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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Modern Farmer

How AppHarvest Is Investing in the First Generation of High-Tech Farmers

Agriculture may have been slower to digitize than other parts of the food sector, but these days a lot of folks would agree artificial intelligence, automation, and other technologies have a role to play in the future of farming. The presence of such things means farming will soon require lots of new skills, which in turn means training a whole new generation on a whole new set of tools. It means, in the words of AppHarvest’s founder and CEO Jonathan Webb (pictured above), “getting young people to really visualize what agriculture is” in a way they haven’t before.

Standing under a tent in the middle of a downpour outside Elliott County High School in Sandy Hook, Kentucky recently, Webb explained to me how his company is training the next generation of farmers while simultaneously investing in the company’s own future as a high-tech agricultural powerhouse.

We, along with with students, parents, teachers, and Kentucky governor Andy Beshear, were at the launch for the latest unit of AppHarvest’s high-tech educational container farm program, which teaches high-tech farming to Eastern Kentucky high-school students. Launched back in 2018, the program retrofits old shipping containers to house controlled-environment vertical farms that grow leafy greens. Farms at each school serve as hands-on agricultural classrooms where students can learn not just horticulture but also how to use the technologies powering the next wave of farming innovations around automation, connectivity, and data.

“What we’re doing here is trying to plant the seeds of what it means to be in an exciting industry and get that groundswell early,” Webb told me. 

He was talking specifically about the container farm program but might as well have been referring to the entire company’s MO. AppHarvest, itself a product of Eastern Kentucky, is both a Public Benefit Corporation and a Certified B Corporation, which means the company has to strike a balance between profit and less measurable purposes like environmental impact, transparency, and social good. 

The company’s main business is headquartered about an hour away from Elliott County High School, in Morehead, Kentucky, where AppHarvest operates a 60-acre high-tech greenhouse that grows different varieties of tomatoes. Two additional farms, one for leafy greens and another for tomatoes, are under construction, and the company just broke ground on a couple more last month. All of these farms provide or will provide produce for restaurants and grocery retailers within a day’s drive. They will also provide jobs for a local community that’s seen unemployment rise as the coal industry declines.

The high school container farms are altogether smaller and somewhat different in terms setup and technical specs, but the idea is the same: grow crops in a controlled environment and use technology to improve plant yield, quality, and nutrition profile. In doing so, people from the community get an opportunity to learn the kinds of skills that will be relevant as agriculture gets more and more digitized.

“We’ve tried to say at AppHarvest we’re not building facilities, we’re building an ecosystem,” said Webb. “Obviously our large production facility is the core critical center piece of that, but us investing in a high school education, we’re truly trying to create an ecosystem that includes facilities and the brainpower to be able to operate the facilities.”

This isn’t just feel-good talk, either. Technologies like artificial intelligence, robotics, sensors, and analytics are coming to agriculture in response to multiple problems looming in the near future for the global food system. As McKinsey notes, “Demand for food is growing at the same time the supply side faces constraints in land and farming inputs.” With a population expected to grow to 9.7 billion by 2050, the planet needs to produce around 70 percent more available calories. At the same time, inputs like water supply and arable land are shrinking, raising costs for farming and negatively impacting an already burdened planet.

Part of the promise of controlled environment agriculture formats like high-tech greenhouses and container vertical farms is that they can grow more food faster, at a higher quality, and closer to the buying public. Many of these facilities operate via hydroponics systems that recirculate water, saving on that resource. (AppHarvest’s greenhouse runs off rainwater collected from the facility’s roof.) In the case of vertical farming, less land is required because plants are stacked. AppHarvest’s container farms, for example, can pack three to five acres of leafy greens into a forty-foot-long shipping container. Other large-scale vertical farms a la Kalera or Plenty are growing pounds of greens that number in the millions and also exploring additional crops such as berries.

Most individuals in this industry I’ve spoken to agree that indoor farming isn’t “the savior” that will wholly replace traditional agriculture. Nor was it never meant to be. Rather, greenhouse growers, vertical farm companies, and those operating container farms believe we need all of these formats working together and alongside traditional agriculture practices to try and resolve the above issues.

