ICYMI: Highlights From Our Fresh Faces in CEA Spaces Series
July 5, 2024 So far in 2024, we’ve spoken with five different “fresh faces” in the CEA industry. Each person we’ve talked to has shared about their experience in the industry, current projects they’re working on and where they see CEA going in the future. Here are a few highlights from each conversation:
Sam Humphrey, NC State University
NC State student Sam Humphrey was introduced to CEA in an unconventional way. While he was always interested in studying plants, the term “Astrobotany” stuck with him and encouraged him to explore CEA even further through. Here’s an overview of his experience in NASA’s “Growing Beyond Earth” contest, where he built a growth chamber:
“For the contest, you had to design and build a space plant growth chamber… and I hadn’t worked much with growth chambers before. I didn’t know much about them or what it took to make one. But that contest really grabbed my interest, so I started a team and recruited a bunch of engineering students. We had weekly meetings where we designed and built this beautiful chamber and we ended up winning the competition. So, I guess I got into CEA through that.”
Isabelle Amlicke, Little Leaf Farms
Isabelle Amlicke, a grower at Little Leaf Farms and Cornell scholar, appreciates how CEA is constantly evolving. This has proven to be exceptionally beneficial for her, given her extended background in research:
“Everything is always onwards and upwards and constantly changing. Something that I have really appreciated coming from a research background and going into growing is that everything you do is a step forward. No one is holding on to old ways in CEA, which I think you find in a lot in traditional farming.”
Moein Moosavi-Nezhad, NC State University
When asked where he sees CEA going in the future, graduate student Moein Moosavi-Nezhad explained how he expects to see a lot of growth in urban farming:
“There’s so much potential with CEA in urban horticulture. Considering urban population growth, I think in the future, smart cities should be able to feed themselves and not be reliant on food produced in open fields and transported from far away.”
Ekene Tharpe, Babylon Micro-Farms
Of all the trends she’s noticed in the CEA industry, Ekene Tharpe, Head Grower at Babylon Micro-Farms, is especially intrigued by the need for companies to define themselves as either a technology company or a produce company:
“Sometimes companies will pour tons of resources into a certain technology without honing in on what it actually is. So, I see the trend of people focusing on one specific lane and conquering it. That’s a huge trend that I think is going to become more solidified as time goes on.”
Xiaonan Shi, NC State University
Xiaonan Shi, a Postdoctoral Research Scholar at NC State University, is currently earning her Ph.D in speed breeding, a new concept that integrates CEA into plant breeding:
“[Speed breeding] is super important for modern agriculture because speed breeding is where we apply CEA tools like regulating different environmental cues to shorten the breeding period from seed to seed. But traditionally, that’s why some plant breeding programs are extremely long, because you grow plants outside in the field and you can’t have year–round growth. And on top of that, it takes longer for some plants to reach the flowering stage. So, by playing around with environmental conditions, you can speed up the whole process to where you can grow the plants within a year.”
What do you think of these experiences and fresh takes on the CEA industry? Let us know in the comments.