Welcome to iGrow News, Your Source for the World of Indoor Vertical Farming
Boost Operational Efficiencies With Lighting Control System
Signify has expanded its GrowWise Control System, allowing for higher levels of automation and reducing manual labor and operational costs
"Signify’s expanded GrowWise Control System helps growers boost operational efficiencies. This allows for full dimming for Philips toplighting compact in greenhouses. Besides, it enables growers to plan and automate light recipes one year ahead and to control the grow lighting through their climate computer or greenhouse management system. This will result in lower manual labor costs and improved operational efficiency," the company announces.
Signify has expanded its GrowWise Control System, allowing for higher levels of automation and reducing manual labor and operational costs. This can be achieved by automating the lighting planning for their crop’s full growth cycle, up to one year ahead. The software tool brings dynamic lighting to greenhouses and vertical farms and fits seamlessly with modern climate computers and greenhouse management systems. This enables growers to automatically adjust light levels to maintain consistent levels on cloudy days, save energy on sunny days and simulate sunrise and sunset throughout the day or season.
Growers, like the Italian vertical farm, Planet Farms, and the Belgium greenhouse, De Glastuin, are already using the expanded system providing additional value within their growing facility.
“Using the GrowWise Control System is ideal for us,” says Luca Travaglini, co-founder of Planet Farms. “We want to automate as many aspects of our operations as possible to become more cost efficient. Now we can easily create custom light recipes and set them to run year-round to provide the right light recipe with the right light intensity at the right time throughout the crop’s growth cycle. By automating our full light strategy during the growth cycle, for the whole year, we can run our operations very efficiently and keep our manual labor costs low. That makes it easier for us to maintain consistent quality as we scale up our production.”
The demand for the GrowWise Control System is increasing for greenhouse applications as well. “The lighting can be used much more efficient, since it gives us the flexibility to reduce light levels at any moment we need to,” says Wouter de Bruyn, owner at De Glastuin. Lettuce grower De Glastuin is using the GrowWise Control System to control the Philips GreenPower LED toplighting compact grow lights via its climate control system. “The climate computer is equipped with a daylight sensor that sends actual light measurements to the GrowWise Control System so we can adapt our light levels automatically to ensure an even light level throughout the day and season. This results in a continuous high-quality crop. In case the electricity is the limiting factor, we are still able to use the LEDs evenly for the whole greenhouse in a lesser intensity.”
“Dynamic lighting in a greenhouse is the next step in improving the cost-efficiency and quality for the cultivation process,” says Udo van Slooten, Business leader Horticulture LED solutions at Signify. “It allows growers to effortlessly maintain a consistent level of light throughout the day to produce the best possible crops. The system compensates for cloudy weather and creates a more controlled growing environment for your crop.”
“I’m Opting For Localized Franchised Farming”
Engineering student wants to start her own farm in New Jersey
“In the States, the food system is so inefficient both in the way it’s produced, at a massive scale and in terms of quality,” says Natalie Radu. "The problem is that consumers are left in the dark. They don’t know what pesticide is used on the food they’re eating. GM foods are not labeled. Let aside the waste this industry has.” Natalie says that many don’t have access to healthy food. When walking around in the Bronx for instance, on the lookout for a grocery store, it’s so much easier to buy a pack of soda for half the price of fresh produce.
‘Localized franchised farming’
“McDonald's is known for real estate. If only we could do a Wholefoods / McDonalds franchise where customers could walk in and snip off lettuce, directly available to consumers. I’m opting for localized franchised farming. I have been trying to figure out a location in terms of real estate, but, from the perspective of a small business, New Jersey and New York prices are very high. I would have to start out in a place that’s cheaper on average. However, I would definitely apply for grants to fund the initial infrastructure for the farms."
Natalie Radu in action on her channel
Natalie has her passion for writing and her engineering study to her advantage when starting a farm. “I think because of this intersection I will be able to work with the science and also have the ability to convey that science. I can make the lettuce we’ll be growing feel personal for someone that’s in their own house, miles away or even across the world. That’s the biggest thing, you have to get people excited about vertical farming, at least as excited as you are. However, when it comes down to engineering I’m going to need some help.”
“My family immigrated from Moldova to the US around the collapse of the Soviet Union,” says Natalie. “My grandparents used to grow several fruits in the backyards and my affection for farming started right about there, it’s in my blood.” Natalie, an 18-year-old engineering student has been determined to run her own farm in the future. It all started with finding a proper research topic, which turned into her biggest passion nowadays.
As Natalie’s based in New Jersey, she is surrounded by several vertical farms. She wanted to pass by some farms near her to visit and stumbled upon Good Feeling Farms. Eventually, Natalie was able to do an internship at Good Feeling Farms to get a better understanding of every aspect of a vertical farm, from seeding to growing to harvesting. Good Feeling Farms is a New Jersey-based wholesale micro greenery that specializes in microgreens and hydro lettuce. The farm is run by a team of three, taking care of the cultivation and harvesting process.
Inside Good Feeling Farms' growing facility
Ever since her internship, Natalie is determined to run her own farm in the future. She currently runs a YouTube channel, where she experiments with indoor hydroponics. She recently spoke at a local TEDx event about the inefficacies in traditional food production and distribution systems.
Natalie says: “I’ve tried many growing conditions for plants and I think you can grow them under many different conditions. You have to work with your circumstances. Ideally, your indoor garden would be sustainable. The growth mediums could be sanitized and reused to lessen waste. Besides being water-efficient, vertical farming really shines in the areas of automation and data science. The ability to collect and analyze plant data constantly and instantly modify environmental factors has massive potential for produce cultivation as we know it.”
For more information:
Natalie Radu
natlydrad@gmail.com
Author: Rebekka Boekhout
© VerticalFarmDaily.com
VIDEO: Indoor Ag Science Cafe Discusses Marketing Vertical Farm Food To Consumers
This presentation given by Dr. Bridget Behe discussed marketing indoor farm produce
‘Considerations for Marketing Vertical Farm Food Products to Consumers’ by Dr. Bridget Behe (Michigan State University)
The Café presentations are available from the YouTube channel.
This presentation given by Dr. Bridget Behe discussed marketing indoor farm produce. Dr. Behe emphasizes that marketing is the communication of the value with consumers and “Why” to sell or buy is the important focus to connect producers and consumers. Dr. Behe also shared her latest research on consumer perceptions on price vs value, and COVID-19 pandemic related ‘shopping anxiety’. Indoor Ag Science Café is an outreach program of a project OptimIA, funded by the USDA SCRI grant program (http://www.scri-optimia.org). The café forums are designed to serve as a precompetitive communication platform among scientists and indoor farming professionals.
Contact Chieri Kubota at the Ohio State University (Kubota.10@osu.edu) to be a Café member to participate.
Offering The Complete Package, Thinking From A Plant Perspective
KG Systems has about any solution to vertical farming that can be thought of
“Nowadays, there’s very little growing space. Many growers have to grow in several places at the same time, moving their products around,” says Floris Berghout, International business development manager at KG Systems. “Therefore, when taking this problem into account, vertical farming is a valuable addition to horticulture. However, I do not think that vertical farming will replace traditional greenhouse growers.”
Over 15 years ago, KG Systems became involved with vertical farming. In 2006, the company constructed its first vertical farm inside a greenhouse, used for Lilly production, soon after that, a propagation cell followed for orchids. KG Systems has about any solution to vertical farming that can be thought of. This thanks to the experience they gained because of their involvement in many diverse projects over the years.
(F.l.t.r.) Matthias Haakman and Floris Berghout
“Many growers are involved with researching the propagation process in vertical farms as this cultivation process delivers stronger plants and better performance in the greenhouse,” Matthias Haakman, Account manager at KG Systems. “We always sit down with the client to analyze what the most appropriate solution would be for them. Here, we’re looking at the plants and what they need. We’re basically building a product around the plant the grower aims to grow. In terms of seeds, the system, etc.”
Floris says that the great thing about KG Systems’ technique is that they’re able to adjust any system to the plants. The team is working closely with flora, tomato, etc. growers. These systems are one big puzzle, but the company can deliver either one piece of it or more. “We’re working with many customers that are either upgrading their systems or wanting to install a complete new farm inside a warehouse, or elsewhere. In all these cases the same knowledge is implemented,” he says.
“The more projects we have done, the more we have been taught about the market. It has enabled us to see what techniques are available and that’s in our benefit. Therefore we can offer the best tailored solutions to our customers nowadays,” says Matthias.
KG Systems' installation at a tulip grower
According to Floris, it’s the trick to outline the situation. Meaning, what does the customer have in mind and then reason back to the plant. The client has its eye on a certain market where the product will be sold at a certain price. Therefore we need to know the following things in order to create the best solution for them. Such as, what does the plant need in order to grow, and how do we fit this into a multiple layer system, using what technique? Then we’ll draw up a balance in terms of budget.
KG’s technology is scalable in complexity. In other words, the company can deliver any system at any price, depending on the growers’ end goal. “We are there to help out with their market, potential buyers, you name it. If clients lack of market-, product- or customer knowledge, etc., the company directs them to a consultancy agency,” says Floris. This agency will educate them in every area needed and guide them into the right direction.
For more information:
KG Systems
Matthias Haakman, Account manager
Floris Berghout, International business development manager
info@kgsystems.nl
www.kgsystems.nl
Author: Rebekka Boekhout
© VerticalFarmDaily.com
Could Controlled Environment Agriculture Change The Face Of American Farming?
One of the projects AppHarvest was involved with was retrofitting a 40-foot shipping container into a hydroponic production system that operates with a 5-gallon closed-loop irrigation system and LED lights for students to grow food
Exclusives From Urban Ag News
January 25, 2021
David Kuack, UrbanAgNews
Ramel Bradley thinks so. The community director at AppHarvest is talking to students and communities across the country about the benefits of locally-grown food and the agtech used to produce it.
[Photo above: Ramel with students and faculty from Breathitt High School in Jackson, Ky. on Jan. 15 at the opening of the school’s new container farm funded by AppHarvest and the U.S. Department of Agriculture.]
Growing up in Brooklyn, N.Y., Ramel “Smooth” Bradley aspired to become a professional basketball player like some of the kids that came before him. NBA Hall of Famers Michael Jordan and Bernhard King were two of his role models.
“These great legends inspired my love for the game of basketball,” Bradley said. “As I got older my talents began to increase and I became one of the top prospects in the city. I attended Manhattan Park West High School in New York City and then transferred to the Pendleton School at IMG Academy in Bradenton, Fla., where I was a member of the first basketball team in school history.”
Ramel Bradley, community director at AppHarvest, said the company has created a platform which has enabled him to become a Black farmer and community and youth leader.
