For all of you who think urban agriculture and vertical farming are hobbies for wealthy people with time on their hands, meet Caleb Harper. A 2015 National Geographic Emerging Explorer and a research scientist at MIT’s Media Lab, Harper is helping turn urban agriculture into a reality by reinventing how we grow food indoors to feed our growing population.

Harper, who comes from a farming family, wants to grow food closer to where people live—increasingly, in cities—and avoid environmental risks like drought, storms, and insects, which threaten the quality and quantity of what we eat. “The food will not need pesticides or chemicals, and it’ll be predictable 365 days a year,” he says.

He was inspired to look more deeply into