Welcome to iGrow News, Your Source for the World of Indoor Vertical Farming
Vertical Farming World Congress Kicks Off With Remote Site Visits
Aerofarms in the United States, Intelligent Growth Solutions (IGS) in the United Kingdom, Root AI (United States), Uns Farms from the United Arab Emirates, and YesHealth Group in Taiwan all opened their doors to virtual visitors, by means of videos showcasing what their operations are all about
Under normal circumstances, participants in the Vertical Farming World Congress, organized by Zenith Global, would have been able to visit some vertical farming sites, see the lights, sample some produce, talk to the farm managers. With the global pandemic still raging, however, the organizers decided to take the event online. As part of that move into the virtual domain, participants were able to 'visit' some vertical farms from the comfort of their own home.
Aerofarms in the United States, Intelligent Growth Solutions (IGS) in the United Kingdom, Root AI (United States), Uns Farms from the United Arab Emirates, and YesHealth Group in Taiwan all opened their doors to virtual visitors, by means of videos showcasing what their operations are all about.
The presentation program was then kicked off by Richard Hall, Chairman of Zenith Global, who introduced the first speaker: Ellis Janssen, Global Director City Farming at Signify. The Dutch lighting supplier has put increasing attention on developing products for vertical and indoor farming in recent years. According to Ellis, while lighting is crucial to photosynthesis, it's only part of the puzzle: "It's a combination of factors that makes a vertical farm successful or not - the sum of all elements should add up to more."
Ellis Janssen
Educating vertical farmers
Next up, Wythe Marschall introduced the FarmTech Society (FTS). As Education Committee Chair, he focuses on education and workforce development, pointing out that there are lots of opportunities there in the industry.
Wythe Marschall
"In the US, there are not that many places to go for training, unlike in Northern Europe or Japan for instance," Wythe noted. "We look to work with educational institutions and members, and based on what industry members want, we offer courses with industry credentials, skills that are vetted by the academic institutions and industry." To this end, a CEA training and education consortium has been formed by the FTS.
Vertical circularity
The mic was then passed to Stephan Wullschleger and John Macdonald of Porohita Projects, who tuned in from Switzerland and New Zealand respectively. As Stephan explains, 'Porohita' stands for 'circular' in the Maori language, so it's no surprise that the company is all about circularity in indoor agriculture.
John Macdonald
The duo met in the Middle East, where John was working on a bottled water project. Recently he also spent some time in the UAE and Saudi Arabia working on controlled-environment agriculture projects, before moving into vertical farming. "Most importantly, this project was water positive for most of the year, that made it really very exciting", he says about the latter project.
Saving energy
In the Q&A session, the discussion moved back to lighting. "It's very important that you look at the efficacy of the lighting module", Ellis explained. "In the end, some light is for free, so we need a proper business case for a vertical farm to make it economically feasible.
At Signify, they've been working on improving the efficiency of lighting modules, but as Ellis points out, the other part is also crucial: the yield of your farm. "That yield is influenced by the light spectrum. What you gain in kilograms in yield in your farm, has a direct impact on your price - not only the cost price but also the sales price.
"So it's a combination of having the right spectrum and the right module. Do not only look at capital expenditure but look at the total light plan."
John agrees that it's important to take into account energy as a critical factor and a really big cost. "Water positivity is interesting and emotionally nice to achieve, but it's not going to be your biggest cost, so energy is the one to work on."
The Vertical Farming World Congress continues until the 24th of September. HortiDaily will be posting summaries of several of the sessions in the near future, so keep an eye out for those updates!
Publication date: Wed 23 Sep 2020
Exploring The Costs And Benefits of Indoor Agriculture
Vertical farming is the shiny new toy in agriculture. It's attracted tremendous media attention and VC investments. Mostly, VC seeks a high rate of return. How has VC investment impacted the business decision making in vertical farming operations?
Leafy GreRobert Colangelo and Matt Roy
Yesterday, the Indoor Agtech kicked off its virtual event, joined by many participants. One, of the many seminars, was about 'Exploring the costs and benefits of indoor agriculture'. Robert Colangelo, Founding Farmer at Green Sense Farms, kicked off the seminar by asking what CEA means to Matt Roy, VP Business Development CEA at Tanimura & Antle. Roy answered, “CEA to me, means anything grown inside. There’s a lot of innovation and disruption happening in the space and I think there’s going to be a lot of different technologies that are going to provide the right solutions here.”
Colangelo: “Is it true that, according to the myth, the leafy greens supply chain is broken and where can it be improved?”
