Skills Shortages In The Food Industry

June 10, 2021

Bengt Fellbe, Program Leader, SSEC, Swedish Surplus Energy Collaboration, discusses the importance of training people with the right skills to work within the Swedish sustainable food industry

There is a lot of talk about circular and sustainable processes in the modern food industry. There is a lot of work and investment in innovations that revolve around digitization, AI, automation, aquaponics, vertical cultivation, circular bio-based economic models – and that’s good. BUT, without a skilled workforce, the development will not take place.

Region Skåne

Region Skåne in southern Sweden has perceived the situation and is announcing project funds to help. This is how they describe the situation.

Photographs by Erik Lundgren, Ljusgårda AB

The food industry and agriculture have always been the heart of Skåne. Skåne accounts for about a third of Sweden’s food production. Food is also part of our Scanian identity. This is how we want it to be in the future as well. But there is a concrete threat.

The Scanian food industry and agriculture have a hard time finding the right people. If we do not act now, we may soon have serious problems in this Skåne industry. We must think new.

There are several reasons for all this. Just like in other parts of society, there is rapid technological development and digitalisation in the food industry. It places demands on completely new skills and the food industry also needs to become better at attracting and taking care of young people, new arrivals and people with different backgrounds.

There are jobs. But it is the matching between those who want to hire and those who are looking for work that is lacking. In other words: we are no longer training the right people right for the food industry.

Initiatives

There are, of course, several different good initiatives throughout Sweden that SSEC has initiated.

In the municipality of Bjuv, “Recruitment training” has been carried out aimed at the food industry in collaboration between the company in question with recruitment needs and the Swedish Public Employment Service. A company-friendly tool that the employment service in Sweden has in its toolbox. The company that has skills needs and needs to recruit is involved in the entire process together with the employment service.

SSEC has been helpful in developing requirements profile and course content together with companies in the industry, which has resulted in a Higher Vocational Education (HVE) – “Sustainable food entrepreneur”.

About the Higher Vocational Education “Sustainable food entrepreneur”

By studying to be a Sustainable Food Entrepreneur, you will be involved in developing food from a sustainable, circular perspective. You will gain both theoretical and practical knowledge about the Swedish sustainability work. In addition, you get the opportunity to try out your own ideas in consultation with professional food producers.

The education gives you a basic competence in sustainability and different types of food production, as well as the opportunity to specialise through LIA internships, (Learning at Work).

You also gain knowledge about, for example, the global sustainability goals, sustainable plant breeding, entrepreneurship, sustainable animal husbandry and hygiene and safety.

Ljusgårda in Tibro municipality is an innovative company in vertical cultivation. The company is expanding enormously to meet the needs of the market and needs to recruit staff within several competence levels. These are horticulturists and agronomists with a University degree, operations managers from the Higher Vocational Education, preferably with competence and experience of the technology behind indoor cultivation-vertical cultivation, and a large number of employees in production. In this technology-intensive horticulture, there are changing requirements for competence compared with a traditional horticulture. These are completely different conditions in that the production in this case is automated, digitized, and uses the latest technology in measurement and sensor technology. Another important factor is that it is a year-round business and cannot rely on seasonal employees.

In the Skaraborg region and Tibro municipality, SSEC has therefore initiated a close collaboration between the company, the Swedish Public Employment Service, and the municipality’s labour market unit. The aim is to build structures that support and reflect the need for skills supply in the food industry in both the short and long term. In Northwestern Skåne, 11 municipalities collaborate in adult education. The municipality of Bjuv, together with the municipality of Åstorp, will this autumn, offer basic adult education aimed at the food industry. The goal is to supply a strongly growing innovative industry with competent production personnel in the long term.

As I said, the agrarian industry and the food industry’s technological development are moving at a furious pace towards being both sustainable and competitive. But, without competent employees, we will not get anywhere.

We cannot miss this golden opportunity – with the right education, we help thousands of people to work and increase their quality of life, while companies, municipalities, regions, and countries become socially, economically, and climate-sustainable.

Please note: This is a commercial profile

© 2019. This work is licensed under a CC BY 4.0 license. 

Bengt Fellbe

Acting Program leader

SSEC, Swedish Surplus Energy Collaboration

Phone: +46 709585019

Email: bengt.fellbe@gmail.com

Website: Visit Website

Strategic Partnership Between Oreon And Enersavings, Inc.

IJsselstein, 4 May 2021. Oreon and the Canadian company EnerSavings Inc. have come to an agreement for a strategic partnership. EnerSavings is a leader in customized lighting retrofits throughout Canada with a presence in 7 provinces. As a lighting engineering firm, they continuously work on improvement and innovation. EnerSavings expertise in providing the most sustainable and energy-saving solutions to its customers, fits perfectly with the sustainable water-cooling technology of Oreon’s LED grow lights.

Energy saving solutions

In EnerSavings, Oreon sees a strong partner for the Canadian market. EnerSavings is based in Toronto, Ontario, and has over a decade of experience in the ever-increasing market demand for efficient lighting technologies. The energy savings possibilities of Oreon’s LED grow lights made EnerSavings recognize the advantages of the sustainable water-cooling technology. They see lots of opportunity for growers in the fixture’s high efficiency and the ability to reuse the gained heat and save on cooling costs. The active water-cooling makes it possible for the LED fixtures to efficiently produce a large amount of light without heating up the greenhouse or grow facility. Revenues are increased by lowering operating costs, and growers get full control over the climate in their facility. This results in high-quality yields year-round.

