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Groundbreaking Held for Upcoming Hydroponics Farm in Pee Dee
Groundbreaking Held for Upcoming Hydroponics Farm in Pee Dee
November 9th, 2017, By Nia Watson, Reporter
A groundbreaking ceremony for East Nile Farms was held Thursday in Dillon County. (Source: WMBF News)
DILLON COUNTY. SC (WMBF) - Dillon County held a groundbreaking ceremony for East Nile Farms’ new facility along Heritage Road in Lake View.
The company invested $15.5 million and will create 200 new jobs in Dillon County.
“We’re definitely excited. It’s been a long time coming for Lake View and Dillon County,” said Tonny McNeil, director of economic development for Dillon County. “This is a tremendous opportunity for us, but ultimately our goal is for every single person that wants a job to have one in Dillon County.”
East Nile Farms is an indoor farming facility that grows plants without soil, using only water. The method is called hydroponics.
The company plans to produce 622,000 plants per month at the new facility. East Nile chose Dillon County for its geographic location and its people.
“Lake View, Dillon County had the type of people that enjoyed farming, people that have the background, have the skills,” said Otis Neals, CEO of East Nile Farms. “So, with the technology of hydroponics, we can take technology and combine it with people that enjoy working on farms, but also enjoy working with technology.”
Neals said with indoor farming, there are so many different jobs available. McNeil believes the hundreds of new jobs will transform the community.
“It’s definitely going to bring us closer together. It’s going to lower the unemployment rate and folks are going to be able to provide for their families and that’s really what this is all about, said McNeil.
The project has been in the works since October. The facility is expected to be open in June 2018. The company is still accepting job applications. Anyone interested can visit Dillon County Economic Development.
An Ex-Tesla executive is Teaming Up With A Little-Known Vertical Farming Startup
Kurt Kelty, Tesla's former director of battery technology, is moving into a very different sector of the tech industry: indoor agriculture.
An Ex-Tesla executive is Teaming Up With A Little-Known Vertical Farming Startup
- Leanna Garfield | 10-16-17
A farmer at Plenty, a Silicon Valley-based urban farming startup that scored the largest ag-tech investment in history. Plenty
Kurt Kelty, Tesla's former director of battery technology, is moving into a very different sector of the tech industry: indoor agriculture.
He has joined vertical farming startup Plenty as the senior vice president of operations and market development, according to Bloomberg.
Kelty, who worked at Tesla for over a decade and left in early 2017, was one of the earliest executives at the vehicle startup founded by Elon Musk. Before that, he spent more than 14 years with the Energy Lab at Panasonic, a company known for consumer electronics (which also happens to run its own vertical farming division in Singapore).
At Tesla, Kelty worked on partnerships and material sourcing at the company's Gigafactory near Reno, Nevada, where it manufactures lithium-ion batteries for its cars. At Plenty, he will launch a mass production facility for growing produce in the US, he told Bloomberg.
Instead of growing greens outdoors, Plenty grows its greens on glowing, LED-lit 20-foot-tall towers inside a former electronics distribution center in South San Francisco. The towers don't require pesticides or even natural sunlight.
The technique is called indoor vertical farming — a type of agriculture in which food grows on trays or hanging modules in a climate-controlled, indoor facility. The process allows certain types of produce to be grown year-round,in small spaces. Produce could be delivered to consumers within hours of harvest.
Plenty, founded in 2014, claims to grow up to 350 times more greens than conventional farms of similar size, while using much less water and land. The goal, Plenty CEO Matt Barnard previously told Business Insider, is to revolutionize the way the world grows food — and sell that food for lower prices than typical produce.
A $200 million investment in the startup, led by SoftBank Vision Fund in August 2017, could help make that vision viable. One of the biggest struggles for the company is the energy usage cost from the LEDs, though the lighting technology has become more of a commodity in the past several years.
"I can’t predict what the venture industry will do, nor what the USDA will do given the current state of federal budgeting, but we’re confident that this will be a prominent form of agricultural practice for many crops much sooner than even we projected a few years ago," Barnard said.
SEE ALSO: Panasonic's first indoor farm can grow over 80 tons of greens per year — take a look inside
The Food Tower: Looking up to Solve the Global Food Crisis
The Food Tower: Looking up to Solve the Global Food Crisis
Surbana Jurong principal architect Owen Wee presents a novel concept, the Food Tower, which can solve several urban challenges for Singapore at once: overcrowding, food security, and the ever-present need for community cohesion.
As the world's population slowly but surely shifts to cities, urban farming has gained popularity as a solution to food security challenges. Image: Pixabay
By Owen Wee
5 October 2017
With the global population rising rapidly and expected to reach 9.7 billion by 2050, governments around the world are increasingly asking the simple but critical question: how will we feed ourselves in future? A radical new vertical farming model called the Food Tower could provide an answer.
Food, it seems, is all around us. In our homes; on our televisions; in our shops; on our streets. Yet, surprising though it may seem given this apparent proliferation, the question of how we continue to feed ourselves in future is set to become one of the biggest challenges facing the developed and developing world.
The combined impact of population growth, climate change and urbanisation, which in 30 years’ time could see some 70 per cent of the global population living in cities, means that we are running out of available space and resources to grow crops in traditional ways.
In short, we need to come up with new ways to farm; new ways to manage food production and delivery; new ways to reduce pressure on resources and sustain our environment and lifestyles.
The food production challenge is already seen in cities such as Singapore. With almost no arable land, Singapore is heavily dependent on food imports and faces a potential food security problem. While past investment has enabled water self-sufficiency to be achieved, the need for a sustainable locally-grown supply of food is now more important than ever.
The built environment designers must now adopt a radically different approach to city planning to include food production within their thinking.
The Food Tower
Enter the Food Tower, a radical vertical urban farming concept that could be the innovative solution needed to solve to these challenges. With almost no arable land, Singapore is heavily dependent on food imports and will face a potential, yet undefined, future food security problem.
The Food Tower concept was mooted and tested by Surbana Jurong’s architectural team as a direct response to the growing pressure on sustainability of food production in Singapore.
While Singapore may not have vast land area, it is blessed with an abundance of sunshine and rainfall. The Food Tower concept attempts to maximise this natural potential by by stacking vegetable growing areas in an open, sunlight flooded high rise towers. This way, sunlight can be captured boosting growing yields across the 1 hectare site to some 400 times that of traditional farming.
The Food Tower concept takes a major step forward in large scale urban farming by using aquaponics—that is, where vegetables are grown on towers using the water and nutrients from a system of tanks in which Red Tilapia fish are reared. The vegetable towers are located on “wings” on higher floors that spiral upwards to maximise sunlight exposure; the fish farms are located at the lower floors where there is more shade.
The Food Tower also features a closed loop energy system, with onsite photovoltaics generating power, rainwater harvesting and wetland reed beds to purify and recycle waste water on-site. The wetlands can act as part of a garden for the larger community.
It is estimated that a 100-storey food tower on 1 hectare of land can provide sufficient meat and vegetables for just over 11,000 people per year.
How the Food Tower concept works. Image: Surbana Jurong
Policy support for the Food Tower
While the technology and design for high-rise farming in cities has been slowly maturing, there are a number of other factors which need to be addressed early so that Singapore can stay ahead of the curve and be ready to capitalise on the technology when it becomes viable.
One of the successful pilots that has been in operation is the first urban rooftop aquaponic farm, located at *SCAPE in the heart of Singapore’s shopping district, provides its fresh produce to nearby establishments.
This starts with the physical planning and zoning of suitable sites for urban farms, in particular, to ensure that the immediate setback of buildings around the site enables sunlight to reach the crops.
Government agencies must be armed with well-researched and clear policies to ensure that this need is well understood and taken into account, and the tenure offered to the farmer or farming community for the land use must take into consideration the efforts put in to develop the farm.
Clearly, despite the predictability of the weather in Singapore, the availability of sunlight varies around and throughout the Tower. This must be matched to different types of crops to maximise yield. Land use zoning could designate that above a certain height, building space be developed as farms while lower floors are used for other commercial and retail purposes.
We need to come up with new ways to farm; new ways to manage food production and delivery; new ways to reduce pressure on resources and sustain our environment and lifestyles.
Crop yield per square meter would also need to be mandated to encourage developers to adopt best technology to maximise the efficiency of land use. For example, natural sunlight could be supplemented by artificial LED growing lights, powered by stored photovoltaic energy from panels on the structure – possibly creating 24-hour-a-day growing conditions in the tower and so maximising growing efficiency.
Creating a sustainable solution also means working with the community. Commercial farming revenue from food towers could be supplemented by sharing space which is not so well-suited for farming with other community and residential facilities.
These might include an environmental research centre, restaurant and a school plus other facilities such as Community Parks and wetlands to boost interaction with the local community.
A new way of farming will need a new breed of farmer; an urban-agriculturist. It is a role that currently does not exist, requiring knowledge of the specific technology and techniques needed to adapt modern intensive farming practice to a high-rise urban environment.
The Food Tower would also need a multitude of new skills to run the urban farm; understanding the internal drainage, water and electrical needs of a modern building, the external environment such as solar effects, winds flows plus the impact of dust and city pollutants on crops.
In the factory environment of a Food Tower, they would need to be thoroughly grounded in managing work flow and production process while also understanding and managing resource use and recycling of water, waste and energy so as to maximise productivity and output.
It is clear that globally, we must look at more sustainable ways of living. This means including food production in future planning policies as we define and design the increasingly urban, increasingly congested cities of the future.
Although the idea sets out to rethink mass food production, it also demonstrates that consumers can be supplied with fresher and safer food with a lower overall carbon footprint. The project has already shown that it has a viable commercial business model but it is also a model that can rejuvenate urban sites, engage the community in various levels and create local jobs.
