Future Of Food: How Under 30 Edenworks Is Transforming Urban Agriculture
JUN 1, 2017 @ 03:45 PM
Future Of Food: How Under 30 Edenworks Is Transforming Urban Agriculture
Tim Pierson
Jason Green, 27, and Matt LaRosa, 23, are the CEO and Construction Manager of Edenworks.
When Matt LaRosa joined Edenworks in early 2013, he was a college freshman who still hadn't even picked a major. But when he overheard CEO Jason Green at a pitch competition explain his plan to transform industrial buildings into high-tech farms, he immediately abandoned his own pitch and pitched himself to Green instead. The duo, along with cofounder Ben Silverman, went on to create the self-regulating aquaponic system that now supplies microgreens and fish to Brooklyn and landed them on this year's 30 Under 30 Social Entrepreneurs list.
The Edenworks HQ is not exactly where one would expect to find fresh produce and fish. Located in the Bushwick area of Brooklyn, the company sits atop a metalworking shop belonging to a relative of Green. Their office looks like a typical young startup: all eleven employees crowded in one room with computer screens occupying almost every surface. But upstairs across a narrow walkway is where the magic really happens: an 800 square foot greenhouse, custom built by LaRosa, housing fish tanks, vertically stacked panels of microgreens, and a sanitary packaging unit. Though admittedly cramped, the company says their size has made the team significantly more lithe than larger industrial agriculture operations.
"Being a startup, you have a ton of room to break things and iterate very quickly," LaRosa told Forbes. "We're so nimble with changing our prototypes... we have something different than anywhere else in the entire world."
Currently, about 95% of leafy greens consumed in the US are grown in the desert regions of California and Arizona. Most of these products are grown for mass production and durability in transport, rarely for quality or sustainability. Urban farms have cropped up as way to provide growing metropolises with fresher produce in a way that is better for the environment.
The Edenworks model differentiates itself from other urban farms in that it is a complete, aquaponic ecosystem. Waste from the tilapia fish is used as a natural and potent fertilizer for the microgreens planted on vertically stacked power racks. They have no need for synthetic fertilizers or pesticides that can diminish the nutritional quality of produce.
"The water table is falling every year, there's a huge amount of money invested in pumping water out of the ground and irrigating, and inefficiency in the supply chain where a lot of product gets wasted or left in the field," explained Green, a former bio-engineer and Howard Hughes research fellow. "We eliminate all of that waste."
A common phrase in the office is turning factories into farms instead of farms into factories, and many of their design challenges have been combated by embracing the industrial nature of the location. Indoor farms are often criticized because they can't make use of the natural processes used in traditional farming. But the team has invested in studying ancillary industries to find the lowest cost and highest return methods of mimicking the natural processes, like using custom LED lighting to emulate sunlight.
The research has paid off. In the current iteration, Edenworks is able to harvest, package and reach consumers within 24 hours. By cutting down on transport and prioritizing quality over durability, the greens are also up to 40% more nutrient dense than traditional produce.
For now, their largest barrier is clear: space. With $2.5 million in funding to date, their tiny greenhouse has managed to consistently service the local Whole Foods with two varietals of microgreens. In the winter of 2018 though, they plan to move to a space 40 times the size and simultaneously roll out five additional product lines across the NYC area.
The plans for the new building have been delayed a few times, but with LaRosa graduating NYU last month and joining the team full time, Green is confident they are on track to hit their deadline. The larger facility will be the result of years of planning that will incorporate new technology that will allow them to become even more efficient and competitive in the market.
"What we've developed is a huge amount of automation that will allow us to bring the cost down for local indoor grown product into price parity with California grown product, and that's really disruptive," says Green. "If we want to move the needle on where food comes from in the mass market, it has to be cost competitive. We want to be the cost leader, we want to bring the cost down."