It would be a waste of words to sit here and lecture you about how broken our food system has become.

It would be a waste of your time, too.

It’s not difficult to uproot articles that pertain to our polluted waterways cause by fertilizer runoff, the mysterious yet infamous “pink slime” food filler, the sweeping obesity epidemic, harmful growth hormones in our meat, the “carbon footprint” of food transportation, the millions of pounds of food that go to waste every year, and so on…

And these are just a few examples — the list is endless.

But on the bright side, there are some companies that are making strides to completely disrupt our current food system for the better as the demand for healthily sourced foods is steadily on the rise.

What Are Disruptive Innovations?

So, picture this.

What if there were a wave of innovation that was sweeping over our agricultural systems? And what if it not only created new sources of market and economic value but also delivered food and nutritional security and provided new sources of meaningful employment, all while it worked to shift the planet toward a more sustainable mode of production?

Well, it’s happening all over the globe with the help of numerous revolutionary agriculture- and farm-related disruptive innovations.

The term disruptive innovation was coined about 20 years ago by Clayton M. Christensen, a Harvard University economist. He defined the term as a new technology that is inferior in some respects to existing ones but has other highly desirable attributes and advantages.

The basic textbook definition of the term dictates that it is an innovation that creates a new market and value network, eventually disrupts a market and value network that already exists, and displaces established market leaders and alliances.

This concept is particularly applicable to farming and agriculture, as these enterprises are always subjected to some degree of constant change.

If you were to farm the same way you would 20 years ago, it’s safe to say that you probably wouldn’t be making nearly as much of a profit as you could be.

The large and dominant market players rarely drive a wave of disruptive innovation as their business models are already geared toward the sustainability of existing markets for their goods and services.

However, this doesn’t mean that all dominant players are strictly excluded from the creation of disruptive innovations.

Some very familiar names have teamed up with researchers and startups to create disruptive niche markets of their very own, all over the world.

You’re Right: Robots Are Taking Our Jobs

In Washington state, the harvest of its vast fruit orchards every year requires thousands of workers, and many of them work illegally in the United States.

And many fruit farmers have already experienced detrimental labor shortages.

But with President Trump’s firm stance against illegal immigrants, many farmers have started to seek out alternative harvesting methods as there is no telling what the administration might do.

The human fruit-picking system could drastically change in the near future, as two companies are currently working to get robotic fruit-picking machines on the market.

FFRobotics (an Israel-based startup that was formerly known as FFMH-Tech) and privately held Abundant Robotics are racing to get their mechanical pickers out in the orchards within the next few years. Gad Kober, cofounder of FFRobotics had the following to say:

Human pickers are getting scarce. Young people do not want to work in farms, and elderly pickers are slowly retiring.

Harvesting has already been heavily mechanized for other products of the agriculture industry — such as wheat, corn, soybeans, and most vegetables.

However, delicate and easily perishable commodities like apples, berries, grapes, and lettuce must still be harvested by hand because most mechanized harvesters would damage them during the process.

FFRobotics is developing a machine that has a three-fingered “hand” to grab the fruit and either twist or clip it from its branch.

The machine could have anywhere from four to 12 robotic arms and will be able to successfully remove approximately 90% of the fruit from the trees.

The company’s prototype has the ability to pick up to 10,000 apples an hour.

Abundant Robotics is working on a picker that uses suction to vacuum apples off trees.

Plans for the robotic harvesters, which included the goal of getting them on the market before 2019, were discussed in February at an international conventional of fruit growers in Wenatchee, WA.

The two robotics companies are likely to hit their production goals, said Karen Lewis, a Washington State University cooperative extension agent who has dedicated much of her time studying the present issue.

But in order for the robotic pickers to work successfully, the apples and other crops will have to be grown in specially designed trellis systems that will allow the robots to see and harvest the fruit in full.

Large farming operations will likely be the first to implement the robotic pickers, but it still may be many years before their use is widespread.

For now (and the next 20 years or so), they will be used by some growers to supplement regular picking crews and to serve as backup for labor shortages, says Mike Gempler of the Washington Growers League (WGL) in Yakima, WA.

The industry has no choice but to embrace mechanization, says Mark Powers, president of the Northwest Horticultural Council (NHC), a trade group of farmers in Yakima:

We don’t see some miraculous new source of labor appearing on the horizon. We think labor will continue to be a scarce resource.

