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#Post#: 14077--------------------------------------------------
This startup is building a massive indoor farm in a Rust Belt st
eel town
By: Surly1 Date: October 22, 2019, 7:56 am
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Braddock is over the hill from where I grew up east of
Pittsburgh. When I was a little boy, the red glow from the Edgar
Thompson works would light up the night, such that a four year
old would ask whether it was time to get up yet. At the height
of its operations, worker cars would be parked on the street for
nearly a mile in either direction from the plant.
When I visited five or six years ago, a friend and I drove down
Braddock Avenue to revisit old haunts. I took pictures of
vegetable gardens then being planted outside of the dormant
plant. This is quite an amazing development.
This startup is building a massive indoor farm in a Rust Belt
steel town
HTML https://www.fastcompany.com/90420034/this-startup-is-building-a-massive-indoor-farm-in-a-rust-belt-steel-town?partner=feedburner&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=feedburner+fastcompany&utm_content=feedburner
Fifth Season will begin selling spinach, lettuce, and other
leafy greens—all grown inside with the help of robots—early next
year.
[html]<h2 class="subhead"></h2> <figure><picture><source
media="(max-width: 40em)" sizes="calc(100vw - 20px)"
srcset="
HTML https://images.fastcompany.net/image/upload/w_300,ar_16:9,c_fill,g_auto,f_auto,q_auto,fl_lossy/wp-cms/uploads/2019/10/6-robotany.jpg<br
/>300w,
HTML https://images.fastcompany.net/image/upload/w_638,ar_16:9,c_fill,g_auto,f_auto,q_auto,fl_lossy/wp-cms/uploads/2019/10/6-robotany.jpg<br
/>638w" /><img sizes="calc(0.58333 * (100vw - 40px))"
srcset="
HTML https://images.fastcompany.net/image/upload/w_562,ar_16:9,c_fill,g_auto,f_auto,q_auto,fl_lossy/wp-cms/uploads/2019/10/6-robotany.jpg<br
/>562w,
HTML https://images.fastcompany.net/image/upload/w_937,ar_16:9,c_fill,g_auto,f_auto,q_auto,fl_lossy/wp-cms/uploads/2019/10/6-robotany.jpg<br
/>937w,
HTML https://images.fastcompany.net/image/upload/w_1153,ar_16:9,c_fill,g_auto,f_auto,q_auto,fl_lossy/wp-cms/uploads/2019/10/6-robotany.jpg<br
/>1153w" alt="This startup is building a massive indoor farm in
a
Rust Belt steel town" class="extendsBeyondTextColumn"
width="754" height="423"
/></picture></figure> <div> <p>In a vacant lot next to
one of the last remaining steel mills in Braddock, Pennsylvania,
a town just south of Pittsburgh, a massive new indoor farm is
taking shape. The farm, from a startup called <a
href="
HTML https://www.fifthseasonfresh.com/"
target="_blank"
rel="noopener">Fifth Season</a>, will begin selling spinach,
lettuce, and other leafy greens early next year, using a robotic
system that the founders say costs as little as growing the same
crops on a traditional
farm.</p> </div> <div> <p>It’s more
affordable, they argue, than some others in the vertical farming
industry. “We looked at vertical farming and realized that
the industrywide struggle to make the economics work was a huge
factor, and something that would really prevent the industry
from truly taking off,” says Austin Webb, cofounder and
CEO of Fifth Season, which incubated its first farm at Carnegie
Mellon University. “The per-unit economics don’t
work. Companies are losing money for every pound that they sell.
And that obviously needs to change.”</p> <figure><img
alt="" width="1002" height="563" sizes="(max-width: 767px) 89vw,
(max-width: 1000px) 54vw, (max-width: 1071px) 543px, 580px"
data-src="
HTML https://images.fastcompany.net/image/upload/w_596,c_limit,q_auto:best,f_auto/wp-cms/uploads/2019/10/2-robotany.jpg"<br
/>src="
HTML https://images.fastcompany.net/image/upload/w_596,c_limit,q_auto:best,f_auto/wp-cms/uploads/2019/10/2-robotany.jpg"<br
/>class="extendsBeyondTextColumn" /> <figcaption>[Photo:
courtesy Fifth
Season]</figcaption> </figure> <p>Like others in the
space, the startup touts the advantages of growing indoors.
It’s possible to use only a tiny fraction of the water
that’s used to grow greens in fields; most lettuce is
currently grown in drought-prone California and Arizona. (In
Arizona, farmers will also soon start <a
href="
HTML https://civileats.com/2019/09/18/as-water-sources-dry-up-arizona-farmers-feel-the-heat-of-climate-change/"<br
/>target="_blank" rel="noopener">losing access to water</a> from
the Colorado River.) Growing indoors eliminates the need for
pesticides. It eliminates food safety hazards like E. coli
contamination. And if crops are grown close to end
markets—in this case, restaurants and stores in
Pittsburgh—it also eliminates the emissions from trucks
traveling thousands of miles and the problem of less-than-fresh
produce that may be more likely to be thrown out because
it’s already starting to wilt. “When we look at the
food distribution system, we looked at it and saw an overly
complicated broken system, where no one’s connected to
their food, and there’s a lot of food waste,” Webb
says.</p> <figure><img alt="" width="996" height="560"
sizes="(max-width: 767px) 89vw, (max-width: 1000px) 54vw,
(max-width: 1071px) 543px, 580px"
data-src="
HTML https://images.fastcompany.net/image/upload/w_596,c_limit,q_auto:best,f_auto/wp-cms/uploads/2019/10/5-robotany.jpg"<br
/>src="
HTML https://images.fastcompany.net/image/upload/w_596,c_limit,q_auto:best,f_auto/wp-cms/uploads/2019/10/5-robotany.jpg"<br
/>class="extendsBeyondTextColumn" /> <figcaption>[Photo:
courtesy Fifth
Season]</figcaption> </figure> <p>Some past efforts
at indoor farming have failed because of high costs, such as
FarmedHere, near Chicago, which shut down in 2017 in part
because of the cost of labor. “When you look at vertical
farms and labor is 40% to 60% of their cost—labor for them
is actually more than the all-in delivered cost of Western-grown
field produce—it’s just not going to work,” he
says. The company’s system, which it has running now at
another location and which it’s recreating at the new
location, uses around 40 robots. “Together, they’re
completely integrated so that our facility is, in a sense, one
robotic system.”</p> <p>Robots plant seeds in trays
and deliver trays to grow rooms, where automated systems control
everything from the amount of nutrients the plants receive to
the schedule of lighting and the amount of carbon dioxide in the
air. When a crop is ready, it goes into an automated harvesting
system, and then to an automated packaging system, and the trays
are sent back to be automatically cleaned and sanitized and then
replanted. “We essentially looked at it and said that we
should create an automated fulfillment center,” says Webb.
