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Urban Farm Business Upset Over County Regulations
Urban Farm Business Upset Over County Regulations
By: Sarah Beckman
Feb 26, 2018
DES MOINES - Dogpatch Urban Gardens started small. Now they have more crops, more customers, and more county regulations they have to follow.
Jenny Quiner and her husband started this urban garden in unincorporated Polk County a few years ago.
"Through the two years our farm has sold to restaurants, farmers market, DSA, and we also have an on-site farm stand that we sell out of," said Quiner.
The farm stand is surrounded by gardens, a high tunnel system, and some green space where the Quiners hope to eventually host weddings and small concerts. As they've expanded this operation, the county changed the zoning from a farm stand to a commercial business.
"We feel like the county has changed their stance, we've changed too but we still fit the definition of a farm stand and we've been deliberate about that," said Quiner.
County planning and zoning officials said Dogpatch Urban Gardens is more like area pumpkin patches and wineries, which now classify as agri-tourism.
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"We've been working with them to bring their site up into compliance to meet life safety issues and meet the environmental health requirements for an on-site septic system," said Brett VandeLune, Polk County supervisor.
While these entrepreneurs understand the regulations, it will be expensive to meet county requirements. They hope their customer base grows alongside their business.
The owners of Dogpatch Urban Gardens have started a kickstarts campaign to raise money to help them with about $75,000 worth of upgrades to the property.
How To Raise ‘Farm To Table’ Kids, Even If You Don’t Live On (or near) A Farm
How To Raise ‘Farm To Table’ Kids, Even If You Don’t Live On (or near) A Farm
By Sarah Bradley February 21, 2018
(iStock)
Every night, my 4-year-old son sits down at the dinner table, carefully inspects his food, and asks, “What IS this? And who made it?”
He isn’t being rude or critical — he sincerely wants to know. Did this meat come from a chicken or pig? How did the rice get on his plate? Who grew the carrots he’s eating? How did his milk make its way from the farm to the store to his glass?
My husband and I are happy to give our son a “farm-to-table” education by explaining what we’re eating, where it came from and how it got to our table.
“Promoting a relationship for children with food and food production leads young people to be more engaged with their own health and develop lifelong habits that will serve them into their future,” said Jacqueline Maisonpierre, farm director for New Haven Farms, a nonprofit organization based in Connecticut that rehabilitates urban spaces into organic farms.
“Learning about nutrition and developing healthy habits as a young person can have long-term impacts on health and well being, leading to lower incidence of chronic diet-related disease,” she said.
Teaching kids where their food comes from is valuable — but actually providing this kind of education in a hands-on way is a challenge for many parents. Not all families have a back yard. Some don’t have easy access to grocery stores that sell fresh foods. And others cannot afford to purchase higher-quality, locally grown foods or participate in Community Supported Agriculture programs.
In an ideal world, “farm to table” eating habits would be possible for all families. In reality, it can feel like an unattainable goal. But teaching kids about the origins of their food isn’t impossible; it just requires a little bit of creativity and a whole lot of community cooperation. Here are some simple ways to get started.
Get in the kitchen with your kids. When food comes ready-made in a package or is passed through a drive-through window, there’s an inevitable detachment. Buying the individual ingredients to make meals from scratch at home — at least some of the time — is worth the extra effort: The act of cooking invites kids to not only touch, taste and explore their food, but to ask questions about it. Why does it have seeds? Why don’t we eat the skin? Why was it packaged this way? How do we know when it’s ready to eat?
Deborah Grieg, farm director at Common Ground in New Haven, Conn., recommends starting simply. “You can involve your child in the basics, like helping with dinner, or try interesting projects like making butter, pizza, jam or something else they might have only seen in the store or in a restaurant,” she said. “[Cooking with kids] raises conversations and helps expand their palate.”
Start with a seed. Located at the base of a state park in an otherwise densely populated city, Common Ground’s campus offers several ways to learn about growing food: a charter high school, an urban farm and an environmental education center for kids and adults, all designed to increase the community’s connection to and understanding of the natural world.
A wide variety of fruits, vegetables, and herbs are grown on-site in the campus gardens, but Grieg says the simple act of sprouting seeds on a windowsill offers just as much opportunity for childhood learning: “Even if it doesn’t make it to a large plant, it’s a great way to see something growing.”
Seed sprouting is an easy, foolproof activity: Wrap a dried bean (pinto and lima work well) in a damp paper towel and place it in a see-through glass or plastic cup on a windowsill. Within a few days, the bean will begin sprouting, and kids can examine its growth step-by-step.
Practice “food mapping.” “It’s important for kids to know where their food comes from so they have more of an appreciation for food and farmers,” said Alexa Fiszer, a lead environmental educator at Common Ground. “This [appreciation] often helps evolve kids’ understanding of the food production system and the ways in which it has evolved over the course of history.”
Most of us don’t consider the resources, like electricity and gas, that are required to transport our food from its point of origin to the supermarket. Grieg encourages families to create a “food map” to better understand the relationships among nutrition, farming, and freshness.
“After [grocery] shopping, look at where your food is coming from — the locations where it was grown or shipped from — and map those routes out,” she said. “You can then start talking about how traveling long distances can affect the nutrients and quality of the food you eat, who might be growing your food, what their lives might be like and the environmental impact of eating [certain foods].”
Get your hands dirty. Studies have shown that kids are more willing to try a new food if they have helped with its growth or preparation. Families that have access to a patch of back-yard green — even a small one — can plant tomatoes, squash, lettuce or herbs. A child who “hates” green beans just might be tempted to eat some for dinner if she feels a sense of pride and accomplishment over helping those green beans get onto her plate.
Communicate with your child’s school. More schools are seeing the value in connecting their students to the food production process, whether it’s through participation in farm to school initiatives or by starting their own school gardens. If your child’s school hasn’t started thinking about this yet, it might be time to advocate for some changes, or at least request a field trip to a local farm.
There is also a wealth of educational material available online for teachers who want to promote this kind of learning in their classrooms: The Edible Schoolyard Project offers lesson plans by grade, Netflix is home to several documentaries about food production appropriate for older grades (including “Food, Inc.” and “Forks Over Knives”) and Let’s Move is a good starting point for schools looking to improve the quality of their school lunches.
Tap into your local resources, whatever and wherever they may be. Most people associate the idea of “farm to table” foods with rural communities, but even urban ones are joining the trend. Community gardens are everywhere — including metropolitan areas — and always need volunteers. Farmers markets, which pop up seasonally, are a chance for families to get an up-close look at foods they might not otherwise encounter, chat with local farmers, and sample fruits and vegetables. (Though farmers markets may not be an affordable option every week, there are often coupons for SNAP recipients that could make the occasional trip possible.)
Finally, urban farms like Common Ground and the ones developed by New Haven Farms seem rare, but are actually not so hard to find: There are more of them, most are accessible by public transportation and many offer open farm days, where families are invited to explore the grounds and learn about the food grown on-site.
“I think kids are willing to try a wider variety of food when they see where it grows from, and they are excited to pick [food] themselves,” Fiszer said. “A hands-on approach [like this] shows kids the physical work that goes into harvesting and tending to food, and consequently, a better appreciation for food is often formed.”
Sarah Bradley is a freelance writer and creative writing teacher. She is mother to three wild and wonderful boys, and wife to one extremely patient husband. You can see her attempts at finding a mother/writer balance on Instagram.
Follow On Parenting on Facebook for more essays, news and updates. You can sign up here for our weekly newsletter. We tweet @OnParenting.
SKYBERRIES Conference Celebrates Two Years of Vertical Farm Institute
International conference SKYBERRIES invites urban farmers, researchers, and pioneers to Vienna, Austria, to discuss the future of agriculture from February 28 to March 2, 2018.
SKYBERRIES Conference Celebrates Two Years of Vertical Farm Institute
International conference SKYBERRIES invites urban farmers, researchers, and pioneers to Vienna, Austria, to discuss the future of agriculture from February 28 to March 2, 2018.
Visitors will be able to network on location with the attendees of the URBAN FUTURE Global Conference, which will be held during the same dates. In total, about 3,000 people are expected to convene and discuss topics surrounding food security, urban agriculture, and vertical farming.
Both conferences take place at the Messe Wien Exhibition & Congress Center, the Vienna trade fair venue, and both conferences are accessible with the SYKBERRIES ticket.
SKYBERRIES presents Dickson Despommier, author of The Vertical Farm; Saskia Sassen, sociologist and author of The Global City; Franz Fischler, President of the European Forum Alpbach; representatives of farms such in Infarms, AeroFarms, Green Sense, or Vertical Harvest; and many more speakers. In addition, the conferences will hold industry speed dating activites, a poster exhibition, and field trips.
One of the highlights of the event is the presentation of Ruthner-Towers. These Tower-Greenhouses, built in Vienna as well as many more sites in the 1960s and 1970s, were the world’s first vertical farms. SKYBERRIES highlights this innovation, presenting learnings as well as an excursion to one of the few Ruthner-Towers left.
SKYBERRIES is offering a special discount to the Food Tank community. Click here to order your standard ticket, and enter the voucher-code FOODTHINKTANK to get your ticket for 25-percent off. All tickets include full access to the URBAN FUTURE global conference.
SKYBERRIES SPEAKER UPDATE
SASKIA SASSEN
Saskia is the Robert S. Lynd Professor of Sociology and member of The Committee on Global Thought, Columbia University. Her latest book is Expulsions: Brutality and Complexity in the Global Economy (Harvard University Press 2014) now out in 18 languages. She is the recipient of diverse awards, including multiple doctor honoris causa, the Principe de Asturias 2013 Prize in the Social Sciences, and made a Foreign Member of the Royal Academy of the Sciences of the Netherlands
DICKSON DESPOMMIER
Dickson is a microbiologist, ecologist, and emeritus professor of Public and Environmental Health at the Columbia University. In 2010, he published his widely received book: “The Vertical Farm: feeding the world in the 21st Century”. Well known for his podcasts, TED Talks and lectures on vertical farming, Dickson also supports the vertical farm institute as Board Member.
