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Farm Tech Startup Iron Ox Appoints Impossible Foods and Tesla Veteran Rachel Konrad as First Independent Board Member
Iron Ox growing facilities use advanced robotics to precisely cultivate perfect, nutritious produce by giving each plant the specific attention it needs, and then getting it on a store shelf nearby within about a day of harvest
-- Konrad, who spent the past five years at Impossible Foods, joins the board of Iron Ox during a period of rapid manufacturing scale-up and retail expansion.
-- Iron Ox growing facilities use advanced robotics to precisely cultivate perfect, nutritious produce by giving each plant the specific attention it needs, and then getting it on a store shelf nearby within about a day of harvest.
-- The Series B-stage company, whose products are already a breakout seller in California, is also hiring plant scientists, engineers, greenhouse operators, and roboticists.
SAN CARLOS, Calif., June 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Iron Ox, a farming innovation company with deep expertise in robotics and artificial intelligence, has appointed former Impossible Foods and Tesla executive Rachel Konrad as its first independent board member. This appointment further demonstrates the food tech startup's growth trajectory as they scale up operations and expand their commercial footprint.
Iron Ox, which launched the world's first autonomous farm, has an industry-leading intellectual property portfolio to automate farming and produce that's fresher, cleaner, and locally grown. Thanks to the company's groundbreaking robotics, Iron Ox farms require 90% less water than traditional farms — generating 30 times more produce per acre of land.
Konrad joins Iron Ox after spending the past five years as Chief Communications Officer and a member of the senior leadership team at Impossible Foods, reporting directly to CEO Pat Brown. She previously held senior management roles at Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi and Tesla, where she reported directly to Elon Musk as the company scaled up operations.
"We can't solve our planet's climate crisis without radical changes to the way we make food," said Konrad, who lives in the San Francisco Bay Area and enjoys cooking for her family and hiking with her rescue German Shepherd. "Iron Ox's intellectual property portfolio can usher in a new era of farming that produces food sustainably and ethically. But honestly, I was sold after my first whiff of Iron Ox basil."
"Rachel understands the unique power of disruptive startups to shift entire industries and force even the most entrenched incumbents to do the right thing for people and the planet," said Brandon Alexander, Iron Ox CEO and Co-Founder. "Her unique perspective will help Iron Ox refine and execute our ambitious strategy. As our first independent board member, we expect Rachel to help us set a new standard for inclusive governance in corporate America."
The Series B-stage company operates farms in Northern California and recently broke ground on a new 535,000 sq. ft. indoor farm in Lockhart, Texas. Today, California consumers can buy Iron Ox food throughout California at Whole Foods and at San Francisco Bay Area's upscale Biancchini's markets. Sales in Texas are expected to begin in late 2021.
The company is also hiring plant scientists, engineers, greenhouse operators and roboticists who are passionate about solving food insecurity, which is at the root of our environmental and public health crises.
For more information, and to view the job openings, visit the Iron Ox jobs page.
About Iron Ox:
Iron Ox is a farming innovation company with deep expertise in robotics and artificial intelligence, and a vision to solve global climate through food. Their approach redesigns every step of the farming process, achieving levels of precision that are impossible through traditional farming. Iron Ox produce is both local and sustainable by design, greatly reducing systemic food waste and minimizing the ecological impact of farming. For more information, visit www.ironox.com.
SOURCE: Iron Ox
Robotic Warehouse Farms Will Save The World
CEA technology is just getting started. Like the Tesla Cybertruck, we have a working concept that promises a more-than-Jetson’s-level future many of us can see the benefits of and actively want―it’s just not quite available to the masses yet
by Elle Griffin
Four years ago, Ritch Wood was looking for a better way to grow plants. As the CEO of global skincare company Nu Skin, he ran into ingredient shortages every winter when fields went dormant―and when he moved grow operations to the equator he ran into water and land shortages, along with a host of quality control issues.
Nu Skin needed reliable, quality ingredients for their skincare products. But farming was too unpredictable an industry. “If there was a way to grow indoors,” he thought, “and be able to do that 24 hours a day, 365 days a year―if we could guarantee that it was grown without any herbicides or pesticides and in a sustainable way that uses less water and land―that would be really helpful.”
