Why cooling is an important asset in vertical farming

“Although crops in vertical farms have a highly controlled environment, cooling remains an essential part of the entire growing process needed to guarantee the preservation of the product quality for its end consumers,” shares Sylvia van Uden, Sales manager at Weber Cooling. Weber Cooling is a Dutch…

Eden Green Tech: 11,600m2 hybrid farm will deliver up to five million pounds of produce a year

Eden Green Tech, a vertical farm company, based in Texas, USA, has opened its new hybrid farm of 83,000 sq ft with the second phase on its way. Phase one of the North Texas farm expansion, which is now open, was completed about a year ago, despite supply chain delays and roadblocks. The latest vertical…

US (SC): Local elementary school installs its first soilless garden

Lex-Rich Five school Leaphart Elementary STEAM Magnet has installed a new hydroponics tower from Lettuce Grow on campus. Hydroponic gardening is water-based, growing plants and herbs without soil. The tower will be an instructional tool to engage students while learning about food production, nutrition…

US (VA): Teachers can win a free hydroponic system

Virginia educators interested in growing produce with their students can enter for a chance to win a free hydroponics system from Virginia Agriculture in the Classroom (AITC). Virginia AITC is hosting a 2022 Back-to-School Giveaway through which it will award three lucky Virginia teachers with a HYVE®…

India: Over 200 households adopt aquaponics as side food stream as trend rises

Wish to grow vegetables and fish but don’t have the space for it? More than 200 families in Cherai, Ernakulam, have found the answer by implementing aquaponics.   Cherai embraced it as part of the initiative launched by Pallipuram Service Co-operative Bank (PSCB) in 2006 in association with Marine Products Export…

Jean Chung/Bloomberg

UK investor plans to boost investment in vertical farms up to £500 mln

Gresham House, a UK alternative investment specialist, plans to boost its investment in vertical farms by 10 times over the next three to five years, boosting its total commitment to between £300 million ($344 million) and £500 million. Chinese tech giant Tencent Holdings Ltd. invested in an…

The unintended consequences of lighting up indoor farms

Feeding a growing global population using less land, water, and energy is a big goal. It's even more challenging when you are looking to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, with rising input costs and supply chain shortages. This week Green Sense Farms' Robert Colangelo is speaking to Chris Higgins,…

Photographer: Jim Wyss/Bloomberg

Hurricane Fiona pummeled Puerto Rico’s crops, but not those grown indoors

A few days after Hurricane Fiona slammed Puerto Rico with catastrophic flooding and whipping winds that destroyed much of the island’s agriculture, Francisco Santana was packing a box of bright green lettuce for delivery. “We’re the only ones in this part of Puerto Rico that have something to ship right…

How lightweight expanded clay comes in beneficial

Leca stands for lightweight expanded clay aggregate. To put it simply, Leca comes in baked clay balls that soak up a little water, after which they expand slightly. It’s a…

Photo: Saga Robotics

"Increasing adoption of ag robots as more growers ‘get it’"

According to Anne Dingstad, the brand-new CEO of Saga Robotics, the time for ag robots is now. “The technology delivers, the numbers stack up.”  In 2021, Saga Robotics launched Thorvald, an autonomous robotic platform that focuses on reducing powdery mildew through UV-C treatment. In August of this year, Anne…

Looking back at the 6th AVF Summit and Vertifarm

The 6th Association for Vertical Farming (AVF) Summit on the theme ‘Unifying New Food Systems’, held together with VertiFarm, the first ever International Trade Fair for Next Level Farming and New Food Systems was held on September 27 to 29, 2022 at the Dortmund Exhibition Center in Dortmund, Germany.…

Agdia releases ImmunoStrip for detection of Alfalfa mosaic virus

Agdia, a provider of plant pathogen diagnostic products and services,  announces the commercialization of a rapid, user-friendly product for the detection of Alfalfa mosaic virus on their ImmunoStrip platform. Alfalfa mosaic virus (AMV) is the type member and singular species within the Alfamovirus genus,…

UK: Dry weather sees Evesham vertical grown produce demand soar

A vertical farm owner said demand for its produce is "through the roof" after weather conditions affected harvests. Joe Pilade runs Valefresco in Evesham, where salad is grown stacked on top of each other in a controlled environment. He said the extreme heat over the summer had left crops grown outside…

Philippe Gysen new CEO of Agaris Group

Since Monday, 3 October 2022, Philippe Gysen has been appointed as the new CEO of Agaris. An engineer by education, Philippe can look back on extensive experience in various commercial and management positions at Procter & Gamble in Belgium, the Netherlands, and Switzerland. He further built his career as…

HPGen wins Iberflora Innovation Award

HPGen has won the Iberflora Innovation Award for technological improvement in ornamental production.  The award, named after Professor Ballester-Olmos of the Polytechnic University of Valencia, once again confirms the practical use of our groundbreaking technology to generate hydrogen peroxide on-site. Ornamental…

US (OH): Youngstown City Schools received $10k grant to purchase growing towers

Youngstown City Schools have received a grant to purchase new Fork Farms Flex Farms to grow lettuce and serve city schools.  "We are pleased to announce that the YCSD Food Service Department was awarded a $10,000 grant from William Swanston Charitable Fund, a supporting organization of the Community Foundation of…

EnviroCrops app – a decision support tool for the biomass sector

The EnviroCrops web app project has been awarded £1.57 million of funding from BEIS through the Biomass Feedstocks Innovation (BFI) Programme. The project is led by the Agri…

US East Coast: "CEA products are becoming the top search on our website"

“In the case of indoor farming, FreshDirect as an online grocer has the advantage of already working with short supply chains, which fits nicely into CEA principles. Currently, the typical produce chain involves growing food, sending it to a warehouse, then to another warehouse in another country and…

“A million gallons of water that could be recycled or repurposed”

“Conventional water monitoring systems don’t have the breadth and depth that we need to protect and preserve water resources. With KETOS, we are changing the paradigm of real-time water intelligence and bringing that data to growers’ fingertips,” says Meena Sankaran, founder, and CEO of KETOS. Founded in…

Farm.One

The power of genetics to unleash the potential of indoor farming

How can the biology of a crop be manipulated for greater profits in this fast-growing market through breeding?  Since early farmers began collecting seeds for propagation, they focused on varieties that performed best in unpredictable field conditions, not in highly controlled environments. Specifically, crop…

An uprooted tree helped Kerala farmer start aquaponic farming

Back in 2012, when Palakkad-native Vijayakumar Narayanan returned from Muscat after various jobs for 20 years, he was unsure of what to do next. He could always farm at his ancestral house in Nanniyode, but what? So he pored over books about new farming techniques and crops which were suitable for…

Behind the scenes at Agrician

UK: Grow It York wins award for indoor community farming initiative

A community farm, established by the University of York and based at a container park, has been awarded the Best Community Initiative Award at the World Vertical Farming awards 2022. The farm, Grow It York, was created by the FixOurFood team at the University in 2021 when Prof Katherine Denby teamed up…

WUR and GIANT LEAPS partner to accelerate transition to alternative dietary proteins

Wageningen University & Research is delighted to announce our participation in a new Horizon Research and Innovation Action called GIANT LEAPS. This EU-funded project aims to accelerate the transition from animal-based to alternative dietary proteins. This dietary shift is key to reducing the footprint…