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Indoor Farms of America Announces Game Changing Containerized Farm Models
Indoor Farms of America has developed new models of its containerized farms for 2018 that again transcend any other container farm in the world, for farm yield, and all-around crop growing capability.
Indoor Farms of America Announces Game Changing Containerized Farm Models
NEWS PROVIDED BY Indoor Farms of America
January 30, 2018
AS VEGAS, Jan. 30, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Indoor Farms of America has developed new models of its containerized farms for 2018 that again transcend any other container farm in the world, for farm yield, and all-around crop growing capability.
The 2018 GrowTruck Model 8590 Aeroponic Farm
Indoor Farms of America Beautiful Butter Lettuce Wall
"We received feedback over the past two years from folks all over the world wanting container farms that were not limited in scope to growing leaf lettuce or basil," says David Martin, CEO of Indoor Farms of America. "Now you can have our superior aeroponic farms and grow 3 crop types at the same time, and grow more by a large margin than anything else promoted in a container farm."
The Model 8590 is based on a 53-foot semi trailer platform, and the first of its kind is under construction and headed to an extreme climate in the Northwest Territory of Canada. "This farm is more highly engineered and built to perform and withstand outside temperatures of 40 below zero, and our team is really excited for the folks that will eat the fresh produce from it, that have never in their lives experienced truly fresh things, and definitely have never seen it grown locally as they will now," explained Martin.
In a 40-foot container version, which is called the Model 6160, the Company sees applications in aiding food deserts in any location of the world, particularly where a farm may need to be completely off-grid, which can be done now.
Ron Evans, President of Indoor Farms of America, says: "These are really fun farms for the farmer, and expand what a farmer can offer customers. Grow beautiful butter lettuce, along with strawberries, basil and other herbs, and a bounty of microgreens, all from one farm in a small space. There is nothing else like it in the world and nothing that comes close in growing capacity."
Leading indoor agriculture R&D and manufacturer, Indoor Farms of America has a showroom with demonstration farms operating in Las Vegas, Nevada and in multiple locations in Canada, and in South Africa, where their world-class vertical aeroponic equipment is on display.
The company has its equipment on display February 5th and 6th at the Global Forum for Innovations in Agriculture, in Abu Dhabi, UAE.
CONTACT:
David W. Martin, CEO • 189621@email4pr.com • IndoorFarmsAmerica.com
4000 W. Ali Baba Lane, Ste. F Las Vegas, NV 89118
(702) 664-1236 or (702) 606-2691
SOURCE Indoor Farms of America
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Where Mushrooms Grow Just a Few Feet From The Table
Where Mushrooms Grow Just a Few Feet From The Table
A Brooklyn food-tech startup, Smallhold, puts its "mini-farms" right in the restaurant where they'll be served
By DAN CALLAHAN - January 12, 2018
The company's blue-oyster mushrooms, small but flavorful (All photos courtesy of Smallhold)
In the drive for the absolutely freshest possible ingredients, the farm-to-table movement has reached this point: a Bushwick company is growing crops inside the restaurants they supply.
The company is Smallhold, a distributed farm startup, Its first product is the mushroom, which is being grown in two city restaurants–Bunker in Bushwick and Mission Chinese Food in Manhattan–that lease small, refrigerator-sized units controlled by Smallhold from its headquarters. “There is demand for extreme freshness, the freshest possible,” said Andrew Carter, the company’s co-founder and CEO. “The result is the mushrooms look better and are better nutritionally.”
Call it the vegan version of the lobster tank.
Carter is part of the vertical-farming movement, away from large industrial farms to smaller operations that don’t require a lot of land. After graduating from the University of Vermont, he consulted on hydroponic farming around the city and was involved with the notable Brooklyn agricultural-tech project WindowFarm, which in 2012 raised more than $250,000 on Kickstarter for a kit that grows vegetables from hanging containers.
The founders: Andrew Carter, left, the CEO, and Adam DeMartino, the COO
The availability of Wi-Fi connections is one of the keys to making the Smallhold system work. The company grows the mushrooms to three-quarter ripeness in Bushwick and other farms around New York. Then they’re sent to the climate-controlled units linked by Wi-Fi and hooked up to a water supply. Smallhold employees monitor the units for the right mix of CO2, humidity, temperature and other conditions.
Mushrooms require a controlled environment and, as a fungus, their life process is not plantlike. They process oxygen as animals do: they take in oxygen and emit CO2.And there’s a special trick to mushroom farming. The mushroom must be fooled into thinking it has to reproduce before winter comes. Farmers manipulate temperature, water and CO2 levels to do this, which results in a crop that can double in size in 24 hours.
Smallhold’s “minifarms” carefully control growing conditions including air, water and light
The restaurants rent the units and also pay a per-pound price that can range from $5 to $12. When the crop is ready, the chefs harvest them for the dishes they are preparing. The company also operates a North Brooklyn Produce Hub, a repurposed shipping contained outfitted with the company’s minifarms to supply nearby restaurants with fresh mushrooms.
Mushrooms are not the only crop that can be grown this way. Carter says the company is working on extending its products to lettuce, herbs and other vegetables. “We are focusing on mushrooms right now due to the demand by the market. Leafy greens will be further down the road.”
Lion’s Mane mushrooms, reminiscent of sea coral, are said to have many health benefits
Mushroom farming has a peculiar history in the U.S. The vast majority of mushrooms supplied to the East Coast are grown in a small area in southeastern Pennsylvania that was first developed by Italian immigrants in the late 19th century. Because mushrooms don’t require a lot of land to grow, they were an ideal crop for immigrants who lacked capital. And they were close to big restaurant markets along the East Coast that were happy to include mushrooms to enrich and extend dishes from all manner of ethnic cooking.
Smallhold is following the high-tech, small-scale version of that strategy with a market plan to increase the number of restaurants it serves this year. Carter says the company is working on providing a variety of mushrooms that will include oysters (blue, yellow and pink), king and pioppino types.
Kevin Doyle, who runs Forest Mushrooms in St. Joseph, Minn., and has been growing the crop for more than 30 years, called the Smallhold system an intriguing innovation. “It’s in the perfect location to serve the biggest restaurant market in the U.S.,” he said. “Anything that shows people how mushrooms are grown is good for the rest of the market.”
For more on food and tech, read our stories about 12 cool startups, a food-tech pitch contest, and our podcast with the founder of a digital dashboard for indoor farmers.
To grow other crops like lettuce and herbs, the ventilation system must be changed to accommodate how plants process air: CO2 in, oxygen out. The company is careful to filter air from the units to avoid any allergens getting out into the restaurants.
Carter feels at home growing mushrooms in Brooklyn, he says, because he has so many colleagues at the intersection of farming and technology. “There is so much support here. The ag and food scene is very large. It’s great to be a part of it.”
Former Carroll Gardens resident Dan Callahan is a frequent visitor to Brooklyn, keeping up with his millennial son who in five years has had four different Brooklyn addresses.
10 Macro Trends Driving Food Innovation
JAN 16, 2018 The Little Black Book of Billionaire Secrets
10 Macro Trends Driving Food Innovation
Barb Stuckey , CONTRIBUTORI write about food: innovation, business, trends, and all things delicious. Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.
Each year Mattson identifies a number of macro trends. Our goal is to think beyond “the next kale.” We choose lifestyle trends that have the power to influence food and beverage purchases, behavior, beliefs and, of course, innovation — the business we’re in. The reason to track trends is, ultimately, to translate them into viable business opportunities. Here are our 2018 picks.
1. Cannabis Craze
For most of my life marijuana was an illegal drug. Smoking it was risky and looked upon with suspicion. And smoking was — if not the only — the most common way it was consumed.
Increasingly, marijuana is seen as a functional food, with purported health benefits far outnumbering what consumers can get from kale, turmeric or kombucha. With a new generation growing up in states where cannabis is legal (currently about 20% of the U.S. population), new products are rapidly entering the market. Yet, the biggest challenges in launching cannabis edibles remain monumental because cannabis is still illegal at the federal level. This makes scaling a cannabis-based food or beverage difficult, if not cost-prohibitive.
Most dispensaries in San Francisco or Denver (or coming soon: your state?) carry a wide range of edible or drinkable options, many of them formulated, packaged, and marketed with savvy, like the excellent, beautiful products from Kiva Confections, Franklin Bioscience’s Lucky Edibles, and the super-fun woman-owned Kikoko Tea.
Despite the challenges, there is no question cannabis will influence the food and beverage industry, because it already has.
Cannabis 'edibles' are for sale where about 20% of the US population lives. (ROBYN BECK/AFP/Getty Images)
2. Losing Booze
The increase in cannabis consumption and acceptance leads us to our second trend: flat to declining per-capita alcohol consumption. Many correlate this decline with consumers choosing cannabis over alcohol for the same occasions they might drink booze: relaxing at home, partying with friends, managing anxiety – you name it.
Millennials are also driving this trend given their desire to be more present and mindful in their lives, both of which are difficult when you’re drunk. Also, drinking is expensive. With uncertainty about their future, Millennials are less willing and able to spend hard-earned dollars on alcohol.
Goldman Sachs downgraded Constellation, owner of the Corona, Robert Mondavi, and other alcohol brands, and Boston Beer company, citing these consumption trends. To make sure they’re prepared for a world where consumers legally swap back and forth between alcohol and cannabis, some alcoholic beverage companies are hedging their bets.
Constellation Brands recently announced a $200 million investment in a marijuana grower, with plans to develop cannabis drinks. In Sonoma County, Rebel Coast Winery has launched its premium Sauvignon Blanc, calling it the "world's first legal cannabis-infused, alcohol-removed wine."
And the former CMO of Anheuser-Busch InBev just anointed weed the new craft beer. He also co-founded a company that sells ready-to-smoke joints, which San Franciscans can order online for delivery in about an hour. This gives new meaning to the budding space we call keyboard convenience.
Some analysts think younger consumers will swap alcohol for cannabis. The owners of Corona are investing in growing their own. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)
3. Keyboard Convenience
For years, we’ve been hearing predictions around the ultimate demise of the center-store, where staples like mac-and-cheese, cereal, and bars are on their way to extinction. While consumers are excited about the fresh perimeter, we think center-store has staying power. With the convenience of shelf-stability, these categories have the benefit of being easy to buy in bulk, ship, and store indefinitely. Why wouldn’t a time-strapped household with two working parents and multiple kids trade an inconvenient trip to the store for keyboard convenience?
