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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

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Three Tech Trends Helping To Save Water in the Food Industry

Between disappearing glaciers and groundwater and intensifying droughts, water supply pressure is on the rise in many regions, creating a great need to use water more efficiently.

The Spoon took a look at emerging technologies that are driving smarter use on farmlands and in food processing facilities. Here are some key innovations that could help the food system adapt to a water-depleted world:


Precision irrigation

Crop irrigation accounts for about 70% of water use worldwide, according to the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development. High-tech monitoring systems can help to ensure that irrigation water is being used as efficiently as possible.

California-based startup Ceres Imaging company captures aerial images of farmers’ fields, and then runs them through crop-specific data models to analyze plant health. Ceres can get an idea of how much water is in the soil using color infrared imaging — and can also use its proprietary Water Stress Index to detect irrigation issues. CropX of Israel takes a different approach, using a network of soil sensors to analyze moisture and other conditions.

Updated irrigation systems are also helping farmers to save water. Drip irrigation involves laying “drip lines” of tubing along crop rows. The drip lines are fitted with water drippers at intervals to apply a specific amount of water to each individual plant.

Wastewater management

At the processing stage, many plants consume large quantities of water to perform cleaning operations. Businesses must then decide what to do with the resulting wastewater, most of which flows back out into the environment.

A handful of startups are developing high-tech systems that help businesses to find secondary uses for that wastewater. California-based startup Aquacycl has developed a microbial fuel cell (powered by bacteria) that both treats wastewater and generates electricity. According to a Forbes interview with company CEO Orianna Bretschger, the system removes 70% of suspended solids and high levels of carbon and sulfur from wastewater — and the cleaner, resulting water can be recycled for use in cooling processes and other industrial operations.

Indoor farming

Indoor farming systems allow growers greater control over evaporation and soil drainage. Growers can also recycle irrigation water using recirculating systems; and can precisely control the amount of water that is applied to each plant using automation systems. The budding industry also cuts water use at the produce processing stage: There’s no need for triple-washing, as indoor-farmed produce is grown in a clean and controlled environment.

So it’s no wonder that many indoor farming companies boast high rates of water savings. Gotham Greens, Freshbox Farms, and Infarm all estimate that their systems use 95% less water than conventional agriculture to grow the same amount of produce.

The U.S. Forest Service estimates that 50 years from now, about half of freshwater basins in the country will be unable to meet monthly water demand. Annual drought conditions as well as concerns about a water-scarce future are likely to continue driving tech innovation in the space. Food growers and producers alike may also find that increased transparency around water-saving practices appeal to consumers who are looking for sustainable options.

Soli Organic Announces $120 Million in New Financing to Expand Indoor Soil-Based Farms

Virginia-based indoor growing company Soli Organic announced last week that it has entered a $120 million financing arrangement with real estate firm Decennial Group. This new partnership will help the company in its plans to expand with eight new farms, each with the capacity to grow 5 million pounds of produce per year.

Soli was founded in 1989 as Shenandoah Growers, a conventional agriculture company based in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley region. The Decennial Group partnership and expansion is an important milestone in the company’s transition to all-indoor production.

While many controlled environment agriculture companies are using hydroponic and aeroponic technologies to facilitate indoor growth, Soli is using a soil-based system. This August, that proprietary technology won the Agtech Breakthrough award for Sunless Production System of the Year.

The company says that its soil-based, LED-powered approach has helped it to achieve lower unit costs for organic produce than either conventional farming or other indoor growing methods. One of the big selling points for controlled environment agriculture is that the developing body of technologies could make healthy food more accessible to all—and Soli’s success in bringing down costs suggests that the industry may be able to keep that promise.

Using its soil-based system, Soli is focusing on minimizing water and energy use. “Our organic soil, 95% of which is recycled back into our system after use, is an ideal growing medium for crops due to its slow release of water, with crops controlling uptake based on their need,” a company representative told The Spoon via email. “As a reflection of our ‘biology first’ philosophy, we are also controlling environmental factors, such as leaf temperature, relative humidity, CO2 and light, to optimize the plants’ efficiency in water uptake.”

The company is also working to optimize its LED lighting systems to conserve energy, and using wind and solar power at some locations.

