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Farm.One Launches Latest NYC Vertical Mini-Farm At Whole Foods Market, Manhattan West
Farm.One custom-designed the farm for the Manhattan West store and maintains the on-site mini-farm to supply the in-store prepared food and beverages with freshly grown and harvested Blue Spice Basil
Blog, News from Fluence by monique
Establishes A New Distributed Urban Agriculture Model To Support
Onsite Farms For Grocers, Restaurants,
And Other Businesses In The Greater
New York City Area
NEW YORK (September 9, 2020) — Farm.One, Manhattan’s only vertical farm, launched its latest mini-farm at the newly opened Whole Foods Market Manhattan West. Farm.One custom-designed the farm for the Manhattan West store and maintains the on-site mini-farm to supply the in-store prepared food and beverages with freshly grown and harvested Blue Spice Basil. The basil is used as an ingredient for a variety of delicious menu items, including freshly made pizza and the Whole Foods Mule, a specialty cocktail.
With a mission to surprise and delight with fresh, local, specialty ingredients grown at innovative farms in city centers, Farm.One’s mini-farm represents a major shift in urban food production and supply chains. With mini-farms, businesses have continual access to the highest quality, most flavorful, and consistent professional-grade ingredients. Further, the distance between production and consumption is now mere footsteps, eliminating any carbon emissions associated with the delivery of the produce.
“Every kitchen knows the difference that freshness and quality of ingredients can make to the food they serve,” said Rob Laing, founder and CEO of Farm.One. “When we started in 2016, it wasn’t financially feasible to build and operate small farms profitably in cities like New York. We’ve now been able to decrease the cost of building a farm and have developed a model where a larger farm, like our TriBeCa flagship, can support small farms for grocery stores, restaurants and the hospitality industry all over the greater New York City area. This marks a real inflection point for what people can expect in their meals and the economy of urban food production.”
Farm.One’s mini-farm at Whole Foods Market Manhattan West takes up just thirty two square feet and features a hundred and fifty plant sites on three growing levels. The hydroponic system was designed and built by Farm.One’s engineering and technology team to optimize crop productivity, minimize intrusiveness to the store experience, and require minimal maintenance. The facade of the mini-farm was customized to match the familiar brushed stainless steel aesthetic of Whole Foods Market. The mini-farm is capable of supplying at least 8 pounds of basil every month, including harvesting the fragrant basil flowers for use in the Whole Foods Mule.
“The first thing our customers notice when they enter the prepared food section of the store is the incredible fragrance of the basil,,” said Chris Manca, local forager, Whole Foods Market Northeast Region. “As soon as our chefs, and even our mixologist, had access to the basil they were inspired to create menu items that highlight the freshness and flavor of Farm.One’s blue spice basil. This collaboration with Farm.One has really impacted the way we think about fresh ingredients in our kitchens and we can’t wait for customers to come by and experience it.”
Farm.One’s Distributed Agriculture Model
Farm.One has taken a distributed approach to scaling indoor farming in cities, an alternative to the large, expensive warehouse farming models. By establishing a Farm.One flagship as a hub in a city, the company is able to centralize farming and business operations, engineering, training, and support, to build and maintain on-site ‘spoke’ farms throughout a city for its customers. This results in lower investment requirements, a faster path to profitability, and the flexibility to grow a diverse range of crops that meet a variety of customer needs.
“Our hub-and-spoke model of distributed agriculture proves that indoor agriculture doesn’t need tens or hundreds of millions of dollars to be viable and achieve scale,” added Laing. “Also, by putting farms in visible places around the city we’re ensuring openness and transparency never before achieved in the industry. Whether you visit a Farm.One flagship for a tour or class, when it’s safe to do so, or experience a mini-farm in the middle of a grocery store, you’ll see and learn about how your food is grown.”
The company has plans to build flagships and mini-farms in major cities around the United States and globally over the next twenty four months.
Farm costs are further reduced through its relationship with leading LED lighting company Fluence by OSRAM. The cost of lighting and electricity remains one of the highest cost centers for building and operating indoor farms. By collaborating with Fluence, Farm.One is leveraging innovative LED technology to ensure its growing environments are optimized by crop type and for operational efficiency.
“In a vertical farming environment, efficiency isn’t a perk, it is paramount to the farm’s success,” said David Cohen, CEO of Fluence. “Farm.One is tapping into the world’s most advanced cultivation technology to deliver beautiful, delectable plants in the heart of one of the busiest metropolitan areas in the world. Their ability to localize high-quality crop production illustrates how exploring the interaction between light and life will yield a healthier and more sustainable world.”
The mini-farm at Whole Foods Market Manhattan West adds to several mini-farms Farm.One has built out of its flagship farm in TriBeCa, including at OCTOBER, a restaurant in Nolita which features a 100% plant-based menu, Eataly NYC Flatiron, and at the Institute of Culinary Education (ICE), the site of Farm.One’s original prototype farm. Farm.One also maintains a farm at Project Farmhouse at Union Square.
For more information about purchasing a Farm.One mini-farm for restaurants, grocery stores, and other businesses in the greater New York City area, visit: https://www.farm.one/vertical-farms/custom-units.
For more information about bringing a Farm.One flagship to a city, visit https://www.farm.one/vertical-farms/flagship-farm.
Farm.One Press Inquiries:
Rob Laing
rob@farm.one
US - ORLANDO, FLORIDA - Tech-Driven Vertical Farming Company Announces Two New VP’s
Quickly becoming a world leading company in indoor vertical farming, Kalera has the ability to deliver fresh, locally grown greens, nationally thanks in large part to its streamlined design process and technological advancements. By the end of 2021, Kalera will have five commercial growing facilities
14-10-2020 | Global News Wire
The Appointment of These Executives Coincides With
Kalera’s Expansion Into New Markets Nationwide
Mark Gagnon, VP of Sales for Retail Accounts at Kalera, has over three decades of experience in the produce and grocery industries.
Kalera's newly appointed VP of Foodservice Sales, Marc Jennings, brings with him over 20 years of experience in the foodservice industry.
On October 13th, technology-driven vertical farming company Kalera (NOTC: KALERA, Bloomberg: KSLLF) announced that it has hired two new executives to fill the positions of Vice President of Foodservice Sales and Vice President of Sales for Retail Accounts.
The newly appointed VP of Foodservice Sales, Marc Jennings, brings with him over 20 years of experience in the foodservice industry. Mark Gagnon, VP of Sales for Retail Accounts, has over three decades of experience in the produce and grocery industries.
Prior to joining Kalera as VP of Foodservice Sales, Marc Jennings spent his career building networks of strategic partners in the food industry, both domestically and internationally. Most recently, Jennings worked as the Chief Commercial Officer at Martin Preferred Foods, where he worked to expand into new geographies through strategic alliances.
He previously spent four years as the Vice President of Sales and Marketing at Food Services of America and four years as the Vice President of Foodservice at Cargill, a company with reported revenues of almost $115 billion. Jennings has received recognition as a Leader of Sales & Marketing from the International Food Distribution Association and the International Food Manufacturing Association, where he has held advocacy positions on the industry board.
His primary goal as Kalera’s VP of Foodservice Sales is to build a coalition of strategic partners who share the vision of delivering Kalera’s fresh, locally produced greens to consumers across the planet.
“I’ve always been passionate about finding a sustainable, healthy solution to feeding the world’s growing population, and Kalera does that efficiently and effectively,” said Marc Jennings, new Kalera VP of Foodservice Sales. “I believe my wide range of experience makes me uniquely qualified to establish the diverse network necessary to deliver Kalera’s solution globally.”
Kalera has also named Mark Gagnon as VP of Sales for Retail Accounts. An accomplished executive, Gagnon brings with him over 30 years of sales and leadership experience with three major produce brands, Chiquita, Dole, and Del Monte. Before his six-year tenure as the VP of Sales at Del Monte Fresh Produce N.A., Inc., he led the East Coast sales team for Chobani, where he focused on account development, retail expansion, increasing market share, creating brand awareness, and developing a new sales team.
He previously worked for nine years as the National Director of Sales for Chiquita, where his main focus was growing market share in both pineapple and banana business, as well as leading the Kroger Team for all Chiquita products. Gagnon was also the National Account Manager for Kroger at The Dole Food Company and held various other sales leadership roles over a 14-year period with Dole.
“Over the last 30 years, I’ve developed strong partnerships and relationships with the top retailers in the country through strategic planning and customer engagement at the top levels of each retail organization,” said Mark Gagnon, Kalera’s new VP of Sales for Retail Accounts. “I’m extremely eager to bring my experience and learnings in the produce industry to Kalera, and join a first class company with an incredibly bright future.”
“Having this strong and unified sales team will be crucial to Kalera’s growth and development as we expand globally,” said Daniel Malechuk, CEO of Kalera. “With Mark’s proven track record of account development with key retailers, and Marc’s international manufacturing and distribution background, I have confidence in their ability to continue Kalera’s momentum in building our network of strategic partners as we grow Kalera’s reach. We’re truly thrilled to have them join the team.”
Quickly becoming a world leading company in indoor vertical farming, Kalera has the ability to deliver fresh, locally grown greens, nationally thanks in large part to its streamlined design process and technological advancements. By the end of 2021, Kalera will have five commercial growing facilities open and operating across the US. The company’s recent major milestones include:
Its first commercial vertical farm, the HyCube growing center, currently operates on the premises of the Orlando World Center Marriott, bringing fresh, local produce to the hotel’s visitors and customers.
In March 2020, Kalera opened its second facility in Orlando, providing produce to the area’s top retailers, leading foodservice distributors, resorts, hospitality groups, and theme parks.
The Atlanta facility is the third farm in Kalera’s portfolio and when it opens early next year, will be the largest vertical farm in the Southeast.
Its fourth facility is slated to open in Houston in spring 2021 and will be the largest of its kind in Texas.
In 2021 Kalera will open its fifth and most western location in Colorado, which will serve the greater Denver area.
As Kalera accelerates its growth over the next few years, it will continue to open additional facilities, expanding production capacity throughout the US and internationally.
With indoor facilities situated right where the demand is, Kalera is able to supply an abundance of produce locally, eliminating the need to travel long distances when shipping perishable products and ensuring the highest quality and freshness. Their cutting-edge technology allows plants to reach their maximum potential, and the facilities produce yields at 300-400 times that of traditional field farming. In addition to maximizing production, Kalera’s growing methods and cleanroom technology eliminates the need for chemical pesticide use, and their plants consume 95% less water than field-farmed plants.
About Kalera
Kalera is a technology-driven vertical farming company with unique growing methods combining optimized nutrients and light recipes, precise environmental controls, and cleanroom standards to produce safe, highly nutritious, pesticide-free, non-GMO vegetables with consistently high quality and longer shelf life year-round. The company’s high-yield, automated, data-driven hydroponic production facilities have been designed for rapid rollout with industry-leading payback times to grow vegetables faster, cleaner, at a lower cost, and with less environmental impact.
