Largest Automated Farm to Open in Japan

 GABRIELLE EASTER  |  @gab_produceplus

Tuesday 23rd May 2017, 08:19 Hong Kong

Largest Automated Farm to Open in Japan

Japanese group Spread has announced it’s opening the world’s largest automated vertical farm, Techno Farm Keihanna

Kyoto-based Spread has announced it will be opening the world’s largest automated vertical farm in Kizugawa, Japan.

Called Techno Farm Keihanna, the farm will produce 30,000 heads, or three tonnes, of lettuce each day once it’s fully operational by the beginning of 2018.

Techno Far Keihanna builds on Spread’s established indoor vertical farm, Kameoka Plant, which was built in 2007 and produces 21,000 heads, or two tonnes, of lettuce each day, all sold under the Vegetus brand.

At the new factory, the company will use automated cultivation to reduce labour costs by 50 per cent compared to the Kameoka Plant, and improve the recycling rate of water used for cultivation by 98 per cent. Using LED lighting developed by Spread itself, the company can reduces energy consumption by 30 per cent compared to existing LED lighting.

Spread aims to grow its share of the Japanese lettuce market to 10 per cent through expanding its production and establishing 20 facilities under a franchise model.

Food of the Future is Growing Crops in a Kitchen Cupboard,’ says High School Food Science Lab Founder

Food of the future is ‘growing crops in a kitchen cupboard,’ says high school food science lab founder

16-Oct-2017 By Adi Menayang

The ideal kitchen-of-the-future is where herbs and legumes are alive and growing in a cupboard instead of dried or canned, according to Jaime Guerrero, founder and administrator of a high school food science lab in Chicago. With the MIT ‘food computer,’ that future may not be as far off as it may seem.

HTTPS://WWW.FOODNAVIGATOR-

Future of the Prairie

FUTURE OF THE PRAIRIE

October 11, 2017 at 5:00 am | By DEVIN HEILMAN Staff Writer

LOREN BENOIT/Press From left, Coeur CEO Tom McNabb, Coeur Greens operations manager Kelly Lattin and Innovation Collective founder Nick Smoot pose for a photo in front of house at 1915 E. Mullan Ave in Coeur d’Alene. The house is a prototype for a future sustainable living community in Hayden.

A mixed-use sustainable village destined for Hayden is starting with a little old house in downtown Coeur d'Alene.

Coeur, a company that focuses on sustainable resources including power and food, recently purchased the house at 1915 E. Mullan Ave. to serve as a prototype for a sustainable living community and industrial campus in Hayden. Coeur purchased the 35 acres at the southeast corner of Hayden Avenue and Huetter Road in early 2016 and plans to start construction in the spring.

Coeur CEO Tom McNabb and Innovation Collective founder Nick Smoot, a partner in the project, are using the Mullan house as a demo site for the village.

"It's a simple model to see what we can do for starters," McNabb said Tuesday. "The word ‘sustainability,’ you never really know what it is, but we figure we’d try and figure it out."

Smoot said the community will be built on three core principles: outbound, sustainable and intellectual.

"Most people of this next generation want to live an outbound life in nature and having experiences in their community," Smoot said. "The idea of creating a whole village of people who have that mentality is something that's interesting as a housing development."

The "sustainable" principle is built upon dedication to low-cost, low-impact living where power sources such as wind and solar are maximized, gray water (mostly clean waste water from sinks, baths and kitchen appliances) is recycled, and native landscaping is used. Those involved in the project are researching and working on ways to expand even further into the sustainability aspect.

The third principle is "intellectual," meaning home owner associations and covenants, conditions and restrictions would encourage residents to read books, watch documentaries, help pay for educational guest speakers and otherwise maintain an intellectually stimulated community.

Smoot said he can imagine riding his bike into such a community, parking it at the community bike corral and walking to his house through a neighborhood where community fire pits generate conversation and serve as social gathering places. The houses are small (500 to 1,200 square feet), but provide enough space for their residents, and the community dining hall provides even more opportunities for people to meet and get to know each other.

"It makes me very happy," Smoot said. "That's the kind of place you want to live."

The solar-powered Coeur Technology Campus will be located just west of the village. It will house a solar farm to generate power for schools and public buildings, vertical farms to grow local produce, and a bottling plant to bottle local water at the source. It will also serve as a space where entrepreneurs and forward-thinkers can share ideas and put them into action.

"A lot of people don’t know it, but we have more sun hours per year than Florida,” McNabb said, “Solar, about five years ago, was 2 cents off because the rates for hydropower were cheap, but in the last five years the rates (for hydropower) are going up and the rates of hardware have gone down about 40 percent, so all of a sudden it makes sense.”

The 630-square-foot house on Mullan, built in 1930, would probably have been torn down if it had not been selected for this project. McNabb explained that the original structure will be kept as the inside is remodeled to be a studio-type dwelling that can be rented out on a short-term basis to give people an experience in sustainable living.

Tanks will be installed to recycle the gray water and help with temperature. The roof will be lined with solar panels, and energy-efficient appliances and products will be used, among other forward-thinking alterations that will boost the home's sustainability.

McNabb said a more precise estimate could be given near the house's completion date in the spring, but he believes the cost of giving the house a sustainable makeover will be somewhere around $50,000 or $60,000. About 20 people representing a wide variety of talent and expertise have already expressed interest in contributing to the project, he said.

The community is welcome to attend an open house from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturday to check it out prior to its sustainable makeover and exchange ideas with those leading the project.

Info: www.coeurllc.com

AeroFarms: The Most Interesting Dell IoT Example

AeroFarms: The Most Interesting Dell IoT Example

Rob Enderle |   UNFILTERED OPINION   |   POSTED 13 OCT, 2017

       I was at Dell’s big IoT coming out party, which had many working examples, but one really stood out for me. You see, I grew up spending my winters on a ranch and my summers working on a farm. And I quickly concluded that farming sucked. Getting up at an ungodly hour in the morning to fight bugs that had no sense of a decent hour to be awake, set sprinklers, spread pesticides that were known carcinogens, and fight flies for horse crap (I was perfectly happy to let them have it) in hot weather just wasn’t any fun. Oh, and my grandfather had a view that work shouldn’t be fun so if I found a creative way to enjoy the job, like having paint wars while painting the fence, I got punished. So, for me to look at a farming application and think it was cool takes a lot. But AeroFarms was cool.

Making Farming Not Suck

Farms don’t just suck from my perspective. They consume massive amounts of water; they were highlighted as the primary cause for the massive California drought. They are highlighted as massive polluters because the pesticides they use can contaminate ground water and spread beyond the fields being treated (and are often classified as high-level carcinogens). Driving this home, my uncle, who ran the farm I hated working so much, died because of this and the type of cancer he had basically consumed his body. Trust me, it wasn’t a pleasant way to die.

What AeroFarms does is apply IoT technology to farming. It is closer to hydroponics in that they move the fields inside and the result looks more like a factory than a farm. Using below 10 percent of the water, no pesticides, and having yields that, due to optimized environmental conditions and the lack of pests that farmers would die to enjoy, they also don’t use farmers, they use techs.

Now I didn’t like being a farmer, but I’m perfectly fine being a tech.

Rethinking Farming

The advantage of this is that you can place farming inside cities and far closer to the people who consume the produce. This reduces transport cost massively, reduces storage cost massively, reduces spoilage massively, and it also results in a far higher quality product. According to AeroFarms, the cost for producing the product goes down but, due to far higher consistency and the lack of pesticides, the quality and thus the potential price of the produce could go up.

This means increasing margins and reduced risk. Much of what kills a farm is risk. The ranch I lived on grew oranges. California used to lead in orange production, but a disease called Quick Decline wiped out virtually all the orange ranches in the state and now that market belongs to Florida. The poor ranchers either had to change their entire business model or go bankrupt. Many failed. But in a contained environment, you can better isolate and prevent this kind of thing and reduce most act-of-god type risks. Granted, major problems that take out cities like earthquakes and hurricanes would still be issues, but you can harden against these. You generally don’t need or want windows (to better control light), so your structures can be more resistant naturally, and there is at least a reasonable chance that, in a disaster, these things could be functioning lifelines, helping avoid localized starvation, which is now a concern in areas like Puerto Rico.

Labor

One other area where farming is a problem is that that conventional farms tend to employ a high number of illegal aliens. This makes them attractive havens for those who enter the country illegally and allows excessive levels of employee abuse because these employees can’t complain to the police.

As noted above, AeroFarms uses techs, not unskilled labor, and far less of them. Lending itself to robotics and automation, the model directly addresses this problem as well.

Wrapping Up: Making the IoT Work

AeroFarms likely highlights best the kind of potential for the IoT effort that Dell Technologies is trying to roll out. Farming has massive problems in terms of resource usage, pollution, labor and risk. By using current generation IoT technology, AeroFarms has massively addressed each of these areas and created a solution that is far better for the world of tomorrow, with increasing weather risks and higher uses of robotics. I’m kind of wondering how long before someone who is tech forward like Amazon builds this right into a grocery store.

And, from a personal perspective, this could make farming fun. My younger self would have loved to work for AeroFarms and I’m sure I wouldn’t miss the bugs, heat and horse poop.

Rob Enderle is President and Principal Analyst of the Enderle Group, a forward-looking emerging technology advisory firm.  With over 30 years’ experience in emerging technologies, he has provided regional and global companies with guidance in how to better target customer needs; create new business opportunities; anticipate technology changes; select vendors and products; and present their products in the best possible light. Rob covers the technology industry broadly. Before founding the Enderle Group, Rob was the Senior Research Fellow for Forrester Research and the Giga Information Group, and held senior positions at IBM and ROLM. Follow Rob on Twitter @enderle, on Facebook and on Google+

Illumitex Launches Major Upgrade to PowerHarvest® Series

Illumitex Launches Major Upgrade to PowerHarvest® Series

Illumitex’s PowerHarvest 14 delivers more output at higher efficiencies to meet the needs of the most demanding growing applications.

PowerHarvest 14

We are delivering the best light recipes to produce quality plants with high-quality cost-effective solutions.

AUSTIN, TEXAS (PRWEB) OCTOBER 13, 2017

Illumitex, Inc. is proud to announce the release of the PowerHarvest 14. This LED horticulture lighting solution, ideal for large-scale greenhouse operations, will provide the controlled horticulture environment with 30% increased output, 30% increase efficiency and up to 2.2 µmol/J. The next generation in the popular series will give growers a powerful solution that will improve quality and yield.

The PowerHarvest 14 will be utilized in supplemental or soul-source lighting facilities where growers are looking to achieve a PPF as high as 1300 µmol/second. The light will be offered in various configurations to match the need of each customer. The fixture will be offered in the F3 spectrum, as well wattage of either 556 or 640 and accommodate low and high voltage. These options were carefully selected to meet the needs of the constantly evolving controlled environment horticulture market.

“PowerHarvest 14 takes our field proven horticulture lighting platform to new levels of efficiency and output giving growers approximately 30% more light,” says Jeff Bisberg, CEO & President. “We are delivering the best light recipes to produce quality plants with high-quality cost-effective solutions. It is inevitable that LED will replace traditional lighting solutions in all horticulture applications and our PH14 brings us one step closer to realizing that goal.”

Versions of the PowerHarvest will meet or exceed requirements for utility rebates offering an opportunity to partner with growers and make switching from the traditional lighting to the more efficient LED solution a reality.

The release of the PowerHarvest 14 ushers in a new era of design and innovation from Illumitex as they continue to transform LED lighting for greenhouses, urban farms, and other controlled environments.

About Illumitex, Inc: 
Founded in 2005 in Austin, Texas, Illumitex works diligently to create industry-shifting achievements in horticultural lighting. Our team of horticulture scientist and engineers have radically transformed LED lighting that influence plant benefits including yield, taste, color and smell. Illumitex is enthusiastically committed to scientific research, cutting-edge design, and innovative engineering. We are dedicated to work with our customer to deliver world class horticulture solutions while pushing lighting into the digital age with automated tools and services. http://illumitex.com.

Seven Miles to Heaven // Katie Martin

Seven Miles to Heaven // Katie Martin

KATIE MARTIN OCT 06, 2017  |  CONTRIBUTING REPORTER

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Driving to the Landscape Lab at Yale’s West Campus requires getting on I-95, getting off I-95, taking the ramp to get back on I-95, then veering off to the right moments before you get sucked back into the vortex of traffic. Yale runs two regular shuttles out to West Campus, but I missed the one I needed to catch, so I made my boyfriend rent a Zipcar and drive me there.

Of course, I was late to my meeting with Justin Freiberg, the director of the Landscape Lab. Fortunately, Freiberg is one of the nicest people on Earth, which is probably what happens to you when you spend as much time communing with nature as he does.

In 2007, Yale bought the 136-acre Bayer Pharmaceuticals campus in Orange, Connecticut for $109 million, which sounds like an exorbitant sum but was apparently a pretty good deal. Ten years later, West Campus houses seven institutes dedicated to biology, chemistry, energy sciences and cultural heritage preservation, plus analytic and imaging technology centers that serve the whole Yale community.

It’s also home to 80 acres of greenspace, which is where Freiberg comes in. His job description on the Lab’s website says he “oversees the development, design, planning and execution” of the Lab’s initiatives, but he functions just as much as a human Rolodex/mentor/jack-of-all-trades as he does an administrator. He is involved in practically every project at the Landscape Lab, and everyone I spoke with told me that he had made their work infinitely easier and more successful.

