:00:00. > :00:00.in East Sussex last summer, died because of misadventure.
:00:00. > :00:00.Relatives of some of the victims have been asking why no lifeguards
:00:07. > :00:14.But the coroner said they might still have drowned even if there had
:00:15. > :00:21.Coming up in ten minutes' time, Newswatch, but first on BBC News,
:00:22. > :00:34.This is salad, grown the old-fashioned way.
:00:35. > :00:38.You know, in shipping containers, under LED lights, without soil,
:00:39. > :00:42.in an optimised water and nutrient mix.
:00:43. > :00:46.As Farmer Spock called it, good old hydroponics.
:00:47. > :00:50.In all seriousness, it's been suggested that the type of intense
:00:51. > :00:57.farming going on here at Local Roots in Los Angeles could help solve
:00:58. > :00:58.the world's food problems in years to come.
:00:59. > :01:02.Transport costs can be reduced by growing plants wherever
:01:03. > :01:05.they are needed, even in areas of famine where the land and climate
:01:06. > :01:10.You get higher volumes and many more crop cycles
:01:11. > :01:21.Lettuce can be grown in 30 days instead of up to 90 outdoors,
:01:22. > :01:21.and a new crop can be grown immediately.
:01:22. > :01:28.All in all, one of these containers yields the same as five acres
:01:29. > :01:36.It's very similar to the strawberry farm that we saw in Paris
:01:37. > :01:42.in the spring and in Miyagi in Japan in 2015, where the land had been
:01:43. > :01:48.using artificial intelligence to make some quite unusual tweaks.
:01:49. > :01:49.But before we talk about the vegetables of the future,
:01:50. > :01:52.we are off to San Francisco where Kat Hawkins has been looking
:01:53. > :02:00.I've come to this lab in the heart of Silicon Valley to visit
:02:01. > :02:06.They claim to have invented the food of the future -
:02:07. > :02:11.a completely meatless meat made entirely of plants.
:02:12. > :02:18.It's actually remarkably important to get that state of mind
:02:19. > :02:20.perspective but actually it's also useful for interpreting
:02:21. > :02:29.The aim is to reverse engineer the flavour and texture of meat
:02:30. > :02:37.And as someone who very much enjoys their meat tasting like meat,
:02:38. > :02:37.I wanted to find out how they're doing it.
:02:38. > :02:45.What is it about the flavour of meat that makes it so damn delicious?
:02:46. > :02:47.Why is it so agreeable, what is it that triggers your mind
:02:48. > :02:55.There is a lot that goes into that and it turns out that flavour
:02:56. > :03:01.is about 75 or 80% aroma and about 20 or 25% taste.
:03:02. > :03:04.Impossible Foods found that the key ingredient that gives
:03:05. > :03:07.meat its characteristic irony taste is heme,
:03:08. > :03:08.a molecule found in most living things and especially
:03:09. > :03:15.So this is your magic ingredient, right?
:03:16. > :03:22.And it provides the explosion of flavour you get that makes
:03:23. > :03:28.the difference between white meat chicken with a beefburger.
:03:29. > :03:33.The company has recently flipped the switch on its meatless
:03:34. > :03:34.meat-packing factory as it ramps up production.
:03:35. > :03:38.They will eventually make 4 million burgers a month,
:03:39. > :03:42.and the next aim is to move into chicken,
:03:43. > :03:51.But it's one thing being a scientist who's enthralled by food tech
:03:52. > :03:52.and another to be a chef, using the ingredients produced
:03:53. > :03:59.I think we eat way too much meat in general.
:04:00. > :04:02.So I think this is a way to be as close as possible to how meat
:04:03. > :04:09.The Impossible burger is now the only one Rocco has on his menu
:04:10. > :04:16.It seems like at this stage it might be a novelty for Silicon Valley
:04:17. > :04:17.diners with money to spend but of course, as always,
:04:18. > :04:44.It tastes like mushrooms, but I know there's no
:04:45. > :04:52.But it doesn't taste quite like meat to me.
:04:53. > :04:56.Yes, it's a little bit leaner, as a meat.
:04:57. > :05:04.But it looks like it - it's got that kind of umami flavour
:05:05. > :05:15.It tasted good as I was eating it but afterwards it left a slightly
:05:16. > :05:18.strange taste in my mouth - very strong, very irony.
:05:19. > :05:20.Still, it's healthier than meat, and has zero cholesterol so maybe
:05:21. > :05:25.What comes across talking to Rocco, though, is how important
:05:26. > :05:26.it is for his customers that the flavour is close to meat
:05:27. > :05:32.But what if you could serve actual animal flesh without a single
:05:33. > :05:39.That is what several companies, including this small tech start-up
:05:40. > :05:42.in the heart of Silicon Valley, are working on.
:05:43. > :05:46.They plan to grow actual fish from stem cells.
:05:47. > :05:50.It might sound like an unnerving prospect but they believe
:05:51. > :05:54.Fish consumption is demanding, fish demand is rising,
:05:55. > :05:59.52% of all fisheries are fully exploited.
