How Next-Gen Agri-Techniques Could Deliver Multi-Fold Productivity Gains And Combat Hunger In India

By Dr. Richard Lobo

August 3, 2021

In the early 1700s, Thomas Jefferson wrote in a letter to George Washington, “Agriculture is our wisest pursuit because it will, in the end, contribute most to real wealth, good morals, and happiness.”

Farming has, over the years, changed the course of human civilisation, and then we took on a high premium on land as a key factor of agricultural production. The quality of soil, its fertility, nurture, and value has been a key social and political conversation over centuries.

Over the ages, advances were recorded through mechanisation, irrigation, and fertilisers, and all revolved around improving land and soil quality. However, the latest advances of today are bringing the centrality of land itself in question.

Yes, we are talking about farming practices and methods that do not use land at all. We have come across hydroponics, where plants are grown in inert medium like rocks or coir and are fed with nutrient rich water is probably the most well researched method. And there is aquaponics, where fish are reared in water along with plants.

However, the most interesting among them is aeroponics – growing of plants in air, with the roots not touching the soil but getting their nutrients and water from a nutrient laden mist that is created around the roots periodically.

This method of agriculture was conceived in order to find a way of growing food in space. While the term was coined by Dutch biologist Frits Warmolt in 1957, it only saw some traction in the mid-eighties when patents were filed and aeroponically food was sold in European markets.

Today Asian countries like Vietnam are adopting aeroponics in a big way for a low cost certified disease-free organic produce.

The global Aeroponics market was valued at $578.70 million in 2018, and is projected to reach $3.53 billion by 2026, growing at a CAGR of 25.60 percent from 2019 to 2026.

While not much data is available for aeroponics in India, we can get an idea from how the hydroponics market in the country is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 13.53 percent between 2020 and 2027, according to a report by DataM Intelligence.

Less land and scalable agriculture

Aeroponics technique is also known as vertical farming as the crops can be grown in vertically stacked layers in smaller spaces. This gives a huge opportunity for farmers with smaller land holdings to grow crops in enclosed places by taking away the primacy of land and its cyclicality out of the equation. It also allows farming without lower capital investment as much less land is required.

In a predominantly agrarian country like India, aeroponics holds the potential to contribute to the development of the sector and boost production. The technique requires only 10 percent of the area traditional farming needs.

According to NASA, aeroponically grown plants can be harvested three times faster and the yields are more consistent. As nutrients are sprayed onto the plants and roots, and there's plenty of oxygen and other gases in the growing chamber for roots to absorb.

There are a wide variety of fruits and vegetables that can be grown using aeroponics system. Cucumbers, tomatoes, leafy vegetables, pumpkins, gourds, melons, strawberries, and various herbs can be grown with the help of these techniques in closed spaces.

Less water and sustainable farming

Farming in closed spaces has other advantages. Since nutrients are delivered through a mist, water usage is low. Aeroponics uses almost 90 percent less water than in traditional farming. Also, due to the controlled environment and better use of space, aeroponic farms are able to reduce the carbon footprint of food production.

Farming in a confined space gives the farmer control over pest and locust attacks and sudden heat waves.

In a country like India, space is always an issue. There is a constant pressure on agricultural land and its conversion to other uses and we are losing about 3,000 acres of farmland to real estate or industrial development every day. With Aeroponics the discussions around farming can move away from land constraints to focussing more on sustainable farming techniques.

Sustainability will be a key factor in India’s farming future. India may face devastating climate change effects, including killer heat waves and severe floods, in the next 80 years, says a recent study published in the journal 'Earth Systems and Environment'. The effects of climate change are now becoming severe at an alarming rate.

A farming system that uses less water, operates in a controlled environment leading to lesser wastage can be a boon for the cause of sustainability, especially in a populous country like India.

As aeroponics promises to solve multiple problems through its innovative approach to farming and it is time the technology got its due attention.

Infarm’s Hamilton Growing Facility is Expanding to Become its Largest Vertical Farm in North America

By Jeremey Kemeny

July 27, 2021

Greens grown at an indoor farm right here in Hamilton are about to become more accessible at area grocery stores, following an expansion of Infarm’s vertical growing centre.

The company’s facility near the airport is set to dramatically grow over the next several quarters, a spokesperson for the company said.

It’s part of a national expansion, following a deal strengthening Infarm’s relationship with grocery store chain Sobeys Inc. That deal expands the company’s reach to grocery stores in all ten Canadian provinces.

Infarm moved into its facility on Aeropark Boulevard, off Upper James Street, in the last quarter of 2020, said Infarm global communications director Emmanuel Evita.

The Hamilton facility is expected to be Infarm’s largest growing centre in North America, following the expansion, with a growing capacity of 37,000 square feet.

Founded in Berlin, Germany, in 2013, Infarm touts its advancement of modular farms, allowing for growing leaf vegetables in any available space.

In a video, co-founder Osnat Michaeli lauds the efficiency of the vertical growing technology and food waste reduction by farming in proximity to where the food is consumed.

Infarm Co-founder and Chief Brand Officer Osnat Michaeli explains how we're building a global network of vertical farms to grow and distribute fresh produce in cities. Infarm’s modular, cloud-connected system enable us to scale and deploy urban farms fast, growing tasty and nutritious produce more sustainably than traditional agriculture. Our modular technology is at the core of a sustainable global urban farming network that is up to 400 times more efficient than soil-based farming, using 95% less land, 95% less water, and requires 90% fewer food miles to get to consumers.

Infarm’s hyperlocal approach includes growing facilities in stores, restaurants or distribution centres.

Here in Hamilton, they plan to transform their warehouse farm into a high-yield facility.

Each 10-metre-high module at the Hamilton facility will “take just six weeks to build and (yield) a crop-equivalent of up to 10,000 square metres of farmland,” Evita said.

He said they’re expecting the production capacity and the number of locations served by the Hamilton facility to greatly expand, following the outfitting of the facility.

Evita says Infarm expects to expand its Canadian workforce by 50 per cent before the end of the year. It’s not yet known how many of those employees will be in Hamilton.

“Infarm is already offering fresh, local produce grown directly in Sobeys retailers or supplied from our Hamilton location,” Evita says, “with much more to come.”

Agrify Announces Launch of Innovative, Project-Based Learning Program, Agrify University

July 19, 2021

Introduces immersive program to assist Agrify customers and next-generation growers in cultivating high-value cannabis with efficiency at scale

Agrify Corporation (NasdaqCM:AGFY) (“Agrify” or the “Company”), a developer of highly advanced and proprietary precision hardware and software cultivation solutions for the indoor agricultural marketplace, today announced the opening of Agrify University, a brand new 3,500 sq. ft. state-of-the art indoor vertical farming facility featuring Agrify’s latest technology and advanced cultivation methods. We believe this new immersive, hands-on project-based learning experience will empower Agrify customers and next-generation growers with the knowledge and education to successfully cultivate cannabis with efficiency at scale by leveraging the power of Agrify’s vertical farming units (“VFUs”) and the Agrify Insights software solution.

Located in Billerica, MA, Agrify University, led by David Kessler, Agrify’s Chief Science Officer, and a team of industry experts, horticulturists, and scientists, will provide participants with in-classroom, on-site, and on-demand learning options. The immersive, multi-sensory curriculum will enable customers and growers to expand their knowledge of how to apply novel scientific research, interpret cultivation data, and leverage Agrify’s technology to improve their indoor cannabis cultivation practices.

“The cultivation methods used by many operators have not evolved as quickly as the industry itself, and we see an opportunity to use the power of data and cutting-edge techniques to dramatically improve the quality and yields from indoor cultivation,” said Mr. Kessler. “Agrify University utilizes our vast cannabis research data sets and technological innovation to provide a curriculum that we believe will support the long-term growth of our industry. We’re proud to add this valuable resource to our comprehensive Agrify ecosystem, and we look forward to welcoming our first cohorts.”

