Have Your Food and Eat the Wrapper Too

Contributing Author: Alaina Spencer

According to the U.N. Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), “approximately 8 million metric tons of plastic waste enters the ocean every year.” This plastic waste can take up to 400 years to break down in the landfill, harming animal life, polluting cities, or overwhelming landfills. To combat the harmful environmental effects of plastic, many companies are seeking to replace excess plastic packaging with edible materials. Using innovative technology and plant-based materials like seaweed, organizations have developed numerous packaging alternatives safe for human consumption.

To highlight these inspiring alternatives to plastic, Food Tanks brings you 18 innovations in edible packaging. These organizations are working to reduce plastic waste, support a healthy environment, and influence consumer behavior.

1. Apeel Sciences

Apeel, a translucent ‘peel’ that slows water loss and oxidation from Apeel Sciences, works to extend the freshness of fruits and vegetables and reduce the amount of rotten, wasted food. The California-based company, Apeel Sciences, used plant-derived materials found in peels and skins in creating Apeel to naturally lengthen the shelf life of perishable foods. The sheer coating keeps air out by acting like a second peel and is completely edible. Apeel is trying to reduce the amount of food lost for producers, suppliers, retailers, and consumers.

2. Bakeys

Bakeys, an edible cutlery company, was founded in India to try to provide a waste-free and chemical-free alternative to disposable plastic, wood, and bamboo cutlery. The founder, Narayana Peesapaty, created Bakeys out of concern for groundwater depletion and the danger of plastic toxins on human systems. The cutlery is made of a blend of sorghum, rice, and wheat flours, completely biodegradable, and vegan-friendly.

3. Coolhaus

Coolhaus is a Los Angeles-based ice cream sandwich company that offers their creations in an edible potato wafer paper wrapping. While not all of their products are packaged in edible packaging, Coolhaus offers this potato wrapping as an eco-friendly alternative to their other plastic-based wrappers. To reduce catering and event packaging waste, Coolhaus imprints the tasteless potato wrappers with specific logos or brands using edible ink for each event.

4. Do Eat

Belgium-based company, Do Eat, combines water and potato starch to create a gluten-free, vegetarian, edible package for sandwiches, bagels, cookies, and other individual foods. As an alternative to plastic food packaging, Do Eat packaging is completely edible, biodegradable, and home compostable. The neutral flavor allows the packaging to be paired with savory or sweet foods and can be grilled with its contents. Do Eat founders, Thibaut Gilquin and Hélèn Hoyois, are attempting to change consumer waste behavior without consumers noticing a difference.

5. Ecovative

Ecovative is a design and packaging company working to develop, produce, and market environmentally friendly products to work in conjunction with the Earth’s ecosystem. The New York-based company begins at the cellular level by using mycelium, the vegetative part of a fungus, to grow packaging for wine bottles, cold storage, or any product needing support. Ecovative uses various nutrients and environments to grow the mycelium packaging which creates differing strengths and flexibilities. While Eben Bayer, a co-founder, says the packaging is, in fact, edible, he encourages consumers to compost it to use as fertilizer.

6. E6PR

A Mexican-based start-up, Eco Six Pack Ring or E6PR, is trying to replace the plastic six-pack ring that holds beer cans by combining compostable matter and by-product waste to create an eco-friendly six-pack ring. Plastic six-pack rings often make their way to the ocean greatly harming sea life, which inspired E6PR to create an environmentally and animal friendly product. These biodegradable and compostable ‘ecorings’ completely break down if left in the wild or in water and do not harm animal’s digestive tracts. The ecorings are also 100 percent edible, but the company does not encourage human consumption due to possible contamination on the journey to the retail store.  

7. Evoware  

Evoware, a seaweed-based packaging company, works to reduce plastic waste by replacing plastic food packaging with edible, dissolvable, and biodegradable packaging. The tasteless, odorless packaging comes in various sizes to fit sandwiches, cereals, or coffee sachets and is customizable for specific colors and brand logos. Along with reducing plastic waste, the Indonesian-based company collaborates with local seaweed farmers to try to reduce carbon emissions, increase farmers’ incomes, and maintain clean shores. Evoware is trying to provide an eco-solution to plastic waste while improving the livelihoods of Indonesian seaweed farmers.

8. Loliware

Loliware is a biodegradable, edible cup company founded and designed by Parsons School of Design graduates, Chelsea Briganti and Leigh Ann Tucker. Loliware uses seaweed, organic sweeteners, and fruit and vegetable coloring to produce natural, non-toxic cups that are FDA approved to eat. According to Briganti and Tucker, Americans throw away 25 million plastic cups every year which inspired them to create Loliware. Loliware is trying to change the packaging industry by providing edible products as a solution to one-use plastic cups. The company is currently in the midst of launching an edible straw with the hope to expand their products and decrease the abundance of single-use plastics.

9. Monosol

Monosol, an Indiana-based packaging company, utilizes water-soluble film technology to create sustainable packaging that completely dissolves in water. A division of Japan-based parent company, Kuraray, Monosol partners with various businesses to provide an eco-friendly alternative to packaging of all sorts including detergents, personal care products, and food goods. Because the packaging is transparent, tasteless, and odorless, Monosol is trying to replace the wrapping for foods such as oatmeal and spices.

10. NVYRO

NVYRO, pronounced en-vi-ro, transforms Cassava plants, also called tapioca, into single-use biodegradable and edible packaging to offer an alternative to polystyrene and plastic food packaging. The Cassava plant is a sturdy raw material, which is then broken down and processed through thermal compression moulding making NVYRO’s products water-resistant for 75 minutes and oil resistant for several hours. Based in the United Kingdom, NVYRO offers a wide variety of products ranging from plates and cups to take-out containers in the hopes to replace current single-use plastic and paper goods.

11. Poppits

Florida-based startup, Poppits, is a toothpaste company using water-soluble pods to attempt to reduce the need for plastic toothpaste tubes and caps. In efforts to eliminate plastic pollution, Poppits use food-grade edible film to house single-use toothpaste pods that completely dissolve when brushing, which are packaged in sustainably sourced, biodegradable cardboard and recyclable aluminum. Poppits inventor, Wayne Solan, hopes to decrease bathroom mess while providing an edible and environmentally friendly toothpaste package.  

12. Scoby

Polish design student, Roza Janusz, drew inspiration from vegetable cultivation to create Scoby: Living Packages, an edible, recyclable packaging, for her graduate project at the School of Form in Poznan, Poland. Scoby, short for Symbiotic Culture of Bacteria and Yeast, is a growing, living organism most known as the membrane found in kombucha. Janusz uses extracts from agricultural waste to feed Scoby which then grow into edible and compostable packaging. Janusz wants farmers to grow their own Scoby to limit wasteful packaging practices and instead create zero-waste packaging.

13. Skipping Rocks Lab

London-based start-up, Skipping Rocks Lab, uses seaweed and plant materials to create waste-free alternatives to plastic packaging. Their first product, Ooho, dubbed “water you can eat,” strives to provide the convenience of plastic water bottles without the environmental impact. Ooho is a spherical, flexible package made of seaweed that holds water and can be eaten like a grape. While Ooho is currently only sold at events, Skipping Rocks Lab is working on getting Ooho into stores to help reduce the amount of plastic water bottles ending up in the oceans and prevent millions of kilograms of CO2 from ever being emitted.

14. Taste No Waste Project

Montreal-based anthropological researcher and industrial designer, Diane Leclair Bisson, uses culture-specific research to inform sustainable food packaging innovations that seek to change consumer interaction with food containers through the Taste No Waste Project. The Taste No Waste Project replaces disposable food containers with edible ones made from tomatoes to offer a possible waste reduction solution and a new gastronomic experience. By creating an edible container, Diane hopes to generate a more meaningful interaction with food and its packaging, which she thinks can be an agent for cultural change.

15. TIPA

Inspired by the compostability of an orange peel, TIPA, an Israeli-based sustainable packaging company, creates packing material that looks and feels like plastic with one large difference: it’s completely home compostable. Daphna Nissenbaum and Tal Neuman founded TIPA as a potential solution to the world’s growing plastic waste problem. TIPA combines bio-materials and technology to create flexible, plastic-like packaging that is 100 percent biodegradable and leaves no toxic residue.  

16. Tomorrow Machine

A Swedish design company, Tomorrow Machine, questions the lifespan of plastic food packaging through their own packaging series, This Too Shall Pass. The packages in the series have the same life-span of the contents they hold whether it’s juice, rice, or oil. The edible packaging for oil is made of wax-coated sugar, which cracks open like an egg then melts under water. The designers behind the food packaging series work to build a more sustainable world through research, technology, and new materials.

17. United States Department of Agriculture (USDA)

Two chemical engineers, Peggy Tomasula and Laetitia Bonnaillie, of the Agricultural Research Service (ARS) in the USDA, are trying to reduce food spoilage by using casein proteins found in milk to create an edible wrapping product similar to plastic wrap. The researchers recently combined an alkali compound to the casein wrapping, which they state keeps oxygen out of food 500 times better than petroleum-based wrappings and is resistant to humidity, temperature, and moisture. Because the wrapping is made of the casein protein, the researchers suggest use with other dairy products or provide an allergy warning.

18. WikiCells

Inspired by the methods of nature, WikiCells are edible skins that encase food or liquids to create a protective barrier from the outside world. Harvard Professor, David Edwards, came up with the idea to use various natural food particles held together by nutritive ions to construct a completely edible skin as an alternative to plastic packaging. With the help of designer François Azambourg, Edwards brought WikiCells to fruition with the hopes of WikiCells products being sold in bulk, similar to fruits or vegetables, which the consumer could later wash at home. Incredible Foods commercialized WikiCells and now sell the products in the United States as Perfectly Free bites.

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Danielle Nierenberg

Danielle Nierenberg is President of Food Tank and an expert on sustainable agriculture and food issues. She has written extensively on gender and population, the spread of factory farming in the developing world and innovations in sustainable agriculture.

Announcing “Food Talk With Dani Nierenberg” And 23 Great Food Podcasts

Contributing Author: Katherine Walla

Food Tank is excited to introduce the podcast “Food Talk with Dani Nierenberg.” On the podcast, Nierenberg invites chefs, experts, and activists to outline their ideal food system—and how their projects are making a better food system more attainable. This week we launched two brand new episodes with New Orleans legend, restauranteur Dickie Brennan, and activist Karen Washington, the owner of Rise and Root Farm. We hope you’ll listen, subscribe, rate, review, and let us know who you would like to see interviewed. You can listen to “Food Talk with Dani Nierenberg” on Apple iTunes, Stitcher, or wherever you consume your podcasts.

Food Tank is also highlighting 23 podcasts we admire—podcasts that explore issues relating to food politics, environment, history, access and affordability, and women’s equality. Listen, enjoy, learn, and of course, let us know which podcasts are your favorites.

1. A Taste of the Past

A Taste of the Past, a Heritage Radio Network podcast, connects food cultures of the past to the present, reaching back as far as ancient Mesopotamia and Rome. Host Linda Pelaccio, a culinary historian, invites authors, scholars, and culinary experts to discuss food history. The podcast not only covers single ingredients, such as noodles, but also trends in recipes, dining, and employment in the food system.

2. Agro Africa

Channel Africa’s podcast Agro Africa discusses agriculture and its role in Africa’s development.  The podcast brings together entrepreneurs, farmers, and researchers searching for solutions to industrial agricultural practices or practices threatened by climate change. Agro Africa not only discovers ways Africa’s agriculture must change in the future, but also discovers agricultural changes it has made in the past that contribute to the continent’s preparations for climate change.

3. Bite

Bite is “a podcast for people who think hard about food.” Hosted by Mother Jones Magazine Writers Tom Philpott, Kiera Butler, and Maddie Oatman, the podcast invites farmers, chefs, scientists, and writers to explore food. Together, they uncover the politics, history, and science behind food choices today. Bite also breaks down news from the food world for listeners of all backgrounds.

