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WINNERS ANNOUNCED:  Hackathon to Grow Crops on Mars Sees ‘Duckweed’ Take Prize for Best Solution 

WINNERS ANNOUNCED:  Hackathon to Grow Crops on Mars Sees ‘Duckweed’ Take Prize for Best Solution

7 November 2017, San Francisco, USA

 Hackathon team ‘Just Food’ and their innovative solution for utilizing the aquatic plant duckweed, took the win Sunday night at the inaugural 2017 Autogrow #CropsOnMars Hackathon.

Global ag-tech company Autogrow acknowledged the solution was incredibly well thought out, achievable and original.

“The team did an impressive job researching how they could not only grow duckweed in a challenging environment but how it could realistically sustain life on Mars,” said Autogrow CEO Darryn Keiller.

“The judges all agreed that, while duckweed wasn’t the most appetizing food source, they couldn’t argue with the nutrient value or the innovative prototype of super thin LED lit grow beds they had created.”

‘Just Food’ and nine other teams hacked for two days on software, data or design solutions involving plant biology, controlled environment agriculture and the Mars environment. The judges looked for originality, sustainability, scalability and the potential for reproducibility on Earth.

Teams had the support of mentors and event organizers Autogrow and Silicon Valley Forum over the two days.  

“I was privileged to be a mentor covering all aspects of plant biology and lighting. It was also great hackers had access to other mentors from NASA, IBM, Microsoft, Plenty, Orange Silicon Valley and Western Growers to name a few. And of course, the support of event partner Silicon Valley Forum who found a wonderful venue to hack. Like plants, people thrive in the right environment and we had a great growing environment,” said Autogrow Director of Crop Science and Agronomy Tharindu Weeraratne.

The race for the win was so tight that two teams took the runner-up slot with one advocating collapsible growth chambers and the other a rapid deployable enclosure to be set up prior to astronaut arrival using robotic technology.

Mr. Keiller noted that although teams were competing against each other there was an impressive amount of support for one another.

“The Hackers (predominantly millennials) gave us great hope for the future due to their creativity, their outlook to the future and to put things right for our planet’s ecosystem while meeting the needs of our growing population.”

“As organizers of the event, the most unexpected and visceral emotion of the collective teams was the spirit of unity around the daunting challenge we put in front of them. Here were people from perhaps 20 nations; students, startup founders, academics and business owners, all coming together to do something that was substantially beyond any one of them. The strength of their ideas was in their diversity as people and their willingness to collaborate.”

With the success of the inaugural event under their belt, Autogrow will announce new dates early in the year for the next #CropsOnMars hackathon, likely to be scheduled for late 2018 and held in Silicon Valley. 

WINNING TEAM ‘JUST FOOD’

Wyatt Smith

Michelle Jia

Deger Turan

Santiago Perez

Zandra Vinegar

JUDGING PANEL

Dr. Nate Storey, Chief Science Officer – Plenty

Jeffrey Law, Chief Technology Officer – Autogrow

Dr Ioana Cozmuta, Industry Engagement, Commercial Space Partnerships – NASA

Andrew Scheurmann, CEO – Arch Systems

Greg Chiocco, Director of Product Management - Climate Corporation

Dr Rosie Bosworth, Strategic Communications – Sustain Ltd

MENTORS

Bilind Hajer, Data Engenieer - Product School

Tobi Ogunaikee, Software Engineer

Isabel Chamberlain, Compliance Specialist and Grower - Plenty

Akihiro Ishimura, Senior Consultant/ AgTech Expert - Fujitsu

Miika Mantyvaara, Global Marketing, Business Development and Innovation - The Vault

Robert (Bruce) Pittman, Chief System Engineer - NASA

Bilind Hajer, Data Engineer - Product School

Anna Propas, Software Engineer Lead Instructor - Coding Dojo

Juanita Dion, Software Engineer - IBM

Dennis Donohue, President at Royal Rose Radicchio - Western Growers Association

Ulrika Lidstorm, Research Scientist & Program Coordinator - Dupont Pioneer

Davies Odu, Software Engineer - Microsoft

Itiya Aneece, PhD Researcher - USGS

Hugo Wagner, Partner - Orange Silicon Valley

Erica Riel Carden, AgTech & FoodTech Advisor - Global Capital Markets

Davies Odu, Software Engineer - Microsoft

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Are Vertical Farms The Way Forward for Bengaluru?

Are Vertical Farms The Way Forward for Bengaluru?

Dhwani Desai| TNN | Oct 8, 2017

Pollution and space restraints — something that Bengalureans tackle every single day. Scarcity of water and erratic climate changes have become unfortunate realities, but we still carry on leading our lives in traditional ways that were meant for a plentiful world. It is said that by 2050, there will be well over nine billion people in the world, and 70% of them will live in urban areas. As a result, there is bound to be food shortage and food security issues. This is why 23-year-old Rutusha Nagaraj Kapini, a fresh graduate of The Oxford School of Architecture, picked vertical farming as the topic for her thesis, which, she says, is the way forward in an urban metropolis like Bengaluru. And such was her research into the topic that she received two awards for it — Zonal Winner, Council of Architecture National Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Architectural Thesis 2017 (top 10 in Zone 4) and Archi Design Best Thesis of the Year Award 2016 (Student of the Year Award — national level).


For her thesis, Rutusha had to find an innovative solution to the following problem: 'Increasing population has drastically reduced farming lands. Raw food, such as vegetables and fruits, are loaded with toxic chemicals and pesticides'. Having attended the All India Convention of Architects in 2008 (both her parents are architects), Rutusha was inspired by Dr Dickson Despommier's speech — he is considered the father of vertical farming. "He spoke about how vertical farming can be beneficial in urban populated cities in India, as it can produce nutritious food that one can access within the city. He is the reason I picked this topic," she says.

CREATING VERTI FARMS
So, what did Rutusha discover through research for her thesis? She found that vertical farming could be an innovative model through architectural design intervention, which minimizes land usage, while still feeding the population. The environmentally-conscious and ecological design is conceived as a network of facilities, with training centres for farmers, and creating bioclimatic buildings of the future — Verti Farms. Throwing more light on the topic, Rutusha says, "Bioclimatic buildings are those that respond to climate; verti farms are inside these buildings. The buildings create an artificial environment within them and are not completely dependent on natural resources. So, design plays a big role. For e.g., they will have solar tubes through which natural sunlight enters the building. There will also be LED light farming (certain LED lights help plants grow). Each of the planters will be placed on rotational carousels within the building. There will be mirrors on the walls that will reflect the natural sunlight (the buildings will not be completely closed and the openings will be protected with stainless-steel meshes). The carousels will be placed in stacked heights; there will be one water inlet source, and since the platforms rotate, the water will be drained out at a single drain pipe, which will lead to the central service core that will be connected to a sewerage treatment plant." Through this method, she adds, only 5% of water is required for five times the yield. Also, changes in weather will not affect the crops much as the environment within the building is controlled.


A VERTI FARM IN LALBAGH?

To get a better idea of how verti farms work, Rutusha went to Singapore for a live study of the Sky Greens there. Having done sufficient research, she has identified a vacant plot of land near Lalbagh that can be put to productive use by setting up India's first vertical farm there. "The government already has HOPCOMS set up in many places; similarly, they could allot land to verti farms. These can serve as interactive spaces for the public, which would encourage them to adapt it on smaller scales, such as at apartment complexes and private layouts. It can even serve as local marketplaces, where the produce is sold fresh," says Rutusha. But wouldn't this harm the income of farmers? "No," says Rutusha, explaining, "Farmers will be required to work on verti farms. Each building will have training centres for the farmers — it will be a free course. Crops often fail due to erratic climate changes, but verti farms reduce that risk, since they are not completely dependent on natural forces. So, farmers will actually be able to generate a steady income."

What is interesting is that verti farms cater to city-specific needs. This reflects in the plants that can be grown in them — fruits and vegetables that we use for daily consumption. This includes tomato, peas, brinjal, curry leaves, basil, lettuce, mint, cauliflower, spring onions, okra, cucumber, lemons and broccoli, among others.

CRUNCHING NUMBERS
The organic building that Rutusha has proposed will be expensive initially, but, she says, costs will breakeven after five years, after which it will be profitable. "A 10-acre site in Lalbagh can accommodate two high-rise verti farms. On the same land, I have proposed the setting up of training and research centres, a local market and an interactive space. All this can be built at an estimated cost of Rs 200 crore," says Rutusha.

The young architect wants to continue research on the subject through a Master programme, apart from creating a startup to convert her thesis into a viable business model. If her efforts come to fruition, Bengaluru could very well be home to India's first vertical farm.

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IKEA Debuts Farm That Can Grow in Your Kitchen

The prototype known as Lokal, uses a hydroponic farming system that allows crops to grow on trays under LED light in a climate-controlled box.

IKEA Debuts Farm That Can Grow in Your Kitchen

BUSINESS REPORT / 9 OCTOBER 2017, 4:30PM / STAFF REPORTER

Image: Indoor Growing Kits & Cultivators by IKEA ( IKEA)

Image: Indoor Growing Kits & Cultivators by IKEA ( IKEA)

ONDON - The home furnishings retailer IKEA is now experimenting with products that allow people to harvest food at home.

Space10, Ikea's innovation lab, has designed a prototype of a mini-farm that can grow greens and herbs indoors.

The prototype known as Lokal, uses a hydroponic farming system that allows crops to grow on trays under LED light in a climate-controlled box.

From tasty lemon basil to crispy red romaine lettuce - KRYDDA/VÄXER series makes it easy to grow your own indoor garden all year round. You don't need soil, sunlight or even a spot outside! How does it work? Just keep an eye on the water level and that's it.

Space10 debuted the device in September at the London Design Festival in Shoreditch.

Crops grow under LEDs instead of relying on natural sunlight. 

Accordinng to the Space10 team, this process allows the greens to grow approximately three times quicker than in an outdoor garden.

The Space10 team estimates that Lokol uses 90% less water than a traditional garden to produce the same amount of greens, since the crops grow at a faster rate.

Space10 gave 2,000 free samples of Lokal microgreens to London Design Week attendees.

The purpose was to see how Londoners felt about Ikea's experiment and food grown hydroponically in general. In a press release, the team said they were optimistic about the project.

The Space10 team is now working on adding sensors to the growing trays, so that users can track how the greens grow using Google Home. 

Using machine learning, the sensor system could allow gardeners to learn how to improve the growing process.

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Student-Grown Salad In The School Cafeteria? These Kids Dig It

Student-Grown Salad In The School Cafeteria? These Kids Dig It

By Rachel Nania @rnania  |  October 8, 2017

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WASHINGTON — School gardens are no longer a rarity.

