Large-Scale Automated Vertical Farm Near Tokyo by Spread And ENEOS Partnership

July 14, 2021, Spread Co., Ltd. (HQ: Kyoto, Japan; CEO: Shinji Inada, hereinafter “Spread”)’s partner, and a member of ENEOS Group, J Leaf Corporation (HQ: Chiba, Japan; President: Jun Uehara, hereinafter “J Leaf”) started operating the automated vertical farm “Techno Farm Narita” (Chiba, Japan) on 30th of June.

Spread’s Large-Scale Vertical Farming Partnership with ENEOS Group’s J Leaf Starts Operations near Tokyo

Spread owns and operates two vertical farms in Western Japan (Kyoto), the Kameoka Plant and Techno Farm Keihanna. Techno Farm Narita is Spread’s first partnership project, and the first to be located in Eastern Japan. The most significant feature of Techno Farm Narita is the increased efficiency in the use of land. This has been achieved by increasing the number of cultivation racks levels to 28, double that of Techno Farm Keihanna. Techno Farm Narita will produce 30,000 heads of lettuce daily, building on the know-how accumulated through the operation of Techno Farm Keihanna to deliver increasingly sustainable food production.

Unique Features of Techno Farm Narita

Even more efficient land saving through 28-level cultivation rack system (roughly 2 times more efficient than Techno Farm Keihanna)

Located in the Greater Tokyo Area, allowing for local production and consumption

Transforming idle land to efficient and sustainable agriculture ・

The utilization of renewable energy generated from solar panels

Techno Farm Narita also retains other features of Spread’s next-generation food production system, Techno Farm™, including pesticide-free, stable cultivation, integrated automation, specialized LED lighting, and Spread’s proprietary IoT-based cultivation management system, Techno Farm Cloud.

Techno Farm Narita’s Cultivation Room Opening Ceremony

About the Partners

ENEOS Group is one of Japan's leading corporate groups, with revenue in excess of 10 trillion yen. *1

The Group has the largest market share in oil refinery and petrochemicals distribution in Japan and is centered around ENEOS Holdings.

Spread’s vision is to create a sustainable society where future generations can live with peace of mind. On the way to this objective, Spread plans to reach a total production capacity of 100 tons per day domestically by 2030, through the expansion of its Techno Farm™. With the collaboration at Techno Farm Narita as a foundation, both parties are considering further partnership projects. The green business market is expected to continue growing, and Spread strives to become a leading vertical farming company globally.

Spread will continue to pursue further business opportunities through technological innovation both in Japan and overseas. Spread aims to provide solutions for the global problems of climate change and food security and the delivery of a truly sustainable society.

*1 FY2019 results (announced on May 20, 2020)

*2 ENEOS Techno Materials Corporation is a member of ENEOS Group

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BASF Venture Capital Invests In Indian Startup UrbanKisaan

Startup optimizes sustainable agriculture without soil in tropical climates

■   BASF Venture Capital’s first investment in this early stage Indian business strengthens AgTech activities in Asia

Hyderabad, India, and Ludwigshafen, Germany, July 13, 2021 – BASF Venture Capital GmbH (BVC) is investing in the Indian startup UrbanKisaan, which specializes in hydroponic cultivation of various types of vegetables, greens and herbs in tropical urban environments. This is BVC’s first investment in an early stage business focusing on India. Conceptualized in 2017, UrbanKisaan operates several suburban greenhouses and vertical indoor farms in Hyderabad and Bangalore. The company sells the fresh produce, some of which is grown directly in the shops, in its franchise-owned brick-and-mortar stores and via an app and website. Both parties agreed not to disclose financial details of the investment.

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UrbanKisaan has optimized hydroponics technology for use in tropical climates such as India. With only one tenth of the costs, the proprietary technology is significantly more efficient than conventional global standards in hydroponics cultivation. The company is also capitalizing on the trend of online food retailing, which is booming on the subcontinent. “Our approach in hydroponics enables us to produce our food cost-effectively and with relatively little effort,” said Vihari Kanukollu, co-founder and CEO at UrbanKisaan. “Our produce also contributes towards sustainability as it is grown in clean, hygienic farms in and around the city, thus minimizing the total carbon footprint. Use of IoT (Internet-of-Things)-enabled technology for monitoring the farms ensures pesticide-free produce. The growing demand from our customers shows that our idea is well-received,” he added.

UrbanKisaan’s farms are managed through their proprietary technology. Nutrient content, pH levels, atmospheric humidity, CO2 concentration, light concentration and other important parameters are controlled and adapted to the needs of the particular plants with an app.

“UrbanKisaan, as a pioneer in the hydroponics space, has developed a unique growing method and combines this with a compelling business model for sales,” commented Markus Solibieda, Managing Director of BASF Venture Capital GmbH. He added: “AgTech is one of our key investment focus areas worldwide. This includes, in particular, our goal of supporting innovative agricultural and food-related businesses in Asia. We look forward to learning more about hydroponic farming and exploring its potential through a close collaboration between UrbanKisaan and BASF’s agriculture experts.”

With the investment from BASF, UrbanKisaan plans to further expand its market presence in India, deploy its farming technology to work with thousands of farmers, and bring fresh, local, sustainable produce to urban dwellers.

Hydroponic farming – an efficient way to use limited resources

The world’s population is expected to reach 10 billion by 2050 1 while the area available for farming and freshwater reserves are becoming increasingly scarce. Hydroponics offers a sustainable way to grow crops without soil and using vertically stacked layers while reducing water usage by about 90 percent 2. Especially in densely populated urban areas, this presents a more efficient way to use limited resources like water, space and manpower. Water that is not absorbed by the plants is captured, purified and fed back into the farm’s water circulation system, minimizing wastage significantly.

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India is the second-largest producer of fruits and vegetables in the world, with a production value of about $64 billion3. It is also a large consumer of fruits and vegetables, and while much of this is through unorganized channels (local vegetable markets, hand-pulled carts and neighborhood stores), organized channels (modern trade and online retail) account for a little over 20 percent of the market4. Thus, hydroponics is a fast growing and efficient alternative to traditional supply chains in the organized fresh produce market.

About UrbanKisaan

UrbanKisaan was conceptualized in 2017 in Hyderabad, India. The company began as a farming enterprise but wanted to grow more than just fresh and nutritious food. They wanted to create a sustainable future for farming and feed the world in a way that is good for both people and planet. Today, with its hyper-local urban farms the company is creating a transparent supply chain with a low carbon footprint, leveraging on proprietary growing technology that helps save 90% of water yet grow 30 times more crops compared to traditional farms of similar area. Further information at www.urbankisaan.com.

About BASF Venture Capital

At BASF, we create chemistry for a sustainable future. BASF Venture Capital GmbH (BVC) also contributes to this corporate purpose. Founded in 2001, BVC has offices in Europe, the U.S., China, India, Brazil, and Israel. BVC’s goal is to generate new growth potential for current and future business areas of BASF by investing in young companies and funds. The focus of investment is on new materials, AgTech, Digitization and new, disruptive business models. Further information at www.basf-vc.com.

About BASF

At BASF, we create chemistry for a sustainable future. We combine economic success with environmental protection and social responsibility. More than 110,000 employees in the BASF Group contribute to the success of our customers in nearly all sectors and almost every country in the world. Our portfolio is organized into six segments: Chemicals, Materials, Industrial Solutions, Surface Technologies, Nutrition & Care and Agricultural Solutions. BASF generated sales of €59 billion in 2020. BASF shares are traded on the stock exchange in Frankfurt (BAS) and as American Depositary Receipts (BASFY) in the U.S. Further information at www.basf.com.

3 Fruits & Vegetables Production value at Current Prices for 2015-16, Horticultural Statistics at a Glance 2018, Government of India, Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare

4 Avalon Consulting - http://www.fruitnet.com/asiafruit/article/178572/india-on-the-move

PODCAST: This Weeks Episode - Season 3 Episode 35

Join Harry Duran, host of Vertical Farming Podcast, as he welcomes to the show, co-founder and Chief Marketing Officer at AeroFarms, Marc Oshima. AeroFarms is an award-winning indoor farming company that is on a bold mission to grow the best plants possible for the betterment of humanity. 

Today, Harry and Marc talk about Marc’s background in marketing and how it has impacted his work at AeroFarms. Marc provides his thoughts on the concept of ‘speed breeding,’ speaks to his passion for food, and expounds on the concept of utilizing business as a force for good

Listen & Subscribe

2021 Global CEA Census Will Measure The Impact of Sustainability

7 July 2021: The 2021 Global CEA Census has launched with a focus on growers’ perspectives on sustainability and how they are measuring specific ESG (environmental, social, and governance) outcomes.  

This year Agritecture Consulting will partner with AgTech leader WayBeyond who has taken over the responsibility of the Census from automation business Autogrow.   

