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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Revol Greens

Revol Greens Launches Its Own Plant-Based Nutrient Source for Greenhouses

Greenhouse lettuce grower Revol Greens today unveiled a proprietary plant-based nutrient source with which it can feed the plants in its indoor farms. Dubbed Plant Fed, the product is currently patent pending, and its existence on Revol’s farms means leafy greens will be fed entirely by plants and not with animal ingredients, as is often the case with fertilizer.

Revol raised a $68 million funding round in September 2020 to build out its network of greenhouses. Currently, the company operates a 10-acre greenhouse in its hometown of Owatonna, Minnesota. Two more facilities, one in California and one in Texas, are slated to open in 2021.

The Revol process relies on as much automation as possible, though not necessarily of the robotics variety. Machines automatically sow the seeds in grow trays, which are then moved from the germination room to the greenhouse via a water flume and placed in a massive pools of water with their roots exposed. Human hands pick up the trays to move them from sowing machine to flume then out of the water pools, but people never touch the actual plants.

Meanwhile, much of the farm’s water source comes from UV-sterilized rainwater and snowmelt collected from the roof of the facility. This is an improvement over traditional farming, where produce often shares a water source with nearby animals, thus upping the risk of contamination to the plants. 

Like other hydroponic-based operations, Revol’s method grows plants without any soil. Instead, the new Plant Fed nutrient source will be pumped into the water that is circulated into the pools in which plant roots are exposed.

“The plant-based natural fertilizer developed by our research and development team is an extension of our goal to provide the healthiest, most natural leafy greens to our customers,” Revol’s CEO Mark Schulze said in today’s press release. 

Revol is certainly not alone in that goal, with recent activity in the high-tech greenhouse space underscoring the sector’s possibilities when it comes to future farming. Gotham Greens raised $87 million for its own greenhouse network at the end of 2020, and of course there was the news of AppHarvest going public earlier this year. 

Revol’s Plant Fed nutrient is only feeding the greens in the company’s own facility for now. Whether the company ever decides to sell its product to other controlled ag operations remains to be seen.

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.