A Primer On Vertical Farming As The Industry Gains Steam

Rich Alternman

May 28, 2021

The modern concept of vertical farming was put forth in 1999 by Columbia University microbiologist Dickson Despommier, who along with his students, came up with a design of a skyscraper farm that could feed 50,000 people.

Since then, vertical farming has become a multi-billion-dollar industry. And it’s growing rapidly.

According to PitchBook data, nearly $1.9 billion of global venture capital was invested in indoor farming in 2020, nearly tripling investment in 2019.  And just this week, New York-based vertical farming startup Bowery Farming raised $300 million in its latest funding round, valuing the company at $2.3 billion.

Vertical farming growth may be accelerating at the ideal time, as concerns about population growth and climate change push the food industry to innovate to meet tomorrow’s challenges.

By 2050, around 68% of the world population is expected to live in urban areas, and this growth will lead to an increased demand for food. The use of vertical farming could play a role in preparing for such a challenge. At the same time, it could help restore forests depleted by commercialized agriculture and curb planet-warming emissions caused by farming and transportation. Agriculture and forestry alone account for about a quarter of the world’s greenhouse gases.

What is it?

Vertical farming is the practice of growing crops in vertically stacked layers as opposed to a single level, like a field or greenhouse.

Through the artificial control of temperature, light, humidity, and gases, food can be produced indoors in a way that optimizes plant growth and soilless farming techniques such as hydroponics, aquaponics, and aeroponics. The benefits of which are reliable, environmentally friendly, year-round crop production, significantly reduced water usage (by some estimates up to 95% less), efficient land use, and less exposure to chemicals and disease.

Among its downsides, vertical farms are costly to set up and operate and are too dependent on technologies that have yet to reach full maturity. Further, with its heavy reliance on electricity for lighting and climate control, it uses more energy than traditional farming methods and contributes to greenhouse gas emissions.

With that, the sector continues to innovate. And with vertical farming merely in its infancy, it’s reasonable to expect big things in the coming decades.

Investors certainly think so.

In fact, the global vertical farming market is projected to reach $12.77 billion by 2026, growing at a CAGR of 24.6%, according to Allied Market Research.

Some recent examples of vertical farming going mainstream include:

• Newark, N.J.-based AeroFarms planning to double its product offering at Whole Foods and, for Amazon Fresh, expanding from one to five distribution centers, increasing availability throughout the New York metropolitan area.

• Albertsons Cos. rolling out indoor-farmed produce from Bowery Farming to 275 Acme and Safeway stores in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic.

• The Kroger Co. rolling out produce from vertical farm 80 Acres Farms to more than 300 stores in Ohio, Indiana and Kentucky.

• Giant Eagle introducing more packaged greens products from vertical- and robotic-farming specialist Fifth Season to supermarkets in Pennsylvania and Ohio.

Cost barriers

While investors and environmentalists alike are excited by the prospects of vertical farms, the cost barriers are significant, around 20% to 30% higher than traditional farms.

With that, investors may not be able to live up to the hype they’ve created around the industry, and see their bubble burst before they have a chance to prove themselves, said IDTechEx analyst Michael Dent, in a Bloomberg News article. “If people are expecting world-changing progress and they don’t see it in the first two or three years — and what they see is high-quality salad — there’s a chance they might pull out their investment on the field and move on to the next thing.”

Vertical Farming Startup Oishii Raises $50m In Series A Funding

By Sian Yates

03/11/2021

Oishii, a vertical farming startup based in New Jersey, has raised $50 million during a Series A funding round led by Sparx Group’s Mirai Creation Fund II.

The funds will enable Oishii to open vertical strawberry farms in new markets, expand its flagship farm outside of Manhattan, and accelerate its investment in R&D.

“Our mission is to change the way we grow food. We set out to deliver exceptionally delicious and sustainable produce,” said Oishii CEO Hiroki Koga. “We started with the strawberry – a fruit that routinely tops the dirty dozen of most pesticide-riddled crops – as it has long been considered the ‘holy grail’ of vertical farming.”

“We aim to be the largest strawberry producer in the world, and this capital allows us to bring the best-tasting, healthiest berry to everyone. From there, we’ll quickly expand into new fruits and produce,” he added.

Oishii is already known for its innovative farming techniques that have enabled the company to “perfect the strawberry,” while its proprietary and first-of-its-kind pollination method is conducted naturally with bees.

The company’s vertical farms feature zero pesticides and produce ripe fruit all year round, using less water and land than traditional agricultural methods.

“Oishii is the farm of the future,” said Sparx Group president and Group CEO Shuhei Abe. “The cultivation and pollination techniques the company has developed set them well apart from the industry, positioning Oishii to quickly revolutionise agriculture as we know it.”

The company has raised a total of $55 million since its founding in 2016.

How Vertical Farms Are Revolutionizing Agribusiness

William Ramstein ・ 1 March 2021 ・ Vertical Farming

Urban planners are tasked with answering some pressing inquiries: how can farming be brought closer to consumers; is digital agriculture an essential ingredient for making cities smarter; and can vertical farming improve socio-economic disparities?

Key Takeaways:

• Vertical farming uses LED, Robotics and AI to bring vegetables closer to city dwellers.

• The total addressable market for vertical farming is estimated at around $700 billion.

• Spread, a Japanese vertical farm is profitable but most firms fail.

• Vertical farming is a great way to produce controlled supplies of a customized plant.

• Vertical farming struggles with electricity costs despite reducing carbon emissions.

What is vertical farming and why does it matter?
The bedrock characteristic of cryptocurrency technology is called decentralization, a sovereign and flexible organizational system led by a commune, and today other industries like farming are catching the bug. Farming needs to change its practices in order to meet ecological objectives set up by governments and decentralization could open the door to increasing food access and reducing carbon emissions from food transportation. Smart decentralized vertical farming implies using technology like digital platforms, robotics and artificial intelligence to bring food closer to the growing demand seen in cities.

Despite the difficulty of competing against the cost structure of traditional farming, vertical farming offers numerous advantages. It grants more yield per square meter and reduces waste in both carbon and water usage. The production of vegetables is made in large and often times un-used warehouses close to city centers thus cutting transportation costs and middlemen expenses. The supply is more easily controlled, protected, and priced regardless of global weather and plants are customized to local consumer preferences. Consumers are already paying a premium on farmer’s market products, so why not vertical farm products too?

Cases of vertical farming: Nigeria is one of the most promising African nations because of its age pyramid. But with a large young population comes questions around food and water access and today, more than 170 million Nigerians need prolonged and sustainable access to these resources. Nigeria currently imports $3.5 billion worth of food products while exporting only 1/7 of that figure. Fresh Direct is Nigeria’s first Hydroponics Company (growing crops without standard soil) that combines vertical farming to its business model to reduce the distance between cities and rural farming regions.

The firm is able to produce seven to 10 times the yields because of its stackable shipping containers, which use technologies such as drip irrigation, and cold storage. Direct Farming operates with a community mindset, with the goal to inspire more young farmers to set up shop in urban centers and become urban farmers. The company also trains and finances low-skilled workers into urban farmers and increases economic productivity in unemployed youth groups.

In Japan, a company called Spread is one of the world’s most sophisticated examples of vertical farming. Their factory mainly produces lettuce. Large robotic arms transplant lettuce seedlings into pots where they are left to grow under LED lights. Believe it or not, but the factory can produce 30,000 lettuce heads a day. CEO Shinji Inada boasts of being the only large-scale vertical farm that is profitable and hopes that more widespread adoption continues growing.

However, companies like Spread and A-Plus (another similar farm in Fukushima) struggle to lower unit economics because of their low-scale operations, and they find it hard to penetrate the traditional downstream sellers. When producing high-priced lettuce by the tonne, trucking goods to the local wholesaler does not work partly because vertical farming offers customized products for specific local needs, not necessarily for broad demand. These players have thus geared their focus towards international buyers like UAE to export their goods.

Is vertical farming there yet?
Most vertical farms have failed because of the high initial costs and high operational expenses of running robotic equipment. While sunlight is free, the energy cost of running LEDs is not. The solution could be to install renewable energies like solar panels and wind turbines. However, the fixed cost of that installation would inevitably factor into the end-product, or at least on the balance sheet as a liability assuming they keep prices reasonable for consumers.

While Mr. Inada can rightly boast of turning profits, most firms toss lettuce at a loss. The industry should see more growth ahead, however, with research group IDTechEx forecasting that annual sales of $700 million could more than double to $1.5 billion in 2030. There remain technological challenges though. While many competitors boast of successfully leveraging AI and robotics and filtration, new entrants have seen problems with watering automation systems, mold, and infestations (most players do not use pesticides).

Some analysts suggest that while the excitement around vertical farms makes sense, the farming style might just end up becoming just another way of farming amongst greenhouse and open sky farms. More specifically, vertical farming will focus on high-margin crops rather than commodities like bulk grains.

While the challenges of vertical farming are clear, every country has different needs and constraints. There is a large interest from smaller island countries like Singapore or Iceland, rich economies, and countries that have a higher propensity to import due to less arable lands. Britain is a good example of a country that meets the criteria and in the context of Brexit, it makes all the more sense because of import costs and independence constraints. A potential labor crisis could soon loom too assuming seasonal workers are denied entry into the country. Vertical farms only require one-third of the manpower to run and could therefore alleviate the industry.

 The market opportunity…According to research by Barclays Investment Bank, the market opportunity for vertical farms is large. Analysts estimate the size of the global fruit and vegetable market to be $1.2 trillion and the total addressable market for vertical farms to be $700 billion. The purchased energy use to produce 1kg of lettuce is 247-kilowatt hours far exceeding Netherland greenhouses’ 70-kilowatt hours consumption. With retailers being asked to meet more carbon-neutral objectives, some vertical farms believe they will be able to overcome their expense through increased demand and scale.

