Federal Grant Bolsters Higher Education In AgTech

Growers have indicated the need for highly skilled workforce is becoming more urgent as technology restructures the future of farming.

Today’s blog notes a bright spot amongst many past reports of reduced government-backed financial support in research & development (R&D) and education programs that aim to improve living conditions, reduce environmental impact, and manage the growing population’s resources via technology.

Cornell University has reported that the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), through its National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA), has endowed the university’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences’ School of Integrative Plant Science with a $496,000 grant. The federal funding will be used to develop new controlled environment agriculture (CEA) training programs for a skilled workforce that is sorely needed.

Cornell’s associate professor of horticulture Neil Mattson, well-known to us as the keynote speaker at our 2019 HortiCann Light + Tech conference, will collaborate with Cornell Small Farms program director Anu Rangarajan, Ohio State University’s Agricultural Technical Institute, and SUNY Broome Community College to create a technical training certificate in CEA production. The partners also expect to develop a two-year associate’s degree program for students at these institutions and other community colleges to provide solid education in CEA.

Mattson said in the Cornell Chronicle, “Growers consistently state that finding well-trained personnel to operate their facilities is among the largest barriers to expansion.”

Why do we need this educational support? The global population is growing, and supply needs to ramp up to deliver healthy foods to all economic strata. Many food crops are currently unavailable close to home for many, which places a burden on transportation and increases carbon footprint, as well as impacting shelf life. CEA can bring many food-growing resources closer to consumers, especially in urban areas or regions that would prove inhospitable to sensitive crops in a traditional farming operation.

CEA gives growers the means to apply physical systems of growth media, environmental controls, horticultural lighting, and water supply systems along with evidence-backed research in pest management, food safety processes, light customization, and more to produce food sources in a manner designed to balance economic viability, food demand, and sustainability.

Technologies available to modern CEA growers would naturally require a more advanced skillset. Indeed, said Rangarajan, “Our efforts have laid the groundwork for what I hope will be a dynamic training program that will build the workforce and elevate the industry as a whole.”

It’s an exciting time in the horticultural and agricultural space, and learning opportunities abound. Bookmark our HortiCann Light + Tech conference homepage for updates on our upcoming October program, now virtual for 2020. Moving beyond horticultural lighting fundamentals, the program will also delve into agribusiness and the return on investment in advanced systems and controls, AgTech systems integration, and topics related to legalized cannabis growing operations.

Photo credit: Image by iamereri via Pixabay; used under free license for commercial or non-commercial purposes.

Author: Carrie Meadows | LEDsMagazine | Jul 10, 2020

VeggiTech Builds and Operates Digital Smart Farms For Customers

By GN Focus | May 28, 2020 | Gulf News

In conversation with Hemant Julka, Chief Operating Officer, VeggiTech

Could you tell us about VeggiTech and its operations in the UAE?

VeggiTech is an agro-tech organisation focused on disrupting the agriculture industry to create sustainable and eco-friendly farms. We focus on LED-assisted hydroponics for indoor vertical farms and protected hydroponics to farm sustainably even in the UAE’s challenging conditions, where soil, temperature and water are not conducive to traditional farming. Our farming landscape has grown to over 60 acres of protected hydroponic farms and more than 45,000 sq ft of indoor vertical farms, with a team of over 150 qualified agronomists, engineers and farmers.

How could you help traditional farms in the country incorporate hydroponic farming practices?

VeggiTech’s business model is to build and operate digital smart farms for our customers. We drive the transformation of farms with these innovative technologies in a cost-effective manner. The year 2019 saw more than 35 acres of traditional farms converted into protected hydroponics and the introduction of 45,000 sq ft of indoor vertical farms in Sharjah alone.

Given our expertise, we ensure the latest innovation in farming technology is delivered with optimal return on investment for our customers.

Could you talk about a couple of key projects that you have handled recently?

Some of our recent successes were the conversion of a traditional farms (640,000 sq ft) into modern protected hydroponic farms and the commissioning of the indoor vertical farm of 25,000 sq ft grow area. Our protected hydroponics technologies provide a harvest of 40-45kg per sq m per annum, while our indoor vertical farms provide a harvest of 85-90kg per sq m per annum using less than 5 percent of the water used in traditional farming.

What initiatives have you taken to create more awareness on hydroponics and other innovative farming technologies for a sustainable agricultural ecosystem in the UAE?

Education is key for long term sustainable impact. We work closely with the Ministry of Climate Change and Environment (MOCCAE). Our Chief Agronomy Officer, Bhaskar Rao, leads our Learning Hub platform that hosts the Urban Grower’s programme for students, parents and teachers. We have had more than 50 graduate participants from the programme.

