Welcome to iGrow News, Your Source for the World of Indoor Vertical Farming
Workshop To Feature Hydroponic Technology - September 5, 2019
The workshop, which is sponsored by Purdue Extension, Purdue’s Department of Horticulture and Landscape Architecture and the Indiana State Department of Agriculture, will focus on teaching attendees about hydroponic production technology
Ashley Langreck | AgriNews Publications
July 31, 2019
Krishna Nemali examines hydroponically grown lettuce in the horticulture and landscape architecture greenhouse at Purdue University. Provided photo/Purdue University
WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — The fourth annual Greenhouse and Indoor Hydroponics Workshop will be from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. Sept. 5 on the Purdue University campus.
The workshop, which is sponsored by Purdue Extension, Purdue’s Department of Horticulture and Landscape Architecture and the Indiana State Department of Agriculture, will focus on teaching attendees about hydroponic production technology.
Lori Jolly-Brown, who is serves as the Extension events and communications coordinator for the horticulture and landscape architecture department, said the morning session of the workshop will focus on how to get started in hydroponics, where to purchase and find materials, how to fertilize plants, ways to keep bugs away and a wide variety of other topics.
After lunch, Jolly-Brown said, attendees will have the chance to tour one of Purdue’s state-of-the-art greenhouses and indoor hydroponic facilities, while also having the opportunity to participate in hands-on activities.
Jolly-Brown said individuals will be able to interact with workshop organizer Krishna Nemali, a Purdue assistant professor and a controlled environment agriculture Extension specialist.
“They will get to see Nemali’s hydroponic research and vertical farming displays,” Jolly-Brown said.
Jolly-Brown said the workshop is geared toward commercial producers and growers, those just getting started in hydroponics, as well as those who are involved in hydroponics production technology as a hobby.
To register for the workshop, visit https://bit.ly/2OjqTBn.
Ashley Langreck can be reached at 800-426-9438, ext. 192, or alangreck@agrinews-pubs.com. Follow her on Twitter at: @AgNews_Langreck.
Tags Lori Jolly-brown Agriculture Economics Department Of Agriculture Indiana
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.
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.
Related: How Visionary Tech Can Help Prevent Climate Change
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.
Related: No One Knows It But These 3 Industries Now Depend on AI
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.
Related: How has Technology Sown the Seeds for Advancements in Agriculture
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.
Related: What Is AI, and Will It Take Over Your Service-Based Business Job?
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
Scottish Innovation Provides Vision of Future Farming
The young researchers were exposed to innovation from research facilities and growers using a range of crop systems
BY FRED SEARLE
31st July 2019, London
AHDB PhD students visit range of fresh produce firms in Scotland to inspire research projects
The students visited Angus Soft Fruits' East Seaton Farm in Arbroath
Students from AHDB’s £1.4 million PhD programme witnessed how the farming sector is tackling challenges such as labour and pest management on a recent visit to Scotland.
The young researchers were exposed to innovation from research facilities and growers using a range of crop systems.
There were six stops on the trip, including Scotland’s first vertical indoor farm at the James Hutton Institute; major vegetable producer Kettle Produce; one of Scotland’s leading soft fruit growers, East Seaton Farm; and Britain’s largest potato breeder, Cygnet PB.
PhD student Aaron Hoyle said: “The visit was like stepping into the future. The science in Scotland has massive economic potential for British farming and agriculture, with the added benefits of energy, water, and nutrient use efficiency; it’s going to be a very exciting time for the industry.
“The trip has motivated me to continue pursuing my passion for the industry and contribute to a revolution in crop science.”
AHDB senior crop scientist Joe Martin, who manages the studentship programme, added: “Industry depends on innovation by the best and brightest minds advancing crop science and its applications
“This annual event, taking place in different regions of the UK each year, allows students to see the impact scientific innovation has on advancing the industry, and inspire and motivate them to continue their valued research”
To continue to develop expertise, AHDB has committed £750,000 funding for academic institutions to support up to 10 new PhD studentships. Starting in 2020 these studentships will deliver new experts and science with practical benefits across agriculture and horticulture.
Click here for more information on AHDB’s PhD studentships.
Korean Ag-Tech Company Exports Smart Farming Solution To UAE
According to the source, n.thing will grow and sell Romaine lettuce in Abu Dhabi with Planty Cube
31 July 2019
The n.thing will grow and sell Romaine lettuce in Abu Dhabi with Planty Cube. (Image source: Elsemargriet /Pixabay)
South Korea’s Agricultural Technology Startup n.thing Has Started Exporting Indoor Farming Solution Planty Cube To The UAE
As reported in The Investor, the autopilot farm system is expected to allow farmers to grow greens in fully insulated indoor operations in areas with high aridity.
According to the source, n.thing will grow and sell Romaine lettuce in Abu Dhabi with Planty Cube.
Seeing the local market response, the types of greens will be diversified and production volume will rise, stated the company.
A number of smart farming companies in the Middle East is adopting smart methods to grow vegetables as the same in traditional method is very difficult due to hot arid climate, shortage of farmland and shortage of water.
Seedo Issues Letter to Shareholders
Together, we are delivering the future of automated plant growing technologies, from seed to harvest, for both consumer and commercial use
TEL AVIV, Israel, July 29, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Seedo Corp. - "Seedo" (OTCQB: SEDO) - an agritech company providing the world's first fully automated and controlled indoor growing technologies for the "at-home" and commercial agriculture markets, today issued a letter to shareholders.
Dear Fellow Shareholders,
Zohar Levy, CEO & Chairman Seedo Corp.
Together, we are delivering the future of automated plant growing technologies, from seed to harvest, for both consumer and commercial use. By integrating artificial intelligence (AI), big data, robotics, and remote grow technologies, we are delivering on our vision and mission to improve agriculture for a growing world population. We thank our shareholders for being our partners in this mission.
Consumer side of the business:
We are continuing to deliver the Seedo fully automated home grow device to customers in North America and Europe. We are satisfied to share that consumer response has been overwhelmingly positive, with customers sharing their satisfaction on social media platforms, further driving consumer enthusiasm and demand. Seedo has also recently garnered highly favorable coverage in key media outlets including Forbes, Vice, Maxim, Herb, Green Entrepreneur, Business Insider, Bloomberg, and The Guardian.
In addition to selling the Seedo direct-to-consumer through our website, we are currently ramping up our marketing and distribution efforts in North America and Europe in order to further increase device sales. Specialty retailers are very interested in selling the Seedo both through their physical and online stores that serve the medical cannabis grow market. Additionally, we are progressing with a number of strategic big-box retailers in North America for more meaningful sales exposure.
We are currently evaluating the option to offer a leasing model for our future customers with a third-party who will provide a credit line. We believe that providing customers the choice to own or lease the product will significantly increase future sales. In order to meet higher sales volume, we have begun to ramp up monthly manufacturing of the device.
Commercial side of the business:
We have begun to manufacture our B2B Seedo Farm containers. We have developed two lines of containers, one specialized for medical cannabis and a new line uniquely designed for vegetables and herbs.
Seedo's technology enables licensed medical cannabis producers full control and automation of all plant growth parameters, thus allowing for more precise unified standardized yields suitable for the food, beverage and pharma industries. The containers provide a full turn-key solution and we are in the process of securing EU-GAP and EU-GMP certification to meet international standards. Seedo has already signed two agreements to establish medical cannabis farms at Kibbutz Dan and Moshav Brosh.
Seedo's new vegetable and herb commercial containers provides an incredible solution for industrial agriculture farmers in a variety of "at-risk" markets. Stackable containers afford dramatic savings in land-use, water consumption and human labor needs. Seedo Farm units can be installed anywhere, from rooftops in densely populated cities, to open space in deserts, growing a variety of organic vegetables and herbs, 24/7, independent of climate conditions. We were very pleased to qualify as a registered vendor for the United Nations Global Marketplace, and are working to establish a pilot program in countries suffering from extreme climates and pollution, thereby serving the growing global population with fresh produce all year round. Seedo's solution can be a market leader in vertical urban farming, enabling cost effective growth without harmful chemicals, with an extended shelf life, and with reduced logistics costs.
In our view, both the medical cannabis and the conventional agriculture sectors are primed for substantial transformations in the coming years due to a variety of environmental and logistical challenges worldwide. Because these two sectors are characterized by different commercial markets, as well as different investor profiles in the capital markets, Seedo is evaluating the opportunity to split its business into two separate units, one that exclusively serves the medical cannabis market, and another focused solely on vegetable and herb agriculture. We will keep our shareholders informed about these developments.
As the world becomes increasingly more challenging to feed, we are going to change the way people grow and consume fresh produce. We will keep you updated on our progress.
Yours Sincerely,
Zohar Levy
CEO & Chairman
Seedo Corp.
About Seedo
Seedo is a market leading high-tech company providing the medical cannabis and agriculture industries with the world's first fully automated and controlled indoor growing machine. Seedo provides growers with the freedom to cut costs while generating high yields of lab-grade, pesticide-free herbs and vegetables. Seedo's AI-powered, turnkey systems enable anyone from average consumers to large-scale producers the ability to grow without prior experience or ample space. Seedo is a publicly traded company backed by a group of international investors including Cannabics Pharmaceuticals and is headquartered in Israel. For more information, visit http://www.seedo.com
Disclaimer:
Certain statements contained in this release may constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Such statements include, but are not limited to statements identified by words such as "believes," "expects," "anticipates," "estimates," "intends," "plans," "targets," "projects" and similar expressions. The statements in this release are based upon the current beliefs and expectations of our company's management and are subject to significant risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ from those set forth in the forward-looking statements. Numerous factors could cause or contribute to such differences, including, but not limited to, results of clinical trials and/or other studies, the challenges inherent in new product development initiatives, the effect of any competitive products, our ability to license and protect our intellectual property, our ability to raise additional capital in the future that is necessary to maintain our business, changes in government policy and/or regulation, potential litigation by or against us, any governmental review of our products or practices, as well as other risks discussed from time to time in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including, without limitation, our latest Form 10-Q Report filed on May 15th, 2019. We undertake no duty to update any forward-looking statement or any information contained in this press release or in other public disclosures at any time. Finally, the investing public is reminded that the only announcements or information about Seedo Corp. which are condoned by the Company must emanate from the Company itself and bear our name as its source.
