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Colorado Students Become Virtual Farmers During Pandemic
Students at a Douglas County high school are learning COVID-era business skills using a freight container converted into a high-tech hydroponic vertical farm as their virtual classroom
December 3, 2020
HIGHLANDS RANCH, Colo. -- Students at a Douglas County high school are learning COVID-era business skills using a freight container converted into a high-tech hydroponic vertical farm as their virtual classroom.
After Mountain Vista High School recently switched to remote learning, students and teachers had to completely reorganize the farm's workflows and lesson plans.
David Larsen, agriculture business teacher and farms manager at Mountain Vista High School, said while some students may go on to pursue biology or horticulture, skills learned during the pandemic should transfer to any field.
"Most of these kids are not going to actually be farmers," Larsen admitted. "But they all will have jobs in which they have to troubleshoot, scheduling, logistics, it all comes into play. And the goal I always have with students is to, as much as possible, involve them in that decision-making."
With kids unable to be physically inside the farm to seed, plant, tend, harvest, package and sell crops, Larsen live streams, and records every lesson.
Supply-chain disruption during the pandemic drove up sales, and Larsen saw an opportunity for a business lesson in supply and demand. Crops typically sold during two-day markets have been selling out within two to three hours.
Larsen noted the Greenery unit created by Massachusetts-based company Freight Farms is resistant to pandemics, but also extreme weather and drought.
The unit uses nearly 99% less water than a traditional farm, running on less than the average dishwasher uses.
While most food consumed in the U.S. travels hundreds or even thousands of miles, Larsen observed the Mountain Vista operation is as close to zero food-production miles as you can get.
"So we are literally harvesting and putting into bags as the customer is standing right there," Larsen explained. "So they are living plants. People love lettuce; it's definitely delicious and very clean."
Larsen added students still are able to interact with local shoppers via live video streaming, learning important customer-service lessons.
Because the climate is controlled inside the container, Larsen said food can be grown all school year long with a predictable commercial-scale output.
A Greenery unit can support 13,000 plants at a time, producing harvests of up to 900 heads of lettuce per week.
Lead photo: Crops produced by students at Mountain Vista High School in Douglas County usually are sold during two-day market sales, but post-COVID, customer volume has shot up, selling out within two to three hours. (Mountain Vista High School)
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WEBINAR: How And Where To Site Your Indoor Farm | Indoor Ag-Conversations
JOIN OUR DECEMBER CONVERSATION!
LEARN MORE
Join our expert panel to discuss key factors to
consider when securing a location for your operation, including:
Consideration and determination of critical municipal requirements when siting an indoor vertical farm (zoning laws, water/energy sources)
How renewable energy, like solar and wind, is being incorporated into current indoor farming operations
Are vacant former retail facilities viable options for indoor vertical farms and if so, what are the key steps in acquiring such buildings
How to site an indoor farm within an existing and operational building
Critical areas to consider when investigating a building to be used as an indoor vertical farm
Moderator:
Kim Lovan, Managing Director and Co-Founder, NextGen Ag Team, Black & Veatch
Panelists:
Jake Counne, Founder, Wilder Fields
Tim McGuinness, Chairman, Sterling Advisory Group and Former Senior Vice President, International Council of Shopping Centers (ICSC)
Jim Pantaleo, Indoor Farm Operator | Advisor
LEARN MORE & REGISTER
SPECIAL THANKS TO OUR INDOOR AG-CON 2020
EXHIBITORS, SPONSORS, MEDIA ALLIES & INDUSTRY PARTNERS
Indoor Ag-Con, 950 Scales Road, Building #200, Suwanee, GA 30024, United States
PODCAST: DeMario Vitalis - Leaving Hydroponics Better Than How He Found It
New Age Provisions is an urban farm that uses state of the art hydroponic technology to farm the freshest culinary herbs, lettuces, leafy greens, and cannabis
THIS WEEK IN VERTICAL FARMING
THIS WEEK'S EPISODE
Season 2 | Episode 3
Join Harry Duran, host of Vertical Farming Podcast, as he welcomes to the show Founder of New Age Provisions, DeMario Vitalis.
New Age Provisions is an urban farm that uses state of the art hydroponic technology to farm the freshest culinary herbs, lettuces, leafy greens, and cannabis. In this episode,
Harry and DeMario discuss DeMario’s inspirational story, the success he’s achieving and how he’s bringing awareness to possibilities for minority farm owners.
DeMario speaks to challenges he’s had to overcome, how ‘food deserts’ are affecting communities throughout the world and the importance of having a supportive family and community.
VERTICAL FARMING PODCAST
Listen & Subscribe
Vertical Farming Podcast
Hosted by: Harry Duran
The Vertical Farming Podcast is the #1 show dedicated to the Vertical Farming market. Tune in every week for fascinating conversations with CEOs, Founders and luminaries from the exciting and fast-growing world of Vertical Farming. Vertical farming is a revolutionary approach used to produce food and medicinal plants in vertically stacked layers such as in a skyscraper, used warehouse, or shipping container.
It facilitates production of huge quantities of nutritious and quality fresh food without relying on favorable weather, high water usage, skilled labor, and high soil fertility.
This ensures reliable yield and consistency in crop production year-round with climate control, and no effects of external environment factors such as diseases, pests, or predator attacks. The Vertical Farming industry is projected to generate $12.77 Billion, Globally, by 2026 with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 24.6%. Subscribe and learn more by visiting http://verticalfarmingpodcast.com/
WEBINAR: Indoor Ag Science Cafe December 8th 11 AM Eastern Time
Indoor Ag Science Cafe is an open discussion forum, planned and organized by OptimIA project team supported by USDA SCRI grants
December Indoor Science Cafe
December 8th Tuesday 11 AM Eastern Time
Please Sign Up!
"Crop Growth Monitoring and Simulation-Based
Resource Use Optimization"
Dr. Murat Kacira & KC Shasteen
University of Arizona
Please sign up so that you will receive a Zoom link info.
Indoor Ag Science Cafe is an open discussion forum, planned and organized by OptimIA project team supported by USDA SCRI grants.
Sign Up Here
AUSTRALIA: A Brilliant Plan To Turn Parking Garages Into Rooftop Gardens
“It’s the third-largest land use in the city,” he says. Community space, on the other hand, ranks dead last. Bates Smart crunched the numbers and found that, in total, parking takes up nearly 1,200 acres of space, or more space than New York’s Central Park
Sourced from Fast Company
There are more than 41,000 parking spaces in the central business district of Melbourne, Australia. Many of them could be put to better use, says Julian Anderson, a director at the large Australian architecture firm Bates Smart.
“It’s the third-largest land use in the city,” he says. Community space, on the other hand, ranks dead last. Bates Smart crunched the numbers and found that, in total, parking takes up nearly 1,200 acres of space, or more space than New York’s Central Park. And if it’s not bad enough that these parking spaces take up so much space and encourage more driving, they also sit empty most of the time. “You think, my god, there’s one and a half times Central Park wrapped up in car parking in central Melbourne,” Anderson says. “What can we do to unlock this?”
One potential solution, he says, is to convert some of that parking into much-needed community space such as playgrounds, community gardens, and rooftop parks. And with a new mechanism his firm is developing in consultation with the city government, there may be a way to incentivize the owners of these parking spaces to make that happen.
Anderson says there are at least 20 standalone parking garages in central Melbourne that would be good candidates for reuse. Bates Smart has developed concepts for a few garages to serve as models for how this conversion could work, with some minor structural revision. One, located near the city’s main sports stadium, imagines the space converted into a series of playgrounds and gymnasia, with basketball courts and other recreational spaces. Another, in the city’s Chinatown, uses the ground floor as a market space and the rooftop as an outdoor eatery with open-air cinema. Anderson calls these potential projects a new kind of “vertical urban space.”
Source:https://www.fastcompany.com/90579163/a-brilliant-plan-to-turn-parking-garages-into-rooftop-gardens
Tagged: green roof, green roof benefits, living roof, living roof benefits, rooftop parks, rooftop garden, Melbourne, sustainability, resilience
Utah Farm Using Robotic Vertical Farming To Feed Their Animals For Less
"The key is you can eliminate the weather challenges and it can give you a predictable optimized crop every time," said Steve Lindsley, the president of Grōv Technologies
The Future of Farming Is Here In Utah, All Thanks To Something Called
Robotic Vertical Farming
By: Jordan Hogan
Posted at 8:19 AM, Nov 29, 2020
and last updated 7:08 AM, Nov 30, 2020
MOSIDA, Utah — A Utah tech company, Grōv Technologies, is working with a local farm, Bateman and Mosida Farms, to produce food for their cows more efficiently.
It's being done in towers that handle the whole growing process from start to finish.
The farm produces milk and meat from their cows, but raising them takes a lot of feed and a lot of time.
Now, technology is making part of the process easier.
Olympus Tower farms made by Grōv are a form of robotic vertical farming.
"The key is you can eliminate the weather challenges and it can give you a predictable optimized crop every time," said Steve Lindsley, the president of Grōv Technologies.
It starts with wheat seeds being loaded into trays. Then, they're wheeled up to the top of the tower to start a six-day journey back down to the bottom of the tower for harvest.
Along the way, they're watered with precision and given light from special LEDs that don't give off any heat.
The whole process is automated too, meaning it can run without the help of many traditional farmhands.
Grōv says each one of the towers produces 6,000 lbs of food each time it goes through its cycle. That saves money, time, water and energy. The benefits don’t stop there either — they are then passed on to the consumer.
