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Remembering Ed Harwood: AeroFarms Co-Founder, Chief Science Officer
Ed Harwood, co-founder, and emeritus chief science officer at AeroFarms, has died, leaving a legacy of patented innovative agriculture technology and expansion beyond his expectations
By AMY SOWDER
July 26, 2021
Ed Harwood, co-founder, and emeritus chief science officer at AeroFarms, has died, leaving a legacy of patented innovative agriculture technology and expansion beyond his expectations.
A framed photo of Harwood’s smiling face greets those who arrive at the indoor, vertical aeroponic farm company’s headquarters in Newark, N.J., said Marc Oshima, chief marketing officer, and co-founder with Harwood and David Rosenberg. The company began in 2004.
Whenever someone schedules a meeting in the conference room, they do so at “Ed’s Garage.”
It was in his dining room and then garage where Harwood tinkered with the nozzles that transport water and nutrients to leafy greens. He patented a way to keep them unclogged, Oshima said.
Harwood also patented a new clean, inert, reusable growing medium: cloth. It’s lighter than water and soil, making it more suitable for vertical farming in urban areas where space is scarce. And it’s a growing medium made from recycled water bottles plucked from the waste stream.
“Ed’s early work led us on that path of a circular economy, sanitary design, performance and measuring that performance. Ed’s spirit of inquiry helped foster the same in our team and in our practices,” Oshima said. “His legacy is part of our culture today.”
Harwood’s focus and early discoveries helped commercialize the urban vertical farming movement, he said.
Today, AeroFarms is a Certified B Corporation striving to feed more people on less arable land by using breakthroughs in indoor agtech, artificial intelligence, and plant biology to improve the food system’s way of growing and distributing produce, locally and globally. The company is on its way to going public and has expanded with several locations including commercial farms, community farms and research and development farms, like the newest one in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates.
The company’s awards surpass the dozens. Harwood won United FreshTEC Achievement Award in 2018, a kind of lifetime achievement award for driving innovation in agriculture.
“I was really excited for Ed to be recognized for that by the broader produce community,” Oshima said. “I mean, 15 years ago he was having these conversations.”
Harwood’s training and prior experience provided the foundation of this success.
He earned his doctorate degree in dairy science with a minor in artificial intelligence. He was able to translate the dairy sector’s leading food safety principles and practices into procedures that work for indoor agriculture at AeroFarms, Oshima said.
Harwood was the associate director for agriculture at Cornell Cooperative Extension, where he worked for nine years.
Preferring to be called "Ed" rather than "Edward," Harwood was a man with a sense of fun, a soccer coach, and a family man.
Family members were by Harwood’s side when he died from cancer. He had stepped back from his duties gradually in recent years, serving as emeritus chief science officer and continuing to consult with the company, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and in academia.
Harwood lived with a positive outlook, a smile, and a sense of wonderment about the world, Oshima said.
“He was not one for titles or pretenses. It was just about the work. It was about ‘How can we do something for the greater good, have a greater impact?’” Oshima said. “He would say where we’ve gone has blossomed far beyond his dreams.”
“But it was his principles of curiosity, acting with a sense of urgency and responsibility — those have been the hallmark of our organization.”
Those who wish to send anecdotes or photos can do so at EdHarwoodTribute@AeroFarms.com.
Lead Photo: (Photo and logo courtesy AeroFarms; graphic by Amy Sowder)
2020 Sustainability Report Highlights AppHarvest’s Impact
“Resiliency is at the core of our beliefs at AppHarvest because farming as we’ve known it is broken and not sustainable for the planet,” said Founder & CEO Jonathan Webb
On A Mission To Redefine Agriculture
Titled “Feed the Future,” our 2020 Sustainability Report is now available for view and outlines our efforts to create positive environmental change in agriculture, empower employees and improve the communities in which we operate.
“Resiliency is at the core of our beliefs at AppHarvest because farming as we’ve known it is broken and not sustainable for the planet,” said Founder & CEO Jonathan Webb. “We’re solving for the variables that make our food system unreliable, such as extreme weather, droughts, fire or contamination. Our team built one of the world’s largest facilities in the midst of a global pandemic.”
This Earth Day, we’re detailing our progress toward three distinct impact goals as we work to establish a reliable, climate-resilient domestic food supply:
Drive positive environmental change in agriculture: Our first high-tech indoor farm grows more with fewer resources and contributes to a climate-resilient, domestic food supply. With our strategic location in Central Appalachia, we can reach 70% of the U.S. population within a day’s drive. The location reduces diesel used for transportation as much as 80% compared to produce trucked from Mexico or the Southwest of the U.S. Our operations are also designed to use 90% less water than open-field agriculture with 100% recycled rainwater, zero chemical pesticides, and zero agricultural runoff.
