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In This Toms River Greenhouse, Fish Help Grow Organic Lettuce
Producing Aquaponic Greens is a Group Effort
For The Family Behind HS Farms.
By Lauren Payne | | April 23, 2019
Appears in the April 2019 issue
Photo by James J. Connolly
Heather and Mike Scannell started growing aquaponic lettuce in 2016 in their garage. Their three children gobbled it up. Next, the Toms River couple moved their garage system to their backyard. After a successful growing season, Mike, a financial advisor, cut back his work hours to focus on growing more greens.
Heather Scannell places a lettuce seedling into a styrofoam clip that will hold it in one of the holes on a floating raft (pictured below). In 55 days, the sprout will develop into a perfect head of lettuce.
Photo by James J. Connolly
Today, Heather and Mike operate HS Farms, the state’s only organically certified home-delivery aquaponics farm. Aquaponics is an agricultural method that combines aquaculture (growing aquatic animals) with hydroponics (growing plants in water). This symbiotic process can yield a perfect head of lettuce in about 55 days, much faster than the average 90 days for lettuce grown the traditional way, in dirt.
At HS Farms, the process starts with fish. The two 300-gallon tanks in the Scannells’ 1,500-square-foot greenhouse each hold about 50 fish—a mix of goldfish, cod and tilapia. Their waste feeds tens of thousands of minuscule shrimp in a smaller, connected tank. The shrimps’ digestive systems and bacteria help convert the waste to nitrates; the nitrate-rich water then spills over a tank of clay balls, crushed clam shells and worms, further enriching and filtering the water.
Finally, the water is fed into troughs covered with floating foam rafts.
Michael and Heather Scannell with children,
from left, Allison, 12; Ryan, 11; and Jacqueline, 8.
Photo by James J. Connolly
“The process is chemical free and entirely sustainable,” says Mike. Seedlings of spring greens, romaine, butter-crunch lettuce and kale are clipped in place through holes in the rafts, their roots dangling in the enriched, pH-balanced water. The resulting produce tastes incredibly fresh. “I haven’t bought store-bought lettuce in two years,” says Heather.
Michael and daughter, Allison, survey one of the 300-gallon fish tanks. Photo by James J. Connolly
Mike tends the crop daily. Heather, a physical therapist, puts in several hours each week, planting seeds and separating seedlings. On weekends, Allison, 12; Ryan, 11; and Jacqueline, 8; all pitch in, planting, feeding the fish or, in Jacqueline’s case, digging for baby worms nestled deep in the clay balls. “I love worms,” she says. “I name them all Squirmy and Fasty.”
The Scannells deliver their produce to families in Ocean and Monmouth counties. Mixed greens run $4 for 5 ounces. Their organic lettuce is also available at the four Dean’s Natural Food Market locations in New Jersey.
Heather and Mike plan to build two more greenhouses within the next several months. “Our goal,” says Mike, “is to grow everything you need to make a salad.”
Salmon And Baby Chard, Brought To You By A Brooklyn Farm
Photographer: Victor J. Blue/Bloomberg
Edenworks, an aquaponics operation in East Williamsburg, already sells salads at a local Whole Foods and is looking to scale up.
March 28, 2019
Brooklyn is not what most people envision when they think of farm country.
But if you take the L train to Montrose Avenue and walk a block, past the liquor store and catty corner to Louis Tommaso funeral home, you’ll find Edenworks. It’s an indoor aquaponics operation is raising salmon, shrimp and a hybrid striped bass on the lower level, with teeny tiny salad greens known as baby greens and microgreens, upstairs. A stone’s throw away is Oko Farms, also doing aquaponics, but outdoors and with an educational focus. And Smallhold, which grows mushrooms in its Minifarms in several New York City locations, is headquartered in nearby Fort Greene.
By housing fish and crops under one roof in East Williamsburg, Edenworks is putting a modern spin on an ancient form of agriculture. Chinese rice farmers have been putting carp in their flooded paddies for centuries, and the Aztecs grew crops on “chinampas,” or artificial islands, in lakes. The fish fertilize the crops and can be eaten at the end of the growing cycle.
The Edenworks version—urban, with a focus on premium products—should appeal to the growing category of shoppers looking for local, sustainable, healthy food that comes with lots of flavor and a good backstory. The company already sells two-ounce Spicy Microgreens and Mighty Microgreens Personal Salads for $4.49 each at the Williamsburg, Brooklyn, location of Whole Foods Market. (Sorry locavores, but for now, the fish are only available to a select few at promotional or local events.)
A worker feeds Atlantic Salmon in a tank
Photographer: Photographer: Victor J. Blue/Bloomberg
Novel farming operations have proliferated in recent years, and several have attracted huge investments, notably indoor farms Plenty, which raised $200 million in 2017, and Bowery Farming, which pulled in $90 million in December. But profitability is elusive, and investments in such startups dipped last year, dropping 7.3 percent to $601 million, according to researcher AgFunder, even as the overall agri-tech sector raised a record-breaking $16.9 billion.
