Overcoming Barriers to TCEA Adoption: Lighting, AI, and the Path to Sustainable Farming

As part of our “Back to the Future” project, we’re asking Agri-TechE members to reflect on how the agri-tech industry has evolved over the past decade and to share their vision for the next ten years. By compiling these insights, we aim to create a powerful outlook on the future of agriculture, a compelling call to arms for the industry driven by the diverse perspectives of our community.

This submission is part of the collection of reflections and predictions from our members, offering unique perspectives on the industry’s past milestones and future directions. Each contribution adds to a broader dialogue about the innovations and challenges that will shape the next decade in agri-tech.

Introduction

Innovation Agritech Group is developing, producing and installing totally controlled environment agriculture vertical aeroponic solutions for growers around the world. We are committed to using science and technology to develop fully sustainable farming systems allowing reliable production of food crops in an increasingly unstable environment.

What do you think is the game-changing tech development we’ve seen in the last 10 years?

Here at IAG, we consider the improvements made in the field of lighting and lighting control to be the greatest step forward in advancing the development of totally controlled environment agriculture and vertical aeroponics. Replacing fluorescent tubes with LEDs has allowed IAG to accurately manipulate both intensity and spectrum of lighting with LED lights to create and develop recipes for a variety of crops. Control of spectrum allows controlled environment farms to increase blue and red wavelengths to match the optimum pattern plants need to grow without wasting energy on unproductive wavelengths. Despite higher initial costs, lighting has advanced in terms of energy efficiency, giving savings in the longer term. These improvements are likely to increase over time as increased innovation and adoption of LED technology reduces the cost of production further.

Other advancements in lighting include simplified control via software, diffusion systems, for improved light uniformity, improved light cooling, and high frequency colour modulation. Recent efforts have also been made into utilisation of far-red light wavelengths over 700 nm to manipulate plant characteristics such as shoot elongation.

What’s the biggest challenge to widespread adoption?

The biggest challenge to widespread adoption of TCEA vertical aeroponics are the high costs, both of initial investment and running costs, particularly energy. Until these farms no longer require high capital investment, it is difficult to foresee widespread adoption without increases in available funding, limiting the benefits to only those able to afford the upfront cost. Additionally, the high demand of energy by farms of this nature means that adoption of sustainable TCEA will be limited to areas of the world where energy is already cheap, notably the Middle East.

Overcoming this hurdle is the responsibility of two major stakeholders: us technology production companies reducing the cost of our solutions to compete in the emerging market, as well as funding bodies making capital more available to growers. Perception also has a part to play in prevailing over this obstacle, as TCEA and vertical farming become more mainstream, growers will become more willing to adopt technology that has been proven, meaning economies of scale will come into play and prices will fall, hopefully leading to a snowball effect of increasing adoption. IAG are confident we, and other stakeholders can utilise new developments in agritech in the next decade to overcome these challenges.

What do you think is the most exciting thing we’ll see in 10 years’ time and what will this technology enable?

We expect the most important development in TCEA in the next decade to be the application of artificial intelligence. The wide-ranging uses of AI are impossible to fully anticipate but what follows are a few benefits we expect to be able to exploit in the coming years. AI can be used to make data collection and handling simpler and quicker, particularly useful for farmers inexperienced in data management. AI can be used in conjunction with cameras mounted on robotics and drones to record information such as leaf area, ripeness, disease presence. Automation makes it possible to constantly record this information meaning problems such as disease or mineral deficiency can be identified and remedied as early as possible. Importantly, AI may also be able to play a role in acting on this data and engage in decision making processes. These abilities are most beneficial in complex systems, including those beyond the farm gate such as supply chain management. Integrating AI together with existing and novel farm systems and devices together such as irrigation, lighting, and harvest data can be achieved using the Internet of Things.