In order to face into the challenges laid down by climate change and increasing population we are entering a period of significant re-imagining of how we feed ourselves, starting from the ground up.
Sub trend: Urban Farming
Hydroponics are allowing restaurants and supermarkets to grow produce on-site utilising the urban environment. From basement herb gardens and smokehouses, beehives on rooftops, and subterranean urban farms 33m beneath the streets of London, this is true hyper-local.
I love a new store opening, so I was particularly wow’d by M&S’s new food only concept store in Clapham Junction that opened last Autumn 2019.
Lucky M&S customers will find a range of fresh herbs – including Italian, Greek and Bordeaux Basil, Mint, Curly Parsley and Mountain Coriander – growing in the store using infarm vertical farming units.
According to M&S, Infarm’s ground breaking farming technology combines highly efficient vertical farming units with the latest IOT technologies and machine learning, to deliver a controlled eco-system with the optimum amount of light, air and nutrients. Each unit is remotely controlled using a cloud-based platform, which learns, adjusts and continuously improves to ensure each plant grows better than the last one.
The installation of vertical herb farms in M&S stores shows its commitment to both freshness and sustainability. It also ticks a big box in one of our macro trends, Regenerative Agriculture.