Could New Farming Approaches Help Ensure Food for Growing Population and Urbanization?

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The following post was written and/or published as a collaboration between Benzinga’s in-house sponsored content team and a financial partner of Benzinga.

The global population is expected to exceed 9 billion by 2050 and forecasts show that two out of every three people will be living in urban areas by that date, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).

Those figures alone raise questions about food security and safety - since the strain on the global food supply chain may push farmers to use more chemicals to save their crops from pests and pathogens. How will there be enough safe food to go around, especially when the world is experiencing increasing urbanization?

One potential answer lies in Controlled Environment Agriculture (CEA), and even more specifically in vertical farming — the practice of raising crops indoors in vertical stacks, which is often accompanied by innovative growing techniques such as soilless farming, including hydroponics and aeroponics. Such methods allow for increased volumes of food without the use of typical irrigation systems and can alleviate climate change transportation issues by growing produce locally.

Cities in the U.S. are catching onto the idea. In Jersey City, New Jersey, for example, authorities signed on with locally headquartered AeroFarms, a certified B Corporation vertical farming company, to set up 10 vertical farms across the city.

The farms will be designed to provide healthy food specifically to lower-income communities and will be located at housing, educational, and community facilities across Jersey City. AeroFarms currently also has a commercial vertical farm in Newark, N.J., which has the capacity to provide up to two million pounds of fresh greens annually.

Innovative companies are now advancing their own versions of CEA looking to make the world a better place by providing consumers with access to plant-based food and products that are better tasting and more nutritious than what they might be used to. 

AgriFORCE Wants an Alternative to the Current Farming System

AgriFORCE Growing Systems Ltd. AGRI is an IP-focused A gTech company dedicated to advancing sustainable cultivation and crop processing across multiple platforms. They are positioned to disrupt the status quo.

The Vancouver, B.C. -headquartered company sees the current agricultural ecosystem as essentially broken with a number of competing existential challenges — broken food supply chains, pollution, pesticides, climate change, and unsustainable environmental practices to name just a few.

By advancing innovative intellectual property (IP)  and partnering with other like-minded organizations and individuals, the company is aiming to offer plant-based products that are clean, green, and better.

Its foundational IP is the company’s proprietary facility design and automated growing system known as the AgriFORCE Grow House, was designed to grow crops in virtually any environmental conditions while optimizing yields.

Old Techniques No Longer Needed?

The Grow House process also eliminates the need for products and techniques typically used in mass farming, including herbicides, pesticides, and/or irradiation. Their innovative technique was designed to use substantially fewer natural resources.

The  company is focused on o building on its foundational IP by further technology development and by acquiring or partnering with other innovators players in the multiple sectors 

As the USDA points out, food security is an inevitable challenge amid a growing population and increasing urbanization. Traditional food retailers like supermarket chains such as The Kroger Co. KR and Albertsons Companies Inc. ACI may find themselves under increasing pressure to modify their model in such circumstances.

AgriFORCE says there is little time to waste and that broken systems must be replaced through an integrated approach that produces measurable results.

“It’s time to make things better,” the company says. “Farmers are pleading for it, governments are regulating it, consumers are demanding it — the world is desperate for it.”

The preceding post was written and/or published as a collaboration between Benzinga’s in-house sponsored content team and a financial partner of Benzinga. Although the piece is not and should not be construed as editorial content, the sponsored content team works to ensure that any and all information contained within is true and accurate to the best of their knowledge and research. This content is for informational purposes only and not intended to be investing advice.