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Discussing Green Funding At WIA Paris
Green Funding or Impact Investing is when lenders and investors make their decisions based on if the company in question has environmentally conscious business practices such as alternative energy, water, and waste management, or socially positive goals
Giving the Green Light to Green Funding
Green Funding or Impact Investing is when lenders and investors make their decisions based on if the company in question has environmentally conscious business practices such as alternative energy, water, and waste management, or socially positive goals. Companies like Danone and General Mills, as well as the major financial players in ag, are leading the path to responsible funding in the industry.
Green Funding: Critical or Counterproductive
We’ll be discussing how the practice of green funding is affecting the ag space. What are the current metrics being used to determine if a company is green enough, and how are they being tracked? On the flip side, will this practice make a positive impact or is it just an opportunity for companies to “green wash” themselves to get through the funding hoop? Join us to learn more!
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An Analysis of Vertical Vegetable Farms
Until recently, vertical farms were an exception in the market, but now this high-tech agricultural sector is rapidly gaining ground in urban centers of Asia, North America, and Western Europe
"Huge Investments, Confident Markets, But Still Many Uncertainties"
Until recently, vertical farms were an exception in the market, but now this high-tech agricultural sector is rapidly gaining ground in urban centers of Asia, North America, and Western Europe. However, their economic viability and agronomic interest, compared to field crops or greenhouses, are far from established. Why, then, do some investors choose to follow this path of innovation? What, exactly, are the technical solutions required to produce in confined buildings, without natural sunlight? And, does this business model have future prospects?
The French Centre for Studies and Strategic Foresight, part of the Ministry of Agriculture and Food General Secretariat, published an analysis on the market.
Urban agriculture is now promoted as a vector of sustainable food, quality of life and community engagement. Most often, though, it consists of small-scale home and leisure activities: shared neighborhood gardens, potted crops on balconies or green
rooftops, etc. These “initiatives” are confined to a niche by the lack of land and the intermittence of citizen involvement. The artificial
environment of the city, with its soil and air pollution, building shadows, and impermeable pavement hinders any large-scale deployment of urban gardens. Thus, their contribution to the populations’ food supply seems doomed to remain marginal.
On the opposite side of the social and market spectrum is urban agriculture for industrial and production purposes, and more specifically on vertical farms. With advancements in LED lamps, robotics, and information technology, multi-level indoor production units with reduced footprints are being created, dedicated to the intensive cultivation of plants and vegetables, mostly salads.
Contrary to greenhouses, these high-tech farms do away with natural light and cut all dependance to their outside environment. This version of urban agriculture has strong ambitions: mass production of quality food products, at any time, under any climate, close to consumers, and without the use of pesticides, all at market prices.
Download the full analysis here
Publication date: Thu 7 Nov 2019
Contain Ready To Grow After Completing The Techstars Accelerator Program
Contain started from the ground up. It all began by talking to indoor farmers about their finance needs. Over the last 18 months, we met over 300 growers and developed a deep knowledge of what growers need when looking for finance
Nov 7, 2019
Contain started from the ground up. It all began by talking to indoor farmers about their finance needs. Over the last 18 months, we met over 300 growers and developed a deep knowledge of what growers need when looking for finance.
Once we had developed our expertise through first-hand knowledge and executing a number of leases, we recognized the need to grow what we learned from those conversations. It was time to take the next step as a start-up.
Here enters the Techstars accelerator program.
Last Spring, we pitched and were selected to participate in the Techstars’ Farm to Fork accelerator program, a program that provides ambitious tech startups with corporate mentorship and investment, backed by Cargill and Ecolab. Now, three months later, we’re ready to use the resources of the program to serve more clients, according to their needs. In other words, we’re growing (and we’re growing fast). We’re excited to share more about this exciting new stage in the company. Here’s what’s on the horizon for us.
We’re changing the way indoor farmers find financing.
The investment from Techstars gave us the opportunity to convert our knowledge into an automated leasing platform built for indoor growers. Our newly developed algorithms match indoor growers with the optimal lenders and provide growers with leasing options. And this platform isn’t just for farmers. It also includes specialized portals for equipment vendors and lenders.
We’re growing our mission.
The new platform sets the stage for rapid growth for Contain. It automates our process, and allow us to add hundreds of vendors and lenders to the platform. This in turn, will enable the success of thousands of growers. We’re already working hard to on board the numerous vendors and new lenders that now want to work with us.
Techstars’ Farm to Fork Demo Day
Our network is deeper than ever.
During our time in the accelerator, we developed valuable relationships with industry experts. We got to seek advice from leaders in the marketplace, financial services, and consumer packaged goods mega-corps. We worked with these mentors on everything from product development to marketing and fundraising strategies. As a Fintech company, we’re excited to work with the broader Techstars’ network in New York, Chicago and the Bay Area. We now have more relationships than ever to help us realize our vision.
The program has strengthened our team internally as well. The Contain team is a distributed one. Overall, this is a strength of the company; We see it as one of our advantages that we can accommodate our team members’ lives and still work with experienced and highly skilled folks. But that means that our headquarters is usually Slack, and we hang out with each other virtually most of the time. Being in one location for the summer gave us the opportunity to spend more time with one another in person and become more cohesive as a team.