“Our WayBeyond ethos for sustainable crop production technology fits perfectly with this year’s Census. Understanding the impact of CEA (Controlled Environment Agriculture) on the planet allows us to continue highlighting the growers doing remarkable work to reduce environmental impact while producing quality crops.

There’s clear evidence showing consumers, particularly Gen-Z, are making decisions based on the sustainability factor of not only the food they eat but also the packaging, distribution and producers themselves. This Census will give a clear view of the role CEA can play in creating a more sustainable planet.”

— WAYBEYOND CEO & FOUNDER DARRYN KEILLER

This is the third year the Census has run with increasing participation each year from greenhouse, indoor vertical, and tunnel house growers. Past Census reports have brought forward key information on the state of the industry, tactics being used, and the people behind its many operations. For example, the 2020 report showed that there was plenty of optimism despite the pandemic, with 95% of respondents having an “excellent” or “good” outlook for the 12 months ahead, and only 5% indicating that the business’ future was uncertain.

“We work hard to encourage as many growers to participate as possible and, with a focus on sustainability, we hope to gain an even better uptake this year, especially from large-scale operations.

This is the most comprehensive global survey of CEA operations running, and the published findings will provide valuable insights that may affect policy, financing options, operational practices, and new technology. That is a benefit for all of us in the industry.”

— AGRITECTURE CONSULTING FOUNDER AND CEO HENRY GORDON-SMITH

The 2021 Global Census will run from 7 July 2021 until 20 August 2021.

Take the survey: Global CEA Census

Survey Terms and Conditions can be found here.

All You Need To Know About Hydroponic System

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By: Harold Camaya

July 12, 2021

Many people use hydroponics to grow plants that use nutrient-rich solutions in water, so there’s no use of soil. Instead, some materials support plant roots, such as peat moss, rock wool, perlite, and clay pellets.

Hydroponics has existed in various forms for thousands of years, from Babylonian hanging gardens to ancient Mexican Chinampas.

Only in the past 70-80 years have we understood the science behind this technique. While we have practiced hydroponics in various forms for centuries, some places have sometimes been more developed than others. For example, people use ac infinity to ventilate their growing space. 

In this article, you’ll learn all you need to know about hydroponic systems. We will aim to answer these questions that include:

What is hydroponics?

How do you set up your hydroponic systems?

What systems do people use in hydroponics?

What are the advantages of hydroponics?

What is hydroponics?

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Photo by Lyn Ong from Pexels

Hydroponics refers to any growing of terrestrial plants that delivers nutrients directly to the roots rather than having the roots seek them out by digging in a soil body. 

We derive the word hydroponics from the Greek word hydros, which means water, and pon means work. The plant’s roots receive nutrients from water-based nutrient solutions.

How do you set up your hydroponic system?

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Photo by Jatuphon Buraphon from Pexels

Depending on what your tastes are, your hydroponic system can be simple or very complex. It is possible to set up several approaches that require little effort and set up some that require a significant investment.

The three elements of hydroponic design include: 

1. Growing containers

2. Sump tank

3. Pump

Systems used in hydroponics

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Photo by Anna Tarazevich from Pexels

Selecting a hydroponic system involves choosing from six different types. They all revolve around the use of water and nutrients. Each design addresses the core elements but in slightly different ways.

1. Water culture

Water culture is a simple and inexpensive system. We place plants in a basket above reservoirs filled with nutrient solutions. After hanging in the solution for a while, the roots descend entirely into the soil. They will need regular aeration leading to faster growth to prevent suffocation because of constant submersion. 

1. Nutrient Film Technique (NFT)

The system comprises a shallow, downward-sloping stream of nutrient solution. This stream contains roots that absorb nutrients from its steady flow. Growing lettuce, herbs, and baby greens in this system are excellent for plants with a short growth cycle.

1. Aeroponic

By creating an aeroponics system, we expose roots to as much oxygen as possible. Growing chambers without growing medium allow roots to hang upside down in midair, exposing their entire root system. As the roots grow, we mist them periodically with aeroponics misters within this section. It has proven successful commercially propagating seed potatoes, growing tomato plants, growing leaf crops, and growing microgreens using aeroponics techniques.

1. Ebb and Flow

A water pump runs on a timer in Ebb and Flow, also known as Flood and Drain. Water and nutrients flood and then drain the root system. The overflow tube allows the excess water to drain through. What’s left is a dry pond with soaking roots and an overflow tube to drain water away. 

1. Drip

We use perlite or gravel as a drip system for supplying the roots with nutrients. We then pump water and nutrients into them via tubes from a reservoir. Soaking the growing medium and roots makes the solution drip back into the container and the pool. 

1. Wicking

Plants grow in wicking media, such as vermiculite or perlite. You can find them in a container next to the water and nutrient reservoir. To connect a wicking medium to a solution, we use wicking ropes or strips of felt.

What are the advantages of hydroponics?

Hydroponic gardening offers many benefits. Among the most important are:

• Total control over nutrient supply

Because the soil is not a source of minerals or nutrients, it is easy to adjust mineral or nutrient levels based on plant needs.

• Climate or season is not a constraint

Regardless of the weather outside, you can grow hydroponically whenever during the year.

• Better results and higher yields

If we calibrate the hydroponic system and maintain it well, it can effortlessly produce a higher product quality and quantity than a soil-based system.

• Hydroponics offers significant environmental advantages

Not only does hydroponics take up much less space than traditional horticulture, but it also uses much less water. And it allows nutrient solutions to be recycled.

• It is possible to grow all plants hydroponically

You can grow vegetables like potatoes, carrots, onions, etc., that grow on the earth using hydroponics.

Determining Your Best Method

It would be best to have some ground understanding of each system’s strengths and weaknesses, as well as your hydroponic needs, before choosing one of these systems. 

For example, wicks and water culture systems are excellent options for home growers who want an easy setup system. 

Drip systems and NFT systems may be the right choice if you want to grow various plants. Examine each hydroponic system’s pros and cons to pinpoint the best one.

Conclusion

Growing your fruits and vegetables is a fun way to do so from the comfort of your own home using hydroponics. 

The process can become complicated and expensive, but you do not have to make it so if you don’t want to. With all the essential information in this guide, you can better decide for yourself. 

Lead photo: Photo by Anna Tarazevich from Pexels

Philly Start-Up GrowFlux Tweaks Lighting For Growing Indoor Agriculture Industry

The University City company has received a $250,000 grant to conduct research at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Colorado.

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GrowFlux offer technology and software to control lighting for indoor farms. Shown here is Second Chances Farm in Wilmington, an early customer. GrowFlux

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by Harold Brubaker

07-12-21

Crops in greenhouses — an increasingly popular way to supply year-round fresh greens and other produce to places with cold winters — are most productive when they receive the right amount of light at the right time.

But there’s a downside. Greenhouses are energy hogs and typically generate more gasses than traditional field agriculture because of their lighting and heating needs. Those are terrible characteristics for a burgeoning industry at a time of growing concern over global warming.

GrowFlux, a Philadelphia agricultural technology start-up that is trying to make the industry more efficient, won a $250,000 grant last week from the Wells Fargo Innovation Incubator for research at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in Colorado. The aim is to reduce energy consumption in greenhouses by fine-tuning the amount of artificial light that crops receive.

GrowFlux sells sensors that measure the amount of light, carbon dioxide, temperature, and humidity in indoor farms.GrowFlux

Simple timers are traditionally used to turn lights on and off in greenhouses, said Eric Eisele, GrowFlux’s chief executive, and cofounder. “They’re not dialing in the light in accordance with when the crop is actually using light most efficiently,” he said. “It results in a fair bit of energy that’s wasted.”

The GrowFlux system — to be further developed with the help of researchers at NREL and the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center in St. Louis — measures the natural light available and then adjusts the artificial light to add more when needed.

GrowFlux estimates that it can cut energy use by 20% to 30%.

While the grant, funded by the Wells Fargo Foundation, involves GrowFlux’s lighting controls, the University City company has a broader target with sensors that monitor carbon dioxide levels, humidity, temperature, and other factors that determine how well plants grow.

“They were one of the very first companies that were trying to essentially make farms like ours smart farms by using technology,” said Ajit Mathew George, founder and managing partner at Second Chances Farm in Wilmington, an indoor vertical farm that employs formerly incarcerated individuals.

“You don’t think of indoor vertical farms as being a place where technology plays an important part,” said George, who uses a GrowFlux app on his phone to monitor Second Chances Farm. “It does, and the more it does, the better our production is.”

Investor interest in indoor agriculture surged last year, with $929 million going into 41 deals in the United States, according to PitchBook Data Inc. That’s twice the amount invested the year before. Most of the money went into producers rather than into makers of components and technology like GrowFlux.

Eisele, 35, and Alexander Roscoe, chief technology officer, founded GrowFlux in 2017. Both are Drexel University graduates.

Eisele’s background is in interior lighting for humans. He worked for seven years in the research group at KieranTimberlake, a Philadelphia architecture firm. Rosco, 36, worked at Comcast on the build-out of national internet architecture.

