Close Ad

The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Modern Farmer

Iron Ox Breaks Ground on a New Robotic Farm in Texas

Iron Ox, a company best known for its robotic greenhouses, announced this week it had broken ground on a new facility, a 535,000 square-foot indoor farm in Lockhart, Texas. This is the third farm from Iron Ox, which is based in California and operates two other farms in that state. 

All Iron Ox farms are equipped with hydroponic grow systems as well as robotics, the latter being a mobile transport system that can move trays of produce as well as tend and harvest plants via a robotic grasper. Farms are semi-autonomous, with humans still needed to inspect plants and prune them.

The company says the forthcoming Lockhart farm will grow leafy greens, herbs, berries, and vine crops, and anticipates delivering its first harvest by the close of 2021. Select chefs and food retailers in Texas will be the first recipients of that harvest. The company says the new farm will serve several cities in the state thanks to its proximity to Austin, San Antonio, and Houston. The new farm will also create roughly 100 new jobs in the region. 

Constructions of high-tech greenhouses are happening all over the country right now, with Element Farms, AppHarvest, Little Leaf Farms, and others building or planning to build new facilities. Unlike vertical farms, these greenhouses still rely on sunlight (usually supplemented by some LEDs) as their primary source of lighting. And there’s plenty of sunlight to be had in Texas.

Technology like data-collecting sensors as well as AI systems are increasingly a part of these greenhouse operations, though robotic arms for harvesting crops are a little less common right now. However, AppHarvest recently acquired Root, which makes a crop-harvesting robot, suggesting a future for greenhouses that includes much more in the way of robotics. For its part, Iron Ox has said before that it would like its farms to one day be fully autonomous.

As with other high-tech greenhouse setups, automation in the Iron Ox farms helps to ensure consistency in the crops, better quality plants, and ultimately tasty veggies for consumers. 

Liberty Produce Gets Grant to Further Develop CEA in Singapore

A team led by UK-based vertical farming company Liberty Produce has won £420,000 (~$588,000 USD) from the Innovate UK fund to help advance controlled-environment farming in Singapore, according to a press release sent to The Spoon.

Liberty Produce and Singapore-based LivFresh will jointly lead the Hybrid Advanced Research Vertical Farming Environment Systems and Technology (HARVEST) consortium, which will also include research partners Republic Polytechnic Singapore and the James Hutton Institute.

Liberty Produce will install its Liberator farming system, developed in the UK, at the LivFresh hydroponic farm in Singapore, where it will be integrated with existing greenhouse technology. The HARVEST team will then run trials of this combined system, with the goal being to eventually release a turn-key product for Singapore food growers to use domestically. 

Because of limited land, Singapore currently imports about 90 percent of its food. This dependence on outside sources, however, has proven itself problematic at certain times — like during a pandemic, when the global food supply chain gets disrupted. 

The Singaporean government’s 30×30 initiative aims to get 30 percent of the city-state’s food produced domestically by 2030. Controlled-environment farming, such as greenhouses and vertical farms, is a major part of that plan.  

Liberty Produce develops vertical farms that are modular and can therefore be customized to a specific farming operation’s needs. They are also smaller than the massive “plant factories” a la Plenty or AeroFarms. For instance, the Liberator 5000 is roughly the size of a shipping container, according to the company, while two other models are even smaller. This smaller geographic footprint is well-suited to a place like Singapore, which is mostly urban and, as mentioned above, is already dealing with very limited land.

Liberty Produce systems are 100 percent controlled, from the amount of water and nutrients fed to crops to humidity levels to the “recipes” of LED lights. The system can grow standard leafy greens but has also grown more challenging crops, like blueberries.

The project with LivFresh will last two years and support Singapore’s national strategy around the 30×30 goal.

High-End Strawberry Grower Oishii to Launch ‘Everyday Berry’ via Vertical Farming

Controlled environment agriculture (CEA) company Oishii is best known at this point for its high-end, vertically grown strawberries that cost a cool $50 for an eight-pack. That makes the New Jersey-based company’s wares pretty inaccessible for many consumers — until now. Oishii explained this week that it will be launching an “everyday berry” in the future.

Strawberries are by many accounts the next “it” crop for CEA. As Oishii explained to Vertical Farm Daily, one of the issues with traditional strawberry production is that about 90 percent of all strawberries grown in the U.S. have to be shipped from California. To ensure safer transportation, the fruits are engineered to be resilient at the expense of quality and taste. 

