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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

vertical farming

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.”

California Giant Berry Farms and OnePointOne Team Up to Grow Berries Indoors

More than once in the last few months, indoor farmers have named berries the next important crop for controlled environment agriculture (CEA). California Giant Berry Farms added further weight to that claim today by announcing a partnership with OnePointOne, a technology company that specializes in vertical farming. 

The eventual goal of the partnership is to increase berry output as well as grow crops closer to consumers. To do this, California Giant will work with OnePointOne to develop “an exclusive strawberry cultivar,” an aeroponic vertical farming system that will grow berries. OnePointOne will provide the tech, which includes AI and robotics, while California Giant will share its expertise and existing data for berry growing.

Speaking in a statement, OnePointOne CEO and co-founder Sam Bertram said that his company’s robotics, AI, and plant scientists will “identify the ideal moment for planting, pollination, flowering and picking that will result in strawberries of the highest quality and Brix levels.” The data from these learnings will then be shared with California Giant and potentially used in traditional field growing, too. 

California Giant joins the list of traditional berry growers currently partnering with indoor vertical farming companies. Driscoll’s announced a partnership with California-based Plenty towards the end of last year, and just a couple months ago, Chile-based Hortifrut launched a partnership with New Jersey-based AeroFarms. 

Berries being highly perishable fruits that can easily be damaged in shipping, they make for a logical choice when it comes to choosing crops for indoor farms located closer to consumers. Fully controlled environments, like vertical farms, largely eliminate the need to use pesticides, while close proximity to customers means the berries spend less time in transit. 

California Giant and OnePointOne currently have vertical farming structures in California and Arizona, and plan to expand across the U.S. over time. 

Survey: Indoor Ag to Expand, Add More Tech in 2021

Growers expect to add more technology to various forms of indoor farming for the rest of this year and into the next, according to indoor farm analytics company Artemis’ 2020 State of Indoor Farming report released yesterday.

The report, done in partnership with Startle, is based on a survey of 205 enterprise horticulture facilities, including those with high- and mid-tech greenhouses, indoor vertical farms, and container farms. Respondents answered a number of questions related to crop yields, labor, suppliers, and input. Underlying all of these things is the continued march of technology into the indoor farming space.

A commonly known point the report notes is that indoor ag typically requires more technology than traditional agriculture. For example, while glass greenhouses still use natural sunlight, the addition of LEDs can speed up the grow process for plants or provide more light in parts of the world where sunlight isn’t abundant. Meanwhile, more indoor ag companies these days are turning to tech that can help workers manage operations — an especially important point as farms get bigger and bigger.

To that end, survey respondents’ number one reason for implementing tech is “managing operations more efficiently” (39 percent of respondents). Lowering the cost of production (20 percent) and increasing yield (19 percent) were next. Getting better-quality crops, interacting with customers more effectively, and meeting food safety and compliance standards were also on the list.

In the next year, 19 percent of respondents said they plan to implement data and analytics, while 18 percent will add climate control systems and 17 percent will add labor tracking and cultivation management software. Following those items, growers plan to add more LEDs as well as post-harvest automation equipment and organic nutrients. Remote monitoring and automated scales for weight measurements were also mentioned.

The majority of growers, 73 percent, also plan to expand significantly over the next five years, with a combined expansion of 544 acres total. Mid-tech greenhouse companies — glass or polycarbonate greenhouses that use some tech but not “to the full extent possible” — will expand the most, at 206 acres, followed by container farms at 156 acres and indoor vertical farms at 84 acres.

Echoing this, numerous companies in the space have announced expansion plans in the last few months, from vertical farm company Kalera’s ongoing trek west across the U.S. to Square Roots’ expansion of its container farm network and a second 60-acre greenhouse from AppHarvest. In terms of acreage, greenhouses are likely to grow the most, since they typically don’t use vertical farming technology and often grow crops that require more space than the compact leafy greens that are so popular.  