These days, it’s common to spot pepper plants and tomato towers in schoolyards throughout the country, as more educators turn to dirt to teach lessons on healthy eating and the root of the food system.

But at Horace Mann Elementary School in Northwest D.C., instruction isn’t confined to a few cedar-raised beds. After leafy vegetables are planted and cared for, students harvest the crops, chop them up and serve them to more than 400 of their peers for lunch.

At Horace Mann Elementary School in Northwest D.C., gardening lessons are not confined to a few cedar-raised beds. After leafy vegetables are planted and cared for, students harvest the crops, chop them up and serve them to more than 400 of their peers for lunch. (WTOP/Rachel Nania)

Amy Jagodnik’s third-floor classroom, which is filled with seedlings and outfitted with a small kitchen, opens directly to the school’s rooftop garden. It’s there where a class of third-graders pick parsley and pak choi from commercial-grade garden towers on Monday mornings. (WTOP/Rachel Nania)

“It’s really fun having a conversation with them about whether they prefer the Swiss chard last week to the pak choi this week,” said Amy Jagodnik, who has been the school’s garden coordinator since 2004. (WTOP/Rachel Nania)

Architect Michael Marshall designed the rooftop farm, one of several gardens at Horace Mann elementary, during the school’s renovation three years ago. “The connection to the exterior is not an accident in this design. A lot of these young kids, when they grow up, rooftop gardens are going to be very common as far as sustainability and urban living. Why not prepare them?” Marshall said. (WTOP/Rachel Nania)

Garden coordinator, Amy Jagodnik, shows a student the proper way to cut greens on the elementary school’s rooftop farm. (WTOP/Rachel Nania)

An American University student helps a third-grader dry leaves of Swiss chard and pak choi on the roof of Horace Mann Elementary. (WTOP/Rachel Nania)

After the weekly harvest, students chop the greens and serve them to 400 of their peers in the school cafeteria. (WTOP/Rachel Nania)

“You’re laying the foundation for global stewards,” Amy Jagodnik said about the school’s investment in its gardening program.

“You want children to care about their environment. You want them to know how to eat healthy, where their food comes from and how to support that, even if they don’t become scientists or become environmentalists, they still have that foundation.” (WTOP/Rachel Nania)

At lunch, Jagodnik and a few helpers walk around the cafeteria and serve the salad du jour.

“So we’re going to each table and we’re engaging with each student and asking them if they would like a sample or if they would like a salad,” Amy Jagodnik explained. (WTOP/Rachel Nania)

      “It’s really fun having a conversation with them about whether they prefer the Swiss chard last week to the pak choi this week,” said Amy Jagodnik, who has been the school’s garden coordinator since 2004.

      Jagodnik’s third-floor classroom, which is filled with seedlings and outfitted with a small kitchen, opens directly to the school’s rooftop garden. It’s there where a class of third-graders pick parsley and pak choi from commercial-grade garden towers on Monday mornings.

      Architect Michael Marshall designed the rooftop farm, one of several gardens at Horace Mann, during the school’s renovation three years ago.  

      “The connection to the exterior is not an accident in this design. A lot of these young kids, when they grow up, rooftop gardens are going to be very common as far as sustainability and urban living. Why not prepare them?” Marshall said.

      Once the greens are gathered and washed, they’re hand-chopped and thrown into large stainless steel bowls, where they’re tossed in a simple dressing of olive oil, apple cider vinegar, salt and sugar.

      At lunch, Jagodnik and a few helpers walk around the cafeteria and serve the salad du jour.

      “So we’re going to each table and we’re engaging with each student and asking them if they would like a sample or if they would like a salad,” Jagodnik explained.

      It’s not uncommon to be met with resistance and a few creative excuses — Jagodnik has even heard students say they “already had something green for breakfast.” So she considers the program a success when the kids agree to try just one leaf.

      “You’re laying the foundation for global stewards,” Jagodnik said about the school’s investment in its gardening program.

      “You want children to care about their environment. You want them to know how to eat healthy, where their food comes from and how to support that, even if they don’t become scientists or become environmentalists, they still have that foundation.”

      Like WTOP on Facebook and follow @WTOP on Twitter to engage in conversation about this article and others.

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      What Do Indoor Farming CEOs Think of Hydroponics Organic Approval?

      What Do Indoor Farming CEOs Think of Hydroponics Organic Approval?

      NOVEMBER 8, 2017 EMMA COSGROVE

      Last week the National Organic Safety Board (NOSB), the body tasked with making recommendations to the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) around its organic certification, rejected a proposal that would disallow hydroponic and aquaponic farms from being certified organic.

      Hydroponic farms grow fruit and vegetables in a growing medium submerged in water, through which farmers provide nutrients. Aquaponic farmers use connected aquaculture operations to provide these nutrients.

      In 2010 the NOSB voted to exclude “soilless” forms of growing, but the USDA decided not to take the recommendation, continuing to allow hydroponic farms to be certified and leading to a period of uncertainty on the subject. 

      Some 100 hydroponic farms have been certified over the years inside and out of the United States (there are USDA organic approved certifiers all over the world).  But the ambivalence on the part of the USDA and according to one certifier, often true belief in a soil-based standard, led many certifiers to stay out of that game. 

      Ryan Brouillard, crop and livestock certification manager at  Quality Certification Services (QCS) in Florida, which does certify hydroponic and aquaponic farms told AgFunderNews in August,  “We see it as a useful and productive agricultural system and there is a lot of demand for organic hydroponics. Other certifiers look at the rules as written and see that it is a soil-based standard so I can see where they are coming from too.”

      This ruling offers some clarity on the matter, but the NOSB’s recommendations do not automatically change the USDA’s rules as past events have proven. Last year the Cornucopia Institute filed a complaint with the USDA for allowing USDA Organic certifications to be granted to farms despite the NOSB’s 2010 recommendation. The Cornucopia Institute also lodged a petition to exclude hydroponics from USDA organic standards in just one of many actions to avoid the November 1 result.

      From one angle, this ruling is simply bringing the NOSB in line with what the USDA has already been practicing. In fact, the farm policy director of the Organic Trade Association said that the decision was maintaining the status quo. But, the reaction from the originators of the quite young National Organic Program, which was finalized only in 2000, has been heated.

      Objectors to including hydroponics in the organic certification argue that the standard was created to maintain the health of the soil, which is harmed by conventional pesticides. They feel that soilless growing systems are incompatible with this purpose and should, therefore, be disqualified from the certification.

      Notably, the NOSB is made up of 15 members appointed to a five-year term by the Secretary of Agriculture. Of the 15, four are organic farmers, two are organic processors and packers, one operates an organic retailer, three are environmental conservation experts, three represent consumer interest groups one is a toxicologist, and one is a USDA accredited certifier.

      One outgoing member of the board wrote on The Cornucopia Insitute’s website that the organic industry had begun to wield more influence that organic farmers over the board’s actions and makeup.

      What do Indoor Farmers think?

      Indoor farmers argue that growing hydroponically is decreasing the amount of pesticides, even organic-approved pesticides, going into the soil, along with drastically decreasing water use compared to organic field farming – and is therefore congruous with the intent of the original National Organic Program.

      Irving Fain, CEO of Bowery Farming, a high-tech indoor farming operation in Kearny, New Jersey says that the NOSB’s previous standards were simply out of date with modern agriculture.

      “The NOSB’s previous definition of organic was written at a time when the technology that is available today simply did not exist, so it is appropriate to recognize that today’s produce does not have to be grown in a field to meet the highest quality standards,” he said.

      Fain’s company frequently uses the term “post-organic” in its marketing, claiming that because Bowery’s process requires no pesticides, it is superior to the organic standard, which allows approved pesticides.    

      Bowery Farming, which has raised a total of $27.5 million from tech VCs  General Catalyst and GGV Capital, and GV (Google Ventures), is unique in that it does not commit to one growing technology. The company uses multiple hydroponic configurations in their Kearny farm, the common link between them being a smart monitoring and controls system called “Bowery OS” developed in-house. 

      Though Bowery is eligible for organic certification, Fain says that he won’t be seeking it soon.

      “Organic certification is not a priority for us right now as we’re currently growing fully traceable, post-organic produce,” he said.

      High-tech hydroponic grower Plenty, which raised a record-breaking $200 million this past summer from Japan’s SoftBank Vision Fund among other investors, is taking the opposite tack.

      Though Plenty’s South San Francisco farm is not selling produce yet, the facility is already certified organic and the plan is to certify each new facility – the company just announced its second farm will be outside of Seattle.

      “Organic farmers are diverse in our production systems, but we are united in our values, priorities, and practices. We are pleased that the NOSB has put this debate to rest and confirmed that hydroponic systems have been and will continue to be excellent suppliers of USDA certified organic products,” said Plenty CEO Matt Barnard.

      Hydroponics is in… What’s Out?

      In addition to formally ruling hydroponics and aquaponics in, the board also ruled aeroponics, growing plants with the roots dangling in a mist environment from which they receive water and nutrition, out. Technically aeroponics is a form of hydroponics since water is the primary delivery system for the plants’ nutrition, but the NOSB makes a clear distinction.

      New Jersey-based AeroFarms, which recently closed its Series D round at $40 million, is an aeroponic farm and CEO David Rosenberg is dissatisfied with the way the NOSB has framed this decision.

      “Regulators and standard-makers should be performance-based and not prescription-based. The performance standards should look at what goes into the plants and what ends up on the plants… Making a distinction between aeroponics and hydroponics discredits the process of making standards around organics and highlights how commercially-driven decisions are made. If a party can deliver to a standard of performance, it should not matter if the nutrients were delivered as a spray versus a pool of water,” said Rosenberg.

      The CEO said that AeroFarms has not and is not seeking organic certification, but that he would like to see “a fair set of standards and would like to have confidence in a process.  I would hope that the bodies that make these decisions appreciate how commercially driven decisions hurt credibility and ultimately drive people away from the organic certification.“

      Of course, the USDA could choose to go its own way on this standard too and act against the NOSB’s recommendation to disqualify farms like AeroFarms, but with zero aeroponic farms certified to date and more than 100 hydroponic farms certified, another departure by the USDA from NOSB recommendations is perhaps less likely.

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      This Company Wants to Build a Giant Indoor Farm Next to Every Major City in the World

      This Company Wants to Build a Giant Indoor Farm Next to Every Major City in the World

      Vertical farming may finally be growing up.

      Updated by David Roberts@drvoxdavid@vox.com  

      Nov 8, 2017

      Plenty ... of varieties.  |  Plenty

      Plenty ... of varieties.  |  Plenty

      For as long as I can remember, people have been hyping vertical farming — growing crops indoors, using vertical space to intensify production.

