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Local Entrepreneurs Weigh In: Tech Isn’t Just For Tycoons
Sweet Peas Urban Gardens offers hydroponic microgreens grown from organic seeds in a custom CropBox.
Local Entrepreneurs Weigh In: Tech Isn’t Just For Tycoons
by Latisha Catchatoorian — February 20, 2018
This article was written for our sponsor, Wake Technical Community College.
RALEIGH — What do spinach, sewing machines, and social media have in common? Not a whole lot – except technology!
According to entrepreneurs and small business owners, technology plays a role in everything from urban farming and custom tailoring, to personal branding and business coaching.
Technology doesn’t just encompass Elon Musk’s latest Tesla or cancer breakthroughs; it’s your coffee maker, your shower, the stoplight on the corner, and the passkey that gets you into your building. Everyone uses it, and entrepreneurs and small businesses are integrating it in ways that are innovative and even revolutionary.
Keeping up can be overwhelming, said Martin Brossman, director of Martin Brossman & Associates and a leader in networking and small business training in North Carolina. While we wait impatiently behind someone who’s writing a check, tech-savvy consumers may feel the same way about debit cards as things like Apple Pay become commonplace.
Brossman said entrepreneurs don’t have to be on the cutting edge, but they do need to know what will help them.
“It’s OK to resist new technology,” he said, “but not if it will benefit you and your business.”
It’s also OK to hire an expert who can do it better and faster than you, he said.
Brossman teaches community college classes through The Small Business Center Network. When he started teaching in 2006, people were markedly averse to being on Facebook. Fast forward to 2018, when Facebook has more than 65 million local business pages.
Businesses are getting rid of paper and opting for cloud storage instead. Small businesses are taking advantage of new tools and software to optimize best practices.
Larry Harvey, owner, and operator of Larry’s Tailor Shop, can relate.
“Technology has been a challenge for me,” he admitted. “Everything has become lightning fast in recent years. New technology is something you have to keep up with, along with maintaining customers and trying to stay relevant.”
Harvey recently started a Facebook page for his business, something he said he “wasn’t keen on.”
“I had a class at Wake Tech that showed me its importance,” Harvey said.
Harvey was in the first cohort of the Launch RALEIGH program, a collaborative community economic development initiative of which the Wake Technical Community College/Wells Fargo Center for Entrepreneurship is the training partner. He said the eight-week class reiterated the basics of building a business and helped him get up-to-date on “the multimedia aspects of promoting your business.”
Harvey will soon hire someone to handle the digital aspects of his business and manage his social media so he can focus on his “art form.”
While Harvey has seen technology as necessary but burdensome, small-business owner Tami Purdue has embraced it to ramp up her indoor urban farm, Sweet Peas Urban Gardens.
Sweet Peas Urban Gardens offers hydroponic microgreens grown from organic seeds in a custom CropBox.
Purdue grows hydroponic microgreens from organic seeds in her custom CropBox, a shipping container that has been technologically adapted for indoor urban agriculture.
“It has software that regulates temperature, monitors humidity, the pH in the water, and when to turn on lights and watering pumps,” Purdue explained.
Perdue has an app on her phone that can run everything in the CropBox remotely. She can grow 20 tons of “teeny, tiny veggies” annually – no small feat, especially given the size of the crops.
“When I first saw that I could monitor every aspect of the growing environment and track it from year to year and season to season, I loved it,” said Purdue, who has come a long way from monitoring soil in spreadsheets.
Another way technology is transforming indoor agriculture is with LED lights that help crops grow more efficiently. “These lights simulate the sun so precisely, they give the plants everything they need,” she said.
When investors took an interest in Purdue’s business, she turned to Wake Tech’s Small Business Center for help writing a compelling one-pager showcasing the value of her enterprise.
Brossman said technology is extremely important because it helps him maximize what he does best. And while it can be tempting to keep up with Joneses, he said, “we don’t have to have every new toy.”
“There are plenty of ways brick and mortar businesses can use new-age technology to their advantage, to monitor and manage their business on site,” he said. “Tools that help businesses understand their customers better are always a good thing to look into.”
If you’re an entrepreneur or small business owner looking to drive your business forward, the Wake Tech Small Business Center and the Wake Tech/Wells Fargo Center for Entrepreneurship can help, along with networking groups like the Business Alliance of North Carolina, and the many business-oriented meet-ups around the Triangle.
This article was written for our sponsor, Wake Technical Community College.
LAUNCH RALEIGH WORKFORCE DEVELOPMENT WAKE TECHNICAL COMMUNITY COLLEGE CENTER FOR ENTREPRENEURSHIP CROPBOX INNOVATOR PARTNER
Horticultural LED Market: Is Amazon Showing The Way?
Horticultural LED Market: Is Amazon Showing The Way?
Monday 19th February 2018
Emerging applications, including urban farming, will help market grow by 16.4 percent CAGR between 2018 and 2023
The horticultural LED lighting market reached almost $3.8 billion in 2017, currently driven mainly by greenhouse applications. But future growth may be dominated by new types of farming, according to Yole Développement and PISEO (both part of the Yole Group of companies).
In Yole's latest Horticultural LED Lighting report, greenhouse applications will not maintain their leadership in the mid and long term and are only the tip of the iceberg. Emerging applications, including urban farming, are likely to make the horticultural lighting market boom with a 16.4 percent CAGR between 2018 and 2023.
In this context, it is not surprising to discover Jeff Bezos’ support for a vertical farms project in China. In a recent article, a journalist announced a 300 vertical farms project in China, supported by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and Alphabet Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt.
According to this article, a start-up named Plenty has raised more than $200 million, thanks to the Softbank Group and investment funds. Entering the Chinese market, Plenty hopes to tap into the country’s growing demand for organic foods.
“Vertical farms, especially developed in cities, is probably the most relevant solution we found to produce fresh food and vegetables", comments Pierrick Boulay, technology & market Analyst at Yole.
“The world population is growing and almost 80 percent of the world’s population will live in cities and megacities by 2050. As a consequence, vertical farms will clearly be part of our future."
“LED technology is a key enabler for the development of the vertical farming industry", adds Joël Thomé, general manager at PISEO. “Thanks to optical radiation versatility, easier integration, and long-life span, crop yields under artificial LED lighting will increase dramatically."
Indoor farming should develop strongly in the largely urbanised Asian areas, especially in China, as this region faces severe soil and water pollution. The Plenty start-up is but one example.
Penetration of this market by Amazon and Alphabet is not an isolated example and must be strongly considered by others in the future. According to Yole and PISEO, the horticultural lighting market is expected to reach $17 billion by 2027 thanks to a boom in indoor and vertical farming applications.
Such figures clearly highlight the attractiveness of this sector.
Amazon’s new positioning confirms the added-value of vertical farms in answer to the evolution of the world’s population and food resources. But it is also strong confirmation of the diversification strategy of the giant Amazon in penetrating the whole foods grocery chain.
Ikea’s Teaching You How to Use a Hydroponic Vertical Farm
Ikea’s Teaching You How to Use a Hydroponic Vertical Farm
IKEA‘s innovation lab Space10 created a pop-up hydroponic vertical farm during this year’s London Design Festival. The space was created to showcase Space10’s Lokal project, where microgreens are grown indoors, locally and vertically, aims to provide a space-saving and sustainable way for people to grow their own food, as well as testing how Londoners felt about food grown hydroponically and, more importantly, whether they liked the taste of the microgreens.
Aeroponics Farm Near New London, Minnesota Will Produce Leafy Greens Year-Round
Aeroponics Farm Near New London, Minnesota Will Produce Leafy Greens Year-Round
By Carolyn Lange / Forum News Service | February 13, 2018
NEW LONDON, Minn. — What had been a large, empty pole barn on a farm in rural New London last year is now becoming a climate-controlled maze of computer-operated, high-powered lights and a water misting system housed on a dozen massive stainless steel frames.
By early spring, the building will be filled with lush, fresh lettuce and other leafy greens.
Grown without soil, pesticides or herbicides, the greens will taste "like a treat," said Kevin Ortenblad, who along with his wife, Julie, and daughter and son-in-law, Brian and Melody Dengler, are launching Lettuce Abound Farms LLC.
It will be the region's first large-scale, commercial indoor aeroponics growing system that will produce fresh greens year-round.
They intend to market the high-end produce to restaurants and other outlets, like food co-ops.
"Our goal is to be able to supply this part of the state with all of the leafy green products," Ortenblad said.
Because plants are grown in numerous trays that are stacked vertically in rows that are 8 feet high and 32 feet long, the growing capacity of the building is the equivalent of 180 acres of cropland, Ortenblad said.
Fed with a nutrient-rich mist that's continually sprayed on the roots by a trolley system that traverses back and forth along the rows, the aeroponics method will use about 5 percent of the water used in conventional farming, he said.
The science of farming
Ortenblad is no stranger to farming.
For more than 30 years he farmed in Priam, near Willmar, and found a niche market of selling organic soybeans to Japan.
The family then moved to Colorado, where he and his wife were involved with Christian ministries. They moved back to Minnesota a year ago to be closer to family and began looking for a business venture.
That's when they heard about a Faribault company, called Living Greens Farm, that developed the technology to grow aeroponic greens on a commercial level.
"I thought, 'I can do that,'" said Ortenblad, 62, who confesses the learning curve has been steep, especially when it comes to the computer programming of the automated systems.
Ortenblad and Dengler worked at the Faribault facility for six weeks learning the ropes.
"They shared a lot of secrets with us," said Ortenblad, adding that they have a "sister farm" relationship with Living Greens Farm.