At the time, controlled-environment agriculture (CEA) was in its infancy and grow-light technology had yet to take a turn for the more affordable. When he learned of an agricultural system that promised to use a fraction of the land and water used by traditional agriculture methods and had the potential to make it more affordable, Wood made an investment.
Nu Skin paid $3 million for 70 percent of the company and rights to its IP―and Grōv Technologies was born.
Grōv grass grown in the Olympus machine at the Bateman Mosida Farms. Photo from Grōv Technologies
Controlled-environment agriculture is on the rise
The theory behind CEA is that by controlling the environment in which it grows, we can control everything about a plant and what it grows into by micro-tweaking one of a thousand different characteristics―including temperature, humidity, light duration, light wavelength, dissolved oxygen in the water, and carbon dioxide saturation in the air. By tweaking the growing cycle, we can control the caloric content as well as the nutrient content and density of the plant.
“What we’ve learned through controlled-environment agriculture,” Benjamin Swan, co-founder and CEO at Sustenir in Singapore, once told National Geographic, “[is] we can actually emphasize certain characteristics of the plants. So, without using GMO, we can make our kale softer, we can actually make it sweet.”
The theoretical use cases for this technology are endless―from being able to grow in places where water is scarce (like in much of Africa), or where water is overly abundant (like Hawaii), or in places where labor is scarce (like in parts of Asia), or even in places that have long winters (like Northern Europe). Theoretically, we could have grow towers in every town and feed the whole of it no matter its natural environment.
We could even grow those foods to those cities’ exact nutritional needs―more vitamin D-rich foods in wintery places, for example. Dr. Lee Mun Wei, a senior manager at the Food Innovation and Resource Centre (FIRC) in Singapore aims to predict and prevent illness in a given population by tracking their biometric data using Apple watch-like wearables, then 3D printing nutrient-specific foods that could mitigate imbalances.
Though these technologies exist, they are still in their infancy. Singapore leads much of the research and development out of necessity. With limited land and water resources, the county is forced to import 90 percent of their food and 40 percent of their water from outside the country. As a result, they have no option but to grow vertically and desalinate water from the ocean.
Elsewhere, the industry has been slow to catch on, largely due to exorbitant startup costs, low returns, and lack of urgent need. According to a 2017 State of Farming report by L.E.K., only 27 percent of indoor, vertical farms are profitable compared with 50 percent of container farms and 75 percent of greenhouses. But one thing has spurred the industry on in recent years: cannabis.
Legalized in 39 states, demand for cannabis has created a $13.6 billion industry and enough capital to fund CEA-enabled grow operations. “When you have a crop that fetches up to $2,400 or $2,500 a pound, you need to be able to dial everything in and make it consistent and repeatable,” says Dashiel Kulander, co-founder and CEO at Boojum Group. “If the temperature swings five to 10 degrees on a cannabis plant, that will change the plant’s various cannabinoids. The goal is to create a medicine that is consistent batch after batch.”
It’s only recently that there has been some financial incentive to use CEA technologies for food use―largely driven by Big Ag players hoping to hedge out the competition. Berry farming giant Driscoll’s, for one, led a $500 million round to fund Plenty, a 2.2-acre vertical farm in California they hope will help them fulfill a contract with Albertsons. The Ingka Group, for another, led a $100 million round to fund AeroFarms, a 2.4-acre vertical farm in New Jersey that will help them fulfill a contract with Singapore Airlines.
Grōv tent at the Bateman Mosida Farms. Photo from Grōv Technologies
Grōv Tech is building CEA prototypes in Utah
By investing in Grōv Tech, Nu Skin hopes to do something similar, getting ahead of the supply chain that fuels their skincare products before the competition can beat them to it, or before climate change makes traditional methods more difficult, all while shoring up technology that could provide a farming model that is more sustainable―if only it were more economical.
“The purpose was always, can we build a better product for Nu Skin?” Wood says. “We think there’s a huge story around the ingredient sustainability, and there were a lot of ingredients we felt we could grow, but the challenge was: could we do it in an economical way?”
Grōv Tech started out with a prototype: a tower that pairs hydroponic growing technology with grow lights. But like all CEA startups, a lot of the growing process was manual and the technology was prohibitively expensive. To make something that was scalable and profitable the whole thing needed to be automated and it needed to be cheap.