One of the many things needed to make that a reality is a new generation of young people interested in farming as a career and able to navigate the technical as well as horticultural aspects of agriculture. 

Right now, that’s a challenge. “We don’t have our brightest young people inspired to go into agriculture,” said Webb, adding that the issue is, “How do we inspire them early to get into agriculture and the technology sphere of agriculture?”

AppHarvest started investing in its education program before its main facility was ever complete, spending $200,000 of its initial $1 million investment on the program. “I’m not sure if there’s ever been a venture-backed company that’s taken 20 percent of their raised proceeds early and invested in education,” said Webb.

In 2021, AppHarvest has five different container farm programs operating at Eastern Kentucky high schools, all of them operating independently but also networked together, just as AppHarvest’s larger farms will eventually be networked. 

Students learn a huge range of skills working on these farms, from horticultural-related ones like seeding and harvesting to technology management across multiple farms to food safety, data entry, marketing, packaging, and creating a budget. Via a screen inside the farm, students can learn to track the pH levels of plants, carbon dioxide levels, temperature, humidity, and all the other variables present in a farm. And since farms from every high school are networked together, students can view one another’s activity. Elliott County High can see data from Shelby Valley High School in Pike County and vice versa, for example.

Webb says the farms are also an opportunity for schools and students to collaborate using different skillsets, whether technological, horticultural, or otherwise. “Some students might have more of a background or interest in horticulture. Some students might have more of a background or interest in craftsmanship. All we’re trying to do now is say, ‘Here, it’s your thing, bring it to life, and openly share information.’”

And while there’s no pressure, the hope is that some of these students eventually bring their skillsets to AppHarvest’s main operations and help improve them, along with indoor ag, over the coming years. “Hopefully in four years we have students that might end up at MIT. And then they’re telling us what to do,” said Webb, adding that the ROI here isn’t quick. The true impacts of the company’s investment in school programs probably won’t be seen for another five of six years, which is a few lifetimes when we’re talking about tech. 

“We get judged on quarterly earning calls, [but] that’s not the way I think,” he said. “I want us to think, first decade, second decade, third decade, and these are very long-term investments.”

He hopes to see more tech companies investing in high schools, and AppHarvest isn’t quite the lone wolf when it comes to this. Freight Farms, which deals exclusively in container farms, has a partnership with Sodexo to bring its units to K-12 schools and universities in the U.S. AeroFarms, also a Certified B Corp., has partnerships with various schools and community centers, too.

For AppHarvest, the educational program is is an integral part of the operation, and one tied to the company’s long-term success. “It’s not a ‘nice to have,'” Webb told me. “It’s something we truly believe is going to give our company a competitive advantage medium to long term.” 

AeroFarms Talks R&D in the UAE for Vertical Farming

One place that gets a lot of attention these days when it comes to food tech initiatives is the United Arab Emirates. Like Singapore, the country is aggressively pursuing food and ag tech initiatives as a way to improve food security and quality within its own borders and in doing so become a more self-sufficient food producer.

The UAE got another big agrifood boost recently when New Jersey-based vertical farming company AeroFarms announced that its UAE-based subsidiary AeroFarms AgX LTD had started construction on an R&D facility in Abu Dhabi. The center will focus on new developments for indoor ag and controlled environment farming, and is expected to be operational in the first quarter of 2022.

“The region aligns very well with our value proposition,” Aerofarms cofounder and CEO David Rosenberg explained to The Spoon recently. “The UAE imports 90 percent of their crops, so there’s a food security issue. They also have relatively cheap energy.” He added that a facility for R&D in the country gives Aerofarms a “strong regional presence” from which it can expand to other areas in the Middle East and beyond. 

There’s certainly enough opportunity for indoor agriculture in this part of the world. Because of the desert climate, the UAE and other countries in the Middle East deal with a lack of arable land as well as water scarcity. Vertical farming operations like those of AeroFarms or another player, Vertical Field, claim to use significantly less water than traditional outdoor agriculture. And because of the vertical nature of the grow systems (plant trays are literally stacked inside a giant warehouse-like setting), companies can pack more plants into less space than would be possible on a horizontal field.