"They've been very helpful," he said of the crew at Living Greens, which includes New London-Spicer graduate Dana Anderson, who is president and chairman of the Faribault company.
After purchasing the equipment and patented technology from Living Greens Farm, Ortenblad and Dengler began assembling the system at their farm in New London.
"It's been an enormous amount of work," Ortenblad said.
The investment of up-front time and money has been more than what he had initially expected, but Ortenblad said the complex system is nearly complete and seeds will be planted this month.
When seedlings are moved from the nursery into the vertical trays, they will be anchored with a product called "rock wool" but the roots will dangle in the air and be spritzed with a mist every five or six minutes.
Computers programmed with exactly what nutritional balance plants need at each phase of the growing season will spoon feed liquid fertilizer, micronutrients, macronutrients and filtered water into tubes and sprayers that will glide along on tracks to steadily mist the roots of the plants.
Any excess water that drips down will be returned to the tanks in the closed-loop system.
"This is not farming. This is science," Ortenblad said. "This is science and computer automation is what this is, with farming a cool side part of it."
With a constant temperature of 70-72 degrees and humidity of 60-65 percent, he said farming indoors will have its advantages.
"No hail, no dust, no wind, no cold," he said. "That's the environment I'll get to farm in."
There is about four pounds of pressure in the building, which will help prevent dust and bugs from entering the environment, he said. If aphids do enter, beetles will be released to eat them.
Fans will be used to replicate air flow to help strengthen plants and the system also includes 126,000 watts of light bulbs that will replace the sunshine.
"The power company is going to be our best friend," Ortenblad said.
To augment the science, Ortenblad said he intends to play Christian music in the indoor garden to help inspire the plants to grow. He also said there are hundreds of handwritten Bible verses inside the walls in a nod to the family's core values for their new business.
Year-round greens
The variety of greens that will be grown at Lettuce Abound Farms, like oak leaf lettuce, arugula, and butter lettuce, will be harvested about four weeks after germination.
Microgreens — young, tender plants with intense flavor — will be harvested about two weeks after germination.
Because they are herbicide- and pesticide-free, Ortenblad said the greens don't need to be washed before being put on the table, which he said also extends their shelf life.
"I've never tasted lettuce as good as what Living Greens gave us and what we will be growing," he said.
Ortenblad said he hopes others will also appreciate the flavor and having year-round, locally grown produce raised without pesticides or herbicides.
The cost of the fresh greens will likely be more than typical grocery store prices, but Ortenblad said it will be worth it.
Tags:
Business, Agriculture, Agriculture, Aeroponics, Minnesota, leafy greens, New London
TriBeCa's Hydroponic Wonderland of Herbs and Spices, Farm.One
There's one window into TriBeCa's Farm.One, a series of hydroponic vertical gardens producing greens for some of NYC's best restaurants.
TriBeCa's Hydroponic Wonderland of Herbs and Spices, Farm.One
There's one window into TriBeCa's Farm.One, a series of hydroponic vertical gardens producing greens for some of NYC's best restaurants. That window, however, faces into the building and walking by it gives reason to pause. There, just beyond the glass, is tier upon tier of rolling racks with rare herbs and spices and even edible flowers. There's no natural light, only the power of regulated LEDs. Several water-based nutrient systems cycle through—moderated by about five of the 11 or so employees at the company. Ultimately, it's a pesticide-free destination focusing on about 100 ingredients at a time, all of which have unexpectedly pronounced flavors.
"Pretty much everything here starts from seed," Robert Laing, the founder and CEO of Farm.One explains to CH. "Though, sometimes we will bring in a cutting from outside," he adds. Laing's catalog spans from the obscure to the necessary, including everything from tangerine gem marigolds to nepitella, an herb from Tuscany that delivers an odor of mint and oregano. Both are pungent. "We like to grow things that are small and delicate but have a really powerful impact. They are not just on a plate for appearance. They carry tremendous flavor," he says. Walking through the racks reveals so much: micro arugula, red Russian kale, green sorrel, Miz America, mint flowers and even blue spice basil. If you haven't heard of some of these, that's entirely understandable. Farm.One takes requests from chefs. Some of the most acclaimed establishments, Ai Fiori and Jungsik included, reach out in search of not only specific greens but even shapes and sizes.
"Chefs tell us exactly what they want. It's grown to order for their recipes. We even know the leaf size the chef wants so we work backward from that," Laing explains. "We developed a software to have that in the growing recipe. It guides where the plant batches go in the system." And while this maximizes space, much of their space and resource has been used for experimentation. "We always try to grow new stuff. A year and a half ago we were growing 20 products. Now we've grown close to 600. It becomes this nice library of flavor," he notes. It's clearly also a catalog of experience and knowledge.
Touring the garden with Laing, one is quick to observe a few unexpected elements. Some burgeoning plants extends from brown clumps. "That's coconut husk that's been recycled and turned into plant plugs," Laing explains. They also plant into sun treated stone that's been spun like cotton candy. It's also a reusable planter. "Everything we use can either be composted or reused. We have a zero waste approach here. It's the same with our packaging. Chefs either give their packaging back to us, or reuse it." There are also bugs flitting about. "We control the negative bugs by bringing in populations of other bugs," he continues. "The most visible are the lady bugs. Those will eat aphids, for instance. Then we've got other much smaller ones, hatching in sacks and emerging to eat insects." One of those is a type of parasitic wasp. While it sounds dramatic, they're quite tiny and really only tear the insides out of aphids and spider mites.
"We do not use any pesticides at all and while that's great for the people eating them, it's also great for us working here," says Laing. This means that anyone can pick absolutely anything off of a plant and it's ready to eat. As for how they grow and fertilize, "We don't use chemicals," he begins. "We used plant-based fertilizers, biodigestive materials and fish waste. There's some bat poo, too." This means that the environment is an ecosystem that must be maintained in order for bacteria and beneficial fungi to thrive. Their care must be modified constantly. It's more than just flipping on the app-controlled fanning system.
Laing says one plant brought him into this business: papalo. He tried some at the farmer's market in Santa Monica. "I was like, 'Wow, you can only get this at a certain time in California.' I starting thinking about how anyone could get it in New York in the middle of winter. it spurred me on this quest." His interest in hydroponics was countered by a reduction in LED costs. In 2016 Laing opened a small prototype farm inside of NYC's Institute of Culinary Education. Clients flocked to him. Fundraising brought in an opportunity for expansion and product development. The months-old TriBeCa space marked a materialization of dreams.
The team at Farm.One delivers to clients every weekday. They do so by bike or subway, without the use of cold storage. This means they can grow varieties of herbs and spices that have a lot of upfront flavor, rather than modified version that need to be hearty for transport and consumption later. Freshness is a result, because everything is harvested and delivered within a couple hours. As Laing concludes, "it's farm to table to the extreme." He's got expansion plans, as well—and not just for high end herbs but for more accessible vegetables in underused urban spaces.
There are a few opportunities to enter. First, there's a three hour class ($130). Here one learns about hydroponics, LEDs and indoor farming. Second, there's a 55-minute sensory farm tour ($50) where guests taste dozen of herbs—many of which are likely to be unfamiliar. It comes with a glass of prosecco and ends with a bang (well, an "electric button"). Anyone can also shop for produce. Farm.One is located at 77 Worth Street, TriBeCa.
Hero image courtesy of Farm.One, all other images by Cool Hunting
Farmwall® Is First To Launch Innovative Vertical Farming In Two Iconic Melbourne Venues.
Farmwall® Is First To Launch Innovative Vertical Farming In Two Iconic Melbourne Venues.
MELBOURNE, 21 February 2018
Farmwall is the new Melbourne-based startup that is building vertical, edible farms that will live and grow inside some of the city’s most iconic cafes and restaurants. The team just installed the first two Farmwalls into two of Nathan Toleman’s award-winning cafes—Higher Ground on Little Bourke Street and Top Paddock in Richmond.
Founded by Geert Hendrix and Serena Lee, Farmwall is looking to demonstrate how we can live more in line with nature while enjoying a unique dining experience. Supported by Katie Parker, David Saunders, Matthew Manning, John Servinis, Aiden Colla, Thomas Paterson and Vaughan Elis—the team covers a wide range of skills including industrial design, sustainable architecture, software development, engineering and urban farming. While the team is diverse in skills, they have one thing in common—passion for sustainable food production.
“Cafes spend a fortune on herbs, which often come in plastic packets. We thought we could firstly save money and secondly save waste.” —Nathan Toleman, owner of Higher Ground and Top Paddock
Grappling with infinite population growth and finite farming land, awareness around sustainable food practices can be found in urban farming, a growing trend across major cities all over the world. Farmwalls demonstrate a natural approach to growing fresh produce, providing a unique dining experience patrons won’t forget. In the size a bookshelf, these vertical farms provide a consistent supply of herbs and microgreens, at the fingertips of the chef. By growing to produce on-site, Farmwalls reduce packaging waste and high food miles while delivering quality, freshness, and variety in Melbourne’s world-renowned hospitality scene.
The small-scale farms use aquaponic principles—meaning a beautifully designed fish tank recirculates nutrient-rich water to each layer, creating a closed loop natural ecosystem. Urban farmers make weekly visits with new trays of sprouted seeds, allowing them to finish their growth cycle inside the Farmwall, on display to the patrons as well as the chefs.
To bring sustainable food production even closer, Farmwall is building an urban farm just
8 kms North East of the Melbourne’s CBD—welcoming visits from restaurateurs to test and trial produce. Farmwall aims to use chefs as mediators and food as the communication tool, to inspire a city to “stop eating our planet, and start feeding it.”