The Lab is two years old, but it’s built around a quarter-acre urban farm that’s now in its fifth growing season. Since the Lab’s inception, Freiberg, a team of volunteers, student interns and partner organizations in New Haven have built a barn, a patio and a “WikiHouse” (more on that later); terraced a hillside to create a medicinal herb garden; installed beehives; and begun cultivating mushrooms. The timber barn, adjacent to an agroforestry orchard, is built with wood from the Yale Forest, and serves as the site for courses, workshops and gatherings.

“The Landscape Lab has developed a lot since I started going. When I first went it was just a farm and a couple of trails. But in the past three years we’ve built so much, and now I’m taking leadership on developing a rainwater collection system for the barn,” said Holden Leslie-Bole ’18, who’s been working at the Lab since the beginning of his sophomore year. “The barn is off the grid and we want to get some water to it so we can use it for events. So we could either run a water line from the street for about $20,000, or we could have a cool student design opportunity and develop a rainwater collection system for a couple hundred bucks.”

Leslie-Bole emphasized the value of doing simpler tasks around the Lab as well. “I’ve also spent time building trails, whacking back brush, and laying down wood chips, and I built the fire pit so we could gather around a campfire. It’s a little overwhelming sometimes doing academics at Yale, so it’s nice to get outside and do something physical.”

The Lab’s work isn’t limited to the barn’s immediate surroundings — it extends across West Campus. Thanks to a Seedling Award (a grant that supports student projects at the Landscape Lab), Rachel McMonagle FES ’18 studies the effects of perennial wheatgrass on soil erosion, and she managed to obtain permission to convert an unused hillside between two parking lots into a group of research plots. “That’s a real tribute to the collaboration between the Landscape Lab and West Campus, that they were able to take this unused space and make it productive both generally and in a research sense,” she said.

Another Seedling Award recipient is Jonathan Simonds ’18, an environmental engineering major who used his grant to build a biogas digester and develop preprocessing techniques that will allow more kinds of food scraps to be digested into methane. “Methane is basically identical to natural gas,” Simonds said, “and there’s so much natural gas infrastructure already in place that if you can make methane without fracking, with a renewable material like food scraps, you can use that methane without having to start from scratch.”

Along with Lillian Childress ’17, Simonds applied for the grant after hearing about it from Freiberg, whom he’d met while working on an Engineers Without Borders project at the Landscape Lab. And, as he tends to do, Freiberg helped Simonds and Childress expand their project further than they’d initially imagined. “We really thought we were just applying for some money, because we already knew what we wanted to do — it was just expensive! But the award has been way more than that, way more than what we expected. We’ve gotten so many resources in terms of mentorship, both from Justin and people he’s connected with us. This award is worth so much more than the money,” Simonds said.

Other Seedling Grant recipients include Project Bright, a student-run group that works to install more solar panels at Yale, and a team of Forestry and Environmental students using drones to monitor and analyze various terrains.

The Landscape Lab’s commitment to student projects and entrepreneurship dates back farther than the year-old Seedling Awards. The aforementioned WikiHouse was a 2014 project spearheaded by Peter Hirsch FES ’15, who wanted to test whether houses could be built quickly to serve as temporary shelter in disaster zones or refugee camps. WikiHouse provides open-source building plans that can be downloaded and used to cut pieces out of plywood, which then snap together to assemble without nails or special equipment, making them faster and easier to build than a traditional structure. The WikiHouse organization promises that one can be built in less than a day, so Hirsch enlisted 40 volunteers and picked a day to assemble the parts.

It ended up taking a lot longer than he expected. “We thought it would go up really fast. We had brought a GoPro with 4 hours of film to capture the whole process. It ended up taking a month,” Freiberg said. “But that process of trying and failing taught us about the limitations of this design. The humidity warped the wood so the pieces didn’t fit together properly, and of course that would be a challenge in lots of areas. So it took longer than expected, but Peter learned some valuable things, shared them with the community and now we have this really beautiful structure.”

Cass Walker-Harvey, the program director for social entrepreneurship at the Tsai Center for Innovative Thinking at Yale, pointed to the WikiHouse project as a great example of the Landscape Lab’s contribution to entrepreneurship at Yale. “You need to test ideas like the WikiHouse out somewhere, and you couldn’t do that on main campus,” Walker-Harvey said. “Having a space for trial and error and hands-on experimentation is incredibly valuable. When I hear about any sustainability initiatives, or really any initiatives that need space, from storing prosthetic limbs to testing irrigation systems, I tell my students to go to the Landscape Lab.”

Another project that benefited from West Campus’ spaciousness is Poda Foods, a cricket-based culinary startup founded by Yale students that now operates (unsurprisingly) out of Portland. The company needed somewhere to breed the crickets that it would then use to make cricket flour, a sustainable source of protein. (There are a lot of crickets in the world, and unlike cows, they do not, uh, produce methane in significant volumes). “It addressed a critical food need and a critical sustainability challenge,” Walker-Harvey said. “And they couldn’t have done it without that space and that support.”

More established New Haven companies have also partnered with the Landscape Lab. Junzi Kitchen was founded by two FES students, Yong Zhao FES ’15 and Wanting Zhang FES ’11, and a School of Art student, Ming Bai ART ’13. It is partnering with the Landscape Lab, Dwight Hall and Colombian restaurant Roia to present this Friday’s installment of Beyond Food, a “monthly-ish culinary experience dedicated to interrogating the role food plays in our society.”

“When I think about service and social justice, one way to have greater civic engagement is to have people come together and talk and build empathy,” said Onyeka Obiocha, Dwight Hall’s director of innovation. “And one way Dwight Hall chooses to do that work is through food, which is a great way to bring people together.”

“Junzi and Roia actually forage from the farm at Beyond Food — they use produce and herbs from around the Lab to create the food they’ll serve,” Obiocha continued. “Working around the limitations of the Landscape Lab and the farm, using an open fire and foraging — that speaks to the way Northern Chinese and Colombian cuisines have influenced and continue to influence the culture of New England. The Landscape Lab is really a laboratory for people to get their hands dirty and build things.”

And the farm’s produce is used not just for culinary purposes, but for educational ones as well.

Sanjeet Baidwan first saw the farm’s potential when she visited it in 2015. Baidwan, a clinical instructor at the School of Medicine, had cold-emailed Freiberg (“when I hear of someone interesting that I’d like to collaborate with, I tend to just do that”), and their first meeting consisted of them wandering around the Landscape Lab’s grounds.

Baidwan’s interest in the link between food and health was first sparked when she served on the board of directors for local nonprofit New Haven Farms during her residency. New Haven Farms converts parking lots into urban farms, and partners with neighborhood clinics to identify low-income patients with a high risk of developing diet-linked diseases like obesity and diabetes. These patients and their families are then provided with a 16- to 20-week Community Supported Agriculture share, which includes not only weekly delivery of fresh, locally-grown fruit and vegetables, but also a two-hour weekly nutrition and cooking class offered in both Spanish and English that focuses on recipes using that week’s produce. “You can give people fruits and vegetables,” Baidwan said, “but if they don’t know what to do with them they won’t use them at home. So having a nutritionist give cooking lessons addresses that problem.”

Baidwan saw the success of the program, and realized it was filling a serious gap in the health care system. “I wanted to teach health care practitioners about these issues, because these preventable lifestyle diseases, like obesity, diabetes and some cancers, are a huge burden on the health care system,” he said. “Being in the clinics and seeing patients and physicians who are desperate for answers and help — that kind of brought about this idea.”

So she took a walk with Justin Freiberg, and since no walk with Justin Freiberg ends without him finding a way to help you, Yale Cultivate Health was born. YCH now hosts regular workshops for health care professionals at the Landscape Lab that combine short lectures on nutrition with “Iron Chef-style” cooking competitions where the participants harvest and then use produce from the Landscape Lab’s farm. Baidwan also teaches a required first-year course at the School of Medicine that focuses on food and its impacts on health.

The School of Nursing offers courses in partnership with the Landscape Lab as well: a plant-based medicine class teaches students at the School of Nursing about the uses of medicinal herbs grown in the Lab’s gardens, as well as about food and nutrition.

Undergraduate students also have opportunities to get involved in growing and producing food.

Y Pop-Up, a student-run pop-up restaurant that creates four-course fine-dining experiences in butteries, recently hosted a meal at the Landscape Lab. “Especially when you’re doing something like a dinner where the focus is on sustainability and contextualizing where food comes from, it helps to be surrounded by nature,” said Rhea Teng, the co-president of Y Pop-Up. “I recently went on a foraging tour with Justin for this past Y Pop-Up opening. Justin is one of those people that seems to know the name and use of nearly every plant, and it was a surreal experience to go walking into the wilderness and have things pointed out that you would normally never think to eat.”

Teng is also the president of Bee Space, an undergraduate club that runs the Lab’s beehives and uses the hive’s products, including their honey. “Because the Lab grows so much beautiful produce, it’s the perfect place to have hives to help with pollination,” she said.

“We’re pretty involved. We go to West Campus about every two weeks, once a month in the winter,” said Grace Cheung ’20, a hive coordinator for Bee Space.

“We’re not trying to train professional beekeepers,” said Freiberg, “so it’s less about the practice of beekeeping and more about creating opportunities for students to get a sense of the practice as it stands, and then be inventive and try to build improvements.” Cheung said Bee Space is currently investigating ways to help the bees survive the winter, and exploring nontraditional hive designs.

Another sweet project at the Lab is Maple Fest, an annual celebration of all things maple. “Of course, sharing the maple syrup we’ve tapped from our trees is great. But Maple Fest also offers an opportunity to talk about some of the tangible effects of climate change, like the reduction in harvestable days for maple trees as our area gets less of the weather needed for sap flow,” said Freiberg.

Other projects at the Landscape Lab are also in service of larger social and environmental causes. The Agroforestry Collaborative was founded three years ago by Nathan Hall FES ’17 SOM ’17, who was born and raised in a coal-mining region of Eastern Kentucky. The Collaborative now uses a plot of land at the Landscape Lab to explore how strip-mined land can be reforested, and Hall used his joint degree with the forestry school and the School of Management to investigate alternatives to his home’s mining-centric economy.

Another project, the GrassX Experimental Grassland Competition, challenges teams to design and implement strategies that hold back invasive plants, create pollinator habitats and improve the health of the soil. The competition is held in partnership with Ucross, an organization that works on land stewardship in the American West. “Projects like grassland management need to be executed at scale, and this competition gives people the opportunity to do that. And then, once they’ve had experience managing even an acre of land, that makes them much more prepared to work with the millions of acres out west,” Freiberg said. “And hopefully, we’ll hear about some solutions for pollinator habitat that could be useful locally.”

But not every student’s involvement in the Landscape Lab’s work needs to be so formal (or competitive). “We have programming almost every single day,” said Freiberg, before rattling off a list of recent events including a foraging workshop, farm volunteering sessions and a nature walk. “I wish everyone at Yale would come out here, because there are so many opportunities and so many ways to connect.”

Students who’ve spent time at the Landscape Lab echo Freiberg’s sentiments. “It’s a hidden gem of Yale’s campus. It’s a super cool place that feels almost like a retreat in the middle of the forest, but it’s just a couple minutes away on the shuttle,” Leslie-Bole said.

Though the drive may have been confusing, I could practically feel the stress melting off me as I walked along the Lab’s wooded paths. If the peaceful atmosphere isn’t worth the commute, the diversity of opportunities certainly is — especially if you catch the shuttle.

Katie Martin | katherine.d.martin@yale.edu

Major Green Technology Breakthrough! Metropolis Farms Unveils A New Device That Reduces Electric Cost by 60% and Disrupts The Entire Industry

Major Green Technology Breakthrough! Metropolis Farms Unveils A New Device That Reduces Electric Cost by 60% and Disrupts The Entire Industry

October 17, 2017

Do you know what a lighting ballast is? Chances are, if you're not involved in a trade that deals with lighting, you probably don't.

You're probably reading this because you saw a headline about a massively disruptive technology that reduces electric costs by 60%. This might be puzzling to some, since most folks don't even know about ballasts in the first place.

Well, we're here to tell you that lighting ballasts are one of the most important technological devices that very few people know about. And we have developed a ballast that can make a significant impact on the amount of energy the world uses.

There are two paths to travel to get the world to a more sustainable future:

1. Increase the percentage of power generated by renewable energy sources

and/or

2. Decrease the amount of energy consumed

We are attacking this problem on the consumption side of the equation. This new technology dramatically decreases the amount of energy that is needed to power most lights. (By the way, we are attacking this problem on the production side too, check out the world's first solar powered indoor farm we're building in South Philadelphia.)

But before we dive into this new breakthrough, since most folks don't know what a ballast is, let's start with the basics.

In the simplest of terms, a ballast's responsibility is to ensure lights work properly and don't burn out immediately.

In more defined terms, per the National Lighting Product Information Program, a "ballast regulates the current to lamps and provides sufficient voltage to start the lamps. Without a ballast to limit its current, a lamp connected directly to a high voltage power source would rapidly and uncontrollably increase its current draw. Within a second the lamp would overheat and burn out. During lamp starting, the ballast must briefly supply high voltage to establish an arc between the two lamp electrodes. Once the arc is established, the ballast quickly reduces the voltage and regulates the electric current to produce a steady light output."

