Novel urban strawberry farm gives first fruit
City agriculture scheme raises €4m for expansion in Paris
A company aiming to grow fresh, tasty fruit and veg “right down your street” has raised €4million to fund expansion and Paris strawberry fans can taste fresh fruit this month that is 0% pesticide, 0% GM, 0% pollution and no food miles.
The firm, Agricool, aims to allow modern city-dwellers to eat better than their parents, and avoid foods with more food miles than flavour, by using hydroponic farms in city-centre containers to test its ideas before going into production.
When Connexion first spoke to them in November 2015 Guillaume Fourdinier and Gonzague Gru were building the first prototype container on Gonzague’s parents’ farm in Pas-de-Calais. Several containers later they have 30 staff and 120 helper bumble bees who pollinate the plants in the warehouse test bed at La Courneuve, north of Paris.
Mr Fourdinier said: “Now we have signed everything we can start multiplying production of strawberries that are pesticide- free and that respect the planet.
“We have done hundreds of tests this past year, changing containers every two months to find the best layout, but still based on a 40ft refrigerated container. We can control every aspect of production, with LED lights and water sprays, right down to the pollination and they taste much better than those in shops.
“People have been ordering our strawberries since we started work on the prototypes and they will taste the first fruit this month as everything is the way we want it.
“We have been speaking to local food distribution groups such as La Ruche Qui Dit Oui to develop how we manage this and once this is running we will look at extending the range to include salad leaves and tomatoes.
“Eventually, we hope to offer containers as a franchise that people can site in a city-centre location and sell locally.”