      Its virtues, relative to conventional agriculture, have long been clear. Indoors, the climate can be controlled year-round. Pests can be minimized, and with them pesticides. Water and nutrients can be applied in precise quantities. By going up rather than out, a vertical farm can produce more food per acre of land. And by siting close to an urban area, it can reduce long distribution chains, getting fresher food to customers’ tables, quicker.

      Its drawbacks have become equally clear. They mainly come down to cost. Farming well requires deep know-how and expertise; it has proven extraordinarily difficult to expand vertical farms in a way that holds quality consistent while driving costs down. Optimizing production at a small scale is very different from doing so at a large scale. The landscape islittered with the corpses of vertical-farming startups that though they could beat the odds (though several are still alive and kicking).

      Now a young Silicon Valley startup called Plenty thinks it has cracked the code. It has enormous expansion plans and a bank account full of fresh investor funding, but most excitingly, it plans to build a 100,000 square foot vertical-farming warehouse this year in Kent, Washington, just outside of Seattle, your author’s home town. That farm is expected to produce 4.5 million pounds of greens annually. Your author, in keeping with coastal elitist stereotypes, is a fervent lover of greens.

      In part because I now have a personal stake in the matter, I thought I’d take a look at the company, its prospects, the environmental benefits it promises, and — perhaps most importantly — some of the unnerving social and political implications of a vertical farming revolution.

      Plenty ... of veggies.  |   Plenty

      Plenty ... of veggies.  |   Plenty

      Plenty wants to build a farm near your city

      Plenty is at the center of a veritable hurricane of buzz at the moment.

      It checks all the boxes: It recently got a huge round of funding ($200 million in July, the largest ag-tech investment in history), including some through Jeff Bezos’s investment firm, so it has the capital to scale; it is leaning heavily on machine learning and AI; it has endorsements from several Michelin-rated chefs (“I’ve never had anything of this quality,” a former sous-chef at French Laundry, Anthony Secviar, told Bloomberg); it is in talks with several large distributors in the US and abroad; heck, it even lured away the director of battery technology at Tesla, Kurt Kelty, to be executive of operations and development. (You’re nothing in Silicon Valley without an ex-Tesla exec.)

      “I wanted to figure out where I would contribute to the next big wave,” Kelty told Bloomberg. “I see my next 10-year-run as growing Plenty."

      So, what’s the big deal?

      If you want to really dig in, Bloomberg has the best feature story on Plenty (see also Fast Company), but I’ll quickly run through what the company is up to. It’s helpful to read what follows against this list of nine reasons vertical farms fail, by Chris Michael, CEO of vertical-farming company Bright Agrotech. In a sense, Plenty is a response to previous failures.

      The company is run by CEO Matt Barnard, a former private equity investor, and CTO Nate Storey, an agronomist who did his doctoral work in tower farming. (Storey also founded Bright Agrotech, which he left to join Plenty. In June, Plenty acquired the company.)

      Plenty grows plants on 20-foot vertical towers instead of the stacks of horizontal shelves used by most other vertical-farming companies. Plants jut horizontally from the towers, growing out of a substrate made primarily of recycled plastic bottles (there’s no soil involved). Water and nutrients are fed in from the top of the tower and dispersed by gravity (rather than pumps, which saves money). All water, including from condensation, is collected and recycled.

      The plants receive no sunlight, just light from hanging LED lamps. There are thousands of infrared cameras and sensors covering everything, taking fine measurements of temperature, moisture, and plant growth; the data is used by agronomists and artificial intelligence nerds to fine-tune the system.

      The towers are so close together that the effect is a giant wall of plants.

      Plenty ... of greens.

      Plenty ... of greens.

      Currently, Plenty is focusing on leafy greens and herbs — varieties of lettuce, kale, mustard greens, basil, etc. — but it says it can use the system to grow anything except root vegetables and tree fruits. Strawberries and cucumbers are coming up next. (It’s worth noting that anything beyond leafy greens requires more light and thus more energy, so the source and cost of an indoor farm’s electricity is of keen interest.)

      There are virtually no pests in a controlled indoor environment, so Plenty doesn’t have to use any pesticides or herbicides; it gets by with a few ladybugs. The produce from Plenty’s San Francisco warehouse is certified organic, but leaders in the industry also like to stress that vertical farming is local, with an entirely transparent supply chain. (Why yes, you can also get that at your local farmers market.)

      Bottom line: Relative to conventional agriculture, Plenty says that it can get as much as 350 times the produce out of a given acre of land, using 1 percent as much water. “It is the most efficient [form of agriculture] in terms of the amount of productive capacity per dollar spent,” Barnard has said. “Period.”

      It’s worth reading those claims again, as they are pretty eye-popping. The next grandest claim in the industry is AeroFarms, a Newark, New Jersey company with nine indoor farms, which says it can get to 130 times the amount of produce per acre.

      What’s more, Plenty says its products taste better than most of what customers now have access to. Around 35 percent of fruits and vegetables eaten in the US today are imported. Leafy greens travel an average of 2,000 miles to reach your plate. Some produce has been on ships and trucks for two weeks before it reaches the table — having lost, by some estimates, 45 percent of its nutritional value along the way. Produce is bred to survive that long journey with its aesthetics, but not necessarily its flavor, intact.

        Plenty... of miles.

        Plenty... of miles.

      Plenty plans to build warehouses, not inside major cities, but just outside them, next to distribution centers, to minimize the time its food spends in transit — it wants produce to go from harvest to table in hours, rather than days. If it can do that, the company will be able to grow and sell a wide variety of rare and heirloom breeds, which are more tender and flavorful than what’s available at the supermarket, but less resilient to long journeys.

      In fact, Barnard says he will save more money on trucks and fuel than he spends on facilities and power.

      The company’s goal is to build an indoor farm outside of every city in the world of more than 1 million residents — around 500 in all. It claims it can build a farm in 30 days and pay investors back in three to five years (versus 20 to 40 for traditional farms). With scale, it says, it can get costs down to compete with traditional produce (for a presumably more desirable product that could command a price premium).

      If it can back up those claims in practice, Plenty might not revolutionize global agriculture, but it will sure as hell establish vertical farming as a real thing.

       Plenty... of CEO Matt Barnard.

       Plenty... of CEO Matt Barnard.

      Now, to be very clear: It would be a terrible mistake for anyone to take investment advice from me. I’m not an industry analyst. I have no idea if Plenty will ultimately succeed. It could face difficulty finding affordable urban land; it could have trouble replicating the carefully controlled conditions of its initial warehouse; quality could slip as it output rises; consumers could reject the products for any number of reasons. Many previous alt-farming startups got similar buzz, only to fail. Scaling up is full of peril.

      But I do think, if Plenty is not the early Google of this space, some other company will be, soon enough. The traditional barriers of cost and energy that have blocked the industry from growing are crumbling. And the way it’s happening carries some fateful lessons.

      Plenty is replacing stuff with intelligence

      Entrepreneur Bill Gross said something in a talk once that I never forgot. Every commodity, he said, is finite, and is eventually going to get more expensive — except computing power. Computing power just gets cheaper and cheaper and cheaper. So to the extent you want to ensure low costs in the long term, he said, you substitute computing power for other commodities — intelligence for stuff, as I like to put it.

      By intelligence I mean, roughly, the ability to gather data (through sensors), synthesize it (through computing power), and use it to optimize operations (through machine learning). Optimization wrings waste, i.e., extraneous stuff, out of the process.

      I have argued before that the current energy transition may well move faster than previous transitions, precisely because it is driven by information technology. To put it crudely, if past energy transitions have replaced giant stuff with other giant stuff, this one is going to replace giant stuff, at least in part, with intelligence.

      That same process is taking place in agriculture; that’s part of what vertical farming represents. Zack Bogue, a Plenty investor through Data Collective, a San Francisco venture capital fund, put it this way: “We’re pretty excited about that space because some of the hardest problems in agriculture are now lending themselves to an algorithmic or computational or applied machine-learning solution.”

      As Barnard himself put it, agriculture is a “giant optimization problem.” The challenge is to use just the amount of energy, water, and nutrients necessary to produce food, and no more. Big Ag has struggled with optimization for decades, of course, but it remains extraordinarily wasteful — nitrogen runoff producing dead zones in the Gulf, methane and carbon emissions heating the atmosphere, profligate water use leaving water tables depleted, etc.

      Plenty uses cameras and sensors to optimize light, temperature, and humidity levels. It is automating the growing process “as much as possible,” Barnard told Business Insider. It even has little robots (“Schleppers”!) that transplant seedlings, because the towers and plants are getting so dense that it’s difficult for a human to operate among them.

      Part of what has convinced investors that Plenty has a shot is the radically declining costs of LED lighting. (The efficiency of LEDs puts Plenty on par with conventional agriculture, carbon-wise, at least for some crops, at least when distribution impacts are taken into account; Storey has said he thinks indoor agriculture will be more sustainable in the long haul, especially as the grid gets greener.)

      But just as big, possibly bigger, are recent advancements in AI and machine learning. “Utility computing, [internet of things], machine intelligence, wasn’t effective enough five years ago,” Barnard told Fast Company, “much less affordable.” Now, those technologies have reached a level of cost and performance that enables Plenty to fine tune its process. In five more years, computing will be double again as powerful and half again as cheap, enabling yet more automation and optimization.

      And that’s great! Mostly.

      Plenty is also replacing people with intelligence

      I’ve read about 30 articles on Plenty and not one of them has squarely addressed the elephant in the room. To wit: Plenty will succeed insofar as it eliminates food production jobs.

      The reason is simple, and found among the aforementioned nine reasons vertical farms fail: “Labor is always your biggest cost.” In the same piece, Matt Liotta of Podponics, a company that tried growing produce in shipping containers and went bankrupt in 2016, is quoted putting it even more bluntly: “People are the problem.”

      Industrial agriculture has made ruthless use of scale and automation to minimize labor, but labor remains a huge cost, especially in tasks like harvesting delicate crops like strawberries that can’t easily be mechanized. The same is true for indoor vertical farming: The biggest cost is people.

      To compete with industrial ag, vertical farming will have to be even better at reducing the need for human planters and harvesters. In other words, to compete, it’s going to have to create as few jobs as possible.

      Fewer ... of these.  |  John Moore/Getty Images

      Fewer ... of these.  |  John Moore/Getty Images

      That’s basically the history of technology — getting more value out of less labor.

