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Feeding The Masses With Indoor Farming - Agriculture Finally Grows Up
Food insecurity happens when the people it affects do not have consistent access to nutritious foods. Then, the problems span from stunted growth in childhood to obesity because people cannot get enough nutrient-rich, healthy food to maintain an ideal body weight.
June 11, 2019
Food insecurity happens when the people it affects do not have consistent access to nutritious foods. Then, the problems span from stunted growth in childhood to obesity because people cannot get enough nutrient-rich, healthy food to maintain an ideal body weight.
Credit: MetsikGarden, Pixabay
Traditional farming can help alleviate some food insecurity, but the agricultural industry is heavily dependent on Mother Nature. Unusual weather patterns, poor soil conditions and invasive pests are some of the many things that can cause farmers to have disappointing growing seasons. There’s also the reality that some areas of the world do not have the climates necessary for producing some types of food, and that problem could get worse due to global warming.
So, what if it were possible to take all those outdoor variables out of the picture? That’s happening already thanks to an increasing interest in indoor farming.
Growing Things Vertically
Indoor farming is also called greenhouse farming. Discussions surrounding either of those terms often bring up the concept of vertical farming. It involves growing crops in vertically orientated stacks. This method allows for practically utilizing the available space. Moreover, parties in the vertical farming industry typically use sensors that detect the precise amounts of light, water and other essentials that the crops need to grow.
Taking this approach avoids the waste and uncertainty that can accompany traditional farming. AeroFarms, located in New Jersey, is one of the largest indoor farms. It substitutes LED lights for the sun and uses a specialized cloth instead of soil. Plus, the operation reportedly uses up to 95% less water than standard methods of farming because it delivers a mist of water and nutrients to the root structure.
Other vertical farms operate in similar ways, and their overall methods result in shortened growing times. It’s also worth noting that although the exact statistics vary, an acre of vertical farming could produce as much as a conventional farm that’s at least ten times larger.
Population Growth Is a Pressing Matter
Researchers understand that there’s no time to waste when figuring out how to feed the world’s population. Some estimates say that as the global population grows from 7.3 billion to 9.6 billion people by 2050, we’ll need to produce 70% more food to feed them all. LED lights are particularly advantageous in indoor farms because they allow offering dynamic light spectrums for individual plants. Sunlight is comparatively unpredictable.
But, customizable light is not the only aspect of indoor farming that could make it a feasible way to feed future generations. Some indoor farms use robots to manage many of the necessities. Research shows that labor costs represent as much as 80% of an indoor farm’s operating expenses, but many are using automation to keep costs down. Doing that could help tackle the problem of aging farmers contributing to a labor shortage.
Vertical Farms Help Solve Problems With a Lack of Land
When people bring up matters related to population growth, they often talk about how the increase of people on the planet makes it more difficult for those individuals to secure housing. In the agriculture sector, the opposite problem can arise, whereby an uptick of buildings for houses and offices leaves less land for agricultural development.
Indoor farms address that problem since they can exist inside of or on buildings — such as in one case where a former warehouse in Brooklyn now has a rooftop garden. Then, in the Sunqiao district of Shanghai, vertical greenhouses are integrated parts of the city, showing that farms can thrive without vast expanses of land.
Dealing With the Sustainability Challenge
Vertical farms offer higher yields than outdoor farms, and they’re compatible with urban environments. Many companies also sell compact indoor growing solutions for households, and those product manufacturers took inspiration from the large-scale indoor farms. All of those things are good news for fixing food insecurity.
But, critics point out that some indoor farms are not always sustainable options due to the energy required for things like climate control. That’s a valid argument, but people need to realize that no single solution will completely encompass the issue related to both food insecurity and sustainability.
As mentioned earlier, indoor farms use less water than traditional farms. Plus, they typically don’t require pesticides, which is another advantage for the planet. If enough indoor farms meet food availability needs, it’s also possible that produce would not need to travel as far to reach the people who eat it. That’s a sustainable outcome, too.
The possible downsides of indoor farms should merely be reminders of how solving the problem of feeding the future should take sustainability into account. Then, the results could mean that more people have access to the food they need, and the planet gets the necessary protection.
These Tech Start-Ups Are Changing What It Means To Farm
Feeding a rapidly expanding population without depleting the Earth’s finite resources, is one of the major challenges of the 21st century
The future of farming? Image: REUTERS/Ilya Naymushin
01 Jul 2019
Briony Harris Senior Writer, Formative Content
This article is part of the Annual Meeting of the New Champions
Feeding a rapidly expanding population without depleting the Earth’s finite resources, is one of the major challenges of the 21st century.
These four entrepreneurs - who have all been selected as the World Economic Forum’s Technology Pioneers for 2019 - have a vision to transform the way we farm in order to help feed the world.
Mini-farms in underground parking lots
In an abandoned car park in downtown Beijing, trays and trays of planting beds are stacked on top of each other.
This is a mini-farm, right in the heart of the city, and it supplies nearby hotels with lettuce, celery, herbs, kale and other green vegetables.
“It’s no longer impossible to grow food where people work and live”, says Stuart Oda, who co-founded the agriculture start-up Alesca Life in 2013, referring to the amount of disused urban infrastructure available, including things such as old shipping containers.
LEDs provide the light, and mineral nutrients are added to water instead of soil. Internet-linked devices monitor humidity, acidity levels and the amount of dissolved oxygen in the water, allowing such variables to be adjusted to increase yields.
“Our system allows us to automate all of the major points of human error that could lead to a loss of crop,” Oda says.
Stuart Oda shows his container farms to the UAE’s minister for food security . | Image: Stuart Oda
The proximity of the mini-farms to the customers means that the produce is fresh, and reduces transport and packaging.
Alesca Life has signed an agreement to distribute 1,000 container farms across the Middle East, Africa, China, and North America.
Oda’s decision to launch his company was prompted by the change he could see happening all around him in China, including rapid urbanization, population growth and land degradation of traditional farms.
“There’s a real sense of urgency to dealing with these challenges and I want to dedicate all my productive years, including my passion and my youth, to addressing them,” he says.
2. Finding a market for ugly fruit and veg
Christine Moseley has witnessed massive food waste at first hand.
During the harvest of romaine lettuce, Moseley watched as 25% of each plant was put into uniform packaging, while the rest was discarded.
“I knew then we had a broken food system. It was my ‘aha’ moment and I vowed not to stop until I found a way for that produce to be utilized for consumption,” she told Forbes.
That was when she decided to start Full Harvest, a B2B platform to sell rather than waste unsightly or unwanted fruit and veg.
Roughly one-third of the food produced in the world for human consumption every year — approximately 1.3 billion tonnes — gets lost or wasted, according to the Food and Agricultural Organization of the UN.
In the US alone, 9 billion kilos of ‘ugly’ and surplus produce are wasted each year simply due to the cosmetic standards of grocery stores.
Supermarkets often only buy perfect produce
Image: Reuters/Ngwyen Huy Khan
Full Harvest connects food companies with trucking firms and farms so that they can make use of the imperfect and surplus produce.
This not only makes good use of the food, it also stops water being wasted and limits carbon dioxide emissions from agriculture.
3. Preventing waste with NASA’s hyperspectral imaging
Hyperspectral imaging sees information on parts of the electromagnetic spectrum that human eyes cannot. That means it can test the freshness of food - from beef steaks to avocados - without even touching it.
The technology - first developed by NASA for aerial imaging - detects the internal quality and chemical composition of food products.
ImpactVision then uses machine-learning techniques to assess the quality of the product, providing food companies with real-time information about their stock.
With an avocado, for example, the images can determine the fruit’s ripeness and reject any rotten ones. Previous systems have depended on sampling - and then wasting - fruits.
“Using advanced imaging and machine learning, we help food companies learn about the quality of their food products non-invasively, providing real-time continuous data,” says ImpactVision’s CFO Rachael Gan.
“That leads to optimized decision-making during processing that in turn reduces waste.”
Can you tell which avocado is ripe without touching . Image: REUTERS/Siphiwe Sibeko
ImpactVision is now working with several leading food producers and supermarkets in the US and believes the data it gathers has the power to transform food supply chains in the same way as GPS transformed navigation.
As food quality control is digitized, this new technique could also help spot contamination and prevent costly food recalls at a later date.
Have you read?
4. More productive seeds
“Seeds are the heroes of modern agriculture. If we improve seeds, then we determine how much land, how much water, how much fertilizer will be used,” says Ponsi Trivisvavet, CEO of Inari Agriculture. “We can solve these major environmental problems by going back to the root cause - the seed.”
