Made in London: GrowUp Urban Farm's Tilapia Fish and Microgreens In Beckton

Victoria Stewart goes behind the scenes at an aquaponic urban farm in Beckton

• VICTORIA STEWART 
•  
• When I think of city farms in London I think of tiny replicas of country farms - a few animal pens here and there, a few veg boxes, a farm cafe perhaps. What I don’t picture is what I find at GrowUp Urban Farm in Beckton, E6, which is essentially a warehouse divided into two main rooms, one with huge blue circular tanks filled with tilapia fish swimming around inside, and the other with silver shelves stacked on top of each other and brimming with bright green micro coriander, sunflower shoots and baby kale. On a trip there last week it felt as if I’d been jolted into the future.

GrowUp, currently the largest aquaponic farm set up for commercial use, is the brainchild of co-founders Kate Hofman, a former management consultant who now runs the business, and Tom Webster, a former trained biologist who runs the tech side of things. As well as them, there are 11 employees and some university students working alongside.

For the unfamiliar, aquaponics combines aquaculture - farming fish - and hydroponics - cultivating plants in water - where the greens are fed using waste water from the fish, and this example iin Beckton s what Hofman describes as a “fully ethical and sustainable model.”

Setting it up took months of research, “personal sweat” and equity, and outside investment from Centrica’s social impact fund, angel investors, and WRAP, the waste resources and action programme.

Here Hofman talks about why left management consultancy to set up the business, and why it’s important to be flexible when it comes to using technology to run a business like this one.

How many products do you harvest, and what are they?

As well as our tilapia, which are fresh water fish, we grow pea shoots, baby kale, baby watercress, sunflower shoots, custom mixed salads and frilly baby leaf salad. We also do microgreens: micro radish, micro coriander, micro fennel, micro basil, micro rocket and micro mustard.

Who buys your produce?

We sell our greens directly to restaurants in London, indirectly through a distributor called First Choice, to retailers including Whole Foods and online at FarmDrop, and to a couple of catering customers. The majority of the tilapia goes to a Thai restaurant chain called Rosa’s Thai Cafes.

Why did you start the business? Did you always want to work in the food industry?

Tom trained as a biologist and went onto work as an engineering and sustainability consultant. After he got really interested in food production, we were introduced by a friend and I managed to convince him that it was a good idea to set up a business. I have always been really passionate about food and about sustainability, but I used to work as a management consultant for IBM. I really liked my job but I didn’t feel like I was doing much with a purpose so I decided to take a sabbatical to do a masters in environmental technology and business at Imperial College, where I came across urban farming and aquaponics. It was like a big lightbulb moment - I loved the way that the system took the waste from one side and used it to grow something in the other.

Is this a new technique?

It had been around for quite a while but this was in 2011 and there were very few examples of commercial farms. For so long in Asia, people have been flooding rice paddies, putting fish in them and letting the fish fertilise the plants and eat the bugs and then draining the fields. So from a business perspective I was interested in how you take this technology and this concept of growing that’s been around for hundreds of years to solve some of the sustainability challenges that are going to happen in our food system.

Is growing like this the future?

This is part of the future, I think. I do not think that all food is going to be grown like this going forward, nor do I think the future of what we do is huge Skyscrapers growing food on every level. In a book called Hungry City, Carolyn Steel calculated that if you wanted to feed London using vertical skyscraper farms, you’d have to build 200 Shards to produce enough food. So then of course that throws up all sorts of questions like why? How would you find the space? How could you make enough money from producing food to compete with residential or commercial properties? So I don’t think that’s the future of food, but I do think it’s about finding the available resources and space to grow the right food for people and to do that more locally.

When did you first sell your products?

I was first interested in it in 2011, we set the business up in 2013, and we began selling produce about a year ago.

How many products have you sold since you started?

Here we can produce around 20,000kgs a year of all of our greens. To put that in perspective, one wholesaler might sell around 20,000kgs of baby kale every 3 months. So we think that if we can build 9 farms, and each of those farms is 10 times the size of this, we’ll be able to do about 2% of the demand for baby leaf produce. We can produce 4 tons - 4000kg - a year of tilapia here, and in perspective, most commercial farmers would start of upwards of 100 tons. So there are really exciting opportunities for us to expand. This system is also designed just for tilapia, but technically it’s possible to grow other types of fresh water fish too.

What’s the reaction been like?

It’s definitely taken my grandma about 4 years to work out how to describe to people what I do! But anyway I think we get a very positive reception when we tell and show people what we do because it’s really interesting and it’s a little bit zeitgeisty, too - it’s cool how fascinated people are about seeing that you can produce food in this way (as a lot of people have a very idealised idea of how their food is being produced). People have all sorts of questions, including some about the ethical side of farming the fish which we’re always happy to talk about - we have guidelines on how we do that. I think farmed fish offers a really good opportunity to provide a sustainable source of protein, and I think globally we’ve got a growing middle class population who want to eat more protein, and we need to find more sustainable ways of producing it.

How important to you was it to produce something in London?

I’m from London and I’ve lived here all my life, so I’ve always felt that it would be where I wanted to start a business. London has a well deserved reputation as a city that loves food, and whose consumers care about where their food comes from. Starting the business in London has given us access to a fantastic range of customers that we can work with, and allowed us to showcase our business to the world.

What’s it like setting up a business in London?

We’ve had a great level of support from the local borough and GLA (Greater London Authority), but finding the right space for a business like ours is more challenging in London because space is at a premium - there’s no question it’s more expensive! And some of the costs we’re pleased to bear - for example, we’re a London Living Wage Employer - but we see those costs, representing the true price of equitable food production, as part of the challenge of building a resilient food system. If we can make it work in London, we can make it work anywhere!

Which other London producers you admire?

I’m fortunate enough to live near to Spa Terminus and Maltby Street Market in Bermondsey, and every week there are some amazing producers there. I’m a particular fan of Kappacasein - how brilliant to have a local cheesemaker! If I’m out and about I almost always have a bag of Snact Fruit Jerky with me. They make fruit snacks from fruit that would otherwise go to waste and I really admire their ethics - they even have compostable packaging!

How does a typical day pan out for a London urban farmer?

Once I’ve dropped my baby at nursery and walked the dog, I’m into the office on the farm in E6 to catch up with colleagues about farm operations, sales and any other developments that we’re working on. We’re always keen to show new restaurant and retail customers what we do, and give them a chance to taste our fantastic produce, so I might be giving a farm tour or going out to visit a customer. If I’m at the farm at lunchtime then we quite often grab whatever has just been freshly harvested and use that to make up a big mixed salad with whatever everyone has brought from home. Then in the afternoon I might try and grab some time at my desk to catch up on emails or work on a proposal - but I’m equally as likely to be working with my business partner on strategy or talking to a member of the farm team about a process that needs improving.

For more information on GrowUp Urban Farm visit growup.org.uk; Follow them on Twitter and Instagram

Follow Victoria on Twitter @vicstewart and Instagram @victoriastewartpics