Welcome to iGrow News, Your Source for the World of Indoor Vertical Farming
VIDEO: May 2020 - Indoor Science Cafe Recording is Now Available - How to Fund Your Indoor Farm
This presentation 'How to Fund Your Indoor Farm' was given by Nicola Kerslake (Contain Inc.) during our 19th cafe forum on May 26th, 2020. Indoor Ag Science Cafe is organized by the OptimIA project team funded by USDA SCRI grant program.
This presentation 'How to Fund Your Indoor Farm' was given by Nicola Kerslake (Contain Inc.) during our 19th cafe forum on May 26th, 2020. Indoor Ag Science Cafe is organized by the OptimIA project team funded by USDA SCRI grant program.
We Want To Grow Every Lettuce Variety Without Having To Think About The Light Recipe
The construction of the greenhouse for lettuce growers From Boer in the Dutch town of Dinteloord is in full swing, while this is happening they are already thinking about equipping the greenhouse with the latest technology
The construction of the greenhouse for lettuce growers From Boer in the Dutch town of Dinteloord is in full swing, while this is happening they are already thinking about equipping the greenhouse with the latest technology. For instance, regarding the perfect light needed during cultivation. To figure these things out, Rofianda Lighting Solutions and Form Boer had a meeting. The plans changed a hand full of times, but they have now devised a complete plan.
'Without' thinking
Rofianda and From Boer met in the spring of 2019. Due to modernization, the re-locating, and the current technological developments, the lettuce growers are looking into the questions regarding lighting. The researches’ most important goal is to find a way to cultivate every variety of lettuce without having to think about strict lighting recipes.
“To achieve this goal, Rofianda Lighting Solutions full-spectrum sunlight lighting is perfect”, says Arjan Boer. “You only need to decide on the lighting level, and the plant will take care of the rest.”
'Sunlight lamps’ versus red and blue LEDs
In a testing greenhouse, the results for lighting lettuce under sunlight lamps were compared to the results of those same varieties under red and blue LEDs. The results for lighting under Rofianda Lighting Solution lamps were very noticeable. “The overall growth is close to how it is in nature, and the root forming is much better than when using the LEDs.”
Micromol discussion
Because Arjan and Leonard want to equip their new greenhouse with the latest technology, cultivation will happen in a most modern way. Ronald Gronsveld, owner of Rofianda Lighting Solutions, and the brothers Boer have invested a considerable amount of time in creating just the right lighting plan for the automated cultivation department.
“These types of challenges form the cornerstone of our existence”, says Ronald. “We don’t just supply a few lamps, but think along with the growers when it comes to questions regarding design, installation, costs, lighting levels, the impact of lighting on the cultivation as a whole and payback period. More is not always better, especially in the current discussion regarding micromole. The quality of the light is much more important than the quantity”, in Ronald’s opinion.
The right choices
Arjan confirms that the plans have changed a few times and that they eventually reached a complete plan. “The contact was abundant, and we managed to make the right choices together”, says Arjan.
In the middle of March, the signatures were placed, and the entire cultivation will be equipped with lighting technology that was designed in the Netherlands.
For more information:
From Boer
www.fromboer.nl
Rofianda
info@rofianda.nl
www.rofianda.nl
By Horti Daily | May 4, 2020
Early History of Indoor Agriculture & Associated Technology Development
This month’s Indoor Ag Science Café was about the history and current technology status of indoor farming. The beginning seems to be in Syracuse, NY, where General Electric developed an indoor hydroponic farm funded by DoD in 1973
By urbanagnews
October 17, 2019
By Dr. Cary Mitchell (Purdue University)
This month’s Indoor Ag Science Café was about the history and current technology status of indoor farming. The beginning seems to be in Syracuse, NY, where General Electric developed an indoor hydroponic farm funded by DoD in 1973. Then there was a large commercial indoor farm for leafy greens in Dekalb, IL, owned by General Mills, which was closed in the 1990s. The longest survived may be the one in Japan (TS Farm by Kewpie Co.) where they use HID lamps and aeroponics since 1989. Most significant technological improvements are two ways – one in lighting and another in rack/shelving systems. Dr. Mitchell also introduced the contributions that NASA indoor farming studies made over the past 30+ years, as one of the contributors in the space.
Indoor Ag Science Café is supported by the USDA SCRI grant program and designed to create a precompetitive communication platform among scientists and indoor farming professionals. The Café presentations are available from YouTube channel. Contact Chieri Kubota at the Ohio State University (Kubota.10@osu.edu) to be a Café member to participate.
Center of Excellence For Indoor Agriculture Announces Launch of Networking and Marketplace Web Site
The goal of the Center is to accelerate growth and innovation in the industry through leadership, knowledge sharing, marketplace exchange, investment, programs and services, training, R&D, and advocacy.
Media, PA – Sept 24, 2019 – After leading a year-long study of two hundred indoor agriculture stakeholders that confirmed the need for a Center of Excellence, Eric W. Stein, Ph.D., co-founder and Executive Director is pleased to announce the launch of phase one of the Center of Excellence for Indoor Agriculture, which includes a membership-based networking platform and marketplace exchange web site that brings together 21st century farmers, entrepreneurs, technologists, suppliers, communities, universities, and government. The Center’s new features are available at indooragcenter.org
The goal of the Center is to accelerate growth and innovation in the industry through leadership, knowledge sharing, marketplace exchange, investment, programs and services, training, R&D, and advocacy. Phase two of its development includes raising capital and building a COE headquarters and technology demo facility in the greater Philadelphia area.