Image: FAO
Inari operates a seed foundry where a plant’s genes are edited - some genes may be knocked out, others inserted and others fine-tuned. "Everything we do would probably happen naturally over the next 1,000 years or so,” says Trivisvavet. “We’re just speeding up that process.”
Three changes were simultaneously carried out on tomato plant seeds in order to grow the size of the branch, increase the number of flowers and expand the size of the fruit. This led to an increase of productivity of more than 90%, something which has never happened before in the history of crop development, according to Trivisvavet.
The same technology is being used for soybeans, where the genes of the seed are being edited to increase the number of pods per node, and the number of seeds per pod.
Inari’s seed foundry uses AI-powered computuational crop design to understand the genomes of the crop and how they interact with each other.
“The gene editing itself is easier than identifying where the changes need to be made,” Trivisvavet says. “AI tells us where the changes need to be.”
Among the areas being worked on is making crops more drought-resistant and less dependent on fertilizer.
“We’re working out how to feed the world without starving the planet,” Trivisvavet says.
“If we can grow food with less inputs, then we can return land to nature and lighten the ecological footprint of farming.”
Written by Briony Harris, Senior Writer, Formative Content
The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and not the World Economic Forum.
Five Intriguing Questions With Wanjun Gao, CEO Of BiFarm
What would you do if you could control all the variables of precision growing and control all the things that possibly could go wrong directly on an app, anywhere in the world?
June 26, 2019
Warren Bobrow Contributor
I work with cannabis and have done some wild things in life. cocktailwhisperer.com
Precision Growing in an App | BIFARM
I'm lucky to have a green thumb. Give me some seed or a cutting or just about anything and I can grow it. This was probably caused from my growing up on a Biodynamic farm belonging to my family in New Jersey. However, most people have black thumbs. They plant something in the earth and it just shrivels and dies no matter what they do. They can't understand why the plant died, it just stopped being happy, then it turned to brown and said, without much fanfare, good-bye.
What would you do if you could control all the variables of precision growing and control all the things that possibly could go wrong directly on an app, anywhere in the world?
BiFarm is similar to the concept of Seedo and Leaf except neither of them are available commercially.
BiFarm is the only precision controlled high pressure aeroponics system. Most of the home systems are hydroponics.
BiFarm doesn’t provide lights, casing or air filtering, because growers might already have them, and the selection is geared towards what lights to select, as an example.
BiFarm's system is designed for aeroponics working conditions, which is dependant on precision nutrient delivery, and root area temperature stability. But aeroponics works way better if conditions are right.
Other than home use, BiFarm is perfect for R&D purpose, for schools, labs and seed companies. They need tools to repeated testing on different input.
For example, Cornell university’s agritech center likes BiFarm's AeroKit, and we are working on presenting them a solution similar to 'co-location' project. That will enable them to test out generic change testing.
Enter Wanjun Gao, the intrepid CEO of BiFarm
Warren Bobrow=WB: Where are you from? When did you discover cannabis? Where are you producing your product now?
Wanjun Gao=WG: I originally came from China; however, I have been living in Florida for the most of my adult life. BiFarm's activities of research, design, development, and user experience trial are conducted here in the United States. While exploring the sourcing partners around world, we currently work with our suppliers and manufacturers in China for prototyping and initial production for AeroXPS.
WB: Tell me about your company? Why Cannabis instead of practicing law or say, becoming a surgeon? What is your passion?
WG: BiFarm is a technology company. We develop agricultural technologies and provide soil-less solutions that maximize harvest quality and yields. Our focus is precision aeroponics with automated control. We believe precision-controlled cultivation leads to consistent, reliable, and repeatable results. Imagine if we can have agricultural freedom in environments that are traditionally hard to cultivate in: the dry deserts of Middle-east or cold winters of northern Europe and Canada. In our bigger picture, our goal is to improve the future of agriculture for generations to come.
Bifarm's technologies can grow various plants. For example, university agri-tech center and USDA lab purchased BiFarm’s precision aeroponics equipment as genetics research tools for plants like the apple tree. In a sense, BiFarm's equipment is like an iPhone, and users can utilize different apps to grow different plants. If we look back at BiFarm's origin, it is an accidental business. It started with the problem of my inability to keep indoor plants alive for long, and I took it upon myself to automate the gardening tasks. Before long, I had enthusiastic teammates join me. My passion is to create and make things work. It is quite a sense of accomplishment when I see things that I put together, work.
WB: Do you cook? If so, who taught you? What’s your favorite food? What is your favorite local restaurant? Why?
WG: Well, I guess "cook" is a subjective term. I think I can cook. I learned by trial-and-error, like most people. When it comes to food, I don't discriminate. I like it all, as long as it is of good quality.
WB: What is your six-month plan, one year? What is your inspiration for the future?
WG: With the release of the AeroXPS we are now focusing on scaling the technology for commercial facilities. There are two goals:
1. One is to provide clusters of individually controllable habitats powered by AeroXPS grow systems that are ideal for genetic research labs and small cultivation facilities. The habitat environment can be recreated and repeated with the exact settings for benchmark testing.
2. Another one goal is scale up the grow system to be more efficient for the yields & costs and streamline indoor cultivation activities. In other words, we want to make the facilities the farms of future.
WB: If you could be anywhere in the world right now, where would that be? Doing what? With whom?
Hamilton’s Large Indoor Growing Operation is So Advanced They Want it Around The World
By: Eric Schwartzberg, Staff Writer
80 Acres Farms is taking steps to broaden the reach of the state-of-the-art vertical farming operation it already employs in Cincinnati and Hamilton.
The company this week launched Infinite Acres, an independent joint venture aimed at providing large-scale indoor farming facilities worldwide.
The venture also includes UK-based online grocery retailer Ocado Group and Netherlands-based Priva Holding BV, a leading provider of technology solutions, services and automation systems to horticultural and other industries.
Infinite Acres will use 80 Acres Farms’ technology-assisted vertical farming techniques to grow clean, pesticide-free vegetables, leafy greens and fruits near population centers throughout the world. That includes places where year-round nutritious produce is in short supply because of adverse climate and growing conditions or locations where food must be transported “considerably long distances.”
The partnership will utilize Ocado’s predictive analytics, automation and comprehensive system development and its Ocado Solutions division’s cutting-edge software and hardware systems, robotics and artificial intelligence.
It also will use Priva and 80 Acres Farms’ “extensive horticulture, engineering, operational and food industry expertise,” according to Mike Zelkind, CEO of 80 Acres Farms.
The Infinite Acres venture is “an amazing combination of best-of-breed companies,” that will provide customers state-of-the-art facilities with “uniquely developed” crop recipes, yield guarantees, product packaging, branding, marketing and distribution, Zelkind said.
Luke Jensen, CEO of Ocado Solutions, told this news outlet Wednesday that vertical farming is “a very exciting area within farming” because it’s a way of growing that is “ecologically incredibly efficient compared with traditional farming in terms of use of water and use of energy.”
“It involves no pesticides, fungicides … so it’s an absolutely great way of growing fruit and (vegetables),” Jensen said.
The joint venture will help grow a model aimed at delivering to the marketplace produce harvested minutes before an order.
“That’s why it’s an area that’s of interest to us, both because our technologies are relevant and because ultimately it could be relevant to the customer proposition, but that’s not an immediate preoccupation,” Jensen said. “It’s part of our vision for the long terms.”
The collaborative venture will have “a considerable impact” on the profitability and competitiveness of food service industry customers everywhere — from growers and distributors to retailers and governments, according to Tisha Livingston, CEO of Infinite Acres.
Most Efficient Leafy Greens Farm In The World Delivers Absolute Control And Precision For New Standards of Delicious And Clean Eating
Plenty , the vertical farming company that puts flavor first, today debuted its new farm, Tigris, designed for the best possible flavor while producing with extreme efficiency and cleanliness
SOUTH SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., June 20, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Plenty , the vertical farming company that puts flavor first, today debuted its new farm, Tigris, designed for the best possible flavor while producing with extreme efficiency and cleanliness. Tigris exerts absolute control over variables like climate and light, while using less than one percent of the land and less than five percent of the water compared to an outdoor farm.
Photo Credit: Spencer Lowell (Photographer)
"Plenty is on a mission to change the way we eat by growing produce with craveable flavor while increasing availability to a world that long ago ran out of additional fruit and vegetable farmland," said Matt Barnard, CEO and co-founder of Plenty. "The globe can grow only one-third of the fruits and vegetables required to provide people with a healthy diet,1and those fruits and vegetables are largely available only to the affluent or people who live near a Mediterranean climate. A farm like Tigris has the potential to improve human and planetary health, and that's exactly why Plenty is here."