Agrify University classes are available now to all customers. For more information on how to apply and on available program resources, please contact Agrify at info@agrify.com.

About Agrify (NasdaqCM:AGFY)
Agrify is a developer of premium grow solutions for the indoor agriculture marketplace. The Company uses data, science, and technology to empower its customers to be more efficient, more productive, and more intelligent about how they run their businesses. Agrify’s highly advanced and proprietary hardware and software solutions have been designed to help its customers achieve the highest quality, consistency, and yield, all at the lowest possible cost. For more information, please visit Agrify’s website at www.agrify.com.

Forward-Looking Statements
This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended, concerning Agrify and other matters. All statements contained in this press release that do not relate to matters of historical fact should be considered forward-looking statements, including, without limitation, statements regarding Agrify University. In some cases, you can identify forward-looking statements by terms such as "may," "will," "should," "expects," "plans," "anticipates," "could," "intends," "targets," "projects," "contemplates," "believes," "estimates," "predicts," "potential" or "continue" or the negative of these terms or other similar expressions. The forward-looking statements in this press release are only predictions. We have based these forward-looking statements largely on our current expectations and projections about future events as well as the curriculum and plans that have been developed for Agrify University. Forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other important factors that may cause our actual results, performance or achievements to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements. You should carefully consider the risks and uncertainties that affect our business, including those described in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”), including under the caption “Risk Factors” in our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2020 filed with the SEC, which can be obtained on the SEC website at www.sec.gov. These forward-looking statements speak only as of the date of this communication. Except as required by applicable law, we do not plan to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of any new information, future events or otherwise. You are advised, however, to consult any further disclosures we make on related subjects in our public announcements and filings with the SEC.

Light Science Technologies Launches Sustainable nurturGROW LED Lighting Range

July 21, 2021

90% recyclable and interchangeable design enables growers to simply upgrade and replace 

 Leading UK AgTech company Light Science Technologies (LST) has launched nurturGROW to the market, its new sustainable grow lighting product range, offering an innovative, high-performance and cost-effective solution for indoor farming, covering greenhouses, vertical farming, polytunnels and medicinal plants.  

Created with four core component parts, the patent-pending nurturGROW range is made of high-quality, durable materials to give growers the ideal balance between strength and optimal performance. 90% of the components are recyclable, minimizing the amount of materials needed to drastically cut down on waste and reduce carbon footprint. Thanks to its sustainable, future-proof design, 85% of nurturGROW is also reusable, allowing growers to easily upgrade components, cost-effectively and with no downtime, making nurturGROW easy to maintain. Backed by a 25-year product lifecycle, it ensures indoor farmers maximize the use of every element over a longer lifespan to generate maximum yields and save them a third on future costs.   

Built for scale and sustainability 

Thanks to its modular structure, the nurturGROW range consists of more than 30 different options with variable lengths of up to 2.78m, making it the longest luminaire on the market. It provides the scale needed to commercialize the right recipe and cut down on waste with both energy and space. With a high efficacy of up to 3.0 umol/J and up to 30-degree variance, growers can choose from 1000s of different light recipes to improve plant performance, from one of the widest ranges of recipes available on the market.  

What’s more, nurturGROW enables you to give back to the environment. As proud reforestation partners of One Tree Planted, they plant one tree for every LST product sold, as part of a mutual commitment to champion global reforestation efforts and raise awareness of the importance of ecosystem restoration. 

In-house UK scientific and manufacturing expertise  

nurturGROW features industry-leading, high performing LED lighting innovation by drawing on its own in-house manufacturing capabilities, assuring growers of nothing  

less than high quality and high performance grow lighting. This is supported by a successful tried and tested approach in real environments to prove nurturGROW’s long-lasting lighting technology.  

Backed by science, LST works with growers to create the perfect recipe for crop growth. Using light testing equipment and data gathered from LST’s purpose-built laboratory, its in-house team of scientists can help identify the right spectral waveforms and PPFD levels by recreating various environment scenarios in one of its accredited grow chambers. 

Grow more, with less  

Founded in 2019, LST’s approach from the beginning was to create a bespoke, fully integrated lighting solution that met key criteria for CEA farmers and growers: sustainability, cost-effectiveness, and high performance. Knowing that each growing environment has its own set of unique requirements, nurturGROW gives growers optimum control over their crops with the potential to deliver optimal yield and minimize both CAPEX and OPEX costs. 

Craig Price, Operations Director at Light Science Technologies, said: “Being customer-focused by design means that as an experienced LED grow light partner, we understand every variable and can help indoor growers to design a sustainable solution that fits their unique growing parameters. 

“This extends to adjusting the light recipe for growers, as nurturGROW will allow you to increase, decrease or change the recipe depending on preference, thanks to an interchangeable luminaire body. 

“The unique aspect of our design also means that we have already allowed for future integration of sensor technologies, offering significant added value. By choosing to add in our new sensor technology, which is under development, indoor growers and farmers can look to control their environment in much more granular detail. This will enable them to reduce any sub-optimal performances, whether that be in any environmental controls or from the light itself.” 

Vertical Harvest, MedRhythms Get FAME Financing to Advance Growth Plans

By Catie Joyce-Bulay

July 19, 2021

The Finance Authority of Maine has approved a total of nearly $50 million in financing for two startups — Vertical Harvest L3C, which plans to launch a hydroponic greenhouse in Westbrook, and a Portland provider of "digital therapeutics," MedRhythms Inc.

Vertical Harvest will receive $45 million in conduit bond financing. The company plans to produce over 1 million pounds of produce annually, and FAME's funds will be used to finance a portion of the construction costs to build 70,000-square-foot Westbrook farming facility. The project ultimately is expected to create approximately 50 full- and part-time jobs, many of which are expected to be performed by individuals with disabilities.

The project is part of a larger master-planned development that is expected to include affordable housing and parking in downtown Westbrook. Because the project will treat wastewater as an exempt facility, all or a portion of the bonds will be eligible for tax-exempt treatment under federal tax law.

“We appreciate FAME’s support for the agricultural component of this project,” said Greg Day, president of TDB LLC, developer of the project. “This master-planned program establishes a compelling business model for food production in an urban core that our firm is expanding to other communities throughout New England and the nation.” 

Vertical Harvest plans to break ground on the facility in the fall. It's expected to be Maine’s first vertical farm, and the country’s second. The company’s first location in Jackson Hole, Wyo., was the first of its kind and has been operating for five years.

MedRhythms, Inc. will receive tax credit certificates related to approximately $2.8 million in investments through the Maine New Markets Capital Investment Program to help with the costs of a commercialization strategy of its device and software for stroke rehabilitation. The certificates authorize the issuance by the state of approximately $1.1 million in tax credits through the program.

“We are pleased to support MedRhythms’ plans to advance their digital therapeutic for stroke rehabilitation, as well as additional research and development,” said David Daigler, chair of the FAME board. “Digital therapeutics are a cutting-edge field that can help to improve the everyday lives of Mainers and other patients who will benefit from the company’s technology.”

MedRhythms uses sensors, music, and software to build solutions that measure and improve walking. The company, which currently employs 18 individuals, with 13 full-time employees in Maine, hopes to triple its workforce in the next few years.

“Digital therapeutics are the future of health care, and we appreciate the support of FAME,” said Brian Harris, CEO and founder of MedRhythms.

FAME uses tax-exempt private activity bonds, or “conduit bonds,” which are authorized by the Internal Revenue Code in order to stimulate economic development in certain targeted industries. The projects financed in recent years range from nonprofit health and higher education projects to solid waste improvements, public infrastructure and manufacturing. 

Lead Photo: A 300,000-square-foot Westbrook building, shown in this rendering, is expected to house the Vertical Harvest indoor farm, as well as apartments, parking and commercial space.

1200% Increase In Production At ENOGROW In Times of A Pandemic!

July 11, 2021

One step closer to food sovereignty in New Brunswick Canada. 1200% increase in production at ENOGROW in times of a pandemic!