The Center of Excellence for Indoor Agriculture offers free Individual membership as well as paid Business and Institutional (e.g., university, non-profit, government) annual memberships based on size. Membership benefits include access to the following:
• Social Networking Platform
• Communities of Practice
• The COE Indoor Agriculture Supplier Marketplace
• Discounts on Products, Services, and Events
• Access to Partner Programs for Energy Savings and Job Search
• Access to an evolving library of Best Practices, Cases, Research, and Testing
• Promotion of Products and Brands
All indoor agriculture stakeholders are encouraged to join and discounts on memberships are available through the end of 2019.
“We are really excited to launch the new web site,” according to Eric W. Stein, Ph.D., co-founder and Executive Director of the Center of Excellence. “The site offers an opportunity to create a highly networked community for indoor agriculture that is available to the members throughout the year. We expect it will help investors find farms to invest in, help growers find the products and services they need, highlight key conferences and events, and develop a knowledge base of best practices, solutions, cases, and research. We invite all types of indoor growers to participate regardless of technology or product type; e.g., from greenhouses to plant factories and from leafy greens to mushrooms.”
According to Michael Guttman, co-founder and Director of Sustainable Development for Kennett Township, “The recent launch of the Indoor Agriculture Center of Excellence marks a turning point in the industry’s history. From now on there will be a comprehensive one-stop platform that provides news, education, social networking, and e-commerce for the whole industry - vertical farms, greenhouses, and mushroom farms, as well as facilities builders, equipment manufacturers, and a wide variety of service providers. The possibilities are endless.”
The Center of Excellence for Indoor Agriculture anticipates building its presence in the greater Philadelphia area, which affords proximity to the “Mushroom Capital” of the U.S. in Southern Chester County, PA as well as Philadelphia, Wilmington, Baltimore, Washington, DC and New York. The area boasts advanced cold storage, packaging and distribution, a green-tech workforce, proximity to universities and schools, access to large consumer markets, and availability of land, capital and intellectual capital.
About Indoor Agriculture
Indoor agriculture is a means of growing produce and leafy greens indoors under controlled environmental conditions employing advances in lighting, automation and information management. Nearly $500 million dollars of venture capital has gone into the industry in the past five years (e.g., Hortidaily, 12/4/2017; Forbes 4/5/19). Indoor Ag is predicted to be a multi-billion-dollar industry that alters the way food is grown.
About Eric W. Stein, Ph.D.
Dr. Eric W. Stein is an Associate Professor of Business at Penn State and CEO of Barisoft Consulting Group. Dr. Stein has a Ph.D. in Managerial Science from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and a BA in Physics from Amherst College. He has published numerous books, articles and academic papers in business. He has served as an advisor to municipalities including Kennett Township and the City of Philadelphia as well as advised businesses interested in setting up indoor farms. Dr. Stein has spoken at conferences including Indoor Ag-Con and FreshTech, and run workshops for the USDA on indoor farming. Dr. Stein designed and operates an indoor vertical farm (e3garden) to conduct applied research on the economics of indoor farms.
About Michael Guttman
Mr. Guttman is Director of Sustainable Development for Kennett Township (PA) and co-founder of the Center. He has been a visionary in the field of indoor agriculture by highlighting the contributions of mushroom farming to indoor agriculture. Mr. Guttman has spoken at several indoor farming conferences including FreshTech, Indoor Ag-Con, and Agtech NYC.
Media Contact Information:
Center of Excellence for Indoor Agriculture
info@indooragcenter.org
Anne H. Stein 484-416-5580
###
AmHydro’s Joe Swartz On The “Shiny Object” Problem Plaguing Indoor Ag
All photos courtesy of American Hydroponics and Joe Swartz. Joe Swartz, Vice President of Contain vendor American Hydroponics (AmHydro), is a fourth-generation farmer from Western Massachusetts. When it came time for him to take over, he went looking for a way to do things differently
All photos courtesy of American Hydroponics and Joe Swartz.
Joe Swartz, Vice President of Contain vendor American Hydroponics (AmHydro), is a fourth-generation farmer from Western Massachusetts. When it came time for him to take over, he went looking for a way to do things differently. His family had faced numerous challenges with conventional outdoor agriculture, from the state’s short, 120-day growing season, to an uncle who died prematurely due to pesticide exposure.
Joe decided the solution was indoor agriculture, and since 1984, he’s grown just about everything you can imagine with every possible setup. We caught up with Joe to talk about why it’s important to educate the public about indoor ag, and how media hype can distract from the fundamentals of good farming.
What’s AmHydro’s approach, and what makes it unique?
Ironically, AmHydro started about the same time I started to grow, unbeknownst to each other. We have always focused on the philosophy of making growers successful by employing the correct technologies in the appropriate situation, not trying to sell this system or that system, but looking at a given situation and assembling the correct technologies to effectively grow.
In fact, I think AmHydro has more successful growers around the world than any other hydroponics company. We have growers in 66 countries around the world, soon to be 67, and we’re really very, very pleased with that.
