Grow Food, De-stress: Rooted Offers Corporate Employees Micro-Learning Urban Farming Platform

Agtech startup Rooted wants to make urban farming the new corporate hobby with their new micro-learning platform, which offers users the tools and skills they need to grow their own food at home. Launched amid the coronavirus pandemic at the agri-food conference Future Food Asia 2020, which has led most of us to rethink food safety and health, the first-of-its-kind global farming hub will offer bite-sized and interactive information with input from farming experts so corporates can engaged their employees to cultivate fresh produce at their own pace. 

Rooted is the brainchild of Contain Inc, a US-based fintech platform, and Singapore-based agri-tech investment firm ID Capital, also the organizer of Future Food Asia. The platform combines the expertise, research and network of both to get people growing their first lettuce, mushrooms and even artisanal cocktail ingredients. The platform takes knowledge from Cornell University and SananBio, and “reimagines it in non-technical language” to engage audiences with easy-to-understand information using specially chosen influencers and experts. 

Farming is a fantastic way to bring together employees in a positive project. With Rooted we are pioneering new, social, ways of learning.

Isabelle Decitre, Co-Founder of ID Capital

“We realized people were weary of endless webinars and Zoom meetings, we wanted to create something bite sized and interactive,” said Nicola Kerslake, co-founder of Contain Inc. 

Isabelle Decitre, co-founder of ID Capital, added that because Rooted is designed for all individuals, it makes it the perfect platform for corporate wellness and sustainability programs to engage workforces in activities that are particularly pertinent to the global issues of today – health and the environment. 

“Farming is a fantastic way to bring together employees in a positive project. With Rooted we are pioneering new, social, ways of learning,” Decitre explains. 

It has allowed our employees to understand our sustainability focus in a hands-on way, whilst getting a micro-level taste of the challenges that our farmers face every day.

Christian Wiegele, President of Dole Asia Fresh

Rooted has already been tested by employees at global corporations such as Danone and Dole, and will soon be piloted by a major tech firm ahead of a global rollout to clients from all industries and sectors. 

Commenting on the trial, Danone’s Asia chairman Pascal De Petrini said: “Rooted did a great job of engaging our employees and of helping us to tell our sustainability story in a fun and accessible way.”

“It has allowed our employees to understand our sustainability focus in a hands-on way, whilst getting a micro-level taste of the challenges that our farmers face every day,” added Christian Wiegele, president of Dole Asia Fresh. 

Lead image courtesy of Unsplash.