UAE Farm Tech To The Fore

New technologies are helping the country make more of its own produce

Over a span of just six months, Covid-19 has not only changed the way we work, celebrate occasions and stay healthy but also forced countries to take a hard look at how they feed their residents. “I believe the current pandemic has provided us the opportunity to completely reimagine the global food system,” says Tony Hunter, a global food futurist.

Going urban

One of the factors pushing the global agri-tech agenda is the growth and increasing density of cities. “By 2050, more than two thirds of the world’s population is forecasted to live in cities,” explains Smitha Paresh, Executive Director of Greenoponics, a UAE-based retailer of commercial and consumer hydroponics systems, adding that urban agriculture will be crucial for feeding burgeoning urban populations.

“On a macro level, we will see a rise in urban farming, mostly using high-tech farming methods such as hydroponics, aeroponics or aquaponics.” Paresh cites Singapore’s conversion of car parks into urban farm centres as an example. “In the UAE, as per the national food security strategy for 2017-2021, we have already witnessed a huge increase in climate-controlled greenhouses all over the country.”

Arable environments

For Hunter, who spoke about potential silver linings of Covid-19 at a recent Gulfood webinar, new technologies present the best means of achieving domestic self-sufficiency. “They can release countries from the tyrannies of arable land and water stress.” He singles out algal products that rely on low rainfall and can use seawater; cultivated meat and biomass products; cell-based products such as milk proteins; and synthetic biology that can manufacture a range of food products.

Over the long term, Ravindra Shirotriya, CEO, VeggiTech, believes there are three critical areas for sustainable farming in the UAE. The first is precision agriculture, which focuses on growing conditions for plants using hyperbaric chambers and nanotechnology-based organic nutrition. Photo bio-reactors, meanwhile, can cultivate food-grade algae such as spirulina. Finally, Shirotriya cites smart farms, which work with smart cities to create harvest plans based on real-time data on food demand and consumption within communities. “This will address our current broken food ecosystem, where we waste 35 percent of food while 15 percent of the world population goes to sleep hungry.”

VeggiTech’s primary focus is on setting up LED-assisted hydroponics for indoor vertical farms and protected hydroponics for sustainable farming in the UAE.

In terms of crop production, Avinash Vora, Co-founder of Aranya Farms, says new technologies aim to boost yields, reduce waste and grow produce entirely. “Technology is being applied at every stage, whether for plant seeding, monitoring growth, managing water, energy conservation, harvesting and packaging. “We are making huge strides adapting all of them here in the UAE; the interest and investments in agriculture prove that.”

For Philippe Peguilhan, Country Manager of Carrefour UAE at Majid Al Futtaim Retail, the UAE had already been seeking self-reliance in food production, but coronavirus amped up its importance. “The disruption that Covid-19 caused to the supply chain highlighted the importance of local produce and presented an excellent opportunity for local farmers to grab a greater share of the market.” Majid Al Futtaim recently made headlines for opening the UAE’s third, and Dubai’s first, in-store hydroponics farm.

Hydroponic hope

Hydroponics is one agri-tech that’s attracting keen investor interest. “As an indicator, Madar Farms’ 7,000-sq-m factory will produce 365 tons of tomatoes a year, and about 14,000 tons of cherry vine tomatoes were consumed in the UAE in 2019,” says Hunter. “There’s therefore the market opportunity for 38 Madar farms in the UAE for tomatoes alone. Add in other nutrient-dense crops such as cucumbers, peppers and leafy greens. Depending upon their size, we could be looking at several hundred businesses.”

On an individual level, more people are leaning towards home farming, especially towards soil-less cultivation since it is simple and easy, according to Paresh. “It guarantees a certain amount of yield. Home farming will be on the rise, considering the disruption we may face in trying times like this.”

As with most technologies, Hunter says the biggest challenge of hydroponics is profitability. “Fortunately, the costs of technology inputs required to optimise hydroponic production efficiencies are falling rapidly. This drop, together with simultaneous increases in performance, is driving down the costs of hydroponics, making acceptable ROIs much easier to achieve.” He adds that economies of scale can help achieve good ROIs. “Currently most farms are in the 1-2 ton per day range but farms of 50 tons per day are being projected by as early as 2025.”

Sustainability challenges

“Challenges in building our own farm were access to sufficient and cost-effective electricity; renewable sources of water; and the availability of locally made raw materials, specifically growing media, nutrients and seeds. With seeds we are adapting — we have been growing our own seeds but having a library of seeds to choose from that are suitable for our climate and environment would be a huge boon to all farmers.”

