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Tag: Food Security

Up Vertical Farms Canada

Scaling New Heights: UP Vertical Farms CEO on Innovation and the Future of Canadian Farming

As pioneers in Canadian vertical farming, brothers Bahram and Shahram Rashti, Co-Founders of UP Vertical Farms, are redefining how leafy greens are grown and delivered. Together they have built one of Canada’s most innovative fully-automated, high-density vertical farms that merges sustainability, technology, and profitability to tackle food security challenges head-on. In this Q&A, CEO Bahram Rashti shares insights into UP Vertical Farms’ cutting-edge touchless growing methods, their key partnerships, and their ambitious plans to scale into the U.S. market. Readers can also hear directly from Bahram during the “Trends in Canada” panel at Indoor Ag-Con 2025, where he will discuss the opportunities and challenges shaping Canada’s controlled environment agriculture industry.

From Dentistry to Vertical Farming: Your career shift from dentistry to agriculture is unique, and you co-founded UP Vertical Farms with your brother, Shahram. What inspired this transition, and how has your partnership shaped the company’s vision and success?

(L-R) Shahram and Bahram Rashti, Co-Founders, UP Vertical Farms

The transition from dentistry to vertical farming was definitely not a traditional one, but it was driven by a deep desire to make a more direct impact on people’s well-being and the environment. Dentistry provided me with an understanding of health and the importance of sustainable living, but over time, I realized that agriculture, particularly food security, was a space where I could contribute on a larger scale. The idea of producing fresh, healthy food in an environmentally sustainable way really resonated with me.

My brother, Shahram, and I have always shared a vision of creating solutions that improve people’s quality of life. We believe that we’re on this planet once and we should try to help solve a problem while we can. After much research, we concluded that the time would soon approach where relying on the current food systems alone would lead to supply shortages due to the adverse effects of climate change. We realized the gap in the market will be significant and grow steadily over time leading to a massive emerging market in vertical farming. That was about 10 years ago when we decided to prepare for this shift from outdoor production to indoors, which is not just a once in a lifetime but a once in history event – producing commercial scale vegetable production without the need of the sun. Our partnership in co-founding UP Vertical Farms has been instrumental in pursuing this vision — my foundation in science and systems combined with his expertise in technology and business has allowed us to build a company focused on innovation and sustainability. Our complementary skills have enabled us to scale effectively and stay true to our core values of growing affordable produce while balancing environmental responsibility.

Innovation and Sustainability: UP Vertical Farms emphasizes innovation and sustainability. How do your touchless technology and unique growing methods address food security and market demands while ensuring profitability?

Up Vertical Farms Canada Innovation and sustainability are the cornerstones of UP Vertical Farms. We design, build, and operate our plant factories in a turnkey fashion, which enables us to customize and build exactly what is needed for a fraction of the cost. Our touchless technology in CEA is a game-changer in the farming industry — it automates key parameters for irrigation, seeding, growing, harvesting, and packaging, in turn minimizing human intervention and reducing labor costs while also maintaining hygiene. This ecosystem technology helps us optimize resource use, reduce waste, and achieve consistent, high-quality yields all year round with 99% less water, nutrient fertilizers, and land compared to traditional farming.

Up Vertical Farms This not only makes our operations more sustainable in our 12-level industrial growing racks, but also more resilient to climate change, inflation, and supply chain disruptions. As a result, it allows us to significantly contribute to food security especially since our enclosed warehouse structures are closer to the regions we want to feed. Furthermore, deploying just -in-time production across our racks allows us to provide fresh, nutritious produce with longer shelf life to the market daily while reducing waste from overproduction. Therefore, our model is not just about sustainability; it’s also designed for profitability. Focusing on high density production, and by reducing overhead costs and waste, and ensuring a constant, predictable output, we’re able to offer competitive prices to consumers, and the market can’t seem to get enough of our crunchy tasty lettuce varieties and salad kits.

