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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

indoor farming

Impact Justice Launches Program to Train Incarcerated Populations to Become High-Tech Farmers

This week, Impact Justice announced the launch of Growing Justice, a new program that utilizes precision indoor agriculture to expand access to fresh food in prison communities and provide skills training to incarcerated and formerly incarcerated populations.

The program’s first containerized vertical farm and job training program will be at the Central California Women’s Facility in Chowchilla, the first of what Impact Justice says will be multiple Growing Justice installations at corrections facilities across California. The second location will be Impact Justice’s Oakland headquarters. Both installations will be hydroponic farms built inside shipping containers outfitted with grow lights and irrigation systems.

The Growing Justice work training program is available to populations within 24 months of their scheduled release date. Those already released can apply to participate in the program. Growing Justice is also working with controlled environment agriculture advisory firm Agritecture to create a six-month training program tailored to give prison populations hands-on experience operating a vertical farm.

The organization is also working with a number of vertical farming startups to create pathways for employment post-training, including Square Roots, Bowery Farming, and Fork Farms.

“People in prison face substantial challenges, including poor and limited food choices. For those released, employment options are limited and healthy food remains difficult to obtain,” says Impact Justice President Alex Busansky. “Growing Justice demonstrates how government, the nonprofit sector, and businesses can work together to improve the quality of food, create pathways to jobs, and give people a real second chance.”

In addition to job training, Growing Justice also provides fresh food to prison populations. According to Impact Justice, a fully operational containerized farm will provide up to 60 pounds of leafy greens and herbs per week. Only 11% of prison populations have regular access to fresh vegetables, and this low access often leads to lingering health problems for prison populations that can often extend well-beyond incarceration.

Growing Justice is the latest program in the vertical farming space launched to help train a new generation of farmers. Kentucky-based Appharvest has been building training centers at schools in low-income areas of Appalachia to give high-school students skills training in vertical farming, while Freight Farms works with schools around the Northeast to launch containerized farms at high schools.

The program by Impact Justice is unique, however, in its focus on bringing rehabilitative programming to incarcerated and formerly incarcerated populations. Initially funded by the California State Legislature, the California Department of Corrections, and an anonymous donor, the program provides a potential pathway for people of color to start businesses and find employment post-incarceration.

The program is a tangible example of how newer approaches to food production can be made as on-ramps for marginalized populations to enter the job market. What makes Growing Justice pretty neat is it’s also a very tech-forward and sustainability-centered approach to farming, a part of the economy where people of color own a tiny percentage of businesses.

Construction of the containerized farm at the Central California Women’s Facility will begin in early 2023, and the organization expects to recruit its first cohort in June next year.

Soli Organic to Advance Indoor, Soil-Based Agriculture Through Selective Breeding, AI, and Machine Learning

Soli Organic (previously known as Shenandoah Growers) is an agriculture company that operates indoor growing operations to produce organic culinary herbs. Today, the company announced two new partnerships with Rutgers University and AI/IoT company Koidra that will help enhance its cost advantage and increase the accessibility and affordability of its products.

In the multi-year partnership with Rutgers University, Soli Organic will work with plant breeding experts from the School of Environmental and Biological Sciences. The focus of the collaboration is to optimize the nutrition, flavor, aroma, and yields of selected crops. Additionally, the partners will research what crops that are not feasible for outdoor production but are potentially viable for commercial production in an indoor growing operation.

While leafy greens and herbs are often the most popular types of crops grown via indoor cultivation, there is vast potential for additional crops in this space. Dr. James (Jim) Simon, the Director of the Rutgers New Use Agriculture and Natural Plant Products Program, said, “Of the over 400,000 plant species on the planet, we consume less than 100. We have not even scratched the surface of the different flavors and textures of plants. What will be key to a sustainable future is identifying plants that offer consumers the highest nutrient density combined with flavor, texture and shelf appeal, and the lowest possible environmental impact.”

With Koidra’s artificial intelligence and machine learning technology, Soli Organic intends to automate the operation of its growing facilities. This technology will not necessarily replace human growers, but streamline operations and allow growers to make data-informed decisions. In a greenhouse setting, Koidra use of artificial intelligence, data collection, and sensing technology is able to increase yields, profitability, and consistency.

“Soli Organic is relentless in our pursuit of technologies and partnerships that support our vision to offer our retailer partners and consumers nationwide a variety of nutrient-dense, differentiated fresh products in a manner that maximizes profitability while minimizing environmental impact,” said Soli Organic’s Chief Science Officier Tessa Pocock about the new partnerships.