At IMG Bradley was recruited by multiple college coaches including those from the University of Kentucky.
“What brought me to Kentucky was my love for the game of basketball,” he said. “While at UK, I became the starting point guard, captain, and fan favorite of the Wildcats. I earned my degree and then played professional basketball in multiple countries including Croatia, France, Turkey, and Israel.”
More important than basketball
In 2016 while visiting his family in New York, Bradley discovered his grandmother was having some health issues.
“I decided to stop playing the game I love for something that I love much more–my family and my community,” he said. “When I was 10-years old and falling in love with the game of basketball, my grandmother started a mission in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn, focused solely on feeding the hungry. She started the mission in her kitchen out of the need to feed people who were hungry to provide them with some hope and encouragement.”
“I studied in the College of Agriculture, Food and Environment at the University of Kentucky because of the seed that was planted in me by my family. My interest in agriculture came from the leadership that my grandmother and family displayed in serving the community. I could see the difference on people’s faces when they were fed a meal and they received encouraging words regardless of their circumstances or where they came from.”
AppHarvest has opened a 60-acre state-of-the-art greenhouse facility in eastern Kentucky to produce tomatoes. A second tomato facility is under construction with plans to open a third greenhouse operation for producing leafy greens. Photos courtesy of AppHarvest.
Healthy food is a solution
When Bradley stopped playing basketball he became involved again with his grandmother’s mission.
“We restarted the neighborhood pantry and I started to learn a lot more about the community in regards to food deserts, preventable diseases and the number of Americans dying from these diseases,” he said. “My grandmother is blind now and going to dialysis three times a week. It is one of the most devastating things for her to go through and for my family and I to have to witness. I also have friends and family who suffer from obesity. I never realized the level of access I was provided as a professional athlete to not only training and conditioning and living a healthy lifestyle, but also having access to healthy, nutritious food.
“When I came back home and got to see firsthand that family, friends and community members were suffering from preventable diseases, I made the decision to dedicate my life to feeding the people in my community. Healthy food is a solution to a lot of problems.”
While Bradley believes having access to food can have a major impact on improving the lives of Americans, it is the type of food that is even more important.
“One of the things that drives me is the health and nutritional well-being of our urban community members–the longevity of life,” he said. “A lot of the food that we are exposed to in our communities is processed and it’s just not good for us. If we can get people to eat healthier food, how many lives do we prolong and how many family members can lead happier lives?”
The CDC reported that only one in 10 Americans consumes enough fruits and vegetables. Cost has been cited as a possible barrier to higher fruit and vegetable consumption, especially for low-income households.
“There are a lot of people who are hungry in the world and need to receive food,” Bradley said. “The COVID-19 pandemic has amplified the food insecurity issue. If we’re not growing our own food, who is growing our food? Much of the produce consumed in America is imported. The U.S. imported more than 60% of fresh tomatoes in 2019, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
“If the borders are closed where is that food going to come from? It is crucial that we grow our own food, which will help increase food security, whether it is controlled environment agriculture or open-field agriculture. We’re going to need a lot more food production and we’re going to need a lot more local food production.
Bradley said family and friends recently celebrated his grandmother’s mission by supporting New York City’s largest assistance organizations by giving out 1 million food boxes during the COVID-19 pandemic.
From AppHarvest’s tomato greenhouse in Morehead, Ky., the company can reach about 70 percent of the U.S. population in a one-day drive.
“Every week we feed families in the community in cooperation with a number of community organizations, including Change Food, Food Bank NY, City Harvest, and the Campaign for Hunger,” he said. “All of these organizations have really stepped up in Brooklyn and N.Y. City to deliver nutritious food to community members.”
Reaching out to local communities
In 2016 after retiring from professional basketball, Bradley received a phone call from his good friend and University of Kentucky classmate Jonathan Webb.
“We had a real-life conversation about the lack of economic mobility in our communities, me in Brooklyn and Jonathan in Pikeville, Ky.,” Bradley said. “He knew that I was feeding community members trying to help them overcome preventable diseases. Jonathan told me about his vision of growing vegetables using controlled environment agriculture and being able to feed 70 percent of the Eastern seaboard through a central location in eastern Kentucky in Appalachia.
“That was the birth of our partnership and what brought me back to Kentucky, for us to start AppHarvest. We recently opened the doors to a 60-acre state-of-the-art greenhouse facility in Morehead, Ky.”
Bradley, who is community director at AppHarvest, works with both company employees as well as doing community outreach.
“Since I’ve trained extensively in controlled environment agriculture facilities, I’m able to provide a knowledge transfer to those coming into our company learning about this new industry and providing encouragement to our employees,” he said. That is what I do from an internal standpoint.
“Externally, I go out and share the AppHarvest story with students and community groups around the state and across the country to get them excited about agtech programs. When I joined Jonathan’s vision of making Appalachia an agtech hub one of the first things I did was to create an agtech program that we implemented in eastern Kentucky.”
One of the projects AppHarvest was involved with was retrofitting a 40-foot shipping container into a hydroponic production system that operates with a 5-gallon closed-loop irrigation system and LED lights for students to grow food.
One of AppHarvest’s outreach projects was retrofitting a 40-foot shipping container into a hydroponic production system that allows students to grow food.
“I helped develop the curriculum which teaches the students about plant science, the local food system, the food supply chain, how to build their own local food system and entrepreneurship,” Bradley said. “We have engaged hundreds of students from elementary to high school showing them a new way to grow food.
“We recently partnered with the Save the Children organization where we made over 1,600 grow kits for students to take home and learn about hydroponic growing. The students grow their own lettuce and we provide them with recipes that they can use to cook with their parents while they’re home during the pandemic.”
AppHarvest is also partnering with five universities in Kentucky. The goal is to work closely with them to develop programming and research and development with their students.
“What we are doing at AppHarvest is not being taught at most universities or high schools,” Bradley said. “We have been working with the governor of Kentucky who has put together an agtech task force which I am a part of. We want to continue developing partnerships with universities as well as community organizations throughout the state.
“We have broken ground on a second tomato greenhouse facility and a third facility for the production of leafy greens. We are very adamant about redefining agriculture and making the biggest impact we can possibly make.”
Inspiring future ag leaders
Through Bradley’s role as one of the founding members of AppHarvest, he has transitioned from professional athlete to becoming a Black farmer and community and youth leader.
“It is only right that I use this platform and use this responsibility to provide more access and more opportunity to future Black ag leaders,” he said. “Less than 2 percent of American farmers are African-Americans. By doing the work I’m doing I can hopefully inspire folks that look like me to take advantage of the new opportunities in this growing community.”
Bradley has been talking with leading youth agricultural organizations, including 4-H, FFA and Jr. MANRRS, to implement multicultural programs to develop future ag industry leaders.
“I’m also looking to work closely with historically black colleges and universities (HBCU),” he said. “I’ll start in Kentucky and then hopefully be able to provide access and opportunity to students at HBCU schools throughout the nation. That is another way we can make the ag community more diverse.
“Barriers are being broken by the work that I’m doing. I’m looking to inspire the people who I would like to see get involved in this industry. I am the modern farmer and this is how their future could look.”
Ramel Bradley, AppHarvest
For more: AppHarvest, info@appharvest.com; https://www.appharvest.com.
This article is property of Urban Ag News and was written by David Kuack, a freelance technical writer in Fort Worth, Texas.
VIDEO: Which Type of Hydroponic System Is Better?
I am fairly sure that my standard answer of, “it all depends” annoys most of the people I am speaking to. From suppliers to growers and from researchers to hobbyists there is always a desire to know and understand which system is the best
January 21, 2021, | Chris Higgins
Hint: They are all just irrigation systems.
One of the questions that I get most frequently is, “Which hydroponic system is the best?”
I am fairly sure that my standard answer of, “it all depends” annoys most of the people I am speaking to. From suppliers to growers and from researchers to hobbyists there is always a desire to know and understand which system is the best.
So why do I answer, “it all depends”?
Whether we are talking about nutrient film technique (NFT), deep water culture (DWC), drip irrigation systems, aeroponics systems, ebb and flow systems, or any other system we should agree that these are all just variations of irrigation systems.
Buffer capacity means security. Buffer capacity means you can leave for a day without fear of losing the crop.
Next let’s talk about the systems suppliers and their sales representatives. Suppliers of hydroponic systems will all tell you why theirs is better, but the conversation should really revolve around what factors cause their systems to fail. Every system has a weakness. Your crop, your budget, your facility and your geographic location will likely quickly highlight these weaknesses.
A large variety of hydroponic systems all at once – Big Tex Urban Farms
So, how do you determine what system is best for you?
Here are the things you should know, think about and research thoroughly before you invest.
What crop are you going to grow? If you are planning to grow tomatoes, it’s very unlikely that you will want to invest in a nft system or a dwc system. The needs of your crop will help direct you into the right direction. Likewise, a closed loop drip irrigation system is unlikely to be the answer for lettuce production.
Know your budget. Your budget will play a major role in this decision making process. Do not only think about the upfront costs of the system. Make sure to include the operational and labor costs associated with running the system 7 days a week 365 days per year.
Know your environment. Each crop type will respond to these 9 environmental variables (see diagram below) in different ways. As a grower your ability to manage these variables will be a primary indicator of your ability to achieve your target yields. The irrigation systems primary function is to help you control the 4 variables surrounding the root zone (see diagram below and focus on root zone temp, nutrients, water and oxygen.) Your geographic location and crop will determine which of these variables are most important.
Truly understand the design. In the recent Urban Ag News article, “Important Tips For Designing A Hydroponic Production Facility” I discussed the importance of buffer capacity. Buffer capacity in your irrigation system plays some very important roles. First, it will help you manage your nutrients. Second, it will help your crop deal with variations in temperature. Third and most importantly, it will be a primary indicator of how much time you can spend away from your farm.
Figure out your maintenance and spare parts plan. Irrigation systems break. Irrigation systems get clogged. Irrigation systems need to be serviced and fixed. Make sure you understand everything from how to access the most vulnerable and weak parts of the system to how long it will take you to get replacement parts and what parts you should plan to carry in case of an emergency. Think about redundancy!
Labor is KEY! Consider every aspect of labor. From the education requirements of running the labor, to the amount of labor needed to operate and maintain the system to the importance of labor needed on the system on a regular basis.
Budget • Scale • Access
Which brings me back to where we started. Which hydroponic system is the best? It truly all depends. All we know for sure is that if a supplier tells you, “you can grow every crop in our system”, be concerned. It might be true, but I can almost guarantee you that you cannot grow every crop profitably in their system. If a supplier struggles to help you clearly understand and answer the questions posed in this article, look for a new supplier. There are plenty that will.
Finally, focus on building a professional network with experience in the commercial hydroponics industries. Ask lots of questions and understand the full benefits and limitations of any system you choose.
