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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

vertical farming

Gardyn Raises $10M for Its Consumer-Grade Indoor Farm System

Bethesda, Maryland-based indoor farming company Gardyn announced today it is raising a $10 million Series A round led by JAB Holding Company. According to a press release sent to The Spoon, the non-controlling investment, when finalized, will bring Gardyn’s total funding to date to $15 million. 

The new funds will allow Gardyn to accelerate the North American expansion of its consumer-grade vertical farm to meet what the company calls “the incredible demand” it is currently seeing for its product.

Gardyn’s at-home vertical farming system is geared towards consumers interested in growing their own produce who have neither space nor green thumb to do it the traditional way. The farm itself is a compact vertical tower that can grow up to 30 plants at once and easily fits inside a small apartment. Its accompanying software platform, dubbed Kelby, automates the majority of the grow process, including circulating the water and nutrients, monitoring plant growth, and notifying users, via a smartphone app. when it’s time to add water to the console or harvest the plants.

Currently, the device can grow leafy greens, herbs, some flowers, cherry tomatoes, and jalapeños. Customers have the option to also use their own seeds.

Gardyn is one of several companies developing indoor farms for the consumer home, a category that grew significantly in 2020. Gardyn itself said it experienced “double-digit month-over-month growth throughout 2020.” Others, including AeroGrow and Click & Grow, also reported surges in interest over the last year. Aspara, too, reported a spike in sales in Hong Kong, where the company is based. Aspara has since launched in the U.S. market.

“I am absolutely convinced we are going to see in the coming two years a total disruption in the way we grow things,” Gardyn’s founder and CEO FX Rouxel told me late last year. More than ever, there is greater demand from consumers for local foods with traceable origins and sans pesticides. The pandemic ushered in record levels of consumers buying produce directly from farmers; putting a farm in your house is the obvious next step.

For some, that is. Food sovereignty in the home is currently only possible for those that can afford it. In other words, farming systems for the home are still fairly expensive, ranging from a few hundred to a few thousand depending on the company and model.

When we spoke, Rouxel was keenly aware of this point, and that the $799 price tag for Gardyn’s the base model is still too high for many. “We don’t want this to be only for well-off people,” he told me. “It’s important that we find ways that anyone can afford this.”

The hope is that some of this new funding and expansion can go towards making the grow-at-home movement possible for a wider swath of the population.

Fifth Season Expands the Grocery Footprint for Its Vertically Grown Greens

Fifth Season, a company using vertical farming and robotics to grow greens indoors, just announced a sizable expansion for its leafy green products in Giant Eagle Retail stores. As of today, Fifth Season greens will be available in over 75 Giant Eagle and Market District stores across Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and Cleveland and Columbus, Ohio metro areas. 

The expansion is a significant jump from the company’s previous distribution reach, which was just 10 stores in the Pittsburgh area. The company also launched a direct-to-consumer service for Pittsburgh-area residents in 2020.

Like other controlled ag companies, Fifth Season grows greens vertically indoors, aiding the process with hydroponics and technology (sensors, AI, etc.). Its main differentiator at the moment is the robotics element of its grow process. A proprietary robotics system handles tasks on the farm such as stacking and moving trays of plants, harvesting, and packaging. While the system is overseen by a human, actual bodies are less needed in the grow room of Fifth Season’s farm, which cuts down on labor costs and can execute tasks faster. Human-free grow rooms also mean there is less chance of pathogens getting into the growing space and impacting plants’ health.

The use of robotics isn’t yet widespread in vertical farming, although that is changing quickly, with companies like Nordic Harvest and iFarm introducing a range of robotics and automation technologies to their operations. Kalera, which is expanding rapidly across the U.S., is another notable example.

For Fifth Season, today’s news marks the company’s first expansion outside of its hometown of Pittsburgh. The company will sell four different varieties of its greens as well as ready-to-eat salads at the new retail locations.

The company said in today’s press release that it is the first of many expansions Fifth Season will announce in 2021. 

Vertical Field Signs Agreement to Bring Controlled Ag to the UAE

Israel-based ag tech company Vertical Field announced today that it has signed an agreement with Emirates Smart Solutions & Technologies (ESST), which develops high-tech agricultural projects around the Persian Gulf, to pilot vertical farms in the United Arab Emirates. The first farm will be installed as part of a research, development, and training center in Umm Al Quwain. 

Vertical Field grows leafy greens vertically inside shipping containers that are equipped with technology like sensors that can monitor climate control, lighting, and irrigation levels inside the farm. Data on those elements and others can be fed back to the growers via Vertical Field’s proprietary app, which allows for remote monitoring and management of crops.