      The great promise of Plenty is that through automation and optimization, it can make clean, low-input food cost competitive with (morally and chemically) unclean, resource-intensive food. That could potentially save an enormous amount of water and (insofar as it is electrified and powered by renewable energy) radically reduce the carbon emissions of the agricultural sector. Plus it could give millions of people access to fresher, more flavorful, more nutritious fruits and vegetables, making Michelle Obama (and the public health community) happy.

      But to do any of that, it has to minimize labor.

      Barnard is well aware of that, as is everyone in the industry. “Small-scale growing in 2017 is not a profitable enterprise, and there are a lot of systemic reasons for that that aren’t going to change,” he told Fast Company. “Growing at a small scale, you can’t get to the labor efficiencies that you need. It requires, in essence, too many people.”

      “Too many people” is not a great message to communities who might host a farm, though, so Barnard is quick to say that a full-size warehouse like the one planned for Washington will employ as many as several hundred people at skilled, full-time jobs. “While robots can handle some of the harvesting, planting, and logistics,” writes Selina Wang at Bloomberg, “experts will oversee the crop development and grocer relationships on-site.”

      Barnard also emphasizes that he’s not competing with traditional agriculture or small-scale urban farming, just adding to the portfolio, seeking to keep up with demand.

      But if vertical farming scales as fast as Barnard expects, competing purely on price and efficiency, it will represent a familiar pattern in the US economy — a relatively smaller number of high-skill jobs replacing a relatively larger number of low-skill jobs. In the bigger picture, it is a good thing, to get more and better food for fewer labor and material inputs, but displaced workers tend not to care much about the big picture. And right now agriculture and related industries provide about 11 percent of US employment, according toUSDA.

      Kevin Drum of Mother Jones recently published a big piece about robots taking all our jobs, thanks to the relentless advance of artificial intelligence. Lots of economists and pundits push back on that kind of thing, citing the lack of movement in productivity statistics.

      Plenty ... of these.  |   Shutterstock

      Plenty ... of these.  |   Shutterstock

      I have no idea how that will sort out. But I see automation coming for all drivers pretty soon — taxi, bus, garbage truck, delivery van, backhoe, you name it. And now I can see it coming for the agricultural sector. Whether unemployment will spike, as Drum says, or there will just be more and faster churn, there are going to be lots of angry people out of work.

      And what are we going to do with all those truck drivers and agricultural workers? I don’t think either party has a good answer. Republicans stomp their feet and insist the jobs will return. Democrats wave their hands at “retraining.”

      We better figure it out. We will eventually teach robots to grow our food in giant climate-controlled buildings, optimizing production using AI and machine learning that we can’t yet fathom.

      Plenty wasn’t possible five years ago. What will be possible in five more years

        

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      USDA Advisory Board Blocks Ban Against Using Hydroponics In Organic Farming

      USDA Advisory Board Blocks Ban Against Using Hydroponics In Organic Farming

      Constantine Spyrou

      November 7, 2017

      Hydroponics is one of the fastest-growing fields in agriculture today. By growing plants in water and "feeding" them solutions of nutrients they need, crops can grow at higher yields over a faster period of time while drastically reducing water consumption and land space. While it's an amazing tool for the future of food, one question has been in the minds of several industry members: Can food grown via hydroponics be classified as USDA Organic?

      In a recent 8-7 ruling, the National Organic Standards Board (NOSB) ruled against a ban on hydroponics in organic farming. In doing so, the board, which makes recommendations to the USDA on rules for the organic industry, clears the way for organic, hydroponically grown produce to proliferate in supermarkets. The USDA does still have to receive an official recommendation and choose to act on it or not, however.

      If they do so, it could be huge for hydroponics, but would harm organic soil farmers. Hydroponics, with its faster growth rate and decreased water and land use, is already taking a significant market share away from the soil farmers. Nowadays, most organic tomatoes are grown through hydroponics and similar methods, and organic farmer Dave Chapman voiced fears to NPR that even more space in supermarkets will be given to hydroponically-grown produce.

      "What will happen, very quickly, is that virtually all of the certified organic tomatoes in supermarkets will be hydroponic. Virtually all of the peppers and cucumbers [will be hydroponically grown]. A great deal of the lettuce. And most of the berries."

      On the other hand, the innovative technology can be used to keep up with growing organic demand. It also is more sustainable than traditional farming since it doesn't utilize as many natural resources, making it the ideal choice for environmentalists and scientists focused on preserving the planet.

      At the center of the debate, though, is the true definition of what it means to be "organic." Hydroponic farms claim that they are organic because they don't use synthetic pesticides and can grow year-round at a cheaper price. Traditional farmers, however, argue that the true core of organic farming is nurturing and taking care of the soil itself, something that hydroponics doesn't even involve.

      When it comes to what it really means to be "organic," for now, it seems that the NOSB is willing to include hydroponics within that definition based on their recent decision.

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      Panasonic's First Indoor Farm Can Grow Over 80 Tons of Greens Per Year — Take a Look Inside

      Panasonic's First Indoor Farm Can Grow Over 80 Tons of Greens Per Year — Take a Look Inside

      A worker handles crops inside Panasonic's first and only vegetable farm in Singapore.Reuters/Edgar Su

      A worker handles crops inside Panasonic's first and only vegetable farm in Singapore.Reuters/Edgar Su

      Panasonic may be known for its consumer electronics, but the Japanese company is also venturing into indoor agriculture.

      In 2014, Panasonic started growing leafy greens inside a warehouse in Singapore and selling them to local grocers and restaurants. At the time, the 2,670-square-foot farm produced just 3.6 tons of produce per year. The farm's square footage and output have both more than quadrupled since then, Alfred Tham, the assistant general manager of Panasonic's Agriculture Business Division, tells Business Insider.

      Panasonic's greens are all grown indoors year-round, with LEDs replacing sunlight. The growing beds are stacked to the ceiling in order to achieve a higher yield in the limited space.

      Take a look inside.

      Panasonic's vegetable farm resides in an inconspicuous warehouse in Singapore.

      Reuters/Edgar Su

      Reuters/Edgar Su

      The farm's 20 workers put on hairnets, face masks, gloves, and hazmat suits before handling the produce to make sure they don't contaminate it.

      Reuters/Edgar Su

      Reuters/Edgar Su

      The farm potentially produces 81 tons of greens per year at full capacity — 0.015% of all produce grown in Singapore. The hopes to eventually raise that percentage to 5%.

      Reuters/Edgar Su  |  Source: Ag Funder News

      Reuters/Edgar Su  |  Source: Ag Funder News

      There are currently 40 types of crops in the warehouse, including mini red radish, mini white radish, rocket lettuce, mizuna, Swiss chard, romaine lettuce, and rainbow chard.

      Reuters/Edgar Su

      Reuters/Edgar Su

      To plant the greens, Panasonic's workers place tiny seeds on growing beds. Unlike many vertical farms, Panasonic's grows its greens in soil.

      Reuters/Edgar Su

      Reuters/Edgar Su

      Everything grows under LEDs instead of sunlight. The lights come from a local company and waste less energy than typical light bulbs.

      Reuters/Edgar Su

      Reuters/Edgar Su

      Panasonic's farm likely still has high energy costs, however, since the LEDs are on 24-7. Even the best LEDs have only a 50% efficiency rate, meaning half the electricity is turned to heat, not light, The New York Times reports.

      The LEDs shine at a specific frequency that encourages the plants to grow quickly. The farmers also control the warehouse's climate, including its humidity and temperature.

      Edgar Su/Reuters

      Edgar Su/Reuters

      Once the seeds begin to sprout, the farmers transfer the plants to small pots.

      Reuters/Edgar Su

      Reuters/Edgar Su

      Small nozzles feed nutrient-rich water to the crops.

      Reuters/Edgar Su

      Reuters/Edgar Su

      The farm's goal is to increase the amount of produce grown in Singapore, which imports over 90% of its food. The island nation has a shortage of arable land, so indoor farming could become a viable way to grow more greens, Tham says.

      Reuters/Edgar Su  |  Source: Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority of Singapore

      Reuters/Edgar Su  |  Source: Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority of Singapore

      Each 3-ounce bowl of salad greens from the farm sells for about $5 (USD) in Singapore's grocery stores, under the brand Veggie Life. In mid-2014, Panasonic also started selling greens to local restaurants.

      Reuters/Edgar Su

      Reuters/Edgar Su

      Panasonic's indoor agriculture project is part of its Factory Solutions division, which creates industrial machines and systems. Given the division's experience with engineering and manufacturing, Panasonic sees indoor agriculture as a profitable extension of its business, Tham says.

      Reuters/Edgar Su

      Reuters/Edgar Su

      "We foresee this business to be a potential growth portfolio, given the global shortage of arable land, increasing populations, climate change, and demand for high quality and stable food supply," Tham says.

      Reuters/Edgar Su

      Reuters/Edgar Su

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      Green Automation Americas LLC Expands Markets in North America

      green-automation.jpg

      Green Automation Americas LLC Expands Markets in North America

      The company claims its hydroponic systems use little water and create large yields.

      October 10, 2017

      Wellington, Florida – The average American consumes 27.2 lbs. of leafy greens per year – a staggering number when you multiply that figure with the latest US census figures. The Green Automationhydroponic greenhouse systems were developed over ten years ago in Helsinki, Finland and are now producing fresh, pesticide-free leafy greens and herbs here in North America. 

      “With feet on the ground now here in the U.S. where more than ever the end customer seeks nutritious, locally-produced fresh food, the timing is perfect. Consumers are more exacting about consuming food that is produced naturally, without pesticides and on a year-round basis. Our fully automated and inclusive seed-to-harvest system not only uses 95 percent less water than traditional field farming, but can achieve tremendous product yield for a fraction of the labor costs,” says Tero Rapila, co-Founder and CEO of Green Automation Export in Finland.

      Over 70 percent of the lettuce sold in the U.S. grows in California, an area of the country plagued with water-shortage issues. With traditional farming methods, over 15 gallons of water is required to grow one pound of lettuce. The labor force required to harvest, package and ship lettuce throughout the country has become more and more cost prohibitive. The Green Automation system tackles all these issues, and provides an extremely efficient and profitable solution for the investor and greenhouse growers.

      Green Automation systems are up and running in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York and Illinois. The size of these vary from 1-3 acres, producing more than one ton lettuce per acre each day and can provide the local grocery stores with fresh lettuce within twelve hours of harvest.

