I’ve always been a fan of old-school Epcot at Walt Disney World. I’m enough of a dork about it that I have soundtracks of the original attractions that I listen to regularly. One of the precious few leftovers from the old EPCOT Center days is “Living With the Land,” a boat ride at The Land pavilion.
It’s more than just a pleasant boat ride; on “Living With the Land,” guests see innovative agricultural and maricultural techniques that can allow people to grow food in places where it seems difficult or impossible. Vertical gardening, hydroponics — it ain’t just for the devil’s lettuce — and the other farming techniques on display are fascinating and inspiring. The attraction demonstrates the kind of optimistic futurism that characterized Walt Disney’s dreams.
Farmers all over the world are embracing innovation to achieve the unthinkable. Take, for example, a farm in the UK that is looking to provide Britain’s grocery stores with domestic strawberries for Christmas.
In Great Britain, strawberries have a notoriously short growing season. To have them in the fall and winter, stores have to import them from countries that don’t exactly hold to Western values, or farms have to resort to techniques that aren’t good for the environment or the bottom line.
Those times are changing thanks to one ingenious farm. The Summer Berry Company in West Sussex is betting on a £6 million ($7.85 million) technological investment to provide the nation’s supermarkets with fresh British berries all year long.
“Until now, the company, which is the UK’s largest grower of greenhouse strawberries, stopped growing them in mid-November and did not start again until March,” reports the Sunday Times. “But this year, for the first time, about 175,000 strawberry plants will produce 600,000 punnets [baskets] of strawberries for Sainsbury’s, Marks & Spencer, and Tesco during the winter. The farm is believed to be the first one to achieve the ‘all-year strawberry’ on a commercial scale.”
The technology to grow these berries is genius. The Summer Berry Company has invested in LED units in its greenhouses. Various colors of light mimic what the strawberry plants need at various stages of development, and the lighting keeps the temperature at the level the plants need to grow.
British consumers have placed a premium on British-grown food in recent years, and the Summer Berry Company’s CEO claims that this new system will deliver the quality and taste that Britons expect.
“David Sanclement, chief executive of the Summer Berry Company, said: ‘The British consumer will be eating strawberries [in winter] … The CO2 it generates from bringing a kilo of berries on a plane from Egypt is massive. On top of that, we provide British customers with very tasty, excellent-quality strawberries but, with imported strawberries, the taste isn’t there,’” the Times reports.
What’s even better is that the Summer Berry Company says that it can minimize its environmental impact. Sanclement even claims that his farm will produce 20% less CO2 even with the new greenhouses.
You would think that this news would make the green lobby excited. Not so fast. Mike Berners-Lee, the brother of internet pioneer Tim Berners-Lee and an “expert in the carbon impact of food” (which means he’s loads of fun at parties), womp-womped all over the idea of innovation that brings strawberries to British tables all year.
“Out-of-season fresh strawberries are not great whether airfreighted or hot-housed locally,” Berners-Lee told the Times. “I do know a supplier that is importing asparagus by boat from Peru. Maybe that would work for strawberries. The better alternatives are frozen or even tinned strawberries during winter.”
Former UK Green Party leader Natalie Bennett declared from her cosseted ivory-tower lifestyle that such innovation is useless because British consumers don’t “need” strawberries in the winter.
“In her never-ending quest to make life worse for the British people, Bennett has found a new scourge on which to direct her ire: strawberries,” mocked Steerpike in his gossip column at The Spectator. “Yes, that’s right, apparently growing the popular red fruit in colder months is killing the planet and must be banned immediately. Talk about priorities eh?”
Do we _need_ strawberries in winter? No
— Natalie Bennett (@natalieben) October 6, 2024
Maybe @marksandspencer @sainsburys & @Tesco you could sell them in season only? And have frozen the rest of the year?https://t.co/57yIUsJ5Ni
I called Bennett out for her elitism, and she blocked me. Bless her heart — some people can’t handle the challenge of the truth.
Oh look, another far-left elitist descends from her perch on high to declare what Britons don't need.
— Chris Queen (@ChrisQueen) October 7, 2024
Go pound sand, @natalieben. https://t.co/lHfTuZtRFJ
Leftists hate innovations like these. Innovation gives consumers choices and adds to their enjoyment. It also allows the innovators to make money and hire people. Big-government leftists can’t have this because people who are thriving, enjoying life, and working hard won’t call on the government to do everything for them.
Innovation is a threat to left-wing power, which is why leftists want to stop it at every turn.