With this goal in mind, Wood decided they would start by growing animal feed for Bateman’s Dairy farm. Having grown up on a dairy farm himself, Wood figured this would allow the company to scale the product while refining and automating the technology to the point that it could be replicated. And all of this would have a fortuitous effect on Nu Skin’s bottom line.
“One of our bestselling products is a weight-loss protein powder which uses whey protein,” Wood says. “So again, a very nice connection there is if the animal is eating a more sustainable product and producing better milk with better protein and it’s being done in a sustainable way―certainly that can be a benefit to Nu Skin down the road.”
One year into feeding the 20,000 animals at Bateman, the company has learned a lot. For instance: cows need a lot of magnesium, but they don’t like eating it. Now, Grōv Tech puts magnesium in the water so it’s directly absorbed into the plant and then becomes bioavailable to the cow upon eating it. And because the growing process only takes seven days, data scientists can analyze the results in real-time and adjust the components to optimize production for the next batch of feed.
According to Grōv Tech president Steven Lindsley, it’s not far off that we’ll be looking at milk production (butter, fats, and proteins) and optimizing a herd’s diet for taste, quality, and nutritional value―not to mention the wellbeing of the animal. We’ll be able to look at how many trips from the veterinarian an animal gets when they’re fed certain nutrients in their diet, and whether they can have more calves and produce the same amount of dairy on less, better quality feed. (So far, the answer to this last question is yes. When animals are fed better quality food they need less of it―just like humans.)
And if we hook all of the cows up to robotic milking equipment and connect everything to artificial intelligence, machine learning, and the Internet of Things―Lindsley’s far-flung goal―then we might be able to collect enough data to not only feed cows to their optimum health and performance ability, but humans too. And that could have ramifications not only for feeding the world, but nourishing it― just like Dr. Wei hopes to do in Singapore.
“Last year was about starting to feed animals and get data and prove out the hypothesis we have while continuing to perfect the technology and get confidence there,” Wood says. “And now we’re really to a point where we’ve got data that proves that it works and that financially it’ll be a good thing for a farmer. So now we can really take that proposition to farmers and start to scale.”
Olympus Tower Farm at Bateman Farms in Mosida, UT. Photo from Grōv Technologies
CEA technology could feed the world
Right now, Grōv Tech is focused on refining its technology right here in our own backyard. But once they do that, the plan is to expand internationally.
“Saudi Arabia has actually passed a law where you cannot use water to grow fodder or feed for animals, so all of that now has to be imported. China imports one-third of their alfalfa feed for their dairy animals because they don’t have the capability of growing it,” Wood says. “So there are countries that will probably benefit more than the US would. But we’ve got to refine the technology and get that built to where it’s ready to scale before we start spreading ourselves all around the globe.”
CEA technology is just getting started. Like the Tesla Cybertruck, we have a working concept that promises a more-than-Jetson’s-level future many of us can see the benefits of and actively want―it’s just not quite available to the masses yet. But with more than a billion dollars invested in the technology in just the past few years alone―we’re getting there. And the “there” we are heading toward is rosy indeed.
“To put it in perspective, one tower that is about 875 square feet on the ground will replace 35 to 50 acres of land,” says Lindsley. “And that will feed the animals on roughly five percent of the amount of water. The UN says that that the world will add about 2.5 billion people in the next 30 years. And we have to find a way to feed them on arguably less arable land and water. The good news is the technology is coming along to help solve that equation.”
If COVID-19 taught us anything, it’s that our food supply chain is fragile. But that’s only because our supply chain was built to grow food in California, refrigerate it so it stays fresh, then transport it 1,500 miles so we can eat a salad in the winter in Chicago. In the future, that might not be a thing. “We’re having a dry year now,” Lindsley tells me in February. “But a year ago we were in a blizzard, and even in the middle of a blizzard in February in Utah, we’re pumping out fresh, beautiful, safe green grass for animals. It’s a paradigm shift.”
“Four years ago it was a good idea,” Wood tells me of his company’s investment in CEA technology, “But four years from now it’s going to be required.”
Elle Griffin
Elle is the editor-in-chief of Utah Business and a freelance writer for Forbes, The Muse, and The Startup. She is also a literary novelist and the author of a weekly newsletter called The Novelleist. Learn more at ellegriffin.com.