The hard part is turning small-scale operations into big ones. Several have failed, among them PodPonics in Atlanta, FarmedHere in Chicago and another Brooklyn aquaponics enterprise, Verticulture Farms. The indoor farming niche is “more challenging than many other ag-tech categories,” says Louisa Burwood-Taylor, AgFunder’s head of media and research. “Investors might be more wary until they’ve seen some of these concepts proven out.”
Welcome to the Aqualab
Edenworks co-founder Jason Green, a technologist with a background in neuroscience, believes he has a winning formula. The company closed a $5 million seed round in May, with investors including venture capitalists and food industry veterans. The bet is that Edenworks’s (relatively) simple plan to go to market, with a focus on greens before scaling the seafood, will land it alongside such aquaponics operations as Wisconsin’s Superior Fresh, which now produces 1.8 million pounds of leafy greens and 160,000 pounds of fish each year.
Green, who runs Edenworks, founded the company with construction manager and systems engineer Matt LaRosa and chief technology officer Ben Silverman in 2013, originally building a pilot system raising tilapia and a variety of vegetables. Now they’re growing only baby greens and microgreens, with itty bitty versions of red kale, chard and cabbage—and the lowly tilapia has been abandoned. That commonly farmed species, Green concedes, is never going to be a marquee item. “You can’t brand or market your way out of it being a tilapia,” he says.
Jason Green | Photographer: Victor J. Blue/Bloomberg
Edenworks’ ecosystem harnesses the power of the microbiome instead of pesticides, antibiotics or synthetic fertilizers. The ground-level Aqualab is where the fish live. The waste, mostly feces along with a bit of ammonia from the fish urine and uneaten food, is run through a mechanical filter to separate liquids from solids. Bacteria grown from a starter culture then convert the ammonia to nitrates, sending fertilizer-rich water to the greens in the Farmlab two flights up. For now the solids are aerobically digested, a bacterial sewage treatment process, similar to the ammonia’s conversion to nitrates. (In future facilities, Green said, they’ll be gasified to generate energy.) The result is yields more than twice industry averages and more than eighteen months of farming without any foodborne pathogens, according to the company.
A ‘Win-Win-Win?’
The next step is ramping up the operations into a larger, New York metro area farm in 2020. But scaling vertical farms, even those just focused on a single production system, has been a challenge.
“It sounds like a win-win-win,” says Henry Gordon-Smith, founder and managing director for Agritecture Consulting, an urban-farming consulting firm one L stop away. “But the challenge is anytime you combine multiple systems and make them depend on each other, things get complicated.”
To start, the technology does not scale linearly. “When you have more lights, people, systems and plans, the calculations and requirements to create the consistent micro-climate get more challenging,” he says. Running a farm indoors, as opposed to outdoors in consistently warm weather, drives up energy usage, too. Then there’s the feed problem. The vast majority of commercially available fish feed is made from seafood taken from the already fish-depleted ocean.
Microgreens growing at Edenworks | Photographer: Victor J. Blue/Bloomberg
Green recognizes these challenges: Edenworks is growing only baby and microgreens, high-value crops with short growth cycles. Plans for a larger facility include a more precise “climate delivery” (as opposed to “climate control”) system that will help avoid problems encountered by other vertical farms. For the time being, the company will raise only as much fish as necessary for the salad side, a ratio of 1 pound of seafood for every 10 pounds of produce, until it’s satisfied with the greens business. Automation will restrain labor costs; new farms will use renewable energy technology.
Edenworks is experimenting with plant-based feed and plans to adopt fish-free feed when it becomes globally available in the next year or so, Green says. Jacqueline Claudia, CEO of aquaculture-based company Love the Wild, says increasingly sustainable feeds options are already available at reasonable prices. Still, she adds, Edenworks is likely ahead of most of the seafood industry. “Anytime you can grow more food, in the space you have, close to market, it’s a win,” she says. “What you’re really talking about is splitting hairs.”
Gordon-Smith is also confident in the company. “I’m optimistic they’re going to be able to navigate the challenges,” he says. While the obstacles are real and not every crop can be grown this way, farms like these are a piece of more sustainable future. “As the climate gets worse, we will need adaptation strategies.”
"Do Organic Farmers Using Soil Have A Right To Exclude Aquaponic Farmers?"
Marc Laberge pleading for including all plants in organic rules
If there's one thing the soil-growing and out-of-soil producers can agree on, is that the debate around the organic & soil production is upsetting. If there's two, it's that hydro- and aquaponics should not be entering the organic world via a back door. But how should it be? In- or excluded? With one week to go before the Quebec public consultation on aquaponics ends, Marc Laberge with ML Aquaponics holds a plea for including all plants in the Quebec organic rules.
