• Life Sciences & Technology

  • A Qualified Opportunity Zone Fund

    LoneStar Foundation
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OUR MISSION

LoneStar Life Sciences Opportunity Zone Fund is on a mission to develop the most advanced controlled environment technologies today for the largest indoor commercial grow facility for hops, and reduce the amount of environmental impact in the process.

Phase 1 Mission: LoneStar AgriTech Hops
LoneStar AgriTech will be the first year-round hops cultivation provider to supply fresh hops on a monthly basis for the craft beer and healthcare markets in the world.
Phase 2 Mission: LoneStar AgriTech Expansion
By achieving our first mission, we will have the infrastructure, technology, experience and the pathway to create additional food and plant-based medicinal cultivation such as vertical food production and other nutraceutical or medicinal plants.

OUR VISION

Increase plant yields while reducing environmental impact. Our short term vision is to start with one rare crop in high demand, like hops, and completely disrupt the hops market by creating high-yield, high quality harvest every month – as compared to one harvest per year in September. In the process, we will prove our model and prepare for our long term vision to develop additional technologies in hydroponic water conservation, full-spectrum LED lighting, renewable power, and food security for our future populations.

  • Hops
  • Vertical Farming
  • Other Health Based Cultivation

What Are Opportunity Zones?

As a qualified Opportunity Zone Fund (QOZF), LoneStar looks to solve the severe shortage and seasonal growing of Hops while, spurring economic development and providing tax benefits to investors. Investors can defer tax on any prior gains invested in a Qualified Opportunity Zone Fund (QOZF) until the earlier of the date on which the investment in a QOZF is sold or exchanged. With even more tax break incentives along the way at both 7 years and 10 years of the fund.

What is Life Science?

Branches of science, such as biology, medicine, anthropology or ecology that deals with living organisms and their organizations, life processes, and relationships to each other and their environments. “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.” Albert Einstein.


Unfortunately, big agriculture is destroying the balance of nature by diminishing soil nutrition, poisoning water ways with chemical fertilizer run off, destroying natural habitat (rain forest) for agriculture, and is now the number one cause of global warming. This needs to stop. Trying to produce food for the masses using our current methods is not sustainable and we are destroying our planet in the process. The only way we will survive the future is to avoid destroying the planet. The only way to do that is by creating new technologies that can help us save the planet, yet still provide highly nutritious and high yield food sources. Our first step in this process starts with Texas Hops.
 

A Problems Worth Solving.

Phase 1: It all starts with HOPS

Did you know that “Octoberfest” is actually the celebration of the hops harvest in September, and celebrated with fresh hops beer in October? Have you also noticed the number of craft beers on the store shelves which used to be just Bud, Miller, Coors and Corona? The craft beer market has consistently doubled in number of breweries every four years, but it takes a normal hops plant three years to mature. This means the demand of hops flowers outpaces production – thus causing the great hops shortage. The demand for hops to brew masters (large and small) is skyrocketing beyond the limited capacity traditional outdoor farmers can sustain. There are six major problems with the current hops market, and an explanation of how LoneStar AgriTech will transform the hops industry forever.

PROBLEM 1: LIMITED SUPPLY
The combination of high demand and extreme weather has reduced supply to alarming levels. AKA: The “Hops Shortage”. Take this year as a prime example – record heatwaves and drought in the Pacific Northwest are jeopardizing crop yields, quality and consistency.

LoneStar AgriTech Solution: Controlled indoor environment takes “Mother Nature” out of the equation. We control the water, light, nutrition, temperature and humidity in a 5th generation greenhouse that can withstand harsh weather.

PROBLEM 2: LIMITED SPACE
On outdoor farms, hops plants are spaced 3-5 feet apart for maximum sunlight absorption. This means that each acre can only handle 750-800 plants per acre and harvested only once a year. This means that farmers have to acquire hundreds to thousands of acres to produce enough hops per year to supply the demand.

LoneStar AgriTech Solution: With 50,000 sq ft of grow space per grow zone, we can place 10,500 plants per acre. Not only that, but we can also grow a minimum of three harvests per year, which means we can grow 31,500 plants per acre per year vs 800 plants per acre per year outdoors. By alternating grow cycles to every between four grow zones, we can produce one fresh hops harvest each month. With that said, we can produce flower yields from 126,000 plants in just 4 acres, which would take 160 acres at an outdoor farm. With LoneStar’s plan of 1,000,000,000 square feet, that would total 20 grow zones totaling 630,000 plants per year… on about 25 acres. The same plant volume outdoors would require almost 800 acres outdoors.

