This Vertical Farming Startup Is Valued At $27.5 Million

This Vertical Farming Startup Is Valued At $27.5 Million

By Daniel Lipson  2017

What's vertical farming? In Bowery Farming's first indoor farm, located in a warehouse in New Jersey, proprietary computer software, LEDs, and robotics are able to grow leafy greens without any pesticides, using 95% less water than traditional farms. CEO Irving Fain describes his company as a tech company "thinking about the future of food."

Their indoor farms can be located near city centers and will be able to cut transportation costs and help curb the environmental impact of the industry. By being located indoors, they're unbeholden by weather and can produce 100 times more greens than a traditional outdoor farm of the same size. Fain sees it as a way to answer global population growth, shrinking farmlands, and an influx of people towards urban areas. The farms are enabled by recent technological advances in data analytics and lighting and are poised to scale up in the coming years.

YASUYOSHI CHIBA/AFP/Getty Images

Fain started his career as an investment banker at Citigroup, ran marketing at iHeartMedia, and co-founded loyalty marketing software firm CrowdTwist before venturing into food. They raised first round funds of over $20 million from a list of investors that includes Blue Apron CEO Matt Salzberg and celebrity chef Tom Colicchio as well as GV (formerly Google Ventures). The company has experimented with over 100 different crops and sells six varieties of leafy greens to Whole Foods and Foragers. They plan to use the extra cash to hire more workers and move towards other types of produce. For the long term, they are eyeing China and other emerging markets where food security is an important topic.

Bowery isn't the only one trying to do vertical farming. Competitors AeroFarms and Plenty United are also farming indoors with the capacity to produce millions of greens, and AeroFarms has already raised $100 million, while Plenty United has billionaire backing from Jeff Bezos and Eric Schmidt. The technology enables vertical farmers to convert old warehouses and factories into agricultural centers. All of them benefit from advances in LED lighting that can mimic natural sunlight, as well as lower costs for industrial-scale lighting setups

A Young Startup Looking To Change Sustainable Food Production At The Hyper Local Level

August 21, 2017

A Young Startup Looking To Change Sustainable Food Production At The Hyper Local Level

Without a doubt, one of the most pressing issues in the modern world is that of feeding a rapidly expanding global population. Estimates from a UN DESA report in 2015 indicate that the estimated global population by 2050 will rise to over 9.7 billion people, and that over 66% of those people will be living in urban centers. With such staggeringly high numbers of people in urban areas, providing a food production solution that can rise to the challenge of feeding billions every day (while keeping a low enough carbon & land area footprint) and be environmentally and economically viable is one of the most important problems we must solve to prepare for this inevitable future.

Aeroasis, a young & growing AgTech startup based in South Florida hopes to tackle this problem using a hyper local, decentralized approach. Using innovative hydroponic & aeroponic technologies, combined with the most efficient renewable energy harvesting systems available today, Aeroasis aims to impact the food production/distribution industry in preparation for a more crowded world.

Aeroasis has a deep focus on educational work, providing schools & school districts with the resources to start and maintain their own indoor farms, and giving students a thorough understanding of the problems surrounding food production and distribution today. As the next generation of global citizens grows up, these technologies will continue to get exponentially more cost effective, and the young adults that are properly educated will be prepared to enter a world where they can consciously choose to consume and endorse hydroponically grown produce. Beyond just consumption, the use of automation technologies and deep analytics through sensor feedback will allow consumers and urban dwellers to go beyond just consumption, growing much of their produce in-home.

Aeroasis has been developing Oasis Mini, an automated micro Smart Garden, for the last two years in an effort to prove the viability of this concept. Oasis Mini is a 3 chamber automated Smart Gardening system that takes up less space than a fridge, but can produce up to 26 harvests a year in the case of leafy greens like lettuce and cilantro. Small systems like this are great for any urban householder with a green thumb but no space for a garden, and even for consumers with no gardening experience or free time looking to grow a small garden without all the work and mess. Oasis Mini is small, but its ability to grow food at the highest quality using 90% less water, 60% less nutrients, and no pesticides ever is a powerful showcase of the potential for these technologies to be scaled up in the very near future. Removing the concept ofseasonal crops also makes food availability universal, and allows the individual consumer to make conscious and unlimited choices about their nutrition. There is a long list of benefits to growing hyper local, but here are just a few big ones:

-    No transportation and packaging means up to 80% less food waste. In the US alone, billions of tons of food are wasted every year, and the majority of that waste happens at the harvest, processing, packaging, and retail levels. Making hyper local systems ensures minimal processing and transportation, significantly reducing waste.

-    Using indoor controlled systems means pests are much less of an issue. Pesticide use has been linked to several forms of disease in humans, and eliminating the need for potentially dangerous chemical inputs in the growth process increases the quality and safety of the end product.

-    Having communities observe and be a part of the growth process of their food increases awareness and respect for the food grown and results in less consumer side waste. Having community scale Smart Farms incentivizes community outreach and integration and increases the sense of shared responsibility in local groups. This can have an incredibly positive effect on people’s ability to connect and interact peacefully.

-    Any excess in harvests can either be given to those in need, or can be sold at a market premium due to its freshness and high quality.

Aeroasis is working hard at building this vision. Their team sees a time in the very near future when either all homes, or at least all communities, will come equipped with a larger scale Smart Farm system that allows them to grow much or all of their produce in-home or at a community center style farming co-op. The core mission at Aeroasis is to facilitate/develop projects like this in an effort to help feed the world while reducing the enormous footprint agriculture leaves on the planet. Aeroasis also does consulting and design work related to projects in community centers, retail spaces, and even individual homes. They provide a range of services from design, fabrication, installation, and maintenance of Smart Gardening systems to doing public speaking and awareness work at conferences, workshops, and other sustainability events.

The Aeroasis CEO, Thomas Wollenberger, just taught a 2 week workshop on sustainable food production in partnership with UNESCO affiliated clubs in the Washington DC area, and is working with several schools and school districts in Florida to bring hydroponics to classrooms. Aeroasis continues to develop initiatives and workshops around the world with strategic partners.

For more information on Aeroasis, what they do, who they are, and how to contact them, you can visit www.aeroasis.com.

Indoor Farms of America Receives Investment From Major U.S. Ag Firm Co-Alliance

Indoor Farms of America Receives Investment From Major U.S. Ag Firm Co-Alliance

21-08-2017

LAS VEGAS, Aug. 21, 2017 : Indoor Farms of America, LLC is pleased to announce that it has completed the final phase of its initial relationship with Co-Alliance, LLP, one of the nation's oldest, largest and most diverse traditional agriculture companies. This final phase comes in the form of an equity investment in Indoor Farms of America. Terms of the transaction are private.

"When we had our first visit from the folks at Co-Alliance late last year, we expressed our commitment to having traditional agriculture in the U.S. embrace this technology in a manner that would benefit them, and we discussed in detail just how that would take shape," explained David Martin, CEO of Indoor Farms of America.

"Becoming a part owner of Indoor Farms of America represents our belief in its products and people," said Co-Alliance CEO, Kevin Still. "We see the potential of integrating this world class indoor agriculture equipment into traditional farming operations as a way to diversify family farms, add a year-round income stream, and bring the next generation back to the farm."

The new investment comes just weeks after Co-Alliance purchased two "warehouse" style farms, marking an important milestone for the CEA company. "We have achieved the first stage of the plans to have indoor farming adopted by the very folks who have kept us fed in this country since its inception, and that is the traditional farmer," said Martin.

Co-Alliance will pilot these indoor farms with traditional farmers, assessing the capability to diversify income, spread risks, and to supply local fresh produce all year round. Said John Graham, CFO of Co-Alliance, "We are evaluating the commercial application and income generating potential of the farms here in Indiana so when we introduce the technology to our member-growers on a larger scale, we have a turnkey, replicable, scalable complete production process in place." 

"When Dave and I developed the equipment, we embarked on a journey that started 4 years ago and continues with an intense focus on Research and Development. This is an affirmation of the purpose of the journey. Our aeroponic farms have proven reliable in 3 years of test growing of over 30 types of greens, strawberries, cherry tomatoes, peppers, beans and edible flowers. The equipment will produce strong economic results that make it more than viable in the indoor growing environment, more so than any other equipment that exists today, due to far higher yields in a given space," said Ron Evans, President of Indoor Farms of America.

Co-Alliance sees new opportunities for farmers to have a major impact on the "locally grown" food movement. Per Kevin Still, Co-Alliance CEO, "Co-Alliance is positioning itself and its farmer owners to be able to capitalize on the growing consumer demands for truly fresh, locally grown, and high-quality products available to them from local farmers they know and trust, year round. And to do so, we believe investing in Indoor Farms of America is the right way to go about it."

Co-Alliance, LLP, is a partnership of cooperatives with community roots established in the 1920s. Headquartered in Avon, Indiana, its 50 locations across Indiana, Michigan, and Ohio serve the areas of Energy, Agronomy, Grain Marketing, and Swine and Animal Nutrition. For more information, visit www.co-alliance.com. 

Indoor Farms of America, LLC, is leading indoor ag innovation. It has farms installed in countries surrounding the globe, and brings meaningful advancement to indoor agriculture, with a sole purpose to make it economically viable, while creating meaningful jobs for people in any region, including veterans and disabled individuals. 

Indoor Farms of America is dedicated to creating a sustainable food supply for generations to come. The company designs and builds its patented advanced indoor agriculture equipment using a proven, reliable aeroponics method as the foundation of the farm, allowing year-round high yield production, with no sky-lifts or ladders required to operate the farm.

Indoor Grow Gardens Bring Your Gardening Inside

Indoor Grow Gardens Bring Your Gardening Inside

By Kim Cook   |   AP August 8, 2017  |  Home & Garden

A tasty salad of tender pea shoots. Handfuls of fragrant herbs for the stew. Snack veggies for lunch boxes.

Keeping a fresh supply of greens and herbs on hand can be challenging as the growing season winds down, or if you don’t have a garden. But now you can plop a planter anywhere in your house, set a few timers, and in about 10 days you’ll be nibbling greens like a contented rabbit. All year round.

There are a variety of indoor grow gardens on the market that come with everything you need: planter, planting medium, seeds, fertilizer and a high-intensity grow light. Smart tech and remote controls adjust lighting and moisture levels, so even if your thumb’s not the greenest, you can still find success.

Linnea and Tarren Wolfe of Vancouver, British Columbia, decided to design a home grower after watching their kids gobble up sunflower and pea-shoot microgreens “like potato chips.”

Their Urban Cultivator looks like a wine fridge. It comes as a free-standing unit, topped with a butcher block, or it can be installed under the counter and hooked up like a dishwasher. The company offers an extensive seed selection, but anything from your local garden center will grow. (www.urbancultivator.net )

Linnea Wolfe advises home gardeners to do some research into the benefits of the edible, immature greens known as microgreens.

