The Indoor Farm Revolution

Coronavirus chaos has spurred a grow-your-own food movement — and space-age hydroponic technology is rising to meet it.

View fullsize

By Chris Taylor

NOTE FOR 2020 READERS: This is the eleventh in a series of open letters to the next century, now just 80 years away. The series asks: What will the world look like at the other end of our kids' lives?

Dear 22nd Century,

For all the pain, grief and economic hardship the 2020 coronavirus pandemic has sown, a handful of green shoots seem to have taken root in its blighted soil.

Green being the operative word, because many of these developments could be a net positive for the planet. In lockdown, many of us are seeing what our cities look like without smog. Office workers are experiencing office life without the office; just last week, Twitter announced that most of its employees could work from home forever, while much of Manhattan is reportedly freaking out about what could happen to commercial real estate. Thousands of companies just discovered they can still function, and maybe even function better, when they don’t chain employees to desks or force them to make a soul-crushing, carbon-spewing commute 10 times a week.

And what do more people do when they’re spending more time at home? Well, if you’re like my wife, you start literally planting green shoots. Our house is filling up with them as I write this: lettuce, chard, tomatoes, basil, strawberries, to name the first five shoots poking out of dozens of mason jars now taking up residence on every windowsill. She’s hardly alone; garden centers and seed delivery services are reporting as much as 10 times more sales since the pandemic began. Even the mighty Wal-Mart has sold out of seeds. If viral Facebook posts and Instagram hashtags are any guide, pandemic hipsters have moved on from once-fashionable sourdough starters to growing fresh fruit and veg. 

Another one of our cyclical “back to the land” movements seems to be underway, just like during the 1960s and the Great Depression before that. Only this time, we don’t need land. We don’t need soil. We don’t need pesticide of any kind. We don’t even need natural light. Thanks to giant leaps forward in the science of hydroponics and LED lighting, even people in windowless, gardenless apartments can participate in the revolution. With a number of high-tech consumer products on the way, the process can be automated for those of us without green thumbs. 

In previous letters I’ve discussed the inevitable rise of alternative meat, a process that has been accelerated by the pandemic. I talked about the smaller, more nutritious plant-based meals we're going to need for life extension; I assumed such meals would be delivered by drone. But now I see a future with no food deserts, in which every home is filled with rotating space-station-like hydroponics run by artificial intelligence — a cornucopia of push-button farming providing the side salad to your plant-based meat. 

Even if you don’t grow your own, robot-run vertical farms and community “agrihoods,” now springing up everywhere, will make amazing-tasting produce abundant and cheap. The “locavores” of our era like to boast about their 100-mile diet. Yours will look more like a 100-yard diet. 

Green, not soylent 

It’s worth remembering that it wasn’t supposed to be this way. The 2020s, in fact, is when we were slated for starvation, food riots, and big business quietly processing our corpses into food. 

That’s the plot of the 1973 movie Soylent Green, set in the year 2022. Fruit and veg have all but vanished. In one scene, Charlton Heston's detective hero smuggles home a single tomato and a wilted stick of celery, enough to reduce his roommate Sol (Edward G. Robinson) to tears. On the other end of the future, in a lighter but equally depressing vein, the 2006 comedy Idiocracy showed the Americans of 2500 running out of crops because they couldn’t figure out that water, not "Brawndo" (a spoof on colorful sports drinks), is “what plants crave.”

But these dismal future visions are receding thanks to the science of hydroponics — which dates back to the 19th century, no matter its present-day association with growing marijuana. By the 1930s, we’d figured out that what plants crave is surprisingly minimal: nitrogen, a handful of minerals, something to anchor the roots like rock wool or coconut husks, and H2O. Early hydroponic farms helped feed U.S. soldiers as they hopped through the Pacific during World War II.

Minimalist methods multiplied, and are still multiplying. We’re tweaking the spectrum of LED lights for maximum growth, and figuring out ways to use progressively less water and nutrients. My wife’s mason jar seedlings use something called the Kratky method, where you don't even need to change the water. It turns out this method was invented by a Hawaiian scientist as recently as 2009. And it’s the closest science has yet given us to a free lunch.

Reinventing the wheel

I’m nowhere near as excited by hydroponics as my wife is. But during our quarantine time, even my head has been turned — by the Rotofarm, which I’ve come to think of as the iPhone of gardening. It’s a beautiful device inspired by NASA research on growing plants in space. It uses anti-gravity — literally, when the wheel rotates around its LED light source and the plants are hanging upside down — to grow plants faster. A magnetic cover reduces the glare and increases the internal humidity. You manage it via an app.

Humankind’s oldest technology turns out to be the most efficient use of space for growing plants; even in this 15-inch-wide wheel, you can really pack them in. At the bottom of the wheel, plants dip their roots into the water and nutrient tanks. An owner’s only job is to refill the tanks every week or so, and to snip off their dinner with scissors a few weeks after germination. Some leafy greens, like my favorite salad base arugula, can be regrown without replanting.

Still, to be fully self-sufficient, a future apartment is going to need to have multiple Rotofarm-style devices on the go at once — but they’re designed to live anywhere you can plug in, on coffee tables, on desks, on walls, as eye-catching as artwork.

The main problem with the Rotofarm: It isn’t actually on sale yet. “It feels like we’ve done everything in reverse,” Rotofarm creator Toby Farmer said when I reached him via video chat from his home in Melbourne. “We’ve got the patents, we’ve got the design awards, we’ve got the customers. Now we need to finish the prototypes.” (One key tweak: reducing Rotofarm’s energy requirements, which as it stands could double many users’ household electricity bills.)

Still, orders have come from as far afield as Japan and the Netherlands, from retailers and regular users alike. Farmer’s biggest regret: When Ron Howard’s production company called, hoping to use eight Rotofarms in an upcoming Nickelodeon show set in space, Farmer didn’t have enough to spare.

Rotofarm has been in the works for a few years, but a crowdfunded Indiegogo campaign that closed last month exceeded its $15,000 goal by a third of a million dollars. Farmer, despite his name, had no experience in this area; just 23 years old, he had been a web designer since the age of 12. But he’s scaling up fast, hiring teams in LA and Singapore, soaking up their knowledge (he was keen to assure me he’d hired a lot of 40-somethings for this very reason).

After a projected 2021 release date, Rotofarm’s business model involves making money on proprietary seed pods — though Farmer admits that “there’s a DIY aspect” where customers can make their own. His hope is that official Rotofarm pods will be competitive because they’ll have fewer germination failures, but he'd rather see a world where more people own the device itself. In that spirit, he’s making it modular — the LED light bar can be upgraded separately, for example, rather than making customers buy a whole new device. (As for cost, Farmer says he can't comment yet — though Indiegogo backers were able to secure one for $900 a pop.) 

Might the Rotofarm fail? Of course, just like any other crowdfunded project. Much depends on its price point, as yet unannounced. But it’s far from the only next-level, set-it-and-forget-it hydroponic station taking aim at your kitchen. There’s a Canadian Kickstarter called OGarden that also grows food on a wheel, albeit a much larger wheel. The OGarden was funded in its first six minutes online and is set to cost around $1,000 per unit. There’s Farmshelf, a $4,900 pre-order hydroponic device that looks like a see-through refrigerator, backed by celebrity chef Jose Andres. Users will pay a $35 monthly subscription to get all the seeds they need. 

One of these models is the future; maybe all of them are. Right now, these are high-end devices aimed at early adopters (and restaurants, which get a lot of benefit out of showing off how fresh their produce is as customers walk-in). But with scale, with time, and with the growing desire for grow-your-own food that Rotofarm and its brethren have revealed, they will get cheaper and more widespread. 

After all, the first Motorola cellphone, in 1983, cost $4,000. It looked like a brick and had 30 minutes of talk time. Now sleek, supercomputer-driven smartphones are accessible to pretty much everyone. The same process will happen in-home hydroponics. 

Rise of the vertical farm

Give it 80 years, and I can see apartments with built-in hydroponic farms provided as a standard utility, much as a fridge is seen as a standard feature today. As more humans move to urban environments — two out of every three people will be in cities by 2050, according to the latest UN estimate — the need for such devices will only grow.

“We strongly believe the future of gardening is indoor gardening and more individual gardens,” OGarden CEO Pierre Nibart told us last year. “Stopping mass agriculture and starting to produce their own little stuff at home.” He said this while demonstrating his family's daily OGarden routine: His kids harvest most of what they need for dinner from the spinning wheel. 

Mass agriculture hasn’t exactly covered itself in glory where produce is concerned. And in the post-coronavirus age, we are surely going to become less tolerant of the disease its intensive farming methods have caused.

Food poisoning caused by romaine lettuce, which makes up a quarter of all leafy greens sold in the U.S., has become depressingly familiar. The 2018 E Coli outbreak was the worst — it sickened 240 people in 37 states, hospitalized almost half of them, and killed five. But the CDC has logged 46 E Coli outbreaks since 2006 and says that every reported case of infection is likely matched by 26 unreported ones. And they’re only just starting to figure out the most likely cause: groundwater contaminated by nearby cattle manure. There could also be an infection from passing birds, another major vector of bacteria. 

Never mind the wet markets of Wuhan that likely caused the coronavirus pandemic. We’re already sickening ourselves on the regular with a problem that is baked directly into our food system — and it’s affecting vegans as much as meat-eaters. 

I have no doubt you’ll look at our barbaric farming methods and shake your heads. Why did they use so much water? Why did they transport produce an average of 1,500 miles? Why did they grow it outdoors, where it’s vulnerable to pests, and then use pesticides that had to be washed off? Why did they think “triple washing” did anything to remove bacteria (it doesn’t)? Why did they bother using soil, for goodness’ sake? Didn’t they know what plants crave?

The force of legacy agriculture is strong, but an increasing number of companies are figuring out a better way: the vertical farm, so named because they can stack hydroponic produce in shelves or towers. As I write this, there are more than 20 vertical farm operations being constructed and tested around the country. They use around 90 percent less water than regular soil farms, can grow roughly 10 times more food per acre than regular soil farms, and using precision software they can harvest their produce 30 percent faster than regular soil farms. 

Sure, they’re spending more on electricity, but they’re also spending nothing on pesticide. The economics seem irresistible.

Last year, less than 20 miles from where I write this, in highly urbanized South San Francisco, a company called Plenty unveiled its flagship operation, a vast vertical farm named Tigris. Its sheer scale invites the correct usage of California’s favorite word, “awesome.” Tigris can grow a million plants at once, harvesting 200 of them every minute. With $226 million in funding, Plenty says it has already farmed 700 varieties of produce. Right now, the cost to consumers is comparable to non-hydroponic products (I can get their baby arugula at my nearest Safeway for a dollar an ounce); in the long run, it should be cheaper.

And they are far from the only success story. A Chinese startup, Alesca Life, is turning disused parking lots into vertical farms as well as selling plug-and-play shipping container farms. Back in Silicon Valley, a company called Iron Ox is developing robot arms for indoor farmwork. The future looks green and bountiful, and mostly automated (which is yet another reason you’re going to need Universal Basic Income). 

View fullsize

Fresh future: Inside Plenty's vast vertical farm in South San Francisco.PLENTY

Which is not to say that outdoor agriculture is going away completely; it’s just going to shrink to the size of a community garden. That’s the basis of new urban developments called “agrihoods,” or multi-home communities centered around a professionally managed farm; a just-published book called Welcome to the Agrihood represents their first directory. 

Rooftop organic farms, urban allotments: These are places where city dwellers can connect to the land and feel the satisfaction of nurturing their seeds from scratch. Soil may not be necessary to feed us, but sometimes it’s good to feel the dirt in your fingers. Similarly, farmer's markets are unlikely to go away. In a world where grocery stores are increasingly becoming delivery centers for services like Instacart, there will still be value in meeting and buying direct from the growers of high-end produce. 

