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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.
Living Greens Farm Hires New CEO
George Pastrana brings 30 years of successfully managing iconic consumer brands
George Pastrana Brings 30 Years of Successfully
Managing Iconic Consumer Brands
Source: Living Greens Farm
July 15, 2020
Living Greens Farm CEO George Pastrana
New president, CEO, and board member George Pastrana joins Living Greens Farm, one of the largest indoor aeroponic farms in the U.S.
FARIBAULT, Minn., July 15, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- via NetworkWire – Living Greens Farm (LGF), one of the largest vertical, indoor aeroponic farms in the United States, which provides year-round fresh salad greens, exclusive bagged salad kits, microgreens, and herbs, announces the arrival of George Pastrana as its new president, chief executive officer, and board member.
Pastrana is a commercial leader with a successful record of managing iconic consumer brands for innovation and profitable growth at leading, growth-oriented, market-driven companies. His marketing and operational experience includes Fortune 100 multinational companies as well as smaller entrepreneurial organizations, where he was successful in growing sales, profit, and market share.
Pastrana will reside in Minneapolis and will bring nearly 30 years of commercial and innovation leadership at consumer-packaged goods companies to contribute to LGF’s success in the coming years. He will be leading a talented, experienced team of leaders to establish LGF as a premier brand in the fast-growing bagged and clam-shelled salads and salad kits industry. He also has plans for LGF’s national rapid expansion.
“I am excited about the opportunity to lead LGF’s passionate coworkers as we embark on scaling up our proven, breakthrough aeroponic farming system and to provide our healthy, nutritious, and flavorful greens and herbs to customers with discerning eating habits nationwide,” says Pastrana. “LGF’s patented aeroponic farming systems are a cost-effective way to deliver flavorful, better-than-organic farm fresh greens and herbs. We have a proven model, and we are ready for national expansion with a talented team of leaders.”
Prior to joining LGF, Pastrana was president and COO of Dogfish Head Brewery in Milton, Delaware. He holds a biomedical engineering degree from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and an MBA from Cornell University's Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management, and he completed the advanced management program at INSEAD Business School.
ABOUT LIVING GREENS FARM
Living Greens Farm (LGF) operates one of the largest indoor aeroponic farms in the United States. Aeroponics and specifically LGF’s proprietary grow systems, have been described as the next generation of ag-tech and a solution to the world’s food challenges.
Headquartered in Minnesota, Living Greens Farm is Earth-friendly using 95 percent less water and 98 percent less land compared to traditional farming and can grow safely, consistently, and locally year-round. All products are considered better than organic because they’re grown in a controlled environment without the use of pesticides, herbicides or other harsh chemicals and are non-GMO. Living Greens Farm has a full product line that includes bagged and clamshell salad greens, premium microgreens, and delicious herbs available to customers throughout the Midwest.
For more information, please visit http://www.livinggreensfarm.com.
5 Benefits of Microgreens That Will Boost Your Health
Microgreens are the powerhouse of nutritious foods. These functional foods are the seedlings of vegetables or herbs and are known to boost health function and prevent disease
Microgreens are the powerhouse of nutritious foods. These functional foods are the seedlings of vegetables or herbs and are known to boost health function and prevent disease. Known as being tiny vegetables, microgreens are great additions to any dish as they provide texture, various flavors, and are packed with nutrients. In this article, we’re going to cover five benefits of microgreens that are beneficial to your health.
Nutrient Rich
Studies have shown that microgreens tend to have nine times the amount of nutrients than their mature counterparts. In this study that was published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, it states that “microgreens contain considerably higher concentrations of vitamins and carotenoids than their mature plant counterparts.” By being rich in nutrients with great taste, it’s no wonder these tiny vegetables are growing in popularity.
Prevents Diseases
Not only are they rich in nutrients, studies have shown that microgreens are also filled with antioxidants. Antioxidants can help prevent diseases by removing free radicals from the body. Free radicals are unstable waste molecules that accumulate from factors such as pollution or natural bodily processes. But, as these unstable molecules build, they can develop diseases such as cancer. Intaking foods high in antioxidants can help increase your chances of preventing diseases since they help remove unstable molecules from the body.
Free From Pesticides
Since microgreens are easy to grow indoors, growers will always know what’s going on with their food. This means that microgreens won’t have to be sprayed with pesticides and that they’ll be eaten fresh. These tiny plants can grow in 1-2 weeks and are easy to harvest. Now, we can take comfort in knowing that our homegrown microgreens are free from pesticides and any other harmful chemicals that other crops fall victim to.
Sustainable Source
Since microgreens are easy to grow indoors, city dense populations could take advantage of growing these healthy-packed foods at home. With a turnaround time of a few weeks to full growth, people will always have access to fresh, nutrient-dense foods. To create an ongoing source of microgreens, you could rotate a few crops at the same time, so you’ll always have something fresh to eat per week. This could be a life-changing method for low-income families to get healthy vegetables at a low cost on a consistent basis.
Reduce Risk for Heart Disease
One of the benefits of microgreens is that they have the potential to lower blood pressure, which is one of the major risk factors for heart disease. Since these special vegetables are rich with fiber and vitamin K, eating them on a daily basis can lower your risk to develop heart disease.
The benefits of microgreens are endless. We at the Nick Greens Grow Team understand the nutritional and life-saving benefits behind these magical plants. The time to start learning how to grow your own microgreens is now.
Subscribe to our YouTube channel so you can start learning about how easy it is to grow from home!
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Horticultural Lighting Guide
Learn the foundations needed to discuss, plan, and choose a lighting approach to meet your growing goals with confidence
Learn The Foundations Needed to Discuss, Plan, and Choose a Lighting
Approach to Meet Your Growing Goals With Confidence.
What is a mole of light? How much light will meet my goals? How can I discern if a light plan is going to provide these needed light levels and actually work? How does spectrum influence growth?
The deeper one dives into horticultural lighting, the more questions arise. TotalGrow Lights is pleased to offer this free Horticultural Lighting Guide to provide the foundations needed to engage these questions and determine what lighting approach best matches a grower’s goals and setup.
Whether this is your first step into horticultural lighting, an effort to straighten out seemingly conflicting information, or a reference document to review how lighting metrics are defined, calculated, and properly used, the Horticultural Lighting Guide is a valuable tool.
Vertical Farming vs. Greenhouse Farming: Which is More Efficient?
When starting a farming operation, the first choice you face is what type of farm to start. The options are many: indoor vs. outdoor; arable vs pastoral; intensive vs. extensive. For farmers going the indoor route, one of the biggest decisions is between vertical farms and greenhouses
June 1, 2019
When starting a farming operation, the first choice you face is what type of farm to start. The options are many: indoor vs. outdoor; arable vs pastoral; intensive vs. extensive. For farmers going the indoor route, one of the biggest decisions is between vertical farms and greenhouses. Both vertical farms and greenhouses operate indoors, which means they enjoy benefits like climate control and year-round growing.