INFOGRAPHICS
Have you already seen our infografics? At almost every speaker's profile you can find a graphic on one of the topics to be discussed at SKYBERRIES.
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NONA YEHIA
Nona is uniquely positioned in the Vertical Farming sphere as she is at once a practicing Architect, the Co-Founder, Owner, Designer and CEO of a cutting edge greenhouse, Vertical Harvest of Jackson Hole. This combination has cultivated expertise in both the design, implementation and operation of innovative systems and programs that position Vertical Harvest to be an impact model for communities around the globe
DANIEL PODMIRSEG
Daniel is founder of the vertical farm institute and Vertical Farming expert, studied architecture. His dissertation “up!” deals with the potential of vertical farms with regard to the reduction of energy and land consumption. “up!” is considered a standard work and Dickson Despommier assesses the work as the most comprehensive research on Vertical Farming in the world so far.
VALENTIN THURN
Valentin is a director and producer of more than 50 television documentaries and reports on social, developmental, environmental and educational issues. His shooting and lecture tours have taken him to over 50 countries on all continents. For his films, he received a number of prizes and awards. “Taste the Waste” was a box office hit in 2011/12, and “10 Billion – What’s on your plate?” was the most successful German cinema documentary in 2015.
ISABEL MOLITOR
Isabel is co-founder and CMO at Farmers Cut, an indoor vertical farming company based in Hamburg with the mission to build a global farm network to deliver locally produced, pesticide-free greens from farm-to-fork. Prior to Farmers Cut Isabel lived in New York working in Marketing for a Swiss skincare company. Isabel holds a B.Sc. in Business Administration from the European Business School and a M.Sc. in International Development from from New York University’s Center for Global Affairs.
FRANZ FISCHLER
Franz Fischler became widely known and much respected both domestically and internationally when he was EU commissioner. Between 1995 and 2004, the future of European agriculture was in his hands. Franz Fischler implemented his vision of modern agriculture in far-reaching reforms of European farming policies, rural development and fisheries. Since December 2015 he is president of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Vienna, since 2012 president of the European Forum Alpbach.
BARBARA IMHOF
Barbara is an internationally active space architect, design researcher and educator. Barbara Imhof is the co-founder and CEO of LIQUIFER Systems Group, an interdisciplinary team comprising engineers, architects, designers and scientists. Her projects deal with spaceflight parameters such as living with limited resources, minimal and transformable spaces, resource-conserving systems; all aspects imperative to sustainability.
DAVID SCHMIDMAYR
David is an expert in LED-lighting with many years of experience in horticulture. Using his in-depth knowledge of photonics and semiconductor technology, he co-founded five years ago SANlight (as a company and research institute), with the purpose of developing and manufacturing LED illumination systems for commercial greenhouses, special applications and household use. SANlight won the “Born Global Champion” award in 2016.
... and many more! You will find all our inspiring speakers on ourWebsite.
We leave you with one last reminder of our SKYBERRIES conference discount: Save € 55,- by purchasing a combined ticket for SKYBERRIES and URBAN FUTURE global conference! Exclusively via our SKYBERRIES ticketshop.
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Dubai Chef Offers Tours of His Greenhouse
Buenaventura grows several different kinds of lettuce, a range of herbs, tomatoes, peppers, aubergines and edible flowers in a space that can’t be much bigger than 40 square metres.
Dubai Chef Offers Tours of His Greenhouse
UAE restaurant Cuisinero Uno has begun to grow its own organic vegetables. Gather around and join the fun at this urban farm
March 1, 2018
Keith J Fernandez, Group Editor - GulfNews.Com
John Martho Buenaventura shows off his baby eggplant with all the pride of a father. “I’m so happy,” he trills, talking to Gulf News tabloid!on the deck outside his second-floor restaurant at Dubai’s Business Bay. “Come back in two weeks and we’ll have a lovely crop!”
Rather improbably, we’re standing in a greenhouse bang in the middle of a dense cluster of high rises, in a very Dubai take on the heightened trend for organic produce and locavore eating. “A lot of people have been growing their own food, but we’re the first restaurant to actually do so on our terrace,” he says.
Buenaventura grows several different kinds of lettuce, a range of herbs, tomatoes, peppers, aubergines and edible flowers in a space that can’t be much bigger than 40 square metres. The results are served in his modern tapas restaurant Cuisinero Uno at the Steigenberger Hotel Business Bay.
Diners can tour the greenhouse anytime. Until March 9, as part of Dubai Food Festival, the restaurant is hosting a tour and tasting session each Friday. Interested visitors can take part in an experiential planting session and learn how to make healthy smoothies and mocktails — and taste some of this food. We loved the fantastic burratini salad with homegrown cherry tomatoes — the tomatoes juicy, fresh and sharp, the basil nice and peppery.
“My food costs have gone down between 3 and 5 percent, and the food tastes better because it’s locally sourced and organic,” Buenaventura tells me. The volumes from his terrace farm are nowhere near enough to sustain the restaurant, but as he says, at least he’s doing something to create a greener world and be sustainable. “In our own small way, we want to do a farm-to-table experience and we want to showcase that you don’t have to spend a lot of money for good food.”
And although he faced high installation and set-up costs for this urban farm, these will be amortised over time. He is now also experimenting with making his own compost.
The greenhouse uses a combination of hydroponics and aquaponics. The former is simply growing plants in water and is largely responsible for the spurt in locally grown produce now available in UAE supermarkets. Aquaponics is a system of aquaculture, where plants live off used water from aquariums. The plant beds subsequently purify the water, which loops back into the fish tanks. Nutrients are automatically added as required.
In March last year, Gulf News reported how the UAE Ministry of Climate Change and Environment has prioritised the use of hydroponic technology on farms as part of its food security strategy. The number of greenhouses in the country has grown from 50 in 2009 to over 1,000 in 2016, official figures show.
Buenaventura wants to take that one step further. He hopes to inspire similar projects and seed a discussion about sustainable habits. “The UAE is a hot country and not a lot of crops grow here. But if it was mandated by the government that all buildings in Dubai had to dedicate one floor to vertical farming, nobody would go hungry,” he says. “What do we eat in Dubai? Tomatoes, lettuce, cucumber, lemon, aubergine — we spend a lot of money on those, but we can grow these ourselves.”
He acknowledges that apartment residents won’t achieve the volumes needed to feed their families with a small balcony garden, but he says it’s a viable business model for those looking at alternative sources of income. “In a bigger set-up, like a grow truck — about the size of a trailer truck — you can grow 3,000 heads of organic lettuce in a month with hydroponics, which shortens the grow time by up to 30 per cent. So that’s a good business.”
For the moment, Buenaventura is happy to be making a difference in his own small way.
What Are The Production And Training Issues Facing Controlled Environment Agriculture Growers?
What Are The Production And Training Issues Facing Controlled Environment Agriculture Growers?
Exclusives from Urban Ag News
Ohio State University professor Chieri Kubota is focused on helping to resolve the production and training challenges facing controlled environment growers.
Trying to produce vegetables in hot, humid conditions can be difficult for controlled environment growers whether growing in a greenhouse or a warehouse.
“The challenges of greenhouse growing in Ohio and the Midwest are different than the challenges faced by growers in Arizona,” said Ohio State University horticulture professor Chieri Kubota. Kubota, who joined the faculty at Ohio State this past June will continue the controlled environment agriculture research she was doing while at the University of Arizona.
“Some people think I’m an expert at dealing with heat stress because I was doing my research in an Arizona greenhouse,” she said. “But in Arizona growers don’t really have to worry about the heat inside a greenhouse if they are using an evaporative cooling system to lower the temperature. In Arizona, the outside temperature can be 110ºF, but the temperature in the greenhouse can be lowered to 75ºF-80ºF (25ºC-27ºC) as long as the air is dry enough and water is available. In Arizona the dryness can be a challenge, causing tip burn on sensitive crops such as lettuce and strawberry.
“I really didn’t have to deal with heat stress much in Arizona. But there are other parts of the country like the Midwest and East Coast that have to deal with hot, humid summer conditions and very cold winters. I would like to work on those issues and develop technologies, including climate control strategies that can mitigate the issues of growing crops year-round. In Ohio and the Midwest summer heat stress is a major issue for crops causing all kinds of physiological disorders including incomplete pollination and fruit ripening disorders. During the winter, heating and humidity can also be an issue. There is also an issue with low light levels so supplemental lighting is more important.”
Ohio State University horticulture professor Chieri Kubota is planning to continue the controlled environment research she started at the University of Arizona and plans to expand her program to study LED lighting and new crops.
Photos courtesy of Chieri Kubota, Ohio St. Univ.
Because of the limited optimum growing season in greenhouses in the Midwest, Kubota said using indoor productions systems makes more sense compared to Arizona.
“In this part of the country it is very difficult to maintain the optimum temperature range year round,” she said. “And because of the increased interest in vertical farming, I expect to put more effort in warehouse production systems, including the use of LED lighting.”
Improving vegetable grafting
Some of the projects Kubota started at the University of Arizona that she will continue to work on our vegetable grafting and hydroponic strawberry production. She is a member of a research team led by North Carolina State University plant pathologist Frank Louws that is working on vegetable grafting.
“I am continuing my research on improving grafting methods and the handling of grafted plants so that they can be shipped long distances,” Kubota said. “I am also creating a simple tool for growers to schedule grafted plant production. Having the grafted plants ready at exactly the same size is always a challenge for growers. The research group is working to develop a simple plant growth model based on environmental conditions to predict how many days are needed to finish a grafted crop.”