"EnerSavings is excited to partner with Oreon and expand its presence in the North American LED plant grow light market. The Oreon water-cooled fixture is by far the best grow light in the market today, bringing the highest value proposition to growers. Oreon was the first to bring an LED grow light to market in 2009 and its fixtures are the best built, and cheapest per micromole. The water-cooling ensures productive longevity second to none. The first install over a decade ago still has over 90 percent light output today!" – Jason Beer, Business Development Director of EnerSavings.

“With EnerSavings Inc. as a new dealer, Oreon creates a better connection to the Canadian market. Both Oreon and EnerSavings share the fact that we are both committed to providing sustainable LED solutions and tailored energy-saving solutions, so customers can reduce operating expenses and increase profits. With the expertise of EnerSavings in commercial horticulture projects, we see a promising future in this rapidly growing market,” says Bill Whittaker (North-American Sales Manager) of Oreon.

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Vertical Farming Startup Oishii Raises $50m In Series A Funding

By Sian Yates

03/11/2021

Oishii, a vertical farming startup based in New Jersey, has raised $50 million during a Series A funding round led by Sparx Group’s Mirai Creation Fund II.

The funds will enable Oishii to open vertical strawberry farms in new markets, expand its flagship farm outside of Manhattan, and accelerate its investment in R&D.

“Our mission is to change the way we grow food. We set out to deliver exceptionally delicious and sustainable produce,” said Oishii CEO Hiroki Koga. “We started with the strawberry – a fruit that routinely tops the dirty dozen of most pesticide-riddled crops – as it has long been considered the ‘holy grail’ of vertical farming.”

“We aim to be the largest strawberry producer in the world, and this capital allows us to bring the best-tasting, healthiest berry to everyone. From there, we’ll quickly expand into new fruits and produce,” he added.

Oishii is already known for its innovative farming techniques that have enabled the company to “perfect the strawberry,” while its proprietary and first-of-its-kind pollination method is conducted naturally with bees.

The company’s vertical farms feature zero pesticides and produce ripe fruit all year round, using less water and land than traditional agricultural methods.

“Oishii is the farm of the future,” said Sparx Group president and Group CEO Shuhei Abe. “The cultivation and pollination techniques the company has developed set them well apart from the industry, positioning Oishii to quickly revolutionise agriculture as we know it.”

The company has raised a total of $55 million since its founding in 2016.

AeroFarms Hires These New Executives

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By AMY SOWDER

February 11, 2021

Newark, N.J.-based AeroFarms has hired several executives from companies such as Google, Earthbound Farm, PepsiCo, Kraft, Campbell’s Soup Co., and Tata Consumer Products.

Most recently, Dane Almassy joined the company as vice president of sales, according to a news release.

Almassy has more than 20 years of experience including time at Earthbound Farm, Aurora Organic Dairy, and PepsiCo.

Since 2004, AeroFarms has been working in not only vertical, aeroponic farming, but other aspects of agriculture, from genetics to post-harvest. The company’s more than 850 crop varieties can extend beyond food uses to pharmaceutical, cosmeceutical, and nutraceutical.

AeroFarms has been in major expansion mode with major announcements in 2020:

• The build-out of a large research and development indoor vertical farm in Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates;

• Launch of the municipal indoor vertical farming program in Jersey City, N.J.; and

• The World Economic Forum Healthy Communities and Cities initiative.

To help meet this growth, AeroFarms has made other key hires.

Andreas Sokollek, Stacy Kimmel, Ph.D., and MaryAlice Feinstein joined AeroFarms more than a year ago as chief operating officer, vice president of research and development, and chief people officer respectively, and Mark Boyland joined the summer of 2020 as general counsel.

“These key executive hires, each with deep industry expertise, have been helping us further capitalize on opportunities around the world as we continue to scale and build out our incredible culture and team, all aligned around our mission of growing the best plants possible for the betterment of humanity,” co-founder and CEO David Rosenberg said in the release.

Also, AeroFarms added in 2020 to its board of directors James “Jim” C. Borel, who has more than 40 years of experience in the global agriculture and food industry, including executive vice president and member of the DuPont Office of the Chief Executive.

Lead photo: AeroFarms hires several top executives. - (File photo courtesy AeroFarms)

Bringing The Future To life In Abu Dhabi

Amid the deserts of Abu Dhabi, a new wave of entrepreneurs and innovators are sowing the seeds of a more sustainable future.

Image from: Wired

A cluster of shipping containers in a city centre is about the last place you’d expect to find salad growing. Yet for the past year, vertical farming startup Madar Farms has been using this site in Masdar City, Abu Dhabi, to grow leafy green vegetables using 95 per cent less water than traditional agriculture. 

Madar Farms is one of a number of agtech startups benefitting from a package of incentives from the Abu Dhabi Investment Office (ADIO) aimed at spurring the development of innovative solutions for sustainable desert farming. The partnership is part of ADIO’s $545 million Innovation Programme dedicated to supporting companies in high-growth areas.

“Abu Dhabi is pressing ahead with our mission to ‘turn the desert green’,” explained H.E. Dr. Tariq Bin Hendi, Director General of ADIO, in November 2020. “We have created an environment where innovative ideas can flourish and the companies we partnered with earlier this year are already propelling the growth of Abu Dhabi’s 24,000 farms.”

The pandemic has made food supply a critical concern across the entire world, combined with the effects of population growth and climate change, which are stretching the capacity of less efficient traditional farming methods. Abu Dhabi’s pioneering efforts to drive agricultural innovation have been gathering pace and look set to produce cutting-edge solutions addressing food security challenges.