Soli Organic has seven growing facilities and supplies to 20,000 retailers across the country. According to the company, it is the only indoor grower that has soil-based, controlled environment growing operations. Most of the big players in this space, like Gotham Greens, Bright Farms, and Bowery Farming, use hydroponic growing methods instead.

If you have ever seen indoor-grown greens or herbs in your grocery store, you may have noticed that most of these products are a bit pricier than the standard options. Soli Organic already offers affordable herbs, but following the new partnerships, hopes to bring even more indoor-grown produce to consumers.


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.

Deane Falcone of Crop One Discusses How Indoor Farming Reduces Food Waste

When The Spoon last wrote about Crop One in 2018, the company had just announced that they were building the largest indoor hydroponic farm in the world. The farm, based in Dubai, is set to be 300,000 square feet, three stories high, and capable of producing up to 6,000 pounds of food a day.

This week, I spoke with Deane Falcone, the CSO of Crop One, to catch up on how things are going. He said Dubai is set to open sometime early next year in 2022. Crop One has been steadily growing its team during the past few years and brought on a new CEO, Craig Ratajczyk.

In our conversation, Falcone explained to me how Crop One’s protocol and technology produce extremely clean plants that result in very little waste. Here is a transcript of part of our conversation:

This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.

Ashlen: Can you discuss how indoor crop production reduces food waste?

Deane: Sure. You know, there are numerous metrics for just indoor production, but I’ll focus on things that are I think, unique to us at Crop One. So the first thing is that it’s going back to that plant first concept. What we’re really trying to do at the end of the day is grow a very, very high-quality plant. When you grow high-quality plants, I mean all the leaves that I get on the plants are on a, you know, spinach or kale or lettuce, you want all those leaves to be high quality. And so that’s what we really aim for. So that’s the beginning of the process. 

In other words, there’s not a leaf or there are far, far fewer leaves that might be discarded, because they’re not at the right development stage. They might have some yellowing or something like that. And so all the systems contribute to that high quality. So at the very beginning that of the process, what you’re wasting, so to speak, is reduced. So that’s an important concept to keep in mind. 

The other really important concept is the cleanliness factor. So we talk about this a lot, you know, we grow in sealed rooms, it’s filtered air, grown on purified water, we have pretty elaborate water purification systems. And so what that gives us is a plant that’s very, very clean. And you may or may not know from previous discussions with us, but no one touches the plants. If they are touched by hand when they’re transplanted or they’re harvested, it’s people being wound up wearing gloves, so only a gloved hand touches the plant. Not even water touches the surface of the plant that you eat. So I’m going into that because that results in again, a clean environment, filtered air, etc, etc. 

That gives us what we refer to as a very low microbial load on the surface of plant that has very little fungi and bacteria on the surface and plants, the surface of leaves. But we’ve had this tested, we set up the labs and stuff like that. And so the reason why that’s important is that these are not disease-causing pathogenic microbes but it turns out that when you as soon as you harvest the plant, as soon as you harvest that leaf, the fungi and bacteria, which again is a natural part of the environment, that’s what causes the breakdown of food, so we start seeing food decay is because of these.

The presence of fungal spores and whatnot that that break down the product. And so that’s a really big determinant as to the shelf life. So our shelf life is it’s at least three weeks the refrigerator So it is largely because of that. Now of course, it’s the freshness aspect that is, apart from getting close to a population center so that the delivery to the final consumer is very short. But it’s very fresh, but really the thing that gives us that long shelf life is the cleanliness of the product. Again, it just stays in very good shape over a long period of time.

The packing occurs in a cold room onsight so the delivery time to the cold room as you know, is a few minutes away right in the same building, that it’s packed. It’s been kept in refrigerated temperatures the whole time. 

So there’s really no waste except for the occasional you know, there might be a piece of stem or something that we don’t want in the product and so that simply won’t be passed. For all of those reasons the food waste is really, really low. Again it starts on “the field”, that is in the growth rooms. The plants are very high quality so there’s little waste there. A little sorting waste, and then it stays low throughout the entire process.

This is a really important issue as I’m sure you know, because the statistic I’ve quoted for years now is ⅓ or about 33% of all food produced is wasted, particularly agricultural crops. Just a few days ago in fact, I read another article that it can go as high as 40%. So 33 to 40% of food produced is wasted which is astonishingly high. 

Ashlen: Thank you for breaking all of that down. You might have mentioned this already, but I’m guessing seeing everything is pesticide-free as well?

Deane: Absolutely. And just so you know, our new CEO is always asking why do we only say pesticide-free? What about herbicides? What about the fungicides? He’s an ag person by the way. He comes from the ag approach. He has a very good perspective on what really has gone on for outdoor agriculture. So nothing touches those leaves and nothing is in the water either as far as chemicals, only mineral nutrients to the plants.