Kubota said the grafting research team is looking at a variety of plants, including tomato, watermelon, cucumber, eggplant, pepper, and muskmelon.
“Growers are commercially producing grafted tomato and watermelon plants, but there are many more crops that can use grafting technology to reduce loss from soil-borne diseases and to increase yields. My program is looking at all of these potential crops.”
Kubota said the grafting research also has application to greenhouse crops.
“The grafting technology was originally developed for soil-based production, but greenhouse vegetable growers discovered that even though they are doing soilless production, using grafted plants can increase crop yields,” she said. “In North America, greenhouse growers were the first group who started using grafting technology. The field growers are now more interested since they have fewer means to control disease. In terms of potential market, field production in the U.S. is much larger in terms of number of plants.
“Currently tomato accounts for the majority of grafted plants in greenhouses. Increased tomato yields have been the driver for greenhouse growers to use grafted plants. Some greenhouse growers have been trialing grafted cucumbers and some research has shown that grafted eggplants can increase yields.”
Improving strawberry production
Kubota who has been working on greenhouse strawberry production for nine years will continue working on this crop with an interest in the use of LEDs.
Chieri Kubota will continue her greenhouse strawberry research with an interest in increasing yields using supplemental light.
“Strawberry fruit production is not as productive as leafy greens or tomatoes in terms of dollars of return relative to the input of light,” she said. “I’m interested in studying the increase in yields relative to the increase in light. What is the dollar value of that increase of yield by adding for example, 1 mole of light? Unless there is an improvement in lighting technology, it may not make sense to grow strawberries under supplemental lighting.
“I would like to come up with a smart lighting system to reduce the lighting cost based on the understanding of strawberry physiology and how plants are grown in a greenhouse. I think we could reduce lighting energy use and costs quite a bit by doing that. Strawberries are physiologically unique in terms of light saturation and also in terms of the sink-and-source relationship of how much sugar can be translocated from the leaves so that the photosynthetic rate can be maximized.”
Developing new crops
Another area that Kubota would like to expand for CEA production is the development of new crops.
“Controlled environment growers whether they are growing in greenhouses or warehouses need to diversify and increase the number of crops they are producing,” she said. “Although I don’t have any new crop projects coming up, I am particularly interested in small fruits. Since Ohio and the Midwest have a cold climate, there may be an opportunity to do more with small fruit crops like raspberries, blueberries, blackberries and other berry crops for greenhouse production.”
Kubota is also interested in revisiting the study of spinach production in greenhouse and warehouses.
“Controlled environment growers seem to have a particularly difficult time managing diseases including Pythium on spinach,” she said. “I am interested in determining if there is a practical way to manage these diseases. Cornell University researchers had previously done a lot of studies on this issue years ago. I wanted to see what the difference was between the successful hydroponic growing of spinach in Asia and other countries and why U.S. growers can’t do that too.”
Expanding professional training, research programs
As part of her extension efforts at Ohio State, Kubota wants to expand the opportunities for growers to receive professional training.
“I want this training to go beyond Ohio and to go nationwide and even international,” she said. “I’m interested in training professionals with online courses and other programs at a reasonable cost.
“The heart of the horticulture industry is in this part of the country. There are many different types of growers, supporting vendors and technology providers here. They are well connected.”
Chieri Kubota said having an extensive group of CEA researchers and extension specialists at Ohio State will enable her to expand training programs for growers not only in the state but potentially worldwide.
Kubota said at the University of Arizona research in the plant science department was focused more on basic science such as how a particular gene functions in plants, but not necessarily horticultural plants.
“Here at Ohio State I am in the horticulture and crop science department so the other faculty members understand what horticulture is,” she said. “There are a number of people here working on controlled environment agriculture including horticulture, which covers floriculture, hydroponics, and high tunnels, and ag engineering, entomology, plant pathology and food safety. There is a complete set of researchers and extension specialists who can work on a variety of controlled environment agriculture issues related to horticulture crops. This makes it advantageous for not only developing research projects together, but also professional training for commercial growers.”
For more: Chieri Kubota, The Ohio State University, Department of Horticulture and Crop Science, kubota.10@osu.edu; http://u.osu.edu/cepptlab; https://hcs.osu.edu/our-people/dr-chieri-kubota; https://www.facebook.com/CEPPTLAB.
Big Data Suggests Big Potential For Urban Farming
GETTY IMAGES
This story originally appeared on CityLab and is part of the Climate Desk collaboration.
Gotham 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 US, 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.
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 a 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 US. 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 US 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 a 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.”
How To Put The Youth Back In Agriculture
How To Put The Youth Back In Agriculture
26 FEB 2018 | BY: CARI COETZEE
Misconceptions about working in agriculture have long bogged down the number of young people opting for a career in this industry. Africa's young population is often discouraged by the image of punishing work and poor, weather-beaten farmers, so attracting youth to agriculture is no small feat. However, new technologies, methods, and thinking have started to change the minds of many. Howard blight
We chat with Howard Blight, founder of Agricolleges International (ACI) which aims to prove to young people that agriculture can be fun and profitable and is aimed at inspiring youth from all walks of life to pursue agribusiness entrepreneurship.
©julief514 via 123RF
What are some of the major misconceptions entertained by the youth regarding the agriculture industry and how can this be addressed?
One of the major misconceptions we have come across is that the youth believe agriculture is still an old-fashioned industry. In reality, access to technology, information, and better communication, along with vastly improved equipment are enabling farmers and agri-experts around the world to change the way we think and improve how things are done.
Another misconception is that farming has high barriers to entry, particularly when it comes to the capital needed to set up and operate large tracts of farming land. The exciting thing is that, as technology evolves, it is also reducing these barriers. Vertical farming, for example, is enabling young agripreneurs to build sustainable businesses in warehouses in the middle of town. Technology has also brought us drones for crop assessments, smartphones to set irrigation systems and the computers in planters for precision row-crop soil preparation, planting and harvesting.
We need to address these misconceptions through education and building awareness among the youth, as well as through training and skills development in the areas where the industry currently has large gaps. It is important that agricultural schools and colleges, which provide the major pipeline of potential entrants into the agri-economy, to keep their curriculums up to date and are able to teach students about the incredible tools that are now available, the use of technology and the growing connectedness among farmers.
Why is it essential that we engage with and encourage our youth to consider careers in agriculture?
Food security in Africa and the rest of the world is a growing issue. Food demand in Africa is expected to rise by over 70% by 2050 due to population growth, and agricultural land and water are scarce commodities in many parts of the world. The result is that many farmers are growing their businesses vertically and using the latest technological practices. This, in turn, requires more skilled people who are capable of working in this environment.
At the same time, there is a huge need for small and emerging farmers to build sustainable businesses, but to do this they too need to improve the way they work and build their knowledge and skills. What this means for the youth is that at almost every level there is both opportunity to build skills and find exciting, relevant work in agriculture, while also making a difference to the food security concerns that are looming over the next two decades.
To compound on this, the commercial farming sector of our agri-economy must participate in the agri-transformation philosophy of the sharing of knowledge with the emerging farmers. This is Ubuntu. I am because we are. This is part and parcel of the Agricolleges way of thinking.
What are the main barriers for agripreneurs?
As mentioned above, one of the biggest barriers to entry is the capital and knowledge required, to set-up and operate large tracts of farming land. Another barrier has been the cost of the education needed to build agri-skills. E-learning makes education much more accessible and affordable to the youth, emerging farmers and existing farm workers, who want to build on their current knowledge. We are looking for investors to help develop a sustainable bursary system that can support highly motivated and ambitious students from disadvantaged backgrounds, to obtain reputable agricultural qualifications.
Our President, Cyril Ramaphosa, in his SONA, has made it clear that both agriculture and skills development are among the key areas that government will be focusing on in the coming months and years. Our hope is that this will help to support ACI’s drive to bring more people into the industry.
While the youth flee to the cities to escape rural or agriculture-related careers – a fact lamented by many – should we not place equal emphasis on encouraging and enabling urban agriculture startups?
Absolutely, yes! As this migration towards cities takes place, an increasing number of urban gardens and farms have taken root already. This growth in urban agriculture is helping poor people cope with food scarcity and hunger. It also offers many people a viable income as they are able to find markets for their produce as well as feed themselves. So much is being achieved through sheer necessity - imagine what could be achieved with additional support, knowledge and resources?
Roadside traders could be transformed into the farmers of the future as community vegetable gardens, roadsides and rivers converted into city farms, vertical window food gardens, and horizontal pipe or water gardens. Teaching young people to implement urban agriculture through a variety of modern methods and practices would not only improve their yields and income potential but also give them a sense of achievement and the self-confidence that they may be struggling to achieve through meaningful employment elsewhere.
ACI is able to educate people to implement urban agriculture with health and sustainability in mind, and this is a great step towards creating a more sustainable future in all countries throughout the African continent.
Technology and a new way of thinking has seen agriculture and agribusiness change a lot over the past decade, but how friendly is agriculture in SA and Africa to tech-savvy youth?
There can be no doubt that the technology explosion, and access to cellular phones, in particular, has reached even the most remote parts of Africa. Farmers are also steadily changing their methods, through the use of more technology and adding skills and efficiencies to their operations. This all bodes very well for a tech-savvy youth population that wants to be connected and to work in an exciting, modern environment.
It is also true, however, that we still have a long way to go in terms of catching up to the rest of the world in this regard. We need to build skills and knowledge that are appropriate to our situation and conditions, and we need to be able to modernize and change our courses and curriculums when and where necessary so that we stay relevant and up-to-date.
We are in the fascinating position, where we need to grow emerging, small-scale farmers and teach them how to use traditional methods more effectively and sustainably, while also developing a young and vibrant group of agripreneurs who are looking further into the future, where their more advanced skills and understanding of technology will provide them with a wealth of exciting and dynamic careers in this industry.
