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Farm to Fork: Local Producers to Meet 30 Percent of Singapore’s Nutritional Needs by 2030
Home-based producers now meet less than 10 percent of Singapore’s nutritional needs, and Singapore imports more than 90 per cent of its food supply
Apollo Aquaculture Group's prototype vertical fish farm at Lim Chu Kang. TODAY file photo
07 MARCH, 2019
SINGAPORE — By 2030, homegrown produce could meet 30 percent of Singapore’s nutritional needs, easing its reliance on imports and reducing its vulnerability to supply disruptions.
Home-based producers now meet less than 10 percent of Singapore’s nutritional needs, and Singapore imports more than 90 per cent of its food supply.
The “ambitious” target, announced by Environment and Water Resources Minister Masagos Zulkifli on Thursday (March 7), will also give enterprises and jobs here a lift.
The Health Promotion Board said that a “healthy plate” is made up of 50 per cent fruit and vegetables, 25 per cent protein such as chicken and 25 per cent staples such as brown rice.
The authorities said that local production has been increasing.
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Last year, farms here supplied 24 per cent of the eggs, 13 per cent of leafy vegetables and 9 percent of the fish consumed in Singapore.
The Government hopes to achieve its 2030 vision in the following ways.
TAPPING TECHNOLOGY
Expand agri-food production in high-tech controlled environments, with farming becoming more akin to manufacturing, in order to ensure a consistent output. This is also a “predictable” avenue to deal with the effects of climate change and extreme weather, which can affect yields.
Bump up the productivity of land, use resources such as water and energy efficiently, and automate and integrate systems via robotics and sensors.
Through technology such as indoor multi-storey vegetable farms that use light-emitting-diode technology and recirculating aquaculture systems, production of vegetables and fish can increase by 10 to 15 times a hectare, compared with traditional farms.
The new Singapore Food Agency (SFA), to be formed next month, will help farmers build capabilities through technical support, research-and-development tie-ups and the transfer of technology.
To encourage sustainable farming, the agency will also help farmers adopt advanced systems such as curtain systems that shade crops and reduce the impact of high temperatures on crop growth.
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EXPLOIT ALTERNATIVE SPACES
Explore more spaces to grow food in Singapore, including underused and alternative spaces such as vacant state buildings, rooftops and even the deep sea.
The former site of Henderson Secondary School along Henderson Road, for instance, will be turned into the country’s first integrated space — spanning 35,686sqm — comprising an urban farm, a childcare centre, nursing home and dialysis centre. It could be a test-bed for innovative food-growing technologies. A public tender for the urban farm will be awarded in May.
Deep-sea fish farming, which is highly productive, can also boost local production significantly. The SFA will work with agencies to open up more sites for this purpose. For example, Barramundi Asia — Singapore’s largest farm rearing barramundi (Asian sea bass) in large sea-cage enclosures — registers a yearly production of more than 400 tonnes. The farm occupies a 7.5ha space (10 football fields) off Semakau island.
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GROOMING EXPERTS IN THE FIELD
A pipeline of Singaporean talent with a good grasp of urban food-production processes and business models is needed to expand and support Singapore’s agri-food ecosystem. They need multi-disciplinary expertise in the sciences, engineering, information and communications, robotics and energy, and waste and business management.
To meet demand, the authorities have been working with institutes of higher learning to develop courses, such as SkillsFuture Earn and Learn Programmes, that lead to diplomas in urban agricultural technology and aquaculture.
CHOOSE HOMEGROWN PRODUCE
Demand from consumers is key.
Homegrown produce is fresher as it arrives at retail outlets more quickly and is safe because it can be traced to its source easily, the Government said.
The Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority of Singapore, which will be dissolved when the SFA is formed, has rolled out initiatives to promote homegrown produce. It has organised SG Farmers’ Markets in the heartlands and tied up with supermarkets to hold fairs featuring such produce.
Singapore’s Getting a New Govt Body – And Its Priority Is To Make Sure The Country Has Enough Food
The Singapore Food Agency will be responsible for developing Singapore’s food supply, improving food safety regulations, and handling food-borne disease outbreaks.
February 13, 2019
Come April 1, Singapore’s new food-related statutory board, the Singapore Food Agency (SFA), will come into existence – and its most important job is to ensure the country has enough food supplies.
The new stat board was created to consolidate and handle food-related matters currently scattered under divisions in the Agri-Food & Veterinary Authority (AVA), Health Sciences Authority and National Environment Agency.
SFA’s priority is to develop national strategies to obtain food, Minister for the Environment and Water Resources Masagos Zulkifli said in Parliament on Tuesday (Feb 12).
According to Masagos, imports account for most of Singapore’s food supply, and the republic currently imports items from 180 countries – up from 140 countries in 2004.
The minister said the SFA would continue to look for more import sources to ensure Singapore is not overreliant on any country for food items. This would also reduce the republic’s “vulnerability to external volatility and price hikes,” he added.
In addition, it will also help local food companies based overseas to expand, thus reducing the price of imports.
Another way the stat board plans to develop food security is by increasing the supply from local farms. It is looking at educating farmers at institutes of higher learning (such as universities and polytechnics), so as to incorporate more technology and R&D in the farming sector, Masagos said.
Examples of these technologies include indoor vertical farms and deep sea fish farming.
On top of food security, the SFA will also be responsible for improving food safety regulations and handling food-borne disease outbreaks, such as tracing and recalling food products, and testing food samples.
Its “regulatory oversight over all food-related matters from farm to fork” would allow the government to “address lapses (in food safety) more quickly and more holistically,” the AVA said in a statement.
In addition, a food laboratory, the National Centre for Food Science, will be set up under the SFA to research food safety.
How Urban Agriculture Can Improve Food Security in US Cities
…researchers have calculated that Cleveland, with a population of 400,000, has the potential to meet 100 percent of its urban dwellers’ fresh vegetable needs, 50 percent of their poultry and egg requirements and 100 percent of their demand for honey.
February 13, 2019 10.49pm AEDT
City Farm is a working sustainable farm that has operated in Chicago for over 30 years. Linda from Chicago/Wikimedia, CC BY
Author Miguel Altieri
Professor of Agroecology, University of California, Berkeley
Disclosure statement
Miguel Altieri does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Partners University of California provides funding as a founding partner of The Conversation US.
During the partial federal shutdown in December 2018 and January 2019, news reports showed furloughed government workers standing in line for donated meals. These images were reminders that for an estimated one out of eight Americans, food insecurity is a near-term risk.
In California, where I teach, 80 percent of the population lives in cities. Feeding the cities of the nine-county San Francisco Bay Area, with a total population of some 7 million involves importing 2.5 to 3 million tons of food per day over an average distance of 500 to 1,000 miles.
This system requires enormous amounts of energy and generates significant greenhouse gas emissions. It also is extremely vulnerable to large-scale disruptions, such as major earthquakes.
And the food it delivers fails to reach 1 of every 8 people in the region who live under the poverty line – mostly senior citizens, children and minorities. Access to quality food is limited both by poverty and the fact that on average, California’s low-income communities have 32.7 percent fewer supermarkets than high-income areas within the same cities.
Many organizations see urban agriculture as a way to enhance food security. It also offers environmental, health and social benefits. Although the full potential of urban agriculture is still to be determined, based on my own research I believe that raising fresh fruits, vegetables and some animal products near consumers in urban areas can improve local food security and nutrition, especially for underserved communities.
The growth of urban agriculture
Urban farming has grown by more than 30 percent in the United States in the past 30 years. Although it has been estimated that urban agriculture can meet 15 to 20 percent of global food demand, it remains to be seen what level of food self-sufficiency it can realistically ensure for cities.
One recent survey found that 51 countries do not have enough urban area to meet a recommended nutritional target of 300 grams per person per day of fresh vegetables. Moreover, it estimated, urban agriculture would require 30 percent of the total urban area of those countries to meet global demand for vegetables. Land tenure issues and urban sprawl could make it hard to free up this much land for food production.
Other studies suggest that urban agriculture could help cities achieve self-sufficiency. For example, researchers have calculated that Cleveland, with a population of 400,000, has the potential to meet 100 percent of its urban dwellers’ fresh vegetable needs, 50 percent of their poultry and egg requirements and 100 percent of their demand for honey.
Can Oakland’s urban farmers learn from Cuba?
Although urban agriculture has promise, a small proportion of the food produced in cities is consumed by food-insecure, low-income communities. Many of the most vulnerable people have little access to land and lack the skills needed to design and tend productive gardens.
Cities such as Oakland, with neighborhoods that have been identified as “food deserts,” can lie within a half-hour drive of vast stretches of productive agricultural land. But very little of the twenty million tons of food produced annually within 100 miles of Oakland reaches poor people.
Paradoxically, Oakland has 1,200 acres of undeveloped open space – mostly public parcels of arable land – which, if used for urban agriculture, could produce 5 to 10 percent of the city’s vegetable needs. This potential yield could be dramatically enhanced if, for example, local urban farmers were trained to use well-tested agroecological methods that are widely applied in Cuba to cultivate diverse vegetables, roots, tubers and herbs in relatively small spaces.
In Cuba, over 300,000 urban farms and gardens produce about 50 percent of the island’s fresh produce supply, along with 39,000 tons of meat and 216 million eggs. Most Cuban urban farmers reach yields of 44 pounds (20 kilograms) per square meter per year.
