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Kalera Opens Texas’ Largest Vertical Farming Facility in Houston
Houston farm will be the company's newest and largest yet, joins farms in Orlando and Atlanta
Houston farm will be the company's newest and largest yet, joins farms in Orlando and Atlanta
July 13, 2020 | Source: Kalera
The new Houston facility, which will be the largest vertical farming facility in Texas, is the next step in Kalera’s rapid domestic and international expansion plan to bring consumers fresh leafy greens right where they are.
ORLANDO, Fla., July 13, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Today, technology-driven vertical farming company Kalera announced that it will open a new state-of-the-art growing facility in Houston, Texas in the spring of 2021. The new Houston facility — which will be the largest vertical farming facility in Texas — is the next step in Kalera’s rapid domestic and international expansion plan to bring consumers fresh leafy greens right where they are. By placing its farms directly in the communities that they serve, Kalera is able to supply national retailers and foodservice distributors without a long haul across the country, guaranteeing that its leafy greens are fresher longer, and much safer than field-grown lettuce.
The new facility is being announced a mere two months after Kalera announced it will be opening a new facility in Atlanta in early 2021—an announcement that took place less than two months after it opened its second Orlando, Florida farm. While Kalera’s Atlanta farm is slated to be the highest production volume vertical farm in the Southeast, the new Houston facility will be even larger and will generate dozens of new jobs for the local Houston community. Kalera’s Houston farm’s lettuce will be available at retailers and foodservice distributors, as well as through the hospitality and travel industry.
Retailers, distributors, and food services facilities interested in carrying Kalera’s lettuce can connect with the sales team at orders@kalera.com.
Kalera is able to quickly open its newest growing facility in Houston as a result of a streamlined design and construction process, further illustrating its ability to rapidly scale and expand its vertical farms. As Kalera accelerates its growth over the next few years, it will continue to open additional facilities, expanding production capacity throughout the US and internationally.
“In light of the global pandemic and seemingly endless food safety recalls, today, more than ever, consumers are demanding food that is local and that they can trust. Kalera is leading the way in the indoor-farming AgTech revolution and we are proud, especially in today’s environment, to bring the safest, purest, freshest, most nutritious, sustainable, non-GMO, pesticide-free lettuce to cities across the country as we continue our rapid expansion plan across America and prepare to open our largest facility to date,” said Daniel Malechuk, CEO of Kalera.
“Houston presents Kalera with a wonderful market for our produce, as it allows us to not only supply one of the largest cities in America, but also service cities throughout the region including Dallas-Fort Worth, Austin, San Antonio, and New Orleans. Since we can easily supply produce within hours of harvest from this location to surrounding cities, Kalera can ensure the highest quality and freshness by delivering product to customers within hours of harvest, rather than days or weeks.”
The company utilizes cleanroom technology and processes to eliminate the use of chemicals and remove exposure to pathogens. With indoor facilities situated right where the demand is, Kalera is able to supply an abundance of produce locally, eliminating the need to travel long distances when shipping perishable products. Kalera's plants grow while consuming 95% less water compared to field farming.
In addition to its R&D center, Kalera opened its first commercial vertical farm, the HyCube growing center, on the premises of the Orlando World Center Marriott to bring fresh, local produce to the hotel’s visitors and customers. In March this year, it announced the opening of its second facility in Orlando, and in April, announced that it will open an Atlanta facility in early 2021. The Houston facility is the fourth farm in Kalera’s portfolio, and will soon be joined by more in the United States and around the world. Kalera also made headlines after pivoting their business strategy amidst the COVID-19 crisis, shifting from a foodservice-focus to land their produce in the aisles of Publix. During this time, Kalera also organized giveaways for the Orlando community, giving away tens of thousands of heads of lettuce to provide access to fresh, local, produce to residents.
About Kalera
Kalera is a technology-driven vertical farming company with unique growing methods combining optimized nutrients and light recipes, precise environmental controls, and cleanroom standards to produce safe, highly nutritious, pesticide-free, non-GMO vegetables with consistently high quality and longer shelf life year-round. The company’s high-yield, automated, data-driven hydroponic production facilities have been designed for rapid rollout with industry-leading payback times to grow vegetables faster, cleaner, at a lower cost, and with less environmental impact.
