Ande started out in IT and founded and conceived media140, Europe’s first real-time web-conference, and subsequently developed it into a global social media brand. Following the success of media140 he became involved in philanthropic ventures such as Science Rewired before establishing Green Lab in 2015 to work with entrepreneurs and businesses to design food production systems, processes and new foods that can be scaled from a bench-scale trial to world-wide impact. Green Lab is an open innovation lab and ecosystem for individuals and organisations to design sustainable solutions to complex urban food, water and waste challenges.

Anthony is a well-known face within the UK produce industry as Marketing Director for G’s Fresh. As fresh food industry specialist, Anthony joined G’s from Tesco in 2008 and has led the G’s team’s consumer insight, NPD, PR and marketing functions.

Since 2017 Anthony has been a Non-Executive Director in Zero Carbon Foods t/a Growing Underground and has supported the team to make the breakthrough to supplying vertically farmed produce to UK retail. A firm believer that vertically farmed product has a place in the future supply chain, Anthony is clear that it must add incremental consumer value and be able to compete with established traditional agriculture.

Lydia leads Interactive farmer-facing research into sustainable farming; especially soil health, crop genetic improvement and waste minimisation. She lectured in soil science, crop microbial interactions, environmental biology/land reclamation before moving to NIAB. At NIAB-Innovation Farm interactive demonstrations promote knowledge exchange and innovation uptake, and at the EAI Hub there is incubation and research resource provision for SMEs and academics, with an additional focus on sustainable use of heat and power to drive innovation.

Luuk Graamans is a doctoral candidate from Delft University of Technology (TU Delft), who is currently working as a researcher at Wageningen University & Research (WUR). The business unit Greenhouse Horticulture (WUR) and Climate Design & Sustainability (TU Delft) are investigating the feasibility of vertical farming as a new production system. Luuk’s past research has shown that the effectiveness of Controlled Environment (CE) agriculture depends on a complex interaction of production method, systems engineering, and the yield and costs of energy, water and CO₂.

WUR and TU Delft have joined forces to calculate the feasibility of vertical farms in 5 steps. The first step investigates how plants process energy in a closed cultivation system. The second step concerns the total energy demand: how much energy does vertical farming need? Step 3 focuses on optimising this energy consumption and step 4 on the integration of the vertical farm into the city. Ultimately, this information is used in step 5 to calculate the true feasibility of (urban) vertical farming.

Jack Farmer is the Co-Founder and Chief Scientific Officer of LettUs Grow, a start-up using innovative aeroponic technology to design the next-generation of indoor farms.
Their mission is to reduce the waste and carbon footprint of fresh produce by empowering anyone to grow delicious food near its point of consumption.

He’s a passionate advocate for the use of social enterprise, policy and the circular economy to bring about a more sustainable future. Jack specialises in controlled environment agriculture and its use as a means to reduce agricultural pressures upon natural ecosystems.

Jamie Burrows is Founder and CEO and Vertical Future, a London-based technology company specialised in controlled-environment-agriculture (CEA).
Established in 2016, Vertical Future design, build, and license advanced hardware and software technologies, with an emphasis on R&D level control, full automation, and software integration. The company have build activities across three continents, a promising research and development pipeline with numerous international collaborators, and years of growing experience building a consumer-facing brand, MiniCrops, across London.

Prior to setting up Vertical Future, Jamie spent almost a decade working in health and life sciences, including managerial and senior managerial roles at EY, Deloitte, and IMS Health. He was also seconded to the Department of Health and worked for a number of years in economic regeneration, including with the NHS. Jamie holds a BSc in Economics from the University of Buckingham, a MSc in Energy, Trade, and Finance from Cass Business School, and a Diploma in Investment Banking and Capital Markets from the Swiss Finance Academy. He is also a year away from completing a part-time PhD in Health Economics, specialising in Utility Theory.

GrowUp Farms is a Controlled Environment Production (CEP) business that specialises in high-care and highly automated production facilities to grow that is safer, more sustainable and tastier than traditional produce. Kate Hofman is responsible for the commercial aspects of GrowUp, having founded the company six years ago with CTO Tom Webster. In her spare time she runs around after her toddler and dog.

Eider Vertical Farming is reimagining farming, creating perfect environments for plants to thrive. It produces fresh, nutritious and affordable food, supplying wholesalers with a consistent, high-quality and locally grown source of supply 365 days a year.

Mike has a background in project and corporate finance and a proven track record investing in and developing energy infrastructure projects. He co-founded EVF in December 2019 as a business committed to growing differently and addressing concerns about food security, safety and sustainability. He sees CEA as a game changer in the search for innovative and more efficient ways to meet the world’s food requirements, and part of how agriculture must be reengineered to tackle climate change and soil health.

Mira is co-founder and CEO of OneFarm. She is an agricultural entrepreneur having started indoor farming enterprise in the early 1980s. As CEO of London stock exchange listed company, her understanding and experience in the food sector expanded with the creation of a group of catering companies.

Understanding the impact of changing weather patterns on food production she decided that controlled environment agricultural production was an efficient way for creating additional food supply. To that purpose OneFarm has derisked a piece of the sustainable agriculture revolution and will be deploying large-scale fully circular vertical farms to provide safe, affordable, nutritious and environmentally sound food to local populations.

OneFarm is creating a ‘new category’ of affordable fresh healthy nutritious food and plant pharmaceuticals for local communities – on a global scale.

Niall leads Cambridge Consultants’ activities in the Agri-Tech sector. An engineer by training, Niall has led breakthrough innovation projects in multiple industry sectors, involving novel robotic, wireless and dispense technologies. He is particularly interested in the potential for technologies in adjacent sectors to make the leap into Agri-Tech, delivering the next round of yield increases while reducing environmental impact.