Five early-stage indoor agriculture companies will participate in the ninth cohort of the Wells Fargo Innovation Incubator (IN2), which works with cleantech companies and entrepreneurs across food and housing sectors. Chosen participants for this cohort will focus on tools and processes that can make indoor farming more environmentally and financially sustainable.
The Wells Fargo Foundation funds the program, which is co-administered by the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL).
Indoor ag has seen some major milestones and investments in 2021, but whether its a truly sustainable endeavor (financially and environmentally) remains a hotly debated topic. For example, growing greens inside fully controlled environments like vertical farms might cut down on inputs like land and water usage, but an enormous amount of energy is needed to run a farm off fully on artificial lighting. (Greenhouses, because they use natural sunlight, are usually a different story.) Additionally, leafy greens are still the only crop large-scale vertical farms can grow in huge quantities, and from a calorie perspective, salad can’t fully feed a growing world population.
Claire Kinlaw, director of Innovation Commercialization at the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center, said in a statement today that this year’s cohort is “focused on validating technologies that address key challenges in the indoor agriculture industry, including environmentally and financially sustainable ways to deliver light, control growth environments, evaluate environmental impacts and solve the need for crop varieties that are well-adapted for indoor environments.”
Companies chosen for the program address these issues and others:
- Atlas Sensor Technologies monitors water hardness in real time to reduce waste and cost of water and improve how water softeners operate
- GrowFlux makes intelligent horticulture lighting via an IoT platform the company says can save 20-30 percent in energy costs
- Motorleaf specializes in AI for indoor ag in order to give growers information around yields and carbon footprint
- New West Genetics does genomics-assisted breeding for the hemp industry
- SunPath uses patented fiber optics tech to improve lighting for indoor farms
All participants will receive up to $250,000 in non-dilutive funding from Wells Fargo. Over a 12- to 18-month period, companies will conduct research and development at NREL and at the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center in St. Louis, Missouri.
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