Building Partnerships: Partnerships have been critical to your growth—from collaborating with Oppy in your early stages to working with retailers like Costco. How have these relationships influenced your production, distribution, and business strategy?

Partnerships have been crucial to our success, both in terms of scaling and understanding market needs. Oppy, in the early stages, provided us with invaluable insights into the retail and distribution world, helping us refine our products and processes. Their experience in logistics and relationships with retailers allowed us to hit the ground running and reach a wider audience. Oppy understood our vision and the market opportunity from the very beginning, and they have been a great partner to align with to capture the increasing indoor grown leafy greens market in North America.

Up Vertical FarmsWorking with major retailers like Costco has also been a game changer. It’s given us the ability to scale our operations and ensure that we can meet consumer demand for fresh, sustainable produce at a competitive price. These partnerships push us to continuously improve our production systems and ensure quality control at every level, from farm to store shelf. Meeting and surpassing their stringent quality and value requirements has allowed us to grow our programs and become a trusted supplier all year round – not all vertical farms can currently fulfill both.

Our business strategy has always been to build long-term relationships, not just with retailers but also with consumers, ensuring that we’re providing them with the highest quality produce while contributing to local economies. Consumers appreciate quality and value, which is evident as we steadily gain more market share. The trust we’ve built with the different retail, financial, and distribution partners has allowed us to scale efficiently while keeping our core values of innovation and sustainability intact.

Scaling Beyond Canada: Your recent expansion into Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba is a big milestone. What strategies are you using to scale operations, and how do you plan to navigate entering the U.S. market?

Expanding into provinces like Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba has been an exciting milestone. Our strategy for scaling is rooted in replicating our core operational model but adapting it to the unique needs and taste profiles of each region. Our company has recently rolled out 12 tasty salad kit offerings which pair perfectly with our crunchy baby leafy greens. Providing this many unique and market classic salad kits by a Canadian company to retail stores is another market first which we are proud of. Canadians want to eat more locally grown, fresh, long-lasting, and pesticide-free vegetables, naturally making our products highly successful and in demand. We’ve built a strong understanding of consumer preferences, which allows us to tailor our salad kit offerings to retail partners across each province.

When entering new markets, whether domestically or internationally, it’s essential to form strong partnerships with regional and national retailers and ensuring that we’re not just meeting the market’s immediate needs but also contributing to its long-term sustainability goals.

 

Up Vertical FarmsAs for entering the U.S. market, our vision and strategy is quite long term as the American consumers are also searching for the high quality and value propositions which our products offer. We also plan to leverage the scalability of our touchless technology and our proven track record in Canada to demonstrate the viability of vertical farming as a solution to food security challenges in the U.S. We are in the process of establishing strategic partnerships with American retailers with the intention to eventually have local production facilities across certain states. This expansion will in part be fueled and accelerated by the capital raise that we are currently completing.

Future of Vertical Farming in Canada: As a pioneer in Canadian vertical farming, what do you see as the biggest opportunities and challenges for the industry’s growth in the country?

The future of vertical farming in Canada is incredibly promising. We currently import most of our fruits and vegetables across Canada with lettuce having one of the highest volumes. Even though Canada has a vast landmass and freshwater source, agriculture land is limited, and harsh seasonal climates do not allow for year-round field production of many staple crops. Vertical farming however offers a sustainable way to grow food close to where it’s consumed, reducing the reliance on long-distance transportation and always making fresh produce available. The demand for locally grown, pesticide-free, and sustainable food in Canada is only increasing, which presents a tremendous opportunity for vertical farming to fill that gap and help reduce the dependence on imports.

However, there are challenges to overcome. While the long-term benefits are clear, there can be a significant barrier to entry for new players. This is where partnerships, innovation, and government support will play a key role in driving the industry forward.

One of the challenges is that there is no ecosystem blueprint for new entrants to follow, and building the know-how and expertise in vertical farming can be very challenging and costly. Consumer education is another challenge. While vertical farming is becoming more well-known, there’s still a need to educate the public about the benefits of its sustainably grown produce. We have taken major strides in that direction with both partner retailers and government agencies, but continued collaboration across the industry will be critical. Other more talked about items include energy use, capital costs, and competition from existing field and greenhouse producers, all of which we have successfully managed.

