CANADA – Urban Barns Foods is pitching its ultra-futurist cubic farming concept as ‘Star Trek meets farming.’ According to the company, its state of the art Cubic Farming™ machines sustainably grow premium quality vegetables year round and can even grow 500 heads of lettuce each year in under one square meter of space.
The company explains, “Removing the long-distance transportation model, our patent pending Cubic Farming™ technology allows us to grow produce in secure, safe, and controlled environments, with minimal water requirements, producing green leafy vegetables that are full of nutrients, while eliminating the use of fungicides, pesticides and insecticides.”
Check out this video for an inside look the company’s Cubic Faming concept and how it works:
The company’s Canadian President and CEO, Richard Groome, believes that this system is well ahead of its time. In an interview with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), Groome said, “This is the highest-density mechanized machine in vertical farming we’ve seen in the world…In our controlled environment growing season, the plants are not subject to the huge variations of temperature and the vagaries of mother nature that are causing chaos.”
Currently, Urban Barns Foods currently offers lettuce, herbs and microgreens grown from non-GMO seeds and free of pesticides, herbicides and fungicides.
Groome went on to say he hopes that once Urban Barns structures are developed in desert areas like Arizona or Las Vegas, they could ultimately be introduced into Australia and the Middle East.
With our industry being tasked with the huge undertaking of feeding the world’s growing population with healthy, high-quality fresh produce, it is always interesting to see what the farming of the future could look like.
