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Taiwanese Know-How Built Vertical Farm In Rome In Just 3 Months
Taiwan, Vatican reap the harvest of smart agriculture at joint farm
Taiwan, Vatican Reap The Harvest of Smart Agriculture At Joint Farm
By Matthew Strong, Taiwan News, Staff Writer
2021/01/16
TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — Taiwan and it’s only European diplomatically, the Vatican, on Friday (Jan. 15) marked the first harvest of a joint farm focused on smart agriculture and environmental principles.
The Taiwanese-designed indoor farm sits on 60 hectares of land in southwest Rome owned by a Catholic foundation providing education and work opportunities to young refugees, CNA reported.
Taiwanese Ambassador Mathew Lee (李世明) on Friday toured the facility, which was launched by a team of engineers and agricultural experts from the island after just three months of preparations. He said the project was inspired by Pope Francis’ call for a more active response to environmental problems and climate change.
The farm uses the technique of vertical farming, in which vertically stacked shelves are used to grow plants through more efficient management of temperature, irrigation, and lighting. Less land and water are required to produce higher yields in vertical farms, and fewer fertilizers and pesticides are needed.
Friday’s tour featured a meal prepared with herbs and vegetables grown at the farm, according to CNA.
Lead photo: Taiwanese diplomats and Vatican officials toured a joint smart farm Friday (CNA photo)
Tags: agriculturesmart agricultureVaticanvertical farmingTaiwan-Vatican relationsPope Francis
"The Push For Urban Farming Solutions Has Only Intensified"
Agritecture offers answers regarding urban farming solutions
With significant population growth and urbanization both underway and projected across the globe, the push for urban farming solutions has only intensified. The search for innovative solutions has generated many questions surrounding best agricultural practices and how to build a sustainable urban farm.
Agricultural consulting company Agritecture was developed to address exactly those questions. Agritecture was founded in 2011 when its CEO Henry Gordon-Smith began blogging about urban agriculture and subsequently received numerous inquiries from entrepreneurs looking to start urban farms. Within a few years, Agritecture began to officially offer consulting services and quickly built a portfolio.
Sustainable urban farming solutions
“With a mission to empower impact-driven organizations to develop sustainable urban farming solutions, Agritecture focuses on turning business ideas into practical realities,” says Agritecture’s media strategist, Briana Zagami. The breadth of services offered by Agritecture allows the company to meet the needs of entrepreneurs at various project stages.
Ask Agritecture is the company’s entry-level service through which entrepreneurs can schedule a 30-minute phone call with a consultant to discuss economic and technological aspects of the project and recommend future steps. The company also offers premium consulting services, which are “backed by several years of operational data and a team of experienced growers, agricultural engineers, sustainability managers, and marketing experts”, according to Briana. Furthermore, Agritecture uses its feasibility tools to help urban farmers and entrepreneurs obtain real-world financial estimates for a greenhouse or vertical farm project in any location.
Education
Agricultural education is another cornerstone of Agritecture’s mission, which the company achieves through its Commercial Urban Farming course, which presents best practices in six comprehensive lessons complete with short video modules and additional resources. Agritecture also provides free educational content in the form of its blog, podcast and videos.
The most recent addition to Agritecture’s service offerings is the Agritecture Designer, which was launched in April 2020 and is the world’s first digital platform for the planning of urban farms. According to Briana, “the goal was to take our years of experience as leading industry consultants and translate this into a digital platform to help expedite the planning stage and avoid common pitfalls.”
Future
In 2020, Agritecture’s digital audience is now comprised of 100,000 + users around the world. The team has consulted on over 120 projects spanning more than 26 companies. When asked how Agritecture has responded in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, Briana explained that “Agritecture reinvented itself in the wake of COVID-19 and offered insights from its learnings to other small businesses and advisory firms that are struggling to find new business. We launched several new online initiatives in April and May to better connect with our audience and saw a nearly 3x increase in inbound consulting requests.”
So how does Agritecture envision the development of urban agriculture? According to Briana, “urban agriculture will continue to grow around the world due to the innovative spirit of farmers and the rising demand for fresh, sustainably-grown products.” With the development of supportive policies and standards in key cities, Agritecture expects that urban agriculture will only continue to grow and push past its niche status.
For more information:
Agritecture
www.agritecture.com
Publication date: Wed 6 Jan 2021
Meet The Green Man of Ludhiana Who Has Created Vertical Gardens Across City From Waste Plastic Bottles
A man has started turning plastic waste into vertical farms in order to recycle in a new way.
Aimed at reducing waste of plastic and also as an attempt to reduce air pollution, Mehra said under his instructions, the vertical gardens have come up in many places including schools, colleges, gurudwaras, churches, police stations, government offices and railway stations.
Using waste plastic, an IRS officer Rohit Mehra (in grey sweater) set up Vertical Gardens to tackle air pollution in Ludhiana. (Credit: ANI/Twitter)
In today's time when there is a huge need to recycle waste and reduce the use of plastic, Rohit Mehra, Additional Commissioner in the Income Tax Department, has shown an inspiring path to follow when he used 70 tonnes of discarded plastic bottles to act as planting pots for vertical gardens in Ludhiana.
Aimed at reducing waste of plastic and also as an attempt to reduce air pollution, Mehra said under his instructions, the vertical gardens have come up in many places including schools, colleges, gurudwaras, churches, police stations, government offices and railway stations.
Speaking to news agency ANI on Sunday, Mehra said, “Using at least 70 tonnes of waste plastic bottles as pots, we have set up more than 500 vertical gardens at public places.”
Speaking about what made him turn to this unique idea of using plastic, Mehra said he started thinking of the copious amount of plastic waste and pollution that plagues the cities when his child some 4 years ago, one fine day informed him that their school had declared holidays due to high air pollution. Mehra said he pondered how the situation has turned so bad that they cannot even breathe in fresh air and provide the same to their children. This made him take note of the worsening situation and he decided to do something about it.
Mehra, who is know as the Green Man of Ludhiana due to his conservation work at the trees, has also created 25 mini forests ranging between 500 sq feet to 4 acres in 2 years, along with the vertical gardens. To broaden his understanding of quick growing of trees, he studied ancient Indian texts like the Vrikshayurveda that talks about the science of growing plants and forest. He also stumbled across the Japanese technique of Miyawaki.
He added, “It is a cost-effective and space-efficient solution for urban greenery. The vertical gardens also save the environment as you reuse plastic wastes as pots. Thanks to drip irrigation, these gardens save 92 per cent water."
Mehra said that after the establishment of the vertical gardens, they had checked the air quality index (AQI) of the city by a scientist associated with the Punjab Agricultural University and found a 75 per cent reduction in air pollution, thus making their venture a success.
"CEA Can Increase Its U.S. Market Share By 5x Over The Next 10 Years"
Investment in CEA has surpassed $2.0B across North America and Europe spurring new start-ups, innovation and corporate engagement across the supply chain
S2G Ventures rResearches
Controlled Environment Agriculture Market:
Investment in CEA has surpassed $2.0B across North America and Europe spurring new start-ups, innovation and corporate engagement across the supply chain. With increased demonstration of the viability of controlled growing, a newly launched report predicts that CEA will support more than 10% of US vegetable and herb production by 2025 leading to significant opportunities for growers over the next decade.
The new report, Growing Beyond the Hype: Controlled Environment Agriculture, launched by S2G Ventures reveals how innovation in the field of Controlled Environment Agriculture (CEA), including greenhouse and indoor farming, will lead to ripple effects across the food system and more sustainable methods of production. S2G Ventures is a multi-stage investment firm committed to advancing sustainable solutions in food and ag – its portfolio companies include Beyond Meat, sweetgreen, Lavva, Apeel Sciences and more. The report predicts the maturation of CEA will lead to differentiated, quality products, cost-competitive pricing and a more resilient, traceable and trustworthy supply chain. These new supply chains may represent a transition for the changing urban real estate landscape post-covid.
"Controlled farming has the potential to offer consumers and supply chain stakeholders resilient, sustainable, local, high-quality products," said Walter Robb, Executive-in Residence at S2G Ventures and former co-CEO of Whole Foods. "It is a growing part of our evolving food system and can work alongside outdoor production to mitigate climate risk and help solve systemic nutrition and food access challenges."
S2G Ventures expects that CEA will have far-reaching implications for the future of our food system in three key areas.
Local production and controlled environments will lead to a more resilient, traceable and trustworthy supply chain
Despite being a $1.2 trillion global industry, fresh produce faces significant supply and demand challenges resulting in a systemic lack of high-quality, affordable products reaching consumers. According to the Lancet, only 36% of the global population in 2015 had adequate availability of fruits and vegetables to meet the WHO age-specific minimum nutrition targets.
In the United States, for example, the fresh produce market is challenged by the limitations of outdoor production, including climate, field loss exposure, resource intensiveness, and limited ability to iterate or diversify, as well as geographic constraints resulting in products traveling 7-10 days on average from farm to consumer. As a result, the U.S. is reliant on other countries to meet demand with 53% of fresh fruit and 32% of fresh vegetables imported annually according to the FDA.
If just 13% of vegetables and herbs shift to local CEA production by 2025, the United States can add $2.3bn additional production capacity and reduce our need for fresh vegetable imports by 15%. Local production can save up to 9 Trillion food miles through shorter transportation routes minimizing shelf life time spent in transit and reducing the amount of food waste by retailers and consumers. Additionally, controlled environments improve food safety, traceability and consistency of production.
Technology and operations advancements drive improvements to CEA unit economics that can compete with or beat outdoor production.
In order to gain market share, CEA production must become cost competitive with outdoor production. High upfront capex costs of facilities and equipment as well as energy costs, labor and product inputs, have historically made costs of CEA growing prohibitive. But innovation of grow inputs, improved grow systems, and optimization of facility productivity are driving more cost-effective production. Those innovations combined with CEA's higher number of grow cycles, 10+ for Greenhouse and 20+ for Indoor, will enable CEA to achieve unit economics that are at cost parity with outdoor.
