Welcome to iGrow News, Your Source for the World of Indoor Vertical Farming
FREE WEBINAR: Food Safety Opportunities & Challenges Unique To Controlled Environment Agriculture - September 9, 2020
Join the CEA Food Safety Coalition and its panel of food safety experts from Bowery Farming, BrightFarms, Plenty & Planted Detroit - for our next Indoor Ag-Conversation
Join the CEA Food Safety Coalition and its panel of food
Safety Experts From
Bowery Farming, BrightFarms, Plenty & Planted Detroit
for our next Indoor Ag-Conversation:
RESERVE YOUR FREE SPOT!
MODERATOR:
Marni Karlin, CEA Food Safety Coalition Executive Director
PANELISTS:
Chris Livingston, General Counsel, Bowery Farming
Jackie Hawkins, Senior Manager of Food Safety, BrightFarms
Isabel Chamberlain, Senior Manager of Food Safety, Plenty
Simon Yevzelman, Director of Operations, Planted Detroit
DURING THIS 60-MINUTE SESSION, YOU'LL:
Learn about food safety opportunities and challenges specific to CEA leafy greens production - including areas such as system design and recirculating water
Hear from food safety experts from CEA leafy greens producers representing a variety of production practices, sizes, and geographies
Gain an understanding into the role of technology in CEA food safety
Learn why consumers and retailers should care - and the work the Coalition is doing to develop a CEA-specific food safety addendum
LEARN MORE
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Indoor Ag-Con, 950 Scales Road, Building #200, Suwanee, GA 30024, United States
IDTechEx Identifies Innovative Companies Changing The Face of Vertical Farming
Vertical farming, the practice of growing crops indoors under tightly controlled conditions, is continuing to expand rapidly
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".
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.
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.
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.
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.
Coronavirus May Lead To More Indoor-Grown Produce Coming To Your Local Supermarkets
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
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
Albertsons To Bring Plenty Leafy Greens To 400-Plus Stores
Plenty products are already available in some Safeway and Andronico’s locations in the Bay Area, and the plan is for more of the company’s stores in California — Albertsons, Vons and Pavilions locations — to also carry Plenty products as supply increases
August 12, 2020
Boise, Idaho-based Albertsons has entered into an agreement with South San Francisco, Calif.-based Plenty Unlimited to bring its leafy greens to more than 430 California stores.
Plenty products are already available in some Safeway and Andronico’s locations in the Bay Area, and the plan is for more of the company’s stores in California — Albertsons, Vons and Pavilions locations — to also carry Plenty products as supply increases, according to a news release.
Stores plan to carry four Plenty products to start: baby arugula, baby kale, crispy lettuce and mizuna mix.
“We pride ourselves on offering fresh, quality products that surprise and delight our customers,” Geoff White, executive vice president of merchandising for Albertsons, said in the release. “Plenty’s data-driven and sustainable methods are truly innovative, and we look forward to bringing their unique and exciting products to more customers in California as they scale their operations.”
The company’s indoor vertical farm is powered by wind and solar energy, and its operation leverages customized lighting, machine learning and data analytics, per the release. The farm can grow a million plants at a time and process 200 plants per minute.
Lead Photo: Albertsons and Plenty announced a new partnership. ( Albertsons and Plenty )
Related Topics: Produce Retail Sustainability Lettuce
How Can Crop Production Data Advance The Controlled Environment Agriculture Industry?
The Controlled Environment Agriculture Open Data project aims to advance controlled environment research, machine learning, and artificial intelligence through the collection and dissemination of crop production data
The Controlled Environment Agriculture Open Data project aims to advance controlled environment research, machine learning, and artificial intelligence through the collection and dissemination of crop production data.
by By David Kuack
There is a considerable amount of data being generated by both private companies and university researchers when it comes to controlled environment crop production. This data is being generated for ornamentals, food crops, and cannabis. One of the questions about all this data is whether it is being used to its maximum potential to benefit the horticulture industry.
“Data has become a big topic in the horticulture industry with university researchers and private companies,” said Erico Mattos, executive director of the Greenhouse Lighting and Systems Engineering (GLASE) consortium. “People can identify with the challenges and opportunities with the amount of data that is being generated. However, we don’t yet have a centralized repository and a standard methodology for storage to allow us to explore and exploit this data.”