Source and Photo Courtesy of Global News Wire
UNITED KINGDOM: Whole Foods Joins List of Infarm Customers
As part of its continued UK expansion, the Berlin-based company will install its modular vertical farming units in two of the retailer’s London stores – High Street Kensington and Fulham – so shoppers can buy fresh produce that has been grown in store
E KNOWLES
15th October 2020, London
The Berlin-Based Urban Farming Specialist
Continues Its Meteoric Rise
With The Addition of One of London's Leading Retailers
Whole Foods Market customers in the UK will soon be able to purchase a range of fresh produce grown by Infarm, which claims to be the world’s fastest-growing urban farming network.
As part of its continued UK expansion, the Berlin-based company will install its modular vertical farming units in two of the retailer’s London stores – High Street Kensington and Fulham – so shoppers can buy fresh produce that has been grown in-store.
Infarm produce will also appear in Whole Foods Market stores in the capital at Piccadilly Circus, Stoke Newington, Richmond, Clapham Junction, and Camden at the end of October and during November.
These stores will be supplied with produce from a local Infarm growing centre in Tottenham, the company said, providing flexible supply as and when required.
For Whole Foods Market shoppers, the Infarm range will include herbs such as coriander, parsley, basil, mint, dill, and Thai basil, as well as a number of different fresh lettuce varieties.
“The partnership between Infarm and Whole Foods Market aims to satisfy increasing consumer demand for sustainably grown products with a smaller environmental footprint, helping customers to both make healthy choices and reduce their food waste,” said a spokesperson for Infarm.
Growing and Growing
The company recently raised US$170m in series C funding, further boosting an expansion strategy that has seen it land retail partnerships in the UK, US, Canada, France, and Germany. Fruitnet understands it will soon be making its market debut in Japan.
The expansion comes as retailers look to find innovative ways to combat climate change. “Infarm units use 95 percent less water and 90 percent less transport than traditional agriculture, as well as 75 percent less fertiliser and no pesticides,” the spokesperson added.
The first harvest from Whole Foods Market Kensington is scheduled for 19 November.
Daniel Kats, vice-president of corporate sales at Infarm, commented: “Whole Foods Market felt like a perfect fit for Infarm. Its commitment to providing customers with vibrant, sustainable food aligns with our goal of growing produce locally and, in the process, substantially reducing food waste and the environmental impact of what we consume. We hope that in installing our modular farms in Kensington and Fulham, we can help to educate shoppers about the future of food.”
Jade Hoai, director of purchasing and operations at Whole Foods Market, said: “We are excited to partner with Infarm to offer a truly hyper-local selection of greens and herbs across all of our London stores. Whole Foods Market customers can expect to find fresh, unique herbs from Infarm’s vertical growing units like Boudreaux purple basil, that are grown locally, have no pesticides, and use a fraction of the traditional resources required to grow. We are excited about this relationship for its joint commitment to environmental stewardship and for the delicious, nutritious meals our customers will be crafting at home.”
Super Local
Founded in Berlin in 2013 by Osnat Michaeli and the brothers Erez and Guy Galonska, Infarm is dedicated to creating a future where local super fresh produce is available for everyone. The farms are placed in various locations in the city, like supermarkets, restaurants, and distribution centres, so that vegetables grow and are harvested close to the moment of purchase or consumption.
Infarm farmers visit the store after each growth cycle to add new seedlings to the farm. According to the company, the plants retain their roots post-harvest to maintain exceptional flavour and freshness, meaning they’re still alive when harvested.
“These controlled, growing environments are connected to a central cloud-based farm-brain which gathers more than 50,000 data points through a plant’s lifetime, allowing the platform to learn, adapt and improve itself constantly so that every plant grows better than the one before,” it adds.
“This modular, data-driven, and distributed approach — a combination of big data, IoT, and cloud analytics, in addition to rapid growth at a global scale — sets Infarm apart from any other urban, farming solution.”
During last week’s FPJLive conference organised by the Fresh Produce Journal, Infarm’s UK operations director Jeremy Byfleet confirmed the company was investigating the possibility of expanding its product offer beyond leafy salad vegetables and herbs to include a number of other fresh fruit and vegetables.
RELATED ARTICLES
The Farm Of The Future Might Be In Compton. Inside A Warehouse. And Run Partly By Robots
Plenty wants to build at least 500 of these vertical farms around the planet, especially in densely populated cities of at least 1 million people
BY STEFAN A. SLATER IN FOOD
OCTOBER 6, 2020
Lettuce grows in a vertical farm at Urban Crop Solutions in Waregem, Belgium, on September 20, 2016. (JOHN THYS/AFP via Getty Images)
From the outside, the gray and white warehouse near the corner of Oris Street and Mona Boulevard seems like a thousand other mundane Southern California buildings. But the interior, once completed, will resemble a sketch from a futurist's daydreams. If all goes well, the 95,000-square-foot Compton facility will house rows of hydroponic towers organized into emerald walls of non-GMO, pesticide-free leafy greens. These plants won't rely on sunlight in order to grow. Gleaming LED lamps will provide all the light the crops could ever want. Robots will transport seedlings while other machines move the towers as part of an orchestrated production process. Picture a grow room in a futuristic Martian colony and you're probably on the right track.
The exterior of Plenty's vertical farming facility in Compton. (Stefan Slater for LAist)
The operation is run by Plenty, a San Francisco-based startup that uses vertical farming to create high-quality, nutritious plants "you'd actually want to eat" (their words). Stated another way, they grow crops, often without natural light or soil, in vertically stacked beds in enclosed and controlled environments.
Plenty wants to build at least 500 of these vertical farms around the planet, especially in densely populated cities of at least 1 million people.
The first Plenty farm, in South San Francisco, went into production in 2018 and was upgraded in the summer of 2019 to increase production. For its agricultural second act, the company chose Compton.
A farm operations associate in front of leafy greens growing in vertical towers at Plenty's vertical farming facility in South San Francisco. (Spencer Lowell/Courtesy of Plenty)
Plenty's long-term goals go beyond tasty salad greens. It wants to combat food apartheid by bringing healthy, locally-grown crops to communities that lack access to nutritious produce.
"We want to invest in places where we can serve a large number of people," says Shireen Santosham, the company's head of strategic initiatives. "Compton can help us better serve Los Angeles while also allowing us to invest in a community with a long history of farming."
The goal for Plenty's Compton outpost, once it's running at full capacity, will be to create enough produce to make regular deliveries to hundreds of grocery stores. In early August, the company reached an agreement with Albertsons to provide 430 of its California stores with assorted leafy greens.
Company reps say the Compton site will initially focus on producing kale, arugula, fennel, and bok choy before adding strawberries to its repertoire. They expect prices to be similar to organic leafy greens currently on grocery store shelves.
The company was hoping its Compton farm would be able to bring produce to market by the end of 2020 but the coronavirus pandemic altered that timeline. Plenty now hopes to start its first customer deliveries sometime in 2021.
A view of the grow space at Plenty's vertical farming facility in South San Francisco as seen through the vestibule window. (Spencer Lowell/Courtesy of Plenty)
WHY COMPTON?
Los Angeles has for centuries been a land of citrus groves, peaches, olives, and even vineyards, and Compton was no exception. In the late 1860s, Reverend Griffith Dickenson Compton led roughly 30 people from Stockton to settle in and cultivate the area. Rough weather and tremendous floods nearly destroyed their dreams, but they persisted, and their agricultural efforts eventually began to thrive.
A drawing of the Compton farm and Star Cheese Dairy of Omri J. Bullis in 1880. It was located on Alameda Street, north of El Segundo Blvd. (Security Pacific National Bank Collection/Los Angeles Public Library Collection)
In 1888, Compton donated his land and the area was incorporated as the city of Compton under the condition that a swath of it be zoned for agriculture. That particular area — a 10-block neighborhood sandwiched between downtown Compton and what's now the 91 Freeway — became Richland Farms, known for a variety of crops including pumpkins, sugar beets, and cauliflower. By the 1940s and '50s, Compton had become a working-class suburb. African American families, many of whom had moved to the West Coast to work in military production during World War II, settled there and were drawn to the Richland Farms neighborhood. With its large lots and agricultural zoning, residents could grow crops and raise livestock to provide for their families and their community.
Richland Farms — home of the Compton Cowboys — remains a living link to Compton's agricultural past. Drawing on that history, Plenty began designing and developing its Compton vertical farm (located a few miles north of Richland) in the summer of 2019.
"There is just a rich tradition of farming in Compton, and to have Plenty come back in an innovative way is exciting for our community," Compton Mayor Aja Brown says.
City officials are working with the company to connect its facility with nearby schools so kids can learn about vertical farming and the technologies associated with it.
A farm operations associate tends to plants in the grow space at Plenty's vertical farming facility in South San Francisco. (Spencer Lowell/Courtesy of Plenty)
OK, BUT WHAT EXACTLY IS A VERTICAL FARM?
Compared to traditional field agriculture, which humanity first started tinkering with approximately 12,000 years ago, vertical farming is in its infancy.
One of the first vertical farms was a hydroponic system built-in Armenia sometime before the early 1950s, although there's not much information about it.
The modern vertical farm, at least in the way we think of it, was popularized two decades ago by Dickson Despommier, an emeritus professor of public and environmental health at Columbia University.
Baby kale is grown at AeroFarms on February 19, 2019, in Newark, New Jersey. (ANGELA WEISS/AFP via Getty Images)
In 1999, he wanted students in his medical ecology class to explore ways they could feed New York's residents on crops grown entirely within the city. They started with rooftop gardens but those barely made a dent in the amount of food they needed. Then, Despommier remembered the city's abandoned buildings. "What if you could fill up those buildings with the grow system that you've instituted on the rooftop and just increase food production?" he says.
The result was a multi-level, urban farm featuring layers of crops stacked on top of one another.
Greens growing at Bowery Farming, a vertical farm in Kearny, New Jersey, on January 28, 2019. (DON EMMERT/AFP via Getty Images)
Until the 21st century, commercial vertical farming seemed like the stuff of utopias, a grand if impractical dream evangelized by a handful of futurists and agricultural techies. But the last few years have seen a jump in interest — and venture capital. Between 2016 and 2017, investments in vertical farming grew nearly eightfold.
In 2017, Plenty received $200 million from several high-profile investors including Alphabet chairman Eric Schmidt and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. One of its East Coast competitors, Bowery Farming, received a $90 million investment from Google Ventures.
The UAE's Badia Farms in Dubai, seen on August 4, 2020, uses hydroponic technology and vertical growing towers to produce fruits and vegetables year-round. (KARIM SAHIB/AFP via Getty Images)
AeroFarms, which uses aeroponics to grow produce, scored $40 million from IKEA and Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid of Dubai. The United Arab Emirates is also hoping vertical farming will boost the country's limited domestic food production. The Abu Dhabi Investment Office sunk $100 million into four ag-tech companies, including Aerofarms, which plans to build a new vertical farm and R&D center in Abu Dhabi.
