- [Announcer] Coming up on "America's Heartland," farming without sun or soil?

It's a growing trend in agriculture.

Discover how this school district is growing lettuce for its salad bars inside a converted shipping container located right on campus.

- We take the lettuce from the wall, and unlike conventional farming where you have to bend over, we simply lift the panel off the wall, and we transfer the panel right to our nursery station.

- Health expert Dr. Daphne Miller explores the nutritional differences between vegetables grown in the soil and those grown hydroponically and says there is a role for both in our diets.

Plus "Farm to Fork" host Sharon Profis demonstrates how to make a mushroom brie wrapped in a puff pastry, a tasty appetizer for any get-together.

- I love an appetizer that looks like I tried really hard to make it, but actually it was super simple.

- [Announcer] And meet the fourth-generation farmers who are meeting the increasing demand for washed and bagged salads.

- I think the most exciting thing is that we get to promote fresh produce which is good for you.

You know, it's not processed food.

- [Announcer] It's all coming up next on "America's Heartland."

"America's Heartland" is made possible by... (gentle upbeat music) ♪ You can see it in the eyes of every woman and man ♪ ♪ In America's heartland ♪ Living close to the land ♪ There's a love for the country ♪ ♪ And a pride in the brand ♪ In America's heartland, living close ♪ ♪ Close to the land (gentle music) - Providing students with real fresh-grown, nutrient-dense produce is real pivotal to the learning.

- [Narrator] Michael Jochner admits it's a very unusual way to farm, but says that technology and this shipping container are key to meeting the green salad lettuce needs for students in the Morgan Hill Unified School District.

- Well, I think food sovereignty is important, especially in underserved communities.

And I wanted to demonstrate that a school district and not just large farming or small-scale farming, that a school district itself could be the farm.

- [Narrator] Michael has a background as a chef and is Morgan Hill's director of Student Nutrition.

The shipping container is called a Freight Farm and uses the vertical hydroponic farming technology developed by a Boston company.

It all takes place in a 10-by-40 foot space.

- So let me show you our nursery station.

This is where the lettuce and the seedlings start their life cycle.

The nursery station is kind of the brains of the Freight Farm operation.

All of our nutrients are stored here.

The computer pumps continually check the water, evaluate the EC readings, pH readings, temperature readings, and then at the end of the nursery station, we have a 40 gallon reservoir where all that water is stored.

- [Narrator] Michael grows five varieties of lettuce which germinate at the nursery station in small grow pods.

Nutrient-dense water feeds the roots of the tiny plants.

- Down on this floor, we start our seeds in the grow pods.

They'll spend two weeks in the humidity domes, and at the end of the two-week cycle, they turn into these beautiful little seedlings.

- [Narrator] The Freight Farm at Sobrato High School is one of two in the district, each costing $150,000.

After sprouting, the seedlings move to vertical-growing panels called cultivation walls watered with drip irrigation.

Each farm container will grow 4,000 small heads of lettuce at a time.

LED light walls powered by the high school's solar panels provide the illumination for plant growth.

- So leafy greens require specific light spectrum.

Freight Farm uses red and blue lights in the cultivation walls.

This is our daylight setting.

We have over 100,000 LED lights, and these lights will remain on for 14 hours of simulated sunlight.

As the lettuce transitions from seedling to full head, the full-head lettuce requires a different light spectrum for healthy lettuce leaf growth.

This helps promote healthy root growth and healthy, strong, crispy lettuce that our students really seem to enjoy.

So lettuce on this wall is now six weeks old.

Morgan Hill students get to enjoy living lettuce right from our walls.

We take the lettuce from the wall, and unlike conventional farming where you have to bend over, we simply lift the panel off the wall, and we transfer the panel right to our nursery station.

- [Narrator] Lettuce from the cultivation panels goes directly to lunch rooms and cafeteria salad bars.

Michael says the container farms produce the equivalent of 2 1/2 acres of lettuce in just 320 square feet of grow space.

Raising their own has also helped the district reduce part of their spending on fresh produce.

For second-graders Aida and Cody, it means a tasty part of their daily choices at lunch.

- I always love salads.

I had tomatoes, salad, ranch, cucumbers, and plums.

- For a lot of our students, it's the only meal that they have during the day, and so we take our school nutrition efforts very seriously to ensure that our students are eating healthy.

- My dream is to ultimately try and grow the whole salad bar.

While ambitious, we decided to start with lettuce because the technology allowed us to do so.

- [Narrator] Michael calls his future agricultural plans farm tech.

It would utilize existing greenhouse facilities and the district's open space to develop curriculums and coursework.