With big agribusiness heading indoors, with our apartments growing much of what we need and vertical farms providing backup in every city, we’ll also be able to let most of our present-day farmland go fallow. That in itself should take care of a chunk of climate change, considering the amount of carbon-soaking vegetation that springs up on fallow land. Lab-grown and plant-made meat will remove the need for those disease-ridden feedlots. Aquaponics, another discipline where the science is expanding by leaps and bounds, may even let us grow our own fish for food, reducing the strain on our overfished oceans.

No doubt it won’t be all smooth sailing. No doubt we, as humans, will stumble upon fresh ways to mess up the planet and make life worse. But from where I’m sitting, surrounded by soilless germinating jars, the future looks very green and nutritious indeed.

Yours in leafy goodness,

2020

TOPICS: Tech, Tech, Food, Health & Fitness, dear 22nd century, Internet Of Yum, Indoor-gardening

Irish Vertical Farming Technology Startup Farmony Signs European Distribution Agreement With US LED Horticultural Lighting And Vertical Farming Equipment Provider Sananbio

Dublin, Ireland | May 19th, 2020 ​

SANANBIO, a global leader provider in LED horticulture lighting and vertical farm technology, announces strategic distribution partnership with Dublin based startup for European markets. Farmony will build a network of interconnected, controlled environment vertical farms across Europe.

Irish Agtech company Farmony has signed a European distribution deal with Sananbio for their vertical farming Radix systems. The Dublin based startup, established in 2018, will incorporate Sananbio’s technology into their controlled environment vertical farming solutions.

“As our climate continues to change and populations across the globe expand, food production must evolve in order to keep pace with these unprecedented changes. We are delighted to announce our partnership with Sananbio; global leaders in cutting-edge vertical farming technology developed to empower the modern farmer and spur sustainable local food production. Sananbio is the ideal technology partner to complement our own customized, automated controlled environment software & hardware solution. ”-​ ​John Paul Prior, Strategy and Sales Director, Farmony

View fullsize

Farmony: Left to right: John Paul Prior (Strategy Director), Dan O’Brien (CEO), Rodrigo Andrade (Operations Director)

“Farmony provides Sananbio with the ideal partner to expand our industry leading technology into the European markets. With over one million square feet of commercial vertical farms currently using RADIX, farmers, and investors in more than 10 countries believe in our company's highly engineered grow technology. In Farmony we have a partner that adds significant value to our product offering through exceptional sales & marketing, IOT focus and new product development. " -​Michael Yates, Vice President Sales, Sananbio

View fullsize

ABOUT Sananbio®

SANANBIO is a leading Ag-tech company backed by one of the world’s largest LED chip manufacturers. Supported by an elite R&D team comprised of plant scientists, researchers, and engineers; SANANBIO utilizes state-of-the-art technology that enables growers worldwide in the horticulture industry to increase the quality and quantity of their yields. Years of extensive research and real-world deployment and operations allow SANANBIO to offer its customers proven, scalable, efficient and cost-effective solutions in LED horticulture lighting and Controlled Environment Agriculture (CEA) vertical farming grow system; as well as turn-key vertical farm solutions including building, transfer, financing, and training of staff for both large and small-scale farming facilities. SANANBIO empowers growers with the technology and knowledge to achieve unprecedented results in farming operations.

Learn more:​ ​ SANANBIO

View fullsize

Farmony build controlled environment Vertical Farming solutions: Left to right: Rodrigo Andrade, Dan O’Brien, John Paul Prior

John Paul Prior asks will vertical farming mean that Irish horticulture finally gets its 'day in the sun'?

ABOUT Farmony

With offices in Dublin & mainland Europe; Farmony provides an operating system for Controlled Environment Farms through a combination of software and hardware, customized specifically for vertical farming applications. The Farmony operating system provides producers with grow recipes, real time alerts, and feedback on the efficiencies of their farm, while also automating dosage, irrigation, and lighting.

Through the aggregation of the associated growing data from their network of producers, Farmony can then optimize yields and, through machine learning technology, ensure that the network is constantly improving it’s output for its network of users, establishing a growing efficiency algorithm.

Their partnership with Sananbio, facilitates all-year-round pesticide-free growth of leafy greens, microgreens, and herbs from a footprint of 55 Square Meters, producing the output equivalent of 5 acres of traditional farmland. Farmony has recently opened a facility in Poland to support their European expansion.

Learn More:​ ​www.farmony.ie​ ​www.farmony.pl

Media Contact: John Paul Prior +353 86 8116708

Variety of Healthy Foods From Vertical Farming Platform

When talking about technology, it's easy to focus on things like computers, smartphones, apps and the growing number of smart gadgets around the house. But technology is far-reaching and can influence and change traditional sectors quickly, one of them being the agricultural sector.

One company that is looking to take on the commercial agricultural industry is Eden Green Technology, just out of Texas. This company focuses on sustainability in the food industry. Eddy Badrina, CEO of the company tells about what they do, how they use technology, and how they envision the future of the agricultural industry.

View fullsize

Efficient use of space
"Eden Green Technology is a vertical farming platform that grows large quantities of local produce safely, sustainably, and efficiently. We use less land, energy, and water than both traditional farming and other indoor solutions. Our greenhouses are constructed on small footprints, in urban or suburban areas, to provide stable jobs and produce non-GMO, pesticide-free produce, which goes from farm to table in as little as 48 hours, compared to the 14 days it usually takes under the traditional model," Eddy says.

The founders of Eden Green are brothers Jacques and Eugene van Buuren. They came to the US to secure investment, source talent, and experiment with their technological solutions in diverse climates. They started in Texas, with its own extreme range of environmental considerations, agricultural know-how, and business opportunities, and built from there. 

Technology company
"Our technical secret sauce consists of a few ingredients, including our patented vertical “vines,” where our produce grows, and the way we create microclimates for each individual plant with temperature-controlled air and nutrient-enriched water. We also designed and built a proprietary mechanical, electrical, and plumbing solution specifically to automate and remotely monitor all our greenhouses. Because of that hardware and software combination, we like to think of ourselves as a technology company that happens to grow produce."

Read more at Vator.

By Horti Daily | May 4, 2020

How An Unlikely Farmer Is Plotting The Future of Food

View fullsize

By: Dan Morrell; photographed by Scott Nobles

In a nondescript former root beer plant, tucked behind the Curtain & Bath Outlet off Main Street in Millis, Massachusetts, FreshBox Farms is growing the future of food.

View fullsize

The FreshBox facility bears no resemblance to our cultural renderings of a farm; not only is there no soil, but every attempt is made to contain the risk that such outside organic matter could introduce. Visitors are asked to dip the soles of their shoes into a shallow plastic water bath, so as to limit contamination by pathogens and insects. Entry into one of the facility’s 15 growing units—8' x 40' metal boxes resembling shipping containers—necessitates a white cap and a lab coat. The units feature a double-door protocol that requires the exterior door to be closed before a second internal door can be opened. In the far corner of the building, a larger-scale model of the growing unit features an entry foyer with a ventilation system that cycles the air every few seconds and a secondary system designed to blow out any pathogens or insects that might have snuck past earlier garrisons.

All of this security is in place to protect—sans pesticides—the racks of Styrofoam-like growing beds inside the units, which are filled with leafy greens and fed by precisely tuned LED lights. An intricate digital system measures the room’s temperature and the CO2 levels inside the units every 30 seconds, adjusting as necessary; another delivers computer-calculated nutrients and water through the plant beds. These precision systems allow the facility to use about 1 percent of the water required by traditional farming counterparts while producing the equivalent of a 400-acre farm in just 27,000 square feet of space. It’s as if nature has been stripped of its variability and cranked all the way up.

Which is exactly the kind of tech upgrade the world food system needs to be given our increasingly insecure ecosystem, says Sonia Lo (MBA 1994), CEO of Crop One Holdings, which owns and operates the FreshBox brand. Sitting in FreshBox’s makeshift conference room—a long table, chairs, and a monitor, surrounded by four very high stacks of the white foam growing racks—she lays out the challenge. Climate change and its progenies, drought and flooding, are threatening traditional agricultural systems. And even when those systems work, they still rely on carbon-intensive shipping supply chains that move food thousands of miles from where it is grown to the tables where it is consumed. The global population is rising, with the United Nations projecting it to swell to 9.7 billion from its current 7.7 billion by 2050. “We also have to solve the calorie deficiency that we’re going to confront by 2050 on this planet,” she says. “We have to produce 70 percent more calories than we produce today to feed that population.”

Addressing a problem with that kind of span requires scaling beyond the 8' x 40' units—and beyond Millis. “The modular unit that’s going into Dubai will be three times the size of this,” says Lo, motioning to the larger-scale model in the back left corner of the facility. In June 2018, Crop One won a bid to provide leafy greens to Emirates Airlines’ flight catering company, and it is in the midst of building a 130,000-square-foot facility in Dubai that they expect to produce three tons of greens a day. It’s an almost unfathomable amount of daily production, but Lo puts it in perspective. “A single fast-food restaurant chain uses 300 million pounds a year of leafy greens alone,” she says. “A one-ton-a-day farm produces 740,000 pounds a year. So even if we built a 50-ton-a-day farm, you’re still only producing 240 million pounds a year. You would serve one customer.”

That 50-ton-a-day mark is a real goal, says Lo, and the Dubai farm will be a big proof of concept. And while any company’s world-saving ambitions can resemble Silicon Valley–like hype, Lo stresses that there’s a path, and the first step was figuring out how to most effectively grow lettuce in climate-controlled shipping containers in this former root beer plant. “We’re doing this in a very logical, road-mapping way. We’re not trying to bend the laws of physics. We are trying to enhance control. We’re trying to grow 365 days a year. We’ve been growing every day since February of 2015, which is pretty remarkable for any farmer to be able to say. We have not stopped growing even one day, you know?”

View fullsize

“We’re not trying to bend the laws of physics. We are trying to enhance control. We’re trying to grow 365 days a year.”

View fullsize

Lo is an admittedly unlikely farmer. She grew up as the daughter of Korean diplomats, a life that provided her with a multitude of international addresses and seven languages. And while growing up in fully staffed ambassadorial residences and being transported in limousines with darkened windows and little flags on the hood seems strange in retrospect, the multicultural upbringing had an impact that Lo has only recently come to realize.

About six years ago, Lo met a neurologist who was fascinated by her early experience with languages. “I would love to study you because the way that your neural networks have been formed must be so different—because you were really substantively multilingual before you were seven,” the doctor told her. “The implications of that are problem-solving, so you’re probably going to be able to see two or three solutions around something in a way that other people don’t.” The other benefit, the neurologist noted, was creativity. While Lo never saw herself as a creative person, she did seem to have a knack for seeing overlooked connections between ideas and then visualizing and building maps to explain those correlations.

These cartography skills have proved vital to her career. In the late 1990s, Lo was working on innovation and ventures for a media company in London when she realized that the industry was due for disruption. In a meeting with the CEO, Lo drew him a network diagram of what the future infrastructure of TV distribution was going to look like. “It’s all going to be bits and bytes,” she told him. Lo would later help stitch together some 200 European internet cafés to build a digital media platform; when the entrepreneurial bug bit soon after, Lo built a Groupon-like platform that helped smaller companies get product discounts.

That startup, eZoka, was pulling in £1 million a month until outside investment was derailed by the attacks of September 11, 2001. She spent a year cleaning up the aftermath. Exhausted and bruised, she decided to step away from business, attending culinary school and becoming a private chef in London for two years. (Lo donated all her earnings to charity and coauthored a book during that time, Dining with Dictators, which was part political satire and part cookbook.)

