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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Ag Tech

Scientists Discover How to Manipulate Plants’ Response to Light for Food Growth

What if you could turn a plant’s genes on and off depending on changes in light and temperature? A group of scientists from UC Riverside has done just that in a recent study that could have important implications for farmers in an era of rapid and unpredictable climate change (reported on by UC Riverside News).

Plants need light to develop and grow, and the protein found in plants that detects light is called phytochrome B. This particular protein changes the expression of genomes and alters plant growth based on light information received. Additionally, phytochrome B can control the activity of a group of proteins called PIFs. If the activity of the PIF proteins are reduced, this could lead to the plant’s stem slowing in growth.

According to the researchers, this discovery can assist in increasing food production and crop yields. When plants are too close together in a field, they compete for light. Shorter plants that end up in the shade of other plants exert extra energy to grow their stems taller than their neighbors. This extra energy is taken away from growing the “food part” of the plant, like the seeds, leave, or fruit.

The scientists, led by UCR botany professor Meng Chen, reduced the activity of the PIF proteins and reduced the stem growth. In turn, they discovered that plants with shorter stems can free up energy for the more desirable edible portions to grow more rapidly and robustly. They also found that manipulating a plant’s response to light can allow plants to be grown closer together and in the shade.

With the human population rapidly approaching 8 billion and expected to hit close to 10 billion by 2050, finding alternative solutions to growing high crop yields is prudent. Indoor farming, as companies like CropOne, AeroFarms, and BrightFarms practice, allow for a fully controlled environment and can result in consistent crop yields. A company called InnerPlant edits plant DNA to turn the plant into a living sensor to mitigate crop loss.

Climate change is expected to affect growing seasons and the ability to grow certain crops worldwide. However, studies like this give hope that one day crops will better adapt to fluctuations in light and temperature, making them viable in a rapidly changing environment.

Perdue Is Putting Birds Out to Pasture With Solar-Powered Mobile Chicken Coops

With more than $7 billion in annual sales, it would be easy for Salisbury, MD-based Perdue Farms, a top 10 domestic poultry producer, to focus on business as usual. Instead, the company looks to the future and understands its vision must go beyond simply putting broilers, wings, and chicken breasts in supermarkets and then on consumers’ dinner plates.

In launching its expanded pasture-raised program, Perdue is putting into play a clever piece of technology that benefits consumers, the environment, and, of course, its birds. At its 6th Annual Perdue Farms Animal Care Summit, the company unveiled its solar-powered mobile chicken coops, which it believes will play a key role in its future.

Ryan Perdue, VP, and GM of Perdue’s pasture business explained how the solar-powered mobile chicken coops operate and how they will lead to more sustainable farmland and a healthier product for consumers. Perdue’s commitment to the pasture-raised part of the business was further fueled by its December 2019 purchase of California-based Pasturebird, a firm whose mobile chicken coop took the pasture-raised process to a new level. The acquisition made Perdue the largest producer of pasture-raised chickens in the United States.

While a seemingly subtle distinction, the change in location yields significant benefits. As Perdue explained in an interview with The Spoon in advance of the announcement, a mobile, solar-powered chicken coop houses 6,000 birds which is 75% less than a typical bird house. It is a floorless building, 150 feet by 50 feet in size, and via a solar-powered engine, it moves 50 feet per day.

Perdue says the chickens are offered a new, fresh bounty of grass, insects, flowers, and grains at each new pasture location. While the chickens are not labeled organic, there is a significant increase in the organic matter they eat when presented in a new feeding area each day.

Perdue says that rotating the pasture areas creates a “virtuous cycle” where there is less erosion from rain, and by having the land rest, grass and flowers grow back even more bountiful than before.

While much of the process is automated, farmers will be hands-on overseeing the movement of the mobile coops.

“There are major benefits to the consumer,” Perdue adds. “A pasture-raised bird has less saturated fat, is more nutrient-dense, and higher in Omega-3.”

