IKEA has debuted an indoor farm that grows greens three times faster than a garden

Rory Gardiner

IKEA is known for its flat-pack kitchen tables, islands, and cabinets.

Now the home furnishings retailer is experimenting with products that allow people to harvest food at home.

Space10, IKEA’s innovation lab, has designed a prototype of a mini-farm that can grow greens and herbs indoors.

Called Lokal, it uses a hydroponic farming system — allowing crops to grow on trays under LEDs in a climate-controlled box. Space10 debuted the device in September at the London Design Festival in Shoreditch.

Check it out below.

The Lokal farm lets anyone harvest greens indoors.

Rory Gardiner

Crops grow under LEDs instead of relying on natural sunlight.

Nicklas_Ingemann

This process allows the greens to grow approximately three times quicker than in an outdoor garden.

Nicklas_Ingemann

The Space10 team estimates that Lokol uses 90% less water than a traditional garden to produce the same amount of greens, since the crops grow at a faster rate.

Rory Gardiner

Space10 gave 2,000 free samples of Lokal microgreens to London Design Week attendees.

Rory Gardiner

The purpose was to see how Londoners felt about IKEA's experiment and food grown hydroponically in general. In a press release, the team said they were optimistic about the project.

Rory Gardiner

Michael La Cour, Managing Director of IKEA Food Services, said in a statement that Lokal still needs to be developed further before the company decides whether to sell it in stores.

Rory Gardiner

The Space10 team is now working on adding sensors to the growing trays, so that users can track how the greens grow using Google Home. Using machine learning, the sensor system could allow gardeners to learn how to improve the growing process.

Rory Gardiner

This isn't the first time IKEA has experimented with agriculture. In late 2016, Space10 launched
a flat-pack spherical garden called the Growroom that grows plants, veggies, and herbs.

IKEA made the Growroom's design plans open-source in February 2017.

'Lokal could help develop a new, local supply chain -- one that enables us to grow more food within our cities, and food that tastes great and is more nutritious, healthy and fresh all year round,' Guillaume Charny-Brunet, Director of Innovation Strategy at SPACE10, said.

Rory Gardiner

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