The formation of the Controlled Environment Agriculture Open Data (CEAOD) project aims to promote crop production data sharing from universities and private companies to accelerate CEA research.
Addressing the data proliferation
In 2018 during the North Central Extension & Research Activity–101 (NCERA-101) meeting members of this USDA-organized committee discussed what should be done with the extensive amount of data being generated by controlled environment researchers. Ohio State University professor Chieri Kubota proposed the formation of a sub-committee to address the need to develop guidelines for sharing data generated by controlled environment agriculture researchers.
“Dr. Kubota initiated the discussion about the need for a centralized platform to store data collected from controlled environment research,” Mattos said. “A task force was formed that included Chieri, Kale Harbick at USDA-ARS, Purdue University professor Yang Yang, Melanie Yelton at Plenty and myself. Since the task force was formed Ken Tran at Koidra and Timothy Shelford at Cornell University have also become members of the task force.
“We started discussing how we could make use of all this data. Researchers in the United States collect a huge amount of data. All of the environmental data such as temperature, relative humidity and carbon dioxide and light levels in controlled environment research is collected. There is also a biological set of data which includes plant biomass and fruit yield.”
Mattos said there is also a great deal of research data generated and collected by private companies that is not shared with the horticulture industry.
“With the advancement in sensors and environmental controls, the capability now exists that this data can be collected,” he said. “With the advancements in computing power, this data can be used to start new applications and new tools that haven’t been available before. However, in order to do this, we have to have access to a large amount of data. That’s why the task force thought it would be good to create a repository where researchers and private companies could share the data following a specific format. This data could then be used in the advancement of machine learning and artificial intelligence applications to optimize crop yields in commercial CEA operations.”
An increasing number of funding agencies and organizations, including USDA, are requiring researchers include information about their data management plans in their grant proposals.
Need for collecting and organizing data
Mattos said university researchers see the value in creating a centralized database.
“There are probably millions of data points when you consider how many researchers are doing research in the U.S.,” he said. “Historically these researchers have not been required to share their data. However, an increasing number of funding agencies and organizations, including USDA, are requiring that researchers share their data. If researchers apply for a grant from USDA, they are required to include information about their data management plans in their grant proposals.
“Researchers see the value of sharing this data, but this is not a common practice which involves allocating time and resources. This means someone on their research team would have to organize and share the data. There are probably millions of data points (big data) when you consider how many horticulture researchers there are in the U.S.”
Creating a central database
Based on the need for collecting and organizing the controlled environment research data that is being generated, the task force established the Controlled Environment Agriculture Open Data (CEAOD) project [https://ceaod.github.io/]. The project aims to promote data sharing to accelerate CEA research.
The CEAOD website provides guidelines on how to upload the data. The task force developed the guidelines, which include three sets of data that can be uploaded to the website.
“One set is environmental data, including environmental controlled parameters such as temperature, carbon dioxide, relative humidity, and ventilation,” he said. “These data points are usually collected automatically by sensors. Another set of data is biological data, which is usually collected by humans. These biomass production yield parameters include shoot and root biomass and plant height and weight. The final document is the metadata which are descriptions of the experimental setups and data sets. It is a file that explains the experiments. It describes how the experiments were done.
“There is a certain format that is recommended to be followed to upload the data on the CEAOD website. The step-by-step process is listed on the website. There are no restrictions on which crops the data can be submitted. Our goal is to establish a platform to host a large number of crop production data sets to allow for the development of machine learning and artificial intelligence algorithms aimed at improving crop production efficiency.”
Leading by example
This winter GLASE will have a student collecting and organizing environmental and biological research data.
“The data will be uploaded to the CEAOD database and we will be documenting these activities,” Mattos said. “We will create a guideline of recommendations. We also plan to work with researchers from other institutions to demonstrate how the data can be organized and uploaded to create awareness and how to use the database.
“We hope this initial GLASE contribution will incentivize other researchers to share their data and will facilitate the uploading process. Access to the CEAOD database is free. It is an open platform and anyone can contribute to the development of this database tool.”
