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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

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CES Session: The Future of Farming (Video & Transcript)

The first session we will feature is titled ‘The Future of Farming’, a panel which featured experts on gene-edited crops, molecular farming, and vertical farming.

The session description:

The numerous challenges facing today’s farmers require them to be ever-more-efficient to survive. In this session, we’ll look at how farmers are employing automation, IoT, biotech and more to create the farms of the future.

The panelists for this session included:

  • Vonnie Estes, VP of Innovation, International Fresh Produce Association (Moderator)

  • Haven Baker, Co-Founder, Chief Business Officer at Pairwise

  • Amit Dhingra, CSO | Professor and Department Head, Moolec Science | Texas A&M University

  • Katie Seawell, Chief Commercial Officer, Bowery Farming

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We Talked To Bowery Farming About the Community Impact of Their Indoor Farming Expansion

Back in December, The Spoon reported on Bowery Farming’s plans to build a new, indoor farm in Bethlehem, Pa. The New York-based company already runs two commercial farms in the Mid-Atlantic region, plus two R&D facilities and a plant science innovation hub in New Jersey.

Bowery plans to open the Bethlehem farm sometime this year or in 2022—and meanwhile, they’re expanding in other ways. The company has doubled its revenue this year. Its products are sold in over eight times as many stores as they were last January.

Last week, The Spoon joined Bowery’s Chief Commercial Officer, Katie Seawell, on Zoom to find out how the company is engaging local communities as it expands its operations.

The most obvious way that Bowery’s farms bring value to their communities is by producing nutritious, pesticide-free food. The company expects its new Bethlehem facility to produce about 20 million clamshells of leafy greens and other produce per year. (To grow that volume of food via conventional agriculture, you’d need to use up 5 million square feet of land.)

Seawell attributes some of Bowery’s recent growth to rising consumer interest in locally grown produce and food supply chain issues—both in turn influenced by the COVID-19 pandemic. At the end of the day, she says, the company wants to build a more sustainable, productive farming model that will weather disasters.

“If we can minimize the externalities of climate change, weather events, and other disruptions that you see in the traditional food system, and can create surety of supply in a way that is more sustainable,” says Seawell, “then we can meet the moment, meet the demands of our growing population. That’s the model we’re cracking with indoor vertical farming at Bowery.”

Last year, the USDA declared Bethlehem’s South Side a food desert. The Brown and White, a local newspaper, reported on the abundance of fast food and relative lack of healthy options in the area.

Of course, Bowery’s expansion won’t solve that problem if its products aren’t accessible to locals. Seawell says that the company is taking a multi-pronged approach to boost accessibility as it expands its commercial footprint. First, the team is taking steps to make its products available to consumers across a wide range of retailers—from Whole Foods and independent grocery stores to Walmart and Giant.

“We’re also looking at innovative models for bringing our product to communities,” says Seawell. Bowery donates produce to nonprofit hunger relief organizations, including Maryland Food Bank and Table to Table.

The company has also partnered with D.C. Central Kitchen, a nonprofit that acts as a wholesale partner, reselling Bowery products to local corner stores at reduced rates. Through its Healthy Corners food program, the organization is working on building the infrastructure for corner stores to carry more fresh foods. “It’s a really cool program because it’s not just access to fresh food that these communities need,” says Seawell, “it’s the infrastructure to support fresh food programs.”

Seawell says the company will explore further community partnerships as it expands to Bethlehem and beyond.

The team is also excited about the Bethlehem farm because of the opportunities that it represents for the former industrial powerhouse. Bowery received grant support for the project from the Pennsylvania Department of Community and Economic Development and the Governor’s Action Team. The farm will be part of an economic redevelopment project intended to boost employment and create new opportunities in the area.

The farm will be located at a site that was once home to a steel mill. The tract has been identified as a brownfield (or potentially contaminated) site. “This is land that you could not farm in a traditional sense,” says Seawell. “So what we’re doing is transitioning this non-arable land into a highly productive farm that will serve this community.”

Seawell says Bowery provides entry-level employment opportunities that require no previous agricultural experience. Bowery farms also provide year-round employment, in contrast to conventional farms, which generally have seasonal work cycles.