Perdue Farms is not disclosing how many solar-powered mobile coops it currently deploys or a schedule as to when its poultry-raised product will be widely available on supermarket shelves. Because it is a premium product, pasture-raised chicken commands a higher price; however, Perdue reports, “as the company finalizes price points, Perdue will not sell its pasture-raised chicken at a profit.”

At the time of Perdue’s purchase of Pasturebird, several smaller producers of pasture-raised poultry, primarily sold at farmers’ markets and specialty grocery stores, feared that the deal would put pasture-raised poultry out of the hands of independent farms. Based on Perdue’s acquisition of Coleman Natural Meats in 2011 and Niman Ranch in 2015, the company has grown more than in revenue and product lines.

In an interview with The Counter.org, Lauri Torgerson-White, senior animal welfare specialist with Mercy for Animals, suggests Perdue has learned a lot from companies like Niman Ranch, a pioneer in progressive farming. “Most companies, like Tyson, blow us off. We’ve done multiple investigations of their farms, and they refuse to talk to us,” she says. “But when Perdue learned what was going on, they reached out to talk to us, and since then, we’ve had a really positive relationship with them. Every year they’re doing more to improve the welfare standards on their farms. It’s been a very, very good, cooperative, productive relationship.

Terra Bio Turns Spent Grain Into Protein Ingredient for Plant-Based Meats

Spent grain, a byproduct of the beer brewing process, often goes to waste (although it’s sometimes fed to livestock). Canadian startup Terra Bio is giving the used grain a second life as a plant-based protein.

Terra Bio has developed a proprietary process called bio-fractionation, which breaks down the grain into component parts while leaving its proteins intact. The company says that the resulting protein—which it calls Protina—has a mild, malty flavor and promising gelation properties.

This week, The Spoon got on Zoom with the Terra Bio team to learn more about its vision for Protina.

Meet Protina

In spent grain, Terra Bio saw an opportunity to create a more sustainable, plant-based protein. Protina requires no direct agricultural inputs as an upcycled ingredient, making it less land- and water-intensive than soy or pea protein.

Terra Bio doesn’t envision Protina as a stand-alone protein. Instead, it sees the ingredient as a textural base alongside other proteins.

“There’s no such thing as a perfect protein,” says company President and Co-Founder Ricardo Martinez, but Protina can add value by complementing other ingredients. “It can be used in combination with other more expensive or premium proteins, so you can reduce costs. And you can increase your product’s performance in terms of amino acids or textures.”

By taking advantage of different proteins’ unique properties, the team says, manufacturers could also simplify their products’ ingredients lists. For instance, Protina’s appealing texture could cut down on the need for additional texturizers.

To demonstrate the possibilities for Protina, Terra Bio is currently working with microalgae protein startup Smallfood and vegan chef Doug McNish to develop a plant-based fish fillet. The project was selected as one of 28 semifinalists for the XPRIZE Feed the Next Billion competition.

The spent grain supply chain

The team noted another upside of using spent grain: The breweries where the ingredient is generated are often located near food manufacturing plants. By taking advantage of an ingredient that can usually be sourced closeby to production facilities, the Protina manufacturing process can simplify the supply chain.

“That’s especially important as we’re in the middle of this COVID environment where supply chains are highly disrupted,” says CEO and Co-Founder Steve George. The COVID-19 pandemic has put global food supply chains under stress and driven up food prices. “So we said, what if we can shorten the supply chain. This accomplishes that.”

Because the bio-fractionation process can be performed using existing food processing equipment, Terra Bio plans to focus on building partnerships with contract manufacturers rather than constructing new production plants. The team says it sees these partnerships as a way to scale up production and leverage local supply chains while minimizing the environmental footprint of producing Protina.

Protina’s path forward

Terra Bio currently uses barley-rich spent grain mixtures to produce Protina, but the team is working on modifying the bio-fractionation process to accommodate more diverse feedstock. The company has also begun the process of getting food safety approval from Health Canada and the FDA.

As it takes steps to scale up its production process, Terra Bio is also seeking out new partnerships with breweries, food companies, and contract manufacturers. Through those partnerships, the company plans to continue taking on more capacity.

