V-FAST consortium backed by Innovate UK and the Biotechnology & Biological Sciences Research Council. A consortium of four British companies, comprising UK Urban AgriTech (UKUAT), Intelligent Growth Solutions Ltd, RheEnergise and James Hutton Institute has received a grant from the UK Government to advance the development of low-carbon and low-cost food production.  Specifically, the V-FAST consortium will explore how co-locating energy storage (RheEnergise’s HD Hydro® Energy Storage system) with vertical farms can support a low-emission route to growing protein-rich crops in a controlled environment. Last year, V-FAST – Vertical Farming And Storage Technologies – started investigating sites in Scotland’s Central Belt for the location of Scotland’s next generation of hectare+ scale vertical farms, powered by 100% renewables and using RheEnergise’s…

by Nicole Thorpe After two years of public consultation, GLOBALG.A.P., have launched their revised version of the Integrated Farm Assurance (IFA) standard. Together with the Farm Tech Society (FTS), and in collaboration with UKUAT, I was part of a dedicated international team advising GLOBALG.A.P. on recognition and inclusion of CEA in their revised flagship standard IFA v6 for fruit and vegetables, flowers and ornamentals, hops and aquaculture. The corresponding documents were published in September and are available online. So what is new? This update has been rather comprehensive and a full list of changes is available on the GLOBALG.A.P. website. I have chosen a selection of the most notable ones relevant for CEA (my personal opinion). Firstly, CEA has found…

*Total Controlled Environment Agriculture What if I told you that the British berries market is worth over 1.7 billion? That is amazingly massive. Stop for a minute and actually take that in. This essentially equates to a whopping 239,243 tons of berries, equivalent in weight to 114 London Eyes; can you believe that? Good news for you, I have amassed all the information as a part of my PhD research and have summarised some of the information into a concise and easy to digest read. I hope 😉 But what about the strawberries in particular? Well again, good news for you, here is a bite sized summary of the worldwide overview of strawberries. Worldwide production of strawberries The most recent…

For a long time, creating the perfect plant recipe has been a mere pipe dream for indoor growers as they look to achieve optimal crop yield while reducing CAPEX and OPEX costs.​ While Controlled Environment Agriculture is still relatively embryonic in its development, already there has been an advancement in creating the perfect recipe for growers by utilising the ‘art’ of science in a lab. Inside the lab The word ‘lab’, especially in the context of growing food crops, often evokes the idea that there is some form of meddling with nature or something more sinister at play. As it is, there is still some way to go to fight the general misconception that vertical farming is just a bunch…

The first webinar of our spring series, ‘What is the Secret of Growing Strawberries in TCEA’, presented by Katia Zacharaki of Digital Farming was a great success. While not giving away every single secret, the content is an great starting point to encourage discussion amongst peers and covers a wide range of topics that speak at length about all the fundamentals of successfully growing strawberries inside a TCEA (Total Controlled Environmental Agriculture). Katia gives a brief overview of the strawberry market in the UK, a market where strawberries are an incredibly popular berry and yet are for the most part only grown outside or inside a poly-tunnel environment. This means that they are imported from afar out of season, an…