CEA will usher in the next wave of biodiversity, nutrient density, and flavor innovation providing retailers with differentiated, quality products.
According to the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization, about 75 percent of the world's food comes from just 5 animal species and 12 plants. Almost half of our plant-derived calories come from just three foods: wheat, corn and rice. Germplasm for these plants are bred for long storage time and disease resistance, at the expense of flavor, color, and nutritional value. The lack of biodiversity and nutritional value in our global diet restricts the value that plant molecules can play in human health.
Indoor Agriculture offers new grow formats, methods and technologies that promise to increase the quality, consistency and diversity of produce. Advancements in CEA-tailored seeds bred for traits such as flavor, color, nutrient density and ripening will expose consumers to new flavors and more varied products. Ultimately, indoor agriculture will support customized grow recipes as IP, branded produce, local production of hard to access specialty ingredients, spices and superfoods and eventually inputs for food as medicine.
"Controlled growing is a critical solution to address both the current supply challenges brought to light by COVID and the pressures on outdoor growing exacerbated by climate change," said Sanjeev Krishnan, S2G Ventures Managing Director and Chief Investment Officer. "We believe CEA can grow its US market share by five times over the next 10 years in response to these pressures and continued consumer demand for fresh produce."
The report
Growing Beyond the Hype: Controlled Environment Agriculture is based on S2G Ventures desktop research and interviews with over 20 industry experts including CEA growers, systems providers, policymakers, academic institutions, outdoor growers, ag input suppliers, philanthropists, and other investors. The report outlines the opportunity for CEA to resolve the current lack of high-quality, affordable produce driven by limitations in outdoor production and customer geography and outlines three areas indoor production must overcome to take significant market share including cost, product selection and productivity.
To read the full report, download at https://www.s2gventures.com/reports
3 Dec 2020
Benefits of Vertical Agriculture And Hydroponics
With a growing population and resource needs, the availability of arable land is going to decrease substantially. Consequently, such rapidly pressing needs should be matched by a higher rate of food production
Reviewed by Emily Henderson, B.Sc.
It is estimated that 11 percent, or 1.5 billion hectares, of the world’s land is used for crop production, which represents over a third of the total land suitable for crop production. With a growing population and resource needs, the availability of arable land is going to decrease substantially. Consequently, such rapidly pressing needs should be matched by a higher rate of food production.
What alternative solutions are there and what would they provide?
Throughout modern agriculture, conventional systems use large amounts of space, freshwater, fertilizer, and pesticides to maximize yield production and crop health to ensure food security, which unsustainable when looking into a future of widespread environmental and socioeconomic change.
In response, contemporary methods need to evolve to meet the current and predicted requirements of a growing world population.
Alternative solutions include the use of structural modifications such as vertical agriculture as well as entire systems by incorporating elements such as hydroponics, aeroponic, and aquaponics.
These strategies do not require fertile land to be effective, they require less water and space compared with the conventional agricultural systems and are able to increase the yield per unit of area. Additionally, these strategies use significantly fewer agrichemicals, which are potentially harmful to humans and animals.
As such, two strategies that hold promising interests is the implementation of vertical agricultural systems as well as hydroponics.
Integrating verticality into the design of agricultural systems
Agricultural systems have typically been spread over large spans of land as far as the eye can see. The reduction in arable land as well as the increase in demand to house growing populations, however, means that such strategies need to be reconsidered.
Rather than horizontal systems, large vertical walls covered crops can be used instead. These vertical layouts can employ soil, water, or air-powered systems to manage crops, and can be contained in greenhouses, warehouses, or other such facilities.
As a result, vertical agricultural systems, also known as verticulture, can encompass varying sizes and be located within many different areas from the middle of highly urbanized cities to more suburban or rural areas. The verticality aspect can also enhance nutrient and water flow, helping to reuse costly resources in a much better way than traditional methods, as demonstrated by an Indonesian research team in a study published earlier this year.
The potential location of vertical systems means that the cost of transport is nearly nullified as consumers may access them within urban areas. Moreover, the enclosed feature of verticulture means that pests and parasites are easily controlled, reducing the use of pesticides to a minimum. Finally, the reduction in space required means that there is a significant increase in yield per area, holding extensive potential for a future world of urbanization.
Despite such benefits, several limitations persist. Specifically, it is currently difficult and expensive to construct and manage such systems, which has limited their popularity. Some additional costs are also to be considered, particularly the artificial lighting that is required to help the plants grow. However, technological advances may help reduce the economic pressure of sustaining vertical systems as well as improve the overall efficiency of implementing these systems.
The development of hydroponic strategies
The transformation of agricultural systems may also include changes in applied strategies. For instance, transitioning from primary soil-based systems may provide a range of advantages, particularly in a world undergoing considerable changes in environmental conditions.
In particular, the advent of hydroponic systems represents a strategy of soilless agriculture since it uses mineral nutrient solutions in aqueous solvents to grow crops.
By relying essentially on water and nutrients, hydroponic systems are able to reduce the requirement of space and pesticides. Crop demands for nutrients and water can be controlled precisely to optimize growth and adjust to other conditions. Additionally, hydroponics can be used with other strategies, such as verticulture, and be used to address additional non-agricultural issues in urban areas.
Indeed, not only are hydroponic systems easily manageable, but they can also help mitigate issues of sanitation and animal waste processing. For instance, a recent study by African researchers earlier this year demonstrated how treated municipal wastewater can be used to establish hydroponic systems that produce healthy and sustainable crops for consumption. Additionally, a German study from 2016 designed a double recirculating system based on fish waste as fertilizer for tomato plants, with very promising results.
Nonetheless, hydroponic systems rely heavily on water and management measures, making it an expensive solution even to this day. It is therefore difficult to implement such systems at much larger scales, particularly as water scarcity is increasingly frequent and severe in many regions around the globe. In response, the combination of hydroponics with other strategies including recirculating systems or vertical designs may hold additional potential.
Image Credit: Peter Acker/Shutterstock.com
Alternative strategies in an era of global environmental and socioeconomic changes
Conventional agricultural systems have considerable dependencies on space and resources. Using strategies such as vertical designs and elements including hydroponics could be sustainable alternatives as they require less water, less fertilizer, and less space. Such benefits are key to consider in a rapidly changing world, particularly in terms of saving space and energy.
Rising global temperatures and the increased frequency, as well as the severity of extreme weather events, has considerable implications for crop production around the world. Moreover, geographic regions that are predicted to undergo the most environmental changes are ones that are already under socioeconomic stress, therefore exacerbating existing disparities. In response, alternative strategies that incorporate elements of sustainability are urgently required.
However, many limitations remain when considering alternative agricultural systems. In particular, the cost-effectiveness of designing and implementing such strategies may be out of reach of many regions. In response, technological advances are expected to improve our understanding of crop management and reduce the costs of strategy implementation, which can directly help to inform sustainable strategies to increase efficiency and decrease reliance on resources.
Ultimately, strategies are likely to be used in combination to complement one another and reduce the limitations that may occur. Such a coalition of strategies holds promising potential for addressing current as well as future socioeconomic and environmental challenges, yet considerable research is still required to refine such a cause.
References
Ichwan, N. et al. (2020) ‘Shallot’s growth and production under sub-surface irrigation in vertical agriculture (verticulture) system’, IOP Conference Series: Earth and Environmental Science. IOP Publishing, 454, p. 12044. doi: 10.1088/1755-1315/454/1/012044.
Magwaza, S. T. et al. (2020) ‘Hydroponic technology as decentralized system for domestic wastewater treatment and vegetable production in urban agriculture: A review’, Science of The Total Environment, 698, p. 134154. doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2019.134154.
Suhl, J. et al. (2016) ‘Advanced aquaponics: Evaluation of intensive tomato production in aquaponics vs. conventional hydroponics’, Agricultural Water Management, 178, pp. 335–344. doi: 10.1016/j.agwat.2016.10.013.
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Further Reading
Artificial Intelligence could help the agriculture industry meet increasing food demands
Leaf litter converted to biochar could reduce N20 emissions from vegetable fields
The use of natural hydrogels in food and agriculture practices
Lead photo: Image Credit: YEINISM/Shutterstock.com
Last Updated: Nov 26, 2020
TURKEY: Use of Artificial Intelligence In Greenhouse And Vertical Agriculture
Vertical farming is generally used when the yield of the soil is low or under unused conditions and it also contributes to the cultivation of crops. Consequently, many vertical fields and greenhouses are designed as closed spaces and are inclined to provide better light
October 25, 2020
Vertical farming is the production of products vertically stacked so that even if the land is used it can now be produced as a more effective method, smart agriculture.
Vertical farming is generally used when the yield of the soil is low or under unused conditions and it also contributes to the cultivation of crops. Consequently, many vertical fields and greenhouses are designed as closed spaces and are inclined to provide better light.
In vertical farming, artificial light is often used in combination with natural daylight, and pioneers who prefer this method, such as ForFarming have observed positive impacts on future food safety and human health, and the need for agricultural land will be reduced. One of the most important reasons for this is the protection of natural life and the prevention of environmental pollution.
Another important issue is the importance and use of artificial intelligence in vertical agriculture. IoT-based artificial intelligence system, developed by ForFarming, “Farmio” with a stylish and elegant design that you are currently producing greenhouses, parks, and gardens can be controlled and monitored simultaneously with Farmio plays a role.
Farmio can be controlled from anywhere with its advanced algorithm system, and it ensures that your current harvest can be measured automatically such as humidity, temperature, temperature, pH, or CO2. This feature provides great advantages to the users, and the fact that it can be followed in a coordinated manner has a great effect on the maximum utilization of production.
