Welcome to iGrow News, Your Source for the World of Indoor Vertical Farming

IGrow PreOwned 12/27/19 IGrow PreOwned 12/27/19

Sustainability In Three Dimensions

Picture a snow globe. Inside its crystalline sphere, the conditions are always ideal for a winter wonderland—even in the hottest days of summer. So, what if farmers could take this idea and use it to create optimal, self-contained cultivation environments that allowed them to grow their crops during the dead of winter?

Technology Spotlight December 20, 2018

A traditional approach to this challenge is greenhouse farming, in which glass domes heighten and retain solar energy within a growing environment that’s closed off from the surrounding atmosphere. As a result, the temperature inside the dome is warmer and more stable, allowing farmers to cultivate warm-weather crops during the cold seasons.

If farmers can grow their crops through the winter, what if they could grow them through the night?

WHAT IF GROWERS COULD CREATE THE INFRASTRUCTURE TO GET 10 ACRES WORTH OF PRODUCTION FROM ONLY ONE ACRE OF LAND?

It may sound improbable to grow plants in closed environments without relying on the sun, but modern agriculture is already making incredible strides in bringing 24/7 cultivation to reality by augmenting existing practices with indoor vertical farms and robotic technologies.

In fact, vertical farms are on the rise. There are currently 2.2 million square feet of indoor farms operating across the globe, and that number is expected to increase almost tenfold to 22 million square feet in the next five years. Will vertical farming replace conventional farming practices? No, but this dramatic rise in indoor farms will add even more of a boost to our future food production capabilities, complementing the incredible innovations that are being made in traditional sun-soaked, outdoor crops.

Why such the exponential increase in interest and investment in both vertical farms and robotics? In short, this pairing offers profound potential to help agriculture achieve sustainability in the environmental, economic, and societal spheres.

To read the entire article, Please Click Here

IGrow PreOwned 12/6/19 IGrow PreOwned 12/6/19

Stacked Farm, Australia's First Fully Robotic End-to-End Vertical Farm

Australia may have one of the world's lowest population densities and plentiful farmland, but as farmers know all too well, water is and will continue to be a great challenge for the country's food supply

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Written on the 3 December 2019 by Matt Ogg

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Whether it be Bowery Farming backed by Google's parent company Alphabet, Square Roots which was founded by Elon Musk's brother Kimbal, or the innovative startup InFarm with leafy green-growing modules installed in supermarkets, vertical farming is a fertile space for development right now.

Innovations abound in the sector, most notably Sundrop Farms in South Australia which has become a global leader in sustainable agriculture by powering its greenhouse with solar power and sourcing irrigation from desalinated seawater.

Now another Australian company Stacked Farm is set to join the ranks of innovators pioneering food solutions for the future.

After four years of research and development, the Gold Coast-based group's fully automated end-to-end vertical farm will soon be supplying leafy greens to national wholesalers including Sumo Salad, QSR, Dnata, Crown Resorts and Morco Fresh.

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This means Stacked Farm's urban-grown produce from Burleigh Heads will be supplied to casinos, in-flight airline catering and retail outlets around the country, with plans for expansion with new facilities in 2020.

A spokesperson for the company says the facility is likely the first of its kind in the world to be fully automated.

"Other vertical farms might have a component of automation but one or two components are done by hand whether that's seeding, cutting or packing," she says.

Stacked Farm CEO Conrad Smith (pictured) says the farm is commercially viable, scalable and competitive, from seedling through to packaging with leading-edge technology.

"A good crop is not weather dependent and can be grown using up to 95 percent less water than conventional farming. It eliminates the use of pesticides and other climate-related hazardous processes as the growing is fully contained and controlled," says Smith.

"We also take sustainability very seriously and renewable power is already contributing up to 30 percent of what it takes to power the farm."

"Drought has wiped out so many primary producers in the country. Water is always going to be an issue in Australia it's our most valuable commodity. Vertical farming can help support our farmers in times of drought or crisis."

Efficient water usage is just one of the sustainable aspects that makes this operation appealing to food wholesalers in Australia. Produce growth is fast and shelf-life longer, with the entire process from seed to bag taking only 16-21 days.

"Produce life is increased due to the controlled growing environment, the technology and the fact it's packed within seconds of harvest and there's no need to wash it - which can be a big degrader of product quality," he says.

"It's great for growing in the city, as we can deliver within kilometres of the produce being grown, not like most farms who rely heavily on lengthy transport distances."

While the current facility can produce a couple of tons of produce a week equating to a 20-acre farm in output. Smith doesn't see this as working against traditional agriculture but rather as a means to complement it.

It's a game-changer for the cattle industry. We have identified that we can grow livestock feed en masse very quickly, and again using up to 95 percent less water. A 1000sqm vertical farm will have enough output to feed hundreds of cattle daily."

"The impact that this could have on farming communities that are suffering through the drought is enormous."

While the production is currently focused on leafy greens, herbs and livestock feed, Stacked Farm is also working with the CSIRO to develop additional products suited for indoor vertical farm growth.

Discussions are also underway with property owners in Victoria and Queensland to build farms suitable for produce growing, as well as a major farming operator in NSW to grow livestock feed.

Roto-Gro on track for Freshero JV and first facility

In other recent horticultural news, ASX-listed Roto-Gro International announced Friday that it had made significant progress in negotiations for a joint venture with Freshero, an aspiring organic produce grower with longstanding relationships across the wholesale, retail and foodservice space in Australia, Southeast Asia and the Middle East.

The company expects to execute the terms of an agreement by the end of 2019, in a move that will see the construction of a fully automated state-of-the-art facility Roto-Gro's patented and proprietary cultivation technology with standard agricultural seeding and harvesting equipment.

This technology includes rotational garden systems, fertigation units, the company's iGrow Software as well as material management systems.

Roto-Gro said Freshero CEO Tony Mahoney had strategically positioned Freshero to lead the development of organic urban vertical farming and distribution centres for fresh organic produce grown in proximity to large urban centres.

Despite the positive news, the RGI share price is currently less than half of what it was a year ago, most likely due to the collapse of cannabis stocks to which its growing technology is also closely aligned.

IGrow PreOwned 10/29/19 IGrow PreOwned 10/29/19

Can Cutting Costs, Via Robotics, Unlock Vertical Farming Profits?

Despite the enthusiasm of the investment community for vertical ag in recent years, the indoor vertical farming industry has yet to deliver an economically viable business model

October 15, 2019

Donald Marvin Contributor

Despite the enthusiasm of the investment community for vertical ag in recent years, the indoor vertical farming industry has yet to deliver an economically viable business model. No matter how well funded they might be, most indoor vertical farms struggle to be profitable. The reasons are simple: high operating costs, especially for labor and energy.

One of the newest entrants to the vertical ag scene, Fifth Season, has designed its first 60,000-square-foot indoor vertical farm, now being constructed near Pittsburgh, and is looking ahead toward solving the profitability challenge. The company got its start under the name RoBotany while in the incubator program at Carnegie Mellon University’s (CMU) Swartz Center for Entrepreneurship, which supports innovation coming out of the university's renowned robotics, business and other schools. Drive Capital and other investors with connections to CMU have helped supply over $35 million in total funding to date to help Fifth Season commercialize its innovative technology platform.

Co-founder and CEO Austin Webb, a CMU alum and former investment banker with B. Riley FBR, said it took the company three years to develop and perfect its platform technology at two indoor R&D farms, working out of an old warehouse in Pittsburgh. Webb and his team—plant scientists and robotics and AI engineers—designed their facility to achieve the goal of producing greens, including spinach, arugula, lettuce and herbs, to be sold locally, at affordable prices and at a profit.

Fifth Season's first commercial, large-scale indoor vertical farm will begin operation in early 2020. It is a welcomed participant in the revitalization of the riverside town of Braddock, longtime home of U.S. Steel’s Edgar Thomson Works, one of the oldest still-operating steel plants in the Monongahela Valley.