Within a few years, the robotic pickers should be able to pay for themselves and could be implemented on a much larger, global scale.

Britain is experiencing similar labor shortages since it withdrew from the European Union.

A large majority of its seasonal migrant workers came from the EU and may be unable to come to the UK if stricter immigration policies are set in place.

British farmers have also turned to robots to fill the gaps in their labor supplies — with the most promising being Thorvald, a Norwegian agricultural robot designed to perform the laborious tasks on UK farms post-Brexit.

The robot was developed by Professor Pål Johan From, head of the robotics group at Norwegian University of Life Sciences, and may become an essential instrument in the prevention of fungal infections without the use of pesticides.

Thorvald can monitor fields while it constantly watches for attacks from fungi, mites, and other damage; treat plants without chemicals; and even aid in the harvesting process.

In response to quickly changing political policies, scientists like Professor From and Gad Komer see the farming robot as a realistic alternative to human hands, which will help with the world’s shrinking labor force issue.

Farming at Disney?

Vertical farming is the latest disruptive innovation wave that’s sweeping over the agricultural industry.

Some of the players that have gotten involved in this new form of farming are some you might not have expected, and all of them have created their own individualized renditions.

It’s a technique that involves indoor growing in precisely programmed light and water systems and specially designed structures that literally grow vertically, rather than horizontally.

This innovative method also allows for a great degree of personal interpretation and variation, as well.

Entrepreneur Kimbal Musk, Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s little brother, is kick-starting his own vertical farming co-op inside of an old Pfizer factory in Brooklyn, NY.

Musk teamed up with a fellow entrepreneur, Tobias Peggs, and launched a new urban farming incubator program called Square Roots.

The program will give young food-tech entrepreneurs spaces to develop and accelerate their own vertical farming startups.

Musk and Peggs will create smaller vertical farms inside of 10 steel 320-square-foot shipping containers, all of which will be housed in the old Brooklyn Pfizer factory.

Very soon, an unlikely company will also start to use vertical farming technologies: Target (NYSE: TGT).

The retail giant has teamed up with privately held design firm IDEO and the MIT Media Lab to launch the Food + Future coLab.

Greg Shewmaker, one of Target’s entrepreneurs-in-residence at the coLab, says that the companies plan to test the new system in a select few stores to see just how involved customers will be with this new technology.

During the trials, customers could potentially harvest their own produce from the vertical farms. According to Shewmaker:

Because it’s MIT, they have access to some of [these] seed banks around the world. So we’re playing with ancient varietals of different things, like tomatoes that haven’t been grown in over a century, different kinds of peppers, things like that, just to see if it’s possible.

The largest vertical farm the team has developed, just under 8,000 square feet, could grow crops for an entire neighborhood or community, which would essentially bring an entire farmer’s market into their retail stores.

That big farm is currently being tested in India where they are not only growing food and produce but inedible crops like cotton, as well.

Target’s collaboration aims to deconstruct the notion of “buying locally” and transform it into “buying on site,” instead.

In doing this, the collaboration offers several benefits for grocery retailers: It tightens the supply chains, cuts transportation costs, supports regional economies, promotes sustainable practices, and enables stores to micro-merchandise.

Vertical farming also offers some degree of gentrification as it sets up shop in decommissioned factories and abandoned warehouses, which gives these buildings new purposes.

Some other companies that have branched out and are using vertical farming technologies include the following:

• The Walt Disney Company (NYSE: DIS) at its EPCOT Center.
• Panasonic Corporation (OTC: PCRFY)
• Sony Corporation (NYSE: SNE)
• Toshiba Corporation (OTC: TOSBF)
• Fujitsu Limited (OTC: FJTSY) in Japan with plans to export its crops to Singapore.

The Bottom Line

These disruptive innovations will not only shatter the conventional notion of modern farming, but they also hold the potential to support the global growth of sustainable agriculture and food production.

Each of these innovations addresses a very real problem head-on while keeping in mind economic reservations and resource allocations to boost efficiency and yields.

From robotic fruit-pickers to the most unlikely of companies that are growing crops in vertical gardens, it seems like the world has finally woken up to the harsh reality of our food crisis.

That’s all for now.

Until next time,

John Peterson
Pro Trader Today