Loading audio file, please wait.
Evansville-based Anu, an agricultural technology startup, is making a name for itself in 2024.
In May, the rotary aeroponics company won the HungerTech Innovation Challenge from AgriNovus Indiana, and co-founder Ivan Ball was named one of the Conexus Indiana 2024 Rising 30. In March, co-founder Scott Massey made the Forbes 30 Under 30 list and traveled to Africa for the fourth time to expand Anu’s initiative to address food insecurity.
The Purdue University alumni have developed a smart garden appliance that uses seed pods to grow produce through aeroponics. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration has been researching this method of hydroponics for years to grow food in space by spraying nutrient solutions over the roots of the plants.
“Hydroponics is growing plants with water without the use of soil, which has a number of benefits. By dissolving the nutrients into the water itself, we can grow at a much faster rate, especially when the plants are done in a controlled environment,” said Massey.
Anu’s rotary aeroponics technology allows crops to grow year-round without traditional farming interferences.
“When a plant’s growing outdoors, it’s battling pests and inopportune weather conditions. It’s exerting energy, attempting to obtain nutrients in the soil,” said Massey. “We keep those plants perfect, happy and healthy all the time. There is no off-season. We control the seasons, and we ensure perfect consistency throughout the growth cycle.”
Besides Africa, Anu has also introduced its smart garden appliances at Perry Central Junior-Senior High School in Leopold. Ray Niehaus—former director of Vincennes University’s Center for Technology, Innovation and Manufacturing—encouraged Massey to bring the ag tech to the rural southern Indiana community.
“Vertical planting is what it is going to be in the future. The more students can incorporate that, look at it and look at problem solutions, the better,” Niehaus said. “They’re seeing how they can produce product in a shorter period of time and get excellent quality and results. We’re producing product in 30% to 50% less time than you would outside.”
The birth of Anu (formerly GroPod)
An interest in hydroponics developed for Massey and Ball at Purdue while working on a research study with Dr. Cary Mitchell, a horticulture professor.
“It was a combination of a hydroponic growth system, an [light-emitting diode] lighting system and a gas exchange system so that we could monitor small crops in real time regarding how they were responding to different environments. Llight intensity, light spectrum, CO2 concentration, temperature, things like that,” said Mitchell.
With Evansville’s appliance manufacturing history in the back of his mind, Massey began thinking of ways to use this ag tech in the home.
“It started spurring a series of provocative questions in my mind. Why do we have appliances that store food? To prolong the inevitable rot and decay of food. But these very appliances could be the source of food. They don’t need to be the tomb. They could be the womb,” he said.
Massey submitted a patent for his rotary aeroponics design and worked with Ball to develop a prototype. After winning a pitch competition at Ball State University, the pair found a way to raise money for their project.
“My senior year, I took a road trip to every university in the Midwest that would let me in and competed in competitions and was very fortunate to get the funding to continue our prototype iteration,” said Massey.
At this time, Massey was still a full-time student who was working and interviewing for jobs in case the ag tech idea didn’t pan out. While delivering newspapers for the Purdue Exponent, he convinced the managing editor to publish a story every time the rotary aeroponics prototype won a pitch competition.
“Readers reached out to me and said, ‘Hey, I saw that you have this prototype in development. When it’s ready, I want one.’ And that basically took care of the first year of sales right there,” Massey said.
Addressing food insecurity in Africa
After graduating Purdue, Massey got involved with the Mandela Washington Fellowship, which eventually led him and Anu to Africa.
“I was contacted by Dan Dawes and some other great individuals at Purdue, asking me to be a mentor for these fellows. Many of them come here from drought-stricken countries where water was a very scarce resource, and they had great interest in adopting hydroponic farming methods. It’s very advantageous for them because it uses 90% less water than conventional farming because there’s no runoff,” he said.
Massey discovered the fellowship offered reciprocal exchange grants to fund travel to the fellows’ home countries to help implement what they learned.
“What we proposed was building hydroponic farms so that individuals could have an income stream with viable entrepreneurial business models but also create decentralized food production systems that were resilient from food import disruptions,” he said.
So far, the rotary aeroponics company has been to Africa five times, with four trips for Massey and one trip for Ball.
“In some instances, we would be communicating these highly technical details through multiple translators of individuals who had traveled far and wide from rural areas to get access to this information,” said Massey.
Vertical planting at Perry Central
Before incorporating smart gardens at Perry Central, Massey and Niehaus met at an event in Crane where the entrepreneur was showcasing his product.
“I was impressed with his presentation and what he was doing. Two of the big areas that I’ve had a great deal of interest in is vertical planting and water, and his was vertical planting,” Niehaus said.
The pair kept in touch, and during a later conversation, Massey explained his idea for another use of rotary aeroponics to Niehaus.
“I told him how I had this vision of leveraging some elements of the technology in our very high-tech appliances to create maybe a slightly lower-tech, but still highly productive system that would focus on commercial quantities of production. So feeding communities rather than single households. And he loved it. He said, ‘This is what I’ve been waiting for,’” Massey said.
Niehaus suggested integrating the ag tech into schools.
“I said, ‘I think you ought to be doing this in some of the high school education, the ag side.’ Because there are a lot of schools just teaching by the book, and that’s a difficult thing. A lot of schools have greenhouses. Perry Central has one, but they need to learn how to get more capacity in planting. And I thought this would be a perfect opportunity,” he said.
Massey gave parts to the students who then constructed growing towers and housing structures. The students also developed a manual explaining the materials, assembly and business plan.
“We took [Massey’s] basic equipment and then we surrounded it with polycarbonate, put the lights on, put the air system on to minimize insects and all the other things. So we made a self-contained unit, and that’s the one he actually took to Africa,” Niehaus said.
Niehaus said the students grow spinach, lettuce, tomatoes and herbs. He believes working new technology like rotary aeroponics into a school system early is beneficial.
“Because now when they go off to college or they go to a company—they may go to a company that has a greenhouse and growing—they’re going to be way ahead on the scale. They’re going to understand the water system. They’re going to understand the heat, temperatures and light. All of the automation sensors that are actually being used,” he said.
The future of indoor agriculture
Massey said Anu is still working on pricing for its smart garden appliances, but the seed pods should be equivalent to the price of coffee pods.
“The prices of the physical growing systems are going to be aligned with similar quantity based systems on the market, if not priced beneath it. Because we’re fitting far greater quantities of plants per square foot than what any other system on the market is able to achieve or even hope to achieve,” he said.
Mitchell believes the development of LEDs has supported the evolution of the indoor agriculture and vertical farming industry.
“With LEDs being much more efficient and cooler light sources, people are on the cusp of being able to grow plants completely indoors with sole source LED lighting,” he said. “I think that would be popular with some of today’s busy consumers. People who would like to have their own vegetables at their fingertips, but they don’t have time or the space to grow a garden outside or on their patio.”
Perry Central plans to grow food for its cafeteria and local food pantries with its towers.
“That is the goal. We would have that capacity with the three units we have to produce some greens for the school. The other thing we’ve been looking at is how to implement this with a senior living facility where the seniors could easily plant the stuff with minimal effort. Just walking by every day and checking it is about all you have to do,” said Niehaus.
Massey expects to announce some exciting updates about Anu in the near future and encourages people to follow the startup on social media.
“I invite everybody to please join us as we continue growing to become the largest farm in the world without owning any land, by seeking to empower everybody to grow pure produce that’s better for themselves and the environment,” he said.
Story Continues Below