With Tigris and future farms, Plenty can not only create an environment that nurtures the perfect flavor in a crop, it can choose crops that have never been grown for grocery stores, due to the whims of climate or seasonality or the many food miles that fruits and vegetables travel today.
"There are 70,000 edible fruit and vegetable varieties in the world, and because of the challenges of growing outdoors and putting food on trucks, we've been relegated to eat the few dozen that we find at the grocery store," said Nate Storey, chief science officer and co-founder of Plenty. "Plenty has unlocked a future where people across the globe, regardless of income or geography, can experience the joy of incredible, nourishing fruits and vegetables."
Tigris is currently being commissioned and will then undergo a facility-level food safety certification pursuant to internationally-recognized third party standards, guaranteeing that it meets and exceeds the highest levels of cleanliness and safety for its produce. Plenty is available in the Bay Area today online through Good Eggs and in-person at numerous neighborhood markets, and the greens from Tigris will be widely available later this year. For more information, people can visit Plenty online .
Contact:
Christina Ra, press@plenty.ag
1 https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0205683
Target Launches Same-Day Delivery Throughout U.S.
http://producenews.net/the-produce-news-today-s-headlines/26843-target-launches-same-day-delivery-throughout-u-s
JUNE 14, 2019
Looking to make the shopping experience easier for customers, same-day delivery shopped by Shipt is now available directly through Target.com.
“With same-day delivery now available directly within the Target.com experience, we’ve made it even easier for our guests to shop at Target — while still getting the great value, curated product assortment and helpful guest service they’ve come to expect,” said Dawn Block, senior vice president of digital.
Guests can now get 65,000 items delivered to their door in as soon as an hour with an order placed directly on Target.com. And there’s more perks: Guests can use their REDcard to pay, which gives them 5 percent off their purchases, and they can take advantage of weekly ad promos (like buy three items, get a $5 Target GiftCard).
For guests who want to try out Shipt’s delivery service, they can sign up for a free four-week trial or have the option to pay a $9.99 delivery fee for each order on Target.com, giving guests the benefits of same-day delivery without having to commit to an annual membership.
Competitors Join Forces to Push The Industry Forward
“FarmRoadTM was conceived to fulfil two broad purposes. A platform for autonomous farming and secondly as a way of bringing together all disparate technologies that farmers use into one unified management tool,” explains Darryn
Autogrow and Ridder
In order for the industry to move forward, collaboration is necessary. That’s what Darryn Keiller, CEO with Autogrow, is convinced of. “Everybody is innovating, but innovating in silos. There’s no real sharing of advantages created for the broader industry - and that’s the only way of speeding up innovation.”
Launching FarmRoad on the Indoor AgTech yesterday!
To change this, Autogrow launched a new farm management platform: FarmRoad. The new platform was launched yesterday at the Indoor AgTech Summit in New York.
“FarmRoadTM was conceived to fulfil two broad purposes. A platform for autonomous farming and secondly as a way of bringing together all disparate technologies that farmers use into one unified management tool,” explains Darryn.
Autogrow aren’t just talking - they are doing what they say they are - and have also announced a collaboration with their competitor Ridder Group, which will make it possible for growers to connect their Ridder climate control and irrigation systems to the FarmRoadTM platform.
“To be truly unified you need to be open and work collaboratively across the industry with buy-in from existing major players. It’s a concept we advocated two years ago when we came out with the first open API (Application Programming Interface) and I’m pleased to be in a position to say the dream is now tangible.”
“We are ecstatic that Ridder has shown the foresight and faith in us, to support what we are doing and join us in showing the industry what is possible when true collaboration occurs.”
Both Autogrow and Ridder market automation solutions for Controlled Environment Agriculture (CEA) and both will be able to integrate with FarmRoadTM. Ridder Group, will make it possible for growers to connect their Ridder climate control and irrigation systems to the FarmRoadTM platform.
“The Ridder Group, developer of the HortiMaX greenhouse control systems for over 40 years, supports the initiative of Autogrow,” says Joep van den Bosch, Chief Innovation Officer, Ridder Group. “Ridder believes strongly in a connected future where systems and data is shared for the benefit of optimizing the plants growing conditions and more efficient and sustainable greenhouse operations.”
There are various developments in the industry causing Autogrow to start innovating in this direction. Darryn explains how there are roadblocks in the way when it comes to the adoption of Agtech including the knowledge base – with the average age of the farming community going up and limited knowledge sharing tools available.
In order to transfer knowledge and systemise it, making it possible to utilise new technology, they developed FarmRoadTM, making it possible to share knowledge and collaborate.
Autogrow CEO Darryn Keiller at the Auckland, NZ office
“There are many applications growers have to deal with at their farm. If it’s the cultivars or heating, or energy consumption - traceability, environmental effects, finance, labor. Part of our journey is unifying farm information and data for different farms and crops, including machine learning techniques, into one platform.”
Alongside Ridder Group, Autogrow will also be collaborating with New York based Start-Up NATIVE.
“Equally as important as an established player showing vision, is new entrants to the industry who are also bringing innovation. What NATIVE are creating delivers a fundamental industry building block, which we will integrate with FarmRoadTM,” says Darryn.
The NATIVE platform connects farms with local buyers, maximizing the value of their harvests and helping both buyers and restaurants deliver on the promise and demand of locally sourced food.
“Our partnership with Autogrow will most benefit the growers and the farmers,” says Frank Pica, co-founder, NATIVE. “FarmRoadTM users can provide NATIVE with real-time data that verifies the quantity and quality of their harvests, and Native will return the true market value of the products. NATIVE then provides an outlet for growers to bring their products to premium markets within their region.”
Autogrow will work closely with Ridder Group and NATIVE over the coming months during the pilot phase. The beginning of the journey in working collaboratively with producers and growers.
“The next iterations of FarmRoadTM include flower and fruiting identification through Machine Vision and AI to provide pollination rates and flower to fruit conversion performance. We will be extending the 3rd party integration to include finance, labor management, food security and more,” says Darryn.
For more information:
Kylie Horomia
Autogrow
kylie.horomia@autogrow.com
www.farmroad.io
Robots Are Already Farming Crops Inside This Silicon Valley Warehouse
Indoor farming company Plenty’s new, bigger operation wants to deliver fresh greens, any time of year. And its robot farm workers help it optimize growing conditions to make the most delicious produce
06.20.19
Indoor farming company Plenty’s new, bigger operation wants to deliver fresh greens, any time of year. And its robot farm workers help it optimize growing conditions to make the most delicious produce.
1/7 [Photo: Spencer Lowell/courtesy Plenty Farms]
Inside a cavernous warehouse in South San Francisco, 16-foot-tall walls of kale and other greens stretch down aisles twice the length of a bowling lane. Matt Barnard, CEO and cofounder of Plenty, the startup that designed and built the indoor farm, points to two types of mustard greens called mizuna and tatsoi. “This is one of the blends that we are working to position against junk food,” he says.
Barnard wants to change how the world eats by changing how food is grown. The new farm, which will begin selling produce to San Franciscans later this year, is the latest iteration of its indoor growing system, designed to grow food as efficiently as possible in any space, so cities anywhere can have access to locally grown vegetables—optimized for flavor—at any time of year. When I first visited the company’s headquarters in 2017, it used only a small amount of the space, a former electronics distribution center in an industrial neighborhood. A few months later, Softbank led a $200 million investment round in the startup. The new version of Plenty’s farm now sprawls over a much larger part of its headquarters, and the company plans to eventually replicate it near large cities globally.
[Photo: Spencer Lowell/courtesy Plenty Farms]
Each step in the process is now automated. In one corner of the massive warehouse, a bright yellow robot picks up a tower filled with kale that was growing, minutes earlier, in one of the aisles of greens next door. Gently turning the tower on its side, the robot sets it on a conveyor belt where a spinning wheel neatly trims the greens to harvest them. When the farm opens, this will be one of the last steps before produce is delivered to grocery stores or directly to consumers (the company already sells greens from its earlier, smaller farm through a local food delivery service called Good Eggs, along with some independent groceries). In another corner, robots pack trays with soil and seeds and deliver them to another room to germinate. Along another wall, four robots inside glass boxes carefully lift seedlings out of trays and plant them into the tall white growing towers. Back in the growing room, infrared cameras and sensors monitor the indoor climate, and software adjusts details like the precise “recipe” for light or water to create the best flavor in the plants.
