Intro
With global warming rapidly intensifying yearly, agriculture is exposed to droughts and heat impacting crop yields. This calls for action and innovations to find new ways of producing food in a sustainable way to feed the world’s population.
One innovation is vertical farming, the way of growing crops in a contained environment with artificial heat, water, and energy, without the weather disturbing the crops, and without the need for pesticides. This allows farming closer to the cities inside buildings or greenhouses, enabling certain greens (leaf vegetables), microgreens (such as basil, cilantro), and other vegetables to be farmed anywhere, without the food being transported across different countries and continents. Vertical farming has a high potential to be economically scalable as well, using precision farming technology: AI and machine learning to maximize yields. One might question how sustainable it actually is when including energy into the equation, but using energy from renewable sources or even spillover from other facilities makes it highly sustainable. And what is a better locally produced plant than the one in-store? This literally eliminates transportation, its pollution, and the cost. It also ousts intermediaries by selling directly to supermarkets or even installing vertical farms in our around store facilities, which often increases product costs. Not to mention freeing up land for reforestation, reducing deforestation, and omitting pesticides.
Vertical farming will be an important piece in the future of sustainable farming, which is why we believe it’s important to funnel talent into job opportunities at companies working with this technology - a great way of working professionally with climate action.
Vertical Farms in Sweden
Some Vertical Farming Companies in Sweden and job opportunities:
Grönska Stadsodling
- About: Grönska is an end-to-end company revolutionizing food production by developing technology for vertical farming and producing city-grown vegetables and herbs. You can find their products at a wide range of grocery stores in the Stockholm area.
- Location: Huddinge, Stockholm
- Website
- Career site
- Open positions: Lead Hardware Engineer, Production Manager/Lead Grower
Agtira
- About: Agtira is a research and development company in the food tech sector, which delivers systems for sustainable food production to actors in the food industry. Through the use of intelligent aquaponics and artificial intelligence, they have redefined the concept of locally grown food. They are world leaders in the field of aquaponics, developing both cultivation methods and software support for the farming of fish and vegetables in urban environments.
- Location: Härnösand
- Website
- Career site
- Open positions: Fisheries Technicians / Aquaculture Technicians, Grower
Ljusgårda
- About: In Ljusgårda's factory in Tibro, the plants are allowed to grow up in a closed environment, with just the right conditions. There are no pests in the closed environment and therefore no pesticides are needed. The water system is circular, which means that water consumption is roughly 90% lower than in traditional cultivation. Since the plant has not been sprayed, it does not need to be rinsed and treated after harvest. This means that the salad lasts much longer at home in your fridge, and that you can eat it straight out of the bag, just as it is.
- Location: Tibro, Skaraborg
- Website
- Career site
- Open position: Ambassador in stores, fairs & visits
SweGreen
- About: Offering efficient and automated InStore farming solutions and hyper-local and climate-smart greens, grown in their sustainable, circular, futuristic, and controlled-environment systems. SweGreen is a pioneering enterprise in offering urban farming in a service model enabled by their AI-driven farm management, cloud-based monitoring, and highly automated hardware platforms - which they call Farming as a Service, FaaS.
- Location: Stockholm
- Website
- Career site
Urban Oasis
- About: Urban Oasis is a Swedish agtech startup rethinking the way food is produced and consumed. Today Sweden imports more than 25 billion SEK worth of greens and vegetables from abroad. Growing produce where people live not only decreases transportation and climate impact, it also increases the freshness and taste of the greens and vegetables.
- Location: Stockholm
- Website
- Career site
Optima Planta
- About: Optima's ADA grow modules utilize advanced technology, automation, and AI to grow food. Optima's franchisees use proven technology to grow food for their local community, grocery stores, restaurants, catering firms, etc. Always locally grown, always fresh. No pesticides, no CO2 emissions, and minimal water usage. The Optima way.
- Location: Uppsala
- Website
- Career site
These are vertical farms located in Sweden, but these types of companies and vertical farms are increasing in number tremendously all over the world. Take a peek at one of the biggest ones in the world:
AeroFarms
- About: Using the latest breakthroughs in vertical farming, artificial intelligence, and plant biology, AeroFarms is fixing our broken food system and improving the way fresh produce is grown and distributed locally and globally. They have built a proprietary agriculture platform to grow a wide array of products, delivering superior flavor, better quality, and improved nutrition with the most sophisticated levels of traceability & food safety in our industry. The unique way they grow indoors creates the perfect conditions for healthy plants to thrive, allowing them to deliver the highest quality produce to customers all year round, while using up to 95% less water, 99% less land, 390X more productivity, and zero pesticides compared to traditional field farming.
- Location: Newark, New Jersey, USA; Danville, Virginia, USA; Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates
- Website
- Career site
- Example open positions: Software Development Manager, Strategic Business Development and Partnerships Manager, Packaging Lead Technician
More in Sustainable Agriculture Innovation
There are many innovations to make agriculture and feeding the planet more sustainable. One other revolutionary innovation in food production is called cultured meat, which is meat produced by using animal cells without harm, instead of from slaughtered animals. It is a form of cellular agriculture, with the potential to cut up to 87% of greenhouse gas emissions from industrial farming, while also having great positive effects on water use and deforestation. We will dive deeper into cultured meat and exhibit the companies pioneering this technology and their job opportunities in a later article. Stay tuned!
Did we leave out a company you think should have been included? Did you find a job at any of these companies and want to share your story? Do you just want to say hi? Reach out to us below!
Sources:
https://climate.nasa.gov/news/3124/global-climate-change-impact-on-crops-expected-within-10-years-nasa-study-finds/
https://ebrary.ifpri.org/utils/getfile/collection/p15738coll2/id/130648/filename/130821.pdf
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/may/07/true-cost-of-eating-meat-environment-health-animal-welfare
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/dec/04/animal-agriculture-choking-earth-making-sick-climate-food-environmental-impact-james-cameron-suzy-amis-cameron#:~:text=precious%20natural%20resources.-,Raising%20livestock%20for%20meat%2C%20eggs%20and%20milk%20generates%2014.5%25%20of,biodiversity%20loss%2C%20and%20water%20pollution.
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