Final hint: Aquaponics growers use one of these systems as well
Hydroponic Indoor Farm Plans To Be Among First Tenants In Downtown Piqua's Zolo Building
It was strategically placed in front of the Zollinger's building, a 40,000-square-foot former grocery warehouse planned as a mixed-use development with 16 loft-style residential units, a roof deck, community market/kitchen incubator and co-working space.
Fifth Season Farm, founded by a local brother-sister duo, has launched a hydroponic indoor farm inside a shipping container along Main Street in downtown Piqua.
By John Bush – Senior Reporter, Dayton Business Journal
A unique farming business has set up shop in downtown Piqua, and if all goes to plan the concept will be among the first tenants in an historic building being redeveloped in the city core.
Fifth Season Farm, founded by brother-sister duo Britt Decker and Laura Jackson, launched a hydroponic indoor farm inside a shipping container along Main Street. It was strategically placed in front of the Zollinger's building, a 40,000-square-foot former grocery warehouse planned as a mixed-use development with 16 loft-style residential units, a roof deck, community market/kitchen incubator and co-working space.
While the farm has been operating there for months, the long-term intention is to occupy space inside the the century-old building, which will be renamed the "Zolo." Chris Schmiesing, Piqua's community and economic development director, said the community market concept fits well with Fifth Season's business, and would be a welcome addition to the building.
"Part of the Zolo concept is the community market space, where local growers and producers can come and put their product on the shelves and begin to grow their business," Schmiesing said. "We're really excited to have Fifth Season Farm in there because we think it really represents the kind of innovative, entrepreneurial activity we want to see more of."
Unlike some traditional farms, Fifth Season does not use pesticides or herbicides, and utilizes non-GMO seeds. Powerful LEDs create a specific light recipe for each plant, allowing control over size and shape. There is no dirt, meaning the crops are free of bugs. The hydroponic system uses 90% less water by recycling the nutrient rich infused water in a loop system. Since it is weather controlled, temperature, relative humidity and CO2 levels remain constant all year.
"It is a complete, self-contained unit," Decker said. "The products also have a much longer shelf life because they are harvested to order."
Fifth Season currently grows about half-a-dozen varieties of lettuce, as well as specialty greens such as Swiss chard and kale. Decker said they are also growing small root vegetables such as radishes.
Currently, Fifth Season offers delivery through its website. Orders can be delivered up to five miles from its farm location, where customers can also come to pick up their products. Fifth Season produce can also be found on the Miami County Locally Grown Virtual Market. Decker said they are in discussions with local grocery stores, restaurants and gyms to carry their product as well.
When their space in the Zolo building is ready, Decker said they plan to open a marketplace and pickup location inside. He added the entire reason they placed the farm in that location was to be ready for when the redevelopment project is complete.
In June 2020, the Piqua Planning Commission unanimously approved a zoning change that allows for residential use within the building. The rezoning was a big administrative hurdle the project needed to cross, but the project still needs to be fully financed. The project missed out on the latest round of Ohio Historic Preservation Tax Credits, though Schmiesing said additional funding sources are being finalized.
Gamble Associates, a Massachusetts-based urban design and planning firm, is taking the lead on the Zolo project. Gamble Associates Principal David Gamble previously said the interior build-out will take between nine and 10 months to complete once it gets started.
Assuming everything aligns, Gamble said this project will create a "critical mass" that could have ripple effects throughout the city of Piqua.
"Piqua, in my mind, has reached an inflection point," he said in July 2020. "While there may not be a lot of transformation to date, there's been a lot of good planning and the city has very good leadership. Piqua is due for that next phase of growth. We like working here, and we're excited about this opportunity and what it can do for the city."
Signify’s Expanded GrowWise Control System Helps Growers Boost Operational Efficiencies
Signify has expanded its GrowWise Control System, allowing for higher levels of automation and reducing manual labor and operational costs
Signify has expanded its GrowWise Control System, allowing for higher levels of automation and reducing manual labor and operational costs. This can be achieved by automating the lighting planning for their crop’s full growth cycle, up to one year ahead. The software tool brings dynamic lighting to greenhouses and vertical farms and fits seamlessly with modern climate computers and greenhouse management systems. This enables growers to automatically adjust light levels to maintain consistent levels on cloudy days, save energy on sunny days and simulate sunrise and sunset throughout the day or season.
Growers, like the Italian vertical farm, Planet Farms, and the Belgium greenhouse, De Glastuin, are already using the expanded system providing additional value within their growing facility.
“Using the GrowWise Control System is ideal for us,” says Luca Travaglini, co-founder of Planet Farms. “We want to automate as many aspects of our operations as possible to become more cost efficient. Now we can easily create custom light recipes and set them to run year-round to provide the right light recipe with the right light intensity at the right time throughout the crop’s growth cycle. By automating our full light strategy during the growth cycle, for the whole year, we can run our operations very efficiently and keep our manual labor costs low. That makes it easier for us to maintain consistent quality as we scale up our production.”
The demand for the GrowWise Control System is increasing for greenhouse applications as well. “The lighting can be used much more efficient, since it gives us the flexibility to reduce light levels at any moment we need to,” says Wouter de Bruyn, owner at De Glastuin. Lettuce grower De Glastuin is using the GrowWise Control System to control the Philips GreenPower LED toplighting compact grow lights via its climate control system. “The climate computer is equipped with a daylight sensor that sends actual light measurements to the GrowWise Control System so we can adapt our light levels automatically to ensure an even light level throughout the day and season. This results in a continuous high-quality crop. In case the electricity is the limiting factor, we are still able to use the LEDs evenly for the whole greenhouse in a lesser intensity.”
“Dynamic lighting in a greenhouse is the next step in improving the cost-efficiency and quality for the cultivation process,” says Udo van Slooten, Business leader Horticulture LED solutions at Signify. “It allows growers to effortlessly maintain a consistent level of light throughout the day to produce the best possible crops. The system compensates for cloudy weather and creates a more controlled growing environment for your crop.”
For more information about the GrowWise Control System and our Philips-banded horticulture lighting, visit our horticulture pages.
Or please contact:
Global Marcom Manager Horticulture at Signify
Daniela Damoiseaux
Tel: +31 6 31 65 29 69
E-mail: daniela.damoiseaux@signify.com
About Signify
Signify (Euronext: LIGHT) is the world leader in lighting for professionals and consumers and lighting for the Internet of Things. Our Philips products, Interact connected lighting systems and data-enabled services, deliver business value and transform life in homes, buildings and public spaces. With 2019 sales of EUR 6.2 billion, we have approximately 37,000 employees and are present in over 70 countries. We unlock the extraordinary potential of light for brighter lives and a better world. We achieved carbon neutrality in 2020, have been in the Dow Jones Sustainability World Index since our IPO for four consecutive years and were named Industry Leader in 2017, 2018 and 2019. News from Signify is located at the Newsroom, Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram. Information for investors can be found on the Investor Relations page.
American Indian Architect Leads Aeroponics Farm Plan For Iron Range To Meda Finals
Pieratos, who is now 62, and three other Chippewa women are co-owners of Harvest Nation, which is leading a promising effort to build an indoor aeroponics farm that would serve hundreds of customers with fresh produce year-round from the reservation, near Tower and Lake Vermilion
JANUARY 24, 2021
“The recruiting sergeant looked at me like, ‘What is this Indian woman doing?’ I scored so highly on the entrance test that he showed me a lot of jobs.” Denise Pieratos, an MIT-trained architect and founder of Harvest Nation, started by four women who are members of the Bois Forte Band of Chippewa in northeastern Minnesota.
Denise Pieratos, who grew up on the Bois Forte Chippewa reservation in northeastern Minnesota, started her career after Tower-Soudan High School as an iron miner.
Recession cost Pieratos her job in 1982 at the former U.S. Steel mine near Virginia. She enlisted in the Army for the G.I. Bill in order to finance the college education that always had seemed a distant dream.
"The recruiting sergeant looked at me like, 'What is this Indian woman doing?' " Pieratos recalled. "I scored so highly on the entrance test that he showed me a lot of jobs."
Pieratos became a Russian-language specialist in Army intelligence and rose to sergeant. And that wasn't the last time Pieratos surprised those who underestimated her.
She was a double-major honors student at the University of Minnesota in the early 1990s, in fine art and graphics design.
Her mentor during an internship at Walt Disney Co. recommended architecture school. Pieratos won a scholarship to MIT in Boston. She earned a master's degree in 1998.
That led to a 12-year design career at architecture firms in Minneapolis and in New York City.
Pieratos, then a divorced mother of two, moved back to the reservation from New York in 2010 to care for her father, who was dying of heart disease and diabetes.
Pieratos attributed that to bad diet.
Pieratos, who is now 62, and three other Chippewa women are co-owners of Harvest Nation, which is leading a promising effort to build an indoor aeroponics farm that would serve hundreds of customers with fresh produce year-round from the reservation, near Tower and Lake Vermilion.
These entrepreneurs also were seeded in 2019 with a $35,000 feasibility grant by Blandin Foundation.
CEO Tuleah Palmer, president of Grand Rapids-based Blandin, praised Pieratos and noted that less than 5% of such investment lands in rural Minnesota and less than 1% with tribes.
"As I admire the work Ms. Pieratos has advanced, her ingenuity and determination, I wonder how many more people like her are out in Minnesota's small towns and villages without access to capital,'' Palmer said.
"Scarcity is a dangerous narrative; it is long overdue that that changes."
Harvest Nation, a semifinalist in the 2019 Minnesota Cup entrepreneur sweepstakes, has been working with a business-development mentor and is one of the 13 finalists this week in the third-annual Meda Million Dollar Challenge for minority-led firms.
The national competition, the largest such entrepreneurs-of-color competition in America, has resulted in $3 million invested in 12 minority businesses since 2019.
Other finalists have attracted post-competition growth capital.
"We're like 'Shark Tank' without the teeth," quipped Meda CEO Alfredo Martel. "2020 has been a tough year for most and to see these exciting companies persist is inspiring. We are excited to see the results of their hard work."
Dani Pieratos, 32, Denise's daughter and the sales and marketing director for Harvest Nation, said the four founders are encouraged by hundreds of reservation, commercial-and-residential Iron Rangers who have expressed interest in becoming fresh-produce customers.
"Our traditional, native-food economy was wrecked and we started eating all those mass-produced processed foods," said Dani Pieratos, who also works full time in food distribution for the Arrowhead Economic Opportunity Agency.
"Investing in healthy bodies and minds is the best 'asset-management' strategy for any community."