But at the end of the day, it’s not just about the corporate connections or our team. It’s about the indoor farmers that inspire our work. Here is our CEO Nicola Kerslake, on what we learned while conducting interviews with some of the indoor growers we had worked with prior to the program.
“The greatest boost to the Contain team during the program was interviewing some of the indoor growers that we had worked with,” she said. Kerslake continues, “we realized that we had made a difference in the life of farmers and the communities that they support.”
For her, “It’s the best feeling to know that our hard work has a positive impact in the wider world.”
WRITTEN BY Nicola Kerslake
We’re Contain Inc. We use data to improve access to capital for indoor growers, those farming in warehouses, containers & greenhouses. https://www.contain.ag/
This Google Ventures-Backed Indoor Farming Startup Just Opened Its Biggest Farm Yet
The Baltimore farm is 3.5 times as large as Bowery’s formerly largest farm—and is the latest attempt to make indoor farming work as a way to disrupt the agricultural system
11.06.19
The Baltimore farm is 3.5 times as large as Bowery’s formerly largest farm—and is the latest attempt to make indoor farming work as a way to disrupt the agricultural system.
If you live in the U.S., the last time you ate a salad, the lettuce inside it almost certainly came from California or Arizona. But the geography of leafy greens is very slowly starting to change as the trend of indoor farming—growing greens in large warehouses using artificial light and automated technology—expands. The latest farm to open is in Baltimore. It’s the largest, so far, from the New York-based, tech-heavy startup Bowery.
[Photo: Bowery]
The company, which just announced that it raised another $50 million from investors, grows what it previously called “post-organic” produce in sprawling warehouses (it no longer uses the phrase, but the greens are grown without any pesticides). It’s one of a handful of startups trying to make a dent in some of the challenges of traditional agriculture. The industry isn’t moving as quickly as some predicted. Aerofarms, for example, said in 2015 that it hoped to build 25 farms over the next five years; so far, it has two large farms, an R&D farm and a small farm at a school. The same year, FarmedHere said that it planned to expand to 18 farms but went out of business two years later. Boston-based Fresh Box Farms said in 2017 that it planned to expand to 25 farms in five years but still has only one farm. Plenty, a Silicon Valley-based indoor farming startup that has raised $226 million, has one farm.
Bowery, which launched in 2015, opened its first farm in New Jersey in 2017, followed by another farm at the same location, roughly 30 times larger, in 2018. The new farm in Baltimore is around 3.5 times larger than the last (the company won’t disclose specific square footage). The company is ramping up operations in Baltimore this week and planting crops, with the first sales to begin at local retailers early next year. Like others, the startup also hasn’t moved quite as quickly as it has suggested—last year, it said that it planned to open multiple farms in new cities by the end of 2019, though the Baltimore farm will be the only one to open this year—but it offers evidence that the field is continuing to grow. Another large indoor farm, from Gotham Greens, will also open in Baltimore late this year inside a former steel mill. In Pittsburgh, a robot-run farm from another startup called Fifth Season is scaling up in an industrial neighborhood.
“We’ve been really measured and thoughtful at Bowery in the way that we’ve scaled and grown the business, and that’s not just the farms themselves but the development around our technology . . . I think that really is rooted in the recognition that the problem that we’re solving and the opportunity that we’re focusing on is a large one, and ultimately, we’re running a marathon, not a sprint,” says Bowery CEO Irving Fain.
If the business model can succeed, it could help farming become more sustainable. “When you look at the footprint of agriculture globally, it’s the largest consumer of resources in the world by a quite a wide margin,” says Fain. The majority of the world’s water is used for agriculture—often in places like California that struggle with frequent drought and where droughts will increase with climate change. Indoor growing systems can shrink water use by more than 95%.
Because the crops grow in a pristine environment, they also don’t require any pesticides, fungicides, or herbicides. (Growing inside a controlled environment also eliminates the risk of contaminated produce, such as an E. coli outbreak in conventionally grown lettuce in 2018 that made 210 people sick and left five people dead.) Bowery estimates that its system is 100 times more productive than a traditional farm on the same amount of land. And while indoor farming uses a significant amount of energy for climate control and lighting, the technology is becoming more efficient. “I think you’re going to see us really fulfill our energy needs with more and more renewable energy over time,” he says.
[Photo: Bowery]
Like others in the space, Bowery relies heavily on technology. The company uses a custom-built operating system to carefully monitor plants and automatically make changes to improve yield and quality. Cameras track plant growth. “That plant vision system is taking photos of our crops in real-time,” Fain says. “It runs those photos through deep learning algorithms that we’ve developed. It both analyzes and understands what’s happening with the crops today but also predicts what will happen to the crops in the future. And then all that data runs through other machine learning algorithms, which essentially say, these are the adjustments and tweaks and changes that we want to make to this crop.” The software also manages farmers, making it possible, he says, to hire people who have no previous experience in growing food.
As the company expands, it can use the data it has already collected to improve each new farm. “In essence, what we’re doing is we’re building this distributed network of farms, and every new farm comes online with the benefit of all the prior farms that have come before it,” says Fain. “And then that farm itself also is now contributing data into that network and strengthening the network itself. What that means is better produce, more efficiency, new taste and flavors, and new varieties, and all those things are sort of translating from the learning that we’re getting through the Bowery operating system and the systems themselves.”