Empower individuals in Appalachia: To us, ‘empowering individuals’ means creating a life-changing experience for employees and their families. As of March 31, 2021, we have created 500 jobs with 100% of employees verified to be paid a living wage plus a comprehensive benefits package that is considered best-in-class in the agriculture sector. We also make each employee a stakeholder in the company’s success by providing equity-based incentives.
Improve the communities in which we operate: Our plans call for more than tripling our investment in Appalachia to reach almost $1 billion in capital invested by 2025. We're also working with Eastern Kentucky high schools to incorporate AgTech curriculum and provide high-tech container farms that offer students a hands-on opportunity to grow their own food and learn about nutrition. In fact, we opened another container farm today. Read more below.
“Consumers are more educated than ever, and they use that knowledge to support organizations, like AppHarvest, that have the best interests of all stakeholders in mind by putting people and planet first,” said AppHarvest President David Lee.
The complete Sustainability Report can be downloaded here.
The Rise Of B Corps Highlights The Emergence Of A New Way Of Doing Business
Today’s workforce is rejecting the old Milton Friedman notion that the only social responsibility of business is to maximize profits; they think business should also be trying to make a positive difference in the world.
August 3, 2018
Michele Giddens Contributor
In my previous column, I talked about the growing demand for impact investments, driven by powerful global trends like the ongoing transfer of wealth to women and millennials.
Crucially, these same trends are also boosting the supply of impactful investment opportunities – by supporting the rise of a new generation of enterprises that are actively pursuing social and environmental impact alongside financial goals.
In the most recent Deloitte Millennials survey, almost 40% of respondents stated that the goal of business should be to ‘improve society’ (second only to ‘generate jobs’ in terms of priorities). And in an earlier study by the Intelligence Group, 64% of millennials said it was a priority for them to make the world a better place – while 88% wanted ‘work-life integration’.
Today’s workforce is rejecting the old Milton Friedman notion that the only social responsibility of business is to maximize profits; they think business should also be trying to make a positive difference in the world. And quite right too: why should we stop caring about the things that matter to us when we go to work?
In short, people increasingly want to work for, buy from and invest in companies that have mission and impact at their heart of their model. So for entrepreneurs, there’s an increasingly attractive business case for an impact-driven approach. By making it easier to attract top talent, additional customers, and new investors, it can actually serve as a source of commercial advantage.
A notable example of this changing mindset is the global rise of the B Corp movement, a group of businesses committed to pursuing better social or environmental performance alongside their financial targets. Founded in 2006 by the entrepreneurs behind AND1 (a US sportswear company that became one of the earliest ‘profit with purpose’ businesses), it now numbers almost 2,500 businesses across 50 countries – including the likes of Triodos Bank, Warby Parker, Patagonia, Natura and Ben & Jerry’s (disclosure: Bridges is also a B Corp).
To become a certified B Corp, a company must first submit to an independent assessment of its social and environmental performance, accountability, and transparency. If the company scores highly enough, it must then incorporate its social or environmental mission into its governance articles in order to be certified (it is subsequently reassessed every three years to make sure it is maintaining the required standard, as best practice evolves).
To take just a couple of my personal favourites: Elvis & Kresse is a UK business that began life by taking old fire-hose decommissioned by the London Fire Brigade and turning it into beautiful bags and other accessories – a perfect example of the circular economy in action (it has now averted more than 300 tonnes of waste from landfill). And AeroFarms is a US business that’s come up with an innovative way to help feed the growing population: indoor vertical farms, which have produced over 250 types of leafy green vegetables using a fraction of the land and 95% less water than standard farming.
Leafy green vegetables. Healthy meals. Shutterstock
The idea is that over time, the B Corp stamp of approval will help companies attract new customers/ employees/ PR/ investors – while also creating a community whose members can learn from each other. And the early signs are promising: the UK arm reported earlier this year that UK-certified B Corps grew on average 28 times faster than national GDP in 2017. Roughly one in three of these companies said they had reached new audiences since certification, and almost half said their B Corp status had helped them attract new staff.
Of course, becoming a B Corp is no guarantee of commercial or impact success. And it’s by no means the only way for businesses to signal their commitment to achieving social and environmental impact (there are lots of highly impactful businesses that are not B Corps).
But what’s clear from the growth of this movement (and similar initiatives around the world) is that there’s an ever-growing pool of businesses that are actively trying to pursue impact goals alongside financial goals – not only because they think it’s the right thing to do, but also because they think there’s a strong commercial rationale for it. If we can match these companies up with those investors who are looking to invest for impact, we’ll be much better equipped to tackle some of the biggest challenges facing our world.
I am a partner at Bridges Fund Management, the specialist sustainable and impact investor, which I co-founded in 2002 alongside Philip Newborough and Sir Ronald Cohen. I have over 25 years of international development and impact investing experience. I have been heavily ...MORE