Lo returned to business in 2004, starting Chalsys, an investment and advisory practice that helps large companies avoid the pitfalls of corporate venturing. And it was through this company that she met a German investor who would become an initial Chalsys coinvestor and, eventually, one of the firm’s partners. In 2012, Phil Strause (MBA 1967), a former boss from an early career stint at Deloitte, sent Lo a business plan for a vertical farming company. She forwarded it on to the German investor, whose family, it so happened, had major European agriculture holdings. “You know, this is really interesting,” he told Lo. “Because if the unit economics of this thing turns out to be even remotely true, it’s the future of food.”

View fullsize

Lo’s interest was piqued. She knew almost nothing about farming and had always just trusted that the Western world’s food supply was safe and reliable. But as she dug into the research, she began to realize how wasteful, unsafe, and unreliable it really was. Conventional agriculture was facing substantive infrastructure problems while the cost of the tech solutions to address these issues was declining rapidly. It was a recipe for revolution.

But what Crop One needed was one of Lo’s maps. After their initial investment in April of 2013, Lo describes the business as “failing to launch.” There was a leadership deficit and a business model that hadn’t accounted for returning investor capital—which included a significant investment from the Chalsys partner to whom she’d initially forwarded the business plan. “By the end of 2013, we reached the point where I confronted either writing it off and writing off my friend and benefactor’s money—or I was going to pull the nose up.”

Lo stepped in as CEO in July 2014. She built out the team, including hiring Chief Scientific Officer Deane Falcone, an expert plant biologist from the University of Massachusetts, to start defining the science side. “I was trying to figure out the technology road mapping for an industry that didn’t have a road map and, in fact, wasn’t an industry,” she says. But she also changed the mindset. “I was asking ‘Why is this an investable industry? Why is this a world-class company? How do we get it to be on the world stage?’ And that’s really the big fundamental shift.”

Lo focused on three factors for growing in her first few years at Crop One: lowering costs, enhancing yield, and segregating risk.

In her first 18 months, the company worked to reduce the cost of the growing units from $560,000 to $43,000. To boost production, they leaned heavily on Falcone’s expertise, allowing him time to test and tweak the inputs—temperature, CO2 levels, water, LED spectrums—to determine optimal growing conditions for the various greens. This focus on nailing the plant science, says Lo, was a differentiator, though one she didn’t immediately grasp. “I have enough experience in technology that I thought, ‘I totally see this hardware being commoditized.’ ” But she soon realized that it wasn’t the racks and tubs and trays that would separate them—anyone could buy those at their local hydroponics store. “But very few people can grow at the density and with the specificity that we can,” says Lo. The risk issue was addressed with what she refers to as the facility’s “triple defense system,” which includes the shoe bath, the growing units’ double-door protocol, and the lab coats. Better defenses mean decreased loss and, therefore, higher yields.

By the fall of 2015, FreshBox had six production units and was distributing its leafy greens to the local Roche Bros. supermarket chain, filling plastic clamshells with kale and spring mix on-site. Originally occupying only 24,000 square feet of the warehouse, it expanded to take over the facility’s entire 43,000 square feet. “What surprised us was the take-up and the demand, the kind of hunger for the product,” says Lo. More than 90 percent of the country’s leafy greens are produced in Arizona or California, according to the states' Leafy Green Marketing Agreement, and transportation to New England can take weeks; FreshBox being able to offer Massachusetts consumers a locally grown product not subject to the region’s cruel winters has proved to be a boon to the brand.

The addition of more modular units also allowed the company to grow different types of greens, enhancing R&D and commercial growth. This diversity came into play when they were bidding for the Emirates contract. Up against a very capable Japanese company that was already producing some 1,700 pounds a day, Crop One boasted 24 plant varieties to the Japanese company’s 4.

The Emirates farm is scheduled to have its first harvests this year, and plans for national expansion are now underway. Crop One will only be a minority owner in these new farms, says Lo, noting that the farming aspect of the business is very capital intensive. But they’ve pursued a project financing model rather than venture financing. “Project financiers are not starry-eyed venture capitalists,” she says. “They’re not romantic at all.” They want to see cash flow and mitigated risk, not hockey-stick returns. “We believe that in every technological disruption you have to have hand-in-hand capital model disruption and business model disruption because you don’t reinvent an industry unless all of those things coalesce. This is the wholesale replacement of agricultural infrastructure, right?”

“Gigafarms we’re defining at 50 tons a day. We hope to build our first gigafarm in the next five years, which is pretty ambitious.”

Deciding on future locations, Lo says, will come down to costs—energy and labor, chief among them—and existing local sources. Meaning, on the latter, can they grow anything there outdoors? “So in the Middle East, definitively not, right? You really have to bend the laws of physics to grow stuff there. Northern Europe—doesn’t grow very much, good prices, high labor, reasonable green energy, right?” The US Midwest has solid energy options and population density. There’s great hydroelectric power in New York, so the Northeast could work. The Southeast too. “When we look out across the United States, we would map against the major retailers’ distribution center network,” says Lo, meaning they’d build a farm at these centralized locations—23 of them to be exact. “We see a minimum of 23 megafarms.”

A megafarm? “Somewhere between 1 and 10 tons [of production] a day,” says Lo. “Gigafarms we’re defining at 50 tons a day. We hope to build our first gigafarm in the next five years, which is pretty ambitious. That’s our sort of moonshot goal.”

But she can see it pretty clearly. Twelve megafarms in Northern Europe, maybe one or two gigafarms. Russia would make sense. The Middle East is almost there.

Another ultimate goal, says Lo, is carbon neutral—vertical farms set up next to, say, a giant solar field or a wind farm. “We look at the industry, and it’s pretty clear you can’t put a sustainable label on yourself unless you solve the energy piece of it—and we don’t see our competitors doing that,” she says.

Crop One is also exploring decarbonization models, pairing with power companies to feed its CO2 to their plants. “We have people who are rocket scientists”—literally—“who are looking at this for us and doing the energy analysis. I touch base with them every couple of months just to say, ‘So tell me, if we were to approach power plants about being their carbon sink, who would we go to?’ They know who we would go to.”

Lo has the coordinates; she sees the path. “I think it is a tangible, known goal in which we have known steps.”

Vertical farming is still far from mainstream, but Lo notes its profile began to rise a few years ago, thanks to a marquee investment: In July 2017, Softbank’s Vision Fund led a $200 million funding round into Plenty, a San Francisco–based vertical farming startup. “That really moved the needle,” she says.

Don Goodwin, the founder and president of produce consulting firm Golden Sun Marketing—and a longtime attendee of the School’s Agribusiness Seminar—has closely tracked the industry’s ascent. He estimates that there’s some $2 billion invested in the space right now, with money flowing in from VCs, sustainable private equity funds, and billionaires like Eric Schmidt and Jeff Bezos, who also contributed to that July 2017 Plenty funding round.

“We look at the industry, and it’s pretty clear you can’t put a sustainable label on yourself unless you solve the energy piece of it.”

The recipients of those funds vary, says Goodwin. “There’s a number of reasons people come into the space. We have the small local operator who has a vision and a past, and wants to change the way people eat,” he notes. “And then we have these ‘big idea’ guys like Crop One.” Those businesses, he notes, are “trying to create a sustainable investment strategy, not only from traditional economic terms but also from societal terms.”

Which means that growing locally in a vertical farm allows FreshBox to compete on price and mission. Here’s how that works, Goodwin explains: “If [the lettuce] is grown in Massachusetts, I can put it on [a grocery store’s] dock at the same price or lower than if you grow it in California and truck it across the country. And so I get all that benefit of the freight. I get the shelf life that you’ve given up—the seven or eight days to get there by truck. And I get the whole sustainability message because of food miles.”

While she gets the business model and consumer appeal, Mary Shelman (MBA 1987), former director of HBS’s Agribusiness Program, is slightly wary of the world-saving aspirations of vertical farming. She’s heard entrepreneurs discuss how they can manipulate the LED lighting to create arugula with different flavor profiles, for example, even varying the spiciness. “But at the end of the day, how much does arugula really help if we have to feed nearly 10 billion people?”

Which isn’t to say that Shelman thinks there is no value in it. “I think we can learn things from their systems—because they have the ability to do controlled experiments—that we can then take outside or in more traditional, controlled-environment agriculture,” she says, “and use that in those systems that are lower capital cost.”

Chief among vertical farming’s costs is energy. “It’s the industry’s dirty little secret,” says Lo. So noticeable is indoor farming’s drain on a local grid, she notes, that law enforcement used to monitor spikes in electricity demand to find illegal marijuana growers.

The energy costs are improving, plus Crop One is constantly refining its design to increase efficiency, adds Deane Falcone. Scaling up will be a big help. He contrasts the climate system they use for the larger model in the corner of the facility to the individual systems on the independent units. “It’s like if you had a 10-bedroom house: Would you have 15 window air conditioners, or would you have a central air-conditioning system?”

Driving down costs is important because Lo ultimately wants this model to be cheap enough to be a solution for the developing world. “I do not want to be in a carbon-intensive industry; I want to be producing a nutritionally relevant meal, and I do not want to only be in the business of feeding rich people,” she says.

But if vertical farming is going to feed the world, it will also need to expand beyond lettuce and kale. Wheat and corn are unlikely, says Lo, but rice could eventually be a possibility. “Two-thirds of the world population’s staple diet includes rice,” she notes. But there’s perhaps an even greater opening here: Andrew D. Ive (MBA 1997), former managing director of the Food-X accelerator and founder of Big Idea Ventures, says that the meat-production model that much of the world still relies on is wildly inefficient at producing protein. “It basically takes nine calories of energy or input to get one calorie out,” says Ive. “Whereas if you’re producing a plant-based material, it’s closer to one-to-one. It also doesn’t require the same land use, it doesn’t require the same water use, et cetera. So leafy greens are great, but if you’re thinking about how to supply food for the 9 billion, then you’re really, really focusing more on other protein sources and other kinds of plant-based sources.”

This plant-based protein movement is fast becoming mainstream. Even the McDonald’s in the shopping center across Main Street from FreshBox Farms could be offering meatless burgers soon: The fast-food chain recently announced a trial partnership with Beyond Meat, whose products are made in part from yellow peas. So, yes, says Lo, getting to the point where her farms could grow yellow peas and soybeans—a crucial ingredient of the plant-based Impossible Whopper, Burger King’s early market entrant—would be ideal. The ongoing food revolution needs a parallel farming revolution to succeed.

Lo is on it. Crop One, she says, is researching these and other high-protein plants and investigating how her farms can produce products that can provide the world with necessary subsistence while also absorbing carbon dioxide at a higher rate.

“That will cause an explosion of take-up,” says Lo. “Because, again, we can’t continue on the trajectory that we’ve been on. We just can’t.”

Someone has to do something, even if that someone is a first-time farmer trying to build a global revolution in an old root beer plant in small-town New England.

Topics: Agribusiness-Plant-Based AgribusinessInnovation-Disruptive InnovationLeadership-Leading Change

US: Florida - Kalera Opens New Vertical Farming Facility In Orlando

March 03, 2020 | Source: Kalera

View fullsize

Kalera, a technology-driven vertical farming company, announced the opening of its new state-of-the-art growing facility in Orlando, Florida. Daniel Malechuk, CEO of Kalera, believes the company is leading the way in defining what pick-to-plate means for the future.

Kalera’s New Facility Is The Highest Production

Volume Vertical Farm In the Southeast

ORLANDO, Fla., March 03, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Today, technology-driven vertical farming company Kalera announced the opening of its new state-of-the-art growing facility in Orlando, Florida. This new facility is the highest production volume vertical farm in the Southeast.

The rapidly constructed facility also demonstrates Kalera’s ability to quickly build and open farms around the US and the world. This new facility complements Kalera’s initial HyCube growing facility located at the Orlando World Center Marriott and is centrally located in the heart of Florida, one of the largest tourist destinations in the world. The new facility has the capacity to supply millions of heads of leafy greens per year to consumers while also providing dozens of new high-quality jobs.

