Welcome to iGrow News, Your Source for the World of Indoor Vertical Farming
This Vertical Farming Startup Is Valued At $27.5 Million
This Vertical Farming Startup Is Valued At $27.5 Million
By Daniel Lipson 2017
What's vertical farming? In Bowery Farming's first indoor farm, located in a warehouse in New Jersey, proprietary computer software, LEDs, and robotics are able to grow leafy greens without any pesticides, using 95% less water than traditional farms. CEO Irving Fain describes his company as a tech company "thinking about the future of food."
Their indoor farms can be located near city centers and will be able to cut transportation costs and help curb the environmental impact of the industry. By being located indoors, they're unbeholden by weather and can produce 100 times more greens than a traditional outdoor farm of the same size. Fain sees it as a way to answer global population growth, shrinking farmlands, and an influx of people towards urban areas. The farms are enabled by recent technological advances in data analytics and lighting and are poised to scale up in the coming years.
YASUYOSHI CHIBA/AFP/Getty Images
Fain started his career as an investment banker at Citigroup, ran marketing at iHeartMedia, and co-founded loyalty marketing software firm CrowdTwist before venturing into food. They raised first round funds of over $20 million from a list of investors that includes Blue Apron CEO Matt Salzberg and celebrity chef Tom Colicchio as well as GV (formerly Google Ventures). The company has experimented with over 100 different crops and sells six varieties of leafy greens to Whole Foods and Foragers. They plan to use the extra cash to hire more workers and move towards other types of produce. For the long term, they are eyeing China and other emerging markets where food security is an important topic.
Bowery isn't the only one trying to do vertical farming. Competitors AeroFarms and Plenty United are also farming indoors with the capacity to produce millions of greens, and AeroFarms has already raised $100 million, while Plenty United has billionaire backing from Jeff Bezos and Eric Schmidt. The technology enables vertical farmers to convert old warehouses and factories into agricultural centers. All of them benefit from advances in LED lighting that can mimic natural sunlight, as well as lower costs for industrial-scale lighting setups
Indoor Farms of America Receives Investment From Major U.S. Ag Firm Co-Alliance
Indoor Farms of America Receives Investment From Major U.S. Ag Firm Co-Alliance
21-08-2017
LAS VEGAS, Aug. 21, 2017 : Indoor Farms of America, LLC is pleased to announce that it has completed the final phase of its initial relationship with Co-Alliance, LLP, one of the nation's oldest, largest and most diverse traditional agriculture companies. This final phase comes in the form of an equity investment in Indoor Farms of America. Terms of the transaction are private.
"When we had our first visit from the folks at Co-Alliance late last year, we expressed our commitment to having traditional agriculture in the U.S. embrace this technology in a manner that would benefit them, and we discussed in detail just how that would take shape," explained David Martin, CEO of Indoor Farms of America.
"Becoming a part owner of Indoor Farms of America represents our belief in its products and people," said Co-Alliance CEO, Kevin Still. "We see the potential of integrating this world class indoor agriculture equipment into traditional farming operations as a way to diversify family farms, add a year-round income stream, and bring the next generation back to the farm."
The new investment comes just weeks after Co-Alliance purchased two "warehouse" style farms, marking an important milestone for the CEA company. "We have achieved the first stage of the plans to have indoor farming adopted by the very folks who have kept us fed in this country since its inception, and that is the traditional farmer," said Martin.
Co-Alliance will pilot these indoor farms with traditional farmers, assessing the capability to diversify income, spread risks, and to supply local fresh produce all year round. Said John Graham, CFO of Co-Alliance, "We are evaluating the commercial application and income generating potential of the farms here in Indiana so when we introduce the technology to our member-growers on a larger scale, we have a turnkey, replicable, scalable complete production process in place."
"When Dave and I developed the equipment, we embarked on a journey that started 4 years ago and continues with an intense focus on Research and Development. This is an affirmation of the purpose of the journey. Our aeroponic farms have proven reliable in 3 years of test growing of over 30 types of greens, strawberries, cherry tomatoes, peppers, beans and edible flowers. The equipment will produce strong economic results that make it more than viable in the indoor growing environment, more so than any other equipment that exists today, due to far higher yields in a given space," said Ron Evans, President of Indoor Farms of America.
Co-Alliance sees new opportunities for farmers to have a major impact on the "locally grown" food movement. Per Kevin Still, Co-Alliance CEO, "Co-Alliance is positioning itself and its farmer owners to be able to capitalize on the growing consumer demands for truly fresh, locally grown, and high-quality products available to them from local farmers they know and trust, year round. And to do so, we believe investing in Indoor Farms of America is the right way to go about it."
Co-Alliance, LLP, is a partnership of cooperatives with community roots established in the 1920s. Headquartered in Avon, Indiana, its 50 locations across Indiana, Michigan, and Ohio serve the areas of Energy, Agronomy, Grain Marketing, and Swine and Animal Nutrition. For more information, visit www.co-alliance.com.
Indoor Farms of America, LLC, is leading indoor ag innovation. It has farms installed in countries surrounding the globe, and brings meaningful advancement to indoor agriculture, with a sole purpose to make it economically viable, while creating meaningful jobs for people in any region, including veterans and disabled individuals.
Indoor Farms of America is dedicated to creating a sustainable food supply for generations to come. The company designs and builds its patented advanced indoor agriculture equipment using a proven, reliable aeroponics method as the foundation of the farm, allowing year-round high yield production, with no sky-lifts or ladders required to operate the farm.
Indoor Grow Gardens Bring Your Gardening Inside
Indoor Grow Gardens Bring Your Gardening Inside
By Kim Cook | AP August 8, 2017 | Home & Garden
A tasty salad of tender pea shoots. Handfuls of fragrant herbs for the stew. Snack veggies for lunch boxes.
Keeping a fresh supply of greens and herbs on hand can be challenging as the growing season winds down, or if you don’t have a garden. But now you can plop a planter anywhere in your house, set a few timers, and in about 10 days you’ll be nibbling greens like a contented rabbit. All year round.
There are a variety of indoor grow gardens on the market that come with everything you need: planter, planting medium, seeds, fertilizer and a high-intensity grow light. Smart tech and remote controls adjust lighting and moisture levels, so even if your thumb’s not the greenest, you can still find success.
Linnea and Tarren Wolfe of Vancouver, British Columbia, decided to design a home grower after watching their kids gobble up sunflower and pea-shoot microgreens “like potato chips.”
Their Urban Cultivator looks like a wine fridge. It comes as a free-standing unit, topped with a butcher block, or it can be installed under the counter and hooked up like a dishwasher. The company offers an extensive seed selection, but anything from your local garden center will grow. (www.urbancultivator.net )
Linnea Wolfe advises home gardeners to do some research into the benefits of the edible, immature greens known as microgreens.
“Most of them only take about 7 to 10 days to grow,” she says. “You can mass-consume them, and the health benefits are extraordinary.”
The indoor garden trend is part of a, well, growing movement, says New York landscape architect Janice Parker.
“The technology of these kits simplifies hydroponic gardening at its best, and makes it available to all,” she says. You don’t need a yard, or favorable weather.
“What a pleasure to have fresh herbs, flowers and vegetables, and experience a connection to nature no matter where you are,” says Parker.
She thinks these kits shouldn’t just be relegated to the kitchen.
“I’d put them anywhere — dining room tables and coffee tables come to mind. Or in ‘dead’ spaces that have no light or interest,” she says.
She recommends growing plants with both flavor and flair: “Chives, dill, rosemary, fennel, basil and nasturtiums all have gorgeous flowers and beautiful foliage”.
Miracle Gro’s line of Aerogarden indoor planters includes the Sprout, which is about the size of a coffee maker and suitable for herbs, as well as a larger model in which you could grow just about anything. Pre-packaged seed pods like lettuces, cherry tomatoes, herb blends and petunias come ready to pop in the planter. An LCD control panel helps adjust lighting and watering needs. (www.miraclegro.com )
Year-Round Agriculture in Milwaukee? Look No Further Than Big City Greens
Year-Round Agriculture in Milwaukee? Look No Further Than Big City Greens
Photo by Jessi Paetzke
ANN CHRISTENSON AUGUST 15, 2017
An indoor farm north of Brady Street is a model of year-round city agriculture.
After eight years selling eggs, pickles and produce out of their farmhouse in California’s Napa Valley, Bryan De Stefanis and Deborah Diaz moved back to Wisconsin with their daughter in 2015 to be close to family and to launch a farming business in, yep, the city of Milwaukee.
