Welcome to iGrow News, Your Source for the World of Indoor Vertical Farming
These Low-Tech Indoor Gardens Bring Vegetables To Your Kitchen
While some indoor farming companies operate in sprawling buildings–like Aerofarms, with a 70,000-square foot, tech-filled farm inside a former steel mill in Newark, New Jersey–a small startup called Aggressively Organic is focused on increasing indoor farming one square foot at a time.
- 06.29.18
- WORLD CHANGING IDEAS
These Low-Tech Indoor Gardens Bring Vegetables To Your Kitchen
Aggressively Organic wants to improve diets (and fight food insecurity) by making growing your own produce as simple as possible.
[Photo: Aggressively Organic]
While some indoor farming companies operate in sprawling buildings–like Aerofarms, with a 70,000-square foot, tech-filled farm inside a former steel millin Newark, New Jersey–a small startup called Aggressively Organic is focused on increasing indoor farming one square foot at a time. The startup wants to make small kitchen gardens affordable enough to be accessible to everyone, growing kale or tomatoes that can begin to address food insecurity.
The company’s new kits, which will begin shipping to customers in August, come with seeds that someone can plant in a small pod made from coconut coir, a byproduct of making coconut water. After the plants sprout up, the pods get moved to small cardboard containers under lights that come with the system. The company claims that after the initial setup, the system holds in water well enough that it won’t need to be watered again for at least a month. It’s low-tech, unlike some similar systems with sensors that measure soil moisture and automatically water themselves.
[Photo: Aggressively Organic]
“Typically hydroponic systems require pumps and air filters,” says Partlow. “Ours does not. It requires none of that. So that’s how you keep the cost down.” A set of nine hexagonal planters, which nestle together to save space on a counter or bookcase, along with all of the assorted parts of the system and 72 refills of the growth medium and seeds, is currently on pre-order at a sale price of $139; once the plants begin growing, they can be harvested continuously for months.
[Photo: Aggressively Organic]
“We harvest off of a head of lettuce for three months or kale for us six months to a year,” says Partlow. (When leaves are taken off the plant, rather than cutting off the whole plant, the plant keeps growing.) Like an outdoor vegetable garden, it’s cheaper to use than buying organic produce at a grocery store, but because it’s inside, it can be used year-round in any climate. It’s also easier to maintain, uses less water, and doesn’t require the use of pesticides. The company believes that a network of its indoor gardens throughout households would also make the food system more resilient; rather than growing lettuce in drought-prone Arizona and California, where nearly all of it is grown today, it could be grown in the kitchens where it’s eaten.
Partlow aims to make the systems available to everyone, particularly those who are food insecure, though even a price of $139 may be out of reach of someone who relies on food stamps. The company is working on a new service model that would supply customers with a six-pack of plants that are already ready for harvest, and let them exchange the plants as many as 24 times a month, for a cost of around $50, which could be paid either in installments or through SNAP, the government food assistance program.
Growing food at home could also improve nutrition–both because fruits and vegetables lose nutrients as they spend time in long supply chains and because simply having kale visible on your counter may mean you eat more of it.
“What we found is that if it’s available and you don’t have to go to the store to get it, our diets start to resemble more of what our natural diets as human beings have always been, which is we graze,” says Partlow. “Our habits actually change… you eat more vegetables than you would now because it’s available. It takes less time to plant, grow and maintain these things than it takes most people to get dressed and get ready to go to the grocery store and find a parking spot.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Adele Peters is a staff writer at Fast Company who focuses on solutions to some of the world's largest problems, from climate change to homelessness. Previously, she worked with GOOD, BioLite, and the Sustainable Products and Solutions program at UC Berkeley.
GrowGeneration Launches B2B Platform on Amazon.com
GrowGeneration Launches B2B Platform on Amazon.com
PRESS RELEASE PR Newswire
Jul. 18, 2018
Hydroponics Sales Projected to be in excess of $100M on Amazon, growing at 80% Year Over Year
DENVER, July 18, 2018 /PRNewswire/ - GrowGeneration Corp. (OTCQX: GRWG), ("GrowGeneration", "GrowGen" or the "Company"), one of the largest specialty retail hydroponic and organic gardening store chain, with 18 locations serving both commercial and home growers, announced today that it has formed a strategic partnership with Amazon to launch hydroponic and organic garden supplies online. GrowGeneration is onboarding thousands of products to offer the best pricing and world-class logistics with two-day delivery or better.
GrowGen CEO Comments:
"As part of our omni channel strategy of delivering our highly specialized suite of products for hydroponic growing, partnering with Amazon as our online solution allows us to reach a truly extensive audience of professional growers. Amazon's logistics are the best in the world and by selling through them, we can deliver on a direct basis anywhere in the country just in time. We project that Amazon will generate significant sales for GrowGen."
The Upstart Group CEO Comments:
"As a preferred partner of Amazon, The Upstart Group and GrowGeneration will work hand in hand to capture the $100M+ hydroponics space. Together we strive to bring GrowGen's product suite to market, and service the online hydroponics and organic gardening consumer. We are certainly excited about the opportunity that lies ahead, as we look for a bright future in the B2B eCommerce category with GrowGen."
According to Forrester, it is estimated that B2B eCommerce will reach $1.2 trillion and account for 13.1% of all B2B sales in the US by 2021. By offering our full product suite through the Amazon platform, and with 197 million unique monthly visitors, GrowGeneration seeks to capitalize on the projected growth of the B2B sector.
GrowGeneration fully understands that online buying is the new normal for American businesses and in order to continue to evolve, a partnership with Amazon is a necessity. Nearly half of online consumers are tech-savvy and sophisticated; they expect purchasing to be instinctive, with self-service interfaces and 24/7 eCommerce availability. With this new partnership, GrowGeneration intends to build upon this foundation for their digital strategy and ensure that all customers become loyal brand advocates who view GrowGeneation as a leader in the Hydroponics industry.
About GrowGeneration Corp.:
GrowGeneration Corp. ("GrowGen") owns and operates specialty retail hydroponic and organic gardening stores. Currently, GrowGen has 18 stores, which includes 6 locations in Colorado, 6 locations in California, 3 locations in Michigan, 1 location in Las Vegas, 1 location in Rhode Islandand 1 location in Washington. GrowGen carries and sells thousands of products, including organic nutrients and soils, advanced lighting technology and state of the art hydroponic equipment to be used indoors and outdoors by commercial and home growers. Our mission is to own and operate GrowGeneration branded stores in all the major legalized cannabis states. Management estimates that roughly 1,000 hydroponic stores are in operation in the U.S. By 2020 the market is estimated to reach over $23 billion with a compound annual growth rate of 32%.
Forward Looking Statements:
This press release may include predictions, estimates or other information that might be considered forward-looking within the meaning of applicable securities laws. While these forward-looking statements represent our current judgments, they are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially. You are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which reflect our opinions only as of the date of this release. Please keep in mind that we are not obligating ourselves to revise or publicly release the results of any revision to these forward-looking statements in light of new information or future events. When used herein, words such as "look forward," "believe," "continue," "building," or variations of such words and similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those contemplated in any forward-looking statements made by us herein are often discussed in filings we make with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission, available at: www.sec.gov, and on our website, at: www.growgeneration.com.
Connect:
• Website: www.growgeneration.com
• Facebook: GrowGenerationCorp
• Twitter: @GrowGenOK
• Instagram: @growgen
View original content with multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/growgeneration-launches-b2b-platform-on-amazoncom-300682734.html
SOURCE GrowGeneration
Markets Insider and Business Insider Editorial Teams were not involved in the creation of this post.
Startup Farmshelf Aims To Let Restaurants, Homeowners Grow Their Own Veggies
Nicole Zelniker, Special to USA TODAY
Published: July 3, 2018
In Singapore, several groups hope to transform the urban jungle into productive farmland by growing crops on rooftops. USA Today's Elizabeth Weise visited one.
(Photo: The Associated Press)
NEW YORK – When Andrew Shearer started Farmshelf in a San Francisco garage about two years ago, he created a business that set him on the path to the forefront of urban farming.
Farmshelf sells hydroponic growing systems, bookshelf-like units that come complete with everything needed to grow herbs and vegetables indoors, from seeds and nutrients to the LED lights that provide artificial sunlight.
Because Farmshelf's concept is hydroponic – employing science to grow food indoors – it says its veggies grow much faster than they would in fields.
Shearer founded Farmshelf on the belief that everyone should be able to grow their own food. For now, the systems are being pitched to restaurants and hotels, but individual consumers and home chefs may be next.
"At the end of the day, it all comes down to empowering people to grow the best-tasting food and the most nutritious food possible," said Shearer, also the CEO.
Current customers include Beefsteak, a restaurant with three locations in Washington, D.C., that specializes in vegetable-based dishes; and the Great Northern Food Hall, a Nordic-inspired restaurant in New York's Grand Central Station.
Shearer's background isn't in farming. Most recently, it's in technology.
Shearer worked at ideas-sharing site Pinterest in the San Francisco Bay Area, where he was a partner manager. At Pinterest, he said he began looking at ways to make his own food by searching for tips on Pinterest's message boards. He left to found Farmshelf in October 2015.
Now, Shearer has an office at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, where he can grow food and experiment with new technology.
"We drove across the country and relocated the company to New York," Shearer said. "The restaurant scene and the community are just amazing."
The effects of food insecurity on children. (Photo: Jerry Mosemak)
At Great Northern, Farmshelf's growing units are on display. Customers can see the origin of at least some of the ingredients in their meals. Chefs snip herbs and other greens from the shelves to prepare the day's meals.
