World’s first robotic vertical farm

Set up in 1996 in Norway by Jakob Hatteland and Ingvar Hognaland, AutoStore went commercial in 2004 and is today recognised as a worldwide logistics standard for efficient automated warehousing and order fulfilment across multiple industries. In this campaign, it promotes Opollo Farm - a modular, fully automated facility in Arizona, where "robots grow leafy greens in just 15 days using 95% less water than traditional farming". Opollo Farm is already supplying Whole Foods Market stores in Phoenix, it boasts. You may recall that Whole Foods was bought up by multinational technology giant Amazon in 2017. Amid increasing protests by farmers under threat from galloping commercial imperatives, you don't need to be an environmentalist to question the value of systems which often appear to be in battle rather than harmony with Nature. Intensive farming has already been demonstrated as stripping the soil of the nutrients in crops and livestock. Today's tech uses immense amounts of water, largely for cooling purposes. So too does enery production, and the robots handling initiatives like Opollo Farm themselves require energy, bringing into question the ultimate accuracy of the contention of using less water. As food production hurtles towards increased volume with diminishing value, a tipping-point approach may be approaching. There's no denying the convenience and often the value of automated workforces or Amazon-led delivery standards: AutoStore underscores the importance of hydroponic, pesticide-free cultivation; year-round, high-density harvests; and scalable design for urban food production. But the question stands with regard to this and other ads: Idyllic, horrifying, or just another faltering step in human lifestyle evolution?

Keywords: AutoStore Opollo Farm, robot farmers, food logistics, automated vertical farming, OnePointOne vertical farming, hydroponic farms, food sustainability, global food system