Controlled Environment Agriculture

Bowery Farming to close

Wed, 06 Nov 2024 14:05:18 GMT

New York City-based Bowery Farming, a leafy greens, herbs and strawberries vertical grower, is reportedly ceasing operations, according to PitchBook , which referenced a document seen by it and company employees.

Bowery Farming, founded in 2015, utilized refurbished warehouses close to the communities it served in Kearny, N.J.; Nottingham, Md.; and Bethlehem, Pa.

The company opened its Farm X, an innovation hub for plant science in Kearny, N.J., next to Bowery’s original R&D Center of Excellence and first commercial farm in 2021. Bowery Farming said at the opening that Farm X would increase the company’s research and development capacity by 300%.

PitchBook reported Bowery Farming conducted several rounds of layoffs in 2023 as the company struggled with its valuation plummeting. Last year the company also paused its previously announced plans to open facilities in Arlington, Texas, and Locust Grove, Ga., amid its valuation struggles.

PitchBook estimates the company at its peak was valued at $2.3 billion and raised more than $700 million in venture capital from investors such as F idelity Management & Research Co. , GV (formerly Google Ventures), General Catalyst, GGV Capital, Temasek, Groupe Artémis, as well as new participation from Amplo and Gaingels.

The company said it increased its retail footprint by more than 15 times between 2020 and 2023 and supplied almost 1,900 grocery stores and major e-commerce platforms, including Whole Foods, Ahold Delhaize, Amazon, Safeway/Albertsons and Walmart. The company also supplied its salad kits to Citizens Bank Park and Sweetgreen locations in the New York Tri-state area, which featured the Bowery Bowl.

Vertical farmer Kalera files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy

Wed, 05 Apr 2023 17:26:18 GMT

Kalera, a vertical farming company based in Orlando, Fla., filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy April 4 in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Texas.

The public limited company is known on the Nasdaq stock exchange as “KAL,” according to a news release.

Kalera will continue to operate its business as “debtor-in-possession” under the jurisdiction of the bankruptcy court and according to the bankruptcy code. The company is requesting customary relief for transitioning into Chapter 11 so that ordinary daily operations won’t be disrupted.

Jim Leighton’s employment as Kalera’s president and CEO has ended, effective March 29. Leighton also resigned from the company’s board of directors.

Related news: The Packer’s Q&A with Kalera’s CEO

The rest of the company’s executive management team will remain with Kalera, including: Chief Operating Officer Austin Martin, Chief Financial Officer Fernando Cornejo, founder and Chief Science Officer Cristian Toma and Senior Vice President of Human Resources Leon Lachance. These members will remain on the board: Chairman Curtis Williams, Robert Arnall, Brent de Jong, Sonny Perdue and Cristian Toma.

Kalera has a global network of hydroponic vertical farms growing greens and culinary herbs, harvested on demand year-round. Farms in Orlando, Houston, Atlanta and Denver are in operation. Farms in Seattle, Columbus, Honolulu and St. Paul, Minn., are under construction, according to Kalera’s website .

Kalera also operates farms in Munich and Kuwait and had a mega-farm opening in Singapore in 2022 .

Kalera PLC, Kalera S.A. and other subsidiaries — including Vindara Inc. and Iveron Materials Inc. — are not part of the Chapter 11 filing. Kalera intends to use the court-supervised process to evaluate strategic alternatives for Kalera, including a potential sale of Kalera or its assets.

To help with process, Kalera PLC has appointed Mark Shapiro, senior managing director at B. Riley Advisory Services, as chief restructuring officer. Shapiro will oversee the business and its restructuring process to further the Kalera’s business strategy and sell it for the maximum value.

“The Chapter 11 process will allow Kalera to continue operations and serve its existing customer base while it evaluates strategic alternatives for its business and assets,” Shapiro said in the release.

To enable Kalera to continue operations during the reorganization process, Kalera’s existing lender has agreed to provide Kalera with $5.1 million of debtor-in-possession financing, as long as Kalera meets some customary conditions, including the approval of the bankruptcy court, which has not been obtained by press time.

Kalera hired the Baker & Hostetler law firm to be its legal adviser and B. Riley Advisory Services to be its financial adviser to assist in the Chapter 11 case filing, its restructuring and review of all available strategic alternatives.

Related: Kalera opens vertical farming facility in Denver

Because of this ongoing review, the company was not able to file its annual report for the preceding year ending Dec. 31, 2022, by March 31, 2022. It’s not clear when that report will be made.

On April 14, 2022, according to the release, Kalera took a loan from Farm Credit of Central Florida, in which Farm Credit agreed to make:

Revolving loans in an aggregate principal amount of up to $10 million.
One or more term loans in an aggregate principal amount up to $20 million.