Pieratos said Harvest Nation is talking to the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources about siting a demonstration project of around $1 million, of a full-sized production farm inside the old Lake Vermilion-Soudan iron mine that would cost up to $4 million. The mine is managed as a state park by the DNR. The temperature is a near-constant 55 degrees.
Harvest members would pay about $50 per week for a big box of fresh vegetables weekly.
Aeroponics may be best demonstrated in Minnesota by "Living Greens" of Faribault. The company has raised millions of dollars to build a 7,000-square foot building in the middle of farm country. It combines technology, agriculture and science to produce tons of year-round fresh salads, microgreens and herbs on 60,000 square feet of space, mostly elevated.
Aeroponics, a growing trend, uses misting and "dosing" systems to grow year-round crops that need 98% less land and 95% less water than traditional farming with no herbicides or pesticides.
The Harvest Nation founders want to generate green economic growth and better health on the range, to supplant some of what must be trucked in most of the year.
They also are seeking investors for their long-odds aeroponics farm.
Minneapolis-based Meda, a nonprofit adviser, and financier, was founded in 1971 by business leaders to foster minority-business expansion. It has grown in recent years to serve businesses with total revenue of $1 billion and 6,000 employees.
More information is at meda.net and harvestn.ationinc.com
A Leading NYC Mayoral Candidate Thinks Roof Farms Can Save America’s Cities
On the Eater’s Digest podcast, Eric Adams talks healthy eating, urban farming, and food deserts
Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams distributing food
Photo by Andrew Lichtenstein/Corbis via Getty Images
Later this year, the voters of America’s largest city will elect a new mayor. New York’s next leader will contend with budget crises, a small business sector in a free fall, a struggling mass transit system, a school system in open revolt, and a grieving populous. They also have an opportunity to help the city redefine itself and its values and priorities.
Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams, one of the leading candidates in the race right now, believes food is a key component in any future recovery. Passionate about urban farming, he wants to set up a citywide network of vertical and rooftop farms that feed hospitals, schools, prisons, and beyond while educating schoolchildren and getting trucks off the road. He believes in the ability of healthy food to fight the chronic illnesses the plague Black and brown communities across the city, having reversed his diabetes diagnosis with his diet. And he believes in cutting through the bureaucracy of city government to make it all happen.
Last month, Borough President Adams came on the Eater’s Digest podcast to discuss why food needs to be central to any conversation around environmental, economics, and health.
Read below for the full transcript of our conversation with Adams.
Amanda Kludt: Today on the show, we have Brooklyn Borough President and New York City mayoral candidate, Eric Adams. I wanted to have him on the show because he’s very passionate about rooftop farming, getting healthy food to food deserts, and using food as a weapon against chronic diseases like diabetes, which disproportionately impacts African-American communities. Borough President Adams, welcome to the show.
Eric Adams: Thank you, Amanda and Daniel. It’s great to be here and you started out, you said what I was passionate about, and I am probably one of the few people who have reached this level of government that I’m passionate about our universe. I think far too often when you are a part of the government, you become so scripted and you do not have personal narratives that make you and it forces you to look at life in a different way. I think that the dark moments in my life, I was able to take them from being burials to plantings. It led me to a journey of realizing the universality of our coexistence, not only with our mothers but mother earth.
I view everything through that prism. So sometimes you speak with me and you’ll say, “Okay. He’s an elected official.” Then another time, you say, “Wait a minute, this guy’s a hippie.” Then another time you’ll say, “Hey, this guy is some type of Sage.” I moved through all of these universes and it’s scary at first until people finally say, “Wait a minute, there’s more to life and our purpose than what we were told.”
AK: I love that. To that end, do you want to tell our listeners a little bit about your background, just a quick bio for those who are not familiar with your work and what you do?
EA: I was born in Brooklyn. Brooklyn is the largest borough county in the city of New York out of the five, 2.6 million people, extremely diverse, moved to Queens as a child. I was arrested by police officers who assaulted my brother and I, and that’s why the movement around police reform is so important to me. But instead of saying, “Woe is me.” I say, “Why not me?” I joined the police department. I started an organization for police reform and public safety at the same time. I became a Sergeant, Lieutenant, a Captain, and retired as a Captain. I went on to become a state Senator. Then after serving four terms, I became the first person of color to be the Borough President in Brooklyn. On the way, something called chronic disease hijacked or attempted to hijack my life. I was diagnosed with type two diabetes four years ago.
I woke up one morning and I could not see my alarm clock. I lost sight in my left eye. I was losing it in my right, had constant tingling in my hands and feet. That was permanent neuropathic nerve damage that would eventually lead to amputation, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, the American package. Instead of following the American route of using a prescription, I decided to use plants. In three weeks, after going through a whole full plant-based diet, my vision came back three months later, my diabetes went into remission, the nerve damage went away, and I dropped 35 pounds. I like to tell people I don’t have a six-pack. I have a case now.
AK: That is remarkable. One of the reasons I wanted you on here is because you have ideas around rooftop farming. You’ve talked about how Queens and the Bronx were farmland originally. So can you talk about what you’d like to do there and what kinds of businesses you’d like to build for the city?
EA: I’m in this place where one solution solves a multitude of problems. So we were an agrarian economy at one time. We’re cycling out of COVID. We are going to have a real problem around food. COVID reveals that comorbidities and preexisting conditions led to a higher rate of hospitalizations and deaths. We’re dealing with food deserts throughout our entire city, particularly in economically challenging communities. So look at all of those areas and now say to ourselves, “Our environment is going through a terrible time because there are too many trucks on the road. So why not use our rooftops? Why not look at using vertical farming, using everything from hydroponics, and let’s start with our school system.” We feed 960,000 children a day.
AK: Wow.
EA: Why not say, “Let’s turn to food.” And by growing the food using rooftops, using classrooms, using empty factory spaces, the person who invents and expands this system now will have enough money to leverage long contracts. So if I go to the companies and state that, “Hey, I’m going to give you a five year guarantee contract that you’re going to grow the vegetables and some of the fruits that you’re about to provide to our school system,” you now can leverage that to go into the science and to expand. What do we do in the process? You’re going to teach my young children a nutritionally-based education so they can learn this multibillion-dollar industry of urban farming. They’re going to be skillful in it. And these are the jobs of the future, because 40 percent of the jobs we’re training our children, for now, won’t be available because of computer learning and artificial intelligence. But we’re always going to eat.
Then we take the trucks off the road that are feeding our Department of Education. Then we have the children built into this civic educational plan of identifying food desert, food apartheid, and do nutritionally-based education in their communities so that you can go into the bodegas and local stores and storefronts and start making available fresh fruits and vegetables. Then we go to the Department of Correction and start feeding them healthy meals instead of the meals we’re feeding them. Then we supply them to the hospitals. So this will continue to expand based on the buying power and the leverage we have as a city.
Daniel Geneen: So have you actually been able to incentivize or figure out ways to incentivize or mandate some farms in Brooklyn already, or is this something you’re thinking about for the future?
EA: It’s here. We put a substantial amount of money into our schools, the Department of Education, one of the largest school systems in the country, and we put a substantial amount of money into schools with children, learning how to deal with growing food in the classroom. We partnered with an amazing organization called Farmshelf, and look at what happened with this group that we partnered with. They have this sort of unit that’s the size of a refrigerator with a growth of vegetables inside of the refrigerators in the classroom. The children are connecting with local public housing to give the freshly grown food to. But the children in this school, Democracy Academy, it was an alternative high school where the children were not coming to class. When we bought a couple of units and allowed them to be engaged with this farming inside the classroom, urban farming, the teacher said, “We can’t get them out of the school.”
“When we bought a couple of units and allowed them to be engaged with this farming inside the classroom, urban farming, the teacher said, ‘We can’t get them out of the school.’”
They found a purpose. Education is not feeding the creative energy of children. They’re not into this rote learning. They’re not into not being able to really look at their creative energies and find purpose. So some of the programs we have in the Department of Education, they have been extremely successful. We are trying to turn a public housing development called Marlboro Projects, we want to spend close to $13 million to build a two-story greenhouse that’s going to teach farming, education around farming, and how to deal with food deserts. The bureaucracy that’s in the way is unbelievable. We have been working on this project for about three years and that’s one of the problems we’re having. Too many people in government just don’t get it.
DG: Is it about getting the money together or is it about building it? What signatures do you need that you’re having trouble getting?
EA: Great question. It’s not about the money. I am allocating the money. We already have the money. The money is sitting there waiting to be spent. We have dueling rules and codes in our city and we don’t have a universal plan on, “Okay. We want to do urban farming. We want to do rooftop farms. We want to do vertical farming.” So our city and the city’s zoning and policies are stuck in the 20th century when the entire planet is evolving, technology is evolving. So when you go to people in these various agencies, they are professional naysayers, they say, “Well, we can’t do that.” And you say, “Why?” “Because we’ve never done that.”
DG: Right.
AK: Do you think there are opportunities for private/public partnerships here too, working with a lot of the landlords who might be looking for new opportunities to use their real estate right now?
EA: Yes. I think that is something that we are exploring because when you think about everyone is going to take a financial hit or through COVID, when I save, I diversify my savings. So if one part of my savings, a stock or my CDs go down, at least I’ve diversified it enough, but now landlords must start thinking outside the box. How do you diversify your plan? How do you diversify your buildings? We see that in some of the towers that are placed on buildings for cell phone usage, we can actually diversify the rooftops like some of the establishments in Industry City, The Navy Yard, they have different greenery grown on their rooftop. Our factories have an amazing amount of rooftop space. We’re not going to grow more land, but we have millions of feet of rooftop space that is underutilized and we believe we could use it a better way to grow food in a more healthier way.
DG: Because I assume education is a key component of this, but I imagine in a dream world for you, all of the rooftops would just be growing the food for New York to eat, right? It’s not just government-controlled farms. You’d want a lot of people growing their own stuff as well, right?
EA: Without a doubt. I believe that we... I think that we should return to an agrarian economy. I remember saying this to my team two years ago and they all walked out of the room and said, “He must be smoking that weed that’s illegal.” Now, they started talking to finance experts.
DG: And they’re like, “What if we grow that weed on the rooftops?”
AK: That’s how you make the money.
EA: But we partnered with NYU’s finance team there. They’re looking at it. They’re crunching the numbers and they said, “Wait a minute, this guy is onto something.” We partnered with Cornell University. People are seeing the do-ability of actually doing this, and I feel that all about rooftops can play a role. We can repurpose these rooftops to ensure that we can grow our food. We’re going to take trucks off the road ... There’s a great opportunity to redefine ourselves as a city.
“We can repurpose these rooftops to ensure that we can grow our food. We’re going to take trucks off the road”
DG: What is the red tape like for a private institution to grow on their rooftop? We’re very familiar with trendy restaurants having a farm on their roof and they’re like, “After your aperitif, come check out our farm,” or whatever. But if I have a big apartment complex and I’m like, “I want to turn my roof into a farm,” what kind of legal hurdles are there? Or can I just start doing it?