Contacts:
Seedo Corp.
+972-77-6149333
info@seedolab.com
http://www.seedolab.com
Start-Up of The Day: Food Made From Air
At Solar Foods, we have developed a carbon neutral and climate-independent way to produce a fully natural protein source without wasting land or water. We call it Solein. Cost-effective and suitable for all consumer diets, we can offer a full-range Solein solution with unlimited scalability for all food products and types. With a pilot already underway, we have a solid roadmap for a global commercial launch in 2021
Posted by Giacinto Bottone | Jul 25, 2019 | Tags: Solar Foods, Start-up of the day
About Solar Foods
A world in which we won’t have to use land or water in order to produce food is closer thanks to the work of Solar Foods. The Finnish start-up aims to make food without the use of agriculture. They have created Solein, a revolutionary natural single-cell protein resulting from an all- natural fermentation process involving C02, water, and electricity. The end product looks and tastes like wheat flour and it contains 50% protein, 5-10% fat and 20-25% carbohydrate.
Another great advantage of the Solar Foods’ product is that it will not run out. It is not affected by weather, irrigation or soil. Consequently, it is possible to imagine that as the supply of this environmentally-friendly protein is increased, the world’s food carbon footprint will go down.
Solar Foods’ Solein’s original concept originated from a NASA space program and it was developed by the Technical Research Centre of Finland Ltd and the Lappeenranta University of Technology (LUT). As of 2018, Solar Foods is participating in the ESA Business Incubation Centre in Finland.
Innovation Origins had a short interview with Dr. Pasi Vainikka, CEO and Co-Founder of Solar Foods
®Solar Foods
What was the motivation behind the creation of Solar Foods?
About one-quarter of greenhouse gas emissions which are caused by human action is due to what we eat. We need major changes there in order to become sustainable on this planet.
What makes Solar Foods stand out from the pack?
We are not connected to agriculture and are still able to produce the world’s most environmentally friendly protein. A disconnect from agriculture provides interesting opportunities for scaling. Aside from that, we are able to play a part in many future foods instead of just one category.
Do you think that there are many start-ups tackling the same issue?
No. Those that exist are aiming at fodder, not food.
What has been the biggest obstacle that you have had to overcome during the whole Solar Foods process?
There have been so many critical moments along the way, I cannot name one. Maybe the biggest hurdle was having to deal with all of them.
Was there a moment in where you thought of giving up?
Solar Foods’ Reactor. ®Solar Foods
No.
What has been the most gratifying moment in the whole process?
The moment we saw the real product/protein for the first time.
What can we expect from the coming years?
We are aiming to introduce it to the market in 2021. Which will mark the beginning of a global shift towards scaling.
What is your ultimate goal?
We would like to produce food in a very environmentally friendly way so that the planet is able to cope with it. We want to present a totally new, natural food which is viable and scalable. “Science is like magic but it is real.”
WAY OF THE FUTURE.
At Solar Foods, we have developed a carbon neutral and climate-independent way to produce a fully natural protein source without wasting land or water. We call it Solein. Cost-effective and suitable for all consumer diets, we can offer a full-range Solein solution with unlimited scalability for all food products and types. With a pilot already underway, we have a solid roadmap for a global commercial launch in 2021.
How Tech Is Helping The Agriculture Sector Curb Carbon Emissions
UN Deputy Secretary-General Amina J. Mohammed stated that 2018 was a record-breaking year for climate, but 2019 doesn’t look much better. As the list of extreme weather events and climate shocks grows, so does our shared responsibility to act
A worker harvests Image: REUTERS/Edgar Su at a vertical farm in Singapore.
26 Jul 2019
Alzbeta Klein Director and Global Head, Climate Business , International Finance Corporation (IFC)
UN Deputy Secretary-General Amina J. Mohammed stated that 2018 was a record-breaking year for climate, but 2019 doesn’t look much better. As the list of extreme weather events and climate shocks grows, so does our shared responsibility to act.
For the agricultural sector, these weather events are particularly devastating, with increased cycles of more frequent floods and drought hitting many farmers. The good news is that, two years ago in Bonn, the world’s governments finally acknowledged for the first time that agriculture has a major role to play in our changing climate. Following a series of intense all-night discussions and years of division and deadlock, governments at COP23 finally agreed on the connection between industrialized farming and our warming climate.
The world’s leading climate scientists have concluded that how we farm and use our land (whether for food production, forestry, or other types of land use) is responsible for about one-quarter of global greenhouse gas emissions. If we include emissions caused by the processing, transport, storage, cooling and disposal of the food that we consume, then that figure rises to more than 40% – an unthinkable price for how we farm and eat.
With the global population set to rise from 7.3 billion to 9.7 billion between now and 2050, world governments are faced with an overwhelming dilemma: how to feed the future without putting irreparable strain on our planet’s already overburdened soils and oceans? I believe that technology can get us there.
Agricultural technology – or agtech – approaches like precision farming, drought- and pest-resistant seeds, mobile phones and digital technology platforms are a solution. They boost farmers’ profits by cutting costs and increasing yields and benefiting customers the world over. But more technological innovation is needed. Fortunately, some of the International Finance Corporation’s partners are at the forefront of innovation when it comes to agtech.
Take Planet Labs, an innovative geospatial start-up that uses 149 earth-observing satellites to generate a daily stream of high-resolution images of the earth’s surface for farmers to understand crop and soil changes from pre-season to harvest.
Planet Lab’s goal is to take images of the Earth’s entire surface every day to make climate change visible, accessible and actionable, according to Tara O’Shea, Planet’s director of forestry. Founded in 2010 by three former NASA scientists, the company visualizes daily changes across the Earth’s surface in real time. Until now, satellite imagery data was not frequent enough to react to crop stress in a timely manner. Planet’s daily imagery has been a game changer in the digital ag space – enabling farmers to manage their precision agriculture at scale and farm more efficiently, profitably, and sustainably.
Agriculture isn’t just a rural concern. As urban density increases around the world, and more and more people move to cities, locally sourced food is taking on greater importance. Crop One Holdings is a “vertical farming" company that is transforming the landscape of indoor farming in urban areas.
The term vertical farm is relatively new. It refers to a method of growing crops – in Crop One Holding’s case, leafy greens and lettuce – usually without soil or natural light, in beds stacked vertically inside a controlled-environment building. One of the company’s 320 sq ft units can substitute up to 19 acres of farmland and use 1/2500th of the water usage of field-based growing. In Boston, a Crop One Holding one-acre farm produces yields equivalent to that of a regular 400-acre farm.
Crop One drastically reduces the length of transportation as well as carbon use, due to the farms’ proximity to consumers. There is no soil used in the growing, nor any chemical intervention or pesticides. Competitive field products are usually 12 to 15 days old by the time they are delivered to a store, resulting in significant losses for the retailer.
Vertical farms that rise to the challenge of climate change are still in the early stages of development, but a recent $40 million joint venture between Crop One and Emirates Flight Catering to build the world’s largest vertical farming facility in Dubai suggests that agtech business models are showing potential to scale across markets.
That’s good news for my climate business team at IFC, who are helping existing and potential agribusiness clients acquire and leverage new agricultural technologies for both large scale and smallholder farms. Our “climate-smart” approach targets animal protein, land and crops, and food losses, yielding $1.3 billion in investments since 2017. Agtech can accelerate these investments and help farmers adopt more sustainable agronomic practices.
At this year’s One Planet Summit, IFC signed two agreements with the Kenya Tea Development Agency Power Company Ltd. (KTDA Power): one that enables carbon credits, and another that will support KTDA with various advisory activities such as financial literacy training for farmers, soil testing for productivity improvement and development of a wood-sourcing strategy.
How we farm matters. In addition to record-breaking temperatures, super typhoons and drought, Deputy Secretary-General Mohammed has also spoken about how 5G technology and AI can build smarter agricultural systems.
Feeding our growing population requires revolutionary transformations in farming and land cultivation. Adopting pioneering agricultural technologies with the potential to increase yields while limiting greenhouse gas emissions is an essential step. If agriculture is to continue to feed the world, then we must enable technology to shape the farms of the future.
"AGrowth AgTech Accelerator - 12 week programme"
The AGrowth Accelerator is a 12-week programme supporting innovative and scalable AgTech companies, from late seed through Series B stage. This programme focuses on delivering breakthrough innovations and technologies to impact the future of farming
The AGrowth accelerator programme is a 12-week programme commissioned by National Innovation Agency (NIA) and powered by Nest. Aimed at innovative and scalable AgTech startups, this accelerator programme supports startups and entrepreneurs from around the globe in delivering breakthrough innovations and technologies in AgTech to make an impact on the future of farming.
We are seeking AgTech companies that have established product-market fit and have
developed innovative solutions addressing the following areas:
Data transparency and analytics: data capture and analysis tools to maximise productivity
Automation & digitisation: technologies that can help reduce manual processes and increase efficiency
Logistics and supply chain visibility: platforms that create price transparency and visibility of logistic options and provide alternatives to incumbent solutions
New market identification and access: tools and platforms enabling farmers to access new buyers / markets
Urban agriculture: technologies to enable the creation of self-sustaining ecosystems in city environments, including but not limited to vertical and indoor farming
AGrowth Accelerator participants will be guided through their business growth and development with the help of business mentoring from NIA and Nest, as well as two leading corporates. It’s a great opportunity to establish a foothold in Thailand, or to expand your existing presence in the region through commercial partnerships.
