HOLYOKE, MA – March 28th, 2024.
‘Dan White calls it “turning back the clock on decomposition of food and seeds.”
That’s how he chose to describe the technology created by Clean Crop Technologies, a Holyoke-based company that has become one of the foundations of that city’s emerging cleantech and greentech sector and one of the more intriguing regional entrepreneurial success stories in recent years.
Elaborating, White said there have long been technologies that will prevent the decomposition that results from molds, fungi, toxins, and pathogens that attack seeds and crops. But until recently — in fact, until the technology developed by the team at Clean Crop — there was little if anything to reverse that decomposition, or turn back the clock, as he put it, once those foods were in the supply chain.
Getting more specific, he said that, when it comes to seeds, which have increasingly become the company’s focus, Clean Crop has been able to address a long-standing tradeoff when it comes to addressing decontamination.
“You can choose between killing the contaminant, and in so doing harm the germination of the seed, or you can make sure you have vigorous seeds, but not be able to kill everything,” he explained. “What we focus on at Clean Crop is developing our Clean Current technology to solve the tradeoff; we’re targeting applications where we can achieve the same or better decontamination as things like hot water and chemical treatments, but without harming germination in the process.”
In simple terms, the company is using a high-voltage cold-plasma technology to revolutionize food safety, and it’s doing it in downtown Holyoke in space that was once a paper mill, helping that city build what could be called a cluster of cleantech businesses, while further diversifying the region’s business community and perhaps laying the tracks for more businesses of this type.
“What we focus on at Clean Crop is developing our Clean Current technology to solve the tradeoff; we’re targeting applications where we can achieve the same or better decontamination as things like hot water and chemical treatments, but without harming germination in the process.”
This is an inspiring story, with chapters that have played out in Pennsylvania, where White developed an affection for agriculture and a desire to make it a career; in sub-Saharan Africa, where he would meet eventual partner Dan Cavanaugh and develop a passion for solving a problem that until then lacked a solution; in Iowa, where the partners would meet and then collaborate with Kevin Keener on new technology and a company to refine it and put it to practical use; in the Boston venture-capital market, where $3 million would be secured to bring the concept to the next stage; at UMass Amherst (and its Institute of Applied Life Sciences); and in a small office in Northampton, where the partners built a core technical team and proof of concept.
And now, in Holyoke, where the company, recently named among TIME magazine’s Top Greentech Companies of 2024, landed amid a search for clean energy (Holyoke boasts hydropower), needed space, and a landlord sympathetic to the needs and challenges of startup ventures (read: a shorter-term lease). There, Clean Crop is now deep into the process of scaling up, building its team, telling its story — there have many visitors to the site for tours as well appearances by the principals on several agriculture-related podcasts — and writing the next chapters.
Putting the problem of contamination into perspective, White said the U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates that roughly 30% of crops are lost in farmers’ fields every year to a wide range of toxins, pathogens, molds, and pests, with this loss quantified at $220 billion. And while the monetary loss, not to mention the huge loss of food to the supply chain, gets plenty of attention, what doesn’t is the fact that this crop loss is also a huge driver of greenhouse-gas emissions.
“These same contaminants, both on farm and in the supply chain, result in a lot of food being wasted,” he explained. “And as food waste decomposes, it generates methane, which is more than 50 times more potent as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.”
Thus, Clean Crop Technologies is addressing several problems at once, from increasing the amount of food eventually reaching the table to reducing those harmful greenhouse gases.’
Full article oh how Clean Crop is changing the greentech landscape available here.