We want our plants to work smarter. The company is developing both hardware and software to automate and scale the production of aquatic plants in a controlled environment as a more resilient option for feed, food and soil health.
According to Prapas, the plants he launched out of MIT are "super" because of their ability to grow quickly. They have the ability to grow at scale.
Some operations can reduce production costs, water usage and greenhouse gas emissions by over 50% with the help of Fyto.
According to the University of California, Davis, the largest water consumer in California is alfalfa, which uses five to ten times less water than crops.
More than 75% of the world's soy is fed to animals for meat and dairy production. That is one of the reasons why the company is starting with feed. In the year of 2021, Fyto did a pilot with a dairy farm in Northern California to see if its technology could be used to grow plants outside.
There are shallow ponds where the plants grow in a water basin. The farmer can manipulate the crops using robotic automation and scooping devices because they aren't embedded in anything.
The pilot-scale automated cultivation system is being activated. Bill is the image credit.
The plants reproduce in a way that Prapas called "vegetatively," where the mother plants split off into the next generation. The advantage of this is that there is no land preparation and the plants are always in a controlled environment.
The pilot found that the plants could be Harvested year-round and were high in vitamins, minerals, and Omega 3's.
In the summer of last year, we fed cows on an active dairy where we were growing the plants. Nitrogen makes its way into the water from livestock operations and is one of the biggest issues globally. It is a big challenge for the whole state, but if you can grow plants off of it, then you can feed those cows. The closed-loop process is exciting.
He said that the company will launch and sell its products later this year. The pilot program touched off a need for funding for the farm scale.
Existing investors AgFunder, Refactor Capital, First StarVentures and Bolt are participating in the Series A funding. The company has raised a lot of money. Andy Wheeler became a member of the board of directors.
Fyto will be able to hire more people thanks to the funding. Prapas wants to get new feed ingredients on the market, engage with food producers, and learn how to solve major problems in the agricultural sector.
He said that a majority of their time has been focused on feeding cows. Some of the crops we can pull from are shown to be very good for human nutrition. We are looking forward to addressing what we can.
Bowery Farming is forcing us all to look up at the future of vertical agriculture
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