[elcritch]

I worked for the company that developed the technology. Personally not much of a green-thumb myself, but it's great to see how much you can grow with vertical towers, either in a greenhouse or indoors with LED lights. You can grow about 3-4x what you would get with a flat grow bed for many plants [1]. While the towers are great, the real trick is the grow media as you want it robust enough to survive while not suffocating the roots.

For those interested in starting your own farm or just gardening I'd highly recommend "UpStart Farmers" [2]. A friend of mine help's moderate it and is really focused on helping people learn vertical farming and aquaponics. They have an enormous selection of content regarding various aspects such as nutrient mixes, dealing with pests, etc. The community is also active and helpful to each other.

FYI: This is from the Canadian licensee's of the original Bright Agrotech that was acquired by Plenty Ag [3]. I'm bullish that indoor farming will be a big boon in providing more localized and therefore fresh and nutritional vegetables and leafy greens for much of the world's population. The economics are slowly improving with LED efficiency increases and capital infusion to scale farms.

1: https://search.proquest.com/openview/ccf876147b3e8a224da6770... 2: https://www.upstartfarmers.com 3: https://www.plenty.ag/the-feed/plenty-acquires-bright-agrote...

[doctoboggan]

I thought the technology looked familiar. I had been following the Bright Agrotech people on YouTube for a while, they produced great content for those interested in indoor hydroponics for the home grower.

Do you know what happened to the company? Did they go bankrupt and have to liquidate their IP?

[elcritch]

Sibling is correct. Plenty Ag acquired Bright Agrotech for people and IP. Bright was profitable but faced a difficult time scaling. It’s business model depended on individuals getting enough capital to start a farm. Many farms were profitable, but not all, and it’s difficult finding lots of people wanting to take out loans to start farms and banks didn’t understand the idea of indoor farms. Plenty Ag raised $200 million (largely from SoftBank) and needed to get a jumpstart on working tech and experts in the field. I’m still hopeful that once indoor farming tech keeps improving (based partly on large investment in the Plenty’s of the world) and banks accept indoor farms that individuals will be able to easily run indoor farms. A big part of that would be more labor automation. Plus if an asteroid ever hits Earth knowing how to grow indoor food would be valuable. ;) More realistically (hopefully!) indoor farming will be critical for colonizing Mars or asteroids. Long term, indoor farming and vertical farming will be critical technology for humanity to perfect, IMHO. An example (and fun) tech innovation was Bright’s invention of “water cooled LED towers”. That’s an early “Google style” innovation akin to using trays of cheap servers. Regardless hardware innovation takes massive amounts of capital. I’m hoping the Plenty Ag people are able to make fresh produce “a thing”! Edit: link to water cooled led’s https://info.brightagrotech.com/hubfs/Downloadable_Guides/Co...

[eurekaSky]

They were bought out by a company from Cali. Bright Agrotech started in Laramie Wyoming.

Their first "major" greenhouses were behind the building that my company was in. Really interesting people.

[tomp]

Do you have any idea, why do people concentrate on aquaponics, not aeroponics? Is it just simply easier to implement, or better researched? Or is it actually better (higher yield, closed-loop system, ...)?

[Sophistifunk]

Hydroponics would be the alternative to aeroponics, I think? Aquaponics usually means a hydroponics system in a loop with fish tanks.

[pault]

Sibling is correct. Aquaponics is a (partially) closed loop system where fish provide nitrogen for the roots, and the plants clean the water for the fish. You still need to feed the fish and sometimes balance the water pH.

[knodi123]

I've experimented with both. Aeroponics is a LOT more complicated- you really need a high-pressure system if you want good results (fogponics with an ultrasonic humidifier doesn't work well enough). And a high pressure system has to worry about clogs in the nozzles, and it has more moving parts, and some of those parts need to be well sealed.... vs. hydroponics which can be as complicated as turning on and off an aquarium pump.

[hanniabu]

A lot more maintenance issues with aeroponics