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The Microgreens Show Episode 17 - Urban Farm $6000/wk To $250/wk
He will explain how the urban farm went from making $6000/wk to $250/wk
Visiting Vertical Farm On The West Side Of Chicago to interview CEO Mark Thomas.
He will explain how the urban farm went from making $6000/wk to $250/wk.
COVID-19 Pandemic Highlights Importance of Strengthening Singapore's Food Security, Say Experts
SINGAPORE: From growing rice at sea to turning to microalgae as an alternative protein source - these are some of the ways Singapore could boost its homegrown food production in the future as it looks to improve its food security
SINGAPORE: From growing rice at sea to turning to microalgae as an alternative protein source - these are some of the ways Singapore could boost its homegrown food production in the future as it looks to improve its food security.
The COVID-19 pandemic has proven to be a wake-up call for Singapore on the issue of food security, say experts.
“The crisis could be a timely reminder of how fragile food security can be,” said Professor William Chen, director of the Nanyang Technological University’s Food Science and Technology programme.
While there are other factors such as climate change which pose a threat to food security, these are relatively far off, he noted.
The coronavirus outbreak, as well as resulting lockdowns to stop its spread, has helped put a spotlight on the issue, said Prof Chen, who is also Michael Fam chair professor at NTU.
In March, Malaysia announced its movement control order, with measures including barring citizens from leaving and foreigners from entering the country. This sparked a round of panic buying in Singapore, with long queues of people at supermarkets stocking up on items such as eggs and meat.
Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong later announced that his Malaysian counterpart Muhyiddin Yassin had assured him that the flow of goods and cargo - including food supplies - between the two countries would continue despite the travel restrictions.
At the time, Trade and Industry Minister Chan Chun Sing noted that Singapore had contingency plans for a disruption of supplies from Malaysia, which included national stockpiles, building up its own capabilities and diversification of its sources. However, speaking in Parliament earlier this month, Mr Chan said the country would have to be ready for more disruptions to its supply of food and other essentials as lockdowns in various countries “severely diminished global production capacities and disrupted global supply chains”.
About 90 per cent of Singapore’s food currently comes from overseas.
Last month Singapore and six other countries - namely Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Myanmar and New Zealand - issued a joint ministerial statement highlighting a commitment to maintaining open supply chains amid the ongoing pandemic.
“One of the ways to go forward is to have more of these supply chain connectivity agreements,” said food security expert Paul Teng. However, Prof Teng - an adjunct senior fellow at the Centre for Non-Traditional Security Studies under the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies - said it was unclear how binding such agreements were.
During times of crisis, countries may understandably seek to protect their own interests, said Prof Chen.
“It would be very difficult to impose (on other countries) that you promised this and that,” he noted.
Prof Teng pointed to Vietnam’s move last month to suspend exports of rice to ensure its own national food security amid the COVID-19 outbreak - which it has since reversed - as well as other factors beyond the control of governments, such as the droughts in Thailand that had affected rice production there. Prof Chen also highlighted how governments may choose to keep supply chains open, as exports of food and other essential items are a significant source of revenue for these countries.
URBAN FARMING IN SINGAPORE
While only 10 per cent of Singapore’s food is produced locally, it aims to become less dependent on other countries over the course of the next decade.
Last year, the Singapore Food Agency announced plans to have 30 per cent of the country’s food produced locally by 2030. It aimsto achieve this in land-scarce Singapore by four means - harnessing technology, increasing the amount of space dedicated to farming, as well as supporting local agriculture and encouraging consumers to buy local produce.
In April, a S$30 million grant was announced to help boost local food production.
And with the opening of an 18ha Agri-Food Innovation Park in Sungei Kadut next year - dedicated to high-tech farming as well as research and development in the sector - Singapore aims to stake its own claim in the S$5 trillion agri-tech industry.
Even so, the price sensitivity of Singapore consumers means they tend to shy away from local produce, which is generally more expensive than imports from elsewhere in the region, Prof Teng noted.
“There are also some who believe that imported is better, particularly from countries like Japan, Australia or USA,” said Bjorn Low, co-founder and executive director of urban farming social enterprise Edible Garden City.
Prof Chen said his research in microalgae - an alternative protein food source - showed it could be done inexpensively and without sunlight.
Still, Mr Low noted there are other hurdles in urban farming in Singapore.
“One of the biggest challenges we face is a talent crunch. Not only is it difficult to hire Singaporeans to become farmers, it is also difficult to train our staff locally, as there are little to no accredited farming programmes,” he added, noting that there is also a lack of space and resources, with the resulting lack of economies of scale leading to higher costs.
“Thankfully, all of these issues are changing for the better, as the Government is extending more help to local farmers, and as people are becoming more aware of the quality of local produce, as well as the national and nutritional benefits of buying local.”
Technology could also expand the scope of what can be grown locally, said Prof Teng.
He pointed to British startup Agrisea, which claims to have developed a variety of rice that can be grown in the ocean, noting it is in early discussions to test it in Southeast Asia. "This could be a real game-changer," he said. "We might see big circular platforms growing rice (in the sea) around Singapore."
BACK TO BASICS FARMING
Even as Singapore moves to adopt tech to boost its local produce, Prof Teng - who himself ran a fish farm until two years ago - believes there is still a place for smaller, more conventional farming methods.
“It’s not proven to us yet - or to me anyway - that a few large farms can feed everybody,” he said.
Community gardens could serve this purpose of growing vegetables for residents, he noted, adding that the authorities could allow for excess vegetables from such gardens to be sold off.
While noting Edible Garden City uses agritech to overcome limitations such as space or climate - allowing it to grow kale and specialty Japanese vegetables like komatsuna in indoor climate controlled environments - there must be a balance with “natural farming methods”, Mr Low said.
“At Edible Garden City, we grow what we can outdoors using natural farming permaculture methods. This has the least impact on the environment and is the most sustainable way of farming, keeping our soil healthy and productive for future generations,” he said.
“Additionally, there's also a wide variety of veggies that grow well in our climate, many of which are not only tasty but that are incredibly nutritious.”
Prof Chen also noted that as part of food security, Singaporeans should reduce their level of consumption as well as the amount of food waste produced here. Any waste produced should be composted, he said.
He pointed to figures released by the National Environment Agency on Wednesday that showed that food waste made up 20 per cent - or 600,000 tonnes - of the three million tonnes of waste generated here last year.
Beyond that, he said there could be greater decentralisation of food production here, noting this would lighten the burden of ensuring food security on the Government.
While fish farming may be too difficult to do at a community level, there are other options, said Prof Chen.
“If we talk about community gardens, why not community chicken farms?” he asked, noting this could provide both poultry and eggs to residents.
Source: CNA/az
By Zhaki Abdullah
April 19, 2020
Can Vertical Farming Help In The Battle Against COVID-19?
For vertical farming companies, the increasingly-evident pressures facing the world’s food supply chains are confirmation of what they were already saying: resilient supply chains are hyper-local supply chains, especially when it comes to fresh produce
April 17, 2020
Companies of all stripes are rushing to respond to the threats (or opportunities) posed by the widening coronavirus pandemic. For vertical farming companies, the increasingly-evident pressures facing the world’s food supply chains are confirmation of what they were already saying: resilient supply chains are hyper-local supply chains, especially when it comes to fresh produce.
But there is also a more direct way vertical farmers want to confront the virus; they could be crucial in developing and manufacturing rapid testing kits, vaccines, or even a cure, according to pharmaceutical companies.
Inno-3B, a Quebec-based vertical farming equipment design company that has over the last year been developing a turnkey solution for plant-based pharmaceutical companies, is claiming to have diverted its focus onto confronting Covid-19 head-on. To do this, the firm has teamed up with biopharmaceutical businesses PlantForm Corporation, Cape Bio Pharms and Biopterre.
Growing monoclonal antibody treatments in vertical farms
Inno-3B plans to build and operate a pilot molecular farm at its 35,000 sq. ft facility located in St-Pacôme, QC. This facility will be the site where these firms develop what they call “a monoclonal antibody treatment” for COVID-19 patients. They will also develop “prophylactic applications” for first responders and other health-care personnel who require immediate protection.
“Speed and efficiency are of the essence right now,” Inno-3B CEO Martin Brault tells AFN. Intriguingly, the idea owes much to tobacco. The tailored solution Inno-3B has been developing for plant-based pharmaceutical companies in recent years uses strains of the tobacco plant. Even before Covid-19, plant-based molecular farming for protein production offered advantages over traditional fermentation systems to produce drugs using animal or bacterial cells. These advantages include lower costs, improved scalability and faster turnaround times.
“The science behind it is called Transient Gene Expression,” says Brault. “It is a real game-changer for the pharma industry. This is what we are embedding into our vertical farming equipment. If I had to explain it in its simplest form, here is how I’d do it: This science is based on using a characteristic of a very specific bacteria called agrobacterium. This bacteria has the ability to transfer some genetic material to a plant cell reproduction component in order to survive and reproduce itself. It is basically using the plant-growing mechanism to live… a parasite. The technology consists of tricking the bacteria by replacing a gene sequence inside its own RNA. Once the bacteria is “reprogrammed” it will enter the plant’s cell to transfer its gene but the result will be the expression of a targeted molecule for which it was programmed. In our case: antibodies for COVID-19 that will produce detection kits, treatment, and prophylactics.”
