Hello everyone! I’m Shohei.
This column is about what I felt and experienced at a plant factory in Japan.
When you’ve been in the field for over 10 years, a lot of things happen. I write freely about what I remember.
Please feel free to read it while thinking, “Wow, that’s how Japanese plant factories work.”
A story about the big mistake I made when replacing a fluorescent light bulb.
Recently, it has become mainstream to use LEDs for lighting in plant factories.
According to a recent survey, more than 90% of artificial light type plant factories use LEDs. However, some facilities used to use fluorescent lights, and even the plant factory where I worked used fluorescent lights.
Looking back at those days, I remember that fluorescent lights had a short lifespan, so I had to constantly replace them.
There are tens of thousands of fluorescent lights installed in the factory, and it takes time just to find a burnt-out fluorescent light.
To do this, it is necessary to go back and forth many times from one end of the bed to the other. My eyes start to flicker because I keep looking at bright lights at a close distance.
Moreover, just looking into the first or upper beds requires a lot of energy.
However, if the lights were not working, crops would not grow, so replacing them was an essential task.
During such exchange work, an incident occurred.
Fluorescent lights look like they’re going to break, and in fact they can easily break even with the slightest shock.
So I always thought, “It would be terrible if it broke,” but the person in charge of the replacement work broke a fluorescent light bulb. And right above the crops.
This was a very difficult problem. The fragments of the broken fluorescent light are scattered into pieces, making it extremely difficult to recover them.
It is also difficult to check whether it is attached to crops. If the product is made into a product with debris still attached, it will cause a serious problem.
In the end, as a countermeasure, it was decided to “discard all crops in the area that may have fallen.”
The damage was widespread, as debris was scattered not only at the broken area but also on the surrounding beds.
This is a bitter memory about fluorescent lights, which we see less and less often these days. In hindsight, I’m really glad that the lighting in the plant factory has been switched to LED.
This column was published in a collection of know-how to improve on-site skills.
This column is included in the Plant Factory Know-How Collection below.
This know-how collection is packed with useful tips to help you increase profitability, regardless of the specifications or equipment on-site.
This is a must-read for those operating plant factories or indoor farms. Implement the know-how to increase profitability.
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