"The Farmshelf team monitors our plants for us," said Jenny Pura, senior communications manager at Meyers USA, which oversees the Great Northern Food Hall. "They're great to work with because they see this as a science."
A favorite for Meyers' customers is micro-basil, which the chefs use in flatbread and some of the drinks at the Great Northern Food Hall. Pura said she often sees customers taking pictures of the Farmshelf units.
For Pura, Farmshelf matched the company's priorities when it came to sourcing food.
"We care immensely about where we get our food from," she said. "Not just sustainable, but as local as possible."
The idea of urban farming is not new. In the 1800s, Germans used urban gardens to fight food insecurity. During World War II, Americans were urged to plant Victory Gardens to supplement short supplies at home as farm production was diverted to feed soldiers, sailors and Marines.
As a startup, Farmshelf made a lot of sense, according to Barry Moltz, author and speaker on entrepreneurship. Small businesses such as Farmshelf have the advantage of low production costs and the ability to know what is happening in the community.
“People start businesses because they see a problem” they can fix, Moltz said. “They see a hole they can fill.”
The United Nations estimates that food production will need to at least double by 2050, according to a 2015 report. Plus, many households today need new sources of fresh food.
In New York City, about 15 percent of the population is what is termed as "food insecure," living in fear of running out of food or lacking access to nutritional food, according to a 2017 report. Many people who are food insecure have limited options, such as fast food, since it is cheap relative to other options, such as most organic produce.
Armed with the knowledge of how to lessen hunger with high-quality food, Farmshelf allows food to travel mere feet instead of miles on the path to consumption.
"Getting food into a city and providing high-quality food is difficult now," Shearer said.
Helping to solve an urban problem attracted investment from Urban-X, a collaboration between an automaker, BMW's Mini, and a venture capital firm interested in improving city life, Urban Us.
Farmshelf is one of seven small businesses that received support from Urban-X in 2016.
"Startups have an inherent advantage around speed and being really close to their customers," said Micah Kotch, managing director for Mini. "They're able to bring new thinking to the table."
Seed Supply Company Targets Growing Urban Farming Market
Seed Supply Company Targets Growing Urban Farming Market
June 18, 2018
East-West Seed prototype hydroponic unit for urban farming. -- ANNA GABRIELA A. MOGATO
VEGETABLE and flower seed producer and supplier East-West Seed Co. is planning to expand its portfolio by offering vertical farming solutions such as hydroponic units and smaller greenhouses to urban dwellers.
East-West Seed Co. Agricultural Engineer Pedro F. Dayag III, who designed the hydroponic unit prototypes, said that the company decided to target prospective urban farmers due to strong interest.
“We’re still more concentrated on farmers in the provinces. We rarely entertain urban. Now, since our technology has achieved scale, we will bring it to urban [farming],” he added.
“[For urban farming], we are trying to educate those who eat vegetables that they can also do it on their own. It doesn’t really have to come from big farms. It also has a lot of benefits — aside from eating vegetables, you know how it’s planted. It’s also therapeutic [to grow your own vegetables].”
Mr. Dayag said that while hydroponic units are not yet available for mass production, the company will accommodate individual orders.
“If there’s an inquiry and someone wants it made then we can probably accommodate because is what we are really selling here is the greenhouse [for urban farming]. Greenhouses have a repeat-buy but this one (hydroponic unit) is only a one-time buy,” he added.
East-West Seed Co. got into the business of manufacturing and installing greenhouses almost 10 years ago at the request of farmers who buy seeds from the company. Mr. Dayag said that while greenhouses can be customized, these usually come in two sizes, 3.5 meters by 18 meters and 6 meters by 24 meters.
If built and installed in Manila, the greenhouse can cost to about P50,000 to P55,000. This does not, however, include the hydroponics units inside.
The company last month exhibited a hydroponic unit which can cost around P6,000 to P8,000, which includes the aquarium pump to circulate a solution outsourced from the University of the Philippines-Los Baños. At a height of about four feet, the unit can accommodate around 72 receptacles for growing vegetables.
“I was thinking of a design [for hydroponics] that can be used in condominiums with its own lighting and aquarium pump,” Mr. Dayag said.
“All the end-user has to do [is] to choose what to plant — it can be lettuce, kangkong (water spinach), pechay (bok choy). And on the first week, they plant only on the first layer, and add another layer on the second week so that they won’t run out of vegetables. For a single person, that’s a lot.”
Field marketing representative Cusrome Loi S. Adaro said that aside from hydroponics, the company is also offer repurposed pallets for gardening.
“We had that idea because we had so many pallets in the office that remained unused. We also had another project, the “seed in the city,” where we conducted urban farming seminars to get ideas like that,” he added.
“It is now possible that the land needed for farming not be that big; that’s why we thought of projects such as container gardening. That it our focus right now but [rural] farmers are really still our main market.” — Anna Gabriela A. Mogato
Why Hydroponic Grow Boxes Are The Future Of Growing
Why Hydroponic Grow Boxes Are The Future Of Growing
From the time I start writing this article to the time I finish the world's population will have increased by approximately 10,000 people. That not only means 10,000 more mouths to feed. It also means a decrease in the space that we have left on this earth.
There is no denying that the worlds increasing population is putting pressure on food supplies and available living and agriculture spaces. A decrease in growing spaces means a decrease in area for farms and agriculture to produce food for the world's population creating a vicious cycle that only leads to a more difficult problem to solve.
But what if everyone could produce their own food? A world where everyone produces the food that they eat within their own living space means there would be no need for massive agricultural spaces. We could then use those previous agricultural spaces for additional living space or natural reserves. What’s the most exciting part? This isn’t just a fantasy.
A hydroponic system means growing in an entirely water-based system instead of the traditional soil-based system. If you live in a high rise apartment in the middle of downtown Toronto, New York, Tokyo or any large urban center then growing your own food with soil isn’t a very viable option. Furthermore, even if you could have a room full of soil in your apartment you still might not have the horticultural touch to grow your own food. But luckily there is an answer.
Fully automated hydroponic grow boxes allow their users to grow their own food in their house without having to constantly tend to their crop like a farmer. The Canadian-based Company Grobo has created a hydroponic grow box that constantly monitors and adjusts its own ecosystem’s lighting, EC and pH levels.
Hydroponic grow boxes are launching us towards a world where traditional farming and agricultural systems are merely a memory. Each person can grow their own fresh food from the comfort of their own home. I’m excited to live in a world where I can grow my own strawberries, tomatoes, and lettuce while sitting in my apartment watching TV or playing baseball at the park.
Now that’s smart farming!
"Indoor Farms Could Fine-Tune The Flavours of Our Food"
"Indoor Farms Could Fine-Tune The Flavours of Our Food"
A new way to farm indoors using different wavelengths of light could boost the taste of fruits, salads, and herbs, while also increasing food supply and nutritional value.
Growing food inside brings many benefits to farmers by reducing the amount of land, fertilizers, energy, and water needed to cultivate the plants.
But it can come with a major drawback – produce grown indoors sometimes lacks the depth of flavor it would have if it was allowed to flourish and ripen outside.
And it is the controlled environment of indoor farming itself that seems to be at least partly responsible.
‘A plant that grows outside is stressed,’ said Alexander Penzias, co-founder of Ponix Systems, an agriculture company specializing in indoor farming based in Vienna, Austria.
Extreme temperatures, hailstones, torrential rain or too much shade all produce stress that affects the growth rate of food. But these trying moments also force plants to produce phytochemicals, the active compounds that give fruit and vegetables their distinctive flavors.
In the future, produce could be grown directly in supermarkets or restaurants. Image credit - infarm
Despite increasing yield, the carefully controlled climates used in indoor farming do not stress the plants enough for them to produce these flavorsome phytochemicals.
This is bad news for taste. But it is also a weakness that could prevent this form of sustainable food production ever achieving widespread acceptance by consumers.
Indoor farming techniques like greenhouses and hydroponics systems, a soil-free system that uses artificial sunlight, also produce fewer greenhouse gas emissions than traditional agriculture. But if consumers are not willing to buy food produced in this way, the environmental benefits will be impossible to realize.
‘If you have plants that come out of a hydroponic system, it is not a case of them tasting good or bad, it is that they don’t have a taste at all,’ added Penzias.
His team, however, have focused on tuning light emitting diodes (LEDs) to produce specific wavelengths of light that encourage indoor plants to release phytochemicals.
They have developed this into a series of light recipes for specific plants that not only enhance flavor but allow it to be tuned. Amber light, for example, can increase the flavor of basil, while ultraviolet light can boost the taste of tomatoes flavor and also make salad leaves thicker and therefore more palatable.
Subjecting plants to different wavelengths of light can induce the production of phytochemicals and help develop flavors. Image credit - Ponix Systems
On top of that, it can also boost the health benefits of the food.
‘If it tastes better, it means it has a higher nutritional content,’ said Penzias. Many phytochemicals can be classified as antioxidants, which are good for heart health and the immune system, he added.
Ponix Systems are currently conducting a feasibility study of their LED technology as part of the flexiLED project. Once it is completed, they hope to team up with researchers and farmers to develop a commercial product.
Currently, the indoor farming company specializes in a hydroponic system called Herbert, which are stackable modules that can be installed on walls in homes or larger premises like offices or restaurants. They have already installed some of these modules in a school and a hospitality academy in Austria.
‘At first, the cooks were skeptical of the system,’ said Penzias. ‘But as soon as the cooks started harvesting the food, the flavors were more intense than what they expected.’
Commercialisation
Ponix Systems are planning to introduce their new light recipe technology at the school within the next few months and at the hospitality academy soon after that. The chefs there are already eager to tune the flavors of their indoor-farmed food.
This is a significant achievement, Penzias believes, because overcoming the skepticism of notoriously picky chefs is a good insight into the challenge of convincing the public.
