AGRA's goal is to help bring about a more sustainable agricultural future.
To do this, AGRA will develop and franchise commercial-scale Plant Factories that take all crops (ultimately staple crops such as wheat, rice and soy) out of the field and vertically stack them indoors, to mitigate their impact and sustainably produce food on earth and beyond.
(For more details and references, see our white paper)
Globally, there are serious challenges facing our current agriculture system, sustainability being chief among them.
Crops are responsible for the same amount of greenhouse gas emissions as all road transportation, 30% of global water withdrawals, land degradation, habitat loss, species extinction, deforestation and eutrophication. In addition, agriculture faces looming challenges from climate and socio-economic factors as we progress into the future. If we continue on our current path, we will face challenges in feeding the population while doing untold damage to our world.
Taking crops out of the field and into a vertically stacked indoor environment has the ability to address almost all of these challenges in one solution. Crops in AGRA's farms are grown without sun or soil, using artificial light, a nutrient rich mist and are powered by renewable energy.
Existing controlled environment farms focus on leafy greens and herbs at a premium price point but fail to grow staple crops such as wheat, rice, soy etc. as they are currently too expensive to be grown commercially. However, these crops are responsible for the greatest impacts on our world and Plant Factories provide one of the only economical, sustainable ways to produce them due to resource use efficiency, productivity and the falling cost of inputs. In order to secure the future supply of one our most fundamental resources, an economically viable sustainable method must be developed.
The ability of any sustainable technology to make an impact hinges on cost. If electric cars are expensive forever it doesn't matter how sustainable they are, they will never reach mass adoption and thus never meaningfully impact climate change. The sustainable alternative has to have equal or better economics to the existing option.
AGRA is developing sustainable crop production systems that can produce crops for the same price as traditional field agriculture while providing better nutritional quality, longer shelf-life and improved supply chain security. In our review of the market, we have not been able to find a competitor with a comparable offering. It's first system ARVUM produces lettuces and herbs (as they are the easiest crops to achieve price parity in the short-term) with its later system PRAEDIUM being capable of staple crop production.