Taastrup | A purple halo runs over the racks where lettuce, aromatic herbs and kale will soon grow: in an ordinary warehouse in an industrial area on the outskirts of Copenhagen hides one of the largest “vertical” farms in Europe, inaugurated this past year. week.
Huge 14-storey shelves, 10 meters high and lit by a total of 20,000 LED bulbs, fill from floor to ceiling this vast 7,000 square meter shed, operated by Danish start-up Nordic Harvest.
In order to ensure very regular harvests – 15 times a year here – products that do not see the light of day are constantly lit.
Robots, which transport the seed trays, roll between the aisles, increasing the futuristic atmosphere.
If the first salad leaves grow under bright light, the large aluminum containers are for the moment almost all empty.
But some 200 tonnes of market garden produce are due out by the first quarter of 2021, and nearly 1,000 tonnes over the year as a whole, with 50 employees, says Anders Riemann, the farm designer. Enough to place the Taastrup warehouse among the largest sites in Europe.
These urban farms suffer the taunts of farmers in the countryside, who doubt their ability to feed the planet and question their electricity consumption or the price of their products.
But Anders Riemann describes on the contrary an ecological model, with short circuits close to the consumer, provided that green electricity is used, as is the case here.
“A vertical farm is characterized by the absence of environmental pollution, by recycling all the water, nutrients or fertilizers”, argues the fifty-year-old, who does not use pesticides.
In Denmark, the European wind power champion, around 40% of electricity comes from renewable sources, even though fossil fuels are still the majority.
“But at Nordic Harvest we use 100% of the energy produced by wind turbines, which makes us CO2 neutral,” explains the urban farmer.
While he remains discreet about the amount of his electricity bill, the power comes from “wind certificates” registered with the Energy Exchange – a legal document “guaranteeing that the amount of electricity you consume in a year is equivalent to the electricity produced by numbered offshore wind turbines, ”says Riemann.
Shy development in Europe
Founded in the early 2010s, these vertical farms have multiplied in Asia and the United States in particular, where the largest vertical farm in the world is located. They are starting to develop timidly in Europe.
For Mr. Riemann, the development of urban agriculture could contribute to the reforestation of land exploited by monoculture.
“We have moved the forests in order to have cultivated fields”, he laments, defending the return to the city “of part of the food production, cultivated on a much smaller land and in a space optimized in height. “.
On his farm, he uses 1 liter of water per kilogram of plant mass, which is 40 times less than for greenhouse cultivation and 250 times than in the fields, he says.
Among its customers: caterers, restaurants, but also supermarkets.
According to a survey by the Farmers’ Federation, 95% of Danes are willing to change their purchasing behavior to protect the environment.
For Carl-Otto Ottosen, professor of agriculture at the University of Aarhus, the company, which focuses on a small variety of products, remains anecdotal and does not call into question the agricultural traditions of Denmark, where “it does not ‘there is no space problem ”.
“It works in Japan or Shanghai, where there is no place to cultivate and where quality products are sought.” But despite the polls, what the Danes are looking for above all “is the price, not the taste”, he says.
Nordic Harvest, which aims for profitability from its first year of operation, assures that its production will be offered at competitive prices, similar to those of organic farming.
The company “aims to allow supermarkets to sell its products around the same price as organic products grown in a conventional way,” she says.
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