Three years ago, Nordic Harvest opened in a former warehouse near Copenhagen, the capital of Denmark, as Europe’s largest vertical farm. The scale is impressive: 7,000 square meters of floor space, with growing racks stacked 14 tiers high.
The farm uses aeroponics and hydroponics to grow lettuce, cabbage, thyme and other greens. Some lettuce varieties are harvested 30 times a year. Yield per square meter is 200 times higher than on a conventional farm, and the farm uses 250 times less water than traditional agriculture. It also runs on wind power.
Founder Anders Riemann says the farm can produce locally all year round with consistently high quality. Its produce stays fresh longer, which cuts food waste. The team set itself an ambitious goal of high-quality produce that most consumers can afford, and according to Riemann, they reached it by rethinking food production with new technology and methods.
The Nordic Harvest team is now working to raise output from 250 to 1,000 metric tons of greens a year. The company plans urban farms in Sweden, Norway, Finland and Denmark, and a long-term project to restore forests on land that used to be farmed.
Swegreen, another Scandinavian startup, takes a different approach. The Swedish company believes fresh produce should go straight to the shopper’s table without delivery and transport, so it installs vertical farms inside supermarkets.