“Most of them only take about 7 to 10 days to grow,” she says. “You can mass-consume them, and the health benefits are extraordinary.”

The indoor garden trend is part of a, well, growing movement, says New York landscape architect Janice Parker.

“The technology of these kits simplifies hydroponic gardening at its best, and makes it available to all,” she says. You don’t need a yard, or favorable weather.

“What a pleasure to have fresh herbs, flowers and vegetables, and experience a connection to nature no matter where you are,” says Parker.

She thinks these kits shouldn’t just be relegated to the kitchen.

“I’d put them anywhere — dining room tables and coffee tables come to mind. Or in ‘dead’ spaces that have no light or interest,” she says.

She recommends growing plants with both flavor and flair: “Chives, dill, rosemary, fennel, basil and nasturtiums all have gorgeous flowers and beautiful foliage”.

Miracle Gro’s line of Aerogarden indoor planters includes the Sprout, which is about the size of a coffee maker and suitable for herbs, as well as a larger model in which you could grow just about anything. Pre-packaged seed pods like lettuces, cherry tomatoes, herb blends and petunias come ready to pop in the planter. An LCD control panel helps adjust lighting and watering needs. (www.miraclegro.com )

Year-Round Agriculture in Milwaukee? Look No Further Than Big City Greens

Year-Round Agriculture in Milwaukee?  Look No Further Than Big City Greens

Photo by Jessi Paetzke

ANN CHRISTENSON AUGUST 15, 2017

An indoor farm north of Brady Street is a model of year-round city agriculture.

After eight years selling eggs, pickles and produce out of their farmhouse in California’s Napa Valley, Bryan De Stefanis and Deborah Diaz moved back to Wisconsin with their daughter in 2015 to be close to family and to launch a farming business in, yep, the city of Milwaukee.

De Stefanis found a location for a greenhouse a few blocks north of Brady Street, close enough to the city’s farm-supporting restaurants so he could deliver within hours. One of his earliest visits was to Sanford Restaurant, where chef/co-owner Justin Aprahamian’s culinary philosophy embraces locally grown food and uses the kitchen as a lab for preserving and fermenting all manner of ingredients. Soon after making the Sanford connection, De Stefanis’ Big City Greens (906 E. Hamilton St.) supplied 20 flats of micro-arugula for Aprahamian’s 2015 gig cooking at the James Beard Foundation Awards.

In addition to heirloom vegetables, herbs and microgreens from the indoor farm, De Stefanis delivers foraged wild edibles he unearths at their property in central Wisconsin. It’s “all very fresh and great quality,” says Buckley’s restaurant chef Thi Cao, a regular customer. Big City’s ingredients and preserved foods, including those featured below, are also available at the weekly farmers markets in Shorewood and Greenfield or by emailing Big City Greens. 

Deborah Diaz and Bryan De Stefanis of Big City Greens. Photo by Jessi Paetzke

Beyond the Megafarms: 4 Alternative Models For Indoor Agriculture

Beyond the Megafarms: 4 Alternative Models For Indoor Agriculture

AUGUST 14, 2017 EMMA COSGROVE

Indoor agriculture has grabbed several headlines in the mainstream media recently. Not only does the idea of growing produce indoors, in an automated high-tech environment capture the imagination of many consumers and readers, but just last month, an indoor farming business raised a whopping $200 million in funding, in the largest ever deal for an agriculture technology startup.

South San Francisco’s Plenty raised the funding from SoftBank along with affiliates of Louis M. Bacon, the founder of Moore Capital Management, who joined the round alongside existing investors Innovation Endeavors, Bezos Expeditions, Chinese VC DCM, Data Collective, and Finistere Ventures.

Good news sells

Four different indoor farming operations told AgFunderNews that the rate of incoming investment inquiries noticeably increased after the Plenty news. High-tech indoor farming has captured the imagination of the media as well. In fact, you could say that indoor farming is the crossover hit of the agtech world — a niche story that has made it into the mainstream.

But like a country song that hits the pop charts for a while, high-tech, high-cost indoor vertical farming groups like Plenty are not necessarily representative of the form all indoor farming operations take. There are many different business models for growing food indoors, and as this segment of the agrifood industry is still very young, there are few proven successes yet.

Further, as Sanjeev Krishnan of S2G Ventures, an agtech-focused VC, told AgFunderNews in July, it is unlikely that this space will see a clear front-runner emerge.

“There is no winner takes all potential here. There are many different models that could work and we are excited about the platforms being built in the market.”

Plenty has a similar business model to a few other well funded startups including AeroFarms of New Jersey, which closed $34 million of a $40 million Series D round in May, and Bowery Farming, which raised a $20 million Series A co-led by General Catalyst and GGV Capital, including GV (Google Ventures) in June.

All of these farming operations are indoors, using LED lights and varying levels of data science to create what is essentially a plant factory — or mega farm. They don’t use soil or sunlight, they seek to make a profit selling produce for retail and food service, and they rely on scale, explaining their need to raise vast sums of capital.

“The thing that is hard about investing is that at some point someone has to invest in scale before the scale is there and SoftBank is both visionary and courageous,” said Plenty CEO Matt Barnard to AgFunderNews when the news broke in July.

Some say that the high price tag of building indoor vertical megafarms makes profitability a distant dream — AeroFarms’ flagship facility in Newark will cost about $40 million when fully complete.

Virtue in variety

Below we explore some business models that differ from these mega-farms and are lower-cost. They are of course faced with a healthy dose of skepticism too; some industry insiders say that lower-cost, smaller-scale operations are not financially sustainable long term due to the high cost of labor and lack of efficiency.

What the alternatives have in common generally, however, is that they collect their revenue at different points in the value chain and, often, they have more than one income stream.

Read below how four indoor ag startups are taking a different approach to the indoor farming trend.

Green Collar Foods

Based in Detroit, MI, Green Collar Foods (GCF) builds and operates small, indoor hydroponic farms that are run by community members. It sells leafy greens exclusively to local public sector institutions like hospitals, at market prices, with multi-year forward contracts. The company is built to operate in areas with a high degree of urban blight and eventually transfer each farm to a local owner, moving toward a franchise model. GCF plans to construct 6,000 square foot facilities, which will cost under $500k each.

The company has farms in Detroit and Bridgeport, CT, and soon will have one in Rotherham, UK, all in cooperation with local universities.

The company says that its aeroponic growing systems and farm management software are simple enough to hire unskilled labor and therefore make a larger impact at the community level through job creation. “The GCF Platform — a hybrid between best-in-class aeroponics and cloud-based computing — is designed to be an effective and simple solution right out of the box,” said co-founder Daniel Casanas.

Founder Ronald Reynolds sees his distributed — or franchised — model of urban farming as lower risk to a large megafarm because of the disease and pest risk associated with concentrated growing at scale.

“If you have 10-, 6-, 7,000 sq ft, you still add up to 60,000 sq ft. You can still leverage the same forward contract, but if you run into hiccups in the facilities you can switch over,” Reynolds told AgFunderNews. 

Reynolds said that the high-profile megafarms are in a chicken and egg cycle, with investor money following this one business model and then entrepreneurs recreating it because that’s where the money is. “The business models are trying to follow where the perceived money is coming from. The only thing that seems to be getting people’s attention are big asks. People find it easier to write bigger checks than smaller checks.” GCF is currently working to complete a $1.5 million financing round. GCF’s funding to date has come from the co-founders’ own micro-venture firm called DayRiver, local individuals and grants.  Read more about Green Collar Foods here.

Alesca Life

Alesca Life charges hotels, high-end catering outfits or hospitality groups for the installation and operation of a small indoor farm and then sells the produce in a subscription model. It is based in Beijing and is currently expanding to the United Arab Emirates.

Founder Stuart Oda has recently been setting up and operating small farms for two members of the Dubai ruling family and Mercedes Benz. In order to increase his footprint, he is embracing the expat population in Dubai, targeting hotels and luxury food service operations where customers are willing to pay a premium and there is more appetite for his crop, leafy greens.

Oda says that his facilities can break even in around two years. “If we have a servicing contract in place for even a year and a half, we will have made back our money.”

He further said that picking the right crops and markets is what makes his financials make sense, “Let’s find a product, or a niche, or a market, or a city, or a customer that can generate the profit we need.” In contrast to the normal practice of American indoor mega-farms, to build the farm and then find the customer, Oda is bringing the farm directly to a specific customer. With Plenty likely to build a farm in Japan and AeroFarms recently receiving an investment from the UAE’s Meraas, the investment arm of Dubai’s leader Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid, other players may be looking to capitalize on favorable pricing for produce internationally as well.

 Alesca Life has raised undisclosed seed and angel rounds from individuals and family offices so far. Read more about Alesca Life and other indoor operations in the UAE here.

Freight Farms

Boston-based Freight Farms is one of the older players in the indoor, vertical space, having been around since 2011. The company sells retrofitted shipping containers for indoor, vertical growing along with software to help farmers to track and control their operations remotely via cameras and a mobile app.

The container farms sell for about $85,000 in the US and have the growing potential equivalent to eight acres of land. Freight Farms has offices in the US and Europe along with a licensed dealer in the Middle East.

In June, Freight Farms, completed its Series B funding round of $7.3 million, raising the funding from existing investor Boston-based Spark Capital along with new investor Stage 1 Ventures with support from early investors like Launch Capital.

Freight Farms has now raised a total of $12 million and deployed more than 100 farms that use hydroponic technology, LED lighting, and automated watering and fertilizing technology. The startup raised $3.7 million in Series A funding in 2014.

Fresh Box Farms

Sitting in between a few of these models is Fresh Box Farms, a Boston-based indoor operation currently farming out of shipping containers, but soon building a facility the equivalent to 200 of those, admittedly moving on from the container model. CFO David Vosburg says that though containers were a great place to start, in the long run concentrating labor into one big operation makes more sense.

However, Vosburg’s larger farm will have rooms within it to provide more precise temperature control for different plants. “You just can’t grow efficiently in a large warehouse because basil does not like to grow at the same temperature as romaine and different cultivars like wildly different CO2 levels,” he said.

Fresh Box Farms has raised more than $10 million to date from individual investors and family offices. 

The indoor vertical farming industry as a whole is far from maturity and perhaps decades away from competing with the Salinas Valley in leafy greens production. As it grows and matures it may prove important to remember that there is more variety in indoor farming businesses than makes the news

Meet Farmlab.One, The Latest Indoor Farming Experiment From Germany’s Largest Retailer

Meet Farmlab.One, The Latest Indoor Farming Experiment From Germany’s Largest Retailer

By Michael Wolf  |  August 14, 2017

While we haven’t arrived at a future where every corner grocery has an in-store farming system with rows and rows of produce, it isn’t for lack of trying.

