Technological advancements have not spared any industry including agriculture and farming. There are many startups that aim to disrupt the food supply chain with their technologies. These have replaced the age-old farmers with a wave of equipment and technologies.
Urban farming is a concept of modern agriculture that involves the adoption of various emerging tech trends including robotics to make agriculture more productive, profitable and sustainable. With this advancement, it is possible to grow and deliver high-quality food with the minimal waste within an area of a smaller footprint.
Here we list 10 revolutionary urban farming startups in Europe that aim to disrupt traditional agriculture as sourced from Dealroom.
Ynsect (France)
Founders: Alexis Angot
Funding: €168 million
Valuation: €500 million – €750 million
Founded year: 2011
Why its hot: Ynsect is a French agritech startup, which produces insect-based animal food. This startup uses scalable and unique technology and breeds insects to product premium ingredients for organic plant fertilizers, pet food and fish feed. Ynsect is the world’s largest insect producer touted to product nearly 20,000 tons of protein per year.
Infarm (Germany)
Founders: Osnat Michaeli, Erez Galonska, Guy Galonska
Funding: €122 million
Valuation: $400 million – $600 million
Founded year: 2013
Why its hot: Infarm is a Berlin-based leading urban farming startup with over 50 farms in the city located in distribution warehouses, supermarkets and restaurant kitchens. It is a modular farming startup designed to be flexible so that it can be built anywhere. The units are arranged together letting thousands of farming units to be positioned together.
Agricool (France)
Founders: Guillaume Fourdinier
Funding: €36.9 million
Valuation: €100 million – €150 million
Founded year: 2015
Why its hot: Agricool has devised a new, local and sustainable method of growing food, especially strawberries. The startup creates small urban farms using old shipping containers called cooltainers to grow strawberries vertically sans any pesticides. These cooltainers use LED lights powered by 100% renewable energy and require 90% less water than those grown in the ground.
Plantui (Finland)
Founders: Mikko Kodisoja
Funding: €1.8 million
Valuation: €1 million – €2 million
Founded year: 2012
Why its hot: Plantui is a Finnish developer of smart gardens. The startup focuses on indoor gardening, which is a rapidly growing trend across the world. Plantui specialises in the development and manufacturing of smart hydroponic gardens that let anyone to grow clean, delicious and healthy herbs and salads.
Naïo Technologies (France)
Founders: Aymeric Barthes, Gaëtan Séverac
Funding: €5.9 million
Valuation: €10 million – €15 million
Founded year: 2011
Why its hot: Naïo Technologies develops and markets agricultural power tools and robots to help farmers grow and harvest yields. These robots are designed to assist farmers in their daily tasks and reduce their workload. Naïo Technologies optimises the profitability of farms and reduce the environment impact.
Agrilution (Germany)
Founders: Maximilian Lössl, Philipp Wagner
Funding: €4.6 million
Valuation: €15 million – €23 million
Founded year: 2013
Why its hot: Agrilution was founded as its creators were inspired by the concept of vertical farming. The vision of this startup is to harvest the freshest and most nutritious greens to make it best-in-class for consumption.
LettUs Grow (UK)
Founders: Ben Crowther, Charlie Guy, Jack Farmer
Funding: €1.3 million
Valuation: £120k – £180k
Founded year: 2015
Why its hot: LettUs Grow has invented a patent-pending aeroponic technology to grow shrubs and herbs with over 70% higher growth rate than traditional techniques. Its technology suspends plant roots in a nutrient-rich mist rather than using soil to ensure faster and more consistent results. In comparison to open-field farming, LettUs Grow reduces water usage by 95%, uses no chemicals and pesticides and minimises carbon footprint.
The New Farm (Netherlands)
Founded year: 2017
Why its hot: The New Farm is a business building in The Hague. It has been redeveloped into a building with a great potential. The central theme of The New Farm includes innovation, sustainability and urban agriculture. As it is all about vertical farming, there is space on the ground floor for catering and retail concepts.
PATS Indoor Drone Solutions
Founders: Sjoerd Tijmons, Bram Tijmons, Kevin van Hecke
Founded year: 2018
Why its hot: PATS Indoor Drone Solutions lets greenhouse farmers significantly minimise and eliminate flying insect pest populations. The startup develops autonomous insect control solutions based on micro-drones that can be deployed within the greenhouse infrastructure that exists. The solution helps reduce costs of products and labour in the crop protection process and reduce losses due to infected plants and crops.
Infinite Acres
CEO: Tisha Livingston
Funding: €1.3 million
Valuation: £120k – £180k
Founded year: 2015
Why its hot: Infinite Acres is a sustainable food system company with proven engineering, scalable operations and industry experts. It is an automated turn-key indoor farm, which is operated by experts. The startup provides a full-service solution starting from the design and construction of a vertical farm to crop recipes with optimal yield.
Stock Photos from MONOPOLY919/Shutterstock
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