Ballasts are connected to all fluorescent, compact fluorescent, HID, and many commercial LED lights. Regarding LEDs, ballasts are called drivers, but they are effectively the same thing. So whenever you're out and about, know that almost all of the lights you see in commercial or public spaces are connected to a ballast. 

Lighting accounts for 53% of electric usage in U.S. retail buildings. And ballasts are the bridge that enables that power consumption. 

In 2016, the U.S. Energy Information Administration estimates about 279 billion kilowatthours (kWh) of electricity were used for lighting by the residential sector and commercial sector in the United States. That's 279 million megawatts and does not account for public buildings or streetlamps. 

So lighting is responsible for a massive amount of energy that is consumed.

Beyond the statistics that are directly related to powering the lights, more energy is used by HVAC systems to combat the excessive BTUs (heat) that lighting systems generate. This is a particularly sensitive issue when the temperature needs to be highly regulated, like in an indoor vertical farm.

Currently in our vertical farms, we are using 315W ceramic metal halide bulbs and we have 1 ballast for 1 bulb. For every bulb in our hydroponic farms, there's a ballast regulating the energy necessary for the light to work properly. 

That's typical for most big lighting systems. For example, in another sector, each streetlamp you see illuminated at night is connected to a ballast.

All that said, you're now probably wondering: what's this development that will change the world?

Well, it's a new ballast. A more efficient ballast. One that brings unprecedented breakthroughs in ballast technology.

Here are two facts that will show why this is not hyperbole:

1) This new ballast will reduce total energy consumption in our indoor farms by 60%.

2) We will use 1 ballast to power 8 bulbs.

These results are being verified by a major university's lighting laboratory and certified by a CPA firm.

If you don't understand the game-changing ramifications of those statements, please keep reading!

The most common argument against indoor farming or vertical farming is that it requires too much energy to produce diverse crops. And in light of that argument (pun intended), we've already developed vertical farming systems that can grow diverse crops while still using less energy than other indoor farms that only grow leafy greens, and we have shown that these systems can produce profitable results for farmers.

Now with this new ballast, the energy argument can be totally put to bed. The equation has completely changed and by making these ballasts available to everyone, all indoor vertical farms will be able to reduce their energy consumption dramatically. All businesses and cities will be able to reduce their energy consumption dramatically.

We recently wrote a post on the topic of legal cannabis and how it's going to change the world. We said that due to the technologies being researched and developed to grow cannabis better, there will be emerging technologies that are backwards compatible and enable us to grow foodbetter.

But this technology takes it a step further. By focusing efforts on how to grow anything in a more energy efficient way, a technology was discovered that will enable every industry to operate using less energy.

With our old ballasts, the bulbs in our hydroponic systems required 3 amps and 315W to power them. With this new ballast, they only need 1 amp and 110W. That is far less energy used by the most efficient LED lights, and we still produce full spectrum light so our plants thrive. 

This was me after being told how these ballasts work:

Below are a few other features of this new ballast breakthrough that changes the game:

• There's a massive heat reduction at the bulb from 400 degrees to 150 degrees, which significantly reduces energy cooling loads.

• Remember the Superbowl when the power went out and the lights couldn't be turned on for 34 minutes? That happened because the ballasts and bulbs needed time to cool down and recalibrate the energy flowing into the bulbs. With our new ballast, those lights could have been turned on right away. 

• Before, a ballast could only power a certain kind of light. For example, one type of ballast could power fluorescents, another could power HIDs, while another powers LEDs. This new ballast can power any kind of bulb, simultaneously.

As mentioned earlier, this one ballast can power multiple high usage lights.

And as nature goes, there are indirect consequences from a technological advancement. It just so happens that in this case, we are extremely excited about one consequence in particular. 

Since 1 ballast will effectively replace 8, the economics work in such a way that we will be manufacturing these ballasts in the United States.

We are already working on plans to build a Philadelphia-based manufacturing facility that will provide a significant amount of living-wagejobs to local Philadelphians.

Beyond the manufacturing jobs, there will be a significant amount of work for electricians everywhere as we envision this new technology becoming the norm. Building owners will be able to retrofit their existing light systems with these new ballasts and immediately decrease the amount of energy they use.

To review, this technology can help decrease electric usage by 60%. Considering the 279 billion kWh used for just lighting in the residential and commercial sectors, and that the average residential price per kWh is 12.99 cents, saving over 167 billion kWh is the same as saving over $21.7 billion. Indoor farming for cannabis alone accounts for 1% of the entire country's energy usage, at $6 billion annually, and that number will continue to climb as more states legalize cannabis.

If these ballasts are installed everywhere, think of what $22+ billion could be spent on!

On 10/16, President of Metropolis Farms Jack Griffin unveiled and demonstrated this new ballast technology at Indoor Ag Con alongside Pennsylvania's Secretary of Agriculture, Russel C. Redding. We are working on plans to manufacture these ballasts in Philadelphia and estimate they will be available in 2018. From there, we believe this new ballast will become the new standard not only in indoor vertical farming, but in all commercial lighting. This will have an immense impact on the amount of energy that is used for lighting by decreasing the energy consumed immediately upon installation. This will help the world transition to a more sustainable future. And this will create living-wage jobs in the U.S.

We are incredibly excited about this new breakthrough and hope that you are on board as well. The times they are a changing and indoor agriculture is here to stay, here to create positive change, and here to revamp the broken food system. Join us for the journey.

Let's get lit.

For more information on Metropolis Farms and to see where we plant our roots, read about us here. 

AeroFarms - Job Offer

AeroFarms - Job Offer

On behalf of AeroFarms Green Career Consult is looking for a: 

Commercial Head Grower

Vertically Controlled Environment Agriculture

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AeroFarms is a change-the-world vertical farming company revolutionizing agriculture in the heart of Newark, NJ; just 8 short miles from New York City. AeroFarms mission is to transform agriculture by building and operating environmentally responsible farms throughout the world to enable local production at scale and nourish our communities with safe, nutritious, and delicious food.  We use aeroponics to mist the roots of the greens with nutrients, water, and oxygen. AeroFarms’ aeroponic system is a closed loop system, using 95% less water than field farming and 40% less than hydroponics.  Our engineered lighting allows tight control of size, shape, texture, color, flavor, and nutrition with razor-sharp precision and increased productivity.  AeroFarms can take the exact same seed from the field and grow it in half the time as a traditional field farmer, leading to 390 times more productivity per square foot than a commercial field farm.  

The past 12 months have been an exciting time for us. Our team has doubled during this period and we now need a special individual – an experienced and talented problem solver with two green thumbs to lead commercial growing operations in our new, state-of-the-art facility. 

Your role:
You will be the onsite growing expert called upon for training, problem solving, and plant health monitoring, and will be responsible for yields and quality in collaboration with the Operations and R&D team.  In this role, you will help provide leadership for the facility by working with cross-functional teams to ensure that long-range goals, strategies, plans, and policies are followed. You should be an experienced leader with a strong background in the growing of high quality produce. The ideal candidate will be able to demonstrate experience implementing new processes and facility start-up. You will be an energetic, forward-thinking and creative individual with high standards and good judgment. Our organization is fast-paced: we value individuals who can lead by example and keep focus in a team-centered environment. 

Your tasks & responsibilities:

• Manage growing in a large-scale, commercial production facility.
• Ensure product quality, yields, sales volumes and deliveries are achieved.
• Oversee cleanliness, sanitation and organization of all equipment present within the facility.
• Implement and oversee water, media and nutrient solution management, sampling and testing procedures.
• Continue to develop an extensive knowledge base of successful Integrated Pest Management (IPM) strategies.
• Quantify and qualify data regularly, while following company policies and procedures.
• Lead by example and assist with seeding, scouting, irrigation, pest control, plant health, harvesting, etc.
• Contribute and improve upon already-existing operations and processes to improve work-flow, efficiency and provide constructive feedback and recommendations.
• Operate heavy and light horticultural equipment and machinery.
• Facility maintenance and trouble-shooting as necessary.
• Develop methods for reducing costs while optimizing production.
• Comply with all HR policies, including confidentiality and non-disclosure agreements.
• Communicate effectively with supervisors, contractors, and employees.
• Contribute to a fun, team-oriented and challenging work environment in an innovative and pioneering atmosphere.
• Other duties as assigned.

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Your profile:

• Minimum five years of experience in a commercial greenhouse with a demonstrated history of success with progressive team management.  Experience in hydroponic and aeroponic growing would be considered a plus.
• A four-year degree in Horticulture (BSc.) or closely related discipline; Masters preferred.
• Knowledge of large-scale commercial plant cultivation, including nutrient requirements and delivery systems, plant health, growing mediums, light requirements, temperature and humidity control, air flow, pH, EC and IPM etc.
• Knowledge of plant diseases, insects and fungi, as well as plant treatment options.
• Ability to perform routine equipment maintenance, management and minor repairs.
• Knowledge and experience with Horticulture automation and associated software with the ability to learn new technologies.
• The ability to use data to recommend and implement process improvements that enhance efficiency, yield, and quality.
• A commitment to compliance with Food Safety, HACCP, and Quality Control procedures.
• Experience developing and managing budgets.
• Ability to plan ahead, trouble-shoot, anticipate and solve problems and manage multiple tasks at a time.
• Ability to perform manual labor tasks required for the proper management of a large-scale grow greenhouse.
• Strong interpersonal skills and ability to lead and hold direct and non-direct personnel accountable for meeting daily, weekly and monthly goals.
• An eye for improvement: you will continuously work to improve operating efficiencies, increase learning and develop new skills.
• Leadership skills: you will recruit, train, mentor and motivate the farming team.
• Fluent in spoken and written English
• You are presently located, or willing to relocate to New York, USA

AeroFarms offers:

• An incredible ‘change-the-world’ company with the eyes of the world focused on our success.
• A team of motivated, intellectually curious individuals to support you.
• The backing of some seriously impressive firms including Goldman Sachs, Prudential and other leading venture funds.
• Be eligible to work in USA (Newark), AeroFarms will support you in this matter (working permit, etc.)

Contact:  johan@greencareerconsult.nl

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Johan Grootscholten (left) and Evert Verboom (right)

Indoor Farms of America Expands Key Corporate Staff

Indoor Farms of America Expands Key Corporate Staff

NEWS PROVIDED BY:  Indoor Farms of America 

LAS VEGAS, Oct. 18, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Indoor Farms of America is pleased to announce that it has recently filled several key roles at the company as the company client base expands into specific areas of need which its unique equipment can address.

Company CEO David Martin stated, "As 2017 has progressed, it was clear with the level of potential farm owners and operators we are working with that we needed to take our internal operations to a next level, and we are doing that by bringing on board some very solid folks."

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Chef Georg Paulussen Director of Culinary Operations for Indoor Farms of America

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Jake Arterbury Crop Scientest at Indoor Farms of America

Martin continued, "We are really focused on continued research into how we can push our equipment to grow plants to unlock the highest nutritional value possible, with the most purity.  That, coupled with working on adjusting flavor profiles in crops we can grow, and continuing to increase the variety of crops we can grow at commercial scale, such as proteins, is where our interests are focused."

As such, the company has hired two key people: Jake Arterbury, who will work in the role of Crop Scientist and Staff Biologist. "Jake will work on all areas of testing crops grown in our patented aeroponic system, and we are delighted to have him on board. Jake is a graduate of Baylor University with a strong emphasis on field research and plant physiology, and he is a great addition to our team."

In addition, the company has hired a world class Five Star Executive Chef in Georg Paulussen, for the position of Global Director of Culinary Operations.

"Some folks wonder why would an indoor farming company need an Executive Chef?  Well, when I met Georg, and I realized his passion for nutrition and he told me his vision for feeding people around the world healthier food which they can have immediate access to, I knew he was the perfect fit for Indoor Farms of America," stated Martin.

"Georg has worked literally around the globe for over 35 years as either the Executive Chef, or as the Director of Food and Beverage, for the leading five star resort companies of the world, the very best.  His desire to be the best in his field took him to places where he witnessed countless people that are not nourished properly in day to day living."

Chef Georg Paulussen states it this way, "When I met with Dave initially, I thought, wow, this equipment is pretty cool stuff, as it grows so many plant varieties so beautifully, with such great taste. But when we connected on the level of nutrition and education, and how Indoor Farms of America has as a broader mission to reach people around the world who need it most, I knew this was a place I could have a positive impact and help the company achieve its goals."

"My working environments have always provided me with such passion, my work is my love as a chef, but now I want to focus on nutritional aspects for helping the most people, and this company has the correct plan for that," added Mr. Paulussen.

CEO Martin adds, "Both Jake and Georg will work on special projects alongside our Corporate Farm Manager, Anthony Randolph. Our initial sessions together have been incredible, and we are excited to have them on our team."

Chef Georg will also work directly with chefs and major hotels from around the world to educate them on how they can have an abundant and cost effective supply of fresh-harvested vegetables every day for their needs in restaurants anywhere they are.  On the nutrition side, the focus is how hospitals and governments can bring immediate access to high quality foods, such as for patients in various levels of recovery.

Indoor Farms of America President Ron Evans sees it changing the landscape for access to fresh foods: "We have watched several companies make claims that are simply funny, in this growing area of indoor agriculture. One thing we know, if you are going to grow crops indoors, you simply must do it in far higher quantity to make it a success financially. If a growing system at the end of the day will not produce enough product to ensure it can be a financial model that will sustain, then it is a waste of time.  That was our original vision, and now we can take our game even further beyond anyone in the industry with these new folks on our team."