      Here are a few examples of our reference projects:
      Florida, USA

      Massachusetts USA, 2016

      New Hampshire USA, 2016

      Illinois USA, 2014

      New York, USA, 2014

      Bulgaria, Europe 2017

      Russia, Europe 2015

      Finland, Europe 2016

       

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      Signal of Change / Radical New Vertical Farming Model Could Provide The Answer to Urban Food Resilience

      Signal of Change / Radical New Vertical Farming Model Could Provide The Answer to Urban Food Resilience

      BY MARTA MELVIN / 11 OCT 2017

      food_tower.jpg

      One of the biggest challenges facing the developed and developing world: how will we continue to feed ourselves in future with the global population rising rapidly and expected to reach 9.7 billion by 2050. In addition, in 30 years’ time we could see some 70 per cent of the global population living in cities.

      Designers of our urban built environment will need to adopt radically different approaches to city planning to include food production within their thinking. Planning and zoning of suitable sites for urban farms will be needed to ensure that sunlight can reach the crops as a result of immediate setback of buildings around a site. Ideas for high-rise farming in cities such as Singapore are slowly maturing and beginning to be piloted.

      The Food Tower concept has been tested by Surbana Jurong’s architectural team as a direct response to the growing pressure on sustainability of food production in Singapore.

      Vegetable growing areas are stacked in open, sunlight flooded high rise towers. Growing yields across the 1 hectare site are boosted to some 400 times that of traditional farming.

      greenhouse-2139526_1280_news_featured.jpg

      It's a whole system: vegetables are grown on towers using the water and nutrients from a system of tanks in which Red Tilapia fish are reared. The vegetable towers are located on “wings” on higher floors that spiral upwards to maximise sunlight exposure; the fish farms are located at the lower floors where there is more shade. A closed loop energy system, with onsite photovoltaics generating power, rainwater harvesting and wetland reed beds to purify and recycle waste water on-site. The wetlands can also act as part of a garden for the larger community.

      It is estimated that a 100-storey food tower on 1 hectare of land can provide sufficient meat and vegetables for just over 11,000 people per year.

      Resource links:

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      The Genetic Freedom in the Salad Bowl: Food Variance and the Decrease in Costs of Vertical Farming

      The Genetic Freedom in the Salad Bowl: Food Variance and the Decrease in Costs of Vertical Farming

      #CEA #VERTICALFARMING

      02-11-2017

      I'm taking a break this week from the conversation about machines to talk about plants. Delicious, crispy, green, flavorful plants. I've lived a few places in my life, and one thing I've come to really appreciate is fresh produce. If you don't live near major agricultural regions, you know the loss of quality that comes from being on the end of a long produce shipping lane (NYC, you know what I'm talking about).

      Vertical farming is looking to change that and disrupt the vice hold that horizontal farming has on our world. With our population's caloric needs ever growing and our desire for better quality in our produce, vertical farming is quickly becoming the industry investors are banking on. What will the future dinner table look like when we breed food for flavor rather than survivability? Is there are new food renaissance ahead or another investor pipe dream?

      “70% of our water goes to agriculture, 70% of our contaminated water comes from agriculture. If one wants to solve water, one needs to start at agriculture.” ~AeroFarms

      I was just at a Dell Technologies event in New York City, IQT day, last week. I was blown away with how the world’s largest vertical farm, AeroFarms, (located in Newark, New Jersey), is using Dell Technologies IoT platform to grow food smarter. When we think of the Internet of Things, our minds often go to devices and high tech…but what about a super practical application of the IoT, like, feeding the world? A few mind-boggling quotes I caught from the AeroFarms presentation on the main stage at the Dell Technologies IQT Day, were so thought-provoking, I went home after the event to really dive into what vertical farming is and what it means to our global future.

      We need 50% more food by 2050. ~AeroFarms

      It seems the barrier to vertical farming proliferation isn't cost, it's time. Over the past decade or so, vertical farming has gone from being the concept of one man, a professor named Dickson D. Despommier, Ph.D., to a worldwide industry with one company, Plenty, pulling in $200 million dollars in Series B Funding.

      What do investors see in the industry that skeptics don't? Well, only seven years ago, both parties might have been much more aligned. Costs of labor, electricity and scale were killing vertical farming startups. There were also hard lessons to be learned about pricing and location. It turns out that all the different forms of vertical farming such as hydroponics, aeroponics and aquaponics (yes, that's different than hydroponics) all use a lot of electricity to function. Upfront and upkeep costs have also, historically, been another pain point for these companies. Couple that with complex labor equipment and well-being needs, it looked rather bleak for the small vertical farm. And for small vertical farms, it still is a big pill to swallow. To compete with established traditional farming, large scales of operation seem to be the best way to overcome the economic stress of putting these farms of the future together and be sustainable.

      Vertical Farming is 130-390x more productive, using 95% less water than conventional farming. ~AeroFarms

      But it's starting to happen. Plenty is going strong with plans for more warehouses around the world, along with long time industry champion AeroFarms and several other largescale farming companies. And what they've realized is that the longer they can stay afloat, the more technological innovation will lower their costs. In the past couple of years, breakthroughs in renewable energy and LED technology as well as iteration within the industry itself have greatly lowered the overhead, allowing large scale vertical farming companies like Plenty to figure out what models work for sustained growth (for the companies as well as the plants!).

      download.jpeg

      How Green can the Grass Get When We Breed it for Desirability Rather than Durability?

      But enough about the struggles, what about the cool aspects of the vertical farming industry? Well, the best part about vertical farming, at least to me (after it's impending disruption of an established industry) is what the companies can focus on now that survivability isn't going to be an issue much longer. One of the biggest advantages they have over traditional farms is that vertical farms function within completely controlled environments. Workers wear protective gear, rooms are controlled for temperature and composition and plants are fed on strict nutrient schedules. Also, vertical farms can be built anywhere, reducing on transportation time. For traditional horizontal farms, pests, weather, soil variations and long transportation routes have required producers to breed their plants to survive long enough to get from the farm to the dinner table. Since vertical farming plants no longer having to combat with the stressors of nature and an extended supply line, their farmers can focus on breeding for other aspects.

      What have we been missing when producing food for function rather than form? Flavor is the obvious characteristic. We like to enjoy eating food. But what else? I could see farms breeding a generation of their plants to deal with vitamin deficiencies within a population. Like specialty varieties of wine and beer, we could see a line of tomatoes or kale with artistic properties added to them, like unique smells, mouthfeel and colors. When there are no baseline concerns for a product, the sky's the limit.

      AeroFarms says that their mission is to build vertical farms in cities all over the world so that everyone has access to fresh, safe, food. What else do you think could come from this produce production revolution? Let me know what you think.

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      Anti-Bacterial LED Horticultural Lighting Solving Major Issues

      Anti-Bacterial LED Horticultural Lighting Solving Major Issues

      Granville, Ohio - November 3, 2017 - InCite Lighting, LLC is proud to announce the arrival of new anti-bacterial LED Lighting technology to the United State indoor horticultural market. Indoor horticultural operations have long battled mold, viruses, and other unwanted biological contaminants in their facilities. 

      InCite Lighting, LLC is the master distributor for Full Spectrum Technologies Group (FST). FST's illumiGrow (featuring illumiPure technology) LED Grow Lights 405nm spectral peak model of lights can destroy those unwanted items, while still providing superior grow light technology. The illumiPure technology has been proven to kill several known strains of bacteria and fungus. Beginning in January 2018, FST Grow Lights will be manufactured in Houston, Texas. Patented Proprietary Technology, Fully Customizable, Controllable, with Great Warranties. Large customers can visit the factory to observe their orders being manufactured

      InCite Lighting LLC has worked to bring exciting new LED Grow Light technology to the indoor horticulture market, including the exclusive anti-bacterial 405nm spectral peak model. This cost-effective highly productive technology allows growers to grow products in more environmentally conscious methods and organically.

      InCite Lighting is dedicated in helping our client partners find the perfect combination of technology, efficiency, and economical solutions to serve their needs (both present and future). We are a master distributor for several manufacturers, specializing in horticultural lighting.

      # # #

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      Jeff Bezos-Backed Indoor Farming Startup Plenty Opens 100K Square-Foot Facility in Seattle Region

      Jeff Bezos-Backed Indoor Farming Startup Plenty Opens 100K Square-Foot Facility in Seattle Region

      BY TAYLOR SOPER on November 3, 2017 at 7:04 am

      Plenty CEO and co-founder Matt Barnard. (Photos via Plenty)

      An indoor farming startup backed by some of the biggest names in tech that wants to change how people eat fruits and vegetables has arrived in Seattle.

      Plenty grows its plants in 20-foot tall towers inside a climate-controlled facility with LED lights.

      Plenty grows its plants in 20-foot tall towers inside a climate-controlled facility with LED lights.

      Plenty today announced that it will open a 100,000 square-foot farm in Kent, Wash., where the 3-year-old company will grow pesticide-free, “backyard quality” produce for consumers in Seattle and Vancouver, B.C. It’s the first time the startup has expanded beyond its home markets in South San Francisco and Wyoming; it will also be the company’s first “full-scale” farm.

      Plenty grows its plants in 20-foot tall towers inside a climate-controlled facility with LED lights. It does not use pesticides, herbicides, synthetic fertilizers, or GMOs. There is plenty of technology used, with thousands of infrared cameras and sensors collecting data in the farms that is then analyzed with machine learning to optimize how the plants grow.

      Plenty said its technology can achieve yields of up to 350 times greater than traditional agriculture while using 1 percent of the water and barely any land compared to conventional methods. Plenty’s farms can also grow plants — up to 300 variants of produce — all year-round, regardless of seasonality changes, which helps increase efficiency; its proximity to cities also means that produce doesn’t sit in trucks for days and weeks on end before ultimately arriving on your kitchen table.

      Investors are bullish about the company’s potential. Backers of Plenty’s $200 million round it raised this past July include folks like SoftBank (via its Vision Fund); Alphabet Chairman Eric Schmidt (through Innovation Endeavors); Amazon founder Jeff Bezos (through Bezos Expeditions); DCM Ventures; Data Collective; Finistere Ventures; and Louis Bacon.

      In an interview with GeekWire, Plenty CEO and co-founder Matt Barnard said that Seattle’s lack of access to local produce and the region’s emphasis on healthy food made it a perfect place to expand.

      “As we looked at the West Coast, Seattle was the best example of a large community of people who really don’t have much access to any fresh fruits and vegetables grown locally,” he explained.

      Plenty will hire 50 people at the farm in Kent, and expects to double the size of its team, Barnard said. Fresh produce will start shipping to a few restaurants initially in mid-2018, and then to other buyers that will be announced at a later date. It also plans to open more farms across the country and eventually around the world.

      Plenty, which has raised $238 million to date, is not the first company to try and build a business around indoor farming. Local Garden Vancouver, a similar crop-yielding greenhouse concept, declared bankruptcy a few years ago and other startups in the space have struggled over the years.

