Between the pasta and deli counters in the middle of a Whole Foods is the last place you’d expect to find a contraption that simultaneously evokes a rave and a forest floor, let alone a brand-new way of farming. Yet Smallhold’s Minifarm is all of these things.
The sleek metal and plexiglass case holds blue, pink, and yellow oyster mushrooms. Their alien forms are striking enough, but bathing them in psychedelic hues to mimic lunar cycles and pumping in mist to keep them comfortably moist gives you your warehouse rave vibe. Slide open the door, close your eyes, and the rich scents of decay and growth mingle, transporting your mind to a childhood summer’s day in the woods, flipping over logs and churning last year’s leaf litter.
Smallhold, a Brooklyn-based company that builds high-tech, climate-controlled “Minifarms” that grow mushrooms, has been rolling out its wares in the New York area in restaurants and more recently, Whole Foods. The fungus-filled devices hardly look like farms in the traditional sense, but that’s kind of the point. A sliver of the growing urban agriculture movement, the Minifarms aim to cut the distance from farm to table, reduce food waste, and use tiny sensors to perfect growing mushrooms.