On March 21, 2023, Farm Credit informed Kalera that as of the close of business on March 17, 2023, Farm Credit had sold its interest under the loan agreement to Sandton Credit Solutions Master Fund V.

Starting this Chapter 11 bankruptcy case constitutes a default on the loan, which accelerates Kalera’s obligations under the loan. The loan agreement provides that, upon a Chapter 11 case filing, the unpaid principal and interest due under the loan agreement are automatically due and payable.

But Chapter 11 bankruptcy protects Kalera from this: Any efforts to enforce these loan payment obligations are automatically stayed as a result of the Chapter 11 case filing, according to the release, and the creditors’ rights of enforcement are subject to the bankruptcy code.

Kalera has more than 200 creditors, according to the petition for Chapter 11 bankruptcy .

Some of the creditors with the largest unsecured claims that aren’t insiders include: Orlando-based House of Plastics Unlimited Inc. for $352,053; Orlando-based accountant Grant Thornton for $345,622; Grand Rapids, Mich.-based public relations firm Lambert for $323,822.63; Columbus, Ohio-based freight brokerage firm BBI Logistics for $197,991; and Tavares, Fla.-based Aaron’s Electrical Services for $116,632.35.

More information about the case is available here .

Related news, via the “Tip of the Iceberg Podcast": Where vertical farms (like Bowery) are headed

The Need to Improve Energy Efficiency in Vertical Farming

Thu, 17 Nov 2022 17:02:14 GMT

While so-called urban agriculture has deep historical roots, as I described in a blog on this topic in October 2017 , efforts to raise crops without full access to sunlight in a controlled environment, known as vertical farming or agriculture, is a much more recent development.

The first commercial vertical farm was established in Singapore in 2012. Sky Greens Farms, initially consisted of six aluminum towers, each 120 feet high, which combined could produce 1 metric ton of fresh vegetables every day, sold in local supermarkets to consumers. The operation has since expanded to growing vegetables in 300 towers, and hopes to expand further in coming years. The company is financially supported by the government of Singapore, but is seeking to export its technology to other countries as well. Unlike many subsequent vertical farming or controlled environment agriculture (CEA) ventures, this approach relies on natural sunlight and soil to grow its plants, primarily leafy vegetables.

Even though the technology used has evolved considerably since Sky Greens Farm was established, these ventures still focus on growing high value crops such as fruits and vegetables, especially leafy green vegetables, which are highly perishable and often degrade in quality when shipped long distances from farms to markets. The facilities’ design structures are also geared in this direction, focusing on low-height, light-weight crops with short growing seasons that can accommodate multiple harvests annually.

In the last ten years, the CEA industry worldwide has grown from its humble beginnings in Singapore to producing an estimated $79 billion worth of fresh product in 2021, projected to nearly double in the next five years by Pitchbook, a firm that tracks data on private and public capital markets. While these estimates represent a tremendous rate of growth, it is important to put it in context. That 2021 figure amounts to less than 1 percent of the estimated value of global fruit and vegetable production in 2020 (about $918 billion), according to data reported by the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization.

As of 2020, there were vertical farming operations in place in at least a dozen countries, primarily in the United States, in developed countries in Asia such as Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, China, and Singapore, in western European countries such as the United Kingdom, France, Germany, and the Netherlands, and wealthy Middle Eastern countries such as the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Kuwait.

Most vertical agriculture facilities rely on artificial LED lights as substitutes for natural sunlight, and hydroponic solutions with all the necessary nutrients included to replace soil. These structures utilize a much smaller land footprint than do either conventional farms or greenhouse operations. Such farms are also highly typically water efficient, as the closed systems allow for precision application on the growing trays as well as the ability to better clean and recycle water.

Many vertical farms are established in existing buildings, which helps to reduce construction costs, although remodeling costs can be significant. However, the major disadvantage of these types of operations is the very heavy use of energy associated with them, especially as compared to conventional outdoor or greenhouse farming operations. Activities such as operating the artificial lights, circulating the water and hydroponic solutions throughout the system, conditioning the environment, and all the automation features of some CEA operations all require utilization of energy. It is estimated that the average greenhouse facility uses 2.5 kilowatt-hours (kWh) for every pound of produce it grows, while the average vertical facility uses about 17.6 kWh per pound, or about seven times greater. This substantial gap is the main reason that vertical facilities focus on producing high value crops, to offset their high energy input costs.

In recent years, some operations and academics have been exploring ways to reduce those energy expenditures. CubicFarm Systems, a Canadian company, has developed technology that allows the growing plants to rotate on an ‘undulating path’ through a single layer of LED lights to better mimic natural plant growth rather than lighting the whole environment equally. The company claims that this approach is 62 percent more energy efficient than a typical vertical ‘rack and stack’ farming arrangement.

