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VIRTUAL SUMMIT: Connecting Technology & Business To Create Healthy, Resilient Food Systems - July 23, 2020
By sharing best practice from around the globe, and facilitating new connections and collaborations, the summit offers an invaluable platform to develop new business and accelerate projects across the Indoor AgTech ecosystem
The Indoor AgTech Innovation Summit is going virtual! This year’s summit will be live online on July 23, 2020, providing an essential opportunity for the industry to meet, network, https://indooragtechnyc.com/, and exchange ideas at this critical time for our industry.
The world’s leading farm operators, food retailers, and investors will present live, before hosting virtual discussion groups on the emerging trends and technologies that will shape your business as we emerge from the current crisis into a redesigned food system:
Key Themes:
· Finding Growth in Crisis: Responding to a Rapidly Changing Food Landscape
· Scaling Up: Co-locating Food Production and Distribution Centers
· Enhancing Nutritional Value: Towards a Perfect Plant Recipe
· Optimizing Seeds for Indoor Agriculture: Breeding a Competitive Advantage
· Analytics and the Cloud: Digital Integration to Optimize Indoor Agriculture
· Robotics: Developing a Contactless Food System
· Energy Consumption: Driving Efficiency and Economic Viability
· Financing Growth: Can Capital Keep Pace with Industry Demand?
· Consumer Awareness: How to Build a “Holistic” Indoor Brand
All participants can schedule video 1-1 meetings with potential partners and clients throughout the summit, and for an extended period before and after the sessions.
By sharing best practice from around the globe, and facilitating new connections and collaborations, the summit offers an invaluable platform to develop new business and accelerate projects across the Indoor AgTech ecosystem.
Summit website: https://indooragtechnyc.com/
Registration:
- One summit pass Indoor AgTech: $195.00
- Start-Up pass: $95.00 / Please contact jamie.alexander@rethinkevents.com to enquire about the criteria to qualify for special rates.
Indoor Agtech Virtual Innovation Summit July 23, 2020
By sharing best practice from around the globe, and facilitating new connections and collaborations, the summit offers an invaluable platform to develop new business and accelerate projects across the Indoor AgTech ecosystem
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Major names join speaker line-up for virtual summit
We are thrilled to announce the first speakers confirmed for the 2020 virtual Indoor AgTech Innovation Summit on July 23.
They'll share critical intelligence on how the indoor farming industry is shaping the agri-food landscape, and redesigning food systems to meet consumer demand for fresh produce.
VIEW SPEAKER LINE-UP
Hear from and connect with international thought leaders including:
WHAT ARE OUR EXPERTS SAYING?
"Instead of shutting down, we implemented South Korean-style measures for our warehouse, farm, and office. Then, we launched a new nationally distributed product that allows folks to grow mushrooms at home rather than travel to the grocery store."
Andrew Carter, CEO, SMALLHOLD
"COVID-19 has raised awareness about the prospects for automation such as machines working in packing houses and indoor environments. I think it’s fair to say that humans can be relieved of those tasks."
Elyse Lipman, Director of Strategy, LIPMAN FAMILY FARMS
"Given current pressures on the U.S. food system, one thing is clear: the importance of strengthening our country’s food supply chain through decentralized, regional supply chains."
Viraj Puri, CEO and Co-Founder, GOTHAM GREENS
READ MORE INSIGHTS FROM OUR SPEAKERS>>
Secure your place at Indoor AgTech and save 10% with discount code iGROW10
and connect with the world’s leading farm operators, food retailers, and investors for a jam-packed day full of 1-1 video meetings, live panel sessions, and interactive roundtable discussion groups.
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We look forward to welcoming you online.
Best wishes,
Oscar Brennecke
Conference Producer
Indoor AgTech Innovation Summit
+44 (0)1273 789 989
oscar.brennecke@rethinkevents.com
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The New Wave Of Urban Farms Sprouting Strong Community Connections
If there’s one thing the global pandemic has taught us, it’s the importance of being as self-sufficient as possible, especially when it comes to putting food on the table
By Greg Callaghan | The Sydney Morning Herald | June 5, 2020
If there’s one thing the global pandemic has taught us, it’s the importance of being as self-sufficient as possible, especially when it comes to putting food on the table.
While community gardens and urban farms have been sprouting up across our cities in recent years, driven by an increasing demand for fresh, locally sourced vegetables and fruits, the coronavirus lockdown really struck a nerve about grow-your-own, according to operators of nurseries, community gardens and commercial urban farms in Sydney and Melbourne.
