Plenty, a Silicon Valley company, plans to revolutionize farming by bringing it indoors and dramatically reducing water use. It has ambitious plans to replicate its warehouse farms in Japan, China and across Europe. BBC Click’s Alison van Diggelen explores: the veracity of its technology; its environmental claims; its use of AI and automation; and how it plans to disrupt the agricultural industry.
Here’s a transcript of the original (lengthier) report:
Plenty’s Patrick Mahoney (inside warehouse, sounds of farm fans, air-conditioning, beeps) : What you see is a cathedral like room – in which there are rows of towers on which our plants grow. This lush abundant overload of beautiful greens that we’re growing indoors here.
van Diggelen: Climate change is exacerbating food shortages by delivering more extreme temperatures, storms and severe droughts. Can technology help grow food more efficiently, using a fraction of the land and water of traditional agriculture? Matt Bernard, the CEO of Plenty, an indoor farming company in Silicon Valley believes it can. He grew up on a cherry farm in Wisconsin and says that fixing the water industry has been a driving force for him ever since. Barnard says that today’s agriculture industry uses about 80% of global water consumption and could use a “heck of a lot less.” His solution is “vertical farming” – massive indoor warehouses with powerful LEDs, and a super-efficient watering system. It uses just 1% of the water needed for a traditional field, he says.
Barnard: In the size of a couple of football fields we can grow 200 to 1000 acres. If you look at a football pitch – say FC Barcelona – we can grow what would grow on that field in the space of one net. That’s how land efficient it is. We get to grow all year long, without seasonality. [because we give the plants the perfect environment, they’re growing much faster than they do out in the field.
van Diggelen: Unlike rivals like, that grow produce on massive trays, Plenty’s plants grow out of 20-feet long poles and are fed with nutrient-rich water. Such soil-free systems, called hydroponics, have been around for decades, but recent tech advances have enabled a brave new world of indoor farming, on a scale that’s unprecedented. The temperature, humidity, and light is controlled by sensors and electronics, a system known as the Internet of Things or “IoT.” Here’s Bernard:
Bernard: We wouldn’t exist if it wouldn’t be for things like LED lights, if they hadn’t come down in cost by 98% over the last 7-8 yrs and the efficiency hadn’t improved.
van Diggelen: What other tech breakthroughs and cost curve reductions have been key?
Bernard: IoT sensors were too expensive 5 years ago, and weren’t practical enough – they were relatively dumb. Today the story is very different, camera tech and software technology make cameras as effective as possible. That tech and its cost effectiveness are critical to computer vision – a technology we need to run an effective farm.
van Diggelen: Can you break that down? What’s computer vision?
Bernard: The pairing of camera and vision tech with machine learning. Developing algorithms to allow machines to learn from the information they gather over time from what’s happening on the farm. Machine Learning was a couple of orders of magnitude more expensive only five years ago and also not effective enough to make use of in a farm.
van Diggelen: How does that make you better farmers?
Bernard: In the field, even in greenhouse, you don’t control all the inputs.
We end up with a giant optimization problem and we need to ask the machines to help if we want to learn and move as fast as possible.
van Diggelen: The sensors and software can spot plant problems before they’re obvious to a human he says. So, instead of using pesticides, this monitoring means ladybugs are its only pest control.
Many companies are vying for a slice of this fresh produce pie. And several have withered on the vine as they strive for economic viability. But with over 200 million dollars, Plenty is the best funded enterprise in the field. With funding and scaling expertise from Softbank’s Vision Fund, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and former Google Chairman, Eric Schmidt, Plenty has an aggressive plan to build its intensive farms close to major world cities. Providing local produce is key to its business model.
Barnard points out that the average lettuce travels about 2000 miles from field to grocery store in the U.S. The company aims to increase food nutrition and prolong shelf-life by what he describes as “collapsing the time from farms to tables, from weeks to minutes.”
