Can Vertical Farming Help Secure Türkiye's Food Supplies?

The global climate crisis is not only impacting the places we live, it's also threatening the very food we eat. Volatile temperature swings together with unpredictable droughts and floods have left farms devastated from the US, Asia to Africa. The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and Russia's attack on Ukraine also exposed how vulnerable global supply chains are. In Turkiye, one solution to combatting this food insecurity is vertical farming. Turkiye is home to the world's second-deepest indoor vertical farm centre at 30 metres deep. Established in Istanbul, between the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry and private companies, the indoor farm hopes to provide clean, reliable food supplies to people living right in the city. Using 95% less water than traditional farming, these urban food-growing centres hope to alleviate already strained water supplies caused by long-running droughts. Vertical farming, which practices dense indoor agriculture, by stacking crops vertically, has been hailed as a way to reduce land usage and water that traditional farms have relied on for thousands of years. Guests: Levent Kurnaz Climate Scientist Stella Tsai YesHealth Group