:06:00. > :06:03.25% above that are in collapse, they are overextended.
:06:04. > :06:09.So we only have 23% of the world's fisheries left that we can use
:06:10. > :06:15.So if we still want to eat fish at the rate that we're eating it,
:06:16. > :06:21.Finless Foods takes a small sample of cells from real fish
:06:22. > :06:28.One cell can theoretically become one tonne of fish meat but they're
:06:29. > :06:35.We'll be on the market in three years with products that
:06:36. > :06:42.are new versions of fish that people haven't had before and in five
:06:43. > :06:47.or six years we'll have steaks and filets
:06:48. > :06:50.at the supermarket, just like what's inside of the fish that you'd
:06:51. > :06:57.And they're not the only company working on what some have
:06:58. > :07:02.Just this week, Hampton Creek claimed they will hit the stores
:07:03. > :07:11.And around the corner at Memphis Meats, they've already
:07:12. > :07:16.produced fried chicken and meatballs from stem cells.
:07:17. > :07:23.But at $18,000 for a pound of beef, there's a long way to go.
:07:24. > :07:29.Scaling up will mean finding a new medium to help grow
:07:30. > :07:31.Currently, the blood of calf foetuses is used,
:07:32. > :07:34.which is extensive and of course, if you don't want to hurt
:07:35. > :07:41.With the population due to increase to 9.7 billion by 2050,
:07:42. > :07:41.many people feel current approaches to food production
:07:42. > :07:47.Cultured meat promises to reduce environmental impacts and meat looks
:07:48. > :07:53.set to be the latest thing to be given the Silicon Valley overhaul.
:07:54. > :08:01.Much like we expect from our phones, from our cars, that it will be
:08:02. > :08:04.better, cheaper, faster, safer, year by year,
:08:05. > :08:08.we should expect the same thing from our food.
:08:09. > :08:08.But once you start thinking about food, a cow, as a pure piece
:08:09. > :08:09.of technology, and you apply those same technological insights we use
:08:10. > :08:12.elsewhere in our lives, you can start really thinking
:08:13. > :08:14.about what food should be, what food could be.
:08:15. > :08:16.I think I'll stick to the salad for the moment.
:08:17. > :08:17.Which is lucky, because I'm surrounded by the stuff.
:08:18. > :08:20.The thing that really hits you inside one of these containers
:08:21. > :08:22.It's just lovely, all this concentrated fresh lettuce.
:08:23. > :08:23.And you don't even get this, I don't think, in an open-air field.
:08:24. > :08:26.But in here - wow, it's lovely.
:08:27. > :08:29.I'm inside what is called a food computer, where every aspect
:08:30. > :08:30.of the plant's growth cycle - the temperature, nutrient mix,
:08:31. > :08:31.humidity and light is monitored and controlled.
:08:32. > :08:33.This kind of computer-controlled hydroponics is allowing food
:08:34. > :08:37.scientists to not just replicate but improve
:08:38. > :08:48.So every plant that we grow has a finely-tuned growing algorithm
:08:49. > :08:54.to optimise its growth, its yield and its flavour profiles
:08:55. > :09:19.Not only does each variety get its own unique growing
:09:20. > :09:23.conditions but artificial intelligence and computer vision
:09:24. > :09:29.are monitoring the plants, looking out for and treating any
:09:30. > :09:38.Local Roots hopes to place between 20 and 50 of its so-called
:09:39. > :09:42.'terrafarms' right next to supermarkets' local distribution
:09:43. > :09:49.It means the veg won't have to travel so far and it will be
:09:50. > :09:55.I've always needed a dressing on my salad because I thought it
:09:56. > :10:02.tasted quite bland without it, but this is really full of flavour.
:10:03. > :10:06.I could even eat an entire bowl of this without any dressing.
:10:07. > :10:10.But some researchers don't like the idea of individual
:10:11. > :10:13.companies doing research by themselves.
:10:14. > :10:17.Putting life in a box is incredibly complex.
:10:18. > :10:23.It requires biology as much as chemistry, as much as plant
:10:24. > :10:34.And so right now it's being tackled by a lot of start-ups and it's hard
:10:35. > :10:39.for those start-ups to have such a multidisciplinary approach.
:10:40. > :10:45.This is why all of our work is open sourced -
:10:46. > :10:48.the hardware, software - so we can get people thinking
:10:49. > :10:53.on the issues and we can ask them for advice.
:10:54. > :10:58.And we are not stymied by intellectual property.
:10:59. > :11:02.At MIT's media lab, the Open Agricultural Initiative,
:11:03. > :11:06.or OpenAg, wants to create a worldwide collection
:11:07. > :11:14.One of the things that we've invented here we call the personal
:11:15. > :11:19.food computer and it's like a hacker kit for plants.
:11:20. > :11:25.What we've done is distributed all the plans, all the materials,
:11:26. > :11:32.So not only might food computers improve on nature
:11:33. > :11:37.but they could also teach us more about how to get the best out
:11:38. > :11:45.That is it for the short cut off Click. The full version is online.
:11:46. > :11:50.And you can check us out on Facebook, too.