Training Workshop On Hydroponics Agriculture Concludes At Pir Mehr Ali Shah, Arid Agriculture University Rawalpindi
Training Workshop On Hydroponics Agriculture Concludes At Pir Mehr Ali Shah, Arid Agriculture University Rawalpindi
Umer Jamshaid 26th February 2018
RAWALPINDI, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News
A 15-day training workshop to impart training to the farmers of Punjab on Hydroponics Agriculture under the project 'Testing indigenous hydroponics model for vegetable growing' concluded here on Monday at Pir Mehr Ali Shah, Arid Agriculture University Rawalpindi (PMAS-AAUR).
The project was funded by Agriculture Development Bank, Government of Punjab to indigenize the latest agriculture practices and impart training to the farmers on hydroponics agriculture for the development of the agriculture sector.
It was the eighth and final session and over 290 farmers from across the country got training on hydroponics technology to experience the practices in their native areas to meet the domestic as well as the country's needs of food.
Prof. Dr. Sarwat N Mirza, Vice Chancellor (VC) PMAS-AAUR was the chief guest at the certificate distribution ceremony while deans, directors and staff members were also present on the occasion.
Prof. Dr. Sarwat N Mirza stressed the need for the demonstration, implementation and improvement of the technology and hoped that the farmers would not only apply the knowledge in their fields but also guide other farmers to test the results in their native areas and share their experiences to overcome the challenges and loopholes being confronted in enhancement of the technology in all areas of the country.
He said, "Improvement is the continuous process. Learn, admit and transfer the knowledge for the well being of others." He further said that the training session will be very helpful for the progressive farmers to improve their life standards and for the achievement of desired results.
He assured every support to the farmers for the development of the farming community. The VC thanked the government of Punjab for provision of funds for the training of the farmers on the hydroponics agriculture and hoped that the government will also support such programs and training in future.
He appreciated efforts of Prof. Dr. Safdar Ali, Director Institute of Hydroponics for their contributions to train the farmers on hydroponics agriculture and for the achievement of the targeted goals. At the concluding session, certificates were also distributed among the trainee farmers.
Rules For Growing Microgreens Indoors
Rules For Growing Microgreens Indoors
February 23, 2018
Next winter you'll most likely want to grow microgreens outdoors(kidding). Or you might already know how to grow but need a little help (or you just don't want to admit why your microgreens died); either way we will be giving you some rules to follow, while you walk on the road towards success.
Equipment & System Needs
The Heating System hoophouse is passive solar heated, which works fine for starting plants in earliest spring, but for growing a consistent crop of microgreens during cold and low solar months of winter, it needs to be supplemented. After research that was done, it was determined that heat mats were the most efficient direct heat option. There are several options to heat the water, electric, gas but also solar and biogas.
Water is essential for microgreens, they need to be constantly kept at ideal moisture levels so water must be accessible in the growing area. Watering equipment for our system remained pretty simple: long hoses that run the length of the tables with long neck spray nozzles that release a gentle shower. These happened to be the most flexible performers and provided good coverage.
Ventilation by large fans is essential to prevent fungus in winter and keep microgreens cool in summer. They act to keep the growing area at even temperature and moisture levels, which the farmer can manage. They are essential to the success of the growing operation.
Working towards developing a system for your clients based on climate, farm setup and prospective buyers
To keep track of all the crop varieties in trials, you should develop a simple log to track all the pertinent information for each trial. Document the date of the seeding, the media used, tray size if used, quantity of trays, whether you applied heat or not, quantity of seed used per unit, harvest yield and harvest date. With solid note-taking, you will be better able to track the successes and failures and troubleshoot to minimize the latter, so we recommend this as a practice. Documentation was important not only in trialing seeds, media, and growing conditions, but during later steady commercial production as well. Keeping good notes, not just numbers on all the variables, was key to seeing what types of systems worked best in our setup.
Growing Medium
You'll have to decide what you want to use for soil. Whether it'd be Coir or potting soil. You will have to decide which is best for you and figure out the ratio that best suits your growing needs. Be sure to always experiment in this stage. Mark from Vertical veg says, "using old compost will help because of the nitrogen that aids leafy vegetables."
Harvesting
You can experiment with microgreens to find the stage you like best – either when the first pair of leaves appear, or later, when a few leaves have grown. One exception is sunflower shoots. These need to be eaten before their second pair of leaves appear, as these are bitter. The easiest way to harvest most microgreens is with a sharp pair of kitchen scissors. Some microgreens – like pea shoots – may regrow, particularly if you chop them just above the lowest leaf.
This blog post touches on basic guidelines to follow while you grow microgreens. There are many specifics that need to be followed on your journey. We hope you try to impress your peers with some the information you just read. Thanks for reading.
If you enjoyed this, you might also enjoy these post:
"Facts about the microgreens grow system"
"Supercharge your hydroponics setup"
Tags:
growsystem microgreensgrowsystem microgreens leafygreens hydroponicsystem
This Startup Is Building The Techiest Indoor Farm In The World
This Startup Is Building The Techiest Indoor Farm In The World
Vertical farming startup Bowery says it's building the most technologically sophisticated indoor farm in the world. Courtesy of Bowery
By BETH KOWITT
February 28, 2018
Indoor vertical farming startup Bowery is in the process of building a second facility which it claims will be the most technologically sophisticated indoor farm in the world.
The operation will be in Kearny, N.J., and grow 30 times more produce than its current indoor farm that’s located nearby, and supply 100 types of leafy greens and herbs for customers like Whole Foods and Foragers.
In May, the New York City-based startup raised a $20 million Series A from investors including General Catalyst, GGV, and GV (formerly Google Ventures), with capital from the round going toward building the new farm.
Bowery is applying robotics, machine learning, and predictive analytics to the agriculture sector, a segment of the economy that has been slow to adopt technology and digital advancements.
The company has developed what is says is a proprietary software system, complete with a robust network of sensors that takes in data in real time to determine outcomes like the quality, texture, color, and yield of its plants. “The software is the brains of the farm,” says Bowery CEO and founder Irving Fain.
Small adjustments—water flow, light intensity, temperature, humidity—can then be made in response to data inputs to impact outcomes like taste and flavor, such as growing a mustard green that’s got a spicier pick.
“These changes get pushed out automatically into our system,” says Fain. “The precision and level of control is unparalleled.”
Fain says that Bowery is more than 100 times more efficient than a square foot of farmland, in large part because the startup can grow 365 days a year independent of season in a completely controlled environment. Bowery doesn’t use any pesticides or agri-chemicals. Normally out in a field that would lead to reduction in yield, but Bowery has more crop cycles per year, grows twice as fast as a field, and has higher yield per crop cycle, says Fain.
The Bowery model is also predicated on a growing demand for local food. Since the farm is located in New Jersey, its produce goes out to the tri-state area. “We see very strong demand nationally and internationally right now for high quality locally produced consistent produce,” Fain says.
Because the produce is grown close to the point of consumption, “not as many players sit between us and the final consumers.” That level of efficiency helps keep costs down, Fain explains.
The National Organic Standards Board recently voted on whether hydroponics—essentially crops not grown in soil—could be certified as organic. While the board voted yes, Fain says that Bowery wasn’t involved in those conversations and isn’t focused on the organic certification.
“We’re growing post-organic produce,” he says. “It’s the next evolution.” Organic, he explains, still allows for pesticides—something his operation does not use
“It’s a better product for us and better way of growing and less destructive to the earth,” says Fain. “We’re using technology to grow the purest food possible.”
Indoor Vertical Farming: Digging Deep in Data
Indoor Vertical Farming: Digging Deep in Data
Geoff Spencer | Microsoft Writer
February 27, 2018
When it comes to farming, Ken Tran digs deep – not in dirt, but in data. He doesn’t drive a tractor and he doesn’t pull a plow. But he is helping to sow the seeds of a new type of agriculture – one that is nurtured by machine learning and artificial intelligence.
Ken is a Principal Research Engineer with Microsoft Research and his mission is to help perfect new ways of growing food and feeding the world scientifically, sustainably, and profitably.
In its way, digital technology is writing a new chapter in the story of agriculture. Once upon a time, about 12,000 years ago, humans began to give up hunter and gatherer lifestyles for farming. Across the ages, more secure food supplies saw the number of the people on the planet grow from maybe a few million people in Neolithic times to more than 7 billion today.
And through all those millennia, farmers have literally battled the elements. They have read the seasons and bred new crop types largely through trial and error. By the late 20th century we had increased food production with mechanization, fertilizers, herbicides, pesticides, irrigation and a lot more. Today, humankind is growing more food than ever. But, here’s a crucial question: How long can we keep farming like this?
Ken Tran, Principal Research Engineer, Microsoft Research
Ken has his doubts. “The planet’s population is growing, and the amount of arable land is diminishing. There are threats from climate change and pressure on resources, like water,” he explains. “At the same time, our cities are expanding. More and more consumers want food that is fresh, safe, nutritious, varied and available.”
In short, agriculture is being squeezed at one end by pressure on finite resources, and at the other by never-ending demand.
Moreover, there is so still a lot we don’t know about the vagaries of the environment, and even about plants themselves. We still “hope” for good harvests. We still “pray” for rain, and we still “worry” about early frosts, late snow, unexpected floods, prolonged droughts, tenacious weeds, and hungry pests. The natural world is full of uncertainty and lot of farming is still based on good luck and guesswork.
The game-changing component here is the ability to collect high-quality data and very quickly.
When we are confronted with big issues like this, science and knowledge often offer a better way. And for Ken, and technologists like him, that better way lies in digital transformation. Agriculture, he argues, is one of many sectors of human endeavor that is falling under the spell of the 4th Industrial Revolution. Like so much else in the modern world, farming is being disrupted by data that can supply answers and produce solutions.