Soli has already broken ground on its first new construction, which will be located in Anderson County, S.C. The company expects the facility to be operational by the second quarter of 2022, and to create 50 local jobs. The locations of the other facilities have yet to be announced.

The company has also been taking steps to boost the commercial reach of its products (which include herbs, leafy greens, and microgreens) by staffing its c-suite with executives from big-name food brands. In June, former Starbucks CMO Matthew Ryan stepped up as the company’s new CEO, while former Postmates SVP Mike Buckley became CFO.

“My career has been shaped and defined by innovative, market-leading companies. Here, the opportunity for growth could be even greater, as Shenandoah Growers is uniquely positioned to deliver against the converging demand for affordable, high-quality and organic produce, and the need to grow it sustainably and reliably,” said Ryan in a press release on the leadership changes.

It’ll be interesting to see how Soli’s combination of proprietary growing technology, legacy agriculture background, and big corporate leadership affects the company’s transition to all-indoor growing—and how soil-based indoor farming will stack up against other methods in terms of environmental footprint and economic efficiency.

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.

Here’s Why Future Cattle Farmers and Fishermen May Work at an Office Park or Abandoned Mall

As more and more companies in the cell-based meat space migrate from prototype to full pilot production phase, one of the questions that we need to start thinking about is how exactly all this meat will be made at scale.

Sure, scaled production is likely 10 years out for many of these companies, but the reality is re-configuring an industry as big and significant as meat, poultry or fish production will be a herculean task, so it’s worth starting the conversation now.

One of the futuristic visions I keep hearing about is the idea of “meat breweries“, where buildings host giant bioreactors that grow cultured meat.

It’s a weird concept now, but in fifteen years time there’s a good chance we’ll need meat breweries sprinkled throughout the country (and globe) if we plan to get anywhere near the volume of production where cell-based meat can account for 35% of all meat consumed predicted by consulting firm AT Kearney by 2045.

If we’re going to use the brewery concept as a model to frame the conversation, it’s worth comparing the idea of meat “brewing” to that of traditional beer brewing market and ask: will meat breweries be something akin to big high-production beer breweries like those of Anheuser-Busch, producing a bunch of meat centrally and shipping around the country?

Or, alternatively, will meat brewing be something closer to the microbrewery model where meat is made city-by-city for consumption within a hundred mile radius?

My best guess based on conversations with early entrepreneurs in this space is the meat-brewing production model will be much closer to how one makes my favorite local IPA to than, say, Budweiser. In other words: There will be lots of meat breweries around the country and around the world, producing cell-based meat to be consumed locally.

So where will these meat breweries be built? The reality is that while cell-based meat production can certainly be done in a building built on farmland (and I definitely think livestock farmers should consider such a thing), the reality is that meat brewing can and will be done just about anywhere where there is space. Space like in old factories, warehouses, empty office parks and even restaurants. Just as with today’s brewpubs, you can even envision some restaurants that make their meat on site in the future.

And then there’s empty shopping malls and abandoned retail spaces. Retail real estate demand is shrinking quickly and likely won’t come back as more people buy online and work remotely. We’ve already seen some empty retail locations turned into vertical farms, so why not think about turning these spaces into the meat farms of the future?

No matter where we decide to put these future cell-based meat, poultry and fish production facilities, chances are we will need a lot of them. Those developers, entrepreneurs and city planners that start envisioning a future now that includes distributed cell-based meat production could help us usher in the cultured meat farmers and fishermen of the future.

Sensei Ag Uses AI Platform and Hydroponic Technology to Grow Food

As the world’s population inches towards its estimated 10 billion people by 2050, finding more, not to mention more sustainable, ways to feed people becomes more and more important. High-tech, indoor agriculture is one solution getting a lot of attention lately, and recently, a new company joined the fast-growing sector. Sensei Ag is the brainchild of Oracle’s Larry Ellison and scientist Dr. David Agus, and the company’s goal is to grow more greens using hydroponics and AI.

Based on the small Hawaiian island of Lāna’i, Sensei Ag has built a 100,000 sq. ft. hydroponic pilot greenhouse that is expected to grow 1 million pounds of food per year. I spoke with Sensei Ag CEO Sonia Lo by phone this week, and she described the company as an integrated solution to indoor farming that uses the best practices in computer vision, germination, and seeding to optimize indoor growing.

