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Affinor Growers Reduces Cost of Tower Technology By 30%
Affinor Growers Reduces Cost of Tower Technology By 30%
Cost reductions resulted from several growing tests. New design also allows for organic certification
Vancouver (Canada), December 6 2017 - Affinor Growers (CSE:AFI, OTC:RSSFF, Frankfurt:1AF) (“Affinor” or the “Corporation”), is pleased to announce several design improvements have resulted in a 30% reduction in overall cost and optimized growing conditions.
30% Tower Cost Reduction
Over the summer and during various grow-trial testing periods, Affinor took the opportunity to redesign certain aspects of the tower technology with the goal to reduce overall cost by 20%, improve plant resource availability and versatility. New ideas were conceived and prototyped with our supplier located in Port Coquitlam. By reducing the number of parts and simplifying various fabrications, the overall financial objective was exceeded with a total cost saving of 30% per tower.
The towers have an estimated useful life of 20 years so a 30% reduction allows farmers to amortize the reduced cost at a lower rate and reap more financial benefits from the optimized growing conditions.
Organic Certification Potential
In parallel, the new design improvements upgrade the tower to allow growers to be certified as compliant for organic certification under current Canadian regulations pertaining to the amount of volume and depth of organic soil required per plant as well as improved light penetration by introducing a new tiered level approach. Improved versatility was achieved by designing a universal growing arm that now fits custom plastic inserts to maximize density during the plant growing cycle and accommodate different types of plants.
Jarrett Malnarick, President & CEO, commented, "We are very happy about the design improvements that occurred over the last several months and believe our growing technology can offer cost-effective solutions to a variety of markets. These improvements will allow organic certification and enhanced growing environments for fresh fruit, produce and cannabis plants as well as offer versatility within the plant's life cycle or types of product to be grown.”
For More Information, please contact:
Jarrett Malnarick, President, and CEO
contact@affinorgrowers.com
About Affinor Growers Inc.
Affinor Growers is a publicly traded company on the Canadian Securities Exchange under the symbol ("AFI"). Affinor is focused on growing high-quality crops such as romaine lettuce, spinach, strawberries using its vertical farming techniques. Affinor is committed to becoming a pre-eminent supplier and grower, using exclusive vertical farming techniques.
On Behalf of the Board of Directors
AFFINOR GROWERS INC.
"Jarrett Malnarick"
President & CEO
The CSE has not reviewed and does not accept responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.
FORWARD-LOOKING INFORMATION
This News Release contains forward-looking statements. The use of any of the words "anticipate", "continue", "estimate", "expect", "may", "will", "project", "should", "believe" and similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements. Although the Company believes that the expectations and assumptions on which the forward-looking statements are based are reasonable, undue reliance should not be placed on the forward-looking statements because the Company can give no assurance that they will prove to be correct. Since forward-looking statements address future events and conditions, by their very nature they involve inherent risks and uncertainties. These statements speak only as of the date of this News Release. Actual results could differ materially from those currently anticipated due to a number of factors and risks including various risk factors discussed in the Company's disclosure documents which can be found under the Company's profile on www.sedar.com. This News Release contains "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended and such forward-looking statements are made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995.
Something Fishy About Downtown Toronto’s Waterwheel Farms
Something Fishy About Downtown Toronto’s Waterwheel Farms
With aquaponic farming, the root systems of plants grow directly through pipes into water.
TORONTO • Arts & Life • Food
Solutions to growing local produce may be as close as Queen Street West
By Katherine ForteDecember 4th, 2017
When you think farm you may not think of downtown Toronto, but Alec Wheeler is trying to change that perception.
His Waterwheel Farms uses aquaponic techniques to grow leafy greens and herbs in the facility near Queen Street West and Dufferin Street. The farm employs fish and microbes to grow the plants, which in turn filter the water for the fish – no soil required.
“It looks a little ‘labby’ in here but this is the identical ecosystem you’d find in a lake,” Wheeler said during a recent tour for the Toronto Observer. “You have fish, you feed them, they produce waste, the waste feeds the plants and just as importantly, the plants then filter the water for the fish. It’s a closed loop cycle.”
At Waterwheel Farms, instead of aquatic plants, they are growing crops for human consumption.
“So that’s aquaponics in a nutshell. It’s a living ecosystem between fish, microbes, and plants.”
Aquaponic farming is a closed loop cycle in which the fish act as the fertilizer for plants. The environment is similar to a lake. (WATERWHEEL FARMS)
Wheeler began a small aquaponics farm in his apartment five years ago, when he got tired of his store-bought greens going rotten too quickly. All of his education on aquaponics farming came from research and translating knowledge gained from growing up on his family’s open-field farm in Northern Ontario. He works as a financial analyst for a renewable energy provider. He jokingly refers to himself as “a renewable energy crusader by day and an urban farmer revolutionist by night.”
In May 2017, Wheeler expanded from his apartment to a 1,000 square foot research facility and farm. On-site at there are two tanks containing 400 tilapia fish who aid in growing Bok Choy, arugula, sorrel, spinach, lettuce and Waterwheel Farms’ most popular product, their tender kale. Anyone can purchase their fresh produce by visiting on Saturdays.
The seeds start their life cycle in peat moss. When they’ve grown to the point where their roots are the appropriate length they’re transplanted into pipes with running water where they have more room to flourish. The vegetables grow under different kinds of lights, at controlled temperatures that mimic the longest summer day in Toronto, for optimal growing conditions.
“Because we are indoors we’re controlling the lighting and heating and all that kind of stuff. In Toronto we are at the 43 latitude. Our longest day is just shy of 16 hours. We have these lights timed so they run on 16-hour cycles,” Wheeler said. “We can get, like, seventeen harvests for certain plants as opposed to the one or two you’d get traditionally.”
Waterwheel Farms doubles as a research facility. Founder Alec Wheeler experiments with different colours in the light spectrum to see which yield the best plant growth. (KATHERINE FORTE)
Wheeler finds that aquaponic farms have the ability to provide farmers with more, using less space.
“In traditional agriculture – nothing against it – you’ll read on the packet it says plant every 18 inches or whatever, it’s mainly because there’s a limited amount of nutrients in that soil and those plants are competing for those nutrients. With aquaponics it’s more of a smorgasbord for the plants because the nutrients are coming to the plants. So you can pack them in closer and produce more food and faster,” Wheeler said.
He boasts that his lettuces grow in 20 days, rather than three months.
Plentiful crops aren’t the only benefit of aquaponic farming. Since crops are grown indoors, they’re resistant to poor weather and climate change. The closed-loop system also uses 90 percent less water than traditional agriculture. The only water that leaves the system is what’s used by the plants, and the fish are edible, as well as the vegetables.
There’s no need to worry about toxins from the fish poop or harmful pesticides either. Just like in nature anything toxic in the fish waste or water would “crash the system” according to Wheeler. The same can’t be said about many methods of traditional open-field farming. Though crops can flourish with chemicals in the ecosystem, these chemicals often run off into our rivers and lakes.
Wheeler thinks his style of urban agriculture could change the way Toronto eats, and its impact on our lives could be huge. More people don’t have their own aquaponic farms due to lack of awareness, he believes.
“Like everything, there’s an education barrier. “ Wheeler said. “That’s kind of why we have the facility here so that people from Toronto and in Toronto can come and see the farm.”
That education barrier and lack of awareness is exactly why Rhonda Teitel-Payne and the other members of Toronto Urban Growers celebrated the first Urban Agriculture Day, on Sept. 15, 2017. Farms and gardens, including Waterwheels, opened their doors for tours, and urban farmers from Toronto got together to host a week of events.
What began as a community of urban farmers became Toronto Urban Growers in 2008. The group helps potential city-based farmers and gardens locate resources and connect to each other, so they can share tips, tricks, and anecdotes.
“We started to realize one of the biggest barriers we had in terms of getting projects going was lack of awareness of what urban agriculture is and what it can do and what it’s capable of,” Teitel-Payne said. “We thought that Urban Agriculture Day would be a great way both to celebrate and build that urban agriculture community in Toronto but also to get out the message of ‘Hey look what we can do when we’re growing food in the city. Let’s do more of it.’”
According to Teitel-Payne, urban farming can have more of an effect on us than just what’s on our plate. While Toronto probably couldn’t be self-sufficient when it comes to agriculture (some of the most optimistic statistics estimate we could only produce 10 per cent of our own food), there are other changes that could come with bringing some of the farm to the city.
Not only is diversifying our food sources a bonus, but Teitel-Payne finds that food connects us in different ways to different issues. That connection through food and urban agriculture could empower others to become more vocal on a number of issues.
“Food is that pathway into greater action.” Teitel-Payne said. “What comes out of that is people saying ‘There’s something about our neighbourhood we wanna change.’ Whether it be climate change, political action, access to food, or income or transit, there’s a whole constellation of issues that food touches.”
So where do we start?
Both Teitel-Payne and Wheeler agree condos could hold some potential for the future.
“Let’s start having a discussion with the developers and owners and let’s start cutting out a portion of the space for each condo to have it’s own farm,” Wheeler said. “The condominium right next to us has a beautiful and massive grocery store in it. Well, let’s just add to it. Rather than them having to ship in their food, let’s have it produced on site.”
Until then, Wheeler and Teitel-Payne hope that when people see urban agriculture in action it’ll inspire them to get on board.