Beyond work supporting the application of novel agricultural technologies, Abu Dhabi is also investing in foundational research and development to tackle this growing problem. 

In December, the emirate’s recently created Advanced Technology Research Council [ATRC], responsible for defining Abu Dhabi’s R&D strategy and establishing the emirate and the wider UAE as a desired home for advanced technology talent, announced a four-year competition with a $15 million prize for food security research. Launched through ATRC’s project management arm, ASPIRE, in partnership with the XPRIZE Foundation, the award will support the development of environmentally-friendly protein alternatives with the aim to "feed the next billion".

Image from: Madar Farms

Global Challenges, Local Solutions

Food security is far from the only global challenge on the emirate’s R&D menu. In November 2020, the ATRC announced the launch of the Technology Innovation Institute (TII), created to support applied research on the key priorities of quantum research, autonomous robotics, cryptography, advanced materials, digital security, directed energy and secure systems.

“The technologies under development at TII are not randomly selected,” explains the centre’s secretary general Faisal Al Bannai. “This research will complement fields that are of national importance. Quantum technologies and cryptography are crucial for protecting critical infrastructure, for example, while directed energy research has use-cases in healthcare. But beyond this, the technologies and research of TII will have global impact.”

Future research directions will be developed by the ATRC’s ASPIRE pillar, in collaboration with stakeholders from across a diverse range of industry sectors.

“ASPIRE defines the problem, sets milestones, and monitors the progress of the projects,” Al Bannai says. “It will also make impactful decisions related to the selection of research partners and the allocation of funding, to ensure that their R&D priorities align with Abu Dhabi and the UAE's broader development goals.”

Image from: Agritecture

Nurturing Next-Generation Talent

To address these challenges, ATRC’s first initiative is a talent development programme, NexTech, which has begun the recruitment of 125 local researchers, who will work across 31 projects in collaboration with 23 world-leading research centres.

Alongside universities and research institutes from across the US, the UK, Europe and South America, these partners include Abu Dhabi’s own Khalifa University, and Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence, the world’s first graduate-level institute focused on artificial intelligence. 

“Our aim is to up skill the researchers by allowing them to work across various disciplines in collaboration with world-renowned experts,” Al Bannai says. 

Beyond academic collaborators, TII is also working with a number of industry partners, such as hyperloop technology company, Virgin Hyperloop. Such industry collaborations, Al Bannai points out, are essential to ensuring that TII research directly tackles relevant problems and has a smooth path to commercial impact in order to fuel job creation across the UAE.

“By engaging with top global talent, universities and research institutions and industry players, TII connects an intellectual community,” he says. “This reinforces Abu Dhabi and the UAE’s status as a global hub for innovation and contributes to the broader development of the knowledge-based economy.”

Vertical Farming: Ugandan Company Develops Solution for Urban Agriculture

We speak to Lilian Nakigozi, founder of Women Smiles Uganda, a company that manufactures and sells vertical farms used to grow crops in areas where there is limited space.

Image from: How We Made It in Africa

1. How Did You Come Up with the Idea to Start Women Smiles Uganda?

Women Smiles Uganda is a social enterprise formed out of passion and personal experience. I grew up with a single mother and eight siblings in Katanga, one of the biggest slums in Kampala, Uganda. I experienced hunger and poverty where we lived. There was no land for us to grow crops and we didn’t have money to buy food. Life was hard; we would often go to sleep on empty stomachs and our baby sister starved to death.

Growing up like that, I pledged to use my knowledge and skills to come up with an idea that could solve hunger and, at the same time, improve people’s livelihoods, particularly women and young girls living in the urban slums. In 2017, while studying business at Makerere University, I had the idea of developing a vertical farm. This came amid so many challenges: a lack of finance and moral support. I would use the money provided to me for lunch as a government student to save for the initial capital of my venture.

I managed to accumulate $300 and used this to buy materials to manufacture the first 20 vertical farms. I gave these to 20 families and, in 2018, we fully started operations in different urban slums.

2. Tell Us About Your Vertical Farms and How They Work.

Women Smiles vertical farms are made out of wood and recycled plastic materials. Each unit is capable of growing up to 200 plants. The product also has an internal bearing system which turns 360° to guarantee optimal use of the sunlight and is fitted with an inbuilt drip irrigation system and greenhouse material to address any agro-climatic challenges.

The farms can be positioned on a rooftop, veranda, walkway, office building or a desk. This allows the growth of crops throughout the year, season after season, unaffected by climatic changes like drought.

In addition, we train our customers on how to make compost manure using vermicomposting and also provide them with a market for their fresh produce.

Image from: How We Made It in Africa

3. Explain Your Revenue Model.

Women Smiles Uganda generates revenue by selling affordable, reliable and modern vertical farms at $35, making a profit margin of $10 on each unit. The women groups are recruited into our training schemes and we teach them how to use vertical farming to grow crops and make compost manure by vermicomposting. Women groups become our outgrowers of fruits and vegetables. We buy the fresh produce from our outgrowers and resell to restaurants, schools and hotels.

We also make money through partnering with NGOs and other small private organisations to provide training in urban farming concepts to the beneficiaries of their projects.

4. What Are Some of the Major Challenges of Running This Business?

The major challenge we face is limited funds by the smallholder farmers to purchase the vertical farms. However, we mitigate this by putting some of them into our outgrower scheme which helps them to generate income from the fresh produce we buy. We have also linked some of them to financial institutions to access finance.

5. How Do You Generate Sales?

We reach our customers directly via our marketing team which moves door to door, identifying organised women groups and educating them about the benefits of vertical farming for improved food security. Most of our customers are low-income earners and very few of them have access to the internet.