De Stefanis found a location for a greenhouse a few blocks north of Brady Street, close enough to the city’s farm-supporting restaurants so he could deliver within hours. One of his earliest visits was to Sanford Restaurant, where chef/co-owner Justin Aprahamian’s culinary philosophy embraces locally grown food and uses the kitchen as a lab for preserving and fermenting all manner of ingredients. Soon after making the Sanford connection, De Stefanis’ Big City Greens (906 E. Hamilton St.) supplied 20 flats of micro-arugula for Aprahamian’s 2015 gig cooking at the James Beard Foundation Awards.
In addition to heirloom vegetables, herbs and microgreens from the indoor farm, De Stefanis delivers foraged wild edibles he unearths at their property in central Wisconsin. It’s “all very fresh and great quality,” says Buckley’s restaurant chef Thi Cao, a regular customer. Big City’s ingredients and preserved foods, including those featured below, are also available at the weekly farmers markets in Shorewood and Greenfield or by emailing Big City Greens.
Deborah Diaz and Bryan De Stefanis of Big City Greens. Photo by Jessi Paetzke
Beyond the Megafarms: 4 Alternative Models For Indoor Agriculture
Beyond the Megafarms: 4 Alternative Models For Indoor Agriculture
Indoor agriculture has grabbed several headlines in the mainstream media recently. Not only does the idea of growing produce indoors, in an automated high-tech environment capture the imagination of many consumers and readers, but just last month, an indoor farming business raised a whopping $200 million in funding, in the largest ever deal for an agriculture technology startup.
South San Francisco’s Plenty raised the funding from SoftBank along with affiliates of Louis M. Bacon, the founder of Moore Capital Management, who joined the round alongside existing investors Innovation Endeavors, Bezos Expeditions, Chinese VC DCM, Data Collective, and Finistere Ventures.
Good news sells
Four different indoor farming operations told AgFunderNews that the rate of incoming investment inquiries noticeably increased after the Plenty news. High-tech indoor farming has captured the imagination of the media as well. In fact, you could say that indoor farming is the crossover hit of the agtech world — a niche story that has made it into the mainstream.
But like a country song that hits the pop charts for a while, high-tech, high-cost indoor vertical farming groups like Plenty are not necessarily representative of the form all indoor farming operations take. There are many different business models for growing food indoors, and as this segment of the agrifood industry is still very young, there are few proven successes yet.
Further, as Sanjeev Krishnan of S2G Ventures, an agtech-focused VC, told AgFunderNews in July, it is unlikely that this space will see a clear front-runner emerge.
“There is no winner takes all potential here. There are many different models that could work and we are excited about the platforms being built in the market.”
Plenty has a similar business model to a few other well funded startups including AeroFarms of New Jersey, which closed $34 million of a $40 million Series D round in May, and Bowery Farming, which raised a $20 million Series A co-led by General Catalyst and GGV Capital, including GV (Google Ventures) in June.
All of these farming operations are indoors, using LED lights and varying levels of data science to create what is essentially a plant factory — or mega farm. They don’t use soil or sunlight, they seek to make a profit selling produce for retail and food service, and they rely on scale, explaining their need to raise vast sums of capital.
“The thing that is hard about investing is that at some point someone has to invest in scale before the scale is there and SoftBank is both visionary and courageous,” said Plenty CEO Matt Barnard to AgFunderNews when the news broke in July.
Some say that the high price tag of building indoor vertical megafarms makes profitability a distant dream — AeroFarms’ flagship facility in Newark will cost about $40 million when fully complete.
Virtue in variety
Below we explore some business models that differ from these mega-farms and are lower-cost. They are of course faced with a healthy dose of skepticism too; some industry insiders say that lower-cost, smaller-scale operations are not financially sustainable long term due to the high cost of labor and lack of efficiency.
What the alternatives have in common generally, however, is that they collect their revenue at different points in the value chain and, often, they have more than one income stream.
Read below how four indoor ag startups are taking a different approach to the indoor farming trend.
Green Collar Foods
Based in Detroit, MI, Green Collar Foods (GCF) builds and operates small, indoor hydroponic farms that are run by community members. It sells leafy greens exclusively to local public sector institutions like hospitals, at market prices, with multi-year forward contracts. The company is built to operate in areas with a high degree of urban blight and eventually transfer each farm to a local owner, moving toward a franchise model. GCF plans to construct 6,000 square foot facilities, which will cost under $500k each.
The company has farms in Detroit and Bridgeport, CT, and soon will have one in Rotherham, UK, all in cooperation with local universities.
The company says that its aeroponic growing systems and farm management software are simple enough to hire unskilled labor and therefore make a larger impact at the community level through job creation. “The GCF Platform — a hybrid between best-in-class aeroponics and cloud-based computing — is designed to be an effective and simple solution right out of the box,” said co-founder Daniel Casanas.
Founder Ronald Reynolds sees his distributed — or franchised — model of urban farming as lower risk to a large megafarm because of the disease and pest risk associated with concentrated growing at scale.
“If you have 10-, 6-, 7,000 sq ft, you still add up to 60,000 sq ft. You can still leverage the same forward contract, but if you run into hiccups in the facilities you can switch over,” Reynolds told AgFunderNews.
Reynolds said that the high-profile megafarms are in a chicken and egg cycle, with investor money following this one business model and then entrepreneurs recreating it because that’s where the money is. “The business models are trying to follow where the perceived money is coming from. The only thing that seems to be getting people’s attention are big asks. People find it easier to write bigger checks than smaller checks.” GCF is currently working to complete a $1.5 million financing round. GCF’s funding to date has come from the co-founders’ own micro-venture firm called DayRiver, local individuals and grants. Read more about Green Collar Foods here.
Alesca Life
Alesca Life charges hotels, high-end catering outfits or hospitality groups for the installation and operation of a small indoor farm and then sells the produce in a subscription model. It is based in Beijing and is currently expanding to the United Arab Emirates.
Founder Stuart Oda has recently been setting up and operating small farms for two members of the Dubai ruling family and Mercedes Benz. In order to increase his footprint, he is embracing the expat population in Dubai, targeting hotels and luxury food service operations where customers are willing to pay a premium and there is more appetite for his crop, leafy greens.
Oda says that his facilities can break even in around two years. “If we have a servicing contract in place for even a year and a half, we will have made back our money.”
He further said that picking the right crops and markets is what makes his financials make sense, “Let’s find a product, or a niche, or a market, or a city, or a customer that can generate the profit we need.” In contrast to the normal practice of American indoor mega-farms, to build the farm and then find the customer, Oda is bringing the farm directly to a specific customer. With Plenty likely to build a farm in Japan and AeroFarms recently receiving an investment from the UAE’s Meraas, the investment arm of Dubai’s leader Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid, other players may be looking to capitalize on favorable pricing for produce internationally as well.
Alesca Life has raised undisclosed seed and angel rounds from individuals and family offices so far. Read more about Alesca Life and other indoor operations in the UAE here.
Freight Farms
Boston-based Freight Farms is one of the older players in the indoor, vertical space, having been around since 2011. The company sells retrofitted shipping containers for indoor, vertical growing along with software to help farmers to track and control their operations remotely via cameras and a mobile app.
The container farms sell for about $85,000 in the US and have the growing potential equivalent to eight acres of land. Freight Farms has offices in the US and Europe along with a licensed dealer in the Middle East.
In June, Freight Farms, completed its Series B funding round of $7.3 million, raising the funding from existing investor Boston-based Spark Capital along with new investor Stage 1 Ventures with support from early investors like Launch Capital.
Freight Farms has now raised a total of $12 million and deployed more than 100 farms that use hydroponic technology, LED lighting, and automated watering and fertilizing technology. The startup raised $3.7 million in Series A funding in 2014.
Fresh Box Farms
Sitting in between a few of these models is Fresh Box Farms, a Boston-based indoor operation currently farming out of shipping containers, but soon building a facility the equivalent to 200 of those, admittedly moving on from the container model. CFO David Vosburg says that though containers were a great place to start, in the long run concentrating labor into one big operation makes more sense.
However, Vosburg’s larger farm will have rooms within it to provide more precise temperature control for different plants. “You just can’t grow efficiently in a large warehouse because basil does not like to grow at the same temperature as romaine and different cultivars like wildly different CO2 levels,” he said.
Fresh Box Farms has raised more than $10 million to date from individual investors and family offices.
