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Berlin Gets First Taste of In-Store Vertical Micro-Farms (rt.com) 95

Posted by msmash from the one-stone-two-birds dept.
An anonymous reader shares an article on RT: German shoppers now have the chance to buy fresh greens and herbs in supermarkets with tiny vertical farms which both grow and display the produce. The new delivery method for the freshest possible produce is being pioneered by INFARM which is currently testing its live herb gardens at METRO stores in Berlin. The people behind the project say these are the first indoor farming installations of their kind, placed directly in supermarkets. "Imagine a future where cities become self-sufficient in their food production, where autonomous farms grow fresh premium produce at affordable prices, eliminating waste and environmental impact," The farms look like a tiny greenhouse inside the store where shoppers can pick their own freshly harvested salad greens and herbs right from the growing plants. The advantages of the indoor micro-farms are lower transport costs and associated emissions. They use less water, energy and space than conventional farms and horizontal greenhouses.
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Berlin Gets First Taste of In-Store Vertical Micro-Farms More

Berlin Gets First Taste of In-Store Vertical Micro-Farms

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  • I heard they have a new electric tractor sitting out in the parking lot because German law requires a new green tractor for all farms.

    • Re:Farrrrrm livin' is the life for me! (Score:4, Funny)

      by gstoddart ( 321705 ) on Friday April 01, 2016 @10:05AM (#51823377) Homepage

      Actually, the tractor is sitting in a drawer ... it's a micro-farm, after all, so you only need a micro-tractor.

      It charges off USB, so it's pretty green since you can do that with solar.

      • I want to see a micro-tractor pull.

        • Re:Farrrrrm livin' is the life for me! (Score:4, Informative)

          by gstoddart ( 321705 ) on Friday April 01, 2016 @10:27AM (#51823529) Homepage

          LOL ... well, there's these guys [nmmtpapullers.com]. National Micro-Mini Tractor Pullers Association

          Micro-Mini Tractor Pulling is a 1/16 scale version of full size tractor pulling.
          A weight transfer sled is pulled by these small "toy" pullers on a 2'x16' wooden track which is
          either covered with a formica surface or sealed with a smooth surface of polyurethane. Some of
          these pulling units in the 6 lb. open modified tractor class have been known to pull in excess of 600 lbs.

          No [nmmtpapullers.com], I didn't make that up.

          You're welcome.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by KGIII ( 973947 )

            > open modified

            Wait, what?

            They have a stock, unmodified class? 'Cause that sounds too awesome to click the link.

            See, if I click the link I might find out that I'm not as pleased by the results as I want to be. In my head, this is awesome. I'm afraid that reality won't match the awesomeness that is in my head. Sadly, that's often the case - more so where people are involved.

            Also, I read the headline as "Velcro" farming. That too was incredibly awesome in my head. Like I said, life seldom turns out as awes

            • You know you wanna [nmmtpapullers.com]:

              They have a stock, unmodified class? 'Cause that sounds too awesome to click the link.

              Well, here's the abridged version:

              BELOW ARE SOME VEHICLE SPECIFICATIONS
              OF CURRENT NMMTPA CLASSES

              PRO STOCK TRACTOR: Originates from 1/16 scale 2 wheel drive tractor
              WEIGHT CLASSES: 3lb. & 5lb.

              TWO WHEEL DRIVE: Replicates 2 wheel drive road vehicle
              MAX. WEIGHT: 4lbs.

              SUPER STOCK TRACTOR: Originates from 1/16 scale 2 wheel drive tractor
              MAX. WEIGHT: 5lbs.

              FOUR WHEEL DRIVE: Replicates 4 wheel drive roa

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by KGIII ( 973947 )

                I opened it in a background tab. I'll look at it later. I'm gonna remember who sent me there... So, it'd better not be too awesome and I end up with yet another hobby with too much spent on it and never finished projects scattered across both State and country borders. :/ *sighs* I need to finish my robot before I go back to Maine.

    • I heard they have a new electric tractor sitting out in the parking lot.

      Unfortunately, the "new electric tractor" is made by Volkswagen and billows out clouds of diesel fumes when it is started.

      VW's motto used to be "Fahrvergnügen" . . . now it is "Fehlerbehebungsmaßnahmen" . . .

  • I'm interested, but if we've got to the point where it's more efficient to grow something in a tiny urban space rather than reap the efficiencies of scale out in the vast acres of agriculture, hasn't something gone badly wrong? Where are the costs we're saving: in transport? refrigeration? waste?

    (No of course I haven't RTFA! I was too busy posting my ill-informed musings.)

    • April phools!