AppHarvest Acquires Agricultural Robotics And Artificial Intelligence Company Root AI To Increase Efficiency
Acquisition of Root AI and its signature robot, Virgo, bolsters the company’s intelligent tools to produce foods sustainably. Root AI CEO Joins AppHarvest as Chief Technology Officer
Acquisition of Root AI and its signature robot, Virgo, bolsters the company’s intelligent tools to produce foods sustainably. Root AI CEO Joins AppHarvest as Chief Technology Officer
MOREHEAD, Ky., April 08, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- AppHarvest, Inc. (NASDAQ: APPH, APPHW), a leading AgTech company and Certified B Corp focused on farming more sustainably using 90 percent less water than open-field agriculture and only recycled rainwater, announced today that it has acquired Root AI, an artificial intelligence farming startup that creates intelligent robots to help manage high-tech indoor farms. The acquisition of Root AI and its robotic universal harvester, Virgo, is expected to provide AppHarvest with a baseline of harvesting support working alongside crop care specialists focused on more complex tasks. AppHarvest expects the game-changing advantage of the technology to be in the data the robots can collect as they harvest, which can help evaluate crop health, precisely predict yield and optimize overall operations of the controlled environment agriculture (CEA) facility.
“Farming as we’ve known it is broken because of the increasing number of variables such as extreme weather, droughts, fire, and contamination by animals that make our food system unreliable. Indoor farming solves for many of those challenges, and the data gathered can exponentially deliver more insights that help us predict and control crop quality and yield,” said AppHarvest Founder & CEO Jonathan Webb. “One of the key challenges in agriculture is accurately predicting yield. Many downstream decisions from work scheduling to transportation to retail planning are based on that. Any deviation between projection and actual yield can result in fire drills for numerous functions to adjust for the change, and AI can help solve for that.”
Root AI co-founder and CEO Josh Lessing will take on the role of Chief Technology Officer for AppHarvest where he will take the lead in continuing to develop the robots and their AI capabilities for the network of indoor farms that AppHarvest is building. Lessing, along with co-founder Ryan Knopf who will join AppHarvest as vice president of technology, helped establish Root AI as an early leader in employing artificial intelligence in CEA. Virgo is the world’s first universal harvester, which can be configured to identify and harvest multiple crops of varying sizes including tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers and more delicate fruits such as strawberries among others.
Though Virgo can work indoors or out, the robot’s focus has been on controlled environment agriculture. Over the past three years, it has collected the world’s largest data set of tomato images to enable it to identify more than 50 varieties in multiple growing environments and at varying stages of maturity to learn how and when to harvest.
Virgo uses a set of cameras combined with an infrared laser to generate a 3D color scan of an area to determine the work it can perform. Once it maps the tomatoes, it assesses their orientation and determines if they are ripe enough to pick. The robot can be programmed to make other quality assessments as well. The scan enables the robot to find the least obstructive and fastest route to pick the crop ahead of the arrival of the robotic arm and gripper. The robot can identify hundreds of tomatoes in a fraction of a second without having to connect to the cloud. Virgo keeps score on its success rate like a video game. A built-in feedback mechanism constantly evaluates its efficiency so it learns how to harvest any given configuration of fruit most effectively.
“A piece of food—whether that’s a tomato or a berry or a cucumber—is an outcome from many variables that are part of the growing process. Enhanced data collection for each plant through the robot can lead to insights that teach us precisely how to design better, more resilient food systems that are reliable and that produce more food with fewer resources,“ said Lessing. “Joining forces with AppHarvest is a natural fit: we want to ensure a stable, safe supply of the nutritious and healthy food that people should be eating -- grown sustainably -- and doing that at the scale of AppHarvest gives us the opportunity to make the greatest difference.”
Gathering more data through AI enables growers to use real-time information to improve a number of sustainability efforts such as detecting and eliminating pests naturally, helping indoor farms successfully grow chemical pesticide-free fruits and vegetables.
AppHarvest is investing approximately $60 million, consisting of approximately $10 million in cash and the balance in AppHarvest common shares, to acquire Root AI. The Company will issue approximately 2,328,000 shares for the transaction.
Founded in 2018, Root AI is based in Somerville, Mass., and has 19 full-time employees, all of whom are expected to join AppHarvest’s technology group to help advance the mission of building a resilient and sustainable food supply.
