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Syngenta Adds New Director To The Board
April 15, 2019
BASEL, Switzerland--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Following the Annual General Meeting of Shareholders on Friday, April 12, it was announced that Louise O. Fresco will join the Board of Directors as an Independent Non-Executive Director, effective April 12, 2019.
Fresco is currently President of Wageningen University & Research in The Netherlands. She combines a long academic career as a professor at both Wageningen and Amsterdam universities with extensive involvement in policy and development in Africa, Asia and Latin America.
“We are delighted to have Louise join the Syngenta Board,” said Frank Ning, Syngenta Chairman. “Her experience and expertise in sustainable healthy food production together with her ability to engage people in the benefits of science and agriculture will be greatly valued.”
This appointment comes just days after Syngenta announced it will accelerate its innovation to address the increasing challenges faced by farmers around the world including climate change, soil erosion and biodiversity loss, as well as changing consumer expectations and views on agricultural technology. Syngenta has made this commitment in response to listening sessions held at the end of 2018, during which there was a clear call for innovation and more action to address these challenges.
“Joining the Board will give me a chance to work towards more sustainable food production and reducing the environmental impact based on the latest scientific insights,” said Fresco. “I am particularly interested in how the best science can help smallholders increase yields sustainably.”
Fresco spent 10 years of her career as Assistant Director-General of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN. She is a member of eight scientific academies, and has served on the boards of Rabobank and Unilever. Her book “Hamburgers in Paradise, the stories behind the food we eat,” has been translated into 13 languages. She has published multiple books and writes a bi-weekly column in NRC, the leading evening newspaper of The Netherlands. She has also presented a 6-part documentary on food and development for Dutch public television, and in 2009 she was a speaker at the TED Conference in Palm Springs, California.
About Syngenta
Syngenta is one of the world’s leading agriculture companies. Our ambition is to help safely feed the world while taking care of the planet. We aim to improve the sustainability, quality and safety of agriculture with world class science and innovative crop solutions. Our technologies enable millions of farmers around the world to make better use of limited agricultural resources. With 28,000 people in more than 90 countries we are working to transform how crops are grown. Through partnerships, collaboration and The Good Growth Plan we are committed to improving farm productivity, rescuing land from degradation, enhancing biodiversity and revitalizing rural communities.
To learn more visit www.syngenta.com and www.goodgrowthplan.com.
Follow us on Twitter at www.twitter.com/Syngenta and www.twitter.com/SyngentaUS.
Cautionary Statement Regarding Forward-Looking Statements
This document contains forward-looking statements, which can be identified by terminology such as ‘expect’, ‘would’, ‘will’, ‘potential’, ‘plans’, ‘prospects’, ‘estimated’, ‘aiming’, ‘on track’ and similar expressions. Such statements may be subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause the actual results to differ materially from these statements. For Syngenta, such risks and uncertainties include risks relating to legal proceedings, regulatory approvals, new product development, increasing competition, customer credit risk, general economic and market conditions, compliance and remediation, intellectual property rights, implementation of organizational changes, impairment of intangible assets, consumer perceptions of genetically modified crops and organisms or crop protection chemicals, climatic variations, fluctuations in exchange rates and/or commodity prices, single source supply arrangements, political uncertainty, natural disasters, and breaches of data security or other disruptions of information technology. Syngenta assumes no obligation to update forward-looking statements to reflect actual results, changed assumptions or other factors.
Student Farmers Get A Chance To Learn How Their Garden Grows
On April 19, Meier and Mital will present “The Grow Pod Lab: A UO Indoor Agriculture Experiment” at the food studies Food Talks series. UO and community members are invited to tour the pod and learn more about potential research, curriculum and community engagement opportunities associated with the Grow Pod
April 8, 2019
On the outside, it may look like an ordinary industrial shipping container, but on the inside it’s nothing short of extraordinary.
Step into the temperature-controlled environment — a virtual oasis of calm bathed in purple lights that emanate from dozens of overhead, state-of-the art LED lights — and breathe in the rich aroma of soil and take in the rows upon rows of grow trays teeming with verdant green plants and herbs.
First-year students in Bean Hall’s Community for Environmental Leaders academic residential community — many of whom have never grown plants from seeds before — have spent the last few months getting their hands dirty and raising their first crops of indoor tomatoes.
“The students just light up when they come into the pod,” said Briana Meir, a doctoral student in the environmental sciences, studies and policy program and graduate employee in the Office of Sustainability. “It smells like dirt and plants and soil, and it’s funny because it’s a shipping container: It’s gray, it’s metal, it’s sort of ugly on the outside and you walk inside and there’s all this light. They find it a relaxing place. They have formed friendships.”
Designed to promote ongoing research, learning and innovation for sustainable urban food production, the idea for bringing indoor agriculture to the UO campus came with the generous donation of a shipping container by Imagination International Inc. Additional help came from a $10,000 applied environmental science seed grant awarded to the food studies program and the UO Office of Sustainability to support the start-up.
“These young environmental leaders in their first year at the UO are helping to grow food,” said Steve Mital, UO’s sustainability director. “Access to and knowledge about food production are an important part of a sustainability-focused education, and we’re hopeful that some of them will really explore these issues more deeply while they are undergraduate students here at the university.”
As the first group of academic residential community students to tend to and nurture a crop of tomatoes in the Grow Pod, emulating inside a 20-foot-long metal box what naturally occurs outside comes with its own set of challenges. That includes everything from determining the correct amount and strength of light the plants get, how much water they get and the precise consistency of soil and nutrients to figuring out how the plants can pollinate if there is no wind or bees to carry the pollen from plant to plant.
When a student posed the pollination question, it led to an ingenious solution: electric toothbrushes. Applied gently to the plant’s blooms, the vibration releases the pollen into the enclosed environment allowing pollination to occur.
Meir said the learn-as-you go approach has evolved since they started last fall, and recently they brought in a master gardener to help.
“It’s been a collective effort to figure out things as we go along, but the students are doing a pretty good job of taking ownership over it,” she said.
Courtney Kaltenbach, a music major, and Sydney Gastman, who is majoring in landscape architecture, got involved in the Grow Pod project through the Environmental Leaders academic community and agree the experience has been amazing.
“The greatest satisfaction was seeing something grow and being a part of that and working with a team of people with the same goals,” Kaltenbach said.
“Understanding how plants grow and getting involved with the science of it all has been such a great learning experience,” Gastman said. “I may not have the opportunity to take biology classes, so it’s been a really good way to get my science fix.”
Look for students from the program selling a variety of plant starts at a table outside the Erb Memorial Union during Earth week, April 22-24.
The Office of Sustainability is also exploring a number of additional academic and co-curricular opportunities. They include computer science classes using data generated from the lab to study machine learning, and UO business classes identifying income-generating opportunities for crops raised in the pod.
The indoor, controlled-environment agriculture industry has grown dramatically in the past several years. Shipping containers outfitted for growing vegetables are being used by farm-to-table restaurants, to support experiential education programs and for niche social enterprises that increase local food production in areas where land-based farming is limited.
Mital said shipping containers might support urban homesteading or post-disaster recovery efforts in the future. “We’re hoping our faculty and local entrepreneurs help us explore the possibilities,” he said.
On April 19, Meier and Mital will present “The Grow Pod Lab: A UO Indoor Agriculture Experiment” at the food studies Food Talks series. UO and community members are invited to tour the pod and learn more about potential research, curriculum and community engagement opportunities associated with the Grow Pod.
—By Sharleen Nelson, University Communications
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New Hydroponic Gardens Sprouting At The University of Utah
March 31, 20196
Hydroponics gardens located at the U's Lassonde Studios (Courtesy of Dylan Wootton)
The Sustainable Campus Initiative Fund here at the U, which was set up for faculty and students alike to “propose projects that enhance the sustainability of our campus and community,” has granted thousands of dollars towards a project proposed by the U’s Hydroponics Club which plans to plant hydroponic gardens in Lassonde Studios.