In many locations around the world, new data-driven techniques anchored in the cloud are being introduced to farm life. Microsoft is leading the movement through its Farm Beats program. For instance, small plot farmers in India rely on digital tools to work out when best to sow their crops and so enjoy more bountiful harvests. In New Zealand, farmers are using the Internet of Things to best deploy spraying to best irrigate their fields.
Ken, who is originally from Vietnam and is now based at Microsoft’s headquarters in Redmond in the U.S. state of Washington, is part of this overall effort. But he occupies a different place: His research is indoors.He is focused on improving the output and efficiency of “indoor vertical farms”. These are enclosed spaces where everything that is required to grow crops – light, atmosphere, temperature, water, and nutrients – is supplied, controlled and constantly monitored to produce data that in turn is used to develop better techniques and better results.
Indoor vertical farms, which are sometimes called “plant factories”, rely on hydroponics. This soil-less water-based way of growing plants has been around for decades. What is different now is the arrival of cloud computing, which has given rise to data-based techniques aimed at producing better yields and better food at cheaper cost and in sustainable ways.
“The game-changing component here is the ability to collect high-quality data and very quickly,” he said on the sidelines of an international conference on indoor agriculture that was recently held in Singapore. “With big data, we use machine learning in the cloud to analyze and produce models with optimal configurations – say for the intensity of light to create better yields, or lower electricity costs, or what is the best ratio of nutrients that we should provide the plant to produce good food and higher yield.”
Indoor vertical farm technology is still being perfected and there are many variations. In theory, all crops could be grown this way. But the greatest potential is for leafy green vegetables, along with some fruits and herbs. High-calorie foods, including cereals, like rice and wheat, and vegetables, like potatoes, are probably best grown in the field – albeit under more optimal, data-driven conditions.
Eri Hayashi from the Japan Plant Factory Association
Eri Hayashi, of the Japan Plant Factory Association, specializes in airtight and thermally insulated rooms where “control” is a crucial factor. And, it is here that data comes into its own.
“On a traditional outdoor farm, environmental factors control how plants grow,” she explains. “In a plant factory, we can control the environmental factors – so we control how plants grow rather than the other way around. And, a closed environment is a great way to collect data quickly. We call the needs of a plant ‘a plant recipe’. The plant needs light, carbon dioxide, nutrients, and water. There are so many combinations. Until now we have only been able to find set points on some of the combinations. So, we need AI’s help to find more combinations for numerous plant recipes.”
Both Ken and Eri see opportunities to trial new ways of doing things. For example, “in a closed plant factory, we can pump in extra carbon dioxide to promote faster plant growth with oxygen produced as a byproduct. That might mean using a greenhouse gas for good,” says Ken.
Closed environments also mean better control of pests and disease – and the elimination of chemical pesticides and herbicides. Water, which is largely lost to the soil and atmosphere on a conventional farm, can be used sparingly in a closed continuous cycle.
“We can reduce water usage by 99 percent or more compared with land farms. We can also reduce the use of nutrients and waste by minimizing input and maximizing out,” Ken says.
AI-controlled indoor vertical farming also opens up the prospect of farms in urban and industrial areas that can be productive in all seasons and in cost-controlled ways in all sorts of building and spaces. And, that could significantly change the way cities source food and feed themselves. By way of example, let’s look at a supermarket not far from where Ken and Eri were being interviewed in Singapore, a city-state with virtually no space for conventional farming of its own. Its shelves were stocked with produce from around the world, like lettuce from Australia, strawberries from South Korea, beans from the European Union, and grapes from Peru. Local indoor farms potentially could reduce that dependence on imports that are now constantly flown or shipped in.
Acknowledging the advantages, Asian cities, particularly in China and Japan, are fast-adopting this technology with hundreds of indoor vertical farms – and Ken only sees this trend growing there as well as across North America and Europe.
READ: AI for Earth can be a game-changer for our planet
Automation – through AI, machine learning, and robotics – promises to bring down the cost of labor and other operations at a time when the age of farmers is climbing around the world and the economics of agriculture is fluctuating. This will allow smaller entrepreneurial farmers, as well as big operators, to establish niche on-demand services for customers. It could be lifestyle-changing.
“In 10 years it is very possible that many apartment buildings in cities will have their own indoor farms,” Ken says. “In a few years’ time, there will be a lot more online delivery companies. So, you can grow indoors and package at your farm. Your customers will just go online and order a delivery. The time from farm to your fridge could be around two hours or so – just like a pizza delivery now.
“It means fresh, locally available, cheaper and healthier food for potentially millions of people.”
- Additional images featured in this report are of indoor vertical farming activities conducted by SananBio in Xiamen, China.
Increased Consumer Demand Drives Strawberry And Lettuce Greenhouse Expansion
Ontario, Canada
February 26, 2018
Increased Consumer Demand Drives Strawberry And Lettuce Greenhouse Expansion
Mucci Farms is in the third year as well as the third expansion phase of its greenhouse grown strawberry program. Smuccies™ was commercially launched in 2016 on a 12-acre site. “We completed phase two this past October, bringing us to a total of 24 acres of greenhouse grown strawberries,” says Bert Mucci, CEO of Mucci Farms.
The final 12-acre expansion will be completed this summer and will include grow lights, allowing the company to offer high-quality local berries year-round, also during the winter months. The first harvest from the final 12 acres will be in October of this year. The 36-acre site is the largest strawberry farm in North America under glass.
Strawberry greenhouse
Consistent flavor and quality
What drives the expansion into a 36-acre site? “An increased demand from consumers and retailers,” shared Joe Spano, Vice President of Sales & Marketing. “Strawberries are consistently ranked at the top of the ‘dirtiest fruit’ lists yearly and we have responded by offering the market the cleanest strawberries grown in the cleanest environment, which is free of pesticides. High demand confirms we are fulfilling a need.”
Not only are the strawberries pesticide free, but Spano remarks how they are the most flavorful strawberries available in the market. “Due to the control we have over the growing conditions, we offer the most consistent and flavorful strawberries. This is a significant benefit as strawberry quality tends to vary based on season.”
Reduced travel time
Smuccies are grown in Kingsville, ON, a region that typically brings in strawberries from California. “We are offering a product with significantly less travel miles. Reduced travel miles increase shelf-life as well as quality of this extremely delicate berry,” Spano commented.
Lettuce expansion
In addition to the success story for strawberries, Mucci Farms is also in the process of expanding its lettuce acreage. “We are consistently sold out of lettuce and have more retailers that are interested in our product,” mentioned Bert Mucci. “We are currently harvesting 30,000 heads of lettuce per week out of a roughly two-acre facility. To accommodate increased demand, we are in the process of expanding to eight acres, allowing us to harvest 200,000 – 250,000 heads per week.” The six-acre expansion will be completed this fall. As with the initial two acres, the expanded facility will also be equipped with state-of-the-art proprietary automation and robotics, allowing for maximum production and yield.
The expansion is mainly driven by the popularity of Naked Leaf™ Living Lettuce. “It comes with the root intact, allowing leaves to stay fresh and continue to grow if placed in a cup of water,” Mucci said. Consumers are interested in a pesticide-free and long-shelf life product. “Living Lettuce lasts for up to 14 days.” In addition to the current Naked Leaf™ Living Lettuce offering, Mucci Farms is in the process of developing Naked LeafTM Salad Kits.
Lettuce farm
Southern Exposure
The team at Mucci Farms is looking forward to this week's Southern Exposure show. “As we do every year, we have fun with the SEPC theme. Since “Produce is King” alludes to Elvis, we chose to put a spin on “Jailhouse Rock” by naming our theme “Greenhouse Rock”. We’ve created a custom booth to reflect the time period and used vinyl records, an old school microphone and creative artwork to bring it to life,” says Ajit Saxena, Digital Media Coordinator at Mucci Farms. “Jailhouse Rock” was re-written as “Greenhouse Rock” and an authentic theme song was recorded, highlighting Mucci’s products and presence at the SEPC. Visit booth #448 to see how “Produce is King”.
For more information:
Ajit Saxena
Mucci Farms
Tel: (+1) 519-326-8881
Publication date: 2/26/2018
Author: Marieke Hemmes
Copyright: www.freshplaza.com
Organic Certification For Hydroponic Systems
Organic Certification For Hydroponic Systems
The U.S. Department of Agriculture has ruled that hydroponic and aquaponic products remain eligible for organic certification.
By Lydia Noyes | Spring 2018
The National Organic Standards Board has ruled that hydroponic and aquaponic products will continue to be eligible for organic certification.
Photo by Getty Images/LouisHiemstra
As hydroponic and aquaponic farms have flourished across the country in recent years, debates about their suitability for organic certification have reached a fever pitch. This past November, the National Organic Standards Board came to a decision on one of the most divisive topics in sustainable farming: Should plants qualify for organic certification if they’re grown without soil? Through a series of close votes, the board — an advisory committee to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) — ruled that hydroponic and aquaponic products will continue to be eligible for organic certification.
To be clear, this vote doesn’t change the standards in place. Hydroponic and aquaponic systems already qualified for certification, but their increasing prevalence has made this standard controversial among many traditional organic farmers, who argue that the lack of soil used with these growing techniques means they don’t meet the USDA’s definition of organic. (Hydroponic systems grow plants in water-based nutrients, while aquaponic systems combine hydroponics and fish farming. Both techniques often grow produce indoors.)
The subject of organic certification is quite contentious. Conceptualized in the mid-20th century, the organic movement originally idealized a “closed-loop” farm system, or a property that produced almost everything it needed on-site. Based on the notion that a well-managed farm would rely foremost on natural processes, organic farming was fundamentally about maintaining and improving soil health.
