Hospitals in the United States have a critical opportunity to educate patients and inspire healthy dietary changes, and yet, they aren’t exactly known for offering an abundance of healthy food, let alone fresh greens. That could change, if Babylon Micro-Farms has anything to say about it. The company’s indoor vertical growing setups are designed to take the work out of farm work, requiring just two hours of labor per week on average, Babylon CEO Marc Oshima told TriplePundit.
The company’s hydroponic micro-farms include the equipment for growing greens and software that eliminates the need for extensive horticultural knowledge. The software is the brains behind the operation, Oshima said. It controls the lights, nutrients and water within the farm. When it’s time to plant seedlings or harvest greens, an app alerts the owner.
“We could take someone who has limited knowledge about horticulture or agriculture and make them have a green thumb,” Oshima said. “The training materials are very accessible. We have videos, we have content, and then we’re guiding them with the app. So it’s very intuitive.”
If something goes wrong, expert support is available. Data from the farms feeds into a platform at Babylon’s office, allowing the company to keep track of what’s going on and plan to upgrade and scale up each system, Oshima said. The level of automation sets the micro-farms apart from other indoor growing options.
The farms are designed to be aesthetically pleasing to help promote healthier eating, too. “You eat with your eyes, right? So the idea is that these units have been designed specifically not just to go into the kitchen, but into the dining room … or the reception or into lobbies,” Oshima said. “Seeing something green and vital, it just creates this really amazing halo effect. The better part about it though, is you get a chance to eat and have that immediate connection.”
Babylon is putting all of this together to help hospitals and senior living facilities make healthier eating an appetizing option. So far, 80 hospitals and senior living facilities have micro-farms, including multiple Mayo Clinic campuses. Residents of the senior facilities are eating 35 percent more leafy greens than they were before the installations, which is especially impactful considering how ingrained people’s dietary habits can become with age, Oshima said.
Hospitals currently use the fresh produce in their cafes, a big step up considering how common it is to have fast food restaurants on campus. But, integrating greens grown in the micro-farms into patient meals is part of the larger vision, so Babylon hired a dietician and is working with institutions to make that possible.
“For the hospitals, it’s about bringing that freshness, that story,” Oshima said. “One of the things that we really under-appreciate in the [food] industry is around nutrient density, nutritional value. This idea of hyperlocal allows us to harvest at peak flavor and peak nutrition.”
Indoor micro-farms can produce those hyperlocal options year-round, regardless of seasons and weather, providing reliability for hospital chefs. “When we think about healthcare, the needs, it’s every day,” Oshima said. “This allows us to have that integration … both for the patients, but also then for the staff, so there’s this consistency in terms of scheduling and what they need to do.”
Whether the produce is used for cafes or patient meals, growing on-site with vertical hydroponics means less food waste since the greens are picked to order and are not transported long distances. The farms also use 96 percent less water than traditional crops, Oshima said. Plus, they require less fertilizer and no pesticides.
Over 45 different crops are can be planted in the micro-farms, including lettuces, leafy greens, micro-greens, herbs and even edible flowers. But some plants, like larger vegetables aren’t well suited for the vertical growing style.
Babylon’s farms are catching on, the company just made the annual Inc. 5000 list of the fastest-growing private companies in the U.S. Still, the biggest barrier to reaching more healthcare systems is awareness. At a recent healthcare event, 85 percent of attendees had yet to hear of the company, Oshima said.
Babylon isn’t deterred. “We think this is the nexus of what’s coming to dining,” Oshima said. “This marriage of sustainability, this marriage of nutrition, the marriage of accessibility.”