This is especially true for METRO Group, Germany’s largest retailer, who has been experimenting with in-store farming since early 2016.

The First InStore Farm in Europe**** The first of its kind farm in the METRO Supermarket in Berlin. Delicious greens grow 365 days a year InStore In full transparency and by demand. 

That’s when the retailer launched Kräuter Garten (herb garden), the first retail in-store farming installation in Europe. The technology for METRO’s first foray into vertical farming was provided by INFARM, a vertical farming startup based in Germany. Since the launch of  Kräuter Garten in Berlin, other retailers such as EDEKA (Germany’s largest grocery store chain) have since taken an interest in in-store growing.

Now METRO is at it again, launching another vertical farming experiment with Farmlab.one, a joint project between the retail giant and Schmiede.ONE, a German innovation lab focused on future business models that intermingle agriculture and cutting edge technologies such as artificial intelligence.

The project will be managed by James Lindsay of Schmiede.ONE in an indoor lab in Düsseldorf. METRO has provided resources in the form of indoor farming racks from TowerGarden, the indoor farming division of Juice+. The project is starting with three crops to start, which you can watch here via Periscope.

While the project is a modest one, it’s a sign of continued interest in vertical, in-building farming by a large food retailer. In the US, we’ve seen growing interest in solutions from companies like Farmshelf, and just last month we saw one of the biggest investments ever in a vertical farming startup when Jeff Bezos, among others, invested $200 million in stealthy startup Plenty.

A comparison of yields and resource consumption of indoor vs. soil-based farming. Source: Schmiede One

While it’s unlikely that in-store vertical farms could produce at the scale to meet the total demand for fresh produce purchased at a high-volume urban retail storefront, it’s clear that soilless vertical farms produce at a much high rate of productivity compared to soil based farming, which means much less overall space is needed to produce the same amount of produce. With such high yields, one can envision a future where a mix of in-store grown produce combined with other warehouse grown urban farmed food could be enough to meet a large percentage of overall demand for fresh produce.

While we haven’t arrived at a future where every corner grocery has an in-store farming system with rows and rows of produce, it isn’t for lack of trying.

This is especially true for METRO Group, Germany’s largest retailer, who has been experimenting with in-store farming since early 2016.

The First InStore Farm in Europe**** The first of its kind farm in the METRO Supermarket in Berlin. Delicious greens grow 365 days a year InStore In full transparency and by demand. 

Shaping Smarter Cities: Urban Farming in Tokyo Japan

Shaping Smarter Cities: Urban Farming in Tokyo Japan

14 August 2017

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With the next evolution of Mouser Electronics’ Empowering Innovative Together™ series, Mouser and Grant Imahara team up with the creative minds at WIRED Brand Lab to take a look at the modern city. Sponsored this year by our technology partners Analog Devices, Intel, Microchip a,nd Molex, we’re traveling the world to see and learn from the innovators and progressive companies creating a more livable future for our cities. We’re asking insightful questions: How can technology make our hectic lives better, and what solutions will it provide to the everyday problems today’s ever-growing cities face? Across the globe, there are many innovators hard at work already employing technology to create smarter cities that are more efficient, less polluted and more sustainable.

In the third episode of our 5-part video series, Grant heads to Tokyo, Japan to speak with engineers at a company called Mirai. Mirai is investigating how urban farming could enhance food production for ever growing populations in smart cities. Almost three-quarters of the landmass in Japan is mountainous. This leaves only a relatively small area for the entire population to live work and grow food. As the population increases, the strain on food production expands exponentially.

That is where Mirai comes in. They have converted a former Sony semiconductor factory into the world’s largest indoor farm. It ships out 10,000 heads of lettuce per day. By building these farms up instead of out Mirai has found one solution to the problem of space for farms in Japan.

Inside their indoor vertical farm, Mirai can control all the things that keep a farm awake with worry every night. In the controlled environment they have created rainfall can be precisely controlled, soil nutrients can be meticulously applied and damage from animals and insects ceases to be a concern. The yield per square meter is 50 to 100 times that of a normal farm.

The types of vertical farms that Mirai has created can be installed virtually anywhere they are needed. This means that the food miles (a measurement of the distance food has to travel from producer to consumer and the fuel required) for their products are greatly reduced.

The indoor nature of these farms also reduces water consumption. All drainage from the watering of crops is collected and recycled. Even the water lost to evaporation is trapped and then recycled.

These are just a few examples of how vertical farming will revolutionize the world of agriculture and enhance smart cities.

In the next episode Grant treks to Los Angeles, California to take a look at the future of city building.

When Entrepreneurship Meets Agriculture, You Get An ‘Accelerator’ Teaching ‘Vertical’ Farming

When Entrepreneurship Meets Agriculture, You Get An ‘Accelerator’ Teaching ‘Vertical’ Farming

(iStock )

By Gene Marks August 24 at 3:10 PM 

Flush from raising $5 million, a “vertical farm” accelerator is getting ready to conquer the world.

The company, according to this Fast Company story, is called Square Roots and it has a “campus” in Brooklyn made from climate-controlled shipping containers where 10 urban farmer entrepreneurs have learned the ins and outs of growing food over the past nine and a half months. The goal: compete against the large industrial farmers that dominate our food chain. The 10 initial student entrepreneurs are all on track to graduate in October and the company is planning to use its recently raised capital to expand to other cities.

“We wanted to come up with a model that scaled small urban farming, so literally every consumer of food can have a direct relationship with a farmer,” Square Roots co-founder and chief executive Tobias Peggs told Fast Company (the company’s other founder is Kimbal Musk, whose brother is…yes, that guy).

How hard is urban farming? Seems pretty hard. To graduate from the program the entrepreneurs each need to learn how to grow food in glorified shipping containers, complete with irrigation systems and LED lights. The accelerator provides them with coaches and experts to help them with the process, and to teach them business building skills so that ultimately they can start up their own urban farming enterprises. “The hope is there will be tens of thousands of new businesses that end up being formed,” Peggs says.

It’s not all about selling food. Some of the entrepreneurs are working on a farm-to-desk delivery program while others are working on projects that cover everything from growing fresh greens for low-income neighborhoods to developing better lighting for indoor farming.

The accelerator makes its money by taking a cut of the entrepreneurs’ sales. The strategy gives both the entrepreneurs and the people at Square Roots the motivation to succeed. Peggs says his business is successful if the farmers are successful and that he and his staff wake up every morning thinking of ways to help his students profit.

Interested in becoming an urban farming entrepreneur? Square Roots is taking applications for its next class right now. It’s a hot field. In 2016, 500 applicants applied to the company for just the 10 spots.

Gene Marks owns the Marks Group, a Bala Cynwyd, Pa.-based consulting firm that helps clients with customer relationship management. Marks is an author and a certified public accountant, and he writes regularly for The Post’s On Small Business blog.

For more about Marks, visit  genemarks.com.

Follow @genemarks

Can Agritech Save The Future of Food?

Photo: SKY GREENS

Can Agritech Save The Future of Food?

Aug. 7  06:00 am JST

By Maxine Cheyney for The Journal (ACCJ)TOKYO

The Fourth Industrial Revolution—a fusion of cloud-connected technologies, Big Data, and biotech—is changing the way we do business, travel, communicate, and even how we eat and produce food. The agriculture industry has already seen two revolutions of its own, with scientists and manufacturers dabbling in mechanization, plant breeding, and genetics. Now, this technological shift has sparked the rise of smart farms and what is being called the Third Green Revolution.

Although agritech—a broad collection of innovations and technologies that can be applied to farming—is not new, it is finding new life in Japan and abroad. As the world’s resources are stretched thin by population growth, and as environmental factors begin to impact our food supply, agritech is finding sure footing as a possible solution.

This is particularly true in Japan. Following the devastating Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami of March 11, 2011, the demand for untainted food swelled. The declining population of farmers has caused further production problems, making technologies that can improve yield, profit, and provide clean produce more important than ever.

More companies are looking for ways to invest, whether through venture capital funds, public equities, or direct investment. In Japan, technology companies such as Toshiba Corporation and Panasonic Corporation are finding ways to support smart farming.

But how are these technologies progressing? What potential do self-contained farms have to become the new way to grow fruit and vegetables? What is the science behind the agritech movement?

TECH TIME

According to Digital America: a tale of haves and have-mores, a 2015 report by consultants McKinsey & Company, agriculture and hunting remain the least-digitized industries in the United States.

But farmers have long been seeking the most efficient tools for their trade. Sensors that measure air and soil, livestock biometrics, and automated systems that use the Internet of Things (IoT) to control irrigation are just some of the tools already available. Precision equipment, geo-positioning systems, Big Data, unmanned aerial vehicles, drones, and even robotics are also leaving their mark on farming.

“The whole agritech sector is really interesting—it’s kind of like the healthcare sector, because it’s fundamentally important,” said Trista Bridges, founder and president of Vizane KK. “It’s very complex, very regulated, and there’s lots of different actors and stakeholders.”

The Journal also spoke with representatives from Japan’s Institute of Agricultural Machinery (IAM), part of the National Agriculture and Food Research Organization (NARO), about this growing sector.

“In smart agriculture,” they explained, “it is important for it to be cost-effective and have set rules and regulations, such as liability upon accidents.”

Bridges recently helped organize the AgriTech Summit (AG/SUM), which took place in Tokyo from May 23 to 25 and focused on how disruptive technology is helping to shape agriculture. She explained that many start-ups at the event provided a variety of solutions to meet a range of agriculture needs. Not one, however, delivered an end-to-end solution.

One of the main issues is understanding farmers’ needs, which differ from farm to farm. “The [return on investment] on a lot of these technologies is not proven at all,” she added. “It’s extremely complex to make a smart farm that is full-functioning, and indoor farming is probably a little easier because it’s self-contained.”

She also pointed out that the price of LED light bulbs is beginning to drop, an important change that will help many indoor farms.

Japan-based plant factory operations and vegetable production company Spread Co., Ltd. has created its own LED lighting for the soon-to-open Techno Farm Keihanna. Chief Executive Officer Shinji Inada said, “The lights are tailored to vegetables cultivated in indoor vertical farms.” He added that, compared with existing LED lighting, the system reduces energy consumption by 30 percent.

The number of self-contained farms is certainly increasing, helping the sector grow. They also provide a place for innovative technologies to be tested.

“I think it has a lot of potential, especially in a country where you have limited space and fewer people working on farmland,” Bridges said. But, she added, it is not yet clear in what situations equipping a farm with robotics and advanced technologies is the best option.

Inada added, “Although indoor farming comes with its fair share of challenges, its ability to control the environment not only allows for more stable production year round, but also for the cultivation of high-quality produce without the use of pesticides.”

