Growing your own vegetables, even in the most forgiving of climates, is a challenge that many of us are all too familiar with. But for sfilebards residents, poll the sun cycles that see months of total darkness in winter and midnight sun in summer make conventional farming here near impossible. What's happening now we're all kind of disconnected and that's what I've been trying to do is reconnect everybody back to where the food comes from because we all take it for granted. Good morning. Have some greens for you. Some radish for you. And some clover. We started the plant your other one so once it's ready then we will start to follow that. But for now we have this. Yeah and the other ones are there. Long travel distances for food or for waste disposal of almost 1000 kilometres between the sfilebards city of Longibian and the Norwegian mainland mean that residents here are some of the world's highest energy consumers. Recognising a lack of available fresh local food, international chef turned Longibian local Benjamin Vidmar saw an opportunity to change the way that food was viewed. So we started this in 2016 and we ordered it from Alaska this dome and then we put it back together and we had to put a lot of concrete around the perimeter so it's secure to concrete. Here we focus more to the leafy greens, herbs, we do some micro greens. Now we have some beets there, there's kale, radish, dicon radish. So yeah we've just been growing. But we can grow and these kind of like the cold weather so we don't have to warm it too much, we don't use any heat inside of here, it's only from the sun so it can get up to 30 degrees when the sun is out and it can go down to 5-10 degrees when the sun's not out. Now it's about 8 degrees in here. And this dome is only used in the summertime when it's... Yeah only when we have light. So from end of May till about end of September we can grow out here and then the rest of the time we grow indoors. Fantastic. And leafy greens you've found to be the most kind of... I suppose for your system the most kind of economically viable to keep this operation running. Yeah well the thing is it would be so nice to grow tomatoes and cucumbers and potatoes but we wouldn't make much money from that so and all of this stuff comes by flight. So it's very expensive to buy and it doesn't transport very well so that's why we've been kind of focused on that. Using two main facilities, Benjamin and his team are able to grow in both the summer and darker winter months. By working around seasonality Benjamin uses both indoor and outdoor facilities in order to maximise his productivity while minimising any waste and energy consumption. So I know I'm just going through and open everything up. This is radish, the day kind radish. This is also more radish. You managing all of this? And the mirror. Yeah the mirror. Yeah the mirror. We're the main two behind it. I just need to water these. But we're the main ones behind it so I kind of take over the greens and keep them growing and he does the delivery and he also takes care of the basil. And things like composting you mentioned that you're using compost from yours and other businesses. Have you seen it kind of rise at all in that since you've been... Actually I don't want it to rise so much. No because we don't have the space or the facilities to deal with it. So now we only compost what we deliver. Yeah sure. So when this goes out we take it back. But if you are upscaling that way? Then we would take more. Yeah for sure. We would take more because we would need to. But for now it's a very small scale. But the thing is we make the possibility for our guests to compost. Who else is doing that? Yeah. Everybody else throws it down the drain or they throw it in a garbage. So it's nobody else doing that. Yeah. So tomorrow I will take this one, maybe this one, this one and this one and I will put under the light. And then it takes about another three days and then we can deliver it. Okay. What does the light do for them? It's going to turn them green because I see there a big yellow. Long Eben's busy restaurant industry has absolutely welcomed a new option in Ben's locally produced grains. High end restaurants like Funkan Lodge now use Ben's home grown ingredients to give their dishes a unique Arctic edge. My name is Jelana. We are working at the Svalbard's Funkan Lodge for six months now. Oh it's... What are you getting from the ships? I mean this is amazing. Yeah. I mean we are almost at an odd point. Yeah. So this is exclusive I would say for Svalbard. Yeah. And also it's sustainable and it's really cool. Yeah. I mean you don't even have this like in Gothenburg where I'm from. Yeah. I mean if you don't have fresh things you can never make good food. Yeah. According to me it tastes better. Yeah. And of course I mean we grow it here. So it's always fresh if we order from the mainland and it goes by plane. It's also bad for the environment. And also it usually just dies on the way here. So it's just bad and we need to throw it away anyways. So it would be best for everyone and for Svalbard's restaurant in general if we could grow as much as possible here. So hopefully we'll get there. So I mean we're on a good way. Outside of growing vegetables Ben also operates tours of the local area in his custom built restaurant on wheels. It gives guests a unique insight into his operation as well as a chance to experience local foods like Arctic Rangia paired with his very own greens. Yeah so it's a restaurant bus. And we have we do tours, do the Arctic top of tour, we do northern lights tours. So you sit in there you can drink wine, we serve some snacks. And then the kitchen is on the side of it. So the kitchen is like a food truck and then the bus is like the restaurant. And you serve your breakfast and stuff. Yeah that's the plan. Now we want to make like a setup where we grow our food, we serve it with our tours. And yeah I can show you around. If you want to have a quick look. So once we get a piece of land, we will park the bus, we will park the kitchen, we will move the dome, set it up there. We're going to buy a new greenhouse, that's like a hybrid system, that it's in the summer. It has like a reflective flap so we open and we can use the sunlight. And then in the winter we close it and we use lights. So I don't want to use electricity all year. I want it to be smart. So when we have sun, we're going to use sun. And when we don't have sun, then we will use electricity. Although it has taken Ben, a considerable amount of time and energy to gain support for his project. Local perceptions about growing are slowly changing. So what do you think about it? You think it's worth trying to grow vegetables here versus shipping them into the mainland? Yeah definitely. It's a step in the right direction to become more sustainable. So it's cool, it's a cool thought. I think people also worry about environmental footprint that we make living here. And we've been nice to reduce that. Since we've been doing this, there's been so many unintended consequences. Now everybody's trying to grow food and everybody's inspired to do something different. And they're all growing based on their all sharing pictures of it. And the University of Trumsaw people came here and like they're like all PhDs and professors and this and that. And they came here and they said, wow, he can do this week and do so. Now they want to set up some growing stuff in Trumsaw. And they're going to name it after me as well. So this little project is inspiring so many other people and making people think that it's possible. You don't have to wait for it. What are we waiting for? That's the thing. What are we waiting for? We need to do it now. That's what we're doing. We're trying to work and to do it now.