According to Rosenberg, the R&D center isn’t really to figure out how to grow food in the desert (“We could grow anywhere in the world”) so much as it is about growing plants specific to Middle Eastern eating habits in general. He cites mint and parsley, two popular foods in the region, as examples. Having an R&D center that focused on optimizing the grow cycle for these plants could increase quality, yield, and nutritional profile. 

The other goal of the forthcoming new center will be to apply the learnings discovered there to other parts of the region in the future. That includes research in areas like plant science, vertical farming and automation, accelerating innovation cycles and commercializing products.

Rosenberg says that versus a greenhouse, his company’s vertical farms can grow plants faster, producing around 26 harvests per year instead of 12 to 16. Right now, Aerofarms is best known for leafy greens, but the company has its sights set on other crops, too. In April of this year it announced a deal with Chile-based berry producer and distributor Hortifrut to research and develop blueberry and caneberry production. 

“Today we’re most known for leafy greens, but behind the scenes, we’re working with some of the biggest ag tech companies in the world to improve their genetics,” says Rosenberg. He adds that AeroFarms has grown 70 different varieties of berries, and that of the 550 different plants the company has grown, “probably 350 of them are in the leafy greens category.” He declined to elaborate on other crops, but suggested that information might surface soon to the public.

Last year, the Abu Dhabi Investment Office (ADIO) invested $150 million in a few ag tech companies, AeroFarms being one of them. The forthcoming R&D facility will be one tangible result of that investment. 

AeroFarms announced in March its intention to go public via SPAC with Spring Valley Acquisition Corp. 

Farm.One Launches a New Vertical Farming Facility in Brooklyn

NYC-based indoor ag company Farm.One cut the ribbon on its new urban vertical farm recently, this one located in Brooklyn, New York. According to the Brooklyn Reader, the 10,000-square-foot facility and will start planting seeds in the coming weeks. The Brooklyn farm is the company’s second large-scale farm, following its existing one in Manhattan’s Tribeca neighborhood.

Farm.One started out supplying its vertically grown greens to New York City’s high-end restaurant scene. The original goal was to grow rare, unusual plants restaurant chefs could then use in their dishes, a plan that worked until the COVID-19 pandemic started shutting down restaurants last year. 

In response, Farm.One took the same direct-to-consumer route many companies shifted to in 2020. NYC-based consumers can now sign up for a Farm.One subscription and receive greens and a few other local goods delivered to their doorsteps. The company has also teamed up with Brooklyn-based indoor farming company Smallhold to sell “local luxury mushrooms.” An additional collaborations with Rawsome Treats provides smoothies and plant-based bottled milks. Farm.One uses bikes for all deliveries and packages all items in reusable containers the company retrieves once they are empty. The shift to this model proved so popular that there is currently a waitlist to even get products. 

Hence the new farm space in Brooklyn’s Prospect Heights neighborhood, which opened at the end of last week. The space will grow various microgreens as well as herbs and some flowers. All crops are grown using the hydroponic method and artificial lighting, with plants harvested “hours before delivery,” according to the company. 

The Brooklyn farm will also include an event space where attendees can sample plants on “tasting tours” and attend lectures on food and agriculture. In future there may also be a daytime cafe as well as a cocktail menu.

Farm.One also licenses its technology out and currently has locations at the EATALY NYC Flatiron location and a Whole Foods in Manhattan. 

All of these offerings would classify as premium, targeting higher-end consumers. It remains to be seen if Farm.One’s demographic reach will widen as it adds more farms and is able to serve more parts of NYC and beyond. 

Wageningen University Launches the Third Autonomous Greenhouse Challenge

Netherlands-based Wageningen University is holding the third edition of its Autonomous Greenhouse Challenge, where international teams compete to grow crops in greenhouses using AI and automation. 

A first and second edition of the challenge grew cucumbers and tomatoes, respectively. For both of those crops, a level of autonomy was involved, though human intervention was still required during the grow process. The third edition, where teams will grow lettuce, differs in that participants must figure out how to grow their crops from seed using a fully automated algorithm.

