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Jersey City May Have The U.S.'s First Municipal Vertical Farm. Experts Share How it Can Thrive
The city has signed a three-year contract with the Newark-based vertical farming company AeroFarms and plans to begin growing leafy greens in 10 locations including senior centers, schools, public housing complexes and municipal buildings later this year
Rebecca King | NorthJersey.com
June 26, 2020
Jersey City is on track to implement the country’s first municipal vertical farming program.
The city has signed a three-year contract with the Newark-based vertical farming company AeroFarms and plans to begin growing leafy greens in 10 locations including senior centers, schools, public housing complexes, and municipal buildings later this year.
“A lot of people don’t go for regular physicals,” said Jersey City Mayor Steven Fulop. “They’re not checking their sugar levels, blood pressure or cholesterol. Having people be more diligent about their diet will hopefully increase their lifespan, long-term.”
Once the microgreens start sprouting, members of the community will be able to sign up to receive free produce. They’ll be encouraged to attend seminars about healthy eating and get regular health tests done through Quest Diagnostics, which has also partnered with the city.
Because crops are stacked at this AeroFarms facility, the company says it can produce 390 times the crops from a traditional farm.~Courtesy of AeroFarms
“It’s important to be doing this prior to people getting diseases or sicknesses,” said Fulop. “A lot of what we’re doing is based on education. Many people aren’t aware of the bad foods they’re putting in their bodies on a regular basis.”
Vertical farming is one method of hydroponic controlled environment agriculture. Instead of being grown outside in soil, plants in vertical farms are stacked on shelves inside, misted with nutrients and lit with LED lights in lieu of sunlight.
Garrett Broad, an assistant professor at Fordham University whose research focuses on new food technology, food justice, and community-based organizing, says vertical farming has many sustainability boons.
Because the environment is completely controlled, the weather cannot destroy or affect crops. Vertical farming saves water. It reduces runoff. There’s no need for pesticides. And any kind of crop can be grown year-round. Fulop predicts Jersey City’s program will produce 19,000 pounds of food annually.
“The idea is that by doing vertical stacking, you can get a lot of productivity out of a very small area,” Broad said.
Farmers tend plants at AeroFarms with the help of platforms that can rise and fall.~Courtesy of AeroFarms
But, there are downsides. Vertical farming is extremely energy-intensive. Even energy-saving LED lights require a huge amount of power to shine on the crops. According to Fulop, Jersey City has no way to offset the impact of this energy use yet. Many of the farms are housed in decades-old buildings that have not been updated to include solar panels or other energy-saving technologies.
“It’s something we need to consider in the future,” said Fulop.
The other issue with vertical farming is that leafy greens are essentially the only plants worth growing, said Broad. Larger, heavier fruits and vegetables have too much biomass and require too much artificial light and nutrients to grow in a cost-effective way.
Indeed, Fulop confirmed that greens are the “easiest base material” to grow and will be the focus of Jersey City’s vertical farms.
That said, vertical farms do have the ability to create change in a community when done right, said Broad.
“Vertical gardens are similar to other urban farming projects we see,” he said. “They exist on a sort of spectrum. Some are total failures, some are a fun project and some are actually part of a social change.”
Projects that don’t receive enough funding or attention rank as “total failures.” Small community gardens rank in the “fun project” category -- “They provide small scale change. People get to know their food a bit more, they learn some horticultural skills, but it doesn’t drastically change the community,” said Broad.
According to Broad, Jersey City will have to do extensive community outreach to make vertical farming a long-term success – which means reaching out to faith leaders, schools and groups that are trusted by the community and getting them involved with the distribution of produce.
It means talking to residents about what vegetables they actually eat; planning cooking classes at times when people aren’t working; making dishes at those classes that the attendees will actually cook in their own homes.
As technology continues to improve, the company expects vertical farming to become even more cost-effective. | Courtesy of AeroFarms
“Did we ask to see if the people who are actually the target of this project have working kitchens? Are we making sure they have pots and pans? Are we growing food that’s culturally relevant to them? If we don’t ask these questions, a lot of times vertical farming projects stay in the ‘nice and fun’ category,” Broad said.
