Welcome to iGrow News, Your Source for the World of Indoor Vertical Farming
A Healthy Hydroponics Ecosystem
“I believe the current pandemic has provided us the opportunity to completely reimagine the global food system,” says Tony Hunter, a global food futurist
October 28, 2020
How New Ways of Growing Can Help
The UAE Achieve Food Security
A little under two years ago, Mariam Hareb Almheiri, UAE Minister of State for Food Security, made a presentation to the country’s leadership. The National Strategy for Food Security aims to take the UAE to top spot in the Global Food Security Index by 2021; enable sustainable food production through technological means; improve nutrition; and reduce waste. One of the technologies that can help turn this national strategy into reality is hydroponics.
Rethinking the food system
“I believe the current pandemic has provided us the opportunity to completely reimagine the global food system,” says Tony Hunter, a global food futurist. “Countries should look to ensuring domestic manufacture of basic foodstuffs for their own populations.” Hunter, who gave a talk on the potential silver linings of the pandemic for the global food industry in a Gulfood webinar earlier this year, believes hydroponics may be a promising method of ensuring a country can supply some of its own fresh produce at a time when Covid-19 has rendered international supply chains vulnerable.
Paresh Purushothaman, Managing Director at Greenoponics, says, “There is a lot of support in the local community for developing farms that use water-conserving methods such as hydroponics.” His company, which specialises in hydroponic and other soil-free agricultural technologies, serves both retail customers – primarily homes and offices – and commercial clients, who use slightly larger systems to grow their own produce.
Hydroponics at home
It’s easier than you think to set up a mini hydroponics system in your home – so long as you have a good grasp of its principles and a bit of patience, explains Purushothaman. “All you need is one free square metre to get started. A small system using a technology called deep water culture is the easiest way to start. You can grow leafy greens including basil, parsley, coriander, various varieties of spinach and rocket leaves.”
Greenoponics’ smallest system, Ezee, can grow all of these, and can fit 16 plants at once. Slightly more ambitious home gardeners can opt for the bigger Eva, which can grow up to 20 plants at once – including cucumbers and tomatoes – using a nutrient film technique. A staple for both salads and cooking, these fruits take about 35 to 40 days to mature, and one plant can provide multiple harvests.
New technologies
Meanwhile, The Sustainable City in Dubai is home to special controlled-environment domes that fuse fish farming and urban farming – a term referred to as aquaponics. “We have advocated urban farming since day one not only in response to the UAE’s food security strategy but also as a lifestyle,” explains Karim El-Jisr, Chief Sustainability Officer - Social. “Urban farming can assume many shapes and sizes, including aquaponics, which combines conventional aquaculture (better known as fish farming) with hydroponics (soilless farming).
“Whereas indoor farming tends to focus hydroponics for the production of leafy greens and vegetables, we wanted to explore aquaponics as a way to produce animal protein within a community. We currently operate an aquaponic system that produces fish and fodder such as alfalfa. Aquaponics is about nutrient cycling, whereby fish waste becomes a source of nutrients for the plants, which help maintain water quality for the fish,” he says.
El-Jisr says the pandemic has highlighted the need to prioritise local supply chains, and urban farming is simply a great opportunity to create value for society while protecting the environment. “Food security is about improving the availability of and access to healthy and essential foods, including fibre and protein. The benefits of urban farming, including hydroponics, is that we can produce a lot of food in small spaces, and save a lot of water.”
While he says hydroponics can increase yields over conventional farming by a factor of 12 while reducing per-crop unit of water consumption by up to 95 per cent, he does concede that one of the challenges of indoor farming is the energy requirements of recreating a plant’s natural environment.
Purushothaman points out to the increasing affordability of LED lighting and automation solutions as key to the medium-term growth of indoor farms. “Automation can set the release of nutrients and water circulation to a timer, while ensuring the oxygen content, PH levels and electrical conductivity of the water are at their optimal levels – all factors that determine a plant’s growth.”
Besides energy consumption, both El-Jisr and Hunter highlight the cost competitiveness of hydroponic produce – compared to conventionally farmed imported produce – as a key challenge to hydroponics becoming more mainstream. However, Hunter cites the lowering cost of technology as a means of redressing the balance, while El-Jisr says, “With time, through innovation, indoor farming will overcome these challenges.” With technology, believes Hunter, “Countries no longer need to be bound by the tyrannies of arable land and fresh water or be at the mercy of the agricultural and political policies of other countries.”