Webb and his colleagues noticed early on that, after an initial surge of investments in vertical farming, funders have more recently been posing very pointed questions about profitability. Accordingly, said Webb, his team has been designing with profitability as the paramount objective.

“Consumers are all in for locally produced, clean food that’s affordable,” Webb noted. “But to be sustainable and profitable long-term, you’ve got to prove favorable ‘all-in’ per-unit costs. And that’s what makes us different in the industry.”

That is where robotics come in. In their due diligence, Webb and colleagues saw that routine work in the full production chain could be turned over to robotics to help drive down costs. That’s most opportune, given that somewhere from 40% to 60% of a typical vertical farm’s operating costs are for labor. Fifth Season has targeted 20% and less, courtesy of robotics.

“We said, let's take an empty warehouse and design a system—from seed to harvest to package to destination,” Webb said. Their resulting proprietary design strings together an “Internet of things” of about 40 different robotic components, or “bots”—in Webb’s words, “a fully integrated solution of robotic hardware and software.”

Energy is another big cost factor in vertical growing, and Fifth Season’s team designed its operation with cost efficiency in mind there, too. Energy costs are reduced via solar collectors, which help provide the power supply not only to the robotics and IT, but for grow lights, which are in use 16 or more hours a day in a typical indoor vertical farm.

Fifth Season is collaborating with GE Current, a Daintree Company, to employ the most efficient lighting technology to its operation. In an interview, Michel Doss, general manager of specialty at Current in Montreal, said he believes a vertical-farming approach that can drive energy and labor costs down toward those of outdoor farming will be the big winner.

“I'm definitely convinced 100% that vertical farming will work,” Doss said in an interview. “But nobody knows exactly when as a date on a calendar. But the economics have to be there for it to happen.”

In addition to working with Fifth Season, Doss's division did the lighting for two of the largest vertical farms in the world: Mirai Co. of Japan and the U.K.’s Jones Food Co.

Doss called the advent of LED lighting a “missing link” that has enabled indoor farming. But, he added, lighting is only one factor, along with seeds, ventilation, humidity control and airflow, among others: “The entire ecosystem for indoor growing is critical. The technology is still evolving as it’s being tested in the field.”

Lighting alone is a work in progress, he said: “We’ve historically done a mix of deep red, which has a 660-nanometer range, and blue, a regular blue that’s readily available and seems to be yielding good results with leafy greens. But we still need more studies. What about adding green? What about white, and what kind of white, because all white isn't equal? We're just at step one of a 10,000-step journey in the space.”

Webb’s team at Fifth Season, along with Doss’s Current lighting crew and other vendors and collaborators, are still tweaking many variables, always with a sidelong glance at the elusive holy grail of indoor growing: tasty and sustainable profits.

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Donald Marvin

I am president and CEO of Concentric, a developer and producer of proprietary biological and plant nutrient inputs for specialty and broadacre crops. Concentric was named one of the Forbes Top 25 Most Innovative Agtech Startups in 2018. I report on agtech developments based on my more than 30 years’ experience in building and leading bioscience and agtech companies. Prior to joining Concentric in 2014, I was CEO at IdentiGEN, Inc., a provider of DNA-based solutions to the agriculture and food industries. Earlier in my career, I co-founded the Nasdaq-traded Orchid BioSciences, a pioneer in human DNA identity testing and was president and CEO of Diatron Corporation, a biomedical company developing fluorescence-based instrument systems for the clinical diagnostics industry. I have raised in excess of $350 million in both private and public financings and completed over a dozen M&A transactions. I earned my B.S. in microbiology from Ohio State University and an MBA from Iona College.

IGrow PreOwned 10/22/19 IGrow PreOwned 10/22/19

This Startup Is Building A Massive Indoor Farm In A Rust Belt Steel Town

The farm, from a startup called Fifth Season, will begin selling spinach, lettuce, and other leafy greens early next year, using a robot-based system that the founders say is cost-competitive with growing and transporting the same crops from a traditional farm

Fifth Season will begin selling spinach, lettuce, and other leafy greens—all grown inside with the help of robots—early next year.

BY ADELE PETERS

10.22.19

In a vacant lot next to one of the last remaining steel mills in Braddock, Pennsylvania, a town just south of Pittsburgh, a massive new indoor farm is taking shape. The farm, from a startup called Fifth Season, will begin selling spinach, lettuce, and other leafy greens early next year, using a robot-based system that the founders say is cost-competitive with growing and transporting the same crops from a traditional farm.

It’s more affordable, they argue than some others in the vertical farming industry. “We looked at vertical farming and realized that the industrywide struggle to make the economics work was a huge factor, and something that would really prevent the industry from truly taking off,” says Austin Webb, co-founder, and CEO of Fifth Season, which incubated its first farm at Carnegie Mellon University. “The per-unit economics don’t work. Companies are losing money for every pound that they sell. And that obviously needs to change.”

Like others in the space, the startup touts the advantages of growing indoors. It’s possible to use only a tiny fraction of the water that’s used to grow greens in fields; most lettuce is currently grown in drought-prone California and Arizona. (In Arizona, farmers will also soon start losing access to water from the Colorado River.) Growing indoors eliminates the need for pesticides. It eliminates food safety hazards like E. coli contamination. And if crops are grown close to end markets—in this case, restaurants and stores in Pittsburgh—it also eliminates the emissions from trucks traveling thousands of miles and the problem of less-than-fresh produce that may be more likely to be thrown out because it’s already starting to wilt. “When we look at the food distribution system, we looked at it and saw an overly complicated broken system, where no one’s connected to their food, and there’s a lot of food waste,” Webb says.

Some past efforts at indoor farming have failed because of high costs, such as FarmedHere, near Chicago, which shut down in 2017 in part because of the cost of labor. “When you look at vertical farms and labor is 40% to 60% of their cost—labor for them is actually more than the all-in delivered cost of Western-grown field produce—it’s just not going to work,” he says. The company’s system, which it has running now at another location and which it’s recreating at the new location, uses around 40 robots. “Together, they’re completely integrated so that our facility is, in a sense, one robotic system.”

Robots plant seeds in trays and deliver trays to grow rooms, where automated systems control everything from the amount of nutrients the plants receive to the schedule of lighting and the amount of carbon dioxide in the air. When a crop is ready, it goes into an automated harvesting system, and then to an automated packaging system, and the trays are sent back to be automatically cleaned and sanitized and then replanted. “We essentially looked at it and said that we should create an automated fulfillment center,” says Webb. “The difference being that instead of pallets of boxes, it should be trays of plants.” Solar panels on the roof and a battery backup system means that the facility can continue operating even if extreme weather takes out the electric grid.

Other companies in the industry are also developing automated systems, including Plenty, a Softbank-funded Silicon Valley startup that now has a suite of state-of-the-art custom robotics. Plenty hasn’t shared the details of the cost of its system. But Fifth Season estimates, as an example, that its own robot used for storing and retrieving plants may cost two to three times less. It also uses space more efficiently than some other companies; because everything is automated and humans don’t need to access rows of produce on scissor-lift equipment, the aisles between plants can shrink, growing more produce in the same amount of space. (The new farm is 60,000 square feet, a little smaller than the 69,000-square-foot farm run by another company called Aerofarms.) During its first full year of operation, it expects to grow half a million pounds of greens and herbs, with prices in line with organically grown produce. At that price point, the payback period of the full system will be less than two years.

In Braddock, where the population has shrunk more than 90% since its high point in the 1920s to around 2,000 people today, the new farm can provide some new jobs, despite the automation. Three shifts a day will employ 20 workers each. “These are manufacturing-like jobs where we’ve got folks that are helping us operate our machinery,” Webb says. “We’ve got folks that are monitoring the health of the equipment. All of that is something where someone can come from a previous job and you’re not necessarily saying you’re going to do something that’s totally completely different, such as sit at a computer and write code.” As the company expands, it will also hire more engineers and plant scientists.