Chef Georg will be available this week at the PMA Fresh Summit in New Orleans. "Stop by our booth for a visit if you are at the show, and let's talk fresh, and let's talk nutrition!" states Martin

Indoor Farms of America has a showroom with demonstration farms operating in Las Vegas, Nevada and in multiple locations in Canada, and in South Africa, where their patented vertical aeroponic equipment is on display.

CONTACT: 
David W. Martin, CEO   181249@email4pr.com   IndoorFarmsAmerica.com
4000 W. Ali Baba Lane, Ste. F Las Vegas, NV 89118
(702) 664-1236 or (702) 606-2691

SOURCE Indoor Farms of America

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U of M Secures $2.5 Million Grant to Improve Quality of Life in Cities

U of M Secures $2.5 Million Grant to Improve Quality of Life in Cities

October 12, 2017

The National Science Foundation (NSF) announced today that it has awarded a $2.5 million grant to a multi-disciplinary team of researchers led by the University of Minnesota for a new project to advance access, wellbeing, health, and sustainability in cities. The project will focus on multiple “smart” infrastructure sectors—water, energy, food, shelter, transportation, waste management—that converge in cities.

The grant is part of the NSF’s Smart and Connected Communities initiative, which is investing $19.5 million nationwide to develop interdisciplinary and community-engaged research to revolutionize the nation’s cities and communities with more responsive and adaptive infrastructures, technologies and services.

The research effort will be co-directed by lead investigator Professor Shashi Shekhar, a computer science and engineering professor in the University of Minnesota’s College of Science and Engineering, and co-investigator Professor Anu Ramaswami, a professor in the University of Minnesota Humphrey School of Public Affairs. The project spans four academic institutions and includes co-investigators Florida State University Professor Rick Feiock, University of Washington Professor Julian Marshall, and Purdue University Professor Venkatesh Merwade.

With transformative new infrastructures coming on the horizon—such as autonomous vehicles, smart and distributed energy systems, novel green infrastructure, and urban farms—the physical fabric of our future cities will be very different from what exists today. The research team will provide new insight on how the future spatial deployment of these new infrastructures in cities will shape access, wellbeing, health, and environmental sustainability in different neighborhoods in the cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minn., as well as Tallahassee, Fla.

The new project will advance basic research in multiple disciplines including environmental and civil engineering, computer science, urban planning and public policy. It will create a unique public database, establish citizen science protocols, and advance the science of smart sustainable urban systems through knowledge co-production with cities engaged in infrastructure planning.

“Infrastructure is one of the pillars of our economy—and sustainable, smart infrastructure systems allow our cities, towns, and communities to thrive as 21st century hubs of innovation and prosperity,” Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) said in a news release about the NSF grant.

He was joined by other members of Minnesota’s congressional delegation, including Senator Amy Klobuchar and Representatives Keith Ellison and Betty McCollum, in adding their political support behind the goals of the initiative.

The research team will also engage K-12 students, university researchers, and citizen scientists to develop the first comprehensive public database on infrastructure, environment, health, and wellbeing at the neighborhood level in cities. They will use innovative techniques such as crowdsourcing campaigns using low-cost sensors to characterize air pollution and flooding risks, K-12 engagement in mapping well-being and infrastructure satisfaction at the neighborhood level, and the development of related cyber-infrastructure.

The rich database then will be analyzed to identify novel, interesting, and useful spatial patterns and to develop urban models. Researchers will work with city partners to help better plan future cities considering emerging smart grid, smart mobility, and smart food system transitions.

The project’s educational activities will also connect graduate students from the fields of engineering, urban planning, policy, and sustainability with K-12 teachers and students, with particular attention to underserved populations. Research insights will be broadly disseminated to U.S. cities through partnerships with ICLEI-USA, the National League of Cities, and the MetroLab Network, a city-university collaborative, and through the National Science Foundation’s Sustainable Healthy Cities Network.

“Minnesota leads the nation in STEAM education that integrates the creativity of the arts with science, technology, engineering and math to address our critical infrastructure needs,” Rep. McCollum said. “This grant reflects the excellence of the University of Minnesota in educating the next generation to meet these challenges.”

Additional collaborators at the University of Minnesota include professor Julie Brown of the College of Education and Human Development, Diana Dalbotten of the College of Science and Engineering’s St. Anthony Falls Laboratory, Len Kne of U-Spatial, along with professor Jason Cao and senior fellows Frank Douma and Robert Johns of the Humphrey School of Public Affairs.

NSF’s Smart and Connected Communities initiative is part of a multipronged strategy for investing in foundational research and education on smart and connected communities. For more information about NSF’s Smart and Connected Communities, visit the NSF website.

Your Next Head of Lettuce, Grown By A Robot

Your Next Head of Lettuce, Grown By A Robot

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You could drive past and never see the only farm in San Carlos, California. The tiny city of 30,000 that sits between San Francisco and Silicon Valley has all the charms of suburbia—sprawling office parks and single-story homes—but doesn’t seem a likely suspect for agriculture.

The farm, run by startup Iron Ox, is nestled between three stonemasons and a plumber in a nondescript office park building; there’s no greenhouse, no rows of freshly-tilled soil, or tractor parked outside. Only peeking in the large bay door reveals the building’s tenants: a few hundred plants and two brightly-colored robot farmers.

Iron Ox looks a lot like a tech company. One of its co-founder is an ex-Google engineer and it raised $1.5 million in pre-seed venture capital from Y Combinator, Pathbreaker, and Cherubic Ventures in April 2016. Instead of fake food, or plant-based meat meals, or even a food delivery service tethered to an app, Iron Ox is reinventing farming, raising real, not faux, food. Think hydroponically raised lettuce and basil, like what you’d get at an ordinary farmers market.

Iron Ox plans to build a network of autonomous, robot-run greenhouses near major US cities, complete with a fleet of trucks to ensure same-day delivery. Traditional outdoor farms don’t mesh with suburban sprawl, but the planned square-acre greenhouses have a small footprint that can easily fit into dense urban or suburban areas. The robots plant, raise, and harvest the crops.

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Iron Ox founders Jon Binney, left, and Brandon Alexander. (Iron Ox)

Pod lettuce

Co-founder and CEO Brandon Alexander, who worked on Google’s Project Wing, figuring out how to make multiple robots work together, says it takes just three or four months to set up one of its farms. Plants take six weeks to mature. One of these modular, square-acre farms could provide the same yearly yield as 30 acres of traditional farmland, Alexander says.

“We want to have the most efficient farm out there,” says Alexander. “In some ways this is just the natural evolution of [farming].” Growing up, Alexander spent summers working on his grandfather’s peanut, potato, and cotton farm that straddles Texas and Oklahoma. He’s seen his grandfather adopt self-guided tractors and other new technologies, giving the ability to scale the family farm from 40 to 5,000 acres in one generation.

While raising crops has evolved from the time of small family farms, it’s still inefficient, Alexander says. Vegetables waste a large portion of their shelf lives traveling 2000 miles to get from farm to store. In addition, the pool of labor for existing centralized farms is aging and diminishing. The average US farmer is 55 years old, and the average crop worker is 33. “There’s just not enough labor to go around,” Alexander says.

Iron Ox isn’t the only company trying to revolutionize food production. Plenty, another Bay area startup, recently received $200 million from the Softbank Vision fund with a similar mission of distributed farms near metropolitan areas. Plenty’s buzzword isn’t automation, but vertical farming: growing crops up walls to save space. AeroFarmswants to disrupt hydroponics with nutrient-filled mist. Freight Farmswill grow crops in shipping containers.

The robots

Iron Ox plans to use three robots powered by artificial intelligence to work each square-acre of greenhouse. Two robots, without official names but referred to as transporters, will lift and ferry trays of plants over to the third robot, a robotic arm. The robotic arm will plant seeds, cycle juvenile plants into larger growing plots, image the plants to check for disease, and harvest the crop. Iron Ox plans to grow leafy greens like the lettuce and basil varieties it is testing now. Large-field crops like corn aren’t on the roadmap.

Iron Ox is using a hydroponic system called deep water culture; the plants, seated in plastic cones, float on a raft in a tray of water, their roots submerged in nutrient-rich water.

These trays are the key to Iron Ox’s indoor farm; while many deep water culture systems are built around large, stationary pools of water, these trays allow the plants to be moved to and from the robotic arm. The company developing the three components—robotic arm movement, transporter robot, and automated hydroponic system—separately. Humans now do the work slated for the robots, but the pre-robot farming provides a valuable runway of data for Iron Ox about optimal growing conditions.

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Half a dozen data points are collected from each water tray per second, plus air temperature and quality, ambient light, humidity. The brains of the system are in the robotic arm. If it knows certain plants need more space, the transporter can be summoned to collect them for transplanting. If it’s time for harvest, the trays come to the arm.

The arm, which stands between two trays, moves with serpentine ease only occasionally interrupted by a mechanical lurch. As I watch, it’s controlled by CTO Jon Binney, but can be set to autonomously shuffle plants around from tray to tray. The goal is to only have one robot arm per acre of greenhouse, able to switch out its end effector, or hand, for specialized tools based on the task. Universal Robots is the arm’s manufacturer, but it runs custom code for motion planning. The stereoscopic cameras used to image the produce are installed and integrated by Iron Ox, and the end effectors used to inject and transplant are built custom-built by the company as well.

The transporter’s job is to hulk over a tray of plants, tuck the tray into its belly, and carefully transport it to a space next to the arm. It glides around the warehouse with a precise, mechanical grace, seemingly able to drift in any direction on its Mecanum wheels. These specialized wheels mean the trays can be just inches apart on the entirety of the greenhouse floor, since the transporter doesn’t need space to turn.

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The process

The plants start as seeds, which are injected by the robotic arm into small, foam-like cubes seated in a plastic cone. The plastic cone protects the base of the plant from the robotic arm’s grippers, which giving each plant a standardized place to grip the plant while moving it around.

When the seeds have sprouted and grown for about two weeks, they are brought to the arm by the transporter. The robotic arm then picks up the plants and transplants them to a tray with more room between each plant. Each tray is outfitted with augmented reality tags (that allow the arm to recognize which tray it’s working with, and the bounds of where it can and can’t put plants.)

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Two weeks later, the transplant process occurs again, and then again two weeks after that. Each time a plant is moved, two cameras on the arm build a 3D model of it, which is analyzed to check for disease and to ensure it’s growing normally. After the plant is fully grown, the arm pulls it—roots and all—from its plastic cone, and places it in a plastic clamshell container to be shipped.

The company has yet to launch its first fully-functioning greenhouse, and it currently donates its hydroponically-grown produce at a local San Carlos food bank in addition to supplying the company salad bar. IronOx wants to build the first greenhouse by the end of 2017, sell to local chefs in the Bay Area, and then scale to grocery stores in early 2018.

Masayoshi Son’s Grand Plan for SoftBank’s $100 Billion Vision Fund

Masayoshi Son’s Grand Plan for SoftBank’s $100 Billion Vision Fund

By KATIE BENNER  |  OCT. 10, 2017

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Eric Gundersen, chief executive of Mapbox, met in July with Masayoshi Son, who led a $164 million investment in Mapbox that was announced on Tuesday. CreditJason Henry for The New York Times

SAN FRANCISCO — When Eric Gundersen, the chief executive of a mapping start-up called Mapbox, met Masayoshi Son, the head of the Japanese conglomerate SoftBank, in late July, he expected to have to sell Mr. Son on what made Mapbox important.

Son recently told Matt Barnard, the chief executive of Plenty, that computers were ushering in a revolution in agriculture not seen since the invention of the plow. 

But Mr. Son, 60, did not need to be convinced that Mapbox’s technology — which powers Lyft drivers and companies like Snap and Mastercard — had value. After a whirlwind courtship, Mr. Son’s nearly $100 billion Vision Fund, which SoftBank unveiled last October with money from Saudi Arabia and others, led a $164 million investment in Mapbox that was announced on Tuesday.

In the process, Mr. Son also explained his grand plan for deploying the Vision Fund to Mr. Gundersen. The Japanese billionaire said he believed robots would inexorably change the work force and machines would become more intelligent than people, an event referred to as the “Singularity.” As a result, Mr. Son told Mr. Gundersen, he is on a mission to own pieces of all the companies that may underpin the global shifts brought on by artificial intelligence to transportation, food, work, medicine and finance.

“For Masa, his vision is not just about predictions like the Singularity, which has gotten a lot of hype,” Mr. Gundersen said. “He understands that we’ll need a massive amount of data to get us to a future that’s more dependent on machines and robotics.”

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What Mr. Son laid out for Mr. Gundersen helps explain why SoftBank and its Vision Fund have invested billions of dollars in a seemingly random sample of more than two dozen companies since the fund was announced. The investments span robotics software start-ups like Brain Corporationand the indoor farming business Plenty, as well as more prominent companies like the business software maker Slack. The deals have run the gamut from smaller investments in start-ups to larger deals with public companies.

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Mr. Son is deploying SoftBank’s nearly $100 billion Vision Fund by investing in a network of companies.CreditAlessandro Di Ciommo/NurPhoto, via Getty Images

Yet the companies all have something in common: They are involved in collecting enormous amounts of data, which are crucial to creating the brains for the machines that, in the future, will do more of our jobs and creating tools that allow people to better coexist.