Two farm operations associates tend to plants in the grow space at Plenty's vertical farming facility in South San Francisco. (Spencer Lowell/Courtesy of Plenty)
WHY DO WE NEED THEM?
Vertical farming is all about efficiency. The process allows growers to control and monitor light, oxygen, nutrients, temperature, humidity, and carbon dioxide levels. In a vertical farm, you don't need to wait for the right season. Growth and harvesting can occur year-round.
Plenty's approach relies on automation, intricate sensors, machine learning and hydroponic grow towers where plants are cultivated in a nutrient-rich water solution instead of soil. With this method, the company claims it can grow 350 times as much produce, per square foot, as a conventional, outdoor farm — all while consuming a fraction of the water.
"[Vertical farms] are much more water-use efficient than field production," Neil Mattson, associate professor of plant science at Cornell University, says.
Santosham claims Plenty's vertical farms will use "about 1% of the land and 5% of the water" required by a comparable traditional farm.
Producing more food with less land is a must if we want to keep humanity fed.
A worker tends to basilicum plants at an indoor vertical farm at Colruyt Group in Halle, Belgium on March 3, 2020. (THIERRY ROGE/BELGA MAG/AFP via Getty Images)
By 2050, Earth will have 9.8 billion residents and two-thirds of them will probably live in a city. In places like Los Angeles or New York, where real estate doesn't come cheap, vertical farms could be installed without taking up much space.
Produce from vertical farms would also be less likely to spoil since it would, in theory, only travel a few miles to the nearest grocery store, market or restaurant, instead of sitting on a plane or cargo ship for hundreds or thousands of miles.
Plus, vertical farms could help make our food supply chain more resilient.
Since March, the pandemic has impacted everything from beans to strawberries. When the hospitality industry shut down, some farmers had buyers for only half of their crops, so they had to let them rot or plow them back into the soil. Dairy farmers dumped millions of gallons of milk. Meat plants have had to shut down due to COVID-19 outbreaks. Plus, the workers who pick the crops, raise the cows and run the slaughterhouses have been ravaged by the virus. And all of this has been happening while hunger skyrockets. In the last six months, food banks have seen a surge in demand, in some cases by as much as 600% percent.
"I don't think all of our food is going to come from urban production," Mattson says. "It does add diversity to our food supply chain to have some of our produce — the nutrient-dense foods — come from close to where they're consumed."
With COVID-19 exposing the weaknesses in our food supply chain, Mattson believes indoor growing (which includes vertical farming and greenhouses) and more localized production might get their moment in the high-intensity LED spotlight: "We're going to see these trends happen even quicker than if we hadn't encountered COVID."
The central processing area at Plenty's vertical farming facility in South San Francisco. (Spencer Lowell/Courtesy of Plenty)
A PEEK INSIDE
The Compton farm is still under construction but the company is using its existing South San Francisco facility as a template.
That facility, which started in 2015 as a container farm, features 50,000 square feet of production space and a roughly 10,000-square foot grow room. It provides produce to approximately 40 grocery stores and runs entirely on solar and wind power.
The Compton farm will feature a similar grow system. Employees, referred to as growers, will oversee the process of cultivating seeds into seedlings. Robotics will transfer the seedlings to large vertical grow towers, arranged to form what looks like a vast, green wall.
The amount of time produce spends in the grow room depends on the crop. Nate Storey, chief science officer and co-founder of Plenty, explains that one leafy green crop might go through the entire process from seedling production to harvesting in two to three weeks. That's significantly less time than if those crops were grown via traditional agriculture.
Laborers harvest romaine lettuce using a machine with heavy plastic dividers that separate them from each other on April 27, 2020, in Greenfield, Monterey County, California. (Brent Stirton/Getty Images)
On a large, outdoor farm in the Salinas Valley, baby kale would typically require 35 to 50 days, depending on the time of year, before it was ready for harvest, according to Richard Smith, a University of California Cooperative Extension vegetable advisor for the Central Coast.
"For something like lettuce, where you might be waiting for several weeks in the field, we're carving a significant amount of time off that production schedule," Storey says.
A post-harvest associate inspects produce for packaging at Plenty's vertical farming facility in South San Francisco. (Spencer Lowell/Courtesy of Plenty)
Once the plants spend some time in Plenty's grow room, robots pick up the towers and retrieve the produce, which is moved to a processing area where it's packaged. Through it all, human hands never touch the food.
"We're able to create an environment that's so favorable to plants and not pathogens or pests that we can deliver a product without ever applying pesticides, which is a big win," says Nick Kalayjian, senior vice president of engineering at Plenty.
In fact, without bugs or human contact, he claims Plenty's produce doesn't need to be washed. Kalayjian also says the small adjustments in temperature, water, nutrients and light result in produce that's at the peak of flavor.
Plenty sent me samples of their baby kale, baby arugula and Sweet Sunrise mix, a combo of fennel, beet leaves and other greens. Did visions of tree stars seize me and shatter all perception of space and time? No. But they did taste exceptionally fresh. The flavors were strong, clean and... just good. I found myself snacking on the Sunrise mix straight from the package, something I never do with greens.
A farm operations associate tends to plants in the grow space at Plenty's vertical farming facility in South San Francisco. (Spencer Lowell/Courtesy of Plenty)
WHERE DO WE GROW FROM HERE?
Vertical farms aren't cheap to build. They also require a lot of energy to run, much more than conventional field agriculture or greenhouses. "That, to me, is one of the big sticking points," Mattson says.
In a 2020 study, Mattson and other Cornell University researchers studied the economic and environmental impacts of bringing leaf lettuce to U.S. cities via field-based agriculture vs. CEA (controlled environmental agriculture) supply chains such as greenhouses and vertical farms.
"We had almost the same carbon footprint of growing in a greenhouse in New York City as compared to field growing and shipping 3,000 miles. The vertical farm had about twice the carbon footprint of either of those," Mattson says.
In Plenty's case, making sure their farms operate on sustainable, renewable power is a priority. The South San Francisco facility has a power purchase agreement in place with a renewable provider to supply the farm with sustainable energy. Plenty wants its Compton farm to run entirely on clean energy but that won't happen until some undetermined point in the future. Company reps couldn't offer a more precise timeline on when that might happen.
Various leafy greens grow in vertical towers at Plenty's vertical farming facility in South San Francisco. (Spencer Lowell/Courtesy of Plenty)
Warehouse-sized vertical farms may someday be common sights in major cities but it'll take time to scale up to that level. No one, except maybe the most optimistic futurists, thinks vertical farming is going to overtake field agriculture anytime soon.
"We're an additive technology, not a replacement technology. We simplify the supply chain and allow domestic production in places that don't currently have it," Kalayjian says.
A worker tends to lettuce under artificial lights at the Pink Farms warehouse in Sao Paulo, Brazil, on August 28, 2020. (JONNE RORIZ/AFP via Getty Images)
Although vertical farming is still in its earliest stages, Despommier urges us to imagine how it might work in 50 years. "We're looking at a sort of Stanley Steamer [car], not even a Ford Model T," he says, "We're looking at the early trials and tribulations of an industry that wants to supply all of your food. Look how fast it took America to go from no cars to two cars per person."
Maybe by the time humanity has figured out how to colonize other planets and build Star Trek-style replicators, the urban dwellers of earth will rely on skyscraper-style vertical farms. Maybe thousand-acre fields of fruit and vegetables will someday look as obsolete as rotary phones. Until then, we'll be playing in the dirt, just as we've done for thousands of years.
How An Indoor Farm Is Redefining Local
Bowery is an indoor, vertical farming company. Walking into its Nottingham Farm feels a bit like stepping into the greenest library you could imagine
Washington D.C. sits at the intersection of some of the best farming areas in the country. According to the 2017 United States Census of Agriculture, there are over 53,000 farms in Pennsylvania plus another 40,000+ farms in Virginia. Yet, for all of the area’s agrarian prowess, you may not have seen a farm quite like this.
Standing in front of Bowery Farming’s newest farm, located just outside of Baltimore in Nottingham, you could easily mistake it for a shipping warehouse. But, like most good things, it’s what’s on the inside that counts.
Bowery is an indoor, vertical farming company. Walking into its Nottingham Farm feels a bit like stepping into the greenest library you could imagine. Rows and rows of fresh lettuces and herbs stretch towards the ceiling, where they’re nourished under LEDs and a constant, carefully controlled amount of filtered water and essential nutrients.
Bowery’s pesticide-free, Protected Produce is also restoring the Nottingham area to its farming roots. From the 1940s to the late 1970s, this land was largely agricultural. Since then, it has been cleared and developed. But today, Bowery has repurposed an industrial area back into a fully operational farm that employs local Modern Farmers who keep the Mid-Atlantic region nourished with fresh produce year-round.
So why grow indoors anyway? After all, traditional farms have been growing food across the country as long as anyone can remember. Growing produce indoors has a few distinct advantages.
First, Bowery’s indoor farms use less finite resources like water and land. Filtered water that’s not taken up by the plants is recycled, refiltered, and fed back to the plants. Bowery’s farms also take up less space. Because of their vertically stacked design, they can grow 100x more food on the same square footage as a traditional farm.
Indoors, crops are also exempt from seasons. Rain, sleet, or snow, Bowery’s greens grow every day, all year long. And, because their farm is located right outside of the cities they serve, their fresh produce reaches local retailers within days of harvest.
Lastly (but to our taste buds, most importantly), Bowery selects non-GMO seeds for flavor attributes, unlike outdoor growers that are usually looking for options that can withstand a range of weather conditions or pests. Bowery removes the uncontrollable variables found in the field, giving plants the seasonal conditions they crave indoors so they can grow up to be the best expression of themselves.
Want to try it for yourself? Support local and find Bowery Farming near you here.
Vertical Farming Startup Takes Crown In Ahold Delhaize Innovation Contest
Evergreens Farms, founded in 2017 in Massachusetts, brings fresh and local produce to the New England market regardless of the season by using technological processes to grow crops indoors with "no need for soil, sunshine, pesticides, or excess water," according to the company's website
Author: Rosie Bradbury
Oct. 8, 2020
Dive Brief:
Vertical farming startup Evergreens Farms won Ahold Delhaize’s supply chain innovation pitch competition, Retail Business Services, the services company of the food retailer’s U.S. operations, announced in a press release. The startup’s winning pitch involved a solution to provide vertical farming technology in any climate year-round. A panel of retail and venture capital experts determined Evergreens Farms had the most viable technology.
Evergreens Farms, founded in 2017 in Massachusetts, brings fresh and local produce to the New England market regardless of the season by using technological processes to grow crops indoors with "no need for soil, sunshine, pesticides, or excess water," according to the company's website.
Dive Insight:
By scouting out and building relationships with high-tech vertical farms start-ups, Retail Business Services can integrate new agricultural technologies to supplement produce sourcing for stores. Regional vertical farms startups such as Evergreens Farms cut down on food waste and transport costs by growing produce close to where it is consumed, as well as appealing to consumers’ penchants for locally grown fruits and vegetables.