ForFarming, which wants to be the world’s landless agricultural technology provider, provides the world’s first and only artificial intelligence supported intelligent agriculture solution, and provides healthy and fresh products throughout the year.
With its elegant design, Farmi is ready to be used in many different areas than you can imagine and is suitable for use in many places from supermarkets to restaurants, offices, and hotels. In addition, Farmi enables its customers to grow more than 30 plants, and by using artificial intelligence in all processes from production to harvest (Farmio), it provides customers with great advantages in tracking processes and makes this work much more enjoyable.
Agriculture, Industrial And Consumer Equipment Sales Veteran Dan Schmidt Joins CubicFarms As Senior Vice President of Global Sales
In Dan’s new role, he is responsible for growing and leading the Company’s global sales strategy as it enters its next phase of rapid growth
VANCOUVER, BC, OCTOBER 8, 2020 – CubicFarm® Systems Corp. (TSXV:CUB) (“CubicFarms” or the “Company”) is pleased to announce the appointment of Dan Schmidt as Senior Vice President of Global Sales, effective immediately.
In Dan’s new role, he is responsible for growing and leading the Company’s global sales strategy as it enters its next phase of rapid growth.
Dan has spent more than 20 years forging a successful, proven track record for building commercial brands with some of the largest heavy agricultural equipment manufacturers in the world.
He has been responsible for establishing and growing independent dealer-partner channel relationships for multi-national organizations, including John Deere, JCB, and Stanley Infrastructure, while mentoring, developing, and advancing the teams that work with him.
Prior to joining CubicFarms, he served as Vice President of Sales at Stanley Infrastructure, a division of Stanley Black & Decker – a manufacturer of hydraulic attachment tools – and led the integration of five independent sales organizations into one division comprising 180 sales staff and approximately US$500 million in annual revenue.
As JCB Americas’ former Vice President of North American Sales, Dan was responsible for recruiting and leading 120 JCB Americas dealers and sales staff to achieve US$650 million in annual revenue. He also held various senior roles within JCB, including Vice President of North American Agriculture – where he led the development of an independent agriculture dealer network of 120 dealers for revenue diversification, as well as Sales Director for Eastern Europe – where he built brand awareness for JCB’s heavy equipment line in 15 Eastern European countries.
At John Deere, a world-leading manufacturer synonymous with the farm tractor, he served in manager-level sales and marketing roles, implementing the southern U.S. division’s annual marketing and sales plans through multiple distribution outlets, combination dealerships, independent dealerships and mass channel partners. He also led a cross-divisional channel sales team that generated over US$500 million in annual consumer revenue.
Dan holds a Bachelor of Business Administration in Political Science and Business Communications from the University of Kansas, and a Masters of Business Administration from the University of Georgia’s Terry School of Business.
CubicFarms CEO Dave Dinesen commented: “After an exhaustive search for a proven sales leader, Dan emerged as the right candidate to help propel our business onto the global stage. He deeply understands our customers’ operational and financial objectives and has the experience to educate and partner with them to ensure overall satisfaction and longevity with CubicFarms. His expertise in developing relationships with global distributors and dealers, and coaching in-house sales teams, will be a huge asset to our company. I’m excited to work with Dan and extend him a warm welcome to our executive team.”
Dan Schmidt, Senior Vice President of Global Sales, commented: “Having worked in agricultural equipment manufacturing and distribution sales for the last few decades, I have witnessed the agriculture industry’s evolution of new farming techniques and the adaptation of technology to help manage the fields. I’ve always kept my eye on emerging concepts such as vertical farming, which could alter the future of how and where we get our fresh food.
“When I discovered the innovation built into CubicFarms’ proprietary systems, I knew I wanted to be part of the bold idea that agriculture could take place anywhere without being at the mercy of Mother Nature. I believe that CubicFarms really could be the next technological evolution of the tractor!”
Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor it’s Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.
About CubicFarm® Systems Corp.
CubicFarm Systems Corp. (“CubicFarms”) is a technology company developing and deploying technology to feed a changing world. Its proprietary technologies enable growers around the world to produce high quality, predictable crop yields. CubicFarms has two distinct technologies that address two distinct markets. The first technology is its CubicFarms™ system, which contains patented technology for growing leafy greens and other crops indoors, all year round. Using its unique, undulating-path growing system, the Company addresses the main challenges within the indoor farming industry by significantly reducing the need for physical labor and energy, and maximizing yield per cubic foot. CubicFarms leverages its patented technology by operating its own R&D facility in Pitt Meadows, British Columbia, selling the system to growers, licensing its technology, and providing vertical farming expertise to its customers.
The second technology is CubicFarms’ HydroGreen system for growing nutritious livestock feed. This system utilizes a unique process to sprout grains, such as barley and wheat, in a controlled environment with minimal use of land, labor, and water. The HydroGreen system is fully automated and performs all growing functions including seeding, watering, lighting, harvesting, and re-seeding – all with the push of a button – to deliver nutritious livestock feed without the typical investment in fertilizer, chemicals, fuel, field equipment, and transportation. The HydroGreen system not only provides superior nutritious feed to benefit the animal but also enables significant environmental benefits to the farm.
Information contact:
Kimberly Lim
VP, Corporate Communications & Investor Relations
Mobile: 236.858.6491
Office: 1.888.280.9076
Email: kimberly@cubicfarms.com
How We Can Rethink Agriculture So It’s More Local
With a global population projected to exceed eight billion in 2023 and 10 billion by 2056, we can ill afford the inefficiencies and incremental gains of today’s industrial agriculture
SEP 21, 2020
Climate Week is a reminder of how susceptible global agriculture systems are to climate change risks. More than 800 million people went to bed hungry every night even before COVID-19 disrupted the global food supply chain, which put an additional 130 million at risk of food insecurity.
This unprecedented crisis comes as industrial agriculture already struggles to feed a growing global population under threats of declining resources and an increasingly inhospitable environment.
While we can still produce enough food to feed the world today, we are running out of time. Many experts believe that conventional farming techniques are becoming unsustainable because of the vast amounts of land, water, and energy required, as well as additional crop failures that will occur with the warming climate. To achieve sustainable food security, we must fundamentally disrupt the traditional forms of agriculture. We must pivot towards more cost-effective food production that is closer to home, more sustainable than factory farming, and less land-intensive.
Building more local capacity for agriculture
With a global population projected to exceed eight billion in 2023 and 10 billion by 2056, we can ill afford the inefficiencies and incremental gains of today’s industrial agriculture. Feeding 10 billion people will require an additional 109 million arable hectares, a landmass larger than Brazil. Given that 80 percent of arable land is already in use, the world faces even more acute food shortages if we can’t figure out how to grow more with less and get it where’s it’s most acutely needed.
The first step is to decentralize food production and distribute it more locally. When the 2017 famine in South Sudan took hold, it wasn’t because there wasn’t enough food to feed the five million people; it was because disruptions to the food supply prevented its distribution. Similarly, when food supply disruptions caused harrowing shortages on American supermarket shelves in the early months of the pandemic, we all witnessed how quickly panic and hoarding set in.
Urban agriculture is one way to build more local capacity. Building in cities, even on rooftops, can improve local food security and nutrition in food deserts where underserved communities suffer from access to fresh produce. Studies show that urban agriculture can meet 15 to 20 percent of global food demand today.
The next step is to bring food production indoors, when and where it makes sense. Technological innovation has helped bring food closer to local communities, enabling food to be grown more in places once thought impossible. However, we need to rethink our approach to indoor growing systems.
Today’s most advanced greenhouses and indoor vertical farms have significant shortcomings. Vertical farms, for instance, require massive amounts of energy due to the need for climate control systems and artificial lighting. Some argue that energy and environmental costs of vertical farms are offset by the reduced “food miles” of transporting food from afar. But as climate and environmental scientist, Dr. Jonathan Fole points out this argument turns out to be a red herring. Local food typically uses about the same energy per pound to transport as food grown away due to volume and method of transport.
And both indoor vertical farms and greenhouses suffer from a lack of the sun’s full light spectrum, compromising the robustness of indoor plant growth as well as the quality of the food.
The need for precise controls
Instead, a new model of agriculture is emerging that is nimbler than large-scale commercial farming, safer than outdoor farms, greener than greenhouses, more natural than vertical farms, and more efficient than almost any other growing technique in terms of water consumption, power usage, and CO2 production. It’s essentially a hybrid approach of all three growing modalities – outdoors, greenhouses, and indoor farms. This “fourth way” of agriculture integrates and continually refines entirely new approaches to crops, operations, facilities, systems, and the growing environment (COFSE). The model was developed to produce far higher yields per acre than outdoor farms, superior yields to greenhouses and up to 20 percent better yields than comparably sized indoor farming systems.
The new model has two key principles: first, bring the full sun indoors and, secondly, create and control an indoor ecosystem precisely tuned for each kind of crop.
Plants grow most robustly and flavorfully in full natural sunlight. While it may seem counter-intuitive to some, even the clearest of glass greenhouses inhibit the full light spectrum of the sun. But new cladding materials have emerged recently that enable the near-full-transmission of the sun’s RV and light spectrum.
Unlike plastic or glass, these new transparent membranes can help crops achieve their full genetic (and flavor) potential. Natural light also warms the microclimate when necessary, dramatically reducing heating energy requirements. And at times when the sun isn’t cooperating, advances in supplemental grow lighting can extend the plants’ photoperiod – even beyond natural daylight hours – to maximize crop growth and quality, and reduce time to harvest by up to 50 percent or better.
Greenhouses and vertical farms are also compromised by outdoor and human-introduced contamination. The new model relies on creating a tightly-sealed, cleanroom-like microclimate that keeps pests, pesticides, and other pollutants outside.
