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Superior Fresh At The Forefront Of Aquaponics Trend
By Noah Fish nfish@agrinews.com
December 8, 2018
Brandon Gottsacker, chief operations officer for Superior Fresh, describes the facility that grows salmon and greens in the middle of western Wisconsin countryside. | Chuck Rupnow/Eau Claire Leader-Telegram
“To grow what we have on about two-acres under glass, you’d need about 60-acres of conventional land,” said Kurt Wagaman, general manager of Superior Fresh. The fish house at the Superior Fresh facility, a Wisconsin-based aquaponics firm based out of Hixton, Wis.
HIXTON, Wisconsin
If you find yourself eating locally grown, organic lettuce this winter and wonder how that’s possible, it’s probably because of a Wisconsin-based aquaponics firm.
On a Native Restoration Sanctuary in the Coulee Region, about 60-miles from the Minnesota border, the company Superior Fresh has built a recirculated aquaculture facility and hydroponic greenhouse.
For those unfamiliar with aquaponics, the most basic definition is that it’s the combination of aquaculture (to raise and harvest fish) and hydroponics (to grow plants without soil). In even simpler terms, the fish waste feeds the plants and the plants clean the water for the fish.
The Superior Fresh facility uses nitrate-rich water from fish held in the aquaculture tanks to fertilize and water leafy greens in its greenhouse, which has recently doubled in size to 250,000 square-feet. The company is able to produce fresh products year-round, while maintaining a water-sustaining zero-discharge.
You’d be hard-pressed to find an organic, sustainable operation that can match the latitude of Superior Fresh.
“We have no chemicals, no antibiotics, no pesticides and are non-GMO — even our fish food is certified organic,” said Kurt Wagaman, general manager of Superior Fresh. “To grow what we have on about two-acres under glass, you’d need about 60-acres of conventional land.”
The company grows more than 100,000 pounds of leafy greens a month, Wagaman said. That ranges from several different varieties of head lettuces to salad greens.
“A good way to imagine that, is that it’d be the equivalent of roughly 32,000 heads of lettuce every day,” Wagaman said.
Inputs vs. outputs
Steelhead trout and Atlantic salmon are also raised under the same roof. Superior Fresh raises about one pound of fish for every 1.1 pounds of food that’s put into the system. According to Brandon Gottsacker, president of Superior Fresh, that’s a very efficient feed conversion ratio.
“On top of that, we’re using all that nutrient-rich water that the fish pass on to grow an additional 10-pounds of produce,” said Gottsacker. “That’s 1 pound of input into the system and 10 pounds of healthy organic food out of the system. So that’s flipping the scales with agriculture inputs versus outputs, and it’s pretty special.”
Wagaman said Superior Fresh hopes to add an herb line and is investigating the production of microgreens.
If you’re looking for Superior Fresh lettuce, you don’t have to go far. Wagaman said the firm’s lettuce can be found at any Kwik Trip location. Superior Fresh living butterhead lettuce and baby spring mix also are available in more than 600 stores throughout Wisconsin and Minnesota, and the company’s washed leaf lettuce mixes are available at more than 30 stores throughout Wisconsin.
This summer, Superior Fresh sold its first batch of land-farmed salmon at Festival Foods stores in Wisconsin.
Wanek family investment
The state-of-the-art aquaponic center in rural Wisconsin was built in 2015 by the Wanek family, owners of the Arcadia-based Ashley Furniture. The Waneks invested more than $100 million in the facility.
Interested in sustainable agriculture, Todd and Karen Wanek recruited Gottsacker, a distant relative of theirs with a degree in biological sciences, fisheries and aquaculture from the University of Wisconsin—Stevens Point.
“We had a common interest, and felt there was a huge need for sustainable agriculture and raising sustainable protein,” Gottsacker said of his link to the Waneks.
To gain the knowledge he’d need to run a commercial operation, Gottsacker went to West Virginia to work as an aquaculture technician for the Freshwater Institute of The Conservation Fund. He credits Steven Summerfelt, the director of aquaculture systems research for the institute, for spending a year training him. Summerfelt now serves as the chief science officer for Superior Fresh.
“He took me more or less under his wing, and showed me the ropes,” said Gottsacker. “He showed me the landscape of aquaculture and we visited sites all over North America.”
Gottsacker returned to Wisconsin in 2013 to work with the Waneks on a business model, and how to approach the capital intensive startup. During that time they also decided to integrate hydroponics with aquaculture.
“With Todd and Karen’s help, assistance and great background and understanding in business, we were able to put together what we think is the best plan,” said Gottsacker. “To not only have a successful business, but to do it sustainably.”
Growing trend
This week, Gottsacker and Wagaman were in Miami for the annual Aquaculture Innovation Workshop, where leaders from the industry are able to network.
This was the sixth workshop for Gottsacker. He said it’s amazing to see how much the aquaculture industry has grown in that time. Six years ago, the workshop had about 50 attendees and just a few commercial companies. This year he said there were around 20 companies.
According to the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development, there are now 40 aquaponics facilities in the state.
“We’re proud to be the first ones to really take that same model in aquaculture and integrate it with commercial hydroponics application,” Gottsacker said. “There’s a huge need for it, and this type of farming is going to continue to grow.”
Tags Hydroponics Agriculture Economics Sanctuary Fresh Product Greenhouse
Restoration Facility Aquaculture Gardening Greens Fish Romaine Produce Natural Food Ceo Karen Todd Wanek Steven Summerfelt Brandon Gottsacker Wisconsin
Commerce Company Botany Store Kurt Wagaman Food Superior Fresh Firm
Noah Fish - Agri News Reporter
Noah joined the Post Bulletin staff in 2018 as a regional and Agri News reporter, and has covered Southeast Minnesota as regional and sports reporter since 2016. He enjoys talking to farmers, playing basketball and watching HBO.
New Research Shows How Organic Farming Is Worse For Climate
Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden
One of the main aims of organic farming is to maximise the 'natural' aspects and minimise chemical interference when it comes to producing our food. But is it actually better for the environment?
A new study, published in Nature, looked at pea and wheat crops and it suggests the opposite. It claims that organic farms are worse for the climate, simply because they tend to take up more room. That means more deforestation, and less carbon getting pulled out of the air and stored in the ground, conclude the international team of researchers.
But to be clear, this research was limited to a couple of crops in just one region, so it's way too soon to make any broad sweeping statements about the entire industry. For their study, the team of scientists focused on the farming of organic peas and wheat in Sweden.
Primarily because no fertilisers are used, organic pea farming takes up more space than non-organic pea farming, and that can be a problem, depending on how that land would otherwise get used.
"Our study shows that organic peas, farmed in Sweden, have around a 50 percent bigger climate impact than conventionally farmed peas," says one of the researchers, Stefan Wirsenius from Chalmers University of Technology. "For some foodstuffs, there is an even bigger difference – for example, with organic Swedish winter wheat the difference is closer to 70 percent."
The team developed a "carbon opportunity cost" metric for assessing the carbon footprint of certain types of land use, charting carbon dioxide emissions against how much food is produced. For organic farms, that ratio lags behind non-organic farms. Few previous studies have considered how carbon storage in vegetation and soil affects the environmental impact of organic farming, according to the researchers.
And the team isn't suggesting organic farming should be shut down at the earliest opportunity – rather that its use should be carefully considered. That consideration could extend to biofuels too, which also need more land to produce than conventional fuels.
According to sciencealert.com, the issue is particularly topical in Sweden, with the government pushing for an expansion in organic farming. These policy decisions have an impact on the climate across the globe, the researchers point out.
Publication date : 12/17/2018
Swedish Retailers Are Starting To Grow Herbs Under Their Stores
William McGrath, Amsterdam Office, Bord Bia – Irish Food Board
As Ron Finley once said in his Ted Talk on Gorilla Gardening - “To Grow your own food is like printing your own money”. Urban Gardening is by no means a new phenomenon – it has been around for hundreds of years. Back in the 1800s urban gardening took up much of the space that we see in gardens and parks in modern day cities and towns. Back then urban gardening was not a past-time or a way to improve your social media followership but instead it was a way to survive. People didn’t have the luxury of popping down to the supermarket to fetch a fresh bag of rocket lettuce or freshly pickled beetroot, instead they had to put in the hard graft and grow the food from scratch.