Roy stated that one of the misconceptions out there is that there’s this big waste field on the West Coast on how products are grown, harvested, and shipped out. “It’s actually highly innovative and from innovation, technology, and sustainability standpoint, there’s a lot of exciting things happening out there. I continue to be amazed at how well we are able to get fresh fruits and vegetables across the country. A lot of things we’re trying to achieve indoors, in a lot of ways we have accomplished that outdoors. From growing it, getting it harvested efficiently, timely, and done food safely, we’re getting high quality, nutritious fresh produce across the country in a matter of days.”
Colangelo: “Can you give us a quick thumbnail of the different touchpoints, from seed in the field to the supermarket, how does that level travel and where do you see waste along that line?”
Roy: Naturally, with any farming, indoor, or outdoor there is going to be some level of waste. Obviously, putting products on a truck for five days brings challenges and vulnerability along. A misperception is that all of the food is left in the field, but in a lot of ways, it’s organic material feeding the soil. Just because leaves are left in the field after harvesting, it might be viewed as waste, but it goes back in the dirt and provides nutrition to the soil.
Colangelo: "A challenge in vertical farming is packing on a large economy of scale. What are the challenges of packing as a smaller scaled farm with few centralized packing houses near? How do you get packing done economically?"
Roy: “Hyperlocal smaller farms bring value to the supply chain and continue to provide additional ways to provide nutritious products to consumers. I think it’s going to be one of the challenges, and it’s a huge component that is not talked about a lot. There’s a lot of discussion on the growing side, but I think that we need more conversation on what innovation looks like on the packing side. What is looks like for hydro-cooling, think of everything shipped out from the West Coast, is hydro-cooled. So, when growing indoors, pulling the heat out of the product to ensure you have the shelf life needed out of it. It’s a big piece that needs to be solved.
Colangelo: “Most of the packing equipment is geared to large-scale production and there's very little cost-effective low scale packing equipment out there. So I agree, that it’s an area that we all need to work out. Looking at product recall, there's been a number of recalls with field-grown lettuce, but I've not heard of any from a vertical farm. So, can you talk a little bit about health and safety, and food safety when it comes to field production versus indoor growing?”
Roy: “The challenge has been full case-level traceability. A lot of work was done around the first traceability initiative. But, until all channels of the supply chain jump all in together around traceability, it's going to continue to be a challenge rather outdoors or indoors. Controlling more elements inside allows to produce a safer product, but in a lot of ways, it creates more risk because it's easier to contaminate all of your crops. So it’s really an all-in from everybody jump in and says we're going to prioritize food safety. And yes, this product might be 50 cents or a dollar more of a product, but we're putting a premium on food safety. We know these ‘five golden rules’ they are compliant against and we're going to pay a premium for that. As a buyer, you’re not looking at food safety first, so it’s actually a broader conversation that impacts both indoor and outdoor. It's great to have you here with your unique perspective both as a buyer and now our producer.”
Colangelo: Vertical farming is the shiny new toy in agriculture. It's attracted tremendous media attention and VC investments. Mostly, VC seeks a high rate of return. How has VC investment impacted the business decision making in vertical farming operations?
Roy: “I think it creates a different pressure. Whereas, if you're a self-funded or institutionally funded organization, there's more of a long view on what you're doing and when you're crawled by VC money there's a higher expectation on the return. I think that in a lot of ways vertical is still early stage and technology has not gone to a point that had a mass scale to produce cost-effectively. The market has not matured enough to demand a premium to get those returns. The pressure impacts your day-to-day decisions as a business leader. Are you going to make the right decisions, long-term, for the help of a product in your business, or, are you going to make some short-term decisions that might not allow long-term success in your business?
Colangelo: “Banks don’t provide debt finances to new ventures. Private equity and VC being the only few sources, how do new ideas get funded in this market?”
Roy: “In the last four of five years, from an investment side people have really have given more attention to how much food is consumed, and the size of the industries, the supply chains around products. In general, the energy coming into the food space, investing, bringing innovation and new ideas to disruption is all very exciting, but I think you speak to that challenge. ‘How do you balance funding your business to get started, while still staying true to your principles and creating something long-term?’ So I think that these many people were battling with these challenges. From a macro view to me, it's exciting to see a lot more VC money coming into fresh produce than you’ve seen historically. With that will come continued innovation and disruption.”