However, the development of such projects will require major commitment and intervention by governments to cover the substantial start-up cost and to create the necessary governance to allow such high-density food production in urban areas.
Owen Wee is principal architect, Surbana Jurong. This article was written exclusively for Eco-Business.
NatureFresh™ Farms Signs Agreement With Netherland’s Van der Knaap Group
NatureFresh™ Farms signed an agreement with Netherlands-based specialists in high quality rooting and growing media Van der Knaap Group to grow peppers organically using a patented sustainable organic cultivation system.
NatureFresh™ Farms Signs Agreement With Netherland’s Van der Knaap Group
Leamington, Ontario (Oct 6th, 2017)
NatureFresh™ Farms: Committed to Investing in Innovation
NatureFresh™ Farms signed an agreement with Netherlands-based specialists in high quality rooting and growing media Van der Knaap Group to grow peppers organically using a patented sustainable organic cultivation system. This agreement supports NatureFresh™ Farms plans increase it’s organic peppers lineup from 9 acres to 15 acres in 2018, and further this effort with 30 acres of organics by 2019.
Sustainable Organic Cultivation: Seven Years in the Making
Van der Knaap’s R&D team has been working with their partners to develop a cultivation system for growing organically above the soil. This effort has been led by Karel de Bruijn, R&D Manager of Van der Knaap who developed a reactor that converts proteins into nitrates (NO3) nitrogen. This nutritional solution produced with the reactor is free from organic residue, fungi and bacteria.
Applying Global Best Practices to Local Growing
“Our team strives to constantly innovate in order to improve our growing practice.” says John Ketler, General Manager of NatureFresh™ Farms. Working with Van der Knaap’s cultivation system underscores NatureFresh™ Farms commitment to improving the quality of its organics offering by applying the latest technologies from across the globe. “Sustainability is core to our business and this partnerships allow us the ability to think globally and grow locally.” says Peter Quiring, CEO & Owner of NatureFresh™ Farms.
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About NatureFresh™ Farms
NatureFresh™ Farms has grown to become one of the largest independent, vertically integrated greenhouse vegetable growers in North America. Growing in Leamington, ON and Delta, OH, NatureFresh™ Farms prides itself on exceptional flavor & quality. Family-owned NatureFresh™ Farms ships Non-GMO greenhouse grown produce year-round to key retailers throughout North America. Learn more at www.naturefresh.ca/about/innovation
About Van der Knaap Group
Van der Knaap is a group of companies specialised in high quality rooting and growing media. Van der Knaap Group offers professional horticulture solutions in the field of natural rooting and growth media. Van der Knaap consciously chooses raw materials that are recyclable and therefore environmentally friendly.
Softbank and Bezos Backed Vertical Farm Startup Has Global Expansion Plans
Softbank and Bezos Backed Vertical Farm Startup Has Global Expansion Plans
brian wang | November 11, 2017
Plenty is a startup that has big vertical farming expansion plans $226 million in total venture funding. They plan to build a 100,000 square foot (2.3 acres) vertical-farming warehouse this year in Washington state outside of Seattle. That farm is expected to produce 4.5 million pounds of greens annually.
Plenty grows plants on 20-foot high towers with vertical irrigation channels and facing LED lights.
In June 2017, California-based vertical farming company Plenty, previously See Jane Farm, acquired Bright Agrotech in an effort to reach “field-scale.”
Bright Agrotech is an indoor ag hardware company that’s focused on building indoor growing systems for small farmers all over the world, in contrast to Plenty, which is aiming to become a large-scale indoor farming business and currently has a 52,000 sq. ft farm in South San Francisco.
Plenty claims to use 1 percent of the water and land of a conventional farm with no pesticides or synthetic fertilizers. Like other large soilless, hi-tech farms growing today, Plenty says it uses custom sensors feeding data-enabled systems resulting in finely-tuned environmental controls to produce greens with superior flavor.
Plenty claims to get 350 times the crop yield per year over an outdoor field farm.
With the backing of SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son, Plenty has the capital and connections build massive indoor farms on the outskirts of every major city on Earth, some 500 in all. In that world, food could go from farm to table in hours rather than days or weeks.
Bezos Expeditions, the Amazon CEO’s personal venture fund, has also invested. So Plenty could supply WholeFoods.
Early leaders in vertical farming (PodPonics in Atlanta, FarmedHere in Chicago, and Local Garden in Vancouver) have shut down. They had a mix of design issues and high hardware costs. Gotham Greens and AeroFarms have not been as successful with fundraising.
A landmark study on the topic by Donald Davis and his team of researchers from the University of Texas (UT) at Austin’s Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry was published in December 2004 in the Journal of the American College of Nutrition. They studied U.S. Department of Agriculture nutritional data from both 1950 and 1999 for 43 different vegetables and fruits, finding “reliable declines” in the amount of protein, calcium, phosphorus, iron, riboflavin (vitamin B2) and vitamin C over the past half century. Davis and his colleagues chalk up this declining nutritional content to the preponderance of agricultural practices designed to improve traits (size, growth rate, pest resistance) other than nutrition.
They are finding about 14-30% drop in various nutrients.
WINNERS ANNOUNCED: Hackathon to Grow Crops on Mars Sees ‘Duckweed’ Take Prize for Best Solution
WINNERS ANNOUNCED: Hackathon to Grow Crops on Mars Sees ‘Duckweed’ Take Prize for Best Solution
7 November 2017, San Francisco, USA
Hackathon team ‘Just Food’ and their innovative solution for utilizing the aquatic plant duckweed, took the win Sunday night at the inaugural 2017 Autogrow #CropsOnMars Hackathon.
Global ag-tech company Autogrow acknowledged the solution was incredibly well thought out, achievable and original.
“The team did an impressive job researching how they could not only grow duckweed in a challenging environment but how it could realistically sustain life on Mars,” said Autogrow CEO Darryn Keiller.
“The judges all agreed that, while duckweed wasn’t the most appetizing food source, they couldn’t argue with the nutrient value or the innovative prototype of super thin LED lit grow beds they had created.”
‘Just Food’ and nine other teams hacked for two days on software, data or design solutions involving plant biology, controlled environment agriculture and the Mars environment. The judges looked for originality, sustainability, scalability and the potential for reproducibility on Earth.
Teams had the support of mentors and event organizers Autogrow and Silicon Valley Forum over the two days.
“I was privileged to be a mentor covering all aspects of plant biology and lighting. It was also great hackers had access to other mentors from NASA, IBM, Microsoft, Plenty, Orange Silicon Valley and Western Growers to name a few. And of course, the support of event partner Silicon Valley Forum who found a wonderful venue to hack. Like plants, people thrive in the right environment and we had a great growing environment,” said Autogrow Director of Crop Science and Agronomy Tharindu Weeraratne.
The race for the win was so tight that two teams took the runner-up slot with one advocating collapsible growth chambers and the other a rapid deployable enclosure to be set up prior to astronaut arrival using robotic technology.
Mr. Keiller noted that although teams were competing against each other there was an impressive amount of support for one another.
“The Hackers (predominantly millennials) gave us great hope for the future due to their creativity, their outlook to the future and to put things right for our planet’s ecosystem while meeting the needs of our growing population.”
“As organizers of the event, the most unexpected and visceral emotion of the collective teams was the spirit of unity around the daunting challenge we put in front of them. Here were people from perhaps 20 nations; students, startup founders, academics and business owners, all coming together to do something that was substantially beyond any one of them. The strength of their ideas was in their diversity as people and their willingness to collaborate.”
With the success of the inaugural event under their belt, Autogrow will announce new dates early in the year for the next #CropsOnMars hackathon, likely to be scheduled for late 2018 and held in Silicon Valley.
WINNING TEAM ‘JUST FOOD’
Wyatt Smith
Michelle Jia
Deger Turan
Santiago Perez
Zandra Vinegar
JUDGING PANEL
Dr. Nate Storey, Chief Science Officer – Plenty
Jeffrey Law, Chief Technology Officer – Autogrow
Dr Ioana Cozmuta, Industry Engagement, Commercial Space Partnerships – NASA
Andrew Scheurmann, CEO – Arch Systems
Greg Chiocco, Director of Product Management - Climate Corporation
Dr Rosie Bosworth, Strategic Communications – Sustain Ltd
MENTORS
Bilind Hajer, Data Engenieer - Product School
Tobi Ogunaikee, Software Engineer
Isabel Chamberlain, Compliance Specialist and Grower - Plenty
Akihiro Ishimura, Senior Consultant/ AgTech Expert - Fujitsu
Miika Mantyvaara, Global Marketing, Business Development and Innovation - The Vault
Robert (Bruce) Pittman, Chief System Engineer - NASA
Bilind Hajer, Data Engineer - Product School
Anna Propas, Software Engineer Lead Instructor - Coding Dojo
Juanita Dion, Software Engineer - IBM
Dennis Donohue, President at Royal Rose Radicchio - Western Growers Association
Ulrika Lidstorm, Research Scientist & Program Coordinator - Dupont Pioneer
Davies Odu, Software Engineer - Microsoft
Itiya Aneece, PhD Researcher - USGS
Hugo Wagner, Partner - Orange Silicon Valley
Erica Riel Carden, AgTech & FoodTech Advisor - Global Capital Markets
Davies Odu, Software Engineer - Microsoft
Are Vertical Farms The Way Forward for Bengaluru?
Rutusha says, "Bioclimatic buildings are those that respond to climate; verti farms are inside these buildings. The buildings create an artificial environment within them and are not completely dependent on natural resources. So, design plays a big role
Are Vertical Farms The Way Forward for Bengaluru?
