Federal Grant Bolsters Higher Education In AgTech

Growers have indicated the need for highly skilled workforce is becoming more urgent as technology restructures the future of farming.

Today’s blog notes a bright spot amongst many past reports of reduced government-backed financial support in research & development (R&D) and education programs that aim to improve living conditions, reduce environmental impact, and manage the growing population’s resources via technology.

Cornell University has reported that the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), through its National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA), has endowed the university’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences’ School of Integrative Plant Science with a $496,000 grant. The federal funding will be used to develop new controlled environment agriculture (CEA) training programs for a skilled workforce that is sorely needed.

Cornell’s associate professor of horticulture Neil Mattson, well-known to us as the keynote speaker at our 2019 HortiCann Light + Tech conference, will collaborate with Cornell Small Farms program director Anu Rangarajan, Ohio State University’s Agricultural Technical Institute, and SUNY Broome Community College to create a technical training certificate in CEA production. The partners also expect to develop a two-year associate’s degree program for students at these institutions and other community colleges to provide solid education in CEA.

Mattson said in the Cornell Chronicle, “Growers consistently state that finding well-trained personnel to operate their facilities is among the largest barriers to expansion.”

Why do we need this educational support? The global population is growing, and supply needs to ramp up to deliver healthy foods to all economic strata. Many food crops are currently unavailable close to home for many, which places a burden on transportation and increases carbon footprint, as well as impacting shelf life. CEA can bring many food-growing resources closer to consumers, especially in urban areas or regions that would prove inhospitable to sensitive crops in a traditional farming operation.

CEA gives growers the means to apply physical systems of growth media, environmental controls, horticultural lighting, and water supply systems along with evidence-backed research in pest management, food safety processes, light customization, and more to produce food sources in a manner designed to balance economic viability, food demand, and sustainability.

Technologies available to modern CEA growers would naturally require a more advanced skillset. Indeed, said Rangarajan, “Our efforts have laid the groundwork for what I hope will be a dynamic training program that will build the workforce and elevate the industry as a whole.”

It’s an exciting time in the horticultural and agricultural space, and learning opportunities abound. Bookmark our HortiCann Light + Tech conference homepage for updates on our upcoming October program, now virtual for 2020. Moving beyond horticultural lighting fundamentals, the program will also delve into agribusiness and the return on investment in advanced systems and controls, AgTech systems integration, and topics related to legalized cannabis growing operations.

Photo credit: Image by iamereri via Pixabay; used under free license for commercial or non-commercial purposes.

Author: Carrie Meadows | LEDsMagazine | Jul 10, 2020

Pablo Bunster, Co-founder and CCO of AgroUrbana “In Our Next Farm, We Will Be Able To Use 100% Renewable Energy”

As Chile has been in a complete lockdown since mid-May, AgroUrbana is lucky to continue its operations. “It’s not easy, because you have to change the way of operating, the interactions, and in-farm activities, even when food safety was already key to the company culture. Our customers have been ordering through home delivery”, Cristián Sjögren, Co-founder and CEO of AgroUrbana says.

Renewable energy

Bunster notes: “It took us from the energy market, from renewable energy, to farming. We believe that this is the perfect testing round to see what vertical farming can do.” Chile has drought, cheap labor, we have competitive, available and abundant renewables. Which is always a discussion around vertical farming. We manage sunlight here as we use 100% renewable energy PPA. However, we cannot do this with our pilot because the overall consumption is too low, so we have to regulate it. In our next farm, we will be able to go 100% renewable. That puts a lot toward sustainability for vertical farming.” The urban population is growing fast in Latin America. AgroUrbana believes that vertical farming can accommodate that food demand.

“Our next stage is, going commercial to a scale where we can bring costs down”, Bunster continues. “First, we thought of a small community distributed model with a few small blocks around, such as container farms. But, we believe that scale is still required as you can become more competitive with higher efficiency.

“First, we’re farmers and technology comes to serve that purpose be the best farmers! We are developing some technologies internally to run our farms, but our focus now is how we can actually rate the curve of cutting costs to make our products increasingly competitive. We want to stay out of the commodity but still reach the masses. Our mantra is to deliver better quality food to everyone”, Sjögren adds.