We have come so far in the last 100 years in relation to food technology and production that we have become comfortable with where our food comes from and how it gets to our dining tables.
Recent years have seen a revolution in the concept of urban gardening. Not only can we see urban garden plots popping up in suburbs of most cities but we can also see people growing plants and herbs in their homes and on their apartment balconies. In Stockholm alone, people have turned their balconies into a miniature oasis of speciality herbs, vegetables, and flowers. With urban populations around the world forecast to grow over the next decade, we can begin to see that people are conscious of where their food is coming from especially in an urban setting.
A new initiative created by the leading Swedish retailer ICA Kvantum - Liljeholmen in cooperation with Urban Oasis, sees retailers in Sweden beginning to grow their own micro-herbs and vegetables in the basement of their stores. The system used is a Hydroponic system, meaning they grow the crops in a water solution as opposed to soil, making the crops less reliant on fertilizers, pesticides and fungicides. Joakim Haraldsson – Sales manager stated “We can use this technique to cultivate anything we want. We are just a small step away from sun-ripened tomatoes and ripe strawberries for Christmas”. The idea came from a group of four students, who created the concept of Urban Oasis as a pilot project in University. The idea has continued to grow momentum in Sweden, with ICA Maxi Lindhagen also creating plans to grow speciality herbs in their basement using the same concept.
Source: Bord Bia
Publication date : 12/06/2018
NatureFreshTM Farms Gives Back to Leamington & Delta Communities This Holiday Season
Leamington, ON & Delta, OH (December 19th, 2018) –During the 2018 holiday season, the NatureFreshTM Farms team was busy spreading good will by volunteering with local partners, spreading cheer at holiday events, helping deserving families, and donating food to feed people in need. Giving back to the communities they grow in is an integral part of the NatureFreshTM Farms identity!
NatureFreshTM Farms kicked off the season of giving by sending a group of volunteers to Southwestern Ontario Gleaners, a charitable organization in Leamington, ON that distributes nutritious food to people in need both locally and internationally. NatureFreshTM Farms regularly donates Bell Peppers to this organization so that they can create healthy soup mix bags for charitable distribution. In one volunteer session, the NatureFreshTM Farms team was able to prepare roughly 25,000 servings of soup!
Leamington’s Annual Christmas Parade, which took place on November 24th this year, presented the NatureFreshTM Farms team with an opportunity to spread holiday cheer in a community they have called home for twenty years. The team gave their Greenhouse Education Center trailer a festive makeover for the event, and Peter Quiring, Matt Quiring, John Ketler, and dozens of their NatureFreshTM Farms employees accompanied the float, wishing happy holidays to families watching the parade.
To help their neighbors have a happy holiday season, NatureFreshTM Farms also ran a Holiday Sweepstakes campaign in Fulton County, Ohio, calling members of the community to nominate five deserving families to receive a helping hand. Cornelius Neufeld, Operations Manager at NatureFreshTM Farms USA, explained how this initiative got started: “Our employees in Ohio really drove this initiative – a lot of them knew neighbors or friends who would benefit from a helping hand during the holidays. They came to us asking what NatureFreshTM could do to support their community – so that’s where it all began.” The families who are chosen will each receive $500 grocery gift cards and NatureFreshTM Farms food baskets – they should expect the delivery of their care packages before Christmas Day.
All year long, NatureFreshTM Farms feeds their communities with healthy, flavorful Tomatoes, Bell Peppers, and Cucumbers, but their team decided to take things a step further this year and run a cross-company food drive during the holidays.
Collectively, they were able to gather 6,330 non-perishable food items for donation! Donations were made to The Salvation Army in Leamington, ON and The Open Door in Delta, OH, and they were made in Peter Quiring’s name – a gesture that he says was very humbling: “These donations were given in my name as a gift from my team – it was incredibly humbling to see how everyone was inspired to give back to people in need in our communities in such a meaningful way.”
One more initiative that NatureFreshTM Farms supported this holiday season was Talking Over Turkey. This Leamington-based initiative will bring hundreds of food boxes to families in need this holiday season throughout the Leamington, ON area. Through the donations of South Essex Fabricating, NatureFreshTM Farms, and NatureFreshTM Farms Sales, approximately 200 Leamington-based families will receive a healthy holiday food box.
Connecting with the communities they grow in is always a top priority at NatureFreshTM Farms, whether it’s the holiday season or not – as far as their team is concerned, year-round growing is just as important as year-round giving!
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About NatureFreshTM Farms
NatureFreshTM Farms has grown to become one of the largest independent, vertically integrated greenhouse vegetable growers in North America. Growing in Leamington, ON and Delta, OH, NatureFreshTM Farms prides itself on exceptional flavor & quality. Family owned since 1999, NatureFreshTM Farms ships fresh greenhouse grown produce year-round to key retailers throughout North America.
SOURCE:
NatureFreshTM Farms | info@naturefresh.ca
T: 519 326 1111 | www.naturefresh.ca
Young, Hip Farmers: Coming To A City Near You
People want to know where their food is coming from, and the agricultural industry is responding.
Date:December 3, 2018
Source:Purdue University
Summary:The population of American farmers is aging, but a study shows a new generation of farmers is flocking to cities with large populations, farmers markets and the purchasing power to support a market for niche goods.Share:
FULL STORY
Farmers markets in larger cities are supporting a new, younger faction of American farmers.
Credit: Purdue University/Mark Simons
If you've been to your neighborhood farmers market or seen a small "local" section pop up in your grocery store, you may have noticed a trend: People want to know where their food is coming from, and the agricultural industry is responding. The number of farmers markets in the U.S. has skyrocketed in recent years, but with an aging population of farmers, who's supporting this growth?
Enter the new American farmer. It's a term used by Andrew Flachs, an environmental anthropologist at Purdue University, to describe a movement of younger people new to agricultural work who do it for different reasons than the conventional farmer. They may be motivated through higher education, personal politics, disenchantment with urban life or in search of an authentic rural identity, he says.
In a new paper in the journal Rural Sociology, Flachs identifies several hot spots where this movement is really taking shape: the West Coast, central Texas and Oklahoma, central Florida and the Great Lakes region.
"We're seeing these hot spots pop up in the peripheries of hip cities," Flachs said. "Some of these places might seem obvious, like the West Coast and the northern Midwest around Madison, the Twin Cities and Chicago. But we also see some things that aren't totally expected."
Among the unexpected trends he found, east Texas and the southern Midwest are becoming increasingly important for this kind of agriculture. Appalachia, which has historically been a hub, essentially disappeared from the map.
In collaboration with Matthew Abel, an anthropologist at Washington University in St. Louis, Flachs built a model that counts how many traits associated with new American agrarianism appear in each county. With data from the USDA agricultural censuses from 1997 to 2012, they considered factors such as average sales per farm, number of certified organic farms, owners under age 34, number of farms selling directly to individuals, proximity to farmers markets and more.
The findings show that newer farmers appear to thrive on the outskirts of cities that provide high demand and purchasing power, a large population and healthy number of farmers markets.
The price of real estate is another important factor in determining where these markets can flourish. Rural developers have steadily increased farm real estate over the last few decades, which could deter newer farmers from settling down there. Concentrations of urban wealth drive up real estate costs in the city while simultaneously creating new niche markets, making space for younger farmers to exist between urban and rural landscapes.
Identifying where new and small farmers live and work will pave the way for further research on what's motivating this budding sector of the agricultural economy. New American farmers occupy an important intersection of niche marketing strategies, environmental politics and rural demographic change that could have a significant impact on food production and social life in agrarian landscapes, according to the paper.
Flachs points out that many new American farmers approach agriculture with hopes to embody a nostalgic past where food and environments were healthier, but others may be simply trying to make a living as farmers amid dissatisfaction with conventional agribusiness. Although it's easy to stereotype, it's unlikely that all new American farmers fit this description.