Thanks to an equipment investment upgrade valued at nearly $250,000. ENOGROW, an indoor vertical hydroponic farm, located in Saint-Léolin NB, will see a production increase of leafy vegetables from 7,500 to
nearly 100,000 heads grown per year by the end of 2021. Due to the owners Chantal and Daniel Ratté hard work, perseverance and imagination, this amazing production surge occurs after less than 18 months of operation and in the midst of a worldwide pandemic.

Cultivation in a controlled environment takes place inside the former Le Maillon school, a 2280sqm building on 4 acres of land 12 month a year! ENOGROW currently offers their products to grocery stores, restaurants and on-site to the local population. With the above upgrades, along with a new refrigerated truck, the company will expand its customer’s network to Miramichi and Campbellton areas, and soon to southern New Brunswick as well.

Due to climate change, supply issues and the ever-growing demand for fresh local produce, this indoor hydroponic farm takes NB residents one step closer to food sovereignty year long!

This innovative indoor hydroponic farm grows nearly 20 different products year round, including 4 kinds of lettuce, various herbs and microgreens from organic seeds. All of this healthy produce is grown without soil, pesticides, herbicides or chemical residue, using 90% less water in only 10% of the space required by conventional cultivation.

The company is already working on their new goal for 2022, with expectations of 200,000 heads produced, a step closer to the final goal of 750,000 heads annually by 2025. This would create nearly 20 permanent jobs and serve New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia and Newfoundland with fresh and local leafy vegetables 12 months per year.

This is quite a challenge for Chantal and Daniel, whose company began their operations in November 2019, less than 3 months before the start of the pandemic. They work almost 80 hours a week. “We never thought
we had the ability to work this hard, especially me at 62 years old, says Dan. Advice to anyone thinking of beginning this kind of agricultural that request a high production volume to be profitable. This is real farm work, and it is year round, Dan explains!

The final commissioning of the new equipment is scheduled for end of July.

Daniel Ratté Pres.
Enogrow Inc.
916 Boul. Saint-Joseph,
Saint-Léolin, NB E8N 2P8
danielr@enogrow.com
Off: 506-604-4400 Cell:506-720-2007 FB: Enogrow

FRANÇAIS

06 Juillet 2021

Plus près de la souveraineté alimentaire au NB. Augmentation de 1200% de la production de légumes à feuilles chez Enogrow en temps de pandémie!

Grace à un investissement en équipements d’une valeur de près de $250,000, la ferme hydroponique verticale intérieure ENOGROW de Saint-Léolin verra sa production de légumes à feuilles passer de 7500
à près de 100,000 têtes cultivées par année d’ici la fin de 2021. C’est grâce au travail acharné, persévérance et imagination, des deux propriétaires Chantal et Daniel Ratté que cette incroyable augmentation de production se produit après moins de 18 mois d'exploitation et au milieu d'une pandémie mondiale.

Dû au changement climatique, problèmes en approvisionnement et ses coûts, ainsi qu’à la forte demande en produits frais local sans cesse grandissante, cette ferme hydroponique intérieure permet aux résidents du NB de franchir un pas de plus vers la souveraineté alimentaire.

La culture sous environnement contrôlée, se fait à l’intérieur de l’ancienne école Le Maillon, un bâtiment de 2280mc sur 4 acres. Ils offrent présentement leurs produits aux marchés d'alimentation, restaurants et sur place pour la population locale. Par cet ajout d’équipement et d’un camion réfrigéré, l’entreprise peux maintenant étendre son réseau de clients vers Miramichi et Campbellton et bientôt le sud du nouveau Brunswick.

La ferme hydroponique intérieure d’avant garde cultive près de 20 produits différents, dont 4 sortes de laitue incluant la romaine, fines herbes et micro-pousses à partir de graine graines organiques, sans terre, insecticides, herbicides ou résidus de produits chimique, en utilisant 90% moins d'eau en utilisant seulement 10% de l’espace requis par la culture conventionnelle et ce 12 mois par année!.

L'entreprise travaille déjà sur leur nouvel objectif pour 2022 qui devrait être près des 200,000 têtes produites en route vers son but final de 750,000 produites annuellement d'ici 2025. Ceci créera près de 20 emploies permanents et pourra servir le Nouveau Brunswick, Ile du Prince Edward, la Nouvelle-Écosse et Terre neuve en légumes à feuilles frais et local.

C’est tout un défi à relever pour Chantal et Daniel dont l’entreprise a démarré ses opérations en novembre 2019, soit moins de 3 moins de mois avant le début de la pandémie. Ils y travaillent près de 80 heures par semaine. ‘’ On ne pensait jamais avoir à travailler autant spécialement moi à 62 ans. C’est un pensez y bien avant, pour ceux et celles qui désirent se lancer dans ce genre d’agriculture qui demande un haut volume pour atteindre la rentabilité. C’est un travail de ferme mais à longueur d’année explique t-il!

La mise en service des nouveaux équipements est prévue fin juillet.

Daniel Ratté Prés.
Enogrow Inc.
916 Boul. Saint-Joseph,
Saint-Léolin, NB E8N 2P8
danielr@enogrow.com
Off: 506-604-4400 Cell:506-720-2007 FB: Enogrow

Manage Only The Environment That Matters: The Canopy

July 5, 2021

“We offer a completely integrated product and take all of the guesswork out, whether it relates to chillers, controls, air handling units, adjustable nozzles, etc.,” says Emil Breza, co-founder, president and CEO of AgricUltra Advancements.

AgricUltra is a Canadian company that designs and develops turnkey, multi-layer grow platforms that are engineered to optimize inter-canopy control and management. The company also conducts research and development related to UV lighting.

AgricUltra Advancements was officially incorporated in August 2018 and specializes in four keys areas: controlled environment agriculture, computational fluid dynamics analysis (CFD), systems design & engineering and photobiology. While the company designed its systems for medical cannabis production, AgricUltra believes that its system can be applied to any vertical farm and will be trialing berry production at its new research center and unit.

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Decisions rooted in CFD analysis
As Emil explains, computational fluid dynamics modeling allows the company to accurately model airflow in an existing or proposed grow room. AgricUltra can visualize how heat, humidity and temperature interact to create humidity pockets, temperature stratifications or impeded airflow.

“At AgricUltra, we create a very accurate representation of the physical environment (from room level to canopy level) as well as the environmental setpoints (Temp, RH, CFM, heat inputs, etc) and let the software compute the complex interactions that result. Then we can identify problem areas and come up with viable solutions. That’s the power of CFD analysis. It helps you find mistakes that you can’t otherwise see,” says Emil.

Read the complete article at: Vertical Farm Daily

For more information:
Emil Breza, Co-Founder, President and CEO
AgricUltra Advancements
www.agricultra.com
yanna@agricultra.com

BrightFarms Launches Multimillion-Dollar R&D Hub in Greater Cincinnati

By Liz Engel - Staff reporter

June 24, 2021

An indoor farming company is investing millions in Ohio with the debut of a new research and development hub.

BrightFarms, a New York-based grower of indoor leafy greens since 2013, is forming BrightLabs, a new innovation and research hub, at its Wilmington greenhouse. BrightLabs, overall, will represent a tenfold increase in the company’s research capabilities, while increasing profitability and delivering new product innovations.

Steve Platt is the CEO of BrightFarms. (Jenn Erickson)

CEO Steve Platt declined to disclose the exact investment but told me it’s in the multimillions. The project is being launched as part of the company’s $100 million Series E funding round in October led by media conglomerate Cox Enterprises.

“BrightFarms as a company has been growing very consistently, and the indoor farming industry is at an inflection point,” Platt said. “We’ve perfected how we grow – among competitors, we’ve developed the most profitable model for the production of indoor leafy greens – but now’s the time to invest behind R&D to secure an advantage for the future. It’s essential to stay ahead of the curve.”

