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    • AI and data in water-efficient food production – Swegreen’s insights from the past year

    March 13 2025

    As Unity4Water moves closer to launching its pilot facility in Wichita Falls, a year of research and collaboration has provided valuable insights into optimizing water and energy use in food production. The key takeaway? Data-driven solutions and AI-based optimization are pivotal in making food systems more efficient and sustainable. We spoke with Swegreen, one of Unity4Water’s key partners with speciality in on-site farming, about their findings over the past year.

    – We’ve developed a holistic understanding of how water consumption, energy efficiency, and resource circularity interact within food production. One of the most important lessons we’ve learned is the necessity of integrating data and AI-driven solutions to continuously adapt systems to real-world conditions. This approach is proving crucial for maximizing resource efficiency and creating truly sustainable farming methods, says Sepehr Mousavi, Chief Innovation Officer and Co-Founder of Swegreen.

    While it’s still early to draw definitive conclusions, AI and real-time data analytics are showing great potential for improving water and energy efficiency. However, fully unlocking this potential will require the collection and analysis of significantly more live data across multiple systems. What Swegreen brings to the table is connected and controlled systems that could generate accurate and precise big data.

    Advancing sustainable controlled environment agriculture – The Farm4Future Lab

    One of the most significant milestones in sustainable food production has been Swegreen’s collaboration with Mälardalen University (MDU), resulting in the establishment of a state-of-the-art growing facility at MDU’s Farm4Future Lab. This unique research environment in the Nordics serves as a cutting-edge testbed where fully controlled hydroponic farming, AI-driven automation, and resource-efficient technologies come together to drive innovation in sustainable agriculture.
    At the heart of this facility is a Swegreen Saga unit, originally designed for commercial use and further developed to meet research standards. By adapting the unit for scientific applications, the lab has created a platform that enables deep exploration into AI-optimized growing conditions, energy-efficient cultivation methods, and circular resource management. The Farm4Future Lab continuously generates valuable insights, functioning as a knowledge hub for optimizing energy consumption, water efficiency, and closed-loop agricultural solutions. These findings are shaping best practices in the industry, setting new benchmarks for scalable, sustainable food production that can be applied both in urban farming and large-scale agricultural systems.

    The road ahead: Circular solutions and water reuse

    Looking ahead, increasing circularity and water reuse will be key to further reducing water consumption in food production. By enhancing water recycling systems, optimizing irrigation techniques, nutrient recovery, precision fertilization and developing closed-loop solutions, significant reductions in water and nutrient usage can be achieved—without compromising productivity, crop quality, or cultivation capacity.
    Unity4Water’s initiative brings together leading researchers, engineers, and industry experts to drive innovation in sustainable food production. The goal is to create scalable solutions that strike a balance between resource efficiency and a resilient, environmentally friendly food supply.
    With the Wichita Falls pilot facility—a collaboration between MDU and Swegreen from Sweden and Babylon Microfarms and Texas State University from the USA – these insights will soon be tested in real-world conditions in the U.S., establishing a dedicated test platform for sustainable food production. This marks an important step in validating AI-driven, resource-efficient farming solutions on an international scale. However, the vision does not stop there. Back in Sweden, the journey continues, with ongoing research and development at MDU’s Farm4Future Lab, where cutting-edge innovations in hydroponics, automation, and circular resource management will further refine the future of sustainable food production.