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Grower Data: Farming As A Business With The LGM
Our customer base here at Freight Farms is incredibly diverse, but whether you’re an entrepreneur, a distributor or a restaurant, the business numbers need to make sense
February 15, 2019, Caroline Katsiroubas
Welcome to our most popular blog post of all time!
We originally published this story back in 2015 so the content is a bit outdated. We have since launched our next-generation container farm, the Greenery™, which we encourage you to learn more about! This new farm has more plant sites, stronger LED lighting, and more flexibility for growing your business.
Our customer base here at Freight Farms is incredibly diverse, but whether you’re an entrepreneur, a distributor or a restaurant, the business numbers need to make sense. We shared data on how the LGM compares to traditional farming practices, and now we are sharing the data we’ve been able to collect on crop yields, business and operating expenses, pricing and revenue.
The small business farmers in our network are each unique in how they operate their businesses. Some sell directly to customers, others to restaurants or wholesalers. The diversity in business plans influences the numbers significantly. Some of the other variables that have an impact are packaging, location, crop, and hired labor. While the numbers we are sharing have significant ranges, they still paint a good picture of how a business can be run using the Leafy Green Machine.
First, we’re sharing some of the top crops grown by our farmers and the corresponding weekly yields. We’ll then elaborate more on the costs associated with running the LGM, and how pricing and revenue can break out.
Crop Yields
By now you’re aware that the crops that grow best in the Leafy Green Machine are... leafy greens. To optimize all 320 square feet inside the container, we recommend growing smaller compact crops, like head and loose leaf lettuces, herbs and heartier greens like kale and swiss chard. That doesn’t mean larger crops can’t grow, but for those who are operating it as a business, we recommend growing crops with a high turnover rate, which just means each farmer will have more produce to sell for profit.
Here we’re sharing the weekly yields of some of the more popular crops grown by our network of farmers. You’ll notice that we measure yields by a unit dependent on the crop (heads, bunches, ounces etc.), but we’ve also converted the yield numbers into a standard unit of measure (pounds), across the board. It’s important to keep in mind that this is not how the market buys and sells all varieties of produce, but we wanted to give a relative measure that you could wrap your head around.
Operating costs
Now that you’ve got a good sense of what the LGM can produce, let’s talk about its consumption. You’ll notice wide ranges, and that’s because a lot of these costs are location dependent. For example, electricity costs in New York City may be drastically different than those in Arkansas, and a site lease in Boston may cost more than one in New Hampshire.
We’ve seen operating costs ranging from around $8,000 to $16,500, but most frequently this falls around $10,400 annually. Obviously, some of these costs are subject to change.
Business Costs
In addition to operating an LGM, there are also indirect costs associated with running the LGM as a business. These costs are largely driven by our farmers and their chosen business model, so similar to the operating costs these are also going to range. We think of these numbers differently than operating costs, because these vary based on who is buying the produce. As a result we really rely on our experienced farmers’ network to uncover best practices for our newest farmers. Ultimately our farmers are their own boss, and each farmer’s income and goals are his/her own. But as a result of being so personal, these items are less straightforward. Even so, we wanted to include as many of the potential line items as possible. For the purpose of being clear about the numbers, we’ve included the bulk of the line items we uncovered and a range of our farmers’ annual spend:
Again, we’ve seen business costs ranging from around $3,900 to $9,600, but most frequently this falls around $7,200 annually.
Below we've combined all the costs associated with operating the LGM as a business that we discussed above:
Adding it all up
Alright, we just shared a lot of numbers that are important to know. These are crucial to understanding when farmers figure out how to price the end product. What we encourage our farmers to do is drill this number down into a cost per unit (unit depending on crop and described in the chart above). This number gives you a floor for pricing, meaning you’d never want to continuously sell your crop for less than what it took to produce. This is the most important thing to remember when operating the LGM as a business.
We totally understand that this can sound like a daunting task to those who aren’t familiar with how to calculate all-in costs, which is why Heather came up with a handy spreadsheet model that calculates each freight farmer's cost per unit. All you need to do is input some of your own data! So if you’re working on your business model, and need to figure out the cost per unit just ask us and we’ll send it right over.
Revenue and Pricing
Pricing can be tough for some farmers. The above information will keep your business profitable, but when optimizing revenue you need to take into consideration a few more variables. Here are the three things to keep in mind when pricing a product:
Cost to produce (above)
Competition and substitute prices (what else is in the market that buyers can purchase instead?)
Customer willingness to pay (at what price will a buyer say “ouch” but buy it anyway?)
For those farmers who are new to the market or for companies introducing a new product to their current buyer, they can choose to introduce their crop by offering it at a low introductory price. This limits the buyer's risk for purchasing this new product, enticing them to try it out. This also gives the farmer the ability to attract customers while not anchoring the price of their product too low, and furthermore, gives the buyer the ability to test the product. After a specified period of time, if the buyer is happy with the product, the price reverts back to the non-introductory (e.g., higher) price. In essence, you’re building your very own demand curves!
Pricing
Like we said earlier, each of our farmers operates unique businesses, choosing to grow and sell different crops to a variety of different outlets. This diversity in business plans influences the numbers significantly, but we do want to give an example of how some of our farmers are pricing their product. Here is a range of what our freight farmers in Boston have been commanding in wholesale price for cases of mini heads of Red Oak Leaf Lettuce:
The Bottom Line
Now that we’ve talked about yields, operating/business costs, and pricing, it’s time to put it all together to get an annual profit. Below we’re using the pricing example from our farmers in Boston selling mini-head lettuces wholesale:
88 cases x $12.50 = $1,100 weekly revenue
$1,100 x 52 weeks = ~$57,000 annual revenue
$57,000 - $18,000 = ~$39,000 annual profit
An average of 88 cases per week breaks out to $1,100 in revenue or ~$57,000 annually. Factoring in the annual costs discussed above (~$18,000) calculates to a profit of ~$39,000 annually for one Leafy Green Machine.
So how do these numbers scale if farmers operate more than one farm? It’s tempting to multiply the bottom line for the number of farms, but here are two things to remember: fixed costs and some other variable costs scale. This gives a boost to profits over multiple farms.
But what is the biggest variable that drives the economics of the farm? Crop type. The buyer type (who the farmer sells to) comes in a very close second. We’ve talked at length about lettuce, but for this example, we’re switching to a lower-price crop: basil. The low price of this crop can be overcome by packaging it in small units (picture 1 or 2-ounce clamshells of basil). When farmers choose to sell directly to end consumers (CSAs, farm stands, etc.) they may command the highest price point for some normally low-price crops. Conversely, choosing to sell that same low-price crop in bulk to a wholesale produce distributor generally does not command a price above the “all-in” cost per unit - so don’t do that! Just keep in mind that the labor involved in packaging will increase costs.
Growing in the future
The most powerful thing to know here is that our network of farmers is relatively new to the occupation. These numbers weren’t gathered by expert growers, but simply from everyday people like you and me who had a burning desire to become a farmer. Another great thing about these numbers is that they aren’t static; they will change as we get more farmers growing, and they will change again as we make our systems more efficient.
It’s important to us to share the capabilities of the Leafy Green Machine, but even more important to tell the story of each of our farmers. And we owe it to them for all of this information. They are the ones growing for their local communities, and making the real positive change in the food system. We wouldn’t be where we are today without them!
See this content in the original post
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Freight Farms Aced 2019 – Here's Our Report Card
2019 was a year for the books! We released the Greenery and showed you how it works. We hosted a record number of webinars featuring customers from all backgrounds and levels of experience
December 23, 2019
As we enter a new decade, we look back at all our 2019 accomplishments.
2019 was a year for the books! We released the Greenery and showed you how it works. We hosted a record number of webinars featuring customers from all backgrounds and levels of experience. We also invited you to a record number of open houses, where you were able to meet the team, tour the farm, and ask a local Freight Farmer all your questions. And, as with every year, we expanded our world map with new customers from the United Kingdom, Spain, Germany, and Australia!
2019 was also a banner year for our farm-to-school customers. As an increasing number of K-12 schools and universities add container farms to their campuses, we see the Greenery become more than just a means of food production. Instead, the Greenery can function as a classroom, research lab, after-school club, center for student jobs, and so much more!
Want to keep up with Freight Farms in 2020?
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Indoor Farming Comes of Age – And it’s Commercial
The company, Sprout Stack, which won the business leadership category at last week’s Green Globe awards, is using abandoned shipping containers to grow chemical-free vegetables in a hydroponic system that is 95 percent more water-efficient than traditional farming and uses 80 percent less fertilizer
Poppy Johnston
3 December 2019
There’s a few ambitious Australian outfits spruiking the benefits of indoor hydronic farming but one company says theirs is the first to do it on a commercial scale.
The company, Sprout Stack, which won the business leadership category at last week’s Green Globe awards, is using abandoned shipping containers to grow chemical-free vegetables in a hydroponic system that is 95 percent more water-efficient than traditional farming and uses 80 percent less fertilizer.
It also uses solar energy where possible to power its operations.
Vegetables are grown under controlled conditions, harvested within one to four weeks, and delivered straight to grocery stores to be sold.