In Paris, The Pandemic Gave A Boost To Urban Farms
Nature Urbaine’s initial plan was to sell produce to restaurants and local businesses in the surrounding area. When France imposed stay-at-home orders, those restaurants and cafés closed overnight. But lettuce and tomatoes don’t stop growing during a global pandemic
The largest urban rooftop farm in Europe opened its doors to the public at the beginning of July – two months behind schedule. Stretching the length of two football fields, Nature Urbaine sits on top of a convention centre in the south-west corner of Paris. The farm began growing herbs, fruit, and vegetables just weeks before Covid-19 hit Europe.
Nature Urbaine’s initial plan was to sell produce to restaurants and local businesses in the surrounding area. When France imposed stay-at-home orders, those restaurants and cafés closed overnight. But lettuce and tomatoes don’t stop growing during a global pandemic.
“We had to rethink our entire model, just as we were having our first harvest,” says Sophie Hardy, the farm’s site manager.
The farm began instead to sell directly to consumers. The small team of farmers were the only people allowed on the rooftop during the lockdown, and every morning they would harvest fruit and vegetables grown from seeds sown in March. They sold the resulting food baskets to residents in front of the 15th arrondissement’s town hall the same day.
For Hardy, the pandemic actually helped urban farms to find a new relevance.
“The crisis marked a moment when people living in the city wanted to opt for healthy, quality products found locally,” she explains. “There was a boom in producers selling their produce directly, and a new awareness that local producers were in danger – and, in echo of that, that France’s own position as a leader in the food industry was in danger”.
This fact did not go unnoticed by the French government. President Emmanuel Macron said in a speech on 12 March that delegating the nation’s food supply to other countries was “madness” and called to “take back control”.
As Covid-19 spread across Europe that month, European countries re-erected invisible internal borders, slowing down or even halting entirely cross-border food supply chains. Storage vehicles piled up at borders and seasonal farmworkers, hunkered down in lockdown, couldn’t get to fruit-picking jobs. Some lorry drivers refused to drive across a continent in the grip of a pandemic.
Fearing seeing fruit and vegetables rot in the fields, the government told businesses and consumers to focus on stocking and buying French food products.
In Paris, where residents weren’t allowed to go further than 1km from their homes, some local producers thrived.
Paris’s Socialist mayor Anne Hidalgo has long championed urban agriculture. In 2016, Paris’s city hall unveiled Parisculteurs, a call for ecological and agricultural projects that would receive start-up money. Since then, the platform has funded 38 new urban farms, which produce 800 tonnes of fruit and vegetables every year.
One of Hidalgo’s principle ideas in her recent, successful re-election campaign was the idea of the '15-minute city', a way to rethink urban proximity. The concept aims to turn one of Paris’s drawbacks, its density, into its strength: residents should be able to access every conceivable service within 15 minutes of their homes, from health centres to bars, restaurants, and schools. The city wants to make everything more accessible – including locally grown produce.
La Caverne is one local producer that saw a financial benefit from the lockdown. On the other side of the city from Nature Urbaine and ten metres underground, mushrooms and endives flourish in a former car park that has been transformed into an urban farm.
“For the first time people realised the value of local agriculture,” explains La Caverne’s co-founder Jean-Noël Gertz. “Local producers were able to sell their products at a fair price. They didn’t have a problem finding places that would sell their products, nor did they have to compete with tomatoes from Morocco”.
Although the Covid-19 crisis didn’t entirely rupture traditional supply chains, urban agriculture professionals are hoping that the last few months have proved the importance of a diversified local food supply.
“Urban farms are an essential way of rethinking the cities of tomorrow,” says Anouck Barcat, the president of the French Association of Professional Urban Agriculture (AFAUP). “It’s one of the tools to make a city more resilient. They have so many benefits – we don’t make monofunctional farms”.
There are a number of environmental advantages to urban farms, not least of all their carbon footprint. An urban farm can sell fresh strawberries just metres from where they were grown, rather than having them travel hundreds of miles in a refrigerated container.
