If you think growing leaves is easy, think again.
Lettuce is not the world's most difficult crop, but as any farmer knows, there are many problems that can arise between planting and harvest. They range from pests to pathogens to rain, but there's no such thing as too little or too much.
To protect tender vegetables from the cruel world, many growers are bringing their crops indoors. Vast greenhouses and noisy warehouses provide new homes for crops of all kinds. However, the devil lurks indoors as well, and profit and loss accounting has recently begun. In reality, there are more losses than gains.
Indoor farming startups have become the darlings of the startup world in recent years, with their technology-focused investments attracting roughly $3 billion worth of investments from 2012 to 2022, according to Crunchbase. But over the past year or so, funding for the space has dried up, and AppHarvest and Fifth Season have both filed for bankruptcy. Iron Ox laid off nearly half of its employees. And Bowery Farming has repeatedly cut jobs and had its valuation plummeted by Fidelity.
With headwinds like this, the sector appears to be heading towards the Dust Bowl.
There are also some green buds. Hippo Harvest recently raised his $21 million Series B by repurposing warehouse robots, TechCrunch has learned exclusively.
Additionally, this round values the startup at $145 million post-money, according to PitchBook, a significant increase from its previous valuation of $42 million. The round was led by Standard Investments, with participation from Congruent Ventures, Amazon Climate Pledge Fund, Hawthorne Food Ventures, and Energy Impact Partners.
In some ways, Hippo Harvest is similar to its competitors. The hope is that we can grow food more efficiently using less land and water. But what sets the company apart in this space is the fact that it's more of a robotics startup than an indoor farming company.
Many indoor farming companies rely on automation. Computers control everything from the heat and humidity to the nutrient levels in your hydroponic system. Trays full of ripe produce move along the truck, ready for harvest.
“If you walk into an Amazon warehouse from 15 years ago, you'll see something that actually looks a lot like a greenhouse today: pneumatics, gantry systems, and a lot of fixed process automation,” said Eitan Marder, CEO of Hippo Harvest. -Eppstein told TechCrunch.
But Amazon's warehouses look completely different now. Robots run around, moving entire shelves of products from one place to another, optimizing the layout according to demand.
Marder-Epstein said these robots have become so widely used that they have become a commodity. “We saw this opportunity and thought, 'Hey, what if we turned these robots into greenhouse tractors?'” he said.
It's a decision that shapes the entire company. “We went back to the way daycare centers used to be run, with people walking around with watering cans and a very old-school feel. But now we have robots that can do that.”
The robot also allows Hippo Harvest to run more experiments and collect data for machine learning algorithms. When Marder-Eppstein and his co-founder Wim Meussen started researching greenhouses, they were constantly faced with one problem. “These systems operate on large circular piping loops,” Marder-Epstein said.
Sharing the loop meant that we didn't know how much nutrients each individual plant was receiving, and we couldn't keep each plant's microbiome separate from other plants (plants relies heavily on the microbiome to make the most of available nutrients). Such a setup would severely limit the number of experiments that could be performed.
So rather than placing plants in the same shared hydroponic loop, Hippo Harvest places plants in separate cells within 3-foot by 3-foot modules. This separation not only allowed more variables to be tested in the greenhouse, but it also addressed a problem that had plagued hydroponic greenhouse operators: pathogens that could quickly spread through shared loops and kill entire crops. I was able to solve this problem unexpectedly.
In the Hippo Harvest greenhouse, plant modules are placed on trellised posts and separated by small walkways. The robots weave beneath the apartment, appearing in walkways to deliver water and nutrition and collect data. Once the plants grow, the flats are lifted and transported to a warehouse operator for harvesting.
Hippo Harvest eschews vertical farms and sticks with greenhouses to save capital and operating costs. (Vertical farms require more intensive lighting, heating, and ventilation.)
The company says it can grow vegetables using up to 92% less water, 55% less fertilizer and no pesticides compared to conventional farming, but does not disclose the carbon footprint of its operations. . Currently, the company's greenhouses are heated with natural gas, but Marder-Eppstein said the company is working to be net-free by 2040.
Hippo Harvest's produce is currently sold in California through Amazon Fresh, as well as at several smaller stores in the state, including Mar-Val and Gus's Community Market. The company plans to use its Series B funding to expand its operations while remaining focused on the Golden State.
If Hippo Harvest is successful, investors will no doubt be happy and it will buck the trend. Although indoor farming faces challenging conditions, its potential has proven too attractive to ignore. Indoor farms promise to reduce water use, no small feat in times of major drought, and bring produce closer to homes and restaurants, reducing transportation costs and emissions. I promise.
Now all they have to do is keep costs down, and Hippo Harvest hopes its reusable robots will do just that.