4. Farmer to Farmer

On Farmer to Farmer, host Chris Blanchard introduces listeners to successful farmers and growers. The podcast, made by farmers for farmers, explores what it takes to make a farm successful. Listeners can hear about a range of issues including employment in the farm sector, soil fertility, farming challenges, and even the secrets to cultivating carrots.

5. Food Heaven Podcast

Food Heaven Podcast co-hosts Jessica Jones and Wendy Lopez share tips for using diet and health choices to commit to sustainable, healthy living. The podcast invites experts in topics like food, health, and nutrition to share advice on ways listeners can work toward their desired healthy lives. Jones and Lopez’s focus on health goes beyond food, covering topics such as mental health and body kindness.

6. Gastropod

Co-hosts Cynthia Graber and Nicola Twilley discover more about food on Gastropod. The podcast brings together experts at research labs, farms, and archaeological sites in order to use food as a tool to understand the world and its history. Gastropod also tries to identify the role that food plays in shaping cultures, history, and current trends.

7. Good Food

Good Food presents the latest news about what’s happening in food and restaurant culture throughout America. Host Evan Keliman discusses the latest water and agricultural issues, food politics, and cultural movements relating to the food system. Kleiman’s take on life, culture, and the human species explores trends in southern California, ranging from avocados, tacos, and the best L.A. pie.

8. Gravy

Gravy spotlights Southern foodways, highlighting the way Southern traditions and food innovations intertwine in the region. Host John T. Edge uses the food we eat to explore the American South as it evolves with new dynamics, movements, stereotypes, and voices. Gravy’s episodes also show how the South accommodates new immigrants and their traditions, coming from around the globe.

9. Hacking Hunger

Part of the United Nations World Food Programme’s Storytellers project, Hacking Hungershares stories about hunger and nutrition in current events. Host M.J. Altman shares the stories of those not only living with hunger, but fighting it: Altman talks to aid workers, journalists, lawmakers, community leaders, and survivors to encourage listeners to find their own place in fighting hunger.

10. Homesteady

Homesteady finds ways for listeners to lead a self-sufficient and sustainable life, growing and raising food on their own. Host Aust—a farmer and father—lives off the land with his family, trying to create a steady life on the farm. The podcast realistically portrays the obligations of homesteading, from foraging and hunting, to farming and harvesting.

11. Plate of the Union

Plate of the Union brings together chefs, farmers, and policymakers with passions for advocacy. Sponsored by Food Policy Action, the podcast aims to promote safe, healthy, and affordable food for all. Host Spike Mendelsohn—celebrity chef and Chairman of the D.C. Food Policy Council—joins Food Policy Action’s Executive Director, Monica Mills, to discuss guests’ dreams for a better food system and their initiatives bringing these dreams into reality.

12. Real Food Reads

Founder and Director of Real Food Media, Anna Lappé believes books have the power to expose reasons why the food system is broken and solutions to fix it. On Real Food Reads, Lappé brings listeners together to discuss top books in food. The podcast also brings prominent authors into the discussion, considering questions big and small, for the future of the food system.

13. Sound Bites

Sound Bites brings together researchers, academics, dietitians, and more to talk about strategies to find good food and maintain healthy nutrition. Host Melissa Joy Dobbins tackles topics including healthy diets, weight management, diabetes, agriculture, farming, and more. Sound Bites aims to provide listeners with credible information on the latest food news and events, like recent episodes on pesticides, pop culture’s psychological effects, and school food.

14. Small Farm Nation

Small Farm Nation seeks to show listeners the benefits and obligations of having a successful sustainable farm. Host Tim Young gives tips on how to attain success by treating the farm as a business, with marketing strategies and branding tools. The podcast addresses topics like business growth, finding customers, community involvement, and social media engagement to help listeners in any stage of the process of building a farm.

15. Sustainable World Radio

On Sustainable World Radio, host Jill Cloutier interviews sustainability experts about possible solutions to environmental challenges. The podcast focuses on the environment and natural world, exploring ecology, soil, herbal medicine, organic growing, regenerative agriculture, and more. Cloutier also explores the link between psychology and ecology, hoping to find solutions to climate change.

16. The Beginning Farmer Show

The Beginning Farmer Show follows host Ethan Book—farmer, blogger, and founder of Crooked Gap Farm—as he starts his farm from scratch. Book shares both the easy and difficult lessons he learned along the way growing crops and raising livestock, including listeners in his hard decisions such as downsizing his herds.

17. The Doctor’s Kitchen

On The Doctor’s Kitchen, United Kingdom National Health Service Doctor Rupy Aujla seeks to show listeners that food is medicine. Aujla sits down with experts and researchers to discuss how nutrition and lifestyle are dependent on one another. The podcast outlines the smartest diets for specific illnesses and diseases while avoiding fad-diets and trends.

18. The Eater Upsell

The Eater Upsell is Eater’s flagship podcast hosted by Eater Editor-in-Chief Amanda Kludt and Audience Development and Special Projects Producer Daniel Geneen. The podcast covers food news, restaurant culture, and industry trends, with a deep look into the newest food innovations. The Eater Upsell also presents the “10 Best Food Stories” each month.

19. The Female Farmer

The Female Farmer podcast is part of the Female Farmer Project, which seeks to document the rise of women in agriculture and their roles in the food system. The podcast serves as a platform for women to share their stories, discussing all aspects of being a female farmer. Co-hosts Audra Mulkern and Kate Doughty dive deep, bringing up discussions not only about feminism, but also motherhood, disability, and veteran support.

20. The Food Chain

The Food Chain, a BBC podcast series, examines the business, science, and cultural significance of food. On the podcast’s special segment, “My Life in Five Dishes,” top chefs and food writers tell stories about their lives remembering five dishes that influenced them. Host Emily Thomas also composes stories of what it really takes to put food on the table.

21. The Secret Ingredient

The Secret Ingredient dives deep into one food system ingredient each episode focusing on anything from tomatoes, to school food, and even to democracy. Co-hosts Raj Patel, Tom Philpott, and Rebecca McInroy explore food history to tell listeners why they’re eating the food they eat, and why the food system appears as it does today.

22. The Splendid Table

The Splendid Table explores the intersection of food and life with conversations about culinary arts, culture, and lifestyles. New host Francis Lam, an award-winning food writer, gives a glimpse into the food world, discussing ideas about cooking, sustainability, and food culture. Known as “the radio program for people who love to eat,” The Splendid Table received numerous accolades since its start in 1995, including James Beard Foundation Awards for Best National Radio Show on Food and more.

23. The Urban Farm Podcast

The Urban Farm Podcast assembles special guests to discuss urban gardening and growing. Host Greg Peterson aims to motivate every listener to grow some of their own food with podcasts covering topics like urban beekeeping, chicken farming, composting, and more. The Urban Farm Podcast also explores tools and resources to help listeners make better choices in their local food systems.

Freight Farmer Q&A: Bee's Greens Company

8 Questions with Lizzy Porter of Bee's Greens Company!

We caught up with Lizzy of Bee's Greens Co. to learn more about her island farm in Waipahu, Hawaii!

One of the best things of being part of the Freight Farms team is talking to our farmers and hearing about their successes, customers, and challenges as they pursue a variety of container farming ventures. They are a wealth of information, so we're sharing some of their stories with you!

“As an island in the middle of the Pacific, importing comes at great environmental and food quality cost.” — Lizzy Porter

Freight Farms: What’s the story behind your Freight Farms project?

Lizzy Porter: My Freight Farms project was born from an interest in the future and emerging exponential technologies, and developed into what it is today after learning about contemporary food issues in Hawaii. I learned about Freight Farms while on a path of learning about how existing big industries could be decentralized and democratized. I began to understand more about current food insecurity issues in Hawaii - where more than 80% of food is imported; where arable land can be hard to come by; where tropical weather can surprisingly and significantly impact a growing season.

As an island in the middle of the Pacific, importing comes at great environmental and food quality cost. With the Freight Farms technology in mind, I found there was an opportunity to participate in a futuristic pursuit while helping with contemporary issues. Not to mention, I was pretty ready for an excuse to move to a beautiful tropic island. Thus, Bee’s Greens Company, operating in Hawaii for Hawaii, came to be.

FF: What, if any, was your experience with farming before becoming a Freight Farmer?

LP: Not much! I had a personal vertical hydroponic gardening system before becoming a Freight Farmer, but would not say I had experience with farming, let alone on a commercial scale. However, I grew up very comfortable with life sciences and technology so was ready for the challenge. I also believe that success often comes from delegating to others whose strengths complement your own - so was confident that if I was struggling, I could always find someone or a team with different skills and experiences to make the project thrive.

Lizzy with her brother and dad, who help her out at the farm!

“The support of my family, the Freight Farms team, and the Freight Farms community has been absolutely instrumental in helping me overcome challenges of getting started and finding my footing.”

— Lizzy Porter

FF: What reaction do you typically get from people when you tell them what you do for a living?

LP: Surprise and genuine interest! I love that my answer is not traditional, whether I’m talking to someone on a corporate path, in the agricultural field, or pretty much any other avenue. It usually makes for a fun conversation about the future, unconventional passions, and potential solutions to contemporary issues - and inevitably ends up with looking us looking a dates to schedule a tour of the farm.

FF: How did you find customers to buy your produce?

Just one fun farmers market sign!
Photo: Bees Greens Co. on Instagram

LP: We’ve found our customers through farmers markets! We sell the majority of our greens to both patrons of the markets as well as other vendors at the markets. Other customers have come through by looking for like-minded companies.

FF: What’s your favorite crop to grow and why?

LP: My favorite crop is probably the Butterhead Rex. It is well loved here but doesn’t normally grow year-round, so the communities I serve are familiar with it and excited to see it when they hadn’t expected to. It’s also just the right amount of tender and beautiful.

“With the global culture and awesome technology that we have in 2018, it is unrealistic and uncreative to just decide that a society can only have the food that grows well traditionally in that location.”

— Lizzy Porter

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Photo: Bees Greens Co. on Instagram

FF: What’s the most pressing issue in food and agriculture that you’d like to see solved?

LP: On a personal and local level, I think a very pressing issue is food security in Hawaii. 80% or more of food is imported to the islands from 3000 miles away, which means quality loss, environmental costs, and an economic loop that is not benefiting the local community as it could. The challenge is that, because the imported produce is produced in very large commercial scales, it can remain cheaper than fresh, low impact, local food. 

With the global culture and awesome technology that we have in 2018, it is unrealistic and uncreative to just decide that a society can only have the food that grows well traditionally in that location. Things like the Freight Farms’ LGM provides a great opportunity for global selections of locally produced, consistent, high-efficiency, low impact goods.

We completely agree with Lizzy! Check out our blog, Freight Farming Over Freight Shipping: Bringing Local Back to the Island for more insights into the problems island communities face today.

Lizzy working in her farm–you'd never know she didn't have any previous growing experience!

FF: What was the most challenging part of becoming a Freight Farmer and how were you able to overcome it?

LP: The most challenging part of this project was moving into a field that was relatively new to me, having never been involved in commercial farming before. The support of my family, the Freight Farms team, and the Freight Farms community has been absolutely instrumental in helping me overcome challenges of getting started and finding my footing. Now that we’ve been operational for a while, that support has been epically supplemented by the help and knowledge of great employees, and getting to share our stoke and passion with our customers and community.

“Passion is contagious, and I’ve found the best way to keep the stoke is to share it! ”

— Lizzy Porter

FF: What’s the best piece of advice you can give to people interested in becoming Freight Farmers?

