INTRODUCTION

GASTRO FARMS offers integrated agriculture systems tailored to the food service industry. We install and manage fully automated on-site organic farms that allow clients to gain full control over their food supply. Whether you serve ten-thousand or a million meals a year, GASTRO FARMS has the right farm-to-table solution to meet your needs. Our solutions are a synergy of software and hardware that integrate easily into the growing process to achieve higher cost efficiency, superior yields, consistent crop-cycles and improved quality of service. Grow hundreds of superior quality crops tailored to your chef’s specific requirements, fully automated and with minimum labour.

ORGANIC & SUSTAINABLE

We provide integrated solutions for resilient agriculture. Our nutrient delivery systems use natural microbiology and beneficial organisms to grow produce up to 4 times faster, with enhanced nutritional value, and without the need for synthetic chemicals and additives. We provide organic solutions for farm-to-table growers using hydroponics, aquaponics, and vertical farming techniques that cleverly utilises vertical grow space; up to 6000 plants can be grown within a 10m x 20m area.

One of the hardest tasks for restaurants today is to deliver high-quality meals consistently. When the quality starts to drop so do the clientele. Today’s consumer puts a premium on freshness, nutritional value, and accessibility. Customers demand fresher and less processed ingredients while also looking for unique dining experiences – putting new pressures on every sector of food service.

Local and on-site growing with integrated agriculture systems reduces usage of fossil fuels  and your carbon footprint, while saving production costs and the planet.

LOWER OPERATING COSTS:

GASTRO FARMS will eliminate your transport and cold storage costs associated with food delivery and storage. Your produce will be grown on-site right near to your restaurants, picked fresh, and prepared in a matter of minutes.  We reduce costs by eliminating the supply-chain, streamlining production to meet your restaurant’s specific needs, eliminating cold storage requirements and reducing overall wastage.

Our systems also help F&B managers maintain financial consistency and forecasting.

Restaurants who use GASTRO FARMS systems can expect an approximate 55% decrease in production costs. It takes just 4 weeks to setup, and another 6 weeks to reach full production. Within as little as 2.5 months you will be serving up top quality greens, herbs and vegetable produce.

HIGHER QUALITY:

We grow food with superior taste. GASTRO FARMS use a combination of modern agricultural techniques including aquaponics and hydroponics that delivers year-round high-quality produce. The superior quality and consistency of the food we grow delivers robust flavour, colour and nutrients, enabling your restaurants to deliver a higher-quality product consistently. In controlled agriculture hundreds of different crops can be grown to the highest quality standards throughout the year.

SUPERIOR NUTRITION:

The holy grail of a nutritional diet is the sufficient intake of micro-nutrients. Today’s farmland is heavily depleted of micro-nutrients due to overuse. Aqua/Hydro grow systems have verified third-party test results showing higher nutrient content levels than traditional farming practices (soil-based growing). Unlike traditional farming, GASTRO FARMS food systems use no soil and rely on organic seaweed fertilisers and fish effluent to produce a constant flow of natural micro-nutrients in our closed-loop systems.

TASTE/FLAVOUR:

Food grown in controlled environments are not subject to weather extremes, therefore it remains delicate, flavourful, and pure. We grow tender, delicate vegetables that burst with flavour due to their high nutrient levels.

APPEARANCE:

The vegetables we grow are always the cream of the crop. Blemishes that can be caused by animals, pests, or severe weather are all eliminated within a controlled growing environment. They are always colourful, appealing, and fresh.

TRANSPORT / LOGISTICS:

In Sri Lanka, vegetables travel 200km over many days and through many hands before being consumed. Nearly 75% of the price you pay for food accounts for transportation, fossil fuels, and packaging. With GASTRO FARMS, those costs are eliminated and the removal of carbon emissions an added savings. Food is grown on-site or nearby, picked and served fresh to customers. No transportation. No logistics. No packaging.

Farm to table within minutes.

LAND USE & SCALABILITY:

GASTRO FARMS use a fraction of the square footage of a traditional soil garden because we utilise vertical space. We use a combination of vertical farming, media beds, nutrient film technique (NFT) and Dutch buckets that requires a tenth of the space of traditional farming.  We can provide high-yield production almost anywhere – a greenhouse, a garage, backyard, roof terrace, garden or nearly any unused space.

Our clean room technology will safely retrofit any unused space for optimal controlled environment agriculture.

WORKFORCE DEVELOPMENT:

Many hoteliers and restaurateurs can utilise the benefits of a workforce development and staff enrichment programme. Your staff dives deeper into food education and bio-security skills, which they then bring to the food service. By understanding food production themselves, they are learning the stories which will then lead to interesting dialogue with customers about your food. GASTRO FARMS help innovative chefs create imaginative, colourful menus because they control the supply chain. These unique systems will generate a much richer front-of-house and back-of-house experience.

RISK MITIGATION:

By not using soil in our systems we eliminate soil borne pathogens and we further  reduces the probability of food borne illnesses and contamination by: removing warm-blooded organisms from the production chain, thereby eliminating the risk of e-coli and other such viruses; reducing the number of hands that touch your produce; and bringing stability to the supply chain through controlled environments. In short, you control access to your food supply and climate-proof your vegetable production.

FOOD SAFETY:

We control the growing environment, with no manure, no synthetic pesticides, and very limited interaction with human hands. We can configure your systems to exceed the most rigorous food safety requirements. Organic certification is possible.

LIVE FOODS

Live foods are foods that are consumed fresh, raw and/or in a condition as close as possible to their original, vibrant, living state. This distinction between living and dead foods may be unfamiliar to most of the public, but to many of today’s forward-thinking nutritional experts, it is a very real and important one. In fact, many nutritionists have long insisted that eating a diet rich in raw and other “live” foods is the single most important thing you can do to improve and preserve your health.