GrowFlux’s first products, launched in 2018, were horticultural lights with built-in wireless technology. “The lighting space got very competitive in horticulture due to legalization of cannabis,” Eisele said.

The start-up, which now employs four, was competing with “the likes of Philips and General Electric and Osram,” Eisele said. GrowFlux dropped its lights in 2019 but kept developing its controllers.

Eisele and Roscoe declined to disclose their annual revenue but said they have raised close to $2 million from investors. The company has products in more than 100 farms, including indoor cannabis producers and greenhouses growing food like tomatoes and strawberries. The products are also used overseas, in Iceland and in an indoor vertical farm in Singapore that grows strawberries, Eisele said.

Trish Cozart, NREL’s program manager for the Wells Fargo Innovation Incubator, which in the past has worked with companies involved in traditional farming, said that over the next 30 years, global food production will have to increase by 60% to meet demand. NREL is part of the U.S. Department of Energy.

“It might not be possible to meet that demand through field-grown agriculture. Indoor agriculture is going to play a part. We don’t know how big of a part,” she said. But because indoor agriculture consumes so much energy, “we want to figure out how to combat that using innovative companies,” Cozart said.

Published July 12, 2021

• Harold Brubaker

• I write about the business side of health care and the nonprofit sector.

Solar Firm To Convert Shipping Containers To Urban Greenhouses

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July 9, 2021

New York, New York, July 09, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Green Stream Holdings Inc. (OTC PINK: GSFI) (“the Company”) (http://www.GreenRainSolar.com), an emerging leader in the solar utility and finance space, which had previously announced that it would be entering the rapidly growing urban gardening sector with solar greenhouses dedicated primarily to rooftop farming, today announced that it is also moving forward with its previously announced project to convert old shipping/cargo containers into inexpensive greenhouses for urban and inner city neighborhoods.

Last year, on October 6, 2020, the Company previously announced that it had entered into a non-binding agreement with Aoki Group Inc. (“Aoki”) and famed restauranter, Kevin Aoki, who wanted to ship his famous mushrooms to his various sites around the world. The mushrooms would grow inside the container while being shipped to their destination.

Blondie’s specializes in custom urban landscapes including roof decks, terraces, courtyards and entry gardens, and is now utilizing that expertise in designing the irrigation systems for our Cargo container Solar Greenhouses. Blondie’s transforms concept and vision into realized functional design.

Blondie’s is experienced in specifying, installing, renovating and maintaining green wall systems. They are famous for their interior and outside Green Walls.

For more information go to: https://blondiestreehouse.com.

CEO James DiPrima said: “We also felt that inner city urban areas also needed a way to get fresh fruits and vegetables grown right in their own neighborhood. Reimagining old shipping/cargo containers as the structural framework for our soar technology would greatly reduce the costs of building greenhouses. Less room, less labor and less panels was a marriage made in heaven for underserved communities. Communities can get one, ten or 100 containers… whatever amount of land is available… and since each container has a small footprint, there is a lot of flex flexibility for each situation.

Using solar energy has two main benefits: Solar energy systems do not produce air pollutants or carbon dioxide, and Solar energy systems on buildings have minimal effects on the environment… OUR Solar Greenhouses combine the two creating a physical structure that produce electricity, with the ability to capture the sun from many different angles.” 

About Green Stream Finance, Inc.
Green Stream Finance, Inc., a solar utility and finance company with satellite offices in Malibu, CA and New York, NY, is focused on exploiting currently unmet markets in the solar energy space, and is currently licensed in California, Nevada, Arizona, Washington, New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, New Mexico, Colorado, Hawaii, and Canada. The Company’s next-generation solar greenhouses constructed and managed by Green Rain Solar, LLC, a Nevada-based division, utilize proprietary greenhouse technology and trademarked design developed by world-renowned architect Mr. Antony Morali. The Company is currently targeting high-growth solar market segments for its advanced solar greenhouse and advanced solar battery products. The Company has a growing footprint in the significantly underserved solar market in New York City where it is targeting 50,000 to 100,000 square feet of rooftop space for the installation of its solar panels. Green Stream is looking to forge key partnership with major investment groups, brokers, and private investors in order to capitalize on a variety of unique investment opportunities in the commercial solar energy markets. The Company is dedicated to becoming a major player in this critical space. Through its innovative solar product offerings and industry partnerships, the Company is well-positioned to become a significant player in the solar space.

SOURCE: Green Stream Holdings Inc.

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Feel Confident In Starting Your Project With This 3-Part Webinar Series!

Even with effortless, turn-key container farms, there are still questions left unanswered for those interested in getting startedThis three-part webinar series will take you step-by-step through what you need to know before you start, how to select the best business model, and your options for financing the project. 

By signing up, you will:

• Hear and learn from first-hand experiences

• Access knowledge and resources from Growcer and Farm Credit Canada

• Break down how to get growing year-round into smaller, digestible steps

If you’re interested in growing food for your community but don’t know where to start or are stuck along the way, sign up for the webinar series today!

Register now for all three sessions:

• July 13 - Getting Started

• July 27 - Choosing a Business Model

• August 10 - Financing your Project

Excited for you to join us,

The Growcer Team 

Farmers At Growing Underground Launch Fresh Branding As They Announce B Corp Status And Growth Plans

Growing Underground announces its status as a B Corp brand, making it the first B Corp salad brand available in mainstream UK supermarkets. Meanwhile, owner Zero Carbon Farms (ZCF) is the first certified B Corp vertical or controlled environment farm in the UK and Europe. B Corporations are businesses that meet the highest standards of verified social and environmental performance, public transparency, and legal accountability to balance profit and purpose. Growing Underground boasts a fully net carbon negative growing system, meaning that it off- sets more carbon than it emits.

Target-busting investment shows industry and individual support for the vertical farming movement
Since 2015, Growing Underground crops have been generating proprietary data, improving technology and methods to increase yields and reduce resources to create a net carbon negative growing system. Now the AgTech brand has formed a strategic partnership with one of the leading fresh fruit and veg suppliers to the UK, Reynolds, allowing the brand to distribute nationally. 

To scale up its innovative farming mode even further, ZCF is currently undertaking a share offering. The financing has met with strong industry interest and investor endorsement and included a deliberately targeted crowdfunding campaign that hit its target in less than 24 hours. The offering has been over-subscribed and in total over £4 million has been raised, which will be used to expand into a second site in North London this summer.

“Growing Underground continues to grow in every sense,” comments Richard Ballard, Co-Founder & Farmer-in-Chief, Growing Underground. “We’re looking forward to translating our carefully crafted model and sustainability credentials into an industrial-scale distribution network, accelerating the world’s transition to carbon negative farming and continuing to transform the future of sustainable food production in the UK.”

Read the complete article at: Fresh Plaza 

For more information:
Growing Underground
www.growing-underground.com 

9 July 2021

The Future of Agritech: Inside Singapore’s Vision For Food Security

Melvin Chow, Senior Director, Food Infrastructure

Development & Management Division,

Singapore Food Agency Discusses The

Role of High-Tech Urban Farms.

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By Justin Tan

9 JULY 2021

Early last year, Covid-19 restrictions led to hordes storming supermarkets. Eggs, butter, and even toilet paper were flying off the shelves.

As a small city-state with limited resources, Singapore is especially vulnerable to such disruptions. It imports over 90 percent of its food from other countries, and only one percent of its land is set aside for agricultural use. How can it ensure its food supply remains stable amid today’s volatile world?

Local farms are turning to tech to increase food production. Melvin Chow, Senior Director, Food Infrastructure Development & Management Division at Singapore Food Agency (SFA), shares how that’s bolstering the city-state’s food security.

Stacking production

Singapore aims to produce 30 percent of local nutritional needs by 2030. To reach the goal, the country will increase local production of commonly consumed food such as fish, eggs and vegetables. These are also more perishable and vulnerable to supply disruptions, Chow says.

With limited land spaces and resources, the nation needs to optimize the limited land resources they have through “intensifying each unit area”, he adds.

A local farm, Sustenir Agriculture is using tech to optimize farming spaces. It uses LED lighting to grow vegetables indoors across multiple floors. Their system is designed to fit into existing multi-story buildings such as industrial areas, eliminating the need for specialized new compounds to be built.

Sustenir Agriculture is a high-tech indoor farm that taps on hydroponics and a controlled environment agricultural system to grow crops such as kale and lettuce.

These indoor farms will be more “resilient to some of the impacts of climate change”, Chow says. Urban farmers can incorporate sensors that will help to ensure factors like air quality, light, and water are optimally balanced.

Apollo Aquaculture Group is another local innovator that is maximizing production with eight floors of vertical fish farms.

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Apollo Aquaculture Group’s indoor multi-story fish farm utilizes Recirculating Aquaculture System which treats and recycles water to reduce waste.

