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KEARNY, Feb. 24 – Workers at the Bowery Farming warehouse near New York swapped a farmer's hoe for a computer tablet that reads light and water conditions in real time.
Launched in 2015, Bowery is part of the fast-growing vertical agriculture movement, which uses technology in a controlled and man-made environment to grow fresh vegetables indoors while at the same time. throughout the year.
The champions of practice view vertical agriculture as an essential tool for meeting global food needs as the population grows and the climate changes.
Company Managing Director and co-founder Irving Fain said his Kearny, New Jersey site uses fewer resources than traditional farms and does not use pesticides.
"All my life in technology, I've always believed that I could solve not only difficult problems, but also significant issues," said Fain, who previously ran a company that provides data badytics to large companies on their loyalty programs.
Bowery employs more programmers than agricultural scientists. The company claims that its use of algorithms allows it to be 100 times more productive per area than a traditional farm and use 95% less water.
Lower electricity costs
Vertical farming has been practiced for a long time in Japan and other countries, but it has not taken off in the United States before recent technological advances make it viable.
Light emitting diode (LED) bulbs, which have allowed farmers in the interior to significantly reduce their electricity costs, have been a key element.
But Bowery also uses a lot of robotics and artificial intelligence to keep prices under control.
The combination of these new tools "is the way we are really rethinking what agriculture will look like in the next century and beyond," said Fain.
The company has also benefited from over $ 120 million in funding from technology titans, including Google Ventures and Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi.
The connection in Silicon Valley has also strengthened Plenty, another major San Francisco-based vertical agriculture company, which raised more than US $ 200 million from Amazon's general manager Jeff Bezos of Softbank and others.
Crop One, based in the United States, and Emirates Flight Catering have launched a $ 40 million US joint venture for the construction of a giant vertical farm complex in Dubai.
Profitable?
The largest vertical farm in the world is located in Newark, New Jersey, and is operated by AeroFarms.
The company, founded in 2004 and considered a pioneer of the sector, remains a private company and does not disclose financial data. But the company says it's now profitable after a series of failures.
David Chang, founder of the Momofuku noodle restaurant brand, is an investor.
AeroFarms exclusively uses technologies designed by the company that have now reached China, the Middle East and Europe, said its co-founder Marc Oshima.
In a warehouse that was once a steel mill with ceilings of 12 meters, the company cultivates kale leaves and arugula arranged in rows of 12 metal lockers. The roots are suspended in the air as they are irrigated intermittently while the leaves are gilded under LED lights.
AeroFarms regularly experiments with lighting and nutrients in order to find the optimal recipe for each plant and to develop the best algorithm.
The company produces watercress that reminds the reporter of his grandmother's soup, a kale as tender as spinach and a slightly spicy arugula.
Bowery Farming's basil was tinged with lemon.
However, vertical farms may take some time to find viable solutions.
"Large and large verticals are struggling to make their businesses profitable because of their initial capital," said Henry Gordon-Smith, founder of Agritecture, a consulting firm.
Large farms usually need seven or eight years to be profitable, the smaller ones may require half the time.
But entrepreneurs in the sector have confidence in their prospects as more and more young urban citizens worry about climate change and pesticides.
"Vertical farming is not THE solution to food security," Gordon-Smith said. "That's one of the possible solutions."
Critics of upright agriculture say its carbon footprint is important because of intensive use of lighting and ventilation.
However, advocates believe that this negative impact is more than offset by the benefits of reduced water consumption, proximity to population centers and non-use of pesticides.
A bigger problem may be the limits of production itself, at least in terms of nutrition.
"You can not feed the world with salad alone," said Paul Gauthier, a plant scientist at Princeton University, who said vertical farmers will have to develop more protein-rich offerings.
Gauthier – who was growing more spicy peppers in his own lab by subtly increasing potbadium levels – said that vertical farming could provide fresh food to so-called "food deserts" where they are absent and could eventually meet the growing food demand as the climate changes. – AFP
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