Oishii’s Omakase Berry, which the company grows in its vertical farm facility in New Jersey, is in many ways the antithesis of the traditionally grown strawberry. Omakase Berries typically only grow for a short part of the year in a very specific region of Japan, and they are known for their sweetness and strong aromas. They are also, as noted above, a very premium produce item and, in the case of Oishii, a very expensive one.

But now, Oishii is using its recently raised $50 million funding round to expand R&D and commercialize an everyday berry, with the goal of becoming one of the largest strawberry growers in the world. Oishii will apply the learnings and proprietary technology used to grow its Omakase Berry towards other strawberries as well as other crops, such as tomatoes and peppers.

Strawberries are one of the dirtier crops when it comes to pesticides, and more than one CEA company is now attempting to grow the fruit indoors at scale. Plenty announced a partnership with berry grower Driscoll’s last year. Meanwhile, a Singapore-based company called SinGrow is growing strawberries indoors to make the fruit more widely available in the city state without relying on imports.

Oishii said this week it will focus for now on local markets in northern New Jersey and New York, but also plans to build more farms in other cities and even countries. 

Element Farms Plans a New High-Tech Greenhouse Customized for Growing Spinach

Element Farms announced this week its plans to expand its greenhouse operations and build a new, 2.5-acre facility designed specifically to grow baby spinach. This will be the company’s second high-tech farm, the first being a 1.5-acre facility that already grows arugula, lettuces, beet greens, and, of course, spinach. Like the first, the second farm will also be located in Lafayette, New Jersey, according to a press release sent to The Spoon.

Baby spinach is a popular produce type in the U.S. But in many parts of the country, it can only grow outside at certain times (spring and fall), and its delicacy and susceptibility to bacteria and disease make it a prime candidate for local, indoor farms. 

However, growing spinach indoors is actually quite challenging, which is one of the reasons we don’t see more controlled environment agriculture (CEA) companies doing it. In particular, spinach is susceptible to the water-borne pathgen Pythium aphanadermatum, a water mold that attacks the plant roots and causes poor crop quality and crop death.

When we spoke a while back, Element’s CEO Serdar Mizrakci explained that technology allows the company to add another layer of precision control to better aid against water-borne pathogens and other diseases. To that end, Element uses its own proprietary technology to monitor plants, calculate recipes for plant nutrients supplemental lighting, and help spot problems during the grow process. As in other CEA settings, greens are grown without pesticides and meant to serve customers no farther than about a day’s drive away.

The company doesn’t have a lot of competition right now when it comes to spinach, BrightFarms being one notable exception. As technology improves and costs come down for CEA growers, more companies may join the efforts to grow spinach indoors.

Element says its existing farm, located in Lafayette, New Jersey, currently delivers directly to more than 120 retailers, including Key Food, Whole Foods, and e-commerce shops Misfits Market and FreshDirect. When the new farm is up and running, Element will be on track to ship 2 million pounds of greens per year. 

The new farm is slated to open later in 2021. Additional farms are planned for other U.S. markets and will be announced “in the coming year.”

Square Roots Unveils Its Third Modular Indoor Farm, Built in Just 3 Months

Controlled environment agriculture (CEA) company Square Roots today unveiled its newest indoor farm. The facility is located in Grand Rapids, Michigan and growing micro-greens to serve grocery stores, e-commerce platforms, and restaurants in the Great Lakes region. Produce will be available “in the coming weeks,” according to a press release sent to The Spoon. 

Square Roots broke ground on the farm in December of 2020 and planted the first seeds just three months later, in March of this year. The company’s ability to move this quickly can be largely attributed to the types of farms it builds, which company cofounder and CEO Tobias Peggs calls “prefabricated modular farms.” For Square Roots and others, these are typically built inside of upcycled shipping containers (though Peggs suggested over a call this week that the setup could live in any properly insulated space, not just a container). As the word “modular” suggests, farming units can be added or subtracted based on the needs of the individual farm.

The aim he and company cofounder Kimball Musk share is to be able to build a farm quickly in response to demand for local produce in a given area. The new farm in Michigan, for example, is partly in response to the increase in demand for local produce across the Midwest during the Covid-19 pandemic. And it doesn’t get much more local than placing the farm in the same zip code as its customers, as Peggs said is the case here. 

