Why Are British People Protesting U.S. Farm Imports?

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by H. Claire Brown

10.28.2020

Cow costumes, tractor caravans, and Great British Bake Off support: U.K. farmers and their allies are registering opposition to a new agriculture bill.

This weekend, lawmakers in the U.K. were greeted with a strange sight. Costumed demonstrators—one dressed like President Trump carrying a syringe, others dressed like farm animals—gathered in London to protest the passage of a new agriculture bill. 

At issue was the government’s failure to codify British food standards as the country exits the European Union. Activists fear this omission would crack open the door for an influx of food imports from the United States as part of a trade deal between the two nations. They argue that allowing imports of U.S. products like beef raised with hormones (hence the syringe) and chicken washed in chlorine would compromise food safety and animal welfare. 

A similar battle is playing out across Europe: The EU recently issued a green farming plan that blocks these products and signals a shift away from chemical pesticides and fertilizers. U.S. trade representative Ted McKinney called the plan a “diss.” And the EU once faced fierce opposition over imports of hormone-raised beef and chlorine chicken from the U.S., leading to an eventual ban—which Britain may abandon.

Elsewhere in the country, protestors have staged tractor parades down city streets and enlisted the support of celebrities including Jamie Oliver and Great British Bake Off judge Prue Leith in support of their cause. (Leith actually voted in favor of Brexit, so her tweets promoting British food standards were met with backlash from opponents who said she should have considered the consequences for farmers before voting to leave the European Union.) 

“In this country, we’ve been through some major food crises with foot and mouth 20 years ago. We had the horsemeat scandal. We had the egg scandal in the 80s, with salmonella.” says Liz Webster, a self-described “farmer’s wife” and campaign organizer with Save British Farming, a group that advocates for British food standards. “We’ve got stricter standards about how many animals you can have in an area.” 

Jamie Oliver put it another way in a video with the BBC: “Imagine being a British beef farmer and all of a sudden someone across the pond who uses hormones—those cows have never seen grass—they can sell you a product much cheaper.”

The messaging in these campaigns is a little muddled: They’re claiming that loosening import rules is bad for animal welfare, and also that it’s bad for farmers’ bottom lines, and, perhaps most alarmingly, that imported food threatens the health of the people who eat it. And it is true that the European Union has adopted food standards that ban some potentially harmful products used in animal production and food processing in the U.S., including bovine growth hormone. If the U.K. adopts its own agriculture policy without banning the same products, activists worry they’ll find their way into the food supply. It’s also true that Europe has adopted some stricter animal welfare laws, including rules that give chickens a bit more space than their American counterparts. 

“They’re trying to imply that food imported from America isn’t safe somehow, or that it’ll poison them or something—they don’t spell it out because it’s not true.”

Yet the implication in many of these campaigns that U.S. food imports are less safe than homegrown beef is not backed up by acknowledgment from the U.S. or the World Trade Organization. “They’re trying to imply that food imported from America isn’t safe somehow, or that it’ll poison them or something—they don’t spell it out because it’s not true. What they’re really talking about is the way the food is produced,” said Sean Rickard, an economic analyst who advises clients on food and farming.

Of course, there’s a deeper set of issues at play here: This bill, which represents the government’s foray into post-Brexit agricultural policy, has been a wake-up call for farmers, half of whom voted in favor of leaving the EU, Rickard said. “What farmers realized as it was going through the Houses of Parliament was that it wasn’t actually the sort of milk and honey that they had been expecting,” he added. The bill removes direct payments to farmers and replaces them over the next several years, though the details are hazy. More concerning to some are the trade implications.

“Farmers suddenly woke up to the fact that one of the dangers was that if this bill didn’t protect them against imports of cheaper food, they were going to be completely screwed,” Rickard said. “They were not only going to lose their support systems, but they were also going to face imports from countries that can produce food more cheaply.” 

Over time, the food service sector will slowly start purchasing imported meat, and Britons will start eating chicken grown in the U.S. at KFC.

Rickard is cynical about the potential inclusion of food standards language in the agriculture bill because such a move could jeopardize a trade deal with the U.S. “[Representatives] made abundantly clear there will be no trade deal with us if we are not prepared to accept American standards,” Rickard said. That puts politicians in a bind: Some of Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s key supporters are farmers, but a bilateral trade deal with the U.S. is not compatible with a policy that limited American farm imports. 

U.K. legislators have promised not to allow imports of the two most incendiary products—beef raised with growth hormones and chicken washed with chlorine—but The Guardian notes that the proof will be in the pudding. Under pressure to sign a trade deal with the U.S., these assurances may fall by the wayside. 

In the long run, Rickard envisions a slow, grudging acceptance of U.S. food imports. “I think in the short run, the supermarkets will say, ‘Oh, we’re going to put big labels up. None of our food will be produced in the way Americans do,’” he said. But over time, the foodservice sector will slowly start purchasing imported meat, and Britons will start eating chicken grown in the U.S. at KFC. Slowly, the grocery stores will follow suit. “The truth is that when it comes to buying food—and we have a lot of people, unemployed, single-parent families, in this country—cheaper food will find its way into the supermarkets,” he added.

Lead photo: AP Photo/Alberto Pezzali

Trade Trump

Also tagged farmers, food imports, trade, trump administration, united kingdom

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H. Claire Brown is a senior staff writer for The Counter.

How Indoor Farming Is Shaping The Future of The Agriculture And Curbing Climate Change

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October 14, 2020

Irving Fain - Bowery Farming Founder & CEO joins Yahoo Finance’s On The Move panel to discuss how the vertical farming company has expanded into more than 650 U.S. stores as well as break down how consumer demands are changing our food systems.

ADAM SHAPIRO: Farming revolution under the way. Sustainable farming, but the kind of farming that takes place indoors and on rooftops. To talk about this, we bring in Irving Fain. He's Bowery Farming founder and CEO.

Years ago, I got to see an indoor marijuana farm, essentially, where they grew everything in a ground coconut shell, but it was incredibly efficient the way the nutrients and the water were recycled. And I would imagine that's part of what you do.

But what's even cooler about this is, you're already supplying, what, is it 600 plus stores in the tri-state area with your produce. So how does someone who's got their start in software and finance go into farming?

IRVING FAIN: Yeah, it's a good question, Adam. Thanks for having me. I think I've been a believer since I was a young kid that the technology and the innovation economy could be used to solve hard problems and important problems.

And when you look at what's happening with the climate crisis right now, you look at the fires in California, you look at the storms we've been seeing, you look at just the droughts we've been going through for the last decade-plus, there is no greater cause of climate harm than agriculture. It is the largest consumer of resources globally. 70% of the world's water goes to ag every year. And we use about 6 billion pounds of pesticides annually across the world.

And so, in the last 40 years alone, we've lost 30% of all of our arable farmlands. And you look at the fact that the world population is increasing. We need more food to feed that growing population. And we are urbanizing at a faster and faster rate. I just got really obsessed with this question of, how do you get fresh food to urban environments, and how do you do that more efficiently and more sustainably?

JULIE HYMAN: Irving, it's Julie here. Thank you for joining us. You know, this has seemed to be a trend. We spoke with a company recently that was going public through a SPAC that was a big indoor farming company. That person, too, was not necessarily a farmer, right?

As Adam mentioned, you're from a banking and tech background. And so I'm curious, is the farming industry, so to speak, onboard? We have talked a lot on this show about how family farms are dying, in many cases. The economics are really tough there. So I'm wondering how much this new part of the industry is incorporating the old, and how much those people might be on board?

IRVING FAIN: Yeah, you know, I think what's so exciting to see right now, Julie, is just the fact that technology is penetrating all areas of agriculture right now. So you're seeing precision agriculture on the farms. So we can give crops much more precise amounts of water or fertilizers versus just dumping from planes or spreaders like you can see on the photo right now.

You're seeing the use of satellite imagery and drone imagery. So I think when you look at innovation in agriculture, we've got to look at indoor farming as a part of a larger puzzle. We are a piece of this puzzle, a very important piece of it because the fresh produce industry is so critical.

But in order to solve a problem where agriculture is consuming so many of these resources, where our climate is being stretched in the way that it is, we're going to need cooperation from outdoor farmers and indoor farmers alike.

MELODY HAHM: And Irving, I think the company that Julie was mentioning was AppHarvest. Also news today that SoftBank is leading a $140 million funding round for Plenty, of course, your counterpart there. And actually, Driscoll's, the berry company, is going to be an investor.

I want to think about the idea of vertical farming. Speaking with folks who are in very saturated cities or very cosmopolitan areas, as I understand it, vertical farming was another way to provide fresh fruits, fresh veggies to perhaps lower-income students, many of whom depended on their schools for breakfast, lunch, and even dinner sometimes.

How have you been navigating this space, if at all? And what's your vision therein allowing a lot of these fresh produce items to reach the masses and perhaps those who wouldn't be able to afford some fresh things at Whole Foods?

IRVING FAIN: Yeah, no, it's a great question, Melody. And so, you know, at Bowery, we're building the modern farming company. And, you know, we're really proud to be the largest indoor vertical farming company in the United States right now. And we are building smart farms that are close to the cities that we're serving. And we really take the responsibility of the community members seriously.

And so that, for us, means a number of things. We're engaging with nonprofit partners in the mid-Atlantic, where we are, as well as in the tri-state area. We're actually the largest donation partner for fresh produce in the Maryland Food Bank right now.

We're actually selling a wholesale product to the DC Central Kitchen Healthy Corners Program right now. And what they then do is they take that produce and they bring it into corner stores in food deserts across the Baltimore and the DC area. And they sell that at a subsidized price inside coolers to get fresh, healthy produce to consumers who may have a difficult time achieving that.

That's a really critical piece, but also, we have just built Bowery under the belief that we want to democratize access to high-quality fresh food. Everybody should be able to eat great produce. And the produce we're growing is, it is like the produce you remember from your grandparents' garden.

And so you can find Bowery products everywhere from Whole Foods or a Giant, all the way to retailers like Walmart and then online retailers as well. And so we really believe in spreading the access to what we're growing at Bowery.

ADAM SHAPIRO: I am curious because I think a lot of people, there's a passion about what you're doing with this farming revolution. But it's all about yield when you talk about crops. So can you give us a perspective of where the indoor farming market stands with its yield? And potentially, we're talking about feeding, at least this country, with things that are grown in this manner, or is that really a pipe dream?

IRVING FAIN: No it's the right question to ask. I think it's one of the reasons why, at Bowery, we've invested really heavily in the technology side of what we're building. And so, we're building warehouse-scale indoor farms. We stack our crops from the floor to the ceiling. And we grow under lights that mimic the spectrum of the sun.

And so we can grow year-round, independent of weather and seasonality. It is pesticide-free, protected produce. We're 100 times plus more productive than a square foot of farmland. And we use only a fraction of water compared to traditional agriculture. And what really makes that possible is innovation that we've been driving in robotics and automation, as well as innovation around the software side.

So we've built something called the Bowery OS, Adam, which is, it's the brains of our farm. It's a proprietary system, and it uses software, computer vision, machine learning to both monitor and manage our crops to ensure they're getting exactly what they need when they need it. They're as flavorful as possible. And they're harvested at that peak yield and peak freshness.

So it really is where technology marries traditional growing and traditional agriculture, which comes together. And it creates an enormous opportunity. I mean from our view, this is a $100 billion a year opportunity in the US and probably about a trillion dollar a year opportunity globally.

And that's not for every crop. We don't look at staple crops, for instance, corn and wheat and soy, as areas that we're necessarily focused in today. Could you do that eventually? You know, technology has a nice way of surprising us. But that's not something where we're focused or counting on right now. And you don't need that to build a big business.

ADAM SHAPIRO: Look, I tried to grow tomatoes on the 18th floor, the terrace out here. And I refer to them as the toxic tomatoes because it was a disaster. I want to thank you for joining us, Irving Fain, Bowery Farming founder, and CEO.

Technology Quarterly, The Future of Agriculture

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Factory Fresh

If agriculture is to continue to feed the world, it needs to become more like manufacturing, says Geoffrey Carr. Fortunately, that is already beginning to happen

TOM ROGERS is an almond farmer in Madera County, in California’s Central Valley. Almonds are delicious and nutritious. They are also lucrative. Californian farmers, who between them grow 80% of the world’s supply of these nuts, earn $11 billion from doing so. But almonds are thirsty. A calculation by a pair of Dutch researchers six years ago suggested that growing a single one of them consumes around a gallon of water. This is merely an American gallon of 3.8 litres, not an imperial one of 4.5 litres, but it is still a tidy amount of H2O. And water has to be paid for.

Technology, however, has come to Mr. Rogers’s aid. His farm is wired up like a lab rat. Or, to be more accurate, it is wirelessed up. Moisture sensors planted throughout the nut groves keep track of what is going on in the soil. They send their results to a computer in the cloud (the network of servers that does an increasing amount of the world’s heavy-duty computing) to be crunched. The results are passed back to the farm’s irrigation system—a grid of drip tapes (hoses with holes punched in them) that are filled by pumps.

The system resembles the hydroponics used to grow vegetables in greenhouses. Every half-hour a carefully calibrated pulse of water based on the cloud’s calculations, and mixed with an appropriate dose of fertilizer if scheduled, is pushed through the tapes, delivering a precise sprinkling to each tree. The pulses alternate between one side of the tree trunk and the other, which experience has shown encourages water uptake. Before this system was in place, Mr. Rogers would have irrigated his farm about once a week. With the new little-but-often technique, he uses 20% less water than he used to. That both saves money and brings kudos, for California has suffered a four-year-long drought and there is social and political, as well as financial, pressure to conserve water.

Mr. Rogers’s farm, and similar ones that grow other high-value but thirsty crops like pistachios, walnuts, and grapes, are at the leading edge of this type of precision agriculture, known as “smart farming”. But it is not only fruit and nut farmers who benefit from being precise. So-called row crops—the maize and soyabeans that cover much of America’s Midwest—are being teched up, too. Sowing, watering, fertilizing and harvesting are all computer-controlled. Even the soil they grow in is monitored to within an inch of its life.

People will want to eat better than they do now

Farms, then, are becoming more like factories: tightly controlled operations for turning out reliable products, immune as far as possible from the vagaries of nature. Thanks to better understanding of DNA, the plants and animals raised on a farm are also tightly controlled. Precise genetic manipulation, known as “genome editing”, makes it possible to change a crop or stock animal’s genome down to the level of a single genetic “letter”. This technology, it is hoped, will be more acceptable to consumers than the shifting of whole genes between species that underpinned early genetic engineering, because it simply imitates the process of mutation on which crop breeding has always depended, but in a far more controllable way.

Understanding a crop’s DNA sequence also means that breeding itself can be made more precise. You do not need to grow a plant to maturity to find out whether it will have the characteristics you want. A quick look at its genome beforehand will tell you.

Such technological changes, in hardware, software, and “liveware”, are reaching beyond field, orchard, and byre. Fish farming will also get a boost from them. And indoor horticulture, already the most controlled and precise type of agriculture, is about to become yet more so.

In the short run, these improvements will boost farmers’ profits, by cutting costs and increasing yields, and should also benefit consumers (meaning everyone who eats food) in the form of lower prices. In the longer run, though, they may help provide the answer to an increasingly urgent question: how can the world be fed in future without putting irreparable strain on the Earth’s soils and oceans? Between now and 2050 the planet’s population is likely to rise to 9.7 billion, from 7.3 billion now. Those people will not only need to eat, they will want to eat better than people do now, because by then most are likely to have middling incomes, and many will be well off.

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The Food and Agriculture Organisation, the United Nations’ agency charged with thinking about such matters, published a report in 2009 which suggested that by 2050 agricultural production will have to rise by 70% to meet projected demand. Since most land suitable for farming is already farmed, this growth must come from higher yields. Agriculture has undergone yield-enhancing shifts in the past, including mechanization before the second world war and the introduction of new crop varieties and agricultural chemicals in the green revolution of the 1950s and 1960s. Yet yields of important crops such as rice and wheat have now stopped rising in some intensively farmed parts of the world, a phenomenon called yield plateauing. The spread of existing best practice can no doubt bring yields elsewhere up to these plateaus. But to go beyond them will require improved technology.