Another advantage of urban agriculture is its flexibility: it can slot into the negative spaces of the city, like abandoned railways, empty metro stations and even up the sides of buildings.
“We don’t need to be Haussman,” Barcat jokes, referencing Paris’s most notorious urban planner, who sliced up the city in the 19th century to create its wide avenues and tree-lined boulevards. “We’re not cutting through the city to make way for farms. They can go wherever there’s space: on roofs, in polluted areas, in car parks. We already have the solution for these spaces.”
One criticism levelled at urban farms is that the small yields don’t justify their expense. But both Barcat and Hardy are keen to insist that urban farms should not compete with nor try to replace traditional rural agriculture, but exist in parallel with it.
“We can’t cultivate every type of crop, and anyway, we’re not able to produce enough to feed the entire city. But the crisis has shown that urban agriculture has its place in the city and that this model works,” says Hardy.
France began to ease its lockdown on 11 May. Paris’s restaurants and cafés have reopened, and the city’s open-air street markets are once again selling peaches from Portugal and strawberries from Belgium. The farmers at Nature Urbaine now only have to walk a few metres to deliver their produce to Le Perchoir, the chic cocktail bar and restaurant sharing the same rooftop.
Barcat is philosophical about the slow rise of urban farms, but says that France’s capital has already seen a shift in thinking.
“Of course, some people will go back to their old habits. But others won’t. [The pandemic] has opened up new possibilities. My hope is that the ordinary Parisian will start to introduce more food grown locally in their consumption habits. We’re not going back to zero.”
Catherine Bennett is a journalist based in Paris.
Lead Photo: The largest urban farm in Europe, Nature Urbaine, had to pivot its model due to the coronavirus pandemic. (Stephane de Sakutin/AFP via Getty Images)
Podcast + Story: The Power of Urban Farming
Can cities grow a lot more of their own food? Should they? The creators of the Gastropod podcast investigate.
BY CYNTHIA GRABER AND NICOLA TWILLEY
CRAIG F. WALKER/GLOBE STAFF
In March, as the United States began to lock down, shoppers met an unfamiliar and disturbing sight: empty shelves where bags of flour, jugs of milk, and packages of chicken breasts used to be. These shortages, combined with the “Groundhog Day”-like experience of being home day in, day out, for months on end, inspired a wave of gardening novices to try growing vegetables at home — and we at Gastropod, the podcast that looks at food through the lens of science and history, wanted to join in. To our dismay, we discovered that some of the plants we’d hoped to grow had long since sold out, like bags of flour before them, in what has been hailed as the great COVID-19 Victory Garden comeback.
This sudden, shared urge to grow food in the middle of America’s cities intrigued us — enough to make an episode on urban agriculture, featured above. As the creators of a food podcast, we’re well aware of the harms caused by the intensive, industrial system of agriculture that feeds America, from the food miles racked up by the average spinach leaf to the underpaid farmworkers who harvest it. Could the solution to these problems lie in diversifying where food is grown? Advocates claim that urban agriculture, which has been expanding in many ways in recent years, yields healthier diets, environmental benefits, and a host of more intangible outcomes, from beautification to food sovereignty. We couldn’t help but wonder: Might this spontaneous efflorescence of COVID Victory Gardens be part of a genuine shift, as America’s city-dwellers begin to feed themselves?
And, more importantly, is urban agriculture really the panacea our food system needs?
History provides some clues. The World War II Victory Gardens to which today’s COVID gardens have been compared were far from the first American urban garden movement. In the 1890s, faced with hunger and rioting following a stock market panic, Detroit’s mayor Hazen S. Pingree offered vacant lots to the city’s poor to grow food — a popular scheme that became known as the Potato Patch Plan. A few decades later, the Liberty Gardens effort of World War I urged newly urbanized Americans to grow vegetables to support the war.
But neither of these initiatives compared to Victory Gardens, the largest and most popular home gardening effort in the country’s history. Encouraged to pick up shovels and hoes by ubiquitous advertising campaigns, horticultural classes at city halls, and the patriotic urge to save commercial canned food for the troops, more than two-thirds of Americans planted seeds in windowsill pots, backyard patches, city parks, corporate factory campuses, and alongside railways.