Many companies nowadays take a similar approach to controlled-environment agriculture these days, with Freight Farms, Thrive, and Brick Street Farms being a few notable examples. Where Vertical Field differs from these companies is its choice to use geoponics — soil-based growing — rather than the more common hydroponic method. Instead of plants growing in towers through which water is circulated, Vertical Field farms are made up of what the company calls “living walls” (see image above). The company claims this geoponic method means lower initial and operating costs as well as more crop variety.

Whether with geoponics or hydroponics, controlled ag is an obvious concept to try out in the Persian Gulf region, which endures high temperatures, sparse rainfall, high winds, and other extreme weather conditions around the year. These conditions limit the amount of traditional agriculture production that can happen, which makes controlled-environment container farming an attractive alternative. Another notable development in this part of the world is the Abu Dhabi Investment Office’s recent multimillion-dollar investment in a few agtech companies to innovate on the concept farming in this particular climate.

The Vertical Fields pilot project with ESST will be the first step towards full-scale deployment of the farms across the UAE. Through the partnership, the Vertical Field farm will run as a pilot project that will provide produce to both commercial establishments and the private sector. One of the goals of the project is to determine which crops are most suitable for the local market. 

Eventually, the partnership is expected to expand and include farm deployments around the rest of the Gulf states. 

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.

Indoor Farming Got Big in 2020. Literally

One thing we can say about indoor farming in 2020: it grew, both in market size and investment.

At the start of the year, a big part of our attention focused on the potential of smaller vertical farms in grocery stores and consumer homes. Writing on the topic at the end of Dec. 2019, I figured we would see the most compelling developments in this area over the next 12 months when it came to controlled-environment agriculture.

There certainly were a lot of notable happenings. InFarm further expanded its concept of placing its pod-like mini farms in grocery stores. A number of companies, including Aerogarden, MyFood, Rise Gardens, Aspara, and Farmshelf offered vertical gardens built for the consumer home. And on that note, at CES 2020, both LG and GE unveiled concepts to turn indoor farming into the next big home appliance category. Manufacturers of at-home farms, in particular, reported spikes in demand resulting from the pandemic and our sudden collective interest in at-home food sovereignty.

There’s one drawback to at-home vertical farms and smart gardens: for now, at least, they come with a price tag that’s too high for many households. See Aspara’s $350 countertop farm on the low end and, on the high end, the $13,000 Natufia Kitchen Garden. When it comes to providing fresher, more local, and affordable greens to everyone, it was actually the large-scale commercial farms that made the most news.

A glance at some of the major announcements shows just how big controlled-environment agriculture got in 2020, both in terms of physical space and investment dollars:

There are plenty of differences in the way these companies approach controlled-environment agriculture. Some rely on vertical farming, while others stick to the greenhouse method aided by automation and AI. Many stick to growing leafy greens; others have expanded their wares to include tomatoes, the aforementioned strawberries, and other types of produce.

What all of these have in common is that they are trying to bring the concept of healthier, fresher food to more people at a price point the majority of households can manage. Many of them also provide much-needed jobs for local communities.

The world’s population is expected to hit nearly 10 billion people by 2050. At the same time, the limitations — and environmental dangers — of relying solely on traditional agriculture get more apparent each year. The past 12 months have shown us that these controlled-environment farms, which occupy millions of square feet and are now producing just as much produce, will be a major part of agricultural innovation going forward.

Stay tuned for more developments in 2021.

 

 

Bowery Announces Its ‘Most Technologically Advanced’ Indoor Farm

Controlled-environment agriculture company Bowery is set to open its largest indoor farm to date. The new facility will be located in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, turning a non-arable industrial site into a farm that will grow leafy greens throughout the year.

A spokesperson for Bowery said that the company does not disclose actual square footage of its farms, but that it would be able to serve nearly 50 million people within a 200-mile radius. 

The Bethlehem facility joins Bowery’s roster of farms located in Kearny New Jersey and Nottingham, Maryland. All farms use the hydroponic method for growing. Plants are set in vertically stacked trays and fed a nutrient-enriched water solution that gets recirculated continuously. On the software side, Bowery has a proprietary system, BoweryOS, that monitors plant growth from seed.

Bowery says its Bethlehem facility will be its “most technologically advanced commercial farm yet.” Importantly, it will leverage billions of data points collected from Bowery farms over the last five years to boost this new farms “intelligence” when monitoring plant growth and health.

Other advances include energy-saving LED lighting, more automation of the growing process through BoweryOS, and some innovations in water circulation. The latter will come in the form of what Bowery calls “a comprehensive water transpiration system.” Transpiration is the release of water from plant leaves; Bowery’s system will capture and re-use this water, with the goal of reclaiming “nearly all” of the water used in the growing process.