"Sometimes when we think about these farmers, we picture young people with liberal arts degrees looking for some kind of connection to the earth or wanting to work with their hands," Flachs said. "What we found is that that's probably not the most representative view of who these people actually are. I'm glad to have my stereotype broken up by the data."
Story Source:
Materials provided by Purdue University. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.
Journal Reference:
Andrew Flachs, Matthew Abel. An Emerging Geography of the Agrarian Question: Spatial Analysis as a Tool for Identifying the New American Agrarianism. Rural Sociology, 2018; DOI: 10.1111/ruso.12250
This Entrepreneur Left Wall Street to Count the World's Calories. Now She's Warning of a Global Food Disaster Equal to the Financial Crisis.
Menker's path to counting the world's calories is a bit unorthodox.
ARIA BENDIXDEC 8, 2018, 09.45 PM
Michael Cohen/Getty Images for The New York TimesSara Menker at the 2018 New York Times Dealbook in November.
Entrepreneur Sara Menker traded in her Wall Street gig to help solve the world's mounting food crisis.
In the next decade, she warned, the world's food shortage could rival the financial crisis or dot-com crash in terms of its threat to government stability and economic safety.
Menker's company, Gro Intelligence, aims to create a universal language that helps companies, countries, and industries earn money and eliminate food shortages.
When it comes to feeding every person on the planet, the world could fall short of demand by 214 trillion calories per year in less than a decade. That's more Big Macs than McDonald's has ever sold, said Sara Menker, the founder and CEO of the software company Gro Intelligence.
Menker often uses this reference to help people understand the extent of the global food crisis - a disaster she believes is imminent.
At Gro, she collects all sorts of data about the world's agricultural system, from what types of coffee beans are most lucrative to the rise of avocado exports in Mexico. Her company then uses that data to uncover major patterns, like the fact that grain prices tend to follow trends in the oil market.
The global food shortage is often defined by the weight of crops needed to feed all citizens. But the words "kilogram" or "ton" haven't done much to convey the threat of food scarcity around the world.
What matters more, according to Menker, is calories - the actual thing that keeps people from going hungry. But even this metric can be confusing.
"It becomes this massive problem that is physically not possible for a human being to process," said Menker.
Menker said her team floated countless comparisons, including the weight of elephants, before landing on the Big Mac. The anecdote made its way into her 2017 TED Talk, which has been viewed nearly 1.5 million times.
From Wall Street to counting calories
Menker's path to counting the world's calories is a bit unorthodox. Before Gro, she was a vice president at Morgan Stanley, where she worked in commodities trading. While there, she went from trading sacks of potatoes for gold to investing in farmland.
Like any good Wall Street exec, she started off looking for the best deal.
She soon realized that the best purchase wasn't a $1 per acre plot in a developing country, but a $15,000 to $20,000 per acre plot in the Midwest. That's because investing in the cheaper farmland required borrowing money, obtaining crop insurance, paying for her own trucking service, building her own roads, and leveling her own land.
Joe Raedle/Getty ImagesA worker dries green coffee beans at a farm in Costa Rica.
The process was inefficient. Governments and investors hadn't taken the time, or devoted the resources, to figure out how to grow smarter in these areas. With Menker's help, they can learn how how to fix the system, and begin investing in it.
At Gro, Menker said, "our greatest challenge is actually getting clients to look at all the data."
Climate data, she said, has been particularly difficult for people to understand, since it "has always sat in the hands of the scientific community."
By presenting information in a way that clients can digest, Gro has created something of a universal language in agriculture.
Food security involves everyone
Gro not only makes it easy for people like Wall Street traders to understand weather patterns and temperature trends, but it also demonstrates why these trends matter, according to Menker.
"You can't really tackle trade without understanding climate risk," she said.
AP Photo/Eduardo Verdugo, FileA man works at an avocado orchard owned by the Cevallos family in Michoacan, Mexico.
Gro has an altruistic component as well. Consider a grain like quinoa, which has become increasingly popular in Europe and the US. As the global demand for quinoa rises, farmers who grow the crop can no longer afford to purchase it.
Gro allows companies to find areas that yield similar grains, which helps to feed communities. West Africa, for instance, produces a grain called fonio that Menker described as a "quinoa equivalent."
In this way, her company makes the case for emerging markets - and new companies to go along with them.
Traditional agriculture isn't going away
The practice of vertical farming has risen in popularity as Menker's company has grown. Since founding Gro in 2014, Menker has started to anticipate the question: Why care about climate when some farms make it possible to grow massive amounts of crops indoors?
The answer, she said, is that vertical farming is limited to certain crops - mainly leafy greens, which, despite their health benefits, aren't very caloric.
"The economics work to move leafy greens from outdoor to indoor," she said. "But you're not going to solve your rice problem through vertical farming."
PlentyInside Plenty, a Silicon Valley-based urban farming startup that scored the largest ag-tech investment in history.
Menker said the process is also geared toward solving food problems in wealthy communities.
"We're talking about feeding the world the basics, let alone the fanciest lettuce or basil," she said. "Getting a leafy green that's as close to your home as possible is a privileged economic decision."
"There are lots of great impacts," said Menker. "But it won't solve our looming global food crisis."
The most viable solution, she said, isn't to overhaul the world's agricultural system. It's to make it more efficient.
Adelaide Puts Food, Not Developments at the Top of the City-Fringe Menu
So much so, its city fringe farm land is being legally protected.
By national rural and regional correspondent Dominique Schwartz
Updated Sun at 4:37am
Scott Samwell lives on brussels sprouts.
His Adelaide Hills family is one of Australia's biggest growers of the vegetable and the only producer of the kale-brussels sprout hybrid, the kalette.
Restaurant dishes such as twice-cooked brussels sprouts sautéed with bacon and sprinkled with parmesan have made the once-maligned vegetable hugely popular.
But the family is not able to expand its Mt Barker farm to keep up with demand because they would literally run into a brick wall.
"When we first came out to Bald Hills Road we were the only property out here, the only house out here," Scott's uncle Leigh Samwell said.
Thirty years on, "there are houses everywhere".
Mount Barker is one of Australia's fastest-growing urban centres.
Just half an hour's drive from Adelaide by freeway, the once rural hamlet is now a satellite town of more than 35,000 people and is projected to grow 60 per cent within the next two decades.
Developers have offered the Samwells eye-watering sums of money for their land, but they have resisted selling.
And even if they wanted to cash in, from April next year they will not be allowed to sell to make way for housing.
South Australia appreciates the value of good food and wine
So much so, its city fringe farm land is being legally protected.
Agriculture is the state's economic driver and a lot of it happens around the fertile fringe of Adelaide.
Two years ago, the then-state Labor government introduced Environment and Food Production Areas (EFPA) to restrict urban sprawl across a massive 8,000 square kilometres of land.
It's illegal to subdivide rural land for residential housing within these protected areas.
The ban takes full effect in April 2019, and has the backing of the current Liberal government.
The Barossa Valley and McLaren Vale already have tough development restrictions in place.
"It's about protecting some of our best lands for food production," South Australian Primary Industries Minister Tim Whetstone said.
"Horticulture is worth $22.5 billion and growing [and] peri-urban farms are critically important."
What's the main benefit of farming on the fringe?
In a word, water.
In Mount Barker, the Samwells might not be able to expand, but they do have ready access to three key ingredients often not available to farmers further afield.
Labour
Markets
Recycled household waste water
That last one is especially important in Australia's driest state.
During a drought, the rain may stop and rivers may dry, but people still wash, clean and flush.
Maybe not as much, but enough to guarantee an abundance of irrigation water for the Samwells, who are tapped into Mt Barker's waste water treatment plant.
"We don't want to have to grow in poor soil away from infrastructure, transport and water because it would increase the cost of what is already an expensive operation," Scott Samwell said.
"So preserving what we have got close to cities and regional areas is important."