      But Barnard, who started the 100-person company Nate Mazonson and Nate Storey, said that costs of indoor farming have lowered enough while the technology has advanced to the point where Plenty can promise “Whole Foods Quality at Walmart Prices,” as this Bloomberg headline noted last month. Barnard called it a “giant optimization problem.”

      “We give plants the perfect environment to both grow fast and taste the best,” he added.

      Barnard noted that the percentage of fruits and vegetables eaten by U.S. consumers and grown outside of the country continues to rise due to rising labor and land costs — up to 35 percent today, from zero a few decades ago. There is also shrinking available land that is fertile enough to grow high-quality produce, he said.

      “This isn’t a matter of a zero-sum game, and it’s not a matter of competitors,” Barnard added. “It’s a matter of, how do we meet this unmet demand and how do we add a new set of agricultural practices to our portfolio as a society to be able to address demand and these secular trends of essentially declining agricultural capacity.”

      Plenty’s business model “will be relatively similar to what people know,” Barnard said, but he hinted that the company is thinking of new ways to make revenue.

      “We are always working to figure out how to get food into people’s hands and onto their tables in as few minutes as possible,” he said.

      Barnard’s interest in creating a new way to grow food started at an early age when he grew up on a commercial food farm in Wisconsin.

      “There were whole crops that we couldn’t grow on the farm in Wisconsin that I didn’t even know I liked until I moved to California,” he recalled. “I couldn’t understand why in the world people loved watermelon so much because all I knew was the stuff I had in Wisconsin, which was pretty gross because that stuff was exhausted and spent a week on a truck. Watermelons aren’t meant to spend a week on a truck.”

      Barnard, who previously spent time working in utility technology infrastructure and cellular smart grid production, has also dealt with an autoimmune condition while his wife was later diagnosed with stage-4 breast cancer four years ago. Both of those personal life events made him realize the importance of eating healthy and he ended up conducting research into how our food affects health.

      “While we don’t know as much as I would love for us to know in 2017, one thing we do know is that a nutrient-rich diet generally leads to a happier, healthier life for people — and we get most of our nutrients from fruits and vegetables,” the CEO said.

      Love space and science? Sign up for our GeekWire Space & Science email newsletter for top headlines from Alan Boyle, GeekWire’s aerospace and science editor.

      TS.jpeg

      Taylor Soper is a GeekWire staff reporter who covers a wide variety of tech assignments, including emerging startups in Seattle and Portland, the sharing economy and the intersection of technology and sports. Follow him @taylor_soper and email taylor@geekwire.com.

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      “There Are a Lot of Palm Pilots Out There But No iPhones Yet In Consumer Indoor Farms” – Verdical CEO

      “There Are a Lot of Palm Pilots Out There But No iPhones Yet In Consumer Indoor Farms” – Verdical CEO

      NOVEMBER 1, 2017 EMMA COSGROVE

      Verdical.jpg

      Andrew Deitz has been in Silicon Valley since the late 1990s. He spent nearly a decade at Climate Earth, a consultancy that helps big companies understand their carbon footprint and how decreasing it might help their bottom line. In September,  he took the helm at consumer-focused indoor farming group Verdical.

      Verdical produces an indoor, hydroponic growing tower intended for restaurants. Prototype growing systems are in use in three Bay Area restaurants and Deitz sees the system as a no-brainer for any restaurant, space or institution that wants to communicate local food values.

      But the category of on-site growing  — systems deployed to serve the needs of consumers at home or in restaurants — has been slow to get funding. According to AgFunder data, only four consumer grow systems companies raised funding in the first half of 2017. We caught up with Deitz to find out how he plans to grow Verdical in this nascent category.

      Can you describe the Verdical growing system?

      It’s a vertical tower that has openings for seed pods – we call them growing zones. You insert your seed pod into a growing zone. You wait, depending on what you’re growing: microgreens take 3 weeks, herbs take 8-12 weeks and you enjoy the pleasure of harvesting and eating.

      Will there eventually have to be partnerships with major appliance manufacturers for these on-site farms? What does Verdical look like five years from now?

      I think that consumers are changing and a living food appliance can be an important contribution to the kitchen. For Verdical, I think there are a bunch of paths to market.

      Andrew Deitz

      Andrew Deitz

      I see the B2B market as most interesting. The B2B market is about an experience. If you think about cafeterias and restaurants, there is ample space in those places to create a different experience for their customers. I think that their ability to articulate their values is a challenge. What is sustainability? What is fresh? What is local? These are all kind of nebulous words these days. One of our customers talks about what we’re doing for him as a statement of his values. His patrons can see their food, in this case just basil, going from three steps away to someone cutting it and putting it on their pizza.

      He happens to do everything else right too – he treats his employees right, he sources well, he takes good care of his supply chain and his partners – but he had no way of communicating that and he didn’t want to bang customers over the head.

      What do you think is going to be the deciding factor on which small-scale growing unit gains market share?

      I think that it is about [user] experience. If you do it in a warehouse 50 miles away, people are not directly connected to their food. It’s also important to understand that there are very different price points in food. Lettuces and leafy greens are a tougher commodity business, and then there are higher end micro greens and herbs that might be a better starting spot because they’re more expensive and delicate.

      So it will come down to the efficacy of the system? It has to be so easy to use, the user can’t mess up?

      Yes, that’s the experience side. I think we’ve nailed the experience. I think there are a lot of palm pilots out there, but no one has made the iPhone yet.

      People are getting ahead of their ski tips on ‘we grow plants faster. We grow them bigger – bigger yields.’ There is a danger that the consumer gets confused and they get so wrapped up in the yield, they lose sight that this is experiential.

      And on the other side, it has to be cost-competitive because you’re still going to compete with the field and whatever basil costs. Organic basil sits at around $18-20 per pound. So you have to still get near that price point. But I think people will buy it because it’s pretty and for the experience, and I think companies can make money because it is a consumable and there is an opportunity for people who use it on a high scale. I think a lot of the home products are novelty and hobbyist.

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      National Organic Standards Board Decrees That Hydroponic Can Be Organic

      National Organic Standards Board Decrees That Hydroponic Can Be Organic

      By Dan Nosowitz on November 2, 2017

      A row of hydroponic greens  |  Aqua Mechanical onFlickr

      On November 1st, the National Organic Standards Board finally made a decision on one of the most divisive issues in the organic world: should crops grown in water, containers, or otherwise not in the ground be allowed to call themselves organic?

      The decision is thus: hydroponic and container gardens will remain eligible for organic certification.

      This is a debate that’s much more complicated than it seems. Hydroponics and other types of high-tech farming get a lot of attention, most of it positive, for utilizing spaces that previously couldn’t house farms (abandoned factories, shipping containers, that kind of thing). They can potentially be very energy-efficient and reduce water usage. And there’s rarely a need for pesticides at all, since many of these operations are indoors.

      Among those pleased with the decision is the Recirculating Farms Coalition, a group of eco-conscious high-tech farmers and innovators. “By siding with current science and recognizing that existing law purposely leaves the door open for various farming methods, the NOSB is sending a critical message that sustainability and innovation are valuable in U.S. agriculture,” wrote RFC executive director Marianne Cufone in a release.

      But many of the farmers who were behind the original push for an organic certification program are vehemently opposed, and it’s not because of groups like the RFC. Two main groups benefit from hydroponic farms being able to get organic certification (and thus charge much more for their wares): techie farmers, like those Cufone represents, and large agribusiness firms. Those firms, which include Driscoll’s and Wholesum Harvest, operate gigantic hydroponic operations for their organic food, and many organic activists, like the Cornucopia Institute, see those as a cheap and easy way to charge a premium without actually doing any of the stuff the organic program is really about.

      At its core, say those activists, organic food is about an entire ecosystem: taking care of the soil, recharging nutrients with crop rotation, providing for natural pollinators and pest control. It is a way for farming, which can often be ecologically destructive, to work with the planet. And massive hydroponic and container operations like Driscoll’s do not do that: they are willfully separate from the environment. They do not contribute to soil health (partly because they don’t use soil) nor to the overall health of the natural world. For their part, those companies say that they follow the rules in terms of pesticide use and therefore should be allowed to use the label. Organic activists say this is a loophole—a way to get the big bucks an organic label can secure by following the letter, rather than the spirit, of the law.

      In some ways, it’s an unfortunate debate, because it pits people against each other who have many of the same goals in mind. Organic activists and small hydroponic farmers both want to grow food sustainably, at their core. But, as with most of the agricultural developments during the current administration, this decision isn’t about small farmers.

      It may seem like a small thing, allowing hydroponics to call themselves organic. But to many organic farmers, this is a total perversion of what the term is supposed to mean and achieve. What’s the point of following all of these expensive and difficult planet-saving rules if a huge corporation can just build a factory and undercut your prices with a product that doesn’t work toward the same goals?

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      Urban, Farming, Vertical Farming, Indoor Farming IGrow PreOwned Urban, Farming, Vertical Farming, Indoor Farming IGrow PreOwned

      Futureworld: The IoT-Driven ‘Vertical Farm’ 

      Futureworld: The IoT-Driven ‘Vertical Farm’ 

      October 26, 2017 by Doug Black

      Source: Aerofarms

      Imagine a farm without herbicides, insecticides or pesticides; a farm that cuts water consumption by 95 percent; that uses no fertilizer and thus generates no polluting run-off; that has a dozen crop cycles per year instead of the usual three, making it hundreds of times more productive than conventional farms; a farm that can continually experiment with and refine the taste and texture of its crops; a farm without sun or soil. That’s right, a farm where the crops don’t need sunlight to grow and don’t grow from the ground.

      Such a farm – an “indoor vertical farm” – exists, it’s located in that grittiest, most intensely urban of inner cities, Newark, NJ, in a former industrial warehouse. Visiting there, you go from a potholed, chain linked back street into a brightly lit, clean (visitors wear sanitary gowns, gloves, masks and head coverings), 70,000-square-foot facility. Walking in, you get that rare, uncanny sense of having stepped into the future. Way into the future.

      The farm consists of large, flat platforms stacked 10 levels high (“grow towers”) of leafy greens and herbs thriving in seeming contentment under long rows of LED lights, irrigated with recycled water that sprays the exposed roots hanging, suspended, from the crops, under the watchful “eye” of IoT sensors that, with machine learning algorithms, analyze the large volumes of continually harvested (sorry!) crop data.

      Aerofarms began developing sustainable growing systems since 2004, and has adopted a data-driven technology strategy that’s a showcase for the IoT and deep learning capabilities of Dell Technologies.