Their shorter supply chain also allays consumers’ concerns of contamination risks such as E. coli, and market research suggests that consumers will be more willing to pay more for locally-grown products. Large grocery retailers have increasingly taken notice of the advantages of vertical farming. In August, supermarket chain Albertsons announced its partnership with farming tech firm Plenty to supply salad greens to 430 of its stores. Farming firms such as Plenty and Evergreens Farms also appeal to grocers’ efforts to adopt sustainable practices, as their technology-intensive approaches cut down on both land and water consumption compared to traditional commercial farms.
Greenhouse operator BrightFarms, a major player in farming technology, also supplies packaged greens to Ahold Delhaize, Walmart, and Kroger stores. Earlier this year, BrightFarms expanded its distribution to Food Lion stores in the Mid-Atlantic region.
For stores left with unnecessary floor space as much of its operations shift to online, miniature vertical farming hardware could act as a savvy supply line as well as an attractive use of space. Kroger and Whole Foods have both recently installed small produce farms inside stores.
Recent efforts by Ahold Delhaize indicate it is looking to cultivate partnerships with young companies on the technological cutting edge. Earlier this year, Ahold Delhaize scouted more than 380 smart cleaning technology companies to participate in a Cleaning Bot Challenge.
Lead photo: Courtesy of Bayer
US - NEW YORK: Yemi Amu’s Urban Farming Concept Takes Root In The Big Apple
Earth is the only home we have. If we don’t start now to turn around the environmental damage we have caused, we might not be around to save it and the plants and animals that we depend on
By Tony Binns | October 6, 2020
Earth is the only home we have. If we don’t start now to turn around the environmental damage we have caused, we might not be around to save it and the plants and animals that we depend on. As a possible solution, many metropolitan cities are turning to urban farming and aquaponics. In Brooklyn, New York, Nigerian-born Yemi Amu has been a part of this movement by opening the city’s only teaching aquaponics farm, Oko Farms.
What is aquaponics and why is it important to the sustainability of our planet?
Aquaponics is farming in water. It is the cultivation of fish and plants together in a symbiotic aquatic ecosystem whereby fish waste provides nutrients for plants while plant roots filter the water for the fish. This farming method allows you to raise both fish and plants while using up to 80% less water than traditional farming. Aquaponics is also scalable and can occur both indoors and outdoors.
As we deal with the environmental impacts of climate change including soil erosion and drought, alternative growing methods like aquaponics can help create food security for vulnerable communities.
What is Oko Farms and how did it find a home in Brooklyn?
Oko Farms is an aquaponics farming and education company in Brooklyn. In 2013, we converted an abandoned lot in East Williamsburg, Brooklyn, into the Oko Farms Aquaponics Education center — NYC’s first outdoor — and only publicly accessible — aquatic farm. We were able to acquire the lot through a partnership with the Brooklyn Economic Development Corporation and GreenThumb NYC.
In addition to growing a wide variety of vegetables and fish, we provide workshops, tours, and support individuals and organizations with setting up their own aquaponics farms.
What type of produce and fish do you grow on your farm?
We grow a variety of vegetables on our farm, including leafy greens, herbs, onions, tomatoes, peppers, sweet potatoes, cabbage, sorghum, rice, millet, squash, etc. We also raise catfish, bluegill, tilapia, goldfish, and koi
How did you get into aquaponics?
I learned about aquaponics while I was managing a rooftop farm that I helped to create. The rooftop farm was located at a housing facility for formerly homeless adults in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, in 2011. One of the neighborhood volunteers introduced me to aquaponics and I was attracted to the fact that it saves water while producing both fish and vegetables. After that, I spent a couple of years studying and visiting aquaponics farms in Florida and the Midwest.
Are there career opportunities for people of color in the field?
Aquaponics farming is a great option for people of color interested in a career in farming, especially those living in urban areas. Access to land for farming can be challenging for people of color in the U.S, but some cities like Detroit, Philadelphia, and Atlanta have urban ag[riculture] policies that support farmers of color with land access.
For more information, visit www.okofarms.org.
Lead photo: Yemi Amu, director of Oko Farms (Photo courtesy of Harrison Chen)
Rooftop Greenhouses Take Urban Farming To New Heights In Quebec
Lufa claims this latest site, opened this summer, becomes the world's largest rooftop greenhouse
BY EMMA JACOBS (FREELANCE REPORTER/PRODUCER) , IN MONTREAL
Lauren Rathmell co-founded the company Lufa, whose latest rooftop greenhouse opened in Saint-Laurent, QC earlier this year. Photo courtesy: Lufa.
October 8, 2020 — Cherry tomato plants tower over Lauren Rathmell’s head in the latest greenhouse built by the company she co-founded, called Lufa.
"We train everything vertically so that we can keep these plants a lot longer than a typical garden tomato plant," she explains. "We're in the probably 15 to 20-foot-long plant range now. They're really high."
Emma Jacobs Rooftop greenhouses take urban farming to new heights in Quebec
Their height makes it hard to tell that the greenhouse encloses a space the size of three football fields — all dedicated to growing varieties of tomatoes and eggplants.
It’s also four stories off the ground, on the roof of a former Sears warehouse not far from Montreal’s Trudeau International Airport.
Greenhouse-grown produce is a relatively small but growing part of agriculture in the Canadian provinces of Ontario and Quebec.
Lufa claims this latest site, opened this summer, becomes the world's largest rooftop greenhouse.
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"Once everything's picked and ready, it's going to go down right to our warehouse below us and packed into tomorrow - early tomorrow morning, into the baskets for the day," says Rathmell. The baskets containing the items customers' order online get delivered around the Montreal area and as far away as Quebec City in the company's electric delivery vehicles.
"We forecast really accurately and we try to pick just what's needed for that day's baskets. It's better for taste, it's better for quality, and it means no waste in the end as well," she says.
Lufa's latest 163,000 square foot greenhouse is located on top of a former Sears warehouse in Saint-Laurent, QC. Photo courtesy: Lufa.
Rathmell, originally from Vermont, founded Lufa with her husband to try and eliminate the environmental footprint associated with shipping produce across the continent. Lufa is named for a Lebanese cucumber. Rathmell’s husband is Lebanese. They call their customers "lufavores."
While greenhouses use a lot of energy, especially up north, Rathmell says putting them on a rooftop cuts winter energy use in half.
"We benefit by just passively receiving the heat that's coming from that building below, rather than being on a cold ground level in wintertime," she said. The greenhouse also creates an insulating bubble over the building below. The former Sears building now also contains other offices and warehousing.
Lufa established what was then the world’s first commercial rooftop greenhouse back in 2011.
With its latest, the company now operates four sites in the greater Montreal area, which have year-round growing seasons. Building on a rooftop does come with extra costs but Rathmell says energy savings and proximity to consumers help to offset them.
At the start of the pandemic, those customers doubled virtually overnight. People looking to order groceries for delivery signed up at rates that took the company by surprise.
"Within a week or two we had gotten a waitlist in place, first time ever we've never had a waitlist before, but we couldn't keep up," Rathmell recalls.
The company had to reorganize its greenhouses and warehouses for safety while also increasing the density of plants in its greenhouses. But Rathmell says it was a useful test for their business, which she’d like to expand someday to other cities, potentially in the northeastern United States.
Eggplants grow in the Saint-Laurent rooftop greenhouse. Photo courtesy: Lufa.
She’s also interested in expanding the range of crops.
"We do have two banana trees at one of our greenhouses as well," she says. "You can basically grow anything in a greenhouse. Is it worth growing in a greenhouse? Maybe not. But yeah, the bananas, I think they took like a year and a half, but we did get bananas.
So Quebec’s probably not the next banana capital, but certainly, a good place to experiment with greenhouse farming in cold climes.
Related Topics
montreal · environment · quebec · canada · agriculture
PMA Virtual Town Hall: Global Societal Macrotrends And How They Affect The Produce Industry
The first of the macrotrends that was discussed was that of globalization
This week’s PMA virtual town hall focused on five important macrotrends in society and how these trends affect the produce industry. “It is always a good time to think about the big picture, but especially now, when what happens in the future is so critical to guiding our everyday operations,” Lauren M. Scott of PMA says. She was joined by Marc Oshima, Co-Founder and CMO of AeroFarms, Sharon Foo, who works as a consultant, Elizabeth Nardi, CEO of Organically Grown Company, and Wyard Stomp, VP of Sales and Marketing to discuss this topic.
Globalization
The first of the macrotrends that was discussed was that of globalization. “In the context of COVID-19, the interdependency of our supply chain has become increasingly clear,” says Oshima. “This interdependency is due to globalization. We have to think more specifically now in terms of food security and resiliency in the supply chain due to the pandemic,” he adds.
While globalization has been an important factor that has been increasingly impacting the entire world for decades now, and even arguably for centuries, the outbreak of the pandemic has also brought forth an increased popularity of locally grown produce. Nardi explains: “This is definitely something we have been seeing here on the West Coast, this trend of hyper-localization. The pandemic has given consumers a real desire to know where their food came from. Consumers are looking for trusted sources and want to support local economies.”
Population diversification
The diversification of populations is the next macrotrend that was discussed. This topic can be approached in many different ways. Nardi, for example, looked at the different lifestyle trends among the population: “We’re seeing that non-gmo has become one of the most recognized labels in the world, and organic has been seeing a significant growth in popularity. There is a shift in how people think about the products they are purchasing.”
For Oshima, the population diversification translates increasingly into product diversification. “With regard to food trends, borders have become seamless. Food continues to play a powerful role in bringing people together, so we think about it as a way of preserving customs and traditions of specific cultures through food.”
For Stomp, generational diversification is also an important aspect of this trend. “Millennials and Gen Z are a whole new game, and we are working to understand them better, especially Gen Z, who are now coming into play as consumers.”
Precision technology
The advancement of technology has always been closely integrated with the produce industry. This is something that AeroFarms, for example, was built on: “For us, it’s about optimizing the key attributes that consumers are looking for. We are working with chefs and the menu development now starts at the farm. We’re able to use technologies to build smart farms, which allow us to bypass season and deliver product consistently year-round,” Oshima shares.
“It’s not science for science’s sake, but for a greater reason,” Foo adds. “Today’s technology helps to solve the problems of the consumers. It’s important that people have a clear grasp on the drivers behind certain developments so that we can understand that the technology is there to enable great access for consumers to the healthy foods the industry has to offer.”
Climate adaptation
Changes in the climate and the environment are central to the agricultural industry, and so this next macrotrend is vitally important for everyone in the supply chain. “We like to look at agriculture as a way of reversing climate change,” says Nardi. “There is so much we can do to pull the carbon out of the air and put it back into the soil.”
Foo explains that she looks at it in terms of regeneration rather than sustainability. “Realistically, there’s not much left to sustain, so we need to change our vocabulary and start looking at it as regeneration instead. We need to build a circular economy and build solutions.