Time saver
Brault and his collaborators hope Inno-3B’s closed environment production platform and PlantForm’s proprietary biopharmaceutical manufacturing platform will reduce the time it takes to produce the drugs. According to Brault, the initiative will also allow the scientific community to accelerate the time to market of other plant-based solutions as a response to current and future pandemics. Production dedicated to initial clinical trials will begin in July 2020.
This joint effort will allow the production of approximately 4,000 doses per week of the target therapeutic antibodies for COVID-19. The facility, Brault says, will have the capacity to produce up to 400,000 doses per week for other pharmaceuticals. The pharmaceutical industry is already considered a potential saviour of vertical farming solutions, as competing on growing lettuce with outdoor farms is hard unless vertical farms get better at growing high-value produce that can only be grown in other parts of the world, like strawberries in Singapore, or tomatoes in Abu Dhabi. Indoors it is easier to ensure standards for consistency, repeatability, traceability and full scalability throughout the growth and materials handling cycles.
Lead photo: Concept of SARS-CoV-2, from iStock
Is your vertical farm working on a cure for COVID-19 or other diseases? Let us know. Drop an email to richard@agfunder.com
Are Container Farms The Solution To The Coronavirus Food Supply Problem?
As people run to grocery stores to stock up on food and supplies during a time of quarantine, the $899 billion restaurant industry is collapsing, raising questions about the economic security of the nation’s food supply industry in the time of COVID-19
April 13, 2020
As people run to grocery stores to stock up on food and supplies during a time of quarantine, the $899 billion restaurant industry is collapsing, raising questions about the economic security of the nation’s food supply industry in the time of COVID-19.
Dairy farms are already seeing the effects of nationwide school and restaurant closures in the wake of the coronavirus.
About one half of the normal demand for dairy has disappeared since the start of the United States’ social isolation period.
As a result, dairy farmers have had to throw out thousands of pounds of excess milk.
The agricultural side of the farming industry faces similar threats.
Food distributors and wholesalers are scrambling to redirect products from restaurants and other affected businesses to grocery stores.
But grocery stores desire different things than restaurants and schools, making it difficult to fully solve the problem.
Meanwhile, farm suppliers are racing to ship out fertilizers, seeds, and chemicals before the deadly virus disrupts the truck delivery industry.
Without these essential supplies, agriculture farmers won’t be able to produce enough food to meet demand in the States, especially as trade with other countries decreases.
The result could be a wide-scale food shortage.
Labor is also threatening agriculture as many field workers cannot afford to take time off, increasing potential for rapid spread throughout farms.
It’s a problem threatening to cause a significant labor shortage, lowering production and contributing to a potential food shortage.
Experts predict that our food security this fall and next year will be determined by how well these next harvests go.
With shortages in the food supply comes price gouging, leaving the world’s most vulnerable even more so.
The price of global food staples such as wheat and rice are already rising worldwide. Meanwhile, egg prices reached a record high in the US, as grocery stores reported a demand of six times the normal amount.
With more and more people facing unemployment and economic insecurity due to the effects of the global pandemic, increased food prices can make food insecurity worse.
Food security refers to the ability to obtain affordable, nutritious food.
In 2018, 5.6 million households in the US had very low food security.
Plus, as safety concerns skyrocket, consumers are becoming more conscious of how many hands have touched the food they’re about to take home and eat.
As a result, at-home solutions are seeming more appealing.
Since the beginning of March, Google searches for words related to “gardening” and “hydroponics” have increased.
In this time of uncertainty, small-scale indoor farming, like container farms, could prove to be an emergency solution.
Container farms are small indoor farms built inside of repurposed shipping containers.
They have the potential to easily provide food to urban areas, which tend to have the highest populations of food-insecure households, as they don’t require any farmland, only electricity, water, and internet connections.
Container farms also won’t be too affected by labor problems, as they’re fairly self-sufficient, meaning it doesn’t require too many laborers to ensure a bountiful harvest.
Higher tech containers, like our Pure Greens Container Farms, use controlled environment agriculture technology that’s automated and controllable through a smartphone app.
This allows for a more hands-off approach than traditional agriculture.
It also means the growing environment simulates perfect conditions for crops, resulting in more consistent and reliable yields.
Container farms are also able to yield quite a lot while being compact in size, which could help ease some of the burden of a global food shortage.
We’ll have to wait to see how well the agriculture industry adjusts to the pandemic, but it’s worth it to be proactive by looking into possible solutions as soon as possible.
If you’re interested in learning more about starting your own container farm, visit our website or call us at 602–753–3469 to get started!
WRITTEN BY Pure Greens Arizona LLC
Pure Greens’ container-based grow systems offer a variety of interior layouts, sizes, and options so customers can create a farm that meets their needs.
Tags: Container Farming Farming Covid 19
Global Food Exports Are Paralyzed by Problems at Ports
The port backups that have paralyzed food shipments around the world for weeks aren’t getting much better. In fact, in some places, they’re getting worse
April 14, 2020
The port backups that have paralyzed food shipments around the world for weeks aren’t getting much better. In fact, in some places, they’re getting worse.
In the Philippines, officials at a port that’s a key entry point for rice said last week the terminal was at risk of shutting as thousands of shipping containers pile up because lockdown measures are making them harder to clear. Meanwhile, curfews in Guatemala and Honduras, known for their specialty coffees, are limiting operating hours at ports and slowing shipments. And in parts of Africa, which is heavily dependent on food imports, there aren’t enough workers showing up to help unload cargoes.
The port choke-points are just the latest example of how the virus is snarling food production and distribution across the globe. Trucking bottlenecks, sick plant workers, export bans and panic buying have all contributed to why shoppers are seeing empty grocery store shelves, even amid ample supplies.
Food moves from farm to table through a complicated web of interactions. So problems for even just a few ports can ripple through to create troubling slowdowns. For example, wheat grown in Europe can be shipped off to India, where it’s processed into naan bread for eventual export into the American market. Disruptions along the way are causing heavy delays.
And there’s the threat that things could get much worse if port problems spread. Just a handful of countries, for instance, export the bulk of the world’s rice and wheat, staple sources of calories. Soybeans from South America help keep the planet’s livestock fed, and the vast majority of cocoa supplies are shipped out of a small section of West Africa.
Even countries like the U.S., a key food exporter, depend on imports for things like wine, spices, cheese, and out-of-season produce — that’s how you can make avocado toast year-round.
U.S. frozen-foods company Saffron Road relies on Indian shipments for naan and other products. A three-week lockdown on the nation’s 1.3 billion people has brought transportation of goods within its borders to a near halt, and the government sparked confusion when it told all major ports that the virus was a valid reason to halt some operations.
Saffron Road may be forced to look for other suppliers if disruptions continue much longer, said Chief Executive Officer Adnan Durrani. Durrani said that his Indian products are well-stocked, though, and he won’t seek alternative suppliers for those goods.
“It’s uncharted territory,” Durrani said.
Still, in some parts of the world earlier port disruptions have already improved.
China is past the worst of its problems. At the height of the nation’s outbreak, thousands of containers of frozen pork, chicken and beef were piling up at major ports after transport disruptions and labor shortages slowed operations. The logjam also created a dearth of containers elsewhere in the world, which was then compounded by the fact that vessels weren’t making trips out from the Asian nation with manufactured goods. Those issues have since cleared up as the country went back to work.
In Brazil, the world’s top exporter of soybeans, beef, coffee and sugar, shipments are now running at a normal pace amid a joint effort between the government and companies to keep shipping flowing.
A.P. Moller-Maersk A/S, the world’s largest handler of refrigerated containers, is bringing 1,800 empty units to the South American nation to counter a shortfall for Brazil’s meat shipments. Containers are scarce in Brazil after being used for refrigerated stockpiles amid congestion in China’s key ports during the Asian nation’s lockdown, Maersk said.
Brazil also managed to export record volumes of soybeans in March after the government intervened to stop a strike threatened by port workers who were worried about their safety.
“Brazil’s export volumes are so big that any minor issue must be solved very quickly. Otherwise, it may lead to logistic bottlenecks in all the world,” said Sergio Mendes, head of the nation’s grain export group known as Anec.
But with the disease spreading, container issues are popping up in other regions. The sturdy boxes, often made of steel and usually measuring somewhere between 20 feet (about 6 meters) to 50 feet in length, are constantly sent back and forth across the planet with goods. That flow has been heavily disrupted as the virus slows manufacturing and cripples demand for some products. The Port of Los Angeles, for example, saw a 31% drop in volume in March compared with a year ago as retailers scale backorders.
Food exporters are being forced to wait longer for incoming shipments to be able to empty and refill vessels with their goods. That’s the case in Europe, where operations are running more or less normally, but the container squeeze is causing delays, according to Philippe Binard, general delegate of Freshfel Europe, a produce association.
It’s also a problem in Canada after some shipping routes were canceled by carriers because of lower demand for manufactured goods.
