On March 31st, 2021, we held the fourth webinar of our series with some of the most inspiring minds working in the field of vertical farming. Our brilliant guests shared with us the journey that led them to build and develop leading FoodTech companies and provided their visions for the future of our food system.

The Event

Agriculture is a £6 trillion global industry that has altered the face and lungs of the Earth for 12,000 years. But, unless we change our food systems, we’ll be in trouble. By 2050, the global population will be 9.7 billion, two billion more than today. Fifty-six percent of us live in cities; by 2050 it will be 70%. If the prosperity of megastates like India and China continues to soar, and our diets remain the same, we will need to double food production without razing the Amazon to do it.

Vertical farmers believe they are a part of the solution. Connected, precision systems have grown crops at hundreds of times the efficiency of soil-based agriculture. Located in or close to urban centres, they slash farm-to-table time and eliminate logistics. New tech is allowing growers to tamper with light spectra and manipulate plant biology. Source: wired

The webinar was moderated by Belinda Clarke, director of Agri-TechE. Dr Belinda Clarke, a former scientist at the John Innes Centre, who trained as a plant scientist, has worked for a number of innovation-driven organisations, including Innovate UK. She has been the director of Agri-TechE since its launch in 2014. Agri-TechE is a business-focused membership organisation, supporting the growth of a world-leading network of innovative farmers, producers, scientists, technologists and entrepreneurs who share a vision of increasing the productivity, profitability and sustainability of agriculture. Thus, we could not be more honored to have her chairing this session.

She started off by asking our speakers to introduce themselves and their companies. Thus, we went on to discover more about our panelists and the journeys that led them to build their businesses through some of the personal stories they shared with us. In the following paragraphs, we share how Marc, Gregory, Max, and David got into Food Tech and some of the words of wisdom they shared during the panel.

Marc Oshima, CMO & Co-founder at AeroFarms (#2 of the 2020 FoodTech 500)

Marc Oshima has extensive experience in retail marketing, brand management and media for large companies. He also has experience in the food industry, leading marketing for The Food Emporium, a Northeast supermarket chain and Citarella Gourmet Markets, which has been recognised as one of the top 50 specialty food shops in the United States. Marc co-founded AeroFarms with the intention of making healthy and delicious food more accessible to urban communities around the world.

AeroFarms is on a mission to transform agriculture by building and operating environmentally responsible farms throughout the world to enable local production at scale and nourish our communities with safe, nutritious, and delicious food. Since 2004 they have been charting the way towards a new standard of fully controlled agriculture. They build farms on major distribution routes and close to population centers. They challenge traditional growing seasons by allowing local, commercial-scale cultivation all year round. They set a new standard of traceability by managing their vegetables from seed to package.

AeroFarms has been leading the way not only for indoor vertical farming but also agriculture from genetics to post harvest. They have grown over 800 different varieties of crops and sees potential even beyond food production to extend to other verticals like pharmaceutical, cosmeceutical, and nutraceutical.

Gregory Lu, Co-founder at Natufia (#154 of the 2020 FoodTech 500)

 

Gregory Lu has 20 years of experience in the real estate sector, from small to large scale residential and commercial development projects. A few years ago he decided to diversify into the world of food production and distribution, as well as retail, which led him to create Natufia Labs. Natufia Labs is a startup manufacturing the first kitchen garden appliance, that is fully automated and made to be integrated into professional & home kitchens.

After 4 years of significant investments and efforts, Natufia Labs has become a leading research laboratory and a specialised manufacturer of high-tech hydroponic equipment. This equipment is specially designed for anyone who shares its vision on original taste, traceability, pesticides, transgenics, herbicides and the responsibility we all have towards our planet.

Gregory states that when we talk about indoor growing, we enter a different world where we don’t have to focus on aspects such as pesticides or insect damage, because the crops are completely protected from these external factors. The interesting thing about vertical and indoor farming is that we can focus on something very different and more important like taste, plant diversity and nutrient quality.

Max Loessl, Co-founder at Agrilution (#14 of the 2020 FoodTech 500)

 

Max Loessl is an entrepreneur and sought-after speaker on the potential of vertical farming to improve our malfunctioning global food system. As he traveled the world and lived in China, the EU and New Zealand, he realised that vertical farming has to be part of the solution to solve global food and environmental challenges. In 2013 he founded Agrilution and the Association for Vertical Farming (AVF).

He grew up as the son of a development aid worker in China and experienced early on the contrast between technical comfort and deepest poverty and malnutrition. To help create a better future for all, he moved to New Zealand to support Greenpeace, where his desire to take action and improve the world only grew.

Inspired by all his research and study on vertical farming, and with the vision that in the future you could harvest fresh leafy greens, herbs and vegetables whenever you wanted them in your own kitchen, grown without pesticides, packed with nutrients and produced sustainably, he decided to co-found Agrilution in 2013 with co-founder Philipp Wagner. They have built up a team of 17 scientists, technicians and salespeople for the development of the sustainable indoor greenhouse, the Plantcube.

“The idea behind agrilution was to bring the point of production as close as possible to the point of consumption, by leveraging all the benefits that vertical or indor farming technology has to offer.”

David Lee, President at AppHarvest (#12 of the 2020 FoodTech 500)

David J. Lee has recently been appointed as president of AppHarvest. In this newly created role, David develops strategy and is involved in managing operations, leading the sales, marketing and finance functions as AppHarvest continues to grow as a sustainable fresh food company. He joined AppHarvest from Impossible Foods, where he served as the Chief Operating Officer and Chief Financial Officer since December 2015. Mr. David has 20 years of experience in the retail and consumer sectors, with a successful track record of helping to drive business transformations and optimise organisational effectiveness.

AppHarvest is on a mission to feed the future through vertical farming technology. Growing fresh, nutritious fruits and veggies for the betterment of people and the planet. They are building a sustainable, homegrown food supply that’s accessible to all, all year long. Using the sunlight and water provided by the planet, various sensors and lighting that allow them to grow with maximum efficiency inside the greenhouse, they create a controlled environment agriculture.

David Lee stresses the importance of the location of its production plants. They chose Kentucky as their first site because, due to climate change, it is getting wetter and wetter. When they talk about improving nature with technology, a good example is their ability to recycle all rainwater to run their factories in a more sustainable way.

Appharvest has recently become the first greenhouse company to go public via reverse IPO. That is why Lee states they are excited to prove that being a public company can be absolutly in concern with being a company that makes a diference for the world.

 

We then wrapped up the event by opening the floor to our attendees for a Q&A session with our panelists.

At Forward Fooding, we are incredibly proud to have hosted the Vertical Farming webinar. We loved hearing more about the entrepreneurial journeys and the inspiring stories from some of the incredible entrepreneurs from the ‘2020 FoodTech 500’s pack’ who are leading the charge in the vertical farming sector!

A big thanks go to all our speakers,  for taking the time to share their words of wisdom and inspire other entrepreneurs to enter this space. Another huge thank you to all the attendants who came along and joined us to celebrate this amazing pack of entrepreneurs who are bettering our food system every day with their inspiring work!

Last but not least, a very special thanks goes to Belinda Clarke, for agreeing to chair our event and being an amazing moderator for this session!

If you’ve missed this event, fear not,  you can watch the video below!