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- GE Mirai Lettuce Farm 5A former Sony Corporation semiconductor factory in Japan has been converted into the world’s largest indoor farm, all illuminated by LEDs. Having only started production a year ago, the farm is already shipping out 10,000 heads of lettuce per day.1
- GE Mirai Lettuce Farm 4Japanese plant physiologist Shigeharu Shimamura, CEO of Mirai Co., has partnered with GE Japan to make his dream of a water, space and energy efficient indoor farming system a reality.2
- GE Mirai Lettuce Farm 2At 25,000 square feet, the farm is nearly half the size of a football field. 17,500 LED lights spread over 18 cultivation racks reaching 15 levels high are a key to the farm’s success. The LEDs were developed for the project by GE and emit light at wavelengths optimal for plant growth, allowing Shimamura to control the night-and-day cycle and accelerate growth.3
- GE Mirai Lettuce Farm 3The systems allows the farm to grow lettuce two-and-a-half times faster than an outdoor farm. Wasted produce is also reduced from around 50 percent down to just 10 percent of the crop. This means a 100-fold increase in productivity per square foot.4
- GE Mirai Lettuce farm 1Of the successful partnership Shimamura says, “I knew how to grow good vegetables biologically and I wanted to integrate that knowledge with hardware to make things happen.” The GE Japan team is convinced that indoor farms like the one in the Miyagi Prefecture could be a key to solving world food shortages. The project partners are already working on similar indoor farms in Hong Kong and the Far East of Russia.5