This Berlin supermarket just installed a farm inside its store
LONDON -- If you're looking for locally grown farm produce, your local farmers market or farm shop are usually your best bet. But one German supermarket has done something a little different by installing a "farm" within its store.
In the Metro supermarket in Berlin, an indoor farming startup has set up a vertical farm at the end of the store's produce aisle, inside which greens and herbs are growing.
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Berlin-based startup Infarm built the vertical farm with the aim of growing fresh local produce 365 days a year.
The farm takes the form of a glowing modular box, which -- according to Infarm -- is so efficient it can make vertical farming affordable on a micro scale.
Within the box, plants don't grow on soil, but instead grow "hydroponically" on a thin layer of water enriched with fertilisers and oxygen, under LED growing lights which imitate sunlight. Infarm also uses micro-sensors and data processing to make sure the conditions are suitable for the plants
"I was always very passionate about being self sufficient," says Erez Galonska, founder and CEO of Infarm, in response to questions submitted by Mashable.
When Galonska travelled to remote communities where "what you grow is what you eat," farming became a big part of his life.
"I discovered that growing food is such a powerful and natural experience when you eat truly fresh vegetables you recognise immediately how much tastier and healthier they are."
"When I came back to my flat in the city, the feeling of freedom and freshness dissolved very quickly and the urban chaos took over. I was longing for a piece of land.
"One night I googled: 'can I farm without soil?' and the answer I got was: 'hydroponics.'"
After watching YouTube tutorials, Galonska built a hydroponic pipe system in his living room, which -- after one month -- yielded a "jungle farm full of delicious greens."
"It was February in Berlin, cold and snowing outside, and we had fresh vegetables inside," says Galonska.
Galonska wants to create an "urban farming revolution" through the creation of vertical indoor farms.
This isn't the first time a supermarket has experimented with in situ growing. In 2013, Whole Foods partnered with Gotham Greens to bring a rooftop greenhouse to Whole Foods Market Gowanus in Brooklyn, as well as other locations in New York City. Whole Foods' 20,000 square foot greenhouse produces pesticide-free produce all year round.
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Rachel Thompson is the Features Editor at Mashable. Rachel's second non-fiction book The Love Fix: Reclaiming Intimacy in a Disconnected World is out now, published by Penguin Random House in Jan. 2025. The Love Fix explores why dating feels so hard right now, why we experience difficult emotions in the realm of love, and how we can change our dating culture for the better.
A leading sex and dating writer in the UK, Rachel has written for GQ, The Guardian, The Sunday Times Style, The Telegraph, Cosmopolitan, Glamour, Stylist, ELLE, The i Paper, Refinery29, and many more.
Rachel's first book Rough: How Violence Has Found Its Way Into the Bedroom And What We Can Do About It, a non-fiction investigation into sexual violence was published by Penguin Random House in 2021.