Like others in the indoor farming space, BrightFarms lauds the fact that its lettuce is healthier, tastier, looks better, is more nutritious, and, particularly for customers in Ohio, fresher than field-grown produce hauled in from states like California and Arizona. Today the company’s five greenhouses in Ohio, Virginia, Illinois, Pennsylvania produce 9 million pounds of produce each year. 

But unlike several outfits, particularly vertical farms that use purple-hued LED lighting, BrightFarms leverages natural sunshine. Its souped up, high-tech greenhouses grow spinach, romaine, arugula and more using a hydroponic system, or water instead of soil.

Wilmington, which celebrated its first harvest in 2018, isn’t the company’s largest greenhouse in terms of size or production, but Platt said it made a good host for the innovation hub because of its centralized location. It’s close to customers and easily accessible from its other farms. He also credited the workforce and level of academic talent available from universities nearby. 

BrightFarms celebrated its first harvest in Wilmington in 2018. BrightLabs is investing millions to build out an innovation and research hub at the site. (Brian Mollenkopf)

Phase one for BrightLabs includes a new, approximately 1,350 square foot lab that has been built at the Wilmington greenhouse site. BrightFarms will also dedicate space on the farm for the BrightLabs team to work. 

Platt said BrightLabs will focus on three key areas:

• Biotech. BrightFarms wants to study the environments in which plants grow to increase yield, flavor, and texture.

• Agtech. BrightOS, the company’s proprietary AI software system, acts as the company’s central nervous system, Platt said, collecting millions of data points from its fives farms to streamline operations. How can the company improve that technology?

• Product innovation. BrightFarms recently launched NutriGreens, a new lettuce packed with antioxidants – double the amount, Platt said, found in a serving of blueberries. BrightFarms wants more advances like that.

BrightLabs itself will be led by Matt Lingard, a former Bayer plant scientist and Ph.D. with over 15 years of experience, who joined BrightFarms in May as its VP of agriculture and science. Platt said the BrightLabs team will include four employees to start.

“We’re the leading grower of indoor spinach – in the U.S. we grow 90% of the indoor spinach that’s sold – but we want to double our production on that. How do we come out with new types of spinach that can grow even better in a hydroponic system?” he said. 

“We’re taking on a massive industry and a complicated, broken system – where greens are grown all in one location, shipped thousands of miles across the country, generally with pesticide reside, there’s a food-borne illness, and the product isn’t that good,” Platt added. “We have a simpler system and a better product, but we need to deliver that at a price point and at a volume that competes with what’s coming out of California. If we’re trying to unseat this big gorilla, we can’t be this niche that’s only affordable to people who drive Teslas.”

Overall, there’s billions being invested in the industry. New York City-based Bowery Farming, in late May, announced a $300 million funding round with a $2.3 billion valuation. Kentucky-based AppHarvest merged with a special purpose acquisition company in February, an IPO approach that’s gaining ground in 2021, and is now worth $1.5 billion. 

BrightFarms, with its Series E, has raised more than $200 million in total. In addition to launching BrightLabs, it plans to use the funds to expand its network of regional indoor farms – new farms are currently under development in Massachusetts and Texas – and grow its retail footprint. Locally, BrightFarms is available at Sam’s Club, Walmart and Pipkin Produce as well as Food Lion and Kroger in other markets.

The company said by the end of 2021 its leafy greens will be available at over 3,500 stores.

“It’s amazing. Even when I joined the company two years ago, we were convincing people this was the future. Now customers are coming to us saying, ‘We want to replace field grown with indoor-grown,’” he said. “We think the future is here.”

Lead photo: BrightFarms grows leafy greens like spinach, romaine, and arugula in high-tech, computer-controlled greenhouses.

Highlighting The Potential of Dutch Horticulture In Vertical Farming

“The Dutch are falling behind when it comes to vertical farming,” says Judith van Heck, Community Builder at Indoor Farming Nederland. “As we’re so tremendously good at greenhouse growing there is relatively less interest in building vertical farms in the Netherlands. In comparison to countries such as the US, this has resulted in lower investments. That’s why we started the initiative Indoor Farming Nederland. We want to help the Dutch horticulture sector to develop the potentially very interesting sector, and we also want to highlight the international potential of Dutch horticulture in vertical farming.”

Indoor Farming Holland aims to bring companies together to see where their knowledge can be developed and applied in the vertical farming space. “We’re focusing on the combination of technical solutions with plant science, where Holland has a great proposition. We, therefore, believe that we can obtain optimal results from vertical farms and take the lead on that,” Judith notes.  

“Due to many things happening around vertical farming and innovative solutions that are brought to market, we’ve created a government-backed organization to stimulate indoor farming amongst Dutch horticultural companies,” says Gus van der Feltz, project leader for the Fieldlab Vertical Farming. In the Fieldlab Vertical Farming, an important collaboration is established between South Holland knowledge institutions and companies that are engaged in the production of vertically grown products, the sale of vertically grown products, and suppliers of technologies for vertical farms.

Gus van der Feltz and Judith van Heck

Increasing awareness
The Fieldlab is supported by the European Fund for Regional Development of the European Union and the Province of South Holland. Now, the organization’s activities consist of four different ‘packages’ which they’d like to elaborate on throughout the Dutch horticulture industry. Vertical Farming Zuid-Holland received a subsidy to develop a foundation for potential market entrants that consists of four different packages.

The Fieldlab, working together with Indoor Farming Nederland, wants to increase awareness of the added value of vertical farming. Firstly, by using market research to understand consumers, growers, retailers, and the supply chain’s perspective on vertical farming. “Through market research, we want to highlight the benefits and processes that could be improved,” says Gus. Secondly, the organization will do research and testing to generate knowledge on vertical farming and recipes through development and innovations by Dutch horticulture companies.

Thirdly, “we want to educate and train people,” says Gus. “We’re working on developing training programs specifically focusing on vertical farming. From the technical side of things to running a farm and selling your produce successfully.” Last but not least, a sector-related platform is to be constructed to create a long-term and sustainable network the industry can fall back to. In collaboration with Vertical Farming Fieldlab, for the industry to further develop knowledge in Dutch horticulture, the organization consists of multiple companies, such as Own Greens, Delphy, Signify, WUR Bleiswijk, Vertify, Logiqs, Proeftuin Westland, InHolland, WUR Wageningen, Future Crops (Poeldijk). 

Judith explains that the community works with jointly formulated ambitions. “We help this cluster of companies to obtain as much knowledge as needed. We stimulate them to co-create on several challenges. One of the ambitions is to communicate the potential of the cluster and indoor farming products to various target groups. Amongst other things, we are creating a white paper regarding the general statements about vertical farming and the complex reality of it.” Next to that, the organization is exploring the feasibility of a collective market intelligence tool to see where vertical farming can add value internationally. However, the community aims to not only help Dutch entrepreneurs but the collective market. One of the ambitions, for instance, is to communicate the potential of the cluster to various target groups within, but especially also outside, the Netherlands.

Amongst other things, Indoor Farming Nederland will create a whitepaper that states all facts concerning vertical farming. Next to that, the organization is exploring the feasibility of a collective market intelligence tool to see where vertical farming can add value internationally. They’re doing so by looking at climate, population density, food patterns, availability of water, and energy. Also by analyzing where the most potential is for vertical farming, or hybrid solutions even, in combination with greenhouses.

For more information:
Indoor Farming Nederland
Gus van der Feltz, Project leader 
gus@feltzwerk.nl
Judith van Heck, Community Builder
judith@imagro.nl 

Publication date: Wed 16 Jun 2021
Author: Rebekka Boekhout
© HortiDaily.com

Singapore: Mega-Farm, Research Center To Open By December 2021

&ever

“We’re really happy to have launched in Munich and consumers really like our harvest-on-demand concept,” says Franz Drack, Chief Marketing Officer at &ever. "We just need to see how to increase the accessibility of our solutions. I’d love to see 200 vertical farms in Europe with this technology in the next five years."