From the manufacturer/marketer perspective, we have seen a shift in what our entrepreneurial clients are looking for. No longer are they coming to us with dreams of selling their product line at traditional retail. They want to launch and learn online. And some of them don’t even have a long-term desire to end up at the Safeways and Krogers of the world. These Millennial entrepreneurs are changing the food industry as much as Millennial consumers.
There are unique challenges that come with e-commerce. We develop product lines specifically for this channel of distribution. I can tell you (from learning the hard way!), not every product works in e-comm in the traditional ways it used to work: from formulation to packaging to branding to marketing. Some things are obvious, like glass being less desirable for packaging than plastic. But some things are not. You simply have to box your product up and ship it via common carrier.
Amazon's Whole Foods products are now available with same-day or 2-day shipping: the ultimate in keyboard convenience. (SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images)
That’s where the old tried and true has come around to being relevant again. Our home use testing (HUT) methodology is perfect for working out product, packaging, and online ordering bugs before launch. But the ultimate benefit of e-comm is that you don’t have to test your product ad nauseam. It’s easy and cheap to launch into the channel, even through behemoth Amazon. No slotting, no huge inventory investment, no buyer meetings. It’s the best way to get consumer insights: from real consumers paying real money for real products.
4. Taking Food Personally
Over the past decade, we’ve come to embrace the fact that the food we eat profoundly impacts our health, but this wasn’t always the case. Western medicine healthcare was reactive. Eastern medicine was holistic: taking into consideration the mind, body and spirit. Taking cues from the East, today's personalized food and beverages allow consumers to follow unique diets more targeted than gluten-free, paleo, and vegan, each chosen for a consumer's one-of-a-kind physiology.
We expect this to continue, and evolve into a belief that mental health can be impacted by diet, as well. With a burgeoning understanding of the microbiome, there’s indication that the companions we have in our gut can influence not just our physical issues (such as obesity), but our mental well-being.
This is where probiotic foods, beverages, and supplements will take the leap from gastrointestinal relief, regularity and immunity benefits, to our brain. Soon we’ll be eating to stave off depression, aid in sleep, and enhance overall mood.
In fact, almost half of people surveyed by Mintel said they believe that “What I eat impacts my emotional well-being.” (Source: Better-for-you Eating Trends Spotlight on Real, September 2017). It's coming: food for mood.
5. Fast Fresh Farming (Indoors!)
Consumers increasingly desire to eat fresh and local food. But it’s challenging to grow fresh produce during the frigid winter months. One solution is to move farming indoors, and that’s now happening in great numbers at both the residential and industrial level.
With technology that meters out water and nutrients, success rates are better. Imagine growing produce inside your home, harvested just seconds before use. It’s the ultimate way to assure you’re eating fresh and clean. And it doesn’t get any more local.
Startup AVA is an indoor garden system that operates like Keurig. Consumers insert seed and nutrient pods into the AVA Byte appliance, add water, and software does the rest. Check in on your fresh herbs from the app while on vacation. It’s a way for skill-free gardeners to grow pesticide-free tomatoes and herbs.
On a commercial scale, Urban Organics uses aquaponics, which is hydroponics with a twist. Fish. The water in which the vegetables grow is also home to fish, like arctic char, who naturally fertilize the produce, making for a closed loop inside an urban warehouse in Minnesota.
Cubic Farms sells a complete hydroponic farming “system” housed in a 40-foot shipping container. Inside is an automated conveyor rotation system with lights that make it easy to grow leafy greens and herbs year-round, without pesticide.
AeroFarms grows and markets Dream Greens lettuces in vertical farms and can be installed just about anywhere. They tout flavor as one of the big advantages to having complete control over the growing process “Our kale is sweeter. Our arugula is spicier. Our herbs are brighter,” they claim.
We love the idea of shipping containers and abandoned urban buildings as the ecologically sound commercial farms of the future: located wherever they’re needed.
6. Meal Kit Migration
We know that consumers fundamentally want meal kits, but the original direct-to-consumer subscription model is not how they want to buy them. Too much commitment, too costly, too much solid waste and carbon footprint. Blue Apron and competitors Hello Fresh, Sun Basket, etc. need to find a way to sell their awesome offerings where consumers already shop for food. Chef’d is already selling meal kits at retail. When Albertson’s bought Plated, it was obvious that’s what they had in mind. Sure enough, they’ve launched Plated kits into grocery. We suspect others will soon show up there.
We also think there’s a huge opportunity for chain restaurants to reinvigorate mature brands (TGIFridays, Applebee’s, Olive Garden, etc) by creating their own meal kits, sold to lunch patrons for making later that night. Why casual dining brands haven’t done this has baffled me for years. And it’s not for lack of trying! I’ve been pitching this idea for almost a decade since The Slanted Door started selling meal kits from their takeaway shop in San Francisco’s Ferry Building.
Meal kits are here to stay, but how and who wins will be different than how and who built the segment.
7. Intrinsic Nutrition
Fat is back. Protein is hot. Sugar is out. Yes, consumers want to eat healthy, but their definition of what this means continues to change. Mostly, consumers want to eat foods that contain what we call intrinsic nutrition: nutrients that are inherent in the ingredients. Intrinsic fiber comes from beans or whole grains, not supplementation.
The next wave of innovation will be intrinsic healthy fats, protein, fiber, and other essentials from nutrient-dense foods like soy, meat, cheese, eggs, fruits, vegetables, and dairy. We know this, because we’re working on these new products now, for launch in the near future.
Another way to arrive at intrinsic nutrient benefits is fermentation. This is why we’re bullish on kombucha and other probiotic beverages, fermented vegetables such as pickles and kimchee, and fermented dairy like yogurt and kefir. The fermentation process creates healthy microbes that (someday) we’ll want to eat for mental health!
8. The Fabulous Flexitarian
What if you could tap into a growing group of consumers that make up about a third of the population? Have I got your attention? Meet the Flexitarian.
From a proprietary online consumer study we conducted in July, 2017 we’ve learned a lot about these people. There is no official definition of Flexitarian, but we consider them to self-define in two ways. First, there are those actively trying to eat less beef, chicken, pork, and dairy. And second, there’s a group that already eats a “mostly vegetarian” diet, with the occasional consumption of beef, chicken, pork, and dairy. Together, these consumers make up about one-third of the population.
It gets even more interesting when you ask all consumers—no matter what their current diet—what they plan to eat in the year ahead. A full 50% of the population claims they’ll be actively trying to eat more plant-based foods next year. The combination of these two stats indicates a growing opportunity to make plant-based eating easier for both the Flexitarian and the beef-eating carnivore.
Ripple’s new plant-based creamers address consumers’ desires for alternatives to dairy.
While many assume that vegetarians and vegans are the ones driving the growth in plant-based foods such as plant-based milks and meat, it’s simply not true. They only make up about 5 to 7% of the population and that number has remained fairly flat. It’s the Flexitarians that are driving growth, and will continue to do so in 2018 and beyond.
9. Produce Power!
Today's burgeoning ready-to-cook and ready-to-eat fruit and vegetable products go way beyond baby carrots with ranch. Consumers want to eat more fresh produce, but they’re not confident in their ability to cook with it.
Today’s produce snacking goes way beyond baby carrots and ranch. ReadyPac’s Ready Snax are pre-packed trios such as tortilla chips, natural cheese, and salsa, or fruit, cheddar, and flatbread. Mucci Farms sells snack-size Cutecumbers®, and SunDrops® grape tomatoes, packaged and marketed for kids.
Consumers want to eat more fresh produce, but they’re not confident in their ability to cook with it. Solving this conundrum are products like ReadyPac’s line of single-serve Fresh Prep’d Soup Kits, which pair fresh produce, protein like chicken breast, and concentrated soup broth. Just add water, stir, and heat. And Sunset Grown’s You Make Me pasta kits pair fresh tomatoes with dry pasta, spices, and oil. We predict many more of these meal and snack kits coming in the near future.
10. Non-Food Brands Branch Out
Licensing is one way to solve the dilemma of building new food brands because it lets companies gain access to a new brand without having to build it from scratch. Big Food has shown they're unwilling to take on this daunting challenge, preferring instead to buy brands at ridiculous multiples. Why not lean on licensing to enjoy the best of both worlds?
When Oprah enters a new industry, watch out. Now that she’s launched a line of refrigerated foods, we can expect a lot more products to launch under her partnership with Kraft Heinz.
Oprah is not the only non-food brand entering the industry. Eating Well has partnered with Bellisio to launch a line of frozen foods, 20 years after the start of Eating Well magazine. Patagonia used to sell only clothing. Today they offer brand loyalists a line of mission-driven Provisions that range from buffalo jerky to soup to smoked salmon. The question is, “What non-food brand will appear next in your cart?!”
Happy eating in 2018!
See more at www.MattsonCo.com and www.barbstuckey.com.
Project EDEN ISS: Arrival On The Eternal Iceshelf
Project EDEN ISS: Arrival On The Eternal Iceshelf
Greenhouse reaches the Antarctic
"Now that we have unloaded at the ice shelf edge, we are under construction," says EDEN-ISS project manager Daniel Schubert. "We could hardly wait, landing on the Antarctic continent as a four-person construction team, right before Christmas." Over the next few weeks, the team from the German Aerospace Center (DLR) will erect the ‘extreme climates greenhouse’ just 400 meters from the German Neumayer Station III in the Antarctic. This is operated by the Alfred Wegener Institute (AWI), which implements the EDEN-ISS project together with DLR. The Antarctic is the ideal testing ground for soil-less vegetable growing with artificial light in a sealed system, where all the water is recycled and no pesticides or insecticides are needed. The test will demonstrate the viability of the cultivation of crops in deserts and areas with low temperatures on Earth as well as future manned missions to the Moon and Mars.
Offloading of the greenhouse in the Antarctic - Photo: dlr
Satellite image of the arrival of the EDEN ISS - Photo: dlr
Ambitious schedule
The researchers of the DLR Institute for Space Systems accompanying Daniel Schubert do not have much time now to make the greenhouse functional. "Once the two container parts have been towed from the shelf edge to the station and assembled on the pre-installed scaffolding, we must quickly start with the interior design," explains Schubert. "Shelves need to be set up, nutrient solution pumps installed, and special LEDs calibrated for optimal illumination. And sowing will begin." As early as mid-February, Daniel Schubert and his two team-mates, Conrad Zeidler and Matthew Bamsey, will have to return to Germany via Cape Town when one of the last aircraft leaves Neumayer Station III. Paul Zabel will remain to take care of plant breeding in the polar winter during the months of hibernation. "If we sow punctually at the beginning of February, I hope to be able to harvest the first salads and radishes at the end of March," says Zabel.