The startup hopes to replicate the new facility, designed as a modular system, throughout the country. “We’re able to take what we’re building in Braddock and take those blueprints and really hit the repeat button quickly,” he says.

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, and contributed to the second edition of the bestselling book "Worldchanging: A User's Guide for the 21st Century."

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IGrow PreOwned 10/21/19 IGrow PreOwned 10/21/19

Shenandoah Growers Opens Next Generation USDA Certified Indoor Biofarms In Virginia

Shenandoah Growers Produce

October 14, 2019

ROCKINGHAM, Va. — Shenandoah Growers, Inc., the US leader in indoor USDA certified organic agriculture, has begun harvests at its next generation BioFarm facilities in Rockingham and Elkwood, Virginia. The company will now grow, pack and ship locally grown, premium quality organic produce from its sustainable indoor farms to its customers in the Mid-Atlantic region 365 days a year.

**Shenandoah Growers BioFarm Basil Plants**

The new BioFarms will solve persistent problems in the fresh product supply chain – delivering peak freshness, longer shelf life, enhanced food safety, reduced food miles, and year-round organic supply. Shenandoah’s sustainable growing technology uses bioactive soil and fresh water, just like in nature, producing healthy organic plants and delivering on the company’s mission to reduce its carbon footprint and lead in environmental stewardship.

The Rockingham BioFarm will supply 100% of Shenandoah’s basil in the Mid-Atlantic region, marking the transition away from traditional field production. Basil is not only the best-selling herb, but it is also the most difficult to grow and ship nationally due to its vulnerability to weather volatility, disease and temperature damage. The Elkwood BioFarm will supply the company’s new line of local organic lettuces to Mid-Atlantic customers.

“Being able to grow the totality of our basil demand inside our pack house and not fly or truck hundreds or thousands of miles from the field was inconceivable when I entered the business over 20 years ago,” says Tim Heydon, CEO.

While Shenandoah Growers are pioneers in indoor organic agriculture, they are quick to emphasize that the company has been farming and operating in the industry for over 30 years. Chief Customer Officer Steven Wright intoned, “It’s one thing to be able to grow indoors, it’s quite another to harvest, pack and deliver with consistent quality 7 days a week, 52 weeks a year while meeting demand during peak seasons.”

The company points out that its indoor production units, many of which have been in operation for over 4 years, are proven efficient. According to company President, Phillip Karp, “Fundamentally we are about the democratization of sustainably grown organic produce, and for the promise of indoor agriculture to truly unlock its great potential, it must achieve cost parity with traditional farming. Anything we launch from our indoor farms will be scalable and profitable for us and our customers and affordable for the shopper.”

The company is in the process of accelerating its indoor farming capacity with a clearly defined plan to deploy additional next generation USDA certified organic Biofarms across its entire national platform of operating locations.

About Shenandoah Growers, Inc.
Founded in 1989, Shenandoah Growers is the leading grower and marketer of fresh organic culinary herbs in the United States, providing sustainable, USDA certified organic, regionally grown produce to retailers coast-to-coast. The Rockingham, Virginia-based company has developed the nation’s largest commercial indoor organic growing systems and continues to redefine how to bring fresh, organic, and sustainably farmed produce to market—operating across a nationally integrated platform of farms, production, and logistics facilities. For more information, please visit www.shenandoahgrowers.com.

Under the THAT’S TASTY® BRAND, Shenandoah Growers provides USDA organic, non-GMO, regionally grown, and sustainably farmed fresh culinary herbs and greens. Launched in 2017, the THAT’S TASTY BRAND offers consumers ways to add Pure Organic Flavor™ to their everyday cooking by offering a full line of products including living organic herb plants, fresh cut herbs, herb purees, lettuces and microgreens. www.thatstasty.com

IGrow PreOwned 10/5/19 IGrow PreOwned 10/5/19

2 Day Webcast Series: New Ag International Digital Week

Join us 14 & 15 October 2019 for New Ag Digital Week, a global 2-day series of live educational webcasts and downloadable resources providing the latest insights on Biostimulants, Biocontrol, specialty fertilizers, Irrigation and new/the latest Greenhouse and Precision Ag technologies

Day 1: Monday, October 14, 2019

The Impact of Swarm Robotics on Arable Farms
9am EDT / 2pm BST / 3pm CEST

Does deficit irrigation work in annual crops? Best practices learned from Spain
10am EDT / 3pm BST / 4pm CEST

Day 2: Tuesday, October 15, 2019

New Biostimulant Technologies Focus on Efficiency
9am EDT / 2pm BST / 3pm CEST

Development of New Biological Control Agents Against Apple Scab and Powdery Mildew
10am EDT / 3pm BST / 4pm CEST

REGISTER NOW

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To sponsor future digital events, contact partners@knect365lifesciences.com or request details.

IGrow PreOwned 9/24/19 IGrow PreOwned 9/24/19

RoBotany Builds 60,000-Square-Foot Vertical Farm In Braddock, Plans Nationwide Expansion As Fifth Season

The company's first urban farm, incubated at Carnegie Mellon University, uses proprietary robotics technology to grow affordable fresh produce for Pittsburgh-area grocery stores and restaurants

The company's first urban farm, incubated at Carnegie Mellon University, uses proprietary robotics technology to grow affordable fresh produce for Pittsburgh-area grocery stores and restaurants

NEWS PROVIDED BY Fifth Season

September 24, 2019

PITTSBURGH, Sept. 24, 2019,/PRNewswire/

Fifth Season, an indoor farming pioneer, announced plans for its first highly efficient, commercial-scale indoor vertical farm, which will open in early 2020 in Braddock, a historic steel town near Pittsburgh.

Fifth Season, originally founded as RoBotany Ltd., is a consumer-focused technology company that was incubated at Carnegie Mellon University's (CMU) Swartz Center for Entrepreneurship—an alliance of CMU's business, robotics, and other schools focused on fostering innovation. The company has raised over $35 million to date led by Drive Capital and other private investors with close ties to CMU. Its leadership team has deep expertise in plant science, robotics, AI and systems engineering.

Austin Webb, Fifth Season's co-founder, and CEO

Austin Webb, Fifth Season's co-founder, and CEO said the company's 60,000-square-foot Braddock farm will set a new vertical agriculture standard for efficient, safe and sustainable production of pesticide-free leafy greens and herbs in urban communities.

Fifth Season developed and perfected its technology with two R&D vertical farms in Pittsburgh's South Side neighborhood. Their leafy greens have been sold at local retailers, such as Giant Eagle and Whole Foods Market, along with popular Pittsburgh restaurants Superior Motors, honeygrow and Kahuna.

Produce from the flagship production farm coming to Braddock will also be available in Pittsburgh-area grocery stores and restaurants.

"The goal through our first three years of development was to prove we could bring fresh food to urban customers at prices competitive with conventionally grown produce," Webb said.

"We have developed fully integrated, proprietary technology to completely control the hydroponic growing process and optimize key factors such as energy, labor usage and crop output," Webb added. "The result is a vertical farm design that has over twice the efficiency and grow capacity of traditional vertical farms. Our unprecedented low costs set a new standard for the future of the industry."

Webb said the Braddock farm's ideal growing environment will deliver perfect, pure produce, in any season. It will produce over 500,000 pounds of lettuce, spinach, kale, arugula and herbs from its 25,000-square-foot grow room during the first full year of operation. The facility is partially solar-powered and requires 95 percent less water compared to traditional growing operations.

Webb said the company is planning a staged expansion in additional, similar-sized cities across the U.S.

