At the end of December 2016, Yokosuka Toshiba Clean Room Farm, which has more than two year operation in Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan, quietly came to an end. In a statement issued in October this year, Toshiba has said: "Close the plant factory will also stop the production and sale of lettuce and other vegetables.
In contrast to Toshiba's resignation of the plant, at the beginning of 2017, the Jinshajiang Capital highlights that it entries into the modern agricultural industry, together with the world's leading plant brand AeroFarms, to market the Chinese market. They lead in introducing the world's leading plant factory technology to expand in China, including Hong Kong, Macao, Taiwan; and San An Optoelectronics announced that together with the Chinese Academy of Sciences Institute of Plant, they will build the second plant at the end of March this year, and will add 50,000 square meters of planting area.
With regard to the development prospects of plant plants, there is a consensus in the industry that as the urban population increases, the supply of vegetables increases and land resources continue to decrease. The environmental burden caused by traditional agricultural production is increasing. Vegetable plants use pesticides and insect pests to pursue production, vegetable pollution concerns increased; and plant factories using LED lighting, gas cultivation and climate control and other latest technologies, so that plants can thrive without sunshine, soil and pesticides. It has the following characteristics: for example, the production plan is strong, suitable for non-arable land production, not or rarely limited by the cultivated land; not affected by the external environment, the yield of per unit area is high, can reach 30-40 times of the open cultivation; its mechanization, high degree of automation, low labor intensity; no pesticides and pollution, product more safety; multi-layer, three-dimensional cultivation, high utilized resources (land, water, etc.). Therefore, the plant factory is generally considered to be an important means the future to solve the shortage of resources, the labor shortage of new generation, rising demand for food and other problem, but also the vital ways to achieve an of self-sufficiency during the future space engineering, the moon and other planetary exploration process, so won the widespread attention in the world
It is reported that only a plant nursery industry provides a huge consumer market for the LED light source. If the plant factory nursery uses LED instead of traditional electric light source, the one-time total market size will reach 200 billion RMB. Market research firm Navigant Research also pointed out that the LED is expected to be the first to occupy 50% market share sales of the plant lighting market in 2017.