While there are differences and similarities between the two, they are best compared in terms of efficiency. For a long time, it was thought that greenhouses were more efficient and profitable than vertical farms, as they do not require artificial lighting. However, a 2018 study out of Quebec (Eaves & Eaves, 2018) showed that vertical farms enjoy a number of benefits over greenhouses, especially if the farm is operating for commercial purposes.
To understand what those benefits are, we first need to understand the reasons for farming indoors.
Why grow indoors?
For most of human history, farming has been an outdoor activity. Plants need sunlight to live, and soil to get water and nutrients from, so it is no surprise that traditional farming is done outdoors.
But as agriculture developed, farmers gradually realized that there were benefits to indoor farming. For one, it keeps pests and diseases at bay, as well as allowing certain crops to be grown all year long. Furthermore, indoor farming in ‘hot’ greenhouses can allow plants to grow faster than they would outdoors. By the late Roman Empire, greenhouse-like methods were already being used for these and other reasons. In the 1800s, Greenhouses hit their stride, as European farmers started using them to grow tropical plants that otherwise would not grow naturally on their continent.
The differences between vertical farms and greenhouses
While vertical farms and greenhouses both practice indoor farming, the similarities end there. Greenhouses rely on sunlight and have their plants arranged on one horizontal plane. This means that they require a large amount of space and are therefore best suited for rural or suburban areas. In comparison, vertical farms can operate in urban areas as they need far less space than greenhouses to operate. This is because vertical farms have plants stacked in layers and rely on artificial light.
Many people have argued that because vertical farms require artificial light, they are less efficient than greenhouses. While artificial lighting is a major cost at vertical farms, it is not necessarily a barrier to profitability. The 2018 study “Comparing the Profitability of a Greenhouse to a Vertical Farm in Quebec” showed that growing lettuce in a vertical farm can actually be more profitable than growing it in a greenhouse. They attributed this to two factors: increased yield per square meter, and centralized distribution.
Yield
The main advantage that vertical farms have over greenhouses is a greater yield per square meter. Although vertical farms have higher light and heat costs, they have the benefit of more produce grown per unit of soil. This means that even though vertical farms cost more to operate, they produce more crops, with the end result being higher revenue.
The 2018 study supports this through the results of a simulation, which showed that lettuce grown in a vertical farm has a slightly higher yield than that grown in a greenhouse.
Distribution
Another major advantage of vertical farms is centralized distribution. Because these farms can be run in almost any kind of building (ex. warehouses), they can be located in urban areas. This puts them right at the heart of major distribution hubs, in the middle of a big local customer base. Therefore, compared to a rural greenhouse, a vertical farm has less distance to travel to get to customers, and when it does have to ship over a distance, it has better transportation options.
As a result, vertical farm crops can be sold more quickly and at higher margins than greenhouse crops. According to the Quebec paper, this creates a perception of freshness that helps the vertical farm produce sell quicker than the greenhouse equivalent.
Gross profits
Due to centralized distribution, vertical farms may enjoy higher gross profits than greenhouses. The Quebec paper showed this to be the case specifically for lettuce grown in the Quebec area. Although the wholesale price of lettuce produced at greenhouses and vertical farms is usually the same, the vertical farm’s lettuce may enjoy a premium when sold in its local market due to the perception of freshness. Additionally, because the vertical farm is located in an urban area, it can ship more fresh produce to more customers, without high transportation costs.
A second reason for the higher gross profits at vertical farms is winter heating costs. It is widely assumed that vertical farms use more electricity than greenhouses. But that’s not necessarily the case. It really depends on the specific farm(s) in question. As the Quebec paper showed, in areas that get extremely cold in the winter, Greenhouses can be very expensive to heat. Depending on how rural their location is, they may need to be heated by a generator; and depending on their size, they may consume quite a bit of electricity. So while the vertical farm needs to be heated year-round, the greenhouse can actually be more expensive to heat in the crucial winter season.
Growth potential
One area where vertical farms really shine is the potential for growth. While sales from greenhouses are growing at 8% year-over-year, sales from vertical farms are growing at a full 30% annually. That means that vertical farms are growing more than three times as quickly as greenhouses. While part of this can be explained by the fact that vertical farms are newer than greenhouses, it also has to do with centralized distribution. Since vertical farms have access to urban distribution centers, they can get more product out, more quickly, than greenhouses can. The greater yield per square meter of vertical farm space also contributes to this fast growth.
Putting it all together
Vertical farming is the cutting edge of agriculture. Offering the ability to grow more crops, in a controlled environment, inside major distributions hubs (i.e. cities), it takes advantage of economies of scale in a way no other farming operation can. In the past, many critics have cited lighting costs as a stumbling block to profitability for vertical farms. But as the Quebec paper showed, vertical farming can actually be more profitable than a conventional greenhouse operation. Especially when situated in major urban centers, and taking full advantage of the distribution benefits that come with that, vertical farms can be highly profitable. And when you add the benefits of automated labor into the equation, the benefits can be greater still.
We see vertical farming as the evolution of the greenhouse.
Latest developments in LED (less consumption) and solar energy (higher efficiency) will reduce the biggest remaining cost factor (energy) during the next years.
Automation will increase the benefits of vertical farming even further
Source: Growcer
Florida Indoor Farming Firm Turns Pandemic Disruption Into Opportunity
Orlando, Fla.-based Kalera had to give away an entire harvest in March when the company's commercial customers closed amid stay-at-home orders. But, like some other greenhouse operations around the country, Kalera found other customers and avoided layoffs or going out of business
JULY 9, 2020
A large greenhouse operated by Brooklyn, N.Y.-based Gotham Greens helped produce food as the coronavirus pandemic cut supply chains in March.
Photo courtesy of Gotham Greens
ORLANDO, Fla., July 9 (UPI) -- A Florida company that grows lettuce in greenhouses turned a desperate situation during the coronavirus pandemic into new opportunities, thanks to a nationwide upswing in produce purchases from indoor farms.
Orlando, Fla.-based Kalera had to give away an entire harvest in March when the company's commercial customers closed amid stay-at-home orders. But, like some other greenhouse operations around the country, Kalera found other customers and avoided layoffs or going out of business. Indoor farms like Kalera produce food close to their customers, in clean, hygienic facilities. The process also is called vertical farming because produce is grown on racks, using hydroponics -- raising crops with water and nutrients, but without soil.
Good hygiene and a local supply are more important than ever during supply chain disruptions and waves of panic buying during the pandemic, said Daniel Malechuk, Kalera's chief executive officer.
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It was literally the day of our first harvest at a new facility when the state announced stay-at-home orders and many of our food-service customers closed overnight," Malechuk said about what the company faced in March."
My reaction at first was massive disappointment. That would be an understatement. But we rolled up our sleeves and were determined to make the best of it," he said.
Kalera has developed its farm technology over the past 10 years and had built a demonstration farm and production facility in Orlando. To the CEO's dismay, the crops in the new greenhouse became ready for harvest just as Gov. Ron Desantis ordered all restaurants closed to indoor dining.
