South Korea turned an abandoned road tunnel into the world's largest clean vegetable farm, ambitious to revive agriculture

This car tunnel has been closed since 2002, but is now turned into a farm by Korean scientists to grow underground plants.

In the past few decades, the area of ​​agricultural land in Korea has disappeared nearly half. The main reason is global warming: farmers find it more difficult to cope with high temperatures. In addition, the labor force in the country's agricultural sector is also falling sharply as young people largely leave the countryside to the city to look for jobs. In this situation, Korean scientists have come up with a highly feasible solution - building underground smart farms.

NextOn director Choi Jae Bean is explaining how the farm is operated.(Photo: Borneo Bulletin)

NextOn Company opened a vegetable farm in a car tunnel that was deactivated and abandoned for 16 years. It can be said that this is one of the largest farms in the world according to the vertical model. With an area of ​​about 2300 square meters, there are up to 60 different fruits and vegetables grown by unused soil hydroponics: the roots are submerged in nutrient solutions.

South Korea turned an abandoned road tunnel into the world's largest clean vegetable farm, ambitious to revive agriculture.

Scientists use neon pink light of LEDs to replace sunlight, and turn on classical music (such as Claude Debussy's "Moonlight") instead of birdsong to stimulate growth for plants here.

Farm entrance.(Photo: Borneo Bulletin)

Because it is underground, the temperature of the farm is always stable in the range of 10 to 22 degrees Celsius - depending on human adjustment. The Korean Ministry of Agriculture believes that vertical farms like this could help revive agriculture not only in Korea but also worldwide. The ministry also announced plans to expand agricultural complexes like this one. Accordingly, in the next few years they will expand the farm area nearly twice: from 4000 to 7000 hectares.