Does this high-tech lettuce hold the answer to the global food crisis?

Bathed in a ghostly purple-red light, these floating lettuces are barely distinguishable from those grown outdoors, but require one-tenth as much land. The high-tech greenhouse where they live, in Maasbree in the Netherlands, is one possible remedy for a global food industry in crisis, facing a shortage of land due to climate change and conflict.

In his new book, Food for Thought, photographer Kadir van Lohuizen captures the food industry’s struggle with these challenges, taking a whistlestop world tour of how the sausage, quite literally, gets made.

While high-tech solutions like the lettuce farm, pictured above, and Plenty’s vertical farm in Compton, California, shown below, promise to deliver us from food apocalypse, van Lohuizen doesn’t shy away from the low-tech dystopia of much of the world’s food production as it is.

He hopes that giving an insight into the size of the industry might make it easier to answer questions such as: how will it change in a rapidly warming climate, and which solutions are feasible? His Food for Thought exhibition, featuring video, photography and sound, is at the National Maritime Museum in Amsterdam until 5 January 2025.