What are some of the most common challenges about getting started in indoor agriculture?
There are lots of different technology companies trying to get your attention. The biggest challenge I see right now is a lot of inappropriate technology that’s being promoted, especially in the media and online, because people think certain things look really interesting or cool. We call it “shiny object” technology. These are not effective technologies.
A lot of vertical farming technology, where you’re essentially trying to cram as many plants into a give area as you can, from a horticultural standpoint, that isn’t correct. Plants have very specific needs in terms of environmental management and space management, and a lot of these systems ignore the basic horticultural concepts that are required for successful production.
You’re saying you think all vertical farms and plant factories don’t work?
Not all plant factories, but unfortunately that model is by far—and I mean by a factor of thousands—by far the most challenging segment of controlled environment agriculture in terms of making an economic return.
If you look at the industry, look at where the expansion is in hydroponics. Companies like Gotham Greens and BrightFarms are expanding rapidly because they have a cost-effective production model. Tomato operations such as Houweling’s and NatureFresh and Sunset are all expanding rapidly. Again, they’re utilizing effective technology.
What’s been the main benefit of working with Contain?
We were actually one of the first companies that Contain worked with. They believed in our model, and we believed in the model they had, which was helping provide financing solutions so that more people could enter this industry. We thought it was a great model — people who understood controlled environment agriculture and were offering financing models. Good people and proper technology is a good combination.
We’ve had a few projects where there would have been difficulty in locating financing, and they went through Contain and were able to do it, so it was an effective model. We hope to do more of that in the future.
What advice do you wish you got when you started growing?
I think I would’ve pushed myself to focus on the basics of correct horticulture. That means to learn as much about the lifecycle of the plant, the lifecycle of insect and disease pests, to understand the different living ecosystems that go on in a facility like that. At the end of the day this is still farming. With a lot of the technological advances, people forget that.
Why are some banks and investors reluctant to get into indoor ag, and how can we change that as an industry?
It’s a very capital-intensive business. It is expensive to set up and to get started. That’s always been one of the big pain points of getting into the industry.
And I do think that investment and interest in technologies that are not productive damages the industry. In the 1980s, Weyerhaeuser and Pepperidge Farms and General Electric and all these huge corporations began building large greenhouses here on the East Coast, and utilizing the pond system, and talking about lettuce factories, and these are all automated systems, and by 1990 all of our food is going to be grown in these indoor food factories. They all failed spectacularly, and millions and millions of dollars in investment were lost, and it damaged the credibility of the industry. It’s taken a long time for the industry to recover. Unfortunately, we’re heading down the same path today.
AmHydro does a lot of public education. Why is that important?
We feel very strongly that education is the key to everything. Basically you are looking at a very intensive form of growth that requires knowledge in terms of growing and business management to be successful. The more we educate our growers, the more successful they are.
What’s the most exciting trend in indoor agriculture?
The most exciting trend is the level of public awareness about the business, both from a consumer buying hydroponically grown produce, to people who want to get involved in the industry. This is the highest level ever.
When I was in agricultural college in the ‘80s, I was in a classroom of young people with 30, 35 students. I come back now to the University of Massachusetts and I lecture to 300 students, so the level of involvement has skyrocketed, and that’s tremendous, and I couldn’t be more excited.
This conversation transcript has been lightly edited for length and clarity. Learn more about Contain and funding your indoor ag business at our website.
Tags: Agriculture Indoor Agriculture Startup Finance Contain
WRITTEN BYNicola Kerslake
We’re Contain Inc. We use data to improve access to capital for indoor growers, those farming in warehouses, containers & greenhouses. https://www.contain.ag/
Not All LEDs Are Equal: How Greener Roots Farm Is Growing Faster With Horticulture Lighting From Current
From a small window sill to an empty storage closet, to a rooftop utility room and, finally, to a spacious warehouse and greenhouse, Founder and President Jeffrey Orkin has been growing Greener Roots Farm one harvest at a time since 2012
Meet the light bars behind “the best damn lettuce you’ve ever tried.”
From a small window sill to an empty storage closet, to a rooftop utility room and, finally, to a spacious warehouse and greenhouse, Founder and President Jeffrey Orkin has been growing Greener Roots Farm one harvest at a time since 2012. As the first commercial-scale hydroponic vertical farm in Nashville, Tennessee, Greener Roots supplies herbs and leafy greens to local establishments year-round, including fresh lettuce and flavorful pea shoots, sunflower sprouts, sorrel and more that are picked and delivered within two days, never traveling more than 50 miles.
For Orkin, consistency is the key to Greener Roots’ steady success, measured in predictable crop yields and high-quality, nutrient-dense produce with no seasonal fluctuations. It’s what keeps local grocery stores and restaurant owners racing back to fill new orders, and it’s why Orkin relies heavily on LED lighting to help his business thrive. However, when a big investment in a new system started to go bad, Current, powered by GE, stepped in with a brighter solution.
Rising Above the Rest
Greener Roots cultivates over 14 tons of produce a year, with most of the greens being raised in racked hydroponic beds stacked high to the ceiling. Between its warehouse and greenhouse, the indoor operation totals nearly 7,000 square feet of grow space, requiring more than 300 LED light bars to provide optimal illumination for plant health. According to Orkin, it’s all part of producing “the best damn lettuce you’ve ever tried.”