RELATED USDA announces another $470 million in purchases for food banks
That meant Kalera -- and other farmers who faced similar closures around the nation -- had nowhere to sell their crops. Some growers buried their produce rather than shoulder the expense of harvesting crops without having buyers waiting.
Among the customers Kalera lost were Marriott Orlando World Center, the Orlando Magic basketball team, and area theme parks, Malechuk said.
Kalera had built a large grow house on the grounds of the Marriott resort to supply fresh lettuce and micro-greens to the kitchens there. But the resort has been closed for months and does not plan to reopen until Aug. 1.
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Instead of destroying the food, Malechuk donated his crop directly to local residents and food banks. That's also when he reached out to Florida-based Publix, one of the nation's largest grocery chains with more than 1,200 stores in the Southeast and Mid-Atlantic regions.
At first, Publix paid Kalera for some crops and donated the produce to food banks.
Worried about possibly laying off his workforce of about 100, Malechuk wrote a heartfelt email to a Publix executive with whom he previously corresponded. His subject line was "Humble Plea."
The email asked Publix to make Kalera a permanent supplier. It worked, and Kalera produce now is sold in hundreds of Publix stores."
I knew Publix wasn't accepting new suppliers at that point, and I didn't think it would work," Malechuk said. "But I had to try, and I told Publix that.
"Unexpectedly, Publix expedited its process for accepting new products because of Kalera's crisis, said Curt Epperson, the company's business development manager for produce and floral.
“We were not only able to help their business -- and all the people who depend on them -- but our customers and our community," Epperson said in an email to UPI.
Kalera was not alone in turning a dismal outlook to a brighter future. Other indoor farm companies overcame difficulties during the pandemic and saw new opportunities.
Brooklyn, N.Y.-based Gotham Greens opened new greenhouses in several states as the pandemic spread around the world, CEO and co-founder Viraj Puri said.
His employees already had been wearing masks in growing areas before the pandemic struck. As coronavirus advanced, management added more levels of safety. "We started detailed health screening calls, temperature checks, increased distancing. It was a hard time for everyone. We all knew people who tested positive, and we saw people lose their jobs," Puri said.
Gotham Greens soon saw increased demand from retail merchants for its greenhouse produce as other farmers around the country struggled to find labor for harvests and had difficulties shipping food across the country during the pandemic, the CEO said."
The pandemic altered life around us, unfortunately, but it also showed that we can help ensure food security with indoor farming in controlled environments," Puri said. "These local supplies for growing produce are going to be important."
A number of other indoor farming operations found new customers -- and appreciation for their products -- during the pandemic, said Joel Cuello, a professor of agricultural and biosystems engineering at the University of Arizona and vice-chair of the Association for Vertical Farming, based in Munich, Germany.
“In the future, customers want to make sure they have reliable access to food nearby. Vertical farming can be hyper-local, with a facility next to your restaurant or inside your grocery market if wanted," Cuello said.
As people value their health more during a global pandemic, nutrient-packed leafy greens are the most likely food that will be produced indoors, especially in remote areas with harsh environments, said Krishna Nemali, assistant professor of controlled environment agriculture at Purdue University in Indiana. "In northern places, like Iceland or Alaska, or in desert regions, like the Middle East, they struggle to grow food outdoors, so they are turning more to hydroponics," Nemali said. "That's where we will see more demand."
Another vertical farm company, Indiana-based Green Sense Farms, also reported an increase in calls and inquiries to its sales staff from potential customers about its technology, said Robert Colangelo, a founder, and CEO.
Colangelo's company provides contract research, design, and construction of indoor, controlled-environment agriculture facilities. Green Sense charges a little under $1 million to provide a system that includes an automated germination room, grow room, equipment room, and cooled packinghouse room."
What we found is the COVID virus caused people to look at the length of their supply chains. Long complex supply chains can really be disrupted," Colangelo said.
He said he has spoken to officials in various cities who want to learn more about setting up vertical farms."
If you have a food desert [an area with few grocery stores] or a school or hospital in a remote area, you could produce greens right on your property or right next door for that," he said.
USDA Grant to Support Cornell Indoor Ag Training Programs
Fueled by year-round market demand for local food and by advancements in greenhouse technology, controlled environment agriculture (CEA) is a rapidly growing field
July 10, 2020
CORNELL UNIVERSITY
IMAGE: NEIL MATTSON, LEFT, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF HORTICULTURE, WORKS WITH PH.D. STUDENT JONATHAN ALLRED TO COLLECT DATA FROM STRAWBERRIES GROWING IN THE GUTERMAN BIOCLIMATIC LABORATORY GREENHOUSE. view more | CREDIT: JASON KOSKI/CORNELL UNIVERSITY
ITHACA, N.Y. - Fueled by year-round market demand for local food and by advancements in greenhouse technology, controlled environment agriculture (CEA) is a rapidly growing field. In this intensive form of agriculture, plants are grown in a controlled environment, such as a greenhouse, to efficiently produce fresh, high-quality fruits and vegetables.
However, commercial CEA requires advanced knowledge of both plant biology and complex infrastructure. And while New York state ranks fourth in the nation for CEA production value, the workforce hasn't been able to keep pace with industry growth.
Now, thanks to a $496,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture's National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA), two horticulture experts at Cornell University will help design new CEA training programs to build a skilled workforce pipeline for the industry.
"Growers consistently state that finding well-trained personnel to operate their facilities is among the largest barriers to expansion," said Neil Mattson, associate professor of horticulture. "This project uses a targeted approach to determine what skill sets are most critical, and it develops several pathways for training - both for traditional college students and for the professional development of existing employees."
He and Anu Rangarajan, director of the Cornell Small Farms Program, will collaborate with industry leaders, Ohio State University and its Agricultural Technical Institute, and SUNY Broome Community College to develop a technical training certificate in CEA production. They also plan to create a two-year Associate of Applied Science degree for students enrolled in those schools and for other community colleges to integrate into their curriculum.
Participants will gain experience with CEA infrastructures, such as hydroponics, aeroponics, and aquaculture. They will also develop advanced knowledge in environmental monitoring, pest management, food safety, and marketing skills.
Rangarajan already oversees numerous training programs and has spent the last five years working with commercial urban agriculture operations to better understand the key factors that influence farm viability. As part of the new project, she will lead the development of an online delivery platform for the new programming.
Mattson's current research includes using energy-efficient LED lighting for sustainable greenhouse production and studying the long-term viability of indoor urban agriculture. His role in the NIFA project involves collaborating with industry partners to develop the new learning modules.
In addition to supporting more local and sustainable food systems, Rangarajan said the work they've done thus far has been essential for learning how to provide more skilled-training opportunities for new farmers.
"Our efforts have laid the groundwork," she said, "for what I hope will be a dynamic training program that will build the workforce and elevate the industry as a whole."
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Tepco Unit Launches Giant Vertical Farm in Shizuoka Powered by Artificial Lighting
A unit of Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc. has launched an indoor vertical farm in Shizuoka that can yield up to 5 tons of produce a day — one of the world’s largest such facilities to rely solely on artificial lighting
KYODO
JUL 5, 2020
A unit of Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc. has launched an indoor vertical farm in Shizuoka that can yield up to 5 tons of produce a day — one of the world’s largest such facilities to rely solely on artificial lighting.