About AppHarvest
AppHarvest is an applied technology company building some of the world’s largest high-tech indoor farms in Appalachia that grow non-GMO, chemical pesticide-free produce using 90 percent less water than open-field agriculture and only recycled rainwater while producing yields up to 30 times that of traditional agriculture on the same amount of land with zero agricultural runoff. The Company combines conventional agricultural techniques with cutting-edge technology and is addressing key issues including improving access for all to nutritious food, farming more sustainably, building a domestic food supply, and increasing investment in Appalachia. The Company’s 60-acre Morehead, Ky. facility is among the largest indoor farms in the U.S.
For more information, visit https://www.appharvest.com/.
Utah Farm Using Robotic Vertical Farming To Feed Their Animals For Less
"The key is you can eliminate the weather challenges and it can give you a predictable optimized crop every time," said Steve Lindsley, the president of Grōv Technologies
The Future of Farming Is Here In Utah, All Thanks To Something Called
Robotic Vertical Farming
By: Jordan Hogan
Posted at 8:19 AM, Nov 29, 2020
and last updated 7:08 AM, Nov 30, 2020
MOSIDA, Utah — A Utah tech company, Grōv Technologies, is working with a local farm, Bateman and Mosida Farms, to produce food for their cows more efficiently.
It's being done in towers that handle the whole growing process from start to finish.
The farm produces milk and meat from their cows, but raising them takes a lot of feed and a lot of time.
Now, technology is making part of the process easier.
Olympus Tower farms made by Grōv are a form of robotic vertical farming.
"The key is you can eliminate the weather challenges and it can give you a predictable optimized crop every time," said Steve Lindsley, the president of Grōv Technologies.
It starts with wheat seeds being loaded into trays. Then, they're wheeled up to the top of the tower to start a six-day journey back down to the bottom of the tower for harvest.
Along the way, they're watered with precision and given light from special LEDs that don't give off any heat.
The whole process is automated too, meaning it can run without the help of many traditional farmhands.
Grōv says each one of the towers produces 6,000 lbs of food each time it goes through its cycle. That saves money, time, water and energy. The benefits don’t stop there either — they are then passed on to the consumer.
"Each of these machines represents between 35 and 50 acres of land, so in this case here, it's the same as 50 acres of land but it's only covering 875 square feet of the ground and it uses 95% less water to grow the crops," said Lindsley.
Saving water and space is something that's becoming increasingly important as the demand for more homes increases and climate change increases the chances for extreme drought in the summer months.
"One of the biggest challenges farmers have around the world is how do they deal with the weather, the climate, and the uncertainties that come with that," Lindsley said.
The new technology couldn't have come at a better time for the farm either.
"In the first weeks and the first month of the COVID-19 Pandemic things started to go a little bit crazy," said Brad Bateman, a farming operations partner at Bateman Mosida Farms.
He said the farm wasn't able to order in a lot of their feed at the beginning of the pandemic, threatening the cows' food supply.
Now they can rely on their own production of feed, and this model of farming could be adopted beyond farms in the future.
"The vision that I see is there’s probably one of these in the back of every supermarket growing fresh food right in the store," said Bateman.
Grōv Technologies told FOX 13 they plan on rolling out this technology worldwide once they reach agreements with other farms.
Could Urban Agriculture Feed The Cities of The Future?
Vertical farms, rooftop farms and computer-controlled growing environments are an emergent phenomenon in cities around the world, which are eager to take advantage of the many benefits of urban agriculture
03 Sep 2020
By Agency
Vertical farms, rooftop farms, and computer-controlled growing environments are an emergent phenomenon in cities around the world, which are eager to take advantage of the many benefits of urban agriculture.
Drawing on new technologies and enthusiasm for locally sourced organic produce, these promising initiatives have raised hopes for greater sustainability that will reduce the environmental impact of cities and agricultural production required to meet the needs of their citizens.
However, the question remains: will urban farms be able to produce enough food to make cities self-sufficient?
The vast majority of fruit and vegetables sold in cities are picked before they are ripe, and are produced using intensive farming methods, which do extensive damage to the environment.
In contrast, urban agriculture offers the hope that we will one day be able to meet the global challenge of feeding cities in a much more sustainable manner. At the same time, it also provides a solution to the need for high-quality and locally sourced fresh food.
Recent successes in the field speak for themselves, notably the US$4mil (RM16.6mil) in funding raised by IFarm, which provides software and technology to the vertical farming sector.