An organic farm in Havana, Cuba, that produces outputs averaging 20 kilograms (44 pounds) per square meter per year without agrochemical inputs.Miguel Altieri, CC BY-ND
If trained Oakland farmers could achieve just half of Cuban yields, 1,200 acres of land would produce 40 million kilograms of vegetables – enough to provide 100 kilograms per year per person to more than 90 percent of Oakland residents.
To see whether this was possible, my research team at the University of California at Berkeley established a diversified garden slightly larger than 1,000 square feet. It contained a total of 492 plants belonging to 10 crop species, grown in a mixed polycultural design.
In a three-month period, we were able to produce yields that were close to our desired annual level by using practices that improved soil health and biological pest control. They included rotations with green manures that are plowed under to benefit the soil; heavy applications of compost; and synergistic combinations of crop plants in various intercropping arrangements known to reduce insect pests.
Research plots in Berkeley, Calif., testing agroecological management practices such as intercropping, mulching and green composting. Miguel Altieri, CC BY-ND
Overcoming barriers to urban agriculture
Achieving such yields in a test garden does not mean they are feasible for urban farmers in the Bay Area. Most urban farmers in California lack ecological horticultural skills. They do not always optimize crop density or diversity, and the University of California’s extension program lacks the capacity to provide agroecological training.
The biggest challenge is access to land. University of California researchers estimate that over 79 percent of the state’s urban farmers do not own the property that they farm. Another issue is that water is frequently unaffordable. Cities could address this by providing water at discount rates for urban farmers, with a requirement that they use efficient irrigation practices.
In the Bay Area and elsewhere, most obstacles to scaling up urban agriculture are political, not technical. In 2014 California enacted AB511, which set out mechanisms for cities to establish urban agriculture incentive zones, but did not address land access.
One solution would be for cities to make vacant and unused public land available for urban farming under low-fee multiyear leases. Or they could follow the example of Rosario, Argentina, where 1,800 residents practice horticulture on about 175 acres of land. Some of this land is private, but property owners receive tax breaks for making it available for agriculture.
In my view, the ideal strategy would be to pursue land reform similar to that practiced in Cuba, where the government provides 32 acres to each farmer, within a few miles around major cities to anyone interested in producing food. Between 10 and 20 percent of their harvest is donated to social service organizations such as schools, hospitals and senior centers.
Similarly, Bay Area urban farmers might be required to provide donate a share of their output to the region’s growing homeless population, and allowed to sell the rest. The government could help to establish a system that would enable gardeners to directly market their produce to the public.
Cities have limited ability to deal with food issues within their boundaries, and many problems associated with food systems require action at the national and international level. However, city governments, local universities and nongovernment organizations can do a lot to strengthen food systems, including creating agroecological training programs and policies for land and water access. The first step is increasing public awareness of how urban farming can benefit modern cities.
"Do Organic Farmers Using Soil Have A Right To Exclude Aquaponic Farmers?"
Marc Laberge pleading for including all plants in organic rules
If there's one thing the soil-growing and out-of-soil producers can agree on, is that the debate around the organic & soil production is upsetting. If there's two, it's that hydro- and aquaponics should not be entering the organic world via a back door. But how should it be? In- or excluded? With one week to go before the Quebec public consultation on aquaponics ends, Marc Laberge with ML Aquaponics holds a plea for including all plants in the Quebec organic rules.
"Aquaponics is here to stay and is a great way of farming. Aquaponics has the potential to supply year-round organic fruits, vegetables and fish at a reasonable price, yet this entire type of farming, this fundamental Mother Natures’ purest, most organic, way of growing clean, dirt-free plants is at stake here", Marc with ML Aquaponics says. His aquaponics farm ML Aquaponics has harvested millions of crops of lettuce and rainbow trouts over the years. Following the Canadian Aquaculture Organic Laws, none of these has ever been certified organic - but that can change since the organic certification requirements of the Safe Food for Canadians Regulations (SFCR) were extended to aquaculture products early this year.
Roots in water
"However Quebec’s organic watch dogs, the CARTV, are still not convinced that plants having their roots growing in water should be allowed to carry the organic certification", Marc explains. Currently the CARTV is asking for he public's opinion on this matter and Marc doesn't want the industry to miss out on this opportunity.
"We have every right to be called organic and are proud of it. Although our voices are outnumbered by at least a 1000 to 1, does this mean we have no rights?"
He shows Google answers on the search for organic:
1. Relating to or derived from living matter. “organic soils”. Synonym: living, live, animate, biological, natural.
2. (of food or farming methods) produced or involving production without the use of chemical fertilizers, pesticides, or other artificial agents. Synonym: pesticide-free, additive-free, chemical-free, nonchemical, natural
"If you look at the evolution of plants on this planet, you will find that they derived from water, starting out as some type of algae. Water is the essence of life on plant Earth, the Mother of all “Mother Natures” if you like", he says. "Organic farming is a method that grows plants in living matter without using synthetic chemicals. Synthetic fertilizers mean man made, we’re not talking about salts and minerals that are extracted from nature by man, but rather created by processes that would most likely never take place naturally."
Synthetic vs organic
"One of such procedures that comes to mind, is the use of petroleum to create nitrogen and then used as a synthetic fertilizer. So then, what is living matter? Besides the obvious, can soils be considered living matter? Of course, they can if they haven’t been burnt-out by harsh chemicals. What about water? The same applies, cities must kill off many living organisms in order to provide safe drinking water, but take a look under a magnifying glass at water from a natural source such as lakes, rivers, ponds and you will see life, lots of life."
Out of habit
Continuing on this point of view, Marc says that the combination soil-organic is mainly a combination made out of habit. "Organic farming using soil has been around for a long time, so long as a matter of fact, that some people are now saying that organic farming must use soil. Aquaponics is a farming method using fish to provide nutrients to plants that are grown in water. Although aquaponics has been around longer than soil farms, only in the last few decades has this way of producing food intensively, under controlled environments become of interest, to a new generation of organic farmers."
Questioning
That's why Marc now urges the public to take the opportunity and send out their point of view to the CARTV, currently holding a questioning on the matter. "The CARTV claim that only “aquatic” plants can be allowed to be organic, and that “terrestrial” plants must use the soil organic rules that, ironically do not allow cultivation in water. Looking at the definition of Organic, and knowing all terrestrial plants arose from water, we can only wonder if the organic farmers using soil, are trying to prevent other new organic aquaponic farmers from entering their niche markets?"
He's pleading for a more united industry and calls out to the industry to use the opportunity and fill in the Quebec questioning.
"We all believe in organic food the same way the soil people do, we share so many values and yet like siblings continue this fight", Marc says. "Have we forgotten what the essence of life is and that nothing will grow without it? Do the organic farmers using soil have a right to exclude aquaponic farmers from this label? Has the word Organic evolved into another meaning over time? If so, what definition should we use? What does Organic mean to you?"
Alberta, Canada: Hydroponic Lettuce Revolution In Bruderheim
Arthur Green
More from Arthur Green
January 29, 2019
A look at the new addition to Thiel’s Greenhouses in Bruderheim, Alberta.Thiel’s Greenhouses has invested in this new technology from Dry Hydroponics to mass produce fresh lettuce. Arthur C Green/The Record
Growing green and growing clean, in lettuce Thiel’s Greenhouses trusts.
An Ontario-Alberta-Netherlands connection has led to the sky glowing pink over Thiel’s Greenhouses in Bruderheim, Alberta.
Since 1958, Thiel’s Greenhouses have been serving the Fort Saskatchewan, Bruderheim, Lamont and Vegreville areas. The company has been focused on creating superior product quality and with the recent upgrade they look to enter a new market.
Nadine Stielow grew up in the Bruderheim area and as a little girl, she frequented the business she now has made her own. Arthur C Green/Submitted Image
Owner Nadine Stielow grew up in the Bruderheim area and as a little girl, she frequented the business she now has made her own. Stielow is taking Thiel’s Greenhouses to the next level of plant cultivation with the installation of a hydroponic system to grow lettuce.
Stielow was thrilled to give Postmedia a tour of the brand-new equipment purchased from Dry Hydroponics in the Netherlands. Stielow made the decision to purchase after visiting with Dry Hydroponics in NL where they have demonstration/trial greenhouses showcasing their product.
“I was there last January to learn from them,” Stielow told The Record.
The state of the art system uses cultivation ponds built of cement. Nutrient-rich water is added to the ponds and the crops grow in crop holders placed on floats. Arthur C Green/The Record
The Dry Hydroponics system is suitable for short-cycle crops, like lettuce, herbs and flowers according to the company’s website. Thiel’s Greenhouses will be able to produce 1500-1900 heads of fresh lettuce a week with the new equipment.
“The state of the art system uses cultivation ponds built of cement. Nutrient-rich water is added to the ponds and the crops grow in crop holders placed on floats,” Stielow said.
The design has been patented by Dry Hydroponics and allows crops to acquire sufficient amounts of water, light, nutrients, CO2 and oxygen, Stielow told Postmedia.
The designs give an ideal microclimate and allow the crops to grow in a natural way.
A shot of Thiels Greenhouses in the night sky. Residents of Bruderheim will now see a glow of pink in the evenings. Arthur C Green/The Record
‘The Ontario-Alberta-Netherlands Connection’
Thiel’s Greenhouses, which is located in Bruderheim, Alberta uses a hydroponic supplier based in Ontario named AMA Horticulture.
“I also get some of my spring plant supplies from AMA Horticulture as well,” Stielow said. “Shawn Mallen who is a specialist with that company is here helping with the setup.