The indoor vertical farming industry as a whole is far from maturity and perhaps decades away from competing with the Salinas Valley in leafy greens production. As it grows and matures it may prove important to remember that there is more variety in indoor farming businesses than makes the news
Meet Farmlab.One, The Latest Indoor Farming Experiment From Germany’s Largest Retailer
Meet Farmlab.One, The Latest Indoor Farming Experiment From Germany’s Largest Retailer
By Michael Wolf | August 14, 2017
While we haven’t arrived at a future where every corner grocery has an in-store farming system with rows and rows of produce, it isn’t for lack of trying.
This is especially true for METRO Group, Germany’s largest retailer, who has been experimenting with in-store farming since early 2016.
The First InStore Farm in Europe**** The first of its kind farm in the METRO Supermarket in Berlin. Delicious greens grow 365 days a year InStore In full transparency and by demand.
That’s when the retailer launched Kräuter Garten (herb garden), the first retail in-store farming installation in Europe. The technology for METRO’s first foray into vertical farming was provided by INFARM, a vertical farming startup based in Germany. Since the launch of Kräuter Garten in Berlin, other retailers such as EDEKA (Germany’s largest grocery store chain) have since taken an interest in in-store growing.
Now METRO is at it again, launching another vertical farming experiment with Farmlab.one, a joint project between the retail giant and Schmiede.ONE, a German innovation lab focused on future business models that intermingle agriculture and cutting edge technologies such as artificial intelligence.
The project will be managed by James Lindsay of Schmiede.ONE in an indoor lab in Düsseldorf. METRO has provided resources in the form of indoor farming racks from TowerGarden, the indoor farming division of Juice+. The project is starting with three crops to start, which you can watch here via Periscope.
While the project is a modest one, it’s a sign of continued interest in vertical, in-building farming by a large food retailer. In the US, we’ve seen growing interest in solutions from companies like Farmshelf, and just last month we saw one of the biggest investments ever in a vertical farming startup when Jeff Bezos, among others, invested $200 million in stealthy startup Plenty.
A comparison of yields and resource consumption of indoor vs. soil-based farming. Source: Schmiede One
While it’s unlikely that in-store vertical farms could produce at the scale to meet the total demand for fresh produce purchased at a high-volume urban retail storefront, it’s clear that soilless vertical farms produce at a much high rate of productivity compared to soil based farming, which means much less overall space is needed to produce the same amount of produce. With such high yields, one can envision a future where a mix of in-store grown produce combined with other warehouse grown urban farmed food could be enough to meet a large percentage of overall demand for fresh produce.
While we haven’t arrived at a future where every corner grocery has an in-store farming system with rows and rows of produce, it isn’t for lack of trying.
This is especially true for METRO Group, Germany’s largest retailer, who has been experimenting with in-store farming since early 2016.
The First InStore Farm in Europe**** The first of its kind farm in the METRO Supermarket in Berlin. Delicious greens grow 365 days a year InStore In full transparency and by demand.
Shaping Smarter Cities: Urban Farming in Tokyo Japan
Shaping Smarter Cities: Urban Farming in Tokyo Japan
14 August 2017
With the next evolution of Mouser Electronics’ Empowering Innovative Together™ series, Mouser and Grant Imahara team up with the creative minds at WIRED Brand Lab to take a look at the modern city. Sponsored this year by our technology partners Analog Devices, Intel, Microchip a,nd Molex, we’re traveling the world to see and learn from the innovators and progressive companies creating a more livable future for our cities. We’re asking insightful questions: How can technology make our hectic lives better, and what solutions will it provide to the everyday problems today’s ever-growing cities face? Across the globe, there are many innovators hard at work already employing technology to create smarter cities that are more efficient, less polluted and more sustainable.
In the third episode of our 5-part video series, Grant heads to Tokyo, Japan to speak with engineers at a company called Mirai. Mirai is investigating how urban farming could enhance food production for ever growing populations in smart cities. Almost three-quarters of the landmass in Japan is mountainous. This leaves only a relatively small area for the entire population to live work and grow food. As the population increases, the strain on food production expands exponentially.
That is where Mirai comes in. They have converted a former Sony semiconductor factory into the world’s largest indoor farm. It ships out 10,000 heads of lettuce per day. By building these farms up instead of out Mirai has found one solution to the problem of space for farms in Japan.
Inside their indoor vertical farm, Mirai can control all the things that keep a farm awake with worry every night. In the controlled environment they have created rainfall can be precisely controlled, soil nutrients can be meticulously applied and damage from animals and insects ceases to be a concern. The yield per square meter is 50 to 100 times that of a normal farm.
The types of vertical farms that Mirai has created can be installed virtually anywhere they are needed. This means that the food miles (a measurement of the distance food has to travel from producer to consumer and the fuel required) for their products are greatly reduced.
The indoor nature of these farms also reduces water consumption. All drainage from the watering of crops is collected and recycled. Even the water lost to evaporation is trapped and then recycled.
These are just a few examples of how vertical farming will revolutionize the world of agriculture and enhance smart cities.
In the next episode Grant treks to Los Angeles, California to take a look at the future of city building.
When Entrepreneurship Meets Agriculture, You Get An ‘Accelerator’ Teaching ‘Vertical’ Farming
When Entrepreneurship Meets Agriculture, You Get An ‘Accelerator’ Teaching ‘Vertical’ Farming
(iStock )
By Gene Marks August 24 at 3:10 PM
Flush from raising $5 million, a “vertical farm” accelerator is getting ready to conquer the world.
The company, according to this Fast Company story, is called Square Roots and it has a “campus” in Brooklyn made from climate-controlled shipping containers where 10 urban farmer entrepreneurs have learned the ins and outs of growing food over the past nine and a half months. The goal: compete against the large industrial farmers that dominate our food chain. The 10 initial student entrepreneurs are all on track to graduate in October and the company is planning to use its recently raised capital to expand to other cities.
“We wanted to come up with a model that scaled small urban farming, so literally every consumer of food can have a direct relationship with a farmer,” Square Roots co-founder and chief executive Tobias Peggs told Fast Company (the company’s other founder is Kimbal Musk, whose brother is…yes, that guy).
How hard is urban farming? Seems pretty hard. To graduate from the program the entrepreneurs each need to learn how to grow food in glorified shipping containers, complete with irrigation systems and LED lights. The accelerator provides them with coaches and experts to help them with the process, and to teach them business building skills so that ultimately they can start up their own urban farming enterprises. “The hope is there will be tens of thousands of new businesses that end up being formed,” Peggs says.
It’s not all about selling food. Some of the entrepreneurs are working on a farm-to-desk delivery program while others are working on projects that cover everything from growing fresh greens for low-income neighborhoods to developing better lighting for indoor farming.
The accelerator makes its money by taking a cut of the entrepreneurs’ sales. The strategy gives both the entrepreneurs and the people at Square Roots the motivation to succeed. Peggs says his business is successful if the farmers are successful and that he and his staff wake up every morning thinking of ways to help his students profit.
Interested in becoming an urban farming entrepreneur? Square Roots is taking applications for its next class right now. It’s a hot field. In 2016, 500 applicants applied to the company for just the 10 spots.
Gene Marks owns the Marks Group, a Bala Cynwyd, Pa.-based consulting firm that helps clients with customer relationship management. Marks is an author and a certified public accountant, and he writes regularly for The Post’s On Small Business blog.
For more about Marks, visit genemarks.com.
Can Agritech Save The Future of Food?
Photo: SKY GREENS
Can Agritech Save The Future of Food?
Aug. 7 06:00 am JST
By Maxine Cheyney for The Journal (ACCJ)TOKYO
The Fourth Industrial Revolution—a fusion of cloud-connected technologies, Big Data, and biotech—is changing the way we do business, travel, communicate, and even how we eat and produce food. The agriculture industry has already seen two revolutions of its own, with scientists and manufacturers dabbling in mechanization, plant breeding, and genetics. Now, this technological shift has sparked the rise of smart farms and what is being called the Third Green Revolution.
Although agritech—a broad collection of innovations and technologies that can be applied to farming—is not new, it is finding new life in Japan and abroad. As the world’s resources are stretched thin by population growth, and as environmental factors begin to impact our food supply, agritech is finding sure footing as a possible solution.
This is particularly true in Japan. Following the devastating Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami of March 11, 2011, the demand for untainted food swelled. The declining population of farmers has caused further production problems, making technologies that can improve yield, profit, and provide clean produce more important than ever.
More companies are looking for ways to invest, whether through venture capital funds, public equities, or direct investment. In Japan, technology companies such as Toshiba Corporation and Panasonic Corporation are finding ways to support smart farming.
But how are these technologies progressing? What potential do self-contained farms have to become the new way to grow fruit and vegetables? What is the science behind the agritech movement?