Another aspect to consider is the cost of bringing in produce. “In Japan, you have substantial issues with importation of food,” Bridges explained. This means pressure is mounting for Japan to become more self-sustaining, especially as migration to the city increases. This is a concern shared by the United States.

Gotham Greens, an urban greenhouse opened its doors in Brooklyn in 2009. During the winter months, much of New York City’s produce was coming from places such as Mexico, California, and Israel, and CEO Viraj Puri saw a business opportunity. “We realized that by the time the produce made its way here, it was at least a week old and had changed hands multiple times. We also began to notice that consumer preferences were shifting toward more local and sustainably produced food.”

SECTOR SOLUTIONS

The importance of agritech falls into two crucial areas undergoing change: climate and population. Rapid growth of urban areas, resulting in declining land availability for agriculture, is fueling the need to find farming alternatives.

According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations report, Strategic Work of FAO for Sustainable Food and Agriculture, by 2050 there will be more than nine billion people on earth. That means we will need to produce 60 percent more food—an increase from 8.4 billion metric tons a year to almost 13.5 billion metric tons. This will require increased use of fertilizer, water, pesticides, and drugs, and the introduction of new crop varieties and animal breeds. Much of this production will come from already-cultivated land.

Unpredictable climate change also impacts the productivity of farms. The report states that sustainability relies on enhanced systems and “we must learn to produce more food with less resources and do so under much harsher conditions.” Smart farm alternatives could provide some respite.

One such smart farm is in Singapore. Sky Greens, a low-carbon, hydraulic-driven vertical farm, has found a way to create a sustainable business using minimal land, water, and energy. CEO Jack Ng explained how he saw an opportunity while working in the construction industry at a time when Indonesia had stopped exporting sand to Singapore. This heavily impacted the industry.

He knew that if something such as that happened in the agricultural sector, the impact would be much greater. “I realized that our country is very vulnerable due to our size and open economy,” he said.

Sky Urban Solutions—Sky Greens’s holding company—has patented its water-pulley system, which harnesses hydraulic power for irrigation. “This reduces the energy required to rotate the trays of crops upwards to get natural sunlight and down to the water tray for irrigation,” he explained.

Ng claims the system uses just five percent of the water used in conventional farming, and reduces energy consumption—each tower requires just 40W per hour to grow up to 2,500 plants.

Reduced labor is another key benefit. “The opportunity for our technology lies in the fact that it requires relatively few people to operate,” said Inada. “And it provides a comfortable and safe environment for its farm workers.”

The environmental benefits are also broad, with no agricultural runoff thanks to a scalable and flexible closed-loop irrigation system. Sky Greens has technology that can meet the unique needs of the local environment. Towers can also be built on non-arable land.

Gotham Greens, too, has found sustainable and environmentally friendly solutions that serve its inner-city communities all year round. “Our pesticide-free produce is grown using ecologically sustainable methods in 100 percent clean, electricity-powered greenhouses. We use advanced, recirculating hydroponic techniques to maintain precision plant nutrition.”

In addition, the greenhouse uses many of the technologies mentioned previously, including sensors, controls, and data science to create optimal conditions for the plants to grow. “Hydroponic farming, when practiced effectively, can be very efficient,” Puri said.

NARO-IAM has also developed a movable bench system for high-density cultivation of strawberries. This means workers do not have to move between cultivation benches, saving time and labor. The organization has also developed a robotic strawberry harvester.

Other projects to further develop agritech are now on NARO-IAM’s drawing board, including joining the Cross-ministerial Strategic Innovation Promotion Program (SIP) created by the Cabinet Office of the government of Japan. NARO-IAM works as the representative research body, looking at revolutionary technologies to boost rice production.

Of course, this all requires rules and regulations to ensure food safety. “In March 2017, the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries of Japan announced safety measure guidelines for autopilot agricultural machinery, and this will be revised as autopilot in agriculture advances,” NARO-IAM experts explained.

Efforts in Japan to encourage smart farming businesses are strong. According to the Nikkei Asian Review on May 22, the government of Japan is moving to cut taxes for operators of high-tech indoor farms to encourage growth in this sector. Land that is paved over for indoor farms will be subject to the same taxes as agricultural land rather than higher property taxes.

Japanese technology companies are also taking an interest in the smart farming sector in Singapore. Panasonic Factory Solutions Asia Pacific, a subsidiary of Panasonic Corporation, opened an indoor vegetable farm in Singapore, and uses its LED lighting to grow Japanese vegetables that cannot withstand Singapore’s tropical climate.

FUTURE FARMS

Opening a smart farm is not all smooth sailing. Inada’s experience opening Spread’s Kameoka Plant in 2007 highlighted this. “It took us about six years to reach the point of stable cultivation in such a large environment.” He explained that there were also difficulties with conveying the concept to stores and the general public.

Ng said some farmers have misconceptions about the aim of his farm. “I am often misunderstood; [farmers think] that my innovation is built in order to replace them,” he said. “Farmers are also generally skeptical of modern methods of cultivation, and are therefore slow to embrace technology and engineering solutions.”

Even now, Ng admits that he is still learning in the rapidly growing agritech sector. “Any viable modern farming system is a synthesis of two main branches of science: engineering and horticulture.” Coming from the construction industry, for Ng this meant learning from scratch about plant science, crop behavior, pest control, and environmental factors.

Gotham Greens’ Puri, too, had to overcome obstacles when opening his greenhouse. “We initially faced some setbacks,” he said. “Challenges we faced included finding the right real estate and landlord, as well as logistics, regulatory challenges—zoning and permitting—and high upfront costs.”

One of Ng’s main concerns with the agricultural sector is that “many traditional farmers are giving up their trade, getting on in years, and are not likely to be succeeded by their children. The younger generations will not be attracted to agribusiness unless it pays more, requires much less work, and offers better prospects.”

However, the opportunity is there to further advance the smart farming sector, and having the right approach is crucial. Puri emphasized the need for perseverance and capital for any business looking to enter the market.

“For any vertical farm or businesses involving intensive cultivation, mixed or integrated farming, it is important to work backwards by identifying market demand to determine crop selection.”

Puri’s concerns for the industry goes further than just the pressures of the environment. “One of the problems with our current food system is over-industrialization, which has led to a huge disconnect between consumers and producers.”

“Long distance transport associated with trucking food across the country—and the food waste that results from it—are also significant issues.” he added. The idea that Gotham Greens can harvest daily and deliver food straight to supermarkets and restaurants within hours makes the self-contained greenhouse a viable option in any big city environment.

Japan’s smart farming sector is certainly growing, and Inada is looking to expand Spread’s operations. “Domestically, we will aim for a 10 percent share of the Japanese lettuce market by utilizing a franchise/ownership model to establish 20 facilities and a daily production capacity of 500,000 heads of lettuce.”

As technological innovation transforms agriculture, the smart farming sector is bound to go through the trials that other industries have experienced during such transitions. But we are sure to see more and more smart farms on the global scene, and the Third Green Revolution could ensure that each of the world’s soon-to-be-nine-billion people are fed.

Photo: SKY GREENS

Gotham Greens, New York  Photo: GOTHAM GREENS

Purdue Students Created “Hydro Grow”

Purdue Students Created “Hydro Grow”

August 17, 2017 

People will produce faster and fresh food in their homes with the help of the Purdue student’s inventions. A mechanical engineering student named Scott Massey working on a NASA-funded project tasked with growing plants in outer space. Scott Massey said, “I think I realized that if I really had this one shot at life, why not try something new and take a risk?”. With the help of the co-founder and classmate Ivan Ball Scott Massey developed Hydro Grow.

The Hydro Grow is a business whose task is to provide easier access to people to freshly grown produce in their homes. The vertical tower Gropod named can produce a variety of vegetables as well as fruits faster rate than a traditional farm could.

Scott Massey said, “People want to know how their food is developed, and there’s just a general hunger for that knowledge”. Further, he said, “This is a product that lets people have the comfort to know that what they have is naturally grown, and they can be present every step of the way”.

The Gropod is still in its prototype phase. Scott Massey stated that they are looking to start selling the product in just a few months.

The process is simple Massey said, just people need to insert a seed into the Gropod’s slots and pour water into the tower and then let it grow. Ball said, “It will continue to grow until it’s ready for harvest”. Further, Ball added, “You can continually keep your produce fresh”. Ball said, “With a hydroponic system like we have, you’re actually able to continuously recycle the water over and over again by spraying the roots directly”.

Hydroponics quickly becoming one of the next targets for sustainable agriculture, it is a global industry that continues to grow.

Indoor AG-Con Philly

Indoor AG-Con Philly

ABOUT INDOOR AG-CON PHILLY

After two successful years in New York, Indoor Ag-Con is relocating its East coast event to Philadelphia for its inaugural Indoor Ag-Con Philly on October 16, 2017. Our venue is the modern gallery at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, and our agenda will include 12 industry-leading keynotes covering topical “big picture” subjects such as the use of artificial intelligence in indoor agriculture.  As for other Indoor Ag-Con events, our agenda for Indoor Ag-Con Philly will be tech-focused and crop-agnostic.  With extended Q&A sessions and networking breaks, there will be plenty of opportunity to network with the growers, produce buyers, entrepreneurs, tech geeks and investors we expect to join us.  Participation will be capped at 120 to keep the conversation flowing and maximize networking opportunities.

On October 17, the day after Indoor Ag-Con Philly, our Nextbean Ambassador sponsors at Kennett Township, PA – one hour’s drive outside of Philadelphia – will be hosting tours, free to Indoor Ag-Con Philly participants, of the extensive indoor agriculture production and distribution facilities which support their world-class mushroom industry. Every day Kennett produces, packs and ships 1.5M lbs of fresh mushrooms, single-handedly supplying ~50% of the US market, an amazing feat that’s been going on year-round for over 100 years! This is a truly unusual opportunity to get an insider’s view of what’s involved in producing and distributing a large-scale agriculture commodity grown entirely indoors. In addition, the event will start from world-famous Longwood Gardens, home to more than 1,000 acres of formal gardens, conservatories, woodlands and meadows, and includes a custom tour of Longwood’s own indoor production horticultural facilities, plus a complimentary farm-to-table lunch and free admission to the public gardens. You’ll be asked if you would like to join the Kennett event – at no extra charge – as you purchase your Indoor Ag-Con Philly admission.

REGISTER FOR PASSES

Passes are available at the early bird rate of $399 through August 31 or until the event is sold out, a 25% discount to the standard rate of $499.

This rate includes access to all sessions, light breakfast and lunch, drinks party and a gift bag with an exclusive hard copy of our newest white paper.

REGISTER NOW

SPONSORING & EXHIBITING

As it is a one day event, we will not have an exhibition hall at Indoor Ag-Con Philly, but we do have plentiful sponsorship opportunities to allow you to engage your brand with our farming, equipment supply, tech, investor, academic and government participants.