“The outbound capacity is really starting to diminish,” said Mark Hemmes, president of the Edmonton, Alberta-based Quorum Corp., a company hired by the federal government to monitor Canada’s grain transportation system.
Across the globe in Nigeria, the problem is too many containers, which are piling up and clogging the ports. Workers who would normally be clearing the congestion are facing difficulties coming in as the nation’s lockdown shut public transportation. Banks near the ports are closing, making it harder to process receipts and clearing documents.
With food stuck in containers floating at the docks, it’s exacerbating shortages and driving up prices.
“The ports are jam-packed,” Tony Nwabunike, president of the Association of Nigerian Licensed Customs Agents, the union that represents workers who clear the ports. “The main reason is that there is no movement now. Even those of us that have been given orders to go to the ports as essential service providers, we are not accessing the ports because transportation remains skeletal,” and not all workers have the necessary paperwork to show they are essential employees, he said.
“Police are on the road, so people are scared. There is harassment everywhere.”
Even as some of these issues start to ease, there’s also concern over the possibility of port workers getting sick. Employees in close proximity will have to be quarantined if they are exposed, and there’s the threat of contagion. Hubs like Singapore and Shanghai have halted crew transfers to prevent the spread of the virus.
In Australia, two workers at Port Botany, one of the country’s biggest container ports, tested positive for COVID-19, it was confirmed this week. A further 17 workers went into self-isolation for 14 days.
The threat of sick workers is top of mind for Paul Aucoin, executive director of the Port of South Louisiana, the largest tonnage port district in the U.S. The virus has already forced some security personnel to self-isolate, and vessel crews are no longer allowed onshore in an effort to stem the spread, he said.
“I fear we’re going to lose some workers, and when you lose workers it gets harder to keep the same pace,” Aucoin said. “We are going to see a slowdown.”
Lead photo: Bloomberg
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Vertical Farm Accelerates Rollout For Covid-19 Crisis
Bristol vertical farm technology developer LettUs Grow is building two LED-based vertical farms to feed vulnerable communities in ten days
April 09, 2020, // By Nick Flaherty
Bristol vertical farm technology developer LettUs Grow is building two LED-based vertical farms to feed vulnerable communities in ten days
Indoor farming technology provider LettUs Grow is building two vertical farm modules in the UK to help feed vulnerable communities during the COVID-19 outbreak.
The company, based in Bristol, UK, has won a number of awards for its ethical practices and is teaming up with the food redistribution charity FareShare South West to ensure the produce gets to those who need it most.
LettUs Grow expects the first of the LED-based aeroponic vertical farm modules to be ready to start producing fresh produce from mid-April, with the first harvests ready to be delivered to FareShare just ten days after the farm’s commissioning. A second, larger module will be following in June.
The farm’s operations are automated and run with only one person on-site at any given time to allow the social distancing of key workers and minimizing strain on an already stretched farm labor force. The food is also produced in a high care environment with few people coming into contact with it. Once up and running, the farms will be able to provide a consistent, predictable and climate-resilient food supply to the local community all year round. A vertical farm is energy-intensive, and the company has a deal with supplier Octopus Energy to use energy from purely renewable wind and solar sources.
The coronavirus outbreak has shone a spotlight on the fragility of the UK’s just-in-time food supply chain. The UK only produces 50 percent of the food it consumes, which leaves it vulnerable to shocks in the global supply chain. The closures and lockdowns enforced due to the pandemic have also created logistical bottlenecks that ripple across these lengthy chains
“When we founded LettUs Grow, we wanted to enable anyone, anywhere in the world, to grow fresh produce near its point of consumption. That mission has hardly ever felt as urgent as it does today. We knew we had to get involved and help in any way we could," said Jack
Farmer, co-founder and Chief Scientific Officer of LettUs Grow. "Because our farm modules can be deployed anywhere with an electricity and water supply, they are uniquely positioned to increase regions’ food supply chain resilience by diversifying local food production.”
UNITED KINGDOM: Liverpool's Underground Urban Farm Producing Greens Boxes For Residents
Since launching its Greens for Good project last year, Farm Urban has been busy delivering boxes and towers to businesses and schools across the city
By Lisa Rand Community Reporter
11 APR 2020
The farm, underneath the Baltic Triangle, produces leafy greens hydroponically in vertical towers
Greens for Good is a project by Farm Urban, based in a tunnel under UTC Life Sciences in the Baltic Triangle
A Liverpool urban farm based in a Victorian tunnel underneath the Baltic Triangle is to provide boxes of leafy greens to Liverpool's isolating residents during the lockdown.
Modern mansion with swimming pool around the corner from Lark Lane
Since launching its Greens for Good project last year, Farm Urban has been busy delivering boxes and towers to businesses and schools across the city.
The social enterprise is based beneath the UTC Life Sciences building on Upper Parliament Street, where it produces leafy greens in vertical towers grown hydroponically under controlled conditions.
Yet, with many of their customers closed during the current crisis, Farm Urban has now "pivoted" its activities to work to keeping Liverpool's residents in good supply of healthy fresh produce during lockdown - and the team have adopted a military-style approach of splitting their team in two for the duration of the pandemic to ensure crop production continues even if team members become unwell.
Managing director of Farm Urban, Dr. Paul Myers told the ECHO: "Before all this, we were mainly focusing on our boxes of greens going into offices, and for every box that we sold into the office that would go towards greens in school kitchens."We also worked with businesses installing large scale systems. and that's now ground to a halt.
Read Entire Article
What Are The Hygiene Benefits From The Way We Grow?
Due to the surge in COVID-19 cases around the world, proper hygiene practices such as hand washing have become a more regular part of the daily routine
Due to the surge in Covid-19 cases around the world, proper hygiene practices such as hand washing have become a more regular part of daily routine. However, the importance of maintaining high hygiene standards has always been critical when it comes to food safety. Given the sheer number of restaurants in the UAE, local government regulations prescribe exact procedures and requirements for establishments that handle and serve food. For example, Madar Farms has been a certified member of Dubai Municipality’s FoodSafe initiative since 2018. While we can be confident in the hygiene protocols governing where our food was served, do we really know under what conditions our food was grown and packed?
We’ve all experienced some sort of food contamination at one point in our lives – but did you know that food contamination kills almost half a million people every year? [1] Unsafe food containing harmful bacteria, viruses, parasites, or chemical substances causes over 200 types of disease – ranging from diarrhea to cancers. In 2019 Romaine Lettuce grown in California was recalled twice due to E.Coli contamination, which can cause pneumonia, urinary tract infections, or even kidney failure. The outbreak was found to originate in field agriculture due to contaminated water sources. Madar Farms eliminates this risk by only using municipal drinking water as our indoor farms’ water source, which passes through a 3-stage purification process consisting of a UV-light, a sediment filter, and a carbon filter.
Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points (HACCP) is a widely recognized food safety certification. Rather than rely on intensive inspections of the final product, HACCP’s approach is to ensure that standard operating procedures are designed to avoid food safety hazards in the first place. Our operations are HACCP certified, but we hold ourselves to a higher standard.
Our hygiene protocols are founded on three principles: education of staff, mitigation of potential risks, and strict adherence to standardized processes. Every single grower in our team holds Basic Food Hygiene certifications, and farm managers are Level 3 Food Safety certified. Potential contamination risks are minimized through structural and procedural practices.
Upon entering our farms, our staff remove their street clothes and put on food handler workwear (white cotton lab coats and trousers). Shoes are changed, hands are washed, and then all workers pass over a shoe disinfection mat. Inside the farm, daily and weekly cleaning routines ensure all critical surfaces are properly cleaned and disinfected with plant-safe sanitizers.
We use steel structures to prevent pest intrusion. In our farms, we use hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) to sanitize all surfaces and growing environments. We chose this because the only byproducts of this formula are simply water and oxygen – things that people and plants love. Even our water and air are treated by UV filters, running 24/7 to ensure that even in the unlikely event that a contaminant enters the farm, it will be neutralized immediately before spreading. Most importantly, access is restricted to only those essential to growing, with a strict visitor policy that restricts physical entrance to the farm (we still have windows that allow you to see our growers at work because we value transparency).
We go above and beyond regulatory requirements by submitting random samples of our produce to screen for all recognized pathogens to third party laboratories that are accredited by Emirates International Accreditation Center (ISO/IEC 17025:2005). Although this extra step is not required by local law or even industry best practice, we choose to do this to ensure our customers are eating the safest food possible coming from our farms.
As we excitedly look forward to building our new facility, we are working to ensure that the highest standards of food safety and hygiene are incorporated into the facility design and layout. We are employing lessons learned in our R&D facility to further minimize the risk of either a plant-based infection or harvested produce contamination. We have benchmarked the industry’s recognized food hygiene leaders and are in consultation with two international food safety consultancies to ensure that this commercial-scale facility delivers not only locally grown, nutritious food, but that food that is safe for you and your families, for decades to come.