TECH TIME
According to Digital America: a tale of haves and have-mores, a 2015 report by consultants McKinsey & Company, agriculture and hunting remain the least-digitized industries in the United States.
But farmers have long been seeking the most efficient tools for their trade. Sensors that measure air and soil, livestock biometrics, and automated systems that use the Internet of Things (IoT) to control irrigation are just some of the tools already available. Precision equipment, geo-positioning systems, Big Data, unmanned aerial vehicles, drones, and even robotics are also leaving their mark on farming.
“The whole agritech sector is really interesting—it’s kind of like the healthcare sector, because it’s fundamentally important,” said Trista Bridges, founder and president of Vizane KK. “It’s very complex, very regulated, and there’s lots of different actors and stakeholders.”
The Journal also spoke with representatives from Japan’s Institute of Agricultural Machinery (IAM), part of the National Agriculture and Food Research Organization (NARO), about this growing sector.
“In smart agriculture,” they explained, “it is important for it to be cost-effective and have set rules and regulations, such as liability upon accidents.”
Bridges recently helped organize the AgriTech Summit (AG/SUM), which took place in Tokyo from May 23 to 25 and focused on how disruptive technology is helping to shape agriculture. She explained that many start-ups at the event provided a variety of solutions to meet a range of agriculture needs. Not one, however, delivered an end-to-end solution.
One of the main issues is understanding farmers’ needs, which differ from farm to farm. “The [return on investment] on a lot of these technologies is not proven at all,” she added. “It’s extremely complex to make a smart farm that is full-functioning, and indoor farming is probably a little easier because it’s self-contained.”
She also pointed out that the price of LED light bulbs is beginning to drop, an important change that will help many indoor farms.
Japan-based plant factory operations and vegetable production company Spread Co., Ltd. has created its own LED lighting for the soon-to-open Techno Farm Keihanna. Chief Executive Officer Shinji Inada said, “The lights are tailored to vegetables cultivated in indoor vertical farms.” He added that, compared with existing LED lighting, the system reduces energy consumption by 30 percent.
The number of self-contained farms is certainly increasing, helping the sector grow. They also provide a place for innovative technologies to be tested.
“I think it has a lot of potential, especially in a country where you have limited space and fewer people working on farmland,” Bridges said. But, she added, it is not yet clear in what situations equipping a farm with robotics and advanced technologies is the best option.
Inada added, “Although indoor farming comes with its fair share of challenges, its ability to control the environment not only allows for more stable production year round, but also for the cultivation of high-quality produce without the use of pesticides.”
Another aspect to consider is the cost of bringing in produce. “In Japan, you have substantial issues with importation of food,” Bridges explained. This means pressure is mounting for Japan to become more self-sustaining, especially as migration to the city increases. This is a concern shared by the United States.
Gotham Greens, an urban greenhouse opened its doors in Brooklyn in 2009. During the winter months, much of New York City’s produce was coming from places such as Mexico, California, and Israel, and CEO Viraj Puri saw a business opportunity. “We realized that by the time the produce made its way here, it was at least a week old and had changed hands multiple times. We also began to notice that consumer preferences were shifting toward more local and sustainably produced food.”
SECTOR SOLUTIONS
The importance of agritech falls into two crucial areas undergoing change: climate and population. Rapid growth of urban areas, resulting in declining land availability for agriculture, is fueling the need to find farming alternatives.
According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations report, Strategic Work of FAO for Sustainable Food and Agriculture, by 2050 there will be more than nine billion people on earth. That means we will need to produce 60 percent more food—an increase from 8.4 billion metric tons a year to almost 13.5 billion metric tons. This will require increased use of fertilizer, water, pesticides, and drugs, and the introduction of new crop varieties and animal breeds. Much of this production will come from already-cultivated land.
Unpredictable climate change also impacts the productivity of farms. The report states that sustainability relies on enhanced systems and “we must learn to produce more food with less resources and do so under much harsher conditions.” Smart farm alternatives could provide some respite.
One such smart farm is in Singapore. Sky Greens, a low-carbon, hydraulic-driven vertical farm, has found a way to create a sustainable business using minimal land, water, and energy. CEO Jack Ng explained how he saw an opportunity while working in the construction industry at a time when Indonesia had stopped exporting sand to Singapore. This heavily impacted the industry.
He knew that if something such as that happened in the agricultural sector, the impact would be much greater. “I realized that our country is very vulnerable due to our size and open economy,” he said.
Sky Urban Solutions—Sky Greens’s holding company—has patented its water-pulley system, which harnesses hydraulic power for irrigation. “This reduces the energy required to rotate the trays of crops upwards to get natural sunlight and down to the water tray for irrigation,” he explained.
Ng claims the system uses just five percent of the water used in conventional farming, and reduces energy consumption—each tower requires just 40W per hour to grow up to 2,500 plants.
Reduced labor is another key benefit. “The opportunity for our technology lies in the fact that it requires relatively few people to operate,” said Inada. “And it provides a comfortable and safe environment for its farm workers.”
The environmental benefits are also broad, with no agricultural runoff thanks to a scalable and flexible closed-loop irrigation system. Sky Greens has technology that can meet the unique needs of the local environment. Towers can also be built on non-arable land.
Gotham Greens, too, has found sustainable and environmentally friendly solutions that serve its inner-city communities all year round. “Our pesticide-free produce is grown using ecologically sustainable methods in 100 percent clean, electricity-powered greenhouses. We use advanced, recirculating hydroponic techniques to maintain precision plant nutrition.”
In addition, the greenhouse uses many of the technologies mentioned previously, including sensors, controls, and data science to create optimal conditions for the plants to grow. “Hydroponic farming, when practiced effectively, can be very efficient,” Puri said.
NARO-IAM has also developed a movable bench system for high-density cultivation of strawberries. This means workers do not have to move between cultivation benches, saving time and labor. The organization has also developed a robotic strawberry harvester.
Other projects to further develop agritech are now on NARO-IAM’s drawing board, including joining the Cross-ministerial Strategic Innovation Promotion Program (SIP) created by the Cabinet Office of the government of Japan. NARO-IAM works as the representative research body, looking at revolutionary technologies to boost rice production.
Of course, this all requires rules and regulations to ensure food safety. “In March 2017, the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries of Japan announced safety measure guidelines for autopilot agricultural machinery, and this will be revised as autopilot in agriculture advances,” NARO-IAM experts explained.
Efforts in Japan to encourage smart farming businesses are strong. According to the Nikkei Asian Review on May 22, the government of Japan is moving to cut taxes for operators of high-tech indoor farms to encourage growth in this sector. Land that is paved over for indoor farms will be subject to the same taxes as agricultural land rather than higher property taxes.
Japanese technology companies are also taking an interest in the smart farming sector in Singapore. Panasonic Factory Solutions Asia Pacific, a subsidiary of Panasonic Corporation, opened an indoor vegetable farm in Singapore, and uses its LED lighting to grow Japanese vegetables that cannot withstand Singapore’s tropical climate.
FUTURE FARMS
Opening a smart farm is not all smooth sailing. Inada’s experience opening Spread’s Kameoka Plant in 2007 highlighted this. “It took us about six years to reach the point of stable cultivation in such a large environment.” He explained that there were also difficulties with conveying the concept to stores and the general public.
Ng said some farmers have misconceptions about the aim of his farm. “I am often misunderstood; [farmers think] that my innovation is built in order to replace them,” he said. “Farmers are also generally skeptical of modern methods of cultivation, and are therefore slow to embrace technology and engineering solutions.”
Even now, Ng admits that he is still learning in the rapidly growing agritech sector. “Any viable modern farming system is a synthesis of two main branches of science: engineering and horticulture.” Coming from the construction industry, for Ng this meant learning from scratch about plant science, crop behavior, pest control, and environmental factors.
Gotham Greens’ Puri, too, had to overcome obstacles when opening his greenhouse. “We initially faced some setbacks,” he said. “Challenges we faced included finding the right real estate and landlord, as well as logistics, regulatory challenges—zoning and permitting—and high upfront costs.”
One of Ng’s main concerns with the agricultural sector is that “many traditional farmers are giving up their trade, getting on in years, and are not likely to be succeeded by their children. The younger generations will not be attracted to agribusiness unless it pays more, requires much less work, and offers better prospects.”
However, the opportunity is there to further advance the smart farming sector, and having the right approach is crucial. Puri emphasized the need for perseverance and capital for any business looking to enter the market.
“For any vertical farm or businesses involving intensive cultivation, mixed or integrated farming, it is important to work backwards by identifying market demand to determine crop selection.”