For further press information contact Serena Lee
0412 271 833 media@farmwall.com.au
Facts About The Microgreens Grow System
The microgreens grow system utilizing complete bio-hydroponic nutrients, plant-based growing media, and virtually no pest control (10-day growth cycles eliminate most pest problems).
Facts About The Microgreens Grow System
February 20, 2018
How’d you like to learn facts about microgreens grow system built out of plastic and metal, it runs on a couple of small water pumps and a timer.
The microgreens grow system utilizing complete bio-hydroponic nutrients, plant-based growing media, and virtually no pest control (10-day growth cycles eliminate most pest problems). The system is comprised of PVC grow ‘channels’ arranged on the steel frame or ‘rack’. Each shelf is four or five channels wide by eight channels high. This vertical, stacked system makes the most efficient use of your indoor space, increasing your production capacity over traditional microgreens, growers using soil-filled trays on benches.
Microgreens are grown on a plant-based mat to hold the seeds in place and keep them from washing away before they germinate. Made of all natural untreated materials, the mat is placed inside the channel, acting as a root anchor for the plants while distributing the nutrient solution evenly to the plants and retaining the moisture between feeding cycles.
The feeding is accomplished through a plumbing system of feed lines and PVC running from the nutrient tank up to each channel to the microgreens. Microvalves(4) are located on each channel so that flow can be adjusted and feeding can be adjusted at the front of each channel. The nutrient solution drains via gravity from the top feed end of the channel down to the bottom drain end of the channel, then is recirculated back to the nutrient tank, creating a closed system. This reduces waste and keeps the environment unadulterated from runoff. The nutrient tank is emptied 4 times a year for cleaning and remixing fresh nutrients. The nutrient levels are maintained by the grower between cleanings by adding water, nutrient and pH adjustment materials to the tank as needed. More details on this process are going to be discussed in a later post.
Traditional microgreens growers using soil-filled trays harvest their crops by hand using scissors to manually cut a handful at a time. They then place the harvested greens into a tub, rinse away the excess dirt or other grow media (perlite or peat), and finally dry the microgreens. This method is incredibly laborious.
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Need For Modern Technology Use In Agriculture Stressed
Use of modern techniques and technologies in Agriculture is the need of the hour which carries equal significance for both the businessmen and the men of science and technology.
Need For Modern Technology Use In Agriculture Stressed
Rukhshan Mir (@rukhshanmirpk) February 14, 2018
Use of modern techniques and technologies in Agriculture is the need of the hour which carries equal significance for both the businessmen and the men of science and technology
LAHORE, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News
Use of modern techniques and technologies in Agriculture is the need of the hour which carries equal significance for both the businessmen and the men of science and technology.
It was the upshot of the speeches delivered at a seminar on 'High-Value Agriculture' held here at Lahore Chamber of Commerce & Industry on Wednesday. The LCCI President Malik Tahir Javaid, Ceo Yuksel Seeds, Turkey Yaqub Yuksel, Convener LCCI Standing Committee on Mechanized & High Value Agriculture Mian Shafqat Ali, Ex-vice Chancellor Arid Agriculture University, Rawalpindi Dr Rai Niaz Ahmed, Dr Khawaja Asif, Mian Shaukat Ali, Faisal Iqbal Sheikh and Naeem Hanif also spoke on the occasion.
The experts said that there was a dire need for reforms in the agriculture sector and addition in the cropped area as a country could not afford to stay where it was today in terms of cropped areas and per hectare yield, because it was already running well short of per capita food availability.
They said that yield gap in the four major crops of Pakistan was three times from the best producers in the world such as China and Egypt.
They said that low yield had contributed to the poverty in rural areas besides forcing the country to import agriculture produces to feed its population.
Malik Tahir Javaid said the agriculture sector of Pakistan continued to be the single largest and dominant driving force for growth which contributed almost 19.5 percent in Gross Domestic Product.
It was the main source of livelihood for 42.3 percent of total labour force despite the fact that agriculture mechanization in Pakistan was very limited. He said that area under cultivation for important crops accounted for 23.85 percent of the value added in overall agriculture.
Wheat accounted for 9.6 percent of the total value added in agriculture and cotton production was 10.67 million bales. For the sake of increasing the share of agriculture sector in GDP, the existing area of cultivation had to be increased on war-footing.
Malik Tahir Javaid said that due to lack of technology usage in the agriculture sector, we face the problem of crops yields gaps. The average yields production in the agriculture sector of Pakistan was far below the level of those countries that used the technology in their agriculture sector, he said, citing that level of yields of different crops was 50 to 83 percent lower than the average of other countries of the world.
He said the prospects of Pakistan's economic prosperity heavily depended on the performance of agriculture sector. It had to be evaluated that government was giving subsidy to farmers at various stages of purchasing fertilizers, pesticides, seeds as well as selling their output at support prices but still this sector had not succeeded in enhancing the level of productivity.
He said that in the present scenario of water scarcity, the sustainable food security of Pakistan had to be ensured by way of adopting new techniques. "There are many developing countries like Pakistan which are encouraging corporate farming and in parallel to that, they are fostering high-value agriculture that includes vertical farming, hydroponics farming, aquaponics farming and arctic farming etc.
If government helps the farmers in acquiring these technologies at affordable prices then it is highly likely that new employment opportunities will be created and the productivity will also increase." Mian Shaukat Ali said that Chamber of Commerce and Industry played an important role to promote agriculture sector of any country.
All Chambers of Commerce and industry of Pakistan should pay attention to agriculture so that they could highly contribute to the development of this sector. He said that another problem of the agricultural sector was lack of agricultural graduates or their non-seriousness towards agricultural developments, adding that had they worked for the development of this sector seriously it would be beneficial for the country.
For New Breed of Local Farmers, The Sky’s The Limit
For New Breed of Local Farmers, The Sky’s The Limit
Lettuce (left) and tomatoes (right) being farmed at Meod's one-hectare plot at the D’Kranji Farm Resort. The four-year-old firm snapped up a 6ha plot last week in the AVA’s first tender that featured a fixed price upfront, for companies to compete solely on the concept. Photos: Meod
17 FEBRUARY, 2018
SINGAPORE — In less than two years, green shoots sprouting from swathes of flat land may no longer be the image that best represents local vegetable farming.
If the proposals picked by the Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority (AVA) in a recent tender are any indication, the future of farming will consist of mid-rise “apartment blocks” for vegetables, as well as towering rows of leafy greens in next-generation greenhouses.
The winning companies said they are raring to place Singapore on the map for urban farming.
Backed by public-listed company Edition, a four-year-old firm called Meod snapped up the biggest number of plots – three – last week in the AVA’s first tender that featured a fixed price upfront, for companies to compete solely on the concept.
The seven other successful tenderers each secured one plot in Lim Chu Kang.
With each plot spanning about two hectares, Meod’s three plots, which cost S$836,000, will significantly boost its existing operations, which started in January last year.
It currently farms on a one-hectare plot at the D’Kranji Farm Resort with an aim to produce about 500 to 550kg a day.
Fruiting vegetables like tomatoes and melons are planted there using trellis lines that allow farmers to string up crops and grow them to a maximum height of 4.5m. The method was inspired by practices in Israel and gleaned from Dutch consultants the firm engaged, said Meod director Jeremy Chua, 38.
In the new plots, Meod plans to grow only leafy greens using its proprietary hydroponics system, which features modular plant beds that can be stacked to heights of three to four metres.
Meod will also be making use of the data they have collected in its current farm – where they planted a mix of lettuce, Asian greens, herbs and Swiss chards – in a big way. Besides the temperature, humidity and light within the greenhouses, the company tracked the growth of seedlings and crops using various methods, as well as the time needed for each plant to reach a certain weight and stage of growth.
Such a science-based approach provided “a solid base to work with our consultants for the six hectares, to design and build the greenhouse and growing structures that can cater specifically to our local and regional tropical climate”, said Mr Chua.
He expects the newly secured plots to be operational in 12 to 18 months’ time.
Asked about its relative lack of large-scale farming experience, Mr Chua said: “We do have a team of consultants, both local and abroad to help with the size and scale. Two of our partners had also been heavily involved in the urban farming movement in Singapore since 2011 and 2012.”
Mr Chua said Meod hopes to write the chapter in Singapore’s farming story and “scale (the technology) beyond Singapore, specifically into South-east Asia”.
“We have to look at how to implement large and tangible improvements in harvest and yield with the help of technology, while still keeping costs realistic in the regional context,” he said.
NO SUN, NO PROBLEM
At least two of the successful tenderers are taking their farming indoors, growing crops on tiered racks with light emitting diodes (LEDs) replacing sunlight.
Sunpower Grand Holdings was set up by Taiwanese academic Wu Yu-Chien.
Dr. Wu holds a patent in LED technology that allows brightness to be adjusted with a computer, without the use of bulky magnetic components like transformers and inductors.
Partnering Ms. Jean Ee, a Johor-based former banker, Dr Wu will be rolling out his invention for growing hydroponics fruits and vegetables in a real farm setting for the first time.
The technology will enable vegetables like kailan and xiao bai cai, which typically require 45 days to grow, to be harvested in 15 days, said Ms. Ee, 45.
The yield from their three planned buildings is expected to be 900 tonnes a year. One building will hold up to 15 tiers of plants.
“If you leave it to nature, sometimes the weather varies,” said Ms Ee, whose mother is a traditional caixin and herb farmer in Johor.
She and Dr. Wu also intend to build an education centre on their premises.
Another company, Farm deLight, will use its two-hectare plot to expand its 600sqm operation in Boon Lay.
