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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

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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.”

Ganaz Wins $250,000 to Become the Glassdoor for Farms

A combination of aging farmworkers, immigration crackdowns, and the dangerous, backbreaking work of farming have created a labor crisis in U.S. agriculture. Which means that more than ever, the industry needs tools to help find and retain reliable workers.

To help uncover solutions to this labor shortage, Radicle Growth, an agtech accelerator fund, and the Western Growers Association held the Radicle Automation Challenge. Last night in Salinas, CA, Ganaz was named one of the winners of that challenge and was awarded $250,000 in seed investment.

Ganaz (pronounced “GAH-nahz”), is a year-old, Seattle-based startup that aims to be the “Glassdoor for Farms.” It’s a mobile app that lets farms advertise jobs and communicate with its workers.

I met Ganaz Co-Founder Sri Artham at the Food IT conference in San Francisco yesterday. He explained to me that there are a ton of digital services like Glassdoor and Linkedin if you are looking for a white collar job, but if you’re a farm worker, there really aren’t those same tools.

“There could be a job on a farm just 30 miles away from you, and you’d never know,” said Artham.

Ganaz works to connect workers with those open jobs and help farms communicate more effectively with its workforce. Farms list job openings on the app in both English and Spanish, and workers can scroll through listings and apply for them. Once on the job, Ganaz facilitates communication with the workers by letting farms send work-related updates (e.g. show up to a particular field the next morning) via the app or SMS. Communications written by farms on Ganaz are automatically translated into Spanish.

Right now Ganaz is available in Washington, Oregon, California and Baja, Mexico, and the platform is used by 4,000 people weekly. Ganaz currently makes money by charging a fee for job postings as well as a subscription fee for ongoing communications with workers.

Eventually, the Ganaz platform will also incorporate more robust in-app communication features, a way for workers to rate farms, and potentially a way for farm workers to find off-season, non-farm work. But first, Artham said that if Ganaz accepts the Radicle seed funding award (terms of the investment still need to be worked through), the money will go towards building out the engineering team and adding people to help interact and support farms on the platform. The total amount raised by the company at that point will be just over one million dollars.

Ganaz is among a wave of startups that are using networks to connect and improve farming operations. Farmers Business Network allows farms to share data analytics and input purchase pricing, and WeFarm helps farmers share knowledge with one another through text messages.

And these startups could not have come at a better time. With the current administration circulating the idea of limiting visas for temporary agricultural workers, farms are going to need all the help finding all the help they can get.

Motorleaf Uses AI to Predict Crop Yields for Indoor Farmers & Greenhouse Growers

Between unpredictable weather, pests, and degrading soil quality, farming is an extremely difficult way to make a living. Indoor farming, though less weather-dependent, carries its own set of burdens.

Montreal-based startup Motorleaf wants to lighten the lift for indoor farmers by improving crop yield predictions and optimizing growing conditions. The company hopes that their software, which CEO and co-founder Ally Monk likens to a “virtual agronomist,” will take the uncertainty out of farming.

To do this, Motorleaf first gathers data on the grow environment through machine vision, agricultural sensors, and historical information. It then applies algorithms and AI to help farmers determine the adjustments they need to make to the indoor grow environment to optimize their crop. Which means farmers can monitor CO2 levels, light spectrum, and other atmospheric conditions remotely through wireless devices or laptops.

Customers can opt to install Motorleaf’s own hardware (a suite of IoT-enabled sensors), though they can also just connect the Motorleaf’s software to the farm’s existing pre-installed hardware to measure and remotely adjust environmental inputs. Its interoperability makes Motorleaf an easy tool for larger greenhouse operations, ones who already have their own monitoring hardware in place, to install.  “At the end of the day, we are a software company,” said Monk.

Motorleaf isn’t the only company helping indoor farmers help manage the lifecycle of their crop. In fact, it’s not even the only company which sees itself as a “virtual agronomist.” What sets it apart, however, is its ability to predict crop yield. Monk claims that motorleaf is the first company to use AI and machine learning to increase the accuracy of yield estimations.

This is a lot more important than an average person (read: the author) might think. Commercial greenhouses pre-sell produce before their harvest based on estimations given by agronomists — though they’re not always accurate. It’s extremely difficult to guarantee the quantity or quality of their crop before it’s harvested, and miscalculations can lead to loss of profits for both the buyer and producer, and also generate huge amounts of food waste.

Motorleaf claims that their software can cut yield prediction error by more than half — at least for some crops. Monk explained that each plant needs its own specialized software for yield prediction, likening farming to a recipe. “Maybe they think there’s a right recipe to growing kale; they need this many nutrients, this much light,” he explained. “We very strongly disagree with that. We think that any farming protocol needs to be dynamic, because if something happens in a greenhouse — which happens all the time — why would you stay rigid? You have to adapt.”

So far, their AI has only been proven to work for estimating tomato yield. However, they’re also deploying algorithms for peppers and silently developing technology for five other crops.

Photo: Motorleaf.

I was surprised to learn that indoor farming environments could be so volatile. After all, that’s the whole point of bringing them indoors, right? Apparently, not so. Monk explained that variable factors like sunlight, outside air temperatures, and human error can all affect greenhouse conditions. Even the plants themselves can do unexpected things that can affect their climate change.

Motorleaf got $100,000 Canadian dollars from the FounderFuel accelerator in the summer of 2016, and later that month Motorleaf raised $850,000 (US) for their seed round of funding. The startup is currently working with clients in Canada, USA, South Africa, South America, Mexico, Holland, Poland, New Zealand and the UK, and aims to be in Spain, France and Germany by early 2019.