Wageningen said in a post that the first and second editions of the challenge have shown “that artificial intelligence can potentially be superior to human intelligence, hence can potentially control indoor farming in the future. The goal of the third challenge will be fully automated control.”

Wageningen is one of Europe’s most well-known innovation centers when it comes to food, food tech, and food innovation. Scientists and researchers from here work on everything from alternative proteins to biodiversity initiatives to gene-editing technologies and, of course, greenhouse innovation.

One of the goals of the Autonomous Greenhouse Challenge is to “connect the world of artificial intelligence (AI) and food production, create more knowledge, make this knowledge publicly available and thus contribute to the worldwide efforts of making our food systems more sustainable.”

Part 1 of the competition is an online challenge meant to test participants’ machine learning and computer vision skills, as well as attract talent from the realm of AI into the horticulture space. Part 1 is currently underway and will wrap on July 14 when a winner is chosen. Following that will be a 24-hour hackathon, which anyone can join, even if they did not participate in Part 1. Five teams will be selected from this session to go on to compete in Part 3, the actual greenhouse challenge.  

For the latter, each participating team will be assigned one compartment inside Wageningen’s high-tech greenhouse facility. All compartments are identical and have different actuators that control the grow conditions inside: heating and shading systems, lighting, water input, etc. Compartments are also equipped with sensors to measure temperature, CO2 levels, PAR light, pH and the electrical conductivity of fertigation water. Data from these sensors can be used to inform the algorithms to decide on the compartment’s control settings.  

Teams will be allowed to do a test cycle with a first crop before they must transition to growing the lettuce using fully autonomous algorithms “make choices with respect to the control settings, to remotely control crop growth.” 

Even without automation in play, lettuce is typically a more “hands off” crop than tomatoes or other vegetables. The competition seems not so much about automating indoor farm labor as it is about showing the public the benefits automation can bring in terms of growing plants faster and at higher yields without sacrificing quality. It will also produce more data, which experts have long agreed indoor farming needs more of. 

In the case of Wageningen’s challenge, the public will be able to follow crops’ growth along in real time via a website, and the datasets will eventually be released to the public. The winner of the competition will be the team with “the highest net profit in the end,” according to the challenge rules. 

 

BrightFarms Launches R&D Hub for Its Growing Network of Greenhouses

BrightFarms, which operates a network of greenhouses in the U.S., is launching an innovation and research hub at its Wilmington, Ohio headquarters, according to an announcement sent to The Spoon. Dubbed BrightLabs, the research facility will build on BrightFarms’ existing work growing leafy greens in a greenhouse setting aided by tech.

The company calls BrightLabs “one of the most advanced biotechnology ventures in the indoor farming industry” and one that will develop ways to improve the flavor, texture and yield of plants the company grows in its five greenhouses. Tech experts along with microbiologists and plant scientists will join the BrightLabs team, which will be led by Matt Lingard, formerly a Bayer greenhouse scientist. Lingard has recently joined BrightFarms as the VP of Agriculture.

One of BrightFarms’ biggest achievements to date is that it’s mastered the notoriously difficult task of growing spinach in a greenhouse (or any indoor ag setting). Spinach is especially susceptible to a certain kind of water mold, presenting a challenge for greenhouse and indoor ag operations that rely on hydroponic systems. BrightFarms says it already has proprietary research on the process of growing spinach indoors, and, via BrightLabs, aims to double the production of that particular crop.

Another notable aspect of BrightLabs is that the hub will allocate significant energy to studying plant microbiome, the natural bacteria that influences plant health. The company says it can do this because the greenhouses are powered by sunlight and so there is not a need to spend abundant R&D dollars on artificial lighting solutions (e.g., LEDs). “So instead of spending R&D dollars on finding expensive and energy-intensive artificial lighting solutions, we can zero in on how to simply grow better plants,” BrightFarms CEO Steve Platt told The Spoon. He added that BrightLabs plant scientists are developing proprietary ecosystems that will optimize plant microbiome to help crops flourish. “By putting the microbiome to work, we can do more of what we do best: grow great lettuce,” he said.

