BOUTIQUE FARMING WILL SURPRISE 

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In North America the family farm has been shrinking for 200 years. Now the possibility of a renaissance is on the horizon.

Several recent columns pointed out technological innovations in both hard and soft technology that will affect large farms of the future. Now a development that may increase the number of small farms: boutique farming!

With such familiar and naturally occurring plants as potatoes, eggplant, celery, corn and cabbages, anyone who buys the seed can grow and sell the plants. Not so with patented plants developed through modern biotechnological methods. They are protected under recent patent regulations and may only be grown by private arrangment with the patent holder.

One exciting possibility here is that small farmers may in future operate similar to owners of a McDonald's franchise. They will enter into a contract with the patent holder and agree to handle his "product" the way a car dealer handles Honda, Toyota or BMW. The boutique farmer will purchase the seed, plant, grow and market the product and agree to participate in broad advertising campaigns supported by all growers tied in with this particular product. Just like what happens with a McDonald's franchise holder. In return the farmer will have the exclusive right to be the only grower of that product in a given area. Maybe as few as five or ten per province or state.

The real power lies in a product developed by manipulating genes into a new plant. It might look like a cauliflower. But it might be green or red or orange. And it might also offer relief from a particular allergy.

With the technique of transferring genes from one plant to another already well established, another breakthrough has emerged. The gene that allows a firefly to glow has been successfully implanted into a tobacco plant. Tobacco plants can now glow before being lit. Imagine the implications .. a gene transferred from the insect, animal, human world across the gene barrier into the plant world. This means, at least theoretically, that any gene from any living organism can be moved into another living thing. The University of Guelph Agricultural Department have hatched chicken -- with the heads of quail!

Along with the possibilities of unusual, nutritional and perhaps medically potent foods produced in this manner, new methods of growing such products will develop. Many fruits and vegetables will be grown inside, year round and invertical rows.

Today, food can now be grown in what appears to be large, vertical sewer pipes with open "windows" encircling the pipe at regular intervals. The patented seed is planted within these windows and grows out through the openings to reach super-pure sunlight collected on the roof of the "farm" by a device similar to a satellite dish that tracks the sun.

Inside the "dish", fresnel lenses collect and intensify the sunlight and feed it down to the plant via fibre-optic cables. On the way down, a process called "light shift" takes out the heat-carrying infra-red band of light to partially warm the building. The harmful ultra-violet portion of the light spectrum that burns tomatoes and people is discarded and only pure sunlight reaches the plant, allowing it to carry out the photosynthesis process. Other solar panels collect additional sunlight, turn it into electricity which, stored until the hours of darkness, provides the additional light required to bring a total of 22 hours of "sunshine" each day to each plant.

Irrigation of these plants requires far less water than on flat, open land where much of water evaporates or runs off. The same applies to fertilizer that runs off in heavy storms or filters through to the water table when the plants do not intake the quantity applied to the soil.

The vertical drip system ensures that each plant in the vertical farm receives precisely the moisture it requires and what the plant at the top does not use runs down the pipe to plants at a lower level.

There are other advantages. These farms can operate year round and thus can contract with hotels, restaurants and grocery stores to provide a known quality product every day of the year at standardized price throughout the various seasons.

With this type of operation, a 10-hectare indoor-farm should be able to produce the equivalent of what is now grown, during five or six months of the year, on a 50-hectare old-style farm.

Since this type of "food" can contain medicinal and other qualities new to the plant world, it won't sell for 49 cents. Expect to pay closer to $5 a head. But then you've been spending more than that for your allergy pills each week, haven't you?

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