SCIF was set up in 2008 by ASUU when there became “an increasing demand for sustainable infrastructure on campus.” It is also student funded, costing $2.50 in student fees. Since its inception, there have been over $900,000 allocated to SCIF projects. This particular project was granted $6,000, and plans to use it to “construct a series of gardens on the first floor of the Lassonde Institute.”
Dylan Wootton, a member of the U’s Hydroponics Club, holds lettuce grown in hydroponic incubators. (Courtesy of Dylan Wootton)
Hydroponic agriculture is an innovative way to yield more crops with less water — a win-win. The Daily Utah Chronicle spoke with Dylan Wootton, a senior at the U studying biomedical engineering, about the project. Wootton is also a resident assistant on the second floor of Lassonde. Every Lassonde floor is themed, and the second floor is the “Sustainability and Global Impact” floor. As you step off the elevators at night, you can see the bluish glow of fluorescent hydroponic grow lights on the soilless, budding plants.
“Hydroponics is a unique form of agriculture where plants are grown in a nutrient-rich solution typically placed indoors,” Wootton said. What is the benefit of this? “Hydroponics enables plants to grow significantly faster — in about half the time — and more sustainably — using only 10 percent of the water — than traditional agricultural methods.” Also, the planting substances can even be recycled.
“We’re planning on using this money to build four vertical ‘Garden Walls’ that people can see when they first enter Lassonde,” Wootton explained. Speaking on the potentiality of hydroponics, Wootton discussed just how important innovative agricultural systems are to the future of food consumption. “Agriculture is one of the leading contributors to greenhouse gas emissions and uses about 70 percent of the world’s fresh water. Developing the next generation of food production can serve to significantly reduce emissions and wasted water. If climate change or the impending water crisis are issues that you’re interested in, hydroponics is for you.”
As for the next step after the grant, Wootton said they will “use [the] system to test new technologies and build innovative solutions to scaling our operations.” Additionally, their yields will continue to serve the Feed U Pantry, the U’s on-campus food bank, and provide “fresh fruits and vegetables to the campus community, free of charge.”
Hydroponic use and awareness is growing rapidly in the United States. Elon Musk’s brother, Kimbal Musk, launched an “urban farming incubator program” called Square Roots where they give young entrepreneurs a chance to start their own vertical farm. The vertical farms can yield a lot — ”everything grows inside 320-square-foot steel shipping containers. Each container can produce about 50,000 mini-heads of lettuce per year.” The USDA even gave these young entrepreneurs loans to help with operating expenses. It seems we are at least looking up in the right direction when it comes to farming innovation.
The Future of Sustainable Food Is Fishy
Marketing manager Shawn Bonnough, Farm manager Jeff Smith and General Manager Barbara Bonnough are behind the new Aquaponics Training Institute. (Brieanna Charlebois - Morning Star)
Aquaponics Training Institute officially
launched last weekend in Vernon
April. 2, 2019
A new way to grow food has come to Vernon.
It’s called aquaponics and is the combination of aquaculture (breeding fish in captivity as a food source) and hydroponics (growing plants without soil).
Jeff Smith is the farm manager at the recently opened Aquaponics Training Institute in Vernon. He explained the process as a “match made in heaven.” In the symbiotic system, fish provide fertilizer for the plants, and the plants clean the water for the fish, eliminating water waste and making it the ultimate sustainable food source.
Link To Video
Marketing manager Shawn Bonnough said that his ultimate goal is to show people how to minimize their ecological footprint by growing food at home throughout the year.
“We’re really just a small training company with a small local footprint and our doors are open to the local traffic, but we have a global solution to a problem that we’re all going to be facing in 8.3 years and we’re going to hit a tipping point,” said Bonnough.
Smith explained that the system uses less than a tenth the amount of water in comparison to any other agricultural system. Very little waste is produced.
“There is no real waste to this system other than the evaporation. The fish are fed the appropriate ratio of food to produce the appropriate amount of food,” he said.
Bonnough said he hopes to be able to bring this science to small communities in northern Canada that don’t have food readily available based on distance to farmed food and weather conditions. Located at 4877 Haynes Road, the Institute is an indoor facility that will operate all year long.
“With a background in education, we formed the Aquaponics Training Institute to be able to take food security to our planet’s most vulnerable population and that’s usually Indigenous communities worldwide,” said Bonnough. “We’ve got a scalable worldwide solution to a worldwide problem. When you look at the economic impact to a community who is shipping vegetables 50 to 100 kilometres on average to get to their community, we can turn that around and create jobs and opportunity for fresh, nutritious vegetables and fish, that are both healthy when they’re combined.”
The first information session took place Saturday, March 30 and hosted about a dozen local hobbyists. The next session is set to take place Saturday, April 6 from 9 a.m.-12 p.m. From there, people can sign up for workshops on how to build their own system.
Those who are travelling to Vernon for courses are also able to stay at the accommodations on site.
For more details, visit the Aquaponics Training Institute website.
A Middle School Farm Team Is Automating Agriculture
Take me to your seeder: Behold, the FarmBot, an agricultural automaton that can plant, till, water, take pictures, check soil conditions and more, built and programmed by the young geniuses at Melville's West Hollow Middle School.
MARCH 14, 2019
By GREGORY ZELLER //
Meanwhile, back on the farm, the future was evolving.
The farm, in this case, is inside West Hollow Middle School, a forward-looking jewel of the Half Hollow Hills Central School District. And the future comes in the form of FarmBot, a kid-crafted, kid-coded automaton that could help feed future generations on this increasingly crowded planet – and even astronauts exploring distant worlds.
The robot, of course, tills its land on a relatively small scale: FarmBot measures 9 feet by 14 feet, an impressive achievement for middle-schoolers, if not quite ready to solve a global food crisis.
But as a blueprint for creative and sustainable agricultural innovations – a veritable must, with 7.5 billion hungry humans already seated and 3 billion additional dinner guests expected by the end of the century – FarmBot truly shines.
Described as “an open-source farming robot,” the mechanism slides on vertical and horizontal axes, carrying a camera, a small rake, a grasping tool and even soil-quality sensors that know when it’s time to make it rain, all designed and installed by ambitious sixth-, seventh- and eighth-graders (school maintenance professionals plugged in the electricity and water lines).
FarmBot knows what to do, and when, because of coding. “Kids who are interested in engineering” volunteered their time to build it, according to Half Hollow Hills CSD Public Relations Director Charles Parker, and now “different kids with interests in coding” are working on the programming side.
“Students came during their lunch periods and after school to build it,” Parker told Innovate LI. “And now students who are interested in coding are spending their time off in the school day to come work on it.
“These students are really doing phenomenal stuff.”
Part child, part machine, all farmer: West Hollow Middle School students help FarmBot work the land.
While the obvious goal is to automate the indoor growing process – interesting to overstuffed urban centers, future populations crowded into arctic regions and possibly space colonies – there are bigger themes at play.
Not only do students strengthen those increasingly important STEAM skills (for science, technology, engineering, art and math), they gain a wider understanding of alternative agricultural practices – also a priority, as farming environments shift, in many cases for the worse.
The effort even has a heart of gold: Hauppauge-based hunger-relief organization Island Harvest has donated seeds to the FarmBot project and will gather the fruits of the robo-labor for distribution to regional food-insecure families (other FarmBot produce will be used by the middle school’s Family and Consumer Science teaching staffs).
It’s a healthy crop of cross-disciplinary goodness, packed into a truly innovative 21st century educational effort, according to West Hollow Middle School science teacher Christopher Regini.
Life on MarsFarm: The crispy green fruits of hydroponic labor.
“The goal is to combine computational thinking, data collection and analysis, electronics and prototyping, and general good science practices to better understand plants, food production and the resources needed to reduce food insecurity,” Regini noted.