“We expect to be able to make those key partnerships in this coming year, and be able to start having protein and protein-based products out there come 2023,” says Rebecca Bradley, Terra Bio’s Outreach and Marketing Coordinator. “We expect to be able to scale a lot faster because we’re working together.”

AeroFarms is Supplying Goose Island UK With Hydroponic Hops

Goose Island UK has collaborated with indoor vertical farming company AeroFarms to craft Hail Hydro’s beer, a brew made with hops grown hydroponically in AeroFarms’ 100,000 square-foot global headquarters in Newark, New Jersey.

The new hazy session IPA joins Goose Island’s Impossible IPA series, a collection of beers using new recipes, techniques, and hops. Those looking to learn more about the new beer can scan a QR code on the can to read about AeroFarm’s hops and take a virtual tour of its farm.

The hydroponic hops plants were grown without soil and submerged in AeroFarms’ patented growth medium and fed nutrient-rich water. Because this method is unaffected by changes in the weather, soil conditions, and any other environmental factors that come with crop farming, AeroFarms can grow and harvest these Cascade hops year-round.

As fluctuating temperatures, droughts, and flooding impact crop yields more each year, expect to see more indoor farming in the craft beer industry and beyond. The industry took off in 2020, as companies like Freight Farms, Elevate Farms, Plenty, and BrightFarms raised large funding rounds and broke ground on major expansions. While these companies have historically grown leafy greens and herbs, some are beginning to branch out to produce crops like strawberries, tomatoes, and cucumbers. AeroFarms grows over 550 varieties of plants, including leafy greens, hops, berries, and tomatoes (and how hops).

The AeroFarms and Goose Island collaboration beer is currently available on the Goose Island UK website.

Deane Falcone of Crop One Discusses How Indoor Farming Reduces Food Waste

When The Spoon last wrote about Crop One in 2018, the company had just announced that they were building the largest indoor hydroponic farm in the world. The farm, based in Dubai, is set to be 300,000 square feet, three stories high, and capable of producing up to 6,000 pounds of food a day.

This week, I spoke with Deane Falcone, the CSO of Crop One, to catch up on how things are going. He said Dubai is set to open sometime early next year in 2022. Crop One has been steadily growing its team during the past few years and brought on a new CEO, Craig Ratajczyk.

In our conversation, Falcone explained to me how Crop One’s protocol and technology produce extremely clean plants that result in very little waste. Here is a transcript of part of our conversation:

This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.

Ashlen: Can you discuss how indoor crop production reduces food waste?

Deane: Sure. You know, there are numerous metrics for just indoor production, but I’ll focus on things that are I think, unique to us at Crop One. So the first thing is that it’s going back to that plant first concept. What we’re really trying to do at the end of the day is grow a very, very high-quality plant. When you grow high-quality plants, I mean all the leaves that I get on the plants are on a, you know, spinach or kale or lettuce, you want all those leaves to be high quality. And so that’s what we really aim for. So that’s the beginning of the process. 

In other words, there’s not a leaf or there are far, far fewer leaves that might be discarded, because they’re not at the right development stage. They might have some yellowing or something like that. And so all the systems contribute to that high quality. So at the very beginning that of the process, what you’re wasting, so to speak, is reduced. So that’s an important concept to keep in mind. 

The other really important concept is the cleanliness factor. So we talk about this a lot, you know, we grow in sealed rooms, it’s filtered air, grown on purified water, we have pretty elaborate water purification systems. And so what that gives us is a plant that’s very, very clean. And you may or may not know from previous discussions with us, but no one touches the plants. If they are touched by hand when they’re transplanted or they’re harvested, it’s people being wound up wearing gloves, so only a gloved hand touches the plant. Not even water touches the surface of the plant that you eat. So I’m going into that because that results in again, a clean environment, filtered air, etc, etc. 

