Company Adds New Executive Leaders As It Becomes The Largest Vertical Farming Company In The U.S.

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StreetInsider.com

9/25/20201

Bowery Farming Announces Availability in 650 Stores,

Marking 600% Growth This Year

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Bowery Farming, the Modern Farming Company, today announced that its fresh, traceable Protected Produce is now available in more than 650 U.S. stores — marking a rapid increase from 100 stores in January. With this expansion, Bowery becomes the largest vertical farming company in the U.S. as consumers are hungry for flavorful, local, and sustainable food.

Bowery’s brick and mortar presence in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast includes Whole Foods Market, Giant Food, Stop & Shop, Walmart, Weis Markets, and a number of specialty grocers. The company’s expansion has catalyzed more than 600% in-store sales growth since the beginning of this year and it has more than doubled sales with e-commerce partners.

Growing a New Generation of Greens

Located near the cities they serve, Bowery’s indoor farms use technology to create a simplified, agile food system focused on flavor, freshness, and safety — farming efficiently to feed locally. At the core of its farms is the BoweryOS, its proprietary operating system, which uses sensors, vision systems, machine learning, and automation technology to monitor and control all variables contributing to crop growth. By applying proprietary machine learning algorithms to environmental data, the BoweryOS determines the ideal recipe for each crop and makes automatic adjustments to conditions, such as temperature, humidity, airflow, light intensity, and nutrients to optimize crop quality, health, yield, and flavor, giving the plants exactly what they need, when they need it. Every farm benefits from the collective knowledge of the BoweryOS, making the entire network stronger with each new farm built.

As a result of the BoweryOS and the other systems built by Bowery, its farms are more than 100 times more productive on the same footprint of land than traditional agriculture, use a fraction of the water, and grow traceable pesticide-free produce. Bowery’s greens and herbs (such as Arugula, Crispy Leaf, Basil, and Butterhead) grow in completely controlled environments year-round, at least two times quicker than in a field — completely independent of weather and seasonality. Bowery produce is harvested at the peak of quality and taste and is available on the shelf within just a few days.

“Climate events continue to disrupt the way food is grown and distributed, and the pandemic exacerbated the vulnerabilities in our already fragile food system. We need a more resilient solution focused on the future, and that’s exactly what we’re building at Bowery,” says Irving Fain, Founder & CEO of Bowery Farming. “Our growth has been driven by consumer demand for safer and more transparently grown produce, and our ability to provide a consistent and reliable supply to our retail partners. We’re incredibly fortunate to have a dynamic team at Bowery that is relentlessly committed to innovation, strengthening our food system, and increasing access to fresh, healthy food.”

Cultivating Bowery Farming Talent

As the company continues to grow, it welcomes its first-ever Chief Supply Chain Officer, Colin Nelson, who will oversee Bowery’s end-to-end operations, from seed to store. A mechanical engineer by training, Nelson has spent the past 30 years of his career in supply chain management and operations at major multinationals, including Unilever and GlaxoSmithKline. Nelson most recently served as Senior Vice President and Global Chief Supply Chain Officer at Walgreens Boots Alliance, where he led supply chain management of retail and wholesale pharmaceuticals and front-end retail.

“I’m impressed by what Bowery is building and how the company is applying innovative technology and human ingenuity to strengthen our food system and help feed a growing urban population in an economically sustainable way,” said Colin Nelson, Chief Supply Chain Officer of Bowery Farming. “I am looking forward to working closely with the incredibly passionate, purpose-driven team to further expand the business and deliver excellent economics through the supply chain and operational efficiencies at Bowery.”

Nelson is the most recent among a series of strategic hires for Bowery, which also includes Carmela Cugini, Chief Revenue Officer (formerly Head of Merchandising & Curation at Jet.com and VP and General Manager of Walmart’s US e-commerce team) and Katie Seawell, Chief Marketing Officer (formerly SVP of Product and Marketing for Starbucks). The company has also added two new members to its Board of Directors: Sally Genster Robling (former EVP of Pinnacle Foods and founding President of the $1.1B Birds Eye Division) and Michael Lynton (Chairman of Snap Inc., and former Chairman and Chief Executive of Sony Pictures Entertainment).