The selected startups can expect a highly supportive and collaborative environment, with an opportunity to pitch their solutions. If chosen for the programme, startups will:
Be immersed in the innovation ecosystem in Thailand and establish a foothold to build a broader network in Asia as a foundation for future expansion
Be guided through a 12-week structured process working towards a potential PoC and possible commercial integration opportunities with two corporate sponsors
Gain exposure to business leaders and receive mentorship opportunities
Receive access to a network of investors as well as investment advice from Nest,
with the chance to pitch to investors at a demo day
Access customer insights regionally and internationally
Receive one round-trip flight as well as accommodations for the duration of the time
spent in Bangkok, Thailand
Applications close on August 11th, 2019
To learn more about the programme: http://bit.ly/32h2H5y
To apply: http://bit.ly/2NHobp8
Indoor Vertical Farming, Electronically - Consumer Electronics Giants Such As Panasonic Are Expanding Into Indoor Agriculture
When the news first broke several years ago that Panasonic was growing lettuce in a warehouse in Singapore, it was tempting to think of it as a kind of lark—an exotic branding exercise meant to show the ever-expanding depth and breadth of new electronics technologies. The results have proven otherwise
When the news first broke several years ago that Panasonic was growing lettuce in a warehouse in Singapore, it was tempting to think of it as a kind of lark—an exotic branding exercise meant to show the ever-expanding depth and breadth of new electronics technologies.
The results have proven otherwise. Panasonic is now an established and growing player—if still a small one—in Asia’s agricultural marketplace, selling primarily to local grocers and restaurants. And it is not alone. Several of its rivals are engaged in similar experiments in diversification into vertical agriculture far beyond their core electronics businesses. What’s driving these high-tech high-fliers into this low-margin business? And what’s in it for them?
Not business as usual
A look inside Panasonic’s hydroponic operation reveals that there are indeed the predictable high-tech bells and whistles: automated farming systems do the seeding, potting, and irrigation. Plants grow under intelligent LED grow lights in a room whose temperature, humidity, and carbon dioxide settings are electronically controlled at levels that hasten and maximize plant growth.
But the electronics company is taking the enterprise seriously. It has more than quadrupled the farm’s square footage and output in the past few years. Its lab-coated farmer engineers now run a facility of almost 13,000 square feet that yields more than 80 tons of produce annually.
Meanwhile, in 2016, Fujitsu joined forces with Masuda Seed and Orix, a private equity firm, to use cloud-based technology to grow produce indoors in a facility in Japan, while Toshiba has also dabbled in leaf-vegetable production. In Dubai, Sharp recently debuted a high-tech strawberry-growing operation built around its Plasmacluster air-disinfecting technology. Many of these efforts are supported by governments in Asia that are looking for solutions to concerns about the scarcity of arable land and food sustainability. One estimate places the market for vertical indoor farming in Asia at $4 billion by 2024.
“It’s super interesting to see these companies starting to play in farming, where you go from the highest tech margins to the lowest margins possible,” says Allison Kopf, founder and CEO of Agrilyst, a tech company that harnesses data to help indoor farm operators build their businesses. The depth and intensity of the connection between the electronics companies and agriculture crystallized for her last year in China, when she toured a facility operated by BOE Technology Group, a Chinese maker of intelligent interface products like cell phone displays that, in a not-unrelated development, is also in the LED business. “The carryover opened up a new market for them,” she says. “And it makes sense—the technology definitely overlaps.”
Neil Mattson, associate professor at Cornell’s School of Integrative Plant Science in the department of horticulture, studies indoor growing. He points out that the factories are eerily suited to what growers need—predictability in an increasingly unpredictable world. These companies already produce electronic components in clean rooms with tight environmental controls that ensure impeccable air quality, lest any floating contaminants end up in motherboards or other highly sensitive equipment. “A clean-room protocol is really good in terms of food safety and infectious-disease issues,” Mattson says.
Climate, controlled
The indoor factories also mitigate food-supply issues arising from the changing climate. California’s unusually wet winter several years ago, for example, triggered shortages in spinach crops, causing the vegetable to virtually disappear for a time from stores on the East Coast. “The thought is that as the climate changes, we’re going to have to be more conscious of transportation and water and so on,” says Mattson. “And we don’t have to worry about wild animals, we don’t have surface-water irrigation sources, so there’s a lot less potential for contamination, and it’s a lot easier to control checkpoints.”
Growing in these kinds of controlled conditions is also several times more efficient than conventional farming in terms of water and fertilizer use and the use of space, Mattson notes. In 2015, researchers from Arizona State University found that lettuce grown in a hydroponic system used about a tenth of the water required with conventional methods. Scientists at the University of Nevada-Reno came up with a similar finding in a study focused on strawberries. These kinds of results prompted the authors of the Arizona study to note that hydroponics “could become a strategy for sustainably feeding the world’s growing population, if the high energy consumption can be overcome through improved efficiency and/or cost-effective renewables.”
Mattson concurs that the main issue right now is the power required for the lighting systems—and that research into LEDs may hold the solution. “Energy is the current sticking point,” he says.
All of these overlaps in technology and marketplace demand have made for some intense buzz. Back in the U.S., for example, the indoor farming startup Plenty recently announced it had raised $200 million in funding. A Panasonic spokesman told one media outlet: “We foresee this business to be a potential growth portfolio, given the global shortage of arable land, increasing populations, climate change, and demand for high-quality and stable food supply.”
But can it scale?
For all the deserved excitement, though, there are good reasons the electronics companies so far have mostly only dabbled in their respective enterprises. Serious questions remain about whether vertical farming is viable at any sort of significant scale. One problem is energy: indoor farms use twice as much as a greenhouse in the same climate, Mattson says, and significantly more than it takes to grow crops in a field and to ship them thousands of miles.
There are reasons why no dominant company has emerged, and they have to do with climate and geography, and the challenges inherent in shipping delicate foods like lettuce and strawberries. “Globally, you’ve got an industry that’s been around for decades and decades, but it looks very, very different in different regions,” Kopf says. “There are similarities that carry through, but as far as technology goes it looks very different because of geography. There’s no real standardization, which makes it hard for a clear market winner to evolve.”
In China, Kopf saw companies dabbling in agriculture using government subsidies, or opening farms on a one-off basis as a kind of experiment in ways to build market advantage, she says. The farming enterprises essentially amount to elaborate R&D programs—experimental efforts to determine whether produce can become a high-value product. “It feels very much like the Wild West,” Mattson says. “I like to say the hardware of intelligent lighting is farther advanced than our physiological understanding of plants. So a company can deliver these lights to the market, but we don’t truly know the best way to operate or use those lights.”
The learning curve
The reasons to bet on these counterintuitive types of business expansions? One is simply that these companies are deeply experienced at manufacturing and shipping products at scale. Mattson also says to expect improvements in LEDs and the understanding of how to use them—refining what companies refer to as their “light recipes.” Meanwhile, the continued evolution of robotics will drive down overhead.
One key question that remains is whether electronics companies really want to own and run the farms, or just provide the technology to run them. Either way, it’s safe to say that if you live in Asia in the not-so-near future, your lettuce and your Bluetooth headphones might very well have something very much in common.
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]
How To Afford The Switch To A STEM Career
If you’re unsatisfied with your current career, changing to a career in STEM — which stands for science, technology, engineering and math — might be a solid option
BANKRATE STAFF JUNE 24, 2019
At Bankrate we strive to help you make smarter financial decisions. While we adhere to strict editorial integrity, this post may contain references to products from our partners. Here’s an explanation for how we make money.
Hero Images/Getty Images
If you’re unsatisfied with your current career, changing to a career in STEM — which stands for science, technology, engineering and math — might be a solid option.
Employment in STEM occupations has grown 79 percent since 1990, from 9.7 million to 17.3 million and has outpaced overall U.S. job growth. The thirst for STEM workers hasn’t subsided, either. The demand for STEM professionals creates a huge need for new entrants into the STEM workforce.
Transitioning to a STEM career can come with financial barriers, but it can be worth the initial investment in the long run. Personal loans, grants and other sources of funding can mitigate career-change expenses.
Interested in opting for a STEM career instead of your current nine-to-five? We’ll help you understand the financial benefits, obstacles and how to get around any barriers to your STEM-related future.
Why you should consider changing your career
There are several reasons you might change to a STEM career, and they include high salary potential, job satisfaction, positive impact on society and job flexibility.
High salaries
STEM jobs pay out about 70 percent more than the national average, says StratoStar, an education company. More specifically, data from Pew Research Center states that the typical full-time, year-round STEM worker earns $54,745 and a similarly educated non-STEM worker earns $40,505, or 26 percent less.
Though not an exhaustive list, here are the different STEM sectors and possible opportunities within those sectors:
Science: Physics, chemistry, life sciences, geoscience, astronomy, social sciences, environmental studies and biology.
Technology: Information technology, programming, web development, software development, IT architecture, database administration and security and systems analysis.
Engineering: Mechanical, chemical, civil, electrical, management and geotechnical engineer (and hundreds of subcategories as well).
Math: Applied and theoretical mathematics, statistics, calculus, finance and probability.
Growing field
STEM careers are some of the fastest growing, most in-demand career categories, partially because of technology’s constant evolution.
There’s high demand for diverse, talented individuals to seek careers in these well-paid, future-shaping STEM fields. “By far, the greatest labor shortages of women and minorities will be in information and communication technologies,” says Dani Gehm, who works for ChickTech, which engages women and girls of all ages in the technology industry.
