AeroFarms and Nokia Bell Labs Partner to Further AI-Plant Technology

By Johnny Eppich

August 11, 2021

AeroFarms and Nokia Bell Labs have unveiled a multi-year partnership. The goal is to combine their expertise and expand their joint capabilities in cutting-edge networking, autonomous systems, and integrated machine vision and machine learning technologies to identify and track plant interactions at the most advanced levels.

As part of this partnership, AeroFarms, a global leader in indoor vertical farming, contributes its commercial growing expertise, comprehensive environmental controls, an agriculture-focused data platform, and machine vision core foundation.

Nokia Bell Labs, the industrial research arm of Nokia, contributes its autonomous drone control and orchestration systems, private wireless networks, robust image and sensor data pipelines, and innovative artificial intelligence (AI) enabled mobile sensor technologies.

AeroFarms and Nokia Bell Labs have been working together since 2020. They have reached a milestone of achieving a proof of concept for this state-of-the-art integrated system and testing the technologies with AeroFarms’ current commercial crop varieties.

Together, they plan to scale this system to all of AeroFarms’ crops and future indoor vertical farms, including the next ones in Danville, VA, and Abu Dhabi.

The integration of Nokia Bell Labs’ AI-enabled drone-based sensors and advanced machine learning, computer vision, and data analytics technologies with AeroFarms’ existing machine vision tools enhances and elevates AeroFarms’ position as an agriculture platform and capabilities organization dedicated to solving food and agriculture supply chain challenges.

“With Nokia Bell Labs, we have developed the next-generation system that can image every plant every day in a cost-effective way at scale,” says David Rosenberg, CEO at AeroFarms. “This level of detailed imaging and insights helps us be better farmers by monitoring our plant biology dynamically and allowing us to course-correct as needed to ensure the highest level of quality all year round.”

Nokia Bell Labs’ machine vision technology has enabled the most precise data capture yet, down to the level of individual plants, using leaf size segmentation, quantification, and pixel-based scanning to identify consistency and variation.

Going beyond what even the human eye can perceive, this state-of-the-art imaging technology enables the gathering of immense insights about a plant, including its leaf size, stem length, coloration, curvature, spotting, and tearing.

The end-to-end system is flexible and robust, built to take advantage of Nokia’s 5G private wireless network with cloud processing technology. The network is designed for low latency and high privacy in an on-premises network. It also provides intelligent industrial analytics capabilities as an integrated service that can be deployed quickly and efficiently anywhere.

“Nokia Bell Labs is driven to solve hard and impactful problems, and together with AeroFarms, we are building the ability to see and identify plant interactions at unprecedented levels,” says Thierry Klein, Vice President of Integrated Solutions and Experiences Research Lab at Nokia. “The fundamental technologies of this partnership are our strength, and vertical farming is just the beginning. With the AeroFarms platform, we are exploring the power of network-driven intelligence for industrial outcomes. These capabilities can expand into a multitude of indoor industrial operations, including logistics, warehousing, distribution hubs, and manufacturing.”

AeroFarms Is Trying To Cultivate The Future of Vertical Farming

By Jesse Klein

August 10, 2021

2021 is turning out to be quite the year for Newark, New Jersey-based vertical farming pioneer AeroFarms. 

The biggest news is that the company is going public. In March, it announced a merger with a blank-check firm, Spring Valley Acquisition Corp., that will see the company traded publicly later this year under the ticker ARFM. Also in March, AeroFarms announced a research and development partnership with Hortifrut to push vertical farming technology into the lucrative $39.8 billion berry market, reducing its dependency on revenue from leafy greens. And in July, AeroFarms rebranded its Dream Greens produce line to AeroFarms to capitalize on its name recognition. At the same time, it expanded into five new leafy green products: Baby Bok Choy, The New Spinach, Micro Arugula, Micro Broccoli, Micro Kale and Micro Rainbow Mix. And in August, AeroFarms announced another partnership with Nokia Bell Labs, the New Jersey-based historic scientific research firm, to take its technology to the next level with increased networking, advanced autonomous systems, machine vision and machine learning technologies.

The company is obviously picking up steam. The public market offering and the capital gained during the process will be crucial for AeroFarms to reach the next level of its growth and to achieve several strategic expansions, including improving operational and energy efficiency, adding into new products (right now it’s focusing on berries), and maintaining its social impact.  

"We told investors, we view this as a long-term industry," CEO David Rosenberg said. "It is going to be massive. We feel we have a strong leadership position in the industry from a technology standpoint. So how do we build upon that and really double down on the tech producing [capital expenditures], reducing [operating expenses] and improving quality as well as new varieties of plants on this platform."

AeroFarms was founded in 2004, and its products are sold in 200 grocery stores across the Northeast including Whole Foods. It operates one vertical farm in New Jersey, with more on the way. AeroFarms is breaking ground on a facility in Abu Dhabi, pitched as the world’s largest vertical farm, as well as one in Danville, Virginia. Along with the publicly announced farms in Abu Dhabi and Danville, AeroFarms plans to build 16 more farms with the capital it’s raising, using a slightly different strategy than the company’s previous build locations. 

"It’s not where the mouths are, but where the produce distribution centers are," Rosenberg said. "So we can sell to a surrounding number of cities. We’ve gone from a lens of hyper local to a more looser definition of local." 

AeroFarms uses aeroponics, a soilless way of growing produce that uses mist to cut down on water usage by 95 percent; it plants seeds in cloth made from recycled plastic bottles. Using LED lights, the vertical farms draw on specific wavelengths to maximize efficiency of the plants’ photosynthesis. 

The vertical farming industry, already an important part of the food supply chain, is poised to explode. According to a 2020 report by the World Wildlife Fund, indoor farming is projected to have a combined annual growth rate of more than 24 percent between 2018 and 2024, hitting $3 billion in revenues worldwide in 2024. The challenges and opportunities faced by AeroFarms over the next few years will inform the vertical farming playbook for its followers. 

Energy is the next big hurdle

The SPAC merger is expected to bring AeroFarms $317 million in cash, on top of the $80 million the company already has, to scale and expand into new geographies. According to Rosenberg, the company focused most of the last 15 years on innovating its technology, seeds and plants. He is confident its technology can support a massive jump in demand and commercialization.

Energy stands out as one of the bigger hurdles facing the [vertical farming] industry.

But the process of scaling up vertical farming isn’t without controversy. A World Wildlife study that compared the life cycle assessment of lettuce grown traditionally in California and transported to St. Louis against indoor farming solutions based in St. Louis — including greenhouse hydroponically grown lettuce, greenhouse aquaponically grown lettuce, indoor vertically farmed lettuce, hydroponically grown lettuce and indoor vertically farmed, aquaponically grown lettuce — found that the energy required to run the lights, irrigation and automation for all the indoor solutions resulted in an overall higher climate impact than the traditional farming method.

"Energy stands out as one of the bigger hurdles facing the [vertical farming] industry," said Julia Kurnik, director of innovation startups at WWF and author of the study. "Because it already is making great gains around things like water use, pesticide use, food loss and food waste. So it’s doing wonderful things there."

According to Kurnik, hydroponics and aeroponic farming use less water and don’t degrade soil like traditional farming, but for vertical farming to become environmentally sustainable on a carbon emissions level, these systems need to source electricity from renewables such as solar, wind or hydro.

But simply hooking up a vertical farm to solar or wind power won't solve the problem. Manufacturing solar panels is also an environmental strain due to the materials mined and energy used to make the solar panels. Like Kurnik said, everything that produces energy has to be built. And on the business side, AeroFarms said it’s very difficult for the company to find locations that have access to 100 percent renewable energy.

According to Rosenberg, access to a greener grid is part of AeroFarms’ weighting process for picking new locations for farms, but it can’t be a dealbreaker. For example, Danville relies heavily on nuclear and natural gas for energy, which is one reason AeroFarms decided to build there. Rosenberg also hopes AeroFarms will start to focus on places and cities that have access to hydropower.

But both Kurnik and AeroFarms CTO Roger Buelow agreed that one of the main goals for both the industry and AeroFarms specifically should be reducing the energy intensity of vertical farm growing. 

"Let’s be more efficient," Buelow said. "Let’s make sure we are getting the most pounds per square meter per photon we can get. So that we’re really being good stewards with that energy. And we’re making sure that every photon gets to do its job."

One way AeroFarms does this, according to Buelow, is to put a lot of effort into making sure it uses the most efficient LED lights. But Rosenberg emphasizes that there is more to the environmental picture than just energy usage. He notes that aeroponic farming doesn’t use pesticides, herbicides or fungicides, which all have embodied energy in their production and produce degradation effects on the environment. 

"There’s the environmental picture. There’s the energy side. There’s the pollution side. There’s the soil degradation side. There’s the water usage side. The water contamination side. There’s the food waste side," he said. "It’s part of a much broader narrative in assessing what’s good or what’s not as smart for the environment."

Working on expanding crop offerings

According to the WWF study, energy represents about 25 percent of the operating costs for vertical farms, and those costs have limited what is profitable to grow in contained-environment agriculture. 

"I’ve seen pretty much anything, even fruit trees growing in these systems," Kurnik said. "But it isn’t cost-effective or energy-effective. You would spend so much energy growing them, it would bring a large environmental footprint, and it would become too expensive for the farms to sell that produce. So to see the entire industry scale and be able to grow a much greater variety of things and therefore capture all the benefits that these farms do bring, we need to figure out how to lower and/or green that energy footprint."

Berries are a high-value crop that could make the investment on the vertical farming side worthwhile for businesses such as AeroFarms.

AeroFarms is working on breaking out of the leafy green market and making some of those more energy-intensive crops profitable. The company has grown 550 varieties of plants in at least the research phase and is participating in a trial of growing a pharmaceutical ingredient for a drug. But the most likely success story will be the berries it hopes to cultivate working alongside Hortifrut. 

"[The partnership] is a great example of how we really think of ourselves as a platform," Rosenberg said. "And how we work on this platform to solve broader problems in agriculture."

Berries are a fickle fruit in the agriculture world. Berries are part of the Dirty Dozen, a list of 12 produce types created by nonprofit The Environmental Working Group that use a lot of pesticides. They are also a high-demand product that people want year-round but that only grow best in summer months, leading to massive transportation costs (both financially and environmentally) as the industry ships berries from farther away places to meet this demand. With that in mind, berries are a high-value crop that could make the investment on the vertical farming side worthwhile for businesses such as AeroFarms. 

"It’s local. It’s perishable. There’s a reliable demand. There’s a need for consistency. There’s a need for pesticide-free, herbicide-free," said AeroFarms CFO Guy Blanchard. "There’s many, many markets that look like they could very well make sense [for vertical farming]. We’re at the forefront of looking for those types of crops and markets and finding ways to deploy the technology to address those markets."

One example of that initiative: AeroFarms is also a founding member of Precision Indoor Plants (PIP), a joint venture between The Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research and other participants including BASF, Benson Hill, FFAR, Fluence, GreenVenus and Priva. The consortium is working on genetically adapting seeds for optimized indoor growing, improving light recipes, advancing speed breeding technology and altering the chemical makeup of plants to improve flavor, nutrition and medical efficacy. 

"The broader world of vertical farming will have access to all those genetics, and we’ll all be able to grow stronger plants that really make the best use of the features of vertical farms," Buelow said. 

PIP and AeroFarms plan to share their findings and innovations with the broader vertical farming community so every business in the industry can operate as efficiently as possible.

"I do think there is a lack of knowledge sharing and best practices across the industry," Kurnik said. "Because it is a bunch of startups. It is very nascent. I think the entire industry could benefit from sharing and establishing metrics and a baseline to figure out how to improve."

Balancing automation alongside social goals

The sustainability of farming and food are huge social issues as much as they are environmental ones. According to Rosenberg, one reason AeroFarms chose to locate a farm in Danville was because of the social impact it could make there. The city is 51 percent African American and has a relatively higher poverty rate than its neighbors. 

By entering an economically depressed city, AeroFarms can address food deserts and help alleviate them by providing locally sourced food and creating jobs. The Danville operation will employ about 100 people from the community, according to Rosenberg. "We want to go into those communities and inspire those communities," he said. 

AeroFarms also supports a past offenders program that started in 2016 and provides employment for 15 formerly incarcerated people so far. 

Automation is coming, and it is one way AeroFarms will decrease costs. But that could undermine the jobs added by the company in the future. Right now, the company automates the seeding process, but the seedlings are placed in trays manually. The loading, unloading, harvesting and packaging is automated but pockets of manual work are needed as well. AeroFarms wants to use the best technology while still providing jobs, according to executives. 

Vertical farms are often a collision of education levels; highly educated engineers working alongside farm labor.

"Obviously, our next farms are going to be more automated, much more automated and that innovation is something we are proud of," said Diego Rivera, Aerofarms’ master grower. "But even with automation, nothing is going to replace the human eye. Some key positions are going to be still there."

So it’s going to be about retraining. According to Rivera, Aerofarms has programs in place that create conditions for people to stay at the company by promoting people from within. 

"Our approach is going to innovate and continue to work to bring our workforce along with us," Rosenberg added. "How do we train for those next skills? How do we get them to understand how to use those controls so they could apply their contribution in a higher level way? We’re constantly training them to be ready for the next challenges."

To provide employees with the opportunity for upward mobility, AeroFarms offers computer literacy programs and financial literacy workshops. According to Rosenberg, vertical farms are often a collision of education levels; highly educated engineers working alongside farm labor. 

"So how can we get the highly educated workforce to work with our frontline workers to teach them these skills and help form that sense of community," Rosenberg added.

It’s clear vertical farming sits right in the middle of many of the largest issues facing our economy and our planet. AeroFarms is trying to tackle a lot of them; everything from food insecurity to energy usage to job sustainability. Succeeding could create a path leading others towards a sustainable and equitable economy of the future for others to follow, while failing will offer a parable of trying to be all things to all people and biting off more than you can chew. 

AeroFarms and Nokia Unveil Partnership for Next Generation AI-Enabled Plant Vision Technology

August 5, 2021

NEWARK, N.J.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--AeroFarms and Nokia Bell Labs today unveiled a groundbreaking multi-year partnership to combine their expertise and expand their joint capabilities in cutting-edge networking, autonomous systems, and integrated machine vision and machine learning technologies to identify and track plant interactions at the most advanced levels.