The Michigan farm also shares a location with U.S. food distributor Gordon Food Service, with whom Square Roots has an ongoing partnership. The companies first joined forces in 2019 and plan to build more of these these co-located farms across the country.

One bonus of the prefabricated modular model versus something like a large plant factory (a la Plenty or AeroFarms) is that the size of the farm can be scaled up or down to meet demand relatively quickly by adding or subtracting containers. Each container is its own grow environment, with temperature and lighting adjusted to meet the needs of a specific crop.   

All containers are cloud-connected and run by a combination of human growers and Square Roots in-house software called The Square Roots Farmer Toolbelt. The latter guides farmers through day-to-day activities and collects data that can then be analyzed to improve yield, taste, and texture in addition to growing methods.

As far as competition goes, Berlin, Germany-based InFarm is probably the most similar operation to Square Roots right now. However, InFarm’s modular concept was only announced this year, and at last check is only slated for one U.S. location right now.

For now, the new farm is growing microgreens and herbs, as is the case with other Square Roots farms. Peggs said during our talk that growing other produce types, whether it be strawberries or root vegetables, is less a question of capability these days and one that’s more about economics. At the risk of oversimplifying the matter, is costs more money to grow denser vegetables, like a turnip, compared to something like basil.

That said, Square Roots mentioned in today’s press release that it has grown over 200 varieties of produce so far, including some of those denser varieties like root vegetables. 

AeroFarms Partners With Hortifrut to Grow Blueberries, Caneberries Via Vertical Farming

Vertical farming company AeroFarms this week announced it a partnership with Chile-based berry producer and distributor Hortifrut. Via the multi-year partnership, the companies will research and develop blueberry and caneberry production in controlled environment agriculture (CEA) settings, including vertical farms.

Up to now, AeroFarms has been known primarily for growing leafy greens and herbs inside its commercial-scale vertical farms on the east coast. Blueberries and caneberries (blackberries, raspberries, etc.) are both a departure from the usual from AeroFarms, and somewhat unique in the vertical farming space, where strawberries are more common. 

According to a press release, the first phase of the partnership between the two companies is underway, and blueberry plants will arrive at AeroFarms’ New Jersey facility this spring. Hortifrut has bred “compact blueberry plants ideal for vertical farming,” while AeroFarms has adjusted its proprietary tech system for berry production. 

While the companies aim to commercialize the process of growing these berries indoors, there is not yet any kind of timeframe as to when we might see vertically grown blueberries or caneberries on store shelves. Rather, this first phase of the partnership appears to be more about experimenting with Hortifrut berries in an indoor setting and assessing how feasible it is to grow such foods via CEA.

Fruit on the vertical farm is still the exception rather than the rule when it comes to the crops companies grow. As noted above, strawberries are more common at this point, with companies like SinGrow and Oishii growing high-end versions of the berry and Plenty partnering with Driscoll’s on the west coast. 

AeroFarms’ news comes just days after the company announced it will go public via a merger with special purpose acquisition company Spring Valley Acquisition Corp.

AeroFarms to Go Public Via SPAC Deal

Large-scale vertical farming company AeroFarms announced today it will go public via a merger with special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) Spring Valley Acquisition Corp. Once the deal goes through, AeroFarms will become publicly traded on the Nasdaq under the ARFM ticker symbol. The combined company is expected to have an estimated equity value of about $1.2 billion.

Certified B Corporation AeroFarms also noted that the deal will help to fund things like expanding retail distribution, constructing additional farms, and further developing the technology that powers the company’s growing operations. 

Headquartered in Newark, New Jersey, AeroFarms grows leafy greens via indoor vertical farms that rely on LED light recipes, hydroponics, and software to grow plants. The company, which has raised $238 million to date, currently distributes products in the New York Metro Area as well as online via Whole Foods, FreshDirect, AmazonFresh, and Shop Rite.

The announcement comes not long after another controlled-environment agriculture company, AppHarvest, also went public via SPAC earlier this year. AppHarvest (also a Certified B Corp) completed a merger with Novus Capital Corp. and began trading on the Nasdaq on February 1. Its high-tech greenhouse model differs considerably from AeroFarms in terms of both the facility and the crops, but the end goal is similar — get pesticide-free, more locally grown produce to more people.