Once research data is collected and available for dissemination, the equipment used to produce controlled environment crops will be able to optimize the environmental conditions for a wide variety of crops, including lettuce, tomatoes, and cannabis.
Benefits to the horticulture industry
Mattos said private companies would also benefit from the collection of data and creating a centralized database.
“These companies need more data because it would allow them to analyze the data to develop new products and identify new markets,” he said. “Unfortunately, many of these companies don’t want to share their data. They are very proprietary about their data. They see that collecting and analyzing this data can put them ahead of their competition.
“Many private companies see the need for more data and how it can be valuable but are unwilling to share their own data. But like in other industries there are early adopters. I believe there will be companies that step up and will share their data with the horticulture industry. Hopefully, industry people will be willing to contribute and work on this database as well.”
Mattos said one of the big applications with this project is related to machine learning and artificial intelligence.
“With these applications, large sets of data are needed in order to create baselines,” he said. “Using the data, machines can be taught. Currently, growers’ production knowledge and opinion are more accurate for growing crops than artificial intelligence predictions. Growers are still more reliable, but it is just a matter of time before the use of big data and artificial intelligence will be able to match the growers in regards to optimizing growth.
“We are trying to develop this platform between the growers and controlled environment researchers and the machine learning/data computer scientists. I’m not sure the controlled environment researchers have grasped the potential that is available. We are not using this technology. Establishing this platform, as we collect and disseminate the data, there is real potential to help the advancement of the horticulture industry.”
For more: Erico Mattos, Greenhouse Lighting and Systems Engineering (GLASE), (302) 290-1560; em796@cornell.edu.
More info on CEAOD
Want to learn more about the Controlled Environment Agriculture Open Data project? Then check out these two upcoming events.
Aug. 4, 2-3 p.m. EDT
GLASE webinar: Controlled Environment Agriculture Open Data project. Presented by Erico Mattos, executive director of GLASE, and Kenneth Tran, founder of Koidra LLC.
Aug. 13, 10:30 a.m.-12 p.m. EDT
American Society for Horticultural Science presentation: The Promise of Big Data and New Technologies in Controlled Environment Agriculture. Presented by Erico Mattos.
David Kuack is a freelance technical writer in Fort Worth, Texas; dkuack@gmail.com.
Vertical Farming in LatAm: AgroUrbana Closes $1m Seed Funding
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
July 2, 2020
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?
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
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.
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.
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.
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.”
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.
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.
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
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
Indoor crops grown by high-tech methods are on the rise as the Covid-19 pandemic spurs interest in food security for cities.
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.”
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The Road Ahead For Vertical Farming
"In the next 10-15 years, it will rise as one of the dominant forms of agriculture." In a recent webinar presented by the Association for Vertical Farming and Heliospectra, the opportunities and challenges facing the vertical farming industry in 2020 and beyond were highlighted, resulting in quotes like the one introducing this article
"In the next 10-15 years, it will rise as one of the dominant forms of agriculture." In a recent webinar presented by the Association for Vertical Farming and Heliospectra, the opportunities and challenges facing the vertical farming industry in 2020 and beyond were highlighted, resulting in quotes like the one introducing this article. Moderated by AVF Chairwoman, Christine Zimmerman-Loessl, the three guests, Nate Storey (Co-Founder & Chief Science Officer of Plenty), Joel Cuello (Professor of Biosystems Engineering, University of Arizona) and Ali Ahmadian (President & CEO, Heliospectra) shone their light on where the industry is headed.
"On the cusp of growth"
According to Joel, the vertical farming industry has had a historic run in growth and proliferation globally in the last five or so years. "Going forward, especially in terms of the enormous COVID-19 disruptions in fresh produce chain, vertical farming will continue growing", he says. "It should be economically viable, but it shouldn't just be a growth story, but also of sustainability and resilience."
Nate adds that currently, the vertical farming industry is still in its infancy. "We're on the cusp of growth and expansion as an industry. By and large, the world is still skeptical because vertical farming isn't a dominant form of production yet, but in the next 10-15 years it will rise as one of the dominant forms of agriculture."
