Crisis Sparks Urban Farming Trends, Disruption Creates Space for Entrepreneurs

Covid-19 crisis shattered the whole world and changed our perspective towards many dimensions of life including one particular Health. This has led to a major shift in consumer behavior globally sparking a wave of trends and innovation.

We have witnessed tremendous growth in digitization, sudden surge in online services from remote working to supply-chain reinvention to video conferencing to tele-health to Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning to high tech faming (urban farming) trends.

An obvious sense of enquiry is now theme of all aware citizens — What are we eating, where does it come from, and how it is grown? The focus has shifted towards a more healthier, natural and holistic way of living.

This disruption — consumer behavior change is accelerating the urban farming (future of farming) trends, creating space for entrepreneurs, and startups to scramble to reboot, reimage, install and adapt new technologies and innovative solutions.

High tech aka urban farming mainly relates to technology enabled farming system aimed at increasing 5-10X times yields, ensures much high quality (high nutrition & pesticide-free), and realizes increased profit margins

As we start to explore growing things in these climate controlled — greenhouses, polyhouses, indoor, or in vertical farms, its now opening up doors of enterprise opportunities for many young millennial, and small business owners.

“When food becomes scarce, we have to turn to high tech farms. Future is going to be high-tech, fairly local, and plant-based,” says Apoorv Raghuvanshi, Co-founder of Hi-Tech Agro Soup, a high-tech farming social commerce agritech startup in Delhi NCR India. “Studies show, by 2050 the world’s population will reach 9.1 billion, 34 percent higher than today. About 70 percent of the world’s population will be urban and to support that our food production must increase by 70 percent. A Senior United Nations official said – if current rates of degradation continue all of the world’s top soil could be gone within next 60 years, that means topsoil is degraded to a point to where it’s not going to be very fertile.”

He further adds, “And this is not one nation’s problem, it a global issue. Recent UK’s fuel crisis cascaded to UK’s food crisis reinforced the importance of food security, strengthening the fact that “The new future economy” could lie in high-tech farming space (technology enabled greenhouse and polyhouse) making the food availability crisis-proof and able to produce locally to shorten the supply chain.”

Plato said it right — necessity is indeed the mother of invention

To lower the entry barriers in this space startups and companies are tapping this opportunity by offering a variety of solutions from farm automation software to farm sensor control units to auto nutrient dosers, IoT(Internet of things) enabled solutions and others.

“But one of the biggest problem area in this space is knowledge and awareness gap” says Apoorv Raghuvanshi from Agro Soup. “These high-tech polyhouses or greenhouses are temperature, moisture, and nutrition-controlled setup, built on G.I. steel frame, covered with high-quality plastic, installed with sophisticated drip irrigation systems along with sensors, foggers, and high-pressure fans to start with. Further technologies like AI & IOT enhance the hi-tech agro ecosystem with automation.”

“At Agro Soup, we are building the knowledge base for this space and world’s largest networking and social commerce platform for players in the High Tech Farming ecosystem, platform is centered around the High Tech Farming community including potential Agripreneurs, high tech farm owners, vendors, companies, suppliers and consultants providing services in this niche space.

On one hand (social) its LinkedIn for the high tech farming community to network and find the right team, on other hand Agro Soup Marketplace (commerce) is enabling with market linkage, B2C & B2B deals and discovery in this space” he adds.

While digital and online is the future, we can’t ignore the importance of local events and expositions. One such initiative is by Smart Urban Farming Expo (SUFex), specialized trade show on Urban Farming. Its jointly organized by Indian Society of Agricultural Engineers (ISAE), Pusa and Urban Gro in collaboration with Indian Agricultural Research Institute (IARI) as the Knowledge Partner, to showcase the Technologies, Products, Services, Innovations and Designs of Urban Farming.

The expo will bring together all stakeholders of Urban Farming pertaining to Hydroponics, Aquaponics, Aeroponics, Vertical Farming, Indoor Farming, Terrace Farming, etc.

The inaugural Smart Urban Farming Expo (SUFex) is poised to start Nov 27-28, 2021 at Thayagaraj Stadium, INA, New Delhi.

Hi-Tech Agro Soup and SUFex officials confirmed an official partnership, complementing each other with their forte and initiatives.

Today, Urban Farming is the fastest growing sector within the farming industry and future holds immense opportunity for entrepreneurs, enterprising youth and small businesses.