— Avinash Vora, Co-founder of Aranya Farms

By Riaz Naqvi, Staff Writer | Gulf News | May 28, 2020

WEBINAR - JUNE 3: USDA $3M In Grant Money Available For Urban Agriculture, Innovative Production Projects

Planning Projects:

• USDA is making available $1 million for Planning Projects that initiate or expand efforts of farmers, gardeners, citizens, government officials, schools and other stakeholders in urban areas and suburbs. Projects may target areas of food access, education, business and start-up costs for new farmers and development of policies related to zoning and other needs of urban production.

Implementation Projects:

• USDA is making available $2 million for Implementation Projects that accelerate existing and emerging models of urban, indoor and other agricultural practices that serve multiple farmers. Projects will improve local food access and collaborate with partner organizations and may support infrastructure needs, emerging technologies, educational endeavors and urban farming policy implementation.

Webinar:

• A webinar, which will be held on June 3, from 2 to 4 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time, will provide an overview of the grants’ purpose, project types, eligibility and basic requirements for submitting an application. Information on how to register for and participate in the webinar, or listen to the recording, will be posted at farmers.gov/urban.

More Information:

• The Office of Urban Agriculture and Innovative Production was established through the 2018 Farm Bill. It includes representatives from many USDA agencies, including Farm Service Agency and Agricultural Marketing Service, and is led by the Natural Resources Conservation Service. More information is available at farmers.gov/urban.

Additional resources that may be of interest to urban agriculture entities include AMS grants to improve domestic and international opportunities for U.S. growers and producers and FSA loans.

The Decarbonization Promise of Indoor Agriculture is Still in The Seed Stage

By Jim Giles

May 21, 2020

Here’s a tale of two chefs.

Both are based in the Midwest and both are preparing a Caesar salad. One uses lettuce shipped from where much of our lettuce is grown: The fields around Monterey, California. The other sources her greens from a nearby indoor farm.

Out in Monterey, the farmer used diesel-powered machinery, pumped water, fertilizer, and pesticides. At the indoor farm, precision systems provided the lettuce with exactly the amount of water and nutrients the crop requires — and no more.

The pickers in California discarded lettuces that didn’t look perfect. That wasn't an issue indoors: Conditions are so well controlled that almost all the crops met consumers’ exacting standards. Finally, when the crop was packed and ready, the indoor farmer drove 20 miles or so to drop the lettuce at our chef’s restaurant. The Monterey produce had to travel 2,000 miles.

Which chef is preparing the more environmentally friendly salad?

Let’s start with the bad news. The story above about indoor farming, a tale about technology can produce dramatic environmental gains — it doesn’t hold true. The Monterey lettuce is currently the better bet, according to a new analysis from the WWF.

For places that are food-insecure, this could be a real game-changer.

The problem with indoor farming, also known as controlled environment agriculture, is the electric grid. Indoor farms use LEDs to light crops. In St. Louis, Missouri, the focus of the WWF study, two-thirds of electricity comes from fossil fuel plants that pump out health-damaging particulates and planet-warming carbon dioxide.

The WWF team combined these and other impacts into a single score that captures total environmental harm. Lettuce grown in St. Louis greenhouses, which supplement LEDs with natural light, scored twice as high as the conventional crop. In a vertical farm lit entirely by LEDs, the difference was threefold.

Now to the good news: Our chef who sources from a nearby indoor farm may not be making the best environmental choice today, but she likely will be soon.

That’s partly because if we look beyond energy use, indoor ag delivers clear benefits. Indoor systems require little or even no pesticides and generate 80 percent less waste. They use less space, which can free up land for biodiversity. The WWF study found that precision indoor water systems use 1 liter of water to produce a kilogram of lettuce; for field-grown lettuce, the figure is 150 liters.

Another reason is that indoor ag’s energy problem is likely to become less serious. Market forces are already adding renewables to the U.S. electricity mix and pushing out coal. Technology improvements in the pipeline also will cut energy use in indoor farms.

PlantLab, a Netherlands-based startup, has developed an LED that’s more efficient in indoor ag settings because it emits light at the exact wavelengths used for photosynthesis. New crop varieties from Precision Indoor Plants, a public-private partnership that is developing seeds specifically for indoor use, may require less light to grow.

This tech is at an early stage, which makes it tough to quantify the future impact. But the data we do have shows that a combination of efficiency improvements and grid decarbonization can make indoor farms a much better environmental choice for some crops. Cutting energy use also will lower costs, making indoor farms competitive on price. It’s fascinating to speculate about what would happen if both these trends came to fruition.

Indoor farms likely would diversify, for starters. At present, indoor farms in urban areas profitably can grow leafy greens but little else. If energy costs come down, cucumbers, berries, and tomatoes also might make financial sense, suggests Julia Kurnik, director of innovation startups for WWF.

When this project ends, key players will already be invested and ready to move ahead with building a pilot system that can be replicated worldwide ...

