How M&S fruit picked by a Dyson could save us all money (Ben Spencer, March 21 2026, Times uk)
It is not just the robotic pickers that make the farm so advanced. The glasshouse is also divided into different climatic zones to “trick” the plants into fruiting throughout the year; strawberries are grown on 13ft tall rotating ferris wheels to increase the productivity of the space; UV lights on rails are used at night to tackle mould; and ladybirds are released to eat aphids. “We only use pesticides as a last resort,” said Cross.
The real key, though, is that the entire project is energy self-sufficient. A £16 million anaerobic digester next to the greenhouses takes maize, barley and rye grown in adjacent fields and ferments it in huge vats. The gas produced by the digester is then burnt to heat the greenhouses and generate electricity to meet all the farm’s power needs, with any excess sold back to the grid.
Carbon dioxide is also fed from the digester into the greenhouses via long, leaky tubes woven through the plants, to boost yields and sweetness. And when the feedstock has been digested, the resulting waste is put back onto the fields as a fertiliser.All this means that when gas prices increase — and they have nearly tripled in the three weeks since the Iran conflict began — the Dyson strawberry operation is cushioned from the increase in costs that are hitting other producers.