All of this, he says, can happen at a cost-competitive with growing in the field. Right now, the company’s leafy greens sell through 100 retailers for around the same price as organically grown produce. Fain says that he expects the cost to eventually be at par with any produce. “When I started Bowery, one of the things that was really important to me was really ensuring that we could ultimately democratize access to high quality, fresh produce,” he says. “To get there, we had to be able to sell a product that was already competitive today . . . We’ve spent a lot of time really carefully and meticulously focusing on not only the way we run our farms but the systems inside of our farms, the automation, the technology and the software, and how that directly ties into the unit economics of the farms themselves. And so we can today be at or below field organic pricing with a very healthy economic model for our farms.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Adele Peters is a staff writer at Fast Company who focuses on solutions to some of the world's largest problems, from climate change to homelessness. Previously, she worked with GOOD, BioLite, and the Sustainable Products and Solutions program at UC Berkeley, and contributed to the second edition of the bestselling book "Worldchanging: A User's Guide for the 21st Century."
[Photos: Bowery]
CropKing Pres. Paul Brentlinger On Ag’s Undervalued Human Element
Dan Brentlinger, the late founder of CropKing, knew he wanted to be an indoor grower as early as a sixth grade when he wrote an essay about his dream of pursuing horticulture. By that time, he was already growing strawberries in his basement. It took years for the industry to catch up to his ambitions
All images courtesy of CropKing and Paul Brentlinger
Dan Brentlinger, the late founder of CropKing, knew he wanted to be an indoor grower as early as a sixth grade when he wrote an essay about his dream of pursuing horticulture. By that time, he was already growing strawberries in his basement. It took years for the industry to catch up to his ambitions. He founded CropKing because he felt other indoor operators were offering poor products with even worse support for growers. Now, Paul, his son, is at the reigns, and we chatted about financing tips, the ag data revolution, and how the human element of agriculture is more vital than ever.
What is the biggest challenge in indoor ag right now, compared to when CropKing got started?
You fast forward 35 years [from the founding of CropKing] and the bigger challenge isn’t that nobody understands what hydroponics is, or what the benefits of controlled environment agriculture are, or why our food system isn’t working in its current state.
Now the bigger question is, how do you weed through all the garbage? As any industry matures, you’ve got the guys like CropKing or AmHydro, who have been around for almost 40 years. You don’t make it for 40 years if you’re not providing good products and good support. But now that CEA and hydroponics are somewhat mainstream, you’ve got everybody and their brother claiming to be experts and to have packages and tech support and quality supplies.
In the age of social media and mass information, how can growers make sure they’re getting reliable advice?
I would talk to as many people as I could that are doing what you’re doing. You’re not inventing something new. It doesn’t matter where you live, within a hundred miles of you, somebody is doing something very similar to what you want to do.
Find out who they went with, what made them successful, what do they not like about their process of getting set up. Get as much info as you can from going to seminars, going to trade shows. Meet with the people you’re going to buy your stuff from because those are the same people that are going to support you afterward, and if you don’t like ’em, find somebody else. If you don’t think you’re going to want to call these people weekly or daily in your first year, you’re going to have to find somebody else, because that’s realistically what you should be doing.
What’s CropKing’s signature approach?
Customer service. I’m not selling something that is extremely unique. It’s not, “You have to have this specific thing to succeed.” What you need to succeed is support, the ability to get through the problems, to not have a catastrophic failure, all of those things that, when you look at our ag space, crush people in their first year.
There is only a really small group of successful small businesses that last longer than 10 years. Well, if you look at the number of growers that CropKing has set up over the last 38 years, it would be safe to say that over 80% of them are still in business 10-to-15 years later.
What should new growers know about financing?
There’s a lot of entry points. The growers that Contain is more likely financing, and the growers that CropKing typically sells packages to, are relatively small commercial growers, typically less than an acre, most of the timeless than half an acre.
When it comes to financing these guys, they probably don’t have the agricultural experience that traditional banks are looking for to say, “We believe in ag, and you obviously have the skillset to make this successful.”
Our answer to that is a business plan model that we can help you put together that is very beneficial to the bank and being able to look at it and go, “OK, we understand what you’re accomplishing and how you’re going to be able to do this,” and you can then explain to the financier the support system that you have by going through CropKing. So we can help people navigate that.
In the end, though, if you’re not financeable, you’re not financeable. If you’ve got bad credit, or you don’t have substantial assets, or you’ve gone through two bankruptcies, there probably are not great options to get a loan to start a business.
Why work with Contain?
Even if you are financeable, an agriculture loan can still be more difficult to get than a traditional business loan. This is where Contain comes in, and I think, is starting to fill a niche, in that you guys are saying, “Hey, we know that if you, the grower, are going to buy from x, y, or z, you are more typically successful than not, so we’re willing to finance it, assuming it’s coming through these channels.”
There was clearly a missing section in finance as it relates to small commercial ag in controlled environments, and that’s what you guys are filling. I think it’s great. And you guys are first to market, but I think in the next five years you’ll see more similar models to what you guys do, and I think it’s awesome.
