You may or may not remember the news about the world’s first floating farm in late 2017, but now the farm has finally welcomed its first cows, 32 red-pied cows. The cows are doing well and are not seasick.
The Floating Farm in Rotterdam is a world’s first and is extremely innovative. It’s 27m2 and counts three levels. The lower level, on the floating base, houses the factories and a visitor’s area and shop. The factories will process the raw cow milk, rainwater collected from the roof and cow urine and manure. Once processed, the manure will be used as fertiliser to grow feed for the cows.
The second level consists of a cow garden, a robot for food distribution, one to clean up manure and another for milking. There is also a visitor’s lookout on this level. Next to the farm, you will find floating solar panels in the shape of a milk bottle. At night, the milk bottle will light up one row at a time, so it looks like the bottle is being filled up- cool, right?
As the farm aims to be as circular as possible, the cows’ feed will consist of waste products for around 80 percent. This includes things such as grass from football fields, grains from breweries, potato peels and bran from mills in Schiedam. Grass will also be produced on site for the cows using LED technology.
The farm will be producing and processing milk and yoghurt and this will then be sold in regional Lidl supermarkets. If you visit the farm, you’ll also be able to get raw milk from the tap. However, an exact date for when you can expect to find these products in the supermarket or even visit the farm is not yet known.