Earlier this year, Unispice’s Born Farms added macrotunnels to its green and French bean farms to better protect the crops from devastating weather and pests.
Christopher Safieh, founder of Born Farms, says green and French beans are susceptible to heat, rain, diseases and pests, so about two years ago the company started to design this custom solution, from the mesh used in the tunnels to the hoops.
“We designed the mesh so that the light that went through the mesh was perfect for the beans but was not enough to let weeds grow,” he says. “We’re basically using no herbicides within the tunnels, but the light wave is perfect for the beans.”
Safieh says this results in a straight growing bean thanks to the light distribution through the mesh.
He says these macrotunnels help provide a consistent crop throughout the rainy season in Guatemala, which can run from May to September. Beans quickly develop fungal issues when underwater for more than three hours.
“And what it allowed us to do also is also extend the season in certain farms because we have farms in different altitudes and climates throughout Guatemala, and we use them only for a specific season,” Safieh says. “Because you’re shielding it against a lot of external stuff, we’re able to extend the season in a lot of our farms. We’re able to grow not only year-round but do it extremely consistently even through the rainy season, which is traditionally one of the toughest seasons for Guatemala.”
And this predictability, Safieh says, is one of the hardest factors to control, but using Unispice’s Cerebro, an AI predictive modeling platform, the company designed grids for improved drainage of the nearly 400 hectares under tunnels to handle large storms capable of dumping large amounts of water in a short amount of time.
“We ran simulations of water and designed a farm to be able to take that amount of water,” he says. “So, what ended up happening is that instead of having between 98% and 100% loss, which is what other farms had, we had between 7% and 2%, which is very manageable compared to 100%.”
Safieh also says the macrotunnels coupled with Cerebro and Unispice’s packaging technology help extend shelf life and thus better predictability throughout the supply chain.
“If you make that first step predictable, we can guarantee predictability throughout the chain,” he adds. “So, when we’re building our program with our retailers or our food service companies, we can give them a lot more predictability when it comes to their supply. So, it makes it very stable. The reason why you get a lot of swings in prices is because of lack of predictability.”
Safieh says Born Farms also uses its technologies to deliver appropriate volumes of beans during peak parts of the season — the week of Thanksgiving.
“We grow between three and five times what we grow on a usual week, specifically for the week of Thanksgiving,” he says. “If you have it a week before, it’s useless. If you have it a week after, it’s like having Christmas trees in January.”