Each floor will be equipped with a tank system that will purify, monitor, and recirculate water within the farm. Only five percent of the water will need to be replaced when contaminated by fish waste. That reduces water wastage compared to traditional farms that regularly clean out whole tanks, reported Smithsonian Magazine.

Such innovative farms help to produce up to 10 to 15 times more food product per hectare as compared to traditional farms, Chow says.

To overcome land constraints, SFA is also looking to use alternative spaces for farming. The rooftops of multi-story car parks have been used to grow vegetables. Citiponics, one such farm in the Ang Mo Kio neighborhood, sells pesticide-free vegetables and provides job and training opportunities for senior residents.

These community farms will help to raise public awareness and support for local produce, Chow told CNA.

Sustainable farming

To encourage more sustainable farming methods, the SFA recently launched a new agricultural standard for local farms. This will ensure farms are using resources efficiently and recycling waste. Non-edible crop waste, for instance, can be used for composting before it is disposed of.

Singapore currently incinerates up to 95 percent of food waste, which is a “waste of resource”, Dr. Per Christer Lund, Science and Technology Counsellor at Innovation Norway told GovInsider.

Food waste can be converted into animal feed – recycling nutrients back into the food production loop, Chow says. SFA is looking to improve the efficiency of tech that can convert food waste into animal feed, Chow says.

The National Environment Agency is moving to support this, as large restaurants and food factories will have to segregate their food waste for treatment from 2024.

Singapore is also hoping to encourage “green citizenry” that consumes and wastes less, Chow says. Singapore’s Green Plan 2030 – a nationwide agenda to advance sustainable development – plans to educate youths on sustainable living habits, reported CNA.

Support for the industry

SFA is providing funding for the adoption of innovative tech. Last year, the organization launched a “30×30 Express” grant which offered SG$39.4 million (US$29.1 million) to nine high-tech farms to boost local food production.

One of the farms, I.F.F.I, will set up an indoor vegetable farm that uses AI to monitor the growth of produce. It will also set up a water treatment system that reduces the amount of bacteria and extends the shelf life of crops, reported by The Straits Times.

SFA’s SG$60 million (US$44.4 million) Agri-Food Cluster Transformation fund also encourages farms to adopt tech-enabled and sustainable farming practices, Chow says.

As the farming industry transforms, the workforce will need to be trained. Young people must also be attracted to join the industry. “By 2030, we expect about 4,700 jobs to be created and upskilled in the agri and aqua-tech food industry,” Chow says.

On this, the agency is working with local farms and institutes of higher learning to roll out internship programs and diploma courses. 20 students studying aquaculture at local polytechnics have been placed in internships at ten local fish farms, SFA reports.

Existing workers in the sector or workers looking to make a switch can take the SkillsFuture Continuing Education and Training courses, Chow says. The courses include part-time diplomas in aquaculture and agriculture technology.

The turbulence of the past year has underscored the need for governments to bolster food security. Innovative and sustainable farms will help Singapore reduce its reliance on food imports.

Images by the Singapore Food Agency

PinDuoDuo: Building A More Resilient Food System With Technology - July 14 -15

The pandemic has shone a light on how fragile and intertwined our global agri-food supply chain is, making it even more pressing to push for food systems innovation and change. Can we leverage technology to build a more resilient food system that feeds more people and feeds them better?
 
Join us virtually for our inaugural Food Systems Forum, which will convene experts from around the world to share their insights and spark further connections and potential collaborations.

Register To Join The Conversation

BrightBox Farms’ Gideon Saunders Sees Alaska’s Future For Agriculture In Hydroponics

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By Staff Reporter

July 8, 2021

Nestled next to an otherwise ordinary house on Kodiak is a shipping container. It looks out of place, but the garden in it is even more noticeable. The growing area of ​​the BrightBox Farm looks like a prop from a movie about space exploration – the vertically oriented hydroponic farm has its own perfect microclimate.

The use of this shipping box has enabled Gideon Saunders to conquer the seasons that otherwise rule Kodiak Gardens.

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“There we worked with Freight Farms, who build 40-foot containers, high cubes, 2.50 m high, 2.40 m wide, standard containers, only slightly higher, very insulated, highly insulated R-28. So we agreed with them and picked out a unit and then delivered it to us, ”Saunders said.

Freight Farms made the interior of the shipping container. Inside, there are shelves with lettuce and other greens, interspersed with panels of blindingly bright ultraviolet light. A panel filled with nutrients feeds into a water tank on the back, which in turn feeds drips into the hydroponic system. The air is supplemented by a carbon dioxide tank, which ensures that the plants do not lack for anything.

The container is completely controlled by an app. And it even comes with built-in bluetooth speakers. But for the container, function is more than form – Saunders boasts that he could grow 1,000 heads of lettuce a week in less than 30 hours.

It doesn’t just look futuristic. Saunders believes systems like this will revolutionize agriculture.

“I think it’s the future. I mean, we can get into the politics of agriculture and water rights and freshwater use worldwide, and global warming and all these hot topics – 8 billion, 9 billion, 10 billion people, how do you feed them? The population is growing – how do you become more efficient with your food? Well, when it comes to vegetables and leafy greens and what we do, we use 95% less water than traditional farming. We do not use herbicides, pesticides or insecticides. So no glyphosate, no Miracle Grow. Chemically nothing bad. You can control it. So it’s the future of agriculture, ”Saunders said.

This type of production is not cheap. Saunders says the device costs around $ 100,000 with shipping and handling. But as technological advances inevitably push prices down, it becomes more cost-effective for smallholders to invest in such equipment.

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And Saunders says it’s already inexpensive, although its container is complemented by a small homemade addition in its garage. He sells microgreens as a subscription service, in which he provides his subscribers with bags of greens for a monthly fee, and through sales at the local farmers’ market. Even on an island known for its horticultural and merchant shipping challenges, herbivores can enjoy fresh, locally grown produce year round.

How AppHarvest Is Investing In The First Generation of High-Tech Farmers

By Jennifer Marston

July 6, 2021

Agriculture may have been slower to digitize than other parts of the food sector, but these days a lot of folks would agree artificial intelligence, automation, and other technologies have a role to play in the future of farming. The presence of such things means farming will soon require lots of new skills, which in turn means training a whole new generation on a whole new set of tools. It means, in the words of AppHarvest’s founder and CEO Jonathan Webb (pictured above), “getting young people to really visualize what agriculture is” in a way they haven’t before.

Standing under a tent in the middle of a downpour outside Elliott County High School in Sandy Hook, Kentucky recently, Webb explained to me how his company is training the next generation of farmers while simultaneously investing in the company’s own future as a high-tech agricultural powerhouse.

We, along with with students, parents, teachers, and Kentucky governor Andy Beshear, were at the launch for the latest unit of AppHarvest’s high-tech educational container farm program, which teaches high-tech farming to Eastern Kentucky high-school students. Launched back in 2018, the program retrofits old shipping containers to house controlled-environment vertical farms that grow leafy greens. Farms at each school serve as hands-on agricultural classrooms where students can learn not just horticulture but also how to use the technologies powering the next wave of farming innovations around automation, connectivity, and data.

“What we’re doing here is trying to plant the seeds of what it means to be in an exciting industry and get that groundswell early,” Webb told me. 

He was talking specifically about the container farm program but might as well have been referring to the entire company’s MO. AppHarvest, itself a product of Eastern Kentucky, is both a Public Benefit Corporation and a Certified B Corporation, which means the company has to strike a balance between profit and less measurable purposes like environmental impact, transparency, and social good. 

The company’s main business is headquartered about an hour away from Elliott County High School, in Morehead, Kentucky, where AppHarvest operates a 60-acre high-tech greenhouse that grows different varieties of tomatoes. Two additional farms, one for leafy greens and another for tomatoes, are under construction, and the company just broke ground on a couple more last month. All of these farms provide or will provide produce for restaurants and grocery retailers within a day’s drive. They will also provide jobs for a local community that’s seen unemployment rise as the coal industry declines.

The high school container farms are altogether smaller and somewhat different in terms setup and technical specs, but the idea is the same: grow crops in a controlled environment and use technology to improve plant yield, quality, and nutrition profile. In doing so, people from the community get an opportunity to learn the kinds of skills that will be relevant as agriculture gets more and more digitized.

“We’ve tried to say at AppHarvest we’re not building facilities, we’re building an ecosystem,” said Webb. “Obviously our large production facility is the core critical centerpiece of that, but us investing in a high school education, we’re truly trying to create an ecosystem that includes facilities and the brainpower to be able to operate the facilities.”

This isn’t just feel-good talk, either. Technologies like artificial intelligence, robotics, sensors, and analytics are coming to agriculture in response to multiple problems looming in the near future for the global food system. As McKinsey notes, “Demand for food is growing at the same time the supply side faces constraints in land and farming inputs.” With a population expected to grow to 9.7 billion by 2050, the planet needs to produce around 70 percent more available calories. At the same time, inputs like water supply and arable land are shrinking, raising costs for farming and negatively impacting an already burdened planet.