STEM unemployment rate is low, and according to the U.S. Bureau of Statistics, STEM jobs are expected to grow almost twice as much as other jobs, at 21.4 percent. In addition, 80 percent of jobs will require technical skills within the next decade.
Job satisfaction
A Pew survey indicated that 66 percent of those working in a STEM profession or teaching felt their job gave them an identity. Only 43 percent of those working in manual or physical occupations and 37 percent of those working in retail or service jobs said the same.
Impact on society
STEM extends beyond petri dishes and coding on a computer. It includes food production, manufacturing and more than meets the initial eye. Its impact on society and current gaps in U.S. STEM jobs are two reasons why many schools so heavily push STEM education. In total, the Department of Education committed $279 million in STEM discretionary grant funds in 2018.
“You can make a material difference in humanity’s quest to increase our knowledge of the universe,” says Jason Gibson, an electrical engineer who worked for NASA then started an online tutoring company helping students in the STEM field. “Whether you work in a factory, a chemical plant, design computer chips or launch rockets, people who go into STEM fields in a tangible way increase the sum total knowledge of our species on this planet.”
Flexibility
Only 18 percent of Americans believe careers in STEM have more flexibility for balancing work and family compared to jobs in other industries, according to Pew.
From virtual physics teacher to technology marketing manager, there are more flexible STEM careers available than you might think. For example, many registered nurses such as case managers or hotline nurses (who answer patients’ questions over the phone) can telecommute.
Here are a few other ideas of flexible STEM sectors and/or jobs:
Software development
Some engineering careers
Medical science liaison
Technical support representative
Affording your career change
Once you’ve decided to make the leap to a new STEM career, figure out whether your new career will require you to go back to school. If so, can you get the degree online? Or will it require attaining an online certification?
Do your research
Research the salary potential and years of school needed for your anticipated career. This will help you with a financial budget and plan.
Any initial investment could be offset by your high-paying career down the road.
However, the costs depend on what stage of your career you’re in and what degrees you’re going after. Do the math to make sure the cost of an educational program or degree will be recouped in the increased salary you’ll earn.
Always look for any grants or scholarships you can find. Grants and scholarships are free money that you don’t have to pay back for college or career school. Grants are often need-based, while scholarships are usually merit-based. Grants and scholarships can come from the federal government, your state government, the college or career school you’re considering or an organization.
You can also consider getting a student loan. Direct Subsidized and Unsubsidized loans are great options because interest rates are lower than private loans you could get from a student loan lender.
Finally, visit the schools you’re considering and ask for a full breakdown of all of your potential costs, from tuition to transportation to technology costs and more.
Online learning/certifications for specific skills
Not sure you want to fully go back to school or want to prepare before you do? Many classes and certifications are offered online. You can find both free and fee-based programs to advance your career and knowledge base.
You can find course materials, videos and lecture series through the following free and low-cost programs, some at highly-ranked colleges and universities.
You’ll need a blend of technical and professional skills to make a STEM career switch. In addition to training programs offered from colleges, universities, certificate programs, coding academies and more, take advantage of tech-focused meet-up groups and workshops. Networking is just as important as technical skills and can lead to a job, according to the National Center for Biotechnology Information.
Creating a new 529 or using leftover funds
A 529 plan is a tax-advantaged investment vehicle that encourages savings for future qualified higher education expenses such as tuition, fees, books, computers, computer software and other supplies and equipment. The advantage of a 529 plan is that while it’s not tax deductible at the federal level, it may be tax deductible at the state level or you may qualify for a tax credit. Check into your state-sponsored 529 plan.
You may still have money left over in a 529 plan if your child didn’t use it all or if he or she didn’t go to college. You can change the beneficiary to yourself by completing a form found on the plan’s website. Note that the beneficiary cannot be changed to a parent if the 529 plan is a custodial 529 plan.
You can also start a new 529 plan for yourself even though you may not have as much time on your side to build savings as you might have with a child’s account.
Grants and funding for going back to school
Don’t forget to see what educational opportunities your company currently offers — your company may pay for you to go back to school part-time. Visit your current company’s human resources office for more details on the particular back-to-school tuition reimbursement program your company offers.
Once you’ve done that, check out federal opportunities for STEM students based on various STEM sectors.
Minority and female resources
There are fewer females in traditionally white male-dominated STEM fields. The National Science Foundation reported that women’s lowest degree shares are in computer sciences and engineering (S&E).
When it comes to occupations, female and underrepresented minority scientists and engineers were more likely than their male counterparts to work in a non-S&E occupation.
Despite these numbers, female and minority numbers in STEM careers continues to increase each year. In addition to searching for grants and scholarships, it’s important to seek out women or minority mentors already in the STEM industry who can provide guidance on entering a STEM career.
Scholarship and grant opportunities for women include:
Society of Women Engineers Scholarships
Women Techmakers Scholar Program
National Physical Science Consortium’s Fellowships in the Physical Sciences
Women in Engineering and Computer and Information Science Awards
Regent’s Healthcare Scholarship for Medicine and Dentistry
Scholarship and grant opportunities for minorities include:
National Action Council for Minorities in Engineering
Xerox Technical Minority Program
Ford Foundation’s Pre-doctoral Fellowship for Minorities
National Black Nurses Association
National Physical Science Consortium’s Fellowships in the Physical Sciences
Regent’s Healthcare Scholarship for Medicine and Dentistry
Other ways to pay
If you can’t get the assistance or funding you need to go back to school, there are a few other possibilities. Look into the benefits of a personal loan over student loans. Personal loans can be used for any purpose and have less stringent requirements than student loans. You also won’t need to verify that you’re enrolled in college when you apply for a personal loan.
Consider a side hustle or an extra job while you’re going to school — or don’t quit your day job so you can pay for your education. Being a part-time student can be a great way to pay the bills.
Literally Growing An Award-Winning Hardware Business Lettus Grow Wins 2019 Hardware Award At The Sparkies
Developing new indoor farming technologies is not just tackling a major problem but also winning awards. LettUs Grow in Bristol is developing aeroponics that allow crops such as strawberries and even trees to be grown indoors under LED lights.
9TH JULY 2019
Developing new indoor farming technologies is not just tackling a major problem but also winning awards. LettUs Grow in Bristol is developing aeroponics that allow crops such as strawberries and even trees to be grown indoors under LED lights.
The company won the Hardware Award at last week’s Sparkies for its technology, to sit alongside a number of awards and deals, including time in the Oracle and John Lewis technology incubators.
The company was set up by three engineers from the University of Bristol, where there is a focus on how to be as green as possible, says said Ben Crowther, co-founder and chief technology officer.
Being in Bristol and the strong ecosystem has been a key part of the success of the company. “We’ve got a really good ecosystem here to bounce idea off along the way,” he said.
You may like: Oracle Startup Cloud Accelerator’s first Bristol-based cohort pitch to top UK investors
“I’m a systems engineer and I was really interested in our food supply chain, primarily in the reduction of food waste, but then also making it more resilient to weather change and freak events to make sure we can all eat as we grow as a population and reduce the carbon footprint while doing it,” he said.
The aeroponics they developed uses 95% less water than hydroponics as it is a closed loop system based around a mist that carries water and nutrients to the roots of the plants and everything is filtered and re-used.
“Our core advantage is we have a completely novel irrigation system – our aeroponics is simple,” he said. “We don’t use high pressure nozzles that are prone to breaking, it’s a really, really simple system that we developed. That means we have increased growth rates compared to hydroponics.”
“We do use more power but the benefit is that you can position production right by the point of consumption or distribution,” he said.
“We don’t think it should replace hectares of fields. Indoor farming, greenhouses and open field farming each have their different roles,” he said. “If you can grow it in a field grow it in a field, it makes much more sense. But in many places its just not possible as it uses too much water and pesticides and the soil is degrading quite rapidly, so having a baseline production of crops that are very sensitive to environmental conditions has significant benefits.”
You may like: LettUs Grow secures £1m to build farms of the future
The company has also done a deal with renewable energy supplier Octopus Energy so that it can use cheap renewable energy, for example at night, to grow the crops. “Vertical forms will be a really important part of the electrical production grid to use the surplus renewable energy so you can use infrastructure projects to smooth out demand,” he said.
The company provides technology to people building vertical farms, and has demonstrated herbs and micro-greens which are popular with indoor farms, but can also grow strawberries and even trees.
“We use specialist horticultural lighting and we partner with LED suppliers for that,” he said. “They are tuned for different types of crops, generally on read an blue with differing levels of green and white. We partner with a world leading researcher at the University of Bristol on circadian rhythms for plants on how we can apply this to our misting technology.”
“The John Lewis one is an interesting opportunity for future collaboration,” he said. “It’s a really exciting opportunity to work with a well known UK brand to do exciting stuff which could be in a number of areas, whether that’s in-store or otherwise.”
This is a key part of the strategy. “We are interested in supermarkets and food producers in general as vertical farming can provide a very stable rate of supply, really reliably for a low carbon cost.”
The company has also developed software called Ostara that logs all the data, automate all the irrigation and lighting schedules to reduce the labour cost and make everything as easy as possible for the farmer. “We provide insights and recipes for growth as aeroponics is a novel technology and our control hardware is tied to our core irrigation technology so we are a distributed IoT system within a confined area. We also provide cloud services such as analysis and insights to our customers – if you buy a farm from us we are invested in the growth of our customers.”
TAGS: Bristol
Nick Flaherty
Nick Flaherty is one of the UK’s leading electronics technology journalists. Based in Bristol, he has been covering the latest developments in semiconductor, embedded software and electronics technology for the last 25 years as a writer, editor, analyst and consultant. His experience at the leading edge of technology has enhanced a wide range of technical trade publications around the world, including EETimes Europe and Electronic Engineering Times in the US, as well as SouthWest Innovation News, Electronics Times, Electronic Engineering and Electronics Weekly. He has edited MicroTechnology Europe and Electronic Product Design magazines and was launch editor of Automotive Electronics magazine.