“I envision it being a snowball effect,” said Wheeler. “You plant a couple of seeds and let it grow.”
from research and translating knowledge gained from growing up on his family’s open-field farm in Northern Ontario. He works as a financial analyst for a renewable energy provider. He jokingly refers to himself as “a renewable energy crusader by day and an urban farmer revolutionist by night.”
About this article:
By: Katherine Forte
Posted: Dec 4 2017 12:16 pm
Edition: Toronto
Filed in: Arts & Life • Food
Multimedia: Photos
Tagged: alec wheeler • aquaponic farming • Food • gardening • lettuce • tilapia •Toronto • toronto urban farm • Toronto urban growers • waterwheel farms
Vertical Farming is Amazon’s Next Bold Step
Associate Consultant at Bain & Company | Los Angeles | Harvey Mudd ’17 | lakshayakula.com
Nov 4, 2017
Vertical Farming is Amazon’s Next Bold Step
An artist’s (i.e. my) impression
Vertical farming complements Amazon’s business model, the Whole Foods acquisition, Jeff Bezos’s ambitions, and Amazon’s capabilities — it’s only a matter of time until Amazon pours money into vertical farming.
From data centers to organic kale
Amazon is well known for investing in bold, new technologies and businesses. Here’s a list of some of their noteworthy moves:
- In 1997, Amazon set the stage for their logistics network by building theirfirst two fulfillment centers in Seattle and Delaware
- In 2006, Amazon launched Amazon Web Services (AWS); today, as Google is to search, AWS is to the cloud
- Later in 2006, Amazon became a logistics provider by offering Fulfillment by Amazon
- In August 2007, Amazon launched AmazonFresh, starting their ongoing journey to become a grocery provider
- A couple months later 2007, Amazon entered hardware and brought e-readers to the masses by introducing the Kindle
- In 2012, Amazon made a significant step in automated warehouses by acquiring Kiva Systems for $775M
- In 2014, Amazon brought the Amazon ecosystem into the living room, with the home assistant Alexa (and the smart speaker it runs on, Echo)
- This year, Amazon acquired Whole Foods for a whopping $13.7B
At first, it seems like there’s very little in common among Amazon’s ventures. There’s no connection between data centers and organic kale. But there’s method to the madness. A simple business model underlies Amazon’s success.
The Amazon model
For a venture to fit into Amazon’s business model (i.e. the Amazon model), it only needs to have three characteristics:
- High fixed costs with huge economies of scale
- Have Amazon as the first and best customer
- Can be modularized, to offer infrastructural components to third-parties
Here’s how it works. Amazon invests in a new venture with high fixed costs and economies of scale. It can justify their initial investment and provide scale because Amazon’s existing businesses will be a customer of the new venture. The services are modularized to third-parties, increasing scale and decreasing costs, making the new services even more attractive, further increasing scale and feeding a virtuous and unrelenting cycle.
Here’s a diagram of the model. Note that growth is central to the model.
Supposedly drawn by Bezos on a napkin; also resembles a fried egg (Source: Stratechery)
AWS is the best example of the Amazon model at work. AWS is distant from Amazon’s core e-commerce business. For one, the former is B2B whereas the latter is consumer-facing. With conventional goggles, it’s difficult to see why Amazon launched AWS or why AWS has become so wildly successful. With the lens of the Amazon model, we can understand the beauty of AWS.
Let’s see how AWS fits those three characteristics from earlier:
- Cloud services is an industry defined by high fixed costs with huge economies of scale. It’s expensive to build the infrastructure and buy servers at first, but once that’s done, adding the marginal customer is practically free.
- Amazon.com was the first and best customer of AWS. Amazon.com benefits from free web services and AWS gets a jump-start with the initial scale.
- AWS may be the most modularized service in existence — I counted 124 products across 22 categories. It’s so modularized that any company can use its products, from fast-growing startups to multibillion dollar companies to the CIA.
To summarize, AWS started with Amazon.com as a customer, justifying the initial investment in AWS and providing initial scale. It was then modularized for 3rd parties, increasing scale, which AWS used to invest in more capabilities and reach more businesses, further increasing scale and decreasing costs. Today, AWS is in a league of its own in terms of market share and leadership.
AWS’s market share, execution and vision are unmatched by competitors (Sources: Synergy Research Group & Gartner)
The Amazon model is precisely why AWS is so successful. If you want to learn more about the Amazon model, I’d recommend reading Ben Thompson’s blogStratechery (particularly this one).
Making sense of Whole Foods
I promise to get to vertical farming soon, but first, we need to understand why Amazon acquired Whole Foods. The most common explanations are: 1. AmazonFresh will benefit from selling Whole Foods products 2. Amazon can use Whole Food’s urban, retail space, and 3. Amazon Prime can synergize with Whole Foods’s loyal and affluent customer base. These explanations are reasonable but they misunderstand Amazon’s strategy.
Ben Thompson wrote an excellent explanation for how the Whole Foods acquisition ties into Amazon’s business model. In it, he details how the acquisition is effectively Amazon purchasing a customer to provide scale for their grocery efforts.
Amazon’s food delivery service, AmazonFresh has floundered for the past decade. It hasn’t expanded beyond a few urban centers, nor has it given traditional grocery stores a run for their money. The problem is that AmazonFresh fails criteria #2 of the Amazon model — have Amazon as the first and best customer. As a result, AmazonFresh has never built the scale to become competitive.
With the Whole Foods acquisition, AmazonFresh is re-positioning itself as “Amazon Grocery Services” (AGS). The parallelism with AWS is intentional. AGS’s first, large customer is Whole Foods. With this initial scale, AGS will be competitive and Amazon can justify investing in AGS. AGS will modularize and offer services to other grocery stores, restaurants and customers. With increased scale, costs will go down and AGS will become more competitive.
But Amazon isn’t about being competitive. Amazon is about being dominant. In order for AGS to be dominant, AGS needs a technological advantage over its competitors. This key differentiating factor will be vertical farming.
Vertical Farming’s perfect fit for Amazon
Vertical farming comes in many flavors and forms. For Amazon, I envision warehouses near population centers producing greens and herbs. These warehouses will be highly controlled environments, optimized to produce maximum yields.
Currently, vertical farms like these not economical because of high energy costs for artificial lighting. I’m expecting Amazon to be the one to solve this problem and take vertical farming off the ground. And in case Amazon is looking for a name, I have an idea — “Amazon Vertical Farming” (AVF).
Why boils down to three reasons:
- AVF synergizes well with AGS
Both services cater to urban locales and will scale in lockstep. It’s a perfect union. AVF gives AGS a competitive advantage and improves AGS’s scale. Whole Foods will be AVF’s first and best customer. AVF can be modularized by using AGS to sell produce to other grocery stores, households and restaurants. AVF may not be as perfect of a fit for the Amazon model as AWS, but it’s still a great fit. - Amazon has the know-how for vertical farming
To execute successfully, vertical farming will require developments on both the technological and supply-chain fronts. Amazon is the only player with both. Amazon Robotics can automate much of vertical farming and Amazon Logistics can deliver the product to customers. - CEO and Founder Jeff Bezos wants to
To be honest, this is probably the most important reason of the three. Bezos has personally invested in the vertical farming startup Plenty twice: once in a Series A round in 2016, and again in a Series B round in July 2017 just after the Whole Foods acquisition. Clearly Bezos is a believer in vertical farming.
He also has a track record for taking risks. He launched the experimental drone-delivery services Prime Air and created the spaceflight company Blue Origin. Taking a risk with vertical farming wouldn’t be out of character for him.
Most importantly, what more could the third-richest person on Earth want to do than solve one of the biggest problems facing the planet? Agricultural pollution and food waste are pressing issues. With vertical farming, Bezos can make a significant step forward for humanity in addressing these problems.
What’s next?
How Amazon will enter vertical farming is up to debate. It’s possible that Amazon will enter a partnership with Plenty, the vertical farming start-up Bezos has already invested in. I personally believe Amazon will be much more ambitious and acquire Plenty. It’s also possible that Amazon will develop vertical farming capabilities independently, but I find that unlikely given Bezos’s existing investment in Plenty.
Google searching amazon vertical farming as of 09/25/2017, for future reference
Regardless of how Amazon enters vertical farming, one thing is certain. At the time of writing, Google searching “amazon vertical farming” brings up vertical farming products sold on Amazon, including this book and this indoor vertical garden. The 7th link down is the first one to discuss Bezos’s investment in Plenty. With certainty, I can promise that those search results will change significantly in just the next year or so.
Thanks to Rohan Nagpal for the conversations that led to this piece and reviewing my drafts. This really was a collaborative effort. Thanks, bud.
This Company Wants To Solve The World's Hunger Problem. Here's How
Plenty, a new San Francisco–based startup, hopes to step up to that plate. The Jeff Bezos–backed endeavor, which has raised $200 million to date, is dedicated to bringing healthy food to everyone in the world, thanks to a unique system of vertical farms. Plenty, a new San Francisco–based startup, hopes to step up to that plate. The Jeff Bezos–backed endeavor, which has raised $200 million to date, is dedicated to bringing healthy food to everyone in the world, thanks to a unique system of vertical farms
This Company Wants To Solve The World's Hunger Problem. Here's How
November 9, 2017
While we love bringing you functional recipes and sharing the latest in superfood trends, it's hard to ignore the fact that some people simply don't have access to the most basic elements of healthy food. In line with our newly shared You. We. All. mission, it's abundantly clear that if some—many—of us can't find or purchase healthy food, the system isn't working for all of us, and something needs to change.