It currently farms herbs and microgreens using red and blue LED lights, while smart controls regulate air-conditioning and the amount of carbon dioxide.
It intends to farm “common leafy greens” like xiao bai cai and kale going forward.
Meanwhile, Cameron Highlands farm operator Vegeasia has joined hands with beansprout farmer Tan Teck Tiang, 51, to set up an outdoor hydroponics system that uses PVC panels, as well as pumps and pipes to supply the crops with nutrients and water.
Vegeasia currently uses the technology in Malaysia, where it has more than 100 hectares of farmland that yields 40 to 50 tonnes of vegetables such as lettuce, caixin, kailan, and tomatoes a day.
Mr. Tan said the S$1 million partnership aims to bring Vegeasia’s “tried, tested and proven” technology to the Republic.
“We (will) save a lot on trial and error,” said Mr. Tan, who has about 15 years’ experience at his uncle’s company, Chiam Joo Seng Towgay Growers. The latter supplies about four tonnes of bean sprouts a day to supermarkets here.
The AVA has high hopes for the eight companies. “We look forward to the contributions of these companies in transforming the local farming sector into one that is productive, innovative and sustainable,” Mr. Melvin Chow, its group director of food supply resilience, said last week.
Its tender launched last August attracted 28 parties.
Among the unsuccessful tenderers was veteran farmer Wong Kok Fah, 56, who wanted to secure more land for high-tech farming “for my next generation” – his nephew Dave Huang, 33.
Mr Wong’s Kok Fah Technology Farm currently operates seven plots spanning nine hectares in Sungei Tengah.
The plots’ leases are renewed on a three-year basis and he produces about 100 tonnes of leafy vegetables like bayam (a variety of spinach), kailan and xiao bai cai monthly through a mix of soil cultivation and hydroponics.
Mr Huang, who joined the business straight out of university, said the unsuccessful attempt is not the end of the road.
It will give him “more time to perfect the system” before the next tender, he declared.
How Two Toronto Women Are Turning Vacant Lots Into Food
How Two Toronto Women Are Turning Vacant Lots Into Food
The co-founders of the Bowery Project use milk crates to temporarily transform empty urban space into mobile farms
By Rashida PowankumarFebruary 20th, 2018
Rachel Kimel and Deena DelZotto, co-founders of the Bowery Project, love working with plants.
They started the non-profit organization because they were especially interested in growing food and educating the public about healthy eating. The Evergreen Brick Works and greenhouse, which specializes in “sustainable practices,” was one of the spaces that inspired them.
"Bowery" actually means "farm" in Dutch. So we wanted to come up with a name not too simplistic as "green in the city" or ‘green spaces downtown,’” Kimel said at a meeting at the Leaside Public Library in East York on Feb. 8.
“In New York, the Bowery was the road that led from the settlements to the farms, hence why we named our project after the New York City street.“
The Bowery Project would not be what it is today without milk crates. All of its produce is grown in “re-purposed milk crates that sit above the land,” its website explains.
The crates are light and mobile, making it easy for anyone to lift. “A farm of up to 5,000 crates can be disassembled and relocated within 24 hours,” which aligns with the mission to “create opportunities for urban agriculture through the temporary use of vacant lots.”
Environmental sustainability is important to DelZotto, a mother of three, who explained the importance of thinking twice before eating unhealthy meals.
“I think that once you have a child, you realize that everything that goes into their mouths becomes a part of their body,” she said. “I think you become more aware of the process — because you see how it grows, maybe you will eat it and want to taste it.”
The Bowery Project has several sources of funding — The Ontario Trillium Foundation, fundraising events, and chefs among them — and benefits many diverse communities, including a Toronto Community Housing neighborhood for single mothers for which Kimel and DelZotto’s organization helps provide three healthy meals a day.
The founders of the project are looking for summer students and volunteers to continue educating the public and turning more vacant lots into farms. If you’re interested, you can find more information at www.boweryproject.ca/what-you-can-do.
Colorado Offers Incentives For I-25 Pedestrian Bridge, Indoor Farm Proposals
Colorado Economic Development Commission members (L to R) Tara Marshall, Denise Brown and Tom Clark listen Thursday to a presentation on a company seeking incentives to grow in the state.
Colorado Offers Incentives For I-25 Pedestrian Bridge, Indoor Farm Proposals
By Ed Sealover – Reporter, Denver Business Journal
Feb 15, 2018
The Colorado Economic Development Commission on Thursday offered job growth incentive money to a large firm proposing to build a pedestrian bridge across Interstate 25 and another newer business that reported just $300,000 in revenue last year but $185 million cash on hand.
The joint offerings — part of a trio of decisions made by the EDC that involved a combined $8.6 million in incentives aimed at bringing 1,498 new positions to the Denver and Boulder areas — demonstrated an increased willingness to bet on new technologies and companies. EDC members also agreed to give $104,215 to a new documentary film being shot by former Colorado Public Radio arts reporter Corey Jones.
The biggest deal of the three offered Thursday involves an unnamed publicly traded provider of information technology products calling itself “Project 5760” — most proposals get pseudonyms as they are being considered — that is looking to add some 1,300 workers to an existing facility in Arapahoe County.
Those jobs would add to 1,500 employees the company already has in Colorado as part of its 18,000-person global workforce and would pay an average of $79,150 annually, said Rebecca Gillis, a global business manager for the Colorado Office of Economic Development and International Trade.
In addition to growing its local worker base substantially, the company said it would construct a $10 million pedestrian bridge across I-25 near Dry Creek Road to allow its workers to park and cross the highway. EDC member Tom Clark, the former executive director of the Metro Denver Economic Development Corp., said such an offer by a company was “extraordinary.”
Still, EDC members Tara Marshall and Denise Brown balked at the proposed offering of $4.55 million in strategic-fund money to the company. The two said the total represents most of the $5 million OEDIT receives annually from the Colorado Legislature for that specific fund and would mean that the office would have to curtail its pipeline of other opportunities.
Marshall’s counter-proposal to offer just $3.25 million instead — a figure representing $2,500 per job — was rejected by the commission. Instead, the commission OK'd the $4.55 million in incentives after company officials at the meeting hinted that any reduction in funding likely would mean they would expand instead in Nevada.
“This company has been a strong job creator in the past,” argued Sam Bailey, vice president of the Metro Denver EDC. “This is a highly competitive project, and the competing state is highly skilled competition with the resources to secure a project like this.”
The commission was unanimous in offering $1.02 million in job-growth incentive tax credits to a five-year-old agricultural technology company headquartered in San Francisco company behind “Project Peach.” The unidentified company is looking to build its first full-scale indoor farm where it would harvest food year-round largely for the local market and would hire 43 people at an average annual wage of $84,167.
It did not identify where along the Front Range it would locate the facility, as it continues to scout several possible locations, but acknowledged that the Denver area is competing with the Chicago and Atlanta areas.
Commission members stumbled over the fact that the nascent company reported just $300,000 in revenues last year, far less than would be needed normally to secure such a big incentive from the state. But it has a significant amount of deep-pocketed investors and has raised $185 million in private-equity funding already, calming any fears about the state’s investment.
The commission adding a caveat that OEDIT leaders must be allowed to see the company’s full financial statements in the near future.
“If they had a limited amount of cash in the bank, we would not bring this to you with the financials the way they are,” said Jeff Kraft, OEDIT director of business planning and incentives.
Commissioners also unanimously approved the offering of as much as $3.04 million in job-growth incentive tax credits for “Project Destiny,” a publicly traded company headquartered in Louisville that offers a global video subscription service and wants to launch an in-house film studio to generate original content.
The company, which now has 122 workers in Colorado, would hire 155 more at an average annual wage of $101,903 and also is looking at Arizona and Florida as possible locations for the studio, Gillis said.
Searching For Profits With Fish, Vegetables And A Greenhouse
Searching For Profits With Fish, Vegetables And A Greenhouse
- BARRY ADAMS badams@madison.com
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- February 18, 2018 | 5 min to read
Mike Knight, co-founder of Clean Fresh Food near Paoli shows off some of the nearly full-grown lettuce grown in his greenhouse that is part of an aquaponics system located on a former dairy farm. The system, which holds 55,000 gallons of heated well water, uses the waste from tilapia, growing in an adjacent building, to fertilize the crops in the greenhouse. Knight, who founded and later sold Third Wave Research Group and now owns Customer Analytics, is working with his wife, Dagny, and a small staff to determine the best way to profitably grow leafy greens and microgreens year round.
STEVE APPS, STATE JOURNAL
Town of Primrose, Wisconsin — The farmland along Sun Valley Parkway east of Paoli is still fertile soil for corn, soybeans, alfalfa and other traditional crops.
But a 120-acre farm established in the 1800s along a rail line that is now the Badger State Trail is trying to make a year-round business out of lettuce, herbs and micro greens, thanks to a greenhouse, tanks of tilapia and the entrepreneurial drive of its owners and small staff.
Clean Fresh Foods is the creation of Mike and Dagny Knight, who are skipping the dirt. Instead, their aquaponics farm uses tanks and troughs of well water in an attempt to reach profitability, capitalize on the local food movement and provide fresh greens to restaurants, grocery stores and institutions, even when their Dane County property is smothered in February snow.
Jo-Ann O'Brien-Schorr, a former nurse who lives near Farm Fresh Foods in the town of Primrose, transfers young lettuce plants to a raft that will float in a trough of water fertilized by the waste of tilapia. The farm harvests about 12,000 head of lettuce a month, which is sold to grocery stores and restaurants.
