
Infarm wants to put a farm in every grocery store - prostoalex
https://techcrunch.com/2017/06/26/infarm/?ncid=rss&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Techcrunch+%28TechCrunch%29
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sapote
This is a terrible idea. Growing plants sustainably requires soil and sun. And
good tasting produce requires both. Two minutes thought about it from a whole-
systems perspective, and maybe a bit of common sense, would have told them
that this was a terrible idea.

A few reasons to get things started:

* Pests go nuts in indoor farming operations like this. You have to spray to stay on top of them. There's no natural ecosystem present, so natural predators don't take care of your pest problems. Also, plant metabolism changes to adapt to pest problems, and such systems are typically "precision" agriculture oriented, where the plants' needs are reduced to a small set of easy to distribute soluble elements.

* Soil composition and biology influences produce flavor. There's a reason vineyards care a lot about soil.

* Energy efficiency of such an operation is far below that of an outdoor farm -- just think about the number of energy conversions and the infrastructure needs (and its embodied energy) of this sort of operation.

* The most local basil is one that you put in a flowerbed next to your kitchen window.

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ciconia
> Soil composition and biology influences produce flavor. There's a reason
> vineyards care a lot about soil.

That is true, but look at the current reality when it comes to the produce
sold in supermarkets. It seems like most people care about how it _looks_
(hence the wax makeup) and how cheap it is. Our food has been commoditised to
such a degree that it's more about brand perception and price, rather than
taste.

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diyseguy
This is why strawberries taste like fibrous nothing but look really great.
Same for cherries. In fact, most fruits don't taste very good anymore. I
recently found bought a bunch of 'Heirloom' oranges which actually tasted
wonderful. Probably because they haven't been genetically engineered to look
good and last a long time.

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peterjlee
This may work for a few Whole Foods customers who pay $5 for a bottle of herb
infused water but I wonder if the cost is going to be reasonable enough for
most people. Real estate cost alone may trump every other cost savings. Even
if that "farm" can produce 10x more per square foot from vertical farming, the
real estate cost of a grocery store in a city is a lot more expensive than a
farmland in the middle of no where.

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Mizza
It's for weed. They're all for weed. Every "indoor farming" company is just
trying to get capital and build a brand with a cover story for when marijuana
is inevitably legalized. The only thing that it really makes positive ROI
sense to grow in this kind of way in the United States is for marijuana.
Everbody working in the indoor farming industry knows this, the whole "we're
saving the world by growing basil" thing is said with a big smirk. (Similarly,
big pharma has acres and acres of farmland just waiting to be used for this
purpose.)

~~~
peterjlee
If marijuana is legalized, why bother growing it indoor?

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ryankupyn
I think they're hoping for a "sweet spot" of legalization, where the product
is legal to produce and sell, but regulations prevent outdoor farming (or
mandate additional security in such a way that makes indoor farming an
appealing alternative).

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Animats
This probably works only for items where there's a huge markup. It's like
those little indoor trays of growing grass seen at some hipster sandwich
shops. The article suggests they want to grow basil.

This was tried in LA in 2015.[1] Not sure what happened to "Green City Farms",
but their last Twitter activity was in 2015 and their web site says "Error
establishing a database connection".

[1] [https://www.fastcompany.com/3044958/this-hollywood-
restauran...](https://www.fastcompany.com/3044958/this-hollywood-restaurant-
grows-your-food-next-to-your-table)

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mtalantikite
I spent a lot of time thinking about and researching vertical farming a few
months back, even going as far as to start prototyping out a system, and while
I love the vision for the future, I'm wondering how this ends up being
profitable for those doing it. As LED prices continue to fall it starts making
more sense, but can you really compete with the Sun and industrial agriculture
on price? How many of these units would you need to install to meet demand at
my grocery store up the street here in Brooklyn? I think we forget that a huge
amount of automation already exists in the agricultural supply chain.

I'd love to see it work since you can reduce water and pesticide requirements,
which is great for the environment. I'm just skeptical that you can be more
than a basil and microgreens service for yuppies.

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kingbirdy
It also reduces transportation costs, and cuts out the farmer's profit margin,
and any other middlemen between them and the grocer

~~~
hasbroslasher
This is actually a huge reason that food costs as much as it does. The seeds
are free, water's cheap, Sun's free, fertilizer is plentiful (and overused),
and machines do all the heavy lifting. You don't need a lot of manpower, and
farmers don't make a ton of money. All that money that we pay for food is
going into three things:

1\. Transportation costs: when everything grows in Ohio (and/or South
America), it's going to cost a lot more to get it in front of consumers in
Seattle or New York. To make matters worse, there's a built in timer on the
goods. 2\. Waste: something like 12% of America's food supply goes bad in
transit. Then after that, some more rots on the shelf. That which doesn't is
brought home, or to a restaurant and is wasted there. There's not much we can
do about the last part of the equation, but having the food fresh in the store
is a big step for the first two prongs. 3\. Aesthetics: This one I don't fully
understand, but apparently people turn down perfectly good produce because it
doesn't look normal, despite being perfectly healthy and nutritious. I've
always had a taste for mutant carrots, myself. It's possible (not guaranteed)
that selling this produce at reduced costs and directly from the dirt where it
was grown might help that.