The results were impressive: an estimated 43 percent of all the produce that Americans consumed in 1943 came from Victory Gardens. Not self-sufficiency, certainly, but enough to make a huge difference in the country’s food supply. Yet, as soon as the war ended, “whoosh!” said Anastasia Day, a historian of the movement. “They disappeared almost overnight.” Out of the hundreds of thousands of Victory Gardens that sprang up during the war years, only two remain, the oldest of which still occupies seven acres on Boston’s Fenway.
This makes more sense, Day told us, if you look at how those gardening efforts were framed. Contemporary discussions about urban farms position them as an alternative foodway, one that offers a stronger connection to nature, the possibility of regional self-sufficiency, and eco-friendly, organic produce. By contrast, Day told us that Victory Gardens were promoted as temporary replacement food factories for the war effort, in language that mimicked the country’s obsession with science and industry. And so, once the immediate need passed, home gardeners were happy to hand off the business of growing food to companies that could farm more efficiently. Many Victory Gardeners traded their urban veggie patches for the post-war era’s suburban lawns and white picket fences.
JAMEL MOSELY: Leah Penniman, farm manager, and co-director at Soul Fire Farm in Grafton, N.Y.
Urban gardening and farming largely fell out of favor over the next decades, and as it did, Americans missed out on its many benefits, said Leah Penniman, farm manager and co-director at Soul Fire Farm in Grafton, N.Y., and author of “Farming While Black.” Those benefits include, but extend well beyond, the joy of biting into a sun-warmed tomato. “It’s also the opportunity to get exercise, to be outside and feel connected to the earth, to have a meaningful activity, to engage with your loved ones,” she said.
Penniman told us that many African Americans who moved to northern cities during the Great Migration did try to grow food, and some succeeded, despite a lack of access to land and credit, as well as other obstacles created by systemic racism. Plenty of others, however, shied away from gardening. “For many people, there’s this visceral reaction to land, because land got mixed up with the oppression that took place on the land,” she said. “But to have a garden on your own terms, to grow food for your community that you find delicious — this is the process of healing from that trauma.”
According to Raychel Santo, a Johns Hopkins researcher and co-author of a recent analysis of urban agriculture, the evidence for such socio-cultural benefits from urban agriculture is overwhelming. Based on the more than 200 studies she reviewed, these benefits included getting to know neighbors, meeting people from different backgrounds, and being involved in something productive. “But they’re hard to quantify in numbers,” Santo told us.
The result is that, while anyone who has volunteered at a community garden or coaxed baby seedlings out of the ground understands the power of growing food, urban gardens are often seen as fuzzy, feel-good projects, rather than being taken seriously as an alternative mode of food production. Still, at least one health benefit can be quantified: Santo told us that studies have shown that city-dwellers who participate in some form of urban farming eat more vegetables. History offers support for this finding: During World War II, Americans consumed more produce then they have eaten before or since — at least in part because of the success of Victory Gardens. Given that only one in 10 Americans currently eats enough vegetables to meet federal regulations — and thus reduce their risk for many leading causes of illness and death, including heart disease and type 2 diabetes — the potential health benefits of expanding urban agriculture are significant.
Good for you, but good for the planet?
The environmental benefits of growing food in cities seem like they should be easier to pin down. Certainly, Santo said, like most urban green spaces, farms and vegetable gardens boost biodiversity, improve rainwater drainage, filter air pollution, and reduce the urban heat island effect. They also offer another tangible good, albeit one that can be challenging to implement: the opportunity to turn food scraps into compost and thus close the loop on some of the city’s waste.
Logic dictates that eating locally grown produce would also reduce emissions from food miles — but evidence for that has thus far been spotty. One widely cited analysis, published in 2008 by researchers at Carnegie Mellon, found that transportation accounted for only 11 percent of food’s carbon footprint. The authors used this finding to conclude that eating less meat and dairy was substantially more climate-friendly than eating local — but their analysis failed to take into account the greenhouse gas emissions associated with refrigerated warehouses and food spoilage. “There’s a lot of debate in this area,” Santo said. “I would say the literature is not very clear.”
