Infarm Wants to Put a Farm in Every Grocery Store

[monkeymagick]

Getting closer to resembling what a post-apocalyptic future would look like post humanity, TechCrunch has a story about vertical farming start-up, Infarm. The company of 40-plus workers was the first to have a vertical farming system in a supermarket, one located in Berlin. Nested inside a series of trays, the farming system allocates plants based on size and growth, distributing the plants from the center to the outer area. A concept that has already taken off in Japan, the idea of farming as a service on-demand is still relatively new for most. Each of Infarm's units can be configured to grow different crops to the vendors own-choosing from a simple herb garden to one with bell peppers or even fruit. I'm awaiting a meat tree that provides its own beef, but the food dehydrator will do for now.

Check out the video.

"When we presented our idea three or four years ago, people looked at us as though we [had] lost our mind," says Infarm co-founder Erez Galonska. "We are the first company in the world that has put vertical farming in a supermarket. We did it last year with Metro Group, which is one of the biggest wholesalers in Europe, and now we are facing very big demand from other supermarkets that want to do the same."

The resulting combination of IoT, Big Data and cloud analytics is akin to "Farming-as-a-Service," whilst, space permitting, Infarm's modular approach affords the ability to keep adding more farming capacity in a not entirely dissimilar way to how cloud computing can be ramped up at the push of a button.

 

[Nukester]

Why is this news. Pot growers revolutionized hydroponics ages ago.

 

[sirmonkey1985]

Your wish has already come true, theres a plant that is used to replace meat, tastes and bleeds just like real meat when it's cooked to resemble medium rare cooked meat. Forget what it's called though.

 

[Armenius]

Anything that takes out the transportation logistics for freshly grown food is good news to me. Would be a good option if you have no convenient access to a local farmer's market.

 

[shad0w4life]

Was that them plating a cat turd at the end, Anchorman style?

 

[katanaD]

vertical farming will very much be a part of the future. it allows complete control over the growing of crops, massive reductions in waste and water usage. plus since it is in an enclosed space, you dont need all those pesticides.

once they get some things worked out, they could design a very tall building that slowly moved the crop through it from seed to harvest. and if setup right, that would lead to a daily harvest of fresh pesticide free crops, all through the year

 

[sfsuphysics]

So what happens for the other 90% of the people who want vegetables after all those are gone? Or the 100% of the people who want vegetables the next week but can't have any because there's that inconvenient truth that it takes time for stuff to grow, and not just a tiny amount of time. 6 to 8 weeks to get a crop is a long time. Bottom line is there is a reason why farms are so absolutely huge in size, because it takes a lot of space to grow things, sure you can do vertical growing and save some multiple number of acres but how do you deal with the added electricity used because you're not using sunlight? People growing their own food is great, as long as they realize that they're just supplementing a small part of their diet in most cases (people in urban settings do not have space to grow large quantities like in the suburbs).

Also unsure if they're trying to showcase the technique, or a model for markets, because markets are there to make money, how much are they going to charge for these types of produce over the cost of regular produce. I've seen hydroponic lettuce in stores before (after harvest obviously, and not grown locally) and it's not cheap compared a regular head of lettuce. Plus these types of setups are only useful for crops that don't grow terribly high, so most fruit is out.

And the chef putting a piece of basil in liquid nitrogen and then flicking it so it breaks over the plate of food(??) was just icing on the cake, talking about sustainability and then hit up an industry which is the grand daddy of wasting food. Plus you're looking at a single meal costing the same as probably feed your family for a week, and you'll still be hungry after eating it.

 

[-PK-]

My dream is to have freshly grated parmesan cheese by an attractive celebrity in every store. this gives me hope.

 

[Wiffle]

Lol, where or how its grown is more or less a marketing gimmick. Food is cheap to grow, and you can grow a lot in a small space cheaply if you know what you are doing. Transporting it to market, this is where the real money lies, and where much of the added cost comes from. Eliminating transportation costs would allow supermarkets to retain a larger portion of the profit. And since its "new" there is added value from a "wow" factor.

Only true added benefit I see to this is less spoilage and possibly better tasting foods. From the moment it is harvested, produce begins to degrade, so harvesting generally begins just as things begin to ripen or at the early possible harvesting moment. Being able to wait until the day of purchase to harvest means extending the shelf life from days to weeks, and it ensures the food is fully ripened before harvest.

 

[TwistedAegis]

So what happens for the other 90% of the people who want vegetables after all those are gone? Or the 100% of the people who want vegetables the next week but can't have any because there's that inconvenient truth that it takes time for stuff to grow, and not just a tiny amount of time.

I would imagine at first this would be a slightly premium product, which could hopefully drive scale. This wouldn't be enough to replace all of a store's produce for sure, but perhaps it could for certain items that can spoil faster.