Plenty, a new San Francisco–based startup, hopes to step up to that plate. The Jeff Bezos–backed endeavor, which has raised $200 million to date, is dedicated to bringing healthy food to everyone in the world, thanks to a unique system of vertical farms. Vertical farming is the perfect antidote to many of the problems that plague the modern agricultural world: It doesn't require land (it goes up, not out); soil (which is often depleted of nutrients from over-farming); sunlight (special low-energy UV lamps are used); or pesticides (Plenty will seek official organic certification within the next calendar year). While vertical farming is incredibly effective in all types of environments, it's especially change-making in urban regions, where thousands of gallons of fuel are typically used to ship produce from more far-flung farms (the time in transit significantly reduces the nutrient contents of produce as well), and countries with environments that don't typically lend themselves to agriculture (many mountainous and desert regions). Vertical farming crops can yield up to 530 times more than typical fields, a huge boon when it comes to quickly getting vegetables to the world's ever-expanding population.
The company has opened two vertical farms thus far, in the Bay Area and Wyoming, with plans for a third to debut in Seattle in spring 2018. The new warehouse is twice as large as the company's first and will grow 4.5 million pounds of greens annually—enough to feed nearly 200,000 Americans. With its large investment, the company hopes to eventually have a vertical farm in every major city in the world.
While there is speculation about the company's future plans—rumors include direct-to-consumer delivery done by robots, among other things—one thing is certain: Plenty is poised to quickly revolutionize the way the world eats.
Liz Moody is the senior food editor at mindbodygreen. She's contributed to Glamour, Women's Health, Food & Wine, goop, and many other publications and is the woman behind the...
Board Approves Conceptual Plans For Dutch Style Hydroponic Greenhouses, Main Street Market
Board Approves Conceptual Plans For Dutch Style Hydroponic Greenhouses
- December 4, 2017
- By TERRY FLORES tflores@kenoshanews.com
PLEASANT PRAIRIE — The Village Board on Monday night approved the master conceptual plans for a hydroponic greenhouse project east of Highway H and a proposed development that would include a 50,000-square-foot medical facility at Green Bay Road and 104th Street.
Prairie Produce Farm LLC is expected to break ground in the spring on its first greenhouse, a 15.3-acre building, on 54.5 acres of a 65-acre site in the Green Hill Farm neighborhood at 122nd Street east of 88th Avenue. The site is just to the northeast of the village’s recycling center.
The $3 million Dutch-style hydroponic greenhouse operation also includes plans for another 20-acre greenhouse that would be constructed in a second phase as early as 2020, depending upon market conditions, according to Jim Hershenbach who represents Prairie Produce, a sister company of DeFresco Produce and Sunrite Greenhouses in Ontario, Canada.
The Green Hill Farm neighborhood had originally been planned for eventual rezoning for residential units. Because of the greenhouse proposal, however, the agricultural zoning currently in place will remain intact, according to Jean Werbie-Harris, the village’s community development director.
The greenhouse development would be the first of its kind in the state and would sell produce such as tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers and strawberries to area grocery outlets. Hershenbach said the high-tech hydroponic greenhouse operation is unique to the Dutch, who perfected such growing methods due to the destruction of soils. The massive hydroponic system will allow non-GMO plantings to grow vertically within maximum height limits of the greenhouses.
While there will be no retail sales to the public onsite, Hershenbach said the greenhouses would be open to visitors and schools for planned educational tours, and the company would partner with area schools and colleges for student internships.
The greenhouses would employ 30 to 40 full-time workers once fully operational, according to Prairie Produce.
The board also approved detailed conceptual plans for the Main Street Market development in the Highpoint Neighborhood, which will accommodate a four-story medical building for Froedtert South on a 22-acre parcel at Green Bay Road and 104th Street.
The development proposal also includes a convenience store, a grocery store and a mix of other retail and commercial services.
Froedtert’s medical building would be the first of six lots to be developed by Bear Development.
Trustee Michael Serpe expressed concerns about traffic safety at 104th Street at the south end of the development and whether there were other options, including the use of Jelly Belly Lane as another outlet. Werbie-Harris said a traffic impact analysis by the Wisconsin Department of Transportation is currently underway and is among several options being studied.
Werbie-Harris said Froedtert representatives will also be presenting more detailed building plans for the medical facility in January.
Construction is planned to begin early next year and be completed by the winter of 2018-19.
New Start-Ups Aiming to Make Singapore As The First Food Sustainable City
Another Makanpreneur start-up, E-Farmer Market, is building an online platform to connect hobby farmers with the local community. Farmers can trade their home grown foods with their neighbours, giving visibility to Singapore’s underground homegrown farmers, and reduce food wastage by redistributing food surpluses.
New Start-Ups Aiming to Make Singapore As The First Food Sustainable City
By Laxmi Iyer
December 4, 2017
PC: Unsplash/Carissa Gan
9 in 10 Singaporeans are concerned with food waste, yet hardly any one is doing anything about it. A survey from the National Environment Agency showed that an average Singaporean generates 140kg of food waste a year, an equivalent of throwing two bowls of rice in the trash every day.
Is this because Singaporeans deem food sustainability as something far-fetched and unattainable?
Food waste has risen by an appalling 50% from 2005 to 2014, mounting to a gruesome 788,600 tonnes of food waste per year in the little red dot. While this figure has since dropped by 0.39% in 2016, a mere 0.39% drop belies a fact that there is still much room for improvement.
Just last month, Channel News Asia announced Singapore Airline’s effort to incorporate more sustainable ingredients in its in-flight meals to promoting environmental sustainability and support for local farmers.
While corporate businesses are inching to be more environmentally conscious, Singapore start-ups are taking it up a notch, with many championing food sustainability at the forefront of their businesses, tackling the problem of national food waste on a much larger scale.
Makanpreneur- Southeast Asia’s first Food Sustainability Accelerator was launched on the 18 November 2017. Four innovative food start-ups were selected, out of sixteen applications, for a four-month training programme by UNFRAMED in partnership with Croeni Foundation, National Youth Council, and FoodXervices. The accelerator program aims to help tech start-ups addressing food sustainability challenges to scale their impact, by offering comprehensive support including rigorous training, coaching programs, funding and the largest impact-network in Singapore.
So what are these start-ups looking at, to improve food sustainability in Singapore?
Some Makanpreneur start-ups are fostering local food production looking to make Singapore -the first food-resilient country, a real challenge, given its land scarcity. Ecolution looks at the next-generation of polyculture farms, where smart precision agriculture technologies are implemented in farming multiple crops in the same space. FarmX has developed a full Internet-of-Things (IOT) system including sensors and automated smart-irrigation, so that urban farming can be made cost-effective, with minimal manpower involvement. Both are currently piloting their solutions with local farms.
In contrast, some start-ups turn online to reduce food waste. Another Makanpreneur start-up, E-Farmer Market, is building an online platform to connect hobby farmers with the local community. Farmers can trade their homegrown foods with their neighbours, giving visibility to Singapore’s underground homegrown farmers, and reduce food wastage by redistributing food surpluses. Similarly, Lasmin has launched an online marketplace with both an Android and an iPhone app, bringing buyers and sellers of perishable food items together, thus reducing information asymmetry and food waste.
Makanpreneur ends on the 28 March next year with a presentation to an audience composed of invited guests from the food industry and impact investment space. The most promising teams will receive a funding of up to $10,000 from Croeni Foundation. Through UNFRAMED’s rigorous training & coaching sessions covering pitching, branding and digital marketing, impact assessment and more, the start-ups will see their businesses scale up to bring even more impact into Singapore’s food sustainability.
Kent To Get Large, Indoor Organic Produce Farm
Kent To Get Large, Indoor Organic Produce Farm
- By Steve Hunter
- Friday, November 10, 2017
Once known decades ago for its many fields of greens as the “Lettuce Capital of the World,” Kent’s about to get its first large indoor organic produce farm.
Plenty, a San Francisco-based firm whose investors include Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon.com and Kent’s Blue Origin aerospace manufacturer, announced plans this month to open a 100,000-square-foot facility next year near the Amazon Fresh grocery delivery service site along 84th Avenue South.
“Seattle’s emphasis on delicious, healthy food and energy and water efficiency makes the area a natural fit for our next Plenty farm,” said Matt Barnard, CEO and co-founder of Plenty, in a media release. “At nearly 100,000 square feet, Seattle will be home to our first full-scale farm and help set the standard by which our global farm network makes locally grown, backyard-quality produce accessible to everyone. We’re excited about what’s next and look forward to building the Seattle team.”
Plenty’s farm is expected to open in the first half of next year with about 50 employees, including indoor farming engineers, organic growers, and operations experts. Produce grown will be available to Seattle and Vancouver British Columbia area consumers beginning in mid-2018.
“This is a grow we can all get behind,” Ben Wolters, city economic and community development director, said to the City Council at its Tuesday meeting, in reference to the city’s ban against marijuana businesses. “They grow organic produce with LED lights, and yield 350 times what a field of similar size would produce.”
The indoor farm will produce about 4.5 million pounds of greens annually and grow 300 types of produce year-round, Wolters said.
The location near Amazon Fresh, which opened its Kent warehouse this year, makes for a natural connection.
“The idea is Amazon Fresh will buy from here and then ship it out as part of your order,” Wolters said. “They can harvest produce within hours of your order.”