Ashlen: Have you ever had a problem in the past with pests entering the facilities or is that pretty easy to manage on your end?

Deane: Yes. So we’ve been in operation for over six years now, What I mean by the operation is the whole process of growing the plants harvesting, packing, and selling. The honest truth is you have to have good protocols so everything’s kind of double door. And we’re actually in a warehouse. So insects can get into the warehouse. If you aren’t careful with the double door system, that is. Don’t open the inner door when the outer doors are open, it’s really as simple as that. If you don’t adhere to that pretty soon you can get in second position. And exactly as you say, you know, without the use of pesticide that’s a lot of nice material for the insects to take. So they’ll take it over pretty rapidly but I have to say in the last, maybe pushing four years, but certainly the last three and a half years, we have not had a single insect infestation. It’s really, you know, well-trained people. People put their gloves on, we clean the shoes. The insects by the way are oftentimes almost microscopic, they’re very, small and so they can adhere to your clothes. And they just like to eat plants. It’s just very common and so we really have to keep an eye on that. But again the last three to four years, we haven’t had any insect outbreaks. So that’s literally the main thing keeping those doors shut.

Ashlen: Can you speak about the nutrition component of food that’s been grown outdoors versus something that would be grown indoors? 

Deane: So this is a huge interest to us. We’ve evaluated, everything we grow. The nutrition is at least as good, as what we’re trying to see is where we can make it better. And so, there might be ways of just, for example, manipulating what’s the mineral nutrient to the water. So for example, plants need a fair amount of calcium. How much calcium is actually taken up in a queue. related to these, and so we’re really starting to look at that. To see if we can enhance it because the biggest kind of change in perspective indoor growth is that everything is controlled automatically. It’s everything that’s dissolved in the water. 

So for example iron, in traditional agriculture, all those components are in the fertilizer or in the soil. In our case, we add them, right so they’re adding very precise levels. And of course, you could add to much, which you don’t want to have, you could have negative plant growth if you go too high with certain levels of other trace minerals. Such as copper; plants require a little bit of copper. Of course, they require a little bit of iron. You can’t go too high in those, and so on. But others like potassium and calcium, for certain species, we can actually increase their abundance of leaves by simply increasing their level in the water. So there’s there’s a lot of opportunities there we’re just at the beginning of increased nutritional content.

So if you think about outdoor grows, it turns out that the metabolites, the mineral nutrients, the vitamins that plants produce, and plants are great at producing an abundance of them. You know, they’re loaded. Almost all breeding plants are loaded with vitamin C, for example. The fact of the matter is those levels. Those levels oscillate very widely outdoors because it’s influenced by the environment. If you have a couple of days of heavy rain or a period of drought, warm days, all that kind of variability, that results in variability of this kind of nutritional aspects of vitamins and minerals and nutrients.

We can actually start to think about saying, oh we have Spinach or whatever leafy green that has x amount of a vitamin or X amount of iron, calcium, or potassium, that sort of thing. So that’s a pretty exciting thing, isn’t it? It’s something that you really can’t say with outdoor growth because again, the environments always changing. At least metabolites change pretty widely in those conditions.

Ashlen: Do you see indoor hydroponic farming as part of the future of food?

Deane: Absolutely. It’s absolutely part of the future. Yes. That I can expand on that if you wish. The first major thing that the industry has to do including us is scaling. And that’s exactly what our farms will show. It is a pretty large operation and produces quite a significant output of the crop. So that actually hasn’t been done to appreciable levels yet and in truth, completely controlled indoor farms, there’s plenty of greenhouses out there that are getting quite massive in producing a lot but they just don’t have that level of precise control nor do they have the density that indoor farming can provide. 

Stacked shelves, vertically stacked shelves. They give you a very high output and we’re not the only company doing that of course. Once that becomes established, then it’s just a matter of time for these things to propagate. There’s a lot of companies jumping into the industry because they see the value, right? It’s pretty obvious now.

Our product is particularly clean, we work really hard to use highly purified water to grow the plants and all that sort of thing. And we really see the advantages, as I mentioned before on shelf life, things like that. So it’s really only the beginning. The honest truth is we didn’t know that the shelf life would be so extended just by making a clean product. So as these kinds of realizations come forth, you can really see the industry expanding because it’s going to be a very viable way of providing food in a reliable and continuous way.

Ashlen: Those are all the questions I have for now. Unless there’s anything else you want to share.