Overall, I’m optimistic about the future of vertical farming in Canada. As the industry matures, we’ll see more innovation, cost reductions, and greater adoption, ultimately contributing to a more sustainable and resilient food system.

After almost a decade of R&D and experience, our team at UP Vertical Farms has mastered how to build and operate vertical farms to provide affordable, profitable, and high-quality leafy greens. We are setting the benchmark in Canada for successful vertical farming by having low CapEx and OpEx coupled with high density production and yield. It’s the same know how and expertise that we are applying to other vegetable production as we bring them indoors and grow vertical. This is just the beginning – the sky’s the limit.

Learn more about Up Vertical Farms by visiting their website.

And join us at Indoor Ag-Con, March 11-12, 2025 for the panel discussion with Bahram Rashti and other leaders:

Trends In Canada: Insights From CEA Growers Across the Nation
Tuesday, March 11, 2025 | 11:00 AM – 11:50 AM

 

 

Plenty

From Vertical Farm Daily: Joint Venture to Invest $130M in Regional Strawberry Growth Across GCC Region

Plenty® has built the most technologically advanced indoor farming platform aimed not only at meeting year-round consumer demand but making it possible to build a long-term food security infrastructure that can adapt to the needs of regions like the Middle East,” said Arama Kukutai, CEO of Plenty.

Plenty Unlimited Inc. and Mawarid Holding Investment have entered an exclusive, multi-year, region-wide partnership to bring locally grown fresh produce to countries across the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). The joint venture Plenty and Mawarid have formed will invest more than AED500 million (US$130 million) into the partnership’s first project in the GCC – a vertical farm in Abu Dhabi, designed to grow more than 2 million kilograms of strawberries annually.

The joint venture plans to develop up to five farms in the next five years, which would require investing up to AED2.5 billion (US$680 million) and bring thousands of direct and indirect employment opportunities to the region. Mawarid is a subsidiary of Alpha Dhabi Holding, a major publicly listed company on the Abu Dhabi Securities Exchange (ADX).

Read the full story from Vertical Farm Daily

EE Berger/Planted Detroit

Revolutionizing Agriculture: Indoor Vertical Farming With Pipp Horticulture | Planted Detroit Case Study

 

Pipp Horticulture has quickly become an industry-leading Mobile Vertical Growing Solutions provider, with installations in over 2,500 grow rooms worldwide. Pipp’s Mobile Vertical Grow Racks allow cultivators to maximize production capability, reduce operating costs, and increase overall revenue per square foot by maximizing their cubic canopy footprint without increasing the square footprint of the room or building. Pipp takes pride in manufacturing all its products in the USA.

Although Pipp’s entry point into the horticulture industry was through the cannabis market, Pipp Horticulture is not limited to any specific cultivation or plant processing category. 

Instead, the company looks forward to leveraging the knowledge and experience gained through the cannabis industry to develop solutions for all growers. Pipp sees tremendous growth ahead. Rooted in what indoor cultivation will mean to families, cities, and the world. The possibilities are limitless.

Photo courtesy of EE Berger/Planted Detroit
Photo courtesy of EE Berger/Planted Detroit

Over the years, Pipp has strategically acquired several industry leaders in the market to create a well-rounded cultivation solution. These companies include Greenhaus Industries, Vertical Air Solutions,  GGS Structures, and the assets of Grow Glide. Each of these strategic acquisitions aims to provide purpose-built solutions to support all aspects of your grow facility. Through these acquisitions, Pipp has assembled a team of highly experienced cultivators.

Pipp experts work with the company’s engineers and designers to develop innovations built for the indoor vertical farming market. They also support Pipp customers before, during, and after installation. They offer expert advice and help educate the community on best practices for building and operating your indoor vertical farm.  