Tepco Energy Partner Inc. started running the farm Wednesday in Fujieda, Shizuoka Prefecture, to grow lettuce and other leafy greens by using light-emitting diodes.
The company aims to initially produce about a ton of vegetables per day at the 9,000-sq.-meter facility and begin shipping around August. It said it plans to raise the output to 5 tons a day by next year and move into the black in 2023.
Vertical farming via artificial lighting has been drawing attention as a way to ensure stability in food production and distribution because it is not affected by undesirable weather and other risks, such as epidemics, the Tepco unit said.
Such facilities are also expected to provide solutions to problems faced by Japanese agriculture, such as the decline in the number of farmers and the aging of those still working their land, it added.
Tepco Energy Partner, which engages in electricity retailing, also said an indoor environment allows farmers to better maintain quality and freshness, which can help reduce food waste.
“We would like to make the most of our energy-saving technologies,” said an official of the company. “Since it’s indoors, vegetables are resistant to abnormal weather, and they are also safe because they are grown without using agrichemicals.”
See You Next Week? Take A Virtual Tour of The Greenery™ With Us! July 16, 2020 - 4:30 PM EST
Explore the Freight Farms Greenery™ alongside farm expert Derek, where you'll learn about the basics of controlled environment agriculture, hydroponics, and vertical farming...from the comfort of your own home!
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Explore the Freight Farms Greenery™ alongside farm expert Derek, where you'll learn about the basics of controlled environment agriculture, hydroponics, and vertical farming...from the comfort of your own home!
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VIDEO: The Supermarkets That Grow Their Own Food
There's a food-tech revolution happening in our supermarkets, and it could change the way we eat forever
Jul-2020
Ian Dickson
There's a food-tech revolution happening in our supermarkets, and it could change the way we eat forever.
To View The Video, Please Click Here.
From romaine lettuce to curly parsley, salads and herbs are leaving the fields behind to be grown in-store in front of customers' eyes.
Under the glare of artificial light and computer-controlled temperatures, these pioneering plants are part of an ambitious vertical farming project. One that could fundamentally change how fresh food is grown and help dramatically reduce food miles (the distance food travels to get to your plate) and the use of natural resources.
Behind the revolution is Germany-based Infarm, one of a growing number of companies weaving technology and food production together.
Infarm sells supermarkets a modular growing chamber, a bit like a giant fridge, with plants stacked in rows to ceiling height, where they're remotely controlled through a cloud-based and "internet of things" enabled farming platform.
Currently, Infarm supplies more than 700 local "farms" across the world, from The Netherlands to Japan, and harvests in excess of 250,000 plants a month.
So far, these farms have saved 2.4 million kilometers of transport, 27 million liters of water and 38,000 square kilometers of land.
Infarm are based in Berlin, and were founded in 2013. /Infarm
Emmanuel Evita is the global communications director at Infarm and he says it's vital to grow fresh produce as close as you can to where it will be consumed because of the environmental burden of agriculture supply chains.
He tells CGTN Europe: "At Infarm, we want to find another way. We want to practice a form of agriculture that is resilient, sustainable and beneficial to our planet."
The farms are designed to easily "plug into any urban space." As Evita says: "Our in-store farms each occupy less than 2 square meters of ground. When these plants are purchased, they are so fresh they are still living."
Over in the UK, supermarket chain M&S has been trialing Infarm at seven of its London branches. It says that each of its micro-farms produces a crop equivalent to 400 square meters of farmland.
And because they are controlled by self-learning internet of things technology, the plants are continually monitored and receive only the optimum level of light, water and nutrients.
As a result, M&S says its store-grown plants use 95 percent less water and 75 percent less fertilizer than traditional soil-grown plants.
"Infarm's innovative farming platform is a fantastic example of what can happen when passionate agricultural, food and technology experts work together," said Paul Willgoss, director of food technology at M&S Food. "We operate as part of a complex global food supply chain and want to understand the emerging technologies that could help provide more sustainable solutions, while also delivering fantastic products."
Infarm's vertical farms specialise in herbs. /Infarm
In May, Infarm partnered with Germany's ALDI SUD to grow chives, parsley, basil, mint, and coriander in stores across Frankfurt and Dusseldorf. Additionally, ALDI SUD is providing 300 more stores with fresh Infarm produce from centralized distribution centers.
"Our customers can watch the herbs grow. They are grown and harvested in our stores – they couldn't be more fresh," says David Labinsky, group buying director at ALDI SUD.
While customers can watch the plants grow, they can't pick their own. Instead, they're harvested on a regular basis and packaged in-store where they're at their freshest.
Could vertical farms be the future of food? That's certainly what Paul Gauthier, professor of plant science at Delaware Valley University, believes. As he told The Daily Princetonian newspaper: "There is no question about it, vertical farming will be part of our lives. It's important to start thinking and finding solutions for the future."
Video editor: David Bamford
OptimIA Free Indoor Ag Webinar - July 29, 2020 - 1 PM EST
OptimIA offers free indoor ag webinar on July 29, 2020. The OptimIA (Optimizing Indoor Agriculture) project team invites indoor farmers, allied trades, and professionals to their first annual meeting to share recent research results with leafy greens and discuss future activities
By urbanagnews
July 6, 2020
OptimIA offers free indoor ag webinar on July 29, 2020
The OptimIA (Optimizing Indoor Agriculture) project team invites indoor farmers, allied trades, and professionals to their first annual meeting to share recent research results with leafy greens and discuss future activities. OptimIA is a USDA-supported Specialty Crop Research Initiative project to advance the emerging indoor farming industry to become more profitable and sustainable through critical research and extension activities.
TENTATIVE AGENDA / TOPICS
Promotion of lettuce growth under an increasing daily light integral depends on the light intensity and photoperiod
Influence of light intensity and CO2 concentration on dill, parsley, and sage growth and development at harvest
Major energy savings during production of baby greens
Managing nutrient disorders of hydroponic leafy greens
Improving air distribution and humidity management in vertical farming systems
Critical elements of CEA economics
View the agenda and register at http://scri-optimia.org/stakeholder2020.php. The webinar is free, but space is limited and is on a first-come, first-served basis.
OptimIA Director and PIs
Erik Runkle, Michigan State University (Project Director)
Murat Kacira, University of Arizona
Chieri Kubota, The Ohio State University
Roberto Lopez, Michigan State University
Cary Mitchell, Purdue University
Simone Valle de Souza, Michigan State University
OptimIA Collaborators
Jennifer Boldt, USDA ARS
David Hamby, OSRAM
H. Christopher Peterson, Michigan State University
Nadia Sabeh, Dr. Greenhouse Inc.
Pandemic Gardening Moves Indoors With a Smart Garden in The Kitchen
It’s not hard to see why. Even as public spaces begin to open up, many people remain leery of winding through the narrow aisles of their grocery stores
By Mandy Behbehani | July 3, 2020
The Click and Grow Smart Herb Garden uses “smart soil” to provide everything the plants need. The company has seen huge increases in orders because of the coronavirus.