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Pablo Bunster harvesting some fresh lettuce

Pilot farm

Sjögren states: “We started with a pilot farm, because vertical farming is something completely new in Latin America.” Before launching a new category for Agriculture in Chile, Sjögren and Bunster wanted to understand the economics of vertical farming. They took an approach of technology-agnostic by building a 3000 sq. ft pilot farm, where different technologies are tested. The 18-month pilot phase will be completed by the end of this year. 

“We are integrating our own recipe that combines the seeds nature provides us with its nutrition and environmental parameters. Next to that, we are constantly improving and optimizing our operations in order to drive down costs”, Bunster adds. These quantities are allocated in a 3000 sq. ft farm which is not a large production, Sjögren noted, but this is done to test the market, integrate and develop our technology and do R&D in new varieties. AgroUrbana is planning on scaling up throughout Chile in 2021 with an aim to further expand into the new markets, mainly large urban areas, in the region in the next years. 

“Chile is a perfect testing ground to start, test and stress what vertical farming can do, due to the Mediterranean weather we have, favorable to open farming, but also abundant and competitive renewable energy. We both spent our last ten years in the wind- and solar energy industry. Renewables will help AgroUrbana close the gap between traditional agriculture and vertical farming”, Sjögren says. 

The country has suffered from climate change, with a 10-year drought that highly affected Chilean agriculture. AgroUrbana has achieved surprising improvements in its yield. “We are planning to transfer all this knowledge to our next farm, a 30,000 sq. ft commercial-scale farm. In the upcoming months, we are doing funding rounds in order to help us realize this farm.

Sjögren says that AgroUrbana is going to pilot in the berry space as well, such as strawberries. “We are starting a pilot to test the different varieties of strawberries. Next to that, we are developing edible flowers and some microgreens”, Sjögren affirms. Most of the volume is lettuce, but we will be rolling out other leafy greens and we will see how it goes with the other crops. 

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Carmelo platform

“There are many components such as climate control, irrigation, growing structures, and so on. We want to put all the pieces together and operate these very efficiently”, Sjögren states. The company is developing a technology ‘Carmelo’, a platform of sensors with hardware and software to monitor and control our operations. “We are at a level of precision, where we are able to handle the microclimates within the farm. Using Carmelo, we are collecting data already for over one year which is helping us to become even more precise and consistent.” All data gathered will be used for our first large scale commercial farm planned for 2021.

“We’re all about technology and data because that’s how you drive down the costs. We are combining genetics, giving the perfect climate, and the perfect environment. Carmelo is all about finetuning the recipe we’re creating, through managing a farm, and having consistent quality food, every day of the year”, Bunster adds. 

Product pricing

“Our team is in good spirits as we have been keeping up production. The pandemic hit us hard, but we were able to relocate all production to different distribution channels, such as e-commerce, supermarkets and subscriptions”, Bunster states. We were planning on doing that already, but we accelerated our go-to-market because of the current situation. “There’s no going back on e-commerce because customers are getting used to it. If we can take our produce to e-commerce, keep our customers satisfied and easy about always getting the perfect product, they’ll always order it online. It’s something we already wanted to do and we are currently testing and proving it. So far, we’re doing okay”, Bunster adds.

AgroUrbana has two markets, one of them being retail with a fast pace opening of new distribution for their products, with 100% recyclable packaging. Furthermore, the company delivers its products to restaurants. Since one year, AgroUrbana has launched its own house mix of lettuce. 

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Cristián Sjögren and his colleague preparing the plugs for planting

Bunster mentioned that AgroUrbana is selling to restaurants that are price sensitive. Meaning that they care about food quality and the costs. “Here’s where food waste comes into play. We do not have any food waste. We’re coming to the point where most of what we grow, we’re able to process and sell. In restaurants only, we’re saving between 25-35% food of waste in leafy greens. We are very efficient in logistics as we don’t truck. We move food for a few miles from our farms to the kitchens of different clients. This helps us to make numbers for a competitive market.”

Focusing on the next generation

“It has been exciting to put our team together because nobody has a vertical farming degree on its resumé. We’re really excited to prepare the next generation of vertical farmers. We’re putting together different skills and attracting the next generation of farmers that want to move from the countryside to the city. It’s an attractive way to get a generation back to growing veggies in the city with a lot of interaction with technology”, Sjögren ends. 