The Helsinki-based company manages heavily automated indoor farms in which produce is grown in vertically stacked beds with a host of technologies that include a wide range of sensors, computer vision, and machine learning.
It currently has some 50 farms that are in development and is hoping to manage one million square meters of vertical farms and provide support for 500 different crops by 2026.
Is food self-sufficiency within reach?
It could be, notably with regard to vertical farms and certain crops. A recent publication in the interdisciplinary scientific journal PNAS has drawn attention to the potential of vertical farming to generate enormous yields of wheat.
Researchers have calculated, on the basis of theoretical values for the growth of wheat under optimal conditions, that a 10-story building on a one-hectare site could provide up to 1,940 tonnes of wheat per year, 600 times more than the average yield from traditional agriculture.
One of the reasons for this is because vertical farming provides conditions that would allow for five harvests per year instead of one. With the added advantages of doing away with the need for herbicides and pesticides, low water use, and land depletion, vertical farms may well fulfill their promise.
Questions remain about the viability of projects
However, as it stands, urban farms are very expensive to set up, and only a very few are actually profitable. Taking advantage of their situation in cities, most of those that are now operating are sustained by revenue from sources other than food production: notably income generated by cultural events, workshops, and renting plots to private individuals. – AFP Relaxnews
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Community farm brings residents together
Getting ready for Agriculture 4.0
Lead photo: Urban agriculture is increasingly common in cities. This picture shows one of six farms created by the New York City Housing Authority in Brooklyn, New York. Photo: Leticia Barboza/AFP
TAGS / KEYWORDS: Urban Farming , Food Security , Vertical Farming , Rooftop Farms
US: Vacant For Five Years, A Former Target in Calumet City Gets New Life As An Indoor Vertical Farm Growing Greens For The Chicago Area
The 135,000-square-foot building in the River Oaks shopping center will house stacks of trays growing kale, arugula and other leafy greens under artificial lights. A retail shop on-site will sell the produce to the community and invite people in to learn about how indoor farming works
CHICAGO TRIBUNE | JUL 15, 2020
Jake Counne, founder of Wilder Fields, is seen July 14, 2020, inside an empty Target he plans to convert to an indoor farm, in Calumet City. (Brian Cassella / Chicago Tribune)
A former Target that’s been sitting vacant in Calumet City for five years will be reborn as an indoor vertical farm producing locally grown greens for the Chicago area.
The 135,000-square-foot building in the River Oaks shopping center will house stacks of trays growing kale, arugula and other leafy greens under artificial lights. A retail shop on-site will sell the produce to the community and invite people in to learn about how indoor farming works.
Once at full capacity, Wilder Fields will employ 80 people and produce 25 million heads of lettuce a year that will be available in grocery stores across the region, said founder Jake Counne. Wilder Fields is the new name of the company, which previously was called Backyard Fresh Farms.
The property was exactly what Counne envisioned when he set out to repurpose existing buildings as indoor farms to supply fresh produce to cities far from the growing fields of California and Arizona.
An empty Target that Jake Counne, founder of Wilder Fields, plans to convert to an indoor farm in Calumet City. (Brian Cassella / Chicago Tribune)
As retail giants close stores, a trend that’s been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, Counne hopes to put the buildings they leave behind to sustainable use.
“We think this is very repeatable,” said Counne, who was a real estate investor before he became an agricultural entrepreneur. “There is a huge amount of vacant anchor retail space.”
Calumet City, which borders Chicago’s southern edge, acquired the building from Target and will lease it to Wilder Fields for 12 months, Counne said. After that, he plans to purchase the property from the city.
Counne expects to break ground by the end of this year and have the first phase of the redevelopment completed by early next year. After operating at a smaller scale to work out the kinks, Counne plans to finish developing the site by 2023. A group of investors is funding the first phase of the project. He declined to say how much funding he has received.
Produce grown locally indoors has gained popularity with consumers in recent years for environmental and quality reasons. It uses less land and water than traditional agriculture and travels far shorter distances, so the product is fresher and lasts longer when it gets into consumers’ hands. Growing year-round in controlled environments also cuts down on waste and contamination and avoids the challenges of unpredictable weather.
The Chicago area is home to several greenhouses that sell greens commercially, including Gotham Greens in Chicago’s Pullman neighborhood and BrightFarms in Rochelle, both of which have recently expanded. But vertical farms, which use artificial light rather than sunlight, have struggled to succeed at a large scale.