The pandemic has imposed many supply chains disruptions and labor shortages threatening food security in regions around the world relying heavily on imports. Vertical farming is recognized lately and since 2014, has seen a flow of funds equal to $1.8 billion according to data group Dealroom. SoftBank fundraised $140 million into Plenty, a start-up, and countries like Abu Dhabi want to build farms in deserts.

Some of the top players in the global farming market include Vertical Farm Systems (Australia), American Hydroponics (US), Agrilution (Germany), Green Sense Farms (US), Everlight Electronics (Taiwan), Koninklijke Philips (Netherlands), Sky Greens (Singapore), Illumitex (US), Urban Crop (Belgium), Aerofarms (US) and InFarm (Germany).

Plenty Ranked Number One on Prestigious FoodTech 500

SOUTH SAN FRANCISCO, Calif.

Plenty, the flavor-first vertical farming company with a mission to improve the lives of people, plants, and the planet, today announced its #1 ranking on the esteemed Forward Fooding 2020 FoodTech 500.

Referred to as the “Fortune 500 list of agrifood companies,” the FoodTech 500 highlights global entrepreneurial talent at the intersection of food, technology and sustainability. Forward Fooding’s proprietary algorithms evaluate a business on its size, digital footprint and sustainability as measured against the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Plenty came in first on the ranked list of 500 and out of a total of 2,000 nominees.

“It is an honor to be included on the FoodTech 500 and we are thrilled to be ranked first,” said Nate Storey, co-founder and CSO of Plenty. “The world is in need of an agricultural revolution, and there are many exciting areas where innovators are changing the future of food. At Plenty, we’re focused on using our proprietary, scalable vertical farming technology to deliver the freshest, most favorable produce year-round, while preserving our most precious resources.”

Plenty grows pesticide-free, non-GMO produce that tastes like it was fresh-picked from the garden because it was. The company ships from its farm to local stores every day. The farm’s controlled environment means the company can grow leafy greens year-round, regardless of the season. Plenty’s leafy greens are so clean, there is no need to wash because there is nothing to wash away - no bleaches, chemicals, soil or pesticides. The company wants the first person to touch their produce to be the consumer opening the package in their kitchen. Plenty plants are cultivated in an optimum growing environment, reaching peak flavors and nutrient value year-round, across every harvest.

The world is running out of usable land for growing crops and the global water supply is under severe threat of depletion. Plenty was founded on the need to create a more sustainable way to grow food using less land and water. Plenty yields hundreds of acres of crops in a building the size of a big box retailer, without cutting down a single tree, and using a fraction of the water required in the field. It’s San Francisco-based farm uses 100% renewable energy, and its greens are stored in 100% recyclable packaging and shipped locally to minimize the transportation footprint. Plenty’s data analytics and machine learning capabilities deliver 200 years’ worth of data each year, helping to quickly iterate and improve farm yield, quality and efficiency.

“The FoodTech 500 was created to shine a spotlight on the leading global innovators across the AgriFoodTech ecosystem, from farm to fork, who are making impactful solutions to better our food system,” said Alessio D’Antino, Forward Fooding founder and CEO. “This year’s list focused on understanding the driving factors behind the leading companies’ success and innovation, and we were thrilled to learn more about the top industry players, like Plenty, that are transforming our food system.”

The list represents 38 technology domains within the AgriFood space, including the broad categories of alternative proteins, farm management and precision farming, and vertical/indoor farming. The full ranking and more data about the 2020’s FoodTech 500 and its methodology can be found here.

About ForwardFooding

Forward Fooding is the world’s first collaborative platform for the food & beverage industry via FoodTech Data Intelligence and corporate-startup collaboration. Data services include The FoodTech Data Navigator data subscription service and facilitating corporate-startup collaboration through bespoke innovation programs and FoodTech consultancy.

To learn more visit: www.ForwardFooding.com

About Plenty

Plenty is an American farming technology company that frees agriculture from the constraints of land, weather, seasons, time, distance, pests, natural disasters, and climate. The company’s plant scientists, engineers, and farmers have developed its indoor vertical farming technology to grow nutrient-rich and pesticide-free plants with extraordinary flavor. The Plenty platform is designed to grow multiple crops in a building the size of a retail box store, yielding hundreds of acres using a fraction of the water and other precious resources. Plenty's flagship farm and headquarters are located in South San Francisco, and the company operates the largest of its kind Research and Development farm in Laramie, Wyoming. Plenty is currently building the world's highest-output, vertical, indoor farm in Compton, California.

View source version on businesswire.com:https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210301005069/en/

CONTACT: Jane Gideon

Press@plenty.ag

KEYWORDS: CALIFORNIA UNITED STATES NORTH AMERICA

INDUSTRY KEYWORD: ENVIRONMENT TECHNOLOGY OTHER TECHNOLOGY FOOD/BEVERAGE AGRICULTURE SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT RETAIL NATURAL RESOURCES SCIENCE OTHER SCIENCE

SOURCE: Plenty

Copyright Business Wire 2021.

PUB: 03/01/2021

http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210301005069/en

A New Searchable Directory Focuses On Women Innovators In Agrifoodtech

Connie Bowen & Amy Wu

Image credit: Women in Agriculture Summit

Editor’s note: Amy Wu is the founder of From Farms to Incubators in Salinas, California, and Connie Bowen is the director of innovation and investment at AgLaunch in Memphis, Tennessee. 

Despite a global pandemic, agrifoodtech startups received $30.5 billion in investment in 2020 – a big increase from the $20.2 billion raised in 2019, according to AgFunder’s 2021 Agrifoodtech Investment Report. Previously emerging technology trends rapidly accelerated in the midst of increasing pressures on global food supply chains. These include everything from robotics and automation to fill the gap of human labor, to business models that enable producers to capture a higher percentage of dollars by selling their product directly to consumers.

Innovations and technologies are also tackling big impact issues such as food security and food waste. This is excellent news for investors, entrepreneurs, and growers who debated the viability of what was once a fledgeling sector.

But everywhere we look, the gender inequity in the distribution of opportunities and resources is painfully obvious. Looking at the 10 largest agrifoodtech financings in 2020, 100% of the founders of these 10 companies are men. Of the top 20 financings, just two are known to have women co-founders.

In 2019, only 7% of investment money that went into agrifoodtech deals went to startups founded by women, according to a 2019 report — ‘Money Where Our Mouths Are’ (MWOMA) — released by AgFunder, Karen Karp & Partners, and The Counter in collaboration with S2G Ventures. The data aren’t yet available for 2020 – but watch this space! 

The bottom line is that while the number of women founders, leaders, and innovators in the agrifoodtech sector — which extends into agbio and foodbio — continues to grow, the voices (and exposure) of women in the industry remain few and far between.

Challenge often creates opportunity and this is what a handful of women in agrifoodtech saw when they independently began collecting the names of women in the sector into a list simply because no such list existed. The women included agtech entrepreneurs, investors, and journalists who write about agrifoodtech. In 2020, they became aware of each others’ lists and decided to combine forces and merge them into a single directory.

Today, we’re launching the ‘Womxn in AgTech Directory’ – a searchable Airtable directory that lists the names and social media platforms of womxn founders and leaders in agrifoodtech in the US and internationally. This list is the result of a collaboration between women leaders in agtech including Connie Bowen (AgLaunch Initiative), Amy Wu (From Farms to Incubators), Allison Kopf (Artemis Ag), Pam Marrone (Marrone Bio Innovations), and Louisa Burwood-Taylor (AgFunder, AFN, MWOMA), and we hope that you’ll get involved, too.

Alison Kopf, the founder and CEO of Artemis Ag, says she was motivated to start a list in 2018 “because we have a stark vacancy of diverse voices on panels and events in our industry and wanted to elevate women to the table, especially when in ag — mostly corporate ag — there are already strong women voices at the top.”

“I want to see more women and black, indigenous, and other people of color starting companies in ag and in general,” she added.

Pam Marrone, the founder of Marrone Bio Innovations, a Nasdaq-listed company in the agbio space, had an Excel sheet where she’d been compiling whatever names she came across. Over the years it has evolved from handfuls to dozens.

“With more and more women jumping into agtech and starting companies, it is critical to track the progress and to network with each other and provide support and mentoring. In addition, this list can help those organizing conferences who are looking to diversify the speakers and panels,” Marrone said.

Louisa Burwood-Taylor says that, as a journalist, she wants to contribute to building a solid data set that connects agtech with gender to solutions to gender inequality. While there are articles, columns, and anecdotal evidence that shed light on this topic, unfortunately, there is a lack of statistics.

“There’s so little data to prove how or why gender biases persist, so I’m keen to create a community where more can be shared, learned, and reported to help change that,” she said. Through MWOMA, Burwood-Taylor is working on bringing more data to light to help change investor and entrepreneur behaviors.

We hope that this directory can serve as a one-stop-shop for entrepreneurs — in and outside of agtech — for growers and investors to connect with, learn from, hire, and invest in women in agtech.

We hope that conference organizers will find it and consider adding more women as speakers, that investors and VC firms will find the list and take a deep dive into the companies, and growers will connect with founders through this portal. Finally, we believe that by working as a collective we can create a paradigm shift – more women can enter this space and will be encouraged to enter this space.

The directory will be made live today on From Farms to Incubators and is visible here. Women can add (or update) their names and info through a short survey here.