“Bowery Farming’s best-in-class approach and application of software, robotics, automation, and AI has proven that local, smart farming at scale can be a reliable and more sustainable model for the future of agriculture,” said Hans Tung, Managing Partner at GGV Capital. “Solving for our global food challenge requires us to think differently about how we can address a number of issues — from climate events and biodiversity to population growth and public health — and Bowery’s multidisciplinary, technology-driven approach makes this possible.”

As consumers continue to seek healthy, safe, and sustainable food brands, Bowery expects more growth ahead. Already, indoor farming brands are outpacing conventional packaged salad in the grocery store by more than 25% compared to last year, according to IRI. And as online grocery shopping increases in popularity, Bowery is providing consumers with more options with e-commerce retailers, including Peapod and Amazon Fresh.

For more information about Bowery, please visit www.boweryfarming.com, and connect with the company on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram.

About Bowery Farming

Bowery Farming, the Modern Farming Company was founded in 2015 with the belief that technology and human ingenuity can grow better food for a better future. By building smart indoor farms close to the cities they serve, Bowery creates the optimal conditions to cultivate wildly flavorful Protected Produce that’s available on the shelf just a few days after harvest.

Its proprietary software system, the BoweryOS, uses sensors, vision systems, automation technology, robotics, and machine learning to monitor plants and all the variables that drive their growth 24/7. Because Bowery controls the entire process from seed to store, farms grow produce year-round, ensuring a safer supply of food that’s reliable and consistent.

The farms are 100 times more productive on the same footprint of land than traditional agriculture, and grow traceable pesticide-free produce — the purest, best expression of what produce is meant to be — with a fraction of the water.

Bowery currently has three farms: a commercial farm and R&D Center of Excellence in Kearny, New Jersey, and a commercial farm in Nottingham, Maryland. The company serves more than 650 stores in the Tri-State area and Mid-Atlantic region, including Whole Foods Market, Giant Food, Stop & Shop, Weis, Walmart, and specialty grocers, along with online partners, such as Amazon Fresh, Hungryroot, and Peapod.

Based in New York City, the company has raised over $172.5 million from leading investors, including Temasek, GV (formerly Google Ventures), General Catalyst, GGV Capital, First Round Capital, Henry Kravis, Jeff Wilke, and Dara Khosrowshahi, as well as some of the foremost thought leaders in food, including Tom Colicchio, José Andres, and David Barber of Blue Hill.

For more information on Bowery and its products, please visit www.BoweryFarming.com

Press kit: https://boweryfarming.com/press/

View source version on businesswire.com: 

https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200924005203/en/

Rachel Alkon
Press@BoweryFarming.com

Source: Bowery Farming

Smart Acres CEO on The launch of The UAE’s Latest Vertical Smart Farm

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August 24th, 2020

Smart Acres Is Here With Lettuce At The Helm. In An Exclusive Interview With Abu Dhabi World, Smart Acres CEO Abdulla al Kaabi Reveals What This Means To Abu Dhabi And The Farming Community On The Whole. 

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words Derek Issacs

If you love healthy produce, and who doesn’t, then this news is going to please you and your tastebuds no end. The only draw back at the moment is they’re not for sale in supermarkets just yet, but it won’t be long before they are.

The launch of Smart Acres, the UAE’s latest addition to the hydroponic vertical farming industry, this week means that a line of the freshest, most nutrient-dense greens for UAE residents and businesses alike is now being produced in containers on the Armed Forces Officers Club in Abu Dhabi, with the aim to expand across the UAE.

So we headed over to the St. Regis Abu Dhabi to meet Smart Acres CEO Abdulla al Kaabi to find out more.

Tell us about your background?

I am from tech and farm background. My father has a passion for farming and gardening; he’s very  strict about anybody who messes around with his garden or farm. My father has a few farms across the UAE, where he grows crops and dates.  When he heard that I was pursuing a project in the agriculture sector he got excited and actually gifted me a farm, which I am grateful for and will keep. However, Smart Acres, rather than the farm my father gifted me, is an urban farm.

How was Smart Acres first developed?

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CEO Abdulla al Kaabi (centre)

Smart Acres was founded in 2017 and local testing began in July 2019. Smart Acres was developed by a team of experts,  including myself, Director Sean Lee and Lead Project Manager, Aphisith Phongsavanh with the aim of improving food security within the United Arab Emirates and developing the country’s farming capabilities, providing a solution to potential socioeconomic threats such as pandemics and climate limitations the Middle East currently endures.

