Farming Without Fields

Lesson overview

This B2 lesson follows a CNET visit to a highly automated vertical farm in California and asks a practical question: how can food be grown when farming moves indoors? Students connect familiar farming needs with an unusual production system and use the video to understand how plants move from seed trays to harvest and quality control.

Learners build useful farming and technology vocabulary, complete gist and detail viewing, reconstruct the growing and harvesting process, and analyse how robots, conveyor systems and controlled lighting support the work. They review and use the passive voice with purpose language, practise sequencing through three unfamiliar production processes, and explain how meaning transfers beyond the video.

In the final location task, learners compare four fictional profiles and prepare a supported recommendation for where a vertical farm could be built. They weigh available space, distance to consumers, outdoor growing conditions, electricity and existing local food supply, then defend a decision with evidence and acknowledge a drawback. The core print lesson takes approximately 110-125 minutes. Ultra members also get access to Production Tour, a substantial classroom digital board game in which teams travel between factories and production sites, complete increasingly demanding process-language challenges, and use sequencing and the passive voice to explain how products are made. The game is an additional extension with a variable classroom duration.