Center of Excellence For Indoor Agriculture Announces Best In Class Award Winners

Written by Indoor Ag-Con on August 9, 2021. Posted in Blog.

A HUGE congrats to the Center of Excellence for Indoor Agriculture “Best In Class” Award winners in the following categories:

Urban Crop Solutions – Best Indoor Production System (Systems starting between $250k-$500k)

Intelligent Growth Solutions – Best Indoor Production System (Systems starting $500k and up)

GE Current – Best Overall Indoor Farm Light Fixture

Emphasis was given to sustainable farms and equipment manufacturers that efficiently use resources such as land, energy, labor and water to produce the highest yields at an affordable price in indoor farm settings.

Read more about the winners here: https://indooragcenter.org/award-winners/.

As part of the award announcement, the COE and Indoor Ag-Con hosted the Indoor Ag-Conversations webinar, The Importance of Operations Metrics In Building Sustainable Farms.

Moderated by Dr Eric W. Stein, PH.D., Executive Director of the Center of Excellence for Indoor Agriculture and Associate Professor of Business at Penn State the panel included:

David Farquhar, CEO, Intelligent Growth Solutions
Maarten Vandecruys, Co-Founder & CTO, Urban Crop Solutions
Daniel Lee, National Sales Manager, Horticulture, GE Current, A Daintree Company
Chris Higgins, President & Co-Founder, HortAmericas
Andew Howell, Vice President of Sustainable Food & Agriculture, Ceres Partners

The discussion covered a number of areas of interest, including

-How to build sustainable Triple Bottom Line farm operations
-The importance of operations management, benchmarking, and continuous improvement to support sustainable indoor farming
-The importance of recognizing operations excellence, the purpose of Best in Class awards and their role in promoting farm metrics
-How metrics can contribute to future investment in indoor ag
-Ways to build indoor farms that can achieve long-term sustainable economic results while supporting job creation, workforce development and environmental goals.
-And much more!

Learn more and access the recording here.