From May 21st to July 22nd, the sun will no longer reach the horizon in Neumayer Station III, which is around 70 degrees south latitude, and temperatures can drop below minus 40 degrees Celsius. "It will certainly be an enrichment of the diet, if Paul can supplement our food with fresh vegetables directly from the greenhouse," says Bernhard Gropp from AWI, who will take over the station management for the upcoming wintering season from February 2018. During the hibernation in 2018, a team of 10 scientists, engineers, a cook and a doctor will live on Neumayer Station III.
"We are interested in whether a positive psychological effect can be achieved with a fresh diet," says Gropp. In the summer season from November to February, a supply of fresh fruit, vegetables, and salad by air from South Africa takes place every three to four weeks. The last fresh food delivery arrives at the end of February. After that, there will be no fresh salad, fresh tomatoes, and cucumbers until next November. The EDEN-ISS greenhouse in the Antarctic is initially planned to remain in operation until December 2018.
From Bremen via Cape Town to the Antarctic
After trials at the DLR Institute for Space Systems in Bremen, the special greenhouse container had left the port of Hamburg for Cape Town on a cargo ship on 8 October 2017. There it was loaded onto a South African research vessel in mid-November, which reached the Antarctic Ekström ice shelf on 3 January 2018. "From the ice shelf edge we towed the container greenhouse with snow groomers another 20 kilometers to Neumayer Station III," says Daniel Schubert. He and his EDEN-ISS teammates traveled from Cape Town to arrive at the Russian Novo station on December 18, from which they used an airplane of the AWI, to reach the German Neumayer Station III on the 21st
Made in Antarctica: plant cultivation without soil and with artificial light
Aeroponics is the magic word for the soon to be started nursery under Antarctic conditions. With this technique, plants are cultivated in a sterile setting without soil, their roots being sprayed -computer-controlled- with a water/nutrient mixture and the leaves being optimally illuminated by special LEDs. "We also adapt the air in the greenhouse to the needs of the plants in the best way possible, thus increasing the CO2 content and using special filters to remove fungal traces and germs from the air. There is also air sterilization by means of UV radiation, which means that purely organic cultivation without insecticides or pesticides is possible," explains project leader Schubert. "Like a space station, the greenhouse has a fully enclosed air circuit, including an air lock that will allow Paul Zabel to enter the greenhouse day after day. The closed circuit will allow all the water that the plants release into the air to be collected, so it can be fed to them again.
Source: DLR
Publication date: 1/15/2018
Your Next Salad Might Be Grown in a Recycled Shipping Container
Your Next Salad Might Be Grown in a Recycled Shipping Container
JANUARY 5, 2018, BY RICH DEMURO,
Salad greens from a recycled shipping container? One LA company is producing healthier, fresher tasting produce thanks to a mix of technology and good old-fashioned farming.
Imagine growing salad greens in the dead cold of winter. Thanks to a system being pioneered by Los Angeles based Local Roots, it can be done.
The company is building farms inside recycled shipping containers. You know, the type that used to carry electronics or other assorted goods across vast oceans. Now, they might be growing basil or kale inside.
I visited the company's warehouse just outside of downtown Los Angeles and got to see - and taste - what they're doing firsthand.
The containers are rigged with shelves that have little or no dirt. A combination of custom lighting, temperature and humidity give plants the perfect environment to thrive. But the brilliant part - these shipping containers can be moved or placed anywhere in the world.
This means that greens can be grown just miles from the restaurant that serves them. Local Roots tells me that their greens stay fresher for about 2 weeks longer than typical because they aren't traveling as far to be eaten.
As for the taste? I was impressed with the fresh, bold flavors of the lettuce I tried. Pretty crazy to think it was grown in a container that had a previous life hauling goods.
Right now, several restaurants in the LA area are serving up greens grown by Local Roots. The company is close to announcing a partnership with a national retailer where you'll be able to buy them in store. They are also hiring lots of smart people to help them in their quest of growing fresher food closer to home.
Sustainable Farming Gets An Urban Upgrade
Sustainable Farming Gets An Urban Upgrade
Aquaponics systems use a combination of hydroponics and aquaculture to farm aquatic animals for food. (Photo courtesy of Catherine Schrading)
ANISH SALVI | Staff Writer
January 8, 2018
Kareem Adam Rabbat formed an appreciation for nature from fishing with his father as a young boy, which eventually led him to join an initiative as an adult to find sustainable ways of getting fresh food to people.
“That kind of instilled in me a great value for the outdoors,” Rabbat said. “I wanted to do everything I could to save and protect the environment.”
As a sophomore environmental engineering student at Pitt, Rabbat combined both his passions for protecting nature and his academic knowledge to become president of The Aquaponics Project — an initiative meant to provide food for communities using sustainable practices and energy-efficient means. Students from Pitt, Carnegie Mellon and the University of Michigan work together on The Aquaponics Project and develop a facility that provides both basil and fish for local communities in Pittsburgh. The facility was previously used by the students working on the project to educate the public about sustainable practices through tours. The students involved in The Aquaponics Project are now working on making improvements and are hoping the facility will start producing food for wider consumption this spring.
The East Liberty facility consists of a 500-gallon fish tank housing tilapia with 30 grow towers — vertical structures within the tank that are capable of growing 27 basil plants each. It operates through the use of aquaponics, a combination of hydroponics — growing plants in water without soil — and aquaculture, farming aquatic animals for food.
Essentially, the facility creates a closed loop system that follows a circular flow. The waste products of the fish provides nutrients for the plants while the plants keep the water clean for the fish. The only input into the system is the food for the fish. According to Rabbat, the output is food produced in an environmentally sound way.
“We’re really trying to attack the whole food issue from multiple perspectives so we can produce this food and distribute it to the community, but at the same time take food waste that would usually go to landfill and decompose [it],” Rabbat said.
Catherine Schrading, a junior majoring in environmental science, co-founded The Aquaponics Project as a first year in 2015 alongside fellow first year and computer science major Vinh Luong with the intention of finding a solution for “food deserts” — communities across the globe without easy access to fresh, healthy foods.
“It’s a portable farm to bring fresh food,” Schrading said. “And also educate people about where their food is coming from, and bring that to communities that would otherwise have no knowledge of those sorts of things and no access to fresh food.”
While the project did begin at Pitt, additional members from the other schools joined to bring a more varied approach with their differing majors, including information sciences and engineering. The original group met its new members from outside of class through volunteering opportunities and Pittsburgh’s environmental community, Schrading said.
“We needed people in different majors and we have students from three different universities and basically every major that you can think off which provides a lot of different insight,” she said. “There are people just very passionate about environmental work in all the different universities.”
The team recently won first place in the 2017 Ford College Community Challenge — a sustainability contest held by the Ford Motor Company Fund — for their project in November. They received $35,000 and a 2017 Ford Transit for their “portable farm.”
Farah Harb, the education program coordinator for the Ford Motor Company Fund, said the projects in the 2017 competition focused on sustainability and that mobility was also part of the challenge — either literal movement or social mobility.
“We want [the students] to think more about community needs, impacting lives,” Harb said. “By exposing them to a project like this we put leadership in their hands.”
According to Rabbat, the team began designing the project in 2015. After a year of collecting grants, fundraising and coming up with a final design for the facility, they began constructing their farm out of a decommissioned shipping container, completing the facility in the summer of 2016.
“The idea is you put this container really anywhere and you don’t have to put that much water into it, don’t have to put that much energy into it,” Rabbat said. “It’ll just provide food for the community whether that be a food desert in the United States or a place in the Sahara Desert in Africa.”
Rabbat said the system allows for 90 percent less water to be used for growing fish and plants compared that for traditional farming.The group had its most successful crop yield this past summer.
“It relies on the symbiotic relationship between fish and plants,” Rabbat said. “[This relationship] also takes out the toxicity of the water so it is clean for the fish so you can just recycle the water through the entire system.”
The group has used their project as a teaching device for Pittsburgh residents. According to Schrading, the group has given tours to the community to explain how the project worked and how this was a sustainable method of procuring food because it produced little to no emissions.
Rabbat said the group has also developed partnerships with several Pittsburgh organizations, including The Door Campaign, an organization that encourages STEM-based learning among young people. The Door Campaign at Savoy utilized the basil that the group grew for hors d’oeurves and drinks at an event last summer, according to Rabbat.
The team plans on reinvesting their prize money back into their aquaponics project by adding on an anaerobic digester that will take on any food waste produced and convert it into energy.
“Food waste would usually go to landfill and decompose and produce methane,” Rabatt said. “But we can control it, have it decompose, harvest that methane, and use it for energy to grow more food.”
The group hopes to finish completing the digestor this spring. Schrading said finding funding for this device is one of the reasons the group entered the Ford College Community Challenge.
“This Ford grant … made us rethink our focus so we’ve expanded our view from just aquaponics to now the food system at large with the anaerobic digester,” Schrading said. “We’re looking at all different aspects of the food system now, so we might actually rebrand.”
Women in Agtech: Sonia Lo of FreshBox Farms is a Female CEO in Indoor Ag
Sonia Lo is CEO of Crop One Holdings, the company behind Massachusetts-based indoor farming operation Freshbox Farms. Before she was a farmer, she was a chef, and before she was a chef, she was an investment advisor and angel investor.
Women in Agtech: Sonia Lo of FreshBox Farms is a Female CEO in Indoor Ag
Sonia Lo is CEO of Crop One Holdings, the company behind Massachusetts-based indoor farming operation Freshbox Farms. Before she was a farmer, she was a chef, and before she was a chef, she was an investment advisor and angel investor.
Lo is vocal about Freshbox Farms’ somewhat different approach to the business of indoor farming from its high-raising peers — her company is “equipment agnostic,” and not looking to operate like a tech company. It’s an approach that Lo believes has led Freshbox to be profitable just two years after its first harvest.
We caught up with Lo to find out how her experience as an investor informs her role as an entrepreneur, and what she wants from the men in her field.
Within venture-funded startups, there is a well-known truth that capital follows capital. How can entrepreneurs in chronically underfunded populations like women and people of color work within that paradigm?
