Kalera, one of the fastest growing vertical farming companies in the US, has announced it will open a fifth facility in Denver, Colorado in 2021. The company currently operates two growing facilities in Orlando, and is constructing facilities in Atlanta and Houston that will open in early 2021. It is expected the new Colorado facility will generate approximately 60 jobs for the local community. Its first commercial vertical farm, the HyCube growing centre, currently operates on the premises of the Orlando World Center Marriott, bringing fresh, local produce to hotel visitors and customers. In March 2020, the company opened its…
Author: Anthony James
Anthony James
With over 20 years experience in editorial management and content creation for a broad spectrum of market-leading B2B magazines and websites in the transport and technology sectors, Anthony has written news and features covering everything from airport security to autonomous vehicles, and stadium design to sustainable energy.
Syngenta and NK Seeds have launched the Cropwise Seed Selector, which provides data-driven seed recommendations to help farmers make more informed decisions and maximize profit potential. Syngenta says Cropwise eliminates a key issue facing the digitisation of agriculture, which is ensuring different systems developed in the market can connect with one another to provide growers with quality data. The tool builds on technology that combines artificial intelligence, two decades of agronomic information and a simple user interface. Along with the added benefit of being connected to a larger network of digital technologies from Syngenta, the Cropwise Seed Selector includes several new…
In our exclusive interview, Jones Food Company CEO and founder James Lloyd-Jones revealed plans for a new vertical farm in the Midlands by the third quarter of 2021, followed by a second site in South Wales in the first quarter of 2022
iFarm, a Finnish startup that already has 11 industrial-scale vertical farms operating or under construction in Finland, Switzerland, UK, Netherlands, Andorra, Russia and Kazakhstan with a total planting area of more than 11,000m², has succeeded in raising a further US$4 million in its latest funding round. The company will use the money to develop its iFarm Growtune SaaS platform that enables operations of multiple varieties of vertical farms; and quadrupling the number of plants compatible with iFarm’s tech. In addition, iFarm will overhaul its automated production lines to reduce labour costs; and complete experiments with growing strawberries, cherry tomatoes, sweet…
Following NASA’s plans to test aeroponics technology on the International Space Station next year, global aerospace giant Sierra Nevada Corporation (SNC) has announced it has successfully grown juicy red tomatoes for the first time in its Astro Garden system. Astro Garden technology builds on SNC’s extensive experience with space-based plant growth systems and technology built over several years in conjunction with NASA. Astronauts have been relying on and utilizing SNC technologies to grow lettuce, Chinese cabbage and ornamental Zinnia flowers successfully on the International Space Station since 2015. Leveraging its proven microgravity plant growth systems, SNC developed Astro Garden – its largest and…
Food security in the UK is under increasing scrutiny in light of COVID-19 – can vertical farming scale up to provide a viable, long-term solution? Anthony James ‘Are automated indoor growing facilities the future for fresh produce?’ This is the topic of a new online conference organised by Agri-TechE, a private sector membership body which aims to bring together organisations and individuals that share a passion for improving the productivity, profitability and sustainability of agriculture. ‘CEA Lite’, which takes place 10 September 2020, will provide a digital space for controlled environment agriculture (CEA) technologists, producers and investors to discuss the current…
Food entrepreneur and icon Martha Stewart, Impossible Foods CFO David Lee, and best-selling author and investor J.D. Vance have joined AppHarvest’s board of directors as it prepares to open one of the world’s largest indoor farms this Autumn in Morehead, Kentucky. Starting with non-GMO tomatoes, AppHarvest’s farms will provide freshly grown American fruits and vegetables for national grocers, meeting the enormous and growing demand for locally grown produce amidst the supply chain challenges created by the current COVID-19 pandemic. AppHarvest says its indoor farms reduce the need for acreage, use no harmful pesticides, lessen fuel used in shipping, and are…
Intelligent Growth Solutions (IGS), an Edinburgh-based supplier of controlled-environment growth products, including a vertical ‘farm-in-a-box’ and retrofit growth stations for low-rise installations, has signed a deal with new vertical farming operator Vertegrow, which was only established in May this year by Martin Dickie, founder of the BrewDog brewery and pub chain. Vertegrow has chosen IGS’ four-tower system for a new indoor farm to be built at its existing Waterside Farm facility in Ellon, Aberdeenshire, Scotland, later this year. A 245m² insulated superstructure will accommodate four 9m-high towers alongside a 1,600m² service area. Together, they will provide approximately 1,343m² of growing space, producing…
AppHarvest, a US start-up already committed to building North America’s largest ‘controlled environment agricultural facility’ – a US$97 million, 2,760,000ft² hydroponic greenhouse on 60 acres of land in Morehead, Kentucky – has now announced ambitious plans to turn the long-suffering Appalachia region into the USA’s leading centre for agricultural technology. The company is one of 17 signatories including the Dutch government, the state of Kentucky, several universities and numerous private companies of an international agreement to create a new agtech capital in Appalachia, a region spanning some 13 US states (West Virginia, Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Maryland, Mississippi, New York, North…
Grow Solutions Holdings Inc (GRSO), a Canadian company specialising in indoor agriculture solutions, has reported rapid progress in its bid to develop artificial intelligence (AI) to automatically measure crop health, detect growth patterns, and adjust environmental settings in indoor vertical farms featuring the company’s AeroPod units. GRSO believes smart farm networks can use AI to accelerate each other’s crop quality and yield gains, while keeping costs low and requiring minimal staff with specialized crop knowledge. GRSO is now analysing critical grow data, which it will use to generate fully GRSO-owned IP that builds on the capabilities of the first-generation AeroPod.…