STEVE APPS, STATE JOURNAL
“I think we’re just on the edge of profitability,” said Dagny Knight, a former nurse. “If we can figure out this micro greens piece and get into the farmers market niche, that would be a good step in the right direction. We’re just so close to breaking through that profitability mark.”
Aquaponics is a combination of hydroponics and aquaculture in which fish waste from the aquaculture system is broken down by bacteria into dissolved nutrients that is then fed into a hydroponics system to grow vegetables or other plants. The nutrient removal improves water quality for the fish but also decreases overall water consumption by limiting the amount released as effluent, according to a 2017 report by D. Allen Porttillo, an extension and outreach fisheries specialist at Iowa State University.
Like hydroponics, aquaponics systems require less land and water than conventional crop production methods, increase growth rates and allow for year- round production.
Aquaponics is a combination of hydroponics and aquaculture in which fish waste from the aquaculture system is broken down by bacteria into dissolved nutrients that is then fed into a hydroponics system to grow vegetables or other plants. The nutrient removal improves water quality for the fish but also decreases overall water consumption by limiting the amount released as effluent.
STEVE APPS, STATE JOURNAL
Aquaponics farms across Wisconsin
Aquaponics farms are dotted throughout the state. They include Lake Orchard Farm Aquaponics near Sheboygan, which harvests 1,100 heads of lettuce a week and also sells tilapia. Floating Gardens Aquaponics near the La Crosse County community of Mindoro opened in 2017 and sells lettuce, kale, basil, chive, lavender, cilantro and other greens to grocery stores and other retailers in western Wisconsin and eastern Minnesota.
In nearby Jackson County, Superior Fresh has one of the largest aquaponics systems in the world. The massive facility in Northfield, just south of the intersection of Interstate 94 and Highway 121, has a 1.3 million-gallon system, a 123,000-square-foot greenhouse designed to produce 1.8 million pounds of leafy greens annually and a 40,000-square-foot fish house that is home to thousands of Atlantic salmon and rainbow trout.
Clean Fresh Food near Paoli isn't a fish farm but needs fish, like this tilapia, to grow vegetables in the adjacent greenhouse. The tilapia are raised in 1,200-gallon tanks, and the nutrient-rich water from the tanks is circulated into troughs where vegetables are grown year-round.
STEVE APPS, STATE JOURNAL
The first commercial aquaponics farm in the state opened in 2009 near North Freedom in Sauk County.
Donna Meunier has a 9,000-square-foot greenhouse that is fed by 10 1,200-gallon tanks brimming with tilapia. Her KP Simply Fresh facility grows 15 to 20 varieties of lettuce for area nursing homes and hospitals and, over the past few years, she’s been experimenting with growing cucumbers, cherry tomatoes, kale and radishes.
She battles aphids from nearby alfalfa fields, has lost crops due to cold and early on had to replace her copper pipes leading from the well with PVC because copper is toxic to fish.
“We’ve expanded twice to meet the needs of what people are asking for,” said Meunier, who for years had run with her husband one of the largest amusement game companies in the state. “I know we will get to the point were we will make a consistent profit each month, but we’re just not there yet. This entire business is very expensive. I know of several people who have gone into it and are now out of it because it’s too much work.”
‘Entrepreneurial ADD’
The Knights are well aware of the challenges but are determined to find the right system and business model.
They purchased the farm in 2011 and a year later started construction on their $250,000 aquaponics operation, which includes a 7,200-square-foot greenhouse and 2,700-square-foot fish building. They began growing fish in four 50-gallon tanks in an old milk house in October 2012, harvested their first vegetables in summer 2013 and harvested their first fish around Thanksgiving of that year, Dagny Knight said.
Mike Knight holds the root and a grow-plug made of rock wool from a recently harvested lettuce plant that was grown on a floating raft.
STEVE APPS, STATE JOURNAL
The farm now produces about 12,000 head of lettuce a month. But other crops like mustard and carrot greens, basil and arugula are also being grown in the system that uses six troughs, each 8 feet wide, 100 feet long and about a foot deep, each with 100 floating Styrofoam mats.
The water in the 55,000-gallon system is fertilized naturally by the tilapia who swim in 12 1,200-gallon plastic tanks in a building adjacent to the greenhouse. The water, the vast majority of which is recycled through the system, comes from the well and is warmed with an outdoor furnace that in 2017 went through 40 cords of wood harvested from the farm.
“This is the result of entrepreneurial ADD,” Mike Knight said. “I didn’t grow up on a farm. I grew up on military bases. My whole thing is trying to make this sustainable on its own. If we can do this in this climate, growing these fresh green vegetables, what’s it mean to remote locations around the world and further northern climates?”
Knight, 62, who grew up in Utah and is a graduate of Utah State, has a drive for entrepreneurial ventures and has a deep business background. He is the former director of the Applied Population Lab at UW-Madison and in 1993 founded Third Wave Research Group, a company that provides insights from customers for other businesses, customer-based marketing strategies and behavior-based marketing services. He sold the company in 2010 and now heads Customer Analytics, a company with 365 employees that provides data-mining services for non-health care companies looking to expand their business.
Zak Buell plants arugula, a micro green that could help turn a better profit for Clean Fresh Food, an aquaponics farm in southwestern Dane County.
STEVE APPS STATE JOURNAL
Lettuce, micro greens sold in Madison
The lettuce and micro greens grown at Clean Fresh Foods are sold to the two Metcalfe’s Markets in Madison, restaurants at Memorial Union and the business school at UW-Madison and to the Downtown Madison restaurants Lucille and Merchant. The tilapia, prolific at fish counters and one of the most consumed foods in the world, are not part of the business plan and are periodically harvested and either composted or given away to family and friends every 12 to 18 months.
But the Knights, who have received guidance from UW-Stevens Point and Roth Fresh Farms in Boscobel, a company that uses tilapia to grow lettuce, micro greens, and edible flowers, may switch to bluegill. The beloved panfish would still provide the needed fertilizer but could be more marketable to Wisconsin restaurants known for their fish fries and customers with an appetite for the sweet-tasting fish.
Mike Knight explains his tank farm that hold hundreds of tilapia. The fish are given away to family and friends once they are mature since their is little profit in selling the fish. But Knight is considering switching to blue gill, which could be more desirable for area restuarants, grocery stores and fish markets.
STEVE APPS STATE JOURNAL
The Knights are also looking at ways to increase profits with the vegetables, which could mean focusing more on herbs and microgreens, which could bring in higher prices and generate more revenue. Each 2-foot-by-4-foot floating raft can grow about $45 worth of lettuce but about $56 worth of microgreens. They also want to grow food without government subsidies, are considering adding more troughs and would like to partner with a company to create a brand of herbs. They also want to explore dedicating some troughs to specific businesses that could customize their crops.
“I’m not sure what the exact model is, but I know it’s not just delivering lettuce to restaurants,” Mike Knight said. “At some point, we’re going to go back to more of a regional model. We’ve already done it with beer and whiskey. Just look at all the distillers and breweries. I think it’s the right trend.”
Growtainers Expands With Central Market, Looks to New Crops
For just about a year now, Central Market in Dallas has tested out offering produce that was grown on-site in a Growtainer. Evidently, that partnership has gone so well that Central Market is making the relationship more permanent and expanding it with the addition of another Growtainer.
Growtainers Expands With Central Market, Looks to New Crops
By Chris Albrecht | The Spoon
February 17, 2018
For just about a year now, Central Market in Dallas has tested out offering produce that was grown on-site in a Growtainer. Evidently, that partnership has gone so well that Central Market is making the relationship more permanent and expanding it with the addition of another Growtainer.
Growtainers are modified shipping containers that provide a food-safe indoor growing environment. Each one contains a vertical rack system for holding crops, crop-specific LED lighting fixtures, and a proprietary irrigation system. Growtainers come in 40, 45 and 53-foot sizes and are customized for each customer, costing anywhere from $75,000 – $125,000 a piece. The amount a Growtainer can produce depends on the crop.
The Growtainer at Central Market offers leafy greens and herbs grown on-site in a 53-foot container. While he couldn’t provide specific numbers, Growtainer Founder and President Glenn Behrman told me by phone that “demand outpaces supply” for the market’s store-grown produce. “We’ve proven the concept,” he said.
Central Market expanding its relationship with Growtainer helps push the idea of produce grown on-site more into the mainstream. Other players in this sector include Inafarm, which has been installing indoor vertical farming systems at food wholesalers in Berlin. And here at home, indoor farming startup Plenty raised $200 million last year from investors including Jeff Bezos (who happens to run Amazon, which owns Whole Foods).
As on-site farming technology improves and gets cheaper and easier to use, it’s not hard to imagine more stores opting to grow their own fresh produce in-house instead of having it transported across the country.
Behrman says that there are Growtainers all over the world for a variety of agricultural and pharmaceutical customers. He built two Growtainers for the Community Foodbank of Eastern Oklahoma so they could grow their own produce, and he’s talked with both the military and the United Nations about installing Growatiners for them in more remote (and volatile) areas.
One group Behrman hasn’t chatted with is venture capitalists. He laughed when I asked him about funding. “We have no investors, and we’re profitable,” said Behrman. But in the next breath, he said he realizes that his current go-it-alone approach won’t scale. “I think once this Central Market project expands and becomes more mainstream, I will have to look for some funding.”
Until that time, Behrman wants to have Growtainers produce more high value crops. “Lettuce and leafy greens are not that challenging,” he said. Behrman, who’s been in horticulture since 1971, believes Growtainers could be excellent for growing exotic mushrooms that have short shelf lives, or fungi that historically could only grow in particular seasons.