“We cast a very wide net in terms of who we recruit in the community,” she says. “We look more for a cultural fit than any specific, hard skill set.”

The company is also considering the energy footprint of its new facility. Its existing commercial farms are run using low-impact hydropower. Seawell says the team is currently considering renewable energy strategies for the Bethlehem farm.

Last spring, Bowery raised $300 million in Series C funding, which it will use to accelerate its farming expansion and bring new products to market. Seawell says that as the company considers new sites in the Mid-Atlantic region and beyond, the team will continue to weigh their commercial bases, the availability of untapped talent pools, and sustainability issues.

“We aspire to take this model nationally, and eventually globally,” says Seawell. “So in many ways, the new Bethlehem farm is a milestone for us as we continue to think about a national footprint for Bowery.”

Vertical Farming Company Bowery Raises $300M in Series C Funding

NYC-based vertical farming company Bowery announced today it has raised $300 million in Series C funding from a boatload of investors. Fidelity Management and Research Company led the round, which also saw participation from GV, General Catalyst, GGV Capital, Temasek, Groupe, Artémis, and Amplo and Gaingels. Additional investors included Lewis Hamilton, Chris Paul, Natalie Portman, Justin Timberlake, and José Andrés. The round is one of the largest ever raised by a controlled environment agriculture (CEA) company, and brings Bowery’s total funding to date to $$72 million.

The funds will fuel further development of the proprietary technology setup that powers Bowery’s network of vertical farms. Currently, the company operates two vertical farming facilities, one in New Jersey and one in Maryland, and has a third under construction in Pennsylvania. These are all equipped with the BoweryOS, which the company calls its “central nervous system of the business.” Software, hardware, sensors, computer vision systems, and robotics work together to manage the farms and collect and analyze valuable data on crops that can be used across Bowery’s entire network. 

The company will break ground on additional farms this year. No specific cities or regions have yet been announced.

Bowery will also use its new funds to recruit new talent and branch into crops beyond the leafy greens the company is currently known for. Here, too, the company hasn’t announced specifics. Several companies, including Plenty, Oishii, and Spread, have said they will grow strawberries in the future. AeroFarms is even considering blueberries. Other non-leafy-green crops that have been grown on vertical farms include peppers, tomatoes, flowers, and even potato seedlings. 

Regardless of the crop, Bowery’s larger aim is to transform the food supply chain to grow food closer to the consumers that actually buy it. When we talked earlier this year, company founder and CEO Irving Fain mentioned our evolving food system, and the need for “transparency and traceability in the food system.”

Bowery greens are currently in over 850 grocery stores, including Albertsons. And once the Pennsylvania farm is complete, Bowery will be able to serve about 50 million people within a 200-mile radius. 

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. 

Bowery’s Founder, Irving Fain, on the Future of Vertical Farming

At one point in the not-so-distant past, vertical farming’s role in our future agricultural system was far from certain. Growing leafy greens in warehouse-like environments controlled by tech seemed like a compelling business, but one that had yet to prove itself either economically or as an important source of food for a growing world population.

That, at least, was a common sentiment Irving Fain, CEO and founder of Bowery, met with when he started his vertical farming company five years ago. “There was a bit of skepticism around it,” he told me over a call recently, suggesting that five years ago, there were a lot more “ifs” than “whens” in terms of vertical farming’s future.

Fain, Bowery, and the entire vertical farming industry get a much warmer reception nowadays. Investment dollars are pouring into the space. Around the world, companies, scientists, and food producers are using the method to not just supply upscale grocery stores with greens but experiment with breeds of produce, feed underserved populations, and grow food in non-arable regions. As Fain suggested when we spoke, the last 12 months seem to have turned those “ifs” into definite “whens.” 

Bowery’s last 12 months also illustrate this change. Fain said that Bowery went from under 100 retail locations about a year ago to nearly 700 right now, and will be in more than 1,000 “in the coming months.” Its produce is in a number of food retailers around the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast, including Whole Foods Market, Giant Food, Stop & Shop, Walmart, and Weis Markets. And in 2020, the company experienced “more than 4x growth” with e-commerce partners.