Monk concluded our call with what he called “a crazy thought,” one he had when he saw celebrity-branded color palettes. “Why can’t I have a Jamie Oliver taste palette? Why can’t I buy a radish that’s the exact kind he likes to cook with?“ he asked. Farmers could use Motorleaf’s software to manipulate crops into having a certain taste and look, one that would be specific to, and branded by, celebrity chefs. Consumers could purchase produce that had the same taste profile as those preferred by their favorite chefs, and even integrate them into those chef’s recipes.

In the age of celebrity-branded meal kits and baking mixes, this idea isn’t too far-fetched. We’ve even seen companies like Bowery use AI to tweak the flavor, taste, and color of fruits and vegetables.

Motorleaf hasn’t started developing any of this technology yet, but Monk used it chiefly as an example to show how AI can open up “a whole slew of possibilities” for farming. He hopes that one of its applications will be to take the unpredictability out of farming, and put the power back in the hands of the growers.

The Harvesting-Robot Early Adopter Market Is Now Worth $5.5 Billion

Of all the uses for robots, harvesting plants seems like one of the most practical and therefore promising ways to put these machines to work.

I’m not alone in thinking this. Based on findings from 1,300 farmers recently surveyed by market research firm Alpha Brown, the robot-harvesting market is now worth $5.5 billion. And that’s just the early adopter segment. Because the robotics-for-harvesting segment is so new, and because most of the machines aren’t yet available for commercial use, Alpha Brown confined its findings to this segment.

But there’s much to discuss within that early adopter market. And while harvesting bots aren’t the only ones rolling around the farm these days, they serve an especially sensitive area of the agricultural supply chain.

Harvesting things like fruits and vegetables requires labor, and labor on farms is in short supply these days. In Santa Barbara County alone last year, $13 million of strawberries, broccoli, and produce was left to rot in the field because there weren’t enough workers harvest the crops. Another estimate states that 20 percent of produce grown in the U.S. never leaves the farm because of either labor shortage or cost of labor.

That shortage is, of course, wrapped up in a web of economics and politics I’ll leave you to read up on yourselves. The bottom line is that labor is an issue when it comes to harvesting produce, and robots are seen as one promising solution to the problem. 

The Alpha Brown report based the $5.5 billion market value on robots’ abilities to offset existing labor costs. Labor will, according to the report, “determine the level of implementation of this technology in the market.”

And while only about 3 percent of growers currently use robots for harvesting, there are plenty of choices out there for those considering. The following are just a few companies making promising moves in this space as they bring their bots to market.

Harvest Automation

Harvest Automation has been around since 2008, originally operating under the mission of using robotics to solve problems across various industries. The nursery and greenhouse market is one such area that needs the help, as the struggle to find enough labor is especially pervasive here.

Enter the HV-100, the company’s flagship product. Aside from looking a little like Wall-E, the robot automates the task of spacing of containerized plants commonly found in nursery operations. As plants grow, their containers need to be spaced increasingly farther apart to ensure a uniform canopy overhead. The HV-100, which is built to handle most container sizes, makes this manually-intensive task faster and more efficient, and the spacing more accurate.

The HV-100 is also designed to work alongside human laborers, rather than replace them, and can be used both outdoors and in.

Harvest Automation About Us

Agrobot

Fruit is far and above the most delicate type of produce out there, which makes the idea of using harvester robots especially practical. Spain-based company Agrobot has narrowed this idea down to one of the most sensitive fruits out there, the strawberry. The company’s SW6010 uses morphological and color analysis to determine, in real time, how ripe a fruit is, its size, and other factors that will determine whether it gets collected. The robot does this one strawberry at a time, which sounds like it would take forever but happens in seconds, according to Agrobot’s site.

Abundant Robotics

Hayward, Calif.-based startup Abundant Robotics spun out of SRI International and is currently testing a prototype that automates apple picking. Using computer vision algorithms, the robot locates the apples and picks them using a vacuum-like mechanism. To robot is designed to pick one fruit per second from the tree. At the same time, Abundant says the machine is gentle enough not to damage the fruit during the harvesting process.

The company is reportedly planning to go from prototype to mass production in 2018.

FRRobotics

FRRobotics takes the concept of harvesting delicate produce one step further with its machine, a grasping hand that can be adjusted based on the fruit it’s picking. Strawberries, for example, would need a much more delicate touch than apples. With FFRobotics’ yet-unnamed machine, a simple modification could accommodate those different needs. This also allows farm to use harvesters over multiple seasons.

The robot emulates the way an actual hand picks fruit and can pick, according to the company, “10 times more usable fruit than the average worker.” Like Abundant, FRRobotics’ machine uses advanced image processing to locate and harvest the fruit.

FFRobotics - The Future of Fresh Fruit Harvest

Energid

Energid makes a few different kinds of robots, among them a citrus harvesting system. The prototype system was tested in a Florida orange grove by mounting it to a four-axis hydraulic arm, which in turn was mounted to a truck. The result? The machine can pick an orange every two to three seconds, with 80 percent picking accuracy.

You can check out the machine shown in slow-motion below, to get an idea of just how many oranges two to three seconds yields.

Robotic Citrus Harvesting

Right now the biggest question mark seems to be cost. Farmers surveyed for the Alpha Brown who hadn’t yet integrated robotics into harvesting said the technology was either too costly or their farms weren’t big enough to justify the purchase. It’s a little early to tell if this will change as more robots become commercially available. But given the millions of dollars in un-harvested produce we’re losing, let’s hope these companies find a way to get more machines onto more farms, sooner rather than later.