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Australia: Planting, harvesting and bagging herbs and microgreens with no human intervention

Stacked Farm chief operating officer Sam Canavan says the robot farm start-up could provide Melburnians with fresh herbs and leafy salads within 24 hours of harvesting after the opening of its second farm next year.

The Tribeca-backed vertical farming company has won both the Financial Review Sustainability Leaders agriculture and environment category, as well as being the overall winner for innovation. Stacked Farm has developed a system to operate vertical indoor farms that use robots to plant, harvest and bag herbs and microgreens with no human intervention.

"You've got an environment completely inoculated from the vagaries of the outdoors, like unforeseen weather events, the risk of foreign bodies, or even stock-standard seasonality," Canavan says. "For example, basil is infamous in growing circles because its price doubles in winter versus summer.

"So you're inoculated from vacillating price points as well – you can lock in prices and grow it twice as quickly, because we can essentially play god with the light."

Read more at Financial Review