However, we do also make use of social media platforms like Facebook to reach out to our customers, especially the youth.

In addition, we organise talk shows and community gatherings with the assistance of local leaders with whom we work hand in hand to provide educational and inspirational materials to people, teaching them about smart agriculture techniques.

6. Who Are Your Main Competitors?

Just like any business, we have got competitors; our major competitors include Camp Green and Spark Agro-Initiatives.

Image from: The Conversation

7. What Mistakes Have You Made in Business and What Did You Learn From Them?

As a victim of hunger and poverty, my dream was for every family in slums to have a vertical farm. I ended up giving some vertical farms on credit. Unfortunately, most of them failed to pay and we ended up with huge losses.

This taught me to shift the risk of payment default to a third party. Every customer who may need our farms on credit is now linked to our partner micro-finance bank. By doing this, it is the responsibility of the bank to recover the funds from our customers and it has worked well.

8. Apart from This Industry, Name an Untapped Business Opportunity in Uganda.

Manufacturing of cooler sheds for the storage of perishable agricultural produce is one untapped opportunity. Currently, Ugandan smallholder farmers lose up to 40% of their fresh produce because of a lack of reliable cold storage systems.

Providing a cheap and reliable 24/7 cold storage system would dramatically reduce post-harvest losses for these farmers.

Is AppHarvest the Future of Farming?

Special purpose acquisition companies, or SPACs, are red-hot right now, with investors clamoring to get into promising young companies.

In this video from Motley Fool Live, recorded on Jan. 28, Industry Focus host Nick Sciple and Motley Fool contributor Lou Whiteman discuss AppHarvest, one such SPAC that is looking to disrupt the agriculture industry. Here are the details on what AppHarvest wants to do, and a look at whether the company represents the future of farming.

Nick Sciple: One last company I wanted to talk about, Lou, and this is one I think it's -- you pay attention to, but not one I'm super excited to run in and buy. It was a company called AppHarvest. It's coming public via a [SPAC] this year. This vertical farming space. We talked about Gladstone Land buying traditional farmland. AppHarvest is taking a very different approach, trying to lean into some of the ESG-type movements.

Lou Whiteman: Yeah. Let's look at this. It probably wouldn't surprise you that the U.S. is the biggest global farm exporter as we said, but it might surprise you that the Netherlands, the tiny little country, is No. 2. The way they do that is tech: Greenhouse farm structure. AppHarvest has taken that model and brought it to the U.S. They have, I believe, three farms in Appalachia. The pitches can produce 30x the yields using 90% less water. Right now, it's mostly tomatoes and it is early-stage. I don't own this stock either. I love this idea. There's some reasons that I'm not buying in right now that we can get into. But this is fascinating to me. We talked about making the world a better place. This is the company that we need to be successful to make the world a better place. The warning on it is that it is a SPAC. So it's not public yet. Right now, I believe N-O-V-S. That deal should close soon. [Editor's note: The deal has since closed.] I'm not the only one excited about it. I tend not to like to buy IPOs and new companies anyway. I think the caution around buying into the excitement applies here. There is a Martha Stewart video on their website talking up the company, which I love Martha Stewart, but that's a hype level that makes me want to just watch and see what they produce. This is just three little farms in Appalachia right now and a great idea. This was all over my watchlist. I would imagine I would love to hold it at some point, but just be careful because this is, as we saw SPACs last year in other areas, people are very excited about this.

Sciple: Yeah. I think, like we've said, for a lot of these companies, the prospects are great. I think when you look at the reduced water usage, better, environmentally friendly, all those sorts of things. I like that they are in Appalachia. As someone who is from the South, I like it when more rural areas get some people actually investing money there. But again, there's a lot of execution between now and really getting to a place where this is the future of farming and they're going to reach scale and all those sorts of things. But this is a company I'm definitely going to have my radar on and pay attention to as they continue to report earnings. Because you can tell yourself a story about how this type of vertical farming, indoor farming disrupts this traditional model, can be more efficient, cleaner, etc. Something to continue paying attention to as we have more information, because this company, like you said, Lou, isn't all the way public yet. We still got to have this SPAC deal finalized and then we get all our fun SEC filings and quarterly calls and all those sorts of things. Once we have that, I will be very much looking forward to seeing what the company has to say.

Whiteman: Right. Just to finish up along too, the interesting thing here is that it is a proven concept because it has worked elsewhere. The downside of that is that it needed to work there. Netherlands just doesn't have -- and this is an expensive proposition to get started, to get going. There's potential there, but in a country blessed with almost seemingly unlimited farmland for now, for long term it makes sense. But in the short term, it could be a hard thing to really get up and running. I think you're right, just one to watch.

Urban Home For High Tech Horticulture In Australia

RMCG has kicked off 2021 with a new project for the Australian horticulture industry, which aims to assess the potential of emerging production technology and its application in the urban landscape.
Vertical farms, aquaponics, floating farms – these are just some of the many possibilities of high technology horticulture in urban areas across the globe. But are they feasible for Australian growers?

RMCG is excited to lead a consortium in partnership with the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) and global urban agriculture consultancy ugritecture to answer that very question. The six-month project, funded by Hort Innovation, will assess the potential of emerging production technology and its application in the Australian urban landscape, which will also cover regional areas and hubs.

High technology horticulture and emerging production technology can benefit Australian growers and industry by developing food production and delivery systems that have the potential to optimize yield, quality and supply. Examples of this technology include vertical farm systems, hydroponics, aquaponics, nearly fully automated production as well as rooftop, underground and floating farms.