That is such a complicated question to unpack. I think there are endless think-tank discussions about why women and women of color and men of color don’t get the same access to capital.
I think it comes down to what the Europeans call ‘clubbability.’ It means how likely a person might be to be admitted to a private members’ club. And women are never clubbable because these clubs only admit men. With the vast majority of VCs being men, and white men at that, I think it’s easier to admit someone into the club or invest in someone that looks like you, has the same educational and/or social background – ‘he looks like me, therefore, he’s going to act like me and that means I can trust him to caretake my funding.’
Women continue to be a minority at business schools and in finance. Tech as well. These are the usual sources of venture capitalists and so a dearth of numbers at the inception of a woman’s career then turns out to be a further narrowing of numbers when she goes out as an entrepreneur to look for capital.
And then, women’s lives don’t neatly intersect with the social lives of venture capitalists in Silicon Valley. One fund’s “go-to” CEO (they use him whenever they need a transition CEO in one of their portfolio companies), meets the VCs because his kids play little league with various VCs kids. He openly admits that’s how he gets his gigs — that’s Clubbability again.
Until you start seeing women make up 50% of the investment committee of tier-one VCs, I don’t think that you are going to start to see gender balance in very large well-funded ventures. Whether it’s in agtech or any tech for that matter.
Your bio is a bit intimidating. You speak seven languages, you’re an investor in your own right, you were a professional chef and you have a third-degree black belt in Tae-Kwon Do. You’re also a woman of color. When you walk into a boardroom of any kind, what do you feel is the most prominent aspect of your personality that is perceived by others?
Funny you should say that. I was recently advised to emphasize certain aspects of my personal background that I would normally not have thought to include. I am all of the things that you point out, but I’m also a mom and a farmer and an entrepreneur. The market for produce, is 85% women (mostly moms) who are feeding their families. And yet, here I was, not really seeing that I am the only CEO of a major vertical farming company that is our target demographic. Despite all the languages, I fell into a specific vocabulary and mindset, and I’m glad we had this wise advice about speaking to my other strengths. So now I’m pitching as “Mommy Farmer” – which resonates with investors and customers alike.
In your various capacities as investor and CEO do you make an active effort to elevate people who have a hard time getting elevated? And how does that work?
Yes. Do I apply a gender lens to what I do as an individual investor? Absolutely, and I think the statistics bear me out. Do I apply a gender lens at work? No, because I don’t do much of the direct hiring. My direct reports are my senior management teams and they’re all men. They just happen to be the best people for the job at the time that we were hiring them. We have great women at the director level and on the director track at the farm, but we also have a lot of very good men. And the one thing that has been a little surprising for us is that we do very well with people who have Asperger’s or are on the autism spectrum.
And it’s not surprising, right? Because it’s highly detailed repetitive work. So you know we’re not applying a gender lens obviously, but we are hiring a particular personality type that I think might otherwise struggle to get jobs. We are a great fit for people who think in a different way.
What do you tell other women getting into agrifood tech?
Try to run companies for profitability. Don’t go into things where you’re beholden to capital forever.
This is an industry where the disruption can be enormous, but it can also be very slow and there are very good, entirely satisfactory substitutes in field-grown produce — particularly organic. My colleagues in the industry don’t necessarily want to hear that — they’d rather live the dream of how we’re building the coolest thing since the iPhone X. But the reality is that we still have to build profitable farms if we want this industry to last. Our margins are better (and hopefully will stay better) but costs and revenues still matter, and we still have to make that work, one leaf at a time.
Is that advice you give across the board?
I give this advice across the board, but particularly to women.
Why?
Because there just simply isn’t the same access to capital. I wish I didn’t have to say that but it’s true.
If you could have anything from men in your field. If you could recommend like one thing and they actually do it, what would that be?
For the men in my field, I think my one piece of advice is executed flawlessly. I say it to women as well. If you don’t execute, then all of us are going down with you. This industry is too young for anybody to have a big failure so please don’t fail.
photo: Freshbox Farms
Environmentalists Look At Ways To Grow Produce Using Shipping Containers
Environmentalists Look At Ways To Grow Produce Using Shipping Containers
By Lori Corbin
December 18, 2017
Co-owner of Local Roots, Eric Ellestad says it's taken four years to create a growing model that can be utilized anywhere from arid deserts to frozen tundra.
One garden is capable of growing five football fields worth of produce a year in extremely economical and environmentally friendly conditions through hydroponic gardening methods.
"We design build and operate controlled environment indoor farms. We can optimize for the freshest, healthiest, delicious, most nutritious leafy greens, fruits and vegetables, using 99 percent less water and no pesticides or herbicides," said Ellestad.
"Not only are people getting more of the nutrients that they need when they eat our product, but it also tastes better. We're able to grow crops two, three, four, sometimes five times faster than you would in a conventional farm," said co-founder Matt Veil.
No soil, no farmland needed.
They take a typical shipping container and using technology they can take a container, put it anywhere in the world and have a terra-farm up and running in five to seven days.
"We developed a team of plant scientists, agronomists, hardware engineers software engineers, electrical engineers and data scientists. We collect data ranging from C02, temperature, humidity, air flow, different wave lengths of light, macro-nutrients, micro-nutrients," said Ellestad.
Their biggest challenge is energy. Currently the container uses the equivalent power needed to run seven American households, but they're looking at renewable energy sources and use a very efficient LED lighting system.
"We can actually deliver less light than it receives from the sun, but focus on the categories that activate photosynthesis," said Ellestad.
The company wouldn't reveal the cost to create the containers, but you can try their produce now being used at Mendocino Farms, Tender Greens and sold at Bristol Farms under the Local Roots logo at a price point comparable to regular growers.
Small Footprint Produce
Farm-In-A-Box Technology Benefits Farmers
While many companies are taking on the business venture of setting up containerized hydroponic growing, others have been at it for a few years now. An increase too in producing micro greens and lettuces – even flowers - makes the prospect of owning a self-contained agriculture unit appealing for many types of people, not just farmers.
Greens For Everyone
Freight Farms began production of its 40-foot cube container, the Leafy Green Machine in 2014. They had a handful of customers to start (about 10), then about 50 the following year. “Half of our customers had never farmed before in their life,” explains Jon Friedman of Freight Farms. “They were either students at university or a mom and pop shop that wanted to get out of their existing business.” Customers are located all over: in the United States, the Caribbean, Canada, Sweden, Dubai and more recently, Vietnam, which he says is actually a clothing company. One customer - Best Fresh Farms - has been easily able to weather the recent bad weather in Georgia, not having to take any safety measures to protect his crops.
Produce – Long List of Options
The list of possible produce that can be grown in the Leafy Green Machine is extensive, however, the goal is to help customers narrow down what they can – or should – grow that will be profitable crops for their particular region. “When people go to farm camp and talk to a team member we’ll help direct them to what crops they’ll get the highest price point based on the food supply and the food chain where they’re located.” For example, he notes that in some areas basil is $40/lb. and in other areas, it’s $8/lb. “The list comes in handy for people to adjust to the market trends.” In 2016 most customers were growing head lettuce (and kale) but now Friedman says he observes less similarities between customers and more niche produce being grown, like flowers and radishes. He’s also seen lots of interest in microgreens. The container has a seeding area that customers are using for various applications, not just seedlings.
Farm camp training
Freight Farms encourages all new customers to addend their Farm Camp – especially since the vast majority of customers have no farming background whatsoever. The two-day experience helps people get to know the system and jump right into growing and running their business. The experience also includes planting and harvesting crops.
Seedling table
Monitor From Offsite
Monitoring the container remotely via cloud data and a camera feed allows business owners to check how the crops are performing without having to be onsite – which can be beneficial in inclement weather. “People can avoid having to be in the container for no reason,” says Friedman. Farmhand, which is the software used, could also have positive applications in traditional greenhouses. He says they have plans to release the software to conventional farms and greenhouses that are currently running outdated controllers.
Helping Customers Gain Customers
Recently released as a supplement to customers to help them sell their product What’s Good connects buyers with the local Leafy Green Machine farmers. The first question Caroline Katsiroubas of Freight Farms says prospective Leafy Green Machine customers ask is how they’ll acquire customers since they wouldn’t likely have an existing customer base. “It helps connect our customers with their own customers,” she says. She says customers are encouraged to visit local restaurants and grocery stores, talk to produce managers and chefs to see what the current demand is for. “For some people new to the business that can be intimidating. This (helps) take out the anxiety and headache of finding customers for our freight farmers.”
For more information:
Jon Friedman/Caroline Katsiroubas
Freight Farms
Ph: 877-687-4326
Publication date: 1/8/2018
Author: Rebecca D Dumais
Copyright: www.freshplaza.com
The Face of Farming Is Changing, As An Increasing Number of Millennials Are Becoming Farmers
The Face of Farming Is Changing, As An Increasing Number of Millennials Are Becoming Farmers
Jan 02, 2018
The face of farming is changing, as an increasing number of millennials are becoming farmers.
They're interested in organic food, and sustainable farming practices and their choices are making an impact on big food companies.
Millennials are flocking to the farm and Chris Hay is one of them with his 150-acre farm.
But the 34-year-old wasn't born on a farm.
He studied philosophy in college and up until seven years ago, Hay was living a city life, working a desk job.
Chris Hay, owner, say Hay Farms said, "It didn't jibe with a lot of the goals that I had for myself professionally. I enjoyed working with food, and all those things kind of just meshed into why not try farming?"
That led him to a job on a farm and now he's the owner of "say Hay Farms" in rural Yolo County, California.
He's not alone.
According to the USDA's most recent census of farmers from 2012, the number of principal farmers ages 25 to 34 increased 2.2 percent from five years before, while some of the older age brackets saw double digit declines.
A new survey by the National Young Farmer Coalition also finds that the upcoming generation of farmers is demographically different from previous generations.
They're likely to be college-educated, not grow up in farm families, use sustainable practices, and produce organic food.
Among those recruiting millennial foodies into farming, Kimbal Musk, brother of tech billionaire Elon Musk.
Kimbal Musk, Founder, Square Roots said, "If you look at just five years ago, farming was considered you know, this is what your grandparents did. And over the past few years, there's been this extraordinary demand and desire to be a farmer amongst the younger generation."
He's disrupting the food chain with a collection of locally-sourced restaurants and an urban farm accelerator called square roots...they received 11-hundred applications from millennials to launch their own farming startups.
