I was searching for a farm underground, and I could not find it. My mother and I spun around Sangdo Station in a cloud of platforms, exits, fluorescent hallways—over and over—until we were certain we had the directions wrong. A farm down here? Underground? The Seoul Metro consumed us as commuters swarmed by. Trains breathed out. Nothing about the space suggested farming. This was infrastructure for movement, not growth.
We doubled back.
We finally located the entrance to the farm. Tucked behind a glass wall and a clean, modern sign was Metro Farm. Rows of leafy greens grew under purple and white LED lights, stacked neatly in a climate-controlled room beneath the city.
I bought a salad, the greens crisp and gorgeous. They had never known the sun, never felt rain, and they tasted as clean as they looked. Sterile. Their world was precise: light maximised for photosynthesis, drip-fed nutrients timed and rationed, temperature calibrated like a food for a world where the weather itself is no longer reliable.
Chewing the salad, I felt awed and unsettled. Because when land in cities is at a premium and food supply chains are at risk, the new logic of resilience is control. I swallowed the last bite. How quickly this food could become commonplace. How easily we acclimate to convenience and innovation. How seldom we ask at what cost.
When we finally got back to the street level, the city roared in my ears.
The salad tasted good. But for me, what lingered was a recognition that the future of food may arrive quietly, down below, beneath our feet, while we hustle by on our way to something or somewhere else. How many farms would have to move underground before we remember what had been lost up above?
