The Future of Food Production Speaker Profile: "We can win this battle, but there are some tough decisions to be taken on every level of humanity"

With The Future of Food Production Summit taking place in a little over two weeks, we’re getting to know our expert speakers a little better. Now we sit down with John Matcham, Innovation Director at Light Science Technologies, who will be taking part in a panel discussion on 16 November 2022 called ‘Scaling vertical farming systems to produce healthy and nutrient-rich food at a retail price point’.

Matcham has farming in his blood. He grew up in the Cotswolds, UK, mostly on a mixed farm. “From pulling wild oats, bumping bales, lambing and calving, climbing around the hay barn to find fresh free-range eggs, learning to milk the house cow, planting and picking peas and sprouts – just about all the worst jobs on the farm had to be done by hand,” he says.

That got him thinking. There had to be a better way.

“Then, 20 years ago, somebody asked me if I could make a lightbulb that stopped ‘cannibalism’ in chickens,” he says. “With all that experience growing up, it didn’t take long to realize that it wasn’t cannibalism. So, I did a lot of research and built an LED lightbulb that removed some of the light that humans couldn’t see but was involved in what turned out to be an involuntary pecking response in chickens at certain wavelengths, in particular when they got hot or stressed.”

It worked.

Then somebody asked Matcham if he could do for plants what he did for the chickens. “I laughed and said, ‘I’d seen a plant eat a fly but never another plant!”

The question in this instance, however, was really about controlling the height of glasshouse-grown early- and late-season coriander, and the implications on profits was very real. More specifically, the project involved growing a coriander crop that was 8in tall to fit in an 8in cellophane tube for the fresh herb section in a supermarket. Early- and late-season coriander has a lot of ‘stretch’ – they get very leggy and hold lower quantities of leaf (the valuable part of the crop). Its proper name is hypocotyl, the stem below the leaf. "Consumers don’t want an 8in tube of stem – they want to buy leaves," Matcham says. "We found the answer, but in 2010 the cost was impossible to justify. It took time for the financial numbers to fall into line and in 2017 I had the opportunity to design and build one of the four largest vertical farms in the world.”

In 2010 the cost was impossible to justify. It took time for the financial numbers to fall into line and in 2017 I had the opportunity to design and build one of the four largest vertical farms in the world

That company, Fischer Farms, went on to attract many millions of pounds of investment and, according to Matcham, will build the biggest vertical farm “by a country mile”.

He’d answered his own 40-year-old question. “There was a much better way! Now, I am 60 and I find myself asking that same question every single day. There must be a better way?”

Agtech being a multi-faceted suite of tools that can help growers produce food more efficiently and sustainably, solutions such as indoor vertical farms are just one of the tools available. Within that, Matcham believes light, power and sensors will have a huge impact on global food production in the years ahead.

“Many people think that vertical farming and Controlled Environment Agriculture (CEA) are power hungry, and put in the simplest terms, they are,” he admits. “But when you factor in the cost of growing crops on the other side of the world and transporting them home, both in energy and ecological terms, vertical farming and CEA are actually big energy-savers.”

The crops also have a much longer shelf life, which reduces waste, Matcham notes. “So, we need power. Lots of green, clean power and huge batteries to store the power that’s not being used, instead of wasting it as we do now. We can already create light that works for plants, saving huge amounts of energy that lets us grow all year round. The sensors look at the entire environment not just temperature, humidity and CO2, and tell us when we are getting it right. They also tell us when we’re getting it wrong. This makes our learning processes much faster. It also makes our returns on investments realistic.”

Anybody, Matcham goes on to say, can build a vertical or CEA farm, but it takes a combination of unique experience to add raw farming knowledge, technology and plant science all together in the same space.

“It all comes down to the money and it’s usually the sceptic that costs the most in time and money, waiting for a set of numbers that actually crunch,” he feels. “We demystify the tech and the knowledge, break it down into a cost-effective and practical solution, then bring it all together with the understanding of farming. Watching a sceptic’s face when they suddenly realize just how much money we’re going to save them is one of the most satisfying aspects about my role. The penny drops and then they see pounds!”

We demystify the tech and the knowledge, break it down into a cost-effective and practical solution, then bring it all together with the understanding of farming

The panel discussion at The Future of Food Production Summit that Matcham will participate in also features Alexander Juranek, Founder of FarmNOW, Joe Swartz, Vice President at American Hydro (AmHydro) and Matylda Szyrle, CEO of Poland’s Listny Cud. Asked what delegates will take away from what he brings to the table, Matcham says he hopes people will understand that Light Science Technologies is not just “selling brown boxes”.

“We are there to be part of your team from the beginning to the end of your construction and then on into the future,” he says. “We want you to spend less and produce more. We make sure your environment is the most energy-efficient per plant, not just per square meter. Exacting precision can literally saves millions. Leafy greens are relatively easy, but there are crops with much higher margins for the food industry, legal medicines, cosmetics and even animal feeds. All these markets will make vertical farming and CEA the norm. It shouldn’t attempt to replace traditional agriculture, but it can enable traditional agriculture to grow a lot more.”

When it comes to the overall challenge of feeding the population of 2050 without further detriment to the planet, Matcham is certainly a glass-half-full kinda guy. “I think if you ask the average person in the street about a food crisis needing to be solved by 2050, they have no idea whatsoever about the scale of the problem or what lies ahead of them,” he says. “We can win this battle, but there are some tough decisions to be taken on every level of humanity. As food growers and technologists, we can achieve what is needed, but long term we need the rest of the world on the team. We need as an industry to improve our message and engage with the end user. We need to get them excited about great fresh and tasty energy-efficient healthy food!”

The Future of Food Production Summit is a virtual conference and takes place 15/16/17 November 2022. It features more than 75 speakers, 50 presentations, seven panel discussions and two start-up pitch symposiums. Even if you can’t attend live, you can access all the content – more than 20 hours’ worth – on-demand. Tickets are priced at just US$495. Click here to secure your seat