Fringe farms serve up 80pc of Melbourne's food
Dr Rachel Carey is a research fellow on sustainable food systems at Melbourne University and says we have "overlooked how important cities are for food production".
She said Melbourne's food bowl served up 80 per cent of the vegetables eaten by the city's nearly 5 million residents.
In South Australia, the market gardens and orchards north of Adelaide alone account for one-fifth of the state's horticulture.
"It's really important that all of Australia's states now introduce much stronger protection for farmland on the city fringe," she said.
Dr Carey said city fringe farms would become increasingly important as food supply was affected by climate change.
"We should see them as an insurance policy if you like, as a buffer against the future pressures and also potential shocks that we are likely to face to our food supply," she said.
"We should be planning for at least 50 years and beyond in terms of saying there are areas that will not be touched for the long term, then the other crucial thing, of course, is to hold the line."
Growers divided on food protection zones
"You can almost split my growers into two," Jordan Brooke-Barnett, head of the SA branch of the grower association AusVeg, said.
Mr Brooke-Barnett said some AusVeg members were opposed to the development restrictions imposed by the EFPA.
"[They would] like the opportunity to subdivide land potentially one day to houses and the economic benefits that could potentially bring," he said.
Others who deal with urban encroachment and "fight for the right to have their business exist" supported stronger protection of city fringe farms, according to Mr Brooke-Barnett.
In Queensland, fourth generation vegetable farmer Ray Taylor did move to a regional area, but he was happy to.
His family started farming just 11 kilometres from Brisbane's CBD in 1914, but every generation was pushed further out as the city expanded.
Now, the Taylor's main operation is near Stanthorpe, 225 km south-west of the capital.
"That enables us as a family to go and find a larger parcel of land in another area, so … obviously we can grow the business," he said.
The Taylors grow 25 million vegetables per year, and while they can benefit from the economies of scale space brings, water security is a "massive issue".
Without rain, the farm's 27 dams were only 20-60 per cent full and the main creeks had not run for 20 months, Mr Taylor said.
"We're down about 30 per cent on [vegetable] production this year due to water scarceness."
The family is planning to sell its last foothold on Brisbane's urban fringe — a 40-acre waterfront property at Redland Bay.
"It's too small … and you can't expand it," Mr Taylor said.
"We're the last ones left there, so all the services have shut up and moved on and we get a lot of pressure from urban sprawl — spray drift, dust, noise — so it's very difficult to operate in that environment."
It is that situation South Australia is trying to avoid, according to the state's Primary Industries Minister who makes no apologies for restricting urban sprawl.
"The government has to draw a line, [it has to] give a secure future to farmers and food production in South Australia, but also certainty to those developers looking to move into peri-urban areas of Adelaide and South Australia," Mr Whetstone said.
SA plans $1 billion horticultural export hub on city fringe
The state is aiming is to ensure it has enough fresh produce not just to survive, but thrive.
Protecting farm land along the city edge is part of a greater plan to turn the Northern Adelaide Plains into an export hub and a global leader in intensive food production.
Work is underway to more than double the amount of treated waste water being piped to growers from Adelaide's Bolivar waste water plant, and to open up new areas within the protected EFPA for irrigation.
The goal is to treble the value of northern Adelaide's annual horticulture production to $1 billion within two decades and the plan has the backing of industry and all levels of government.
Providing certainty around land and water helped boost business confidence and available capital, Mr Whetstone said.
Meet investor Henry Liu
Henry Liu is one person investing heavily in South Australia's food future.
Mr Liu had one of the first greenhouses in Virginia north of Adelaide 18 years ago.
Now he has eight hectares of hydroponic vegetables growing in state-of-the-art, climate-controlled glasshouses.
That number will rise to 12 hectares when his new glasshouse starts production early next year.
"The future is great, very bright," Mr Liu said.
Glasshouse crops use 95 per cent less water than those grown in the field and carbon dioxide can be captured and used to boost plant growth, he said.
"The advantage of glasshouses over field production is that you can control the growing conditions," Mr Liu said.
But they are energy-hungry and solar power is not yet enough to run them.
Mr Liu believes hydroponic cropping will increase, but there will always be a place for soil-based growing and that however food is produced, being close to water, markets and labour is reason enough to protect city food bowls.
Hydroponic Farming Lets You Grow Your Food Indoors
By Kristine Wen | Published on Friday, December 7, 2018
Urban farming is hardly a new concept. Watch “Edible City,” and you’ll discover the trend was really taking root (see what we did there?) around 2008. But today, tonier restaurants on both coasts have gone beyond simply growing mint on the roof or kale next to the patio. Indoor farming, or sometimes called vertical farming, a highly technological, grow-your-own-indoors method, has been having a moment the last couple of years.
Glass-paneled hydroponic vertical farms, often doubling as interior designporn or art pieces, grow fresh produce—think butter lettuce, wasabi, cucumbers—in soil-less containers next to where your Manhattan is being made. Water and nutrients are delivered directly to a plant’s roots, allowing food to be grown in perfectly controlled conditions inside.
Former college roommates Andrew Carter and Adam DeMartino started their own indoor farming business called Smallhold in 2016, with the aim of growing hard-to-find mushroom varieties they knew chefs were on the hunt for. Smallhold grows a dozen different mushroom varieties, from coral-like pink oyster clusters to the cloud-shaped formations of young lion’s mane, in shipping containers in Bushwick. (Similar to fellow Brooklynite indoor farm Square Roots.) Before they are ready to harvest, the mushrooms are distributed to customers in what Smallhold dubs “minifarms,” which house the fungi in climate-controllable encasements as they continue to grow. Like the custom installations of Melbourne’s Farmwall, Smallhold’s minifarms are designed and built to match their customers’ aesthetic needs. At New York’s beloved Mission Chinese, for example, the minifarm’s display of amorphous, brightly-colored mushrooms is part art installation, part fresh mushroom vending machine.
Smallhold
It sounds complicated, but that’s kind of the point. “Our customers don’t have to understand how to grow mushrooms,” says Carter. “With our technology, we’re able to tell what’s going on, on a shelf-by-shelf basis in each of our minifarms. We can also run programs depending on the species we put in—changing the humidity, the CO2 levels—to create the best growing conditions for each type of mushroom,” adds DeMartino. All chefs and vendors have to do is pick the mushrooms when they’re ready to harvest, serving food that’s grown-to-order.
So why only mushrooms? “Restaurants like Bunker Vietnamese and Mission Chinese are looking for quality produce first and foremost,” says DeMartino. “It’s really hard to get high-quality mushrooms. You might start out with high-quality harvested mushrooms, but by the time they’ve gone through the harvesting and shipping processes, their taste and appearance have deteriorated quite a bit.”
And when you’re ready to try these grown-to-order mushrooms yourself, DeMartino has a few suggestions. “You can’t go wrong with the Mission Chinese mushroom fried rice,” he says. “And one of the best chefs in New York, Tara Novell of Honey’s, makes a tempura from the lion’s mane mushrooms we grow. The lion’s mane is perfectly encapsulated in the batter. You can taste the full mushroom, but with that tempura crunch.”
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Header image courtesy of Farmwall.
Bowery Farming Adding Microgrid With Solar, Natural Gas And Storage
Schneider Electric and Scale Microgrid Solutions have announced an agreement to design, engineer and build a new microgrid for modern-farming company Bowery Farming.
Posted by
November 15, 2018
Schneider Electric and Scale Microgrid Solutions have announced an agreement to design, engineer and build a new microgrid for modern-farming company Bowery Farming.
Under the terms of the agreement, Scale Microgrid Solutions will build, own and operate a proprietary hybrid microgrid system that leverages Schneider Electric EcoStruxure technology for Bowery’s newly commissioned facility in New Jersey.
The system will use distributed energy resources, including a rooftop solar array, a natural gas generator equipped with advanced emissions-control technologies and Schneider Electric’s lithium-ion battery energy storage system interconnected in a behind-the-meter configuration.