OUR AGENDA & SPEAKERS

Our one day event will be split into four themed sessions that look at the “big picture” of indoor agriculture with presentations from its thought leaders.  Each consists of three keynote speakers, with an extended Q&A at the end of each session.  We’ll be adding speakers here as they are confirmed, and the agenda may change a little as we confirm speaker availability.

8:30 AM9:15 AM  Registration & Light Breakfast

9:15 AM9:20 AM  Welcome & Introduction

9:20 AM10:05 AM  Session One: How indoor agriculture can develop local communities
Three Keynote Speakers, including:

Eric Stein, Associate Professor, Penn State

10:05 AM10:30 AM  Extended Q&A and Discussion

10:30 AM11:00 AM  Networking Break

11:00 AM11:45 AM  Session Two: Artificial intelligence in indoor agriculture
Three Keynote Speakers, including:

Adam Greenberg, CEO, iunu

Dr. April Agee Carroll, VP of R&D, AeroFarms

11:45 AM12:15 PM  Extended Q&A and Discussion

12:15 PM1:45 PM  Lunch, with Curated Discussion Tables

1:45 PM2:30 PM  Session Three: The coming impact of LED lighting
Three Keynote Speakers, including:
Dr. AJ Both, Associate Extension Specialist, Rutgers University

2:30 PM3:00 PM  Extended Q&A and Discussion

3:00 PM3:30 PM  Networking Break

3:30 PM4:15 PM  Session Four: How technology changes indoor agriculture business models
Three Keynote Speakers, including:
Jack Griffin, President, Metropolis Farms

4:15 PM4:45 PM  Extended Q&A and Discussion

4:45 PM4:50 PM  Closing Remarks

5:00 PM  After Party

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Hydroponics: the future of farming

Hydroponics: the future of farming

AUG 16 2017

hydroponics uses mineral nutrient solutions to feed plants in water – without the need for soil.

In 2015, the United Nations predicted that the world population will grow to 9.6bn by 2050 and 70% of the population will live in cities.

For anyone in the UK wanting to give the technology a try, Ikea introduced a line of indoor hydroponic garden products earlier this year, as part of the Krydda/Växer collection.

In 2015, the United Nations predicted that the world population will grow to 9.6bn by 2050 and 70% of the population will live in cities.

However, such a population increase comes hand in hand with the need to produce more food to feed them. Some estimates suggest 70% more food will be needed. But with 80% of cultivated land already in use and the rapid urbanisation of countries set to continue, the challenge of producing more food in a sustainable way will become ever more pressing.

One solution is hydroponic technology, a niche method of food production that allows producers to grow plants without soil. A subset of hydroculture, this method uses mineral nutrient solutions to feed plants in water without the need for soil.

Hydroculture subset: what are the benefits?

The earliest published work on growing plants without soil was Francis Bacon’s 1627 book Sylva Sylvarum. Water culture quickly became a popular research technique following the publication, but it was not until the 1920s that the idea really took hold.

In 1929, William Frederick Gericke of the University of California at Berkeley began promoting the idea that solution culture could be used for agriculture crop production. Gericke was able to grow tomato vines to a height of 25ft in his garden using mineral nutrient solutions instead of soil. In the present day, this technology is being used worldwide.

Using hydroponic technology to produce plants has a number of benefits when compared with traditional cultivation methods. In hydroponics, the roots of the plant have constant access to an unlimited supply of oxygen, as well as access to water. This is particularly important as a common error when growing food is over or under-watering. Hydroponics eliminates this error margin, as quantities of water, mineral salts, and oxygen are controlled.

Other benefits of hydroponic technology include the ability to better control the plant’s nutrition, a visible improvement in quantity and yields, a shortening of the growth interval for many plants, a high propagation success rate, savings on fertilisers, the absence of pesticides and herbicides, and a more efficient use of space. As the world’s population continues to grow, it is this last point that makes the technology such a useful one.

Carbon footprints: sustaining the population

Hydroponics has the potential to sustain a large proportion of the world’s population and to allow third world countries to feed their own people, even in places where soil is poor and water is scarce. The technology can also be used as a valuable source of food production in places where space is scarce.

In Guangzhou, China, 14 hydroponic tanks have been installed on a rooftop measuring 1,600ft², producing hundreds of pounds of vegetables every year. The tanks are part of a study that is trying to show residents and developers in the Chinese city that their rooftops have the potential to produce a steady supply of vegetables that may even be cheaper than store-bought alternatives. Published in July in the journal Agronomy for Sustainable Development, the results of the study outline a comprehensive business model for hydroponic rooftop farming, a method that is already in use across the US, Canada, and Europe.

By 2020, Guangzhou’s population is expected to almost double, from 9.62 million in 2010 to 15.17 million. With this population expansion comes the need to produce more food, create jobs, and reduce the carbon footprint of transporting food into cities.

Research associate at the Worldwatch Institute Wanquing Zhou was quoted by Quartz as saying: “There is a need for rooftop farms not only in Chinese cities, but all major cities that have the resources (rooftop spaces, water, sunlight) and yet are heavily dependent on food produced long distances away.”

Being able to grow and produce food within cities for urban populations eliminates the carbon footprint generated through the transport of food from rural areas to city centres.

Food production: growing a garden

On the other side of the Pacific Ocean, the cities of New York, Chicago, and Montreal have all seen some success with rooftop hydroponic farms. Gotham Greens has four rooftop hydroponic greenhouses in New York and Chicago, which produce leafy greens, herbs, and tomatoes. Canada-based company Lufa Farms was credited with opening the world's first commercial rooftop greenhouse in 2011 and now boasts a second greenhouse in the city, which yields 120tn of produce every year.

As consumer demand for sustainably produced (and sourced) food continues to grow, rooftop hydroponic farms like these ones in North America should continue to pop up in cities across the world. Rapid urbanisation in countries such as China and the resulting decrease in land available for agricultural activities will force populations to come up with novel ideas and technologies to cater for larger populations in smaller spaces.

The progression of hydroponic technology since Gericke first promoted the idea in the late 1920s has made soilless farming possible within urban environments. This simple but effective method is key to addressing the issue of sustainable food supplies as the world’s population continues to expand.

For anyone in the UK wanting to give the technology a try, Ikea introduced a line of indoor hydroponic garden products earlier this year, as part of the Krydda/Växer collection.

Ikea's website claims: “Anyone can grow a garden”, and the collection has everything you need to get your fingers green and start growing your own herbs and lettuces.

Alesca Life Is Creating Urban Solutions That Is Transforming The Farming Production

Alesca Life Is Creating Urban Solutions That Is Transforming The Farming Production

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Alesca Life Technologies Dubai Municipality MoU signing. Photo credit: Courtesy of Alesca Life Technologies

• 03-Aug-2017
•  Samuel Wendel, Forbes Middle East Staff

Stuart Oda isn’t your average farmer. As the 32-year-old explains it, “I’m a former investment banker turned urban farmer.”

Oda is CEO of Alesca Life Technologies, a Beijing-based agricultural technology startup that creates software-enabled crop growing facilities designed for urban farming. “We build weather-proof, cloud-connected farms that enable food production by anyone, anywhere,” says Oda.

One such “anywhere” is Dubai. Oda is eyeing the U.A.E. as Alesca Life’s first major expansion opportunity outside of its primary market in China, where he and two co-founders formed the company in 2013.

Back then, the founders spied an opportunity to innovate the agriculture industry in emerging markets by using new technology. “There’s a lot of opportunities for us to improve everything from access to highly nutritious foods all the way to food security,” says Oda.

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Stuart Oda, CEO of Alesca Life Technologies

Alesca Life primarily takes old shipping containers and turns them into miniature, automated farms. It outfits containers with hydroponic systems that allow crops to be grown using fewer resources.

As a result, its container farms use between 20 to 25 times less water than traditional agriculture, says Oda. It also uses less fertilizer and is pesticide free.

Simultaneously, Alesca Life cuts down on labor costs by automating most of the growing process using software. It relies on sensors inside the containers to monitor the crops, and the operation can be controlled remotely through a smartphone app.

Alesca Life’s container farms are designed to be embedded in buildings or other unused spaces in high-density urban areas. Oda markets the technology to clients such as hotels, restaurants, supermarket chains and food distributors.

In addition to saving resources, Alesca Life’s technology allows clients to reduce their logistics costs. Rather than transport produce into the city from rural areas, clients can grow fruits and vegetables in the center of major metropolitan areas. “To give them the capability to produce food locally, we believe it would be quite transformative for their business,” says Oda.

He sees potential in the U.A.E. for a variety of reasons. For starters, Dubai is a cosmopolitan city home to a thriving tourist industry, which creates a demand for a large mixture of fresh produce. “The variety of cuisines that exist [in Dubai] is enormous,” says Oda. These cuisines require a wide range of ingredients, many of which are not produced in the U.A.E.

As a result, the U.A.E. is a major importer of food—and it’s not alone. Across the Gulf, food imports are expected to rise in each country over the next three years; overall food imports are projected to grow to $53 billion in the Gulf by 2020, according to a research paper by the Economist Intelligence Unit.

Many types of the imported produce could be grown onsite in Alesca Life’s container farms. “Anything you can imagine, from Italian herbs to the simplest sprouts and micro-greens,” says Oda. “These are typically things that are imported from Europe.”

The company first put down roots in the Middle East last year through the Dubai Future Accelerators program, where it was one of 30 companies to make the cut out of nearly 2,000 that applied to the government-backed startup accelerator. During the 12-week program Oda was introduced to potential local partners and clients in the Gulf. “It essentially allowed us to see if the technology had value in the region, which we were convinced it did,” says Oda.

The program culminated with Alesca Life signing a memorandum of understanding with the Dubai Municipality to be its strategic advisor.

According to Oda, Alesca Life is currently in the final stages of signing contracts with clients in the U.A.E. He declines to reveal client’s identities until after the deals are completed, but notes they’re talking to both public and private sector players. Oda is also reaching out to potential customers in Saudi Arabia.

In China, over the last six months Alesca Life has served clients such as Mercedes Benz and the hotel group Hotel Jen. Oda is currently exploring expanding into Europe and southeast Asia as well, an objective which he hopes to achieve within the next 12 months.

As a result, these days Oda spends more time flying than he does tending to his crops. He’s on pace to take 60 flights this year—or one flight about every six days.

Back in the U.A.E., Alesca Life isn’t the only one exploring agricultural innovation; local companies such as Landex Group and My Green Chapter, to name a few, are also addressing urban agriculture.

My Green Chapter, which caters to environmentally conscious Emirati consumers looking to grow their own food, is an online platform selling all manner of products designed for urban farming, from indoor growing kits to chicken coops.