I asked Lo about how the company incorporates AI into their greenhouses. She said that their AI platform will act as a data engine that harnesses global grower knowledge, and will create an algorithm for the best-practices in indoor growing. She did not go into the specifics of their platform, but did mention that this would be made available to other growers, and it would be embedded into each part of their agricultural system. Sensei Ag also uses advanced cameras within their greenhouses to identify pests, pathogens, plant health, and uneven growth in crops. The company’s goal is to enable platforms within the greenhouse to make decisions on growing food autonomous of human intervention.

The COVID-19 pandemic, climate change, and a growing population has forced us to consider the possibility of global food insecurity. In response, companies like Phytoponics, Element Farms, and Gotham Greens all operate indoor farms that use hydroponic techniques to grow leafy greens. Meanwhile, companies like Verdeat, Rise Gardens, and Seedo offer at-home vertical farming products that allow you to grow leafy greens in your living room. 

Sensei Ag grows cherry tomatoes, basil, and butter lettuce, and Lo said that they will definitely be expanding the crops they grow. They are currently scouting for a location in California or Nevada for their flagship farm, which will be used as a template for rolling out future farms. 

Russian Digital Ag Marketplace Agro.Club Raises $1.5 Million

While North America and Western Europe have seen fairly strong adoption of digital marketplaces by farmers and their buyers, the Russian market has lagged a little behind when it comes to digital transformation.

But Agro.Club hopes to change that and, according to a report from Agfunder, the Russia-based digital marketplace just raised a $1.5 million seed round to help them do so.

According to the report, it looks like they’ve already made good progress since they started the company just under two years ago. From Agfunder:

Since launching in Russia in August 2018, the self-described fintech startup said that 20% of farmers in the region signed up for the service within 18 months leading to millions of euros in transactions. Over 4,000 grain companies have signed on to the platform and Agro.Club reports agreements with multinationals like Cargill, Bayer, and EuroChem.

While Agro.Club allows farmers to connect with buyers, it also has other features:

(AgroClub) allows users to monitor grain prices with automated logistics, obtain analytics, trade grain, obtain ag inputs, receive weather forecasts for specific fields, and share best practices with other farmers. Users can also seek advice from experts.

Digital marketplaces had already been a hot vector for investment, with startups like WeFarm and Indigo Agriculture raising rounds in the last year and a half or so. Now, with the pandemic disrupting many farmer’s traditional supply chains, we might see an even greater interest in these types of markets as farmers look to accelerate their digital transformation.

Steward is a Crowdfunding Platform for Small, Sustainable Farms

During this pandemic consumers have been trying to shop from local farms more than ever. And yet these farms — small, family-owned operations — are having a tough time scaling up and pivoting to serve increased demand from new sales channels.

One thing that might help is if they had easier access to funding. An online platform called Steward is trying to help sustainable farms attract more capital. Steward lets individuals invest in pre-vetted local farms via its website. The company also recently launched new software to allow farmers to sell directly to consumers and even raise funds for projects, like building a new barn or expanding CSAs.

Dan Miller, the CEO and founder of Steward, told me over the phone recently that he got the idea for his company after he heard from lots of individuals who wanted to support sustainable local food systems, but weren’t sure exactly how. “There were way too many intermediaries,” he said. 

Steward funded its first farm, an urban farm in Detroit, in 2017. Since then they’ve funded 15 more farms with a total of $3 million. Over 50 farms also use Steward’s software for their own fundraising ventures. 

“Funding is hard to come by,” said Miller. “Traditional [investment] sources are focused on big commodity farmers, and sustainable farmers are often dismissed as not serious enterprises.” The reality, he argues, is that if farmers get access to the capital they need they can grow enormously.

On the flip side, it’s also hard for individuals to figure out how to invest in farms. Miller said that the business is “heavily regulated,” and that Steward simplifies the process. He told me that the majority of their investors are individuals who go in for a few hundred to thousand dollars.

Photo courtesy of Steward

Right now, individuals have two ways to invest through Steward. They can either invest in the Steward Farm Trust, which is a portfolio of loans picked by the Steward team. They receive interest payments from the loans of 8 to 10 percent. People can also look through the farms on Steward’s platform and invest individually, but Miller said that’s trickier because it involves regulatory hurdles (read: is probably not for the casual investor).