LP: Passion is contagious, and I’ve found the best way to keep the stoke is to share it!  A new business venture can at times be a grind, but if you can find the pieces of being a Freight Farmer that are most interesting to you – i.e. the parts that blow your mind - those are what you want to hang onto and share with others to blow their minds in turn.  A significant amount of my sales and new connections have come from when I get on a roll, talking about how cool the system is, and why it’s important for now and for the future. Sharing my excitement and having it reflected back to me has been endlessly inspiring and motivating.

Wellspring Harvest Greenhouse Co-op In Springfield Brings Hydroponic Lettuce To Market

By Jim Kinney | jkinney@repub.com | August 1, 2018

Wellspring Harvest lettuce on sale at the Cooley Street Big Y. (Jim Kinney/ The Republican)

SPRINGFIELD -- It's not unusual to see fresh and locally grown produce arrive at Big Y in July just hours after it was harvested.

But it will be quite a treat when fresh, locally grown lettuce arrives at Big Y just hours after it was harvested -- in January.

The Wellspring Harvest Greenhouse Cooperative delivered its first lettuce Tuesday to four Big Y locations: Cooley Street, Ludlow, Wilbraham and Fresh Acres on Wilbraham Road.

The delivery -- 200 heads in total -- represents the culmination of more than two years of work by Wellspring that included building a $1.5 million four-season hydroponic greenhouse at on Pinevale Street on part of the formerly contaminated Chapman Valve site in Indian Orchard.

"We are creating a whole new food system for the city of Springfield," said Marcello Rossi, who handles sales and deliveries for Wellspring Harvest Greenhouse Cooperative. "We are going to grow food where we need it. Where we need it is in the heart of the city."

The greenhouse is Wellspring's third worker-owned enterprise, said Fred Rose, Wellspring Cooperative Corp. co-director. The quarter-acre greenhouse follows the Wellspring Upholstery Cooperative and the Old Window Workshop.

The Greenhouse has seven employees who have an opportunity to work toward being worker-owners in the business.

"Our mission is to create sustainable jobs, good local jobs and job training," Rose said. "Some of our workers have farm experience. Some do not. We are working with one man who was homeless."

Wellspring isn't like other farms. For one thing, it's all hydronic, with produce grown in a water solution. Wellspring is certified through the state's Commonwealth Quality Program assuring that the produce is grown, harvested and processed right here in Massachusetts using practices that are safe, sustainable and don't harm the environment.

"It's a very rigorous process," Rose said. "They look at everything."

Rossi said Wellspring grows its vegetables in a controlled environment taking precautions to avoid infestation by insects or contamination by disease. That's an area of concern for consumers given the recent recalls of salad greens from the marketplace.

The new greenhouse can produce 17,000 heads of lettuce a month with 10,000 a month being the breakeven point to profitability, Rose said.

"It sounds like a lot now, but we expect our product to sell more as the other local produce fades from the shelves," he said.

Wellspring will branch out, he said, adding herbs, tomatoes, cilantro and cucumbers as winter grips the region. Wellspring will also grow callaloo, a leaf vegetable popular in the Caribbean.

"In the middle of winter, you can have cucumbers," Rossi said. "You can have fresh tomatoes and they are not ripened artificially. They are not coming from the other side of the world."

Wellspring will expand its customers as well to include the Springfield city schools, Mercy Medical Center and the eventually the River Valley Co-Op in Northampton and the Franklin Community Co-Op markets in Greenfield and Shelburne Falls.

The four varieties of lettuce on sale at the Big Y markets -- red sweet crisp, romaine manoa, green sweet crisp and green butter -- come as a 5-ounce plant with a root in a plastic clamshell. Each package sells for $3.49 in keeping with the prices Big Y charges for its organic and specialty lettuce.

The lettuce will last as long as 10 days, Rossi said, and you can even plant the root and harvest a leaf at a time for months.

The $1.5 million greenhouse cost included buying the parcel from the Springfield Redevelopment Authority for $70,000. 

Wellspring Harvest financed the greenhouse project by raising more than $500,000 from local investors, Rose said. The rest came in loans from Farm Credit East, of Enfield, Connecticut, and Coastal Enterprises Inc., of Brunswick, Maine.

Myra S. Marcellin, vice president and senior loan officer for Farm Credit East, said she was attracted to Wellspring because of its business plan and mission of bringing sustainable agriculture to an urban setting.

"It fits with our mission," she said. 

Myra S. Marcellin, vice president and senior loan officer for Farm Credit East in Enfield, poses with Wellspring Harvest lettuce Tuesday in Springfield. Farm Credit East helped finance Wellspring Harvest and its greenhouse in Indian Orchard. (Jim Kinney / The Republican)

2018 Food Tank Summit (New York City): Focusing On Food Loss and Food Waste

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by Food Tank

 

Wed, October 3, 2018, 9:00 AM – 5:00 PM EDT

$249 TICKETS

The New York City 2nd Annual Food Tank Summit

Food Tank, Natural Resources Defense Council, New York University, Hunter College NYC Food Policy Center, ReFED, and The Rockefeller Foundation are excited to announce the second annual NYC Food Tank Summit.

Wednesday, October 3, 2018

***EARLY BIRD SALE!!! Only $249! Only 50 Tickets Left at this Price***

***Hurry, this Summit will sell out!***

This exciting event will feature more than 30 different speakers from the food and agriculture field.

Last year in New York we had Tom Colicchio, Sam Kass, Kimbal Musk, Ruth Reichl and dozens of others and the event sold out quickly with a waiting list of 1,400. An additional 90,000 watched via livestream. Don't miss this chance to book your spot!

2018 speakers include (one announced every weekday starting July 23th):

Marion Nestle, best-selling author and professor emeritus at New York University; Dan Barber, is a best-selling author, chef, and co-owner of Blue Hill and Blue Hill at Stone Barnes, along with Row 7 Seed; Dickie Brennan, Owner and Managing Partner of Dickie Brennan & Company; Celebrity Chef Tim Ma, Kyirisan; Caity Moseman Wadler, Executive Director Heritage Radio Network; Julia Moskin, New York Times; and Brad Nelson, Vice President, Marriott International.

As one of the fastest-growing nonprofit organizations in food and agriculture, Food Tank started these Summits four years ago, all in collaboration with major universities and non-profits and bringing together more than 400 speakers for discussions moderated by journalists from outlets including the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, Vice, Vox, NPR, BuzzFeed, and Bloomberg.

Breakfast, coffee/tea, snacks, and lunch included (vegetarian, vegan, and gluten conscious options).

For sponsorship opportunities, email bernard@foodtank.com. To volunteer, please send your resume and availability on October 2nd and 3rd to vanesa@foodtank.com with the subject line "Volunteering at the New York Summit."

TAGS Things To Do In New York, NY Conference Food & Drink

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DATE AND TIME

Wed, October 3, 2018

9:00 AM – 5:00 PM EDT

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LOCATION

Tishman Auditorium

Vanderbilt Hall

40 Washington Square S

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Food Tank is a non-profit organization focused on building a global community for safe, healthy, nourished eaters. We spotlight environmentally, socially, and economically sustainable ways of alleviating hunger, obesity, and poverty and create networks of people, organizations, and content to push for food system change.

Government of Aruba Approves Vertical Farming Project Using Affinor Growers' Technology

VANCOUVER, British Columbia, Aug. 10, 2018 -

Affinor Growers Inc. ("AFI" or the "Company") (CSE:AFI, OTC:RSSFF, Frankfurt:1AF) is pleased to announce that on Aug 9, 2018, the Government of Aruba held a press conference to announce they have approved VDA Vertical Designs Aruba VBA to build a vertical farming project in Aruba, using AFI's vertical farming technology.

The technology will allow VDA Vertical Designs Aruba VBA to produce crops year-round in Aruba's tropical climate while utilizing land that, previously, could not be utilized for farming

The Company had previously announced, on February 21, 2018, that it had signed an exclusive license agreement with Vertical Designs Aruba Inc. Due to some legal obstacles during the incorporation process, VDA Vertical Designs Aruba VBA was incorporated in place of Vertical Designs Aruba Inc. The Company and VDA Vertical Designs Aruba VBA are in the process of finalizing a new amended licensing agreement. The licensing agreement is expected to be completed early next week.

Nick Brusatore, CEO, commented that "This is absolutely thrilling news for the Company, VDA Vertical Designs Aruba VBA and the country of Aruba. Not only will this project have a substantial, and lasting, economic impact on Aruba, but this will be the first step in revolutionizing the farming industry in the Caribbean. This is the perfect showcase for our vertical farming technology and we hope this will act as a catalyst for other vertical farming projects around the world."

About Affinor Growers

Affinor Growers is a publicly traded company on the Canadian Securities Exchange under the symbol ("AFI"). Affinor is focused on growing high quality crops such as romaine lettuce, spinach, strawberries using its vertical farming techniques. Affinor is committed to becoming a pre-eminent supplier and grower, using exclusive vertical farming techniques.

Neither Canadian Securities Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the Canadian Securities Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

This news release may contain assumptions, estimates, and other forward-looking statements regarding future events. Such forward-looking statements involve inherent risks and uncertainties and are subject to factors, many of which are beyond the Company's control that may cause actual results or performance to differ materially from those currently anticipated in such statements.

For More Information, please contact:

AFFINOR GROWERS INC.
"Nicholas Brusatore"
CEO

Amid Trucking Shortage, Walmart Doubles Spending On Drivers

AUTHOR Jessi Devenyns

Sept. 11, 2018

Dive Brief:

• Walmart, who has historically had low trucker turnover, is being pinched by the worsening shortage of drivers across the U.S. The retailer plans to double its spending on enticing and retaining truckers by the end of the year, according to Bloomberg Business. 

• In an effort to attract more drivers amid the tight market, Walmart will offer referral bonuses of up to $1,500, reduce the onboarding process by more than a month and broadcast its first national TV ad to drum up recruits. 

• “To be candid, right now I could hire a few hundred drivers,” Tracy Rosser, Walmart’s senior vice president of transportation, told Bloomberg. “It is getting tougher and tougher to find qualified drivers. It’s a really serious situation right now.”

Dive Insight:

Transportation is an issue in the grocery industry. With wage hikes, rising diesel-fuel prices and higher freight demand, June saw the biggest monthly uptick in long-distance trucking costs in nearly a decade.

On top of the rising costs, driver vacancies reached a record 296,311 in the second quarter, according to researcher FTR Transportation Intelligence. Just one truck was available for every 12 loads needing to be shipped at the start of 2018, which is the lowest ratio since 2005, according to an industry analysis by DAT Solutions.

The average age of a Walmart driver is 55, so the company is losing many to retirement, and the industry turnover rate hovers around 90 percent for long-haul truckers, according to the American Trucking Associations. In an effort to fill the gaps left by truckers rotating and retiring, Walmart is vigorously increasing incentives. New hires earn about $86,000 a year and get up to three weeks vacation, and now Walmart is working to reduce the onboarding process from 70 to 30 days and offering referral bonuses to new drivers.

Walmart’s profit margins have taken a hit for three straight quarters due to the trucker shortage. But the company is not alone. Bloomberg reports that cutthroat competition has caused some other carriers to raise wages as many as three times over the past year and dish out signing bonuses of as much as $10,000. Everyone is feeling the strain.

With shipping costs rising and freight volumes outpacing the supply of available trucks, food distributors are scrambling to find a solution to slow the financial burden on their overall earnings. Many manufacturers — including Dean Foods, Tyson, Del Monte, Kellogg and US Foods — said higher transportation and logistics costs weighed on earnings in the most recent quarter.

Trucks are vital to the retail supply chain. They carry more than 70% of the goods consumed in this country, according to the American Trucking Association, and under normal circumstances, grocers lose $75 billion a year in sales — 10% of the industry total — due to out-of-stocks and unsalable goods, often the result of late deliveries, according to the Food Marketing Institute. With the industry anticipating a need for 898,000 new drivers or an average of nearly 90,000 per year for the next decade, if fleets can’t find new drivers, grocers could expect losses to increase. As it stands, it wouldn’t be surprising to see retailers and manufacturers pass the cost of those losses on to consumers.