Capping an incredible wk with Fri goodbye/vaarwell to my ON-AB-NL #DreamTeam
For NOW! Time to GROW #epic #finalbuild #VeniVidiVici @amahort @Dry_Hydroponics @PhilipsHorti @BallHort @AFSC_AB @Bruderheim @ThreeSixtyAB @AsGr8AsHome @1BIOBEST #liveit12:08 AM - Jan 28, 2019
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Martin Naaborg is a specialist with Dry Hydroponics and has traveled nearly 7,000 kilometers to install the system for Thiel’s Greenhouses.
“Both Shawn and Martin were here for the week to consult in the final stages of the project,” Stielow said. “AMA Horticulture is the Canadian dealer for Dry Hydroponics. Both companies are stellar in the tech support and overall help they provide to customers.”
‘Growing clean and looking to enter new markets’
Thiel’s Greenhouses has invested in this new technology from Dry Hydroponics to mass produce fresh lettuce. They will in turn market this product to local consumers and the high-end restaurants.
“To be considered organic in Canada plants must be grown in soil,” Stielow said. “I am growing clean; no pesticides will be put on our plants. I do not use chemicals in our greenhouses.”
The water heaters that were installed at an additional cost. The system is state of the art. Arthur C Green/The Record
You can walk up to any plant and eat it without a worry about it affecting your health. But this type of growing is not considered organic, Stielow added.
“Everything is being started from seed,” Stielow said. “We obtained seeds that are specifically created for hydroponic growing.”
Stielow admits that although lettuce is her company’s main focus right now, she would like to add different products as time progresses.
“I would love to try growing some new products such as bok choi and lemongrass,” Stielow said. “There are others I would like to try but I won’t go too crazy yet.”
Arthur C Green/The record
If you would like to visit Thiel’s Greenhouses, they are located on 4916 45 Street in Bruderheim. Or they can be found on the web at www.thielsgreenhouse.ca
“Our mission is simple,” Stielow said. “To supply the highest quality plants, products and services for our customers”
Living Greens Farm Becomes One of the Largest Indoor Farms in the World
On Feb. 22, Living Greens Farm Will Open Their Third Grow Room In Faribault, Minn.
FARIBAULT, MINN. (PRWEB) FEBRUARY 13, 2019
With the opening of a new grow room, Living Greens Farm, a vertical, indoor aeroponic farm that provides year-round fresh salads, microgreens and herbs, is set to become the largest vertical plane aeroponic farm in the world on February 22, 2019. This brings their farming operation to 60,000 square feet – allowing Living Greens to offer produce that’s better for you and the environment. Unlike most produce, Living Greens Farm never uses pesticides, herbicides or GMOs – delivering the highest standards in food safety. Because Living Greens’ products are fresher, they contain more vitamins and nutrients than conventional produce.
While aeroponics has been around for decades, Living Greens Farm has discovered a way to successfully transition and improve this technology for commercial production. Aeroponics is the practice of suspending a plant’s roots in the air and spraying them with a nutrient-rich solution, instead of burying them in soil. Living Greens Farms’ patented vertical plane design allows one acre to produce the equivalent of hundreds of conventional acres. A high-tech computer system manages the plants growing conditions for variables such as light, temperature, humidity and CO2 to grow year-round produce. Overall, Living Greens Farms’ system uses 200 times less land and 95 percent less water than traditional growing methods. While other vertical aeroponic farms are larger in square footage, Living Greens Farms’ vertical plane design is the first of its kind and is more efficient than other aeroponic growing methods which decreases labor by up to 60 percent.
“Our patented growing technology has changed the game of aeroponics, within one year our new farm will save 24 million gallons of water and several hundred thousand miles of shipping – saving over 35,000 gallons of diesel and nearly a million pounds of CO2 emissions," said Dana Anderson, Chairman and CEO of Living Greens Farm. “With our third grow room, Living Greens Farm will nearly triple its capacity, move into major market segments and position the company for even stronger growth in 2019. The expansion places Living Greens as the world’s largest vertical plane aeroponic farm in the world.”
Living Greens Farm’s new grow room will allow an expansion of their consumer product line into new states including Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Iowa, North Dakota and South Dakota by February 2019.
ABOUT LIVING GREENS FARM
Headquartered in Minnesota, Living Greens Farm is the world’s largest vertical plane aeroponic farm. Living Greens Farm produce requires 95 water and 99 percent less land to grow year-round and all products are grown without pesticides or GMOs. Living Greens Farm has a full product line that includes salads, microgreens and herbs available throughout the Midwest. For more information, please visit http://www.livinggreensfarm.com
Modern Farming, A Must To Boost Local Food Supply: UAE minister
Hydroponic farming is cost-efficient and it yields more vegetables and herbs in a shorter time.
Angel Tesorer
February 13, 2019
Combatting climate change also means embracing modern farming practices to diversify food sources and achieve sustainable development in the agricultural sector.
This was given emphasis by Dr Thani bin Ahmed Al Zeyoudi, Minister of Climate Change and Environment, in an interview with Khaleej Times on the sidelines of the World Government Summit in Dubai on Tuesday.
Al Zeyoudi said: "We at the ministry have developed a policy for food biodiversity where we encourage a change in the behaviour of our local farmers - towards more resilient agricultural practices - to produce the right crops."
He noted that employing modern technology and tools will bring about a two-pronged result: increased food production and lesser carbon footprint.
Al Zeyoudi cited hydroponic farming as an example of a more sustainable option as it uses around 90 per cent less water than regular farming. It also requires less space for plants and vegetables to grow, making it the best solution to the challenges presented by the UAE's limited arable land.
On the economic side, he noted that hydroponic farming is cost-efficient and it yields more vegetables and herbs in a shorter time. And more importantly, its carbon footprint is minimal as the greens are grown locally.
The UAE imports 85 per cent of its food requirement and some studies show that food importation is set to rise from $100 billion in 2014 to $400 billion in 2025.
Al Zeyoudi said they are urging small-scale farmers to move to commercial agriculture and embrace modern cultivation practices to increase their contributions to the local food supply.
"We are subsidising farm materials, including seeds that can grow in an environment with high temperature, humidity and salinity," he said.
While the technology is available, the minister cautioned farmers against utilising it on their own.
"There are many experts and engineers at the ministry who can provide them with trainings. They should not just use hydroponics or build greenhouses without first understanding them."
Last week, Al Zeyoudi visited several farms in Dubai and Abu Dhabi where he inspected various water and energy-saving technologies, including greenhouses.
"The results are amazing," he said. "Farmers are happier because the technology is tailored-fit to the conditions of the UAE."
The Founders of The Farm Project Announce Nationwide Launch of Lettuce Grow
Founded by Jacob Pechenik and Zooey Deschanel as an initiative of The Farm Project, Lettuce Grow is calling all front yards, backyards, patios and balconies to move fresh food production back into our communities
THE FOUNDERS OF THE FARM PROJECT ANNOUNCE NATIONWIDE LAUNCH OF LETTUCE GROW: A NEW MEMBERSHIP EXPERIENCE EMPOWERING AMERICANS TO GROW 20% OF THEIR FOOD AT HOME
Los Angeles, CA, and Austin, TX (March 13, 2019)
The Farm Project is proud to announce today the nationwide launch of Lettuce Grow, providing everyone the tools, encouragement and inspiration to grow 20% of their food at home while building an expanding community of passionate growers who connect deeply through food and sustainable living. Lettuce Grow is now available for pre-orders, with membership programs starting in April 2019.
Founded by Jacob Pechenik and Zooey Deschanel as an initiative of The Farm Project, Lettuce Grow is calling all front yards, backyards, patios and balconies to move fresh food production back into our communities. By building the world’s largest distributed farm, Lettuce Grow is on a mission to change our food system, closing the gap on food mileage and resource waste, all while re-establishing a deeper, lasting and experiential connection with the food we eat.
The company will donate one Farmstand and membership for every ten member sign-ups to a school or community-based organization via its Lettuce Give program, in order to advance fresh food access and help cultivate the next generation of sustainable farmers, chefs and consumers.
”We couldn’t be more excited to finally bring Lettuce Grow to homes across the country,” say Founders Jacob Pechenik and Zooey Deschanel. “It’s something we’re extremely passionate about – empowering people to grow a substantial portion of healthy, fresh food at home while also helping to reduce waste and create more sustainable communities. We hope to inspire people to develop a new, more healthy relationship with the food they eat.”
More and more people want to grow their own food, but the lack of space, time, dependability and expertise keeps many from making it a reality. With Lettuce Grow, members only need a power outlet and 9 square feet of sunny outdoor space – everything else required to become successful master growers is included with the membership.
Lettuce Grow Farmstands use self-watering hydroponic technology and are sustainably made from ocean plastic. They’re designed to save time and space, delivering about the same yield as 40 square feet farmed conventionally in raised beds, with only a few minutes needed for maintenance and harvesting each week.
Lettuce Grow sends members bi-weekly deliveries of living baby plants, so their Farmstands are always fully stocked. Growing plans are curated based on eating preferences and include over 75 varieties of leafy greens, vegetables, herbs and edible flowers – even watermelons! Lettuce Grow’s data-driven approach takes into account the member’s location, individual environment, weather data and seasonality to make sure members can successfully and reliably harvest meaningful quantities of fresh food at peak harvest.
Along the way, members have access to educational content and support from expert horticulturists as well as their own interactive farming dashboard, which always shows them what’s growing and what’s ready in their Farmstands. And because the goal is to help members meet their personal healthy eating goals, Lettuce Grow provides them a steady stream of exclusive recipes and how-to’s to accompany their harvests.
