Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Inside a New Vertical Farm Full of Robots”.
We got a tour of a new vertical farming facility in Compton California, to learn about the potential benefits of growing food in Towers rather than fields and the technological innovations required to make it happen. Let’S check it out with the world’s food supply under threat from climate change, extreme weather events, not to mention the agriculture industry’s need for scarce Land and Water Resources. A company called plenty believes: it’s developed a compelling alternative, we’re providing another option for Humanity; to safeguard the food supply, to safeguard nutrition, to safeguard things that agriculture has historically provided that are maybe taken for granted, but probably won’t be ticketed for granted for a whole lot. Longer plenty’s vertically grown food is less dependent on environmental factors due to being grown indoors and since plenty’s produce can be grown closer to where it is to be consumed, it could cut down on the energy cost of transporting food. The vertical farming system also allows plants to be grown in areas or in times of year, when they might not otherwise be available. The entire life cycle of the plant from seeding to harvesting is contained within plenty’s Compton, California, Farm, robotic systems and conveyor belts, shuttle the plants from one destination to another, monitored by a team of workers and PPE to keep everything up to sanitary standards. Each plant’s Journey starts here where seeds are planted in trays and provided with the proper water and nutrient mix to give them a start, then they’re sent to the propagation room where they’re, given warmer more humid conditions, to encourage them to sprout then they’re transplanted into the Towers and moved off to the Grow rooms where they reach full maturity under the glow of plenty’s, very own proprietary lighting system. You know the team has done a tremendous job at putting together these lights. That point sideways.
Basically, they’re, not overhead they’re, they sit. They Point sideways, it’s integrated with ventilation systems and it contains kind of a spectrum that we developed in-house to protect the luminescent IP. I wasn’t able to film the lights, except through a window that had a tint on it that distorted the spectrum. They drive photosynthesis very efficiently. They also have programming effects on the plant, so we can tell the plant what to do with the Spectrum. The lights are kind of a relatively simple looking thing, but they’re the culmination of a lot of r d, an awful lot of work to figure out the optimal way to talk to plants with energy. Of course, the sun shines free, but indoor farming requires not just nourishing lights, but extra energy to power them plenty gets its power from the grid and makes special consideration to build its farms in areas where the supply of Renewables is significant or set to grow.
In the future, it’s an exciting time to be in an industry that uses a lot of power. I really view what we’re doing as the marriage of two technology driven Industries. One is, you know, the vertical farming of the indoor farming industry and the other one is renewable energy.
A great thing to do is to see you know, Supply coming online and meet it with demand, and so that’s really, I think, the role that we play when Harvest time comes. The plans move along the conveyance system to this big, yellow robot arm, which loads the towers into the Harvester as the tower rolls through blades slice off the greens, and they enter the quality, control, packaging and distribution side of things. Quality control happens here with a blue light and a computer vision system that keeps an eye out for any damaged or discolored leaves and uses puffs of air to knock them out of the flow of healthy greens. Plenty’S produce is available in some partner stores like Whole Foods, Bristol Farms and Walmart Walmart is one of our partners right. If you walk into a Walmart you’ll find product that we’ve grown on the shelf and it’s priced at kind of the average organic pricing. Next plenty has its sight set on vertical strawberry and tomato Farms, with the possibility of even more applications for this vertical farming Tech in the future.
There’S an opportunity to use these Farms that almost perform like biological factories in a way right to produce things that have never been produced before whether those are you know, ingredients to novel proteins and all sorts of neat stuff that we can grow in a plant. That, just historically, we haven’t been able to do. Plenty’S foods are labeled pesticide free, which plenty reps say is Beyond Organic, because organic produce can still include the use of some pesticides.
I got to try some of plenty’s greens and I found them to be quite fresh and enjoyable. What do you think of vertical farming? Let us know down in the comments, as always thanks so much for watching. I’M your host Jesse oral, see you next time with the fam .