FarmBot, which was constructed and programmed this school year, follows in the virtual footsteps of another West Hollow Middle School future-farming foray: the MarsFarm, an indoor hydroponics farm already in its second year of operation.
Incorporating cutting-edge sensor technology into its soil-less system, MarsFarm allows students to remotely control systems and analyze data; via the education-focused Flipgrid videoconferencing network, they share their agricultural experiences with students in Acapulco and China, among other places.
Together, the STEAM-powered middle school farms are already producing healthy crops of cabbage, bok choy, bell peppers, basil and other herbs and vegetables, and there’s more on the way. Expect the tech to grow, too – according to the school, students are eager to begin 3D printing new tools for their prototype FarmBot system.
Regini – who noted the MarsFarm data is shared with Princeton University researchers and Growing Beyond Earth, a partnership between NASA and Florida’s Fairchild Tropical Botanical Garden – said the forward-thinking farming efforts are a critical tool for familiarizing young learners with science, art and engineering.
“The goal is to apply STEAM education in a way that is meaningful, allowing us to focus on topics already within the science curriculum,” the science teacher added, “while engaging students in a practice that equips them with the 21st century skills that make them future-ready.”
TOPICS: Charles Parker Christopher Regini Fairchild Tropical Botanical Garden FarmBot Flipgrid Half Hollow Hills Central School District Island Harvet LeadMarsFarm NASAPrinceton UniversityWest Hollow Middle School
A Beginner’s Guide To Help You Grow Plants Indoors
In the last 5 to 10 years, a number of exciting technologies have come forward that may change the way people garden forever
Do you ever feel like your garden just won’t grow right, no matter how many nutrients, pesticides, or hours of care you throw at it?
If you answered yes, you are not alone! Growing up, many of us have seen our parents or teachers work magic with plants in their garden, dealing with cold weather, frost, bugs, animal invasions, and other tedious garden tasks. Many of us are left wondering how dealing with the elements and bugs can be worth it for anyone!
In the last 5 to 10 years, a number of exciting technologies have come forward that may change the way people garden forever. No longer do gardeners have to brave the elements and deal with cold winters where nothing grows. Indoor gardening has gained global attention, and there are countless innovators working on indoor growing solutions for the home and office.
Here are a few of these technologies. We hope these tips can empower you grow more food for more of the year!
LEDs
Horticultural LEDs have revolutionized indoor gardening in more ways than any other technology could. With access to controlled indoor light that isn’t too expensive to run, anyone can turn their soil or hydro container farm into an indoor set up, eliminating the need for sunlight and the risk of climate damage to crops. With the right LEDs giving your crops light, you can also expect way higher yields and fuller growth from your plants!
Hydroponics
This is the most popular of the indoor growing methods today. Hydroponics is the process of growing plants using no soil, suspending them in or over a nutrient rich solution for food and often using LEDs or artificial lighting to induce day/night cycles for plants and allow them the energy to photosynthesize. There are many kinds of hydroponic system designs and configuration, all of which carry out different approaches for different plants and outcomes.
Aquaponics
Similar to hydroponics, this growing method allows the user to grow plants without soil. Using slightly different irrigation and feeding methods, aquaponics takes fish waste from a fish tank and circulates it into the hydroponic root system, giving plants truly organic natural food. The plant roots then soak up the waste and clean the water, which can then be circulated back to the fish and the cycle repeats. This technology most closely mimics a natural energy cycle, and also has the added benefit of producing more than just plants, but seafood in your home too!
Container Gardening
Container gardens can be either indoor or outdoor, and are the lowest tech and oldest indoor gardening solution. Using a container with a water catching tray underneath, anyone can move their plants indoors, eliminating many of the pest and climate issues commonly associated with container gardening outdoors. Besides being the lowest cost indoor gardening solution, container gardens are a great way to transition from soil gardening outdoors to soilless gardening indoors using something like a hydroponic system. Whether using LEDs or natural light from a window, container gardening will keep you growing right through the winter months with a little less work and risk.
Smart Gardening
The newest of these options, smart gardening utilizes a plug and play growing appliance or device which controls lighting, feeding, watering, and monitoring your plants for you. This is the most effortless and failure free gardening option for homeowners anywhere. Whether you have a colder climate, a busy job, or a full social life, having a smart garden guarantees you the space and time to grow a garden without the hassle, time commitment, or pesticides. Smart gardens often utilize full climate control systems to guarantee your plants an optimal environment, and produce much less waste, toxins, and runoff than any other indoor gardening solution. Smart gardens come in all shapes and sizes, growing everything from herbs and greens to tomatoes and cannabis! If you are looking to up your gardening game for good, you can’t do better than a Smart Garden!
Many people we meet and talk to at Aeroasis agree on a few key things:
First, gardening is an incredibly rewarding experience, minus one or two very tedious and time consuming tasks. Second, limitations like seasonality make it hard to keep their garden up year after year, and this affects people’s willingness to garden over time. Third, everyone is looking for a better way to grow, spending more time and money on their plants directly and less on tertiary tasks like weeding, spraying, and watering their crops. With the option to garden inside, all of the more tedious aspects of growing become significantly less limiting, and seasonal plants are a thing of the past!
We at Aeroasis hope to keep empowering more people to grow their food indoors, and to spread the joy of controlled environment agriculture globally!
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Ohio: Hillel Day School Students Learn Across Curriculum With Microgreens
Avi Gilbert (L) and Menachem Simon harvest microgreen crops at Hillel Academy Jewish day school, March 7. Photo: Marshall Weiss.
By Marshall Weiss, The Dayton Jewish Observer
Hillel Academy Jewish day school, which champions a project-based approach to learning, has made indoor farmers of its fifth- and sixth-grade students.
With help from a registered dietitian nutritionist — and now from a hydroponic farming educational initiative in Israel — Hillel students began growing and harvesting microgreen crops in January.
Microgreens are edible herb and vegetable seedlings. According to a study at the University of Maryland published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, microgreens have up to 40 times more vital nutrients than mature plants.
“It’s crazy how this tiny little plant has so many nutrients,” says fifth grader Avi Gilbert as he harvests a crop of radish microgreens. “It’s really cool how we actually have a farm inside. There are a bunch of variables that are different from when it is outside.”
Dietitian and nutritionist Shari Jacobs, a parent of Hillel alumni, approached Hillel Curriculum/Instruction Director Dr. Kathy Mecoli with the idea for the farm because of Jacobs’ passion for promoting nutrition, pesticide-free growing, and eco-friendly agriculture, which reduces water use in farming.
“They’re learning science, they’re learning food safety, and nutrition,” Jacobs says.
With funding from Hillel families and alumni, a local farmer installed the school’s microgreen system and showed faculty and students how to get started.
Among their crops are arugula, kale, parsley, radish, mustard, and broccoli.
Through meticulous data collection, the students learn how to maximize their crop yields. And they’re figuring out how to learn from their mistakes.
Fifth grader Logan MacDonald recorded in his microgreens blog, “Some of the microgreens they have been growing recently started dying. The class brainstormed and realized the problem probably was because of saturation, microfiber wicks being cut into thirds, depth in the soil or the soil was too deep. The intermediate class decided to establish a clear step process of jobs to increase the likelihood of less plant death. The class decided to cut the microfiber wicks into halves instead of thirds to stop the problem.”
Mecoli says the school’s approach is to model how to learn.
“What we find is that because they’ve become such good thinkers, they can pretty much solve the problems once you set them in a certain direction,” she says.
“They’re going to be blogging a lot,” says Todd Brisco, Hillel’s instructor of integrated project-based learning. “They’re putting data on spreadsheets to see whether we’re keeping them in the blackout (germinating) period long enough. We don’t know: how long should we let them grow before we harvest, because we made a mistake of harvesting too soon.”
Chaya Simon sprays trays of seeded soil before putting them into ‘blackout’ for germination. Photo: Marshall Weiss.
Once the students get the system down, Mecoli says, they’ll train the fourth graders, who will carry the project forward next year.