Musk said, "It comes from the desire to be part of the food revolution, to grow real food for their community, it's a wonderful thing that's going on and it's super exciting."
Feasting on organic food, millennials' focus on organic foods is having a real impact on business too.
Organic food sales in the U.S. totaled a record $43 billion dollars in 2016, more than doubling since 2007.
The biggest group driving those sales is millennial parents, according to the Organic Trade Association.
And in a note this year about the packaged food industry, Goldman Sachs wrote "millennial consumers should drive the entirety of the industry's growth in the next decade."
For Chris Hay, using sustainable practices and producing organic food isn't a business decision, it's just the right thing to do.
Hay said, "We're out here to help move the ball forward. And it's a whole system of change that needs to take place."
Local Roots: Farm-In-A-Box Coming To A Distribution Center Near You
Local Roots: Farm-In-A-Box Coming To A Distribution Center Near You
Ars checks out shipping-container farming that’s said to have price parity with farms.
Diana Gitig - 12/16/2017, 11:00 AM
The interior of a TerraFarm | Local Roots
Eric and Matt could not be more earnest in their quest to feed the world.
These two fresh-faced LA boys founded Local Roots four years ago. Their first purchases were broken-down, 40-foot shipping containers—this is apparently easy to do, since it is cheaper for shipping companies to just churn out new ones rather than fix broken ones. Local Roots then upcycles them into modular, shippable, customizable farms, each of which can grow as much produce as five acres of farmland. The idea is to supplement, not supplant, outdoor agriculture. And Ars got a look at one of these "farms" when it was set up in New York City recently.
Every aspect of the TerraFarm, as the repurposed shipping containers have been dubbed, has been designed and optimized. The gently pulsing LED lights are purplish—apparently, that’s what lettuce likes—and the solution in which the plants are grown is clean and clear. The "farm" is bright and vibrant, and it smells great in there.
This environment came about because Local Roots consulted a lot of experts. It employs horticulturalists, mechanical, electrical, and environmental engineers, software and AI developers, and data and nutrition scientists. The company does this to ensure that the growing conditions and produce are always optimal—both for the plants' growth and their nutritional content.
TerraFarms use no pesticides, herbicides, or fertilizers—they don’t have to. This means they generate no toxic runoff, and the produce fits most definitions of organic food. They use 99-percent less water and obviously much less land than outdoor farms. Since the farms are indoors, they are not subject to the vagaries of weather, be it the extreme temperatures, storms, and droughts brought on by climate change or the more mundane conditions of heat, cold, or dryness that exist outside of LA.
They can be moved anywhere—desert, tundra, underground, and even Mars, as both Eric and Matt pointed out independently of each other. Wherever the TerraFarms are, their conditions will be constantly monitored by the experts back at HQ in Vernon, California, just outside of downtown LA, where Local Roots recently built a huge new facility.
The difference two weeks makes
Most of the crops that we grow today have been bred for the stability of the final product, whether a fruit or leaf or root. This way, the produce can last for the two weeks it takes to truck it from where it's grown (California, for example, which produces more food than any other state) to wherever it's headed. But TerraFarms is intended to reside and be staffed near distribution centers for major retailers, never further than 50 miles from the consumers eating the produce. So most of that same two-week period will elapse while the produce is in your fridge.
Regardless of their location, TerraFarms will provide people with fresh, local, organic produce all year long. Local Roots thus seems to have managed to attain both the benefits of small organic farms—i.e., fresh, local produce—while keeping the benefits of large, industrialized agriculture, like technical expertise and centralized distribution.
Local Roots already provides food to SpaceX, Tender Greens, and Mendocino Farms, and the United Nations World Food Programme has just purchased TerraFarms to provide produce to developing areas of the world; although the Food Programme supplies essentials like rice and beans, about two million people still suffer from micronutrient deficiencies which other produce can alleviate.
A solution like this in a developing economy doesn't seem to make much sense on the surface. But the company is now claiming that it has achieved cost parity with traditional, outdoor farming. It's the first in the indoor/urban/vertical farming model to have done so, possibly because the shipping containers allow them to generate more farmland more quickly and more cheaply than can be done in a warehouse or other indoor systems.
Thus far, Local Roots has concentrated on growing greens—lettuces and some herbs. Since these are highly perishable, they benefit the most from being grown locally and getting to consumers quickly. But in principle, each TerraFarm can be customized to grown anything, anywhere. Which might be a very good thing, as climate change is not going to be good for the coffee crop.
Grow Pod Solutions Introduces Automated Farming to The Investor Community
Grow Pod Solutions Introduces Automated Farming to The Investor Community
NEWS PROVIDED BY Grow Pod Solutions
CORONA, Calif., Dec. 19, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Grow Pod Solutions, the developer of portable indoor growing environments, recently held a technology investor conference at its company's headquarters in California. The conference attracted some top investors and professional athletes.
Grow Pod Solutions has developed the world's most advanced growing pods. Their container farms are fully automated, and feature innovations such as greenhouse control software, Bipolar Ionization, automatic dosing, fertigation scheduling and full-time surveillance. The system conserves water, has minimal energy costs, and produces clean, pesticide-free crops.
Grow Pod president, George Natzic, spoke about the company's innovative technology and its ability to change the way food is grown and distributed in America.
"You can take charge of your food chain, and grow healthy, natural produce – without pesticides year round," he said.
Natzic said that Grow Pod Solutions allows individuals, businesses and organizations to grow anywhere, for profit or humanitarian efforts.
"No one needs to go to bed hungry," Natzic said. "Our automated farming technology can grow healthy food virtually anywhere on the planet."
Event key note speaker, Shannon Illingworth, Chief Innovation Officer at AR Systems, shared news about the strategic alliance between AR Systems and Grow Pod Solutions. AR Systems has developed advanced control systems for use in the automated farming industry, and has reached an agreement with Grow Pod Solutions as a technology provider.
"Our technology focuses on data acquisition, supervisory controls, sequencing actions, and the data logging aspects of automated farming," Illingworth commented.
Kyle Turley, former NFL All-Pro, also spoke at the event. Turley played with the New Orleans Saints, St. Louis Rams, and Kansas City Chiefs. He is a member of the advisory board at Grow Pod Solutions and spoke about his involvement with the company.
"I enjoy working with the team at Grow Pod Solutions and helping them extend their reach into sectors I deeply care about," Turley said. "The automation and technology we developed can empower people, communities, and organizations, by providing the tools they need to grow healthy foods and medicines anywhere in the world."
Turley said that Grow Pods are more than just fancy technology. "Our systems can dramatically improve lives."
For information on Grow Pod Solutions, visit: www.growpodsolutions.com or call (855) 247-8054.
Connect:
Email: info@growpodsolutions.com
Website: www.growpodsolutions.com
Facebook: facebook.com/GrowPodTechnology
Twitter: @GrowPodSolution
Media:
Innovation Agency
310-571-5592
www.inov8.us
info(at)inov8.us
Global Growables, Inc. Partners With DNM Farms
Global Growables, Inc. Partners With DNM Farms
The first Mobile Growable hydroponic container is growing herbs and greens to augment the Aquaponics and Greenhouse on a farm near Santa Fe New Mexico
San Juan Capistrano, Dec. 29, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Food deserts, food insecurities and lack of education are real issues facing many local communities nationwide and the partnership between Global Growables and DNM Farms provides a sustainable solution that feeds, educates and donates to the local community. This sustainable model does not require government funding or intervention and generates a recurring revenue stream for decades to come.
The first Mobile Growable unit is on location at DNM Farms which is owned and operated by George Budagher, a long-time New Mexico resident that has an existing Aquaponic farm and Greenhouse. DNM Farms has over 1,500 live fish in three large tanks. The fish feeds the community and provides a sustainable solution as the fish waste feeds and fertilizes the tomatoes, peppers, lettuces, and herbs in the 5,000 square foot greenhouse.
DNM Farms recently added the Mobile Growable container to grow high-quality greens and herbs to service the local chefs from private country clubs and restaurants. The Mobile Growable container is made from refurbished freight containers and grows micro-greens, herbs and leafy-greens indoors 24/7 365 days a year using liquid-cooled LED lights and sophisticated hydroponic technology.
The Mobile Growable container will grow over 10,000 pounds of fresh produce annually using 10% of the water of traditional soil-based farming and will provide the chefs at local private clubs, restaurants, and hotels with fresh, organic and local organic food. The combined yield from the Greenhouse, Container, and Aquaponics will feed hundreds of families, provide local jobs and provide financial support to the community with donations from the sale of fresh, healthy and locally grown food.
In addition, DNM Farms will host school field trips, provide fresh produce at farmers markets, provide culinary education and tours to help educate and feed the kids and families living in the community. In addition, local residents living in cities from Santa Fe to Albuquerque New Mexico now have a reliable source for affordable and locally grown fresh vegetables, leafy greens, herbs and fresh fish.
Click here to listen to a recent podcast with Rick Ladendorf, founder of Global Growables.
George Budagher, founder, and farmer explains, “We have over 1,500 Tilapia fish growing in three tanks and they provide our plants with natural fertilizers i.e. fish poop, which in-turn provides the plants natural fertilizers and nutrients for maximum yield and flavor. We deliver live fish to the chefs and grocers and we service the local chefs with specialty herbs, micro-greens and hard to find leafy-greens at local private country clubs, restaurants and hotels. A portion of the proceeds and product are donated to local schools, churches and food banks, which is our way of giving back to the community.”
Global Growables mission is to reduce childhood obesity, prevent and reverse chronic illnesses through education, provide access to affordable plant-based foods and more importantly create sustainable solutions that doesn’t rely on the government. Rick Ladendorf explains, “I recently asked a child if they could tell me where a carrot comes from and he replied, “Wal-mart”! While I was not surprised, I can honestly say his response is a reflection of our society where the lack of educational funds allocated to health in the schools and lack of nutritional knowledge in the home is a major contributing factor to the health crisis. And until we change behavior in the home, mom will continue to load the shopping cart with unhealthy options and the obesity epidemic will continue to get worse. The partnership with DNM Farms will provide local families access to affordable food and provide the education needed to change behavior.”
ABOUT GLOBAL GROWABLES, Inc.
Global Growables designs builds, installs and manages Mobile Growable Containers made from refurbished freight containers. Global Growables is strategically aligned with Prevo Health Solutions, the private club industry’s premier wellness experts and Executive Producer of America’s Healthiest Clubs certification program. Global Growables and Prevo Health work together to bridge the gap between the have’s and the have not’s, the private club with the community and the public and private sectors.