How does financing change based on grow size?
Financing of a less than half an acre and financing a two-acre are worlds different. If you are financeable and you’re trying to do something that’s less than a million dollars, you could probably accomplish that in the next four or six months if you’ve got your ducks in a row. If you are trying to do a two-acre project and you’re looking for financing, if you’re not anticipating 18 months from now, you’re really delusional. It’s just that long of a process to get this stuff together.
When you’re talking about building a two-acre facility, you’re talking about way more involvement with city officials and understanding what the look of this has to be and bringing in infrastructure and utilities and turn lanes and all that stuff that people who are building a two-bay, four-bay, half-acre greenhouse get away with by putting it in the back of their property and utilizing the wonderful world of ag exemptions.
What trends are you most excited about in indoor agriculture?
There’s the increased focus on data collection. It’s got pros and cons. A lot of people are looking at AI and data as a way to get to where it’s more of a process and an app, and we’re just setting programs. I don’t think we’re going to get to that level. I think the human aspect in growing is very key, and you’ll never work that out of a greenhouse. But the ability to have this data to make that human that much better is extremely valuable.
This conversation transcript has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Learn more about Contain and funding your indoor ag business at our website, and subscribe to Inside The Box, our weekly newsletter.
The Scottish Innovations Tackling The World’s Food Shortage
Invergowrie-based Intelligent Growth Solutions (IGS) has created Scotland’s first vertical farm, pictured here, and the company has recently harvested a £5.4 million cash boost from the Scottish Investment Bank, agri-food investor S2G and online venture capital firm AgFunder
Intelligent Growth Solutions' purpose-built facility is being constructed at the James Hutton Institute near Dundee.
SARAH DEVINE
19 September 2019
Scotland’s agriculture sector is changing rapidly, with rural businesses across the country driving forward groundbreaking innovations in attempts to address the myriad challenges of the land.
Globally, some 113 million people across 53 countries reportedly experienced food poverty last year, and it is expected that the world’s population will reach 9.8 billion by 2050, according to the UN.
However, inventive organizations across Scotland are devising new and creative ways to tackle the global food shortage.
Invergowrie-based Intelligent Growth Solutions (IGS) has created Scotland’s first vertical farm, pictured here, and the company has recently harvested a £5.4 million cash boost from the Scottish Investment Bank, agri-food investor S2G and online venture capital firm AgFunder.
The firm, which is based at the James Hutton Institute situated on the outskirts of Dundee, provides vertical farming technology to enable efficient food production through indoor crops around the world, having built its demonstration facility at Invergowrie last year.
It features stacked layers, LED lights and app-controlled air vents to create the perfect conditions for crops to thrive all year round.
The early-stage company states that its patented Internet of Things-enabled power and communications platform is able to reduce an organization’s energy usage by up to 50 percent and labor costs by up to 80 percent, in comparison to other indoor growing environments, and can produce yields of 225 percent compared to crops that have been grown under glass.
IGS experimented with colored LED lights, growing basil plants at the indoor facility in an impressive 20 days.
Its chief executive, David Farquhar, explains that such developments are urgently needed because at present an astonishing 30 percent of the world’s food is put to waste.
“Vertical farming allows experimentation to take place in order to impact the yield or cost of production, flavor, nutrients, appearance or a combination of those things,” he says.
“Producers want consistency, assurance of supply, and to know they are going to fill supermarket shelves or supply those Michelin-starred restaurants every day of the week. Those are things that farmers struggle with all the time.”
Farquhar adds: “If there is a forecast for bad weather and a supermarket decides to only take half of their delivery, what are they going to do with the rest of the produce?”
Using the vertical farm, a crop’s growth can be slowed down or sped up to prevent waste.
“People have been talking about vertical farms for several years, but we are now at the starting point. Over the next six months, we will get going with the first technology in the world that is capable of delivering this on an industrial scale.”
The firm, which was formed in 2013, plans to use this recent funding to create jobs in areas such as software development, engineering, robotics, and automation.
Investment into such areas is also needed across Scotland because dietary demand is changing, according to David Ross, chief executive of Edinburgh-based Agri-EPI Centre.
“Environmental sustainability is personal now for everyone and therefore there are challenges for primary producers to adapt to the needs of the consumer, the needs of society and the overall sustainability of the planet,” he says.
Starbuck's Is Anchoring New Food And Tech Fund Valor Siren Ventures With $100M Investment
March 22, 2019
Starbucks announced it is making a $100 million investment in Valor Siren Ventures Fund (VSV), a newly launched venture fund that will back the next generation of food and retail technology startups.
In the coming months, VSV said that it is aiming to raise another $300 million from other outside investors.
“We believe that innovative ideas are fuel for the future, and we continue to build on this heritage inside our company across beverage, experiential retail, and our digital flywheel,” said Kevin Johnson, president and CEO, Starbucks.
Managed by Chicago-based Valor Equity Partners, a leading growth private equity investment firm that is a backer of Tesla and a long-time investor in food tech, this new fund will identify and invest in innovative companies that are developing new technologies, products, and solutions for the food and retail sectors.