Photos and graphics to accompany this announcement can be downloaded at this link: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/8ucvpnvlln10o7x/AADzxmH2iA3rr9LGNO_BrMc1a?dl=0

Contact:

Grant Vandenbussche, Fifth Season (248) 240-4694, grant@robotany.ag

Michele Wells, Wells Communications (303) 417-0696 or mwells@wellscommunications.net

SOURCE Fifth Season

IGrow PreOwned 9/23/19 IGrow PreOwned 9/23/19

The Scottish Innovations Tackling The World’s Food Shortage

Invergowrie-based Intelligent Growth Solutions (IGS) has created Scotland’s first vertical farm, pictured here, and the company has recently harvested a £5.4 million cash boost from the Scottish Investment Bank, agri-food investor S2G and online venture capital firm AgFunder

Intelligent Growth Solutions' purpose-built facility is being constructed at the James Hutton Institute near Dundee.

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SARAH DEVINE

19 September 2019

Scotland’s agriculture sector is changing rapidly, with rural businesses across the country driving forward groundbreaking innovations in attempts to address the myriad challenges of the land.

Globally, some 113 million people across 53 countries reportedly experienced food poverty last year, and it is expected that the world’s population will reach 9.8 billion by 2050, according to the UN.

However, inventive organizations across Scotland are devising new and creative ways to tackle the global food shortage.

Invergowrie-based Intelligent Growth Solutions (IGS) has created Scotland’s first vertical farm, pictured here, and the company has recently harvested a £5.4 million cash boost from the Scottish Investment Bank, agri-food investor S2G and online venture capital firm AgFunder.

The firm, which is based at the James Hutton Institute situated on the outskirts of Dundee, provides vertical farming technology to enable efficient food production through indoor crops around the world, having built its demonstration facility at Invergowrie last year.

It features stacked layers, LED lights and app-controlled air vents to create the perfect conditions for crops to thrive all year round.

The early-stage company states that its patented Internet of Things-enabled power and communications platform is able to reduce an organization’s energy usage by up to 50 percent and labor costs by up to 80 percent, in comparison to other indoor growing environments, and can produce yields of 225 percent compared to crops that have been grown under glass.

IGS experimented with colored LED lights, growing basil plants at the indoor facility in an impressive 20 days.

Its chief executive, David Farquhar, explains that such developments are urgently needed because at present an astonishing 30 percent of the world’s food is put to waste.

“Vertical farming allows experimentation to take place in order to impact the yield or cost of production, flavor, nutrients, appearance or a combination of those things,” he says.

“Producers want consistency, assurance of supply, and to know they are going to fill supermarket shelves or supply those Michelin-starred restaurants every day of the week. Those are things that farmers struggle with all the time.”

Farquhar adds: “If there is a forecast for bad weather and a supermarket decides to only take half of their delivery, what are they going to do with the rest of the produce?”

Using the vertical farm, a crop’s growth can be slowed down or sped up to prevent waste.

“People have been talking about vertical farms for several years, but we are now at the starting point. Over the next six months, we will get going with the first technology in the world that is capable of delivering this on an industrial scale.”

The firm, which was formed in 2013, plans to use this recent funding to create jobs in areas such as software development, engineering, robotics, and automation.

Investment into such areas is also needed across Scotland because dietary demand is changing, according to David Ross, chief executive of Edinburgh-based Agri-EPI Centre.

“Environmental sustainability is personal now for everyone and therefore there are challenges for primary producers to adapt to the needs of the consumer, the needs of society and the overall sustainability of the planet,” he says.

IGrow PreOwned 8/23/19 IGrow PreOwned 8/23/19

FARMPRO: Fully Automated And Climate Controlled 40' Container Farming

The Urban Crop Solutions FarmPro is a 40 ft fully automated freight container with a state-of-the-art leafy green growing system. This system gives you a fully automated 4-layer growing solution

FARMPRO by Urban Crop Solutions

Screen Shot 2019-08-16 at 12.28.56 PM.png

A FULLY AUTOMATED AND

CLIMATE CONTROLLED 40' FREIGHT CONTAINER

The Urban Crop Solutions FarmPro is a 40 ft fully automated freight container with a state-of-the-art leafy green growing system. This system gives you a fully automated 4-layer growing solution.

HYDROPONICS AND OWN GROWTH RECIPES FOR 200+ CROPS

To deliver healthy crops, our closed-loop irrigation system:

Minimizes the use of fresh water
Increases plant nutrient uptake and can work with up to 70 organic nutrients and minerals
Provides optimal root growth, aeriation and nutrient delivery
Allows to grow microgreens and super-large crops

CLIMATE CONTROLLED ENVIRONMENT

In/outflow of air is controlled to limit unwanted elements while optimizing climate conditions.

Closed production plants have minimal external elements influencing the indoor climate
Monitoring the in- and outflow of air allows for the best possible crops
Flavour can be tailored to market demand by influencing climate, light and nutrients

CUSTOM-MADE LED TECHNOLOGY

Our own LED lights provide the optimal spectrum for your plants, using limited energy.

The photosynthetic active radiation (PAR) range, enables photosynthesis in the 400-700nm range
Using energy-efficient LEDs, our crops receive just the right light spectrum to grow efficiently

ROBOTIZED AND CONTROLLED PROCESS

Our top-notch industrial standards allow full control over monitoring and automation.

Minimize human intervention to achieve higher levels of pro

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40 ft insulated container

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80 M² GROWING SURFACE

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IGrow PreOwned 8/9/19 IGrow PreOwned 8/9/19

3 Ways Technology Is Changing The Food-Growing Industry

It's happening right before our eyes -- robots have submitted their resumes and are taking over human jobs. Robotics is certainly the change that we can neither deny nor refuse, the very next thing in technology

The Phenomenon of Uncontrollable

Weather And Farming Conditions Demand A Solution.

Toby Nwazor

CONTRIBUTOR

Consumer Goods Entrepreneur, Freelance Writer

August 2, 2019

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

It's happening right before our eyes -- robots have submitted their resumes and are taking over human jobs. Robotics is certainly the change that we can neither deny nor refuse, the very next thing in technology.

The effect of this "next level" is not limited to any industry. Apart from the threat it poses to human labor, which might imply job loss for many, these machines serve to ensure efficiency and effectiveness of processes and products, reduce lag time and increase output.

This is particularly true for the agricultural industry. With vertical farming came the use of controlled-environment area (CEA) technology for growing food. The phenomenon of uncontrollable weather and farming conditions received a solution with this technology-powered innovation. Skyscrapers, hitherto used or abandoned warehouses, and shipping containers were transformed into farmlands.

Within this farmland, the environment is controlled and techniques similar to greenhouses adopted. The augmenting of natural light with artificial lighting is not uncommon here. Most recently, LED lights are made to mimic sunlight for the purpose of growing foods. Call it a sneak peek into the future; below are three ways technology is changing food growing today.

1. Surprise technological advancements

We live in the computer age, and computer-powered machines are the new labor force. Tasks that depend solely on human labor are reducing by the day. We're looking at times when tractors and other farm machines drive themselves, and nothing is done the same way anymore. Over the last twenty years, the agricultural industry has experienced tremendous changes; you would be surprised to learn shocking ways AI is shaping the food growing industry.

This is good news, as machine intelligence is sure to condense the inefficiencies related to human labor. It's amazing how these technological advancements are running on auto-update even in the agricultural sector.

With vertical farming, urban areas don’t have to depend on rural farmers for their entire food consumption. While the former lacks the large expanse of land for farming, they can utilize the spaces in her high-rise building, abandoned containers or simply create some, to grow her food.

The lag time wasted on irrigation and fertilization at different times has been collapsed into fertigation, which is a process that combines fertilization and irrigation. Fertilizer is added into an irrigation system, and is most commonly used by commercial growers.

2. Weed control made easy

For small farms, human effort is effective for weed control. This is because of the time given to "seeing" and eliminating weeds across the farmland. Large scale food growing cannot afford the time and resources needed to pull it off. Hence, the use of herbicides and the devising of machines to aid in spraying.