“Some chefs are adamant about soil, but we’re showing them you can grow very flavorful things without soil, and having extremely high and uniform light levels is critical to that,” he says.
Greener Roots was growing fast, and new and better lighting technology was hitting the market. With help from Hort Americas, a leading commercial greenhouse and hydroponics supplier, he started to test an array of new LED options including horticulture lighting from Current. Immediately, Orkin gravitated to Current’s Arize™ LED growing system for its ease of installation, long life and proven results in improving production yields.
“The new lights from Current are very reliable and are producing faster growth, and now we can get red leaf varieties to turn red, where we couldn’t do that before,” Orkin said.
“The new lights from Current are very reliable and are producing faster growth, and now we can get red leaf varieties to turn red, where we couldn’t do that before.”
– Jeffrey Orkin, Founder and President, Greener Roots Farm)
“The Arize system also puts off less heat, so we can add more layers to our vertical beds if we choose. And what’s convenient is how you can daisy-chain the product end-to-end to make installation much simpler, which we really liked, having done all the work ourselves.”
Growing the Future
By isolating and combining different light wavelengths to replicate and accelerate natural photosynthesis, Arize LEDs can shorten growth cycles and enable different growth patterns, allowing urban farmers to tailor the light to the specific needs of every crop. Including LED tubes, light bars, suspended fixtures and lamps, the full Arize product family features everything needed for indoor vertical and greenhouse farming.
“Overall, we’re getting more biomass from every harvest,” says Orkin. “It’s all about ensuring the correct light intensity throughout the day, and how many photons we’re ‘feeding’ to the plants essentially. Current’s LEDs help us create the ideal condition for each crop.”
“Overall, we’re getting more biomass from every harvest.”
Orkin notes that Greener Roots is now pulling over 2,500 heads of lettuce a week from its greenhouse as more local customers discover the soil-free urban farm flourishing in their city. In fact, the new greenhouse―located on the outskirts of Nashville in nearby Franklin, Tennessee―is part of a large agritourism destination dubbed Southall Farms. This farm-to-table rural retreat will feature an inn, guest cottages, an event center and an agricultural barn, adding up to over 160,000 square feet of relaxed destination space where people will be able to savor experiences that celebrate culture, community and craft.
“There’s been an undercurrent for urban farming for some time, whether that’s someone raising a garden at home or a small farm making more fresh food options available to people,” Orkin says.
Rooted in Results
Orkin still drives the delivery truck that drops off freshly picked foods to his customers each day because to this entrepreneur, relationships are the seeds of success. It’s an approach that has taken the landscape-architect-turned-urban-farmer from a single planter in a kitchen window to a sprawling production system that ensures sustainable produce is always in stock.
“Having Current and Hort Americas there to support us, to answer our questions and try new things, it’s been huge,” says Orkin. “We’re trying to have the biggest impact on the local food scene we can, and that takes partners who understand the importance of durable and reliable technologies, such as LED.”
Learn more about how Current, with its deep expertise in LED technology, is helping indoor farmers reach new heights.
Are you ready to talk about
the right growth spectrum for your business?
START THE CONVERSATION
Want Chemical-Free Vegetables? Vertical Farming Might Be The Answer
These vertical farming towers developed by the Telangana State Centre of Excellence may be the answer to the increasing demand for chemical-free leafy green vegetables
JULY 01, 2019
The Telangana State Centre of Excellence (TSCoE) in Jeedimetla feels like an oasis, in contrast to the barren highway that leads to the area and the humble residential colony in its vicinity. The 10.35-acre facility managed by the department of horticulture is a hub of experiments for cultivation of vegetables and flowers.
In one of the poly houses covered by a UV-stabilising film, more than 800 PVC pipes have been converted into vertical farming towers. Each of these pipes have been filled with a mix of coco peat, red soil, neem cake, vermicompost and micronutrients that help plant growth. Each pipe has more than 20 slots from which small branch-like extensions emanate, it is in these that green leafy vegetables are grown.
The CoE designed and tested such prototypes in December 2018, approved by the department of horticulture authorities and a technical committee of agriculture experts; it has so far grown coriander, amaranthus, bacchali (Malabar spinach) and palak (spinach). At the moment, the 800-plus towers grow spinach, some of them ready to harvest.
A retail counter near the entrance of the premises sells fresh greens and vegetables grown at the centre and it’s a big hit with the neighbourhood. Palak is sold at ₹40 per kg, double the price of wholesale market, but there are many takers since these greens are free of chemical pesticides. There have been days when the centre sold 400 to 600 bunches of leafy greens.
Around the world
Singapore: The vertical urban farm called Sky Greens, located in Lim Chu Kang, harvests 500kg of green leafy produce every day. According to a Straits Times report, the yield in this farm is 10 times that of traditional farms, as it uses tiered metal towers up to nine metres tall. The rotation of these towers in glass buildings allows all the plants to get uniform sunlight.
San Francisco: Tigris, a hydroponic vertical farm in San Francisco, is a futuristic project focusing on growing leafy greens. The new farm reportedly can grow one million plants at a given time.
While vertical ornamental gardens add aesthetics to premises, vertical farming is more utilitarian. CoE intends to encourage residential colonies in urban areas and farmers at the district and zilla parishad levels to grow more greens using vertical farming.