‘When consumers hear the term hydroponics they are immediately scared,’ said Penzias. He said the term can often sound too technical or chemical to appeal to environmentally conscious shoppers.
But one indoor farming business based in Berlin, Germany, may have found the secret to successfully addressing the taste issue on a large scale in Europe.
Infarm offers supermarkets monthly subscriptions to rent an indoor farming system alongside their optimizing growing services, such as algorithms that determine the most efficient use of light, water and nutrients. They also use specific wavelengths to enhance the flavour of the plants they grow.
Martin Weber, chief financial officer at Infarm said: ‘We are really able to show that people are buying our produce and prefer it over existing stuff that is out there.’
Infarm produce has already been used by Michelin star chefs in Germany, while their indoor systems have been installed in other restaurants and a Berlin supermarket, which allows the retailer to sell the produce grown directly to its customers.
‘Normally, they are buying at a specific margin for a lot of produce, but they throw away a big amount of it,’ said Weber.
At the same time, it eliminates the costs of importing salads or herbs from other parts of the world, greatly reducing the environmental impact.
Infarm’s technology is now being used in over 50 Berlin supermarkets and they are planning to expand to Paris, France, in August and then to London, UK, soon after. Their first farm in a French supermarket will also be their biggest one yet. Covering 100m2, it will produce five tonnes of herbs, allowing the retailer to become self-sufficient for this commodity.
‘The food we are consuming is traveling too far and its carbon footprint is devastating for the world,’ added Weber. ‘(In the future) we will be growing a lot of food in cities, or closer to the cities.’
Source: European Commission (Steve Gillman)
Publication date: 6/14/2018
10 Numbers That Show How Much Farmland We’re Losing to Development
10 Numbers That Show How Much Farmland We’re Losing to Development
By Dan Nosowitz on May 22, 2018
This image, courtesy of American Farmland Trust, shows the conversion of agricultural land to urban and low-density residential development between 1992 and 2012.
AFT, Farms Under Threat
American Farmland Trust, which since 1980 has been attempting to save agricultural land in the U.S., has compiled a huge assessment of the movement of farmland between 1992 and 2012 (the latter date being the last that the data required was available).
The organization’s findings, which they are calling “the most comprehensive ever undertaken of America’s agricultural lands,” aren’t hugely shocking, at least at the surface: American farmland is being vacuumed up by development. What’s new, though, is the discovery that the development isn’t coming only from urban areas expanding outwards—rural areas are also losing farmland rapidly.
“The fact is that we have this sort of insidious development that no one’s been paying attention to, and we really need to start paying attention,” says Julia Freedgood, the assistant VP of programs at the AFT.
Why is this happening? There’s no simple answer. One major reason, which has spiraling effects, is that farming is an incredibly difficult and not a very lucrative career path. The average age of the American farmer was nearly 60 in 2012 (the time of the last census); as those farmers retire or pass away, successive generations turn elsewhere for jobs, the land goes fallow and is sold off. Another reason: it’s sometimes simply worth more to sell farmland rather than actually farm the land, especially if that farmland is near a city or town.
“There’s no one to take it over and it’s worth more selling to developers, so why not?” That’s also part of the reason it’s obscenely difficult to find new land for new farmers; land access, according to the National Young Farmers Coalition, is one of the most difficult obstacles for beginning farmers.
This is concerning for a variety of reasons. The obvious one is that farmland produces food, so less farmland means the price of food may rise. The majority of American farmland is devoted to commodity crops—soy, corn, wheat—and many of the uses of those crops are not for direct eating. Much of it, though, is used for animal feed, and if the price of animal feed goes up, so goes the price of meat. And, of course, some of the farmland being lost is for so-called “specialty” crops, like fruits and vegetables. But there are other reasons as well.
Development on farmland can have negative effects, removing land that animals use as a habitat. Well-operated farms care for the soil, air, and water, and produce viable ecosystems. Economically, the agricultural industry employs millions in all sorts of fields, from machinery to inputs to researchers to retailers to packagers.
What it's like to apply for the almost unwinnable U.S. green card lottery
We put together a list of some of the AFT’s findings that should help to add some (scary) context.
10% of the world’s arable acres lie within the United States.
Agriculture contributes $992 billion to the American economy each year.
31 million acres of farmland lost to development, in total, between 1992 and 2012.
That’s 175 acres per hour of agricultural land lost to development—3 acres per minute.
It probably comes as no surprise that the expansion of cities and suburbs are responsible for most of the loss in farmland. But 41% of the lost acres actually came from development in rural areas.
The U.S. lost 11 million acres of America’s best agricultural land—land with superior soil conditions and weather for growing food—from 1992 to 2012.
Best agricultural land for intensive food and crop production in 2012. Source: AFT, Farms Under Threat.
0.43 PVR: PVR stands for Productivity, Versatility, and Resiliency, and it’s a metric the American Farmland Trust uses to rate the quality of farmland. If farmland has a rating above that—say, 0.65—that makes it great farmland. Below that, and it’s subpar. Farmland with a high rating is being lost disproportionately quickly, which means suboptimal farmland will have to be used. And suboptimal farmland requires more water, more transportation, more energy, more fertilizers, and more pesticides to be productive, all of which are bad for the environment.
Just 17% of American land is ideal for farming. We don’t have that much to lose! The amount of the best land lost is about equal to California’s entire Central Valley.
62% of development between 1992 and 2012 took place on agricultural land. The other 38% was primarily forest and simply unused space.
Some types of farmland are more at risk of being swallowed by development than others. 91% of the acreage devoted to fruit trees, tree nuts, and berries are directly in the path of development as they’re located in counties that qualify as either metropolitan areas or immediately adjacent to them.
This report is the first part of a multi-year project to better understand farmland use and loss state-by-state and to better understand the effectiveness of state farmland protection policies. Make sure to read the full, eye-opening “Farms Under Threat” report, and you can also use that link to sign up for updates on the project from the AFT.
South Korea: Smart Farms Cultivate 'Vegetables of The Future'
South Korea: Smart Farms Cultivate 'Vegetables of The Future'
'We Are Future Vegetables'
May 30, 2018
Plants grow at Miraewon's Fresh Farm III, a factory-style smart farm that grows leafy plants and herbs in an automated environment. / Courtesy of Miraewon
Two South Korean smart farms are leading the way in using a technically advanced agricultural system with a huge future around the world.
By Ko Dong-hwan
They may be farms, but there are no signs of soil or smelly manure. Instead, the sound of water flowing, a breeze, a pleasant temperature and bright artificial lights fill the indoor space of "smart farms" in South Korea. In this environment, countless numbers of different leafy plants thrive in multi-layered beds.
Humans rarely frequent the enclosure, which looks similar to a laboratory. Apart from a cleaner with a vacuum cleaner that sucks water from empty plant beds, not a soul bothers the plants. A closer look at the crops reveals antenna-looking fixtures as small as a human finger installed here and there.
Unlike the quiet space, the real game happens outside the enclosure ― "played" by computers. Reading data transmitted from the antennas, the computers care for the plants, varying temperature, light intensity and water flow amount, and remote-control the enclosures' environment to maintain ideal conditions. The operation goes on round-the-clock, regardless of outside factors like seasonal effects, weather conditions, human error or animal intrusions.
Plants grown in artificial environments, controlled by state-of-the-art artificial technologies, may seem odd to some people. Yet, considering how efficiently smart-farming uses natural resources and energy to produce healthy crops continuously, the concept may well become a reality in a major way.
Plants grow in n.thing's "Planty Square," which can be remotely controlled by a smartphone app to supply water for seeds in each pot. / Courtesy of n.thing
Module pots
The method is being pursued by n.thing, a smart-farm developer based in Jamwon-dong in Seocho-gu, Seoul. Leo Kim, CEO, came up with a plastic pot called "Pickcell." The container, measuring just over five centimeters in width, length and depth and weighing 16 grams, works as a module. Attachable to one another, each hydroponic pot grows a single seed and multiple pots produce plants accordingly.
Pickcells can be linked to make a "Planty Square" or in thousands to make a "Planty Cube," a vertical farm in a shipping container-like space. All the components are Internet of Things inventions, with users controlling them with a dedicated smartphone app that transmits data through the company's firmware.
Leo Kim, right, explains his smart-farm products and software at a SXSW booth in Austin, Texas, in 2016. / Courtesy of n.thing
"Our company is oriented for exports," says Lee, who started the company in 2014. "Because of the module-based design, the farm is easy to install. The Cube's container-concept is convenient in that it allows a faster counter-response to contamination compared to a large-scale factory. We don't have to shut down the entire facility but just isolate containers separately. The module basis also enables easy replacement of hardware parts."
The company started operating the Cubes in practice early this year, installing three in an unused space in Mia-dong in Gangbuk-gu, Seoul. Afterward, Lee searched for spaces to install 100 additional Cubes in three locations that he keeps secret. He said they would be operating within this year.
Lee sold Planty Square to about 30 countries on crowd-funding site Kickstarter. In January, the company exported two Planty Cubes to Poshtel hostel in Copenhagen, Denmark, where smart-farming using artificial lights and conveyor belts began in 1957.
Lee believes that future farming is all about data. Crops' appearance, taste and growth period can all vary depending on different environmental elements that can be adjusted according to data. For example, a cucumber seed, when grown in an African country, can grow several times bigger than in Korea because of the different climate and environment.
Manipulation of the data allows him to customize plants for people who cannot eat fresh plants because of health issues. For people with kidney problems and diabetes, he developed plants without potassium and nitrate, respectively. He has acquired a patent for this.
