A model for farm-to-table agriculture in the UK's biggest city
Following microgreens on a mission to feed London
In the middle of Clapham, 33 meters below the bustling pavement, Richard Ballard is pulling on a pair of white wellies, lab coat, and a blue hair net. He hands me an identical kit.
We stand at a long industrial sink basin, operating the taps below with our knees and scrubbing our hands clean of the world outside. We’re about to enter a sterilised, highly controlled environment—no germs, dirt, bugs, or other contaminants allowed.
Which is ironic, because technically we’re going to a farm.
The Farm
From the outside, Growing Underground doesn’t look like much. It's a round, windowless concrete building on the corner of the A3 and a small side street. Inside the electronically padlocked door is a spiral concrete staircase and wrought iron lift leading down to the plants. Even from the street, the complex smells earthy and organic.
The farm is located inside a World War II bomb shelter. Several 2.5-metre-high tunnels branch off a main corridor, covering about 65,000 square feet in total. Each tunnel has a different purpose: one for packing, one for cultivating, one for growing.
With clean hands, Ballard and I walk into the 'growing' tunnel. Rows and rows of tiny plants sprouting from recycled carpet are stacked on metal shelves along the walls— micro pea shoots, sunflower seeds, coriander, Thai basil, chamomile, purple cabbage, garlic chives. It's unexpectedly loud; fans hanging from the ceiling between the shelves are on full blast. Ballard moves to a large panel on the wall, and suddenly the entire tunnel is bathed in a pink glow.
It's beautiful.
Growing Underground is a vertical, hydroponic farm, meaning crops are grown in vertical layers without soil. Instead of earth and sunlight, the plants here are powered by technology and carefully monitored by Growing Underground's partners at Cambridge University and the Alan Turing Institute.
For example, Ballard said: "Normally, plants need sunlight for photosynthesis.
"We just change that by giving the plant everything it needs with LED lights, from the light spectrum."
Red and blue LED lights light the plants for 18 hours a day. Sensors throughout the tunnel also monitor the temperature, airflow, humidity, and about 80 other variables and their effects on plant growth. With the help of this 'digital twin', Ballard and his team can tweak the tunnel's conditions to optimise yield and flavour while minimising energy and water use.
So far, they’ve been very successful. The hydroponic system uses 70% less water than a traditional above-ground farm and produces about six times as much produce. It’s also pesticide free—which is why we had to suit up—and last March, Growing Underground was recognised as a Certified Carbon Neutral + Organisation.
The farm’s central location also means that the greens can go from farm to table in four hours.
And that's the point.
The Origin Story
Ballard’s inspiration for Growing Underground, which he co-founded in 2015 with his childhood friend and erstwhile business partner Steven Dring, came in part from a location scout for a film about London’s hidden places. Ballard is not your conventional farmer.
“I was doing a film degree and moved to London, and I was fascinated with what’s going on underneath my feet,” he said. “The tunnels seemed like a good idea for the film.”
Ballard was already interested in the concept of vertical growing. The World Bank estimates only 10.8% of the world’s land is arable, a proportion continually threatened by climate change, and a recent study from the University of Sydney found that transporting food is responsible for about 6% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Ballard believes growers need to embrace farming in unusual and unused spaces, closer to consumers. Especially in cities.
At the same time, he was reading Jeremy Rifkin, an American economic and social theorist. Rifkin proposes a ‘third industrial revolution’ is coming, which will combine internet technology and renewable energy to create cheap, sustainable energy that can be shared on a grid to power all sorts of activities—including agriculture. This idea gripped Ballard.
“And that led me into food,” Ballard said. “Figures coming out from the UN said there will be an extra two billion people on the planet in the next 30 years. So how are we going to feed and provide power for these people?”
The controlled, contained environment of the bomb shelter was the perfect location to test drive their idea. In 2012, Dring and Ballard approached Transport for London (TfL) who ‘owned’ the Clapham tunnels. Ballard described TfL’s reaction to their proposal as somewhere between curiosity and scepticism.
But the pilot project was successful, and in 2015, they launched Zero Carbon Farms, the parent company of Growing Underground. And with it their mission to provide sustainable, hyperlocal produce to the UK’s largest city.
“With all the issues of the world around conventional agriculture, the effects from pesticides and herbicides, the supply chain food coming in and travelling from all over the world into the UK, we just saw that if we can grow this locally, this will solve all our problems,” Ballard said.
From Farm to Table
Which brings us to the microgreens’ journey from farm to fork.
Growing Underground supplies both retailers and restaurants in London. The produce destined for Le Gavroche, Kricket, and other eateries is sent to New Covent Garden Market, the largest wholesale market for produce and flowers in the UK. It’s conveniently located about a mile away from the farm.
Between the hours of midnight and 6AM, restauranteurs can place their orders, and the greens are transported to their kitchens. Ballard says the coriander and pea shoots are particularly popular among chefs.
A map of some of the locations Growing Undergound supplies.
Blue pins: grocery stories and restaurants.
Orange pin: New Covent Garden Market.
Green pin: Growing Underground.
For retailers like M&S, Whole Foods and various greengrocers, Growing Underground packages their microgreens into salad blends, like Superfood, Italian and Asian.
Ballard says the packages first travel to distribution centres. “They’re on the outskirts of London, and then it’s coming back in.
“So you know it’s still a drive out, but to really get the scale, you’ve got to work with the current system. And the current system actually is an efficient way because you’ve got massive articulated lorries carrying loads of produce.”
One of the Londoners who buys Growing Underground’s goods from M&S and his local greengrocer, Marvellous Greens & Beans, is Pedro Branco, director of food and beverage for the London Marriott Hotel County Hall.
“I’m a chef by trade, and I came across Growing Underground when I was researching something for work about local, sustainable food,” Branco told me.
Branco uses the greens for his own culinary experiments; a plan to use the greens in a new restaurant at the hotel was thwarted by the COVID-19 pandemic, which put the expansion on hold.
But he hopes the project will pick up again because there is growing demand for sustainably grown produce. “I think that right now, we face a massive supply crisis because of Brexit, because of the war, and I think people in general are much more aware of the importance of sourcing locally.
“Not only because it’s good quality, but because of the impact in the world,” Branco said.
Growing Underground’s approach also allows environmentally conscious chefs like Branco to use ingredients year-round. Branco explained, “I don’t buy something if it’s not in season.” But in Growing Underground’s controlled environment, there are no seasons.
Looking to the Future
The COVID-19 pandemic, Brexit, and the war in Ukraine have all served as both proof-of-concept and challenge to Growing Underground’s approach. The crises are precisely the sort that the company can weather better than producers who rely on supply chains and international transport to deliver their goods. During the lockdowns, Growing Underground was still able to supply London’s grocery stores.
But the farm is not immune from the global disruptions to normal operations.
Ballard’s team had been planning an expansion to an above-ground site in North London before the pandemic and war in Ukraine: “But once the energy price increase happened, we realised we can’t get the scale that we want and get the automation equipment,” he said.
And scale is key to making this approach to urban farm-to-table agriculture viable. Restricted by space and high energy prices, Growing Underground is in its seventh year and still not profitable.
But Ballard is buoyed by a rising trend in urban farming and hopes the third industrial revolution won’t be too long in coming. “Giving a time is really difficult, but I’d like to be there in five years, but it’s probably more likely to be ten,” he hedged.
Ballard is spot on about one thing; the coriander is excellent. I can still taste the aromatic flavour when I leave the farm 15 minutes later—and take the overground to Clapham Junction to pick up a Superfood Salad Blend from Whole Foods, 1.7 miles away.
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