A Dutch vertical farming company has just been valued at over $1 billion
At the moment the company grows 75 different varieties of herbs, salads and leafy greens but the company ultimately wants to grow the entire fruit and vegetable basket
By Sam Shead
CNBC
Dec 17, 2021
Excerpt:
Infarm’s vertical farms are housed in “growing centers,” which have around 110,000 square foot of growing space. The company also builds smaller in-store farming units for grocery stores. It currently operates more than 17 growing centers and over 1,400 in-store farms for 30 retailers worldwide.
The company claims that it can transform a space the size of a living room into an urban vertical farm that produces more than 500,000 plants per year, which is the equivalent of a soccer field-worth of crops.
Unlike conventional farming, Infarm’s vertical farms use no pesticides. They also recycle water and nutrients and use the evaporated water of the plants. As a result, they use 95% less land and 95% less water than soil-based agriculture, Infarm claims.
It’s all highly technical. The indoor farms are jam-packed with sensors that are used to collect vast quantities of data on everything from temperature and humidity to soil nutrient levels and crop growth rates.