Dhwani Desai| TNN | Oct 8, 2017
Pollution and space restraints — something that Bengalureans tackle every single day. Scarcity of water and erratic climate changes have become unfortunate realities, but we still carry on leading our lives in traditional ways that were meant for a plentiful world. It is said that by 2050, there will be well over nine billion people in the world, and 70% of them will live in urban areas. As a result, there is bound to be food shortage and food security issues. This is why 23-year-old Rutusha Nagaraj Kapini, a fresh graduate of The Oxford School of Architecture, picked vertical farming as the topic for her thesis, which, she says, is the way forward in an urban metropolis like Bengaluru. And such was her research into the topic that she received two awards for it — Zonal Winner, Council of Architecture National Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Architectural Thesis 2017 (top 10 in Zone 4) and Archi Design Best Thesis of the Year Award 2016 (Student of the Year Award — national level).
For her thesis, Rutusha had to find an innovative solution to the following problem: 'Increasing population has drastically reduced farming lands. Raw food, such as vegetables and fruits, are loaded with toxic chemicals and pesticides'. Having attended the All India Convention of Architects in 2008 (both her parents are architects), Rutusha was inspired by Dr Dickson Despommier's speech — he is considered the father of vertical farming. "He spoke about how vertical farming can be beneficial in urban populated cities in India, as it can produce nutritious food that one can access within the city. He is the reason I picked this topic," she says.
CREATING VERTI FARMS
So, what did Rutusha discover through research for her thesis? She found that vertical farming could be an innovative model through architectural design intervention, which minimizes land usage, while still feeding the population. The environmentally-conscious and ecological design is conceived as a network of facilities, with training centres for farmers, and creating bioclimatic buildings of the future — Verti Farms. Throwing more light on the topic, Rutusha says, "Bioclimatic buildings are those that respond to climate; verti farms are inside these buildings. The buildings create an artificial environment within them and are not completely dependent on natural resources. So, design plays a big role. For e.g., they will have solar tubes through which natural sunlight enters the building. There will also be LED light farming (certain LED lights help plants grow). Each of the planters will be placed on rotational carousels within the building. There will be mirrors on the walls that will reflect the natural sunlight (the buildings will not be completely closed and the openings will be protected with stainless-steel meshes). The carousels will be placed in stacked heights; there will be one water inlet source, and since the platforms rotate, the water will be drained out at a single drain pipe, which will lead to the central service core that will be connected to a sewerage treatment plant." Through this method, she adds, only 5% of water is required for five times the yield. Also, changes in weather will not affect the crops much as the environment within the building is controlled.
A VERTI FARM IN LALBAGH?
To get a better idea of how verti farms work, Rutusha went to Singapore for a live study of the Sky Greens there. Having done sufficient research, she has identified a vacant plot of land near Lalbagh that can be put to productive use by setting up India's first vertical farm there. "The government already has HOPCOMS set up in many places; similarly, they could allot land to verti farms. These can serve as interactive spaces for the public, which would encourage them to adapt it on smaller scales, such as at apartment complexes and private layouts. It can even serve as local marketplaces, where the produce is sold fresh," says Rutusha. But wouldn't this harm the income of farmers? "No," says Rutusha, explaining, "Farmers will be required to work on verti farms. Each building will have training centres for the farmers — it will be a free course. Crops often fail due to erratic climate changes, but verti farms reduce that risk, since they are not completely dependent on natural forces. So, farmers will actually be able to generate a steady income."
What is interesting is that verti farms cater to city-specific needs. This reflects in the plants that can be grown in them — fruits and vegetables that we use for daily consumption. This includes tomato, peas, brinjal, curry leaves, basil, lettuce, mint, cauliflower, spring onions, okra, cucumber, lemons and broccoli, among others.
CRUNCHING NUMBERS
The organic building that Rutusha has proposed will be expensive initially, but, she says, costs will breakeven after five years, after which it will be profitable. "A 10-acre site in Lalbagh can accommodate two high-rise verti farms. On the same land, I have proposed the setting up of training and research centres, a local market and an interactive space. All this can be built at an estimated cost of Rs 200 crore," says Rutusha.
The young architect wants to continue research on the subject through a Master programme, apart from creating a startup to convert her thesis into a viable business model. If her efforts come to fruition, Bengaluru could very well be home to India's first vertical farm.
IKEA Debuts Farm That Can Grow in Your Kitchen
The prototype known as Lokal, uses a hydroponic farming system that allows crops to grow on trays under LED light in a climate-controlled box.
IKEA Debuts Farm That Can Grow in Your Kitchen
BUSINESS REPORT / 9 OCTOBER 2017, 4:30PM / STAFF REPORTER
Image: Indoor Growing Kits & Cultivators by IKEA ( IKEA)
ONDON - The home furnishings retailer IKEA is now experimenting with products that allow people to harvest food at home.
Space10, Ikea's innovation lab, has designed a prototype of a mini-farm that can grow greens and herbs indoors.
The prototype known as Lokal, uses a hydroponic farming system that allows crops to grow on trays under LED light in a climate-controlled box.
Space10 debuted the device in September at the London Design Festival in Shoreditch.
Crops grow under LEDs instead of relying on natural sunlight.
Accordinng to the Space10 team, this process allows the greens to grow approximately three times quicker than in an outdoor garden.
The Space10 team estimates that Lokol uses 90% less water than a traditional garden to produce the same amount of greens, since the crops grow at a faster rate.
Space10 gave 2,000 free samples of Lokal microgreens to London Design Week attendees.
The purpose was to see how Londoners felt about Ikea's experiment and food grown hydroponically in general. In a press release, the team said they were optimistic about the project.
The Space10 team is now working on adding sensors to the growing trays, so that users can track how the greens grow using Google Home.
Using machine learning, the sensor system could allow gardeners to learn how to improve the growing process.
Sky High Veggies? Urban Farming Grows in Unexpected Places
CalSTRS Executive Chef Conrad Caguimbal offers a salad with roasted vegetables from the pension fund’s edible garden featured every day in the CalSTRS cafeteria in West Sacramento. Renée C. Byer rbyer@sacbee.com
Sky High Veggies? Urban Farming Grows in Unexpected Places
BY DEBBIE ARRINGTON | darrington@sacbee.com
OCTOBER 13, 2017 2:00 PM
Fresh vegetables and herbs, harvested steps away from the kitchen; that’s a chef’s dream.
In the Farm-to-Fork Capital, it’s also a sign that a business has thoroughly bought into an ethos of sustainability. Grow tomatoes at your doorstep – or on your roof – and patrons know those veggies are as local as they can get. So do employees who like to know their food source is just outside their windows.
Popping up throughout California are statement-making gardens full of food. That includes the landscaping at the front entrance of West Sacramento’s CalSTRS building, home to the California State Teachers’ Retirement System.
“Most people grow landscaping as an afterthought,” said Lara Hermanson, the gardener/farmer behind Farmscape, which created the CalSTRS “Waterfront Gardens.” “They put in some shrubs and lawn, then forget about it. Food is much more interesting.
Farmscape, the largest urban farming company on the West Coast, has created more than 700 edible gardens in unexpected places.
“We do anything from a couple of raised beds to giant rooftop projects,” said Hermanson, who started growing food as landscaping for wealthy families in Malibu who wanted “kitchen gardens” without the gardening part.
As part of its contracts, Farmscape provides regular maintenance as well as original plans and setup. Packages start at $79 a week for 125 square feet; consultations start at $90 an hour. That’s expensive for a residential vegetable garden, but more reasonable for business or public projects – especially for such high-profile landscaping such as at the entrance of a major building.
Businesses may want to grow edible landscaping, but have no clue how to do it, Hermanson noted. Farmscape takes care of everything from planning to planting to harvest. Adding color and beauty, seasonal flowers, herbs and ornamental plants are mixed in with the vegetables, so the beds appear manicured and attractive year round.
Besides looking good, these gardens have an immediate dividend: Fresh organic food.
“That’s what people love,” Hermanson said.
Farmscape’s most famous “farms” are on top of Levi’s Stadium, the Santa Clara home to the 49ers, and under the scoreboard at the Giants’ AT&T Park in San Francisco.
Featuring espaliered fruit trees as well as annual vegetables, the Giants’ garden had a better summer than the team.
“Produce from that garden is used in three little cafes (at the ballpark) that feature wood-fired pizza including gluten-free options,” Hermanson said. “They also offer vegan options for folks who don’t do baseball food.”
A short throw from the bullpen, hydroponic towers sprout berries and greens used in ballpark smoothies and salads.
“It’s kind of an idea garden,” Hermanson said. “During games, 40,000 people can see how good it looks and think about growing food, too.”
Dubbed “Faithful Farm,” the rooftop garden at Levi’s Stadium supplies fresh produce to the venue’s food service. It looks like a typical vegetable garden – except the soil is only 6 to 9 inches deep and it sits nine stories above the ground.
“We had a crazy good summer at Levi’s,” Hermanson said. “We harvested 5,000 pounds of food from a 6,000-square-foot space. We had a thousand pounds of just melons! We grew so many peppers, we harvested 100 pounds a week.”
Among the challenges of farming on the roof: It gets really windy (but so does AT&T Park) and it’s less protected from rain and sun.
“Everything is more intense on the roof,” Hermanson said. “We had trouble with all that rain (last winter). The little lettuce just rot; it wouldn’t grow. On Christmas Eve, we had another huge storm. And the wind!
“(In summer and early fall), it gets so hot up there, everything just gets cooked,” she added. “But we’re getting to know what works up there.”
On the banks of the Sacramento River, the CalSTRS garden is much more hospitable. Originally planted two years ago, it has 10 raised beds plus more than a dozen fruit trees. It’s also been prolific; this summer, it produced 2-1/2 pounds of food per square inch.
Executive chef Conrad Caguimbal, who oversees CalSTRS’s busy cafe, enjoys growing vegetables and herbs for cafe meals. Open to the public, the cafe serves about 700 meals a day.