With more diverse output, the farms could become local hubs that would strengthen the food system’s resilience to extreme weather events and other shocks. "For places that are food-insecure, this could be a real game-changer," Kurnik added.

Venture capitalists already have seen this future; hundreds of millions of dollars have flowed to indoor farming companies in recent years. That’s essential if this industry is to grow, but it’s also great to see an organization such as the WWF in the mix.

After studying the potential, the WWF has convened a diverse group of stakeholders to map out the expansion of indoor ag in St. Louis. In addition to business execs and investors, the group includes civic and community leaders.

"By working as a group to make those decisions," explains the report, "when this project ends, key players will already be invested and ready to move ahead with building a pilot system that can be replicated worldwide, making food production more environmentally sustainable."

I’ll certainly be keeping tabs on progress in St. Louis, and with indoor ag more generally. If you know of a particular project or related technology that deserves a mention, drop me an email at jg@greenbiz.com.

This article was adapted from the GreenBiz Food Weekly newsletter. 

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The Indoor Farm Revolution

Coronavirus chaos has spurred a grow-your-own food movement — and space-age hydroponic technology is rising to meet it.

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By Chris Taylor

NOTE FOR 2020 READERS: This is the eleventh in a series of open letters to the next century, now just 80 years away. The series asks: What will the world look like at the other end of our kids' lives?

Dear 22nd Century,

For all the pain, grief and economic hardship the 2020 coronavirus pandemic has sown, a handful of green shoots seem to have taken root in its blighted soil.

Green being the operative word, because many of these developments could be a net positive for the planet. In lockdown, many of us are seeing what our cities look like without smog. Office workers are experiencing office life without the office; just last week, Twitter announced that most of its employees could work from home forever, while much of Manhattan is reportedly freaking out about what could happen to commercial real estate. Thousands of companies just discovered they can still function, and maybe even function better, when they don’t chain employees to desks or force them to make a soul-crushing, carbon-spewing commute 10 times a week.

And what do more people do when they’re spending more time at home? Well, if you’re like my wife, you start literally planting green shoots. Our house is filling up with them as I write this: lettuce, chard, tomatoes, basil, strawberries, to name the first five shoots poking out of dozens of mason jars now taking up residence on every windowsill. She’s hardly alone; garden centers and seed delivery services are reporting as much as 10 times more sales since the pandemic began. Even the mighty Wal-Mart has sold out of seeds. If viral Facebook posts and Instagram hashtags are any guide, pandemic hipsters have moved on from once-fashionable sourdough starters to growing fresh fruit and veg. 

Another one of our cyclical “back to the land” movements seems to be underway, just like during the 1960s and the Great Depression before that. Only this time, we don’t need land. We don’t need soil. We don’t need pesticide of any kind. We don’t even need natural light. Thanks to giant leaps forward in the science of hydroponics and LED lighting, even people in windowless, gardenless apartments can participate in the revolution. With a number of high-tech consumer products on the way, the process can be automated for those of us without green thumbs. 

In previous letters I’ve discussed the inevitable rise of alternative meat, a process that has been accelerated by the pandemic. I talked about the smaller, more nutritious plant-based meals we're going to need for life extension; I assumed such meals would be delivered by drone. But now I see a future with no food deserts, in which every home is filled with rotating space-station-like hydroponics run by artificial intelligence — a cornucopia of push-button farming providing the side salad to your plant-based meat. 

Even if you don’t grow your own, robot-run vertical farms and community “agrihoods,” now springing up everywhere, will make amazing-tasting produce abundant and cheap. The “locavores” of our era like to boast about their 100-mile diet. Yours will look more like a 100-yard diet. 

Green, not soylent 

It’s worth remembering that it wasn’t supposed to be this way. The 2020s, in fact, is when we were slated for starvation, food riots, and big business quietly processing our corpses into food. 

That’s the plot of the 1973 movie Soylent Green, set in the year 2022. Fruit and veg have all but vanished. In one scene, Charlton Heston's detective hero smuggles home a single tomato and a wilted stick of celery, enough to reduce his roommate Sol (Edward G. Robinson) to tears. On the other end of the future, in a lighter but equally depressing vein, the 2006 comedy Idiocracy showed the Americans of 2500 running out of crops because they couldn’t figure out that water, not "Brawndo" (a spoof on colorful sports drinks), is “what plants crave.”

But these dismal future visions are receding thanks to the science of hydroponics — which dates back to the 19th century, no matter its present-day association with growing marijuana. By the 1930s, we’d figured out that what plants crave is surprisingly minimal: nitrogen, a handful of minerals, something to anchor the roots like rock wool or coconut husks, and H2O. Early hydroponic farms helped feed U.S. soldiers as they hopped through the Pacific during World War II.