"We control the data," Lee says, describing the smart-farm maintenance. "Inside the controlled smart-farms, we can grow crops the way we want. People who buy our module farms need our data to grow plants the way they want."
Just as traditional computer servers evolved from a physical box to an online cloud server, Lee describes his smart farm models as "cloud farms" that he operates for customers, charging them an operating fee unrelated to output.
"Because traditional farming is affected by seasons and crops' prices vary accordingly, the supply-and-demand chain is unstable," Lee says. "Smart farms enable stable production and thus stable pricing. It brings down the cost of 100 grams of lettuce as low as a few hundred won retail. It's just like the transition from CDs to online streaming for music listeners."
Lee believes that just as computer engineers need their own working tools to develop programs, farmers need dedicated farming tools to focus on growing crops. He points out that farmers have so far been reluctantly burdened with things other than their main job, from searching for sales routes to managing venues and selling the products.
"The smart farms are a platform for farmers to focus solely on farming," he says.
n.thing's "Planty Cube" is an unmanned smart farm in a space the size of a shipping container. / Courtesy of n.thing.
Veggie factory
Amid wide open farm fields in Pyeongtaek, Gyeonggi Province is a cluster of several manufacturing firms. Next to a dusty road, smart-farm operator Miraewon runs six factories 24/7 with about 200 employees, many of them migrant workers.
At one factory called Fresh Farm III, about 20 different species of plants grow in automated indoor environments. Growing on 98 floors of hydroponic beds spanning more than 1,400 square meters, leafy and herb plants densely pack the enclosure beneath LED lights.
"Every day, we sow and harvest," says Jeong Myeong-hwan, the factory's chief operator. "The tight daily cycle allows us to harvest enough to meet the required demand. Making money in this industry requires a strong, steady pipeline, as well as quality products."
The company produces an average 100 kilograms of leafy vegetables and 50 kilograms of herbs each day. This output would not have been possible without the smart-farming technology that reduces the time taken from sowing to harvesting to 33-37 days. Minimizing the growth cycle and still providing good qualities ― vivid colors and plants weighing at least 150 grams per crop ― is not easy, according to Jeong, who left global corporation Samsung to join the burgeoning smart farm industry years ago.
Miraewon has contracts with South Korea's fried chicken restaurant chain Kyochon and warehouse retailer Costco Korea to provide salad packs containing basil and other greens.
Established in 2004, the company now spearheads domestic smart-farming. Miraewon launched Fresh Farm III in 2014 and built other factories dedicated to making salads, growing herbs, paprika and special vegetables and experimenting with about 60 varieties.
An automated small-scale vertical farm is installed at Hyundai Department Store's Cheonho branch in Gangdong-gu, Seoul, providing vegetables for a restaurant there.
Butterheads grow at Miraewon's Fresh Farm III. / Courtesy of Miraewon
Miraewon's efficient pioneering methods were recognized by the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs, which loaned the company 1.5 billion won ($1.4 million) to develop a demonstration project for domestic farmers. In 2017, Dutch vegetable farm Enza Zaden, which assesses and grades vegetable factories across the world, rated the company third-highest on a scale of 1-10.
Miraewon's demonstration project, which will be active within this year, will introduce a nutrient film technique (NFT) to replace the old deep-flow technique (DFT). Compared to DFT, which uses potentially hazardous foam in building plant beds and requires five laborers per 300 square meters, NFT uses hazard-free plastic materials and requires as little as two maintenance workers.
"With the demonstration project, we want to surpass Japan," Jeong says, referring to the nation that has long outpaced South Korea in smart farming. "South Koreans, once well organized with ideas and supporting tools, can make miracles happen. I aim to realize another miracle this time."
Miraewon's reputation precedes other domestic smart-farms and motivates it to fulfill its corporate social responsibility. It met members of a disability group and discussed ways to hire physically challenged people as laborers. In this company, age does not really matter. One of the most recent retirees was in his 80s.
The company this year started to teach public servants from other countries about smart-farming. In March, 20 government officials from Laos visited the company. Before this, representatives from 29 countries came to the company to learn South Korea's state-of-the-art agricultural methods.
Prospects for smart farming
By the end of 2020, Seoul plans to build the nation's first smart farm in dedicated buildings. Two structures will be in an outdated section of Mok-dong district in Yangcheong-gu, which will be re-urbanized. The city will contribute about 7.5 billion won to the project.
"We will not erect the farms from scratch but instead renovate existing buildings," said Park Se-hwang from Seoul Metropolitan Government's Urban Agriculture Division, who leads the smart farming project. "We found no laws or regulations that might cause any legal conflict with the project. So it's good to go. It's just a matter of time to secure the site."
Seoul Mayor Park Won-soon is known to be interested in the smart-farm. The city, along with Mok-dong, tried to build another vertical farm near Garak Market in Songpa-gu but the deal fell through.
Because smart-farming requires much more investment ― 10 million won per 3.3 square meters ― compared to vinyl houses or glass houses, and take a painstakingly long time ― up to 10 years ― to offset the cost, starting a smart-farm takes courage. Namyangju in Gyeonggi Province planned the nation's first smart farm in 2009 but decided the investment cost was too high.
"A 30-storey vertical farm can feed 50,000 people," says a Seoul Metropolitan Government official citing a Columbia University's study. "Technological development supporting urban farming and future food businesses are our new perspectives in approaching the (Mok-dong) farm project. No matter how long the project will take, we will get it done."
Heliponix Tackling Global Food Crisis With Household Appliance
Heliponix Tackling Global Food Crisis With Household Appliance
When Scott Massey’s dreams of a tropical internship dried up in the Texas dust, a bigger dream materialized. The Evansville native and Ivan Ball of Owensville founded Heliponix to tackle the challenge of global food insecurity through their GroPod appliance. The problem, as Massey explains it, is this: “We already allocate 50 percent of American land use and 80 percent of our freshwater consumption to agriculture, but the United Nations is predicting we need to increase global food outputs by 70 percent by 2050 to avoid a global food crisis.”
To help them go after their idea, they pursued funding through the Elevate Purdue Foundry Fund. Heliponix received an Elevate-funded $20,000 Black Award in 2017 and an $80,000 Gold Award in May 2018.
Massey’s telling of how the two-man Southwest Indiana team uncovered the root of the problem, developed a marketable solution, and are gaining financial momentum and credibility is an entrepreneurial story many founders will relate to and can learn from.
Tell me your business story so far. How did you get where you are with Heliponix?
I was introduced to CEA (controlled environmental agriculture) in 2017 at Purdue University during my junior year as a mechanical engineering student. Ivan Ball and I were working on a NASA-funded research study under Dr. Cary Mitchell. CEA is a hydroponic farming technique that is three times faster and uses 95 percent less water year-round than conventional farming. There were still a number of technical hurdles to be overcome for this technology to have a meaningful impact in yields of food production, the largest being the outrageous energy cost. The indoor lighting needs prevented indoor agriculture from being a financially viable enterprise without dependence on government subsidies.
After coming to grips with the unfortunate reality that the technology wasn’t ready for mass adoption, I went to the career fairs at Purdue looking for a summer internship. I thought I had finally gotten my break after receiving an internship offer as a project engineer in Hawaii. Although the location on the contract I signed said “TBD,” I was told the final details of my housing arrangements were being finalized — I was dumb enough to believe that.
I was instead reassigned to renovate Section 8 government housing in El Paso, Texas, along the border to Juarez, Mexico. My primary responsibility was to oversee a Spanish-speaking workforce for labor jobs such as toxic asbestos removal. Many of the workers had previous gang affiliations, and narcotic use was rampant. The section of El Paso I managed was called the Angel’s Triangle, situated between the Franklin Mountains, the US Army’s Fort Bliss, and a border wall to Mexico. This portion of town was originally called the “devil’s triangle” due to the gang activity, narcotics, and prostitution.
The city of El Paso is a desert in more ways than one — it’s also a food desert.
Needless to say, I wasn’t thrilled about my reassignment from Hawaii at first, but it was a very enlightening experience that I’m glad I went through. The city of El Paso is a desert in more ways than one — it’s also a food desert. A food desert is where a low-income, inner-city area is so far away from grocery stores with fresh food that the residents resort to fast food for every meal. The result? Higher obesity rates and health complications. I began to ask myself, “Why do food deserts exist?” The simple answer is that low-income areas aren’t profitable places to run a business, such as a grocery store. However, the root reason behind this is much more complex. I began to look into why fresh food was too expensive for these food deserts, and the results were alarming. Farming is very expensive in terms of resource consumption, and it’s the consumer who ends up paying the price.
In the United States, we throw away 40 percent of the produce grown. What’s most alarming is that we’re producing at capacity, but we’re failing to deliver before it perishes because food goes bad over time. I realized that food deserts could be the tip of an iceberg that would only become more common as urban centers grow with the human population.
It was at this moment that I truly became aware of the perpetual cycle of food deserts.
- Residents are placed into government housing in a food desert.
- Residents become obese due to poor food options nearby.
- Residents become more dependent on government funding for medical care for obesity-related health complications.
If the funding existed to purchase these appliances, would it be so crazy to think that an appliance that could grow fresh produce could break this cycle?
The cycle was ironic. We were installing brand new appliances in government housing complexes, and shipping out the functional appliances. If the funding existed to purchase these appliances, would it be so crazy to think that an appliance that could grow fresh produce could break this cycle? What if a recurring revenue business model could be built on subscriptions to seed pods? That’s when my fire was truly lit. I began researching prior art patents, existing products, and meticulously cataloging customer complaints for competing devices on the market to devise a turnkey appliance that grew food with the same level of maintenance as a Keurig coffee machine.