“I love the fact I can actually harvest my own produce, take it to the cafe and create something delicious,” Caguimbal said, “and I never get my hands dirty.”
Each week day, he creates an “Earth Bowl,” featuring fresh selections from the garden that sits just outside the cafe’s patio. Using veggies picked that morning, a recent bowl mixed together kale, zucchini and caramelized carrots with barley for a vegan entree.
“A lot of people get excited when we harvest,” he said. “They’ve been watching those tomatoes and squash grow, too.”
CalSTRS chose edible landscaping because it fits with its overall sustainability initiative, explained Madeline O’Connell, the facility’s environmental sustainability specialist. For example, the LEED-certified building recycles 40 tons of organic waste per month to make energy. (That includes waste from the garden.)
“We also use the garden for educational events,” O’Connell said. “After all, we serve teachers.”
Hermanson loves the CalSTRS garden, in part because of its location. It welcomes the building’s 1,100 workers as well as visitors and passersby.
“It’s really fun,” Hermanson said. “It’s right on the river walk. People take lunchtime rambles and stop by the garden. When we’re out there, we get a lot of questions. Is this real? Where does the produce go? (Visitors) interact – and that’s exactly the idea.”
Debbie Arrington: 916-321-1075, @debarrington
Conrad Caguimbal, executive chef at CalSTRS in West Sacramento, builds a salad from vegetables he gathered in the agency’s new edible garden. It’s on the daily menu at the CalSTRS cafeteria. Renée C. Byer rbyer@sacbee.com
Student-Grown Salad In The School Cafeteria? These Kids Dig It
Architect Michael Marshall designed the rooftop farm, one of several gardens at Horace Mann, during the school’s renovation three years ago. “The connection to the exterior is not an accident in this design. A lot of these young kids, when they grow up, rooftop gardens are going to be very common as far as sustainability and urban living. Why not prepare them?” Marshall said.
Student-Grown Salad In The School Cafeteria? These Kids Dig It
By Rachel Nania | @rnania | October 8, 2017
WASHINGTON — School gardens are no longer a rarity.
These days, it’s common to spot pepper plants and tomato towers in schoolyards throughout the country, as more educators turn to dirt to teach lessons on healthy eating and the root of the food system.
But at Horace Mann Elementary School in Northwest D.C., instruction isn’t confined to a few cedar-raised beds. After leafy vegetables are planted and cared for, students harvest the crops, chop them up and serve them to more than 400 of their peers for lunch.
At Horace Mann Elementary School in Northwest D.C., gardening lessons are not confined to a few cedar-raised beds. After leafy vegetables are planted and cared for, students harvest the crops, chop them up and serve them to more than 400 of their peers for lunch. (WTOP/Rachel Nania)
Amy Jagodnik’s third-floor classroom, which is filled with seedlings and outfitted with a small kitchen, opens directly to the school’s rooftop garden. It’s there where a class of third-graders pick parsley and pak choi from commercial-grade garden towers on Monday mornings. (WTOP/Rachel Nania)
“It’s really fun having a conversation with them about whether they prefer the Swiss chard last week to the pak choi this week,” said Amy Jagodnik, who has been the school’s garden coordinator since 2004. (WTOP/Rachel Nania)
Architect Michael Marshall designed the rooftop farm, one of several gardens at Horace Mann elementary, during the school’s renovation three years ago. “The connection to the exterior is not an accident in this design. A lot of these young kids, when they grow up, rooftop gardens are going to be very common as far as sustainability and urban living. Why not prepare them?” Marshall said. (WTOP/Rachel Nania)
Garden coordinator, Amy Jagodnik, shows a student the proper way to cut greens on the elementary school’s rooftop farm. (WTOP/Rachel Nania)
An American University student helps a third-grader dry leaves of Swiss chard and pak choi on the roof of Horace Mann Elementary. (WTOP/Rachel Nania)
After the weekly harvest, students chop the greens and serve them to 400 of their peers in the school cafeteria. (WTOP/Rachel Nania)
“You’re laying the foundation for global stewards,” Amy Jagodnik said about the school’s investment in its gardening program.
“You want children to care about their environment. You want them to know how to eat healthy, where their food comes from and how to support that, even if they don’t become scientists or become environmentalists, they still have that foundation.” (WTOP/Rachel Nania)
At lunch, Jagodnik and a few helpers walk around the cafeteria and serve the salad du jour.
“So we’re going to each table and we’re engaging with each student and asking them if they would like a sample or if they would like a salad,” Amy Jagodnik explained. (WTOP/Rachel Nania)
“It’s really fun having a conversation with them about whether they prefer the Swiss chard last week to the pak choi this week,” said Amy Jagodnik, who has been the school’s garden coordinator since 2004.
Jagodnik’s third-floor classroom, which is filled with seedlings and outfitted with a small kitchen, opens directly to the school’s rooftop garden. It’s there where a class of third-graders pick parsley and pak choi from commercial-grade garden towers on Monday mornings.
Architect Michael Marshall designed the rooftop farm, one of several gardens at Horace Mann, during the school’s renovation three years ago.
“The connection to the exterior is not an accident in this design. A lot of these young kids, when they grow up, rooftop gardens are going to be very common as far as sustainability and urban living. Why not prepare them?” Marshall said.
Once the greens are gathered and washed, they’re hand-chopped and thrown into large stainless steel bowls, where they’re tossed in a simple dressing of olive oil, apple cider vinegar, salt and sugar.
At lunch, Jagodnik and a few helpers walk around the cafeteria and serve the salad du jour.
“So we’re going to each table and we’re engaging with each student and asking them if they would like a sample or if they would like a salad,” Jagodnik explained.
It’s not uncommon to be met with resistance and a few creative excuses — Jagodnik has even heard students say they “already had something green for breakfast.” So she considers the program a success when the kids agree to try just one leaf.
“You’re laying the foundation for global stewards,” Jagodnik said about the school’s investment in its gardening program.
“You want children to care about their environment. You want them to know how to eat healthy, where their food comes from and how to support that, even if they don’t become scientists or become environmentalists, they still have that foundation.”
Like WTOP on Facebook and follow @WTOP on Twitter to engage in conversation about this article and others.
What Do Indoor Farming CEOs Think of Hydroponics Organic Approval?
Last week the National Organic Safety Board (NOSB), the body tasked with making recommendations to the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) around its organic certification, rejected a proposal that would disallow hydroponic and aquaponic farms from being certified organic.
What Do Indoor Farming CEOs Think of Hydroponics Organic Approval?
NOVEMBER 8, 2017 EMMA COSGROVE
Last week the National Organic Safety Board (NOSB), the body tasked with making recommendations to the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) around its organic certification, rejected a proposal that would disallow hydroponic and aquaponic farms from being certified organic.
Hydroponic farms grow fruit and vegetables in a growing medium submerged in water, through which farmers provide nutrients. Aquaponic farmers use connected aquaculture operations to provide these nutrients.
In 2010 the NOSB voted to exclude “soilless” forms of growing, but the USDA decided not to take the recommendation, continuing to allow hydroponic farms to be certified and leading to a period of uncertainty on the subject.
Some 100 hydroponic farms have been certified over the years inside and out of the United States (there are USDA organic approved certifiers all over the world). But the ambivalence on the part of the USDA and according to one certifier, often true belief in a soil-based standard, led many certifiers to stay out of that game.
Ryan Brouillard, crop and livestock certification manager at Quality Certification Services (QCS) in Florida, which does certify hydroponic and aquaponic farms told AgFunderNews in August, “We see it as a useful and productive agricultural system and there is a lot of demand for organic hydroponics. Other certifiers look at the rules as written and see that it is a soil-based standard so I can see where they are coming from too.”
This ruling offers some clarity on the matter, but the NOSB’s recommendations do not automatically change the USDA’s rules as past events have proven. Last year the Cornucopia Institute filed a complaint with the USDA for allowing USDA Organic certifications to be granted to farms despite the NOSB’s 2010 recommendation. The Cornucopia Institute also lodged a petition to exclude hydroponics from USDA organic standards in just one of many actions to avoid the November 1 result.
From one angle, this ruling is simply bringing the NOSB in line with what the USDA has already been practicing. In fact, the farm policy director of the Organic Trade Association said that the decision was maintaining the status quo. But, the reaction from the originators of the quite young National Organic Program, which was finalized only in 2000, has been heated.
Objectors to including hydroponics in the organic certification argue that the standard was created to maintain the health of the soil, which is harmed by conventional pesticides. They feel that soilless growing systems are incompatible with this purpose and should, therefore, be disqualified from the certification.
Notably, the NOSB is made up of 15 members appointed to a five-year term by the Secretary of Agriculture. Of the 15, four are organic farmers, two are organic processors and packers, one operates an organic retailer, three are environmental conservation experts, three represent consumer interest groups one is a toxicologist, and one is a USDA accredited certifier.
One outgoing member of the board wrote on The Cornucopia Insitute’s website that the organic industry had begun to wield more influence that organic farmers over the board’s actions and makeup.
What do Indoor Farmers think?
Indoor farmers argue that growing hydroponically is decreasing the amount of pesticides, even organic-approved pesticides, going into the soil, along with drastically decreasing water use compared to organic field farming – and is therefore congruous with the intent of the original National Organic Program.
Irving Fain, CEO of Bowery Farming, a high-tech indoor farming operation in Kearny, New Jersey says that the NOSB’s previous standards were simply out of date with modern agriculture.
“The NOSB’s previous definition of organic was written at a time when the technology that is available today simply did not exist, so it is appropriate to recognize that today’s produce does not have to be grown in a field to meet the highest quality standards,” he said.
Fain’s company frequently uses the term “post-organic” in its marketing, claiming that because Bowery’s process requires no pesticides, it is superior to the organic standard, which allows approved pesticides.