And speaking of leafy greens, those along with herbs still account for almost half of all crops grown via indoor ag right now (26 percent and 20 percent, respectively). Microgreens (16 percent) are next, followed by tomatoes (10 percent). Other crops, such as strawberries, may become more prevalent as companies leverage new technologies and methods for growing indoors.

iFarm and Al Sadarah Group to Boost Food Security in Qatar Through Vertical Farming

Finland’s iFarm announced a multi-year partnership today with Sadarah Partners to build out a commercial-scale indoor vertical farm in the State of Qatar, according to a press release sent to The Spoon. The goal of the partnership is to bring more local food production inside Qatar’s own borders and at the same time produce greens, flowers, and berries year-round.

The Al Sadarah Group owns Qatar-based indoor farming company Agrico Organic Farm, with whom iFarm will work directly on the project. The two entities will build out an indoor vertical farm based on iFarm’s technology, which includes a number of different tools that help automate the maintenance and management of the indoor grow process. This time around, that includes drones, which will be equipped with computer vision and used to monitor crop health and yields. Computer vision can track the size, weight, and health of each crop, and also spot potential diseases and other problems. 

The forthcoming farm will be the first farm in the Gulf Cooperation Council countries that uses AI and drone technology to grow food.

The bigger-picture goal here is to make Qatar more self sufficient when it comes to food production. Food security issues in Qatar pre-date the COVID-19 pandemic, as the 2017 Gulf rift halted food supply lines into the country and brought the issue of food security into the forefront. Since then, Qatar has invested hundreds of millions of dollars into food self sufficiency.

However, cultivating crops in the country is difficult because of Qatar’s hot temperatures, lack of rainwater, and desert climate. Fertile soil is also limited. Those factors make the country and prime candidate for more indoor, controlled-environment farming. The iFarm-Agrico partnership is also part of the hugely ambitious goal to reach 70 percent self-sufficiency in food production by 2023. 

iFarm and Agrico will start with strawberries and leafy greens on their farm, as well as some edible flowers. For iFarm, the partnership is one of many it has around Europe and the Middle East. 

Vertical Farming Company Bowery Raises $300M in Series C Funding

NYC-based vertical farming company Bowery announced today it has raised $300 million in Series C funding from a boatload of investors. Fidelity Management and Research Company led the round, which also saw participation from GV, General Catalyst, GGV Capital, Temasek, Groupe, Artémis, and Amplo and Gaingels. Additional investors included Lewis Hamilton, Chris Paul, Natalie Portman, Justin Timberlake, and José Andrés. The round is one of the largest ever raised by a controlled environment agriculture (CEA) company, and brings Bowery’s total funding to date to $$72 million.

The funds will fuel further development of the proprietary technology setup that powers Bowery’s network of vertical farms. Currently, the company operates two vertical farming facilities, one in New Jersey and one in Maryland, and has a third under construction in Pennsylvania. These are all equipped with the BoweryOS, which the company calls its “central nervous system of the business.” Software, hardware, sensors, computer vision systems, and robotics work together to manage the farms and collect and analyze valuable data on crops that can be used across Bowery’s entire network. 

The company will break ground on additional farms this year. No specific cities or regions have yet been announced.

Bowery will also use its new funds to recruit new talent and branch into crops beyond the leafy greens the company is currently known for. Here, too, the company hasn’t announced specifics. Several companies, including Plenty, Oishii, and Spread, have said they will grow strawberries in the future. AeroFarms is even considering blueberries. Other non-leafy-green crops that have been grown on vertical farms include peppers, tomatoes, flowers, and even potato seedlings. 

Regardless of the crop, Bowery’s larger aim is to transform the food supply chain to grow food closer to the consumers that actually buy it. When we talked earlier this year, company founder and CEO Irving Fain mentioned our evolving food system, and the need for “transparency and traceability in the food system.”