As the amount of domestic acreage that produces affordable fresh fruit and vegetables shrinks while labor and land costs sustain their perpetual rise, Plenty’s expansion is critical to making local, hyper-fresh and organic produce available and affordable for people everywhere, company officials said.
Plenty’s farms, which the company is developing in or near communities around the world, will deliver industry-leading yields of local, backyard-quality produce that’s completely GMO and pesticide-free while remaking agriculture to be both predictable and perpetual given the demands of 7.3 billion people worldwide. Plenty officials say the farms give plants the perfect environment for amazing flavor, use 1 percent of the water and a tiny fraction of the land of conventional agriculture.
The company’s first field-scale farm is in South San Francisco and will start delivering produce to local Bay Area customers within hours of harvest by the end of this year.
“It’s very cutting edge, and the technical and business magazines are covering it,” Wolters said. “It highlights Kent where innovation and opportunity can thrive.”
Why Some Young Workers Are Leaving White-Collar Jobs for Farming
Why Some Young Workers Are Leaving White-Collar Jobs for Farming
December 4, 2017 | Gina Belli
There was a time in the United States when it was very common to work as a farmer. In 1820, 72 percent of the workforce was employed in “farm occupations.” By the late 1980s, that figured had fallen to just about 2 percent.
The industry is aging, too. According to the Labor Department, today the median age of farmers in the U.S. is 55.9 years old. But, that might be starting to change. These days, a growing number of young workers are going into farming, and they’re often leaving behind desk jobs to do it.
Farmers Are Getting Younger
The number of farmers aged 25 to 34 increased 2.2 percent between 2007 and 2012, according to the latest U.S. Department of Agriculture data, per the Chicago Tribune. This is only the second time in 100 years that the number of farmers under the age of 35 has increased. These young people are already starting to have a real impact on this challenging industry.
“There’s real power in the young people and what they’re bringing to this, and to the agriculture, which is a tedious, tiresome, labor-intensive, and low-wage industry,” Henry Gordon-Smith of Blue Planet Consulting told Civil Eats.
There aren’t enough young farmers in this new generation to replace the ones who are retiring. But, the shift could “contribute to the growth of the local food movement and could help preserve the place of midsize farms in the rural landscape,” according to the Chicago Tribune article.
The number of farmers aged 25 to 34 increased 2.2 percent between 2007 and 2012.CLICK TO TWEET
They Aren’t Your Grandfathers’ Farmers
Many of these young farmers didn’t grown up on farms, as farmers often did in years past. Perhaps that’s why they’re open to doing things a little differently. This group is far more likely to grow organically, operate small farms, diversify crops or animals and to be involved in community supported agriculture (CSA) programs and farmers markets.
Other young farm workers are finding work in places like warehouse farms. Indoor agriculture, which utilizes techniques like vertical farming, hydroponics and aquaponics, is expanding in areas in and around cities.
“Food jobs have steadily left our cities for the past 100 years, and local food demand is driving production that is now bringing some of these jobs back to the communities in which their food is produced,” Paul Lightfoot, CEO of BrightFarms, told Civil Eats. “This has no downside for urban markets—it only increases jobs and economic activities.”
What They’re Leaving Behind
Perhaps these young farmers aren’t just moving toward rural farms but also away from office life, and the workday grind that goes with it. Of course, farming is unbelievably hard work. But, it’s a very different kind of experience than what workers encounter in white-collar employment.
“I wanted to have a positive impact, and that just felt very distant in my other jobs out of college,” 32-year-old farmer Liz Whitehurst told the Chicago Tribune. “In farming, on the other hand, you make a difference. Your impact is immediate.”
More than 50 percent of millennials say they would take a pay cut in order to find work that’s aligned with their values. And, 75 percent say they feel that businesses are focused on their own agendas not on improving society. One way to reconcile this is to leave office life behind and blaze a new trail.
Some of these young workers have even been bold enough to leave city life behind and try their hand at rural midsize farming. They might not have the numbers to replace the farmers who came before them, but they might revolutionize our agricultural system just the same.
Do You Know What You're Worth?
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Tortuga AgTech Raises $2.4m Seed Round for Indoor Ag Robotics
BREAKING EXCLUSIVE: Tortuga AgTech Raises $2.4m Seed Round for Indoor Ag Robotics
DECEMBER 4, 2017 EMMA COSGROVE
Tortuga AgTech, a Denver-based robotics startup targeting controlled-environment fruit and vegetable growers has raised a $2.4 million Seed round.
Tortuga Agtech is developing robotic systems for harvesting fresh produce in controlled environments, from indoor hydroponics to greenhouses, starting with strawberries.
“Our products will enable advanced growing methods to compete with scale agriculture, which means growers will be able to grow better produce that’s also better for the planet,” says the company’s website.
The round was led by early-stage hardware VC Root Ventures and closed in September. Root Ventures is also an investor inMomentum Machines, San Francisco’s burger-making robot company, which raised $18.4 million in June.
Also participating in this round were Silicon Valley tech VCs Susa Ventures and Haystack, data-focused firm AME Cloud Ventures, AI and robotics VC Grit Labs, the Stanford-StartX Fund and SVG Partners, which runs the Salinas Valley-based Thrive Agtech Accelerator. AME Cloud is also an investor Zume Pizza, a pizza delivery company in the Bay Area with a robot for a chef, which raised $48 million in October.
Harvesting of row crops has been automated for decades, but harvesting of specialty crops, like nuts, fruits, and vegetables, remains an elusive skill for farm robotics startups. Not only do these crops vary greatly in size, height, and color, they can also be more delicate and require not just a light touch in picking, but immediate assessment and packing by size or quality.
Though high-tech indoor agriculture is ripe for robotics interventions because of the easier and more stable working conditions compared to the field, not many robotics startups have emerged servicing this kind of growing.
Spread is a Japanese indoor vertical farming company that will open an automated lettuce farm in early 2018 allowing for a 50% reduction in human labor, according to the company. Transplanting seedlings, managing the growth process, and harvesting will all be automated, according to the company’s website.
South San Francisco-based vertical farm Plenty’s CEO told Business Insider that the company uses tiny robots in its seeding process. Though the company is not yet commercially growing strawberries, CEO Matt Barnard told AgFunderNews this is in the works.
Most operating vertical farms today are growing only leafy greens and microgreens due to the short growing cycles and high yields. There are just a few growing strawberries such as Japan’s Ichigo Company.
Greenhouses, however, are gaining market share of strawberry cultivation worldwide. Though greenhouse-growing of strawberries in the US has not yet taken off, 24% of strawberries grown in the Netherlands, the worlds second-largest exporter of food (by value) grow in a greenhouse according to the Dutch Central Bureau of Statistics.
Also working on harvesting strawberries, but in outdoor environments, are Agrobot and Harvest Croo
Indoor Ag-Con Asia Returns to Singapore, Introduces Indoor AG Pitch Competition with $150,000 In Cash Grant Prizes
NOVEMBER 27, 2017 BY RONY DELUCIA
Indoor Ag-Con Asia Returns to Singapore, Introduces Indoor AG Pitch Competition with $150,000 In Cash Grant Prizes
Indoor Ag-Con
Indoor Ag-Con covers growing using hydroponic, aeroponic & aquaponic techniques. It is hosting a 2-day conference, trade show & pitch competition on Jan 16-17.
Still buzzing from @indooragcon Asia! Thanks for the great event.” — @Galactic Farms
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SINGAPORE, SG, November 27, 2017 /EINPresswire.com/ —
The indoor agriculture industry has grown rapidly as consumer demand for fresh, local produce anytime, anywhere is forcing shifts in global supply chains. Indoor Ag-Con is the premier event covering the technology of growing crops in indoor systems, using hydroponic, aeroponic and aquaponic techniques. It is returning to Singapore for the third time in January 2018. This years’ event will be focused on accelerating innovation in the industry, in areas as diverse as plant biology and artificial intelligence.
Our two-day event will be hosted at the Marina Bay Sands, Singapore on January 16-17, 2018, and will include an exhibition hall and an exciting lineup of speakers including representatives from AEssense, Eco Insect Farming, Microsoft, Sanan Bio and Urban Crop Solutions, among many others. We will be covering a broad range of crop types – such as leafy greens, mushrooms, insects, aquaculture and medicinal crops – as well as technologies ranging from artificial intelligence to LED lighting to control systems. Participants will receive an exclusive hard copy of the newest edition in our popular white paper series in the event gift bag. Participants will have the chance to network during the day, through our event app and at our popular after party on the first evening of the event. The event is sponsored by Fresh Box Farms, Upgrown Farming, and Urban Crop Solutions.
For the first time, Indoor Ag-Con Asia’s exhibition hall will include country pavilions, with companies from Canada, Japan, Singapore, the Netherlands able to represent their home countries at the event. Further details on joining a country pavilion can be found at indoor.ag/Asia.
Our events have long supported entrepreneurs in this fast-growing industry, for instance, we sponsored the first Startup Weekend Singapore to include an indoor agriculture focus in 2017. We are taking this commitment one step further in 2018 with an indoor agriculture pitch competition – Indoor Ag-Ignite – to find the most innovative new ideas globally in indoor agriculture. The competition is open to any team or company of under 40 employees developing or deploying technologies for the indoor agriculture industry. Three winning teams will receive prize packages including Startup SG grants of S$50,000 per team thanks to the sponsorship of SPRING Singapore. Startup SG grants are divided into two parts; a S$25,000 non-dilutive cash grant and a further S$25,000 grant with an option to convert into equity at the next institutional fundraising.