Both would emphasize the nutritional and environmental benefits of merging technology and farming.

- The district is sitting on several acres of land that has been set aside to see if we can build farm tech into a destination-worthy, field trip-worthy location for both students and the community.

I'd like to show off the technology and show that its importance in a community is not solely reliant on conventional farming, that there are high-tech alternatives.

- [Narrator] But for now, the technology is providing daily evidence of the possibilities that come from finding new ways to help feed students and the community.

- For me, it's really just been about the kids and watching them grow to learn real produce.

- If we begin with our students and teach our students the importance of healthy eating habits, those habits will stay with them throughout their entire lives, and it will pay dividends to ensure that our kids grow a healthy life.

(students chattering) (gentle banjo music) - Normally when you think about farming, you think about live soil and sunshine and rain, but what about soilless farming?

At Freight Farm, all this takes place in a shipping container next to an elementary school in Morgan Hill.

These kinds of farms, which are actually hydroponic farms, are being dropped down in different places around the country and are becoming more and more popular around the world.

They're great because you can put them on concrete in the middle of a city or on the roof of a building.

They offer other advantages.

For example, you don't have to worry about storms or blistering heat or drought.

So normally, we grow our plants in live soil using sunshine and rain and irrigation systems, and they send their roots deep into the soil to gather their nutrients.

But in a hydroponic system, the plants are growing in an inert pod made of coconut fiber or peat moss, and their nutrients come from a water system that has a solution of minerals placed into it.

So these are very different systems.

In the hydroponic system, there's no sunshine.

What they're getting for UV light is actually LED lights that are very specially controlled.

So as a family doctor, I was wondering what is the difference in nutrition between these two plants?

Of course, if you're really gonna ask this question, you have to compare apples to apples or in this case, lettuce to lettuce.

And these are clearly not the same variety of lettuce.

So to do the study, you really need to put the same seed into a hydroponic system and also into soil and then measure the nutrients in both of them after you harvest them.

It turns out that those studies have been done, and the results are quite interesting.

Yield was actually a little higher in the indoor hydroponic farms because there are no environmental conditions to challenge the plants, and you can get an optimal amount of the key growth minerals such as nitrogen.

This is great because it means more greens for more people.

They also found that the concentration of minerals in the indoor and outdoor plants were about the same because indoor farmers can put these minerals in the solution that feeds the plants.

Also, certain vitamins that are made by the plants in response to photosynthesis and UV light, such as ascorbic acid, chlorophyll, and betacarotene, were also about the same, or sometimes they were even higher in the indoor system because these nutrients are highly light-sensitive and can be destroyed by too much light.

Sugar and fiber content were also about the same.

But when you look at one major class of nutrients we call phytonutrients, the plants grown outdoors consistently had more of these.

Basil, for example, had twice the amount of polyphenols, one of the phytochemicals.

There are thousands of phytochemicals, and we're constantly discovering more.

It makes sense that outdoor plants would make more phytochemicals because they do this in response to environmental challenges such as bugs or viruses or blazing sunshine.

These substances act like inborn defense systems and help plants protect their selves and recover from injury.

These phytochemicals offer us, the eaters, similar protection.

They help our cells recover from injury and radiation.

Some studies strongly suggest that diets rich in phytochemicals, especially from fruits and vegetables and legumes and spices, offer protection against certain cancers, heart disease, diabetes, and neurologic diseases such as Parkinson's.

Kind of a mixed bag when it comes to results.

And although these indoor farming systems really do offer a lot of benefits, I don't think they're gonna replace outdoor farming anytime soon.

I think that there's a role for both of them.

And I'm especially interested in how hydroponic science might help produce medical foods for people with various health issues.

Food scientists are exploring how they can add or subtract various minerals from the nutrient solution and tailor the mineral content of the plant to address specific health needs.

For example, you could grow vegetables with low potassium for people with advanced kidney disease who have trouble processing potassium.

Or you could boost the calcium, silicon, and boron in the mineral solution to grow plants that help with bone health.

This is all in investigation right now, but is a promising thing for the future.

Thanks for checking out Freight Farms to learn about the difference between soil-full and soil-free farming and how they both contribute to our health.

- [Announcer] Still ahead on "America's Heartland," discover how lettuce and other leafy greens are grown and harvested year round for bagged salads, a ready-to-eat food that's exploded in popularity in recent years.

But first, elevate your next gathering with this easy-to-make appetizer.

We'll show you how to turn a wheel of brie into a delicious mushroom pastry.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music) - I love an appetizer that looks like I tried really hard to make it, but actually it was super simple.

Today we're making a mushroom brie bake.