Tending the veggie garden at Camperdowns Commons, Sydney. Louise Kennerley
Emma Bowen, co-founder of Pocket City Farms in inner Sydney, which is part of Camperdown Commons, a former lawn bowls club turned urban farm and restaurant, says growing food forges a stronger sense of community.
“We’ve seen a really huge shift in mindset towards urban farms in the eight years we’ve been working here,” she notes. “We have many more developers and local councils reaching out about incorporating both urban farms and community gardens into new developments.”
While Camperdown Commons’ on-site restaurant and workshops have been put on hold since the lockdown, produce from the farm has been selling out every week, says Bowen. “Growing food where we live and building resilient communities are more important than ever.”
Before the pandemic, Farmwall, an agrifood-tech start-up in Melbourne, was predominantly selling its vertical aquaponic farming kits to businesses in office buildings. Now the company’s market has shifted to apartment blocks, enabling those without backyards or even balconies to grow microgreens, herbs and leafy greens.
“We show people how to grow food indoors, in limited spaces, in a naturally contained eco-system,” says Geert Hendrix, founder of Farmwall.
Adds Serena Lee, the firm’s non-executive director, “We may never go back to the corporate environment.”
But the urban farming phenomenon isn’t restricted to inner-city hipsters. Five percent of Australia’s biggest urban park, the Western Sydney Parklands, which covers more than 50 square kilometres, has been set aside for urban farming. In the heart of Parklands, 16 existing urban farms supply fresh fruit, vegetables and flowers to surrounding areas.
“Our urban farmers have experienced an upswing in customers at their roadside stalls, with the community choosing to shop locally and away from the traditional supermarkets,” says Parklands executive director Suellen Fitzgerald. “It reduces transport costs and allows children to see where their food comes from.”
To read more from Good Weekend magazine, visit our page at The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age and Brisbane Times.
Hydroponics - A Growing Trend in Architecture
Hydroponics might as well be the most sustainable way to feed the growing communities in moving forward. It is most efficient to grow leafy vegetables in vertical farms. Compared to traditional farms, vertical farms use 90% less land, gives 90% more fruit, and uses 90-98% less water with no soil.
‘In which Annie gives it those ones’, a movie that came out in the year 1989 featuring an honest life of a typical architecture college and its students. The principal figure is a titular character – Annie, or Anand Grover (played by Arjun Raina) who dreams of revolutionizing India through radical concepts. With a motive to reverse the whole process of urbanization, he suggests the growth of fruit farms alongside railway lines to make better use of excreta dumped on tracks by passing trains. This would end the migration from rural villages to urban cities. Such hare-brained schemes are “those ones” of the title – hippy-dippy fantasies of using architecture to be of some use of society. He questions in the movie, how could anyone else have not thought of the idea before he did. Well, the real scenario was even worse until hydroponics occupied its seat in the field of Architecture.
Farmlands in urban cities ©www.dezeen.com
Hydroponics Brings Farmlands To Urban Cities
With the rapid change in the world, there is a proportional decline in land availability and the quality of the soil. Resources like freshwater are left to count on throughout the world. By the year 2050, the population figure is predicted to rise to 9 billion and at the same time climate change could lower crop production by 25%.
Currently, with the expansion of cities & exhaustion of the rural lands, a vegetable growing on farmland travels about 2400 km before it reaches households. To keep it fresh and edible, it is sprayed by pesticides and chemicals. The food that one eats thus gets reduced to 50% of its nutrients, even 100% in some cases. Hence, the future of farming is being brought to cities across the world. Kimble Musk, brother of Elon Musk, and co-founder of Square Roots has a shipping container farm in Brooklyn. Under the streets of London there is a shelter being converted into an underground farm. There are tiny farms under Michelin Star Restaurants in New York City and a Tokyo office building which has its own rice paddy field in the lobby.
Vertical Farming in True Garden, Arizona ©www.usatoday.com
Hydroponics might as well be the most sustainable way to feed the growing communities in moving forward. It is most efficient to grow leafy vegetables in vertical farms. Compared to traditional farms, vertical farms use 90% less land, gives 90% more fruit, and uses 90-98% less water with no soil. The UN estimates that 20-40% of crops that are grown are destroyed by pests. So, growing in a closed environment without soil means no pests and thus, no pesticides. Tower Garden collaborated with Tower Farms to birth True Gardens in Arizona, USA. It is one of the major successful examples who have envisioned to drastically reduce the regional agricultural problems against the temperatures and lack of resources.
