AgTech is not just a thing, it is the future of sustainable farming. Our client, Zero Carbon Farms, created a technologically driven underground farm beneath the streets of London. Complete, real-time control over the subterranean environment ensures the perfect summers day, every day. And with that, the demand for data grew, too…
Could this be the future of farming, today?
Potentially, yes. With the concerns about intensive farming front of mind for many consumers and distributors, a switch to a more sustainable source is timely. Step forward, Zero Carbon Farms. Their operations drain up to 90% less water, and far less of the physical space currently annexed by conventional farming. Growing crops this way, with the company distributing their ‘microgreens’ across the capital, reduces food miles and the wider carbon footprint of food production.
All you can eat data…
Zero Carbon Farms harnessed the power of technology to realise their business ambitions. Key to this progress was the creation of a Digital Twin: a virtual entity mirroring the characteristics of the physical twin – the real-world product, system, or process in development. NASA created the original, pioneering version to simulate spacecraft builds. The Digital Twin would create reports and analyse the data to support a partnership with Cambridge University and the Turing Institute.
Let’s grow!
The Google Forms and Sheets Zero Carbon Farms were using to collate growing pattern data for the Digital Twin weren’t yielding the right result. Replacing like for like wasn’t going to cut it. Only a complete farm management system – a proprietary application that would capture and use the data more efficiently, while overcoming the obvious practical issues involved in working underground – would do it.
So, how did it go?
There’s too much to share in a simple blog, so we’ve created a dedicated case study page to explain more about our work with Zero Carbon Farms. While the parent company is no more, the multi-platform, app-based intuitive software lives on, and is still at the vanguard of planet-saving, plant-based technology. Want to see how we went from first discussion through to wireframes and on to deployment? Let’s go.