For more information call 888-321-1804 or visitwww.globalgrowables.com.
ABOUT DNM FARMS
DNM Farms is a sustainable farm located halfway between Santa Fe and Albuquerque New Mexico. The 8,500 square foot facility is comprised of a 5,000 square foot greenhouse, four 1,500 gallon aquaponic tanks and 3,500 square feet of production area that includes a designated area for growing mushrooms. DNM Farms grows and delivers mushrooms, leafy greens, micro-greens, vegetables and specialty herbs and greens.
For more information call George Budagher at 505-228-5318.
Local Roots Shipping Container Farms Achieve Cost Parity With Traditional Farming
4,000 heads oflettuce every 10 days: Local Roots‘ shipping container farms achieve that while using 99 percent less water. Today the LA-based company announced that it has reached cost parity with traditional farming – and they plan to deploy over 100 farms in 2018.
Local Roots Shipping Container Farms Achieve Cost Parity With Traditional Farming
4,000 heads of lettuce every 10 days: Local Roots‘ shipping container farms achieve that while using 99 percent less water. Today the LA-based company announced that it has reached cost parity with traditional farming – and they plan to deploy over 100 farms in 2018. Inhabitat checked out their mobile TerraFarm in New York City and met with CEO Eric Ellestad and COO Matt Vail to learn more.
We visited Local Roots’ TerraFarm in Manhattan a windy, chilly December day, but inside, green butterhead, red butterhead, green leaf, and red leaf lettuce was thriving. Vail and Ellestad started the company around four years ago on a mission to boost global health and seek sustainability in farming.
A few statistics that fuel their mission? For one, the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization estimates agriculture is responsible for over 25 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. And then, 52 percent of the food we do grow in America doesn’t even make it to the consumer, according to Ellestad.
Related: 40-foot shipping container farm can grow 5 acres of food with 97% less water
Their indoor farms address those issues. They can deploy TerraFarms right at or near distribution centers. They design, build, deploy, and efficiently operate the vertical farms, and sell the food – which they think is even better than organic produce.
“In outdoor farming, whether it’s organic or traditional, there’s a lot of variabilities. Even across a field, there’s not going to be a uniform nutrient application or soil quality. In our environment we’re able to consistently create growing conditions that optimize for flavor and nutrient density,” Ellestad told Inhabitat. “We can select varietals that are naturally more nutritious, even ones that don’t make sense to grow outdoors or are really susceptible to weather or have a short shelf life or break down in transit. We can bring those to market at scale with price parity and do that for some of the largest buyers.”
They also see an accelerated growth rate in their TerraFarms. Ellestad said crops will grow two or three times as fast as they would in a field since they can create perfect growing conditions for a plant. They can reuse or recycle all of the water – their biggest use of water is actually for cleaning the farms. And since they can control the environment, they can grow local food year-round.
“Instead of being constrained to a growing season, you’re growing fall, winter, summer, spring; in Saudi Arabia in the summer, in New York in December,” he told Inhabitat. “We’re over 600 times more productive per square foot compared with an outdoor farm. So suddenly you can bring commercial-scale food production into urban areas and start to bring them closer to the point of consumption.”
Solar panels lined the roof of the mobile TerraFarm in Manhattan. They could generate three kilowatts, enough to operate the farm in sunny California, according to Vail. The indoor farms can go off-grid with solar or wind and batteries. Local Roots tends to evaluate the local grid before deploying a farm to see if it’s clean or if they might want to add a source of renewable energy.
Now as they’ve cracked the code for cost parity with traditional farming, Local Roots will be expanding in a big way in 2018. They’ll deploy their first projects outside of the Los Angeles area, and plan to hire around 150 people. Ellestad said they’re also launching their retail brand in a new way. They hope to be on the East Coast by the end of 2018.
But they’re already looking ahead to bringing nutrition to people around the world. Vail told Inhabitat, “We’re here with a mission to improve global health, so that means more than just LA and New York. It means developing countries around the world. It means the two billion people who today don’t have access to the micronutrients they need to be healthy.”
Local Roots is working with the World Food Program (WFP) to deploy and field test a few TerraFarms in 2018 in a developing nation to be determined. These farms will be off-grid, likely equipped with solar power, so they will be self-sustaining; locals will just need to bring in water.
Vail told Inhabitat, “We’ll educate and train the community to operate the farms, and they’ll then have ownership so they can feed their community perpetually in a really sustainable way with food that’s healthy, delicious, and local.”
Find out more about Local Roots on their website.
Images via Lacy Cooke for Inhabitat and courtesy of Local Roots
SpaceX Buys Produce From This High-Tech Farm In A Shipping Container — Take A Look Inside
A growing movement of people believes that indoor farming could be a solution to the increasing demand for food. Instead of natural sunlight, crops grow under LED lights and in a nutrient-rich water-based solution that mimics soil.
SpaceX Buys Produce From This High-Tech Farm In A Shipping Container — Take A Look Inside
Local Roots co-founder and CEO Eric Ellestad in one of the company's indoor farms.Leanna Garfield
December 13, 2017
By 2050, the world will need to feed 9.7 billion people — 2.4 billion more than today.
A growing movement of people believes that indoor farming could be a solution to the increasing demand for food. Instead of natural sunlight, crops grow under LED lights and in a nutrient-rich water-based solution that mimics soil.
Using this technique, farmers can grow produce year-round in urban areas, monitor progress with embedded sensors, and deliver produce within hours of harvest.
A startup called Local Roots makes indoor farms, called TerraFarms, from shipping containers. The team operates the farms near its customers, which include large corporate offices (SpaceX is one of them) as well as giant distribution centers for restaurants and grocery stores.
Local Roots will deploy more than 100 new TerraFarms in 2018. The company is also moving into a new, 165,000-square-foot manufacturing and headquarters in Vernon, California.
We toured a farm in New York City in early December. Take a look inside below.
Local Roots operates 320-square-foot indoor farms made from shipping containers, which take two weeks to build.
To date, Local Roots has raised $10.5 million.
The company's Series A financing is expected to close in early 2018.
Each container can produce about 4,000 heads of lettuce every 10 days, Local Roots co-founder Eric Ellestad told Business Insider. The farms can technically grow any fruit or vegetable, but greens are the most economically viable crop.
Existing customers include healthy fast-casual chain Tender Greens, farm-to-table restaurant chain Mendocino Farms, and SpaceX, the aerospace company run by Elon Musk.
Elon Musk's brother, Kimbal Musk, co-founded a shipping container farm compound called Square Roots in Brooklyn, New York in 2016.
Instead of sunlight, they rely on a sheet of blue and pink LED lights overhead, which uses proprietary technology. Ellestad said Local Roots' LEDs use less energy than "off-the-rack" ones.
The seeds grow in proprietary pods that mimic soil. The primary material depends on the crop. Baby kale, for example, grows best in pods made from peat moss.
Compared to traditional outdoor farms, TerraFarms can run on 99% less water since it's recycled through various systems, according to Ellestad.
Farmers hired by Local Roots control the container's levels of pH, oxygen, and temperature, and set preferences automatically via an app. Sensors embedded in the growing trays track all of this data.
The company has also installed cameras above the growing trays. They use an artificial intelligence technology similar to facial-recognition and relay growing data to Local Roots headquarters.
Local Roots is one of several companies in the burgeoning indoor farming space.
AeroFarms, one of the world's largest hydroponic farming companies, launched in 2007 and operates out of a 69,000-square-foot warehouse in Newark, New Jersey. Another called Bowery Farms started delivering hydroponically grown produce to tri-state-area retailers this year.
Several other vertical farming companies have failed, however. In 2015, Google's Alphabet X abandoned its automated vertical farm project, because it couldn't figure out how to grow staple crops (like grains) hydroponically. VertiCrop, North America’s first vertical farm, was founded in 2011 and declared bankruptcy after only three years.
But unlike others that work regionally, Local Roots is focusing efforts on distribution centers that send produce to supermarkets and food retailers across the US. Ellestad said this strategy will allow the company to sell its products for the same price as regular produce to as many people as possible.
The company would not disclose what the exact retail price will be for its produce.
"In the short-term, we're going to be the first vertical farming company to truly hit commercial scale," he said. "In the long-term, our mission is to improve global health through increasing access to and the affordability of healthy, responsibly grown food."
Belgian Researchers Test Bananas in Growth Container
There is a place in Leuven, Belgium, where since a few weeks ago, the climate of the African highlands can be found - in a container at the Bioscience Engineering Faculty. Scientists are going to do a four-year study on how well different banana plants grow in this climate.
Belgian Researchers Test Bananas in Growth Container
There is a place in Leuven, Belgium, where since a few weeks ago, the climate of the African highlands can be found - in a container at the Bioscience Engineering Faculty. Scientists are going to do a four-year study on how well different banana plants grow in this climate.
You could not tell by looking at what is on offer at supermarkets on any given day, but there are more than 1 500 different types of banana plants in the world. Leuven has a databank with cuttings of all these varieties. Researchers now want to know how each kind will fare in the African highlands climate. This type of climate is characterized by 'cold' nights and too little rain for the conventional banana plant. When the study is concluded, the researchers want to be able to advise African farmers about which types of bananas would be best suited for their region.
In order to carry out this research, scientists teamed up with Belgian agricultural company, Urban Crop Solutions. This company builds so-called 'growth containers' that are used to cultivate plants in ideal conditions. Sebastien Carpentier, the driving force behind the project, says, "For the next four years, we will re-create the climate of the African highlands in the container at Leuven University. We will grow 18 cuttings of each type of banana per eight-week cycle.There is room for 504 cutting in the container; so we can grow 20 varieties per cycle. We will closely monitor how each cutting reacts. After 75 cycles, we will have tested all 1 500 varieties."
This research will take place as part of the European COST project. Research institutions from 28 European countries are going to 'phenotype' the different plants. This means they will test how several varieties of a particular crop fare under specific conditions. The project aims to map 'climate-smart' varieties - those that thrive in specific conditions. "Climate change is a major challenge for crop cultivation. The information generated by the COST project will enable farmers to switch between different varieties of the same crop quickly. In this way, they will be able to keep their yield up to standard", explains bio-engineer, Sebastien Carpentier.
A Highland Banana?