For more information:
Green Sense Farms
Robert Colangelo, Founding Farmer
www.greensensefarms.com
Tanimura & Antle
Matt Roy, VP Business Development CEA
www.taproduce.com
Indoor AgTech Innovation Summit
www.indooragtechnyc.com
Publication date: Fri 24 Jul 2020
Author: Rebekka Boekhout
© HortiDaily.com
Swegreen Vertical Farm Goes In-Store in Gothenburg, Sweden
Swegreen's first automated farming unit takes place at ICA Focus in Gothenburg
Swegreen's first automated farming unit takes place at ICA Focus in Gothenburg
Swegreen inks contract with ICA Focus in Gothenburg, to become the exclusive producer of hyper-locally grown vegetables via an automated cultivation system inside the store itself. The agreement is based on Swegreen's subscription-based Farming-as-a-Service, which gives food retailers and restaurants the opportunity to offer their customers fresh crops all year round – harvested directly on-site or in-store.
From left: Andreas Dahlin, CEO at Swegreen. Elsa Adlersson, ICA Focus' responsible for the In-Store greenhouse. Marcus Petersson, chairman at Swegreen.
The contract between Swegreen and ICA Focus concludes that the Gothenburg-based store will be the first in Sweden to offer its customers hyper-locally produced greens grown from seed to fully-grown size inside a store itself. The cultivation facility, which is provided by the Swedish startup company Swegreen, is based on so-called hydroponic cultivation technology that is both resource-efficient and climate-smart. The technical solution also includes the company's special lighting and nutrient recipe, air conditioning system for control of heat, humidity, and CO2 content plus a complete digital monitoring – as well as a data-driven intelligent system for optimization of all cultivation processes.
Through Swegreen's subscription-based business model, Farming-as-a-Service (FaaS), the cooperation between the parties is based on a long-term commitment where Swegreen ensures efficient production at agreed volumes and quality.
- Our FaaS model means that every store and restaurant owner can offer hyper-local, fresh and high-quality crops that are fantastically nutritious and tasty – at very competitive prices, says Swegreen's CEO, Andreas Dahlin.
- We are very proud and happy to start this collaboration with ICA Focus. It is a store that has the will to be at the forefront, and we think there are going to be many who desire to follow their footsteps.
ICA Focus is located in the Gårda district in central Gothenburg, just a stone’s throw away from the famous amusement park, Liseberg, and the Swedish Exhibition and WTC. A flagship store that always has a large assortment of environmental-friendly products.
- Our customers have demanded more locally produced and sustainable greens in our assortment – and it will not be more local and greener than this! Says Daniel Åkerhage, Store Manager at ICA Focus.
- Now we look forward to our first on-site harvest, which we expect to take place later this month.
At full capacity, it is possible to deliver and harvest around 300 units of fresh salad heads and herbs per day in the cultivation facility in the ICA Focus store.
With hydroponic cultivation technology, where the crops grow without soil with lighting from special LED lamps, it is possible to grow vegetables in an urban environment – and thus produce food very close to the consumer. It also removes unnecessary, expensive, and climate-damaging transportations. In addition, the crops do not need to be sprayed by pesticides or herbicides – they are ready to be eaten directly off the growing system. Up to 95% of the irrigation water is reused via the recycling system. Nutrients are also recycled, while the plants receive carbon dioxide through a filtered air intake from the store itself.
Swegreen has developed the cultivation module to be able to create integrated plant environments together with partners in the food and restaurant sector. Therefore, Swegreen has developed a cloud-based control- and monitoring system to make production easy to manage. Through data collection of current factors in the cultivation environment, the system can continuously refine and further optimize the cultivation processes by the use of artificial intelligence.
For more information contact:
Andreas Dahlin, CEO of Swegreen, +46 70-924 00 32, andreas.dahlin@swegreen.se
Daniel Åkerhage, store manager ICA Focus, +46 76-117 16 20, daniel@icafocus.se
Swegreen is a Swedish FoodTech company that combines advanced technology, data science, and agricultural knowledge to be able to efficiently produce high-quality and climate-smart crops in an urban environment. The company offers a subscription-based cultivation service called Farming-as-a-Service (FaaS). It gives food retailers and restaurants the opportunity to offer their customers hyper-locally produced, fresh, nutritious, and tasty greens all year round. www.swegreen.com
ICA Focus is a unique grocery store that has been a rendezvous place for food-loving Gothenburgers for over 25 years. With an assortment of over 35,000 items, you have about twice as much to choose from as in an ordinary ICA store. ICA Focus also has its own bakery, charcuterie and restaurant. The store also has one of Gothenburg's best fish delicate retailers, Fisk i Focus. ICA Focus is located in Focushuset, Gårda, in central Gothenburg.