EA: Two pieces, Daniel. And that’s very important what you just stated and I hope listeners heard you. Racism is built into the structure of our society. We’re comfortable with a trendy restaurant in an affluent community, saying, “When you finish your tea and you finish your Merlot, now, go on up to the rooftop and we’re going to handpick some of your microgreens,” and it’s acceptable. But now, you go out to Brownsville and you have a group of residents that have stated, “We have all of this footage, all of the square feet of rooftop. We want to grow and have our gardens here.” Now, all of a sudden, the rules come out. All of a sudden, it becomes impossible to do.
It’s as though in our mind, people in economically challenged communities are not deserving of some of the finer things that we placed in other communities. So what the Department of Buildings, the Fire Department, the Department of Health, all of these different entities have not come together and started to say, “How do we make this happen?” That’s what we have to go do. I partnered with the former Councilman in Brooklyn, and we came together and said it’s time to get all of our agencies together that are in this space and come up with ways of making this happen. That is one of the goals that we have because they’re all over the place, they’re disjointed and that prevents us from moving forward. So you’ll get an approval in one agency just for another agency to be a complete contradiction of another agency.
DG: Yeah. No, it’s a great point. It’s also the perception of what they’re growing too. The trendy, New York restaurant, the perception of what’s being grown, people would be excited about it like, “Oh, that’s so cool. It’s grown right here,” but if it’s more industrial and it’s grown in a lower income neighborhood, the perception would be that it’s more like crops for feeding and not anything that people should be excited about.
EA: So true. I think that people miss the connection that we long for and we need with nature, not only with the growing of food locally, the plants are not only going to feed your body, but it feeds the anatomy of your spirit. Living in a concrete environment, not seeing the health of the food that you’re growing, not being a part of, not being connected to nature, we don’t realize it, but it plays on us and it takes away from who we are as human beings. That’s why when you go around public housing, you see a high level of violence, high level of chronic diseases, a high level of stress, mental health illnesses. It’s because of the environment people are in. I truly believe that if you turn it into a more green environment, more inclusiveness with nature, you’ll get a different outcome.
AK: I think that’s a great segue back into your personal journey. You actually just wrote a book about this, “Healthy At Last,” where you talk about how you change your diet to fight chronic disease and how in so many communities, there needs to be a push for this. There needs to be a push for eating healthier. Can you talk a little bit about your goals there and how you want to change the way that people eat in certain communities?
EA: Think about this for a moment. Three months of going to a whole food plant based diet, and I went from losing my vision, permanent nerve damage that was reversed, diabetes was also reversed, my ulcers went away, my blood pressure normalized, my cholesterol normalized in three months. Think about that for a moment. The people and I spent the entire ... Has it been nine months now with COVID? Every day of those nine months, I have been in the streets and I’m sure I’ve been around people who have had COVID. I’m pretty sure I was in their presence. I would deliver in masks. I moved into Borough Hall and put a mattress on the floor and I slept here and I used it as mobilization from my office in Borough Hall.
Now, if we would have spent the last three months — we were feeding people in this city for three months — if we would have said, “On our dime, we’re giving you healthy foods. We’re not giving you nacho chips. We’re not giving you processed food. We’re going to give you healthy food like quinoa, which is one of the most nutritional meals people can have. We’re going to introduce you to new food.” We would have number one, we would have fed people, which was important. Number two, we would have started the process of building their immune system so they can have a stronger immune system to fight off COVID-19. Three, we would have started changing the habits that people are so wedded to that believe they could only eat fast food, junk food. So we were missing a golden opportunity.
My goal is, as my program is at Bellevue Hospital, was first of its kind in New York, if not America, where we’re doing lifestyle medicine. 750 people on a waiting list, 230 people are in the program and we are helping people to cycle off their disease and medicine and using this new term called, “reversing chronic diseases.” That is what I believe our hospitals should do and what I want to continue to do to show people how you use food as medicine. That is what’s important. That’s what my book wanted to point out. Many people believe that their culture is tied to the food that’s poisoning them. I wanted to give a very real, honest story of exposing my weakness. “Hey, I’m the Borough President. Yes, I’m a former state Senator, but I’m just an everyday person that I was digging my grave with my knife and fork,” and I want to show people how they can live a healthy life. That’s why my 80-year-old mother was able to reverse her diabetes, also, get off insulin after only two months of going whole food plant-based.
AK: About restaurants in general, do you have a position speaking to your constituents about how they can get out of this crisis? Like many small business owners, they have been so impacted by COVID and I’m wondering if you see a path forward for them.
EA: Yeah, especially with my small restaurants. I hear some people say restaurants are for rich people. They should try the days when I was a kid and I was a dishwasher helping my mother pay the mortgage by washing dishes in a restaurant. Restaurants are for everyday people. Inside a restaurant is a cook, is a dishwasher, waiter, waitress, busboy/girl, low skill, low salary, they’re eking out a living and we have to get our restaurants back open. I believe that a bellwether of a city if you don’t get them up and operating, it’s an indicator of how bad your city’s doing.
I think the city can do a better job. Stop purchasing our food from outside the city and outside the state. Let’s localize the production of food. Let’s allow our local restaurants to use their kitchens to supply the food. We are providing millions of meals. Let’s allow our local restaurants to handle this distribution of food to communities and really engage them to keep them afloat, to keep people hired right here in our city. We spend too much money out of our city and I’m pretty sure other big cities are spending too much money outside of their city limits going to places that it may be cheaper in the short term, but in the long term, keeping your people employed, engaged and your small businesses open is extremely important.
AK: Awesome. I love that. Yeah.
DG: So as you look to a mayoral run, how much of this are you incorporating into your platform? Are these the kinds of things that you will be talking about constantly, or is it just a portion of your plan?
“What good is it to have a fancy hospital when you go in there to have your legs cut off because of diabetes neuropathic nerve damage?”
EA: A substantial portion. Our crisis, our health system, Daniel, is not sustainable. We have 30 million Americans diabetic, 84 million are pre-diabetic. We spend 80 cents on the dollar on chronic diseases. Diabetes is the leading cause of blindness, leading cause of non-trauma limb amputation, leading cause of kidney failure. We can’t continue to go down this road. I am really disappointed. Which presidential candidate talked about food and healthy food? What are candidates running for statewide, citywide offices all across this country, who are engaged in preventive medicine about healthy food? Everyone is talking about access to healthcare. What good is it to have a fancy hospital when you go in there to have your legs cut off because of diabetes neuropathic nerve damage? We have to become proactive and that’s my message. I’m going to use health in hospitals to ensure we have a proactive approach and give people choices, so they don’t have a lifetime of being on prescriptions, but they could have a lifetime that’s healthy on being on plants.
DG: Final thing, you said in the beginning that some people call you a hippie or sometimes you’re a hippie. All right. What does it mean to be a hippie? And are you a hippie?
EA: I think I am. I should’ve been born in the sixties. I just really... Let me tell you. I think that we had a very unique cosmic shift in a universe where people are really looking for their purpose and they’re no longer looking to just go through the motion of being on Valiums and statins and going home every day being unhappy. In Bhutan when I was there, they judged their country not by the gross national product, they judge it by the happiness of their people. We may be financially sound, but we’re emotionally bankrupt and it’s time to really start investing in what’s important and that’s family, friends and happiness.
DG: All right. Let’s grow happiness.
AK: Thank you for your work and thank you. Your book is, “Healthy At Last.” It just came out in October. Everyone should check it out. Thanks so much.
PODCAST: Season 2 Episode 21 - Chief Science Officer (CSO) of AeroFarms, Ed Harwood
In this episode, Harry and Ed share a discussion on the difference between hydroponics and aeroponics, the merits and disadvantages of both, and Ed’s never-ending quest to change the world for the better through education, technology, and science
Join Harry Duran, host of Vertical Farming Podcast, as he welcomes to the show Chief Science Officer (CSO) of AeroFarms, Ed Harwood. It is the mission of AeroFarms to grow the best plants possible for the betterment of humanity. With over forty years of agricultural and engineering experience, Ed founded GreatVeggies before transitioning to AeroFarms.
In this episode, Harry and Ed share a discussion on the difference between hydroponics and aeroponics, the merits and disadvantages of both, and Ed’s never-ending quest to change the world for the better through education, technology, and science.
VERTICAL FARMING PODCAST
Listen & Subscribe
Cultivatd Launches As A New Vertical Farming Technology Brokerage
Co-founded by two former executives at ZipGrow Inc, Cultivatd will represent over 30 different vertical farming and greenhouse growing technologies to better help people select which tools and tech are best suited for their project needs
JANUARY 1st, 2021: Cultivatd Inc, a startup based in Canada, is announcing it has begun operations and launched an indoor farming technology brokerage.
Co-founded by two former executives at ZipGrow Inc, Cultivatd will represent over 30 different vertical farming and greenhouse growing technologies to better help people select which tools and tech are best suited for their project needs.
“We were seeing a lot of people come to us in the past, asking for solutions that required more than one technology, so we decided to launch Cultivatd to fill that gap in the marketplace,” says Eric Bergeron, a serial entrepreneur who is now on his fourth AgTech startup. “We use our expertise as growers, manufacturers, and consultants to make recommendations on the proper setup and agtech solutions.”
Added co-founder Eric Levesque, the former VP of Business Development at ZipGrow, “We work with manufacturers and technology providers to help sell their products to customers that are best suited to their needs. Our brokerage services are free to the end-user as we work on behalf of our partners”.
At current, Cultivatd works with several known AgTech partners including long-time industry companies such as ZipGrow, Cubic Farms, Moleaer, AutoGrow, Ceres Greenhouses, Nelson & Pade Aquaponics, Modular Farms Australia, Growfilm, Iluminar, Hydrogreen, and Intravision Group as well as new technology providers such as GroStack, AmplifiedAg, GROV, Canobi Technologies, Auto Greenhouse, Just Vertical, Grobo and ATOM Controllers,.
Cultivated is also announcing two new service offerings;
Farming As A Service and Cultivatd Consultants.
Farming As A Service (FAAS) is a program where Cultivatd will send a farm manager to operate your indoor farm, removing the difficulties in getting a farm up-and-running and eliminating the barrier-to-entry for most new farmers. The service is contract-based and meant to get your farm to full operational efficiency with an experienced grower by your side. Once the team is trained and using the SOPs put in place, the farmer will move on or remain on as a consultant.