“Bowery has created a facility wherein crop production is already 100 times more efficient than traditional farmland, creating a greater need for reliable, efficient power,” says Ryan Goodman, CEO of Scale Microgrid Solutions. “Microgrids offer a compelling value proposition, but they’re inherently complex machines, and not many companies have the in-house expertise needed to make the investment. We’re excited to deploy an affordable microgrid solution in conjunction with Schneider Electric that will further reduce Bowery’s carbon footprint and provide critical resilience.”
Schneider Electric’s EcoStruxure Microgrid Advisor (EMA), a cloud-connected, demand-side energy management software platform, will be integrated to optimize the system’s performance. By leveraging predictive and learning algorithms, EMA will empower Scale Microgrid Solutions to better manage the production and consumption of its renewable energy and control energy spend. The system will also be equipped to operate in parallel with traditional utility electric services during normal operating conditions and in “island mode” to ensure that the farm remains powered during unexpected outages.
“Bowery is committed to growing food for a better future, and we are excited to have found partners in Schneider Electric and Scale Microgrid Solutions, who will help us achieve our mission,” says Brian Donato, senior vice president of operations at Bowery Farming. “We’re looking forward to continuing to provide consumers with access to local, high-quality produce and drive a more sustainable future.”
Commissioning of the Bowery microgrid project is scheduled for the first quarter of 2019.
NatureFresh Farms Ohio-Based Greenhouse Growing Strong Throughout The Winter
Delta, OH (December 5th, 2018)
With the last weeks of 2018 still ahead of us, NatureFresh Farms is in the thick of a third winter growing season at their Ohio- based facility. Located in the northwestern community of Delta, OH, the NatureFresh Farms USA greenhouse will be picking, packing, and shipping fresh and flavorful Tomatoes throughout the coldest months of the year – good news for retailers looking to add NatureFresh Farms products to their store shelves all year long!
Since 2015, NatureFresh Farms USA has experienced great success with consistently healthy crops and high fruit yields every season. This year, the greenhouse grower is producing Tomatoes-on-the-Vine, Beefsteak Tomatoes, and a large variety of Specialty Tomatoes across 45 acres.
The Delta-based greenhouse was strategically built in the northwestern region of the Buckeye state to allow for quick transport of products to all the company’s North American retail partners.
The Delta facility is using High-Pressure Sodium (HPS) lighting fixtures, a powerful grow light technology which allows for winter Tomato production. Paul Schockman, Sales Manager, shares that the Delta greenhouse gave NatureFresh Farms the opportunity to produce locally-grown Tomatoes at a time of year when traditional farms are not in operation: “Our retail partners within the northeastern region of the United States can now provide high-value Ohio-grown products to their customers when locally-grown food is typically not available. With such an effective arrangement, it wouldn’t surprise me if we add more acreage in Ohio in the future.”
Growing in the state of Ohio has also provided the NatureFreshTM Farms team with the opportunity to develop a strong partnership with the Ohio Proud program. Featuring the Ohio Proud sticker on all Tomato products grown and packed at the NatureFresh Farms USA location ensures consumers know they are purchasing Ohio-grown products, creates support for local growers, and promotes local agriculture, the number one industry in Ohio.
With exciting plans for market growth, as well as various expansion projects to look forward to, NatureFresh Farms is positioned to reach incredible new heights in 2019 and beyond.
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About NatureFresh Farms
NatureFresh Farms has grown to become one of the largest independent, vertically integrated greenhouse vegetable growers in North America. Growing in Leamington, ON and Delta, OH, NatureFresh Farms prides itself on exceptional flavor & quality. Family owned since 1999, NatureFresh Farms ships fresh greenhouse grown produce year-round to key retailers throughout North America.
SOURCE: NatureFresh Farms
info@naturefresh.ca
T: 519-326-1111
"Educator Greenhouses Foster The Perfect Learning Environment"
GrowSpan Commercial Educator Greenhouses provide a growing environment to encourage hands-on learning. The American-made structures offer an economical growing solution for instructors looking to enhance their program and teach horticulture throughout the year.
The Commercial Educator Greenhouses are 14’ wide and built to various lengths, tailoring the size of each structure to the program’s specific needs. The durable frame is made from triple-galvanized steel to prevent corrosion over time, while the clear, UV-resistant Twin-wall polycarbonate cladding is 12 times lighter than glass and accompanied by a 10-year warranty. GrowSpan is able to customize Educator Greenhouses with complete environmental control systems, including lighting, heating, ventilation and hydroponics systems as desired.
Starmont High School utilizes a GrowSpan Educator Greenhouse to take this learning a step further by organizing an annual plant sale to incorporate commerce and business experience into their program. As a GrowSpan customer, their educational program finds immeasurable value in the knowledge their students gain while working in the greenhouse.
GrowSpan understands the benefits of agricultural education for people of all ages. These greenhouses are suitable for primary and secondary schools, colleges and universities, research institutions, correctional facilities and more.
For more information:
GrowSpan Greenhouse Structures
1395 John Fitch Blvd
South Windsor, Connecticut 06074
Toll-free USA: (800) 476 9715
International: +1 860 528 9550
info@growspan.com
Publication date : 12/4/2018
Why Urban-Fringe Farming Is Vital For Food Resilience
November 29, 2018
When you pick up supplies at your local supermarket for tonight’s dinner, the produce will likely have come from many parts of Australia and from distant parts of the world. But some of the fresh produce may also have come from one of the highly productive foodbowls on the fringes of Australia’s state capitals.
The role that city fringe farmers play in feeding cities is sometimes overlooked in an era of sophisticated supply chains that enable food to be sourced from all over the world. But city foodbowls make a significant contribution to Australia’s fresh food supplies, and cities can do more to support them.
Areas outside Melbourne identified as ‘foodbowls’ for city-fringe farming. Foodprint Melbourne
Why being close to cities makes sense
Many cities now recognise the need to strengthen relationships with local farmers as a way to increase the resilience of their food supplies to climate change and make efficient use of scarce natural resources.
Retaining food production close to urban areas can reduce food shortages if transport routes into the city are cut off (for example, by a major storm or flood). Recycled water from city water treatment plants can also be used to grow food during a drought, and food waste can be processed into organic fertilisers for use on nearby farms.
Strengthening links between cities and farms on the fringe can improve farmer livelihoods and grow the local economy.
Farmers on the city fringe are caught in a tight “cost price squeeze” with very high land prices (and rates) and low farm-gate prices. Many are small-scale farmers who find it difficult to compete through economies of scale. But there are also advantages to being close to the city, such as the proximity to city markets and access to recycled water.
The Foodprint Melbourne project has just released an infographic that showcases the mutually beneficial relationships that can be developed between cities and the farmers on their fringes. These ideas were developed in workshops that brought Victorian stakeholders together from across sectors (farmers, industry, local government, state government and civil society) to explore how the viability of farming on Melbourne’s fringe could be strengthened.
How food can make its way from the city fringes to urban residents. Foodprint Melbourne
The infographic shows how strong links between cities and local farmers can create a two-way exchange. Farmers can capture a higher share of the food retail dollar by selling direct to local consumers (through farmers markets or community-supported agriculture) or local businesses (such as cafes and restaurants). City residents benefit from access to fresh, local produce and from opportunities to participate in agri-tourism activities on nearby farms (such as pick your own produce and farm-gate bike trails).
Food from Melbourne’s foodbowl can also be sold directly to local families, shops and restaurants in the city, in addition to being transported interstate and overseas via city airports. A new provenance brand could be introduced so consumers and businesses can easily recognise food from the area and support local farmers.
State and local governments could introduce food procurement standards so that government services, such as hospitals, prisons and “meals on wheels” programs, are encouraged to buy food from Victorian farmers. Government food procurement standards like these are already used in other countries, such as the United States and Canada.
Farmer incubators could be established to help new farmers access land and begin farming on the city fringe, mentored by experienced growers. Farmer-owned food-processing co-operatives could enable these growers to add value to their produce and take greater control of the food supply chain.