A recent survey found that many growers plan to add more LEDs in the future as well as climate control systems, and post-harvest automation tech. Plant microbiome did not factor into the report, and BrightFarms is still rather unique in its decision to focus on that as a means of increasing and improving yield.

BrightFarms said that the launch of BrightLabs means 10 percent of the company is now dedicated to developing “patented growing solutions” that will be applied across the company’s network of greenhouses. As noted above, there are currently five such facilities, one each in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Illinois, North Carolina, and Virginia. The company says that by the end of the year, its leafy greens will be available at over 3,500 stores.

Equinom Raises $20M Series C Round for Seed Breeding Tech

Israel-based Equinom announced today it has raised a $20 million Series C funding round led by Phoenix. The round also included participation from Fortissimo, Trendlines, Maverick, and BASF, and brings Equinom’s total funding to $27.6 million.

Equinom uses AI to improve upon the existing nutrition of seeds, including a seed’s protein content. Through its natural non-GMO breeding process, seeds with desired traits are selected and then bred. Equinom’s “Product Profiler” app allows food companies to select what traits they want in a particular seed for the product they are developing. According to its website, the company is working with soy, yellow, pea, sesame, and will offer boosted versions of chickpeas, mung beans, quinoa, cowpeas, and fava beans in the future. Across the world, Equinom is growing over 100,000 acres of these crops.

With this most recent round of capital, Equinom will expand its operations in marketing, research, development, and sales. At the beginning of May, the company partnered with Dipasa, a leading producer of sesame seeds, to launch a new variety of high protein sesame seeds. In addition to Dispasa, Equinom has had contracts with major food companies like Sabra and Roquette to improve upon the nutrition content of seed for use in plant-based foods.

Seeds, nuts, and grains are more sustainable and efficient to produce than meat, yet a common complaint regarding plant-based ingredients is that they often do not have the same high protein content as meat. It’s therefore a pressing issue to find nutrient-dense crops that can support a population that will reach 9.7 billion by 2050. Plant-based ingredients like chickpea, soy, peas, and lentils are nutrient-dense and contain a high protein content, but still fall short of the protein content found in a serving of, say, beef. By increasing protein content in these seeds, Equinom’s technology could prove valuable in helping feed more mouths with more nutritious and environmentally friendly food.

In the last quarter of 2021, Equinom is set to launch the highest pea protein concentrate available on the market, called “Smarter Pea Protein.”

Babylon Micro-Farms Gets $1M Grant to Further Develop Its Software for Controlled Ag

Babylon Micro-Farms, which operates a network of indoor grow systems in foodservice venues around the U.S., has received a $1 million grant from the National Science Foundation, with the potential for $750,000 more in follow-on funding. The grant money will go towards further development of BabylonIQ, the company’s platform that remotely manages its distributed network of farms. 

This grant follows a 2019 Phase 1 grant of $225,000, also from the National Science Foundation, that enabled the company to start trials of its technology designed to capture growth and health metrics for plants. 

Babylon Micro-Farms started in 2016, originally in Charlottesville as a project at the University of Virginia. Over the last five years, the farm itself has gone from a tabletop model to the 15-square-foot controlled-environment farming module that’s now in numerous hospitals, cafeterias, and senior living residences. The goal is to be able to remotely manage this distributed network of farms, collecting the kind of data that can inform better growing conditions for all Babylon farms. 

BabylonIQ uses machine learning and computer vision components to capture data from the farms that can optimize both plants’ grow recipes (light levels, temperature, etc.) and best practices across the Babylon Micro-Farms network. The company says the platform will eventually be able to learn from itself and improve processes over time, which in turn would hopefully lead to better-tasting greens, higher yields, and a higher nutritional profile per plant.

The emphasis on improving the software that powers farms is in keeping with something Babylon Micro-Farms CEO, Alexander Olesen, told The Spoon in 2020: that the company isn’t “necessarily interested in the hardware aspect going forward.” One potential direction the company could pursue is that of focusing primarily on software and bringing that expertise to a partnership with a separate hardware company. Nothing more has been officially said about that, though today’s news seems to point along that path. 