Most recently, SoftBank has been involved in a plan to buy nearly a fifth of the existing stock of Uber, the world’s biggest ride-hailing company and one that has changed the transportation industry. SoftBank is aiming to accumulate Uber’s stock through a tender offer that could value the company at a discount to its current valuation of $68.5 billion, according to people briefed on the negotiations, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the details were confidential. The tender offer could still fall apart, one of the people said.

If it ends up being completed, Mr. Son would own significant chunks of ride-hailing companies globally because SoftBank already owns stakes in Uber’s rivals like Didi Chuxing in China and Ola in India. Altogether, SoftBank would have a network of companies that gather valuable logistics data and operate large, connected fleets that could work well with self-driving car technology.

“Location data is central and mission critical to the development of the world’s most exciting technologies,” Rajeev Misra, who helps oversee SoftBank’s Vision Fund, said about Mapbox in a statement on Tuesday. He added that the investment was part of SoftBank’s plan to put money into “the foundational infrastructure for the next stage of the Information Revolution.”

SoftBank declined to comment further for this article.

For more than three decades, Mr. Son has consistently made over SoftBank with acquisitions and investments to keep it on the cutting edge. The company began in 1981 as a PC software distributor in Japan and expanded to the United States in 1994 with the acquisition of the PC trade show operator Comdex.

Mr. Son later became the largest shareholder of Yahoo, started Yahoo Japan and, in the last decade, invested in broadband and telecommunications companies — SoftBank agreed to buy the majority of Sprint for $21.6 billion in 2012 — anticipating the need for high-speed connectivity. He has also invested in e-commerce companies, including the Alibaba Group of China and Gilt Groupe, as well as video game businesses like Supercell and media like HuffPost and BuzzFeed.

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A Mapbox office in San Francisco. The company makes mapping technology that powers fleets of Lyft drivers and companies like Snap.CreditJason Henry for The New York Times

In a speech last month in New York, Mr. Son declared that in 30 years, there would be as many sentient robots on Earth as humans and that those robots, which he called metal collar workers, would fundamentally change the labor market.

“Every industry that mankind ever defined and created, even agriculture, will be redefined,” Mr. Son said. “Because the tools that we created were inferior to mankind’s brain in the past. Now, the tools have become smarter than mankind ourselves.”

Mr. Son is having many of the same conversations with entrepreneurs these days as he looks to spread investments from the Vision Fund. Many entrepreneurs said Mr. Son’s conversations jumped from philosophical discussions about technology’s impact on humanity to the minutiae of a technical problem.

Mr. Son recently told Matt Barnard, the chief executive of Plenty, that computers were ushering in a revolution in agriculture not seen since the invention of the plow. Mr. Son led a $200 million investment in Plenty in July, part of an effort to make it a global leader in indoor farms. Plenty, which has no farms operating at scale, is now planning its first farm in South San Francisco that will open by the end of the year.

“I really do like to believe he likes us a lot,” Mr. Barnard said of Mr. Son. “I’d say the thing we have in common with his other investments is that they are all part of some of the largest systems on the planet: energy, transportation, the internet and food.”

Some entrepreneurs travel the globe to spend time with Mr. Son at his palatial home in Woodside., Calif., and his offices in India, San Francisco and Tokyo. The SoftBank chief is known for almost always smiling and speaking slowly. He rarely picks up phone calls and his email signature includes the whirring fan icon that shows a computer is booting up, or “thinking.”

Many of the entrepreneurs speak of Mr. Son with reverence.

“Only people close to him know how huge his vision is,” said Eugene Izhikevich, the chief executive of Brain Corp., a company based in San Diego that makes the software that controls autonomous robots.

Mr. Son’s engineers stumbled on Brain Corp. when they were looking for self-driving car technology. Mr. Izhikevich was soon seated across from Mr. Son, talking about robotics as well as how Britain operated 200 years ago when the landed gentry did not work, but came up with new inventions and business improvements.

Like many other entrepreneurs, Mr. Izhikevich said SoftBank moved “scary fast” to sew up its investment. Mr. Son’s team swarmed Brain Corp.’s businesses and spent hundreds of hours on due diligence, wrapping up in a few months.

Unlike other investors, Mr. Son, who is already talking about a second Vision Fund, does not insert himself into the day-to-day operations of most of the companies he has invested in. His Sprint deal has yet to pan out and may be dependent on merging with another company. When other investments have lagged, as did his investment in Snapdeal, an online retailer in India, he has invested in competitors, leading a $2.5 billion investment into Flipkart, a rival Indian e-commerce company.

Some entrepreneurs said Mr. Son’s breakneck investing pace with the Vision Fund was unlikely to slow.

“Masa is in a hurry,” said Vijay Sharma, the chief executive of Indian digital payments start-up Paytm, which SoftBank put $1.4 billion into in May. “He sees this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity where everything we touch can become a market, where we’re at the opening up of a new industrial revolution.”

No Dirt, No Weeds, Just Organic Greens - Floor To Ceiling

NO DIRT, NO WEEDS. JUST ORGANIC GREENS – FLOOR TO CEILING

October 4, 2017

By Gretchen C. Van Benthuysen |

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Theresa Reid, owner of Beyond Organic, plans to open a juice bar in the building in front of her 3,500 square-foot greenhouse at 89 Howell Road in Howell where she grows 15,000 plants in aeroponic towers. All photos by Gretchen Van Benthuysen

Beyond Organic started small and grew and grew.

“My daughter lives in L.A. and I would go out there to visit her and the produce was so beautiful and delicious,” explained Theresa Reid, owner of Beyond Organic in Howell. “I craved having that all the time.”

So she bought a 4 1/2-foot tall indoor Tower Garden by Juice Plus that uses aeroponics (water, liquid nutrients and a soilless growing medium).

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Seedlings that were germinated in rockwool, a soilless growing medium, will be transplanted into the towers where water and liquid nutrients circulate feeding the plant as it grows.

“It was great,” she said. “It was the middle of winter and I was getting fresh thyme and parsley and lettuce from my tower.”

Then she had another idea that began to grow. She wondered how she could bring locally grown, delicious, organic greens, microgreens and herbs to the local community. Maybe even open an organic juice bar.

“I knew they did this (aeroponics) on a commercial scale,” she said. “So we looked into it and nobody was doing this north of Georgia at the time, nor east of Oklahoma.”

“We” included her husband David Reid, the owner of Reid Sod Farm, Freehold, and a fourth generation farmer, and her son Matt Engleke, who works closely with her at Beyond Organic. Two years later, Reid has a 3,500-square-foot greenhouse with 15,000 plants that grow in 144 aeroponic 10-foot tall towers filled with nutrient rich water. Radiated heating in the floor enables growing throughout the winter. The initial investment was $350,000 for the greenhouse and towers that use 90 percent less land and water than a conventional farm, she said.

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Matt Engleke, Theresa Reid’s son, tends to some of the greens and herbs grown in vertical aeroponic towers at Beyond Organic.

There’s no weeding, but strict monitoring of the pH balance and nutrients is a must.

Ladybugs and grasshoppers take care of any bugs in the summer and organic Neem oil does the job in the winter.

“But if your plants are healthy they’re not going to be susceptible to disease and bugs and that results in a higher percentage of crop success,” Reid said. “We’ve learned a lot. I came from corporate sales and I knew nothing about gardening.”

On a recent hot summer day the windows were open, the fans were blowing and the sound of dripping water all around you was soothing.

“I like to grow stuff I can’t find in grocery stores, like lemon basil, Thai basil, garlic chives, tangerine edible marigolds, escarole that is sweet, and thin stalks of celery that are amazing,” she said. “We have butter crunch (lettuce) growing that has a really mild butter aftertaste. It’s delicious. Everything here is about flavor.

“This arugula is going to have a kick to it,” she warns as she hands me a leaf I pop into my mouth that immediately wakes up my tongue. “And that’s our mild guy.”

Mustard leaves have been popular recently, she noted, especially one with a spicy horseradish kick that can bring tears to the eyes.

There is no mistaking the distinctive tangerine taste of a marigold leaf. She grows them at the request of Fresh Kitchen in Sea Girt.

Chef Meg LaManna at 26 West on the Navesink in Red Bank requested red sorrel for its tart lemon taste.

Theresa Reid, owner of Beyond Organic, plans to open a juice bar in the building in front of her 3,500 square-foot greenhouse at 89 Howell Road in Howell where she grows 15,000 plants in aeroponic towers.

“We make sure we grow plenty and always have that ready for them,” Reid said.

Currently 12 restaurants are clients, including Kitch Organic in Red Bank; d’jeet in Shrewsbury; Blue Grotto in Oceanport; Rooney’s and Trama Trattoria in Long Branch; Tre, 618 and the Metropolitan Cafe in Freehold; the Shipwreck Grill in Brielle; and Local Urban Kitchen in Point Pleasant Beach.

“Most of the restaurants contacted me,” she said. “Even if they are not about organic, it’s the flavor. And it’s fresh.”

But chefs don’t get all the fun.

Greens, herbs and microgreens (including pea shoots and wheat grass) are available to the public in a 4-ounce bag. Seedlings are available at $2 each.

“It’s funny. Now people are buying nasturtium for their dishes at home,” she said. “Normally that’s the thing they push aside on their dish in the restaurant. Everybody’s getting an education.” That includes Girl Scout and Boy Scout troops and a special education school group that toured the greenhouse.

“They plant a seed. They do a taste test. They’re willing to eat it because they’re working with their hands and it brings them back into farming,” Reid said. “We’re eating clean. We’re eating organically.”

Adults are learning as well. Farm-to-table dinners held in the greenhouse are popular and bookings for private parties are increasing.

For the dinners, a guest chef prepares a multicourse meal paired with wine inside and cooks on an old propane tank converted into a wood-fired grill with an oven and two burners outside the greenhouse overlooking 210 acres of the sod farm that also includes Reid’s home.

“White linen tablecloths. Live music. The setting sun. People love it,” Reid said. “They sit at these long tables and they talk to each other. They take each other’s number and come back in groups. It’s a lot of fun.

“Dinners were not part of the plan, but they are now,” she said, adding she plans to expand with a tent, add a container organic vegetable garden and book more events next summer.

“We will also have a juice bar opening out front,” she said. “I can grow and juice it and now I know how good the flavors are going to be. If it’s there, people will eat healthy.”

Last Sunday, Beyond Organic hosted an 80th birthday party.

“We’re just getting a lot of requests. People are asking about having baby showers, bachelor parties. They’re looking for something different to do,” she said. “And I think the younger generation want local, fresh food. And so many of them are vegans as well.”

It just keeps growing and growing.

This article was first published in Sept. 14 – Sept. 21, 2017 print edition of The Two River Times.

Food Loves Tech Conference Will Explore Food’s Not-Too-Distant Future

Food Loves Tech Conference Will Explore Food’s Not-Too-Distant Future

Food and drink innovators and enthusiasts will gather in Brooklyn, New York, on November 3 and 4, 2017, to explore the developing relationship between modern technology and food systems at this year’s Food Loves Tech conference. Produced by Edible Manhattan and Edible Brooklyn, the event is described as an “education-by-entertainment innovation expo” and will be hosted at Industry City.

The two-day expo is designed to give “attendees a chance to see, smell, touch, hear, and taste food’s not-too-distant future,” according to Edible Manhattan and Edible Brooklyn Editor-In-Chief Brian Halweil and Publisher Stephen Munshin. They write that the event will be careful to not only highlight those novel technologies that solve what they call “#firstworldproblems,” like faster ways to order food online, but also those technologies and startups that are “compelled by a mission to fix our broken food system.”

“Why are we so fascinated by this?,” they write. “At best, this data-flooded food culture will mean more traceability, less waste, increased crop diversity, less overeating. Hopefully.”

In addition to the experiential component of the conference, 10 scheduled panels will explore various questions: How can tech help save our oceans? How can technology help mitigate food waste? How will we buy groceries in 2050? Can vertical agriculture help us produce more food, more sustainably? Food Tank President Danielle Nierenberg will be both speaking on and moderating panels at the event.

For tickets to Food Loves Tech 2017, click here.

BrightFarms Set to Break Ground on 4th Greenhouse

Ohio, October 16, 2017

BrightFarms Set to Break Ground on 4th Greenhouse

With consumer demand for local produce and value-added products at an all-time high, New York-based BrightFarms, Inc. is set to break ground on its fourth greenhouse this month. "We have emerged as the nation’s leading producer of locally grown salad greens as it continues to disrupt the incumbent salad industry on the West Coast," says Paul Lightfoot, CEO. “We have seen demand for our local greens climb sharply as retailers have come to rely on the stability and consistency of our product." Though many companies look to occupy the locally grown salad space, SPINS data shows BrightFarms is the leader, exceeding others in this space by millions of dollars in annual sales.

Preference for local

The success BrightFarms is experiencing is part of a larger national trend towards local produce. The Food Marketing Institute’s 2017 Power of Produce report listed both organic and local as two of the largest drivers for growth in fresh, but noted that consumers have a significant preference for local. Researchers found when quality and appearance are controlled with no price differential, 60% of consumers chose the local option versus just 32% for organic. 

However, Lightfoot notes that most retailers are unable to gain access to reliable year-round supply of local produce. “There is a large opportunity for the supermarket produce department to grow if they can source locally,” he says. “BrightFarms sees a clear opportunity in the market to expand our model for local produce across the country.” 

