High-tech Dutch trend of 'vertical farming' grows food faster without sunlight...

In their beds, the salad greens enveloped by magenta hues from the lights above hardly seem appetizing. Surprisingly, the unblemished leaves taste pretty good when they come out from under the lamps.

Those who visit Brightbox, a high-tech horticulture lab in the Netherlands' agricultural hub of Venlo are invited to taste what is grown under light-emitting diodes, or LED lights.

The salad greens are raised in such immaculate conditions, there is no need to wash the leaves before sampling, visitors are told.

"We try to stay away from soil," said Gus van der Feltz, global director of City Farming at Philips Horticulture LED Solutions.

He touts climate cells as the future of food production because the method relies on a fraction of the water needed to raise crops in fields or greenhouses. And plants grow faster under red and blue lights than the full spectrum of sunlight. Full story...

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