Q&A: Upward Farms wants to attract more microbes

Previously known as Seed & Roe, Upward Farms eschews hydroponics in favor of a closed-loop aquaponics system, which allows the company to raise both microgreens and hybrid striped bass in its Brooklyn, New York facility. Manure from the fish is used to fertilize the plants. Recently, Upward Farms started selling its fish for the first time, at Brooklyn restaurant and fish counter Greenpoint Fish & Lobster.

AFN recently spoke to Upward Farms CEO and co-founder Jason Green (JG) about the company's approach to vertical farming and its focus on the microbiome.

AFN: What came first? The greens or the fish?

JG: It was all together from the beginning. The leafy greens and the fish have always been part of the process for the benefit of producing a microbiome that improves the productivity and stability of the ecosystem overall.

AFN: Both are two industries that aren't particularly though of as 'local.'

JG: Correct. Vertical farming and indoor farming [are] certainly seeking to make what is a transcontinental supply chain a more local one. Upwards of 90% of the leafy greens that are consumed in the US are grown in California and Arizona. Most of the leafy greens that are consumed in the US are on the eastern half of the US.

Aquaculture is quite similar. Americans are eating $96 billion worth of seafood annually. Ninety percent of that is imported, and imported fish is in fact one of the most mistrusted foods in America. There are real challenges whether you're consuming, or are purchasing, even a wild or farmed product. It's very difficult to make a good decision because of those labeling and traceability issues. And if that's the 90% in the seafood market, it makes it really hard to make a good choice.

Our approach on the leafy green side is that a local supply chain and a highly perishable product can improve the quality and can improve the shelf life. We can invest in the quality of that product as opposed to investing in the transportation costs. And on the seafood side, not only are those things true — that we're farming protein in the US as opposed to importing it — but it's really answering a fundamental need for consumers as much as for climate, which is that consumers want to be able to make responsible seafood choices. And by creating a local seafood supply chain, we can offer quality safeness and product integrity guarantees that are just impossible in the supply chain right now.

AFN: How does the microbiome fit into vertical farming?

JG: This is [a] really interesting tension. The indoor farms are saying, "I have control over everything, therefore I don't need biodiversity."

On the flip side, you've got the ag biotech solutions like Indigo Agriculture, Pivot Bio, and so on. And they've also got very compelling technology. You screen soils, you find microbes that are already occurring, put them onto seeds and put them back out there. But there's also a real limitation, which is that you see very low uptake of those cultures in fields. And the reason for that is there's already so much competition, and the microbes of interest might have very particular conditions under which they will successfully inoculate that environment. [The microbe] might need 23 degrees Celsius to be at its optimal growth range, and it's 26 the day that the seed gets planted.

So there's this interesting tension between what indoor farms saying, "I have all the control therefore I don't need the biodiversity" and what's happening on the broad acre which is saying, "Soil has lost all of this biodiversity, we need to put it back out there, but there isn't the right level of control."

We're putting those two together and saying, "Well, what if we can build biodiversity ecosystems within a highly controllable biological [environment]?"

Ecological Intelligence [Upward Farms' new "microbiome technology"] is sort of a capture for all of the work that we do around the microbiome. [With] indoor agriculture, the focus is often around whether it's AI and machine learning, software optimization. Our perspective is that those are table stakes as a manufacturer.

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Source: Ag Funder News