Future Fresh

Phillipines: Future Fresh has become the middleman between farmer and customer

Today, produce shopping has become about tapping, clicking, and scrolling through browsers in different hues of greens and reds for an experience of choice but also less contact.  Direct-to-consumer startup Future Fresh takes it all the way back into the supply chain. Maintaining their own indoor farms, they…

ColdAcre

CAN (YT): Tackling food insecurity above the 60th parallel

In the northernmost territories of Canada, agricultural development is underway but must contend with the cold climate, variable photoperiod and other environmental challenges. It comes as little surprise, then, that interest in controlled environment agriculture is on the rise. ColdAcre Food Systems is…

Montreal: Out-of-season tulip supply made possible by LEDs

It’s springtime in Montreal and while tulips won’t be blossoming outdoors for another month, tulips are already blooming inside a small indoor farm, La Ferme Nomade. La Ferme Nomade is a small-scale indoor farm located in Montréal, Québec and produces tulips under specialized LED lighting. La Ferme…

Texas A&M University

A pioneering woman in agriculture

Kansas Freedom Farms CEO, Lenny Geist, and freelance writer Anne Amoury are two people who believe Lisette Templin, a professor of health and kinesiology at Texas A&M University (TAMU) in College Station, Texas is a pioneering woman in agriculture today. Associate Professor Templin is the director and…

Vertical Roots Canada

Canada: Bringing fresh greens to Albertans and making hydroponics more accessible

Mike and Becky Newhook first took an interest in local agriculture nearly 20 years ago, during a visit to the Philippines where most of the people they met were farmers. When they visited the region 18 years later, those same people were still farming. One thing led to another, and the couple began…

Russia: Hobby farmer turns into ‘local supplier’ of indoor grown cucumbers

In the Republic of Sakha, Artem Vladimirovich Usoltsev, a Yakutsk-based hobby farmer has been experimenting with cucumbers, cultivated under LEDs. Artem wanted to prove that cucumber cultivation is possible, even in the most bizarre weather conditions in northern Russia. Namely, by growing them in an…

PinkFarms @danmagatti

Brazil: Pink Farms has big expansion plans for the upcoming years

“There is hardly any expertise on large-scale vertical farming in Brazil, let alone the technical know-how,” says Geraldo Maia, Founder and CEO at Pink Farms in São Paulo. “That is why we developed an entire system ourselves.” Geraldo started industrial engineering at the University of São Carlos.…

Photo by Grow Well Farms

US: Food pantry in church to grow hydroponic and aquaponic vegetables

Hope Collective, a Lake Zurich church, has been feeding some 200 families a week through its food pantry. In April, the church and the nonprofit Growing Healthy People/Grow Well Farms of Grayslake will launch an indoor, year-round garden featuring several soilless methods of growing vegetables for the…

Harvest London

“Vertical farming gives us the opportunity to create a demand-driven food system”

Starting the business in 2017 with a proof of concept, Harvest London was ready to construct a more high-tech farm. “We’ll only grow the requested demand of the customers,” says Chris Davies, CEO at Harvest London. “Everything is supply-based, however, this has resulted in food waste and a fundamentally…

Photo by wgntv

"The Invert" hopes to bring underground building project to old Southeast Side steel mill

A real estate development company in Chicago is hoping to take contaminated buildings left behind by old steel mills and build below them, underground. The investors behind The Invert are hoping to take 140 acres of abandoned property and convert it to 6,000,000 square feet of usable commercial space,…

Today

Vertical Harvest featured at Today Show

Vertical Harvest recently has been featured on the Today Show, where co-founders Nona Yehia and Caroline Estay made an introduction to the company.  Vertical Harvest, which opened its doors in 2016, is the first vertical hydroponic greenhouse in the United States. It stands three stories high on the side of…

Eden Green Technology

Technology-based on empowering growers with a commercially viable model

Eden Green Technology is a Texas-based agtech company that offers “greenhouses-as-a-service” vertical farming technology and greenhouse systems. These systems can grow  50+ varieties of leafy greens, fruits and vegetables in a sustainable manner, supporting both economic growth and food security. According…

Regulatory changes expected to restrict smaller companies’ ability to provide beneficial microbes

While early 2020 cast a dismal outlook for Green Search Inc., the biotech company quickly bounced back amid the pandemic and finished the year with its high revenues yet. According to Remco Kostwinder, president of Green Search Inc., “The magic was in being flexible and seeing where we could fit in the…

Planted Detroit

"We’re retrofitting with the variables we have in place"

“The Square Room is a big block of pink lights with eight levels, where all our growing is done. Everything after germination is done in the same room, both harvesting of our baby greens and microgreens. Because we’re almost done with our PARS (Planted Automated Racking System), which is the big…

Signify

Five years of feeding tomorrow’s cities

Ellis Janssen, Director city farming at Signify explains: “At the GrowWise Center, we believe in vertical farming. Over the past five years, we have helped hundreds of entrepreneurs and pioneers all over the world discover how they can feed tomorrow’s cities and grow plants faster, in a more sustainable…

Dreamstime: Airubon & MartinBergsma (f.l.t.r.)