Rabobank: Fresh Produce Foodservice Demand Has 'Virtually Stopped' in Europe
Demand from foodservice channels for fresh produce in Europe, North America and New Zealand has fallen off a cliff during recent weeks in the Covid-19 pandemic, according to Rabobank
by Fresh Fruit Portal
05 April 2020
Demand from foodservice channels for fresh produce in Europe, North America and New Zealand has fallen off a cliff during recent weeks in the Covid-19 pandemic, according to Rabobank.
However, the Netherlands-based company said in a report that overall sales volumes of fresh produce are expected to remain at pre-pandemic levels or even to increase. This is due to at-home meals including a higher proportion of fruit and vegetables compared to out-of-home meals.
During mid-March 2020, fresh produce retail sales increased by over 30% year-on-year in the U.S., while frozen produce sales doubled as hoarding and eating at home become more prevalent.
"The ‘healthfulness halo’ around fresh produce could be a positive demand factor that ends up lasting longer than the COVID-19 outbreak," Rabobank said in the report.
The company also highlighted that businesses supplying the foodservice sector have been impacted severely by lockdowns, as many of them cannot easily change to other clients as these have different requirements.
The share of foodservice sales in total fresh produce sales varies widely among countries - with around 20% in Europe and 25% in New Zealand.
Rabobank explained that although most fresh produce sales have been transferred from food service to retail, this isn't the case across the board.
"Specific items that rely heavily on foodservice are lettuce, fresh herbs, asparagus, and red currants," the company said. "One specific, young sector potentially being impacted by this is vertical farming, as many of these farms are highly exposed to local foodservice clients. Forced by these difficult market circumstances, growers are looking for alternative sales channels, like delivery of vegetable boxes or selling directly from the farm via a drive-through."
Logistical challenges in the Covid-19 pandemic
Some of other major concerns and uncertainties in the fresh produce industry at the
moment are logistics and labor, Rabobank said.
The industry has been faced with numerous logistical challenges caused by border closures, port lockdowns, flight cancellations, and other hiccups, the report said.
While borders have not closed for the transportation of essential products, including fresh produce, in some places there have been delays which lead to increased costs.
And the sudden high retail demand in some countries has also resulted in higher
transportation costs, Rabobank said.
"The uncertainty about the situation and potentially new challenges popping up is affecting the market. For example, just after the Covid-19 outbreak in China, a shortage of sea containers was reported, but this situation has been improving over the course of March," it said. "Still troublesome are the flight disruptions that have resulted in problems for some specific items that are flown on passenger jets, like premium exotic fresh fruits and cut flowers."
Prices of globally traded products, like tropical fruits, are reported to be "extremely volatile" since the Covid-19 outbreak.
In addition, changes in exchange rates will also potentially affect trade flows.
"As a global recession is now more imminent, money is flocking to safe-haven currencies, like the U.S. dollar," it said. "This will negatively impact export demand for the U.S., but positively impact export demand for countries that are net food exporters, like New Zealand."
Labor concerns for fresh produce
Another major concern has been the safety and availability of employees, both on farms and in packing and distribution.
Growers and packers are having to deal with extra costs for recruitment and also for
measures related to the required social distancing, like additional work shifts, the report said.
In the U.S., there is uncertainty about seasonal labor from Mexico, while the fresh produce sectors in Australia and New Zealand rely quite heavily on people from the Pacific region and backpackers for harvesting and picking fresh produce.
In Europe, growers almost completely rely on immigrant workers from countries inside and outside of the EU.
"A possible solution to labor shortages is recruiting students or people from other sectors, such as tourism and hospitality, who are unemployed due to the Covid-19 crisis," the report said. "In Europe, growers are trying to collectively organize charter flights for Romanian workers circumventing border checks."
Small Business Administration COVID-19 Resources & Information
The SBA is responding to small business owners impacted by the Coronavirus with several different forms of assistance
By urbanagnews
April 3, 2020
By Marlow Schindler, U.S. Small Business Administration
The SBA is responding to small business owners impacted by the Coronavirus with several different forms of assistance.
Last week the CARES Act was signed by President Trump. The Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) outlined in this stimulus package is not yet available. Lenders may begin processing loan applications as soon as April 3, 2020.
The SBA provides low-interest disaster loans directly to help businesses and homeowners recover from declared disasters. For this disaster, Economic Injury Disaster Loans are currently available throughout the state of California. You can get access to the online application and information about the SBA disaster loans here. The online application is now open.
Anyone who has already applied for EIDL should have received an email from SBA this week providing instructions on how to apply for the up to $10,000 EIDL advance. Advance may be available even if your EIDL application was declined or is still pending, and will be forgiven.
If you wish to apply for the Advance on your EIDL, please visit www.SBA.gov/Disaster as soon as possible to fill out a new, streamlined application. In order to qualify for the Advance, you need to submit this new application even if you previously submitted an EIDL application. Applying for the Advance will not impact the status or slow your existing application.
If you have questions about this application or problems providing the required information, please contact our Customer Service Center at 1-800-659-2955 or (TTY: 1-800-877-8339) DisasterCustomerService@sba.gov.
You may always reach out to your local Small Business Development Center, Women’s Business Center, Veteran’s Business Outreach Center or SCORE chapter to get paired with an advisor who can help you during this difficult time.
Also, we encourage you to subscribe to our national email updates via www.SBA.gov/Updates and follow the SBA on Twitter at @SBAgov for the latest news on available SBA resources and services.
Best regards,
Marlow Schindler
Assistant District Director for Lender Relations & Public Information Officer
San Francisco District Office
U.S. Small Business Administration(415) 519-0030
marlow.schindler@sba.gov
Check regularly at SBA’s page for Coronavirus Small Business Guidance
Major Food Shortages Possible In Asia Says "Food Industry Asia"
ASEAN Food and Beverage Alliance (AFBA), the regional associations representing Asia and ASEAN’s food and beverage (F&B) industries respectively, are jointly calling upon governments across the region to ensure the unhindered production and supply of food
30-Mar-2020 By
Jim Cornall
In light of the increasing number of nationwide lockdowns and border restrictions, Food Industry Asia (FIA) and the ASEAN Food and Beverage Alliance (AFBA), the regional associations representing Asia and ASEAN’s food and beverage (F&B) industries respectively, are jointly calling upon governments across the region to ensure the unhindered production and supply of food and beverages as each country tries to contain the outbreak of COVID-19.
READ MORE
COVID-19 Roundtable: Indoor Ag Perspectives On Coronavirus
One of indoor ag’s greatest strengths is its diversity. Under one roof — hopefully, with a rooftop garden — it unites agriculture, tech, business, tradition, and innovation in a way few other industries can match
One of indoor ag’s greatest strengths is its diversity. Under one roof — hopefully, with a rooftop garden — it unites agriculture, tech, business, tradition, and innovation in a way few other industries can match. This diversity means that when it comes to confronting something like coronavirus, people may experience the crisis in different ways. And it means a world of different people bringing their unique experiences to the monumental task of keeping people fed while the rest of the world is shut down.
With that in mind, we reached out to our friends across the industry for a (socially-distanced, email) roundtable on what they’re seeing now, and what it means for the industry.
Supply and Demand Are Changing
As shelter in place orders go out across the country, shuttering bars and restaurants, Americans are returning to eating at home, and that’s changing how they buy.
“Supply chains are disrupted and most indicators say that it will take three to four weeks to adjust to the current coronavirus situation. There is a big shift away from restaurants and toward retail food purchases and direct to consumer options. Direct-to-consumer quickly went from something grocery stores and restaurants wanted to figure out to an urgent need given the number of people that cannot or do not want to venture out of their house.
“Local produce and products from vertical farms can fit nicely into this new model. They provide local and fresh options that can fill in current supply chain gaps. Consumers tend to increase purchases of local, organic, and natural products when there is a human health or food safety concern. This spike will likely happen here. The only factor pulling it down is that these products tend to be more expensive and many people are very worried about their jobs. Over 3 million people filed for unemployment this week and that number is expected to rise dramatically in the coming weeks.” — Michelle Klieger, Strategerm Consulting
Automation Is Imperative
Whether you harvest insects, like Ÿnsect, or make agtech solutions, like Autogrow, it’s clear that this moment underscores what we’ve known for a long time: automation is one of the keys to the next generation of indoor ag.
“We have a robotized manufacturing process, where we require very, very few workers. They are wearing a full suit, so they are secure, and have a mask, like a diver. The risks of contamination are very low.” — Alain Revah, Ÿnsect
“We recently launched our new environmental sensor network, Folium, and we’re super excited to present this state-of-the-art solution to commercial growers. Launching a new product just before a global pandemic hit, who could plan for that? We are responding to this by changing channels we utilize to connect with our customer base, including more marketing and video conferencing based meetings.”
“In the current climate it’s pretty evident that if you have advanced automation systems and new smart applications to run your farm, e.g. remotely accessible environmental and crop information along with farm management tools, it gives you the freedom to make sure you are aware of what’s happening with your crops and manage them, without having to always be physically on-site. And it minimizes commercial risk. You can’t do without a grower or manager (yet) but you can certainly use solutions that can help — especially during isolation situations, reducing risk to a minimum.” — Darryn Keiller, CEO, Autogrow
Protect Your People
Our product is great food, but great food comes from great, hard-working people, and their health is always key. That means shaking up business, and how we connect with each other on an emotional level, too.