Hydroponic Farming: Why Soil-Free Agriculture Might Be The Way Forward
Research has but the market value of hydroponics at $8.08 bn in 2019, prompting entrepreneurs to believe that soil-free agriculture might be the way forward. We talk to some of them
By: Isha Arora | Published: July 14, 2019
Research has put the market value of hydroponics at $8.08 bn in 2019, prompting entrepreneurs to believe that soil-free agriculture might be the way forward. We talk to some of them
Farms can be set up in a space as small as a cubicle-sized room fitted with a tech support system that creates an artificial environment conducive for growth.
Think farming and cultivation and even your mind pictures flat expanses of open land pulsating with life — fresh harvest of rice, wheat, paddy or vegetables.
Thick canopy of branches with birds fluttering from one bough to the other on a sun-kissed morning, away from cities’ bustle and haze of smoke, completes the idea of idyllic surroundings. But talk urban farming, and the picture is quite different.
Farms can be set up in a space as small as a cubicle-sized room fitted with a tech support system that creates an artificial environment conducive for growth. These hi-tech, sustainable farms, operate on the science and principles of hydroponic farming — a soil-free farming technique.
In hydroponic farming, plants grow naturally, drawing nutrients out of reservoirs filled with nutrient-rich and water-based solutions, under optimal positioning of lights and regulated temperature conditions. While the technique became an instant hit in the West, where people initially used hydroponics and its farming variants to grow marijuana, it did not take too long to catch the fancy of scientists, entrepreneurs and practitioners of agriculture across the globe. In India, hydroponic farms are omnipresent — found in the arid tracts of Jaipur, landlocked Delhi-NCR, in humid weather conditions of Goa and various places in the southern parts of the country.
“It is a process of fast multiplication of high-quality planting material producing about 35-60 mini-tubers per tissue culture plantlet. Mini-tubers are progeny tubers produced on plantlets and developed artificially. Through this technology, it is possible to produce seven-10 times more mini-tubers from in-vitro plantlets (produced in a test tube or culture dish), as compared to cultivation under net house conditions with multiple mini-tubers of desired size. The technology can also be exploited for other important crops like tomato, strawberry, brinjal, chilli, spinach,” says Tanuja Buckseth, scientist (vegetable science) at Indian Council of Agricultural Research-Central Potato Research Institute (ICAR-CPRI), Shimla.
Somveer Singh Anand, co-founder and CEO of Pindfresh
Under hydroponics, terrestrial plants can be grown in multiple ways. The most common ways involve exposing roots to nutritious liquid, or in some cases, the roots can be physically supported by an inert medium such as perlite or gravel. Hydroponic DIY kits are available aplenty online. These devices enable people to set up equipment within the confines of houses and grow vegetation. The two most commonly deployed systems in hydroponics are Nutrient Film Technique (NFT) and Deep Water Culture (DWC). In NFT, a shallow stream of water containing dissolved nutrients is re-circulated through bare roots in a watertight thick tube, which forms a mat-like layer from which the roots absorb nutrients. An abundant supply of oxygen is provided to the roots through the process.
Under DWC, roots are left suspended in nutrient-rich, oxygenated water. The solution is saturated with oxygen infused by an air pump in the presence of porous stones. The method is touted to be more suitable for plants’ faster growth, given the high level of oxygen that roots receive.
The great traction that the advanced farming technique has received over the years has Dublin-based market research company Research And Markets put the global market value of hydroponic systems at a whopping $8.08 billion in 2019. Going ahead, the market is projected to grow at a compounded annual growth rate of 12.1% to reach $16.03 billion by 2025. The value of crops produced globally through hydroponics is expected to touch $32.13 billion this year at an anticipated growth rate of 5.1% from 2019 to 2025.
Influx of players
There has been a conspicuous rise in the number of “urban farmers”. These are basically entrepreneurs, who didn’t take long to recognise immense growth opportunities lying untapped in the hydroponic farming space. A majority of them did not enter the space with the intention of making profit as hydroponic farming is cost-intensive.
These individuals’ wish to venture into the space stemmed from their eagerness to explore and identify alternative means of agriculture, given unavailability of fertile and mineral-rich soil. “We were inspired by the large number of people around us vying for greenery in their houses and surroundings. But they didn’t know how to go about it, given that the weather conditions aren’t always favourable,” says Somveer Singh Anand, co-founder and chief executive officer of Pindfresh, a Chandigarh-based start-up that makes, uses and sells semi-commercial hydroponic equipment in the form of DIY kits.
“Another issue that struck a chord with us was that in a place like Mumbai, where nearly 30% of the population doesn’t have access to toilets, the muck goes into the soil. Now, if we’re growing fruits and vegetables in the same soil, it is obviously going to be contaminated with toxic substances,” he adds. Started in April 2017 by Anand and his team, Pindfresh has grown in leaps and bounds since inception, even as the hydroponic equipment the firm sells cost anywhere between Rs 50,000 and Rs 3.5 lakh. There are cheaper alternatives available in the form of grow bags and pipes with compartments containing nutrient-rich solution, which boost growth, that cost anywhere between Rs 1,200 and Rs 2,500. The start-up also conducts workshops free of cost to impart knowledge and training on hydroponic farming. “We turned profitable within months of inception and are growing at a consistently lucrative growth rate, generating about Rs 5-6 lakh in revenue per month,” Anand adds.
Delhi-based Triton Foodworks, which started as an experiment in urban farming by four friends — Deepak Kukreja, Dhruv Khanna, Ullas Samrat, and Devanshu Shivnani — in September 2014 deploys NFT, DWC, and media-based hydroponic systems to grow fruits and vegetables. Media-based systems involve the use of mediums like rockwool, coco coir, expanded clay, perlite, gravel and vermiculite for growth of plants. The company has grown seven varieties of lettuce, basils, pok choy, swiss chard, spinach, cherry tomatoes, snack cucumbers, bell peppers, sweet peppers and mint as of now. They plan to add radishes and turnips to their basket very soon.
Goa-based Letcetra Agritech is another market player that grows organic vegetables using hydroponics and sells them across hotel chains, supermarkets and farmers’ markets. Set up in 2016, the firm helps set up commercial hydroponic farms for large-scale growers as well.
“We supply to most restaurants that serve salad greens in north Goa. We also have tie-ups with a few super markets and retail consumers. We started by growing only lettuce and today we grow around 15 different varieties of vegetables. Most of the start-ups in this domain are focusing on consultation and sale of hydroponics units. Our focus is on growing good quality, nutrient-rich, pesticide-free vegetables and making these accessible and affordable to everyone,” says CEO Ajay Naik. Letcetra Agritech plans to replace at least 30% of the traditional farms in India to urban farms in the next five years.
Gurgram-based Barton Breeze is focused on setting up hydroponic farms with a major chunk of investment from the clients. “We grow 28 varieties of crops and manufacture components for hydroponics setups. However, about 65-70% contribution to our topline figure comes from development of new farms that we undertake for our clients,” says Shivendra Singh, who co-founded the start-up in 2016 with the aim of restoring the nutritional value of our produce. The company’s topline grew at a compounded annual growth rate of 300% in FY19 from FY18, signalling the high demand for hydroponic setups in our country.
Comparisons with traditional agriculture
While the modern farming practice is a boon at a time when rampant soil contamination and massive influx of harmful pesticides and insecticides into agricultural fields is increasingly becoming a cause of great health concerns, hydroponic farming suffers from two major setbacks. One, it involves a complex setup and the running and maintenance costs are huge. The technique requires some amount of expertise to be practised from scratch. For instance, the ICAR-CPRI in Shimla has been following aeroponic seed production system since 2011. This is hydroponics in a lot of ways, except that the process doesn’t need a medium like sand, gravel or water. It produces disease-free, quality plantation material to boost yield of potato varieties in the country.
Buckseth says the initial cost to set up an installation for producing one million mini-tubers (area:1500 sqm) was Rs 100 lakh. The expense can certainly not be borne by a traditional farmer, and the technique can hence be only utilised by entrepreneurs and government agencies with ample investment. “Aeroponic technology, standardised by the institute, is being commercialised under an MoU signed between the parties after royalty payments. The technology is essentially for progressive farmers/ firms/ FPO etc. But since the initial cost of setting up the whole process is very high, a number of surveys have to be conducted and prior market knowledge is a must,” Buckseth says. Besides, all the start-ups and agencies involved in hydroponics currently have the backing of an agriculture scientist or expert in the field. This kind of expertise is certainly not commonplace, making the technique cumbersome.
On the flip side, there are multiple pros that hydroponic farming has in comparison to traditional agriculture. For one, it reduces the water requirements of plants by a marked extent, since the medium in which they grow is solvent-based. Secondly, monoculture is not an issue with hydroponic farming and the practice is readily possible in areas where climatic or geographical conditions pose a barrier. “Hydroponics has four big advantages over traditional methods, which made the technology so popular. It uses 80-90% less water, 80-95% less land, harmful pesticides can be avoided and vegetables can be grown all year round,” says Naik.
The yield of hydroponic farming is also substantially higher than that of traditional agriculture. “Yields are almost 2.5 times more than it is through the traditional means. People can claim more, but it is almost 2.5 times in real. That’s primarily because one can grow more number of plants compared to ground agriculture, and the plants grow at a faster pace,” Singh says.
