Grow Ahead series

Purdue’s vegetable field day offers networking, education

Vegetable farming and growing vegetables in the home garden is important for many people in Northwest Indiana. Farmers and gardeners can increase their knowledge in vegetable production at an Aug. 9 field day from Purdue... more »

CropManage tool lowers fertilizer, water use

Since the free online irrigation and fertility decision support tool CropManage launched in 2011 for use in lettuce fields, the University of California has added more than two dozen row and permanent crops. Users can... more »

Digicrop views robotics, precision ag

Robotics and other technologies designed to benefit agriculture were at the forefront of Digicrop, the International Conference on Digital Technologies for Sustainable Crop Production. The virtual March 28-30 conference assembled researchers from a variety of... more »

Weeding robots put farms in better control

The Great Lakes Fruit, Vegetable & Farm Market EXPO was quite a treat this year. I felt the energy around and within me – after a year or two without conferences I didn’t realize how... more »

AppHarvest grows indoors for tomatoes, other produce

The first tomatoes from AppHarvest’s flagship, 60-acre greenhouse in Morehead, Kentucky, first appeared on retail shelves in January 2021, but that pales in comparison to what the company hopes to be shipping out by the... more »

Startup in NY Finger Lakes works on voice-to-data app for growers

Georgia-based software startup AgVoice – a 2019 Grow-NY finalist – announced plans recently to establish a headquarters office in New York’s Finger Lakes region, citing unparalleled resources offered by Cornell AgriTech and the Center of Excellence for Food and Agriculture (COE), both in... more »

Bioscience beckons, offers new traits for growers, consumers

Talking to researchers and companies about their genetically-engineered projects for specialty crops is a little bit like a trip to a grower’s dream world. Imagine ground cherries that stay on the plant until harvest, potatoes... more »

Mechanized cucumber harvesting, packing emerges

A Dutch robotics firm says its machine could be automatically harvesting greenhouse cucumbers in a few years. Harvests for greenhouse cucumbers can run nine months to year-round with artificial light, said Richard Vialle, CCO and... more »