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USA: MACOMB, ILLINOIS - Macomb Hy-Vee Begins Selling WIU-Produced Hydroponic Lettuce
The "Rex" butterhead lettuce is grown in WIU's Knoblauch Hall through collaborative research and classroom work by two agriculture professors and their students
August 12, 2021
MACOMB, IL – Through a second partnership with Hy-Vee Food Store in Macomb, the Western Illinois University School of Agriculture is now growing hydroponic lettuce marketed through the local grocer.
The "Rex" butterhead lettuce is grown in WIU's Knoblauch Hall through collaborative research and classroom work by two agriculture professors and their students.
"We just delivered our first load of hydroponic lettuce to the local Hy-Vee store," said School of Agriculture Director Andy Baker. "I have been working with Gary Jenkins, the Macomb Hy-Vee's produce manager, to get this accomplished. Hopefully, we can grow our relationship with Hy-Vee even further in the future. We are super excited about getting additional food products, raised in the School of Agriculture, into our local Hy-Vee store."
WIU Agriculture Assistant Professors Shelby Henning and Dan Atherton started working together a few years ago when they built a small system in the basement of Knoblauch Hall to grow the produce. The production process allows for several research opportunities for students, including the process of detecting nutrient deficiencies.
The roots of the lettuce grow in channels similar to vinyl rain gutters, which allow for the introduction of nutrients. LED lights are utilized to increase production and to ensure the lettuce has adequate hours of light during the day.
In October 2020, the School of Agriculture began selling ground sausage, as well as links and patties, in traditional and zesty flavors, produced by Leatherneck Country Meats (LCM), through Hy-Vee's East Jackson Street location. LCM is an organization that sells pork products that were raised on the University Farm.
The products are processed by Farmhouse Meats in Carthage, IL, which is partly owned by several WIU School of Agriculture alumni. Products are also sold on the LCM website at bit.ly/LCMorder.
It is also anticipated that bell peppers and tomatoes, grown through the University's agriculture program, will be sold through Hy-Vee's produce section beginning soon.
For more information about the WIU School of Agriculture, visit wiu.edu/ag
Posted By: Jodi Pospeschil (JK-Pospeschil@wiu.edu)
Office of University Relations
PHOENIX, ARIZONA: GCU’s Farm Fills Neighbors’ Plates, Students’ Souls
Twenty-six vegetables of numerous varieties grow here in the shadow of the six-story Agave Apartments
March 03, 2021
by Mike Kilen
GCU Outdoor Recreation Club members plant greens in the Canyon Urban Farms raised beds.
Story by Mike Kilen -Photos by Ralph Freso - GCU News Bureau
Nathan Cooper looked across the farm in the middle of the Grand Canyon University campus, where spinach and tomatoes, melons, and broccoli were growing amid students tending them. It’s always easier for farmers to tell stories standing shoulder to shoulder, looking out.
“There was this old woman in my hometown in Minnesota …” the Manager of GCU’s Canyon Urban Farms began.
A smile appeared. Every year, the woman had grown a bountiful patch of tomatoes and gave them all away. Everyone in town knew it. There was a waiting list to get her tomatoes that came from a seed variety dating back decades in her family.
“She died a couple years ago,” Cooper said. “I want to get one of her seeds and dedicate a spot to her here.”
Students Savannah Miles and Gracie Grettenberger (from left) listen as Canyon Urban Farms Manager Nathan Cooper gives them planting tips.
Canyon Urban Farms has that woman’s sentiment at its heart — growing as an act of giving. Cooper had just delivered a batch of produce to Lutheran Social Services for the neighborhood refugee population.
A year into the project, he has the quarter-acre plot to the north of Agave teeming with life – and not just with plants: Students have found it a place of contemplation, a reminder of grandma and renewed growth during a rough pandemic year.
“This was rocky soil,” Cooper told group a half-dozen students from the GCU Outdoor Recreation Club, which arrives weekly to tend the garden and learn from it. “It is turning into the best soil you will ever find.”
The 35 raised beds are filled with it, and now several in-ground raised beds are teeming with organic matter, supplied by compost bins of rotting vegetables and other waste.
He urged the students to contribute to the garden by taking a small container, toss in it waste from their rooms – banana peels, coffee grounds, egg shells – and bring it to the compost bins, where it will be heated by bacteria’s hard work, turned and broken down into the magic of beautiful natural fertilizer.
“As you work, just pick up a handful of the dirt,” he told them. “You will see how much more living it is. You can feel it.”
Students found there is nothing like the taste of a carrot fresh from the ground.
It reminded senior Payton Oxner of his grandmother’s garden in South Dakota.
“During the pandemic, that’s where they got a lot of their food,” he said.
During the pandemic, this is where the Outdoor Rec Club got a lot of its nature. With off-campus outings restricted, it was a welcome addition to step outside into new possibilities.
“COVID took so much from us, so we wanted to create community right here on campus,” said senior trip guide Gracie Grettenberger. “When you say, ‘We have a garden on campus.’ What? They want to be a part of developing it.
“Living in a dorm, we don’t have the opportunity to garden on our own. They miss this, and being able to do this on a campus is a mindful experience.”
It’s part of what brought freshman Savannah Miles to the garden, where she held a package of three different varieties of peppers to plant in an in-ground bed that Cooper called the “salsa garden,” where in weeks peppers and tomatoes can make a delicious addition to any meal.
Gracie Grettenberger of the Outdoor Recreation Club plants seeds in the in-ground beds.
“It’s a meditative activity that wipes away the stress,” she said. “It’s beautiful to make your own produce. Plus, I like dirt. I like playing in dirt.”
Twenty-six vegetables of numerous varieties grow here in the shadow of the six-story Agave Apartments, and Cooper has had to learn which areas get just the right amount of sun for each type of produce.
Some of the broccoli has bolted, but he tells a student that even the leaves can be used to juice.
Kaleb Morrow said that’s also why he and other students are interested in a garden – to go back to the ways of healthy eating, fresh from the dirt outside your room.
“It takes some time to know the intricacies, but you can grow anything,” he said.
While a student’s mobile phone sat in the dirt, leaned against a Bluetooth speaker playing singer/songwriter tunes you’d hear in a coffee shop, Cooper talked of the appeal of this garden — not only as a place to reap the fruit of your labor but as a tool of education. He urged each student to take a package of herb seeds to put in a pot in their rooms.
“You throw a seed in the ground and it comes back a living thing,” he said.
Savannah Miles prepares the ground for planting.
His goal is also to be a good steward of the earth with a self-sustaining garden, using the seeds to plant next year’s crop and using food waste to regenerate the soil.
Plans are growing as fast as the vegetables beyond its primary goal of helping feed the neighborhood.
New wheeled planters for maximizing growing location are planned for the University’s 27th Avenue office complex. A farmers’ market for community members is on his wish list, as are more gatherings on the east end of the acreage, saved as a place for teaching locations or for students to quietly gather among new life.
This virus, he said, created a lot of longing for a place like this.
“There is a lot of good that can be done from this garden.”
Grand Canyon University senior writer Mike Kilen can be reached at mike.kilen@gcu.edu or at 602-639-6764.
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Related content:
GCU Today: GCU’s urban farms plant seeds to nourish neighbors
Democratic Mayoral Candidates Offer Ideas for Addressing Food Insecurity
Nine candidates vying for the Democratic nomination to become the next mayor of New York City gathered Tuesday morning in a virtual forum to discuss their visions for the city's food policy and serving the roughly 2 million New Yorkers who are food insecure
Image from: Ed Reed/Mayoral Photography Office
Nine candidates vying for the Democratic nomination to become the next mayor of New York City gathered Tuesday morning in a virtual forum to discuss their visions for the city's food policy and serving the roughly 2 million New Yorkers who are food insecure.
At the "Town Hall on the Future of Food in New York City" -- hosted by Hunter College in partnership with City Harvest, CUNY Urban Food Policy Institute, Food Bank for NYC, Hunger Free America, and other organizations, and moderated by NY1 anchor Errol Louis -- the candidates discussed the city's urgent need to manage rampant hunger during the pandemic and center it in the recovery effort. But the discussion also focused on the pre-existing problems of food insecurity, inequitable access to nutritious meals, and inefficiencies and lack of sustainability in the city's food use.
The participants, who were selected based on their polling and fundraising standings among a field of dozens of candidates, included Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams, former federal housing secretary Shaun Donovan, former city sanitation commissioner and "covid food czar" Kathryn Garcia, former Citigroup executive Ray McGuire, former nonprofit executive Dianne Morales, former city veterans' services commissioner Loree Sutton, city Comptroller Scott Stringer, small business owner Joycelyn Taylor, and Maya Wiley, a civil rights attorney and former counsel to Mayor Bill de Blasio. Louis pushed them to focus on how they would bring anti-hunger initiatives to scale to address the food crisis compounded by the pandemic.
Programs to help feed New Yorkers have often missed the mark, failing to meet adequate health standards and leaving many New Yorkers out entirely. A 2017 study from the Robin Hood Poverty Tracker found 1 in 4 eligible food stamp, or SNAP, recipients -- 700,000 New York City residents -- were not enrolled in the program, less than the statewide participation rate of 93 percent the same year, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. In September, the Poverty Tracker reporter 1.7 million New Yorkers were getting food stamps, over 200,000 more than last February. During roughly the same period the percentage of food stamp recipients who also used a food pantry doubled, from 27 percent of enrollees to 60 percent.
Nearly all candidates agreed on the need to increase SNAP benefits, and improve enrollment in the program; expand community gardens and urban agriculture; and improve access to nutritious food throughout communities and in institutional settings like schools and food pantries. There was also broad consensus around creating a more unified food procurement and distribution system in New York City by strengthening the Mayor's Office of Food Policy. Multiple candidates highlighted the frequent lack of coordination among the myriad city agencies that provide food as part of their services.
"One of the reasons why I needed to step in is that the Mayor's Office of Food Policy is incredibly understaffed," said Garcia, who managed the city's emergency food response last summer before leaving the de Blasio administration last fall and launching her campaign to succeed him.
"[Food Policy Director] Kate McKenzie does an amazing job but she doesn't have procurement authority, she doesn't have logistical authority...one of the clear things is how we approach food is very siloed, very fragmented," Garcia said, noting the separate food procurement activities of the Department of Education, Department of Correction, and senior centers. Garcia says the city provided 1 million meals a day and shored up food pantries last summer under her leadership. (Shortly after the forum, Garcia released a multi-pronged platform to fight food insecurity with an emphasis on enrolling more New Yorkers in SNAP and expanding what the benefits would cover.)
Adams, who repeatedly discussed the need for nutritious food, criticized the nutritional value of many of the government-provided or -supported food services, including Garcia’s covid effort, and said increasing the size of the Mayor's Office of Food Policy would have a limited impact if the city did not also incorporate the new perspectives from food-access "visionaries."
"They don't share the values," Adams said of the city's food-oriented bureaucrats, historically. "I am amazed at the roadblocks, that organizations like Rockaway Youth Task Force are not able to scale," he said during a segment of the conversation on urban agriculture programs.
Some of the candidates saw the city's food dilemmas rooted in job scarcity and low wages and frequently discussed the importance of building food policy into the city's economic recovery.
"We solve none of this if we don't recognize that fundamentally what is broken and why 30% of our people were not eating through the month before covid is because the rent was too damn high and people were choosing to pay rent instead of buying groceries," Wiley said, adding, "at the end of the day it is about the city's ability to generate new jobs." Wiley has announced a plan as mayor to create 100,000 jobs through a $10 billion capital investment and cited it as an example of how she would leverage existing city resources to bring her approach to scale.
"Fundamentally, food insecurity is about income and it is about the fact that we do not intentionally ensure that our young people have pathways to careers and are prepared for the careers of the 21st Century," said Garcia.
The conversation of workforce development dovetailed with another on building an urban agrarian economy in New York to create good jobs and ensure both sustainable and equitable food access for city residents.
"We need to also think about aligning not just food policy, but the resilience office that exists right now to work more in tandem with each other because we know that food justice is also climate justice," said Morales, who was the executive director of Phipps Neighborhoods in the South Bronx, a social services provider. As mayor, Morales said she would invest $25 million to food innovation and sustainability programs in communities of color.
Multiple candidates, including Stringer, Donovan, and Adams wanted to see a greater emphasis on local and regional food procurement. "If I'm mayor, I really want to create a Mayor's Office of Food Markets because we've got to link farming with communities and for a farm-to-table policy that brings the purchasing power of this city regionally, upstate, downstate, and create those relationships," Stringer said. "Farmers markets should be everywhere."
Image from: Square Roots
"There is huge potential to grow, so to speak, the power of locally-grown produce," said Donovan, who was the city’s housing commissioner under Mayor Bloomberg before spending all eight years in the Obama presidential cabinet. "We need innovative approaches to ensure we are using every inch of available space that we can." Like other candidates, he expressed support for ideas like more community gardens and vertical agriculture. Donovan also repeatedly stressed the need to support struggling restaurants and incorporate them into the city's food programs as well as its economic recovery.
While supportive of partnerships with upstate and Long Island counties, Garcia took issue with the notion that New York could achieve a sustainable food market locally. "If we want fresh, healthy food day in and day out, we're not harvesting today in this region, we are going to have to bring it in," she said following Donovan's comments. "We need to make sure the systems go beyond just this region so that we can still be getting lettuce even though it's February."
"That should not hold us back from starting to have a robust agrarian economy in New York City," Adams countered, echoing Donovan's statements about the importance of life sciences in city schools and connecting lessons about food production to healthy eating.
When asked directly whether they would use the city's power of eminent domain to force the sale of private land for the city to use, most candidates raised their hands affirmatively. Adams expressed his dissent, noting that the many existing city resources that he said are being wasted or under-utilized should be tapped before forcing land sales. (Others also raised the importance of better using available land, with Stringer naming a report he issued as comptroller on the number of vacant city-owned lots that could be used to develop housing and noting that many lots could also be used for community gardens.)
McGuire, who recently stepped down from one of the biggest jobs on Wall Street to run for mayor, also criticized the mismanagement of city resources and cautioned on the costs to the city that eminent domain could pose. "It gets expensive so you have to figure out when you exercise eminent domain at market rates who is going to pay for it," he said.
Equity was an overriding theme in a number of areas of the food policy discussion, from eradicating food deserts to ensuring healthy options in schools and pantries.
"I think we do have a moral obligation to ensure that every resident of the city has those basic needs of food and housing," said Taylor, who created the nonprofit NYC WMBE Alliance, according to her website. "We have to make sure that when we look at the budget we look things that are 'nice to have' and things that are 'needs to have,' and if it means that we have to reallocate funds from the things that are nice to have to the needs, then that's what I would do."
"We need to stop leaving communities out of the co-creation process," said Morales, who stressed participation of food advocacy groups.
Wiley and Taylor also discussed the need for community participation in the form of locally-based food councils to inform nutrition, per Wiley, and more active mayoral outposts in each borough, per Taylor. Both also discussed the importance of collecting more targeted data to better determine the outcomes of food programs. Other candidates outlined plans or past work to incorporate cultural sensitivity into food access, including then-Manhattan Borough President Stringer's 2008 "Go Green East Harlem Cookbook" and Garcia's discussion of halal and kosher options in meal services, something others mentioned as well.
The candidates agreed that compounded structural problems of food deserts and the reliance of low-income communities on the city's various food programs exacerbate malnutrition and health outcomes, but not all offered the same solution.
"Today food deserts are such that many of our people don't have access to healthy food. They have access to those institutions that provide food that is pretty low on the nutrition scale," McGuire said. He laid out a more corporate-friendly view of the path forward, that involved rezoning to allow big supermarket chains, hiring gig workers to deliver meals to seniors, and bringing refrigeration resources to bodegas in order to better store fresh produce.
As is often the case, Morales was at the other end of the spectrum, saying she supports community land trusts to create both better access to fresh produce and greater "food sovereignty" in poor communities. Sutton said the solution was to leverage public-private partnerships.
"It's one thing to talk about all these ideas, but in the same breath to disdain, disparage and disrespect the top 1 percent of New Yorkers who bring in nearly 40 percent of our tax base or reject and shun real estate as one example, as a number of my fellow candidate have during this campaign," said Sutton, a former Army psychiatrist who led de Blasio's Department of Veterans' Services. "We are absolutely shutting down those pathways to partnership and prosperity."
Université de Sherbrooke Students Create Greener Greenhouse
Three engineering students at l'Université de Sherbrooke spent three years designing and building their perfect greenhouse
Off-Grid VG360 Greenhouse Project Can Feed
A Family of Four For A Year
Spencer Van Dyk · CBC News · Dec 28, 2020
Three engineering students at l'Université de Sherbrooke spent three years designing and building their perfect greenhouse.
They set out to build a smart green building, which would be entirely off-grid, and a model for future construction projects, while also promoting food autonomy.
The three-by-six-meter structure — called VG360 — is made of cedar, with an inclined south-facing window wall, solar panels, and a red metal roof.
And it does not need a power source.
"We believe it is possible to build greenhouses — and other houses — using less power," said Valerie Pouliot, one of the students on the project. "We want to build green to be better for the environment."
The angled south-facing window wall is designed to bring heat from the sun into the greenhouse, while thick insulated walls keep it in, so the structure can stay warm throughout the cold winter months. (Spencer Van Dyk/CBC)
The team started by excavating five feet into the ground, and then added insulation using rocks and sand, essentially creating an underground cooler, into which the greenhouse will pump hot air, explained building engineering student Raphael Boisjoly-Sallafranque.
The double-beamed walls and roof each have more than a foot of insulation, so all the heat that's brought into the building thanks to the window and solar panels will stay inside, keeping the greenhouse warm during the cold winter months.
"It's gonna be our first test winter, so we're gonna be able to see the performance of it," Boisjoly-Sallafranque said. "Which is why we haven't released the plans yet, because we want to make sure the concept is viable."
The solar panels generate electricity, which can be stored and used for at least three days in the event of inclement weather, Pouliot explained.
"Just with the sun coming in, you can do all that, so it's not harder than being aligned with the sunlight," she said.
A hot air collector near the ceiling of the greenhouse will then push all the hot air down into the soil, where all the plants will grow directly in the ground.
Building engineering student Raphael Boisjoly-Sallafranque says the greenhouse's battery acts as its grid, and it stores energy in the event of inclement weather. (Spencer Van Dyk/CBC)
The group intends to release the plans for the greenhouse, including the structure itself and the technology, via open-source, so anyone can have access to it.
The prototype, which was built over four months this summer at a farm in Durham-Sud, 50 kilometres northwest of Sherbrooke, cost about $25,000.
But Pouliot says future builds will cost less because anyone hoping to have their own off-grid greenhouse wouldn't have the same data collecting costs the students had.
She said especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, people seem to be working toward being more self-sufficient and sustainable, and she thinks an off-grid greenhouse aligns with those goals.
The greenhouse's mechanical system, which includes its solar panel controls, battery, and a pump to send hot air into the soil to help plants grow. (Spencer Van Dyk/CBC)
While energy-efficient buildings are fairly common, the team wanted the food security and food autonomy elements of the project highlighted.
"Our grid is like the battery system, so it's like a typical off-grid with a battery bank system," Boisjoly-Sallafranque said. "There are a bunch already out there, but the thing is to put it inside of a greenhouse."
The team plans to get seeds in the ground in the next few weeks and will spend the winter months tracking the greenhouse's efficiency.
"Now it's the hard part, and the fun part for myself, particularly because I love the control world and the data collecting part of this," Boisjoly-Sallafranque said.
The students hope to release the open-source plans by late Spring 2021.
Lead photo: CBC's Journalistic Standards and Practices|About CBC News
Farmshelf Continues Expansion In Foodservice Channel, Signs Agreements To Bring Vertical Farming To Primary Schools And Universities
Farmshelf, an indoor farming company, today announced continued success in its foodservice channel with the addition of ten primary school system partnerships, and multiple university agreements including University of Illinois at Chicago, which will anchor Farmshelf’s launch in the Midwest next month
BROOKLYN, N.Y.- Farmshelf, an indoor farming company, today announced continued success in its foodservice channel with the addition of ten primary school system partnerships, and multiple university agreements including University of Illinois at Chicago, which will anchor Farmshelf’s launch in the Midwest next month.
Through these partnerships, Farmshelf will provide its proprietary hardware and hydroponic technology that makes growing more than 50 types of leafy greens, herbs and edible flowers easy for foodservice providers, restaurants and hotels. Farmshelf is currently operational in New York, Washington, D.C. and Houston metros with 100 units in operation.
“Schools and universities are on the cutting edge of finding new ways to feed students in a healthful, responsible and cost-effective way, while also educating them on opportunities to reduce waste and grow produce on site,” said Andrew Shearer, founder and CEO of Farmshelf. “Working with foodservice providers in an academic setting is the perfect engagement for us as it helps educate the next generation about healthy eating and responsible, sustainable farming.”
“Farmshelf is ushering in a new way for us to provide fresh produce to students and staff who dine on campus by bringing the farm right to our facility,” said Laura Lapp, Vice President of Sustainability and Culinary Services for Chartwells Higher Ed. “Providing our chefs direct access to a variety of greens and herbs allows them to elevate their dish offerings with fresh, flavorful and healthy ingredients – all at their fingertips. We can utilize Farmshelf as a teaching tool in our educational programming to show students not only how easy it is to grow fresh produce, but to also highlight the wellness attributes and flavor that fresh herbs and vegetables add to a dish.”
Farmshelf’s product is a smart, efficient and visually stunning growing system that brings fresh produce to the consumer, no matter the location. The company uses the latest technology in vertical farming, computer vision and machine learning to grow food to optimize flavor, yield and quality.
“Our mission at Farmshelf is to bring indoor farming to as many establishments as we can, including academic settings, foodservices and restaurants – essentially wherever fresh produce is used,” said Shearer. “We are pleased with the adoption we’ve seen to date in the food community with leading chefs Marcus Samuelsson and José Andrés being passionate users of Farmshelf and supporters of our mission. We are excited to help familiarize and get people excited about this type of food procurement.”
Farmshelf operates on a monthly subscription model with an upfront fee for the unit, as well as options to lease the hardware. Subscription services include monthly seedpod delivery and Farmshelf remote monitoring.
About Farmshelf
Founded in 2016, Farmshelf is an indoor vertical farming company that makes it easy for foodservice providers, restaurants, hotels and schools to grow their own leafy greens and herbs in an attention-grabbing, compact, on-site installation. For additional information, visit: http://www.farmshelf.com.