This will be a challenge. Farmers are famously and sensibly skeptical of change since the cost of getting things wrong (messing up an entire season’s harvest) is so high. Yet if precision farming and genomics play out as many hope they will, another such change is in the offing.

Smart farms: Silicon Valley meets Central Valley

In various guises, information technology is taking over agriculture

ONE way to view farming is as a branch of matrix algebra. A farmer must constantly juggle a set of variables, such as the weather, his soil’s moisture levels and nutrient content, competition to his crops from weeds, threats to their health from pests and diseases, and the costs of taking action to deal with these things. If he does the algebra correctly, or if it is done on his behalf, he will optimize his yield and maximize his profit.

The job of smart farming, then, is twofold. One is to measure the variables going into the matrix as accurately as is cost-effective. The other is to relieve the farmer of as much of the burden of processing the matrix as he is comfortable with ceding to a machine.

An early example of cost-effective precision in farming was the decision made in 2001 by John Deere, the world’s largest manufacturer of agricultural equipment, to fit its tractors and other mobile machines with global-positioning-system (GPS) sensors, so that they could be located to within a few centimeters anywhere on Earth. This made it possible to stop them either covering the same ground twice or missing out patches as they shuttled up and down fields, which had been a frequent problem. Dealing with this both reduced fuel bills (by as much as 40% in some cases) and improved the uniformity and effectiveness of things like fertilizer, herbicide and pesticide spraying.

Bugs in the system

Bacteria and fungi can help crops and soil

MICROBES, though they have a bad press as agents of disease, also play a beneficial role in agriculture. For example, they fix nitrogen from the air into soluble nitrates that act as natural fertiliser. Understanding and exploiting such organisms for farming is a rapidly developing part of agricultural biotechnology.

At the moment, the lead is being taken by a collaboration between Monsanto and Novozymes, a Danish firm.

This consortium, called BioAg, began in 2013 and has a dozen microbe-based products on the market. These include fungicides, insecticides and bugs that liberate nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium compounds from the soil, making them soluble and thus easier for crops to take up. Last year, researchers at the two firms tested a further 2,000 microbes, looking for species that would increase maize and soyabean yields. The top-performing strains delivered a boost of about 3% for both crops.

In November 2015 Syngenta and DSM, a Dutch company, formed a similar partnership. And earlier that year, in April, DuPont bought Taxon Biosciences, a Californian microbes firm. And hopeful start-ups abound. One such is Indigo, in Boston. Its researchers are conducting field tests of some of its library of 40,000 microbes to see if they can alleviate the stress on cotton, maize, soyabeans and wheat induced by drought and salinity. Another is Adaptive Symbiotic Technologies, of Seattle. The scientists who formed this firm study fungi that live symbiotically within plants. They believe they have found one, whose natural partner is panic grass, a coastal species, which confers salinity-resistance when transferred to crops such as rice.

The big prize, however, would be to persuade the roots of crops such as wheat to form partnerships with nitrogen-fixing soil bacteria. These would be similar to the natural partnerships formed with nitrogen-fixing bacteria by legumes such as soyabeans. In legumes, the plants’ roots grow special nodules that become homes for the bacteria in question. If wheat rhizomes could be persuaded, by genomic breeding or genome editing, to behave likewise, everyone except fertilizer companies would reap enormous benefits.

Since then, other techniques have been added. High-density soil sampling, carried out every few years to track properties such as mineral content and porosity, can predict the fertility of different parts of a field. Accurate contour mapping helps indicate how water moves around. And detectors planted in the soil can monitor moisture levels at multiple depths. Some detectors are also able to indicate nutrient content and how it changes in response to the application of fertilizer.

All of this permits variable-rate seeding, meaning the density of plants grown can be tailored to local conditions. And that density itself is under precise control. John Deere’s equipment can plant individual seeds to within an accuracy of 3cm. Moreover, when a crop is harvested, the rate at which grains or beans flow into the harvester’s tank can be measured from moment to moment. That information, when combined with GPS data, creates a yield map that shows which bits of land were more or less productive—and thus how accurate the soil and sensor-based predictions were. This information can then be fed into the following season’s planting pattern.

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Farmers also gather information by flying planes over their land. Airborne instruments are able to measure the amount of plant cover and to distinguish between crops and weeds. Using a technique called multispectral analysis, which looks at how strongly plants absorb or reflect different wavelengths of sunlight, they can discover which crops are flourishing and which not.

Sensors attached to moving machinery can even take measurements on the run. For example, multispectral sensors mounted on a tractor’s spraying booms can estimate the nitrogen needs of crops about to be sprayed and adjust the dose accordingly. A modern farm, then, produces data aplenty. But they need interpreting, and for that, information technology is essential.

Platform tickets

Over the past few decades, large corporations have grown up to supply the needs of commercial farming, especially in the Americas and Europe. Some are equipment-makers, such as John Deere. Others sell seeds or agricultural chemicals. These look like getting larger still. Dow and DuPont, two American giants, are planning to merge. Monsanto, another big American firm, is the subject of a takeover bid by Bayer, a German one. And Syngenta, a Swiss company, is being bid for by ChemChina, a Chinese one.

Business models are changing, too. These firms, no longer content merely to sell machinery, seed or chemicals, are all trying to develop matrix-crunching software platforms that will act as farm-management systems. These proprietary platforms will collect data from individual farms and process them in the cloud, allowing for the farm’s history, the known behavior of individual crops strains, and the local weather forecast. They will then make recommendations to the farmer, perhaps pointing him towards some of the firm’s other products.

But whereas making machinery, breeding new crops, or manufacturing agrochemicals all have high barriers to entry, a data-based farm-management system can be put together by any businessman, even without a track record in agriculture. And many are having a go. For example, Trimble Navigation, based in Sunnyvale, at the southern end of Silicon Valley, reckons that as an established geographical-information company it is well placed to move into the smart-farming market, with a system called Connected Farms. It has bought in outside expertise in the shape of AGRI-TREND, a Canadian agricultural consultancy, which it acquired last year.

By contrast, Farmobile of Overland Park, Kansas, is a startup. It is aimed at those who value privacy, making a feature of not using clients’ data to sell other products, as many farm-management systems do. Farmers Business Network, of Davenport, Iowa, uses almost the opposite model, acting as a co-operative data pool. Data in the pool are anonymized, but everyone who joins is encouraged to add to the pool, and in turn, gets to share what is there. The idea is that all participants will benefit from better solutions to the matrix.

Some firms focus on market niches. iTK, based in Montpellier, France, for example, specialises in grapes and has built mathematical models that describe the behaviour of all the main varieties. It is now expanding into California.

Thanks to this proliferation of farm-management software, it is possible to put more and more data to good use if the sensors are available to provide them. And better, cheaper sensors, too, are on their way. Moisture sensors, for example, usually work by measuring either the conductivity or the capacitance of soil, but a firm called WaterBit, based in Santa Clara, California, is using a different technology which it says can do the job at a tenth of the price of the existing products. And a sensor sold by John Deere can spectroscopically measure the nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium composition of liquid manure as it is being sprayed, permitting the spray rate to be adjusted in real time. This gets round the problem that liquid manure, though a good fertiliser, is not standardised, so is more difficult than commercial fertiliser to apply in the right quantities.

Things are changing in the air, too. In a recapitulation of the early days of manned flight, the makers of unmanned agricultural drones are testing a wide range of designs to find out which is best suited to the task of flying multispectral cameras over farms. Some firms, such as Agribotix in Boulder, Colorado, prefer quadcopters, a four-rotored modern design that has become the industry standard for small drones, though it has limited range and endurance. A popular alternative, the AgDrone, built by HoneyComb of Wilsonville, Oregon, is a single-engine flying wing that looks as if it has escaped from a 1950s air show. Another, the Lancaster 5, from PrecisionHawk of Raleigh, North Carolina, vaguely resembles a scale model of the eponymous second-world-war bomber. And the offering by Delair-Tech, based in Toulouse, France, sports the long, narrow wings of a glider to keep it aloft for long periods.

Even an endurance drone, though, may be pushed to survey a large estate in one go. For a synoptic view of their holding, therefore, some farmers turn to satellites. Planet Labs, a firm in San Francisco, provides such a service using devices called CubeSats, measuring a few centimetres across. It keeps a fleet of about 30 of these in orbit, which it refreshes as old ones die by putting new ones into space, piggybacking on commercial launches. Thanks to modern optics, even a satellite this small can be fitted with a multispectral camera, though it has a resolution per pixel of only 3.5 metres (about ten feet). That is not bad from outer space, but not nearly as good as a drone’s camera can manage.

Satellite coverage, though, has the advantage of being both broad and frequent, whereas a drone can offer only one or the other of these qualities. Planet Lab’s constellation will be able to take a picture of a given bit of the Earth’s surface at least once a week, so that areas in trouble can be identified quickly and a more detailed examination made.

The best solution is to integrate aerial and satellite coverage. That is what Mavrx, also based in San Francisco, is trying to do. Instead of drones, it has an Uber-like arrangement with about 100 light-aircraft pilots around America. Each of the firm’s contracted planes has been fitted with a multispectral camera and stands ready to make specific sorties at Mavrx’s request. Mavrx’s cameras have a resolution of 20cm a pixel, meaning they can pretty much take in individual plants.

The firm has also outsourced its satellite photography. Its raw material is drawn from Landsat and other public satellite programmes. It also has access to these programmes’ libraries, some of which go back 30 years. It can thus check the performance of a particular field over decades, calculate how much biomass that field has supported from year to year and correlate this with records of the field’s yields in those years, showing how productive the plants there have been. Then, knowing the field’s biomass in the current season, it can predict what the yield will be. Mavrx’s method can be scaled up to cover entire regions and even countries, forecasting the size of the harvests before they are gathered. That is powerful financial and political information.

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A truly automated, factory-like farm, however, would have to cut people out of the loop altogether. That means introducing robots on the ground as well as in the air, and there are plenty of hopeful agricultural-robot makers trying to do so.

At the University of Sydney, the Australian Centre for Field Robotics has developed RIPPA (Robot for Intelligent Perception and Precision Application), a four-wheeled, solar-powered device that identifies weeds in fields of vegetables and zaps them individually. At the moment it does this with precise, and precisely aimed, doses of herbicide. But it, or something similar, could instead use a beam of microwaves, or even a laser. That would allow the crops concerned to be recognised as “organic” by customers who disapprove of chemical treatments.

For the less fussy, Rowbot Systems of Minneapolis is developing a bot that can travel between rows of partly grown maize plants, allowing it to apply supplementary side dressings of fertiliser to the plants without crushing them. Indeed, it might be possible in future to match the dose to the plant in farms where individual plants’ needs have been assessed by airborne multispectral cameras.

Robots are also of interest to growers of fruit and vegetables that are currently picked by hand. Fruit-picking is a time-consuming business which, even though the pickers are not well rewarded, would be a lot faster and cheaper if it were automated. And robot pickers are starting to appear.

The SW6010, made by AGROBOT, a Spanish firm, uses a camera to recognise strawberries and work out which are ripe for the plucking. Those that are have their stems severed by blades and are caught in baskets before being passed on by a conveyor belt for packing by a human operator sitting on the robot. In the Netherlands, researchers at Wageningen University are working on a robot harvester for larger produce such as peppers.

All these devices, and others like them, still exude a whiff of the Heath Robinson. But robotics is developing rapidly, and the control systems needed to run such machines are getting better and cheaper by the day. Some think that in a decade or so many farms in rich countries will be largely robot-operated.

Yet others wonder just how far farmers will let their farms be robotised. Self-guiding agricultural machinery such as that sold by John Deere is all but robotic already. It is like an airliner, in which the pilot usually has little to do between landing and take-off because computers do the work for him. Yet Deere has no plans to hand over complete control to the cloud, because that is not what its customers want.

Tunnel vision

If total control still seems some way off in outdoor farming, it is already close for crops grown in an entirely artificial environment. In a warren of tunnels beneath Clapham, in south London, Growing Underground is doing exactly what its name suggests. It is rearing around 20 types of salad plants, intended for sale to the chefs and sandwich shops of the city, in subterranean voids that began life as second-world-war bomb shelters.

In many ways, Growing Underground’s farm resembles any other indoor hydroponic operation. But there is one big difference. A conventional greenhouse, with its glass or polycarbonate walls, is designed to admit as much sunlight as possible. Growing Underground specifically excludes it. Instead, illumination is provided by light-emitting diodes (LEDs). These, in the minimalist spirit of hydroponics, have had their spectra precisely tuned so that the light they emit is optimal for the plants’ photosynthesis.

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As you would expect, sensors watch everything—temperature, humidity, illumination—and send the data directly to Cambridge University’s engineering department where they are crunched, along with information on the plants’ growth, to work out the best regimes for future crops.

For now Steven Dring, Growing Underground’s boss, is confining output to herbs and vegetables such as small lettuces and samphire that can be brought to harvestable size quickly. He has reduced the cycle for coriander from 21 to 14 days. But tests suggest that the system also works for other, chunkier crops. Carrots and radishes have already been successfully grown this way, though they may not command a sufficient premium to make their underground cultivation worthwhile. But pak choi, a Chinese vegetable popular with trendy urbanites who live in inner-London suburbs like Clapham, is also amenable. At the moment growing it takes five weeks from start to finish. Get that down to three, which Mr Dring thinks he can, and it would be profitable.

The firms that make the LEDs could also be on to a good thing. Mr Dring’s come from Valoya, a Finnish firm. In Sweden, Heliospectra is in the same business. Philips, a Dutch electrical giant, has also joined in. In conventional greenhouses such lights are used to supplement the sun, but increasingly they do duty in windowless operations like Mr Dring’s. Though unlike sunlight they do not come free, they are so efficient and long-lasting that their spectral advantages seem clinching (see chart).

This kind of farming does not have to take place underground. Operations like Mr Dring’s are cropping up in buildings on the surface as well. Old meatpacking plants, factories and warehouses the world over are being turned into “vertical farms”. Though they are never going to fill the whole world’s bellies, they are more than a fad. Rather, they are a modern version of the market gardens that once flourished on the edge of cities —in places just like Clapham—before the land they occupied was swallowed by urban sprawl. And with their precise control of inputs, and thus outputs (see Brain scan, below), they also represent the ultimate in what farming could become.

Brain scan: Caleb Harper

PLANT breeders are understandably excited about manipulating botanical genomics (see next page). But it is a crop’s phenotype—its physical instantiation—that people actually eat, and this is the product of both genes and environment.

Optimising phenotypes by manipulating the environment is the task Caleb Harper has set himself. Dr Harper is the founder of the Open Agriculture Initiative (OAI) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Media Lab. At first sight, that seems odd. The Media Lab is an information-technology laboratory, best known for having helped develop things like electronic paper, wireless networks and even modern karaoke machines. It is very much about bits and bytes, and not much hitherto about proteins and lipids.

However, environmental information is still information. It informs how a plant grows, which is what interests Dr Harper. As he once put it, “people say they like peppers from Mexico. What they actually like is peppers grown in the conditions that prevail in Mexico.” He reckons that if you can replicate the conditions in which a botanical product grew, you can replicate that product. But this means you have to understand those conditions properly in the first place.

To help with this, he and his colleagues at the OAI have developed what they call the Personal Food Computer: a standardised tabletop device that can control illumination, carbon-dioxide levels, humidity, air temperature, root-zone temperature, and the acidity and dissolved-oxygen content of water delivered to the roots, as well as its nutrient content and any other aspect of its chemistry.

Plant phenotypes are monitored during growth by web cameras linked to software that detects leaf edges and colour differences and by sensors that can detect areas of active photosynthesis. After harvesting they are examined by lidar (the optical equivalent of radar) to record their shape in detail, and by gas chromatography/mass spectroscopy to understand their chemical composition.

