AgFunder Announces Green Collar Foods Raising Capital to Make Indoor Agriculture a Reality for Inner-Cities
San Francisco, CA (PRWEB) May 12, 2016 -- Green Collar Foods (GCF), a Detroit, MI-based indoor vertical farming company, is launching a $1.5 million equity financing campaign on AgFunder, the leading agriculture-focused online investment platform. The company is in the controlled environment agriculture (CEA) sector and deploying an innovative network of franchised inner-city farming facilities. The GCF vision is to empower inner-city farmers with an affordable CEA business solution that is technologically intuitive and financially profitable.
Green Collar Foods leverages its technology platform, which combines Microsoft Azure’s IoT suite with GCF’s centralized machine learning platform and proprietary farm management software to create the GCF AgCloud. The platform streams data from sensors and open-source APIs to connect, monitor, and control a network of indoor farms. This enables continuous learning for GCF and its clients to extract efficiencies, record plant recipes and improve yields. The GCF AgCloud was built in collaboration with technology partner and investor Shaping Cloud.
The main aim of this technology is to enable anyone to operate an inner-city indoor farm while continuously learning from the process. GCF is passionate about democratizing inner-city CEA along with increasing the sustainability of each new location.
“We want to create real impact in the inner-city communities we are targeting, instead of talking about food desert-amelioration policies that ignore the real factors like lower levels of income and education. Therefore, we believe the best way towards an impact strategy is to give people ownership in fresh food production facilities – hence creating jobs, teaching usable STEM technology skills, all while building economic value,” said Ron Reynolds, Chairman and co-founder at Green Collar Foods.
GCF has a pipeline of facilities set for construction across the US and the UK including five GCF Hubs in its 1-year development pipeline across the US and UK. Integral to its rollout strategy, the company has partnered with major local land-grant universities, both as long-term food purchase customers, and low cost providers of research and support. These institutions include Florida A&M University, University of Connecticut and the University of Sheffield in England.
In the next five years GCF plans to create 130 new inner city jobs and redevelop 200,000 sqft of blighted urban infrastructure, by supplying thousands of pounds of high-value specialty crops to local institutional customers and generating strong returns for investors.
For more details, view Green Collar Foods’ investment profile (https://agfunder.com/listings/green-collar-foods) and a recording of their investor webinar (https://agfunder.com/webinar/green-collar-foods).
About Green Collar Foods
Green Collar Foods (GCF) is a controlled environment agriculture (CEA) platform designed for society’s most promising, yet challenged, inner-city environments. GCF is focused on empowering its business owners with the agricultural, commercial & technological tools required to successfully produce specialty crops that yield financial returns. Green Collar Foods leverages its technology platform, which combines Microsoft Azure’s IoT suite with GCF’s centralized machine learning platform and proprietary farm management software to create the GCF AgCloud. This enables continuous learning for GCF, its clients and University partners to extract efficiencies, record plant recipes and improve yields. The GCF AgCloud was built in collaboration with technology partner and investor Shaping Cloud. For more information visit http://www.greencollarfoods.com.
About AgFunder
AgFunder is the world’s first online investment platform created specifically to connect accredited investors with world-class agriculture and agtech investment opportunities. Every company featured on AgFunder is evaluated for its economic and technical merits by our expert team of agriculture and business experts, providing potential investors access to some of the most promising agriculture investment opportunities. For more information visit https://agfunder.com.
Contact: Melissa Tilney, melissa(at)agfunder(dot)com
Important Information: All terms described herein are simplified and provided for convenience only and are qualified in their entirety by reference to the transaction documents. In the event of any discrepancy between the terms displayed herein and the terms provided in the final executed transaction documents, such transaction documents shall control in all respects. All prospective accredited investors are advised to review the transaction documents and consult independent legal counsel prior to making an investment.
Melissa Tilney, Cofounder & Head of Marketing, AgFunder, http://www.agfunder.com, +1 415-689-4677, [email protected]
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