 

[Exavior]

personally I would like somebody who isn't border line retarded picking produce when it is actually ripe or close to ripe depending on the food. But maybe that is just me.

 

[TwistedAegis]

personally I would like somebody who isn't border line retarded picking produce when it is actually ripe or close to ripe depending on the food. But maybe that is just me.

Considering an orange picker in Florida, as an example, gets paid $0.85 per 90 pound box of oranges they fill, I don't think they could GAF. Average productivity is about 8 boxes per hour, or 5,760 pounds per 8-hour day per person. And you get $54.40 for your day's labor.

 

[buzzbomb]

My dream is to have freshly grated parmesan cheese by an attractive celebrity in every store. this gives me hope.

Would you accept pre-shredded mozzarella-like cheese food product handed to you by Robert Goulet?

 

[TwistedAegis]

Would you accept pre-shredded mozzarella-like cheese food product handed to you by Robert Goulet?

I think I'd prefer TV's Michael Grey!!!

 

[Dekoth-E-]

It was proven to be laughably false. It was their "hope" to achieve it. That was mainly aimed at getting large wads of research money thrown at them. They have never produced a single verifiable product.

 

[Exavior]

Considering an orange picker in Florida, as an example, gets paid $0.85 per 90 pound box of oranges they fill, I don't think they could GAF. Average productivity is about 8 boxes per hour, or 5,760 pounds per 8-hour day per person. And you get $54.40 for your day's labor.

Think about that for a moment though, do orange pickers work 365 days a year?

They are going to be seasonal workers brought in when most of them should be ripe to pick them and then they are done. The farmer knows when to bring in the slave labor to pick everything. That is different from putting a bunch of plants into a room and expecting the workers to know exactly when something is ripe.

 

[rudy]

I think where this stuff would make sense is in very low volume products, certain herbs come to mind where you buy a tiny package for $2.99 in the grocery store to have it fresh. Now the grocery store doesn't need to take a risk that no one will buy that herb before it goes bad which they did in the packaging. Anything higher volume doesn't work, think some specialty basil vs cilantro. Cilantro is sold by large bunches really cheap and is high volume. As single day of cilantro at my grocery store would fill that entire little green house of theirs.

That said I am not sure if the math even works out in that scenario. See I happen to know that a lot of potted plants are sold at stores and the stores actually find it is literally a waste of money to try and take care of them. They would rather let them die then provide them with light or water. And its not like grow lights are some unimaginable new invention. Same with automation and green houses. But maybe what these guys really figured out is that no one has made a nice neat little automated green house yet that stores can easily buy and plop where every they want. Maybe that's the real innovation.

 

[Exavior]

I think where this stuff would make sense is in very low volume products, certain herbs come to mind where you buy a tiny package for $2.99 in the grocery store to have it fresh. Now the grocery store doesn't need to take a risk that no one will buy that herb before it goes bad which they did in the packaging. Anything higher volume doesn't work, think some specialty basil vs cilantro. Cilantro is sold by large bunches really cheap and is high volume. As single day of cilantro at my grocery store would fill that entire little green house of theirs.

That said I am not sure if the math even works out in that scenario. See I happen to know that a lot of potted plants are sold at stores and the stores actually find it is literally a waste of money to try and take care of them. They would rather let them die then provide them with light or water. And its not like grow lights are some unimaginable new invention. Same with automation and green houses. But maybe what these guys really figured out is that no one has made a nice neat little automated green house yet that stores can easily buy and plop where every they want. Maybe that's the real innovation.

Not only that but when you have to buy more space for your green houses / grow room because how you are cutting into floor space of what you are trying to sell to grow plants how much is that going to cost you?

 

[sfsuphysics]

personally I would like somebody who isn't border line retarded picking produce when it is actually ripe or close to ripe depending on the food. But maybe that is just me.

Then go to a farmer's market, seriously. Produce there is more likely than not going to be ripe. Produce in a supermarket is bought on large scales, sent to distribution centers, then those distribution centers deliver send out to stores via trucks which jostle around like crazy. Supermarkets have latched onto the idea that the public wants "pretty produce" first and foremost and that's what they deliver, so in order for it to be pretty they need to pick it unripe, and let it "ripen" (aka color up) en transit or stick it in a room and pump in ethylene gas to artificially ripen it (again color it up). The public also has another requirement to pretty, they have to have a particular produce year round, well tomatoes do not have a year round growing cycle for anyplace in the 1st world outside of a greenhouse, neither do most every other piece of produce.

So do yourself a favor and visit a farmers market, and as long as they are on the up and up, you're good to go. Unfortunately a great number don't care if vendors simply buy from those same distribution centers, and then sell there.