Deane: The only other thing to bring up I guess is very important. Everyone knows about the water use efficiency that indoor ag provides. If you look at the West Coast of the US, we’re seeing the beginnings of real severe shortages of water. As I’m sure you know, most freshwater is actually used for irrigation with agricultural crops. So we’re at the earliest stages in this industry and then in this way of growing food, but it’s important because unfortunately, climate change is real and climate change is here. It’s good that we have these alternative means to at least get the maximum water use efficiency that’s possible, and that’s pretty much going to be true for most indoor farms. Mostly, in our case, all the water that you use in the system goes through the plant. It’s transpired through the plant so very little is wasted in that sense.

Ashlen: Thank you for bringing that up, that’s really important. Great. Thank you for taking the time to speak.

Cox Enterprises Acquires High-Tech Greenhouse Grower BrightFarms

Cox Enterprises has acquired indoor farming company BrightFarms, the two companies announced today via press release. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. The companies noted that the acquisition will be key to helping Cox Enterprises build out a “multibillion cleantech business” by 2030. 

Multi-industry conglomerate Cox is in the midst of expanding from its core lines of business (communications and automotive), hence its goals related to cleantech innovation. The company says it is currently investing in and/or acquiring “clean resource efficient businesses that provide sustainable energy, food, and water for the rapidly growing global population.”

Cox nabbed a majority stake in BrightFarms in 2020, though the two companies’ relationship goes back to 2018. Speaking in today’s press release, Steve Bradley, vice president of cleantech for Cox Enterprises, noted, “Over the years, our enthusiasm for BrightFarms and the opportunity to transform the industry has increased tremendously, which led us to want to play a larger role in what they’re doing.”  

BrightFarms operates a network of greenhouses that use hydroponics, natural sunlight, and a proprietary software system to grow leafy greens. The company announced its fifth greenhouse earlier this year and more recently said it would open an “innovation and research hub.” Ten percent of the company is now dedicated to developing “patented growing solutions to be used across BrightFarms entire network to improve crop yield, flavor, and other factors. The company says that by the end of the year, its leafy greens will be available at over 3,500 stores.

BrightFarms said joining Cox will allow it to scale more rapidly. As part of the acquisition, BrightFarms will grow its physical footprint from 15 acres of crop today to more than 140 by 2025. This growth will, the company says, let it reach roughly two-thirds of all U.S. consumers. Additionally, BrightFarms will build out multiple 30-acre greenhouses and increase the number of stores, restaurants, and food distributors it serves.

Red Sea Farms Raises an Additional $6M to Grow Crops With Saltwater

Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea Farms has raised an additional $6 million in pre-Series A funding, bringing the total round to $16 million (h/t Wamda). Those leading the round include Aramco’s venture arm Wa’ed, the Saudi government-owned Future Investment Initiative (FII) Institute, KAUST, Global Ventures, AppHarvest, and Bonaventure. The $6 million announced over the weekend follows an initial $10 million investment the company unveiled in June of this year.

Red Sea Farms, which is based out of King Abdullah University for Science & Technology (KAUST) in Saudi Arabia, is developing a grow system for crops that relies primarily on saltwater as the primary irrigation input. As company cofounder and CSO Prof. Mark Tester told The Spoon recently, the system works on both crops grown traditionally via land and those grown indoors using hydroponics. The idea is to provide more resource options for farmers in parts of the world where freshwater is less abundant. The company’s technology can use saltwater for evaporative cooling in greenhouses, which could potentially cut a facility’s carbon footprint.

Red Sea Farms currently has three grow sites, all in Saudi Arabia. The pre-Series A round of funding will help the company expand its operations in Saudi Arabia and other parts of the Middle East, as well as explore opportunities in the U.S. “where growing conditions are harsh.”

A number of companies have announced crop innovations for the Middle East region this year, including iFarm’s partnership with Sadarah Partners in Qatar and AeroFarms’ developing a R&D hub in the UAE. Also in 2021, Estonian automated gardening company Natufia announced its relocation to Saudi Arabia. Most of these developments are in response to a rising urgency around global food security coupled with a need to reduce the planet’s over-reliance on traditional agriculture resources (e.g., freshwater, land).

Red Sea Farms says it can cut freshwater consumption of farming operations by by 85 to 90 percent through its grow system.

AppHarvest Gets $91M in New Financing for Its High-Tech Indoor Farms

AppHarvest this week announced a $91 million financing arrangement with Equillibrium Capital, according to Food Navigator, who broke the news. The money will go towards AppHarvest’s previously stated goal of building out 12 high-tech indoor farming facilities by 2025.

Equilibrium Capital’s $91 million figure is a construction loan that will support the building of AppHarvest’s forthcoming 60-acre facility in Richmond, Kentucky. The Richmond location is almost identical to the company’s 60-acre high-tech greenhouse in Morehead, Kentucky, which is already operational and shipping different varieties of tomato to grocery retailers within a day’s drive. 