Now, Hillel’s fifth and sixth graders are sharing their data with students working on the same project in Jerusalem. Hillel is the first school affiliated with Israel’s Start Up Roots program outside of the Jewish state.
Robin Katz founded the non-profit Start Up Roots four years ago to bring hydroponic farming to a school for girls from impoverished Haredi families in Jerusalem. The girls also learn how to market their products to the student body.
“In one cycle,” Katz says, “It changed the handout mentality they had, to their hands out with something to give — so proud and excited.”
Katz adds that the school also hired a chef who taught the students what they could do with the vegetables, from drinks to appetizers to desserts.
“They started with a summer camp and then they ended up revamping the whole school lunch program,” Katz says.
In Israel, Start Up Roots is taught in three middle schools, about to enter a fourth, and recently received approval from Israel’s Ministry of Education, which will help it expand.
“Entrepreneurship, life skills, and nutrition: those aren’t taught in schools and that’s such a growing problem,” she says.
Katz reached out to Jacobs when Start Up Roots began to add microgreens at a school.
“We’re learning a lot from Shari,” Katz says. “She’s implementing in a very methodical way that will enable us to really understand how to improve it, how to replicate it, expand it in the most efficient way possible.”
Jacobs is now Start Up Roots’ American educational liaison; she and Katz aim to bring the program to other schools in America.
Hillel is connected to the Shaarei Tziyon school in the Neve Yaakov settlement neighborhood of Jerusalem.
“We’ve been emailing them about things we’re doing for the microgreens, our problems,” says Hillel fifth grader Yiyi Li Kudera.
The Hillel students email their Israeli counterparts in Hebrew, guided by Hillel’s Hebrew instructor, Rina Thau.
“Now there’s a back and forth,” Katz says. “And the kids hope that they’ll meet one day.”
Katz and Jacobs have also developed a Start Up Roots microgreen curriculum that melds science and Jewish values related to food justice, such as why there are blessings over food and the obligation to those in need.
“We did a project on world issues,” says DeLaine Niesley, who teaches Hillel’s fifth and sixth graders reading and writing. “We’re finding out conditions that cause poverty, including what’s here in Dayton. Because there’s this assumption that we’re America: we don’t have that here.”
Radish microgreens grown at Hillel Academy. Photo: Chaya Simon.
“There are so many parts to it,” Mecoli says of the program. “Each day at lunch, the children put out microgreens on a tray and they go around and give everybody microgreens if they want them with their lunch.
“The little kids see it as cool because the older kids are doing this. I don’t even say anymore, ‘Go get the microgreens.’ They come to me and say, ‘Can we get the microgreens?’ So there’s a lot of independence and a lot of ownership with it.”
Once the students have mastered the science of growing their microgreen crops most efficiently and effectively, Hillel plans to bring its produce to market.
Mecoli says they’ll learn the cost to produce them, the profit, and entrepreneurship.
“Bernstein’s Fine Catering, they are committed to buying them from us to use as garnishes,” Mecoli says. “We’ll engage markets that could buy some from us every week.”
For now, they’re starting small. At Purim, the school was sending shalach manot gift packages to its Life & Legacy donors.
“We’re coming up with a little tower with three boxes of one-ounce of microgreens, and then we’re going to have crackers and hummus in one, and (parent) Rochel Simon is going to bake hamantashen that are more savory, with the microgreens in them, and then we’ve created a little card that says thank you for supporting Hillel,” Mecoli says.
For Passover, the school hopes to have parsley available for order.
TAGS: Hillel Academy of Greater Dayton Kathy Mecoli Robin Katz Shari Jacobs Start Up Roots
Bigger Produce, Better Crops With Vertical ‘Container Farms’, Scientists Claim
By Dominic Cuthbert -
25th March 2019
Professor Chungui Lu in one of the container farms
A UK university has created two vertical ‘container farms’ capable of producing natural crops which, scientists claim, are more nutritious, have bigger yields and are ready to harvest in half the time.
Thought to be the first of their kind in the UK, the farms are housed inside two converted shipping containers and use a variety of innovative and automated feeding and environmental control systems to create perfect growing conditions all year round.
Each container farm is capable of producing three to five tonnes of crops a year.
Scientists at Nottingham Trent University’s School of Animal, Rural and Environmental Sciences plan to use them for teaching and research – and to showcase the potential for ‘precision agriculture’ in a time of global challenges for food security and safety.
Nearly 70% of the UK’s fruit and vegetables currently comes from outside the UK and there is concern that food imports could become more expensive post-Brexit and that there could be significant disruption to the UK’s food supply chain.
An increasing world population, climate change, and pressure on natural resources which threaten global food security, are other major challenges.
The farms, located at the Brackenhurst Campus, have been created as part of a project with scientists at Huazhong University of Science and Technology in China.
Produce is grown vertically on racks using various LED light and nutrient ‘recipes’ to stimulate growth, depending on the particular species, variety of crop and its different developmental stages.
Suitable wavelengths of light enhance plant growth, giving crops higher yields, more flavour and increased nutrition.
Plants are also grown using include hydroponics – growing plants without soil in a nutrient-rich solution – and aeroponics, whereby plant roots are suspended mid-air in high humidity, whilst being intermittently misted with a nutrient solution.
Unique recipes of the 17 different nutrients which control crop quality and flavour are automatically monitored and delivered to each plant via a software-based control system.
Delivering these directly to the roots ensures almost all nutrients are taken up by the plant – hence bigger yields, faster growth and improved nutrition.
Only about 30%-40% of nutrients are taken up by the roots when grown in soil.
In addition to this, the project tackles the need to increase efficiency of nutrients and the protected conditions of the container mean there is no need for pesticides or fungicides.
“We want to address food security and sustainable agriculture issues by developing new farming systems which can provide an improved crop quality and yield,” said Chungui Lu, Professor of Sustainable Agriculture in the university’s School of Animal, Rural and Environmental Sciences.
“We believe that there is enormous potential for urban agriculture and ‘”vertical farming to meet these emerging challenges.
“Container farms have optimum growing conditions from germination right through to harvest. It is a hugely efficient and sustainable way of growing very fresh vegetables and some fruit all year round.
“Container farms the size of ours would be able to produce three to five tonnes of crops per year. Producing natural and sustainable local food under such protected conditions could be very attractive for a range of organisations, such as supermarkets and restaurants.
“The system is also completely autonomous so people wouldn’t need to know how to operate it.”
Village Farms Spreads The Word About Healthy Eating
The Transformer Bumblebee even got in on the action to create some buzz about eating healthy!
Press Release – Village Farms recently sponsored and participated in “Cars for the Cure”, a car show benefitting the American Lung Association. This event showcased an array of the most distinctive and unforgettable cars from around the world during a daylong, family-friendly festival.
A team of volunteers from Village Farms spent the day giving away almost 2000 pounds of their authentic Heavenly Villagio Marzano® tomatoes to participants, attendees, and volunteers. The Transformer Bumblebee even got in on the action to create some buzz about eating healthy!
“Village Farms was proud to be a sponsor and support Cars for the Cure in its 15th year,” said Helen Aquino, Director of Brand Marketing and Communications. “Participating in an event like this for such a good cause was especially rewarding. We truly enjoyed getting out in our community to promote health and wellness and we loved hearing time and time again how much people enjoy the Garden Fresh Flavor® of our tomatoes!”
Now in its second century, the American Lung Association is the oldest voluntary health organization in the United States and the leading organization working to save lives by improving lung health and preventing lung disease. Founded in 1904 to fight tuberculosis, the American Lung Association today fights lung disease in all its forms, with special emphasis on asthma, tobacco control and environmental health.
