evolve.ag

A European supermarket is growing 900,000 bags of salad on the roof and selling it downstairs. Meanwhile in America, we now have nearly 12,000 confirmed and probable cases of an explosive diarrhea parasite, and the exact source still hasn't been confirmed. Local systems have traceability built in. Germany's largest supermarket chain, REWE, is taking it to a whole new level: REWE opened Europe's first supermarket with a farm on the roof back in 2021. That store grows fish and basil together right above the shopping aisles, through an aquaponics system where fish waste fertilizes the basil and uses roughly 90% less water than normal farming. Their newer store in Berlin grows over 900,000 bags of salad a year on the roof, picked fresh every single day, and it only takes 23 days from seed to store shelf. The whole building runs on rainwater and heat the store would have wasted anyway, and it's even built from wood instead of concrete so it can be taken apart and reused someday instead of torn down. In America, we've built supply chains so long that when outbreaks occur, the source is nearly impossible to find. More than 11,000 domestic cyclosporiasis cases are now under report or investigation, and the source still hasn’t been definitively confirmed. That kind of confusion doesn't happen with a rooftop farm right up the stairs from your shopping cart. Let’s push our dollars toward transparency in America through buying local. If you need help finding a local farmer, check out the Localize App.