IPOs aside, it has been a busy month for the indoor farming space, with vertical farms Plenty and Bowery both expanding their retail footprint, Sweden’s Grönska raising $2.4 million, and Bablyon Microfarms closing a $3 million seed round.

AeroFarms said today that the merger has been approved by the Boards of Directors of both it and Spring Valley, and now just needs the approval of Spring Valley shareholders.  

NASA Harvest Partners with CropX to Combine Soil Monitoring and Satellite Data

NASA’s Food Security and Agriculture Program, NASA Harvest, and soil analytics company CropX announced a partnership today that will provide insights into soil conditions around the planet to support more sustainable agriculture with higher yields.

Based in Tel Aviv, Israel, the CropX platform combines hardware sensors that are screwed into the ground with a cloud-based analytics platform. The combined hardware and software analyzes soil moisture, temperature and salinity to help farmers better manage watering and fertilizer application.

The partnership with NASA Harvest will combine CropX’s earthbound technology with NASA’s network of Earth-observing satellites. By marrying underground data with aerial imagery and information, NASA Harvest plans to provide new insights around soil health to governments and farmers around the world.

According to a press release emailed to The Spoon, NASA has already deployed CropX technology across a group of alfalfa farms in Arizona. Over a year-long pilot program that integrates NASA satellite data and synthetic aperture radar, NASA Harvest will be able to establish parameters for water usage estimates, yield prediction, soil quality and land usage assessment based on crop growing cycles.

The race is on to figure out how the world will sustainably feed 9 billion people by the year 2050. Thankfully there are a number of startups tackling the problem from a number of different angles. Companies like Apeel are helping extend the shelf life of products. There is an entire sector of cell-based meat startups working to feed us cultured protein instead of devoting so many resources to raising animals. And partnerships like the one between CropX and NASA Harvest can help spur the adoption of more precision agriculture to reduce waste in the growing process.

Bowery Farming Brings Its Vertically Grown Greens to Albertsons Stores

Indoor ag company Bowery Farming announced today a partnership with Albertsons that will put Bowery’s vertically grown greens into hundreds of grocery stores. From today, Bowery produce is available at an initial 275 Albertsons-owned Safeway and Acme stores in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic regions of the U.S.

To start, Bowery’s most popular products will be available at these stores. That includes a few different lettuce varieties as well as basil. All crops are grown in vertically stacked trays inside Bowery’s commercial-scale farms, which use a hydroponic system and a proprietary software platform that controls conditions inside the farm, such as temperature, humidity, and light intensity.

The system can also, through more advanced automation, detect potential problems with plants before they happen. This in turn can lead to better overall yields and higher-quality food that tastes better for consumers. 

Speaking of that technology. Bowery founder and CEO Irving Fain told me earlier this year that “The system [for] indoor farming that you choose has a direct impact on the crops you’ll be able to grow, on the margins you’ll be able to generate, and on the return profile of the business itself.”

Bowery is also at work on its most technologically advanced farm to-date, which will open in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania later in 2021.  

The company’s retail expansion comes at the same time indoor ag’s presence in mainstream grocery stores is on the uptick. Plenty, which operates commercial-scale vertical farms on the West Coast, just expanded its own Albertsons partnership in California. Kalera has partnerships with Publix stores around the U.S., and InFarm, based in Berlin, Germany, has come stateside in the last year via a deal with Kroger.

A demand for more local, traceable food is one reason for indoor ag’s increased presence in the grocery store. When we spoke, Fain noted that vertical farming can provide a more efficient, reliable way to get fresh produce into the hands of more customers.  

Bowery’s completion of its Pennsylvania farm, which is slated to be the company’s largest to date, will allow for further expansion into grocery stores around the East Coast. 

Eden Green Technology Nabs $12M for Its Vertical Farm-Greenhouse Combo

Vertical farming company Eden Green Technology announced this week it has raised $12 million from existing investment partners and broken ground on a new greenhouse in the Dallas-Ft. Worth area. The new farm is located news next to Eden’s R&D center, and will produce about 500 tons of leafy greens annually, the company said in a press release.

Eden’s approach to controlled-environment agriculture is unusual in that it combines elements of both vertical farming and greenhouse growing. While plants are powered by a vertical hydroponic vine system (see image above), the farm relies largely on the sun for light, rather replicating sunlight with LEDs, as most large-scale vertical farming companies do. Accompanying software, what the company calls its “micro-climate technology,” controls humidity and temperature levels for each plant. 