Bowery greens are currently in over 850 grocery stores, including Albertsons. And once the Pennsylvania farm is complete, Bowery will be able to serve about 50 million people within a 200-mile radius. 

CEA Grower Spread Says Its Vertical Farming Tech Is Ready for ‘Mass Production’ of Strawberries

Kyoto, Japan-based controlled environment agriculture (CEA) company Spread said this week it has developed technology that will let it mass-produce strawberries in a vertical farm setting.

Spread is “old guard” when it comes to indoor farming, having completed its first large-scale vertical farm in 2007. Since 2018, the company has also operated its Techno Farm, which uses robotics to automate much of the grow process for plants. Up to now, Spread has grown leafy greens inside these environments. And like a few others in the vertical farming space, the company is now applying its technology and learnings from that process to growing strawberries. 

Strawberries still top the Environmental Working Group’s “Dirty Dozen” list, which means they contain the highest levels pesticides of any fruit. They are also extremely perishable and prone to damage during the shipping distribution process. That makes farms like the ones Spread operates suitable grow environments, since vertical farms are inherently pest-free already and typically situated closer to consumers. Spread’s Techno Farm, for example, is located in Kansai Science City, which sits at the intersection of the Kyoto, Osaka, and Nara prefectures in western Japan.

Strawberries are in high-demand in Japan as in other parts of the world, and Spread joins companies like Plenty, Oishii, and AppHarvest have already said they are planning to grow the fruit in a CEA environment. Oishii also grows the über-premium Omakase berry — normally only available in a specific region of Japan for a short time — inside its facility. 

Spread said this week it is considering distribution of its strawberries to Europe and North America as well as Asia. The company is also working on grains, mushrooms, and other fruits as potential future crops on its farms. 

Maine Colleges and Hospitals Will Get CEA-Grown Greens Thanks to Sodexo and Vertical Harvest

Foodservice and facilities management company Sodexo announced this week it will partner with controlled environment agriculture (CEA) grower Vertical Harvest to source greens from the latter’s forthcoming vertical farm in Maine. Sodexo said it will source about 80 percent of its lettuce products distributed in its Maine facilities from that farm, rather than importing food from other states.

Vertical Harvest is scheduled to break ground on the Westbrook, Maine farm in August 2021. When completed, the farm will be a four-story, 70,000-square-foot facility that produces about 1 million pounds of lettuce annually. The company already operates one farm, in Jackson, Wyoming, where it grows different types of leafy greens and distributes those to grocery stores and restaurants.

Because of its climate, Maine imports a good deal of its produce from other regions. Vertical Harvest says that once its Westbrook farm is operational, it will “displace” much of this out-of-state produce. Growers will also be able to produce year-round, which normally wouldn’t be possible in a state as far north as Maine.

Sodexo, meanwhile, is one of the largest employers in Maine, and says it serves about 13,000 meals per day at colleges and hospitals across the state. By partnering with Vertical Harvest, the company will be able to serve fresher, more local greens at all 14 of its partner locations in the state.

This isn’t Sodexo’s first time to partner with a CEA company, either. In 2020, the foodservice giant announced a partnership with Freight Farms to bring container grow systems to school cafeterias and university dining halls around the U.S. Elsewhere in the world of food innovation, Sodexo has also launched an Impossible Burger menu and sent Kiwi’s delivery robots across college campuses with food deliveries. 

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.

Meet HECTAR, an Open-Source Project for At-Home Vertical Farming

When it comes to at-home vertical farming, who will be first to grow a watermelon?

That’s a question posed by HECTAR Hydroponics, a project that wants to open-source the at-home vertical farm concept. Rather than mass-producing a whole farm and selling it to consumers, the project’s creators have instead made a manual and documentation available for free download, so that any DIY enthusiast can build their very own HECTAR.