Hydroponics In Small-Scale Projects
Courtyards in office space ©www.archdaily.com
Backyards ©www.wallpaper.com
While people are getting under built concrete to fabricate urban farms in the cities, some architects open a new aspect of Hydroponics in the field of Architecture. C.C Arquitectos – an architectural firm in Mexico, designed a contemporary office that meets modern hydroponics. The site became a major driving force for this project. The building block is located between two production warehouses of leafy green vegetables. The project was intended to resolve the location of offices in a space that made emphasis on the constant interaction of the areas.
The context consists of agricultural fields that generate deep horizons. This became the second aspect the architect wanted to address: how to contain workspaces, bring a human scale to the whole, and provide visual breaks. He took advantage of the proximity to one of the production plant warehouses to visually involve the production process. It was intended to promote a friendly atmosphere, take distance from the corporate condition, and try to approach a community working for common purposes. This example shall inspire one, and all the designers to break the stereotypical boundary of application of hydroponics that limits to only vertical farming.
Hydroponics Meets Art
Before you proceed to read further, I would like you to take a pause and imagine –what if, hydroponics meets art and architecture with a pinch of technology? In advance of you declaring the amalgamation impossible, I would like to introduce a project known as Kinetic Green Canvas, built by Associative Data (BAD) along with Green Studios to create a prototype green art installation for building façades.
The Canvas consists of individual modules, each of which is a cube made from a steel framework, back paneling, L-shaped jambs, secondary structure, waterproofing board, irrigation piping, Green Studios hydroponic skin, and plants. These layered components are assembled on four sides of the cube module, with a motor and water pipe attachment that circulates water throughout. Varied shades of green grass are grown on each face and can create changeable ‘pixel’ art. All we need is art and plants to cheer up the neighborhood, so why not combine the best of both worlds?
Kinetic module ©www.materialdistrict.com
Stacking rows of pixel units’ ©www.materialdistrict.com
Kinetic green canvas creating art ©www.architectureanddesign.com
Hydroponics Builds A Tiny Ecosystem
Solar power at top level ©www.smithsonianmag.com
Fish farming at bottom level; ©www.smithsonianmag.com
Amidst the sea or river, grows a field yielding tons of vegetables, fruits, and fish each year! Barcelona-based architectural firm – Forward Thinking Architecture floats an idea of a complete ecosystem. With the ideology of no land-no problem, the firm proposes ‘Smart Floating Farms’; large triple-decker agriculture barges that feature fish farms down below, hydroponic gardens up top and, solar panels on the roof to keep things running. The designers contend that all of this could, in theory, operate pretty much automatically with minimal human intervention. A project takes the right direction when the classical elements merge together to support life and are self-sufficiently sustainable.
The extent of Hydroponics spreads exponentially more and beyond. It has been experimented in the farming sector and is successfully solving major world crises in the present and for the coming future. The growing trend in architecture shall meet advanced technology and who knows, we might even have growing buildings using hydroponics! Contradicting what we’ve always been taught – I would recommend building castles in the air. It could be one significant bridge for the human race to jump to productive architecture.
Architectural Journalist
Rethinking The Future
Tanushree Saluja is constantly inspired by connecting different forms of art and translating into architectural experiences. She strives for the eccentricity that’s interminable in the mind of the receiver. Bringing in fresh perspectives and unique outlook has been the greatest challenge and reward to her creativity.
Western South Dakota Aquaponic Farm Floats Fresh Food
A Butte County couple is putting fish to work in a new aquaponic greenhouse, growing fresh, locally-grown lettuce that now lines Northern Hills grocery shelves
May 23, 2020
Photo: Lacey Peterson, AP | Chris Garro shows off the long root under some herbs growing at the aquaponic greenhouse at Garro Farms in Nisland, S.D. (Lacey Peterson/Black Hills Pioneer via AP
BELLE FOURCHE, S.D. (AP) — A Butte County couple is putting fish to work in a new aquaponic greenhouse, growing fresh, locally-grown lettuce that now lines Northern Hills grocery shelves.
He is a Black Hills and Wyoming native, she’s from northeast Iowa, and together, Chris and Alexa Garro, owners of Garro Farms, have mastered the art of mimicking a natural ecosystem that combines traditional aquaculture with hydroculture in the ultimate symbiotic system.
It just so happens that the work fish naturally do, eating and producing waste, is the perfect fertilizer for growing plants. And boy do those fish grow a lot of plants when they get to work.