The idea is that Personal Food Computers can be built by anyone who chooses to, and form part of an “open science” network that gathers data on growing conditions and works out those conditions’ phenotypic effects. Of particular interest are matters such as flavour and astringency that are governed by chemicals called secondary metabolites. These are often parts of plant-defence mechanisms, so in one experiment the computers are looking at the effect of adding crushed arthropod exoskeletons to the water supply, which may mimic attack by insects or mites. The hope is that this will change flavours in controllable ways.

Though Dr Harper is from a rural background, his career before the OAI was conventionally Media Lab-like. In particular, he designed environmental-control systems for data centres and operating theatres—keeping heat, humidity and so on within the tight limits needed for optimal function. But the jump from controlling those environments to controlling miniature farms was not enormous.

Some three dozen Personal Food Computers already exist and about 100 more are under construction the world over. This geographical dispersion is important. Dr. Harper’s goal, as his view on Mexican peppers suggests, is to decouple climate from geography by building a “catalogue of climates”. That would allow indoor urban farms to be programmed to imitate whatever climate was required in order to turn out crops for instant local consumption. This would certainly appeal to those who worry about “food miles”—the cost in terms of carbon dioxide of shipping edible items around the world. How it will go down with farmers in places whose climates are being imitated in rich-country cities remains to be seen.

The founder of the Open Agriculture Initiative at MIT’s Media Lab is building a “catalogue of climates” to help plants grow better

Crops of the future: Tinker and tailor

Farms need better products. Genomic understanding will provide them

C4 SOUNDS like the name of a failed electric car from the 1970s. In fact, it is one of the most crucial concepts in plant molecular biology. Plants have inherited their photosynthetic abilities from bacteria that took up symbiotic residence in the cells of their ancestors about a billion years ago. Those bacteria’s descendants, called chloroplasts, sit inside cells absorbing sunlight and using its energy to split water into hydrogen and oxygen. The hydrogen then combines with carbon dioxide to form small intermediate molecules, which are subsequently assembled into sugars. This form of photosynthesis is known as C3, because these intermediates contain three carbon atoms. Since the arrival of chloroplasts, though, evolution has discovered another way to photosynthesise, using a four-carbon intermediate. C4 photosynthesis is often more efficient than the C3 sort, especially in tropical climes. Several important crops that started in the tropics use it, notably maize, millet, sorghum, and sugar cane.

C4 photosynthesis is so useful that it has evolved on at least 60 separate occasions. Unfortunately, none of these involved the ancestors of rice, the second most important crop on Earth, after wheat. Yet rice, pre-eminently a tropical plant, would produce yields around 50% bigger than at present if it took the C4 route. At the International Rice Research Institute in Los Banos, outside Manila, researchers are trying to show it how.

The C4 Rice Project, co-ordinated by Paul Quick, is a global endeavour, also involving biologists at 18 other laboratories in Asia, Australia, Europe and North America. Their task involves adding five alien enzymes to rice, to give it an extra biochemical pathway, and then reorganising some of the cells in the plant’s leaves to create special compartments in which carbon dioxide can be concentrated in ways the standard C3 mechanism does not require. Both of these things have frequently happened naturally in other plants, which suggests that doing them artificially is not out of the question. The team has already created strains of rice which contain genes plucked from maize plants for the extra enzymes, and are now tweaking them to improve their efficacy. The harder part, which may take another decade, will be finding out what genetic changes are needed to bring about the compartmentalisation.

Genome editing resembles the natural process of mutation

The C4 Rice Project thus aims to break through the yield plateaus and return the world to the sort of growth rates seen in the heady days of the Green Revolution. Other groups, similarly motivated, are working on making many types of crops resistant to drought, heat, cold and salt; on inducing greater immunity to infection and infestation; on improving nutritional value; on making more efficient use of resources such as water and phosphorous; and even on giving to plants that do not have it the ability to fix nitrogen, an essential ingredient of proteins, directly from the air instead of absorbing it in the form of nitrates. Such innovations should be a bonanza. Unfortunately, for reasons both technical and social, they have so far not been. But that should soon change.

The early days of genetically engineered crops saw two huge successes and one spectacular failure. The successes were the transfer into a range of plants, particularly maize, soyabeans and cotton, of two types of gene. Both came from bacteria. One protected its host from the attentions of pesky insect larvae. The other protected it from specific herbicides, meaning those herbicides could be used more effectively to keep fields free from weeds. Both are beloved of farmers.

The spectacular failure is that neither is beloved of consumers. Some are indifferent to them; many actively hostile. Even though over decades there has been no evidence that eating genetically modified crops is harmful to health, and little that they harm the environment, they have been treated as pariahs.

Since people do not eat cotton, and soyabeans and maize are used mainly as animal fodder, the anti-GM lobby’s impact on those crops has been muted. But the idea of extending either the range of crops modified or the range of modifications available has (with a few exceptions) been thought commercially too risky to try. Moreover, transgenics, as the technique of moving genes from one species to another is called, is haphazard. Where the moved gene will end up is hard to control. That matters, for genes work better in some places than others.

Spell it for me

The search has therefore been on for a better way than transgenics of doing things. And one is now emerging that, its supporters hope, may kill both the technical and the social birds with a single stone. Genome editing, as this approach is known, tweaks existing DNA in situ by adding, subtracting or substituting a piece that may be as small as a single genetic “letter” (or nucleotide). That not only makes the technique precise, it also resembles the natural process of mutation, which is the basis of the variety all conventional plant-breeding relies on. That may raise fewer objections among consumers, and also holds out the hope that regulators will treat it differently from transgenics.

After a couple of false starts, most researchers agree that a technique called CRISPR/Cas9, derived from a way that bacteria chop up the genes of invading viruses, is the one that will make editing crop genomes a realistic prospect. Transgenic technology has steered clear of wheat, which is eaten mainly by people. But DuPont’s seed division, Pioneer, is already trying to use CRISPR/Cas9 to stop wheat from self-pollinating, in order to make the development of hybrids easier. Similarly, researchers at the Chinese Academy of Sciences are using it to try to develop wheat plants that are resistant to powdery mildew, a serious hazard.

Not all current attempts at agricultural genome editing use CRISPR/Cas9. Cibus, in San Diego, for example, employs a proprietary technique it calls the Rapid Trait Development System (RTDS). This co-opts a cell’s natural DNA repair mechanism to make single-nucleotide changes to genomes. RTDS has already created one commercial product, a form of rape resistant to a class of herbicides that conventional transgenics cannot protect against. But at the moment CRISPR/Cas9 seems to be sweeping most things before it—and even if it stumbles for some reason, other bacterial antiviral mechanisms might step in.

Whether consumers will accept genome editing remains to be seen. No one, however, is likely to object to a second rapidly developing method of crop improvement: a souped-up breeding technique called genomic selection.

Genomic selection is a superior version of marker-assisted selection, a process which has itself been replacing conventional crop-breeding techniques. Both genomic selection and markerassisted selection rely on recognising pieces of DNA called markers found in or near places called quantitative trait loci (QTLs). A QTL is part of a genome that has, because of a gene or genes within it, a measurable, predictable effect on a phenotype. If the marker is present, then so is the QTL. By extension, a plant with the marker should show the QTL’s phenotypic effect.

The difference between conventional marker-assisted selection and the genomic version is that the former relied on a few hundred markers (such as places where the DNA stuttered and repeated itself) that could be picked up by the technology then available. Now, improved detection methods mean single-nucleotide polymorphisms, or SNPs (pronounced “snips”), can be used as markers. A SNP is a place where a single genetic letter varies in an otherwise unchanging part of the genome, and there are thousands of them.

Add in the enormous amounts of computing power available to link SNPs with QTLs—and, indeed, to analyse the interactions between QTLs themselves—and the upshot is a system that can tell a breeder which individual plants are worth raising to maturity, and which should then be crossed with each other to come up with the best results.

Crop strains created this way are already coming to market. AQUAmax and Artesian are drought-tolerant strains of maize developed, respectively, by DuPont and Syngenta. These two, intriguingly, are competitors with another drought-tolerant maize strain, DroughtGuard, developed by Monsanto using the transgenic approach.

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Genomic selection also offers opportunities for the scientific improvement of crops that seed companies usually neglect. The NextGen Cassava Project, a pan-African group, plans to zap susceptibility to cassava mosaic virus this way and then systematically to improve the yield and nutritional properties of the crop. The project’s researchers have identified 40,000 cassava SNPs, and have now gone through three generations of genomic selection using them. Besides making cassava resistant to the virus, they also hope to double yields and to increase the proportion of starch (and thus the nutritional value) of the resulting strains. If modern techniques can similarly be brought to bear on other unimproved crops of little interest to the big seed companies, such as millet and yams, the yield-bonuses could be enormous.

For the longer term, some researchers have more radical ambitions. A manifesto published last year by Donald Ort, of the United States Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Service, and his colleagues proposes not merely recapitulating evolution but actually redesigning the photosynthetic process in ways evolution has not yet discovered. Dr Ort suggests tweaking chlorophyll molecules in order to capture a wider range of frequencies and deploy the resulting energy more efficiently. He is also looking at improving the way plants absorb carbon dioxide. The result, he hopes, will be faster-growing, higher-yielding crops.

Such ideas are controversial and could take decades to come to fruition. But they are not fantastic. A combination of transgenics (importing new forms of chlorophyll from photosynthetic bacteria), genome editing (to supercharge existing plant enzymes) and genomic selection (to optimise the resulting mixture) might well be able to achieve them.

Those who see this as an unnatural, perhaps even monstrous approach to crop improvement should recall that it is precisely what happened when the ancestors of modern plants themselves came into existence, through the combination of a bacterium and its host and their subsequent mutual adjustment to live in symbiosis. It was this evolutionary leap which greened the Earth in the first place. That something similar might re-green it is at least worth considering.

Fish farming: Catch of the day

Farming marine fish inland will relieve pressure on the oceans

IN THE basement of a building on a wharf in Baltimore’s inner harbour, a group of aquaculturists at the Institute of Marine and Environmental Technology is trying to create an artificial ecosystem. Yonathan Zohar and his colleagues hope to liberate the raising of ocean fish from the ocean itself so that fish farms can be built inland. Fresh fish, served the day it comes out of the brine (even if the brine in question is a judicious mixture of tap water and salts), would thus become accessible to millions of landlubbers who must now have their fish shipped in from afar, deep-frozen. Equally important, marine-fish farmers would no longer have to find suitable coastal sites for penning stock while it grows to marketable size, exposing the crowded animals to disease and polluting the marine environment.

People have raised freshwater fish in ponds since time immemorial, but farming species such as salmon that live mainly in saltwater dates back only a few decades, as does the parallel transformation of freshwater aquaculture to operate on an industrial scale. Now fish farming is booming. As the chart on the next page shows, human consumption of farmed fish has overtaken that of beef. Indeed, one way of supplying mankind with enough animal protein in future may be through aquaculture. To keep the boom going, though, technologists like Dr Zohar must become ever more inventive.

His ecosystem, which is about to undergo commercial trials, constantly recycles the same supply of brine, purified by three sets of bacteria. One set turns ammonia excreted by the fish into nitrate ions. A second converts these ions into nitrogen (a harmless gas that makes up 78% of the air) and water. A third, working on the solid waste filtered from the water, transforms it into methane, which—via a special generator—provides part of the power that keeps the whole operation running. The upshot is a closed system that can be set up anywhere, generates no pollution and can be kept disease-free. It is also escape-proof. That means old-world species such as sea bream and sea bass, which cannot now be grown in America because they might get out and breed in the wild, could be delivered fresh to the table anywhere.

Besides transforming the design of fish farms, Dr Zohar is also working on extending the range of species that they can grow. He has spent decades studying the hormone system that triggers spawning and can now stimulate it on demand. He has also examined the needs of hatchling fry, often completely different from those of adult fish, that must be met if they are to thrive. At the moment he is trying to do this for one of the most desirable species of all, the bluefin tuna. If he succeeds, and thus provides an alternative to the plummeting wild populations of this animal, sushi lovers around the world will be for ever in his debt.

Gone fishin’

Fish farmers used to dream of fitting their charges with transgenes to make them grow more quickly. Indeed, over the past couple of decades researchers have treated more than 35 fish species in this way. They have often been spectacularly successful. Only one firm, though, has persisted to the point of regulatory approval. AquaBounty’s transgenic Atlantic salmon, now cleared in both America and Canada, has the desirable property of rapid growth. Its transgene, taken from a chinook salmon, causes it to put on weight all year round, not just in spring and summer. That halves the time the fish will take to reach marketable size. Whether people will be willing to eat the result, though, is an experiment in its own right—one that all those other researchers, only too aware of widespread public rejection of transgenic crops, have been unwilling to conduct.

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That may be wise. There is so much natural variation in wild fish that conventional selective breeding can make a big difference without any high-tech intervention. Back in 2007 a report by researchers at Akvaforsk, now part of the Norwegian Institute of Food, Fisheries and Aquaculture Research (NOFIMA), showed that three decades of selective breeding by the country’s salmon farmers had resulted in fish which grew twice as fast as their wild progenitors. Admittedly starting from a lower base, those farmers had done what AquaBounty has achieved, but without the aid of a transgene.

If conventional selection can yield such improvements, it is tempting not to bother with anything more complicated. Tempting, but wrong. For, as understanding of piscine DNA improves, the sort of genomic selection being applied to crops can also be applied to fish.

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Researchers at SalmoBreed of Bergen, in Norway, have employed it not to create bigger, faster-growing fish but to attack two of fish farming’s banes—infestation and infection. By tracking SNPs (single-nucleotide polymorphisms, a variation of a single genetic letter in a genome used as a marker) they have produced varieties of salmon resistant to sea lice and also to pancreas disease, a viral illness. They are now looking into a third problem, amoebic gill disease. In Japan, similar work has led to the development of flounders resistant to viral lymphocystis, trout immune to “cold-water” disease, a bacterial infection, and amberjack that evade the attentions of a group of parasitic worms called the monogenea.

Altering nature, then, is crucial to the success of fish farming. But nurture can also give a helping hand, for example by optimising what is fed to the animals. As with any product, one key to success is to get costs down. And here, environmental and commercial considerations coincide.

A common complaint by green types is that fish farming does not relieve as much pressure on the oceans as it appears to, because a lot of the feed it uses is made of fish meal. That simply transfers fishing pressure from species eaten by people directly to those that get turned into such meal. But fish meal is expensive, so researchers are trying to reduce the amount being used by substituting plant matter, such as soya. In this they have been successful. According to a paper published last year by researchers at NOFIMA, 90% of salmon feed used in Norway in 1990 was fish meal. In 2013 the comparable figure was 30%. Indeed, a report published in 2014 by the European Parliament found that fish-meal consumption in aquaculture peaked in 2005.

It’s a gas

Feeding carnivores like salmon on plants is one way to reduce both costs and environmental harm. Another, which at first sight seems exotic, is to make fish food out of natural gas. This is the proposed business of Calysta, a Californian firm. Calysta feeds the gas—or, rather, its principal component, methane—to bacteria called methanotrophs. These metabolise the methane, extract energy from it and use the atoms thus liberated, along with oxygen from water and nitrogen from the air, to build their bodies. Calysta then turns these bodies into protein pellets that are sold as fish food, a process that puts no strain at all on either sea or field.

Even conventional fish foods, though, are low-strain compared with feed for farm animals. Because fish are cold-blooded, they do not have to eat to stay warm. They thus convert more of their food into body mass. For conservationists, and for those who worry whether there will be enough food in future to feed the growing human population, that makes fish a particularly attractive form of animal protein.

Nevertheless, demand for the legged and winged sort is growing too. Novel technologies are therefore being applied to animal husbandry as well. And some imaginative researchers are even trying to grow meat and other animal products in factories, cutting the animals out of the loop altogether.