Today, organic certification has drifted away from this original premise. The requirements for certification focus less on a natural farming philosophy and more on what isn’t allowed — namely, synthetic chemical inputs, such as fertilizers and pesticides. This creates a considerable gray area for farming practices that technically follow organic certification requirements but ethically and/or technologically may fall short of their original intent. While hydroponics don’t pollute the soil with toxic chemicals, they also don’t improve it, mainly because no soil is involved. This leads to the crucial question: How do you categorize a farm operation that uses sustainable techniques, but doesn’t benefit the land it’s on?
Beyond the philosophical tensions, organic farmers are worried about the financial impacts of making certification more inclusive. Organic food sales reached $43 billion in the United States in 2016. Because large-scale greenhouses are cheaper to operate than soil-based farms, hydroponically-grown organic tomatoes can undercut soil-grown ones and drive down prices. Moreover, because hydroponic operations don’t need to undergo a three-year “transition period,” as field-based farms do before putting certified products on the market, they can benefit from a faster return on their investments.
While the controversy over organic certification ostensibly pits farmers with similar goals against each other, the stakes are high. The recent decision may have awarded hydroponics more credibility in the sustainable-growing sphere, but it hardly signals the end of the debate.
VH Hydroponics Pilots New Line of Hydroponic Growing Cabinets in Student Union
VH Hydroponics Pilots New Line of Hydroponic Growing Cabinets in Student Union
February 21, 2018
A demo unit of Vertical Harvest Hydroponics’ new indoor gardening cabinets is located in UAA’s Student Union. The university is one of only two places that the hydroponic growing cabinets are located in Anchorage, along with the Anchorage Museum.
VH Hydroponics is an agricultural technology company headquartered in Anchorage. The company, founded in 2014, has a mission to “provide an alternate way to source fresh, locally grown and sustainable produce in remote communities, year-round,” as stated on their website.
Hydroponics is the process of growing plants in a nutrient dissolved solution rather than in soil. This method offers many advantages, notably location flexibility and ability to produce crops year round. Other pros include no weather dependency, little to no bugs or weeds, less water consumption than typical farms and the ability to grow a large variety of crops.
The idea for installing a hydroponic cabinet in the university was presented by a group of students to the Green Fee Board. Many other hydroponic-based proposals have been brought to the board in the past, but according to Heather Jesse, chair for the Green Fee Board, this idea rose above the rest.
“Hydroponics is one of the most popular student ideas and one that is frequently presented to the board via grant proposals,” Jesse said. “This was the most feasible hydroponics proposal we’ve ever received, financially and physically. We were more than happy to fund it.”
After the efforts of the Green Fee Board, partnered with Student Activities and Commuter Programs, the hydroponic cabinet is now up and running in the Student Union. It is currently growing chard, kale, lettuce, chamomile, mint and strawberries.
Produce grown in the cabinet will help support the Daily Den. The program offers free food and beverages to students twice a day, Monday through Thursday. Vegetables produced in the cabinet will be introduced into the meals made at the Daily Den.
Jesse found the decision to install the cabinet extremely beneficial to students who take advantage of the Daily Den. She also believes it is a good use of the Green Fee, a $3 fee collected from every UAA student taking at least three credits on campus.
“As a student who frequently eats at the Daily Den, I think the benefits are very clear. Almost all of the meals I’ve had there have been carbs, frozen or both,” Jesse said. “Being able to provide students with proper nutrition, fresh vegetables and fruit is a priceless opportunity, especially since the Daily Den serves so many students each year.”
The growing cabinets are a new and smaller alternative to VH Hydroponics’ main product, the Containerized Growing System. These 40-foot units function relatively the same as the cabinets, although much larger. They are used in grocery stores, restaurants and hospitals.
Joe Selmont, a member of the Green Fee Board, sees the current cabinet system as an investment that could continue to grow in the future.
“In the long term, our little experiment with hydroponics holds potential to inspire confidence for the university to purchase a larger system that could eventually make us more self-sufficient, while simultaneously providing much needed nourishment to food-insecure students,” Selmont said.
If the cabinet proves successful, Kojin Tranberg, Commuter Programs coordinator within the Student Life and Leadership office, hopes to invest in one of the larger, commercial hydroponic units. This investment would also involve the organization’s campus partners, Seawolf Dining and the UAA Culinary Arts program.
One of Tranberg’s main focuses is food insecurity on-campus. This topic is one of the motivations behind the installation of the hydroponic cabinet. Tranberg believes the new growing unit will initiate student conversations about the topic.
“I personally have the ambition to stamp out hunger on campus,” Tranberg said. “This hydroponic garden is a key part in bringing awareness to the issue of food insecurity.”
Menasha's Fork Farms is Changing The Face of Farming -- And Helping Schools, Pantries
Menasha's Fork Farms is Changing The Face of Farming -- And Helping Schools, Pantries
February 21, 2018
What's opening now, and in the coming months, in the Fox Cities? (Maureen Wallenfang/USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin.) Wochit
MENASHA - This isn’t your father’s farm.
Or anyone’s vision of a farm, really, outside of a science fiction novel.
This “farm” of indoor plastic growing modules looks like it came off a spaceship.
Fork Farms is a small, young, agriculture technology company that manufactures plastic hydroponic growing modules.
Inside each one, ruffled rows of lettuce grow vertically without a speck of soil or sunlight.
Fork Farms grows lettuce around LED lights inside a module. (Photo: Dan Powers/USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin)
Fork Farms moved into its current home at 1101 W. Midway Road this spring and has 16 indoor growing machines. It's in a former flooring store just west of Appleton Road near Piggly Wiggly in Menasha.
Prior to this, inventor Alex Tyink operated out of his apartment and garage. He’s spent eight years working on the modules while holding down a day job. He's never taken a dime from the company and has operated on a slim investment of less than $20,000 gathered from family and friends.
“I believe in food. I know that sounds corny,” said Tyink, 30. “I felt better when I started eating good food instead of burgers and fries. A simple thing can make so much of a difference in our lives.”
He went to school to become an opera singer, not an engineer, so he said the years tinkering were spent learning, evolving and experimenting to get the system right.
Since 2009, he has made 28 different prototypes and invested thousands of hours into the venture.
Social service
Working on the growing machines satisfied his desire to create something that mattered, he said.
Growing fresh produce this way can make healthy food more accessible and create a connection between kids and food.
“Our mission is to put these in food deserts and low-income schools,” he said. “The social service side is very important to me. I never want to lose that.”
Tyink co-founded the company with his father, Steve Tyink, who is vice president of business innovation at Miron Construction, and John Brogan, CEO of Bank of Kaukauna.
His two employees have taken equity before paychecks. Commercial Horizons gave him a sweet lease on the building.
Fork Farms is a limited liability company owned by a group of 14 people, including employees Gil Shaw and Stewart McLain.
Shaw was formerly hydroponics manager at Riverview Gardens and is now farm manager here. McLain, formerly a music teacher in Seattle, is operations manager.
Shaw said the opportunity to join Fork Farms was too good to pass up.
“It’s one of the most innovative systems out there. It’s in a class of its own,” Shaw said.
“This is a real game changer because of its water use, efficiency and space. The potential of this is extraordinary. It can revolutionize arid land growing.”
Fork Farms' growing system already has one patent and two more pending.
Growing modules
The company's first 20 growing modules have been sold to schools, food pantries and individuals.
Local schools include Mount Olive Lutheran School, Fox Valley Lutheran High School, Appleton North High School and New Directions Learning Community in Kaukauna.
At North, the machine was purchased with a grant from the Appleton Education Foundation.
"We love having our machine in the classroom," said Matt Hechel, North's alternative education coordinator. "We have a few students who have taken charge of being our main gardeners."
"I like learning about the hydroponic system and am really surprised how easy it is to grow our produce right in our classroom," said J.T. Zubich, one of the students in charge of the module. "It would be cool if every classroom was able to do this."
Students have eaten salads in the classroom from their harvest. Students and staff have taken lettuce home.
“It’s an improvement on the traditional school garden model,” Tyink said. “It’s highly productive in growing food and makes a nutritional difference in schools. We’re improving the quality of lunch lines.”
Besides making and selling the growing modules, Fork Farms grows lettuce in its Menasha headquarters and sells it to several hotels and a caterer. Its first and largest buyer has been the Best Western Premier Bridgewood Resort Hotel in Neenah.
"We use their Fox Valley blend of lettuces for lunch buffets and catering, and their buttterhead lettuce for weddings and corporate events," said Ryan Batley, food and beverage director. "What's so great about it is that it's local. It stays fresher than anything else we're getting. It's very clean and crisp. A great product. The cost is a little higher, but we think it's money well-spent."
Batley said they use whole butterhead lettuce heads on each plate for weddings.
"One bride called us back and said her guests were still commenting on it weeks later. She said 'I never thought people would remember the salad,'" Batley said.
For-profit/nonprofit partnership
Tyink’s day job is director of programming at Feeding America Eastern Wisconsin. He previously field tested his growing machines while working at Goodwill Industries of North Central Wisconsin.
Feeding America now provides ancillary support to Fork Farms in what Tyink calls a “for-profit/nonprofit partnership.”
While Fork Farms is a for-profit business, he said it’s “mission-driven” to educate and feed people.
Growing modules cost $3,500. Feeding America provides education, training and a year’s worth of supplies for an additional $1,500.
Each vertical module can grow 288 plants in a four-by-four-foot space, Shaw said. Each machine can grow 15 to 20 pounds of lettuce in three to four weeks.
Indoor farming has been in the national news recently with the large-scale Plenty operation, a Jeff Bezos-backed indoor farm now expanding into the Seattle area.
But at the same time, some indoor farms have struggled.
FarmedHere, for example, closed its indoor hydroponic growing operation near Chicago earlier this year, reportedly because of high labor and energy costs.