But to contrast that, diesel prices are expected to drop after reaching a three-year high. Although lower gas prices alone won’t be enough to overcome the worker shortage, it could help financially. The demands of the job are steep, even with recent regulations limiting time on the road, and keep many otherwise qualified drivers from applying. The hours are long and don’t allow for much of a home life. In addition, it’s a largely male field, with only 6% women in its workforce.

Still, Walmart hopes that by doubling its recruiting spend for non-traditional truckers that it can operate its private fleet of 6,500 trucks at full capacity and keep fulfilling orders. However, the pressures associated with freight show no signs of letting up, and as the perfect storm of higher consumer demand and lower trucking supply continues to rage, it will keep having a significant impact on profit margins for retailers and suppliers.

Recommended Reading:

• Bloomberg Walmart Doubles Spending in Battle for Truckers

  Manufacturing Grocery Ingredients Corporate Packaging

  Food Safety Policy Protein Marketing Beverages Sustainability

AccorHotels Now Using 600 Onsite Urban Food Gardens

9 August 2018, source edie newsroom

Hospitality giant AccorHotels has announced that it is on track to install urban fruit and vegetable gardens at 1,000 of its 4,500 global hotels by 2020, as part of its commitment to cut emissions from food transportation and reduce its food waste output.

The urban vegetable garden at Novotel London Waterloo produced enough pesticide-free basil to stock the kitchen all summer

The hotelier has today (August 9) revealed that it has fitted 600 of its locations worldwide with the gardens, which supply fresh vegetables, herbs and salads to be used in its restaurant and bar menus, putting the chain on track to meet its target of installing 400 more over the next two years. To date, 26 of these gardens are at UK branches, including the Novotel hotels in Canary Wharf, Paddington and Waterloo.

AccorHotels said in a statement that the move to build the gardens would help the company meet its target of reducing food waste from its restaurants – which collectively serve more than 150 million meals each year - by 30% by 2020, while boosting the traceability, and reducing the environmental footprint, of its produce supply chains.

“As a group that produces a lot of food for our guests across the world, it is vital that we play our part in reducing food waste and investing in sustainable food systems,” AccorHotels’ chief operating officer for Northern Europe, Thomas Dubaere, said.

“Our hotels are encouraged to source local produce, reducing the environmental impact from their food purchases and providing outlets for farmers to sell their produce.”

As well as shortening the produce supply chain, AccorHotels claims that installing urban gardens has improved the biodiversity and air quality in the areas surrounding its hotels, reduced the urban heat island effect and urban runoff and provided better heat and sound insulation to buildings which have rooftop gardens.

In addition to produce from onsite, pesticide-free gardens – which make use of hydroponic, aquaponic and vertical farming innovations to thrive - AccorHotels regularly uses honey produced from beehives on hotel rooftops across its restaurants. For example, the Novotel London Tower Bridge has recently been fitted with hives on its rooftop garden, with AccorHotels estimating that this will enable kitchen and bar staff to harvest 30kg of honey by the end of 2018.

Branching out

AccorHotels’ commitment to build urban gardens at its hotels forms part of the chain’s Planet 21 sustainability strategy, which was launched in 2012 and sets out a range of 2020 targets across topics such as eco-design, energy efficiency and water stewardship, alongside sustainably sourced food.

The strategy additionally includes the company’s Plant For The Planet initiative, which has seen AccorHotels commit to plant 10 million trees by 2021 through a string of global agroforestry and reforestation projects.

As of 2016, it has planted five million trees in 26 countries through the initiative – but Dubaere noted that the need to champion sustainable agriculture in a city environment had grown since Plant For The Planet launched in 2009.

“Our backing of agroforestry projects supports sustainable food production in rural areas, but almost 70% of the global population will live in cities by 2050, so we also feel it is important to mitigate the increasing consumption in urban areas,” Dubaere added.

The launch of the urban garden initiative came after AccorHotels last year became a signatory of WRAP’s Courtauld Commitment 2025, committing to achieve at least a 20% reduction in food waste and greenhouse gas emissions. To date, more than XYZ companies across a range of sectors have signed up to the commitment, with signatories representing 95% of the UK food market. 

Sarah George

AgFunder Just Released The Inaugural China AgriFood Startup Investing Report

AgFunder just released the inaugural China AgriFood Startup Investing Report in collaboration with our report partner Bits x Bites. The report covers technology startups operating across the agrifood value chain as well as other non-tech startups disrupting China’s agrifood industry.

In 2017, Chinese agrifood startups raised $1.8 billion of investment across 177 deals with 198 participating investors.

The vast majority of startups featured in the report are building businesses downstream at the consumer end of the agrifood supply chain, to answer the growing middle class's demand for premium products - a major driver for the overall Chinese economy - as well as convenience.

Startups operating upstream raised just $106 million across 28 deals as scattered farmland and complicated supply chains make it difficult for upstream startups to gain momentum in China. 

China's position as the global leader in e-commerce shone through as the eGrocery segment raised the largest amount of investor funding at $814m.

Technology-enabled "new retail" built a lot of hype during the year, driving $565 million of investment in In-Store Retail & Restaurant Tech but 90% of the startups offering unmanned store and vending machine technology had failed before the end of the year, according to local media reports.

China's three technology giants Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent (BAT) were key players in the sector during the year investing $741 million in agrifood startups (41% of total) and responsible for $5.8 million in M&A.

Find out more about the key deals and investors driving China's fledgling agrifood startup sector here: 

Download the FREE 32-page report here

Michael Dean, CIO, and the AgFunder team 

About AgFunder

AgFunder is an online Venture Capital Platform investing in the bold and exceptional entrepreneurs transforming our food and agriculture system. Our in-house technology enables us to invest globally and at scale, make better investment decisions,and supporting our portfolio companies. Through media and research, AgFunder has built a community of over 50,000 members and subscribers, giving us the largest and most powerful network in the industry.

Stay up-to-date with AgriFood Tech Startup news, and other reports, by signing up to our newsletter here.

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Dirty Feed, Done Dirt Cheap: Are Consumers Who Shell Out for Organic Meat Eating a Bunch of Bull?

By Brian Barth on August 9, 2018

Illustration by Brian Stauffer

America imports staggering amounts of organic grain from abroad—which allows for sleight of hand during shipping and opens the door to tainted feed. Are consumers who shell out for organic meat eating a bunch of bull?

Many Americans assume that anything labeled “USDA Organic” hails from the USA. And for produce, at least, the assumption typically holds true, with the exception of obvious imports like mangoes or coffee beans or tomatoes in January. But the farther an item is removed from the soil, the greater the possibility it harbors ingredients farmed abroad. One needn’t reach the tail end of the supply chain, where the frozen breakfast burritos dwell, to find foreign inputs. Just consider the steak in your butcher’s case. A cow must jump through multiple hoops before earning USDA certification. While the animal may have grazed on chemical-free Iowa pasture all summer, what did it eat during the off-season and where were the feed’s ingredients grown?

Chances are, not here. Although the United States remains the world’s largest exporter of conventional grain, we now import a hefty chunk of the organic stuff. Roughly 70 percent of our organic soybean supply, and some 40 percent of the organic corn consumed domestically, originates overseas. Between 2013 and 2016 alone, the amount America spent on imported organic soy leapt from $110 million to $250 million, and on imported organic corn from $36 million to $160 million. As a result, the bottom fell out of the U.S. market: Prices for organic soy plummeted from $26 to $18 per bushel, and organic corn from $14 to $7.50 a bushel—less than what it costs most American farmers to produce the crops.

A number of these growers found the sudden spike in imports suspicious. Beyond questions regarding food security and food miles, the glut of foreign grain raised regulatory concerns, especially given the three-year transition period required for organic certification. How could the USDA possibly enforce its strict standards on a rapidly expanding global playing field?

“I knew something was up,” says John Bobbe, executive director of OFARM, a marketing co-op that represents several hundred organic grain growers across 19 states. In May 2016, Bobbe needed to move corn from Illinois farms to an Indiana feed mill, and had a tough time finding anybody to haul the load. Turns out, a much bigger gig was drawing Midwestern truckers: A cargo ship called the Federal Nakagawa had just docked in Burns Harbor, Indiana, with 25 million pounds of feed corn in its hold. “That’s as much as 50 of our farms produce in a year,” explains Bobbe, who doubted the corn was organic when he discovered its country of origin.

Turkey lacks the flat, fertile plains needed to support export-scale corn and soy production. The politically volatile nation also has a history of attempting to export fraudulent organic goods to the European Union, according to a 2016 report from the USDA’s own Foreign Agricultural Service. Yet, that year, we imported $118 million worth of organic corn from Turkey, more than twice the amount the United States purchased from all other countries combined. The amount we spent on organic Turkish soybeans rose 268-fold between 2013 and 2016.

Bobbe soon heard of other ships delivering purportedly organic grain from Turkey to our ports. In September 2016, he turned over the names of the vessels, and one particularly suspicious importer, to the USDA’s National Organic Program (NOP), which is charged with ensuring the integrity of the organic seal. “The NOP told me it was too late to investigate,” he says. “I think it was more like, ‘We don’t want to bother.’”

Then, in February of last year, Peter Whoriskey, a reporter at The Washington Post, got in touch. Plying industry informants and Freedom of Information Act requests, Whoriskey managed to unearth shipping documents and other paperwork that laid bare a lucrative laundering scheme. His May 2017 article detailed three shipments of conventional grain that magically turned “organic” as they crossed the sea. All three came through Turkey, but at least two originated in other countries. “Lo and behold, the NOP started looking into it,” recalls Bobbe.

So just how, exactly, does the USDA go about certifying crops grown overseas? In the case of some countries (Canada, Japan, Switzerland, Korea, and the 28 European Union nations), the agency basically takes their word for it, via “equivalency arrangements” that acknowledge a foreign government’s organic standards as equivalent to ours. America has also signed “recognition agreements” with Israel, India, and New Zealand, recognizing certifiers accredited by those governments. Everywhere else, a USDA-accredited certifier must perform the inspection.

You might be surprised to learn that, of the 80 third-party, organic-certification agencies accredited by the USDA, 32 are based in foreign countries. Bobbe believes that’s part of the problem. “There is no way the NOP has the manpower to monitor them,” he insists, pointing out that only six or so auditors, none stationed abroad, are tasked with overseeing all the paperwork submitted by organic certifiers worldwide. He also faults the NOP for failing to inspect inbound cargo. U.S. Customs and Border Protection might, but those agents aren’t trained to scrutinize organic-certification documents. “Your chances of getting caught with a shipload of fake organic grain are next to nil,” Bobbe says. And should you get caught, the maximum fine per violation is $11,000—not much of a deterrent when millions can be made off a single shipment of fake organic corn.

Kelly Damewood, director of policy and government affairs at one of the largest certification agencies in this country, California Certified Organic Farmers (CCOF), agrees that the NOP needs more funding, though she warns against overstating the lapses. “In the rare cases of fraud, it can often be traced back to an uncertified handler,” says Damewood. “Technically, if you are not repacking it, processing it, relabeling it, or turning it into anything else—if you are just a pass-through entity—then you are not required to have certification.” Last September, CCOF started requiring the companies it certifies to complete a new form, verifying that every handler is complying with organic standards.

That same month, following a strongly worded directive from the USDA Office of Inspector General, the NOP issued new guidelines for certifiers aimed at closing loopholes along the supply chain. The agency also stopped a freighter named the Diana Bolten as it arrived in Bellingham, Washington, loaded with “organic” corn for the same importer associated with the Federal Nakagawa. Sources with knowledge of the incident told Bobbe that a portion of the shipment was rejected by the USDA as fraudulent. The USDA declined Modern Farmer’s request for comment on the matter.