The best of both worlds
Aquaponics uses the best of all the growing techniques, utilizing the waste of one element to benefit another, mimicking a natural ecosystem.
Alexa told the Black Hills Pioneer it represents the relationship between water, aquatic life, bacteria, nutrient dynamics, and plants that grow together in waterways all over the world. Taking cues from nature, aquaponics harnesses the power of bio-integrating those individual components — exchanging the waste byproduct from the fish as a food for the bacteria, to be converted into a perfect fertilizer for the plants, and return the water in a clean and safe form to the fish — just like mother nature does in every aquatic ecosystem.
“If we were to let this system just hang out and never touch it, it (the bacterial symbiotic process) would happen naturally,” Alexa said. “It’s kind of like nature wants to make it work, and then we just provide the facilities.”
The system has found shortcuts around common agricultural issues.
While gardens can be located in your backyard, industrial farms are often thousands of miles from where their food is consumed. This requires extensive transportation, refrigeration, and packaging to get the food from farm to table.
Hydroponics is a method of growing plants without soil, by instead using mineral nutrient solutions in a water solvent. While hydroponics solves many soil-based issues, it also offers its own problems.
Traditional hydroponic systems rely on the careful application of expensive, man-made nutrients made from mixing together a concoction of chemicals, salts, and trace elements. For the Garros, through aquaponics, they merely feed the fish and monitor the system carefully, and grow fresh, bountiful greenery that you could have on your table the day after harvest.
The Arpan setup
Garro Farms, located approximately 18 miles northeast of Belle Fourche on Arpan Road, is home to the 2,400 square-foot commercial-scale greenhouse. Chris, utilizing second-hand materials, built the greenhouse with the ultimate goal — to supply fresh produce to the Northern Hills and Wyoming areas all year long.
“It took some imagination to get it to this,” Chris said. “And I hope other people follow suit, too.”
Although there are numerous types of aquaponic systems, the Garros selected deep-water culture, or raft-based growing, that uses a foam raft which floats in a 12-inch deep channel filled with fish effluent water that has been filtered to remove solid wastes. Plants are placed in holes in the raft and the roots dangle freely in the water.
Photo, Chris and Alexa Garro have opened a commercial-scale aquaponic greenhouse to offer fresh, locally-grown lettuce and herbs to Northern Hills and Wyoming communities pose at the farm in Nisland, S.D. (Lacey Peterson/Black Hills Pioneer via AP)
In 2018, Chris implemented a smaller backyard experiment in aquaponics and found the plentiful rewards it could provide. He said the property had only a limited amount of available space, forcing him to get creative, making aquaponics the perfect solution to offer healthy, high-yielding fresh produce.
The system’s water starts out in a 500-gallon in-ground tank and is pumped into the tank where the fish thrive. From there, the nutrient-rich water flows through a solids filter and into a bacterial conversion tank before being piped into the “beds” where the plants roost while they grow.
“And then back again,” Alexa said. “So, it’s all a big cycle. The plants clean out that nitrate, and it comes back to the fish.”
The system circulates approximately 4,500 gallons of water each hour, Chris said.
And the system works well.
“Almost every single thing that comes out of this, there’s no waste byproduct,” she said, adding that other than adding iron to the water, Garro Farms doesn’t provide any additives to the process. “Otherwise, it’s completely self-sustaining. The older the system gets, the more efficient it works, and the more balanced it gets.”
“We figured out how to basically get as much production in this size (of) greenhouse as we would get out of something four times this size,” Alexa said. “So, by taking the square footage and doing a certain crop rotation that he did, that’s how we get (the amount of production).”
Currently, the farm grows six types of lettuce — green oakleaf, rouxai, adriana, salanova red incised, green incised and butter crunch. They also cultivate microgreens, grown under natural sunlight in the greenhouse, including pea shoots, purple-stemmed radish and sunflower. But that’s not all; the Garros are experimenting with herbs like cilantro and culinary sage.
“To be this new and have the right levels and everything producing was a stroke of genius on Chris’ part,” Alexa said.
Without the rotation the Garros utilize, Chris said it would be next to impossible to get the amount of growth production.
“We can do between 50,000-74,000 heads of lettuce out of here a year,” he said. “And if I had done it the conventional way and not moved anything, if we just put in the water and let it grow … they need quite a bit of room when they get bigger and we’d of cut that (production) in a quarter.”