That gives us what we refer to as a very low microbial load on the surface of plant that has very little fungi and bacteria on the surface and plants, the surface of leaves. But we’ve had this tested, we set up the labs and stuff like that. And so the reason why that’s important is that these are not disease-causing pathogenic microbes but it turns out that when you as soon as you harvest the plant, as soon as you harvest that leaf, the fungi and bacteria, which again is a natural part of the environment, that’s what causes the breakdown of food, so we start seeing food decay is because of these.

The presence of fungal spores and whatnot that that break down the product. And so that’s a really big determinant as to the shelf life. So our shelf life is it’s at least three weeks the refrigerator So it is largely because of that. Now of course, it’s the freshness aspect that is, apart from getting close to a population center so that the delivery to the final consumer is very short. But it’s very fresh, but really the thing that gives us that long shelf life is the cleanliness of the product. Again, it just stays in very good shape over a long period of time.

The packing occurs in a cold room onsight so the delivery time to the cold room as you know, is a few minutes away right in the same building, that it’s packed. It’s been kept in refrigerated temperatures the whole time. 

So there’s really no waste except for the occasional you know, there might be a piece of stem or something that we don’t want in the product and so that simply won’t be passed. For all of those reasons the food waste is really, really low. Again it starts on “the field”, that is in the growth rooms. The plants are very high quality so there’s little waste there. A little sorting waste, and then it stays low throughout the entire process.

This is a really important issue as I’m sure you know, because the statistic I’ve quoted for years now is ⅓ or about 33% of all food produced is wasted, particularly agricultural crops. Just a few days ago in fact, I read another article that it can go as high as 40%. So 33 to 40% of food produced is wasted which is astonishingly high. 

Ashlen: Thank you for breaking all of that down. You might have mentioned this already, but I’m guessing seeing everything is pesticide-free as well?

Deane: Absolutely. And just so you know, our new CEO is always asking why do we only say pesticide-free? What about herbicides? What about the fungicides? He’s an ag person by the way. He comes from the ag approach. He has a very good perspective on what really has gone on for outdoor agriculture. So nothing touches those leaves and nothing is in the water either as far as chemicals, only mineral nutrients to the plants.

Ashlen: Have you ever had a problem in the past with pests entering the facilities or is that pretty easy to manage on your end?

Deane: Yes. So we’ve been in operation for over six years now, What I mean by the operation is the whole process of growing the plants harvesting, packing, and selling. The honest truth is you have to have good protocols so everything’s kind of double door. And we’re actually in a warehouse. So insects can get into the warehouse. If you aren’t careful with the double door system, that is. Don’t open the inner door when the outer doors are open, it’s really as simple as that. If you don’t adhere to that pretty soon you can get in second position. And exactly as you say, you know, without the use of pesticide that’s a lot of nice material for the insects to take. So they’ll take it over pretty rapidly but I have to say in the last, maybe pushing four years, but certainly the last three and a half years, we have not had a single insect infestation. It’s really, you know, well-trained people. People put their gloves on, we clean the shoes. The insects by the way are oftentimes almost microscopic, they’re very, small and so they can adhere to your clothes. And they just like to eat plants. It’s just very common and so we really have to keep an eye on that. But again the last three to four years, we haven’t had any insect outbreaks. So that’s literally the main thing keeping those doors shut.

Ashlen: Can you speak about the nutrition component of food that’s been grown outdoors versus something that would be grown indoors? 

Deane: So this is a huge interest to us. We’ve evaluated, everything we grow. The nutrition is at least as good, as what we’re trying to see is where we can make it better. And so, there might be ways of just, for example, manipulating what’s the mineral nutrient to the water. So for example, plants need a fair amount of calcium. How much calcium is actually taken up in a queue. related to these, and so we’re really starting to look at that. To see if we can enhance it because the biggest kind of change in perspective indoor growth is that everything is controlled automatically. It’s everything that’s dissolved in the water. 