As part of this partnership, AeroFarms, a Certified B Corporation and global leader in indoor vertical farming, contributes its commercial growing expertise, comprehensive environmental controls, an agriculture-focused data platform, and machine vision core foundation. Nokia Bell Labs, the world-renowned industrial research arm of Nokia, contributes its groundbreaking autonomous drone control and orchestration systems, private wireless networks, robust image and sensor data pipelines, and innovative artificial intelligence (AI) enabled mobile sensor technologies. This combination of innovative technologies allows AeroFarms to reach the next level of imaging insights that further enhance its capabilities as an industry leading operator of world-class, fully-connected smart vertical farms that grow the highest quality plants all year round.

AeroFarms and Nokia Bell Labs have been working together since 2020 and have reached an important milestone of achieving a proof of concept for this state-of-the-art integrated system and testing the technologies with AeroFarms’ current commercial crop varieties. Together, they are now ready to scale this system to all of AeroFarms’ crops and future indoor vertical farms, including the next ones in Danville, Virginia and Abu Dhabi, UAE.

The integration of Nokia Bell Labs’ AI-enabled drone-based sensors and advanced machine learning, computer vision and data analytics technologies with AeroFarms’ existing machine vision tools enhances and elevates AeroFarms’ position as an agriculture platform and capabilities organization dedicated to solving food and agriculture supply chain challenges.

David Rosenberg, CEO at AeroFarms, said: “With Nokia Bell Labs, we have developed the next-generation system that can image every plant every day in a cost-effective way at scale. This level of detailed imaging and insights helps us be better farmers by monitoring our plant biology dynamically and allowing us to course correct as needed to ensure the highest level of quality all year round. When I watch the drones autonomously imaging our plants, I am blown away by how this truly represents the power of harnessing leading-edge technologies and bringing brilliant problem solvers together from diverse groups to grow the best plants possible.”

Roger Buelow, CTO at AeroFarms, said: “AeroFarms’ expert team of plant scientists and engineers have been working together for two years with Nokia Bell Labs’ top researchers and engineers to train these complex learning systems with a nuanced understanding of plant biology. We have created a cross-disciplinary understanding at an industrial scale to develop the latest imaging technology to help accelerate our ability to introduce new crops and ensure the highest quality for our commercial operations.”

Nokia Bell Labs’ machine vision technology has enabled the most precise data capture yet, down to the level of individual plants, using leaf size segmentation, quantification, and pixel-based scanning to identify consistency and variation. Going beyond what even the human eye can perceive, this state-of-the art imaging technology enables the gathering of immense insights about a plant including its leaf size, stem length, coloration, curvature, spotting, and tearing. The end-to-end system is flexible and robust, built to take advantage of Nokia’s industry-leading 5G private wireless network with cloud processing technology, designed for low latency and high privacy in an on-premises network. It also provides intelligent industrial analytics capabilities as an integrated service that can be deployed quickly and efficiently anywhere.

Thierry Klein, VP, Integrated Solutions and Experiences Research Lab at Nokia, said: “Nokia Bell Labs is driven to solve hard and impactful problems, and together with AeroFarms, we are building the ability to see and identify plant interactions at unprecedented levels. The fundamental technologies of this partnership are our strength, and vertical farming is just the beginning. With the AeroFarms platform, we are exploring the power of network driven intelligence for industrial outcomes. These capabilities can expand into a multitude of indoor industrial operations, including logistics, warehousing, distribution hubs, and manufacturing.”

The multi-year partnership between AeroFarms and Nokia is anchored on shared values as mission-driven companies with the vision to scale technologies for the greater good. AeroFarms’ vertical farming platform is more sustainable than traditional farming with up to 390 times greater productivity per square foot annually, while using up to 95% less water and zero pesticides. In addition, vertical farming provides local food options for communities, reducing the environmental impact of trucking and shipping produce long distances and helping combat food waste.

Additional resources
AeroFarms website
Nokia Bell Labs website

About Nokia

At Nokia, we create technology that helps the world act together. As a trusted partner for critical networks, we are committed to innovation and technology leadership across mobile, fixed and cloud networks. We create value with intellectual property and long-term research, led by the award-winning Nokia Bell Labs. Adhering to the highest standards of integrity and security, we help build the capabilities needed for a more productive, sustainable and inclusive world.

About AeroFarms

Since 2004, AeroFarms has been leading the way for indoor vertical farming and championing transformational innovation for agriculture. On a mission to grow the best plants possible for the betterment of humanity, AeroFarms is a Certified B Corporation with global headquarters in Newark, New Jersey. Named one of the World’s Most Innovative Companies by Fast Company two years in a row and one of TIME’s Best Inventions in Food, AeroFarms patented, award-winning indoor vertical farming technology provides the perfect conditions for healthy plants to thrive, taking agriculture to a new level of precision, food safety, and productivity while using up to 95% less water and no pesticides ever versus traditional field farming. AeroFarms enables local production to safely grow all year round, using vertical farming for elevated flavor. In addition, through its proprietary growing technology platform, AeroFarms has grown over 550 varieties and has developed multi-year strategic partnerships ranging from government to major Fortune 500 companies to help uniquely solve agriculture supply chain needs. For additional information, visit: https://aerofarms.com/.

On March 26, 2021, AeroFarms announced a definitive business combination agreement with Spring Valley Acquisition Corp. (Nasdaq: SV). Upon the closing of the business combination, AeroFarms will become publicly traded on Nasdaq under the new ticker symbol "ARFM". Additional information about the transaction can be viewed here: https://aerofarms.com/investors/.

No Offer or Solicitation

This press release does not constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy, or the solicitation of any vote or approval in any jurisdiction in connection with a proposed potential business combination among Spring Valley and AeroFarms or any related transactions, nor shall there be any sale, issuance or transfer of securities in any jurisdiction where, or to any person to whom, such offer, solicitation or sale may be unlawful. Any offering of securities or solicitation of votes regarding the proposed transaction will be made only by means of a proxy statement/prospectus that complies with applicable rules and regulations promulgated under the Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the “Securities Act”), and Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended, or pursuant to an exemption from the Securities Act or in a transaction not subject to the registration requirements of the Securities Act.

Forward Looking Statements

Certain statements included in this press release that are not historical facts are forward-looking statements for purposes of the safe harbor provisions under the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements generally are accompanied by words such as “believe,” “may,” “might,” “will,” “estimate,” “continue,” “contemplate,” “anticipate,” “intend,” “expect,” “should,” “would,” “could,” “plan,” “predict,” “project,” “potential,” “seem,” “seek,” “future,” “outlook,” and similar expressions that predict or indicate future events or trends or that are not statements of historical matters. All statements, other than statements of present or historical fact included in this press release, including those regarding the expected benefits of the partnership, improvement of plant yields and quality and Spring Valley’s proposed acquisition of AeroFarms are forward-looking statements. These statements are based on various assumptions, whether or not identified in this press release, and on the current expectations of the respective management of AeroFarms and Spring Valley and are not predictions of actual performance. These forward-looking statements are provided for illustrative purposes only and are not intended to serve as, and must not be relied on as, a guarantee, an assurance, a prediction, or a definitive statement of fact or probability. Actual events and circumstances are difficult or impossible to predict and will differ from assumptions. Many actual events and circumstances are beyond the control of AeroFarms and Spring Valley. These forward-looking statements are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties, including changes in domestic and foreign business, market, financial, political, and legal conditions; the inability of the parties to successfully or timely consummate the proposed transaction, including the risk that any regulatory approvals are not obtained, are delayed or are subject to unanticipated conditions that could adversely affect the combined company or the expected benefits of the proposed transaction or that the approval of the stockholders of Spring Valley or AeroFarms is not obtained; failure to realize the anticipated benefits of the proposed transaction; risks related to the expansion of AeroFarms’ business and the timing of expected business milestones; the effects of competition on AeroFarms’ business; the ability of Spring Valley or AeroFarms to issue equity or equity-linked securities or obtain debt financing in connection with the proposed transaction or in the future, and those factors discussed in Spring Valley’s Annual Report on Form 10-K, Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q, final prospectus dated November 25, 2020 and definitive proxy statement/prospectus dated July 26, 2021 under the heading “Risk Factors,” and other documents Spring Valley has filed, or will file, with the SEC. If any of these risks materialize or our assumptions prove incorrect, actual results could differ materially from the results implied by these forward-looking statements. There may be additional risks that neither Spring Valley nor AeroFarms presently know, or that Spring Valley nor AeroFarms currently believe are immaterial, that could also cause actual results to differ from those contained in the forward-looking statements. In addition, forward-looking statements reflect Spring Valley’s and AeroFarms’ expectations, plans, or forecasts of future events and views as of the date of this press release. Spring Valley and AeroFarms anticipate that subsequent events and developments will cause Spring Valley’s and AeroFarms’ assessments to change. However, while Spring Valley and AeroFarms may elect to update these forward-looking statements at some point in the future, Spring Valley and AeroFarms specifically disclaim any obligation to do so. These forward-looking statements should not be relied upon as representing Spring Valley’s and AeroFarms’ assessments of any date subsequent to the date of this press release. Accordingly, undue reliance should not be placed upon the forward-looking statements.

Contacts

AeroFarms Contacts
Investor Relations:
Jeff Sonnek
ICR
Jeff.Sonnek@icrinc.com
1-646-277-1263

Media Relations:
Marc Oshima
AeroFarms
MarcOshima@AeroFarms.com
1-917-673-4602

AeroFarms' David Rosenberg Discusses Growth, Investment, and More

By Melissa De Leon Chavez

July 29, 2021

NEWARK, NJ - From diving into publicly traded waters and launching a rebrand to introducing several new items and opening a research and development (R&D) hub, it’s safe to say that AeroFarms has come farther than CEO and Co-Founder David Rosenberg envisioned since the beginning days of 2004.

David Rosenberg, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer, AeroFarms

“When I co-founded the company, I thought of this as a supply chain play. I looked at the inefficiencies and thought, if we could enable local food production at scale, we could disintermediate parts of the supply chain and enable local food production and access to fresh food, starting with leafy greens,” David shares with me.

Fast-forward to today, and AeroFarms is consistently breaking ground, physically and conventionally, in the U.S. and overseas.

“Our new AeroFarms AgX project in Abu Dhabi is two-fold. One, we expect to have a strong presence in the Middle East. Two, it aligns with our value proposition where there's not much farmland. There's not as much fresh water and there's relatively low-cost, abundant energy. Additionally, we're using our presence there to really innovate. We're building the world’s largest indoor vertical farming R&D facility of its kind that is going to have a tremendous amount of innovation in it, from genetics to automation exploration,” he tells me. “We're also doing a lot in the U.S. We just opened a building expansion here in Newark where we have our global headquarters. That's another 25,000-square-foot facility for prototyping and R&D, so we have much going on Stateside as well.”

AeroFarms has revealed several advancements, from diving into publicly traded waters and launching a rebrand to introducing several new items and opening a new research and development (R&D) hub

AeroFarms has a diverse, partner-fueled style that can be seen blueprinted in David's own background. Far from a straight line to agriculture, the executive was drawn to the produce industry by a love of problem-solving.

“My last company was a nanotech company in construction, which focused specifically on waterproofing and corrosion inhibition. From that I learned how much water goes to agriculture and thought I could make a difference. I love when there could be technological solutions to existing issues, and it’s a pattern I have found across industries,” David imparts.

With a background as a multi-business serial entrepreneur from Columbia Business School, it’s no wonder that David and his team have an unorthodox approach to indoor ag, employing several outside minds to expand laterally and vertically the possibilities of the industry.

“What surprised me is that fully controlled agriculture enables us to understand and give a plant exactly what it wants, when it wants, and how it wants it. As a consequence, we're competing on taste and texture in unique ways. So, I used to think our competitive advantage was local and fresh when, it turns out, we have unique tastes that allow us to go further and distinguish us from any other grower out there,” the CEO and Co-Founder muses.

AeroFarms most recently expanded its leafy greens product assortment for both baby leafy greens and microgreens as it seeks to redefine indoor-grown fresh produce and all it could impact

It's the result of having a team comprised of skilled farmers, plant geneticists, and R&D scientists that pushed the company into a whole new ring of investing: public trading.

“One of the reasons we're going public is it allows us to continue innovating on the tech side and make continued advancements to reduce capital cost, operating costs, and improve quality. We are investing millions a year in R&D. AeroFarms is involved in some cutting-edge, pioneering work, which attracts a lot of interest in this space. We’re also working with other big companies to accelerate innovation cycles, such as Dell and others—companies you don't typically associate with agriculture. We're partnering with them and developing some breakthrough stuff,” David points out, bringing us back to thinking out of the box and of traditional teams.

Among the areas AeroFarms is looking to further transform includes automation across seeding, harvesting, cleaning, packaging, and beyond, as well as biological development, working to understand what plants need to help realize their full potential.

“There's a strong lens towards technical innovation. I see a lot of players in the industry looking at produce as an execution play, not realizing there's a lot more room to reduce capital and operating costs,” he shares.

It is in that spirit that AeroFarms has continued to launch new products, most recently expanding its leafy greens product assortment for both baby leafy greens and microgreens, as it seeks to redefine not just indoor-grown fresh produce, but all it could impact.

AeroFarms is looking to further transform areas such as automation across seeding, harvesting, cleaning, packaging, and beyond, as well as biological development.

“We're very mission focused,” David concludes of the company’s driven success. “We have a program with past offenders where we've successfully taken people who were previously incarcerated and given them good jobs with a better pathway in life. We also have internal programs where computer literacy and financial literacy training continue to foster growth. Environmentally, we're focused on how to do more with less. How do we continue to grow a plant using less energy, less water, less nutrients, and zero pesticides? I think these commitments and our mission to grow the best plants possible for the betterment of humanity are why we're attracting so many new employees as we seek to build a better future.”

As we continue to eye such movers and shakers throughout fresh produce, continue to follow AndNowUKnow.

AeroFarms Expands Its Award-Winning Leafy Greens Product Assortment

July 13, 2021

NEWARK, N.J.–AeroFarms, a Certified B Corporation and leader in indoor vertical farming, today announced that it is expanding its line of leafy greens to include 5 new items: Baby Bok Choy-The New SpinachTM, Micro Arugula, Micro Broccoli, Micro Kale, and Micro Rainbow Mix.

