KIRKLAND, Wash. — The Seattle area offers a rich smorgasbord of geeky tech-as-a-service offerings — ranging from software as a service, to gaming as a service, to pizza as a service.
Now you can add “farming as a service” to the list.
That’s what Infarm is going for, with hydroponic plant-growth cabinets that shrink the acreage needed to grow fresh greens to fit in a grocery-store aisle. The startup, based in Berlin, Germany, has just opened up its first North American “farms” inside a pair of QFC supermarkets east of Seattle, at Bellevue Village and here at Kirkland’s Urban Plaza.
“It’s a merger of agriculture and technology,” Emmanuel Evita, Infarm’s global communications director, told me during today’s “first harvest” in Kirkland.