Tell us more

We planted lettuce and after a few harvests, we decided to expand from two containers to eight containers. From the two insulated containers the yield was 3.5 tons annually, which was our proof of concept. For the proof of concept, our target weight for each lettuce head was 140g. However, we have reached an average of 200g per head. I don’t think any other vertical farm here reached that quality or weight in terms of vegetables at this size.

How would you describe Smart Acres?

It is a one-of-a-kind agriculture system that is designed to produce some of the highest yields of crops within the UAE’s vertical farming industry, while introducing a new future for clean foods and allowing both business to business (B2B) and business to consymer (B2C ) sectors to locally source produce.

Tell us about the containers

We invested heavily in the containers, not just financially, and it took us a while to partner up with n.thing, a South Korean vertical farming technology company, to bring the best vertical farm here in the UAE. We had talks with other companies before and we decided to go with this one, in terms of risk, in terms of technology they are using. And the system we are using in the containers is hydroponics (growing plants without soil)  which has been used by growers for hundreds of years.  Techno advancements means we were able to implement the Internet of Things for operations, which helps us to monitor the entire farm in terms of humidity, temperature, and even the nutrients that goes inside the plants. Now we have our expansion plan from eight to 78 containers, which eventually will produce more than 140 tons of produce annually. We are currently in talks with private and public entities in terms of the expansion. We are also planning to have a research and development centre in order to start growing our own potato seeds in a controlled environment.

Will Smart Acres just be growing lettuce?

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In our current eight containers, we grow four types of lettuce;  Lolo rosso , green glace, oakleaf Batavia, but we are able to grow 30 types of lettuce.  Currently we are testing new methods to improve quality and weight of the existing lettuce. The results of last month’s test resulted in lettuce whose individual heads weighed  more than 200 grams on average. However, we aim to grow more than just lettuce. We have plans to eventually grow baby spinach, mature spinach, and baby arugula. Smart Acres’ vision is to expand to meet the demand of popular produce in the region such as strawberries,  and, as I previously mentioned, a shift and emphasis on cultivating potato seeds.

Where can we buy your smart lettuces? 

We are now supplying restaurants and hotels for free to get ourselves known, and we have had great feedback from them. We have also partnered with several restaurants and cafes around the country including Inked and Fae Cafe, and have plans to have our produce in the kitchen of dozens of other F&B outlets. The recent initiative by HH Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed, Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Presidential Affairs, and Abu Dhabi Agriculture and Food Safety Authority (ADAFSA), stating that all major grocery stores in the capital must allocate space for local produce means we are perfectly poised to enter local supermarkets. We have had lots of offers from Abu Dhabi Holding and other government entities that are members in the food security committee to buy our whole produce. Currently we are focused on our actual produce itself, in terms of quality, weight.

Posted in Features, Food, Life, News

Tagged agriculture system Abu Dhabi, CEO Abdulla al Kaabi, Clean foods UAE, food security UAE, SMART ACRES Abu Dhabi, st regis abu dhabi, UAE Climate Change Risks and Resilience, UAE farms, UAE’s vertical farming industry, vertical farming Abu Dhabi

Exploring The Costs And Benefits of Indoor Agriculture

Leafy GreRobert Colangelo and Matt Roy

Yesterday, the Indoor Agtech kicked off its virtual event, joined by many participants. One, of the many seminars, was about 'Exploring the costs and benefits of indoor agriculture'. Robert Colangelo, Founding Farmer at Green Sense Farms, kicked off the seminar by asking what CEA means to Matt Roy, VP Business Development CEA at Tanimura & Antle. Roy answered, “CEA to me, means anything grown inside. There’s a lot of innovation and disruption happening in the space and I think there’s going to be a lot of different technologies that are going to provide the right solutions here.”

Colangelo: “Is it true that, according to the myth, the leafy greens supply chain is broken and where can it be improved?”
Roy stated that one of the misconceptions out there is that there’s this big waste field on the West Coast on how products are grown, harvested, and shipped out. “It’s actually highly innovative and from innovation, technology, and sustainability standpoint, there’s a lot of exciting things happening out there. I continue to be amazed at how well we are able to get fresh fruits and vegetables across the country. A lot of things we’re trying to achieve indoors, in a lot of ways we have accomplished that outdoors. From growing it, getting it harvested efficiently, timely, and done food safely, we’re getting high quality, nutritious fresh produce across the country in a matter of days.”  