Although it all started in Hamburg, &ever is currently headquartered in Munich which is also where the grow tower showroom is located. In 2020, &ever opened its first commercial farm in Kuwait, spanning 3,400 m2 and with a daily output capacity of 550 kg. The farm provides its leafy greens to Kuwaiti restaurants and retailers. The company also recently launched a grow tower in an EDEKA Stadler+Honner “Die Frisch-Nachbarn” supermarket in Unterfôhring near Munich. 

Mega-farm and research center 
&ever is currently building a mega-farm in Singapore with support from the Singapore Food Agency, SFA, and the Economic Development Board, EDB, and will be launched by the end of 2021. The mega-farm will be 15m high and have an annual production capacity of up to 500,000 kg of leafy greens.

In addition to the mega-farm, &ever will be establishing Singapore as its global R&D center to accelerate knowledge development and transfer to the mega-farm. The R&D center will focus on improving energy use efficiency through optimized lighting strategies and improving crop quality by evaluating different seed and substrate combinations. Moreover, &ever will be working to develop non-invasive crop monitoring processes through vision systems.

“We’re getting tremendous support from our local partners EDB, SFA and A*Star; everyone is keen to get this farm online. This farm is what we are most excited about this year,” Franz notes. To better address consumer demand, &ever conducted market research in Singapore by speaking with potential consumers and foodservice providers. This research has allowed &ever to explore the balance between western and eastern leafy green species to be grown in the mega-farm.

“Our team under the lead of our country manager, Kerstin Köhler, have worked with food service providers who are very good at telling us what products are needed and wanted. Some products are very interesting for certain segments of the value chain, so we try to talk to a lot of different people,” says Franz.

&ever is continuing to focus on leafy greens, microgreens and herbs for the time being. While there is a lot of interest in fruits (like strawberries), Franz explains that the company is focused on keeping its product range simple to perfect the growing process. 

&ever's growing tower 

Rebranding efforts 
In recent months, the vertical farming industry has seen major players taking a new approach to product branding by using brightly colored packaging. &ever is also focused on bright, enticing packaging designed to represent the company’s values and production process.

“We will start using colors that represent what we’re actually doing. Yellow for the light, blue for the water and green for our greens. It allows the brand to stand out and visually signals to consumers that things are changing. This shows that we are a new type of agricultural company. Stay tuned for that in the second half of 2021.” explains Franz.

Franz also notes that &ever’s products are also sold living, whereas many indoor farms sell cut greens, packaged in clamshells or other packaging materials. Moreover, &ever is also looking into direct-to-consumer sales of leafy greens. 

In building its mega-farm, putting its products on European shelves and rebranding, &ever is eager to continue growing by getting consumers excited and developing more farm projects across the world.

&ever is a German agtech company offering three growing solutions, each addressing a different level of production. The &ever grow box is a small-scale system that allows growers to produce 15-30 kg of leafy greens per day in a small footprint. The company’s medium-sized solution is the &ever grow tower which is a small room containing a circular cultivation module.

Young plants are first transplanted in the inner circle and are gradually pushed further to the outer circles as new plants are introduced to the system. In pushing the plants further, the older plants receive more available space to continue growing without crowding neighboring plants. The grow towers provide a customizable output of 20-50 kg of leafy greens per day. Finally, &ever also develops large-scaled production system which it calls mega-farms.

For more information:
Franz Drack, CMO
&ever 
local@andever.de 
www.and-ever.com 

Publication date: Tue 8 Jun 2021
Author: Rebekka Boekhout
© VerticalFarmDaily.com

New Vertical Farm In Oshawa Will Harvest Fresh Greens Year-Round

By Jillian Follert

May 22, 2021

A new vertical farm is open in Oshawa with plans to harvest local greens year-round.

Mighty Harvest Produce, located at 871 Wilson Rd. S., is growing leafy greens and herbs hydroponically, which means without the use of soil.

Founder Derrik Stevenson started the business as a way to follow his passions after being laid off from an office job as a result of the pandemic.

“I decided, I’m not going to look for a job. I’m going to create my own job,” says Stevenson, who is vegan and has an interest in sustainability and fresh food.

Right now you can find greens like kale and salad blends growing at Mighty Harvest as well as herbs such as parsley, marjoram, and anise basil. 

Stevenson says growing greens indoors has benefits for the environment as well as the people who eat them.

“The ultra freshness is what sets us apart from the grocery store,” he says, explaining how greens sold in Ontario often make a long journey from California or Arizona. “I can harvest on a Wednesday night and be selling the product on Thursday.”

Vertical farming uses 90 per cent less water than conventional agriculture and Mighty Harvest does not use pesticides or herbicides.

Stevenson says customers may be surprised to learn Mighty Harvest Greens are not certified organic — it’s because Canadian regulations don’t allow certification for produce that’s not grown in soil.

Mighty Harvest is open Thursday and Friday from 1 to 6 p.m. and Saturday from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. and can be found at the Whitby's Farmers Market on Wednesdays.

AppHarvest Hopes To Build A Garden Of Eden In America's Appalachia

May 15, 2021

AppHarvest, Inc. (APPH)

Summary

• AppHarvest is building out commercial indoor farms in Appalachia.

• APPH, which recently went public via a special purpose acquisition company, has seen its stock price collapse on the back of the flight of capital from growth to value.

• With revenue growth increasing, the company's next challenge is growing into its valuation profitably.

Photo by IP Galanternik D.U./E+ via Getty Images

AppHarvest (NASDAQ:APPH) is building large commercial greenhouses in Kentucky to primarily grow tomatoes indoors. The benefits of this approach would see the company use up to 90% less water than traditional farms, have the ability to attain harvests year-round, use no chemical pesticides, and attain at least 30x more food per acre than conventional farming methods. Essentially, indoor farms allow modern farmers to carefully control the environment to indefinitely allow for near-perfect growing conditions.

This has brought the future of farming forward, a critical need in a world still facing significant population growth rates while beset by the uncertainties of climate change.

However, while AppHarvest's ESG credentials are undoubtedly strong with the company using recycled rainwater for its circular irrigation system, there remains uncertainty over whether its business will be able to profitably grow commodity fruit and vegetable produce. This would be against a domestic market increasingly dominated by Mexico. Imports of tomatoes from Mexico to the USA grew by 125% from 1.6 billion pounds to 3.6 billion pounds between 2002 and 2017. This subsequent decline in US production of tomatoes is a trend AppHarvest hopes to reverse with its indoor farm in Kentucky. This is able to reach 70% of the US population within a day's drive.

This means produce should not only arrive at grocery stores fresher, but they would also do so with a lower carbon footprint. AppHarvest longs would consider this an important point as consumers become increasingly aware of the importance of the food chain to managing climate change and the damaging impact of pesticide use on the natural environment. For example, surface runoff from farms into lakes and rivers have potentially damaging effects on aquatic ecosystems.

AppHarvest September 2020 Investor Presentation (Source)

While AppHarvest inaugural 60-acre Morehead facility primarily grows tomatoes, the company expects to be able to produce leafy greens and cucumbers in the near future with two new facilities planned for 2022.

Strong Geographic Reach And Improved Revenue Visibility

AppHarvest expects revenue to ramp up materially over the next four fiscal years from 2021 on the back of an expansion of its indoor greenhouses. The company has guided revenue to reach $376 million in 2025, a four-year compound annual growth rate from 2021 of 97%. To achieve this, AppHarvest expects to hit 12 active facilities across Appalachia by 2025. The company also expects to attain greater diversification by expanding into growing other fruits and vegetables.

AppHarvest September 2020 Investor Presentation (Source)

Of course, the main barrier to an investment in AppHarvest would be its ability to scale revenue growth profitably. Capital expenditure in new greenhouses should very well see the company increase total acreage and annual production, but its ability to do this profitably would be challenged by the unique costs of indoor growing. From increased electricity consumption to the use of more skilled and variable labour.

Hence, AppHarvest's focus on robotic harvesting emphasised with its recent acquisition of artificial intelligence startup Root AI points to a potentially profitable scale-up.