Steward makes money by charging farmers a 2 percent origination fee for investment, and collecting a 1 percent servicing fee yearly from investors. They also make money from the SaaS side of the business, which costs $95 per month. Thus far Steward is self-funded.

COVID is upending the entire food system and prompting consumers to examine where their food comes from in a way they might not have pre-pandemic. According to Miller, sustainable farms are benefiting from this emphasis on transparency. “We’ve seen boosted sales on all of the farms that we support,” he said.

To adapt to this spike in sales, small farmers are facing new challenges. They need to set up e-commerce sites to fulfill new demand, and figure out how to sell produce now that restaurant sales are down.

“They need capital to up their production,” Miller told me. He hopes that Steward will be able to provide some of that capital to help sustainable farms continue to grow, in COVID and beyond.

Like Local Farms? You Better Step Up Now or They’re Going to Disappear

Certain food sources, like e-commerce grocery sites and meal kit companies, are seeing a boost in sales in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. At the same time, many parts of the world are shuttering farmers markets and restaurants, eliminating key revenue sources for local farmers. So how can those farmers survive in our new coronavirus reality?

Unfortunately, it won’t be easy. Small farmers make a significant chunk of their money from these markets or selling to restaurants — which, as you’ve probably noticed, are also struggling. The numbers are discouraging: Civil Eats pointed to an analysis of the impacts of COVID-19, predicting a $689 million decline in sales from March to May 2020 for farmers who sell at local markets. It’s especially tricky for farmers who sell perishable goods, like eggs and produce, which might go bad while their sales channels are blocked.

Some farmers and supporters are fighting back by making a petition to designate farmers markets in areas like Seattle, where they’ve been shut down, as essential. I think that makes sense. People are already shopping shoulder-to-shoulder in grocery stores, way closer together than six feet. Arguably, it’s less dangerous from a public health standpoint for them to shop outside in the open air?

One solution for farmers could be to move towards selling more CSAs, or Community Supported Agriculture. With a CSA, individuals can buy a share in a farm’s output, which is delivered either to their door or a pick-up point, usually once a week. It’s a way to continue to get local produce and support farmers without having to risk cross-contamination in a farmers market, if those are even still available. Clearly people are interested — according to Yelp, deliveries of CSAs have gone up 405 percent in March.

Certain online platforms are also facilitating online sale of local foods. MilkRun in Portland, Oregon, for example, is an online marketplace connecting people with local farms in their area. MilkRun’s CEO and Founder Julia Niiro told me that the company’s orders have increased more than 6 times since the start of the crisis with “no signs of them slowing down” as farmers markets close. Even if you aren’t in the Portland area, Niiro is urging diners to buy from local farmers wherever they can. “If you want to be able to get beautiful, local food at any restaurant after this crisis is over, you need to buy directly from small farmers now,” she told me.

Restaurants are also thinking of creative ways to support farmers. Naked Farmer in Tampa Bay, Florida, which was slated to open its doors this April, has instead pivoted to open a digital farmers market. People can order locally-sourced foods through either the Naked Farmer website or UberEats, and can get their orders at a pick-up zone or via delivery. In Seattle, Eric Rivera, who’s been especially innovative in the face of COVID-19, is partnering with local farmers to sell bags of locally grown vegetables for pickup at his restaurant. Diners can also add it onto their delivery order from his restaurant, Addo.

Some existing online farm-to-diner sites are struggling to keep up with the sudden explosion in demand. UK-based platform Farmdrop, a service that delivers food from farmers to Brits’ doorsteps, has had to limit its drop-off days. When I checked the site earlier today, I saw a note that they are “at capacity and unable to take any further orders for the current days available,” but would be opening new slots soon. In the U.S., local farmed food delivery service Hungry Harvest has also had to pause new signups due to an increase in orders.

That’s an encouraging sign that people want to support local farmers and buy their goods. It also shows that we need more services connecting consumers to farmers and facilitating purchases and delivery. And soon.

Small farmers are already struggling to survive for a myriad of reasons — if we don’t find ways to sell their produce, or give them a significant bailout, we could be looking at a future with significantly fewer farmers markets and locally-grown food. And that’s not a future I want to eat in.

Will People Eat More Spinach if It’s Red? The USDA Thinks So.