The CoE feels that having several small crop colonies in urban pockets and rural areas might help meet some of the growing demand for vegetables in the state. Leafy greens, tomatoes, brinjals, chillies and okra, for instance, can be cultivated in balconies and terrace gardens to meet individual home needs.
In addition, enterprising farmers in both urban and rural areas can do vertical farming to grow greens that meet the needs of their neighbourhoods, believes the CoE. “Green vegetables are the need of the hour. They perish easily and don’t withstand long-distance transport. A lot of greens available in the market are also laced with chemical pesticides. There’s an increasing awareness today about safe food. Growing your own greens will ensure safe food and reduce food miles,” says K Latha, assistant director of horticulture, CoE.
Traditional farmers can use vertical farming towers to step up the yield. “In flat-surface farms, it’s tough to harvest green leaves during monsoon. Leafy vegetables can be harvested every 25 to 30 days, so ideally you can aim for 12 harvests a year. In flat cultivation farmers only manage eight or nine harvests. Using these towers and a poly film roof, greens can be grown all round the year,” she says.
K Latha, additional director of horticulture, COE, with agriculture engineering students at the vertical farming polyhouse | Photo Credit: K V S Giri
The coco peat and nutrient mixture in these towers can be replenished after three or four harvests to get quality produce. To counter weeding, the CoE uses a weeding mat on the ground. Small outflow pipes from each of the towers drain excess water.
To make vertical farming economical, the CoE uses non-ISI mark PVC pipes that cost ₹400 to 500 each, as opposed to ISI-certified ones that cost around ₹5000. However, the non-ISI pipes stand the risk of damage when exposed to prolonged heat. The UV-stabilising poly film roof counters this problem.
Latha points out that there are several smart vertical farming methods worldwide, including those that use hydroponics and aeroponics. “There are various designs of vertical farming towers too, across the world. The indigenous technology we developed is one of the methods,” she says, signing off.
Planet Healers celebrates eco-conscious initiatives. If you know an eco warrrior, write in to hydmetroplus@thehindu.co.in
Best New Field Technology And Best New Indoor Growing Technology
Innovation Award finalists - Part 2
United Fresh announced 48 new products as finalists for the United Fresh Produce Association’s 2019 Innovation Awards. This year’s finalists will compete in seven categories for the title of Best New Product at United Fresh 2019, June 10-12 in Chicago, where attendees will be able to vote for those winners during the trade show.
Earlier, FreshPlaza presented the finalists for Best New Fruit product and Best New Vegetable product, and today we look at the finalists for Best New Field Technology and Best New Indoor Growing Technology.
Best New Field Technology
Automated Storage and Retrieval System (ASRS)
Stemilt Growers, LLC – Booth # 6015
"Stemilt’s new distribution center welcomes a piece of technology they call the “brains” of the operation: the automated storage and retrieval system (ASRS). ASRS is the one-stop-shop for order fulfillment to make the process flawless and speedy, resulting in an experience that is delightful from farm to table."
Produce Plan
Frontera Produce – Booth # 13046
"This technology enhances your supply chain data visualization, actively updates production plans, and protects your crop investment through cultural practice performance monitoring. Soil moisture, heat units and estimated harvest dates per field and lot are just a few examples of how this technology can change traditional farming."
RipeTime
RipeTime – Booth # 18045
"RipeTime has developed world-first patented technology that measures and reports in real-time of ethylene in post-harvest operations from 1PPB. This monitoring and alerting allows post-harvest operators to make decisions to assure the quality of their fruit and assist with prioritizing the load-out operations."
SC iOn™ Trak SC1204
CalAmp – Booth # 18025
"The SC iOn Trak™ SC1204 eliminates the manual processes of automatically logging location and environmental condition data using a wireless gateway (fixed or mobile) that can communicate with several Bluetooth tags for transport and storage applications. The solution is reusable, which helps to increase the technology investment ROI."
Best New Indoor Growing Technology
Hoogendoorn Analytics
Hoogendoorn America Inc. – Booth # 18045
"Our online platform for data storage and data analysis. Convert real-time data into valuable information that can give you the possibility of producing more and better. We use this information to track the growth of the plants and look for the best combination to achieve high yield production."
LivingCube™
Del Fresco Produce Ltd. – Booth # 12027
"The LivingCube™ is a system of automated vertical growing machines that continuously produces living lettuce, living basil and microgreens all year long. It's powered using an off-the-grid electrical cogeneration system, which is environmentally sustainable due to its minimal footprint, reduction in greenhouse gases, usage of recycled water and pesticide-free integration."
Virgo
Root AI – Booth # 9028
"Root AI is building autonomous systems that care for specialty crops. Our first product, Virgo, uses the latest advancements in robotic hardware and artificial intelligence software to delicately harvest tomatoes with precision, efficiency, and dependability."
The 2019 United Fresh Innovation Awards finalists will be displayed on the trade show floor at United Fresh 2019 in Chicago, where attendees will have the opportunity to cast their votes for their favorite new and innovative products on Tuesday, June 11 and Wednesday, June 12. United Fresh will announce winners from the Main Stage on Wednesday, June 12 at 2:00 pm at Chicago’s McCormick Place Convention Center.