Animal husbandry: Stock answers

Technology can improve not only productivity but animal welfare too

IF THE future of farming is to be more factory-like, some might argue that the treatment of stock animals such as chickens and pigs has led the way. Those are not, though, happy precedents. Crop plants, unsentient as they are, cause no welfare qualms in those who worry about other aspects of modern farming. Even fish, as long as they are kept healthy, rarely raise the ire of protesters. Birds and mammals are different. There are moral limits to how they can be treated. They are also individually valuable in a way that crop plants and fish are not. For both these reasons, they are worth monitoring one at a time.

Cattle, in particular, are getting their own private sensors. Devices that sit inside an animal’s rumen, measuring stomach acidity and looking for digestive problems, have been available for several years. They have now been joined by movement detectors such as that developed by Smartbell, a small firm in Cambridge, England. This sensor hangs around a cow’s neck, recording its wearer’s movement and transmitting that information to the cloud. An animal’s general activity level is a good indication of its fitness, so the system can give early warning of any trouble. In particular, it immediately shows when its wearer is going lame—a problem that about a fifth of British cattle suffer at some point in their lives—even before an observant farmer might notice anything wrong. If picked up early, lameness is easily treated. If permitted to linger, it often means the animal has to be destroyed.

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Movement detectors can also show if a cow is ready for insemination. When she is in oestrus, her pattern of movement changes, and the detector will pick this up and alert her owner. Good breeding is crucial to animal husbandry, and marker-assisted genomic selection will ensure that the semen used for such insemination continues to yield better and better offspring. What is less clear—and is actively debated—is whether genome editing has a role to play here. Transgenics has given an even wider berth to terrestrial animals than it has to fish, and for the same reason: wary consumers. Some people hope, though, that this wariness will not apply to animals whose DNA has merely been tweaked, rather than imported from another species, especially if the edits in question will improve animal welfare as well as farmers’ profits.

Following this line of thinking, Recombinetics, a firm in St Paul, Minnesota, is trying to use genome editing of the sort now being employed on crops to create a strain of hornless Holstein cattle. Holsteins are a popular breed for milking, but their horns make them dangerous to work with, so they are normally dehorned as calves, which is messy, and painful for the animal. Scott Fahrenkrug, Recombinetics’ founder, therefore had the idea of introducing into Holsteins a DNA sequence that makes certain beef cattle hornless. This involved deleting a sequence of ten nucleotides and replacing it with 212 others.

Bruce Whitelaw at the Roslin Institute, in Scotland, has similarly edited resistance to African swine fever into pigs, by altering a gene that helps regulate immune responses to this illness to make it resemble the version found in warthogs. These wild African pigs have co-evolved with the virus and are thus less susceptible to it than are non-African domesticated animals. Randall Prather at the University of Missouri has similarly created pigs that cannot catch porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome, an illness that costs American farmers alone more than $600m a year. And at the International Livestock Research Institute in Nairobi, Steve Kemp and his colleagues are considering editing resistance to sleeping sickness, a huge killer of livestock, into African cattle. All this would make the animals healthier and hence happier as well.

Not all such work is welfare-oriented, though. Dr Fahrenkrug has also been working on a famous mutation that increases muscle mass. This mutation, in the gene for a protein called myostatin, is found naturally in Belgian Blue cattle. Myostatin inhibits the development of muscle cells. The Belgian-Blue mutation disrupts myostatin’s structure, and thus function. Hence the animals’ oversize muscles. Two years ago, in collaboration with researchers at Texas A&M University, Dr Fahrenkrug edited the myostatin gene of a member of another breed of cattle to do likewise.

Where’s the beef?

There may, though, be an even better way to grow muscle, the animal tissue most wanted by consumers, than on animals themselves. At least two groups of researchers think it can be manufactured directly. In 2013 Mark Post of Maastricht University, in the Netherlands, unveiled the first hamburger made from muscle cells grown in laboratory cultures. In February this year a Californian firm called Memphis Meats followed suit with the first meatball.

Dr Post’s original hamburger, which weighed 140 grams, was assembled from strips of muscle cells grown in Petri dishes. Including all the set-up costs, it was said to have cost 250,000 ($350,000), or $2.5m a kilogram. Scaling up the process will bring that figure down a lot. This means growing the cells in reactor vessels filled with nutrient broth. But, because such cells are supposed to be parts of bodies, they cannot simply float around in the broth in the way that, for example, yeast cells used in biotechnology can. To thrive, they must be attached to something, so the idea is to grow them on small spheres floating in the vessels. Fat cells, which add juiciness to meat, would be cultured separately.

Do this successfully, Dr Post reckons, and the cost would fall to $65 a kilogram. Add in technological improvements already under way, which will increase the density of muscle cells that can be grown in a reactor, and he hopes that Mosa Meat, the firm he has founded to exploit his work commercially, will have hamburger mince ready for sale (albeit at the pricey end of the market) in five years’ time.

Meanwhile, researchers at Clara Foods, in San Francisco, are developing synthetic egg white, using transgenic yeast to secrete the required proteins. Indeed, they hope to improve on natural egg white by tweaking the protein mix to make it easier to whip into meringues, for example. They also hope their synthetic white will be acceptable to people who do not currently eat eggs, including vegans and some vegetarians.

Towards 2050: Vorsprung durch Technik

Technology will transform farmers’ lives in both the rich and the poor world

ONE of the greatest unsung triumphs of human progress is that most people are no longer working on the land. That is not to demean farming. Rather, it is to praise the monumental productivity growth in the industry, achieved almost entirely by the application of technology in the form of farm machinery, fertilisers and other agrochemicals, along with scientifically improved crops and livestock. In 1900 around 41% of America’s labour force worked on a farm; now the proportion is below 2%. The effect is less marked in poorer countries, but the direction of travel is the same. The share of city-dwellers in the world’s total population reached 50% in 2007 and is still rising relentlessly, yet the shrinking proportion of people living in the countryside is still able to feed the urban majority.

No crystal ball can predict whether that will continue, but on past form it seems perfectly plausible that by 2050 the planet will grow 70% more food than it did in 2009, as the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) says it needs to. Even though some crops in some parts of the world have reached a productivity plateau, cereal production increased by 11% in the six years after the FAO made that prediction. The Malthusian fear that population growth will outstrip food supply, now 218 years old, has not yet come true.

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Yet just as Thomas Malthus has his modern-day apologists, so does his mythical contemporary, Ned Ludd. Neo-Luddism is an ever-present threat that can certainly slow down the development of new technologies—as has indeed happened with transgenics. But while it is fine for the well-fed to be prissy about not eating food containing genetically modified ingredients, their fears have cast a shadow over the development of transgenic crops that might help those whose bellies are not so full. That is unconscionable. With luck, the new generation of genome-edited plants, and maybe even animals, will not provoke such a reaction.

Regardless of whether it does, though, some other trends seem near-certain to continue into the future. Precision agriculture will spread from its North American heartland to become routine in Europe and those parts of South America, such as Brazil, where large arable farms predominate. And someone, perhaps in China, will work out how to apply to rice the sort of precision techniques now applied to soyabeans, maize and other crops.

The technological rationale for precision suggests farms should continue to consolidate, though in an industry in which sentiment and family continuity have always played a big part that purely economic analysis might suggest is irrational, this may not happen as fast as it otherwise would. Still, regardless of the speed at which they arrive, these large holdings will come more and more to resemble manufacturing operations, wringing every last ounce of efficiency out of land and machinery.

Such large-scale farms will probably continue to be served by large-scale corporations that provide seeds, stock, machines and management plans. But, in the case of the management plans, there is an opening for new firms with better ideas to nip in and steal at least part of the market.

Other openings for entrepreneurs are available, too. Both inland fish farming and urban vertical farming—though niche operations compared with Midwestern soyabean cultivation or Scottish sea-loch salmon farms—are waves of the future in the service of gustatorially sophisticated urbanites. And in these businesses, the idea of farm as factory is brought to its logical conclusion.

It is in the poorer parts of the world, though, that the battle for full bellies will be won or lost; and in Africa, in particular, the scope for change is both enormous and unpredictable. Though the problems of African farming are by no means purely technological—better roads, better education, and better governments would all help a great deal—technology nevertheless has a big part to play. Organizations such as the NextGen Cassava Project, which apply the latest breeding techniques to reduce the susceptibility of crops to disease and increase their yield and nutritional value, offer Africans an opportunity to leap into the future in the way they did with telephony, bypassing fixed-line networks and moving straight to mobiles. Crops could similarly jump from 18th- to 21st-century levels of potential in a matter of years, even if converting that potential into productivity still requires the developments listed earlier.

Looking further into the future, the picture is hazier. Large-scale genetic engineering of the sort needed to create C4 rice, or nitrogen-fixing wheat, or enhanced photosynthetic pathways, will certainly cause qualms, and maybe not just among the neo-Luddites. And they may not be needed. It is a general technological truth that there are more ideas than applications, and perfectly decent ones fall by the wayside because others have got there first. But it is good to know that the big ideas are there, available to be drawn on in case other yield plateaus threaten the required rise in the food supply. It means that the people of 2050, whether they live in Los Angeles, Lucknow or Lusaka, will at least be able to face whatever other problems befall them on a full stomach.

Is The Future of Farming Indoors?

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July 14, 2020

Brian Kateman Contributor

I write about sustainable and ethical technology and consumer trends.

The global population is predicted to reach 9.7 billion by 2050 and to feed everyone, it’s estimated that global food production will need to increase by up to 70% in the next 30 years.

There are many challenges to overcome before fears of a worldwide food shortage can be allayed, including rising temperatures and more frequent droughts caused by global warming. These obstacles are making traditional farming methods increasingly inefficient and unpredictable.

Traditional farming has also been hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic. According to the FAO, border closures, quarantines and disruptions to supply chains are limiting some people's access to food, especially in countries hit hard by the virus or already affected by high levels of food insecurity.

There’s an emerging consensus that the agriculture industry needs to adapt to use less water and chemicals, make crops less vulnerable to changes in the climate, and produce more reliable yields. Part of the answer may lie in the emerging start-ups growing produce in indoor environments, where growing conditions can be better managed.

The indoor farming technology market was valued at $23.75 billion in 2016, and is projected to reach $40.25 billion by 2022. Yields are typically much higher than traditional farming methods. Crops from indoor farming are grown in three dimensions, rather than two – and can be grown all year round, independent of external weather conditions.

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Square Roots next-generation farmers growing basil. CRAIG VANDER LENDE

One of Square Roots’ indoor farms, for example, produces the same amount of food as a two- or three-acre farm annually, just from 340 square feet. This yield is achieved by growing plants at 90 degrees, and by using artificial intelligence (AI) to ensure the environment is optimal for each specific plant, including the day and night temperatures and amount of CO2 needed.

“Our indoor farms are living biosystems, constantly adapting to maintain optimal climates for growing specific crops. We’re then able to understand how changes in the climate can impact yield taste and texture,” says Tobias Peggs, Square Roots’ chief executive.

Not only could indoor farming help adapt to a warming planet, but it has the potential to help slow down climate change by being more sustainable – using less water and producing fewer emissions. While estimates vary widely, according to the United States Environmental Protection Agency, agriculture accounted for 10% of all greenhouse gas emissions in 2018; it is also highly dependent on, and a pollutant of, water.

Square Roots’ pop-up farms are built in shipping containers in cities, often in parking lots. They serve local communities, which means reduced emissions compared to traditional agriculture, which often involves transporting food much further. For example, it has 10 farms in Brooklyn that serve 100 retail stores all within five miles of the farm.

At the Plenty headquarters in South San Francisco, leafy greens use up one percent of the land and five percent of the water compared to traditional outdoor farms, says Matt Barnard, the start-up’s Chief Executive Officer, and Co-Founder.

AeroFarms’ indoor farm in New Jersey grows greens including baby kale, baby arugula, and baby watercress using 95% less water than conventional agriculture on just one percent of the land required. The crops grow under LED light with no pesticides and a fraction of the fertilizer used on traditional farms.

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AeroFarms environmentally-controlled indoor farms can grow all year round independent of climate and ... [+] AEROFARMS

Marketing director Alina Zolotareva says being able to produce have ready-to-eat produce that doesn’t require rinsing helps to reduce water usage.

“This is a transformational innovation for agriculture at large,” she says, “as access to fresh water for growing food is one of the most pressing challenges of our time.”

As well as fewer miles and less water, indoor farming doesn’t require pesticides. This is better for the environment and human health as it eliminates the risk of water contamination due to run-off, and is in line with increasing consumer demand for non-GMO produce.

Plenty eliminates the need for pesticides with LED lights, which are synced with the crop’s growth, Barnard says, to provide the ideal spectrums and exposure and minimize energy usage.

“Our sensor system ensures each plant gets exactly the amount of purified water it needs, and any excess water is recycled through a closed-loop irrigation system resulting in greatly reduced water consumption and zero waste,” he says.

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Nanobubbles super-saturates the water with oxygen, making the plant roots healthier. This promotes ... [+]

MOLEAER

Other farms are using nanobubble technology, such as Moleaer, which has allowed more than 100 indoor farms to connect their irrigation systems to generators that provide oxygen via sub-micron gas-containing cavities to the plant’s roots to provide chemical-free water. These nanobubbles result in healthier roots, more resilient plants, and increasing crop yields, says Nick Dyner, CEO of Moleaer.

“Our oxygen transfer efficiency provides the most cost-effective solution to elevate oxygen levels in the water, which in turn promotes beneficial bacteria and root development,” he says.

The company is also working on a new NASA-approved space farming research project, exploring how astronauts on the International Space Station can grow their own food in microgravity using nanobubble technology.

There are concerns that it’s an expensive investment, but Dyner says Moleaer has various systems so it’s accessible to all sizes of indoor farms, high- and low-tech. Some products do, however, require growers to connect an external source of oxygen, which must come from a gas supply company or an onsite oxygen generator, which Moleaer provides.

“In many cases, traditional farmers may have more to gain by using our technology, since the capital investment is significantly less than the most advanced growing technologies available today, which are often out of a typical farmer’s budget,” Dyner says.

“Nanobubble technology is a cost-effective, chemical-free, and scalable solution that allows growers to increase crop yields and shorten cultivation time - which will be much needed to feed our growing population in the future.”

Peggs says Square Roots is also focused on ensuring its technology makes farming an accessible career path for young people who live in urban areas.

“If you’re a new young farmer at Square Roots, our app will guide you through what to do; what’s growing, what state is in it, what do we need to do today based on where things are in the growth cycle. Through our app and our training program we’re able to bring new people into our team, even folks with zero horticulture experience, and get them ready to go in about six weeks.”

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Indoor farming is putting the youth back in agriculture. PLENTY

But despite being an emerging option for youth in the city, Barnard predicts most will remain traditional farmers.

“The world still needs the field and will need the field forever. We support the field by growing in addition to the field. Over time, [indoor] farming systems will become more accessible and affordable. Both field and indoor farming will be necessary to support global food demand.”

Viraj Puri, Co-Founder, and CEO of Gotham Greens, a pioneer in urban indoor agriculture that operates over 500,000 square feet greenhouses in 5 U.S. states, echoes this sentiment: “Growing produce indoors certainly has an increasing role to play in the future of sustainable food production. While indoor farming may not represent the future of all fresh produce production, for certain types of crops such as tomatoes, cucumbers, leafy greens, and herbs, it will become more prevalent. Customers are increasingly recognizing the reliability, consistency, and high quality of greenhouse-grown produce that’s grown in close proximity to large population centers using fewer natural resources. Other agricultural commodities like grains or fruits or root vegetables, however, can’t yet be produced.”  

However, Dyner predicts that, eventually, the majority of agriculture will move to indoors, in vertical farms— the practice of growing crops in vertically stacked layers—in urban areas.

“These settings enable traditional farming to shift to controlled growing conditions, using new technology and automation, and reducing the risk of exposure to harsh climate conditions,” he says.

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Plenty's goal is to build vertical farms in urban hubs and distribute each farm’s harvest locally ... [+]

PLENTY

Start-ups like Square Roots, Plenty, and AeroFarms currently practice vertical farming, which is a form of indoor farming that relies on artificial lighting such as LEDs instead of drawing on natural sunlight.