Planted Detroit Case Study:

Planted Detroit, located in Detroit, Michigan, is a 20,000-square-foot warehouse with two grow rooms equipped with two types of LED lighting, two hydroponic systems, and a single database system for data collection and analysis. Their mission is to actively work to reduce food insecurity in their communities and come together to grow tastier, healthier, and more accessible greens sustainably. 

Photo courtesy of EE Berger/Planted Detroit

Planted Detroit is moving ahead with Pipp Horticulture as its primary provider of racking systems due to its versatility which allowed Planted Detroit to add advanced ebb-and-flow hydroponic technology to the racking system.

Pipp engineers and installation experts worked with Planted Detroit to install mobile vertical grow racking systems that were clean and biosecure. The Pipp team helped implement a controlled environment agriculture (CEA) system to help better serve their community regardless of the season. Planted Detroit wants to ensure they grow only the best greens, monitoring every aspect of their environment.

Photo courtesy of EE Berger/Planted Detroit

After implementing Pipp’s mobile vertical grow racking systems, Planted Detroit can quickly access and tend to all their plants and grow 8x more. They cultivate their fresh greens on Pipp’s mechanical-assist carriages, holding eight tiers of plants while utilizing 3,000 ABS combination grow trays. Pipp then helped further increase the efficiency of Planted Detroit’s growing systems with our ELEVATE® Platform System to help maintain and care for all their plants on each grow level.

All photos courtesy of EE Berger/Planted Detroit

For more information visit Pipp Horticulture

Codi Whittaker of Primitive Greens inside one of their farms

The Indoor Farmer Who’s Using Freight Farms to Increase Food Security for the Cayman Islands

In the Cayman Islands, Freight Farms and Primitive Greens are working to overturn the status quo of food supply.

A Freight Farm being Delivered
A Freight Farm being Delivered

With the Cayman Islands’ beauty comes a challenging food supply chain. The islands only produce about 1% of their own food, with the rest of the food they consume sourced from Jamaica, Honduras, and, largely, the United States. Relying on shipped produce results in precarious food security. To make matters worse, there are very few direct shipping lines from food-producing Caribbean islands to the Cayman Islands. With lengthy shipping routes, the fresh food that the Cayman Islands ultimately receives is no longer very fresh … and it’s also very pricey.

Enter Freight Farms’ vertical shipping container farms. Codi Whittaker, a young recent college grad, and business partner Kerry Lawrence purchased three container farms from Freight Farms to launch their business, Primitive Greens, with the goal of increasing the sustainability of life on the Cayman Islands.

A Lettuce Wall in Primitive Greens Freight Farm
A Lettuce Wall in Primitive Greens Freight Farm

The three Freight Farms allow Primitive Greens to defy the very things that make fresh food so scarce on the island: a lack of arable land, extreme weather which makes farming near-impossible, and those long shipping lines. Instead, Primitive Greens grows right near consumers, inside high-tech shipping containers right on Grand Cayman island. They work the container farms’ perfectly climate-controlled environment to their advantage to grow beautiful, coveted produce. This, they sell to grocery stores and restaurants on the island at a competitive price — offering island establishments and residents reasonably priced, long-lasting, quality produce.

A school group visits Primitive Greens
A school group visits Primitive Greens

To increase the sustainability of the business, Primitive Greens plans to install a solar and energy storage microgrid that will fuel the farms with 100% clean energy. Energy cost is up everywhere, and the Cayman Islands are not immune. Currently, Primitive Greens pays the equivalent of $0.40 USD per kilowatt hour of electricity — mostly from dirty diesel fuel offered by the local utility. (By comparison, the current average cost of energy in Los Angeles is about $0.26 USD per kilowatt hour.) The solar project, which features solar panels floating in the water of an old quarry, will not only make growing food more sustainable. It will also provide resiliency to the island, through power that is available 24/7 and independent of the electrical grid.