Accelerated urbanization
The final macrotrend that was discussed was urbanization. The majority of the world’s population lives in urban areas, and the consumer trends in urban areas differ widely from those in rural areas. “Our produce is grown by the community, for the community. We have farms located in inner-city schools and growing inside cities. It is about diversifying the supply chain and improving last-mile efficiency, and indoor farming is a big part of that,” Oshima says.
Stomp sees urbanization as a creator of additional opportunities. “This macrotrend is one of the most important ones, from the sales and marketing point of view. Urbanization rates create a lot of opportunities, but they also require that we adjust how we approach the market. For example, people in urban areas shop more often, sometimes even going to the store multiple times a day. This creates a lot of opportunity, but in order to capitalize on these opportunities, we need to recognize the trend and translate the data into a strategy. In the produce industry, so much of the business is focused on the short term – day to day and week to week, but it’s very important to keep track of these macrotrends, analyze the data and simplify to see how it impacts your business, what opportunities you can take from it, and then drive actionable strategies from there,” Stomp concludes.
Next week’s virtual town hall will focus on global trade issues and will include insights from leaders in trade about how to navigate difficult environments and address trade disruptions.
Publication date: Thu 1 Oct 2020
Author: Annika Durinck
© FreshPlaza.com
Second Chances Farm Announces New Farm In Philadelphia
The farm will be part of the North Station redevelopment of several million sq. ft. of vacant buildings and land near the Temple University campus being led by Bailkin’s Arete Group
Second Chances Farm founder Ajit Mathew George recently announced that he has reached an agreement with Philadelphia developer Michael Bailkin, who will invest the capital needed to open a 30,000 square feet farm – roughly 10 times larger than Second Chances Farm’s current operation – with enough space to eventually expand to 100,000 square feet.
The farm will be part of the North Station redevelopment of several million sq. ft. of vacant buildings and land near the Temple University campus being led by Bailkin’s Arete Group.
Second Chances Farm will not be putting capital into the project but is considered a minority partner because staff from the Wilmington operation will be sent to Philadelphia to help get the new farm up and running. The new farm is slated to open in 2021. Michael said that he intends to use Philadelphia as a headquarters site, while opening satellite farms in “older industrial cities” throughout Pennsylvania.
Michael has been very interested in indoor vertical farming for a long time, and his wife, Billie, and son, Cole, were looking at a whole range of opportunities.
“And then we met Ajit about a year ago,” he says, who is active in Opportunity Zones, “and we became very intrigued by the technical approach that he had, setting up a vertical farm, and doing that in a way that was going to make a major social impact by bringing in returned citizens and providing a job base and other opportunities for them. It was the combination of those two things that made us focus on doing something with our budget and over the next year or so, we continued working with him.”
Michael and Second Chances Farm agreed to do a large project in Philadelphia, essentially as the headquarters, at least the regional, possibly national, headquarters for expansion. Starting off with a 30,000 sq. ft. facility with a potential to expand it up to a 100,000 sq. ft., they will open a series of smaller units, of 15 to 20,000 sq. ft. in Opportunity Zones in some of the older industrial cities in Pennsylvania like Scranton, Coatesville and Norristown, while also doing economic development in those cities. The most important consideration will be on creating opportunities for second chance citizens.
The second target of the partnership is to provide healthy food for areas that are food deserts, which most of these opportunities are. The third is economic development, which is what Michael brings to the table. “Second Chances Farm will be the anchor and catalyst for other economic development activities in each of these opportunities zones,” Bailkin says.
For more information:
Second Chances Farm
www.secondchancesfarm.com
Publication date: Wed 30 Sep 2020
Tenders Awarded To Turn 9 HDB Carpark Rooftops Into Urban Farming Sites
With these farming systems, the sites have the potential to collectively produce around 1,600 tonnes of vegetables annually"
September 30, 2020
SINGAPORE - Parked cars will soon make way for growing vegetables as tenders were awarded for urban farming at nine carpark rooftops by the Singapore Food Agency (SFA) on Wednesday (Sept 30).
The sites, which are rooftops of Housing Board multi-storey carparks, comprise five single sites and two clusters of two sites each. They were awarded to six tenderers.
Each site has a term of up to three years.
The highest tender of $90,000 for annual rent was awarded to IT Meng Landscape and Construction for a cluster site in Jurong West, with one site spanning a total area of 3,311 sq m - three-fifths of a football field - and the other at 2,974 sq m.
Other carpark locations include Choa Chu Kang, Tampines, Hougang, Ang Mo Kio, Toa Payoh, and Sembawang.
SFA chief executive Lim Kok Thai said: "The successful tenderers' proposals included hydroponic and vertical farming systems with a variety of innovative features such as IoT (Internet of Things), blockchain technology and automated climate control."
With these farming systems, the sites have the potential to collectively produce around 1,600 tonnes of vegetables annually."
He added: "We look forward to seeing these HDB multi-storey carpark rooftops transform into productive vegetable farms that will contribute to Singapore's '30 by 30' goal, and we will render assistance and guidance to farms where needed."
The 30 by 30 goal refers to Singapore's aim to produce 30 percent of the country's nutritional needs locally by 2030.
Ms. Phoebe Xie, 30, director and co-founder of local urban technology company AbyFarm, was one of the six who successfully tendered for the carpark rooftop spaces. With the 3,171 sq m site at Ang Mo Kio, the company hopes to begin construction of the farm in the next few months, and to have its launch date within the first half of next year. Using a combination of hydroponics and aeroponics vertical farming methods, the farming process is expected to use 90 percent less water, and it is said to be 10 times more productive compared to traditional methods. “The farm will be entirely automated, with real-time technology used to control the environment within the green house, and to consistently monitor the crops and early identify the possibility of bad crops, which will ensure the quality of our crops,” she said. With an expected yield of 200 tonnes of fruits and vegetables each year, the company is looking to harvest local favourites, such as kang kong and kailan as well as other types of produce such as mushrooms, figs, and Japanese melon. Co-founder of SG Veg Farms Eyleen Goh, 46, who secured a cluster site at Sembawang, said the company is expecting around 80 to 100 tonnes of vegetables per site each year. The company will be selling most of its produce to nearby supermarkets, though it hopes to host weekend markets for residents to buy its vegetables.
Minister for Sustainability and the Environment Grace Fu said in a Facebook post on Wednesday that “the challenges of Covid-19 and climate change, together with other trade and environmental pressures, pose a threat to Singapore’s supply of critical resources such as food”.
As land is scarce in Singapore, the SFA has been “unlocking alternative spaces to grow food, such as vacant buildings, like the former Henderson Secondary School and carpark rooftops”.“
Over the next few years, we will be master-planning the larger Lim Chu Kang area and will be engaging the stakeholders and the public in the process,” she said, adding that there are longer-term plans in place to “expand agriculture in the Lim Chu Kang area and aquaculture off (Singapore’s) southern coast”.
Mr. Melvin Chow, senior director of SFA's food supply resilience division, said in May that the launch of the tender for the nine sites came as a result of growing interest from both the industry and the public towards urban farming in community spaces.
Last year, a pilot urban farm - spanning 1,900 sq m - was launched at a multi-storey HDB carpark in Ang Mo Kio. Known as the Citiponics Farm, it aims to grow up to four tonnes of vegetables a month.
The tender for the nine sites, which was launched on May 12, had closed on June 16, and the sites were awarded using the price-quality tender method, where both the bid price and the quality attributes, such as production output, design, and site layout, as well as business and marketing plans, were factored into the tender evaluation.
The SFA said it will be working with HDB to tender out more multi-storey carpark rooftop sites for urban farming in the fourth quarter of the year, as the move is also in line with HDB's Green Towns Programme to cool HDB towns through the use of greenery, such as on carpark rooftops.
More details of these plans for tender will be released at a later date.
Lead Photo: Local agri-tech firm Citiponics' vertical farming plot at the multi-storey carpark rooftop at Block 700 Ang Mo Kio Avenue 6.ST PHOTO: JASON QUAH
Hydroponic Nutrient Solution: A Must-Read Essential Beginner’s Guide
This article will teach you about hydroponic nutrient solutions and how to use them so you can hydroponically grow your own plants without worry
Many gardeners use hydroponics as their preferred way to grow plants because using a hydroponic nutrient solution ensures optimal plant growth. Using a hydroponic nutrient solution ensures that your plant’s roots get the nutrients they need from the water so they can grow with ease. This article will teach you about hydroponic nutrient solutions and how to use them so you can hydroponically grow your own plants without worry.
Macronutrients
Plants need macronutrients to be able to thrive and grow. The macronutrients that plants need are nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium.
Nitrogen (N) - allows the plant to grow its leaves, its leaves’ colors, and provides amino acids, proteins, nucleic acid, and chlorophyll synthesis. When a plant is lacking in nitrogen, its leaves are typically a faded color and the plant grows at a slower rate.
Phosphorous (P) - is necessary for the synthesis of the plant’s DNA and RNA. It is also responsible for developing the plant’s stems, roots, flowers, and seeds. A deficiency in this nutrient leads to weak stems and leaves, and it causes root growth to slow.
Potassium (K) - synthesizes the proteins and carbohydrates of the plant. It helps develop the flowers, roots, and stems but not as much as compared to phosphorus.
Micronutrients
Alongside the macronutrients, plants also need micronutrients to grow. The nine micronutrients that a plant needs include:
● Boron: Works with calcium to help form cell walls by synthesizing the cell membrane’s structure and functions.
● Calcium: Works with boron to form cell walls
● Copper: activates enzymes and helps with respiration and photosynthesis.
● Iron: Forms chlorophyll, used in photosynthesis, and helps provide energy provision.
● Magnesium: catalyzes the growth process and helps makes oxygen during photosynthesis
● Sulfur: A component of two of the 21 amino acids that synthesize protein.
● Zinc: Helps form chlorophyll and assists with plant respiration and nitrogen metabolism
How to Form a Hydroponic Nutrient Solution
You can find a quality hydroponic nutrient solution at your local store, or you can create your own solution. It’s recommended for beginners to use store-bought solutions first, and once they get a hang of the hydroponic growing process then learning how to create your own hydroponic nutrient solution can be the next step.
Hydroponic nutrient solutions come in powder and liquid forms, which liquid forms being more popular to use. Since these liquid solutions are more concentrated, do not spill any on yourself or your plant. These typically come with pH buffers so you can test the water. You can mix the solution in the water, and it’s ready to go!
Make sure to choose a solution that is specifically made for hydroponic growing and not the all-purpose packages. Soil-grown plants have different needs than hydroponically grown plants. Try to purchase a 2 or 3 part hydroponic nutrient solution as well. This way you can mix in the solution depending on the needs of the plant at its specific life cycle. The 2 to 3-part solutions will contain separate packaging for macronutrients, a growing solution, and micronutrient solution depending on which one you get.
Want to Know More?