At the moment, the company is selling its product to retailers such as Harris Farm and Harbord Growers Market.
The company is growing its hydroponic vegetables at its indoor farm in Brookvale on Sydney’s northern beaches with a team of about 15. Chief executive officer Hugh McGilligan says scaling up operations is next on the agenda but the company is still working on a blueprint to show investors how it will do this.
Asia next?
The company is currently backed by one “patient” private investor but it will be looking for other investors as it progresses to its next stage of growth.
Eventually, it sees itself expanding internationally with investors from Asia taking an interest in the company. McGilligan says this could still be a while off and the plan is to grow in Australia first.
How it all started
The Sydney-based startup, founded by an agronomist and an electrical engineer, started out with a vision to bring leafy greens to rural communities where fresh produce is hard to come by.
The idea was to create a distributed network of the shipping container farms where there’s plenty of sun for solar power but limited water for irrigation.
The vision has since evolved but its potential is certainly biggest in water-poor and inclement environments, as well as areas with limited land resources.
Starting in 2016, the founders spent about 18 months getting the production right. McGilligan says this was no walk in the park.
“It’s actually quite hard to grow vegetables indoors.”
How the farms work
Not only are the shipping containers portable but the perfect environments for controlled indoor farming, McGilligan told The Fifth Estate.
Shipping container are stripped and fitted out with multiple stacks of trays for growing seedlings, which are filled with a coconut husk byproduct from commercial coconut production. McGilligan says it has no nutritional value but it provides a structure for plant roots to grow.
There are LED lights above each tray and a pump system that floods the trays with a hydroponic solution between one and four times a day.
McGilligan says the tricky part is getting the “growth algorithm” right for each plant – that is, the right temperature, nutrients, light, and CO2 quantity. These formulas are the company’s proprietary information.
The end result is a nearly closed-loop system, even reusing waste material as a medium for growing mushrooms.
Sitting behind the hardware is a technology stack that controls the farms’ systems automatically. In the future, the plan is to leverage machine learning so that the farms can adjust the conditions automatically according to how well the plants are growing – adding a little more water or lowering the temperature as necessary.
The farms can grow “pretty much anything” – strawberries, herbs, kale – but at this stage, the focus has been on leafy greens because the fast growth makes them more economically viable.
It’s not a perfect figure but McGilligan says the farms are capable of outputting an equivalent of about one hectare of traditional farmland.
This is made possible by stacking the hydronic beds. McGilligan says each container produces several thousand units of produce at one time.
People are ready for urban farming
The response to the company’s system has been “universally positive”. McGilligan suspects this is because people are starting to think more about the provenance of their food.
Part of the company’s mission is to bring people closer to the means of production – something that he believes we’re missing in the modern world.
“What we are combating is the disconnect between food and the means of food production.”
Nutritional value of fresh produce “falls off a cliff” during the week it takes to get from harvest to stores
Indoor hydroponic farming under LED lights is big overseas but in its infancy in Australia, but with our cities set to swell in the coming decades, McGilligan says we’ll have no choice but to rethink how we produce fresh food.
He says existing agriculture systems are already “pretty strained” with the situation expected to worsen as populations grow.
With normal agriculture systems, it takes a week to get produce from paddock to plate. But with indoor farming techniques, it’s possible to harvest one day and deliver fresh produce the next morning.
Not only does this lighten the carbon footprint of transporting goods around, this fast turnaround means more nutritious and tasty produce.
McGilligan says the nutritional value of fresh produce “falls off a cliff” during the week it takes to get from harvest to stores. He claims the company’s product is around 50 percent more nutritious than traditional produce.
Much of the flavour disappears during the week-long journey, he adds.
Sprout Stack chief executive officer Hugh McGilligan
He doesn’t see the company’s methods as a replacement for traditional farming but a complementary source of production.
Triple bottom line sustainability
The company is committed to triple bottom line sustainability, with profitability expected to come with scale.
The company is also committed to bringing the community along for the ride through a school education program and employing staff from disadvantaged backgrounds.
He says the energy use is still “quite high” and “not where we want it to be” but the plan is to leverage solar power as part of its expansion.
Tags: hydroponics, indoor farming, urban farming Tweet
Comments
2 Responses to “Indoor farming comes of age – and it’s commercial”
Frank says:
I thought this was the way most green vegs in Singapore and such places were now grown.
I liked an article I saw couple years ago suggesting that Japanese Toshiba company was gearing up to be a complete provider of all the technology for indoor vertical farming – computer-controlled hydroponics, HVAC, LED grow lights – the whole shebang.
As for first folks doing indoors – I’ve seen pix of Spain where most fresh vegs for the UK were grown (at least before Brexit) – from the air all you see are white plastic covered hectares – presumably containing hydroponic vegs growing.
Woof says:
Elon Musk’s brother surprised you didn’t mention him
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THE NETHERLANDS: "Container Offers Flexible Research Solutions"
On the outside it's 'just' a container. But when the doors open, a good deal of high-tech reveals itself. A climate container to be precise
on their way to USA
On the outside it's 'just' a container. But when the doors open, a good deal of high-tech reveals itself. A climate container to be precise. In Aalsmeer in the Bosman Van Zaal production hall, two are ready to be transported to a large American herb grower who wants to use the container to work out the optimum cultivation recipe for basil.
Carlo Castelijn inside of the container in which three 'Danish carts' fit next to each other. If desired, both sides can also be provided with a Grow&Roll-system with Danish carts.
Container over climate chamber
But why a container and not a climate chamber? "Simple", says Carlo Castelijn of Bosman Van Zaal. "These containers can then be clicked onto the back of a trailer. This makes it possible, after a research project, to sell the container or transport it to another location of the company. A lot cheaper than demolishing an entire climate chamber and rebuilding it elsewhere."
Recently, numbers three and four were built, after the first container had already been built two years ago at the request of another customer.
Three Danish cars
A total of three extra wide 'Danish' cars fit in one half of the container. These can be used to create a small-scale multilayer cultivation system with LED and all the bells and whistles that come with it. On the other hand, a growing table has been mounted for research into 'normal', non-multi-layer cultivation.
The only thing needed to get the climate container up and running is electricity, water and CO2. Electricity to keep the LED lights on and the climate computer running. The latter then takes care of the rest, including the water and CO2 dosing.
The side containing the grow table, a request from the customer who wanted the table as low as possible. In addition, gutters are hung in the container so that the customer can experiment with strawberry cultivation.
Over the past few weeks, the finishing touches have been put to the containers, which will be transported in December.
Finishing off with the numbers:
-Container outer dimensions: 6058x2500x2896 mm LxWxH
-Grow&Roll cultivation area: 9x0.9 square meters
-Cultivation surface table: 2 square meters
For more information:
Bosman Van Zaal
info@bosmanvanzaal.com
www.bosmanvanzaal.com
Publication date: Tue 26 Nov 2019
© HortiDaily.com
How To Run A Successful CSA | WEBINAR
So you want to start a CSA...but you have so many questions. Where do I find customers? What's the best way to set up operations? What should I grow? We went directly to the expert to help you answer all these questions and more
Hear How Sarah Sells Out Her CSA Every Season
Thursday, December 12th, 2019
12 - 12:30 PM EST
So you want to start a CSA...but you have so many questions. Where do I find customers? What's the best way to set up operations? What should I grow? We went directly to the expert to help you answer all these questions and more.
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Sarah Ward from Oasis Springs Farm in Nashua, New Hampshire has been operating a successful CSA since 2016. She's sharing how she overcame challenges while growing her customer base and finding creative ways to find free marketing.
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The Future of Food: Why Farming Is Moving Indoors
Ten shipping containers dominate a corner of the Brooklyn parking area, each full of climate control tech, growing herbs that are distributed to local stores on bicycles. This is urban farming at its most literal
November 27, 2019 Staff Writer
A car park opposite the infamous New York City housing estate where rapper Jay-Z grew up seems an unlikely place for an agricultural revolution.
Ten shipping containers dominate a corner of the Brooklyn parking area, each full of climate control tech, growing herbs that are distributed to local stores on bicycles. This is urban farming at its most literal.
The containers are owned by Square Roots, part of America‘s fast-expanding vertical farming industry, a sector run by many tech entrepreneurs who believe food production is ripe for disruption.
The world‘s best basil reputedly comes from Genoa, Italy. Square Roots grows Genovese seeds in a container that recreates the city‘s daylight hours, humidity, Co2 levels – and all fed hydroponically in nutrient-rich water.
“Rather than ship food across the world, we ship the climate data and feed it into our operating system,” says co-founder Tobias Peggs.
High costs
An artificial intelligence expert, Mr. Peggs founded Square Roots with investor Kimball Musk (Elon‘s brother) two years ago. They‘ve signed a deal with one of America‘s big distribution companies, Gordon Food Service, to locate herb-growing containers at some its 200 warehouses.
He says the deal represents everything about indoor farming‘s potential: locally grown, quick-to-market, fresh produce that can be harvested year-round and is free of pesticides and harsh weather.
“Indoor farming can answer many of the questions being asked by today‘s consumers about the provenance, sustainability and health of the food they eat,” he says.
