Stallgrün: From pigsty to indoor farming

Thorsten has been familiar with farming since childhood. He grew up on his family’s pig-fattening farm in Borken, initially completed an apprenticeship as a marketing specialist and then went on to study business informatics in Münster. During his studies, it became increasingly clear to him that pig farming offered hardly any long-term prospects for many farms. “We felt a certain lack of prospects on our farm because pig farming no longer offered us any future prospects,” says Thorsten, describing the situation.

In his search for a solution, setting up a business wasn’t even on his mind at first. Rather, Thorsten wanted to enable his father to continue running the farm. It soon became clear, however, that this problem was by no means an isolated case. Thousands of farmers face the same challenge: what will happen to their empty pigsties?

It was clear to Thorsten that these buildings had to be more than just unused space. The idea arose to transform former pigsties into a new business venture. Together with Judith, he eventually developed this into ‘Stallgrün’ – a system that enables the cultivation of herbs and vegetables in former pigsties, thereby opening up new economic prospects for farmers.

To begin with, Thorsten and Judith tested an existing indoor farming facility. However, it soon became apparent that this was not designed to meet the requirements of former pigsties. It could neither be run profitably nor integrated practically into day-to-day farming operations. The pair therefore decided to develop their own system – with a clear focus on cost-effectiveness and ease of use for farmers.

Today, former pigsties can be converted and put to further use with relatively little effort.

Stallgrün does not just supply the technology. A key component of the concept is digital cultivation logs, which contain all the settings for lighting, irrigation, fertilisation and climate control in a single app. Farmers simply select which crop they wish to grow – the control system takes care of the rest automatically.

This means that herbs, lettuces and various leafy vegetables, amongst other things, can be produced regionally all year round. Furthermore, Stallgrün shares its own experience in marketing and sales with the farmers. This is because the entire process is already being carried out on Thorsten’s family farm – from sowing to selling to local supermarkets.

Following its successful implementation on the family farm, the focus is now on scaling up. Stallgrün aims to enable as many farmers as possible to get started with indoor farming and to put disused barns to good use once again. At the same time, the aim is to boost regional food production and make the agricultural sector less reliant on imports.