Governments are slowly starting to realise the importance of city fringe farming and providing greater protections. Foodprint Melbourne
How to encourage city fringe farms to thrive
Cities around the world now recognise the importance of actively strengthening links with farmers on the city fringe. The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation has released a “city region food system toolkit” that supports cities in building closer links with nearby farmers to improve farmer livelihoods, grow local economies and increase access to healthy, sustainable food.
A key step is to provide certainty about the future of farming areas close to cities by introducing laws that protect them for the long term. The city of Portland, Oregon, for instance, has created rural reserves that protect important farming areas for at least 50 years.
Measures to promote the viability of farming are equally important. In Ontario, the provincial government funds the Friends of the Greenbelt Foundation to promote farming, tourism and conservation in the agricultural area surrounding Toronto.
The links between cities and the farmers on their fringes have weakened as modern food supply chains have developed, but there is renewed interest among consumers in reconnecting with where their food comes from.
To improve access to locally grown food and increase the resilience of food systems to climate change, we need to build mutually supportive relationships between cities and the growers on their fringes, so that farms thrive as our cities grow.
This article is part of a series focusing on the politics of food – what we eat, how our views of food are changing and why it matters from a cultural and political standpoint.
Rachel Carey, Research Fellow, University of Melbourne; Jennifer Sheridan, Researcher in sustainable food systems, University of Melbourne; Kirsten Larsen, Manager, Food Systems Research and Partnerships, University of Melbourne.
This article was originally published on The Conversation.
NASA Technology To Grow Crops Faster
NASA has created a new technology to grow crops on other planets with the prospect of establishing colonies on Mars or another planet in the future. A group of scientists from the John Innes Center, the Earlham Institute, the Quadram Institute in the United Kingdom, and the University of Queensland have tested the application of this technology in terrestrial crops.
They have applied the new technology in a greenhouse at the John Innes Center in Norwick (United Kingdom). Researchers conducted rapid genetic improvements using shorter crop growth and harvest cycles, in addition to improved LED lighting. The research, which was published in the scientific journal Nature Protocols, shows that this method of cultivation can produce crops that are resistant to diseases, climate challenges, and that are more nutritious to feed a growing world population.
This technique uses improved LED illumination and day regimes of up to 22 hours to optimize photosynthesis and promote rapid crop growth. It accelerates the plants reproduction cycle: for example, it allows producers to grow six crops of wheat in a year, well above the two crops per year that are achieved with traditional improved farming methods.
By shortening breeding cycles, the method allows scientists and plant breeders to make accelerated genetic improvements, such as increasing yields, disease resistance and tolerance to climate change in a variety of crops, such as wheat, barley, rapeseed, and pea.
Source: lavanguardia.com
Publication date : 11/29/2018
Revolution Farms Harvests First Batch Of Aquaponics Crops Grown Without Soil
Tripp Frey, founder and CEO of Revolution Farms
Locally grown lettuce now will be available in Michigan grocery stores during all four seasons.
Revolution Farms, at 2901 76th St. in Caledonia, harvested its first crop of aquaponics lettuce last month and made its debut in 16 SpartanNash stores, including Forest Hills Foods, 11 D&W Fresh Market locations and select VG’s Grocery and Family Fare locations.
Tripp Frey, founder and CEO of Revolution Farms, said the farm will be harvesting lettuce three times per week, which will result in 4,000 pounds per week. He said there are plans to grow more in the future; the farm has the capacity to produce more than 350,000 pounds of lettuce per year. Revolution Farms currently has between 12 and 15 full-time employees, according to Frey.
He said the farm purchases a variety of seeds from Johnny’s Selected Seeds, a national seed supplier, to grow its lettuce aquaponically, without soil, in a 55,000-square-foot glass greenhouse.
“We have about 15,000 fishes, and we are basically composting,” Frey said. “We break down the fish waste using a mechanical and biological infiltration, and we turn that ammonia into nitrogen for the plant. By growing it this way and in a greenhouse, we can grow the produce year-round and offer really healthy products to people. Consumers want fresh, locally grown food, and they care where their food comes from.”
In addition to growing year-round salad mix, which includes green butter, red oak, sweet crisp and romaine lettuce, Frey said the farm will be using fewer resources than traditional farmers, such as 80 percent less water, 90 percent less land and 95 percent fewer miles traveled. About 95 percent of lettuce in Michigan comes from outside the state, according to the Michigan Department of Agriculture and Rural Development.
“This method of farming is sustainable; you use significantly less water,” he said. “There is no agricultural runoff, and we are not trucking products across the country from California. So, there are really no negatives, in terms of the product. It is really great for us.”
Lettuce season generally occurs from May to October, and lettuce production from the farm is not only beneficial during the wintertime. Ronald Goldy, a vegetable educator at Michigan State University Extension, said the hardest time for traditional farmers to grow lettuce is in the summer.
“Lettuce doesn’t like it hot because it goes to seed quickly and gets bitter tasting under hot conditions,” he said. “So, aquaponics farming is good during the summer season, also.”
Along with the seasonal benefits for aquaponics, Roger Betz, farm business management educator at MSU Extension, said aquaponics can lower the risk of bacteria, like E. coli and salmonella, that is plaguing the lettuce industry across the country, including Michigan.
“It is a very controlled biosystem, so diseases will be under control, detained and so forth,” he said. “Diseases will have limited access as opposed to the outdoor terrain.”
The packaged and prepared salad industry has a market value of $12 billion, and by 2025, the industry is estimated to be valued at $21 billion, according to Revolution Farms.
The farm is a $3.3-million project that was partially funded by the Michigan Commission of Agriculture and Rural Development through a $50,000 performance-based grant. Along with the construction of the aquaponics farm, there is a 35,000-square-foot warehouse on-site.
Danielle Nelson
Danielle Nelson is a Grand Rapids Business Journal staff reporter who covers law, startups, agriculture, sports, marketing, PR and advertising and arts and entertainment. She is also the staff researcher who compiles the weekly lists. Email Danielle at dnelson at grbj dot com. Follow her on Twitter @Dan_Nels
Inspired Greens Producing To Meet Frantic Demand For Clean, Safe, Local Lettuce
Innovative Alberta greenhouse offers lettuce grown in pristine conditions
COALDALE – A $60 million investment into the world’s most innovative greenhouse technology was based on a fundamental premise: clean means clean.
With North American retailers and consumers paying heightened attention to food safety – specifically related to romaine lettuce – Inspired Greens offers greenhouse-grown lettuce varieties grown with triple-filtrated water in a closed, environmentally safe and secure environment.
“Retailers and consumers have a heightened awareness of food safety, quality and taste,” said David Karwacki, Chief Executive Officer of The Star Group of Companies, which built the Inspired Greens greenhouses. “We invested this cutting-edge clean technology to ensure we can unequivocally deliver clean, fresh, healthy lettuce with no concerns about contamination.”
The Inspired Greens greenhouses opened in Coaldale, AB, in June 2017 and can produce up to 12 million heads annually. It is the first North American greenhouse to use this advanced technology, with plants untouched by human hands from seed to harvest. In April 2018, Inspired Greens announced plans to double its production capacity based on strong industry and consumer demand.
Inspired Greens and Inspired Leaves are available in grocery stores across Western Canada and in select markets in the western United States
Prince Edward Officially Opens New Hydroponics Unit
20th November 2018
By Lauren Jones Multimedia Reporter
A state-of-the-art hydroponics unit in Ellesmere Port has been officially opened by the Earl of Wessex.
The Bridge Community Wellness Gardens and Farm welcomed Prince Edward on Monday, November 19 to officially open the 'The Earl of Chester Hydroponics Unit.'
First of its kind in Cheshire, the new hydroponics unit will grow plants without soil by using mineral nutrient solutions in water solvent.
Plants can be grown with only their roots exposed to the solution and the farm's staff are growing fruit,vegetables and exotic micro greens for restaurants in Cheshire.
Farm and wellness gardens manager Clair Johnson said: “It was fantastic to have a visit from Prince Edward and to show him the amazing work we do here.
“The hydroponics unit is an exciting addition for us because it allows us to grow plants indoors without soil, gives us faster growth all year round and saves on water usage.