Spinach consumption dropped significantly after an E. Coli outbreak in 2006, from 2.3 pounds per American to 1.6 pounds, and has remained flat since, according to the USDA. Now, a scientist at the agency hopes to boost the leafy vegetable’s place in our diet by introducing USDA Red, “the world’s first true red spinach variety.”

“A true red spinach like USDA Red will bring excitement to the spinach market and could help attract people back to eating spinach,” Agricultural Research Service geneticist Beiquan Mou, who developed the new variety, said in a press release.

But could changing the color of spinach really make it more desirable? There’s some science to back up Mou’s hypothesis. According to a 2016 study from International School of Advanced Studies, humans associate the color red with calorie-dense foods. “The redder an unprocessed food is, the more likely it is to be nutritious, while green foods tend to be low in calories,” said SISSA researcher Francesco Foroni.

The new spinach variety is the result of traditional breeding, with the color derived from betacyanin, the red pigment found in plants such as beetroot. The USDA said that betacyanin allows USDA Red to have an antioxidant capacity that’s up to 53 percent higher than other spinach varieties, which could help prevent sickness, inflammation and cancer.

We often forget, but almost all of the fruits and vegetables we enjoy today are the products of genetic breeding. For example, corn used to be 10 times smaller, hard and tasted like potato, Vox reports, while watermelon had also been significantly smaller and bitter. Carrots can be found in many colors, but through selective breeding the root vegetable is mostly found in orange. Earlier this decade, a black tomato breed called Indigo Rose debuted.

The USDA said that it’s seeking a partner to license production of red spinach seeds for the market. Until then, you’ll just have to make due with green spinach, or leaf it alone (not sorry).

Bee Vectoring Technologies Gets EPA Approval for its Bee-Delivered Fungicide

Bee Vectoring Technologies (BVT), a Toronto-based startup that uses bees to deliver pesticides, got a nice regulatory boost this week when the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) approved the company’s fungicide for use on commercial crops. This also marks the first time the EPA has approved any product for delivery by bees.

Clonostachys rosea CR-7, which is sold under the name Vectorite, is an organic fungicide that is labeled for use on strawberries, blueberries, sunflowers and almonds. It is a powder that is held in trays that sit outside commercial beehives. As we wrote last year, when bees exit the hive, the powder, which BVT says is not harmful to bees, gets on their feet. As the bees land on a plant and shake a flower to release pollen, the fungicide is dropped. This surgical type of delivery can give farmers more precise pesticide application methods than they might get with broad spraying.

I spoke with Ashish Malik, President and CEO of BVT, who explained that CR-7 is derived from a micro-organism found in soil around the world. BVT has isolated a particular strain that can colonize plant tissue quickly and helps fight of botrytis in fruit, which manifests as a fuzzy grey mold.

BVT’s tray holds the CR-7 for bees to walk on as they leave the hive.

“We have a number of studies and results from trials and every single trial we’ve done we’ve shown a positive effect, 20 – 25 percent better yields in strawberries,” Malik said. The results were even higher with blueberries, according to BVT press materials sent to The Spoon that said there was a 77 percent bump in fruit yield with CR-7 as well as a 50 percent gain in the number of marketable berries.

In addition to better yields, Malik said that there is early evidence that BVTs fungicide can help keep strawberries fresher longer, though he was insistent that more trials needed to be conducted before they made that claim official. If those early freshness results are borne out with further testing, it’s not hard to imagine CR-7 being used in conjunction with other startups like AgShift and Apeel in fighting food waste. CR-7 could prolong food freshness while AgShift helps route food to locations based on freshness, and Apeel would extend that freshness even longer. All of this is in theory, anyway.

Up until now, BVT has been in testing with university researchers as well as some farm demonstrations. With the EPA approval, BVT now has license to operate CR-7 as a biological fungicide commercially. “This gives us credibility in the eyes of US grower, but also outside the US,” said Malik.

Though BVT is small, it is already listed on the Toronto stock exchange. As the company looks to scale up production, Malik said it would raise the money to do so by issuing more common stock. With the EPA approval, the buzz on BVT might just be starting.

Agerris Raises $6.5M for its Ag Tech Robotics and AI Platform

Agerris, an Australia-based robotics and AI platform for agriculture, announced over the weekend that it has raised $6.5 million (AUSD) in seed funding from Uniseed, Carthona Capital and BridgeLane Group.