Jeffery Landau, director of business development at estimates the global value of the vertical farming market will rise to about $6.4bn by 2023, from $403m in 2013, with almost half that attributed to growth in the US.
Despite the sector‘s high costs and limited food range, the potential is not lost on investors. Recently, AeroFarms, a producer of lettuce and other leafy greens, raised $100m, including from Ingka Group, Ikea‘s parent company. Bowery Farming raised $90m in a funding round backed by Google Ventures and Uber boss Dara Khosrowshahi.
Plenty, another major US player, raised funds from Softbank chief executive Masayoshi Son and former Google head Eric Schmidt. The company has ambitions to build hundreds of vertical farms in China. In the UK, food delivery and robotics company Ocado is investing in indoor farming.
But there have also been failures. “Vertical farms are a highly intensive capital expenditure,” says Mr. Landau. “Your lighting system will be one of your highest capital costs.” And then there‘s ventilation, air conditioning, irrigation, and harvesting. “Make a mistake and you will have one costly upgrade on the horizon,” he adds.
Mr. Peggs chose a modular system based around shipping containers because he says it is quickly scalable according to demand. “We can put a herb farm in a new city for less than $500,000 and be growing within two months. We just press the ‘basil button‘ – or mint, or tarragon – and the box configures itself to grow in optimum climate conditions.”
In neighboring New Jersey, however, Bowery Farming takes a different approach. The five-year-old company runs industrial-sized farms. Outside one huge, grey windowless warehouse a heat haze shimmers off the concrete. It‘s a sharp contrast to the chilly interior where an aroma of fresh farm produce hits you immediately.
Robots
Produce is grown on trays stacked ceiling-high to maximize acreage. Everything from the automatic seeding machine to harvesting is run by Bowery‘s proprietary operating system (OS) which controls light, adjusts water nutrients and takes camera images of each plant to monitor its health.
“The OS is our central nervous system. There are millions of data points,” says founder Irving Fain. “The artificial intelligence is constantly learning and predicting how to produce the best quality product.”
Running the farm manually would be difficult, he says. Staff operates things from computer screens and iPads. In the cavernous farm room itself, the only sound is robots moving the shelves.
Growing food indoors has been around for decades, but the industry got a kick-start from advances in the performance of lower-cost LED lighting. Combine that with robotics, innovations, and AI, and you have an industry that Mr. Fain says is both viable and scalable.
“The big question was, how can we grow in large volumes at a consistently high quality? Suddenly, the economics changed,” he says. “We can grow 365 days a year – a major departure from thousands of years of agriculture. Unlike outdoor farming, our yield is virtually 100% guaranteed.”
Vertical farmers talk with a zeal you‘d expect of entrepreneurs with tech world backgrounds. With population growth and climate change putting pressure on food production, they think they may have answers.
But this highlights one of the industry‘s limitations. You can‘t feed the world on leafy greens. That said, for Mr. Fain, if Bowery only ever grew lettuce or kale, “it‘s still a win”. But his ambitions are greater. Bowery is growing radishes and turnips that he expects to come to market with two years.
Square Roots hopes to soon start commercial production of beetroots and strawberries and is experimenting with so-called heirloom produce from rare and long-forgotten seeds.
Carbon footprint
Mr. Peggs says: “It makes sense to grow perishable produce in the same neighborhood as the consumer – stuff that doesn‘t travel well. A lot of produce – tomatoes, strawberries – are grown for travel, not for taste. It doesn‘t make sense to vertically farm food with a long shelf life.”
But different produce presents different challenges, says Mr. Landau. Where plants are concerned, not all light is created equal. Fruiting and flowering crops such as tomatoes, strawberries, and peppers have different needs.
“Lights for these types of crops will generally be more expensive, require more electricity, and produce more heat, meaning additional cooling,” says Mr. Landau. “Harvesting these crops can be a significant operational cost.”
But it is being done. In the US, Oishii vertically farms the much-prized Japanese Omakase strawberry year-round. And Farm One produces more than 200 products, including 34 edible flowers. Plenty is experimenting with watermelons. As technology costs fall and R&D intensifies, the crop variety will expand.
That may also ease criticism of the industry‘s carbon footprint. In the artificial light versus sunlight debate, the latter often has the upper hand. But, then, indoor farmers point to the transportation costs and waste in traditional agriculture.
For the moment, Mr. Landau says, the carbon footprint concerns are valid, although he expects indoor farms to increasingly draw on renewable energy.
“And when you look at markets located in extreme climate environments or island nations where they import a majority of food, indoor farming could be a viable option,” he says.
Mr. Peggs stresses that the industry is still young and is trying to work out the right business models and direction. The entrepreneurs don‘t agree on everything, though they certainly agree on this: vertical farming has the potential to transform global food production as we know it.
US: Alabama - Container Will Grow Food For Montgomery Restaurants
The future of Montgomery fine dining scene is growing inside a freight container in a parking lot off Decatur Street. Dropped into place by a crane earlier this week, the Freight Farm container is full of vertical hydroponics farming equipment and environmental controls
Brad Harper, Nov. 20, 2019
Vintage Year owner Jud Blount, left, and Executive Chef Eric Rivera show their new hydroponic container garden that is being set up to grow fresh vegetables for the Vintage Year restaurants in Montgomery, Ala., on Tuesday, November 19, 2019. (Photo: Mickey Welsh)
The future of Montgomery fine dining scene is growing inside a freight container in a parking lot off Decatur Street.
Dropped into place by a crane earlier this week, the Freight Farm container is full of vertical hydroponics farming equipment and environmental controls — everything you need to grow produce inside. Another crate is on the way and will be stacked on top of the current one.
“We’ll have two different climates, one primarily to (grow) our lettuce and some of our greens, and another climate that’ll be more conducive to growing all of our fresh herbs,” Vintage Year Executive Chef Eric Rivera said. “We should be able to come out and harvest that day for the produce we need that night.”
Everything can be controlled via a phone app.
Workers lower a Freight Farm container into place on South Decatur Street in Montgomery. (Photo: Contributed)
They’ll be up and running in a few weeks, with the first harvest around the end of the year. The team behind Cloverdale’s Vintage Year plans to use the crates as the source for food at its Cloverdale restaurant, the neighboring Vintage Café, and, eventually, at the Ravello Italian restaurant that’s now under construction downtown.
The production capacity in each crate is “huge,” Rivera said. A single crate can produce 700 heads of lettuce a week, for example. They plan to send some of the food to local farmers’ markets and sell more to other restaurants here.
Jud Blount, one of the people behind Vintage Hospitality, said he was sold on the idea after talking about the problems of outdoor gardening with Auburn University Horticulture Dean Desmond Layne. It was a way to work around issues like extreme weather and pests. “This is something where 365 days a year we’ll be growing,” Blount said.
Vintage Year owner Jud Blount, left, and Executive Chef Eric Rivera show their new hydroponic container garden that is being set up to grow fresh vegetables for the Vintage Year restaurants in Montgomery, Ala., on Tuesday, November 19, 2019. (Photo: Mickey Welsh)
Launching the container farming business, called MGM Greens, will give them the chance to work with interns and graduate students from the Auburn horticulture department. Those students, in turn, will have “an opportunity to use a full, functioning facility, which they don’t currently have,” Rivera said.
It also opens new menu options for Rivera. He said they’ll be able to grow herbs that are entirely new to Montgomery, and they can start growing something in the container just a few weeks before it pops up on the menu at one of the restaurants.
Vintage Hospitality announced this fall that they’re opening an upscale Italian eatery in the former City Federal Savings & Loan Building at 36 Commerce Street downtown. The 1925 structure is still being redesigned and restored. Plans call for marble floors, an event space, a ballroom, a courtyard, and a wine cellar.
That opening is still more than a year away.
Vintage Year's new hydroponic container garden that is being set up to grow fresh vegetables for the Vintage Year restaurants in Montgomery, Ala., on Tuesday, November 19, 2019. (Photo: Mickey Welsh)
Contact Montgomery Advertiser reporter Brad Harper at bharper1@gannett.com.
Kimbal Musk’s Square Roots is On A Mission To Feed The World — And Eventually Astronauts On Mars
Elon Musk’s brother, Kimbal, is on a mission to feed the world and train the next generation of farmers. He co-founded Square Roots with CEO Tobias Peggs to grow non-GMO crops in reclaimed shipping containers, even in urban areas. The company is installing its container farms at Gordon Food Service facilities and other grocery stores across the U.S. Square Roots made CNBC’s 2019 Upstart 100 list, released Tuesday
NOV 12 2019
KEY POINTS
Elon Musk’s brother, Kimbal, is on a mission to feed the world and train the next generation of farmers.
He co-founded Square Roots with CEO Tobias Peggs to grow non-GMO crops in reclaimed shipping containers, even in urban areas.
The company is installing its container farms at Gordon Food Service facilities and other grocery stores across the U.S.
Square Roots made CNBC’s 2019 Upstart 100 list, released Tuesday.
Kimbal Musk meets with Square Root farmers at the company’s Brooklyn headquarters, home to farms housed in shipping containers.