About Village Farms
Village Farms is one of the largest producers, marketers, and distributors of premium-quality, greenhouse-grown fruits and vegetables in North America. The food our farmers grow, along with other greenhouse farmers under exclusive arrangements are all grown in environmentally friendly, soil-less, glass greenhouses. The Village Farms® brand of fruits and vegetables is marketed and distributed primarily to local retail grocers and dedicated fresh food distributors throughout the United States and Canada. Since its inception, Village Farms has been guided by sustainability principles that enable us to grow food 365 days a year that not only feeds the growing population but is healthier for people and the planet. Village Farms is Good for the Earth® and good for you.
IDEA San Benito, Texas Introduces Hydroponic Farming
By Luis Montoya -
March 5, 2019
SAN BENITO, RGV – To coincide with National Nutrition Month, IDEA Public Schools has introduced what it is called the Leafy Green Machine at its San Benito campus.
IDEA leaders say LGM is an efficient and environmentally conscious way to grow food because of its minimal electricity and water requirements. IDEA San Benito is just one of ten K-12 schools in the U.S. with the LGM on campus and became the second school in the State of Texas to obtain the LGM after IDEA Eastside in San Antonio in 2018.
The Leafy Green Machine has been developed by Freight Farms, a leader in the agriculture technology industry and the first to introduce container farming. A 40’ x 8’ x 9.5’ modified freight shipping container, LGM incorporates hydroponic farming to grow and harvest food for the campus. LGM will serve as a pilot program.
Using just ten gallons of water per day and incorporating a closed loop hydroponic system that delivers nutrient rich water directly to the plants’ roots, LGM is capable of producing 500 heads of lettuce, 40-50 lbs. of hearty greens, and 35-45 pounds of herbs in one week. That is 90 percent less water than traditional farming methods.
Jordon Roney, campus farmer at IDEA San Benito, says the pilot program is part of an effort to support IDEA’s Healthy Kids Here initiative. Roney believes LGM will provide for an engaging space for IDEA students to learn about the future of growing food at the intersection of agriculture, conservation and technology. He pointed out that the technology itself will engage students in combination with classes such as biology, chemistry, math and our Junior Master Gardeners (JMG) curriculum. All harvested items, he said, will be used to supply the campus’ food nutrition program throughout the year.
“IDEA San Benito is excited to become the first campus in South Texas to implement this new and efficient farming method,” says Jordan Roney, campus farmer at IDEA San Benito. “Not only will our students benefit from learning about the technology behind hydroponic farming, but we will also have the ability to support our campus food program while providing students with an abundance of healthy produce year-round.”
Hernan Colmenero, CNP Farm Manager at IDEA’s Valley headquarters, said LGM is an efficient and environmentally conscious way to grow food because of its minimal electricity and water requirements. With little agricultural training, anyone can quickly learn to operate the unit and our students can reap the benefits, Colemenero said.
The internal temperature, carbon dioxide (CO2) levels, and all nutrient needs within the contained are controlled through a software application that can be accessed by any mobile device. This allows the greens, such as a variety of lettuce and herbs, to provide hefty harvests year-round, no matter the outside weather conditions. On average, the LGB has a monthly operational cost of $1975/month.
An IDEA news release stated:
STUDENT LEARNING
The LGM will provide an engaging space for IDEA Students to learn about the future of growing food sustainably. They will be able to touch and taste leafy greens packed with nutrients, building connections with healthy eating choices as well as participate with the market-scale growth of crops, witnessing how technology plays a role in agriculture. The technology itself will engage students, but combined with classes such as biology, chemistry, math or our Junior Master Gardeners (JMG) curriculum, it will support IDEA’s mission to prepare students for college and citizenship.
LGM FEATURES
IDEA students will have access to leafy greens, harvested at the peak of ripeness with the highest potential for nutritional content.
Vertical Crop Columns – 4,500 growing sites throughout 256 lightweight crop columns.
The ability to grow 500 head of lettuce, 40-50 lbs. of hearty greens, and 35-45 pounds of herbs in one week.
Automation System – software that allows farmers to automate functions using real-time data from sensors and in-farm cameras.
LED Array – high efficiency LED lights in the seedling and mature growth areas provide crops with only the optimal wavelengths of light required for photosynthesis
Irrigation System – Uses approximately 10 gallons of water per day, 90% less water than traditional farming methods, in a closed loop hydroponic system that delivers nutrient rich water directly to the plants’ roots
Controlled Environment – Uses approximately 80 kWh per day and is equipped with environmental sensors that monitor water, climate, and lighting conditions within the farm.
Editor’s Note: This is the first of a two-part series on National Nutrition Month. Part Two will be posted on March 6, 2019.
These Shipping Container Farms Will Soon Be In Grocery Store Lots Across The U.S.
03.06.19
Kimbal Musk’s Square Roots’ partnership with Gordon Food Service will bring hundreds of container-style farms directly to distribution centers and stores.
[Photo: Square Roots]
Since 2016, Square Roots–the indoor urban farming startup founded by Kimbal Musk and entrepreneur Tobias Peggs–has been producing a steady output of fresh herbs and greens. In 10 shipping containers in a Brooklyn parking lot, the Square Roots team harvests the produce for local distribution to New York grocery stores, and educates young people interested in learning this new, tech-driven method of agriculture.
Musk and Peggs aren’t the only entrepreneurs growing greens indoors and hydroponically: AeroFarms and Bowery, both based in New Jersey, are just a two of the many other companies using similar tactics to grow kale and basil. It’s an increasingly popular idea: Bowery and AeroFarms have raised $118 and $138 million, respectively. But some more traditional organic agriculture advocates, like Dan Barber, have criticized the method for failing to contribute to the effort to remake farming in a more environmentally healthy way, in favor of leaning on new technology.
[Photo: Square Roots]
But despite that criticism, enthusiasm for a more sci-fi approach to growing greens does not appear to be slowing down. In fact, it will only become more mainstream, and Square Roots’ newest collaboration will play a critical role in that.
The farming tech company (or “accelerator,” as Musk and Peggs call it) is partnering with Gordon Food Service, which manages distribution facilities across North America as well as 175 retail store locations. Through the partnership, Square Roots will set up its shipping container farming systems on or very near GFS’s distribution and retail locations. The idea is to create a very short pipeline for fresh, local greens to reach GFS customers. And through Square Roots’ Next-Gen Farmer Training Program, which will expand along with the growing operations, Peggs says the number of young people the company will be able to train and employ will increase dramatically.
[Photo: Square Roots]
The way the partnership came about, Peggs says, is tied up with another project of Musk’s: his nonprofit Big Green, which educates young kids about food and growing by installing gardens in schools. GFS, which is based in Grand Rapids, Michigan, sponsors Big Green in Detroit. Around nine months ago, GFS’s CEO, Rich Wolowski, traveled to Brooklyn to visit the Square Roots facility to investigate the possibility of a partnership.
“GFS understands that there’s an increasing consumer demand for locally grown food, and changes in climate mean that we need to be thinking about new and innovative forms of agriculture,” Peggs says. “So they came to the farm and literally tasted the basil. It was obvious that the companies were mission-aligned: We both want to bring good quality food to a great number of people.”
[Photo: Square Roots]
The partnership evolved very quickly, and not all of the details are final. Square Roots and GFS, for now, are not announcing which distribution centers and retail stores will be the first to get a farm on their property. But they do have a sense of what the impact could be: Each Square Roots farm “campus” might contain 10 shipping containers, each of which will create one job for a local person interested in the Next-Gen Farmer Training Program. Each container can grow around 50,000 pounds of produce per year, which will feed directly into the local food supply. The farms are all connected, so as more come online, Peggs says the company will receive more data about what conditions lead to the best yields, and will be able to use that knowledge to increase efficiencies and introduce more diverse crops to their operations.
Square Roots and GFS are not placing a ceiling on how many farm containers each property might receive: That, Peggs says, can quickly develop in accordance with customer demand. “We’ll start with putting 10 containers down in a market, and as demand for locally grown produce increases, we can very quickly expand our footprint by adding more modules,” he says.