Three more farms in Kentucky are already under construction, too: two 15-acre facilities that will grow leafy greens in Berea and Morehead, respectively, and a 30-acre facility in Somerset for growing strawberries. 

The farms use or will use a mix of hydroponics, sensors, supplemental LED lighting, automation and AI as well as natural inputs like sunlight and rainwater to grow produce. AppHarvest is also adding more technology to its operations. It acquired harvesting robot startup Root AI in April of this year for $60 million, and CTO Josh Lessing (formerly the CEO of Root AI) has said AppHarvest is investing in robotics, artificial intelligence, teleoperation, and proprietary seed genetics. Its intelligent robot, Virgo, for example, is currently learning to manage crops and make decisions about growing decisions. All that tech, of course, means more data that has the potential to improve growing processes, crop yield, and food quality.

AppHarvest went public earlier this year via a SPAC merger with Novus Capital Corp for $475 million.

Food Tech News: Indoor Farming as Art, Cover Crop Snacks, and Alcohol-Free Spirits

Welcome to your weekly Food Tech News round-up, where we gather interesting pieces of news you might have missed this week:

Edible artwork is now growing at the Gagosian gallery in New York City

A small, but fully functional, indoor urban farm is now on display at the Gagosian Gallery’s New York City location. The installation, created by artist Linda Goode Bryant and architect Elizabeth Diller, is a part of the “Social Works” exhibit (curated by Antwaun Sargent). The exhibit aims to showcase the relationship between different spaces, like personal, institutional, public, and psychic spaces, and Black social practice. The indoor farm exhibit, called Are we really that different?, features a 40-foot-tall structure in a long hallway that houses plants. Given water and nutrients through dripping IV pouches, the plants receive sunlight through skylights in the gallery. The plants consist of edible flowers and vegetables that are harvested daily for visitors to munch on. The exhibit is on display now until August 13, 2021.

Snack brand uses regenerative cover crop as its main ingredient

Chasin Dreams Farm produces a flavored popcorn-like snack, but instead of using corn, sorghum is the main ingredient in the product. Sorghum is a grain that is drought-resilient, and the company sources its sorghum from farms using regenerative practices. Additionally, sorghum is a cover crop that can be planted after other crops have been harvested to protect the soil from erosion, smother weeds, and add healthy, organic matter to the soil. Chasin Dreams Farm currently has three flavors, Sweet & Salty, Cocoa, and Cinnamon. According to the company, its popped sorghum snacks have around 94 percent less fat than traditional popcorn snacks. Currently raising money on Republic, Chasin Dreams Farm has already met its goal by 171 percent with 61 days left in the campaign.

Photo by Andy Kelly on Unsplash

Scientists discover that microorganisms in the stomach’s of ruminants can help break down plastic

Plastic is a problem due to its negative environmental and health impacts, and despite the fact that humans were the ones that created it, we are always trying to find new solutions to replace it, get rid of it, upcycle it, or break it down in a sustainable manner. A group of scientists from various universities recently discovered that particular microbes found in the stomachs of ruminants can actually help break down certain types of plastic. Ruminants like cows consume a naturally occurring polyester that is produced by plants, called cutin. Polyethylene terephthalate (PET) is the type of plastic typically used to make soda bottles and food packaging, and it has a similar chemical structure to cutin.

Due to this, researchers hypothesized that microbes found in the rumen (the largest part of a ruminant’s stomach) could break down PET and other polyesters in the same manner that cutin was broken down. To test this, the scientists placed different plastics in rumen liquid for one to three days. It was found that the rumen liquid broke down PET, polybutylene adipate terephthalate (PBAT), and polyethylene furanoate (PEF), with the bacteria-rich liquid breaking down PEF the most effectively.

Optimist: a plastic and alcohol-free spirit

To accommodate the rise of adults looking to cut back on alcohol consumption or be sober, there has been an influx of “alcohol-free” spirits hitting the market. One of these brands, Optimist, has developed three botanical-infused, alcohol-free spirits, completely free from plastic. Intended to be a direct replacement for alcohol spirits, Optimist can be drunk straight up, on the rocks, or mixed into a cocktail. The spirits contain 10-15 botanical distillates, with three different flavors available: Bright (lemony and light, drinks like vodka), Fresh (full of herbs, drinks like a botanical gin), and Smokey (flavors of wood and spice, drinks like a tequila). Both the bottle and cap of the spirits are made from glass, and plastic is intentionally not used in any part of the production, packaging, or distribution process. A 16.9 oz bottle of Optimist is available for $35 on the company’s website.

