In 2024, Shanghai, strawberries grown on Qin Chuhan’s company’s planting modules. Photo provided by the interviewee
On Chongming Island, which faces Shanghai across the river, six containers stand quietly. The world in their belly is a competition, competing for growing vegetables. One of the containers has the words "Let mankind no longer rely on the sky for food" printed on the outer shell. The interior is full of planting racks with a metallic sheen - 1,380 lettuce seedlings rotate every 15 minutes, driven by four sets of gears and chains. There are "eyes" and "hands" in the cloud "growing" outside the box. There is a demand for lettuce, even if the carbon dioxide concentration needs to increase by 1 percentage point, calcium ions need to increase by 0.03 grams, and the temperature needs to drop by 0.1 degrees Celsius... the intelligent system can detect it. , to achieve adjustment. This place doesn't look like a vegetable field. There is no one in the about 40 cubic meters of confined space, and only LED lights, air conditioners, pipelines, cameras, sensors and other equipment continue to work. After 30 days, it is expected to harvest nearly 200 kilograms of lettuce, which is about 10 times the harvest of the same area of farmland. Since the recruitment of the 2024 Guangming Duoduo Vertical Agriculture Challenge and the 4th Duoduo Agricultural Research Technology Competition began at the end of March, 16 participating teams and 142 post-90s and post-00s people from different subject backgrounds have competed on the same stage. After the preliminary online road show and professional defense, 4 teams from universities and 2 teams from industry entered the finals. They have to complete the "competition" of independent container transformation and lettuce planting within half a year. On October 21, the finals entered the final stage - "AI growing" lettuce in containers. The reason why we chose lettuce is that it is a more mature and easier-to-operate variety in the field of unmanned container cultivation. During this stage, no participating team members are allowed to enter or exit the container. After the "unpacking" in early December, the jury will make a decision at the end of this year based on the container renovation design and construction, leafy vegetable planting results, system stability and funding control. Out the game results. The container that "allows humans to no longer rely on the sky for food" belongs to the participating team led by Qin Chuhan. Before becoming a "vegetable farmer", he was a "code farmer" who studied abroad. For that container, eight people spent two months and 220,000 yuan. The intelligent system on the cloud condenses seven or eight years of exploration and research by this group of young people. The young "Qin Chu Han people" grow vegetables in containers and are also planting the future of vertical agriculture.
