Infarm grows wheat indoors, calls project a climate-resilient alternative to open-field farming
Vertical farming company Infarm has produced wheat in an indoor farm without the use of soil and chemical pesticides.
Infarm projects it could grow 11.7 kilograms of wheat per square metre each year – or 117 tonnes per hectare – using “much less water” than open field farming.
“To continue to feed the world's growing population, we need to achieve higher crop yields which we have now proven to be possible for wheat through indoor, controlled environment agriculture,” Guy Galonska, CTO and co-founder of Infarm, said in a statement. “Our results are significant when compared to the average yield of outdoor wheat production, which is about 4.5 tonnes per hectare per year and heavily dependent on weather and seasons. We are confident that wheat can be grown successfully at scale indoors as a climate-resilient alternative. Our record yield could potentially be increased by a further 50% in the coming years using a combination of improved genetics, hardware, and optimised growth environments.”
Erez Galonska, CEO and co-founder of Infarm, called the success of the first trials an important milestone for the global company.
“Eheat is a calorie-dense but resource-intense crop that is a core component of diets worldwide. We started Infarm to find new ways of producing food to feed the world’s growing population and the results show that we are a big step closer to achieving this goal,” Galonska added.
Founded in 2013, Infarm has partnerships with more than 30 retail chains across North America, Asia and Europe, and its produce is available in more than 1,850 stores worldwide.