“We restricted international travel earlier in March, we could see that coming. International travel and now domestic have effectively been suspended. Cancellation of trade shows has been the biggest impact, they are how the whole industry operates in terms of customer engagement.” — Keiller
“We are dealing with anxiety and the fear of the unknown with all of the employees. We are all human and struggle with not knowing details and being out of control. So lots of communication, discussions (which are slightly more awkward as we all practice social distancing). Trying to understand all of the new rules and options for employees as we continue to process the changes that are happening on a day to day basis.” — Paul Brentlinger, President, CropKing
A Silver Lining?
There is no doubt that coronavirus is awful in just about every way, but somewhere in there is small but powerful silver lining: it’s making people think seriously about where their food comes from, and what it takes to keep stores and markets full.
As Brentlinger puts, it, “I think it shows us how prepared we need to be for any situation, and how essential we are to the world.”
Amen to that!
Learn more about Contain and funding your indoor ag business at our website, and subscribe to Inside The Box, our weekly newsletter.
Agriculture Food Supply Chain Indoor Agriculture Vertical Farming
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. Contain.ag
"A Few Weeks Ago, We Couldn't Have Imagined This Situation"
Due to the COVID-19 outbreak, the Dutch restaurants and cafes had to shut down two weeks ago
Due to the COVID-19 outbreak, the Dutch restaurants and cafes had to shut down two weeks ago.
Although food can still be picked up or delivered, it has proven to be a burden for many food suppliers and requires innovative thinking. The Duurzame Kost City Farm is located in a unique location, on an industrial heritage in Eindhoven, the Netherlands and is the largest circular indoor farm in Western Europe. It grows leafy greens, strawberries, and trout using an aquaponic growing system. The aquaponic farm produces 20,000 kg lettuce per year on a surface of 400m2.
Innovative thinking
Some distributors have created a local mini-market to supply all produce available and in this case, to sell their products. A client of Duurzame Kost, restaurant Phood, based in Eindhoven as well, has come up with a food Farm Box. Jos Hakkennes, owner of Duurzame Kost says: “Together with their other suppliers, cooks are making recipes where we get to deliver the ingredients needed. The Farm Box can be ordered at the Food restaurant and will be delivered at your home address, but there’s also a pickup point. Last week the first boxes have been delivered out and about Eindhoven. Another initiative is a ‘mini market’ located in Maarheze, which is about 10 km to the south of Eindhoven. The market serves as a fresh collection point for customers, which includes the fresh lettuce of Duurzame Kost.
Local supportHakkennes mentions, “Last week we had a big supply of fresh lettuce that could not yet be used for the mini market and the Farm Box concept. Therefore, we promoted the pick-up of our fresh produce on social networks at a fair price in order to prevent it from being thrown away. We received great support from the locals. A few weeks ago, we couldn't have imagined this situation. Nevertheless, it’s great to see creative ideas coming up and that’s really a good thing.”
Jos and an employee checking on the basil
Product innovation
Also, Duurzame Kost itself is looking to new products. "We are currently working on the possibilities within aquaponics around saltwater growing, such as sea vegetables. We see a big demand in these products from the restaurants we supply to. So there’s definitely a market for it, looking at the sales."
Strawberries, leafy greens and trout
The main product of Duurzame Kost is lettuce, but they also supply 4kg of kale year-round to a local restaurant and grow strawberries as a seasonal activity to provide to local restaurants. As the plants are put up in February, it's going to be a while before they start bearing fruit. “These strawberries take a bit more time to grow than normally, as we offer mixed fresh produce. In the first one and a half years, we have done a lot of research into crops and specific varieties that can grow next to each other.”
A freshly harvested salad with trout
“Our fruits are not very big but they taste great. As the strawberries are a seasonal side product we love providing them to our local restaurants”, Hakkennes adds. And starting next week they are also kicking off the delivery of their fresh trout straight to customers - being grown in the water used for the cultivation of the plants. "The trout is sold per 300 grams for a price of €3.95 ($4.33) each. What is being produced is directly delivered to the customers after the harvest. Because we can.”
Daycare
Duurzame Kost also serves as a care farm as we take in people with diverse disabilities and social backgrounds on a daily basis. We have around 12 people that come to our indoor farm, but the visiting days are dispersed over the week as it varies weekly. The social workplace is not canceled as it serves as a daycare for these people. “The hygiene measures are stricter than ever so we take this into account when we let people in”, Hakkennes mentions.
Lead photo: Jos Hakkennes, owner of Duurzame Kost
For more information:
Duurzame Kost
Jos Hakkennes, founder
jos@duurzamekost.nl
www.duurzamekost.nl
Publication date: Mon 30 Mar 2020
Author: Rebekka Boekhout
© HortiDaily.com
“Our Ozone Technology Kills Viruses Including Corona, And Keeps Fresh Produce Safe”
Many mitigation tools are being used to stop the spread of the coronavirus, including social distancing, and enhanced personal hygiene
Christian DeBlasio with Purfresh
Many mitigation tools are being used to stop the spread of the coronavirus, including social distancing, and enhanced personal hygiene. In addition, health experts are promoting healthy eating as a way to boost immunity. “Here at Purfresh, we ensure that the fruits and vegetables transported around the globe are safe and virus-free,” says Christian DeBlasio, the company’s President & CEO.
Ozone Sterilizes Cargo And Mitigates VIrus Spread
The company specializes in controlled atmosphere for fresh produce in refrigerated ocean containers. Vessel journeys can be long, varying from seven days up to 50 and during this time, controlled atmosphere stops the fruit from ripening. “It minimizes decay and keeps fruit fresh during transit,” said DeBlasio. “I admit we are not the only company offering CA technology. However, we are unique in the sense that we are the only company in the world that adds ozone into our controlled atmosphere reefer container product.” Ozone has the attribute to mitigate the spread of viruses and protect food. It reduces the threat of foodborne illness as it sterilizes the container and cargo, prevents cross-contamination and can decrease the risk of many types of surface-borne pathogens by as much as 99 percent in a time frame of five to seven days.
Kills Viruses And Bacteria
“Ozone can go anywhere air can go and that’s why it is so effective in disinfecting,” continued DeBlasio. It has been scientifically proven to kill pathogens, including E. coli, salmonella, and listeria. It acts as a powerful, residue-free disinfectant that immediately reverts to oxygen, leaving the product’s natural taste, texture, and smell intact. In general, enveloped viruses, like Covid-19 are considered the least resistant to disinfectants, but several studies, including one from the Thailand Medical News, are demonstrating ozone’s ability to destroy the current coronavirus.
“Our ozone system is the only solution proven effective to minimize decay, control ripening, and enhance food safety without the use of chemicals,” said DeBlasio. “Stopping the spread of COVID-19 is a top priority and we want to do our part in ensuring the food we eat is healthy, safe and tastes great. That is why we are investing more than USD $1 million on new equipment this year.” Like SARS-1, COVID-19 is a respiratory syndrome. They are both viruses that can last on different types of surfaces for days. However, the big difference is that with SARS-1 people showed symptoms sooner and with COVID-19 symptoms can be significantly delayed. “This causes a major spread issue and ozone can play an important role in limiting the virus spread.”
For more information on Purfresh’s ozone system and current research on the technology, go to:
Purfresh Ozone Coronavirus or contact:
Christian DeBlasio
Purfresh
Tel: (+1) 813-546-0274
cdeblasio@purfresh.com
www.purfresh.com
www.intellipur.com
Publication date: Thu 26 Mar 2020
Author: Marieke Hemmes
© FreshPlaza.com
Is Covid-19 Likely To Be At Pandemic Proportions For 2 Years?
Scott Hsieh works at David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA
Answered March 16, 2020 · Upvoted by Pedro Frank Ferrer Rivera, PhD Medicine and Healthcare, Santiago De Cuba, Cuba (2005) and David Chan, MD from UCLA, Stanford Oncology Fellowship
Here’s The Problem With Covid-19:
If we do nothing, it goes out of control. There is nearly universal agreement on this point. Every week the number of infected people doubles or triples, according to the best estimates of R0 today. Within about two months, hospitals start to collapse under the pressure (Italy) and can survive only by building emergency new facilities using help from the rest of the country (Wuhan). However, if you really are doing nothing, then two months later the rest of the country falls down and no one can help you. At this point, there are no more ICU beds left and the mortality rate goes from 2% to 5-10% because we run out of respirators.
On the other hand, if we declare a state of emergency … schools shut down, airports virtually close, and the country goes on lockdown. All for what, like 3,000 cases?? Then if the disease is successfully suppressed a few months later, everything opens back up and we look around and say, gee, why did we even do that?! Why did the country shut down when the ordinary flu killed 100x more people this year? Didn’t we way overreact?
But the difference between 5,000 cases and 5 million cases is 10 weeks of inaction. That is why governments around the world are taking severe and enormous action now because we are at the edge of the precipice.
To answer the original question — will Covid-19 be considered a pandemic in two years? That depends on us. Please, if you have a cough and/or a fever, stay at home and stay away from others. You probably have a cold, but if you’re a minimally symptomatic carrier, you can do your part by making sure your particular Covid-19 ends at you and doesn’t get passed on to another person.