A company called Eden Green, headquartered in Texas, is promoting its approach, which uses vertical towers like the original Sky Greens Farms, allowing use of sunlight to reduce the need for artificial lighting. The company also tries to focus its climate control around the plants themselves, and not spending as much energy conditioning empty spaces within the facility where plants are not being grown. They claim that their system is ten times more energy efficient than the typical vertical farm.

Dr. Qingwu (William) Meng, an assistant professor of controlled environment horticulture at the University of Delaware, has been studying whether plants in vertical farming need full-spectrum (white) light to grow in an efficient manner, or can they thrive in single spectrum light environments, which are less costly to radiate. He is also exploring how a range of other environmental factors, such as carbon dioxide concentration, air temperature, and the content of the nutrient solution, can affect plant growth rates. His work is partially funded by NASA, which is interested in better ways of growing food on long-term manned space voyages that may be launched in the future, such as to Mars.

Greenhouse Technology Can Help Feed Africa

Sun, 08 May 2022 12:00:00 GMT

By Amadou Sidibe: Bamako, Mali

Today, a kilogram of melon costs $20 in Congo Brazzaville—a country where the daily wage for a typical worker is just four (4) dollars.

This basic food item is far beyond the financial reach of an ordinary person in the world’s second-poorest country .

I’m working with partners to solve this growing challenge with technology.

As an architect by trade and a technology-focused farmer in Mali , I grow off-season fruits and vegetables in greenhouses . We started with tomatoes and have moved into cucumbers, peppers, green beans, melons, and watermelons, and even roses.

Our efforts have succeeded so well that farmers and entrepreneurs around Africa have taken notice. They see how the technology of greenhouses can create new opportunities for growing food and employing people.

My projects now have included eight hectares of greenhouses in Bamako, the capital of Mali, as well as a hectare of greenhouses in both Burkina Faso and Chad. I also have partnerships in Guinea, the Ivory Coast, and Niger.

Last month, I visited Congo to meet with a potential investor who contacted me through my company’s Facebook page . He would like to build 15 greenhouses—and make melons and other fruits and vegetables more affordable for the people of Congo Brazzaville.

Greenhouses are climate-controlled structures with transparent walls and ceilings that allow farmers to grow crops in places where they can’t survive outside. Most of Mali, for example, is in a region known as the Sahel , which separates the Sahara Desert from the coastal areas of West Africa. It’s dry and hot. These conditions make it impossible to grow most crops.

Greenhouses change the equation. They protect fruits and vegetables from weather, while still admitting the sunlight that crops need for photosynthesis . Farmers who use them can supply water and fertilizer as necessary, and then watch crops flourish in locations where they would otherwise shrivel and die.

Greenhouses can be found in almost every shape and size. The world’s largest is in the UK and called the Eden Project . It contains an entire rainforest.

Mine are much different and more practical. They are small and inexpensive—and perfectly suited for the limitations and opportunities of the African market. My partner is Netafim , a manufacturing company based in Israel, which also needs to grow food in an arid environment. This collaboration is a good example of the international cooperation that often lies behind the best agriculture.

Our greenhouses are turnkey, tailor-made operations that take into account the specific needs and challenges the owner needs to address. Farmers who build the metal frames and then attach the clear plastic roof and walls of insect proof filets can get started immediately. My company helps with installation and training. This model of cooperation makes it possible to reduce costs and save time.

Congo is a promising location for greenhouses. It’s the largest country in sub-Saharan Africa, and it has more arable land than any other nation on the continent. It has the potential to feed 2 billion people, according to one estimate . Yet only about 10 percent of it is cultivated and the Congo population depends on imports for 90 percent of its food.

Poverty is a big part of the problem because agriculture requires investment. The other challenge is the climate: In Congo, it rains constantly. Crops need water, but too much water can be as deadly as too little water. Lots of plants simply drown in these wet conditions.

This is the opposite of what I face as a farmer in Mali, where the main threat is drought. Yet in both my country and in Congo, greenhouses offer an alternative. They are remarkably versatile.

The massive rainfall in Congo even presents an opportunity. All that water must go somewhere, and much of it flows into the Congo River, the second most powerful river in the world. Only the Amazon River in South America discharges more water into the ocean.

This means that greenhouse farmers in Congo will have easy access to a key ingredient for crops as well as a possible source of clean energy.

Soon, our greenhouses may be growing melons as well as tomatoes, cucumbers, zucchini, and lettuce—and improving food security for the people of Congo.

Amadou Sidibe is an architect by training who is investing in greenhouse technology to produce affordable and nutritious fruits and vegetables in Mali and now across Africa. Amadou is a member of the Global Farmer Network. This column originates at www.globalfarmernetwork.org