Siemens and 80 Acres Collaborate to Scale Vertical Farming

Siemens announced its collaboration with 80 Acres Farms, a leader in the indoor farming industry. With five production farms in southwestern Ohio, a new farm in Florence, Kentucky, a future farm in Covington, Georgia, and R&D facilities in Arkansas and the Netherlands, 80 Acres Farms specializes in growing the next generation of food — food grown in eco-friendly indoor farms closer to consumers’ tables.

Anchored by Siemens Financial Services’ initial investment, the two entities have partnered to apply innovative technology within the agriculture industry — fostering sustainable, healthy, traceable, and more productive farming practices. Utilizing Siemens’ robust set of software and hardware solutions, spanning intelligent facility and energy management systems to advanced industrial automation technology, 80 Acres Farms is well positioned to meet its goal to optimize and standardize its operations — with the vision to support food security worldwide.

Siemens’ full-scale collaboration involves the optimization, automation and control of 80 Acres’ farming facilities and processes. Working with the company’s technology subsidiary, Infinite Acres, Siemens supports the industrialization and scaling of the company’s proprietary Loop platform – a comprehensive solution that encompasses crop management software and algorithms, environmental controls, robotics, and automation.

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Siemens Smart Infrastructure is providing power distribution equipment while its energy and building management technologies within the facilities help monitor fire and life safety, security and power distribution systems all from a single interface. Siemens Digital Industries will install a suite of advanced industrial automation technologies and edge devices to help automate the production line, while edge devices and human-machine interfaces monitor and update the farms’ control systems. Taking a deeper look into the growth processes, Siemens Digital Industries Software is currently developing a digital twin that simulates the farm, plant growth and the production process to predict plant growth under diverse conditions as well as to optimize future farms for growth and shipping.

Looking towards the future, Siemens’ R&D arm, Siemens Technology, is leveraging artificial intelligence and machine learning to develop an app that optimizes software to identify irregularities, avoiding adverse conditions within the plants.

For further information on controlled environment agriculture, please see this Link.

Source: SIEMENS, 09 January 2023