While the pandemic is responsible for some of this popularity, Fain insists it is not the only reason for the eventful year. “It’s definitely bigger than the pandemic,” he said. “What you’re seeing is a food system that’s evolving and [people have a desire] to see transparency and traceability in the food system.” These, he says, are issues the traditional food supply chain isn’t really able to address right now, hence the opportunity for companies like Bowery, which effectively cut multiple steps out of the supply chain.

Bowery grows its greens (lettuces, herbs, and some custom blends) inside industrial spaces where crops are stacked vertically in trays and fed nutrients and water via a hydroponic system. Technology controls all elements of the farm, from the temperature inside to how much light each plants get. The company currently operates two farms, one in New Jersey and the other in Maryland. A third is planned for Pennsylvania.

Technology, in particular, is something Bowery has big plans for. On top of a retail expansion, Bowery also added some notable personnel to its staff, including Injong Rhee, formerly the Internet of Things VP at Google as well a chief technologist at Samsung. Having such technology chops onboard will be vital in order for Bowery to realize many of its ambitions around advanced automation, which has the potential to optimize many parts of the seed-to-store process for vertically grown greens. 

For example, Bowery’s farms are equipped with sensors and cameras that are constantly collecting data — “billions” of points, according to the company — that can be used to not just observe the current state of plant health but also predict the most optimal growing conditions for each crop. Elements like temperature, humidity levels, nutrient levels, and light intensity can all be adjusted, via the BoweryOS software, to create those optimal conditions. The end result is more consistent crop production, better yields, more flavorful food, and, ideally, a better nutritional profile for the greens compared to what conventional produce offers.

The system can also, through automation and AI, detect problems with plants. In a recent interview with Venture Beat, Bowery Chief Science Officer Henry Sztul used the example of butterhead lettuce yellowing at the edges during growth. Bowery’s system is technologically advanced enough at this point that it is starting to understand the conditions that create those yellowing edges. That foreknowledge, in turn, will allow growers to adjust the crop “recipe” (see above mixture of lights, temperature, etc.) to avoid the problem.

It took Bowery years to get to this point in terms of what its technology is capable of doing. “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,” said Fain. “And so being incredibly intentional and thoughtful about what technology you use is something we spent a lot of time on because it has an extraordinarily important economic impact.”

On a less technically complex note, controlled ag from Bowery and others also goes some way towards reinventing the supply food chain. Rather than greens being harvested in, say, Mexico and shipped via a complex distribution process all the way to Baltimore, they are packaged up at the farm and distributed to nearby retailers, usually those within a day’s drive “It is much more sustainable. It is much more efficient, and it’s more reliable, and those things have been important to consumers long before COVID,” said Fain.

Bowery will continue to innovate on both the technology and supply side of its business, as well as with the food itself. The company just launched a new specialty product line that will experiment with different flavors of greens and change frequently.

In terms of tech, Bowery’s latest farm, currently being built in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, will incorporate even more automation than the company’s two existing farms. That location is slated to open later in 2021. When it does, Bowery will be capable of serving nearly 50 million people within a 200-mile radius.

The company hopes to expand its geographic reach much wider some day, building farms near most major U.S. cities and beyond. Given the increased confidence in the vertical farming sector as a whole, now looks to be the optimal time to move towards those ambitions. 

Bowery Announces Its ‘Most Technologically Advanced’ Indoor Farm

Controlled-environment agriculture company Bowery is set to open its largest indoor farm to date. The new facility will be located in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, turning a non-arable industrial site into a farm that will grow leafy greens throughout the year.

A spokesperson for Bowery said that the company does not disclose actual square footage of its farms, but that it would be able to serve nearly 50 million people within a 200-mile radius. 

The Bethlehem facility joins Bowery’s roster of farms located in Kearny New Jersey and Nottingham, Maryland. All farms use the hydroponic method for growing. Plants are set in vertically stacked trays and fed a nutrient-enriched water solution that gets recirculated continuously. On the software side, Bowery has a proprietary system, BoweryOS, that monitors plant growth from seed.