Part of the promise of controlled environment agriculture formats like high-tech greenhouses and container vertical farms is that they can grow more food faster, at a higher quality, and closer to the buying public. Many of these facilities operate via hydroponics systems that recirculate water, saving on that resource. (AppHarvest’s greenhouse runs off rainwater collected from the facility’s roof.) In the case of vertical farming, less land is required because plants are stacked. AppHarvest’s container farms, for example, can pack three to five acres of leafy greens into a forty-foot-long shipping container. Other large-scale vertical farms a la Kalera or Plenty are growing pounds of greens that number in the millions and also exploring additional crops such as berries.

Most individuals in this industry I’ve spoken to agree that indoor farming isn’t “the savior” that will wholly replace traditional agriculture. Nor was it never meant to be. Rather, greenhouse growers, vertical farm companies, and those operating container farms believe we need all of these formats working together and alongside traditional agriculture practices to try and resolve the above issues.

One of the many things needed to make that a reality is a new generation of young people interested in farming as a career and able to navigate the technical as well as horticultural aspects of agriculture. 

Right now, that’s a challenge. “We don’t have our brightest young people inspired to go into agriculture,” said Webb, adding that the issue is, “How do we inspire them early to get into agriculture and the technology sphere of agriculture?”

AppHarvest started investing in its education program before its main facility was ever complete, spending $200,000 of its initial $1 million investment on the program. “I’m not sure if there’s ever been a venture-backed company that’s taken 20 percent of their raised proceeds early and invested in education,” said Webb.

In 2021, AppHarvest has five different container farm programs operating at Eastern Kentucky high schools, all of them operating independently but also networked together, just as AppHarvest’s larger farms will eventually be networked. 

Students learn a huge range of skills working on these farms, from horticultural-related ones like seeding and harvesting to technology management across multiple farms to food safety, data entry, marketing, packaging, and creating a budget. Via a screen inside the farm, students can learn to track the pH levels of plants, carbon dioxide levels, temperature, humidity, and all the other variables present in a farm. And since farms from every high school are networked together, students can view one another’s activity. Elliott County High can see data from Shelby Valley High School in Pike County and vice versa, for example.

Webb says the farms are also an opportunity for schools and students to collaborate using different skillsets, whether technological, horticultural, or otherwise. “Some students might have more of a background or interest in horticulture. Some students might have more of a background or interest in craftsmanship. All we’re trying to do now is say, ‘Here, it’s your thing, bring it to life, and openly share information.’”

And while there’s no pressure, the hope is that some of these students eventually bring their skillsets to AppHarvest’s main operations and help improve them, along with indoor ag, over the coming years. “Hopefully in four years we have students that might end up at MIT. And then they’re telling us what to do,” said Webb, adding that the ROI here isn’t quick. The true impacts of the company’s investment in school programs probably won’t be seen for another five of six years, which is a few lifetimes when we’re talking about tech. 

“We get judged on quarterly earning calls, [but] that’s not the way I think,” he said. “I want us to think, first decade, second decade, third decade, and these are very long-term investments.”

He hopes to see more tech companies investing in high schools, and AppHarvest isn’t quite the lone wolf when it comes to this. Freight Farms, which deals exclusively in container farms, has a partnership with Sodexo to bring its units to K-12 schools and universities in the U.S. AeroFarms, also a Certified B Corp., has partnerships with various schools and community centers, too.

For AppHarvest, the educational program is is an integral part of the operation, and one tied to the company’s long-term success. “It’s not a ‘nice to have,'” Webb told me. “It’s something we truly believe is going to give our company a competitive advantage medium to long term.” 

VIDEO: Signify Expands LED Installation At Walters Gardens With Philips GreenPower LED Toplighting Compact

July 6, 2021 

Eindhoven, the Netherlands – Signify (Euronext: LIGHT), the world leader in lighting, is supplying Walters Gardens with the Philips GreenPower LED toplighting compact to expand their existing lighting installation. Walters Gardens is a market leader in the ornamental industry from Zeeland, Michigan, in the United States.

They first trialed Philips GreenPower LED toplighting in 2014 - one of the first growers in North America to install Philips horticulture LED grow lights over ornamental crops, with the aim to jump-start their spring perennial production.  

As a result of the trial’s success, Walter’s Gardens partnered with Signify again, when expanding their lighted growing areas in 2019 - 2020, with the Philips GreenPower toplighting compact.

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“It was a really easy decision to go with the Philips LED toplighting compact”, says Aren Philips, finishing lead grower at Walters Gardens. “The tops are fuller, the roots are more active, we are able to finish our hostas product 1 to 2 weeks ahead of schedule.”

Together with the high efficacy of the toplighting compact, and the easy 1:1 replacement of the HPS, leading to a great ROI, Walters Gardens knew the expansion would pay off.

Learn more about the Philips LED grow lights for floriculture here.   

--- END ---

For more information:

Global Marcom Manager Horticulture at Signify

Daniela Damoiseaux

Tel: +31 6 31 65 29 69

Email: daniela.damoiseaux@signify.com

www.philips.nl/horti

About Signify

Signify (Euronext: LIGHT) is the world leader in lighting for professionals and consumers and lighting for the Internet of Things. Our Philips products, Interact connected lighting systems and data-enabled services, deliver business value and transform life in homes, buildings, and public spaces. With 2020 sales of EUR 6.5 billion, we have approximately 37,000 employees and are present in over 70 countries. We unlock the extraordinary potential of light for brighter lives and a better world. We achieved carbon neutrality in 2020, have been in the Dow Jones Sustainability World Index since our IPO for four consecutive years and were named Industry Leader in 2017, 2018 and 2019. News from Signify is located at the Newsroom, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram. Information for investors can be found on the Investor Relations page.

Contain Inc Announces Finance Arrangement With Edible Beats For FarmBox Foods Container Farm

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NEWS PROVIDED BY

Contain Inc

July 07, 2021

Contain Inc announces a financing agreement arranged between Edible Beats Restaurant Group & a prominent lender for a FarmBox Foods container farm.

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Image courtesy of FarmBox Foods

With the FarmBox Food container, we can grow hyper-local, organic, year-round produce that will be featured at all of our restaurants. We feel this is just the beginning of what we can grow”— Justin Cucci of Edible Beats Restaurant Group

RENO, NV, UNITED STATES, July 7, 2021 /EINPresswire.com/ -- Contain Inc is pleased to announce a financing agreement arranged between Edible Beats Restaurant Group and a prominent lender for a controlled-environment container farm, FarmBox Foods. Edible Beats is a locally owned Denver-based restaurant group known for its diverse menus and healthy, plant-based dishes that highlight local and seasonal ingredients. Edible Beats will be able to grow herbs, leafy greens, salad greens, and various produce organically and year-round with the container farm that will be attached to their Vital Root location.

“We have always sought opportunities to be more responsible to the sourcing, growing, and handling of the incredible ingredients that we get,” said Justin Cucci of Edible Beats Restaurant Group. “With the FarmBox Food container, we can grow hyper-local, organic, year-round produce that will be featured at all of our restaurants. We feel this is just the beginning of what we can grow, and we are eager to add the mushroom grow operation in the future”

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Image courtesy of Unsplash

Edible Beats purchased the container from FarmBox Foods, a Colorado-based company that builds automated farms that grow gourmet mushrooms, leafy greens, and culinary herbs. To FarmBox, controlled-environment agriculture is the future, and this deal is one of many leading us towards a more decentralized and eco-friendly food system.

“I think we’re going to see a lot more of these types of programs going forward,” said Chris Michlewicz, Chief Public Relations Officer at FarmBox. “Restaurants are realizing that their produce is fresher and has a longer shelf life when they have a container farm on site. It’s a reliable and sustainable source of food, and it’s more eco-friendly because you no longer have to transport food in from elsewhere.”

Image courtesy of Unsplash

Likewise, Contain Inc is thrilled to support Edible Beats as it ventures into indoor ag. “We're delighted to have assisted SemiMojo and FarmBox Foods in this innovative initiative. Contain is always excited to see more fresh food made available to consumers. Customers appreciate freshness and quality produce, year round. Restaurants and container farms make this possible”, said Doug Harding, Head of Leasing & Vendor Relations at Contain Inc. “We are thrilled to have collaborated with Edible Beets and Farm Box Foods on this project. It aligns perfectly with Contain's mission of supporting the controlled environment agriculture industry in its financing needs”.

The container farm is being built and customized for Edible Beats, and will produce ingredients for all of the EB concepts, Linger, Root Down, Vital Root, El Five, and Ophelais.

