Urban Farm Shop concept rendering – credit, LocalDutch
In the city of The Hague, a Dutch agri-tech firm has had the bright idea of combining a greenhouse grow operation with a grocery and delivery business.
Called LocalDutch, their idea is that the greenhouse grocers will integrate on-site food production with direct-to-consumer retail and local delivery in a single location, hoping the result will reduce transportation costs and food waste.
LocalDutch is calling its idea Urban Farm Shops, and believe the concept is straightforward and scalable—produce fresh vegetables year-round, sell them locally, and build a social meeting point around food that is grown in the community.
That local focus matters in parts of the United States, the Caribbean and Africa where fresh produce can still be hard to access and supply chains often rely on long-distance transport.
Urban Farm Shops would generate revenue through direct retail sales, Community Supported Agriculture (SCA) memberships, and last-mile delivery partnerships, allowing flexibility for every local market while maintaining a consistent operational backbone.
“What we are bringing to the United States is truly Dutch technology, applied in a way that is both effective and easy to scale,” said Arne Spliet, co-founder of LocalDutch, in a press release. “In a sector where skilled greenhouse climate specialists are scarce, our system automates much of that work. That helps ensure consistently successful local production—and that is exactly what many communities around the world urgently need.”
If anyone is wondering why this hasn’t been done before, LocalDutch claims that at least one major barrier for high-performing greenhouses is expertise: keeping a stable, optimal climate requires specialist knowledge, and those professionals are scarce.
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LocalDutch says its answer is automation. Its system uses an indoor climate “autopilot,” managed centrally through AI and cloud services, so individual locations can run consistently without relying on rare in-depth climate specialists on site.
So far the idea—ambitious in that it doesn’t target LocalDutch’s home market—has received substantial interest from investors, with over $68 million in funding proposals received so far, the company says.
In February 2025, LocalDutch received a $40,000 grant from Pennsylvania’s Agricultural Innovation Program to support its automated greenhouse model.
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