Counne believes he can make it profitable with lower-cost automation, which he has been testing at a small pilot facility at The Plant, a food business incubator in Chicago’s Back of the Yards neighborhood.
He’s developed robotics to reduce the amount of time workers spend climbing ladders to tend to plants. For example, an automated lift collects trays of ready plants and brings them to an assembly line of workers for harvest. He’s also developed a system of cameras and artificial intelligence software that prompts the environment to automatically adjust to optimize growing conditions.
Jake Counne, founder of Wilder Fields, on July 14, 2020. (Brian Cassella / Chicago Tribune)
Wilder Fields’ pricing will be in line with greenhouse-grown lettuces, which typically retail at $2.99 to $3.99 for a clamshell.
Though its first products will be standards like spring mix, spinach and basil, the plan is to also sell more unique varieties that people may not have tasted before. Among those Counne tested during his pilot were spicy wasabi arugula, tart red sorrel and horseradish-tinged red mizuna.
Counne is proud that his first farm is bringing fresh vegetables and jobs to an area that needs both. Parts of Calumet City are in a food desert.
Counne will be hiring for a variety of positions, from harvesters to software engineers to executives. He plans to implement a training program that will allow people to move from entry-level roles to positions managing the computer algorithms.
Alexia Elejalde-Ruiz
Alexia Elejalde-Ruiz covers the food industry for the Chicago Tribune's business section. Prior beats include workplace issues, the retail sector and lifestyle features, plus stints at RedEye, the Daily Herald and the City News Service. Alexia grew up in Washington, D.C., and has her degree in international relations from Brown University.
VIDEO: SANANBIO Announces the Availability of its Unmanned Vertical Farming System UPLIFT to Global Growers
“Pour your seeds in the seeder and do nothing but expect fresh veggies to be harvested in a matter of days,” said Zhan Zhuo, co-founder, and CEO of SANANBIO. UPLIFT has been under tests in the last two years and proves to be commercially feasible and ready to be established as turnkey projects for worldwide growers
XIAMEN, CHINA, July 16, 2020--SANANBIO, one of the world’s largest indoor farming technology providers announces the availability of its unmanned vertical farming system, a.k.a. UPLIFT, to growers globally.
“Pour your seeds in the seeder and do nothing but expect fresh veggies to be harvested in a matter of days,” said Zhan Zhuo, co-founder, and CEO of SANANBIO. UPLIFT has been under tests in the last two years and proves to be commercially feasible and ready to be established as turnkey projects for worldwide growers. “It can produce 6-8 tons of fresh leafy greens every day on a farm of only 5,000 sqm. By stacking up layers higher than a traditional vertical farm, we can best utilize the space to increase the yields. With the same farm size, UPLIFT’s productivity is 6 times of a 6-layered vertical farm.
The increased yield means a lowered cost, which in turn makes our produce affordable to more people. We’ve also upgraded our water circulation system so that 60% of the water can be absorbed by plants and the remaining 40% recycled. This fact is especially meaningful for the regions of the world that struggle with water shortages and harsh agricultural conditions.” said Zhan.
UPLIFT uses PlantKeeper, a proprietary indoor farming management system, to control and monitor environmental factors so farm operators can be updated with real-time growing conditions throughout the farm. By using simple and proven robotics and conveyor systems, UPLIFT automates seeding, transplanting, harvesting, plant transporting, and system cleaning, reducing labor intensity to its lowest.
“We’re phasing out manpower to make our produces available for more people. So we can say that UPLIFT is unmanned for humanity,” said Zhan.
About SANANBIO
SANANBIO is a joint-venture by Sanan Optoelectronics, one of the world’s largest LED manufacturers, and the Institute of Botany of Chinese Academy of Sciences, China’s leading institute in plant science. Comprised of LED experts and plant scientists, SANANBIO is able to provide simple indoor farming solutions for global growers. The RADIX, a patented vertical hydroponic system, has been widely endorsed by growers in more than twenty countries.
“We’re phasing out manpower to make our produces available for more people. So we can say that UPLIFT is unmanned for humanity,” said Zhan.
To learn more about UPLIFT, please contact SANANBIO at global@sananbio.com or visit its LinkedIn page https://www.linkedin.com/company/fujiansanansinosciencephotobiotechcoltd.