Neil Mattson, professor of horticulture at Cornell University, is halfway through a three-year project that aims to tease out these nuances, at least when it comes to growing leafy greens in northern U.S. cities year-round versus shipping them from California. Lettuce is usually a seasonal harvest in community gardens, but, in recent years, there’s been increasing interest — and investment — in more high-tech urban farms. Some of these facilities are greenhouses, but others, often called “vertical farms,” resemble automated food factories, with rows of baby greens growing under glowing LEDs and in perfectly calibrated climactic conditions inside skyscrapers and tunnels from London to Tokyo.
SALWAN GEORGESA worker harvests basil inside a Gotham Greens facility in New York City.
This is where the promise of urban farming meets its most significant challenge: replicating the sun. When it comes to more traditional greenhouses, Mattson’s research shows that the energy needed to provide optimal heat and humidity levels is similar to the transportation energy of trucking lettuce across the country, making their carbon footprint at least comparable. (He is still working on a full life-cycle analysis that includes everything from the embodied cost of the glass and steel used in greenhouse construction to the emissions from transport refrigeration units.)
But those fully controlled vertical farms so beloved by techies, architects, and VC-funded entrepreneurs? Mattson has found providing sufficient electric light for photosynthesis and controlling the humidity sucks up twice the energy of growing lettuce in California and shipping it across the country. Until we get significantly more energy from renewable resources or invent dramatically more efficient lighting, even the most advanced vertical farms aren’t necessarily more sustainable than California’s Imperial Valley.
That said, both vertical farms and heated greenhouses do use significantly less water than California farms — 10 times less water, according to Mattson — and, as the West becomes more arid, water will likely become a limiting factor. In the future, Mattson says, climate-controlled urban farms of all sorts may well look like increasingly attractive options. They might be priced out of real estate in downtown Boston or New York, but traveling just an hour or two out of the city can connect growers to much cheaper places for indoor agriculture.
Mattson pointed out that our current food system is extremely centralized, meaning that the majority of produce is grown in a relatively small area. If drought, floods, or an E. coli outbreak hit, supermarket shelves are left empty across the nation. “Producing some proportion of our food in cities could make for a more robust system,” he said.
Self-sufficiency
Critics argue that we only get about 10 percent of our calories from vegetables and fruits, and so cities can neither feed themselves nor transform the country’s farming systems. Even the most passionate urban agriculture advocates, such as Keep Growing Detroit’s Tepfirah Rushdan, don’t imagine that cities will grow and process all their own grains. But could cities at least grow the vegetables they need? Here the data look promising. Rushdan told us that Keep Growing Detroit’s goal is food sovereignty, meaning that more than half the produce consumed in the city is grown there. Though that’s not yet reality — the organization says the results of their last produce weigh-in shows the city growing around 5 to 10 percent of what’s eaten — a Michigan State University study demonstrates that the city could theoretically supply nearly two-thirds of the demand. Similarly, researchers in New England have mapped out how the region could produce up to half of its vegetables in urban and suburban plots by 2060.
ERIN CLARK FOR THE BOSTON GLOBE
Kevin Washington, 14, waters plants at the Michigan Urban Farming Initiative in Detroit. The farm has taken over three acres of vacant lots and turned them into a green oasis of fruit trees, vegetables, and a sensory garden. Solely run by volunteers, the farm gives back all of the produce to the community for free.
Elsewhere, researchers have calculated that empty land in Cleveland could provide half the city’s fresh vegetables, and if commercial rooftops and a small amount of residential land were added, up to 100 percent — plus 94 percent of the city’s eggs and chickens. This spring, a study showed that Sheffield, England, has sufficient vacant land to grow enough fruits and vegetables to feed all its residents. Of course, urban farming will look different in different cities: In Boston, it might include city farms along the lines of the Fowler Clark Epstein Farm in Mattapan, as well as high-tech greenhouses on the outskirts of the city, such as Little Leaf Farms a half-hour away. There’ll be rooftop beehives, like those on top of the Lenox Hotel, and community plots in the South End. New York City’s expensive real estate might push much urban farming to the periphery; Detroit, where 17 percent of the city is considered vacant, is perfectly situated to expand internally.