Puri’s concerns for the industry goes further than just the pressures of the environment. “One of the problems with our current food system is over-industrialization, which has led to a huge disconnect between consumers and producers.”
“Long distance transport associated with trucking food across the country—and the food waste that results from it—are also significant issues.” he added. The idea that Gotham Greens can harvest daily and deliver food straight to supermarkets and restaurants within hours makes the self-contained greenhouse a viable option in any big city environment.
Japan’s smart farming sector is certainly growing, and Inada is looking to expand Spread’s operations. “Domestically, we will aim for a 10 percent share of the Japanese lettuce market by utilizing a franchise/ownership model to establish 20 facilities and a daily production capacity of 500,000 heads of lettuce.”
As technological innovation transforms agriculture, the smart farming sector is bound to go through the trials that other industries have experienced during such transitions. But we are sure to see more and more smart farms on the global scene, and the Third Green Revolution could ensure that each of the world’s soon-to-be-nine-billion people are fed.
Photo: SKY GREENS
Gotham Greens, New York Photo: GOTHAM GREENS
Purdue Students Created “Hydro Grow”
Purdue Students Created “Hydro Grow”
August 17, 2017
People will produce faster and fresh food in their homes with the help of the Purdue student’s inventions. A mechanical engineering student named Scott Massey working on a NASA-funded project tasked with growing plants in outer space. Scott Massey said, “I think I realized that if I really had this one shot at life, why not try something new and take a risk?”. With the help of the co-founder and classmate Ivan Ball Scott Massey developed Hydro Grow.
The Hydro Grow is a business whose task is to provide easier access to people to freshly grown produce in their homes. The vertical tower Gropod named can produce a variety of vegetables as well as fruits faster rate than a traditional farm could.
Scott Massey said, “People want to know how their food is developed, and there’s just a general hunger for that knowledge”. Further, he said, “This is a product that lets people have the comfort to know that what they have is naturally grown, and they can be present every step of the way”.
The Gropod is still in its prototype phase. Scott Massey stated that they are looking to start selling the product in just a few months.
The process is simple Massey said, just people need to insert a seed into the Gropod’s slots and pour water into the tower and then let it grow. Ball said, “It will continue to grow until it’s ready for harvest”. Further, Ball added, “You can continually keep your produce fresh”. Ball said, “With a hydroponic system like we have, you’re actually able to continuously recycle the water over and over again by spraying the roots directly”.
Hydroponics quickly becoming one of the next targets for sustainable agriculture, it is a global industry that continues to grow.
Indoor AG-Con Philly
Indoor AG-Con Philly
ABOUT INDOOR AG-CON PHILLY
After two successful years in New York, Indoor Ag-Con is relocating its East coast event to Philadelphia for its inaugural Indoor Ag-Con Philly on October 16, 2017. Our venue is the modern gallery at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, and our agenda will include 12 industry-leading keynotes covering topical “big picture” subjects such as the use of artificial intelligence in indoor agriculture. As for other Indoor Ag-Con events, our agenda for Indoor Ag-Con Philly will be tech-focused and crop-agnostic. With extended Q&A sessions and networking breaks, there will be plenty of opportunity to network with the growers, produce buyers, entrepreneurs, tech geeks and investors we expect to join us. Participation will be capped at 120 to keep the conversation flowing and maximize networking opportunities.
On October 17, the day after Indoor Ag-Con Philly, our Nextbean Ambassador sponsors at Kennett Township, PA – one hour’s drive outside of Philadelphia – will be hosting tours, free to Indoor Ag-Con Philly participants, of the extensive indoor agriculture production and distribution facilities which support their world-class mushroom industry. Every day Kennett produces, packs and ships 1.5M lbs of fresh mushrooms, single-handedly supplying ~50% of the US market, an amazing feat that’s been going on year-round for over 100 years! This is a truly unusual opportunity to get an insider’s view of what’s involved in producing and distributing a large-scale agriculture commodity grown entirely indoors. In addition, the event will start from world-famous Longwood Gardens, home to more than 1,000 acres of formal gardens, conservatories, woodlands and meadows, and includes a custom tour of Longwood’s own indoor production horticultural facilities, plus a complimentary farm-to-table lunch and free admission to the public gardens. You’ll be asked if you would like to join the Kennett event – at no extra charge – as you purchase your Indoor Ag-Con Philly admission.
REGISTER FOR PASSES
Passes are available at the early bird rate of $399 through August 31 or until the event is sold out, a 25% discount to the standard rate of $499.
This rate includes access to all sessions, light breakfast and lunch, drinks party and a gift bag with an exclusive hard copy of our newest white paper.
SPONSORING & EXHIBITING
As it is a one day event, we will not have an exhibition hall at Indoor Ag-Con Philly, but we do have plentiful sponsorship opportunities to allow you to engage your brand with our farming, equipment supply, tech, investor, academic and government participants.
OUR AGENDA & SPEAKERS
Our one day event will be split into four themed sessions that look at the “big picture” of indoor agriculture with presentations from its thought leaders. Each consists of three keynote speakers, with an extended Q&A at the end of each session. We’ll be adding speakers here as they are confirmed, and the agenda may change a little as we confirm speaker availability.
8:30 AM9:15 AM Registration & Light Breakfast
9:15 AM9:20 AM Welcome & Introduction
9:20 AM10:05 AM Session One: How indoor agriculture can develop local communities
Three Keynote Speakers, including:
10:05 AM10:30 AM Extended Q&A and Discussion
10:30 AM11:00 AM Networking Break
11:00 AM11:45 AM Session Two: Artificial intelligence in indoor agriculture
Three Keynote Speakers, including:
Dr. April Agee Carroll, VP of R&D, AeroFarms
11:45 AM12:15 PM Extended Q&A and Discussion
12:15 PM1:45 PM Lunch, with Curated Discussion Tables
1:45 PM2:30 PM Session Three: The coming impact of LED lighting
Three Keynote Speakers, including:
Dr. AJ Both, Associate Extension Specialist, Rutgers University
2:30 PM3:00 PM Extended Q&A and Discussion
3:00 PM3:30 PM Networking Break
3:30 PM4:15 PM Session Four: How technology changes indoor agriculture business models
Three Keynote Speakers, including:
Jack Griffin, President, Metropolis Farms
4:15 PM4:45 PM Extended Q&A and Discussion
4:45 PM4:50 PM Closing Remarks
5:00 PM After Party
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JOIN OUR EMAIL LIST | HELLO@INDOOR.AG | US: +1.775.623.7116 | SG: +65.3159.1305
Alesca Life Is Creating Urban Solutions That Is Transforming The Farming Production
Alesca Life Is Creating Urban Solutions That Is Transforming The Farming Production
Alesca Life Technologies Dubai Municipality MoU signing. Photo credit: Courtesy of Alesca Life Technologies
- 03-Aug-2017
- Samuel Wendel, Forbes Middle East Staff
Stuart Oda isn’t your average farmer. As the 32-year-old explains it, “I’m a former investment banker turned urban farmer.”
Oda is CEO of Alesca Life Technologies, a Beijing-based agricultural technology startup that creates software-enabled crop growing facilities designed for urban farming. “We build weather-proof, cloud-connected farms that enable food production by anyone, anywhere,” says Oda.
One such “anywhere” is Dubai. Oda is eyeing the U.A.E. as Alesca Life’s first major expansion opportunity outside of its primary market in China, where he and two co-founders formed the company in 2013.
Back then, the founders spied an opportunity to innovate the agriculture industry in emerging markets by using new technology. “There’s a lot of opportunities for us to improve everything from access to highly nutritious foods all the way to food security,” says Oda.
Stuart Oda, CEO of Alesca Life Technologies
Alesca Life primarily takes old shipping containers and turns them into miniature, automated farms. It outfits containers with hydroponic systems that allow crops to be grown using fewer resources.
As a result, its container farms use between 20 to 25 times less water than traditional agriculture, says Oda. It also uses less fertilizer and is pesticide free.
Simultaneously, Alesca Life cuts down on labor costs by automating most of the growing process using software. It relies on sensors inside the containers to monitor the crops, and the operation can be controlled remotely through a smartphone app.
Alesca Life’s container farms are designed to be embedded in buildings or other unused spaces in high-density urban areas. Oda markets the technology to clients such as hotels, restaurants, supermarket chains and food distributors.
In addition to saving resources, Alesca Life’s technology allows clients to reduce their logistics costs. Rather than transport produce into the city from rural areas, clients can grow fruits and vegetables in the center of major metropolitan areas. “To give them the capability to produce food locally, we believe it would be quite transformative for their business,” says Oda.