Wilmington, Ohio

BrightFarms’ Wilmington, Ohio, greenhouse is slated to break ground this month and will encompass 120,000 square-feet. The operation will provide locally grown salad greens and herbs to supermarkets in the Cincinnati, Dayton and Columbus metropolitan areas. “We will also be creating 30 permanent green collar jobs that provide a living wage and full healthcare benefits to members of the community.” says Lightfoot. “A model for the future of local, low-impact farming, the greenhouse will be the most sustainable source of local year-round salad greens in the Ohio market.”

In keeping with its commitment to health and sustainability, BrightFarms is sponsoring the 5K Race for Talent at Produce Marketing Association’s Fresh Summit in New Orleans. “We hope everyone will come out for this great event whether to run or to support someone who is running,” says Lightfoot. “We look forward through this event and our other market inroads to continuing as an innovative leader in produce and retail.”

For more information 

BrightFarms, Inc

349 5th Ave

New York, NY 10016, USA

Tel: +1 212-358-1100

www.brightfarms.com

A $140 Million Prototype Of A Mars Colony Is Being Planned For A Desert Near Dubai — Here's What It Looks Like

A $140 Million Prototype Of A Mars Colony Is Being Planned For A Desert Near Dubai — Here's What It Looks Like

• Leanna Garfield
•  
• Oct. 4, 2017

BIG's design for the Mars Science City near Dubai, UAE.Dubai Media Office

What might it be like to live on Mars?

Bjarke Ingels Group — the architects behind the designs for Two World Trade Center in Manhattan and the Hyperloop One — has an idea.

The firm is designing a city in the desert of the United Arab Emirates meant to simulate a Mars colony. The $140 million development near Dubai is slated to be "a viable and realistic model to simulate living on the surface of Mars," according to the local government.

The design for the Mars Science City, as it's called, spans 1.9 million square feet — which would make it the largest of its kind in the world. The plan calls for a team of astronauts to spend a year living in the simulated city after it's completed. However, there's no timeline for construction yet.

A team of Emirati scientists and engineers from the Mohammed bin Rashid Space Centre plan to conduct research about colonizing the red planet at the Mars Science City.

Dubai Media Office

Source: The Government of Dubai

The city is expected to include a giant greenhouse to test agricultural techniques, as well as laboratories designed to explore how to store food, generate energy, and get water.

Dubai Media Office

The greenhouse plan calls for the use of an agricultural technique called vertical farming. Instead of natural sunlight, crops would grow under LEDs on stacked trays in a climate-controlled environment.

Dubai Media Office

The ceiling would be made of materials that can block solar radiation (which is stronger on Mars than on Earth, due to its lack of protective atmosphere). The walls would be 3D-printed.

Dubai Media Office

A portion of the development includes a museum where visitors could learn about achievements in space exploration.

Mars Science City is part of the United Arab Emirates' larger mission to create a viable community on the red planet within the next century.

Dubai Media Office

"The UAE seeks to establish international efforts to develop technologies that benefit humankind ... and that establish the foundation of a better future for more generations to come," UAE's prime minister, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid, said at a recent meeting of government officials.

Dubai Media Office

Viability of Indoor Urban Agriculture is Focus of Research Grant

Viability of Indoor Urban Agriculture is Focus of Research Grant

By Krishna Ramanujan  |  October 12, 2017

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A commercial CEA greenhouse operation producing leafy greens in eastern New York.            Chris Kitchen/University Photography

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Neil Mattson, associate professor in the Horticulture Section of the School of Integrative Plant Science.

Growing crops in controlled environments – in greenhouses, plant factories and in vertical farms – provides alternatives to conventional farming by producing food year-round near metropolitan areas, reducing transportation costs and water use, and improving land-use efficiency. Such local systems also offer valuable educational and psychological benefits by connecting urban people to the food they consume.

At the same time, there is little concrete evidence to show how so-called controlled-environment agriculture (CEA) compares to conventional field agriculture in terms of energy, carbon and water footprints, profitability, workforce development and scalability.

Cornell will lead a project to answer these questions, thanks to a three-year, $2.4 million grant from the National Science Foundation, through its new funding initiative called Innovations at the Nexus of Food, Energy and Water Systems.

“By putting all these pieces together – including energy, water, workforce development and economic viability – we hope to discover if CEAs make sense for producing food for the masses,” said Neil Mattson, the grant’s principal investigator and associate professor in the Horticulture Section of the School of Integrative Plant Science.

Six projects included in the grant will look at:

Case studies: Food system analysis of case studies in metropolitan areas will examine where vegetables are currently sourced and the market channels they go through to reach consumers, such as supermarkets, retailers or restaurants. Researchers will model whether urban CEAs could replace a large fraction of this produce, and whether it makes sense for CEA produce to go through the same market channels or other ones that may suit them better. This project is led by Miguel Gómez, associate professor, and Charles Nicholson, adjunct associate professor, both in Cornell’s Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management.

Computer modeling of energy and water use: Computer models of energy and water use for different crops in greenhouses, vertical farms and plant factories (indoor environments with artificial lighting and racks of plants) will be developed. The models will be calibrated with real-world data from greenhouse growth trials at Cornell and the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI). A 2008 study by Lou Albright at Cornell found that based on that year’s technologies, the carbon footprint to produce lettuce in a greenhouse in New York state was twice that of growing it in a field in Arizona or California. Other researchers have reported that CEAs use 20 times less water than field agriculture, since water can be recycled indoors. Mattson leads this effort with research associate Kale Harbick, also in the Horticulture Section of the School of Integrative Plant Science.

Networking: The project will foster industry-to-research networks for facilitating the acceptance, adoption and improvement of metropolitan CEA systems. Anusuya Rangarajan, senior extension associate, will lead this project.

Nutritional value: Researchers will examine the nutritional value of produce from greenhouses and plant factories and comparing those values with CEA systems where lighting might be optimized for more healthful produce. Project leaders include Marianne Nyman, associate professor of civil and environmental engineering, and Tessa Pocock, a senior research scientist, both at RPI.

Workforce needs: Cornell researchers are collaborating with the Association for Vertical Farming to assess the workforce needs of the urban CEA industry and develop programs to meet those needs and test if requirements are being met. Researchers will examine if, for example, all the tomatoes consumed in New York City were to be grown indoors, how many jobs at what education levels and training would be needed. Rangarajan leads this effort.

Training opportunities: Rangarajan and the Association for Vertical Farming will also create workforce training opportunities. They will spearhead outreach through conferences and events to share information. A forthcoming website will house a toolkit to assess the viability and resource availability of proposed urban agriculture projects.

“Urban agriculture is an increasingly touted way to connect producers with consumers, and this grant will help guide full development of this industry and do better to figure out where the best opportunities might be, as well as cases where it doesn’t make sense,” Mattson said.

STORY CONTACTS

Krishna Ramanujan

ksr32@cornell.edu

607-255-3290

It’ll take More Than An Apple to Fix Newark’s Food Economy

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Pictured above: Newark resident Jacob Kim is a farmer at Jersey Cider Works and helps tend to the orchards of dwarf apples on the company’s farm in Hunterdon County.

It’ll take More Than An Apple to Fix Newark’s Food Economy

Karine Vann

But it may be a good place to start.

October 5th , 2017
by Karine Vann

FARM

At first glance, Charles Rosen, founder of Jersey Cider Works, appears to be a walking contradiction. A self-proclaimed “socialist, Canadian Jew,” he also preaches a self-styled economic philosophy he calls “libertarian pragmatism.” He’s by turns captivating and abrasive. One moment, he’s touting the virtues of regenerative agriculture, citing poetic imagery about the benevolence of trees; the next, he’s cursing “douchebag Brooklyn hipsters” for buying their microgreens from AeroFarms (the new, much-ballyhooed vertical farm in town). He’s a former lawyer and ad executive living in the tony suburb of Montclair, New Jersey. But his sights are set on the struggling metropolis to the east: Newark.

Newark, of course, is full of contradictions of its own. A historically diverse city with a rich cultural legacy, it boasts one of the country’s busiest airports, an indispensable shipping port, and a prime location: only six miles from New York City. But despite these advantages, nearly a third of the population lives below the poverty line. Home to several major corporate offices and a number of universities, local residents hold only 18 percent of the city’s jobs. In spite of everything, economic inequality has persisted.

Rosen says he hopes to help transform Newark through hard cider—not the product, specifically, but the agricultural, economic, and labor model he’s built around producing it. It’s an ongoing effort that’s both made breakthroughs and hit snags. But to tell the story of Jersey Cider Works, it’s important to point out that Newark was formerly a center of local food production. That’s thanks in part to an unlikely hero, a speckled, golden apple that was once abundant, then nearly extinct, and now—like Newark—may finally be on the mend.

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Karine Vann

Rosen has contracted with local farmers to provide the apples for his cider as he waits for the Harrison trees to mature

Newark has had a reputation for many things, but it’s been a while since cider making was one of them. And yet, long ago, the kind produced here—made from a prized local specialty, the Harrison apple— was considered the nation’s finest. At the turn of the 19th century, a robust industry sprang up around the Harrison and the celebrated “champagne of Newark” that it yielded, supposedly winning the highly coveted affection of George Washington himself.

But then, the champagne of Newark stopped flowing. Orchards gave way to housing as the city grew, and, according to Edible Jersey’s Fran McManus, as development pushed farms farther east and prohibition-era stigmas remained, cider never recovered. City-brewed beer became the local drink of choice. By the 1970s, the Harrison apple was thought to be extinct—though reports of its death turned out to be slightly exaggerated. In 1976, and again in 1989, orchardists discovered two surviving Harrison trees—one just a week before it was cut down to make room for a vegetable garden and another, still living, on an estate near Paramus. In both cases, spring twigs—known as “scion wood”—were grafted onto healthy trees elsewhere, creating new orchards in Vermont and Virginia from the cuttings.

It was a close call for the Harrison, a brush with oblivion. But for Rosen, the apple’s resurgence has become a guiding metaphor, a call to arms, and a symbol of the city itself.

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Karine Vann

James Williams, an employee of New Ark Farms and member of Rosen’s workforce development curriculum, pressing pears on the Ironbound farm

“I live in a town that has literal billionaires in it,” Rosen says of Montclair, where his neighborhood roster sounds a lot like a red carpet after-party guest list. “I live next to Bobbi Brown, the makeup tycoon; Don Katz, who built Audible; and Stephen Colbert. You have tremendous wealth in communities like mine, that are basically suburbs of Newark.”

Though Rosen says being a member of the ring of wealth surrounding Newark’s “impoverished inner core” bothered him, he wasn’t quite sure what to do about it. Early on, he toyed with the idea of running for public office, but he gave up after learning that most of his time would be spent fundraising, or, as he puts it, “sitting in a call center, dialing for dollars.” But as Rosen searched for a way to meaningfully invest in Newark’s local economy, he stumbled on the folksy and poignant story of the Harrison apple’s near-extinction. And it came at the perfect time.

It was 2012, and Rosen had just founded New Ark Farms as a venture in workforce development and urban renewal, later hiring Aldo Civico, director of the Center for Conflict Resolution at Columbia University, to help develop a prison re-entry curriculum for former inmates.

Rosen was growing more and more interested in using sustainable agriculture as a way to rejuvenate the city. At the same time, cider was becoming a rapidly expanding sector of the alcohol industry. Here was a crop anchored in the city’s heritage. The idea to bring Newark cider back checked all the boxes.

By 2014, Rosen was purchasing American heirloom cider trees from nurseries all over the United States, including a few Harrisons from Virginian orchardist Tom Burford—who had helped graft twigs from the last remaining trees—with the intent of repopulating the region. He launched Jersey Cider Works, the cider production branch of his New Ark Farms (the social enterprise focused on workforce development and regenerative agriculture), and secured small-scale growers to source apples from until his lot was mature enough. The only piece missing was a location in Newark in which to house his production. He entered into negotiations with the city about buying the site of the now-demolished Pabst Blue Ribbon factory.

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Karine Vann

New Ark Farms employee Derek Blackwell from Jersey City, who also takes part in Rosen’s workforce development curriculum, stands amidst the orchards of dwarf cider trees

But his plans were interrupted. Despite a history of cider production in the region, the state did not offer cider licenses, which forced all cideries to operate as wineries. And to be considered a winery in New Jersey, Rosen had to have at least three acres of vineyard space attached to his production facility.

The chances of finding three usable acres of land in a city made of more than 70 percent concrete, with meticulous zoning regulations, incredibly high property values, and environmentally hazardous industrial remains, were understandably slim. Rosen was forced to take his project out of the city.

In the spring of 2014, Rosen, desperate for a venue, finally found an abandoned farm in the small town of Asbury, in Hunterdon County, about 55 miles away from Newark.

Over the last two and a half years, operating out of the remote, rural environment has had its perks. Today, the 108-acre property produces 60,000 gallons of cider per year under the brand name Ironbound (after the historic working-class neighborhood in Newark), with plans to expand into perry (pear cider) production. The farm grows fruits and vegetables, which it sells to local businesses and feeds to its staff, and it also provides a serenity that would have been impossible in the city.

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Karine Vann

The Ironbound Farm, where Ironbound Hard Cider is made.

James Williams commutes two hours every day to get to and from the farm in Asbury. Born and raised by his grandmother in Newark, Williams was a child of the streets—though he says he never missed an 8 o’clock curfew because “that’s how street I was.” At 37 years old, the job at New Ark Farms is Williams’ first ‘on the books’, let alone, on a farm. He says the remoteness has been a godsend. “There’s no nature in Newark, just police and violence. That’s why I like the drive at the end of the day. Quiet, peaceful. And I’m away from problems, stress-free when I’m up here.” He’s been with the company for two and a half years.