Little Leaf Farms Raises $90M to Grow Its Greenhouse Network

by Jennifer Marston

Image from: Little Leaf Farms

Massachusetts-based Little Leaf Farms has raised $90 million in a debt and equity financing round to expand its network of hydroponic greenhouses on the East Coast. The round was led by Equilibrium Capital as well as founding investors Bill Helman and Pilot House Associates. Bank of America also participated.

Little Leaf Farms says the capital is “earmarked” to build new greenhouse sites along the East Coast, where its lettuce is currently available in about 2,500 stores. 

The company already operates one 10-acre greenhouse in Devins, Massachusetts. Its facility grows leafy greens using hydroponics and a mixture of sunlight supplemented by LED-powered grow lights. Rainwater captured from the facility’s roof provides most of the water used on the farm. 

According to a press release, Little Leaf Farms has doubled its retail sales to $38 million since 2019. And last year, the company bought180 acres of land in Pennsylvania on which to build an additional facility. Still another greenhouse, slated for North Carolina, will serve the Southeast region of the U.S. 

Little Leaf Farms joins the likes of Revol Greens, Gotham Greens, AppHarvest, and others in bringing local(ish) greens to a greater percentage of the population. These facilities generally pack and ship their greens on the day of or day after harvesting, and only supply retailers within a certain radius. Little Leaf Farms, for example, currently servers only parts of Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, New York, and New Jersey. 

The list of regions the company serves will no doubt lengthen as the company builds up its greenhouse network in the coming months.

Agritech: Precision Farming With AI, IoT and 5G

Image from: Photo by Mohd Izwan Mohd Nazam/The Edge

For a company that grows and delivers vegetables, Boomgrow Productions Sdn Bhd’s office is nothing like a farm, or even a vertical farm.

Where farms are bedecked with wheelbarrows, spades and hoes, Boomgrow’s floor plan is akin to a co-working space with a communal island table, several cubicles, comfortable armchairs, a cosy hanging rattan chair and a glass-walled conference room in the middle.

At a corner, propped up along a walkway leading to a rectangular chamber fitted with grow lights, are rows of support stilts with hydroponic planters developed in-house and an agricultural technologist perched on a chair, perusing data. “This is where some of the R&D work happens,” says Jay Dasen, co-founder of the agritech start-up.

But there is a larger farm where most of the work behind this high-tech initiative is executed. Located a stone’s throw from the city centre in Ampang is a 40ft repurposed shipping container outfitted with perception technologies and artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities that mimic the ideal environment to produce more than 50,000kg of vegetables a year.

Stacked in vertical layers, Boomgrow’s vegetables are grown under artificial lights with Internet of Things (IoT) sensors to detect everything from leaf discolouration to nitrate composition. This is coupled with AI and machine learning algorithms.

Boomgrow is the country’s first 5G-connected vertical farm. With the low latency and larger bandwidth technology, the start-up is able to monitor production in real time as well as maintain key para­meters, such as temperature and humidity, to ensure optimal growth conditions.

When Jay and her co-founders, K Muralidesan and Shan Palani, embarked on this initiative six years ago, Boomgrow was nowhere near what it is today.

The three founders got together hoping to do their part in building a more sustainable future. “I’ve spent years advising small and large companies on sustainability, environmental and social governance disclosures. I even embarked on a doctorate in sustainability disclosure and governance,” says Jay.

“But I felt a deep sense of disconnect because while I saw companies evolving in terms of policies, processes and procedures towards sustainability, the people in those organisations were not transforming. Sustainability is almost like this white noise in the background. We know it’s important and we know it needs to be done, but we don’t really know how to integrate it into our lives.

“That disconnect really troubled me. When we started Boomgrow, it wasn’t a linear journey. Boomgrow is something that came out of meaningful conversations and many years of research.”

Shan, on the other hand, was an architect who developed a taste for sustainable designs when he was designing modular structures with minimal impact on their surroundings between regular projects. “It was great doing that kind of work. But I was getting very dissatisfied because the projects were customer-driven, which meant I would end up having debates about trivial stuff such as the colour of wall tiles,” he says.

As for Murali, the impetus to start Boomgrow came from having lived overseas — while working in capital markets and financial services — where quality and nutritious produce was easily available.

Ultimately, they concluded that the best way to work towards their shared sustainability goals was to address the imminent problem of food shortage.

“By 2050, the world’s population is expected to grow to 9.7 billion people, two-thirds of whom will be in Asia-Pacific. Feeding all those people will definitely be a huge challenge,” says Jay. 

“The current agricultural practice is not built for resilience, but efficiency. So, when you think of farming, you think of vast tracts of land located far away from where you live or shop.

“The only way we could reimagine or rethink that was to make sure the food is located closer to consumers, with a hyperlocal strategy that is traceable and transparent, and also free of pesticides.”

Having little experience in growing anything, it took them a while to figure out the best mechanism to achieve their goal. “After we started working on prototypes, we realised that the tropics are not designed for certain types of farming,” says Jay. 

“And then, there is the problem of harmful chemicals and pesticides everywhere, which has become a necessity for farmers to protect their crops because of the unpredictable climate. We went through many iterations … when we started, we used to farm in little boxes, but that didn’t quite work out.”

They explored different methodologies, from hydroponics to aquaponics, and even started growing outdoors. But they lost a lot of crops when a heat wave struck.

That was when they started exploring more effective ways to farm. “How can we protect the farm from terrible torrential rains, plant 365 days a year and keep prices affordable? It took us five years to answer these questions,” says Jay.

Even though farmers all over the world currently produce more than enough food to feed everyone, 820 million people — roughly 11% of the global population — did not have enough to eat in 2018, according to the World Health Organization. Concurrently, food safety and quality concerns are rising, with more consumers opting for organically produced food as well as safe foods, out of fear of harmful synthetic fertilisers, pesticides, herbicides and fungicides.

According to ResearchAndMarkets.com, consumer demand for global organic fruit and vegetables was valued at US$19.16 billion in 2019 and is anticipated to expand at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 6.5% by 2026.

Meanwhile, the precision farming market was estimated to be US$7 billion in 2020 and is projected to reach US$12.8 billion by 2025, at a CAGR of 12.7% between 2020 and 2025, states MarketsandMarkets Research Pte Ltd.

Malaysia currently imports RM1 billion worth of leafy vegetables from countries such as Australia, China and Japan. Sourcing good and safe food from local suppliers not only benefits the country from a food security standpoint but also improves Malaysia’s competitive advantage, says Jay.

Unlike organic farming — which is still a soil-based method — tech-enabled precision farming has the advantage of catering for increasing demand and optimum crop production with the limited resources available. Moreover, changing weather patterns due to global warming encourage the adoption of advanced farming technologies to enhance farm productivity and crop yield.

Boomgrow’s model does not require the acres of land that traditional farms need, Jay emphasises. With indoor farms, the company promises a year-round harvest, undisturbed by climate and which uses 95% less water, land and fuel to operate.

Traditional farming is back-breaking labour. But with precision technology, farmers can spend less time on the farm and more on doing other things to develop their business, she says.

Boomgrow has secured more than RM300,000 in funding via technology and innovation grants from SME Corporation Malaysia, PlaTCOM Ventures and Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation, and is on track to build the country’s largest indoor farms.

Image from: Boomgrow

The company got its chance to showcase the strength of its smart technology when Telekom Malaysia Bhd (TM) approached it to be a part of the telco’s Smart Agriculture cluster in Langkawi last October.

“5G makes it faster for us to process the multiple data streams that we need because we collect data for machine learning, and then AI helps us to make decisions faster,” Jay explains.

“We manage the farm using machines to study inputs like water and electricity and even measure humidity. All the farm’s produce is lab-tested and we can keep our promise that there are no pesticides, herbicides or any preserving chemicals. We follow the food safety standards set by the EU, where nitrate accumulation in plant tissues is a big issue.”

With TM’s 5G technology and Boomgrow’s patent-pending technology, the latter is able to grow vegetables like the staple Asian greens and highland crops such as butterhead and romaine lettuce as well as kale and mint. While the company is able to grow more than 30 varieties of leafy greens, it has decided to stick to a selection of crops that is most in demand to reduce waste, says Jay.

As it stands, shipping containers are the best fit for the company’s current endeavour as containerised modular farms are the simplest means of bringing better food to local communities. However, it is also developing a blueprint to house farms in buildings, she says.

Since the showcase, Boomgrow has started to supply its crops to various hotels in Langkawi. It rolled out its e-commerce platform last year after the Movement Control Order was imposed. 

“On our website, we promise to deliver the greens within six hours of harvest. But actually, you could get them way earlier. We harvest the morning after the orders come in and the vegetables are delivered on the same day,” says Jay.

Being mindful of Boomgrow’s carbon footprint, orders are organised and scheduled according to consumers’ localities, she points out. “We don’t want our delivery partners zipping everywhere, so we stagger the orders based on where consumers live. 

“For example, all deliveries to Petaling Jaya happen on Thursdays, but the vegetables are harvested that morning. They are not harvested a week before, three days before or the night before. This is what it means to be hyperlocal. We want to deliver produce at its freshest and most nutritious state.”

Plans to expand regionally are also underway, once Boomgrow’s fundraising exercise is complete, says Jay. “Most probably, this will only happen when the Covid-19 pandemic ends.”

To gain the knowledge they have today, the team had to “unlearn” everything they knew and take up new skills to figure what would work best for their business, says Jay. “All this wouldn’t have been possible if we had not experimented with smart cameras to monitor the condition of our produce,” she laughs.

Vertical Farming ‘At a Crossroads’

Building the right business model to balance resource usage with socio-economic conditions is crucial to capturing new markets, say speakers ahead of Agri-TechE event

Image from: Fruitnet

Although growing crops all year round with Controlled Environment Agriculture (CEA) has been proposed as a method to localize food production and increase resilience against extreme climate events, the efficiency and limitations of this strategy need to be evaluated for each location. 