“We essentially coax a different flavor profile out of the plants by giving them the right recipe,” says Barnard. Each day, the company runs harvested crops through its “sensory” department, evaluating factors like size and flavor and tweaking the growing environment as needed for the next crop. “We take those plants and analyze what’s in them, and then we work to give subsequent crops exactly the right recipe so that these things are lovable. And that’s critical. That’s how we get to 10-year-olds asking their mothers for our kale.”
[Photo: courtesy Plenty Farms]
Right now, only around 1 in 10 Americans eat as many fruits and vegetables each day as federal guidelines recommend. If it’s possible to buy local, freshly harvested produce in Minneapolis in February—rather than wilted greens that spent a week on a truck from Arizona or California—Plenty believes that people will be more likely to want to eat them. Because the company can control the growing environment, it says that it can achieve flavors that aren’t consistently possible in fields. It can also sell varieties of produce that are too delicate to survive current supply chains. Consumers don’t really want to buy iceberg lettuce, Barnard says. But it’s a huge crop because it can survive both difficult growing conditions on farms and then travel thousands of miles. With a local journey, Plenty can sell crops that don’t exist in typical supermarkets now. I tasted wasabi arugula, a spicy wild green that mimics the heat of the Japanese condiment.
The company wouldn’t comment on the cost of its system. But it says that it’s still possible to sell greens at the same cost as those grown on a traditional farm. One of the largest costs for indoor farms is energy use, especially from lighting; in the last year, Plenty cut energy consumption by 80% per kilogram of plants grown, and it expects to cut that further. Roughly a third of the value of vegetables sold in the eastern U.S., it says, comes from transportation from farms in places like California or Mexico. Indoor farms can also avoid the cost of days in distribution centers and other parts of those long supply chains. There’s also intrinsic value for consumers in the fact that greens grown in food safety-certified facilities can avoid the contamination that sometimes happens outdoors. In 2018, in three outbreaks, romaine lettuce grown on traditional farms caused 300 infections and hospitalized 128 people; six died. Water contamination from nearby livestock was the culprit. Plenty uses purified tap water inside a space so pristine that it doesn’t have to treat its greens for them to be safe to eat (“prewashed” greens from farms are often washed in bleach in an attempt to kill germs).
Indoor farming still hasn’t proven itself at scale. Aerofarms, another startup with a massive indoor farm at its headquarters in Newark, New Jersey, said in 2015 that it expected to build 25 farms over the next five years; to date, it has built one large farm in addition to its headquarters. FarmedHere, which said in 2015 that it planned to build 18 farms near major cities. Two years later, the company shut down. Bowery, a New York-based, Alphabet-backed startup that also uses robotics, has two farms so far, though it raised a $90 million round of investment in late 2018 and plans to expand. Plenty itself had planned to open a farm near Seattle by this point, but decided to focus on building its tech platform. Still, it can move quickly: The company completed the design for its new automated Bay Area farm last November, began construction in December, and was operational by March.
To begin with, like other companies in this space, Plenty is growing greens, because they are particularly economical to grow in this way. But at another location in Wyoming, where it tests new varieties of crops—700 over the last year—it is also perfecting the “recipes” to grow foods like strawberries and tomatoes. Indoor growing is unlikely to ever replace growing in fields, both because some crops are better suited for outdoor growing and because of the scale required. But as available space for farmland shrinks and the global population grows, indoor farming could help fill some of the gap. Plenty declined to share the exact size of its new farm or expected annual production, but depending on the crop, the company’s indoor growing system can produce between 150 and 350 times as much produce as the same crop in a field. It could also become more necessary in some areas as outdoor farms struggle with drought, heat waves, flooding, and other impacts from climate change. Indoor farms use a small fraction of the water required in places like California.
Barnard believes that the company can grow quickly. “I think people are going to be stunned at the speed with which a lot of what’s available in the fruit and vegetable aisle is from a Plenty farm or from an indoor farm,” 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.
CO2 Gro Q1 Results + Talk With Management
CO2 Gro Inc. (GROW.V, BLONF) reported their full-year 2018 and Q1 2019 results recently. Neither reporting period provided much excitement but let’s go through the highlights before I dig into the conversation I had with VP Sam Kanes.
Click here for my initial analysis of CO2 Gro Inc.
I own shares of CO2 Gro Inc.
Q1 Results
On May 31st, 2019, GROW reported Q1 2019 results. The highlight of CO2 Gro Q1 results was the completion of the installation of their CO2 equipment with their first two growers under contract. GROW began collecting revenue from their first contract in late March while revenue from their second contract will begin in June. While GROW only generated $6650 in revenue in Q1, their first two contracts will generate $240,000 per year.
Although this is not a huge amount of money, it is a base that GROW can continue to build upon. The contracts are long term, perpetual contracts as long as the systems are still in use.
In February GROW announced positive results from a trial of their dissolved CO2 spray on e.coli and powdery mildew. Their MD&A states that these positive results have lead to increased interested in GROW’s technology from hemp growers in North America. This could be a distinct advantage for GROW. GROW’s dissolved CO2 spray is organic and safe for the plant and humans while also enhancing plant growth.
GROW is now finally collecting revenue from their dissolved CO2 foliar spray technology. Once these growers start to collect harvests with increased yield and quality, the word should spread through the hemp and cannabis industry. GROW is operating at under a $1 million burn rate as they only used $183,000 of cash used in operating activities and investing activities in Q1. With no debt on the balance sheet, $1.6 million in cash and $240,000 in recurring revenue GROW is in a very good position to seek out new contracts.
Discussion With VP Sam Kanes
On June 5th I was fortunate to get some time with VP Sam Kanes. He answered a bunch of my questions and also gave me an update on what might be coming next for GROW.
Management is Very Busy
I caught Mr. Kanes right as he was entering a meeting and was able to talk to him for about half an hour once his meeting wrapped up. GROW has been very busy, but a good kind of busy.
CEO John Archibald and COO Aaron Archibald have been travelling extensively meeting growers and ag tech companies. CEO Archibald has been travelling all over the United States with New Mexico and Texas mentioned while COO Archibald has been travelling in the United States, Canada and Europe.
Technology Advancement
Mr. Kanes briefly mentioned that GROW has developed generation one and generation two equipment. He didn’t provide much detail on the new equipment but did say that the equipment is much more advanced and allows for 24/7 monitoring. A new video with Market One Media Group should be released soon.
GROW has stocked some additional equipment in preparation of new contracts being signed. This equipment will show up as inventory if not deployed during the Q2 reporting period. It took GROW approximately three months from commercial agreement to the installation of their equipment. Mr. Kanes told me that they are working to shorten this timeline to six weeks for future installations.
2019 Projection
Mr. Kanes reiterated that he believes they can achieve a $10 million revenue run rate by Q1 2020. This would equate to contracts of 1 million square feet of cannabis or 10 million square feet of produce.
The growers with the first two contracts were granted a discount for being the first growers to adapt their technology. Future contracts will not receive the same discounting.
Health Canada Regulations
Mr. Kanes explained that the regulations surrounding their technology are still unclear. This is causing Canadian licensed producers to hesitate before adopting GROW’s technology. Health Canada is introducing new language in October 2019 that Mr. Kanes said they are very supportive of.
With some additional clarification, Mr. Kanes believes that growers will be far less hesitant to adopt their technology. When it becomes clear that GROW’s technology can be used on cannabis in Canada this will be a material change for their business. Being based out of Toronto Mr. Kanes said that they are within a forty-five-minute drive of numerous growers in Ontario.
In both my conversations with Mr. Kanes he was very confident in their technology and its safe use on plants and for the humans working in these environments. It seems like only a matter of time before dissolved CO2 foliar spray is approved for use in Canada.
Global Expansion
On April 10th GROW announced that they had attended the GFIA Global Ag Tech Conference in Abu Dhabi. COO Aaron Archibald was fully booked with one-on-one meetings with potential customers.
The news release states that COO Archibald met with growers that are unable to use CO2 gassing due to excessive heat inside their greenhouses that must be vented. When the heat is vented the gas is also vented negating the positive growth effects. This is the type of “low hanging fruit” management has mentioned in the past. GROW’s technology seems to be a perfect fit in these types of situations as they are the only option these growers have to gain the benefits of added CO2 to plant growth.
Additions to the Board
I was able to ask Mr.Kanes how overseas expansion was going. He first mentioned that the two recent additions to their board, Dr. Gord Surgeoner and Rose Marie Gage, were brought on to assist with international expansion. Ms. Gage’s press release is quite impressive with numerous achievements both as a CEO and Director. I especially like that she won the 2018 Outstanding Achievement in Governance Award (Directors’ College). It’s always a benefit to investors to have a strong Board of Directors working for them.