Regular spraying leaves a lot of unnecessary herbicides lying around on the farm, which is both a waste of resources and labor effort squandered. The solution would be a weed-control process that targets the weeds alone, is fast, efficient, and has no effect on the farm yield.

With the advent of the seed and spray machines, computer vision and machine learning are combined to redefine weed control. The see and spray smart machine is the new way to control weed, as it jettisons 90% of the herbicide used while making sure weeds are eliminated. It comes with a "sense and a decide" function that sees every plant and decides the appropriate treatment for them, while the robotic nozzles target unwanted weeds in real-time as the machine drives through.

3. Robotic plant grafting and agricultural drones

Artificial Intelligence is all about speed, efficacy and convenience. With AI, once-stressful tasks are handled by robots. According to this report, vegetable expert Richard Hassell led a team of scientists at Clemson University's Coastal Research and Education Center who unveiled a robotic system that grafts disease-resistant roots to robust plant tops as quickly as you can say chop-chop.

On the other hand, agricultural drones allow farmers and the drone pilots that operate them to increase efficiency in certain aspects of the farming process, from crop monitoring to planting, livestock management, crop spraying, irrigation mapping and more. These drones are useful for land scouting, spot treating of plants and general farm management.

Precision agriculture seeks to use new technologies to increase crop yields and profitability while lowering the levels of traditional inputs needed to grow crops (land, water, fertilizer, herbicides and insecticides).

In conclusion, we can choose to either focus on the potential human job loss that this future implies, or we can embrace the change. The fact is, this is the future of food growing, and artificial intelligence is driving it.

Lead Image Credit: Sompong Sriphet | EyeEm | Getty Images

IGrow PreOwned 7/29/19 IGrow PreOwned 7/29/19

An Agricultural Robot Makes Its Debut In Fujian

The white agricultural robot, with 5G technology and many sensors, can move between two rows of green leafy vegetables in a greenhouse, collect data on the plants and send them to the control room

Online People 2019: 07

Fuzhou, 07/11/2019 (The People Online) - While industrial robots have become commonplace in factories throughout eastern China, the country's agricultural sector is seen by some as a place where few technologies they can take root, due to the high cost and the sophisticated natural environment involved in the cultivation of food.

But a research institute and a start-up based in Fuzhou, capital of Fujian province, east of China, are determined to change perception by jointly developing an agricultural robot.

The white agricultural robot, with 5G technology and many sensors, can move between two rows of green leafy vegetables in a greenhouse, collect data on the plants and send them to the control room.

Developed by the Academy of Agricultural Sciences of Fujian and Fujian Newland Era Hi-Tech Co Ltd, the robot is part of its efforts to build a functioning autonomous farm.

Unlike industrial plants where robots can follow pre-established routes and perform fixed jobs, such as feeding standardized electronic parts, agricultural environments are much more complex, said Zhao Jian, deputy head of the Institute of Digital Agriculture of the Academy of Agricultural Sciences of Fujian .

"Agricultural robots also have to adapt to a wide variety of crops, livestock and highly differentiated aquatic products," said Zhao.

To solve the challenges, the research institute and Newland have jointly developed a more sophisticated artificial intelligence system. The computer algorithms, as well as the positioning hardware, map construction, route design and avoid obstacles, have been optimized to adapt to the agricultural environment, taking into account fertilization, plant irrigation, bumpy roads and other factors natural.

The robot's head is equipped with two 5-megapixel cameras that make "eyes" and two 7-megapixel cameras that make "ears." With the sensors at the top of its head and mouth, the robot can also detect wind speed, carbon dioxide levels, humidity, temperature and other data about the natural environment of the greenhouse.

The farm robot has succeeded in verifying its compatibility with 5G mobile communication technology, which allows data to be analyzed by computers enabled by artificial intelligence in the control room more efficiently.

"Currently, the robot can automatically inspect farms and collect data samples that are used to drive various applications. It can determine the health condition of the plants and decide if pest control measures are required," said Chen Li, deputy director of Newland Marketing.

According to Chen, the robot remains a prototype and, based on this, the two sides hope to increase investments to develop versatile robots that can even harvest fruit with a bionic hand in the future.

"Based on the mass agricultural data and images we have acquired, we hope to build a plant growth model optimized to achieve automatic control of the growth environment and early warning of pests and diseases," Chen added.

China is now the largest industrial robot market in the world. As labor costs continue to rise, the demand for robots will be stronger in China, said Wang Tianmiao, president of the Intelligent Manufacturing Research Institute of Beihang University.

Lead Photo: An agricultural robot moves between two rows of plants in a greenhouse in Fuzhou, capital of Fujian Province. [Photo provided to China Daily]

IGrow PreOwned 7/24/19 IGrow PreOwned 7/24/19

VIDEO: This Robotic Farm Uses 90% Less Water Than Traditional Farming

There are multiple advantages of our approach to farming. With hydroponics, we can grow near consumption, near people. And with robotics, we can make sure that we're getting a consistently, great product every week

Kevin Priolo and Alexandra Appolonia

Iron Ox's robotic farm uses 90% less water than traditional farming.

The plants are grown without soil in sensor-connected, hydroponic trays.
Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Following is the transcript of the video.

This robotic farm uses 90% less water than traditional farming.

According to the World Resources Institute, the world population will be 10 billion by 2050.

That's 2.4 billion more mouths to feed than today.

That's a challenge that start-up Iron Ox is tackling.

Iron Ox wants to create more sustainable farming by combining robotics and hydroponics.

Hydroponics is the process of growing plants without soil.

Brandon Alexander: There [are] multiple advantages of our approach to farming. With hydroponics, we can grow near consumption, near people. And with robotics, we can make sure that we're getting a consistently, great product every week.

IGrow PreOwned 7/5/19 IGrow PreOwned 7/5/19

With Huge New Vertical Farm, Plenty’s Produce Could Hit More Shelves

Just outside the LED-lit depths of the Bay Area’s newest and most futuristic indoor farm, a robot arm grabs a row of seedlings and sticks them into a hydroponic planter. An even larger robot arm then flips the planter vertically and sends it onward to become one thin sliver of a 20-foot-tall wall of arugula, baby kale and beet leaves

Janelle Bitker

June 20, 2019

Plants grow on vertical towers inside Tigris.Photo: Plenty — **Plants** **grow on vertical towers inside Tigris.Photo: Plenty**

South San Francisco vertical farm company Plenty has unveiled its biggest, most efficient and most automated farm yet in its hometown. Called Tigris, it grows produce hydroponically — without soil — with LED lights year-round. Unlike outdoor farmers, Plenty’s engineers don’t have to think about the seasons, pests or what plants will grow best locally. While Tigris is specifically designed for leafy greens, Plenty CEO Matt Barnard said the company has test-grown nearly 700 varieties of plants within the last year.

Firm Takes Leap Into Future With Robot Strawberry Picker

Wilkin and Sons’ Farms manager Andrey Ivanov has been working with Dr. Vishuu Mohan, a computer science and engineering lecturer at the University of Essex, to develop the robotic strawberry picker.

Screen Shot 2019-02-23 at 2.28.19 PM.png

PUBLISHED: February 2019

Sarah Chambers

Dr Vishuu Mohan at the University of Essex Picture: VICKY PASSINGHAM

A prototype fruit-picking robot being developed on an Essex jam maker’s farm has featured in a report on farming of the future.

Wilkin and Sons’ Farms manager Andrey Ivanov has been working with Dr. Vishuu Mohan, a computer science and engineering lecturer at the University of Essex, to develop the robotic strawberry picker.

“The researchers at the university, like many across the world, are trying to develop a robotic piece of equipment that will be capable of identifying when a strawberry is ready to be picked then make a decision and pick the fruit by snapping the stem without damaging or touching the actual berry to avoid bruising,” said Mr Ivanov.

The challenge for the researchers is developing a robot capable of picking strawberries of all sizes in all weathers and conditions. “Dextrous manipulation in unstructured environments is a big challenge for robotics today,” admitted Dr Mohan.