"Each of these machines represents between 35 and 50 acres of land, so in this case here, it's the same as 50 acres of land but it's only covering 875 square feet of the ground and it uses 95% less water to grow the crops," said Lindsley.
Saving water and space is something that's becoming increasingly important as the demand for more homes increases and climate change increases the chances for extreme drought in the summer months.
"One of the biggest challenges farmers have around the world is how do they deal with the weather, the climate, and the uncertainties that come with that," Lindsley said.
The new technology couldn't have come at a better time for the farm either.
"In the first weeks and the first month of the COVID-19 Pandemic things started to go a little bit crazy," said Brad Bateman, a farming operations partner at Bateman Mosida Farms.
He said the farm wasn't able to order in a lot of their feed at the beginning of the pandemic, threatening the cows' food supply.
Now they can rely on their own production of feed, and this model of farming could be adopted beyond farms in the future.
"The vision that I see is there’s probably one of these in the back of every supermarket growing fresh food right in the store," said Bateman.
Grōv Technologies told FOX 13 they plan on rolling out this technology worldwide once they reach agreements with other farms.
INDIA: Simply Fresh Receives ‘Telangana Best Brand Award’ by CMO Asia
The awards recognize, identify, and celebrate outstanding brand building & marketing initiatives by organizations, individuals, and teams for their innovation, uniqueness, consistency, and performance
The Award Recognizes The Best
And Most Innovative Brands Across Categories
Hyderabad, 01 December 2020: Simply Fresh, has been awarded the ‘Telangana Best Brand’ award by CMO Asia ‘2020. The award was presented at a virtual felicitation ceremony. The awards recognize, identify, and celebrate outstanding brand building & marketing initiatives by organizations, individuals, and teams for their innovation, uniqueness, consistency, and performance.
Simply Fresh, an innovative agri-tech startup, using precision farming techniques, has commissioned India’s largest 140-acre ‘Plant Factory’ in Telangana. The company uses plant profiling & nutrient management in climate-controlled greenhouses. The greenhouses have retractable roofs & walls, are equipped with growing systems (benches, gutters, pots, etc.), and supported by AI-driven fertigation and irrigation system. Simply Fresh leverages Artificial Intelligence (AI) through its proprietary software Farm in A Box (FiAB), which tracks the plant’s life cycle from the initial stage of seeding, plant profiling, monitoring plant health, and nutrient level requirement at each stage of growth. This gives the brand ‘Simply Fresh’ the unique attributes of transparency and ensures quality and consistency in the product.
Speaking on the recognition Mr. Sachin Darbarwar, Founder and CEO of Simply Fresh India said “It is a great honour to receive the award from CMO Asia this year. The award encourages us to work hard and bring outstanding quality for produce including nutraceutical crops, medicinal & aromatic plants, leafy greens, and vine crops using precision farming techniques; for the customers through sustainable agriculture practices.”
About Simply Fresh India:
Simply Fresh Private Limited was founded in 2013 by two Indian software engineers, based in Australia, Sachin Darbarwar (CEO) and Shweta Darbarwar (CMO). With a strong understanding of the technical processes associated with farming techniques, the duo shifted back to their hometown Hyderabad, where they started implementing the latest farming techniques that are inspired by international farming practices.
Simply Fresh uses global technology in farming based on international standards using precision farming techniques. The farm uses AI technology in farming for growing, nourishing, picking, and processing. Farming uses sustainable practices that do not exhaust natural resources. Simply Fresh Farms produces a full line of Medicinal plants and fresh produce year-round at our greenhouses located in Hyderabad. They are a grower-owned processor adhering to industry-leading food safety and quality standards.
For more information please Visit Us on: simplyfresh.co.in
For more information please contact: KONNECTIONS
Anurag Kumar - 8686072400 / anurag.kumar@konnections.co.in
Vertical Farming In New Jersey
Indoor farming represents the cultivation of crops in a controlled environment thus allowing for year-round growing. This approach to growing food includes a range of methods such as greenhouse production, hydroponics, aeroponics, plant factories, and vertical farming
November 19, 2020
By Eric Stein
Introduction
Vertical and indoor farming is an emerging growth industry and New Jersey is show-casing itself as a leader in the field. Some of the most well-known companies like AeroFarms, Bowery Farming, and Element Farms have made New Jersey their home in part due to the proximity to New York City and Philadelphia, which represent huge markets for food and dining out. This post will highlight the impacts these and other indoor farms are having in the Garden State.
What is Indoor Farming?
Indoor farming represents the cultivation of crops in a controlled environment thus allowing for year-round growing. This approach to growing food includes a range of methods such as greenhouse production, hydroponics, aeroponics, plant factories, and vertical farming.
Many new technologies and methods are used to fine-tune nutrient delivery, water use, climate conditions and artificial lighting to create optimal growing conditions using fewer resources. These innovative designs and technologies help make indoor farming methods more sustainable and allow for the production of fresh vegetables and greens anywhere throughout the year.
Benefits of Indoor Farming
The benefits of indoor farming are numerous. Some argue that on a macro scale indoor farming addresses many of the concerns regarding traditional food production methods such as the over-use of pesticides, the consumption of freshwater, soil erosion, and nutrient loading. Furthermore, some argue that it offers a new way to feed an ever increasing world population, which is expected to climb to over 9 billion by 2050.
On a micro level, indoor and vertical farming offers sustainable growing practices, higher yields with the use of less water and space, pesticide-free fresh foods, consistent quality, stable pricing, year-round availability, and local production close to urban centers. The appearance of Covid-19 has highlighted the weakness of long-distance food supply chains in the United States, pointing towards the importance of local and sustainable food sources.
Why New Jersey?
New Jersey has a long agricultural history dating back to pre-colonial times, which is how it acquired its name as the “Garden State.” Traditional cultivation methods of NJ’s fertile land have earned New Jersey its spot as a top producer of several horticultural crops. New Jersey ‘s cultivation of over 720,000 acres is thus seen as vital part of a multi-billion-dollar industry totaling over $115 billion (2019). However, in recent years, the high cost of land and urban encroachment of farmlands has become a serious concern for the state. New Jersey has experienced the highest decline of farmland and rural open land in the United States.
Limited available farmland has pushed some producers into urban and peri-urban areas. Others have been enticed with investments and tax incentives to move operations to urban areas across the Garden State. Companies like AeroFarms, Bowery and others have established themselves in New Jersey’s cities and are benefitting consumers with local fresh foods, offering employment opportunities, and championing urban development initiatives and partnerships.
Bowery Farming in Kearny, NJ
Headquartered in New York City, Bowery Farming has farms in Kearny, NJ, Maryland, and Washington DC. Bowery’s recent series B funding led by a $90 million investment by GGV brings the indoor vertical farming company’s venture funding to $117.5 million. The indoor farm in Kearny produces arugula, basil, crispy leaf, and butterhead lettuce in a repurposed industrial space using Bowery’s proprietary technologies, which help to collect data and optimize production. According to its website, the farm claims to be 100 times more productive on the same amount of land and use 90% less water than traditional agricultural methods. Bowery Farming’s produce is now available in over 650 retail stores in the Mid-Atlantic area making it one of the larger producers of vertically farmed greens and herbs in the U.S.
“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.”
In addition to employing local residents, community partnerships with Bowery include a New Jersey food rescue effort, Table to Table, the Maryland Food Bank, DC Central Kitchen, and Teens for Food Justice.
AeroFarms in Newark, NJ
AeroFarms operates a 70,000 square foot farm in a former steel mill in Newark, NJ. They are also building vertical farms in Danville, VA, and in Dubai. AeroFarms raised $100 million in a 2019 funding round, bringing its total funding to over $238 million. Additionally, the company benefits from a grant of $11.14 million in tax incentives over 10 years from the Grow New Jersey Assistance Program, which encouraged them to move to New Jersey. These incentives included requirements for AeroFarms to bring operations into economically depressed areas and make capital improvements to the buildings they occupy.
Their Dream Greens brand features blends of baby greens and microgreens for local retail sales. AeroFarms uses a proprietary aeroponics method to produce its greens. Aerofarms offers fully-controlled indoor vertical farming with 390 times greater productivity per square foot annually vs. traditional field farming while using 95% less water and zero pesticides according to its web site and in statements by CEO David Rosenberg. The company highlights its use of advanced sensing technologies, data science, machine vision, and artificial intelligence to achieve these gains.
Moving forward, AeroFarms will be partnering with the city of Jersey City to create a municipal vertical farm. It is a part of the World Economic Forum’s Healthy Cities and Communities 2030 Initiative whereby produce from its vertical farms are delivered to people in the community. AeroFarms also has partnerships with Table to Table and Matriark Foods in New Jersey.
Other Smaller Indoor Farms in New Jersey
Element Farms produces a variety of baby greens and salad mixes in their greenhouse hydroponics operation which is housed in a new 70,000 square foot facility in Lafayette, NJ, about an hour northwest of Newark. Almost $700,000 was crowdfunded for their expansion into a new greenhouse facility. Element Farms serves the New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania tri-state area and seeks to expand into other states in the future.
Sweetleaf Farm in Andover, NJ, also about 50 minutes northwest of Newark, is a smaller, low-tech operation, run by New Jersey locals Cris and Guy Tuhy. They produce an array of greens, herbs, and microgreens. Some are traditional crops but they found that the use of hydroponics in their greenhouse allowed them to serve their community with locally grown produce year-round, using minimal land and water. Fortunately, they have found the demand for safe, local produce has increased since the pandemic began.
