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The World's First Floating Dairy Farm Will House 40 Cows And Be Hurricane-Resistant
PETER KOTECKI
September 24, 2018
Beladon
The Dutch company Beladon is opening the world’s first floating dairy farm in the Netherlands.
Located in Rotterdam, the farm will house 40 cows in a high-tech facility on the water.
Minke van Wingerden, one of the project’s leaders, told Business Insider that the farm will produce an average of 211 gallons of milk each day.
Most of the cows’ food will come from city waste products, such as grains left over from local breweries and by-products from mills.
Beladon is also interested in launching floating chicken farms and floating vertical farming greenhouses.
A Dutch company is set to debut the world’s first floating dairy farm near Amsterdam.
A high-tech, multilevel facility will soon be floating in the water in Rotterdam, located roughly 50 miles outside of Amsterdam. Minke van Wingerden, a partner at the property development company Beladon, told Business Insider that the 89-by-89 foot farm will produce an average of 211 gallons of milk each day.
The facility will have 40 cows, which is fairly typical for a small dairy farm in the Netherlands.
“Although it’s strange and not very logical perhaps for some people, we think that on the water there is still space for growth and also space to look at new opportunities for technology,” van Wingerden said.
Van Wingerden and her husband, Peter van Wingerden, came up the idea after a business trip to New York City in 2012. Hurricane Sandy hit the city during the visit, flooding Manhattan and knocking out power for many residents. The storm quickly made it difficult to buy fresh produce, as thousands of food delivery trucks were unable to reach their destinations.
Beladon decided to search for a way to help cities produce food close to where residents live in order to better withstand supply chain disruptions. Eventually, the company moved forward with designs for a farm that could float on water.
The idea adds to existing innovations in urban agriculture, including rooftop and warehouse farms. Floating farms, Minke van Wingerden said, can adapt to changes in the climate and be hurricane-resistant.
“You go up and down with the tide, or the water, and it has no influence on your food production, so you can still make fresh food in the city,” she said.
The farm’s bottom level will feature machinery for processing and packaging the dairy. The cows will be on the second level, along with robots for milking. Beladon will use the third level to grow clover and grass for the cows to eat.
Beladon | A floating dairy farm under construction in Rotterdam, Netherlands.
The farm will also recycle as much as it can, van Wingerden said. For example, the cows will be fed with various waste products from the city, such as grains left over from local breweries and by-products from mills. Beladon will also process the cows’ manure and sell it as a natural fertiliser.
After launching the Rotterdam project, van Wingerden said Beladon will work on opening more floating farms. Beyond producing dairy, the company is designing floating chicken farms and floating vertical farming greenhouses. Van Wingerden said she would like to open farms in Singapore and China soon, and the company is in talks with another Dutch city for a second farm.
She and her husband also believe that new communities should be built with food access in mind. The area by the Rotterdam harbour, for example, is on track to be filled with residential spaces and offices in the next several years, and Minke van Wingerden said food production should be at “the heart of that community.”
Rotterdam’s port authority initially had some reservations about Beladon’s farm, voicing concerns about the smell and noise. Van Wingerden said the manure will be removed quickly from the farm by robots, which will reduce any bad odor associated with the farm.
As for the cows making noise, van Wingerden said there is not much they can do.
“Some people are afraid what’s going on, but on the other hand there are also [those] who cannot wait until the first cows come in,” she said. “They are very much looking forward to see a cow here in the harbour.”
The World's First Floating Farm Making Waves In Rotterdam
By Simon Fry
Technology of Business Reporter
August 16, 2018
The floating farm will start with about 40 cows milked by robots | LELY
The world's first offshore dairy farm opens in the Port of Rotterdam this year, with the aim of helping the city produce more of its own food sustainably. But will such farms ever be able to produce enough to feed the world's growing urban populations?
A Dutch property company, Beladon, is launching the world's first "floating farm" in a city port.
It has built the offshore facility right in the middle of Rotterdam's Merwehaven harbour and will use it to farm 40 Meuse-Rhine-Issel cows milked by robots.