Founded in 1995 by managing partner and CIO Antonio J. Gracias, Valor Equity is a previous investor in SpaceX, Tesla, Eatsa, Fooda, and Wow Bao, among others. And in July of last year, raised $1.05 billion for its Fund IV, bringing the total funds raised by the company, at the time, to more than $2 billion.
The fund also will act as an incubator for startups with which Starbucks can partner, and gives the company first-hand access to innovations that it can leverage to advance its own technology and retail platforms.
“At the same time, and with an eye toward accelerating our innovation agenda, we are inspired by, and want to support the creative, entrepreneurial businesses of tomorrow with whom we may explore commercial relationships down the road,” said Johnson. “This new partnership with Valor presents exciting opportunities, not only for these startups, but also for Starbucks, as we build an enduring company for decades to come.”
I Think We’ll Need a Bigger Wagon…
In recent years there has been a flurry of accelerators and venture capital arms launched by large CPG companies. This reflects the continued truth that there is a shift occurring within the food sector that is creating a scenario in which Big Food needs the rapid-response innovation generated by startups as much as startups need the capital available from Big Food.
The move to launch venture capital arms and accelerator programs or incubators has become a widely used method by some of the world’s largest and most conventional companies to achieve diversification, and to gain a foothold and to establish relevance in a swiftly changing consumer market. CPG companies also use these programs as a means to stay a step ahead of their competition while realizing the growth potential in disruptive food innovation.
Others that have come before include:
General Mills, which launched 301 Inc., in October 2015 – a venture capital arm that has gone on to outrank the likes of Time Warner and Merck for investment activity.
Campbell’s Soup, which launched its $125 million venture capital fund, Acre Venture Partners, in February 2016.
Anheuser-Busch, which partnered with Techstars to launch an accelerator in April 2016.
Danone, whose venture capital fund Danone Manifesto Ventures made its first investment in June 2016 in France’s Michel et Augustin, a producer of premium biscuits, dairy products, fresh desserts, and beverages.
Tyson, which launched its $150 million venture fund, Tyson New Ventures, in December 2016.
Kellogg’s, which launched its venture capital unit, eighteen94, in January 2017, making its first investment in Kui Kuli, a manufacturer and distributor of moringa-based bars, powders, and energy shots.
Barilla, which launched Blu1877, a hybrid venture capital fund and innovation hub, in November 2017.
Pepsi, whose PepsiCo HIVE made its first investment in Health Warrior, a producer of plant-based and superfood snacks and protein powders in October 2018.
And Mars, which announced the launch of Seeds of Change™, an early stage, food-focused accelerator, in March of this year.
At this point, an initial investment for the Valor Siren Ventures Fund has not been disclosed, however a company statement noted that Starbucks is “embracing new ideas and innovations that are relevant to Starbucks customers, inspiring to its partners, and meaningful to its business.”
Valor Equity CIO Antonio J. Gracias said, “as experienced investors in food and retail technology, we are thrilled to partner with Starbucks, one of the most iconic and forward-thinking global brands. Under our partner Jon Shulkin’s leadership, we are incredibly excited to partner with Starbucks to drive innovation in the food and retail industries.”
~ Lynda Kiernan
Lynda Kiernan is Editor with GAI Media and daily contributor to GAI News. If you would like to submit a contribution for consideration, please contact Ms. Kiernan at lkiernan@globalaginvesting.com.
Urban Farmer Turns to Crowdfunding to Support Growing Business
A loan would take too long to help, and when someone suggested crowdfunding, the urban farmer saw how much further that small business support could go.
By Sean Evans | January 10, 2019 at 5:04 PM EST - Updated January 10 at 6:50 PM
SAVANNAH, GA (WTOC) - Just blocks from busy Pennsylvania Avenue and not far from the heart of downtown Savannah, there’s a business venture you might not know about, or think could be that close to downtown. In fact, it’s growing so much that its loyal customers and folks who support them are chipping in to help them grow.
“I am the owner and sole employee of Vertu Farm," said Chris Molander.
Molander started Vertu Farm on Savannah’s east side about three years ago after cultivating a passion for farming in high school and college.
“When an opportunity opened up out here at the old dairy farm, I just jumped on it," Molander said, as he picked some of his crops from the ground.
On two acres of leased land, Molander’s farm has grown to provide Savannah’s residents with local greens, on sale at the Forsyth Park Farmer’s Market, as well as at some area restaurants.
“I can’t say enough about our Farmer’s Market. There’s a lot of really dedicated people that come out every single week to support the farmers," Molander said.
About a month ago, Molander realized he had an immediate need for greenhouse space. A loan would take too long to help, and when someone suggested crowdfunding, the urban farmer saw how much further that small business support could go.
“It’s literally past everything that I could have thought would even possibly happen, and all the responses, individual responses, people coming out here to talk to me, they’re just interested in the farm. They want to see it, they want to know more about it, and it’s just awesome," Molander admitted.
With four days left, the Indiegogo campaign goal is more than 90-percent complete.
Funds raised will help this local business owner complete his own greenhouse space, and keep Vertu Farms producing homegrown greens for Savannahians to enjoy.
What Bowery’s Latest Funding Round Says About Indoor Farming
The new investment round brings Bowery’s total funding to $117.5 million.
