What you need to know about the future of Food and Agricultre

by FreeBees.io

Every year farmers in the United States make more than $100 billion in revenues by producing and selling agricultural products. It’s a huge market.

This morning I learned that 40% of the world’s population is employed in the agriculture industry.

But the circumstances — earth’s population and climate — are changing, water and land are becoming more scarce and expensive and therefore the food and water supplies have to be rethought.

By 2050 the earth will house 9.7 billion people, that’s over 30% more than today (7.1 billion people). What does that mean? Most probably that we will come in a time of water and food scarcity. In the United States, the demand for fresh water will exceed the supply by 40 percent by the year 2030, according to a State Department report last year. In terms of food production we have to realise that we will need much more food but have much less space to grow it.

Consequently, more food will need to be produced over the next four decades than has been produced over the last 10,000 years. Joshua Bateman for TechCrunch

On the one hand we need more space to grow, on the other we need more efficient growing environments. Experts say that the production is switching from growing in open fields to closed operations in greenhouses or plant factories. Increasing yields per surface area is essential which is why scientists, companies, entrepreneurs around the world are working on innovative urban and indoor solutions. And there’s an increasing demand for locally-grown produce even in areas that are nowhere near farmland.

One very interesting approach is vertical farming which describes the practice of producing food in vertically stacked layers and vertically inclined surfaces as opposed to spreading horizontally. The modern idea of vertical farming uses controlled-environment agriculture (CEA) technology, where all environmental factors can be controlled. There are a variety of benefits for this concept:

Verticalization

• fewer water usage (90 percent reduction in water usage relative to traditional farming)
• fewer land usage as opposed to spreading horizontally
• high density growing environment

Closed Environment

• limited pollution
• no insecticides or herbicides > no chemicals needed for food protection
• year-round growing seasons
• stable daily production
• protected from weather
• greater cutback in mineral nutrients

Technology

• use data to better manage the production cycle (e.g., planting, input application, harvesting, etc.)
• automate the planting, input application and harvesting process to leverage existing resources more effectively
• distinguish products by individual medical needs
• control the quality of plant nutrients
• stimulate development of desirable compounds in fruit and create high-quality produce

Urbanity

• fresher products/less waste due to lower distance of production > customer
• less transportation costs
• convert unused buildings into vertical farms
• less imports > lower prices, better quality of food

Environment

• urban farming creates urban jobs
• reduce the net environmental footprint by using renewable energy
• less drink water consumption

One project called Freight Farms approaches vertical farming with a container solution. Here is a nice explanation video of the project:

Freight Farms allow anybody — especially people living in urban areas — to become a farmer and grow their own agricultural products. Containers let you grow lettuce varieties (e.g., coral, leaf, curly, wave, antler, sweet romaine), herbs (e.g., coriander, mint, basil), and cruciferous vegetables (e.g., broccoli, cabbage, bok choy, sprouts). And as the industry develops, cropping possibilities widen. To maintain your growing container an app lets you keep control over all key components of the farm like air, water, nutrients, and plant growth.

There is also BrightFarms which tries to eliminate time, distance and cost from the food supply chain by building hydroponic greenhouse farms on the rooftops of grocery stores in urban areas. The company has attracted the attention of many investors and has raised $25 million in venture capital by now.

And Toshiba recently converted one of its old floppy disk factories into a site of vertical farming.

Another non-vertical farming but good example of empowering the farmer and disrupting the food supply chain is the French company Food Assembly. This startup which attracted famous investors like Fred Wilson breaks the traditional food supply chain and lets the farmer directly sell its products to the customer using a community model.

The farmer can keep control over pricing and receives around 85% of the revenue. The customer receives the products much faster and therefore in a better quality. The trust factor is as important, customer want to know where their food is coming from, if it got sprayed with chemicals or if it’s genetically modified. Again, technology disrupts the supply chain and wholesaler / retailer loose power as neighborhood co-ops, farmers markets, as well as CSA (community supported agriculture) programs evolve. This way local farmers regain their competitiveness in the global market by offering local products.

Other AgriTech companies I stumbled upon during my research:

VitalFields is a Estonian software startup which enables farmers to manage and get comprehensive information (like active operations, whether data etc.) about their fields. There’s a bunch of other similar startups approaching the farmer with mapping, data and analytics solutions like KisanHub, Trecker.com, Agroptima and many more.

CropX is a data startup which uses soil sensors to collect data which helps farmers to understand where their water is going. The accuracy generated with data from only three simple sensors is revolutionary.