In SF, the company’s focus is R&D, but it’ll start delivering produce this year from its first warehouse farm in Seattle. This 100,000 sf facility will powered entirely by renewable energy. But, like many tech dreams, marinated in Silicon Valley’s Kool Aid, is this all more hype than substance?
Jon Foley is the Executive Director of the California Academy of Sciences. I caught up with him on the phone….
Foley: They use an enormous amount of resources to build the infrastructure to make these indoor farms. They use an enormous amount of energy to power them…to replace the sun and use indoor LED lighting. But we didn’t run out of sun!
The only benefits is maybe for water but food miles and food transportation isn’t really a huge problem for the environment. The biggest emissions of GHG from agriculture are not due to food miles, it’s things like deforestation, and too many cattle burping methane.
van Diggelen: Foley points out that many crops like wheat and corn just won’t grow indoors. They need heat and wind to develop stalks.
Foley: You see lots of vegetable greens: lettuce, arugula…you’re basically growing garnish.
van Diggelen: Foley also questions scalability…
Foley: Are we going to truly make a dent in global land-use that cost vastly more than farmland in Kansas? They’re not a silver bullet. They’re not really addressing the biggest problems we face feeding the world sustainably, it’ll be expensive and I doubt it’ll be reaching the world’s poorest billion.
van Diggelen: Another existential challenge is a pests outbreak. Due to the intensive nature of the farm, just one infestation could be catastrophic. Right now, the Plenty team is paranoid about pests. Workers and visitors must wear overalls and rubber boots disinfected in special shoe baths. A powerful ceiling fan is set up to remove any unwanted pests like Spider Mites.
Although the company plans to focus first on the U.S. market, another agriculture expert, Professor Heiman Lieth of UC Davis suggests the biggest opportunity might be in China where there’s a shortage of safe fresh produce, and government incentives for “green jobs” and subsidized renewable energy sources. The United Arab Emirates also offers a fertile venue with cheap power and affluent consumer demand.
But will consumers love the product enough to pay a premium?
Atmos: lettuce breaking sniffing…
(Lettuce container opening)
Keller: This was harvested ten minutes ago….We measure the size (tape measure unrolling). It’s ~9 cm – within accepted range. It meets the arugula profile…We’re on track…
van Diggelen: At this futuristic farm, even the taste testing is tech centered. The distinct taste, smell, even the size of each sample crop is tested twice a day and inputed to a computer program that features colorful pie-charts. Human and machine analysis creates a quick reaction-loop inside the warehouse to ensure a consistent taste and quality.
My mouth was watering by the time I met the taste experts, in Plenty’s white-tiled kitchen. Chief taste testers, Christine Keller and Leta Soza offered me what looked like baby spinach, but was in fact the sweetest, spiciest arugula I’ve ever tasted.
Keller (sniffing): We break it…We put our faces in the product and we take little sniffs so you detect every smell in there: Fresh cut grass, a very spicy wasabi…When we’re done, we roll it up into a little ball (Crunching, chewing…)
Keller: Our data teams and our plant science teams continue to improve the product because we know all the environmental controls going in and the sensory things coming out. It’s remarkable. It’s not been done.
Keller: We’re each filling out 3-digit codes for where the product came from, which room, (what farm, if you will) so we can track it back to all of the computer science that’s telling us the exact recipe that went in there.
Soza: (Typing andform filling): that’s slightly more than a four on the sweet actually – wasabi’s beautiful and so is bitter. Let’s send that off so farm ops can have the data and press on. (Laughter)
van Diggelen:It’s certainly a brave new vision for farming. But Plenty needs to scale up and surmount the cost challenges it faces, and keep growing tastier products than conventional farms, with a fraction of the water. It also needs to find markets where the demand and the price is “just right.” Only then will they flourish as well as their leafy green produce. Right now, it looks like a very tall order.
Listen to the BBC podcast or to the player above to hear a lively discussion of this report and some insights from Click’s Bill Thompson.