In Freehold, NJ, Beyond Organic Growers has transformed the family’s sod farm into a state of the art greenhouse that houses their vertical farming aeroponics operations. The Reid family grows leafy greens, herbs, microgreens, and some specialty crops. In addition to the sales of their produce, they have an organic juice bar on-premise and they host events such as farm-to-table dinners and yoga classes in the greenhouse.
Non-Profit Indoor Farms
The town of Robbinsville, NJ created one of the first municipal indoor farms in 2017 using a box container farm purchased rom Freight Farms. The program allows for community participation and provides healthy fresh foods to those in need.
Greens Do Good is a nonprofit organization producing lettuce, microgreens, and basil in Hackensack, NJ to benefit its customers and a portion of the proceeds go to autistic members of the community. The organization offers individuals with autism the opportunity to work alongside their farmers. They also donate 100% of their proceeds to the REED Foundation for Autism, a nonprofit organization that supports adults with autism by providing continuing education, life experience, and work opportunities so they can achieve greater independence and participate meaningfully in their communities.
Kula Urban Farm in Asbury Park, NJ includes a mix of traditional farming and a greenhouse for various hydroponic crops. The farm is run by the non-profit organization Interfaith Neighbors as part of a larger array of programs addressing homelessness and food insecurity in the community.
Summary
In New Jersey, not only are we are seeing an interesting mix of businesses large and small as part of a growing industry but also non-profits benefitting the populations they serve. Vertical and indoor farming ventures are versatile in the ways they can operate in the community by bringing fresh healthy foods, sustainable practices, and new opportunities for education and employment. We look forward to seeing how indoor farming continues to add to the rich history of agriculture in the state of New Jersey.
Tags: Industry Snapshot, Knowledge Base, Learning
Scottish Technology Firm, IGS, Named As A 2020 Red Herring Top 100 North America Winner
IGS is an agritech innovator delivering state-of-the-art vertical farming technology designed to help producers improve the productivity of their crops – including yield, quality and consistency – whilst dramatically driving down the cost of power and labour
30 November 2020
Scottish-based agritech and smart spaces business, IGS Limited, has been named amongst the winners of Red Herring’s Top 100 North America 2020 event, which recognises some of the world’s most exciting and innovative technology companies.
IGS is an agritech innovator delivering state-of-the-art vertical farming technology designed to help producers improve the productivity of their crops – including yield, quality and consistency – whilst dramatically driving down the cost of power and labour. The company was shortlisted from thousands of entries before being invited to present at Red Herring’s virtual conference on November 17th and 18th where they were selected to join the final 100 winners.
Previous winners of the awards include household names such as Alibaba, Kakao, Skype, Spotify, Twitter and YouTube.
David Farquhar, CEO of IGS, commented: “We are delighted to see IGS included in the Red Herring’s Top 100 North America 2020 list. It’s an incredible accolade for a relatively small company based in Scotland to have been recognised alongside major global players in the world of technology and innovation. This achievement is truly testament to the ingenuity and forward-thinking approach of our team.”
Industry experts, insiders and journalists who examined the entrants against a wide variety of criteria including financial performance, innovation, business strategy, and market penetration. Winners were selected from a wide variety of verticals, from FinTech and Artificial Intelligence to Security, IoT, and many more industries.
“2020’s crop of Top 100 winners has been among our most intriguing yet,” said Red Herring chairman Alex Vieux, “What has excited me most is to see so many people forging niches in high-tech and cutting-edge sectors. Some of the technical wizardry and first-rate business models showcased at the conference has been fantastic to learn about. We believe IGS embodies the drive, skill and passion on which tech thrives. IGS should be proud of its achievement - the competition was incredibly strong.”
A full list of the 2020 Red Herring Top 100 North America Winners is available here.
Ends
Notes to editors:
For more information: please contact Kate Forster on kate@intelligentgrowthsolutions.com / +44 7787 534999 or Georgia Lea on georgia@intelligentgrowthsolutions.com / +44 7897 539954.
About IGS:
Founded in 2013, IGS brought together decades of farming and engineering experience to create an agritech business with a vision to revolutionise the indoor growing market. Its commitment to innovation has continued apace and it has evolved the applications of its technology beyond agriculture to create solutions for a wide variety of indoor environments which enhance life for people, plants and animals.
IGS launched its first vertical farming demonstration facility in August 2018, based at the James Hutton Institute in Invergowrie.
For more information visit www.intelligentgrowthsolutions.com or connect with us on Twitter and LinkedIn.
AUSTRALIA: Sydney's First Underground Farm Reducing Distance Between Paddock And Plate
From pink kale, spicy radish, coriander, basil, and cabbage, the vertical garden is controlled almost entirely by artificial means including fans which imitate a light breeze to help the plans grow
Underneath Sydney's bustling CBD, a group of savvy farmers have designed the city's first underground commercial farm. Four basement levels below the city streets in Barangaroo, in an office tower car park, Urban Green is now the largest vertical farm in Sydney. It features 35 verities of microgreens - seedlings of plants that are usually harvested early before being fully grown.
From pink kale, spicy radish, coriander, basil, and cabbage, the vertical garden is controlled almost entirely by artificial means including fans which imitate a light breeze to help the plans grow. Just four years on from when it first began, Urban Green now provides fresh produce to restaurants and chefs around the city.
Watch the video at 9news.com.au
26 Nov 2020
CEO of Red Lobster Joins Kalera Board of Directors
Kalera also welcomes Chris Logan, Investment Director of Canica International AG. The addition of these members coincides with Kalera’s rapid expansion into several new markets including recent announcements of locations in Atlanta, Houston, and Denver to open in 2021
ORLANDO, Fla., Nov. 20, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Kalera (OSE ticker KAL-ME, Bloomberg: KSLLF), one of the fastest-growing vertical farming companies in the world, today announced the appointment of two new members to its Board of Directors. Kim Lopdrup, the CEO of Red Lobster, brings decades of expertise from the restaurant industry and a history of successful global expansion. Kalera also welcomes Chris Logan, Investment Director of Canica International AG. The addition of these members coincides with Kalera’s rapid expansion into several new markets including recent announcements of locations in Atlanta, Houston, and Denver to open in 2021.
“We couldn’t be more thrilled to have Kim, a proven titan in the food and restaurant industry, join our Board,” said Daniel Malechuk, Kalera CEO. “His knowledge and expertise span from securing the highest quality, traceable food for his vast network of restaurants to leading companies through global expansion, skills which are invaluable to Kalera at this time. Chris has also made an impact within his industry and I am confident he will bring key financial insight as we grow rapidly and internationally.”
New board member Kim Lopdrup has been the Chief Executive Officer of Red Lobster, the world’s largest seafood restaurant chain company, since 2014. Under his leadership, Red Lobster has greatly improved its food and service, and today all of Red Lobster’s seafood is traceable, sustainable, and responsibly sourced. Before joining Red Lobster, Kim was the Chief Operating Officer, North America, for Burger King Corporation. He led the company’s 8,500 North American restaurants to record guest satisfaction scores in both company-owned and franchised restaurants, contributing to a turn-around of declining same-store sales.
“Kalera is an extraordinarily innovative company with disruptive technology and an unbeatable product that will allow them to grow very quickly and successfully,” said Kim Lopdrup, new Kalera board member and CEO of Red Lobster. “I am very passionate about food quality, safety, nutrition, and sustainability, and Kalera’s passion and commitment to all of these things is particularly impressive. I also have a lot of experience expanding brands internationally, and it is clear to me that Kalera has tremendous global potential.”
Kim serves on the boards of Wawa, Inc. (since 2006); Red Lobster (since 2014); and Bob Evans Restaurants (since 2017). He previously served on the boards of Rubio’s Restaurants (both before and after its IPO), 31 Ice Cream (a Japanese public company), and Hiram Walker & Sons, Ltd. (a Canadian company). He also served on the board of Boys & Girls Clubs of Central Florida for 12 years, being named Board Member of the Year in 2011 and receiving National Service to Youth awards in 2010 and 2015. He is currently co-chair of Project Opioid. Orlando Business Journal named Kim a “CEO of the Year” in 2016. He holds an MBA with Distinction in Business from Harvard Business School. In 1984, Kim won the Uhlmann Prize for best agribusiness research at Harvard Business School.
Also joining the board is Chris Logan, Investment Director of Canica International AG. His career prior to Canica includes four years as an accountant at Deloitte and six years at Goldman Sachs in London where he was responsible for European infrastructure research and was a three-time ranked analyst in the Greenwich and II surveys. He was also a founding partner of investment bank Liberum Capital in London, and Head of Research for Swiss-based hedge fund B1 Capital. His 20 years of capital markets experience includes corporate valuation, mergers & acquisitions, financing solutions, and investment management. Mr. Logan is a Chartered Accountant (ACA) and holds a B. A (Hons) in Economics from the University of Nottingham.
Global G.A.P. World Consultation Tour Focus Controlled Environment Agriculture Partnership With UKUAT And The Farm Tech Society
November 26, 2020
Register for free today! https://globalgapsolutions.org/wct/
Virtual Design Discussion for the Revised
GLOBALG.A.P. Standard Version 6 to be launched in 2022
7th December 2020, 17:00 CET, 16:00 GMT
The GLOBALG.A.P. World Consultation Tour goes into its second round! Join the upcoming virtual meeting in cooperation with the Farm Tech Society and UK Urban AgriTech (UKUAT).
We aim to deliver an impactful standard in line with producers’ practices. The unique challenges presented by vertical farming or produce grown in controlled environments will be addressed to ensure an appropriate user experience.