Meanwhile, a central “brain” for a network of smaller, module farms is still somewhat unique among controlled environment agriculture companies. Larger operations like Bowery or Plenty or even Square Roots have made much of their software systems that can remotely manage a network of farms. Babylon Micro-Farms is one of the first to do so for smaller-size farms found in cafeterias, hospitals, and other facilities that serve food. Farm.One is another such company.

Babylon Micro-Farms says this week’s Phase 2 grant also provides “financial resources to accelerate commercialization.”

InnerPlant Raises $5.65M to Turn Plants Into “Living Sensors” and Mitigate Crop Loss

Agtech company InnerPlant, which is changing plant DNA to create “living sensors” that mitigate crop loss, has raised $5.65 million in pre-seed and seed funding, according to an official announcement sent to The Spoon. The round was led by MS&AD Ventures, the investment arm of Japan’s MS&AD Insurance Group. Bee Partners, Up West, and TAU Ventures also participated in the round. 

InnerPlant created its technology platform to spot threats to plant growth — pests, nutrient deficiencies, water stress, etc. — quicker than is possible via traditional farming methods. To do that, the company recodes plant DNA to include a fluorescent safe-for-human-consumption protein that lights up the leaves of a plant when there is a problem. Essentially, it is turning the entire plant into a living signal that can “talk” to the farmer when there is a problem. Different colored lights indicate different issues.  

Since these signals are invisible to the human eye, farmers can use InnerPlant’s augmented reality system to photograph their fields and view potential problems via an iPhone or iPad. The signals can also be detected via a drone flying overhead or even a satellite.

This handy explainer video goes into more detail:

According to the company, it only takes tens of these sensor plants to protect an entire field. Once the signal plants send off a distress signal, a farmer can address the impacted area before it spreads to the whole crop. For example, if a harmful fungi breaks out in one area of a field, a farmer can get rid of only the impacted plants, instead of spraying the whole field with fungicide. Think of it as on-demand crop protection.  

InnerPlant says its entire concept is merely piggy-backing off the natural signals plants send to one another when they are in distress. Recoding the DNA to include the protein is “amplifying” these natural signals, so that farmers can spot problems faster. It also frees them from what InnerPlant founder and CEO Shely Aronov calls “the pesticide treadmill,” which is our increasing use of chemicals and pesticides that harm waterways, impact microbial diversity in soil, and are linked to some cancers.

It remains to be seen how consumers will feel about eating produce with recoded DNA, or how that message will get effectively communicated. And since InnerPlant is a relatively new company (it released its first product, the InnerTomato, in 2020), it is too soon to have much data on how effective these living plant sensors are compared to other modes of crop protection. 

The technology does, however, show us yet-another possibility for improving crop yields and mitigating loss in the food system at a time when the world’s population is growing. 

InnerPlant says it is currently working on a new product, InnerSoy. Funds from the seed and pre-seed rounds will go towards developing other products in future. 

California Giant Berry Farms and OnePointOne Team Up to Grow Berries Indoors

More than once in the last few months, indoor farmers have named berries the next important crop for controlled environment agriculture (CEA). California Giant Berry Farms added further weight to that claim today by announcing a partnership with OnePointOne, a technology company that specializes in vertical farming. 

The eventual goal of the partnership is to increase berry output as well as grow crops closer to consumers. To do this, California Giant will work with OnePointOne to develop “an exclusive strawberry cultivar,” an aeroponic vertical farming system that will grow berries. OnePointOne will provide the tech, which includes AI and robotics, while California Giant will share its expertise and existing data for berry growing.

Speaking in a statement, OnePointOne CEO and co-founder Sam Bertram said that his company’s robotics, AI, and plant scientists will “identify the ideal moment for planting, pollination, flowering and picking that will result in strawberries of the highest quality and Brix levels.” The data from these learnings will then be shared with California Giant and potentially used in traditional field growing, too. 

California Giant joins the list of traditional berry growers currently partnering with indoor vertical farming companies. Driscoll’s announced a partnership with California-based Plenty towards the end of last year, and just a couple months ago, Chile-based Hortifrut launched a partnership with New Jersey-based AeroFarms. 