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For more information:
AgroUrbana
Cristián Sjögren, Co-Founder and CEO
cristian.sjogren@agrourbana.ag 
Pablo Bunster, Co-Founder and CCO
pablo.bunster@agrourbana.ag
www.agrourbana.ag 

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Publication date: Tue 25 Aug 2020
Author: Rebekka Boekhout
© HortiDaily.com

Scaling Up Urban Farming Beyond COVID-19

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by Esther Ngumbi | University of Illinois

9 June 2020

*Any views expressed in this opinion piece are those of the author and not of Thomson Reuters Foundation.

The world has seen an increase in urban farming amid the coronavirus and fragile food supply chains

Esther Ngumbi, Ph.D., is Assistant Professor in the Department of Entomology and African American Studies Department at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She is a Senior Food security fellow with the Aspen Institute New Voices

More urban dwellers who usually rely on food that is sourced from farms away from the city are turning to urban farming now that COVID-19 has fractured and exposed how fragile the existing food supply chains are. Google trends reports show that searches for “gardens” are up and enterprises that sell plants and seeds report a spike in the number of customers. Across America, people are planting more vegetables.

Around the world, other countries have seen a sharp increase in urban farming, from Jakarta, to Singapore to Australia. This is a move in the right direction and the reinvigorating of the urban farming movement should be supported and nurtured.

What does urban farming look like? According to the United States Department of Agriculture and Food and Agriculture Organization, urban agriculture can take many forms, from roof-top gardens to farming on abandoned buildings and parking lots to backyard and balcony gardening. In many African countries, it often entails sack and stack farming and traditional gardening in backyards, and in some places like  South Africa, it also includes rooftop gardens and small farm gardens.

There are many benefits to urban farming including condensing the mileage of food from the farm to the market to improving personal health, ecosystems, and food insecurity while promoting sustainable livelihoods. Most importantly, during the pandemic, urban farming has helped families to cope with food insecurities.   

The urban farming movement is especially welcome in Africa, a continent that is rapidly urbanizing, with cities that are crowded and costly.  At 3.5 percent per year, Africa’s urban growth rate is the highest in the world, and that number is expected to keep increasing. Supporting urban farming across Africa would allow the continent to be ready for any future pandemics.  Moreover, at the moment, urban cities in Africa rely on rural areas to meet their food demands, because most of the food consumed is bought in markets and from vendors who source their food directly from farmers that are based in rural areas. 

How do we then tap into the renewed attention to urban farming by city dwellers? 

Well, to develop effective support systems while further nurturing urban agriculture, there is the need to first and foremost accurately capture and map the current state of things. How many new community and city gardens and farms have been planted? Who is doing it? What challenges have they faced? What kind of food are they growing? How did they finance their venture? Who are they distributing the products to? How big is the space and land they are using?

Creating databases and dashboard maps of this information is vital to growing the urban farming movement. This can be done by sending surveys by organizations that are already practicing urban farming, city governments or educational institutions that are based near urban cities. Creating these inventories would also serve to inform urban city planners and policy makers and governments while connecting urban farmers with each other, to potential funders and to consumers.

Second, farming and agriculture is knowledge-intensive. Consequently, there is a need to establish support systems for these farmers. Urban dwellers need current knowledge about recent growing methods, innovative business models, and other best practices to ensure they make the most out of their urban farming enterprise. The good thing is that there are ample resources such as on the sites of USDA, and UN FAO.

Moreover, as urban farming grows, a community and network of support would be key. Urban farmers living in the same cities and regions can form partnerships to support each other.

As we nurture the movement, we must also encourage many more urban dwellers who have not yet ventured into urban farming to give it a try. From university webpages to private organizations to associations YouTube videos including guiding African cities urban dwellers on how to successfully create a bag garden. 

Food supplies disruptions due to another pandemic or other causes are likely to happen. This new appreciation for urban farming fostered during COVID-19 lockdowns should keep growing. We must continue to tap onto urban agriculture to grow fresh, healthy, and nutritious food for urban city dwellers.

THEMES CLIMATE (AIR POLLUTION, GREEN TRANSPORT, ZERO CARBON INITIATIVES ETC)