That is the conclusion of research by Luuk Graamans of Wageningen University & Research, a speaker at the upcoming Agri-TechE event on CEA, which takes place on 25 February.

His research shows that integration with urban energy infrastructure can make vertical farms more viable. Graamans’ research around the modelling of vertical farms shows that these systems are able to achieve higher resource use efficiencies, compared to more traditional food production, except when it comes to electricity. 

Vertical farms, therefore, need to offer additional benefits to offset this increased energy use, Graamans said. One example his team has investigated is whether vertical farms could also provide heat.

“We investigated if vertical farms could provide not just food for people living in densely populated areas and also heat their homes using waste heat. We found that CEA can contribute to stabilizing the increasingly complex energy grid.”

Diversification

This balance between complex factors both within the growing environment and wider socio-economic conditions means that the rapidly growing CEA industry is beginning to diversify with different business models emerging.

Jack Farmer is CSO at vertical producer LettUs Grow, which recently launched its Drop & Grow growing units, offering a complete farming solution in a shipping container. 

He believes everyone in the vertical farming space is going to hit a crossroads. “Vertical farming, with its focus on higher value and higher density crops, is effectively a subset of the broader horticultural sector,” he said. 

"All the players in the vertical farming space are facing a choice – to scale vertically and try to capture as much value in that specific space, or to diversify and take their technology expertise broader.”

LettUs Grow is focussed on being the leading technology provider in containerised farming, and its smaller ‘Drop & Grow: 24’ container is mainly focussed on people entering the horticultural space.

Opportunities in retail

“This year is looking really exciting,” he said. “Supermarkets are investing to ensure a sustainable source of food production in the UK, which is what CEA provides. We’re also seeing a growth in ‘experiential’ food and retail and that’s also where we see our Drop & Grow container farm fitting in.”

Kate Hofman, CEO, GrowUp agrees. The company launched the UK’s first commercial-scale vertical farm in 2014.

“It will be really interesting to see how the foodservice world recovers after lockdown – the rough numbers are that supermarket trade was up at least 11 per cent in the last year – so retail still looks like a really good direction to go in. 

“If we want to have an impact on the food system in the UK and change it for the better, we’re committed to partnering with those big retailers to help them deliver on their sustainability and values-driven goals.

“Our focus is very much as a salad grower that grows a fantastic product that everyone will want to buy. And we’re focussed on bringing down the cost of sustainable food, which means doing it at a big enough scale to gain the economies of production that are needed to be able to sell at everyday prices.”

Making the Numbers Add Up

The economics are an important part of the discussion. Recent investment in the sector has come from the Middle East, and other locations, where abundant solar power and scarce resources are driving interest in CEA. Graamans’ research has revealed a number of scenarios where CEA has a strong business case.

For the UK, CEA should be seen as a continuum from glasshouses to vertical farming, he believes. “Greenhouses can incorporate the technologies from vertical farms to increase climate control and to enhance their performance under specific climates."

It is this aspect that is grabbing the attention of conventional fresh produce growers in open field and covered crop production.  

A Blended Approach

James Green, director of agriculture at G’s, thinks combining different growing methods is the way forward. “There’s a balance in all of these systems between energy costs for lighting, energy costs for cooling, costs of nutrient supply, and then transportation and the supply and demand. At the end of the day, sunshine is pretty cheap and it comes up every day.

“I think a blended approach, where you’re getting as much benefit as you can from nature but you’re supplementing it and controlling the growth conditions, is what we are aiming for, rather than the fully artificially lit ‘vertical farming’.”

Graamans, Farmer and Hofman will join a discussion with conventional vegetable producers, vertical farmers and technology providers at the Agri-TechE event ‘Controlled Environment Agriculture is growing up’ on 25 February 2021.

Yasai To Establish First Zürich Vertical Farm, Strategic Partnership Announced

Image from: Urban Ag News

iFarm with Yasai AG (Switzerland) and Logiqs B.V. (Netherlands) are proud to announce the beginning of a long-term cooperation.  

With the launch of the first vertical farm project in Zurich, Yasai AG announced the signing of a strategic agreement with equipment and tech suppliers. The company involved Logiqs and iFarm as technology partners in the construction of a pilot facility, with 673 sq. m of growing area and with a design capacity of 20 tons of fresh herbs per year.  

The Dutch company Logiqs will act as a supplier of automated shelving systems and grow lights. iFarm will supply the nutrient solution management system, climate control equipment, and the Growtune software platform which enables flow chart implementation and control over production conditions and processes. Going forward, the partners plan to scale up the experience of rapidly constructing an automated, compact, high-performance vertical farm, gained in a Swiss project, across the globe.

Image from: Urban Ag News

Mark Essam Zahran (co-founder Yasai):

The project will not just be limited to the testing and fine-tuning of state-of-the-art innovative solutions.  We expect to lay the groundwork for large-scale industrial vertical farming in smart cities and showcase the incredible benefits of a circular economy. A plantation in the largest Swiss city, one of the most expensive cities in the world, will help us assess the economic prospects and give other European cities an example of how to produce an abundant yield without harming the planet, plants, and people.

Gert-Jan van Staalduinen (owner Logiqs):

The Swiss project opens up interesting prospects for us. We expect a fruitful collaboration with Yasai experts and a beneficial exchange of best practices with iFarm. With our vast experience in implementing automation and logistics systems on farms, we will be able to build a technologically advanced farm in the very heart of Europe. 

Kirill Zelenski (CEO iFarm Europe):

We appreciate how meticulous and scrupulous Yasai is and are impressed by their passion and drive. We are just as inspired by the prospect of working with seasoned professionals from Logiqs. We hope that our software technologies will perfectly complement their hardware and the project as a whole will become a lasting benchmark for the industry and will serve as the beginning of a long-term cooperation.  

Smart Agriculture Startup Bowery Farming Hires A Google Veteran As CTO

BY AARON PRESSMAN

One goal of high-tech indoor farming startup Bowery Farming is to use artificial intelligence and machine learning to enhance its crop yields and reduce costs. So the five-year-old Manhattan-based company has hired Google and Samsung veteran Injong Rhee as its new chief technology officer.

Rhee, who was previously Internet of Things VP at Google and chief technologist at Samsung Mobile, will focus on improving Bowery’s computer-vision system and other sensors that analyze when plants need water and nutrients, while also looking to apply the company’s accumulated historical data to new problems.

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Bowery grow room near Baltimore

“Agriculture is sitting at the crux of the world’s most challenging problems like food shortages, climate change, water shortages, a lack of arable space,” Rhee tells Fortune about his decision to join the startup. “These are very challenging problems, and all of these are relevant to what Bowery tackles every day. Any advances we make here lead to a better world.”

There’s also the matter of the kale, Rhee adds.

Bowery so far has focused on growing and selling green leafy vegetables like lettuce, arugula, and kale, though it aims to add other categories of produce soon. “It was an eye-popping experience,” Rhee says of his first time trying Bowery’s kale. “How can it be so sweet and so crunchy. That was amazing.”

The hire comes after a year of accelerated growth at Bowery, with retail sales at outlets like Whole Foods rising 600% and e-commerce sales via Amazon and others increasing fourfold, the company says, while declining to disclose its actual sales or production figures. With two large warehouse-size farms in operation, in New Jersey and Maryland, Bowery is on the verge of opening its third indoor growing center in Bethlehem, Pa. The startup claims its high-tech methods, though more expensive than growing outdoors, create farms that are more than 100 times as productive per square foot as traditional outdoor farms.

“COVID was an accelerator of trends,” Bowery CEO and founder Irving Fain says. The pandemic disrupted food supply chains stretching across the globe, giving an advantage to Bowery, which sells its produce within just a few hundred miles of each farm, he says. “That amplified and accelerated a trend towards simplifying supply chains, and creating a surety of supply.”

But Bowery also faces a host of competitors, from other indoor farming startups like AeroFarms and Gotham Greens, to more traditional ag companies like John Deere and Bayer’s Monsanto, all fueling a movement toward precision farming. If one-quarter of farms worldwide adopted precision agriculture using A.I. and other data-crunching methods by 2030, farmers’ annual expenses would decline by $100 billion, or as much as 4% of the sector’s total expenses, while saving water and reducing greenhouse gas emissions, a recent study by McKinsey found.

Rhee spent 15 years as a professor of computer science at North Carolina State University, where he helped develop core Internet standards for transporting data at high speeds. He joined Samsung in 2011 where he helped lead a wide range of projects including the Bixby digital assistant, Knox security app, and Samsung Pay mobile payments service. He moved to Google in 2018 as an entrepreneur-in-residence to focus on Internet of Things projects.

Bowery has raised over $170 million in venture capital from a mix of tech figures like Amazon consumer CEO Jeff Wilke and Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi, well-known restaurateurs such as Tom Colicchio and David Barber, and venture capital firms including Temasek, GV, and General Catalyst.

Bringing The Future To life In Abu Dhabi

Amid the deserts of Abu Dhabi, a new wave of entrepreneurs and innovators are sowing the seeds of a more sustainable future.

Image from: Wired

A cluster of shipping containers in a city centre is about the last place you’d expect to find salad growing. Yet for the past year, vertical farming startup Madar Farms has been using this site in Masdar City, Abu Dhabi, to grow leafy green vegetables using 95 per cent less water than traditional agriculture. 

Madar Farms is one of a number of agtech startups benefitting from a package of incentives from the Abu Dhabi Investment Office (ADIO) aimed at spurring the development of innovative solutions for sustainable desert farming. The partnership is part of ADIO’s $545 million Innovation Programme dedicated to supporting companies in high-growth areas.