Lead photo: A mini hydroponics system at homeImage Credit: Supplied
Interview With Eddy Badrina, CEO of Eden Green Technology
One company that is looking to take on the commercial agricultural industry is Eden Green Technology, a company based out of Texas that focuses on sustainability in the food industry
Josiah Motley · April 27, 2020 · Short URL: https://vator.tv/n/5018
A look at the vertical farming platform that uses tech to grow a variety of healthy foods
When we talk about technology, it's easy to focus on things like computers, smartphones, apps, and the growing number of smart gadgets found in our homes.
But technology is far-reaching and can influence and change traditional sectors quickly. One sector that may seem immune to the growing use of technology is the farming industry, but a quick look at what farm equipment is becoming can prove that wrong quickly (even if the transition is proving difficult for some).
One company that is looking to take on the commercial agricultural industry is Eden Green Technology, a company based out of Texas that focuses on sustainability in the food industry.
I had the chance to interview Eddy Badrina, CEO of the company, to learn a bit more about what they are doing, how they use technology, and how they envision the future of the agricultural industry.
Check it out below.
Care to introduce yourself and your role with Eden Green?
Sure. I'm Eddy Badrina, and I’m the CEO of Eden Green Technology.
In just a few sentences, what is Eden Green?
Eden Green Technology is a vertical farming platform that grows large quantities of local produce safely, sustainably, and efficiently. We use less land, energy, and water than both traditional farming and other indoor solutions.
Our greenhouses are constructed on small footprints, in urban or suburban areas, to provide stable jobs and produce non-GMO, pesticide-free produce, which goes from farm to table in as little as 48 hours, compared to the 14 days it usually takes under the traditional model.
What inspired the creation of the company?
The founders of Eden Green are brothers Jacques and Eugene van Buuren. They witnessed firsthand the effects of hunger in their native South Africa and thereafter dedicated themselves to helping feed the world.
They came to the US to secure investment, source talent, and experiment with their technological solutions in our diverse climates. They started in Texas, with its own extreme range of environmental considerations, agricultural know-how, and business opportunities, and built from there.
What types of produce can your vertical farms grow?
Our greenhouses can grow 50+ varieties of produce, including herbs, leafy greens like spinach, kale, and arugula, and a sizable array of vegetables, plus other non-produce plants like hemp and research crops.
You call yourself a tech company, can you go into more detail on that?
Absolutely. So, our technical secret sauce consists of a few ingredients, including our patented vertical “vines,” where our produce grows, and the way we create microclimates for each individual plant with temperature-controlled air and nutrient-enriched water.
We also designed and built a proprietary mechanical, electrical, and plumbing solution specifically to automate and remotely monitor all our greenhouses. Because of that hardware and software combination, we like to think of ourselves as a technology company that happens to grow produce.
Eden Green seems extremely relevant right now with coronavirus, are you doing anything to help people and businesses affected by the virus?
We directed our R&D facility to start a unique partnership with a local business that had to pivot from supplying high-end restaurants to starting home deliveries of high-quality poultry, eggs, beef, and produce.
For every pound of our produce they deliver, we are giving one pound away to local food banks, homeless shelters, and other nonprofits. The creative problem-solving of combining how to sell our produce, help another small business grow, and feed the local underserved population all at the same time, was a really valuable experience.
More generally, the coronavirus crisis brings into focus the kinds of problems with traditional farming methods that we help directly address - easy access to local food sources, sustainability, and resiliency.
A more-widespread application of greenhouses like ours would also help defray the market effects of workforce shortages due to sickness, the personal effects of crowded, unsanitary, and otherwise-unsafe work environments, and the problems that come with relying on low-paid seasonal work.
What locations are you currently available in and do you plan on expanding?
We currently have our R&D facility in Texas and are prepping for facilities to be built in two other countries and a number of states.
Through our Texas facility alone, we’ve partnered with local food banks and nonprofit organizations, run pilot tests with two grocery companies, and a research university, with a lot more expansion planned in the coming years.