Mary Stevens | CNBC
One-third of the world’s food supply is wasted, according to research from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization. Now a start-up called Square Roots, co-founded by Kimbal Musk (Elon Musk’s brother) and Tobias Peggs wants to reduce that waste by growing food as close as possible to the point of use.
Based in Brooklyn, New York, Square Roots has developed and installs “modules” — hydroponic farms in reclaimed shipping containers that can grow certain non-GMO vegetables around the clock and without pesticides. Today they are producing mint, basil, other herbs, and leafy greens. The company made CNBC’s 2019 Upstart 100 list, released Tuesday.
The modules, which employ software-controlled LED lighting and irrigation systems, can be set up in the parking lot of a grocery store or even inside a large warehouse or industrial building, enabling a food maker to access fresh ingredients locally for use in their dishes or packaged products.
According to CEO Peggs, raising at least some crops close to where they will be eaten helps reduce the food damage and spoilage that occurs during shipping from a point of harvest to a faraway destination.
Growing food in a tightly controlled microclimate also means those crops can have better flavor and yield than counterparts that are grown in traditional farms, said Peggs, who added that in the great but unpredictable outdoors, everything from changes in soil acidity to humidity can harm crops.
Square Roots CEO Tobias Peggs is redefining urban farming. | Square Roots
Those who buy Square Roots produce can scan a QR code on the packaging to read a “transparency timeline,” with details about their fresh food, like the identity of the farmers who grew it and when it was harvested and delivered to the store.
One day Square Roots aims for its technology to work off-world. Kimbal Musk, who is Square Roots’ executive chairman and also holds board seats at SpaceX and Tesla, said: “I’m focused on bringing real food to everyone (on Earth), but the farming technology we are building at Square Roots can and will be used on Mars.”
Peggs, who has a Ph.D. in artificial intelligence from Cardiff University, has a history of building businesses with Kimbal Musk. Peggs was the CEO of a social media analytics firm called OneRiot, which Musk co-founded. They sold it to Walmart in the fall of 2011.
Peggs and other OneRiot employees joined Walmart Labs and helped the retail giant roll out mobile apps and analytics in international markets. That was when Peggs became intrigued with the potential for software to help feed the world.
Square Roots faces significant competition in what’s known as indoor ag or sunless farming, including venture-backed competitors Bowery Farming, Plenty, Freight Farms, Gotham Greens and AeroFarms, among others. Their potential to reduce the environmental footprint of agriculture is yet to be determined.
Modern agriculture accounts for 24% of greenhouse gases and is the No. 1 source of pollution on the planet, according to environmental researcher Paul Hawken, the founder of Project Drawdown, a nonprofit that points to ways global warming can be reversed.
Hawken told CNBC, “Indoor ag may or might not pencil out with respect to sustainability when all the energy and inputs are totaled.” That’s because indoor farming requires more human-made energy but less transport and distribution energy.
Square Roots container farms can grow fresh mint and basil, year-round, in Brooklyn.
https://squarerootsgrow.com/
Moreover, crops from indoor farms might not match the nutrition of soil-grown crops, because the medium the plants are grown in is either hydroponic or assembled substrates. Hawken wrote:
“What makes plants superfoods and nutritious is stress, not ‘perfect’ temperature-controlled growing environments. Phytonutrients that are vital to human health do not develop to the same extent indoors. Sun, UV radiation, insects, dryness, competition, wind, and wide temperature variations ultimately make plants strong, delicious and nutritious.”
But it will bring locally grown, organic produce — part of a healthy diet — to markets that may not have much of it otherwise, he said.
Inspiring a new generation of farmers
Square Roots is aiming to work with partners that use renewable energy as much as possible to power their modular farms, said Peggs. One recent example is Square Roots’ partnership with Gordon Food Service in Grand Rapids, Michigan, which runs its business partly on wind power.
The company has agreed to roll out Square Roots modular farms across their network of hundreds of retail stores and food production and distribution facilities in the U.S. in the coming years.
“Rather than a plant factory, where you’d spend tens of millions to build an industrial-scale facility that could take two to three years, we pop up in a new city in a matter of weeks.
Tobias Peggs
SQUARE ROOTS CO-FOUNDER
Another objective of Square Roots is to inspire more people to become farmers. Wherever it installs its modules, crops are grown and systems are managed by employees who have enrolled in Square Roots’ Next-Gen Farmer Training Program. Throughout the year, the trainees get to learn about everything from plant science to computer science from Square Roots, while also earning a salary and health benefits — which aren’t always available from similar internships and apprenticeships.
Because Square Roots is supplying fresh-grown herbs to more than 70 stores in New York City, that means a significant number of its next-gen farmers are city dwellers who never expected to be working in agriculture.
Peggs said he’s betting on modular farms over other indoor agriculture approaches precisely because of their flexibility. “Rather than a plant factory, where you’d spend tens of millions to build an industrial-scale facility that could take two to three years, we pop up in a new city in a matter of weeks.”
Produce Grown Is Served In On-Campus Dining Locations
Housing and Food Services, along with the student organization OUr Earth, have joined together to bring the Leafy Green Machine to campus
Freight Farms
Housing and Food Services, along with the student organization OUr Earth, have joined together to bring the Leafy Green Machine to campus. Housed in an upcycled shipping container, it is the first hydroponic farm at a Big 12 university. Produce grown is served in on-campus dining locations.
In A Seoul Subway Station, A Smart Farm Sprouts
The future could see farms without farmers – automated agriculture, boxed up and set to go anywhere, anytime
The farm of the future – in a Seoul metro station. Photo: Asia Times/Andrew Salmon
The future could see farms without farmers – automated agriculture, boxed up and set to go anywhere, anytime
By ANDREW SALMON
With agricultural sectors massively subsidized globally, with threats posed by pesticides and herbicides raising international concerns and with chemical-free organic farming a hugely risky undertaking, could the future see the sector move off the farm and into a box?
An underground, vertical smart farm established last month in – of all places – a Seoul subway station points to one possible solution.
In Sangdo, a subway station serving a southern Seoul residential neighborhood, Korea’s first “Metro Farm” – an urban, underground smart farm – opened on September 23. A second has just started operation and two more are under construction and will open by the end of the year.
The metro farms are a partnership between the sustainability- centric administration of Seoul Mayor Park Won-soon and commercial smart farm firm company Farm 8.
“Seoul was looking for a company that would grow, and which had the capability to operate a system,” said Kim Sung-un, a senior manager at Farm 8. “We had 10 years of history, so Seoul received applications and they chose us.”
Making Sangdo Station sustainable
The result in Sangdo is an impressively futuristic-looking space that would not look out of place on a spacecraft – which is, incidentally, one potential future application of smart farms.
Covering 394-square meters, it is divided into four separate zones. There is the main facility, a glassed-in, vertical farm, a smaller, self-contained smart farm in a shipping container, an education space for children and an outlet where produce is sold and consumed on-site.
Inside the air shower. Photo: Asia Times/Andrew Salmon
Sterilized outwear – lab hats, coats, and overboots – are donned before entering the vertical farm. After being wafted by an “air shower,” trays of herbs and lettuce, at various stages of cultivation and stacked floor-to-ceiling, can be seen in the pinkish, artificial light.
Eight vegetables are being cultivated in Sangdo, under LED lighting, in trays of hydroponics – composed of algae, water, and nutrients – that take the place of soil.
The smaller container farm displays Farm 8’s smart farm-in-a-box product. Here, the farm’s digital monitoring and control panels can be seen, close up, in addition to the growing produce.
“People in Korea are very concerned about fine-dust pollution,” said Kim who, together with a Seoul City official, recently showed foreign reporters around the farm. “We are not pulling in dirty air from outside or from the subway. We have a filtration system.”
Inside the container smart farm. Photo: Asia Times/Andrew Salmon
Thanks to this sealed, sterile environment, vertical farms have no need for widely-demonized herbicides or pesticides. Moreover, the vegetables grown boast slightly higher amounts of vitamins and minerals than regular vegetables, Kim said.
These messages are being promulgated to a small audience.
“These are not only farm facilities, these are places where children can see urban farming for education purposes,” Kim said. A classroom includes puzzles, stickers, workbooks that teach about balanced diets.
“At the end of the sessions, the children get the chance to harvest some vegetables, and we finish with a quiz,” Kim said. Signup is online.
Sangdo’s metro farm is a full nose-to-tail operation – its salad bar sells cartons of produce to eat on-site or to take home, together with juice drinks. While Seoul City may have partnered with Farm 8 for reasons of sustainability, the concept is not simply about being smart and doing good, Kim insisted.
“The most important thing is that the facilities must be able to make a profit without [government] support,” he said, although he admitted that Farm 8 benefits from generous government energy subsidies for farms. “That is what makes us competitive.”
The end product had the thumbs up from one customer dining at the café.
“I live in this area and this was my first time to see this kind of thing,” said Kim Ji-eun, 30, a teacher dining on a salad with bulgogi topping, a Korean beef dish that translates as “fire meat.”
Describing herself as “an avid veggie lover” she added: “I’d prefer more toppings, though.”