Bowery Farming, which has raised a total of $27.5 million from tech VCs General Catalyst and GGV Capital, and GV (Google Ventures), is unique in that it does not commit to one growing technology. The company uses multiple hydroponic configurations in their Kearny farm, the common link between them being a smart monitoring and controls system called “Bowery OS” developed in-house.
Though Bowery is eligible for organic certification, Fain says that he won’t be seeking it soon.
“Organic certification is not a priority for us right now as we’re currently growing fully traceable, post-organic produce,” he said.
High-tech hydroponic grower Plenty, which raised a record-breaking $200 million this past summer from Japan’s SoftBank Vision Fund among other investors, is taking the opposite tack.
Though Plenty’s South San Francisco farm is not selling produce yet, the facility is already certified organic and the plan is to certify each new facility – the company just announced its second farm will be outside of Seattle.
“Organic farmers are diverse in our production systems, but we are united in our values, priorities, and practices. We are pleased that the NOSB has put this debate to rest and confirmed that hydroponic systems have been and will continue to be excellent suppliers of USDA certified organic products,” said Plenty CEO Matt Barnard.
Hydroponics is in… What’s Out?
In addition to formally ruling hydroponics and aquaponics in, the board also ruled aeroponics, growing plants with the roots dangling in a mist environment from which they receive water and nutrition, out. Technically aeroponics is a form of hydroponics since water is the primary delivery system for the plants’ nutrition, but the NOSB makes a clear distinction.
New Jersey-based AeroFarms, which recently closed its Series D round at $40 million, is an aeroponic farm and CEO David Rosenberg is dissatisfied with the way the NOSB has framed this decision.
“Regulators and standard-makers should be performance-based and not prescription-based. The performance standards should look at what goes into the plants and what ends up on the plants… Making a distinction between aeroponics and hydroponics discredits the process of making standards around organics and highlights how commercially-driven decisions are made. If a party can deliver to a standard of performance, it should not matter if the nutrients were delivered as a spray versus a pool of water,” said Rosenberg.
The CEO said that AeroFarms has not and is not seeking organic certification, but that he would like to see “a fair set of standards and would like to have confidence in a process. I would hope that the bodies that make these decisions appreciate how commercially driven decisions hurt credibility and ultimately drive people away from the organic certification.“
Of course, the USDA could choose to go its own way on this standard too and act against the NOSB’s recommendation to disqualify farms like AeroFarms, but with zero aeroponic farms certified to date and more than 100 hydroponic farms certified, another departure by the USDA from NOSB recommendations is perhaps less likely.
This Company Wants to Build a Giant Indoor Farm Next to Every Major City in the World
For as long as I can remember, people have been hyping vertical farming — growing crops indoors, using vertical space to intensify production.
This Company Wants to Build a Giant Indoor Farm Next to Every Major City in the World
Vertical farming may finally be growing up.
Updated by David Roberts@drvoxdavid@vox.com
Nov 8, 2017
Plenty ... of varieties. | Plenty
For as long as I can remember, people have been hyping vertical farming — growing crops indoors, using vertical space to intensify production.
Its virtues, relative to conventional agriculture, have long been clear. Indoors, the climate can be controlled year-round. Pests can be minimized, and with them pesticides. Water and nutrients can be applied in precise quantities. By going up rather than out, a vertical farm can produce more food per acre of land. And by siting close to an urban area, it can reduce long distribution chains, getting fresher food to customers’ tables, quicker.
Its drawbacks have become equally clear. They mainly come down to cost. Farming well requires deep know-how and expertise; it has proven extraordinarily difficult to expand vertical farms in a way that holds quality consistent while driving costs down. Optimizing production at a small scale is very different from doing so at a large scale. The landscape islittered with the corpses of vertical-farming startups that though they could beat the odds (though several are still alive and kicking).
Now a young Silicon Valley startup called Plenty thinks it has cracked the code. It has enormous expansion plans and a bank account full of fresh investor funding, but most excitingly, it plans to build a 100,000 square foot vertical-farming warehouse this year in Kent, Washington, just outside of Seattle, your author’s home town. That farm is expected to produce 4.5 million pounds of greens annually. Your author, in keeping with coastal elitist stereotypes, is a fervent lover of greens.
In part because I now have a personal stake in the matter, I thought I’d take a look at the company, its prospects, the environmental benefits it promises, and — perhaps most importantly — some of the unnerving social and political implications of a vertical farming revolution.
Plenty ... of veggies. | Plenty
Plenty wants to build a farm near your city
Plenty is at the center of a veritable hurricane of buzz at the moment.
It checks all the boxes: It recently got a huge round of funding ($200 million in July, the largest ag-tech investment in history), including some through Jeff Bezos’s investment firm, so it has the capital to scale; it is leaning heavily on machine learning and AI; it has endorsements from several Michelin-rated chefs (“I’ve never had anything of this quality,” a former sous-chef at French Laundry, Anthony Secviar, told Bloomberg); it is in talks with several large distributors in the US and abroad; heck, it even lured away the director of battery technology at Tesla, Kurt Kelty, to be executive of operations and development. (You’re nothing in Silicon Valley without an ex-Tesla exec.)
“I wanted to figure out where I would contribute to the next big wave,” Kelty told Bloomberg. “I see my next 10-year-run as growing Plenty."
So, what’s the big deal?
If you want to really dig in, Bloomberg has the best feature story on Plenty (see also Fast Company), but I’ll quickly run through what the company is up to. It’s helpful to read what follows against this list of nine reasons vertical farms fail, by Chris Michael, CEO of vertical-farming company Bright Agrotech. In a sense, Plenty is a response to previous failures.
The company is run by CEO Matt Barnard, a former private equity investor, and CTO Nate Storey, an agronomist who did his doctoral work in tower farming. (Storey also founded Bright Agrotech, which he left to join Plenty. In June, Plenty acquired the company.)
Plenty grows plants on 20-foot vertical towers instead of the stacks of horizontal shelves used by most other vertical-farming companies. Plants jut horizontally from the towers, growing out of a substrate made primarily of recycled plastic bottles (there’s no soil involved). Water and nutrients are fed in from the top of the tower and dispersed by gravity (rather than pumps, which saves money). All water, including from condensation, is collected and recycled.
The plants receive no sunlight, just light from hanging LED lamps. There are thousands of infrared cameras and sensors covering everything, taking fine measurements of temperature, moisture, and plant growth; the data is used by agronomists and artificial intelligence nerds to fine-tune the system.
The towers are so close together that the effect is a giant wall of plants.
Plenty ... of greens.
Currently, Plenty is focusing on leafy greens and herbs — varieties of lettuce, kale, mustard greens, basil, etc. — but it says it can use the system to grow anything except root vegetables and tree fruits. Strawberries and cucumbers are coming up next. (It’s worth noting that anything beyond leafy greens requires more light and thus more energy, so the source and cost of an indoor farm’s electricity is of keen interest.)
There are virtually no pests in a controlled indoor environment, so Plenty doesn’t have to use any pesticides or herbicides; it gets by with a few ladybugs. The produce from Plenty’s San Francisco warehouse is certified organic, but leaders in the industry also like to stress that vertical farming is local, with an entirely transparent supply chain. (Why yes, you can also get that at your local farmers market.)
Bottom line: Relative to conventional agriculture, Plenty says that it can get as much as 350 times the produce out of a given acre of land, using 1 percent as much water. “It is the most efficient [form of agriculture] in terms of the amount of productive capacity per dollar spent,” Barnard has said. “Period.”
It’s worth reading those claims again, as they are pretty eye-popping. The next grandest claim in the industry is AeroFarms, a Newark, New Jersey company with nine indoor farms, which says it can get to 130 times the amount of produce per acre.
What’s more, Plenty says its products taste better than most of what customers now have access to. Around 35 percent of fruits and vegetables eaten in the US today are imported. Leafy greens travel an average of 2,000 miles to reach your plate. Some produce has been on ships and trucks for two weeks before it reaches the table — having lost, by some estimates, 45 percent of its nutritional value along the way. Produce is bred to survive that long journey with its aesthetics, but not necessarily its flavor, intact.
Plenty... of miles.
Plenty plans to build warehouses, not inside major cities, but just outside them, next to distribution centers, to minimize the time its food spends in transit — it wants produce to go from harvest to table in hours, rather than days. If it can do that, the company will be able to grow and sell a wide variety of rare and heirloom breeds, which are more tender and flavorful than what’s available at the supermarket, but less resilient to long journeys.
In fact, Barnard says he will save more money on trucks and fuel than he spends on facilities and power.
The company’s goal is to build an indoor farm outside of every city in the world of more than 1 million residents — around 500 in all. It claims it can build a farm in 30 days and pay investors back in three to five years (versus 20 to 40 for traditional farms). With scale, it says, it can get costs down to compete with traditional produce (for a presumably more desirable product that could command a price premium).
If it can back up those claims in practice, Plenty might not revolutionize global agriculture, but it will sure as hell establish vertical farming as a real thing.
Plenty... of CEO Matt Barnard.
Now, to be very clear: It would be a terrible mistake for anyone to take investment advice from me. I’m not an industry analyst. I have no idea if Plenty will ultimately succeed. It could face difficulty finding affordable urban land; it could have trouble replicating the carefully controlled conditions of its initial warehouse; quality could slip as it output rises; consumers could reject the products for any number of reasons. Many previous alt-farming startups got similar buzz, only to fail. Scaling up is full of peril.
But I do think, if Plenty is not the early Google of this space, some other company will be, soon enough. The traditional barriers of cost and energy that have blocked the industry from growing are crumbling. And the way it’s happening carries some fateful lessons.