Originally announced at the end of August, Kalera was able to get its new growing facility up and running in less than six months due to a streamlined design and construction process that illustrates the company’s ability to quickly scale and expand its vertical farms. Kalera was able to retrofit the existing building with its proprietary technology to create the highest production volume vertical farming facility in the Southeastern United States. As Kalera accelerates its growth over the next few years, it will build additional facilities, expanding production capacity throughout the US and internationally.

“Adding a large-scale vertical farm to Central Florida was the next logical step for us as a company. We’ve spent years perfecting and fine-tuning our technology to place us as industry leaders in the local farming ag-tech revolution," said Daniel Malechuk, CEO of Kalera. “Right now, we are leading the way in defining what pick-to-plate means for the future. In a sense, we are trying to perfect Mother Nature indoors by combining science and technology with farming.”

View fullsize

The new facility has the capacity to supply millions of heads of leafy greens per year to consumers while also providing dozens of new high-quality jobs.

"Kalera's business is built on good science. We’re planting non-GMO seed, and over the past several years we have perfected plant and data science-driven methods to optimize the growing environment, nutrient mixes, and distribution that make plants thrive,” said Cristian Toma, Chief Technology Officer of Kalera. “We’re excited to be able to meet customers’ demands for cleaner, safer, non-GMO, pesticide-free leafy greens that are fresher, boast a longer shelf life and higher nutritional value, and are grown locally with consistently high yields.”

The company utilizes cleanroom technology and processes to eliminate the use of chemicals and remove exposure to pathogens. With indoor facilities situated right where the demand is, Kalera is able to supply an abundance of produce locally, eliminating the need to travel long distances when shipping perishable products.  This means Kalera can ensure the highest quality and freshness by delivering product to customers within hours of harvest rather than days or weeks. Kalera's plants grow while consuming 95% less water compared to field farming.

Kalera opened its first vertical farm in 2018, the HyCube growing center, on the premises of the Orlando World Center Marriott to bring fresh, local produce to the hotel’s visitors and customers. This farm has served as a successful model illustrating the place of vertical farms in the sustainable food movement.

About Kalera
Kalera is a technology-driven vertical farming company with unique growing methods combining optimized nutrients and light recipes, precise environmental controls, and cleanroom standards to produce safe, highly nutritious, pesticide-free, non-GMO vegetables with consistently high quality and longer shelf life year-round.  The company’s high-yield, automated, data-driven hydroponic production facilities have been designed for rapid rollout with industry-leading payback times to grow vegetables faster, cleaner, at a lower cost, and with less environmental impact.

Media Contact:
Elka Karl
Phone: 510-508-7328
Email: elka@dadascope.com

Institute For Advanced Learning And Research And Virginia Tech Launch The Controlled Environment Agriculture Innovation Center in Danville

View fullsize

By urbanagnews

February 17, 2020

View fullsize

The partnership will create a hub of innovation and economic development in an industry expected to grow to $4 billion

The Institute for Advanced Learning and Research (IALR) is partnering with the Virginia Tech School of Plant and Environmental Sciences and the Virginia Seafood Agricultural Research and Extension Center to launch a Controlled Environment Agriculture Innovation Center on IALR’s campus in Danville, Virginia.

The Innovation Center will leverage technology and research to accelerate advancements, economic development, and regional participation in the developing industry of indoor farming. The value of U.S. greenhouse-grown food crops is expected to exceed $4 billion this year.

“We are delighted that the Institute for Advanced Learning and Research and Virginia Tech’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences have combined their expertise to create a top program in controlled environment agriculture. This collaborative effort is creating tremendous energy and excitement because of its potential to provide innovative solutions to the agricultural community,” said Alan Grant, dean of the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. “Partnerships like this will help us realize the vision of the SmartFarm Innovation Network Initiative to support the agriculture industry.”

Convening industry, academia and producers, the Innovation Center will be housed primarily within a modern greenhouse complex on IALR’s campus. Features will include various hydroponic systems, which grow plants in a soilless root medium with optimal amounts of water and nutrients. Vertical growing racks will maximize space, and high-tech engineering and technology will be integrated and on display throughout the center.

High-value demonstration crops will include lettuce, herbs, strawberry, blackberry, hemp, and more. In addition, faculty and staff involved in the center will research and educate on raising fish in controlled environments using aquaponics, or recirculating aquaculture systems that integrate plant and fish production. While traditionally viewed as separate fields, plant and fish production share many similar technologies, issues, and needs.

“We are excited to partner with Virginia Tech, a fellow champion of cutting-edge innovation, to expand the impact of agriculture in promising new ways,” said Mark Gignac, executive director of IALR. “While agriculture is a longtime industry of Southern Virginia, economic factors have demanded a new identity. We believe controlled environment agriculture is one of the defining solutions, and we are proud to work with Virginia Tech to introduce the concept to our region’s growers and attract industry.”

According to Michael Schwarz, director of the Virginia Seafood Agricultural Research and Extension Center, this new collaboration will further bolster domestic seafood production.

“The U.S. currently has a national seafood trade deficit in excess of $15 billion, with more than 50 percent of the seafood we consume originating from aquaculture,” he said. “Through this new programming and leveraging of expertise and infrastructure, we have the opportunity to drastically increase domestic seafood and produce production within the state, region, and country, enhancing food safety, security, sustainability, and, most importantly, socioeconomically within our agriculture economies.” 

Controlled environmental agriculture helps protect plants from disease and stress while providing ideal growing conditions for high-quality, quick-to-harvest food products — sometimes in as fast as two weeks depending on the crop. In addition to hydroponic systems, the Innovation Center will use data management, sensors, and vertical structures to ensure ideal distribution of water, energy, capital, and labor. Plus, strict entry protocols will prevent pests. Together these factors result in a high-quality, consistent product with significantly more harvests than outdoor conventional production methods. Other advantages of controlled environmental agriculture include uniform, year-round production, potentially pesticide-free agriculture, and greatly reduced land and water requirements.

AeroFarms, a leading controlled environmental commercial producer based in New Jersey, recently announced the world’s largest indoor farm to be located in Cane Creek Centre in Pittsylvania County, just minutes from IALR. While this industrial-sized operation demonstrates scalability, Michael Evans, director of Virginia Tech’s School of Plant and Environmental Science, believes the technology is accessible to even small farmers in the region.

To encourage market growth, and in line with IALR’s role as a regional catalyst for economic transformation, the Innovation Center will introduce controlled environmental technologies to regional parties interested in entering the market. Conferences, workshops, site visits, and a web presence will comprise part of the outreach and educational activities. According to Evans, controlled environment agriculture is a rapidly growing sector that offers many potential opportunities in Southern Virginia.

“We are excited to house this facility on the Institute for Advanced Learning and Research’s campus and to benefit from both the technology developed and the associated economic development opportunities it provides for the region,” said Scott Lowman, director of applied research at IALR. “Consumer demand for healthy, local, and pesticide-free produce is high and will continue to increase in the coming decades. We look forward to serving this need through controlled environment agriculture.”

The Institute for Advanced Learning and Research serves Virginia as a regional catalyst for economic transformation with applied research, advanced learning, advanced manufacturing, conference center services, and economic development efforts. IALR’s major footprint focuses within Southern Virginia, including the counties of Patrick, Henry, Franklin, Pittsylvania, Halifax, and Mecklenburg, along with the cities of Martinsville and Danville. For more information, visit www.ialr.org.

For more information on IALR, contact Allison Moore at allison.moore@ialr.org or 434.766.6766

• TAGS Business Controlled Environment Agriculture Education Leafy Greens

• Research Virginia Tech

Indoor Farming Companies Rank High On FoodTech 500 List

View fullsize

Amy Sowder

February 7, 2020

AeroFarms, Bowery Farming, and Crop One Holdings are ranked at Nos. 1, 3 and 125, respectively. The three companies have northeastern indoor farms and specialize in leafy greens.“

We’re proud to be recognized,” Marc Oshima, chief marketing officer of Newark, N.J.-based AeroFarms, said in a news release. “Forward Fooding says our proprietary aeroponic technology is transforming the future of food, now.”Inspired by the Fortune 500, the FoodTech 500 list of mission-driven companies was created by Forward Fooding, a global network of entrepreneurs enabling collaborations and partnerships among established food organizations and startups.

There were more than 1,200 applications from 54 countries in eight categories, according to the Forward Fooding website.

At No. 3 on the list, Bowery Farming, New York, N.Y., is an automated, indoor vertical farm as well.

Ranking No. 125, Crop One Holdings includes the FreshBox Farms brand of leafy greens grown and distributed to retailers from its indoor Massachusetts farm.

Find out what other companies made the list at https://forwardfooding.com/foodtech500.

Logo courtesy Forward Fooding

Related Topics: Sustainability Ag Sustainability Sustainability/Going Green Produce Tech Technology Northeast (U.S.) New York New York City New York Produce New Jersey New Jersey Produce Massachusetts

Autogrow Launches Wireless Smart Sensor Network Into US $40 Billion Global Greenhouse Market

5 February 2020

Leading AgTech expert Autogrow has released a wireless smart sensor giving greenhouse operators high-density microclimate data to improve yield, quality and decision making.

View fullsize

Each Folium sensor gathers environmental data including temperature, humidity, CO2, PAR, RAD and barometric pressure, which growers can view on a heatmap - immediately seeing differences across their grow areas. Folium enables greenhouse operators unlimited depth of environmental analysis, as the number of sensors is completely scalable.

“We’ve advocated for a long time in the industry that you can’t manage what you don’t measure and the decisions you make are only as good as the sensor technology gathering the data. Folium will go a long way to giving growers actionable data using state-of-the-art heat mapping technology. It reveals what the eye can’t see,” explains CEO Darryn Keiller.

“According to market analysts, the global greenhouse market is looking to exceed US$40billion in the next 5 years, so it’s a growth market we are excited to support. With over two years of research and development, and a huge amount of hard work from my team, it’s fantastic to have Folium in the market and offer greenhouse growers new technology that will substantially impact their bottom line.” 

Folium’s target customer is large greenhouse growers who, simply by the size of their operations, require high-density climate data to ensure all areas of their facilities are providing the optimal environment for growth. The sensor network reliably scales to any size greenhouse.

Chief Technology Officer Jonathan Morgan notes that sensor technology can be incredibly complex but the experience for the grower should be easy and meaningful.

View fullsize

“We’ve been lucky to work with some fantastic growers throughout the development of Folium who have shared their time, knowledge and grow operations to ensure we are solving some of the pain points they experience when dealing with microclimates,” says Mr. Morgan.

“This is just the beginning of what Folium will be able to do. With the way our technology has been designed, we can easily introduce new features that continually support growers. They can also add more Folium units as their business grows and being connected to our cloud platform gives them access anywhere at any time.”

For more information www.autogrow.com/products/folium

PHOTOS: Folium unit in a greenhouse / Heatmap image showing PAR readings

Kylie Horomia

Head of Brand & Communications

kylie.horomia@autogrow.com

(m) +6421 733 025 

www.autogrow.com

www.farmroad.io 

www.cropsonmars.com

 About Autogrow

Autogrow leverages the power of technology, data science, and plant biology to provide indoor growers affordable, accessible and easy-to-use innovation – 24/7, anywhere in the world.

Our solutions support growers and resellers in over 40 countries producing over 100 different crop types.

 We are the experts in Controlled Environment Agriculture (CEA) and continue to stay ahead of a rapidly evolving landscape. 

Autogrow, Level 1, Building 3, 61 Constellation Drive, Mairangi Bay, Auckland 0632, New Zealand

A.G. Kawamura Joins Board of Indoor Growing Tech Company

February 7, 2020

Agt3 Holdings, a Laguna Niguel, Calif., indoor vertical growing technology company, has appointed former California Secretary of Agriculture A.G. Kawamura to its board.