Thanks to artificial intelligence (AI), the Internet of Things, and similar advances, growers can create highly automated growing systems that reduce human intervention and its associated costs. Finely-tuned convective air circulation systems enable the microclimate to remain sealed and protective. Natural temperature regulation using sunlight and organic foam-based clouds can significantly reduce air-conditioning electricity requirements. And highly automated hydration, fertilization, and lighting are all continuously optimized by machine learning.
This new model, which has been designed over more than three years of research and development, is set to be put into large scale practice when the first of three new grow facilities completes construction on a 41-acre site in Coachella, Calif. Construction is set to commence within the next year. This unique approach, which included contributions from lighting experts who had previously worked at NASA sending plants into space, was developed to significantly affect local food security in an environmentally friendly way. It applies the best aspects of current growing methods – outdoors, greenhouse, and indoors – and, where possible, replaces their shortcomings with superior technology and processes, creating an overall improved approach. Yet as a result of the facility design and automated growing system, it is designed to and expected to consume up to 90 percent less energy than traditional indoor grow operations while producing up to 10 to 20 percent better yields than other comparably sized farming systems.
The world we live in now gives us the intelligence and technologies we need to change the outdated legacy of how farming is done today into tomorrow’s way of producing food, creating a robust, delicious, and nutritious food chain on a global level. Using these technologies, we can decentralize production, reducing our reliance on global supply chains, and move high-density growing systems closer to communities to ensure food security for all.
Image credit: Devi Puspita Amartha Yahya/Unsplash
Virginia Researchers Are Studying ‘The Sound of Plants Dancing’ To Better The Future of Agriculture
Using experimental technology, the scientists are trying to figure out how the sonification of plant movements could be used to assess plant health and aid farmers who need to monitor their greens at an industrial scale
By Katherine Hafner
The Virginian-Pilot 9/7/2020
What Do Dancing Plants Sound Like?
© Virginia Tech/The Virginian-Pilot/TNS Some of the pepper plants being studied by researchers at Virginia Tech. The researchers record the plants' long-term movements  sped up into \"dances\"  then convert those patterns into sound as a way to evaluate plant health based on responses to environmental conditions.
It seems like the start of a philosophical essay question. But researchers at Virginia Tech think the answer could be one tool wielded in the future of agriculture in the commonwealth and beyond.
Using experimental technology, the scientists are trying to figure out how the sonification of plant movements could be used to assess plant health and aid farmers who need to monitor their greens at an industrial scale.
They are focused on indoor or so-called controlled-environment agriculture. Think greenhouses with LED lights and plants in hydroponic systems, using liquid nutrient solutions instead of soil.
“When you grow a plant inside a building, you really control ... introducing any insects or pathogens, minimizing the use of pesticides” and the like, said Bingyu Zhao, the lead researcher and associate professor in the School of Plant and Environmental Sciences. “But you can still have disease problems or sometimes they could have environmental stress.”
Maybe the temperature’s too high, he said, or the nitrogen levels are off. “It’s all not good for the plant growth.”
Imagine a grower using an indoor facility with dozens of rows of plants. Unlike in a small backyard garden, they can’t continuously check on every individual plant to monitor the effects of all those variables.
So Zhao got the idea to set up cameras to do it instead, using a small number of pepper plants for observation.
The high-resolution cameras capture the continuous movements of the plants. Over times, patterns develop.
These “micro movements” are mostly naked to the human eye, Zhao said. But they become apparent when sped up in time-lapse videos.
The even more unconventional part comes next.
The researchers take the data they’ve collected on plant movements and convert it into sound in a process called sonification.
In that way, a human could hear patterns present among the plants. The idea is to eventually be able to link certain sounds to indicators that a plant needs better light, for example.
Computers, analyzing the data at a large scale, could learn “what is a good sound and what is a bad sound,” Zhao said.
He works with professors across other disciplines in engineering and in the School of Performing Arts to bring together the different elements.
The plant movement project is just one part of the university’s new statewide SmartFarm Innovation Network, said Susan Duncan, associate director of the Virginia Agricultural Experiment Station.
Two years ago, the school brought together stakeholders in the agriculture and food processing fields from around Virginia to hear their concerns and interests, she said.
One big takeaway: technological innovation was on everyone’s mind. In order to maintain a future workforce and catch up with evolving needs, they needed to think outside traditional agricultural techniques, she said.
So the decentralized network was born, consisting of 11 off-campus research centers including the Hampton Roads Agricultural Research And Extension Center in Virginia Beach. Though the center in our region isn’t involved in the “dancing plants” project, it has plenty of its own areas of study, including water quality and boxwood blight disease.
There are more than 100 research projects connected to the network delving into the future of agriculture.
With growing plants indoors, for example, “you can’t just say, ’I’m going to put this LED light over my plant and see how it goes,’” Duncan said. “There’s a science behind it.”
In the operating room, surgeons often use sound to be able to keep track of routine measurements such as blood pressure while performing surgery, Duncan said.
Applying that to plants, she said, is “how they can help guide us to make decisions for them.”
“It’s kind of a cool concept. If they start ’screaming,’ whatever that sounds like, we can pay attention.”
©2020 The Virginian-Pilot (Norfolk, Va.)
Visit The Virginian-Pilot (Norfolk, Va.) at pilotonline.com
Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
Little Wild Things City Farm
Little Wild Things City Farm produces soil-grown microgreens, shoots, and edible flowers on less than one-quarter acre in the heart of Washington, D.C.
Little Wild Things City Farm produces soil-grown microgreens, shoots, and edible flowers on less than one-quarter acre in the heart of Washington, D.C.
We believe that environmentally sustainable, commercially viable farming is possible in urban landscapes—and we're proving it.
As a first generation farm, we combine the best of time-honored sustainable growing techniques with new innovations and a disciplined business focus to achieve high yields from our very small growing spaces.
We aim to demonstrate that farming is a desirable career for the best and brightest of the next generation, and seek to develop relationships with customers who share our values to create a transformative impact on our local food system.
WHAT ARE MICROGREENS?
Our microgreens are tiny edible greens that provide exceptional flavor, nutritional value, texture, and color to salads, sandwiches, wraps, tacos, pizza, smoothies, soup and more. Smaller than “baby greens,” and harvested later than “sprouts,” microgreens provide a variety of leaf flavors, such as sweet and spicy, and come in many vibrant colors. Fine dining chefs use microgreens to enhance the beauty, taste and freshness of their dishes with their delicate textures and distinctive flavors.
Researchers at the USDA Agricultural Research Service and the University of Maryland began studying the nutritional content of microgreens in 2012. They looked at four groups of vitamins and other phytochemicals – including vitamin C, vitamin E, and beta carotene — in 25 varieties of microgreens. The researchers found that leaves from nearly all of the microgreens had four to six times more nutrients than the mature leaves of the same plant, with variation among the varieties – red cabbage was highest in vitamin C, while the green daikon radish microgreens had the most vitamin E [i]
[i] Xiao, Z.; Lester, G. E.; Luo, Y.; Wang, Q. (2012). "Assessment of Vitamin and Carotenoid Concentrations of Emerging Food Products: Edible Microgreens". Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry 60 (31): 7644-7651
Exploring The Costs And Benefits of Indoor Agriculture
Vertical farming is the shiny new toy in agriculture. It's attracted tremendous media attention and VC investments. Mostly, VC seeks a high rate of return. How has VC investment impacted the business decision making in vertical farming operations?
Leafy GreRobert Colangelo and Matt Roy
Yesterday, the Indoor Agtech kicked off its virtual event, joined by many participants. One, of the many seminars, was about 'Exploring the costs and benefits of indoor agriculture'. Robert Colangelo, Founding Farmer at Green Sense Farms, kicked off the seminar by asking what CEA means to Matt Roy, VP Business Development CEA at Tanimura & Antle. Roy answered, “CEA to me, means anything grown inside. There’s a lot of innovation and disruption happening in the space and I think there’s going to be a lot of different technologies that are going to provide the right solutions here.”
Colangelo: “Is it true that, according to the myth, the leafy greens supply chain is broken and where can it be improved?”
Roy stated that one of the misconceptions out there is that there’s this big waste field on the West Coast on how products are grown, harvested, and shipped out. “It’s actually highly innovative and from innovation, technology, and sustainability standpoint, there’s a lot of exciting things happening out there. I continue to be amazed at how well we are able to get fresh fruits and vegetables across the country. A lot of things we’re trying to achieve indoors, in a lot of ways we have accomplished that outdoors. From growing it, getting it harvested efficiently, timely, and done food safely, we’re getting high quality, nutritious fresh produce across the country in a matter of days.”
Colangelo: “Can you give us a quick thumbnail of the different touchpoints, from seed in the field to the supermarket, how does that level travel and where do you see waste along that line?”
Roy: Naturally, with any farming, indoor, or outdoor there is going to be some level of waste. Obviously, putting products on a truck for five days brings challenges and vulnerability along. A misperception is that all of the food is left in the field, but in a lot of ways, it’s organic material feeding the soil. Just because leaves are left in the field after harvesting, it might be viewed as waste, but it goes back in the dirt and provides nutrition to the soil.
Colangelo: "A challenge in vertical farming is packing on a large economy of scale. What are the challenges of packing as a smaller scaled farm with few centralized packing houses near? How do you get packing done economically?"
Roy: “Hyperlocal smaller farms bring value to the supply chain and continue to provide additional ways to provide nutritious products to consumers. I think it’s going to be one of the challenges, and it’s a huge component that is not talked about a lot. There’s a lot of discussion on the growing side, but I think that we need more conversation on what innovation looks like on the packing side. What is looks like for hydro-cooling, think of everything shipped out from the West Coast, is hydro-cooled. So, when growing indoors, pulling the heat out of the product to ensure you have the shelf life needed out of it. It’s a big piece that needs to be solved.
