Is it the ultimate localization?

Each country or even each city has particular characteristics for environmental movement.

I always like to see those differences and how it effectively works in that region. In terms of regional differences, the U.S. and Japan have very different model regarding to localization because the size of land is the obvious difference between those two countries. Thus, today I would like to introduce a new Japanese localization method and a new environmental trend by taking advantages of small Japanese region.

Have you heard "plant factory"?

Plant factory is a new productive system which take place inside of the building and use an environmental control technology and automation technology. It means that the computer control plant's temparture, light, amount of CO2, and fertilizer, so plants do not get any extreme weather and season influences. In Japan, this productive system gradually become popular, and people hope to this farming as the new type of localization food. This system is good for especially bug cities like Tokyo because plant factory can farm even at small space.

This news article introduces the new Subway restaurant with plant factory at Marunouchi which is very famous business district, Tokyo

The concept of this shop is ''Tensa Tensho (Local Producton for Local Consumption)."

At the center of this restaurant, there is an installed small plant factory faculityfor growing food stuff from seeds. The Main farming is Lettuce in organic hydroponics. All lettuce for the dishes are grown in the shop, and it takes about three weeks to harvest, the store expects to have about 20 balls per week (approximately 100 servings), and they hope to increase more and more later.

I thought this is a very interesting article when we think about regional differencies. The U.S. does not have such kind of farming method because they have huge land, but Japan have to deal with it's very limited region especially for big cities, so plant factory would be very helpful for them. In order to accelerate localization products as well as reduce transportation cost, this might be one of good mehod to resolve environmental issue and limited land issue for small regional countries.