AeroFarms® award-winning retail brand of leafy greens is prized for its elevated flavor and is grown using proprietary aeroponics and indoor vertical farming technologies, which yield annual productivity up to 390 times greater than traditional field farming while using up to 95% less water and zero pesticides.

There has been increased consumer interest in Asian greens and Future Fusebiquity – as outlined in Datassential’s Food Bytes 2021 Food Trends – that takes new generation products and combines them with well-known dishes. AeroFarms Baby Bok Choy-The New SpinachTM is reimagining how to create a better spinach experience that is juicier, more flavorful, and even more nutrient-dense with an ANDI (Aggregate Nutrient Density Index) score of 865 vs. spinach at 707, and it can be enjoyed in just about any spinach recipe for an updated new take on the dish.

Microgreens were recognized by The Today Show as one of the top health trends for 2021, and AeroFarms has been expanding this category at retail since 2019. Responding to consumer demand, AeroFarms has added Micro Arugula, Micro Broccoli, Micro Kale, and Micro Rainbow Mix to its core line of Micro Spicy Mix and Micro Super Mix. Produced year-round at the highest quality, AeroFarms microgreens offer great visual and flavor excitement, elevating the home cook into a chef. In addition, AeroFarms microgreens provide higher nutrient density than their mature green counterparts, offering a powerful way to provide a potent boost of vitamins, minerals, and phytonutrients.

AeroFarms starts by selecting the most flavorful varietals of microgreens and baby greens, then perfects them in its proprietary indoor vertical farms for optimal quality, yield, color, nutrition, texture, and taste. In fact, AeroFarms has trademarked Vertical Farming, Elevated Flavor™ to highlight to consumers not only where and how their food is grown, but also more importantly, the key growing benefits that AeroFarms uniquely brings to the market, setting a new culinary standard with millions of data points to prove it.

AeroFarms is able to grow its kale to be sweeter and its arugula to be perfectly peppery, and the Company has developed its signature FlavorSpectrum™ to represent the breadth of flavors and hundreds of varieties of leafy greens that it is able to grow. AeroFarms’ team of experts from horticulturists to engineers to data scientists to nutritionists paired each specific tasting note with a representative color to bring the FlavorSpectrum™ philosophy to life. Across its leafy greens packaging line, the cool blue tones represent sweet and mellow notes, while the intense reds represent bold and zesty flavors.

All AeroFarms leafy greens are safely grown indoors in New Jersey at one of AeroFarms’ state-of-the art commercial indoor vertical farms that is certified for USDA Good Agricultural Practices, SQF Level 2 Good Manufacturing Practices, Non-GMO Project Verification, and OU Kosher. AeroFarms leafy greens are completely pesticide free, and ready-to-eat without any need to wash, providing a major benefit to consumers looking for safety and convenience. AeroFarms leafy greens are available at major customers such as Amazon Fresh, Baldor Specialty Foods, FreshDirect, Morton Williams, ShopRite, Walmart, and Whole Foods.

“Our Company is committed to partnering with our retail partners to expand the entire category of leafy greens and drive consumption with our sustainably grown produce that is winning on taste,” said David Rosenberg, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of AeroFarms. “We are excited to expand our line of microgreens, which we believe can move from just a garnish to center of the plate given their exceptional taste — microgreens can be enjoyed all of the time!”

About AeroFarms

Since 2004, AeroFarms has been leading the way for indoor vertical farming and championing transformational innovation for agriculture. On a mission to grow the best plants possible for the betterment of humanity, AeroFarms is a Certified B Corporation with global headquarters in Newark, New Jersey. Named one of the World’s Most Innovative Companies by Fast Company two years in a row and one of TIME’s Best Inventions in Food, AeroFarms patented, award-winning indoor vertical farming technology provides the perfect conditions for healthy plants to thrive, taking agriculture to a new level of precision, food safety, and productivity while using up to 95% less water and no pesticides ever versus traditional field farming. AeroFarms enables local production to safely grow all year round, using vertical farming for elevated flavor. In addition, through its proprietary growing technology platform, AeroFarms has developed multi-year strategic partnerships ranging from government to major Fortune 500 companies to help uniquely solve agriculture supply chain needs. For additional information, visit: https://aerofarms.com/.

On March 26, 2021, AeroFarms announced a definitive business combination agreement with Spring Valley Acquisition Corp. (Nasdaq: SV). Upon the closing of the business combination, AeroFarms will become publicly traded on Nasdaq under the new ticker symbol “ARFM”. Additional information about the transaction can be viewed here: https://aerofarms.com/investors/

No Offer or Solicitation

This press release does not constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy, or the solicitation of any vote or approval in any jurisdiction in connection with a proposed potential business combination among Spring Valley and AeroFarms or any related transactions, nor shall there be any sale, issuance or transfer of securities in any jurisdiction where, or to any person to whom, such offer, solicitation or sale may be unlawful. Any offering of securities or solicitation of votes regarding the proposed transaction will be made only by means of a proxy statement/prospectus that complies with applicable rules and regulations promulgated under the Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the “Securities Act”), and Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended, or pursuant to an exemption from the Securities Act or in a transaction not subject to the registration requirements of the Securities Act.

Forward Looking Statements

Certain statements included in this press release that are not historical facts are forward-looking statements for purposes of the safe harbor provisions under the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements generally are accompanied by words such as “believe,” “may,” “might,” “will,” “estimate,” “continue,” “contemplate,” “anticipate,” “intend,” “expect,” “should,” “would,” “could,” “plan,” “predict,” “project,” “potential,” “seem,” “seek,” “future,” “outlook,” and similar expressions that predict or indicate future events or trends or that are not statements of historical matters. All statements, other than statements of present or historical fact included in this presentation, regarding Spring Valley’s proposed acquisition of AeroFarms, Spring Valley’s ability to consummate the transaction, the benefits of the transaction and the combined company’s future financial performance, as well as the combined company’s strategy, future operations, estimated financial position, estimated revenues and losses, projected costs, prospects, plans and objectives of management are forward-looking statements. These statements are based on various assumptions, whether or not identified in this press release, and on the current expectations of the respective management of AeroFarms and Spring Valley and are not predictions of actual performance. These forward-looking statements are provided for illustrative purposes only and are not intended to serve as, and must not be relied on as, a guarantee, an assurance, a prediction, or a definitive statement of fact or probability. Actual events and circumstances are difficult or impossible to predict and will differ from assumptions. Many actual events and circumstances are beyond the control of AeroFarms and Spring Valley. These forward-looking statements are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties, including changes in domestic and foreign business, market, financial, political, and legal conditions; the inability of the parties to successfully or timely consummate the proposed transaction, including the risk that any regulatory approvals are not obtained, are delayed or are subject to unanticipated conditions that could adversely affect the combined company or the expected benefits of the proposed transaction or that the approval of the stockholders of Spring Valley or AeroFarms is not obtained; failure to realize the anticipated benefits of the proposed transaction; risks relating to the uncertainty of the projected financial information with respect to AeroFarms; risks related to the expansion of AeroFarms’ business and the timing of expected business milestones; the effects of competition on AeroFarms’ business; the ability of Spring Valley or AeroFarms to issue equity or equity-linked securities or obtain debt financing in connection with the proposed transaction or in the future, and those factors discussed in Spring Valley’s Annual Report on Form 10-K, Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q, final prospectus dated November 25, 2020 and preliminary proxy statement/prospectus dated May 10, 2021 under the heading “Risk Factors,” and other documents Spring Valley has filed, or will file, with the SEC. If any of these risks materialize or our assumptions prove incorrect, actual results could differ materially from the results implied by these forward-looking statements. There may be additional risks that neither Spring Valley nor AeroFarms presently know, or that Spring Valley nor AeroFarms currently believe are immaterial, that could also cause actual results to differ from those contained in the forward-looking statements. In addition, forward-looking statements reflect Spring Valley’s and AeroFarms’ expectations, plans, or forecasts of future events and views as of the date of this press release. Spring Valley and AeroFarms anticipate that subsequent events and developments will cause Spring Valley’s and AeroFarms’ assessments to change. However, while Spring Valley and AeroFarms may elect to update these forward-looking statements at some point in the future, Spring Valley and AeroFarms specifically disclaim any obligation to do so. These forward-looking statements should not be relied upon as representing Spring Valley’s and AeroFarms’ assessments of any date subsequent to the date of this press release. Accordingly, undue reliance should not be placed upon the forward-looking statements.

Indoor Farming Is In Growth Mode

By Lynn Petrak

July 9, 2021

The future of indoor farming, including vertical farming, has nowhere to go but up. With parallel and perhaps inevitably colliding trends of sustainability, plant-based eating, food safety and labor-saving agricultural practices, produce grown in controlled environments is likely to become much more common in grocery stores.

As a testament to the sunny future of the ag tech niche, the U.S. Department of Agriculture started a new Office of Urban Agriculture and Innovative Production last year. More than $3 million in initial grants were made available through that department in 2020.

Prognosticators have weighed in on a future of food that includes strategically located indoor farms throughout the country. In a report released late last year, Allied Market Research, whose Americas office is in Portland, Ore., projected that the global vertical-farming industry is expected to reach $1.38 billion by 2027, with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 26.2% from 2021 to 2027.

Several grocers are already buying into this type of produce supply. Earlier this year, The Kroger Co., based in Cincinnati, began sourcing fresh produce from Hamilton, Ohio-based indoor grower 80 Acres Farms for the retailer’s stores in Ohio, Indiana and Kentucky. In 2020, Kroger partnered with German startup Infarm to add modular vertical farms to two of its Quality Food Centers in the Seattle area.

Also last year, Publix Super Markets said that it will invest more in hydroponic produce and added a new on-site trailer farm from a local hydroponic grower to its GreenWise Market store in the grocer’s hometown of Lakeland, Fla. Boise, Idaho-based Albertsons Cos. has collaborated with South San Francisco, Calif.-based Plenty and with Bowery Farming, based in New York, to provide its shoppers with fresh produce grown indoors. Natural and organic retailer Whole Foods Market, based in Austin, Texas, recently added a mini-farm from New York-based Farm.One to one of its Big Apple stores to provide herbs for prepared pizzas and drinks. In addition to these and other large grocery players, smaller chains and independents have teamed up with various greenhouses and growing operations near their locations.   

Consumers have expressed their opinions about produce grown indoors. According to the 2021 “Power of Produce” report published by Arlington, Va.-based FMI – The Food Industry Association, and conducted by San Antonio-based 210 Analytics, 43% of shoppers don’t have a preference for produce coming from indoor versus outdoor farms. Those most likely to prefer indoor growing include urbanites, consumers with above-average spend per person, members of the Generation Z age demographic, higher-income households, core value-added shoppers, organic produce buyers and men. Those more likely to prefer outdoor-grown produce include consumers in rural areas and conventional produce buyers, the report found.

AeroFarms uses aeroponic methods to grow healthy plants, using up to 95% less water and no pesticides.

Greener Pastures

One of the biggest drivers of the move to produce more food in indoor-farming facilities is sustainability. From an environmental standpoint, indoor-grown produce may be part choice, part necessity, depending on the area and the circumstances.

Necessity is born of conditions wrought by continual weather extremes that are often attributed to a changing climate. Unusual weather patterns resulting in droughts, floods, storm damage and harmful freezes take a toll on traditional farms and on the farmers who grow fresh fruits and vegetables.  

Weather extremes have always happened, but are becoming more frequent. For example, coming off last summer’s devastating derecho event, a drought that began in late 2020 in Iowa and has continued through early summer is stressing that state’s corn and soybean crops. Earlier this year, rare heavy snow, ice and frigid temperatures in Texas hurt winter wheat and some citrus crops.

At the same time, there’s an overall push to produce food in a more sustainable way. More than two-thirds (64%) of American consumers say that they’re willing to pay a premium for environmentally friendly products. “There is a trend – not a fad – of consumers who appreciate the benefit of getting produce soon after it’s harvested,” says David Rosenberg, co-founder and CEO of vertical-farming leader AeroFarms, based in Newark, N.J., “and more and more customers are realizing that they want products with no pesticides, because those are not meant for human beings.”

On the business side, sustainability is a central part of many CPGs’ and grocers’ corporate- responsibility platforms as they pledge to reduce their use of resources like water and energy. Many manufacturers and retailers have also revealed goals to cut down on or eliminate the use of pesticides in their products.  

Other Seeds of Change

In addition to the pursuit of sustainable growing practices, other factors are contributing to interest in this method of agriculture. The need to shore up food security in the face of a booming global population and the problem of urban food deserts are notable catalysts. So is consumers’ penchant for eating more fresh plant-based foods, and foods grown in a more sustainable way.

Meanwhile, as evidenced in ubiquitous “Now hiring” signs, it can be tough to find workers to plant, care for and harvest crops. Indoor farms run with several automated controls and tasks are less affected by fluctuations and stresses in the labor market.

The global COVID-19 pandemic also contributed to the acceleration of indoor farming. When some retailers faced supply chain issues and had difficulty sourcing fresh products, they turned to new vendor partners that operated indoor farms with more controlled conditions and inventories. Indoor farms typically can be built faster and are also versatile operations that allow for pivots in the event of changing circumstances.

There are additional practical reasons for sourcing produce from indoor growers. “Right now, retailers want consistency in price, quality and delivery. At its core, we are delivering consistency,” notes Rosenberg, citing other profit-driven benefits such as reduced shrink and spoilage.

Modern indoor farms combine technology and agriculture to provide fresh produce in a more sustainable way.

Indoor-Farm Tour

Generally, plants in indoor-farming facilities are grown in cells stacked for space savings and efficiency. In lieu of the sun, LED lights are used to facilitate growth. 

Watering techniques vary. In hydroponic farms, plant roots are placed in nutrient-rich solutions instead of soil. With aeroponics, exposed roots hang down from the plant and receive nutrients via a system that sprays nutrient-filled water.

