While everybody in Bremen, up north Germany, is longing for the summer, Paul Zabel is already looking forward to the Antarctic. In the case of a crisp 40 degree minus, the aerospace scientist will be working as a Arctic vegetable farmer in the greenhouse, link: EDEN-ISS *. Within his Project Zabel docked at the Antarctic station Neumayer III, from the Alfred Wegener Institute. Their crew, at times up to fifty men, is already looking forward to the refreshing change from Zabel’s “macrobiotic effort”. The technically oriented engineer has already turned his skills “green” with the help of scientists in Wageningen last year. They explained the care and advised him on the selection. About 15 plant varieties travel with. Horticulture under Antarctic conditions, called aeroponics, does not allow the plants either sunlight or earth. The elaborate greenhouse of the future provides the seedlings with a daily cocktail of artificial light and selected nutrient solutions. The 28 year old is enthusiastic. Special filters clean the air of fungi and germs. The air treatment is carried out by means of UV radiation. Zabel can do without this biological process on insecticides and pesticides. Zabel’s workplace is distributed over two containers with a completely closed air circuit. All the water which the plants give to the air is collected and fed again. Zabel is already living in it. He weighs the cucumbers, counts the lettuce leaves and documents the scientific results. “It’s going to happen in four months,” he says. “Then I’m thousands of miles away without a quick return, and without the sun in the Pola pigeons,” he says, “you feel a bit like traveling on a different planet,” Zabel smiles, “and if that still works with the strawberries, then we are unbeatable.”

It is also possible that the supermarkets of the future breed vegetables in their shelves, meat from the Petri Dish, Link: Mark Post, and Link: Meat the Future, because this “future music” is not so far away. At least it would be a considerable relief for the Animals and our environment …