Participants will meet the expert working group behind the standard revision and will have the opportunity to join the ongoing discussion and process.
Details:
7th December - 1700 CET
Please register here
High-tech monitoring and control systems in commercial controlled environment agriculture farms and their supply chains enable the opportunity to capture automated measurements, support assessment and analyze a wide range of variables including water to energy to inputs, reducing costs and adding value for individual farms and across the industry. The ultimate goal of the partnership is the development and implementation of an impactful standard and certification process.
About FTS:
The Farm Tech Society (FTS) is an international non-profit industry association that unites and supports the Controlled Environment Agriculture (CEA) industry, seeking to strengthen the sector through the development and implementation of resilient and future proof methods and technologies for indoor growing.
The FarmTech Society is enlisted in the EU Transparency Register with #469686733585-87
About UKUAT:
UK Urban AgriTech (UKUAT) brings together the UK’s key players in modern agricultural technologies, in a cross-industry group devoted to promoting urban agtech as a solution for food and environmental crises.
About GLOBALG.A.P.:
GLOBALG.A.P. is a leading global certification program whose mission is to bring farmers and retailers together to produce and market safe food, to protect scarce resources, and to build a sustainable future.
cheers
Tom ZoellnerCo-Founder FarmTech Society ASBL Secretary-General
Resetting The Food System From Farm to Fork
Resetting the future of food is possible and with this aim, we will present in an international debate- concrete solutions to rethink our food systems from farm to fork
Barilla Foundation and Food Tank invite you to attend the online event “Resetting the Food System from Farm to Fork: Setting the Stage for the 2021 UN Food Systems Summit” to be held on December 1st, from 2.00 PM CET.
Resetting the future of food is possible and with this aim, we will present in an international debate- concrete solutions to rethink our food systems from farm to fork.
The event will begin by highlighting the critical role of farmers in feeding the world and managing natural resources, food business in progressing towards the 2030 Agenda, and chefs in re-designing food experiences.
Here are details of the first three conversations of the day, which will feature, among others, the likes of Edie Mukiibi, Vice President, Slow Food International; Massimo Bottura, Chef and Owner, Osteria Francescana; Jeffrey Sachs, Professor and Director of the Center for Sustainable Development, Columbia University; Director, U.N. Sustainable Development Solutions Network; Elly Schlein, Vice President, Emilia Romagna Region.
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The world needs urgent action on agriculture and food systems.
Let's make the future grow!
2030 is the deadline to achieve all 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The next decade is a chance to remake our future. Through the “Decade of Action”, we all have a part to play in the transition towards sustainable economic, social, and environmental development—with sustainable food systems at its heart.
In a rapidly changing world, food systems face substantial challenges, including the COVID-19 pandemic acting as a multiplier of food and nutrition insecurity. Globally, two billion people are malnourished. More than 700 million adults are obese while at least 820 million suffer from hunger—a statistic that will no doubt increase as a result of the pandemic. And some one-third of the global harvest is lost or waste. Biodiversity is declining, water and land are increasingly degraded, climate change is posing adverse impacts on agricultural production and livelihoods.
We must act now to address the impending global food emergency and avoid the worst impacts of the pandemic while seizing upon the opportunity of resetting food systems. Over the next 20 years, food systems will need to nourish 10 billion people while also protecting precious natural resources for future generations. The spread of COVID-19 has demonstrated the fragility of global food systems, but it also offers opportunities to transform the way we produce, distribute, and consume food.
Join the conversation
Distinguished speakers
Leading experts, world-renowned chefs, and international journalists will convene for this unique virtual event.
Lively discussions
Panels will cover diverse themes including the role of food as medicine, the new food economy, and the EU’s Farm to Fork strategy.
Trends spotlights
The latest food and agricultural technologies will be discussed, as well as how chefs are re-designing food experiences.
Concrete change
The event will generate recommendations that will help set the stage for the 2021 United Nations Food Systems Summit.
SPEAKERS
“Experimentation, Learning By Doing And Listening To Others Is Key For Any Entrepreneur”: Interview With Infarm’s Co-Founder Osnat Michaeli
Osnat Michaeli is co-founder and CMO of the fast-growing German agritech scaleup, Infarm. Since 2013, the Berlin-based startup has grown to be one of the world’s fastest-growing urban farming networks
November 20, 2020
Where did the food on your plate come from? Was it from a neighboring EU region, or perhaps a vertical urban farm around the corner in your city?
Osnat Michaeli is co-founder and CMO of the fast-growing German agritech scaleup, Infarm. Since 2013, the Berlin-based startup has grown to be one of the world’s fastest-growing urban farming networks. In September 2020, Infarm announced a €144 million investment, raised in the first close of a Series C funding round, which is expected to reach around €169 million. Right now they’ve grown to a team of 400+ employees, an impressive feat in 7 years.
This scaleup has covered a lot of ground and has garnered new interest since the pandemic set in and we collectively started thinking more about our food systems. So let’s jump into the interview, to get her insights on scaling a fast-growing team, the future of foodtech, and advice for fellow founders.
Hello Osnat, thank you for being with us today. Could you please give us a short overview about how you became an entrepreneur as well as why you founded Infarm?
Just under a decade ago, my two co-founders (Erez and Guy Galonska) and I started Infarm with a mission: to help cities become self-sufficient in their food production while improving the safety, quality, and environmental footprint of our food. We had just moved to Berlin, bought a 1955 Airstream trailer, outfitted it with DIY growing shelves, and started experimenting with indoor farming. Soon we began to build modular, vertical farming units that could be installed in any urban environment, including supermarkets, restaurants, distribution centers, and other urban spaces, as close as possible to where food is consumed.
Infarm is based in Berlin. What is your opinion on the environment for creating a tech company there?
We owe a great debt to the Berlin community who received us and welcomed our vision to challenge the status quo in how we transport, plant and harvest our produce in cities.
Moreover, the growth of Europe’s most dynamic tech hubs – London, Berlin, Amsterdam, Stockholm, Helsinki, Dublin, and others along with the accompanying inflow of investment is driving a steady reorientation of talent, not only from Europe but from countries outside of Europe – including my native Israel – to help meet demand. Our business, which requires highly trained individuals in plant biology and plant science also benefits from the pool of Master’s and Ph.D. candidates so plentiful in European markets, including here in Berlin.
Infarm has announced recently closing a €144 million Series C funding round. What are your future plans with such capital?
We believe Infarm has the potential for mass expansion across the world. We have big ambitions, aiming to reach more than 5,000,000 square feet of growing facilities by 2025, and in doing so becoming the largest distributed farming network in the world.
This news comes amidst growing concerns about a second COVID-19 wave. What steps have you taken to safeguard your operations and teams?
What we found was that our farming model was quite resilient, allowing us to respond quickly to the needs of our clients, many of whom themselves were also moving quickly to establish procedures for producer and customer interaction within their retail spaces. We were able to alternate easily to direct delivery of fresh produce from our local hubs where needed if direct store access to our employees or our farms was limited. Across our global network, each of our farms is connected to the cloud, allowing us to monitor plant performance, growing environment, and make adjustments remotely. We developed a system to guide local teams through farm installation remotely when our installation teams were unable to travel, further minimizing any potential impact from the changing pandemic environment to our operations.
In our offices, as our work environment increasingly became more remote, we began to use office space more creatively, dedicating more space in our Berlin headquarters for example, to areas like marketing, packaging, and product design, while establishing a greater number of remote workstations so employees who needed to work on-site could easily do so. We also looked for and found more opportunities to communicate across our teams, not only in terms of regular updates relating to the changing environment, but through groups where we checked in on one another, shared playlists and successful lunchtime dishes, and participated in virtual get-togethers to maintain a sense of community.
Over the years, Infarm has grown to more than 600 employees. What tips would you give to someone who wants to build a solid team?
When starting out, it’s important to find the right partners who inspire you, partners whom you trust and you enjoy working with. My co-founders and I elevate one another. We each have a different area of focus and expertise, whether that be branding, operations or technology. We create more together than anything we could possibly produce apart. This is also true for the investors, mentors and employees you bring along. Today, we’ve grown our workforce to hundreds of employees and have brought together people from all kinds of backgrounds and disciplines—data scientists, designers, engineers, scientists and more— as inclusivity and diversity in talent is key.
In your opinion, how is the vertical farming ecosystem doing now compared to when you started?
Back when we first started out, vertical farming was intriguing as a concept for many, but we couldn’t have imagined that a few years later we would be partnering with some of the largest retailers in the world. Our assumptions at the time were that retailers and their customers would be attracted to the taste and freshness of produce that grew right in front of them in the produce section, in our farms. What we didn’t anticipate was how much and how quickly the demand for a sustainable, transparent, and modular approach to farming would grow as we, as society, begin to feel the impact of climate change and supply chain fragility upon our lives, our choices and our food. Of course, we also did not anticipate a global pandemic, which has underscored the urgency of building a new food system that can democratize access to high quality, amazing tasting food, while helping our planet regenerate and heal. The past few months have confirmed the flexibility and resilience of our farming model, and that our mission is more relevant than ever.
What is it like to build a company from the ground up with Erez and Guy?
It’s great to be able to work with someone you trust, and we’re all very lucky to have found one another to build this together.
What is your advice to young entrepreneurs looking to kick off their own agtech company?