Colangelo: “Most of the packing equipment is geared to large-scale production and there's very little cost-effective low scale packing equipment out there. So I agree, that it’s an area that we all need to work out. Looking at product recall, there's been a number of recalls with field-grown lettuce, but I've not heard of any from a vertical farm. So, can you talk a little bit about health and safety, and food safety when it comes to field production versus indoor growing?”
Roy: “The challenge has been full case-level traceability. A lot of work was done around the first traceability initiative. But, until all channels of the supply chain jump all in together around traceability, it's going to continue to be a challenge rather outdoors or indoors. Controlling more elements inside allows to produce a safer product, but in a lot of ways, it creates more risk because it's easier to contaminate all of your crops. So it’s really an all-in from everybody jump in and says we're going to prioritize food safety. And yes, this product might be 50 cents or a dollar more of a product, but we're putting a premium on food safety. We know these ‘five golden rules’ they are compliant against and we're going to pay a premium for that. As a buyer, you’re not looking at food safety first, so it’s actually a broader conversation that impacts both indoor and outdoor. It's great to have you here with your unique perspective both as a buyer and now our producer.”
Colangelo: Vertical farming is the shiny new toy in agriculture. It's attracted tremendous media attention and VC investments. Mostly, VC seeks a high rate of return. How has VC investment impacted the business decision making in vertical farming operations?
Roy: “I think it creates a different pressure. Whereas, if you're a self-funded or institutionally funded organization, there's more of a long view on what you're doing and when you're crawled by VC money there's a higher expectation on the return. I think that in a lot of ways vertical is still early stage and technology has not gone to a point that had a mass scale to produce cost-effectively. The market has not matured enough to demand a premium to get those returns. The pressure impacts your day-to-day decisions as a business leader. Are you going to make the right decisions, long-term, for the help of a product in your business, or, are you going to make some short-term decisions that might not allow long-term success in your business?
Colangelo: “Banks don’t provide debt finances to new ventures. Private equity and VC being the only few sources, how do new ideas get funded in this market?”
Roy: “In the last four of five years, from an investment side people have really have given more attention to how much food is consumed, and the size of the industries, the supply chains around products. In general, the energy coming into the food space, investing, bringing innovation and new ideas to disruption is all very exciting, but I think you speak to that challenge. ‘How do you balance funding your business to get started, while still staying true to your principles and creating something long-term?’ So I think that these many people were battling with these challenges. From a macro view to me, it's exciting to see a lot more VC money coming into fresh produce than you’ve seen historically. With that will come continued innovation and disruption.”
For more information:
Green Sense Farms
Robert Colangelo, Founding Farmer
www.greensensefarms.com
Tanimura & Antle
Matt Roy, VP Business Development CEA
www.taproduce.com
Indoor AgTech Innovation Summit
www.indooragtechnyc.com
Publication date: Fri 24 Jul 2020
Author: Rebekka Boekhout
© HortiDaily.com
Vertical Farms Could Grow All The Wheat We Need
The global population eats a lot of wheat. It’s the most widely grown crop in the world, and it accounts for approximately 20% of the calories and proteins in the average human diet
05-08-2020 | Gizmodo
For years, vertical farming has captured headlines, including on this very website. A new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on Monday shows the practice could revolutionize the world’s ability to grow wheat.
The global population eats a lot of wheat. It’s the most widely grown crop in the world, and it accounts for approximately 20% of the calories and proteins in the average human diet. As the global population grows, we’ll need more of it to sustain humanity. With arable land a premium, the new study looks at if vertical farming—a method of growing crops in vertically stacked layers—could help.
To find out, the authors created two growth simulation models of a 10-layer vertical farm set up with optimal artificial light, temperatures, and carbon dioxide levels. They found that the simulation could yield up to a whopping 1,940 metric tons of wheat per hectare of ground per year. For context, the current average wheat yield is just 3.2 metric tons per hectare of land.
It makes sense that the authors would be looking into this now. Globally, one in nine people already face hunger, and the problem could become more acute as the population increases. The world could have to produce more than 60% more wheat to account for population growth. That won’t be easy; rising temperatures and other changes in growing seasons driven by the climate crisis are lowering crop yields around the world.
The new study offers an insight into how to address some of these problems. But right now, scientists are only offering simulations. Actually bringing these massive wheat crop yields to fruition would come with massive challenges.
For one, vertical farming is wildly expensive. It requires massive amounts of energy to work, especially because unlike traditional farming, it requires artificial lighting systems. The authors say their simulated systems would provide a light intensity for the crops 30 to 50% greater than directly overhead sunlight. Watering systems and technology to ensure optimal temperature and air quality conditions in these indoor environments would also be costly—not to mention energy-intensive. Depending on how the systems are powered, that could be a problem for the climate. Previous research shows that powering these systems could require vastly more energy than our current high-emissions food system.
“No one has ever attempted to grow food crops under artificial lighting that’s as strong as sunlight, much less strong, for the simple reason that it would require too much energy,” Stan Cox, a scientist and plant breeder at the Land Institute in Salina, Kansas, said in an email.
The new study’s authors note that recent innovations in solar energy are lowering the costs of electricity and lighting is becoming more efficient, but note crops grown this way are still not likely to be economically competitive with current market prices of agriculture. Cox found that to be an understatement.
“A decade ago, given the amount of light wheat plants require to produce one pound of grain, I calculated that growing the entire U.S. wheat crop indoors would consume eight times the country’s entire annual electricity output,” he said. “That was before recent advances in lighting efficiency. So, hey, maybe it would now use up only four to five times our total electricity supply! For one crop!”
Innovations in automation, the authors note, could further lower the costs of vertical farming. That may be true, but in our current economic system, that could be a problem for farmworkers, who are already seeing their pay get cut. For these reasons and more, vertical farming has been a controversial topic in agricultural and environmental circles.
The new study’s authors note that there are also many unanswered questions about growing wheat in indoor facilities. It’s not clear, for instance, what the nutritional value and quality of indoor-farmed wheat would be, or what diseases could arise in such facilities.
Though their projected crop yields are exciting, even if vertical farming does work, it can’t be the only solution to our agricultural issues. Other systemic changes, including reducing food waste, moving away from meat-centric agricultural systems, diversifying crops, and improving soil health, should also play a role.
“Under specific circumstances, and if the energy cost and profitability issues can be resolved, indoor vertical wheat farming might be attractive,” the authors conclude. “Nonetheless, the outcomes described here may contribute only a relatively small fraction (yet to be determined) of the global grain production needed to achieve global food security in the near future.”
By Dharna Noor
Source: Gizmodo
Photo by Science in HD on Unsplash
FarmERP Gears Up For The Future As Top Executives From Cognizant And SAP Join Them
FarmERP’s main focus lies in rigorous technology-intensive transformation of agriculture and agribusinesses, through the latest advancements including the Internet of Agricultural Things, AI, Blockchain and Machine Learning
FarmERP’s main focus lies in rigorous technology-intensive transformation of agriculture and agribusinesses, through the latest advancements including the Internet of Agricultural Things, AI, Blockchain, and Machine Learning. To enable revolutionary ease within the management system, FarmERP welcomed Mr. Abhijeet Dange and Mr. Vikram Metkari on board.
The team at FarmERP recently announced the appointment of Mr. Abhijeet Dange as the Associate Vice President for Delivery at the organization. With vast experience in banking and financial services, learning, and talent development for over 22 years while working for organizations like Cognizant and Silverline, he has immense knowledge about handling large offshore customer engagements.
On his appointment, Mr. Dange quoted, “With the knowledge I possess, I aim to help in maintaining FarmERP’s competitive advantage by effectively aiding the growth of agribusinesses through cutting edge technology platforms.”
Mr. Sanjay Borkar, the CEO of the Indian-grown 2001 brand believes that, apart from being a strong leader with excellent people management skills, with his expertise in streamlining digital IT transformations, Mr. Abhijeet will play a crucial role in uncomplicating complex product management for FarmERP.
The team also welcomed on board Mr. Vikram Metkari as the Head of Sales and Marketing, who shares the same passion that the co-founders of the organization do, for transforming the inner workings of agriculture through the use of tech platforms. Mr. Metkari, an MBA and BE professional with rich work experience in marketing, sales, and business strategy, is a self-motivated and confident leader. He is not only a keen planner and strategist, but also an articulate communicator offering high- caliber presentations, negotiations, and analytical skills.
Mr. Santosh Shinde, the COO of FarmERP believes that Mr. Metkari’s extensive experience of working for various companies- both smaller organizations and world leaders like SAP and Vodafone in the IT & Telecom domain will enable him to guide, innovate, build, and provide value to agribusiness' customers by strengthening FarmERP's existing leadership in the domain.
With the valuable addition of both these members to the team at FarmERP, striving to make a difference and create an impact in these testing times, and the immense experience and culmination of expertise that they bring to the table, the management is now stronger than ever.
FarmERP is a leading smart agriculture management ERP technology platform. It was incepted as a part of Shivrai Technologies more than a decade ago and is currently deployed in 25 countries, assisting a variety of agribusinesses.
FarmERP is a pioneered effort by engineers, classmates, and now partners, Mr. Sanjay Borkar and Mr. Santosh Shinde. Both coming from an agricultural background, they were and are well aware of the toils and troubles that the agricultural sector faces on a daily basis. They turned to technology as a helping hand and as a partner.
Due to the connection, both personal and professional that they have towards the agricultural sector, it makes each individual work that much harder towards achieving the long-term goals they stand for. Aiming at the revolutionizing of the practices the agriculture sector follows as of date, FarmERP strives to make considerable progress in the agri-sectors they work with, while actively trying to incorporate their offerings with additional sectors as well since they are a platform which can accommodate the personality of numerous agribusinesses.
