CubicFarm Systems is putting sustainability back into farming

Added on 29 April 2022

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CubicFarm Systems is putting sustainability back into farming

I've always been intrigued by vertical or modular farming. It may have been born out of the massive unutilized office space in downtown Calgary over the last several years as the energy industry went through a very challenging period. Beyond that, there's the bombardment of climate change news suggesting that there will be droughts and extreme weather impacting all forms of farming globally for the foreseeable future. And while climate change is somewhat uncontrollable, I recall seeing that there is a town in California's San Joaquin Valley that has sunk as much as 11.5 feet over the past 14 years due to subsidence resulting from all the water required for area farming being pulled from underground aquifers. That doesn't seem very sustainable to me but maybe I'm missing something.

Perhaps I'm getting a little too dramatic, but you get the picture. Supply chains and food security in an increasingly populous and volatile weather world are something we need to be wary of. Tack on a war encompassing some of the best agricultural lands in Europe and things become even more uncertain. We need to secure our food supply and control our destiny in a sustainable way. One company out there leading the charge is CubicFarm Systems Corp. ("CubicFarms") (TSX: CUB). CubicFarms is a leading local chain agricultural technology company developing and deploying technology to feed a changing world. Its proprietary ag-tech solutions enable growers to produce high quality, predictable produce and fresh livestock feed with HydroGreen Nutrition Technology.

The Company has two core business segments, the Fresh Division and the Feed Division. The Fresh Division operates using the patented CubicFarm System, which contains patented technology for growing leafy greens and other crops. The CubicFarm System addresses two of the most difficult challenges in the vertical farming industry, high electricity and labor costs, by using unique undulating path technology. The Crop Motion technology allows hundreds of growing trays to move under LED lights along a path from the back to the front of the modules, getting the right amount of light, water, and air flow to maximize their growth. Every 90 to 120 minutes (depending on the crop), approximately 250 trays of plants will pass by you so you can stand in one spot and do all of your harvesting and planting. The undulating conveyor of interchangeable growing trays is housed within a customized 40-foot shipping container and generates far more yield than any other system because the module brings everything to the worker at the front and you don't need to leave any access hallways for people.