Project approach
A feasibility study will be conducted to identify the opportunities and challenges for high technology horticulture in urban Australia. It will identify a range of high technology systems and assess their applicability to urban Australia by considering: regulation and planning, farm input and waste, supply chain logistics, and social, environmental, and economic aspects.

The project will include a high-level literature review and modeling of the social and environmental impacts. The economics of high technology systems for urban horticulture will also be analyzed.

The study is being guided by an industry-led reference group including growers and emerging commercial leaders engaged in urban high technology horticulture in Brisbane and Sydney, members of local city councils, and subject-matter experts in protected cropping.

The outcomes of the study will identify future priorities for research, development and extension activities and investment into Australian high technology horticulture in urban areas.

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For more information:
RMCG
www.rmcg.com.au 

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28 Jan 2021

PODCAST: Season 2 Episode 22

Join Harry Duran, host of Vertical Farming Podcast, as he welcomes to the show founder of Ponic Jobs and co-host of the CropTalk Podcast, Kyle Barnett. Kyle is currently serving as Account Manager in the horticulture division at WestRock, focusing on helping growers create superior packaging, labels, and merchandising solutions.

In this episode, Harry and Kyle discuss the varying facets of ponics, from deep water culture and NFTs to vertical farming and aquaponics. They talk about the vital role distribution plays in the AgTech industry, what inspired Kyle to create the Ponic Jobs website, as well as his collaboration with CropTalk Media. His podcast segment, Kyle Talks AgTech, focuses on CEA, vertical farms, greenhouse technology as well as industry leaders.

Listen & Subscribe

Nature Fresh Farms Advances In Sustainable Transportation Through The SmartWay Program

Leamington, ON (January 15, 2020) – Nature Fresh Farms pledges to reduce freight transportation-related emissions by becoming a member of SmartWay.

Over the past year, Nature Fresh Farms joined the SmartWay Transport Partnership to further its sustainable development and continue to lead in its environmental initiatives. SmartWay is administered in Canada by NRCan and is free to those interested in becoming members, aiming to help both shippers and carriers move goods efficiently, by maximizing load capacity and keeping fuel costs and environmental impact at a minimum.

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SmartWay is an internationally recognized program that encourages its members to be more aware of their carbon footprint by helping them track fuel consumption and improve their overall performance. Through their membership, Nature Fresh Farms can use the program to measure the environmental impact of their freight supply and use recommendations from SmartWay to improve and modify their transportation and operation strategies. With Nature Fresh Farms’ commitment to reducing emissions, their goal is to have at least 80% of their carrier base SmartWay certified by 2023.

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“It has always been important for Nature Fresh Farms to recognize and understand our carbon footprint in every area of our operations,” shared Leigh Ann Breault, Director of Logistics. “Making the necessary improvements to our freight supply chain, using the recommendations provided from SmartWay, will only help reinforce our position as an industry leader in sustainability.”

With environmental performance becoming increasingly important as a business metric, more companies are becoming aware of the benefits of being a part of programs such as this. Having over 3,600 North American companies signed on to the SmartWay partnership, Nature Fresh Farms membership demonstrates their continued environmental leadership and corporate responsibility.

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About Nature Fresh Farms

Continuously expanding, Nature Fresh Farms has become one of the largest independent, vertically integrated greenhouse vegetable farms in North America. As a year-round grower with farms in Leamington, ON, Delta, OH, and Mexico, and with their Distribution Centers established in Leamington, Delta, and Laredo, TX, Nature Fresh Farms prides itself on consistently delivering exceptional flavor and quality to key retailers throughout North America, while continuing to innovate and introduce more viable and sustainable growing and packaging solutions.

SOURCE: Nature Fresh Farms | info@naturefresh.ca T: 519 326 1111 | www.naturefresh.ca

10 Ways Square Roots’ Farm-Tech Platform Empowers The Next Generation of Farmers

Square Roots is building a distributed network of indoor, modular farms, farmed by a new generation of farmers, to grow local food for people in cities all over the world. Here’s why it’s working.

Square Roots Super Farms are scalable, resilient and smart, and can be built fast. (Image: Via Chicago Architects + Diseñadores)

Square Roots’ scalable “farmer-first” platform brings fresh, healthy food to urban areas year-round, while simultaneously training future generations of farmers. With production farms in Brooklyn, New York, and Grand Rapids, Michigan (with more to come in 2020!), Square Roots has a mission to bring local, real food to people in cities across the world while empowering the next generation of leaders in urban farming.

Whether we’re in the farms tweaking CO2 levels, or in a board meeting plotting a pathway for what the company looks like in 2050, every decision we make is guided to help us achieve our mission faster, smarter, and with as much impact as possible.

Choices we’ve made around our technology platform are a good illustration of that. Our platform needs to bring fresh, healthy food to urban areas year-round, consistently, sustainability, and on any continent in the world. At the same time, it must also be a welcoming environment, conducive to training future generations of farmers to be productive, fast.

Central to our platform is the decision we made very early in the company’s life to build a distributed network of modular Climate Containers, as opposed to following the plant factory template.

Inside a Square Roots Climate Container, data-empowered farmers work with optimum growing conditions, all year round.