Now that you understand the basics of hydroponic nutrient solutions, you may want to learn more about hydroponic growing or growing plants at home! We at the Nick Greens Grow Team work diligently to provide the necessary research and information that covers everything from microgreen growing to hydroponics to way more!
Sign up for our new weekly microgreens class, which is held every Friday at 4:30 pm CST. Can’t make the class? Subscribe to our blog and YouTube channel for weekly updates about farming methods.
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Groundless Myths
Since Aristotle, people believed that plants exclusively feed on organic matter. Only in the 18th century did these ideas begin to be questioned
05-10-2020 | iFarm
Since Aristotle, people believed that plants exclusively feed on organic matter. Only in the 18th century did these ideas begin to be questioned. Scientists discovered that in fact plants’ primary source of nutrition is inorganic in nature. Similar myths exist today. One of them is that soilless cultivation is an artificial process, during which tasteless vegetables, berries and greens grow rapidly almost on "steroids". We compared hydroponics — one of the most common and sustainable soilless crop cultivation technologies, with traditional farming to identify their key differences and similarities.
A bit of history
The concept of "hydroponics" was introduced in the 1930s by the American biologist William Gericke.
During the Second World War, the first hydroponic plantations were launched using this technology. Since the 1970s, hydroponic systems of various modifications have begun to appear in different parts of the world. Today NASA is working on an inflatable expandable greenhouse where hydroponics will be used. It is planned to be installed on Mars so that the first settlers can provide themselves with fresh vegetables, berries and herbs like on the Earth.
Hydroponics combines several methods of plant cultivation in artificial environments: wick and drip irrigation systems, flooding irrigation, nutrient layer method, etc. On iFarm vertical farms, we use the flow hydroponics method: seeds are sown in one of the types of substrate (peat or mineral wool), and nutrient solution is served into the pots from below.
A huge advantage of hydroponics is its controllability. The technology makes it possible to create ideal conditions for plants in terms of nutrition, lighting, temperature, and environment. In an optimal microclimate, they reveal their maximum potential, useful properties, have a prominent taste and aroma.
Nutrient intake
All elements of root nutrition are absorbed by plants either from the soil or a mixture of water-soluble fertilizers only in the form of ions.
Growing in soil
The content and availability of macro and microelements (nitrogen, potassium, phosphorus, magnesium, iron, etc.) in the soil is influenced by the temperature of air and soil, the amount of solar energy and moisture, the pH of the environment. Natural conditions are very unstable: air temperature and pressure fluctuate during the day, the sun is often covered with clouds, there may or may not be any rain for several days. All this affects the availability of nutrients for plants, causing a deficit of one or more of them, which in turn reduces yields and product quality. To accelerate plant growth and ensure yields, people began to use mineral or organic fertilizers.
Hydroponics
The microclimate inside a vertical farm is stable and the plants get nutrition in the amount they require. "We do not accelerate the growth of plants, but create conditions in which they can fully develop, without experiencing a lack or excess of nutrients and stress from changes in the environment. All this allows you to get tastier and earlier harvests," said Natalia Smirnova, a plant nutrition specialist at iFarm. iFarm labs select balanced nutrition for all crops grown on vertical farms. In fact, macro- and microelements are the same, but the delivery methods to the root systems may differ.
iFarm agrochemists select a balanced diet not only for each crop, but also for a specific phase of its development (the amount and ratio of consumed macro- and microelements depends on it). They can adjust the supply of nutrients to plants to get fruits not only with specified taste characteristics but also with a specific concentration of iron, silicon, vitamins, carotene, and other components important for human health.
The quality of vegetables, berries, or herbs does not depend on the method of their cultivation, but on the conditions the plants grew in, regardless of the environment being natural or artificial. Products that taste like "plastic" are often obtained using a large number of fertilizers, growth stimulants and pesticides, helping fruits to gain weight faster and increasing their shelf life. They are usually harvested without being given time for natural ripening or accumulation of nutrients (although two or three times per season).
Natalia Smirnova
Candidate of Biological Sciences,
iFarm plant nutrition specialist
Protecting from pests and diseases
In the closed ecosystems of vertical farms pests cannot infect the plantings (there is no need to fight them, that is why production is pesticide-free unlike traditional field farming or greenhouses). You can lose crops only due to disturbances in plant nutrition.
Growing in soil
10 billion microorganisms live in 1 g of black soil. Some of them are pathogens (fungi, viruses, and bacteria) that cause various diseases in plants. In order to protect crops and keep harvests, agricultural producers are forced to use chemical agents (pesticides: herbicides, fungicides, insecticides) in the fields while growing. In addition, ripe fruits are also processed for safety during transportation. Pesticides remain on products even after washing in water and, once they enter the human body, can cause diseases of the gastrointestinal tract, oncology, reproductive and endocrine disorders, etc.
Hydroponics
Vertical farms using iFarm technologies have a closed microclimate. An energy-efficient air purification and disinfection system ensures complete absence of outside air, any pollution, pests or diseases. The substrate that holds the roots of plants is purchased from leading international manufacturers. iFarm agronomists always check suppliers' quality certificates and test substrates in laboratories. For the nutrient solutions, we use treated water, purified in a special system that eliminates any impurities letting in only oxygen and water molecules through a membrane. There is simply no need to use pesticides.
Soilless cultivation also allows to carry out an early analysis of the root systems, giving a chance to evaluate every single plant’s condition. On vertical farms, root access is always open.
Water consumption
Vertical farms use 90% less water than greenhouses. Special engineering solutions can help to further improve this number to save even more water, allowing the plants to receive precisely required amount of moisture.
Growing in soil
Producers annually calculate the irrigation norm rate — the amount of water plants require to fully grow. It depends on the climate, soil properties, crop characteristics, cultivation technology. However, it is difficult to calculate accurately due to the unreliability of weather forecasts. As a result, plants may receive too little or too much water. Failure to comply with irrigation norms washes away the upper layers of the soil: irrigation erosion annually carries away 100−150 t/ha of soil, 0.8−1 t of humus, 100−120 kg of nitrogen, and 110−165 kg of phosphorus. On such soils, crops grow unevenly, and yields decrease.
Hydroponics
Thanks to the automated microclimate, the amount of water required by plants to fully develop is determined with an accuracy of a milliliter. iFarm engineers have also developed a dehumidification system to collect moisture evaporated by plants, filter, decontaminate and reuse it to water crops. This will help save even more water, which is incredibly useful in regions where water resources are limited (when grown in soil, moisture released by plants simply evaporates).
www.nutrienhorticulture.com.au
The advantages of hydroponics (climate controllability, pesticide-free production, preservation of the environment) stimulate the growth of the global vertical farming market. According to Research and Markets, in 2017 it was about $ 2.3 billion, and by 2023 it will grow to almost $ 7.5 billion, adding more than 20% annually.
Source and Photo Courtesy of iFarm
WALES: Vertically Farmed Anglesey Watercress Is A Hit For Hooton’s Homegrown
TechTyfu is creating a skill-sharing forum and is working in collaboration with local growers and food businesses to develop supply chains
BY JOHN SWIRE
SEPTEMBER 29, 2020
Watercress grown on one of the island’s first Vertical Farms has sold out in hours at Hooton’s Homegrown, Brynsiencyn.
James Hooton and his family are well known for growing quality fruit and vegetables and rearing their own livestock. Their latest offer, watercress, was grown as part of Menter Môn’s ‘TechTyfu’ project, with James one of 3 commercial growers in Gwynedd and Anglesey to trial an innovative vertical farm growing system.
The family received support from TechTyfu, a project created by Menter Môn, to establish a vertical farm at their farm shop in Brynsiencyn over the Summer. Anglesey watercress is grown in a vertical farm unit, which uses a flood and drain hydroponic system to pump nutrient-rich solutions to the plant crop, enabling efficient and clean growth without soil.
“My family have been farming here since the early 1960s,” explained James Hooton, “and watercress is the latest produce we grow to supply our farm shop, Hooton’s Homegrown.”
“We have been using hydroponics to cultivate crops for many years, such as with the tabletop strawberries you’ll see at our ‘pick-your-own’ site. However, this is the first time we’ve used a vertical farm system.”
“I’ve been impressed with the ease of using this system,” said James. “Being able to trial the system through the TechTyfu project has shown me that the system works well and offers a number of advantages. We plan to further trial the system by growing other crops such as pea shoots and various herbs.”
“Watercress is a fabulous source of vitamins and minerals. It is a little green wonder-leaf, and our customers have been delighted with the taste and quality of the Anglesey watercress we’ve produced.”
Gram for gram, watercress contains more calcium than milk, more folate than bananas, more Vitamin C than oranges, and more Vitamin E than broccoli. It is highly nutritious and is packed with more antioxidants than the rest of the Brassica family it belongs to.
“With the winter months ahead, watercress’ nutritional content are sure to appeal to our customers and the vertical farm gives us the ability to produce this wonder food all year round,” shared James.
Luke Tyler, who is leading the project, says “Our project is helping position food production in North Wales to be more resilient, and open doors for farmers, businesses and restaurants looking for strategic ways to diversify. Anglesey watercress’ popularity proves that there is great demand for fresh, local produce”.
TechTyfu is creating a skill-sharing forum and is working in collaboration with local growers and food businesses to develop supply chains.
“Growing is often the most straightforward aspect of getting local produce to the market,” noted Luke. “The real challenge on our hands with TechTyfu is developing the supply chains so that every partner along the way makes a profit and fresh produce reaches the customer in excellent condition.”
Since participating with TechTyfu this year, and despite the challenging economic conditions, new doors have opened for growers such as James Hooton.
“We have further developed our own supply chain since collaborating with TechTyfu,” said James. “We have established a new route to market with a local fresh produce distributor, and it was thoroughly rewarding to see our rhubarb reaching various local restaurants.”
in addition to watercress, the project has already identified local opportunities for specialist crops such as pea shoots and a range of microgreens.
“Our estimate is that the market for pea shoots only is worth about £40-50k in Gwynedd and Anglesey alone,” noted Luke. “And by growing them locally, a grower would be able to offer unbeatable freshness. We have already had prominent local chefs asking where they could purchase local pea shoots.”
TechTyfu is a project run by Menter Môn. Luke Tyler can be contacted at luke@mentermon.com and the project can be followed on Facebook and Twitter.
TechTyfu has received funding through the Welsh Government Rural Communities – Rural Development Programme 2014-2020, which is funded by the European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development and the Welsh Government.
Farm Boy Deal Just The Beginning For Indoor Farming Startup
Within six months of completing construction on its Cornwall growing facility, Fieldless Farms’ produce could already be found on the shelves of more than 20 Farm Boy stores across Ontario
Cornwall’s Fieldless Farms Eyes Expansion Into New Markets
BY: Adam Langenberg
October 6, 2020
“We want to scale this very large – we want to be a national success story,” says Fieldless Farms CEO Jon Lomow.
Within six months of completing construction on its Cornwall growing facility, Fieldless Farms’ produce could already be found on the shelves of more than 20 Farm Boy stores across Ontario.