Indoor farms take different forms in the United States and around the world. Some indoor farms are massive in size and almost industrial in their setup. Others are smaller and hyperlocal, using locations like repurposed shipping containers or greenhouses. Some farms are constructed vertically to minimize the physical footprint or to use existing buildings, while others are more spread out in their design. Farms are being built in urban areas, often in former manufacturing facilities, warehouses or multilevel stores, and in more rural areas, where they are run by longtime family farm owners who are looking for ways to reinvent their businesses in the wake of competition from big farms.

One thing is for sure: There are more of these types of growing operations. AeroFarms is one grower on the march, with a l36,000-square-foot aeroponics farm under construction in Virginia, set to be finished sometime in 2022.

In June, Vertical Roots, a Charleston, S.C.-based hydroponic container farm that’s part of Amplifed Ag, opened its third indoor farm in Atlanta at a facility run by two large produce suppliers in the Southeast. According to the company, the new farm will eliminate the need for transportation to the distributor and will enable produce to be delivered to local customers the same day that it’s harvested.

In mid-June, Morehead, Ky.-based grower AppHarvest revealed that it’s adding two large indoor farms in the Bluegrass State. With a completion date of the end of 2022, the farms will produce non-GMO leafy greens and fruits for shipment to grocers and restaurants.

Also in 2021, Irvington, N.Y.-based BrightFarms opened its newest indoor farm, in Hendersonville, N.C., a 6-acre greenhouse that will deliver to retailers in nearby areas in that state, as well as in South Carolina and Georgia.

Startup Bowery Farms is opening an R&D hub called “Farm X” that will help expand product development. The facility includes a new sensory lab and innovation center.

In another sign of the health of this sector, there’s major seed money – no pun intended – going toward indoor farming. Berlin-based Infarm, for example, is said to be going public following a reported merger with Kernel Group Holdings Inc., of San Francisco. In May, Bowery Farming revealed a new round of funding to the tune of $300 million that lifted the company’s estimated value to about $2.3 billion. Indoor-farming company Gotham Greens, based in Brooklyn, N.Y., revealed $87 million in new funding in December 2020.

While indoor farms are expanding, crops produced in such facilities are expected to grow, too.  Most ag tech companies currently produce leafy greens and herbs in hundreds of different varieties. Tomatoes are also grown hydroponically in many places. Better technologies and a greater collective knowledge are spurring innovations in other types of crops grown indoors in an eco-friendlier way. AppHarvest, for its part, is growing strawberries in one of its new locations, and vine crops in another.

Implications for the Retail Produce Section

More and different types of indoor farms are transforming agriculture – and the retail produce department.  Since many of these products are packaged on site, supermarket produce sections now feature a greater mix of packaged and bulk items. Offerings like packaged salads and tomatoes also help define and elevate a brand, whether it’s a store brand or a grower brand. 

Coming off a year in which consumers prepared more foods and experimented with new products and varieties, several new products grown in indoor-farming facilities have hit the marketplace. Medford, Minn.-based Revol Greens recently rolled out new varieties of chopped romaine salads made with lettuces grown at its indoor farm in its home state. Revolution Farms, in Caledonia, Mich., is launching four new salad mixes. One of Bowery Farming’s latest products is a new Bowery Crispy Leaf Lettuce, deemed to be a “reinvigorated version” of iceberg lettuce. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg (lettuce).  

Grocers can merchandise indoor-farmed produce in a creative way to distinguish their offerings and connect with shoppers. “We’ve worked in a process of co-creating with retailers,” observes AeroFarms’ Rosenberg. “It is an opportunity to deliver innovation and excitement for an exciting category.”

Lead Photo: Hydroponic farming company Vertical Roots is growing its footprint with a new indoor lettuce farm in the Atlanta area.

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.”

No Dirt? No Farm? No Problem. The Potential For Soil-Less Agriculture Is Huge

By CATHARINE HAMM

At Plenty’s South San Francisco hydroponics growing facility, a million plants produce leafy greens that are sold through area grocery stores. The company plans to open a farm in Compton this year.

(Plenty)

Imagine kale that doesn’t taste like a punishment for something you did in a previous life. Envision leafy greens that aren’t limp from their journey to your plate. Anticipate the intense flavor of just-picked herbs that kick up your latest culinary creation a notch or three.

Then consider the possibility that such advancements will play a role in altering the face of agriculture, becoming sources of flavorful, fresh produce in “food deserts” and making farm-to-table restaurant cuisine possible because produce is grown on the premises, even in urban areas.

This is the potential and the promise of hydroponics (a term that also includes aeroponics and aquaponics systems), the soil-less cultivation of crops in controlled environments. It’s a growing industry — $9.5 billion in sales is expected to nearly double in the next five years — that stems, in part, from concerns about growing enough food to feed a worldwide population expected to hit 10 billion in the next 30 years.

The growing method isn’t new. The Hanging Gardens of Babylon, dating to the 6th century B.C., maybe a precursor to today’s hydroponics, if they existed. (Historians disagree on that as well as where the gardens were.) Then, as now, technology is a key to giving growers, not Mother Nature, more control overproduction.

The size of today’s systems varies. They might be as simple and compact as an in-home system that’s about the size of a couple of loaves of bread stacked on top of each other. Some of the growing popularity of those units may be connected to the pandemic, according to Paul Rabaut, director of marketing for AeroGarden, which produces systems for in-home crop production.

“As soon as the pandemic was declared in mid-March and the quarantine took effect, we saw immediate growth spikes, unlike anything we’d ever seen before,” he said. Those spikes resulted, he said, from the need for entertainment beyond Netflix and jigsaw puzzles, a desire to minimize trips to the grocery store and the promise of teachable moments for kids now schooled at home.

At the other end of the spectrum are large urban farms. Plenty, for instance, has a South San Francisco hydroponics growing facility where a million plant sites produce crops, some of which are sold through area grocery stores. The company hopes to open a farm in Compton this year that’s expected to be about the size of a big-box store and will grow the equivalent of 700 acres of food.

Plenty scientists, engineers and growers at work in their South San Francisco hydroponics growing facility.

(Plenty)

“It’s a super vibrant community with a rich agricultural history,” Nate Storey, a cofounder of the vertical farming company, said of the Compton facility. “It also happens to be a food desert.

“Americans eat only about 30% of what they should be eating as far as fresh foods,” he said. “We started this company because we realized the world needed more fresh fruits and vegetables.”

As different as hydroponics growing systems are, most have this in common: The plants thrive because of the nutrients they receive and the consistency of the environment and can produce crops of fresh leafy greens and other vegetables, various herbs and sometimes fruits.

Such controlled-environment agriculture is part of the larger trend of urban farms, recognized last year by the May opening of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Office of Urban Agriculture and Innovative Production. The farms’ proximity to larger markets means produce can be delivered quickly to consumers, whether they’re grocery shoppers, airline passengers, students or communities in need or restaurants, an industry that has been devastated in the last year.

Today’s micro-and mega-farms have taken on increased importance, partly because of world hunger, which will increase as the population grows.

Add increasing urbanization that is gobbling available agricultural land in many countries, mix in climate change and the scramble for water to grow crops — as much as 70% of the world’s water is used for agriculture — and the planet may be at a tipping point.

No single change in the approach to feeding the world will shift the balance by itself.

Hydroponic farming is “a solution,” said Alexander Olesen, a cofounder of Babylon Micro farms in Virginia, which uses its small growing units to help corporate cafeterias, senior living centres, hotels and resorts provide fresh produce, “but they are not the solution.”

Babylon Micro farms in Virginia provides fresh produce for corporate cafeterias, senior living centers, hotels and resorts.

(Babylon Micro-Farms Inc.)

For one thing, not all crops are viable. Nearly everything can be grown using hydroponics but some crops, such as wheat, some root vegetables (including carrots, beets and onions), and melons and vining crops, are impractical. The easiest crops to grow: leafy greens, including spinach and lettuce; microgreens; herbs such as basil, cilantro, oregano and marjoram; some vegetables, such as green peppers and cucumbers; and certain fruits, including tomatoes and strawberries.

Although hydroponic farming means crops grow faster — thus increasing output — the process comes with a significant carbon footprint, according to “The Promise of Urban Agriculture,” a report by the Department of Agriculture/Agricultural Marketing Service and Cornell University Small Farms Program. Lights generate heat, which then must be removed by cooling. Lettuce grown in traditional greenhouses is far cheaper, the report says.

If these crops can be grown traditionally — in a garden or in a commercial field — why bother with growing systems that are less intuitive than planting seeds, watering and harvesting? Among the reasons:

Climate control: Such indoor agriculture generally means consistent light, temperatures, nutrients and moisture for crops no longer held hostage by nature’s cycles of drought, storms and seasons.

Environmental friendliness: Pesticides generally aren’t used and thus create no harmful runoff, unlike field-grown crops.

Productivity: Leafy greens tend to be cool-season crops, but in a controlled environment, it’s an any-time-of-year crop without the worry of depleting the soil because of overuse because, of course, there is no soil.

Use of space: AeroFarms, a former steel mill in Newark, N.J., boasts that it can produce 2 million pounds of food each year in its 70,000 square feet, or about 1.3 acres. California’s Monterey County, by contrast, uses nearly 59,000 acres — out of 24.3 million acres statewide of ranches and farms — to grow its No. 1 crop, which is leaf lettuce valued at $840.6 million, its 2019 crop report showed.

AeroFarms in Newark, N.J. boasts it can produce 2 million pounds of food each year at its 70,000-square-foot facility in Newark, N.J.

(AeroFarms)

Food safety: In E. coli outbreaks in late October and early November of last year, fingers pointed to romaine lettuce that sickened consumers in 19 states, including California. In November and December of 2019, three other outbreaks of the bacterial illness were traced to California’s Salinas Valley. A Food and Drug Administration study, released in May with results from that trio of outbreaks, “suggest(s) that a potential contributing factor has been the proximity of cattle,” whose faeces often contain the bacteria and can find its way into water systems.

That’s less of an issue with crops in controlled-environment agriculture, said Alex Tyink, president of Fork Farms of Green Bay, Wis., which produces growing systems suitable for homes and schools.

“In the field, you can’t control what goes where,” he said, including wildlife, livestock or even birds that may find their way into an open growing area.

And as for workers, “The human safety approaches that we take [with] people in our farm make it hard for them to contaminate even if they wanted to,” he said.

“Before people walk in, they gown up, put their hair in nets, beards in nets, put on eye covering and bootie covers for their shoes, then walk through a water bath.”

None of the statistics matter, though, unless the quality of soil-less crops matches or exceeds that produced traditionally.

Not a contest, new-age growers say. Flavors of leafy greens, for example, tend to be more detectable and, in some cases, more intense.

So much so that when AeroFarms introduced its baby kale in a New York grocery store, Marc Oshima, a cofounder and chief marketing officer, says he saw a woman do what he called a “happy dance” when she sampled this superfood. The version that AeroFarms produces is lighter and has a “sweet finish,” Oshima said, compared with adult kale grown in traditional ways that some say make the superfood fibrous and bitter.

Storey, the cofounder of Plenty, judged his Crispy Lettuce mix successful when his children got into a “rolling-on-the-floor fistfight” over a package of it.

Some credit for that flavor can be attributed to the time from harvest to market. Arizona and California are the top lettuce producers in the U.S., but by the time the greens get to other parts of the country, they have lost some of their oomph. AeroFarms and Plenty, for instance, distribute their commercial products to nearby grocery stores in New York and the Bay Area, respectively, where their time to market is significantly reduced.

And when was the last time you had a salad on an aeroplane flight that didn’t taste like water gone bad? Before the pandemic constricted airline traffic, AeroFarms was growing greens to be served to passengers on Singapore Airlines flights from New York’s JFK. The fresh vegetables travelled just five miles from the warehouse to Singapore’s catering kitchen, a new twist on the farm to (tray) tabletop.

Because the turnaround from harvest to market is shorter, Storey said his products often last several weeks when refrigerated.

Leafy green vegetables are grown by AeroFarms.

(Emily Hawkes)

And perhaps best of all? Growers say that because the greens have a flavorsome peppery, some like mustard — salad dressing may be optional, perhaps dispossessed in favor of the flavor of naked greens.

Getting consumers interested in vegetables and incorporating those foods into their diets is especially important, growers say, because of skyrocketing rates of obesity, diabetes and heart disease, especially for populations in food deserts.

Tyink grew up in rural Wisconsin but moved to New York to pursue a career in opera. By chance, he sampled some produce from a rooftop garden that he called life-altering. “My eating habits changed because [the greens] changed my emotional connection to food,” he said.

His exposure to homelessness and poverty on the streets of New York also focused his attention on what people consume and why. Price and convenience often drive bad food decisions and unhealthy habits.

Young farmers in training can help change those habits; some of Fork Farms’ systems are used in schools and other nonprofit organizations for children. Kids become accidental ambassadors for the nutrient-rich crops, and the fruits of their labors go to school cafeterias or to local food distribution centres in their communities.

“I really think when you lose fresh, locally produced food, you lose something of [the] culture,” said Lee Altier, professor of horticulture at Chico State University, where he has been working with students to develop its aquaponics program. “I think it is so important when communities have an awareness … that this is for their social integrity.”

As for the future, much still needs to be done to put such products in the right hands at the right time. That requires investment, innovation and technology to perfect the systems and keep costs under control, never mind persuading buyers and consumers that food that’s healthy can also be satisfying.

Is it a puzzle worth solving? Storey thinks so. “I want to live in a world where [we create] delicious, amazing things,” he said, “knowing that they are not coming at a cost that we don’t want to pay.”

About Catharine Hamm

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Catharine Hamm is the former Travel editor for the Los Angeles Times and became a special contributor in June 2020. She was born in Syracuse, N.Y., to a peripatetic family whose stops included Washington, D.C.; Honolulu; and Manila. Her varied media career has taken her from McPherson, Kan., to Kansas City, Mo., San Bernardino, Salinas and L.A. Hamm has twice received individual Lowell Thomas Awards, and the Travel section has been recognized seven times during her tenure as editor. Her favourite place? Always where she’s going next.

IDTechEx Identifies Innovative Companies Changing The Face of Vertical Farming

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IDTechEx 

Sep 02, 2020

BOSTON, Sept. 2, 2020,/PRNewswire/ -- Vertical farming, the practice of growing crops indoors under tightly controlled conditions, is continuing to expand rapidly. By using LED lighting tailored to the exact needs of the crop, alongside advanced hydroponic growing systems, and growing crops in vertically stacked trays, vertical farms can achieve yields hundreds of times higher than the same area of traditional farmland.