Alas, Farm 8 does not do cattle farming. But it offers plenty of other budding ideas.
Packaged salads on offer in Seoul’s first ‘Metro Farm.’ Photo: Asia Times/Andrew Salmon
Down on the smart farm
Unlike traditional farming work, with its requirement for spadework and heavy machinery, smart farming labor is light. With almost all processes – bar seeding and harvesting – fully automated or using robots, the main job is monitoring.
According to Kim, Seoul’s four metro farms require only three monitoring staff – and disabled people were hired for the job. “The good thing about smart farming is that we can include those who are socially excluded, and that is why Seoul City is so proactive,” Kim said. “And these systems are something women can work on, there is no hard labor.”
These characteristics make smart farms suitable for a generation that has turned away from traditional agriculture, Kim said, referencing the lack of young people entering the farming sector in heavily urbanized and industrialized South Korea.
The farms are also applicable in environments where traditional farming is not feasible – such as deserts and arctic climate zones. “There is a smart farm in the Korean base in Antarctica,” Kim said. “Theoretically, smart farms could operate on spacecraft, but we have not had the chance to try that.”
Sangdo Station’s vertical farm maximizes the use of space. Photo: Asia Times/Andrew Salmon
Farm 8
Farm 8 is headquartered in the port-industrial hub of Pyeongtaek on the Yellow Sea coast south of Seoul. The company, founded as an agribusiness in 2008, has seen approximately 20% growth per year, Kim said.
Under the “wellness” trend, which is prompting growth in areas such a premium mineral waters and organic vegetables, the salad market is on the rise – hence the firm’s main business is salad production and distribution.
In partnership with about 70 farms nationwide, Farm 8 grows about 50 vegetables, selling roughly 30 tons of packaged salads per day. Clients include Starbucks and GS25, a leading nationwide convenience store chain.
Salad is 80% of Farm 8’s business. Retailing and servicing smart farms is the other.
Inside the container smart farm. Photo: Asia Times/Andrew Salmon
Eat greens, get smart. Photo: Asia Times/Andrew Salmon
That breakdown offers the business two prongs: domestic produce supply and global hardware supply. While salad distribution is only feasible in the domestic market – due to the short sell-by dates of fresh vegetable products – the smart farm market is global, Kim said. Farm 8 is now selling its container farms to Japan as well as in South Korea.
“Our main focus is our LED light technology,” Kim said – appropriate, given South Korea’s strengths in that industry. “We own the technology. These are the best LED lights for plant growth,” he claimed.
Under the brand “Cultivate the Future,” Farm 8 operates the largest number of smart farms in South Korea. Customers who buy a smart farm unit from Farm 8 get a monthly service visit.
Units vary from refrigerator-sized vertical farms, suitable for in-home use, to 40-foot containers, which are more appropriate for restaurants, canteens or actual farms. The container farms retail at 150,000,000 won (US$129,000) – about half the price of a downtown Seoul apartment.
Still, Kim admits that smart farms are not suited to every kind of vegetable. “We can produce potatoes or tomatoes, but they are not cost effective,” Kim said.
However, they are ideal for lettuce – widely used in Korean cuisine as wraps for barbequed meat and fish – and herbs – widely used in Korean cuisine and medicine.
In these areas, Farm 8 boasts real competitiveness. “Compared to ordinary farmland, we are 40% more profitable as we are stacked in layers,” Kim said. “Our system uses less space and offers faster growth.”
Moreover, smart farms bridge a seasonal gap in Korea’s traditional farming calendar. “In Korea, in summer, it is too hot to cultivate greens, so prices fluctuate,” Kim said. External heat, however, does not impact temperature-controlled smart farms.
Another advantage is risk-management. “The agriculture sector is risky. Even if there is a lettuce problem in Europe, people stop eating lettuce here,” he said. Smart farms, however, are firewalled from both blights and fear of blights.
Farms of the future
Farm 8 is thinking outside the box when it comes to its future business lines.
In its next subway outlet – in central Seoul’s super-busy Euljiro Station – Farm 8 is planning a produce café complete with salad vending machines for on-the-go Seoulites.
It is also planning to install allotment-style smart farms in upmarket apartments, where families would be able to grow their own vegetables at a central, managed facility in the complex.
With Farm 8 being largely a B2B company with limited human resources, the plan, Kim said, would see the operation of the apartment complex farms outsourced to a rental company.
Looking to the broader future, the company is peering beyond salads and toward the cosmetic and medical sectors.
“They need special herbs and other ingredients for both cosmetics and drugs,” Kim said, noting the rising demand for pesticide-free herbal face packs. “We are researching this with both government and universities, and expect to see results in three years.”
Buds in a box: Checking out the station’s container smart farm. Photo: Asia Times/Andrew Salmon
Fresh Greens From A Shipping Container In Alaska’s Aleutian Islands? Believe It
A young family has begun selling the first year-round, locally grown commercial produce in the unforgiving climate of Unalaska in the Aleutian Islands. Aleutian Greens co-owner Blaine Shaishnikoff said last week that two storms had just blown through the community — and the lettuce and herbs, nestled inside shipping containers set up as hydroponic farms, were unscathed
November 11, 2019
A young family has begun selling the first year-round, locally grown commercial produce in the unforgiving climate of Unalaska in the Aleutian Islands.
Aleutian Greens co-owner Blaine Shaishnikoff said last week that two storms had just blown through the community — and the lettuce and herbs, nestled inside shipping containers set up as hydroponic farms, were unscathed.
“You wake up and there‘s a couple inches of snow on the ground, and it kind of makes you think about it for a minute,” Shaishnikoff said.
Shaishnikoff, 28, and his wife, Catina, grew up in Unalaska, the treeless island community where fresh produce is shipped in from Seattle, more than 2,000 miles away.
“It takes a lot of shelf-life off of the product,” Shaishnikoff said.
Sometimes grocery stores run out of certain vegetables. Members of the community have long discussed how fresh produce is hard to come by, he said.
The Shaishnikoffs started Aleutian Greens with funding from the Aleutian Housing Authority. The plants are grown hydroponically inside standard shipping containers.
Aleutian Greens is growing lettuce, herbs and other produce in shipping containers in Unalaska. The plants are grown hydroponically. (Photos provided by Aleutian Greens)
Each shipping container measures 40 feet long, 8 feet wide and 9 feet 6 inches high. A single container can produce 450 heads of lettuce every week or combinations of leafy greens and herbs.
So far, the butterhead and green leaf lettuces have been popular, Shaishnikoff said. They are also growing parsley, dill, arugula, kale, chives, basil, Thai basil, cilantro, bok choy and mizuna, a spicy mustard green.
Since its first harvest Oct. 28, Aleutian Greens has been selling to the Grand Aleutian Hotel and Harbor View Bar and Grill for their restaurants.
In January, the company will expand its reach, and Unalaska residents will be able to buy the produce at Alaska Ship Supply, one of two grocery stores in town.
“Being able to buy and sell locally grown fresh produce is something that you never even thought would be an option in the Aleutians,” Bob Owens, Alaska Ship Supply owner, wrote in an email.
Unalaska‘s 4,400 residents live about 800 miles southwest of Anchorage.
Imported produce takes two weeks to arrive from Seattle, Owens said. With Aleutian Greens, the store will have the produce on the same day it is harvested.
“Slight difference,” Owens wrote.
Owens wrote that the prices will be comparable to produce already on the shelves.
The growing units came from Anchorage-based company Vertical Harvest Hydroponics, which specializes in creating vertical farms in shipping containers.
Why shipping containers? Cameron Willingham, Vertical Harvest Hydroponics founder, and Chief Technology Officer, offered two reasons.
First, shipping containers are tough — “pretty much bombproof” — which makes them ideal for rough conditions, Willingham said. Second, the farms must be small enough to fit on a barge or plane to be shipped to rural Alaska.
The hydroponics systems are set up for quick-cycling plants like herbs and greens. “We never set out to compete with carrots or potatoes,” Willingham said, which can be stored longer.
“We set out to go after the crops that just don‘t travel well, that just don‘t grow in the winter up here, that just don‘t store,” Willingham said.
The two containers sit on land owned by the Aleutian Housing Authority that was previously vacant – and happens to be a “stone‘s throw” from Shaishnikoff‘s house, he said.
So far, the couple operates the business along with a couple volunteers. Shaishnikoff has kept a second job working at a rock quarry, he said.
In late November, a third shipping container was en route to Unalaska that will be used for harvesting and packaging, Shaishnikoff said.
“That‘s really going to benefit us,” Shaishnikoff said.
Contain Ready To Grow After Completing The Techstars Accelerator Program
Contain started from the ground up. It all began by talking to indoor farmers about their finance needs. Over the last 18 months, we met over 300 growers and developed a deep knowledge of what growers need when looking for finance
Nov 7, 2019
Contain started from the ground up. It all began by talking to indoor farmers about their finance needs. Over the last 18 months, we met over 300 growers and developed a deep knowledge of what growers need when looking for finance.
Once we had developed our expertise through first-hand knowledge and executing a number of leases, we recognized the need to grow what we learned from those conversations. It was time to take the next step as a start-up.