Plenty is replacing stuff with intelligence
Entrepreneur Bill Gross said something in a talk once that I never forgot. Every commodity, he said, is finite, and is eventually going to get more expensive — except computing power. Computing power just gets cheaper and cheaper and cheaper. So to the extent you want to ensure low costs in the long term, he said, you substitute computing power for other commodities — intelligence for stuff, as I like to put it.
By intelligence I mean, roughly, the ability to gather data (through sensors), synthesize it (through computing power), and use it to optimize operations (through machine learning). Optimization wrings waste, i.e., extraneous stuff, out of the process.
I have argued before that the current energy transition may well move faster than previous transitions, precisely because it is driven by information technology. To put it crudely, if past energy transitions have replaced giant stuff with other giant stuff, this one is going to replace giant stuff, at least in part, with intelligence.
That same process is taking place in agriculture; that’s part of what vertical farming represents. Zack Bogue, a Plenty investor through Data Collective, a San Francisco venture capital fund, put it this way: “We’re pretty excited about that space because some of the hardest problems in agriculture are now lending themselves to an algorithmic or computational or applied machine-learning solution.”
As Barnard himself put it, agriculture is a “giant optimization problem.” The challenge is to use just the amount of energy, water, and nutrients necessary to produce food, and no more. Big Ag has struggled with optimization for decades, of course, but it remains extraordinarily wasteful — nitrogen runoff producing dead zones in the Gulf, methane and carbon emissions heating the atmosphere, profligate water use leaving water tables depleted, etc.
Plenty uses cameras and sensors to optimize light, temperature, and humidity levels. It is automating the growing process “as much as possible,” Barnard told Business Insider. It even has little robots (“Schleppers”!) that transplant seedlings, because the towers and plants are getting so dense that it’s difficult for a human to operate among them.
Part of what has convinced investors that Plenty has a shot is the radically declining costs of LED lighting. (The efficiency of LEDs puts Plenty on par with conventional agriculture, carbon-wise, at least for some crops, at least when distribution impacts are taken into account; Storey has said he thinks indoor agriculture will be more sustainable in the long haul, especially as the grid gets greener.)
But just as big, possibly bigger, are recent advancements in AI and machine learning. “Utility computing, [internet of things], machine intelligence, wasn’t effective enough five years ago,” Barnard told Fast Company, “much less affordable.” Now, those technologies have reached a level of cost and performance that enables Plenty to fine tune its process. In five more years, computing will be double again as powerful and half again as cheap, enabling yet more automation and optimization.
And that’s great! Mostly.
Plenty is also replacing people with intelligence
I’ve read about 30 articles on Plenty and not one of them has squarely addressed the elephant in the room. To wit: Plenty will succeed insofar as it eliminates food production jobs.
The reason is simple, and found among the aforementioned nine reasons vertical farms fail: “Labor is always your biggest cost.” In the same piece, Matt Liotta of Podponics, a company that tried growing produce in shipping containers and went bankrupt in 2016, is quoted putting it even more bluntly: “People are the problem.”
Industrial agriculture has made ruthless use of scale and automation to minimize labor, but labor remains a huge cost, especially in tasks like harvesting delicate crops like strawberries that can’t easily be mechanized. The same is true for indoor vertical farming: The biggest cost is people.
To compete with industrial ag, vertical farming will have to be even better at reducing the need for human planters and harvesters. In other words, to compete, it’s going to have to create as few jobs as possible.
Fewer ... of these. | John Moore/Getty Images
That’s basically the history of technology — getting more value out of less labor.
The great promise of Plenty is that through automation and optimization, it can make clean, low-input food cost competitive with (morally and chemically) unclean, resource-intensive food. That could potentially save an enormous amount of water and (insofar as it is electrified and powered by renewable energy) radically reduce the carbon emissions of the agricultural sector. Plus it could give millions of people access to fresher, more flavorful, more nutritious fruits and vegetables, making Michelle Obama (and the public health community) happy.
But to do any of that, it has to minimize labor.
Barnard is well aware of that, as is everyone in the industry. “Small-scale growing in 2017 is not a profitable enterprise, and there are a lot of systemic reasons for that that aren’t going to change,” he told Fast Company. “Growing at a small scale, you can’t get to the labor efficiencies that you need. It requires, in essence, too many people.”
“Too many people” is not a great message to communities who might host a farm, though, so Barnard is quick to say that a full-size warehouse like the one planned for Washington will employ as many as several hundred people at skilled, full-time jobs. “While robots can handle some of the harvesting, planting, and logistics,” writes Selina Wang at Bloomberg, “experts will oversee the crop development and grocer relationships on-site.”
Barnard also emphasizes that he’s not competing with traditional agriculture or small-scale urban farming, just adding to the portfolio, seeking to keep up with demand.
But if vertical farming scales as fast as Barnard expects, competing purely on price and efficiency, it will represent a familiar pattern in the US economy — a relatively smaller number of high-skill jobs replacing a relatively larger number of low-skill jobs. In the bigger picture, it is a good thing, to get more and better food for fewer labor and material inputs, but displaced workers tend not to care much about the big picture. And right now agriculture and related industries provide about 11 percent of US employment, according toUSDA.
Kevin Drum of Mother Jones recently published a big piece about robots taking all our jobs, thanks to the relentless advance of artificial intelligence. Lots of economists and pundits push back on that kind of thing, citing the lack of movement in productivity statistics.
Plenty ... of these. | Shutterstock
I have no idea how that will sort out. But I see automation coming for all drivers pretty soon — taxi, bus, garbage truck, delivery van, backhoe, you name it. And now I can see it coming for the agricultural sector. Whether unemployment will spike, as Drum says, or there will just be more and faster churn, there are going to be lots of angry people out of work.
And what are we going to do with all those truck drivers and agricultural workers? I don’t think either party has a good answer. Republicans stomp their feet and insist the jobs will return. Democrats wave their hands at “retraining.”
We better figure it out. We will eventually teach robots to grow our food in giant climate-controlled buildings, optimizing production using AI and machine learning that we can’t yet fathom.
Plenty wasn’t possible five years ago. What will be possible in five more years
USDA Advisory Board Blocks Ban Against Using Hydroponics In Organic Farming
USDA Advisory Board Blocks Ban Against Using Hydroponics In Organic Farming
Constantine Spyrou
November 7, 2017
Hydroponics is one of the fastest-growing fields in agriculture today. By growing plants in water and "feeding" them solutions of nutrients they need, crops can grow at higher yields over a faster period of time while drastically reducing water consumption and land space. While it's an amazing tool for the future of food, one question has been in the minds of several industry members: Can food grown via hydroponics be classified as USDA Organic?
In a recent 8-7 ruling, the National Organic Standards Board (NOSB) ruled against a ban on hydroponics in organic farming. In doing so, the board, which makes recommendations to the USDA on rules for the organic industry, clears the way for organic, hydroponically grown produce to proliferate in supermarkets. The USDA does still have to receive an official recommendation and choose to act on it or not, however.
If they do so, it could be huge for hydroponics, but would harm organic soil farmers. Hydroponics, with its faster growth rate and decreased water and land use, is already taking a significant market share away from the soil farmers. Nowadays, most organic tomatoes are grown through hydroponics and similar methods, and organic farmer Dave Chapman voiced fears to NPR that even more space in supermarkets will be given to hydroponically-grown produce.
"What will happen, very quickly, is that virtually all of the certified organic tomatoes in supermarkets will be hydroponic. Virtually all of the peppers and cucumbers [will be hydroponically grown]. A great deal of the lettuce. And most of the berries."
On the other hand, the innovative technology can be used to keep up with growing organic demand. It also is more sustainable than traditional farming since it doesn't utilize as many natural resources, making it the ideal choice for environmentalists and scientists focused on preserving the planet.
At the center of the debate, though, is the true definition of what it means to be "organic." Hydroponic farms claim that they are organic because they don't use synthetic pesticides and can grow year-round at a cheaper price. Traditional farmers, however, argue that the true core of organic farming is nurturing and taking care of the soil itself, something that hydroponics doesn't even involve.
When it comes to what it really means to be "organic," for now, it seems that the NOSB is willing to include hydroponics within that definition based on their recent decision.
Panasonic's First Indoor Farm Can Grow Over 80 Tons of Greens Per Year — Take a Look Inside
Panasonic's First Indoor Farm Can Grow Over 80 Tons of Greens Per Year — Take a Look Inside
A worker handles crops inside Panasonic's first and only vegetable farm in Singapore.Reuters/Edgar Su
Panasonic may be known for its consumer electronics, but the Japanese company is also venturing into indoor agriculture.
In 2014, Panasonic started growing leafy greens inside a warehouse in Singapore and selling them to local grocers and restaurants. At the time, the 2,670-square-foot farm produced just 3.6 tons of produce per year. The farm's square footage and output have both more than quadrupled since then, Alfred Tham, the assistant general manager of Panasonic's Agriculture Business Division, tells Business Insider.
Panasonic's greens are all grown indoors year-round, with LEDs replacing sunlight. The growing beds are stacked to the ceiling in order to achieve a higher yield in the limited space.
Take a look inside.
Panasonic's vegetable farm resides in an inconspicuous warehouse in Singapore.
Reuters/Edgar Su
The farm's 20 workers put on hairnets, face masks, gloves, and hazmat suits before handling the produce to make sure they don't contaminate it.
Reuters/Edgar Su
The farm potentially produces 81 tons of greens per year at full capacity — 0.015% of all produce grown in Singapore. The hopes to eventually raise that percentage to 5%.
Reuters/Edgar Su | Source: Ag Funder News
There are currently 40 types of crops in the warehouse, including mini red radish, mini white radish, rocket lettuce, mizuna, Swiss chard, romaine lettuce, and rainbow chard.
Reuters/Edgar Su
To plant the greens, Panasonic's workers place tiny seeds on growing beds. Unlike many vertical farms, Panasonic's grows its greens in soil.