Another sign of progress: Last September, Representatives John Faso (R-NY) and Michelle Lujan Grisham (D-NM) introduced the Organic Farmer and Consumer Protection Act, which would authorize $5 million for the NOP to upgrade its enforcement systems and technologies, and mandate ongoing budget increases at a rate that matches the growth of the organic sector. The bill has garnered broad bipartisan support, with a mix of co-sponsors from both parties, including celebrated food-movement champions like Representative Chellie Pingree (D-ME).

“This is the system working more or less as it’s supposed to,” says Mark Lipson, a former organic and sustainable agriculture policy advisor at the USDA. Lipson worries that extrapolating a few specific, if glaring, fraudulent incidents into a systemic indictment of the NOP risks undermining public confidence in the organic label—and would be unjustified. “The Washington Post report demonstrated that the enforcement structure needed to catch up with the growth in the market, but the National Organic Program still works better than a lot of other regulatory divisions,” says Lipson.

Bobbe isn’t so sure. While the amount of certified organic grain flowing in from Turkey has decreased since 2016, to approximately $80 million apiece for soy and corn last year, his network of farmers continues to suffer. One of them, Bob Stuczynski of Amherst, Wisconsin, says, “Organic farmers in America can hardly move their corn unless they want to fire-sale it.” Stuczynski estimates that he’s lost tens of thousands of dollars in revenue over the past couple years. And an OFARM analysis found that imported organic grain cost U.S. farmers a total of $300 million to $400 million from 2015 through 2017.

Bobbe recently attended a conference convened by the European Organic Certifiers Council and the International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements in Odessa, Ukraine, across the Black Sea from Turkey—an apropos location. Some of Bobbe’s E.U. counterparts are convinced the Turkish mafia is barging in conventional corn from Ukraine and other Black Sea countries, then shipping it out as organic to Europe and North America. “It’s an international crime syndicate,” he says.

A final piece of the puzzle has even more of a conspiracy-theory ring to it. The nations surrounding the Black Sea, like Kazakhstan and Armenia, generally do not produce corn and soybeans on a significant scale. But there is one giant exception, and its grain exports are booming of late. “Russia!” says Bobbe, his voice dropping to a whisper. “It’s the elephant in the room.”

Imagining The Impossible: The Futuristic Designs of Vincent Callebaut

Adam Williams

July 24th, 2018

New Atlas takes a look at Vincent Callebaut's most interesting architectural designs (Credit: Vincent Callebaut Architectures)

Sometimes outlandish, often fantastical, but always compelling, Vincent Callebaut's projects range from realizable ideas like towers covered in greenery to conceptual works depicting a near-future in which architecture, technology, and nature are blended to make cities a more pleasant – and sustainable – place to live.

The Belgian architect heads his firm Vincent Callebaut Architectures in Paris, France. Over the years he has developed a recognizable design language that draws inspiration from nature and makes liberal use of honeycomb patterns and complex geometry. He seems poised for greater prominence now though, as at least two of his projects are due to be built in the next few years.

Let's take a look at some of his most interesting designs.

5 Farming Bridges

Now that the so-called Islamic State has been expelled from Mosul, Iraq, the reconstruction of the city can begin. The 5 Farming Bridges proposal involves rebuilding a like number of bridges destroyed during the fighting and using them as residential units and urban farms. Existing rubble would be used as building material, with flying drones and spider-like robots doing the actual construction.

Manta Ray

The Manta Ray proposal envisions a manta ray-shaped ferry terminal in Seoul, South Korea. The remarkable-looking building would float in place to deal with seasonal flooding and sport a huge roof covered with a solar power array, along with a wind turbine farm. Biodegradable waste and high-tech water turbines would transform the river's kinetic energy into power too – all of which would allow the ferry terminal to power itself and send a surplus to Seoul.

2050 Paris Smart City

Created for a competition seeking ideas to turn the City of Light into a City of Green in the coming decades, 2050 Paris Smart City calls for 15 new sustainable towers to be built on the rooftops of existing buildings on the city's famous Rue De Rivoli. The towers would feature residential units and sport dragonfly-shaped solar panels on their facade, providing all required electricity for the project.

Nautilus Eco-Resort

The Nautilus Eco-Resort is a paradise imagined for the Philippines that would allow well-heeled tourists to vacation without polluting the planet (excepting on the flight there, presumably). The whole thing would be arranged into a shape inspired by the Fibonacci sequence and include a dozen spiral hotel towers that rotate to follow the sun. Nearby, a like number of sea snail-shaped buildings would include exhibition spaces and hotels, while at its center would be a large timber building covered with vegetable gardens and orchards.

Tour & Taxis

Callebaut's Tour & Taxis sees the Belgian architect propose a return to his home country to transform a former industrial area in Brussels into a vibrant sustainable community. The area would comprise three ski jump-shaped high-rises that would be topped by solar panels and covered in greenery. Other notable elements include wind turbines, rainwater harvesting, and the production of fruit and vegetables.

Hyperions

Hyperions consists of a cluster of connected timber towers in New Delhi, India, that are named after, and take design cues from, the world's tallest living tree. It will boast extensive greenery and enable occupants to grow their own vegetables on balconies, as well as the facades, the rooftops, and in specialized greenhouses. The interior is taken up by apartments, student housing, and office space, and it will all be powered by solar panels. According to Callebaut, this one is going to be built and is due to be completed by 2022.

Agora Garden Tower

It can be difficult to imagine how exactly all these renders would translate into brick and mortar buildings, but Taipei's Agora Garden Tower shows the way. Sporting a twisting form inspired by DNA's double helix shape, the building twists 4.5 degrees each floor, turning a total of 90 degrees in all. Once completed, it'll feature 23,000 trees, as well as a rainwater capture system and solar power.

Avoiding GMO Food Might Be Tougher Than You Think

Photo: Scott Warman

By Sara Chodosh

While there’s currently no evidence that genetically modified organisms harm human health, that isn’t to say there aren’t legitimate reasons to avoid them.

Perhaps the most common is a simple preference for that which is natural and a general aversion to that which technology — especially technology developed by Big Ag — has meddled in. Others worry about long-term effects that haven’t appeared in scientific studies yet or ecosystem-level impacts that we haven’t picked up on. A comprehensive 2016 report from the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine found no evidence that would support those concerns, but it also noted that caution is generally a good idea.

GM experts and proponents also have legitimate concerns that adding a label identifying GMOs gives the impression that there are scientifically proven risks to worry about. Studies on the perception of GM food suggests that the public has a baseline aversion, and a label may increase wariness. Labeling advocates, of course, argue that if Americans want to avoid GMOs, they have a right to do so.

But really, a lot of the research on public opinion of GM food suggests that Americans don’t so much think negatively of it as that they don’t think much about it at all. Yes, there’s a baseline aversion, but the opinion of study subjects seems to vary wildly depending on the information provided. One study following up on that 2016 report found that the entire American public shifted their opinion measurably in the positive, likely because the report was well-publicized in its findings that GMOs are, as far as we can tell, perfectly safe for the human body.

So, it’s unclear how many Americans will actually be looking to avoid GM food in the future. But even if you want to keep your pantry GMO-free, doing so could prove challenging.

“Can people avoid them? The answer is certainly yes. Especially in the last few years, there have been more products on the market that are non-GMO or organic,” says Jayson Lusk, an economist at Purdue University who studies the consumer side of GMOs. “Now, those products are more expensive — no one ever said you can avoid them for free. But they can if they’re willing and able to pay, and one way they’ll pay is in the time to find the products.”

Though very few fruits and vegetables are genetically engineered, he points out that almost anything with corn or soybeans will be difficult to get without a GM component. More than 90 percent of both crops are bioengineered in the U.S., and corn and soy derivatives go into many processed foods. Much of the sugar produced derives from sugar beets, nearly all of which are genetically engineered. Somewhere between 60 and 70 percent of processed foods on the market today have a GM ingredient, but many of those foods may not require a label according to the proposed rules.

Highly processed ingredients like high fructose corn syrup have little to no traceable DNA in them, and so the U.S. Department of Agriculture (which regulates food labels) doesn’t require manufacturers to add a label to indicate those bioengineered foods.

And then there’s that word — ”bioengineered.” The USDA only just announced how they would require manufacturers to disclose GM ingredients, though the law was enacted back in 2016, and the new rules don’t use the term “GMO” or even “GM.” Instead, they opt for “BE” or “bioengineered,” perhaps to avoid using loaded terminology. “I’m not sure how much people will know that term,” says Dominique Brossard, a communications professor at University of Wisconsin-Madison specializing in life science issues like GMOs. “I don’t think it’s going to be very easy for people to find out [which foods are genetically modified].”

“I think this was actually the intent of the 2016 law,” says Glenn Stone, an environmental anthropologist who studies the GMO debate. “[It] was passed just in time to overrule a state-level law was taking effect requiring that GMO foods have clear labels.” Vermont had previously passed legislation that would have fined companies for failing to label food containing GM ingredients, including highly processed ones like corn syrup (though it excluded cheese, which often relies on a genetically engineered enzyme called chymosin). It also specified that the labels would include the phrase “genetic engineering,” not “bioengineered.”

In contrast, the USDA regulations allow companies to choose between three options: write out the warning (as in “contains a bioengineered food ingredient”), include a BE label, or use a QR code that would link the consumer to a page disclosing all the information.

Stone, along with other labeling proponents, argue that these options will make it harder for people to actually get the information the legislation is supposed to mandate. “This rule claims to label GMO foods, but it exempts the most common GMO food ingredients like soy oil and corn syrup while allowing the use of QR codes,” he says, “knowing perfectly well that few shoppers have the time or inclination to get out their phone, scan a code, and read a website over and over while shopping.”

Unless those regulations change, though, it could be quite hard to figure out exactly which foods contain GM ingredients and which do not. Many of the top GM crops grown for human consumption — maize, soybeans, canola, sugar beet, papaya, squash, eggplant, potato, and apples — get processed first, and wouldn’t require a label. The rest, if sold whole or as part of another food, would necessitate one. A recent overview of attitudes towards GM foods, published in the journal Annual Reviews, commented that “Since soybeans and corn (the most widely planted GE crops) are common ingredients in many food products (corn starch, corn syrup, corn oil, and soybean oil), it is likely that foods in the United States listing soybeans and corn as ingredients contain some GE ingredients unless it is specifically stated that they do not.”

Avoiding GM foods entirely could mean quite a drastic shift away from any processed food at all. Corn syrup and soybean oil are in a surprising number of foods, and they won’t carry a BE label. It’ll be up to you as the consumer to navigate those grocery store aisles on your own.

Urban Farmers Forced Off Land Find New Ground To Grow

With land access threatened, urban farmers find new ways to grow sustainably while being sensitive to concerns of colonization.

 By Louisa Chu Contact Reporter Chicago Tribune

The wind-whipped rooftop of a converted warehouse in the Kinzie Industrial Corridor might be the last place you’d expect to find fertile farmland, unless you’re Jen Rosenthal, founder and owner of Planted Chicago.

“I got my start in farming on the rooftop at Uncommon Ground, the restaurant up in Edgewater,” said Rosenthal. It was the first certified organic rooftop farm in the nation.

These days, urban farming is increasingly common, but the burgeoning business sector is not without its challenges, namely space and literal room to grow.

From her rooftop endeavors, Rosenthal began her own business installing and maintaining on-site gardens for chefs and restaurants across the city, including Lula Cafe in Logan Square.

“Three years ago, I took advantage of an opportunity on a little plot of land on the South Side to start also growing crops outright for some of the chefs that were looking for really specific niche ingredients,” she added.

What were among the custom crops she’s grown?

“One of my favorites and unusual were crosnes,” said Rosenthal. “They look like little tiny grubs, but they’re tubers.

“They’re amazing and have this really crunchy, juicy texture, kind of like a raw almond meets a water chestnut.”

But this growing season she’s back on rooftops as a consultant and not on her own farm in North Kenwood.