So for example iron, in traditional agriculture, all those components are in the fertilizer or in the soil. In our case, we add them, right so they’re adding very precise levels. And of course, you could add to much, which you don’t want to have, you could have negative plant growth if you go too high with certain levels of other trace minerals. Such as copper; plants require a little bit of copper. Of course, they require a little bit of iron. You can’t go too high in those, and so on. But others like potassium and calcium, for certain species, we can actually increase their abundance of leaves by simply increasing their level in the water. So there’s there’s a lot of opportunities there we’re just at the beginning of increased nutritional content.

So if you think about outdoor grows, it turns out that the metabolites, the mineral nutrients, the vitamins that plants produce, and plants are great at producing an abundance of them. You know, they’re loaded. Almost all breeding plants are loaded with vitamin C, for example. The fact of the matter is those levels. Those levels oscillate very widely outdoors because it’s influenced by the environment. If you have a couple of days of heavy rain or a period of drought, warm days, all that kind of variability, that results in variability of this kind of nutritional aspects of vitamins and minerals and nutrients.

We can actually start to think about saying, oh we have Spinach or whatever leafy green that has x amount of a vitamin or X amount of iron, calcium, or potassium, that sort of thing. So that’s a pretty exciting thing, isn’t it? It’s something that you really can’t say with outdoor growth because again, the environments always changing. At least metabolites change pretty widely in those conditions.

Ashlen: Do you see indoor hydroponic farming as part of the future of food?

Deane: Absolutely. It’s absolutely part of the future. Yes. That I can expand on that if you wish. The first major thing that the industry has to do including us is scaling. And that’s exactly what our farms will show. It is a pretty large operation and produces quite a significant output of the crop. So that actually hasn’t been done to appreciable levels yet and in truth, completely controlled indoor farms, there’s plenty of greenhouses out there that are getting quite massive in producing a lot but they just don’t have that level of precise control nor do they have the density that indoor farming can provide. 

Stacked shelves, vertically stacked shelves. They give you a very high output and we’re not the only company doing that of course. Once that becomes established, then it’s just a matter of time for these things to propagate. There’s a lot of companies jumping into the industry because they see the value, right? It’s pretty obvious now.

Our product is particularly clean, we work really hard to use highly purified water to grow the plants and all that sort of thing. And we really see the advantages, as I mentioned before on shelf life, things like that. So it’s really only the beginning. The honest truth is we didn’t know that the shelf life would be so extended just by making a clean product. So as these kinds of realizations come forth, you can really see the industry expanding because it’s going to be a very viable way of providing food in a reliable and continuous way.

Ashlen: Those are all the questions I have for now. Unless there’s anything else you want to share.

Deane: The only other thing to bring up I guess is very important. Everyone knows about the water use efficiency that indoor ag provides. If you look at the West Coast of the US, we’re seeing the beginnings of real severe shortages of water. As I’m sure you know, most freshwater is actually used for irrigation with agricultural crops. So we’re at the earliest stages in this industry and then in this way of growing food, but it’s important because unfortunately, climate change is real and climate change is here. It’s good that we have these alternative means to at least get the maximum water use efficiency that’s possible, and that’s pretty much going to be true for most indoor farms. Mostly, in our case, all the water that you use in the system goes through the plant. It’s transpired through the plant so very little is wasted in that sense.

Ashlen: Thank you for bringing that up, that’s really important. Great. Thank you for taking the time to speak.

A Cuppa Joe Grown in a Lab? That’s Right, Cell-Cultured Coffee Is Now a Reality

Cellular agriculture has given us hope about the future of sustainable meat production, but what about coffee? After all, many of us (this author included) would happily give up that great steak or burger to make sure we get that first cup of coffee in the morning.

Well good news, caffeine addicts: A research lab in Finland announced they have made coffee using cellular agriculture techniques. According to an article today in Phys.org, the VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland “is developing coffee production through plant cells in its laboratory in Finland. In the process, cell cultures floating in bioreactors filled with nutrient medium are used to produce various animal- and plant-based products.”

The process by VTT includes establishing the cell lines in the lab and then transferring the cell cultures to a bioreactor where they produce biomass. Once harvested, the biomass is roasted into something resembling the coffee we purchase from the store.