You might be excused for thinking that the success of Tesla Motors is entirely due to the brilliance of its leader, Elon Musk. OK, perhaps with a wee bit of help from his friend, JB Straubel?
Well, that media delusion was dispelled last week when Tesla threw open the doors of its Palo Alto Headquarters and showed off a panel of top female engineers and leaders. The occasion was the 44th in a series of Bay Area Girl Geek Dinners, a popular women in tech group founded by Angie Chang and managed by the energetic Sukrutha Raman Bhadouria.
The group of 100 female techies was treated to Tesla Model S rides, product demos, networking with key members of the Tesla team; and a rare view of the Tesla patent wall (see photos below).
But the highlight of the evening was a lively panel of Tesla engineers and executives, including Katie Noble (Systems Integration Engineering Manager), Lauren Fullerton (Electronic Design Engineer), Miriam Vu (Product Manager), and Troy Nergaard (Senior Hardware Development Engineering Manager). Tesla’s Susan Repo (VP, Global Tax) did a solid job moderating the event and exploring:
1. The challenges of working at Tesla
2. Being a woman at Tesla
3. The importance of soft skills at Tesla
4. The legal action that Tesla faces from car dealers in some U.S. states.
“You work with aggressive people occasionally, both male and female… Passions are high at Tesla and things can get heated…If someone blows up, you try not to internalize things…(and) appreciate the passion they have for a particular problem.” Katie Noble
“At Tesla, you don’t have time to take the wrong path. As a leader you need to know when to step in.” Troy Nergaard
On Time Pressures at Tesla
“With Tesla moving so quickly, we may not have all the answers right up front before we start moving… We are a very small team in a company that’s trying to do a lot of things, so time is of the essence.” Miriam Vu
On The Types Who Work at Tesla
“There are “car geeks” and there are “green geeks.” Troy Nergaard
The Bay Area Girl Geeks Dinners boasts a membership of over 8,000 and demand for the events – hosted at top Silicon Valley companies like Google, Yahooo and Facebook etc are typically over-subscribed. This Tesla event had 2000 signups for 100 tickets. As a result Chang and Raman Bhadouria have created a lottery sytesm for tickets.
Let’s face it, President Obama is struggling to get anything through Congress right now, never mind a national energy policy, but here’s a big idea from Berkeley’s Jennifer Granholm to create more clean energy and clean jobs… from the bottom up.
You may remember Jennifer Granholm as the Governor of Michigan (2003-2011), the TV host of “The War Room” or the passionate speechmaker at the DNC 2012; but perhaps her most lasting contribution to the world will be this big idea: a Clean Energy Race to the Top.
Leveraging her experience in Michigan, where she attempted to transform the state’s “rustbelt” image to “greenbelt” by investing heavily in clean energy and green jobs, she’s seen the strategy’s economic impact and is eager to keep the momentum going. This time, on a national basis.
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Modeled after the Education Race to the Top (RTT), her clean energy idea is to offer a pot of money to incentivize all 50 states to compete and raise their clean energy standards to 80% by 2030. Just think: The Amazing Race for Clean Energy.
Her budget? A cool $4.5 Billion. By her calculations, that’s less than one tenth of 1% of Federal funding (and close to the RTT budget for education), nevertheless in today’s economy, funding prospects look grim.
Granholm’s Clean Energy Race to the Top sounds like a smart idea, but in these times of brutal belt tightening and sequestration, securing that funding looks like mission impossible. It will be fascinating to watch the debate unfold here and at her TED talk; and see if she gets any traction for it during this congress.
It might not be perfect time for a Clean Energy Race to the Top, but don’t expect the idea to wither and die. Granholm may be keeping a relatively low profile as a law professor at UC Berkeley these days, but if there’s another Clinton (or Obama) in the White House in 2016 or beyond (I’m talking Hillary or Michelle), we may see Granholm taking a cabinet role. She’s earning her stripes for a position as Energy Secretary, and that could one day make her big idea a reality.