Investors and entrepreneurs alike are excited about the potential of vertical farming to revolutionize the global food system and some vertical farming companies have raised dizzying amounts of money. Plenty, a San Francisco-based start-up, and the most well-funded vertical farm, has raised $401 million in funding, with backers including SoftBank, Alphabet Chairman Eric Schmidt, and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos. Fellow US start-ups AeroFarms and Bowery Farming are not far behind, with $238 million and $167.5 million in funding, respectively.

While there has been much attention on these companies and their exploits, there are dozens of other companies in the industry developing their own approaches to vertical farming. Here, we explore some of the most innovative vertical farming start-ups, based on the recent IDTechEx report, "Vertical Farming 2020-2030".

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Freight Farms

Freight Farms is a Boston-based vertical farming company that manufactures "container farms", vertical farming systems installed into 40' mobile containers. Alongside its container farms, Freight Farms provides the farmhand software, a hydroponic farm management, and automation platform that also connects users with other Freight Farms customers. Container farms have many advantages - they are easy to transport, compact, and relatively cheap to set up in comparison to other vertical farming systems. Container farms are often turnkey systems, too, meaning that they require much less experience and expertise to operate than either a factory-scale vertical farm or indeed a traditional farm.

Freight Farms recently released its most advanced container farming system, the Greenery, which it believes is the most advanced container farming system in the world. The Greenery is a turnkey system that uses an array of sensors to continuously monitor the growing conditions inside the farm, with the farmhand software automatically making adjustments and planning watering cycles in order to provide the optimum environment for growing crops and allowing users to control their Greenery remotely from a smartphone.

80 Acres – Collaboration, Food Experience

Despite their potential, many vertical farming start-ups have struggled over the years with the labor costs and power requirements for running a high-tech indoor farm. This has often forced producers to sell their crops at a much higher price than conventionally farmed leafy greens. Additionally, many founders of vertical farming companies have little experience in the food industry and can struggle with the day-to-day realities of running a food production industry.

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80 Acres is an Ohio-based vertical farming start-up aiming to overcome these challenges by constructing the world's first fully automated indoor farm. The company was founded in November 2015 by Tisha Livingston and Mike Zelkind, who between them have over 50 years' experience in the food industry. Collaboration is also important to 80 Acres. The company believes that vertical farming is a very multidisciplinary field, requiring collaboration between partners who are experts in their own discipline. Signify (formerly Philips Lighting) developed the LEDs used in the facility and Dutch greenhouse automation company Priva developed the control and fertigation systems, with 80 Acres using its experience in food to bring the system together and integrate the technology.

The company currently operates a 75,000 square foot facility in Hamilton, a suburb of Cincinnati, which is set to expand to 150,000 square feet in summer 2020 following a $40 million investment from Virgo Investment Group. When completed, 80 Acres claims this facility will be the world's first fully automated indoor farm. The farm will be automated from seeding to growing to harvesting, using robotics, artificial intelligence, data analytics, and around-the-clock monitoring sensors and control systems to optimize every aspect of growing produce indoors.

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Jones Food Company

Jones Food Company is a British vertical farming start-up that operates Europe's largest vertical farm out of a warehouse in Scunthorpe, UK. It was founded in 2016 by James Lloyd-Jones and Paul Challinor, who wanted to build the largest vertical farming facility that they could in order to help overcome some of the operational problems plaguing the industry and bring vertical farming to the mainstream. After visiting several vertical farms in Japan, they decide that the only way to make vertical farming a success is to focus on scale and automation.

Jones Food Company focuses on maximizing automation and robotics in their facility to minimize operating costs, with its facility being modeled on a car factory, with the growing process resembling a production line - over the 25-day growing period, plants move from one end of the facility to another. Much of the work is done by machines, helping to reduce labor costs. Harvesting is carried out by bespoke machines and the heavy lifting is performed by a robot called Frank. This focus on automation means that only six employees are required to operate the Scunthorpe facility.

Jones Food Company has partnered with UK online grocery company Ocado, which currently owns about 70% of the business. Through this partnership, Jones Food Company is aiming to set up vertical farms next to Ocado's grocery depots, meaning that fresh produce could be delivered to shoppers within an hour of being picked.

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Infarm

Infarm is a Berlin-based start-up that sells modular, hydroponic vertical farms for growing leafy greens and herbs in supermarkets, schools, and offices. A single two-square meter unit can grow 8,000 plants in a year, with the company claiming its farms use 95% less water than soil-based farms, take up 99.5% less space, use zero chemical pesticides, need 90% less transportation, and use 75% less fertilizer.

Infarm has partnered with several major supermarkets across Europe, where it has currently deployed over 500 farms in stores and distribution centers. The company is also beginning to expand in the USA, having recently partnered with Kroger to trial its indoor farms in two QFC stores in Seattle. In the UK, it has partnered with supermarket chain Marks & Spencer, which is trialing in-store urban farming in seven locations in London, growing Italian basil, Greek basil, Bordeaux basil, mint, mountain coriander, thyme, and curly parsley.

The company's business model is based around an "agriculture-as-a-service" model. The modular farms remain the property of Infarm, which receives income per harvested plant. Infarm then coordinates with clients such as retailers and takes care of the farm including installation, cultivation, harvesting, and maintenance. Aside from the regular visits by service personnel to plant new plants, the farms are controlled remotely. This modular, data-driven, and distributed approach — a combination of big data, IoT, and cloud analytics — sets Infarm apart from competitors. From a price point, Infarm is attractive for supermarkets, which get a better product at the same price. In addition, the plants, especially herbs, are harvested fresh, preserving color, smell, flavor, and nutrients.

For more information about the vertical farming industry and the innovative companies operating within the space, please see the recent IDTechEx report, "Vertical Farming 2020-2030", www.IDTechEx.com/VertFarm or for the full portfolio of related research available from IDTechEx please visit www.IDTechEx.com/Research.

IDTechEx guides your strategic business decisions through its Research, Consultancy, and Event products, helping you profit from emerging technologies. For more information on IDTechEx Research and Consultancy, contact research@IDTechEx.com or visit www.IDTechEx.com.

AeroFarms Helps Reduce Food Waste With New Partnership With Table to Table and Matriark Foods

AeroFarms Helps Reduce Food Waste with New Partnership with Table to Table and Matriark Foods Through New FarmPlus to People Program, funded by ReFED COVID-19 Food Waste Solutions Fund

AeroFarms is proud to support the new FarmPlus to People program, an innovative partnership with Matriark Foods and to upcycle farm surplus into a healthy, added-value vegetable stew for distribution to the hungry in New Jersey.

Matriark Foods and Table to Table were awarded a $50,000 grant from ReFED COVID-19 Food Waste Solutions Fund  to pilot a processing program that pays farmers, creates jobs, diverts vegetables from landfill, feeds the hungry, and proves out the metrics for nimble processing infrastructure. The goal is to deliver 500,000+ meals​ and ​offset 1,000,000+ pounds of greenhouse gases over the next 90 days.

With its global headquarter and farms in Newark NJ, AeroFarms is excited to be able to provide delicious, healthy stems and greens from a second-harvest that normally would be left in the traditional field. AeroFarms pioneering indoor vertical farming allows access to the entire root to leaf to create upcycled products that are breaking through for their culinary flavor and nutrition.

The nutritious, tasty vegetable stew ​will be distributed to the hungry​ using Table to Table’s established logistics capability and large network of agencies in Bergen, Essex, Passaic and Hudson Counties in New Jersey.

The Covid19 pandemic has increased the challenges of accessibility and availability for much-needed fresh food, straining food system logistics of storage and distribution resulting in an increase in food waste at a time when so many are in need.​ We are thrilled for the opportunity to partner with such extraordinary organizations who will help us provide an alternative source of nutritious produce. ReFED’s commitment to this project will have a significant impact on our ability to feed our hungry neighbors, while keeping a little less food from ending up in our landfills.” said Ilene Isaacs, Executive Director of Table to Table.

“The goal of this public/private partnership pilot is to demonstrate that with the existence of more nimble food processing, massive amounts of food waste could be diverted from landfill while providing jobs, nutritious food for those who need it, and offsetting GHGs at scale,” states ​Anna Hammond, Founder and CEO of Matriark Foods.​ “We plan to optimize the use of the ReFED grant to inspire investment in scaling our model for the benefit of people and the environment.”

“AeroFarms is proud to partner with Table to Table and Matriark to help provide fresh, nutritious, delicious leafy greens and stems and serve our communities struggling with food insecurity. As a Certified B Corporation, we are committed to helping increase access to fresh, healthy, great tasting food while minimizing food waste, a huge contributor to climate change. “​Marc Oshima, Co-Founder & Chief Marketing Officer, AeroFarms

“We’re thrilled to collaborate with Matriark and Table to Table to divert high quality produce at risk of going to waste to those who need it most. In particular, we see enormous value in demonstrating a proof of concept for in-time processing of surplus produce, a development that has the potential to build capacity for a food waste reduction strategy that has remained elusive due to lack of nimble processing infrastructure.” ​Anya Ranganathan, Co-Founder, Bad Apple Produce

“COVID-19 has disrupted the regular flow of the food supply chain, making it difficult to get fresh, healthy food to the people who need it most and increasing the amount of food insecurity,” said Alexandria Coari, Capital and Innovation Director at ReFED,​ a national nonprofit working to advance solutions to reduce the amount of food waste. “The work of organizations like Table to Table and Matriark Foods is urgent, and we’re excited to get them the critical support they need from the ReFED COVID-19 Food Waste Solutions Fund.”

Coronavirus May Lead To More Indoor-Grown Produce Coming To Your Local Supermarkets

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Aug 13, 2020

Andria Cheng Senior Contributor Retail

I cover retail, from fashion to grocery, and its dance with technology

The coronavirus pandemic has disrupted traditional U.S. food and agriculture supply chain and proven to lend a potential growth opportunity for plant-based meat companies like Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods. It also may translate to your seeing more produce from indoor vertical farms in the so-called AgTech space. 

Supermarket chain Albertsons and San Francisco-based indoor vertical farm startup Plenty said this week that Plenty will supply its indoor-grown baby kale and other produce eventually to more than 430 stores across California beyond select Albertsons-owned Safeway and other stores in the Bay Area that currently, stock Plenty produce. 

The startup, which is backed by investors including Softbank, Amazon AMZN 0.0% CEO Jeff Bezos and Google GOOGL +0.6%’s former CEO Eric Schmidt, has raised more than $400 million as of Jan. 1, according to PitchBook. That puts it in the unicorn club of startups with valuation exceeding $1 billion. 

When fresh produce demand soared at the start of the pandemic, the companies said Plenty was able to boost production to supply more produce to relieve store shortages. 

“When COVID hit, that severely shocked the food chain and distribution centers were closed,” Matt Barnard, Plenty CEO, said on financial network CNBC Wednesday. “There were instances when Plenty was the only thing on the shelf. We were able to prove the extreme reliability of our farms and short food chain with our local farms.”

Like its rivals including AeroFarms and Bowery Farming, these indoor farms make part of the growing crop of AgTech companies that often have some sort of environmental sustainability pitch and tout the use of data science and other technology to increase crop yield and make different parts of agriculture more efficient and traceable. Plenty, for instance, said its vertical indoor farm uses less than 1% of land and 5% of water compared to traditional farming. 

In another sign of growing interest in the space, Oracle ORCL -0.3% Co-founder Larry Ellison and physician Dr. David Agus in July formed Sensei Holdings that also includes an indoor-farm AgTech unit. 

Investors also look to be taking a growing interest in the space, especially against the uncertain impact of the pandemic and how it may upend the global food supply chain. 

AgTech venture capital investment totaled $2.2 billion in the first two quarters of this year, after a record 2019 when $2.7 billion in total was raised, according to a study by Pitchbook and VC firm Finistere Ventures, which also invests in Plenty. This is in sharp contrast to Pitchbook data showing VC funding in the battered-retail sector having slumped by more than half this year.

In the so-called food-tech category, $4.8 billion already has been raised the first six months of this year, compared to $7 billion in total last year, the research shows. Most of the funding for both the food and agriculture tech spaces this year came in the second quarter when Covid-19 escalated to become a global crisis.

As consumers increased online orders, that translated to delivery companies Deliveroo, DoorDash and Instacart rounding out the top four startups, along with plant-based meat company Impossible Foods, in getting most VC funding in the first half of this year, according to the study. A case in point, for publicly-traded Uber UBER -1.2%, Uber Eats-led delivery business has beat its mainstay ride-sharing bookings.

After the pandemic idled or shut meat plants and caused spikes in prices, Beyond Meat, which went public last year, said in May it would introduce “heavier discounting against animal protein.” Company CEO Ethan Brown said then meat supply disruptions gave Beyond “an opportunity for consumers to be aware of a different model.”

The pandemic continues to sow its disruptive effect across different sectors of the economy.

Related on Forbes: As coronavirus batters retailers, mall owner Simon Property sees an opportunity in bankrupt chains

Related on Forbes: Uber’s biggest business is officially no longer ride sharing

Lead photo: With coronavirus having disrupted food supply chain, that may provide more growth opportunities for ... [+] LIGHTROCKET VIA GETTY IMAGES

Farming In The Desert: Are Vertical Farms The Solution To Saving Water?

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Deutsche Welle

Jul. 23, 2020

By Isabelle Gerretsen"

When I told people I was going to grow tomatoes in the desert, they thought I was crazy," Sky Kurtz, founder of Pure Harvest Smart Farms, told DW.

With just an average 12 days of rain a year, less than 1% arable land, a desert location, and an 80% import rate for food, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) seems an unfavorable place to set up a farm.

Kurtz is one of several entrepreneurs using high-tech farming techniques to boost crop production in the Emirates. Pure Harvest built the first climate-controlled greenhouse in Abu Dhabi in 2017.

Prompted by arid conditions and a desire for greater food security, the country is investing millions in technologies — such as vertical farming — that could make it an unlikely agricultural pioneer.

