France: Agricool transforms containers into fruit farms

French Start-up Company Agricool believes that nowadays fruit is less tasty than in the old days. Therefore they invested 4 million Euros (4.2 Million US dollars) to transform containers to plant fruits and get back to the good old tastes.

Agricool uses vertical surfaces on which to grow their fruit and each of their containers can produce more than 4,000 strawberries. By using a closed circulation system, they can effectively reduce around 90% of water consumption. Moreover it uses only renewable electricity and it aims to optimize the growing conditions, such as nutrition levels, irrigation and LED lighting. The air absorbed outside is also filtered to reduce the possibility of letting pollutants enter the container.

Mr. Guillaume Fourdinier, the co-founder of Agricool said that they employ 30 engineers in the company with the goal of constantly improving the technology. "Our mission is to bring back the original good tastes of fruits and vegetables. Each container can produce 120 times more fruits than on the same size of a piece of farm land. Moreover, our fruits contain more vitamins. As they do not contain harmful chemical residues, it is not necessary to wash them before eating. Another huge advantage is that this container can be maintained by consumers with no agricultural experience, and Agricool can inspect the plants' growing conditions and control water and nutrients level from a distance."

Each container takes up only 30 square meters, which is the size of 2 parking spaces. For Agricool, they hope that this growth model can serve the whole city area, and it can also help reduce the time of transportation, costs and emissions.

Source: cnbeta