For more information:
Mary Coppola
United Fresh Produce Association
Ph: +1 (202) 303-3425
mcoppola@unitedfresh.org
www.unitedfresh.org
Publication date: 5/14/2019
Photos: The Beauty of High-Tech Horticulture
The Danish magazine Foresight Climate & Energy has something nice to show you. They dove into the Dutch efforts to reduce carbon footprint of their tomatoes and tulips.
"As the world pushes to decarbonise energy systems and the Netherlands aims to end its 50-year-old love affair with gas, greenhouse companies and the municipality of Westland are looking for cleaner heating solutions, such as geothermal heat and heat pumps, to reduce the carbon footprint of their tomatoes and tulips", they write
The attention for the efforts of the horticultural industry to better the world are nice - but there's more.
Take a look at the beauty of horticulture in these photos.
Publication date: 5/9/2019
Author: Arlette Sijmonsma
© HortiDaily.com
Relationships And Trust Help Hort Americas Mark 10 Years In Controlled Environment Agriculture
Horticultural distributor Hort Americas is celebrating its 10th anniversary of working with controlled environment growers. General manager Chris Higgins said it has been 10 years of forming trusting relationships with the growers and vendor suppliers that Hort Americas works with
Hort Americas 10 years of providing controlled environment growers with timely technical information and innovative products to solve their problems.
Horticultural distributor Hort Americas is celebrating its 10th anniversary of working with controlled environment growers. General manager Chris Higgins said it has been 10 years of forming trusting relationships with the growers and vendor suppliers that Hort Americas works with.
“Hort Americas doesn’t make a single product,” Higgins said. “What Hort Americas does do is we use our technical expertise to assist in the development of new products used to solve growers’ problems. This process takes a lot of trust. Our customers have to trust us about sharing their information. Some of that information could be proprietary. It could be information about their business that they need to be comfortable sharing. It could be information that allows us to look into the future and identify problems growers see coming up. By partnering with our grower customers and vendor suppliers, Hort Americas has been able to develop the technology, products and services that help controlled environment growers.”
At the same time that growers have to be able to trust Hort Americas, Higgins said a similar relationship has to exist between Hort Americas and its suppliers.
“Whether it’s working with our suppliers to develop new substrates or lighting fixtures, Hort Americas often has to share sensitive information. We need to have trust that sensitive information is going to turn into products that are going to be equitable in terms of helping everyone along the supply channel grow their businesses profitably.
“There is a lot of trust involved and that trust can’t be built off of non-disclosure agreements. That trust needs to be built off of years of experiences, cooperation and deliverables. If someone can’t deliver what they say they are going to deliver when they say they are going to deliver it, then trust is going to be lost. And the desire to want to cooperate is going to be lost too.”
Forming trusting business relationships
Higgins said forming a trusting business relationship should not have anything to do with the size of the company whether it’s a grower or supplier.
“Many businesses find themselves on a one-way street,” he said. “Many business people today only care about the value they create for their own business. And while it has probably always been this way, it feels this is more the case today than ever before.
“Trust takes years to build, seconds to break, and forever to repair.” – Author unknown
“This can happen with suppliers that haven’t set up a true supply channel management strategy. Distribution partnerships may seem needed, but are truly not necessary. Therefore some suppliers don’t really care about the health or well-being of their partners or partnerships. They just want to get as much of their product out the door as possible. Fortunately for Hort Americas we have been able to find those suppliers that are exceptions to the rule. Hort Americas must then remember that it is on a two-way street. We must create a situation that is not only good for our grower customers, but are vendor partners as well.”
Chris Higgins, general manager at Hort Americas, with Daniel Lee, sales development manager at Current, powered by GE.
Partnerships in the Information Age
Higgins said today’s Information Age also creates challenges for companies trying to form strong partnerships.
“In this Information Age companies don’t necessarily see the value of networking,” he said. “They don’t see the value of how long it takes to build trust along the supply channel.
“Hort Americas goes out on a limb every time it takes on a new business relationship whether it’s with a grower or supplier. Every time we begin to build a new partnership we have to expect we may never receive the invested money or time back. There’s two to three years of never knowing whether all of the resources we have invested are going to take on any sort of return.”
Higgins said there is an inherent amount of risk that one takes when forming business relationships.
“Sometimes companies build these relationships and they go very well for five to six years,” he said. “Then one person at the top changes the management strategy of an entire company and everything implodes. This could be a change in personnel. This could be a stress fracture created by the need to find increased profitability. There could be a change in market dynamics such as competition, demand or price. Based on this list of changing conditions, companies need to be able to find the ability to trust each other.
“Partnerships are based on trust and that takes time. Hort Americas and GE have been working together for 5 years and we could not be happier with what we have been able to accomplish together.” —Dan Lee, Current, powered by GE
“Just like in a marriage, if something drastic happens, the marriage can end in divorce. Being able to maintain that relationship has to do with the ability to change and adapt. The way you treat somebody, the professionalism and the ability to be empathetic to the position that a customer might be in, those are going to speak volumes in terms of one’s ability to create strong business relationships.”
From bicycles to horticulture
William Fry, who is Hort Americas longest serving employee, started as the customer service manager in 2012.