The study is featured in a new report from the National Farmers’ Union (NFU), which looks at what the food and farming industry might look like in 20 years, with robots, vertical farms and virtual fencing.

The Future of Food 2040 report highlights the importance of establishing a future domestic agricultural policy which enables the industry to increase its productivity, profitability and resilience.

Looking beyond Brexit to how the country will evolve socially, technologically and environmentally, it delves into how changing trends will affect food production

The Tiptree plant’s collaboration is one of three case studies featured.

NFU East Anglia Regional Director Rachel Carrington said: “Agriculture is a progressive and forward looking industry and farmers in East Anglia have always been quick to adopt new technology.

“Our farmers already utilise satellite-guided tractors, drones to survey crops and soil structures, probes to monitor moisture in fields and robots in glasshouses. However, there are still many jobs that have to be done by hand and cannot be replaced by technology, at least in the short-term.

“This report provides an exciting glimpse of the future, but, to get there, it is crucial that farm businesses are not only given the support they need to survive and thrive now, but they start to plan and prepare for the challenges and opportunities ahead.”

Agri-Tech East director Dr Belinda Clarke said: “This NFU report rightly positions agri-food production as an industry with enormous potential. Measures to improve the use of finite resources such as soil and land and to increase productivity are to be encouraged and Agri-Tech East welcomes this report.

“However, to encourage the wider adoption of new technology it is vital to establish the business case for farmers and growers. We would like to see a process for independent evaluation of the return on investment.

“We agree, as stated in the report, that innovation needs to meet regulatory approval, but also understand that this can be problematic if the science is progressing ahead of the regulators. We would recommend creating advisory panels that include scientists and technologists as this would be beneficial to all.”

Topic Tags:

IGrow PreOwned 3/15/19 IGrow PreOwned 3/15/19

Tech Connection Boosts NY Vertical Farmers

Vertical farming has long been practiced in Japan and some other places but it did not take off in the United States until recent technological leaps made it viable.

By AFP

24 February 2019

A Bowery Farming employee inspects some of their greens grown at the hydroponic farming company in Kearny, New Jersey

Workers at Bowery Farming's warehouse near New York have swapped out a farmer's hoe for a computer tablet that takes real-time readings of light and water conditions.

Launched in 2015, Bowery is part of the fast-growing vertical farming movement, which employs technology in a controlled, man-made setting to grow fresh vegetables indoors all year long.

Champions of the practice see vertical farming as a key tool to meet the world's food needs at a time when the population is rising and the climate is changing.

Irving Fain, CEO and co-founder of Bowery Farming, talks about his hydroponic grown greens

The company's chief executive and co-founder, Irving Fain, said his company's Kearny, New Jersey site uses fewer resources than traditional farms and does not employ pesticides.

"I have been a big believer my entire life in technology as being able to solve not only hard problems, but also important problems," said Fain, who previously ran a company that provides data analysis for big companies on their loyalty programs.

Bowery employs more programmers than agricultural scientists. The company says its use of algorithms enables it to be 100 times more productive per area compared with a traditional farm and to use 95 percent less water.

- Lower electricity costs -

Greens are grown at Bowery Farming, a vertical farming site founded in 2015

Vertical farming has long been practiced in Japan and some other places but it did not take off in the United States until recent technological leaps made it viable.

A key component has been LED bulbs, which have enabled indoor farmers to drastically cut electricity costs.

But Bowery is also making heavy use of robotics and artificial intelligence to keep prices under control.

Bowery makes heavy use of robotics and artificial intelligence to keep prices under control

The combination of these newer tools "is how we really rethink what agriculture will look like in the next century and beyond," Fain said.

The company has also benefited from more than $120 million in funding from tech titans including Google Ventures and Uber Chief Executive Dara Khosrowshahi.

The Silicon Valley connection has also boosted San Francisco-based Plenty, another prominent vertical farming company, which has garnered more than $200 million from Amazon Chief Executive Jeff Bezos, Softbank and others.

US-based Crop One and Emirates Flight Catering have launched a $40 million joint venture to build a giant vertical farming facility in Dubai.

- Profitable? -

AeroFarms co-founder and chief marketing officer Marc Oshima looks at baby kale

The world's biggest vertical farm is in Newark, New Jersey and operated by AeroFarms.

The company, founded in 2004 and considered a pioneer in the sector, remains privately-held and does not disclose financial data. But the company says it is now profitable after a series of fumbles.

David Chang, founder of the noodle restaurant brand Momofuku, is an investor.

AeroFarms exclusively uses company-made technology that has now made its way to China, the Middle East and Europe, said its co-founder Marc Oshima.

AeroFarms's vertical grow towers in Newark, New Jersey

In a warehouse that was once a steel mill with 40-foot (12-meter) ceilings, the company is growing kale and arugula leaves set in rows of 12 metal racks each. The roots are suspended in the air as they are intermittently irrigated while the leaves bask under LED lights.

AeroFarms experiments regularly with lighting and nutrients with an eye towards finding the optimal recipe for each plant and developing the best algorithm.

The company produces watercress that reminded a reporter of her grandmother's soup, kale as tender as spinach and arugula with a hint of spice.

Basil from Bowery Farming was tinged with the flavor of lemon.

But it can take a while for vertical farms to find solutions that are viable.

"The big, big vertical farms are having a difficult time being profitable because they are so capital-intensive at the beginning," said Henry Gordon-Smith, founder of Agritecture, a consultancy.

Large farms typically need seven or eight years before they are profitable, with smaller farms requiring perhaps half as long.

But entrepreneurs in the business are confident in their prospects as more young people in cities express worry about climate change and pesticides.

"Vertical farming is not THE solution to food security," said Gordon-Smith. "It is one out of the possible solutions."

Critics of vertical farming say it has a large carbon footprint due to heavy use of lighting and ventilation.

But defenders say that this negative impact is more than offset from the benefits of lower water use, the location near population centers and the non-use of pesticides.

A bigger issue may be the limitations of the output itself, at least in terms of nutrition.

"You can't feed the world with salad alone," said Princeton University plant researcher Paul Gauthier, who says vertical farmers will need to develop more protein-rich offerings.

Gauthier -- who grew spicier peppers in his own lab by subtly increasing potassium levels -- said vertical farming could supply fresh food to so-called food "deserts" where it is absent and could in the long-term meet growing food demand as the climate changes.

IGrow PreOwned 1/18/19 IGrow PreOwned 1/18/19

Meet The Farmers Of The Future: Robots

Brandon Alexander would like to introduce you to Angus, the farmer of the future.

A robotic arm lifts plants being grown at Iron Ox. Iron Ox has been talking to San Francisco Bay area restaurants interested in buying its leafy vegetables and expects to begin selling to supermarkets next year. (AP photo)

By: The Associated Press 2018

Iron Ox CEO Brandon Alexander looks out at his robotic indoor farm in San Carlos, California. Alexander builds robot farmers that roll through a suburban warehouse, tending to rows of vegetables. (AP photo)

SAN CARLOS, Calif. (AP) — Brandon Alexander would like to introduce you to Angus, the farmer of the future. He’s heavyset, weighing in at nearly 1,000 pounds, not to mention a bit slow. But he’s strong enough to hoist 800-pound pallets of maturing vegetables and can move them from place to place on his own.

Sure, Angus is a robot. But don’t hold that against him, even if he looks more like a large tanning bed than C-3PO.

To Alexander, Angus and other robots are key to a new wave of local agriculture that aims to raise lettuce, basil and other produce in metropolitan areas while conserving water and sidestepping the high costs of human labor. It’s a big challenge, and some earlier efforts have flopped. Even Google’s “moonshot” laboratory, known as X, couldn’t figure out how to make the economics work.

