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.
But it might not look as "cool" or come with the $7,000 price tag and bragging rights?
Indoor out of season hydroponics while worthwhile in a select few circumstances is not exactly cutting edge.
The local YMCA started a Michelle Obama garden in their limited greenspace. It must have been hugely expensive as they invested heavily in soil, fencing, plants and time. They had a huge stock of beautiful egg plants, zucchini, beets, carrots, etc., at the front desk with a sign saying to take what you wanted. I asked how many people took anything and the lady at the desk said, “You gotta cook this stuff. Nobody want this sh*t. We ain’t given away nothin.’”
High end pot farmers have been using the same process for decades. Growing marijuana and growing tomatoes are nearly identical processes.
Someone saw a grow setup in “High Times” and made it look better. There is nothing new or revolutionary about it. $7k to start and another $1200 a year in supplies is probably 4x what it costs to create something similar at home.
I wish them the best of luck, but this isn’t earth-shattering tech.
virtue signaling.
probably will see them used for growing cannabis before long.
I see this as food supply insurance. Prepped.
Its a giant Aero Garden.
Exactly. It would compete with the time I can devote to tanning my own hides, catching and smoking my own fish, sewing my own clothes, and working in my home foundry to make my own car. When you rebel against the corporate machine and decide to go local, time management does become an issue. Sometimes I think it might be better to just get a day job and do my shopping at a store, but a couple of hours at the drum circle usually gets my head straight again.
So here's even more reason that we do not need illegals in our country to do manual labor.
I'll do my job and let those hydroponic folks do theirs.
I can’t say what other veggies grown this way taste like, but hydroponic tomatoes are Tomatoes In Name Only.
Pretty and uniform, but absolutely tasteless
I would have loved this back in college, for growing our pot plants! (1960s)
GREAT tagline!
We live in a community of a few hundred homes (Lakeside at Tessera, Lago Vista TX) and they will be clearing land and building a few thousand more. Some chick wants a Community Garden. WHY NOT IN HER BACKYARD, it is plenty big enough. It is a big lib idea, the community garden. So the builder and HOA OK’ed the idea. There will be room for about 12 garden plots. For a few THOUSAND homes. Already they are asking WHO will be responsible for the garden? Pick up trash, pull weeds...
We say the chick who wants the d*mn thing can be in charge of it! I will continue to buy from our local farmers market or the grocery stores! LOL
LED Farm food is JUNK food & unhealthy.
Real light comes from fire like the sun or wood. 1 million years of human evolution cannot be voided by FAKE light of an LED bulb.
LED grown food long term will make you sick. It lacks the btoad spectrum of sun light. It cannot be simulated without a heat source. But the heat source makes that good light cost more. You must burn something.
Good light is still a chemical reaction not electrical.
Sorry to piss on your Wheaties but the Big State will force this LED piss Wheaties junk food on to people crammed into coffin apartments.
But there is still room for a solar room in every house that delivers great healthy food. But business is instead making the junk version.
We of course have one nut case who wants a compost site available along with barrels to collect rainwater.
We have no need for either. She goes on and on...
this is a nutritional disaster waiting to happen just like factory hog and chicken production.
this is a nutritional disaster waiting to happen just like factory hog and chicken production.
A small greenhouse is a good idea. The main drawback is it requires a heater during those freezing outside temperature days and nights. Would the extra electricity costs be greater than just buying the produce in the store?
The main drawback is dressing up like a snowman to check the garden everyday.
I grew my seeds indoors over the winter and planted in the spring. I simply don't buy that many vegetables in the winter. People eat differently in the winter.....most of my meals have vegetables and are in the freezer.
Already made 21 quarts of sauce for winter.
Love the idea, but with a growth rate like that there has got to be some GMO going on there some where.
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