“I came from the world of bicycles, Fry said. “Bicycles were a passion of mine, including riding bikes all the time. That led me to the business side of bicycles. I owned a bicycle shop and worked with a bicycle parts distribution company. That experience translated well into horticultural distribution when I came to Hort Americas. It doesn’t really matter what the commodity is that you are trying to get from one side of the world to the other, it’s very similar.
“Coming to Hort Americas I had no knowledge of greenhouse technology–what went where, what was needed for each crop, etc. But since I had learned about thousands of bicycle parts, I figured I could learn anything I needed to know about what goes inside a greenhouse.”
Fry, who is now Hort Americas operations manager, said the reasons he has stayed with the company is it’s a fun place to work and he really enjoys working in the horticulture industry.
“Hort Americas and the industry constantly challenge me, both by the technology that is coming out and how they are ever evolving,” he said. “I have to constantly educate myself from a product standpoint.
“From a logistics standpoint, our products are shipped from all over the world. The challenge is to bring them in in a logical way. I’m constantly trying to beat myself as to how I can do things more efficiently and bring costs down for us and for our customers.”
Trying to grow its customers’ business
Fry said one of the major reasons that growers enjoy working with Hort Americas is the company is constantly trying to bring new technology to market.
“We’re trying to bring proven technology to market,” he said. “We aren’t just going to have an idea that a product might work and then offer it to growers. We are going to test it in a research greenhouse first. We are going to send it to growers who we have great relationships with for them to trial. And we are going to work with universities to prove that these products will serve a purpose in this market and work before we bring them to market. That has been fun and interesting.”
Hort Americas general manager Chris Higgins (center) with the Hort Americas team look to provide their grower customers with the expertise they have acquired on controlled environment production.
Another benefit that Hort Americas offers its grower customers is its efforts to be very economical.
“We try to buy at the best price, sell at the best price and ship at the best price,” Fry said. “We are constantly working to provide excellent customer service and to save people money. We are trying to help our customers grow their business so that our business can grow. We try to be a cheerleader for our customers. I have always tried to value every single sale that we have made and try to make our customers that much better so that as they grow we grow.
“Developing our own network of logistics partners has given Hort Americas the ability to cherry-pick the best combination of price vs. speed depending on the situation. With this network we feel confident that we can respond to whatever needs our customers have, whether it is saving money on shipping or delivering an emergency order to them ASAP. We can lean not only on our logistics network, but also on our network of vendors who have much larger buying power.
Looking for supportive suppliers
Fry said good vendor/suppliers provide a consistent, high quality product in a timely manner with logistical excellence.
“Good vendors back us with sales and marketing materials and trial materials for our customers who want to try a product to prove it will work for them,” he said. “They also have a good customer service team on their end as well.
“I’m looking for vendors who treat us as a customer and as a partner, not as a middleman. The same thing that I expect Hort Americas to deliver to our customers, I expect from our vendors. Offer good products, deliver them to us in the best manner possible and help us market and promote them. Be there as a partner and work with us as a team to accomplish a goal. The training that has been by provided by GE lighting engineers along with the hands-on installation of new GE fixtures and factory tours with Grodan representatives to understand the rockwool production process have been invaluable.”
Kyle Barnett (left), regional sales manager at Hort Americas, talks with Bruno D’Amico, design and product manager at GE, about the lighting company’s newest LED fixtures.
Fry said Hort Americas tries to pull from its staff’s experiences when developing new products and working with its vendors to develop these products.
“Sometimes we find a product and it really works well,” he said. “Sometimes we decide the market just isn’t big enough for a product. Or a product may not work in trials as well as we thought it would and we scrub it before ever bringing it to market. We are always looking for those products that make us special to our grower customers. We have also been much more responsive in how we bring on new products in order to lower costs for our customers and for Hort Americas.
“The other half of this product development is training our staff to work with the products. Our staff has a lot of hands-on experience with the products. Depending on the supplier, they may not have the employees who understand the niche industry that we’re in. That is where Hort Americas comes in with staff members who are experts in controlled environment agriculture.”
This article is property of Hort Americas and was written by David Kuack, a freelance technical writer in Fort Worth, TX.
For Indoor Ag Startup Freight Farms, Competing With The Mass Market Produce Industry Was Never The Plan
Indoor agriculture, a generalized term used to refer to farms inside structures such as greenhouses, container farms, and multi-level warehouse operations housing thousands of rows of plant space, has been touted as a way to meet the demand for local food, help consumers learn more about food production, and provide a fresher source of produce with fewer food miles.
But some are skeptical about the scalability of an inherently localized industry and whether it will ever truly compete with traditional mass market produce, especially when it comes to container farming where production is housed in an old shipping container.
“The confines of the retrofit shipping container make it inherently inefficient compared to other forms of CEA (controlled environment agriculture) and therefore the audience for container grown produce will be a highly niche one over the long term,” agriculture consultant Peter Tasgal recently wrote in the AgFunderNews guest post What is the Future of Container Farming?
Tasgal also noted that there are significant costs involved with container farming, including retrofitting the box, labor, and the cost of power for the LED lights. He concludes that container farming is at least four times as expensive per pound to produce leafy greens in a container compared to traditional farming methods.
“There is technological innovation that will improve the efficiency of container farming, but I don’t see anything on the horizon that will allow container-grown produce to compete with the quick turning leafy greens sold at your local grocery store or those sold by wholesale distributors,” Tasgal wrote.