Besides building a farm in the Dallas-Ft. Worth area, Eden also licenses its farms out as “turnkey” options for food producers, retailers and even whole cities. The 1.5-acre farms can grow a variety of leafy greens and herbs, strawberries, peppers, tomatoes, and cucumbers, among other produce types. Eden says each farm can yield between 11 and 13 harvests each year, depending on produce type. The company manages the construction of each farm as well as staff training and technology customization. 

The vertical farming industry is right now split between commercial-scale farms like Plenty and AeroFarms, and those companies like InFarm or Babylon Microfarms, which are more focused on selling or licensing their hardware and software to other companies.

Eden Green Technology sits somewhere between those two areas, since it produces its own greens but also sells its technology to other organizations. The company’s use of sunlight rather than LEDs is another factor that sets it apart in the vertical farming industry. 

The company said in this week’s press release that it plans to expand its partnerships beyond Texas, to new locations both domestically and internationally. So far, more than 20 of these partnerships are predicted to be in place by 2024.  

Kalera Expands Its Vertical Farm Network to Minnesota

Vertical farming company Kalera today announced its plans to open a commercial growing facility in St. Paul, Minnesota. This is the eighth farm that is either open or in the works for Orlando, Florida-based Kalera. 

For a long time, Kalera primarily served the hospitality industry in Orlando with its HyCube vertical farming facility. The company broke ground on another and bigger location in that city in 2019. At the time, the company planned to focus mainly on the Southeastern region of the U.S.

The pandemic, of course, changed all that. With most restaurants shut down or fulfilling lower order volumes, Kalera pivoted to retail via a partnership with grocery store chain Publix in 2020. The company also started expanding beyond the Southeast U.S. and is now, in terms of geographical footprint, one of the fastest-growing commercial vertical farming companies. 

Kalera’s controlled environment farms use a mix of hydroponics, sensors, LEDs, and some automation to grow a variety of leafy greens. Besides the two facilities in Orlando, the company also operates a farm in Atlanta, which just opened. Facilities in Houston, Denver, Columbus (Ohio), Seattle, and Hawaii are currently under construction. The company says that once all of these farms plus the Minnesota facility are open, Kalera will have a total projected yield of “tens of millions of heads of lettuce per year, or the equivalent of over 1,000 acres of traditional field farms,” according to today’s press release.

Kalera’s announcement comes just days after a slew of other new developments in the controlled environment agriculture space. Last week alone, Babylon Microfarms and Grönska both announced funding rounds and Plenty expanded into new grocery retailers in California. Prior to that GoodLeaf Farms announced plans to expand across Canada and InFarm unveiled its modular commercial-scale farms.

For its part, Kalera also recently acquired Vindara, a company that develops seeds specifically bred for indoor farming environments.  

Babylon MicroFarms Closes $3M Seed Round

Virginia-based Babylon MicroFarms announced this week it has closed a $3 million round of seed funding to expand its controlled-environment farming business. The round was led by previous investors including the Center for Innovative Technology, and also included participation from new investors Hull Street Capital, Venture South, and the CAV Angels Group. 

The round comes on the heels of the company’s recent move to Richmond, Virginia, where the business will now be headquartered. Babylon MicroFarms was previously based in Charlottesville, Virginia, where it was originally started as a University of Virginia project in 2016.

Over time, the company has evolved from producing table-top farming units to fully controlled grow systems it licenses out to foodservice businesses such as cafeterias in hospitals and senior living facilities. The controlled-environment farming units grow a variety of leafy greens and some flowers. Babylon Microfarms remotely monitors the hydroponic system so that foodservice operations need only harvest their crops when the plants are ready.

This model of licensing indoor farms to foodservice operations is one Babylon Microfarms shares with companies like Farm.One and Grönska. However, Babylon’s founders told me last year that the company isn’t “necessarily interested in the hardware aspect going forward.” Teaming up with a hardware manufacturer and providing expertise in software for indoor farms is one potential direction the company could pursue, though no mention of that was made in this week’s press release. 

For now, the company will focus on expanding the licesning of its farm units nationally. Speaking in this week’s press release, Babylon Microfarms CEO Alexander Olesen said that 2021 “is on track to be a year of accelerating growth and major market penetration” through the national distribution of its farms. The company also said that over the next 24 months, it will triple its workforce, exceeding original projections for 2022.