Vertical farms can grow a rich variety of different crops by stacking them in layers under LED lighting in climate-controlled greenhouses and watering them with mist or drip systems. The process is tailored to each crop's specific needs, resulting in high-yield, year-round harvests."

It takes 30 to 40 days to grow leafy greens out in the field. We can grow that same crop in 10 to 12 days," says Marc Oshima, co-founder of Aerofarms. The company received funding from the Abu Dhabi Investment Office to build the capital's largest indoor vertical farm, with 800 different crops, by 2021.

Water Scarcity and Fossil-Fuel Reliance

The technology uses minimal land and up to 95% less water than conventional agriculture.

The hydroponics system places the plants' roots directly into a water-based and nutrient-rich solution instead of soil. This "closed-loop" system captures and recirculates all the water, rather than allowing it to drain away — useful for a country like the UAE suffering from extremely high water stress.

Globally, agriculture accounts for 70% of freshwater withdrawals, and UAE is extracting groundwater faster than it can be replenished, according to the International Center for Biosaline Agriculture (ICBA)."

Water is very expensive over in the UAE, but energy is cheap as it is subsidized," says Jan Westra, a strategic business developer at Priva, a company providing technology to vertical farms.

The artificially controlled environment is energy-intensive because the air conditioning and LED lights need a constant source of electricity.

This bringing forth of life in the desert could come at a high environmental cost. Most of that energy comes from carbon-emitting fossil fuels, even as the Middle Eastern country feel the effects of climate change.

By 2050 Abu Dhabi's average temperature is predicted to increase by around 2.5°C (36.5 F) in a business-as-usual scenario. Over the next 70 years, patterns of rainfall are also expected to change.

Integrating Renewable Energy 

Although Pure Harvest is building a solar-powered farm in neighboring Saudi Arabia, its UAE operations get electricity from the carbon-intensive national grid.

Investing more in renewables "is a goal of ours," Kurtz told DW. He said the company has not set a clean energy target but is working on various green power projects, including a plan to integrate solar power generated in UAE into its operations.

However, Willem van der Schans, a researcher specializing in short supply chains at Wageningen University in the Netherlands, says sustainability and clean energy should be "inherent in the technology and included in plans when starting a vertical farm."

He argues that many vertical farming companies are not sustainable in terms of energy as they still view clean power as an optional "add-on."

Ismahane Elouafi, director-general of the government-funded ICBA in Abu Dhabi, acknowledges that vertical farming has some way to go before achieving "real sustainability," but she believes the innovations are "promising."

Improved battery storage, increasingly efficient LED lights, and cheaper solar panels will help, she adds.

Local Solutions

 By 2050, the UAE government wants to generate almost half its energy from renewable sources.

Fred Ruijgt, a vertical farming specialist at Priva, argues that it's important to factor transport and refrigeration into the energy equation. Vertical farming uses more energy to grow crops than traditional agriculture, but because crops are grown locally, they do not have to be transported by air, sea, or truck over long distances."

The energy-saving is difficult to calculate exactly, but the advantages of locally grown crops are huge," he says, adding that those grown in vertical farms not only use less water and pesticides but that they also have a longer shelf life due to minimal transportation time.

Food Security and Coronavirus

 In 2018, the UAE set out its vision to become a hub for high-tech local food production.

Companies and investors have flocked to the region, attracted by the 0% corporate tax rate, low labor costs, and cheap energy. With their help, the UAE aims to reduce its reliance on imports and make its food system more resilient to shocks like climate change and pandemics.

Oshima from Aerofarms says the coronavirus pandemic has brought "greater appreciation of how fragile the supply chain is and raised questions about food safety and security."

When the UAE went into lockdown in April, imported supplies of perishable goods like vegetables fell and business boomed for local suppliers.

ICBA's Elouafi said they have helped keep the UAE well-stocked during the pandemic."With the help of local food production and adequate imports, there has been absolutely no shortage of food in the UAE," Elouafi told DW.

Climate change, however, poses an altogether more complex threat to the country in the long-term. Given climate change's likely impact on food production, she says vertical farming has shown it is "an economically viable proposition even with harsh climatic conditions."

Reposted with permission from Deutsche Welle.

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US: NEW JERSEY - Will NJ's Million Dollar Investment In Vertical Farming Yield Long Term Growth?

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Written By: Theo Longsdon, Agritecture Intern

Amidst the growth of urban farming projects in the US, a notable development took place earlier in June with the announcement that Jersey City, New Jersey, is to fund the construction and operation of 10 vertical farms in the city; the first municipal vertical farm program in the country. 

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The city has partnered up with AeroFarms in a three-year contract worth $987,000 - with just over half of this sum funding the construction of the farm units and the rest covering the project’s maintenance. The farms will use aeroponics to grow a range of vegetables and will be situated at senior centers, schools, public housing complexes, and municipal buildings across the city, taking six weeks to install, and the first vegetables being ready just two weeks after.

The principal motive behind the program is the recognition that there is a growing need to enhance access to locally grown nutritious food and improve the diet and overall well being of citizens. This is in part related to the impact of Covid-19, which according to Steve Fulop, the mayor of Jersey City, has had a “disproportionate impact on people with pre-existing heart conditions, high blood pressure, obesity and diabetes which is directly linked to a person’s diet”. The venture will seek to counter these issues and promote a healthy, sustainable lifestyle through producing 58,000 lb of fresh vegetables over three years – roughly equating to 100,000 servings – and through holding dietary workshops and health screenings for participants. The hope is that a surge in awareness about healthy eating practices, coupled with the distribution of fresh, nutritious produce, will drive a change in people’s eating habits that leads to improvements in the wider, long-term health of the community.  

The creation of jobs will be a further benefit of the program. AeroFarms are significant job providers; they have created about 120 jobs through their projects in Newark, and their new indoor vertical farming facility in Danville is projected to generate 92 jobs for the area. Whilst there has been no indication about the exact number of jobs that will be created as part of the program, with the introduction of 10 farms across the city it is clear a number of employment opportunities will arise, thus helping to stimulate economic development in the area.

Yet despite these upbeat anticipations, the cost of constructing and maintaining the 10 vertical farms is high, with the contract worth just under $1m. By AeroFarms’ own estimation the 10 farms will produce around 58,000 lb of produce over their 3 years, meaning that it will cost the city about $17 to produce one lb of produce. This is a colossal sum and represents an expensive economic venture in a time when the city faces a $70m budget shortfall as a result of Covid-19.

In such a climate, an alternative option for the city would be to invest money in supporting local farms and promoting the distribution of their produce. A quick look at local farms in the region highlights how this may be a far more cost-effective option: Alstede Farms, a 600-acre farm based in Chester Township retails a wide range of fresh organic vegetables at a significantly lower price – selling a bunch of their spinach for $2.99; a bunch of kale for $2.99; and a pound of beans for $3.99. Another organic farm in the region – Terhune Orchards - offers similarly low prices, retailing a bunch of their kale for $3.25 per bunch, a Romaine lettuce head for the same price, and a head of green cabbage for $2.95. If the city was seeking a more cost-friendly way of promoting healthy consumption patterns, then taking such an approach may have been the more viable option. 

But whilst they may represent the more costly option, vertical farms hold a number of advantages over traditional soil farms. Crop yields tend to be higher, as crops can be grown all year round and conditions can be controlled to maximize growth. Having this controlled environment reduces the susceptibility to climate and local weather conditions that is a major drawback of traditional soil farming. The land area needed to cultivate the produce is far lower, as the vegetables can be stacked vertically – a major benefit at a time of increasing pressure on land. Vertical farms also use much less water as they facilitate the production of crops with 70-95% less water compared to traditional cultivation practices. Finally, the generation of local, year-round farmworker jobs is a clear advantage over conventional outdoor farms in the NJ area that depend primarily on seasonal labor. Taking such factors into account may indeed justify the higher cost of produce associated with the program.

One notable stipulation of the program is that those wanting to gain free access to the produce must partake in healthy eating workshops and quarterly health screenings. This entails the obvious risk that the city has overestimated the demand for education and health monitoring amongst Jersey City residents, which could mean that the uptake is lower than anticipated. If the demand does fall short of what the city anticipates, then issues of distribution may arise and the program’s effectiveness may be undermined. Its success will, therefore, depend to a large extent on the willingness of residents to spend time participating in these workshops and regular health screenings.

Jersey City’s newly launched program represents a pioneering attempt to combat deficiencies in access to locally grown, nutritious produce and awareness about healthy dietary patterns. The decision by the municipal body to step in and sponsor the vertical farms is ambitious and unprecedented in the US, but it also throws up some major questions. For example; will the plan of action lead to a long-term alteration in the diets and lifestyles of those involved? Do the associated benefits outweigh the cost of the program? And ultimately, is it a city’s duty to feed people through its own asset, or should it instead focus on policies, incentives, and programs that encourage the growth and support of local farms?

Vertical Farming Congress Makes Virtue of Virtual

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By urbanagnews 

July 30, 2020

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The first Vertical Farming World Congress will now be held online on 22-24 September, with numerous innovations to help develop an emerging community of leading producers, funders, suppliers and customers. Its theme will be ‘Shaping Food’s Future.’ 

“We already had top speakers confirmed from around the world including North America, the Middle East and Asia as well as Europe,” commented Richard Hall, Chairman of the food and drink experts Zenith Global and the event’s organiser. 

“Now, instead of one vertical farm tour, we plan to offer a selection. Beyond chance encounters, it will be possible to contact other delegates and set up meetings beforehand. Questions can also be tabled in advance and sessions will be recorded for later review. Regional welcome receptions will enable introductions to other delegates from the same geographic area. 

“When you add the advantages of extra people being able to attend because of no travel, time being used more flexibly and costs being substantially lower, we believe we can deliver even greater value,” Richard Hall added. “I hope attendees will be surprised how virtual can be made to feel real.” 

Full programme and booking details are available at www.zenithglobal.com/events. Topics include: market opportunity; an industry leadership panel; strategic alternatives between aeroponic, aquaponic and hydroponic systems; technology briefings ranging from lighting and robotics to overall system design; a nutrition briefing; a funding panel; and key innovator case studies. 

Amongst the speakers are: 

• Leading producers such as 80 Acres Farms, Aero Farms, Growing Underground, Intelligent Growth Solutions, Jones Food Company, LettUs Grow, Root AI, Square Roots, The Circle, Uns Farms, Vertical Future and YesHealth 

• Association heads and academics from Germany, Japan and the Netherlands 

• Investment experts from Ashfords, Innovate UK and S2G Ventures. For further information, go to www.zenithglobal.com/events or contact events@zenithglobal.com

• TAGS Conference Food Production Vertical Farming Wageningen University

Blue Nalu, Aero Farms Highlight Sustainable Food Technology

Photo: AeroFarms

08.03.2020

By Sam Danley

NEW YORK — Entrepreneurs are utilizing new technologies to bridge the gap between where food is grown and where it is consumed.

San Diego-based BlueNalu, Inc. is pioneering cellular aquaculture, a process by which living cells are taken from fish and grown using culture media to create seafood.“

(Seafood) is one of the most vulnerable supply chains on the planet,” said Lou Cooperhouse, co-founder and chief executive officer at BlueNalu, during a virtual Town Hall hosted by accounting and consulting group Mazars. “Global demand for seafood is at an all-time high. The problem is that our supply is increasingly diminishing.”

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Lou Cooperhouse, co-founder and chief executive officer of BlueNalu, Inc.

A variety of overlapping factors, including illegal fishing and overfishing, warming oceans, plastic pollution, habitat damage, toxins, contaminants, and inconsistent quality of freshness have contributed to the diminishing supply, Mr. Cooperhouse said. Other issues like mislabeling, occupational hazards, and price volatility add to an already stressed system.“

Prices are going higher over time and are anticipated to grow increasingly higher in the years to come,” Mr. Cooperhouse said, adding that BlueNalu has been working to bring down the cost of its formulation to reach price parity with conventional seafood products.

As it scales, the company could potentially offer a price discount, he said.BlueNalu recently expanded its production and R&D capabilities with a new, 38,000-square-foot manufacturing facility in San Diego that includes a pilot-scale production plant. Eventually, it aims to build similar plants around the world, each with the capacity to produce enough cell-based seafood to feed millions of residents.“

Today we might be importing seafood 7,000 miles, 9,000 miles from Southeast Asia to New Jersey, and that's a 30% bycatch with a 60% yield at the foodservice operator level,” Mr. Cooperhouse said. “In our case, we're making a product with no head, no tail, no bones, and no skin. It’s just the filet.”

The pilot plant will help BlueNalu bring its first products to test markets within the next 12 to 18 months. The company currently is focused on several species that typically are imported, overfished or difficult to farm-raise, including mahi-mahi, tuna, red snapper, and yellowtail amberjack

The idea is to complement or supplement rather than disrupt the current supply, Mr. Cooperhouse said.“

Why would we disrupt an industry that’s doing well or focus on a species that currently isn’t an issue?” he said.

A similar mindset is behind Aero Farms, a Newark, NJ-based sustainable indoor agriculture company.“

Seafood is traveling thousands of miles, and it’s the same for produce,” said Marc Oshima, co-founder, and chief marketing officer at AeroFarms. “How can we bring farms closer to where people are and bypass what is a very complex supply chain?”

The company repurposes unused industrial spaces into indoor farms that use 95% less water than conventional agriculture and a fraction of the land space.

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Marc Oshima, co-founder and chief marketing officer at AeroFarms“

We're misting the roots with the right amount of water and nutrients in a very targeted way,” Mr. Oshima said. “It leads to a faster-growing process and is much more efficient.”

AeroFarms’ main focus is baby greens, which are supplied to foodservice operators and sold to retailers under the Dream Greens brand.

Because they are grown independent of season and weather, the products offer more consistent quality, price, and year-round availability, Mr. Oshima said.

The company also is collecting data to optimize crops for taste and nutrition.“

We’re thinking about what the consumer is looking for and delivering on a lot of those benefits,” Mr. Oshima said.

Along with keeping transportation to a minimum, increasing yield, and offering more nutritious produce, indoor farming may complement traditional agriculture by accelerating seed development.“

Typical seed breeding is about a seven-year process,” Mr. Oshima said. “With our growing process, we can have up to 30 harvests in a year. Each one is a learning opportunity.”