Other indoor farming companies like Gotham Greens grow produce in high-tech glass-clad greenhouses that primarily rely on natural sunlight for plant photosynthesis. According to Puri: “vertical farming is a more nascent technology within the indoor farming sector and the costs of running a vertical farm with artificial lighting and air conditioning is currently not as cost-effective as relying on natural sunlight in greenhouses.”

Gotham Greens takes a different approach, relying on natural sunlight rather than the artificial ... [+]

GOTHAM GREENS AND JULIE MCMAHON

“Greenhouse indoor farming technology has been in operation globally for 20 to 30 years and is proven to be commercially viable. That being said, the costs around artificial lighting and other vertical farming technologies have been coming down significantly in the past few years,” he adds.

Nonetheless, indoor farm technology start-ups, broadly speaking, don’t see themselves as disruptive, but as being on the same side of traditional farms, for the wider cause.

“The common enemy is the industrial food system, shipping food from one part of the world to the other, rather than locally produced food,” Peggs says.

Indoor farms don’t work in competition with each other, either; they work collaboratively by forming a network that shares data. For example, AeroFarms is collecting data on a research project with the non-profit Foundation for Food & Agriculture Research to understand the sensory and nutritional characteristics of leafy greens for the benefit of the entire agriculture industry.

However traditional and AI-based indoor farming work together in the future, there’s little doubt that indoor farming is helping to meet the needs of a growing global population and support traditional farming, which is both at the mercy of and exacerbating a warming planet. Only one method will find itself in space – but there’s space for them both.

Brian Kateman

I am co-founder and president of the Reducetarian Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to reducing consumption of animal products.

Lead Photo: The world’s current agricultural practices are unsustainable, and indoor farming may offer solutions ... [+]  PLENTY

JPFA Webinar June 30 - The Challenges And Impact of COVID-19

Japan Plant Factory Association / JPFA

Japan Plant Factory Association (JPFA) is a non-profit organization founded in 2010 and is devoted to academic and business advancements in the global industry of plant factory/controlled environment agriculture. Our mission is to develop and disseminate sustainable systems that can address global challenges: food, environment, energy, resource and people's health. With international industry-academia collaborations, we manage around 20 R&D projects, workshops, training courses, etc. based in a Chiba University campus in Kashiwanoha, a smart city in Japan.

Monthly workshops are one of our important education/knowledge sharing activities with JPFA members and others. We have been organizing workshops since 2010 on a wide variety of topics, including plant physiology, new technologies towards next generation, cultivation methodology on multiple crops, business case studies of commercial plant factory operations, to name just a few.

The Japan Plant Factory Association (JPFA) is organizing its 138th online workshop. The workshop is free of charge.

Some sessions include the presentation of 80 Acres Farms on tomato production in indoor farms, a survey report on the impact of COVID-19 by JPFA and a lively panel discussion with leading plant factory companies from Japan and China. Such as, 808 Factory, Greenland, Saladbowl, and Future Agro-Tech, all together with researchers on plant factory and indoor breeding from JPFA and Chiba University. 

Date

Scheduled to be released on June 30, 2020.
Free viewing will be available from 13:00 (JST) on June 30 to 13:00 (JST) July 15, 2020.

Theme

As the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) creates challenges worldwide, we feel concerted effort is crucial to our sector more than ever before.

The global challenges/impacts of COVID-19 in the sector, the future role, possibilities and direction of plant factory will be discussed to rethink about what we can do together for our future.   

Outline

I. Keynote: “beyond leafy greens: tomato crop production in indoor farms” by Mike Zelkind, 80 Acres Farms + Q & A Session

II. “Report on COVID-19 survey by JPFA” Eri Hayashi (JPFA)

III. Panel discussion: “the challenges and impact of COVID-19, future role and direction of Plant Factory”

*Please kindly note that some contents might be only in Japanese.

Panelists:

• Bai Baosuo (Future Agro-Tech (Beijing)

• Katashi Kai (Shinnippou, 808 Factory)

• Susumu Tanaka (Saladbowl)

• Toyoki Kozai (JPFA)

• Toru Maruo (Chiba University)

• Yuhei Shimada (greenLand)

• Moderator: Eri Hayashi (JPFA)

Fee Free of charge

How to watch

Advanced registration is required.
Registration deadline: 13:00 (JST) on July 14, 2020
Please register at https://select-type.com/e/?id=n2duYvX-Gas

After the registration, you will receive the link with access to the workshop videos a day before the release. Please apply one by one. If you cannot access the registration website, please send us the email with your "name", "organization", "country" and "questions to the webinar speaker/panelists (optional)" to info.english@npoplantfactory.org

For more information on the workshop:
JPFA Workshop website 
https://select-type.com/s/JPFA-Training
https://npoplantfactory.org/information/1499/

If you have not joined the survey yet, please take the survey, Urgent Survey on the Impact of COVID-19 (Vol.1) before the workshop/online viewing starts. 

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For more information:
Japan Plant Factory Association (JPFA) International Relations & Consulting
Nozomi Hiramatsu, Eri Hayashi
info.english@npoplantfactory.org

Farm Fresh Produce - Fresh Is Better

Fresher is better - Fresh produce, of course. But also fresh ideas. New ways of thinking about the age-old business of getting great tasting sweet potatoes and blueberries and napa cabbage and more - from field to table. Not throwing out the past for the safe of shiny new objects, but taking a clear-eyed look at what works, what we can improve, and where there are opportunities for smart, strategic growth.

The Difference

What makes Farm Fresh Outstanding in the field?

We get it. Because we grow it.

In addition to working with a reliable team of experienced growers, we own and operate our own sweet potato farm. Not only does this mean we know first-hand the challenges our partners face — it also means we have greater control over supply.

We give you fresh thinking. Every step of the way.

We’re a grower. We’re a packer. We’re a distributor. We’ve been across the country and around the world. We understand every link in the chain — and we make sure each and every one is strong enough to keep you supplied with everything you need, week in and week out, whatever the weather, wherever you are.

You buy it, you name it.

You’ve spent time and money building your brand, so it only makes sense to show it off every chance you get. We’ll work with you to create completely customized packaging for your shipments, so it’s your private label that customers see when the produce arrives. 

​We’re sustainable for the long haul.

The entire Farm Fresh operation is designed to work toward an optimized carbon footprint, which in practice means:

• Using natural pesticides and conserving water in the fields

• Installing a rain water collection system at our warehouse

• Exploring ways to incorporate recycled materials and generate solar power in our buildings

• Developing smart packaging solutions that maximize truck-packing efficiency

• Deploying advanced logistics and near-siting to minimize road-based emissions

 We mind the GAP.

We proudly follow the standards of GLOBALG.A.P., a key reference in the worldwide push towards best practices in the produce industry, now covering more than 100 countries.

 We’ve got nothing to hide.

Around here, one day of really hard work is just like any other; we don’t need time to clean up or hide things under the rug when company comes. So if you want to see what we’re all about, drop by anytime.

Fresh produce, fresh ideas, fresh opportunities — let’s find out what we can do to help each other grow.

Toll-Free: 1-800-606-9267 (YAMS)

Fax: 1-800-807-9267 (YAMS)
Local N.C. Phone: 910-920-9871
Local Quebec, Canada: (514) 461-0836
Local Mississippi Phone: (662) 796-1977
Cell Phone: (910) 508-8933

USA: Indoor Growers Wanted For CEA Survey

A Cornell team is leading a new project to investigate how Controlled Environment Agriculture (CEA) compares to conventional field agriculture in terms of energy, carbon and water footprints, profitability, workforce development and scalability. Strategic FEW (food, energy, water) and Workforce Investments to Enhance Viability of Controlled Environment Agriculture in Metropolitan Areas is funded by a three-year, $2.4 million grant from the National Science Foundation, through its new funding initiative called Innovations at the Nexus of Food, Energy and Water Systems.

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The workforce development research, led by Professor Anu Rangarajan (Director, Small Farms Program), consisted in 2018 and early 2019 of interviews and an intensive two-day workshop with industry experts. During that workshop, a focus group of indoor farm operations managers produced this chart detailing the duties (responsibilities) and tasks (activities, skills) that describe their work.

Survey
"The current step in our research plan is to verify the details of this chart with peer growers worldwide via a survey", explains research associate Wythe Marschall. "It invites indoor farm managers to tell us how important each skill is, and how frequently it is conducted. The survey can be completed anonymously, or growers can provide us with their names and emails to receive a $25 Amazon gift card as a token of our appreciation."

To take this survey, register here. The Cornell team will send a survey link directly from Qualtrics. Respondents may provide their names and emails to receive a $25 Amazon gift card as a token of appreciation.

Online workshops
"We are also interested to ask growers if they would be interested in a series of upcoming online workshops to help us detail what specific, teachable steps (activities) are contained within each important skill needed by indoor farm operations managers", Wythe adds. "For example, we'll ask growers to dive into the specific skill, 'Manage crop fertigation (e.g., mixing nutrients, monitoring pH, monitoring water temp),' breaking this down into teachable, specific components.

"This series of workshops will be compensated, and we are beginning to schedule it now. Any CEA farm manager is invited to participate, regardless of location or modality."

For more information about this study regarding the future of the CEA workforce, please contact project lead Anu Rangarajan (ar47@cornell.edu) or research associate Wythe Marschall (wmarschall@fas.harvard.edu).

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Publication date: Tue 9 Jun 2020

Vertical Farming Is The Future of The Agriculture Industry

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26 May 2020

By: Garsha Sai Nitesh

World population is said to grow by another 2 billion by the year 2050, feeding humans adequately will become a huge challenge until then. Due to rising industrialization and urbanization, humans are clearing arable land and forests. According to scientists, our planet lost a third of its arable land in just 40 years. Many believe that Vertical farming is the solution for sustainable living soon. 

As countries are getting rich demand for food is increasing which is pressuring the planet for more cultivation and aggressive use of resources. Due to globalization and the growing population, it is not clear how much more of arable land we will lose. Developed countries are now investing in Vertical farming heavily. 

 What is Vertical Farming? 

 Vertical farming is a simple practice of producing food crops on vertically inclined surfaces, unlike the traditional farming method of single-level like in fields or greenhouses. In this method, food is produced in vertically stacked layers which are integrated into structures like skyscraper or shipping containers. 

Using Controlled Environment Agriculture (CEA) technology, vertical farming uses indoor farming techniques. This indoor technique uses artificial control of temperature, light, gases, and humidity for food. This farming is mainly used to maximize crop output in a limited area. 

This farming has four important parts 1) Physical layout 2) Lighting 3) Growing Medium and 4) Sustainability Features. 

At first, the crops are cultivated in a stacked-layer in a tower-like structure. Then a combination of natural and artificial lights is used to maintain the perfect light in the room, technologies such as rotating beds are often used to improve light efficiency.

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Thirdly, in place of soil aeroponic, aquaponic or hydroponic are used as growing mediums, coconut husks and other non-soil mediums are often used. Finally, various sustainability features to reduce the energy costs of farming is used. Vertical farming use water at a minimal level. 

Developed countries like Singapore, Hong Kong who depend on imports for food products are now investing in Vertical Farming. Sky Greens, first commercial vertical farm and worlds first low carbon vertical farm. This farm produces up to 1,000 kg of vegetables a day. Next year it will reach its full capacity then it can produce 5,000 to 10,00 kg a day.

In Hong Kong, a Vertical farming venture called Farm66 uses modern LED lights and aquaponics in a fully air-conditioned vertical farm of size 20,000 sq ft. This farm produces four tons of lettuce, endive, and cabbage very month.

In the next two decades, 80 percent of people live in urban cities, increasing the demand for food. Vertical farming offers a solution to such problems. One acre of indoor vertical farming equals 4-6 acres of outdoor farming. This farming use 75-95 percent less water compared to normal cultivation. As vertical farming is based on the technology of using proper lightning crops can be developed without pesticides. 

Related Links:

• How Vertical farming is the Solution for Modern-Age Agriculture

Vertical Farming: How Plant Factories Stack Up Against Field Agriculture

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March 31, 2020

By Jeff Jurgens, AEM Director of Product Stewardship

With the world's population expected to reach nine billion by 2050, estimations project that food production must increase by 70 percent to keep up with worldwide demand. This means farmers will be required to grow more foodstuff in the next 35 to 40 years than the last 10,000 years combined. There is presently not enough farmable terrain to meet this constraint, and due to the negative environmental impacts of global deforestation (including desertification and flooding), clearing more forest for cultivation is not a sustainable option. Vertical farming, with its potential benefits, may play a major role in addressing the growing food demand while minimizing environmental impact.

VERTICAL FARMING DEFINED

Controlled Environment Agriculture (CEA), commonly known as vertical farming, is a growing system designed to weather- and climate-proof the production of food crops. CEA grows crops indoors in stacked, or standing, layers using growing systems such as hydroponics, aeroponics or aquaponics, all of which use a method of nutritious liquid delivery with minimal soil. CEA uses enclosed growing practices, controlling the environment’s temperature, illumination, gases and humidity with the goal of maximizing crop output in limited space.

CEA has become an attractive alternative to traditional farming in areas where arable land is inaccessible or scarce, including metropolitan areas where citizens wish to bring food production nearer to home. Rather than growing crops on a single level, such as in the ground or a greenhouse, CEA produces crops in vertically stacked layers, which can frequently be incorporated into other constructions like high-rise buildings, intermodal (shipping/Conex) containers or repurposed industrial space.

ENVIRONMENTAL CONCERNS

NASA reports that the majority of the world's freshwater supplies are draining faster than they are being replenished with freshwater demand set to increase by 55 percent by 2050. Currently, agriculture is responsible for 92 percent of the global freshwater usage, creating a challenge for even developed countries such as the United States, China and Australia.

A 2017 report found that more than 75 percent of Earth’s land areas have suffered from erosion and water degradation. The continual plowing of fields, combined with heavy use of fertilizers, has degraded soils across the world with erosion occurring at a rate 100 times greater than soil formation. This results in 33 percent of the world’s adequate or high-quality food-producing land being lost at a rate that far outstrips the pace of natural processes to replace diminished soil.

Collectively, this means arable land is decreasing, and poor soil health is contributing to less healthy agriculture, while water demands continue to rise. 

COMMON GROUND

Approximately 1.3 billion tons of food destined for human consumption gets lost or wasted each year globally, discarded anywhere along the supply chain, from farmland to supermarkets, restaurants and home consumers. But crops for human consumption only accounts for 55 percent of all crops grown. Nine percent are used for biofuel and 36 percent used as livestock feed. Feed crops, such as hay and soy, are land and water-intensive to grow and the animals that consume them require high levels of water to thrive. Additionally, many types of livestock occupy the grazing land, which constitutes 70 percent of all agricultural land, which is not arable.    

BENEFITS OF VERTICAL FARMING

Some of the obvious benefits of vertical farming for is year-round crop production for both human and livestock consumption, consistent quality, and predictable output. CEA holds other environmental benefits, requiring less fertilizer being applied to plants, reducing water usage up to 95 percent and, through weather-proofing, eliminating the need for chemical pesticides. CEA technology allows for faster growth cycles and quicker harvests, meaning more food can be grown every year, in a much smaller space than on a conventional farm. One of the highest-yielding farms grows over 350 times more food per square yard than a conventional farm. 

In urban settings vertical farms utilize a farm-to-table order-based system, drastically cutting down on food waste, packaging and the fuel consumption used to transport food—known as food miles—as well. However, the carbon savings are relatively minor even with these novel approaches as at least 80 percent of the emissions for agriculture happens on the farm—not in the processing, not in the transportation. Urban gardening and vertical systems have many benefits, but it doesn’t presently have the scale that’s needed to meet human food demand or reduce environmental impact on a massive scale.