Kawamura, who led the California Department of Food and Agriculture from 2003-10, is a founding member of Orange County Produce. The Agt3 Holdings board is made of agriculture industry leaders with “unparalleled experience and expertise in sustainable, economically strong urban farming,” according to a news release.

“A.G.’s extensive expertise in innovative farming and sustainable agriculture will be invaluable to the Agt3 Holdings Board,” CEO Ed Horton said in the release.

Kawamura is involved in numerous agriculture groups and is a co-chairman of Solutions From the Land, a member of AGree Initiatives’ Ag Advisory Committee, a member of the Board on Agriculture and Natural Resources, a Western Growers board member, a member of the advisory committee for the Agricultural Sustainability Institute at the University of California-Davis, and a trustee for the Council on Agriculture, Science, and Technology.“

With the rapid expansion of urban agriculture, innovative vertical farms like Agt3 Holdings offer a solution to the changing landscape,” Kawamura said in the release. “I look forward to collaborating with Ag t3 Holdings and its board of like-minded visionaries.”

Lead Photo and logo courtesy Agt3 Holdings; graphic by Amelia Freidline )

 Related Topics: Greenhouse Produce Tech

How Stockholm Wants To Be 'The Green Food Tech Hub of The Future'

View fullsize

news@thelocal.se

10 January 2020

Tim Marringa

foodfoodtechtechnew

Lead Photo: Photo: Stina Stjernkvist / TT

In 2017, the Swedish food retail sector was worth 272 billion kronor. But how can the Nordic nation embrace innovation to make the food chain more sustainable? Several startups and business accelerators are investing heavily in sustainable development in the form of foodtech.

At Grönska, 1.3 million plants are grown each year in long rows of racks filled with stacked drawers. This hall in Huddinge in Stockholm county is not just a business premise, but a high-tech vertical farm. Food is grown locally in a controlled and space-efficient environment.

"Sweden imports 60 percent of its food and a third to a quarter of the emissions in Sweden comes from transporting food," Natalie de Brun, one of the co-founders of the startup, tells The Local.

"Sweden has a short season of three to four months where food can be produced. By producing food in a vertical farm, we do not depend on the climate. We are replicating nature inside and stacking the crops, which is very space-efficient. Each shelf has its own LED lighting and circulating water system. Here we can grow strawberries all year round."

Foodtech is a movement of companies that are trying to change the way we grow, transport and consume food. By combining traditional and innovative technologies, the idea is that food can become more efficient, sustainable and healthier.

Bright LED lights light up the business space in Huddinge. The plants follow an artificial daylight rhythm to grow as efficiently as possible. Delicate plants such as different kinds of herbs and lettuce are growing in stacks of about 20 metres wide and six metres high. Grönska employees are walking around and taking care of the plants.

"Food is something everyone consumes every day, and you can have a direct effect on it yourself," explains de Brun. "We are selling our products to local restaurants, supermarkets and even an airline. Growing the amount of arugula or lettuce we grow in one year would require at least 15 times more space if grown on an open field, and 100 times more carbon emissions from transportation."

View fullsize

The vertical farm located in southern Stockholm is one of Europe's largest. Photo: Lars Pehrson / SvD / TT

In an office in the Söderhallarna building on Stockholm's Södermalm, Sweden Foodtech brings companies together by organizing events and focuses on major themes around the future of food. One of the key questions is simply: How do we manage to feed future generations?

Together with supermarket Coop and impact hub Norrsken, Sweden Foodtech offers support to companies that want to 'reshape the food system'.

"Food is a huge market, from production and transportation to supermarkets and restaurants. But innovation in the sector is very minimal. That's something we would like to change," says Federico Ronca, Innovation Consultant at Sweden Foodtech.

"One-third of all the food in the world is wasted," he adds. "A few big producers are managing the whole food market. We are trying to work with them and convince them to open up to new initiatives and technologies. We're connecting the dots, and creating an 'orchestra of the players'."

The initiative started as a food festival, SMAKA -- Good Food Festival, which grew into one of the biggest food festivals on the planet and developed into Sweden Foodtech. Ronca sees Sweden and Stockholm as perfect places for foodtech projects. 

"There is a large tech sector and a great digital infrastructure. Sweden and the Nordics are the best in sustainable development, they are leading in the world. Sweden also doesn't have a strong food tradition, as France and Italy have. That makes that people are very open-minded about food," he explains.

Stockholm as a hotspot for innovative businesses

The same goals are shared by Stockholm Business Region, the Swedish capital's official promotion agency, which is dedicated to creating a good ecosystem for innovative businesses and hopes to turn the Stockholm into a "leading foodtech hub".

"Stockholm truly is an innovation-driven place. It's full of early adopters", says Irena Lundberg, a business manager at Stockholm Business Region.

"These consumers are aware of their responsibility and like to buy eco-friendly products. There is natural support from the city for all kinds of sustainable projects, and Sweden itself is a very steady environment for starting a business."

The public interest, environmental awareness, Nordic culinary traditions and active tech community in the city make Stockholm the place to be for foodtech initiatives, she believes.

But despite strong ambitions, there are not yet any figures or statistics available to fulfill the hopeful expectations. Stockholm Business Region is currently monitoring 300 businesses in the foodtech industry, and according to Lundberg, expects to see results "in about one year".

At Grönska, we walk along the rows of racks where all kinds of herbs and lettuce varieties are grown. The founders of this vertical farm have experienced the opportunities available to startups in Sweden firsthand.  

"Stockholm is a great place to start an innovative business. There is a great startup culture, we really feel empowered and encouraged here. There are a lot of facilitators and enablers that help us grow our business," says de Brun.

View fullsize

In the vertical farm in Huddinge, various herbs and lettuce varieties are grown locally and used in supermarkets and restaurants. Photo: Stina Stjernkvist/TT.

Until now, traditional greenhouse production is the norm. This type of production is less energy effective and has higher transportation emissions. But Grönska sees a big technology shift coming up. 

"In the near future we can inexpensively build high tech vertical farms and grow food on a large scale," says de Brun. "This way we can grow our food local and more energy-efficient and people can eat better and healthier. There will be more space for other players in the food market."

But she admits that it will take time to change the food industry.

"We are working with a fresh, organic and alive product," explains de Brun. "It's a complex and established industry. Everyone needs food every day, you can't change that system overnight. There's a lot going on, and it's cool to be part of that wave. Food is key."

SWITZERLAND: Migros Basel And Growcer Launch Joint Vertical Farming Project

“Vertical Farming Meets The Demand

For More Sustainability And Regionality"

Together with the Migros Basel cooperative, Growcer is developing the first "Robotic Vertical Farm" in Switzerland, in order to grow regional foodstuffs there in the future, independent of weather conditions, pesticide-free and water-saving, and - thanks to the shortest transport routes - to deliver them quickly to the Migros branch. The start of production is imminent, and the first products are expected to be available exclusively in the MParc Dreispitz in the summer.

Switzerland's first "Robotic Vertical Farm" is currently being built in a hall located on the Wolf site in Basel. From sowing to irrigation and harvesting, machines take over the work fully automatically. The production chambers are sealed off from the environment, which means that production can take place all year round without soil, without any pesticides and with up to 90 percent less water.

In addition to all this, land consumption is, of course, minimal, as the cultivation beds can be stacked. This creates around 1,000m2 of cultivated area on a surface area of just 400m2. The farm can produce leafy vegetables and herbs all year round and, thanks to the immediate proximity of the sales point in the MParc Dreispitz, these can be delivered absolutely fresh within hours of being harvested.

Regionality and continuity
"Switzerland, like many countries, is dependent on imports. Via Growcer we bring regionality and continuity into it. In addition, pesticides are a problem for the population and nature, which we can solve by doing without them. With Migros Basel we have found a partner who supports our values and goals and is committed to the introduction of a new generation of sustainable products", says Marcel Florian, CEO of Growcer AG.

"Vertical farming is a trend that meets the demand for more sustainability and regionalism", says René Lori, Head of Supermarkets/Catering at Migros Basel. "The cooperation with Growcer gives us the opportunity to invest in an innovative and future-oriented project".

Year-round production
The production facility on the Wolf will be completed next spring, and the first products are expected to be available exclusively at Migros in the MParc Dreispitz in the summer. It is planned to produce further vegetables or fruit all year round at a later date and to supply other branches.

Migros Basel and Growcer are looking forward to the cooperation.

Source: Migros Basel

View fullsize

Publication date: Fri 17 Jan 2020

Europe Can Be At The Heart of Tech With Purpose

View fullsize

View fullsize

09 Jan 2020

1. Tom Wehmeier Partner and Head of Research, Atomico

This article is part of the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting

• Venture-backed, purpose-driven companies represented 12% of all capital invested in Europe in 2019.

• Talent and consumers are both demanding start-ups display social commitment.

• Only 1 in 5 start-up founders actually measure environmental and social impact.

“Some say China has all the data, and the US has all the money. But in Europe, we have purpose.”

Thus observed EU commissioner for competition Margrethe Vestager when she outlined her priorities for the next five years in October.

Her words could not be timelier. This year, the number of purpose-driven European founders who have pitched to us at Atomico has been overwhelming. Tech leaders have the most powerful tech toolkit in history available to them, and European companies are stepping up to help solve some of the world's most pressing challenges such as the climate crisis and healthcare.

We quantified this trend in our annual State of European Tech report, released in November. With Dealroom, we created a framework to assess venture-backed European tech companies based on their alignment with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The analysis focused on a subset of seven of the 17 SDGs. Only companies where the purpose-driven impact was considered core to the business model were included in the final dataset and analysis.

View fullsize

In total, the analysis identified 528 unique venture-backed, purpose-driven tech companies. They raised a total of $4.4 billion in capital investment in 2019, up from less than $1 billion in 2015. That $4.4 billion represents 12% of the total capital in Europe invested in 2019. It also represents the third largest “industry” in European tech by capital invested, behind fintech and enterprise SaaS.

These companies span Europe and include Infarm in Germany, which is building advanced vertical farms, telemedicine firm Kry in Sweden, and insect farming start-up Ÿnsect from France.

From an investor's point of view, it is obvious that the world’s biggest challenges also represent some of the world’s biggest markets and opportunities. But the rise of purpose-driven tech in Europe is also a response to the changing priorities of talent and consumers in Europe.

More debate and visibility over the impact and unintended consequences of digital technology on our society have made talent think more about working for companies that align with their values. Kate Hilyard, COO at Healx in the UK who we partnered with this year, expressed this trend very well in the report.

“At Healx, we believe every rare disease patient deserves a treatment. It's this belief that drives us to achieve our mission of taking 100 new treatments towards the clinic by 2025. Having such a clear mission also helps with recruiting and retaining the best and brightest talent. For the team here, there's no bigger motivator than knowing you're applying your skills to improving the lives of patients, their careers and their families. This is especially the case for the many team members who count either themselves or a relative amongst the 400 million people worldwide living with a rare disease.”

View fullsize

Then there are consumers who also want to support companies that align with their values and beliefs. According to a survey of 30,000 global consumers by Accenture Strategy, 62% of consumers want companies to “take a stand on current and broadly relevant issues like sustainability, transparency or fair employment practices”.

It also makes sense that European tech start-ups are differentiating themselves on purpose, as compared to their US or Asian peers. Many western European countries are leaders on sustainability from energy to transportation. According to RobecoSAM and Robeco’s Country Sustainability Ranking, a comprehensive framework for analyzing countries’ ESG performance based on governance, societal and environmental considerations, seven of the top 10 countries are in Europe.

View fullsize

Despite this rise in purpose-driven companies, only one in five founders told us in our State of European Tech survey that they are already measuring their firm’s environmental or social impact – something potentially important for all tech companies regardless of their business model. Given that the majority of founders say they are considering measuring this, and only 14% say they don’t think it’s important, measurement seems to be one way that investors could support all founders to consider the impact of their business on society.

