COVID-19, Agriculture Re-Awakened
The COVID-19 Pandemic is a current reality that is forcing the global population to reassess affected industries, and plan a future that will be less dependent on the weak links in our current supply chain facing unprecedented disruptions. Travel restrictions imposed to limit the virus’s spread have resulted in migrant laborer shortages to harvest produce as mentioned in Essential, but Unprotected.
Leafy green vegetables will be the first affected due to their early spring harvest, while already facing consumer scrutiny over food safety concerns for being highly prone to foodborne diseases when grown outdoors. To make matters worse, these vegetables are a critical part of a nutritious diet needed to support the immune systems of people fighting off viral infections. With many resorting to nonperishable foods and little exercise, there will likely be a spike in obesity which statistically makes the virus even deadlier.
Social distancing and self quarantining have become daily routines for nearly everyone in the US. The concept of decentralized agricultural production, or more commonly known as indoor gardening, enables people to grow safe and nutritious produce within their homes to minimize exposure from crowded grocery stores while shopping for highly perishable goods that require frequent visits.
Gardening has the benefit of educating children who are out of school about agriculture and technology. It also improves the psychological well being of the individuals by being around aesthetically pleasing plants as well as improving indoor air quality according to the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency). Over the past few years, we’ve seen e-commerce aggressively challenge brick and mortar stores across industries. Despite this market trend, the food and grocery industries still heavily rely on in-store experiences, led by big-box chains such as Walmart, Target, and Costco.
This is attributed to the high perishability of produce, two-thirds of which are grown in California which requires an extensive supply chain and energy-intensive refrigeration sections to constantly account for losses. However, in recent times, the value proposition of grocery delivery has seen a meteoric rise in response to consumer viral transmission fears. This is true for one such company, Heliponix, which has built their own direct-to-consumer supply chain for growing food that has been unphased by current events.
Heliponix© provides consumers with the GroPod© Smart Garden Appliance with a Seed Pod™ subscription that could be described as "Keurig for food." Their automated, hydroponic hardware combined with smart, cloud software allows anyone to become a farmer regardless of their climate, space, or existing knowledge of agriculture. Consumers enjoy Pure Produce™ that is better for their health, and the environment by reducing water consumption and food waste through local production while maintaining social distancing. Keeping the plants alive until the moment of consumption will maximize the nutritional content and taste for the user.
Co-Founder and CEO, Scott Massey stated, “We have experienced an explosion of inquiries in light of the pandemic from consumers who want control of their own produce supply. Consumers want food that tastes better, while being healthier for them from a trusted source. The GroPod makes them self-sufficient in production from our convenient seed pod subscription, and automated appliance that doesn’t require agricultural knowledge. Not only is it environmentally sustainable by avoiding the harmful pollutants of industrial agriculture, but it is also financially sustainable for the consumer who will generate a profit from the premium quality produce when all hardware, subscription, and even negligible water and energy costs are accounted for.”
Massey then went on to say, “Our company had a unique founding while my Co-Founder, Ivan Ball and I were both undergraduate students at Purdue University. We met while working as coworkers and worked as research engineers on a NASA funded project to design targeted LEDs to grow food on the ISS (International Space Station) under Dr. Cary Mitchell. We became familiar with many leading experts in this growing industry destined for mass adoption and were very fortunate to receive our first pre-seed and seed investments from Purdue Ventures Ag-celerator fund which focuses on innovations within the AgBioScience realm. I view the adoption of the distributed farming model as inevitable as global food output needs to increase by 70% as we exceed 9 billion people in 2050 according to the FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations), but we’re not making anymore farmland. Vertical, indoor agriculture is the most viable solution, however, energy, labor, and facility infrastructure are the most expensive costs resulting in low margins. This is why we chose a direct-to-consumer model; to decentralize the facility into consumer appliances, developed a more energy-efficient design, and are not dependent on labor to plant/harvest/process the crops since they are grown directly at the point of consumption, the household.”
Ivan Ball explains, “We are now deep into the fourth industrial revolution with blockchain, artificial intelligence (AI), cloud computing, and IoT connecting everything in our homes to our phones. Development of these systems will provide the architecture we need to begin connecting biological organisms to our digital world.” Computer vision and machine learning are the tools needed to understand a plant's response to a given environment and enable our automated device to adapt the environment to a plant’s preference in real-time. Additionally, a user will be able to input their preferred taste preference of a plant, for example, a “sweeter basil”, so that their GroPod can cultivate a garden of plants with a personalized taste. Already we are seeing indoor vertical farming move closer to people by growing it directly in the grocery stores. This trend from dirt to fork is compared to the ice industry of highly perishable goods being decentralized and produced within the home. It is our goal to decentralize agriculture to eliminate food waste, save water, reduce energy consumption, and become the world’s largest farming company without owning a single acre of land.
Heliponix, LLC recently won the Leyton International Startup Sustainability Challenge which landed them a booth within Eureka Park at CES (Consumer Electronics Show) 2020 in Las Vegas. They received a phenomenal amount of press from the likes of The Associated Press among others.
Source: Minnesota Historical Society/Getty Images. A poster from the Minneapolis Defense Council urged planting.
However novel the GroPod Smart Garden Appliance’s innovative design improves efficiencies, the concept of consumers growing their own food has been accomplished before. A similar mass, consumer gardening experiment was successfully orchestrated in 1943 when war-time Victory Gardens produced close to 40 percent of the country’s fresh vegetables, from about 20 million gardens in homes, schools, and community gardens. Our dependence on grocery stores will be greatly reduced by consuming produce directly from the source of a personal farm. Perhaps people may re-adopt the agrarian lifestyles of our ancestors through these automated farming appliances at a consumer level in the new gig economy.