From the time the seeds are planted, the plants are full grown and ready for market in about 35 days, Chris said.
“We’re not using any special seed or anything like that,” he said. “We’re trying to provide ideal conditions, and if you give something ideal conditions, … it just does better.”
What about the fish?
As one of the main components in an aquaponic system, the fish are an important focus for the Garros.
Chris said he stocked his 1,500-gallon fish tank, which is above ground and separate from the water tank, with 50 pounds of fathead minnows three or four months ago.
The type of fish is atypical for an aquaponic setup, Chris said.
“This is pretty experimental, too, because I haven’t read about anybody doing that with bait fish,” he said.
Due to the proximity to the Belle Fourche Reservoir and wanting to keep product procurement as local as possible, the farm gets the minnows from the Wheel In Bait Shop.
The local supply is handy but, Alexa said the fish species is particularly hardy when it comes to handling the area temperatures, whereas other fish species typically used in other aquaponic setups like tilapia, koi or goldfish would struggle in the South Dakota conditions.
So, what happens when the fish get too big and the balance is thrown off?
“The cool thing about it is we’ll trade these out for smaller ones with the bait shop,” Chris said.
A 50-pound batch of minnows will likely thrive in the greenhouse for around six months before needing to be traded out for smaller ones, he said.
“Most people factor in because they either do a huge, massive, million-dollar scale building, or they have a little backyard system,” Alexa said. “So, they either want to eat the fish or they’re factoring it into their revenue plan. For us … it’s so weird fitting that middle ground where we’re not a million-dollar facility but we’re not a 500-gallon backyard system. What worked for everybody else will not quite work here, especially in South Dakota in the wintertime.”
Pandemic curveball meets ingenuity
The current pandemic conditions put a slight kink into the Garros’ plans.
Chris said that the pandemic conditions related to COVID-19 have caused a supply shortage for some of the supplies needed for the greenhouse, requiring them to operate on a smaller level until more supplies arrive.
Photo, Alexa Garro examines the lettuce crop grown at Garro Farms' aquaponic greenhouse in Nisland, S.D. (Lacey Peterson/Black Hills Pioneer via AP)
“And we don’t even have this thing (the aquaponic bed) like a quarter of the way full, and this is (producing) about 860 heads (of lettuce) a week,” Alexa said.
In about a month, Chris anticipated the greenhouse would likely be at around three-quarters capacity.
Even through the rough conditions, Garro Farms is rising above and plowing through the roadblocks. The farm’s produce is already on the shelves of Lueders Food Centers in Spearfish and Belle Fourche, Lynn’s Dakotamart in Belle Fourche, Bee’s Knees Natural Foods in Spearfish, Grocery Mart in Sturgis and Bearlodge Bakery in Sundance, Wyoming.
Soon, that will likely expand. Alexa said they’re in talks with some restaurants all the way to Rapid City, hoping to provide locally grown, healthy options everywhere.
“We had such a good response from everybody. All the stores we’ve sold to … they’re selling out weekly,” Chris said.
The bigger picture
The couple, who, between the two of them, has ranched in Montana, worked in the Bakken oil fields, done professional construction work, and worked in radio and news outlets, decided they wanted a new direction in life.
“It’s good work, and I didn’t mind it,” Chris said. “But, doing something like this, to me, is a bigger thing. Growing food, to me, is more important.”
The farm expects to be able to keep a consistent level of inventory in terms of production, year-round.
“The way that we’re going to get away with that is the grow lights,” Chris said. “In the wintertime, I’ll probably put them over all the beds. You need 10-15 hours of sunlight (each day).”
The couple was uniquely drawn toward growing lettuce. Chris said that around 95% of the country’s lettuce comes from the California region.
“There’s no reason we can’t grow this locally like this,” he said.
“Lettuce is just one crop that you can’t really get it in mass in the winter in South Dakota,” Alexa said. “This is something that everybody that I talked to had the same problem, ‘I buy lettuce, it goes bad; I buy lettuce, it’s not really what I wanted.’ We just kind of went, ‘lets focus on this and get it going.’”
The pandemic conditions have highlighted to the couple the importance of having a local supply chain.
“If we can do this here, I think it’s possible pretty much anywhere,” Chris said.
Chris said he hopes to continue to grow the business, bring on staff, and someday, produce for most of western South Dakota and eastern Wyoming.
Although the farm sold its first batches of lettuce to local stores in mid-April, the couple is already expanding on the greenhouse, planning a 12-foot addition to the front to accommodate a packaging area.