Of tech and troughs

摘要

On a grey day in December Johnny An-deres, the head chef at The Kitchen, a trendy restaurant in Chicago, is checking out a farm in an unlikely place. Farmed-Here, which claims to be one of America's largest "indoor vertical farms", occupies 90,000 square feet of former warehouse in a run-down Chicago suburb. It grows three types of basil, baby kale, micro-radish and arugula (rocket) in vertically stacked beds, lit with leds and fed with water from tanks of hormone-free tilapia. Mark Thoman of FarmedHere says the farm will be able to produce 1m pounds of leafy greens a year when it reaches full capacity. He concedes that his ultra-local, organic produce is costlier than food grown on the Midwest's megafarms. But wealthy foodies don't mind. "We have more demand than we can supply," he says.