Jen Rosenthal, owner of Planted. Rosenthal lost her three-year-old plots when her time in an incubator program came to an end.

(Kristen Norman / Chicago Tribune)

“I lost the lease,” said Rosenthal. “It was an incubator system, and I aged out. I think there’s this notion that people think urban farming is so easy. There’s so many empty lots. Like how difficult can it be?”

“It’s not quite as straightforward as one might think.” she added. “And I have been looking for good alternative land access for the three years.”

“It’s an interesting time in urban ag,” said Rosenthal. “It’s important work, and it’s meaningful work.”

“And I know I’m not one of the original pioneers. There are the Ken Dunns and the Erika Allens who are going on nearly two decades of this work.”

Last season, I spoke with Ken Dunn, founder of City Farm, whose commercial compost clients include Monteverde chef and partner Sarah Grueneberg.

I think there’s this notion that people think urban farming is so easy. There’s so many empty lots. Like how difficult can it be?”— Jen Rosenthal, owner of Planted

Erika Allen is the co-founder and CEO of Urban Growers Collective, previously Growing Power.

Allen’s father, Will Allen, is the retired professional basketball player turned urban farmer who founded the original organization in Milwaukee. He won a MacArthur Foundation "genius grant” in 2008. In November 2017, Growing Power closed.

“My dad was retiring, and the organization in Milwaukee had been financially challenged for a while,” said Erika Allen. “It had shifted to less programming and more urban farming, which is very difficult to do without capital.”

Urban Growers Collective is a not-for-profit that works to develop urban farms, but not just for food, though crops include a number of mustard green varieties, as well as herbs for culinary, aromatic and medicinal use.

“We use urban farming as a way to heal communities in terms of trauma and the violence that a lot of our youth and their families experience,” said Allen. “Also as a recovery from the historic impact of structural racism that manifested through the agriculture system.”

“So we’re taking this really broken system of agriculture that exploited labor first through slavery and then through sharecropping and then migrant workers. Now we’re taking that and reclaiming that and using it to create sustainable communities.”

Erika Allen, co-founder and CEO of Urban Growers Collective at the South Chicago Farm in Schafer Park. (Zbigniew Bzdak / Chicago Tribune)

“We’re highly productive as an urban farm, but really we couldn’t do the healing and infrastructure development that we do without philanthropic support.”

“Our goal with this new entity is to really support entrepreneurs, so they’re able to build farms that meet their financial goals and for us not to be in that business of trying to meet our budget with farm sales. We can’t do both.”

But even a pioneer like Erika Allen faces land access issues.

“Our primary farm is our South Chicago farm, 90th (Street) and Lake Shore Drive, right across from the old U.S. Steel site. That’s a 7-acre farm that replaced Iron Street, which used to be our biggest, but we lost that farm.”

“The owner wanted $14 million for the site, and we could not afford that.”

“Luckily we had a funder who’s incredibly generous and believes in us, so we had the resources to do it, but it was really emotional, after 10 years of building, taking an industrial site to a prosperous farm, to have to walk away from that.”

“We were able to relocate all the soil, animals and hoop houses to South Chicago. Now it’s on public land.”

The public land is critical to each farmers' permanence, but new administrations can change policy, perhaps forcing them off land as Rosenthal experienced with Planted Chicago.

“The South Chicago farm is an important model because it’s publicly held land. The farmers we are ‘incubating’ — our incubator is not a two-year incubator, it’s a permanent incubator, meaning those farmers never have to leave the site — they’re in a training program. Once the training wheels are off, they maintain and continue to grow on the farm.”

“It’s our job to replicate the program on other land.”

From hundreds of growing farmers to the other end of the urban farm spectrum you get a one-woman operation, The Pie Patch, a half-acre strawberry farm in the Back of the Yards neighborhood. “I think it’s the only pick-your-own farm in the county,” said owner and farmer Breanne Heath. “It’s definitely one of the only certified organic fruit farms in Cook County.”

“I am a for-profit, but I’ve never actually made a profit,” said Heath. “I don’t think any for-profit farm in the city has yet.”

Like most urban farmers in Chicago, she does not own the land.

“I currently only have a lease that goes until the end of this year. Really for a farmer to really plan, it really should be five to 10 years,” she said.

Heath previously worked the land when it was a Growing Home garden (not to be confused with Growing Power).

“I feel comfortable being in the area because I’m already familiar with it.” she said. “But I am aware of conversations around colonization of the neighborhood. I’m sensitive to that.”

“There is a lot of vacant land, and it should be used for growing food, but I don’t know if it all needs to (solely) be these urban farms,” she added. “That should be decided by the communities themselves.”

The city of Chicago also suggests plazas, landscapes, athletic fields, playgrounds or dog friendly areas too.

“There’s a lot of assumptions like, ‘Oh, everyone wants to grow their own food’ but not everyone wants that. It’s a huge amount of work.”

Back on the rooftop, Rosenthal, a friend of Heath’s, agreed. “It’s hard. People sometimes have a romantic notion.”

“But people connect with farming too. And the more they can and the more they can see a future with it, whether in an urban space or not, means everything right now.”

Despite her experience and expertise, rooftops are not her favorite place.

“It’s more the getting up,” said Rosenthal. “There are a couple where it’s straight up a wall on rung ladders and up through a hatch that you have to open and then climb out of. On some, I have to harness in.”

“I feel a little more comfortable with my two feet planted firmly on the earth.”

The Pie Patch, 5045 S. Laflin St., 773-340-2048, www.thepiepatchfarm.com

Planted Chicago, 773-398-2146, www.plantedchicago.com

Urban Growers Collective; main office (1200 W. 35th St., 773-376-8882, www.urbangrowerscollective.org); 61st Street Farmers Market (6100 S. Blackstone Ave., 773 241-6044, www.experimentalstation.org/market); Sunday City Market Bridgeport (1000 W. 35th St., 773-823-9410, www.sundaycitymarket.com)

lchu@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @louisachu

Way To Grow: Urban Farms Are An Amenity At Many Developments

2018 Margaret Jackson, Bisnow Denver

As people increasingly demand to know where their food comes from, more developers are jumping on board to integrate urban farms into their projects.

Courtesy of Tracy Weil

RiNo Art District Creative Director Tracy Weil grows heirloom tomatoes at Farm 39 in RiNo

Take S*Park. Named for its heritage as Sustainability Park, the 99-unit residential project in Denver’s Curtis Park neighborhood includes a 7,200 SF greenhouse with 340 aeroponic towers that will grow leafy greens.

The greenhouse will be operated by Altius Farms, which will offer residents a vegetable subscription program, greenhouse tours and classes and community dinners with Denver celebrity chefs. Altius also will provide neighborhood restaurants with produce from the greenhouse.

Courtesy of Altius Farms

Altius Farms will grow leafy greens on towers like these at Scissortail Farms in Tulsa, Okla.

Altius Farms founder and CEO Sally Herbert said the tower system at S*Park will produce 75,000 pounds of leafy greens a year — the equivalent of 1.5 acres of conventional farming each month. The towers use 10% of the water of a traditional farm and produce 10 times the yield, and the produce is much fresher than what consumers find in grocery stores, she said. Colorado imports 97% of its produce, and after it spends seven to 14 days in transport, between 20% and 40% of it is discarded.

“When restaurateurs receive produce that’s come in from Arizona or California, it’s been harvested early and gets wilty or bruised,” she said. “You have to throw away the crappy stuff.”

NAVA Real Estate Development is taking a different approach at Lakehouse, its 12-story, 196-unit condominium project at Sloan’s Lake. The produce from its second-floor garden will be available only for residents of the 12-story building.

“We are growing a certain amount of vegetables and herbs on-site that will be professionally managed and harvested,” NAVA co-founder and CEO Brian Levittsaid. “We’ll have a harvest room where people can be part of a harvest. There will be opportunities where people can reach over and pick something and put it in their salad. There will be a juicing center and sauna where people can sit and enjoy the juice.”

Bisnow/Margaret Jackson

The greenhouse at S*Park will provide produce to residents and nearby restaurants.

The garden is just one component of NAVA’s efforts to ensure a healthy environment for residents of Lakehouse, which is seeking Well Building certification. It also must meet standards for air and water quality and fitness, among other things.

Urban Ventures has launched a wellness program that includes food production at Aria Denver development. Aria Denver has partnered with Regis University to launch the Cultivate Health program at its development in northwest Denver. Food production, in both gardens and greenhouses in the neighborhood, is just one component of the program, which is designed to support the health and wellness of residents living in the multi-generational, mixed-income community. Its food production partners are UrbiCulture Farms and Groundwork Denver.

Courtesy of Tracy Weil

Farm 39 in RiNo sells about 8,000 tomato plants a year.

Urban farming is a growing trend both in new developments and city neighborhoods.

Artist Tracy Weil, creative director of the RiNo Art District, co-founded Heirloom Tomato Farms with Carolyn Jansen in 2004 when they weren’t able to find the produce they wanted. They started with 175 plants, which they sold and gave to friends. Weil was on the board of The GrowHaus, a nonprofit indoor farm, marketplace and educational center in Denver’s Elyria-Swansea neighborhood. The GrowHaus, based in a historic 20K SF greenhouse, agreed to give him enough space to expand to 1,200 plants.

But then aphids from the herbs in The GrowHaus infested Weil's tomato plants, so he built his own greenhouse — Farm 39 — on an eighth of an acre at 3611 Chestnut Place in RiNo. Jansen started The Sparrow in Capital Hill. The combined farms are known as Heirloom Tomato Farms. Now, people line up every spring to purchase some of the 8,000 plants the two farms grow before they sell out.

“It’s been kind of a nice supplemental income,” he said. “As an artist, I wanted to diversify my income stream.

Coming to Englewood: Kimbal Musk's Square Roots Urban Farm In Shipping Containers

Tobias Peggs, CEO of Square Roots Urban Growers, speaks about urban farming outside one of the Square Roots shipping containers on April 25, 2017 in New York. The startup says its hydroponic system can grow more than 50 pounds of greens per container per week. (Don Emmert / AFP/Getty Images)

Greg TrotterContact ReporterChicago Tribune

There’s another Musk brother with big plans for Chicago.

Kimbal Musk, younger brother of Tesla founder Elon Musk, is planning on bringing his Brooklyn, N.Y.-based Square Roots urban farm to Englewood on about 3 acres of city-owned property behind Whole Foods Market at 62nd and Green streets. Square Roots grows leafy greens in a hydroponic system inside repurposed shipping containers, yielding more than 50 pounds of greens per container each week, according to the startup’s website.

Kimbal Musk, brother of Tesla founder Elon Musk, is co-founder of Square Roots, a New York urban farm. (Michael Tercha / Chicago Tribune 2017)

Craig Huffman of Ascendance Partners, developer on the project, confirmed Wednesday that Square Roots would be one of the anchor tenants of the second phase of the Englewood Square development, which is expected to break ground next year. The first phase, which included Whole Foods Market, Starbucks and Chipotle, opened to much fanfare in 2016.

Square Roots would have offices in the vacant firehouse behind Whole Foods. Huffman’s also in talks with Folkart Management, the restaurant group led by chef Matthias Merges, to open a barbecue restaurant in the firehouse.

Huffman otherwise declined to answer questions, saying it was too early.

“We are working around the clock to finalize our funding and then bring this project to life, which can help build new and exciting partnerships for Englewood through this unique entrepreneurial venture,” Huffman said in a subsequent emailed statement. “We believe Square Roots will support the momentum established by phase one by bringing more foot traffic and investment to Englewood.”

Square Roots, an urban farming concept inside shipping containers, is coming to Englewood. (Don Emmert / AFP/Getty Images)

Musk couldn’t be reached for comment. His automatic email reply said he was “off grid.”

Musk’s spokeswoman Courtney Walsh didn’t respond to emails and calls.

