These Vertical Hydroponics Systems Are Growing Fresh Lettuce Anywhere With An Outlet
Sarah Hauer Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
November 29, 2019
Alex Tyink, a partner in Fork Farms, is shown looking down at a vertical hydroponics unit on Tuesday, November 26, 2019 at Butte des Morts Elementary School in Menasha, Wis. Fork Farms LLC has expanded a lot in the last year going from just selling in Wisconsin to 18 states. Three of these goods are harvested each week, producing about 60 pounds of fresh Romaine lettuce, which is used by the food service at Menasha High School. MARK HOFFMAN/MILWAUKEE JOURNAL SENTINEL
Mark Hoffman/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Years ago, Alex Tyink met a guy who was farming on a rooftop in New York City.
Tyink was an opera singer then and like the arias he performed onstage, the process of growing food captivated him. So Tyink started doing it, too — growing food in the middle of the city for friends and family. Any extra went to a food pantry.
Tyink helped start more rooftop gardens around New York. But he found the farms difficult to scale.
Five years, 30 prototypes and a move back to Wisconsin later, Tyink is the founder of Appleton-based Fork Farms LLC. With his product, dubbed a Flex Farm, food can be grown nearly anywhere with an outlet. The company produces a vertical hydroponics system for indoor agriculture, requiring lower energy and labor resources than other systems Tyink used.
The Flex Farm is catching on and growth is ramping up. Fork Farms is set to double its revenue this year, Tyink said. Fork Farms' systems are now in schools, restaurants, private clubs and in health care systems in nearly 20 states.
"Everyone is tired of paying for food to go bad," he said.
The Flex Farms are best for highly perishable foods like lettuces and tomatoes. One four-foot-tall system can grow more than 150 pounds of leafy greens a year, according to the company. The Flex Farm starts at $2,995.
Hydroponics is a method of growing plants that deliver nutrients through water, rather than soil. The Flex Farm system requires water and electricity to run, light is reflected throughout the system so the plants will grow.
"Sometimes people think about it as being unnatural and I don’t think about it that way," said Neil Mattson, associate professor of plant science at Cornell University. "Roots take up nitrogen in the same molecular form if it's in soil or a water solution and photosynthesis takes the same form if its sunlight or another beam."
Hydroponics takes up less space and uses less water than traditional agriculture. It can be done indoors, allowing for year-round food production. Highly perishable crops are among the most common to grow using hydroponics, Mattson said.
While Tyink's initial vision was to sell to schools, all sorts of would-be hydroponics farmers are buying the units. Fork Farms has installed its system in almost 300 locations, Tyink said. Some of those installations are one Flex Farm while others have a dozen or more.
The Marshfield Clinic's community health center purchased 17 farms to be placed in Rusk County to see if the increase in fresh food available affects public health, he said. Medinah Country Club outside Chicago is using Flex Farms to ensure fresh produce year-round.
The Oak Creek-Franklin Joint School District has four Flex Farms kept in the 9th Grade Center's cafeteria at Oak Creek High School. The farms supply fresh lettuces and herbs daily to around 2,000 students a day who eat lunch served by the district.
"I don't have a green thumb," said Jill Fehler who serves as the district's hydroponic farmer. " I had a fear of failure, but it's not hard to grow the lettuce and things. Cucumbers and strawberries are a little harder."
Fehler said she spends less than 15 minutes a day on the farm. The ph levels need to be checked and water added to the tanks, said Fehler, a food service director for Teher Inc., the school district's food management company.
"I also sing to them," she said. "They like Sinatra."
It takes about four weeks for the plant to grow from a seed to something to harvest. She's looking to start growing jalapenos next.
Six full-time employees comprise Fork Farms' core team. Nearly every component that goes into one of the units is produced within 50 miles of Fork Farms headquarters in Appleton. All of the plastics work, gasketing, and metal fabrication is done in Wisconsin.
It's the social mission that keeps the team going, Tyink said. Fork Farms developed a curriculum with FIRST Educational Resources LLC in Oshkosh for kindergarten through grade 12 students to accompany the hydroponics system, covering science, arts, health and other disciplines.
"We have to keep selling stuff to stay alive but that’s not really why we’re here," Tyink said.
Sarah Hauer can be reached at shauer@journalsentinel.com or on Instagram @HauerSarah and Twitter @SarahHauer. Subscribe to her weekly newsletter Be MKE at jsonline.com/bemke.