For the new facility, Bowery is working with the Pennsylvania Department of Community and Economic Development and the Governor’s Action Team, both through a Pennsylvania First grant. The farm is expected to create year-round jobs for the area’s farming community.

The news caps off what’s been a big year for Bowery in terms of company growth. Since January 2020, the company expanded its retail presence from 100 brick-and-mortar stores to 680, and said it has seen more than 600 percent growth in stores and doubled its e-commerce presence.

According to Bowery’s spokesperson, Covid was definitely “an accelerator” for some of this growth, though some of that growth is also due to demand for more local, traceable food grown without pesticides — a trend that predates the pandemic. The new farm will help the company further meet this demand, along with advancing the technology component of the vertical farming sector. 

Freight Farms Partners With Arcadia to Provide Growers With Clean Energy Options

Freight Farms announced today it has partnered with clean energy service Arcadia to offer growers a way to connect their farms to cleaner sources of energy. The new program, available to all Freight Farms customers in the U.S., will let growers synch their utility to one of Arcadia’s wind or solar farms, according to a press release sent to The Spoon. Arcadia will then match 100 percent of the farm’s electrical consumption with solar and wind energy.

Freight Farms helped to popularize the concept of turning old shipping containers into vertical farms that grow produce like leafy greens, herbs, and tomatoes. The farms, of course, require electricity to function, since most controlled-environment farms rely on LEDs as their plants’ light source and need additional energy for temperature control and dehumidifying. There isn’t a lot of public data yet on how much power these farms use, which in turn has led to a lot of questions in the last couple years around how energy efficient they actually are. 

While they’re not giving away any hard numbers on energy consumption, Freight Farms and Arcadia claim their new partnership can connect growers to cleaner forms of energy, including wind and solar, and potentially reduce their energy costs. The program builds on Arcadia’s existing subscription model, where users pay a flat monthly fee to connect their utility to Arcadia’s clean energy sources.  

Once a Freight Farm is connected, Arcadia will match 100 percent of its electricity generated by purchasing the equivalent amount of wind and solar energy in the form of Renewable Energy Certificates. Growers may, based on their location in the U.S., also be able to cut down on energy costs.

There are two options for membership, based on a farm’s location. Growers located in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New York, Illinois, Colorado, Maryland, and Maine can sign up and access the community solar power market. Those in other states sign up for $5/month to access cleaner energy, according to today’s press release. 

Arcadia’s systems automate everything, so signing up for the program doesn’t require any extra steps on the part of the grower. 

Since the program is brand new, it’s difficult to say exactly how much energy is saved through it or what the actual cost savings for individual farmers are. Freight Farms said today only that the program “reduces Freight Farmers’ carbon footprint to one-quarter of industrial farming operations.”

   

YesHealth Group and Nordic Harvest Are Building ‘Europe’s Largest’ Vertical Farm

Europe will soon have its largest commercial vertical farming facility to date. Taiwan-based vertical farming company the YesHealth Group announced today via email that, in partnership with Nordic Harvest, it is building out a 14-story, 7,000-square-meter facility on the outskirts of Copenhagen, Denmark.

YesHealth Group operates a number of vertical farms in Asia and Europe that are equipped with the company’s in-house proprietary tech and provide produce to local retailers and other food outlets.

The partnership with Nordic Harvest, a vertical farming company based in the Copenhagen area, was first announced back in April, when construction on the new facility began. In today’s press release, YesHealthGroup CCO Jesper Hansen called the partnership “a crucial step” of his company’s expansion into Europe.

The Copenhagen farm is expected to start production in the first quarter of 2021. According to today’s press release, it will use a mixture of YesHealthGroup’s technologies, which include hydroponics, robotics, liquid microbial fertilizer formula for nourishing the plants, more than 20,000 LED lights, and smart software to grow leafy greens. Nordic Harvest will manage operations locally.

The news comes at the end of a major year for commercial vertical farming in terms of funding and development. Recent milestones include Pleny’s massive $140 million fundraise led by Softbank’s Vision Fund 1 and Sweden-based Urban Oasis’ $1.2 million fundraise to increase its production capacity by 15 to 20 times.

YesHealthGroup is projecting profits within the first year of its Nordic Harvest farm. Those projections are, according to the press release, based on a “scale-up model” in which the farm will expand from an initial 200-ton annual capacity to 1,000 tons in the fourth quarter of 2021.

