researchers are

searching for solutions.

A typical harvest in Japan. The workers wear protective suits,

that are hygienically prepared.

The environment is clinical, these lettuce heads are

cultivated — without soil, and free of pesticides.

In this room, the temperature always remains the same.

I find it pretty good that I can always work indoors,

regardless of the weather, it's better than in the rice fields.

"Vertical Farming" is the name of this method from Japan as

seen here at the company Spread in Kyoto. The roots

thrive in a liquid nutrient solution, without topsoil but

with the same natural ingredients, such as sodium

and potassium. Lamps, with a similar color temperature to

sunlight are used.

Solar collectors and the building's green façade

indicate that progress is at home here. The University of

Chiba in Japan. In this futuristic-looking greenhouse,

experiments with vertical vegetable cultivation are being conducted.

Professor Toyoki Kozai invented this method in the

1970s. Back then he initially had problems finding the right

light and had high electricity costs. The breakthrough came

with LED technology.

Originally I wanted to help the small farmers who own

small land parcels. Vertical farming enables one to

achieve 100 times more annual harvest, on a single

area, than with conventional farming. So it's worth

investing in such vegetable factories. These facilities can

be set up anywhere. It is an important step towards

sustainable agriculture. There are no losses during

the harvest, and we use less energy for transport.

Productivity and profitability can be increased

even further, with the latest technology.

This method is mainly used for vegetables and salads.

As far as staple foods go such as cereals or potatoes, more

research is still needed.

In Japan, after the Fukushima catastrophe,

there was a lot of interest in these new greenhouses,

because it is possible to produce all year round,

regardless of external influences. Thanks to our

methods, the farmers have a stable production without

damage from insects or worms. And of course, the

system is sustainable. You can run these vegetable

factories in the middle of the city and produce local food

as needed.

The contrast: agriculture in the fields. Once again the farmers

lack water. A lot of water. And the weather is much too hot.

Temperatures of up to 40° can dry up the soil to two meters deep.

Large parts of Germany are affected by drought in the

summer. The result can be the total loss of the harvest, with

high financial losses.

Hans-Heinrich Grünhagen in Brandenburg is one of the

farmers who suffer. He grows potatoes and corn. His farm is

located in an area with light, dry soil. Without the help of

expensive irrigation systems, nothing would grow on his farm.

The water already needs to be pumped from deep

underground. And climate experts predict that even more

extreme dry periods are expected.

If you look at the ground here, there is no moisture.

No plant can survive. That's why there's not much on this.

Here are two miserable potatoes, here are a few

more, which might have been okay, if they had

enough water. Like last year, we are having a very dry

year again. It's only rained half the amount that we

normally would have had, at this time of year. The soil is

so dry from last year that even the little rain we've had

over the last few days, is not enough for the plants.

But how can the farmers' problems be solved, how can

we ensure that food supply in the future is safe?

Wageningen University in the Netherlands is looking into

these questions. At the renowned agricultural

university, scientists are working on using new ideas

and methods to finally defeat hunger in the 21st century.

They are working on the assumption that in just 30

years, twice as much food will have to be produced as today.

But the conditions for this have become worse. In order

not to exacerbate the climate crisis, the area available for

food cultivation should not increase. New methods are

therefore needed to produce food in the future.

Ernst van den Ende is head of the Plant Science Department.

He understands how grave the situation is.

So, if we change nothing, and we keep on consuming the

way we are doing, if we do not optimize the way we

produce our food, then for the next forty years we will

need to produce as much food as we did over the last

8000 years. And I think that really gives a good

impression how big the challenge is, to feed the

world in 2050.

With its huge greenhouses, the Netherlands is the second

largest food exporter in the world. And they take care of

their resources: vegetable growers here need much less water

to grow tomatoes than elsewhere - thanks to new

irrigation techniques.

Our research is focusing on to produce more food but at

the same time to do it with less inputs so we need to

produce more nutritious food, more safe food. And

this challenge more with less and better, is really the

overarching theme of our research programs.

This is how daily life looks in the Spanish region of

Almeria. Under this sea of plastic tarpaulins lies Europe's

largest vegetable garden. Artificially irrigated, grown

for export. Millions of tons of tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers

and other varieties are shipped from here, mostly to Germany.

But intensive cultivation has its price. Pesticides and

fertilizers contribute to the fact that hardly anything grows

here outside the greenhouses. And the Spanish vegetable

farmers are running out of water. The whole area is

drying up.