Road ahead
While hydroponics farming does hold the promise of changing the face of urban farming, entrepreneurs fear that lack of knowledge and expertise can play spoilsport in its growth rate. “Every hydroponic expert would say that the minimum investment in a hydroponic farm would be `30 lakh, while the maximum would go up to as high as Rs 4 crore. Who has that kind of money? I sell hydroponic setups for Rs 50,000, and I manage to sell just three in a month. That’s the only negative. People usually don’t have any expertise, and are just wanting to sell,” says Anand. He cautions not without reason. Hydroponic set-ups do entail massive investment and if not treated with care and knowledge, the money can certainly go waste.
In such a scenario, Anand suggests getting the basics right. Go back to the textbooks, get ample knowledge on the subject and then invest in relatively cheaper hydroponic set-ups to produce first for home, and then for the rest. Singh had adopted a similar strategy before he set up Barton Breeze. “We started as a small pilot project in Dubai, where we learned first, did all the R&D, testings and trials at our own cost and then presented the idea to our investors,” he recalls. “Even in India, when we started out, we set up the first farm at our own cost, since we were still experimenting. We didn’t want our clients to incur any expense for us,” he adds.
Buckseth suggests getting trained officials on board before venturing any further into the new technology. “The initial cost in this practice is high, which once invested can only be recovered by the quality produce, which otherwise will be more than the traditional system. Therefore, trained officials may be hired for proper functioning,” she says.
Rest assured, looks like greener pastures and clean produce are finally home.
We’ve Gone Vegetarian And Vegan But Soon We Could Be Going Vertical In Crop-Shelf Revolution
The global population is set to grow by two billion within the next 20 years, and demand for food is predicted to be 60% higher. At the same time climate change, the spread of cities and soil degradation will have shrunk the amount of land to grow what we eat
by Stevie Gallacher July 15, 2019
Invergowrie Intelligent Growth Solutions LTD have created a vertical farming indoors in Perthshire.
The world Is heading For A Food Crisis
The global population is set to grow by two billion within the next 20 years, and demand for food is predicted to be 60% higher.
At the same time climate change, the spread of cities and soil degradation will have shrunk the amount of land to grow what we eat.
The solution to global starvation, however, might be found in a shed in Invergowrie.
At the James Hutton Institute in Perth, a company is developing a system of vertical farming.
This is where food is grown in stacks in environmentally-friendly towers.
The revolutionary idea has been hailed as the future of food and is predicted to be one of the early steps on a journey which could end with our crops being grown in city-centre skyscrapers.
That’s the view of David Farquhar, the CEO of Intelligent Growth Solutions, the company developing the new farming technique.
“At the moment we’re growing broccoli seedlings, potato seedlings and strawberry seedlings for local farmers,” he explained.
“We’ve got all the way to growing actual strawberries. We’re growing things like pea shoots, baby kale, baby celery, fennel, coriander, parsley, basil, and every herb you can possibly imagine.
“These are things which would normally be grown in a Mediterranean climate.
“Imagine you’ve taken a field and cut it up into snooker table-size rectangles. You put the rectangles in a box, stack them 10 metres high and put the weather in.
“Then you control that weather via your mobile phone.”
It sounds simple but at Intelligent Growth Solutions the vertical farms, which are around 10 metres high, see cutting-edge techniques being used to grow a variety of crops.
The system attracted £5.4 million worth of investment last month, with one American agri-tech investment company enthusing “nothing else can touch” the Perth initiative.
David hopes to develop pre-packaged farming “towers” which can be installed almost anywhere – from existing farms to modern city centres.
Now everyone from governments to businesses to local farmers is keen to employ his services.
“In Singapore there’s very little arable land,” added David. “In Saudi Arabia, all you’ve got is desert. In the Cayman Islands, it costs £70 for a kilo of basil because it has to be flown in,” added David.
“The amount of miles food has to travel is expensive and bad for the environment.
“Vertical farms could solve these problems.
“Farmers want to grow seedlings for things like potatoes, broccoli and cauliflower more efficiently and cleanly. A lot of seedlings we import are diseased or have pests – we have to throw it away. With our system, we can provide seeds without diseases or pests.”
Food producers are keen to reap the benefits of vertical farming, too. And retailers love the system because it produces fruit and vegetables which have a longer life.
“Because we don’t use chemicals, retailers have suddenly realised that we could salad for them that doesn’t require to be washed,” David explained.
“And what that will do is it will cook between five and seven days extra on to the shelf life.
“We are using no chemicals anywhere in the vertical farm. Everything is grown on an organic basis — although we can’t actually we can’t actually claim it’s organic, because we’re not growing the crops in soil.
“There are no pesticides, no chemicals, nothing. It just grows in peat or it grows in coconut matting.
“That’s the same stuff used if you have a hanging basket in your garden.”
Farming in towers rather than fields may not seem natural but neither is the current state of how we grow the food we eat, according to David.
And he branded those who would rather stick to traditional farming as being stuck in the past. “You will always get Luddites, in any sector,” David added.
“In offices you use computers but there’s always someone who wants to go back to an older system.
“There will always be people yearning for the past but people are going to taste the quality of these crops, and realise it is extremely clean as well as being very, very tasty.
“And then there is the carbon footprint. You can go to the supermarket at any time of the year and pick up a packet of blueberries which have come from Peru, Uruguay or somewhere ridiculous. These have been flown here by jet.
“That is nuts. You can get on your high horse about this type of food, but please stop eating this stuff, or only eat fruit and vegetables when they’re in season – which is what we used to do.
“We’re lacking enough Vitamin C in our diets as it is!
“We keep hearing about how much food is thrown away. Well, if we can solve those kind of problems, then that’s pretty exciting.
“This is never going to replace the farmer growing barley but it might help the ones growing potatoes and broccoli and cauliflowers and soft fruits. It might well help protect these jobs.”
The food produced in vertical farms has also been given the thumbs up by food experts in terms of safety.
“As for the quality? Well, Dundee City Council sent one of their microbiologists to come and run tests on the crops,” said David.
“They said, it’s just about the cleanest if ever seen. And so it’s approved for human consumption. And I’ve actually got a tray of basil in the boot of my car.
“I’m taking it home, my wife is going to make pesto with it tonight. It tastes fantastic.”
Modernisation of Greenhouse Complexes in Russia And The CIS
Starting from 2013, the output of greenhouse vegetables (mainly cucumbers and tomatoes) in Russia increased by almost 50%. 95% of greenhouse cucumbers and 65% of greenhouse tomatoes in the domestic market are produced in the country
For the last several years production of vegetables in greenhouses has become one of the major drivers for agriculture. Starting from 2013, the output of greenhouse vegetables (mainly cucumbers and tomatoes) in Russia increased by almost 50%. 95% of greenhouse cucumbers and 65% of greenhouse tomatoes in the domestic market are produced in the country.
Rapid development of greenhouse industry in the CIS is supported by the following factors: high retail prices in the domestic market, relatively low price of labour force, moderate, warm climate and access to the Russian market – major market of greenhouse vegetables in Eastern Europe.
“Development of commercial greenhouses is one of
the priority directions of agriculture. For the last three
years greenhouse vegetable production is rapidly
growing owing to the national support”,
— First Deputy Minister of Agriculture of the Russian Federation, Dzhambulat Khatuov.
Team of analysts from Vostock Capital has prepared the report on modernisation of greenhouse complexes in Russia and the CIS. The report provides relevant updates on reconstruction of obsolete and upgrade of operating greenhouse complexes.
The report includes:
investment projects on greenhouse complexes’ modernisation
preconditions and key modernisation technologies
regional and federal support programmes for commercial greenhouses
Get the report
Investment projects on construction and modernisation of greenhouse complexes will be presented at the the 4th International Investment Greenhouse Complexes Russia Forum 2019, to be held 4-5 December in Moscow.
Silver Sponsors: Signify, GREEN AUTOMATION EXPORT; Bronze Sponsor: Rijk Zwaan, Royal Brinkman. Industry Partner: Greenhouses of Russia Association.
Contacts: Elvira Sakhabutdinova, Project Director
+44 207 394 30 90 (London)
Biomimicry Helps Urban Farmers Scale Up
The Biomimicry Institute sat down virtually with Felipe Hernandez Villa-Roel, CEO and founder of Hexagro Urban Farming, to ask him about his experience as an entrepreneur and Biomimicry Launchpad participant
The Biomimicry Institute sat down virtually with Felipe Hernandez Villa-Roel, CEO and founder of Hexagro Urban Farming, to ask him about his experience as an entrepreneur and Biomimicry Launchpad participant.
What motivated you to start HEXAGRO?
Hexagro started as a bachelor’s thesis in Product Design when I started to analyze the problems that organic farmers in Costa Rica are facing in terms of productivity, sustainability, and health. These challenges are related to the high amounts of pesticides used by adjacent traditional farms, soil degradation, and climate change, so I began researching methods that didn’t use soil as a growing medium.
I analyzed the latest trends on soilless food production, starting from the indoor farming sector and through vertical farming, which proposes a more efficient way to grow food with less effort through new technologies like LED lighting and hydroponics in vertical configurations. I concluded that the main issue with these solutions was their scalability, since they followed a centralized model which is capital-intensive, requires infrastructure and expert personnel, and is difficult to set up and launch. The thesis made an analysis of nature’s strategies to reduce space while maximizing productivity with a modular structure that was then translated into the first version of Hexagro’s Living Farming Tree.
What was your experience in the Biomimicry Launchpad? What did you learn and how did you apply that to your business?
This project became a team and then a finalist in the Biomimicry Global Design Challenge, thanks to the inspiration taken from nature to develop the first product iteration. After that, we were invited to participate in the Launchpad program. From 2015-2016, we participated in many training sessions and had access to expert mentoring. This gave the team the tools to define a clear business model, which changed the approach of the first design iteration and led to a second design iteration that gave the basis for the current pre-industrial product. Today, the team continues to take inspiration from Nature’s Unifying Patterns to create solutions that follow the principles of biomimicry for every aspect, from product development to marketing and business development. Hexagro Urban Farming was incorporated as a for-benefit company in Milan, Italy, after the participation in the finals of the Launchpad in late 2016.
