Guanajuato exports technology and intelligence

Mexican entrepreneurs grow more and better agro-foods all over the world

One of the constant worries of authorities everywhere in the last years is crops, producing more with less resources, mainly land

Leon/Gto News

After the stoppage of many activities and the changes that were generated by the Covid 19 pandemic, some results were reflections on the situation but also alternatives to face the pandemic, mainly in countries that don’t grow their own foods.

Guarantee food

For some years now the start-up from Guanajuato Verde Compacto, has developed a series of solutions to guarantee the food safety in the planet in a sustainable manner.

“What does it mean to guarantee the sustainable food safety? that these solutions that we develop really have an impact in the environment, in transforming the lives of millions of people and that they also can generate an economic result both, to the company and to collaborators”, said Jorge Lizarde of Verde Compacto.

The beginning

Jorge Lizarde and Juan Gabriel Succar, started their first business of production of organic fertilizers in 2014.

They worked to optimize the processes, they found a company to help them use the gas produced from the compost, a company dedicated to develop ecotecnias.

In the end, they were selling the technology of the company of ecotecnias, but back then they noticed that the areas of opportunity were in agriculture.

More food with less resources

“We noticed that the trend is precisely that. The trend in agriculture is how we produce  more food with less resources and we investigated that indoor agriculture and vertical hydroponics are key to reach this goal”, said Jorge Lizarde.

In 2016 Verde Compacto was born, it was a project that started at the Tec de Monterrey campus Leon, with the firm goal to distribute this type of innovation in Mexico and Latin America.

The Huvster

Their first creation as a company are the farms called Huvster, they are set up in a recycled ship container where we install a whole system of vertical hydroponics complete with automation systems to control the weather and all variables that can affect the plants.

“In this container of some 30 square meters, you can produce the same as what you can produce in 5 thousand square meters of land a year, for example of, let’s say, lettuce; then practically in 30 square meters we are producing the same as they produce in half a hectare a year and we have zero waste of water, no toxic waste, and a container can be installed anywhere in the world. You can set it up in a parking place in a supermarket, in an urban center, in a ranch where they are producing some food. In a small space you can produce a large amount of food and that is what we sell today”, said Lizarde.

In numbers Lizarde said that in a container you can harvest 3 thousand lettuces every 25 days.

The post Covid situation

As the Covid 19 pandemic came, the projects in Mexico and Latin America lagged behind, not so in the United States, Japan, as well as in some countries in Asia and Europe.

Juan Gabriel Succar, co-founder of Verde Compacto, said that the high demand of their projects occurs in countries that are not producers of foods, that depend on the products they receive from other countries or that have an extreme weather.

The concept everywhere

“Today we have exported projects to French Polynesia and we are about to finish a project for Central America, during the pandemic we made a comercial Alliance with a company from the United States, to have a comercial office in that country and Canada. We are also working on an alliance with someone in Amsterdam to have a comercial office in Holland and with the help of COFOCE, we are exploring other horizons and with these allies we have been generating we have gotten proposals to work in other parts in the world. We have plans to work in Turkey, Singapore, and even Brazil, Colombia, Canada, the Caribbean, that is, we have gotten projects in many parts of the world and right now we are in the process to consolidate those projects”, said Succar.

Verde Compacto and COFOCE are also working to set up a commercial alliance in the Middle East, countries that given their weather conditions need this type of technology.