By
December 13, 2018
New Jersey-based indoor-farming startup Bowery announced yesterday that it has raised $90 million in fresh funding. The round was led by Alphabet Inc.’s GV with participation from Temasek and Almanac Ventures, General Catalyst and GGV Capital (Bowery’s Series A investors), and various seed investors.
Bowery produces what founder Irving Fain calls “post-organic produce.” Or to put it more plainly, Bowery produces leafy greens in an indoor environment it controls with proprietary software. The FarmOS system, as it’s called, helps farmers manage crops by collecting data about water flow, light levels, humidity, and other environmental factors that impact the taste of greens. And because the farm is indoors, Bowery can grow its crops without soil, pesticides, or chemicals.
This new investment round brings Bowery’s total funding to $117.5 million. That sounds like a lot until you compare it to Softbank’s $200 million investment in Bowery’s West Coast competitor Plenty, which took place in July of 2017.
Both companies’ raises illustrate the enormous amount of interest in indoor and vertical farming right now. The latter field is expected to have a market valuation of more than $13 billion by 2024, and there are dozens of other companies working on various iterations of indoor farming today.
AeroFarms grows leafy greens inside a 70,000-square-foot facility in New Jersey and has backing from IKEA and Momofuku’s David Chang. Crop One Holdings and Emirates Flight Catering are building what they call “the world’s largest vertical farm.” And Ford Motors operates a farm in Detroit that helps feed the homeless.
Okay, but will leafy greens really feed the homeless? Will butter lettuce and fresh basil help alleviate the global food shortage we’re expected to face as the population nears 9 billion people?
By itself, indoor farming can’t do either of those things, at least not adequately. But that doesn’t render indoor farming an overhyped segment. What it does mean, though, is that we need to start moving beyond the leafy greens and start producing foods with a little more substance. Plenty says cucumbers and strawberries are next on its list. Meanwhile, it’s possible to grow root vegetables like turnips, beets, and sweet potatoes using hydroponics. It’s just more expensive and more challenging than basil.
Bowery says its new capital will go towards “scale its operation in new cities across the country and open multiple farms by the end of 2019.” There’s no word yet on whether those new farms will stick to leafy greens or branch out, though Fain did say Bowery is working on “scalable solutions for an impending climate and food crisis.”
We’ll hopefully see Bowery put those words into action by figuring out how to widen the possibilities of what we can grow with indoor farming.
Young Fijian Makes Good Use Of Govt Scheme
A Fijian who studied in India has made the most of Government’s Young Entrepreneurship Scheme and embarked on a journey to combine engineering and agriculture.
September 22
18:56 2018
by SWASHNA CHAND , SUVA
Entrepreneur, Rinesh Sharma.
A Fijian who studied in India has made the most of Government’s Young Entrepreneurship Scheme and embarked on a journey to combine engineering and agriculture.
Rinesh Sharma, 25, is an entrepreneur living in Lautoka who has started up something unique.
“While studying in India, I came across a software engineer who had an indoor hydroponics farm in Goa,” he said.
“After reading his success story, I made up my mind to do the same back home.”
Hydroponics is a method of growing plants without soil by using mineral nutrient solutions in a water solvent.
“Engineering combined with agriculture allows me to grow plants in its special conditions and parameters, maximising faster yields,” he said.
“I grow include strawberries, mint, coriander, coral lettuce and butter crunch lettuce. The idea of hydroponics came to me in my third year of engineering.
“Since then, I have researched every day about executing this project on a commercial scale in Fiji.”
Mr Sharma said he came back to Fiji in May and started an automated hydroponics system, in which he grew green leafy vegetables in his backyard.
“This was a challenging process because it was almost impossible to find hydroponic system supplies in Fiji, but regardless I made a small prototype where I can harvest 372 plants per month,” he said.
“Doing farming is the best thing I have done and perception really does matter because we have a lot of people who left farms and moved to the urban life and this has created a huge gap to fill in the field of agriculture.”
Mr Sharma said for him it was a mission to feed the world and he was going to start with his country.
“Upon my arrival in Fiji, I had applied for the YES entrepreneurship scheme run by the Ministry of Trade, Tourism and Industry with the intention to begin an automated hydroponics farm in Fiji on a commercial scale and got a grant of $20,000,” he said.
He is thankful to the Government for providing him with the assistance.
“The assistance is motivating and encouraging for us the younger generation to do step forward and do something,” he said.
“I keep challenging myself with growing the most impossible edible items such as blueberries, raspberries and apples as well.
“It is important that people of Fiji are able to afford proper nutritional meals every day and that to at low cost.
“So, as a hydroponics farmer, I am able to control any device in my farm through a single touch on my phone via internet and I am also able to receive any data changes that may occur, such as change in PH, moisture, temperature.
“It was a privilege to be given a scholarship by the Indian High Commission where I got to learn so much.
“I came back to Fiji with the intention of working with the Government and their expertise to change and shape farming methods in Fiji.”
Edited by Epineri Vula
Feedback: swashna.chand@fijisun.com.fj
State Grant Program Offers Money, And Legitimacy, For Urban Agriculture
By Taryn Phaneuf | 10/09/2018
MinnPost file photo by Ibrahim Hirsi
Michael Chaney, a long-time advocate from north Minneapolis who founded Project Sweetie Pie, a grant recipient, said he approached lawmakers with the idea about four years ago.