Virgo, Root AI's Tomato Picking Robot (Source)

AppHarvest does not expect Virgo to entirely eliminate its use of labour. However, the robot can evaluate crop health, precisely predict yield and optimise overall operations by handpicking tomatoes. This will be a material factor in efficient and profitable operations especially if it can work without a high degree of human intervention.

Indeed, the company expects to reach EBITDA profitability in its fiscal 2023, generating positive free cash flow during the same year. With its shares currently trading at $11.91, AppHarvest holds a $1.12 billion valuation. This would place its forward 1-year market cap to sales at 45x. While still high for a farming company, it is down from 162x when it reached all-time highs in February. Further, this multiple drops to 19x using revenue guided for its fiscal 2022. Investors would be right to be wary about paying almost 20 times revenue for a greenhouse farming company so might be prudent to wait for any further potential pullback in shares.

Turning Appalachia Into America's Own Modern Farm

AppHarvest will not be immune to the gyrations of selling a commodity product to a domestic market that has tilted towards cheaper imports over the last decade. The company will not only have to compete adequately on price with traditional farmed fruits and vegetables, but it would also have to do so with a high-tech setup that while big on ESG credentials offers up avenues for increased costs that could eat into any potential profits.

AppHarvest is a long-term somewhat speculative play on a better more modern method of farming. Hence, just as the green revolution of the mid 20th century saw increased agricultural production worldwide. This more modern ESG-focused method of farming promises to usurp the old order.

This article was written by

Winds Research

INTERACTIVE WORKSHOP: How To Make Your Network Part of Your Net “Worth”

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Little Leaf Farms Raises $90M to Grow Its Greenhouse Network

by Jennifer Marston

Image from: Little Leaf Farms

Massachusetts-based Little Leaf Farms has raised $90 million in a debt and equity financing round to expand its network of hydroponic greenhouses on the East Coast. The round was led by Equilibrium Capital as well as founding investors Bill Helman and Pilot House Associates. Bank of America also participated.

Little Leaf Farms says the capital is “earmarked” to build new greenhouse sites along the East Coast, where its lettuce is currently available in about 2,500 stores. 

The company already operates one 10-acre greenhouse in Devins, Massachusetts. Its facility grows leafy greens using hydroponics and a mixture of sunlight supplemented by LED-powered grow lights. Rainwater captured from the facility’s roof provides most of the water used on the farm. 

According to a press release, Little Leaf Farms has doubled its retail sales to $38 million since 2019. And last year, the company bought180 acres of land in Pennsylvania on which to build an additional facility. Still another greenhouse, slated for North Carolina, will serve the Southeast region of the U.S. 

Little Leaf Farms joins the likes of Revol Greens, Gotham Greens, AppHarvest, and others in bringing local(ish) greens to a greater percentage of the population. These facilities generally pack and ship their greens on the day of or day after harvesting, and only supply retailers within a certain radius. Little Leaf Farms, for example, currently servers only parts of Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, New York, and New Jersey. 

The list of regions the company serves will no doubt lengthen as the company builds up its greenhouse network in the coming months.

Indoor Farming Gains Ground Amid Pandemic, Climate Challenges

Investors say urban farming can boost food security despite rising inflation, trade tensions and global food shortages.

Image from: Reuters via AppHarvest

Investors used to brush off Amin Jadavji’s pitch to buy Elevate Farms’ vertical growing technology and produce stacks of leafy greens indoors with artificial light.

“They would say, ‘This is great, but it sounds like a science experiment,'” said Jadavji, CEO of Toronto, Canada-based Elevate.

Now, indoor farms are positioning themselves as one of the solutions to coronavirus pandemic-induced disruptions to the harvesting, shipping, and sale of food.

“It’s helped us change the narrative,” said Jadavji, whose company runs a vertical farm in Ontario, and is building others in New York and New Zealand.

Proponents, including the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), say urban farming increases food security at a time of rising inflation and limited global supplies. North American produce output is concentrated in Mexico and the US southwest, including California, which is prone to wildfires and other severe weather.

Climate-change concerns are also accelerating investments, including by agribusiness giant Bayer AG, into multi-storey vertical farms or greenhouses the size of 50 football fields.

They are enabling small North American companies like Elevate to bolster indoor production and compete with established players BrightFarms, AeroFarms and Plenty, backed by Amazon.com Inc founder Jeff Bezos.

But critics question the environmental cost of indoor farms’ high power requirements.

Vertical farms grow leafy greens indoors in stacked layers or on walls of foliage inside of warehouses or shipping containers. They rely on artificial light, temperature control and growing systems with minimal soil that involve water or mist, instead of the vast tracts of land in traditional agriculture.

Image from: Reuters via AppHarvest

Greenhouses can harness the sun’s rays and have lower power requirements. Well-established in Asia and Europe, greenhouses are expanding in North America, using greater automation.

Investments in global indoor farms totalled a record-high $500m in 2020, AgFunder research head Louisa Burwood-Taylor said.

The average investment last year rose sharply, as large players including BrightFarms and Plenty raised fresh capital, she said.

A big funding acceleration lies ahead, after pandemic food disruptions – such as infections among migrant workers that harvest North American produce – raised concerns about supply disruptions, said Joe Crotty, director of corporate finance at accounting firm KPMG, which advises vertical farms and provides investment banking services.

“The real ramp-up is the next three to five years,” Crotty said.

Vegetables grown in vertical farms or greenhouses are still just a fraction of overall production. US sales of food crops grown under cover, including tomatoes, cucumbers and lettuce, amounted to 358 million kilogrammes (790 million pounds) in 2019, up 50 percent from 2014, according to the USDA.

California’s outdoor head lettuce production alone was nearly four times larger, at 1.3 billion kg (2.9 billion pounds).

Image from: Reuters via AppHarvest

The USDA is seeking members for a new urban agriculture advisory committee to encourage indoor and other emerging farm practices.

Plant Breeding Moves Indoors

Bayer, one of the world’s biggest seed developers, aims to provide the plant technology to expand vertical agriculture. In August, it teamed with Singapore sovereign fund Temasek to create Unfold, a California-based company, with $30m in seed money.

Unfold says it is the first company focused on designing seeds for indoor lettuce, tomatoes, peppers, spinach and cucumbers, using Bayer germplasm, a plant’s genetic material, said Chief Executive John Purcell.

Their advances may include, for example, more compact plants and an increased breeding focus on quality, Purcell said.

Unfold hopes to make its first sales by early 2022, targeting existing farms, and startups in Singapore and the United Kingdom.

Greenhouses are also expanding, touting higher yields than open-field farming.

AppHarvest, which grows tomatoes in a 60-acre greenhouse in Morehead, Kentucky, broke ground on two more in the state last year. The company aims to operate 12 facilities by 2025.

Its greenhouses are positioned to reach 70 percent of the US population within a day’s drive, giving them a transportation edge over the southwest produce industry, said Chief Executive Jonathan Webb.

“We’re looking to rip the produce industry out of California and Mexico and bring it over here,” Webb said.

Projected global population growth will require a large increase in food production, a tough proposition outdoors given frequent disasters and severe weather, he said.

Image from: Reuters via AppHarvest

New York-based BrightFarms, which runs four greenhouses, positions them near major US cities, said Chief Executive Steve Platt. The company, whose customers include grocers Kroger and Walmart, plans to open its two largest farms this year, in North Carolina and Massachusetts.

Platt expects that within a decade, half of all leafy greens in the US will come from indoor farms, up from less than 10 percent currently.

“It’s a whole wave moving in this direction because the system we have today isn’t set up to feed people across the country,” he said.

‘Crazy, Crazy Things’

But Stan Cox, research scholar for non-profit The Land Institute, is sceptical of vertical farms. They depend on grocery store premiums to offset higher electricity costs for lighting and temperature control, he said.

“The whole reason we have agriculture is to harvest sunlight that’s hitting the earth every day,” he said. “We can get it for free.”

