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Little Leaf Farms Raises $90M to Grow Its Greenhouse Network
Massachusetts-based Little Leaf Farms has raised $90 million in a debt and equity financing round to expand its network of hydroponic greenhouses on the East Coast. The round was led by Equilibrium Capital as well as founding investors Bill Helman and Pilot House Associates. Bank of America also participated.
by Jennifer Marston
Image from: Little Leaf Farms
Massachusetts-based Little Leaf Farms has raised $90 million in a debt and equity financing round to expand its network of hydroponic greenhouses on the East Coast. The round was led by Equilibrium Capital as well as founding investors Bill Helman and Pilot House Associates. Bank of America also participated.
Little Leaf Farms says the capital is “earmarked” to build new greenhouse sites along the East Coast, where its lettuce is currently available in about 2,500 stores.
The company already operates one 10-acre greenhouse in Devins, Massachusetts. Its facility grows leafy greens using hydroponics and a mixture of sunlight supplemented by LED-powered grow lights. Rainwater captured from the facility’s roof provides most of the water used on the farm.
According to a press release, Little Leaf Farms has doubled its retail sales to $38 million since 2019. And last year, the company bought180 acres of land in Pennsylvania on which to build an additional facility. Still another greenhouse, slated for North Carolina, will serve the Southeast region of the U.S.
Little Leaf Farms joins the likes of Revol Greens, Gotham Greens, AppHarvest, and others in bringing local(ish) greens to a greater percentage of the population. These facilities generally pack and ship their greens on the day of or day after harvesting, and only supply retailers within a certain radius. Little Leaf Farms, for example, currently servers only parts of Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, New York, and New Jersey.
The list of regions the company serves will no doubt lengthen as the company builds up its greenhouse network in the coming months.
US - OHIO: Thinking And Growing Inside The Box
A brother-sister team has taken the mechanics of farming out of the field and into a freight container. “We are growing beautiful plants without the sun; there’s no soil, and so it’s all a closed-loop water system,” Britt Decker, co-owner of Fifth Season FARM, said
A brother-sister team has taken the mechanics of farming out of the field and into a freight container.
“We are growing beautiful plants without the sun; there’s no soil, and so it’s all a closed-loop water system,” Britt Decker, co-owner of Fifth Season FARM, said. “We use non-GMO seeds, completely free of herbicides and pesticides, so the product is really, really clean. In fact, we recommend people don’t even wash it, because there’s no reason to.”
Fifth Season FARM is unique in many ways; the 3-acre hydroponic farm is contained in a 320-square-foot freight container that sits along 120 S. Main St. in Piqua, with everything from varying varities of lettuce, to radishes, to kale and even flowers in a climate-controlled smart farm that allows Decker and his sister, Laura Jackson, to turn crops in a six- to eight-week cycle. The crops spend 18 hours in “daytime” every day, and the farm uses 90% less water than traditional farming.
“It’s tricky because we’re completely controlling the environment in here. It’s kind of a laboratory more than a farm,” Decker said. “I think there’s about 50 of them around the world right now. These are really international, and they’re perfect for places that are food deserts where they can’t grow food because of climate or other reasons. It gives them a way to grow food in the middle of nowhere.”
Image from: Sidney Daily News
Decker and Jackson, along with their brother Bill Decker, also do traditional farming and grow corn, wheat and soybeans, but Decker said they were looking for a new venture that would help lead them to a healthier lifestyle and learn something new.
“Just with the whole local food movement becoming more and more important and food traceability, we just thought it would be a great thing to bring to our community to help everyone have a healthier lifestyle,” Decker said. “People love food that’s grown right in their hometown and the shelf-life on it, when you get it home, is remarkable. It’ll keep for two weeks.”
Image from: AgFunder News
Currently, Decker and Jackson are growing a half-dozen variety of specialty lettuces that include arugula, butterhead and romaine, as well as specialty greens like kale and Swiss chard, and even radishes and flowers. They received their freight container at the end of July and set up their indoor farm over two weeks; while the farm has been in operation for less than six months, Decker says that they’re growing beautiful product.
They have also started growing micro-greens, said Decker. Micro-greens are immature plants which are 1 to 3 inches tall and are in a 5-inch by 5-inch container.
“People will use them as garnishments and in smoothies,” said Decker. “Since they are immature plants, they have an intense flavor.”
Decker said they are growing wheat germ, broccoli and spicy salad mixes.