About Contain Inc
Contain is out to empower the indoor ag industry of tomorrow. Our first and key mission is bringing easier and faster financing to controlled environment agriculture, but we aren't stopping there. We create platforms to move the industry forward, and most importantly, find ways to make indoor ag more accessible to farmers of all stripes.
Contact Contain:
Doug Harding, Leasing & Vendor Relations
doug@contain.ag | 760-330-1199

About Edible Beats
Edible Beats is a locally owned independent restaurant group that operates such diverse concepts as Linger, Root Down, El Five, Ophelais, and Vital Root. “Walking the walk” is important to us and the various aspects of sustainable & local food sourcing, up-cycled design, and authentic Hospitality.

About FarmBox Foods
FarmBox Foods was founded to help provide a sustainable, eco-friendly food source to places where there is a lack of access to farm-fresh produce. The company’s mission is to use container farms to decentralize the food supply chain and empower local communities.

Doug Harding
Contain Inc
doug@contain.ag
Visit us on social media:
Twitter
LinkedIn

Vertical Farming World To Meet In September

With the theme of ‘Raising Expectations’, the 2nd Vertical Farming World Congress will host industry members, from global leaders to new start-ups, on 20-22 September at a hybrid event online as well as in person.

“This will be the most substantial dedicated event of the year, featuring many of the world’s leading companies and technologies, offering unparalleled networking opportunities as well as training for new entrants,” commented Richard Hall, Chairman of event organiser Zenith Global.

“We’re hoping as many people as possible will attend in person, so we’ve selected a hotel within the London Heathrow airport complex. Many others will wish to join us online, using a platform that allows for full participation including networking and questions. One advantage for everyone is that all sessions will be recorded and available for review later,” he concluded.

Congress sessions and speakers include:

• Industry leadership panel with InFarm, Kalera, Plenty and YesHealth

• Market opportunity and strategy with HortAmericas, Rabobank, VeggiTech and Vertical Future

• Crop and technology innovation with 80 Acres, Bowery, Fork Farms, Grow Group IFS, Swegreen

  and Vertical Field

• Science briefing from NASA on vegetable production at the International Space Station

• Industry policy forum with industry associations from Africa, Japan, UK and US alongside

  Association for Vertical Farming and Farm Tech Society

• Regional pioneers AgroUrbana from Chile, UrbanKisaan from India and 808 Factory from Japan

• Customer and investor panels.

  Other highlights include:

• Agritecture workshops on planning an urban farming business

• Vertical Future farm visit and fresh produce tasting

• Presentation of 2021 Vertical Farming World Awards

• Welcome and networking receptions.

  The event is supported by Platinum sponsors Vertical Future and Intelligent Growth Solutions, and Gold sponsor CubicFarms. The awards are supported by Headline sponsor Cutlivatd.

  Full programme and booking details are available on www.zenithglobal.com/events/vfwc2021.

• For further information, email events@zenithglobal.com

No Lives At Steak, IDTechEx Predicts How Food Will Be Made In The Future

IDTechEx

BOSTON, July 6, 2021

Syntheti bolognese

From free-range chicken to food miles on alfalfa, eating ethically is becoming more and more of a head-scratcher. Even for vegans, there are the questions of how sustainably agave was sourced, or whether environment-damaging pesticides were used to grow kale – and all that is without even considering how the food tastes.

Advances in the food and agriculture industry could answer every one of these questions, plus some of the regular consumers hadn't yet thought to ask.

For a slaughter-free spaghetti bolognese, a beef burger where no cows were harmed, and fresh produce growing from the walls of skyscrapers, food technology is turning science fiction into science fact one innovation at a time.

Plant-based burgers are on a roll

Meat alternatives are not new. Tofu and seitan have been around for over 1000 years and veggie burgers have been on supermarket shelves for decades. However, these have typically only appealed to vegans and vegetarians, a niche market perhaps prepared to compromise on how meat-like the product is for their own ethical reasons. With the advancement of new food technologies, that may no longer be a compromise that needs to be made; plant-based food is becoming increasingly convincing as meat. One example of plant-based food appealing to a more carnivorous palette is Impossible Foods, who used genetically modified yeast to make a vegetarian burger that bleeds.

But could the search for sustainable, guilt-free burgers go further? Cultured meat says yes.

Culture shock: meat the new burger on the block

A burger, made from 100% real beef, but no cows were harmed in its making? New technologies in cultured meat offer a potential solution for the burger-lover who feels bad about it.

Cultured meat involves directly culturing the same (or very similar) animal cells that make up conventional meat. Therefore, it is theoretically possible to create meat products completely indistinguishable from conventional meat, and without the need for slaughter.

Since the world's first cultured burger was produced in 2013, the industry has grown at a rapid pace, with start-ups around the globe competing to be the first company to commercialize a cultured meat product.

In December 2020, the industry received a major boost when Singapore became the first region in the world to grant regulatory approval for commercial sale of a cultured meat product, a hybrid product made from plant protein and cultured chicken cells produced by Eat Just. Many in the industry are hoping this will be the first of many approvals over the next few years, helping cultured meat transition from the prototype stage to consumer products.

For more information on how cultured meat is made, and promising companies in this area, see the IDTechEx report "Cultured Meat 2021-2041: Technologies, Markets, Forecasts".

Vertical farming takes agriculture to new heights

Let's not forget the lettuce and tomatoes! A successful vertical farming future could see people buying their veggies at markets mere meters from where they were grown. Food miles could become a thing of the past.

Vertical farming is a method of growing crops indoors under controlled environmental conditions, with crops grown in vertically stacked layers to save space. This could enable yields 20-30 times higher per acre than normal agriculture. By using advanced growing methods such as hydroponics and LED lighting tailored to the exact photosynthetic needs of the crops, vertical farming can achieve yields hundreds of times higher than the same space of conventional farmland.

Because it doesn't need large amounts of arable land to grow crops, it's possible to do vertical farming in urban areas, closer to population centers. This both frees up arable land and reduces the distance that food must travel to reach consumers.

Almost any location can be used for vertical farming, with companies operating out of old shipping containers (Freight Farms), disused warehouses (AeroFarms uses a warehouse in New Jersey for its indoor farming) and the walls of skyscrapers. The only limitations are being able to get resources in and harvested plants out.

Precision agriculture

Increasing agricultural yields in a sustainable manner will be crucial in feeding the world's growing population. Precision farming is a promising emerging approach, in which individual plants (or at least regions of a field) can receive targeted treatment. Furthermore, planting and harvesting can be tailored to ground conditions in a particular area and to the status of a particular fruit or plant.

Achieving this technological transition from the incumbent, broad-brush farming methodologies requires multiple new technologies, spanning robotics, imaging, machine vision and low-cost sensors. Indeed, this revolution in farming practices provides a substantial market opportunity for technologies perhaps more commonly associated with industrial automation.

Hyperspectral imaging

One technology that can monitor plant health and catch diseases early, minimizing the risk of wastage and lost crops, is hyperspectral imaging. Insight into plant health can be gained through hyperspectral imaging. Rather than expressing an image as red, green, and blue (RGB) values at each pixel location, hyperspectral imaging instead records a complete spectrum at each point, creating a full 3D data set. By obtaining a complete reflection spectrum for each pixel, far more information can be gained than from a standard image, enabling supervised machine learning to quantify chemical composition more precisely and hence determine ripeness or disease.

Extensive details of the wide range of competing technologies for SWIR and hyperspectral imaging, along with other emerging image sensor technologies and market forecasts for their adoption in different industries can be found in the IDTechEx report "Emerging Image Sensor Technologies 2021-2031: Applications and Markets".

Agricultural robotics and drones

Once agriculturally relevant data has been harvested and converted via AI into actionable insights, these need to be carried out. This will require agricultural robots, which can use this data to deliver precision-targeted planting, fertilizing, weedkilling and harvesting. Imagine varying planting densities across a field in response to soil conditions or targeting specific areas of a field with pesticides.

Short-wave infra-red imaging

To appropriately target fertilizer and/or weedkillers, the attributes of individual plants need to be ascertained. While this can be done via algorithmic image analysis, conventional cameras in the visible spectrum cannot necessarily identify subtle differences between leaves or fruit at different stages of ripeness.

Short-wave infrared (SWIR, 1000 to 2000 nm) imaging resolves some of these challenges since surfaces that look similar under visible light can show substantial differences under SWIR light – bruised fruit is an excellent example. An additional advantage of SWIR imaging is that scattering by clouds, dust, or mist decreases as wavelength increases, thus facilitating imaging in otherwise adverse conditions.

Biostimulants and biopesticides

Synthetic chemical pesticides and mineral fertilizers are growing less and less sustainable. They are responsible for greenhouse gas emissions and environmental damage, with the overuse of certain pesticides leading to the growing problem of resistance. However, much of the world's food supply still depends on them.

Agricultural biologicals – crop inputs derived from nature – could form part of the solutions. Biostimulants could boost crop yields while reducing the need for fertilizers and boosting soil health and biodiversity, while biopesticides could provide much-needed new modes of action, without causing environmental damage.

One other solution to the pesticide problem would be to genetically engineer plants to withstand certain common pests and diseases.