      By building farms in major population centers and near major distribution routes (the Newark farm is a mile from the headquarters of one of the largest supermarket chains in the New York City area), the company radically shortens supply chains and lowers energy resources required to transport food from “farm to fork”  while also decreasing spoilage. It enables local farming at commercial scale year-round, regardless of the season. It tracks and monitors its leafy greens from seed to package so that the source of food, if some becomes tainted, can be quickly identified. Taken together, AeroFarms claims to achieve 390 times greater productivity than a conventional field farm while using 5 percent as much water.

      “We are as much a capabilities company as we are farmers, utilizing science and technology to achieve our vision of totally controlled agriculture,” said David Rosenberg AeroFarms co-founder and CEO. The company’s vision, he said, is to understand the “symbiotic relationships” among biology, environment and technology, to leverage science and engineering in ways that drive more sustainable, higher-yield food production.

      aerofarms-diagram-768x514.jpg

      IoT comes into play via AeroFarms’ Connected Food Safety System, which tracks the “growth story” of its products, analyzing more than 130,000 data points per harvest. The growth cycle begins when seeds are germinated on a growing medium that looks like cheesecloth, receiving a measured amount of moisture and nutrients misted directly onto their roots that dangle in a chamber below the growing cloth, along with a spectrum of LED lighting calculated to match the plants’ needs throughout a 12- to 16-day growing cycle.

      Rosenberg said Aerofarms decided to partner with Dell because it “offers a comprehensive infrastructure portfolio that spans our IT needs, from edge gateways and rugged tablets to machine learning systems and network gear.”

      At the edge, sensors and cameras in the aeroponic growing system gather data on everything from moisture and nutrients to light and oxygen and then send operating and growing environment data to Dell IoT Edge Gateways for processing. Information is then relayed over their farm network to Dell Latitude Rugged Tablets and a local server cluster, making it available to Aerofarms workers for monitoring and analysis. AeroFarms’ precision growing algorithms allow just-in-time growing for its selling partners. Once the plants reach maturity, they are harvested and packaged onsite and then distributed to local grocery stores.

      Aerofarms is developing a machine learning capability that identifies patterns based on analysis of images and a combination of environmental, machine and historical growing data.

      The company said it may expand its use of Microsoft Azure to conduct more analytics in the cloud while leveraging geo-redundant data backup, collect disparate data from its multiple vertical farms and multiple data sources, including information interpreted in historical context, leveraging data previously collected and analyzed over time to improve taste, texture, color, nutrition and yield.

      Aerofarms' 

      David Rosenberg

      Aerofarms said it also is working on real-time quality control through multi-spectral imaging from its grow trays. Cameras with integrated structured light scanners send data to Dell Edge Gateways, which create 3D topological images of each grow tray. When an anomaly is detected, the gateway sends an alert to operators using Dell Latitude Rugged Tablets on the farm floor.

      “For me, the journey started with an appreciation of some of the macro-challenges of the world, starting with water,” said Rosenberg. “Seventy percent of our fresh water goes to agriculture. Seventy percent of our fresh water contamination comes from agriculture.”

      Land is another problem.

      “By U.N. estimates, we need to produce 50 percent more food by 2050, and we’ve lost 30 percent of our arable farm land in the last 40 years,” he said. “Looking at all those macro-issues, we need a new way to feed our planet.”

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      Co-Founder of The East London Start-up, Tom Webster, Explains how He is Spearheading Aquaponic Farming in The UK

      Screen shot 2017-11-02 at 11.30.45 AM.png

      TOM WEBSTER

      NOV 2, 2017

      Co-Founder of The East London Start-up, Tom Webster, Explains how He is Spearheading Aquaponic Farming in The UK

      I co-founded GrowUp Urban Farms with my business partner Kate Hofman in May 2012. Our vision is to contribute to a more sustainable food system using aquaponics – a combination of aquaculture (fish farming) and hydroponics (growing plants in a nutrient rich solution other than soil). The farming methods we have developed enable us to produce a year-round harvest of fresh fish, leafy salad crops and herbs, in an energy-efficient controlled environment.

      We started out by creating the GrowUp box, a demonstration system that we built in a shipping container at London Bridge, then, in 2015, we moved to Unit 84, at London Industrial Park in Beckton, and built our first farm.

      The farm is essentially comprised of two separate systems. The first is a recirculating aquaculture system where water passes through a series of fish tanks, into a filtration system, and then back to the tanks. That water continually moves round and round between the tanks and the filters. At Unit 84 we have 12 tanks in the system, each containing roughly 400 Tilapia fish. It takes around six months to grow them from the fingerlings that we buy in. All our adult fish go to the Thai restaurant chain Rosa's. We've worked with them for years and it's a great restaurant run by great people. Tilapia is a very mild-flavoured fish, similar to cod. It takes on flavours really well, so it's well suited to Asian cuisine. It's also a very good source of protein and makes a great replacement for chicken.

      miles-willis-025_b026044.jpg

      The other system we use is essentially a normal hydroponics system, with three fundamental differences. Firstly, there is no natural light– we use LED lighting instead. Secondly, instead of it being on a horizontal plane, we have lots of hydroponic benches stacked on top of each other, which we call vertical farming. This allows us to maximise the growing potential of urban spaces. Thirdly, instead of feeding freshwater into the system (that we would need to add all the necessary nutrients to), we bring in water from the fish farm, which already contains 80 per cent of the nutrients the plants need, which come from the fish waste. That's the only water that goes into the hydroponics system, and we just top it up with the other 20 per cent of nutrients that are necessary, particularly things that aren't in the fish's diet, like iron.

      We've grown all sorts of microgreens – coriander, micro basil, fennel and rocket – tiny, beautiful leaves that are used to decorate plates and add a lot of flavour. We've also had a range of salad crops like pea shoots, sunflower shoots, watercress and baby kale, but our main focus is the more traditional baby leaf salad crops that you see in the supermarket, such as full-sized rocket and watercress, spinach, lettuces and pak choi. The UK currently imports a lot of these crops. They are widely consumed, widely imported and very perishable.

      miles-willis-034_b026171.jpg

      At the moment leafy salad is predominantly grown in Spain, Italy and Africa, so it travels a long way to reach us, which is not very environmentally friendly. These open-field crops are also at the mercy of the weather and climate change. As we saw in early 2017, the supply chains for salads got completely cut off when there was an unexpected frost in Italy and a snowfall in Spain, which meant that salad crops were decimated. The supermarkets were importing lettuce from the USA, at a loss, just to keep it on the shelves. In a world with an increasingly unstable climate, we need to look at producing more of our food in controlled-environment growing systems to safeguard against these kinds of devastating events.

      The farm at Unit 84 is a commercial test bed we created to research, develop and prove our ideas and methods. We've worked with leading horticultural engineers and fish scientists in the UK to figure out the best way to make the system work at scale and we are now looking at sites for the next farm, which we plan to start building before the end of 2018. It will be much bigger and designed to be a profitable farm, feeding into the larger supply chains. Our focus is really on those baby leaf salads that everyone is already eating. We've learned to grow these properly, in an environment that's perfect for them – the right lighting, the right temperature, the right humidity – so once the next farm is built we're ready to go.

      miles-willis-012_b025899.jpg

      Agriculture happens on such a humongous scale that if we're going to have an impact we need to do something that fits into supply chains that already exist. For this reason we are looking to develop and operate farms near big food hubs, such as supermarket distribution centres and wholesalers, so we can get the produce to them as quickly as possible after it's been harvested, minimising the time, cost and environmental impact of transporting these perishable goods.

      Our vision is not to create premium bagged-salads and niche products. We want to be the basic salad and fish fingers on the supermarket shelf. Protein and salad that people consume on a daily basis. It might sound like a strange thing to say, but that is when we will really be making an impact, so that's the gold standard for us and where we want to be – producing at scale, supplying to existing supply chains.

      It will still be a drop in the ocean, but it will be a drop in the ocean closer to where we want to be.

      Images © Miles Willis; growup.org.uk

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      Japan’s Spread to Expand Vertical Farming Concept to Middle East

      Japan’s Spread to Expand Vertical Farming Concept to Middle East

      Posted By: Guest contributor: October 31, 2017

      In: AgricultureEnvironmentFoodIndustries

       

       
      BY DR GAIL BARNES
      SUSTAINABILITY SPECIALIST
       

       

       

      At the beginning of 2016 I wrote an article about indoor or vertical farms being the future of growing produce, describing the progress of Spread in Japan with the creation of the world’s first farm manned entirely by robots capable of harvesting 30,000 heads of lettuce per day.

      Fast forward to July 2017, and a new indoor farming investment inflection point was reached with the announcement that the SoftBank Vision Fund was leading a $200 million investment in Silicon Valley indoor farming startup Plenty. Now there is news on Spread too – the expansion of its automated Techno Farm concept to the Middle East, starting with the UAE.

      Increased demand for fresh produce

      An arid, desert environment, lack of water resources and other geographical factors pose challenges for growing produce in the Middle East, which has led to a reliance on imported goods. This is becoming increasingly expensive as a growing population, and changing and healthier eating habits, are driving an increased demand for vegetables and produce such as lettuce.

      Vertical farming solutions, like this one from VertiCrop, could be part of the future of the food industry. ©Valcenteu/Wikimedia

      Container farming offers stable supply

      “Spread is responding to these challenges with the solutions found in its next-generation vegetable production system, Techno Farm, which was created based on Spread’s ten years of experience in operating a vertical farm and incorporates automation and advanced water recycling,” according to Spread.

      “In October 2017, Spread entered into a memorandum of understanding with Madar Farms, a company that has established a container farming business in the UAE, for a strategic partnership for developing the Techno Farm business in the Middle East.

      “In June 2017, Spread and Toyo, a global engineering company with abundant knowledge in the construction of industrial-scale facilities, entered into a memorandum of understanding for Techno Farm engineering services overseas.”

      The aim of the partnership is to provide a stable supply of safe and high-quality vegetables such as lettuce to the Middle East. According to Spread, construction of the first Techno Farm is planned to begin in 2018 with completion slated for 2019. Moving forward, 20 facilities are planned for construction in the Middle East, starting with the UAE.

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      Can Food Still Be Organic If It's Grown Without Soil?

      Can Food Still Be Organic If It's Grown Without Soil?

      'Dirt first' traditionalists are fighting with supporters of soil-less agriculture over the ‘organics’ label. Climate and sustainability are central to the debate.

      Georgina Gustin

      NOV 1, 2017

      Both sides of the debate argue that their methods of organic farming have an increasingly important role to play in protecting the climate and building sustainability. Credit: Valcenteau/CC-BY-SA-2.0

      Both sides of the debate argue that their methods of organic farming have an increasingly important role to play in protecting the climate and building sustainability. Credit: Valcenteau/CC-BY-SA-2.0

      A crucial battle in a long-brewing conflict over organic farming could come Wednesday as an influential government panel meets to discuss whether soil is an essential element of organic farming.