John Archibald, CEO stated “Her deep relationships with greenhouse plant growers,
agriculture industrial companies and Government agriculture organizations will be of great
benefit to GROW’s Board, strengthening its Agri-Tech expertise and ability to successfully
move GROW’s Strategy going forward.”
Back to international expansion, Mr.Kanes explained that they would need to sign an agreement with an ag tech company or hire a bunch of new staff for international expansion to succeed. GROW stated in their GFIA press release that they were in talks with a European greenhouse manufacturer to partner with. Mr. Kanes told me that they expect to announce some new partnerships soon but explained that these types of partnerships take time to finalize.
Conclusion
CO2 Gro Q1 results started to show revenue from their very first commercial installation. Although this revenue is small it is recurring. With a few more contracts GROW will be cash flow positive if they remain at their current low cash burn. Remember that management isn’t being paid a salary until GROW is cash flow positive.
With numerous catalysts on the horizon (Health Canada clarification, Ag tech partnership announcement, future contract announcements, and global expansion) GROW seems to have a lot of good things going for it. In order to meet their projected $10 million revenue run rate by Q1 2020, they will need to get some more contracts signed and equipment installed. The interest appears to be there, hopefully, that interest is turned into revenue.
I continue to own shares of GROW.V and plan to add to my position as management executes.
Continue Reading
Previous PostCO2 Gro Inc: A High Margin Business with Proven Scientific Trials
Take a Tour of a Hema Supermarket And Experience "New Retail"
Chinese multinational conglomerate Alibaba has reiterated its plan to merge online and offline shopping experiences to better serve customers and improve efficiency, through among other measures, the rapid expansion of its grocery store Hema Supermarkets in China
Published on Jul 16, 2017
Alizila's Tom Brennan offers a tour of a Hema Supermarket, showing how online and offline shopping are merged into a seamless “New Retail” experience.
Winny Tang The Jakarta Post
Shanghai, China / Sun, November 11, 2018
Customers are pictured shopping at Hema Supermarket, part of Alibaba Group, in Shanghai, China. Hema is a digitized retail store that allows shoppers to buy food, eat in or order home delivery. (JP/Winny Tang)
Chinese multinational conglomerate Alibaba has reiterated its plan to merge online and offline shopping experiences to better serve customers and improve efficiency, through among other measures, the rapid expansion of its grocery store Hema Supermarkets in China.
Hema CEO Hou Yi said the group planned to open nine more stores by Dec. 12, from 91 stores it operates at present in 16 cities, including Shanghai, Beijing, Ningbo, Shenzhen, Hangzhou and Guiyang.
“By next month, we will have 100 Hema stores […] Hema is the first retail store where all products can be bought offline and online,” he told reporters during a media briefing in Shanghai on Saturday.
Hou Yi, said the company was currently focusing on expanding to Tier 1 and Tier 2 cities in China.
Hema is an example of a “new retail” model that Alibaba has incubated since 2015. The store provides a retail experience that uses a technology-driven concept for in-store purchases, online delivery and in-store consumption.
Shoppers can purchase products by using the Hema mobile app, which is linked to their Alipay account. Those living within a radius of 3 kilometers from the store can also use its home delivery services.
At Hema’s robotic restaurant in Shanghai, customers are served by robots that deliver dishes right to their table. (dwa)
Canon Exploring The Vision of Indoor Agriculture
June 12, 2019
AUTHOR: Ivan Ball - Content Contributor to iGrow News
The well known digital imaging company, Canon U.S.A. Inc., attended the 2019 Indoor Ag Con in Las Vegas.
A small team based out of Richmond, Virginia brought a prototype vision system for the indoor vertical farm industry. One of the team members claimed that they were attending the conference just to learn more about the needs and wants of indoor farmers to further develop a fully autonomous plant vision system.
The prototype at the conference utilized a small RGB camera encased in a 3D printed housing that allowed the camera to travel along a rail system throughout a vertical shelf farm on display. This camera would travel over the tops of the plants and snap pictures at different locations to monitor their growth. Once the camera is finished capturing images of the plants, it would travel back to a wireless charging station to fill its battery as well as upload all the images and locations of the plants. One of the engineers explained that this technology would make it cheaper to implement fewer cameras for a larger farming facility.
Each farming shelf could use just one camera that would travel the shelf in an oval pattern. Canon has been developing high quality imaging equipment for over 80 years and could bring a disruptive technology for farms in the near future. This new system combined with artificial intelligence and machine learning could allow indoor farmers to receive quicker growing insights for making operational decisions.
Dennis Riling, Director of Business Development at Illumitex presented on the interaction between light and plants. He explained how Illumitex is using FarmVisionAI to attach cameras to their grow lights to detect pest outbreaks, leaf wilting, growth rate, nutrient deficiencies, and predict yield estimates.
This image feedback combined with the ability to manipulate light spectrums, dose fertilizers, and adjust pH could allow farmers to even change the taste, color, and texture of plants according to Blake Lange, Business Development Manager at Signify, formerly Philips lighting. Blake is doing research with dynamic spectrum LEDs on their GrowWise Control System to find light recipes to change the taste of plants.
Keep an eye out for Canon as they continue to investigate the industry of controlled environment agriculture (CEA). The team is highly aware of the growing indoor agriculture industry and plans to find new innovative ways to join the space as they learn more from the farmers.
AgraME Launches AgraTech To Showcase Tech Innovations In Agribusiness
21 May 2019, Dubai, UAE:
The Internet of Things (IoT) has revolutionised the world we live in, pervading into our daily lives through our homes and businesses. Revolutionising agriculture, IoT has provided the industry with invaluable data that may have not been accessible previously.
AgraME has recently introduced ‘AgraTech’ – A platform for the display of technological advancements to the regional market and to promote knowledge sharing between global and local industry leaders.
With a variety of innovative products and services now available, including cloud solutions, farm automation, UAVs, soil sensors, farm management platforms, climate control, robotics and more, AgraTech will open a wealth of opportunity in the agricultural industry in the Middle East and Africa.
Governments in the region are also backing the move to modern farming techniques through various projects as well as investment in to the sector.
In the UAE, the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi has approved a series of incentive packages totalling up to AED1 billion ($272 million) for local and international AgTech firms.
The UAE has also seen a pilot project that used UAVs, commonly known as drones, to create a highly accurate agricultural database that supports decision-making and forward planning by enabling the best use of resources and determining the optimum areas for crop growth.
In Saudi Arabia, Red Sea Farms, another AgTech company, will utilise engineering and plant science to grow saltwater-tolerant crops with plans to produce 50 tons of tomatoes annually by 2020.
Commenting on the addition to the show, Sheetij Taneja, Exhibition Manager, AgraME said, ‘AgraTech is an overarching sector that covers all our present sectors – Animal Farming and Health, Aquaculture and Crop farming.’
‘By providing the industry with access to products, solutions and technical know-how to implement AgTech, we hope to help farmers in the Middle East and Africa automate processes, improve efficiency, increase monitoring, and capture meaningful, actionable data.’
In addition to the exhibition, the AgraME Conference will bring together local and international experts to discuss the AgTech landscape in the Middle East and Africa, best practises to improve the technical know-how of farmers within the region.
Key AgTech exhibitors at AgraME 2019 included Sage, Aritmos, Apisa, Certhon, Deep Trekker, Delta T Devices, Intravision Group, Roam Technology, Veggitech and more.
Focusing on the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals, AgraME will continue to focus on goal 2, zero hunger through AgraTech. ‘By increasing analytics within farms, we can ensure sustainable food production systems and implement resilient agricultural practices that increase productivity and production, help maintain ecosystems and strengthen capacity’ noted Taneja
Taking place from the 3 – 5 March 2020 at the Dubai World Trade Centre, UAE, AgraME welcomes global leaders in Animal farming and health, Aquaculture and Crop farming to the UAE, providing the Middle East and Africa with valuable information and knowledge.
For More Information,
Please contact Sheetij Taneja at +971 4 336 5161
or info@agramiddleeast.com
Best New Field Technology And Best New Indoor Growing Technology
Innovation Award finalists - Part 2
United Fresh announced 48 new products as finalists for the United Fresh Produce Association’s 2019 Innovation Awards. This year’s finalists will compete in seven categories for the title of Best New Product at United Fresh 2019, June 10-12 in Chicago, where attendees will be able to vote for those winners during the trade show.