Do you believe this is the future of farming?
We absolutely believe that this is the future of farming. Not only does our solution make market sense - because global demand for year-round access to a variety of produce is growing, and costs to meet that demand are rising, having a locally-sourced, year-round solution solves for that - it’s also a sort of good on its own.
To be clear, we believe we are reshaping farming, not replacing farmers. We have always believed this will innovate the entire industry and will support farmers in the field to improve their processes and best practices.
The way we grow is more sustainable, environmentally friendly, and efficient (in terms of land, water, energy costs, and chemicals) than traditional farming. It saves time, money, and waste in the transportation of the produce, and it reduces food waste and the decrease in nutritional value incurred by transit as well.
If we can offer an opportunity to develop farms into a more efficient operation that improves not just food security in underserved areas, but also food safety, then we grow our business and help farmers as well.
Anything you'd like to close with?
Without getting too much on my soapbox, I’d just like to say that we have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to reassess what’s really important in each of our local communities, to refocus our efforts to care for those around us, and to rethink how businesses can thrive while doing that.
I’m excited to be part of Eden Green at a moment when we can be an example of the potential of the technology itself, and the philosophy underlying it: that we can treat our food, our people, and our environment - locally and globally -with the respect they deserve, and that we can all succeed together.
I'd like to thank Eddy for taking the time to answer some of my questions.
"Healthy Food Is A Basic Human Right"
These Local Initiatives Are Combatting America's Food Desert Issue
By Alex Aronson
Apr 30, 2019
Access to fresh food is not just an issue in third-world countries. It's a problem right here on American soil, and it's affecting millions.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) defines food deserts as "areas that lack access to affordable fruits, vegetables, whole grains, low-fat milk, and other foods that make up a full and healthy diet." This issue is also compounded by factors like lack of financial resources and an excess of convenience stores rather than large retail markets that stock healthy foods. Due to this problem, many communities in the U.S. struggle with a deficiency of proper nutrition, leading to a significant increase in child and adult obesity.
But not all hope is lost. There are some incredible organizations and individuals who dedicate their time to combatting this widespread issue.
Click here to learn how 11 amazing groups are doing their part to put an end to food deserts.
BARCROFT MEDIA GETTY IMAGES
National Nonprofit Aims To Put Gardens In 100 Detroit Schools
BIg Green
Kimbal Musk, co-founder and CEO, Big Green, stands in a learning garden in Indianapolis.
National Nonprofit Aims To Put Gardens In 100 Detroit Schools
Big Green, run by brother of Elon Musk, promotes science education, healthy eating
January 17, 2018, By SHERRI WELCH
- Big Green to bring 100 learning garden classrooms to metro Detroit as part of $5 million commitment
- Kimbal Musk, who with brother Elon sold company that later became PayPal, is champion behind the gardens
- $2 million raised so far for project
A national nonprofit run by the brother of serial entrepreneur Elon Musk aims to bring food education and outdoor "learning garden" classrooms to more than 100 metro Detroit schools as part of a $5 million plan to connect the city's youth to real food.
The gardens created by Boulder, Colo.-based Big Green are intended to support science lessons taught through the growing of food. The idea is to help kids increase their preference for nutritious foods, develop healthier responses to stress and improve their academic performance, said co-founder and CEO Kimbal Musk, who with his brother Elon developed and sold for $300 million the company that is now PayPal Holdings Inc.
Kimbal Musk went on to open Kitchen restaurant in Boulder, a farm-to-table restaurant, in 2004, and for the next dozen years helped local farmers scale their businesses to meet the growing demand of his restaurant group, The Kitchen Cafe LLC.
He also founded the Kitchen Community — now known as Big Green — after seeing how school gardens can help kids.
Since 2011, it has created learning garden classrooms, with raised beds planted with fruits and vegetables and student seating areas, in Denver, Indianapolis, Pittsburgh, Los Angeles and Chicago, serving about 250,000 students.
The metro Detroit project, which happened with encouragement from the Pathways Foundation, Musk said, has raised $2 million to date from Pathways; Grand Rapids-based Gordon Food Service; Carol Ilitch, a mediator at Oakland Mediation and the daughter of Little Caesars founders Mike and Marian Ilitch; and others.