How AppHarvest Is Investing in the First Generation of High-Tech Farmers

Agriculture may have been slower to digitize than other parts of the food sector, but these days a lot of folks would agree artificial intelligence, automation, and other technologies have a role to play in the future of farming. The presence of such things means farming will soon require lots of new skills, which in turn means training a whole new generation on a whole new set of tools. It means, in the words of AppHarvest’s founder and CEO Jonathan Webb (pictured above), “getting young people to really visualize what agriculture is” in a way they haven’t before.

Standing under a tent in the middle of a downpour outside Elliott County High School in Sandy Hook, Kentucky recently, Webb explained to me how his company is training the next generation of farmers while simultaneously investing in the company’s own future as a high-tech agricultural powerhouse.

We, along with with students, parents, teachers, and Kentucky governor Andy Beshear, were at the launch for the latest unit of AppHarvest’s high-tech educational container farm program, which teaches high-tech farming to Eastern Kentucky high-school students. Launched back in 2018, the program retrofits old shipping containers to house controlled-environment vertical farms that grow leafy greens. Farms at each school serve as hands-on agricultural classrooms where students can learn not just horticulture but also how to use the technologies powering the next wave of farming innovations around automation, connectivity, and data.

“What we’re doing here is trying to plant the seeds of what it means to be in an exciting industry and get that groundswell early,” Webb told me. 

He was talking specifically about the container farm program but might as well have been referring to the entire company’s MO. AppHarvest, itself a product of Eastern Kentucky, is both a Public Benefit Corporation and a Certified B Corporation, which means the company has to strike a balance between profit and less measurable purposes like environmental impact, transparency, and social good. 

The company’s main business is headquartered about an hour away from Elliott County High School, in Morehead, Kentucky, where AppHarvest operates a 60-acre high-tech greenhouse that grows different varieties of tomatoes. Two additional farms, one for leafy greens and another for tomatoes, are under construction, and the company just broke ground on a couple more last month. All of these farms provide or will provide produce for restaurants and grocery retailers within a day’s drive. They will also provide jobs for a local community that’s seen unemployment rise as the coal industry declines.

The high school container farms are altogether smaller and somewhat different in terms setup and technical specs, but the idea is the same: grow crops in a controlled environment and use technology to improve plant yield, quality, and nutrition profile. In doing so, people from the community get an opportunity to learn the kinds of skills that will be relevant as agriculture gets more and more digitized.

“We’ve tried to say at AppHarvest we’re not building facilities, we’re building an ecosystem,” said Webb. “Obviously our large production facility is the core critical center piece of that, but us investing in a high school education, we’re truly trying to create an ecosystem that includes facilities and the brainpower to be able to operate the facilities.”

This isn’t just feel-good talk, either. Technologies like artificial intelligence, robotics, sensors, and analytics are coming to agriculture in response to multiple problems looming in the near future for the global food system. As McKinsey notes, “Demand for food is growing at the same time the supply side faces constraints in land and farming inputs.” With a population expected to grow to 9.7 billion by 2050, the planet needs to produce around 70 percent more available calories. At the same time, inputs like water supply and arable land are shrinking, raising costs for farming and negatively impacting an already burdened planet.

Part of the promise of controlled environment agriculture formats like high-tech greenhouses and container vertical farms is that they can grow more food faster, at a higher quality, and closer to the buying public. Many of these facilities operate via hydroponics systems that recirculate water, saving on that resource. (AppHarvest’s greenhouse runs off rainwater collected from the facility’s roof.) In the case of vertical farming, less land is required because plants are stacked. AppHarvest’s container farms, for example, can pack three to five acres of leafy greens into a forty-foot-long shipping container. Other large-scale vertical farms a la Kalera or Plenty are growing pounds of greens that number in the millions and also exploring additional crops such as berries.

Most individuals in this industry I’ve spoken to agree that indoor farming isn’t “the savior” that will wholly replace traditional agriculture. Nor was it never meant to be. Rather, greenhouse growers, vertical farm companies, and those operating container farms believe we need all of these formats working together and alongside traditional agriculture practices to try and resolve the above issues.

One of the many things needed to make that a reality is a new generation of young people interested in farming as a career and able to navigate the technical as well as horticultural aspects of agriculture. 

Right now, that’s a challenge. “We don’t have our brightest young people inspired to go into agriculture,” said Webb, adding that the issue is, “How do we inspire them early to get into agriculture and the technology sphere of agriculture?”

AppHarvest started investing in its education program before its main facility was ever complete, spending $200,000 of its initial $1 million investment on the program. “I’m not sure if there’s ever been a venture-backed company that’s taken 20 percent of their raised proceeds early and invested in education,” said Webb.

