As CEO of agricultural giant Fenaco, Martin Keller (r) is behind the concept of Agriculture 4.0. "We are increasingly becoming a technology transfer company. This is one of the most valuable roles we can play for Swiss agriculture in the future. One future technology is vertical farming. Vegetables, herbs, and salads no longer grow outside in the field but stacked on top of each other in high halls. With the ETH spin-off Yasai, we are already marketing basil and other herbs produced in this way, among others, at Coop. However, there are major obstacles to vertical farming in agriculture, as this project also shows," he says in an interview with Schweizer Illustrierte.
Last year, microgrids were set up at three Landi locations in close cooperation with Agrola, the overall energy service provider. Keller: "In contrast to pure photovoltaic systems, we can fill a battery storage system and deliver the energy specifically to the Landi charging or fast-charging station. This principle holds a lot of potential for farms that could produce electricity locally for neighbors on their roofs."
For more information:
www.fenaco.com/