US: New York State - Youths Get Hands-On Lessons In Food Production
Boys And Girls Club Gets Indoor Hydroponic Farm
Steve Barnes October 23, 2019
The equivalent of a 2-acre farm that grows 500 heads of lettuce a week hides inside a 40-foot-long metal box in a parking lot near the police station in downtown Troy.
The container farm, as it's called, or Freight Farm, after the Boston-based company that first introduced hydroponic growing systems in repurposed shipping containers, is a project of the Boy & Girls Clubs of the Capital Area. The $90,000 container farm was a gift from the SEFCU credit union, which for the past two years has operated a similar container farm at its offices near the Harriman state office campus in Albany.
Launched over the summer and overseen by two adult staffers, the farm gives young people who participate in the Troy club's after-school programs hands-on experience planting, growing, harvesting and selling fresh produce. Although the farm now grows only greens, including two types of lettuce plus kale and Swiss chard, seeds are available for a variety of items, from radishes and beets to herbs and flowers. They are being considered for future crops, according to the club.
"It's sustainable, year-round and ideally will generate income while giving our teens good experience with fresh produce," said Justin Reuter, CEO of the BGCCA. The organization, formed earlier this year by a merger of clubs in Albany and Troy, serves 5,200 young people annually and recently opened facilities in Cohoes and Green Island.
The unexpected gift of the container farm came out of a conversation early this year, during what SEFCU's president and CEO, Michael Castellana, described as a "good news/bad news meeting" with club leaders, who had asked for a $50,000 donation to pay for a summer program.
"I closed the folder and said, 'Absolutely not,' " Castellana said, a response that was startling because, he said, "We hardly ever say to no them." Instead, aware of the hit SEFCU's own container farm had become among employees and the food pantries its produce was donated to, Castellana proposed giving one to the BGCCA. The offer, he said, initially left club representatives slack-jawed.
"Once they closed their mouths, they said, 'Absolutely yes,' " he said.
Hydroponic growing is hardly new, having been used commercially at least since the 1930s when Pan American Airways established a hydroponic growing operation for vegetables on a Pacific atoll that was used as a refueling station for flights from the U.S. to Asia. But container farms like the one run by the boys and girls club are less than a decade old. Freight Farms, which started manufacturing in 2013, has installed about 200 worldwide.
The only three Freight Farms in the Capital Region, according to a company spokeswoman, are owned by SEFCU, the BGCCA, and Carioto Produce and Seafood in Green Island, which acquired one almost three years ago.
The lettuces raised in the boys and girls club's container farm — butterhead, or Boston, and a red-leaf variety called Lollo Rosso — and the other greens take eight weeks to grow from seed to harvest. Seeds are planted in trays in a soil-like medium of ground coconut shells, where they are watered for three weeks. The small seedlings, with a pyramid-shaped plug of growing medium around their roots, are then transplanted into one of 256 foam-lined vertical columns, each 7 feet tall, that hang in facing rows along the sides of the container farm, 10 heads to a column. Nutrient-laden water, fed from the top by a computerized system, trickles down the columns, and, overnight, LEDs shine specially calibrated light on the plants. With staggered planting, the farm, in theory, can produce more than 600 heads a week, though production hasn't yet ramped up to that volume.
The greens become part of the approximately 1,100 meals a day the BGCCA serves at its locations, and club staffer Patricia Doyle, who manages the farm, said the fact the food is home-grown seems to have generated more receptivity among members than preteens and adolescents might otherwise grant leafy produce.
"When you grow something, you're more apt to eat it," she said. "They're proud of it."
The 10 to 12 club members who work on the farm put their initials on the columns they've planted, following their heads through to harvest.
"I was interested because I like science and nature, and it attracted me because I wanted to do something for my community," said club member Kelyse Bell. The 13-year-old moved to Lansingburgh earlier this year from North Carolina, where she learned gardening from her grandmother.
"This is better for the environment, too — you grow more in a faster time than you would on land on a normal farm," said Bell.
The club sells its lettuces, for $2 per head, at the Troy farmers market on Wednesday afternoon, and, in its first of a hoped-for list of restaurant customers, to Brown's Brewing, for use in its taprooms in Troy and North Hoosick. Much of the approximately 200 heads Brown's buys each week is the base for salads for private events in its Revolution Hall banquet facility, adjacent to the brewpub on River Street in downtown Troy.
"The taste is amazing, the leaves are all intact, there's no dirt, insects, chemicals or anything like that," said Paul Minbiole, operations director for Brown's Brewing and one of those involved in the decision to start purchasing the club's lettuce. He said, "It's processed and delivered to us the same day. You can't get much fresher than that without picking it yourself."
Being able to give a social-services nonprofit for youth the opportunity to expose its members to farming is part of SEFCU's larger mission of offering nontraditional growth opportunities and benefits for the communities it serves, said Castellana.
"SEFCU is committed to trying to change lives by trying to minimize obstacles that people have in their life," he said. "Hunger is one of the most significant and overlooked obstacles that people have, and this is one way to start to address that."
Bell said she is pleased by what she's learned about one of the futures of farming in just a few months since she started coming to the Troy club.
Demonstrating her new knowledge, Bell said the container farm operates at 60 degrees, with 55 to 60 percent humidity, and a higher level of carbon dioxide than in outside air.
"We're only supposed to be in here for about 45 minutes at a time," she said. "The air is good for plants, but people need more oxygen."
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Steve Barnes has worked at the Times Union since 1996, served as arts editor for six years, and since 2005 has been a senior writer.
Since 2006, Steve has passed along his knowledge, or at least his opinions, to young writers as a journalism instructor at the University at Albany.
Contact him at (518) 454-5489
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