Reuters/Edgar Su
Everything grows under LEDs instead of sunlight. The lights come from a local company and waste less energy than typical light bulbs.
Reuters/Edgar Su
Panasonic's farm likely still has high energy costs, however, since the LEDs are on 24-7. Even the best LEDs have only a 50% efficiency rate, meaning half the electricity is turned to heat, not light, The New York Times reports.
The LEDs shine at a specific frequency that encourages the plants to grow quickly. The farmers also control the warehouse's climate, including its humidity and temperature.
Edgar Su/Reuters
Once the seeds begin to sprout, the farmers transfer the plants to small pots.
Reuters/Edgar Su
Small nozzles feed nutrient-rich water to the crops.
Reuters/Edgar Su
The farm's goal is to increase the amount of produce grown in Singapore, which imports over 90% of its food. The island nation has a shortage of arable land, so indoor farming could become a viable way to grow more greens, Tham says.
Reuters/Edgar Su | Source: Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority of Singapore
Each 3-ounce bowl of salad greens from the farm sells for about $5 (USD) in Singapore's grocery stores, under the brand Veggie Life. In mid-2014, Panasonic also started selling greens to local restaurants.
Reuters/Edgar Su
Panasonic's indoor agriculture project is part of its Factory Solutions division, which creates industrial machines and systems. Given the division's experience with engineering and manufacturing, Panasonic sees indoor agriculture as a profitable extension of its business, Tham says.
Reuters/Edgar Su
"We foresee this business to be a potential growth portfolio, given the global shortage of arable land, increasing populations, climate change, and demand for high quality and stable food supply," Tham says.
Reuters/Edgar Su
Green Automation Americas LLC Expands Markets in North America
Green Automation Americas LLC Expands Markets in North America
The company claims its hydroponic systems use little water and create large yields.
October 10, 2017
Wellington, Florida – The average American consumes 27.2 lbs. of leafy greens per year – a staggering number when you multiply that figure with the latest US census figures. The Green Automationhydroponic greenhouse systems were developed over ten years ago in Helsinki, Finland and are now producing fresh, pesticide-free leafy greens and herbs here in North America.
“With feet on the ground now here in the U.S. where more than ever the end customer seeks nutritious, locally-produced fresh food, the timing is perfect. Consumers are more exacting about consuming food that is produced naturally, without pesticides and on a year-round basis. Our fully automated and inclusive seed-to-harvest system not only uses 95 percent less water than traditional field farming, but can achieve tremendous product yield for a fraction of the labor costs,” says Tero Rapila, co-Founder and CEO of Green Automation Export in Finland.
Over 70 percent of the lettuce sold in the U.S. grows in California, an area of the country plagued with water-shortage issues. With traditional farming methods, over 15 gallons of water is required to grow one pound of lettuce. The labor force required to harvest, package and ship lettuce throughout the country has become more and more cost prohibitive. The Green Automation system tackles all these issues, and provides an extremely efficient and profitable solution for the investor and greenhouse growers.
Green Automation systems are up and running in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York and Illinois. The size of these vary from 1-3 acres, producing more than one ton lettuce per acre each day and can provide the local grocery stores with fresh lettuce within twelve hours of harvest.
Here are a few examples of our reference projects:
Florida, USA
Massachusetts USA, 2016
New Hampshire USA, 2016
Illinois USA, 2014
New York, USA, 2014
Bulgaria, Europe 2017
Russia, Europe 2015
Finland, Europe 2016
Signal of Change / Radical New Vertical Farming Model Could Provide The Answer to Urban Food Resilience
Signal of Change / Radical New Vertical Farming Model Could Provide The Answer to Urban Food Resilience
BY MARTA MELVIN / 11 OCT 2017
One of the biggest challenges facing the developed and developing world: how will we continue to feed ourselves in future with the global population rising rapidly and expected to reach 9.7 billion by 2050. In addition, in 30 years’ time we could see some 70 per cent of the global population living in cities.
Designers of our urban built environment will need to adopt radically different approaches to city planning to include food production within their thinking. Planning and zoning of suitable sites for urban farms will be needed to ensure that sunlight can reach the crops as a result of immediate setback of buildings around a site. Ideas for high-rise farming in cities such as Singapore are slowly maturing and beginning to be piloted.
The Food Tower concept has been tested by Surbana Jurong’s architectural team as a direct response to the growing pressure on sustainability of food production in Singapore.
Vegetable growing areas are stacked in open, sunlight flooded high rise towers. Growing yields across the 1 hectare site are boosted to some 400 times that of traditional farming.
It's a whole system: vegetables are grown on towers using the water and nutrients from a system of tanks in which Red Tilapia fish are reared. The vegetable towers are located on “wings” on higher floors that spiral upwards to maximise sunlight exposure; the fish farms are located at the lower floors where there is more shade. A closed loop energy system, with onsite photovoltaics generating power, rainwater harvesting and wetland reed beds to purify and recycle waste water on-site. The wetlands can also act as part of a garden for the larger community.
It is estimated that a 100-storey food tower on 1 hectare of land can provide sufficient meat and vegetables for just over 11,000 people per year.
Resource links:
Urban Agriculture: Utilizing NYC’s Underused Spaces to Grow Local Food
Urban Agriculture: Utilizing NYC’s Underused Spaces to Grow Local Food
By Phyllis Huang
October 31, 2017, 3:54 pm
On Thursday, City Council held a public hearing on a new bill to develop a comprehensive urban agriculture plan that addresses land use policy and other related issues to promote the expansion of urban agriculture in the city
Urban rooftop farm Brooklyn Grange at the Navy Yard. Photo: Brooklyn Grange
In a congested place like New York City, it may come as a surprise that there are underused spaces. The truth is: the city has 14,000 acres of unused rooftops; the neighborhood of East New York alone has more than 45,000 square feet of publicly-owned, unused land. What should New Yorkers be doing with these spaces? With a new bill, Introduction No. 1661, the New York City Council attempts to provide an answer to the question: Grow food on them.
On Thursday, the Committee on Land Use held a public hearing on Introduction No. 1661. Councilmember Rafael Espinal of the 37th District, and David Greenfield of the 44th District, who is also the chair of the Committee on Land Use, are spearheading the new legislation which would require the Department of City Planning (DCP) to develop a comprehensive urban agriculture plan that addresses land use policy and other issues to promote the expansion of urban agriculture in the city.
During the hearing, representatives from the DCP answered questions regarding the application of the bill, and members from various advocacy groups including Teens for Food Justice and New York City Community Garden Coalition, as well as agricultural innovators and urban agriculture practitioners such as Jason Green ofEdenworks, raised their voices and expressed their support for the new legislation.
Councilember Espinal, sponsor of Introduction No. 1661
The bill aims to address, but is not to be limited to, the following issues:
- change of land use policies to promote the expansion of agricultural uses in NYC;
- cataloguing existing as well as potential spaces suitable for urban agriculture uses;
- the integration of urban agriculture into the city’s conservation and resiliency plan.
The bill comes in the nick of time as the nascent hydroponic farming industry is expanding and can be seen as a call for the city to “officially recognize” urban agriculture as an industry. Such an acknowledgement, so the hope, would help to support and promote the growth of the urban agricultural business sector by providing clear legislation, and thus a solid foundation to start-ups and entrepreneurs.
The need for clear regulations of how spaces and buildings can be used for urban agricultural purposes is evident. For example: Currently, rooftop farming is only allowed on top of commercial buildings, but not on residential buildings. Or: Existing regulations prohibit growing and selling produce on the same lot, regardless of what the lot is zoned for. As Councilmember Espinal explained: ‘The vegetable grown on the roof of a building cannot be sold on the stoop of the same building.”
Such regulations may not only be confusing, they are also at odds with people’s increasing needs and wants for local food, food that is grown in a space as close to them as possible. Corresponding to that need, the bill also calls for urban agriculture to be used as a means to tackle the lack of access to healthy food in neighborhoods identified as food deserts.
According to a 2016 report by the Food Bank NYC, Brooklyn has a food insecurity rate of 20 percent, the only borough with a rising trend since 2009. The paradox: there is a plethora of bustling farmers markets in New York City. Yet, there are few if any in the communities that would benefit from it the most.
In some of Brooklyn neighborhoods the occurrence of diseases commonly caused by malnutrition and low-quality food is so high that now there is a type of diabetes calledFlatbush diabetes. The name reveals all and calls for a solution the bill could provide: if farmers markets don’t go to the people who need them the most, the city should provide institutional support for the people to grow their own food.
Community gardens also play a crucial role in transforming food deserts. Currently, there are more than 600 community gardens in NYC. East New York Farms, among other community gardens-turned-farms, play a key role in providing healthy food for the residents in so-called food deserts. A representative from the New York Community Garden Coalition made a plea for the preservation and support of community gardens; in times of gentrification, also community gardens are targeted by real estate developers and landlords, as the example of Bushwick City Farm shows which has been facing eviction since August. At the hearing, the representative from Bushwick City Farm asked the city to buy the land so that the farm can be kept.
Bushwick City Farm Photo: DNAinfo
In conclusion, DCP pointed out that not all of the requests fall into the department’s jurisdiction, but agreed to continue the conversation with other government agencies to find a solution. The department would be required to deliver such plan to the mayor and the speaker of the City Council by July 1, 2018.
“The bill will be reviewed and amended with consideration of the public testimony. At this time, the administration would like to have a discussion with stakeholders about the best way to move forward. But I believe this bill must ultimately become law to ensure the appropriate resources are put in place by the city to make this a reality,” said Espinal.
There has been a trial on the grassroots level to use agriculture as one way to revive formerly decrepit urban spaces and to serve underprivileged communities in New York City. Introduction No. 1661 could help the government to recognize what has been already achieved and create more to continue on that path.