CHALLENGES OF VERTICAL FARMING

Economics is a major obstacle for the broad implementation of CEA practices. Plant factories are currently not the solution to feeding the world's increasing population as competition with crops grown in traditional systems will not be economically viable in the coming years. Plants – not just growers – will need to adapt to CEA growing conditions. Meaning, new crop genetics will need to be designed specifically for vertical farm production that addresses five traits of interest: easy and uniform fruiting; rapid biomass and multi-harvest capable crops; photoinduced quality; auto-harvest friendly traits; and dwarf plants with yield efficiency. It remains to be seen if created, the genetically modified plants would be attractive to an end consumer given the movement of non-GMO products.

CEA approaches require huge capital to launch, as they're high-risk businesses given the cost of production can be quite high per pound of product. Vertical farms are more feasible because of LEDs, but they are still energy-intensive.  Proponents of vertical farms often say that they can offset the enormous sums of electricity they use, by powering them with renewable energy —, especially solar panels — to make the whole thing carbon neutral.  But just stop and think about this for a second. These indoor “farms” would use solar panels to harvest naturally occurring sunlight, and convert it into electricity so that they can power…artificial sunlight? In other words, they’re trying to use the sun to replace the sun.  With current technology, it makes no sense to grow food staples, such as wheat, indoors. A Cornell professor calculated that if you grew wheat indoors, just the electricity cost per loaf of bread made from that wheat would be $11.  

Even if a vertical farm boom were to ensue, the output would only be a small percentage of the vegetables and fruits grown on traditional farms and none of the wheat, corn, soy, or rice, at least not in the foreseeable future. Nor will vertical farms raise livestock or grow oil palms, which are mainly what people are clearing hardwood forests to make room for.

THE FUTURE OF FIELD AGRICULTURE

The contribution of vertical farms to overall food production and environmental concerns is to be determined. The greatest potential impact is the implementation of technology in agriculture, partly due to new possibilities with data analysis. Vertical farms have a multitude of sensors measuring many parameters (from, temperature, to nutrient levels). The plants are analyzed with cameras and sensors, which monitor plant health in real-time. As a result, vertical farms are hiring data engineers and sensor specialists as a significant percentage of their workforce. Artificial Intelligence already plays a key role in many vertical farm operations. As sensors continue to get cheaper and more capable, the opportunities for field farms increases considerably. 

Farmers will solve agricultural problems — like developing new methods for drip irrigation, better grazing systems that lock up soil carbon, and ways of recycling on-farm nutrients. Organic farming and high-precision agriculture are doing promising things, like the use of artificial intelligence for detecting disease, sensor-activated irrigation systems, and GPS-controlled self-driving tractors.

From the plummeting cost of robotics to the new frontiers of bioinformatics, the future landscape of farming may well look very different, indeed. While this isn't going to happen immediately, growth in the sector will accelerate as technological improvements drive down investment and operational costs. 

THE BOTTOM LINE

While civilization wouldn't be where it is today without agriculture, it's a big factor in a number of society's greatest challenges. If farming practices continue unabated, the likely outcome is having to cut down more remaining forests for acreage, destroying even more land and freshwater habitats in the process. Current projections make a global water crisis almost certain. 

In light of these challenges, AEM members are looking at every way to reduce the negative impact of current agricultural methods and existing equipment technology.  Manufacturers are becoming technology balanced and interdisciplinary, utilizing designers, engineers, horticulturalists, and sustainability managers.  AEM members can provide service from concept development to feasibility studies to education and workshops. 

IoT devices are guiding precision farming to increase yields. Advanced machine communication is allowing the implementation to control the tractor for optimum efficiency. And manufacturers are developing many alternative power sources, such as advanced battery technology, cable-powered machines, and tractors powered by methane gas. Some concept machines are small enough to fit between rows, using lasers to destroy pests one by one. That is precision farming. If constraints are the catalyst for innovation, then AEM and its member companies are already rising to meet the challenge. 

Subscribe to our AEM newsletters for more perspectives from AEM staff.

• Agriculture Safety Regulatory & Standards

2 Day Webcast Series: New Ag International Digital Week

Join us 14 & 15 October 2019 for New Ag Digital Week, a global 2-day series of live educational webcasts and downloadable resources providing the latest insights on Biostimulants, Biocontrol, specialty fertilizers, Irrigation and new/the latest Greenhouse and Precision Ag technologies.

Day 1: Monday, October 14, 2019

The Impact of Swarm Robotics on Arable Farms
9am EDT / 2pm BST / 3pm CEST

Does deficit irrigation work in annual crops? Best practices learned from Spain
10am EDT / 3pm BST / 4pm CEST

Day 2: Tuesday, October 15, 2019

New Biostimulant Technologies Focus on Efficiency
9am EDT / 2pm BST / 3pm CEST

Development of New Biological Control Agents Against Apple Scab and Powdery Mildew
10am EDT / 3pm BST / 4pm CEST

REGISTER NOW

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To sponsor future digital events, contact partners@knect365lifesciences.com or request details.

Cultivate '19 is a wrap

Automation, Biological Crop Control And Mobile Accessibility

Booths are broken down, bags are packed and cars, airplanes and other means of transport have left Columbus. Cultivate '19 is a wrap. The ninetieth edition of the trade show was one of the biggest ones in the last years and expectations are this is not to change for the next edition.

With conditions being favorable for plant growers, the atmosphere at the show was good and that pleased the suppliers - even though some noticed a lesser amount of vegetable and cannabis growers made the trip to Columbus. Still, many suppliers, especially providing biological crop protection for these crops, made it to the show and weren't displeased: the demand for solutions and for knowledge is high and so was the interest.

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Feeding your beneficials during the start-up of the population! That can be done with this new Biobee product.

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The team with Bluelab showing their Pulse Meter, making it possible to measure the root zone.

Labour and automation
Like for other growers in the industry, labour, more specifically skilled labour, is an issue amongst potted plant growers and investing in solutions for this is of high relevance.

Also LED lights were all over the show - although not as many as earlier this year on GreenTech, where it seemed to be a disco party every now and then. Amongst technical suppliers, accessibility of data found in the greenhouses is an important topic and many more launched solutions to provide better insight and mobile applications for their platforms.

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The BioSafe team launched an application making it possible to control your irrigation system remote and on mobile devices. More to follow...

Paul Jaeger and Daphne Brogdon with Micro Grow Systems, showing their MicroCool solutions and sharing insights on creating the best climate in various crops.

Water quality
Then there's water quality. If it's minuscule bubbles added to the irrigation water, solutions for fertilisation or biostimulants to be added to the water - it all could be found at the trade show this year. 

Curious to see what solutions we're talking about more specifically? Keep an eye out for Friday's publication, when we'll release our photo report.

If you want to read more about the trends in potted plants, check out our floricultural publication FloralDaily today.

Publication date: 7/17/2019 
Author: Arlette Sijmonsma 
© HortiDaily.com

Bad Certification News From Canada

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A negative situation is brewing in Canada that could spread across borders and set back aquaponics’ progress worldwide.

CanadaGAP, a government-recognized food safety certification program, stated that it will withdraw CanadaGAP certification for Aquaponic production effective March 31, 2020.

Unfortunately, the decision appears to be based on faulty and/or incomplete information:

“New information has come to light related to potential chemical hazards (antibiotics, for example) associated with aquaponic production. Further, there may be potential for leafy greens to uptake possible contaminants found in the water from the aquaculture production. Unfortunately, peer-reviewed scientific studies are limited at this time.”

This decision strikes at the heart of all aquaponic growers. We must publish and maintain trustworthy information about our practice to ensure institutional support, rather than opposition.

The Aquaponics Association is currently working with experts to compile the information needed to counter the false assumptions. We will make this information public as soon as possible. Please stay tuned.

In the meantime, do you have information or data that supports the food safety of aquaponics? Email us at community@aquaponicsassociation.org.

At the Putting Out Fruits Conference this September 20-22, we will talk about actions we can take together to support the advancement of aquaponics. And we’ll discuss what our message needs to be to food safety regulators and other policy-makers that affect our practice.

We’re all in this together!

Brian Filipowich, Chairman
Aquaponics Association

Secretary Perdue Praises Farming Innovations at Forbes AgTech Summit

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 JULY 2, 2019 AGRI-BUSINESS,  USDA-NRCS

At the fifth-annual Forbes AgTech Summit in Salinas, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue noted his admiration for the level of innovation that continues to be developed in the agricultural sector.  During his discussion with Forbes CEO Mike Federle, the Secretary described the agtech environment as being “on the cusp” of making revolutionary improvements to the field of agriculture and noted that USDA wants to help facilitate those advancements.

“We want to help form a regulatory framework that works with our innovators, and creators, and entrepreneurs rather than against them,” said Secretary Perdue.  “We have the ability here at USDA, through our land grant universities and our extension service, to get that to the ground floor of producers, to understand the new technology here.”

Many of the technologies being developed for agricultural application are going to rely on consistent internet access. The issue of broadband internet, which the Secretary described as having a “transformational capacity,” will need to be addressed with improvements to infrastructure.  “As we move as a society to the internet of things, agriculture is going to be one of the beneficiaries, but it’s going to rely on connectivity,” Secretary Perdue noted.  “We’ve got some gee-whiz kind of productivity increases out there in precision agriculture that could be utilized today but they’re dependent upon connectivity.”  

Along with agricultural innovations, the Secretary also addressed trade concerns as they relate to China.  While the troubling trade market is not likely to remain the status quo, Secretary Perdue noted that it is because of American farmers success that they carry much of the burden when trade tensions run high.  “We’re blessed to be in a nation where we can produce more than we can consume domestically,” said Secretary Perdue.  “Farmers, because of the trade surplus that they enjoy in agriculture, they’re the tip of the spear.  When people are going to retaliate then that’s where they go.”

The Forbes AgTech Summit was one of several stops the Secretary made on his most recent trip to California.  Secretary Perdue visited the indoor vertical farming company Plenty to review the techniques being used to grow food in an urban environment.  The Secretary also toured Driscoll’s Berries, as well as the C.W. Bill Jones Pumping Plant, a key component of the Central Valley Project.  During his California visit, Secretary Perdue also met with local politicians and community members at several town hall events that took place in Clarksburg, Watsonville, Los Banos, and Yolo County.

Listen to Secretary Perdue’s discussion at the Forbes AgTech Summit below.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Brian German

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Multi-media Journalist for AgNet West

US (WV): Good Hot, Dry Weather Helpful in Aquaponics Facility's Construction

Construction work is underway on the aquaponics facility which will be located at Kermit. The recent hot, dry summer weather has been good as the project moves forward. The facility is located on the old Burning Creek Mine property inside the Kermit City limits.

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Leasha Johnson, executive director for the Mingo County Redevelopment Authority, said, "With the delivery of the greenhouse expected in early July, we're getting more and more excited about the completion of the aquaponics project. Barring any unforeseen delays, we expect the facility to be completed by late August or early September."
 
"Sprouting Farms, our operating partner, is starting to put together job descriptions. Together with Sprouting Farms, we've engaged a marketing consultant to create a brand identity, logo and core messaging for the facility in order to expand the market that it will serve and to establish the facility's role in the community. We've gotten excellent cooperation and assistance from Mayor (Charles) Sparks and the Town of Kermit, and we're looking forward to the start of an innovative economic development and agriculture project in their community," Johnson added.

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The multi-million-dollar project is to be developed on abandoned mine land just in northern Mingo County. When completed it is initially projected to employ about 12 people. The project was originally announced in 2016. It is part of the Abandoned Mine Lands (AML) Pilot Program and the W.Va. DEP.

When operational, the aquaponics facility and training center will provide 150 kilowatts of solar power, provide healthy and fresh food for local and regional consumers, and represent a model that can be implemented in other coalfield communities, according to Johnson. 

Source: Williamson Daily News (Kyle Lovern)

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Publication date: 7/1/2019 

Living Greens Farm Becomes One of the Largest Indoor Farms in the World

FARIBAULT, MINN. (PRWEB) FEBRUARY 13, 2019

With the opening of a new grow room, Living Greens Farm, a vertical, indoor aeroponic farm that provides year-round fresh salads, microgreens and herbs, is set to become the largest vertical plane aeroponic farm in the world on February 22, 2019. This brings their farming operation to 60,000 square feet – allowing Living Greens to offer produce that’s better for you and the environment. Unlike most produce, Living Greens Farm never uses pesticides, herbicides or GMOs – delivering the highest standards in food safety. Because Living Greens’ products are fresher, they contain more vitamins and nutrients than conventional produce.

While aeroponics has been around for decades, Living Greens Farm has discovered a way to successfully transition and improve this technology for commercial production. Aeroponics is the practice of suspending a plant’s roots in the air and spraying them with a nutrient-rich solution, instead of burying them in soil. Living Greens Farms’ patented vertical plane design allows one acre to produce the equivalent of hundreds of conventional acres. A high-tech computer system manages the plants growing conditions for variables such as light, temperature, humidity and CO2 to grow year-round produce. Overall, Living Greens Farms’ system uses 200 times less land and 95 percent less water than traditional growing methods. While other vertical aeroponic farms are larger in square footage, Living Greens Farms’ vertical plane design is the first of its kind and is more efficient than other aeroponic growing methods which decreases labor by up to 60 percent.

“Our patented growing technology has changed the game of aeroponics, within one year our new farm will save 24 million gallons of water and several hundred thousand miles of shipping – saving over 35,000 gallons of diesel and nearly a million pounds of CO2 emissions," said Dana Anderson, Chairman and CEO of Living Greens Farm. “With our third grow room, Living Greens Farm will nearly triple its capacity, move into major market segments and position the company for even stronger growth in 2019. The expansion places Living Greens as the world’s largest vertical plane aeroponic farm in the world.”

Living Greens Farm’s new grow room will allow an expansion of their consumer product line into new states including Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Iowa, North Dakota and South Dakota by February 2019.

ABOUT LIVING GREENS FARM

Headquartered in Minnesota, Living Greens Farm is the world’s largest vertical plane aeroponic farm. Living Greens Farm produce requires 95 water and 99 percent less land to grow year-round and all products are grown without pesticides or GMOs. Living Greens Farm has a full product line that includes salads, microgreens and herbs available throughout the Midwest. For more information, please visit http://www.livinggreensfarm.com

Tech Connection Boosts NY Vertical Farmers

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By AFP

24 February 2019

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A Bowery Farming employee inspects some of their greens grown at the hydroponic farming company in Kearny, New Jersey

Workers at Bowery Farming's warehouse near New York have swapped out a farmer's hoe for a computer tablet that takes real-time readings of light and water conditions.

Launched in 2015, Bowery is part of the fast-growing vertical farming movement, which employs technology in a controlled, man-made setting to grow fresh vegetables indoors all year long.

Champions of the practice see vertical farming as a key tool to meet the world's food needs at a time when the population is rising and the climate is changing.

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Irving Fain, CEO and co-founder of Bowery Farming, talks about his hydroponic grown greens

The company's chief executive and co-founder, Irving Fain, said his company's Kearny, New Jersey site uses fewer resources than traditional farms and does not employ pesticides.

"I have been a big believer my entire life in technology as being able to solve not only hard problems, but also important problems," said Fain, who previously ran a company that provides data analysis for big companies on their loyalty programs.

Bowery employs more programmers than agricultural scientists. The company says its use of algorithms enables it to be 100 times more productive per area compared with a traditional farm and to use 95 percent less water.

- Lower electricity costs -

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Greens are grown at Bowery Farming, a vertical farming site founded in 2015

Vertical farming has long been practiced in Japan and some other places but it did not take off in the United States until recent technological leaps made it viable.

A key component has been LED bulbs, which have enabled indoor farmers to drastically cut electricity costs.

But Bowery is also making heavy use of robotics and artificial intelligence to keep prices under control.

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Bowery makes heavy use of robotics and artificial intelligence to keep prices under control

The combination of these newer tools "is how we really rethink what agriculture will look like in the next century and beyond," Fain said.

The company has also benefited from more than $120 million in funding from tech titans including Google Ventures and Uber Chief Executive Dara Khosrowshahi.