The Cultivatd Consultants service will be a brokerage of experienced master growers looking to share knowledge with indoor farm operators. Cultivatd currently has 6 consultants with expertise in cannabis, vertical farming, greenhouse production, operations, and sales & marketing for vertical farming. “We are always looking to expand our network of consultants as demand for this service is already outweighing our ability to connect experts to projects in need of support..” added Levesque.
“We continue to add new partnerships every day and want to work with the world’s best agtech technology solutions so we can offer our clients a true, unbiased, assessment of the right solution to solve their need”. added Bergeron.
Visit cultivatd.com for more details and to see the growing list of partnerships.
FOR MORE INFORMATION
Eric Levesque
Managing Partner, Cultivatd Inc.
+1 (613) 360-5195
The One Thing You’re Probably Overlooking In Your Greenhouse
We often overlook the value of light in southern parts of the continent.
The cost of natural sunlight is an important thing for producers to understand because there is an economic value that they should be placing on sunlight. It’s one of the main inputs to production!
If you ask a good greenhouse operator, “What is your cost of natural gas? Electricity? Building cost per square foot? Operational cost per square foot?”, he’ll give you detailed answers.
Ask him, “What is the value of the light you receive?” and you’ll get a different response.
“…Uh, what?” he might respond.
You clarify. “The light, the sunlight. What is the value of the sunlight?
“I don’t know.” He will be taken off guard because he’s never thought about it before. Why?
Because people take light for granted. After all, sunlight is free. Why place a value on it?
But light is a “free” resource!
The cost of natural sunlight is an important thing for producers to understand because there is an economic value that they should be placing on sunlight. It’s one of the main inputs to production! If they’re placing an economic value on supplemental lighting, then they should be placing an economic value on natural light.
Why do they make that mistake? Because it’s free. Most people don’t put a value on free things.
And if a person places no value on a thing, they’re not going to use it efficiently. When something is free you don’t think about trying to use it in the most economical sense. When something is free you just use it.
Why would you try to conserve something that’s free? Why would you try to maximize the value of something that’s free? In your mind, it has no value.
This is true with sunlight. Because it’s (supposedly) a free resource, people don’t place an economic value on it and then they don’t build their model to maximize that value. The problem with this is that light does have a cost that can act as a limiting factor on your operation. This inefficiency poses a significant problem.
For instance, say you want to grow in Alaska. You want to grow year round but in the middle of the winter you might only have an hour of daylight – all of a sudden the economic value of that light becomes alarmingly apparent. Because you actually have to pay to replace it in the wintertime. So if you’re growing in Alaska in the wintertime, you’re freaking out about how you get the maximum value out of that light. You’re may choose to use red and blue LEDs instead of white because you can get more efficiency from them – even if it’s at a higher initial cost. You’re going to do everything you can to maximize the value of that resource.
We often overlook the value of light in southern parts of the continent.
And that’s why, even though light is a resource like everything else, no one actually figures it into any of their calculations, including the cost of goods sold. This mistake often limits growers to much lower production, or missing out on key observations that inform their model. (Among other things.)
In reality, the value of light is high
Note that the value and the cost of light are very comparable here. The value of something can be defined by it’s cost. Keep that in mind.
If you did think about light use efficiency, you would probably find yourself at the same destination that we did: volumetric farming, and much higher production because of it.
How to Place a Value on Light
If you don’t have light, then the easiest way to calculate it is by calculating the cost of replacing that light. What is the cost of replacing it with LEDs or HID or whatever supplemental lighting you choose?
If you do have light, then you’re probably growing in a greenhouse. In that case, you can find the cost of light by comparing the cost of growing in a greenhouse (which is how you are acquiring that light) with the cost of growing in a facility without that sunlight. (So the value of the sunlight is essentially the difference in operational cost between a warehouse of the same size and a greenhouse.)
These operating costs are going to include things like replacing a covering, heating (heating a greenhouse is always a lot more expensive), and maybe things like building permits.
Those costs can add up, and you’ll find that light is a costly resource even if you don’t think about it much. When you understand the costs of light, you will begin to use it more efficiently. You’ll start thinking about maximizing light use the same way that you maximize water and electrical and natural gas and other resources.
Initially this will result in lower overall costs, but we think you’ll find that your efforts toward efficiency will lead to even more benefits.
Once you do understand the value of your light, how do you get more out of it?
To increase light use efficiency, you first have to identify the main areas of waste and eliminate them. To do that, you start by identifying what’s happening with most of the light that enters your greenhouse: absorption and reflection.
ZipGrow Towers were designed to reflect light through the mass of towers to reduce shadowing and light waste.
Absorption is happening either when the light hits photosynthesizing plants or when it hits another absorptive surface and is either used by plants or turns to heat. Reflection happens when light hits a surface and bounces back. This is what you want, because if it’s not being absorbed by plants, then we reflect it to be absorbed by plants. (The less light energy that’s converted to heat, the more is conserved for use by your plants.)
The most obvious way to promote reflectance is to use reflective surfaces wherever possible. This doesn’t necessarily mean using silver or mirror finish, but it does mean white finishes to reflect that light. It also means that we think about growing plants on multiple planes, and arranging the production apparatus to conserve light within the greenhouse through reflection as opposed to reflecting it out of the greenhouse.
If you’re growing on a horizontal plane, know that if that light doesn’t hit a plant, oftentimes light will just be reflected back up and out of your greenhouse. When we switch the plane around so that the photons are conserved to the bottom of the mass, our absorption rates are higher, we have more plants absorbing energy rather than energy just being reflected up and out of the greenhouse. That’s the idea behind volumetric farming with ZipGrow™ Towers.
Source and Photo Courtesy of Agritech Tomorrow
BrightFarms Promotes Jackie Hawkins To Director Of Food Safety & Quality
Hawkins will oversee all aspects of food safety and quality assurance as the company continues its rapid growth into new markets
BrightFarms, a leading supplier of locally grown packaged salads, recently announced that Jackie Hawkins has been promoted to director of food safety & quality. She will report directly to Josh Norbury, BrightFarms’ senior vice president of operations.
Jackie Hawkins
Hawkins will oversee all aspects of food safety and quality assurance as the company continues its rapid growth into new markets. Her responsibilities will include the development and execution of BrightFarms’ food-safety protocols across five facilities, as well as the coordination of customer, regulatory and third-party audits.
“Under Jackie’s leadership, BrightFarms is delivering the safest and freshest leafy greens to the nation’s largest retailers,” said Josh Norbury, senior vice president of operations. “She has built an industry-leading food safety program for the indoor production of leafy greens, and our rigorous protocols have set the standard for other companies in our space. We are fortunate to have her leadership and expertise as we continue to grow.”
Since joining BrightFarms in 2016, Hawkins contributions have been critical to the success of the company’s world-class operations team. She has designed and implemented the most comprehensive food-safety program in the indoor farming industry and maintains close working relationships with leading food-safety experts in the produce industry.
In 2018, Hawkins led the development of the Controlled Environment Agriculture (CEA) Food Safety Coalition, an independent and member-governed organization whose membership is comprised of controlled environment leafy greens growers who subject their production processes to external audit. She also led BrightFarms’ early adoption of IBM’s Food Trust platform to enhance traceability with blockchain technology.
“Food safety is a personal passion that I’ve dedicated my career to, and I couldn’t be more thrilled to step into my expanded role,” said Hawkins. “I’m thrilled that I have the opportunity to work for a company that places food safety at the centre of everything we do. I look forward to continuing to advance our leading protocols and providing our consumers with the safest, freshest and most nutritious greens on the market.”
Hawkins graduated from Oregon State University in 2016 with a B.S. in Environmental Science.
For more information about BrightFarms, visit www.brightfarms.com.
WayBeyond Appoints Head of Industry Transformation to Drive Sustainability Agenda
“…ensuring we deliver on the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and formalizing and extending the work we have been doing on industry education, connecting the eco-system and our own graduate and internship program,” says CEO & Founder Darryn Keiller.
WayBeyond’s vision is to transform the agricultural industry. This is a declaration of intent and to give this intent focus and leadership, Kylie Horomia has been appointed into a new role as Head of Industry Transformation. Ms. Horomia holds a Masters in International Communications, 20 years in communications and almost 10 years in the Horticulture industry, most notably with T&G Global and recently with Autogrow where she was Head of Brand & Communications.
“Kylie is a passionate and respected communications specialist and industry advocate, who has provided the next level of thinking around our story and will begin working on our long-term global sustainability strategy. This includes ensuring we deliver on the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and formalizing and extending the work we have been doing on industry education, connecting the eco-system and our own graduate and internship program,” says CEO & Founder Darryn Keiller.
The key to the transformation of anything is the transformation from the inside. In the context of agtech, this means ushering in a new generation of farmers, scientists, and technologists. Addressing Zero Hunger (including reduction of waste), Clean Water & Sanitation, Sustainable Cities, and the evolution of Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure; will take creativity and collaboration.
“With our WayBeyond team based in New Zealand, the Netherlands, and United States and employees from 15 cultures; we celebrate our diversity, which critically includes the diversity of thinking required to solve the world’s greatest food production challenges," explains Mr. Keiller.
Ms. Horomia is also on the Executive Board of the NZ Guild of Agricultural Journalists and Communicators and worked to develop the Global CEA Census alongside New York-based industry partner Agritecture Consulting.
“I’m very excited about this new opportunity. AgTech is an amazingly fast-paced industry to be in and the work we are doing to grow food sustainably using science and technology is something of which I am incredibly proud. I will continue to promote the inclusion of STEM disciplines to reduce food waste, increase the efficiency of natural resources, and make a positive impact on growers, the environment and communities we operate within,” says Ms Horomia.
Ms Horomia will take up the role effective immediately.
To learn more about WayBeyond and follow Kylie’s transformation of the brand, please go to www.waybeyond.io
For further information, interviews and images, please contact
Kathy Cunningham
(e) kathy@empirepr.co.nz
(m) +6421 743 378
About WayBeyond
The WayBeyond Vision is to transform the agricultural industry to produce food sustainably for everyone on the planet.
The Mission is to break boundaries to explore new ways of farming so our solutions benefit every farm in the world (and beyond). This includes sharing knowledge and expertise with data, artificial intelligence, and plant science to transform the way growers farm. www.waybeyond.io
Vertical Farming Takes Root In Taiwan
Taiwan is uniquely placed to benefit from the application of information technology to agriculture, enabling it to help provide food for an expanding global population.
Exposed root system for hydroponically grown plants at YesHealth's iFarm in Taoyuan. Photo: Jules Quartly
After becoming a world leader in semiconductors and other electronic products, Taiwan is now looking to smart agriculture as its next vine to climb. The island aims to supply much of the world’s fruit and vegetables within the next 30 years.
