Ever since the invention of agriculture, humans have been rediscovering innovative ways of farming and finding out modern techniques to make both harvesting of crop and human lives easier. Like the agriculture industry, the vertical farming industry too has infinite potentials, rather more but no less. Apparently, not in a way as it is generally perceived. The agro-gurus now say that vertical farms will not only be feeding everybody in near future, but will also majorly contribute to optimize specific supply chains. This agricultural technique will perhaps be an extraordinary solution for multiple cases like in the regions where leafy greens cannot be produced and the import quality is too poor, farmers can use VF technology for their own nurseries, or pharmaceutical companies who use the technology to have just-in-time production and higher amounts of active compounds in their plants.
Like any other solution, it is certain that one must first understand the business needs of the customer, and then only implement the solution. Apparently, there is no generalization of the potential of VF technology implication and it depends on numerous factors such as location, selected crop and position inside the value chain among many other things. With decades of rich experience, Urban Crop Solutions, a turnkey solutions provider in the indoor vertical farming industry, is redefining every term in the world of agriculture and creating high benchmarks in the vertical farming industry. It doesn’t believe in the concept of generalization and delivers each customer with an extraordinary solution only after assessing their needs, just to ensure excellence and perfection.
Constantly Developing the Most Optimal Plant Growth Recipes
With a focus to engineer, manufacture and install fully automated and robotized indoor farming solutions; Urban Crop Solutions is building solutions completely according to the needs of its clients. Part of its portfolio includes the standard growth container solutions, which can be easily shipped to anywhere across the globe. Urban Crop Solutions has an in-house team of plant biologists who are constantly developing the most optimal plant growth recipes which can be accessed all through the database. The company reveals that currently, its clients have access to around 180 different crops ranging from leafy greens to flowers and even medicinal plants.
“The cooperation with our clients doesn’t stop when one of our solutions is constructed and delivered. Urban Crop Solutions offers the complete after sales services, including maintenance, training, and distribution of consumables such as seeds, substrates, nutrients and access to new plant growth recipes. And of course, our consultants are always ready to help growers to develop their own crops,” asserts the team of Urban Crop Solutions. And the Founder of the company adds, “We envision becoming the global reference for integrated automated growth infrastructure, plant growth recipes and other additive products and services for the closed environment vertical farming industry.”
With a Goal bigger than what others can Imagine
Urban Crop Solutions claims that the current and the near future challenges that the world is facing is what has encouraged them to start a company like this. United Nations has projected that by 2050, this planet will be inhabited with almost 10 billion people, of which 70 percent will live in large urban areas, but the scarier part is that 80 percent of the land suitable for agriculture is already in use. The world is not only facing a production challenge, but also a distribution challenge, hence, Urban Crop Solutions is working hard with the objective to solve these challenges by optimizing supply chains, from seed to harvest, eliminating excess transport, pollution and losses.
The potential of this technology is enormous, but it’s of utmost importance to serve people with the best installation for their needs and that is where Urban Crop Solutions’ expertise lies at. In order to do so, the company first identifies all the current needs and the challenges that their client is facing. Followed by that, a feasibility study is conducted to obtain not only an operational and technical analysis but a financial one as well. After all, everyone desires to get the guaranteed success in this young and booming industry, so, Urban Crop Solutions ensures that they do not miss even an inch.
Urban Crop Solutions has taken a step ahead of what it’s already known for and has modified the technology in a way that plants are not impacted by seasons, changing environments and external influences that causes reaction due to change in parameters. This creates a significant impact on the yields, flavor, and amounts of active compounds, vitamins or minerals a plant contains. The company gives superior importance to all its customers. Urban Crop Solutions is headquartered in Belgium; but to serve customers better every moment, the company has established a local presence in the United States and Japan by having local country managers and is also developing a global network of sales agents with whom they are currently active in more than 12 countries.
About the Innovative Men behind this Revolutionary Company
With a concept of urban farming in 2012, and after testing several concepts and business models, Maarten Vandecruys, CEO, founded Urban Crop Solutions along with Frederic Bulcaen, Chairman of the Board, in November 2014. After huge research, Maarten came up with the idea of scalable indoor farming installations to solve the challenges caused by global urbanization, the growing world population and the lack of agricultural land in the world.
Delivering Agro-Solutions of the Level-Next
Being the first to open a fully automated and robotized Plantfactory, Urban Crop Solutions combines both the engineering and biological know-how to offer customers a solution tailored to their building or specific plant growth recipe to deliver a higher nutritional value. Maarten, concluded about their strategies and future plans by saying, “At Urban Crop Solutions, we believe the only reason why we succeeded in offering our clients profitable business models, is because we focus a lot on continuously investing in R&D and optimizing the potential this technology offers. We will continue pursuing this strategy and are currently finalizing the construction of 10 new laboratories in our headquarters in Belgium.”
He added, “Furthermore, our international growth will continue by opening new offices and partnering with new agents around the globe.”
Source :- The 10 Best Agro Solution Providers To Watch 2017