Finally, though we agree with critics that putting your hands in the dirt won’t solve all the problems of the industrial agricultural system, we believe it could help, by connecting people to their food. “We do have to do both,” Rushdan told us. “We have to make time to focus on local production, and then we have to make time to address the larger systematic issues.”
The urban gardeners we spoke with hope that COVID-19 gardens won’t just be a temporary fad, but will, as Penniman put it, trigger “an awakening as to the type of structural changes that we need to make to have an equitable, just, and sustainable food system.”
After all, as Anastasia Day pointed out, World War II’s Victory Gardens may have vanished practically overnight, but the children who grew up tending them turned into adults who celebrated the first Earth Day in 1970.
Cynthia Graber and Nicola Twilley are journalists who host the Gastropod podcast, which explores the science and history of food.
5 Ways Urban Farming Empowers Communities For Sustainability
Urban farming has the potential to empower cities and communities all over the globe. From backyard farms to community gardens to vertical farming, the possibilities of growing sustainable foods are endless.
Urban farming has the potential to empower cities and communities all over the globe. From backyard farms to community gardens to vertical farming, the possibilities of growing sustainable foods are endless. As more and more urban areas start to implement local farms in their areas, the communities will reel in a wide range of benefits. In this article, we’re going to cover some of the major benefits that communities will experience when using urban farming.
Provides Educational Opportunities
As a society, we are disconnected from our foods; we don’t know where the foods we eat come from. Urban farming will not only teach communities how to grow their own foods, but also will establish a clear understanding of current food systems. This is an incredible learning tool for families to adopt into their livelihood because it will empower them to spread the word to others about the world-changing benefits of urban farming.
Offers Food Security
One of the most reassuring aspects of urban farming is that it bridges the gap of food access. Many densely populated cities are hundreds of miles away from conventional farming areas. With urban farming, these cities will have direct access to food sources in their area. This also allows for reduced food prices since no travel is needed to get the crops from one place to another.
Increases Food Quality
With the ability to have local farms, members will be able to grow a wide variety of foods that aren’t usually seen in supermarkets. Growing heirloom crops or foods with a lower shelf life can’t be done with conventional farming because they won’t last the travel time. Urban farming solves this issue by allowing the community to plant and harvest foods of their own choices without having to worry about shelf life. This allows communities to enjoy fresh, nutritious foods that they may have never seen in a supermarket before.
Creates Job Opportunities
The growth of urban farming will increase the need for community members to get involved, thus creating jobs that directly benefit the city itself. Urban cities tend to have higher cases of poverty and hunger. By establishing local urban farms in cities, more people will be able to get jobs and to learn about how to grow their own food back at home. This will stimulate the local economy and provide an educational outlet to the community.
Reduces Carbon Emissions
With local farms on the rise, there will be less of a need to transport foods to cities. Urban farming will help cut down on the immense amount of fossil fuels that’s needed to transport food from one place to another. This is a great opportunity to reduce a carbon footprint while also empowering communities to grow their own local food sources.
Cities across the nation are beginning to see the value in urban farming, and some have even implemented their own farming systems. We at the Nick Greens Grow team understand the importance of urban cities having direct access to their own food sources. Want to learn more about the future of farming? Subscribe to our blog for weekly updates and to our YouTube channel to learn about educational farming techniques.
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Vertical Agriculture in Chile
Urban agriculture is beginning to take off in Chile, where the AgroUrbana start-up has just closed a $ 1 million seed capital round, raising its total capital to $ 1.5 million, to create a vertical farm, according to the Association for Vertical Agriculture
Urban agriculture is beginning to take off in Chile, where the AgroUrbana start-up has just closed a $ 1 million seed capital round, raising its total capital to $ 1.5 million, to create a vertical farm, according to the Association for Vertical Agriculture.
Leading the round with a 33% cash contribution was the CLIN Private Investment Fund managed by Chile Global Ventures, the venture capital arm of Fundacion Chile, a public-private initiative for innovation and sustainability in the country. Funding also came from CORFO, Chile's economic development agency, and private investors.
The funds will go to the construction of a 280-square-meter pilot facility in the suburbs of Santiago, where tests are being carried out with hydroponic crops and led lights powered by renewable energy. Green leafy fruits and vegetables are grown there.