Urban farming in Minnesota reached a milestone this summer, when the state announced the first round of grants for agriculture education and development projects in cities.
It’s the first time the state has allocated money specifically for urban agriculture, and it took several tries to get the legislation passed. Michael Chaney, a long-time advocate from north Minneapolis who founded Project Sweetie Pie, a grant recipient, said he approached lawmakers with the idea about four years ago. At the time, he saw plenty of interest in urban agriculture — but not the kind of financial support that exists for rural farmers. “I was disenchanted and discouraged,” Chaney said.
Advocates said state investment is crucial because it lends credibility to what Chaney calls the “changing face of agriculture.” Such state funding, even a small amount, can usher in a shift toward seeing urban areas as potential farms and their residents as fellow food producers.
That shift can also bring education and economic opportunities that are often more associated with rural areas. “Agriculture has been deemed corporate ag with rural roots and conventional farming techniques,” Chaney said. “What we’re proposing with urban farming is a whole reconfiguring. … What’s the role of urban communities in growing food?”
Rep. Karen Clark, DFL-Minneapolis, authored the bill, which called for $10 million annually to fund urban ag projects in cities throughout the state. The legislation prioritizes poor communities of color and Native American communities. Clark kept the idea alive at the state level for years, and finally made headway when legislators commissioned a study of urban agriculture that defined its scope and the purpose and identified policy recommendations.
The study cost $250,000, the same amount the Legislature eventually earmarked for urban ag grants for each year in the current budget. It’s far less than program advocates wanted, but it maintained the original intent, said Erin Connell, who administers the grants for the Minnesota Department of Agriculture. Eligible groups include for-profit businesses, local governments, tribal communities, nonprofits, or schools in cities of more than 10,000 people. Cities with between 5,000 and 10,000 people are also eligible if 10 percent of residents live at or below 200 percent of the poverty line, or where 10 percent of residents are people of color or Native American.
“It’s exciting for me so see the acceptance of urban ag as a new standard for ag production,” said Connell, who grew up in the Twin Cities metro area and didn’t discover her interest in ag until she started studying food systems at the University of Minnesota.
Urban agriculture’s impact
Growing food in the city is partly about improving residents’ diets and food security, but it also extends to building wealth, culture, and independence. “Community members were very vocal about wanting to bring the benefits of ag into various urban areas,” Connell said.
Jolene Jones, president and interim CEO of the Little Earth Residents Association, said the community received a grant for nearly $45,000, which they’ll use to teach more children to help in their gardens by creating a storybook that shows them how indigenous people farm in the city.
This fall, they’re learning to construct a hoop house that will extend their growing season, and learn how to grow the four medicines – sage, cedar, sweetgrass, and tobacco. “To actually be able to grow them, it will be awesome for them,” Jones said. “Culture is very sustainable. … the way to put culture in agriculture is to teach children the traditional value of their plants.”
A local food system – which includes everything from growing food to processing it to buying and consuming it – also creates jobs, income, and infrastructure. That’s the mindset used to justify public spending on agriculture development in Greater Minnesota, like one that helps farmers modernize their livestock operations by, say, expanding their facilities to hold more animals. That has visible impact, Peterson said, by providing more work for veterinarians and feed companies.
That’s exactly the kind of ripple effect local food advocates imagine in places like north Minneapolis. Project Sweetie Pie, for example, will put its grant toward establishing a greenhouse that will belong to a broad coalition of groups, who will use it to operate year-round, Chaney said. It’s another step forward in their vision to grow their local food economy.
The fight for funding
Urban agriculture joins a suite of initiatives funded through the Agricultural Growth, Research, and Innovation program (known as AGRI), which supports the state’s agricultural and renewable energy industries through various grants and loans.
AGRI was an important win for Minnesota agriculture when it was established in 2009. At the time, the state subsidized ethanol production. “When those payments were going to end, we got concerned we were going to lose investment into agriculture,” said Thom Peterson, who lobbies the state government with the Minnesota Farmers Union.
Advocates convinced the state to establish AGRI, and the program will allocate a little more than $13 million a year for fiscal years 2018 and 2019, according to the most recent report.
The Farmers Union backed the bill to add grants for urban ag to the AGRI program, Peterson said. And he sees its addition as a chance to expand public support for state ag funding as a whole. “There’s agriculture all over the state, including in the metro areas,” he said.
He credits Clark, who is leaving the Legislature at the end of her term, with pushing the matter forward for years, until Rep. Rod Hamilton, a Republican from Southwest Minnesota who heads the House Agriculture Finance Committee, got on board. “Urban ag is going to need a new champion at the legislature now that Karen Clark is gone,” Peterson said.
Connell repeated the concern, saying the top question facing the urban ag grant program is whether funding will continue past 2019. She said communities that benefit from urban farming, especially from the grants handed out these two years, will need to show up when 2020-2021 budget talks begin.