US: MINNESOTA: North Market Installs Onsite Vertical Farm
Black-owned and operated by the nonprofit organization Pillsbury United Communities (PUC), the grocery store North Market has installed a hydroponic vertical container farm from Freight Farms onsite
Source: North Market
07.28.2020
By Emily Park
MINNEAPOLIS – Black-owned and operated by the nonprofit organization Pillsbury United Communities (PUC), the grocery store North Market has installed a hydroponic vertical container farm from Freight Farms onsite.
Built-in an upcycled shipping container and controlled by a data-driven IoT platform called farmhand, the 320-square-foot farm is located in the retailer’s parking lot.
Regardless of the season, it will provide the market’s community with fresh produce (all pesticide- and herbicide-free) year-round. Growing at commercial volume, the farm uses less than 5 gallons of water a day.
North Market will start by harvesting 11 flavorful crops: three varieties of mini compact romaine lettuces, green oakleaf, basil, Thai basil, rosemary, thyme, lemon balm, sage, and mint.
“At Pillsbury United Communities, our mission is to co-create enduring change toward a just society in which every person has personal, social, and economic power,” said Kim Pepper, chief engagement officer of PUC. “The closed-loop food ecosystem we have built around North Market is one of the ways we are working to realize this vision. Greens grown onsite in the Freight Farm are sold at North Market ensuring community access to fresh, affordable, local produce year-round. Produce that doesn’t sell is rescued, prepared, and served at our free community café."
Some of the added benefits of the onsite vertical farm include:
Elimination of food miles: the crops only travel steps from the parking lot to the store
Consistent reliability: store can produce its own line of crops for shoppers, with year-round consistency regardless of the weather or changing climate conditions in Minneapolis
Quality and freshness: by being grown hyper-locally (in this case, right onsite), produce stays fresh for far longer, reducing food waste for both the store and consumers
Cost reduction: in removing distribution costs from the equation, PUC is able to pass savings on to the consumer
Traceability & safety: the farm’s integrated IoT platform, farmhand, enables complete traceability of crops from seed to harvest
North Market also sells produce from the PUC’s other soil-based farms in the city. To get those crops to the store, bicycle couriers pick up freshly harvested food from PUC’s Southside gardens and deliver them to North Market to be sold. Completing the cycle, they also pick up surplus food and bring it back to the Southside to be distributed in community delivery meal programs. The remaining food is composted back at the Southside gardens.
VIDEO: Vertical Farming: The Only Way Is Up
Just like we've grown accustomed to living in compartments stacked directly on top and beside each other so too are lettuce and herbs
by Jasmine Reimer
Trends - /March 2, 2020
Just like we've grown accustomed to living in compartments stacked directly on top and beside each other so too are lettuce and herbs.
Agriculture is going vertical. Why? Because it saves water, increases efficiency, and provides us with fresh, local produce.
Vertical farming is the practice of producing food on upright surfaces. Instead of farming in a field, vertical farming grows plants stacked in layers, in structures like shipping containers or warehouses.
If this seems like an insignificant shift, unlikely to produce much effect, consider this: by 2050 the world's population is expected to grow by another 2 billion people.
Feeding everyone will be challenging. Vertical farming could be a solution.
What is vertical farming?
Assembled layer by layer under candy-colored lights, vertical farming has become an increasingly popular way for food producers to reduce costs related to space and energy consumption while increasing growth rates and nutrient values.
Of the many companies that are testing out this innovative farming method, Urban Crops uses a conveyor-like system to hold baby plants under LED ultraviolet lights. Their system is automated and relies on technology to program lighting and growing conditions specific to each species. And because they don't heat up, the bulbs can be placed closer to the leaves to encourage optimal light absorption.
In addition to not having to maintain an entire plot of land, Urban Crops boasts that vertical farming yields more crops per square meter than traditional farming or greenhouses. It also grows plants faster and can be used year-round. In theory, vertical farming can be practiced anywhere, which means that water-restricted locations can still harvest produce. Vertical farming uses up to 95% less water than traditional methods.
As Urban Crops' Chief Executive Maartin Vandecruys points out:
“Basically… every day is a summer's day without a cloud in the sky."
CES 2020: LG are launching exciting new indoor gardening technology.
While vertical farming could be the future of large-scale agriculture, companies like Urban Crops are also hoping that non-farming folk like yourself will be interested in investing in DIY versions. Because, while it makes sense to grow salad greens and edible flowers, trying to grow other foods like wheat for bread isn't yet an option: “At 10 cents a kilowatt-hour, the amount of energy it would take to produce wheat would [translate to] something like $11 for a loaf of bread," states, Vandecruys. Nonetheless, vertical farming could mean big changes in the way you think about “local" produce.
Vertical farming helps reduce the amount of questions for the consumer including its provenance, growing conditions and harvest date.
Data is useless unless you put it to work
Around the world, data-driven technologies are being used to keep indoor farming afloat. Detailed, real-time data collected via artificial intelligence, location services and IoT technology is used to analyze and produce better feeding models and optimal configurations, i.e. the concentration and scheduling of light and ratio of nutrients. Most recent is IoT company n.thing's Planty Cube, launched at this year's CES 2020.
Leo Kim, n.thing's CEO, came up with the idea for Planty Cube after creating an IoT-enabled smart pot called “Planty Square."
Planty Cube is a smart hydroponic vertical farm that relies on data from farming logs, which are fed back into a database called the “Cube Cloud" and analyzed with AI to help farmers determine optimal growing conditions. As the user adds more Planty Cubes to the vertical farm, this real-time, cloud-based system makes it easier for the grower to manage the overall farm, even remotely.
But even prior to sowing seeds, technology can help vertical farmers and consumers alike.
Automation, tracking and AI technology also opens up the potential to locate farms in urban, industrial, and even domestic spaces that can produce crops all year round.
This has the possibility to truly change the way cities source food. Most urban supermarkets are supplied from distributors around the world. Local indoor farms could decrease reliance on imports and reduce carbon emissions from transportation.
In the future, I hope to see supermarkets filled with vertical farms of their own.
The ups and downs of growing up
The vertical farming industry is booming. However, there are realities to consider before growing on a professional scale:
What are you growing and for whom?
Before you invest, do some market research. Get a sense of who your customers will be and your price point. Basically, if you can't sell it, you shouldn't grow it.
What is your distribution plan?
How will you physically get your produce to your customers? Find out who your end customers are and keep your farm as close to them as possible. Being local is an integral component to your success but this may present further challenges such as high cost of land, poor soil quality, and resource restrictions.
Will your building meet your needs?
Remember, indoor farming requires substantial amounts of power: lighting, pumps, HVAC, automation equipment, fans, computers etc. Not all buildings are equipped with the type of electricity you require. And if you're serious about getting into the vertical farming industry, you need to plan for future expansions.
Fortunately, vertical farming is being supported by more than just salad-starved individuals like me; location services and tracking technology are helping farmers retain high yields and prepare for the future.
IDTechEx: How to Succeed in Vertical Farming
Vertical farming is an emerging technique within agriculture that involves growing crops indoors under controlled environmental conditions
NEWS PROVIDED BY IDTechEx
May 26, 2020
BOSTON, May 26, 2020,/PRNewswire/ -- Vertical farming is an emerging technique within agriculture that involves growing crops indoors under controlled environmental conditions. By carefully tailoring the environment to the exact requirements of the crop, such as through using LED lighting to produce the exact light spectrum needed for optimal photosynthesis, it is possible to obtain yields hundreds of times higher than traditional agriculture.
Vertical farms can be set up almost anywhere, making it possible to grow crops in the middle of populous urban centers, meaning that it is possible for crops to reach consumers within minutes of harvest. This contrasts with traditional agriculture, where fresh produce can take weeks to reach consumers, losing the freshness, and increasing contamination risk along the way. The recent IDTechEx report, "Vertical Farming: 2020-2030" explores the technologies and markets around the fast-growing vertical farming industry.
Vertical farms use artificial lighting and carefully controlled climates to grow crops at far higher yields than conventional agriculture. Source: Intelligent Growth Solutions (PRNewsfoto/IDTechEx)
Vertical farming has been the subject of a lot of hype in recent years, with supporters claiming it could revolutionize food production. Industry advocates, such as Columbia University Professor Dickson Despommier, have presented visions of a future world where fresh food is grown inside skyscrapers to feed giant, high-tech metropolises (for further visions of the cities of the future, see the IDTechEx report, "Smart City Opportunities: Infrastructure, Systems, Materials 2019-2029"). Investors are also feeling the hype, with vertical farming start-ups raising over a billion dollars in investment in the last five years alone.
However, despite this optimism, the industry does face some major challenges and the sector has more than its fair share of bankruptcies. PodPonics, once the most well-funded vertical farming company in the world, and FarmedHere, which once operated what remains the largest vertical farm ever built, both went bankrupt. David Rosenberg, Chief Executive of New Jersey-based vertical farming outfit AeroFarms, recently said he wouldn't be surprised if 90% of the players in the industry went out of business within the next three years.
Broadly, many vertical farms struggle for the same reasons. As well as costing a lot of money to set up, vertical farms can be very expensive to run, largely because they require continuously running artificial lighting and climate controls. This is compounded by high labor costs and logistical difficulties that often get more difficult as the vertical farm gets larger. This all makes it very difficult to compete on price with produce grown on conventional farms, which typically have razor-thin profit margins.
Because of these challenges, vertical farmers generally only grow crops where the whole of the plant can be consumed, in order to maximize space efficiency and avoid wasting energy on growing inedible stems and leaves. Therefore, almost all vertical farmers are restricted to growing herbs and leafy greens. These are still a large market but fall somewhere short of the lofty claims made by some supporters of the industry.
It is certainly possible to run a successful vertical farming business, as fast-growing players such as Bowery Farming and InFarm will attest to, however, it requires a carefully planned out strategy and consideration of all the variables and trade-offs involved in vertical farming, in addition to a fair amount of investor capital.