Lettuce Grow Farmstands start at $399, with a monthly membership at $49 per month. For more information about how to sign up for Lettuce Grow and to start growing at home, visit
lettucegrow.com. Follow Lettuce Grow on Instagram at @lettucegrow and Facebook at @LettuceGrow.
Nepal: AeroRoots Wants To Transform Nepal’s Agriculture By Farming In The Air
In 2017, Rana and Singh designed a system with over 150 plants and put it at Rana’s house. “At that point, we were in a hit and trial process. We didn’t know if our system would work,” shares Rana.
Linked by Michael Levenston
We want to be able to grow Himalayan herbs in the Terai and Terai vegetables in the Himalayas,” claims Rana.
By Shashwat Pant
Online Khabar
March 10, 2019
Excerpt:
In 2017, Rana and Singh designed a system with over 150 plants and put it at Rana’s house. “At that point, we were in a hit and trial process. We didn’t know if our system would work,” shares Rana.
Of the 150 plants they had planted, only one survived. But the survival of one plant was enough to give the two partners the boost to continue the project which they started as a dream.
“The one plant that survived gave us the confidence that we were heading on the right path. Had that plant not survived, I don’t think AeroRoots would have existed today,” shares Rana.
Since then AeroRoots has come a long way. Learning from their mistakes, they have till date created four systems, each upgraded and better than the other.
The co-founders also share that they not only want to create a pesticide-free tomorrow, they also aim to revolutionize agriculture in Nepal. The company through its system is paving way for a soilfree farm which ensures higher yield and less investment of resources including the workforce.
Read the complete article here.
Earth Notes: Urban Agriculture
Vertically stacked growing shelves, closely spaced plantings, and covered beds are helping farms fit in where space is often restricted.
By DIANE HOPE • FEB 13, 2019
In backyards and vacant lots, urban farming is on the rise in towns and cities across the Colorado Plateau. Vertically stacked growing shelves, closely spaced plantings, and covered beds are helping farms fit in where space is often restricted.
Roots Micro Farm
CREDIT MADELYN CHANCE
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Warehouse farming operations grow crops in sterile atmospheres that need costly nutrient inputs and energy for lighting. But small-scale urban farms offer lots of sustainable advantages.
These farms use natural sunlight and moisture, and make great use of local food waste, says Josh Chance. He and his wife Maddy established Roots Micro Farm on a neighborhood lot in downtown Flagstaff two and half years ago.
They mix organic waste from Northern Arizona University and local breweries with horse manure from nearby barns, creating deep fertile growing beds. Hoop houses let them extend the growing season from late April through December. They raise everything from kale to kohlrabi and tomatoes to edible flowers.
Such small urban farms can’t achieve the economies of scale that massive modern farming can – so their produce may cost a bit more than at large grocery chains. But, since they’re often located just a mile or two from consumers, local growers deliver fresh, healthy produce requiring little or no energy for transportation.
There are some extra benefits too--these farms provide pleasant green spaces within a city. And they can give young people the chance to see where food comes from, and how it’s grown. Some even provide training workshops for locals to learn - and trade - skills.
All in all, urban agriculture appears to be an idea ripe for the picking.
This Farming Style That Skips Soil And Adds Fish Is Growing In Popularity
Aquaponic farming is not a widespread practice, but it is expected to grow. According to Future Market Insights, the global aquaponics industry is expected to grow more than 7 percent in the next 10 years. In 2018, the United States was home to about 40 percent of all aquaponics operations globally.
Courtesy of Tom McPherson
Springworks Farm, a commercial aquaponics operation in Lisbon.
By Sam Schipani, BDN Staff
February 22, 2019
Aquaponics sounds like the stuff of science fiction. Instead of crops’ roots reaching down into the soil, they are suspended in water that is filled with live, swimming fish that sustain the plants with their nutrient-rich excrement. The closed-loop system is generally less disease prone and more water efficient than soil-based gardening, and at the end of the day, its farmers can sell plants from above the waterline and the fish from below.
Aquaponic farming is not a widespread practice, but it is expected to grow. According to Future Market Insights, the global aquaponics industry is expected to grow more than 7 percent in the next 10 years. In 2018, the United States was home to about 40 percent of all aquaponics operations globally.
The innovative growing method has the potential to make a splash in Maine’s agricultural scene, but first, it has to overcome market roadblocks and a marred past.
The story of Springworks Farm
The only active commercial aquaponics growing operation in Maine is Springworks Farm in Lisbon. Trevor Kenkel, the company’s founder, broke ground on Springworks Farm five years ago, when he was just weeks into his freshman year at Bowdoin College. The 6,000-square-foot facility raises tilapia and grows five different types of lettuce. Kenkel said the farm provides produce and fish to about 25 Hannafords and several distributors.
Courtesy of Tom McPherson
Springworks Farm, a commercial aquaponics operation in Lisbon.
“Our system is about 20 times more productive per acre than a conventional farm,” Kenkel said. “We have this whole web of organisms that allows us to be a steward of that system rather than controlling it.”
Along with their eco-friendly bona fides, aquaponic systems can provide local produce year-round, even during Maine’s harsh winters.
“Maine has a really strong local food movement that I think is really supportive of an operation like this that can produce local food all year,” Kenkel said.
Growing local has an added sustainability benefit: reducing food miles. Most of the lettuce in the United States is grown in California and Arizona, whereas Maine-grown aquaponic lettuce does not accrue the carbon generated by a cross-country journey.
“In terms of carbon use, the amount that you save by reducing the 2,500-mile trucking journey to 200 miles is really incredible,” Kenkel said.
Kenkel said that Springworks Farm is still in “growth mode,” but the outlook is good. It recently broke ground on a second greenhouse.
Courtesy of Tom McPherson
Trevor Kenkel, founder of Springworks Farm, a commercial aquaponics operation based in Lisbon.
But promising aquaponics operations have failed in Maine before. Fluid Farms, billed as the first commercial aquaponics operation in the state, was founded in 2013 in Dresden following a successful Kickstarter campaign that raised more than $9,000. In 2016, it won the $50,000 grand prize in Gorham Savings Bank’s LaunchPad competition. The company was even certified organic by Maine Organic Farmers and Growers Association.
Now, only a few years later, Fluid Farms appears to be no longer operational. According to the Maine Secretary of State’s office, Fluid Farms administratively dissolved in 2018. Tyler Gaudet, one of the founders, declined to comment on what happened to the company.
Aquaponics in the classroom
Aquaponics is used primarily as a learning tool in Maine.
Maine Agrotech in St. Albans, designs, installs and provides technical support for small-scale aquaponic systems throughout the state. Jeff Giallombardo, Maine Agrotech’s founder, said most of its customers are universities and high schools, though he has installed a few at private residences as well.
“The interest now seems to be in the education sector,” he said.
Giallombardo started Maine Agrotech after using aquaponics as an educational tool for an alternative education program for Nokomis Regional High School in Newport.
“I got involved with aquaponics to try to deliver engaging and interdisciplinary instructions to students in my program,” Giallombardo said. “I got inundated with requests from people wanting to know how to do it.”
Education is built into the business model for Springworks Farm, too. Kenkel said the farm has been an educational operation “from the start,” conducting tours and selling small aquaponics kits for aquariums as a didactic tool.
Courtesy of Tom McPherson
Lettuce grown at Springworks Farm, a commercial aquaponics operation based in Lisbon.
“We have those now in something like 130 schools and a curriculum to match,” Kenkel said. “I kind of wish I had that growing up. A micro-farm lets you experience things the hands on way.”
University of Southern Maine is one of the schools that takes regular field trips to Springworks Farm. Theodore Willis, associate research professor at the university, started using aquaponics to teach a land-based aquaculture and research methods class in August 2017. The 10-tank aquaponics system — housed in a university laboratory — grows lettuce, celery, bell peppers and kale alongside tilapia, which is the fish most commonly used in aquaponic systems.
In Willis’ experience, aquaponics is a valuable learning tool, but can be challenging to manage. During the school year, Willis has a steady stream of students to help tend the system, and the school cafeteria and catering services use the produce grown in meals on campus. Summer vacation, on the other hand, proves challenging.
“It works well for nine months out of the year, but for three months we are trying to figure out what to do with the various things we are growing down there,” Willis said. “I’m relying on undergraduate volunteers to come in and clean things and feed fish.”
Roadblocks to aquaponics in Maine
On a larger scale, the small university scheduling issues could translate into real world roadblocks for commercial aquaponics operations.
“If you have any aquaculture system on a large scale, you have to have the financial backing and the personnel to keep it running,” Willis said.
Like at the university, having consumers for aquaponically grown products is also essential to the operation’s success.
“You have to be able to move product,” Kenkel said. “Lettuce has a very short shelf life.”
Unlike at the university — Willis said he is not looking to make money off of its system — consumer preferences matter for commercial operations. Aquaponically grown crops also tend to be more expensive than their soil-based commercial farmed counterparts.
“It is a relatively expensive way to grow food, so there is usually a premium price point on it,” Willis explained. “You have to get the consumer to recognize that head of organic romaine for $2.99 drove thousands miles and was grown with water mined from aquifers, whereas one from aquaponic operation that is $3.25 was grown locally with no added fertilizers.”
Courtesy of Theodore Willis
Associate research professor Theodore Willis growing aquaponics at the University of Southern Maine.