There are a lot of smart people in this industry, many with different visions for the optimum architecture and model for indoor farming (e.g. plant factories). But all working hard to bring better food to market — which, given our wider vision to bring real food to everyone, is wonderful to see. The more of us working on the real food revolution the better — and we want all of these systems to flourish. But here are 10 reasons why we think container farming rocks:

1. Speed to Market

Today we can enter a new market and open a Square Roots “Super Farm” — with 25 Climate Containers, cold storage, biosecurity infrastructure, and everything else you need to run a food-safe farm at scale — in less than three months, like we did in partnership with Gordon Food Service last Fall. That time period is only coming down. In comparison, building a plant factory can cost tens of millions of dollars, as well as take years to construct. We want to get real food to more people, and fast!

2. Easy to Scale

To meet increasing market demand, we simply add Climate Containers to any existing deployment. This means just-in-time capital deployment, and also just-in-time technology deployment. This is really important in an industry where the technology is improving fast. You don’t want to spend years and millions to open a big farm full of old tech that immediately needs a refresh.

3. Climate Control

I was an early investor in Chicago’s Farmed Here, one of the first and largest plant factories in the US. There, I saw first-hand how much the team struggled to control the climate in a building that size. Plants don’t like it when you get it wrong. And neither do landlords — the humidity can wreak havoc with the underlying infrastructure. In our programmable Climate Containers, each one built inside a 320 square foot shipping container, optimum conditions for a variety of crops can easily be maintained. The perfect climate for each variety can be seamlessly replicated — in any market — to ensure consistent quality every time, at every harvest.

Alyssa Patton, Square Roots Next-Gen Farmer, harvesting fresh, local basil inside a Climate Container in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

4. Diversity of Products

Multiple containers on our Super Farms allow for multiple climates, which lets us grow multiple crops at the same time to satisfy local market demands. For example, basil requires a completely different climate than chives to grow well, so it’s practically impossible to grow these two products together in a way that tastes good if you have a giant farm with one mono climate. The ability to grow multiple quality SKUs is particularly important in the retail market, where product variety is key to getting shelf real estate. Having multiple climates also means we can tackle many niches in any local market (e.g. using one container on a Super Farm to grow something exotic like Shiso or Mustard Greens), giving us a lot of business flexibility while keeping things interesting for our teams of farmers.

5. Sustainable Systems

As with most hydroponic growers, Square Roots uses zero pesticides, and 90% less water than outdoor farms. We can also be clever about energy usage. For example, we make it “daytime” in the farm by turning on our grow lights overnight when there is excess energy in the grid, and the cost per kilowatt-hour is lower. However, if for some reason we need to be in the farms during “daytime,” we can put a Climate Container into “harvest mode” — which dims the lights, and configures the climate to be optimum conditions for people at work — before seamlessly switching back to plant growing mode once we’re done.

6. Location

Our modular architecture means we can be very creative in repurposing existing city infrastructure when we look for locations to build a farm. We can pop up on an empty parking lot like we did in Brooklyn, New York, or build a campus on the headquarters of a major distribution company like we did with Gordon Food Service, or even build into a new development. This flexibility means we can build our Super Farms literally in the same zip code as the end consumer. This means fresher and tastier products for the customer, fewer food miles (most industrial food is shipped in from the other side of the world!), and less food waste. It also helps to get consumers more connected to their food and the people who grow it — they can simply jump on a subway or in their car, and come visit one of our farms!

7. Food Safety and System Resilience

All indoor farms need to be prepared for bad things to happen. While there is way less risk in a controlled environment versus an outdoor farm, it’s inevitable that you will get some sort of pest outbreak, powdery mildew, or some other issue at some point while you’re managing a complex ecosystem full of living, breathing plants. If that ever should happen in one of our Climate Containers, we can quickly shut it down and reboot that single node while the rest of the network keeps going strong. I’ve seen this happen in a plant factory, with one big mono climate, and you lose all your crops.

8. Faster Learning

Our farms are cloud-connected, and we collect millions of data points that we analyze to determine how changes in certain environmental parameters can impact factors like yield, taste, and texture of the final product. More climates in more containers means more feedback loops, which means faster learning. To systematize this learning, we’ve built The Square Roots Farmer Toolbelt — a software which is now the OS for the whole company as we all learn faster together.

9. The Network Gets Smarter as it Scales

Square Roots’ cloud-connected farms and data-empowered farmers learn from each other, enabling us to replicate success from one location to another, seamlessly. Working with Gordon Food Service to build farms across their network of distribution centers and retail stores brings us closer to the vision of a distributed network of indoor farms, bringing local, real food to people in cities across the world—while empowering thousands of next-gen leaders in urban farming through our unique training program.

10. Sense of Responsibility

Perhaps this is unique to Square Roots and our Next-Gen Farmer Training Program, but because we grow in modular Climate Containers, we’re able to give all our young farmers a personalized understanding of their individual impact on the overall business. The Square Roots Farmer Toolbelt provides day-to-day instructions on a per-farmer and per-crop basis, as well as a means for data capture, and real time analysis of both plant health and business metrics. All this information is accessible from the tablets that everyone on our farm team carries everyday. This system also ensures that we track every aspect of production — who does what, when, and how, from seed to sales. This is a goldmine of data, that not only helps us improve operations, but also implicitly provides traceability. In December 2018, we started exposing this data to consumers in the form of our Transparency Timeline. On every package of Square Roots produce, you can simply scan a QR code and get a complete story of where your food comes from — seed to shelf.

Simply scan the QR code on every Square Roots package to see where your food comes from.

Our Super Farm platform is exciting in terms of scalability, resilience, and efficiency, and it’s a really wonderful environment for our farmers to farm in. For urban consumers it means local farmers growing your food with love — which is why it tastes absolutely delicious. And technology enables us to grow a ton of food in a very small area, in ways that make a lot of business sense too. It’s a classic example of “doing well by doing good”.

