Love fresh, local food? Build Farmwalls!

"At the start of 2016, I made a decision to only pursue the things I love, while making an impact on this world. I quit my sales job and began the search for finding my natural aptitudes. Looking to my past, I was always passionate about building ecosystems. In my youth, that meant making fishtanks and building ponds for my turtles. Today, it’s translated into Farmwall.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve had an intense frustration with waste and unethical food practices. We have all the resources to produce food more in-line with nature, but we prioritize cost-cutting and time-saving over the environment. This was the beginning of our mission to transform cities into food producing ecosystems.

But creating a sustainable ecosystem where we can work and play in cohesion with nature, relies on a serious attitude change. To trigger this, we thought of designing a scaled down, indoor farm for cafes and restaurants. The thinking behind it was, If we have to start small, how can we have the largest reach? By growing fresh herbs and microgreens inside cafes and restaurants, we can reduce packaging waste and high food files while introducing quality and freshness into Melbourne's hospitality scene. Farmwalls are in essence, a communication tool to reconnect patrons with the origins of their food.

The Farmwall principle has endless possibilities, we’re starting off in hospitality, but our future places us in all sorts of markets. We’ve got a big vision and believe that through scale, we can really make a difference to redesign our cities to be food and water resilient, giving back to the people as well as the environment. We plan to build an urban aquaponic farm that delivers on the chef’s needs for local, sustainable produce while acting as a base for our educational, social and environmental programs.

We’ve got an amazing team, all driven by the same passion for sustainable food production. We cover a range of skills covering industrial design, sustainable architecture, culinary expertise, software development, engineering and commercial aquaponics. Through combining the best of our abilities to bring the vision to life, we’re on a strong trajectory to inspire and make a real difference.

We want to transform our cities into food producing ecosystems. To do this, we need to change the way we think about food by reconnecting consumers with the origins of what’s on their plate. We’re very excited to announce our first venue, Higher Ground in the heart of Melbourne’s CBD. It’s an award winning location known for its innovative menu and lush greenery. It’s the perfect spot for our launch! We also just signed the lease for a 1000sqm plot of land, a few kilometers from Melbourne CBD, for our urban aquaponic farm. This farm will support our local Farmwalls, and inspire more people who get to see first hand, the advantages of transforming our cities into food producing ecosystems."

Learn more about Farmwall's awesome journey on their crowdfunding campaign page:

Watch the Farmwall video for more: