Does growing food with less water and no soil sound too good for the climate to be true? It’s not as far-fetched as you might think. Since 2019, Stockholm-based startup SweGreen has been working on a way to bring farms directly to supermarket shelves, and the company says it has found one, as Interesting engineering detailed.

Using a well-known method of soilless farming called hydroponics, the company is able to grow food in rockwool plugs – a sterile, controlled environment that it claims eliminates the need for pesticides and other chemicals, reduces transport-related pollution and uses up to 99% less water, most of which is recycled – rather than through traditional agriculture.

As Interesting Engineering puts it, SweGreen “gave new meaning to the word farm fresh.”

According to the startup, growing a kilo of lettuce requires just over a liter of water, compared to around 250 using traditional farming methods.

Saving water is vital as more than 2 billion people live in water-stressed countries. And with the global population expected to reach nearly 10 billion by 2050, ensuring food security without expanding agricultural land use that only exacerbates the climate crisis must be a priority to avoid irreversible damage to the natural systems that support life on the planet.

SweGreen’s in-store vertical farms currently grow herbs, spices and leafy greens like parsley and dill, but they may soon offer customers the opportunity to pick strawberries and other fruits in more than 25 locations in Sweden and Germany.

Vertical farming, which involves growing crops in layers stacked vertically rather than on a single surface, is already gaining ground on conventional farming. and even fishing practicesand you can see it on the screen at Disney World. But the Swedish group is pioneering facilities tailored to store sizes and restaurants and hotels looking for fresh, sustainable ingredients, what it calls “agriculture as a service” or FaaS.

The United Nations estimates that around a third of the world’s food is wasted – with household waste alone accounting for 19% of that third, or around a billion meals of edible food wasted per day. The remaining 13% is lost between harvest and retail.

As such, SweGreen’s approach promises to reduce this 13%. Seeing your next meal growing before your eyes, there is no risk of falling for large juicy fruits filled with herbicides or out of season. vegetables produced on the other side of the world.

What is the most common reason you end up throwing away food?

I bought more than I could eat

It went wrong sooner than expected

I forgot it was in the fridge

I didn’t want any leftovers

Click on your choice to see the results and express your opinion

There’s a problem, though: despite using AI-optimized LED lighting, these setups consume a lot of power.

As content creator Le Monde de Gourdil explains in a Facebook video, it is “a real dilemma between water savings and energy consumption. “It’s a balance to be found between these two important environmental issues.”

In particular, if SweGreen’s installations can derive their energy from solar energy, in some ways simply redirecting solar energy to a more controlled environment, the benefits could stack up with some downsides. In response to both environmental and health issues, SweGreen hopes to show that the development of local and circular food systems is realistic and scalable.

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