We’re accepting applications to pitch on our website until January 8, 2018. The initial round of pitches will take place on January 15, 2018 at Marina Bay Sands, and a panel of three judges will select five finalists to pitch to our entire Indoor Ag-Con audience on January 17, 2018. A panel of judges will select the three winners. Please visit our website at indoor.ag/pitch for more information.
Participant Feedback: @Galactic Farms “Still buzzing from @indooragcon Asia! Thanks for the great event.”
Indoor Ag-Con, which hosts meetings in Las Vegas and Philadelphia in addition to Singapore, is the leading convener of growers, corporate executives, entrepreneurs, policy makers, and investors involved in the growth of the sector. Our audience includes greenhouse and vertical farm growers, technology companies, executives from the food and beverage sector, venture firms, startups and established urban farmers.
Since it was founded in 2013, Indoor Ag-Con has captured an international audience at all its, attracting some of the top names in the business. Events have welcomed over 2,250 participants from more than 20 countries.
Newbean Capital, the host of the conference is a registered investment advisor; some of its clients or potential clients may participate in the conference. The Company is ably assisted in the event’s production by Rachelle Razon, Michael Nelson and Sarah Smith of Origin Event Planning.
3rd Annual Indoor Ag-Con Asia
Date – January 16-17, 2017
Place – Marina Bay Sands, Singapore
Registration – currently open to the general public from US$399
Features – Two-day seminar, with keynote speakers, exhibition hall, after-party, and pitch competition
For more information, please visit www.indoor.ag/asia or call +1.775.623.7116
Nicola Kerslake
Newbean Capital
7756237116
email us here
More Urban Farms, Rooftop Gardens in Singapore With Enhanced Greenery Scheme
More Urban Farms, Rooftop Gardens in Singapore With Enhanced Greenery Scheme
Urban farms, like this one at Raffles City, help to optimise under-utilised roof spaces. (Photo: Edible Garden City)
SINGAPORE: Urban farms and communal rooftop food gardens might soon be a more common sight in Singapore, with the enhancement of an urban greenery scheme.
This was announced by Second Minister for National Development Desmond Lee on Thursday (Nov 9), at the opening of greenery and landscape design event GreenUrbanScape Asia.
The Landscaping for Urban Spaces and High-Rises (LUSH) programme, which aims to replace greenery lost during a building’s development or redevelopment, will be enhanced to improve both the quality and quantity of urban greenery, Mr. Lee said.
This includes encouraging property developers to house urban gardens and communal rooftop gardens in their buildings and increase landscaping on walls and roofs - which can also help lower ambient temperature.
The Tree House condominium in Bukit Panjang has green walls that are designed to reduce ambient temperature. (Photo: Finbarr Fallon)
“Such features have been gaining popularity in our urban landscape, as many Singaporeans have a keen interest in farming and gardening,” said Mr Lee, who is also the Minister for Social and Family Development.
The enhanced LUSH programme will encourage more people to take up urban farming and gardening near their offices and homes, while allowing developers to better utilise rooftop space, he added.
First introduced in 2009, the scheme has contributed to more than 130 hectares of greenery so far, or the equivalent of about 210 football fields.
GREENERY DENSITY FRAMEWORK INTRODUCED
A framework to assess the volume of greenery will also be introduced under the LUSH scheme, with the green plot ratio standards to outline the density of greenery required in a development.
“In this way, developers will be encouraged to consider not just the amount of landscaped area provided in their projects, but also how lush the greenery will be,” Mr Lee said.
The announcement comes as Singapore ramps up efforts to inject more greenery in spaces across the island, with a target of 200 hectares of rooftop greenery by 2030 set out in the Sustainable Singapore Blueprint. Currently, there are around 100 hectares of skyrise greenery across the country, or the equivalent of more than 100 football fields.
The Lee Kong Chian Natural History Museum has planter boxes integrated into its facade. (Photo: Finbarr Fallon)
ROOF GARDENS HOME TO “DIVERSE RANGE OF WILDLIFE”
Mr Lee also highlighted a new study, which found 110 species of birds and butterflies on roof gardens across the island, representing 13 and 18 per cent of the total number of bird and butterfly species in Singapore.
Jointly conducted by the National Parks Board and National University of Singapore at 30 rooftop gardens over 20 months, the study also found 24 species of rare or uncommon birds and butterflies. Khoo Teck Puat hospital was found to have the highest number of species recorded, with 61 birds and 37 butterfly species.
“This joint study suggests that with careful design planning, urban roof gardens can play host to a diverse range of wildlife, and help complement the equally important work of natural habitat conservation and enhancement,” Mr Lee said.
At the event, 26 developments were also recognized for their efforts in greening landscapes, 14 of which received the Skyrise Greenery Awards.
Launched in 2008, the biannual awards aim to recognize excellence in landscape architecture in Singapore.
Source: CNA/cy
Why Did IKEA Invest in AeroFarms and What is Next For This New Agrifood Tech Investor?
In October, New Jersey indoor farming group AeroFarms announced that is had closed its Series D round on $40 million with a new, eye-catching investor in Swedish furniture giant IKEA Group.
Why Did IKEA Invest in AeroFarms and What is Next For This New Agrifood Tech Investor?
DECEMBER 4, 2017 | EMMA COSGROVE
In October, New Jersey indoor farming group AeroFarms announced that is had closed its Series D round on $40 million with a new, eye-catching investor in Swedish furniture giant IKEA Group.
The investment is part and parcel of an initiative at IKEA, also famous for bringing Swedish food to a global audience, to reimagine its food program with sustainability as the driving force, helmed by managing director of IKEA Food Services Michael la Cour.
IKEA’s iconic meatballs and packaged food products are headed for a shake-up, says la Cour, so we caught up with him to find out what’s in store and how startups might play a role. So far, this year, IKEA has participated in the AeroFarms Series D (through its entity IKEA Group) and the company has also invited Israeli fruit fly farm and insect protein startup Flying SpArk to join IKEA’s first boot camp and startup accelerator in September. IKEA is also a shareholder in Swedish plant-based meat and dairy alternative food manufacturer BoFood (through IKEA Greentech).
You said at the Sustainology Summit that we can expect radical change to the IKEA food program, which sounds to me like nothing is off the table. Is that right?
That’s absolutely right. At IKEA, we’re interested in everything our customers are interested in. And if you look at the food business, I think it’s undergoing a radical change, isn’t it? I think you see a lot of interesting movement in the food business from a retail perspective — new ideas that are popping up, cross-collaborations from celebrity chefs to the more mass-based food industry. I think it would be absolutely foolish to exclude anything at this point.
That’s the way we’ve approached the furniture side as well, and how we work with innovation. It’s by always trying to think with ambition, and being at the forefront of things, and collaboration is the absolute key in this, and that’s what we’re going to apply to the food business, as well.
With that in mind, how are you prioritizing the changes you plan to make? Are you using sustainability and environmental issues as your priorities, or are you using your own food sales as your guide?
Health and sustainability throughout the value chain is what guides us. It should be evident in the range we offer. It should be evident in how we develop things, and it should be evident in how we ultimately source things, as well. Now, this is, of course, a journey. We’re in the early stages of it, but it’s those things that sort of become our priority in everything that we do.
Michael la Cour
I think the IKEA Group investment in AeroFarms, is one such example on how to, in early stages, invest in vertical farming that would significantly change the environmental impact, let’s say, of how we would get fresh produce to a store in the future. I think even Flying SpArk, as well, is such one example.
It may be early days for mass consumption of fruit flies as a protein, but it’s in these early days that I believe companies like ourselves with 660 million customers every year through our food program need to step in.
Is investing in early-stage companies the way you plan on interacting with startups that in the future?
Yeah, absolutely, and I think we’ll find out. The startup IKEA Greentech invested in recently, BoFood in Sweden, is the first pilot. I think as we learn, we will start to understand at what stage of a startup is most suitable for working with us and how to define, in the early stages, the scalability opportunities. But again, when it comes to sustainability and health, we firmly believe that startups and mid-sized companies are the way forward for us.
We’ve also, for the first time, tried to sort of act like an incubator and see where that leads, so it’s a test and trial, if you will, for us as well, on how to incorporate that into a bigger machine more seamlessly, without having to go in and acquire and so on, but utilizing the resources we have, the investment capabilities and funding. That’s what we bring to it and they bring the innovation, the spirit, and the great ideas.
How deep do you expect or plan these relationships to go? Do you intend to, or can you imagine eventually being a customer or an acquirer?
Yes. I think actually we can operate on that whole scale, but I would always aim for a healthy split on that. I think there is a business opportunity in being a company that can facilitate startups, the corporation will launch products in the store directly. That scalability within a short timeline is our number one priority. At the same time, I also believe very much in pairing up with startups, tech companies, and on backward in our supply chain, which we are currently restructuring.
There are a lot of companies out there who make consumer hydroponic grow units that are the size of a wine fridge. And there are also companies out there making restaurant and retail installations using that technology. Why did you choose to go for a seller of food, and not a seller of growing systems?
Well, I think it’s more a matter of just what came first, really. IKEA actually launched a home cultivation product that enables you to do this in your own home.
Now, when it comes to the installation in the stores, we do have actual discussions on whether we can do it. The thing is that with the enormous flow of customers that we have in an average store, we have to find the practical way of doing this.