The Genetic Freedom in the Salad Bowl: Food Variance and the Decrease in Costs of Vertical Farming
It seems the barrier to vertical farming proliferation isn't cost, it's time. Over the past decade or so, vertical farming has gone from being the concept of one man, a professor named Dickson D. Despommier, Ph.D., to a worldwide industry with one company, Plenty, pulling in $200 million dollars in Series B Funding.
The Genetic Freedom in the Salad Bowl: Food Variance and the Decrease in Costs of Vertical Farming
#CEA #VERTICALFARMING
02-11-2017
I'm taking a break this week from the conversation about machines to talk about plants. Delicious, crispy, green, flavorful plants. I've lived a few places in my life, and one thing I've come to really appreciate is fresh produce. If you don't live near major agricultural regions, you know the loss of quality that comes from being on the end of a long produce shipping lane (NYC, you know what I'm talking about).
Vertical farming is looking to change that and disrupt the vice hold that horizontal farming has on our world. With our population's caloric needs ever growing and our desire for better quality in our produce, vertical farming is quickly becoming the industry investors are banking on. What will the future dinner table look like when we breed food for flavor rather than survivability? Is there are new food renaissance ahead or another investor pipe dream?
“70% of our water goes to agriculture, 70% of our contaminated water comes from agriculture. If one wants to solve water, one needs to start at agriculture.” ~AeroFarms
I was just at a Dell Technologies event in New York City, IQT day, last week. I was blown away with how the world’s largest vertical farm, AeroFarms, (located in Newark, New Jersey), is using Dell Technologies IoT platform to grow food smarter. When we think of the Internet of Things, our minds often go to devices and high tech…but what about a super practical application of the IoT, like, feeding the world? A few mind-boggling quotes I caught from the AeroFarms presentation on the main stage at the Dell Technologies IQT Day, were so thought-provoking, I went home after the event to really dive into what vertical farming is and what it means to our global future.
We need 50% more food by 2050. ~AeroFarms
It seems the barrier to vertical farming proliferation isn't cost, it's time. Over the past decade or so, vertical farming has gone from being the concept of one man, a professor named Dickson D. Despommier, Ph.D., to a worldwide industry with one company, Plenty, pulling in $200 million dollars in Series B Funding.
What do investors see in the industry that skeptics don't? Well, only seven years ago, both parties might have been much more aligned. Costs of labor, electricity and scale were killing vertical farming startups. There were also hard lessons to be learned about pricing and location. It turns out that all the different forms of vertical farming such as hydroponics, aeroponics and aquaponics (yes, that's different than hydroponics) all use a lot of electricity to function. Upfront and upkeep costs have also, historically, been another pain point for these companies. Couple that with complex labor equipment and well-being needs, it looked rather bleak for the small vertical farm. And for small vertical farms, it still is a big pill to swallow. To compete with established traditional farming, large scales of operation seem to be the best way to overcome the economic stress of putting these farms of the future together and be sustainable.
Vertical Farming is 130-390x more productive, using 95% less water than conventional farming. ~AeroFarms
But it's starting to happen. Plenty is going strong with plans for more warehouses around the world, along with long time industry champion AeroFarms and several other largescale farming companies. And what they've realized is that the longer they can stay afloat, the more technological innovation will lower their costs. In the past couple of years, breakthroughs in renewable energy and LED technology as well as iteration within the industry itself have greatly lowered the overhead, allowing large scale vertical farming companies like Plenty to figure out what models work for sustained growth (for the companies as well as the plants!).
How Green can the Grass Get When We Breed it for Desirability Rather than Durability?
But enough about the struggles, what about the cool aspects of the vertical farming industry? Well, the best part about vertical farming, at least to me (after it's impending disruption of an established industry) is what the companies can focus on now that survivability isn't going to be an issue much longer. One of the biggest advantages they have over traditional farms is that vertical farms function within completely controlled environments. Workers wear protective gear, rooms are controlled for temperature and composition and plants are fed on strict nutrient schedules. Also, vertical farms can be built anywhere, reducing on transportation time. For traditional horizontal farms, pests, weather, soil variations and long transportation routes have required producers to breed their plants to survive long enough to get from the farm to the dinner table. Since vertical farming plants no longer having to combat with the stressors of nature and an extended supply line, their farmers can focus on breeding for other aspects.
What have we been missing when producing food for function rather than form? Flavor is the obvious characteristic. We like to enjoy eating food. But what else? I could see farms breeding a generation of their plants to deal with vitamin deficiencies within a population. Like specialty varieties of wine and beer, we could see a line of tomatoes or kale with artistic properties added to them, like unique smells, mouthfeel and colors. When there are no baseline concerns for a product, the sky's the limit.
AeroFarms says that their mission is to build vertical farms in cities all over the world so that everyone has access to fresh, safe, food. What else do you think could come from this produce production revolution? Let me know what you think.
Anti-Bacterial LED Horticultural Lighting Solving Major Issues
Anti-Bacterial LED Horticultural Lighting Solving Major Issues
Granville, Ohio - November 3, 2017 - InCite Lighting, LLC is proud to announce the arrival of new anti-bacterial LED Lighting technology to the United State indoor horticultural market. Indoor horticultural operations have long battled mold, viruses, and other unwanted biological contaminants in their facilities.
InCite Lighting, LLC is the master distributor for Full Spectrum Technologies Group (FST). FST's illumiGrow (featuring illumiPure technology) LED Grow Lights 405nm spectral peak model of lights can destroy those unwanted items, while still providing superior grow light technology. The illumiPure technology has been proven to kill several known strains of bacteria and fungus. Beginning in January 2018, FST Grow Lights will be manufactured in Houston, Texas. Patented Proprietary Technology, Fully Customizable, Controllable, with Great Warranties. Large customers can visit the factory to observe their orders being manufactured
InCite Lighting LLC has worked to bring exciting new LED Grow Light technology to the indoor horticulture market, including the exclusive anti-bacterial 405nm spectral peak model. This cost-effective highly productive technology allows growers to grow products in more environmentally conscious methods and organically.
InCite Lighting is dedicated in helping our client partners find the perfect combination of technology, efficiency, and economical solutions to serve their needs (both present and future). We are a master distributor for several manufacturers, specializing in horticultural lighting.
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Proposal Would Grow Central City Farms
Bonnie Halvorsen, the founder and executive director of the Institute for Urban Agriculture and Nutrition, said that she and her colleagues have traveled to countries like Japan and Cuba where strides are being made in urban farming because of supportive political leaders.
Proposal Would Grow Central City Farms
Two Milwaukee legislators envision urban farms rising in 30th St. Corridor.
By Graham Kilmer - Oct 31st, 2017 01:16 pm
Aerial view of the 30th Street Corridor. Photo courtesy of the Redevelopment Authority City of Milwaukee.
A pair of state legislators rolled out bills Monday that would transform Milwaukee’s post-industrial central city into a hub for urban farming.
State Rep. Evan Goyke and State Sen. LaTonya Johnson are sponsoring four pieces of legislation in their respective chambers of the legislature. The legislation seeks to create a $10 million educational institution focused on urban agriculture, and greater access to resources for community organizations that work on urban farming projects throughout the city.
“The design and the dream with these bills is that they’re farming areas in the heart of central city and revitalizing the 30th Street Corridor,” Goyke said.
Urban agriculture is one way to work on combating food deserts and shortages in cities. The press conference Monday was held in the Merrill Park neighborhood, which itself is a food desert, said Sherrie Tussler, Executive Director of Hunger Task Force.
Johnson said impediments to residents accessing healthy food require innovative thinking and solutions. Urban farming is one such solution, that can help ensure fresh produce and food for the families that live in areas plagued by food deserts, she added.
“Eating healthy should just be a basic human right,” Johnson contended, “and this legislation is a start in that direction.”
One of the bills directs the Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection to create the Office of Urban Agriculture. Another bill directs that new office to help urban farmers, and community organizations like the Hunger Task Force, with guidance and training and educational and promotional resources. This is something the state already does for industries like soybeans, dairy, corn and others, Goyke said. And with offices already existing for minority and veteran famers, he thinks an office for urban farming is warranted.
The other two bills being proposed should “cement Milwaukee’s position as a national leader in urban agriculture,” Goyke said.
These bills would create a School of Urban Farming and Nutrition. The new institution would be a space for universities and colleges in the Milwaukee area to research and provide education and degrees in urban farming for students. The ideal location for the school is somewhere in the central city along the 30th street corridor.
“I look at areas around Center Street, North Avenue, Burleigh where you have these large, multi-acre industrial sites that could be remediated and brought back to life,” Goyke said.
Michael Carriere, a professor at Milwaukee School of Engineering, said that urban farming projects, like that being championed in the new legislation, can be tools for community and economic revitalization. They can also be an incredible educational tool, he said. MSOE students are working in communities around the city on engineering problems related to urban agriculture, Carriere noted.
Bonnie Halvorsen, the founder and executive director of the Institute for Urban Agriculture and Nutrition, said that she and her colleagues have traveled to countries like Japan and Cuba where strides are being made in urban farming because of supportive political leaders.
Now that Goyke and Johnson have introduced the bills, they are looking to gain cosponsors and build a favorable coalition as the proposals head through the legislative process. If passed, the project for the school heads to the building commission where it will join a queue of projects jockeying for funding.
Goyke said if the bills pass, the project likely won’t be underway within the next year, but with support it could be realized in the next few years. “The building commission has a line of projects and there’s always politics involved,” he said.
Goyke believes anyone that looks at the urban farming that’s already happening can easily see it’s a positive for the communities. “I don’t think anybody needs convincing,” he said.
“The difficulty is building a broad coalition around the state,” he said, “So that communities outside Milwaukee can see the benefit.”