“In terms of smell and taste, our trained sensory panel and analytical examination found the profile of the brew to bear similarity to ordinary coffee,” said VTT Research Team Leader Dr. Heiko Rischer. “However, coffee making is an art and involves iterative optimization under the supervision of specialists with dedicated equipment. Our work marks the basis for such work.”

While we’ve seen a few startups such as Atomo working on building “molecular” coffee, those approaches use upcycled plant-based ingredients with similar compounds to coffee beans. VTT’s research project is the first example we’ve seen of cellular agriculture techniques used to replicate coffee bean cells in a bioreactor.

Whether it’s cell-ag coffee beans or derived using molecular magic, discovering new approaches to create coffee is urgent given the state of traditional crop farming. Mega-producers like Brazil face severe droughts due to climate change, which has resulted in big jumps in coffee bean prices.

But don’t expect coffee from a bioreactor to show up on store shelves anytime soon. First, researchers must figure out how to scale the process, and regulatory approval would be needed.

You can see the full article on Phys.org here.

Napa Valley Winery Uses Cisco’s IoT Sensors in Vineyard

Bouchaine Vineyards, based in Napa Valley, California, shared this week that it has integrated Cisco Systems‘ sensor technology throughout its 100 acres of vineyards.

The Cisco Industrial Asset Vision sensors are installed in multiple areas throughout the vineyard to gather data points, including humidity, water availability, temperature, and light. Large vineyards are broken up into “blocks” separated based on topographic features or soil type. The sensors track data block-by-block and upload it to a real-time dashboard.

Each block might receive a different amount of light, and Cisco’s technology can determine how much light is hitting each grapevine in a single block. This information gives insight into the development of tannins and can also be used to inform leafing, fruit thinning, and irrigation of the vines.

A critical insight for the California-based vineyard is water usage. With California constantly experiencing droughts and strain on water sources, knowing when to irrigate is essential. Since the sensors track temperature, this can help the winery irrigate the vines when only necessary, therefore reducing its water usage.

According to a study done by Cornell University, climate change has reduced farm productivity by 20 percent since the 1960s. As a result, farmers are increasingly embracing Internet of Things technology like Cisco’s to monitor and adapt to changes in temperature, precipitation, and humidity to fight back. Arable has developed sensor-filled discs that monitor metrics like rainfall, humidity, soil moisture, plant temperature, solar radiation, wind speed and direction, and chlorophyll index. InnerPlant actually turns plants into “living sensors” that change color when something is wrong with it (disease, pests, not enough water, etc.). Another agtech company called CropX uses in-ground sensors to measure soil moisture.

In addition to sensors, Bouchaine uses Cisco Webex, a virtual meeting and event platform, to allow its customers to book virtual tastings through the winery. In the virtual tastings, customers can view a live stream of the vineyard, and a dashboard with information gathered from the sensors.

Small Robot Company Crowdfunds £4M for its Ag Robots

British agriculture robot company, Small Robot Company, announced today that it has raised £4 million (~$5.5M USD) through its equity crowdfunding campaign on Crowdcube. This brings the total amount for funding raised by Small Robot to £11 million (~$15.12M USD).

Small Robot Company uses a combination of robotics and artificial intelligence to help farmers manage their fields. Small Robot makes a trio of robots dubbed, Tom, Dick and Harry that map fields, zap weeds, and do no-till drilling, respectively. The whole system is tied together with the Wima AI that uses computer vision to identify weeds and gather per-plant intelligence.

This is Small Robot’s fourth trip to the crowdfunding well, and this particular campaign got off to strong start in July when the company raised £2M (~$2.75M USD) on its first day. Small Robot isn’t the only ag robotics company going the equity crowdfunding route. Future Acres, which makes an autonomous driving platform for a number of farm is crowdfunding as well.

Agriculture is an area that is ripe for automation as the industry faces ongoing labor shortages and extremely harsh working conditions. Robots can work in the fields in extreme heat all day without injury or sickness, and can bring precision to tasks such as weeding to reduce the need for harsh herb and pesticides.

