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We already have lots of producers, why grow vertical farms indoors? We’re the farmers in the city. We started out a couple of years ago solving two key problems for cafes and restaurants - waste and freshness. As a result, we developed the Farmwall, a small scale indoor farm that operates on aquaponic principles and can grow a range of micro greens and herbs inside the venue that you harvest as needed. It’s efficient in its use of water and electricity and is designed to fit within the design of the venue. We believe there is a lot of value to growing our food within our living environments, greening up the space and creating an element of wellness to the people around it. We found a lot of different pockets where growing food in the city can create value so that selling it and eating it becomes the cherry on the cake. We’re on a mission to transform our city into a food producing ecosystem, so we believe we can grow a lot of food in the city while also adding value to our lives, our buildings and our environments. And hopefully with the help of IoT make the city a lot more sustainable by implementing the Farmwall mindset more than the actual unit.

What role does IoT play? While we started out focusing on cafes and restaurants, we’ve realised people are hungry to learn more about how to grow food themselves. Then comes the big but: they don’t have the time or the knowledge. There is a huge opportunity for technology and for IoT to educate people as well as help them grow food in their premises and their own environments without needing all the knowledge or the responsibility. You can have your food grow at home but you can go to India for three weeks and come back and it’s ready to pick. And you can manage and follow the journey of your produce, whether it’s in your home or office, on your phone. How do you protect your product? We’re more about implementing different technologies and different systems across the city. Farmwall is our flagship brand and a visual representation of how the food ecosystem can work. It’s also a mindset. We can apply a similar mindset and technology on larger scales as well. We’ve got a trademarked brand and we invest a lot of time and effort and funds into creating and positioning it so it’s strong and will protect our market position. The Farmwall product itself is in constant development. So we have a patent strategy where we file for smaller items within the whole system and over time when they all come together further down the track, it will create a stronger fire wall.

GEERT HENDRIX Founder and CEO, Farmwall

Geert Hendrix is the founder and CEO of AgTech startup Farmwall — designing urban farming technology and experiences in Australian cities. Geert is leading the Farmwall team on their mission to transform cities into food producing ecosystems. The companies flagship design is the Farmwall, a small scale vertical farm that grows fresh produce indoors in a beautifully designed natural ecosystem. Their custom designed urban farms grow food in under-utilised space, paired with experiential community engagement.

For example, we’re collaborating with Sonaray, an LED technology company, to incorporate lights into our vertical farms. We’re also working with big corporates and developers like Mirvac to create green food producing infrastructure in our buildings. There is a trend within corporates where they are developing teams to report directly to the CEO that are working like start-ups within the corporate businesses.

We are able to work with one corporate just because they have an innovation team that enabled them to bypass most of the corporate structures and we were able to work very quickly, very closely and with minimal budgets to proof and validate our concept. We’re also based in the Melbourne Innovation Centre, which is a cluster collaborative of businesses and art. They’ve helped us a lot with their expertise and the network within that.

How important is collaboration for you? There’s a lot of knowledge required in what we’re doing and collaboration is essential. If we don’t have the technology ourselves we find people that can help us, and as we’re building a brand and creating direction in the market, we’re able to leverage our exposure for the parties to come on board.

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