In 2021, AppHarvest has five different container farm programs operating at Eastern Kentucky high schools, all of them operating independently but also networked together, just as AppHarvest’s larger farms will eventually be networked. 

Students learn a huge range of skills working on these farms, from horticultural-related ones like seeding and harvesting to technology management across multiple farms to food safety, data entry, marketing, packaging, and creating a budget. Via a screen inside the farm, students can learn to track the pH levels of plants, carbon dioxide levels, temperature, humidity, and all the other variables present in a farm. And since farms from every high school are networked together, students can view one another’s activity. Elliott County High can see data from Shelby Valley High School in Pike County and vice versa, for example.

Webb says the farms are also an opportunity for schools and students to collaborate using different skillsets, whether technological, horticultural, or otherwise. “Some students might have more of a background or interest in horticulture. Some students might have more of a background or interest in craftsmanship. All we’re trying to do now is say, ‘Here, it’s your thing, bring it to life, and openly share information.’”

And while there’s no pressure, the hope is that some of these students eventually bring their skillsets to AppHarvest’s main operations and help improve them, along with indoor ag, over the coming years. “Hopefully in four years we have students that might end up at MIT. And then they’re telling us what to do,” said Webb, adding that the ROI here isn’t quick. The true impacts of the company’s investment in school programs probably won’t be seen for another five of six years, which is a few lifetimes when we’re talking about tech. 

“We get judged on quarterly earning calls, [but] that’s not the way I think,” he said. “I want us to think, first decade, second decade, third decade, and these are very long-term investments.”

He hopes to see more tech companies investing in high schools, and AppHarvest isn’t quite the lone wolf when it comes to this. Freight Farms, which deals exclusively in container farms, has a partnership with Sodexo to bring its units to K-12 schools and universities in the U.S. AeroFarms, also a Certified B Corp., has partnerships with various schools and community centers, too.

For AppHarvest, the educational program is is an integral part of the operation, and one tied to the company’s long-term success. “It’s not a ‘nice to have,'” Webb told me. “It’s something we truly believe is going to give our company a competitive advantage medium to long term.” 

Babylon Micro-Farms Gets $1M Grant to Further Develop Its Software for Controlled Ag

Babylon Micro-Farms, which operates a network of indoor grow systems in foodservice venues around the U.S., has received a $1 million grant from the National Science Foundation, with the potential for $750,000 more in follow-on funding. The grant money will go towards further development of BabylonIQ, the company’s platform that remotely manages its distributed network of farms. 

This grant follows a 2019 Phase 1 grant of $225,000, also from the National Science Foundation, that enabled the company to start trials of its technology designed to capture growth and health metrics for plants. 

Babylon Micro-Farms started in 2016, originally in Charlottesville as a project at the University of Virginia. Over the last five years, the farm itself has gone from a tabletop model to the 15-square-foot controlled-environment farming module that’s now in numerous hospitals, cafeterias, and senior living residences. The goal is to be able to remotely manage this distributed network of farms, collecting the kind of data that can inform better growing conditions for all Babylon farms. 

BabylonIQ uses machine learning and computer vision components to capture data from the farms that can optimize both plants’ grow recipes (light levels, temperature, etc.) and best practices across the Babylon Micro-Farms network. The company says the platform will eventually be able to learn from itself and improve processes over time, which in turn would hopefully lead to better-tasting greens, higher yields, and a higher nutritional profile per plant.

The emphasis on improving the software that powers farms is in keeping with something Babylon Micro-Farms CEO, Alexander Olesen, told The Spoon in 2020: that the company isn’t “necessarily interested in the hardware aspect going forward.” One potential direction the company could pursue is that of focusing primarily on software and bringing that expertise to a partnership with a separate hardware company. Nothing more has been officially said about that, though today’s news seems to point along that path. 

Meanwhile, a central “brain” for a network of smaller, module farms is still somewhat unique among controlled environment agriculture companies. Larger operations like Bowery or Plenty or even Square Roots have made much of their software systems that can remotely manage a network of farms. Babylon Micro-Farms is one of the first to do so for smaller-size farms found in cafeterias, hospitals, and other facilities that serve food. Farm.One is another such company.

Babylon Micro-Farms says this week’s Phase 2 grant also provides “financial resources to accelerate commercialization.”

A Peek Inside AppHarvest’s 60-Acre High-Tech Greenhouse in Eastern Kentucky

Ag tech company AppHarvest may only be a few years old, but growth for both the operation and its tomato crops moves at a breakneck pace these days. After shipping its first harvest to stores in late January of this year, AppHarvest proceeded to go public at the start of February and has since broken ground on two more farms, acquired a robotics company, and announced it will soon grow leafy greens and strawberries in addition to tomatoes. 