This Fresh Dialogues interview took place at the Claremont Hotel, Berkeley on February 21, 2013
This month, I moderated a panel of green jobs experts for the Commonwealth Club Silicon Valley. Experts included: Parag Chokshi, Clean Energy Public Affairs Manager, Google; Josh Green, General Partner, Mohr Davidow Ventures; Linda Keala, Vice President Human Resources, SolarCity and Nanci Klein, Deputy Director, Office of Economic Development, City of San Jose.
The panel shared insights about the green economy, as well as tips for finding and securing green investments and green jobs. Here are highlights of our conversation (edited for space and clarity).
What are hot sectors in the green economy?
Josh Green, Mohr Davidow Ventures: “In the current environment, we’re looking for less capital intensive deals (energy efficiency, LED lighting and building management systems), so that means we’re on the side of energy demand much more than energy production. People call this cleantech IT – Information Technology. I’m an investor in Xicato, an LED module company. The LED convergence will happen…the payback is less than two years and (it’s) equivalent to halogen light. You don’t have to replace them for ten years or more and especially in a commercial settings, you end up lowering your maintenance costs.”
On cleantech growth sectors in Silicon Valley
Nanci Klein, Office of Economic Development, City of San Jose: “People say manufacturing has left the US…but manufacturing is very exciting here. When you talk about innovation and commercialization, Silicon Valley is a hub around new product introduction. Contract manufacturers will take a low volume, high mix of products. …the ten largest in the world – Tier One contract manufacturers – are all here in Silicon Valley, six of them in San Jose. They’re like a secret weapon resource. We try to link baby investors to these companies. You take someone with a hot idea and you put them with all of the accelerated services…if the product is good you can have a rocket in terms of acceleration.”
Josh Green, Mohr Davidow Ventures: “The loan guarantee program is operating well within the loan loss reserves. Certain loans are going to fail…The Solyndra mess became a big political football…the good news is that we’ve passed the half life…Congress officially stopped all its hearings. There will be continued efforts to end the loan guarantee program…but Solyndra itself: it’s over in terms of an issue. As investors, it never was an issue, it was a company that was not successful…I’ve got a portfolio with lots of companies that are not successful. Out of 100 investments, if you have 10 that meet your investment objectives (10x your money or better) then you’re ‘wildly’ successful, that makes you a top venture capitalists. That means you have a 90% – under your expectations success – rate.”
Tips on getting a green job
Linda Keala, Director of HR, SolarCity:
1. “A background in cleantech is not a prerequisite.”
2. “Differentiate yourself – what about the job (post) got you inspired? What resonated about the company?”
3. “I love getting handwritten letters. A personalized message tells me this is who I am, this is what I can bring to the company. Sometimes I get them in little pink envelopes…”
4. “Touch a spot in our hearts and we’ll take a close look at that resume.”
Josh Green, Mohr Davidow Ventures: “Have passion to change the world.”
How to get a job in Google’s Green Team (there are currently seven openings in the sustainability/green team areas)
Parag Chokshi, Clean Energy Public Affairs Manager at Google:
Here are the qualities Google looks for:
1. “Be a self starter, work independently and drive forward a project.”
2. “Think about creative solutions. We value innovation and creativity.”
3. “Show passion and new ways of thinking about things…that is very valuable.”
How is the City of San Jose helping entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley and beyond?
Nanci Klein, Office of Economic Development, City of San Jose: Here are some of the resources available – The Entrepreneur Center in downtown San Jose; Business Owner Space; Opportunity Fund. Check out SJEconomy.com. She also recommends the Cleantech Open competition and SolarTech an association for those in solar and financing sectors. The City of San Jose is working in partnership with Lawrence Berkeley Lab and others to create Prospect Silicon Valley, a demonstration and commrecialization center for cleantech startups.
On storage and battery technology
Josh Green, Mohr Davidow Ventures: “Storage is the most important development that could happen for our grid at the utility scale storage level as well as the emerging EV market to encourage the widespread adoption of EVs. ON the grid side, there is NO storage…the second you produce an electron it has to be consumed…this results in the creation of “Peaker Plants” used for 5-15 hours a year (especially in August). Storage has the greatest potential to unlock value.