I discovered that there was a flood of cheap novelty devices in the market that served more as decorations than useful products that actually gave the user legitimate yields. Essentially, they were flower pots disguised as “groundbreaking devices” that required users to buy their own lights and HVAC equipment. Additionally, many of these low-quality products — some made of cardboard — had major food safety concerns because of the cheap materials that acted as perfect growing mediums for toxic E. coli or fungi.
This highlighted the importance that the world did not need another decorative flower pot, but instead needed an appliance that serves as an automated, miniature greenhouse. This would be no small undertaking. The knowledge requirement for design for manufacturability, software architecture, electrical engineering, fluid mechanics and industrial design was steep. Although Ivan and I were capital poor when we founded the company, we were rich in ambition and human capital at our disposal at Purdue.
What have been some pivotal moments in the development of Heliponix so far?
We’re competing with the financials of soil and sun farming, so what became the Heliponix GroPod had to be very energy efficient to be cost competitive. In my research, I discovered that vertical farms were the only financially viable method. We needed to be able to place a vertical aeroponic tower inside of a miniature greenhouse, and the tower had to rotate, with plants accessible 360 degrees around it.
I filed multiple utility patents on this concept we affectionately call “rotary aeroponics” (now a trademarked name). During our growth trials, we thought we were miscalculating our growth rates. Our device demonstrated a 300 percent increase in efficiency compared to other factory farms and was 500 times more efficient than conventional soil farming, which is typically limited to one harvest a year. These results that have been repeated time and again.
Our first break occurred when we unexpectedly won our first business plan competition at Ball State University in the fall of 2017. After walking away with a nondilutable $5,000 check, I asked myself, “Why stop?” Ivan and I applied to every business plan competition we could find, and were featured at the Forbes AgTech Summit. To date, we have won under close to $200K in funding from business plan competitions in the form of grants or convertible note investments.
Some figures in the entrepreneurial space looked down at us for not raising a massive investment round. But after solving all technical hurdles, and selling the first GroPods, we’ve proven that this isn’t necessary. I’m a firm believer in bootstrapping a startup until the critical mass has been established. Nondilutive funding mechanisms or convertible debts were a much better strategy for Heliponix. Revenue is truly the cheapest form of capital.
The moment I began eating most of my own food from my GroPod was the inflection point that I realized we would be OK, and we were ready for sales.
However, this wasn’t achieved without extreme commitment and emotional testing to overcome all technical hurdles. The worst problems in a product design are long-term problems that only occur after several months of continual use because you thought it wasn’t a problem anymore. Fortunately, our perseverance paid off by not quitting. The moment I began eating most of my own food from my GroPod was the inflection point that I realized we would be OK, and we were ready for sales.
What do you think the value is of having resources like Elevate in Southwest Indiana?
The primary reason we’ve been able to launch Heliponix without a major investment to date is because of our ability to leverage our network. Eric Steele [Elevate Entrepreneur-in-Residence, Southwest Indiana] has made instrumental introductions to former Whirlpool engineers who possessed an intimate understanding of appliances with fluid control systems, among many other influential business developers. At times in our product development process, we felt lost. While we had the skills to make a physical product, a simple conversation with an individual rich in intellectual capital proved to be incredibly valuable.
The Purdue@WestGate [an economic development accelerator formed by the partnership between WestGate Authority, Naval Surface Warfare Center Crane Division (NSWC Crane), Purdue University and Purdue Research Foundation] location and Innovation Pointe are the two of the most overlooked resources for starting a business to make all of these introductions and find funding mechanisms for new businesses.
Why focus on a problem that seems far in the relative future? Why is it important or interesting to tackle a huge problem like global hunger?
My biggest fear is a life played safe, wondering what could have happened if an opportunity was pursued fully.
Working in Texas was a lower point in my career. I woke up one day and could see my entire career in front of me doing the exact same job until the end of my life. At that moment, I asked myself, “Would I be happy on the day I die with the life I lived in this career?” The answer was no, and I realized I had a unique opportunity to risk failure for the opportunity to change the world for the better. My biggest fear is a life played safe, wondering what could have happened if an opportunity was pursued fully.
The timing couldn’t have been any better for a product that makes consumers self-sufficient for produce production. Droughts and food safety concerns are predicted to become much worse with a growing population expected to reach 9.7 billion in 2050 — an additional 3 billion humans. I was always aware of the daunting task to bring the GroPod to market, but I also knew that the world needed a practical solution to food insecurity, and our persistence would pay off.
Entry into the mainstream agriculture marketplace is daunting. The discussion of food insecurity has become political with polarized sides offering biased data vs. anecdotal evidence. Agriculture (one of the oldest professions) is ripe for disruption and requires an outsider’s perspective to design an entirely new solution that eliminates the entire supply chain in an industry that is inherently resistant to change.
To put this in perspective, we already allocate 50 percent of American land use and 80 percent of our freshwater consumption to agriculture, but the United Nations is predicting we need to increase global food outputs by 70 percent by 2050 to avoid a global food crisis. The California drought was caused by the sheer volume of water consumption for its massive, growing population. At Heliponix, we see this as an opportunity to thrust mankind into the third generation of agriculture of farming appliances as we begin to hit the guard rails of the human population limit.
Food insecurity is not a future problem. I have personally seen the overwhelming evidence in the food deserts plaguing inner city areas in the USA, and children suffering from extreme malnutrition while working overseas in West Africa to build low-cost hydroponic farms. I strongly encourage anyone skeptical about this to accompany me on my next trip to Africa, or volunteer at a local food pantry. It has been a challenge to convince decision makers in the U.S. that famines are not unique to the developing world, but it is difficult to convince someone to invest in water conservation technologies who has never experienced a drought. A population explosion combined with drought could just as easily put a developed nation into a food insecure state.
Fortunately for us, I don’t need to convince most decision makers of the facts. What we focus on is selling a product to solve food deserts one home at a time as a scalable solution. In the not-so-distant future, we will have scaled to solve an entire city’s food desert with our current business trajectory.
To learn more about Heliponix and GroPods, visit heliponix.com. To reach the Entrepreneur-in-Residence in your region, contact Elevate Ventures.
"PRODUCT SHOWCASE" Revolutionizing Agriculture With Household Appliances | Scott Massey | TEDxWabashCollege
Revolutionizing Agriculture With Household Appliances | Scott Massey | TEDxWabashCollege
Published on Jun 8, 2018
With a rapidly growing population and the flawed design of agriculture, concerns rise about how to feed the global population in 2050. Using innovation, experience, and hydroponics, Scott Massey reveals a new way to grow certain vegetables within the comfort of your own home.
Scott Massey designed refinement systems in the oil and natural gas industry as a mechanical engineer and made patent drawings for a local patent attorney.
He then teamed up with a fellow Purdue research student to design a hydroponic plant growth chamber to grow food in future space colonies. Wanting to make a larger impact he set out to create personal, hydroponic appliances that could yield a full head of leafy greens on a daily basis to eliminate a user's dependence on a grocery store for most produce. Scott Massey (CEO) designed refinement systems in the oil and natural gas industry as a mechanical engineer and made patent drawings for a local patent attorney. Ivan Ball (CTO) worked as an electrical and computer engineer managing production of ethanol at a processing plant.
They met while working as student research engineers at the Purdue University Horticulture College designing a NASA funded, hydroponic plant growth chamber to grow food in future space colonies.
They then set out to create personal, hydroponic appliances that could yield a full head of leafy greens on a daily basis to eliminate a user's dependence on a grocery store for most produce. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community.
Heliponix
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Founder of Purdue-Affiliated startup Travels To Africa To teach Togolese About Using Hydroponics For More Sustainable Farming
June 13, 2018
Founder of Purdue-Affiliated startup Travels To Africa To teach Togolese About Using Hydroponics For More Sustainable Farming
A young Togolese boy helps build a hydroponic system during a workshop led by Scott Massey, a founder of Heliponix LLC, and Delia Diabangouaya, quality manager of Choco Togo. The workshops, held at the University of Lome in Togo, sought to help residents of the small West African country create sustainable agriculture methods. (Photo provided) Download image
WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. – A founder of a Purdue University-affiliated startup that makes a kitchen appliance that grows garden vegetables year-round traveled to Africa to lead a hands-on workshop to help residents of Togo, a small West African country, create sustainable agriculture methods.
Scott Massey, a Purdue graduate and founder of Heliponix LLC, and Delia Diabangouaya, quality manager of Choco Togo, the first chocolate production facility in Togo, led the workshop on hydroponic systems at the University of Lome in Togo, Diabangouaya’s alma mater.
Togo, a country that has about 7.5 million residents, is one of the world’s poorest countries, with many people surviving on subsistence farming. It has struggled with capital shortages to purchase irrigation equipment and fertilizers, which in turn, reduces the nation's potential yields.
This has created a need for sustainable agricultural methods that will increase yields without requiring extensive capital investments. Diabangouaya and Massey explored ways they could bring hydroponic technologies from the United States to West Africa.
Hydroponics is a method of growing plants in liquids with the use of soil. Most hydroponic systems are indoors in seasonal climates or outdoors in tropical environments, meaning they can grow produce year-round, using 95 percent less water, and can grow produce three times faster without the use of pesticides if contained.
“I thought it was a great opportunity to share what I know and help the people of Togo,” said Massey, a Purdue University mechanical engineering technology graduate.
Scott Massey (center, with sunglasses), a founder of Heliponix LLC, poses with residents of Togo who took part in a hands-on workshop on hydroponics in the small West Africa country, where many people survive on subsistence farming. The workshop was funded by the Mandela Washington Fellowship Reciprocal Exchange Component. (Photo provided) Download image
Massey met Diabangouaya while she was at Purdue University for the Mandela Washington Fellowship, a flagship program of the Young African Leaders Initiative (YALI) that empowers young people through academic coursework, leadership training, and networking. They explored ways they could bring hydroponic technologies from the United States to West Africa.
