“The Future of Agriculture”: Goochland Tech Students Get New Vertical Farms While Demand Grows At Area Food Banks

GOOCHLAND COUNTY, Va. (WRIC) — Farm to table has a whole new meaning.

“It’s literally grown, sometimes even harvested and consumed in the same room,” said Meredith Thomas with Babylon Micro-Farms. 

Vertical Farming is one of the fastest growing trends in food production. Some call it the future of agriculture. Now, students at Goochland Tech will get the chance to learn all about it while their local community reaps the benefits. 

In a new partnership between GoochlandCares and Goochland Tech, two new vertical farms have been installed at the high school. According to Babylon Micro-farms, the Charlottesville company who made the farms and installed them in early August, “a single micro-farm takes up only 15 square feet but has the productive capacity around 2,000 square feet.”

The farms are active year-round and all aspects of farming are controlled by a cell phone app. 

“It’s a hydroponic farm designed to take the green thumb out of growing,” Thomas said.

She added this kind of farming is more environmentally sustainable — it uses no soil, no pesticides and roughly 90 percent less water.

“The nutrients and PH are controlled by sensors that check the water every single morning, and add nutrients, or PH balancing solution, or even water,” Thomas said.

Students will be taught about vertical farming while also supplying food to the pantry at GoochlandCares, which distributes food to neighbors in need.

“The pantry will receive both nutritious, locally grown fresh produce year-round and dishes prepared by the students with the harvests from the farms,” said Janet Matthews with Babylon Micro-Farms.

8News has witnessed long lines outside of food banks in our area for months. In Chesterfield on Friday, cars filled two lanes for over half a mile leading up to the Chesterfield Food Bank. That kind of backup has been seen on Ironbridge Road every weekend for the past several months. 

Before COVID-19 spread around the world, the Chesterfield Food Bank was helping anywhere from 8,000 to 12,000 people a month. Now, they say nearly 30,000 people utilize the food bank’s distribution programs each month — with 200 to 400 volunteers offering their help every week.

Chesterfield Food Bank averaging a million meals per month during the pandemic, triples in donations

“The recent COVID-19 pandemic has shown us the weak links in our country’s food distribution system, affecting everyone especially those who are most vulnerable. We hope that this partnership will be a model for many other food pantries to have a reliable in-house resource to provide fresh food,” said Sally Graham, Executive Director of Goochland Cares.

On Wednesday, the food pantry’s manager, Terri Ebright, said her team is “ecstatic” about the food that will be coming in. She said the demand for food has also grown at her pantry during the pandemic. “Our clients are relying on us even more.”

Goochland Tech Culinary Arts instructor David Booth said the new farms are a big deal for students.

“Right now I’ve got five different lettuces in there that I know half my students have never seen or tasted before,” he said. “It’s one of those things you don’t even really have to design a lesson plan around,”

“I just see it as a boundless opportunity. I really do,” Booth said.

You can learn more about how vertical farming works here.

By Alex Thorson

Posted: Sep 16, 2020 / 09:01 PM EDT - Updated: Sep 16, 2020 / 09:19 PM EDT

VIDEO: 8 Startups That Are Revolutionizing AgTech

Agriculture is changing rapidly in the modern age. The global population is rising at an alarming rate and consumer preferences are shifting towards organic and sustainably produced goods. To keep up with these demands, the traditional agriculture industry must adopt new technologies to make farms more efficient and automate production.

The growing interest in AgTech is reflected in venture capital investments for AgTech startups. According to Pitchbook, $6.7 billion was invested in AgTech startups in the last five years and $1.9 billion in the last year alone. These 8 AgTech startups are paving the way to revolutionize the future of the agriculture industry.

1. Big Wheelbarrow

Big Wheelbarrow connects wholesale food buyers with local farmers. Big Wheelbarrow makes it faster and easier for buyers to work with small independent growers, regardless of size. Their technology empowers their customers to offer local products to their clients without the time and effort it used to require.

2. Vestaron

Vestaron Corporation develops and produces insecticides by employing peptides sourced from spiders in the United States. Its products are used in agricultural, animal health, and specialty non-crop applications, as well as in-household insects and commercial pest control applications.

3. Cainthus

Cainthus is developing the world’s most advanced technology for dairy farms today; technology that’s transformational for animals, farmers, and the production of food. Using computer vision and artificial intelligence to identify health, reproduction, and environmental changes early on, Cainthus translates visual information into actionable data.