Stories like Williams’ are encouraging, but they’re far from the norm. There are many heartbreaks in this line of work. Farm life is a dramatic shift for a city-dwelling workforce, especially a formerly incarcerated one, and it’s not for everybody. Rosen recalls one former inmate, whose financial circumstances forced him back to the streets and, eventually, back in prison, despite his progress in the curriculum.

Rosen says he’s invested millions of dollars of his own money into funding New Ark Farms and jokes that he “can’t even get the state to fund a deer fence.”

“These people come out of a state of brokenness for years,” he says. “We bring them out of that environment, they have all these restrictions on the jobs they can get, all of their child support kicks back in, all of their court fees and fines and we’re like, ‘Good luck!’ Many of them are simply forced back into dealing.”

What started as a project to create jobs and strengthen local food production for the city of Newark currently employs only two Newark residents, Williams being one of them. For a number of reasons, importing a steady workforce into Hunterdon County’s serene countryside has been a constant battle.

Bridging the divide between where food is grown (agrarian communities) and where it is consumed (urban centers) is an extremely complicated issue for American cities. And Newark is no exception. Under former mayor—now Senator—Cory Booker’s administration, a push toward healthy food access gained some momentum. In 2008, the city held what it called a “Green Future Summit,” a citywide brainstorming session during which issues tied to sustainability were discussed in depth. Soon after, an Office of Sustainability was formed and in 2013, it released an Action Plan that devoted an entire chapter to food.

Some goals didn’t materialize, like the long-awaited formation of a Food Policy Council. But others were successful—setting up a raft of new farmers’ markets in the city, for instance, and promoting the massively underutilized Adopt-A-Lot program, where residents can lease a vacant lot owned by the municipality for just a dollar.

Today, there are between 60 and 70 functioning urban gardens in the city.

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Karine Vann

‘The Garden of Hope’ is a community garden in Newark’s central ward made possible by the Adopt-A-Lot program

But while community gardening has done a lot to educate and beautify the city, many gardens cannot operate in a commercial capacity or create jobs the way larger for-profit enterprises like Rosen’s can. Gardens are usually maintained or funded by nonprofit entities, which themselves are strapped and often under existential threat as they continually strive to raise enough funds for their own viability.

Stephanie Greenwood, who ran the Office of Sustainability under the Booker administration, says there’s still change needed at the state level in order for Newark to strengthen its food economy. Making local growers eligible to accept food stamps is just one example. “A lot of the people in Newark shopping for produce are eligible for SNAP and WIC. It’s a big market, actually, and if you have the ability to accept these two programs as money, you could make a decent amount of money selling produce in Newark. But the local growers [urban gardeners] here can’t access it because of a state policy that says you have to be a five-acre farm or more in order to accept it.”

“It’s kind of ridiculous, these antiquated rules,” says Nathaly Agosto Filion, the Sustainability Office’s current director. She recalls a recent conversation with someone who had hoped to start a vermicomposting company in the city but encountered difficulty because of laws saying worms should be treated like livestock. “People don’t realize they’re there until you have this interesting idea… and you’re faced with a wall of bureaucracy.”

But while some urban food ventures are obstructed in Newark, others thrive.

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Karine Vann

Architectural rendering for Aerofarm’s state-of-the-art facility approved by the city on 212 Rome Street in Newark

Around the same time Rosen was toiling to open Jersey Cider Works in Newark, the aforementioned AeroFarms, currently the world’s largest vertical farm, opened its headquarters downtown. It has been welcomed into the city with open arms. In January, the New Yorker’s Ian Frazier penned a lengthy feature on AeroFarms’ high-tech, hydroponic model—now a nearly $100 million venture, at least some portion of which is funded by public grants and tax credits.

Rosen says he’s invested millions of dollars of his own money into funding New Ark Farms and jokes that he “can’t even get the state to fund a deer fence.”

Fortunately, the regulation tide for cider makers in Newark appears to be turning. Last May, Governor Chris Christie signed a bill on behalf of two New Jersey cideries, one of which was Jersey Cider Works, enabling future cideries to produce up to 1.5 million gallons within city bounds.

Thanks to that new legislation, Rosen has a two-year plan for expansion, which includes migrating cider production and agricultural activity back into the city. But despite this news, a tension lingers that is far from reconciled. For all of Newark’s modern success stories—community gardens, AeroFarms, and Jersey Cider Works—how many other other entrepreneurs have tried and failed to implement their vision of a more sustainable food economy? And how do we fix the system that prevented them from doing so?

“I went to Newark to prove a model—that a for-profit business could treat people with dignity, help repair the damage of the earth, and stillmake money whilst doing so,” Rosen said early on in one conversation. To the question, “Why Newark?” he responded warily, “I kind of feel like if we can’t crack Newark… well, we’re in big trouble as a country.”

FARM

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Karine Vann

Karine Vann is a freelance writer and musician living between New York and Boston. In 2017, she returned from three years in Yerevan, Armenia, where she wrote on topics related to post-industrialism, sustainability, and urban and rural development for a number of organizations. Her work has also been featured on Smithsonian.com.

Urban Farming is Booming, But What Does it Really Yield?

Urban Farming is Booming, But What Does it Really Yield?

The benefits of city-based agriculture go far beyond nutrition.

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Photo by Marcin Szczepanski

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WRITER  |  Elizabeth Royte
@ElizabethRoyte  |  Science and environment writer and author

April 27, 2015 —  Editor’s note: This story was produced in collaboration with the Food & Environment Reporting Network, a non-profit investigative news organization.

Midway through spring, the nearly bare planting beds of Carolyn Leadley’s Rising Pheasant Farms, in the Poletown neighborhood of Detroit, barely foreshadow the cornucopian abundance to come. It will be many months before Leadley is selling produce from this one-fifth-acre (one-tenth-hectare) plot. But the affable young farmer has hardly been idle, even during the snowiest days of winter. Twice daily, she has been trekking from her house to a small greenhouse in her side yard, where she waves her watering wand over roughly 100 trays of sprouts, shoots and microgreens. She sells this miniature bounty, year round, at the city’s eastern market and to restaurateurs delighted to place some hyperlocal greens on their guests’ plates.

Leadley is a key player in Detroit’s vibrant communal and commercial farming community, which in 2014 produced nearly 400,000 pounds (181,000 kilograms) of produce — enough to feed more than 600 people — in its more than 1,300 community, market, family and school gardens. Other farms in postindustrial cities are also prolific: In 2008, Philadelphia’s 226 community and squatter gardens grew roughly 2 million pounds of mid-summer vegetables and herbs, worth US$4.9 million. Running at full bore, Brooklyn’s Added-Value Farm, which occupies 2.75 acres, funnels 40,000 pounds of fruit and vegetables into the low-income neighborhood of Red Hook. And in Camden, New Jersey — an extremely poor city of 80,000 with only one full-service supermarket — community gardeners at 44 sites harvested almost 31,000 pounds (14,000 kilograms) of vegetables during an unusually wet and cold summer. That’s enough food during the growing season to feed 508 people three servings a day.

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In addition to raising vegetables, urban gardens can help families raise kids who enjoy the outdoors. Photo of Rising Pheasant Farms’ Carolyn Leadley and family by Marcin Szczepanski.

That researchers are even bothering to quantify the amount of food produced on tiny city farms — whether community gardens, like those of Camden and Philly, or for-profit operations, like Leadley’s — is testament to the nation’s burgeoning local-foods movement and its data-hungry supporters. Young farmers are, in increasing numbers, planting market gardens in cities, and “local” produce (a term with no formal definition) now fills grocery shelves across the U.S., from Walmart to Whole Foods, and is promoted in more than 150 nations around the world.

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations reports that 800 million people worldwide grow vegetables or fruits or raise animals in cities, producing what the Worldwatch Institute reports to be an astonishing 15 to 20 percent of the world’s food. In developing nations, city dwellers farm for subsistence, but in the U.S., urban ag is more often driven by capitalism or ideology. The U.S. Department of Agriculture doesn’t track numbers of city farmers, but based on demand for its programs that fund education and infrastructure in support of urban-ag projects, and on surveys of urban ag in select cities, it affirms that business is booming. How far — and in what direction — can this trend go? What portion of a city’s food can local farmers grow, at what price, and who will be privileged to eat it? And can such projects make a meaningful contribution to food security in an increasingly crowded world?

Urban Advantages

Like anyone who farms in a city, Leadley waxes eloquent on the freshness of her product. Pea shoots that have traveled 3 miles (4.8 kilometers) to grace a salad are bound to taste better and be more nutritious, she says, than those that have traveled half a continent or farther. “One local restaurant that I sell to used to buy its sprouts from Norway,” Leadley says. Fresher food also lasts longer on shelves and in refrigerators, reducing waste.

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New York City–based Gotham Greens produces more than 300 tons per year of herbs and greens in two hydroponic facilities. Photo by TIA (Flickr/Creative Commons)

Food that’s grown and consumed in cities has other advantages: During times of abundance, it may cost less than supermarket fare that’s come long distances, and during times of emergency — when transportation and distribution channels break down — it can fill a vegetable void. Following large storms such as Hurricane Sandy and the blizzards of this past winter, says Viraj Puri, cofounder of New York City–based Gotham Greens (which produces more than 300 tons (270 metric tons) of herbs and microgreens per year in two rooftop hydroponic operations and has another farm planned for Chicago), “our produce was the only produce on the shelf at many supermarkets across the city.”

Despite their relatively small size, urban farms grow a surprising amount of food, with yields that often surpass those of their rural cousins. This is possible for a couple reasons. First, city farms don’t experience heavy insect pressure, and they don’t have to deal with hungry deer or groundhogs. Second, city farmers can walk their plots in minutes, rather than hours, addressing problems as they arise and harvesting produce at its peak. They can also plant more densely because they hand cultivate, nourish their soil more frequently and micromanage applications of water and fertilizer.

As social enterprises, community gardens operate in an alternate financial universe: they don’t sustain themselves with sales, nor do they have to pay employees.

Though they don’t get as much press as for-profit farms and heavily capitalized rooftop operations, community gardens — which are collectively tended by people using individual or shared plots of public or private land, and have been a feature in U.S. cities for well over a century — are the most common form of urban agriculture in the nation, producing far more food and feeding more people, in aggregate, than their commercial counterparts. As social enterprises, community gardens operate in an alternate financial universe: they don’t sustain themselves with sales, nor do they have to pay employees. Instead, they rely on volunteer or cheap youth labor, they pay little or nothing in rent, and they solicit outside aid from government programs and foundations that support their social and environmental missions. These may include job training, health and nutrition education, and increasing the community’s resilience to climate change by absorbing stormwater, counteracting the urban heat island effect and converting food waste into compost.

Funders don’t necessarily expect community gardens to become self-sustaining. These farms may increase their revenue streams by selling at farmers markets or to restaurants, or they may collect fees from restaurants or other food-waste generators for accepting scraps that will be converted into compost, says Ruth Goldman, a program officer at the Merck Family Fund, which funds urban agriculture projects. “But margins on vegetable farming are very slim, and because these farms are doing community education and training teen leaders, they’re not likely to operate in the black.”

It’s the microgreens that keep Leadley from joining the ranks of the vast majority of U.S. farmers and taking a second job.

Several years ago, Elizabeth Bee Ayer, who until recently ran a training program for city farmers, took a hard look at the beets growing in her Youth Farm, in the Lefferts Gardens neighborhood of Brooklyn. She counted the hand movements involved in harvesting the roots and the minutes it took to wash and prepare them for sale. “Tiny things can make or break a farm,” Ayer notes. “Our beets cost US$2.50 for a bunch of four, and people in the neighborhood loved them. But we were losing 12 cents on every beet.” Ultimately, Ayer decided not to raise the price: “No one would have bought them,” she says. Instead, she doubled down on callaloo, a Caribbean herb that cost less to produce but sold enough to subsidize the beets. “People love it, it grows like a weed, it’s low maintenance and requires very little labor.” In the end, she says, “We are a nonprofit, and we didn’t want to make a profit.”

Sustainable and Resilient

Few would begrudge Ayer her loss leader, but such practices can undercut for-profit city farmers who are already struggling to compete with regional farmers at crowded urban markets and with cheap supermarket produce shipped from California and Mexico. Leadley, of Rising Pheasant Farms, realized long ago that she wouldn’t survive selling only the vegetables from her outdoor garden, which is why she invested in a plastic-draped greenhouse and heating system. Her tiny shoots, sprouts, amaranth and kohlrabi leaves grow year-round; they grow quickly — in the summer, Leadley can make a crop in seven days — and they sell for well over a dollar an ounce.

Nodding toward her backyard plot, Leadley says, “I grow those vegetables because they look good on the farm stand. They attract more customers to our table, and I really love growing outdoors.” But it’s the microgreens that keep Leadley from joining the ranks of the vast majority of U.S. farmers and taking a second job.

Mchezaji Axum, an agronomist with the University of the District of Columbia, the first exclusively urban land-grant university in the nation, helps urban farmers increase their yields whether they are selling into wealthy markets, like Leadley, or poorer markets, like Ayer. He promotes the use of plant varieties adapted to city conditions (short corn that produces four instead of two ears, for example). He also recommends biointensive methods, such as planting densely, intercropping, applying compost, rotating crops and employing season-extension methods (growing cold-tolerant vegetables like kale, spinach or carrots in winter hoop houses, for example, or starting plants in cold frames — boxes with transparent tops that let in sunlight but protect plants from extreme cold and rain).