Earlier, FreshPlaza presented the finalists for Best New Fruit product and Best New Vegetable product, and today we look at the finalists for Best New Field Technology and Best New Indoor Growing Technology.
Best New Field Technology
Automated Storage and Retrieval System (ASRS)
Stemilt Growers, LLC – Booth # 6015
"Stemilt’s new distribution center welcomes a piece of technology they call the “brains” of the operation: the automated storage and retrieval system (ASRS). ASRS is the one-stop-shop for order fulfillment to make the process flawless and speedy, resulting in an experience that is delightful from farm to table."
Produce Plan
Frontera Produce – Booth # 13046
"This technology enhances your supply chain data visualization, actively updates production plans, and protects your crop investment through cultural practice performance monitoring. Soil moisture, heat units and estimated harvest dates per field and lot are just a few examples of how this technology can change traditional farming."
RipeTime
RipeTime – Booth # 18045
"RipeTime has developed world-first patented technology that measures and reports in real-time of ethylene in post-harvest operations from 1PPB. This monitoring and alerting allows post-harvest operators to make decisions to assure the quality of their fruit and assist with prioritizing the load-out operations."
SC iOn™ Trak SC1204
CalAmp – Booth # 18025
"The SC iOn Trak™ SC1204 eliminates the manual processes of automatically logging location and environmental condition data using a wireless gateway (fixed or mobile) that can communicate with several Bluetooth tags for transport and storage applications. The solution is reusable, which helps to increase the technology investment ROI."
Best New Indoor Growing Technology
Hoogendoorn Analytics
Hoogendoorn America Inc. – Booth # 18045
"Our online platform for data storage and data analysis. Convert real-time data into valuable information that can give you the possibility of producing more and better. We use this information to track the growth of the plants and look for the best combination to achieve high yield production."
LivingCube™
Del Fresco Produce Ltd. – Booth # 12027
"The LivingCube™ is a system of automated vertical growing machines that continuously produces living lettuce, living basil and microgreens all year long. It's powered using an off-the-grid electrical cogeneration system, which is environmentally sustainable due to its minimal footprint, reduction in greenhouse gases, usage of recycled water and pesticide-free integration."
Virgo
Root AI – Booth # 9028
"Root AI is building autonomous systems that care for specialty crops. Our first product, Virgo, uses the latest advancements in robotic hardware and artificial intelligence software to delicately harvest tomatoes with precision, efficiency, and dependability."
The 2019 United Fresh Innovation Awards finalists will be displayed on the trade show floor at United Fresh 2019 in Chicago, where attendees will have the opportunity to cast their votes for their favorite new and innovative products on Tuesday, June 11 and Wednesday, June 12. United Fresh will announce winners from the Main Stage on Wednesday, June 12 at 2:00 pm at Chicago’s McCormick Place Convention Center.
For more information:
Mary Coppola
United Fresh Produce Association
Ph: +1 (202) 303-3425
mcoppola@unitedfresh.org
www.unitedfresh.org
Publication date: 5/14/2019
Indoor Farming Technology
Indoor farming technology creates an artificial environment inside an enclosed facility using technologies that help plants grow and become more nutritious in a short span of time as compared to traditional farming
Enclosed facilities used in indoor farming create optimum growing conditions for farmers to grow a crop from the seed to its harvesting stages in lesser time and obtain higher yields in each cycle with limited land area.
Indoor Farming Technology
Narendran B | MarketsandMarkets
04/25/19
Indoor farming technology creates an artificial environment inside an enclosed facility using technologies that help plants grow and become more nutritious in a short span of time as compared to traditional farming. The growth, productivity, and quality of plants depend on technologies such as climate control, air purification, lighting systems, and pump & irrigation systems. Indoor farms are located close to the point of sale or where efficiency can be maximized. One of the main advantages of indoor farming is its higher yield compared to traditional farming, which makes it a viable option.
Enclosed facilities used in indoor farming create optimum growing conditions for farmers to grow a crop from the seed to its harvesting stages in lesser time and obtain higher yields in each cycle with limited land area. According to the USDA data, in 2016, the average yield of tomatoes grown in greenhouse hydroponics was 10.59 pounds per square foot, and that of traditionally grown tomatoes was 1.85 pounds per square foot.
Therefore, indoor farms can help in increasing the overall crop yield per unit area with the usage of stacked layers of potted seeds. According to MarketsandMarkets the indoor farming technology market was valued at USD 23.75 Billion in 2016, and is projected to reach 40.25 Billion by 2022, at a CAGR of 9.65% during the forecast period.
Global Protected Cultivation Area, 2016
Source: ResearchGate Publications, FAO, FICCI, NAIP (ICAR), International Horticulture Congress, and MarketsandMarkets Analysis
The aeroponics segment is projected to grow exponentially during the forecast period for its effective use of growing conditions and crop inputs
In aeroponics, the plant roots are inserted in containers filled with plant nutrients, instead of soil, which is ideal for oxygenation and moisture and helps the plant absorb nutrients effectively, thereby aiding faster development and cultivation. This system can be controlled externally through computers or timers for the release of moist air at regular intervals and does not require frequent use of pesticides, weeding, and other maintenance processes as compared to conventional farming. Thus, with a high adoption rate of this technology, the market for aeroponics is projected to grow at the highest rate during the forecast period.
INDOOR FARMING TECHNOLOGY market, BY GROWING SYSTEM, 2017 (USD million)
Source: Secondary Research, Expert Interviews, Related Research Publications, Government Publications, Company Press Releases, Company Websites, Company Publications, and MarketsandMarkets Analysis
The rise in demand for fresh foods with higher nutritive value is expected to increase the demand for indoor farming technology
Indoor farming is used for growing crops or plants suitable for both large- and small-scale farming. On a larger scale, indoor farming is followed to bolster local food supplies and provide nutritious, fresh produce to urban and suburban consumers. This method of farming controls the input of plant-fertilizing nutrients, so the food that is grown using this technique is highly nutritious. Indoor vertical farming systems provide organic food that is not contaminated with the use of agrochemicals. Hence, the driving forces for indoor vertical farming are the increasing consumer demand for pesticide- and herbicide-free food and the growing requirements to reduce the carbon footprint of traditional agricultural practices.
The key players in the indoor farming technology market include Philips Lighting (Netherlands), Argus Controls Systems (Canada), Netafim (Israel), LumiGrow (US), Illumitex (US), and EVERLIGHT Electronics (Taiwan). These companies are developing new processes or products to help improve productivity and achieve overall market growth. For instance, Philips Lighting (Netherlands), which provides lighting solutions for indoor farming, has been undertaking R&D operations for providing energy-efficient lighting systems. In January 2018, Philips Lighting introduced GreenPower LED top lighting at IPM Essen, Germany.
This new version offers higher light efficacy, longer lifetime of 35,000 burning hours, and high energy efficiency compared to the former top lighting module. Furthermore, companies are focusing on investments, partnerships, and agreements. For instance, in July 2017, Softbank (Japan) invested USD 200 million in Plenty (US), a Silicon Valley start-up for vertical farm technology. In August 2014, FarmedHere LLC (US) partnered with Illumitex, Inc. (US), a leading lighting solution provider, to cultivate crops using less energy and lighting systems provided by Illumitex, Inc.
Future opportunities through the production of biopharmaceutical products can intensify the adoption of indoor farming technology
The cultivation of crops such as tobacco and cannabis for large-scale production of biopharmaceutical proteins is a recent development in indoor vertical farming. Biopharmaceuticals are proteins or compounds produced by a living organism, used for diagnostic and therapeutic purposes in human or animal health. Conventional methods of manufacturing biopharmaceuticals involve the usage of organisms that are highly expensive.
However, using existing agricultural technologies such as indoor vertical farming to produce biopharmaceuticals in plants is cost-effective, requires less time and efforts, is pollution-free, and easy to produce. Indoor vertical farms are being used not only for food production, but also for aiding in applications that can support human health. For instance, Caliber Biotherapeutics, LLC (US), the world's largest plant-made pharmaceutical facility that has an 18-story, 150,000-square foot warehouse facility, which contains a 2.2 million tobacco-like plants, stacked 50-feet high. These plants are grown for making new drugs and vaccines. These indoor vertical farms are carefully monitored and controlled by technicians, thus eliminating the chances of possible diseases and external contamination.
About Narendran B
Narendran currently holds the role of Team Lead with an experience of 4.5 years in research and consulting practice for Food & Agriculture domain in MnM. He has provided influential market solutions involving market sizing, supply chain analysis, opportunity analysis, and market & competitive intelligence to clients in support of their strategic decision making.