Genetic engineering

Although many aspects of agricultural biotechnology remain controversial, the technology has enormous potential as a way of improving food security.

Crop biotechnology is a set of tools and disciplines that modify organisms for a particular purpose, e.g. increasing yields, or developing an innate resistance to certain diseases in order to reduce crop losses and pesticide requirements.

The basis of agricultural biotechnology is genetics, with scientists using an understanding of DNA to develop methods to improve agriculture. The ability to identify genes that can confer advantages to certain crops and the ability to work precisely with these genes can significantly enhance breeders' abilities to improve crops and livestock.

IDTechEx, a leading market intelligence provider, offers a wide range of technical market research on the food and agricultural technology industry. For more details visit www.IDTechEx.com/Research/AgTech.

This research makes up part of the extensive research portfolio from IDTechEx covering many emerging technologies, building on a long history of analyzing these technologies, markets, and applications. All reports include a detailed analysis of established and emerging technologies, their potential adoption barriers and suitability for different applications, and an assessment of technological and commercial readiness. These reports also include multiple company profiles based on interviews with early-stage and established companies, along with 10-year market forecasts. A full list of IDTechEx reports and services can be found at www.IDTechEx.com or contact research@IDTechEx.com for more information.

Lead photo: Creating a burger with future food technologies

About IDTechEx

IDTechEx guides your strategic business decisions through its Research, Subscription and Consultancy products, helping you profit from emerging technologies. For more information, contact research@IDTechEx.com or visit www.IDTechEx.com.

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Natalie Moreton
Digital Marketing Manager
press@IDTechEx.com 
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Grodan Plugs Are A Key Factor In The Success of Smart Indoor Gardens

Lynn Radford

Finland-based Plantui produces smart indoor gardens for sale to consumers. The company has doubled its sales volumes over the past year, driven by a number of macrotrends including sustainability, food safety, local sourcing, healthy eating, and home cooking. Besides the innovative LED technology and closed-loop irrigation system, the Grodan plugs in which the edible plants are grown are a key factor in the success of these miniature ‘vertical farms’ in the home.

Biotech company Plantui Oy is aiming to solve some of today’s and tomorrow’s food challenges by enabling consumers to grow edible plants in their own homes. Founded in 2012 in Turku – a major hub for agriculture, manufacturing, and the high-tech inudstry in the southwest of Finland (which, incidentally, has been ranked the happiest country in the world for the third consecutive year) – it has developed a range of indoor ‘smart gardens’ that combine Nordic design and functionality with cutting-edge technology. The plug-and-play devices come with simple instructions, making it easy for consumers to produce fresh, ready-to-pick herbs, lettuces, tomatoes, chilies, and edible flowers for use in home cooking.

“The recent changes in the world such as urbanization and the COVID-19 pandemic have further spurred the grow-your-own food movement. People are looking for safe and sustainable solutions, and hydroponic growing is a good fit with this because it requires no soil and no pesticides,” says Kari Vuorinen, CTO of Plantui. “We’ve put all our knowledge and research related to plant science, nutrients, light, and technology into creating a patented indoor hydroponic growing method, from seed to plant. Our unique artificial lighting solution is based on a special photon stream that replicates the light of Finnish Lapland and optimizes photosynthesis. This results in more green mass and better quality, meaning the plants are much tastier and more nutritious than the ones you can buy in supermarkets.”

Automatically regulated
The device is sold with everything included: horticultural LED lighting, a water bowl with an integrated pump system, seed capsules, and nutrients, which are adjusted by the integrated microcontroller in line with the growth phase algorithm recipe. “After extensively testing relevant light spectra, we’ve programmed the computer in the device to automatically regulate the wavelength and intensity of the light and the water-pumping rhythms as the seeds progress through the germination, seedling and growth phases,” explains Martina Angeleri, head of plant science at Plantui. “So all the customer needs to do is fit the device together, fill the water bowl, insert the capsules, plug the device in and then keep the water and nutrients topped up roughly once a month. At the end of the harvesting period, they simply clean the device – and everything is dishwasher-proof – and then they can buy new capsules and start all over again. This solution supports local year-round growing, irrespective of the season. An indoor garden can produce three to four harvests a year, depending on which types of plants people choose to grow.”

Besides the automated lighting and irrigation system, the substrate is equally important in ensuring that Plantui can deliver on its 100% guarantee of success. “If the seeds don’t germinate you won’t have any plants, so the growing medium has to be failsafe,” says Kari. “That’s why we tested lots of different solutions when we first started out in 2013, including peat, sphagnum moss, coconut fibre and stone wool. Sphagnum moss was very promising in the growth stage but it’s not easy to get hold of. When we tested it against Grodan’s plugs, we found that they were just as good in the growth stage and actually achieved better performance in the germination stage – plus they are readily available in large quantities, so we’d hit the bullseye!” Plantui initially sourced the plugs through the Grodan distributor in Finland, but later started working directly with the company in the Netherlands. “Grodan has played a big part in our success with the plants and the device. For example, the company has tailored the existing plugs specifically to our needs by creating a slightly bigger hole for the seeds in the capsule.”

No risk of contaminants
Grodan’s plugs offer other important benefits in the Plantui Smart Gardens, according to Martina. “Stone wool is a homogeneous inert substance. Unlike with an organic material such as peat, we know for sure that the plugs are clean and pure with no risk of contaminants such as insects, bacteria or fungi. Therefore, we can rely on uniform and reproducible support for plants. This allows us to make things as easy as possible for users, as they don’t need to check the pH before adding the nutrients,” she explains. “Additionally, the density of the stone wool helps to prevent light from penetrating into the root zone, thus protecting the roots and avoiding the formation of algae in the substrate. And last but not least, no organic fibres can leach into the water and clog the active pumping system.”

Sustainability
Sustainability is a top priority for Plantui; its devices are energy-efficient, produce 100%-natural food with no pesticides or other additives, and help to reduce the carbon footprint in terms of food miles and food waste. “Stone wool is a good fit with this because basalt is an inexhaustible resource. Additionally, Grodan is the only company of its kind that is EU-certified for environmental excellence. At the end of the harvesting phase, the stone wool plugs can be separated from the plastic holders and both parts can be recycled, which supports our ‘100% recyclable’ message,” states Kari.

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Path to sales growth
The company is already selling tens of thousands of devices annually, both to high-end department stores across Europe – including in the UK and Italy – and through its own web shop. It is on track to double its sales this year, having received a major boost from an agreement between Plantui and a leading European producer of home appliances which has recently started marketing and distributing Plantui’s products under its own brand. Additionally, promising negotiations are underway with retailers in countries including Switzerland and the Netherlands.

Exciting future
The future not only looks very exciting for Plantui because of the increasing sales of its devices, but also because it has patented its technology and growing method globally. “We ourselves are focusing on consumer products for now, and there may be opportunities to branch out into other channels such as food service. For example, a couple of hotels and restaurants are already using our devices. We’ve even developed a specific lighting programme exclusively for a chef at a one-star Michelin restaurant who now grows his own unique-tasting dill!” exclaims Kari. “But the technology itself is ready for use on a larger scale and we’re now licensing it to other companies. In fact, we’ve recently sold licences to two small-scale vertical farms. We believe that networking is the key to success nowadays, so we are looking to build a good network of partners around the world – including in the USA and China – who can help us to further expand our market, and we are pleased that Grodan forms a part of that,” he concludes.

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Martina Angeleri PhD from Plantui Oy examines a liquorice seedling in a Grodan plug from a Plantui Smart Garden.

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No Soil. No Growing Seasons. Just Add Water And Technology

A New Breed of Hydroponic Farm, Huge And High-tech, is Popping Up in Indoor Spaces All Over America, Drawing Celebrity Investors And Critics.

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By Kim Severson

July 6, 2021

MOREHEAD, Ky. — In this pretty town on the edge of coal country, a high-tech greenhouse so large it could cover 50 football fields glows with the pinks and yellows of 30,600 LED and high-pressure sodium lights.

Inside, without a teaspoon of soil, nearly 3 million pounds of beefsteak tomatoes grow on 45-feet-high vines whose roots are bathed in nutrient-enhanced rainwater. Other vines hold thousands of small, juicy snacking tomatoes with enough tang to impress Martha Stewart, who is on the board of AppHarvest, a start-up that harvested its first crop here in January and plans to open 11 more indoor farms in Appalachia by 2025.

In a much more industrial setting near the Hackensack River in Kearny, N.J., trays filled with sweet baby butterhead lettuce and sorrel that tastes of lemon and green apple are stacked high in a windowless warehouse — what is known as a vertical farm. Bowery, the largest vertical-farming company in the United States, manipulates light, humidity, temperature, and other conditions to grow produce, bankrolled by investors like Justin Timberlake, Natalie Portman, and the chefs José Andrés and Tom Colicchio.