Massey and Diabangouaya sent a proposal to the Mandela Washington Fellowship Reciprocal Exchange Component to hold hydroponic technology lectures and workshop builds on the University of Lome campus for students to bring the technology to their homes. Funds were provided to finance Massey’s travel and to buy materials to build the first Heliponix farms in Africa.
Upon arriving in April, Massey quickly learned the challenge of designing outside of the United States because everything in Togo is in metric. He also had no knowledge of what materials were readily available to the average Togolese person in their marketplaces.
“This became a difficult design challenge. If the design I shared had a single part that was unobtainable, then the entire design was worthless, and would have no lasting impact,” Massey said.
He had a preliminary design drafted but needed to get his hands dirty and boots on the ground to make a theoretical design into a practical solution for food insecurity.
“We immediately went to the market, and utilized my network of contacts to find a plumber and students at the International Agricultural Association of Students who knew the landscape and could help negotiate deals for our material purchases. The farm design had to be low-cost, highly productive, and easy to assemble,” Diabangouaya said.
That’s when Massey realized he needed to revise his design.
“I needed a realistic plan that could be scaled across the country. Fortunately, I had a team of farmers, students, and tradesmen to interview to find out more information about their design constraints. Although I left the USA to teach lectures about this technology, I learned more than I could ever teach from those facing the reality of resource consumption,” Massey said.
After procuring materials, Diabangouaya organized lectures at the University of Lome and the Woelab technology incubator, where Massey taught lectures about funding entrepreneurial ventures, 3-D printing and the fundamentals of hydroponics with the help of a translator. They then held workshops for lecture participants of various backgrounds to see a system be physically built.
“I am not fluent in French, so the language barrier made it difficult at times to teach technical concepts,” Massey said. “I was discouraged to see blank faces look back at me as I held up materials for the first workshop, and felt like I was losing the audience’s attention. … Then something amazing happened. Hyppolyte Awadi, the plumber who provided valuable insights for the design stood and began teaching the assembly process the audience.”
Participants pulled out their phones to record the instructions. By the second workshop, Massey and Diabangouaya watched students assemble the next Heliponix farm independently without any oversight.
“The knowledge transfer was complete, and it was clear many farms were to be built long after Scott left,” Diabangouaya said.
Massey said they have open-sourced this design in a complete manual in as many languages as possible.
“This will allow anyone in Africa to build their own system, and improve upon the designs as its user base rapidly expands. This Heliponix system would cost $300 to build, could continue producing crops even when the power goes out, requires four square meters and can grow about 250 kilograms of vegetables on an annual basis.
“Our progress in Africa will not be tracked in dollars earned, but instead the number of mouths fed and lives saved from hunger. Most of the countries in Africa import a significant portion of their food, so this isn’t just an issue of environmental sustainability,” Massey said. “This is a national security threat for these countries if their food supplies are cut, so they need to become independent.”
Purdue Research Foundation contact: Tom Coyne, 765-588-1044, tjcoyne@prf.org
Source: Scott Massey, scott@heliponix.com
AVA Technologies Raises $2.6 Million To Launch A Soilless Smart Garden
BY JESSICA GALANG CANADIAN STARTUP NEWS JUNE 5, 2018
AVA Technologies Raises $2.6 Million To Launch A Soilless Smart Garden
Vancouver-baed AVA Technologies has raised $2.6 million in a seed round meant to support the launch of its smart garden product. The round was led by Vanedge Capital.
This year, AVA plans to launch AVA Byte, which the company calls a “Nespresso machine for gardening.” AVA Byte uses biodegradable soil-less pods filled with seeds and automatically adapts water and lighting based on the plant. Users can track the progress of plants on their phone.
AVA Byte initially launched on Indiegogo in June 2017 and pre-sold over $130,000 worth of gardens.
“With multiple hardware companies in their portfolio, including Vancouver success story Recon Instruments, acquired by Intel for an unconfirmed $175 million, Vanedge is an ideal partner as we scale AVA Byte worldwide,” said Valerie Song, CEO, and co-founder of AVA Technologies. “We’re extremely humbled and excited to have Vanedge as our partner not only to provide us with growth capital and strategic connections but also as proud supporters of the diverse Canadian tech ecosystem.”
AVA Byte can grow tomatoes, herbs, and vegetables, and the company plans to release new crops and product extensions next year.
“AVA Byte is one of the most beautiful innovative and innovative attractive solutions we’ve seen for this rapidly growing market for indoor growing,” said Vanedge Capital in a statement. “With more than 650 units pre-sold through their Indiegogo campaign and strong retail interest, what Valerie and the team have accomplished is extremely truly impressive. While consumer hardware is typically not an investment area of ours, AVA is an outlier with recurring sales, proven demand, and a passionate and diverse founding team.”
Funding Vancouver
Jessica Galang
Jessica Galang is BetaKit's News Editor. Follow her on Twitter @jessicagalangg or send her pitches to jessica.galang@betakit.com. Website Twitter
New Unique Designer Hydroponic System To Land On Indiegogo
New Unique Designer Hydroponic System To Land On Indiegogo
May 3, 2018
(Isstories Editorial) London, May 3, 2018 (Issuewire.com) – Good news on the way for Urbanites who struggle to grow herb gardens in the concrete jungle. London-based promising startup VictoryGrow is launching a revolutionary designer low-powered hydroponic system on Crowdsourcing website Indiegogo that will allow green enthusiasts to have a lovely herb garden right on their windowsill. Aptly titled as PowerPot, the new-age system assures energy, space and water-efficient horticulture that can be easily practiced at apartments and commercial establishments.
The Indiegogo campaign is geared to raise around $19,500.
VictoryGrow PowerPots are small yet powerful hydroponic systems which will allow users to grow-from-seed various edible plants such as small tomatoes, chilies, herbs and so on. Users can also use the USB-powered system to grow fancy display plants and flowers. The PowerPot sports a clear viewport which will enable you to check up the growth and health of your plants roots any time -something which is simply impossible with soil-grown plants.
One of the best bits about our PowerPot is its all-in-one seed-to-fruit design that eliminates the hassle of transplanting your seedlings once they start to grow up. We have designed it to bring a little bling to growing whilst preventing the unwanted mess of growing plants in soil. Its convenient, easy to use, powerful and most importantly renders that desired green touch to your urban home or office when you are lamenting about the absence of a garden, stated Nick Outram, a visionary tech veteran, a seasoned hydroponic system designer and the man behind the innovative PowerPot.
Speaking further, Mr. Outram revealed the state of the art features of his new unique VictoryGrow PowerPot-
- Robust 4 mm thick high quality acrylic case manufactured with care by a leading aquarium producer
- Durable brushless and noiseless motor instead of cheap air pump brushed motors usually found in regular hydroponics systems
- In-built multicolor LED light inside the pot that can change color via remote control according to the mood of the user
- Customizable Facerings that are available in broad range of hues to choose as per specific preferences
- Low voltage powered (USB=5V) hydroponic system to ensure safe usage
VictoryGrow has also plans for a safety magnetic coupler for power in the near future.
We have got a revolutionary hydroponic system for you which is a perfect blend of form and function. At present, we are looking towards mass production and building a following around the PowerPot hence this Indiegogo campaign. Your generous support will enable us to kick-start our production at an affordable cost and start an urban growing revolution!
Backers will be rewarded with the new-age PowerPot at discounted prices along with 2 seed trays providing 12-18months of hassle free growing.
To show your support for this campaign, please visit IndieGoGo and search PowerPots
Press Kit Link: http://www.victorygrowuk.com/contact-and-presskit
Indie Link: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/victorygrow-powerpots-designer-growing-systems/coming_soon
Victory Grow
noutram@victorygrowuk.com
Upper Richmond Road, Putney London, United Kingdom
This Automated Greenhouse Fits In An Apartment
This Automated Greenhouse Fits In An Apartment
Posted by Mike Williams-Rice May 11th, 2018
To improve access to vegetables among urban apartment dwellers, engineering students have created an indoor, automated greenhouse.
“This allows them to grow fresh produce, everything from leafy greens to herbs to root vegetables,” says Harrison Lin, a member of the team from Rice University.
Växthus (Swedish for greenhouse) comes from the HSB Living Lab at Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg, Sweden. The lab is a residential community of 29 apartments for students and visiting researchers, all of whom are involved in finding solutions for more sustainable living. The Living Lab partnered with Rice on a previous project to develop a device to simplify composting at home.
The Rice students say their greenhouse project furthers that mission by enhancing city life.
The team worked at Rice’s Oshman Engineering Design Kitchen with guidance from Matthew Elliott, a lecturer in mechanical engineering, and Gary Woods, a professor in the practice of computer technology and electrical and computer engineering. The goal was to produce an efficient and attractive prototype small enough for an apartment. The result is a wood-paneled greenhouse with a clear acrylic front.
“I think we did really well, thinking about how it would feel as an outside user,” says team member Mike Hua. “We wanted to create a product that made the user interface easy.”
The greenhouse uses soil, as opposed to a hydroponic system. That allows users to grow a greater variety of vegetables, as hydroponic systems don’t have the space for the deep-root systems that vegetables like carrots require.
(Credit: woodleywonderworks/Flickr)
The fully automated Växthus design controls lighting and watering with a closed-loop system. Moisture, temperature, and humidity sensors collect data and send them to a touchscreen display, with on and off switches for water and light. When the soil is dry, the greenhouse releases water for the plants. When it senses that the soil’s moisture level is fine, it turns off. The team added manual controls so users can override the automatic functions.