In the early 20th century, technologies from electrification, to the washing machine to the jet engine improved the day-to-day lives of millions and opened up new frontiers for humanity. Technology drove economic growth and boosted prosperity, but it also left deep scars on the environment and failed to solve big problems such as global food security.

Though we are only two decades into this century, the work of purpose-driven European founders suggests that the legacy of technology in the 21st century might have a more beneficial and transformational impact on our society, one in which purpose and profit are mutually reinforcing.

Lead Photo: An employee of the urban farming start-up Infarm checks an indoor growing system.

Image: REUTERS/Hannibal Hanschke

CES 2020: The Planty Cube Aims to Make Vertical Farming More Modular And Automated

View fullsize

View fullsize

by Jennifer Marston

JANUARY 7, 2020

View fullsize

While many questions remain around exactly what role vertical farming will play in the future of agriculture, there are a few things we can count on with certainty. These indoor farms will become more and more automated over time, as well as modular. They will also be more user-friendly to the average consumer or small business, something evident by the number of indoor farming offerings at CES 2020 this week. 

Among those offerings is the Planty Cube, a smart hydroponic indoor farm made by a Seoul, South Korea-based IoT company called n.thing. The grow system is modular enough to work in a number of different settings, from an apartment to a cafeteria, and automated enough that pretty much anyone can operate it.

Like other vertical farms out there, the Planty Cube environment contains rows and shelves of planters stacked inside a shipping container. Plants rely not on soil and human hands cultivating them, but instead on a computerized system that delivers the right “recipe” of nutrients, water, and light from LEDs to help photosynthesis. Humans have little involvement with the actual plants during the grow process. Most of the work on the farm, such as adjusting the LEDs, controlling temperature and humidity, and monitoring plant health, is done by the Planty Cube system, which uses sensors to collect data on the plants and can be controlled remotely by a smartphone.

Leo Kim, n.thing’s CEO, came up with the idea for the farm after creating an IoT-enabled smart pot called “Planty.” From there, the company developed the Planty Square, a modular system made up of multiple capsules called Pickcells, each roughly two inches in width, length, and depth, that contain the seeds of each plant. Users can connect multiple Squares (“like a Lego block,” says Kim) to grow larger crops, and enough of these put together make up the Planty Cube farm.

The Planty Cube system relies heavily on data from farming logs, which are fed back into a database known as the CUBE Cloud and analyzed with AI to help farmers determine optimal growing conditions for each crop. As the user adds more Squares to the farm with new and different crops, this real time, cloud-based system makes it easier for the user to manage the overall farm, even remotely.

While a number of companies now operate automated vertical farms that grow leafy greens, most of these (Kalera, Plenty, Intelligent Growth Systems) are better suited to large warehouse settings that produce millions of heads of lettuce. Planty Cube’s modular and user-friendly nature make it a more apt candidate for places like schools, hospital cafeterias, and university dining halls — all locations that would benefit from having freshly harvested greens onsite.

Planty Cube nabbed a Best of Innovation award for CES this year. If you’re currently milling about the show floor in Vegas, drop by n.thing’s booth to see the Planty Cube in action.

• AG TECH BUSINESS OF FOOD FEATURED FOODTECH MODERN FARMER VERTICAL FARMING

"I Like To Call Us A Technology Partner Instead of Equipment Supplier"

Niko Kivioja, Netled:

Netled CEO Niko Kivioja was interviewed by the International Association of Vertical Farming, AVF, about the future of Netled and vertical farming. In the first part of the interview, Niko’s thoughts on Netled and the future of the company are shared.

View fullsize

How did Netled come to regard vertical farming as the future of the company?

My father started organic tomato greenhouse production, one million kilograms annually, in 1987. That was our family business for 25 years until he retired. We started to develop more energy-efficient lighting for that greenhouse in 2005 and established Netled Oy in 2007 to facilitate the R&D. Focus in vertical farming started by joint development, a 500 sq m project to Robbe’s Lilla Trädgård in 2015.

We’ve been supplying technology already in 7 industrial type vertical farms scaling from 100 to 4500 sq m.

How do you select the technologies that you are currently using?

Our core team has 25 years of experience in commercial horticulture and CEA growing. We have learned from the best possible practices and technologies from these fields modified them to fit into vertical farming and topped that with our special design for vertical farms such as automation integration, LED lighting, racking design, climate design, and energy re-circulation as well as processing design, just to mention few.

We differ from many other suppliers by our own integrated design in all parts of our Vera Vertical Farm. There are no third-party suppliers of commercially available equipment. This allows us to have the best knowledge of the technology and take the technology risk to ourselves.

How is Netled’s own Vera the most advanced vertical farming system in the world?

Vera Vertical Farming System is an ecosystem-level combination of technology, services and IT, developed especially for industrial-scale vertical farming. This means that Vera is an all-inclusive technology with verified yields and technical performance, topped with maintenance and outsourced technology risk. I like to call us a technology partner instead of an equipment supplier because we are aiming at long-term partnerships instead of quick sales.

In addition to performance, we’ve also developed the best possible layout and material flow allowing optimized internal logistics expenses and labor costs. So, we are developing our system from the smallest detail to the overall general, making sure all parts are planned to serve the best possible performance.

Our automation level consists of the full-automatic growing environment, growing cycle for crop logistics (transplanting and spacing) and full-automatic harvesting, platform processing and replanting of crops. We have developed Vera OS, high-level software, for advanced care of crops, while our hardware-level automation is designed as robust and highly integrated. Vera OS has 53 parameters for static and dynamic care for each layer/crop, making a total of 318 parameters in each production unit. These parameters are packed into growing programs with the closest description being the recipe.

Standard growing recipes are supplied with the facility, but we also allow our clients to develop their own recipes. We develop constantly our own recipes, so our clients have the best possible recipe for their crops.

From this perspective, Vera constantly improves its yield and performance. The well-working recipe can also be copied to any Vera Vertical Farming System, because of our standardized, but easily scalable and modular technology with the same growing results. This allows Vera growers to make also additional income or focus purely on recipe development and sales.

We offer Vera in proof of concept scale with 96 sq m production area and industrial-scale modular system with 1000 to 7000 sq m production area in a single production unit.

The article is based on an interview conducted by the Association of Vertical Farming.

View fullsize

For more information:
Netled
+358 40 1585528
solutions@netled.fi
netled.fi

View fullsize

Publication date: Fri 3 Jan 2020

How 16 Initiatives Are Changing Urban Agriculture Through Tech And Innovation

View fullsize

Andrea Oyuela

Thursday, January 2, 2020

The United Nations estimates (PDF) that nearly 10 billion people will live in cities by 2050. According to a recent publication by the Barilla Center for Food & Nutrition, urban eaters consume most of the food produced globally and maintain more resource-intensive diets including increased animal-source and processed foods — rich in salt, sugar and fats. At the same time, many urban populations — particularly in low-income areas and informal communities — endure acute hunger and malnutrition as well as limited access to affordable, healthy food.

But there are countless ways that cities can feed themselves and create better linkages between rural and urban food systems. In Mexico City, the organization CultiCiudad built the Huerto Tlatelolco, an edible forest with 45 tree varieties, a seed bank and plots for biointensive gardening. In the United States, City Growers uses New York City’s urban farms as a learning laboratory for children to reconnect with nature. And in the Kalobeyei Settlement in northern Kenya, urban agriculture represents a tool for empowerment by improving food security, nutrition, and self-sufficiency among refugees.

"Agriculture and forestry in the city… answer to a variety of urban development goals beyond the provision of green infrastructure and food, such as social inclusion, adaptation to climate change, poverty alleviation, urban water management and opportunities for the productive reuse of urban waste," says Henk de Zeeuw, senior adviser at the RUAF Foundation.

And thankfully, hundreds of entrepreneurs and organizations are using this opportunity to improve urban agriculture and satisfy the demands of an increasingly urban population. From high-tech indoor farms in France and Singapore to mobile apps connecting urban growers and eaters in India and the United States, Food Tank highlights 16 initiatives using tech, entrepreneurship and social innovation to change urban agriculture.

There are countless ways that cities can feed themselves and create better linkages between rural and urban food systems.

1. AeroFarms, Newark (United States)

AeroFarms builds and operates vertical indoor farms to enable local production at scale and increase the availability of safe and nutritious food. The company uses aeroponics to grow leafy greens without sun or soil in a fully controlled environment. The technology enables year-round production while, they say, using 95 percent less water than field farming, resulting in yields 400 times higher per square foot annually. Since its foundation in 2004, AeroFarms aims to disrupt conventional food supply chains by building farms along major distribution routes and in urban areas. The company also won multiple awards, including the 2018 Global SDG Award, for its environmentally responsible practices and leadership in agriculture.

2. Agricool, Paris (France)

Agricool is a start-up that grows strawberries in containers spread throughout urban areas. The company retrofits old, unused containers to accommodate both an LED-lights and aeroponics system making it possible to grow strawberries year-round. The Cooltainers are powered by clean energy and use 90 percent less water than conventional farming. Agricool also works on building a network of urban farmers through the Cooltivators training program, aiming to open up job opportunities for city residents to work in the agricultural sector. The start-up works on expanding operations to other cities, an effort made possible by the replicability of the container’s design.

3. BIGH Farms, Brussels (Belgium)

BIGH (Building Integrated Greenhouses) Farms, a start-up based in Brussels, works on building a network of urban farms in Europe to promote the role urban agriculture can play in the circular economy. BIGH’s designs integrate aquaponics with existing buildings to reduce a site’s environmental impact. The first pilot — above the historic Abattoir in Brussel’s city center — includes a fish farm, a greenhouse and over 2,000 square meters of outdoor vegetable gardens. It started in 2018 producing microgreens, herbs, tomatoes and striped bass. BIGH Farms also partners with local businesses and growers to make sure the farm’s production is complementary to the existing food community.

4. Bites, Phoenix (United States)

Bites is a mobile platform working to help connect urban farmers, chefs and eaters in Phoenix through farm-to-table dining experiences. Eaters and chefs sign up and meet through the app to organize an in-home dining event. Chefs gather the ingredients from urban growers registered on the platform in an effort to promote local, small businesses. Bites was launched in 2017 by Roza Derfowsmakan, founder of Warehouse Apps, to improve accessibility to farm-to-table experiences and support urban farmers. By using technology to build culinary communities, Bites aims to change consumer choices from shipped-in, trucked-in produce to locally sourced food — involving people in the solution itself.

5. BitGrange, Multiple Locations (North America)

BitGrange is an urban farming tool and learning platform working to help educate children on food and agriculture. The BitGrange device, a hydroponics and internet of things-based system, produces edible plants with little water and energy. BitGrange’s software evaluates environmental variables in real-time and notifies growers through a smartphone app to take necessary actions, such as adding more water or plant food. Founded in 2015 according to its philosophy, Plant-Connect-Sync-Play, BitGrange aims to inspire youth to engage in farming by gamifying agriculture. The nano-farm’s design is available for download at BitGrange’s website for potential growers to 3D print the device in their own location.

Chefs gather the ingredients from urban growers registered on the platform in an effort to promote local, small businesses.

6. Bowery Farming, New York Metro Area (United States)

Bowery Farming, an indoor farming start-up, uses software and robotics to grow produce inside warehouses in and around cities. By controlling every aspect of the growing process, the start-up is able to produce leafy greens and herbs using a minimal amount of water and energy per square foot. The technology also makes it possible to grow customized products for chefs and restaurants, such as softer kale and more peppery arugula. Since its establishment in 2017, Bowery Farming is expanding operations beyond its New Jersey warehouse to build vertical farms in other cities and, ultimately, bring efficient food production closer to consumers.