It's wrapped in puff pastry.

It's gooey.

There's mushrooms hidden inside.

Let's get started.

For this recipe, you'll need eight ounces of brown mushrooms.

They can be crimini.

They can be baby bellas.

I'm just going to do a nice thin slice on each one of these mushrooms.

The secret ingredient today is balsamic vinegar.

When balsamic vinegar cooks, it gets sweeter, and that's what makes this dish so, so special.

This looks like a massive pile of mushrooms.

It is, but when you cook mushrooms down, they release a lot of moisture, and they shrink in volume.

And so you'll see this ends up being just the right amount of mushrooms.

I have one shallot here.

We always strive for even cuts so that everything cooks at the same pace.

First we'll add 1 1/2 tablespoons of butter.

Now the mushrooms go in.

Salting at the beginning draws out moisture, and we can still get a nice brown on them.

Once they start to release some of their juices, then I will add the shallots.

Once the mushrooms have shrunk, it's time to add our final few ingredients.

So first we'll add three garlic cloves microplaned right into here.

If you don't have a Microplane, you can just mince them.

I have three sprigs of thyme.

Rough chop.

Thyme goes in.

When the garlic is microplaned or minced like this, it does not need a ton of time to cook.

So I have this on a very low temperature.

Let's season this with some pepper, teeny bit more salt, and finally the balsamic vinegar.

Now let's assemble.

I have a 16-ounce wheel of brie.

This is quite large.

Usually you'll find them in eight-ounce sizes.

Because I want people to get straight into the cheesiness of the brie, I'm going to trim off the top part of the rind.

All that takes is a sharp knife, being very careful, just like that.

Now we'll very carefully pile all of these mushrooms, which have cooled slightly, right on top.

By the time they've cooled, they almost start to stick to each other.

That's exactly what we want.

Gorgeous already, but we have to prep our puff pastry.

I have one sheet of puff pastry here.

It's already floured.

I'm just going to stretch it out a little bit more so that it can fully wrap around this brie wheel.

Take the puff pastry, put it right on top like a blanket.

Okay, now flip it over.

And now wrap it up.

The benefit of doing it this way is that it pretty much guarantees that none of the cheese will come oozing out from the seams.

If it does, that's totally fine.

So just take a few extra moments to pinch any seams.

We'll transfer it to our baking sheet.

And I've prepared an egg wash, which is just one egg scrambled with a tablespoon of water.

At this point, I want to gently score the brie to give it a little bit of dimension.

This goes into the oven 425 degrees for about 20 minutes until it's nice golden brown, a little puffed, and then we can enjoy it.

Look at how beautiful our mushroom brie bake came out.

It puffed up a little bit.

Our little scoring artwork turned out beautifully.

We'll transfer it to our serving plate.

And here I have some crackers.

This is also great with a baguette.

Let's cut into this to see how it turned out.

Okay.

Beautifully melted brie with the mushrooms, and now all that's left to do is eat.

(upbeat music) - [Narrator] Mushrooms might be small, but they pack a big nutritional punch.

They bring a savory flavor to dishes like pizza and pasta but are low in calories and sodium.

That reduces the need for extra salt, keeping your blood pressure down.

Mushrooms contain antioxidants that can lower the risk of cancer.

And mushrooms exposed to UV light have strong levels of vitamin D, helping your body build strong bones.

(relaxing upbeat music) - [Narrator] It may surprise you to learn that the average American eats four or more salads a week, and who leads the nation in growing the greens that end up in your salad bowl?

- California is about 80% of all leafy greens for the entire country.

It's significant.

Leafy greens are... We have the perfect climate, weather, soil, for the ability to grow regionally year round and provide an abundance of leafy greens for our country.

- [Narrator] Jan Berk is the chief operations officer for San Miguel Produce in Ventura County.

This farming operation grows a wide variety of washed, bagged, and ready-to-use greens.

Jan came to agriculture after a career in newspapers, joining her husband, Roy Nishimori, who founded San Miguel Produce in the 1970s.

- [Garrett] In 1995, we started Coming Clean Greens.

It's the original fresh-cut cooking greens.

- [Narrator] Garrett Nishimori is Jan and Roy's nephew and a fourth-generation member of this Japanese American farming family.

He oversees the San Miguel operation as general manager.

Garrett came to farming after training as a chef.

His background was beneficial, as San Miguel began a transition in the mid '90s from commodity crops like celery and broccoli to ready-to-use washed and bagged greens for salads and cooking.

- We developed some kits.

We developed different blends, and that's kind of where I guess my culinary background kind of comes in, and it kind of helps, you know, develop the type of flavors and stuff like that.