It has been an exciting journey to our Super Farm platform. When we launched Square Roots back in 2016, we were very focused on figuring out the Farmer Training Program model — as we knew that farmers bring love to the food, the program would create enormous impact over time, and it would also be a long term engine of growth. So we partnered with a number of 3rd parties who could provide parts of the growing system for us, while we got the training program right. (In many ways, that was like Tesla sourcing our chassis from Lotus for the first Roadster). After that initial phase, and finding out what the urban farming world needs — i.e. higher quality yields with much lower costs to drive scalable unit economics, and ultra-high standards of biosecurity to support operations that are first class in food safety—we have developed our own technology specifically tailored to our model. This enables us to grow local food at incredible scale in ways that make sense for people, planet, and profits.

Our partnership with Gordon Food Service was announced at the end of March 2019, and our first co-located farm opened just six months later in Grand Rapids, Michigan — marking our next step of bringing local food to people in cities all across North America while training thousands of future farmers. Which, in a neat and circular way, brings us right back to the mission statement we started this post with.

Of course, we still have lots of work to do and we have a lot of exciting announcements coming this year as we grow! And, we’re always looking to talk with great people — from hardware and software engineers to farmers and plant scientists. So feel free to check our website and get in touch.

This article was originally published on the Indoor Ag-Con blog by Kimbal Musk on March 4, 2020.

Published by Dani Kliegerman for iGrow News

Purdue Study Addresses Environmental, Economic Impacts of Hydroponic, Aquaponics Systems

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October 22, 2020

Story by Brian Wallheimer

Hydroponics and aquaponics offer promise for growing produce and raising fish. But some may be wary of entering the industries because of perceptions about high capital and operational costs and environmental impacts.

Purdue University scientists compared the environmental performances of both systems and calculated their economic efficiencies in Indiana. Their findings, published in the Journal of Cleaner Production, inform those interested in entering hydroponic or aquaponic industries on how to get the most for their investment with the least environmental footprint.

Hydroponics and aquaponics are soilless systems. Hydroponic plants are grown in water containing chemical fertilizers as nutrients. Aquaponics adds the raising of fish and uses fish waste to replace chemical fertilizers. These indoor operations come with upfront capital costs and require use of significant amounts of energy for lighting, heating and water pumping, as well as fish feed and fertilizers.

For one month, graduate students Peng Chen and Gaotian Zhu raised six vegetables in a hydroponic system and those same vegetables with tilapia in an aquaponic system. Experiments were conducted in the lab of Hye-Ji Kim, a Purdue assistant professor of horticulture and landscape architecture, and in collaboration with Paul Brown, a Purdue professor of forestry and natural resources. Jen-Yi Huang, a Purdue assistant professor of food science and the leader of the project, worked with the students to conduct a life cycle assessment using the data they collected.

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Purdue University researchers conducted a life cycle assessment of hydroponic and aquaponic growing systems in Indiana to measure their environmental and economic impacts. (Photo provided by Peng Chen)

The researchers found that the aquaponic system led to 45 percent less environmental impact when considering fossil fuel use, global warming, water acidification and eutrophication created by resources used as well as waste and emissions released. Twice as much food is grown in the aquaponic systems with little added environmental cost.

“The aquaponic system is more environmentally friendly when you look at the total environmental footprint per US dollar of economic value of the products,” Huang said. “But that is based on using Indiana’s current energy mix. If we consider using more renewable energy sources, things start to change.”

Indiana currently gets almost 60 percent of its energy from coal-fired power plants, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, with about one-third coming from natural gas. The less electricity hydroponic and aquaponic growers source from fossil fuels, the more environmentally friendly their operations become.

Chen said that changing the mix and getting one-third of power from coal, natural gas and wind would reduce the environmental impacts of hydroponics by up to 48 percent. If an operation sourced its electricity solely from wind energy, hydroponic operations would be considered slightly more environmentally friendly than aquaponics.

“By using wind energy, which is largely produced in Indiana, farmers can reduce their environmental footprint enough to make these two systems essentially equal in terms of the economic output gained for the environmental cost,” Chen said. “By choosing more plant-based fish feed, the environmental impacts can be further reduced in aquaponic systems.”

Could One Parking Lot Feed A City? They're Betting On It

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May 3, 2019

by Monica Humphries

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VERTICAL FARMING COMPANY SQUARE ROOTS HAS A PLAN TO FEED CITY RESIDENTS WITH LOCALLY GROWN PRODUCE. THE ONLY CATCH IS, CAN WE AFFORD IT?

In a parking lot in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York, there’s a 20-acre farm. But there’s no soil or tractors in sight. Instead, 10 bright white shipping containers occupy the asphalt.

The lot is contested space in a major city like Brooklyn. But Square Roots isn’t using it for parked cars. It’s using the space to grow herbs. The company has deliberately chosen the middle of an urban environment, and its goal is to feed the city that surrounds it.

“We’re literally in a parking lot of an old Pfizer pharmaceutical factory. We’re across the road from the Marcy [housing] project. We’re within a subway ride of 8 million people in New York,” Tobias Peggs, a co-founder of Square Roots, told NationSwell.

Square Roots, a vertical farming company, runs its operation out of the refurbished containers. Its goal is to make local food accessible to everyone.

A lack of fresh produce is a major problem for many residents in urban areas like New York, where over 16 percent of the population is food insecure. And for those who do have access to fresh produce, chances are it traveled hundreds of miles before ending up at the grocery store.