    • We've got a local (Florida) company that grows salad greens in portable containers that are shipped living to the restaurant - so the greens aren't harvested until the salad is prepared. The "better" restaurants keep the greens in plant-friendly sunlit / well watered locations, others just put them on display by the hostess podium and sell them so fast it doesn't matter that they're slowly dying in the air-conditioning/dim artificial light.

      • others just put them on display by the hostess podium and sell them so fast it doesn't matter that they're slowly dying in the air-conditioning/dim artificial light.
        Well, I guess relative to how much it did the same thing in a box inside a dark, refrigerated shipping-container travelling half way around the world is an important consideration.

        "Slowly dying" when it was harvested yesterday instead of, oh, a few weeks ago is a hell of an improvement.

        Oh, that and e coli and listeria and other nasty crap is far

        • others just put them on display by the hostess podium and sell them so fast it doesn't matter that they're slowly dying in the air-conditioning/dim artificial light.

          Well, I guess relative to how much it did the same thing in a box inside a dark, refrigerated shipping-container travelling half way around the world is an important consideration.

          "Slowly dying" when it was harvested yesterday instead of, oh, a few weeks ago is a hell of an improvement.

          Oh, that and e coli and listeria and other nasty crap is far less likely to creep in along the way due to industrial processing.

          Yep, they're quite tasty too.

    • Re:scale? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by ShanghaiBill ( 739463 ) on Friday April 01, 2016 @10:14AM (#51823431)

      This is more about hipsterism than efficiency. And even for the hipsters, urban farming is only about fresh herbs and salad greens, which are difficult to transport and store. There is no way that urban farming is going to work for staples like wheat or oil seeds, so the notion that cities will be self-sufficient in food is silly.

      • This is more about hipsterism than efficiency. And even for the hipsters, urban farming is only about fresh herbs and salad greens, which are difficult to transport and store.

        Wait, what? It would be a hipster thing to want to have fresh herbs and salads which are difficult to transport and store so they don't have to come from half way around the world? Maybe even have them in winter in places which can't normally have them and have to import them? Or in remote places where you simply can't get it pretty

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by pr0nbot ( 313417 )

          (Parent's comment about self-sufficiency relates to a claim made in the Slashdot summary.)

          • Sure, but TFS says this:

            Imagine a future where cities become self-sufficient in their food production

            It didn't say "this will make cities self-sufficient".

            And any degree to which you can grow locally instead of importing adds a degree of "self-sufficieny" and is stuff you don't need to import, and which doesn't need to travel thousands of miles.

            I'm assuming TFA is an April Fool's joke ... but the idea isn't so crazy.

            Hell, at one point this year cauliflower was something like $11 each. For ONE damned caulif

            • I grow both lettuce and cauliflower in my garden. Given the relative effort needed for both (harvesting a salad worth of leaves every three days vs waiting three months for a single cauliflower), you'd be paying $20 each for each head. In general, there's absolutely no way for a small garden (under a few aces) to be able to compete with a lager one. There is significant fixed cost ($100's of dollars) work to grow a single plant (soil preparation, watering, fertilization, cultivation, de-weeding and harvesti

              • All valid points.

                BUT, the kind of thing this article is talking about is indoor growing, not out in the wild, and with a significant amount of automation ... you know like this [weburbanist.com].

                The statistics for this incredibly successful indoor farming endeavor in Japan are staggering: 25,000 square feet producing 10,000 heads of lettuce per day (100 times more per square foot than traditional methods) with 40% less power, 80% less food waste and 99% less water usage than outdoor fields.

                So, really ... are you so sure abo

                • It's all about calories/m^2 or calories/watt. If yo want to farm spirolina or chlorella, your level of automation and efficiencies will be much higher. I can easily see a machine a few times the size of a refrigerator able to produce enough food for a single person on 25cents of electricity/day.

              • In many cases, bulk-farmed items are cheaper.

                On the other hand, I just about fall on the floor laughing whenever I pass the citrus fruit displays at the local supermarket. They're charging 50 cents a fruit for stuff that I'm begging neighbors to take surplus off me and the stuff I grow isn't small and nasty like theirs is. All for about $20 in fertilizer every few months.

                Or the pineapples. On sale, they're still $2.50 or more, off sale closer to $ and the ones in my garden are as big and tasty as the ones i

                • I totally agree and share your problem of trying to give away free citrus. I used to have two orange trees and got hundreds of gallons every year, ie, multiple 50 gallon garbage cans full of oranges. We got just as many lemons off of the single lemon tree. Also included were a tangelo , a tangerine, 3 peach, 2 apricot, a fig and pomegranate. We'd donate or throw away hundreds of pounds a year all on about a third of an acre, ut this was in AZ full sun an a lot of water. You're never going to economically ge
        • The average diet is 2,000kcals/day. The average herb salad sans dressing is 10kcals. You'd need to eat 200 salads every day just to stay alive over the period of a few months.