The startup was founded by Professor Salah Sukarrieh and began as research at the Australian Centre for Field Robotics at the University of Sydney (which is also a partner in Uniseed). From the looks of it, Agerris is building a modular robotics and AI platform that has broad applications for both plant and livestock farmers.

According to a University of Sydney news post, Agerris has two main products. The “Swagbot” can autonomously monitor and identify weed issues, detect food and crops through computer vision, as well as herd livestock. Agerris'”Digital Farmhand” is a lower cost robot platform to help row and tree crop farmers manage crop health and yields.

Tree Crop Demo - Farmhand and Swagbot

Agerris will begin trials in Australia before attempting to expand to Southeast Asia and countries in the South Pacific over the next year.

AgTech presents a big opportunity for robotics as the world’s farms will need to increase production to keep up with a growing global population, and robots can do much of the hard, manual labor that comes with farming. Adding to that pressure currently here in the U.S., farms are facing a labor shortage, creating even more need for automation in the fields.

Agerris seems similar to Pennsylvania-based Augean Robotics, which scored its own seed funding last week. Augean builds the Burro, a squat, rugged, wheeled robot meant to haul gear and crops around a farm. But the Burro is also a broader platform, upon which Augean will offer additional ag-specific capabilities such as weed detection, targeted spraying and more.

If you are interested in how robotics will change the meal journey, be sure to come to our ArticulATE food robot and automation summit next week in San Francisco. Tickets are almost gone, so get yours today!

Sweetgreen Connects Schools With Fresher Foods By Emphasizing Choice

Imagine being able to vote on your school cafeteria’s lunch options each week. Even in the ’80s, I doubt many of us would have chosen soggy fries and cardboard-like pizza. But we probably wouldn’t have chosen vegetables, either.

Fast-casual salad chain Sweetgreen wants to change kids’ attitudes about healthy meals by introducing them in a way that educates students about the importance of fresh food while still giving them choice over what they’re eating. To do so, the Washington, D.C.-based company has partnered with non-profit organization FoodCorps, an AmeriCorps entity that works to find different ways of getting healthier food into schools, to pilot the Reimagining School Cafeterias program in schools around the U.S. (h/t Fast Company).

Reimagining School Cafeterias takes existing school food programs and, with input from Sweetgreen’s culinary team, works to “guide students to make healthier choices and create more inclusive and joyful cafeteria experiences.” Sweetgreen has pledged $1 million over the next two years towards further developing the Reimagining School Cafeterias program. The initiative was announced earlier this month and is currently in three schools in the U.S. Since it builds off existing programs within each school, Reimagining School Cafeterias looks different in each location.

In New Mexico’s Navajo Nation territory, students at Wingate Elementary School can learn about and try out various sauces and spices at the school’s Taste Buds Flavor Bar. The Tasty Challenge, at Aberdeen Elementary School in Aberdeen, NC, lets kids try different fresh produce, prepared in different styles, and vote on what they like best. And in Oakland, CA, Laurel Elementary students brainstorm ideas about how to make their cafeteria better, from the way the room is set up to what’s offered in terms of food.

Getting better, fresher food into schools in the U.S. is a mission more and more organizations are taking on, from Ford Motors introducing vertical farming to schools in Detroit to Teens for Food Justice working in The Bronx to teach youths farming techniques. Those efforts are needed: An estimated 1 in 8 Americans are considered food insecure, including about 12 million children.

What’s interesting about Sweetgreen’s approach to schools is how the fast-casual chain takes its business approach of building your own meals and translates it to the school setting. In other words, it introduces students to healthier eating by giving them choices, and without shoving a plate of green beans at them and forcing them to eat it.

Sweetgreen does a number of community service initiatives, many of which are around sustainability and assisting food desert parts of the U.S. Schools, though, are a particularly important territory. Especially in light of how the USDA recently changed some rules around school food, essentially weakening health standards.

As usual, it’s up to the non-profits of the world to offset a lack of change at the government level by launching programs that teach kids (and everyone else) the value of healthier eating. If more of these programs got support from growing restaurant companies like Sweetgreen, we might even be able to make the concept of fresh veggies appealing to more kids. As one 5th grader is quoted as saying on Sweetgreen’s site, “I thought broccoli was nasty. Not this broccoli. You do it right.”