Scientists grow sweet potatoes in Martian greenhouse
A pump system lets water drip from the ceiling to mimic rain and reclaims it from the drip tray below. “Any excess water will percolate through into the tank below,” says team member Jack Kaplan. That allows the device to recycle water.
During the design phase, the team grew kale and herbs, and now has carrots and radishes growing in the greenhouse.
The team is building two more of the devices and will ship them to Sweden, and in June it will install them at the Living Lab, where residents and researchers will continue testing the units, tweaking the automated system as necessary and growing different vegetables.
Source: Rice University
Purdue Startup Puts Computer-Controlled ‘Greenhouses’ In Kitchens That Grow Fresher, Healthier Produce
May 8, 2018
Purdue Startup Puts Computer-Controlled ‘Greenhouses’ In Kitchens That Grow Fresher, Healthier Produce
People can grow a variety of plants in the Heliponix GroPod. This photo shows Genova basil, red Russian kale, cherry tomatoes, cilantro and arugula being grown. (Chris Adam/Purdue Research Foundation Image)
WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. – A Purdue University-affiliated startup that seeks to redefine “farm-to-table” when it comes to garden vegetables by delivering its first orders of an appliance that fits under a kitchen counter and grows produce year-round.
Heliponix LLC, founded by two Purdue University graduates, has begun taking orders on its GroPod, a dishwasher-sized device its creators believe will disrupt the landscape of how food is produced in the face of looming worldwide food shortages and increasing concerns about chemical runoff polluting water sources, rampant food waste and water supplies diminishing on a global scale.
“It’s great for consumers and for the environment,” said Scott Massey, CEO of Heliponix.
The Heliponix GroPod allows people, even those living in inner cities with no access to land, to create perfect climate conditions so lettuce, spinach, and other crops can flourish in their kitchens without using soil. The Gropod uses aeroponics, an efficient form of hydroponics that mists the plant roots rather than submerging the roots in a nutrient reservoir. It also uses targeted light-emitting diodes that give off the optimal light spectrum for photosynthesis.
People can grow a variety of plants in the Heliponix GroPod. This photo shows Genova basil, red Russian kale, cherry tomatoes, cilantro and arugula being grown. (Chris Adam/Purdue Research Foundation Image)
“Each Heliponix GroPod is connected to the internet through IoT software that eliminates the need to know how to farm by automating ideal growing conditions through aeroponics, which uses no pesticides and 95 percent less water than conventional agriculture. You don’t need to know how to program software, design hardware, or understand how to farm, the patented design has mastered that form and function,” said Ivan Ball, also a Heliponix co-founder.
The Heliponix GroPod recently won the Best New Tech Product award from TechPoint, Indiana’s technology growth initiative.
The GroPod also uses less energy than conventional farming and can grow crops up to three times faster. It also takes up no land and reduces the need for food transportation. The GroPod is self-cleaning and can be taken apart in less than 30 seconds to wash the pieces in their dishwasher.
The founders estimate most Americans would save enough money growing their own organic produce that the GroPod could pay for itself in a couple of years.
Consumers can rip off a leaf of lettuce while letting the rest of the head to continue to grow, even when it is the dead of winter outside.
“You can’t get any fresher than this,” Massey said. “You never have to throw anything away. We hope this is going to shake things up in the ag world.”
The Heliponix founders believe the device could be as disruptive to the kitchen as refrigeration, which allowed people to safely store food inside their homes for longer periods without someone delivering ice. The GroPod will allow people to grow fresh food inside their kitchen daily without the need of going to the store. The common theme is the innovation eliminates the perishability of the goods.
Growing a variety of crops in the Heliponix GroPod is easy. Users purchase seed cups, which are put inside the GroPod, and use aeroponics to grow. (Image provided)
“The moment you separate a plant from its roots, the nutrients begin to decay exponentially,”Massey said. “By the time it’s on display at the grocery store, some of the nutrients are gone. It’s amazing what happens when you let nature run its course, and flourish in the Heliponix GroPod.”
Massey and Ball, both graduates of Purdue’s Polytechnic Institute, were introduced to controlled environment agriculture (CEA) on a NASA funded research study to develop life support systems for future space colonies.
Inspired by their NASA research, they started a company called Heliponix (formerly Hydro Grow LLC) to commercialize their space-age appliance. The company was funded through business plan competition victories at other universities until Ball and Massey’s graduation at Purdue.
Since graduating in 2017, they both worked for Heliponix full time. The company has begun selling the first Heliponix GroPod and plans to eventually begin selling refrigerator-sized GroPods.
“We chose the name "Heliponix" by combining the word ‘helix’ with ‘hydroponics.’ Our goal is to find the most efficient form of agriculture, and that means farming with the least amount of space, energy, and water without compromising our commitment to growing the highest quality food. For inspiration, we looked to nature and were influenced by the helix found in DNA segments. Through survival of the fittest, nature has already determined this to be the most efficient shape, and this has been a powerful influence on our work.”
Massey said taking part in programs at the Purdue Foundry, an entrepreneurship and commercialization accelerator in Discovery Park's Burton D. Morgan Center for Entrepreneurship at Purdue, was essential in helping get the company off the ground. Taking part in the FireStarter program, where innovators and entrepreneurs work through ideation and market discovery to prove out their ideas and determine a path forward to commercialize that idea, helped them with a business model, product identification, and industry introductions. It also helped them win some cash awards, including $25,000 from the Purdue Ag-celerator, a plant sciences innovation fund operated by Purdue Ventures, and $20,000 for earning “Black Award” status from the Elevate Purdue Foundry Fund.
“The Foundry has been a home-run success as a startup incubator for us, making the business introductions when needed, and making funding mechanisms available,” Massey said.
About Purdue Foundry
The Purdue Foundry is an entrepreneurship and commercialization accelerator in Discovery Park's Burton D. Morgan Center for Entrepreneurship whose professionals help Purdue innovators create startups. Managed by the Purdue Research Foundation, the Purdue Foundry was co-named a top recipient at the 2016 Innovation and Economic Prosperity Universities Designation and Awards Program by the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities for its work in entrepreneurship. For more information about funding and investment opportunities in startups based on a Purdue innovation, contact the Purdue Foundry at foundry@prf.org.
Purdue Research Foundation contact:
Tom Coyne, 765-588-1044, tjcoyne@prf.org
Source: Scott Massey, scott@heliponix.com
Smart Gardening Just Got A Major Upgrade: The Oasis Mini Ecosystem
Smart Gardening Just Got A Major Upgrade: The Oasis Mini Ecosystem
Aeroasis, an up and coming smart gardening startup based in Santa Cruz, CA, has just announced a major upgrade to their first Smart Garden, Oasis Mini.
The AgTech industry as a whole has been gaining serious exposure in the last 3-5 years. With disruptive offerings from many innovative companies focused on technologies ranging from commercial to hyperlocal, there is no doubt it is an exciting time to be a foodie (or a farmer). Never before have there been so many ways to grow food so fast and with so little labor, and with the application of AI in food farming our farms have never been smarter.
While commercial AgTech players have already seen a massive influx of venture and corporate capital, there is one segment of the AgTech market that is still in its infancy, and is ripe for disruption and exponential growth; Consumer ready, smart gardening appliances.
Oasis Mini Ecosystem is the first and only plug and plant, consumer friendly, 3+ chamber smart gardening appliance in development today. What this means for the gardener is multiple plant types can grow at once, in multiple climates, with no watering, feeding, or weeding necessary. For over 3 years, the Aeroasis team has worked long hours optimizing the growing experience and automation components for Oasis Mini, evolving the system through multiple design iterations and deep market research.
Aeroasis announced last week that Oasis Mini has reached its final design iteration. Oasis Mini, which began as a single appliance, has by popular demand developed into an ecosystem of modular, single chamber smart gardens that can be attached to one another to create a practically limitless multi-chamber gardening experience, tailored to the needs and wants of the gardener.
The Aeroasis team believes there is a serious need for a more modular, user focused smart garden that fits the needs of any home, school, or business. With over a third of US homes already growing food, and millions of people living in unsuitable climates for outdoor gardening, people are ready for a smart gardening system that can actually augment their home gardening experience. The Oasis Mini Ecosystem lets you design the smart garden that fits your gardening needs, whether that be a countertop herb/spice garden or a multi plant micro farm. Now anyone looking to try out smart gardening in their home can go to just one company for all their smart garden needs, from countertop to appliance.
The Aeroasis team plans to open a beta testing round for the Oasis Mini Ecosystem later this year, with a target launch slated for early next year. To stay updated or get involved, visit www.aeroasis.com and @Aeroasis on social media.
Best Discovery This Week: Tech In Canada
Best Discovery This Week: Tech In Canada
Roopinder Tara
May 04, 2018
Contributors: Michael Alba, Emily Pollock, Juliver Ramirez
Once a year, Ontario trots out its brightest companies, hippest startups, and most amazing technologies and sets a stage for it all at OCE Discovery conference in downtown Toronto. This year, over 3,600 attendees, 550 companies and exhibitors made Discovery a pretty hot ticket. ENGINEERING.com, headquartered in nearby Mississauga, dropped in to cover it.
During her keynote speech, Megan Smith–once a CTO of the United States, a VP at Google, an MIT graduate, and now spearheading shift7 (that’s the “&” symbol on the keyboard)–gave a Silicon Valley blessing to the Canadian event. Smith expressed her belief that “if we include everyone, we can fix nearly everything.”
Have Your Kale and Eat It Too
Living room furniture can sprout plants. That's a good thing for those seeking greens closer to home, says Conner Tidd, of Just Vertica
From the abundance of booths devoted to tech farming, it would seem one of the world’s problems that Smith alluded to is the lack of kale. The bitter leaf that ruins salads and smoothies was featured in three booths.