The effort will target Detroit, elsewhere in Wayne County and nearby low-income, underserved schools, Kimbal Musk said.
"We have stopped educating our kids about real food for a couple of decades now, and the results have been disastrous, rampant diabetes ... and in some neighborhoods, over 40 percent of kindergarteners go into kindergarten obese," he said.
"It's not something they did to themselves. It's what we did to them, and we now need to fix it."
Big Green has named Ken Elkins, who served as COO of Winning Futures since 2013, as regional director for Detroit. He will be charged with hiring three teachers who will serve as garden educators and assist teachers with lesson planning, and three local landscapers to build and maintain the gardens.
Elkins also will be charged with raising the remaining $2.5 million to $3 million for the project.
The $5 million will fund the construction and planting of the first 100 learning gardens. The Detroit branch will then need to raise about $1 million a year afterward to maintain the teacher training and gardens, Musk said.
Big Green will work initially with the Grand Valley State University charter school network, given the interest it has shown in the learning gardens, Musk said.
The university charters 41 schools throughout metro Detroit, according to its website.
"We expect at some point to work with Detroit Public Schools Community District, as well," Musk said.
The nonprofit plans to build its first learning garden in April and to have 100 in place within 2 1/2 years, Musk said. "Will be moving very fast."
Big Green looks to build on the urban agriculture, community garden and school garden projects sprouting around Detroit.
School gardens have shown to be a powerful tool to improve test scores, Musk said.
"If you teach the exact same science lesson in fifth grade in the classroom and then move it out to the garden, you'll get a 15-point increase in test scores for those who had the outdoor lesson. It's so much more powerful than learning in the classroom."
As for the produce that's grown, many schools choose to do a farmers market, selling it to parents. Others incorporate it into the cafeteria menu so students can eat the food they've grown, he said.
Given that the gardens go in schools in low-income communities, "we also encourage people to eat food right out of the garden," Musk said.
Junk Food Could Be Taxed Like Cigarettes Or Alcohol, Researchers Find
Researchers found that a tax on junk food is both legally and administratively feasible at the federal level in the United States. Proponents of such a tax claim it will help curb obesity in the country which is now peaking at alarming levels, essentially becoming a public health hazard.
Junk Food Could Be Taxed Like Cigarettes Or Alcohol, Researchers Find
JANUARY 24TH, 2018 | BY TIBI PUIU
Researchers found that a tax on junk food is both legally and administratively feasible at the federal level in the United States. Proponents of such a tax claim it will help curb obesity in the country which is now peaking at alarming levels, essentially becoming a public health hazard.
“Economic and social environments can influence food choice in beneficial and harmful directions. Our finding that a federal manufacturer excise junk food tax — defined through product category or combined category-nutrient approaches — appears to be legally and administratively feasible and has strong implications for nutrition policy,” said Jennifer L. Pomeranz, who is an assistant professor of public health policy and management at NYU College of Global Public Health.
According to the CDC, 36.5 percent of American adults and roughly 20 percent of children ages 6 to 19 are obese. What’s more, over 70 percent of all men and 60 percent of all women from the US are overweight. This makes a huge fraction of the country’s population at risk of developing cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes, osteoarthritis, and chronic kidney disease. And to be fair, this is no longer an American problem. A third of the world’s population — over two billion people — is now either overweight or obese.
Given the public health risks, many experts believe we ought to enact policies that improve American diets. One course of action would be to regulate the price of food and beverage to incite consumers to make healthier choices, either through taxing unhealthy foods or offering subsidies for healthier foods.
A legally feasible tax
Researchers at New York University and the Friedman School at Tufts University investigated the feasibility of implementing a national soda or junk food tax. A federal-level tax, rather than state-by-state, is preferred because the effects are broader and you avoid seeing things like consumers traveling from state to state to fill groceries and dine at restaurants where they can escape the tax. On the other hand, the United States is not heterogeneous in its citizens’ attitude towards junk food or healthy eating, which will make a nation-wide tax challenging to implement.
The team examined the present scientific literature to identify which products should be targeted for junk food taxes but also looked elsewhere where similar legislation was passed. There are eight countries in the world who have implemented some kind of food and beverage taxation specifically aimed at curbing obesity.