“We love to encourage our wellness clients to overcome their mental health and learning difficulties and find new skills.
"And they do every day. It’s so inspiring!”
During his visit, Prince Edward was given a tour of the farm where he met staff and volunteers working in the routing shed, the bee friendly Mandala Garden, the seeding tunnel, solar dome and polytunnel.
He also unveiled a plaque on the site marking the official Royal visit.
Chairman of Bridge Community Wellness Gardens and Farm Francis Ball said: “I’m incredibly proud of what Clair and her team of staff and volunteers have achieved here.
“Pretty well every day we are reduced to tears by the gratitude of a client, or client’s parent or carer, who gain so much benefit from spending just a few hours with us.
"It’s inspiring and it drives us on to Grow Better Lives.”
Prince Edward also paid a visit to pupils at Neston High School on Monday.
New Hydroponics Project Lets Students Learn As Crops Grow
By Kathy Brown, Gillette News Record (via Wyoming News Exchange)
Gage Terrell prepares to harvest lettuce from a hydroponic plant holder in the hydroponics room at Lakeview Learning Center. Rhianna Gelhart, Gillette News Record
GILLETTE — The Adventurarium in Gillette is growing plants and feeding many of its animals through a new hydroponics room.
The Campbell County School District’s science center is open throughout the school year for Family Science Nights and serves students ranging from pre-school through sixth grade. The new hydroponics room with lights, a top-drip vertical wall system and a floating deep water culture system (now growing tomato plants) are featured in the hydroponics room.
There, Gage Terrell, 17, a senior at Thunder Basin High School, tests the systems for pH levels, harvests the lettuce and herbs growing in the top-drip system and helps science center director Jodi Crago-Wyllie keep up with the planting, harvesting and production from the hydroponics.
It’s Terrell’s second year as a mentor student at the science center. Each morning he feeds the plants and checks their pH levels. He’s become a right-hand man for Crago-Wyllie, who also serves as the elementary level science facilitator for the district.
It is an affordable hydroponics system that uses PVC pipe, painted used aquariums and similar inexpensive parts that grow plants year-round.
The science center staff, including Crago-Wyllie and Terrell, are learning as they grow.
“You really have to be on top of it,” Crago-Wyllie said. “It’s kind of like a pet.”
Everything in the room is grown without soil, she said. Material to start the seedlings is similar to carpet or compost material. Those are then planted in the vertical wall.
“We don’t bring in any plants with soil on the roots,” Crago-Wyllie said, adding that soil can transfer diseases or bugs.
Each week, Terrell and Crago-Wyllie harvest the lettuce and herbs and replant. The system uses overhead lights that can be raised or lowered with another track of lights aimed at the wall system, which can be moved closer or further away from the plants as needed.
That’s where they are continuing some experimentation, along with growing herbs ranging from oregano to parsley. Crago-Wyllie said she hopes to plant some peppers in the deep water system once she has harvested the tomatoes, which are showing dramatic growth each week.
She’ll also have to see how to add stakes to help support the tomato plants, she said.
“It’s become such a big thing now,” Crago-Wyllie said of hydroponics. “So many kids don’t know where their food comes from.”
The hydroponics room is a way to show them. There are three types of lettuce being grown in the eight vertical rows of plants in the top drip system. The room is kept at between 70 to 81 degrees and a fan helps circulate air.
“It’s cool,” Terrell said. “You can see how food is grown and we can feed it to the animals who eat it." (Terrell’s) parents don’t garden, but his grandmother does. And he’d like to show her how this hydroponics room works.
Terrell’s favorite? The tomatoes, he said. “I like these because you can see them grow every day.”
The plants doubled in growth over the past three-day weekend. It won’t be long before he is raising the lights or adding stakes to the aquariums and lightweight, floating rocks (similar to lava).
“I think it’s something we can do in my house,” Terrell said about building his own hydroponic garden.
Among the herbs growing at the science center is cilantro, he said, adding that “hopefully we can make some salsa.”
It is a class Terrell said he loves.
“It’s cool to do different things. I do something different every day,” he said. “I like it in here. It’s like a science experiment.”
Terrell remembers coming to the science center and Adventurarium as a younger student in Campbell County.
“I thought of it as a museum of sorts. If I’d known, I’d have come every day,” he said of the Adventurarium, which each elementary school class visits at least once a year.
The class works well with what he hopes to do in the future. “I thought about being a teacher. A science teacher would be fun,” he said.
He plans to start at Gillette College, attend two years there, then move on to the University of Wyoming, Terrell said.
He repainted the aquariums black to start the deep water culture system. The air pumps from those former fish tanks are very responsive, Crago-Wyllie said.
The baskets they found to hold the rocks and the tomato plants fit perfectly and cost about $10, she said. Overall, the two systems in the room cost about $1,500 and will grow plants year-round.
A daily dose of nutrients helps the plants grow better and faster under the lights, she said. If the plants are less acidic, they absorb more nutrients, which means quicker growth.
“It sounds easy, but you have to keep up with it,” Crago-Wyllie said. “It’s so fun and so much different than I imagined.”
Terrell grows the lettuce to feed the animals in the science center, including his favorite, Cedric, a parrot. He also will sing to the animals when he feeds them.
“Cedric loves him. He loves Gage and he doesn’t love anyone,” Crago-Wyllie said of the formerly abused parrot.
The idea of building a hydroponic garden came to Crago-Wyllie a year ago. Now both she and Terrell are learning as they go.
“Yeah, I still don’t really know how that works,” Terrell said.
“You have to be a bit of everything,” Crago-Wyllie said. “A chemist ... and more, not just a gardener.”
With that, she and Terrell added a new row of lettuce to try Tuesday, including Caesar, Simpson and butter crunch.
Technology Distilled To Grow The Hydroponics Industry
By Chad Campbell
November 16, 2018
When Horticulture Assistant Professor Krishna Nemali joined Purdue in July 2016, he immediately began to develop a program as new to the school as he was. Nemali studied agriculture in India before earning his Ph.D. from the University of Georgia and spending nine years as a scientist in controlled environment crop physiology at Monsanto. All these experiences combined to provide him with the range of experience necessary in his current position coordinating research and Purdue Extension activities in Controlled Environment Agriculture (CEA).
CEA harnesses technology to grow plants like vegetables and ornamentals in conditions maximizing the efficient use of water, light, labor and space. Hydroponics, the method most commonly associated with CEA, minimizes water, nutrient and labor requirements to grow plants. It can also reduce other needs, such as pesticides. Researchers like Nemali work to discover the perfect combinations of water, light, nutrients, temperature and additional factors to make sure there is no wasted energy or potential. Nemali’s goal is to answer the question,
“How do you make that technology easily accessible to everybody?”
Nemali is working to harness the potential of smartphones, specifically new apps and add-on devices, to provide growers access to these processes. “There are companies and some apps already there that just take a picture and show some data. That’s not what we’re trying to get at. We have these expensive imaging stations and we are developing technologies that match that high-quality data.” A combination of research, calibration and algorithms takes place behind the scenes to provide farmers with valuable, yet easy-to-understand information, everything using their smartphones.
One app Nemali is creating will use background processing to measure plant growth. The plant’s size is calculated through pictures the user takes and algorithms designed by Nemali. With daily use, the app generates growth curves. “It’s like when you take your kids to a doctor, and they take a weight and height measurement.They put the numbers on a standard chart. 90th percentile height, 70th percentile weight. You can create standard curves for different species and plot this data under the standards.”
Nitrogen is essential in plant processes, including photosynthesis, yet the equipment needed to measure nitrogen levels in plants is cost-prohibitive. Nemali’s lab is currently creating a similar device for smartphones, available for less than $150. Nemali hopes to create widely adopted and applied technology to reach independent growers.
Through Purdue Extension, Nemali also works with Indiana farmers to capitalize on the untapped potential hydroponics provides. The industry is small, but rapidly growing at 3.5% annually in the US. For example, Nemali sees a wealth of opportunity in leaf lettuce production. The USDA estimates people eat about 11 pounds of leaf lettuce per year. With 6.7 million Hoosiers and a $1.00 wholesale valuation on each pound of lettuce, that’s over $70 million.