He has authored 50+ business reports related to agrochemicals, fertilizers, seeds, biologicals, equipments, feed, and feed ingredients. He has been an integral part of successful consult studies conducted for leading market players such as Monsanto, Elanco, Arysta, and Vilomix (Danish Agro Group).
The content & opinions in this article are the author’s and do not necessarily represent the views of AgriTechTomorrow
04/25/19, 08:52 AM | Indoor & Vertical Farming | Analysis and Trends
AEssenseGrows Wins Red Herring 2019 Top 100 North America Award
The AgTech Company’s AEtrium System Uses Automation and Precision
to Deliver Superior Aeroponic Quality and Yields
SUNNYVALE, Calif., May 20, 2019 -- AEssenseGrows, an AgTech company specializing in automated precision aeroponic platforms for consistent high-yield plant production, has won Red Herring’s Top 100 North America award, one of the technology industry’s most prestigious prizes. Winners were selected and announced during a Red Herring ceremony last week in Pasadena, Calif.
CEO Robert Chen receiving the award.
Photo provided by AEssenseGrows
"Of course, human hunger strikes the most vulnerable countries and the poorest, and technology would not meet its paramount objective if it was not addressing this issue as well,” said Red Herring Chairman Alex Vieux. Vieux said CEO Robert Chen and AEssenseGrows “have demonstrated that tomorrow, one could put an end to this drama which every year kills millions. Increasing the food supply and multiplying agricultural output, offsetting weather uncertainties--all this combined in one concept deserves utmost attention.
“As a result,” Vieux said, “AEssenseGrows has received the Red Herring Top 100 2019 Award and will continue to expand across the globe."
“We at AEssenseGrows appreciate that Red Herring’s judges see the same value in our products that we see—a unique combination of technology and agricultural sciences that can help feed the world,” said Chen. “We’re extremely proud to stand alongside so many other innovators and game-changers in accepting this award.”
The AEssenseGrows AEtrium system delivers sensor-driven automation to simplify aeroponics and amplify its inherent benefits. The company's Guardian Grow Manager central management software monitors grow conditions 24/7 and, if needed, automatically adjusts key variables such as lighting and nutrients to maintain optimal conditions.
The Top 100 companies were chosen from thousands of entrants, Red Herring said, and the companies were judged by industry experts, insiders and journalists on a wide variety of criteria including financial performance, innovation, business strategy, and market penetration. The complete list of winners can be found on the Red Herring website.
In addition to produce, the AEssenseGrows aeroponics system is increasingly being used to grow cannabis and hemp. Last year, Ackrell Capital selected AEssenseGrows as one of the firm's Top 100 Private Cannabis Companies for 2018.
About AEssenseGrows
AEssenseGrows (pronounced "essence grows"), founded in 2014, is a precision AgTech company based in Sunnyvale, CA. AEssenseGrows provides accelerated plant growth SmartFarm platforms and software automation delivering pure, zero pesticide, year-round, enriched growth to fresh produce and medicinal plant producers globally.
With AEssenseGrows, you can precisely control your production operations at your fingertips from anywhere in the world.
Hands-Off Farming Is Way of The Future
In most industries, and agriculture is no exception, automation has typically been viewed as a way to gain greater efficiency from traditional methodologies
DAVID PLATT, The Weekly Times
05-14-19
IN RE-IMAGINING food for the future, we must focus on understanding and transforming our food production capabilities — a revolution well on its way.
The capabilities that are becoming standard for anyone in food production are automation that reframes efficiency; new means of production that reshape our thinking about nutrition; and the smart use of data to record immediate feedback and meet customer needs.
In most industries, and agriculture is no exception, automation has typically been viewed as a way to gain greater efficiency from traditional methodologies.
In farming, that has emerged as enhancements to existing technologies. From autonomous machinery and drone-based remote inspection to robotic milking and harvesting — all are accepted as improvements to business as usual.
However, rapidly emerging forms of automation are radically reshaping farming.
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Iron Ox is a start-up in California focused on embedding robotics into hydroponic indoor farming. Its technology has the potential to reduce repeatable human interactions that comprise most current costs of production.
Efficiency in the future is indoor farms producing leafy greens (and more) in perfect climatic conditions, with limited water, pesticide free, in both urban and rural contexts, with limited human interaction.
And all driven by solar energy, which not only powers the food factory, but enables the farmer to on-sell any excess energy.
Until now, the contribution that farming makes to nutritional wellbeing has been taken for granted. Whether livestock, veg or dairy, fresh has generally equated to healthy.
That too is changing.
Whether it’s due to concerns about meat consumption or pesticide exposure, consumers are becoming more selective about what they consume and why. Emerging businesses such as Beyond Meat and Foodini have launched products that are radically reshaping our relationship with food and the nutrition it provides.
Beyond Meat uses plant-based cells to recreate the molecular structure of meat — meaning the meat-substitute looks, feels and tastes just like the real thing — but is from a different source, not livestock.
Foodini is a 3D-printing kitchen appliance designed for both commercial and domestic markets — giving cooks localised control of their processed foods.
In fact, part of Foodini’s core assertion is that all food is processed in some way, so why not have control of both inputs and outputs?
In a world where data is now being created at an exponential rate, knowing what to collect and how to use it is critical.
Indoor vertical farming company Aerofarms is leading the way with its use of “smart” technologies and data to reset business and operating models. In Aerofarms’ case, real-time feedback data supports continuously refining its system to ensure it gets the best results from its pesticide-free leafy greens.
So, whether you’re moving to enhanced automation, rethinking nutrition or embracing the power of data, you need to keep pace with the future of food production, and know what to invest in and when.
To be a part of the ‘thinking food in the future’ conversation, email David at thinkingfood@resilientfutures.com
David Platt is a director and strategist at Resilient Futures. He is an expert facilitator and is the co-author of Disrupted: Strategy for Exponential Change and The Disruption Readiness Test.
Agtech Startup Agrilyst Is Now Artemis, Raises $8M Series A
May 22, 2019
Artemis, the agtech startup formerly known as Agrilyst, today announced that it has raised an $8 million Series A funding round. The round was co-led by Astanor Ventures and Talis Capital, with participation from iSelect Fund and New York State’s Empire State Development Fund. With this, the company, which won our 2015 Disrupt SF Battlefield competition, has now raised a total of $11.75 million.
When Agrilyst launched, the company mostly focused on helping indoor farmers and greenhouse operators manage their operations by gathering data about their crop yields and other metrics. Over the course of the last few years, that mission has expanded quite a bit, and today’s Artemis sees itself as an enterprise Cultivation Management Platform (CMP) that focuses on all aspects of indoor farming, including managing workers and ensuring compliance with food safety and local cannabis regulations, for example.
The expanded platform is meant to give these businesses a single view of all of their operations, and integrates with existing systems that range from climate control to ERP tools and Point of Sale systems.
Compliance is a major part of the expanded platform.
“When you look at enterprise operations, that risk is compounded because it’s not just that risk across many, many sites and many acres, so in 2018, we switched to almost entirely focusing on those operations and have gained a lot of momentum in that space,” CEO and founder Allison Kopf said. “And now we’re using the funding to expand from mainly focusing on managing that data to help with profitability to using that data to help you with everything from compliance down to the profitability element. We want to limit that exposure to controllable risk.”
With this new focus on compliance, the company also added Dr. Kathleen Merrigan to its board. Merrigan was the deputy secretary of Agriculture in the Obama administration and is the first executive director of the Swette Center for Sustainable Food Systems at Arizona State University . She is also a venture partner at Astanor Ventures .
“Technology innovation is rapidly transforming the agriculture sector. Artemis’ approach to using data as a catalyst for growth and risk management provides the company a significant advantage with enterprise-level horticulture operations,” said Merrigan.
Cannabis, it’s worth noting, was not something the company really focused on in its early years, but as Kopf told me, it now accounts for about half of the company’s revenue. Only a few years ago, many investors were also uncomfortable investing in a company that was in the cannabis business, but that’s far less of an issue today.
“When we raised our seed round in 2015, we were pitching to a lot of funds and a lot of funds told us that they had LPs that can’t invest in cannabis. So if you’re pitching that you’re going to eventually be in cannabis, we’re going to have to step away from the investment,” Kopf said. “Now, folks are saying: ‘If you’re not in cannabis, we don’t want to invest.’ ”
Today, Artemis’ clients are worth a collective $5 billion. The company plans to use the new funding to scale its sales and expand its team.