But armed with an aggressive expansion plan to bring more hydroponically grown vegetables to Canadians, CEO Jon Lomow says his company is just getting started. Fieldless currently supplies two types of lettuce mixes – Northern Crunch and Ontario Sweets – grown in its Cornwall indoor farming facility. Lomow wants to rapidly expand both the types of crops the startup grows as well as its physical footprint.
Fieldless uses just 20,000 square feet at its Cornwall facility for its current operations, but Lomow insists that will increase quickly, with the CEO also harbouring ambitions of building new growing facilities in Toronto, Montreal and even the country’s west coast by 2025.“We want to scale this very large – we want to be a national success story. We want to play a major role in shortening supply chains for Canadians using controlled environment agriculture,” Lomow says.
He says Fieldless will significantly increase its capacity to grow leafy greens in the next one to three years, increasing the yield of both its current lettuce mixes and other crops such as romaine lettuce, spinaches, and basil. From there, there are plans to expand to smaller vegetable crops, including baby tomatoes, cucumbers, and peppers, which the company is just on the cusp of being able to grow economically, Lomow says.
Agricultural evolution
That kind of aggressive growth may seem overly optimistic to some, but Lomow says rapid change is all the company has known since its inception. Fieldless, which secured its first round of private capital funding in June last year, has gone from finishing construction on its Cornwall facility to providing almost 2,000 packs of lettuce mixes to customers each week inside six months.
Initially just selling products through Burrow Shop, the Ottawa-based online retailer Lomow co-founded, as well as Ottawa’s Massine’s Your Independent Grocer, Fieldless achieved one of its early goals in August when it signed a deal with supermarket chain Farm Boy to supply its lettuce mixes to 16 stores spanning from Cornwall to Kingston. That number quickly jumped when Farm Boy asked weeks later if Fieldless could supply seven stores in the Toronto area, a number that is set to grow again in coming weeks. Farm Boy’s origin in Cornwall and its “obsessive focus” on reducing the amount of fresh produce wastage made it the perfect first retailer to partner with, Lomow says.
That early growth gives confidence to Lomow, who notes that Canada – reliant on $48 billion of food imports each year – needs to significantly increase its food production in future years.
Lomow is also buoyed by what he predicts will be a “trillion-dollar evolution in the agriculture industry,” powered by falling automation costs and efficiency improvements in lighting technologies.
Fieldless Farms’ indoor growing plant in Cornwall.
The thing that sets Fieldless apart is that it’s not trying to do it all, Lomow says. Before launching, it signed a deal with an unnamed Canadian partner that handles the hydroponic technology side of the equation, leaving Lomow and his team to focus on the supply chain as well as perfecting the taste of its products and getting the products into stores.“We’ll deploy core technologies for our growing platforms and then we’ll innovate inside the gaps, because there are tons of gaps still in indoor farming,” Lomow says. “We just won’t be developing the core technology.”
“We decided we were way better off to focus our efforts on evaluating that technology, in making sure that we had the right technology as opposed to starting from scratch. If you go down the wrong road you’re kind of stuck there.”
The current technology platform sees lettuce crops grow from seedlings inside a 20-day cycle in a way that Lomow says strikes “the right balance between automation and manual labour,” but Fieldless’ technology-agnostic approach means it will partner with other technology companies to build other facilities and grow other crops in the future.
ORGANIZATIONS: Fieldless Farms Farm Boy'
PEOPLE: Jon Lomow. PLACES: Cornwall TAGS: Agri-business
MALAYSIA: Aquaponic Farming Promises Higher Yields For Kundasang Farmers
Their ventures are proving to be lucrative and they encourage more young farmers to grow vegetables using these modern and more sustainable techniques
September 29th, 2020
Their ventures are proving to be lucrative and they encourage more young farmers to grow vegetables using these modern and more sustainable techniques
By MUHAMMAD BASIR ROSLAN
Aquaponic vegetables are chemical-free as no other fertiliser is used with the exception of the fish waste (pic: Bernama)
IN THE cool, hilly area of Kundasang in Ranau, about 100km from Kota Kinabalu, Sabah, a small group of young farmers are trying their hand at cultivating vegetables using aquaponic and hydroponic techniques.
Under the guidance of the Kinabalu Area Farmers Organisation (PPK), the farmers based in Kampung Desa Aman in Kundasang have gone into aquaponics and hydroponics since December 2019.
Their ventures are proving to be lucrative and PPK Kinabalu intends to encourage more young farmers to grow vegetables using these modern and more sustainable techniques.
According to PPK Kinabalu GM Muhammad Irwan Maruji, in aquaponics, the whole cultivation process — starting from planting the seedlings until they are ready for harvesting — takes only about three to four weeks. And, he added, vegetables harvested from a 223 sq m block of aquaponic plants can rake in sales of around RM5,600 a month.
“The capital to start an aquaponic venture, including setting up the pond and a 223 sq m block and greenhouse, comes to about RM85,000. The investment, however, is worthwhile compared to the returns,” he told Bernama, adding that aquaponic farming is suitable for young entrepreneurs who want to get involved in agriculture.
In aquaponic farming, aquaculture (rearing of aquatic animals such as freshwater fish or prawns in tanks) is combined with hydroponics (cultivating plants without soil) in an integrated system where the aquatic waste serves as nutrients for the plants which, in turn, purifies the water in the tank.
Prihatin Aid
Pointing out that vegetable farmers in Kundasang and other parts of Sabah were badly hit during the initial stage of the Movement Control Order, Muhammad Irwan said under the federal government’s Prihatin Rakyat Economic Stimulus Plan, each PPK in Sabah was allocated RM100,000 to RM200,000 to revitalise the agricultural sector.
“We are grateful for the allocation as it will be very helpful to the farmers and agro entrepreneurs here,” he said, adding that PPK Kinabalu plans to use the funds to start an additional hydroponic venture involving the local farmers, as well as introduce maize cultivation and a hanging fertigation system next month.
He said courses on aquaponic and hydroponic farming will be conducted starting early next month, following which he hopes to rope in at least 20 young farmers a year to pursue aquaponic and hydroponic ventures. “PPK Kinabalu also plans to expand the market for their vegetable produce to outside of Sabah,” he added.
Free of Chemicals
In aquaponic farming, aquaculture (rearing of aquatic animals) is combined with hydroponics (cultivating plants without soil) in an integrated system
Elaborating on PPK Kinabalu’s aquaponic venture with local farmers on a 2.83ha site in Kampung Desa Aman, Muhammad Irwan said vegetables such as red coral lettuce, green coral lettuce, mustard plant and celery are being cultivated as they are suitable for aquaponic farming. As for the aquatic component, ikan tilapia and ikan keli are being reared.
“Aquaponic vegetables are chemical-free as no other fertiliser is used with the exception of the fish waste.
“For this farming technique, we need not use much water and the plants mature faster and yield higher quality produce,” he said, adding that they also plan to sell the ikan tilapia once they mature.
“So, eventually, this project will enable us to ‘kill two birds with one stone’.”
Cattle Project
Sabah State Farmers Organisation (PPN) acting GM Mohd Sabri Jalaludin, meanwhile, said with the allocation his agency received under Prihatin, they plan to implement a cattle fattening project which is expected to have a positive impact on the state’s economic cycle.
He said PPN Sabah has expertise in the livestock industry as it has been involved in it for over 10 years. For the new project, the agency plans to buy 40 head of cattle from cattle rearers within the state in a bid to support local businesses.
Under the first phase of the project, expected to kick off next month, the cows will be fed palm kernel cake or palm kernel expeller, wheat husk, and soy residue to fatten them. Once they attain a minimum weight of 320kg each, they will be sold at RM4,000 to RM5,000 each.
Mohd Sabri added that in view of the project’s potential to contribute to the growth of the state’s GDP, they plan to increase the cat- tle to 320 heads by 2021. — Bernama
Largest Indoor Farm In The World To Be Developed In Abu Dhabi
The GreenFactory Emirates will produce 10,000 tons of fresh produce per year on a cultivation area of 160,000 square meters. It combines vertical and flat farming and solves the normal cultivation restrictions due to extreme climates in regions as the UAE
A Joint Venture Between GrowGroup IFS And RainMKRS Capital
Investment Announced The Construction of A 17,5 ha
Indoor Farm In The Desert of Abu Dhabi
2 October 2020
The GreenFactory Emirates will be the biggest indoor farm in the world. The farm uses 95 percent less water compared to conventional outdoor farming.
Vertical and flat farming
The GreenFactory Emirates will produce 10,000 tons of fresh produce per year on a cultivation area of 160,000 square meters. It combines vertical and flat farming and solves the normal cultivation restrictions due to extreme climates in regions as the UAE.
The total project amounting to 150 million euros is planned in different phases for the next 3 years.
Initiators CEO John Breedveld of GrowGroup and chairman Mohamed Jouan Salem Al Dhaheri of rainMKRS.
Extreme low water use
Compared to standard farming methods, the farm uses very little water. According to GrowGroup director John Breedveld the water use will be even lower than for conventional greenhouse cultivations.
‘The water scarcity made us decide to reuse the condensate water. In countries where water is less scarce, this is often considered to be too expensive. We expect to realize a water use of only 2 liter per kilogram produced food.'
The extremely low water use also helps the farm to achieve a low carbon footprint. Breedveld: ‘As we use so little water, we can get it from an inland freshwater source. Therefore we don't need to use freshwater that is produced by desalination of seawater. This is a very common water source in Abu Dhabi but it has a higher carbon footprint.’
‘It helps us to reduce the farmer’s CO2 footprint up to 40 percent compared to conventional outdoor production’, added Breedveld.
Mariam Hareb Almheiri, UAE Minister of State for Food Security.
Food security
Food security is high on the UAE’s agenda. The country aims to be number 1 on the Global Food Security Index by 2051.
Commenting on the announcement, Mariam Hareb Almheiri, Minister of State for Food Security said: ‘The UAE is applying concerted efforts to improve its domestic production of food, with agricultural technology having a hugely important role to play.‘
‘In fact, key targets of the government’s National Food Security strategy are to generate a 30 percent yield improvement from technology-enabled production. Indoor farms such as GreenFactory Emirates are instrumental in helping us reach these goals’, stated minister Hareb Almheiri.
Research and development
GreenFactory Emirates will include a built-in research and development component that will help ramp up the production beyond the 56 current varieties of lettuces, leafy greens, herbs, and kale. It will also optimize its production by collecting real-time data to inform future global expansion of indoor farming.
With confirmed partnerships with GAAS Wageningen and Delphy in The Netherlands, GreenFactory will benefit from live feedback provided by some of the best students and academia in the field.
Partnership
The partnership between GrowGroup and rainMKRS is a result of an introduction made by the Embassy of the Kingdom of The Netherlands in the United Arab Emirates and the Monarch Group which has played an instrumental role in seeking opportunities and nurturing relationships.