It’s not yet known how much the city might offer in tax incentives to help finance the project’s second phase. The first $20 million phase of Englewood Square received about $10.7 million in city subsidies.

Grant Klinzman, spokesman for Mayor Rahm Emanuel, said he couldn’t answer that question at this point.

“This is an important project and we are working hard with the community and developer to finalize the vision and make it a reality. We will have more to share later this year, but it’s a priority for the mayor and the city and reflects Englewood’s strong future,” Klinzman said in an email.

Square Roots greens are grown by entrepreneurs in a yearlong program and sold locally, according to its website. The company was founded by Musk and CEO Tobias Peggs, who was formerly CEO of Aviary, the photo editing program.

Community organizers in Englewood said they were excited by the farm’s potential to provide opportunities and fresh greens to Englewood residents, while also attracting people from other parts of the city. Square Roots will fit the “Whole Foods vibe” of the neighborhood, which is also home to the well-established Growing Home urban farm.

“It will serve as a kind of tourist attraction,” said Perry Gunn, executive director of Teamwork Englewood, a community nonprofit aimed at improving the quality of life in Englewood. “People will wonder, ‘What is this concept? Let me see and touch it.’”

Asiaha Butler, president of the nonprofit Resident Association of Greater Englewood, traveled to Brooklyn in November to see the Square Roots farm. Initially, she had concerns about adding shipping containers to what has become a vibrant retail area. But that changed as she saw the farms firsthand and learned more about how the business fosters entrepreneurship.

“When you open the doors, that’s when you’re like — whoa,” Butler said. “I was like, OK, now I get it. This is going to be a draw for Englewood.”

Butler commended Huffman’s “tenacity and willingness to do something different” in trying to get the second phase of the Englewood Square development off the ground. Despite some of the progress in Englewood in recent years, it’s still difficult to lure retailers to a neighborhood that’s had longtime struggles with poverty and violence, Butler said.

Both Butler and Gunn said they’d been involved in ongoing conversations with Huffman and potential tenants on the project.

The younger Musk, known for his philanthropy and trademark cowboy hat, has previous investments in Chicago. After receiving a $1 million grant from Emanuel in 2012, Musk’s nonprofit Big Green — formerly called The Kitchen Community — has built more than 120 learning gardens in Chicago Public Schools. Musk is also co-owner of The Kitchen, a farm-to-table restaurant in River North.

Last month, Emanuel selected older brother Elon Musk’s The Boring Co. to design a new high-speed transit option to O’Hare International Airport from downtown.

gtrotter@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @GregTrotterTrib

Who Cares? Why We Sued Ben & Jerry's

2018

 Organic Consumers Association

 by Katherine Paul

All About Organics

Splashed across the Ben & Jerry’s website are cartoon-like pictures of happy cows romping in green pastures.

There’s a reason those cows are depicted by drawings, not actual photos—most of the real, live cows whose milk and cream are used in Ben & Jerry’s ice cream products are crammed into dark, filthy barns for most of their short lives.

Ben & Jerry’s goes to great lengths to create the perception that the Unilever-owned company “cares” deeply about the farmers who supply milk and cream for the brand, the cows raised on Vermont dairy farms, and the state of Vermont’s environment.

The company’s “Caring Dairy” program sounds like a dream-come-true for Vermont’s dairy farmers and dairy cows.

But it’s more like a nightmare, for the cows, Vermont’s environment and consumers who care about animal welfare.

As we state in the lawsuit we filed this week against Unilever, Ben & Jerry’s markets its products:

. . . as being made from milk produced by “happy cows” raised in “Caring Dairies,” leading consumers to believe that the products are produced using animal-raising practices that are more humane than those used on regular factory-style, mass production dairy operations.

In contrast to Unilever’s representations, the products include milk that comes from cows raised in regular factory-style, mass-production dairy operations, also known as “Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations” or “Large Farm Operations”—not in the special “Caring Dairies” emphasized in Unilever’s marketing.

As we reported last year, our testing revealed that many samples of popular Ben & Jerry’s ice cream flavors, in the U.S. and in Europe, contain traces of Monsanto’s Roundup weedkiller. We see that as a sign that the brand falls far short of its claims of social and environmental responsibility.

Unilever spends nearly $9 billion a year on advertising, second only to Proctor & Gamble. We think the company should spend less on misleading product claims, and invest more in helping Vermont dairy farmers transition to organic and regenerative practices that actually support those claims.

‘Caring Dairies’ program nothing more than a scam

Like any successful brand, Ben & Jerry’s knows that animal welfare tops the list of issues people care about. Hence, the creation of a program—“Caring Dairy”—intended to make consumers believe that Ben & Jerry’s “cares,” too.

But it’s all smoke and mirrors. Here’s why.

On its “Caring Dairy Standards” website page, the company lists a set of standards it says are required for all dairy farms that supply Ben & Jerry’s.

Thanks to the work of Regeneration Vermont, we know that Ben & Jerry’s sources all of its milk and cream through a cooperative based in St. Albans City, Vermont. Fewer than 25 percent of the approximately 360 farms that deliver milk and cream to the St. Albans co-op meet the “Caring Dairy” standards. But when farmers deliver their milk to the co-op, it’s all mixed together—the co-op doesn’t separate the milk delivered by a “Caring Dairy” program participant from the milk of other dairy farms. So even if some of the milk comes from a farm that actually meets those standards, Ben & Jerry’s can’t truthfully claim that all of their milk and cream come from dairies that meet the company’s “Caring Dairy” standards.

Advertising, even the false kind, pays

So you, the consumer, when you visit the Ben & Jerry’s website and see pretty pictures and a long list of standards the company says all of its farmers meet, are being duped.

All that talk of “Caring Dairies” is there to make consumers feel good about buying Ben & Jerry’s ice cream.

It’s pretty much all a lie. Especially when you consider that over the years, some members of the St. Albans co-op have been fined for violations of environmental laws, including one that illegally expanded its operation near the Missisquoi River Basin, which drains into the already heavily polluted Missisquoi Bay.

In fact, the dairy industry is Vermont’s biggest polluter, according to Regeneration Vermont, in part because the state’s conventional dairy farms feed GMO corn, heavily sprayed with pesticides such as atrazine, metolachlor, and glyphosate, to dairy cows.

So when Ben & Jerry’s says it’s “on a mission to make great ice cream that respects the farmer and their farmworks, the planet and the cow,” don’t believe it.

Ben & Jerry’s is on a mission to spin a false and misleading story about a company that has a lousy track record when it comes to sourcing ingredients from socially and environmentally responsible producers.

Consumers who care about their health, the environment and animal welfare would do better to buy organic brands from companies that don't source glyphosate-sprayed ingredients and that do source from dairies that meet organic standards.

Can Artificial Intelligence Do As Well As Farmers In The Future?

Tuesday 14 August marked the start of the Autonomous Greenhouses Challenge as five international teams try to grow cucumbers at a distance with the use of artificial intelligence at the facilities of Wageningen University & Research (WUR). “The goal is to convert knowledge about cultivation into algorithms that can enable computers to regulate cultivation automatically in the future, even in places where such knowledge is lacking. So the question is: can computers do as well as farmers?”
     

The five international teams will have four months to produce a cucumber yield remotely and without human intervention, using as little water, nutrition and energy as possible while achieving the highest possible output (i.e. production). Each team has been allocated 96 square metres in the facilities of WUR’s business unit Greenhouse Horticulture in Bleiswijk. 

“The teams have partly developed their own algorithms and used them to determine output settings such as temperature, light quantity, CO2 concentration, fertilisation and several cultivation-related parameters such as plant and stem density,” says the head of the Horticulture Technology research team Silke Hemming. “The sensors and cameras – which they will be installing themselves in the week of 20 August – measure some of these cultivation data. The sensors send the information to the computer systems, allowing them to control the climate and fertilization in the greenhouse. The teams will not be allowed to enter the greenhouses apart from to install the equipment.” 
 
The teams will collect all data remotely and be able to continuously adjust their algorithms for the software. Hemming: “The software itself will adjust the output settings like temperature where necessary. The goal is that the self-teaching software gradually takes over human decision-making.” 
 
The challenge was organized by Wageningen University & Research Greenhouse Horticulture and the internet company Tencent. “We think we can further improve food production in greenhouse horticulture by introducing artificial intelligence,” Hemming continues. “This unique challenge lets us connect with international partners and make major strides forward. Although they are already global leaders in cultivation expertise, we believe even Dutch breeders will benefit from results of the challenge, as it will enable them to make decisions based on more carefully considered information.” 
 
According to Hemming, the use of artificial intelligence will have an even greater impact globally. “In many countries, there is very little knowledge about complex plant production. Artificial intelligence can help people make complicated decisions, so they can locally produce vegetables and fruit with fewer means. The higher yield and production are especially important in view of the growing global population.”
 
Cucumber, the crop of choiceIn addition to the autonomously controlled greenhouses, the challenge will comprise a reference greenhouse where the chief grower of WUR Greenhouse Horticulture and several Dutch growers will cultivate cucumbers in an authentic way. “We settled on cucumbers as our crop of choice because they grow fast,” says Hemming. “This will enable us to obtain lots of information in four months. Cucumber plants are also very quickly affected if something is done incorrectly during cultivation. A breeding company cultivated the plants for the teams, and people from the test company of WUR Greenhouse Horticulture will put the plants in the greenhouses. The yields, their value and the associated costs and sustainability factors will be compared to the reference greenhouse.”

Supervisors from WUR Greenhouse Horticulture will provide the teams with the required digital information. Information will be shared with and output settings received from the teams via an interface produced by LetsGrow.com, one of WUR’s tech partners. WUR employees will be responsible for harvesting and communicating standard crop information, including yield weight, to the teams. An international jury will oversee the process and award points. 

“Most of the points will be awarded for maximization of net profit,” Hemming explains. “Another criterion will be sustainability: energy & water consumption, CO2 levels and the use of crop protection agents.” Teams will also receive points for the use of artificial intelligence. Questions such as ‘how autonomous was the teams’ actual approach?’ and ‘how realistically could this system be applied on a large scale?’ will be the main issues evaluated by the jury in the final stage.
 
An exciting competition
“We expect an exciting competition in which the teams – deep_greens, AiCU, The Croperators, Sonoma, and iGrow – apply different approaches,” Hemming concludes. “For one team, for instance, the focus will be on artificial intelligence, while another team will highlight cultivation expertise.” The winner will be announced in the second week of December during the AgriFoodTech trade exhibition. “We will gain lots of new knowledge for a new cultivation method for the future.” 

For more information:

www.autonomousgreenhouses.com

Publication date: 8/15/2018

Stories From Around the Food System

How to go from City Living to Urban Farming in Six Months [Northeastern]

Do you know where your leafy greens come from? If you’re dining at a restaurant in Boston, there’s a good chance the salad greens you’re eating have been grown by two friends inside a small apartment in the city’s South End neighborhood.

Urban Farmers Forced Off Land Find New Ground to Grow [Chicago Tribune]

The wind-whipped rooftop of a converted warehouse in the Kinzie Industrial Corridor might be the last place you'd expect to find fertile farmland, unless you're Jen Rosenthal, founder and owner of Planted Chicago.

Urban Agriculture Could Transform Food Security [SciDev.net]

Using science, technology and innovation (STI) could help promote the use of urban agriculture to sustain food and nutrition security in African cities, experts say.

Helping the Homeless Through Farm-to-Table Training [Great Big Story]

There’s a San Francisco garden growing more than just produce. In a city plagued by homelessness, the Farming Hope Initiative offers urban farming and cooking training to those without a place to live.

The Water Wars of Arizona [New York Times]

Attracted by lax regulations, industrial agriculture has descended on a remote valley, depleting its aquifer — leaving many residents with no water at all.