In the transportation sector, lithium ion batteries are the lightest batteries and they still weigh about 1400 lbs in the new Tesla Model S. To the extent that you can get these to be a smaller battery pack you can unlock incredible advantages.
For the next 10 years, lithuim ion technologies are going to be where batteires and storage are focused. There are about 50-60 venture backed companies in the Bay Area, working on advanced battery technology. Mohr Davidow has invested in extracting lithium from geothermal brine at goethermal plants in Southern California. Its the lowest cost producer in the world with the best environmental footprint. We believe that lithium will help fuel the storage revolution.“
Tesla Motors released its first batch of all electric Model S sedans today. The cars are actually built – not just assembled – at the Tesla Factory in high priced Silicon Valley. The company’s CEO, Elon Musk, says he’s creating “the greatest car company of the 21st Century,” yet despite the hoopla, Tesla is one of the most shorted stocks on the Nasdaq. Will this ambitious entrepreneur – who led the successful SpaceX mission to the international space station last month – prove detractors wrong again?
I visited the factory on June 14 and Gilbert Passin, VP of Manufacturing at Tesla gave me a fascinating two hour tour. He explained the process of making a Model S, from the stamping shop, where huge hydraulic press machines stamp sheets of aluminum into 3-dimensional fenders, hood panels, doors, and roofs; to the quality testing where the paint work is meticulously checked and recycled water is used to test each model’s watertightness.
At the stamping shop, Passin says, “These parts are extremely critical because it’s like the foundation of what makes a good car…See the robot is actually picking up the part in slow motion to make sure that everything works well…you don’t want anything to break.”
Shiny red robots and red T-shirt clad employees work hard at the factory: stamping, assembling, welding, painting and testing. The release of the first ten Model S Sedans is a big milestone for this innovative company. We talk to Charles James Lambert, who is a team leader working on the stylish and unique door handles Tesla manufactures at the factory. “I’m building a door handle that’s going on something fabulous to me: the model S…so sexy to me, the car, right?” he says. “That we have a door handle that responds. It’s pure elegance to me.”
Steve Jurvetson, a Tesla board member, snagged the very first prelaunch Model S (Elon Musk had to wait for number 2) and raves about it with the wide-eyed glee of a teenager describing his first set of wheels. “It’s kind of like driving in a hyper space portal to the future…” says Jurvetson.
Yet this futuristic car, that accelerates 0-60 in 4.4 seconds, does so in a whisper, not a roar. Jurvetson argues that silent is better. “It’s like saying I sleep better when there’s industrial noise going on outside my house, really?” he says and suggests that for drivers who miss the roar of an internal combustion engine, downloadable sounds might be the answer… “People can make it sound like whatever you want. You know, Harley Davidson: “huff pwuffpwuff pwuff.” Fine…just dial it up…blast your ears out…who cares?” he says.
Jurvetson, a Silicon Valley venture capitalist, sincerely believes that all vehicles will be electric one day and Tesla will lead the way. “I love what it represents: emblem of the future and a symbolic step towards a oil-free economy.”
The Model S is phase two of Elon Musk’s masterplan to disrupt the car industry and create efficient sustainable transportation. In 2008, Tesla released the Roadster, a high-end electric sports car priced at over$100,000. With the Model S, Tesla has made a more affordable car, and a year or two after its Model X comes out in 2013, aims to produce a 3rd generation model for $30,000. An electric car “for the masses.” Tesla has already catalyzed an industry shift. Today most major car companies are releasing electric or hybrid models. “Even some of the biggest competitors – the gas burning giants of the past – have admitted that they kicked off their electric vehicle program because they saw what Tesla did,” says Jurvetson. “Management said: this little company in CA is doing it, why can’t we?”