Minimalist methods multiplied, and are still multiplying. We’re tweaking the spectrum of LED lights for maximum growth, and figuring out ways to use progressively less water and nutrients. My wife’s mason jar seedlings use something called the Kratky method, where you don't even need to change the water. It turns out this method was invented by a Hawaiian scientist as recently as 2009. And it’s the closest science has yet given us to a free lunch.

Reinventing the wheel

I’m nowhere near as excited by hydroponics as my wife is. But during our quarantine time, even my head has been turned — by the Rotofarm, which I’ve come to think of as the iPhone of gardening. It’s a beautiful device inspired by NASA research on growing plants in space. It uses anti-gravity — literally, when the wheel rotates around its LED light source and the plants are hanging upside down — to grow plants faster. A magnetic cover reduces the glare and increases the internal humidity. You manage it via an app.

Humankind’s oldest technology turns out to be the most efficient use of space for growing plants; even in this 15-inch-wide wheel, you can really pack them in. At the bottom of the wheel, plants dip their roots into the water and nutrient tanks. An owner’s only job is to refill the tanks every week or so, and to snip off their dinner with scissors a few weeks after germination. Some leafy greens, like my favorite salad base arugula, can be regrown without replanting.

Still, to be fully self-sufficient, a future apartment is going to need to have multiple Rotofarm-style devices on the go at once — but they’re designed to live anywhere you can plug in, on coffee tables, on desks, on walls, as eye-catching as artwork.

The main problem with the Rotofarm: It isn’t actually on sale yet. “It feels like we’ve done everything in reverse,” Rotofarm creator Toby Farmer said when I reached him via video chat from his home in Melbourne. “We’ve got the patents, we’ve got the design awards, we’ve got the customers. Now we need to finish the prototypes.” (One key tweak: reducing Rotofarm’s energy requirements, which as it stands could double many users’ household electricity bills.)

Still, orders have come from as far afield as Japan and the Netherlands, from retailers and regular users alike. Farmer’s biggest regret: When Ron Howard’s production company called, hoping to use eight Rotofarms in an upcoming Nickelodeon show set in space, Farmer didn’t have enough to spare.

Rotofarm has been in the works for a few years, but a crowdfunded Indiegogo campaign that closed last month exceeded its $15,000 goal by a third of a million dollars. Farmer, despite his name, had no experience in this area; just 23 years old, he had been a web designer since the age of 12. But he’s scaling up fast, hiring teams in LA and Singapore, soaking up their knowledge (he was keen to assure me he’d hired a lot of 40-somethings for this very reason).

After a projected 2021 release date, Rotofarm’s business model involves making money on proprietary seed pods — though Farmer admits that “there’s a DIY aspect” where customers can make their own. His hope is that official Rotofarm pods will be competitive because they’ll have fewer germination failures, but he'd rather see a world where more people own the device itself. In that spirit, he’s making it modular — the LED light bar can be upgraded separately, for example, rather than making customers buy a whole new device. (As for cost, Farmer says he can't comment yet — though Indiegogo backers were able to secure one for $900 a pop.) 

Might the Rotofarm fail? Of course, just like any other crowdfunded project. Much depends on its price point, as yet unannounced. But it’s far from the only next-level, set-it-and-forget-it hydroponic station taking aim at your kitchen. There’s a Canadian Kickstarter called OGarden that also grows food on a wheel, albeit a much larger wheel. The OGarden was funded in its first six minutes online and is set to cost around $1,000 per unit. There’s Farmshelf, a $4,900 pre-order hydroponic device that looks like a see-through refrigerator, backed by celebrity chef Jose Andres. Users will pay a $35 monthly subscription to get all the seeds they need. 

One of these models is the future; maybe all of them are. Right now, these are high-end devices aimed at early adopters (and restaurants, which get a lot of benefit out of showing off how fresh their produce is as customers walk-in). But with scale, with time, and with the growing desire for grow-your-own food that Rotofarm and its brethren have revealed, they will get cheaper and more widespread. 

After all, the first Motorola cellphone, in 1983, cost $4,000. It looked like a brick and had 30 minutes of talk time. Now sleek, supercomputer-driven smartphones are accessible to pretty much everyone. The same process will happen in-home hydroponics. 

Rise of the vertical farm

Give it 80 years, and I can see apartments with built-in hydroponic farms provided as a standard utility, much as a fridge is seen as a standard feature today. As more humans move to urban environments — two out of every three people will be in cities by 2050, according to the latest UN estimate — the need for such devices will only grow.

“We strongly believe the future of gardening is indoor gardening and more individual gardens,” OGarden CEO Pierre Nibart told us last year. “Stopping mass agriculture and starting to produce their own little stuff at home.” He said this while demonstrating his family's daily OGarden routine: His kids harvest most of what they need for dinner from the spinning wheel. 

