Reshaping Agriculture: Inside InvertiGro's Indoor Vertical Farms

Once a fashion warehouse, InvertiGro has now replaced clothes with rows of fresh produce, with the scents of basil, strawberries and bok choy filling the air under the soft glow of futuristic purple lights.

Glimpse brought together 40 people for an exclusive tour of indoor vertical farm company InvertiGro during Sydney’s inaugural Climate Action Week. We got an insightful presentation from their CEO Paul Millett and a behind-the-scenes tour of their indoor vertical farms.

Paul shared some shocking statistics that highlight the inefficiency of our food systems — —50% of vegetables never reach their final destination, and 25% don’t even make it off the farm. That’s a staggering amount of waste before produce even hits supermarket shelves.

InvertiGro’s solution is their sustainable and efficient indoor growing systems to allow for crops from leafy greens, medicinal plants, mushrooms, to strawberries to be grown indoors. 

Their InvertiCube products are modular sealed cubes that can be installed almost anywhere from inner-city basements to warehouses in rural locations. Their InvertiWalls are productive greenwalls that can grow food at places like restaurants and hospitals.

InvertiGro doesn’t aim to “replace” the traditional system of growing crops on land, in fact, Paul encourages farmers to grow what they can using traditional methods and use InvertiGro to grow crops that can’t be grown in their local environment or are not in season. That makes a lot of sense to grow locally rather than flying in produce across the world when crops aren’t in season.

Paul listed a variety of other benefits of using InvertiGro from not needing chemical pesticides, greater food security, controlling quality issues, to using less land, less water and less waste.

Whilst many of us were entertained by taking hairnet selfies in front of glowing microgreens, all of us left the tour inspired by their solution to tackle global food and sustainability challenges.

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