Here enters the Techstars accelerator program.
Last Spring, we pitched and were selected to participate in the Techstars’ Farm to Fork accelerator program, a program that provides ambitious tech startups with corporate mentorship and investment, backed by Cargill and Ecolab. Now, three months later, we’re ready to use the resources of the program to serve more clients, according to their needs. In other words, we’re growing (and we’re growing fast). We’re excited to share more about this exciting new stage in the company. Here’s what’s on the horizon for us.
We’re changing the way indoor farmers find financing.
The investment from Techstars gave us the opportunity to convert our knowledge into an automated leasing platform built for indoor growers. Our newly developed algorithms match indoor growers with the optimal lenders and provide growers with leasing options. And this platform isn’t just for farmers. It also includes specialized portals for equipment vendors and lenders.
We’re growing our mission.
The new platform sets the stage for rapid growth for Contain. It automates our process, and allow us to add hundreds of vendors and lenders to the platform. This in turn, will enable the success of thousands of growers. We’re already working hard to on board the numerous vendors and new lenders that now want to work with us.
Techstars’ Farm to Fork Demo Day
Our network is deeper than ever.
During our time in the accelerator, we developed valuable relationships with industry experts. We got to seek advice from leaders in the marketplace, financial services, and consumer packaged goods mega-corps. We worked with these mentors on everything from product development to marketing and fundraising strategies. As a Fintech company, we’re excited to work with the broader Techstars’ network in New York, Chicago and the Bay Area. We now have more relationships than ever to help us realize our vision.
The program has strengthened our team internally as well. The Contain team is a distributed one. Overall, this is a strength of the company; We see it as one of our advantages that we can accommodate our team members’ lives and still work with experienced and highly skilled folks. But that means that our headquarters is usually Slack, and we hang out with each other virtually most of the time. Being in one location for the summer gave us the opportunity to spend more time with one another in person and become more cohesive as a team.
But at the end of the day, it’s not just about the corporate connections or our team. It’s about the indoor farmers that inspire our work. Here is our CEO Nicola Kerslake, on what we learned while conducting interviews with some of the indoor growers we had worked with prior to the program.
“The greatest boost to the Contain team during the program was interviewing some of the indoor growers that we had worked with,” she said. Kerslake continues, “we realized that we had made a difference in the life of farmers and the communities that they support.”
For her, “It’s the best feeling to know that our hard work has a positive impact in the wider world.”
WRITTEN BY Nicola Kerslake
We’re Contain Inc. We use data to improve access to capital for indoor growers, those farming in warehouses, containers & greenhouses. https://www.contain.ag/
US: Texas Schools Tap Container Farms To Fill Cafeterias With Fresh Produce
Texas schools are using refrigerated freight containers converted into hydroponic farms as an extension of the classroom. At IDEA charter schools, students learn how to grow leafy greens and other vegetables, and deliver their harvests directly to the school cafeteria
Texas students are getting hands-on, high-tech experience growing fresh produce inside converted shipping containers. Photo: Freight Farms
by Eric Galatas
SAN ANTONIO, Texas – Texas schools are using refrigerated freight containers converted into hydroponic farms as an extension of the classroom. At IDEA charter schools, students learn how to grow leafy greens and other vegetables, and deliver their harvests directly to the school cafeteria.
Caroline Katsiroubas – director of community relations at Freight Farms, the company that developed the technology – says schools are using the farms in part to shift traditional food culture and improve health by giving students nutritious options.
“In the San Antonio IDEA school’s campus, they don’t use salt or pepper in their cafeteria,” says Katsiroubas. “And they’re growing herbs specifically in their farm to make a seasoning.”
The University of North Texas also is using the container farms as a lab for a wide range of hands-on learning opportunities in biology, organic chemistry, nutrition, and culinary arts, as well as business, computer science, and marketing.
Many schools have developed certificate programs and majors around sustainable food production, which gives graduates a leg up on joining the growing ag-tech field or starting their own farm.
Because the climate is controlled inside the container, food can be grown all school year long with a predictable commercial-scale output. Greenery units can support 13,000 plants at a time, producing harvests of up to 900 heads of lettuce per week.
Katsiroubas says the technology is useful in a state such as Texas and notes Houston freight farmers played a critical role in providing food during Hurricane Harvey.
“These container farms act as a way to control the food supply chain, and make it resistant to shocks like extreme weather patterns or hurricanes or drought,” says Katsiroubas.
Katsiroubas says the container farms also are helping lower schools’ overall carbon footprint. Harvests happen just steps from the dining hall, which all but eliminates transportation emissions and packaging.
She says the farms use 99% less water than a traditional farm, running with as little as five gallons per day, less than the average dishwasher.
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Written by: admin on November 8, 2019.
The Vertical Farming Industry Is Growing Deeper Roots
The urban indoor vertical farm industry is at an important juncture. Automation is taking root, long-term contracts with creditworthy retail and foodservice distributors are in the works and vertical farms are preparing to scale up. Also, the industry is about to get its first trade group, the American Association for Urban and Vertical Farming
November 11, 2019
Plenty plans to build a global network of vertical farms, starting with the west coast of the United States.
The urban indoor vertical farm industry is at an important juncture. Automation is taking root, long-term contracts with creditworthy retail and foodservice distributors are in the works and vertical farms are preparing to scale up. Also, the industry is about to get its first trade group, the American Association for Urban and Vertical Farming.
"The vertical farming industry in the U.S. is at a point where — if provided facilitation in terms of industry coordination, information exchange, innovation, education, training, funding, etc. — ... it can be enabled to reach critical mass," said Joel Cuello, a University of Arizona professor of biosystems engineering and vice chair of the Munich-based Association for Vertical Farming (AVF).
Just as important: a trade association can advocate for the industry and help it secure more funding.
In the 2018 U.S. Farm Bill, an annual allotment of $10 million was established to develop an office of urban agriculture and supporting projects, said Neil Mattson, controlled environment agriculture director and associate professor/greenhouse extension specialist at Cornell University. That’s a relatively small amount that includes everything from vertical farms to urban community gardens.
Whether industry-wide collaboration is needed or wanted at this stage is unclear. Sharing information could accelerate the industry’s development, but it also could dilute the value of a firm’s propriety research and development efforts.
Technology is important to reduce cost and to improve yields and quality, and therefore to provide a better return on investment.
The existence of New York City’s Agriculture Collective — which counts AeroFarms, Bowery Farming, Smallhold and Square Roots as members — illustrates that there are ways for the urban farming industry to share knowledge.
Having a city or regional dimension to collaborative efforts is key, especially when it comes to working in cities, said Henry Gordon-Smith, founder and managing director of Agritecture Consulting. For example, there is often a need for new zoning for indoor farming because it is not a permissible use of a building in an urban area, he added.
The new vertical farm trade association will be affiliated with the AVF, but the exact affiliation has not been negotiated yet.
A compelling story
Vertical farming does a very good job of tapping into customers’ interest in tasty, fresh and locally grown food. "Customers love it," said Chris Manca, Whole Foods Market’s local program coordinator for the Northeast region. "It connects with people who are passionate about local food and the environment."
Since 2014, Whole Foods has cultivated a high-tech Gotham Greens greenhouse farm on the rooftop of its Gowanus, Brooklyn, store. Leafy greens, microgreens and herbs grown in this rooftop greenhouse are sold in its store downstairs, in other nearby Whole Foods locations and at local restaurants. In addition, for the last year and a half, the Whole Foods location in Bridgewater, New Jersey, also has been selling mushrooms grown in an in-store vertical farm unit developed by the Brooklyn-based organic mushroom farming company, Smallhold. More recently, a second Smallhold in-store mushroom growing unit was added in a Whole Foods store in Brooklyn.
Gotham Greens
Gotham Greens operates a network of greenhouses across the Northeast, Mid-Atlantic, Midwest, New England, Mountain West and beyond.
The chief selling points of indoor vertical farm-grown fruits and vegetables are that they are pesticide- and herbicide-free, require only a little water and land to produce, offer flexible supply dynamics, have short grow cycles, offer year-round production and have easy product traceability, according to those interviewed for this article. Grocers or producer purveyors also might be able to claim greater price certainty and a longer shelf life.
"We look at [vertical farms] as a growing trend and a unique opportunity to partner with up and coming brands," Whole Foods’ Manca said.
But some farms need to get their prices in line with traditional produce, and it is becoming clear that vertical farms must start offering a wider variety of produce. Many are experimenting with growing berries and vine crops, such as tomatoes and cucumbers. To date, leafy greens, microgreens and herbs have been vertical farms’ cash crops because they offer more competitive pricing due to high yields and the fact that they require less energy to grow.
The growing appetite for indoor growing
Five Mediterranean climates — including California’s — supply all of the world’s fresh fruit and vegetables, and these climates are dealing with changing weather patterns. That is forcing more scrutiny of the vertical and indoor farming sectors.
"Today, the world can only grow enough fresh fruits and vegetables to feed two-thirds of the global population what is required for a healthy diet. That's with 7.5 billion people on Earth," said Christina Ra, senior director of integrated marketing at Plenty, the San Francisco-based indoor vertical farming company that in 2017 raised $200 million in Series B funding from Softbank, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and Eric Schmidt, the former chairman of Alphabet.
