[Music]
it might look like we're inside a
spaceship but this is actually a farm
the crops here have grown mostly by
machines with the help of just a few
humans like this woman her life offers
an early peek at a new kind of farming
it's a promising twist to an ancient
career but only if the robots don't
replace they're all together as
technology replaces old jobs it's also
creating new ones I'm Aki Ito and I'm
here to show you the jobs of the future
[Music]
my name is Katie Morris and I'm a
vertical farmer
[Music]
Caty works for a three-year-old startup
called Bowery
it's farm is here in this industrial
park in New Jersey it's the last place
you'd expect to find any sign of life we
take extra precaution to make sure we're
not bringing any contaminants into the
farm so we're gonna wear our hair nets
and then this is just gonna cover all
your street clothes Katy wears a clean
uniform every day visitors like me are
handed a non-negotiable jumpsuit
all right step inside and you'll see a
cross between a factory and a lab
[Music]
trays of produce are vertically stacked
to save space and each of them is given
just the right amount of light water and
nutrients at the optimal temperature and
humidity
it's an incredible level of precision
which is why Katy can grow more faster
with less water and no pesticides
[Music]
it's also what lets her grow things that
taste like nothing you've ever had
before the majority of this facility is
automated the data is collected by
sensors and a computer controls growing
conditions for the crops for the things
that the machines can't do yet Katie and
her fellow human farmers fill in and
even those tasks are dictated by the
software that runs this whole operation
it lets me know what I have to do what
time I should be doing it by and that's
how I got my day done do you ever like
rebel against the computers orders um
once in a while if we're trying to do a
little experiment of our own you like
okay is this system telling us the crush
thing most the time it is all the time
it's right after a full day at the farm
Katie likes to bring home samples to her
husband Jase
and her cat Bert salt pepper garlic on
the menu are two items from Katie's farm
basil for pesto pasta and mixed greens
for a salad I'm terrified everyone's
judging cheers guys
Katie fell in love with environmental
science in college but after graduating
she struggled to find a full-time career
in the field Jace had to deal with me a
lot you know coming home to me crying
and trying to figure out if I'm making
the right decisions and then somehow
online bowery popped up she told me
about this job like Valerie farming it's
like an indoor vertical farm and I was
like all right this sounds like total BS
so I took my work truck and I said you
know let me swing around and see what
this is all about so I drove up - it
doesn't look like there's a farm in
there at all so I got cold air and I was
like listen I know like you're psyched
about this job but it seems super
sketchy you're gonna go and check it out
for myself
and I pulled up and it was exactly us
how he described but I gave it a shot
and so in 2017 Katie joined Bowery she
became employee number nine this is
really my first real full-time big girl
job
and it was a little intimidating at
first coming into this company with
people that have like their PhD and I
don't necessarily have that background
so I constantly doubted myself when I
first started at Bowery I wasn't worried
about her I roll you know she said to us
can I do this and I used to tell her to
have a little faith in herself
Katie grew up in a typical New Jersey
suburb with two working parents they've
tried to stay away from putting too much
pressure on their only child when we
heard about what she was doing and
realized that this is something that
didn't exist when we were younger and I
thought back from my generation you know
pcs came out when I started working and
my parents probably would have said I
was crazy if I went into an IT field at
the time but now look what happened so
it's not a good idea for us to try to
tell her what to do because it's a
different world Bowery is backed by some
of Silicon Valley's top investors and
with almost 30 million dollars of
funding the startup is expanding fast
and in May after all that time she spent
doubting herself Katie got promoted to
lead a team of her own farmers the
produce she grows supplies a few nearby
grocery stores as well as this
restaurant in Manhattan
it's less than ten miles away from the
Bowery farm
[Music]
what do you think you made that it's
like crazy to see stuff I grew on a
plate but for Katie it's not just about
making premium vegetables for people who
can afford them I want people to have
the purest produce imaginable and I want
that to be readily available to anybody
the world's population is set to reach
nine point eight billion people by 2050
two thirds will live in cities and we're
gonna need all kinds of new technology
to sustainably feed everyone the key to
making that food affordable is to
continue to make more with fewer farmers
but no matter how high-tech all this
gets Katy thinks there will still be a
place for her I just think there's
something about the human mind that you
can't really replicate so I think we
could still work closely with technology
but I still think it's nice to you know
to have a human there it's also be
pretty lonely for the robots if they
don't have anybody to talk to
[Music]
you