All the Details on the Upcoming Resilient Harvests Conference
October 5, 2022 
Resilient Harvests Conference, a new conference built around the policies, programs, and practices that advance efficient greenhouse and vertical farming, will take place Nov. 1-2 at the Hyatt Regency Long Beach in Long Beach, CA. With the event taking place less than a month from now, here are just a few of the details you need to know.
Keynote Speakers
The two conference keynote speakers are Andrew McAllister, Commissioner at the California Energy Commission, and Dr. Chieri Kubota, Director of Ohio Controlled Environment Agriculture Center, The Ohio State University.
“California leads globally on energy and climate policy, and Ohio State leads on CEA research,” says Derek Smith, Executive Director of Resource Innovation Institute. “The merging of these topics will stoke the solutions we need to collaboratively build a resilient agricultural future.”
Commissioner Andrew McAllister is currently servicing his third term on the California Energy Commission. Since the early 1990s, McAllister has worked on energy deployment and policy, and has since led the policy area of energy efficiency, including the Building Energy Efficiency Standards, appliance efficiency, and load management and flexibility. More broadly, he is focused on enabling modern, data-rich analytical tools to support strong clean energy policy development and program implementation. Under McAllister’s leadership, the Commission is set for a January rollout of the Title 24, Part 6, Energy Code for Controlled Environment Horticulture, which will establish a global reference point for CEA energy requirements.
Dr. Chieri Kubota is a professor in the Department of Horticulture and Crop Science, and Director of Ohio Controlled Environment Agriculture Center at The Ohio State University. In research, her focus is on science-based technology development for CEA crop production such as lighting technologies, water and nutrient management, and introducing new crops for CEA. She will bring her knowledge and experience to the conference by leading a conversation on “Translating CEA to regional needs for a resilient agricultural future.”
Redirecting Supply Chain Shortfalls
Supply chain challenges have beleaguered a range of construction sectors. In CEA, the longer lead times have, in some cases, translated to value trade-offs. Whereas CEA projects are usually under intense pressure to get into production, recent construction delays have opened up time for conversations among construction partners about how to improve the functionality of the structure as it is built. Parallel silos have converged into collaborative design teams focused on the customer’s operational efficiency.
Research Roundtable: Energy Management Perspectives for CEA
Energy management and power optimization within CEA structures has taken on a larger role as these commercial operations continued to expand in the marketplace. Managing the energy needs for the lighting, irrigation and HVAC and linking these three systems to understand the energy flow, mass flow, and data collection required to manage these systems. As a highlighted challenge is developing, HVAC that can provide humidity control while reducing the power required is a future challenge that needs to be address by all CEA production systems.
Visit the Resilient Harvests Conference website for the latest updates and to learn more about tour taking place in conjunction with the conference.
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