“One day we'll put this in every school and every apartment building,” Babylon Micro-Farms CEO Alexander Oleson said in an email exchange. This is a great vision and the level of belief/commitment required to run a startup, especially in a challenging field like vertical farming. However, the STEM Garden costs $6,500, so it is unlikely to reach many households in the short term.
It would be great to start your own vertical farm in your Queens apartment, but that dream will probably have to wait a decade or more (at least until you leverage your tech reporter job into the inevitable fame and fortune until). But this is a step in the right direction. Babylon's latest product costs a fraction of its $15,000 predecessor.
As the name suggests, the new model is firmly targeted at education. This is the same market targeted by many cutting-edge consumer technology companies that aren't ready for the domestic market, from Makerbot to Sphero. Virginia-based Babylon Micro Farms has long set itself apart from much of the vertical farming world with its focus on small spaces, and the new system will shrink its footprint even further.
Image credit: Babylon Micro-Farms
While Bowery likely routinely converts warehouses into indoor green space, Babylon's customer base includes corporate spaces, including hotels/hospitality, healthcare, and brands like IKEA. Anyone who has ever worked in a soulless office can certainly understand the value of adding a little greenery to the landscape. As a bonus, you can harvest them and have a salad for lunch. However, given the nature of the machine, we're not talking about yields high enough to keep your staff fed throughout the year. If large-scale vertical farms are decentralizing and regionalizing agriculture, the microfarm concept does it on an even more intimate scale.
Education is also a core market for the company. The company did not provide specific numbers in this regard, saying only that it shipped units to “several hundred” locations. When we ask educators what they want from next-generation devices, they understandably mention a lower price point. While previous models focused on higher education, STEM Garden specifically addresses K-12, where pockets tend not to be as deep.
Prices were lowered in part by shrinking the product's footprint from bookshelves to cabinets. Frankly, space is often at a premium in these younger grades. The tiers (shelves) were reduced from 5 to 3, and the number of plant “sites” was reduced from 290 to 90. Plants must be watered manually, and elements such as remote monitoring and cameras for live support are omitted.
However, this system includes curriculum integration for learning (admittedly, you can't escape the “stem” pun). And frankly, it's probably less of a hassle if a device that's likely to be used near young children doesn't have a camera.
The STEM Garden is available for pre-order starting today and will begin shipping to classes in Q2. Looks like I'll have to wait forever until I have my own microfarm.