“Abu Dhabi is pressing ahead with our mission to ‘turn the desert green’,” explained H.E. Dr. Tariq Bin Hendi, Director General of ADIO, in November 2020. “We have created an environment where innovative ideas can flourish and the companies we partnered with earlier this year are already propelling the growth of Abu Dhabi’s 24,000 farms.”

The pandemic has made food supply a critical concern across the entire world, combined with the effects of population growth and climate change, which are stretching the capacity of less efficient traditional farming methods. Abu Dhabi’s pioneering efforts to drive agricultural innovation have been gathering pace and look set to produce cutting-edge solutions addressing food security challenges.

Beyond work supporting the application of novel agricultural technologies, Abu Dhabi is also investing in foundational research and development to tackle this growing problem. 

In December, the emirate’s recently created Advanced Technology Research Council [ATRC], responsible for defining Abu Dhabi’s R&D strategy and establishing the emirate and the wider UAE as a desired home for advanced technology talent, announced a four-year competition with a $15 million prize for food security research. Launched through ATRC’s project management arm, ASPIRE, in partnership with the XPRIZE Foundation, the award will support the development of environmentally-friendly protein alternatives with the aim to "feed the next billion".

Image from: Madar Farms

Global Challenges, Local Solutions

Food security is far from the only global challenge on the emirate’s R&D menu. In November 2020, the ATRC announced the launch of the Technology Innovation Institute (TII), created to support applied research on the key priorities of quantum research, autonomous robotics, cryptography, advanced materials, digital security, directed energy and secure systems.

“The technologies under development at TII are not randomly selected,” explains the centre’s secretary general Faisal Al Bannai. “This research will complement fields that are of national importance. Quantum technologies and cryptography are crucial for protecting critical infrastructure, for example, while directed energy research has use-cases in healthcare. But beyond this, the technologies and research of TII will have global impact.”

Future research directions will be developed by the ATRC’s ASPIRE pillar, in collaboration with stakeholders from across a diverse range of industry sectors.

“ASPIRE defines the problem, sets milestones, and monitors the progress of the projects,” Al Bannai says. “It will also make impactful decisions related to the selection of research partners and the allocation of funding, to ensure that their R&D priorities align with Abu Dhabi and the UAE's broader development goals.”

Image from: Agritecture

Nurturing Next-Generation Talent

To address these challenges, ATRC’s first initiative is a talent development programme, NexTech, which has begun the recruitment of 125 local researchers, who will work across 31 projects in collaboration with 23 world-leading research centres.

Alongside universities and research institutes from across the US, the UK, Europe and South America, these partners include Abu Dhabi’s own Khalifa University, and Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence, the world’s first graduate-level institute focused on artificial intelligence. 

“Our aim is to up skill the researchers by allowing them to work across various disciplines in collaboration with world-renowned experts,” Al Bannai says. 

Beyond academic collaborators, TII is also working with a number of industry partners, such as hyperloop technology company, Virgin Hyperloop. Such industry collaborations, Al Bannai points out, are essential to ensuring that TII research directly tackles relevant problems and has a smooth path to commercial impact in order to fuel job creation across the UAE.

“By engaging with top global talent, universities and research institutions and industry players, TII connects an intellectual community,” he says. “This reinforces Abu Dhabi and the UAE’s status as a global hub for innovation and contributes to the broader development of the knowledge-based economy.”

US - OHIO: Thinking And Growing Inside The Box

A brother-sister team has taken the mechanics of farming out of the field and into a freight container.

“We are growing beautiful plants without the sun; there’s no soil, and so it’s all a closed-loop water system,” Britt Decker, co-owner of Fifth Season FARM, said. “We use non-GMO seeds, completely free of herbicides and pesticides, so the product is really, really clean. In fact, we recommend people don’t even wash it, because there’s no reason to.”

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Fifth Season FARM is unique in many ways; the 3-acre hydroponic farm is contained in a 320-square-foot freight container that sits along 120 S. Main St. in Piqua, with everything from varying varities of lettuce, to radishes, to kale and even flowers in a climate-controlled smart farm that allows Decker and his sister, Laura Jackson, to turn crops in a six- to eight-week cycle. The crops spend 18 hours in “daytime” every day, and the farm uses 90% less water than traditional farming.

“It’s tricky because we’re completely controlling the environment in here. It’s kind of a laboratory more than a farm,” Decker said. “I think there’s about 50 of them around the world right now. These are really international, and they’re perfect for places that are food deserts where they can’t grow food because of climate or other reasons. It gives them a way to grow food in the middle of nowhere.”

Image from: Sidney Daily News

Decker and Jackson, along with their brother Bill Decker, also do traditional farming and grow corn, wheat and soybeans, but Decker said they were looking for a new venture that would help lead them to a healthier lifestyle and learn something new.

“Just with the whole local food movement becoming more and more important and food traceability, we just thought it would be a great thing to bring to our community to help everyone have a healthier lifestyle,” Decker said. “People love food that’s grown right in their hometown and the shelf-life on it, when you get it home, is remarkable. It’ll keep for two weeks.”

Image from: AgFunder News

Currently, Decker and Jackson are growing a half-dozen variety of specialty lettuces that include arugula, butterhead and romaine, as well as specialty greens like kale and Swiss chard, and even radishes and flowers. They received their freight container at the end of July and set up their indoor farm over two weeks; while the farm has been in operation for less than six months, Decker says that they’re growing beautiful product.

They have also started growing micro-greens, said Decker. Micro-greens are immature plants which are 1 to 3 inches tall and are in a 5-inch by 5-inch container.

“People will use them as garnishments and in smoothies,” said Decker. “Since they are immature plants, they have an intense flavor.”

Decker said they are growing wheat germ, broccoli and spicy salad mixes.

They’ve also started moving forward with sales and marketing. Fifth Season FARM has partnered with the Miami County Locally Grown Virtual Market to sell their products to the community. They also take orders through their website, customers can opt to pick up their orders between 4 and 6 p.m. on Wednesdays, or Decker and Jackson will deliver products up to five miles from the farm. Decker said that Fifth Season FARM is also in discussions with three restaurants in the area about including their specialty greens on their menus.

Decker said they also plan to attend the Sidney Farmers Market when it opens for the spring/summer season.

“We’re really just getting going,” Decker said. “While we were learning to grow products, we didn’t want to overcommit to a restaurant or grocery store before we knew we could really grow beautiful product, so we’ve been donating product every week to the food pantry at the Presbyterian Church. It feels good to plant the seeds and watch them grow, and it feels good to make sure that people who aren’t getting the proper nutrition are getting some.”

In Malahide, Two Friends Raise A Vertical Farm

Image from: Dublin Inquirer

When salesman Jack Hussey finishes his work day, he closes the laptop, leaves his home in Malahide and walks 10 minutes down the road. At the bottom of his friend’s farm sits an outhouse with a coldroom which now hosts his side business, Upfarm. A farm that goes upwards.

Imagine a shelf rack, says Hussey. “We’ve kitted the roofs of each shelf with an LED grow light. It’s to replicate the sunlight basically.”

A photo of the farm shows purple light beaming down on thick heads of lemongrass and basil, stacked on shelves. Yields from vertical farming are far more efficient than in-the-ground farming, Hussey said, on the phone last Friday.

He likens it to real estate. “You can have houses that are populated side by side or you can start going upwards with apartments.”

From Podcast to Table

Hussey always had an interest in food, he says. Last year he and a school friend, Bill Abbott, began to look into urban farming.

“But we were saying, is farming in the ground actually the best route to go?” Hussey says.

It’s labour intensive, which didn’t suit the two guys, who work other full-time jobs. Then, in March 2020, Hussey heard a podcast with American urban farmer Curtis Stone. He had an urban farm where he was using a spin-farming method, says Hussey. “It’s what they call it. You rotate crops out of the ground in a much more efficient way.”

“Essentially he was able to capitalise on a third acre of land. He was able to take in 80k a year,” he says.

Hussey was inspired by that, by somebody making the most of a small bit of land. So in June last year, in the middle of a pandemic and juggling working from home, Hussey and Abbot set about doing the same, albeit with a different model, and launched their vertical farm.

Image from: Farmony

How It Works

Farmony, which specialises in tech for vertical farming, sold Upfarm with the tools to get up and running – shelves, special LED lighting, a watering system and humidifiers. It is the ideal conditions for growing produce, says Framony co-founder John Paul Prior. Nutrients, hours of light, humidity and temperature are controlled in vertical farming, Prior says.

But Farmony is also a data company, Prior says. “So we capture data at all stages of the growing cycle. And we feed that back to the grower.”

This helps the grower to establish the optimum conditions, he says. “That’s not just in terms of plant growth, that’s in terms of workflow management.”

The size of an operation can be the small coldroom in Malahide that uses one Farmony module, and produces microgreens and wheatgrass for sale. Or it can be like a farm in Tipperary with 60 modules, he says. A module is 1 metre wide, 1.3 metres long and 2.5 metres tall, Prior says. Hussey says it is labour-intensive looking after a vertical farm module.

After work last Thursday, he and his dad replanted his microgreen crops into 30 different trays. “It took about two hours,” he says.

What Is the Benefit?

“So as long as you can control your temperature, your humidity, and your nutrient levels in the water, you can basically grow all year round,” says Prior. Vertical farming also means better conditions for workers, Prior says.

“If you’re working in a controlled environment, like a vertical farm, you’re working in a clean environment,” Prior says.

“You work between 18 to 22 degrees. There’s no harsh frost. There’s no extreme cold winters, equally there’s no burning-hot summers.,” says Prior.

The crop is consistent too, says Prior, thanks to the controlled environment.