“We believe urban farming will contribute very well to the U.A.E.’s agricultural industry,” says Jean-Charles Hameau, the company’s founder.

On a global scale companies such as Freight Farms, PodPonics and Growtainer in the U.S are pursuing technology similar to Alesca Life’s. It was a market opportunity that Oda came upon nearly six years ago, back when his office was in the corporate world rather than on a farm.

At that time Oda worked for Dell in China. Born in the U.S. and educated at the University of California Los Angeles, Oda started his career in investment banking working for Merrill Lynch in Tokyo before moving to Dell in 2011.

There he was tasked with mapping global mega-trends in emerging markets to see how—as Oda phrases it—“the challenges of today become the opportunities of tomorrow.”

It was through this he stumbled on the idea that led to Alesca Life. Although Dell was exploring opportunities in emerging markets from a personal computing angle, it got Oda thinking about global challenges that could be addressed by technology in general. One of the areas that caught his attention was agriculture.

He poked around and discovered that access to fresh produce can be a major challenge in emerging markets, with limiting factors such as agriculture’s reliance on land, logistics and climate.

He saw an opportunity for innovation. “From a market size perspective, it [agriculture] was exciting,” says Oda.

Others were exploring the problem too, doing things such as using weather data to optimize field crop production.

They’re part of a precision farming market that is expected to double in size from $3.2 billion in 2015 to $7.8 billion by 2022, according to India-based market research firm Markets and Markets.

Oda became convinced there must be tremendous opportunity in trying to improve the efficiency of agriculture by making it more data driven.

Still, it took Oda awhile to gather the courage to leave his job and jump headfirst into entrepreneurism. Ultimately, a sense of urgency overwhelmed him. “The opportunity isn’t available for very long,” says Oda.

He teamed up with two co-founders, Kazuho Komoda and Young Ha, to start the company in August 2013. Oda knew Komoda from his days working in investment banking in Tokyo, and Ha also worked at Dell in China (Ha has since left the company).

Then came the real challenges. For one thing, none of the founders were farmers by training. They also had to self-fund the venture in the early days.

Old shipping containers become miniature, automated farms.

They began by studying everything from plant biology to nutritional chemistry, while simultaneously tinkering with the software and technology. Slowly they began to develop a prototype. “It took a while,” admits Oda, with a laugh.

Early on they traveled to a port city in China, where they bought a secondhand shipping container. They refurbished it and insulated it, and then embedded their hardware—all of which was designed by the company. The resulting container was sheltered from air, water and soil pollution.

They developed the smartphone app to give the farm manager the ability to monitor all environmental parameters in the containers.

Once the container was built, Alesca Life’s team got down to the business of planting and growing crops.

The company scored its first client in 2014. Boasting a functioning product, Oda then turned his attention to fundraising and spreading word about the company.

Alesca Life didn’t get its first outside investment until the first prototype container was built and operational. Its earliest investors were friends and family. Oda recently closed a round of funding for more than $1 million, but he can’t disclose the investors yet. To date the company has secured seed funding and angel investments, although Oda won’t reveal the total amount raised.

Last year, Alesca Life competed in the 1776 Challenge Cup, a global startup competition. Although it didn’t win, through it Oda was recommended to the newly created Dubai Future Accelerators program, leading Alesca Life to apply, also last year.

Oda is now focusing his efforts on expanding Alesca Life into new markets, one of the first of which has been the U.A.E. In Dubai, Alesca Life is currently looking for ways to localize the manufacturing of their containers, as well as preparing to set up an office, where Oda plans to hire everyone from industrial designers to horticulturists.

Although it has planted a seed in Dubai, there are other challenges that may face the company as it expands, one of which is regulation. For the moment, Oda thinks the regulatory environment is quite friendly in Dubai.

Winning over consumers is another issue. In China, it has taken time to convince consumers to accept produce grown in new ways, rather than by traditional methods. So far, that hasn’t been a major issue in the U.A.E. either, at least not yet.

Another problem is growing different types of crops profitably. Some crops can be grown quite profitably in Alesca Life’s containers, while others cannot. It’s an issue Alesca Life’s team hopes to squash as they continue to tinker and refine their technology.

Challenges aside, Oda is adamant that it’s the right time for innovation in the agriculture industry. And in Dubai Oda thinks he’s found an opportunity ripe for the picking.

At A Chicago Embassy Suites, Sky Garden Is As Local As It Gets

At A Chicago Embassy Suites, Sky Garden Is As Local As It Gets

Tuesday August 8th, 2017 - 9:00AM

Sky Garden at the Embassy Suites by Hilton Chicago Downtown Magnificent Mile

CHICAGO—The hotel industry has embraced the farm-to-table movement, so much so, it’s no longer a novel idea but a practical way to source fresh ingredients locally and strengthen the guest’s connection to the land. From an onsite rooftop garden to a vertical hydroponic farm, it’s as local as local food gets.

The Embassy Suites by Hilton Chicago Downtown Magnificent Mile is taking the concept a step further by getting the food up close and personal with guests. The 455-all-suite hotel has turned its atrium into a greenhouse of sorts, to herald the arrival of its new Sky Garden and herb collection. Care to pinch a sprig of mint as you wheel your bags through the atrium? The hotel calls it a “direct to fork” approach.

“We have an amazing atrium with loads of natural light; it is one of the most striking features of the hotel. We were crafting a marketing message that would take that into account in our guest interactions," said Mike Rogers, director of sales & marketing for the hotel. Simultaneously, General Manager Konstantine Drosos attended a meeting on repurposing vacant buildings for urban farming. "When we put our heads together, we realized these were complementary concepts and could become something of an urban greenhouse, creating an opportunity for our guests to interact with a green space 365 days a year,” Rogers said. “Coinciding with our discussions on our greenhouse idea, we happened to be working with a client who does exactly this sort of thing—DIRTT Environmental Solutions. We approached them about feasibility, took a walk around their showroom and it took off from there.”

The Sky Garden was built by DIRTT Environmental Solutions, a provider specializing in prefabricated interior design components. DIRTT stands for “Do It Right This Time.” The company puts a strong focus on supporting the environment and people, as much as functional design, noted Rogers. The construction was customized to the hotel’s needs and specs and contains largely modular components, providing opportunities to evolve the space to keep it relevant.

“We wanted the Sky Garden to be a touchpoint, something for everyone to celebrate as they see fit rather than forcing it on our guests. For our chefs, this means herb-centric banquet menus and herb-focused enhancements to our cooked-to-order breakfast and evening reception,” he said. “While seasonality influences the primary components of our menus, the herbs themselves can be a consistent component adapted seasonally. For example, rosemary and watermelon agua fresca in summer can give way to rosemary biscuits in the winter.”

Unlike outdoor gardens, which are seasonal in many climates, the indoor Sky Garden promises to be a year round opportunity to engage with guests.

“There are two distinct trends that influenced this project. First, micro-sourcing is everywhere. We wanted to try to cut out the middle man and instead of farm-to-table, came up with a way to connect direct-to-fork across multiple touchpoints that fit within the Embassy Suites Brand Pillars. This presented opportunities with both our evening reception and our cooked-to-order breakfast,” he said. “Second, while there is an almost instinctual desire to eat 'al fresco,' the other trend we were keying on is the rooftop garden. In Chicago, these gardens are prevalent, but are also often inaccessible to guests and only in bloom for part of the year. The Sky Garden allows us to repurpose the atrium in a way that keeps it activated 365 days a year—come rain, snow, sleet or shine.”

Training associates how to share the Sky Garden with guests varies by department, with each group getting involved in a way that helps to connect the dots. Team gatherings were hosted in the atrium for sales, catering, concierge and culinary teams to ensure operational teams were involved and experienced the herbs, food and beverage. “To help take that story home—literally—and make it part of people’s lives, we gave out basil seeds to our housekeeping team. Our mantra to our clients and colleagues is to ‘cultivate your senses,’” Rogers said.

It’s not uncommon for a staff member to tear off pieces of mint or basil to highlight the smell and experience of the Sky Garden, which is there to activate all of the senses during a visit.

“We discourage actually eating the herbs directly, as they have not been washed or treated for consumption,” he said. “The fixture is permanent and we strategically located the herbs in the top two rows of the wall to ensure our younger guests wouldn’t be too tempted to get into things.”

A courtyard of faux bamboo in the hotel’s atrium has been turned into a real garden, but the story branches out in many directions from there.

“Whether it is the F&B experience onsite, a recipe to take home, or the DIY herb planters we hand out to our VIPs as gifts, there are so many ways to continue the story,” he said. “Philosophically, I have always felt herbs and the hospitality industry are a natural fit; the same way herbs enhance a dish, the right hotel team enhances people’s special moments, be it a wedding, vacation, key business meeting or any number of things. The Sky Garden is the embodiment of what we do at the Embassy Suites by Hilton Chicago Downtown Magnificent Mile.” 

—Corris Little

Full Automation From Planning To Control For Indoor Farms Is Here

Full Automation From Planning To Control For Indoor Farms Is Here

Brooklyn, August 10, 2017 - Two leading agtech companies have joined forces to offer award-winning automation software and hardware to indoor farms.

For the first time ever, growers will be able to use technology to automate processes that have previously been decided based on incomplete data. Agrilyst, based in Brooklyn, is the market leader in farm management and automation software for indoor farms. Motorleaf, based in Montreal, is a market leader in IoT, plug-and-play sensor, and controls hardware and software for hydroponic and greenhouse automation.

It is now possible to connect Motorleaf devices to Agrilyst’s platform. Growers can visualize all of their climate and nutrient information real-time and alongside their crop yield data.

“The customer is the most important piece of the puzzle, and facilitating easy access to critical information in an intuitive and plug-and-play environment are two of the things that both Agrilyst and Motorleaf customers already experience. Now for the first time they can do this with both companies working together on their behalf. Welcome to the new way agtech should work for all customers,” says Ally Monk, Motorleaf Co-Founder and CEO.

“We believe the open exchange of data between systems is critical for farm success and have always been committed to helping farmers access and utilize their data in better ways. We’re excited to work with Motorleaf, who is quickly becoming a key player in advanced indoor controls technology. Connecting to top-of-the line devices will help our customers get the best insights into their operations possible,” says Allison Kopf, Agrilyst Founder and CEO.

For a limited time, growers who sign up for an annual commercial farm subscription with Agrilyst will receive two free control units from Motorleaf.

About Agrilyst

Growers who are interested in taking the next step in data and automation can sign up at: https://www.agrilyst.com/motorleaf/

Agrilyst is the virtual agronomist powering the horticulture industry. The company was founded in 2015 and is based in Brooklyn, NY. The subscription-based software helps growers automate labor-intensive processes like production planning, crop scheduling, and task management and drive higher revenues on the farm. Agrilyst is committed to helping every indoor farmer reach profitability.