Jersey City has launched a few food initiatives in past years. The city gave grants to bodegas and corner stores to redesign display cases, putting fruits and vegetables next to their counters instead of snacks and candy to encourage healthy eating. Another program involved walking senior citizens around a supermarket and teaching them to read the labels on the back of packaged foods. At the end of the tour, they were given money and encouraged to purchase healthy meals.
Areas in which there is an extreme lack of nutritious, affordable food have been called “food deserts.” But, those who study farming technology have been moving away from that term, which brings up images of scarcity and used-up land. Instead, “food swamp” is now used to describe cities and towns that have food available, but few healthy options. Others use the term “food apartheid” to draw attention to food inequality. Poorer neighborhoods are usually the places that lack fresh, affordable food.
Jersey City is one such place, said Broad. If given the right attention, he added, a vertical farming initiative could be a step toward addressing poverty and food inequality.
“This is the kind of thing that can be fun and flashy and get media attention,” he said. “But, it’s up to us to apply pressure to the government and say, ‘OK, show us how this is part of something bigger.’”
Rebecca King is a food writer for NorthJersey.com. For more on where to dine and drink, please subscribe today and sign up for our North Jersey Eats newsletter.
Email: kingr@northjersey.com Twitter: @rebeccakingnj Instagram: @northjerseyeats
June 26, 2020
VIDEO: Fulop Elaborates on Jersey City’s Vertical Farming Program, The First of its Kind in The Nation
“The last couple of months have highlighted that diabetes, obesity, high blood pressure, and heart disease make people more at risk and that’s more prevalent in communities that have less access to healthy food,” Fulop said. “So we though running a large-scale program that incorporates education and diet, which a lot of people don’t know about, with access to food that can hopefully change habits.”
By John Heinis
June 9, 2020
Jersey City Mayor Steven Fulop elaborated on the city’s vertical farming program, the first of its kind in the nation and the fourth overall across the globe, during an interview this afternoon.
“The last couple of months have highlighted that diabetes, obesity, high blood pressure, and heart disease make people more at risk and that’s more prevalent in communities that have less access to healthy food,” Fulop said.
“So we though running large-scale program that incorporates education and diet, which a lot of people don’t know about, with access to food that can hopefully change habits.”
The city will be joining forces with AeroFarms, a Newark-based vertical farming facility, to help make the effort successful.
“Societies’ structural food problems have become more clear with COVID-19. The world needs more distributed, localized food production systems. We also need new ways to get healthy food to our most disadvantaged members of society,” stated AeroFarms CEO David Rosenberg.
Yesterday, the city announcing that there would be 10 farms throughout the city, which are estimated to produce 19,000 pounds of produce a year.
This afternoon, the mayor indicated that two of the locations will be within the Jersey City Public Schools, with the specifics to be determined at a later date, one at Marion Gardens, along with City Hall and the Bethune Center. The remaining locations are still pending.
In addition to the partnership with AeroFarms and the Health and Human Services Department overseeing the program, the World Economic Forum – who describes themselves as “an organization for public-private cooperation” – will also be a key component of the operation.
“We know diet is a key predictor of life expectancy and the Coronavirus has made clear the huge inequities on food access and food education that exists in different communities,” HHS Director Stacey Flanagan said in a statement.
“ … In collaboration with both private-public sector stakeholders, the initiative aims to catalyze new ecosystems that will enable socially vibrant and health and well-being centric cities and communities,” added Head of the Healthy Cities and Communities initiative at the WEF Mayuri Ghosh.
Some residents had questioned what the healthy eating workshops and health-monitoring component of the program would entail and Fulop elaborated today when asked about the particulars.
“It’s not new to have an education component with a city program … just recently, around a similar healthy food initiative – healthy food classes around supermarket shopping. And subsequent to that, we gave vouchers to have people shop with information that they just learned,” he explained.
“It’s important to change habits and incentivize people to do that and at the same time, give them mechanisms to track the progress. So we’re thankful for Quest Diagnostics, which is one of the largest labs in the world on this front and they’re going to help us track and of course keep patient confidentiality.”