Agtech solutions with The Agrarian Group in North Dakota

GREENandSAVE Staff

Posted on Wednesday 3rd August 2022
Agtech Solutions for North Dakota

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An increasingly viable solution for climate change is Controlled Environment Agriculture (CEA), implemented across the U.S., in states likes North Dakota

The water, energy, and food security nexus is a real and present problem. 

Here are some highlights from the website of The Agrarian Group:

As a species, we face the most complex and deadly problems we have ever encountered. Erratic weather events caused by climate change destroy crop yields each year. Pesticides have ruined our soil and water scarcity has become a national security issue. 70% of food cost is linked to fossil fuels, and prices are only expected to rise. The average food item travels 1500 miles to reach it's destination. However, despite everything we do, 40% of all food in the United States is thrown away post-harvest. 

Why

The Agrarian Group was started as an answer to a question - How will we feed the projected 9.1 Billion people that will reside on earth in 2050? To achieve this, we need to increase our already stressed agricultural production by 70%. How do we grow better?

To learn more about Vertical Farming for states like North Dakota, visit The Agrarian Group

Agtech solutions can help solve the challenges we face.

Here is an example of Agtech Solutions in North Dakota:

Dakota Gardener: Farms of the Future

When you hear the phrase “farms of the future,” what do you envision?

Drones detecting weeds and delivering the right mix of herbicide? Robots driving tractors in large soybean fields? While precision ag and automation in agronomic fields are one vision of the future, indoor vertical farms growing fresh vegetables in the city are another.

Vertical farms produce fresh leafy greens and herbs in indoor environments for sale within a local urban area. The first generation of vertical farms built state-of-the-art greenhouses on the roofs of warehouses and factories in cities to utilize wasted space and to capture the power of the sun.

As an example, Gotham Greens built a 75,000-square-foot greenhouse in Chicago, Ill., on top of the Method Products manufacturing plant. This greenhouse produces millions of heads of lettuce for the Chicago market.

In Brooklyn, N.Y., Gotham Greens greatly reduced its transportation costs by building its greenhouse on the roof of an organic grocery story. In its nine greenhouses totaling 500,000 square feet, the company can grow the same amount as a traditional 400-acre vegetable farm and only use one-10th of the water of field production.

Second-generation vertical farms no longer use greenhouses because their horizontal footprint is too big and expensive for urban centers. New vertical farms are multistory indoor plant factories with no windows or exposure to sunlight.

Instead, plants are grown in a multilevel shelving system with LED lights mounted above each shelf. They use soilless systems that bathe plant root systems in a water solution or a mist that contains essential nutrients.

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