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New technology offers a brighter future for global food supplies and consumer health
AgriFORCE Growing Systems Ltd. has spent the past two years re-imagining how to help plants thrive with substantially less impact on the environment.
The global population is expected to reach nearly 10 billion by 2050. This will place enormous pressure on countries worldwide that are facing already-inadequate food supplies, drastically declining access to arable land, and an increase in poor soil health. Today’s agricultural methods tax the environment, using too much water and power because of outdated systems and processes. Added to this, most farmers rely too heavily on pesticides during the cultivation process or on irradiation upon harvest. The current approach is decades behind where it should be—and even further behind where it must be, given the increased challenges the world is facing.
At the same time, a growing body of research suggests that people are increasingly demanding organic purity in the food, pharmaceutical, nutraceutical and other ingestible products that they purchase—and they are willing to pay more for it.
Unfortunately, the gap between what is labelled organic and the identifiable purity of the product is widening. Organic standards are weakening under pressure from Big Ag, and fraudulently documented crops from overseas continue to infiltrate the organic supply chain. In addition, mass-scale agriculture is concentrated in arable regions of the country, which means the proximity of organic to conventional crops has made contamination of the organic plants from pesticide residue or a compromised water table virtually unavoidable.
Under the immense pressures of commoditization, margin compression and high growing costs, the outdated agricultural model, focused on large-scale factory farms with massive output, has too high a cost on the environment. The process must change.
Of course, cultivators need to make a living, which means finding new and innovative ways to be profitable. Farmers are looking for increased yield per square foot to decrease environmental impact and operating costs; they want to use less energy and water. Automation helps in these areas, but doing this right requires a full-blown culture change and technological revolution in this industry.
AgriFORCE Growing Systems Ltd. has spent the past two years re-imagining how to help plants thrive with substantially less impact on the environment. The company has designed a pioneering facility and automated growing system that provides the ability to achieve industrial-scale indoor farming that is both ecologically sustainable and precisely controlled to create a near-perfect growing environment.
“AgriFORCE is set to change the industry and to create an exciting new opportunity in AgTech,” says Ingo Mueller, CEO of AgriFORCE. “Our intellectual property provides a clear solution to the problems plaguing many agricultural verticals.
“Our proprietary system provides a clean, self-contained environment, with limited human intervention and an assurance of quality control. It is designed to provide a higher crop yield, with daily harvests—all while dramatically reducing water and power requirements, environmental impact and production costs. We are set to solve some of the biggest problems facing the agriculture industry.”
Want to get a handle on your food supply? Learn more at www.agriforcegs.com.