Perhaps after another year or so you’ll see truffles and porcinis grown on-site and offered at Central Market (and elsewhere).
Stop the Presses: Hydroponics Certified Organic
While both sides still feel they’re in the right as to whether or not hydroponic produce should be certified as organic, that argument ended on November 1, 2017, with an industry decision that such certification was allowable.
Stop the Presses: Hydroponics Certified Organic
Lee Allen | February 15, 2018
Takeaway: Until November of 2017, growers debated the organic certification of hydroponics. Now, the verdict is in.
While both sides still feel they’re in the right as to whether or not hydroponic produce should be certified as organic, that argument ended on November 1, 2017, with an industry decision that such certification was allowable.
The highly emotional status declaration came down at the Fall 2017 NOSB meeting in Florida, where the advisory body to the USDA ruled that hydroponic and aquaponic farms could carry the organic label. They’ve been allowed to be called organic for a number of years, but now it will be official.
Still, the proverbial Hatfield and McCoy battle on the issue remains pretty heated. Both sides still believe they have the best idea.
The Coalition for Sustainable Organics put the approval in the win column for them, pleased that NOSB rejected a number of proposals that would revoke the certification of many hydroponic, aquaponic, and container growers. President Lee Frankel’s contention was that more, not less, the organic product was needed to feed a hungry world. “Everyone deserves organic, and this proposal would have made it harder for consumers to access organic produce as a meaningful solution to environmental challenges faced by growers (who) need to adapt to site-specific conditions,” he says.
Another supporter, the Recirculating Farms Coalition, was equally pleased with the vote. “NOSB made the right decision,” says executive director Marianne Cufone. “Many products already carry a USDA Organic label and to now withdraw that would be irresponsible and confusing for both farmers and consumers.”
Conversely, The Cornucopia Institute group had sought rejection of what they called a “watering down” of organic standards supported by “big money and powerful corporate lobbyists who want their piece of a growing organic pie.” They advised a “no” vote to “protect soil-based farmers who raise fruits and vegetables in a sustainable, healthy fashion.”
The NOSB ballot count wasn’t an overwhelming landslide but a squeaker win with an eight to seven final tally to reject proposals prohibiting hydroponic/aquatic production certification. By a much larger margin (14 to zero, with one abstention), however, aeroponics was denied the organic certification.
Biosystems engineer Dr. Stacy Tollefson of the Controlled Environment Agriculture Center at the University of Arizona, a member of the Hydroponic and Aquaponic Taskforce, says she’s dumbfounded the NOSB didn’t support aeroponics. She asks, “If they support aquaponics and liquid systems, why not aeroponics?”
The NOSB recommendation is now in the hands of USDA. The federal agency and the staff of the National Organic Program will decide on the rules to modify existing organic standards. Once that is done, there will be a public comment period and a regulatory review before the new classifications become regulation.
Going forward, “This decision should promote more innovation in organic production,” Tollefson says. “There may be increasing pressure to be more transparent within the USDA Organic label, perhaps a push for mandatory labeling that differentiates ‘soil grown’ versus ‘container grown.
Vertical Farming: Lettuce From The Skyscraper Next Door
Vertical Farming: Lettuce From The Skyscraper Next Door
09.02.2018
Graz (TU GRAZ) - Vertical farms are greenhouses - only the cultivated areas are not laid out next, but rather stacked up on top of each other. A Graz-Viennese concept combines structure with urban architecture.
Urban farming, in other words carrying out agricultural projects in urban surroundings, has been a thing for years. Vertical farming goes one step further - a step upward, to be precise. Use is made of building façades to grow fruit and vegetables and to yield a proper return, on the one hand, and to create added benefits for the building in terms of energy technology, on the other. Many existing projects involving vertical cultivation resemble classic greenhouses - only laid out vertically, not horizontally. In Graz and at the Vertical Farm Institute in Vienna, the aspiration is to integrate cultivated areas into the architecture of buildings, thus using synergies and saving energy. "Our goal is to maximize cultivation area while at the same time minimizing the necessary surface area - currently we can create up to 50 times more cultivation area on traditional farming surface areas.
At the same time, we would like to design energy use as efficiently as possible and integrate the farm into the building symbiotically," explains Sebastian Sautter of the Vertical Farm Institute in Vienna and staff member of TU Graz's Institute of Building and Energy. Having dealt with the concepts for many years, he has now, together with colleagues in the exploratory project "Vertical Farming", simulated a prototype farm in Vienna's Urban Lakeside Aspern, and is about to launch a pilot experiment at the Tabakfabrik (former tobacco factory) in Linz.
Up high
But everything in the right order. Vertical farms are greenhouses which are arranged vertically rather than horizontally. Today, classic greenhouses no longer grow their crops in soil, instead, they use hydroponic systems with the plants being grown in so-called trays. The plant boxes are watered regularly with a blend of nutrients. "This also makes them very efficient regarding water consumption because the plants only absorb the water they need - the rest is recirculated," explains Sebastian Sautter.
In traditional greenhouses, the light the plants need to survive and thrive comes through a glass roof. "In vertical farming, the light cannot come from above because the plants are stacked on top of each other. Light can only come into the greenhouse through the façade. This means the plants' best exposure to light takes place directly via the façade. The idea is to transport the plants to daylight," explains Sautter. "Plants don't have to be exposed to light constantly. They can store light energy and you just have to supply the required daily ration of light. This makes them happy and they grow."
In the exploratory project Vertical Farming funded by the Austrian Research Promotion Agency (FFG), researchers at TU Graz's Institute of Building and Energy, the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna, (BOKU Wien) and Siemens are examining current findings in vertical farming and seeing where more research should be done. The project will be phased out in March of this year. The follow-up project is already in the planning stage: a pilot experiment at the Tabakfabrik in Linz.
Lift to the light
A kind of lift system has been developed at TU Graz which transports the plants to the light. The trays are hung and slowly vertically rotated. The plants thus receive the required light in a uniform way. On top of this, they can also get artificial sunlight in the morning and evening or on bad weather days. "We're in the optimization phase at the moment, and we're investigating when the best time to turn the artificial lighting on and off is. At the moment we're planning to turn it on at 4 a.m. and turn it off at approx. 10 pm. The plants need a dark rest period for about six hours a day."
The purpose of the farms is not only to provide fruit and vegetables: optimizing energy consumption is also an important topic. The trays can also serve as thermal insulation next to external walls and are also able to use waste heat for better plant growth. They can also be positioned in areas facing south or west to provide shade and a good indoor climate. "We've got several ideas here, and we're working on optimizing them. Of course, it would be ideal to be involved in planning such a farm when constructing a new building. But they can also be integrated into existing buildings," says Sautter.
Prototype for Linz
The first machine will be installed in the listed former porter's lodge of the Tabakfabrik in Linz. "It's not absolutely ideal because it faces north. But it's wonderful and the windows look out onto a street - but it needs to be optimized for the users," explains Sautter. It is intended to build the vertical farm behind the window façade and to move the trays on a slow circular path. Another arm, which extends into the room, is intended to be used for maintenance and harvesting. You can imagine it as a horizontal T. The technology group Siemens was able to be won over as a partner. Siemens wants to equip the trays with sophisticated sensors to measure the supply of water and light to optimize growth.
This is how the prototype in the Tabaktrafik in Linz should work: In this YouTube-Video the people responsible are introducing their plan.
Transparency in foodstuff production
The concept has been precisely designed to achieve a rich yield of fruit and vegetables. "At the same time, we also want to reduce foodstuff waste. About a third of foodstuffs are currently thrown away due to transport waste. That wouldn't happen in our case, of course, because the head of salad which is eaten or sold would be harvested directly," explains Sautter. Transparency in foodstuff production is also an important topic. "At the moment I cannot at all say where my fruit and vegetables come from, even when it says on the package. We want to change this using visible growing areas and thus create trust among the customers."
Information
The Vertical Farming Institute is organizing the Skyberries Conference in Vienna which runs from 28th February to 2nd March and is part of the Urban Future Conference. You can pick up all the important information on the subject there, also from well-known speakers such as the mastermind of vertical farming, Dickson Despommier, and establish contacts in the scene. By the way, tickets are available at a discounted price for members of TU Graz - see contact box for details.
Contact: Sebastian David Sautter Dipl.-Ing. Institute of Building and Energy Rechbauerstraße 12/II | 8010 Graz Phone: +43 316 873 4756 sautter@tugraz.at
AVA Awards 10 Land Parcels to Vegetable Farmers With Innovative Concepts
AVA Awards 10 Land Parcels to Vegetable Farmers With Innovative Concepts
Farm deLight stacks its plants on multiple layers and grows them indoors using high-tech methods like artificial lighting to provide an optimal growth environment. Its combined proposal with KG Farm was one of the winning submissions for the land tender. PHOTOS: EDEN PURELY FRESH FARM
February 9, 2018 | Derek Wong
SINGAPORE - Ten vegetable farming land parcels in Lim Chu Kang have been awarded to eight companies based on their concept proposals rather than the amount they bid.
This means that the farmers did not have to worry about engaging in a price war for the land but focused more on refining their ideas, having in mind Singapore's push for greater productivity through technological innovation and efficient use of scarce resources.
It is the first time the Agri-Food & Veterinary Authority of Singapore (AVA) has awarded a tender on such grounds, the authority said in a press statement on Friday (Feb 9). It was launched in August 2017.
The size of the plots are about 2ha each and sold for $273,000 to $317,000 with a 20-year term. They are located in Neo Tiew Lane, Neo Tiew Link and Neo Tiew Place.