7. Farmizen, Bangalore, Hyderabad and Surat (India)

Farmizen is a mobile-based platform renting farmland to city residents to grow locally grown, organic produce. The app allocates its users a 600 square foot mini-farm in a community nearby. Users can visit the farm anytime to grow and harvest chemical-free produce. Farmworkers look after the plots when the users return to the city, making a fixed and stable income — up to three times more than that of conventional farming. The app is live in Bangalore, Hyderabad and Surat with 1,500 subscribers and 40 acres of land under cultivation. Farmizen was founded in 2017 by entrepreneur Gitanjali Rajamani, driven by the need to create stable livelihoods for farmers and reconnect city-dwellers to agriculture and nature.

8. Fresh Direct, Abuja (Nigeria)

Fresh Direct is an impact-driven start-up using vertical farming and hydroponics to promote locally grown produce and the involvement of youth in agriculture. When young entrepreneur Angel Adelaja started engaging in eco-friendly farming, she faced multiple challenges with conventional farming practices, including access to land, water and technology. As a response, Adelaja founded Fresh Direct in 2014 to make urban agriculture more accessible to everyone, especially youth. Fresh Direct installs stackable container farms in the city, growing organic produce closer to the market. In the future, Adelaja aims to eradicate the notion among young professionals that agriculture is a line of work for the older generations.

9. Gotham Greens, multiple locations (United States)

Gotham Greens builds and operates data-driven, climate-controlled greenhouses in cities across the United States. The greenhouses, powered by wind and solar energy, use hydroponics to grow salad greens and herbs year-round using fewer resources than conventional farming. In addition to its goal of sustainable food production, Gotham Greens also partners with local organizations, schools, community gardens and businesses to support urban renewal and community development projects. Gotham Greens is also the company behind the country’s first commercial rooftop greenhouse, a partnership with Whole Foods Market to operate the greenhouse above its flagship store in Brooklyn, New York.

10. GrowUp Urban Farms, London (United Kingdom)

GrowUp Urban Farms works on developing commercial scale, Controlled Environment Production (CEP) solutions to grow fresh food in communities across London. The CEP farms use aquaponics to farm fish and grow leafy greens in a soil-less system, turning previously unused brownfield sites into productive areas. The GrowUp Box — a community farm developed together with sister organization GrowUp Community Farms — produces over 400kg of salads and 150kg of fish each year. Over the long run, the company aims to replicate the aquaponics system to build urban farms in other cities, opening employment opportunities for youth and using agriculture as a means to make communities more self-sustaining.

11. InFarm, multiple locations (Europe)

InFarm, a Berlin-based start-up, develops modular indoor farming systems to bring agriculture into cities. Designed to combat the long distances food travels, the InFarms produce leafy greens and herbs using 95 percent less water than traditional farms and no pesticides. The technology, the company claims, can reduce food transportation up to 90 percent. In 2013, the company pioneered the modular system in restaurants, schools, hospitals and shopping centers. Operations have expanded to distribute portable farms in neighborhoods and supermarkets across Germany, Denmark, France and Switzerland. The expansion, AgFunder reports, can be attributed to InFarm’s decentralized, data-driven model.

The farm’s closed-loop system works with used coffee grounds — collected from local businesses — to turn residual flows into food.

12. Liv Up, São Paulo (Brazil)

Liv Up works to deliver healthy meals and snack kits prepared with locally grown food to residents of the Greater São Paulo region. The start-up sources organic ingredients from family farmers in peri-urban areas, in an effort to shorten value chains and better connect small producers to the urban market. A team of chefs and nutritionists prepares the meals, which are later deep frozen to maintain the food’s integrity and extend its shelf life. Liv Up was founded in 2016 by a trio of young entrepreneurs driven by the lack of access to healthy foods in São Paulo. The start-up operates in seven municipalities of the metropolitan area, rotating its menu every two weeks.

13. Pasona Urban Ranch, Tokyo (Japan)

Pasona Urban Ranch, an initiative of the Pasona Group, is a mix of office space and animal farm in the heart of Tokyo’s busy Ōtemachi district. The initiative aims to raise interest in agriculture and dairy farming among city residents by bringing them in close contact with farm animals. The ranch houses eight animal species, including cattle, goats and an alpaca, which are cared for by specialized staff. Visitors and employees of the building can attend seminars on dietary education and dairy farming. Previously, the Pasona Group gained worldwide acknowledgment for Pasona O2 — an underground office farm built by Kono Designs in 2010 growing 100 regional crops in downtown Tokyo.

14. RotterZwam, Rotterdam (The Netherlands)

RotterZwam, an urban mushroom farm, raises awareness on the potential of the circular economy for addressing environmental issues. The farm’s closed-loop system works with used coffee grounds — collected from local businesses — to turn residual flows into food. The mushroom nursery, built out of old containers, uses solar paneling to power the farm’s operations and the e-vehicles used for product delivery. The farm’s team offers tours to educate citizens on circular systems and trains entrepreneurs wishing to start a mushroom farm. RotterZwam’s second location in the Schiehaven area opened in mid-2019 thanks to a crowdfunding campaign to bring back the farm after a devastating fire in 2017.

15. Sustenir Agriculture (Singapore)

Sustenir Agriculture is a vertical farm working to promote high quality, locally grown and safe food with the lowest possible footprint. The farm — in the heart of Singapore — uses the latest technology in hydroponics and smart indoor farming to produce leafy greens, tomatoes, strawberries and fresh herbs. Starting as a basement project in 2012, Sustenir produces 1 ton of kale and 3.2 tons of lettuce per month in an area of 54 square meters.

16. Urban Bees, London (United Kingdom)

Urban Bees is a social enterprise working with communities and businesses in London to help bees thrive in the city. Through education and training, the initiative raises awareness on how to create bee-friendly communities and on how to become responsible beekeepers. The first training apiary was established together with the Co-op Plan Bee in Battersea, South London. The enterprise also advises urban gardening initiatives, including Lush’s rooftop garden, to ensure that green areas install the right forage and create healthy bee habitats. Co-founder Alison Benjamin says that city residents often suffer from nature-deficit disorder and urban beekeeping is one path to reconnect with nature in the city.

This story first appeared on:  Food Tank

Lead Photo: Shutterstock Jose L VilchezView of an urban garden in the Panyu District in Guangzhou, China

Tags:  Food & Agriculture urban agriculture Technology Innovation

Mpatisi Moyo Joins Autogrow

Autogrow has recruited Mpatisi Moyo Ph.D. as Head of Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) to further their strategy towards creating the digital farmer. 

View fullsize

PHOTO: Mpatisi Moyo

Working closely with the wider R&D team and alongside the Director of Agronomy & Crop Science, Dr Tharindu Weeraratne; Mpatisi will focus on yield prediction models and computer vision enhanced products.

“A.I. by itself is not enough to solve the larger issues across the industry. We see the value in the combination of biological science with modern cloud technologies creating value and insight for our customers. You can’t make improvements to crop growth without fully understanding the crop itself and all the variables that go into getting quality yield,” says Jonathan Morgan, Chief Technology Officer. 

“Mpatisi’s background in statistical, biological and machine learning technologies will enable us to further extend our solutions and push into new and as yet undiscovered areas of Controlled Environment Agriculture.” 

Mpatisi has worked across the health, government and corporate sector and is eager to find ways to assist growers with forecast revenue and harvest times.   

“The experience Mpastisi brings will be particularly useful across our FarmRoad solution where the focus is on bringing together what can be incredibly broad and complex information in a format that is easy to understand and manage - especially for larger, global organizations,” explains CEO Darryn Keiller.

“His appointment as Head of A.I. represents our absolute commitment to leading the industry in the long-term development of cognitive services such as the virtual agronomist; leveraging vision, voice, language and critically knowledge - comprising genetics, environment, and management.”

About Autogrow

Autogrow leverages the power of technology, data science, and plant biology to provide indoor growers affordable, accessible and easy-to-use innovation – 24/7, anywhere in the world.

Our hardware, software and data solutions support growers and resellers in over 40 countries producing over 100 different crop types. 

We are the experts in Controlled Environment Agriculture (CEA) and continue to stay ahead of a rapidly evolving landscape.

Autogrow Appoints Two Product Specialists For Growing Market

View fullsize

4 December 2019: Autogrow has appointed Steve Gardner - Head of Product and Sophie Stanley - Head of Product Marketing, to support the company’s continued global growth. Both are members of the Senior Leadership Team.

“It’s great to have someone with Steve’s experience joining us. He will lead customer conversations and engagement to shape the value our products provide to growers and the industry,” says Darryn Keiller, CEO.

“Sophie’s experience within agriculture is fantastic. Combined with her passion for the industry, we are lucky to have her on board.”

Steve previously lead product development involving machine learning, IOT and augmented reality products covering web, mobile, APIs and embedded systems in South Africa and New Zealand.

Sophie, a Nuffield Scholar and previous Vice President of Figured – USA, will lead Autogrow’s go-to-market strategy. Having previously built a successful partnership with one of the largest farm lending institutions in the American Midwest, Sophie will drive market adoption and commercial growth.

Autogrow has increased their team over the past 12 months with new employees in Malaysia, the United States, and New Zealand. This growth will continue through 2020 as new innovations are launched into the market.

PHOTO: Sophie Stanley and Steve Gardner

MEDIA QUERIES

Kylie Horomia, Head of Communications

(e) Kylie.horomia@autogrow.com
(m) +6421 733 025
(w) www.autogrow.com www.farmroad.io www.cropsonmars.com

Sales queries – Sales@autogrow.com

About Autogrow

Autogrow leverages the power of technology, data science and plant biology to provide indoor growers affordable, accessible and easy-to-use innovation – 24/7, anywhere in the world.

Our hardware, software and data solutions support growers and resellers in over 40 countries producing over 100 different crop types.

We are the experts in Controlled Environment Agriculture (CEA) and continue to stay ahead of a rapidly evolving landscape.

Purdue University Mechanical Engineering Technology Grad Developing Food Technology For NASA’s Mars Missions

View fullsize

Written by John O'Malley |

August 19, 2019

View fullsize

NASA Technical and Horticultural Scientist Jacob Torres works in the water for microgravity test bed at the Kennedy Space Center’s Space Station Processing Facility in Merritt Island, Fla. Thanks to Torres’ suggestion, the Española chile pepper will be the first fruiting plant to be grown in space this November on the International Space Station. (Photo courtesy Jacob Torres)

A graduate student who gained experience growing plants for a Purdue Polytechnic research project is now helping NASA develop microgravity food production technology to sustain astronauts during long missions to Mars.

Jacob Torres graduated from Purdue in May 2018 with a master’s degree in mechanical engineering technology. During his studies, he worked on the Biowall, an eco-friendly air filtration system that can be used in residential buildings to improve air quality. That experience proved beneficial when he applied for an internship at Kennedy Space Center in Merritt Island, Florida.

“I did the application and never thought I’d hear anything back from them, straight up,” said Torres. “On the application, there just happened to be one line that said, ‘plant growth for food production in microgravity.’ I thought that was pretty cool and in my research at Purdue, I made a biowall, and it uses plants to filter indoor air.”

After that 10-week internship, NASA (the National Aeronautics and Space Administration) invited Torres to continue his work for an additional four months. In December 2018, his position as a technical and horticultural scientist became permanent.

Torres’ path to becoming a research scientist at NASA has been anything but traditional. He moved from New Mexico to Las Vegas immediately after graduating from high school, found a job at a restaurant and worked his way into a management position. A chance encounter with actors Bill Murray and Billy Crystal led to several years as manager of three of Murray’s restaurants in South Carolina and Florida.

“It was such a rough ride,” said Torres. “I told myself I couldn’t run restaurants for the rest of my life. I was like, ‘Is this all I have to do, is this as far as I could go?’ No way.”

Read the full Rio Grande Sun article.

