The Center of Excellence for Indoor Agriculture is Media Partner of AgriFood Innovation Event 2020

Center of Excellence for Indoor Agriculture

AgriFood Innovation Event 2020 welcomes The Center of Excellence for Indoor Agriculture as Media Partner

About The Center of Excellence for Indoor Agriculture

The mission of The Center of Excellence for Indoor Agriculture is to create a public-private partnership that accelerates growth and innovation in the indoor farm industry through knowledge sharing, programs and services for industry partners, research and development, testing, workforce training, advocacy and leadership.

The Center was founded in 2019 and is in Media, PA, which is equidistant and about 30 minutes from downtown Philadelphia and the heart of the mushroom industry in Chester County, PA.

The Founder and Executive Director of the COE, Dr. Eric W. Stein, has a Ph.D. in business from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and a B.A. in Physics from Amherst College. He is a tenured faculty member at Penn State University and has run a small R&D indoor farm for five years.

Eric authored a year-long study of the feasibility of setting up a Center of Excellence for Indoor Agriculture in which more than 200 stakeholders from industry, local and state governments, mushroom farmers and vertical farmers, universities, and economic development groups participated. The Township of Kennett (PA) was the chief sponsor and Kennett Square and New Garden Township joined as secondary sponsors in September 2017.

The study concluded that a Center was needed and had the potential to transform the green indoor agriculture industry, accelerate its growth, and bring innovation to the one-hundred-year-old mushroom industry.

The two-day AgriFood Innovation Event (June 23-24, The Netherlands) is a focused business, technology and research platform, unique in bringing together European and global companies from the entire agrifood supply chain (from farmer to enduser, with customers, producers, retailers and researchers).

The event includes 4 conferences (focused on 2 tracks: food and agriculture), an expo, workshops, student demo corners, lab tours and more. For the entire program and registration, visit https://agrifoodinnovationevent.com/program/

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