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greenhouses

January 4, 2021

Abandoned Spaces and Automation: What to Expect for Indoor Farming in 2021

Controlled-environment agriculture — also simply known as indoor farming — had a big year both in terms of activity and investment dollars. While once we might have questioned the sector’s economic viability and ability to actually feed a growing global population, a lot of those doubts have diminished and indoor ag in its many forms now has an important role in our future food system.

What that role is, however, will continue to evolve over time. Here are a few thoughts on how that will happen over the next 12 months. 

More automation.

Automation isn’t new to controlled-environment agriculture, but its presence as a part of indoor farming operations has increased over the last several months and will continue to in the next year.

In the context of controlled-environment farming, automation can refer to any kind of technology that removes manual human labor from the growing process. In some cases that includes robots that plant and harvest greens or move trays of produce around the farm. More often, though, automation refers to software that can calculate the optimal environmental temperature for each plant, know when plants need to be fed and harvested, and handle many other calculations that would otherwise require a person to have horticultural and technological (hardware and software) expertise.

Moving into 2021, we’ll definitely see a few more robots buzzing around the indoor farm. But the bulk of automation will be about software. 

More grocery store partnerships. 

Many large-scale indoor farms started out selling their leafy green wares to restaurants and hotels. The pandemic, of course, put a hold on that in 2020, and controlled-environment agriculture operations had to look elsewhere for customers. 

Enter the grocery store. From container farms at local markets to Kalera’s partnership with Publix stores across the U.S., more indoor farming companies are growing their greens either onsite at grocery stores or within throwing distance of them. 

This could in turn help bring the cost of greens grown on high-tech farms down, since the shipping and distribution steps will be less resource intensive in many cases and nonexistent in others. 

More underutilized space.

One of my favorite stories from 2020 was this one, about a company called Wilder Fields that turned an abandoned Target store in south Chicago into a massive indoor farm.

Many companies are constructing their own facilities from the ground up, while others stick to smaller scale container farms that are a bit more mobile. Finding existing space, such as an abandoned big box retailer, seems a logical middle ground, and one we’ll likely see more of as companies work to lower costs and keep their environmental footprint down.

Predictions pieces, of course, are always a bit of a crapshoot, and even if the above forecasts turn out to be true, they’ll be but a smattering of the activity that will happen for controlled-environment ag in 2021.

September 25, 2020

Revol Greens Raises $68M to Build Out High-Tech Greenhouses in the U.S.

Revol Greens announced today it has closed a $68 million funding round for its network of high-tech greenhouses the company says will eventually supply 33 million pounds of greens annually to the U.S. The round was led by Equilibrium Capital. According to a press release sent to The Spoon, this brings Revol’s total funding to $215 million.

The Minnesota-based company says it will use the new investment to launch its third facility, which is a 20-acre farm in Texas that could expand to 80 acres in the future. 

Revol is part of a new wave of companies marrying greenhouse growing with technology systems that allow food producers to grow crops year-round, in totally controlled environments. Its system uses closed-loop hydroponics and, when necessary, supplements natural sunlight with LEDs. It also collects data on plant growth to ensure crops have the correct levels of water and nutrients they need to grow.

As they’re based in Minnesota, the folks behind Revol are no strangers to the kind of extreme weather that makes growing crops outdoors impossible for parts of the year. But extreme weather is also a consequence of climate change, whether it’s fire, drought, or insect outbreaks, and it is becoming more widespread. In traditional agriculture, that could mean an increase in pests, flooding or heavy downpours that threaten crop yields, and increases in carbon dioxide that decrease the quality of products. 

Revol is not alone in merging the greenhouse with high tech to provide an alternative to traditional agriculture. AppHarvest is currently building out a massive greenhouse facility in Appalachia. The company recently raised $28 million. Iron Ox, which raised $20 million earlier this month, is bringing robotics to the greenhouse, and a company called Lufa has taken the greenhouse concept to rooftops in cities.

Getting greens closer to cities is also one of Revol’s goals. “High-tech greenhouses give us the ability to return to regional food systems with farms that produce our food near our communities,” David Chen, CEO of Equilibrium, said in today’s press release. “Regionalism gives us resiliency, food security, and addresses the threat of climate change to our food system. Greenhouses are the tech disruptor in a 10,000year-old agriculture sector.”

Revol CEO Mark Schulze added that by the end of 2021, the company will be “the world’s largest indoor lettuce producer.” 

The company’s first greenhouse launched in 2018 in its hometown of Owatonna, Minn., followed by a second facility in Tehachapi, Calif., which Revol is in the midst of building out.

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