The greatest potential for the partnership between GFS and Square Roots, perhaps, is that it represents a truly localized supply chain for fresh produce. In the U.S., food travels an average of 1,500 miles to reach people’s plates. Those 1,500 miles represent excess carbon emissions from transport and electricity use from cooling needs along the way. If food, instead, can be grown and distributed in the place it is produced, as the GFS and Square Roots partnership aims to accomplish, we could begin to walk back some of the environmental costs of accessing food. “It’s going to take more than Square Roots and GFS to fix the food system,” Peggs says, but he’s hopeful that the partnership and prospective growth signal a real shift toward more localized food production and distribution.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Eillie Anzilotti is an assistant editor for Fast Company's Ideas section, covering sustainability, social good, and alternative economies. Previously, she wrote for CityLab.
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Cadets Create Indoor Farm Inside Shipping Containers
From the confined space of a shipping container, military college cadets grow and harvest hundreds of heads of lettuce per week for staff and students.
By Jennifer Albert and Dalia Martinez
February/March 2019
The project helps cadets gain hands-on experience in business, chemistry, engineering, and growing food. Photo by The Citadel.
Inside three shipping containers on the campus of The Citadel, a military college in South Carolina, cadets are learning how to grow lettuce crops in a controlled indoor “farm” setting, producing organic produce in an environment that can withstand unpredictable weather conditions and disease. The cadets’ hands-on education comes from The Citadel Sustainability Project, in which the first shipping container functions as a hydroponic cultivation system for lettuce crops, the second container is a testing ground for various growing systems, and the third container will be outfitted by cadets who design and build the growing equipment as part of a corresponding independent study.
The Citadel STEM Center of Excellence initiated the project in 2016 as an interdisciplinary collaboration. Of the 20 or so students who are members of the Sustainability Club, several are STEM Scholars. We also have electrical engineers who are completing a design project on hydroponics. We’ve had students from almost every campus department — engineering, biology, business — who have worked with the project.
Prior to their graduation, Alex Richardson, who studied engineering, and Cameron Brown, who studied business, managed the growing container with the help of other students motivated by a passion for the environment.
“Cadets are excited about The Citadel Sustainability Project because it incorporates biology, chemistry, computer science, business, engineering, and community outreach. It gives us the opportunity to collaborate with students outside of our own programs on a project focused on global population needs,” Richardson says. “And seeing people on campus eat and enjoy our crops is gratifying.”
A Sustainable Food Source
We’re currently growing more than 4,400 plants in the shipping containers, including collards, lettuce, spinach, and herbs. The nutrients used to grow the crops are recycled within the system’s 100-gallon reservoir and are managed through a smartphone application. The app tracks the metallic minerals in the water and sends nutrients to the plants every 10 minutes. It also displays the water’s temperature and the container’s carbon dioxide and pH levels.
More than 4,400 plants, including collards, lettuce, spinach, and herbs, grow in the container. Photo by Stefanie Swackhammer.
The transformation from seed to harvest inside the shipping container farm occurs in five weeks, compared with the 10 weeks the crops would need in an outdoor environment. Thanks to high-density crop production, the cadets harvest more than 800 heads of lettuce per week for the campus restaurant’s salad bar as well as events. Additionally, cadets get to eat the fresh lettuce in the student mess hall. If the growing container is running at full capacity, the 320-square-foot space can yield about 40,000 heads of lettuce per year.
Each container is valued at $115,000 after it’s outfitted. The cadets intend to make the project sustainable by putting profits from the crops toward the purchase of more containers.
“Our self-propagating irrigation system uses up to 98 percent less water than conventional industrial farming does,” says Brown, who wrote the project’s business plan. “We want to expand, grow more, and sustain this Earth-friendly initiative, making our healthy produce available to more members of our community.
In addition to providing a sustainable food source, the goal of the project is to help young entrepreneurs and members of other disciplines gain hands-on experience.
We also try to bring in high school students. Last spring, students from Burke High School, which is next door to our campus, incorporated the indoor farm into one of their projects. Then, a 10th grade economics class wrote business plans for the container with data we provided, and followed up with two field trips to the container.
The container farm is installed in a corner of campus, leaving room for expansion. Photo by The Citadel.
The shipping container farm is located in a back corner of campus near the marsh, with plenty of room for expansion. We’ve submitted a National Science Foundation grant application with The GEL Group, AmplifiedAg, and SuperGreen Solutions to design a system that would filter excess nutrients out of treated wastewater and incorporate sustainable energy so the system could be viable anywhere. Ultimately, we’d like to expand the project to be able to produce more fresh food for the South Carolina Corps of Cadets, which comprises the college’s undergraduate population.
Jennifer Albert is the director of The Citadel STEM Center of Excellence. Dalia Martinez graduated from The Citadel in May 2018, and is now a researcher at The Medical University of South Carolina.
Republic Polytechnic Launches Course to Groom High-Tech Farmers
A new course here aims to train the next generation of high-tech farmers so that Singapore can produce more of its own food.
PUBLISHED
JAN 11, 2019, 5:00 AM SGT
A new course here aims to train the next generation of high-tech farmers so that Singapore can produce more of its own food.
The Diploma in Applied Science in Urban Agricultural Technology, launched by Republic Polytechnic (RP) on Wednesday, is the first full-qualification diploma course in agricultural technology in Singapore.
The course was developed by RP, in consultation with the Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority of Singapore, to develop a local core agriculture workforce with modern agricultural knowledge and techniques to drive the sector's growth and transformation.
Senior Minister of State for Trade and Industry Koh Poh Koon spoke at the launch of the diploma, which was held together with the opening of the polytechnic's Agriculture Technology Laboratory.
Dr Koh highlighted the need for a new generation of talent in agricultural technologies, to turn Singapore into a leading Asia hub for urban agriculture and aquaculture technologies.
The growth of the Republic's urban agriculture and aquaculture sector is also an essential pillar in upholding Singapore's food supply resilience, he added.
"As a small country where land is a scarce resource, Singapore has always had limited land space for domestic food production," said Dr Koh, adding that Singapore might be affected by global food supply developments and disruptions.
He added that Singapore's local farms produce just 10 per cent of food fish, 13 per cent of vegetables and 27 per cent of eggs consumed here. But he is confident that these percentages will continue to grow, with technological developments and more young farmers joining the industry through avenues such as RP's urban agriculture diploma.
The first batch of 25 students will start the part-time diploma course in June. These students will be taught five modules, with a focus on agricultural technologies for food production, farming process and management, urban farming technology and systems, agribusiness, and sustainable farming.
The programme's first run also involves eight local farms: Citizen Farm, ComCrop, Farm 85 Trading, Koh Fah Technology Farm, Liteleaf, Nippon Koi Farm, Sustenir Agriculture, and Vegeponics.
The farms will give students in the course on-the-job training opportunities and internships.
The course comes in two formats - one for fresh Institute of Technical Education graduates to build on what they have learnt in school, and the other for adult learners who want to switch to, or further their careers in, the agro-technology and agri-business sector.
RP's new Agriculture Technology Laboratory will give students in the diploma course in-house, hands-on training. The laboratory will also be used as a platform for workshops, industry-relevant projects and research in agriculture technology to incubate solutions to enhance productivity in farms.
It features technologies used in the farming industry today, including vertical farming towers irrigated by a nutrient tank and a horizontal hydroponic system irrigated by shallow tubes.
The laboratory also displays the hydroponic deep water culture system, where the roots of plants are submerged in a nutrient solution, and an energy-efficient substrate growing system.
A version of this article appeared in the print edition of The Straits Times on January 11, 2019, with the headline 'Republic Poly launches course to groom high-tech farmers'. Print Edition | Subscribe
Calling All Microgreen Growers!
By urbanagnews March 2, 2019
Are you a microgreen grower?
University of Arkansas needs your help.