Image Credits: Ben McLeod / Getty Images
Plenty To Invest In Writing Light Algorithms
"We have to listen to plants in a plant-based industry"
To bridge the gap between fundamental research and applied science, Plenty has hired Tessa Pocock as Director of Lighting Optimization. Bringing over 30 years and over 1,000 spectral experiments on dozens of food and floriculture crops, she shares the newest light knowledge with us. "We’re writing light algorithms that make plants produce the characteristics most desired by consumers."
Plenty is one of the most talked about indoor farming start-ups of the last couple of years. After being founded in 2014 as an ag-tech company focusing on growing produce indoors, they surprised the whole world by raising 200 million dollars to expand their indoor farming business in 2017. Now the company prepares for international expansion and improvements to its vertical growing technology - and they've hired Tessa Pocock to help them with this.
"Tessa represents our leap into the fundamental sciences to bridge the gap between fundamental research and applied science. Indoor ag is one of the most opportunity-rich new industries to apply a lot of this knowledge, and I think that Tessa is the best in the field, and the research she's done is going to drive our efficiency and quality forward by leaps and bounds", Nate Storey, co-founder and Chief Science Officer with Plenty says.
Research
Tessa has been working with light and plants for over 30 years. In 2007, she was hired as Director of Research for a European horticultural LED light company. This required a new way of thinking as she saw how quickly plants responded to the spectral quality of light that LEDs allowed. Before coming to Plenty, sShe moved to academia for many years , where she helped develop the Greenhouse Lighting and Systems Engineering Consortium with Neil Mattson at Cornell.
Algorithms
During a period of research spanning twelve years, with 1,000 spectral experiments on dozens of food and floriculture crops, Tessa certainly learned a thing or two about the importance of light. "Light is one of the most important environmental factors for plants. It performs several roles in a crop’s life. Light provides all of the energy required for growth, and is an information source to direct processes such as height, branching, nutrient density and tolerance to stress", she says.
Of course, this doesn't come as a surprise to the average grower. What may come as a surprise though, is that lighting is not just a matter of putting some lamps over the crop, or even of combining colors in light recipes. "'Recipes' is not an accurate term to describe this work", Tessa explains. "What we’re doing is more complex -- we’re writing light algorithms that make plants produce the characteristics most desired by consumers."
She explains how this touches the base of vertical farming. "The opportunities of indoor farming are many. Indoor farms are perfect for areas that suffer from severe droughts, extreme weather events and lack of arable land. It is possible to maintain freshness by building the farms close to densely populated cities. The closed environment allows absolute control and consistency of crops that meet consumers' demands year-round." The consumers is also taken into account in creating the algorithm. "Algorithms are multi-dimensional and include light intensity, spectrum, duration, and timing. The lighting program at Plenty is unique as it merges applied and fundamental science while working closely with engineers to ensure high energy efficiency."
To create these algorithms, Tessa researches the crop, and the answers to the following questions start the process. "What are the optical properties of the leaves? Where does it come from and where does it grow best? How domesticated is it and where does it fit into the ecosystem? What parts do we consume? What are the nutrients that can contribute to health and under what conditions do they accumulate", she sums up. And then there's the creation of the feedback system for indoor farming. Tessa, holding three patents on remote sensing of crop plants (two pending), continues her work toward the perfect biological feedback system, as it will help to remove a lot of the guesswork that currently is used to set up environments for the different crops. "Sensing the environment and the physiological state of the plants are also beneficial as we will be able to let the plants control their environment. We have to listen to plants in a plant-based industry!"
Applied and fundamental research
Tessa explains how, in her research, she will focus on optimising the Plenty production of leafy vegetables as well as research and developments. "The optimization will be based on applied and fundamental research, carried out by all of the plant scientists at Plenty. This is what separates Plenty from others -- we are encouraged to carry out both applied and fundamental research here. This strengthens our R&D program." This has to do with the company’s long-term focus. "At a high level, universities are doing really good research but they're limited by the LEDs that are available on the market today and the speed of realizing their findings to the market. Government research centers and extension offices also add tremendous value to this field. It is difficult for growers to spend time, money and production space to research as it can be a risk and their livelihoods are dependent on production. Forward-looking farms such as Plenty offer a good place to add value to agricultural research, as we are in this for the long run."
Listening to plants
Then there's more. According to Tessa, both lighting and the regulation of crops will propel Plenty toward the future of vertical farming. "The integration of sophisticated lights and sensing systems into Plenty's farms will solve many of the challenges faced by crops grown under sole-source lighting. We can provide the highest quality crops for people by leveraging light to make them look and taste great, while maximizing nutritional content. Plenty will be using light to take advantage of and push the natural genetics that make veggies so good for us."
For more information:
www.plenty.ag
Publication date: 5/3/2019
Author: Arlette Sijmonsma
© HortiDaily.com
Acquisition of Manufacturing Assets
Cobotix is the current manufacturer of the Company’s Patented Vertical Farming Technology
Vancouver (Canada), April 17, 2019
Affinor Growers Inc. (“AFI” or the “Company”) (CSE:AFI, OTC:RSSFF, Frankfurt:1AF) is very pleased to announce that it has entered into a letter of intent to acquire manufacturing assets that make up the Cobotix Manufacturing Inc.’s (“Cobotix”) business, undertakings and goodwill in Port Coquitlam (the “Acquisition”). The Company and Cobotix will have thirty (30) days to complete the due diligence process and determine a closing date for the Acquisition. In consideration for the assets, the Company will pay to Cobotix up to $2,900,000, subject to a valuation of the assets (the “Consideration”).
The Consideration will be satisfied by certain cash payments and the issuance of up to 38,000,000 common shares (the “Common Shares”) in the capital of the Company at a deemed price of $0.05 per Common Share. Upon completion of the Acquisition, it is anticipated that Ron Adolf will be appointed to the board of directors and become an officer of the Company. No additional changes will be made to the Company’s board of directors or management based on the Acquisition.
Cobotix is the current manufacturer of the Company’s Patented Vertical Farming Technology. As a result of the Acquisition, the Company will be able to consolidate the intellectual property associated with the manufacturing and design aspects of the Vertical Farming Towers, and will be able to extend its reach, diversification and stability, which are fundamental to the growth and profitability of the Company going forward. Cobotix is currently developing multiple cell manufacturing opportunities throughout North America, building on the success of current operations. The Company and Cobotix act at arm’s length.
Cobotix brings over 30 years of expertise to the design and manufacturing of the Vertical Farming Towers. Over the past six months, Cobotix has been working directly with the Company to develop and test the new designs that were unveiled at the 2019 BC Tech Summit.
Randy Minhas commented “This is a great opportunity for the Company to move to the next level with its Vertical Farming Towers and to be involved directly with design and manufacturing going forward. We will now be in a position to capitalize on the extremely talented team at Cobotix, who have been instrumental in our new tower designs.”
Ron Adolf commented “We’re excited to be joining AFI and collectively working to commercialize the new Vertical Farming Towers while continuing to work on new designs and technologies in the vertical farming industry. Over the past six months, we have been very pleased with the great strides AFI has made in advancing their technology. Our business model of collocated manufacturing cells is a great fit in the evolution of Cobotix and AFI.”
Randy Minhas
President and CEO
About Affinor Growers
Affinor Growers is a publicly traded company on the Canadian Securities Exchange under the symbol ("AFI"). Affinor is focused on developing vertical farming technologies and using those technologies to grow fruits and vegetables in a sustainable manner.
Neither Canadian Securities Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the Canadian Securities Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.
This news release may contain assumptions, estimates, and other forward-looking statements regarding future events. Such forward-looking statements involve inherent risks and uncertainties and are subject to factors, many of which are beyond the Company's control that may cause actual results or performance to differ materially from those currently anticipated in such statements.
Students Compete For Plant Growth Chamber
Plantae and Conviron have collaborated to launch the Seeding Discovery Competition.
The competition is aimed to equip a successful university or college student with a high-performing GEN1000 plant growth chamber that will enable them to fulfill a meaningful research program in the field of plant sciences, biology, and biotechnology.
The Seeding Discovery Competition provides students with the opportunity to define and submit a proposal for a study that:
Aligns with personal and departmental objectives
Enables them to work with faculty and administration on planning and logistics
Contribute to their institution’s infrastructure with new research equipment at no cost
To be eligible, applicants must be students enrolled in a post-secondary program related to plant science. For further eligibility criteria and competition rules visit www.plantae.org/seedingdiscovery.
For more information:
Plantae
plantae.org
Conviron
Publication date: 4/10/2019