Babylon Microfarms Bets on Automation for the Future of Vertical Farming

What started as a humble tabletop farm at the University of Virginia has since evolved into a major company to watch in the vertical farming space, particularly when it comes to the software piece of the process. Babylon Microfarms has over the last few years garnered quite a bit of attention for its controlled-environment farms the company now licenses to hospitals, cafeterias, and other other foodservice operations.

Based in Charlottesville, Virginia (though soon moving HQ to Richmond, VA) Babylon makes a “plug-and-play” system for hydroponic farming that automates much of the grow process and makes controlled-environment farming more accessible. The company raised a $2.3 million seed round in January of this year and, its current product is a standalone farming unit that grows leafy greens.

Of late, however, the bulk of founders Alexander Olesen and Graham Smith’s focus is on software: namely, using it to automate the growing process, which removes the more complicated aspects of vertical farming that would be off-putting to the average user. 

“Growing is a cumbersome experience for many,” Olesen explained to me over the phone this week. “Removing the friction of the user experience and combining that will some of the remote management [will make] smaller forms of vertical farming possible.”

Were the average person to try and build their own high-tech grow system, it would require significant expertise in horticulture, hardware infrastructure, and software development. To name just a few examples, that would include calculating one’s one LED light recipe (which takes the place of sunlight in controlled-environment ag), controlling the temperature of the farm, and understanding how much nutrient to feed each crop and when to do that. Everyday would require a certain amount of trial and error for every plant variety.

All of this makes for prohibitively high costs when it comes to commercial greenhouse production. Olesen noted that for controlled-environment farming to go mainstream, it has to be less technically complicated for the user.    

Babylon’s software is one solution addressing those complications. The company’s “seed-to-sale” system automatically dispenses the right amount of nutrients, light, and water for each crop, simultaneously collecting data on the plants so that the system can make adjustments as needed. The entire system can be controlled remotely via a mobile app.

Up to now, the company has drawn comparisons to the likes of Farmshelf, Farm.One, and InFarm, all companies that license a hardware-software farming combination out to foodservice and hospitality operations.

But Babylon’s founders told me they aren’t necessarily interested in the hardware aspect going forward. Smith says they would prefer something like teaming up with a hardware manufacturer that wants to make vertical farms but perhaps needs more expertise in software to complement their hardware capabilities. 

Such a scenario is actually on its way to becoming a reality. At CES this past year, hardware giant LG announced plans for a smart-farming appliance for the consumer kitchen. At the same time, GE Appliances showcased its Home Grown concept, which featured grow systems using hydroponics and soil-based methods. Prior to CES, Miele acquired Agrilution in another play for smart farms in the appliance space.

All of these hardware developments suggest great opportunity for the accompanying software. While many companies in the vertical farming space try to do both right now, Babylon’s future focus on being “an enabling company” that offers software and services may prove a wiser bid for the long term. Besides building out distribution of its own farms, Babylon is currently interested in working with other businesses, particularly those making hardware, that want to enter the vertical farming space.

There will be no one product that wins, Olesen said, adding that instead, it will be a combination of tools working together to make vertical farming more accessible to everyone.

Swedish Vertical Farming Company Urban Oasis Raises $1.2 Million

Urban Oasis, an indoor vertical farming company based in Sweden, announced today that it has raised 10.5 million Swedish Krona (~$1.22M USD). Investors include Family Offices Pelarhuset, Anteeo, and Yobi Partners Ltd.

Founded in 2017, Urban Oasis built its first indoor vertical farm underneath an apartment complex in Stockholm. The company produces a variety of leafy greens, including kale, bok choi, and lettuce, which are sold at Swedish retailers including ICA, COOP, and online grocer MatHem.

With its new funding, Urban Oasis aims to build its first MegaFarm, which will expand its production capacity by 15 to 20 times, according to today’s press announcement. The new facility is controlled by Urban Oasis’ GreenOS automation software and will be operational by the end of this year for growing a variety of crops.

Funding for the controlled-environment agriculture, and vertical farming in particular, has been downright frothy this fall. Other players in the space getting investment include Plenty, Kalera, InFarm and Unfold. As my colleague, Jenn Marston explained last month:

Less than one year ago, the vertical farming sector was expanding, but a lot of questions remained around the scalability of the concept and how appealing it could be to investors. The nearly constant stream of funding and product announcements in 2020 has sped up that expansion. Part of this is due to, yep, you guessed it, the pandemic. Disruptions in the food supply chain due to COVID-19 have consumers more interested than ever in where their food comes from, and having it grown closer to home is an increasingly attractive option.

With the pandemic still going strong and a month in a half left in the year, Urban Oasis’ fundraise may not be the last of its kind in 2020.