It'll all come down to whether or not grocers sign on - my guess is that the
price point on something like this will ultimately be pretty good, but it
might take 10 years for the technology to develop enough to be useful out in
the wild.

~~~
maxerickson
I wonder what that 40% looks like if you do it by calorie.

There's no way 40% of potatoes or flour (or vegetable oil or ...) is expiring
in transit.

~~~
hasbroslasher
Yeah, I'd bet that's mostly fresh fruits and veggies. For reference:
[https://www.nrdc.org/sites/default/files/wasted-food-
IP.pdf](https://www.nrdc.org/sites/default/files/wasted-food-IP.pdf)

~~~
maxerickson
The largest part of the 40% in that report is consumer losses.

So food that spoils at home or is thrown away after it is served at a
restaurant.

Distribution and retail losses aren't terrible.

~~~
hasbroslasher
You're correct, will edit to reflect more accurate numbers

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syphilis2
An automated indoor herb garden would be neat, but what does the cost curve
look like compared to shipping traditional potted herbs? I was offput by the
article mentioning flying basil thousands of miles, but maybe that's my bias
since stores in the US usually carry potted basil plants. Taking care of the
hydroponic stack might be as simple as changing a cartridge now and then, but
how much does that cartridge cost and where does it have to be flown in from?

Clearly stores and investors are buying into this, so I must be missing some
information. Or I'm overly skeptical because I dislike the idea. But how much
do these store grown herbs cost?

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kefka
Well..

I could see a path forward, but it would be quite a bit of CNC like
automation. Primarily, I can see a hydroponics setup being used with a
Farmbot.io style automation. With this, a bot would zip up and down powered
rails, and use Wifi to communicate with the base station. Buckets would be
provided for the toolhead to pull plants done growing.

Ideally, this could be used to grow herbs, lettuces, and the like on huge
racks. Of course, in the jurisdictions that allow it, could be modified for
cannabis as well.

The long and short, is that machine vision can be utilized to determine the
fitness of a plant and its finished growing season. Add tilapia to this and
you have a near closed-loop biological system. And then you can also sell
fresh live tilapia.

To give an example, 25 sq ft of this system provides enough food for a human
indefinitely.

This also localizes food production thus strengthening national food security.
And this one is what wins a lot of conservative types who want to see a gain
rather than "feed the fuzzies" kind of reasoning.

~~~
bsder
> Of course, in the jurisdictions that allow it, could be modified for
> cannabis as well.

I suspect this is the _actual_ reasoning and target product.

Unfortunately, you can't get funding for that legally in most jurisdictions.

~~~
kefka
Well, yeah. Shrooms and Weed are the two I could think of that would easily
support hydroponic grow systems. Ideally, I could see them taking off in the
Southwest, given intensity of the sun and win power. The only thing that would
really cost is water, and that should be closed-loop as much as possible. I'd
wonder if some of the new metal-organo-frameworks could efficiently get water
from the air as they were reported to do.

But republicans are still moralizing christians that wish to force their
ideals upon others. Because if anything's been shown, cannabis is one hell of
a tax generator and mucho underutilized commerce. But aside this illegal usage
in most jurisdictions, this could suffice growing in bad environments or to
people with way too much money to spend.

There could be a different segment; people who want guaranteed food supply.
And locally, this could make food safety a guarantee. I could also see this as
a non-profit as well, with low income and homeless getting free access.

~~~
qbrass
And locally, this could make food safety a guarantee.

No it doesn't.

If a farm has a bad harvest, there are other farms a store can buy from. If
the store has a bad harvest. They're competing with their own customers to buy
food from the next store over.

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ilaksh
Right idea, but basil leaves is not a farm.

I think for this type of thing to really change things, they need to
concentrate on calories and nutrition. Things like peanuts and potatoes.

I also think there is some room for permaculture. Such as replacing ornamental
city landscaping with productive food forests.

~~~
maxerickson
What's your definition of "work" there?