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SUPPLY CHAIN PRODUCE SUSTAINABILITY SEAFOOD

Vertical Farming in LatAm: AgroUrbana Closes $1m Seed Funding

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July 2, 2020

Richard Martyn-Hemphill

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Access to vertical farming technologies is deepening and widening across the world, bringing down the costs and hassle of locally producing anything from Singaporean strawberries to Arctic tomatoes.

In Latin America, however, indoor vertical farms are still largely written off on a continent thought of in terms of its abundant fertile soil and plentiful sunlight. Why pay for artificial light or indoor automation when the sun is free, and labor and land are cheap?

That said, there are early signs of a Latin American vertical farming awakening in Chile, where AgroUrbana has just closed a $1 million seed round, bringing its total capital raised to $1.5 million. The startup has created South America’s first vertical farm, according to the Association for Vertical Farming.

Leading the round by contributing 33% of the cash was the CLIN Private Investment Fund administered by Chile Global Ventures, the VC arm of Fundación Chile, a public-private initiative for innovation and sustainability in the country. Support financing also came from CORFO, Chile’s economic development agency, and private investors like company builder and VC Engie Factory, the country’s largest telecommunications company Entel, and sustainability investor Zoma Capital.

In an interview with AFN, AgroUrbana founders Cristián Sjögren and Pablo Bunster described how the funds would be put to work at their 3,000 square feet pilot facility in the suburbs of Santiago, where testing is ongoing on layered, renewable energy-powered stacks of hydroponically grown, LED-lit leafy greens and fruits. AgroUrbana’s first big offtake deal has just been inked with a major Chilean grocery retailer, they said.

A pre-planned switch from restaurant to retail

“It’s been run, run, run,” Bunster recalls, describing the political turmoil in Chile that brought curfews and shuttered restaurants months before Covid-19 locked down the country. That earlier disruption, he adds, actually had its upsides, as it got them thinking more about e-commerce and direct-to-consumer sales — so when the team’s restaurant deals dried up during the Covid-19 pandemic, the switch to retail was already scoped out.

As to scaling up further, Sjögren envisions an eventual 30,000 square foot facility to be bankrolled by Series A funding they plan to work towards later this year. The design and output would depend on the results of their pilot trials.

This size of farm sets the team somewhere in the middle of the two dominant visions of vertical farming: centralized versus distributed. Proponents of centralized systems argue that large-scale production — and financial viability — depend on ever-bigger and higher farms. These farms — or plant factories as they are sometimes called — are proliferating, aided by huge sums of capital. Plenty scooped up a whopping $200 million in Series B funding back in 2017. AeroFarms raised $100 million in late-stage funding in 2019 while Fifth Season secured $50 million last year.

Although centralized facilities have generally dominated in terms of raising capital, distributed and decentralized business models are gaining pace according to AgFunder’s 2019 industry report. One in particular, Germany’s Infarm, nabbed $100 million last year to deploy its connected growing cabinets in supermarkets.

The theatricality of these cabinets harmoniously glowing in office buildings or hospitals in a post-coronavirus world also holds sway in the popular and corporate imagination of 2020. Companies like Square Mile Farms recently crowdfunding over $300,000 on the promise of re-kitting office spaces like Microsoft’s London premises with fresh produce. In New York, Farmshelf has its own grow cabinets deployed in WeWork FoodLabs.

Learning from cash-heavy first movers

Mention of relative giants like Plenty or InFarm could be daunting for newer entrants such as Square Mile Farms or AgroUrbana and their hitherto modest sums raised. But there is perhaps an advantage in starting late, so long as the team learns from the costly mistakes and hubris of earlier endeavours. Here, both Bunster and Sjögren see parallels with the renewable energy industry — where they worked previously — and see the arrival of cheaper, more sustainable energy and capital in Chile as crucial to making vertical farming competitive.

AgroUrbana is exploring three options for solar going forward: either establish a power purchase agreement, in which they buy renewable energy from an existing plant; finance a power plant which will sell energy to them later; or build their own solar farm. But they acknowledge that the larger the facility, the less feasible it is to have solar on-site.

The pair describe how some Chilean outdoor farming is already lean and competitive, yet much of it has been geared towards high-value crops like avocados – and that stuff is primed for export. For the urbanizing local market, they see gaps for hyper-local fresh produce, where the competition would actually be with low-tech smallholder farmers with less traceable supply chains. In the context of Covid-19 and an ensuing consumer embrace of e-commerce options, better nutrition, less water use, and fewer pesticides, the pair reckon there is much to gain from providing produce that is consistently fresh, 365 days a year.

Any chance of the world’s first vertically-farmed avocados any time soon? Unlikely, replies Bunster. As for gene editing, where South American jurisdictions are known to have more lax regulations than their North American counterparts, Bunster says the plan was to work with what nature already provides, while giving “the conditions of spring every day of the year.”

Is The Future of Farming Indoors?

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July 14, 2020

Brian Kateman Contributor

I write about sustainable and ethical technology and consumer trends.

The global population is predicted to reach 9.7 billion by 2050 and to feed everyone, it’s estimated that global food production will need to increase by up to 70% in the next 30 years.

There are many challenges to overcome before fears of a worldwide food shortage can be allayed, including rising temperatures and more frequent droughts caused by global warming. These obstacles are making traditional farming methods increasingly inefficient and unpredictable.

Traditional farming has also been hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic. According to the FAO, border closures, quarantines and disruptions to supply chains are limiting some people's access to food, especially in countries hit hard by the virus or already affected by high levels of food insecurity.

There’s an emerging consensus that the agriculture industry needs to adapt to use less water and chemicals, make crops less vulnerable to changes in the climate, and produce more reliable yields. Part of the answer may lie in the emerging start-ups growing produce in indoor environments, where growing conditions can be better managed.

The indoor farming technology market was valued at $23.75 billion in 2016, and is projected to reach $40.25 billion by 2022. Yields are typically much higher than traditional farming methods. Crops from indoor farming are grown in three dimensions, rather than two – and can be grown all year round, independent of external weather conditions.

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Square Roots next-generation farmers growing basil. CRAIG VANDER LENDE

One of Square Roots’ indoor farms, for example, produces the same amount of food as a two- or three-acre farm annually, just from 340 square feet. This yield is achieved by growing plants at 90 degrees, and by using artificial intelligence (AI) to ensure the environment is optimal for each specific plant, including the day and night temperatures and amount of CO2 needed.

“Our indoor farms are living biosystems, constantly adapting to maintain optimal climates for growing specific crops. We’re then able to understand how changes in the climate can impact yield taste and texture,” says Tobias Peggs, Square Roots’ chief executive.

Not only could indoor farming help adapt to a warming planet, but it has the potential to help slow down climate change by being more sustainable – using less water and producing fewer emissions. While estimates vary widely, according to the United States Environmental Protection Agency, agriculture accounted for 10% of all greenhouse gas emissions in 2018; it is also highly dependent on, and a pollutant of, water.

Square Roots’ pop-up farms are built in shipping containers in cities, often in parking lots. They serve local communities, which means reduced emissions compared to traditional agriculture, which often involves transporting food much further. For example, it has 10 farms in Brooklyn that serve 100 retail stores all within five miles of the farm.

At the Plenty headquarters in South San Francisco, leafy greens use up one percent of the land and five percent of the water compared to traditional outdoor farms, says Matt Barnard, the start-up’s Chief Executive Officer, and Co-Founder.

AeroFarms’ indoor farm in New Jersey grows greens including baby kale, baby arugula, and baby watercress using 95% less water than conventional agriculture on just one percent of the land required. The crops grow under LED light with no pesticides and a fraction of the fertilizer used on traditional farms.

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AeroFarms environmentally-controlled indoor farms can grow all year round independent of climate and ... [+] AEROFARMS

Marketing director Alina Zolotareva says being able to produce have ready-to-eat produce that doesn’t require rinsing helps to reduce water usage.

“This is a transformational innovation for agriculture at large,” she says, “as access to fresh water for growing food is one of the most pressing challenges of our time.”

As well as fewer miles and less water, indoor farming doesn’t require pesticides. This is better for the environment and human health as it eliminates the risk of water contamination due to run-off, and is in line with increasing consumer demand for non-GMO produce.

Plenty eliminates the need for pesticides with LED lights, which are synced with the crop’s growth, Barnard says, to provide the ideal spectrums and exposure and minimize energy usage.

“Our sensor system ensures each plant gets exactly the amount of purified water it needs, and any excess water is recycled through a closed-loop irrigation system resulting in greatly reduced water consumption and zero waste,” he says.

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Nanobubbles super-saturates the water with oxygen, making the plant roots healthier. This promotes ... [+]

MOLEAER

Other farms are using nanobubble technology, such as Moleaer, which has allowed more than 100 indoor farms to connect their irrigation systems to generators that provide oxygen via sub-micron gas-containing cavities to the plant’s roots to provide chemical-free water. These nanobubbles result in healthier roots, more resilient plants, and increasing crop yields, says Nick Dyner, CEO of Moleaer.

“Our oxygen transfer efficiency provides the most cost-effective solution to elevate oxygen levels in the water, which in turn promotes beneficial bacteria and root development,” he says.

The company is also working on a new NASA-approved space farming research project, exploring how astronauts on the International Space Station can grow their own food in microgravity using nanobubble technology.

There are concerns that it’s an expensive investment, but Dyner says Moleaer has various systems so it’s accessible to all sizes of indoor farms, high- and low-tech. Some products do, however, require growers to connect an external source of oxygen, which must come from a gas supply company or an onsite oxygen generator, which Moleaer provides.

“In many cases, traditional farmers may have more to gain by using our technology, since the capital investment is significantly less than the most advanced growing technologies available today, which are often out of a typical farmer’s budget,” Dyner says.

“Nanobubble technology is a cost-effective, chemical-free, and scalable solution that allows growers to increase crop yields and shorten cultivation time - which will be much needed to feed our growing population in the future.”

Peggs says Square Roots is also focused on ensuring its technology makes farming an accessible career path for young people who live in urban areas.

“If you’re a new young farmer at Square Roots, our app will guide you through what to do; what’s growing, what state is in it, what do we need to do today based on where things are in the growth cycle. Through our app and our training program we’re able to bring new people into our team, even folks with zero horticulture experience, and get them ready to go in about six weeks.”

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Indoor farming is putting the youth back in agriculture. PLENTY

But despite being an emerging option for youth in the city, Barnard predicts most will remain traditional farmers.

“The world still needs the field and will need the field forever. We support the field by growing in addition to the field. Over time, [indoor] farming systems will become more accessible and affordable. Both field and indoor farming will be necessary to support global food demand.”

Viraj Puri, Co-Founder, and CEO of Gotham Greens, a pioneer in urban indoor agriculture that operates over 500,000 square feet greenhouses in 5 U.S. states, echoes this sentiment: “Growing produce indoors certainly has an increasing role to play in the future of sustainable food production. While indoor farming may not represent the future of all fresh produce production, for certain types of crops such as tomatoes, cucumbers, leafy greens, and herbs, it will become more prevalent. Customers are increasingly recognizing the reliability, consistency, and high quality of greenhouse-grown produce that’s grown in close proximity to large population centers using fewer natural resources. Other agricultural commodities like grains or fruits or root vegetables, however, can’t yet be produced.”  

However, Dyner predicts that, eventually, the majority of agriculture will move to indoors, in vertical farms— the practice of growing crops in vertically stacked layers—in urban areas.

“These settings enable traditional farming to shift to controlled growing conditions, using new technology and automation, and reducing the risk of exposure to harsh climate conditions,” he says.

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Plenty's goal is to build vertical farms in urban hubs and distribute each farm’s harvest locally ... [+]

PLENTY

Start-ups like Square Roots, Plenty, and AeroFarms currently practice vertical farming, which is a form of indoor farming that relies on artificial lighting such as LEDs instead of drawing on natural sunlight.

Other indoor farming companies like Gotham Greens grow produce in high-tech glass-clad greenhouses that primarily rely on natural sunlight for plant photosynthesis. According to Puri: “vertical farming is a more nascent technology within the indoor farming sector and the costs of running a vertical farm with artificial lighting and air conditioning is currently not as cost-effective as relying on natural sunlight in greenhouses.”

Gotham Greens takes a different approach, relying on natural sunlight rather than the artificial ... [+]

GOTHAM GREENS AND JULIE MCMAHON

“Greenhouse indoor farming technology has been in operation globally for 20 to 30 years and is proven to be commercially viable. That being said, the costs around artificial lighting and other vertical farming technologies have been coming down significantly in the past few years,” he adds.

Nonetheless, indoor farm technology start-ups, broadly speaking, don’t see themselves as disruptive, but as being on the same side of traditional farms, for the wider cause.

“The common enemy is the industrial food system, shipping food from one part of the world to the other, rather than locally produced food,” Peggs says.

Indoor farms don’t work in competition with each other, either; they work collaboratively by forming a network that shares data. For example, AeroFarms is collecting data on a research project with the non-profit Foundation for Food & Agriculture Research to understand the sensory and nutritional characteristics of leafy greens for the benefit of the entire agriculture industry.

However traditional and AI-based indoor farming work together in the future, there’s little doubt that indoor farming is helping to meet the needs of a growing global population and support traditional farming, which is both at the mercy of and exacerbating a warming planet. Only one method will find itself in space – but there’s space for them both.

Brian Kateman

I am co-founder and president of the Reducetarian Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to reducing consumption of animal products.

Lead Photo: The world’s current agricultural practices are unsustainable, and indoor farming may offer solutions ... [+]  PLENTY

Vertical Farms Fill a Tall Order by Emeritus Professor of Public Health and Microbiology at Columbia University, Dr Dickson Despommier

Indoor crops grown by high-tech methods are on the rise as the Covid-19 pandemic spurs interest in food security for cities. 

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Stacked trays of greens growing at the Newark, N.J., facility of AeroFarms.

PHOTO: BRYAN ANSELM FOR THE WALL STREET

By Dickson Despommier

July 25, 2020

The Covid-19 pandemic has disrupted agricultural production and supply chains around the world. Farmers have often struggled to get their food to distant markets, and sharp shifts in demand have repeatedly forced them to dump crops. Avoiding such logistical problems is one of the chief advantages of vertical farms, a new approach to agriculture that aims to grow food closer to population centers.