          • Who the hell said anything about solely surviving on salads? I'm a vegetarian, but I'm not a fucking cow.

            Green leafy things have lots of other nutritional stuff as well. Which means while they may not provide all of your calories, they might provide some valuable nutrients. Oh, and they're tasty. Which is why you'd also grow herb.

            Now, imagine, you're a researcher in the arse end of the world ... oh, I don't know, Antarctica maybe. How happy would you be to have a salad once or twice a week instead of w

            • The point is being able to survive (or not) off of vertical farming. I'm sure you can synthesize vitamins in a lab too much more economically but the metric used in the anthropology books I've read have always been kcals/acre in terms of supporting a population.

    • It is about a high-end taste/smell/quality food product. Germany is not a third-world country full of starving poor people. Actually, the whole EU has opted to not maximize efficiency when growing food, but mandates some efficiency-lowering rules (like on the population density of animal farms or limits on HFCS production [wikipedia.org]) that favor moderation of health risks or promote quality.

      I know it's a concept hard to comprehend for many who've been raised in an extremely capitalist environment, but a significant par

  • There's that word again.
    It's popping up in all sorts of places.
    Autonomous Cars
    Autonomous Medicine
    Autonomous Weapons
    Autonomous Factories
    etc

    It really is going to be interesting to see how in the not too distant future, one of our primary roles will be to try to maintain control over a growing list of autonomous technologies that allow our civilization to function.

  • Vertical farms (Score:5, Funny)

    by rossdee ( 243626 ) on Friday April 01, 2016 @10:14AM (#51823435)

    cows are going to have a hard time

  • But I do wonder where our obsession with "freshness" comes from. Is it because we're so divorced from the places where our food comes from?

    To be honest, I'm happy not seeing the entire process of growth through harvest. I have other things I'd rather do with my time than tend to crops and livestock. And when it comes to processing, I have a preference that livestock be treated well in their life since it's fueling mine...but I have absolutely no desire to be part of the slaughtering process. None. Again, I'

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by swb ( 14022 )

      But I do wonder where our obsession with "freshness" comes from. Is it because we're so divorced from the places where our food comes from?

      Yes.

      Actual fresh-from-the-garden produce is so much better than what's in the store.

      I think some of this high-tech vertical "farming" is quite interesting and it does make you wonder if the benefits of not having to ship stuff half-way around the world is worth the local infrastructure investment.

      It may not work for bulk crops that are large (corn, wheat, etc) but these

      • On a broadcast of America's Test Kitchen a while back, the host talked about his childhood where they literally raced in from the fields with fresh-picked corn (or maybe it was peas). Because the minute that the produce was picked, the sugars in it began converting to starches, so for full sweetness, you wanted it prepared ASAP.

        He did mention that more modern strains are less susceptible to that sort of thing, but there's still a virtue in freshness for many items.

        • Yep, that would be corn. I heard that you want to get the water boiling before you even pick it. But like you said, the modern varieties stay sweeter longer.

  • So what. Home Depot has those occasionally during the year. You have to buy the whole pot though.

  • Ah! (Score:2)

    by no-body ( 127863 )

    How are they fed? Probably non-organic liquid mineral fertilizer...
    All nice and sterile, no earth worms, other critters visiting - anyone wants to be a plant THERE?

  • Skyscraper vertical farms in the future? (Score:3)

    by Fencepost ( 107992 ) on Friday April 01, 2016 @11:25AM (#51823913) Journal
    I wouldn't be surprised to see many variations of vertical hydroponic farms on south-facing windows of buildings in the future, whether on a per-unit basis or in some cases in a vertical atrium-style space. On a small scale leafy greens, carrots and related crops would be the only ones that make sense due to pollination concerns, but I could also see larger setups being feasible with south-facing atriums full of hydroponic crops with some level of access for bees.

    In some ways this complements the trend of rooftop gardens/lawns in urban areas.

  • ...since verticulture is actually a thing. I grow herbs in a home built vertical planter. I grow potatoes in a denim sculpture comprising a pair of jeans filled with compost (it actually stands up on its own).

  • In Flint, MI this idea would go over like a lead balloon.

  • Because I totally want my Romaine and arugula to be grown under fluorescent store lights.

  • This approach does solve need of delicate storage, if greens were harvested for sale instead. As they are still connected to the infrastructure of their growth, it makes them not only freshest possible when buying, but also incomparably better enduring, than any other storage option.

  • First, this is kind of old news, here is an official press release from the METRO corporation [metrogroup.de] from February on it.

    But why does the ./ article amongst all possible sources reference a Russion government financed propaganda channel on this? That's like referencing the US-propaganda channel "RIAS Berlin" when talking about supermarkets in Moscow...

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