They need to make stuff that grows fast and has a relatively high price.
Potatoes and peanuts don't particularly match either of those criteria.

~~~
apendleton
Right, and also stuff that doesn't keep well anyway. Seasonality or needing to
ship quickly to avoid spoilage aren't problems for potatoes either; if well-
climate-controlled they keep for months.

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theprop
This is HUGE. What's much more interesting is not getting this into grocery
stories but into homes. Delivery costs and spoilage represent something like
40% or so of produce costs, maybe more. So in theory it would be much more
efficient if you could grow your own vegetables and fruits at home. Right now,
only a few things like basil can be grown this way, but probably in time, we
can via "breeding" have many other fruits and vegetables that can be grown on
a smaller scale in the home.

I personally like this because of trust...I don't want pesticides in my food
and I don't trust organic farmers markets who probably just bought their
produce at a local grocery store then mark it up double for me ;-D. So I'd
much rather grow myself if it was easy enough to do.

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brad0
This makes zero sense. Even if you choose very specific items that can be
grown in a constrained environment it's going to cost too much to run.

Grocery stores make next to no margin on their sales - by adopting this they
will have to charge more than their competitors. Which means they won't get
sales.

\---

EDIT On top of this, there is not the physical space to do this at the scale
you need. Do you know how often shelves are restocked, especially in the UK
where stores are tiny? How are you going to fit your equipment in such a
constrained environment.

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FrozenVoid
Its actually pretty neat if somewhat expensive. 1.It saves transporation/labor
costs. 2.Allows to monitor/control plants 24/7 3.Immune to all weather
conditions/theft/birds I imagine it would be available to individuals too:
allowing people in cities to grow personal food indoors, without any gardens.
The potential of this "digital agriculture" is huge, since it allows to
control 'natural environment' variables.

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devoply
$20 for a spring of basil plant grown in your local grocers, though sounds
very expensive, there is probably almost definitely a demographic for that.
And it does not go stale, you can keep it there indefinitely. What is likely
to happen though is that it gets commercially farmed and then is brought to
the store after it has reached a certain size. Totally destroying its purpose
but there is a market for this sort of thing.

~~~
mobilefriendly
My wife buys live, potted basil plants all the time from a mainstream US
grocery store. I don't think she pays more than $5 or $6.

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microcolonel
> internet-controlled irrigation and nutrition system

Why? What happens when the network drops out on your basil cabinet? Is there
any reason not to just put the logic inside the thing?

Other than that, I can see this functioning pretty well for large suburban
grocery joints if it's limited to herbs. In fact, I seem to remember seeing
something approximating this at a Canadian grocery store, I don't remember
where.

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EGreg
I support decentralizing many things.

Energy generation

Cellphones

Social media

As farming can now be done in 3D, this may become a good idea. My main concern
is city pollutants getting caught in the plants.

~~~
rosser
I think these racks were intended to be used indoors, in climate-controlled
environments. I'd imagine at least token air quality management wouldn't be
too difficult or expensive to add, and that's all you'd need to beat, e.g., an
urban backyard garden...

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rm_-rf_slash
I can see this playing well with the doomsday bunker crowd.

And even before we get to that point, a distributed agricultural system would
help lessen our reliance on large-scale industrial farming operations which we
are frankly not using at a sustainable (1,000+ years) rate.

~~~
jfim
Keep in mind it doesn't get rid of the centralized petroleum-based
fertilization, so you're still dependent on large-scale industrial petrochem
for fertilizer production.

~~~
strictnein
Just tap into the store's bathrooms and presto! free fertilizer.

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carlob
I've seen supermarkets sell live basil plants for the past 20 years (probably
even earlier but I wasn't paying attention) in multiple countries. Maybe they
just picked the wrong example to start the article?

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web007
This looks like a variation of FreightFarms
[https://www.freightfarms.com/](https://www.freightfarms.com/) \- they've been
doing this for 2 or 3 years now.

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dsfyu404ed
The next decade of incremental farming improvements is mostly going to be
built on the back of grow-op technologies and techniques going mainstream.
Some of them will be more successful than others.

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russdill
Alright, there are 37,716 grocery stores in the US and 321.4 million
residents. That's about 8500 people per grocery store. According to this:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1aozn1/how_much...](https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1aozn1/how_much_land_does_it_take_to_support_one_human/)

The minimum amount of farmland per person assuming a vegetarian diet is about
0.17 acres. This comes out to a land area of a little more than 2 square miles
per grocery store. Your average grocery store is 46,000 square feet. So if you
did stacked farming on the area of the grocery store, you'd only need a about
1400 levels. Give 2 foot per stack, and your grocery store is only about a
half mile high.

~~~
panarky
> minimum amount of farmland per person assuming a vegetarian diet is about
> 0.17 acres

Why assume a vegetarian diet? And why assume that 100% of farming would be
done at the grocery store?

Do you really need the vertical farm in the grocery store to grow the wheat to
bake your bread or the silage to feed cattle?

The vast majority of farmland is dedicated to grains and animal feed, and that
can remain.

But the vertical farm in the grocery store can take care of the fresh stuff,
like herbs, lettuce and some veggies.

~~~
azakai
> Why assume a vegetarian diet?

It's the most efficient in terms of land use (also water, etc.). I think the
person you are responding to is trying to make the best possible case for the
approach, in order to be as fair as possible.

(And yes, it is not necessary to grow 100% of food in stores, as you point
out, for this startup to have a viable business model; but it's still
interesting to see how far it could go, that's what I took that comment to be
doing.)

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rojobuffalo
It will be cool to see advancement in this area and any potential cross-over
with tech research for Martian and space agriculture.

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ratsz
Seems like this could be beneficial for areas with religious-based dietary
restrictions.

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santiagobasulto
It can't get more hipster than this