The Ultimate Farming Tool Is Data

Data Is Shaking Up The Current Food Production Mechanisms

View fullsize

View fullsize

Felix Ingla

November 13, 2019

View fullsize

The agricultural food production mechanisms and their tight dependency on nature have always left little room for operational agility. Now, thanks to Agritech, and more specifically, data, farmers can meet supply and demand efficiently, and reduce losses and uncertainty from plagues and bad weather.

When we look at Agritech, there are broadly two ways in which startups are making farmers’ life easier: reengineering the products or optimizing the creation of the existing products. The first is more focused on R&D — what the Beyond Burger has been doing — and the latter is more focused on data processing and analytics.

By now, everyone is quite aware of the existence of food substitutes for meat and so on, thanks to the news coverage of the Beyond Burger lucrative IPO and its controversial nature — meatless meat, everyone! What people are not as aware of are data-intensive companies aiming at solving modern food supply problems in creative ways.

Farming is becoming data-intensive

Agritech software is allowing farmers to utilize data to boost their sales, predict the value of their crops before harvesting, and remove the uncertainty that plagues and lousy weather brings to plants; software puts the farmer in control. By gathering farming data, AI models allow farmers to understand the value and opportunities of their crops better.

Which are the companies that are empowering farmers all around? There’s a big chunk of them coming from Israel — a country characterized by their solvency when faced with agricultural adversities. One of the most notorious is Taranis, a four-year-old Tel Aviv based startup utilizing the data pulled from drones surveilling fields to predict and prevent crop diseases and pest losses. It can envision the health of the crops, detect insects and weeds early, growth problems, and many other actionable quandaries.

Also, coming from Israel, we got Prospera Technologies. The company pulls data from the farmer’s crops and also uses macroeconomic data pulled from the web. The software manipulates this data so that the farmer can visually track supply and demand balances, and in this way, plan ahead of the market. This solution enhances the sales team of farmer companies, with an outstanding 95% of accuracy. The company was founded in 2014 and has already raised a total of $22M after its recent Series B.

View fullsize

Guy Galonska, CTO and Co-Founder at Infarm (left) & Erez Galonska, CEO and Co-Founder at Infarm (right) — Picture originally posted at Freunde von Freunden

Startups are also tackling the adverse effects of transport of these short-lived products. Coming from Berlin, we got Infarm, an urban farming services company that develops farming tech in grocery stores, restaurants, and local distribution centers.

Infarm is developing smart farms in cities: vertical farms inside of supermarkets, restaurants, and so on, from where customers can get fresh vegetable produces. Each of these farms connects to the cloud allowing Infarms­­ biologists, agronomists, and engineers to understand the growth and health of plants and use the data to continually adjust and improve the conditions under which the plants grow in real-time. The results are healthy and fresh grown plants that have removed the negative externalities of transport.

According to Infarm, given that 7 billion people will be living in urban centers by 2050, the ability to use the city landscape for vibrant, sustainable agriculture will be a fundamental step to ensuring sustainable cities and a sustainable future.

I spoke to the co-founders of Infarm, the Galonska brothers. Guy Galonska, CTO at Infarm, gave me his take on why data is a game-changer in the agricultural and food production space. “Data is providing an unbiased look into the inner workings of how crops grow, and it gives valuable insight into what can be done better.” As he puts it, infrastructure has been the leading enabler. “The combination of increased computing power & mobile connectivity have an immense potential to drive much-needed optimization across the entire supply chain.”

Software is now feeding the world.

— Guy Galonska, CTO & Co-Founder at Infarm

After raising a $100M Series B funding round this past June, led by Atomico, Infarm is now expanding globally, to bring smart and quality-efficient farming to a global scale. As Guy Galonska puts it, “Software is now feeding the world.”

What’s next

Some may argue that Agritech and Foodtech look more impressive on the food R&D-intensive side — it’s thrilling to envision new products that replace the traditional ones; it allows business processes to leap exponentially. Nevertheless, agricultural automatization and data analytics can have a positive impact by turning farming smart. Even though the advances may seem at first marginal, taking the uncertainty of climate change or plagues out of the equation and having a better knowledge of the state of their product is a big game-changer for farmers.

The Next Hot Tech Career? Farming

View fullsize

WISDOM // November 4, 2019

Here’s Why This Vital Industry Needs An Image Makeover

By Karn Manhas

View fullsize

Shutterstock

Back in 1870, almost half the U.S. workforce was employed in agriculture — today just two percent of Americans work on farms. Over the decades, some people were driven away by mechanization or lured to cities by the promise of better-paying jobs. More recently, trade wars, tariffs, volatile crop prices, and declining profit margins have increased risk for farmers — and then there’s the impact of climate change on crop yields, chronic labor shortages and increasing debt. Add to that the perception of farming as unsophisticated, undesirable work and it’s no wonder family farms, once the backbone of America, are now in crisis.

According to the 2017 USDA census, the average American farmer is 57 years old and with few young people entering the field, farming is in desperate need of new blood. There’s much more than centuries of tradition at stake. The UN estimates that the world population will reach 8.5 billion by 2030, and as high as 9.8 billion by 2050, requiring a 70 percent increase in global food production. With that many mouths to feed, farming may well be the most important job on the planet. 

As the CEO of an AgTech company working to help farms transition to more sustainable practices, I’ve seen firsthand the effort and dedication farmers put into stewarding the land and feeding the world. I’ve also seen misperception about what farming is (and isn’t) hold the sector back from attracting younger generations and adopting technological innovations that can improve the lives and livelihoods of farmers. 

It seems to me that what’s needed is a rebrand of sorts — a concerted effort to separate myth from fact and promote the potential farming holds for fulfilling impactful careers. So, how do we give agriculture an image makeover? I don’t have all the answers, but I do have a few ideas on where to start.

Farming is a Tech Industry — Let’s Treat it Like One

Twenty years ago, it wasn’t cool to work at a car company, but today companies like Tesla are attracting some of our best and brightest by reframing auto manufacturing as a sophisticated, futuristic field. Farming has the potential to do the same.

Agriculture might be perceived as old-fashioned and low-tech, but farmers have worked hand-in-hand with technology for generations — whether it’s large machines like tractors and combines or complex chemicals, fertilizers and pesticides. Right now the field is in the midst of profound change as advanced technologies including green chemistries, robotics, artificial intelligence, IoT, autonomous vehicles, machine learning, regenerative agriculture, and biomimetics transform how farms look and function. It might seem like the stuff of science fiction, but autonomous vehicles, indoor farming, and drone pollination are becoming more common throughout the sector.

Looking at, and more importantly, talking about farming as a part of the tech revolution has the potential to ignite the curiosity and imagination of the next generation. In fact, it’s already happening in many countries in Africa, where millennials are using apps and other inexpensive technologies to improve profits and elevate the image of farmers from peasants to professionals. North America would do well to follow suit with an updated image of farmers wielding smartphones rather than American Gothic-era pitchforks.  

Create Better Economics — and Education — for Farmers

Advanced technologies may be poised to revolutionize farming, but the reality is they don’t come cheap — at least not yet. Most farmers don’t have the budget for a strawberry-picking robot much less the skillset to maintain or repair one. What’s needed is an industry-wide, gradual integration of affordable AgTech, accompanied by education and mentorship. Traditional farming co-ops could be revitalized to help bring farming into the digital age by pooling funds and sharing resources to offset the cost of emerging technologies — while still providing vital networks for knowledge sharing and a sense of community.

Meanwhile, farming knowledge, once passed down from generation to generation, needs to include people who weren’t necessarily raised on farms. Programs like Square Roots and New Entry are starting this wave with courses like plant science, indoor farming and business foundations that aim to teach next-generation farming skills to a new generation and lineage of farmers. 

Right now farmers can test and iterate on a crop season maybe 50 times in their life. New tools will allow them to experiment and optimize much more rapidly. Startups like Prospera, Iron Ox, and Farmer’s Edge are utilizing sensors, analytics and machine learning to capture the interest of younger generations and improve predictability, precision, and profits. My own company is working to reduce reliance on synthetic chemical fertilizers and pesticides while increasing yields by gathering data on how inputs like crop protection products, nutrients and water can be used more effectively to naturally boost a plant’s resistance to pests, disease, and drought. By augmenting farmers’ intuition with informed cause and effect, we can use technology to take the guesswork out of farming and decrease risk.

Deepen Our Connection with Food

There’s something special about the gift of food. If someone takes the time to bake you a pie, it’s a gift from the heart. If someone bakes you a pie made with strawberries and rhubarb that they grew themselves? Now that’s a whole new level of love.

From food bloggers posting plates on Instagram to the explosion of TV shows exploring everything from street food to obscure ingredients, foodie culture has deepened our appreciation of good food. But there’s still a disconnect with how it’s grown, or more importantly, who grew it.

Fortunately, we’re headed in the right direction. The increasing popularity of plant-based products such as Beyond Meat and the skyrocketing demand for organic, natural and local produce has people asking what’s in their food. The next step is to connect the dots with how it’s grown.

Education of this sort needs to start at a young age, with school community garden projects and field trips to farms. The Clinton Foundation’s Students for Eco-Education and Agriculture program provides a hands-on agricultural literacy that helps kids understand the food journey – from farm to table – and teaches them about healthy eating, sustainable farming practices and the fragility of our ecosystem. Michelle Obama’s White House Kitchen Garden, meanwhile, sparked a nationwide conversation about nutrition and exposed a generation of kids to the joys of growing their own food. We need to build on that legacy. 

Emphasize the Purpose of Farming 

We’ve heard time and again that millennials want meaningful careers that help make the world a better place. Often that interest is funneled towards jobs in CleanTech, non-profits, the environment or the arts. But farming is an overlooked industry with incredible potential to help improve the world. 

Farmers are stewards of the land, with huge potential to restore damaged ecosystems by employing sustainable and regenerative agricultural practices. As the world grapples with the effects of climate change, the next generation of farmers has a pivotal role to play in correcting the mistakes of the past. Companies like Ingleby Farms have tapped into this ethos by promoting their focus on long-term care of the land, green energy and biodiversity. They’re walking the talk, providing food with a conscience and farms with a future.

Somewhere along the line, we started to devalue farmers and take them for granted, but it’s hard to think of a career that’s more important for our collective survival. Feeding the planet isn’t simplistic or base, it’s multifaceted, complex and sophisticated. Farmers are the original experimenters, hackers, makers and problem-solvers; they’re biologists, chemists, engineers, entrepreneurs and inventors. Perhaps if we talked about them like that, young people would be inspired to continue their legacy, and proudly bring the field into the future.

This article was originally featured in Agfunder and LinkedIn.

— Published on November 4, 2019

LINKEDIN CONTRIBUTOR

View fullsize

Karn Manhas

CEO and Founder of Terramera, Karn Manhas is a leader in the AgTech industry, pioneering the application of revolutionary technologies that transform how we grow food and solve other world-scale challenges. A biotechnologist, entrepreneur and environmentalist, Karn’s mission is to reduce global synthetic chemical loads in agriculture by 80% while improving global farm productivity by 20% by 2030.

Karn was inspired to start Terramera after winning a friendly argument over whether pests like bed bugs could be controlled using non-toxic, natural ingredients. What started as curiosity-fueled research in the summer of 2009—exploring how a natural extract he’d read about, neem oil, could be used to control insects — evolved into a new area of science and the beginning of Terramera and their Actigate™ Targeted Performance technology. Today, Terramera is pairing its Actigate technology with AI, data science and machine learning, to allow natural alternatives to become more effective, reduce global synthetic chemical loads, and revolutionize agriculture in the process.

Karn is an accomplished public speaker who has appeared at TEDx Vancouver, Unreasonable, and Singularity University. He is also a former MLA in the B.C. Legislature in the riding of Port Coquitlam-Burke Mountain. Karn holds a Bachelor of Science in Biology from McGill University and a law degree from the University of British Columbia.