Passion for what you’re doing is the best foundation. Being an entrepreneur is an ongoing learning process that involves lots of research, trial, and error. You have to love it and keep learning new things because the need to be open to learning and exploring just accelerates over the years as you grow. Experimentation, learning by doing, and listening to others is key for any entrepreneur. We learned so much by experimenting with the hydroponic systems we built ourselves. We also gained powerful insights from being active in the food and innovation community by hosting interactive installations, making food, conducting workshops, joining debates, and meeting with many inspiring urban planners, designers, food activists, bio-dynamic farmers, architects, chefs, and hackers.
It’s vital to stay focused and enjoy the journey. All entrepreneurs know that there is always the possibility that they might have set-backs, but it’s not constructive to concentrate on that. Stay positive, focus on where you’re going, choose your partners well and the right people and opportunities will cross your path.
VIDEO: This 2-Acre Vertical Farm Out-Produces 750 Acre ‘Flat Farms’
According to Nate Storey, the future of farms is vertical. It’s also indoors, can be placed anywhere on the planet, is heavily integrated with robots and AI, and produces better fruits and vegetables while using 95% less water and 99% less land
John Koetsier Senior Contributor
November 20, 2020 Consumer Tech
John Koetsier is a journalist, analyst, author, and speaker
Farming is going vertical, thanks to startups like San Francisco-based Plenty.
PHOTO BY ALEX WIGAN ON UNSPLASH
According to Nate Storey, the future of farms is vertical. It’s also indoors, can be placed anywhere on the planet, is heavily integrated with robots and AI, and produces better fruits and vegetables while using 95% less water and 99% less land.
But the future of farms is also personal, emotional, and deeply meaningful.
“The objective of all technology really should be to enable human joy, right?” Storey asked me on the recent episode of the TechFirst podcast. “For me, it’s the memory of being a child in the garden and eating a carrot that my grandfather gave me that still has the grit on it, and the snap and the crunch and the flavor and the aroma, or a tomato from my grandmother’s garden.”
Plenty is an ag-tech startup in San Francisco that is reinventing farms and farming. Storey is the co-founder and chief science officer in a time when farming is going high-tech.
Despite getting a bad rep in much of popular culture over the last few decades for lack of education, farmers have always been stealthily technical, fixing tractors, constructing buildings, and innovating new tools to making farming better or easier. Recently drones and robots are invading the world of “flat farming,” as Storey calls it, and the space is legitimately hot, with over 1,600 startups and tens of billions of dollars of investment.
Plenty is one of those startups, but it’s taking a novel path.
Necessity, as per usual, is the mother of invention.
“The reality is, there are five places in the world where you can grow fresh fruits and vegetables really economically, and all of that land is used up at this point,” Storey says. “Vertical farming exists because we want to grow the world’s capacity for fresh fruits and vegetables, and we know it’s necessary.”
Americans are only eating half of the fresh fruit and veggies they should be, and globally it’s even worse: an average of 30%. In richer nations a lack of a healthy diet means increased levels of obesity, diabetes, and other health concerns; in poorer nations, there may not be enough food of any kind to go around.
Plus, some nations with limited land or poor growing conditions such as deserts face existential risks when they can’t control their own food supply.
“If you are a nation in this world that has limited food security, you have to import everything, the value of your food is quite different than it is here in the United States,” Storey says. “Which means that what you’re willing to pay for it is quite different. And what you’re willing to pay for that independence and that control is quite different.”
Indeed.
In fact, one of the lessons Covid-19 has taught us is the fragility of the interconnected global economy.
Listen to the interview behind this story on the TechFirst podcast:
So Plenty takes the flat farm and performs an Inception transformation on it: ripping up horizontal rows of plants and hanging them vertically from the ceilings. Sunlight from above is replaced by full-spectrum LED lights from all sides. Huge robots grab large hanging racks of growing vegetables and moves them where they’re needed. Artificial intelligence manages all the variables of heat and light and water, continually optimizing and learning how to grow faster, bigger, better crops. Water lost by transpiration is recaptured and reused. And all of it happens not 1,000 miles away from a city, but inside or right next to the place where the food is actually needed.
It turns out that growing, while natural, is also hard. At least at scale.
One key: de-stressing plants.
Nate Storey, chief science officer and co-founder of Plenty | NATE STOREY
“Our problem is that we have to push yields and we have to push quality to an extent that we need to eliminate all plant stress,” Storey say. “That’s really hard, it turns out. Anyone can grow plants at low yield levels, that is not hard. Plants are set up to withstand a lot. But trying to grow them at some of these just, I guess unprecedented growth rates, unprecedented qualities … that is really hard, it turns out.”
Storey says, without irony, that it’s like “building a space shuttle.” There are millions of parts, millions of genes, and plants tend to do “all sorts of wild stuff.”
“It’s kind of our modern human arrogance that thinks we’ve got that under control,” he adds.
The potential benefits are massive.
400X greater yield per acre of ground is not just an incremental improvement, and using almost two orders of magnitude less water is also critical in time of increasing ecological stress and climate uncertainty. All of these are truly game-changers, but they’re not the only goals, Storey says.
The key goal: great produce that tastes amazing.
The startup is fairly early in its mission to reinvent how produce is grown. It has a farm in San Francisco, dubbed Tigris, and another under construction in Compton, California. (Just think about that statement: a farm under construction.) Plus, the company has plans for much more expansion, using $400 million in capital injected by investors including Softbank, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, and former Google chairman Eric Schmidt.
Commercialization is well underway, with a deal inked to supply 430 Albertsons stores in California.
But there’s also plenty of competition, and that’s not just from the flat farms of Iowa, Nebraska, and California. AeroFarms and BrightFarms are two American competitors in indoor farming, while InFarm and Agricool are among the European competitors. Others, like FreightFarms, focus on growing food in shipping containers.
A growing industry can support multiple players, however.
And growing better food in more places with less environmental cost is something that’s positive for everyone.
“The future will be quite remarkable,” Storey told me. “And I think the size of the global fresh fruit and vegetable industry will be multiples of what it is today.”
Follow me on Twitter or LinkedIn. Check out my website or some of my other work here.
I forecast and analyze trends affecting the mobile ecosystem. I've been a journalist, analyst, and corporate executive, and have chronicled the rise of the mobile economy. I built the VB Insight research team at VentureBeat and managed teams creating software for partners like Intel and Disney. In addition, I've led technical teams, built social sites and mobile apps, and consulted on mobile, social, and IoT. In 2014, I was named to Folio's top 100 of the media industry's "most innovative entrepreneurs and market shaker-uppers.” I live in Vancouver, Canada with my family, where I coach baseball and hockey, though not at the same time
Swedish Vertical Farming Company Urban Oasis Raises $1.2 Million
Founded in 2017, Urban Oasis built its first indoor vertical farm underneath an apartment complex in Stockholm. The company produces a variety of leafy greens, including kale, bok choi, and lettuce, which are sold at Swedish retailers including ICA, COOP, and online grocer MatHem
Urban Oasis, an indoor vertical farming company based in Sweden, announced today that it has raised 10.5 million Swedish Krona (~$1.22M USD). Investors include Family Offices Pelarhuset, Anteeo, and Yobi Partners Ltd.
Founded in 2017, Urban Oasis built its first indoor vertical farm underneath an apartment complex in Stockholm. The company produces a variety of leafy greens, including kale, bok choi, and lettuce, which are sold at Swedish retailers including ICA, COOP, and online grocer MatHem.
With its new funding, Urban Oasis aims to build its first MegaFarm, which will expand its production capacity by 15 to 20 times, according to today’s press announcement. The new facility is controlled by Urban Oasis’ GreenOS automation software and will be operational by the end of this year for growing a variety of crops.
Funding for the controlled-environment agriculture, and vertical farming, in particular, has been downright frothy this fall. Other players in the space getting investment include Plenty, Kalera, InFarm, and Unfold. As my colleague, Jenn Marston explained last month:
Less than one year ago, the vertical farming sector was expanding, but a lot of questions remained around the scalability of the concept and how appealing it could be to investors. The nearly constant stream of funding and product announcements in 2020 has sped up that expansion. Part of this is due to, yep, you guessed it, the pandemic. Disruptions in the food supply chain due to COVID-19 have consumers more interested than ever in where their food comes from, and having it grown closer to home is an increasingly attractive option.
With the pandemic still going strong and a month in a half left in the year, Urban Oasis’ fundraise may not be the last of its kind in 2020.
FILED UNDER: MODERN FARMER VERTICAL FARMING
Urban Oasis, an indoor vertical farming company based in Sweden, announced today that it has raised 10.5 million Swedish Krona (~$1.22M USD). Investors include Family Offices Pelarhuset, Anteeo, and Yobi Partners Ltd.
Founded in 2017, Urban Oasis built its first indoor vertical farm underneath an apartment complex in Stockholm. The company produces a variety of leafy greens, including kale, bok choi, and lettuce, which are sold at Swedish retailers including ICA, COOP, and online grocer MatHem.
With its new funding, Urban Oasis aims to build its first MegaFarm, which will expand its production capacity by 15 to 20 times, according to today’s press announcement. The new facility is controlled by Urban Oasis’ GreenOS automation software and will be operational by the end of this year for growing a variety of crops.
Funding for the controlled-environment agriculture, and vertical farming in particular, has been downright frothy this fall. Other players in the space getting investment include Plenty, Kalera, InFarm and Unfold. As my colleague, Jenn Marston explained last month:
Less than one year ago, the vertical farming sector was expanding, but a lot of questions remained around the scalability of the concept and how appealing it could be to investors. The nearly constant stream of funding and product announcements in 2020 has sped up that expansion. Part of this is due to, yep, you guessed it, the pandemic. Disruptions in the food supply chain due to COVID-19 have consumers more interested than ever in where their food comes from, and having it grown closer to home is an increasingly attractive option.