The researchers, supported the Belgian Development Agency, wants to find the ideal banana plant for farmers in the African highlands. Carpentier: "At the moment, these farmers do not regard bananas as a profitable crop. The plants are often seen just growing in back gardens. There are also not enough resources available to invest in these plants. We want to make farmers more aware of how relatively easy it is to grow this food source. We also want to be able to recommend a few varieties that will render a maximum yield in the climatic conditions of the area in which they live."
The researchers are also deliberately not choosing to proclaim only one variety as the 'African highland banana'. "We will rank the 1 500 kinds and will recommend a dozen-or-so varieties to the farmers. We want to take the changing climate into consideration. If it gets a little hotter or wetter, another variety will fare better. It will compensate for the one kind that is bearing fewer fruits at that moment."
Climate-Smart Bananas
Currently, banana growers create ideal conditions in which to grow the small, elongated, yellow bananas which we all know. This is mainly done by giving the plants a lot of water. "Climate change will make this unfeasible", says Carpentier. "Our long-term goal is to find the most-suited bananas for each type of climate. In this way, we want to introduce a whole range of 'climate-smart' bananas."
Source: Leuven University
Publication date: 12/22/2017
Hydroponic Venture Grows Fresh Greens For Locals in Frozen Churchill
Hydroponic Venture Grows Fresh Greens For Locals in Frozen Churchill
By: Dylan Robertson
Posted: 12/26/2017
CHURCHILL — Carley Basler pulls apart a yellow sponge, from which two sprouting lettuce plants are dangling. She places each inside inch-square holes on a metal shelf, inside a humid, densely packed shipping container that sits on the tundra.
This month, Churchill started getting some fresher produce than Winnipeg, thanks to a hydroponic project that harnesses LED lights and nutrients. It’s an effort to bring food stability to the northern Manitoba town that lost its rail link to the south last May.
"I feel like this gives a little bit of hope at a time where we were feeling a little bit hopeless," said Basler, who left Winnipeg years ago for the freedom and challenges of life in the north.
The green sprouts she’s planting almost glow against the white and steel shelves, and they’re a shock to the eye after witnessing a barren landscape of snow and birch trees.
Hydroponic projects have been around for years, using water, minerals and lamps to grow food without soil or sunlight. But Churchill is believed to be the first northern community in Canada to grow some of its own vegetables during winter.
The subarctic town of 900 lost its railway lifeline seven months ago, and ever since the shipping season ended in October, residents have relied on food arriving via plane, which costs three times the price of railway freight. Food prices have soared.
DYLAN ROBERTSON / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS
Carley Basler, a scientist with the Churchill Northern Studies Centre, plants varieties of sprouting lettuce and herbs into the Growcer, a hydroponic system that uses LED lights, nutrients and heat to grow fresh produce without soil.
The hydroponic project aims to help residents cope, and has a longer-term goal of weaning the north off its dependence on costly food from down south, and the uncertainty when blizzards cancel flights.
"We’re really excited about how this project can improve food security," said Stephanie Puleo, interim executive director of the non-profit Churchill Northern Studies Centre.
The centre hosts researchers and classes specializing in polar bears and climate change. But this fall, a green-and-white shipping container arrived by boat. It now sits outside the centre.
The self-contained unit has a machine that monitors mineral nutrients, which are added to a water tank and pumped through stacked shelves, circling each plant similar to the way blood circles through the human body. The seeds sprout roots in rockwool, a yellow fibre made from stones that carries nutrients and water, just as soil does.
Starting in January, the centre plans to harvest at least 400 plants a week. On Dec. 22, the team harvested its first crop of lettuce and donated it to Christmas hampers for town residents.
For now, the centre is sticking with kale, herbs, and varieties of lettuce such as lozano, butter and orville; those plants take five to six weeks to harvest. It plans to branch into heavier vegetables, which are less adaptable to changes in nutrient levels, in the spring.
Though the North West Company takes extra care to make sure its produce isn’t bruised or damaged by the cold, a small, wilted head of lettuce at the local store still costs $5 — something Basler said adds to the difficulties of life in Churchill.
DYLAN ROBERTSON / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS
Sprouting lettuce and herbs are seen inside the Growcer.
She said locals feel isolated because many can’t pay hundreds of dollars for a flight to Thompson or Winnipeg. She recalls December train trips to Thompson, where locals would return to Churchill with Christmas gifts, diapers and even laundry machines.
"There’s a lot of people who are feeling a little bit down about things in the community, not just food-related," she said. "We can’t do anything to speed up this legal process between Omnitrax and the government."
(Omnitrax, the U.S. company that owns the Hudson Bay Railway, is in a court battle with Ottawa over its refusal to repair the rail line that was damaged during severe spring flooding.)
Basler said she expects hydroponics will sweep northern Canada, just like a recent revival in hunting and fishing.
There’s already a couple in town who have sold vegetables from their home hydroponic system; while the school has a tower garden, which has plants grown from a cylinder affixed with pipes and lamps.
"This is catchy, and it is kind of high-tech and interesting. It seems complicated, but it’s actually relatively easy; you’re just giving plants what they need naturally," Basler said.
The centre is considering a subscription system, where residents pay in advance for a regularly grown amount of vegetables. The food will also be used for the centre’s cafeteria, and possibly local restaurants and the school, where Basler plans to offer an educational talk to students.
DYLAN ROBERTSON / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS
The Growcer outside the Churchill Northern Studies Centre.
Puleo said the team will approach the Northern Healthy Foods Initiative for financial support and possible collaboration in other remote areas of Manitoba. The provincial project, hailed as a leader in Canada, helps Manitobans in remote areas learn how to build greenhouses and chicken coops.
As part of a federal grant aimed to alleviate the effect of the 2016 layoffs at the Port of Churchill, Ottawa contributed $276,350 to the project, which uses the first Growcer system in Canada.
There are already six of these shipping container projects in Alaska, and Growcer Inc. chief executive officer Corey Ellis says they’re providing more nutrients than the vegetables found in most cities, which travel for weeks before reaching supermarket shelves in remote areas.
"It definitely is a lot fresher than you can get anywhere else," he said. "It’s pretty much unlimited, in terms of what they want to be growing. At last count, it was over 100 types of veggies that operators in Alaska were growing."
He said Churchill was a good pilot project, as the community has access to hydro power. Some Alaska communities rely on oil furnaces for heat.
A large part of the project will be to monitor the Growcer system and provide guidance to other northern communities. A system is set to be installed in Norway House in northern Manitoba, and Ellis said a handful of Nunavut communities are hoping to get a system during the summer shipping season.
He said hydroponic projects can improve access to culturally appropriate food, such as wild berries. Churchill’s project grows pak choi, a Chinese cabbage that goes well with stews in Inuit cuisine.
DYLAN ROBERTSON / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS
Carley Basler, a scientist with the Churchill Northern Studies Centre.
The Growcer project is rolling out slowly, and that’s intentional. Churchill and Norway House will be the first two communities with a unit; Iqaluit will be next.
"The way we design our food system responds to what they can afford, but also what is a good business strategy," Ellis said.
Other hydroponic projects have been overly ambitious. In 1987, the Newfoundland government invested heavily, but its costs ballooned to $22 million, while the 800,000 cucumbers it sold ended up costing $27.50 apiece.
Ellis said having a modular system made of shipping containers allows Growcer projects to start slowly. The units plug into each other, and some have equipment that can process food.
He said he believes hydroponic projects could be more economically viable in the North, where food is expensive. Electricity is more expensive in the territories, so costly upgrades that make units more energy efficient make more sense than in southern communities, he said.
Basler said there’s no guarantee the Churchill project will be permanent, but she’s optimistic it will attract a strong customer base.
"We’re going to try something new. If anything, we’re going to eat a salad. If that was the only thing that came of this, it would still be exciting."
dylan.robertson@freepress.mb.ca
Elon Musk's Brother Is Helping Millennials Quit Their Desk Jobs And Become Farmers
Elon Musk's Brother Is Helping Millennials Quit Their Desk Jobs And Become Farmers
December 20, 2017
- Young people are returning to farming: the number of farmers between the ages of 25 and 34 increased 2.2 percent between 2007 and 2012, according to the USDA's last farming census.
- Kimbal Musk has an accelerator, Square Roots, that teaches millennials how to farm out of a shipping container in Brooklyn.
- Musk says today's millennial farmers are trying to make a difference in how food is produced.
Millennials are changing the face, and practices, of farming.
According to the USDA's most recent census of farmers from 2012, the number of principal farmers between the ages of 25 and 34 increased 2.2 percent from five years before.
In addition, a new survey by the National Young Farmer Coalition finds that millennial farmers are different from previous generations: they are more likely to be college-educated, not come from farming families, use sustainable practices and produce organic food.
Among those recruiting millennial foodies into farming is Kimbal Musk, brother of tech billionaire Elon Musk. His project Square Roots is an accelerator incubating vertical farming startups inside a shipping container in Brooklyn.
Musk says millennials, who are driving the growth of organic food sales to record highs, are increasingly drawn to farming to make a difference in the way food is produced.
"If you look at just five years ago, farming was considered, you know, this is what your grandparents did. And over the past few years, there's been this extraordinary demand and desire to be a farmer amongst the younger generation," says Musk.
Chris Hay is a 34-year old farmer who made the switch from a desk job to a farm. Hay, who studied philosophy at U.C. Berkeley, worked at a food management group, but was unfulfilled.
"It didn't jibe with a lot of the goals I had for myself professionally," says Hay, who bussed tables at the legendary restaurant Chez Panisse during college. "I enjoyed working with food, and all those things kind of just meshed into why not try farming?"
Despite never working at a farm before (or having grown up on one), Hay quit his job and got a job at a farm on California's Central Coast. That eventually led him to start Say Hay Farms.
Hay hopes his farm, which produces organic fruits and vegetables and uses sustainable practices, will have a broader impact.
"We're out here to help move the ball forward. And it's a whole system of change that needs to take place," says Hay.
While the increase may appear incremental, some of the older age brackets saw double-digit decreases over the same time period.
Robbinsville Officials Hope New Hydroponic Farm Becomes Community Hub
Robbinsville Officials Hope New Hydroponic Farm Becomes Community Hub
By Rob Anthes December 26, 2017
Nestled at the municipal complex just yards away from the Little Red Schoolhouse—an icon of Robbinsville’s past—rests a repurposed shipping container officials say is a symbol of the township’s future.
