Have you ever seen a farm in the subway station? They are called metro farms. There are five metro farms in Seoul subway stations including one at Dapsimni Station on Line 1, Sangdo Station on Line 7, Cheonwang Station on Line 1, Chungjeong-ro Station on Line 2, Euljiro 3-ga Station on Line 3, and one in Geumnam-ro 4-ga Station on the Gwangju Subway Line 1. It may seem strange to hear the name ‘metro farm’ because plants cannot be grown underground without sunlight and nutrient rich soil, things uncommon in subway stations. However, if we use a smart farming system, a metro farm becomes possible.

   A smart farm is an intellectualized farming system that uses technologies such as the Internet of Things (IoT), robotics, drones, or AI while harvesting, processing, and delivering forest, marine, agriculture, and livestock products. No matter where it is located, a smart farm can create nature-friendly environments using these types of technologies. Using a smart farm system, people can cultivate agricultural products, in automated closed loops, without any additional efforts required to provide environmental factors including light, temperature control, humidity, carbon dioxide concentration, and the nutrients that are necessary for plants to grow.

   The Metro Farm is a kind of smart farm. Plants in Metro Farms undergo photosynthesis using artificial lightings from light-emitting diode lamps instead of natural sunlight. Holding growth conditions constant and following the best cultivation conditions which farmers enter into a computer, the system can result in a huge increase in the number of crops, and plants that can be grown without exposure to any pollutants.

   This smart farm technology is being used in many different places. In addition to subway stations, indoor farms use smart farm technology. Smart farms are also being installed in some of Korea’s older traditional markets. Gyeongsangbuk-do aims to revitalize their local economy by installing smart farms in empty properties of traditional markets in order to provide vegan restaurants and salad bars with different vegetables grown there. Smart farms are also being installed in abandoned schools and factories, utilizing spaces that would otherwise no longer have a purpose. Putting these properties to use helps the local economies develop and is environmentally friendly by creating a locally produced food supply.

   Smart farm technology has also made agriculture is possible in polar regions where growing food locally was never before imagined. At the King Sejong Station in Antartica residents began cultivating leafy vegetables such as lettuce in 2010 using a smart farm system and recently introduced new fruit and vegetables such as pumpkins, watermelons, and cucumbers. Due to the obvious harsh weather conditions, agricultural activities in Antarctica were nearly impossible. However, after introducing the smart farm system at the research station, a considerable amount of produce can now be grown locally, allowing the 17 residents to eat fresh vegetables at least once a week. The is particularly important since COVID-19 has severely restricted travel between neighboring bases in Chile. As a result, it has become more difficult to access a supply of fresh food for residents at the outpost. The produce supply security has helped boost the morale of staff.

   Smart farms prove their value in various ways. These days, climate change has accelerated its progress sharply, so smart farms are becoming more popular. For example, the Korean distribution company E-mart is getting vegetable supplies such as romaine, Batavia, butterhead lettuce, and basil from a smart farm start-up. Due to repeated climate change effects like typhoons, cold waves, or heat waves, E-mart decided to look for other strategies to secure crop supply and it is already producing results. This summer, while the heatwave made green grocery prices soar, E-mart was able to maintain a relatively stable price of vegetables. The competitiveness of their prices led to an increase in sales of about 4 times the rate of recorded intake in January. Also, in an aging society that always suffers from a shortage of manpower, rural areas are helped by smart farms. The cutting-edge technologies of smart farms can reduce labor intensity and facilitate the management of farms. Therefore, whether a farmer is old, or whether there are fewer farmers than ever, agriculture can be sustained with the help of smart technologies for farming. However, there are some limits to the system too. It is expensive. According to JARES (Jeollanamdo Agricultural Research & Extension Services), the average cost of installing smart farms ranges from fifteen to twenty-five million won. This is quite burdensome for many farmers. Also, vegetables from a metro farm are usually more expensive than any other normal product. If a vegetable produced on a traditional farm gets a price of about one thousand five hundred won per hundred grams, a vegetable produced in a metro farm earns about three thousand won for the same quantity. The price discrepancy is because the initial investment price is high, and the industrial scale of smart farms is not that big. Many experts say that smart farms are a breakthrough in the contemporary food crisis and can be a representative innovation of the fourth industrial revolution. Yet they still have a long way to go before they take over the industry. They have too many supply and scale problems to be a major player in the production of agriculture. Nevertheless, smart farms certainly have the potential to evolve into a future culinary culture. If we can draw out the advantages of this type of farming effectively, we will also be able to create a food revolution tantamount to the changes in food production that evolved from the Neolithic age.