Did you know that AgFunder is one of the most active agrifood tech investors?
We are democratizing access to venture capital. Learn how you can invest with us.
Funding for novel farming systems like indoor agriculture and insect farming dropped between 2018 and 2017 according to AgFunder’s AgriFood Tech Funding Report 2018, which you can download here, raising $596 million. There were 17% fewer deals and only two of those deals were over $100 million after US vertical farming operation Plenty closed a record-breaking $200 million round in 2017.
Different Routes to Market
Indoor ag companies’ route-to-market approaches differ just as much as their approaches to cultivating produce under a roof. Some companies like BrightFarms and Bowery, for example, are offering packaged salads to local retailers to compete with traditional supermarket produce offerings.
But for Boston-based Freight Farms, however, competing with grocery store produce was never the plan.
Founded by Brad McNamara and Jonathan Friedman, Freight Farms has been a longstanding player in the container farming space, raising over $12 million in venture capital funding to-date, including backing from accelerator group Techstars, Right Side Capital Management, Spark Capital, Morningside Group, and The Startup Playbook author Will Herman.
As many startups often say, the idea is to disrupt existing markets, not necessarily to conquer them. For a startup that spends most of its time thinking about how to grow food inside a box, its technology is based on thinking outside of the traditional produce cultivation box.
“They compare container farming to the iceberg lettuce industry. We are not interested in that market,” Friedman told AgFunderNews. “We are interested in a distributed food system and some of the incredible changes that are happening throughout the whole food system like ugly produce, food waste, yield maximization. The entire system is in flux and that’s exciting.”
Introducing Greenery, the Leafy Green Machine 2.0
Freight Farms offers a ready-made shipping container called the Leafy Green Machine (LGM) that can be placed in a wide variety of locations including dense metropolitan areas. It just launched its newest product, Greenery, which is the first deviation from the LGM model.
Within the same 320-square-foot space as the LGM, Greenery boasts 70% more growing space and new IoT technology driven at improving yield, efficiency, and automation. With its real-time transparency feature, a single head of romaine can be traced back through every growing stage to the exact hour its seed was planted. It also features recipes that allow farmers to replicate ideal environmental conditions for specific crops like non-native produce. It supports a variety of crops beyond greens, as well, including tomatoes and root vegetables.
The University of Georgia has already purchased two Greenery containers. An independent farmer operating WhyNot Farms, which supplies pasture-raised meat to chefs in North Carolina and Tennessee, also made a purchase.
Although the duo has been pleased with the LGM’s success, Greenery was developed in response to their clientele’s feedback and ever-changing needs. Freight Farms has diverse users throughout the world, including schools, hospitals, NGOs, corporations, and private owners who develop niche businesses offering locally grown produce to restaurants and chefs in the area.
“The joys of standardizing something is that you get a lot of feedback. We have a network of 200 farmers around the world including Guam, Puerto Rico, Europe, and UAE. When we talk about greenhouse farming or traditional farming, no one farms the same way so it’s hard to collect these metrics,” Friedman says. “We looked at workflow considerations and where operators were spending the most time such as fixing things or having to remove a column to replace a part.”
“We benefited from having hundreds of customers in all these varied segments but at the end of the day, there is overlap among what they want, like more yield, fewer operating costs, flexibility, and customization. Our core, bread-and-butter customers are small business entrepreneurs,” McNamara told AgFunderNews. “And because we had experience developing four generations of the LGM, we were able to move faster and to save development dollars because we had real experience. Something John and I talk about all the time is human centric design. When it came to Greenery’s design process, it was equal parts human and plant-centric.”
Tech Developments
Some of the biggest differences between the LGM and Greenery have to do with workflow and appearance. Greenery has mobile LED light boards and grows rows that are both adjustable. This allows farmers to grow a larger variety of crops and makes it easier to maneuver through the grow rows.
“After the fourth evolution of the LGM, there was a significant design jump to increase yield, bring in new tech, and to hit the metrics that all of our customers want, which are things like increased yield and improved workflow,” Friedman adds. “One of the bigger things we ran into is that we felt like we had exhausted as much of the off-shelf tech as we could. We realized we had to go back to the beginning and build from the ground up.”
As a testament to its outside-the-box ethos, NASA selected Freight Farms for a Small Business Technology Transfer grant to fund work with Clemson University exploring how to grow food in extreme climates. NASA is hoping that Freight Farms can help create an off-grid crop production unit that would help facilitate deep space exploration.
It’s a Dynamic Time for Agriculture
As far as the future of container farming, McNamara and Friedman want to remind people that the industries are not static entities, especially when they are so heavily focused on technological innovation.
“What frustrates us is that articles are written as if everything is in a static state. We are in a dynamic time for indoor agriculture. If you could have told us back in 2010 how things would be today, it would have been beyond our wildest dreams,” McNamara says.
“With LGM and Greenery, we offer a new way of growing to build a distributed food system, which is exciting to us. You can lower the bar to entry for agriculture with this technology, making it possible for people who want to get into this professionally but who don’t want to build a warehouse or who don’t have a background in ag,” says Friedman. “If they want to grow their own brand or have a private label deal for a restaurant, we want to give them the tools to achieve that and to bring the other half of the world into farming and agriculture.”