The tech firms branching into home veg growing
A family admiring their Plantaform smart indoor garden.
Veg eaters who put sustainability first are now catered for by several manufacturers worldwide of indoor gardens. No fewer than three examples were at the recent Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. One received a 2025 Best of Innovation in Food & AgTech award, and the other two were named as Honorees in that category.
Why is there demand for such items? There are clues in the product descriptions, with phrases such as "healthy eating", "no added toxins", "organic", "pesticide-free", and "sustainable". These products may therefore appeal to consumers who have lost trust in the conventional farming and retail systems.
Two of the three products at the CES 2025 show come from South Korea. One of them is Daedong's AI Indoor Garden Kit, and Daedong predicts that the urban farming population and urban agricultural market will grow, thanks to advances in the food-tech industry, the decline in the farming population, climate change, natural disasters, and the increase in horticulturists who enjoy growing “companion (pet) plants.
This is, in fact, part of government policy in South Korea, with the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs planning to grow the domestic urban farming population to three million by 2027, it has already increased by nearly 50% from about 1.31 million in 2015 to about 1.96 million in 2022.
Indoor gardens are an interesting diversification for Daedong, which is the No 1 agricultural machinery company in Korea, and the manufacturer of Kioti brand tractors for overseas markets.
Its indoor gardens are part of its "future agriculture" division.
Designed to integrate with other home appliances and kitchen decor, it features easy-to-use cultivation trays suitable for all ages. It enables anyone to cultivate crops they need at home.
Once a seed capsule is placed in the growing station, the device automatically controls everything from the growing method to the growing environment and also monitors the growth rate.
Automation includes easy checking by the user of when the crop is ready for harvest.
Daedong expects that "even novice farmers in urban areas will be able to easily cultivate crops in the city and indoors rather than on a farm, spreading the joy and value of agriculture".
Daedong’s AI garden kit can grow more than 40 varieties of leafy vegetables, herbs, flowers, and fruits, as well as other functional natural plants. The company says it ultimately plans to provide "a personalised food service focused on health from a food tech perspective".
Also from South Korea, the Midbar company's AirFarm is also a 2025 CES Food & AgTech honoree. It is a "smart farm" for food production anywhere, anytime. It converts water vapour into water and sprays it on the crop roots, thus reducing by 99% the amount of water used in conventional farming.
You can inflate your flat-packed Airfarm and start growing crops within a day, offering sustainable farming in environments ranging from deserts to densely populated cities where normal food cultivation is impossible (providing food for refugees is one of the applications envisaged).
However, it was the more kitchen-orientated Plantaform smart indoor garden that won a Best of Innovation prize at CES in Las Vegas, where more than 141,000 attendees viewed the products of more than 4,500 exhibitors, billed as the world's gathering place for all who thrive on the business of consumer technology.
Made in Canada, the Plantaform smart indoor garden is already established on the market, whereas the two South Korean products were only recently launched.
For $500, you can buy a Rejuvenate smart indoor garden from Plantaform that makes all-year-round growing of fresh and organic herbs, vegetables, and edible flowers easy. Rejuvenate functions without sunlight or natural soil, you add only water and nutrients. It monitors the water level, temperature, lighting, and growing conditions, for foolproof gardening.
It uses innovative fog technology to grow plants (NASA's "fogponics" technology). You can connect it to your smartphone to access and control all of its features, and for harvesting advice.