Weird New Fruits Could Hit Aisles Soon Thanks to Gene Editing [Guardian]

Smooth or hairy, pungent or tasteless, deep-hued or bright: new versions of old fruits could be hitting the produce aisles as plant experts embrace cutting-edge technology, scientists say.

Giant Indoor Vertical Farm Launches Just East of Las Vegas [CNBC]

An indoor vertical farm that uses 90 percent less water than conventional growers is about to launch in Las Vegas and will be able to supply nearly 9,500 servings of leafy green salads per day to casinos and local restaurant chains.

Meriden Aquaponics Scores $500K for New Haven Expansion [Hartford Business]

Meriden-based Trifecta Ecosystems, an aquaponics technology company and indoor farm, has received a $500,000 investment to grow its aquatic systems in the New Haven region.

Dubai Will Be Home To the World’s Biggest Vertical Farm [Smithsonian]

An indoor megafarm might be the best way for the United Arab Emirates—a country that imports an estimated 85 percent of its food—to attempt to feed itself

What Makes Your Lettuce Look and Taste So Good? It May Be the Fish

Karel Holloway, Special Contributor

Connect with Karel Holloway Email

That perfect lettuce in the clamshell box at the grocery store may owe its deep color and rich taste to fish.

More and more produce grown aquaponically is pouring into the highest-end restaurants, farmers markets and grocery stores in North Texas. Hydroponics, a similar water-based growing method, is increasing as well, providing the perfect produce prized by chefs and consumers.

One innovation is "living lettuce." The lettuce is harvested with the roots still attached. The roots harbor water and nutrients that continue feeding the plant, giving it a much longer shelf life. Mostly green leafy vegetables, like lettuce, and some herbs are grown aquaponically or hyrdroponically. Microgreens and edible flowers also are part of the mix. Larger vegetables such as tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers are grown in some bigger facilities.

These types of farms require far less space, water and artificial chemicals than traditionally grown produce. Entrepreneurs and enthusiasts see water-based growing as the future in supplying urban areas.

Profound Microfarms owner Jeff Bednar harvests lettuce inside the hydroponics greenhouse at Profound Microfarms in Lucas. 

(Vernon Bryant/Staff Photographer)

Fish or no fish?

Aquaponics uses fish, usually tilapia or koi, to provide nutrient-rich water that is circulated to plant roots. The plants clean the water, which is pumped back to the fish tanks.

Goldfish tank in the aquaponics greenhouse at Profound Microfarms in Lucas. 

(Vernon Bryant/Staff Photographer)

Please, no jokes about lettuce growing in fish poop. The solids from the fish are cleaned from the water before it ever reaches the plants. Ammonia in the water is refined into nitrogen that feeds the plants. Aquaponics systems can be outdoors, but commercial growers usually use greenhouses.

Hydroponics systems don't use fish, instead depending on a mix of nutrients that are endlessly recirculated. And, please, no marijuana jokes. 

The systems don't use herbicides or pesticides and are less subject to contamination.

Lettuce growing in the aquaponics greenhouse at Breeden Fresh Farms in Terrell. 

(Erin Booke)

Upstart ideas

Harrison Breeden, 27, is president of Breeden Fresh Farms in Terrell. His aquaponics greenhouse produces 6,000 heads of lettuce a week on less than an acre of land.

"I'm passionate about this," Breeden says.

He had an interest in alternative ways to produce high-quality food and studied agricultural resource management at Texas State University. There was no class in aquaponics, but it was presented in some class materials. Intrigued, he put together a small system to see how it worked and was hooked. He decided he'd like to start an aquaponics farm, and his parents agreed to help. 

"They believe it is the future," Breeden says.

The aquaponics greenhouse at Profound Microfarms uses koi fish and goldfish. 

(Vernon Bryant/Staff Photographer)

'Let's move to the country'

Richard and Sharon Hastings of East Texas Aquaponics have a similar story.

They worked in technology and lived in a suburban home in an increasingly crowded Austin. Their kids were grown and they were thinking ahead to retirement.

"We certainly wanted to look at doing something different. We were getting more and more interested in food," Richard Hastings says. "I said, 'Let's move to the country.'"

While they thought it was a good idea, they weren't sure what to do. Neither had farmed and they weren't really interested in traditional growing. They had a large koi pond in their yard, which prompted them to look into aquaponics.

They studied it and decided it had potential as a business and bought a small farm in Mineola to begin their aquaponic adventure growing lettuce, herbs and edible flowers. They now have a 6,600-square-foot greenhouse and plan to expand. Most of their produce goes to East Texas grocery stores and farmers markets, and they also contribute to the East Texas Food Bank.

Profound Microfarms owner Jeff Bednar harvests lettuce  inside the hydroponics greenhouse. 

(Vernon Bryant/Staff Photographer)

A sustainable option

It was a small aquaponics kitchen experiment with his daughter, Lily, that led Jeff Bednar to create Profound Microfarms in Lucas. 

He was working in real estate, tired of driving all over the area and missing his kids. He began researching and taking classes and decided an aquaponics farm was the business he wanted to start.

Growing crops traditionally didn't seem to be a viable business model, he says. Soil is depleted, it takes a lot of water, and is too subject to the weather, he says.

"I wanted to do something more sustainable for the future," he says.

He grows more than 150 types of produce, most of which goes to Dallas area restaurants such as Petra and the Beast, Cedars Social and more. Chefs are interested because they can get different types of greens when they want them and it's really, really fresh.

And because it's fresh, there is less waste.

"Chefs tell me that a typical box of lettuce from farms has about 40 percent waste. Ours is about 5 percent," Bednar says.

Swiss chard grows in a hydroponics system greenhouse at Profound Microfarms. 

(Vernon Bryant/Staff Photographer)

A growing trend

What the three growers have in common is the desire to start a sustainable business that will help with food supply issues. The number of those like them is growing, though most of the evidence is anecdotal.

"We are seeing an uptick in young people looking to get back into agriculture," says Chris Higgins, owner and editor of Urban Ag News. 

Hennen Cummings, a professor at Tarleton State University in Stephenville, concurs. He teaches aquaponics and has seen an increase in enrollment. Classes have grown to the point that students jostle for position in the Hydrotron, the university's name for the aquaponics lab.

Bednar thinks water-based crops will always be a small part of the market, but already there are restaurants and some grocery stores that get much of their greens from local water-based farms. Breeden supplies several large chains and is working to provide produce to school districts.

And even though the product is more expensive than traditional lettuce, it makes up part of the difference with lower transportation costs and less waste.

"It's not going to solve world hunger," Higgins says, "but there is value there."

Technology Promises To Calculate "True" Shelf Life

One of the causes of food waste is produce that goes bad earlier than expected. Of course, shipping produce that is fresh is the goal of every grower. In what manner it arrives and how fresh it remains once in the store, however, is largely out of their control. Furthermore, it is also in the retailer's best interest for the produce to remain fresh and tasty for customer's enjoyment. 

Zest Labs, a company based in San Jose, California, has come up with a solution called Zest Fresh that allows growers and shippers to know how long each pallet of their produce will remain fresh. Using IoT sensors placed in each pallet at the time of harvest and cloud-based analytics, Zest Fresh takes into consideration temperatures at time of harvest, cut-to-cool duration, as well as conditions at each point right up until the receiver, and based on this data, calculates what the "true" remaining shelf life is.

"IoT sensors in each pallet use predictive analytics, machine learning and other functions to calculate a freshness metric of the dynamic remaining shelf life for each pallet," said Kevin Payne of Zest Labs. "We have profiled produce from different regions to determine the maximum freshness duration. Consider us as a postharvest freshness management solution. The reason is that despite a batch of produce coming out of the same field on the same day, the conditions in which they were harvested and eventually placed in the cooler can vary significantly. A pallet of strawberries picked at 7:00am and placed in the cooler at 8:00am will have a different shelf life than the pallet picked at 2:00pm during the heat of the day and placed in the cooler at the end of the day. This causes the 'true' remaining shelf life to be different for each pallet."

Kevin Payne and Todd Clayton with Zest Labs

Sending the pallets to the optimal destinations

Data collection and analysis is great, but varying forms have been around for a long time. Zest Labs noted that the point of difference with their Zest Fresh technology is that something can be done about proactively solving the problem. "Many solutions out there tend to be reactive, meaning an action can only take place after the fact," Payne explained. "However, we believe we offer the only proactive solution, by using the predictions and allowing the shipper to make decisions based on insights and information."

Fundamentally, the idea is to utilize the information to send pallets to destinations most appropriate for the calculated freshness. Most obviously, the greater the shelf life remaining, the further the produce can be sent. "When the calculated shelf life of one pallet is, say, 3 days shorter than another, it can be sent to a receiver that is closer, in order to maximize the shelf life for the receiver," Payne added. "The data is collected continuously and is read at pre-determined waypoints, such as being placed in the cooler, in the truck, moving out of the warehouse, arrival at the receiver, etc. This produces a dynamic shelf life, updated at each interval to give the most accurate shelf life at any one time." 

Payne further noted that growers can use the data to monitor their processes to ensure they're being adhered to, adjusting procedures accordingly. "Zest Fresh empowers workers to keep product on process with real-time tools that reflect each process step – such as received inventory, time and temperature of product staged for pre-cool, pre-cooling, and shipping," he said. "It also drives notifications when preset process parameters are exceeded, focusing workers on the most acute problems in real-time."

The ZIPR Code

To help with the monitoring process, Zest Fresh collects, stores and displays all the data in a unique, automatically-generated code, called the "ZIPR Code" which stands for Zest Intelligent Pallet Routing, the industry’s first freshness metric. The ZIPR Code references the dynamic remaining shelf-life of individual pallets and then users can view and manage that pallet's information.

"Once Zest Fresh combines the data and applies a score, it creates the ZIPR Code for each pallet," Payne explained. "This ZIPR Code is then matched to pending orders to ensure each pallet has sufficient remaining freshness to meet the retailer’s needs. The ZIPR Code ensures that customer shipments are loaded correctly, and that quality is tracked through actual delivery – providing the grower with visibility of delivered quality."

"The ZIPR Code can be integrated into a warehousing management solution, providing alerts and updates on whether the pallet is still in a suitable condition and routing," he added. "It is designed to be autonomous and wireless."

Practicalities

The company said the sensors themselves are small and easy to handle. They can be inserted into pallets at any time, depending on whether the grower wishes to monitor the entire supply chain, or just certain sections. 

"The IoT sensors are about the same size as a deck of cards and are placed in the pallet in the field or at any point along the way," Payne described. "They are reusable and can also be used for certain segments. The software to view information is cloud-based, with the desktop and mobile tags operated by access points. A technician will install these and all that is required is power and a network connection."

The Zest Fresh "dashboard"

Zest Labs is aiming to be at the forefront of technology, so Payne shared that Zest Fresh has Blockchain capability for those that desire it. "Blockchain, which is basically a secure way to exchange and share information, is one of the aspects that I get asked about often," he said. "We do have the support for it although it is not required."

What types of produce and where?

According to Payne, the most common produce type that growers use Zest Fresh for are highly perishable fruits like berries. This is no surprise as these fruits are the ones that feel every effect of temperature changes and inadequate cooling times, for example. Currently, the company is working with growers in North America, and has also worked with suppliers in Central and South America.

"Zest Fresh can be used for any produce type, however most growers and retailers start by using them for the highly perishable produce items like berries, closely followed by leafy greens," Payne said. "We have also seen interest in grapes, cherries and stone fruit. Right now, our technology is used across North America, and we have also worked with growers in Central and South America, particularly in the northern winter. We are aiming to be at the forefront of technology and modernize the supply chain for the fresh produce industry."

For more information:

Kevin Payne

Zest Labs

Tel: +1 (408) 200-6527

kpayne@zestlabs.com

www.zestlabs.com

Publication date: 7/10/2018
Author: Dennis M. Rettke
Copyright: www.freshplaza.com