“Once I tasted the arugula, I was sold,” said Mr. Colicchio, who for years rolled his eyes at people who claimed to grow delicious hydroponic produce. “It was so spicy and so vibrant, it just blew me away.”

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The tomatoes at AppHarvest were delicious enough to attract an investment from Martha Stewart.Credit...Luke Sharrett for The New York Times

The two operations are part of a new generation of hydroponic farms that create precise growing conditions using technological advances like machine-learning algorithms, data analytics and proprietary software systems to coax customized flavors and textures from fruits and vegetables. And they can do it almost anywhere.

These farms arrive at a pivotal moment, as swaths of the country wither in the heat and drought of climate change, abetted in part by certain forms of agriculture. The demand for locally grown food has never been stronger, and the pandemic has shown many people that the food supply chain isn’t as resilient as they thought.

But not everyone is on board. These huge farms grow produce in nutrient-rich water, not the healthy soil that many people believe is at the heart of both deliciousness and nutrition. They can consume vast amounts of electricity. Their most ardent opponents say the claims being made for hydroponics are misleading and even dangerous.

“At the moment, I would say the bad guys are winning,” said Dave Chapman, a Vermont farmer and the executive director of the Real Organic Project. “Hydroponic production is not growing because it produces healthier food. It’s growing because of the money. Anyone who frames this as food for the people or the environment is just lying.”

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The sprawling Kentucky farm is one of a dozen that AppHarvest hopes to open across Appalachia.Credit...Luke Sharrett for The New York Times

The technical term for hydroponic farming is controlled environmental agriculture, but people in the business refer to it as indoor farming. What used to be simply called farms are now referred to as land-based farms or open-field agriculture.

“We’ve perfected mother nature indoors through that perfect combination of science and technology married with farming,” said Daniel Malechuk, the chief executive of Kalera, a company that sells whole lettuces, with the roots intact, in plastic clamshells for about the same price as other prewashed lettuce.

In March, the company opened a 77,000-square-foot facility south of Atlanta that can produce more than 10 million heads of lettuce a year. Similar indoor farms are coming to Houston, Denver, Seattle, Honolulu, and St. Paul, Minn.

The beauty of the process, Mr. Malechuk, and other executives say, is that it isn’t limited by seasons. The cost and growing period for a crop can be predicted precisely and farms can be built wherever people need fresh produce.

“We can grow in the Antarctic,” he said. “We can be on an island. We can be on the moon or in the space station.”

That’s easy to picture: The farms are staffed by a new breed of young farmers who wear lab coats instead of overalls and prefer computers to tractors.

Today, the more than 2,300 farms growing hydroponic crops in the United States make up only a sliver of the country’s $5.2 billion fruit and vegetable market. But investors enamored of smart agriculture are betting heavily on them.

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Lettuces at a Kalera vertical farm destined for nutrient-filled water begin in small plugs of growing medium.

Credit...Courtesy of Kalera

In 2020, $929 million poured into U.S. indoor-farming ventures, more than double the investments in 2019, according to PitchBook data. Grocery chains and California’s biggest berry growers are partnering with vertical farms, too.

“There is no question we are reinventing farming, but what we are doing is reinventing the fresh-food supply chain,” said Irving Fain, the founder, and chief executive of Bowery, which is based in Manhattan and has the indoor farm in New Jersey and one in Maryland, another under construction in Pennsylvania, and two research farms in New Jersey.

Mr. Fain said his farms are 100 times as productive as traditional ones and use 95 percent less water. Other companies claim they can grow as much food on a single acre as a traditional farm can grow on 390.

Vertical farms can be built next to urban centers, so lettuce, for example, doesn’t have to sit inside a truck for days as it makes its way from California to the East Coast, losing both quality and nutritional value. Vegetables can be bred for flavor rather than storage and yield.

The new systems are designed to produce a sanitary crop, grown without pesticides in hygienic buildings monitored by computers, so there is little risk of contamination from bacteria like E. coli, which forced large recalls of romaine lettuce in 2019 and 2020.

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Bowery, the largest vertical-farm company in the United States, is growing hydroponic vegetables that have attracted the attention of chefs. Credit...Brian Fraser for The New York Times

Still, many farmers and scientists remain unpersuaded. Mr. Chapman, of the Real Organic Project, served on a U.S. Department of Agriculture hydroponics task force five years ago, and is leading an effort to get the agency to stop allowing hydroponic farmers to certify their produce as organic. The very definition of organic farming, he and others say, rests on building healthy soil. In May, the Center for Food Safety, an environmental advocacy group, led an appeal of a federal court ruling that upheld the agency’s policy.

Although the nutritional profile of hydroponic produce continues to improve, no one yet knows what kind of long-term health impact fruits and vegetables grown without soil will have. No matter how many nutrients indoor farmers put into the water, critics insist that indoor farms can never match the taste and nutritional value, or provide the environmental advantages, that come from the marriage of sun, a healthy soil microbiome, and plant biology found on well-run organic farms.

“What will the health outcomes be in two generations?” Mr. Chapman asked. “It’s a huge live experiment, and we are the rats.”

The divide between soil loyalists and ag-tech futurists is playing out on a much more intimate scale between two influential brothers: Dan and David Barber, who founded and own the organic farm Blue Hill and its restaurants in Greenwich Village and at Stone Barns in Pocantico Hills, N.Y.

In 2018, David Barber created an investment fund to support new food tech companies, including Bowery. But Dan Barber, a chef whose 2014 book “The Third Plate: Field Notes on the Future of Food” devotes an entire section to soil, believes that truly delicious food can come only from the earth.

“I am not buying any of it,” Dan Barber said of the hydroponic fever.

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The chef Dan Barber, a soil loyalist, is skeptical of the claims made for hydroponic farms.

Credit...James Estrin/The New York Times

Trying to enhance water with nutrients to mimic what soil does is virtually impossible, he said, in part because no one really knows how the soil microbiome works.

“We know more about the stars and the sky than we do about soil,” he said. “We don’t know a lot about nutrition, actually.”

There is a cultural cost, too. For centuries, cuisines have been developed based on what the land and the plants demanded, he said. Regional Mexican diets built on corn and beans came about because farmers realized that beans fixed nitrogen in soil, and corn used it to grow strong.

“The tech-farming revolution is turning this equation on its head,” Mr. Barber said. It aids efficiency in the name of feeding more people but divorces food from nature.

His brother, David, had long been skeptical of hydroponics, too. “Most of my career was about good soil leads to good agriculture and good systems and ultimately good flavor,” David Barber said.

But the environmental advantages of next-generation hydroponic food production can’t be ignored, he said. Nor can the improvements in taste over earlier hydroponic produce. “They are combining outdoor and indoor thinking, and science and history, to create something special,” he said. “There are not going to be many winners in this space, but it is going to be a part of our food system.”

At Bowery, “there is no question we are reinventing farming, but what we are doing is reinventing the fresh-food supply chain,” said Irving Fain, its founder, and chief executive. Credit...Brian Fraser for The New York Times

Indoor farm companies view their competition as the large, industrial growers that produce fruits and vegetables bred to withstand processing and shipping — not smaller farmers using more natural growing techniques. The battle, they say, is against monoculture, not farmers who maintain healthy soil and feed their communities. Hydroponic farms can help develop new and more diverse plants, and reduce overall pesticide use.

“The only thing we are trying to do is get as good as farmers were 100 years ago,” said Mr. Malechuk, the hydroponic lettuce grower.

Indoor farming is a bet on the nation's agriculture, said Jonathan Webb, the Kentucky-born founder and chief executive of AppHarvest.

“The American farmer is already obsolete,” he said, pointing out that the United States imports four billion pounds of tomatoes from Mexico every year. “Our hope is we can get farmers back on U.S. shelves.”

Even Mr. Colicchio, who led a campaign against genetically modified food and has long been a champion of small farmers, said the two styles of farming can coexist. “We’re going to need a lot of tools in the toolbox,” he said.

Ouita Michel, a chef in Kentucky, likes AppHarvest because the company is creating jobs and growing tomatoes she is happy to use in her restaurants.

But technology, she said, will never trump the magic of soil. “Nothing will ever replace my summer Kentucky tomatoes.”

Lead photo: AppHarvest, the nation’s largest hydroponic greenhouse, opened in January in Morehead, Ky. — one in a new breed of huge indoor produce farms that use technology to fine-tune flavor, texture, and other attributes. Credit...Luke Sharrett for The New York Times

Forums And Online Toolkit || Urban Edible Spaces: Growing Food And Happiness In Sustainable Community

HKU Edible Spaces (港大可食空間) has developed an Online Toolkit about urban farming and we hope that it would help those who are interested to start an urban community garden/farm. In addition, two forums discussing the positive impacts of edible spaces are now put online (English and Chinese subtitles will be available soon)

Celeste Shai, Senior Programme Officer - General Education

CEDARS, The University of Hong Kong

For any enquiry, please feel free to contact me at cymshai@hku.hk.

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