One indicator of the opportunity in agriculture automation is the fact that Bear Flag Robotics, which makes autonomous driving technology for tractors, was acquired by John Deere earlier this month for $250 million.

If you’d like to learn more about the state or agriculture and robotics, watch the video from the “Crops and Robots: How Automation is Changing Agriculture” panel we held at our ArticulATE food robotics conference in May that featured Aubrey Donnellan, Founder and COO of Bear Flag Robotics (Spoon Plus subscription required).

Cox Enterprises Acquires High-Tech Greenhouse Grower BrightFarms

Cox Enterprises has acquired indoor farming company BrightFarms, the two companies announced today via press release. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. The companies noted that the acquisition will be key to helping Cox Enterprises build out a “multibillion cleantech business” by 2030. 

Multi-industry conglomerate Cox is in the midst of expanding from its core lines of business (communications and automotive), hence its goals related to cleantech innovation. The company says it is currently investing in and/or acquiring “clean resource efficient businesses that provide sustainable energy, food, and water for the rapidly growing global population.”

Cox nabbed a majority stake in BrightFarms in 2020, though the two companies’ relationship goes back to 2018. Speaking in today’s press release, Steve Bradley, vice president of cleantech for Cox Enterprises, noted, “Over the years, our enthusiasm for BrightFarms and the opportunity to transform the industry has increased tremendously, which led us to want to play a larger role in what they’re doing.”  

BrightFarms operates a network of greenhouses that use hydroponics, natural sunlight, and a proprietary software system to grow leafy greens. The company announced its fifth greenhouse earlier this year and more recently said it would open an “innovation and research hub.” Ten percent of the company is now dedicated to developing “patented growing solutions to be used across BrightFarms entire network to improve crop yield, flavor, and other factors. The company says that by the end of the year, its leafy greens will be available at over 3,500 stores.

BrightFarms said joining Cox will allow it to scale more rapidly. As part of the acquisition, BrightFarms will grow its physical footprint from 15 acres of crop today to more than 140 by 2025. This growth will, the company says, let it reach roughly two-thirds of all U.S. consumers. Additionally, BrightFarms will build out multiple 30-acre greenhouses and increase the number of stores, restaurants, and food distributors it serves.

Red Sea Farms Raises an Additional $6M to Grow Crops With Saltwater

Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea Farms has raised an additional $6 million in pre-Series A funding, bringing the total round to $16 million (h/t Wamda). Those leading the round include Aramco’s venture arm Wa’ed, the Saudi government-owned Future Investment Initiative (FII) Institute, KAUST, Global Ventures, AppHarvest, and Bonaventure. The $6 million announced over the weekend follows an initial $10 million investment the company unveiled in June of this year.

Red Sea Farms, which is based out of King Abdullah University for Science & Technology (KAUST) in Saudi Arabia, is developing a grow system for crops that relies primarily on saltwater as the primary irrigation input. As company cofounder and CSO Prof. Mark Tester told The Spoon recently, the system works on both crops grown traditionally via land and those grown indoors using hydroponics. The idea is to provide more resource options for farmers in parts of the world where freshwater is less abundant. The company’s technology can use saltwater for evaporative cooling in greenhouses, which could potentially cut a facility’s carbon footprint.

Red Sea Farms currently has three grow sites, all in Saudi Arabia. The pre-Series A round of funding will help the company expand its operations in Saudi Arabia and other parts of the Middle East, as well as explore opportunities in the U.S. “where growing conditions are harsh.”

A number of companies have announced crop innovations for the Middle East region this year, including iFarm’s partnership with Sadarah Partners in Qatar and AeroFarms’ developing a R&D hub in the UAE. Also in 2021, Estonian automated gardening company Natufia announced its relocation to Saudi Arabia. Most of these developments are in response to a rising urgency around global food security coupled with a need to reduce the planet’s over-reliance on traditional agriculture resources (e.g., freshwater, land).

Red Sea Farms says it can cut freshwater consumption of farming operations by by 85 to 90 percent through its grow system.