With the pandemic still going strong and a month in a half left in the year, Urban Oasis’ fundraise may not be the last of its kind in 2020.
FILED UNDER:
Seoul Semiconductor Enters The Horticulture Market
"As a world top innovative company we're constantly thriving for optimization and want to offer solutions by our key technologies"
There's a new kid on the block in the horticultural market! Well, new... Seoul Semiconductors was founded in 1992 already, when they rented a small space in a commercial building. By now it is one of the biggest global LED manufacturers. And good news: they are also bringing solutions to the horticultural industry. Recently they became a member of the Association for Vertical Farming
"As a world top innovative company we're constantly thriving for optimization and want to offer solutions by our key technologies", the team says. Based on a differentiated product portfolio, Seoul offers a wide range of technologies, and mass produces innovative LED products for indoor and outdoor lighting, automotive, IT products.
Seoul Semiconductors, also known as SSC, has 4 Production platforms and 6 R&D Labs globally (China, USA, Vietnam, Korea). "We're the only company in the world that can supply all wavelengths UV to IR 200nm – 1000nm," the team says.
SSC pushes forward its expansion of global business with the belief that they can make new history with light. One of the new areas they will engage in with all their knowledge and experience is horticulture and indoor farming by cooperating with other players and supporting R&D for new applications with the sun spectrum LED they have developed.
The Association for Vertical Farming will closely work with SSCs Munich office by connecting them to the fast global network and projects.
All members are welcome to use the AVF MembersHub for direct and easy communication with each other.
For more information:
www.seoulsemicon.com
www.vertical-farming.net
16 Nov 2020
Almost 900.000 Euro Grant For Swegreen's AI-Driven Vertical Farming Project
The research partners Swegreen, Mälardalen University, and RISE Research Institutes of Sweden, have teamed up together to digitalize the urban farming industry and restructure the urban food industry towards climate neutrality with the help of Artificial Intelligence
Swedish AgTech rising star Swegreen, together with research partners RISE and Mälardales University, secures funding from Vinnova, for a 9,1 MSEK (approx. 880.000 euro) project aiming to develop further Swegreens’ platform for AI-driven vertical farming and to evolve a digitalized supply chain from farm to fork.
The research partners Swegreen, Mälardalen University, and RISE Research Institutes of Sweden, have teamed up together to digitalize the urban farming industry and restructure the urban food industry towards climate neutrality with the help of Artificial Intelligence. The core for the partner’s research is Swegreens’ innovation for hyper-local vertical farming and building connected and circular models for integration of those facilities in host buildings.
The cluster started off earlier this year with the project ‘NeigbourFood’, funded with 2 MSEK by Swedish Innovation Agency Vinnova, to further develop a data-driven monitoring and optimization for precision farming in closed-loop indoor environment for Swegreen’s offer for Farming as a Service FaaS. The clusters' new project, called ‘AIFood’, has now been granted with 9,1 MSEK, corresponding to approx. 1 Million USD, to enhance the local and sustainable food production systems in urban environments with help of digital technologies.
"A data-driven approach on Vertical Farming has been Swegreens’ main focus from day one, and sustainability is embedded in our DNA as a greentech company," Andreas Dahlin, CEO of Swegreen, says. "Hand in hand with our technological development, our concrete collaboration with the leading research and academic institutions of Sweden gives us the upper hand to lead this industry’s development as a spearhead enterprise – and our partnership with RISE and Mälardalen University keeps our position on the edge of the development, globally speaking," Andreas Dahlin continues.
The call ‘AI in the service of the climate’ has been launched by the Swedish Innovation Agency Vinnova to support initiatives that focus on use of Artificial Intelligence for minimizing various industries' climate-negative impact. The agricultural and food sector accounts for 30% of the global GHG emissions, and vertical farming can create urban symbiosis as a key factor for resource efficiency and integration of farming facilities into urban infrastructure for significant global greenhouse gas emission cutback.
The ‘AIFood’ project runs for two years and focuses on a proof of concept for autonomous orchestration of vertical farming facilities modelling, and on development of an AI-based platform for precision farming, integration of vertical farms into host buildings, and autonomous interaction of the production facilities with the after-harvest actors.
Dr. Baran Cürüklü, from Mälardalen University – a vibrant AI development academic center – is the Project Lead for the cluster. "AI can go beyond narrow and specific contributions. In this project, our aim is to demonstrate that complex and intricate systems can be orchestrated by AI, and contribute to rapid transition to a more sustainable agriculture, and even innovative services connecting the whole chain from producer to citizens," says Dr. Baran Cürüklü.
The project has a close collaboration with two other national project platforms as reference groups: Sharing Cities Sweden, a national platform for sharing economy with four testbeds in Stockholm, Umeå, Gothenburg and Lund, and a cluster called Fastighetsdatalabb which focuses on data-related advancement of the real-estate sector.
Dr. Charlie Gullström, senior researcher at RISE, Sweden’s major research institution and head of Sharing Cities Sweden’s Stockholm testbed, plays an indispensable role in this project. She convenes an interdisciplinary climate panel connected to this project including household name researchers who focus on the climate aspect of the project. Dr. Alex Jonsson from RISE is another senior researcher that attends to the needs for the project from a technical perspective.
Dr. Gullström adds: "I believe that urban food production can speed up climate transition because it has the potential to engage citizens in local consumption and circular business models that both reduce food waste and unnecessary transports. AI allows us to explore how to complement existing agricultural systems by actively involving stakeholders in the value chain as a whole. In this way, AIFOOD really points the way to a new green deal."
Sepehr Mousavi, Chief Innovation Officer of Swegreen remarks: "We are proud of this collaboration with leading Swedish research institutions and researchers and see it as a successful model for how a private entity could collaborate with academia and offer its assets as a research infrastructure for the good of the whole industry, in a planet and prosperity win-win model."
"This green transformation of the food sector is dependent on empowering factors such as innovation and circularity enhancement, a connectivity-based and data-driven approach through the whole chain; and application of Artificial Intelligence as an exponential enabler. Autonomous control of the vertical farming facilities for maximum resource efficiency, scalability and preciseness of operations is of extreme and fundamental importance for both the industry and our company to move forward," adds Sepehr Mousavi.
For more information:
Swegreen
Andreas Dahlin, CEO of Swegreen
andreas.dahlin@swegreen.se
www.swegreen.se
The Future of Farming Is Inside This Bomb Shelter
The farm is known as Growing Underground (GU), and it’s located 108 feet below the main street in Clapham, a south London suburb
Ten Stories Underneath London,
Thousands of Plants Are growing
BY ROB KEMP
PHOTOGRAPHY BY KATE PETERS
NOV 12, 2020
Deep beneath the streets of London, in a complex of bomb shelters left abandoned since World War II, something is growing. Thousands of green sprouts burst from their hydroponic trays, stretching toward glowing pink lights that line the arched ceilings. These plants, along with tens of thousands of other salad crops, are being grown from seed without soil or sunlight, in tunnels transformed into a high-tech commercial farm.
The farm is known as Growing Underground (GU), and it’s located 108 feet below the main street in Clapham, a south London suburb. Every year, in 6,000 square feet of old bomb shelter, more than 100 tons of pea shoots, garlic chives, cilantro, broccoli, wasabi mustard, arugula, fennel, red mustard, pink stem radishes, watercress, sunflower shoots, and salad leaves are sown, grown, and prepared for dispatch.
London’s unique move toward re-localizing agriculture—feeding its growing population while cutting the environmental impact of producing and transporting crops—is the brain-child of entrepreneur Richard Ballard and his business partner Steve Dring.
The tunnels consist of two portions - a larger upper level, where growing and processing takes place, and a smaller lower level, shown here, which is used for storage. KATE PETERS
“The United Nations predicts that we need 70 percent more food by 2050,” says Ballard. “But how are we going to achieve this when only 10 percent of the Earth’s surface is suitable for agriculture and we use a third of that to grow livestock feed?”
Ballard’s journey to becoming a pioneering subterranean farmer is an unusual one. After his ethical garden furniture business went bust in 2008, he moved closer to his old friend, Dring, and the pair would regularly sit in the pub and discuss ideas for start-ups. Both men were intrigued by the idea of vertical farming as an efficient way to feed people, especially in urban areas.
These farms are not susceptible to weather, and crops can be protected from food contamination and grown without herbicides and pesticides. Transport costs are minimal, harvesting is often automated, and much of the water used to grow crops can be recycled.
But the question of how to build it in a city where living space is at such a high premium presented their first major challenge.
At that time, London’s Crossrail line was in its construction stages. The excavations for the 73-mile-long high-speed railway across the city regularly featured on the TV news—especially as secrets to the city’s past were being unearthed, including plague pits, Roman artifacts, and unexploded World War II bombs. It led Ballard and Dring to consider going underground.
Cilantro sprouts under the pink growing lights. KATE PETERS
They worked with the management company for the city’s underground railway network, Transport for London (TfL), to find the Clapham site. “As long as we weren’t building an underground nightclub, they were happy for us to trial a small farm to see if a tunnel could work as a growing environment,” Dring says.
A crowdfunded campaign raised more than $900,000 to develop the site. After a successful trial in one small section of the shelters, Ballard and Dring negotiated a nearly 20-year lease from TfL and began operating in 2015.
