Posted on 09/15/2018 12:48:23 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Farmshelf, an indoor farm that lets you grow lettuce and herbs, is sprouting up at restaurants, corporate kitchens and food halls around the country
Farm-to-table is taking root in corporate offices.
Farmshelf, a Brooklyn-based startup, has begun selling indoor farm kits that grow food like lettuce and herbs using hydroponics — a method of growing plants in a water-based, nutrient-rich solution instead of soil. And the product is so popular that corporate cafeterias, restaurants and food halls around the U.S. are dropping $7,000 apiece to buy in.
“We’re building the Lego blocks to grow food anywhere,” founder and CEO Andrew Shearer told Moneyish. “We’ve been called the Nespresso for lettuce; you literally put the plant pod in, and watch it grow.”
Farmshelf looks like an open-air six-foot, four-inch bookshelf stacked with greenery that simply plugs into a wall. Users can choose to grow more than 50 crops, including baby lettuce and basil, on shelves fit with custom LED lights and a nutrient system. The corresponding Farmshelf app monitors how your plants are doing in real-time, and sends notifications when your produce is ready for harvest. Each Farmshelf unit costs $7,000, and can produce 10 pounds of herbs per week and 140 heads of lettuce per month, or $350 to $800 worth of produce each month. Farmers pay a $105 monthly subscription fee that includes nutrients and seed pods.
“We’ve automated all the hardest parts of growing your food to enable people to grow their own food and enjoy it,” Shearer said, adding that the plants spring up two to three times faster than crops in a field would — and using 90% less water. “We can grow a full head of lettuce in 20 to 28 days, where it would take 60 in the field.”
Farmshelf takes users about 30 minutes a week to maintain. The indoor farming chores include filling it up with water, harvesting crops and planting the nutrients when needed.
And companies are digging the concept. American Express has ordered six units for its corporate cafeteria, and the Great Northern Food Hall in New York City’s Grand Central Station has planted the indoor farming unit where customers can see some of their ingredients, like basil, being grown. Celebrity chefs such as Jose Andres and Marcus Samuelsson also have them growing in their restaurants. And Shearer plans to make Farmshelf available to at-home users by the end of 2019, and offer more foods like tomatoes, peppers and strawberries. The cost for home growers is estimated at $3,000, and the model will likely include one Farmshelf mounted on a wall or countertop.
Systems like Farmshelf could make healthy food accessible to more people in areas where fresh fruit and vegetables — and food, period — are hard to come by. Hunger effects more than 1 billion people in the world, and food production will need to double by 2050 in order to meet the need for the world’s growing population, the United Nations estimates. What’s more, about 23.5 million people live in food deserts, or low-income, rural areas where a supermarket is more than 10 miles away. Shearer hopes to combat this epidemic.
“We’ve automated all of the hardest parts of growing your food to enable people to grow their own and enjoy it,” Shearer said.
Of course, there are downsides: Some restaurants gripe that the system costs a lot of lettuce. West Coast-based salad company Tender Greens said that it spent 20% more by growing Farmshelf produce than it might have otherwise, after paying for the machine and maintenance. But it’s sticking with the system because it can grow veggies all year long, and not have to worry about importing out-of-season ingredients.
“My goal has always been not to have to ship lettuce across the country, but to grow locally,” Tender Greens co-founder Erik Oberholtzer told Moneyish. “The benefit is having a reliable supply year-round so we can really scale these systems while continuing to support organic farmers.”
While Farmshelf is making major headway in bringing farming to the masses, urban farming has been around for decades. Americans used urban farming techniques during the Great Depression and both World Wars to grow their own food. And more recently, former first lady Michelle Obama has done her part to champion for vegetable gardens in schools to help combat childhood obesity.
I wish the company the best of luck. This is capitalism and it is the company’s hope to profit from it. Just think, without Trump’s economy, Corporations wouldn’t bother with this.
As far as what’s grown, we did this in Israel back in the 70’s. We grew veggies in huge fields of sand using dripper technology.
