(electronic music)
It might look like we're inside a spaceship,
but this is actually a farm.
(buzzing)
The crops here are 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 her altogether.
(upbeat music)
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.
(upbeat music)
My name is Katie Morich, and I'm a vertical farmer.
Katie works for a three year old
startup called Bowery.
(intercom buzzes)
Its farm is here, in this industrial park in New Jersey.
How are you?
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 hairnets, and then this
is just gonna cover all your street clothes.
Katie wears a clean uniform every day.
Visitors like me are handed a non-negotiable jumpsuit.
Alright.
Step inside and you'll see a cross
between a factory and a lab.
(shimmering notes)
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 Katie can grow more faster with
less water and no pesticides.
(shimmering notes)
It's also what let's her grow things that
taste like nothing you've ever had before.
What's this?
This is the sorrel.
Mmm.
That tastes like candy apple.
Whoa! That's good, right?
It's so sour. I know.
The majority of this facility is automated.
(electronic notes)
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 get my day done.
Do you ever, like, rebel against the computer's orders?
Uh, once in a while, if we're trying to do
a little experiment of our own, we'll be like,
okay, is the system telling us the correct things?
Most of the time it is.
All the time it's right. (laughs)
After a full day at the farm,
Katie likes to bring home samples to her husband, Jase,
(blender whirrs) and her cat, Burt.
(blender stops)
Salt, pepper?
Maybe a little more... Garlic?
On the menu are two items from Katie's farm.
Basil, for pesto pasta.
That's so good.
And mixed greens for a salad.
I'm terrified, everyone's judging.
Cheers, guys.
Cheers. Cheers.
(bottles clink)
Katie fell in love with environmental
science in college, but after graduating
she struggled to find a full-time career in the field.
Jase had to deal with me a lot (laughs),
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, Bowery Farming,
it's like an indoor, vertical farm, and I was like,
alright, 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 to it,
doesn't look like there's a farm in there at all.
So I called her and I was like, "Listen, I know you're
psyched about this job, but it seems super sketchy."
But I figured I'd go and check it out for myself
and I pulled up and it was exactly as how he described,
but I gave it a shot.
And so in 2017, Katie joined Bowery.
She became employee number nine.
(door shuts)
This is really my first real, full-time, big-girl job.
(indistinct chatter)
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 at all, 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, PC's came out when I started working
and my parents probably would've 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.
(beeping)
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.
(pan sizzles)
It's less than 10 miles away from the Bowery farm.
What do you think?
It's delicious! (both laugh)
You made that.
It's like, crazy to see stuff I grew on a plate.
Alright, let me get some of...
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.
(electronic music)
The world's population is set to reach
9.8 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,
Katie 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 have a human there.
It'll also be pretty lonely for the robots
if they don't have anybody to talk to. (laughs)
(beeping)