Finding a market for aquaponically grown food and fish in Maine is also going to be a challenge. American consumers have less of a taste for tilapia, the primary fish grown in aquaponic systems. Tilapia is, as Willis described, “a bulletproof teaching fish” because it is so hardy and forgiving. But it is difficult to sell.
“[Tilapia] is a not particularly strong-flavored white flesh fish, like flounder,” Willis said. “A lot of this is training the consumer to accept a different taste than they are used to.”
Not only is it challenging to turn a profit on aquaponically grown products, but also the upfront costs for the energy and infrastructure required for an aquaponics operation are steep. The extreme weather conditions throughout the year make keeping the system at relative stasis especially difficult in Maine.
“In Maine, you’ve got fairly hot summers paired with pretty brutal winters. Keeping things consistent in that kind of environment is difficult,” Kenkel said. “With the right kind of equipment and processes in place, it’s certainly achievable, but getting started is very difficult compared to other kind of agricultural systems.”
Overcoming challenges and the future of aquaponics in Maine
These roadblocks could have prevented commercial aquaponics operations from succeeding in the past in Maine.
“I don’t think anyone has quite figured out the energy equation in Maine in terms of lighting, heating and cooling,” Giallombardo said. “I’m not sure anyone has figured out the market yet either, and what crops are the most profitable.”
Giallombardo believes culinary herbs are an opportunity for aquaponic growers, as most of the herbs sold in supermarkets are grown in the southern United States.
“You can get a much higher quality product grown locally at a better price point right now,” Giallombardo said. “That’s really your best bang for your buck in my research.”
The educational interest in aquaponics across Maine could help with one of its biggest barriers to entry: knowledge.
“People just don’t know enough about aquaponics here,” Giallombardo said.
Giallombardo predicts that the aquaponics industry, as well as similar industries like recirculating aquaculture and indoor agriculture, will only continue to grow in Maine. The proliferance of aquaponics learning tools in classrooms, he said, will prove especially useful as job training.
“You can use these systems really to educate on all of these industries and prepare students for jobs that are no doubt going to be there soon,” Giallombardo said.
Though Springworks Farm still stands alone, Kenkel is also hopeful about the potential for small-scale growers, whether in classrooms or their own homes, to branch out in the future.
“I think there’s a strong community of people who do it on a smaller scale,” Kenkel said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if more people struck out and built larger systems.”
Indoor Agriculture May Hold The Future of Food
Paris has meanwhile come up with its own urban agriculture model, dubbed “Pariculteur,” a series of town hall-mandated projects designed to cover as much of the capital as possible with greenery via a rise in urban farming. An initial 10 hectares for the project is set to grow to 30 hectares by next year
Published: February 24, 2019 AFP
AeroFarms co-founder Marc Oshima. AeroFarms of Newark, New Jersey, is the largest vertical farm in the world.Image Credit: AFP
Paris: In a world faced with the conundrum of mountains of waste and obesity for some and dire shortages and malnutrition for others the future of food is a main dish on today’s global menu.
A key ingredient is the trend in ever more imaginative forms towards urban agriculture, a multi-faceted recipe already being poured over by some 800 million people globally, according to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation.
The trend takes many forms - from collective market gardens in even the most run-down of urban districts to connected vertical farms using indoor farming techniques to meet spiralling food demand in areas largely bereft of arable land.
Today, with our containers, we are 120 times more productive per square metre than on open ground.
- Guillaume Fourdin | Founder, Agricool
Yves Christol, of French cooperative In Vivo, has identified six models of the genre.
They include a key European variant, electronically managed without recourse to pesticide - or even soil or sunshine.
Green beans means ... Iceland
“That has allowed Iceland to become a major producer of green beans,” says Christol, thanks to geothermal heating.
Asian countries are also in on the act, not least Singapore, with the high density population city state bent on ensuring high-tech food autonomy.
Japan and China have sought to give new life to sites which once hosted electronics factories even if the strategy appears costly.
AeroFarms co-founder Marc Oshima. AeroFarms of Newark, New Jersey, is the largest vertical farm in the world.Image Credit: AFP
China has launched some urban farms even in areas where the soil has been polluted by heavy metals and would be too costly to clean up.
The US model, as cities including New York and Chicago seek to become sustainably hunger-proof, includes hydroponic gardens - effectively eschewing soil and using mineral nutrients in a water solvent, although profitability can prove elusive.
But scale is an issue and the concept will not be viable “so long as the price of the vegetables is not increased fourfold,” to cover energy costs, says Christol.
Strawberry containers for ever
The cost of transporting food is something which particularly exercises entrepreneurs such as Guillaume Fourdinier, a founder of French start-up Agricool in Paris and Dubai.
His firm produces strawberries year round in shipping containers fitted out with LED lighting. Urban agriculture’s raison d’etre, he says, comprises fighting against “the ecological disaster of transport”.
“Today, with our containers, we are 120 times more productive per square metre than on open ground,” says Fourdinier.
“We produce in decentralised fashion and closer to customers,” he adds of strawberries sold marginally cheaper than their organic equivalent.
Paris has meanwhile come up with its own urban agriculture model, dubbed “Pariculteur,” a series of town hall-mandated projects designed to cover as much of the capital as possible with greenery via a rise in urban farming.
An initial 10 hectares for the project is set to grow to 30 hectares by next year.
Urban ecologist Swen Deral, who oversaw a pan-European urban agriculture project last year, says if the concept is to be financially viable in cities it has to go “beyond production”.
“Either they recycle, or else they create services linked to urban agriculture, educational activities, restaurants and the like,” he explains.
Researchers point to urban agriculture’s additional benefit of fighting against the effects of climate change as its proponents seek to reinvent urban existence.
Francois Mancebo, researcher at France’s Reims University, summed up the challenge in an article published by peer-review open access publisher MDPI and entitled “city gardening: managing durability and adapting to climate change thanks to urban agriculture.”
Mancebo says the concept must become an integral part of urban planning with local politicians underlining the need for active participation of city dwellers.
Farming On The Roofs of Shopping Malls In Singapore
Agriculture, takes up only about 1% of its land area.
Amidst the luxurious commercial setting of Singapore's Orchard Road, filled with fancy malls, department stores and food courts, there is a farm.
Reuters reports that the 6,450 sq ft Comcrop farm utilises vertical racks and hydroponics to grow leafy greens and herbs such as basil and perppermint, which are sold to nearby bars, restaurants and stores.
Allan Lim set up the rooftop farm five years ago, and recently opened a 4,000-square-metre farm with a greenhouse on the edge of the city.
The goal, in Singapore where land is at a premium, is to tackle food security.
“Agriculture is not seen as a key sector in Singapore. But we import most of our food, so we are very vulnerable to sudden disruptions in supply,” Lim said.
“Land, natural resources and low-cost labor used to be the predominant way that countries achieved food security. But we can use technology to solve any deficiencies,” he said.
In the country where 5.6 million people are densely packed in, land reclamation, moving transport utilities and storage underground, and clearing cemeteries for homes and highways have been undertaken.
Agriculture, takes up only about 1% of its land area.
Last year, Singapore topped the Economist Intelligence Unit’s (EIU) Global Food Security Index of 113 countries for the first time, scoring high on affordability, availability and safety.
However, importing more than 90% of its food, food security is susceptible to climate change and natural resource risks.
As climate change makes its impact felt across the world, the scarcity of water, shifting weather, and population growth will require better ways to feed the people.
A study published last year, cited by Reuters notes that urban agriculture currently produces as much as 180 million metric tonnes of food a year - up to 10% of the global output of pulses and vegetables.
From what was once an agrarian economy that produced nearly all of its own food, from pig farms, vegetable gardens and durian orchards and chicken in the kampongs, to government is now pushing to relocate over 60 farms in the countryside by 2021, to reclaim land for the military.
Speaking to the publication, Chelsea Wan, a second-generation farmer who runs Jurong Frog Farm said: “It’s getting tougher because leases are shorter, it’s harder to hire workers, and it’s expensive to invest in new technologies.
“We support the government’s effort to increase productivity through technology, but we feel sidelined,” she said.
Urban Agriculture May Uproot Traditional Farms in World of Food Ethics
Even though urban farms are more sustainable, they may encourage gentrification
Photo by Gabriella Holm | The State Press
"Gentrification in cities is changing farming as we know it." Illustration published on Wednesday, Feb. 27, 2019.
By Katelyn Reinhart | 02/28/19
Family-owned farms are decreasing as community gardens and urban agriculture find their footing in a world of food ethics.
In Arizona, it is not atypical to see farmland sold for urban development. Arcadia, a neighborhood located 10 miles from ASU's downtown Phoenix campus, was originally known for its citrus groves before the land was sold for development.
Similarly, the ASU Polytechnic campus hosts the Morrison School of Agribusiness, which was given its name to honor ASU alumni Marvin and June Morrison, who donated farmland to the school in 1998.
David King, an assistant professor in the School of Geographical Science and Urban Planning, said larger farms may be suffering from a shifting economy that relies less on citrus and more on housing.
“Agriculture is very resource intensive to grow here,” King said. “A lot of the agriculture that supported the economy in earlier stages just isn’t as critical to the economy now.”
He said that there are people in urban planning who see a future in urban agriculture, which is popular due to its sustainable appeal.
Kristen Osgood, a program manager for the Rob and Melani Walton Sustainability Solutions Service, said supporting local farmers could save travel time and quality in the foods people eat. She also said protecting farmers is extremely important as farmland is sold for housing development.