Contact: Allison Kopf CEO, Agrilyst  |  akopf@agrilyst.com

About Motorleaf

https://www.agrilyst.com/motorleaf/

Motorleaf turns any greenhouse and indoor farm, into a smart connected operation. From a hobby grower to 100+ acres of greenhouse; Motorleaf has a suite of hardware and software to allow the Monitoring, Automation, and AI/Machine Learning enabled discovery to flourish. Motorleaf allows all farmers to ‘Sleep Well While Plants Grow Well.’

Your Greens Might Soon Be Grown in Warehouses

Your Greens Might Soon Be Grown in Warehouses

Technology-driven businesses such as New Jersey-based Bowery are bypassing traditional farming with warehouses and LED fixtures.

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Bowery Farms grows hydroponic crops out of a warehouse in Kearny, New Jersey, using LED lights. Co-founder Irving Fain says productivity far exceeds that of traditional farming.  PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF BOWERY

By Christina Nunez

PUBLISHED AUGUST 11, 2017

Transformational ideas can come from anywhere. From anyone. National Geographic’s CHASING GENIUS is now soliciting ideas around three issues: sustainable planet, global health, and feeding nine billion. Could your solution be a spark of genius? Check out the challenge, where the best ideas for improving our world each can win $25,000.

At a warehouse in New Jersey, beds of hydroponically grown greens sit under grow lights, eventually bound for high-end restaurants and grocery stores in New York City and surrounding areas. Bowery is one of several indoor farming startups aiming to reinvent agriculture using new technology, from highly efficient lights to plant-monitoring software.

Here, Bowery co-founder and CEO Irving Fain talks about the future of urban farming and why it's important.

How is Bowery different from traditional agriculture?

We grow in a completely controlled environment, which means that we can grow 365 days of the year, totally independent of weather and seasonality. The reliable, consistent supply of high-quality produce year-round is a complete departure from centuries of the way agriculture has functioned. We grow all of our food without any pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, or insecticides.

When you grow in that way out in the field, you typically see substantial declines in the yields of the crops. In our case,we actually are able to grow more than twice as fast as the field for a number of crops. We end up more than 100 times more productive than a square foot of outdoor farmland, and we're saving over 95 percent of the water.

Our farms are so close to the point of consumption that our time between harvest and consumption is a fraction of what traditional agriculture has. We can build a much better business than many traditional farmers have today.

That's a striking percentage of water reduction. Why is that?

We built a system that allows us to monitor how the plants are growing and give them only what they need, when they need it. So we're being much more thoughtful about giving the plants any of the inputs that they need to grow. We are also able to recirculate and reuse water.

What was the inspiration for starting the company?

I've always been a big believer in technology's ability to solve difficult problems. When you look at the current agricultural system today, you see that it is really at the epicenter—either directly or indirectly—of so many global issues. By 2050, according to the UN, we'll have nine to 10 billion people on the planet, and we need somewhere between 50 and 70 percent more food to feed that growing population.

That additional food has to come from moving a lot of levers—it's not just what we're doing here that solves this problem. But figuring out ways to grow food in a more efficient way is important. I became really fascinated with this question of, how do you provide fresh food to urban environments, and how do you do it in a way that's both more efficient and more sustainable? (See also: Feeding 9 Billion)

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Bowery vertically stacks its plants to maximize growing space.

PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF BOWERY

Of course, the idea of growing food indoors isn't really new—what's changed?

People have been using lights to grow indoors for a long time. The problem was, the light fixtures were expensive and inefficient.

It wasn't until about six or seven years ago that everything changed. The cost of LED fixtures dropped by over 85 percent, and the efficiency more than doubled. The stacking [of crops] was enabled by the LEDs because they're very thin and they can pull the heat away from the plants well. That means you can stack vertically and use the cubic space much more efficiently.

We also have a [proprietary software network] across our entire farm. We're collecting millions of points of data in real time. We have cameras that are not only taking pictures of the plants, but they're running those pictures through machine-learning algorithms and are actually able to understand, how is this plant growing, what's the quality we're seeing—and then in real time make tweaks to the conditions to change the way the crops are growing.

What advice would you give to someone who has an innovative idea and wants to pursue it?

Get started. And don't be afraid to ask questions and reach out to people to gain as much knowledge as you can. People oftentimes are surprised at how much they could learn just from asking the right questions to the right people.

While I'm not recommending haphazardly diving in, there's a point of diminishing returns whereby thinking and talking to people is yielding less value than you get just by getting started.

Often the point where entrepreneurs will hesitate is right at that cliff. They're looking for a sort of certainty that will urge them to jump off. The reality of entrepreneurship is, that certainty doesn't exist—and it will never exist. You've got to just jump in.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Mouser Electronics “Vertical Farming” E-Book

Mouser Electronics “Vertical Farming” E-Book

August 2017

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Tying into the first EBook from Mouser Electronics’ Empowering Innovation Together initiative, Mouser and Grant Imahara of MythBusters’ fame now explore the up-and-coming realm of urban farming. As previously mentioned, the Empowering Innovation Together initiative takes readers on a quest for new knowledge where they can see a direct connection between ideas and products, and how it’s all applied into a working solution.

In this EBook, entitled “Vertical Farming,” Mouser and suppliers Analog Devices, Intel, Microchip and Molex explore how urban farming could help smart cities meet the challenge of feeding their growing populations.

From precision agriculture and indoor farming to energy efficiency and connectivity, this E-Book examines the aspects of smart agriculture, and the implications these advances may have on our future.

In their next stop, partners Mouser Electronics, WIRED Brand Lab and Grant Imahara visit Tokyo and meet with the group at Mirai, whose goal is to bring farm-fresh food to the middle of one of the busiest cities on the planet. Join Mouser and series sponsors Intel, Analog Devices, Microchip Technology and Molex for a look at the future.

In The Future, Your Grocery Will Likely Come From The Building Next To You

In The Future, Your Grocery Will Likely Come From The Building Next To You

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Tyagarajan S August 8, 2017

The green spires rise up like monstrous trees. Inside the climate regulated indoor farm, drones and robots fuss over walls of green, while self-regulating systems maintain humidity and nutrients. When they are ready to be harvested, automated delivery systems bring these fresh produce to tables in a matter of an hour or two. This self-contained farm is one of many hundreds, spread throughout the city, supplying food to those living around it.

This could be the future as mounting constraints on modern agriculture pushes us into exploring alternate ways to produce food to feed the urban mega-cities of the future. One growing movement offers to bring change nearly 10,000 year-old fundamentals of farming.

Can Farming Really Move Indoors?

Agtech Floating
Indoor vertical farms are trending. The largest agtech investment till date is a $200 million Series B funding, led by SoftBank and other investors including Bezos Expeditions, in a previously little known startup called Plenty.

In a 52,000 sq. ft. facility in San Francisco, Plenty grows various leafy greens on vertical panes. Although it is yet to sell its produce in stores, the startup (and the investors) believes that it has the technology to disrupt the market of ‘growing food’. With its new found financial muscle, Plenty wants to set up vertical farms all over the US, Japan, China and the Middle East.

Until Plenty came along, there was another company that hogged the farming revolution limelight — Aerofarms. A couple of months back, it raised a little more than $34 million as part of its Series D funding. Bowery, another indoor farming startup from New York, raised $20 million in funding soon after.

Aerofarms grows leafy greens, carrots, potatoes, etc. in its vertical farms and claims it is 130 times more efficient than a conventional farm. Source: Aerofarms

What’s all this money going to? Right now, into an experiment that lies at the convergence of the agricultural, industrial and technological revolution. Inside sterile, climate controlled buildings that resemble a chipset factory more than a farm, these startups grow produce without using soil.

In recent years, hydroponics, a technique that involves growing plants using nutrient solution and water as medium has gained popularity. But startups such as Plenty and Aerofarms use what they claim is an even superior technique called Aeroponics. The roots of the plants are suspended on a misty medium rich in nutrients.In either case, these indoor farms do away with soil and sunlight.

Farm computing
Perhaps a better term would be to call these “farm computers”.

LED lights enable photosynthesis and growth. The temperature is controlled and varied as required. Nutrients are added or removed and humidity is tightly regulated thanks to sensors that constantly monitor their levels. All of this is monitored and regulated by a farm operating system. Need less sodium in the leafy greens? Just tweak a few controls.

Japan, with limited arable land and fast dwindling workforce, is very interested. Spread, one of the country’s largest vertical farming companies, produces more than 20,000 lettuce heads everyday using hydroponics. It has set its sights on more than doubling its yield to 50,000 using automation and robotics. Fujitsu, an electronics giant, is converting unused semiconductor facilities into indoor hydroponic farms.

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When Spread opened its Kameoka plant in 2007, it had worked for six years before that to be able to scale its production. Source: Spread.

China, whose blistering growth left its farmlands toxic, is exploring indoor farming techniques as a way to feed its dense urban centers. A Chinese architectural firm is building a multi-story hydroponic vertical farm in Shanghai to grow leafy greens. In Singapore, a Panasonic-run vertical farm cultivates 40 different crops and 80 tons of veggies every year.

There have been small, niche attempts in India too. A small 1600 sq.ft. vertical farm in Goa cultivates about three tonnes of lettuce every month. Future Farms in Chennai is evangelising hydroponic farming with a handful of pilot farms although these are not indoor farms.

One projection estimates that the vertical farming market will be $4 billion by 2020. But how and why did they suddenly get so popular?

Fantasy to necessity
Over the last 10,000 years, since our foraging forefathers started settling down to farm, the fundamentals of agriculture hasn’t changed much. However, the explosion of demand and the resulting scaling up of this agriculture in our recent history has come at a price. Agriculture uses up nearly a third of our land mass (not including Antartica) and consumes 70% of all global freshwater.

Global population is hurtling towards the nine billion mark by 2050 putting a huge ask on our food production. Open arable lands are hard to come by for countries with low space (Japan, Singapore) or harsh climate (Middle East). In countries like India, climate change and poor planning have resulted in complete dependence on the vagaries of monsoon.

So when you hear Plenty claim that their technology can help produce 350 times the output of a conventional farm in the same area, you sit up and listen. Most indoor vertical farms also claim to consume about one-hundredth of the water required for conventional farming.

“Indoor farmers do not have to pray for rain, or sunshine, or moderate temperatures, or anything else related to the production of food crops, for that matter,” said Dickson Despommier who coined the term “vertical farm” when he wrote The Vertical Farm: Feeding the world in the 21st century back in 2010. It’s a promise that offers hope in the current scenario.