Already, there is not enough, and the global population is expected to reach almost 10 billion in 2050, Ra pointed out.
Vertical farms alone cannot fill the gap, but new technologies and innovations, including more efficient LED lighting, robotics, machine vision and artificial intelligence, are making vertical farms more efficient and productive.
"Technology is important to reduce cost and to improve yields and quality, and therefore to provide a better return on investment," said Charlie Wang, president and CEO of Oasis Biotech, an Albuquerque-based company that owns vertical farms in Las Vegas, China and Albuquerque. It also develops and sells LED lights and hydroponic grow systems under SANANBIO brand.
During the last three years, LED lighting costs have dropped considerably amid a 20 percent improvement in energy efficiency. Looking ahead, over the next three years, similar advances in energy efficiency are expected, and developments in precision farming and automation are also expected to help the vertical farm industry eke out additional efficiency gains.
"We can do precision agriculture within a precise environment," said Grant Vandenbussche, senior business development strategist at Fifth Season, a fully automated indoor vertical farm company based in Pennsylvania. "This allows us to isolate variables to optimize for specific desired outcomes rapidly. We know how each factor is impacting things like plant growth, coloring, and flavor. … It's a true 'smart manufacturing' system."
Operating a fully-automated vertical farm can put a vertical farm's labor cost on par with field-grown produce, Cornell’s Mattson said.
We have been very forward [about how] energy requirements are a potential limiting factor for the industry.
According to Vandenbussche, automation helped Fifth Season reduce its labor from 40-60 percent of costs to 20 percent of costs. Fifth Season also said that the energy required from its automation processes is negligible within its system.
Indoor vertical farms’ energy needs for lighting and HVAC are considerable, however. For example, leafy greens grown in vertical farms in the Northeast currently have a carbon footprint that is two times higher than the carbon footprint for the same product grown in a field in California and then shipped 3,000 miles across the country, Mattson said.
There is also research and data that points to vertical farming being more energy-intensive than greenhouse-grown produce.
"We have been very forward [about how] energy requirements are a potential limiting factor for the industry," Vandenbussche said. "We're paying very close attention to our energy requirements as we launch our new farm, and we are implementing as many energy savings solutions as possible."
Sourcing all of a vertical farm’s energy needs from renewable sources through local utility providers can be challenging. Microgrids are an obvious alternative, but for some vertical farms, the initial capital cost is prohibitive.
For its farm, Fifth Season partnered with Scale Microgrid Solutions, a firm that provides turnkey microgrids, on a solar-microgrid solution. "[They have] a shared savings solution that allows you to capture the benefits of a microgrid without the upfront capital cost," Vandenbussche said.
Another workaround could involve geothermal energy, which can help control the air temperature. But for indoor vertical farms, the largest energy cost is electricity for lighting, which geothermal cannot address.
Plenty of paths
The indoor vertical farm industry has seen a lot of investment, but the business models are still sorting themselves out.
"There has been a big push on technology, but technology might not be the differentiating factor. The business models matter" said Ian Copeland, managing director at Ultra Capital, a San Francisco- and Philadelphia-based firm that focuses on small to midsize sustainable infrastructure projects in the agriculture, energy, waste and water sectors.
Investors want data-rich businesses that are responding to climate change, Gordon-Smith of Agritecture Consulting said. Consumers and retailers, meanwhile, want produce that they can trust will be clean and local, he added.
According to Whole Foods Market’s Manca, one big driver of the vertical farming trend is people wanting to know where their food comes from. "Especially for people in urban areas, I think that it’s really appealing to know that fresh produce is now being grown nearby and available at local stores at the peak of freshness," he said.
When it comes to vertical farming, venture capital is important, but project financing is critical, Oasis Biotech’s Wang said.
Project finance investors want to see long-term contracts with creditworthy counterparts; cost-competitive products and revenue predictability are also important.
Most vertical farms, including Plenty, initially have focused on leafy greens such as kale. Plenty
"Thanks to our modular platform — where we build farms inside refurbish shipping containers — we can quickly pop up in a new city with relatively little capital vs competitors,” said Tobias Peggs, co-founder, and CEO of Square Roots.
Earlier this month, Square Roots and Gordon Food Service (GFS), North America’s largest privately-owned foodservice distributor, forged a strategic partnership and opened its first co-located farm at GFS’ headquarters in Michigan.
"First, we want to refine and evaluate the proof of concept [at the co-located headquarters farm]. Assuming that we meet or exceed the projections going in, we hope to begin adding more locations next year," said Sean Walsh, GFS’s director of North America category management.
GFS trucks food to more than 100,000 restaurants, schools, hospitals/healthcare facilities, cruise ships and summer camp customers in the eastern half of the United States and Canada. GFS also runs a regional network of stores that service small businesses, caterers and walk-in consumers.
Other indoor farming companies are also in an expansionary mode. For example, Gotham Greens, which operates five high-tech greenhouse farms in New York City and Chicago, is opening new locations in Providence, Rhode Island; Chicago and Baltimore in the coming months. It says its retail presence will have grown to about 2,000 retail doors by the end of this year.
And in late October, Plenty, which concentrates on the West Coast, announced plans for a farm in the heart of Los Angeles. The new facility will create about 50 local jobs, ranging from growers to operations manager.
Our Latest Webinar Recording Is Now Available!
The Saint Joseph’s College farm supplies the campus with fresh greens year-round and is the backbone for several campus sustainability, student employment, and hands-on education initiatives–including a one-of-a-kind certificate program at the school’s new Institute for Local Food Systems Innovation
On October 21st, we interviewed the farm operators and student farmers from Saint Joseph’s College in Maine. The Saint Joseph’s College farm supplies the campus with fresh greens year-round and is the backbone for several campus sustainability, student employment, and hands-on education initiatives–including a one-of-a-kind certificate program at the school’s new Institute for Local Food Systems Innovation.
Watch The Webinar To Learn More
Don’t have time for the full recording?
Check out our complete summary
on the Freight Farms blog (under 10 minute read!)
JUMP RIGHT IN!
00:00 - Introduction to Freight Farms
05:42 - Meet the speakers
07:18 - Introduction to Saint Joseph’s College
14:49 - Using the farm in the dining hall
20:26 - Student employment at the farm
30:00 - Adding the farm to the curriculum
43:32 - Farmers share some advice!
46:15 - Q&A with audience questions
Pressure To Revoke Certification of Containers Continues At Fall NOSB Meeting
Multiple groups push USDA to revoke certification for organic production systems with containers during most recent National Organic Standards Board meeting cycle
Multiple groups push USDA to revoke certification for organic production systems with containers during most recent National Organic Standards Board meeting cycle
The June 3 USDA memo summarizing the land-use history requirements has not slowed down the efforts of opponents to organic production systems incorporating containers into their farms. Several organizations including retail organizations belonging to the National Organic Coalition in their written and verbal comments for the Fall NOSB meeting continued to call for revocation of certifications of operations using containers. Multiple members of the NOSB went so far as to call for the decertification of seedling facilities that produce transplants for vegetable growers if those facilities rotate greenhouses where raised tables are located during the course of the year between organic and non-organic potting soils in the containers. However, USDA continues to stand firm on the June 3 memo and has not placed the issue of containers on the work agenda of the NOSB nor USDA staff.
CSO reaffirms sensible application of USDA organic standards in Washington and at the NOSB meetings
Members of the CSO met with members of Congress and the USDA as well as testified in front of the NOSB over the last few weeks to reiterate the importance of containers to help meet their obligations as growers under the organic requirements of conserving natural resources. CSO members and staff reminded officials on the importance of organic containers in conserving wildlands by reducing the footprint of fruit and vegetable production, minimizing nutrient runoff from farming operations, increasing the efficiency of water use, enhancing the effectiveness of beneficial insects and generally helping growers properly respond to the site-specific conditions on their farms.
Frankel urged USDA and the NOSB to avoid making false statements regarding the production practices of container growers, especially when making policy decisions. Frankel also presented data showing that the June 3 memo was not raising prices yet was stifling supply increases as growers and marketers are withdrawing investment, promotion, and research necessary to build fresh produce categories as a result of uncertainty surrounding how policy is interpreted and made.
Nova Scotia: Growing Local For A Greener Campus
Eating local is now easier and greener at Acadia University in Wolfville, Nova Scotia. The Growcer is an out-of-the-box local food solution located steps away from the dining hall
Ilayda Coruk October 23, 2019
Out-of-The-Box Thinking Means
Fresh Produce For Campus And Community
Eating local is now easier and greener at Acadia University in Wolfville, Nova Scotia. The Growcer is an out-of-the-box local food solution located steps away from the dining hall.
Acadia partnered with its food service provider Chartwells to bring the hydroponic, vertical growing system housed inside a repurposed shipping container to campus. It will produce greens and microgreens year-round and employ students. It's the first of its kind for post-secondary institutions in Atlantic Canada.
