Feeding the future

Q & A

With its high-tech indoor farming system, Infarm’s mission is to sustainably supply food to growing cities

By Shellee Fitzgerald

NINE YEARS ago, Infarm’s founders started growing food for themselves in an exercise in self-sufficiency. Today, that experiment has blossomed into a global enterprise with the Berlin-based company operating a network of Growing Centers and more than 1,500 indoor farms across 30 of the world’s largest grocery chains, including Empire in Canada. Infarm says its smart modular system allows distribution of vertical farms throughout the urban environment, bringing produce closer to consumers (and thus racking up fewer food miles). The company also boasts that its produce is grown without chemical pesticides, requires little water and can be grown yearround, which, Infarm says, makes it a sustainable solution for feeding swelling city populations. We recently spoke to Daniel Kats, the company’s executive vice-president of sales about Infarm’s grocery partnerships, why there’s so much interest in vertical farming right now and the company’s ambitions beyond leafy greens. Here are edited excerpts from the interview.

Infarm partners with supermarkets around the world. Why do you seek them out?

Supermarkets have a need to supply fresh produce all year round to their customers. In most regions, fresh produce needs to be imported from different countries and is travelling a lot—often, food is travelling more than us! When it arrives [at the store] it’s been travelling for three or four weeks, which is not fresh and often not tasty. From our Infarm Growing Centers and our in-store farming units, we offer exactly what is demanded: locally grown, fresh produce with stable yield and affordable prices. Seasonality doesn’t play a role anymore, import into the countries can be reduced and the supply chain is much shorter, which secures much fresher produce on the shelves, provided by a transparent supply chain. In addition, our smaller in-store farming units put [the farms] in front of shoppers’ eyes so they can see how the produce is grown. It’s harvested in the stores so shoppers can pick it up from the shelves, take it home and they get the freshest experience. That’s how we started in retail. We work with a lot of other food businesses that have a need for very fresh produce such as restaurants, but retail has always been the main business for us.

There is a lot of interest and investment in vertical farming right now. Why is that?

We have a global problem in that our food system is broken. With a growing population and an expected seven-billion people living in cities by 2050, it cannot meet the needs of tomorrow. If products need to travel for weeks or we come to a store and shelves are empty because of weather uncertainties, locally-produced food in controlled environments can be part of the solution. And vertical farming is a smart solution because it requires 95% less land, 95% less water and 90% less transport compared to traditional agriculture. We need food to exist and I think that’s why the industry is booming.

Are the costs of vertical farming manageable, to make it a competitive solution?

Definitely. Vertical farming is not different from any other business, you need to work smart to make a profit. The technology is advancing; for example, light technology—in the past five years we’ve managed to reduce our electricity consumption by almost 50%, this is by improved LED technology. Another is that the way we farm is very smart. We collect billions of data points on each product every month. This data is analyzed on a daily basis and allows us to become smarter in the way we grow our plants. The result is that we can grow more on a square metre, and then we can reduce the price of the product and make it even more accessible to [consumers]. Basically, the more we grow, the more we learn, the more we improve the growing process and that’s how we can reduce cost.

What’s next for Infarm?

We’ll keep investing in Canada; we’re thinking about how we can expand even more in the country because the potential is enormous. And [in terms of product] we definitely want to expand beyond the greens. In Germany, we’ve already launched mushrooms and will add cherry tomatoes, strawberries and chilies soon. To really expand the portfolio we’re investing a lot in research and development and have a large team working day and night on developing new categories because at the end of the day we want to offer the entire fruit and vegetable basket to the consumer. CG

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