Tech catches up with vision
Having moved on from the stage of pioneers and visionaries (who were, in a sense, "too early", because they saw the potential for vertical farming, but the tech didn't match up to their visions), Nate says that "we're now at a point where the tech matches the need; technology has caught up with the vision", adding that it's not going to be a pain-free road. "Folks will be challenged by the economic fundamentality of the business. We need to either offer a differentiated product, or a product that is cost-competitive with the field, so they're accessible to people."
At Plenty, he says, the primary tech inputs are LED and semiconductors. "As costs go down, we reap the benefits - same with data storage, genetics, etc. So we have created our own tech cost curve around indoor ag, which drives costs down and quality up." As a result, the yield for the same amount of energy increased by 12x at Plenty, Nate explains.
There's still a world to win when it comes to the proper use of tech, however. Ali: "50% of vertical farms today are profitable, while the other 50% are struggling. The main reason why vertical farms are struggling is because farmers underestimate the true cost of labor: many farmers overlook the way in which growing techniques make workers more or less efficient."
A small test of Mother Nature: "Get your act together"
Of course, the elephant in the room wasn't ignored by the panel. COVID-19 has had an impact on all industries, and vertical farms are no exception. "In the US, the fresh produce supply chain has been dramatically upended by COVID", Joel says. "Lots of growers were suddenly left without a place to deliver their produce. They need to establish new contacts, which is hard to do, so lots of fresh produce goes to waste."
At the same time, in a lot of major cities in the US, there's been a huge increase in demand for produce from vertical farms. The same thing happened in Europe, although there the dependence on seasonal workers from outside the EU has proven problematic, Joel explains, with a shortage of workers, again leading to produce going to waste.
Nate points out that in many cases the food supply chain is global now. "We've been pushing yield increases in the field to the max, but it's a system under stress, operating at the max all the time - break a link and the whole system comes crashing down." With instabilities like climate change, Nate argues the industry has a lot of buttressing to do. "COVID was a small test of Mother Nature, basically saying 'get your act together'. As the COVID situation affected the Bay Area (where our flagship farm is), our sales have doubled - indoor produce is a supplement to produce from the field, and retailers are realizing the usefulness of indoor produce."
The crucial role of governments
With the COVID crisis, governments have been giving more attention to indoor/vertical farms now. According to Ali, this will open up huge opportunities for current and future vertical farmers.
Nate agrees. "Government recognition is super important - it's a capital intensive business." At Plenty, they're building agricultural infrastructure, comparable to electricity and water. Nate even goes so far as to say that in the future, food production will become one of those utilities. "Government has to play an important role in getting the industry off the ground, cutting red tape and supporting producers, like with loans and capital to help the industry get started. Government support will be a critical step for this industry."
Christine agrees that the role of governments is important, but they also need to be made aware of the opportunities of vertical farming, they need to be informed of what it is and what it isn't. "Governments always say: 'Human beings can't live on salad - so where do we go with this vertical farming industry? Will we produce things like corn and maize in a vertical farm? What is the blueprint of the future?" So informing and educating is also of the utmost importance.
Attracting investors
The same goes for attracting investors, another important pillar under the industry. According to Nate, "folks are starting to view vertical farming not as an if but a when question - what we've earned over the last decade or two is the recognition that this is a necessary thing. It's driven by incredible demographics changes, so it's an inevitability. We are proving that it can be an extremely profitable venture."
As a result, more people are starting to think about investing in this. "The money out there is going to get smarter and smarter about this industry", Nate adds. "Investors tended to be super-specialized in agriculture; now folks who don't come from that background are also approaching the space, having enough info to start making huge investments. So, access to capital will grow, but there is a gap between the capital which is more risk-tolerant and the capital with very little risk tolerance. We'll have to build relationships with risk-tolerant capital."
For more information:
Association for Vertical Farming
Marschnerstrasse,
81245 Munich,
Germany
info@vertical-farming.net
vertical-farming.net
Publication date: Thu 4 Jun 2020
Author: Jan Jacob Mekes
© HortiDaily.com
Looking Up: Vertical Farms Fill Produce Supply Chain Lag During Pandemic
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
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.
The Indoor Farm Revolution
Coronavirus chaos has spurred a grow-your-own food movement — and space-age hydroponic technology is rising to meet it.
Coronavirus chaos has spurred a grow-your-own food movement — and space-age hydroponic technology is rising to meet it.
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).
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