Kerala, a state on India’s tropical Malabar Coast, imposed a 14.5 percent tax on the consumption of fast food. In 2014, France introduced a tax on sugary drinks that made a noticeable dent in the sales. And in the United States, some municipalities have taken matters into their hands. The city of Berkeley, for instance, introduced a one penny-per-ounce tax on all sugar-sweetened beverages sold in the city. Five months after its implementation, lower-income residents had reduced their consumption of these items by 21 percent compared to pre-tax levels.
Researchers identified four ways of classifying foods:
- by product category (such as soda or candy),
- broad nutrient criteria,
- specific nutrients or calories,
- or a combination.
The most frequently targeted categories were sugar-sweetened beverages, candy, processed meat products, and sweet and salty snacks, and the most frequently targeted foods were sugar, calories, and salt.
Next, the researchers looked at the various federal taxing mechanisms that would be the most administratively feasible. For instance, there are two main types of tax: sales or excise. Excise taxes are charged on the manufacture, distribution, or sale of commodities, and it’s up to the taxed entity to determine the extent to which it will pass on the tax to consumers. Sales taxes are paid directly by consumers and collected by sellers.
Other countries where there’s a junk food tax overwhelmingly use an excise tax mechanism, similar to the kind you see for alcohol and tobacco.
“One advantage of a manufacturer excise tax is that food companies may be incentivized to reformulate their products if nutrition criteria are incorporated into the tax,” Pomeranz said.
Ultimately, from a legal and administrative perspective, the team concluded that a federal junk food tax is feasible. Existing bills and laws support defining junk food through product-specific categories, and add a graduated taxation strategy where the tax increases as the nutritional quality of the food decreases. From an administrative perspective, current taxing mechanisms support the viability of a junk food excise tax paid by manufacturers, the researchers reported in the American Journal of Public Health. So, the ball is now in the court of policymakers who have the, admittedly, challenging and unpopular job of taxing junk food and soda.
Photo Credit: Pixabay
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New Research: Mediterranean-Style Diet Leads to Healthier Outcomes in Children
New Research: Mediterranean-Style Diet Leads to Healthier Outcomes in Children
Researchers at the University of Pharma, Italy, recently published a study in Nutrients identifying a link between a Mediterranean-style diet and key health outcomes in children. Children who more closely follow a Mediterranean-style diet are more likely to exhibit other healthy behaviors and outcomes such as increased physical activity, higher academic achievement, and better quality and quantity of sleep, the research reveals. The study analyzed the behaviors of approximately 700 school-aged children enrolled in the Giocampus educational program, created by Barilla and the University of Parma to improve the wellbeing of future generations through healthy eating education and promotion of physical activity.
The study adds to a growing body of research showing a positive association between a Mediterranean-style diet, healthy weight status, and sleep quantity and quality in children and adolescents. That is, better adherence to a Mediterranean-style diet may be associated with healthier weight status as well as more sleep and better-quality sleep.
“The Mediterranean Diet and the adoption of a healthy lifestyle do not mean just eating well and exercising, but also sleeping well. In fact, the word ‘diet’ in ancient Latin and Greek actually implied a lifestyle, rather than exclusively a dietary regimen,” says Kristen Wilk, MS, RDN, Senior Account Executive at Edelman, Food & Nutrition.
A Mediterranean-style diet incorporates the traditional healthy living habits of people from countries bordering the Mediterranean Sea, including Italy, France, Greece, and Spain. While Mediterranean cuisine varies by region, a Mediterranean-style diet is largely based on a high intake of vegetables, fruits, nuts, beans, cereal grains, olive oil, and fish, and small portions of meat and dairy. Pasta tossed with other healthy ingredients such as vegetables, beans, lean proteins, olive oil, and herbs is an easy, balanced Mediterranean-style meal. The Passion for Pasta Advisory Council, a project of Barilla bringing together scientists, nutritionists, and researchers to encourage sustainable consumption of pasta, provides a range of Mediterranean diet-friendly recipes on their website.
Other studies have revealed that following a Mediterranean-style diet can reduce the risk of heart disease and stroke and help fight against depression.