Photo: Carlos Avila Gonzalez / The Chronicle 2016
In April, after the shutdown had made going to the grocery store a risky proposition, Jon Lechich plunked down nearly $1,000 for a three-tier, indoor smart garden. Living on a hill in Lafayette, the entrepreneur and his physician wife had limited outside space and could only grow plants in pots.
When the kit arrived, Lechich dropped a dozen pods that look like coffee capsules into a “nursery” container. After a couple of weeks, when the pods had grown roots and leaves, he transferred them into a sleek white unit that evokes a tropical bookcase. He added water, plugged in the system, and sprinkled in some nutrients. Already he’s harvested basil, kale, lettuce, peppers, and strawberries. Soon, says Lechich, “the only thing we’ll need to get at the grocery store will be meat.”
Indoor smart gardens are having their moment in the sun — er, under the LED lamp — with companies reporting unprecedented sales and even backorders. Rise Gardens, which made Lechich’s system, received a $2.6 million, ahem, seed round in May. Across the United States, Google searches for “smart garden” reached an all-time high the second week of April.
It’s not hard to see why. Even as public spaces begin to open up, many people remain leery of winding through the narrow aisles of their grocery stores. A springtime of understocked supermarket shelves reminded us not to take food-supply chains for granted, and shelter-in-place orders made spring planting season more stressful than usual. Besides, when every day feels the same, the prospect of something blossoming before our very eyes, and within the walls of the home we’re mostly confined in gains appeal.“
It’s very aesthetically pleasing,” Lechich says of his unit. “I love the light, it’s very quiet and has a great green look to it.” He and his wife have been discussing whether to move the unit from the spare room into the living room. She seems open to it, he says.
To be sure, the promise of the smart garden is not new. Neither is the indoor garden and, in fact, people throughout the Bay Area have long embraced the idea of growing their own fresh produce in micro greenhouses on their kitchen counter, a bookshelf or on a ladder up against a wall, without battling pests, contaminants or their friendly neighborhood rabbit.
Or their own non-green thumbs.“
I pretty much kill everything that is not a succulent,” says Michelle Leigh, who lives in a loft in an industrial area of Oakland where she has been advised not to grow food outdoors. She got the coronavirus in March, ordered a Rise Garden in April and received it May 20.
She planted basil, lettuces, cilantro, bananas, peppers, tomatoes, and green beans.“
My partner and I were also nervous about food shortages,” says Leigh, 43. “My diet is meat and vegetables, and I thought, ‘Oh my God if I get stuck having to eat canned or frozen food in some (economic) depression, I’m going to be screwed.’”
To reduce the chances for mishaps, Leigh wanted a hydroponic system, which grows plants using nutrients and water rather than soil and sunlight. So far, so good: All she’s had to do so far is fill the water once a week, and she’s already harvested her lettuce, basil, and cilantro.
Rise Garden says 50 percent of orders come from the Bay Area. But hydroponics are not the only game in town. Units from Click and Grow, one of the older purveyors, use a proprietary “smart soil.” The fluffy substance keeps the levels of oxygen, water, pH, and nutritional ingredients at optimal levels. You insert plant pods (biodegradable, natch) into the mix, add water, and plug the thing in.
Click and Grow, which is based in Estonia but does most of its business in California and New York reports huge increases in orders because of the coronavirus. In March, April and May, revenues were three to five times higher than in the same months last year, says Martin Laidla, a company spokesman. He attributes the jump in sales to fresh-food shortages and fear of them. “Leafy greens are not things you can stockpile,” he says. “You have to have them fresh.”
That’s exactly why Ken Lamb, 60, ordered his unit in April. “I use a lot of basil and oregano,” says Lamb, who lives in San Francisco and co-founded an early-stage VC firm. “I knew they would be useful during a time when there might be trouble having access to fresh herbs for a while.” He’s growing herbs, piri piri chile peppers, and more. “They’re so easy,” he says. “You get the package, which took five minutes to put together, fill with water, open the capsules, stick them into the holes and all you have to do is to fill it with water.”
Worth noting: Major appliance-makers are sowing their own indoor gardening dreams. At the annual Consumer Electronics Show in February, Samsung unveiled its prototype BeSpoke Plant Fridge, while LG showed off an indoor gardening appliance.
Might such technology be used on a much larger scale for commercial farming indoors? Not yet, says Hank Adams, CEO, and founder of Rise Gardens. “There are plenty of empty buildings out there, but it’s not the space, it’s the cost of electricity and of labor to harvest,” he says. The economics just aren’t favorable, he says.
But the “counter-to-table” model has plenty of appeal, he says. There’s a lot of food you can’t grow year-round outside, Adams notes. Besides, he says, plants lose half their water-soluble vitamins within 48 hours of harvest.“
My vision is that in the same way we never envisioned dishwashers and washing machines in everybody’s house and now we can’t live without them, I’d like that for indoor gardening.”
Mandy Behbehani lives in San Francisco. Email: Culture@sfchronicle.com
The Future of Food: Inside The World's Largest Urban Farm – Built on a Rooftop
On top of a striking new exhibition hall in the southern 15th arrondissement of Paris, the world’s largest urban rooftop farm has started to bear fruit. Strawberries, to be precise: small, intensely flavoured and resplendently red
In Paris, urban farmers are trying a soil-free approach to agriculture that uses less space and fewer resources. Could it help cities face the threats to our food supplies?
Urban farming on a Parisian rooftop. Photograph: Stéphane de Sakutin/AFP/Getty Images
08 Jul 2020
On top of a striking new exhibition hall in the southern 15th arrondissement of Paris, the world’s largest urban rooftop farm has started to bear fruit. Strawberries, to be precise: small, intensely flavoured and resplendently red.
They sprout abundantly from cream-coloured plastic columns. Pluck one out to peer inside and you see the columns are completely hollow, the roots of dozens of strawberry plants dangling into thin air.
From identical vertical columns nearby burst row upon row of lettuces; near those are aromatic basil, sage, and peppermint. Opposite, in narrow, horizontal trays packed not with soil but coco coir (coconut fibre), grow heirloom and cherry tomatoes, shiny aubergines, and brightly coloured chards.
“It is,” says Pascal Hardy, surveying his domain, “a clean, productive and sustainable model of agriculture that can in time make a real contribution to the resilience – social, economic and also environmental – of the kind of big cities where most of humanity now lives.
And look: it really works.”Hardy, an engineer, and sustainable development consultant, began experimenting with vertical farming and aeroponic growing towers – as those soil-free plastic columns are known – on his Paris apartment block roof five years ago.
This space is somewhat bigger: 14,000 sq metres, the size (almost exactly) of two football pitches. Coronavirus delayed its opening by a couple of months, but Nature Urbaine, as the operation is called, is now up and running, and has planted roughly a third of the available space.