The joint venture announced the construction of more indoor farms in other regions of the world where extreme climates are a challenge to normal cultivation.
This news item is based on content originally published on the websites of Grow Group IFS, Rainmkrs Capital, and Emirates News Agency.
Lead photo: Impression of the 26 football field large indoor farm that will be built in Abu Dhabi.
Nature Fresh Farms Pledges To Plant 25,000 Trees In Sustainability Campaign
After two years of research and development, Nature Fresh Farms has officially launched their 100 percent home compostable Cucumber wrap, a first for the North American marketplace
Leamington, ON | October 1, 2020
Nature Fresh Farms has launched its sustainability campaign following the release of their new home compostable Cucumber wrap.
After two years of research and development, Nature Fresh Farms has officially launched their 100 percent home compostable Cucumber wrap, a first for the North American marketplace. Made from a starch-based PLA that is derived from plant-based resources, the film is home compostable breaking down naturally into CO2 and water within 90 days.
To celebrate its release and promote to consumers and customers alike, Nature Fresh Farms has launched a unique marketing campaign and want their followers to join in their initiative to make a difference. Their campaign has kicked-off with high-impact social media posts going live on their Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn accounts. Every time someone shares these posts during the month of October, they will plant a tree. With one share equalling one tree, the company is pledging to plant up to 25,000 trees to help our forests thrive.
“We really wanted to grab the attention of our consumers and followers with this home compostable film,” said Luci Faas, Product Development Specialist. “Through this initiative, we hope to raise awareness of this packaging design that will make a lasting change on the environment but also go even further by planting trees to help our North American forests flourish.”
This campaign seeks to spotlight the progression of their sustainable packaging design while encouraging their followers to spread the word by sharing social media posts and help plant a tree. The initiative supports Nature Fresh Farms commitment to bettering the environment and their continued investment in searching for more sustainable packaging designs.
“Our customers are looking for more environmentally friendly packaging and we want to give them that,” shared Director of Sales, Matt Quiring. “With our continued goal of finding more viable packaging solutions we want to provide more options and make it easier for most people to make positive environmental choices.”
At Nature Fresh Farms they are driven to accelerate innovation through evidence-informed sustainable packaging solutions providing a better experience for their customers, while also helping to preserve the vitality of our planet.
About Nature Fresh Farms
Continuously expanding, Nature Fresh Farms has become one of the largest independent, vertically integrated greenhouse vegetable farms in North America. As a year-round grower with farms in Leamington, ON, Delta, OH, and Mexico, Nature Fresh Farms prides itself on consistently delivering exceptional flavor and quality to key retailers throughout North America, while continuing to innovate and introduce more viable and sustainable growing and packaging solutions.
SOURCE: Nature Fresh Farms | info@naturefresh.ca T: 519 326 1111 | www.naturefresh.ca
VIDEO: Geothermal Energy For Greenhouse Application
Mariska Dreschler with GreenTech did an interview with Marit Brommer, passionate about geothermal energy and the Executive Director of the International Geothermal Association
Mariska Dreschler with GreenTech did an interview with Marit Brommer, passionate about geothermal energy and the Executive Director of the International Geothermal Association. In the interview, they talked about:
Why is geothermal energy a logical source for greenhouses
The sustainability factors of sustainable energies such as geothermal usage
What are the goals and missions of the IGA
The misconceptions about geothermal energy
The consequences of energy transition from gas and oil to sustainable energies
What are the basic necessities to implement and apply geothermal energy?
Examples of best practices of geothermal energy in greenhouses
For more information:
GreenTech
www.greentech.nl
Publication date: Fri 25 Sep 2020
Why Soil And Not Hydroponics, And Vice Versa
Hydroponics, in a nutshell, is a method of growing plants without soil
I have decided that is high time we tackle this topic as my next article because in fact is a pretty hot topic of conversation. Especially in Berlin, where we have incredible startups like infarm, who specialize in hydroponic production in urban areas, supplying restaurants, supermarkets, and much more, and therefore cutting down on the food miles as in most places their setup is installed in-house.
Also, I’m finding that friends left right and center are getting themselves home hydroponic kits to grow exciting salad varieties. So we’ve often find ourselves talking about why we use soil instead of hydroponics, and so we wanted to give a bit of an overview of the pros and cons of soil versus hydroponics.
So then let’s go back to basics, what is hydroponics? Hydroponics, in a nutshell, is a method of growing plants without soil, where you use mineral nutrient mixes in a water solution (hence the word ‘hydro’). Generally, the plants are grown with their roots exposed, whereby the water and nutrient mix is introduced by either the roots sitting within the mixture, being sprayed or in some cases having partial drying and partial immersion. In other cases where plants require support to their root systems perlite, rock wool and gravel can be used. The nutrient solutions utilized can be those produced by the multiple companies that have begun specializing in this, or you can mix up your own (with access to a lab-type stock of elements), by-products of aquaculture farms, fish waste, etc. can also be used. Generally, hydroponic systems that most homeowners utilize for home gardening are a fully controllable unit including lighting. Therefore enabling growers to control and produce a very efficient plant in the best conditions that you choose.
Economic investment
This all might sound ideal to some, but actually, there are a few things to consider here. Firstly the economic investment required in the beginning is rather substantial. These systems are not always cheap. Or let me put it this way, if you want good lighting which are in the right ‘spectrum’ and are not going to give you leggy unhealthy plants, you want a good system that has been produced by a trustworthy company. And whilst these sure exist, say Ikea even does great systems their not cheap, it adds up financially. Whilst in comparison when you’re doing home balcony soil based gardening you can do so without investing tons of money in the beginning but build it up slowly, all you need is some seeds and soil and you can recycle egg cartons to your hearts delight for seedling trays and bang you’re on your way in springtime!
Energy reliance/plant compounds
Now another thing to be concerned about in terms of hydroponics is that its energy reliant. So if you’re in a place where the electricity tends to cut out, or you don’t fancy using unnecessary energy but conserving then this is really something to consider. If your lights go out, your plants will die. Sadly that’s just the reality, it’s a very fine-tuned system and you can get great productivity out of it, but at the same time, these plants produced in such systems are not as resilient as those grown in natural conditions. And that brings us to the next major point to consider. Natural conditions tend to enable plants to develop a buffer capacity against changes in temperature, lack of water, etc. They toughen up and produce all kinds of amazing secondary metabolite plant compounds that help protect them from the stress. And guess what- science is just discovering how healthy some of these compounds are for us, humans! Secondary metabolites called ‘glucosinolates’ in the broccoli family have been found to have anti-carcinogenic properties! So plants toughening up to growing conditions can be a good thing for them and for us.
Maintenance / disease
Now whilst there is a whole hype in controlling ‘lighting’ recipes that LED’s can now create for plants, and some home growers are tweaking their tomato plants for example to increase flavonoid secondary compounds. This is realistically a bit more on the advanced side. And essentially hydroponics can be even harder for the novice gardener because the plants are not very resilient or forgiving. They are fragile beauty queens that have never had a stress in their life and really throw a temper tantrum when things go a bit unusually out of schedule. This importantly enough brings us to another point, that hydroponic systems are very controlled clean and uncontaminated. This usually means then that if one plant gets a disease, a virus or is afflicted by something you can pretty much count on all the other plants being afflicted or struck down by the same thing within days. All plants are grown in the same water mixture and this just causes disease and contamination to spread extremely fast. So you have to really be quick on the draw in identifying a malady or symptom when it crops up.
Organic?
Now another aspect if you were not aware of it, an interesting fact, organic produce will not be certified so if grown using hydroponics. Why you might ask? Because one of the underlying most important rules for organic certification is that organic produce in grown in soil. There has been a huge push to get this removed as there have been increasingly more sustainable organic fertilizers and nutrient mixes being made for hydroponics that were not available a few years ago. But I must say that I think it might be an important gold standard to keep in play. Soil is so important, and actually is also such a reserve of all kinds of micro life and activity that when cared for and given back to in exchange for the harvests and bounties you are getting out of your balcony or garden, can become enriched and magical. There is a whole micro magical world of fungi and organisms that aid in the breakdown and transport of nutrients from the air into the soil and to your plant’s roots that are just mind-boggling. So when you create a healthy balanced soil you are in for a win-win situation of constant giving in exchange for a bit of compost and humus content every year. It’s pretty satisfying I must say!
Big companies?
Also back onto the topic of minerals and fertilizers, this is not so far off from the monoculture system many of us are trying to not support by, in fact, growing our own and sidestep the big agri-companies. Hydroponics sadly is fertilizer based, and one very important aspect to consider even when using organic biofertilizers is where and how is this product produced? It’s very often the result of mining activities in a developing country where workers are not living in healthy socially justifiable conditions. Additionally, a lot of ‘producers’ of chemicals required for the creating of these mixtures are big pharmaceutical companies. And essentially I still have a hard time justifying such high externalities when liquid manures and composts can be created so easily at home in even space limited flats. Additionally, the production of hydroponics growing facilities and systems is very energy-intensive to ‘build’ or manufacture. And so if you have access to a windowsill or balcony with sunlight or even semi sunlight I would be more in favor of encouraging gardeners to branch out and explore that area first. I especially cannot wait in spring for those first warm days to go and begin organizing and sowing and get growing. There’s nothing better than fresh air and sunlight and actual dirt under nails in my opinion but that’s just me. Also, let’s not forget how much the insects and bees thank us for the plants and flowers that are provided to them from our outdoor growing activities.
Cons of hydroponics
Now I know I’ve banged on about the cons of hydroponics a bit and I going to try and redeem myself here a bit. Because trust me living in Berlin and being an urban gardener by profession, the idea of growing things indoors in winter really is starting to get under my skin. So for me, this is where the plus can come in. If you have no balcony or sunny windowsills then these systems can be incredible. In fact, I’ve even visited fantastic bars that grow all their medicinal plants indoor year long using beautifully handmade hydroponic shelving systems. So I have been secretly scouting out a section in our flat for a little homemade DIY winter growing because let’s be honest, this green thumb gets super itchy and would love to have some things to play within the winter. I also really like the idea of homegrown winter veg and salads during the winter and being able to see the results of lighting and nutrients first hand, and sadly my flat is incredibly dark year-round with not an inch of sunlight all day. Now my only constraint is all the points I’ve mentioned beforehand, especially as I am blessed enough to have an urban garden here in Berlin that I share with friends. But you know where I think the pay of is going to come? In the summer because fantasizing about all the amazing seedlings I could start of early with a hydroponics system here in the flat. So I guess to finish off- to each their own. But for me personally? Nothing beats being outdoors with dirt under my nails!
Lead photo by Emile-Victor Portenart on Unsplash
Natasha Weddepohl
From market gardening to urban permaculture projects, Natasha has been involved in a multitude of projects linked with food growing and sustainability, for over 12 years. Originally from South Africa, she has gained her experience in sustainable food production through hands-on work worldwide. She is currently based in Berlin, assisting a few projects, whilst completing an MSc in Horticultural Science.