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Back when Dickson Despommier published the book in 2010, the concept of indoor vertical farm was being pursued seriously in few places. Today, the landscape has changed quite a bit. ©Picador

The vagaries of weather on farming is only set to get worse with the worsening effects of climate change. Countries seeking food security cannot rely only on uncertain climatic conditions to feed their growing populace.

Moreover, food production today is a black box today with increasing concerns on quality. A fifth of all arable land in China has more than the prescribed level of toxins for agriculture — the result of the industrial growth surge. As a result, the market for organic produce is surging ($60 billion market by 2020) despite the fact that the label is abused widely nor is it a guarantee that pesticides were not used. Produce grown in indoor farms promise a new level of quality. Bowery calls them “post-organic”, meaning they are grown with zero pesticides.

An indoor vertical farm in the thick of an urban center can also deliver fresh produce faster and with low delivery carbon footprint than traditional farms that need their produce to travel (sometimes) hundreds of kilometers adding to both economic and environmental costs. So, what’s holding them back?

Numbers trail the hype
In 2013, an economic feasibility study conducted to look at what it would take to supply fresh produce to 15,000 people demanding 2,000 kcal of nutrition per day, estimated that the vertical farm would need to be the size of a city-block, 37 floors high, use LED illumination and would be able to supply produce at around $3.40 to $4 per kilogram. In essence, vertical farms today can profitably cater to only high value produce for elites.

For the well funded vertical farm startups, the economics are yet to catch up with the valuations. The set-up costs are high and so are the running energy costs (climate control, LED lighting etc.).

In developing countries where power is more valuable and less reliable, the costs add up and pretty much make indoor farms out of reach for large scale adoption.

Navin Durai, chief marketing officer of Future Farms, told me a few months ago that the capital expense of setting up these farms in India is high since majority of components have to be imported (about Rs 1 crore per acre). And running them with artificial lighting pushes the set up costs even further up. Vertical farms farms relying on direct sunlight and using hydroponics will have operational costs that are a fraction of regular farms and could potentially recover initial costs in three-four years.

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Chennai based Future Farms uses hydroponics to cultivate leafy greens, tomato, bell peppers, broccoli, lettuce etc

But the dynamics are changing rapidly. The components to set up farms including sensors, regulators and the machine learning intelligence are all fast getting commoditized. For instance, the prices of LED lights have dropped by more than 90% in less than a decade. Energy prices could begin to drop if the cost of renewable energy continues to plummet. There could a case for these indoor vertical farms to become profitable in the short term and scale.

But economics isn’t the only hurdle. Google X, which works on moonshot ideas to solve large problems, killed their work on automated vertical farming project some time back. The reason: vertical farms cannot grow staples like rice and wheat that feed a vast majority of the world. Today, vertical farming can primarily produce leafy greens and some vegetables.

Countries that need to mass produce cheap food for its populations like India, China and large parts of Africa cannot still rely on indoor vertical farms to fulfill their needs. Even if the costs align, running these farms require complex expertise with a steep learning curve. These farms demand engineers, biologists, machine learning experts and data scientists.

Does this mean these farms will remain niche indulgences at best? Maybe not. The investments pouring into this could help scale up the technology and increasing commoditization could make these feasible very soon.

The future of your groceries
In a few decades, more than 70% of humanity will be living in a city. The rise of large mega-cities with millions of people and that are connected to each other through high-speed transit may be inevitable. More and more people will demand variety, quality and freshness in food. Meanwhile, climate change and pollution will continue to dwindle land available for agriculture. We’re rapidly running out of water too.

Inevitably, farms will have to get local, move closer to urban centers and be efficient in their use of resources. Detroit, once a symbol of industrial revolution that produced automobiles, is now seeing an agrarian revolution as entrepreneurs buy up old warehouses and abandoned factories and convert them into indoor farms that can generate fresh produce. In London, one startup is growing produce in the forgotten old tunnels beneath the city.

Indoor farms could become self-contained ecosystems that can just download “climate recipes” that enables simulating any climate. One could grow mangoes in Mexico and jalapenos in India. Open Agriculture Initiative by MIT Media Lab strives to do just that by bringing technology that makes indoor farming easy.

As automation increases, these indoor farms could potentially grow in size and scale. Spread is launching is fully automatic vegetable factory where all activities post seeding are done without human intervention. This will enable self-contained farm ecosystems to emerge and eventually get commoditised. Large living enclaves and communities may sport their own farms.

A smart food value chain will emerge, letting consumers order produce on demand fresh from these farms. The rise of on-demand grocery delivery service today is perhaps just the beginning. In the future, smart sensors could help track food from its origin until it reaches the consumer. Individuals may even be able to custom-grow food to their tastes. You could alter the sodium content in your leafy greens. Imagine getting food from farm to table in a matter of a minutes.

Perhaps this is the kind of grocery value chain that Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has on his mind. His personal investment fund Bezos Expeditions is one of the investors in Plenty. Earlier this year, Amazon purchased Whole Foods. It isn’t hard to imagine little automated indoor farms all across the country growing produce and then have a supply chain of drones and self-driving delivery vehicles moving groceries to the end consumers.

For when we eventually do colonize other lands, it’s likely that we’ll ship self contained farm-pods across space even before we set up large scale colonies. But much before we do that, we’ll likely get used to them on earth.

Urban Farms: Projects From Around The World

Urban Farms: Projects From Around The World

By: Henry J. Schumacher

AUGUST 6, 2017

As social entrepreneurs find novel ways to make agriculture an integral part of urban life, I would like to share 10 innovative approaches with you from around the world:

 

Philippines: Quezon City Vice Mayor Maria Josefina “Joy” Belmonte’s campaign, “The Joy of Urban Planting”

The city currently has 68 farms of various sizes found in barangays, public-elementary schools, day-care centers, parishes and non-governmental organizations. The city works with the Department of Environment and Natural Resources and the Department of Agriculture, which provide financial grants. Even if city farmers fail to bring their items to market, urban farming is still a win-win situation. “If they don’t produce [enough] for selling, as long as they can eat their products to decrease the issue of malnutrition, it’s already a triumph,” Belmonte said.

GrowUp Box, London, UK

Kate Hofman and Tom Webster are giving new meaning to the phrase “box lunch” with their reinvented shipping container, the GrowUp Box.
Inside the 20-foot container, tilapia are farmed in tanks especially designed to ensure there is enough room for fish to grow, while on top, greens are cultivated in vertical columns. The water from the tilapia tanks circulates through the columns, where the fish waste provides nourishment to about 400 plants. The fish and greens are sold to area restaurants.

The project’s parent company, GrowUp Urban Farms, consults with people looking to build their own boxes and is set to start building the first commercial-scale aquaponics farm in London, Hofman said. http://growup.org.uk/#%21for-schools-and-universities/c1v6f

Beacon Food Forest, Seattle, Washington, US

The Beacon Food Forest in Seattle is turning a piece of public land into an edible forest garden. Residents will be welcome to forage in the forest, a 7-acre plot­—adjacent to a city park—featuring fruit and nut trees, a pumpkin patch and dozens of berry bushes. The goal is to mimic a natural ecosystem, creating a space that requires less maintenance and offers higher yields, cofounder Glenn Herlihy says. http://www.beaconfoodforest.org/

Farmery, North Carolina and TBA, US

Benjamin Greene, founder of the Farmery, plans to make the journey from farm to store more efficient by eliminating it almost entirely.

The Farmery is an 8,000-square-foot market with food shopping on the lower level and mushrooms, greens and fruits growing on the upper level. Whatever is not grown on site will be sourced locally. http://www.thefarmery.com/

Sky Greens, Lim Chu Kang area, Singapore

Singapore, one of the most densely populated nations in the world, has little room available for farming. So inventor and entrepreneur Jack Ng created the Sky Greens system to grow more food in less space. Think of it as a plant skyscraper.

The equipment holds up to 32 trays of greens—including lettuce, spinach and a variety of Asian greens—on a tall, narrow A-frame structure. The plants slowly rotate, as if on a Ferris wheel, so each tray gets sufficient exposure to sunlight.

Sky Greens harvests and delivers vegetables to Singaporean markets every day. http://www.skygreens.com/

Brooklyn Grange, Brooklyn, New York, US

The Brooklyn Grange comprises two and a half acres of growing space high atop a pair of office buildings. “We’re looking at ways to increase food production without increasing agricultural footprint,” Spokesman Anastasia Plakias said.

The operation grows more than 50,000 pounds of food each year, which it sells through farmers’ markets, CSA subscriptions and wholesale accounts. In addition to boosting New York City’s local food supply, the farm also absorbs more than 1 million gallons of stormwater every year, reducing the load the city’s systems must manage. www.brooklyngrangefarm.com

Deu Horta Na Telha, São Paulo, Brazil

After 30 years of building urban gardens in São Paulo, agricultural technician Marcos Victorino started running out of cultivable land.

As part of his research work at local college Faculdade Cantareira, he designed a way to turn roofs, balconies and paved areas across the city into miniature farms. Victorino turns large roof tiles upside down, creating a long, V-shaped trough that can be filled with soil.

These tile beds are elevated, making them easily accessible to children and the handicapped. Because the tiles are watertight, they hold in moisture, allowing growers to make the most of an increasingly limited water supply.

Prinzessinnengarten, Berlin, Germany

The Prinzessinnengarten is an urban farm nestled in the shadow of the former
Berlin Wall, between unused subway stops, graffitied concrete walls and aging apartment blocks. Inside vine-covered fences grows a wide range of vegetables, all planted in easy-to-move containers—recycled Tetra Paks, rice sacksand plastic crates—that allow the entire operation to be moved if needed. Visitors can pick vegetables, learn about seed harvesting and vegetable pickling, or visit the café to enjoy snacks made from the garden’s produce. http://prinzessinnengarten.net/about/

Urban Organics, St. Paul, Minnesota, US

Located in a building formerly occupied by a commercial brewery, Urban Organics is an aquaponics operation that provides salad greens and fish to grocery stores and restaurants using just 2 percent of the water of conventional agriculture. Founder Fred Haberman, CEO of Minneapolis marketing agency Haberman, hopes the for-profit farm will prove the commercial viability of aquaponics and help spur economic development in the area. “If we can do that, I believe you’ll see more of these types of facilities popping up,” he said.  http://urbanorganics.com/

Lufa Farms, Montreal, Canada

The goal of Lufa Farms in Montreal is to create a “local food engine”, says the company’s greenhouse director Lauren Rathmell.

At the heart of the operation are two sprawling rooftop greenhouses—currently totaling 1.75 acres—that produce a range of vegetables: greens and herbs, peppers and eggplants. The produce is packaged with locally sourced goods like handmade pastas, fresh bread and dark baking chocolate, and delivered to approximately 4,000 customers each week. https://montreal.lufa.com/en/

Comments are welcome; contact me at hjschumacher59@gmail.com.