Jun 28, 2019
Fazenda Urbana launches the first-of-its-kind, onsite supermarket mushroom production container, using sustainable agriculture practices in a vertical farm at a Zona Sul Supermarket in Rio de Janeiro.
Innovation
“We are honored to be invited to participate in this innovative project with Zona Sul. To design, built, install and operate an onsite mushroom production container and showroom for a supermarket.” said company cofounder Rodrigo Meyer. “The idea was to not only produce mushrooms in a sustainable way, but to also provide a showroom wherein we could work with Zona Sul to educate the students, chefs and consumers on how mushrooms are cultivated.”
“This was no small challenge.” said co-founder Thomas Oberlin. “Mushrooms require low temperatures (we are located in Rio de Janeiro) and high humidity to grow. Using our controlled environment and data center know-how, we constructed a new type of production environment with an automated system to manage the temperature and humidity necessary for the mushrooms. The Mushroom Factory also is configured so that we can conduct tours of the production site, after which people can harvest mushrooms in the store.”
Sustainability
Fazenda Urbana has focused intensely on minimizing the use of the scarcest natural resource – fresh water. “We constructed the system using a recycled 40-year-old shipping container. We also started with the idea that we would never use water from the public water system.” Says technical director Eudo Junior. “We capture the condensation from the climatization system, which we then filter and use to hydrate the mushrooms. And the mushrooms do not need to pass tempo in transport between the production site and the store. Furthermore, the roof of the parking area of the store is comprised of a large solar panel system reducing the overall carbon footprint of the project.”
Fazenda Urbana
Founded in 2016, Fazenda Urbana has been considered an innovator in the use of Controlled Environment Agriculture to produce vegan microgreens, without using any pesticides, fertilizers or soil. The company has developed an intelligent system that limits the amount of human involvement in production. Its processes for planting, germination and cultivation of microgreens resulted in a highly reliable and predictable outputin any location with water and energy.
Contact
Thomas S. Oberlin
tom@fazenda-urbana.com
tel: +55 21 99574 3387 skype:tomoberlin
www.fazenda-urbana.com