Already, the team of young urban farmers who tend it have picked, in one day, 3,000 lettuces and 150 punnets of strawberries. When the remaining two-thirds of the vast rooftop of Paris Expo’s Pavillon 6 are in production, 20 staff will harvest up to 1,000kg of perhaps 35 different varieties of fruit and vegetables, every day.“
We’re not ever, obviously, going to feed the whole city this way,” cautions Hardy. “In the urban environment you’re working with very significant practical constraints, clearly, on what you can do and where. But if enough unused space – rooftops, walls, small patches of land – can be developed like this, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t eventually target maybe between 5% and 10% of consumption.”
Nature Urbaine is already supplying local residents, who can order fruit and veg boxes online; a clutch of nearby hotels; a private catering firm that operates 30 company canteens in and around Paris; and an airy bar and restaurant, Le Perchoir, which occupies one extremity of the Pavillon 6 rooftop.
Nature Urbaine. Photograph: Magali Delporte/The Guardian
Perhaps most significantly, however, this is a real-life showcase for the work of Hardy’s flourishing urban agriculture consultancy, Agripolis, which is currently fielding inquiries from around the world – including in the UK, the US, and Germany – to design, build and equip a new breed of soil-free inner-city farm.“The method’s advantages are many,” he says. “First, I don’t know about you, but I don’t much like the fact that most of the fruit and vegetables we eat have been treated with something like 17 different pesticides, or that the intensive farming techniques that produced them are such huge generators of greenhouse gases.“I don’t much like the fact, either, that they’ve travelled an average of 2,000 refrigerated kilometres to my plate, that their quality is so poor, because the varieties are selected for their capacity to withstand that journey, or that 80% of the price I pay goes to wholesalers and transport companies, not the producers.”
Produce grown using this soil-free method, on the other hand – which relies solely on a small quantity of water, enriched with organic nutrients, minerals and bacteria, pumped around a closed circuit of pipes, towers and trays – is “produced up here, and sold locally, just down there. It barely travels at all,” Hardy says.“It uses less space. An ordinary intensive farm can grow nine salads per square metre of soil; I can grow 50 in a single tower. You can select crop varieties for their flavour, not their resistance to the transport and storage chain, and you can pick them when they’re really at their best, and not before.”
No pesticides or fungicides are needed, no soil is exhausted, and the water that gently showers the plants’ roots every 12 minutes is recycled, so the method uses 90% less water than a classic intensive farm for the same yield. The whole automated process can be monitored and controlled, on site or remotely, with a tablet computer.
Urban farming is not, of course, a new phenomenon. The mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, aims eventually to have at least 100 hectares of rooftops, walls and facades covered with greenery – including 30 hectares producing fruit and vegetables.
A programme called Les Parisculteurs invites local groups to come up with suitable projects for up to a dozen new sites every year.Inner-city agriculture is booming from Shanghai to Detroit and Tokyo to Bangkok. Strawberries are being grown in disused shipping containers; mushrooms in underground carparks. Not all techniques, however, are environmentally friendly: ultra-intensive, 10-storey indoor farms that have sprung up in the US rely on banks of LED lighting and are major consumers of energy, Hardy says.
Aeroponic farming, he says, is “virtuous”. The equipment weighs little, can be installed on almost any flat surface, and is cheap to buy: roughly €100 to €150 per sq metre. It is cheap to run, too, consuming a tiny fraction of the electricity used by some techniques.
Aeroponic farming is ‘virtuous’, says Pascal Hardy. Photograph: Magali Delporte/The Guardian
Produce grown this way typically sells at prices that, while generally higher than those of classic intensive agriculture, are lower than soil-based organic growers. In Paris, Nature Urbaine should break even, Hardy estimates, some time next year – a few months later than planned because of the pandemic
.There are limits to what farmers can grow this way, of course, and much of the produce is suited to the summer months. “Root vegetables we cannot do, at least not yet,” he says. “Radishes are OK, but carrots, potatoes, that kind of thing – the roots are simply too long. Fruit trees are obviously not an option. And beans tend to take up a lot of space for not much return.”
But Agripolis runs a smaller test farm, on top of a gym and swimming pool complex in the 11th arrondissement, where it experiments with new varieties and trials new techniques. A couple of promising varieties of raspberries are soon to make the transition to commercial production.
Urban agriculture is not the only development changing the face of farming. As with almost every other sector of the economy, digitisation and new technologies are transforming the way we grow food.
Artificial intelligence (AI) and the internet of things are beginning to revolutionise farming, from driverless, fully automated farm machinery that can sow seeds and fertilise and water soil with maximum precision to systems that monitor exactly how healthy individual animals are and how much they are producing (a concept known as the “connected cow”).
Other AI systems analyse satellite and remote ground sensor data, for example, to monitor plant health, soil condition, temperature and humidity and even to spot potential crop diseases.
Drones, too, have multiple potential uses on farms. With the world’s bee population in steep decline due to global heating, pesticides, and other factors, drones are increasingly being used to pollinate crops fields and fruit orchards. To avoid wasting pollen by wafting it randomly at crops, or the damage to individual flowers caused by drones rubbing against them, scientists in Japan have developed a system in which a drone uses what can only be described as a bubble gun to blow balls of specially formulated liquid containing pollen at individual blossoms.
With global food production estimated to need to increase by as much as 70% over the coming decades, many scientists believe genetic editing, which has already been used to create crops that produce higher yields or need less water to grow, will also have to play a bigger role.
The technique could help build plant and animal resistance to disease, and reduce waste. For example, with methane known to be a stronger greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, research is under way into the stomach bacteria of cows in the hope that tweaking animals’ gut microbes may eventually allow them to produce not just more meat, but also less gas.
Seating at Le Perchoir. Photograph: Magali Delporte/The Guardian
Urban farming of the kind being practised in Paris is one part of a bigger and fast-changing picture. “Here, we’re really talking about about building resilience, on several levels – a word whose meaning I have come to understand personally,” says Hardy, pointing to the wheelchair he has been forced to use since being injured by a falling tree.
“That resilience can be economic: urban farming, hyper-local food production, can plainly provide a measure of relief in an economic crisis. But it is also environmental: boosting the amount of vegetation in our cities will help combat some of the effects of global heating, particularly urban ‘heat islands’.”
Done respectfully, and over time, inner-city agriculture can prompt us to think differently both about cities, by breaking down their traditional geography of different zones for working, living and playing, and about agriculture, by bringing food production closer into our lives. “It’s changing paradigms,” says Hardy.
Barclays and Unreasonable Selects 80 Acres Farms To Receive $100,000 Grant in Support of COVID-19 Related Work
Unreasonable Impact COVID-19 Response is a new initiative launched by Barclays and Unreasonable Group awarding $100,000 grants each to ten Unreasonable ventures that have pivoted their businesses to combat challenges related to COVID1
Barclays and Unreasonable Group launch $1,000,000 fund for entrepreneurial solutions addressing challenges resulting from the global pandemic
July 8, 2020 – LONDON – 80 Acres Farms has been awarded a $100,000 grant in recognition of the exceptional work being undertaken in addressing the immediate and long-term challenges resulting from the effects of the global pandemic.ar
Unreasonable Impact COVID-19 Response is a new initiative launched by Barclays and Unreasonable Group awarding $100,000 grants each to ten Unreasonable ventures that have pivoted their businesses to combat challenges related to COVID19.