“We’re basically selling the community cheaper, healthier, more sustainable, locally grown food; we’re providing power for less than half the cost of diesel; we’re creating food security; we’re creating jobs; and we’re not clearing any land.” — Codi Whittaker, Co-Founder and Operator of Primitive Greens

Primitive Greens intends to send Freight Farms to each of the three Cayman Islands, to alleviate food security for the entire territory. Ultimately, they strive to be the providers of fresh produce for Cayman.

Primitive Greens was recently featured in a webinar hosted by Freight Farms on the potential for indoor farming in the Cayman Islands. Watch the conversation at https://www.freightfarms.com/visit-freight-farms/primitive-greens-live-webinar.

Freight Farms has seen incredible growth in the adoption of their technology in the Caribbean islands, many of which face challenges similar to the Cayman Islands’. From Turks and Caicos to the Bahamas, islanders are discovering the power of controlled environment agriculture to revolutionize food quality and access for themselves and their communities.

About Freight Farms:

Founded in 2012, Freight Farms debuted the first vertical hydroponic farm built inside an intermodal shipping container with the mission of democratizing and decentralizing the local production of fresh, healthy food. Since its inception, Freight Farms has refined its product offering to arrive at the Greenery™ S container farm. With global customers ranging from small business farmers to the corporate, hospitality, retail, education, and nonprofit sectors, Freight Farmers make up the largest network of connected farms in the world. AgTech Breakthrough named Freight Farms the 2022 “IoT Monitoring Solution of the Year” for its farmhand® IoT automation software.

To learn more, visit freightfarms.com or connect on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, or TikTok.

Crop One CEA Craig Ratajczyk

‘Making Global Food Local’ | Q&A With Crop One CEO Craig Ratajczyk

Last week Crop One announced the opening of its second U.S. farm, located in Hazle Township, Pennsylvania.    Earlier this year, it partnered with Emirates Flight Catering to open the world’s largest vertical farm in Dubai.  The company is also raising the bar in the plant science arena with its Plants First ™ approach, other innovations and truly putting its marketing phrase “Making Global Food Local” in action.  Indoor Ag-Con is excited to welcome Crop One CEO Craig Ratajczyk  to our growing speaker roster for the upcoming February 2023 edition. And, we had the chance to catch up Craig in this month’s CEO Q&A to learn more about the company’s exciting developments and plans.

Emerites-Crop One Earlier this year, Crop One and its partner Emirates Flight Catering celebrated the opening of ECO 1 (Emirates Crop One), the world’s largest vertical farm in Dubai. Can you share a little about your mission and goals for this incredible new facility?

Given the arid land and climate, the UAE currently imports over 85% of its fresh produce, with over 30,000 tons of leafy greens imported each year. One of our goals is for ECO 1 to increase food security and food sovereignty in the region by providing sustainably-grown leafy greens to the UAE market. It’s a 330,000-square-foot facility, spanning three floors with an output of about 3 tons per day, and over one million plants being grown at any given time. Hydroponic cultivation uses up to 95% less water than traditional outdoor farming, which gets to another one of our goals for the new facility: to bring fresh, local produce to areas that might not otherwise have access to it given the harsh desert climate.

ECO 1 serves as a strong proof point for how additional vertical farms could be scaled and replicated around the globe, meeting consumer demand and providing food sovereignty to any region that needs it.

There’s a good bit of talk about innovation in the vertical farming arena these days.  What is Crop One up to and what differentiates you from some of the other leaders in the marketplace today?

Crop One is leading the way when it comes to advances in plant science, and we’re particularly excited about a new plant-based protein that we’re researching alongside fellow industry experts. We are confident that this new innovation will open up additional market opportunities. We look forward to sharing more about this in the coming weeks.

Emerites -Crop OneDuring Indoor Ag-Con, you’ll be participating in our “Food Security Through CEA” panel.  What is one of the key messages you hope to share during this session?