The Hexagro team
Tell us about your work to incorporate the Living Farming Tree in hotels and workplaces. What are you hoping to accomplish?
Our vision for Hexagro is a future in which anybody, anywhere, can access healthy food through urban farming. In order to get there, the team has determined a strategy to enter the market and launch its first product, the Living Farming Tree (LFT). Urbanization is booming, and at the same time we are spending around 90% of our time indoors where the conditions are not always meant for people’s well-being. This disconnection from nature within working spaces has direct consequences in employees’ health and psychology and can lead to lack of productivity and engagement, which could have direct consequences for companies. We are reconnecting employees to nature and their work through a “gamified” urban farming experience in which users follow the instructions from a digital interface to perform various maintenance tasks during the cultivation process, aiming to achieve a successful harvest of medicinal herbs for fresh infusions to improve well-being and productivity. Our LFT educates and increases the awareness of indoor farming technologies, while reducing the costs of office greenery maintenance. It engages people with their company and becomes a “gravitational center” for social gathering and relaxation.
The Living Farming Tree (LFT) utilizes a “gamification” strategy to engage employees in offices to become active participants in their own health.
What are the benefits to a modular, decentralized system?
Our team took inspiration from nature to create a system that could adapt to any space available and provide the maximum diversity with the lowest inventory. The Living Farming Tree has a standard configuration, but our plug-and-play components, along with our 3D-printed node and IoT automation systems, allow our system to adapt to any space available indoors (horizontally or vertically) to make it productive.
What is your ultimate hope for Hexagro?
We envision a new and regenerative food system based on the circular and sharing economy, helping people to grow plants and make a profit through a Smart Urban Farming Network. This nature-inspired model can increase accessibility to healthy food, decentralize indoor farming production, create new economic opportunities, and reconnect people to people through food.
For more information:
Biomimicry Institute
info@biomimicry.org
biomimicry.org
Publication date: 7/5/2019
From ‘Micro-Factories’ To Urban Farming: These Innovative Firms Are Shaping The Future
The World Economic Forum today unveils its 2019 Technology Pioneers: tech firms from around the world, shaping their industry and their region in new and exciting way
July 4, 2019
By Newsroom
The World Economic Forum today unveils its 2019 Technology Pioneers: tech firms from around the world, shaping their industry and their region in new and exciting ways. The 2019 cohort was selected by a committee of 59 leading technology experts, investors and entrepreneurs.
“Our new tech pioneers are at the cutting edge of many industries, using their innovations to address serious issues around the world,” says Fulvia Montresor, Head of Technology Pioneers at the Forum. “This year’s pioneers know that technology is about more than innovation – it is also about application. This is why we believe they’ll shape the future.”
As part of their selection, all Technology Pioneers can participate in a two-year programme with the Forum, when they have the opportunity to collaborate with their emerging tech peers, engage with industry leaders and work with public and private experts around the world. The 2019 cohort is invited to participate at the Forum’s upcoming meeting, the 13th Annual Meeting of the New Champions, Dalian, People’s Republic of China, 1-3 July.
Of the 56 firms selected, 25% of them are female-led and they are drawn from a pool that stretches beyond the traditional tech hubs like Silicon Valley. This year’s group includes, among others: healthcare app DabaDoc from Morocco; Via Verde from Mexico facilitating vertical gardening; manufacturing-focused DataProphet from South Africa; and the first Technology Pioneer from Saudi Arabia, trucking and logistics innovator Homoola.
Countries represented are: China, Finland, Germany, Israel, Mexico, Morocco, the Netherlands, Republic of Korea, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Singapore, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States.
The Technology Pioneers are at the cutting edge of a wide range of industries that span agtech, smart cities, cleantech, supply chain, manufacturing, cybersecurity, autonomous vehicles, drones and others.
China’s Dorabot uses robots to create seamless delivery and logistics services. Also based in China, Alesca Life creates cloud-connected farms and farm digitization software to improve the efficiency of food production so that hotels, restaurants or even private homes can produce food in automated “cabinet farms” that use up to 25 times less water and land than traditional methods.
Another Technology Pioneer aiming to address food shortages, US-based Inari Agriculture,uses CRISPR gene-editing technology to produce healthier crops that require much less land and have a significantly lower impact on the environment. Using green technology in another way is Mexico’s Via Verde. This pioneer creates, installs and maintains vertical gardens to transform urban infrastructure into green spaces that generate oxygen, improve air quality, reduce urban heat islands and provide other social and psychological benefits to highly populated cities.
Leading the way in autonomous vehicles is the US company Perceptive Automata. They are combining behavioural science, neuroscience and computer vision for autonomous vehicles to understand how pedestrians, bikes and drivers communicate on the road beyond codified traffic laws. At the cutting edge of manufacturing, DataProphet in South Africauses AI to improve quality and yield.
Other Technology Pioneers are leveraging technology to address social issues. One example is Israeli TIPA,a clean-tech innovator addressing the global plastics crisis with compostable plastics packaging. US-established Marinus Analytics addresses human trafficking by leveraging machine learning and artificial intelligence to empower law enforcement and government agencies to protect vulnerable communities.
The 2019 cohort of Technology Pioneers:
Africa
DataProphet (South Africa) – artificial intelligence for manufacturing
Asia
Alesca Life (China) – data-driven, indoor vertical farming and crop management solutions
Coeo Labs (India) – meeting clinical needs in critical care
Dorabot (China) – artificial intelligence-powered robotic solutions for logistics and beyond
Eureka (Singapore) – an artificial intelligence platform for mobile operator and enterprise partnerships
Guangzhishu Technology (China) – providing blockchain-based privacy-preserving computation solutions
Holmusk (Singapore) – leveraging real-world data to address mental health issues globally
Sky Labs (Korea) – developing a cardio tracker to identify arrhythmia, which is difficult to diagnose
Tookitaki (Singapore) – artificial intelligence-powered regulatory compliance solutions for financial institutions
Europe
Bitfury (the Netherlands) – developing and delivering cutting-edge blockchain hardware and software solutions
Black Bear Carbon (the Netherlands) – bringing the circular economy to tires
Callsign (UK) – revolutionizing how people digitally identify themselves
Garrison (UK) – a unique technology providing secure internet access
ICEYE (Finland) – satellite imaging for every square metre on Earth, every hour
Luminance Technologies (UK) – an artificial intelligence platform for lawyers
Open Mineral (Switzerland) – disrupting how base metal commodities are traded
Photanol (the Netherlands) – making biodegradable plastic from CO2, which is only the beginning
Volocopter (Germany) – certified multicopter offering urban air mobility services
Latin America
Via Verde (Mexico) – creating resilient urban environments using vertical green gardens
MENA
DabaDoc (Morocco) – transforming the patient-doctor relationship through networked care
Homoola (Saudi Arabia) – bringing rideshare to the trucking industry
MeMed Diagnostics (Israel) – translating immune system signals into simple diagnostic insights
QED-it (Israel) – enterprise solutions for data privacy using zero-knowledge proofs
TIPA (Israel) – developing and producing compostable flexible packaging
North America
7 Cups (USA) – technology to scale compassion, solving mental health challenges
Airobotics (USA) – pioneers in autonomous robotics with aerial insights and analytics
Airtable (USA) – empowering human creativity by democratizing software creation
Arcadia Power (USA) – making clean energy an easy choice, for everyone
BigID (USA) – helping organizations know their customers by knowing their data
Bright Machines (USA) – bringing intelligence and automation to manufacturing
CyberCube (USA) – cyber-risk analytics to grow insurance in a connected world
Descartes Labs (USA) – building a cloud-based platform to digitize the physical world
Drishti (USA) – extending human potential in increasingly automated factories
Full Harvest (USA) – the first B2B marketplace for imperfect and surplus produce
GHGSat (Canada) – satellite monitoring of emissions from industrial facilities
goTenna (USA) – a leading mobile mesh networking platform
ImpactVision (USA) – real-time food quality and safety decisions
Inari Agriculture (USA) – from nature’s diversity to better seeds
LunaPBC (USA) – people-driven health discovery platform
Marinus Analytics (USA) – artificial intelligence-based tools to help the vulnerable in the digital world
Microvi (USA) – safe water, sustainable chemicals and a clean environment for all
One Concern (USA) – artificial intelligence for natural disaster resilience
Onshape (USA) – a cloud design platform that speeds up product development
Openwater (USA) – changing the way people read and write their bodies and brains
Perceptive Automata (USA) – human intuition for machines
Quantela (USA) – providing a digital platform for smarter urban infrastructure decisions
Relativity Space (USA) – 3D-printed rockets to build the future of humanity in space
Remitly (USA) – digital remittance services helping immigrants send money overseas
Rigetti Computing (USA) – on a mission to build the world’s most powerful computers
Shape Security (USA) – protecting the Global 2000 from bot attacks
Skuchain (USA) – empowering enterprises to grow their global trade with blockchain
Spring Health (USA) – a comprehensive mental health solution for employers
Starsky Robotics (USA) – bringing driverless trucks to the market
Trackonomy (USA) – powering end-to-end visibility and control across global supply chains
Truepic (USA) – restoring trust to digital photos and videos
Vineti (USA) – creating essential software for personalized therapies
Growing Plants Without Soil
Have you ever thought of growing plants without soil? Sounds weird? There’s a new technology doing rounds in the agriculture market, which could change both the course and future of farming
Have you ever thought of growing plants without soil? Sounds weird? There’s a new technology doing rounds in the agriculture market, which could change both the course and future of farming
BHUBANESWAR: For millennia, the state of Odisha has been a pioneer in farming. The farmers have cultivated plants, grew various kinds of crops, and developed different farming techniques with the help of advance science and technology.