Mass agriculture hasn’t exactly covered itself in glory where produce is concerned. And in the post-coronavirus age, we are surely going to become less tolerant of the disease its intensive farming methods have caused.

Food poisoning caused by romaine lettuce, which makes up a quarter of all leafy greens sold in the U.S., has become depressingly familiar. The 2018 E Coli outbreak was the worst — it sickened 240 people in 37 states, hospitalized almost half of them, and killed five. But the CDC has logged 46 E Coli outbreaks since 2006 and says that every reported case of infection is likely matched by 26 unreported ones. And they’re only just starting to figure out the most likely cause: groundwater contaminated by nearby cattle manure. There could also be an infection from passing birds, another major vector of bacteria. 

Never mind the wet markets of Wuhan that likely caused the coronavirus pandemic. We’re already sickening ourselves on the regular with a problem that is baked directly into our food system — and it’s affecting vegans as much as meat-eaters. 

I have no doubt you’ll look at our barbaric farming methods and shake your heads. Why did they use so much water? Why did they transport produce an average of 1,500 miles? Why did they grow it outdoors, where it’s vulnerable to pests, and then use pesticides that had to be washed off? Why did they think “triple washing” did anything to remove bacteria (it doesn’t)? Why did they bother using soil, for goodness’ sake? Didn’t they know what plants crave?

The force of legacy agriculture is strong, but an increasing number of companies are figuring out a better way: the vertical farm, so named because they can stack hydroponic produce in shelves or towers. As I write this, there are more than 20 vertical farm operations being constructed and tested around the country. They use around 90 percent less water than regular soil farms, can grow roughly 10 times more food per acre than regular soil farms, and using precision software they can harvest their produce 30 percent faster than regular soil farms. 

Sure, they’re spending more on electricity, but they’re also spending nothing on pesticide. The economics seem irresistible.

Last year, less than 20 miles from where I write this, in highly urbanized South San Francisco, a company called Plenty unveiled its flagship operation, a vast vertical farm named Tigris. Its sheer scale invites the correct usage of California’s favorite word, “awesome.” Tigris can grow a million plants at once, harvesting 200 of them every minute. With $226 million in funding, Plenty says it has already farmed 700 varieties of produce. Right now, the cost to consumers is comparable to non-hydroponic products (I can get their baby arugula at my nearest Safeway for a dollar an ounce); in the long run, it should be cheaper.

And they are far from the only success story. A Chinese startup, Alesca Life, is turning disused parking lots into vertical farms as well as selling plug-and-play shipping container farms. Back in Silicon Valley, a company called Iron Ox is developing robot arms for indoor farmwork. The future looks green and bountiful, and mostly automated (which is yet another reason you’re going to need Universal Basic Income). 

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Fresh future: Inside Plenty's vast vertical farm in South San Francisco.PLENTY

Which is not to say that outdoor agriculture is going away completely; it’s just going to shrink to the size of a community garden. That’s the basis of new urban developments called “agrihoods,” or multi-home communities centered around a professionally managed farm; a just-published book called Welcome to the Agrihood represents their first directory. 

Rooftop organic farms, urban allotments: These are places where city dwellers can connect to the land and feel the satisfaction of nurturing their seeds from scratch. Soil may not be necessary to feed us, but sometimes it’s good to feel the dirt in your fingers. Similarly, farmer's markets are unlikely to go away. In a world where grocery stores are increasingly becoming delivery centers for services like Instacart, there will still be value in meeting and buying direct from the growers of high-end produce. 

With big agribusiness heading indoors, with our apartments growing much of what we need and vertical farms providing backup in every city, we’ll also be able to let most of our present-day farmland go fallow. That in itself should take care of a chunk of climate change, considering the amount of carbon-soaking vegetation that springs up on fallow land. Lab-grown and plant-made meat will remove the need for those disease-ridden feedlots. Aquaponics, another discipline where the science is expanding by leaps and bounds, may even let us grow our own fish for food, reducing the strain on our overfished oceans.

No doubt it won’t be all smooth sailing. No doubt we, as humans, will stumble upon fresh ways to mess up the planet and make life worse. But from where I’m sitting, surrounded by soilless germinating jars, the future looks very green and nutritious indeed.

Yours in leafy goodness,

2020

TOPICS: Tech, Tech, Food, Health & Fitness, dear 22nd century, Internet Of Yum, Indoor-gardening

UAE Agri-Tech Growing With New Multi-Million Dollar Fundings For Smart Farms

HALAL INDUSTRY BY PETRA LOHO

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08 MAY 2020

INSIGHT

SALAAM GATEWAY

When Stanford Graduate School of Business alumnus and private equity expert Sky Kurtz started in Silicon Valley, he had no idea his investor and entrepreneur journey would lead him to farm tomatoes in the middle of the Arabian desert.