We would not do it only for show, but try to find a structure where it would actually work.
What is IKEA doing on the problem of food waste?
When it comes to food waste, we identified some years back that with 660 billion customers, of course, we can make a major impact. When you think about the business in general, there are a lot of things we can do, not just from a food perspective, but we sell food containers, we actually sell appliances.
I think the overall UN goal is 50% reduction of food waste by 2030, and we’ve tried to be more ambitious and reduce all our waste in our restaurants and bistros by 50% by 2020, knowing that some of the restaurants operate in more immature markets concerning food waste handling.
To help us with that, we have engaged with Winnow and LeanPath. Basically, it’s software that helps us to identify what we’re throwing away. It describes what we’re throwing away, it helps the awareness of our workers tremendously, and it’s also already in some of the stores, brought us down to very close to our goal.
Was food waste what brought you around to being interested in Flying SpArk?
Put it like this: food waste of course is an essential area to address, not only because it’s actually an unnecessary waste of 30% of all calories produced, but there is a need to feed a lot more people in the future, and that also means that you need to actually look for alternative proteins to what you have today. When we add the process of applications, I think it was some 1,000 companies, not food companies only by any means, but it was about 1,000 companies that applied to IKEA to be part of the bboot campinitiative. This was the one that stood out from an alternative protein perspective.
The startup Flying SpArk applied, and they caught our eyes with the product proposal. It wasn’t the first thing that came to my mind when we talk alternative proteins. I’ve seen, like most people, the different grasshoppers and what you see out there, but this was a new take.
Is your interest in alternative proteins driving you toward a more plant-based menu? Are meatballs in danger?
I think what we see is that the direction of health and sustainability to me does not mean that we diverge completely from meat. For me, it means we start moving towards a much wider and much more exciting offering of plant-based products.
So what are the areas that you’re most interested in for the next like year? What are you looking at right now?
Yeah. I cannot really reveal what we’re looking at right now, but I can tell you in general terms what we’re interested in. I think meat alternatives is a major area that we are very, very interested in. There are of course already a few bigger players in the market.
I think there is both space and need for more than that. I do believe that the area of meat replacements, meat substitutes, is the area that we need to develop. Meat consumption has such a major footprint when it comes to CO2 gas emissions. We need to find alternatives that are still delicious, appealing, and that we can get in at price points that customers will by nature choose because they’re just as good if not better. So I see a huge need there to get players in and get supply up. The demand is there I believe, but the supply is what we need to get up very, very quickly. That is for me the absolute major movement that I would like to move and engage with in the short-term.
Skyscraper Farms Could Be The Answer To The Global Food Crisis
Mainstream agricultural practices have a few major problems in need of innovative solutions. For one, industrial farming practices are hard on the environment. Farms emitted 6 billion tons of greenhouse gases in 2011, or about 13 percent of total global emissions
Source: PLANTAGON
Skyscraper Farms Could Be The Answer To The Global Food Crisis
BY TESSA LOVE
November 6, 2017
Mainstream agricultural practices have a few major problems in need of innovative solutions. For one, industrial farming practices are hard on the environment. Farms emitted 6 billion tons of greenhouse gases in 2011, or about 13 percent of total global emissions. That makes the agricultural sector the world’s second-largest emitter, after the energy sector. Additionally, 38 percent of the world’s total land area was used for agriculture in 2007 and agriculture is responsible for over 70 percent of global freshwater consumption.
On top of that, the way we grow our food now is not sustainable to feed a growing global population, which is expected to reach 10 billion by 2050. We'd have to use more land, more environmentally harmful farming practices and ship more food across continents and the globe, particularly to reach people in concentrated urban centers. In short, it's not realistic. And facing this fact, we have to come up with better solutions.
Swedish company Plantagon believes they may have found an answer. The company has developed plans for "plantscrapers," massive vertical greenhouses meant for growing large-scale organic farms in cities, using less energy and and a smaller carbon footprint than the way we grow food now.
The "plantscraper" is exactly what it sounds like: a futuristic-looking glass skyscraper filled with an indoor farm and some office space for the workers. After years of research and development, Plantagon is now working to make its first prototype a reality: the company is currently crowdsourcing funds to construct a 16-story building called The World Food Building in Linköping, Sweden, which would serve as an international model for industrial urban farming.
The prototype—and all subsequent plantscrapers—would use Plantagon-patented technology to produce 500 metric tons of food every year in a climate-controlled environment. Half the energy used in food production would be recycled and used to heat the floors in the office portion of the building. Plantagon estimates that it could save 1,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions and 50 million liters of water compared to traditional farming methods.
Urban farming has long been looked to as a potential solution to our impending global food crisis. But until now, urban farming has been on a much smaller and more localized scale. Plantagon wants to change that.
"Our vertical farming technology is a solution to the food crisis caused by our human population growing so rapidly," the company said in a press release. "We are growing, the earth is not and vertical farming will make the difference."
Bringing Sustainable Farming Home
Bringing Sustainable Farming Home
I say farming, you say “Midwest”. It’s no secret that the Midwest, and Indiana in particular, serve as the agricultural epicenter for the United States.
Indiana is also home to Purdue University, a school who’s agricultural and technology programs serve as cornerstones for the institution. It is only fitting then that their students are behind Hydro Grow: an innovative blend of farming and technology that ushers in new-age growing.
Hydro Grow has created a commercialized hydroponic grow tank that is designed to fit seamlessly into the average home. This tank can be customized to grow the produce desired by the consumer, directly impacting the supply/demand chain of food production. Rather than settling for the produce items that are in season, or wasting money and soil on vegetables that no one will buy, Hydro Grow’s Gropod generates a tailored harvest.
In one of their most recent iterations, the Hydro Grow team has further integrated technology into the pod, equipping it with advanced analytics capabilities. Using complex algorithms, the pod will identify what plants are growing within and tailor the environment to maximize growth, making real-time adjustments based on the data stream. A mobile application allows remote monitoring, adjustments, cleaning and alerts to reach the user no matter when and no matter where.
This innovative approach to farming not only allows a family to have a tailored produce selection but contributes to the overall sustainability initiative. The ability to shrink and mass produce a practical solution to hunger has wide-ranging implications for a variety of global issues, including world hunger. It allows plants to find a nurturing environment in even the harshest of climates.
Connected farming is just one of the many ways IoT is disrupting established industries. Learn more at our IndyIoT Conference!
Clare Maher
Clare Maher is the Product Marketing Manager at ClearObject. A graduate of Saint Mary’s College (#gobelles), Clare can usually be found yelling at the screen during a Notre Dame game, quoting any film ever made or touring the Indy restaurant scene.
Village Farms: For The Good of The Earth
Village Farms: For The Good of The Earth
For the technology-driven growers of Village Farms, cutting-edge sustainable practices yield a bumper crop of success.
The bright red cherry tomato bursts with a pop as you sink your teeth into it, and for a few delightful seconds it’s still summertime—even though it’s winter. You take another bite to make sure you’re not imagining that freshness, and, sure enough, it’s just as bright, tart, and sweet as the first. The taste takes you back to your childhood, when you’d steal tomatoes from a neighbor’s garden, helping yourself to another, and another…
As summer fades and the air grows colder you’ve become accustomed to the average pinkish-orange globes posing as tomatoes that start filling the shelves of the produce department. Thankfully, Village Farms has no interest in growing average produce, and its environmentally-friendly growing methods allow for fresh, high-quality produce year-round. In fact, nothing that the North American-based company does is anywhere near average, and that’s not just great for veggie lovers—it’s great for the planet, too.
As the premier greenhouse grower of tomatoes, bell peppers, cucumbers, and other crops in North America, Village Farms’ dedication to sustainability, technology, and innovation shows with every pristine vegetable picked. Launched in Pennsylvania in 1988, Village Farms has grown from a single 10-acre greenhouse operation to a vertically-integrated agricultural enterprise.
“On day one it wasn’t the plan,” admitted Mike DeGiglio, Village Farms’ President and CEO. “Our first crop was half peppers, half tomatoes, and our focus was on being a grower.”
When that first crop was rejected by a surly Northeastern produce broker for being “no good,” DeGiglio ignored the slight.
“We hired a sales guy the next day and never looked back.”
New Day, New Business Model
When the company began, all the disciplines in traditional produce companies were separate.
“The grower is the grower, who went to a labor manager to pick the crop, then to a processor who graded and sorted it. Then that’s sent to a trucking company, then to a broker. That broker would send it to a retailer,” DeGiglio recounted. “We asked ourselves, ‘why can’t we do all of it?’”
The answer was, “We can.” Today, Village Farms is an end-to-end operation.
“Today we have 270 skus and 35 tomato varieties,” he noted. “We slowly added more salespeople, distribution centers, and transportation. We became a vertically integrated producer. We have our own engineering, even though there are plenty of companies that build greenhouses.”
The company built a sophisticated greenhouse in West Texas, in part of the Chihuahuan Desert.
“It’s not quite a biosphere but pretty close. It’s 110 degrees all summer and only 20 degrees in winter,” he chuckled, a trace of awe in his voice. “Nothing grows there but tumbleweeds and lizards. We’re like an oasis—it blows people away.”
Today, the company owns and operates seven facilities in British Columbia and Texas, and provides operational and technical support and logistics services for more than an additional 150 acres of greenhouse production throughout Canada and Mexico.