This might seem rather unlikely until you consider that the future of farming is not land and labor but factories and robots. Furthermore, Taiwan already possesses in abundance the tools that tomorrow’s smart farmers will use, including solar and advanced light technology, chemicals, gene editing, drones, smart sensors, software, algorithms, data mining, and big data.
Many of these technologies are being put to use in a glittering new 14-story vertical farm at Copenhagen Markets in Denmark’s capital. The first phase of construction of the 7,000-square-meter facility finished in early December. It is one of Europe’s biggest and most efficient vertical farms and was built using a blueprint of patented technologies from Taiwan’s YesHealth Group.
The result of a partnership between YesHealth and Danish agritech startup Nordic Harvest, the farm looks like a fancy warehouse from the outside. The interior is fitted with rows upon rows and columns upon columns of trays containing leafy greens, growing under an intense battery of more than 20,000 smart LED lights. The plants are tended by engineers in lab coats and guided by software that processes over 5,000 individual data points to optimize plant health.
Rows of fresh produce grown under batteries of LED lights at iFarm. Photo: Jules Quartly
The LEDs provide variable spectrum light for 100 different kinds of plants, nanobubble hydroponics oxygenate the roots and inhibit bacterial growth, and liquid microbial fertilizers derived from oyster shells, brown sugar, and soy milk provide essential nutrients for plants and soil. Even the music played to the plants is science-infused, with classical or light jazz music ranging between 115 and 250 Hertz seeming to work best.
Production at the new vertical farm is set to begin in the new year and will scale up to around 3,000 kilograms of leafy vegetables per day by the end of 2021, equating to approximately 1,000 tons of greens annually. Crucially, unlike most farms, these figures are close to guaranteed since production is not at the mercy of climate, the weather, pests and disease, pesticide residue, nitrate levels, or hundreds of other variables that affect traditional farming.
According to Jesper Hansen, YesHealth Group’s Chief Communications Officer, the partnership with Nordic Harvest has been a productive one so far. It took just five months to install the farm and all the produce is pre-sold to ensure the operation is profitable by Q3 of 2021.
“This collaboration is just the start of a long-term journey together,” Hansen said in an email from Denmark. He notes that the two partners plan to expand to other Scandinavian countries over the next several years.
Hansen credits Taiwan for its efficient development of the technology and know-how to reproduce vertical farms all over the world and calls the Danish development “a crucial milestone in our international expansion.” He adds that the company is eyeing new partners in Europe, Asia, and the MENA (the Middle East and North Africa) region.
YesHealth is the brainchild of serial tech entrepreneur Winston Tsai, who started an LCD screen company at age 21. His “eureka moment” came after being diagnosed with liver cancer and partly linking his illness to pollution in foods. After recovering, he made it his mission to produce affordable, pesticide-free produce by harnessing the power of technology.
He founded YesHealth Agri-Biotechnology Co. Ltd. in 2011 and six years later established YesHealth iFarm in Taoyuan’s Luzhu District. The iFarm cultivates an ever-expanding range of leafy vegetables and herbs in a 2,500-square-meter warehouse factory. It produces 1,500 kilograms of leafy greens per day, a yield which the company says is 100 times more efficient than a traditional farm using the same space and requires only 10% as much water. In addition, YesHealth has a farm in China’s Shenzhen, which harvests up to 2,500 kilograms per day.
A tour of iFarm is well worth a visit and introduces the wide variety of plants grown there. Photo: Jules Quartly
YesHealth’s products are sold to major retailers both in Taiwan and abroad, including restaurants, hotels, and airports. Its stated aim is to supply a total of 7,000 kilograms of leafy greens per day worldwide in 2021.
Diners enjoy a meal at iFarm’s restaurant, which overlooks the vertical farm. Photo: Jules Quartly
Having sampled the produce at the iFarm, I can confirm the arugula grown there is as tasty as any I have tried, while the lettuce and leguminous alfalfa is a perfectly clean, green, and crunchy eating experience – the result, I was informed, of an optimal growing environment and harvesting at exactly the right time.
A plate of salad featuring leafy greens grown at the iFarm site. Photo: Jules Quartly
In a sense, it’s back to the future for Taiwan, which had a largely agricultural economy up until the 1950s. Agriculture was one of the pillars supporting the nation’s economic miracle after World War II. With the help of mechanization and productivity gains, agricultural production at that time contributed around a third of Taiwan’s GDP.
In more recent times it has accounted for just 1.8-1.9% of GDP. That greatly reduced figure, which includes animal husbandry, fishing, and forestry, is not due to a decline in agricultural output per se, so much as the growth in manufacturing and the emergence of a pervasive service sector.
Taiwan has a wide range of rich, often volcanic soils that are exceptionally fertile, along with a subtropical climate that provides plentiful sun and rain. It is known as the “Fruit Kingdom” because of the quality of its fruit, with dozens of varieties ranging from bananas and papayas to wax apples and guavas. More than 100 kinds of vegetables grow all year round.
On the other hand, Taiwan’s mainly mountainous geography means just 25% of the land is suitable for farming. Meanwhile, climate change is affecting agricultural production by increasing summer temperatures and making rainfall more unpredictable. At the same time, considerable soil erosion, acidification, contamination by chemicals and heavy metals, and strong pesticide use have diminished soil quality over the last 50 years.
Furthermore, the proportion of Taiwanese involved in farming has rapidly declined, from 37% of the population in the early 1970s to the current 15% or less, according to the Yearbook of the Republic of China. Not only is the farming population declining, but it’s also ageing as well.
Those factors may not pose as much of an issue, however, since the old model of agriculture is being disrupted so dramatically that even economies of scale are being upended. Given the large size and advanced technology of the U.S., it may come as no surprise that it is the world’s biggest exporter of food as measured by value. Second on the list, however, is the Netherlands, which has just 0.045% the area of the U.S.
According to a National Geographic report in September 2017, the Netherlands’ achievement can be attributed to the work coming out of Wageningen University & Research, 80 kilometres from Amsterdam in the heart of Food Valley – the world’s agricultural equivalent of Silicon Valley in California. The university strives to come up with ways to increase yields and sustainability, and then to disseminate that knowledge.
New generation
With its strong background in information technology, Taiwan is in a good position to follow that example. The island manufactures everything required for what is known as precision agriculture, a farming management concept that uses IT to collect data from multiple sources as a means of increasing crop yields and boosting profitability. Taiwan is thus the ideal place for putting together prototypes relatively quickly and cheaply.
YesHealth, for example, makes its own LED lights through a local contractor rather than relying on a major manufacturer like Philips, which means it’s nimbler in terms of bringing focused, new tech to the market – and reaping the dividends. According to the company’s Program Manager, Dennis Jan, Taoyuan’s iFarm has the sixth generation LED lighting, while new iterations that are increasingly productive and energy-efficient are being rolled out on an almost annual basis.
The Council of Agriculture (COA) recognized some time ago the need for a precision approach to farming. In 2016, it developed the “Smart Agriculture 4.0 Program,” which was passed by the legislature a year later.
COA realized that the nation’s “calorie-based food self-sufficiency rate is relatively low” and that “shortages in food supplies and escalations in food prices” will inevitably occur as the world’s population expands from 7.5 billion to an expected 10.5 billion by 2050.
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations says that in order to meet the needs of all these additional people, about 70% more food needs to be produced. Gains achieved in improving crop yields have plateaued and are unlikely to rise again without a complete transformation of the agricultural landscape through the introduction of city farms, vertical farming, and the application of information technology.
In a written response to Taiwan Business TOPICS, COA commented: “With the rapid development of sensing technology, smart machinery devices, IoT, and big data analysis, smart agriculture has been growing in various fields.
“For example, it can monitor and control the production environment automatically to keep animals and crops in the best condition,” COA said. “It can predict harvesting dates and yields through data analysis and make adjustments to maintain a balance of production and marketing, and it can use smart automated machinery in agricultural operation to significantly reduce the labor burden.” Such uses, says the Council, “make agriculture more competitive.”
Fruitful results
Besides fruit orchards, other sectors that COA has included within Agriculture 4.0 include seedlings, mushrooms, rice, aquaculture, poultry, livestock, and offshore fisheries.
COA cites Taiwan Lettuce Village as an enterprise that has benefited from precision farming. The company halved fertilizer use but improved harvest efficiency 1.5 times by introducing a fertilization recommendation system, a harvesting date and yield prediction system, synchronous fertilizing technology, and transplanter and harvester technology.
According to COA the application of precision farming increased yield prediction accuracy by 5% and prevented 350 metric tons of overstocking. In addition, plant disease and pest control were improved through the use of a cloud-based system and machine learning algorithm. “The results were very fruitful,” COA concluded.
Agriculture 4.0 doesn’t just apply to the growing of produce; it also looks at the storage, transport, and export of goods. As an example, COA points to a relatively new fruit hybrid that was originally developed in Israel in the late 1960s. The atemoya – or pineapple sugar apple (鳳梨釋迦), as it is known in Taiwan – is a heart-shaped fruit with green, scaly skin. A cross between wax apples and the cherimoya (often referred to as Buddha’s head fruit locally), it has become synonymous with Taiwan and export success, much like the kiwi fruit and New Zealand.
Previously, 90% of the country’s atemoya exports went to China because it is so close. Later, the Taitung District Agricultural Research and Extension Station introduced a frozen whole-fruit technique that enables 95% of thawed fruit to have a “consistent ripening texture and dramatically improved the raw material quality.”
The technique involves a quick freeze to -40° Celsius, which inhibits bacteria, allowing the whole fruit to be transported at a fairly standard -18°C. After thawing, it can meet the rigorous food safety standards of Japan and South Korea.
Traditional farmers may harbor concerns about agriculture becoming a primarily manufacturing process, taking place under artificial light. However, Kevin Lin, Head of Business Development at YesHealth, insists that what the company is doing is still agriculture.
“This is nature; we are just optimizing it,” he says. “Sustainability is at the forefront of what we do, and our focus now is on ensuring the energy costs of vertical farming – such as heating and lights – are lowered and the source is sustainable.”
In this way, Lin says, Taiwan can produce cheap, healthy, and environmentally friendly food that can help feed the world, even as the global population approaches the staggering 10.5 billion mark.
* New Deadlines * Center of Excellence Announces: Indoor Farming "Best in Class" Awards!
Companies that score the highest in each category will be nominated for an “Indoor Ag Center Best in Class Award” (TM)
Center of Excellence Announces
Indoor Farming
"Best in Class" Awards!
Who Can Enter
Indoor Vertical Farms
Plant Factories
Greenhouses
Grow System Solution Manufacturers
Lighting Companies
How to Enter
Go to: https://indooragcenter.org/awards/
New Deadlines for Submissions:
Manufacturers: Feb 1, 2021
Growers: Feb 15, 2021
There Is No Fee To Enter
Companies that score the highest
in each category
will be nominated for an
“Indoor Ag Center Best in Class Award” (TM).
