Ag-tech Employing AI and Range of Tools With Dramatic Results - AI Trends

An agricultural technology (ag-tech) startup in San Francisco, Plenty, plants its crops vertically indoors, in a year-round operation employing AI and robots that uses 95% less water and 99% less land than conventional farming. Plenty's vertical farm approach can produce the same quantity of fruits and vegetables as a 720-acre flat farm, on only two acres. "Vertical farming exists because we want to grow the world's capacity for fresh fruits and vegetables, and we know it's necessary," stated Nate Storey, cofounder and chief science officer of the startup Plenty, in an account in Intelligent Living. The yield of 400x that of flat farms makes vertical farming "not just an incremental improvement," and the fraction of water use "is also critical in a time of increasing environmental stress and climate uncertainty," Storey stated. "All of these are truly game-changers."