“Let’s say I’m someone who loves basil and who makes a lot of pesto at home,” he says.

Getting basil of consistent quality from the supermarket can be difficult when it comes from different countries, or may have been sitting on a shelf for days after travelling thousands of miles, he says.

Image from: Farmony

Why Is this Important?

Soil quality is dropping, Hussey says. “What does that mean for outdoor growing?”

The answer, Hussey says, is vertical farming. It uses mineral-rich water so it doesn’t rely on nutrients from the ground, Hussey says.

Says Prior: “Vertical farming uses about 10 percent of the water of traditional farming.”

Prior says it takes less energy to get food from a nearby vertical farm than to ship it from afar. It was not always the case until a breakthrough in another industry, he says.

“Billions of dollars have been invested in the cannabis industry globally. It’s meant that the investment in grow-lighting technology has been huge,” he says.

“As a result, the price, the efficiency and most importantly, the energy efficiency of the lighting is really amazing” he says.

Says Hussey: “It’s not easy work but it is nice work. It’s good work.”

Organic: The Battle for a Single Word

Throughout history, when we see great leaps forward in technology, there are always pushbacks from the old world who want to maintain the status-quo. This can be for a variety of reasons and come from a variety of people. Sometimes, the resistance comes from workers, an example of this would be the fierce opposition from workers who protested the mechanisation of their jobs brought about by the industrial revolution. They were often referred to as luddites because of the propensity to destroy the new machines that were taking their jobs.

On the other hand, there can be examples of when the resistance to innovations come from industry competitors who don’t want to lose the dominance they once had. An example of this can be seen through the fossil fuel industries continuous attempts to limit the growth of renewables by lobbying governments to pursue policies more favourable to them.

Today we are seeing resistance to a new green revolution through innovation in the vertical farming sector primarily from industry competitors or even protective policy makers. Politico recently reported on a story regarding a fight between a Danish vertical farming company, called Nordic Harvest, and the EU whereby the former was prohibited from labelling their crops as organically produced. The reason given for this was that EU regulation demanded that anything being described as organic had to be produced in soil. This seems to be the antithesis to their Farm to Fork strategy as it heavily handicaps innovative indoor vertical farming companies.

Image from: Nord Harvest

Now this may not seem much like a significant infringement on the indoor vertical farming sector, but what this does is make it more difficult for companies, such as Nordic Harvest, to indicate to consumers their green credentials. Moreover, under the EU’s Green Public Procurement rules, indoor vertical farming companies gain a smaller share in food market than it normally would have due to the ruling on the definition of organics. The unfortunate aspect of this is that words only mean what we define them as, so the personal opinions of the individuals who made this decision are going down this direction for reasons not non-partisan.

Now there may so semi-legitimate reasons to resist the rise of indoor vertical farming, but it is clear that this will be the future of farming and it must not be kneecapped by ill-intentioned actors. The limitations of the sector, such as intense energy use or limited crop varieties, can only be solved if there is financial and legislative support from the powers that be.

This is clear with the recent certification of Sky Greens in Singapore as organic whereby the central government has been forward thinking. Speaking of their decision, the chair of the Food Standards Committee stated:

“The certification may allow local urban farms to expand into markets outside of Singapore. Having a national organic certification will help local urban farms to be on equal footing with the US…”

The Food Standards Committee in Singapore defined organic differently from the EU affirming that as long as they avoid mineral fertilisers or other pesticides and herbicides, which indoor vertical farms operating on controlled environment agriculture adheres to. At full capacity, Sky Greens can produce up to half a tonne of salads daily without LEDs and using gravity to collect rainwater to avoid pests. An important point to note however is that the vast majority of Singapore is urbanised with no domestic traditional rural farming industry.

Image from: Sky Greens

Another problematic component of this EU ruling is that may prove controversial is its impact on trade. Any vertical farming company from a country not with the restrictive rules and the EU that wanted to export their food produced in a vertical farm, they would as need to abide by these rules. For example, with basil being one of the major herbs produced in vertical farms, we often see it being used in Pesto. Unfortunately, this would not be able to be marketed as organic. With the EU being the largest trading bloc in the entire world, this will affect the global fortunes of the sector. We are also seeing this happen in the US but due to many legal appeals and challenges, they have not currently implemented the same rules as the EU.

So, with all this in mind, it is important to be aware of the pushback that will inevitably happen due to a green revolution brought about by innovation in the indoor vertical farming sector. The debate surrounding the definition of the word organic is only the start. We already see concerted efforts to ban synthetic meat companies from using words such as hamburger, hot dog or steak. However, even with this uneven playing field, indoor vertical farming is on track to increase its market share significantly over the next decade and beyond while traditional farming methods are on the decline.

The Future of the Food Supply Chain Lives on a Rooftop in Montreal

Image from: Lufa Farms

The world’s biggest commercial rooftop greenhouse sits atop a former Sears warehouse in a semi-industrial northwestern quarter of Montreal. Early every morning, staff pick fresh vegetables, then bring them downstairs, where they get packed into heavy-duty plastic totes along with the rest of the day’s grocery orders.

Tablets loaded with custom pick-and-pack software tell them where to put what: This basket has lettuce, tomatoes, and cucumbers, plus some chicken, eggs, and milk. The next one has eggplant, cashew Parmesan, tomato sauce, fresh pasta, and vegan ground round crumble. Whatever Luca doesn’t grow in its four greenhouses comes from local farms and producers, mostly from within 100 miles.

This is a modern foodie’s dream: a tech-forward online shop full of locally grown, pesticide-free, ethically-sourced products at reasonable price points, delivered once a week to either your doorstep or a local pickup point in your neighborhood.

It’s stunning to think Lufa was founded by two people who’d never even grown a tomato before, let alone sold one. “We said, ‘Instead of learning how the food world works, let’s just come up with what we feel the food world should be,’” says Mohamed Hage, 39, who cofounded Lufa with Lauren Rathmell in 2009.

To them, it looked like this: rooftop greenhouses that bring agriculture into cities. No pesticides, herbicides, or fungicides. Composting their green waste. Selling direct-to-consumer the same day the food is harvested. Capturing and reusing rainwater. Reusable packaging. 

That’s exactly what they now have—and they feed a portion of Montreal, the second-biggest city in Canada, with it.

Image from: Lufa Farms

Back in the warehouse, workers poke at their tablets, checking off items as they’re packed into the boxes.

Customers—Lufavores, as the company calls them—typically place their orders a few days before delivery through the online store, dubbed “the Marketplace,” which Lufa built from scratch in 2012. That’s how Lufa’s suppliers know how much product to provide: They get forecasts first, then final order numbers, through their Lufa software. Some items, like frozen meat, can be delivered to the warehouse once a week. Others, like bread, arrive fresh every day.

Artisanal Montreal bakery la Fabrique Arhoma started supplying Lufa with bread and pastries about six years ago, co-owner Ariane Beaumont tells Fortune. Today, they hand-make 6,000 individual items a day for Lufa. Beaumont said Lufa now accounts for between 30% to 40% of her commercial sales; since pandemic shutdowns, a lot of the product destined for restaurants got redirected to Lufa. “They’re an exceptional company. I don’t know how they do it,” Beaumont says. “And they pay the fastest, too.” 

Technology is the underpinning of Lufa’s success, and the owners know it.

“We see ourselves as a technology company, in the sense that we solve with software,” Rathmell, 32, says. They didn’t really have any other choice. To fulfill that dream they had back in 2009—years before COVID-19 forced most grocery stores to enable online shopping—they had to do it themselves. 

“Nothing off-the-shelf can be applied to what we do, because it’s so complex,” Rathmell notes. “We harvest food ourselves; we gather from farmers and food makers throughout the province; most of it’s arriving just in time throughout the night to be packed in baskets for that day, and every order is fully unique.”

Lufa now has a team of eight programmers working on software and systems that manage e-commerce, warehouse management, routing, customer relationships, supplier fulfillment, pick-and-pack, vendor payments, delivery ETAs, and more. 

Those technologies were tested on that fateful Friday the 13th last March, when Quebec and Canada each announced their first waves of COVID-19 lockdowns. People panicked, rushing to the grocery store to stock up on flour and toilet paper.

Online, new sign-ups for Lufa’s weekly grocery baskets exploded, and existing subscribers began ordering more than they’d ever ordered before—all while Lufa’s pickup points were shutting down. “We essentially doubled overnight,” Rathmell recalls. Lufa was forced beyond its operational capacity, and the cracks started showing in the systems and software that had, until that point, done a fine job getting the company by.

Lufa temporarily closed the website and opened a wait list. The staff analyzed the pandemic’s trajectory and how they had to adapt at each step; reconfigured their warehouse floor to station workers further apart; then relaunched at the capacity they could handle, gradually scaling each week until they hit their usual stride. Today, they’re humming along at 25,000 baskets a week.

Leading with tech helped make them nimble and strategic during those hairy early pandemic days, said Hage and Rathmell. After some recalibrations and new developments, their software and processes can now handle more customers, vendors, and processes—critical elements as the company continues to scale its greenhouse operations. In August of 2020, Lufa opened its fourth greenhouse, doubling its square footage. The four greenhouses combined produce 57,000 pounds of food a week. A fifth is planned for this year. 

“Our objective at Lufa is to get to the point where we’re feeding everyone in the city,” Hage says.

And after Montreal? They’re planning on a yet to be determined second site in the northeastern pocket of North America, ideally this year. “Our vision is to grow food closer to where people live, and grow it more sustainably,” Rathmell says.

Image from: Lufa Farms

Bringing high-yield crop production into cities is a smart answer to many modern challenges in environmental and human health.

