“With massive demand in the US and globally, we’re able to sell indoor farms and our holistic operating system across the world,” says Don Taylor, CEO of AmplifiedAg.
AmplifiedAg develops proprietary indoor farm electronics, hardware and software, and also upcycles decommissioned shipping containers into fully functional farms. These farms are complete with propagation chambers, turnkey hydroponic systems, containers devoted to distribution, and a proprietary operating system, AmpEDGE™, to monitor and control these subsystems.
Don Taylor
The AmplifiedAg difference
Explaining the differences between AmplifiedAg’s offering and other farm management software, Don notes that the company designed its AmpEDGE operating system as a multi-tenant “software as a service” (SAAS) right from the beginning, meaning that the company’s goal was always to develop a product that would sold to and used by growers across the world.
“Most of the control systems and farm management software built by different farms were built to operate that farm, whereas we built them to be a full multi-tenant platform. From the beginning, my vision included deploying farming technologies to bring safe food to people all over the world,” says Don. Traditionally, business management software and farm control management software have been separate systems, until AmplifiedAg’s development of AmpEDGE.
Within the software platform, AmpEDGE reportedly allows the grower to monitor and control temperature, humidity levels, water flow rates, nutrition levels, and more. Growers can modify environmental conditions remotely and are alerted when these conditions fall outside of the targeted range. By incorporating business management software in the operating system, Don explains that growers can view and correlate financial data and environmental data with operational processes all from the same platform.
Operating farms
“Combining business results with the actual environmental conditions allows the horticultural teams to dial in their growing recipes,” says Don. But perhaps the strongest advantage held by AmplifiedAg, according to Don, is the fact that the company operates Vertical Roots which is reportedly the largest container farm in the United States. Vertical Roots has products in 1,600+ grocery stores across 12 states. Don notes that operating Vertical Roots has enabled AmplifiedAg to evolve its platform based on the realities of an indoor farm operation. With hundreds of farm containers across the Southeastern US, one Vertical Roots farm container reports 100,000 data points a day and 1,000 lb. yields per harvest, with up to 17 harvests per year.
“The fact that we are running large-scale farming operations through Vertical Roots gives our engineering team the ability to live in that world. Most software and agtech companies do not operate their own farms. Vertical Roots has been proving that our technology works and that the market wants this type of product,” says Don.
Moving forward, Don explains that AmplifiedAg is focusing on installing farms as close to the point of consumption as possible and establishing strong partnerships to ensure customer success. While AmplifiedAg was initially focused on the southeastern United States with its Vertical Roots brand, the increasing global demand is expected to result in international partnerships. The company is focused on customer success and considers itself to be conservative in that AmplifiedAg spends a lot of time with partners to ensure continued success.
“We believe in white-glove service where we support our clients and make sure that they are successful. If they aren’t successful, then that does not do anybody any good,” says Don.
For more information:
Don Taylor, CEO
AmplifiedAg
[email protected]
www.amplifiedaginc.com
Vertical Roots
[email protected]
www.verticalroots.com