Coronavirus Pandemic Highlights Vital Need For Vertical Farms In World Cities
Although the sources and sourcing of food in North America and Western Europe are currently generally secure, what might soon become a prodigious concern is that their workers in the production, distribution and retail segments of the food supply chain may eventually succumb to coronavirus infection
MARCH 25, 2020
by Professor Joel Cuello, Ph.D.
Image modified from Martin Sanchez/Unsplash
The speed with which the coronavirus outbreaks in Asia, Europe, and North America metastasized into a full-blown global pandemic — catching many world governments by surprise and with little preparation — underscores just how our world today is highly interconnected and how, in order to contain and stem the surging pandemic, temporary disconnection from the physically-networked world by cities, regions and even entire nations has become an urgent imperative.
With confirmed coronavirus cases globally now exceeding 370,000 and the number of deaths surpassing 16,000, many world cities have become throbbing epicenters of the surging pandemic. Accordingly, various countries, states, and cities have enforced lockdown or stay-at-home orders with drastic measures including banning public gatherings, restricting restaurants to take-out and delivery only, and closing schools, bars, theaters, casinos and indoor shopping malls, among others.
Such orders, or their looming possibility, have consequently intensified the panic-buying urges of consumers for food and household essentials particularly in North America and Western Europe, giving occasions for daily photos of empty grocery-store shelves splashed ubiquitously from across news networks to social media platforms. The availability of food in North America and Western Europe during the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, however, remains generally secure, at least in the near term of the pandemic.
Food Sourcing
New York City, for instance, normally has food supply amounting to approximately 8.6 million tonnes (19 billion pounds) annually as purveyed by a network of regional and national food distributors, which then is sold at about 42,000 outlets across the city’s five boroughs, according to a 2016 study sponsored by the city.
Over half of the outlets are made up of approximately 24,000 restaurants, bars, and cafes through which consumers access almost 40 percent of the city’s food by volume annually. The rest of the outlets are chain supermarkets, bodegas, and online grocery stores. The study reported that the city’s annual food supply feeds over 8.6 million city residents, over 60 million tourists plus daily commuters in the hundreds of thousands from the tri-state area of New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut.
With millions of tourists and commuters now staying away from the city, however, and with the city’s hotels at just 49 percent occupancy for the week ending March 14, an excess of the food supply is readily available for diversion into the city’s grocery stores and other retailers to meet the surge in demand by local residents. In the case of Germany, the country imports food that accounts for nearly 8 percent of its US$1.3 Trillion imported goods in 2018. Germany procures from abroad about 3 million tonnes of fresh vegetables annually — with cucumbers and tomatoes accounting for 40 percent of the import volume — at a value of around 3.5 billion Euros, mainly from the Netherlands and Spain. Indeed, approximately 30 percent of the 2.6 million tonnes of exported Dutch-grown fresh vegetables go to Germany.
Meanwhile, approximately 80 percent of the United Kingdom’s food and food ingredients are imported. The U.K. imports approximately 2.4 million tonnes of fresh vegetables each year from Spain (33 percent), the Netherlands (28 percent), France (10 percent) and from various parts the world (29 percent).
Access to Food
Although the sources and sourcing of food in North America and Western Europe are currently generally secure, what might soon become a prodigious concern is that their workers in the production, distribution and retail segments of the food supply chain may eventually succumb to coronavirus infection. In such events, coupled with the potential for lockdown bureaucracies to slow down the flow of cargo between countries and between cities, severe delays in delivery — or real delivery shortages — could well become an actual possibility.
Local Vertical Farms
The coronavirus pandemic lockdowns have laid bare if fortuitously, the crucial importance of partial local food production in or around world cities in the context of urban resilience. The following salient features of vertical farms have become especially significant toward buttressing a city’s resilience in the event of a pandemic lockdown:
(1) Local — production of safe and fresh produce can take place within the lockdown zone, obviating the hurdles and perils of going in and out of the red zone;
(2) Automation-Amenability — impact of severe labor shortage which can be expected as the pandemic surges as well as direct physical contact between workers and fresh produce can be significantly minimized or eliminated;
(3) Controlled-Environment — infection risks to both workers and crops are significantly reduced through clean and controlled operations;
(4) Modular Option — crops may be grown in modular production units, such as shipping containers, which may be conveniently transported to neighborhoods located either farther away or in areas of stricter isolation; and,
(5) Reliability — Dependability, and consistency of high-yield and high-quality harvests throughout the year is virtually guaranteed independently of season and external climate conditions.
Fortunately for New York City, even as it sources most of its fresh vegetables from California and Arizona, the New York greater area now serves as host to the highest concentration in the United States of commercial urban vertical farms — including Aerofarms, Bowery Farming, Bright Farms, Farm.One, Square Roots and Gotham Greens, among others — that operate as controlled-environment farms year-round and independently of the variable effects of climate and geography. While conventional outdoor farming can produce three vegetable harvests per year, some of these vertical farms can achieve up to 30 harvests annually.
New York City and other world cities could certainly use more vertical farms.
Indeed, the urban planning and design of every world city should incorporate vertical farms, in and/or around it, not only for promoting food security — but for fostering disaster resilience as well. During a pandemic when a temporary period of social distancing between cities and nations becomes critically necessary, vertical farms can serve as helping outposts of resilience for cities and regions on lockdown as they brave the onslaught of the pandemic until it runs its course and duly dissipates — at which time the enfeebled ties of cooperation between cities, states and nations across the globe can once again be mended and made even stronger than before. Thus, not only locally, but in fact also globally, vertical farms can serve as helping vanguards of protection for all of our communities.
Dr. Joel L. Cuello is Vice-Chair of the Association for Vertical Farming (AVF) and Professor of Biosystems Engineering at The University of Arizona. In addition to conducting research and designs on vertical farming and cell-based bioreactors, he also teaches “Integrated Engineered Solutions in the Food-Water-Energy Nexus” and “Globalization, Sustainability & Innovation.” Email cuelloj@email.arizona.edu.
Copper Kills Coronavirus. Why Aren’t Our Surfaces Covered In It?
Civilizations have recognized copper’s antimicrobial properties for centuries. It’s time to bring the material back.
In China, it was called “qi,” the symbol for health. In Egypt, it was called “ankh,” the symbol for eternal life. For the Phoenicians, the reference was synonymous with Aphrodite—the goddess of love and beauty.
These ancient civilizations were referring to copper, a material that cultures across the globe have recognized as vital to our health for more than 5,o00 years. When influenzas, bacteria like E. coli, superbugs like MRSA, or even coronaviruses land on most hard surfaces, they can live for up to four to five days. But when they land on copper, and copper alloys like brass, they begin to die within minutes and are undetectable within hours. “We’ve seen viruses just blow apart,” says Bill Keevil, professor of environmental healthcare at the University of Southampton. “They land on copper and it just degrades them.”
No wonder that in India, people have been drinking out of copper cups for millennia. Even here in the United States, a copper line brings in your drinking water. Copper is a natural, passive, antimicrobial material. It can self-sterilize its surface without the need for electricity or bleach.
Copper boomed during the Industrial Revolution as a material for objects, fixtures, and buildings. Copper is still widely used in power networks—the copper market is, in fact, growing because the material is such an effective conductor. But the material has been pushed out of many building applications by a wave of new materials from the 20th century. Plastics, tempered glass, aluminum, and stainless steel are the materials of modernity—used for everything from architecture to Apple products. Brass doorknobs and handrails went out of style as architects and designers opted for sleeker-looking (and often cheaper) materials.
Now Keevil believes it’s time to bring copper back in public spaces, and hospitals in particular. In the face of an unavoidable future full of global pandemics, we should be using copper in healthcare, public transit, and even our homes. And while it’s too late to stop COVID-19, it’s not too early to think about our next pandemic.
The benefits of copper, quantified
We should have seen it coming, and in reality, someone did.
In 1983, medical researcher Phyllis J. Kuhn wrote the first critique of the disappearance of copper she’d noticed in hospitals. During a training exercise on hygiene at Hamot Medical center in Pittsburgh, students swabbed various surfaces around the hospital, including toilets bowls and doorknobs. She noticed the toilets were clean of microbes, while some of the fixtures were particularly dirty and grew dangerous bacteria when allowed to multiply on agar plates.
[Photo: Backiris/iStock]
“Sleek and shining stainless steel doorknobs and push plates look reassuringly clean on a hospital door. By contrast, doorknobs and push plates of tarnished brass look dirty and contaminated,” she wrote at the time. “But even when tarnished, brass—an alloy typically of 67% copper and 33% zinc—[kills bacteria], while stainless steel—about 88% iron and 12% chromium—does little to impede bacterial growth.”
Ultimately, she wrapped her paper up with a simple enough conclusion for the entire healthcare system to follow. “If your hospital is being renovated, try to retain old brass hardware or have it repeated; if you have stainless steel hardware, make certain that it is disinfected daily, especially in critical-care areas.”