The entrance to GU is within an unassuming brick office at street level. In here sit four of the site’s seven aboveground staff; they work at computers taking orders from retailers and arranging deliveries. It’s also the spot where visitors are asked to remove any jewelry and sign a consent form confirming that they are in good health, have never carried typhoid, and are not bringing any nuts onto the site.
From there, it’s a trip into a cramped elevator with barely enough room for two people. It descends slowly, 10 stories belowground, to where visitors step out into a tunnel of whitewashed corrugated arches that contrast brightly with the eerie elevator shaft. Through a row of rubber strips hanging from a tunnel entrance, the kind you see in an industrial refrigerator, a bright pink light glows. Coupled with a sound of hard-core punk music coming from another passageway, this farm has the feel of the illicit nightclub their landlords had feared.
The working farm currently occupies an eighth of its potential 45,000 square feet of growing space. The entire site is two parallel tunnels, each 1,640 feet in length. Built at the height of the Blitz between 1940 and 1942 and capable of accommodating 8,000 people, the space was already connected to electricity and the London water supply before Growing Underground moved in.
Pea shoots are planted in the recycled growing medium. KATE PETERS
Belowground the next set of safety precautions sees visitors putting on white rubber boots, disposable hair nets, another net to cover any facial hair, and white lab coats.
“It’s a controlled environment. We don’t need pesticides but we can’t afford contamination,” says Jess Moseley, GU’s operations coordinator and tour guide. “We ask visitors to remove their jewelry to prevent any possibility of any foreign body contamination. We don’t want tiny gemstones in our salad.” Visitors wash their hands thoroughly with soap and use an alcohol-based sanitizer on them, and then are free to enter the farm.
Moseley works alongside a team of growers, all wearing the same hair net and rubber boots combo. Four of them, dressed in blue, stand in a line at polished-metal weighing scales picking bunches of harvested herbs and packing them for distribution.
“There are 16 production staff and two growers who organize the sowing,” Moseley explains, as the electronic scales beep and another box of fresh herbs is sealed and stacked. These micro greens are the intensely flavored early stages of plants that are usually harvested later in their life cycle. They’re especially popular with restaurants that serve dishes with very little on the plate. “We switched pea shoots to tendril pea shoots, which are frillier, because the chefs prefer them,” says Moseley.
The trays in the foreground hold crops that are ready for the harvest, while those under the lights are still growing. KATE PETERS
Most of GU’s crops are micro herbs—there are only two larger crops, pea shoots and sunflower shoots. Most full-size produce such as carrots or bok choy could be grown here, but they take too long to grow to make them profitable. However, more research into alternative lighting spectrums may make these a possibility, says GU operations manager Alex Hamilton-Jones.
"OUR PEA SHOOTS CAN BE HARVESTED UP TO 60 TIMES IN A YEAR. OUTDOORS YOU GET THREE OR FOUR HARVESTS A YEAR; IN A GREENHOUSE, AROUND 30."
“Larger crops require a change to the growing equipment, like the height of the stacks and light intensity,” Moseley says. “This is going to be a part of the next iteration of the farm.”
Within its short existence, Growing Underground’s team has expanded its variety and reduced turnaround time on crops. That’s due in no small part to a number of technological innovations that optimize growing conditions on the farm.
“Our pea shoots can be harvested up to 60 times in a year,” Ballard says. “Outdoors you get three or four harvests of those in a year; in a greenhouse, around 30.”
To help plants grow quickly, the correct lights are key. Ballard and Dring tried seven different LEDs during their R&D and found that the system they settled on—spectrum AP673L LEDs from Valoya of Finland—produced the best yield and greatest flavors.
These LEDs utilize a red:far-red (R:Fr) spectrum ratio that targets the red and far-red light-absorbing photoreceptors on the plant leaf. The light resembles sunlight at its peak level, which delays the flowering of herbs and allows the plant to focus its energy into fast biomass development.
The result is a compact, intensely flavored product grown in a short time in conditions that not only suit the plant but meet the needs of the growers, too. “The cycle for growing coriander has gone from 21 to 14 days,” explains Riley Anderson, the site’s team leader. “Some plants can be harvested after just six days in the growing tunnel, which beats anything a farm aboveground can achieve consistently through the year.” They toyed with duller tones than the vivid pink that now illuminates the growing tunnel, but found that the reduction in visibility meant having to lift each plant tray out off of its bench to do quality checks. It slowed the process and didn’t enhance the crop.
Jess Moseley, GU’s operations coordinator and tour guide, checks on some of the crops. KATE PETERS
“We wanted to source the lowest energy-consuming lighting system we could find,” explains Ballard. “The LEDs do not use the same amount of energy nor do they create the high direct heat that conventional (high-pressure sodium) lights do, which means we’re able to grow the plants in shelves closer together.”
The power comes from Good Energy, which only uses renewable sources. “As it’s a closed-loop system of farming, anything that’s added—nutrients or fertilizers—stays within the circuit,” says Ballard. The only farm waste—the substrate recycled carpet leftover from harvesting the herbs—is sent to SELCHP, a waste-to-energy converter in southeast London. “Zero carbon output has been the Key Performance Indicator we chose to work to from the very start because any business starting today needs to think about its impact on the environment,” says Ballard.
This 700-recipe cookbook will have you eating every last bit of your bounty. This is an actual problem at our house. Cooking everything takes creativity.
In addition to high-tech lighting, there are several other adaptations that allow plants in the tunnels to grow so quickly. It starts when the seeds are sown, without the aid of conventional soil: Workers place two-inch-thick rectangular growing mats—called Growfelt and made from pulped floor carpet—into shallow trays. The mats are sprinkled with seeds by hand.
Once sown, the seed trays are stacked onto carts and left in a dark section of the same tunnel for propagation. For a short time, they sit in complete darkness, covered with plastic wrap. This “fools” the seeds into thinking they’re beneath the earth. This is where germination begins. Within a day or two, the seed shoots appear. By the fourth day, the trays are transferred to shelves known as benches under the banks of LEDs in the crop-growing tunnel.
Garlic chive seeds are sewn into the recycled carpet seed bed. KATE PETERS
There’s no music playing in the growing area—workers seldom spend much time in here, as the plants are doing all the work on their own. Instead, the only noise in this long, flamingo-pink chamber is the whirring of the axial fans dangling from the ceiling. Although the fans help keep the farm at a settled temperature of around 59°F, the plants beneath the glare of the LEDs feel the warmth of up to 77°F.
“There’s a slight variance throughout the farm,” says Anderson. “We place the crops strategically to optimize growth. Our radishes prefer to be right at the front of the farm, where it is coolest. Our most robust crop, the pea shoot, grows well wherever it is positioned within the farm.”
On either side of the tunnel are trays bristling with herbs at different stages of growth. In each tray, a handwritten sign identifies the type of crop, along with a P date of propagation, an L for the day it was put under the lights (when transferred to the farm from propagation), and B for the bench the tray is assigned to.
The warming glow provides “sunlight” for 18 hours a day. Rain comes in the form of hydroponics. A faucet fills each tray of plants with a water-and-nutrient mix five times a day. The roots in the trays grow down through the matting to absorb the mix and then water is filtered through tanks beneath the benches. “We use 70 percent less water than conventional field farming,” says Moseley.
The garlic chive crop is harvested and ready for packing. KATE PETERS
The night before a harvest, workers put the plants on carts in the middle of the farm, which has the best airflow, Anderson says. That dries them overnight to the point of being packable without them breaking down quicker.
CROPS HERE CAN BE HARVESTED, PACKED, DELIVERED, AND SERVED ON A PLATE ALL WITHIN FOUR HOURS.
To harvest, fresh herbs are sliced from their roots, shaken off of the matting that served as their soil bed, and placed into a blue bowl. From there the crop is weighed and packed into transparent tubs made from rPET—recycled plastic—and labeled with the GU logo and contents.
Above each growing bench is a round, yellow sensor the size of a large coin that records temperature, humidity, and illumination, and sends the data to the University of Cambridge’s engineering department. The results are fed back to GU, which compares them with the crop yields to determine which conditions are working best for growth.
“We monitor yields every day when we cut,” says Ballard. “A platform with machine learning capability collects the data from all the sensors and alerts you to any anomalies. It gives us access to the sort of technology being used in big agricultural projects, but that would be too expensive for us to put together.”
Crops here can be harvested, packed, delivered, and served on a plate all within four hours. The reduced time spent in transit means GU products have a longer shelf life than those grown outside of the capital. As a result, they’re sold in some of the U.K.’s major food retailers and wholesalers.
A number of renowned London chefs use GU produce, too, including Michelin-starred Michel Roux Jr. He not only uses their herbs in his dishes at Le Gavroche, a French restaurant in the Mayfair area of London, but he also came on board as a founding supporter. He describes the shoots and leaves that it provides as “mind-blowingly good.”
For distribution to smaller restaurants, GU goes underground as well. “We send our delivery guys off with all these bags of orders onto the subway trains,” says Anderson. “Food that’s been grown in a Tube tunnel is delivered through one as well, further reducing the carbon footprint.”
Tours of the tunnels take place outside of the production cycle, with chefs, students, and potential investors visiting during the week and members of the public shown around on Saturday afternoons. “We’ve had farmers from Scotland, mainland Europe, and as far as America come and visit us,” adds Anderson. In the past five years that the farm has been operating, technology has improved a lot—more efficient LED lighting, water recycling, and air management systems, Anderson says. “But the principle of what we’re doing is remarkably simple, giving crops the nutrients they need and a medium to grow in.”