Bowery says its Bethlehem facility will be its “most technologically advanced commercial farm yet.” Importantly, it will leverage billions of data points collected from Bowery farms over the last five years to boost this new farms “intelligence” when monitoring plant growth and health.

Other advances include energy-saving LED lighting, more automation of the growing process through BoweryOS, and some innovations in water circulation. The latter will come in the form of what Bowery calls “a comprehensive water transpiration system.” Transpiration is the release of water from plant leaves; Bowery’s system will capture and re-use this water, with the goal of reclaiming “nearly all” of the water used in the growing process.

For the new facility, Bowery is working with the Pennsylvania Department of Community and Economic Development and the Governor’s Action Team, both through a Pennsylvania First grant. The farm is expected to create year-round jobs for the area’s farming community.

The news caps off what’s been a big year for Bowery in terms of company growth. Since January 2020, the company expanded its retail presence from 100 brick-and-mortar stores to 680, and said it has seen more than 600 percent growth in stores and doubled its e-commerce presence.

According to Bowery’s spokesperson, Covid was definitely “an accelerator” for some of this growth, though some of that growth is also due to demand for more local, traceable food grown without pesticides — a trend that predates the pandemic. The new farm will help the company further meet this demand, along with advancing the technology component of the vertical farming sector. 

This Startup Is Using AI to Bring “Post-Organic” Farming to the (Urban) Masses

Kale: great for your health, not so great for the tastebuds. Sometimes I wonder if people eat it because they actually like the taste or because it’s so trendy.

That issue may soon become irrelevant, however, thanks a company called Bowery, which is using artificial intelligence (AI) to tweak crops’ color, texture, and even taste.

Billing itself as “The Modern Farming Company,” the New Jersey-based indoor-farming startup will soon open a second facility it says will be the most technologically sophisticated in the world. Sounds like a brazen claim, until you look at what Bowery actually has cooking, er, farming, at its forthcoming facility.

Bowery’s “brains” are found in its propriety system called FarmOS. Using vision systems and machine learning, FarmOS monitors the crops 24/7, collecting data about water flow, light levels, temperature, and humidity. Bowery growers can then use the data to make adjustments to the environment, which will impact color, texture, and taste. The system also alerts growers when plants are ready for harvest.

All of those elements and more roll up into what Bowery founder Irving Fain recently called “post-organic produce”—Bowery commands the entire process of raising produce, from seed to store, and grows crops in a fully controlled environment that doesn’t have to rely on chemicals, pesticide, or human intuition to ensure quality of crops. Sure, the name’s a little much, but the concept grows more promising each year, thanks to factors like cheaper LED lighting, better data analytics, and concepts like vertical farming, which is predicted to be worth $13 billion by 2024.

And while they’re not all using the “post-organic” label, there are plenty of others exploring the possibilities of farming in fully controlled, indoor environments.

Also in New Jersey, AeroFarms has a 70,000-square-foot facility, where it grows bok choi, arugula, watercress, and other greens, including kale. The company closed a $40 million Series D funding round at the end of 2017, bringing in IKEA Group and Momofuku’s David Chang as additional backers.

Meanwhile, indoor farming startups abound in Alaska, where growing produce outside is pretty much impossible in the depths of winter and anything shipped is often close to spoiled upon delivery. Alaska Natural Organics operates a 5,000-square-foot farm that grows butter lettuce and basil. Vertical Harvest Hydroponics designs systems that can be grown inside shipping containers and distributed across the state, including hard-to-reach areas. Both companies are based in Anchorage.

And in Kyoto, Japan, a “vegetable factory” is run by robots and grows 30,000 heads of lettuce per day. The company, Spread, says that it recycles 98 percent of its water and, because the factory is sealed, doesn’t have to rely on pesticides or chemicals.

What sets Bowery somewhat apart—for now, at least—is that it has gone beyond simply monitoring water supply and temperature with its ability to adjust things like taste, texture, and even blemishes on produce. With the U.S. alone throwing out about 50 percent of produce grown annually, a proprietary system like Bowery’s could seriously be leading the way in terms of indoor farming’s impact on overall agriculture.