Colangelo: “Can you give us a quick thumbnail of the different touchpoints, from seed in the field to the supermarket, how does that level travel and where do you see waste along that line?”
Roy: Naturally, with any farming, indoor, or outdoor there is going to be some level of waste. Obviously, putting products on a truck for five days brings challenges and vulnerability along. A misperception is that all of the food is left in the field, but in a lot of ways, it’s organic material feeding the soil. Just because leaves are left in the field after harvesting, it might be viewed as waste, but it goes back in the dirt and provides nutrition to the soil.

Colangelo: "A challenge in vertical farming is packing on a large economy of scale. What are the challenges of packing as a smaller scaled farm with few centralized packing houses near? How do you get packing done economically?"
Roy: “Hyperlocal smaller farms bring value to the supply chain and continue to provide additional ways to provide nutritious products to consumers. I think it’s going to be one of the challenges, and it’s a huge component that is not talked about a lot. There’s a lot of discussion on the growing side, but I think that we need more conversation on what innovation looks like on the packing side. What is looks like for hydro-cooling, think of everything shipped out from the West Coast, is hydro-cooled. So, when growing indoors, pulling the heat out of the product to ensure you have the shelf life needed out of it. It’s a big piece that needs to be solved.

Colangelo: “Most of the packing equipment is geared to large-scale production and there's very little cost-effective low scale packing equipment out there. So I agree, that it’s an area that we all need to work out. Looking at product recall, there's been a number of recalls with field-grown lettuce, but I've not heard of any from a vertical farm. So, can you talk a little bit about health and safety, and food safety when it comes to field production versus indoor growing?”

Roy: “The challenge has been full case-level traceability. A lot of work was done around the first traceability initiative. But, until all channels of the supply chain jump all in together around traceability, it's going to continue to be a challenge rather outdoors or indoors. Controlling more elements inside allows to produce a safer product, but in a lot of ways, it creates more risk because it's easier to contaminate all of your crops. So it’s really an all-in from everybody jump in and says we're going to prioritize food safety. And yes, this product might be 50 cents or a dollar more of a product, but we're putting a premium on food safety. We know these ‘five golden rules’ they are compliant against and we're going to pay a premium for that. As a buyer, you’re not looking at food safety first, so it’s actually a broader conversation that impacts both indoor and outdoor. It's great to have you here with your unique perspective both as a buyer and now our producer.”

Colangelo: Vertical farming is the shiny new toy in agriculture. It's attracted tremendous media attention and VC investments. Mostly, VC seeks a high rate of return. How has VC investment impacted the business decision making in vertical farming operations?

Roy: “I think it creates a different pressure. Whereas, if you're a self-funded or institutionally funded organization, there's more of a long view on what you're doing and when you're crawled by VC money there's a higher expectation on the return. I think that in a lot of ways vertical is still early stage and technology has not gone to a point that had a mass scale to produce cost-effectively. The market has not matured enough to demand a premium to get those returns. The pressure impacts your day-to-day decisions as a business leader. Are you going to make the right decisions, long-term, for the help of a product in your business, or, are you going to make some short-term decisions that might not allow long-term success in your business?

Colangelo: “Banks don’t provide debt finances to new ventures. Private equity and VC being the only few sources, how do new ideas get funded in this market?”

Roy: “In the last four of five years, from an investment side people have really have given more attention to how much food is consumed, and the size of the industries, the supply chains around products. In general, the energy coming into the food space, investing, bringing innovation and new ideas to disruption is all very exciting, but I think you speak to that challenge. ‘How do you balance funding your business to get started, while still staying true to your principles and creating something long-term?’ So I think that these many people were battling with these challenges. From a macro view to me, it's exciting to see a lot more VC money coming into fresh produce than you’ve seen historically. With that will come continued innovation and disruption.” 