“The difference being that instead of pallets of boxes, it
should be trays of plants.” Solar panels on the roof and a
battery backup system means that the facility can continue
operating even if extreme weather takes out the electric
grid.</p> <figure><img alt="" width="998" height="561"
sizes="(max-width: 767px) 89vw, (max-width: 1000px) 54vw,
(max-width: 1071px) 543px, 580px"
data-src="
HTML https://images.fastcompany.net/image/upload/w_596,c_limit,q_auto:best,f_auto/wp-cms/uploads/2019/10/7-robotany.jpg"<br
/>src="
HTML https://images.fastcompany.net/image/upload/w_596,c_limit,q_auto:best,f_auto/wp-cms/uploads/2019/10/7-robotany.jpg"<br
/>class="extendsBeyondTextColumn" /> <figcaption>[Photo:
courtesy Fifth Season]</figcaption> </figure> Other
companies in the industry are also developing automated systems,
including Plenty, a Softbank-funded Silicon Valley startup that
now has a <a
href="
HTML https://www.fastcompany.com/90365627/robots-are-already-farming-crops-inside-this-silicon-valley-warehouse"<br
/>target="_blank" rel="noopener">suite of state-of-the-art custo
m
robotics</a>. Plenty hasn’t shared the details of the cost
of its system. But Fifth Season estimates, as an example, that
its own robot used for storing and retrieving plants may cost
two to three times less. It also uses space more efficiently
than some other companies; because everything is automated and
humans don’t need to access rows of produce on
scissor-lift equipment, the aisles between plants can shrink,
growing more produce in the same amount of space. (The new farm
is 60,000 square feet, a little smaller than the <a
href="
HTML https://www.fastcompany.com/3043850/meet-the-startup-that-wants-to-make-vertical-farming-mainstream"<br
/>target="_blank" rel="noopener">69,000-square-foot farm run by
another company called Aerofarms</a>.) During its first full
year of operation, it expects to grow half a million pounds of
greens and herbs, with prices in line with organically grown
produce. At that price point, the payback period of the full
system will be less than two years. <figure><img alt=""
width="1006" height="566" sizes="(max-width: 767px) 89vw,
(max-width: 1000px) 54vw, (max-width: 1071px) 543px, 580px"
data-src="
HTML https://images.fastcompany.net/image/upload/w_596,c_limit,q_auto:best,f_auto/wp-cms/uploads/2019/10/1-robotany.jpg"<br
/>src="
HTML https://images.fastcompany.net/image/upload/w_596,c_limit,q_auto:best,f_auto/wp-cms/uploads/2019/10/1-robotany.jpg"<br
/>class="extendsBeyondTextColumn" /> <figcaption>[Photo:
courtesy Fifth Season]</figcaption> </figure> In
Braddock, where the population has shrunk more than 90% since
its high point in the 1920s to around 2,000 people today, the
new farm can provide some new jobs, despite the automation.
Three shifts a day will employ 20 workers each. “These are
manufacturing-like jobs where we’ve got folks that are
helping us operate our machinery,” Webb says.
“We’ve got folks that are monitoring the health of
the equipment. All of that is something where someone can come
from a previous job and you’re not necessarily saying
you’re going to do something that’s totally
completely different, such as sit at a computer and write
code.” As the company expands, it will also hire more
engineers and plant scientists.</div> <div> <p>The
startup hopes to replicate the new facility, designed as a
modular system, throughout the country. “We’re able
to take what we’re building in Braddock and take those
blueprints and really hit the repeat button quickly,” he
says.</p> </div>[/html]
#Post#: 14080--------------------------------------------------
Re: This startup is building a massive indoor farm in a Rust Bel
t steel town
By: AGelbert Date: October 22, 2019, 3:58 pm
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[center][img
width=640]
HTML https://images.fastcompany.net/image/upload/w_596,c_limit,q_auto:best,f_auto/wp-cms/uploads/2019/10/7-robotany.jpg[/img][/center]
[center]Fifth Season will begin selling spinach, lettuce, and
other leafy greens—all grown inside with the help of
robots—early next year.
HTML http://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/new-inventions/this-startup-is-building-a-massive-indoor-farm-in-a-rust-belt-steel-town/msg14077/#msg14077[/center]
[center] [img
width=200]
HTML http://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/gallery/renewablerevolution/2/3-010519192318-2207382.gif[/img][/center]
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