Indoor Ag Science Cafe talks with Robert Colangelo on the right size for a vertical farm

Last year, venture capitalist companies invested $51.7 billion in Ag Tech, but what exactly is Ag Tech? Ag Tech is technology focused agriculture that is meant to increase existing efficiency processes in agriculture and sustainability, which includes everything from aquaculture to new crops/genetics, to animal health to the controlled environment agriculture industry.

With dwindling resources, increasing populations, and climate concerns, Robert Colangelo and his new ag tech company, CEA Technologies Inc., are seeking “to transform agriculture by developing sustainable indoor growing technology that can grow in any climate, free of pesticides using less, energy water and soil” with their unique modular scalable farm that has an inflatable structure, low-cost pest and thermal barrier.

In the October episode of the Indoor Ag Café, Robert Colangelo discusses their patent pending, modular scalable farm and how the company is looking to change how we all look at vertical farming’s profitability, production costs and the ideal vertical farm size. You can view Colangelo’s presentation at https://scri-optimia.org/show_cafe.php?ID=111163.

Indoor Ag Science Café is an outreach program of the OptimIA project, funded by the USDA SCRI grant program. Interested parties can join the free café forums, live or recorded (http://www.scri-optimia.org). The café forum is designed to serve as a communication platform among scientists and indoor farming professionals.