Mark Lefsrud, an associate professor of agricultural and environmental sciences at McGill University, points out that embracing technologies like LEDs and automation to grow indoors and in urban greenhouses means shorter supply chains, better nutritional integrity, less food waste, and reduced vulnerability to climate swings. In cities fed primarily by low-carbon energy (hydroelectricity in Montreal’s case), indoor growing versus importation becomes even more of a no-brainer.

“I’ve been working in the controlled environment and greenhouse industry for 20-some years, and having a company like Lufa has brought a lot of attention to not just urban agriculture, but also the need for greenhouse production,” Lefsrud says, adding that Lufa’s success has prompted more government investment in the sector overall.

“The Quebec government now takes this as a serious venture system, which then means that the students that I’m training, and research we’re doing here at the university, now have employment and have the possibility of setting up their own system,” says the McGill professor.

That idea, of developing more vertically integrated food systems, is a passion of Hage’s—not only for the idea of cutting out production and transformation middlemen to improve profit margins, but also to improve quality, traceability, and ultimately the ethics of food production.

“You know, every time we talk to someone about it, we feel like it’s the ’80s, and we’re holding a big solar panel trying to convince the room that this is the future,” Hage says.

As the larger agricultural industry catches on to vertical integration, it seems Hage and Rathmell are no longer mad scientists with a crazy dream. Instead, they are the voice of reason—and a new generation of food.

As the larger agricultural industry catches on to vertical integration, it seems Hage and Rathmell are no longer mad scientists with a crazy dream. Instead, they are the voice of reason—and a new generation of food.

As the larger agricultural industry catches on to vertical integration, it seems Hage and Rathmell are no longer mad scientists with a crazy dream. Instead, they are the voice of reason—and a new generation of food.

NASA's Challenge To Grow Food In Space Can Win You Up To $500,000

NASA has launched a 'Deep Space Food Challenge' to prompt innovation of food production techniques and technologies viable in outer space.

Image from: Deep Space Food

There are thousands of bizarre challenges doing the rounds on the internet. These unique challenges soon go viral on the internet, with countless participants hopping on board. A number of these challenges also involve some form of food. If you're a food innovator who's looking for the next interesting challenge to take up, NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) may have something for you.

The NASA, in collaboration with Canada's CSA (Central Space Agency), has launched a 'Deep Space Food Challenge'. The one-of-a-kind competition seeks to find food production technologies which are sustainable in long duration missions to outer space.

Our cargo resupply missions can only go so far! That's why we need your help to design a food system to keep our astronauts feed during long duration space exploration.

Check out the @NASAPrize Deep Space Food Challenge: https://t.co/9mxtZXbwaC pic.twitter.com/izU8nSqPDc

— NASA Wallops (@NASA_Wallops) January 30, 2021

A short video explaining the purpose behind the challenge was shared by the official handle. The 56-second clip elaborated on how astronauts embarking on lunar space exploration missions usually rely on pre-packaged meals or resupply of food through shuttles from Earth.

Thus, creating a brand, new food production system with minimal input and nutritious output with minimal wastage can go a long way in fuelling longer duration space explorations. The challenge's focus is on identifying food production technologies that can help feed a crew of four astronauts and help fill food gaps for a three-year round-trip mission with no resupply required from Earth.

These innovative food production methods may also help communities on Earth living in harsh conditions and extreme climates. This could also help tackle food insecurity in the future, which is one of the biggest issues that loom large today. "Solutions identified through this Challenge could support these harsh environments, and also support greater food production in other milder environments, including major urban centres where vertical farming, urban agriculture and other novel food production techniques can play a more significant role," stated the Deep Space Food Challenge's official website.

.@NASA & @csa_asc are launching a Deep Space Food Challenge to develop food production tech in space.

Hey @GuyFieri, how about Diners, Drive-Ins, Dives & Deep Space? #STIdocs #Flavortown 🚀🥘

Read about it: https://t.co/fnz80uwpJT

See research: https://t.co/18q6RG3L2G pic.twitter.com/lSRTiiAFes

— NASA STI Program (@NASA_STI) January 28, 2021

Registrations for the challenge close on 28th May, and submissions are due 30th July, 2021. Winners of Phase 1 of the challenge will be announced in the month of September this year. The prize money for winners of Phase 1 can go up to USD 500,000 (Rs. 3.64 crores approximately). So, if you have an exciting idea to produce food which could help future space missions - you know what to do!

Is AppHarvest the Future of Farming?

Special purpose acquisition companies, or SPACs, are red-hot right now, with investors clamoring to get into promising young companies.

In this video from Motley Fool Live, recorded on Jan. 28, Industry Focus host Nick Sciple and Motley Fool contributor Lou Whiteman discuss AppHarvest, one such SPAC that is looking to disrupt the agriculture industry. Here are the details on what AppHarvest wants to do, and a look at whether the company represents the future of farming.

Nick Sciple: One last company I wanted to talk about, Lou, and this is one I think it's -- you pay attention to, but not one I'm super excited to run in and buy. It was a company called AppHarvest. It's coming public via a [SPAC] this year. This vertical farming space. We talked about Gladstone Land buying traditional farmland. AppHarvest is taking a very different approach, trying to lean into some of the ESG-type movements.

Lou Whiteman: Yeah. Let's look at this. It probably wouldn't surprise you that the U.S. is the biggest global farm exporter as we said, but it might surprise you that the Netherlands, the tiny little country, is No. 2. The way they do that is tech: Greenhouse farm structure. AppHarvest has taken that model and brought it to the U.S. They have, I believe, three farms in Appalachia. The pitches can produce 30x the yields using 90% less water. Right now, it's mostly tomatoes and it is early-stage. I don't own this stock either. I love this idea. There's some reasons that I'm not buying in right now that we can get into. But this is fascinating to me. We talked about making the world a better place. This is the company that we need to be successful to make the world a better place. The warning on it is that it is a SPAC. So it's not public yet. Right now, I believe N-O-V-S. That deal should close soon. [Editor's note: The deal has since closed.] I'm not the only one excited about it. I tend not to like to buy IPOs and new companies anyway. I think the caution around buying into the excitement applies here. There is a Martha Stewart video on their website talking up the company, which I love Martha Stewart, but that's a hype level that makes me want to just watch and see what they produce. This is just three little farms in Appalachia right now and a great idea. This was all over my watchlist. I would imagine I would love to hold it at some point, but just be careful because this is, as we saw SPACs last year in other areas, people are very excited about this.

Sciple: Yeah. I think, like we've said, for a lot of these companies, the prospects are great. I think when you look at the reduced water usage, better, environmentally friendly, all those sorts of things. I like that they are in Appalachia. As someone who is from the South, I like it when more rural areas get some people actually investing money there. But again, there's a lot of execution between now and really getting to a place where this is the future of farming and they're going to reach scale and all those sorts of things. But this is a company I'm definitely going to have my radar on and pay attention to as they continue to report earnings. Because you can tell yourself a story about how this type of vertical farming, indoor farming disrupts this traditional model, can be more efficient, cleaner, etc. Something to continue paying attention to as we have more information, because this company, like you said, Lou, isn't all the way public yet. We still got to have this SPAC deal finalized and then we get all our fun SEC filings and quarterly calls and all those sorts of things. Once we have that, I will be very much looking forward to seeing what the company has to say.

Whiteman: Right. Just to finish up along too, the interesting thing here is that it is a proven concept because it has worked elsewhere. The downside of that is that it needed to work there. Netherlands just doesn't have -- and this is an expensive proposition to get started, to get going. There's potential there, but in a country blessed with almost seemingly unlimited farmland for now, for long term it makes sense. But in the short term, it could be a hard thing to really get up and running. I think you're right, just one to watch.

Advice For New Vertical Farmers: Grower Spotlight on Andrew Worrall

Last week we spoke about running a farm at LettUs Grow. What excites you about vertical farming? 

It’s the future of the industry. Also, the amount of salad that these farms can produce for their local community. We want to be able to eat salad all year round and we import to make that happen. However, just a small farm can easily provide for its local community, very efficiently and all year round. The sustainability element is also exciting: with our salad there’s no food miles, it’s very minimalistic. You could use an electric van or bike to distribute this crop if you wanted to. It’s a step forward in terms of what we need to do to take care of our planet. 

What do you think are the biggest downsides to vertical farming?

It’s still a new technology and it can be expensive. The biggest roadblock facing the industry is that we need more people and companies to collaborate together to make sure we can build these farms at a sensible rate, so we can provide farms to anyone. We want to be able to provide farms to people, communities and countries that don’t have a lot of money, so that they can provide affordable fresh produce to local people. 

How has vertical farming impacted your life?

Massively!  I wanted to find my passion, a job that I loved - that was very important to me. It’s satisfying to be in a position now where I’m very happy to be doing what I do and I look forward to going into work. I was happy to make the move from London to Bristol. I would have moved even further if it meant being able to continue working within this industry.

Image from: LettUs Grow

How do you see vertical farming playing a part in the future? 

When indoor farming first came about, it had a reputation of being competition for outdoor farming, which just isn’t the case. There’s so much we can’t grow that outdoor farming can provide, such as cereal crops. I’m glad we’re at a stage where indoor and outdoor farms can start to work together to optimise both methods. With these new relationships, there should be a good increase in the amount of indoor farms you’ll be seeing. What LettUs Grow offers with DROP & GROW™ is an exciting project because that’s a 40ft shipping container which can be placed pretty much anywhere. It’s not that big - it could go in a car park or behind a restaurant, but actually provide quite a lot of salad to that area. 

How much of our food should be grown this way? 