The situation in Africa is even more extreme. Especially

south of the Sahara. The reason: an increase in weather

catastrophes. It's almost impossible for the poor and

hungry to lift themselves out of their misery without

external help, says the Secretary General of German Agro Action.

Since 2014, the number of hungry people has continued

to rise, and currently 821 million people suffer. We can

see quite clearly that about 30 million people have been

affected as a direct result of the climate change.

People are personally and very acutely affected by this,

because the storms currently hitting these countries were

previously completely unknown. And this is just

such a sign of the destructive force that a change in

climate can trigger, and how the people in the countries

where we work, are quite defenseless and at the mercy

of the elements.

Catastrophes, drought, floods destroy not only the living

space of the inhabitants but also valuable agricultural land.

Although Brandenburg farmer Grünhagen can solve his

drought problems with technical help, supported by

the EU, he nevertheless is pessimistic about his future.

Irrigation is the only way we can still grow things here.

Grain cultivation is actually not feasible anymore and we

are no longer competitive worldwide. The potatoes that

we irrigate are sold here in the region, where we still

have a market that we can sell to.

Back in Japan, at the company SPREAD in Kyoto.

Headquarters for the new world of agriculture. SPREAD

is currently the world's largest farm for vertical production.

An employee of the company on her way to work. Her

clothes are more similar to what people wear in an

operating theatre, than on an outdoor farm. Here hygiene

regulations are very strict.

All precautions are used to prevent germs from the

outside entering the production, as the food should be clean

and unspoiled.

In this closed, sterile environment, the plants grow

without the use of pesticides and fertilizers.

A good 50,000 heads of lettuce leave the factory every

day. This hall is only used for packaging, others are used for

growing various vegetables, including mushrooms and

exotic herbs. The selection is large. None of the produce is

washed, as there are germs in the water that may cause the

vegetables to spoil. Another advantage of this type of

"indoor farming" is that the plants thrive on several floors

above each other, and need very little, valuable, floor

space. The cultivation in some of halls is already fully

automatic. Shinji Inada founded the factory 15 years ago.

Back then, climate change or the explosion of the world's

population was not a big issue. Nor was there a

market for factory grown vegetables. But now we make

a good profit. I don't think that factories will replace

conventional farming completely, but I think that

our way of farming will play a central role in 20 or 30

years. We want to share the technology with poor

countries, so that they can produce their own food.

Thanks to the short distances to supermarkets and

restaurants, no goods are spoiled during transport —

unlike in conventional supply chains.

On the other hand, conventional agriculture in

Japan is also in a deep crisis.

Farmers use pesticides as a necessary tool in rice

cultivation. Rice, which is sacred to many Japanese, is

heavily subsidized in Japan. The market is largely protected

by high customs duties. Rice imports are considered an

attack on cultural heritage. But the areas under cultivation are

dwindling. The average size of a Japanese farm is just 1.8

hectares, which makes it difficult for farmers to make

ends meet. That is why there are hardly any young people

farming, with the average age of a farmer being 66 years old.

Cooperatives are formed in many places, in order to be

able to farm more effectively. But the increase in natural

disasters is also causing them problems.

To avoid being held hostage by these changes, the farmer

Akira Iijima was inventive. This is my aquaponic system.

- he proudly explains. In his small greenhouse, he is trying

out a new form of agriculture: aquaponic. Here, fish are bred

in large tanks. Akira Iijima has 250 sturgeons in his facility.

The fish excrement is pumped out and used as fertilizer for

various vegetables. The water purified by the plants, is then

returned to the fish tanks.

From rice farmer to modern aquaponic farmer. Almost all

vegetables thrive here all year round and are independent of

climate changes. The greenhouse has even withstood

an earthquake. The neighboring farmers have

already suffered this year; it rained too much and their

plants did not get enough sun.

Akira Iijima however can still carry his harvest to the market.

And dreams of an even bigger plant.

Such as this one in the Schöneberg district in Berlin.

In the grounds of an old industrial complex:

Greenhouses for vegetable growing - in the middle of the city.

Groups of visitors from all over the world come here to

learn about the goings on inside. This is also an

aquaponic farm, but on a grand scale. The current product:

Capital City Basil. Grown with the excrement of the fish bred

in these tanks. The fish that is marketed in Berlin is of course

called Capital City Perch.

We want to produce where people consume, so we don't

have long supply chains, or long cold storage times, and

we have a much better CO2 balance. I think our fish, the

capital city perch, is the freshest fish you can buy

here in Berlin.

The principle is as old as the hills: the water that is polluted

by the fish is extracted and used as manure for the plants.