“We saw this happen in Mesa, where people were buying land next to a well-established feed-lot and then complained about the smell and tried to have it shut down — farmland isn’t something that grows back, once it’s gone, it’s gone, and that’s something we need to protect,” she said.
UN highlights role of farming in closing emissions gap http://bbc.in/174DJT8 #climate #agriculture
@ClimateNow As organic becomes more mainstream, the need for BigAgri, MonoCulture farms will decrease.
The priority must be the family farm
Osgood said that while farmers should be protected, growing food in a community garden setting could be valuable sustainably, physically and mentally as well.
Greg Peterson, owner of the Urban Farm in Phoenix, said his urban farm takes up a third of an acre and offers free webinar classes and other tools for users to educate themselves on sustainability topics.
“Something we think is important is growing food where we live,” Peterson said. “We have classes, tours and everything we grow here is grown organically.”
Peterson said that while there has been an increase in younger visitors, the most common visitors are baby boomers who want to know more about the way their food is grown.
Even though urban agriculture offers a more sustainable, local option for produce, it may bring gentrification.
Daoqin Tong, an associate professor in the School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning who has studied community gardens and urban agriculture said that in her work, said she saw that it was more difficult for community gardens to be successful in low-income areas.
“For a lot of community gardens, people will pay fees to keep it around,” Tong said. "A problem with that is, in the summer, it’s very hard to grow anything, so that money goes to an empty garden. For wealthier families, the pay just doesn’t seem like that much.”
She said lower income families often cannot dedicate the time to maintaining a garden if they are working multiple jobs to support themselves.
Danielle Vermeer, a junior majoring in sustainability and urban planning, said that community gardens and urban agriculture have unreached potential in providing for communities.
“I volunteered at the Tiger Mountain Foundation through ASU," Vermeer said. "What we did was work on an urban farm for people who were incarcerated and are trying to integrate back into the community. As much as I think it would be nice for people to use gardens as a food source, at the moment I do see gardening as more of a privilege.”
Reach the reporter at kreinha3@asu.edu and follow @ReinhartKatelyn on Twitter.
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Re-Nuble is 100% Committed to Plant-Based Only Technologies
Re-Nuble is 100% committed to plant-based only technologies that help us meet the growing fertility, and pest and disease suppression challenges in agriculture.
We have a few new tools and solutions underneath our belt that we'll soon be releasing. Most recent is a topical solution that can be directly applied to plants to help mitigate, and, if wildly successful, eradicate the common pest and disease issues that both indoor and outdoor farms currently manage using alternative such as, microbes, genetically modified enzymes, and/or traditional pesticides and herbicides.
If you are a farmer interested in testing a product to help with managing aphids, thrips, powdery mildew and/or fungus gnats, to name a few, email us at wecare@re-nuble.com and drop us an email with the subject line: "We're Interested".
In the next 4 weeks, we plan to engage farmers for feedback on this new product and you may be the first to receive it before its formal public release. Your feedback makes us better.
The Green-Collar Revolution That’s Headed to Wilmington, Delaware
Vertical farming is coming to the city. (Courtesy photo)
By Holly Quinn / REPORTER
02-28-19
First, you need to understand the Opportunity Zone Program, which was enacted as part of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.
It’s an economic development program where census tracts are designated as eligible for tax breaks for private investors through a program called Opportunity Funds. The goal is to help under-resourced communities become more economically stable by creating jobs for the people who live there — or, as the IRS puts it in its FAQ: “Opportunity Zones are designed to spur economic development by providing tax benefits to investors.”
Opportunity Zones are basically an incentive for people to invest in areas that need it — something that, historically, has led to gentrification and displacement of the under-resourced people who were theoretically meant to benefit. (See a map of Delaware’s zones here.)
That’s why Second Chances Farm, an LLC founded by entrepreneur and TEDxWilmington organizer Ajit George, is an interesting concept — one that combines farming, jobs for local returning citizens and ultimately entrepreneurship opportunities that require neither capital nor credit.
“We call them ‘green collar” jobs,” said George in an interview with Technical.ly. “Green because it’s organic, it’s pesticide free, and it’s herbicide free. And it’s about growing food locally. This is not a hobby, this not a corner garden in the summer, it’s about growing food year round, on a production scale.”
So, how did the concept of Opportunity Zones, urban farming and ex-offenders come together? It was the result of two very different 2016 TEDxWilmington talks — one about reentry and recidivism, the other about farming of the future.
Employees — virtually all of whom will be formerly incarcerated — will run the farms with a starting pay of $15 an hour. As the company grows, the plan is for employees to eventually acquire farms of their own and become business owners (or “compassionate capitalists,” as Second Chances Farm calls them).
In contrast to downstate’s traditional outdoor crops, Second Chances Farm will be an indoor, LED-lit, vertical hydroponic farm that will operate year-round; the first farm’s location is yet to be determined.
“There’s no soil, it’s all grown in continuously flowing water,” said George.
The drip system. (Courtesy image)
Vertical hydroponic farming has become increasingly popular over the last few years across the country — even Jeff Bezos has backed a hydroponic farming venture. Second Chances will likely be the first one in Delaware.
The for-profit venture is projected to have its first indoor farm up and running by the fall, pending a final clearance with the IRS. It’s already won a few awards and startup grants.
If placing a farm inside the city seems strange, consider the challenges the average ex-offender faces when trying to get to get a job — and how much easier it would be if $15-an-hour jobs were available right in the neighborhood.
In order to qualify to be placed in a job at Second Chance, inmates heading toward reentry will work with the behavior health and wellness program Dimensions during the final six months of their sentences.
“We are contracting with Dimensions and have an exclusive contract with the Delaware Department of Corrections,” said George. “Issues like anger management are beyond the scope of what we can do. They offer more social work, so it just made sense for us to work with them.”
Dimensions also has a transportation group that can help Second Chances Farm employees get to and from work, an issue for many looking for work after reentry, as drivers licenses are sometimes still suspended and getting car insurance can be a challenge.
The organic, hyperlocal vegetable crops will be sold to restaurants, organic farm stands and to cancer patients avoiding even the minimal amount of pesticides allowed in traditional organic mass farming.
“Delaware used to be known for three things — chicken, credit cards and cars,” said George. “What we’re really talking about is adding a new industry, which is organic hydroponic crops. And with that comes my notion, which is ‘compassionate capitalism,’ which is really providing opportunities for people.”
New City Map Shows Farm-Fresh Produce In Queens, New York
Fresh produce can sometimes be hard to find in many underserved New York City neighborhoods. That is why City Council Speaker Corey Johnson, the acting public advocate, created an interactive Farm-To-City Food map of the five boroughs, highlighting the importance of access to fresh and healthy food for all New Yorkers.
In Queens, the map shows 17 Community Supported Agriculture (CSAs), 20 farmers markets, 2 food boxes and 4 fresh pantry projects.
Source: qns.com
CSAs are partnerships between a farm and a community that allow neighbors to invest in the farm at the beginning of the growing season when farms need support the most, in exchange for weekly distribution of the farms’ produce from June to November. Food Box programs aggregate produce from participating farms and enable under-served communities to purchase a box of fresh, healthy, primarily regionally-grown produce.
Source: qns.com
Big Tex Urban Farms is Using Hydroponics to Achieve its Million Servings Mission
Big Tex Urban Farms is Using Hydroponics to Achieve its Million Servings Mission
Big Tex Urban Farms and Hort Americas have partnered together to install, test and demonstrate a variety of hydroponic production systems while at the same time providing Dallas community organizations with locally-grown produce.
What started as an outdoor gardening project by the State Fair of Texas to better serve the local South Dallas community has surpassed what fair officials ever imagined might be accomplished. Jason Hayes, who is the fair’s creative director, and Drew Demler, who is the fair’s director of horticulture, devised a plan to start an outdoor vegetable garden in unused parking space.
“Big Tex Urban Farms started with a small budget in 2016 using 100 mobile planter boxes to grow food outdoors,” Demler said. “During that first year we got some decent yields. The food that we harvested was donated to two local charitable organizations.
“Baylor Scott & White Health and Wellness Institute in Mill City, Texas, is our primary beneficiary. The institute hosts a farmers market for the community on Tuesday and Friday. One of the institute’s main objectives is to get people eating healthy, fresh vegetables. We donate vegetables, including lettuce, collard greens, Swiss chard, basil and chives, and they in turn give the produce away. This is in a community where there really aren’t many other good options for fresh produce.”
Another local beneficiary of the fresh produce grown by Demler and his staff is Cornerstone Baptist Church. The church feeds the homeless six days a week.
“The church is involved with feeding the people who need food more than anyone,” Demler said. “The church had been receiving donated produce that was declined by area grocery stores. The homeless weren’t receiving anything that would be considered fresh and they weren’t receiving any greens or lettuces at all. We have been able to change that. A lot of what we donate to the church are leafy greens.
“We harvest our produce fresh the morning that we donate it. We probably don’t go more than 4 miles from our facility to any one organization. This is about as local as they are going to get unless they are growing it themselves.”
Expanding into hydroponic production
Demler said growing and donating fresh vegetables gave him and his staff an opportunity to develop good relationships with the organizations they were assisting.
“These local organizations were very happy with what we were doing to assist them in their efforts to feed people in the community that really needed help,” Demler said. “We also received some good media coverage which helped generate more interest in what we were doing.”
Because of the positive response from the groups being helped and some good media coverage, the budget for Big Tex Urban Farms was increased considerably in 2017. This enabled Demler to expand outdoor production to 529 outdoor planters.