Now there’s a new method, by which the state farmers can develop a self-sustaining farm even without the need of soil. Through the process of Hydroponics, one can grow plants in water without using soil. The main components used by plants are water and nutrients, which makes it possible to grow a plant without soil.
Once all the essential nutrients which are required by plants are provided through some other source like a water solution (nutrient-rich solution) containing all the necessary nutrients, one can eliminate the use of soil to grow plants.
According to latest research, there is advanced agronomy technology with Hydroponics. People all around the world seek healthy food grown in a safe environment, where Hydroponics seems to be fulfilling that need. Orissa Post interacted with agriculturist Ekadasi Nanda who said that Hydroponics is the game changer in the agriculture industry. The main concern is to bring the plant in direct contact with the nutrient-rich water solution.
One can start Hydroponics as a mean of additional income by growing and selling plants without much hassle. This technology is all set for commanding a formidable position in the agriculture industry as it doesn’t demand any particular skill required for growing plants. Also, there’s no prior cost involved. By adopting this technology, you can utilize your space and reduce the use of chemical fertilizers for the growth of plants.
This technology has proven to be one of the best for growing crops in urban areas. With all the advantages of Hydroponics system, there are fair chances that this can change the course of the future by restructuring the cities and making them more environment-friendly. Hydroponics can be a game changer for the agriculture industry.
However, it’s not a cakewalk as it seems like, one needs to have access to the proper guidance of subject matter experts to grow and maintain the plants through Hydroponics. My Urban Greens (an initiative by IFFCO Kisan), for instance, is serving similar kinds of services to the urban population and progressive farmers by providing them a customised solution as per their requirements.
Sandeep Malhotra, MD and CEO, IFFCO Kisan, said, “There has been a great hue and cry about the scarcity of water; Hydroponics is emerging as a boon in the agriculture industry as well as in common households. Through this process, plants consume less amount of water in comparison to the conventional gardening system. It’s not just about saving water, but it is observed that plants grown by hydroponics technique consist of 50% more vitamins and it grows faster than traditionally grown plants. It is more profitable for farmers to grow plants through this technology.”
He further added, “IFFCO Kisan provides experts’ advice and services to urban people, FPO’s and progressive farmers related to the right and best practices of Hydroponics farming. We have initiated crop specific advisory services and support in vernacular languages to make this technology easily understandable to the farmers and urban people. We are encouraging and supporting them to adopt this technology and in alignment with that, several training programs are also lined up across different states of the country.”
Tags: HydroponicsInnovative technology
SDLN: The Leading AgTech Networking Forum | Connecting Global High-Level Value-Chain Leaders in Miami, Oct 22 - 24
7/9/2019
Press Release – Keynote, a global leading event company for emerging technology, announced today the Company’s next strategic decision to expand into the AgriTech industry through a new event: Sustainability and Digitalization Leadership Network (SDLN) - Miami Forum.
The 2019 SDLN Miami Forum connects AgriTech’s investors with innovators and their ideas, moving the most critical conversations forward to improve the planet’s future in sustainable agriculture and emerging tech. SDLN is dedicated to addressing today’s food supply challenges by creating a platform for collaborative, open dialogue and high- level networking between industry experts from across the globe.
The three-day event at the James L Knight Center in downtown Miami will cater to AgTech seniors with an international attendance of company executives, investors and market consultants. Alongside presentations covering current world projects and tech advances, the forum will feature panels focusing on innovation vs implementation, long term sustainability and investment in the food ecosystem. This carefully curated agenda will feature entrepreneurs and established investors alongside agriculture’s international leaders, intended to provide strategic, tactical skills and knowledge for those attending.
As a hub connecting agriculture across the Americas and beyond, Miami sets the stage for the rapidly expanding industry. Attendees will meet with innovators throughout the supply chain at the SDLN Official Launch, Wednesday 22nd October, as well as a second evening of networking on Thursday 23rd. Further opportunities for breakout sessions led by industry heads, facilitated networking and 1:1 business meetings will follow.
The first round of presenters announced last week includes Howard Yana Shapiro, Chief Agricultural Officer at Mars; Claudia Rössler, Agriculture Strategic Partnerships at Microsoft; David Friedman, CEO at VividGro.
A core advisory board will oversee and advise on partnerships to ensure quality of connections and sustainable business strategy. For enquiries please email lyndsey@sdlnetwork.com
About Keynote:
Hosting international events since 2012 across Europe, North America and the Middle East, Keynote has curated forums for emerging technology industries, launching high profile fintech projects and acting as a platform to raise significant funds, connecting and enabling companies to reach their potential.
Event Website: https://sdlnetwork.com/
Early bird tickets available until 1st August at sdlnetwork.com
For media partnership enquiries: amandah@sdlnetwork.com
For partner and sponsorship enquiries: amy@sdlnetwork.com
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
June 20, 2019
Plants grow on vertical towers inside Tigris.Photo: Plenty
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.
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.
Related Stories
BY JONATHAN KAUFFMAN
U.S.’s first robotic farm opens in the Bay Area
BY LEENA TRIVEDI-GRENIER
The novice farmer whose search for his roots led to an organic...
BY TARA DUGGAN
The Bay Area company building world’s largest vertical farm...
There are more than 20 companies erecting indoor farms around the country — another Bay Area player is San Mateo’s Crop One, which is building a giant farm in Dubai. Industry leaders say vertical farms can be a solution at a time when labor shortages, drought and climate change threaten outdoor agriculture as well as bring fresh produce to regions that lack arable land. These farms are springing up all over the world, including Japan, the Netherlands and Antarctica.
According to Plenty, the new farm can grow 1 million plants at a time in a facility around the size of a basketball court and process 200 plants per minute, thanks to strides in automation. The new farm means Plenty will be able to greatly widen its distribution to grocery stores and restaurants.
Plenty’s newest vertical hydroponic farm Tigris in South San Francisco can grow 1 million plants at a time in a facility about the size of a basketball court.Photo: Plenty
Plenty, which operates one other farm in South San Francisco as well as farms in Wyoming and Washington, plans to open farms all over the world, and has received $226 million in funding, according to Crunchbase. Plenty’s engineers designed ways to control the environment of each individual plant at the new farm, from the temperature to the amount of light, which impacts flavor.
“On the farm I grew up on, we didn’t measure any of the things we measure here because at the end of the day, there was nothing we could do about it,” said Barnard, who was raised on a cherry and apple farm in Wisconsin.
Inside these vertical farms, everything is intentional and nothing happens by chance, according to engineers.
“We have only one sun outside, but here we can choose the exact light spectrum and intensity based on what we want the plant to taste like,” added Izabelle Back, an engineering manager at Plenty.
In 2018, the company started selling greens through online retailer Good Eggs, San Francisco market Faletti Foods and Roberts Market in Woodside. Barnard said Plenty could expand to as many as 100 grocery stores in the Bay Area by late 2019. He also said prices should continue to drop due to the farm’s efficiency — on Good Eggs right now, a 5-ounce box of salad greens goes for $4.99.
Barnard also hopes to work with more chefs. Plenty supplies San Francisco robot burger spot Creator and fine dining restaurant Atelier Crenn.
Anthony Secviar, chef-owner of Michelin-starred Palo Alto restaurant Protege, described Plenty’s greens as “delicious, vibrant, luscious” and “aesthetically immaculate.” He also remarked on their unusually lengthy shelf life and the lack of need to wash them as being a huge boon for busy chefs.
“We’re begging them to get in the restaurant industry because they’re going to change the game,” Secviar said.
The new farm holds rows and rows of tall green walls, which alternate with walls of bright, colorful LED displays you’d expect to see at Burning Man. Combined with the climate-controlled environment, it clearly racks up a higher energy bill than outdoor farms.
Barnard prefers to look at the entire environmental footprint, including carbon footprint. Since Plenty’s business model is based on distributing only in a farm’s immediate region, its produce travels far fewer miles than, say, avocados from Mexico.
Barnard said Plenty has taken steps to grow more efficient, with the new farm being five times as energy efficient as the company’s other farm one year ago. “We are now roughly on par with a field farm when you look at the total footprint.”
Plenty plans to implement solar and wind power at future farms. The company also claims Tigris uses less than 1% of the amount of land and less than 5% of water compared with conventional outdoor farms.
Because the vertical farming industry is so new, there isn’t much in the way of academic research into its viability. In 2017, Cornell researchers received a three-year, $2.4 million grant to comprehensively study indoor farms, including their environmental impacts compared with outdoor farms. The results are still to come.
Plenty is pushing forward regardless. The company has started experimenting with strawberries and tomatoes and expects to respond to consumers’ increasing interest in plant-based protein with legumes within the next few years.
Some crops, like wheat, are too expensive to grow indoors at scale to be realistic ventures, but the vertical nature of Plenty’s farms doesn’t represent a barrier, according to Plenty chief scientific officer Nate Storey. He said plants adapt to the verticality and support themselves — Plenty has even grown watermelon, which didn’t start dropping to the floor until they reached 20 pounds.
“There’s nothing that won’t work,” he said. “The question is, do the economics make sense today?”
Janelle Bitker is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: janelle.bitker@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @janellebitker
Follow Janelle on: https://www.facebook.com/SFChronicle/janellebitker
Janelle Bitker joined The San Francisco Chronicle in 2019. As the food enterprise reporter, she covers restaurant news as well as Bay Area culture at large through a food lens. Previously, she served as a reporter for Eater SF, managing editor at the East Bay Express, and arts & culture editor at the Sacramento News & Review. Her writing has been recognized by the California Newspaper Publishers Association and Association of Alternative Newsmedia.
Past Articles from this Author: