Fishers Startup Says Its Indoor Veggie Farms Can End Hunger

John Tuohy, john.tuohy@indystar.com

April 6, 2018

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This veggie farm fits in your apartment

A Fishers entrepreneur is bringing farms into the kitchen. And the garage. And the closet. And anywhere else at home one might have room indoors for small planters of lettuce, carrots or tomatoes.

Jonathan Partlow, founder of Aggressively Organic, sells small hydroponic plant growing systems that don’t need sunlight, dirt or pesticides and are grown indoors using just water, nutrients and LED lamps.

Partlow says he has the modest of goal of ending hunger. And he’s being taken very seriously.

The bioscience company last month won two awards at the SXSW (South-by-Southwest) convention in Austin, Texas, the first contestant to win both the Food+City Challenge Prize and the People’s Choice Award.

“One of our biggest goals is to end food insecurity within our lifetime,” said Partlow, 49, an Indiana University graduate from Anderson. “We had to create a system that anyone could afford and use.”

Partlow started Aggressively Organic at Launch Fishers, the tech- and app-focused shared workspace that in just a few years has paved the way for several successful startups.

Now, Aggressively Organic  is preparing to move into its own 40,000-square-foot building at 9160 Ford Circle later this month, where it will grow 6 million plants each year. It hopes to hire 200 employees within five years and have 42 indoor farms of various sizes across the country.

The concept is the same as hydroponic systems, also known as vertical farming, that are sprouting around the country and grow crops indoors year-round in controlled settings. But unlike those farms, in which thousands of shelves are stacked in large warehouses for wholesale distribution, Aggressively Organic’s plants are tailored for the individual, with the plants grown in cardboard, flower pot-sized containers.

“They are cheap and so easy a kindergarten student can learn it,” Partlow said. “In fact, we have taught kindergartners to use it in Fishers schools.”

Schoolchildren and various Indiana 4-H clubs already are learning the system, and there are plans to distribute the plants to food banks. More broadly, Aggressively Organic launched a crowdfunding campaign to send 50,000 plants to Puerto Rico to aid Hurricane Maria victims.

The plants need only 16 ounces of water and a patented nutrient mixture that permits them to grow rapidly for harvesting in about 30 to 60 days. Replenishing leafy plants, such as arugula and kale, grow fastest and can be plucked and eaten for weeks. But even cherry tomatoes grow quickly and can last a couple of growth cycles.

“I’ve been eating from the same head of lettuce for a month,” Partlow said.

The plants, which include herbs like basil, can be kept anywhere in the house where there’s extra space. They also take a minimum of supervision.

A built-in advantage to Aggressively Organic’s individual system, compared to large systems, is that each box and plant is self-contained. So, a flaw in the balance of nutrients in a water-recirculating system won’t affect an entire supply of plants, said Chris Chick, Aggressively Organic’s plant physiologist.

“Each of the different vegetables has its own nutrient solution, so they aren’t sharing a common one,” Chick said. “If something were to go wrong, you throw away the individual plant, not all of them.”

Ultimately, Aggressively Organic will offer memberships in which subscribers can pay a yearly fee to order six packs of plants, then switch them out after they have been eaten after two or three growth cycles, like dropping off empty bottles for the milkman.

Vertical farms are becoming more common in urban areas as a way to provide locally produced vegetables on a large scale that don't need to be shipped thousands of miles, from California or Arizona, where 94 percent of lettuce is grown. Chick said vegetables lose most of their nutrients within 24 hours after being picked.

This week at the company's new headquarters in Fishers, Chick displayed a plant that had been growing for about 35 days that was bursting with two dozen ripe cherry tomatoes from a cardboard box. Broccoli leaves, about a foot long, flowed from a larger box measured about a foot in length. A bite of arugula offered a sharp, peppery flavor much more succinct than the bagged product bought in the supermarket.

"It's picked fresh, so it still has all its flavor," Chick said.

Jeff Barranco, 39, a member of the Anderson school board, who has a small 1.4-acre traditional farm, began growing Aggressively Oganic’s plants in his garage last October. He now has 1,000 plants, including bok choy, tomatoes, hot peppers, basil and lettuce and plans to sell the produce at an Anderson farmer’s market this summer.

“It really is a plug in and play type of system,” Barranco said. “You don’t need a lot of knowledge about farming.”

Barranco keeps the plants in a 8-by-10-foot tent in the garage and spends about $100 a month on electricity for the LED lights. Besides that, little maintenance is necessary.

Barranco said he will tear off some basil or lettuce for salads at dinner and can taste the difference from supermarket-bought food.

“It has a much better taste, it’s fresher and really nice to have right here,” he said.

Call IndyStar reporter John Tuohy at (317) 444-6418. Follow on Twitter and Facebook.