The threats to our global food security are steadily increasing — a rapidly growing global population (as you probably saw, we just surpassed the 8 billion mark), declining arable land, climate change and increasingly severe weather events, and continued supply chain disruptions. These conditions are endangering the food futures of people all over the world, particularly those in places where they might not have the infrastructure or resources needed to overcome new food challenges. One of the key messages I hope to share during the session is that with so many of these threats entirely out of our control, we must focus on new technologies that can overcome — not eliminate — these hurdles. While traditional outdoor agriculture may have worked for the last millennia, it’s not the solution to sustain us into the future.

Emerites-Crop OneCrop One sells its fresh, local produce to 30+ US retail stores under the FreshBox Farms brand. Your marketing for the brand highlights   Crop One’s “ Plants First” ™ approach.   What is that and why is an important part of your messaging?

Unlike other vertical farming companies, Crop One has a Plants First™approach, which recognizes that advances in technology and plant science are synergistic, so the main focus is how to effectively and efficiently grow plants in an artificial environment based on their biology. Only then do we automate the process. The Plants First approach takes a few factors into consideration including plant science, digital systems and innovation, operational efficiency and hardware, together all ensuring that we create the most nutritious and tasty product on the market.

 

Crop One PA Farm

 

What’s Next for Crop One – plans for expansion?

Excitingly, we just announced our second U.S. farm, located in Hazle Township, Pennsylvania. The 316,000-square-foot facility allows us to reach up to 50 million consumers within a 200-mile radius across the tristate and Mid-Atlantic areas, including customers in New York City, Philadelphia, and Baltimore. This new farm will allow us to meet growing retailer demand, while also introducing new consumers across the tristate area to the benefits of hydroponically grown produce.

Learn more about Crop One by visiting the website.

And be sure to put Craig’s Indoor Ag-Con 2023 panel session on your schedule:

Food Security Through CEA
10 am – 10:50 AM PST | Monday, February 27
See Full Conference Schedule

Niko Kivioja

Netled CEO Niko Kivioja: 5 Reasons Why Grocers Need Vertical Farming Partners

Walmart recently announced a big bang in the US grocery trade landscape: its investment in vertical farming start-up Plenty. With this, the retail giant is taking a step toward making high-quality, pesticide-free produce more accessible and affordable for the consumer.

What do they know that you don’t? Why should every grocer be scouting for vertical farming partners now and not later?

  1. The salad and fresh herb markets are growing

NetledSize does matter, and the size of the market for salad and leafy greens in the U.S. and Canada is approximately $15 billion and growing. And it will continue to grow with an estimated CAGR of 8.2% from 2021 to 2028.

Similar growth is expected in the spice and herb market where in North America alone, it is projected to grow at a CAGR 7.2% (2020 to 2025).

That is a lot of money available for leafy greens, herbs, and spices if you can guarantee your yield and deliveries.

But therein lies the problem.

  1. Food security

VeraThe COVID pandemic has shown us that the logistics involved in food transportation are extremely susceptible to disruption; perishable products in particular cannot be stored for long before the quality deteriorates to such an extent that they are no longer fit for sale.

The majority of the lettuces sold in North America are grown in California. So, if you buy a packaged lettuce in New York, it has probably already traveled 3000 miles. Any disruptions to this journey along the way only serve to weaken the quality of the product and its availability to the end customer.

In fact, over the past year, packaged leafy greens have been one of the top items missing from grocery shelves due to logistics and transportation challenges.

Vertical farming systems like Netled’s proprietary system Vera can ensure the availability of products due to their proximity to the store. A Vera system requires very little space and is significantly more efficient and reliable than traditional agricultural systems.

Vera systems produce:

  • 5 times more crops per comparable growing area
  • 15 times more per surface area compared to single-level high-efficiency year-round greenhouse growing.
  • 100 times more crops per surface area compared to the yield for a normal single season in open-field agriculture.

Vertical farming systems also remove the risks that other forms of agriculture are susceptible to such as unpredictable weather, disease, and pests.

 

  1. Food safety

The more stages there are in the food processing and distribution, the higher the chance of some form of contamination.