While a New Zealand composite materials business brought Kurtz to Dubai, what made him stay was to help the United Arab Emirate build food security.

“There’s a need to move to more resource-efficient agriculture everywhere, not only in the UAE,” Kurtz told Salaam Gateway. “The Middle East is just an extreme case with less arable land and little water.”

Food security largely covers three dimensions — the availability, affordability, and accessibility of food. The UAE’s biggest challenge is availability, given its agricultural limitations.

Conscious of the importance, the UAE established a State Ministry for Food Security in 2017, leading to the UAE National Food Security Strategy 2051 formulation.

The strategy aspires to champion agribusiness trade facilitation, enable technology-based production and food supply, promote international trade partnerships, enhance nutritional intake, and reduce waste, according to the ministry’s website.

Supporting the strategy financially, in March 2019, the Abu Dhabi government announced a 1 billion dirhams ($272 million) incentive package to support the development of the domestic agri-tech industry.   

Offering rebates up to 75% of R&D costs, along with other monetary and governing privileges, the scheme targets three agricultural segments to increase production: precision farming and agrarian robotics, bioenergy, and indoor farming.

SMART FARMS

Having co-founded his tech-enabled agribusiness focusing on year-round generation of fruits and vegetables already in 2016, Kurtz’s Pure Harvest Smart Farms hasn’t enjoyed grants from this government package yet, albeit being a perfect match.

However, in April, the firm raised $20.6 million in additional funding and secured a further $100 million commitment from Kuwait’s national investment company Wafra to finance the company’s local and regional expansion.  

“We want to grow very quickly. That’s why we raised such a large sum of capital,” Kurtz said. “Access to funds is a competitive advantage in this capital intensive business as we’re building food infrastructure.”

Initially, Pure Harvest received a $5.6 million seed funding from Shorooq Investment Partners and aligned with the UAE government by securing a 5.5 million dirhams ($1.5 million) investment through the Mohammed bin Rashid Innovation Fund in October 2018. 

Kurtz’s fundraising success reflects on a worldwide trend: the global funding to agriculture technology start-ups grew by 43% year-on-year, to almost $17 billion in 2018, according to AGFunder, an online venture capital platform. The U.S., China, and India accounted for almost 80% of all agri-tech funding.

GREENHOUSE PROOF OF CONCEPT

Pure Harvest operates a high-tech, semi-closed, and climate-controlled greenhouse.

“We see ourselves as an energy company,” said Kurtz. “We harvest solar power and turn it into healthy calorie sources as cheaply as possible.”

Growing the product hydroponically, Kurtz views Pure Harvest exceedingly similar to a vertical farm.

“The big difference is we use natural light. We have more than most plants can utilize,” Kurtz said, alluding to the Middle East’s equator proximity.  

However, the entrepreneur feels his business model is to a greater extent financially viable than vertical farming.

“Our costs for certain products are under one dollar per kilogram,” the Pure Harvest CEO added. “Vertical farms produce typically between $3.50 and $5.50 per kilogram.”

Kurtz claims to have one of the world’s lowest manufacturing costs, of any food production system, including the most ambitious Dutch producers. 

“We are producing at a competitive cost structure now at our pilot farm. At scale, we believe we can do even better,” Kurtz said.

Pure Harvest’s pilot facility harvests about 600 tons bumblebee-pollinated and pesticide-free-grown tomatoes annually.

The company grows a variety of 17, soon to be 20, different kinds of tomatoes — from small, snack-able ones to exotic and aromatic Japanese pink ones.

“Tomatoes are a truly dynamic and technically challenging crop to grow,” Kurtz explained. “Growing greens is a lot easier, and the tomato market is super competitive with both local, regional and international competition – making it a great test case.”

“It was a matter of proving our concept from a technical but also commercial standpoint,” Kurtz explained, referring to the firm’s institutional investors seeking an ROI-making mass-market product as the company matures.

NO WASTE OF WATER

“We don’t waste anything. We capture it and use it somehow. Whether that’s heat energy, cooling capacity, or water,” Kurtz said.

When the greenhouse is closed, Pure Harvest controls and captures evaporation, the treated condensation is reinjected into the irrigation system to water the plants.

According to Kurtz, Pure Harvest uses a little over 30 litres of water per kilogram of production, compared to the around 250 litres of traditional farms.

This is a saving that is crucial for a water-scarce country like the UAE, listed the third most insecure country in the Middle East, after Yemen and Kuwait on the Pardee RAND Food-Energy-Water security (FEW) index.

The country’s renewable water resources are less than 100m3/capita/year — or one-tenth of the 1,000 m3/capita/year water poverty line — according to an article by Hameed et al. published by MDPI, a peer-reviewed journals issuer.