According to company sources, the closure of restaurants due to COVID-19 made them focus on e-commerce and direct sales to consumers. In the long term, the owners plan to expand the facility to 3,000 square meters, which they speculate could be financed with funds from new capitalization rounds before the end of this year. Design and production will depend on the results of their pilot tests.
Source: Bioeconomia.info / agrositio.com.ar
IGS Completes Deal With Vertegrow to Build Scotland’s First Commercial Vertical Farm
A 245 m2 insulated superstructure will accommodate four nine-metre-high towers alongside a 1,600 m2 service area on Vertegrow’s site at Waterside Farm in Aberdeenshire. This will provide approximately 1,343 m2 of growing space, producing up to 70 tonnes of produce per annum when fully operational
New Vertical Farming Operator to Adopt IGS Agritech
Platform in Scotland
Edinburgh, Scotland – 08 July 2020 - Indoor agritech specialist IGS has today announced the completion of a deal with new vertical farming operator Vertegrow. The four-tower system will be built in Aberdeenshire in Scotland in late 2020.
A 245 m2 insulated superstructure will accommodate four nine-metre-high towers alongside a 1,600 m2 service area on Vertegrow’s site at Waterside Farm in Aberdeenshire. This will provide approximately 1,343 m2 of growing space, producing up to 70 tonnes of produce per annum when fully operational.
This is the first move into vertical farming for Vertegrow, diversifying alongside existing agricultural operations, currently growing crops including barley and rye in open fields.
Vertegrow was established through Steadman Partners, the UK-based private investment office set up by BrewDog co-founder Martin Dickie. Located in Scotland, Steadman Partners has a wide range of interests and investments throughout the UK and beyond.
The IGS platform was selected after a rigorous analysis of the market and considered to be the most advanced, efficient, and scalable to meet Vertegrow’s requirements. The plug-and-play vertical farming product developed by IGS offers them a highly controllable platform, designed specifically to maximize productivity whilst minimizing energy consumption and allowing the production of consistently high-quality produce at scale.
The towers, which are expected to be operational in early 2021, will grow a variety of crops that are intended to service the local food supply chain. Vertegrow will work with a range of local customers including retailers, caterers, restaurateurs, and other local services, to deliver fresh, nutritious, high-quality produce all year round.
IGS CEO David Farquhar commented: “This is an exciting step for IGS and for Vertegrow as we set out to deploy a new vertical farm for a new operator in this space. With proven experience in traditional farming and extensive involvement, through its owners, in the food and drink sector, we are confident that this will bring a new and top-quality offering to the local market. Such re-localization of the food supply chain is a feature of post-coronavirus planning we are seeing all over the world.”
“We were delighted that the IGS platform was selected for this project. It is proof that our rigorous commitment to engineering design excellence and our unique patented systems deliver what customers want – a system that is highly pragmatic, flexible, modular, and scalable. We look forward to getting underway with the deployment of our Growth Towers with the Vertegrow team.”
Graeme Warren, of Vertegrow commented: “Vertegrow is delighted to be working with IGS on this innovative project as we position our farm business to address the challenges of the modern food supply chain. We have spent considerable time identifying the right partners and systems, and the IGS platform stood out as a quality solution that could be configured for our needs. Growing quality, nutritious food in North East Scotland will allow us to reduce food miles for our customers. Combined with our renewable energy sources and rainwater harvesting, the efficiency of the IGS system is a key part of our ambition to grow crops in a carbon-neutral way. We look forward to continuing to work with IGS as we construct the facility later this year.”
The team at IGS will continue to work closely with its new customer in the construction and deployment phases over the coming months.
Ends
Notes to editors:
For more information: please contact Kate Forster, IGS on kate@intelligentgrowthsolutions.com or call +44 7787 534999.
About IGS:
Founded in 2013, IGS brought together decades of farming and engineering experience to create an agritech business with a vision to revolutionize the indoor growing market. Its commitment to innovation has continued apace and it has evolved the applications of its technology beyond agriculture to create solutions for a wide variety of indoor environments that enhance life for plants.
IGS launched its first vertical farming demonstration facility in August 2018.