At Fork Farms, Tyink keeps a watchful eye on costs and is in the gener8tor’s gBETA accelerator coaching program for startups.
He said it’s self-sustaining and he hasn’t taken a bank loan.
One of the keys, he said, was keeping energy costs low with LED growing lights.
“All of my research started with energy efficiencies," he said. “We’re running at a higher resource efficiency rate.”
“We kept small and kept capitalization small. We haven’t gone after venture capital because we wanted to know what we had before we made promises.”
German Startup Leads The Way In Urban Farming
German Startup Leads The Way In Urban Farming
Nadja Beschetnikova
February 22, 2018
Living in a big city has its advantages, but there’re still a lot of controversies when it comes to the food market.
Many city residents are unsatisfied with the quality of food products and worry about the source of the produce. With the increasing interest in healthy food and growing concerns about food allergies, many consumers look for fresh and artisan produce. There are a lot of supermarkets in the city but if you are looking for clean organic products, you should either pay the extra money or get in with a farmer.
Infarm, a Berlin-based startup, spotted this gap between consumers and producers and developed vertical farming tech for grocery stores, restaurants, and local distribution centers.
Infarm builds in-store farming units and software to manage the growth of crops. The farms are operated by Infarm’s own platform for monitoring thousands of different data points and personalizing the farm to respective needs, which ensures that the produce is being grown as near to perfect as possible. Each module has its own ecosystem that tailors light spectrum, temperature, pH levels, and nutrients to ensure the maximum expression of each plant.
The glass-walled farm serves basically as an incubator for herbs, lettuce, or other vegetables. With a new technology it becomes possible to have a 365 days a year harvest with any varieties you only wish. The modular system makes the farm very flexible. You can adjust it by adding more modules or customize it, according to your requirements. So the technology is very user-friendly and can be useful for a wide range of customers.
Infarm says, they are the new generation of farmers, and the city is their farm.
Infarm states that one farm can have an output of 1,200 plants a month.
The start-up currently has more than 50 farms running around Berlin in supermarkets, restaurants, and warehouses. The startup has already placed its farm in German supermarket chains METRO and EDEKA, two of Germany’s largest food retailers.
The start-up was founded in 2013 by Osnat Michaeli, and brothers Erez and Guy Galonska. Since then the company has grown from a mobile vertical farm in an old 1955 Airstream trailer to a team of over 100 INFARMers.
“Behind our farms is a robust hardware and software platform for precision farming,” explainedOsnat Michaeli. “Each farming unit is its own individual ecosystem, creating the exact environment our plants need to flourish. We are able to develop growing recipes that tailor the light spectrums, temperature, pH, and nutrients to ensure the maximum natural expression of each plant in terms of flavor, color, and nutritional quality”.
Innovation in agricultural segment seem to be very attractive for the investors. Recently Infarm has secured a $25 million Series A funding round led by Balderton Capital, with other names such as Mons Investments, Cherry Ventures, and LocalGlobe. Additionally the startup won a €2.5 million grant awarded by the European Commission. Totally the Berlin-based company raised to date $35 million.
With this financial support Infarm plans to bring their farms to other German cities and establish an international network, offering their (r)evolutionary taste for customers in Paris, Copenhagen, London.
The goal: 1,000 Infarm vertical farms in operation globally by 2019’s end.
Infarm declares its mission to redefine what it means to eat well, reshape the landscape of cities, re-introduce forgotten or rare varieties, and re-empower the people to take ownership of their food.
The startup targets not only the European market. They want to introduce their healthy food for affordable prices around the world.
“Our ambition is to reach cities as far as Seattle in the United States or Seoul, South Korea with our urban farming network”, said Erez Galonska.
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In Less That 2 Days After Our Official Launch We Reached Our $15,000 Goal!
In Less That 2 Days After Our Official Launch We Reached Our $15,000 Goal!
I'm going through a range of emotions. Honestly, launching this Kickstarter campaign was a risky launch as it made us vulnerable and exposed. You all rallied and lifted us up to validate the farm! My heart is full.
I truly feel we are fighting the good fight, and we are not done! Now that we hit our goal of $15,000 it doesn't mean we are done. Consider this a challenge to see just how much money we can raise!
Our campaign's success is getting people's attention and doing a great job of exposing our story. The video below was created by my urban farming mentor, Curtis Stone. Curtis is based in Canada and has over 190,000 followers on his YouTube Channel. In less than 24 hours this video has been watched over 8,500 times!
Curtis is pioneering urban farm around the world.
Watch to get his perspective on our issues...
Be on the lookout for stretch goals/rewards that will become available soon.
Please keep sharing our story/campaign through with your tribes. Thank you and let's keep on rocking!
Cheers!
Your Urban FarmHer, Jenny
Dear Local Government: Actions Speak Larger Than Words
Dear Local Government: Actions Speak Larger Than Words
Dogpatch Urban Gardens is a female-run urban farm located in Des Moines, Iowa. The farm is facing major hurdles due to changes in policy/regulations by the local county.
Des Moines, Iowa - February 2018: Dogpatch Urban Gardens is an urban farm in Des Moines, Iowa. We just finished our second growing season, and in 2018 we are facing more than $75,000 of imposed infrastructural changes resulting from misinformation from our local county.
In two years of business, Dogpatch Urban Gardens has produced over 12,000 pounds of organically grown produce for people in
Des Moines. The farm is enhancing the community yet the financial burdens from the county are making it hard for the business to be successful. In January, I was featured in the Des Moines Register as a “Person to Watch in 2018.”
Sadly, these challenges are not unique to our farm. When I talk with other farmers, many of them also have faced, or currently are experiencing, hardships resulting from unclear obligations to their local governments. Urban farming is especially challenging because we are doing something outside of the norm; this makes zoning, policies, and regulations challenging.
To make a long story short, our county originally treated our business using residential building code. A year after our operation was up-and-running the county changed their stance and has decided to require that the business now adheres to commercial codes yet not rezoning us from residential. This is in opposition to the farmstand classification, which was how we were categorized by our county and were the guidelines we were told followed. With the change in classification to a commercial business, we are being required to add public restrooms (new septic), fencing, water retention berms, and landscaping. We also must demo and repave surfaces, create a site plan, and more. While we still meet the county’s definition of a farm stand, they told us we are no longer classified as such, and we must comply with their commercial building requirements.
These struggles with our government seem contradictory. The state of Iowa is a part of the “Healthiest State Initiative” and the main page on the website says, “Iowa is #19 in the nation when it comes to being physically, emotionally, and mentally healthy. Our ranking has moved since the Initiative was announced, but our overall well-being score has been fairly constant the past five years. To claim the #1 spot, we have work to do. It’s an ambitious goal, but with your help, we can change Iowa and show the rest of the nation the road to wellness.” If the state of Iowa is placing such an emphasis on health, it seems natural for the state to want to facilitate an urban farm. Our farm provides access to healthy, organically grown food, beautifies the land, provides employment and volunteer opportunities for people to be physically active, provides educational opportunities for growing food, and more. Having an urban farm in a neighborhood exemplifies what the Healthiest State Initiative is trying to promote.
Many cities in the state of Iowa also used to participate in a program called the Blue Zones Project. The goal of this organization is to, “help transform communities across the U.S. into areas where the healthy choice is easy and people live longer with a higher quality of life.” Our urban farm is a great example of the foundation of The Blue Zones project. Happy, and healthy, communities tend to be more active, have an environment where healthy food is available, have decreased stress levels, limits urban sprawl and invests in beauty. If our farm isn’t a good example of a way to make a community happier (thus increasing health and quality of life), then I don’t know what is!
I was looking for some guidance/input on how to work through our county issues, so I reached out to the Blue Zones organization. Their response to my inquiry was, “Thank you so much for your note and the great work you are doing. Our time in Iowa delivered measurable impact at both the state level and community level that to date has delivered over 650 million dollars in grants, gifts, and direct economic impact for an investment of 25 million. As a reward for this work and outcomes, Blue Cross Blue Shield and the state decided not to continue our partnership which tells us that leadership doesn't understand the value of what we and your work delivers. I'm so sorry for what is happening. I would continue to share value of what your work delivers and stick to your guns!”
In an attempt to raise money to lessen our debt load we are taking on due to misinformation by Polk County, we are launching a Kickstarter (crowdfunding) campaign. The Kickstarter campaign will go live on Monday, February 26th. The campaign is active for 30 days, and if the funding goal is not reached we don’t get any money.
Click Here to watch our Kickstarter video
For more information, visit the Dogpatch Urban Gardens website at www.dogpatchurbangardens.com
Your Urban FarmHer, Jenny Quiner jenny@dogpatchurbangardens.com
515-802-4304
https://www.facebook.com/DogpatchUrbanGardens/ https://www.instagram.com/dogpatch_urban_gardens Images:
Independence LED Lighting Ready With Program To Back Changes To SNAP
Independence LED Lighting Ready With Program To Back Changes To SNAP
20 February 2018
Greater Philadelphia
Independence LED Lighting stated that it was shovel ready for a pilot program in Philadelphia to support proposed changes to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Programme (SNAP), included in the President’s Budget for Financial Year 2019.
The White House recently unveiled the updated Budget, which had a path to include American-grown foods provided directly to households.
Mick Mulvaney, director, White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB), said that the administration’s plan would not only save the government money but also provide people with more nutritious food than they have now.
The concept of an America’s Harvest Box, delivered each month as part of the SNAP, is based on volume purchasing to reduce unit costs. Over 16 million American households currently receive some form of assistance through SNAP.
Individually, they do not have the buying power that would come with government volume purchases. The logistics of the proposed programme are naturally very complicated and detractors should not dismiss the idea outright. With economies of scale, SNAP recipients could receive more nutritious food at lower costs.
