Eat Street Northshore Modular Farm sets sights on reforming farming

Hungry for strawberries? There’s an app for that. But not the one you might expect. This Brisbane smart farm grows 2t of basil a year without sunlight. And it only uses a kitchen bin full of water a day. It can even grow strawberries …

Hungry? There’s an app for that. But not the one you might expect.

An indoor farm at Eat Street Northshore has been supplying restaurateur and local produce retailers with luscious crops of basil, kale, rockets and other herbs since March. It uses just 40 litres of water a day and takes about 20 hours a week to care for, thanks to its ability to be monitored remotely by an app on a smart phone.

Modular Farms Australia director James Pateras said this first farm had been so successful, there were plans to establish a second Brisbane site. The farm can produce almost two tonnes of basil a year, and 50,000 head of lettuce.

Eat Street Market's Modular Farm grows nearly 2 tonne of basil and 50 thousand heads of lettuce.

“It’s a completely purpose-built container that allows us to grow crops vertically indoors under LED lights,” he said.

And that has included strawberries.

“Being a closed-loop system we can basically guarantee suppliers produce,” he said.

“But up until the strawberry crisis, it didn’t pay to grow strawberries (in a large scale in the farm), as they were relatively cheap, and hand-pollinating strawberries was not viable in the Brisbane market.

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“But if this was Alaska, you would say yes, there is demand for strawberries and you would grow them in this sort of farm.

“But where we see the most benefits is in growing leafy greens. We could cut some basil and have it at Toombul shopping centre in under a few hours. A retailer buying that wholesale would be getting something on day four or five.”

He said the farm was just now gearing up for a new supply “season”, with seedlings being slotted into the growing stations on the walls. As they grow, a computer monitors conditions, which can then be finetuned.

Eat Street Market's Modular Farm grows nearly 2 tonne of basil and 50 thousand heads of lettuce.

“The whole farm is controlled by an app on my phone,” he said. “From my phone I can control all the nutrients in the water, the lighting schedules, the heating and cooling systems, all the pumps … If one of the interstate farmers ring and say they are having a problem, their basil is looking very average, we can jump online and access their farm, look at the data, and tell them what to do to improve their plants.

“We also know exactly what we can sell and when. By the time we can see the plant we can tell how much we will be able to harvest. We know how many basil plants we have at any one time. This helps to reduce food waste. We are not cutting for the sake of cutting, we are cutting when it is needed, which the produce is the freshest.

General photograph of Modular Farms at Eat Street, Hamilton, September 19, 2018 (AAP Image/Richard Walker)

“The farms we design for people are ready to plug in and get growing.”

Eat Street Northshore director John Harrison said the farm was the “way of the future”.

“When you think that you can have anything you want growing all year ‘round, no matter the season, it’s amazing,” he said. “There was even strawberries, which is a bit controversial at the moment. Talk about farm to plate, they pick it upstairs and the vendors downstairs use it.”

Mr Harrison said the food market was nearing its fifth birthday. The markets relocated from a nearby location last year to allow the State Government’s Hamilton Northshore development to expand.

“We are going incredibly well, firing on all cylinders,” he said. “People are finding us now.

“This is our semipermanent place for another four or five years.”

Eat Street Northshore, 221D MacArthur Ave, Hamilton, is open Friday and Saturdays 4-10pm and Sundays noon to 8pm.

eatstreetmarkets.com.au

PRE-FIREWORKS FUN

It might not be called the unofficial preparty for Riverfire, but Eat Street Northshore will warm up expectations on Friday, Sept 28, with a Jetpack Fireworks Festival. Acrobats wearing jetpacks — and pyrotechnics — will dance above the water, before a spectacular fireworks show launched from a barge in the river off the markets.

Live entertainment from 4pm, show at 7.30pm.

221D Macarthur Ave, Hamilton

Info: Facebook @EATSTREETNorthshore