“Good light is still a chemical reaction not electrical.”
The phrase “not even wrong” comes to mind.
I knew someone with cognitive dissonance. He said funny things like this too. As it progressed, he began to believe in conspiracy theories, got paranoid, and stopped his medical treatments. He died of untreated diabetes.
As if anyone needs $800 of herbs a month. Make that short herbs. Can’t grow dill or rosemary as that grows too tall. Can’t accommodate peppers, tomatoes, green beans, tomatillos, garlic, potatoes, turnips, carrots, parsnips, blueberries, black berries, cucumbers, squash, pumpkins, cantaloupes, etc. Looks useless.
I have a couple of pots of herbs in the kitchen window sill which cost pennies.
Systems like Farmshelf could make healthy food
Gal across the street had a garden, gave me tomatoes, so good & made fine pasta sauce.
“Each Farmshelf unit costs $7,000, and can produce 10 pounds of herbs per week and 140 heads of lettuce per month, or $350 to $800 worth of produce each month. Farmers pay a $105 monthly subscription fee that includes nutrients and seed pods.”
Do the math. The production cost of a head of lettuce is around $5.00.
Anybody here pay $5.00 for a head of lettuce?
L
“You gotta cook this stuff. Nobody want this sh*t. We ain’t given away nothin.’”
I believe it. Many people can’t boil water these days. Food comes from McD and KFC. Then it sits in their fridge for a month until someone tosses it in the garbage. If there were ever a shtf, huge numbers would die of starvation.
Me, I cook from scratch every day. Started some dough for sandwich buns before cooking breakfast this morning. Had a package of chicken thighs which have gone through baked thighs, Chinese chicken, Mexican chicken and tonight will finish up with grilled chicken sandwiches with a homemade aioli. Snort, aioli. Just a fancy foodie word for doctored up mayo.
In the Netherlands—or Holland if you prefer—they are growing almost all their crops under glass and inside. AND they are a net exporter of food.
Cooking isn’t really that difficult. There are many simple recipes that produce tasty, nutritious meals.
This is amazing! I’m an older person, fairly conservative, and have a big outdoor garden every year. However, using technology to farm makes a lot of sense, even if it’s not “traditional”.
My only concern is flavor and taste. The varieties I grow are all about what tastes good (to me), not what’s robust enough to ship out all over the world.
Then again, everything I grow is so seasonal, and often hit and miss. I love Cherokee purple tomatoes, but if one spring it’s too wet, I’ll get very few in any.
I’d love to be able to control the environment where they grow.
In a group that big, it would be better for everyone to have a plot and reserve a communal area for a garden swap/mini farmers market one or two night a week.
True. Very simple. Most items don’t require a recipe but there are people who can’t scramble an egg to save their lives.
Life has changed so much just in the past twenty years.
A food room is the best solution. Take an extra room in your house. Pipe in real sunlight. No conversions, no solar, no electricity, just piped light. Your home is always heated.
It is free food after set up costs.
But piping sunlight through optic cables is still expensive like $10,000.
Until seeds are all privately owned.
We had to move into a tent. I planted pumpkins in the living room and they took over the house. I’d put a pumpkin pic in here but they are so big the pictures weigh 5 lbs each.
In the meantime our pantry is full of dehydrated crops, Cellar is full of salsa, tomato juice and sauce.
I watched a 55 year old man try to scramble an egg. Took him 20 minutes and it was still raw.
Our 4th grade daughter entered a 4-H cooking contest with crepes and the judges nearly disqualified her saying she was too young to cook crepes. 4-H no less! 4-H kids have all sorts of life skills. Geez, crepes are no brainers. Well, those same judges praised the Home Extension worker’s 18 year old senior in high school for entering a salsa that consisted of a can of blackeyed peas and some jarred picante. Two weeks later, daughter made the entire Thanksgiving dinner and desserts by herself from scratch (no written recipes) and only asked for help to lift the 25 lb turkey out of the oven.
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