“Cost-effective change involves challenging the status quo, and we are pleased to leverage our American-made technology to launch a pilot project that will demonstrate the benefits of next-generation future food for SNAP recipients,” said Charlie Szoradi, chairman and chief executive officer, Independence LED Lighting.
American innovation
Independence LED Lighting is one of the first authentic Buy American Act- (BAA) compliant LED lighting manufacturers.
Since moving its production from China to southeastern Pennsylvania in 2010, the company has provided its United States-made light-emitting diode (LED) technology across the public and private sectors.
Building owners and managers typically save 50 percent or more on electricity, and Independence LED Lighting also has developed advanced LED grow lights to optimize indoor farming.
In conjunction with indoor farm partners, the company produces vegetables at lower costs than Americans pay at grocery stores.
By adjusting the light wavelengths of its LEDs, the company can enhance growth by plant type and optimize photosynthetic photon flux density (PPDF).
After more than two years of research and development (R&D), the first consumer received, via overnight mail, the first delivery of live microgreens in November 2017 at 20 percent below the grocery store cost, including the shipping cost.
Microgreens are an excellent addition to any diet, because they often have 40 times more nutrients than their mature counterparts.
The live aspect is important in this example because the vegetables last over two weeks in home refrigerators and retain more of their nutrients than harvested produce.
Local delivery would replace overnight shipping for the majority of the SNAP programme, given that one or more indoor farms would be in or near each major US city.
In addition to the food and cost advantages for the government and SNAP recipients, American manufacturing, indoor farming and produce delivery all help create more job opportunities for SNAP recipients.
Domestic job creation is naturally the top aspect of US president Donald Trump’s Buy American and Hire American Executive Order, signed in April 2017.
Pilot concept
Imagine that there is not necessarily just one American Harvest Box for each family each month, but multiple drop-shipments from a coalition of private sector companies.
The participating companies provide farm-direct and factory-direct food to the families.
Perishable vegetables are not referenced as part of the box concept in the budget, but many SNAP families live in neighborhoods with limited access to fresh produce.
These food deserts are a health challenge for Americans. Independence LED Lighting envisions starting with an indoor farm pilot programme in Philadelphia and then rolling out to each major metropolitan market.
Local indoor farms reduce transportation costs. Currently, California produces over 90 percent of the vegetables in the United States, so reducing 2,000 miles down to under 20 miles is one of the very real ways to generate savings.
Plus, indoor farming is weather-proof for year-round harvesting that is fresh versus truck-ripened.
The reduced transportation also reduces carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, for cleaner air and environmental sustainability.
For the pilot programme, Independence LED Lighting will use veggie drop-off days as opportunities to share health tips and recipes.
The programme will also train SNAP recipients for new jobs, build a youth mentor programme for next-generation ambassadors of healthy living, and provide reports on performance metrics.
The intended outcome is lower-cost food, healthier food, engaged members of the community and measurable results.
Startup Community Brainstorms To Save A Nonprofit ‘Vertical’ Farm In Midtown Anchorage
Startup Community Brainstorms To Save A Nonprofit ‘Vertical’ Farm In Midtown Anchorage
Author: Naomi Klouda, Alaska Journal of Commerce
February 22, 2018
Greenhouse manager Ryan Witten checks plants growing in vertical hydroponic towers while wearing sunglasses to protect his eyes from bright LED grow lights at Alaska Seeds of Change on Wednesday, Jan. 11, 2017, in Midtown Anchorage. (Erik Hill / Alaska Dispatch News)
Managers of an Anchorage hydroponic farm at risk of shutting down in March made an unusual move to save their operation.
Seeds of Change, near Arctic Boulevard and 26th Avenue, occupies a 10,000-square-foot warehouse designed for high-tech agriculture. During its first year of operation, it served 18 young employees through a program for at-risk youth at the Anchorage Community Mental Health Service.
They've sold their first produce at farmers markets and to local restaurants: a dozen varieties of lettuce, chives, mint, kale, and bok choy.
"Our program has not generated enough revenue to be self-supporting," said Ryan Witten, the community development manager at Seeds of Change. "We were told we have funding through the end of March, by the ACMHS board.
Unless we have a plan for the future, they would be forced to shut down. That is absolutely not what the board wants to do."
[How an indoor farm in Midtown Anchorage could help at-risk youth]
They reached out to the University of Alaska Business Enterprise Institute for ideas on saving Seeds of Change.
That led to calling on Nigel Sharp, the University of Alaska Anchorage Global Entrepreneur in Residence.
Sharp, the university's first GEIR and one of only a handful in the nation, has held startup weekends, technology sprints and other events to guide tech-savvy startups since arriving in Alaska last June. But this was the first chance to put together a think tank of expertise moving from theory to a hands-on rescue of a distressed business.
Sharp got the pieces in motion to launch the first Growspace Social Business Catalyzer event Feb. 16 that began at the Seeds of Change warehouse. He invited the entrepreneurship community, including BEI staff, Alyse Daunis of Launch Alaska and Rachel Miller, Alaska Pacific University's School of Business' Walter Hickel Endowed Professor.
Peer outreach worker Quavon Bracken, 19, places plant seedlings on a strip of wicking material as he loads a hydroponic tower at Alaska Seeds of Change on Wednesday, Jan. 11, 2017, in Midtown. (Erik Hill / Alaska Dispatch News)
Eight youth from Seeds of Change also attended, as did officials from ACMHS.
"The project is short on both time and money and yet serves an incredibly important mission for our community," Sharp wrote in his invitation. "Join us for the Growspace program where we'll deep dive into developing new sustainable business models which will end with a presentation to their board of directors for implementation."
A "catalyzer" works with participating organizations that includes social enterprises and nonprofits, to rapidly develop business models, customer validation and funding source strategies.
About 32 professionals turned out for the 10-hour catalyzer at the Anchorage Communications Center the morning of Feb. 17. Sharp said he started from a list of about 160 entrepreneurial resource people. The kickoff event the day before brought out about 100 of them, he said.
The main goal was to come up with a transition plan to present to the board by the end of March. Then the board will make a decision about whether to proceed or shut down, Sharp said.
"We came up with three major elements: fundraising, functioning as an educational business model and outsourcing Seeds of Change staff and facilities to partner organizations," Sharp said. "A fourth element is to do agricultural tourism. It's a novel opportunity to visit an indoor hydroponic farm."
Chervil, also known as French parsley, awaits thinning at Alaska Seeds of Change on Wednesday, Jan. 11, 2017, in Midtown. (Erik Hill / Alaska Dispatch News)
The managers of Seeds of Change, Witten and Sundance Visser, were energized by the ideas.
"We split into six work groups," Witten said. "First we did team building, then talked about challenges with the existing structure. We looked at other organizations that do social impact work working with youth. We all did work ahead of time, researching. Then we came up with ideas in the work groups."
The four action plan ideas they ended up with are all credible, workable ideas that link well together, Witten said.
The first one focuses on fundraising and marketing.
"A lot of people still don't know about Seeds of Change. Since the community is still becoming aware of it, it's important to raise awareness and do fundraising, to give a longer runway training and education programs for more youth," Witten said.
The plan calls for providing educational tours and classes on how to grow year-round indoors.
"It's a pretty new thing to do. If we can help other people shorten their learning curve, that's a good opportunity for us," Witten said.
A second plan involves opportunities for leasing space. Far North Fungi, a mushroom growing business, is looking for more space and showed up at the meeting.
"They need a place that gives more heat for the mushrooms to grow and we need more CO2 for our plants, which the mushrooms give off," Witten said. "In the coming weeks, we will be talking about leasing space."
A third idea is to develop tourism opportunities inside Seeds of Change.
A fourth idea is to sublease with a partner business such as a software developer who can create farm-planning software. They can also partner with other growers for food distribution from the location.
Seeds of Change features 1,500 growing "towers," vertical columns containing thousands of plants. Though the first seeds were planted before Christmas in 2016, the dream dates back a decade of planning by Dr. Michael Sobocinski, the chief operating officer of ACMHS.
Hundreds of vertical hydroponic grow towers at Alaska Seeds of Change. (Erik Hill / Alaska Dispatch News/File)
Seeds is part of the ACMHS Transition Age Youth Continuum of Services. Staff are 16 to 26 years old, and generally are coming out of foster care, mental health treatment, the juvenile justice system or were formerly homeless or Alaska Youth Advocates who use the space as a healthy drop-in center. Sobocinski's dream was to give them a transition point or seeds for changing their own lives through the nurturing environment of planting.
ACMHS bought the building in 2014 and renovated it at a cost of about $2.9 million, including the purchase of equipment from the Alaska Department of Health and Social Services from the "Bring the Kids Home Fund," said Jessica Cochran, the executive coordinator at ANCMS. An Alaska Mental Health Trust grant paid for the staffing and startup.
Seeds of Change's growing operation is energy efficient thanks to the investment in the latest technology: low energy usage even with dozens of grow lights, maximum use of space due to the vertical towers and an irrigation system that recirculates water. Even soil costs are reduced since the plants grow in a "beds" made of recycled-plastic wicking material.
The goal is to produce 70 tons of produce per year. But the expense of operating the business has far exceeded any profits, Witten said.
"There's been a shift in the way that nonprofits have operated in the past. We have been doing our best and we recognize we need more support, working with Nigel Sharp and the UAA Business Enterprise Institute," Witten added. "I was really impressed at the caliber of people in the room. It was tens of thousands of dollars donated in time to us, especially over the last weekend."
Sharp said social-impact businesses — enterprises that combine a social cause in either a for-profit or nonprofit structure — are becoming a new vehicle for philanthropy in the U.S. They also represent a $310 billion US industry sector that is expected to grow to $500 billion over the next 10 years.
"This represents a huge opportunity for building impactful businesses," Sharp said. The consequence is that more resources will be shared among entrepreneurs to create working business models.