The Greenhouse Difference
Greenhouse growing is far superior to conventional land farming, producing better crops with markedly less waste and dramatically less environmental impact.
“It’s a combination of food safety, quality of the product, shelf life of the product, and taste—it’s consistent, available 365 days a year, and not just seasonal,” DeGiglio explained.
Indoor growing is the premier method of sustainable production and allows Village Farms to use integrated pest management as biological control, meaning they release good bugs to combat bad bugs instead of using chemical pesticides. “Of all agricultural products, proteins like beef and chicken, row crops, and fruits and vegetables, I think greenhouse growing is by far the most sustainable type of agriculture there is, even over organic growing methods,” he said.
“When you are in a controlled environment greenhouse, utilizing the same resources an outdoor farmer would use like sunlight and water, you can do it in an environment that is much more efficient and productive,” he added.
These carefully monitored environments offer protection against elements typical farmers have no control over like wind, rain, and extreme heat and cold.
“We can produce output that has 30 times more yield per acre than crops grown on farmland. A 100-acre greenhouse produces the equivalent of a 3,000-acre farm. And you can locate a greenhouse close to anywhere depending on the technology you use.”
Earth First
Village Farms’ approach to sustainability abides by a commitment to preserve the earth’s resources for future generations.
“The way Village Farms fits that definition of sustainability is: one, we don’t use soil, so it takes a lot less land for the same amount of crops. Two, we don’t take any nutrients out of the soil. Three, we don’t leachate any of our solutions into the ground,” DeGiglio enumerated.
“It took 500,000 years for the first one billion human beings to be on the planet. There are now seven-plus billion of us. The demographics say that by 2050, there will be a 30 percent increase of the population of the planet. That’s 2.5 billion people. Whether that number is up or down by twenty percent doesn’t matter,” he posited. “How is agriculture going to feed that amount of people with the same amount of water? It has to come from efficiency and sustainability.”
The company chose growing regions in British Columbia and Texas based on the climate conditions most favorable to producing consistently superior quality crops.
“You can’t move your farm to take advantage of a better climate,” he mused. “In Texas, we grow at the southernmost latitude at the highest elevation in the U.S. We are at a 5,000-foot elevation. We do that because of the warm days and cool nights.”
Natural gas is used to heat the greenhouse at night.
“The boilers designed for greenhouses over the past three decades are so efficient and clean, the carbon dioxide (CO2) that’s released is food grade. We capture all of it, and pump it into the greenhouse,” he revealed. “As you remember from ninth grade biology, plants take in CO2 and make oxygen. Not only do we not extract the CO2 into the atmosphere, we convert it into oxygen. That can’t be done outside.”
Village Farms produces only non-GMO crops, grown in an organic medium made of coconut husks. Crops are vine ripened and hand-picked at the exact right moment for the absolute best taste.
“A lot of field growers pick tomatoes when they’re green,” he said. “If a tomato doesn’t get to a certain level of maturity, then the ripening process never occurs. So they spray an ethylene gas on it so it turns an orangey pink. Bananas are shipped green, and when they’re ready to ship to the store they spray them with ethylene. Vine ripened taste is much better.”
The company’s agricultural engineers are working on extending product shelf life.
“There’s all kinds of good things happening that drives a better tasting, safer product, and people can trust that brand,” he added.
Committing to the Cannabis Crop
Canada approved the use of medical marijuana in 2001, and pending legislation is expected to legalize it for recreational use in mid-2018. Village Farms recently entered into a partnership with Emerald Health Therapeutics, a bio-pharma company focused on the use of cannabinoids to treat disease.
“We are currently in the process of converting our smallest greenhouse footprint of 1.1 million square feet to cannabis in British Columbia. It’s a very new crop, and a lot of the early folks that got into it weren’t farmers, they were just folks who saw an opportunity. We thought our ability to grow any crop was a good fit,” he stated.
“We’ve done modeling, we talked to Health Canada, and we saw a great opportunity in conversions of our Canadian high-tech greenhouses as a lower cost model rather than building new ones because we feel that it will eventually become commoditized out, and when it does, in the end it’s the low-cost producer that survives. That’s always a prudent thing in agriculture.”
While practicality is at the heart of everything Village Farms does as a business, the people of Village Farms are really what makes the difference and our planet—and palates—are much better for it.
This Robot Handles The Entire Process Of Growing Lettuce By Itself
This Robot Handles The Entire Process Of Growing Lettuce By Itself
By Adele Peters/ Nov 30, 2017
A new indoor farming startup called Iron Ox wants to staff its greenhouses with only automated workers.
![[Photo: Iron Ox]](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/57c8695d5016e11e71be1d83/1512238940204-YRF2JT2GH38RGEHW4IP3/p-1-this-startup-uses-robots-to-plant-move-and-harvest.gif)
[Photo: Iron Ox]
Inside a warehouse in the middle of the suburban office sprawl of San Carlos, a Silicon Valley town south of San Francisco, hundreds of heads of lettuce and herbs grow next to a mobile robot designed to move the plants as they get bigger. In a lab next door, engineers tweak robots that can handle every part of the growing process, from planting seeds to packaging harvested heads of lettuce for a grocery store.
By early 2018, Iron Ox, the startup behind the R&D farm, plans to open an 8,000 square foot production farm nearby–all fully automated, in a system that the company says can make local, pesticide-free food production as cheap as traditional agriculture in the field.
![[Photo: Iron Ox]](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/57c8695d5016e11e71be1d83/1512238951054-WHRTBM7KKFCHZ6T8DLJC/i-1-this-startup-uses-robots-to-plant-move-and-harvest.jpg)
[Photo: Iron Ox]
When the co-founders decided to launch the startup, one was working on delivery drones at Alphabet’s X, and the other was building room service robots for hotels. They liked the work but wanted to do more with the available technology. “Robotics has come so far in the past few years–sensors have gotten cheaper, software has become more robust,” says co-founder and CEO Brandon Alexander. “We felt that we could be doing something with more impact.”
[Photo: Iron Ox]
They saw an opportunity in food production, where traditional farming faces multiple challenges. Most lettuce, for example, is grown in California and Arizona, two states that face an increasing risk of water shortages and stress from heat as the climate changes. A head of lettuce may be treated with nine different pesticides before it’s harvested and then shipped hundreds or thousands of miles across the country to consumers. As fewer people want to work on farms, producers also struggle with labor shortages.
Indoor farming, which uses a tiny fraction of the water and space, doesn’t require pesticides, and can happen within cities or suburbs, is often billed as a solution. But as Alexander and co-founder Jon Binney researched the market, they realized that cost was a challenge. “We loved the idea [of greenhouses],” Alexander says. “But our question was, if this is so much better, why is most produce grown outdoors? The biggest thing we found was that it costs significantly more–at least twice as much–to grow a head of lettuce indoors than outdoors.”
Other companies, such as Plenty–another farming startup based in Silicon Valley, which grows greens in vertical towers and recently raised $200 million in funding–say that it can produce lettuce at a cost that is competitive with traditional farms. Plenty uses a layout that maximizes yield in small spaces, and notes that the cost of key components for growing, like LED lights, have dropped dramatically. But Iron Ox’s approach is to focus on removing another cost: labor, which for some growers, can account for 50% of the cost of production.
Some greenhouse-grown lettuce might cost $3.99 now, versus $1.99 for the same head of lettuce from the field. “At the end of the day, if you’re always going to have to cost more, then you’re going to be this niche product,” says Alexander. “For the impact that we’re after, one of the biggest things for us is we need to make this produce accessible. Accessible doesn’t just mean affordable–that’s part of it–but it’s affordable and available. Ideally to everybody.”
In the company’s system, a robotic arm plants seeds in a tightly-packed tray, where the seeds germinate in nutrient-filled water. As the plants get bigger, the arm can transplant them to a tray with more space, and then transplant them again a couple of weeks later. Moving the plants maximizes the number of plants that can grow in a tight space.
The robotic arm also uses a camera to scan each plant and note any problems. “We can actually observe is it the right size, is it the right color, does it have any pest pressure or mildew or anything like that,” he says. Plants with mildew, which can easily spread, can be automatically removed. The robots can use machine learning over time to optimize how the plants are grown.
[Photo: Iron Ox]
The new production farm won’t be the first to grow lettuce with an automated system; a massive new factory in Japan uses robots to grow millions of heads of lettuce a year. But the new system in Silicon Valley is less like a traditional factory, and more flexible.
“That [Japanese farm] works well for a set process: ‘we’re going to grow this type of lettuce in this way, and we’re going to do that for the next 20 years,'” Alexander says. “We try to go with as little infrastructure as possible. All we really need is a concrete floor, at the end of the day. All of our modules, these hydroponic pallets, are portable. We have a mobile robot.” If the company later wants to use a slightly more efficient layout, or change its operation, it can make those changes through software.
As the first production farm in San Carlos scales up, the startup will sell to local chefs with an interest in the company’s sustainability; once output is high enough, it will sell to grocery stores. Ultimately, the company envisions building farms near consumers across the country, so someone shopping at a grocery store in Atlanta no longer buys week-old greens from California. It also plans to expand to other crops.
“We don’t want to be just a leafy green farm, at the end of the day,” says Alexander. “That is our initial focus–we want to nail that, we think that’s important to solve– but with our approach, this robotic system, we would like to be a fresh produce farm.”