This leads to a variety of problems. People living in food deserts generally rely on processed foods and have higher health risks than those who can afford weekly trips to Whole Foods. Transporting vegetables and fruits around the world has a hefty carbon footprint and nutritional values quickly diminish after produce is picked.

And as the world’s population grows to 10 billion by 2050, our food output will need to drastically increase — by an estimated 70 percent, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization.

Square Roots’ founders think they may have found a solution to the aforementioned problems.

“Rather than shipping food from one part of the planet to the next, what if you could just ship environmental data?” Peggs asked. “And recreate climates from all over the world, but recreate those climates in your backyard.”

Square Roots relies on technology to create each crop’s ideal environment in every container. The humidity, temperature, water and light are all controlled. The farms are connected to the “cloud,” which provides accurate, real-time information on each crop.

And the setup is yielding results. When Square Roots first grew basil it took 50 days. Now the growth cycle is just 28 days. By tracking light, heat and water, it can adjust each variable and create the conditions under which each crop grows best.

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Tobias Peggs dives into the technology behind Square Roots’ operations.

Photo courtesy of Square Roots

Once a month, Square Roots invites people from across New York’s five boroughs to look inside the business’s operations. Visitors trickle in, and I watch as they munch on the 28-day-grown basil, chives and mint while learning about Square Roots’ operation.

“We picked them yesterday,” a farmer said.

After a quick overview of the program, we head outside for the main attraction — a peek inside the farm.

Peggs commands the crowd. Eager for the big reveal, he opens the heavy, metal doors. A pink glow cascades over us — energy-efficient light that helps the herbs grow.

Peggs dives into the science. “Basically, when you study photosynthesis, plant growth, the plant doesn’t absorb the full spectrum of white light. The plant only absorbs certain spectrums of light. A lot of red and a lot of blue. What we’re able to do in the farm is really control that light spectrum and only give the plant the spectrum of light that it needs.”

Efficiency is at the core of Square Roots’ operations. Besides refurbishing old shipping containers, each farm uses 90 percent less water than a similarly sized outdoor farm. There’s no soil; instead, the plants are fed nutrient-rich water. The containers also boast energy-efficient LED lights, and there are rumors of adding solar panels to power them. The produce is then biked to grocery stores across Manhattan and Brooklyn, which cuts back on emissions from transportation.

The result is a higher yield with fewer resources. Currently, the farms grow herbs, like mint, basil and chives; and greens, like romaine, gem and Tuscan kale. Peggs says the farms can grow practically anything. Strawberries, eggplants, beets, radishes and carrots are on its horizon.

But the catch is that each type of produce has unique energy requirements. One of the main criticisms of vertical farming is its lack of variety. Most vertical farms focus on lettuces and herbs because those greens have the largest output and highest profitability. Denser crops require more sunlight. That means more energy, and therefore, higher costs and more emissions.

Paul Gauthier, an associate research scholar at Princeton and founder of the Princeton Vertical Farming Project, researches vertical farmings sustainability.

“In terms of carbon emission, it’s actually better to have your lettuce transported from California to New York if your [vertical farming] energy is coming from any fossil fuel,” he told NationSwell. “The energy consumption in a vertical farm in New York would be so high that you would produce more CO2 for lettuce than you [would] if you ship it from California.”

But if the energy is coming from renewable sources, then vertical farming is a competitive player.

It comes down to fueling these farms with the right energy and using efficient light.

Gauthier believes that vertical farms and other small, high output farms will be a key factor in feeding the world — but only if the crop variety grows.

“We won’t feed the world with lettuce,” he said.

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A farmer harvests basil in Square Roots’ vertical farm.Photo courtesy of Square Roots

But there’s debate on whether these ventures are affordable or realistic.

For example, Square Roots’ lot in Brooklyn cost about $1.5 million to build, which was funded by Peggs, the former CEO of Aviary, a photo-editing program, and Kimbal Musk, Elon Musk’s little brother, who sits on the boards of Tesla and SpaceX. So the idea that shipping container farms are scalable feels a little out of reach for the average person or company.

But the cost hasn’t deterred interest. This year Square Roots partnered with Gordon Food Services, which is the largest food distribution company in North America. This partnership will put Square Roots containers across the country.

Even as the company scales, it won’t reach every demographic. A $3 an ounce, basil isn’t something that’s going to solve America’s food deserts.

Peggs stressed that we’re just not there … yet.

“The reality today is that we’re right at the beginning of the technology road map here. Right at the beginning.”

Square Roots isn’t the only private urban farming company that’s professing scalability. Urban farms, such as AeroFarms and Bowery Farming, are currently attracting lots of attention for their potential to make local food available to everyone. According to AgFunder, agriculture-tech startups raised $16.9 billion in support in 2018. And investors, like Google Ventures and IKEA, have poured millions of dollars into supporting those initiatives.

And urban farming is likely to take root in the coming years. A study published in 2018 on Earth’s Future, found that if urban farming is fully implemented around the world, it could account for 10 percent of the global output of legumes, roots and tubers and vegetable crops — 180 million tons of food every year.  

“Not only could urban agriculture account for several percent of global food production, but there are added co-benefits beyond that, and beyond the social impacts,” Matei Georgescu, a co-author of the study, told City Lab.

Peggs and Gauthier agree that there isn’t one clear cut solution. Instead, it’s going to take a combination of urban and traditional farming to feed the world in the future.

“The very clear position here is that the more of us working to get people connected to locally grown food the better,” said Peggs.

Environmental Technology Local Agriculture Local Food Vertical Farming