The grant is designed to support and amplify the impact of the work 80 Acres Farms is doing.
The initiative was launched as a direct response to the outbreak of COVID19 and is an extension of Unreasonable Impact, the unique multi-year partnership between the two companies supporting growth-stage entrepreneurs across the Americas, Europe, and Asia Pacific regions solving many of the world’s most pressing issues.
80 Acres Farms was Chosen by a selection committee for the meaningful work the company has been doing during the COVID-19 pandemic. They bring access to fresh foods to the communities they serve. This grant will further their efforts by deploying mobile markets, “Veggie Vans” to neighborhoods most adversely affected by this pandemic. By growing differently, in a completely controlled environment, 80 Acres Farms can improve the nutritional value of foods, not only getting it to the customer hours after harvest, but also increasing vitamins and minerals, and antioxidants naturally during the growing process.
80 Acres Farms Mike Zelkind will join the nine other recipients at a live virtual event, The Unreasonable Impact COVID19 Response Global Summit, created with Barclays on July 8th where he will have a chance to share his exceptional work with a global audience.
Joe McGrath, Barclays’ Global Head of Banking, commented, “Through Unreasonable Impact, we set out to help entrepreneurs take their businesses to the next level. They are already tackling almost impossible-sounding challenges, so when COVID-19 took hold we weren’t surprised that they would point their talent and drive towards responding to the pandemic. We’re in awe of the speed that they’ve pivoted their businesses and of the positive impact that they’ve already made, so we’re delighted to be able to support them through the Unreasonable Impact COVID-19 Response.”
Daniel Epstein, Founder, and CEO of Unreasonable Group, added, “Unreasonable Impact was co-created with Barclays with a shared intention to support and scale up entrepreneurial solutions to the world's most pressing challenges. The global impact of COVID-19 is unlike any challenge any of us has seen in our lifetimes. Setting up the COVID-Response to support and amplify ventures leveraging business to combat challenges related to the pandemic is a natural extension of our mission. We are humbled to be supporting the exceptional work 80 Acres Farms."
For more information and to register to attend the Global Summit, visit https://unreasonablegroup.com/initiatives/unreasonable-impact/covid-global-summit/
Full list of ventures selected:
1MG Technologies: India’s leading mobile healthcare platform with over 9 million downloads and 33 million monthly visits
80 Acres Farms: Converting urban spaces in ultra-efficient indoor farms that produce accessible, tasty and affordable local food year-round
Airlabs: Transforming polluted cities into clean air zones by removing 95% nitrogen dioxide along with all other pollutants
Day Owl: Turning trash from the poorest neighbourhoods in the world into purpose filled recycled fabrics
Ecoware: Creating 100% biodegradable eco-friendly and compostable certified food packaging and garbage bags
eFishery: Creating the future of aquaculture with an IoT smart feeding technology to help hundreds of millions of farmers at the bottom of the pyramid
Globechain: Creating the world’s largest reuse marketplace that connects corporates to charities and people to redistribute unwanted items
Nanobiosym: Using nanotechnology to empower people worldwide with rapid affordable and portable diagnostic information about their own health
Olio: connecting neighbours and local shops so surplus food and other household items can be shared rather than thrown away
Zero Mass: Making drinking water an ultimate resource with SOURCE, a set of panels that make water from air
About Unreasonable Impact, created with Barclays
Unreasonable Impact is an innovative multi-year multi-geographic partnership between Barclays and Unreasonable Group to launch the world’s first global network focused on scaling up entrepreneurial solutions that will help employ thousands worldwide in the emerging green economy. To date, the more than 100 ventures that comprise the global cohort operate in more than 180 countries, have raised over $2.1bn USD in funding, have generated over $2bn USD in revenue, and have created more than 30,000 net new jobs since joining Unreasonable Impact. For more information, please visit www.unreasonableimpact.com.
About Barclays
Barclays is a British universal bank. The company is diversified by business, by different types of customers and clients, and by geography. Barclays’ businesses include consumer banking and payments operations around the world, as well as a top-tier, full service, global corporate and investment bank, all of which are supported by their service company which provides technology, operations and functional services across the Group.
For further information about Barclays, please visit www.home.barclays.
About Unreasonable Group
Bringing together a global network of entrepreneurs, investors, creatives, and business leaders, Unreasonable acts as a catalytic platform for entrepreneurs tackling some of the world’s most pressing challenges facing us today. From designing highly curated immersive programmes, facilitating access to a global network of mentors to operating a private equity fund, and providing advanced storytelling and media activities, Unreasonable operates at the highest intersection of business and impact. It is uniquely positioned to support growth-stage entrepreneurs solving key global environment and social challenges to scale up through the deployment of knowledge, networks and capital.
For more information about Unreasonable, please visit www.unreasonablegroup.com.
Media Contact
Rebecca Haders
+01 513.910.9089
US - VIRGINIA - What Does Governor Northam Have to Say About Babylon?
“Congratulations to Babylon Micro-Farms, an inspiring up and coming Virginia business, on its CRCF award. Babylon first received seed capital funding from CIT GAP Funds in August 2019
June 30, 2020
We are very excited to share the news that Governor Northam announced last week that Babylon has been awarded matching funds from the Center for Innovative Technology (CIT) for the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant we received from the National Science Foundation. The funding from the NSF made Babylon eligible for a highly competitive application process that CIT holds annually through the Commonwealth Research Commercialization Fund which provides additional support for SBIR recipients to foster ongoing innovation by Virginia-based companies.
“Congratulations to Babylon Micro-Farms, an inspiring up and coming Virginia business, on its CRCF award. Babylon first received seed capital funding from CIT GAP Funds in August 2019. I had the pleasure to get to know the team and learn about the vital work they are doing for indoor farming,” said Ed Albrigo, President and CEO of CIT. “They continue to move forward on research and development of their disruptive platform for hydroponic farming, which has now earned them funding support through CIT CRCF. The Babylon CRCF award, along with CIT GAP funding, is a prime example of how our programs work together to help sustain companies through the difficult first stages of the commercialization process. Sustainable urban agriculture technologies are among the most critical emerging technologies in the nation today, and thanks to Babylon, Virginia will play an essential role in the future of farming."
Babylon added Lansdowne Resort in Leesburg, VA to our portfolio of high-end resorts and we are happy to welcome them to the Babylon family. Lansdowne is very focused on the connection between food and health and has a history of being at the forefront of hospitality trends that incorporate wellness and mindfulness-based activity options. They offer their guests a carefully curated offering of dietary choices based on their commitment to providing them the highest possible quality available in every aspect of their experience. Babylon is proud to be part of that commitment.