Tesla may be a trailblazer, but it faces a bumpy road ahead. Those shorting the stock (betting that the stock will fall in value on the Nasdaq) have a bearish reaction to Tesla’s high debt levels, tough competition and uncertain prospects for mass-market adoption. But it’s more than just the scrappy startup -the Millennium Falcon (Star Wars)- against the Empire (GM, Ford et al). Damon Lavrinc, Transportation Editor for Wired Magazine explains, “The established players don’t like to be challenged on their own home surf.”
He argues that to succeed, Tesla must address both range anxiety and charging time challenges. Price is also an issue. The 150-mile range car may have a base price of $50,000 after federal rebates. But for the fully loaded 300-mile range model, you’ll pay closer to $100,000. California buyers also get a state rebate ($2500) plus those precious carpool stickers. “Once we can get that price of entry lower, once we can get that battery capacity larger, that’s when it’s really going to take off,” says Damon Lavrinc. So far, Tesla has 10,000 reservations for the Model S and will deliver about half this year, ramping up to 20,000 in 2013, if the orders continue to come.
Experts compare it to the BMW 5 Series, but Tesla’s VP of Manufacturing explains its edge. “We’ll change the world by bringing a product that’s extremely efficient, very clean for theplanet, extremely fast, extremely comfortable…extremely beautiful,” says Passin. But Tesla has to get it right the first time, there’s no room for error.
Back in the Tesla Factory, at the end of our tour, Passin explains, “The car has to be finished, has to be perfect, the people working here know this is the end of the line, so it has to be good.” Although these challenges seem formidable, Elon Musk is attacking them like a true tech superhero, channeling the wild ambition of Steve Jobs and his obsessive search for perfection. Musk reportedly works 80-90 hours a week, splitting his time between Tesla and his space exploration company, SpaceX. Elon Musk was reportedly the inspiration for the Iron Man movies. “He may have superpowers, I don’t know,” says Passin, chuckling.
Last month, Musk proved naysayers wrong with his historic SpaceX Mission to the international space station. Can he do the same for the Electric Vehicle market? So much depends upon the successful launch of the Model S sedan. Damon Lavrinc of Wired Magazine sums up what’s at stake: “It’s not just so much a make or break it for Tesla, it is very much a make or break it for the entire electric vehicle industry.”
And he’s got an historic precedent to back his case – from Medieval France no less.
“It’s a very powerful idea that could become something of great importance to California,” he said. “New ideas are never received as well as old ideas, but I think California is the one place where high speed rail can get its start for the United States.”
But with California’s budget in the red and more spending cuts on the table, can California afford to spend a penny on high speed rail?
The 74 year-old governor took a page from history and replied with a question: “How did the peasants of medieval France afford to build the cathedral of Chartres?”
He then enlightened Fresh Dialogues with this answer, “They did it slowly… they did it with community investment and a great belief in the future.”
This echoes Brown’s 2012 State of the State Speech in which he said, “”Those who believe that California is in decline will naturally shrink back from such a strenuous undertaking…I understand that feeling, but I don’t share it because I know this state and the spirit of the people who choose to live here.”
Governor Brown is thinking very long term. In fact, the high gothic Chartres Cathedral, famous for its flying buttresses, took almost 60 years to build.
But it’s an unfortunate analogy. In the 13th Century, the cathedral’s “free trade zone” was also the cause of bloody riots between bishops and civic authorities over tax revenues. An ominous sign indeed for the Governor of California. Plus ca change…
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Given Jerry Brown’s recent announcement that $120 M from a settlement with NRG Energy Inc. would be used to fund the provision of 200 public fast-charging stations for EVs in the Golden State (including some 5000 Nissan Leafs he confirmed have been sold to date), Fresh Dialogues also asked the governor if he drives an electric car. “Not yet,” he replied.
In earlier comments today, he referenced the new Tesla Model S, which will roll off production lines at Tesla’s Fremont Factory this summer. So is he considering a Tesla? He demurred. “I’m looking, looking, looking at it.”
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On Solyndra