And while it’s one thing to say the Morehead, Kentucky-based company operates a 60-acre (2.76 million square feet) greenhouse powered by tech and a deep sense of purpose, it’s another thing to actually stand inside the facility and see the future of agriculture changing before one’s very eyes.  

I had the honor of doing just that at the end of last week, when I drove up to Morehead, Kentucky and took a tour of the facility, which literally stretches into the Appalachian horizon as far as the eye can see. Here’s a look at what goes on inside:

Tomatoes grow in long rows like above. AppHarvest trains these Tomatoes on the Vine (TOVs) to grow in clusters of five.

The greenhouse relies primarily on sunlight for plants. Supplemental lighting, hanging above the plants, can be used when sunlight is weak or when the company wants to speed up the growing time of crops. At night, a sheet automatically unrolls to cover the roof so that surrounding neighbors are not disturbed by the lights.  

Tomato roots inside the growth media block. Since the entire greenhouse is hydroponic, no soil is used in the grow process.

Nutrient-enriched water is pumped to the plants via a hydroponic drip system that can deliver precise levels to plants as they need it. 

Autonomous carts shuttle cases of tomatoes to the packing room once the fruit is harvested. 

A high-level (literally) view of the tomato plants. AppHarvest grows about 800,000 plants at once in its 60-acre facility. A forthcoming farm in Richmond, Kentucky, will be almost identical in terms of layout and the amount it can grow.

Reservoirs and a UV filtration system for the facility’s water supply. AppHarvest relies solely on rainwater collected on the building’s roof. Water is pumped from a retention pond into this room before being delivered to plants via drip irrigation. 

The packing room, where tomatoes are assessed and made ready to ship to grocery stores and restaurants. AppHarvest ships to those within a day’s drive, which the company says is about 70 percent of the U.S. population.

As mentioned above, AppHarvest plans to open an almost-identical facility outside of Richmond, Kentucky, and a 15-acre farm in Berea for growing leafy greens. The company said it plans to have 12 farms up and running by 2025. 

The CEA sector as a whole, meanwhile, is currently getting more investment than ever before as companies build out different versions of indoor farms. Modular vertical farms, warehouse-sized vertical farms, at-home farms, vertical greenhouses, and massive operations like those of AppHarvest are all promising solutions that can exist alongside traditional agriculture. The consensus from my visit to AppHarvest last week is that in order to improve the food system and feed a growing global population, we’re going to need all those methods in the future. 

In the meantime, AppHarvest’s TOVs and Beefsteak tomatoes are available at Walmart, Kroger, and Meijer stores in certain parts of the U.S.

UAE: The Next Big Food Tech Hub?

Singapore may be getting all the headlines as the latest destination for food tech, but another up-and-coming place to watch is the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The country recently launched a major new food tech hub in Dubai meant to boost internal food security while also turning UAE into a global superpower for food tech. The facility includes laboratories, research centers, and prototype agricultural systems, all situated on a single campus.

Dubbed the Food Tech Valley, the project is the first phase of a wider initiative designed to assist the UAE with meeting its National Food Security Strategy 2051 targets. Among the Strategy’s goals are increasing food production and agriculture in the country, adopting more food technologies, achieving zero hunger in the UAE, and introducing legislation that improves nutrition while reducing waste.

Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of UAE and Ruler of Dubai, launched the Food Tech Valley at the beginning of May. 

The facility, which was designed to physically resemble a head of wheat (see image above), is divided into four main areas:

  • A dedicated area for ag tech and engineering will include a vertical farm as well as projects on bioengineering, robotics, and automation.
  • A food innovation center that will function as an incubator for promising food tech startups and businesses. 
  • R&D facilities will be dedicated to a number of different topic areas that include making crops more drought-resistant, alternative protein production, 3D printing, and crop monitoring and analysis.
  • A food-storage system aims to make food storage, distribution, and transportation more efficient through the use of more technologies. 

The UAE’s Minister of State for Food Security, Mariam Al Mheiri, said the Food Tech Valley is “critical to the goal of achieving self-sufficiency and conserving essential resources.”

The UAE currently ranks 42 among 113 countries on the Global Food Security Index, which grades countries based on the affordability, availability, quality, safety. and resilience of their food systems. The Index lists “agricultural research and development” as a major challenge for the country currently. 

UAE is a bit like Singapore in that a lack of arable land makes traditional agriculture and livestock production difficult. While UAE isn’t quite as high-profile as Singapore in terms of food innovation, its entirely feasible that will change over the next several months and years. Already, vertical farming companies such as Vertical Field and AeroFarms are working in the country alongside local players. With the launch of the Food Tech Valley, many more companies, local and global, are expected to join.