Decades later, and admittedly with funding from the Copper Development Association (a copper industry trade group), Keevil has pushed Kuhn’s research further. Working in his lab with some of the most feared pathogens in the world, he has demonstrated that not only does copper kill bacteria efficiently; it also kills viruses. (In 2015, he even demonstrated this phenomenon with a precursor to COVID-19, coronavirus 229E).
In Keevil’s work, he dips a plate of copper into alcohol to sterilize it. Then he dips it into acetone to get rid of any extraneous oils. Then he drops a bit of pathogen onto the surface. In moments it’s dry. The sample sits anywhere from a few minutes to a few days. Then he shakes it in a box full of glass beads and a liquid. The beads scrape off bacteria and viruses into the liquid, and the liquid can be sampled to detect their presence. In other cases, he has developed microscopy methods that allow him to watch—and record—a pathogen being destroyed by copper the moment it hits the surface.
The effect looks like magic, he says, but at this point, the phenomena at play is well-understood science. When a virus or bacteria strikes the plate, it’s flooded with copper ions. Those ions penetrate cells and viruses like bullets. The copper doesn’t just kill these pathogens; it destroys them, right down to the nucleic acids, or reproductive blueprints, inside.
“There’s no chance of mutation [or evolution] because all the genes are being destroyed,” says Keevil. “That’s one of the real benefits of copper.” In other words, using copper doesn’t come with the risk of, say, over-prescribing antibiotics. It’s just a good idea.
In real-world testing, copper proves its worth
Outside of the lab, other researchers have tracked whether copper makes a difference when used in real-life medical contexts–which includes hospital door knobs for certain, but also places like hospital beds, guest-chair armrests, and even IV stands.
In 2015, researchers working on a Department of Defense grant compared infection rates at three hospitals and found that when copper alloys were used in three hospitals, it reduced infection rates by 58%. A similar study was done in 2016 inside a pediatric intensive care unit, which charted a similarly impressive reduction in infection rate.
But what about the expense? Copper is always more expensive than plastic or aluminum, and often a pricier alternative to steel. But given that hospital-borne infections are costing the healthcare system as much as $45 billion a year—not to mention killing as many as 90,000 people—the copper upgrade cost is negligible by comparison.
Keevil, who no longer receives funding from the copper industry, believes the responsibility falls to architects to choose copper in new building projects. Copper was the first (and so far it is the last) antimicrobial metal surface approved by the EPA. (Companies in the silver industry tried and failed to claim it was antimicrobial, which actually led to an EPA fine.) Copper industry groups have registered over 400 copper alloys with the EPA to date. “We’ve shown copper-nickel is just as good as brass at killing bacteria and viruses,” he says. And copper-nickel doesn’t need to look like an old trumpet; it’s indistinguishable from stainless steel.
As for the rest of the world’s buildings that haven’t been updated to rip out the old copper fixtures, Keevil has a piece of advice: “Don’t remove them, whatever you do. These are the best things you’ve got.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Mark Wilson is a senior writer at Fast Company who has written about design, technology, and culture for almost 15 years. His work has appeared at Gizmodo, Kotaku, PopMech, PopSci, Esquire, American Photo and Lucky Peach
[Source Images: ekimckim/Blendswap (toilet), blenderjunky/Blendswap (bathroom)]
Pre-Existing Conditions, No Sick Leave, And Health Insurance Put Farm Workers At Increased Coronavirus Risk
Health workers believe that it’s a matter of time before Covid-19 hits rural communities. Here’s how they’re trying to slow its spread
by Jessica Fu
03.18.2020
Health workers believe that it’s a matter of time before Covid-19 hits rural communities. Here’s how they’re trying to slow its spread.
As the number of coronavirus cases worldwide tops 200,000, health care workers in rural communities are doubling down on farmworker outreach, in an effort to slow the disease’s spread among some of the country’s most vulnerable populations.
“It’s coming,” says Mary Zelazny, CEO of Finger Lakes Community Health, a network of health centers in the central New York region that serves many farmworkers on a sliding-scale basis. “Rural communities are more isolated, that’s a good thing for once in our lives.”
The photo above was taken in 2017 during the Thomas Fire as members of the advocacy group CAUSE hand out masks to farmworkers in Ventura, CA.
Low population density in agricultural areas is buying community health workers precious time to spread the word and to put contingency healthcare plans in place, such as converting in-person care to telehealth. A large portion of Finger Lakes Community Health’s work includes driving out to labor camps and migrant housing sites daily, and providing health services to farm workers where they live. Now, Zelazny has made informing clients about Covid-19 as high a priority as care itself: “We’re having [our community health workers] go out and do education. We have information in Spanish and English. We have a [hotline] they can call.”
“Rural communities are more isolated, that’s a good thing for once in our lives.”
Educating farm workers about Covid-19 is crucial from a health standpoint because they may face heightened risks to the disease compared to the general population, for a variety of reasons including the very nature of their work. Researchers have extensively documented the hazards that they disproportionately face, including dust and chemical exposure linked to lung diseases.
“Many of these workers have pre-existing conditions,” says Antonio Tovar, interim general coordinator for the Farmworker Association of Florida, a nonprofit that represents more than 10,000 farm workers in the state. “High blood pressure and diabetes are very common in our community. The longer farm workers have been in agriculture, the longer they have been exposed to pesticides—so their immune and their respiratory systems might be compromised.”
Complicating matters is a lack of comprehensive health care benefits for most farm workers. According to the Department of Labor’s most recent agricultural workers survey, just 47 percent report having health coverage, compared to 91.5 percent of the general population. Combined with little to no paid sick leave, farm workers are heavily disincentivized from seeing a doctor or taking time off in the case of illness.
Just 47 percent report having health coverage, compared to 91.5% of the general population.
Adelaida Mendoza is a vineyard worker at Chateau Ste. Michelle, one of Washington state’s biggest wineries. Because her job is represented by the United Farm Workers union, Mendoza and her family have health insurance, which she can depend on if she gets sick. However, Mendoza’s brother-in-law, also a farm worker, is less fortunate. “He’s really petrified of what might happen to him because he has no health coverage,” Mendoza says through a translator. “He has no benefits to fall back on.”
Outreach workers across the country are making a concerted effort to educate the people who pick and process our food about Covid-19. Some of the biggest obstacles include language and literary barriers; technology gaps, as not everyone has a smartphone or internet access; and misinformation.
“We’ve been hearing some myths out there—about how coronavirus can be passed by sweat or that Latinos are less affected because of their DNA,” says Linda Cifuentes, a coordinator for the Southeast Arizona Area Health Education Center, a non-profit that places health professionals in underserved communities.
These efforts are driven in part by a fear that rural hospitals may not be equipped to handle a local Covid-19 outbreak. Unlike urban health centers—which themselves are strained for resources—they may not have any ventilators or intensive care units. If someone in the Finger Lakes area were to suffer from severe Covid-19 symptoms, they would need to be transported to the city of Rochester, an hour away, Zelazny says.
Outreach workers across the country are making a concerted effort to educate the people who pick and process our food about Covid-19.
Then there are labor and food supply ramifications if a farm worker contracts Covid-19. One illness can quickly jeopardize the health of others, particularly for farm workers who share living quarters or work in proximity to one another on an assembly line. Because we still know so little about the virus, scientists have not ruled out the possibility of it spreading through food, though they believe it highly unlikely. The agriculture industry is already bracing for a labor shortage: On Monday, the Department of Labor announced that it would suspend all visa services in Mexico as part of a social distancing plan. This will disrupt the H-2A program, which U.S. farms are increasingly reliant on for temporary foreign labor. The American Farm Bureau, a farmer advocacy group, told the Food and Environmental Reporting Network that this move could lead to domestic food shortages.
For Dr. Laszlo Madaras, chief medical officer of the Migrant Clinicians Networks, a coalition of health care providers that serve migrant workers, this pandemic highlights a stark inadequacy in our food system—which fundamentally depends on farm workers’ health, but doesn’t provide them the economic means to maintain it.
“If the weakest people are not able to get the health care and the health protection that they need, it’s going to impact the entire society,” he says. “We can’t really have one group of people thinking that if they just have nice health care and take care of themselves, everything will be okay.”
Lead Photo: Central Coast Alliance United for a Sustainable Economy (CAUSE)
covid-19 farmworkers health care rural sick leave
Jessica Fu is a staff writer for The Counter, covering politics, science, and environmental issues. Previously, she contributed to Seattle's alt-weekly newspaper, The Stranger.
"We Are All In This Together And We Will Make It"
Vertical farming has been hit by the virus as many farms deliver their fresh produce to the hospitality service
vertical farms are battling the new market situation due to COVID-19
The COVID-19 has a huge impact on many industries due to the measurements taken in regards of labor and food safety. Also the vertical farming has been hit by the virus as many farms deliver their fresh produce to the hospitality service. Now most restaurants are closed they have to come up with solutions for their produce. We reached out to vertical farms worldwide to see what measurements they have taken to battle the COVID-19.
What to do with the produce?
"Many have seen complete closers resulting in no orders, so they are targeting home delivery and CSA (Community Supported Agriculture). Such as Facebook posts in neighborhood groups e.g., letting their neighbors know they have fresh, living microgreens for sale", says Larry Hountz with City Hydro Systems, growing microgreens in Baltimore City. "This will more than likely continue after we get back to open restaurants and folks eating out being a new revenue stream for them."