STRAWBERRY FIELDS AHEAD

Forming a partnership with Sheikha Shamma bint Sultan bin Khalifa Al Nahyan, the founder and CEO at the Alliances for Global Sustainability, Pure Harvest secured over 30 hectares to design more greenhouses.

“We’ll build out Sheika Shamma’s land in multiple stages to a production capacity equaling around 24 hectares,” Kurtz said, noting the current farm is just under one hectare.  

The geographical expansion plans will see Pure Harvest also build in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. Extending the product line, Pure Harvest will start growing greens and strawberries in the UAE soon.

MORE INVESTMENT

Early April, the Abu Dhabi Investment Office (ADIO) announced it would provide 367 million dirhams ($100 million) to four firms – two local, two American – to establish new R&D and farming facilities.

“The UAE has been keeping the investments in the agricultural R&D in focus for a transformative food system,” Dr. Dino Francescutti, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization’s (FAO) UAE representative, told Salaam Gateway.

“By determinedly facilitating R&D among its stakeholders, the UAE will be able to develop and benefit from new technologies, increase productivity and efficiency of its limited agricultural resources, thus contributing to the country’s food security and resilience.”

One of the four recipients of ADIO’s $100 million is Madar Farms, a vertical farming pioneer operating a R&D farm growing seven different microgreens in Masdar City.

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Founded in 2017 by Kuwaiti Abdulaziz AlMulla, Madar will build the world’s largest commercial-scale indoor tomato farm located in the Khalifa Industrial Zone Abu Dhabi that lies between Abu Dhabi and Dubai.

Farming vertically is certainly going up. From $2.5 billion in 2017, the vertical farming market size will likely surpass $20 billion by 2026, according to a research report by Global Market Insights.

Vertical hydroponic farms require artificial lighting, heating, and cooling systems, ventilation, shade and nutrient dosing, the Produce Marketing Association writes in the 2019 Fresh Produce Industry: United Arab Emirates report.

This explains why many UAE farms are hesitant to adopt the new technology regardless of the government support offered, fearing the increased set-up and electricity costs, according to the trade organisation.

There are more challenges to deal with, though.

“The agri-tech products developed in Asia, Europe, or North America were created to be successful in their environments and cannot simply be copied and pasted here in the UAE,” Madar Farms brand manager Haifa Alrasheed told Salaam Gateway.

“Effective localisation is the key to success as dust, humidity, and heat can take their toll.”

The tomato farm, designed by the Dutch producer Certhon will be installed with more than 5,000 LED fixtures and is expected to be fully operational by the end of 2020. Certhon also equipped Pure Harvest’s pilot farm.

“This 5,000 square meter (0.5 hectares) facility will enable us to grow approximately more than a ton of fresh tomatoes every day,” Alrasheed said. “The domestic production only covers about 8% of the total consumption.”

“We’ll also triple the microgreens supply, sold through four online portals,” Alrasheed explained.  Demand dependent, the current daily capacity is up to 10 kilograms.

UAE CONSUMPTION   

By one calculation, the UAE’s food consumption is to grow at an annualized rate of 3.5% from 8.7 million tons in 2018 to an estimated 10.3 million tons in 2023, according to Alpen Capital’s September 2019 “GCC Food Industry” report.

In 2016, the UAE consumed 1.5 million tons of vegetables, with tomatoes being a favorite.

Domestic tomato production grew to over almost 79,000 tons in 2018, nearly 80% up from 2016, according to FAO statistics.

Despite the increase, the UAE is still not self-sufficient and must import to meet the demand.

With a 27.4%, 13.5%, and 12% share in dollar value, Jordan, India, and the Netherlands were the top three source markets for the UAE in 2018, according to the U.N. Trade Map, International Trade Centre. Iran and Malaysia followed with a 10.5% and 7.7% share, respectively.

COVID-19 CHALLENGING FOOD SECURITY

Now, the COVID-19 pandemic amplifies just how fragile food security is beyond the lack of arable land and water scarcity. 

“The diffusion of the pandemic poses major food security and supply chain threats worldwide,” the United Nations’ FAO UAE representative Dr. Francescutti said.

Labour shortages to produce, harvest and process food; an increasing farmer’s struggle to access the markets; the decreased perishable commodities supply, and transport restrictions blocking deliveries cause the risk, the FAO expert explained.

Sky Kurtz’s solution to mitigate such food supply chain risks is simple. “Support the homegrown champions,” he said, appealing to both the UAE leadership and to consumers.

(Reporting by Petra Loho; Editing by Emmy Abdul Alim emmy.abdulalim@salaamgateway.com)

Lead photo: Photo: Vertical farming at Madar Farms in the UAE. Photo supplied by Madar Farms.

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