This 40-foot white metal container is a Leafy Green Machine, described by manufacturer Freight Farms as “a farm in a box.” One 320-square-foot container can produce two to four tons of food every year. Farmers can churn out one yield per week in the Leafy Green Machine, with produce going from seed to a plant on your plate in eight weeks or fewer.
It does this using hydroponics, which simply is the science of growing plants without soil.
With hydroponics, growers use solutions with necessary minerals in place of soil. Roots can either be bare or placed in supportive inert materials, like starter cubes. Hydroponics allows plants to grow year round, indoors using artificial light. Proponents say hydroponics allows for healthier plants and better, more consistent yields. Hydroponic gardeners use the same seeds as a conventional outdoor gardener, but many clone grown plants to skip much of the growing process and save time.
Some cities have ventured into hydroponics, but Robbinsville is the first municipal government in the world to acquire a Leafy Green Machine. Robbinsville Mayor Dave Fried said hydroponics has intrigued him for awhile, and views it as a way to solve food insecurity as farmland disappears and human population increases.
The township’s Leafy Green Machine—a hydroponic farm in a repurposed shipping container—sits outside the senior center.
Freight Farms’ product impressed Fried so much upon first viewing it two years ago he tasked the municipal recreation department with bringing one to Robbinsville. The township government completed the purchase in 2017 for $104,000, which included delivery, shipping and set-up costs. It arrived in town Nov. 28, put into place next to the township senior center. Now, the hard work begins—turning a shipping container into a productive farm and a community hub.
Growing started immediately, with township officials hoping to have first yield in February. Initially, the container will be only at one-quarter to one-third of its capacity, with greens like lettuce, kale, Swiss chard, basil, oregano and cilantro growing. By summer, Robbinsville’s hydroponic farm will be closer to full production, as well as—the township hopes—certified as fully organic.
In the Leafy Green Machine, the rows of plants are lined up vertically, a 90-degree rotation from typical farming. They are fed via LED lights and nutrient-rich solutions. It uses 90 percent less water than conventional farming, and no pesticides or herbicides.
Yields will come as often as once per week, with the farm providing fresh greens for senior nutrition program, Meals on Wheels and food pantry clients. It will be used daily for the seniors and Meals on Wheels, and twice a week at the food pantry.
Plans are in the works for other partnerships and programs, some of which would generate money for the township. The township has researched the potential for a CSA program run from the hydroponic farm, as well as coupling with nonprofits to provide low-price veggies and help feed those in need. Fried said although the container would not compete with area farms and farmers’ markets, the township still expects the farm to pay for itself in five years. It has a lifespan of 20 years.
But township officials view the shipping container as much more than a food producer. So high are hopes that the township has hired Kyle Clement, a recent Rutgers University plant science graduate and past state president of the New Jersey FFA Organization, to serve as hydroponic farm coordinator. Clement started in the recreation department part-time in October, and moves to full-time in January. He estimated he initially will spend as much as 30 hours a week getting the farm up and running.
The township’s hydroponic farm upon delivery Nov. 28, 2017.
Some of that labor would be of a traditional farmer. But Clement and Kevin Holt, municipal recreation activities coordinator and community relations specialist, have worked just as hard to explore all the possibilities for the farm as a community feature. This part actually may be the most challenging since there’s no blueprint to follow. Robbinsville’s the first.
The township’s two main focuses for the farm’s recreational angle currently are students and senior citizens. It presented the plan for a hydroponic farm to seniors at the senior center prior to purchasing the Leafy Green Machine, and interest was so high, the township nixed a plan to locate the container at the municipal building, instead putting it at the senior center. It also envisions partnerships with the school district for class trips and other student opportunities. Fried said the high school’s robotics club has expressed interest in exploring the technology within the Leafy Green Machine. The schools’ gardening clubs also seem a natural fit.
“There are just as many kids who don’t play sports,” Fried said. “When’s the last time we did something for the robotics kids or the kids who are interested in farming? And then for the kids to be able to share the experience with the seniors, how cool is that?”
There’s also a potential for broader community classes, as well as other grant-funded programming. Right now, the future is a blank slate.
Because of this wide-open frontier, the township has set out to develop a replicable, easily sustainable program that other municipalities can copy. Fried said he believes governments will get more involved with hydroponics as its potential comes out as a recreational program, a revenue producer and a consistent source of food. It’s the rare government initiative that can be all three.
“There is a really good end user,” he said. “We can paint things and make pottery, but this will have a really good benefit at the end.”
Robbinsville may stand on the forefront of municipally sponsored hydroponics, but it does have a model for its program in the Beth Greenhouse at Newark Beth Israel Medical Center. Clement worked with Molly Fallon, a dietitian at the hospital who helps run the Beth Greenhouse, to get ideas for Robbinsville’s hydroponic farm.
Newark Beth Israel built the Beth Greenhouse a year-and-a-half ago across the street from the hospital. As its name suggests, the Beth Greenhouse is a greenhouse that uses hydroponics to grow fruits and vegetables. The walls are translucent, unlike Robbinsville’s container. In one small building in Newark, the greenhouse yields the same as a 5-acre farm.
What a container like it looks like with growing plants.
The hospital, of course, uses some of what’s grown at the greenhouse, but it has been used mostly to solve food access issues in Newark. The Beth Greenhouse now can take SNAP benefits (food stamps), and sells its produce at a farmers’ market at the hospital every Thursday. The surplus is donated to local food pantries, church groups and the hospital’s cancer patients.
The hospital also has used the Beth Greenhouse for community education, running classes with registered dietitians to teach people in the city what to do with the produce, how to cook healthy and what to look for while grocery shopping. It has also offered kids’ cooking classes, so area students have a foundation in healthy eating.
Fallon suggested Robbinsville partner with local organizations or hospitals to do something similar, saying looping education and community involvement into the farm has been vital to the Beth Greenhouse’s success. It has connected people with the greenhouse and the food that grows there. Those people—many of them immigrants with agricultural backgrounds—have become the biggest champions of the farm.
“It’s something they related to,” Fallon said. “When we first opened, everyone wanted to see what this thing was. People will walk in and share their feelings on what we’re doing.”
In fact, the Beth Greenhouse has adjusted to better reflect its community, growing what Fallon called “culturally relevant plants.” They are items grown in Africa, South America and Asia that are not found in American markets. It has given community members a place to find those items, and a stake in the greenhouse itself.
There also has been buy-in from hospital staff, many of whom will volunteer during their lunch breaks. While a conventional farm would require a change of clothes and a substantial amount of time, the hydroponic greenhouse allows people in professional attire with only a few minutes to spare the opportunity to help.
“Here we can have people in work clothes come over and volunteer,” Fallon said. “It’s not as intimidating.”
But the Beth Greenhouse wasn’t a success right away, and those involved with Robbinsville’s hydroponic farm have taken a lot of optimism from the potential Beth Greenhouse has shown hydroponics has.
“This is going to be so much more than lettuce,” Clement said. “I see the opportunities that can come out of this.”
Local Company Partners With Dockery's To Offer True 'Farm-To-Table' Experience
Local Company Partners With Dockery's To Offer True 'Farm-To-Table' Experience
12/20/2017
BY: KATIE ESTABROOK
If you have been to the new Dockery’s restaurant on Daniel Island over the last week, you may have noticed large white shipping containers sitting outside the building.
These shipping containers, which are operated by local sustainable farming company Vertical Roots, are not what they seem. Inside the structures are panels filled with fresh leafy greens grown using an automated aeroponic farming system.
In partnership with Dockery’s and sister Summerville company Tiger Corner Farms, which repurposes the shipping containers and builds the aeroponic farming systems, Vertical Roots has set up shop in the heart of downtown Daniel Island to give residents a true “farm-to-table” experience.
The average head of lettuce found in a grocery store travels up to 2,500 miles before it reaches its destination, explained Vertical Roots General Manager Andrew Hare, but with the one-of-a-kind partnership between Vertical Roots and Dockery’s, the produce will be harvested just hours before hitting the plate.
“What we always say is, ‘Know your food. Know your farmer,’” said Hare. “If you look at statistics, the average head of lettuce and most produce travels anywhere from 1,500 to 2,500 miles. You don’t know where it came from. You don’t know what kind of chemicals have been sprayed on it or how they harvested and kept it looking good until it’s getting to your plate a couple weeks later. With this partnership, the chefs are able to walk across the patio here and pull out what they need for the day.”
Since partnering with Tiger Corner Farms and local nonprofit Grow Food Carolina, Vertical Roots has grown exponentially, explained Hare. In April of this year, the company operated one shipping container that held 4,500 plants. As of today, they are operating six containers in the area and have four more in production.
“To give you an idea, we went from about 4,500 plants to now, if you combine everything we have from plants that are propagating as little seedlings to what are actually in the panels for sale, it’s about 70,000 plants,” said Hare.
Although the system can be set up to grow various types of produce, the company’s current focus is leafy greens, added Hare. For their initial rollout with Dockery’s, the greens harvested will be utilized in the spring mix and any dish with arugula.
“Almost everything we do right now is different style head lettuces—a lot more than your traditional bib lettuce,” said Hare. “We have some gorgeous reds and purples and some different, what we call, European style mix greens. Dockery’s will actually be using that in their spring mix. We also do things like arugula, bok choy, and kale.”
In addition to the partnership with Dockery’s, Vertical Roots also has plans to roll out a membership program in the upcoming weeks. The plan will allow residents to come by once a week and pick up a box of mixed greens, explained Hare.
“It’ll have their salad mix that they can use, but then they’ll have rotating herbs or different leafy greens, or things that they’ll have that will kind of be a surprise each week,” he said.
The unique aeroponic farming system not only offers residents access to fresh produce, it is also environmentally-friendly, continued Hare.
“The panels have misters that go off every few minutes, so that allows us to use about 97 percent less resources than you would with traditional farming,” he said. “It allows us to maximize our plants. Each month we’re able to harvest about 4,500 plants out of each farm.”
According to Daniel Island Company President Matt Sloan, who made an appearance at the inaugural harvest at Dockery’s, these aeroponic farming systems could have a large impact, not only on the Daniel Island community but communities around the world.
“We’re so excited to have this type of innovation here on Daniel Island,” said Sloan. “It’s a great opportunity to educate the community. This type of product can have such a meaningful impact on communities throughout the world. The plan is in Third World nations, they muster enough funds to buy a few of these and can feed a village.”
To read more about Vertical Roots or to subscribe to the membership program,
visit http://verticalroots.com/.