Vertical farming, a new trend for nutrition?

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With its Agrilution subsidiary, Miele is directly involved in the new trend of Vertical farming. With its solutions, the company is introducing its smart mini vertical farms to private households. This is a concept which was on show as one of the trend issues in numerous pavilions at the Expo 2020 in Dubai. In this new segment, Miele’s Agrilution subsidiary proposed Plantcube, a solution controlled by an app which lets its user know when to add water or bring in the harvest. The Plantcube sees to the rest for the most part automatically.

«To understand why vertical farming has recently become an important trend – Miele explains – it is worthwhile taking a look at conventional agriculture. Nowadays, farming is increasingly concentrated on a small number of large commercial operations. One of the results of this concentration is the distance travelled by produce before it reaches the consumer. This involves emissions in the process of transporting, warehousing and refrigerating food. Thus, fresh products lose important nutrients on longer transport routes before they are even consumed. As a result of intensive forms of agriculture, the total area available for agricultural purposes is diminished each year to the tune of 30 m acres».

Stefan Breit, executive director for Technology at Miele, has accompanied the collaboration with Agrilution from the outset. «I am delighted that Agrilution has been part of the Miele Group since 2019 – he said -. With its strong focus on sustainability and innovative technologies, the company is an excellent match for us and supports us in our continued. At the same time, I believe that both sides can still learn a lot from each other through mutual exchange in the area of sustainability. Agrilution is already doing well on the topic of emissions in the use phase and this is also an important topic at Miele.»