Good question. If you had asked me a while back I would have just said salad, but now I’ve changed my mind. Indoor farming can have a massive impact on propagation, especially aeroponics, because of how we aerate and nourish our roots. We could start lettuce for greenhouse projects and we can also propagate tomatoes, strawberries and tree whips. Propagating trees in this way could potentially be hugely beneficial and it’s something we want to do more of. 

We can also quickly grow large amounts of microgreens, baby leafs, herbs and we can grow fruiting crops like strawberries. We are slowly chipping away and it’s really exciting. I’m waiting to see if I can ever say I’ve grown or propagated every crop that can be grown in these farms! 

What do you think are the biggest benefits of vertical farming? 

How fast these crops can grow! The turnover can be as short as 5 days from seed, depending on the crop. Also how clean it can be - I’m very dedicated to making sure these farms are built to ensure they are easy to be maintained and clean. The most exciting part is the crop growth rate though - it’s incredible how fast our crop grows from seed to plate. In a very well maintained growing calendar, which Ostara® is great for supporting, you can optimise your beds so that the day you harvest can also be the day you germinate onto that same bed. Your farms can be forever providing salad at very fast rates. 

Image from: LettUs Grow

What was the biggest change you encountered during your years indoor farming?

Moving from being a production grower to an R&D grower. It has been a great change! As a production grower I knew what I needed to know about growing the plant safely and getting it onto a plate so it was good for the consumer. Now I’m fully optimising, learning and understanding the plants completely, so that I can help the grower that I used to be. We spend a lot of time on crop recipes to make sure that whoever we sell our farms to can start up very quickly and they won’t have to spend months developing their crops. If they have the customers and clients behind them, they can buy DROP & GROW and start producing salad as soon as it's been commissioned. 

What was the biggest change you encountered in the industry?

More and more people are speaking about what’s going on in the industry and getting involved. I get so many messages on LinkedIn with people who want to get into this career. It’s exciting to see that indoor growing is a career people can access now. When I was developing my skills I didn’t know I would end up in indoor farming. There are more opportunities than ever before. For example, our Crop Technician is doing a placement here for 2 years. The aim is that they can gain the skill sets and knowledge they need to then go off and do the same practice in any farm they want. 

What advice do you have for people who are looking to start a career in growing? 

Reach out to companies who are already out there. You could start off part-time or as an assistant. If you are patient and dedicated then it’s a journey I promise you won’t regret. It takes a lot of work, but the outcome is amazing - you’ll be learning so much about this new technology. You’ll also build great relationships: there are so many amazing people in this industry who are so interesting, with different backgrounds, who are willing to share their knowledge. You can always learn more and other people are a great source of that. 

What about for those looking to start a vertical farming business?

Do your homework.  There are people out there who you can reach out to and it’s very easy to get information. It’s very easy to get excited about the idea and jump straight into it, because it is exciting and can be very rewarding, but it’s really important to do it step by step. Know how to scale properly, learning the differences between a small and larger farm. Understand how many people you’ll need and the logistics. I’d also advise people to get some practical work experience before you buy. You want to start the company knowing the tricks of the trade. 

Image from: LettUs Grow

LettUs Grow Blog: www.lettusgrow.com/blog/advice-for-vertical-farmers

GROW Impact Accelerator Invites Applications From Startups Fostering Food Sustainability

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January 19, 2021

AgFunder

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GROW is based in Singapore, at the heart of Asia Pacific. Image credit: lena_serditova / iStock

GROW, the impact venture builder backed by AgFunder, is now accepting applications for its 2021 Impact Accelerator program. This is a unique opportunity for startups operating in new frontiers of foodtech and agtech to supercharge their growth by tapping into a global network with GROW as their gateway to Asia and the world.

This program marks the GROW Impact Accelerator’s second cohort, backed by AgFunder’s GROW Impact Fund. It will include bespoke coaching, mentor support, expert sessions, peer learning, and access to AgFunder’s unrivaled industry network to help businesses scale aggressively into new markets around the world. Successful applicants will receive US$200,000 in cash and in-kind investment on founder-friendly terms.

Agrifood is the sector where impact investors expect to increase their allocation the most over the next five years, according to the Global Impact Investing Network’s 2020 investor survey. Startups participating in the GROW Impact Accelerator will be given the tools to implement ESG principles and to track how their technology solutions help bring positive impact to people, place, and planet. We deliver a complete program that will provide access to experts, partners, potential customers, and impact-focused investors.

Last year, GROW ran its Singapore Food Bowl program, focused on accelerating early-stage startups that can contribute to local food security. Find out more here

Established to advance sustainability in the agrifood system through its support of extraordinary founders, GROW has designed the GROW Impact Accelerator program to propel not just commercial growth for participating startups, but personal growth for the entrepreneurs behind them. As venture capital investors we are in pursuit of profit, but GROW will also imbue in its alumni an ethos of doing well by doing good; one that will remain with them long after the program has finished.

The GROW Impact Accelerator is based in Singapore but will be conducted as a fully virtual program until international travel resumes. Applicants should have an MVP, be well on the way to establishing product-market fit, and should be operating in at least one market. Our interests stretch end-to-end across the agrifood value chain with a focus on technologies that allow for scalability while delivering on impact creation.

Invest with Impact. Click here.

Areas of particular interest for our 2021 intake include (but are not limited to):

• Biotech and digitalization to advance sustainable agriculture;

• Circular economies (eg, sustainable materials and closed-loop production systems);

• Climate-smart agriculture and aquaculture (technologies for carbon emissions reduction, regenerative agriculture, water use);

• Alternative proteins, innovative foods, and novel ingredients;

• Food waste valorization;

• Supply chain rationalization;

• Technologies to support smallholder farmers (eg, robotics, decision support, chemical reduction, financial inclusion).

To encourage as diverse and representative a cohort as possible, GROW is especially interested in receiving applications from teams with at least one female founder.

You can find more detailed information and apply here.

Applications close on 28 February at 23:59 GMT+8.

Coimbatore’s Hydroponic Farm Delivers Fresh Greens Within Three Hours of Harvest

K Jeshi

Sustainable farming and fresh, zero-carbon food are the philosophy behind the city’s first urban hydroponic farm, located inside an industrial building campus. To know more, MetroPlus makes a visit

I grab a leaf of peppermint from a bed of mint leaves and taste the intense freshness. Next, I look at thyme and smell the powerful aroma. A little away, purple basil with a beautiful, coppery glow beckon. I crush a lemon balm leaf and take in the uplifting, mild scent.

I am at Parna Farms, Coimbatore’s first urban hydroponic farm, located right in the heart of the city at an industrial building campus. Spread across 3,000 square feet, it grows 2,520 plants.

Akhila Vijayaraghavan | Photo Credit: S Siva Saravanan

“Our fresh lemon balm leaves impart a subtle flavour and fragrance, making it especially nice for custards, jam and jellies, cakes and tea,” says Akhila Vijayaraghavan, owner of the farm. “The purple basil is used for colour in salads. Except maybe amaranthus and palak (spinach), you can eat all the greens we grow here raw,” says Akhila pointing to varieties of lettuce, basil, bok choy, and kale.

Asian water spinach (kang kong), red gongura, mustard leaves and methi (fenugreek) are some of the new additions. “We also grow dill leaves, which are used as a garnish for fish and meat dishes and pasta. Fresh peppermint extracts are used in baking. We constantly try new crops based on demand, after rounds of trial-and-error.”

Peppermint grown at the hydrophonic Farm | Photo Credit: S Siva Saravanan

A graduate of Molecular Biology from the University of Glasgow, Akhila ran her own environmental consultancy for over 10 years before turning an urban farmer. “I worked with a lot of companies, from pharmaceuticals to FMCG, and learnt that the supply of quality end-product is a difficult task. Agriculture has always been one of my passions; I was interested in food crops. A herb can be used in cooking, to extract oil, extract nutrients in dry form, and maybe in alternative medicine, perfumery… the possibilities are exciting,” adds Akhila.

She researched hydroponic methodology and educated herself on farming before diving into it. “Anyone can do it, it is not rocket science,” she says.

“Hydroponics combines both sustainability and technology. In indoor hydroponic cultivation, the control on nutrient supply ensures more quality products, for example, improved oil content in herbs, as well as better crop yield. A hydroponic mint has more methanol content than a soil-grown one. The system also uses 80% less water than conventional agriculture. The water is upcycled for reuse.”

At Parna Farms, greens are grown using the nutrient film technique (NFT), where a thin ‘film’ of nutrient-rich water with macronutrients like nitrogen, potassium, phosphorous and calcium nitrate, and micronutrients like manganese and zinc nourish the roots of the plants.

Seedlings at the nursery at the hydroponic farm | Photo Credit: S Siva Saravanan

The farm has a germination area that uses coco peat to sprout plants and a nursery where net cups (small planters) are filled with clay pebbles. There is also the growing system, which involves metal stands and PVC pipes attached to a covered nutrient tank that pumps water to the plants. “We incubate the net cups in a plastic tray for a couple of weeks. Once the plant grows roots, it is transferred to the main system with higher nutrients in the water. This is where it is fully grown and harvested,” explains Akhila.

Hydroponic agriculture, she says, has existed for over 3,000 years, with the Hanging Gardens of Babylon being one of the often-quoted examples of this technique. “It is one of the more accessible forms of modern agriculture, tackling the dual problems of water scarcity and shortage of farmland. It reduces soil-borne pests and diseases.”

Akhila says the objective is to ensure that customers get fresh, pesticide-free produce within three hours of harvest. “Though a palak bunch from here costs ₹130, they are willing to pay the premium to enjoy good health,” says Akhila, adding, “You are what you eat. In hydroponics farming, every day is a learning curve.”

Follow @parnafarms on Instagram to know more