Berries being highly perishable fruits that can easily be damaged in shipping, they make for a logical choice when it comes to choosing crops for indoor farms located closer to consumers. Fully controlled environments, like vertical farms, largely eliminate the need to use pesticides, while close proximity to customers means the berries spend less time in transit. 

California Giant and OnePointOne currently have vertical farming structures in California and Arizona, and plan to expand across the U.S. over time. 

Survey: Indoor Ag to Expand, Add More Tech in 2021

Growers expect to add more technology to various forms of indoor farming for the rest of this year and into the next, according to indoor farm analytics company Artemis’ 2020 State of Indoor Farming report released yesterday.

The report, done in partnership with Startle, is based on a survey of 205 enterprise horticulture facilities, including those with high- and mid-tech greenhouses, indoor vertical farms, and container farms. Respondents answered a number of questions related to crop yields, labor, suppliers, and input. Underlying all of these things is the continued march of technology into the indoor farming space.

A commonly known point the report notes is that indoor ag typically requires more technology than traditional agriculture. For example, while glass greenhouses still use natural sunlight, the addition of LEDs can speed up the grow process for plants or provide more light in parts of the world where sunlight isn’t abundant. Meanwhile, more indoor ag companies these days are turning to tech that can help workers manage operations — an especially important point as farms get bigger and bigger.

To that end, survey respondents’ number one reason for implementing tech is “managing operations more efficiently” (39 percent of respondents). Lowering the cost of production (20 percent) and increasing yield (19 percent) were next. Getting better-quality crops, interacting with customers more effectively, and meeting food safety and compliance standards were also on the list.

In the next year, 19 percent of respondents said they plan to implement data and analytics, while 18 percent will add climate control systems and 17 percent will add labor tracking and cultivation management software. Following those items, growers plan to add more LEDs as well as post-harvest automation equipment and organic nutrients. Remote monitoring and automated scales for weight measurements were also mentioned.

The majority of growers, 73 percent, also plan to expand significantly over the next five years, with a combined expansion of 544 acres total. Mid-tech greenhouse companies — glass or polycarbonate greenhouses that use some tech but not “to the full extent possible” — will expand the most, at 206 acres, followed by container farms at 156 acres and indoor vertical farms at 84 acres.

Echoing this, numerous companies in the space have announced expansion plans in the last few months, from vertical farm company Kalera’s ongoing trek west across the U.S. to Square Roots’ expansion of its container farm network and a second 60-acre greenhouse from AppHarvest. In terms of acreage, greenhouses are likely to grow the most, since they typically don’t use vertical farming technology and often grow crops that require more space than the compact leafy greens that are so popular.  

And speaking of leafy greens, those along with herbs still account for almost half of all crops grown via indoor ag right now (26 percent and 20 percent, respectively). Microgreens (16 percent) are next, followed by tomatoes (10 percent). Other crops, such as strawberries, may become more prevalent as companies leverage new technologies and methods for growing indoors.

A Peek Inside AppHarvest’s 60-Acre High-Tech Greenhouse in Eastern Kentucky

Ag tech company AppHarvest may only be a few years old, but growth for both the operation and its tomato crops moves at a breakneck pace these days. After shipping its first harvest to stores in late January of this year, AppHarvest proceeded to go public at the start of February and has since broken ground on two more farms, acquired a robotics company, and announced it will soon grow leafy greens and strawberries in addition to tomatoes. 

And while it’s one thing to say the Morehead, Kentucky-based company operates a 60-acre (2.76 million square feet) greenhouse powered by tech and a deep sense of purpose, it’s another thing to actually stand inside the facility and see the future of agriculture changing before one’s very eyes.  

I had the honor of doing just that at the end of last week, when I drove up to Morehead, Kentucky and took a tour of the facility, which literally stretches into the Appalachian horizon as far as the eye can see. Here’s a look at what goes on inside:

Tomatoes grow in long rows like above. AppHarvest trains these Tomatoes on the Vine (TOVs) to grow in clusters of five.

