Imagine being able to buy greens so fresh when you go grocery shopping that they’d just been picked within the produce section of the supermarket right before you put them into your cart. That’s what QFC supermarkets in America (around Seattle, Washington) are now featuring.
The idea, however, originated in Europe with a German company called Infarm. They provide the vertical farm units to all who’d like to provide their customers with the freshest produce possible. Many stores around Europe have adopted the system, and QFC is the first supermarket chain in America to do so. Two of its Seattle-area locations have installed Infarm’s modular indoor “farming units” in their produce section with a variety of greens available.
Osnat Michaeli, co-founder of Infarm, said:
For the bulk of the last century, food has been produced far from where it is consumed, generating a supply chain that is environmentally unsustainable.
The startup envisions building a global network of “truly local produce” that ultimately tastes better because it’s fresher, and also eliminates emissions from transportation. The benefits don’t stop there! The indoor agriculture system is highly efficient with water and uses 95% less than crops grown outdoors.
An Infarm vertical farm unit looks like a large refrigerator. Inside, the growing environment is controlled with special adjustable lighting and more to bring out the best flavor in herbs and greens. All of the units are synced to a cloud where agricultural specialists monitor everything and adjust settings accordingly for optimum growth.
Michaeli said:
The individual farms are connected and remotely controlled by our central farming platform that learns, adjusts, and improves itself continuously, so each plant grows better than the one before. From the cloud, at our Berlin headquarters, we’re able to gather up-to-the-minute information about how our plants are growing (including specific metrics such as temperature, pH, and nutrient concentration) and how they respond to different growth environments on a minute scale.
Twice a week, a member of the company visits farms to harvest, package the product, and plant new seedlings.
Just one two-square-meter unit can grow 8,000 plants yearly (that’s the size of a unit in the supermarket). However, the farms can be scaled up and made larger for distribution centers.
Infarm has plans with the QFC supermarket chain to launch growing hubs in 13 more stores next year.