The recently installed farm at Champion Brewing Company Pub is the first partnership between Babylon and our hometown pioneer of the rapidly growing craft beer movement. When founder Hunter Smith envisioned the Pub, he wanted to create a fun community space that was hip and cool, but truly more than that – a place for people to connect. Mission accomplished and since Babylon is all about connecting people to their food by growing it right in front of them, it was a natural fit. The synergy of two local startups working together to bring the best of local food and drink to the table is a winning combination. Stop by and have a cold beer, it's hot outside!
VIDEO: Dubai’s Badia is GCC’s First Commercial Vertical Indoor Farm
Badia Farms in Al Quoz Industrial area in Dubai is the GCC’s first commercial vertical indoor farm that supports Dubai’s agricultural sustainability
June 26, 2020
An expert takes notes on the health of vegetables.
Gulf Today, Staff Reporter
Badia Farms in Al Quoz Industrial area in Dubai is the GCC’s first commercial vertical indoor farm that supports Dubai’s agricultural sustainability.
The large-scale high-tech vertical farm produces 3,500kg of chemical, pesticide, and herbicide-free fruits and vegetables per year.
Badia Farms said, “We have a growing reputation for supplying the finest micro-greens and herbs to Dubai’s top restaurants, caterers and chefs.”
Vertical farming is the practice of producing food vertically in stacked layers, vertically inclined surfaces, and/or integrated in other structures.
It uses a combination of indoor farming techniques and controlled-environment agriculture (CEA) technology.
Experts examine a produce.
Vertical farms can grow non-native produce in locations where traditional agricultural methods are impossible. Also, there’s no exposure to the hazards of traditional farming, such as bugs, diseases, pesticides and weather.
In some ways, it’s as simple as it sounds: a vertical farm is a multi-story greenhouse where fruit and vegetables are grown in stacked up towers. There’s obviously a lot more to it than that – and here’s where we’ll try not to blind you with science.
The techy term for it all is hydroponics, which is a technique for growing produce without soil. Seeds are planted in a sterile, soil-less growing environment and then grown in nutrient-rich water. Water is recycled, and everything from air and water temperature through to humidity and lighting are controlled to create the perfect growing environment.
Badia Farms Vertical Farming Agriculture Dubai UAE InnovationTechnology
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 Singapore 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 Singapore strawberries to Arctic tomatoes.
In Latin America, however, indoor vertical farms are still largely written off on a continent known for its abundant fertile soil and plentiful sunlight. Why need of artificial light or indoor automation when the sun is free and labor is cheap?
That said, there are early signs of a LatAm vertical farming awakening in Chile, where AgroUrbana has just raised a $1 million seed round, bringing its total capital raised to $1.5 million. AgroUrbana is 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 venture capital arm of Fundación Chile, a public-private initiative for innovation and sustainability in the country. Support financing also came from CORFO (Chile’s 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 a video call with AFN, AgroUrbana f0unders 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 stacks of hydroponically grown, LED-lit, renewable energy powered leafy greens and fruits. AgroUrbana’s first big offtake deal had 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,” recalled Bunster, describing the political turmoil in Chile that brought curfews and shuttered restaurants months before Covid-19 locked down the country. That earlier disruption, he added, had 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 envisioned an eventual 30,000 square foot facility that would be bankrolled by a Series A that 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. US-based AeroFarms raised $100 million in late-stage funding in 2019 while Fifth Season secured $50 million last year.
Although centralized facilities have generally dominated the vertical farming venture capital domain, 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-corona world also holds sway in the popular and corporate imagination of 2020, with companies like Square Mile Farms recently crowdfunding over $300,000 on the promise of re-kitting office spaces like those of 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 giants like Plenty or InFarm could be daunting for newer companies like 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 endeavors. Here, both Bunster and Sjögren see parallels with the renewable 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 PPA, in which they buy renewable energy from an existing plant; to finance a power plant which will sell 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 onsite.
The pair described 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, replied Bunster. As for gene editing, where Latin America is known to have more lax regulations than North America, Bunster said the plan was to work with what nature already provides, and just give them “the conditions of spring every day of the year.”
Podcast Agency FullCast Launches Vertical Farming Podcast with David Farquhar of Intelligent Growth Solutions
David Farquhar, CEO of Intelligent Growth Solutions (IGS), says Covid-19 has prompted a spike in interest in vertical farming, as retailers and governments scramble to improve supply chain resilience and lower their reliance on imported food
MINNEAPOLIS, May 6, 2020 /PRNewswire/ — In the inaugural interview of the Vertical Farming Podcast, David Farquhar, CEO of Intelligent Growth Solutions (IGS), says Covid-19 has prompted a spike in interest in vertical farming, as retailers and governments scramble to improve supply chain resilience and lower their reliance on imported food.
The vertical farming industry must ‘take a hard look at itself’ before it fulfills its promise of reliable, quality food, produced affordably and sustainably, says one of its leading figures.
Vertical Farming Podcast produced by FullCast
“But it will be fascinating to see what changes last on the back of this pandemic,” he says. “To what degree are we willing to invest to prepare ourselves to survive another one? We’re working with a lot of governments to think how this might happen.
“Yes, there are huge opportunities, but let’s be realistic. Vertical farming and indoor agriculture are young; making them work is a marathon task. Anyone who says otherwise is lying.”
“In three decades in the tech sector, I’ve never seen anything that’s attracted so much interest nor created so much misinformation.”
“A lot of people are telling a lot of lies. The industry must grow up. Many commentators and participants within the industry feel the same.”
A former British Army officer, Farquhar announced on the podcast that he’s committing the company to openly publish all its data – energy consumption, water usage and nutrient utilization – from its ‘in a box’ vertical farming systems, in a bid to demonstrate the industry-wide honesty and transparency that he believes is so sorely needed.
Headquartered in Scotland, IGS is currently working with commercial and government groups across Australasia, the Middle East, the Caribbean, and North America. Farquhar was interviewed for the first episode of Vertical Farming Podcast, a new show produced by FullCast and hosted by Harry Duran. Harry has launched VFP to engage with the leaders, founders, and visionaries of the evolving vertical farming industry, to bring their insights and knowledge to a wider audience.
Farquhar kicks off a line-up of guests that includes Agritecture’s Henry Gordon-Smith, Freight Farms Co-Founder & COO Jon Friedman, and AgTech journalist Louisa Burwood-Taylor of AgFunderNews.
Listeners are invited to subscribe today at: https://verticalfarmingpodcast.com
Contact InformationCompany: FullCast
Contact Name: Harry Duran
Email: harry@verticalfarmingpodcast.com
Phone: +1-323-813-6570
Address: 340 S Lemon Ave #5557 Walnut, CA 91789
Website: https://verticalfarmingpodcast.com
Source: PRNewsire
VIEDO: Vertical Farming Conference: 8 October 2020, Online or Offline At High Tech Campus Eindhoven, The Netherlands
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A JakajimaTV talk with Jasper den Besten, HAS University of Applied Sciences about the importance of the variety choice for vertical farming. Choosing the correct variety is often underexposed in vertical farming. However, the differences between varieties are huge.
Jasper den Besten will also be speaking at the Vertical Farming Conference, see the program here.
Source: Vertical Farming Conference.
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