The Silicon Valley connection has also boosted San Francisco-based Plenty, another prominent vertical farming company, which has garnered more than $200 million from Amazon Chief Executive Jeff Bezos, Softbank and others.

US-based Crop One and Emirates Flight Catering have launched a $40 million joint venture to build a giant vertical farming facility in Dubai.

- Profitable? -

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AeroFarms co-founder and chief marketing officer Marc Oshima looks at baby kale

The world's biggest vertical farm is in Newark, New Jersey and operated by AeroFarms.

The company, founded in 2004 and considered a pioneer in the sector, remains privately-held and does not disclose financial data. But the company says it is now profitable after a series of fumbles.

David Chang, founder of the noodle restaurant brand Momofuku, is an investor.

AeroFarms exclusively uses company-made technology that has now made its way to China, the Middle East and Europe, said its co-founder Marc Oshima.

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AeroFarms's vertical grow towers in Newark, New Jersey

In a warehouse that was once a steel mill with 40-foot (12-meter) ceilings, the company is growing kale and arugula leaves set in rows of 12 metal racks each. The roots are suspended in the air as they are intermittently irrigated while the leaves bask under LED lights.

AeroFarms experiments regularly with lighting and nutrients with an eye towards finding the optimal recipe for each plant and developing the best algorithm.

The company produces watercress that reminded a reporter of her grandmother's soup, kale as tender as spinach and arugula with a hint of spice.

Basil from Bowery Farming was tinged with the flavor of lemon.

But it can take a while for vertical farms to find solutions that are viable.

"The big, big vertical farms are having a difficult time being profitable because they are so capital-intensive at the beginning," said Henry Gordon-Smith, founder of Agritecture, a consultancy.

Large farms typically need seven or eight years before they are profitable, with smaller farms requiring perhaps half as long.

But entrepreneurs in the business are confident in their prospects as more young people in cities express worry about climate change and pesticides.

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Baby kale is grown at AeroFarms

"Vertical farming is not THE solution to food security," said Gordon-Smith. "It is one out of the possible solutions."

Critics of vertical farming say it has a large carbon footprint due to heavy use of lighting and ventilation.

But defenders say that this negative impact is more than offset from the benefits of lower water use, the location near population centers and the non-use of pesticides.

A bigger issue may be the limitations of the output itself, at least in terms of nutrition.

"You can't feed the world with salad alone," said Princeton University plant researcher Paul Gauthier, who says vertical farmers will need to develop more protein-rich offerings.

Gauthier -- who grew spicier peppers in his own lab by subtly increasing potassium levels -- said vertical farming could supply fresh food to so-called food "deserts" where it is absent and could in the long-term meet growing food demand as the climate changes.

Simple Secrets To Start A Vertical Farm

Talking to people just like you, it’s clear that the first step is always the hardest on the road to building a vertical farm. The plunge into the unknown where your own time, capital, and dreams are at risk stops a lot of entrepreneurs from fulfilling their ambition. Fortunately, Matt Farrell took that step for you and tells all in this exclusive interview on the Urban Vertical Project. Keep reading because Matt talks about:

• Location, location, location (where to put your vertical farm)

• The honest truth about Zip Grow Towers

• How much money can you actually make when you start a vertical farm (what restaurants will pay you)

• The simple secret of getting customers who pay

I know why taking that first step to start your farm is scary; it means taking a big chance with your time and money to do something that doesn’t really have a standard set of procedures.

I am right there with you. Chances are, if you’ve found this article, you’ve thought about what it takes to make one of these bad boys a reality. Maybe you’ve done some daydreaming or vision boarding, or maybe you’ve even built a small system. In the end, we’ve all probably come across or conjured within our own imaginations an idea for a vertical farm that works, but that’s a far cry from actually making it a reality. 

How do you go about doing that? For me, I’m going to follow the process for starting a vertical farm I modeled off another entrepreneur in an earlier article:

1. Set up a proof of concept

2. Secure a buyer

3. Execute

Even knowing a structure like that one exists, transforming that to reality is a different story. But, as my favorite (and legendary, if you can believe such a thing) street performer says “It’s better to go out and do something than to stay home and plan something.”

So, I went out and did something. I helped my father buy a bunch of IKEA products and convert them into a hydroponic system for less than $100. It was a start.

Now I’m working on another prototype, and I hope to actually maintain this one. My goal with this next system is to collect and analyze a bunch of data to project future results like yields, energy costs, and calories/square foot. Maybe that will turn into an open source project that people can turn to for up-to-date information, or perhaps it will evolve into a farm in its own right. In addition to that prototype, I’ve been doing tons of research for different people that’s helped them to think about their own, personal businesses and projects.

Even so, if all of my work turns out perfectly, it still exists in a vacuum. Simply put, there isn’t enough information out there to for people to make realistic comparisons or projections for their own farm. Other websites and news articles have featured fantastic farms, ideas, and projects, but there aren’t a lot of actionable numbers. That partly comes from being in an industry that’s too scared to share (something we’ve mentioned before and that projects like MIT CityFarm is working to overcome). That’s why we work so hard to bring you these exclusive interviews and why we get down and geeky – getting the nitty gritty numbers. I want you to have a successful urban vertical farm.

All of that is to say, I’m working on my first step and outlining that process for you. But this article isn’t about just the first step; it’s about revealing the simple truths real farmers know that can help you think more realistically abut your project.

And that’s where Matt Farrell comes in. Matt has been into hydroponics for awhile, but he doesn’t come from any sort of traditionally agricultural background.

He was studying in the School of International Service at American University where he got hit with the idea to help the school build a small hydroponic system. Though the school has taken it down since, his dedication to the idea of local, high efficiency farming has persevered. Now, he’s out on his own running Stag’s Leap Produce. Their tagline:

“Always Fresh. Never From A Shelf.”

The site goes on to explain their goals a bit more: “We want to connect the community to a local source of fresh, organic produce at an affordable price. Come try the freshest, healthiest produce around.”

I’ve known Matt personally for awhile now and he was generous enough to take time out of his busiest growing season to give me some exceptionally candid answers about his experience getting his farm up and running.

Location

In this section, we’re going to take a quick look at why the location of Matt’s farm is so important and why it means you might have more flexibility than you thought in where to put your vertical farm.

Matt is the owner operator of Stag’s Leap Produce in Mullica Hill, New Jersey. Another New Jersey Farm, huh? Just like Freshwater Greens (from an earlier interview), Stag’s Leap produce illustrates a perfect lesson for aspiring vertical farmers to internalize; take advantage of local market access. In addition to supplying local restaurants and businesses (see below for a list Matt shouts out in addition to a local farmers market and customers that come to him directly), being in New Jersey means they potentially have access to the much denser populations in New York and the surrounding cities.

I talk a little bit more about the importance of these population centers combined with available space in the Rust Belt Hypothesis (you guys remember that, right? Probably not, I wouldn’t either, so here’s a link), but Stag’s Leap might demonstrate an alternative, or even start to unravel that hypothesis. Remember, the Rust Belt Hypothesis is the idea is that declining industrial cities are perfect environments for vertical farms because of the inherent socioeconomic conditions there. Those conditions include: population density, existing infrastructure (usually in the form of abandoned warehouses from the manufacturing golden age), cheap energy, local community support (jobs!), and legislative support to revitalize a struggling economy.

But check this out!

Mullica Hills New Jersey is definitely not a Rust Belt City. So, if Stag’s Leap demonstrates that a vertical farm can work in less dense populations like there, that means the demand for these products (fresh, local vegetables available year round) and the expertise required to produce them is even higher than we expected. It means that if farms like Stag’s Leap become the norm, or even just more common, vertical farms will have demonstrated that they can fill needs beyond urban centers. That opens up huge swaths of the country that would otherwise wouldn’t have been considered; well beyond what’s normally considered the Rust Belt as seen below.

And according to Matt, that fits in perfectly with their mission: “We believe you should have the ability to purchase fresh, healthy, produce straight from its source. Without harmful chemicals or pesticides, at an affordable price.”

How is Matt growing food?

But how exactly is Matt meeting this demand? “I grow lettuce, basil, kale and arugula. I have two types of growing systems, Bright Agrotech’s Zip Grow Towers and custom made shallow water floating rafts.”

Image from Bright Agrotech

Essentially, he is using two types of growing systems inside of one 3000 sq ft greenhouse. Zip Grow towers utilize a wicking medium to deliver water and nutrients to plants.

Here’s a video directly from Bright Agrotech that explains in more detail how the Zip Grows work.

The floating rafts Matt describes to me seem like a conventional deep water culture (DWC) setup, though he’s modified this idea a bit by making the reservoirs shallower. I’ll let the folks at Boswyck Farms in New York City describe what that is as they have one of the few hydroponic certifications around and are really knowledgeable growers in general.

[DEEP] WATER CULTURE

Water culture systems are the simplest form of active hydroponics. Plant roots grow directly in the water reservoir and are supplied oxygen with an air pump. Water culture systems can be built from repurposed glass mason jars, plastic buckets, or tubs as the reservoir container, with the plant suspended from the lid in a net pot, letting the roots grow through the holes into the water below.

In larger, commercial scale designs, several plants are placed in a sheet of buoyant material that floats on nutrient solution like a raft. Water is generally held in a separate, larger reservoir and pumped up to the floating grow bed and then drained back down to the reservoir in a constant cycle.

Deep Water Culture Example From Epic Gardening

The combination of the Zip Grow towers and his tables allows Matt to maximize the efficiency of all the space in his 3000 sq ft greenhouse. That efficiency comes from incorporating the principles of vertical farming we talk about in this blog.

Remember, the definition of vertical farming is growing on multiple levels. The Zip Grows achieve this by having multiple plant sites on a vertical access hanging down from supports running above the ground. Additionally, Matt stacks his DWC beds to double his production/sq ft when compared to a set up like the one in the photo above. Below is a photo of Matt’s stacked system, which, even in its simple form, doubles his production/sq foot! That’s the power of vertical farming!

I was immediately intrigued about Matt using Zip Grow Towers. Bright Agrotech seems like a great company, but I’d struggled to find an account of using their product that wasn’t tied to their marketing material. I didn’t, and don’t, have any suspicions, but I just wanted to check things out. I’d even flirted with buying a few towers myself to test them out, but Matt’s review of the  Zip Grow Towers based off his experience running a real business is even more helpful.

“In the zip grow towers I can plant 6-7 heads of lettuce. But lettuce heads grow much better in raft systems than NTF systems, so we grow our heads in our raft beds now. Each bed is around 4’ by 8’ and we grow 50 lettuce heads in each bed, we also stack our beds twice.“ But, as you can see in the video below (no making fun of the flipped video), those Zip Grows are not wasted.

Link to Facebook Video

“Basil, kale and arugula grow well in our Zip Grow towers. We plant 7-8 basil and arugula per tower and 6 kale. In a 10′ by 10′ space we can house about 30 towers. We get around half pound of basil and arugula per tower and we count kale by the leaves so we get around 12 or more mature leaves per tower. We pick our towers continuously so that we are always harvesting from our plants and doing little replanting. With Zip Grow towers the majority of the work is in planting and hanging the towers.“

That breaks down along these lines:

Harvest/Tower (Lettuce)Harvest/Tower (Basil)Harvest/Tower (Kale)7 plants½ pound12 leaves

So Matt is growing through a combination of Zip Grow towers and vertically stacked deep water cultures. We’ve looked at a few different ways to grow produce on this site, but what it really comes down to is how much money you can make off of what you grow. Remember, the incentive to go vertical is to produce more calories/square foot at a lower cost. To quote from our introduction to LEDs:

“In vertical farming, it comes down to producing calories people want to buy (assuming your product is food of course).  To make money, you need to produce those calories efficiently.”

How much money can you actually make when you start a vertical farm?

Let’s assume you are producing those calories efficiently.

I asked Matt how he set his price points for the different restaurants he sold to. “So originally we followed bright agro’s models for crop pricing. They host a number of blogs and videos talking about how to price your basil and how to sell you produce and offer very large price points for their crops.” Off the top of his head, he cites “$2.00 an oz for their herbs and I think $3/pound for vegetables.”

Bright Agrotech Farm Wall (more info here)

If you remember when I talked about actual restaurant pricing here, you’d understand that I had some doubts that these price points were attainable. Matt agreed. “They like to highlight how restaurants will be happy to pay that price in the winter but all of the restaurants I went to were really turned off by these type of high prices.”

This is the main problem I have with purchasing ready-made systems from companies like Bright Agrotech or Freight Farms. This is not to disparage the actual products; not only have I never grown with them commercially myself, all testimony and evidence points to the fact that they work as intended and are examples of superior craftsmanship. However, it is completely fair to challenge the financial information they provide. They are incentivized by increasing sales of their product to use higher-than-realistic prices when they provide which gives the impression that you can pay off the initial investment in their product faster than is actually possible.

Here’s the table from above with Matt’s harvest per tower again.

Harvest/Tower (Lettuce)Harvest/Tower (Basil)Harvest/Tower (Kale)7 plants½ pound12 leaves

Let’s compare those numbers with those that Freight Farms shares. Real quickly, Freight Farms is a buy and farm as-is shipping container modification that also uses Zip Grows. I will note that I reached out to Freight Farms some time ago when I was originally considering investing in one of these and not for the purposes of an article. They were extremely helpful, but I ultimately decided the product was not for me at a $75,000 price point.

Image from Freight Farms

Here is the nice spreadsheet that they initially sent along for help with financial and crop planning. For full sized lettuce, they are saying that you can fit slightly more than what Matt was able to fit into one tower, but that may just be attributable to variety. They are also saying you can get 35 lbs/week of basil from a single tower. That doesn’t quite seem to stack up, though it could be the difference between a continual harvest like Matt uses, and harvesting a whole tower at once.

Anyways, as I said before, the company is super helpful and if you have any concerns, I’m sure they would be happy to address them. We’re going to look a little more at their financial models in a second too, so stick around.

I’m sure that there are examples of farmers getting the price that they advertise or even higher. However, in the interest of giving you an appraisal of the actual options out there for starting your farm, it’s fair to point out that it might always be the case. I definitely do not intend to disparage these companies or their products, and I’m happy to open up a space for them to respond to anything I’ve written.

As my research shows and Matt confirms “At these prices you’re [or a restaurant is] paying $30 a pound for herbs and twice or three times the industry standard for vegetables. Most restaurants simply can’t do those kinds of numbers. For example, most restaurants will pay around $8-12 dollars a pound for basil that they get from Cisco or other big food providers and while their willing to pay a small mark up for basil, the highest I got was $20, it is hard to get business owners to dish out to much money on basil and lettuce if it is breaking the bank.“

Based on that information, you’d be able to pay of the $75,000 investment in a Freight farm in just 2 years. Not only does that seem a little too good to be true, but if we plug in Matt’s numbers, we get a very different picture. Here are the price points Matt actually advertises when he sells direct to consumers:

Of course, neither Freight Farms nor any other supplier can be expected to anticipate market variance for the entire country. However, I want this information to be out there so you can more accurately make the decision on whether or not these products are right for you to start your business with.

Getting Customers Who Pay

Remember, the three steps to starting your vertical farm are

1. Proof of concept

2. Secure a buyer

3. Execute

I outline them in more detail here, but I wanted to include them here again to point out getting people who will pay you happens before most of the physical farming at a commercial level begins. Matt didn’t blink when I asked him how he did that and his unflinching attitude is probably one of the reasons Stag’s Leap is still chugging along.

He kept his answer short, too. “I literally just went around to everywhere I could find with a business card and told them I was doing locally grown high value crops. Some people didn’t call me back and others did.“ I can shorten it even more. How do you get people to pay? “Elbow grease.”

Original Photo of Mirai in Japan

A google search is going to blast your screen with thousands of marketing books, articles, blog posts, and everything else that’s going to tell you about building a brand, marketing, and sales tactics. Trust me, I’ve read most of them. But what they all really boil down to is just putting in the work, it’s as simple as that.