He sees potential in the U.A.E. for a variety of reasons. For starters, Dubai is a cosmopolitan city home to a thriving tourist industry, which creates a demand for a large mixture of fresh produce. “The variety of cuisines that exist [in Dubai] is enormous,” says Oda. These cuisines require a wide range of ingredients, many of which are not produced in the U.A.E.
As a result, the U.A.E. is a major importer of food—and it’s not alone. Across the Gulf, food imports are expected to rise in each country over the next three years; overall food imports are projected to grow to $53 billion in the Gulf by 2020, according to a research paper by the Economist Intelligence Unit.
Many types of the imported produce could be grown onsite in Alesca Life’s container farms. “Anything you can imagine, from Italian herbs to the simplest sprouts and micro-greens,” says Oda. “These are typically things that are imported from Europe.”
The company first put down roots in the Middle East last year through the Dubai Future Accelerators program, where it was one of 30 companies to make the cut out of nearly 2,000 that applied to the government-backed startup accelerator. During the 12-week program Oda was introduced to potential local partners and clients in the Gulf. “It essentially allowed us to see if the technology had value in the region, which we were convinced it did,” says Oda.
The program culminated with Alesca Life signing a memorandum of understanding with the Dubai Municipality to be its strategic advisor.
According to Oda, Alesca Life is currently in the final stages of signing contracts with clients in the U.A.E. He declines to reveal client’s identities until after the deals are completed, but notes they’re talking to both public and private sector players. Oda is also reaching out to potential customers in Saudi Arabia.
In China, over the last six months Alesca Life has served clients such as Mercedes Benz and the hotel group Hotel Jen. Oda is currently exploring expanding into Europe and southeast Asia as well, an objective which he hopes to achieve within the next 12 months.
As a result, these days Oda spends more time flying than he does tending to his crops. He’s on pace to take 60 flights this year—or one flight about every six days.
Back in the U.A.E., Alesca Life isn’t the only one exploring agricultural innovation; local companies such as Landex Group and My Green Chapter, to name a few, are also addressing urban agriculture.
My Green Chapter, which caters to environmentally conscious Emirati consumers looking to grow their own food, is an online platform selling all manner of products designed for urban farming, from indoor growing kits to chicken coops.
“We believe urban farming will contribute very well to the U.A.E.’s agricultural industry,” says Jean-Charles Hameau, the company’s founder.
On a global scale companies such as Freight Farms, PodPonics and Growtainer in the U.S are pursuing technology similar to Alesca Life’s. It was a market opportunity that Oda came upon nearly six years ago, back when his office was in the corporate world rather than on a farm.
At that time Oda worked for Dell in China. Born in the U.S. and educated at the University of California Los Angeles, Oda started his career in investment banking working for Merrill Lynch in Tokyo before moving to Dell in 2011.
There he was tasked with mapping global mega-trends in emerging markets to see how—as Oda phrases it—“the challenges of today become the opportunities of tomorrow.”
It was through this he stumbled on the idea that led to Alesca Life. Although Dell was exploring opportunities in emerging markets from a personal computing angle, it got Oda thinking about global challenges that could be addressed by technology in general. One of the areas that caught his attention was agriculture.
He poked around and discovered that access to fresh produce can be a major challenge in emerging markets, with limiting factors such as agriculture’s reliance on land, logistics and climate.
He saw an opportunity for innovation. “From a market size perspective, it [agriculture] was exciting,” says Oda.
Others were exploring the problem too, doing things such as using weather data to optimize field crop production.
They’re part of a precision farming market that is expected to double in size from $3.2 billion in 2015 to $7.8 billion by 2022, according to India-based market research firm Markets and Markets.
Oda became convinced there must be tremendous opportunity in trying to improve the efficiency of agriculture by making it more data driven.
Still, it took Oda awhile to gather the courage to leave his job and jump headfirst into entrepreneurism. Ultimately, a sense of urgency overwhelmed him. “The opportunity isn’t available for very long,” says Oda.
He teamed up with two co-founders, Kazuho Komoda and Young Ha, to start the company in August 2013. Oda knew Komoda from his days working in investment banking in Tokyo, and Ha also worked at Dell in China (Ha has since left the company).
Then came the real challenges. For one thing, none of the founders were farmers by training. They also had to self-fund the venture in the early days.
Old shipping containers become miniature, automated farms.
They began by studying everything from plant biology to nutritional chemistry, while simultaneously tinkering with the software and technology. Slowly they began to develop a prototype. “It took a while,” admits Oda, with a laugh.
Early on they traveled to a port city in China, where they bought a secondhand shipping container. They refurbished it and insulated it, and then embedded their hardware—all of which was designed by the company. The resulting container was sheltered from air, water and soil pollution.
They developed the smartphone app to give the farm manager the ability to monitor all environmental parameters in the containers.
Once the container was built, Alesca Life’s team got down to the business of planting and growing crops.
The company scored its first client in 2014. Boasting a functioning product, Oda then turned his attention to fundraising and spreading word about the company.
Alesca Life didn’t get its first outside investment until the first prototype container was built and operational. Its earliest investors were friends and family. Oda recently closed a round of funding for more than $1 million, but he can’t disclose the investors yet. To date the company has secured seed funding and angel investments, although Oda won’t reveal the total amount raised.
Last year, Alesca Life competed in the 1776 Challenge Cup, a global startup competition. Although it didn’t win, through it Oda was recommended to the newly created Dubai Future Accelerators program, leading Alesca Life to apply, also last year.
Oda is now focusing his efforts on expanding Alesca Life into new markets, one of the first of which has been the U.A.E. In Dubai, Alesca Life is currently looking for ways to localize the manufacturing of their containers, as well as preparing to set up an office, where Oda plans to hire everyone from industrial designers to horticulturists.
Although it has planted a seed in Dubai, there are other challenges that may face the company as it expands, one of which is regulation. For the moment, Oda thinks the regulatory environment is quite friendly in Dubai.
Winning over consumers is another issue. In China, it has taken time to convince consumers to accept produce grown in new ways, rather than by traditional methods. So far, that hasn’t been a major issue in the U.A.E. either, at least not yet.
Another problem is growing different types of crops profitably. Some crops can be grown quite profitably in Alesca Life’s containers, while others cannot. It’s an issue Alesca Life’s team hopes to squash as they continue to tinker and refine their technology.
Challenges aside, Oda is adamant that it’s the right time for innovation in the agriculture industry. And in Dubai Oda thinks he’s found an opportunity ripe for the picking.
PIDO's Bike Share Farm Is A Community Garden That Can Be Pedalled From Place To Place
The hydroponic farm consists of a triangular steel framework supported by a pair of bikes. Pipes run across the metal base, with holes for pot plants to slot into. A set of solar panels are fastened onto the structure to power a pump that runs water through the entire system
PIDO's Bike Share Farm Is A Community Garden That Can Be Pedalled From Place To Place
Emma Tucker | 6 August 2017 Leave a comment
Beijing architecture firm People's Industrial Design Office has designed a mobile farm that lets the community share responsibility for crops' wellbeing.
Bike Share Farm – which was created and built by People's Industrial Design Office(PIDO) during a 72-hour hackathon in Seoul, South Korea – addresses the lack of space many major cities suffer from, particularly when it comes to room for growing produce.
The hydroponic farm consists of a triangular steel framework supported by a pair of bikes. Pipes run across the metal base, with holes for pot plants to slot into. A set of solar panels are fastened onto the structure to power a pump that runs water through the entire system.
The frame allows for bikes to be easily exchanged, so that a new cyclist can take responsibility for the farm at each stop. The system is designed to encourage a whole community to take part in farming, and offer more people the chance to get involved.
"Urban gardens are now common in many cities but few have access to them," PIDO co-founder James Shen told Dezeen. "The Bike Share Farm marries the bike share model with urban farming. A vertical and mobile farm addresses the land constraints found in dense cities like Seoul and Beijing."
According to Shen, the structure is light enough to be lifted by two people and is easy to control and steer.
"We imagine people would ride to a Bike Share Farm location, hook on their bikes and take it to a convenient location," he added. "This would allow large numbers of Bike Share Farms to spread throughout the city."
The studio is currently working on demonstrating the design with larger numbers of vehicles.
As cities with limited space continue to build upwards, new approaches to farming are being created by designers keen to introduce greenery. These include a vertical farm that would produce food amid Shanghai's skyscrapers and a floating "food forest" that would occupy a barge on New York's waterways.