Felix Wieberneit of the Royal College of Art and the Imperial College of London conceptualized HECTAR, which eventually became part of Imperial College’s Venture Catalyst accelerator program, a competition for entrepreneurs sponsored by Huawei. The HECTAR vertical farm is the size of a regular bookshelf and can grow up to 128 plants, according to the project’s website. So far, users have grown kale, spinach, and other leafy greens, as well as green beans.

According to the publication Springwise, HECTAR was partly inspired by what Wieberneit saw as a need for more affordability and versatility with at-home vertical farming: “Wieberneit wants to change the market for hydroponic systems from ‘overpriced smart planters and costly seed subscriptions’, to systems that people design to meet their own needs, which use local materials.” 

Thus far, most large-scale vertical farming companies use either proprietary tech developed in-house or a proprietary mix of off-the-shelf technologies. Information on what works and what doesn’t in terms of the technology is few and far between right now, a situation that also applies to at-home versions of vertical farms.

Hence, Hectar. The plans, released under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International, include a step-by-step guide, an instructional video, and a list of materials, all of which can be purchased from the average hardware store.

A few questions come to mind when thinking of HECTAR in the larger context of at-home vertical farming. For instance, how much does it cost? Do all the materials listed add up to something cheaper than, say, a complete farm from Rise Gardens ($549+) or Gardyn? ($899 for a starter kit). What will the quality of the produce be like compared to those or even compared to what you could buy at the store? 

Those questions will no doubt be answered in time on the project’s community forum, where growers can share tips and advice as well as any improvements and/or changes made to the design. No one’s reported any watermelons yet, but open-sourcing the vertical farming concept might just be the way to get there.

The CEA Food Safety Coalition Launches a Food-Safety Standard for Indoor Ag

The CEA Food Safety Coalition announced today what it says is the first-ever food safety certification program designed for leafy greens grown in controlled environment agriculture (CEA) settings. As of today, members of the Coalition can opt to have their crops assessed by the new Leafy Greens Module, according to a press release sent to The Spoon. Upon passing inspection via the module, those growers can then include a “CEA food-safe” seal on their packaging. 

Founded in 2019, the goal of the Coalition is to provide science-based food-safety certification for those growing leafy greens indoors. The Coalition is not a government entity. Rather, it’s a group of leaders in the CEA space that pay membership dues and work together to provide guidance for the entire industry. The Leafy Green Module is meant to be an add-on to existing compliance standards from the Global Food Safety Initiative.  

Founding members include AeroFarms, Bowery Farming, BrightFarms, Little Leaf Farms, Plenty, Revol Greens, Superior Fresh and Vertical Field. The Coalition is also led by Executive Director Marni Karlin, the former head of government affairs and general counsel for the Organic Trade Association. 

“Current food safety standards were written for the field, and many do not address the unique attributes of controlled, indoor environments,” Karlin noted in today’s press release. “This new certification process and the accompanying on-pack seal helps to unify CEA growers while also differentiating them from traditional field agriculture.”

For example, controlled-environment farms that generally rely heavily on technology also favor circulating water systems via hydroponics. On the flip, there are elements CEA farms do not usually have to factor in, such as contamination from animal byproducts.

The Coalition’s entire certification process looks at four main areas:

  • Hazard analysis, which is the use of water, nutrients, growing media, seeds, inputs, site control and other relevant factors
  • Water that comes into contact with all plant and with food contact surfaces. “The use of recirculating water will require a continuing hazard analysis. Will also require zone-based environmental monitoring based on company-specific risk assessment.”
  • Site control, infrastructure, and system design, including all food contact surfaces and adjacent food contact surfaces, such as plant containers. This area also assesses potential physical hazards from lighting, robotics, sensors, equipment and utensils.
  • Pesticide Use and Testing, or the use of pesticides or herbicides during the plant life cycle. Generally speaking, though, CEA farms don’t use pesticides.