Learn More
Our vision is to accelerate the growth of the indoor farming industry. We believe we can do that by recognizing excellence. Consequently, we have embarked upon an ambitious program to collect bench-marking data on indoor farm operations and equipment used to run vertical farms and greenhouses. Each year we will review the data and publicly recognize key stakeholders for their excellence in several categories.
GROW Impact Accelerator Invites Applications From Startups Fostering Food Sustainability
This is a unique opportunity for startups operating in new frontiers of foodtech and agtech to supercharge their growth by tapping into a global network with GROW as their gateway to Asia and the world
January 19, 2021
GROW is based in Singapore, at the heart of Asia Pacific. Image credit: lena_serditova / iStock
GROW, the impact venture builder backed by AgFunder, is now accepting applications for its 2021 Impact Accelerator program. This is a unique opportunity for startups operating in new frontiers of foodtech and agtech to supercharge their growth by tapping into a global network with GROW as their gateway to Asia and the world.
This program marks the GROW Impact Accelerator’s second cohort, backed by AgFunder’s GROW Impact Fund. It will include bespoke coaching, mentor support, expert sessions, peer learning, and access to AgFunder’s unrivaled industry network to help businesses scale aggressively into new markets around the world. Successful applicants will receive US$200,000 in cash and in-kind investment on founder-friendly terms.
Agrifood is the sector where impact investors expect to increase their allocation the most over the next five years, according to the Global Impact Investing Network’s 2020 investor survey. Startups participating in the GROW Impact Accelerator will be given the tools to implement ESG principles and to track how their technology solutions help bring positive impact to people, place, and planet. We deliver a complete program that will provide access to experts, partners, potential customers, and impact-focused investors.
Last year, GROW ran its Singapore Food Bowl program, focused on accelerating early-stage startups that can contribute to local food security. Find out more here
Established to advance sustainability in the agrifood system through its support of extraordinary founders, GROW has designed the GROW Impact Accelerator program to propel not just commercial growth for participating startups, but personal growth for the entrepreneurs behind them. As venture capital investors we are in pursuit of profit, but GROW will also imbue in its alumni an ethos of doing well by doing good; one that will remain with them long after the program has finished.
The GROW Impact Accelerator is based in Singapore but will be conducted as a fully virtual program until international travel resumes. Applicants should have an MVP, be well on the way to establishing product-market fit, and should be operating in at least one market. Our interests stretch end-to-end across the agrifood value chain with a focus on technologies that allow for scalability while delivering on impact creation.
Invest with Impact. Click here.
Areas of particular interest for our 2021 intake include (but are not limited to):
Biotech and digitalization to advance sustainable agriculture;
Circular economies (eg, sustainable materials and closed-loop production systems);
Climate-smart agriculture and aquaculture (technologies for carbon emissions reduction, regenerative agriculture, water use);
Alternative proteins, innovative foods, and novel ingredients;
Food waste valorization;
Supply chain rationalization;
Technologies to support smallholder farmers (eg, robotics, decision support, chemical reduction, financial inclusion).
To encourage as diverse and representative a cohort as possible, GROW is especially interested in receiving applications from teams with at least one female founder.
You can find more detailed information and apply here.
Applications close on 28 February at 23:59 GMT+8.
“Agriculture Doesn’t Lack For Data – It Needs Better Organisation of Data to Feed 10 Billion”
"At Sensei Ag, we believe that indoor agriculture can transform the way we capture data about edible plants, help transform land and water usage at least tenfold through better use of that data, and be part of the critical new infrastructure of post-pandemic economies
As we look ahead to 2021, the challenge of overcoming Covid-19 still stands before us. The primary focus is on rolling out vaccines, but as worries about new variants come to the fore, we really do need to act at warp speed to get shots in arms and take additional measures if necessary.
To look at some of the challenges we face and some of the solutions we have in place, we asked a number of the world’s leading thinkers what their “moonshots” would be, and what grand visions for society we should pursue today.
Sonia Lo says: "Data is collected in the millions of data points every second around the world, in food and agriculture systems. In lesser developed economies, informational offers abound, to help even the smallest small-hold farmer. However, this is not relevant or helpful in the absence of the attendant ecosystem infrastructure of financing; robust, weather-resistant, and inexpensive physical facilities in which to farm; and real-time feedback for the farmers about their critical inputs. The world today is capable of imaging and analyzing every edible plant on the planet and yet there isn’t an international data infrastructure to be able to do that."
"At Sensei Ag, we believe that indoor agriculture can transform the way we capture data about edible plants, help transform land and water usage at least tenfold through better use of that data, and be part of the critical new infrastructure of post-pandemic economies. Organizing data across countries and providing unified data sets across climates and crops not only helps individual farmers but also enables a new generation of “agricultural fintech” which helps those farmers with much needed, but now, well-informed capital. Our vision is to enable the building of a multitude of indoor farm types – to stabilize food supply around the world but also t
Vertical Farms Grow Veggies On Site At Restaurants And Grocery Stores
The Vertical Field setup retains many of the advantages of hydroponic vertical farms, but instead of the plants growing in a nutrient-packed liquid medium, the container-based pods treat their crops to real soil, supplemented by a proprietary mix of minerals and nutrients
By Paul Ridden
The Vertical Field urban farm pod can be installed in parking lots or inside warehouses, with a modular design that can grow according to customer need Vertical Field
Last month we reported that a huge vertical farming operation near Copenhagen in Denmark recently completed its first harvest. That setup uses hydroponics, but the veggies grown in Vertical Field urban farming pods take root in real soil.
Traditional agricultural farming involves the use of a lot of land and resources to grow crops, and then even more resources to harvest and transport the goods – sometimes thousands of miles – to where consumers can get to them.
As well as requiring a fraction of the growing space, controlled-environment agriculture systems such as hydroponics operations can be much more efficient, are no longer bound by season or location, the growing to harvest cycle is reduced and crops could be produced all year, and as with the Copenhagen operation, they can be set up close to where the food is purchased or consumed.
The Vertical Field setup retains many of the advantages of hydroponic vertical farms, but instead of the plants growing in a nutrient-packed liquid medium, the container-based pods treat their crops to real soil, supplemented by a proprietary mix of minerals and nutrients. The company says that it opted for geoponic production "because we found that it has a far richer flavor, color, and quality."
Vertical Field's urban farms grow walls of veggies inside recycled shipping containers
Vertical Field
"Vertical Field offers a revolutionary way to eat the freshest greens and herbs, by producing soil-based indoor vertical farms grown at the very location where food is consumed," said the company's CEO, Guy Elitzur. "Not only do our products facilitate and promote sustainable life and make a positive impact on the environment, we offer an easy-to-use real alternative to traditional agriculture. Our urban farms give new meaning to the term ‘farm to table,’ because one can virtually pick their own greens and herbs at supermarkets, restaurants or other retail sites."
The recycled and repurposed 20- or 40-ft (6/12-ft) shipping containers used to host the farms can be installed within reach of consumers, such as in the parking lot of a restaurant or out back at the grocery store. Growers can also scale up operations to more than one pod per site if needed, and the external surfaces could be covered in a living wall of decorative plants to make them more appealing.
The vertical urban farms are claimed capable of supporting the production of a wide range of fruits and veggies – from leafy greens and herbs to strawberries and mushrooms, and more. And it's reported to use up to 90 percent less water than a traditional farming setup.
"Through internal experiments with our irrigation method using data from sensors and models we have understood that this is the level of water efficiency," Vertical Field's Noa Winston told New Atlas. "Thus we arrived at an optimal irrigation protocol tailored to the needs of the plant."
According to the company's website, though pesticide-free, the system is not yet considered organic (though Vertical Field is currently in the process of attaining organic certification for the urban farm unit from the USDA). The crops also grow in a bug-free environment.
"The container is kept bug-free because it is sealed off, automated, and we limit human entry to only essential people and essential work," Winston explained. "The container farm itself is not a street vendor or a point of sale, therefore unnecessary or frequent entry does not occur."
Installing a Vertical Field urban farm in a grocery store parking lot means that consumers can benefit from fresh veggies all year long Vertical Field
Unlike some high-tech farming solutions, staff won't need special training to work with the vertical farm as the automated growing process monitors, irrigates, and fertilizes the crops as they grow thanks to arrays of sensors that continually feed data on climate, soil condition, LED lighting and so on to management software. Each vertical farm unit has its own Wi-Fi comms technology installed to enable operators to tap into the system via a mobile app.
The company told us that, by way of example, one container pilot farm offered a growing space of 400 sq ft (37 sq m) and yielded around 200 lb (90 kg) of produce per month, harvested daily. Lighting remained on for 16 hours per day. We assume that the pods are completely powered from the grid at their respective locations, though the company says that it is looking at ways to make use of solar panels as well as making more efficient use of water.
Vertical Field has been around since 2006 and has built a number of living green walls around the world since then. The soil-based vertical farm initiative was started in 2019.
Recent installations include the first Vertical Field container farm in the US at a restaurant named Farmers & Chefs in Poughkeepsie, New York, which started producing its own crops of fresh greens in mid-April 2020. Last month, following a successful pilot, Israel's largest supermarket chain, Rami Levy, signed an agreement with the company to roll vertical farms into dozens of store locations over the course of the next five years.
"The Rami Levy chain understands the social responsibility that it has for customers as related to food security and supplying the highest quality products while maintaining low prices," said the chain's Yafit Attias Levy. "Our customers bought Vertical Field's produce during the pilot and returned to purchase more. Therefore, we have decided to expand the partnership with Vertical Field to additional branches of the supermarket, and to offer fresh, high-quality, and pesticide-free produce in a way that increases shelf-life for our customers."
The Vertical Field urban farm can produce crops year round, without the use of pesticides Vertical Field
And earlier this month, Moderntrendo SRO – one of the largest agricultural distributors in Ukraine – signed up for a pilot project that will start with supermarket chain Varus, and potentially expand to other chains.
"We are extremely excited about our partnership with Moderntrendo SRO which has led to the project with Varus and will lead to more projects in the near future with more chains in Ukraine," Vertical Field's Guy Elitzur said. "One of the realizations that have surfaced during the COVID-19 crisis is the need to develop solutions that allow urban residents access to healthy food, with minimal human handling and without depending on transportation and shipping from remote locations. We are delighted to be able to provide - and expand access to - healthy, and high-quality vegetables grown right outside the consumer's door."
As well as grocery outlets and restaurants, the company sees its container-based vertical farms also being installed in hotels, universities, hospitals, and so on, in the future. The video below has more.
Grow Vegetables On-Site with Vertical Field
Source: Vertical Field