Over the past 10 years, hundreds of such indoor farms have sprouted up around the globe, mostly in the larger cities of industrialized countries. They occupy multistory buildings in which crops are grown in water or in misted air instead of soil, with LED lights in place of sunlight, in a controlled and largely automated environment. 

Building more vertical farms in cities is especially timely because of the expected effects of the pandemic on urban office towers. Moody’s Analytics REIS now projects office vacancies to rise to 19.3% in the 82 largest metropolitan areas by the end of the year, up from 16.8% last year, and then to continue rising. In June, 82% of employers surveyed by market-research firm Gartner, Inc. said that they would allow employees to work from home permanently. Indoor farms can occupy some of the abandoned or underused office space created by these trends.

So far, vertical farms have mostly grown and sold leafy greens and herbs—the easiest food crops to grow indoors and to harvest year-round. They are competitive against conventional farms because their crops don’t have to travel far and are free of pesticides and other soil contaminants.

Strictly controlled conditions enable vertical farms to bypass the unpredictable variations of weather and soil. 

As demand rises, however, vertical farms are poised to add a number of other crops that can be grown effectively indoors. These include root vegetables (potatoes, radishes, carrots, celery), vine vegetables (green beans, tomatoes, peppers), and bush fruits (blueberries, blackberries, raspberries). Such an expansion could eventually result in a significant shift of agriculture to cities, where 60% of the world’s population now lives. 

Vertical farms are no longer some futuristic fantasy. Well-established, efficient hydroponic and aeroponic methods have been paired with newer technology such as high-performance LED grow lights. Artificial intelligence now often controls the instruments that automatically deliver nutrients and provide optimal lighting for each crop. 

The strictly controlled conditions inside vertical farms enable them to bypass the unpredictable variations of weather and soil and to exclude the heavy metals and other elements so common in traditional agriculture. Such control also allows endless experimentation to develop the best-tasting produce and most efficient ways of growing. And when pollination is required, bumblebees do the job quite nicely, just as they do outdoors. 

Creating and maintaining that environment takes big startup costs for technology and ongoing costs for energy. But the efficiency of such farms allows nearly 95% of indoor seedlings to be grown to maturity and harvested, according to Gene Giacomelli, professor of biosystems engineering at the University of Arizona. By contrast, the survival rate for outdoor crops, from planting to harvest, vary from 90% in good years to 70% or less in drought or flood years. The latter have been increasing because of climate change, with record-high temperatures often accompanied by extreme weather patterns. 

On multiple floors of a single building, layers of vertical fields can be harvested in phases to provide year-round crops. Since the farms are close to their target consumers, spoilage and damage from shipping are greatly reduced. Eventually, such farms could provide healthier produce options in under-served neighborhoods that have been described as “food deserts.” 

One of the largest and earliest commercial outfits, AeroFarms of Newark, N.J., was started by an agronomist in a defunct paintball arena in 2004. After several false starts, it flourished in 2014 with the help of $200 million in startup funding from the city and private firms. AeroFarms relocated to 70,000 square feet in Newark’s Ironbound district and won contracts with local restaurants, supermarkets and school lunch programs. It has since added larger facilities of 150,000 square feet in Danville, Va., and 90,000 in Abu Dhabi. The company supplements its 72 staff with local personnel trained to work in various phases of crop production. 

Infarm, founded in Israel in 2013 and now based in Berlin, operates differently, exporting its model directly to supermarkets. (I serve, without pay, on its science advisory board and as a paid advisory board member for another firm.) It provides in-store, automated hydroponic growing systems. Each store selects its own mix of greens and herbs, and consumers are encouraged to choose, taste, and harvest from a menu growing right in front of them. The original startup employed a retrofitted 1955 Airstream trailer as its mobile crop production vehicle. Now it employs more than 400 people in 40 countries, mostly in Europe. It sells through, among others, Kroger grocery stores on the West Coast and Marks and Spencer in London. 

There are many other vertical-farm startups backed by venture capital and expanding in Europe and the U.S., as well as on the Arabian peninsula, where they can provide an alternative to hot, arid conditions. But other firms have failed, or have canceled expansion plans, as they struggle to manage their costs and compete in local markets. And vertical farms aren’t likely to gain a competitive advantage over conventional farming when it comes to important commodities such as fruits grown in orchards or grains grown in vast fields. Both are possible to raise in vertical indoor settings, but so far, their yields are too low and seasonal to be economical. 

Would more food crops grown indoors in cities be a helpful trend in agriculture, or not? Join the conversation below.

The pandemic has sparked new demand for the industry. San Francisco-based vertical farm Plenty says that a significant increase in shipments has sped up its effort to diversify crops. The company has already experimented with strategies to add items such as tomatoes and strawberries.

Covid-19 has been a harbinger of longer-term problems in food security for our cities. One answer may come from growing more of our food just down the street.

—Dr. Despommier is emeritus professor of public health and microbiology at Columbia University and the author of “The Vertical Farm: Feeding the World in the 21st Century.”

Jersey City May Have The U.S.'s First Municipal Vertical Farm. Experts Share How it Can Thrive

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Rebecca King  | NorthJersey.com

June 26, 2020

Jersey City is on track to implement the country’s first municipal vertical farming program.

The city has signed a three-year contract with the Newark-based vertical farming company AeroFarms and plans to begin growing leafy greens in 10 locations including senior centers, schools, public housing complexes, and municipal buildings later this year.

“A lot of people don’t go for regular physicals,” said Jersey City Mayor Steven Fulop. “They’re not checking their sugar levels, blood pressure or cholesterol. Having people be more diligent about their diet will hopefully increase their lifespan, long-term.”

Once the microgreens start sprouting, members of the community will be able to sign up to receive free produce. They’ll be encouraged to attend seminars about healthy eating and get regular health tests done through Quest Diagnostics, which has also partnered with the city.

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Because crops are stacked at this AeroFarms facility, the company says it can produce 390 times the crops from a traditional farm.~Courtesy of AeroFarms

“It’s important to be doing this prior to people getting diseases or sicknesses,” said Fulop. “A lot of what we’re doing is based on education. Many people aren’t aware of the bad foods they’re putting in their bodies on a regular basis.”

Vertical farming is one method of hydroponic controlled environment agriculture. Instead of being grown outside in soil, plants in vertical farms are stacked on shelves inside, misted with nutrients and lit with LED lights in lieu of sunlight.

Garrett Broad, an assistant professor at Fordham University whose research focuses on new food technology, food justice, and community-based organizing, says vertical farming has many sustainability boons.

Because the environment is completely controlled, the weather cannot destroy or affect crops. Vertical farming saves water. It reduces runoff. There’s no need for pesticides. And any kind of crop can be grown year-round. Fulop predicts Jersey City’s program will produce 19,000 pounds of food annually.

“The idea is that by doing vertical stacking, you can get a lot of productivity out of a very small area,” Broad said.

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Farmers tend plants at AeroFarms with the help of platforms that can rise and fall.~Courtesy of AeroFarms

But, there are downsides. Vertical farming is extremely energy-intensive. Even energy-saving LED lights require a huge amount of power to shine on the crops. According to Fulop, Jersey City has no way to offset the impact of this energy use yet. Many of the farms are housed in decades-old buildings that have not been updated to include solar panels or other energy-saving technologies.

“It’s something we need to consider in the future,” said Fulop.

The other issue with vertical farming is that leafy greens are essentially the only plants worth growing, said Broad. Larger, heavier fruits and vegetables have too much biomass and require too much artificial light and nutrients to grow in a cost-effective way.

Indeed, Fulop confirmed that greens are the “easiest base material” to grow and will be the focus of Jersey City’s vertical farms.

That said, vertical farms do have the ability to create change in a community when done right, said Broad.

“Vertical gardens are similar to other urban farming projects we see,” he said. “They exist on a sort of spectrum. Some are total failures, some are a fun project and some are actually part of a social change.”

Projects that don’t receive enough funding or attention rank as “total failures.” Small community gardens rank in the “fun project” category --  “They provide small scale change. People get to know their food a bit more, they learn some horticultural skills, but it doesn’t drastically change the community,” said Broad.

According to Broad, Jersey City will have to do extensive community outreach to make vertical farming a long-term success – which means reaching out to faith leaders, schools and groups that are trusted by the community and getting them involved with the distribution of produce.

It means talking to residents about what vegetables they actually eat; planning cooking classes at times when people aren’t working; making dishes at those classes that the attendees will actually cook in their own homes.

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As technology continues to improve, the company expects vertical farming to become even more cost-effective. | Courtesy of AeroFarms

“Did we ask to see if the people who are actually the target of this project have working kitchens? Are we making sure they have pots and pans? Are we growing food that’s culturally relevant to them? If we don’t ask these questions, a lot of times vertical farming projects stay in the ‘nice and fun’ category,” Broad said.

Jersey City has launched a few food initiatives in past years. The city gave grants to bodegas and corner stores to redesign display cases, putting fruits and vegetables next to their counters instead of snacks and candy to encourage healthy eating. Another program involved walking senior citizens around a supermarket and teaching them to read the labels on the back of packaged foods. At the end of the tour, they were given money and encouraged to purchase healthy meals.

Areas in which there is an extreme lack of nutritious, affordable food have been called “food deserts.” But, those who study farming technology have been moving away from that term, which brings up images of scarcity and used-up land. Instead, “food swamp” is now used to describe cities and towns that have food available, but few healthy options. Others use the term “food apartheid” to draw attention to food inequality. Poorer neighborhoods are usually the places that lack fresh, affordable food.

Jersey City is one such place, said Broad. If given the right attention, he added, a vertical farming initiative could be a step toward addressing poverty and food inequality.

“This is the kind of thing that can be fun and flashy and get media attention,” he said. “But, it’s up to us to apply pressure to the government and say, ‘OK, show us how this is part of something bigger.’”

Rebecca King is a food writer for NorthJersey.com. For more on where to dine and drink, please subscribe today and sign up for our North Jersey Eats newsletter.

Email: kingr@northjersey.com Twitter: @rebeccakingnj  Instagram: @northjerseyeats

June 26, 2020

Looking Up: Vertical Farms Fill Produce Supply Chain Lag During Pandemic

By Jesse Klein | Green Biz | June 11, 2020

The great panic buying of 2020 revealed the time it takes for food to go from farm to shelves. The curtain was pulled back on something the shopper rarely thinks about — supply chain logistics. As grocery store shelves emptied, the problem wasn’t necessarily lack of food but a drastic shift in demand that caused traditional distribution engines to sputter.

For example, lettuce takes between 30 and 45 days to grow in a field farm. According to a 2001 study by the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture, traditionally grown lettuce travels about 2,000 miles to get to Chicago grocery stores. So by the time prepackaged greens are bought by consumers, that produce can be almost two weeks old. These long lead times caused those empty shelves in March. 

Vertical farms have struggled to become a major force in the grocery market. Their products are usually limited to leafy greens, and the high labor costs have made turning a profit challenging for many. But the pandemic clarified their role within a more sustainable food system. Vertical farms, with their hyperlocality and ability to quickly grow new crops, can step in to fill retail shelves when traditional farms falter.

"We are a really critical part of this food supply chain, and we can fill a gap when there is a crisis," said Shireen Santosham, head of strategic initiatives at Plenty, which sells vegetables at 20 locations around the San Francisco Bay area.

Location always has been a core part of the vertical farm appeal and business model. During the pandemic, many have taken advantage of the fact that their growing operations often use abandoned warehouses in urban areas and therefore are much closer to retail stores.

Fifth Season Connection, a vertical farm that leverages robotic technology, operates a 600,000-square-foot vertical farm in the food deserts of Pittsburgh. Its chief category officer, Grant Vandenbussche, called me from inside his delivery truck. He was delivering that day’s produce to grocery stores a mere 24 hours after the greens were picked. His company has seen a 50 percent increase in orders over the past few months, even as its restaurant market has dwindled.

"We have fantastic retail partners that we have really leaned on," he said. "Our partnerships have allowed us to get more onto the shelves and expand our offerings."

The consumer also benefits from the quick turnaround time, especially during the pandemic. According to Vandenbussche, vertical farm greens typically last longer after purchase because they haven’t been out of the dirt for as long as traditional produce. So when every trip to the grocery store feels like a risk, shoppers are looking for products that will last longer than a few days.  

According to AeroFarms, its advantage has been the ability to produce baby greens in a third of the time of traditional farms, typically 12 days. AeroFarms operates four vertical farms in New Jersey harvesting almost 2 million pounds of produce a year using aeroponic mist instead of traditional irrigation, resulting in 95 percent less water usage than a traditional farm. According to Marc Oshima, co-founder and marketing director of AeroFarms, most field farms don’t have the nimbleness to respond to a quick change in market demand.

"Because we are inside, we are able to grow all year round," he said. "We can pivot as needed and adjust to the marketplace. We plant, seed and harvest for our customers based on their orders. That allows us to be very customer- and market-driven in how we grow."

Plenty has seen a threefold increase in demand from its retailers since the start of March. The pandemic opened up opportunities with new retail partners for Plenty because the stores were experiencing a disruption in supply chain and looking for alternative means of keeping shelves full, according to executives. 

"[The increase in demand] came from both our existing stores as well as from additional stores that called us up and said, ‘Hey, we are having trouble keeping our shelves stocked, could you add some volume with us?’" said Roger Kirkpatrick, director of business development at Plenty. 

Plenty was able to meet the demand as it already was gearing up its volume for placement in new stores but coronavirus accelerated the pace, Kirkpatrick said.

Vertical farms are hoping to capitalize on this moment. Shelves empty of a consumer's habitual brands help force consumers over the initial barrier of trying a new product such as those sold by Plenty. Once people do try Plenty's produce, according to Kirkpatrick, they tend to stick with the brand. So even as panic buying has calmed down, Plenty has seen its demand stay level, he said.

And even though the Centers for Disease Control and World Health Organization guidelines agree COVID-19 is unlikely to be passed through food contamination, vertical farms are using consumers’ increased awareness of the food supply chain to push their product as a safer and better alternative.

"[Consumers] will continue to gravitate towards local clean options because, now more than ever, they're thinking about where is my food coming from, who is touching it and how has it been processed," Vandenbussche said.