SKS 2020: Why Singapore Is Fast-Becoming Food Tech’s New Superpower

That Singapore is a fast-rising superpower in food tech is something that’s become apparent over the last several months. And yesterday, during a SKS 2020 panel on the Asian food tech landscape, the city-state came up in conversation again as an enormously important location to watch when it comes to food innovation and investment.

“If I had to place my bet I would place it on Singapore,” said Michal Klar, an angel investor who also writes the Future Food Now newsletter. Joining him on the panel were Winnie Leung of Bits x Bites and Spoon Publisher Mike Wolf, and together, the group unpacked some of the reasons why so much food tech innovation is coming out of Singapore right now.

Arguably the biggest driver is that, at the moment, Singapore imports 90 percent of its food. That’s a precarious position to be in during the best of times, never mind during a pandemic that’s disrupted the global food supply chain. In response, the Singapore government launched a $21 million grant fund this year as part of its 30×30 initiative, which aims to have 30 percent of Singapore’s food produced locally by 2030. 

At the same time, that reliance on imports for the majority of its foods may actually help Singapore innovate on food tech faster for the short term. Since so much of the city-state’s food comes from outside its own borders, Singapore lacks some of the constraints other countries face when it comes to getting pushback by established players.

Alternative protein is a good example. Here in the U.S., both plant- and cell-based meat companies must go toe-to-toe with Big Meat producers and lobbyists over labeling of their products, shelf placement, and other issues. By contrast, Klar suggested that because Singapore’s meat supply is imported there’s nobody to push back on new developments and regulations happening in the city-state around alternative forms of meat. That, Klar reasoned, is one of the reasons Singapore is home to Asia’s best-funded cell-base meat startup, Shiok Meats, as well as a number of other up and coming players.  

Indoor agriculture/vertical farming is another area that could potentially thrive because of a lack of existing incumbents. Last year, local farms produced just 14 percent of leafy vegetables consumed by Singaporeans, so there’s little in the way of traditional agriculture to disrupt. At SKS, Leung noted that Singapore’s “highly urbanized” environment makes it an ideal setting for high-tech innovations in indoor farming. We’ve seen this in recent months with companies like SinGrow, which is growing a proprietary breed of strawberries in its vertical farm, and ag tech accelerators like GROW. Leung also flagged aquaculture as a sector to watch in Singapore.

Both Klar and Leung also pointed to Singapore’s regulatory environment as a reason for the city-states speedy growth in food tech innovation. There is only one agency in Singapore that regulates foods, said Klar. In other words, when companies prepare for the phase in which they must get government approval for their products, there’s no doubt or confusion as to who they must go to. This could speed up the process of regulatory approval, which in turn would mean a faster time to market for many companies. 

The above factors are just a smattering of reasons for Singapore food tech’s continued growth, and over the next several months we will continue to see new advances in ag tech, alt protein, packaging, and other areas of the food supply chain emerge.

Plenty Raises $140M to Expand Its Vertical Farming Operations

Vertical farming startup Plenty announced today it has raised a $140 million Series D round led by Softbank’s Vision Fund 1. The round also included participation from berry producer Driscoll’s, according to a press release sent to The Spoon. The investment brings Plenty’s total funding to date to $541 million.

The funding announcement comes mere days after Plenty announced a partnership with Driscoll’s to grow strawberries inside Plenty vertical farms. Part of this new investment will go towards that partnership, as well as Plenty’s collaboration with grocery retailer Albertsons and development on the company’s new farm in Compton, California.

Both the Driscoll’s and Albertsons partnerships mean Plenty’s produce will be available in more locations, especially California, where the company is headquartered. The Albertsons partnership, announced in August of this year, will put plenty greens in 431 of the retailer’s California stores. For the Driscoll’s partnership, Plenty will use its Laramie, Wyoming facility to grow the berry producer’s proprietary strawberry breed.

Plenty’s news follows other recent developments in the vertical/indoor farming sector that span commercial-scale farms, at-home gardens, and initiatives in the grocery store itself. Kalera, another massive vertical farming operation, announced Denver as the next city for its rapid expansion westward. Rise Gardens this week announced an investment from the Amazon Alexa Fund for its in-home hydroponic grow system, and last month, In-Farm raised $170 million to expand its network of vertical farming pods across more grocery stores. 

Less than one year ago, the vertical farming sector was expanding, but a lot of questions remained around the scalability of the concept and how appealing it could be to investors. The nearly constant stream of funding and product announcements in 2020 has sped up that expansion. Part of this is due to, yep, you guessed it, the pandemic. Disruptions in the food supply chain due to COVID-19 have consumers more interested than ever in where their food comes from, and having it grown closer to home is an increasingly attractive option.