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.
Its a nice, neat, turnkey product for a corporate environment. Let them work out the best design features on their dime.
The Chinese will probably make a knock-off version for $300 - it’s basically just a rack with four trays and four fluorescent light fixtures. Gro-light bulbs are probably a main cost driver.
The home model (one four foot tray, one light fixture), for a reasonable price, would be something I’d be interested in. It could be enough to keep me rolling in fresh basil, cilantro and mint; and probably some salad greens.
Attack the author.
Provide zero counter facts.
Pull in a personal anecdote.
There is a pattern here. It is the ignorance pattern.
No wonder your friend passed. He was surrounded by crackpots.
People with an alias like “Conserve” are emotion, not fact based. You probably have some investment in ecology schemes and it annoys you when truth creates legitimate discomfort.
I am waiting for you to uncover why my statement is so critically true. The statement will never come.
Hint: VERTICAL FARMING is a FAILURE. It will create the equivalent of Factory Tea, such as High Fructose Corn Syrup. Cheap junk food fed to the masses with an epidemic of disease to follow.
One big thing this can’t do, is any vegetables that need pollination - basically for herbs and salad greens.
My mother worked with a Vietnamese guy who grew Bean Sprouts at home in his bathtub and sold them to restaurants ,yuck , I stopped eating packaged beans sprouts
I think these things will remain fringe, until general purpose household robots come along.
When you have a general purpose robot, it will initially be hard to keep them productively busy 24x7. Housecleaning is probably no more than an hour a day, and security would be an on-call function, just monitoring sensors in the background. Growing and cooking your food will probably be an early selling feature of the general purpose domestic robot.
That is when home systems will be really turnkey, and production can really be optimized for flavor and nutrition, with world class AI expertise, and super-human sensors for ripeness or disease.
Such a general purpose robot could probably run a few side businesses for you, a few hours a day each. With software updates making them instant experts, they could fix whatever needs fixing, and potentially even make a lot of what you might need.
Good fresh food is a universal requirement. Everyone is going to want it - Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner.
Another expensive gimmick to separate fools from their money.
Hydroponics is hard. I’ve seen more than one expensive system fail. They become fouled with contaminants.
These are future coat hangers.
I have news for everyone:
Herbs & Lettuce are NOT the only FOOD in the world.
You cannot exist on such.
These are the same people who refuse to build more power plants.
Lettuce & herbs..........
I want to see their recipe for “Lettuce Soup”.
My husband’s grandmother began teaching him to cook not long after he could walk. Children are remarkably willing to learn and adults can be remarkably dense.
Thank goodness your daughter was able to move forward from what could have been a crushing experience. Thanksgiving dinner is no easy feat!
You're right. Completely disconnected, It was put there as pure propaganda.
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.
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.
You are factually wrong.
See my posts 50 and 51.
Multiple counter facts to your assertion that vertical farming is a failure. If you need more, just google Dutch vertical farming. They’re not stupid, and certainly not as “bright” as you, no?
Well...honestly, growing weed indoors was, most likely, the reason for this appearing...same techniques. That said, $7000 is way expensive, you could create the equivalent for far less. Just go to a hydroponics store.
I love all the replies to post 1, without reading down further...
Know-it-alls.
I was in bed sick as a dog with another round of pneumonia (caught from her) and every joint burning and coughing my insides out so didn’t want to think about Thanksgiving much less help. She took herself into the kitchen the night before and whipped up a pumpkin pie and a pecan pie and started the cornbread for the stuffing. The next day, did the turkey and all the fixin’s without batting an eye.
When she was less than two years old, I sat her on the counter (bad mom!) to let her watch me make her her first choc chip cookies. Didn’t make them again for 6 months and she was telling me what went in them!
DIRT IS ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT SECRET INGREDIENTS TO OUR HEALTH.
Much cheaper to go down to the local market or grow their own the conventional way. Again, there is only room in that thing for short growing herbs. Maybe some early peas but nothing else. Nothing will recoup the cost.
Everything’s peachy until the mealybugs show up
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