There were 12 land plots put up for tender, but two remain unsold as there were no suitable proposals for them, said AVA. This land will be re-tendered.
The winning proposals feature productive and innovative farming systems. These include green houses with automation and smart controls, multi-tier hydroponic systems using LED lights and data analytics to optimise growing conditions, and multi-storey farms that use automated soil-less cultivation system and robotics.
One of the winning submissions was a joint effort by Farm deLight and KG Farm. They will be paying $288,000 for their 20,167 sq m land plot.
Farm deLight's general manager Edmund Wong, 51, is looking forward to bringing his indoor-farming methods to a bigger space. Currently housed in a 600 sq m space in Boon Lay, it uses a soil-based growing method (geoponics) and organic fertilisers, with the plants stacked in tiers.
High-tech automation and artificial lighting allow Mr Wong to control the environment's humidity and carbon dioxide composition, among other things.
He now mostly provides herbs for a niche fine-dining market via business-to-business transactions.
But with the new space, Mr Wong intends to extend the operations to produce leafy vegetables like lettuce for the mass market.
"We intend to start making sales on the new land within nine months to a year," said Mr Wong.
Eden PurelyFresh Farm, another winning tenderer, is also at the cutting edge of farming technology.
Its chief executive officer Desmond Khoo, 30, will create a "hybrid" farm on the new space, with some sections using a multi-tier system and others using hydroponics in shipping containers. The farm will also harness solar energy and collaborate with Fresh Hub Vending to continually study technological improvements to the space.
Mr Khoo said even artificial intelligence or robotics are possible add-on options in future.
He hopes to kick off full-scale operations in less than a year.
"The work starts now," he said.
Mr Melvin Chow, AVA's group director for food supply resilience, said: "These proposals have the potential to optimise scarce land, reduce reliance on unskilled labour and bolster Singapore's food security."
Concept proposals were evaluated by a Tender Evaluation Committee (TEC) comprising external experts with deep knowledge in agriculture sciences and technology, as well as relevant government agencies.
It assessed the proposals using criteria such as production capability, production track record, relevant experience and qualification of the applicant, and innovation and sustainability.
Seven of the eight successful tenderers are local companies. AVA will be tendering more land for vegetable farming in the second quarter of 2018 and from 2019.
An Agriculture GCSE Will Help Grow The Next Generation of Farmers
February 13 2018, The Times
An Agriculture GCSE Will Help Grow The Next Generation of Farmers
JulianSturdy is a Conservative MP for York Outer
Last week I led a debate in Parliament calling on the government to introduce a GCSE in agriculture. This is already available in Northern Ireland owing to that region’s strong rural tradition and vital contribution to the local economy. However, I would assert that the same could be said for many regions across Britain, and this GCSE could be valuable to pupils from all areas.
I felt it was important to start a parliamentary conversation, since a new qualification of this kind would offer significant skills and career opportunities to secondary-aged children, and could increase the pool of educated younger workers from which the farming sector could draw on. One of the main functions of our education system is to equip young people with necessary skills to make a contribution to the social and economic life of our country. Given pupils can currently study for GCSEs in geology, astronomy, business and psychology, surely they should also be able to learn about farming at the earliest possible opportunity, given how essential it is for putting food on everyone’s tables, and managing our landscapes and natural environment.
The average age of a farmer is 59 in the United Kingdom, so there is a serious need to encourage fresh talent into the sector. Agriculture is the essential foundation of the UK food and drink industry, our largest manufacturing sector, which contributes over £100 billion annually to the economy, and sustains more than 400,000 jobs. There is also the urgent global challenge of food security, with its huge implications for international development and economic growth in poorer nations. World population growth means have to produce 70 per cent more food over the next 30 years, and do so in a sustainable way that maximises finite resources. This challenge in some respects is as significant as climate change, and putting this on the school curriculum through an Agriculture GCSE could inspire young minds to help us produce a solution.
Young people could gain a huge amount from being able to undertake a practical vocational qualification that is directly-linked to a diverse field of employment. Agriculture is increasingly a high-tech, high-skill industry that will be transformed by unfolding scientific developments, and we should be looking to engage our young people with these advances and alert them to the opportunities for a fulfilling and socially useful career.
Methods in farming are changing at a rapid pace with the increased use of robotics, biotechnology, gene editing and data science. A school leaver entering the farming sector in the next few years could expect to use GPS technologies to harvest wheat, driverless tractors, drones to deliver herbicide to weeds on a precision basis, grow wheat with nitrogen-fixing bacteria and new technologies that will drive up animal welfare, such as robotic milking parlours.
Our country is home to some of the best agri-science research in the world, such as at Rothamstead Research in Hertfordshire, and Fera Science just outside my constituency in North Yorkshire. We should be trying to fire the imaginations of our young people by engaging them in the classroom with such examples as soon as possible, just as we try to inspire pupils with the achievements of British scientists and astronauts, and the richness of British cultural and literary achievements in their science and English GCSE courses
Furthermore, the development of indoor vertical farming using hydroponics will also expand the opportunities for growing food in urban areas, which could serve to make agricultural knowledge just as relevant to a pupil in an urban area as in a rural one.
The majority of farms are family businesses (mine being no exception) and the routes to getting involved if you are not from a farming background can be quite limited, to the detriment both of the sector and school leavers, who are restricted in their ability to get a taste of an industry they might well be able to thrive in. Putting an Agriculture GCSE on the curriculum would widen opportunity and access for students by giving them the option to learn about a sector that relatively few of them will have knowledge of, or consider as a career choice.
A new Agriculture GCSE would also represent a sensible extension of the government’s very welcome plans to expand the provision of vocational and technical education, in order to create a better-skilled workforce. The development of T-levels as a full technical alternative to A-levels is encouraging, but if we are truly to establish the parity of esteem necessary to seriously boost take-up of the vocational and technical route, this option needs to be offered to pupils at the first point they select the qualifications they will take — at GCSE level.
Young Startup Brings Vertical Farming To Your Doorstep
Are you an organic food lover and have you ever wanted to grow your own vegetables or herbs at home but is unable to do so for lack of space?
Young Startup Brings Vertical Farming To Your Doorstep
By S V Krishna Chaitanya | Express News Service | Published: 10th February 2018
A model of the vertical mini farm developed by Mumbai-based start-up U-Farm Technologies
CHENNAI: Are you an organic food lover and have you ever wanted to grow your own vegetables or herbs at home but is unable to do so for lack of space?
If so, here is a Mumbai-based start-up firm U-Farm Technologies that is using the hydroponic gardening technique to customize modular farm for an individual apartment complex or for a supermarket.
A group of four, comprising three graduate students from Birla Institute of Technology and Sciences (BITS) Pilani and a horticulturist came with an innovative idea of building an automated, Internet of Things (IoT) and Artificial Intelligence (AI)-powered small-scale vertical farming appliance for farming in the city (supermarkets, restaurants, schools, hospitals and households).
Utsav Gudhaka, one of the founders, said the idea was to grow fresh organic food at one’s place. “There are large-scale hydroponic farms in places like Hyderabad and Pune located 100 km away from the cities. The nutrition value comes down by half by the time it reaches the customer and there are complaints of wilting. To overcome this problem, we came up with this idea,” he said.
He clarified that U-Farm is not the first hydroponic start-up. “There are a few players, but the difference is they give the set-up and you have to manage, which is found to be difficult in most cases. Here, we will set-up the farm and our professional growers will come every day doing the routine and the only thing that is required is subscribe to our produce. Our business model will work in an apartment complex having a minimum of 40 families. We are still working on revenue sharing formula with supermarkets,” Gudhaka said.
He said the project was initially supported by Department of Science and Technology (DST) through IIT-Bombay receiving a grant of `3.67 lakh per year and now under Carbon Zero Challenge-2018 the team has received `five lakh to develop the prototype. The team received applause from the jury.
While one can grow almost anything hydroponically, some vegetables thrive more in hydroponic systems than others. “We have chosen plants that don’t mind moisture and that don’t get too big for our set up, such as wheat grass, lettuce, herbs, microgreens and leafy greens.
On the price, the team said it would cost the same as quoted in “Nature Basket” for organic produce. For instance, spinach (250 grams) would cost around `65.
What is hydroponic gardening?
The science of soil-less gardening is called hydroponics. It basically involves growing healthy plants without the use of a traditional soil medium by using a nutrient like a mineral-rich water solution instead.
A plant just needs select nutrients, some water and sunlight to grow. Not only do plants grow without soil, they often grow a lot better with their roots in water instead
A Man Waters Plants In A Rooftop Garden On Top of Le Bon Marché Department Store In Paris
A man waters plants in a rooftop garden on top of Le Bon Marché department store in Paris. Regis Duvignau/Reuters
Big Data Suggests Big Potential for Urban Farming
February 15, 2018 AMY CRAWFORD
A global analysis finds that urban agriculture could yield up to 10 percent of many food crops, plus a host of positive side benefits.
otham Greens’ boxed lettuces have been popping up on the shelves of high-end grocers in New York and the Upper Midwest since 2009, and with names like “Windy City Crunch,” “Queens Crisp,” and “Blooming Brooklyn Iceberg,” it’s clear the company is selling a story as much as it is selling salad.
Grown in hydroponic greenhouses on the rooftops of buildings in New York and Chicago, the greens are shipped to nearby stores and restaurants within hours of being harvested. That means a fresher product, less spoilage, and lower transportation emissions than a similar rural operation might have—plus, for the customer, the warm feeling of participating in a local food web.
