Vertical Farming is a novel method of growing produce by staking crops one over the other. Plants are grown in-house, with the absence of sunlight and water recycling. Instead, LED lights are shone upon them. There’s no need for pesticides, either. The environment is clean, bug-free, and unlikely to breed any pests.
The controlled growth of plants has proven to be efficient in many ways. The elimination of pesticides, for example, decreases soil pollution significantly. Growth also doesn’t need to depend on external factors, like the weather, meaning produce can be grown all year long.
Vertical farming also reduces transport time and costs. Growing produce traditionally involves a lot of commute time, leading to rotting and wastage. In contrast, vertical farming ensures a safe and healthy supply of fresh produce from neighboring buildings.
Israel, known for its avid interest in technology, is jumping on the bandwagon to support vertical farming and make it available world-wide.
Discover these innovative solutions by Israeli companies:
- Vertical Field – Transforming urban eco-systems, Vertical Field is a leading ag-tech company that develops vertical farming systems for smart cities. Vertical Field’s urban farm is an innovative and accessible way to meet the rising population’s need for nutritious food, by growing produce in any indoor or outdoor urban space. The unique geoponic (soil-based) platform is capable of growing over 200 types of crops that can be planted and harvested easily, and grow to maturity within 21 days.
- Saffron-Tech – enables the controlled, automated cultivation of agricultural crop under laboratory conditions, saving water, land, and manpower while significantly increasing the quality and quantity of output. The company is specialising, as a first step, in the luxury niche of saffron, also known as ‘red gold’.
- TomGrow – is an urban farming start-up focused on the indoor growing market. TomGrow’s technology allows plants to be grown indoors without the need for soil, irrigation, or direct sunlight for prolonged periods of time. Its breakthrough technology in growth mediums is bridging the worlds of chemistry, agronomy and sustainability.
- SoliDrip – systems designed for public and private, outdoor and indoor gardens of any scale, including fruit orchards and vertical gardens and supports most garden plants and planting methods. The company’s technology saves a substantial amount of water and reduces a garden’s overall maintenance cost. SoliDrip’s mission is to boost urban greening and improve the urban environment.
- Catchy-by-Davik – Davik has developed a unique, long-lasting dry adhesive which captures flying insect pests. This adhesive is applied to various colored roller sheets hung in indoor farming situations, protected cultivation greenhouses, indoor vertical leafy green growing structures, insect-proof net houses etc. This is an all-in-one pest control and monitoring system for greenhouses, indoor and net-house farming.
- Grofit – develops sensors and software for precision farming in greenhouses. Its IoT platform employs small, simple, low-cost sensor stations to measure key environmental and plant growth parameters such as air temperature, radiation relative humidity, soil irrigation, fertilization and more.
- Growee – AI Based Plant feeding technology – Growee is developing an autonomous nutrient distribution system combined with a growth analytics cloud platform. The company’s technology offers a plant monitoring and feeding solution for small-scale indoor farmers by combining real-time sensing with feeding algorithms and automation.
Written by Veshalaskhe Gajajraj, Trade Officer of Israeli Economic and Trade Mission, Bangalore – veshalakshe.gajajraj@israeltrade.gov.il.
Israel Trade and Economic Commission in Sydney, Australia 