“Also before the fair started in late September we installed a 30- by 15-foot hydroponic deep water culture tank in one corner of our largest 7,200-square-foot greenhouse,” Demler said. “We also installed six 8-foot tall vertical tower gardens. This was our first venture into hydroponic growing.”
The greenhouse had been used to grow ornamental plants including palm trees and bougainvillea, and to overwinter hanging baskets. It was also used as a plant exhibit room during the fair. Demler worked with the staff at Hort Americas to design and install the hydroponic production systems.
Higher yields with hydroponics
The amount of produce that was harvested from the hydroponic systems immediately got Demler’s attention.
The installation of hydroponic production systems has enabled Big Tex Urban Farms to expand its distribution of produce to more community organizations in South Dallas.
Photos by Jessie Wood, State Fair of Texas staff photographer
“In the short amount of time that we had installed the systems and started growing, we were very impressed with the results,” he said. “Our total production indoors and outdoors in 2017 was around 2,800 pounds of produce. By the end of April 2018 we had exceeded what we produced for all of 2017. This was one of the main reasons that we decided to expand our hydroponic systems. It is such a better and more efficient way to grow.
“Another reason we expanded the hydroponic systems was the overwhelming positive response from the public during the 2017 fair. In 2018 we turned the greenhouse into an indoor growing exhibit. The public had access to the hydroponic systems all 24 days of the fair.”
Achieving the Million Servings Mission
In September 2018 the State Fair of Texas announced it was implementing a Million Servings Mission. The mission was the brainchild of Jason Hayes.
“The main purpose of the mission was to create awareness,” Demler said. “Jason thought the mission was a really good way to raise awareness about the issues facing the residents of South Dallas and what Big Tex Urban Farms is trying to accomplish. Once Big Tex Urban Farms started producing crops hydroponically we were able to greatly expand our distribution. Even in 2019 we have been able to expand even further our food distribution efforts with the addition of the hydroponic production systems we are now using. Working with Hort Americas has enabled us to further our reach in regards to producing more food and assisting additional organizations. One of mission’s points is to give us the impetus to continue to grow figuratively and literally with the produce that we are able to donate.”
To measure achievement of the Million Servings Mission Big Tex Urban Farms calculates all of the produce that it donates.
“I weigh the vegetables and then send the pounds per variety that we donate to Jason. He keeps a spreadsheet and using a formula created by USDA converts pounds of vegetables into servings. We can actually determine relatively accurately how many servings of vegetables we have produced since we geared up our hydroponic production in 2018 and now into 2019.”
Helping Big Tex Urban Farms to be successful
Much of the equipment that has been installed in the Big Tex Urban Farms greenhouse was previously used in Hort Americas’ demonstration and research greenhouse in Dallas.
“Hort Americas has changed its focus from having its own demonstration greenhouse to putting our energy and resources behind making Big Tex Urban Farms successful,” said Chris Higgins, general manager at Hort Americas. “Hort Americas is providing human resources and grower knowledge along with access to innovative technology. The biggest thing that we are doing is teaching the Big Tex Urban Farms employees how to grow hydroponically. Hort Americas is sending staff to the greenhouse weekly to provide oversight, perform actual tasks and to collect data.
“Right now the facility has been equipped with 75-80 percent of the equipment that is needed in order to grow the crops hydroponically that they want to grow. There will be additional equipment installed as the budget allows.”
Big Tex Urban Farms is using LEDs on a number of its hydroponically-grown crops, including lettuce, collards, kale and all seed propagation.
Demler said Big Tex Urban Farms has been receiving hands-on support from Hort Americas tech support staff.
“Matt White helped us build our first deep water culture tank,” Demler said. “Matt also designed all of our lighting systems. He has provided us with technical assistance as we have expanded our hydroponic production systems.
“Diedre Hughes visits us weekly. She helps us log data, organize projects and assists us with whatever we need. This kind of technical support has enabled us to advance our food production at a much faster rate and we are very grateful for it.”
A variety of hydroponic systems, equipment
Big Tex Urban Farms has installed a second larger deep water culture system. It has also added three rows of Dutch buckets that are being used to grow tomatoes and bell peppers.
“We’ve also added a nutrient film technique (NFT) system,” Demler said. “The NFT channels were donated by Hort Americas and I built a simple system based on a couple of designs that I had seen including ones that Hort Americas was using. We are in the process of adding a second larger NFT system, which is going to be bigger and more productive. This second system was being used by Hort Americas in its demo greenhouse.
“We want to see which crops grow best in the NFT system. We will definitely do more lettuce. We will probably grow some herbs. I’m planning to do more of the cut-and-come-again greens, including collards, kale and mustard greens. These are crops that community residents are very familiar with.”
When Big Tex Urban Farms began growing hydroponically it started with one stainless steel GrowRack system for vertical production. It has since added three additional GrowRacks.
“The first GrowRack we installed has always been used for plant propagation to start all our seedling plugs that are transplanted into our hydroponic production systems,” Demler said. “The additional GrowRacks have been used for finishing different crops. The racks are very versatile. Right now we are using them to finish heads of lettuce. We can also grow herbs in them. During the run of last year’s fair we used the racks to produce microgreens and we’re still growing a small amount of microgreens in them.”
Big Tex Urban Farms is using a variety of hydroponic production systems including deep water culture, Dutch buckets and nutrient film technique.
When Big Tex Urban Farms added its second deep water culture system it installed a Moleaer nanobubble generator to deliver a supplementary source of dissolved oxygen.
“The Moleaer generator made a big difference throughout the summer,” Demler said. “We didn’t start producing out of the second pond until the summer. We really needed a system to oxygenate the water during the warm summer temperatures. It made a huge difference in the crops. We were able to do a great comparison in plant growth with and without the Moleaer generator. Our first deep water culture system is oxygenated with a Venturi. It was very difficult for us to harvest a crop out of the first deep water system because the roots of the lettuce would bunch up at the surface of the pond because there is less oxygen in the water. With the Moleaer generator we were consistently able to harvest lettuce.
“This summer we are going to be able to get a really good comparison because we were able to install GE LED top lights over the second pond right before the start of last year’s fair. We are looking forward to seeing the difference in crop production because of the Moleaer generator and the new LEDs.”
Big Tex Urban Farms is currently using LEDs and is looking to add additional lights.
“We are primarily using GE LEDs,” Demler said. “We have a few different versions of the GE Arize LEDs and we really like them. We also have a few OSRAM LED lamps.
“We are also going to be adding some new lighting systems. We may install some high pressure sodium lamps so that we can do trial comparisons with the LEDs. Hort Americas is also looking at a new LED that is nearly a one-to-one LED comparison to a high pressure sodium lamp. If those become available we will probably add those over some of our hydroponic systems and maybe over our existing vine crops which like high light intensities.”
Big Tex Urban Farms has installed 30MHz sensors throughout its greenhouse to ensure it is providing the optimum production conditions for its hydroponic crops.
Demler said he and the Big Tex Urban Farms staff are still trying to figure out the best way to use the hydroponic systems that have been installed.
“I’ve tried to ramp up production on the crops that I know are going to be popular and I know I can get people to start eating like lettuce, collard greens and the bunching greens,” he said. “I love to try new crops. We did bok choy last year in one of the deep water ponds. I even had some peppers growing in the deep water culture. We’ve grown different varieties of kale. I have also been thinking about other crops that we can try in the NFT system. If we add additional production space I’d like to try broccoli and beans.
“Strawberries are on Chris’ list to try. That’s a crop that he has put a lot of time and effort into. If he feels that it could be a viable crop for us, we’ll try growing them. We would like to try growing small fruit too. If we could make that work that would really get people’s attention.”
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This article is property of Hort Americas and was written by David Kuack, a freelance technical writer in Fort Worth, TX.
How 300 Years of Urbanization and Farming Transformed the Planet
Three centuries ago, humans were intensely using just around 5 percent of the Earth’s land. Now, it’s almost half.
Humans are transforming the Earth through our carbon emissions. Arctic sea ice is shrinking, seas are rising, and the past four years have been the hottest since record-keeping began. But long before the first cars or coal plants, we were reshaping the planet’s ecosystems through humbler but no less dramatic means: pastures and plows.
Environmental scientist Erle Ellis has studied the impact of humanity on the Earth for decades, with a recent focus on categorizing and mapping how humans use the land—not just now, but in the past. And his team’s results show some startling changes. Three centuries ago, humans were intensely using just around 5 percent of the planet, with nearly half the world’s land effectively wild. Today, more than half of Earth’s land is occupied by agriculture or human settlements.
“Climate change is only recently becoming relevant,” said Ellis, a professor at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. “If it keeps going how it is, it will become the dominant shaper of ecology in the terrestrial realm, but right now the dominant shaper of ecology is land use.”
In contrast to the typical division of the world into ecological “biomes,” Ellis and his team at the Laboratory for Anthropogenic Landscape Ecology map what they call “anthromes,” or “anthropogenic biomes.” These show the intersection of ecology and human land use.
Using a range of sources, Ellis’s team mapped out that land use, dividing the planet into grids and categorizing each cell based on how many people lived there and how they impacted the land. The densest areas were cities and towns, followed by close-packed farming villages. Less populated areas were categorized by their dominant land use—crops, livestock pasture, or inhabited woodlands—while other areas were marked as largely uninhabited.