“As a company, we want to connect urban residents to their food, with produce grown a few short miles from where you are,” said Viraj Puri, Gotham Greens’ co-founder, and CEO.
Gotham Greens’ appealing narrative and eight-figure annual revenues suggest a healthy future for urban agriculture. But while it makes intuitive sense that growing crops as close as possible to the people who will eat them is more environmentally friendly than shipping them across continents, evidence that urban agriculture is good for the environment has been harder to pin down.
A widely cited 2008 study by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University found that transportation from producer to store only accounts for 4 percent of food’s total greenhouse gas emissions, which calls into question the concern over “food miles.” Meanwhile, some forms of urban farming may be more energy-intensive than rural agriculture, especially indoor vertical farms that rely on artificial lighting and climate control.
An operation like Gotham Greens can recycle water through its hydroponic system, but outdoor farms such as the ones sprouting on vacant lots in Detroit usually require irrigation, a potential problem when many municipal water systems are struggling to keep up with demand. And many urban farms struggle financially; in a 2016 survey of urban farmers in the U.S., only one in three said they made a living from the farm.
Although cities and states have begun to loosen restrictions on urban agriculture, and even to encourage it with financial incentives, it has remained an open question whether growing food in cities is ultimately going to make them greener. Will the amount of food produced be worth the tradeoffs? A recent analysis of urban agriculture’s global potential, published in the journal Earth’s Future, has taken a big step toward an answer—and the news looks good for urban farming.
“Not only could urban agriculture account for several percent of global food production, but there are added co-benefits beyond that, and beyond the social impacts,” said Matei Georgescu, a professor of geographical sciences and urban planning at Arizona State University and a co-author of the study, along with other researchers at Arizona State, Google, China’s Tsinghua University, the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Hawaii.
A MODIS Land Cover Type satellite image of the United States, similar to imagery analyzed by the researchers. Different colors indicate different land uses: red is urban; bright green is a deciduous broadleaf forest. (Obtained from https://lpdaac.usgs.gov/ maintained by the NASA EOSDIS Land Processes Distributed Active Archive Center, USGS/Earth Resources Observation and Science Center)
Using Google’s Earth Engine software, as well as population, meteorological, and other datasets, the researchers determined that, if fully implemented in cities around the world, urban agriculture could produce as much as 180 million metric tons of food a year—perhaps 10 percent of the global output of legumes, roots and tubers, and vegetable crops.
Those numbers are big. Researchers hope they encourage other scientists, as well as urban planners and local leaders, to begin to take urban agriculture more seriously as a potential force for sustainability.
The study also looks at “ecosystem services” associated with urban agriculture, including reduction of the urban heat-island effect, avoided stormwater runoff, nitrogen fixation, pest control, and energy savings. Taken together, these additional benefits make urban agriculture worth as much as $160 billion annually around the globe. The concept of ecosystem services has been around for decades, but it is growing in popularity as a way to account, in economic terms, for the benefits that humans gain from healthy ecosystems. Georgescu and his collaborators decided to investigate the potential ecosystem services that could be provided through widespread adoption of urban agriculture, something that had not been attempted before.
The team began with satellite imagery, using pre-existing analyses to determine which pixels in the images were likely to represent vegetation and urban infrastructure. Looking at existing vegetation in cities (it can be difficult to determine, from satellite imagery, what’s a park and what’s a farm), as well as suitable roofs, vacant land, and potential locations for vertical farms, they created a system for analyzing the benefits of so-called “natural capital”—here, that means soil and plants—on a global and country-wide scale.
Beyond the benefits we already enjoy from having street trees and parks in our cities, the researchers estimated that fully-realized urban agriculture could provide as much as 15 billion kilowatt hours of annual energy savings worldwide—equivalent to nearly half the power generated by solar panels in the U.S. It could also sequester up to 170,000 tons of nitrogen and prevent as much as 57 billion cubic meters of stormwater runoff, a major source of pollution in rivers and streams.
“We had no notion of what we would find until we developed the algorithm and the models and made the calculation,” Georgescu said. “And that work had never been done before. This is a benchmark study, and our hope with this work is that others now know what sort of data to look for.”
Robert Costanza, a professor of public policy at Australian National University, co-founded the International Society for Ecological Economics and researches sustainable urbanism and the economic relationship between humans and our environment. He called the study (in which he played no part) “a major advance.”
“This is the first global estimate of the potential for urban agriculture,” Costanza wrote in an email. “Urban agriculture will never feed the world, and this paper confirms that, but the important point is that natural capital in cities can be vastly improved and this would produce a range of benefits, not just food.”
“Urban agriculture will never feed the world … but the important point is that natural capital in cities can be vastly improved.”
Costanza said he would like to see the researchers’ big data approach become standard in urban planning, as a way to determine the best balance between urban infrastructure and green space—whether it’s farms, forests, parks, or wetlands. That is the researchers’ hope as well, and they’ve released their code to allow other scientists and urban planners to run their own data, especially at the local level.
“Somebody, maybe in Romania, say, could just plug their values in and that will produce local estimates,” Georgescu said. “If they have a grand vision of developing or expanding some city with X amount of available land where urban agriculture can be grown, they can now quantify these added co-benefits.”
That could be very valuable, said Sabina Shaikh, director of the Program on the Global Environment at the University of Chicago, who researches the urban environment and the economics of environmental policy.
“Ecosystem services is something that is very site-specific,” she said. “But this research may help people make comparisons a little bit better, particularly policymakers who want to think through, ‘What’s the benefit of a park vs. food production?’ or some combination of things. It doesn’t necessarily mean, because it has the additional benefit of food production, that a farm is going to be more highly valued than a park. But it gives policymakers another tool, another thing to consider.”
Meanwhile, policy in the U.S. and internationally is already changing to accommodate and encourage urban agriculture. California, for example, passed its Urban Agriculture Incentive Zones Act in 2014, allowing landowners who place urban plots into agricultural use to score valuable tax breaks. The idea has proven controversial—especially in housing-starved San Francisco. Beyond raising rents, critics have argued that urban agriculture, if it impedes the development of housing, could reduce density, contributing to the sort of sprawl that compels people to drive their cars more. Put urban farms in the wrong place, and an effort to reduce food’s carbon footprint could have the opposite effect.
On the other hand, businesses like Gotham Greens that aim to expand may still be hampered by zoning—Puri and his co-founders had to work with New York’s zoning authority to change regulations affecting greenhouses before they could open their first farm. As the company looks to add sites in other cities, the wide array of their zoning rules, utility access, and regulations will influence its decisions.
“I think we could benefit from the more cohesive policy,” Puri said, “but it’s also a very new industry. And then there are so many approaches to urban agriculture. How does a city approach something that is so broad and diverse at this stage?”
While more data about the potential ecosystem services and tradeoffs would surely help create a more navigable regulatory landscape, Puri, like others in his industry, is also something of an evangelist, eager to put in a word for urban farming’s less quantifiable benefits.
“I don’t believe that urban farming is ever going to replace more conventional farming,” he said. “I don’t think a city is going to be able to produce its entire food supply within city limits, but I think it can play a role in bringing people closer to their food, and in making our cities more diverse and interesting and green.”
About the Author
Amy Crawford has written for Boston magazine, the Boston Globe, Slate, and Smithsonian. She lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
Vertical Farming, LEDs and The Flavor of Leafy Greens
Vertical Farming, LEDs and The Flavor of Leafy Greens
A large climate cell with endless racks of microgreens illuminated with soft pink or white light works 24/7 to bring delicious microgreens to the kitchens of some of Amsterdam’s top restaurants. GROWx is one of Europe’s most known vertical farms and its offering of more than 20 microgreen varieties has quickly earned its spot within Amsterdam’s top 10% restaurants. At the moment it is only microgreens and only for the city of Amsterdam but the ambitions of GROWx’s founders are to re-invent agriculture for urban areas. ‘This revolution can’t come fast enough’ says the CEO and Co-Founder, Mr.John Apesos.
This high tech, futuristic looking environment is what the farming of the future could look like. Nevertheless, when it comes to the end customers, restaurant chefs and their patrons in this case, it is primarily about flavor and freshness. These microgreens go from the farm to the dinner plate in a matter of hours and according Mr.Apesos this is what keeps the flavors intense. The varieties include everything from the common pea-shoots to the more exotic ones like the borage crest.
The GROWx vertical farm is fully equipped with Valoya’s LED grow lights. The primary spectrum used is the AP673L which has been optimized for the vegetative stage of plant development. This means that plants grown under this light will quickly develop biomass (stems and large, thick leaves) while flowering will be delayed or completely prevented making it ideal for microgreens and leafy greens in general. In a research conducted by Wageningen University and Democritus University, the AP673L spectrum boosts the development of chicoric, rosmarinic and caffeic acids and other phenolic compounds making the plants more flavorful and nutrient dense1. The other spectrum is NS1, a sunlight replica spectrum, good for the entire growth cycle. Both spectra are wide and patented with a high CRI (Color Rendering Index) value meaning that plants and other objects look natural under them i.e. their colors look as they would under natural sunlight.
1 F. Bantis et al.(2016) Artificial LED lighting enhances growth characteristics and total phenolic content of Ocimum basilicum, but variably affects transplant success, Scientia Horticulturae 198 (2016) 277–283
About Valoya Oy
Valoya is a provider of high end, energy efficient LED grow lights for use in crop science, vertical farming and medicinal plants cultivation. Valoya LED grow lights have been developed using Valoya's proprietary LED technology and extensive plant photobiology research. Valoya's customer base includes numerous vertical farms, greenhouses and research institutions all over the world (including 8 out of 10 world’s largest agricultural companies).