Fewer human contact points, precise control over irrigation, and the growing process result in less risk of contamination.

Every year in North America, 48 million foodborne illnesses, 128,000 hospitalizations, and 3000 deaths are recorded. (CDC, 2013).

Bacteria and pathogen contamination in the production line almost always originates from the irrigation water used. Further risk of contamination comes from the washing of field-grown or greenhouse products after they are harvested.

Outdoor farming and most of the greenhouses perform triple-wash on the harvested plants in order to mitigate the contamination risk, as a post-harvest process.

Vera vertical farming systems are encapsulated in a precisely controlled environment where there is no contamination from external sources such as pests, fungi, or bacteria.

The Vera system uses 95% less fresh water for irrigation than open-field agriculture and the water it uses is captured from the plant respiration, purified, and fed back into the system ensuring no possibility of external contamination. The plants are not touched by humans during the growing process and therefore do not need to be washed after harvesting.

Harvesting and packaging can even be automated with robotics so that there is no physical contact with the plant at all.

  1. Labor costs

All this automation not only ensures the minimum possible amount of contamination, but it also reduces labor costs.

Vera vertical farming systems are less labor intensive in both the growing and harvesting processes. The extremely high level of automation in irrigation, plant spacing, nutrient delivery, and lighting requires less labor resources. Harvesting and packing can also be automated to a high level with the help of AI and robotics, and if the vertical farm is situated in close proximity to the store, logistic, and transportation costs are also reduced dramatically.

  1. Quality

Awareness and demand for healthy plant-based foods is growing. Salads are a good source of fiber, iron, calcium, potassium plus vitamins A, K, C, and E.

There are many factors that can affect the quality of the end product, not only in the processing stages of production, but also in the growing stage. Open-field growing is particularly susceptible to risk factors: extreme weather events such as torrential rain and drought, nutrient depletion and salination of the soil and the chemical fertilizers used to attempt to redress the balance, water infiltration rates, pesticides, herbicides, and chemical spraying to name a few.

Vertical farming systems operate in a precisely controlled environment where every last detail is planned, monitored, and controlled from seed to retail. There are no rainy days, no hot days, no pests or chemicals – everything is always just right

The Vera system is programmed according to the particular plant and the variables are adjusted so that it can grow to its own genetic maximum. This results in the highest possible quality with guaranteed results no matter what time of year or whatever the weather.

In case you’d like to learn more about your potential future vertical farming partner, come and meet Netled CEO Niko Kivioja and the rest of the team at Indoor AgCon booth 1023!

Niko Kivioja will also join a panel conversation on Direct Controlled Environment Agriculture Farming in Grocery Stores, Hotels & Restaurants on Monday, Feb 28th at 4:00 pm.

 

TO LEARN MORE ABOUT NETLED AND ITS VERA TECHNOLOGY:

W: NETLED.FI

NETLED VIDEO RESOURCES:

Introduction to Vera vertical farm

Netled featured on Advancements TV Series aired on CNBC

Netled CEO Niko Kivioja interview Vertical Farming Podcast

Netled CEO Niko Kivioja interview Crop Talk Podcast  

intelligent Growth Solutions

IGS Vertical Farming Buyers Guide Series

IGS’ latest publication, The Vertical Farming Buyers’ Guide Series,’ presents the latest, verifiable facts about our vertical farming system. Make an informed decision about whether vertical farming could form a profitable part of your business.

IGS split the series into the different areas you need to consider before setting up, expanding or diversifying your own vertical farming operation. The Buyers’ Guide Series comes in three parts:

IGS is a technology company that has combined farming and engineering expertise to create a vertical farming system that delivers grower benefits while also addressing the pressing challenges such as food security and sustainability.

Our Total Controlled Environment Agriculture vertical farming system allows customers to grow crops in a clean environment with zero pesticides, fungicides and herbicides, while supporting reductions in power and labour requirements.

To learn more about IGS, visit www.IntelligentGrowthSolutions.com