For more information visit www.intelligentgrowthsolutions.com or connect with us on Twitter and LinkedIn.
About Vertegrow
Vertegrow represents the indoor growing arm of an existing productive arable farm in North East Scotland. It is committed to producing high-quality food sustainably, responsibly, and ultimately in a carbon-neutral way. Vertegrow expects to sell its first crops in early 2021 and then to expand and improve its crop range through research and development.
More information will be available from www.vertegrow.com as the facility approaches completion. Connect with us on Twitter, Instagram or contact hello@vertegrow.com
Upward Farms Announces Rebrand From Seed & Roe and Plans to Open a New Headquarter Farm in Brooklyn, N.Y.
The coronavirus pandemic is significantly increasing consumer demand for organic, sustainable food, indicating heightened awareness for healthy, nutritious eating. Fresh produce sales have remained elevated during the pandemic period, with produce sales showing sustained double-digit, year-over-year growth March through June 2020
Upward Farms announced growth plans including a rebrand from Seed & Roe and construction of a new headquarter farm in Brooklyn that will significantly increase production. These announcements come following the company closing more than $15 million in new funding, including investment led by Prime Movers Lab.
The coronavirus pandemic is significantly increasing consumer demand for organic, sustainable food, indicating heightened awareness for healthy, nutritious eating. Fresh produce sales have remained elevated during the pandemic period, with produce sales showing sustained double-digit, year-over-year growth March through June 2020. As consumers continue to gravitate toward fresh, organic produce and purchase more groceries online, Upward Farms offers consistent product availability and quality, scalability, and a shortened supply chain for East Coasters to receive locally grown greens. Upward Farms' breakthrough approach to indoor aquaponics, using fish to fertilize crops in a complete ecosystem, results in increased yields, more control in disease prevention, and unprecedented food safety. This approach reconnects eaters with flavorful and nutritious local food, rather than relying on long haul distribution systems and imported food.
A look inside the new Upward Farms headquarters, an indoor aquaponic ecosystem growing leafy greens and fish.
“By cultivating complete ecosystems with a strong microbiome and leveraging the precision and control of indoor agriculture, Upward Farms not only grows thriving plants and animals but offers the potential for a sustainable food supply that is both scalable and safe,” said Jason Green, Upward Farms Co-founder, and CEO. “With the support of this capital investment, we will continue to expand the marriage of nature and nurture to produce affordable greens in abundance and make them accessible. Everyone should be able to easily and affordably nourish their body, family, and the planet.”
“As a leading investor in breakthrough scientific companies, we are honored to join Upward Farms' journey to transform billions of lives through next-level nutrition, safety, and deliciousness,” said Suzanne Fletcher, General Partner at Prime Movers Lab and now a member of the Board of Directors at Upward Farms.
Previously known as Edenworks and then Seed & Roe, the company has raised more than $20 million in total funding to date to provide a sustainable source of greens and fish for consumers. The new Upward Farms name and brand is an expression of the company’s mission to heal the broken food system. It also aligns with the company’s plans for expansion, including the opening of additional farms and broadening of its product portfolio for both retail and foodservice. The look for the redesigned logo, new product packaging and digital presence represent Upward Farms’ fresh, clean greens and forward-thinking approach.
In late 2020, Upward Farms plans to unveil a brand new company headquarters in Brooklyn that will demonstrate and advance the company’s next-generation technology through both commercial production and research and development facilities. The new operation is expected to increase production of Upward Farms greens by 20 times over its original facility, also located in Brooklyn. The expansion will enable the brand to supply its washed and ready-to-eat salads to grocery stores across New York City.
Upward Farms’ growing practices eliminate harmful bacteria like E. coli and other pathogens without the use of pesticides, antibiotics or synthetic fertilizers to produce the safest leafy greens on the market. Grown from Non-GMO seeds, Upward Farms leafy greens are pesticide-free, washed, and ready to eat. “Recent events have highlighted what we at Upward Farms already know -- biology has a lifeforce all its own that must be respected. That’s why we are stewards of nature, learning from and building technology to enhance biology,” shared Green.
For more information:
Upward Farms
info@upwardfarms.com
www.upwardfarms.com
Publication date: Fri 10 Jul 2020