Thanks to its partnership with AeroFarms, a vertical farm that’s just five miles from the Newark Airport, it can now serve salads, fruits, and vegetables that were being harvested when the passengers were lining up for the TSA.
“Imagine boarding a plane and enjoying a salad harvested locally, rather than shipped from thousands of miles away,” said Antony McNeil, Singapore Airlines’ director of food and beverage, said in a statement. “The only way to get fresher greens inflight is to pick them from your own garden.”
AeroFarms’ indoor farm is inside a former steel mill near the airport, and its vertical stacking methods allow the company to grow 390 acres’ worth of aeroponic produce in a single acre’s worth of space. The produce is all grown on a “specialty growing cloth medium”—not soil—and thanks to the carefully controlled conditions inside the farm, the plants mature much faster, sometimes in just a few days. Aeroponic farming also requires 95% less water than conventional methods. (There are also no herbicides, fungicides, or pesticides involved).
AeroFarms (Cre: AeroFarms).
According to AeroFarms, some of the dishes that are currently available on the Newark to Singapore route include “The Garden Green,” with asparagus, broccolini, avocado, hot smoked salmon, and AeroFarms mixed salad greens with a lemon vinaigrette; an heirloom tomato ceviche with cured Iberico ham and AeroFarms arugula; and soy poached chicken served with AeroFarms baby bok choi, zucchini ribbons, and sweet potatoes.
The next Singapore Airlines flight to get the AeroFarms treatment will be its JFK to Singapore route, and according to CNN, those ultra-fresh veggies might eventually make their way back to premium economy passengers too.
If you won’t be booking a business class ticket anytime soon, AeroFarms sells its produce to restaurants and retailers under the Dream Greens name. Honestly, this might be the first time anyone has ever wanted to recreate an in-flight meal at home.
Cre: Yahoo Lifestyle
Nguyen Mai Huong-COMM
