Futura Gaïa France

This interview details Futura Gaïa, an indoor farming company based in France. The interview is with Vincent Truffault, Head of Agronomy of Futura Gaïa. Vincent holds a Ph.D. in plant physiology (INRAE, France) and has worked in Ctifl (France) as a research manager for the greenhouse sector.

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What is the origin story of Futura Gaïa?

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Pascal Thomas is founder and CEO of Futura Gaïa. His father was a grower who suffered from pesticide use. As a result he wanted to propose a new solution of growing tasty and high nutritive value plants without pesticides, locally, and to do it with growers in mind.

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Growers are facing too many challenges (climate change, societal change, economic crisis, labour shortage) and they need to be accompanied with innovations. The solution has been built for them. 

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What are some of the biggest challenges facing Futura Gaïa in the future?

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As other competitors in the vertical farming industry, energy crisis is a game changer. Using technological (rotative cylinder with few lamps for or large number of plants) and a software smart algorithm we succeeded in decreasing our energy consumption by 20% compared to other competitors. We also have new innovations coming out. However, water crisis will overcome the energy crisis as far as importance in the coming years.

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What is unique about Futura Gaïa compared to competitors?

Futura Gaïa’s solution relies on innovative technological and agronomical choices: 

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• The use of a rotative cylinder as cultivation system. It allows automation, climate homogeneity and energy savings
• Plants grow in soil substrate, not aeroponics nor hydroponics. It increases plant nutritional qualities, and permits us to work on dedicated “terroir” (specific phytochemistry signature for cosmetics, pharmaceuticals or food).

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Additionally, our business model is different from competitors (licence based business model).

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Last but not least, Futura Gaïa has a strong expertise in Agronomy, with 13,000 plants grown in a 6-climate chambers test facility, plus the ability to test up to 12 different fertigation recipes simultaneously in our laboratory. Agronomists and engineers are working on the cultivation system and parameters for the future crops.

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How do you measure the impact of Futura Gaïa so far? (Revenue, Employees, Customer Quantity, Production Volume) etc?

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Since the beginning of the Futura Gaïa’s journey, we measure our impact using environmental indicators (LCA, carbon footprint). Therefore we do not use peat, we favour local suppliers, we work on organic solutions and apply biominimal approaches to increase input efficiencies. We cannot rest on the bad choices of the past. It is important to build new growing solutions that take account of environmental, social and economic impact.

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What have you learned that you wish you knew when you joined or started the company?

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When I joined Futura Gaïa, as a plant physiologist, I thought that plants in slow rotation would express more negative effect than positive. I learned quickly that it was the complete opposite (more nutritional value, more shelf-life ability, fast growing processes). We collaborate with academic researchers to learn more on this, and our results might be of a great help to understand gravitropism perception for spatial applications.

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How can people connect with you or learn more about Futura Gaïa?

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You can contact us via LinkedIn or contact@futuragaia.com. Our farms and laboratory are open to visitors because there is nothing more than collaborative talks to strengthen the sector.

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