Creating agtech campuses in Kansas that use renewable energy

Kansas Freedom Farms is a technology company based in Overland Park, Kansas with a goal to build multiple state-of-the-art agtech “campuses” as commercial real estate developments across the state. Planned for 2021 to 2026, the construction will typically occur in five phases with each including an…

Microgreens and edible flowers hugely sought after by high-end restaurants in Hong Kong

For Full Nature Farms, COVID-19 came as a blessing in disguise. The Hong Kong fresh produce market, which has always been relying heavily on imports, suddenly realized the benefits of local produce: reduce carbon footprint, lower transportation costs and even more importantly, a fresher product. “People…

Photo 82570250 © Ruslan Mitin | Dreamstime.com

Should pizzerias grow toppings onsite?

Imagine a day when heading to your nearest pizzeria comes with the expectation that the spinach or herbs topping your pie were cut fresh from the store's onsite mini-farm. Now, I'm not speaking here of higher-end restaurant brands, but everyday pizza places and QSRs with value-based offerings that an…

Heron Farms

What do saltwater vertical farming and sustainable coastlines have in common?

Recently Evolve.ag held a podcast on 'What do saltwater vertical farming and sustainable coastlines have in common?'. Their series focuses on what's trending in food and food tech. In the podcast, Heron Farms, a sea beans cultivator, is featured. Heron Farms uses its vertical farm and is also restoring…

McCain Foods invests millions in vertical farming operation GoodLeaf

McCain Foods Limited has made a substantial investment in TruLeaf Sustainable Agriculture and its wholly owned subsidiary GoodLeaf Farms, Canada's largest commercial vertical farming operation, to help drive the company's growth and expansion plans. "With this investment, GoodLeaf Farms is embarking on…

Karma Verde Fresh

Introducing vertical farming to Mexico and beyond

Karma Verde Fresh (KVF) is a vertical farm based in Monterrey, Nuevo León (northeastern Mexico), producing a variety of seedlings, leafy greens, strawberries and beans, and manufacturing its own cultivation systems which can be installed in any urban environment to promote local agriculture. First…

US lettuce grower raises $90 million to fund East Coast expansion

Little Leaf Farms has raised $90 million in debt and equity financing. Equilibrium Capital led the latest funding round, with Coppermine Capital, joining founding investor Bill Helman and Pilot House Associates. Bank of America has also committed more than $20 million to date, with an additional $20…

YouTube: ZipGrow

Join the virtual farm tour

Recently, ZipGrow has opened its doors for a virtual farm tour to demonstrate 'how all things are put together'. The tour was kicked off at the germ chamber, then, after passing through the vestibule viewers are lead to the indoor farm.  In ZipGrow's seedling station plants the crops are propagated until they are suitable for transplantation…

GrowUp FARM

Growing sprouts in a former slaughterhouse

Grow Up FARM has recently launched a new product, named Eat-Grow-Repeat: small pea shoots that grow on a small hemp-square in a bag. "Rip off the upper section of the bag, and the bottom of the bag is now the pot," Lasse Vilmar, Chief Executive Grower of the company, explains. "Place the bottom of the…

Sensei Ag

“Autonomy will not happen until we start sharing data”

In an emerging industry with companies eager to prove their technologies’ worth, Sensei Ag remains form-factor agnostic, meaning that the agtech company remains unbiased towards different farm hardware solutions – focusing more on software and plant biology. Sensei Ag is a market-changing agtech company…

"Everyone should have a living, aeroponic tower on their back porch, balcony or even inside their home"

Chapala Gardens is a rooftop aeroponic farm in Santa Barbara, California. Established in 2012, Chapala Gardens was the first such rooftop farm in the Western USA and includes 32 Tower Gardens up to 8’ in height.  The farm is installed atop a 110-year-old 2-story building by the beach, which required founder…

"I think that we should be pushing for proper food sustainability, which includes pricing"

What began as a vertical farming company in Southeast London is now reaching into Asia, the Middle East, and further. Vertical Future is a London-based vertical farming company that designs, builds, and licenses advanced hardware and software technologies for the vertical farming industry. After spending…