Using the power of events to connect the wider farming community
Since purchasing Indoor Ag-Con in 2018, CEO Brian Sullivan and his team’s goal has been to push for more education about emerging technologies and budding trends around controlled environment agriculture (CEA).
“What the event is involved with is a lot of growing technology,” Sullivan says. “There’s watering systems, there’s HVAC systems, there are special seeds being developed for the sector. One of the areas we’re getting into is food safety. We’re doing food safety certification because folks will need to know that you know can’t just grow and send stuff out into a retailer.”
Indoor Ag‘s 11th annual event took place on March 11 and 12. Over the course of these two days, in addition to its expo floor where more than 200 CEA exhibitors showcased their products, the event highlighted four large-scale topics through its breakout sessions (or “tracks”): the grower track, planning and operations track, cultivating possibilities track and cannabis track.
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Each of these tracks feature five breakout sessions, each covering a its own corner of the larger topic. The first three can be considered staples at Indoor Ag:
- The grower track highlights the ways growers can unlock the full potential of their products.
- The planning and operations track takes a look at how to make your growing situation better by creating a better environment behind the scenes (think greenhouse building, infrastructure and zoning regulations).
- The cultivating possibilities track takes a broad look at the future of CEA development, touching on topics such as AI and sustainability.
Contrary to the belief of some (“For a long time, folks would say, ‘Oh, you’re one of those cannabis shows,’ and we’re really not,” Sullivan says) the last one, the cannabis track, is actually a new addition to Indoor Ag’s breakout list.
“We see cannabis as only a sector of agriculture, but we’re addressing a much wider [audience], leafy greens, tomatoes, strawberries, other things that can grow indoors.” Sullivan says one of the reasons they decided to start the cannabis track is because several companies that attend the event are cannabis growers and “looking to spread their wings a little bit.”
“If they’re growing cannabis indoors, then migrating them outdoors in other seasons, they might want to grow other things, such as leafy greens,” he adds. “If they’re growing leafy greens, they can double what they’re doing. If there’s too much cannabis being grown in some areas, if there’s an overpopulation of it, they can grow other products. They come to our event and learn different ways to grow.”
Much like those cannabis farmers who may have an interest in growing other produce, Indoor Ag also reaches out to those in outdoor farming, as indoor farming may be an area that traditional farmers may have an interest in. “Fields farmers might have some time during the off-season to try indoor farming, so this is an area to teach them about what to do in the wintertime. They [own] a barn and…might want to turn it into an indoor farm for the winter so they get more revenue.”
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In addition to Indoor Ag’s CEA Summit that’s held in the fall in Virginia, from the pandemic sprouted another event. “Like many events, we went online and delivered webinars during the pandemic. We have what we call Indoor Ag Conversations, monthly online sessions that were sometimes even more [frequent]. For free we would have these sessions online that people could attend. We had hundreds of people on them from around the world.”
Also, similar to others, with the return of in-person events, Indoor Ag Conversations don’t happen as frequently as they once did. But, with a 62% increase in attendance in 2023, 60% increase in exhibit floor space and 16% attendance increase this year, and an expanding show floor that sold out last year and this year, the growth of its face-to-face events is apparent.