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For more information:
Green Sense Farms
Robert Colangelo, Founding Farmer  
www.greensensefarms.com 

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Tanimura & Antle
Matt Roy, VP Business Development CEA 
www.taproduce.com 

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Indoor AgTech Innovation Summit
www.indooragtechnyc.com 

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Publication date: Fri 24 Jul 2020
Author: Rebekka Boekhout
© HortiDaily.com

Don't Sell Yourself Short - Each Failure Is A Step Forward

Published on July 29, 2020

Albert Lin

Founder at VegBed | Startup Operations, Logistics, and Market Expansion Expert

[WARNING: If you have any of these following symptoms, then please read ahead. I hope what I say might help you]

Fear of failure, selling myself short, impostor syndrome, fear of outside judgment, if it won’t be perfect I don’t want to post it/make it/talk about it. The list goes on. Do any of those sound familiar to you? Well, I’ve been battling this mentality my whole life. 

I see lots of success within my network and I am genuinely super happy for them as some of these people are my good friends. I want them all to succeed. But then I end up comparing myself and thinking that what I’ve done isn’t as good (or noteworthy).

But you know what? I’m really proud of what I have accomplished working on my business these last 2 years.

Some of you may or may not know, I’ve failed a lot. I tried starting up a vertical farm a few years ago after getting super obsessed with hydroponic growing. The project never came to fruition but I still wanted to start something in the space that I could bootstrap myself.

I started exploring the world of growing mediums and quickly saw that rockwool was the industry standard and dominated hydroponic farming. I wanted to create something better and more sustainable - and thus VegBed was born.

My first ever purchase of microgreen seeds was from True Leaf Market. I remember visiting their website and thinking WOW, they are the Walmart of gardening, seeds and hydroponics. I vowed one day to have my product listed on their site.

My initial attempt actually failed. I reached out to the company with a cold email soon after I had launched the bamboo fiber mats. I touted how a great sustainable alternative they were to what was on the market, sent samples, and got great feedback. I thought for sure I had a chance!

But alas, I was one of thousands of other SKUs vying for valuable stock space. After weeks of back and forth discussion and waiting for a decision, nothing ever panned out.

Fast forward almost 2 years later and through a serendipitous acquaintance, I was able to connect with one of the co-owners of the company. They really liked the product. The demand for at-home growing seemed to skyrocket during COVID and over the next 3 months, we discussed the possibility of them carrying it.

As of five days ago, I am proud to say that VegBed and True Leaf Market have partnered up to offer our bamboo fiber mats to growers everywhere! 

The mats are now live on their site and I am still in shock looking at their marketing email with my product featured at the top. To see this all come full circle has been nothing short of amazing and gratifying. Like they say, this is just the beginning.

I’m hoping my story will help others to not be afraid of celebrating their accomplishments. It took me a while to have the courage just to post this, but once I started writing, things started flowing which leads me to these 4 tips:

1. Don’t give up (obvious, but seriously though, just put your self out there in front of potential customers). 

2. Don’t sell yourself short - You have the ability to step back and judge what you’ve done and what you are capable of.

3. Do things that don’t scale - All the stuff you hate to do and want to automate, don’t worry about that in the beginning. I used to want to think big and figure out what step #100 looked like before I even made a sale yet. Don’t “play business”. Just see if people are willing to pay for your product/service first.

4. Celebrate other people’s accomplishments - Get rid of the negativity/jealousy/hatred. Successful entrepreneurs don’t have time to hate on others, they’re too busy trying to build their thing. 

I’m hoping these tips and my story can add value to anyone that has made it this far. Until next time, keep on pushing and thanks for reading!

Vertical Agriculture in Chile

Urban agriculture is beginning to take off in Chile, where the AgroUrbana start-up has just closed a $ 1 million seed capital round, raising its total capital to $ 1.5 million, to create a vertical farm, according to the Association for Vertical Agriculture.

Leading the round with a 33% cash contribution was the CLIN Private Investment Fund managed by Chile Global Ventures, the venture capital arm of Fundacion Chile, a public-private initiative for innovation and sustainability in the country. Funding also came from CORFO, Chile's economic development agency, and private investors.

The funds will go to the construction of a 280-square-meter pilot facility in the suburbs of Santiago, where tests are being carried out with hydroponic crops and led lights powered by renewable energy. Green leafy fruits and vegetables are grown there.

According to company sources, the closure of restaurants due to COVID-19 made them focus on e-commerce and direct sales to consumers. In the long term, the owners plan to expand the facility to 3,000 square meters, which they speculate could be financed with funds from new capitalization rounds before the end of this year. Design and production will depend on the results of their pilot tests.

Source: Bioeconomia.info / agrositio.com.ar