Target to install vertical farms in stores

In January, Target launched the Food + Future CoLab, a collaboration with design firm Ideo and the MIT Media Lab. One area of the team's research focuses on vertical farming, and Greg Shewmaker, one of Target’s entrepreneurs-in-residence at the CoLab, says they are planning to test the technology in a few Target stores to see how involved customers actually want to be with their food.

“The idea is that by next spring, we’ll have in-store growing environments,” he says.

During the in-store trials, people could potentially harvest their own produce from the vertical farms, or just watch as staff members pick greens and veggies to stock on the shelves.

Most vertical farms grow leafy greens, but the CoLab researchers are trying to figure out how to cultivate other crops as well.

“Because it's MIT, they have access to some of these seed banks around the world,” Shewmaker says, “so we're playing with ancient varietals of different things, like tomatoes that haven’t been grown in over a century, different kinds of peppers, things like that, just to see if it's possible.”

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