After raising $6 million and tinkering with autonomous robots for two years, Alexander’s startup Iron Ox says it’s ready to start delivering crops of its robotically grown vegetables to people’s salad bowls. “And they are going to be the best salads you ever tasted,” says the 33-year-old Alexander, a one-time Oklahoma farmboy turned Google engineer turned startup CEO.

Iron Ox planted its first robot farm in an 8,000-square-foot warehouse in San Carlos, California, a suburb located 25 miles south of San Francisco. Although no deals have been struck yet, Alexander says Iron Ox has been talking to San Francisco Bay area restaurants interested in buying its leafy vegetables and expects to begin selling to supermarkets next year.

The San Carlos warehouse is only a proving ground for Iron Ox’s long-term goals. It plans to set up robot farms in greenhouses that will rely mostly on natural sunlight instead of high-powered indoor lighting that sucks up expensive electricity. Initially, though, the company will sell its produce at a loss in order to remain competitive.

During the next few years, Iron Ox wants to open robot farms near metropolitan areas across the U.S. to serve up fresher produce to restaurants and supermarkets. Most of the vegetables and fruit consumed in the U.S. is grown in California, Arizona, Mexico and other nations. That means many people in U.S. cities are eating lettuce that’s nearly a week old by the time it’s delivered.

There are bigger stakes as well. The world’s population is expected to swell to 10 billion by 2050 from about 7.5 billion now, making it important to find ways to feed more people without further environmental impact, according to a report from the World Resources Institute.

Iron Ox, Alexander reasons, can be part of the solution if its system can make the leap from its small, laboratory-like setting to much larger greenhouses.

The startup relies on a hydroponic system that conserves water and automation in place of humans who seem increasingly less interested in U.S. farming jobs that pay an average of $13.32 per hour, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Nearly half of U.S. farmworkers planting and picking crops aren’t in the U.S. legally, based on a survey by the U.S. Department of Labor.

The heavy lifting on Iron Ox’s indoor farm is done by Angus, which rolls about the indoor farm on omnidirectional wheels. Its main job is to shuttle maturing produce to another, as-yet unnamed robot, which transfers plants from smaller growing pods to larger ones, using a mechanical arm whose joints are lubricated with “food-safe” grease.

It’s a tedious process to gently pick up each of the roughly 250 plants on each pallet and transfer them to their bigger pods, but the robot doesn’t seem to mind the work. Iron Ox still relies on people to clip its vegetables when they are ready for harvest, but Alexander says it is working on another robot that will eventually handle that job too.

Alexander formerly worked on robotics at Google X, but worked on drones, not indoor farms. While there, he met Jon Binney, Iron Ox’s co-founder and chief technology offer. The two men became friends and began to brainstorm about ways they might be able to use their engineering skills for the greater good.

“If we can feed people using robots, what could be more impactful than that?” Alexander says.

IGrow PreOwned 1/11/19 IGrow PreOwned 1/11/19

Take A Look At America’s First Robotic Farm

The company claims that it is “using robotics and intelligence to grow better food for less. In a way that uses less; less of what we can’t get back or can’t afford to waste.”

Siobhan Walsh

December 30, 2018

America’s first robotic farm claims to use less energy than other modern forms of farming. The hydroponics system uses 90% less water than traditional farming and this is while producing 30 times more crops/ac.

The farm, which is just 8,000ft² in size, is said to take a human-led, robotics first approach. This, it says, allows plants to be grown at their best from seed to harvest.

By using the hydroponics system, the farm provides the same products all year round; which are not affected by seasonality.

What is hydroponics?

Instead of soil, plants are grown using a mineral nutrient solution and misting methods. LED lights are often used as the light source.

However, hydroponic farms require a lot of labour, such as transferring individual plants at different growth stages.

To see the robots in action, take a look at the video below.

Quality Produce

Iron Ox – the company behind the robotic farm – states on its website that: “Quality shouldn’t be a luxury or compromise.”

The company claims that it is “using robotics and intelligence to grow better food for less. In a way that uses less; less of what we can’t get back or can’t afford to waste.”

The farm plans to provide a secure food supply and access to premium produce for everyone.

According to reports, the farm plans to grow 26,000 heads of lettuce, greens and herbs. Restaurants will be the first port of call for the produce, which is set to hit the market soon.

IGrow PreOwned 12/25/18 IGrow PreOwned 12/25/18

Canadian Automated Vertical Farm Systems Developer Inno-3B Raises C$6m Seed Funding

Located in Quebec and Ontario, the company provides turnkey vertical farming systems for a variety of customers, from researchers, biotechnologists, and small-scale farmers, to regional and multinational producers.

DECEMBER 18, 2018 COLIN LEY

Canadian vertical farming systems developer Inno-3B has completed its first seed round of financing at nearly C$6 million ($4.45m).

Inno-3B provides fully automated, controlled, scalable, and remotely monitored robotic growing systems with real-time support to help customers grow organic produce, berries, and herbs locally.

This week, the business benefitted from a seed investment round led by the Ecofuel Fund, with the participation of Desjardins Capital, the Fonds de Solidarité FTQ, Premier Tech, the Fonds de Solidarité FTQ Bas Saint-Laurent, Investissement Québec and the Ministère de l’Économie et de l’Innovation.

Inno-3B said that the C$6m will enable the business to implement a demonstration of its technology in the context of real-time operations, a move which is designed to accelerate product marketing and ensure constant support for customers. This will include creating 10 new jobs to advance the company’s design and manufacturing processes; the company already has 15 employees across its two locations.

“We are enthusiastic to start this new phase of development with such strategic investors dedicated to our success,” said Martin Brault, President and CEO of INNO-3B, adding that the Ecofuel Fund, Desjardins Capital and the Fonds de solidarité FTQ were, in particular, actively supporting the company’s growth.

Richard Cloutier, president and CEO of the Ecofuel Accelerator and managing partner of the Ecofuel Fund, said that Inno-3B’s innovative technology had the capacity to enable customers to produce vegetables with low production costs, high yields and low energy consumption, and to do so all in a small space.

“Innovation makes it possible for the company to respond to the growing needs of consumers for fresh quality products while also reducing greenhouse gases significantly,” he said.

In addition to accelerating Inno-3B’s marketing push, the new funding will also be used help to intensify R&D activities within the business.

“Thanks to the technological advances made in recent years, we have managed to position ourselves among the leaders in automated vertical farming,” said Brault, revealing that the company was also exploring certain ‘interesting synergies’ relating to artificial intelligence (AI) as part of its future development planning.

The Ecofuel Fund is a C$30m venture capital investment fund and accelerator offering customized training programs for clean technology companies. Powered by Cycle Capital, Ecofuel works with entrepreneurs to assist them in starting businesses to breakthrough internationally.

Ecofuel is funded by Investissement Québec, BDC Capital, Fondaction, the Fonds de solidarité FTQ and the Centre québécois de valorisation des biotechnologies (CQVB).

Desjardins Capital, working with a background of nearly 45 years expertise, is committed to the promotion and support of small and medium-sized businesses in Quebec, having assets under management of C$2 billion. The fund contributes to the sustainability of 460 businesses, cooperatives and funds operating in various sectors of activity and from all regions of Quebec.

The Fonds de solidarité FTQ is a capital development investment fund that is financed with Quebec savings. With net assets of C$13.7 billion as at November 30, 2017, the fund contributes to the creation and maintenance of 186,440 jobs, partnering with more than 2,700 companies and with more than 645,000 shareholders.

No Tractors Required! Britain's First 'Vertical Farm' Is About To Produce Its First Crop With The Help Of A Robot Named Frank Working In A Warehouse In Scunthorpe

What makes the project in Scunthorpe so revolutionary — and so exciting — is the use of so many layers of plants and the high levels of automation which make managing them possible. The other great development from which the vertical farm has benefited has been the source of the artificial light.