Below is an animation using a simplified version of Ellis’s data:
Even with only one snapshot per century, the animation makes some of the trends obvious. Large swaths of Russia and the United States become cropland over the 19th century, while livestock occupies increasing amounts of previously semi-wild land in Africa and Asia.
“Asia is pretty much the dominant transformed area, and transformed the earliest,” Ellis said. “Europe is also pretty dense ... The rest of the world has a different trajectory. Much slower, less dense.”
All of this is a mixture of estimates and approximations. One reason Ellis and his team only looked every hundred years and divided the world into cells that stretch for miles was to avoid giving a false impression of precision.
People ask Ellis, “‘What was my backyard like?’” he said. “Well, we don’t have any solid evidence … The further back in time you go, the more you have to consider [this], in a sense, educated guesswork.”
Even more recent data can have issues, based on political decisions that countries make about how to self-classify their land. Saudi Arabia, for example, reports “almost every part of their country as being rangeland” even though much of that arid land is seldom if ever grazed.
Humans shape even “seminatural” biomes
Significant portions of the world, both now and in the past, have been what Ellis’s team terms “seminatural.” These are areas—frequently forests—with low but real human habitation. This could reflect a large cell of the grid that has a farming village or two but mostly natural forests. But frequently, Ellis says, humans have taken a much bigger role in shaping seemingly natural wilderness than people think.
Take the “pristine myth”—the idea that the Americas before European colonization were dominated by pristine wilderness untouched by human hands. In fact, modern researchers believe that indigenous tribes had actively shaped their landscapes through agriculture and regular burning of American forests.
Because of this, the devastating spread of epidemics among indigenous populations after 1492 also had a huge impact on climate—and not just locally. Some scholars believe disease-ravaged peoples significantly cut back on their management of American forests, which meant far less carbon dioxide put into the atmosphere from fires and far more absorbed into newly grown forests. The combination could have played a significant role in the “Little Ice Age” that lowered global temperatures for several centuries between around 1500 and 1850 C.E.
This kind of active land management was done not just by sedentary populations, but by hunter-gatherers, too. This, Ellis says, is a shortcoming in the data.
“There’s no direct mapping of hunter-gatherers’ land use in these datasets. That’s something we’re trying to rectify now,” he said, noting that evidence suggests even non-agricultural people have major effects on the environment.
The data also shows the massive impact made by cities, the most dramatic way humans transform their environment. In 1700, a negligible portion of the Earth’s surface was covered by cities. Over the three centuries that followed, this boomed by around 40 times. Cities are still just half a percent of the planet’s land area, but they have had the most dramatic increase in impact of any of Ellis’s “anthromes.”
Densely populated farming villages—which often have similar concentrations of people per square mile as American suburbs—are also big, especially in the developing world. (Ellis’s team don’t map any urban areas in the Americas or Australia before 1900, and never apply the “villages” category to those continents, because those areas didn’t have “histories of intensive subsistence agriculture.”)
Huge portions of India and China are occupied by these kind of villages. So, too, were the hinterlands around major European cities before improvements in transportation enabled produce to be brought from farther away. Paris, for example, used to be surrounded by suburban “market gardens” which, historians André Jardin and André-Jean Tudesq note, could produce five or six harvests per year and had a “virtual monopoly of the Parisian market” for food until the second half of the 19th century.
How cities drive land-use changes
That kind of intensive agriculture to feed a demanding urban market is part of the huge impact that cities have on the use of land even well outside their boundaries. Those thousands or millions of urban dwellers aren’t producing their own food, and thus need more food produced elsewhere in order to eat.
Ellis describes two different ways that cities impact far-away anthromes through their demands for food—one of them devastating to natural ecosystems, the other surprisingly beneficial.
The first sees new land being put under the plow, as societies try to produce more food for a growing population. This is often low-productivity agriculture, reflecting the marginal quality of the farmland: If it was good for farming, it would have been farmed already. But later, as populations grow, comes an “intensification” process as technology increases the yields on low-productivity farmland.
Agricultural expansion has a massive impact on natural biomes, and has for millennia. But the second process, intensification, has the potential to restore some of the natural biomes that humans previously plowed under.
“Dense cities actually have the potential to help areas recover, because dense populations in cities often are basically pulling people out of the rural areas where they’re farming low-productivity land,” Ellis said. The increased production on good land means the marginal farmland is no longer needed.
Author Charles Mann described this process taking place in New York’s Hudson River Valley in his 2018 book, The Wizard and the Prophet. In the late 19th century, this region was dominated by “hardscrabble farms and pastures ringed by stone walls.” Now many of those “hardscrabble farms” are gone. Six counties in the lower Hudson Valley had around 350,000 people and 573,000 acres of timberland in 1875; today those same counties have more than 1 million people but three times as much forest.
“Many New England states have as many trees as they had in the days of Paul Revere,” Mann writes. “Nor was this growth restricted to North America: Europe’s forest resources increased by about 40 percent from 1970 to 2015, a time in which its population grew from 462 million to 743 million.”
But while this intensification of agriculture is allowing the return of nature in parts of developed countries, the first phase—expansion—is still playing out in the developing world. Erle’s maps show the expansion of crops and livestock into areas like Africa’s Sahel and South America’s Amazon rainforest over the past century.
“Land transformation is the big story of biosphere transformation so far,” Ellis said. “If you’re trying to understand how we produced the ecology we have now, it’s the story of land-use transformation.”
What’s next for Earth
So what will a future mapmaker show for the world’s land use in 2100? Ellis said he expects urbanization to continue, at least doubling the share of the planet’s land devoted to urban areas over the next century.
Similarly, he expects developed countries to see an intensification of agriculture that enables marginal land to be returned to the wild—a process already under way in newly developed countries like China. Poorer countries, on the other hand, may continue to convert marginal wild land into farmland.
“It’s only poor farmers without much investment that can make that work,” Ellis said. “When you’re investing large amounts of money in farm equipment and fertilizers, you don’t invest that in marginal land.”
Much depends, however, on political, economic, and technological changes that will unfold over the next 80 years. For example, Ellis said, the United States has recently seen “a huge shift from beef to chicken” in consumer demand. “That changes the kind of land that’s in demand, from grassland to production of maize and soy.”
Among the factors that could affect the future of Earth’s land use are political decisions in Brazil, where new President Jair Bolsonaro wants to open up more of the Amazon rainforest to agriculture, and technology, where a potential breakthrough in electrical generation such as fusion power could enable transformative changes such as vertical urban farming. Conservation efforts, or lack thereof, could also impact areas of intensive agriculture in developed countries.
“The future of the biosphere… depends partly on economics, partly on politics, but also partly on vision,” Ellis said. “It depends on what people’s values are.”
Republic Polytechnic Launches Course to Groom High-Tech Farmers
A new course here aims to train the next generation of high-tech farmers so that Singapore can produce more of its own food.
PUBLISHED
JAN 11, 2019, 5:00 AM SGT
A new course here aims to train the next generation of high-tech farmers so that Singapore can produce more of its own food.
The Diploma in Applied Science in Urban Agricultural Technology, launched by Republic Polytechnic (RP) on Wednesday, is the first full-qualification diploma course in agricultural technology in Singapore.
The course was developed by RP, in consultation with the Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority of Singapore, to develop a local core agriculture workforce with modern agricultural knowledge and techniques to drive the sector's growth and transformation.
Senior Minister of State for Trade and Industry Koh Poh Koon spoke at the launch of the diploma, which was held together with the opening of the polytechnic's Agriculture Technology Laboratory.
Dr Koh highlighted the need for a new generation of talent in agricultural technologies, to turn Singapore into a leading Asia hub for urban agriculture and aquaculture technologies.
The growth of the Republic's urban agriculture and aquaculture sector is also an essential pillar in upholding Singapore's food supply resilience, he added.
"As a small country where land is a scarce resource, Singapore has always had limited land space for domestic food production," said Dr Koh, adding that Singapore might be affected by global food supply developments and disruptions.
He added that Singapore's local farms produce just 10 per cent of food fish, 13 per cent of vegetables and 27 per cent of eggs consumed here. But he is confident that these percentages will continue to grow, with technological developments and more young farmers joining the industry through avenues such as RP's urban agriculture diploma.
The first batch of 25 students will start the part-time diploma course in June. These students will be taught five modules, with a focus on agricultural technologies for food production, farming process and management, urban farming technology and systems, agribusiness, and sustainable farming.
The programme's first run also involves eight local farms: Citizen Farm, ComCrop, Farm 85 Trading, Koh Fah Technology Farm, Liteleaf, Nippon Koi Farm, Sustenir Agriculture, and Vegeponics.
The farms will give students in the course on-the-job training opportunities and internships.
The course comes in two formats - one for fresh Institute of Technical Education graduates to build on what they have learnt in school, and the other for adult learners who want to switch to, or further their careers in, the agro-technology and agri-business sector.
RP's new Agriculture Technology Laboratory will give students in the diploma course in-house, hands-on training. The laboratory will also be used as a platform for workshops, industry-relevant projects and research in agriculture technology to incubate solutions to enhance productivity in farms.
It features technologies used in the farming industry today, including vertical farming towers irrigated by a nutrient tank and a horizontal hydroponic system irrigated by shallow tubes.
The laboratory also displays the hydroponic deep water culture system, where the roots of plants are submerged in a nutrient solution, and an energy-efficient substrate growing system.
A version of this article appeared in the print edition of The Straits Times on January 11, 2019, with the headline 'Republic Poly launches course to groom high-tech farmers'. Print Edition | Subscribe