Ballard is now busy sourcing funding to expand farther into the tunnels while investigating sites for other controlled-environment farms in other parts of the world and in different structures.
“When we started, the plan was to produce a supply for London,” Ballard says. “But as the retailers have taken an interest, we’re now looking to serve their distribution centers beyond the M25 [London’s encircling motorway].”
As GU grows, it looks to similar farms for inspiration. In South Korea, subterranean vegetable farms are cropping up at underground stations on the Seoul metro, thanks to a start-up called Farm8, while in Tokyo, abandoned utility tunnels built to service a skyscraper city that never materialized have also been converted into GU-style farms. In Hamburg, Germany, a vertical farm called &ever uses methods similar to GU’s to harvest salad crop using just 5,920 square feet of indoor growing space. Producing an equivalent yield outdoors would require 161,458 square feet of open field.
Increasingly crowded cities are getting imaginative when it comes to farmland. “But these farms don’t have to be underground at all,” says Ballard. “It can be in an abandoned factory or disused warehouse aboveground. The model is simply redundant space.” Even so, with at least six more abandoned tunnels beneath London alone, GU’s subterranean farm may not be the only game of its type in town, or underneath it, for much longer.
How Family Investors Can Reap What They Sow In Vertical Farming With Vertical Future
Issues surrounding the increasing population of the world combined with water scarcity in a changing climate and the security of food and supply chains exposed by the coronavirus pandemic have all seeded minds on the possibilities of vertical farming
12 NOVEMBER, 2020 | BY JAMES BEECH
Vertical farming is being planted as the future of agriculture and the blossoming sector’s long-term growth could be a good fit for family investors and their patient capital.
Issues surrounding the increasing population of the world combined with water scarcity in a changing climate and the security of food and supply chains exposed by the coronavirus pandemic have all seeded minds on the possibilities of vertical farming.
CampdenFB asked Jamie Burrows, co-founder, and chief executive of Vertical Future, what the nascent sector really means for family investors looking to harvest returns, how his company is innovating in the field, and if families could host a vertical farm on their own property.
Why should families which are not directly involved in or have knowledge of crop health and food production consider investing in Vertical Future and vertical farming?
Families should consider investing in Vertical Future because without sustainable, scalable vertical farming—which is one of the solutions required to deal with the rising global food challenge—the future of our food, crop health, human health, and planetary health are all at risk.
Scientific literature, prominent scientists, and leading figures such as Sir David Attenborough, building on decades of research and lived experience, have shown the gravity and complexity of the issues that we face as a global, interconnected ecosystem.
Over the past 50 years, there has been a significant decrease in biodiversity, a significant increase in population growth, density, and physical expansion, an overall reduction in the quality of food, and an increase in the intensification of farming and use of pesticides. To contextualize this, one of every eight species of plants face extinction, one-third of soil faces degradation, and insect populations, which form a vital part of the food system, are seriously under threat. For these reasons and many others, food, next to water and sustainable forms of energy, must surely be the investment classes of today. Without these, the future is at risk.
Vertical Future is also, at its core, a family business, established by a husband and wife couple in 2016. My wife Marie-Alexandrine, as chief people officer, and I as chief executive, both came from careers in health and life sciences, with no prior knowledge of farming, let alone vertical farming. We believed in the importance of using technology to bring about health improvement and this is our main reason for establishing the company, which constantly strives to achieve this goal. Marie and I simply want a better and healthier future for our children, Gabrielle and Caspien, and a healthy planet for all.
What is vertical farming, how does it work and what does it achieve?
Vertical farming is the practice of growing crops indoors under controlled conditions in stacked layers or on vertical walls, typically using high-efficiency LED lighting and an either hydroponic or aeroponic method of irrigation, instead of soil.
Growing in this type of environment means that produce can be grown sustainably without the use of pesticides, herbicides, or fungicides. It also means that crops can be grown in an optimal manner, increasing output/yield, also relieving pressure on increasingly scarce farmland, encouraging rewilding, and an overall increase in biodiversity. Technological approaches continue to improve, meaning lower water utilization, less energy, and less waste. Moreover, automation, clever systems design, and robotics are allowing vertical farming systems to grow a broader variety of produce, aligning with customer demands.
What makes Vertical Future the market leader in vertical farming?
The global vertical farming market is beginning to receive a significant amount of interest and investment however, much of this is focused on older, first-generation technologies, and models that are not futureproof, and some will potentially fail. Like many other young and nascent markets, there is a tendency for investors to back brands that are perceived to be likely to grow the fastest instead of investing in sustainable technology solutions. Vertical farming, from Vertical Future’s standpoint, should be considered as a medium-to-long-term infrastructure investment. Much like building a hospital to care for the betterment of health and wellbeing, a vertical farm does much the same thing, growing healthy, local food that forms a vital part of the local circular economy.
Leveraging its years of running vertical farms in central London, where the Vertical Future team were at the time used other companies’ technologies, the company has developed a clear and concise understanding of what works, what needs improving, and what innovations are required to grow and succeed in the sector. The last 18 months have focused on building a holistic, integrated, fully-automated vertical farming system—integrating hardware and software—that is future proof, addressing all the issues that exist with other competitors’ systems.
Importantly, the Vertical Future team is built on experience, with more than 200 years of senior-level experience across the engineering and plant science teams alone. Several talented developers lead the company’s software efforts, with data forming an important part of the vertical farming opportunity. The leadership team is also supported by an experienced board, including the former head of the National Health Service, which is the second-largest health organization in the world, and the former chief marketing officer of Deliveroo.
Despite Covid, in the past six months alone the company has already begun to sell its systems through technology sale and software licensing and has generated more than £300 million ($397 million) of prospective pipeline opportunities, across four continents. This adds to ongoing support and recognition from the UK Department for International Trade, with the company winning numerous national and international competitions and being a part of the London Mayor’s International Business Programme.
Research and development (R&D), which is engrained throughout Vertical Future’s activities, shows a 75% success rate in grant funding applications and more than half a million pounds in revenue for the next 18 months alone. This includes collaborative projects ranging from seed sterilization through plasma treatment through to the growing of root extracts for the phytopharmaceutical industry, targeting the development of a novel respiratory drug.
The combination of Vertical Future’s technologies, growing experience, R&D program, experienced team, and pipeline put it in a market-leading position. Considering the importance of the underlying issues that vertical farming aims to address, Vertical Future believes that it is important that investors back sustainable models that are likely to succeed and grow the market.
Where are you vertical farming, is it scalable and where is the produce being supplied?
Vertical Future’s operations to date have been based out of a converted space in Deptford, located about 10 minutes from London Bridge station. The company grew its consumer-focused brand MiniCrops, which today supplies more than 110 restaurants across London and thousands of homes. This was an initial proof of concept, using other companies’ technologies before the company built out its technology proposition. The resulting proprietary technology solution is modular, scalable, affordable, and recognized for its differentiating factors in comparison to other vertical farming systems globally.
How will Vertical Future invest the capital it is looking for?
The focus is on scaling the company to realize the full potential of the vertical farming market. This starts with the build-out of the largest vertical farm in the world, located in London, building on Vertical Future’s client network and existing growing operations.
The second aspect of scale focuses on expanding Vertical Future’s physical footprint in key target geographies, including the development of manufacturing facilities to further improve margins and deployment of sales, technical, and marketing teams. The final element of the round focuses on the improvement of Vertical Future’s existing hardware and software technologies.
What kind of returns are expected for family investors?
The company’s sales model has been built for profitability, with a positive EBITDA [earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization] expected in 2022. The Vertical Future team expects there to be an opportunity for a Series B round in several years’ time, in advance of a potential exit, or partial exit, in 2024/25, likely through an Initial Public Offering (IPO) or trade sale. With the growing popularity of vertical farming and the evident need for sustainable food solutions, the company expects there to be ample interest from prospective buyers in a variety of sectors. A trade sale or partial exit would be expected to be at a price 3-5x (minimum) of the current round, with an IPO potentially offering substantially higher returns.
How can families incorporate vertical farming on their own real estate?
As this is a very new industry, Vertical Future is not aware of any examples of families incorporating vertical farming in their own real estate. However, there are clearly massive opportunities to do so.
Families that have access to or own retail-focused assets, manufacturing capabilities, or assets in strategically positioned areas can both benefit and add value to Vertical Future’s growth plans. For example, commercial real estate located in urban areas can provide opportunities for systems integration, effectively eradicating food miles and providing a constant, year-round supply of fresh produce to local buyers. Similarly, real estate located close to target geographies could be used to increase the rate of expansion, providing land for development of manufacturing sites, or if manufacturing facilities already exist, eradicate the need for new sites.
Where do you want to see Vertical Future’s vertical farming venture in five years?
Food, water, and sustainable energy are—in Vertical Future’s view—the main investment categories of the future. In five years, the Vertical Future team wants to be an internationally recognized brand with its technologies and sites spread across the world. Each site will be sustainable and purpose-driven, producing healthy, affordable food for local inhabitants and improving their quality of life, job opportunities, and level of education. Through their connection via smart data infrastructure, the sites will be on a path of continual improvement. For rural locations, energy independence, accomplished through integrated, off-grid solutions, will be a reality.
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About the Author
Editor
James Beech is the multimedia Editor of CampdenFB, with 21 years of international experience in daily newspapers, B2B and consumer magazines, online, social media, photographic and video journalism, in addition to editorial management, marketing, public relations and client relations, in the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand. He graduated from Bournemouth University in 1999.