And It Could Change Agriculture Forever

A 'vertical farm' in Scunthorpe has the potential to change agriculture forever

Only four human beings work at the vast warehouse, bathed in eerie pink light
It is designed to produce 500 tonnes of plants annually starting with fresh herbs
A single robot — called Frank — is responsible for gathering trays of plants

By GUY WALTERS FOR THE DAILY MAIL

PUBLISHED: 18 November 2018

Normally, November is not the month for the herb harvest in the British Isles, nor is an industrial estate in Scunthorpe the type of place you’d expect to find people gathering in crops.

Yet that is exactly what will be happening next Monday at a radically new farm — and it may just herald a sea-change in the way we grow our food.

Forget all those traditional images you have of agriculture: rolling fields, combine harvesters and lumbering tractors, even greenhouses and polytunnels.

Instead, picture something straight off a sci-fi movie set — a vast warehouse bathed in an eerie pinkish glow, filled with racks of plants stacked 40ft high and tended by a robot that glides about the floor.

It looks like a scene from a sci-fi movie. In fact, this Scunthorpe warehouse is the world’s most advanced ‘vertical farm’ — and its first harvest could change agriculture for ever

The few humans present on this farm look nothing like farmers. Instead of sporting favourite old pullovers or check shirts, they wear overalls, high-vis jackets and hairnets.

In short, this is less the Darling Buds Of May, more a laboratory from the distant future. Welcome, then, to the world’s most advanced commercial ‘vertical farm’.

It’s run by a new firm called Jones Food Company, and is designed to produce 500 tonnes of plants annually starting with coriander, basil, dill and chives to feed the growing appetite for fresh herbs all year.

The first crop was sown as recently as the middle of last month, and by next week, the initial batch will already have been harvested. Everything here is geared towards growing plants as quickly and efficiently as possible. And all without a single handful of soil.

At the heart of the operation is a technique known as hydroponics, whereby plants are grown under artificial light with their roots resting in a ‘hydroponic solution’ made up of water and essential nutrients such as potassium, calcium, nitrogen, nitrate and magnesium, instead of soil.

In the pink: Hydroponic herbs being grown under artificial light at the country's first vertical farm

During the growing process, the water is also periodically drained away ensuring the plants’ roots are able to ‘breathe in’ enough oxygen.

Almost the entire procedure is automated. A single robot — called Frank — is responsible for gathering up the trays of plants and taking them around the various parts of the farm, including the seeding and germination areas, and ultimately, the harvesting room.

In fact, only four human beings work in the vast warehouse. In order to avoid the plants being contaminated by micro-organisms that can cause diseases such as blight, they have to follow a strict handwashing procedure, after which they must don protective overalls. They then have to pass through an ‘air shower’ which blows off any remaining rogue particles.

All this is despite the fact that at no stage do any humans actually touch the plants themselves.

Pure carbon dioxide is pumped into the room, which enables the plants to absorb 50 per cent more than they would in a traditional greenhouse, causing them to grow faster than normal.

All the air that enters passes through medical-grade filters, and the pressure inside the warehouse is kept higher than the air pressure outdoors to stop insects getting in.

Rather than a brand new concept, Scunthorpe’s vertical farm is the latest step in the long-running attempt to find a way of factory farming plants indoors.

There are already a number of hydroponic farms in Britain. Thanet Earth, for example, south of Gatwick, has been operating for nearly a decade. In 2013, this facility alone produced 225 million tomatoes — around 12 per cent of the UK’s total crop.

In Clapham, South London, hydroponics and artificial lights are used to grow salad crops in former air raid shelters — an indicator of how valuable this technique could be in cities.

At the heart of the operation is a technique known as hydroponics, whereby plants are grown under artificial light with their roots resting in a ‘hydroponic solution' made up of water and essential nutrients such as potassium, calcium, nitrogen, nitrate and magnesium, instead of soil.

Previously, sodium bulbs have been used which require enormous amounts of energy. This didn’t just negate many of the environmental benefits but also made operating the farms hugely expensive.

Back in 2010, one estimate put the electricity bill for growing the amount of wheat required for a just single loaf of bread via hydroponics at around £12.

All that has changed thanks to the widespread adoption of LED lights, which use far less power.

The farm in Scunthorpe boasts no less than 7.6 miles of LED lights, the equivalent of 38 Eiffel Towers laid end-to-end. Their pink glow illuminates a total growing surface area of 5,120 square metres — the size of 26 tennis courts.

The company’s co-founder and chief technology officer, Dr Paul Challinor, who has a doctorate in hydroponics and who did much of the testing of the lights at his own home, explains why his warehouse is lit in that eerie shade of pink.

‘The reason is because the plants grow best under red-and-blue light,’ he says, ‘although we also have white lights so that we can see what we are doing.’

The different-coloured lights have different roles to play during the plants’ life cycles. Red light helps to promote leaf coverage, whereas blue light promotes plant structure and leaf mass.

Dr Challinor says an order for his plants has already been placed by a customer who wants a ‘fresh product’, although he is tight-lipped about who it is. The plants are reputedly just as flavoursome as those grown in traditional soil, and it seems unlikely that any commercial customer would order several tonnes of herbs from the farm if they tasted bland.

Forget all those traditional images you have of agriculture (stock image)

In 1999, an American former professor of microbiology called Dickson Despommier claimed that a 30-floor skyscraper farm could one day feed 50,000 people.

By 2050 it is estimated around 86 per cent of people in the developed world will be living in cities and the world’s population is projected to have swollen from 7.7 billion today, to nearly ten billion.

Proponents of vertical farms have argued that as the food could be grown in the heart of cities, food miles — the distance it travels from traditional farms to consumers — could be all but eliminated, cutting greenhouse gas emissions and leaving us with fresher, tastier food.

The use of vertical farms also slashes the amount of land required to feed a growing population and saves us from having to use damaging pesticides and fertiliser.

Even better, because the inside of the warehouse is so closely controlled, vertical farms can grow crops all year, rather than following seasonal cycles. This also protects the crops from the frosts or droughts that can lay waste to traditional farms.

All this hinges on whether new technology has solved the problem of cheap and reliable artificial light.

It is too early to say whether the use of LEDs is, as the Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board claims, a ‘seismic shift that is set to change fundamentally how we grow plants’. For his part, Dr Challinor is nothing if not ambitious. ‘We have already looked at other sites in the Midlands and the South and hope to be running a number of units,’ he says, and claims the farm is taking ‘British horticulture to another level’.

At present, it is growing herbs because of their high retail value, and plans to diversify into growing salad leaves as well as high-value plants needed by cosmetic and pharmaceutical companies (that principle at least has been proved to work: many illegal cannabis operations grow the drug using hydroponics and artificial lights).

In future, it is hoped that other crops such as wheat and barley could be grown in warehouses rather than in open fields.

If Dr Challinor can manage that, then the sky really is the limit.

IGrow PreOwned 10/5/18 IGrow PreOwned 10/5/18

Will America's Future Farmers Be Robots?

After raising $6 million and tinkering with autonomous robots for two years, Alexander's startup Iron Ox says it's ready to start delivering crops of its robotically grown vegetables to people's salad bowls.

Iron Ox Start-Up

Angus possibly will be America’s farmer of the future. He's heavyset, weighing in at nearly 1,000 pounds, and he is a bit slow. But he's strong enough to hoist 800-pound pallets of maturing vegetables and can move them from place to place on his own. Angus is a robot.

To Brandon Alexander, Angus and other robots are key to a new wave of local agriculture that aims to raise lettuce, basil and other produce in metropolitan areas while conserving water and sidestepping the high costs of human labor. It's a big challenge, and some earlier efforts have flopped.

As reported by cbsnews.com, Iron Ox planted its first robot farm in an 8,000-square-foot warehouse in San Carlos, California, a suburb located 25 miles south of San Francisco. Although no deals have been struck yet, Alexander says Iron Ox has been talking to San Francisco Bay area restaurants interested in buying its leafy vegetables and expects to begin selling to supermarkets next year.

Publication date : 10/4/2018