The Gibson Lab in the Department of Food Science is conducting a study to identify factors associated with food safety practices on microgreen farms in the United States. To learn more about this research project and to take the survey, visit the study website. https://sites.uark.edu/gmriggio/
22nd Annual Open House Gives Horticultural Pros An Upfront And Personal Look At All That Is New
(LOUDON, NH) – Building on the success of more than two decades of open house events, Pleasant View Gardens (PVG) and D.S. Cole Growers are at it again – opening their doors to industry professionals from around the world to visit their magnificent greenhouses and gardens on August 2nd.
“It sounds cliché, but after 22 years, we still get excited by all the opportunities this event affords attendees,” smiles Andy Huntington, National Sales Manager of Pleasant View Gardens. “Think about it. Where can you go to learn about all the wonderful introductions from Proven Winners®, pick up new ideas on how to successfully grow and sell these outstanding plants, rub elbows with some of the industry’s top professionals, AND have a little fun? Precious few. Which is what makes this event so popular with growers from all over,” affirms Huntington.
This year, Pleasant View and Cole will be showcasing more breathtaking annuals and recipes than ever before. Plus, they’ll have hundreds of perennials, shrubs, and vegetables on display, including PVG’s own Savor™ Edibles & Fragrants, as well as the new Proven Harvest™ line of herbs, vegetables, and fruit from Proven Winners®.
D.S. Cole owner, Doug Cole, is equally excited. “Getting a chance to show everyone what’s coming next year is always a rush for us. Even more so when we’re featuring plants that many may not have seen at Spring Trials.”
Attendees will also be given the opportunity to help chart the horticultural future by voting on some of the plants and recipes that will be created and trialed in the coming year. And, as always, visitors will learn the importance of how strong genetics deliver greater grower success – something on which Pleasant View, Cole, and Proven Winners® have always prided themselves. Open House guests will also be able to get answers to technical questions from staffers in-the-know, while gaining valuable knowledge networking with other industry pros. Add free refreshments and a tasty catered lunch, and the event’s a hit all around.
The 22nd annual Open House runs from 9 a.m. through 3 p.m. on August 2nd, giving attendees a full day to tour and enjoy the beautiful gardens at Pleasant View and D.S. Cole – both of which are in Loudon, New Hampshire and just a short drive from each other.
Loudon, New Hampshire is around 35 minutes from the Manchester-Boston Regional Airport in Manchester, and 1 hour 20 minutes from the Boston Logan International Airport in Boston, Massachusetts. Located in the south-central area of New Hampshire, Loudon and its surrounding areas provide many recreational opportunities in early August.
Chris Schlegel, Head Grower at D.S. Cole suggests adding a couple side trips for those attending this year’s Open House. “The coast is just a short drive away, and we’re surrounded by gorgeous mountains and lakes. Coming in for our Open House would be the perfect time to explore all that our state has to offer.”
While the Pleasant View and D.S Cole Open House event is free to attend, greenhouse and nursery growers, retailers, landscapers, and brokers are required to register in advance to ensure their spot. For more information, or to register, contact D.S. Cole Growers at 603-783-9561 (office@dscolegrowers.com) or Pleasant View Gardens at 603-435-8361 (shanaf@pwpvg.com, www.pwpvg.com).
WUR Hosts International Workshop On Vertical Farming
October 13-15, 2019 | Wageningen
VertiFarm2019, an international workshop on vertical farming, on 13-15 October in Wageningen, the Netherlands, combines a number of oral presentations of world leading horticultural researchers, panel discussions with renowned companies as well as short oral and poster presentations on the latest research results on vertical farming, also called indoor farming or plant factories with artificial light (PFAL).
The workshop welcomes scientific presentations on all aspects of vertical farming, ranging from plant physiology, breeding, climate control, engineering, systems design, urban planning, economics, consumer demands and business development. Although at this moment vertical farming largely deals with vegetables, there are also opportunities for production of ornamental (young) plants. Therefore, the workshop also welcomes presentations on ornamentals in vertical farms.
This workshop is open to everyone who is interested in vertical farming. "We expect that a nice mix of researchers, advisors and private companies will participate and that it will be a good place not only for hearing the latest knowledge on vertical farming, but also for networking", the convenors say.
There are also excellent opportunities for sponsoring the workshop.
Keynote speakers include: Bruce Bugbee, Erik Runkle, Eri Hayashi, Emiel Wubben, Luuk Graamans, Qichang Yang, Marie-Christine van Labeke, Danny Geelen, Francesco Orsini, Murat Kacira.
Panel discussion include persons from Aerofarms, 808Factory, Urban Farms Global, Infarm, Own Greens, Philips Lighting, Heliospectra, Osram, Grodan and more to be announced soon.
For more info see the attached brochure or
visit www.wur.eu/vertifarm2019
Wageningen ranked best agricultural university in the world for fourth consecutive time
Wageningen University & Research has taken the top spot as the world’s best agricultural university for the fourth consecutive time in the influential QS Ranking. As in previous years, WUR secured first place in the “Agriculture and Forestry” category. Wageningen is currently in 125th place in the QS Global World Ranking, which rates institutions based on general characteristics.
Publication date : 2/5/2019
First Wheelchair Accessible Farm At Local Bronx Public School
By urbanagnews
February 8, 2019
Empire BlueCross BlueShield and Green Bronx Machine to Launch First Wheelchair Accessible Farm at Local Bronx Public School
Press Release – NEW YORK – Green Bronx Machine (GBM), a nationally recognized non-profit organization dedicated to helping students live happier and healthier lives, is partnering with Empire BlueCross BlueShield (Empire) to launch the first wheelchair accessible farm and teaching kitchen in America at P.S. 721x, a District 75 school in the Bronx dedicated to educating students living with disabilities.
“Our students and faculty are so excited and so grateful to Empire and Green Bronx Machine for this classroom makeover that inspires healthy living, healthy learning, and creates 21st century career and college readiness.”~ Frank Degennaro, Principal, P.S. 721x
On Wednesday, February 13th, GBM and Empire will host a ribbon-cutting event at the school to unveil the new, in-school farm. In addition to the wheelchair accessible farm and teaching kitchen, P.S. 721x teachers and students will receive GBMs fully integrated health and wellness curriculum, a GBM Mobile Classroom Kitchen—a fully portable “indoor food truck” complete with sink, refrigerator, convection oven and food warmer and a media studio where students can participate in video conferences with other schools and organizations, post updates to social media, live stream educational programming and older students can record practice interview sessions.
“Thanks to this partnership, we’ve been able to develop the first fully accessible piece of hydroponic technology that will create opportunities for untold Americans and farmers around the world. Empire and Green Bronx Machine are growing something greater – for all!”~ Chris Higgins, Founder & CEO, Hort Americas
GBM founder Stephen Ritz has built his program on the belief that healthy students drive healthy schools, which in turn drives healthy communities. To help educate students on the importance of proper nutrition, Stephen developed a fully integrated core curriculum that teaches students how to grow, eat and love their vegetables while also learning about math, science, and English in a fresh and engaging way.
“To see these future chefs and farmers smiling with glee as they cook and farm, three stories up in the middle of winter, makes me proud and excited to be a New York City public school teacher with District 75.” ~ Jeremy Kottkamp, Teacher, P.S. 721x
In addition to forever changing their eating habits and health, these students will be more prepared to enter the workforce in emerging fields that provide living wage opportunities while enhancing quality of life for all.
“Beyond happy healthy students, this partnership proves that every classroom in America can have an affordable, portable, professional, mobile classroom teaching kitchen that is accessible for all.”~ John Stephenson, Founder of Port-Equip/Stephenson Custom Case
Having first launched GBM’s National Health, Wellness and Learning Center in an underutilized 100+ year-old library at C.S. 55 in Claremont Village, students who have participated in this program have experienced health improvements that lower the risk of childhood obesity, diabetes and heart disease while also increasing their performance in school.