They’ve also started moving forward with sales and marketing. Fifth Season FARM has partnered with the Miami County Locally Grown Virtual Market to sell their products to the community. They also take orders through their website, customers can opt to pick up their orders between 4 and 6 p.m. on Wednesdays, or Decker and Jackson will deliver products up to five miles from the farm. Decker said that Fifth Season FARM is also in discussions with three restaurants in the area about including their specialty greens on their menus.
Decker said they also plan to attend the Sidney Farmers Market when it opens for the spring/summer season.
“We’re really just getting going,” Decker said. “While we were learning to grow products, we didn’t want to overcommit to a restaurant or grocery store before we knew we could really grow beautiful product, so we’ve been donating product every week to the food pantry at the Presbyterian Church. It feels good to plant the seeds and watch them grow, and it feels good to make sure that people who aren’t getting the proper nutrition are getting some.”
Nanobubble Tech Could Revolutionize Aquaculture & Aquaponics
“There is a pressing need to develop an alternative to the current highly energy-intensive conventional aeration,” said Khanal. “Nanobubble technology has a potential to revolutionize aquaculture and aquaponic systems, with higher productivity and resource recovery.” Khanal was initially awarded CTAHR’s Team Science grant, which was critically important to obtaining preliminary data for his grant proposal to NIFA
Image from: University of Hawai’i News
The burgeoning fields of aquaculture and aquaponics hold vast potential for growing food. Yet, the efficacy of these microbial-mediated processes is governed by the availability of dissolved oxygen in water. Generally, oxygen has poor solubility in water, which has a negative effect on fish growth and plant yields.
Almost $200,000 in new funding from the USDA-National Institute of Food and Agriculture’s (NIFA) Water Quantity and Quality Program may expand researchers’ understanding of how nanobubbles could improve aeration and oxygen supplies.
Under the grant, Samir Khanal of the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa’s College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources (CTAHR ) Department of Molecular Biosciences and Bioengineering, will apply the technology to these aqueous systems. His goal is to uncover new opportunities for improving fish and plant yields—with concomitant improvements in water quality.
Image from: University of Hawai’i News
“There is a pressing need to develop an alternative to the current highly energy-intensive conventional aeration,” said Khanal. “Nanobubble technology has a potential to revolutionize aquaculture and aquaponic systems, with higher productivity and resource recovery.”
Khanal was initially awarded CTAHR’s Team Science grant, which was critically important to obtaining preliminary data for his grant proposal to NIFA.
“Thanks to the CTAHR and NIFA grants, we hope our findings will benefit existing Hawaiʻi businesses, as well as a new generation of growers, across the state and beyond,” Khanal added.
USA: SOUTH CAROLINA - $314 Million Agriculture Technology Campus To Bring 1,500 Jobs To Hampton County
Governor McMaster and the South Carolina Department of Agriculture say the 1,000-acre project will use controlled environment agriculture, an indoor farming technique to minimize space and conserve water
by Cody Thomas
September 3, 2020
To View The Video, Please Click Here
The project is expected to be operational by 2022 (Credit: Cody Thomas)
HAMPTON COUNTY, Sc. (WTGS) — On Wednesday, South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster announced a new agriculture technology campus in Hampton County.
The massive project will bring more than 1,500 jobs to the community.
“This is the largest agricultural announcement in South Carolina history, according to commissioner Weathers who’s been working on this project for years,” Governor McMaster said.
Governor McMaster and the South Carolina Department of Agriculture say the 1,000-acre project will use controlled environment agriculture, an indoor farming technique to minimize space and conserve water.
“As we bring food production to the East Coast and not bring those trucks across the country and have that cost involved, there’s only just potential for additional growth,” Commissioner of Agriculture Hugh Weathers said.
The $314 million investment is expected to bring in 1,500 jobs by 2025, but there was concern about the small farmers who are already there.
Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue says there is room for partnership.
“It’s going to be a long, long time before our great agriculture producers are not needed. I don’t ever envision that happening at all,” Perdue said.
Governor McMaster says project investors with the GEM Opportunity Zone Fund could have taken this project anywhere, but the area’s environmental advantages are what secured the deal.
“This kind of innovation represented by these companies and the people that we have here that can do this work, and these are high paying jobs, these are careers, you end up with a great announcement like this,” he said.
He also says the additional 1,500 jobs are exactly what the economy needs during the pandemic.
The project is expected to increase the total economic output in Hampton County by more than $550 million per year.
The new agriculture technology campus is expected to be operational by 2022.