“You learn to improve your soil health, and you learn how to space your plants to get more sunshine,” Axum says. Surveying D.C.’s scores of communal gardens, Axum has been surprised by how little food they actually grow. “People aren’t using their space well. More than 90 percent aren’t producing intensively. Some people just want to grow and be left alone.

“Using biointensive methods may not be part of your cultural tradition,” Laura J. Lawson, a professor of landscape architecture at Rutgers State University and the author of City Bountiful: A Century of Community Gardening in America, says. “It depends who you learned gardening from.” Lawson recalls the story of a well-meaning visitor to a Philadelphia garden who suggested that the farmers had planted their corn in a spot that wasn’t photosynthetically ideal. The women told their visitor, “We always plant it there; that way we can pee behind it.”

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Noah Link checks on his bees at Food Field, a commercial farm in Detroit. Photo by Marcin Szczepanski.

Axum is all about scaling up and aggregating hyperlocal foods to meet the demands of large buyers like city schools, hospitals or grocery stores. Selling to nearby institutions, say food policy councils — established by grassroots organizations and local governments to strengthen and support local food systems— is key to making urban food systems more sustainable and resilient, to say nothing of providing a living to local growers. But scaling up often requires more land, and therefore more expensive labor to cultivate it, in addition to changes in local land use and other policies, marketing expertise and efficient distribution networks.

“Lots of local institutions want to source their food here,” says Detroit farmer Noah Link, whose Food Field, a commercial operation, encompasses a nascent orchard, vast areas of raised beds, two tightly wrapped 150-foot (46-meter)-long hoop houses (one of which shelters a long, narrow raceway crammed with catfish), chickens, beehives and enough solar panels to power the whole shebang. “But local farms aren’t producing enough food yet. We’d need an aggregator to pull it together for bulk sales.”

Link doesn’t grow microgreens — the secret sauce for so many commercial operations — because he can break even on volume: His farm occupies an entire city block. Annie Novak, who co-founded New York City’s first for-profit rooftop farm in 2009, doesn’t have the luxury of space. She realized early on that she couldn’t grow a wide enough diversity of food to satisfy her community-supported agriculture customers in just 5,800 square feet (540 square meters) of shallow raised beds. “So I partnered with a farm upstate to supplement and diversify the boxes,” she says. Now, Novak focuses on niche and value-added products. “I make a hot sauce from my peppers and market the bejesus out of it,” she says. She also grows microgreens for restaurants, plus honey, herbs, flowers and “crops that are narratively interesting, like purple carrots, or heirloom tomatoes, which give us an opportunity to educate people about the value of food, green spaces and our connection to nature,” she says.

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Brooklyn Grange in New York grows more than 50,000 pounds of produce each year in its rooftop gardens. Photo © Brooklyn Grange Rooftop Farm / Anastasia Cole Plakias.

Sometimes being strategic with crop selection isn’t enough. Brooklyn Grange, a for-profit farm atop two roofs in New York City, grows more than 50,000 pounds (23,000 kilograms) of tomatoes, kale, lettuce, carrots, radishes and beans, among other crops, each year. It sells them through its CSA, at farm stands and to local restaurants. But to further boost its income, Brooklyn Grange also offers a summerlong training program for beekeepers (US$850 tuition), yoga classes and tours, and it rents its Edenic garden spaces, which have million-dollar views of the Manhattan skyline, for photo shoots, weddings, private dinners and other events.

“Urban farms are like small farms in rural areas,” says Carolyn Dimitri, an applied economist who studies food systems and food policy at New York University. “They have the same set of problems: people don’t want to pay a lot for their food, and labor is expensive. So they have to sell high-value products and do some agritourism.”

Under Control

On a miserable March morning, with a sparkling layer of ice glazing a foot of filthy snow, a coterie of Chicago’s urban farmers toils in shirtsleeves and sneakers, their fingernails conspicuously clean. In their gardens, no metal or wood scrap accumulates in corners, no chickens scratch in hoop-house soil. In fact, these farmers use no soil at all. Their densely planted basil and arugula leaves sprout from growing medium in barcoded trays. The trays sit on shelves stacked 12 feet (3.7 meters) high and illuminated, like tanning beds, by purple and white lights. Fans hum, water gurgles, computer screens flicker.

With 25 high-density crops per year, as opposed to a conventional farmer’s five or so, CEA yields are 10 to 20 times higher than the same crop grown outdoors

.FarmedHere, the nation’s largest player in controlled environment agriculture — CEA —pumps out roughly a million pounds (500,000 kilograms) per year of baby salad greens, basil and mint in its 90,000-square-foot (8,000-square-meter) warehouse on the industrial outskirts of Chicago. Like many hydroponic or aquaponic operations (in which water from fish tanks nourishes plants, which filter the water before it’s returned to the fish), the farm has a futuristic feel — all glowing lights and stainless steel. Employees wear hairnets and nitrile gloves. But without interference from weather, insects or even too many people, the farm quickly and reliably fulfills year-round contracts with local supermarkets, including nearly 50 Whole Foods Markets.

“We can’t keep up with demand,” Nick Greens, a deejay turned master grower, says.

Unlike outdoor farms, CEA has no call for pesticides and contributes no nitrogen to waterways. Its closed-loop irrigation systems consume 10 times less water than conventional systems. And with 25 high-density crops per year, as opposed to a conventional farmer’s five or so, CEA yields are 10 to 20 times higher than the same crop grown outdoors — in theory sparing forests and grasslands from the plow.

Is CEA the future of urban farming? It produces a lot of food in a small space, to be sure. But until economies of scale kick in, these operations — which are capital intensive to build and maintain — must concentrate exclusively on high-value crops like microgreens, winter tomatoes and herbs.

Reducing food miles reduces transit-related costs, as well as the carbon emissions associated with transport, packaging and cooling. But growing indoors under lights, with heating and cooling provided by fossil fuels, may negate those savings. When Louis Albright, an emeritus professor of biological and environmental engineering at Cornell University, dug into the numbers, he discovered that closed-system farming is expensive, energy intensive and, at some latitudes, unlikely to survive on solar or wind power. Growing a pound of hydroponic lettuce in Ithaca, New York, Albright reports, generates 8 pounds (4 kilograms) of carbon dioxide at the local power plant: a pound of tomatoes would generate twice that much. Grow that lettuce without artificial lights in a greenhouse and emissions drop by two thirds.

Food Security

In the world’s poorest nations, city dwellers have always farmed for subsistence. But more of them are farming now than ever before. In Africa, for example, it’s estimated that 40 percent of the urban population is engaged in agriculture. Long-time residents and recent transplants alike farm because they’re hungry, they know how to grow food, land values in marginal areas (under power lines and along highways) are low, and inputs like organic wastes — fertilizer — are cheap. Another driver is the price of food: People in developing nations pay a far higher percentage of their total income for food than Americans do, and poor transportation and refrigeration infrastructure make perishable goods, like fruits and vegetables, especially dear. Focusing on these high-value crops, urban farmers both feed themselves and supplement their incomes.

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Urban farming is common in Ghana and other sub-Saharan countries. Photo by Nana Kofi Acquah/IMWI

In the U.S., urban farming is likely to have its biggest impact on food security in places that, in some ways, resemble the global south — that is, in cities or neighborhoods where land is cheap, median incomes are low and the need for fresh food is high. Detroit, by this metric, is particularly fertile ground. Michael Hamm, a professor of sustainable agriculture at Michigan State University, calculated that the city, which has just under 700,000 residents and more than 100,000 vacant lots (many of which can be purchased, thanks to the city’s recent bankruptcy, for less than the price of a refrigerator), could grow three quarters of its current vegetable consumption and nearly half its fruit consumption on available parcels of land using biointensive methods.

No one expects city farms in the U.S. to replace peri-urban or rural vegetable farms: cities don’t have the acreage or the trained farmers, and most can’t produce food anything close to year-round. But can city farms take a bite from long-distance supply chains? NYU’s Dimitri doesn’t think so. Considering the size and global nature of the nation’s food supply, she says, urban ag in our cities “isn’t going to make a dent. And it’s completely inefficient, economically. Urban farmers can’t charge what they should, and they’re too small to take advantage of economies of scale and use their resources more efficiently.”

That doesn’t mean that community gardeners, who don’t even try to be profitable, aren’t making a big difference in their immediate communities. Camden’s 31,000 pounds (14,000 kilograms) of produce might not seem like a lot, but it’s a very big deal for those lucky enough to get their hands on it. “In poor communities where households earn very little income,” says Domenic Vitiello, an associate professor of city and regional planning at the University of Pennsylvania, “a few thousand dollars’ worth of vegetables and fruit grown in the garden makes a much bigger difference than for more affluent households.”

History tells us that community gardening — supported by individuals, government agencies and philanthropies — is here to stay. And whether these gardens ultimately produce more food or more knowledge about food — where it comes from, what it takes to produce it, how to prepare and eat it — they still have enormous value as gathering places and classrooms and as conduits between people and nature. Whether or not cultivating fruits and vegetables in tiny urban spaces makes economic or food-security sense, people who want to grow food in cities will find a way to do so. As Laura Lawson says, “City gardens are part of our ideal sense of what a community should be. And so their value is priceless.” 

UPDATED 05.06.15: A source was added for the percent of global food grown in cities.

MPA ESP Student to Transform Urban Farming

MPA ESP Student to Transform Urban Farming

BY LAURA PIRAINO  |  October 6, 2017

MPA-ESP student Alexander Rudnicki is a civil engineer (Columbia University ’10), who comes to SIPA from AeroFarms, an urban farming pioneer. Rudnicki speaks to MPA ESP intern Shagorika Ghosh about the urban farming industry, the enriching experiences of the ESP program, and his plans for the future.

How did your background working with innovative and transformative urban farms lead you to pursuing theMPA-ESP program?

I was the first engineer working at AeroFarms, where being the plant manager for over three years allowed me to experience the entire spectrum of working in the industry. For example, there was a day in particular that I remember, when I spent all day working in the plant training people, supervising operations, as well as having to present our work to the Duke of Westminster, who is one of our largest funders. Working at AeroFarms allowed me to experience the reality of working in the sector–how slowly things can move in real life, how implementation of projects needs teamwork and lots of capital.

AeroFarms was a vehicle for agricultural companies to engage in urban farming. People are excited and enthusiastic about urban farming, but it is a nascent industry with respect to policy and technology, so it’s kind of like the Wild West right now. There isn’t much incentive for farming companies to move into urban areas at this point. I wanted to explore the confluence of urban farming technology and traditional farming techniques, and studying environmental policy seemed to be the way forward.

What specifically motivated you to choose the MPA-ESP program at Columbia University?

I want to shape what the future industry looks like, and how the industry can be developed. The MPA-ESP program really equips me to do that. There is a focus on the environment, but it also takes into account social perspectives. The length of the program and its rigor is definitely another factor. It is a shorter, more intensive program, and the course structure and hands-on experience is great for mid-career professionals because it doesn’t feel like a full step back into school, but more like a half step back. At the same time, it’s great to be at SIPA, which allows you to be flexible, branch out and take different electives. Being at Columbia has also broadened my horizons, and it’s possible to keep abreast of everything that is happening in the industry. A lot of avenues then open up–working in policy or with companies in different areas of the urban farming industry.

What are your favorite classes and why?

One of my favorite classes has been Leadership and Urban Transformation, taught by Professor Michael Nutter, the former mayor of Philadelphia. He brings his long time public service perspective, and incredible insights into the actual implementation of policies, and the challenges of politics involved in policy implementation. I am also enjoying Sustainable Finance with Professor Bruce Kahn, which covers components of corporate finance, sustainability accounting, and sustainability metrics.

How has living and studying in NYC contributed to your experience in this program?

New York City is taking efforts to be at the forefront of sustainability, and this is being supported through high level executive action as well. OneNYC (formerly the Bloomberg Administration’s PlanNYC) is the sustainability plan for the City of New York. I am very interested in their Zero Waste initiative, and I intend to volunteer for the city in the future.

What has been your experience with your Environmental Science and Policy cohort been like?

In the MPA-ESP cohort, we work collaboratively for workshop presentations and other group projects. After multiple projects, we all have worked and interacted with at least half of the entire class. Our cohort is a very close-knit one, and I make it a point to interact with my fellow classmates. It has been very interesting to know their backgrounds, their interests and what they want to pursue. In my role as the ESP Treasurer, I also work to understand what the needs of the cohort are, what events and speakers they would be interested in.

What are your plans once you graduate? What are some skills and tools you have developed over the last year that you can use?

I would love to work with city planning offices to integrate urban farming into city planning and layouts. It’s encouraging to see cities like Detroit that have outlined an urban farming policy. It’s a great start and I want to be involved in such urban initiatives after I graduate.

I came to SIPA to learn how to create policy that would shape the future of urban farming. Through my classes, I am developing skills to be able to do that. I am learning to adopt a systems thinking approach towards earth systems through classes such as Climatology and Hydrology, that allows for a broader perspective when looking at the sustainability industry as a whole. Through my Sustainable Finance class, I am learning not just how to evaluate sustainability quantitatively, but also learn and analyze trends in the industry that are attractive to investors. All of these will equip me to further develop the urban farming industry and integrate traditional techniques and new technologies.