“We’re proud to partner with Empire and NYC DOE to create the first wheelchair accessible classroom farm and kitchen in America. Every child deserves a safe, healthy, nurturing environment and we’re so proud – this is Bronx innovation at its best!” ~ Stephen Ritz, Founder, Green Bronx Machine
If you are interested in attending the event, details are included below and interviews are available.
WHO:
Stephen Ritz, Green Bronx Machine
Victor Pupo, Empire
Frank Degennaro, Principal, P.S. 721x
WHEN:
Wednesday, February 13th at 12:00 PM – 1:00 PM
WHERE:
P.S. 721x; Room 319
2697 Westchester Ave.
Bronx, NY 10461
Media Contacts:
James Freeman, Empire Communications
215.756.2495
James.freeman2@anthem.com
Stephen Ritz, Green Bronx Machine
917.873.6449
Stephen.ritz@greenbronxmachine.org
Republic Polytechnic Invests in Urban Farming With New Diploma, Lab
Republic Polytechnic (RP) is paving the way for the future of Singapore's high-tech urban farming.
Jan 11, 2019
On Wednesday (Jan 9), the poly launched the specialised diploma in urban agricultural technology - the first full-qualification diploma in the field.
At the launch, Senior Minister of State for Trade and Industry, Dr Koh Poh Koon, emphasised the importance of increasing the margin of safety for Singapore's food supply through agricultural technology.
Dr. Koh explained that since Singapore imports more than 90 per cent of its food supply, it is crucial to leverage on technology to minimise challenges like disruptive weather conditions and optimise crops' growth cycles.
To overcome the challenges of unpredictable weather and land scarcity, the agricultural industry has turned to urban agriculture.
Commencing in June with an inaugural batch of 25 students, the part-time diploma in applied science gives students the option of signing up for the associated SkillsFuture Earn and Learn Programme
The 900-hour course is ideal for students interested in a career in the industry and adult learners looking to upgrade their skills.
OPENING
Dr. Koh also witnessed the opening of RP's Agriculture Technology Laboratory and memorandum of understanding signing with Singapore Agro-Food Enterprises Federation.
The Agriculture Technology Laboratory is a new facility to support students in deepening their skills through hands-on training.
The lab will be equipped with indoor farming systems like vertical plane cultivation,conduit-based horizontal hydroponic nutrient film technique, tray-based horizontal hydroponic growing and substrate growing systems.
According to Mr Yeo Li Pheow, the principal of RP, the motivation behind the new course and lab stemmed from the pressing issue of food security due to Singapore's limited land area.
"In order for Singapore to be more self-sufficient and resilient, we need to increase the amount of food we produce locally and reduce our dependence on food imports," said Mr. Yeo.
LED Lighting for Indoor Agriculture
Now, plants can be commercially grown without any sun light. LED lighting is replacing the sun due to advanced technological innovations.
Len Calderone for | AgritechTomorrow
01/10/19, 08:14 AM
Since the beginning of time, plants have relied on the sun to feed and grow through the method known as photosynthesis—a process used by plants and other organisms to convert light energy into chemical energy. Now, plants can be commercially grown without any sun light. LED lighting is replacing the sun due to advanced technological innovations.
Light emitting diodes (LED) work by passing a current between semiconductors. Compared with other forms of electrical illumination, LEDs use less energy, give off little heat and can be controlled to optimize plant growth compared to other forms of electrical illumination, such as fluorescent lamps, which contain mercury, which is needed to make the inert gasses conductive at all temperatures and to make the lamp work properly and efficiently. Mercury is a heavy metal, which is hazardous to the environment.
Then, we have incandescent lamps that are considered the least energy efficient type of electric lighting commonly found in residential buildings. Because of their inefficiency and brief life spans, they are more expensive to operate than LED and fluorescent lights.
LEDs are tiny light bulbs that fit into an electrical circuit. Unlike incandescent bulbs, they don't have a filament that will burn out, and they don't get very hot. They are illuminated uniquely by the movement of electrons in a semiconductor material. The lifespan of an LED exceeds the short lifespan of an incandescent bulb by thousands of hours.
In LEDs, the conductor material is usually aluminum-gallium-arsenide. In pure aluminum-gallium-arsenide, all of the atoms adhere entirely to their neighbors, leaving no free electrons to conduct electric current. Additional atoms change the balance by adding free electrons or creating holes where electrons can go. Either of these variations make the material more conductive.
In agricultural applications, LED lights are used to change how plants grow, alter when they flower, transform how they taste and even modify their levels of vitamins and antioxidants. LED lights can extend a plant’s shelf life as well.
Growers can use LED light modifications to grow two types of basil from the same plant. For example, they can grow sweeter basil for the grocery store and more spicy versions for chefs.
These plants are grown indoors, utilizing a fraction of the land, water and fertilizers of greens raised outdoors with conventional farming. Since the plants are gown indoors, they can be grown close to urban centers. Growers don’t need varieties bred for disease resistance, or plants genetically modified to handle the stresses of growing outside. The harvest isn’t transported across the country in refrigerated trucks, and they are not susceptible to the effects of climate change, which is making growing much more difficult for a lot of farms around the country and around the world.
Indoor growing and LEDs allow fast, year-round crop cycles. This permits growers to produce 200,000 pounds of leafy greens, vine crops, herbs and microgreens annually in a 12,000-square-foot warehouse, which is the equivalent of 80 acres of farmland. Not dependent on the outside weather, plants can grow year-round, enabling a grower to produce 15 or more crops a year.
Conventional greenhouses have depended on on high-pressure sodium lamps (HPS) to complement sunlight, but HPS lights don’t work as well as LED because they consume much more power to produce the same light levels. They also generate too much heat to place near young greens. Greenhouses are moving to a combination of HPS and LED lighting for supplemental lighting, though growers see a time when they will use LEDs alone. Lately, LED lighting costs have been cut in half, and their effectiveness has more than doubled.
Scientists have acknowledged that photosynthesis is improved within the red band, but plants also need blue light waves to prevent stretching and enhance leaf color. A visible range beyond red, known as far red, encourages larger leaves, branching and flowering. With advances in LED technology, light recipes can be finely tweaked to each crop and even to each phase in a crop’s life.
Sunlight is inefficient when it comes to improving small-scale, urban agriculture. The heat produced by the sun can damage plants. The sunlight’s heat effect is further amplified when the plants are packed close together, which they are in urban farming.
In contrast to sunlight, LED lights are known for shifting nearly undetectable amounts of heat onto plants, and the light bulbs are cool to the touch. When using LED lighting, urban farms can closely pack plants for maximum efficiency. This would not be achievable in ordinary agricultural environments without conceding the health of the plants.
There is normally a higher upfront cost using LED lighting. The best way to acknowledge the cost-savings of LED lighting is to look at it in terms of a long-term investment. Over time, LED lighting has a much higher energy productivity over time as compared to other urban farming lighting technologies.
LED's use much less electricity than pressure sodium lights or fluorescent, as much as 40% - 50%. For indoor growing, proper ventilation is required. Ventilation for indoor growing helps prevent excess moisture, the propagation of pests and the weakening of plant stems. LEDs produce much less heat than other types of grow lights, resulting in the need for less ventilation.
LED's grow lights have an extreme life length. They typically have 50,000 hours of usable life, which is approximately 6 years of continuous use. So, if you are utilizing the lights on a 50% on 50% off schedule, the life of LED grow lights is over 11 years.
Since LED's have much lower heat output, they can be located nearer to the plants. This allows the grower to stack more plants in the same vertical space. Therefore, the benefit of using LEDs is to double or triple the production output without changing the area of the growing space. Of course, this depends on the height of the growing space.
As used in commercial indoor growing, LED lighting technologies have been around less than ten years. LED lights are less understood than other types of grow lights, which have been studied for several decades. So, what does this mean? The support for and the knowledge of LED grow lights is far more limited than other types of grow lights. Most importantly, because of the knowledge gap, there are great opportunities.