This webinar and panel discussion will focus on trends and innovations in the indoor and vertical farming sector. It is part of a series from UK-based Forward Fooding that showcases members of its 2020 FoodTech 500. It is sponsored by Neom and Rothamsted Enterprises,
Webinar agenda
The webinar will begin with a 15-minute introduction from Forward Fooding founder and CEO Alessio D’Antino, introducing the FoodTech 500 concept and unveiling the official ranking of this year’s Foodtech 500 cohort. ADD LINK
The panel discussion will be moderated by Agri-TechE director Belinda Clarke. Speakers, selected from the 2020 FoodTech 500, include some of the top five vertical farming experts in that group. They include:
- Marc Oshima, co-founder and CMO at AeroFarms;
- Max Loessl, Agrilution co-founder;
- Jonathan Webb and David Lee, founder and CEO/President of AppHarvest; and
- Gregory Lu, founder and CEO of Natufia Labs.
The webinar will conclude with a 15-minute Q&A session.
Times, dates and registration details
The webinar is free and will take place online. It’s scheduled for 6-7.30pm on Wed 31 March, Central European Time (CET). For those of us on Australian Eastern Daylight Savings time (AEDT), this translates to the very early hours of 1 April –from 4am-5.30am. It’s even earlier for those in Queensland and Western Australia.
Earlybirds, rejoice, and register here.
About the panel
AeroFarms is a Certified B Corporation, dubbed one of the World’s Most Innovative Companies by Fast Company. Its award winning patented aeroponic technology enables highly productive, largely automated ‘precision’ vertical farming productivity with minimal environmental impact. The company also has a retail brand, Dream Greens, providing locally grown, nutrient-rich, pesticide-free fresh produce year-round.
Agrilution is the creator of the Plantcube, a fully automated home growing system. Each Plantcube has‘intelligent’ LED lighting, providing plants with the wavelengths they need to thrive from seed to harvest for up to 16 hours a day, and precise, sensor-based climate control (of temperature, humidity and air movement). And each incorporates automatic hydroponic watering via a closed-loop system with an integrated water reservoir, meaning that the Plantcube requires 98 per cent less water than is used in conventional farming.
Certified B Corporation AppHarvest,nc. (NASDAQ: APPH, APPHW), based in the Appalachia region of Kentucky, builds and operates some of the US’s largest high-tech indoor farms. The company claims it produces affordable, nutritious, chemical- and pesticide-free, non-GMO fruit and vegetables sustainably at scale, using up to 90 per cent less water than conventional open-field agriculture and 100 per cent recycled rainwater.
Estonia-based Natufia Labs is a research laboratory and specialised manufacturer of high-tech hydroponic growing equipment and accessories. Its Kitchen Garden set-up is designed for use by the hospitality industry and home chefs. The company also sells growing media and non-GMO, organic seeds for growing an array of herbs as well as salad and Asian greens.
About Forward Fooding and the FoodTech 500
The annual FoodTech 500 is billed by its founders as ‘the Fortune 500 of agrifood-tech’. Forward Fooding refers to it ‘as the world’s first definitive list of global start-up talent at the intersection between food, technology and sustainability’.
Each year’s list showcases companies that are ‘building and scaling agrifood-tech businesses, addressing the rapid need for change across the food system’ – from early-stage start-ups to fully-fledged enterprises.