Your Greens Might Soon Be Grown in Warehouses
Your Greens Might Soon Be Grown in Warehouses
Technology-driven businesses such as New Jersey-based Bowery are bypassing traditional farming with warehouses and LED fixtures.
Bowery Farms grows hydroponic crops out of a warehouse in Kearny, New Jersey, using LED lights. Co-founder Irving Fain says productivity far exceeds that of traditional farming. PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF BOWERY
PUBLISHED AUGUST 11, 2017
Transformational ideas can come from anywhere. From anyone. National Geographic’s CHASING GENIUS is now soliciting ideas around three issues: sustainable planet, global health, and feeding nine billion. Could your solution be a spark of genius? Check out the challenge, where the best ideas for improving our world each can win $25,000.
At a warehouse in New Jersey, beds of hydroponically grown greens sit under grow lights, eventually bound for high-end restaurants and grocery stores in New York City and surrounding areas. Bowery is one of several indoor farming startups aiming to reinvent agriculture using new technology, from highly efficient lights to plant-monitoring software.
Here, Bowery co-founder and CEO Irving Fain talks about the future of urban farming and why it's important.
How is Bowery different from traditional agriculture?
We grow in a completely controlled environment, which means that we can grow 365 days of the year, totally independent of weather and seasonality. The reliable, consistent supply of high-quality produce year-round is a complete departure from centuries of the way agriculture has functioned. We grow all of our food without any pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, or insecticides.
When you grow in that way out in the field, you typically see substantial declines in the yields of the crops. In our case,we actually are able to grow more than twice as fast as the field for a number of crops. We end up more than 100 times more productive than a square foot of outdoor farmland, and we're saving over 95 percent of the water.
Our farms are so close to the point of consumption that our time between harvest and consumption is a fraction of what traditional agriculture has. We can build a much better business than many traditional farmers have today.
That's a striking percentage of water reduction. Why is that?
We built a system that allows us to monitor how the plants are growing and give them only what they need, when they need it. So we're being much more thoughtful about giving the plants any of the inputs that they need to grow. We are also able to recirculate and reuse water.
What was the inspiration for starting the company?
I've always been a big believer in technology's ability to solve difficult problems. When you look at the current agricultural system today, you see that it is really at the epicenter—either directly or indirectly—of so many global issues. By 2050, according to the UN, we'll have nine to 10 billion people on the planet, and we need somewhere between 50 and 70 percent more food to feed that growing population.
That additional food has to come from moving a lot of levers—it's not just what we're doing here that solves this problem. But figuring out ways to grow food in a more efficient way is important. I became really fascinated with this question of, how do you provide fresh food to urban environments, and how do you do it in a way that's both more efficient and more sustainable? (See also: Feeding 9 Billion)
Bowery vertically stacks its plants to maximize growing space.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF BOWERY
Of course, the idea of growing food indoors isn't really new—what's changed?
People have been using lights to grow indoors for a long time. The problem was, the light fixtures were expensive and inefficient.
It wasn't until about six or seven years ago that everything changed. The cost of LED fixtures dropped by over 85 percent, and the efficiency more than doubled. The stacking [of crops] was enabled by the LEDs because they're very thin and they can pull the heat away from the plants well. That means you can stack vertically and use the cubic space much more efficiently.
We also have a [proprietary software network] across our entire farm. We're collecting millions of points of data in real time. We have cameras that are not only taking pictures of the plants, but they're running those pictures through machine-learning algorithms and are actually able to understand, how is this plant growing, what's the quality we're seeing—and then in real time make tweaks to the conditions to change the way the crops are growing.
What advice would you give to someone who has an innovative idea and wants to pursue it?
Get started. And don't be afraid to ask questions and reach out to people to gain as much knowledge as you can. People oftentimes are surprised at how much they could learn just from asking the right questions to the right people.
While I'm not recommending haphazardly diving in, there's a point of diminishing returns whereby thinking and talking to people is yielding less value than you get just by getting started.
Often the point where entrepreneurs will hesitate is right at that cliff. They're looking for a sort of certainty that will urge them to jump off. The reality of entrepreneurship is, that certainty doesn't exist—and it will never exist. You've got to just jump in.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Mouser Electronics “Vertical Farming” E-Book
In this EBook, entitled “Vertical Farming,” Mouser and suppliers Analog Devices, Intel, Microchip and Molex explore how urban farming could help smart cities meet the challenge of feeding their growing population.
Mouser Electronics “Vertical Farming” E-Book
August 2017
Tying into the first EBook from Mouser Electronics’ Empowering Innovation Together initiative, Mouser and Grant Imahara of MythBusters’ fame now explore the up-and-coming realm of urban farming. As previously mentioned, the Empowering Innovation Together initiative takes readers on a quest for new knowledge where they can see a direct connection between ideas and products, and how it’s all applied into a working solution.
In this EBook, entitled “Vertical Farming,” Mouser and suppliers Analog Devices, Intel, Microchip and Molex explore how urban farming could help smart cities meet the challenge of feeding their growing populations.
From precision agriculture and indoor farming to energy efficiency and connectivity, this E-Book examines the aspects of smart agriculture, and the implications these advances may have on our future.
A Small Missouri Company Has Big Plans For Idle Elevators To Serve As Vertical Farms
A Small Missouri Company Has Big Plans For Idle Elevators To Serve As Vertical Farms
August 7, 2017
Vertical Innovations’ first vertical farm is planned for this elevator. Photos courtesy of Vertical Innovations.
By Ronald Ahrens
Jim Kerns and David Geisler called up the other day from Springfield, Missouri, to ask a question of our readers: Are you aware of any municipally owned, abandoned grain elevators?
Kerns and Geisler run Vertical Innovations, an enterprise formed in December of 2014 to repurpose old elevators, making them into incredibly productive vertical farms for growing leafy green vegetables. They have developed a patent-pending method of hydroponic production, a “structure-driven design” that adapts to the circular shapes.
“The silos tell us what to do,” said Kerns, who has a background in organic farming and leads the company’s innovation, design and construction efforts. “I see them as giant environmental control structures, giant concrete radiators.”
Significant energy savings can result from implementation of circular shapes, which among other things require far less lighting and the corresponding energy use, he said.
Jim Kerns explores elevator guts.
David Geisler, CEO and general counsel, has worked out a lease for a disused elevator in downtown Springfield.
For its next steps, the company has targeted an available elevator in South Hutchinson, Kan., and approached the owner of Tillotson Construction Co.’s Vinton Street elevator in Omaha.
“What an awesome facility,” Geisler wrote in a follow-up email, thinking of Vinton Street.
Geisler and Kerns have cast their eyes far beyond the Midwest, though, from big terminals in Buffalo, N.Y., to San Francisco’s threatened Pier 92.
“We really need to save that facility if it’s structurally sound,” Kerns said. “It could put out about 50 million pounds of green leafy vegetables per year.”
Their most unique discovery source is YouTube videos posted by those who have flown drones around elevators.
But word-of-mouth works, too, and Kerns issues this appeal to readers: “Submit to us pictures and locations of concrete grain terminals in good condition all across the United States, sea to shining sea, north to south.”
Vertical Innovations can be contacted through its website.
Food Security Issues & Innovations on the Table at September Urban Agri Summit in Johannesburg
Food Security Issues & Innovations on the Table at September Urban Agri Summit in Johannesburg
Press release from: Magenta Global Pte Ltd
Urban Agri Summit to be held in Johannesburg, South Africa on 7-8 September 2017
Africa's increasing concerns for food security to feed its growing populations and sustain economic development are to be tackled head-on by the region's foremost experts, regulatory authorities and various agriculture industry stakeholders at the Urban Agri Summit 2017 happening on September 7-8 in Johannesburg.
Several agri-sector leaders herald emerging innovative solutions such as vertical farming to address the continent's increasing need for an adequate and sustainable food supply.
"Vertical Farming will inevitably be Africa`s future pathway to food security and environmental sustainability," said Aliyu Abdulhameed, Managing Director for the Nigeria Incentive-Based Risk Sharing System for Agricultural Lending (NIRSAL). "NIRSAL`s participation in Urban Agri Summit 2017 will open new frontiers to better address the multidimensional needs of agricultural value chains in competitive urban agribusiness and food industry."
Prof Michael Rudolph, Director of the Siyakhana Multipurpose Cooperative, explained: "Vertical farming is becoming an important intervention for African cities as an innovative solution to supplying food, mitigating against air and noise pollution, applying water and energy conservation and combating urban food insecurity. Vertical farming will offer inner city children, youth and adults a chance to reconnect with nature and promote better environment health in the city. The Urban Agri Summit could not have come at a better time for Johannesburg as the city looks for innovative effective and efficient ways for addressing food and nutrition security as well as an environmentally healthy place to live. I look forward to robust discussions and networking with a wide range of key stakeholders during the Summit."