Bruce Bugbee, a professor of environmental plant physiology at Utah State University, has studied space farming for NASA. But he finds power-intensive vertical farming on Earth far-fetched.

“Venture capital goes into all kinds of crazy, crazy things and this is another thing on the list.”

Bugbee estimates that vertical farms use 10 times the energy to produce food as outdoor farms, even factoring in the fuel to truck conventional produce across the country from California.

AeroFarms, operator of one of the world’s largest vertical farms, based in a former New Jersey steel mill, says comparing energy use with outdoor agriculture is not straightforward. Produce that ships long distances has a higher spoilage rate and many outdoor produce farms use irrigated water and pesticides, said Chief Executive Officer David Rosenberg.

Vertical farmers tout other environmental benefits.

Elevate uses a closed-loop system to water plants automatically, collect moisture that plants emit and then re-water them with it. Such a system requires two percent of the water used on an outdoor romaine lettuce operation, Jadavji said. The company uses no pesticides.

“I think we’re solving a problem,” he said.

Agritech: Precision Farming With AI, IoT and 5G

Image from: Photo by Mohd Izwan Mohd Nazam/The Edge

For a company that grows and delivers vegetables, Boomgrow Productions Sdn Bhd’s office is nothing like a farm, or even a vertical farm.

Where farms are bedecked with wheelbarrows, spades and hoes, Boomgrow’s floor plan is akin to a co-working space with a communal island table, several cubicles, comfortable armchairs, a cosy hanging rattan chair and a glass-walled conference room in the middle.

At a corner, propped up along a walkway leading to a rectangular chamber fitted with grow lights, are rows of support stilts with hydroponic planters developed in-house and an agricultural technologist perched on a chair, perusing data. “This is where some of the R&D work happens,” says Jay Dasen, co-founder of the agritech start-up.

But there is a larger farm where most of the work behind this high-tech initiative is executed. Located a stone’s throw from the city centre in Ampang is a 40ft repurposed shipping container outfitted with perception technologies and artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities that mimic the ideal environment to produce more than 50,000kg of vegetables a year.

Stacked in vertical layers, Boomgrow’s vegetables are grown under artificial lights with Internet of Things (IoT) sensors to detect everything from leaf discolouration to nitrate composition. This is coupled with AI and machine learning algorithms.

Boomgrow is the country’s first 5G-connected vertical farm. With the low latency and larger bandwidth technology, the start-up is able to monitor production in real time as well as maintain key para­meters, such as temperature and humidity, to ensure optimal growth conditions.

When Jay and her co-founders, K Muralidesan and Shan Palani, embarked on this initiative six years ago, Boomgrow was nowhere near what it is today.

The three founders got together hoping to do their part in building a more sustainable future. “I’ve spent years advising small and large companies on sustainability, environmental and social governance disclosures. I even embarked on a doctorate in sustainability disclosure and governance,” says Jay.

“But I felt a deep sense of disconnect because while I saw companies evolving in terms of policies, processes and procedures towards sustainability, the people in those organisations were not transforming. Sustainability is almost like this white noise in the background. We know it’s important and we know it needs to be done, but we don’t really know how to integrate it into our lives.

“That disconnect really troubled me. When we started Boomgrow, it wasn’t a linear journey. Boomgrow is something that came out of meaningful conversations and many years of research.”

Shan, on the other hand, was an architect who developed a taste for sustainable designs when he was designing modular structures with minimal impact on their surroundings between regular projects. “It was great doing that kind of work. But I was getting very dissatisfied because the projects were customer-driven, which meant I would end up having debates about trivial stuff such as the colour of wall tiles,” he says.

As for Murali, the impetus to start Boomgrow came from having lived overseas — while working in capital markets and financial services — where quality and nutritious produce was easily available.

Ultimately, they concluded that the best way to work towards their shared sustainability goals was to address the imminent problem of food shortage.

“By 2050, the world’s population is expected to grow to 9.7 billion people, two-thirds of whom will be in Asia-Pacific. Feeding all those people will definitely be a huge challenge,” says Jay. 

“The current agricultural practice is not built for resilience, but efficiency. So, when you think of farming, you think of vast tracts of land located far away from where you live or shop.

“The only way we could reimagine or rethink that was to make sure the food is located closer to consumers, with a hyperlocal strategy that is traceable and transparent, and also free of pesticides.”

Having little experience in growing anything, it took them a while to figure out the best mechanism to achieve their goal. “After we started working on prototypes, we realised that the tropics are not designed for certain types of farming,” says Jay. 

“And then, there is the problem of harmful chemicals and pesticides everywhere, which has become a necessity for farmers to protect their crops because of the unpredictable climate. We went through many iterations … when we started, we used to farm in little boxes, but that didn’t quite work out.”

They explored different methodologies, from hydroponics to aquaponics, and even started growing outdoors. But they lost a lot of crops when a heat wave struck.

That was when they started exploring more effective ways to farm. “How can we protect the farm from terrible torrential rains, plant 365 days a year and keep prices affordable? It took us five years to answer these questions,” says Jay.

Even though farmers all over the world currently produce more than enough food to feed everyone, 820 million people — roughly 11% of the global population — did not have enough to eat in 2018, according to the World Health Organization. Concurrently, food safety and quality concerns are rising, with more consumers opting for organically produced food as well as safe foods, out of fear of harmful synthetic fertilisers, pesticides, herbicides and fungicides.

According to ResearchAndMarkets.com, consumer demand for global organic fruit and vegetables was valued at US$19.16 billion in 2019 and is anticipated to expand at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 6.5% by 2026.

Meanwhile, the precision farming market was estimated to be US$7 billion in 2020 and is projected to reach US$12.8 billion by 2025, at a CAGR of 12.7% between 2020 and 2025, states MarketsandMarkets Research Pte Ltd.

Malaysia currently imports RM1 billion worth of leafy vegetables from countries such as Australia, China and Japan. Sourcing good and safe food from local suppliers not only benefits the country from a food security standpoint but also improves Malaysia’s competitive advantage, says Jay.

Unlike organic farming — which is still a soil-based method — tech-enabled precision farming has the advantage of catering for increasing demand and optimum crop production with the limited resources available. Moreover, changing weather patterns due to global warming encourage the adoption of advanced farming technologies to enhance farm productivity and crop yield.

Boomgrow’s model does not require the acres of land that traditional farms need, Jay emphasises. With indoor farms, the company promises a year-round harvest, undisturbed by climate and which uses 95% less water, land and fuel to operate.

Traditional farming is back-breaking labour. But with precision technology, farmers can spend less time on the farm and more on doing other things to develop their business, she says.

Boomgrow has secured more than RM300,000 in funding via technology and innovation grants from SME Corporation Malaysia, PlaTCOM Ventures and Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation, and is on track to build the country’s largest indoor farms.

Image from: Boomgrow

The company got its chance to showcase the strength of its smart technology when Telekom Malaysia Bhd (TM) approached it to be a part of the telco’s Smart Agriculture cluster in Langkawi last October.

“5G makes it faster for us to process the multiple data streams that we need because we collect data for machine learning, and then AI helps us to make decisions faster,” Jay explains.

“We manage the farm using machines to study inputs like water and electricity and even measure humidity. All the farm’s produce is lab-tested and we can keep our promise that there are no pesticides, herbicides or any preserving chemicals. We follow the food safety standards set by the EU, where nitrate accumulation in plant tissues is a big issue.”

With TM’s 5G technology and Boomgrow’s patent-pending technology, the latter is able to grow vegetables like the staple Asian greens and highland crops such as butterhead and romaine lettuce as well as kale and mint. While the company is able to grow more than 30 varieties of leafy greens, it has decided to stick to a selection of crops that is most in demand to reduce waste, says Jay.

As it stands, shipping containers are the best fit for the company’s current endeavour as containerised modular farms are the simplest means of bringing better food to local communities. However, it is also developing a blueprint to house farms in buildings, she says.