Built-up urban areas may not seem like the most sensible places to run farms, but reducing the distance food travels before it reaches consumers' plates makes environmental sense as it reduces transport pollution.
And if the global population grows to 9.8 billion by 2050 as expected, 70% are forecast to live in cities - up from 55% today.
An artist's impression of how Beladon's floating farm will look when finished
FLOATING FARM
So urban indoor farms, where produce is grown vertically on stacks of shelves under ultraviolet lights, are - literally - on the rise.
Beladon's farm, which is on three levels and is anchored to the ocean floor, is expected to open at the end of 2018 and produce about 800 litres of milk a day.
Peter van Wingerden, an engineer at Beladon, came up with the idea in 2012 when he was in New York working on a floating housing project on the Hudson river.
While there, Hurricane Sandy struck, flooding the city streets and crippling its transport networks. Deliveries struggled to get through and within two days it was hard to find fresh produce in shops.
"Seeing the devastation caused by Hurricane Sandy I was struck by the need for food to be produced as near as possible to consumers," says Mr van Wingerden.
Minke van Wingerden thinks floating farms have great potential for cities built near water | JAN VAN DER MEIJDE
"So the idea came up to produce fresh food in a climate-adaptive way on the water."
The concept would be resilient against hurricanes, too, he adds.
At first, people thought the idea was "weird, funny or unbelievable", he says, but they have started to come round.
"With increasing demand for healthy food, fast-growing urbanisation and climate change, we can't rely on the food production systems of the past any more," he says.
Later in 2012, his team began working on the design and talking to the Port Authority in Rotterdam. Despite its initial hesitations about the potential noise and smell, the port gave Beladon a space to build a prototype.
Since then the farm has taken shape, and earlier this summer its floating platform was moved by barge from Zaandam in the north of Holland, to Rotterdam.
Peter's wife and business partner, Minke van Wingerden, says the farm will start with 40 cows, enough for the venture to break even. But she says it is "easily scalable", with larger operations promising "obvious efficiencies".
The farm also aims to reuse and recycle as much as it can.
"At least 80% of what our cows eat will be waste products from Rotterdam's food industry," says the farm's general manager, Albert Boersen.
That might include grains discarded by local breweries, leftovers from restaurants and cafes, by-products from local wheat mills, and even grass clippings, all collected and delivered in electric trucks provided by local "green waste" firm GroenCollect.
"We will grow duckweed as an animal feed, too," says Ms van Wingerden. "It is high in protein, fast-growing and can be nurtured with cow urine. We will have an installation of four or five vertical platforms growing the plant under special LED lights."
Waste fodder for the cows will be collected from restaurants and breweries in electric vans | THE FLOATING FARM
The project will even generate some of its own energy - hydrogen produced through electrolysis powered by solar panels.
Once up and running, the farm will produce and pasteurize milk and yogurt on-site and sell it in Rotterdam. It will also process and sell its own cow manure.
Dr. Fenton Beed, a team leader at the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation, thinks urban farms are useful because they tend to use less water, fertilizer, and pesticide than conventional production systems.
But he also acknowledges that space limitations may prevent enough food being produced to supply the world's burgeoning urban populations.
"Constraints to producing food in controlled environments include costs for initial investment, LED lighting and continuous energy supplies," says Dr Beed.
"That means that unless policies incentivize the engagement of smaller producers, this technology will be reserved for income-rich private and public entities."
Plenty grows its crops vertically indoors | PLENTY
But such concerns aren't stopping companies like Plenty from attracting significant investment.
The San Francisco-based start-up produces leafy greens in indoor farms and claims it can grow up to 350 times more per square metre than outdoor field farms.
Its crops are grown on six-metre vertical poles, using hydroponics - a water-only feeding system - and LED lights. No soil or pesticides are used. Infrared sensors monitor how the crops are faring so that the system can adjust light, heat and water flow accordingly.
Since it was founded in 2013, Plenty has raised $226m (£177m) from investors such as Amazon's Jeff Bezos, SoftBank's Vision Fund and Innovation Endeavors. This year it will expand its US operations and open its first farm in the Middle East.
Spread's Techno Farm concept is attracting investment | SPREAD
Japan's Spread is another firm developing automated vegetable-growing in vertical urban settings with its Techno Farm concept.