Akron-Based Vigeo Gardens Nets Produce Deal With Quicken Loans Arena
Vincent Peterson, Mark Preston and Jacob Craine started Akron-based Vigeo Gardens as a small hydroponic garden in Craine's basement in 2014. It has quickly grown into a 6,100-square-foot, high-efficiency vertical farm with 2017 sales set to exceed $750,000.
Akron-Based Vigeo Gardens Nets Produce Deal With Quicken Loans Arena
December 3, 2017
Genovese basil grows beneath LED lights at Vigeo Gardens in downtown Akron. The indoor farm provides hydroponic lettuce, hydroponic basil and microgreens to more than 40 restaurants in the Cleveland and Columbus markets, along with major food distributors, grocery stores such as Heinen's and Giant Eagle, and most recently, Quicken Loans Arena. (Vigeo Gardens)
By Megan Becka, special to cleveland.com
AKRON, Ohio - Vincent Peterson, Mark Preston, and Jacob Craine started Akron-based Vigeo Gardens as a small hydroponic garden in Craine's basement in 2014. It has quickly grown into a 6,100-square-foot, high-efficiency vertical farm with 2017 sales set to exceed $750,000.
Vigeo Gardens currently occupies the third floor of the former B.F. Goodrich Company tire factory in downtown Akron, and provides hydroponic lettuce, hydroponic basil and microgreens to more than 40 restaurants in the Cleveland and Columbus markets, along with major food distributors, grocery stores such as Heinen's and Giant Eagle, and most recently, Quicken Loans Arena.
"To be able to supply the home of the Cavs is a dream come true and will hopefully open up a lot of doors for us," Craine said.
The deal took about three months to secure, and the first shipment of lettuce, basil and microgreens will arrive at the arena on Monday, according to Vigeo Gardens Director of Sales John Hairston.
Vigeo founders Peterson, Preston, and Craine, along with five full-time employees, grow more than eight varieties of lettuce and 20 types of microgreens at their indoor farm, as well as basil and wheat grass. According to Craine, indoor farming offers several benefits, including being able to grow and harvest produce year-round, without the use of pesticides or chemicals.
Vigeo Gardens' lettuce and basil are harvested the same day they ship and sold live, which means the produce can last for up to two weeks in the fridge or longer.
"It's as fresh as you can possibly get," he said.
The farm is also on a mission to refine and grow its operation, using the least resources possible.
"We've spent the last two years designing, developing and tweaking the systems to perfect vertical hydroponic farms," Craine said. "Everything in our space is designed, engineered and built by us."
Innovations include designing a vertical racking system to house the plants and a custom nutrient solution. The trio also worked with a Chinese manufacturer to create custom LED lights.
The farm is working to be waste-free by 2018 through composting and waste-water recycling initiatives and is working with FirstEnergy to become the first zero-carbon footprint farm in Ohio.
"Our goal is to expand throughout the Rust Belt, because there is a need for fresh produce all the time, especially during winter months. We'd like to continue our work repurposing old factories, like we have here in Akron, into high-efficiency vertical farms to supply communities with fresh produce," Craine said.
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Panasonic Singapore Starts Supply to Tong Chiang Group With Crops From Its Indoor Agriculture Farm
Panasonic Singapore Starts Supply to Tong Chiang Group With Crops From Its Indoor Agriculture Farm
The FINANCIAL -- Panasonic Singapore has started supplying its locally-harvested produce from their indoor agriculture facility to Tong Chiang Group.
The premium Japanese crop varieties include green leafy lettuce; red leafy lettuce; mizuna; mini red radish; mustard wasabi; and a range of microgreens which are cultivated in Singapore's first licensed indoor vegetable farm. These crops will be selectively incorporated into the catering menus of Tong Chiang Group's portfolio of food services.
Due to the shortage of arable land, 90% of Singapore's green leafy vegetables come from overseas. Hence, Panasonic aims to contribute to Singapore's self-sufficiency levels of vegetables by increasing the supply of local produce. Since the inception of the agriculture business, the company has increased its facility from 258m2 to 1154 m2 with plans for further expansion. Panasonic is also strengthening its research and development efforts to expand its crop variants to include seasonal fruits, according to Panasonic.
Paul Wong, Managing Director, Panasonic Singapore, said, "One of our core growth strategies of the agriculture business is to expand our commercial partnerships with local food providers. Tong Chiang Group shares our vision in promoting Singapore's vision of increasing its self-sufficiency in agriculture and we are happy to supply our crops to them. With this, Panasonic furthers our commitment to a better life and a better world by improving the quality and freshness of local produce."
Vegetables are harvested and delivered fresh from the indoor agriculture farm to Tong Chiang Group's central kitchen, ensuring quality and freshness of the crops.
Lisa Zou, Chief Executive Officer, Tong Chiang Group commented, "Tong Chiang Group prides ourselves in offering healthy and delicious meals for Singaporean families. With rising demands for healthier food options in the local market, we look forward to working with Panasonic in delivering fresh and nutritious vegetables to our customers. The crops are locally harvested and pesticides-free, allowing our customers to enjoy healthy eating with a peace of mind."
Looking ahead, Panasonic will continue promoting to increase the level of self-sufficiency of leafy vegetables in Singapore. As one of the leading factory automation solutions providers, Panasonic is committed to design and develop indoor agriculture solutions to meet market demand for stable and sustainable production of locally-harvested premium crops.
'Vertical Farm' Ceres Greens Set To Open In Barre, Vermont
'Vertical Farm' Ceres Greens Set To Open In Barre, Vermont
Wed, 11/22/2017
Vermont Business Magazine
Construction is underway at Vermont’s first vertical farm, which is designed to grow leafy greens and herbs. Ceres Greens is set to open in January 2018, growing fresh produce year-round in their newly constructed 12,500-square-foot space. Founders Jacob Isham and Greg Kelly have spent the past 14 months perfecting the technology and methods needed for growing produce indoors in a controlled environment.
Jacob Isham and Greg Kelly, Ceres, Greens, Barre. Courtesy photo.
“Our purpose is to help meet the food security challenges we face,” said Isham. “While Vermont is an agricultural state, we still import about 90% of our produce, even in the summertime. Our ability to grow and deliver fresh produce every day of the year will help towards the goal of more locally grown food. We grow using organic, GMO-free seeds, purified water, and without the use of any pesticides.”
The company uses its proprietary grow system, sensors and automated computer controls to create the ideal environment, delivering the precise amount of light, nutrients, constant temperature and humidity to grow its produce.
“Very delicious, as if it came right out of your own garden,” states Kelly. “Our produce will be one day old, having traveled no more than 100 miles when delivered to our customers, as opposed to produce currently available being 7-10 days old and having traveled upwards of 3,000 miles. When we are at full production, our customers, in addition to enjoying tasty locally grown produce, will be pleased knowing they are contributing to saving 100 barrels of oil a month from being burned and the associated carbon being emitted into the atmosphere.”
Isham, a service-disabled veteran of the U.S. Army, is an alumnus of the Veterans to Farmers controlled environment agriculture program in Colorado and intends to provide job training and opportunities in horticulture to fellow veterans in Vermont. Ceres Greens is owned and operated as a Service Disabled Veteran Owned Small Business.
Kelly, with 35 years of technical experience, has spent the last two years developing the company’s vertical farming system.
Source: Ceres Greens www.ceresgreens.com
NATUFIA Kitchen Garden, Your Connected Garden In Your Kitchen.
Natufia brings you its own solution thanks to its "NATUFIA Kitchen Garden". In the same concept as these wine cellar fridges, the NATUFIA Kitchen Garden is a wardrobe. A cupboard equipped with a whole system of filtration and pot which will welcome various vegetables.
NATUFIA Kitchen Garden, Your Connected Garden In Your Kitchen.
TOPICS: 3GHerbConnectedGardenVegetableNATUFIA Kitchen GardenWirelessWiFiWireless
POSTED BY: DAVID PERUCH JANUARY 10, 2017
Present at the Las Vegas show, this company offers a concept for the least original. That of having his own garden in his kitchen. Like a wine cellar device, the company offers NATUFIA Kitchen Garden.
You are a fan of fresh vegetables, but you do not always have time to go to the primeur near you. And unfortunately, you do not have the space to make your own vegetable garden.
Natufia brings you its own solution thanks to its "NATUFIA Kitchen Garden". In the same concept as these wine cellar fridges, the NATUFIA Kitchen Garden is a wardrobe. A cupboard equipped with a whole system of filtration and pot which will welcome various vegetables.
The NATUFIA Kitchen Garden is also equipped with light sources that will have the effect of generating the brightness needed for your vegetables to grow well. Equipped with a multitude of sensors, the NATUFIA Kitchen Garden will be able to analyze the ecosystem in real time.
Equipped with Wi-Fi, all this information can be transmitted directly to the owner's smartphone.
The company also offers its own seeds to ripen in the form of small capsules similar to coffee capsules of the well-known brand which Georges Clooney loves. Among these seeds are a whole collection of condiments.
Thus, you will be able to "plant" parsley, sauce, tomatoes, salad, chamomile and many more. The company offers a variety of 17 condiments for a price of around one euro per capsule.
Capsules that will be available for purchase directly from his online store. For the cabinet "NATUFIA Kitchen Garden", it gets a little rough. Indeed, you will have to pay not far from 13 000 € to acquire and put in place this having connected to the connected garden in your kitchen.
A product that could eventually become a product for the least interesting. Especially for all those who live in apartments. Or who do not have the opportunity to grow their own vegetables in their garden.