"This is just one example of out-of-the-box thinking at Acadia in support of our students and greening the campus," says Jodie Noiles, Acadia's Sustainability Coordinator. "This initiative builds on an existing commitment to purchase and use local produce in our food services."
The Growcer is part of an ambitious new Food Services Plan for the campus. Created by a committee of Acadia students, faculty, and staff along with public health experts, the plan focuses on healthy eating, sustainability, and affordability. "It is one of the most comprehensive and progressive plans for food services across Canada," says Noiles.
Green Ideas
Because of its sealed environment, The Growcer can produce 100 kgs of fresh greens each month year-round. It uses 95 percent less water than conventional farming and uses no herbicides or pesticides. By producing food with fewer resources, Acadia lowers greenhouse gas emissions associated with campus operations and there is fresh produce nearby year-round.
“I'm excited to grow a variety of greens to complement the ingredients we get from farms in the Annapolis Valley,” said Executive Chef Peter Welton. "I can’t wait for Acadia and the Wolfville community to try our Growcer harvest."
During official launch week from October 21st to October 25th, Acadia Dining Services will feature lunch specials made with Growcer greens and diners can learn more about the operation.
The mini-hydroponic farm builds on many campus initiatives like the Acadia Community Farm. At the farm, students operate a half-acre educational garden and grow vegetables for the dining hall and local foodbank. There is also a student group, Acadia Food, and Fork, that grows beans, lettuce, and tomatoes in the K.C. Irving Environmental Science Centre to share with students.
Supporting teaching and research is also an important part of the Acadia Food Services Plan. “Acadia students learn the importance of innovation and entrepreneurship as part of their studies, and The Growcer project is a new opportunity for them to put that learning into practice,” Noiles explains.
Acadia’s food service provider, Chartwells, is committed to delivering a student-first experience on campus. Each year, they plan to donate 10 percent of The Growcer crop to on-campus and local food banks. The initiative is part of Chartwells' Thinking Ahead Giving Back vision, which includes tackling food insecurity. The company will also provide volunteer hours for community support of mental health and social issues facing students and create 1,000 jobs through a more focused commitment to student employment.
VIDEO: Boys & Girls Club Introduces Kids To Hydroponic Farming
The Freight Farm will allow students to learn about science and agriculture. It will also act as revenue for the BGCCA
by: Justina Latimer
October 30, 2019
TROY, N.Y. (NEWS10) — The Boys & Girls Clubs of the Capital Area are introducing kids to high-tech hydroponic farming.
The Freight Farm will allow students to learn about science and agriculture. It will also act as revenue for the BGCCA.
The farm was donated by SEFCU with CDPHP and Brown’s Brewing Company also partnering to support the cause.
US: Texas Schools Tap ‘Container Farms’ To Fill Cafeterias With Fresh Produce
Texas schools are using refrigerated freight containers converted into hydroponic farms as an extension of the classroom
Texas students are getting hands-on, high-tech experience growing fresh produce inside converted shipping containers. (Freight Farms)
Texas News Service October 25, 2019
SAN ANTONIO – Texas schools are using refrigerated freight containers converted into hydroponic farms as an extension of the classroom.
At IDEA charter schools, students learn how to grow leafy greens and other vegetables, and deliver their harvests directly to the school cafeteria.
Caroline Katsiroubas – director of community relations at Freight Farms, the company that developed the technology – says schools are using the farms in part to shift traditional food culture and improve health by giving students nutritious options.
“In the San Antonio IDEA school’s campus, they don’t use salt or pepper in their cafeteria,” says Katsiroubas. “And they’re growing herbs specifically in their farm to make a seasoning.”
The University of North Texas also is using the container farms as a lab for a wide range of hands-on learning opportunities in biology, organic chemistry, nutrition, and culinary arts, as well as business, computer science, and marketing.
Many schools have developed certificate programs and majors around sustainable food production, which gives graduates a leg up on joining the growing ag-tech field or starting their own farm.
Because the climate is controlled inside the container, food can be grown all school year long with a predictable commercial-scale output. Greenery units can support 13,000 plants at a time, producing harvests of up to 900 heads of lettuce per week.
Katsiroubas says the technology is useful in a state such as Texas and notes Houston freight farmers played a critical role in providing food during Hurricane Harvey.
“These container farms act as a way to control the food supply chain, and make it resistant to shocks like extreme weather patterns or hurricanes or drought,” says Katsiroubas.
Katsiroubas says the container farms also are helping lower schools’ overall carbon footprint. Harvests happen just steps from the dining hall, which all but eliminates transportation emissions and packaging.
She says the farms use 99% less water than a traditional farm, running with as little as five gallons per day, less than the average dishwasher.
Author: Eric Galatas, Public News Service (TX)
The Shipping Container Farm Helping To Feed A Dubai Community
Old factories, warehouses, and disused shipping containers have paved the way for a global agricultural revolution that is reaping rewards in a Dubai neighborhood. As more and more indoor farms sprout up in cities across the world, including New York and London, the UAE is firmly on the vertical farming bandwagon
The Sustainable City neighborhood is now home to a vertical farm that is already sowing the seeds of success
Stuart Oda, founder and CEO of Alesca Life, believes vertical farming is set up to succeed in the Emirates. Antonie Robertson/The National
Old factories, warehouses, and disused shipping containers have paved the way for a global agricultural revolution that is reaping rewards in a Dubai neighborhood.
As more and more indoor farms sprout up in cities across the world, including New York and London, the UAE is firmly on the vertical farming bandwagon.
The Sustainable City in Dubai is the latest community to harness the production of fresh leafy greens and herbs in an urban environment, including lettuce, arugula, and basil.
Nestled among the residential neighborhood, Beijing-based Alesca Life Technologies set up a hydroponic shipping container farm in the area two months ago.
READ MORE
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Gulf's first commercial vertical farm opens in Dubai
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“The profile of the farmer is changing dramatically…today’s farming tool is the smartphone, not the plow,” Stuart Oda, founder of Alesca Life told The National.
“Where traditional farmers are dependent on the cadence of nature and seasons, urban farms can control nature.”
Over the past few years, the UAE’s urban landscape has proved to be the perfect host for soil-less food production.
With only a small percentage of the UAE’s land considered arable due to its harsh climate, more than 80 percent of food available in the country is imported, according to the Ministry of Economy.
As the UAE’s vertical farming industry continues to grow organically, this twenty-first-century approach to traditional farming has the potential to bring this figure down.
Buildings dotted among Dubai’s skyscrapers are brimming with life. Keeping the outside elements out, forward-thinking agricultural companies are using climate-controlled technology to turn empty indoor spaces into farms.
Although still in its infancy in the UAE, vertical farming has the potential to meet the growing global food demand by allowing for year-round harvest opportunities.
Bringing food production to cities, indoor farms create consumer convenience. But the benefits reach far beyond that.
Using hydroponics, the method of growing plants without soil via nutrient-rich solutions, they have an environmentally-friendly impact too.
Today’s farming tool is the smartphone not the plough
Stuart Oda
Mr. Oda said urban farms use “90 to 95 percent less water, fertilizer and land” compared to traditional agricultural methods and “no chemical pesticides, herbicides, or fungicides”.
"Annual water use for global food production is about 2.3 million cubic meters...this can be drastically reduced," Mr. Oda said.
“By eliminating the need for long haul transportation for import and export of major foodstuff, it cuts down on CO2 emissions too.”
And by growing up, in vertically stacked layers indoors, vital land is saved, he said.
The shipping container farm is also delivering an impressive yield in The Sustainable City. Antonie Robertson/The National
Controlled through a smartphone app, sensor boxes inside the farms monitor the environment and crops.
Running about “24 harvest cycles each year”, Mr. Oda said the Sustainable City shipping container produces fresh crop batches every two weeks and has already produced 26,0000 lettuces alone.
About 4,000 seedlings can grow at any one time in biodegradable peat moss sponges and each week, 720 leafy greens are sold to residents and cafes within the community for about Dh40 a kilogram, depending on the crop.
“We get to customize a lot of these things so we can reduce our environmental footprint," he said.
“We turn off LED lights when outside heat is optimal and use a drip-feed water cycle system.
“We can even customize a crop’s texture and flavor profile by adjusting the light and watering cycle to simulate a change in seasons.”
The vertical farm produces fresh batches of crops every two weeks. Antonie Robertson/The National
Alesca Life is not alone in taking an innovative approach to farming in the Emirates.
In 2018, the Ministry of Climate Change and Environment issued a rallying cry to the private sector to encourage innovation in agriculture.
One company that took heed was Uns Farms. Last year it opened one of the city’s largest urban farms in Dubai.
Located in an old warehouse in Al Quoz, the 30,000 square foot space harvests more than 1,000kg of leafy greens daily and supplies produce to Union Coop, Emirates Coop and Aswaaq supermarkets across the country, as well as restaurants and hotels.
In the next few months, Emirates Airlines is also expected to open its own vertical farm facility near Dubai World Central airport. Covering 130,000 square feet, it will have a production output equivalent to 900 acres of farmland. The first products are expected to be delivered to Emirates Flight Catering’s customers, including 105 airlines and 25 airport lounges, in December.
Updated: October 22, 2019