Mlibo Bantwini, Executive of the Dube AgriZone, added: "The agribusiness sector in Africa has tremendous potential to contribute to economic development and assist in ensuring food security. The use of methods such as vertical faming complemented with other methods of production can play a vital role in ensuring that this potential is fulfilled. We are excited to be part of the Summit. As this will be our first participation at the Summit, we hope to interact with many stakeholders and learn from their insights and build relationships with industry players."
Various initiatives have already been undertaken by South Africa to spur innovation in its agriculture sector. Together with other Sub-Saharan African cities in Nigeria and Kenya, South African metropolises are joining the footsteps of many global cities to introduce sustainable urban indoor farming. A key to sustainability, however, requires farms streamlining operations and reducing resource wastage.
"Food-producing agriculture value chains must undergo innovation to increase efficiency and yields, enhance variety, and meet the dietary demands of the growing population worldwide. To do so sustainably they must reduce waste and pollution, better manage and conserve water resources, and must be powered by renewable energy and energy efficient systems." said Nicole Algio, Regional Secretariat Manager for REEEP Clean Energy. She added: "REEEP as an endorsing partner to the Urban Agri Summit 2017, has a deep understanding of specialized research and analysis into the water-energy-food nexus and agrifood value chains globally, and supports climate smart innovation in agriculture such as vertical farming that applies the use of renewable energy and energy efficiency to reduce overall energy consumption of fossil fuels."
Angel Adelaja, Founder/CEO of Fresh Direct Produce & Agro-Allied Services, takes a fresh approach: “What if Africa no longer needed to import most of its food products, and agricultural value chains were strengthened, profitable, and were able to meet local demands for food without being environmentally tasking? This is my goal for my company Fresh Direct Nigeria and for African Agriculture. With increased urbanization, we need to secure our food systems not only rural agriculture, but with a complement of urban agriculture through technology and community. I'm excited that the Urban Agri Summit will be a gateway to unlock Africa's potentials through outside the box thinking.”
Urban Agri Summit 2017's is partnered by Gold Sponsor Nigeria Incentive-Based Risk Sharing System for Agricultural Lending (NIRSAL), and is supported by the Association for Vertical Farming (AVF) and by the Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Partnership (REEEP).
The two-day Summit will be held at the Sunnyside Park Hotel in Parktown, Johannesburg. For more details, contact Jose at +65 6846 2366 or email jose@magenta-global.com.sg.
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The Heartland Is Fertile For Ag Tech, But California Is Still King
Last month, San Francisco-based indoor farming startup Plenty scored a win for the California ag tech scene when it secured a $200 million investment from SoftBank’s Vision Fund, one of the largest rounds ever for an ag tech startup.
Image Credit: Pixabay
The Heartland Is Fertile For Ag Tech, But California Is Still King
ANNA HENSEL@AHHENSEL AUGUST 10, 2017 10:30 AM
Last month, San Francisco-based indoor farming startup Plenty scored a win for the California ag tech scene when it secured a $200 million investment from SoftBank’s Vision Fund, one of the largest rounds ever for an ag tech startup. With $2 billion invested in California ag tech startups since 2010, it’s not surprising that California is the most promising place for ag tech — it’s the state with the largest agriculture sector by cash receipts, according to the USDA. But new data from Pitchbook indicates that other states with strong farming sectors are still having trouble cashing in on ag tech.
The good news: Among the 10 states that receive the most ag tech funding are Heartland states like Missouri, Michigan, and Illinois. The bad news: Ag tech startups in California received more funding from January 2010 to June 30, 2017 than all ag tech startups in the other top 10 states for ag tech combined during that same time period. And states like Iowa, Nebraska, and Minnesota — the states with the second, third, and fifth largest agriculture sectors respectively — are nowhere to be seen.
Rob Leclerc, the cofounder and CEO of Agfunder, an online investment platform for ag tech startups, explains that just as in any other sector, ag tech startups have to consider what city will put them in close proximity to their customers, venture capitalists, and good talent before deciding where to place their headquarters. Though states like Iowa and Nebraska have larger agriculture sectors and thus offer ag tech startups closer proximity to more customers, states with smaller, yet still prominent, agriculture sectors like Illinois and Michigan are home to more large universities and cities — and thus larger talent pools, as well as more corporations to potentially partner with.
Jesse Vollmar, the cofounder and CEO of FarmLogs, a startup that provides crop management software to farmers, decided to set up its headquarters in Ann Arbor, Michigan after participating in Y Combinator’s accelerator program in 2012. They settled on Michigan because both Vollmar and his cofounder, Brad Koch, are from there. Additionally, Ann Arbor, home to the University of Michigan, offered FarmLogs close proximity to talent, as well as a major airport that Vollmar and Koch could reach quickly.
“We considered Chicago, but we just didn’t have an established network there,” Vollmar says. “It’s not located in as close proximity to farmers.”
While a high concentration of ag tech funding in California is great for the state, one concern is that it could lead to a lack of diversity in the types of problems that new ag tech startups look to solve.
“If you look at California, there’s a lot of local talent that allows you to solve sort of different types of problems — problems around robotics, around automation. The problems that farmers here often have are specifically around labor,” Leclerc explains. “If you go to the Midwest, what you’re dealing with is much much larger farms; the farms are often so big that you can’t possible go and survey them all entirely, so you really have a big data problem.”
While ag tech startups in places like Iowa and Nebraska may be lacking funding, there’s still plenty of enthusiasm to cultivate a large ag tech sector there. Last year marked the opening of a new ag tech accelerator in Iowa, called the Iowa AgriTech Accelerator, which secured investments from companies such as John Deere and DuPont.
Urban Farm Grows Ugly Greens In Brooklyn, NY
Urban Farm Grows Ugly Greens In Brooklyn, NY
Good greens don’t have to ‘look’ pretty. Even ‘ugly’ produce is just as delicious. This is something Gotham Greens has discovered through its recent Ugly Greens movement. What may have once been considered unmarketable produce was enjoyed by the staff at work or home instead. “We’d enjoy them as part of a team meal and staff would take them home to eat,” explains CEO, Viraj Puri. “But we realized there was an opportunity to sell them while helping to bring attention to the issue of food waste. The amount of food waste in this country is staggering and the NRDC estimates that as much as 50% of produce is thrown out between the farm and the fork.” They’re hoping to show people that slightly blemished greens can be perfectly nutritious, fresh and local despite their cosmetic flaws. “By embracing cosmetically-challenged produce as beautiful, we’re hoping to play a small role in reducing food waste,” he adds.
Food is wasted for cosmetic reasons
Food waste is a concerning issue for consumers, something all retailers and growers should keep top of mind. Puri says that in the US over 70 billion pounds of food is wasted each year which amounts to 250 pounds per person. “Much of what’s discarded is done merely for cosmetic reasons or as a result of long distance transportation. This negatively impacts farmers, retailers and ultimately consumers.” Changing consumer’s preferences towards slightly blemished or imperfect fruits and vegetables is an additional way to address the issue. Feedback on Gotham’s program has been overwhelming, according to Puri and even though it’s a small part of their production and overall business, they’re excited to see the positive feedback.
Current greens being grown and harvested include about a dozen varieties of leafy greens, arugula, and basil. And, supply is good. “Our current production is very strong,” he says. “We’re able to offer our customers a very reliable and consistent supply of greens all year round.”
Year-round availability
Gotham Greens stands by its model of urban agriculture, something Puri says is appreciated by chefs and retail produce buyers. “We grow premium quality local produce in high tech, climate controlled greenhouses, year round. That means, even in the dead of winter, we provide our customers— supermarkets, restaurants, caterers—with fresh produce within a couple of hours of harvest.” Produce is pesticide-free, grown using ecologically sustainable methods in 100% clean, electricity-powered greenhouses. He says this also results in providing precision plant nutrition and optimal growing conditions for the plants. “Hydroponic farming, when practiced effectively, can be very efficient, using a fraction of the amount of resources as traditional farming practices. This enables us to use one tenth the amount of water as traditional soil based practices, while also eliminating all agricultural runoff.”
There may be plans of expansion in the works. Gotham Greens has several new projects planned which could bring urban farming to other cities across the US and globally. “We have several new projects in the works and look forward to sharing more information about them in the coming months.”
For more information: Viraj Puri | Gotham Greens
Publication date: 8/8/2017
Author: Rebecca D Dumais
Copyright: www.freshplaza.com