      On one side: "Dirt first" traditionalists who say that fruits and vegetables must, by definition, be grown in soil to qualify as organic.

      On the other: Agri-technophiles who say "controlled environment" methods like hydroponics and aeroponics are just as deserving, dirt or no dirt.

      The debate over who deserves the U.S. Department of Agriculture's lucrative organic label comes amid broader challenges over the best way to feed a growing population on a warming, resource-challenged planet where most of the arable land is already used for agriculture.

      Both sides are making forceful arguments that organic farming, with its focus on using natural substances and eschewing synthetics, has an increasingly important role to play in protecting the climate. Though vegetables grown in soil may look and taste like those grown in controlled environments—with their roots bathed in liquid solutions or stacked in towers—they may have very different carbon footprints.

      "You're farming in a smaller space and with less resources and reduced shipping and refrigeration," said Marianne Cufone, executive director of the Recirculating Farms Coalition, which represents hydroponic and aquaponic farmers. "It seems to me it's one of the best ways to improve our situation when it comes to climate change and agriculture. To consolidate and grow up is smart."

      But for traditional organic farmers, shifting resources and research dollars to soil-less forms of agriculture ignores the carbon-storing potential of soil-based agriculture and the energy footprint of growing crops indoors.

      "By changing the way we farm the soil, we can improve the sequestration potential of the soil," said Jeff Moyer, executive director of the Rodale Institute, which has long advocated organic farming methods. "We know, globally, as we look at climate change solutions, the soil plays a huge role. Going indoors is not the solution."

      Since the launch of the National Organic Program in 2000, the Agriculture Department has allowed hydroponics and other forms of soil-less or container-based agriculture under the organic label. But in recent years, organic farmers have pushed the National Organic Standards Board—the body that decides what practices are permitted under the organic label—to make an official decision on whether these agri-tech approaches count as organic.

      The board's crops subcommittee is scheduled to meet Wednesday afternoon to discuss it, and the full board could vote soon after.

      Investment Pours in for Novel Techniques

      The debate, which has festered for years, has become increasingly bitter over the last 12 months as more investment and interest has centered on these novel farming techniques, including a $200 million investment in the San Francisco-based start-up Plenty by tech-investment firm SoftBank Vision Fund. Plenty plans to build indoor vertical farms, where produce is grown in stacks under artificial light, outside 500 cities around the world, using technologies including remote sensing to gage growing conditions and artificial intelligence experts to translate data from the plants.

      "We've seen a lot of new money coming into this," said Katelyn McCullock, an economist with the American Farm Bureau Federation, American agriculture's largest trade group. "There's a lot of interest in this area and not from the sources we're used to seeing it from."

      According to AgFunder, a start-up funder that also tracks investments in agriculture, investors have committed $285 million so far this year—including the Plenty investment—dwarfing investment last year, which saw $70 million, and 2015, which saw $53 million. 

      Meanwhile, sales of organics are booming, reaching a record $47 billion in the U.S. last year, and demand for organics is outstripping supply.

      "Organic is obviously super popular, but there's gaining traction in other clean methods of farming," said Louisa-Burwood Taylor, a spokesperson for AgFunder. "When these companies can price their produce cheaper than organic and offer pesticide-free and clean, then I think you've got an interesting dynamic and competition to organic."

      Who's More Climate-Friendly?

      Traditional, soil-based organic farmers say that the competition shouldn't be allowed in the first place, noting that soil-less agriculture isn't permitted under the organic label in other countries, including Mexico, one of the U.S.'s biggest agricultural trading partners. 

      At rallies across the county, pro-soil advocates have demonstrated, with farmers holding homemade signs reading "Don't Water Down Organics with Hydroponics" and "Real Farmers Do it in the Dirt."

      "There will be no sign warning the customers that this fauxganic food was grown without soil," the Keep the Soil in Organics coalition said in an appeal to supporters on its website. "And so we are in a final battle for the soul of the organic label."

      Critics of controlled agriculture systems point out that, in order to simulate the sun, indoor farms consume huge amounts of electricity, negating possible climate benefits.

      Even supporters acknowledge the high electricity demand is a downside. "It is an issue," conceded Sally Rockey, executive director of the Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research, which recently gave a $2 million grant to New Jersey-based AeroFarms, the country's largest vertical farm operator. "When you use electricity the way you have to in controlled environments, you want to take a look at what that means as far as your carbon footprint."

      But, Rockey said, there are some appealing trade-offs. "Oftentimes we don't use pesticides because plants aren't exposed to air," she said, "and generally we use a lot less water."

      Controlled environment farms can also be constructed near cities, potentially cutting down on emissions connected to transportation. 

      The pro-soil growers say, however, that the climate benefits, to the extent that there are any currently, are being overplayed by tech interests with deep pockets.

      "We can mitigate emissions. We know that," said Moyer, who is a former head of the standards board. "They're using the story of climate change, but that's not the reason for their existence."

      The other side, meanwhile, accuses the pro-soil camp of slinging mud to protect their lucrative market.

      "If you have a method of growing that reduces stress on resources—like water, like space, like energy—that can produce healthy, good-quality food, maybe in more abundance and with more efficiency, why wouldn't you support that?" Cufone said. "The only reason I can think of is money."

      What Does the Research Say?

      So far, studies suggest that indoor agriculture consumes more energy than traditional soil-based farms. Researchers at Cornell University have examined the carbon footprint of an indoor hydroponics farm, operated in New York state, and compared its energy use to an outdoor farm in California. Factoring in the energy used to transport the produce from California to the East Coast, they found that the hydroponics operation used twice the energy.

      "At least from an energy or carbon footprint standpoint, growing these produce items in our northerly climate, where we use a lot of light and fossil fuel for heating, you use twice the energy inputs versus field-grown. But that was the status quo technology for 2008," said Neil Mattson of Cornell's School of Integrative Plant Science. "We feel there's the ability to improve that by producers adopting more energy-efficient lighting and using renewable energy systems."

      Beyond Cornell's research, studies comparing the climate benefits of traditional farming systems and controlled environments remain pretty thin. But the climate impacts of various farming methods are a growing conversation within the organics industry, and more research is underway.

      "We're starting to get concerned that an assumption's being made that if you're not growing in the outer crust of the earth, there's no way you can sequester carbon or mitigate climate change," said Nate Lewis, a farm policy director for the Organic Trade Association, the organic industry's largest trade group. "Those are assumptions. I haven't seen anyone compare the full life cycle of a tomato grown in one [system] versus the other. There are so many factors."

      PUBLISHED UNDER:

      AGRICULTURE

      ABOUT THE AUTHOR

      Georgina Gustin

      Georgina Gustin is a Washington-based reporter who has covered food policy, farming and the environment for more than a decade. She started her journalism career at The Day in New London, Conn., then moved to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, where she launched the "food beat," covering agriculture, biotech giant Monsanto and the growing "good food" movement.  At CQ Roll Call, she covered food, farm and drug policy and the intersections between federal regulatory agencies and Congress.  Her work has also appeared in The New York Times, Washington Post and National Geographic's The Plate, among others. 

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      Urban Crop Solutions Wins the FoodNexus Innovation Award in Belgium

      Urban Crop Solutions Wins the FoodNexus Innovation Award in Belgium

      Urban Crop Solutions was awarded on Thursday evening October 26th the FoodNexus Innovation Award. Out of many innovative companies, a jury of experts in the agriculture and food industry selected Urban Crop Solutions as the most promising company in the Belgian agri-food industry.  Urban Crop Solutions will defend Belgium in the European FoodNexus competition, together with another Belgian company from the French-speaking part of the country, during an event in Wageningen (the Netherlands) on December 13th. 

      FoodNexus is a European consortium of international food companies and leading knowledge institutions that strives to create a robust and sustainable European Food System. The Belgian FoodNexus challenge was organized for the first time in collaboration with Flanders’ FOOD, the Universities of Ghent and Liège, Food2Know and many other partners. The core business of the young, participating companies must be related to one of the three following areas: food safety and sustainability, food quality, and health and well-being. The aim of the challenge is to identify and stimulate the most promising young companies, and connect them to leading European corporates in the agri-food industry. This allows the companies to scale their innovations to benefit people and planet, with the support of these partners. Urban Crop Solutions was chosen as the young company of the year by a panel of corporate and scientific experts from the agricultural and food industry. 

      “This award is yet again a highlight for our company. It’s a valuable recognition of the efforts that our team has already made for Urban Crop Solutions. We thank this award to their infinite commitment  We want to keep on improving and creating the best indoor vertical farming solutions for our customers everywhere in the world”, says Maarten Vandecruys, CEO of Urban Crop Solutions. “This award is also a recognition for our business model and our global approach. We commit ourselves to bring to our clients Belgians top expertise in growing crops and automation and robotics”, adds Frederic Bulcaen, Chairman of Urban  Crop Solutions, with a big smile. 

      Since 2014 Urban Crop Solutions develops for its client's tailored plant growth installations. These systems are turnkey, robotized and able to be integrated into existing production facilities or food processing units. Urban Crop Solutions also has its own range of standard growth container products. Being a total solution provider Urban Crop Solutions can also supply seeds, substrates, and nutrients for clients that have limited or no knowledge or experience with farming. Currently, the company has a growing list of more than 200 varieties of crops that can be grown in closed environment vertical farms and that have been validated. These plant recipes (ranging from leafy greens, vegetables, medicinal plants to flowers) are developed specifically for indoor farming applications and sometimes exclusively for clients by its team of plant scientists. Urban Crop Solutions has started activities in Miami (Florida, US) in 2016 and is soon to open a division in Japan.

      For more information on this press release, on Urban Crop Solutions or on the products and services of Urban Crop Solutions you can contact Maarten Vandecruys, Co-founder and Managing Director (mava@urbancropsolutions.com), Frederic Bulcaen , Co-founder and Chairman (frbu@urbancropsolutions.com ) or visit our website (www.urbancropsolutions.com):

      Company headquarters:                                                            

      Grote Heerweg 67

      8971 Beveren-Leie (Waregem)

      Belgium

      Regional headquarters:

      800 Brickell Avenue, 1100 Suite
      Miami (FL 33131)

      Facebook: www.facebook.com/urbancropsolutions
      Twitter: www.twitter.com/U_C_Solutions
      LinkedIn: bit.ly/UrbanCropSolutionsLinkedIn
      YouTube:   bit.ly/UrbanCropSolutionsYouTube

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