PROBLEM 3: LIMITED YIELD & QUALITY
On outdoor farms, hops plants are at the mercy of Mother Nature. With the current problems with climate change, heat waves cause droughts, and droughts causes plant stress, which reduces yield and consistency in quality. Add mold, mildew, insects… and the insecticides, herbicides, and fungicides to control or manage these risks, and you get plants that have limited quality and yield (about 2-3 pounds per plant).

LoneStar AgriTech Solution: With indoor controlled environments, there is never a drought, consistent temperature and humidity, 24 hours of full spectrum LED no-heat light, no toxic chemicals, no mold or mildew, no insects. The plants maximize their genetics by increased size, higher yields, and the quality of their phytochemical profiles are literally off the charts! Not only will LoneStar grow more plants better, but we will produce higher quality and quantity of flowers year-round.

GET STARTED

The LoneStar Solutions.

PROBLEM 4: NOT LOCAL
Over 90% of the US supply (40% of the world’s hops) are grown in Washington, Idaho and Oregon, and only available once a year in September.

LoneStar AgriTech Solution: Controlled environments allow us to grow hops in 3 months all year round. By creating alternating crops, we can provide fresh hop harvest every month. This is a worldwide exclusive technology not found anywhere else in the world.

PROBLEM 5: NOT FRESH
Because hops are only harvested once a year, hops flowers are typically dried and pressed into pellets for use for the rest of the year. Fresh hops, on the other hand, is only available in September and must be used within 36 hours to create “wet hops” beer. Why is this important? Ever use fresh basil in pasta sauce vs dried basil that has been in your cabinet for a year? Same product – different flavor profiles because one is fresh, one is dried.

LoneStar AgriTech Solution: By creating fresh hops grow cycles each month, we can provide locally sourced fresh hops for Texas craft brewers all year round, thus giving LoneStar AgriTech (and Texas craft brewers) an unfair market advantage over any competition.

PROBLEM 6: NOT SUSTAINABLE
A traditional hops yard can use up to 3 million gallons of water per day and is limited to only one crop per year. During the summer of 2021, the Pacific Northwest was hit by a record heatwave and drought. Because hops is genetically restricted to grow outdoors except for the Pacific Northwest climate, the yield and quality are severely restricted.

LoneStar AgriTech Solution: By creating the controlled environment hops technologies, we can grow 3-5 crops per year on the same acre, but only use 10% of the water used on an outdoor grow. Using advanced hydroponics, we fertilize the water with nutrient formulations and send the water directly to the root system, then recapture water and nutrients not absorbed by the plants and recycle the unused water and nutrients back into the system for filtration and redistribution.

BONUS PROBLEM: NOT AVAILABLE (XANTHOHUMOL)

Why so expensive? There is a hops shortage caused by the booming craft beer market – making raw material flowers for Xanthohumol severely limited or unavailable.

LoneStar AgriTech Solution: Because LoneStar will be able to produce more plants per acre per year, LoneStar intends to become the primary source for Medical Xanthohumol for North America. Pharma grade extracts need to come from Pharma grade plants, and with controlled environments, LoneStar will do just that. With fully functional extraction labs built into the hops processing facilities, LoneStar AgriTech will be fully functional and operationally prepared for creating Xanthohumol from weekly harvests of hops for medical research and product development. Creating XN for the US could make LoneStar Life Sciences a potentially exclusive target for big Pharma acquisition in the future. 

Xanthohumol and Covid? Xanthohumol has also been shown to have a wide range of antiviral effects in many in vitro and in vivo studies against both DNA and RNA viruses such as bovine viral diarrhea virus (BDDV), cytomegalovirus (CMV), herpes simplex virus type 1 (HSV-1) and type 2 (HSV-2), porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome virus (PRRSV). The cytokine storm of SARS-CoV-2 infection maybe one of the major causes leading to severe respiratory syndrome. Severe COVID-19 is found associated with increased levels of several cytokines, such as interleukin-6 (IL-6).6 A recent study found IL-6 blockade could reduce the requirement for ICU admission and mechanical ventilation in patients with COVID-19.7 This promising result demonstrates the importance of abrogating inflammation or at least, anti-IL-6 in COVID-19. In addition, an earlier study on SARS-CoV in 2014 found that inhibiting inflammation could significantly prolong the survival of mice infected with SARS-CoV and that activation of NF-κB, upstream of IL-6, played a major role in SARS-CoV-induced inflammation.

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