The greenhouse relies primarily on sunlight for plants. Supplemental lighting, hanging above the plants, can be used when sunlight is weak or when the company wants to speed up the growing time of crops. At night, a sheet automatically unrolls to cover the roof so that surrounding neighbors are not disturbed by the lights.  

Tomato roots inside the growth media block. Since the entire greenhouse is hydroponic, no soil is used in the grow process.

Nutrient-enriched water is pumped to the plants via a hydroponic drip system that can deliver precise levels to plants as they need it. 

Autonomous carts shuttle cases of tomatoes to the packing room once the fruit is harvested. 

A high-level (literally) view of the tomato plants. AppHarvest grows about 800,000 plants at once in its 60-acre facility. A forthcoming farm in Richmond, Kentucky, will be almost identical in terms of layout and the amount it can grow.

Reservoirs and a UV filtration system for the facility’s water supply. AppHarvest relies solely on rainwater collected on the building’s roof. Water is pumped from a retention pond into this room before being delivered to plants via drip irrigation. 

The packing room, where tomatoes are assessed and made ready to ship to grocery stores and restaurants. AppHarvest ships to those within a day’s drive, which the company says is about 70 percent of the U.S. population.

As mentioned above, AppHarvest plans to open an almost-identical facility outside of Richmond, Kentucky, and a 15-acre farm in Berea for growing leafy greens. The company said it plans to have 12 farms up and running by 2025. 

The CEA sector as a whole, meanwhile, is currently getting more investment than ever before as companies build out different versions of indoor farms. Modular vertical farms, warehouse-sized vertical farms, at-home farms, vertical greenhouses, and massive operations like those of AppHarvest are all promising solutions that can exist alongside traditional agriculture. The consensus from my visit to AppHarvest last week is that in order to improve the food system and feed a growing global population, we’re going to need all those methods in the future. 

In the meantime, AppHarvest’s TOVs and Beefsteak tomatoes are available at Walmart, Kroger, and Meijer stores in certain parts of the U.S.

Red Sea Farms is Growing Crops in Saltwater

Earth’s oceans are good for a lot of things. They generate more than half of the oxygen we need to breathe, regulate our climates and provide us with a bounty of fish for sustenance. One thing the ocean’s salty water is not so good at? Watering crops. At least it wasn’t. Startup Red Sea Farms is developing a new technology that uses saltwater to not only irrigate crops, but also help cool growing facilities in an energy efficient manner.

Based in Saudi Arabia, Red Sea Farms is affiliated with King Abdullah University of Science & Technology (KAUST). I spoke with Prof. Mark Tester, Co-Founder and CSO of Red Sea Farms, by video chat this week, and while he was pretty tight lipped about exactly how his company’s technology works, he did share the basic ideas.

In a nutshell, Red Sea Farms is able to either irrigate land crops with saltwater or grow crops hydroponically using a mixture of 90 percent saltwater and 10 percent fresh water. Right now the company is growing tomatoes through a combination of plant selection, breeding and grafting (but not genetically modifying) in such a way that developed root stocks that can grow in saltwater.

The obvious importance of this technology is that areas of the world that are now inhospitable to agriculture because of fresh water access, arable land and temperature could someday produce their own crops with the abundant (and free) sea water.

To be clear, Red Sea Farms isn’t growing tomatoes in the sea. Rather, it is bringing in sea water to either irrigate fields or into a greenhouse facility it has set up in Saudi Arabia. But that saltwater isn’t just growing the tomato plants. Red Sea Farms has also developed a way to use saltwater in its evaporative cooling system. This, plus the use of transparent solar panels at its greenhouses could be used by other growing facilities to reduce their carbon and freshwater footprints when producing food.

Red Sea Farms is already selling tomatoes and cherry tomatoes at markets in Saudi Arabia. As Tester explained, tomatoes grown in saltwater are actually sweeter than normal tomatoes because the plants produce extra sugar to overcome the salt. Additionally, the tomatoes have a slightly thicker skin, which gives them a little extra crunch and extends their shelf life.

While Red Sea Farms currently makes food, it’s an agritech company with a longer term goal to fully develop and productize its technology for licensing out to third parties.