Imagine a world where consumers go to the supermarket and harvest their own produce from the shelves.
It's an idea Italian company Modula has put a lot of thought into and won an international award for.
Customers could walk up to a Modula Farm shopfront and pick their own strawberries.
Another 80 or 90 trays of strawberries would be growing out of sight in the front and rear of the machine.
Thanks to the machine's climate-controlled environment, these bio-cultivated strawberries would be chemical and pesticide free.
Modula area manager Federico Bertin said the Modula Farm on display at EIMA International in Italy last month was a special application of its product.
"This is the beginning of the project to do the vertical farm but it's an interesting idea," he said.
"In this case we cultivate strawberries and we produce the machine but this is a special direction of our machine because it is a version where we can control the temperature and the humidity of the system.
"We can extend the cultivation to other plants like melons and lettuce but we are concentrated on strawberries in this stage."
Modula manufactures automated vertical warehouses and has been in business since 1987.
The systems can be up to 60 metres in height and 4m in width.
These warehouses are used by agricultural machinery companies to house spare parts and components.
It also has a range of customers in the distribution, biochemical and fashion sectors.
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The Modula Farm was one of 25 machines to receive the title of Technical Innovation in a competition sponsored by the organisers of EIMA International, FederUnacoma.
Mr Bertin said the machine had come about in response to requests from the market and an automated vertical farm was a natural evolution of its product.
He also said the company's president, Franco Stefani, was a genius and nature lover.