The keys to success in vertical farming are outlined in the recent IDTechEx report, "Vertical Farming: 2020-2030". The report discusses several factors that can contribute to the success or failure of a vertical farm, including:
Whether or not to automate. Automation can significantly reduce labor costs while streamlining the logistical processes. However, investing in advanced automation equipment can lead to extremely high start-up costs.
Choice of crops. Should vertical farming try to branch out beyond leafy greens, or should it corner the market it has? What about higher-value crops inaccessible to conventional agriculture?
How large is too large? Larger centralized facilities could lead to economies of scale but could also face spiraling logistical difficulties. However, smaller localized facilities may face much higher start-up costs relative to the output capacity.
The importance of location: is a city center location really the best place to set up a vertical farm?
The need for experience in the food industry. Crops are living organisms and are not always predictable. Despite this, there is a relative lack of food and agriculture experience in the vertical farming sector.
For more information on this report, please visit www.IDTechEx.com/vertfarm or for the full portfolio of Food & AgTech research available from IDTechEx please visit www.IDTechEx.com/research/agtech.
IDTechEx guides your strategic business decisions through its Research, Consultancy and Event products, helping you profit from emerging technologies. For more information on IDTechEx Research and Consultancy, contact research@IDTechEx.com or visit www.IDTechEx.com.
Media Contact:
Jessica Abineri
Marketing Coordinator
press@IDTechEx.com
+44-(0)-1223-812300
SOURCE IDTechEx
Agrihoods and Access To Healthy Food
Enter agrihoods: the community feeling of suburbia mixed with the progressive thinking of the city, sprinkled with the splendor of the country
May 13, 2020
Written by Tinia Pina | Re-Nuble
The question has always been there: city life or country life? However, in the 1850’s, in response to a rising urban population and as a result of improved transportation methods, the suburbs began to sprawl out from large metropolises. Now, roughly 80 percent of Americans live in urban areas. Yet, the demand for closed-loop food processes continues to increase. Urban area citizens still want access to sustainable and healthy food systems.
Defining Closed-loop Systems
By definition, a closed-loop system is one in which the operation is regulated by feedback. To clarify, feedback, in this sense, means that a portion of the output is fed back into the system to act as part of the excitation. The output cannot exist independent of the feedback.
Closed loop food systems produce high-quality, healthy foods using less energy and less water. When locally-sourced, their production and sale contributes positively to local economies and develops pride within the community.
Agrihoods and Access to Healthy Food
Enter agrihoods: the community feeling of suburbia mixed with the progressive thinking of the city sprinkled with the splendor of the country. There are several reasons people are drawn to this style of living. First and foremost is access to locally grown, sustainable food. A close second is the closed-loop process: the inhabitants enjoy the crop and the remains are composted for use as fertilizer. There is an eloquent beauty in the cyclical nature of closed-loop food processes.
In addition to providing sustainable, locally-sourced food, agrihoods provide steady work for farmers who gain access to affordable farmland in exchange for their services. Most farmers rarely enjoy a steady salary; this is not true for those employed by agrihoods. Most earn a salary of $35,000 to $100,000 annually and receive free or reduced housing.
While these little utopias are springing up all over the country, they remain out of reach for many Americans that either cannot afford the amenity of living in a neighborhood with a resident farmer or who simply prefer to live in the bright lights.
However, the opportunity for a closed-loop food process can exist even in the middle of Manhattan, giving urban areas access to healthy food. Soilless systems provide a closed-loop, sustainable method of food production that is as valuable to communities as it is to farmers. Soilless systems can be established indoors or out and can take on any size. Additionally, it requires less water to produce foods in a soilless system than in a traditional, soil-based system because water is continuously circulated; not lost to runoff.
Soilless Systems Provides Healthy Food Access for Urban Areas
Recent studies have shown that indoor, soilless systems require up to 90% less water than traditional farming methods. By keeping the plants at optimum conditions throughout the growth cycle, they are better able to utilize nutrients and produce more fruits and vegetables per gallon of water used.
Consumers reap the benefits of locally-sourced, organically grown produce while farmers enjoy a sustainable production method. These systems remedy some of the challenges presented to those that attempt to bring in healthy, locally-sourced produce to urban areas; such as zoning and infrastructure.
However, what has been missing in most soilless systems is true feedback. The fertilizers and growth nutrients used in most systems are petroleum-derived and chemical-based. They are produced in a lab and have nothing to do with repurposing food waste. They fail to take advantage of the nutrients that exist in food waste.
Access to high-quality, bio-derived agricultural materials is challenging, especially for farmers and hobbyists that utilize alternative growth methods. Re-Nuble was developed to meet this need. Re-Nuble products are 100% bio-based, sourced from vegetative food waste, meaning that everything that goes into making Re-Nuble comes from plants; there are no petroleum-based ingredients. As we continue to carry out our own R&D, we hope to identify even more ways to help soilless farms regulate their operations through feedback, providing urban areas with access to healthy food.
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Tags: agrihoods, healthy food, urban agriculture, urban food
Variety of Healthy Foods From Vertical Farming Platform
When talking about technology, it's easy to focus on things like computers, smartphones, apps and the growing number of smart gadgets around the house. But technology is far-reaching and can influence and change traditional sectors quickly, one of them being the agricultural sector.
When talking about technology, it's easy to focus on things like computers, smartphones, apps and the growing number of smart gadgets around the house. But technology is far-reaching and can influence and change traditional sectors quickly, one of them being the agricultural sector.
One company that is looking to take on the commercial agricultural industry is Eden Green Technology, just out of Texas. This company focuses on sustainability in the food industry. Eddy Badrina, CEO of the company tells about what they do, how they use technology, and how they envision the future of the agricultural industry.
Efficient use of space
"Eden Green Technology is a vertical farming platform that grows large quantities of local produce safely, sustainably, and efficiently. We use less land, energy, and water than both traditional farming and other indoor solutions. Our greenhouses are constructed on small footprints, in urban or suburban areas, to provide stable jobs and produce non-GMO, pesticide-free produce, which goes from farm to table in as little as 48 hours, compared to the 14 days it usually takes under the traditional model," Eddy says.
The founders of Eden Green are brothers Jacques and Eugene van Buuren. They came to the US to secure investment, source talent, and experiment with their technological solutions in diverse climates. They started in Texas, with its own extreme range of environmental considerations, agricultural know-how, and business opportunities, and built from there.
Technology company
"Our technical secret sauce consists of a few ingredients, including our patented vertical “vines,” where our produce grows, and the way we create microclimates for each individual plant with temperature-controlled air and nutrient-enriched water. We also designed and built a proprietary mechanical, electrical, and plumbing solution specifically to automate and remotely monitor all our greenhouses. Because of that hardware and software combination, we like to think of ourselves as a technology company that happens to grow produce."
Read more at Vator.
By Horti Daily | May 4, 2020
USDA Announces $3 Million in Urban Agriculture Grants
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced the availability of $3 million for grants through its new Office of Urban Agriculture and Innovative Production
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced the availability of $3 million for grants through its new Office of Urban Agriculture and Innovative Production. The competitive grants will support the development of urban agriculture and innovative production projects through two categories, Planning Projects and Implementation Projects. USDA will accept applications on Grants.gov until midnight July 6, 2020.
“These grant opportunities underscore USDA’s commitment to all segments of agriculture, including swiftly expanding areas of urban agriculture,” Under Secretary for Farm Production and Conservation Bill Northey said. “Such projects have the potential to address important issues such as food access and education and to support innovative ways to increase local food production in urban environments.”
“We are proud to be able to offer support through this cross-agency effort,” said Under Secretary for Marketing and Regulatory Programs Greg Ibach. “In creating this grant opportunity, USDA will build upon its years of experience providing technical support, grant funding and research to help farmers and local and urban food businesses grow.”
Planning ProjectsUSDA is making available $1 million for Planning Projects that initiate or expand efforts of farmers, gardeners, citizens, government officials, schools and other stakeholders in urban areas and suburbs. Projects may target areas of food access, education, business and start-up costs for new farmers and development of policies related to zoning and other needs of urban production.
Implementation ProjectsUSDA is making available $2 million for Implementation Projects that accelerate existing and emerging models of urban, indoor and other agricultural practices that serve multiple farmers. Projects will improve local food access and collaborate with partner organizations and may support infrastructure needs, emerging technologies, educational endeavors and urban farming policy implementation.
Webinar A webinar, which will be held on June 3, 2020, from 2 to 4 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time, will provide an overview of the grants’ purpose, project types, eligibility and basic requirements for submitting an application. Information on how to register for and participate in the webinar, or listen to the recording, will be posted at farmers.gov/urban.
More information The Office of Urban Agriculture and Innovative Production was established through the 2018 Farm Bill. It includes representatives from many USDA agencies, including Farm Service Agency and Agricultural Marketing Service, and is led by the Natural Resources Conservation Service. More information is available at farmers.gov/urban.
Additional resources that may be of interest to urban agriculture entities include AMS grants to improve domestic and international opportunities for U.S. growers and producers and FSA loans.
Horti Daily | Monday, May 11, 2020
The Case Against More Ethanol - It's Simply Bad for Environment
The revisionist effort to increase the percentage of ethanol blended with U.S. gasoline continues to ignore the major environmental impacts of growing corn for fuel and how it inevitably leads to higher prices for this staple food crop
Ethanol, which seemed like a good idea when huge federal subsidies and mandates were put in place a decade ago, now seems like a very poor idea indeed. Yet despite years of bad ethanol reviews, some prominent figures (including former Senator Tim Wirth and attorney C. Boyden Gray in the accompanying article) offer a revanchist argument: Ethanol is not really so bad after all, and we should significantly increase its blending with gasoline from 10 to 30 percent. As Samuel Johnson remarked of a second marriage, this narrative reads like a triumph of hope over experience.