The new certification comes at time when both investment and consumer interest in CEA is on the rise. Leafy greens are still the most prominent crop to be grown in these farms, hence the Coalition’s focus on that produce type in this initial certification. However, other plants, including and especially strawberries, are becoming more popular with indoor vertical growers. No doubt indoor-specific safety certification for that crop is not far away.

Liberty Produce Gets Grant to Further Develop CEA in Singapore

A team led by UK-based vertical farming company Liberty Produce has won £420,000 (~$588,000 USD) from the Innovate UK fund to help advance controlled-environment farming in Singapore, according to a press release sent to The Spoon.

Liberty Produce and Singapore-based LivFresh will jointly lead the Hybrid Advanced Research Vertical Farming Environment Systems and Technology (HARVEST) consortium, which will also include research partners Republic Polytechnic Singapore and the James Hutton Institute.

Liberty Produce will install its Liberator farming system, developed in the UK, at the LivFresh hydroponic farm in Singapore, where it will be integrated with existing greenhouse technology. The HARVEST team will then run trials of this combined system, with the goal being to eventually release a turn-key product for Singapore food growers to use domestically. 

Because of limited land, Singapore currently imports about 90 percent of its food. This dependence on outside sources, however, has proven itself problematic at certain times — like during a pandemic, when the global food supply chain gets disrupted. 

The Singaporean government’s 30×30 initiative aims to get 30 percent of the city-state’s food produced domestically by 2030. Controlled-environment farming, such as greenhouses and vertical farms, is a major part of that plan.  

Liberty Produce develops vertical farms that are modular and can therefore be customized to a specific farming operation’s needs. They are also smaller than the massive “plant factories” a la Plenty or AeroFarms. For instance, the Liberator 5000 is roughly the size of a shipping container, according to the company, while two other models are even smaller. This smaller geographic footprint is well-suited to a place like Singapore, which is mostly urban and, as mentioned above, is already dealing with very limited land.

Liberty Produce systems are 100 percent controlled, from the amount of water and nutrients fed to crops to humidity levels to the “recipes” of LED lights. The system can grow standard leafy greens but has also grown more challenging crops, like blueberries.

The project with LivFresh will last two years and support Singapore’s national strategy around the 30×30 goal.

High-End Strawberry Grower Oishii to Launch ‘Everyday Berry’ via Vertical Farming

Controlled environment agriculture (CEA) company Oishii is best known at this point for its high-end, vertically grown strawberries that cost a cool $50 for an eight-pack. That makes the New Jersey-based company’s wares pretty inaccessible for many consumers — until now. Oishii explained this week that it will be launching an “everyday berry” in the future.

Strawberries are by many accounts the next “it” crop for CEA. As Oishii explained to Vertical Farm Daily, one of the issues with traditional strawberry production is that about 90 percent of all strawberries grown in the U.S. have to be shipped from California. To ensure safer transportation, the fruits are engineered to be resilient at the expense of quality and taste. 

Oishii’s Omakase Berry, which the company grows in its vertical farm facility in New Jersey, is in many ways the antithesis of the traditionally grown strawberry. Omakase Berries typically only grow for a short part of the year in a very specific region of Japan, and they are known for their sweetness and strong aromas. They are also, as noted above, a very premium produce item and, in the case of Oishii, a very expensive one.

But now, Oishii is using its recently raised $50 million funding round to expand R&D and commercialize an everyday berry, with the goal of becoming one of the largest strawberry growers in the world. Oishii will apply the learnings and proprietary technology used to grow its Omakase Berry towards other strawberries as well as other crops, such as tomatoes and peppers.

Strawberries are one of the dirtier crops when it comes to pesticides, and more than one CEA company is now attempting to grow the fruit indoors at scale. Plenty announced a partnership with berry grower Driscoll’s last year. Meanwhile, a Singapore-based company called SinGrow is growing strawberries indoors to make the fruit more widely available in the city state without relying on imports.

Oishii said this week it will focus for now on local markets in northern New Jersey and New York, but also plans to build more farms in other cities and even countries.