Back in the Netherlands, Peter and Minke van Wingerden are looking at opportunities to build more floating farms around the country, as well as in Asia.
"We hope to make many more floating farms, but also welcome others copying us or coming up with concepts contributing to these goals," says Mr van Wingerden.
"Healthy, sufficient food production is key to a better, cleaner, safer world."
Related Topics
World’s First Floating Dairy Farm Being Built
These artist depictions show what the floating farm will look like when operational. | Floating Farms photo
The operation in the Dutch city of Rotterdam will supply urban residents with milk and showcase agriculture
It has taken a lot of time to get the green light, but construction of the world’s first floating dairy farm is finally underway in the Netherlands.
This innovative farm is being built at Rotterdam and will be home to 40 dairy cows when completed. The idea is that the farm will supply the city with fresh dairy products every day, produced, say the developers, “in an animal-friendly and circular manner.”
Three concrete floats are currently being constructed in a drydock that together form the foundations for the floating farm.
The plan is that these floats are expected to be shipped to their final location in the Merwe4Haven in Rotterdam in the middle of May.
However, a few target dates have been shifted over the course of developing the farm, which has prolonged the final opening.
The brains behind this bold move are from Courage, the innovation institute of the Dutch agriculture and dairy sector, Uit Je Eigen Stad, the national frontrunner on city farming, and Beladon, a leading Dutch company on floating concepts.
Peter van Wingerden, project initiator on behalf of property developer Beladon, said this is a real milestone for the project.
“We are absolutely delighted that construction of the floating farm has now begun,” he said.
“After all the preparations, this is an unprecedented milestone for everyone who has worked to get this project up and running.
“Building on water always brings additional challenges with it, although it offers us the opportunity to restore food production to the inner city at the same time.
“We believe that building on water is the way ahead in a country with a changing climate and ever increasing urbanization. A floating farm is the perfect scalable solution for cities such as Rotterdam, with a lot of space on the water.
“In addition, we see huge opportunities for this prototype all over the world. We will be building with all due speed in the months ahead so that we can welcome our first cattle later this year.”
Other benefits of such a system, close to urban populations, include reducing the distance that milk and other dairy products need to be transported to urban consumers, reducing greenhouse gas emissions and putting shoppers back in touch with nature and farming.
The farm will house 40 cows on the floating structure, measuring 40 by 32 metres.
The cows will be able to use a “cow garden” at the top of the structure with a soft floor, which will have the feel of a natural living environment. There will be trees and bushes available to offer areas of shade, and the roof of the cow garden can be entirely opened.
Urine produced by the cows will drain through the floor into an airtight storage facility. By keeping it contained there, ammonia emissions will be limited and it will be able to be distributed for use as fertilizer for city farms. Manure, on the other hand, will be collected and stored separately.
A biodigester will turn the manure into biogas and fertilizers, which in turn can be used to help grow the grass used to feed the cows.
Rainwater will be collected and filtered for the cows to drink.
Cows will have access to an adjacent pasture by using a bridge between the farm and the dock when tides permit.
The cows will be milked with a robotic milking machine and have access to additional grass on the farm grown under LED lighting.
The goal is to extend the facilities once the trial period is deemed a success so that the farm can house 200 cows producing 5,000 kilograms of milk a day.
Raw milk will be dispensed to consumers through a public “milk tap,” and vending machines will sell processed produce. Dairy produce will also be sold to local catering outlets, hotels and shops.
The new farm will showcase the latest technology that money can buy and is said to be an enormous asset for the Dutch agricultural sector.
“Realization of the floating farm is an enormous asset for the Dutch agricultural sector as a whole,” said Carel de Vries, project initiator on behalf of the Courage innovation organization.
“It’s almost impossible to bring cows and dairy processing closer to the city residents. Moreover, the latest technology will be tested on the floating farm going forward with the aim of drastically reducing environmental impact.
“We are developing opportunities that will benefit the entire dairy farming sector throughout the country in the fields of animal welfare, manure processing and circularity. We are thankful for the help we have had to date from all partners involved.”