- [Narrator] Garrett's work in getting the greens from field to market keeps alive a family tradition dating back more than a century.

- So my great-grandfather immigrated here to California to the Los Angeles area in 1905 from Japan, and they started farming in that area.

- [Narrator] The Nishimori family had farmed in Japan, bringing their skills to America at the turn of the 20th century.

They were not alone.

At that time, more than 50% of Japanese Americans working on the West Coast were involved in agriculture.

World War II changed everything.

Thousands of Japanese American farms were lost to the government, and the Nishimoris, like thousands of others, were sent to internment camps.

Farmers lost millions of dollars when their properties were seized, only a fraction of which was repaid in reparations.

California is still home to a number of Japanese American-owned farms but dramatically fewer than generations back.

- In the 1950s, in 1956, my grandfather moved the family up to Oxnard and just started growing more vegetables up here.

And then in 1976 is when Roy, who's the owner of San Miguel produce, he started growing vegetables in this region.

- [Narrator] Workers in the San Miguel fields will handpick and harvest the farm's specialty crops year round.

The success of their ready-to-use bagged greens prompted an expansion of their production facilities in 2019.

And as with many businesses, opportunities to reach new ethnic and cultural markets have prompted product development.

- [Garrett] We have a brand called Jade Asian Greens, and we do baby Shanghai bok choy.

And we're looking to expand that into other of the Asian vegetables and try to bring that more mainstream.

And you might see more bok choy in stores and menus and meal kits and stuff like that.

- [Narrator] That consumer awareness has also brought with it continued and greater attention to detail in making sure that food products go from field to table with food safety considerations in mind.

- How do we improve food safety to ensure that we're providing the safest possible food for consumers?

We feed our family these same greens, and so, you know, we take that very seriously.

- [Narrator] Ready-to-use greens for salads and cooking continue to play a major role in America's consumer produce picture.

And Jan and Garrett say their agricultural efforts give them a chance to impact healthy food choices.

- I think the most exciting thing is that we get to promote fresh produce which is good for you.

You know, it's not processed food.

You know, almost everything that we promote as an industry has some sort of health benefit.

And I think that's exciting 'cause we're helping improve public health in America by promoting these products.

- [Narrator] Jan Berk says San Miguel Produce continues the Nishimori family's farming legacy, but she adds that everyone associated with the work here can take credit for its success.

- So I think that the success of the company is attributed to the people that we have here.

And we've built a great crew of people that have come along for the ride, and they do a great job, and I'm very proud of them.

And some of them are family members, and some of them aren't true blood family, but they feel like family.

(gentle guitar music) - Hi, I'm Paul Robins, and here's something you may not have known about agriculture.

We all like to think that we're making good choices when it comes to our diets, and the fact is, however, most of us these days are consuming more soft drinks, eating more fast food than ever before.

And this focus on what we eat has prompted a lot of us to look at healthier alternatives in our daily diets.

That means cutting down on portions, paying attention to calories, and definitely loading our plates with more fresh fruits and vegetables.

And while we're on that subject, let us talk lettuce.

If you dialed back the clock to the turn of the 20th century, lettuce would not be on the dinner plate in many homes.

Why?

Well, you can only grow it in warmer weather.

It didn't ship very well before refrigeration, and it didn't make it on any list of fan food favorites.

The good news is that most of us today eat about 30 pounds of lettuce a year.

That is five times the amount of lettuce the average American ate in 1900.

Some food historians claim that the lettuce that we see today started out as a weed in the lands of the Mediterranean basin.

Folks there were serving lettuce dishes 4,000 years ago.

We think of lettuce as a green vegetable, but there are red, yellow, and blue-green varieties, and you pretty much have to eat it fresh since it doesn't freeze, dry, pickle, or lend itself to canning very well.

There are four main types of lettuce, butterhead, like a Boston and bibb.

Crisphead, that's your iceberg variety, Loose-leaf and romaine, very popular in Caesar salads.

So what's the best lettuce to sample if you're adding salads to your diet?

Nutritionists say that they're all low in calories, but the darker the green, the better for you when it comes to nutrients.

- [Announcer] That's it for this edition of "America's Heartland."

For more stories, full episodes, and recipes, visit americasheartland.org.

Or connect with us on Facebook.

♪ You can see it in the eyes of every woman and man ♪ ♪ In America's heartland, living close to the land ♪ ♪ There's a love for the country and a pride in the brand ♪ ♪ In America's Heartland, living close ♪ ♪ Close to the land - [Announcer] "America's Heartland" is made possible by... (gentle upbeat music) (bright music) (upbeat music)