AeroFarms Partners With Nokia to Build Out Drone Control and Other Indoor Ag Tech

Vertical farming company AeroFarms announced today an official partnership with Nokia Bell Labs to further develop the technology capabilities of its industrial-scale indoor ag operation. 

Currently, New Jersey-based AeroFarms uses a proprietary system that combines machine vision and machine learning technologies with the company’s agSTACK software, custom lighting, and aeroponics. The goal is to create an indoor farming environment where temperature, humidity levels, and other environmental factors are fully controlled, and where automation can take over some of the tasks around the farm.

According to today’s press release,  Nokia Bell Labs, which is the research arm of Nokia, will contribute its autonomous drone control and orchestration systems to the partnership as well as imaging and sensor tech and new AI capabilities.

These drones fly over the crops and autonomously image each plant to collect more data on overall plant health. AeroFarms CTO Roger Buelow said in a statement today that scientists and engineers have been working for two years to train these systems in plant biology.

From the press release:

“Nokia Bell Labs’ machine vision technology has enabled the most precise data capture yet, down to the level of individual plants, using leaf size segmentation, quantification, and pixel-based scanning to identify consistency and variation. Going beyond what even the human eye can perceive, this state-of-the art imaging technology enables the gathering of immense insights about a plant including its leaf size, stem length, coloration, curvature, spotting, and tearing.“

The end goal of all of this is to improve plant quality, nutritional profile, and taste, as well as crop yield.

To what extent drone imaging can help with that remains to be seen. So far, few indoor ag companies employ drones for any tasks on the farm, Finland’s iFarm being a notable exception. Earlier this year, the company announced a partnership with Sadarah Partners to build an indoor farm in Qatar that will include drone tech. 

AeroFarms and Nokia have worked together since 2020, testing the technologies with some of AeroFarms’ crops. As of today, the tech capabilities are “ready to scale” to all of AeroFarms’ crops as well as to the company’s forthcoming farms in Danville, Virginia and the Abu Dhabi in United Arab Emirates. 

 

John Deere Acquires Bear Flag Robotics for $250M

John Deere announced today that it is acquiring autonomous tractor driving technology startup Bear Flag Robotics for $250 million. According to the press announcement, “The deal accelerates the development and delivery of automation and autonomy on the farm and supports John Deere’s long-term strategy to create smarter machines with advanced technology to support individual customer needs.”

Bear Flag’s technology turns tractors into self-driving vehicles, allowing them to autonomously complete tasks such as spraying, mowing, discing and rippling. The fact that Bear Flag sold for that much is pretty impressive, considering the company had only raised a total $12.5 million.

But the big price tag is a reflection of the growing importance of automation in agriculture, which is in the midst of severe labor shortages that are getting worse. In addition to being short staffed, farm work is hard work that can involve heavy lifting in extreme heat for long hours, or managing fields in inclement weather. Automation like that from Bear Flag Robotics can run in adverse conditions without needing to take a break or run the risk of getting injured. Additionally, automation and robots can bring about more data and precision to agricultural processes, reducing the amount of herbicides and pesticides used, as well as optimizing fertilizer and water usage.

As is always the case in a market sector when a big acquisition happens, industry watchers will start to guess who the next acquisition target will be. There are actually a number of ag tech robotics startups that could be, well, ripe for picking. Augean Robotics and Future Acres both make autonomous vehicle platforms for farms that are meant to haul crops and gear around. Farmwise makes an autonomous weeding robot. And Small Robot Company makes a trio of autonomous robots to map and zap weeds.

It’s also worth noting that this is not John Deere’s first trip to the farm robot rodeo. In 2017 the company bought Blue River Technology, which made the LettuceBot robot for $305 million.

If you want to learn more about agricultural automation, check out the video from the “Crops and Robots: How Automation is Changing Agriculture” panel we held at our ArticulATE food robotics conference in May that featured Aubrey Donnellan, Founder and COO of Bear Flag Robotics (Spoon Plus subscription required).