The essence of the argument that we need more, not less, ethanol in our gas tanks is linked to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s upcoming mid-term review of President Obama’s fuel economy standards, established in 2012. Ethanol boosters say now is the time to ramp up the ethanol/gasoline blend to 30 percent because it will reduce harmful particulate pollution, improve gas mileage, and lower gas prices. As for the environmental costs of increased corn production, they contend that vastly improved agricultural methods are steadily reducing the use of chemicals and fertilizers on cornfields.
The truth is, however, that growing corn in the U.S. heartland still has a major environmental impact — one that will only increase if we add even more ethanol to our gasoline. Higher-ethanol blends still produce significant levels of air pollution, reduce fuel efficiency, jack up corn and other food prices, and have been treated with skepticism by some car manufacturers for the damage they do to engines. Growing corn to run our cars was a bad idea 10 years ago. Increasing our reliance on corn ethanol in the coming decades is doubling down on a poor bet.
The effort to rehabilitate corn ethanol is linked to the perceived insufficiency of federal mandates — known as the Renewable Fuel Standard — requiring an escalating quantity of ethanol from corn and cellulosic sources to be blended with gasoline annually until 2022. Cellulosic ethanol, which was supposed to supplant that made from corn in meeting the mandate, has proven a monumental disappointment, and the EPA has taken a big step back from requiring its use.
To continue to meet the renewable fuel mandate will require further use of corn-based ethanol, which is constrained by the so-called “blend wall” — a limit related to current engine design — because most of the ethanol now available is only blended with gasoline at a level of 10 percent. The ethanol industry and others are proposing raising the blend level to 30 percent. Without such a break in the blend wall, the renewable fuel standards mandates are in trouble. At present, though, fewer than 2 percent of filling stations in the U.S. sell higher than 10 percent ethanol blends.
Shrouded in the political fumes and corrosive influence of special interests, the economic fundamentals of ethanol are clear in the light of day. Two prices determine its profitability: the price of corn and the price of oil. The higher the price of corn, the more expensive it is to divert from feeding animals or making high-fructose corn syrup and instead distill it as alcohol fuel for cars and trucks. Second, the higher the price of oil, the more economically ethanol can be blended with gasoline. When corn is cheap and oil prices are high, ethanol margins are fat. But when corn prices rise and oil prices fall, ethanol margins are flat.
As ethanol production took off in the mid-2000s, aided and abetted by a panoply of federal and state subsidies, it chewed up so much corn so fast that it was hoisted on its own petard as corn prices rose to record highs in 2007 while oil prices weakened. Corn prices then fell back as farmers responded to high prices with record plantings. Today, oil prices remain low and corn prices are strengthening again. Despite recent weakness, corn prices remain nearly double their level of 2005 when the major elements of ethanol subsidies and mandates began to be put in place.
The predictable weakness in ethanol margins resulting from low oil prices has led even Archer Daniels Midland (ADM), one of ethanol’s major advocates, to reconsider its stake in its ethanol investment after years of aggressive subsidy-seeking. Reuters and Bloomberg both reported that against a backdrop of lower crude oil prices, ADM is looking at “strategic options” in its ethanol business after spending $1.3 billion since 2006 to build two new ethanol plants and seeing its fourth-quarter 2015 profits fall.
In the face of these tribulations, the revisionist ethanol narrative makes a number of shaky assumptions. First is that a reevaluation of a 30-percent ethanol blend, or E30, is timely in light of the EPA’s current fuel economy standards review, because its efficiency in high-performance engines may be an improvement over the losses in miles per gallon with a 10-percent ethanol blend, or E10.
E85 fuel in “flex-fuel” vehicles may increase ozone-related mortality, asthma, and hospitalizations.
To date, ethanol has been antithetical to fuel economy. According to the U.S. Department of Energy, vehicles typically go 3 to 4 percent fewer miles per gallon on E10 and 4 to 5 percent fewer miles per gallon on E15, because ethanol packs only about two-thirds the BTU’s of gasoline. Advocates of E30 argue that such inefficiencies can be overcome if high-compression engines are tuned to use the fuel and are certified under EPA rules, making such engines more akin to racecars. But this would mean further EPA regulatory backing for E30 to assure its availability.
A key argument of E30 proponents is that higher-ethanol blends would reduce the need for alternative fuel additives that may have negative health effects. In support, they cite studies related to the impacts of aromatic hydrocarbons from gasoline additives used to boost octane, which lead in turn to secondary particulates with impacts on human health. Without question, hydrocarbon fuels have negative health impacts. But ethanol is no exception. Stanford University’s Mark Jacobson estimates that E85 fuel in “flex-fuel” vehicles may increase ozone-related mortality, asthma, and hospitalizations by 4 percent compared to gasoline by 2020 for the U.S. as a whole and 9 percent in Los Angeles alone.
Apart from the scientific evidence that ethanol-based particles in air can kill people and make them sick, more recent scientific analysis links corn for ethanol to declining bee populations, with potentially catastrophic implications for many other high-value agricultural crops (almonds, apples) that depend on these insects for pollination. A recent study found that declines in bee populations are greatest in areas of intense agriculture in the Midwest corn belt and California’s Central Valley, both of which have few of the flowering species, such as goldenrod, that are so important to bee survival. “These results,” the study noted, “reinforce recent evidence that increased demand for corn in biofuel production has intensified threats to natural habitats in corn-growing regions.”
The Environmental Working Group’s Emily Cassidy has written that moving from E10 to E30 would mean “more carbon emissions, more toxic pollutants into drinking water, more toxic algae blooms, and higher water bills for Midwestern residents.” A preview of the role of ethanol in the climate debate occurred during the California Air Resources Board’s 2009 assessment of the full climate impact of ethanol, one of the first assessments to consider the indirect land-use effects of expanded crops and deforestation to meet biofuel demand.
That ethanol demand has no effect on corn prices would come as news to economists documenting its continuing pivotal role.
While the overall impacts on climate remain uncertain, there is no clear evidence that ethanol is part of the solution rather than the problem. If anything, a ranking of nine energy sources in relation to global climate found that cellulosic and corn-based ethanol (E85) were ranked last of nine technologies with respect to climate, air pollution, land use, wildlife damage, and chemical waste.
Third, proponents of E30 blends submit that corn used for ethanol — now about 30 to 40 percent of the U.S. corn crop — is no longer a threat to food prices due to increases in agricultural productivity and that, anyway, U.S. corn is fed mainly to livestock. The part about livestock is absolutely true. Yet even though a portion of the corn product distilled into ethanol can be recovered for animal feed, this does not mean that corn directly available for feed has not been reduced by allocating close to 30 to 40 percent to ethanol. Meat-producing animals consumed an average of 38 percent of the U.S. corn crop from 2012 to 2016, about the same as used for ethanol. If ethanol blends were raised to 30 percent, does anyone really think that there would be no impact on the prices paid by consumers for corn-fed chicken, eggs, pork, beef, and milk?
The idea that ethanol demand has no effect on corn prices would come as news to economists documenting its continuing pivotal role. Brian Wright, an agricultural economist at the University of California at Berkeley has noted that real corn prices have nearly doubled since the ethanol mandates of 2005-2007. “By the standards of agricultural policy changes, the introduction of grain and oilseeds biofuels for use in transport fuels was abrupt, and the effects on the balance of supply and demand was dramatic,” he has written.
E30 advocates seem to have recently made a novel discovery: Conservation tillage is turning corn growing into a “carbon sink” and is now practiced on nearly two-thirds of all U.S. cropland. Reality check from the Corn Belt: Conservation tillage has been practiced intensively for more than 40 years and has shown real environmental improvements over the erosive open plowing of the past. But as to the extent of its use on cornfields, the U.S. Department of Agriculture reported in 2015 that such tillage practices were used on a little more than 30 percent of all U.S. corn acres in 2010-11, mostly outside the Corn Belt This is a lower percentage than on soybeans, wheat, or even highly erosive cotton.
Ethanol sales are actually projected to decline, from 135 billion gallons to 125 billion gallons in 2022.
Ethanol demand for corn has also contributed to major withdrawals of acres from the federal Conservation Reserve Program (CRP), which were taken out of production precisely because they were highly vulnerable to erosion.
Then there is the issue of vehicle engine efficiency. Here, the argument for E30 is supported by recent experimental work at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, which shows that E30’s increased torque delivers more power to smaller, specialized engines so as to achieve rough miles-per-gallon parity with current E10 fuels. Assuming engine designs can be innovated and E30 can be made widely available, it may be possible to overcome the concentrated resistance to ethanol among consumer groups and the auto industry — in the words of a Mercedes-Benz engineer, to make “the dog like the dog food.” To date, however, the dogs’ appetite for ethanol has been weak.
Ethanol sales are actually projected to decline, according to a 2014 Congressional Budget Office report, from 135 billion gallons to 125 billion gallons in 2022, which is one reason behind the urgency of the ethanol industry to adopt higher blend levels. The American Automobile Association (AAA) has objected to ethanol blend increases even to 15 percent, noting that it could cause accelerated engine wear and failure, as well as fuel-system damage.
For this and a host of other reasons, the push to substantially boost the use of corn-based ethanol to power our cars is extremely ill advised. As the American Interest noted of the Renewable Fuel Standard and the drive for E30, “It’s rare that a policy comes along that offers so little to so many distinct groups of shareholders. In that respect, perhaps there is something impressive about the Renewable Fuels Standard: It’s found that elusive policy sour spot.”
By C. Ford Runge | Yale Environment 360 | May 25, 2016
C. Ford Runge is the McKnight University Professor of Applied Economics and Law at the University of Minnesota, where he also holds appointments in the Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs and the Department of Forest Resources. He is former director of the university's Center for International Food and Agricultural Policy and has written for Foreign Affairs
Lead Photograph: Corn fields in the United States heartland. DAN THORNBERG/SHUTTERSTOCK