“You’ve not had kale like this kale,” said Conner Tidd, of Just Vertical, as we ripped off a leaf from a mini vertical farm designed to double as living room furniture. The company grows the kale and other edible plants through hydroponics, combining farming and living room decoration. Sure enough, the kale was not bitter. “That’s just the way it’s grown on industrial farms,” said Tidd.
Looking like an abandoned microwave overrun by nature, modgarden's Tiny Farm offers another solution for cultivating your own vegetables.
Down the aisle, another tech farmer promises “a salad a day” in what is either the smallest farm in the world or the greenest appliance. The size of a microwave, the countertop “tiny farm” by modgarden brims with leaves, all presumably edible. The farm appliance can be ordered now for $500 and will be $650 if you wait for its production in Fall 2018.
The geodesic half-dome greenhouse by husband and wife Ben Canning and Stefany Nieto of Growing North aims to bring vegetables to the native people of northern Canada, people who rarely, if ever, see anything that is green and edible, much less kale.
“We gave one girl a lettuce and you should have seen her face light up as she ate it,” said Destine Lee at the booth.
Growing North runs on the goodness of the hearts of its founders, making it a non-profit operation. Its ability to harness solar energy during the long, sunny Arctic days–up to 23 hours of sun a day–makes it green in more ways than one. The organization relays the energy into the country’s grid. The greenhouses then draw from the grid during the dark Arctic winter, enabling the produce to grow year-round.
Growing Microgreens At Home
Growing Microgreens At Home
May 1, 2018
Are you interested in growing microgreens at home? I hadn't a garden in ages and I've gotten better at growing since. When I first started I had a fruitful experience learning. I attempted and failed but eventually, it all worked out. A lot of people we're asking me if they could grow indoors without a hydroponic system or vertical farm? The answer is yes.
Microgreens are most commonly harvested from leafy greens such as kale, arugula, beet greens, onions, radish greens, watercress, chard and pak choi and herbs such as cilantro, basil, chervil, parsley, and chives. The taste of microgreens depends on the original vegetable. Microgreens have a very strong and concentrated taste of the original vegetable. This means that cilantro microgreens will still taste of cilantro but in a stronger, more vegetable and condensed format.
Here are some instructions viaFarmingmybackyard
Get a tray or box. Shallow trays are best, but my personal favorite is those clear plastic salad tubs with lids. It’s a little harder to trim, and you may not get ideal airflow, but the lids are nice for keeping the seeds moist while they germinate.
Spread 2 inches of potting soil in your container. Pre-moisten your potting mix and don’t pack it down. Keep the soil nice and fluffy when you add it in.
Sprinkle your seeds over the top of the soil. Don’t worry about spacing! You will be harvesting so soon that a nice little carpet is what you’re going for. You don’t need to put a second layer of soil over the seeds, although some people do. Other people say it decreases germination rate. This is something you may want to test personally and see what works best for you.
Water lightly and cover your container. Covering helps keep in moisture, and the darkness helps the seeds germinate. You can use another tray, a light dishtowel, the lid to a salad box. It’s all good.
Remove cover after the seeds sprout. After a few days, your seeds should have sprouted. Remove the cover and put them near a light source. I don’t have a good south facing windows, so mine go on top of the microwave to take advantage of the under the counter grow lights.
Carefully water your baby plants. The best option is to bottom water, which is setting your tray or box (with drainage holes!) in a sink of water and letting the plants soak it up. If you top water, be careful not to flatten the tiny plants.
Cut your microgreens with scissors. Most are yummiest after they develop their second set of leaves, and are about 2 inches tall. You can let them go longer, especially the larger seeds such as popcorn and pea shoots. Don’t leave your seeds too long or they aren’t as delicious.
Keep the soil moist after harvesting. Sometimes you can get a second crop from seeds that didn’t germinate the first time! Always give it some time and see if you get a round two.
Eat your microgreens! You can eat them on sandwiches, in stir fry, on pizza, in green smoothies, in salads, or as a garnish. They are best fresh, but if you must you can store them in a glass jar in the fridge for a few days.
These are simple and easy instructions. If you have any more questions don't hesitate to reach out.
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'Food Computer' Creator Marketing To World
'Food Computer' Creator Marketing To World
Posted: Mar 26, 2018 By Dan McGowan, Senior Writer/Reporter
WEST LAFAYETTE, INDIANA
The chief executive officer of a West Lafayette-based indoor agricultural technology company has lofty global ambitions. Heliponix co-founder Scott Massey says the company, which makes the GroPod hydroponic "food computer," has a potential market the size of every home in the world. "Ultimately, I see us becoming the world's largest farming company without owning a single acre of land." In an interview for The INnovators with Dr. K, Massey said the in-home appliance could shake up ag the way refrigerators affected the ice industry.
The company was started by Massey and Ivan Ball, who researched indoor ag together for the International Space Station while at Purdue University. The GroPod they've developed is roughly the size of a dishwasher and includes 40 spaces, or pods, for growing primarily leafy vegetables all year-round while consuming eight gallons of water per month and drawing on household electrical outlets. The business model also includes a monthly subscription service for the seed pods used in the device.
Massey told Donald "Dr. K" Kuratko, who serves as Jack M. Gill Chair of Entrepreneurship at the Indiana University Kelley School of Business in Bloomington, the appliances solve issues such as land-space and water consumption by controlling the environment surrounding the plants. The GroPods work by cycling water and nutrients through the plants without the use of soil or pesticides.
You can connect to more about the company and its technology by clicking here.
Next Generation In-Home Robotic Gardening System, Herbot, Now Available on Kickstarter
Next Generation In-Home Robotic Gardening System, Herbot, Now Available on Kickstarter
Entrepreneurs from University of Washington's Global Innovation Exchange Unveil the World's First Artificial Intelligent Indoor Home Garden
NEWS PROVIDED BY farm 4.0
April 05, 2018
SEATTLE, April 5, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- The future of in-home gardening is here. Recently launched on Kickstarter by farm 4.0, Herbot is a line of indoor robots that automate the process of home gardening and empower the next generation of urban farmers through affordable and sustainable organic agriculture.
Harness the power of Artificial intelligence to grow any plants you want. No green thumbs required. Just pop in a pod, and let Herbot take care of the rest.
With Herbot, anyone can grow anything, anywhere, anytime. It's as simple as that. Using precise sensors, climate-control technology, advanced hydroponics and intelligent growing algorithms, Herbot automates the process of growing fresh produce, medicinal herbs and flowers with the ease of pressing a button.
Each Herbot device leverages Artificial Intelligence to automate the plant cultivation process from seed to harvest. "With Herbot's automatic gardening capabilities, we hope to help those who might never have grown food before by giving them the resources and confidence to become urban farmers and join the growing movement for all-natural, hyper-local food," said Talha Sabri, CEO, farm 4.0.
Getting started with Herbot is easy. All you have to do is plug in the preseeded net pods, insert the nutrient solution, add some water to the hydroponic reservoir and select a plant algorithm using the simple-to-use, educational companion app: Herbot OS.
Three variations of Herbot are currently being made available via Kickstarter: the compact and affordable Herbot Mini, the sophisticated and high-precision Herbot Pro and Herbot Grande, with advanced growing technologies and an elongated growing space. Herbot's proprietary DIY "Seedling" Kits enable anyone with the desire to build their own automated hydroponic growing system to customize their device to meet the specifications they desire, leveraging pre-designed sensors, electronics and schematics.
For more information about Herbot, please visit www.herbot.io, the Kickstarter page or follow new developments from the brand on Instagram.
About farm 4.0:
farm 4.0 is а socio-technological enterprise striving to make agri-tech innovation affordable for underserved consumer segments, while also contributing to high-impact social-welfare projects around the world. "farm 4.0's first venture, Herbot, is more than just a line of products, but the first step towards developing the technology, network and infrastructure necessary to scale to larger solutions in automated agriculture," said Ben Keller, Chief Global Development Officer, farm 4.0.
The farm 4.0 team is currently developing shipping-container-turned-IoT-climate-controlled-farms at the Global Innovation Exchange and is in talks about a potential partnership with innovative technology companies in Seattleincluding Microsoft to ship them to areas across the Middle East, Africa and Asia, which are affected by malnutrition and where conventional farming methods are impractical due to climate change and water shortages.
Press Kit: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1dW4rofJ-M193FC4jpzCcI8Bh-b6aCaqf
Press Contacts
Jacques-Laurent Tiktin Misha Savvateev
Chief Marketing Officer Chief Operations Officer
jacques.tiktin@farm40.tech misha@farm40.tech
(914) 255-6905 (206) 371-3878
Related Images
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Control your plants from your pocket.
The Herbot App not only makes gardening more accessible and engaging, it makes Herbot a truly intelligent, fun-to-use product. To make getting started easy, you can choose from our tested plant-growing algorithms or build your own recipe to experiment.
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Herbot: AI-Powered Indoor Gardening Robot
Harness the power of Artificial intelligence to grow any plants you want. No green thumbs required. Just pop in a pod, and let Herbot take care of the rest.
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Herbot Grande:
Herbot Grande takes Pro to the next level with inclusion of a smell-preventing carbon filter, C02 dosing, air control system, insulated glass windows & performance cover that allow for a much wider variety of produce! With its precise climate control system, Grande is ideal for growing larger plants & can grow almost anything from tropical plants to medicinal herbs! Grande starts at a $300 pledge
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Herbot Pro
The Herbot system feeds, waters and provides light to your plants, making it possible for anyone to grow any plants they wish, regardless of climate, space, time limitations or level of gardening experience.
SOURCE farm 4.0