Hydroponics versus Soil-based Produce

That work is made a lot easier when you have a quality product to back it up. I still can’t believe how closed minded people still are to hydroponic products. They insist that the best produce comes from soil because it’s natural. Honestly, I just think they have a preconceived picturesque notion of farming in their mind that they are too stubborn to get rid of.

Look, my uncles have owned a restaurant my whole life, and that’s impressive considering most restaurants close within 90% of restaurants close in their first 12 months of opening. I started working there when I was 6 years old and didn’t stop until I went to college. I’ve been cooking my own meals since then (shoutouts to the ginger scallion sauce in the Momofuku cookbook) and gardening for almost that long too. I know what good produce tastes like. I know that it even smells and feels different. And I know that you can get good produce with hydroponic crops because I eat them all the time.

Yet…just try and bring up the idea of vertical hydroponic farming with an organic or permaculture extremist. Even though the ideas are super compatible, it’s still awful.

Click for the article

And frankly, people don’t agree with them. As Matt says “I haven’t come across anyone that has said we can’t grow superior produce with hydroponics, and if I were, I would probably refer them to a number of studies that suggest hydroponics can grow healthier, more flavor produce. [I’d] also give them some of our lettuce to try.”

That’s not just regular Joe-schmoes vouching for Matt’s product either.  “The chefs that we work with really like our produce and would probably pay a lot more for our produce if they ran their restaurants. We constantly get great remarks about the lettuce we produce and the quality and flavor of our basil. We have a number of repeat customers that come for our salads and lettuce heads that say we have the freshest and best tasting lettuce around. And that definitely has to do with the fact that we are growing inside and with hydroponics. It really makes the whole production a lot easier and since we are selling locally this allows us to grow lettuce for flavor instead of shipping and shelf life.”

Since Matt is focusing on local food, his produce is so much fresher than anything consumers would be able to buy in a grocery store.

Obviously I’m a fan of holistic farming and permaculture techniques. I’m also a general fan of the USDA Organic Label, even if I think it could be improved. I just think that people need to really think about the type of farming Matt is doing beyond writing him off for trying something new, even if he’s using a manufactured product or, “heaven forbid;” PLASTIC. Especially in comparison to USDA Organic, something as simple as plastic doesn’t have as bad of an environmental impact as the pesticides already in use– natural or not. 

Matt and I talked about this as well: “So I think its interesting when people like to contrast holistic farming with vertical farming, or holistic farming with hydroponic farming. When I think about what does holistic mean, I think about what is healthy for the consumer and what is healthy or sustainable for the planet. I think that vertical and hydroponic farming are great in both of those ways. Vertical farming really saves on land, which, as we are having a serious land crisis in terms of farming and are losing a lot of farm land to urban sprawl, is a really sustainable and positive for the future of farming. Hydroponics also allows us to recycle about 70-80 percent of the water we use, reduce the fertilizer we use, and eliminate any runoff from fertilizer. We can also do a lot of traditional holistic methods like companion planting and natural pest control using beneficial insects.”

Those are just a few of the ways to merge ideas that both philosophies espouse.

Conclusion

We wandered through a few different areas in this post. We touched on why vertical farms, if Matt’s is any example, might not be so limited in location than I was writing earlier. We also looked at how Matt is growing his food. He is using a combination of Zip Grow Towers and a custom built, stacked water culture system that allows him to maximize his production in the space.

Then, and perhaps a little controversially, we looked at pricing produce. While Matt is able to get a premium for his product’s freshness and sustainability, he still has the feeling that he’s not hitting the marks companies set for their pre-fabricated products. Not all of the numbers we included were exactly comparable, but they still make the point that you need to do your own market research before basing any business plan on those figures.

Next, we looked briefly into how Matt got customers for his produce before wrapping up by focusing on one of my pet-peeves; the rejection of hydroponic growing techniques by soil fanatics. I think this, along with location planning, is a significant challenge to the adoption of vertical farming technology. Though by no means the most important, it would be great to start doing taste studies along those lines.

This post was jam packed, and I hope you enjoyed it. Besides the great discussion about some of the challenges in vertical farming, I think the biggest take away is the detailed look at potential pricing. “Trust, but verify” as the saying goes.

Farming On The Roofs of Shopping Malls In Singapore

Amidst the luxurious commercial setting of Singapore's Orchard Road, filled with fancy malls, department stores and food courts, there is a farm.

Reuters reports that the 6,450 sq ft Comcrop farm utilises vertical racks and hydroponics to grow leafy greens and herbs such as basil and perppermint, which are sold to nearby bars, restaurants and stores.

Allan Lim set up the rooftop farm five years ago, and recently opened a 4,000-square-metre farm with a greenhouse on the edge of the city.

The goal, in Singapore where land is at a premium, is to tackle food security. 

“Agriculture is not seen as a key sector in Singapore. But we import most of our food, so we are very vulnerable to sudden disruptions in supply,” Lim said.

“Land, natural resources and low-cost labor used to be the predominant way that countries achieved food security. But we can use technology to solve any deficiencies,” he said.

In the country where 5.6 million people are densely packed in, land reclamation, moving transport utilities and storage underground, and clearing cemeteries for homes and highways have been undertaken.

Agriculture, takes up only about 1% of its land area.

Last year, Singapore topped the Economist Intelligence Unit’s (EIU) Global Food Security Index of 113 countries for the first time, scoring high on affordability, availability and safety. 

However, importing more than 90% of its food, food security is susceptible to climate change and natural resource risks.

As climate change makes its impact felt across the world, the scarcity of water, shifting weather, and population growth will require better ways to feed the people.

A study published last year, cited by Reuters notes that urban agriculture currently produces as much as 180 million metric tonnes of food a year - up to 10% of the global output of pulses and vegetables.

From what was once an agrarian economy that produced nearly all of its own food, from pig farms, vegetable gardens and durian orchards and chicken in the kampongs, to government is now pushing to relocate over 60 farms in the countryside by 2021, to reclaim land for the military. 

Speaking to the publication, Chelsea Wan, a second-generation farmer who runs Jurong Frog Farm said: “It’s getting tougher because leases are shorter, it’s harder to hire workers, and it’s expensive to invest in new technologies.

“We support the government’s effort to increase productivity through technology, but we feel sidelined,” she said.

Urban Farms Could be Incredibly Efficient—But Aren’t Yet

JOHN TIMMER - 12/28/2018, 3:45 AM

The green revolution that transformed modern agriculture has generally increased its scale. There's tremendous potential for efficiencies in the large-scale application of mechanization, fertilization, and pesticide use. But operating at that level requires large tracts of land, which means sources of food have grown increasingly distant from the people in urban centers who will ultimately eat most of it.

In some ways, hyper-local food is a counterculture movement, focused on growing herbs and vegetables in the same dense urban environments where they will be eaten. It trades the huge efficiencies of modern agriculture for large savings in transportation and storage costs. But is urban farming environmentally friendly?

According to researchers at Australia's University of New England, the answer is pretty complex. Within their somewhat limited group of gardeners, urban agriculture is far more productive for the amount of land used but isn't especially efficient with labor and materials use. But the materials issue could be solved, and the labor inefficiency may be a product of the fact that most urban farmers are hobbyists and are doing it for fun.

Urban ag

The researchers—Robert McDougalla, Paul Kristiansena, and Romina Rader—defined urban agriculture as taking place within a kilometer of a densely built environment. Working in the Sydney area, they were able to find 13 urban farmers who were willing to keep detailed logs of their activity for an entire year. Labor and materials costs were tracked, as was the value of the produce it helped create. The energetic costs of the materials and labor were also calculated in order to assess the sustainability of urban farming.

The plots cultivated by these farmers were quite small, with the median only a bit over 10 square meters. Yet they were extremely productive, with a mean of just under six kilograms of produce for each of those square meters. That's about twice as productive as a typical Australian vegetable farm, although the output range of the urban farms was huge—everything from slightly below large farm productivity to five times as productive.

For the vast majority of crops, however, the urban farms weren't especially effective. They required far more labor than traditional farms, and, as a result, the total value of the inputs into the crop exceeded the income from selling it. In other words, the urban farmers were losing money, at least by traditional accounting measures. And the farms weren't especially sustainable, with only about 10 percent of all the inputs coming from renewable resources. Again, labor was a major culprit, as it's not considered very renewable, and urban farming is very labor-intensive.

So that all sounds like a bit of a disaster, really. But as mentioned above, things quickly get complex. The urban farmers, as it turned out, bought compost and fertilizer and used the municipal water supply. Cities, as the authors note, produce large quantities of organic waste that could be used to make compost. While it would require additional labor and land space, it would be easy to make the care of the crops far more sustainable. Combined with the use of collected rainwater, these could get the percentage of renewable contributions up to roughly 40 percent.

Laborious

Then there's the issue of the time spent on labor. The urban farmers don't seem to be especially efficient compared to regular farm laborers, and by all indications they don't necessarily want to be. For many of them, it's more a hobby than career; they put in more labor because they enjoy it or find it relaxing. If you start reducing the labor costs to reflect this, things start changing dramatically. If only the material costs of urban farming are considered (meaning labor was set to $0), then the apparent efficiency improves dramatically.

Not surprisingly, ignoring labor costs also makes a big difference financially, with the profit-to-cost ratio going from a mean of 0.62 up to 2.8, indicating that these urban farms would generally be quite profitable.

Labor also makes a big difference in terms of energy use. As they're now operating, these urban farms aren't very different from rural farms, which means they're not sustainable. Shifting to local sources of materials, like rainwater and compost, would drop the energy use dramatically, shifting the farms into territory that's typically considered sustainable. Eliminating labor considerations on top of that would make urban agriculture among the most efficient means of growing vegetables presently studied.

There are two obvious caveats to this work: the small number of farms sampled and the fact that they were all in a single urban area. This sort of study will obviously need to be replicated in other locations before we can start generalizing about hyper-local produce. But the role of labor in this sort of analysis makes conclusions difficult to generalize. Is it reasonable to discount some fraction of the labor costs when people are doing the farming for pleasure? Do we start considering a tomato plant on a balcony part of an urban farm?

While many of the details are unclear, the overall conclusion seems solid: while urban farms aren't yet there in terms of sustainability and energy use, the potential for them to outpace their larger rural cousins is definitely there. But it will take an entire sustainable support infrastructure for them to truly arrive.

With Farms Atop Malls, Singapore Gets Serious About Food Security

ECONOMY

January 09, 2019 5:11 PM

• Reuters

SINGAPORE — 

Visitors to Singapore's Orchard Road, the city's main shopping belt, will find fancy malls, trendy department stores, abundant food courts — and a small farm. 

Comcrop's 600-square-meter (6,450-square-foot) farm on the roof of one of the malls uses vertical racks and hydroponics to grow leafy greens and herbs such as basil and peppermint that it sells to nearby bars, restaurants and stores. 

The farm's small size belies its big ambition: to help improve the city's food security. 

Comcrop's Allan Lim, who set up the rooftop farm five years ago, recently opened a 4,000-square-meter farm with a greenhouse on the edge of the city. 

He believes high-tech urban farms are the way ahead for the city, where more land cannot be cultivated. 

"Agriculture is not seen as a key sector in Singapore. But we import most of our food, so we are very vulnerable to sudden disruptions in supply," Lim said. 

"Land, natural resources and low-cost labor used to be the predominant way that countries achieved food security. But we can use technology to solve any deficiencies," he said. 

Singapore last year topped the Economist Intelligence Unit's (EIU) Global Food Security Index of 113 countries for the first time, scoring high on measures such as affordability, availability and safety. 

Yet, as the country imports more than 90 percent of its food, its food security is susceptible to climate change and natural resource risks, the EIU noted. 

With 5.6 million people in an area three-fifths the size of New York City — and with the population estimated to grow to 6.9 million by 2030 — land is at a premium in Singapore. 

The country has long reclaimed land from the sea, and plans to move more of its transport, utilities and storage underground to free up space for housing, offices and greenery. 

It has also cleared dozens of cemeteries for homes and highways.

An aerial view shows Citiponics' urban farm located on the rooftop of a multi-story garage in a public housing estate in western Singapore, April 17, 2018.

Agriculture makes up only about 1 percent of its land area, so better use of space is key, said Samina Raja, a professor of urban and regional planning at the University at Buffalo in New York. 

"Urban agriculture is increasingly being recognized as a legitimate land use in cities," she said. "It offers a multitude of benefits, from increased food security and improved nutrition to greening of spaces. But food is seldom a part of urban planning." 

Supply shocks

Countries across the world are battling the worsening impacts of climate change, water scarcity and population growth to find better ways to feed their people. 

Scientists are working on innovations — from gene editing of crops and lab-grown meat to robots and drones — to fundamentally change how food is grown, distributed and eaten. 

With more than two-thirds of the world's population forecast to live in cities by 2050, urban agriculture is critical, a study published last year stated. 

Urban agriculture currently produces as much as 180 million metric tons of food a year — up to 10 percent of the global output of pulses and vegetables, the study noted. 

Additional benefits, such as reduction of the urban heat-island effect, avoided stormwater runoff, nitrogen fixation and energy savings could be worth $160 billion annually, it said. 

Countries including China, India, Brazil and Indonesia could benefit significantly from urban agriculture, it said. 

"Urban agriculture should not be expected to eliminate food insecurity, but that should not be the only metric," said study co-author Matei Georgescu, a professor of urban planning at Arizona State University. 

"It can build social cohesion among residents, improve economic prospects for growers, and have nutritional benefits. In addition, greening cities can help to transition away from traditional concrete jungles," he said. 

Singapore was once an agrarian economy that produced nearly all its own food. There were pig farms and durian orchards, and vegetable gardens and chickens in the kampongs, or villages. 

But in its push for rapid economic growth after independence in 1965, industrialization took precedence, and most farms were phased out, said Kenny Eng, president of the Kranji Countryside Association, which represents local farmers.

Organic cilantro seedlings sprout from growing towers that are primarily made out of polyvinyl chloride pipes at Citiponics' urban farm on the rooftop of a multi-story garage in a public housing estate in western Singapore, April 17, 2018.

The global food crisis of 2007-08, when prices spiked, causing widespread economic instability and social unrest, may have led the government to rethink its food security strategy to guard against such shocks, Eng said. 

"In an age of climate uncertainty and rapid urbanization, there are merits to protecting indigenous agriculture and farmers' livelihoods," he said. 

Local production is a core component of the food security road map, according to the Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority (AVA) of Singapore, a state agency that helps farmers upgrade with technical know-how, research and overseas study tours. 

Given its land constraints, AVA has also been looking to unlock more spaces, including underutilized or alternative spaces, and harness technological innovations to "grow more with less," a spokeswoman said by email. 

Intrinsic value

A visit to the Kranji countryside, just a 45-minute drive from the city's bustling downtown, and where dozens of farms are located, offers a view of the old and the new. 

Livestock farms and organic vegetable plots sit alongside vertical farms and climate-controlled greenhouses. 

Yet many longtime farmers are fearful of the future, as the government pushes for upgrades and plans to relocate more than 60 farms by 2021 to return land to the military. 

Many farms might be forced to shut down, said Chelsea Wan, a second-generation farmer who runs Jurong Frog Farm. 

"It's getting tougher because leases are shorter, it's harder to hire workers, and it's expensive to invest in new technologies," she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. 

"We support the government's effort to increase productivity through technology, but we feel sidelined," she said. 

Wan is a member of the Kranji Countryside Association, which has tried to spur local interest in farming by welcoming farmers' markets, study tours, homestays and weddings. 

Small peri-urban farms at the edge of the city, like those in Kranji, are not just necessary for food security, Eng said. 

"The countryside is an inalienable part of our heritage and nation-building, and the farms have an intrinsic value for education, conservation, the community and tourism," he said. 

At the rooftop farm on Orchard Road, Lim looks on as brisk, elderly Singaporeans, whom he has hired to get around the worker shortage, harvest, sort and pack the day's output. 

"It's not a competition between urban farms and landed farms; it's a question of relevance," he said. "You have to ask: What works best in a city like Singapore?"