“Getting the funding this first time is very difficult,” Connell said. “I also feel like after you get that first round of funding, some people who may have been very passionate may get less interested. They might get comfortable in a sense. Every two years, we’re going to get a new budget. Every two years you’re going to have to fight to continue that funding until it’s been there long enough that it’s assumed it goes in the budget.”
Sarbanes Announces Federal Grant to Support Maryland Urban Farming and Environmental Education Program
Representing The 3rd District of Maryland Congressman John Sarbanes
Funding Will Help Local Nonprofit Provide Hands-On Urban Farming Classes and Environmental Learning Experiences for Maryland Students
September 18, 2018
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Congressman John Sarbanes (D-Md.) today announced that ECO City Farms, a local urban farming and education nonprofit, will receive $97,844 in federal grants from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to provide Maryland students with immersive urban farming classes and hands-on environmental learning experiences.
Funding comes from the EPA’s Environmental Education Program, which offers grantmaking opportunities to education programs that promote environmental stewardship and outdoor learning. The grant will support ECO’s “Growing Young Stewards Through Urban Farming,” a program that educates Maryland students about sustainable agriculture and environmental conservation, and encourages youth to play a larger role in protecting local ecosystems.
“This new federal grant will allow ECO City Farms to provide more Maryland students with hands-on urban farming and sustainability education and better connect them to our natural world,” said Congressman Sarbanes, a longstanding environmental education advocate who authored the No Child Left Inside Act. “By providing our students with access to outdoor learning experiences, we can instill them with environmental values and inspire a lifelong commitment to environmental stewardship.”
To learn more about ECO City Farms, visit: http://www.ecoffshoots.org/about-us/
For more information about the EPA’s Environmental Education Program, visit: https://www.epa.gov/education/environmental-education-ee-grants.
Vertical Farming For The Future
Posted by Sarah Federman, AAAS Science and Technology Policy Fellow, Office of the Chief Scientist and Paul M. Zankowski, Senior Advisor for Plant Health and Production and Plant Products, Office of the Chief Scientist in Research and Science
Aug 14, 2018
Indoor and vertical farming may be part of the solution to rising demands for food and limited natural resources. Photo credit: Oasis Biotech
Imagine walking into your local grocery store on a frigid January day to pick up freshly harvested lettuce, fragrant basil, juicy sweet strawberries, and ripe red tomatoes – all of which were harvested at a local farm only hours before you’d arrived. You might be imagining buying that fresh produce from vertical farms where farmers can grow indoors year-round by controlling light, temperature, water, and oftentimes carbon dioxide levels as well. Generally, fresh produce grown in vertical farms travels only a few miles to reach grocery store shelves compared to conventional produce, which can travel thousands of miles by truck or plane.
Beyond providing fresh local produce, vertical agriculture could help increase food production and expand agricultural operations as the world’s population is projected to exceed 9 billion by 2050. And by that same year, two out of every three people are expected to live in urban areas. Producing fresh greens and vegetables close to these growing urban populations could help meet growing global food demands in an environmentally responsible and sustainable way by reducing distribution chains to offer lower emissions, providing higher-nutrient produce, and drastically reducing water usage and runoff.
Recently, USDA and the Department of Energy held a stakeholder workshop focused on vertical agriculture and sustainable urban ecosystems. At this workshop, field experts shared thought-provoking presentations followed by small group discussions focusing on areas such as plant breeding, pest management, and engineering. Workshop attendees from public and private sectors worked together to identify the challenges, needs, and opportunities for vertical farming. A report on this workshop will be released to help inform Departmental strategic planning efforts for internal research priorities at USDA and external funding opportunities for stakeholders and researchers.
We’re excited about the potential opportunities vertical agriculture presents to address food security. That’s why USDA already has some of these funding and research opportunities in place. The National Institute for Food and Agriculture has funding opportunities (PDF, 1.22 MB) that could support future vertical agriculture conferences and research.
Similarly, the Agricultural Research Service is working on a project to increase U.S. tomato production and quality in greenhouses and other protected environments.
We look forward to continuing our partnership with our customers, both internal and external.
Category/Topic: Research and Science
Tags: Office of the Chief Scientist National Institute of Food and Agriculture NIFA Agricultural Research ServiceARS Department of Energy vertical farming
Webinar Series - Funding Opportunities For CEA Energy Efficiency
The GLASE Consortium Webinar Series features the latest technological innovations and best practices in the CEA field providing the audience the opportunity to discover new solutions and to connect with field experts.
Webinar Series
Funding Opportunities For CEA Energy Efficiency
This webinar will introduce some key funding opportunities to help CEA growers install energy efficient equipment. Growers and manufacturers will learn how to leverage federal, state, and utility funding to identify opportunities for energy efficiency and contribute towards the installation cost of the identified projects. Attendees will also learn about utilizing the joint GLASE/EnSave software tool to share operational details of their CEA facility to further the GLASE mission.
Date: July 12th, 2018
Time: 2 pm EST
Presented by: EnSave
Register here
EnSave is the United States' leading designer and implementer of agricultural energy efficiency and greenhouse gas reduction programs. Since 1991, EnSave has worked with a variety of clients including federal agencies, state government, energy utilities, and industry organizations to help drive sustainable growth within the agricultural sector. We are proud to be a GLASE industrial member.