Indiana imports nearly all its leaf lettuce from places like Arizona and California. “We want that money to stay within Indiana," Nemali shared. We want our growers capitalizing on this. There is a demand there. Grow lettuce locally, sell lettuce locally, keep the money local. That money spread out among the 300 lettuce growers in Indiana, that’s going to improve their livelihood. That’s what sustainability, in my opinion, is.” He organizes workshops that provide both classroom style training and experiential learning to farmers.
The methods and technology Nemali creates produce a level of precision that can set hydroponic farmers apart. Even small adjustments to the levels of red, green and blue artificial light provided to grow plants can have significant effects on the growth, color and nutritional value of plants. Nemali tells his growers, “Don’t say simply that your lettuce is crisp and fresh. Everybody says that. How do you find a niche? Use technology to grow lettuce that has more nutritional value, antioxidants, and less nitrates. Show the value. Health. That’s what attracts millennials.” The results of this research are integrated into Nemali’s apps to bolster the intelligence of the technology.
Nemali also uses hydroponics and vertical farming techniques to address problems like childhood obesity. A few years ago, Nemali’s son participated in a multi-week summer camp where the children planted and harvested their own vegetables, making salads and soups.
“For the next couple of months,” says Nemali, “he was all about eating healthy. That told me something. Give kids that exposure to plants: how you seed them, sow them, you see them grow, you harvest them and clean them. That may change their attitudes and behaviors from a less favorable attitude towards eating healthy, and that’s what we’re trying to do.” He collaborates with schools to setup small indoor growing facilities for children using hydroponics.
As the benefits of hydroponics become increasingly apparent, nations around the world are studying, researching and building hydroponic facilities of their own. Scarcities of land and water are critical issues in many countries. Hydroponics are incredibly efficient in both respects. Vertical farming is a common practice in hydroponic facilities. Warehouses may accommodate 15 to 20 levels of plants. It is reasonable to expect five to ten times more production in such spaces.
Hydroponics brings researchers across the globe together to work toward a common goal. Nemali embraces the spirit of hydroponics by making the most of current resources and rapidly producing new resources to grow the industry.
Want to try hydroponics at home?
Create your own simple hobby garden.
Category: Agricultural & Biological Engineering, Agricultural Economics, Agronomy, Botany & Plant Pathology, Extension, Food Science, Forestry & Natural Resources, Giant Leaps, International Programs in Agriculture, Office of Multicultural Programs, Research, Teaching, Uncategorized
US: Cannabis Takes Root On California’s Central Coast
It is the fall harvest here in this fertile stretch of oaks and hills that produces some of the country’s best wine. This season, though, workers also are plucking the sticky, fragrant flowers of a new crop.
Marijuana is emerging among the vineyards, not as a rival to the valley’s grapes but as a high-value commodity that could help reinvigorate a fading agricultural tradition along the state’s Central Coast. Brushed by ocean breeze, cannabis has taken root, offering promise and prompting the age-old question of whether there can be too much of a good thing.
Cannabis has been fully legal in California for less than a year, and no place is generating more interest in it than the stretch of coast from Monterey to here in Santa Barbara County, where farmers now hold more marijuana cultivation licenses than in any other county.
The shift in legal cultivation patterns is coming at the expense of the remote Emerald Triangle, the trio of far-northern California counties where an illegal marijuana industry has thrived for decades. The Central Coast is not growing more marijuana than the Emerald Triangle, but it could be on track to grow more legally, if trends hold.
“We’re nearly right in between Los Angeles and San Francisco, the two big consumer hubs,” said John De Friel, whose 17-acre Raw Garden Farm and seed lab sits among cabbage patches and wineries. “We really didn’t foresee how advantageous that would turn out to be.”
Publication date : 11/16/2018
Aquaponics Farm Puts Fresh Fish And Greens On Plates Of Calgary Restaurants
Reid Henuset and Paul Shumlich of Deepwater Farms in Calgary's first commercial aquaponics farm on Tuesday, Nov. 20, 2018. Al Charest/Postmedia
AMANDA STEPHENSON, CALGARY HERALD
November 20, 2018
It looks like any non-descript industrial park warehouse, but the new Deepwater Farms facility in southeast Calgary produces fresh, local food daily using technology that some believe could be the future of agriculture.
It looks like any nondescript industrial park warehouse, but the new Deepwater Farms facility in southeast Calgary produces fresh, local food daily using technology that some believe could be the future of agriculture.
This urban farm, located in a 10,000-square-foot building, is the city’s first commercial-scale aquaponics facility — meaning it combines hydroponics and aquaculture to raise both leafy greens and fish. Giant tanks house as many as 10,000 fish of varying ages and sizes (currently, Deepwater is raising sea bass), and the waste from the fish is then broken down into nitrates that are used to fertilize the racks upon racks of lettuce, herbs and other greens growing under giant LED lights.
The unconventional technology has given Deepwater the capacity to harvest about 450 kilograms a week of organic, locally grown produce. The company expects to triple that output once it is fully ramped up in late 2019. It can also harvest about 900 kilograms of fish a month — fresh, sustainable seafood that can go straight to the plates of landlocked Calgarians.
“I literally just stumbled across the concept of aquaponics one day on the internet,” said company founder Paul Shumlich. “It was the closed-loop aspect that really spoke to me, because we could take a waste product and turn it into a valuable input in another process. It was a symbiotic system between the fish and the plants, and it was organic.”
Reid Henuset and Paul Shumlich of Deepwater Farms in Calgary’s first commercial aquaponics farm. Al Charest/Postmedia
The 28-year-old Shumlich, who studied entrepreneurship at Mount Royal University, has been working on Deepwater Farms for close to five years, testing the technology in various garages and greenhouses, and building his customer base. Convinced there was a market for consistent, reliable produce that doesn’t need to be shipped from California or Mexico in the dead of winter, Shumlich started out by cold calling some of the city’s top restaurants.
He now has a 30-strong client list, and his produce appears in menu items at establishments including Model Milk, Ten Foot Henry, the Hyatt and the Teatro Group. Japanese restaurant Shokunin is the first restaurant to put Deepwater Farms’ fish on the menu, and the company, which now has 10 employees, expects more customers soon.
“In the city, we see the potential to grow 10 times our current size within the next three years,” Shumlich said.
While Deepwater is the largest farm of its type in commercial operation in Alberta, there is growing interest in aquaponics in the province. According to its website, Earthis Inc. is working on a design for a commercially viable vertical aquaponics greenhouse and already has a proof of concept up and running in Okotoks. And Current Prairie Fisherman Corp., which began farming tilapia and barramundi in Nobleford in 2008, recently built a large greenhouse to provide their restaurant clients with specialty vegetables as well, using fish waste as plant fertilizer.
Aquaponics is appealing from an environmental perspective and an economic perspective (plants grown through this type of system can grow three times as fast as conventionally grown produce), but it is more complex than other types of farming. Every part of the system must work in harmony and must be constantly monitored to ensure the health of both the plants and the fish. Still, Deepwater’s leaders say there is a future for aquaponics even in jurisdictions where indoor growing isn’t a necessity.
“Even though California and Florida have the weather to grow this stuff year-round, they still can’t control everything. They’re going to get rainy days, they’re going to get dry weather,” said acting president Reid Henuset. “If we can get our systems down to the point where we know how every little detail of it works, there’s no reason we couldn’t take it worldwide. Because, with this system, you can control everything.”
Deepwater has launched a crowdfunding campaign to raise money for expansion.
Shumlich said he believes aquaponics technology could have applications in cannabis production, greenhouses of all types and even industrial agriculture through the production of natural fertilizers.
“Vine crops I don’t think it makes sense to grow indoors, you’re not going to grow Prairie wheat and barley indoors,” Shumlich said. “But I think for things that are being transported out of southern California, like leafy greens, it’s definitely the future. And I think in general, smart agriculture is the future of all food production.”
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