Larry and Zhanna Hountz with City Hydro Farm showing their fresh produce
Tossing outAlso Ard van de Kreeke with Growx in Amsterdam, Netherlands, says the orders have shut down completely. "The growing period of most of these products is 4 or 5 weeks, so if I have to deliver in 4 weeks I have to sow the cresses now. I can’t just stop producing. For the next three weeks, we will have to toss everything that comes out of our greenhouse, out. Now we try to harvest everything and have our customers make oils and things like that. We just try to give everything away and make people happy with the products."
An employee harvesting fresh lettuce at Growx
Direct selling to customers
In Taiwan, the team with YesHealth Taiwan is building a salad brand to influence consumers to eat salad more often. "The percentage of selling directly to the consumer is around 35% now", says Stella Tsai with YesHealth Taiwan. “YesHealth in Taiwan has three main selling channels. The first is wholesale, the second is direct to the end-consumer, and the third is to hotels and restaurants. Out of these, the two first are the most important. The COVID-19 has caused a 30% decrease towards hotels and restaurants because of the lack of customers in horeca. But sales towards wholesale and the end-consumers through our online shop have increased by more than 40% at the same time. That is because people want to buy vegetables and cook at home”, Tsai mentions.
Grahame Dunling with Uns Farms, a large-scale vertical farm inside a warehouse complex, located in the United Arab Emirates. “As our distributors handle sales in both horeca and retail, while we take care of the growing. Therefore, we are diversified and not too dependent on anyone's market segment, as our distributors.”
Jesper Hansen director at YesHealth Group checking the produce
Other outlets possible?
As most of the restaurants are closed most of the options seem to be out of reach. Tsai comments, “With many restaurants closed, we had to consider alternatives. Luckily, we already process some of our harvests into supplement products. For instance, we have made our green kale into probiotic powder, which is good for stomach health”.
"The support I have seen locally to the hospitality industry has been amazing folks ordering delivery or take away, GoFundMe pages, etc. We are all in this together and we will make it", Hountz adds.
What to do now?
Dunling continues, "We were built with the vision to address the masses, and to help the UAE fight its dependence on imports and build food security. All we can do now is continue to provide our fresh salads, as indoor growing allows us to be relatively safe from outside elements".
The vertical farm of Uns City Farm
Hydro City Farm still has plenty of supplies but there are slight concerns as their Chinese light manufacturer is still closed. “They are on lockdown, one person is allowed to leave the house every 3-4 days for food and other items, as it has been like this since December. Unless this is a seasonal virus and the warm temperatures kill it off we are going to be in this boat for a while", Hountz remarks.
For more information:
City Hydro Systems
Larry Hountz, Owner
larry@city-hydro.com
www.city-hydro.com
Growx Amsterdam
Ard van de Kreeke, Owner
www.growx.co
Uns FarmsMehlam Murtaza, Owner
Grahame Dunling, CEO
grahame@unsfarms.com
www.unsfarms.com
YesHealth Taiwan
Jesper Hansen, International Business Development Director
jesperhansen@yeshealth.com.tw
www.yeshealth.com.tw
Publication date: Fri 20 Mar 2020
Author: rebekka@boekhout.nl
© HortiDaily.com
Coronavirus And The Food We Eat
On December 31, 2019, dozens of people who recently visited a live animal market in Wuhan, China were immediately treated for “pneumonia” from an unknown source
March 15, 2020
Nav Athwal Contributor
I cover real estate, agriculture, technology, and sustainability.
On December 31, 2019, dozens of people who recently visited a live animal market in Wuhan, China were immediately treated for “pneumonia” from an unknown source. On January 11, 2020, the Chinese state media reported the first death of a 61-year old man from the novel coronavirus. He visited that same animal market in Wuhan. On January 30, 2020, for the sixth time in history, the World Health Organization declared a “public health emergency of international concern,” a title that has been reserved for extraordinary events that threaten to spread internationally. On February 29, 2020, the first death from the coronavirus was reported in the U.S. in Washington state.
The “coronavirus,” or “COVID-19”, as the World Health Organization has coined it, is a respiratory illness that is actually quite common and found in people and various species of animals, including camels, cattle, cats, and bats. The virus originates from the same source as many common colds people obtain and recover from daily. If it feels like the world has experienced this scare before, it has in that the “SARS,” (severe acute respiratory syndrome) and “MERS” (Middle Eastern respiratory syndrome), were both created by this same virus.
The SARS outbreak occurred between November 2002 to July 2003 where more than 8,000 probable cases were reported to the World Health Organization. After its inception in Asia, there totaled eight laboratory-confirmed cases in the U.S. MERS, which spread from Saudi Arabia, caused 2,500 laboratory-confirmed cases, with only two patients testing positive in the U.S. Finally, the H1N1 virus (“swine flu”), which caused the 2009 pandemic, is estimated to have caused 151,000-575,000 deaths. There were an estimated 12,400 deaths in the U.S. All three of the coronavirus strains are believed to have originated in bats whereas the H1N1 Influenza (“swine flu”) is believed to have originated in pigs.
Given the unique and similar history of the coronavirus, it becomes clear our food choices and local market purchases may hold critical importance especially as the world population increases to record levels. It is fair to say due to the global implications of the COVID-19 outbreak from a live Chinese food market, there could be “life or death” implications on what food we eat, how we produce it and where we buy it. In an effort to not minimize the severity of recent events, this may also be an opportunity to encourage U.S. food consumers to reflect on the global food supply chain.
Today In: Entrepreneurs
Consumer behavior has evolved over the past decades as a result of the increased scientific understanding of the impact of nutritious food on human health and overall well-being. As preferences have changed, farmers have already mobilized to produce foods with a heightened awareness of inputs and farming practices to meet the growing importance of “sustainability”. This shift is exemplified in the growth of organic certifications, the increased popularity of plant-based diets and the shift from dairy-based milk to alternatives such as oat, soy and almond milk. Simply put, the consumer is driving these changes and demand for healthier more sustainable food. As a result, these consumer decisions have increased farming input costs and new regulatory expenses for traditional operations while also creating new opportunities to change the food and agriculture landscape.
Furthermore, the consumer demand rotation is driving new mediums of food production. Vertical farming has gained traction in urban centers in an effort to reduce distribution chains, offer lower emissions and drastically reduce water use and runoff while providing a higher-nutrient product.[vi] Despite the increasing popularity of vertical farms, there are pending concerns on the scalability and high capital costs associated with this production.
Additionally, there has been an increasing interest in “non-meat” protein alternatives. These products have undoubtedly gained traction in the market but face strong regulatory headwinds. Finally, the industry-wide consolidation for agriculture has led to an absorption of family farms by commercial and corporate farm operators. This consolidation may provide economies of scale but often create negative effects on local, generational farmers. In an effort to combat this trend, new partnerships have been formed between local farmers and crowd-funding farmland investment vehicles like FarmTogether. These partnerships create mutually beneficial effects for capital providers to support operators who desire to continue farming their own properties but have faced recent profitability concerns given accumulating debt levels and weak commodity prices. Artem Milinchuk, the CEO and Founder of FarmTogether explains “our mission is to facilitate investors capital to empower local farmers by allowing them to focus on what they do best – farm. By sourcing opportunities through our proprietary platform, we identify local farm operators who have proven sustainable practices, thoughtful consideration of inputs, and overall are responsible stewards of their land.”
The coronavirus outbreak may act as a refreshed reminder stimulating Americans to reflect on the importance of U.S. food purchases. For the curious reader and thoughtful participant in the global economy, it is important not to discount the importance of your daily food decisions on the global agriculture industry. The consumer aggregate creates demand and is comprised of individual constituents. Naturally, the supply side will adjust to cater to this demand.
We must not forget the heightened importance of where we are growing our food, how we are growing our food, and how our food is being processed. It will be of keen interest to how the global food and agriculture community responds to the spread of the Coronavirus and how we, collectively, care for the only planet we know that we can inhabit as of today. We are constantly faced with these growing tensions and it is important to be a thoughtful consumer as these tensions increase due to an ever-increasing global population.
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Check out my website. Nav Athwal
My passions include proptech and agtech as well as sustainable agriculture and food production and ag and real estate investing. I am currently a Founder of District, a digital commercial real estate lender and I also manage and operate farmland planted to almonds, alfalfa, corn, apricots and pecans across multiple states. I'm also an active angel investor in agtech and proptech companies located in the U.S. Previously, I was the Founder and former CEO of RealtyShares, a curated marketplace connecting real estate developers and operators with investors across the country. Before starting RealtyShares, I was a real estate and land use attorney at San Francisco based law firm Farella Braun & Martel, LLP. There I represented REIT's, Fund Managers, Nonprofits and real estate developers on some of the largest real estate and renewable energy projects across the country. I broadly cover technology and its impact on real estate. In addition to real estate, my passions including agriculture, inclusionary finance and building software to create efficiency for large inefficient markets. You can follow me on Twitter @navathwal