4. Rex Animal Health

Rex Animal Health is on a mission to help livestock producers and farmers feed the world by increasing productivity and predicting, preventing, and precisely managing disease in the herd. They have a built up the largest database of clinical, health, performance, and genetic data on these livestock. Also, agribusinesses can use this data in order to understand their supply chain to identify the source of potential food borne illness, find the most efficient producers, set prices in commodities trading, and to understand and assess risk to increase transparency in the food supply chain.

5. Smallhold

Smallhold provides retailers and restaurants with contained-­environment vertical farm units that produce large amounts of mushrooms, herbs, and leafy greens with minimal labor. Their current product offering is with on-site mushroom production and can produce up to 120 lbs/week in the space of a bookcase. The mushrooms are certified organic and are competitive with conventional ways of growing.

6. Babylon Micro-farms

Babylon Micro-farms provides an on-demand indoor farming service to make sustainable indoor farming more accessible than ever before. Their farms grow fresh produce 2x faster using 90% less water than conventional agriculture, without the use of pesticides or harmful chemicals. Their business model drastically reduces the upfront costs and expertise associated with indoor agriculture, powered by a patented IoT platform that remotely operates the ecosystem of farms.

7. Kiverdi

Kiverdi technology uses all-natural microbes to transform CO2 and other gases into high-valued nutrients, oils, and bio-based products. Kiverdi’s proprietary platform, which extends early NASA research, converts carbon dioxide from diverse industrial and agricultural sources into new materials using proprietary gas fermenting microbes.

8. Cambridge Crops

Cambridge Crops develops natural and edible coatings to extend the shelf life of a wide variety of perishable foods. Their coatings regulate the exchange of gases and slow down bacterial growth. These unique attributes allow for drastic improvements in shelf life for everything from avocados and spinach to meat and seafood. Cambridge Crops’ technology is easily integrated into existing packing and processing lines, minimizing the need for supply chain changes or expensive on-boarding. By increasing the window of peak freshness, Cambridge Crops allows food producers, food processors, and retailers to extend shelf lives, reach new markets, and reduce waste.

US - VIRGINIA - What Does Governor Northam Have to Say About Babylon?

June 30, 2020

We are very excited to share the news that Governor Northam announced last week that Babylon has been awarded matching funds from the Center for Innovative Technology (CIT) for the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant we received from the National Science Foundation. The funding from the NSF made Babylon eligible for a highly competitive application process that CIT holds annually through the Commonwealth Research Commercialization Fund which provides additional support for SBIR recipients to foster ongoing innovation by Virginia-based companies.
 
 “Congratulations to Babylon Micro-Farms, an inspiring up and coming Virginia business, on its CRCF award. Babylon first received seed capital funding from CIT GAP Funds in August 2019. I had the pleasure to get to know the team and learn about the vital work they are doing for indoor farming,” said Ed Albrigo, President and CEO of CIT. “They continue to move forward on research and development of their disruptive platform for hydroponic farming, which has now earned them funding support through CIT CRCF. The Babylon CRCF award, along with CIT GAP funding, is a prime example of how our programs work together to help sustain companies through the difficult first stages of the commercialization process. Sustainable urban agriculture technologies are among the most critical emerging technologies in the nation today, and thanks to Babylon, Virginia will play an essential role in the future of farming."

Babylon added Lansdowne Resort in Leesburg, VA to our portfolio of high-end resorts and we are happy to welcome them to the Babylon family. Lansdowne is very focused on the connection between food and health and has a history of being at the forefront of hospitality trends that incorporate wellness and mindfulness-based activity options. They offer their guests a carefully curated offering of dietary choices based on their commitment to providing them the highest possible quality available in every aspect of their experience. Babylon is proud to be part of that commitment.

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The recently installed farm at Champion Brewing Company Pub is the first partnership between Babylon and our hometown pioneer of the rapidly growing craft beer movement. When founder Hunter Smith envisioned the Pub, he wanted to create a fun community space that was hip and cool, but truly more than that – a place for people to connect. Mission accomplished and since Babylon is all about connecting people to their food by growing it right in front of them, it was a natural fit. The synergy of two local startups working together to bring the best of local food and drink to the table is a winning combination. Stop by and have a cold beer, it's hot outside!

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