High-tech, indoor, urban agriculture is growing in places like New York, but so are questions about the operations, according to FERN’s latest story, produced in partnership with Edible Brooklyn magazine.
The story, by Rene Ebersole, points to one indoor company that produces high-end specialty greens for restaurants called Farm.One. “In a town of eight million, Farm.One is part of a rising movement to cultivate produce where large numbers of people live by using high-tech systems and smart greenhouses placed at grocery stores, in basements and even inside cargo vessels. Leading restaurants have embraced these futuristic farms for a range of reasons, including variety, ingredient quality and virtually unlimited availability in all seasons,” Ebersole writes.
But others wonder whether these high-tech operations will compete with local farms. “The need to protect and preserve that open space is real,” says Dan Barber, the chef and co-owner of Blue Hill in Manhattan and Blue Hill at Stone Barns in Pocantico Hills, New York. “To divert from that in any way seems to be a lost opportunity—even though I see the excitement of doing some salad greens in a shipping container.”
Critics also question “whether high-tech farming in confined spaces will be destined to cater only to elite restaurants,” Ebersole says. “Chefs also debate taste. Some are grateful to have local hydroponic produce to flavor their dishes in all seasons. Others swear the produce is inferior to herbs and vegetables from a dirt farm with the characteristic flavor of the soil where they grow.”