Since the showcase, Boomgrow has started to supply its crops to various hotels in Langkawi. It rolled out its e-commerce platform last year after the Movement Control Order was imposed. 

“On our website, we promise to deliver the greens within six hours of harvest. But actually, you could get them way earlier. We harvest the morning after the orders come in and the vegetables are delivered on the same day,” says Jay.

Being mindful of Boomgrow’s carbon footprint, orders are organised and scheduled according to consumers’ localities, she points out. “We don’t want our delivery partners zipping everywhere, so we stagger the orders based on where consumers live. 

“For example, all deliveries to Petaling Jaya happen on Thursdays, but the vegetables are harvested that morning. They are not harvested a week before, three days before or the night before. This is what it means to be hyperlocal. We want to deliver produce at its freshest and most nutritious state.”

Plans to expand regionally are also underway, once Boomgrow’s fundraising exercise is complete, says Jay. “Most probably, this will only happen when the Covid-19 pandemic ends.”

To gain the knowledge they have today, the team had to “unlearn” everything they knew and take up new skills to figure what would work best for their business, says Jay. “All this wouldn’t have been possible if we had not experimented with smart cameras to monitor the condition of our produce,” she laughs.

Where Vertical Farming and Affordable Housing Can Grow Together

Some vertical farms grow greens in old warehouses, former steel mills, or other sites set apart from the heart of cities. But a new series of projects will build multistory greenhouses directly inside affordable housing developments.

“Bringing the farm back to the city center can have a lot of benefits,” says Nona Yehia, CEO of Vertical Harvest, a company that will soon break ground on a new building in Westbrook, ME, that combines a vertical farm with affordable housing. Similar developments will follow in Chicago and in Philadelphia, where a farm-plus-housing will be built in the Tioga District, an opportunity zone.

Inside each building, the ground level will offer community access, while the greenhouse fills the second, third, and fourth floors, covering 70,000 square feet and growing around a million pounds of produce a year. (The amount of housing varies by site; in Maine, there will be only 15 units of housing, though the project will create 50 new jobs.)

In Chicago, there may be a community kitchen on the first level. In each location, residents will be able to buy fresh produce on-site; Vertical Harvest also plans to let others in the neighborhood buy greens directly from the farm. While it will sell to supermarkets, restaurants, hospitals, and other large customers, it also plans to subsidize 10% to 15% of its harvest for local food pantries and other community organizations.

“By creating a large-scale farm in a food desert, we are creating a large source of healthy, locally grown food 365 days a year,” Yehia says.

Vertical Farming ‘At a Crossroads’

Building the right business model to balance resource usage with socio-economic conditions is crucial to capturing new markets, say speakers ahead of Agri-TechE event

Image from: Fruitnet

Although growing crops all year round with Controlled Environment Agriculture (CEA) has been proposed as a method to localize food production and increase resilience against extreme climate events, the efficiency and limitations of this strategy need to be evaluated for each location. 

That is the conclusion of research by Luuk Graamans of Wageningen University & Research, a speaker at the upcoming Agri-TechE event on CEA, which takes place on 25 February.

His research shows that integration with urban energy infrastructure can make vertical farms more viable. Graamans’ research around the modelling of vertical farms shows that these systems are able to achieve higher resource use efficiencies, compared to more traditional food production, except when it comes to electricity. 

Vertical farms, therefore, need to offer additional benefits to offset this increased energy use, Graamans said. One example his team has investigated is whether vertical farms could also provide heat.

“We investigated if vertical farms could provide not just food for people living in densely populated areas and also heat their homes using waste heat. We found that CEA can contribute to stabilizing the increasingly complex energy grid.”

Diversification

This balance between complex factors both within the growing environment and wider socio-economic conditions means that the rapidly growing CEA industry is beginning to diversify with different business models emerging.

Jack Farmer is CSO at vertical producer LettUs Grow, which recently launched its Drop & Grow growing units, offering a complete farming solution in a shipping container. 

He believes everyone in the vertical farming space is going to hit a crossroads. “Vertical farming, with its focus on higher value and higher density crops, is effectively a subset of the broader horticultural sector,” he said. 

"All the players in the vertical farming space are facing a choice – to scale vertically and try to capture as much value in that specific space, or to diversify and take their technology expertise broader.”

LettUs Grow is focussed on being the leading technology provider in containerised farming, and its smaller ‘Drop & Grow: 24’ container is mainly focussed on people entering the horticultural space.

Opportunities in retail

“This year is looking really exciting,” he said. “Supermarkets are investing to ensure a sustainable source of food production in the UK, which is what CEA provides. We’re also seeing a growth in ‘experiential’ food and retail and that’s also where we see our Drop & Grow container farm fitting in.”

Kate Hofman, CEO, GrowUp agrees. The company launched the UK’s first commercial-scale vertical farm in 2014.

“It will be really interesting to see how the foodservice world recovers after lockdown – the rough numbers are that supermarket trade was up at least 11 per cent in the last year – so retail still looks like a really good direction to go in. 

“If we want to have an impact on the food system in the UK and change it for the better, we’re committed to partnering with those big retailers to help them deliver on their sustainability and values-driven goals.

“Our focus is very much as a salad grower that grows a fantastic product that everyone will want to buy. And we’re focussed on bringing down the cost of sustainable food, which means doing it at a big enough scale to gain the economies of production that are needed to be able to sell at everyday prices.”

Making the Numbers Add Up

The economics are an important part of the discussion. Recent investment in the sector has come from the Middle East, and other locations, where abundant solar power and scarce resources are driving interest in CEA. Graamans’ research has revealed a number of scenarios where CEA has a strong business case.

For the UK, CEA should be seen as a continuum from glasshouses to vertical farming, he believes. “Greenhouses can incorporate the technologies from vertical farms to increase climate control and to enhance their performance under specific climates."

It is this aspect that is grabbing the attention of conventional fresh produce growers in open field and covered crop production.  

A Blended Approach

James Green, director of agriculture at G’s, thinks combining different growing methods is the way forward. “There’s a balance in all of these systems between energy costs for lighting, energy costs for cooling, costs of nutrient supply, and then transportation and the supply and demand. At the end of the day, sunshine is pretty cheap and it comes up every day.

“I think a blended approach, where you’re getting as much benefit as you can from nature but you’re supplementing it and controlling the growth conditions, is what we are aiming for, rather than the fully artificially lit ‘vertical farming’.”

Graamans, Farmer and Hofman will join a discussion with conventional vegetable producers, vertical farmers and technology providers at the Agri-TechE event ‘Controlled Environment Agriculture is growing up’ on 25 February 2021.

How This Vertical Farm Grows 80,000 Pounds of Produce per Week

Bowery Farming uses technology to prioritize accessibility and sustainability in their produce growing operations

To some, the pristine growing conditions and perceived mechanical interference of a vertical farm can seem unnatural, but at Bowery Farming “interference” is actually not the goal at all. “We don’t really think about how people are involved in the growing process, but how to take people out of the growing process” says chief science officer Henry Sztul. “Our goal is actually to have as few people walking around our plants as possible.”

Bowery Farming is a network of vertical farms working to reengineer the growing process. Using a system of light and watering technology, Bowery is able to use 95 percent less water than a traditional outdoor farm, zero pesticides and chemicals, and grow food that tastes as good as anyone else’s. 

Bowery Farming uses vertical farm-specific seeds that are optimized for flavor instead of insect resistance and durability. Seeds are mechanically pressed into trays of soil, and sent out into growing positions, or racks within the building that have their own lighting and watering systems. Each tray gets its own QR code so that they can be monitored and assigned a customized plan for water and light until they’re ready to be harvested.

Irving Fain, Bowery Farming’s founder and CEO contemplates the prediction from the United Nations that 70 to 80 percent of the world’s population will be living in and around cities in the next 30 years. “Figuring out ‘how do you feed and how do you provide fresh food to urban environments both more efficiently as well as more sustainably?’ is a very important question today, and an even more important question in the years to come.”