"Aquaponics is here to stay and is a great way of farming. Aquaponics has the potential to supply year-round organic fruits, vegetables and fish at a reasonable price, yet this entire type of farming, this fundamental Mother Natures’ purest, most organic, way of growing clean, dirt-free plants is at stake here", Marc with ML Aquaponics says. His aquaponics farm ML Aquaponics has harvested millions of crops of lettuce and rainbow trouts over the years. Following the Canadian Aquaculture Organic Laws, none of these has ever been certified organic - but that can change since the organic certification requirements of the Safe Food for Canadians Regulations (SFCR) were extended to aquaculture products early this year.
Roots in water
"However Quebec’s organic watch dogs, the CARTV, are still not convinced that plants having their roots growing in water should be allowed to carry the organic certification", Marc explains. Currently the CARTV is asking for he public's opinion on this matter and Marc doesn't want the industry to miss out on this opportunity.
"We have every right to be called organic and are proud of it. Although our voices are outnumbered by at least a 1000 to 1, does this mean we have no rights?"
He shows Google answers on the search for organic:
1. Relating to or derived from living matter. “organic soils”. Synonym: living, live, animate, biological, natural.
2. (of food or farming methods) produced or involving production without the use of chemical fertilizers, pesticides, or other artificial agents. Synonym: pesticide-free, additive-free, chemical-free, nonchemical, natural
"If you look at the evolution of plants on this planet, you will find that they derived from water, starting out as some type of algae. Water is the essence of life on plant Earth, the Mother of all “Mother Natures” if you like", he says. "Organic farming is a method that grows plants in living matter without using synthetic chemicals. Synthetic fertilizers mean man made, we’re not talking about salts and minerals that are extracted from nature by man, but rather created by processes that would most likely never take place naturally."
Synthetic vs organic
"One of such procedures that comes to mind, is the use of petroleum to create nitrogen and then used as a synthetic fertilizer. So then, what is living matter? Besides the obvious, can soils be considered living matter? Of course, they can if they haven’t been burnt-out by harsh chemicals. What about water? The same applies, cities must kill off many living organisms in order to provide safe drinking water, but take a look under a magnifying glass at water from a natural source such as lakes, rivers, ponds and you will see life, lots of life."
Out of habit
Continuing on this point of view, Marc says that the combination soil-organic is mainly a combination made out of habit. "Organic farming using soil has been around for a long time, so long as a matter of fact, that some people are now saying that organic farming must use soil. Aquaponics is a farming method using fish to provide nutrients to plants that are grown in water. Although aquaponics has been around longer than soil farms, only in the last few decades has this way of producing food intensively, under controlled environments become of interest, to a new generation of organic farmers."
Questioning
That's why Marc now urges the public to take the opportunity and send out their point of view to the CARTV, currently holding a questioning on the matter. "The CARTV claim that only “aquatic” plants can be allowed to be organic, and that “terrestrial” plants must use the soil organic rules that, ironically do not allow cultivation in water. Looking at the definition of Organic, and knowing all terrestrial plants arose from water, we can only wonder if the organic farmers using soil, are trying to prevent other new organic aquaponic farmers from entering their niche markets?"
He's pleading for a more united industry and calls out to the industry to use the opportunity and fill in the Quebec questioning.
"We all believe in organic food the same way the soil people do, we share so many values and yet like siblings continue this fight", Marc says. "Have we forgotten what the essence of life is and that nothing will grow without it? Do the organic farmers using soil have a right to exclude aquaponic farmers from this label? Has the word Organic evolved into another meaning over time? If so, what definition should we use? What does Organic mean to you?"
BIGH, The Biggest Aquaponic Urban Farm in Europe!
BIGH, the biggest aquaponic urban farm in Europe!BIGH won the prize of the year for the people of Brussels in the “economy” category.
27.02.2019
In the heart of Brussels, 4 00m2 is to be used for urban agriculture divided between glasshouses, pisciculture and outside gardens under the roofs of Foodmet.
The universe of aquaponics according to the BIGH (Building Integrated GreenHouses) is quite a programme which links vegetal culture to fish farming and collecting the energy lost from the building.
2.000m2 of horticultural and fish farming greenhouses, 2.000m2 of productive vegetable gardens make up the largest urban farm under the roofs of Europe. An urban aquaponic farm which provides fish farming and the production of fruit, vegetables and herbs, 100% natural and without any chemical product added under one and the same roof !
For some years now, consumers have demanded more healthy food, local and traceable.
BIGH’s aim is to create a network of farms in the heart of the main European cities, making the places in town accessible, inspirational and innovative, so that the consumer will want to find tasty and local products of quality, while improving the environmental performances of their neighbourhood.
Different tours are designed for group, companies, professionals.
An incredible 1 hour tour of Ferme Abattoir including the outdoor garden, the greenhouse, and the fish farm, all with a fantastic view of Brussels is available in English, French, German and Dutch.
BIGH Website