USA: FLORIDA - The Villages Grown: Food-As-Medicine Concept Expands In America's Largest Retirement Community

As consumers across the globe look for locally produced, nutritious, and reasonably priced fresh produce, The Villages Grown is rising to the challenge for Florida and is currently the largest CEA operation in the southeastern United States.

The Villages Grown LLC began as a farm-to-table, food-as-medicine initiative centered in The Villages, Florida, America’s largest retirement community with roughly 165,000 residents. The innovative growing complex covers 85 acres with 40 acres dedicated to vertical hydroponics in controlled environment greenhouses. The site also includes space for cut processing and a commercial kitchen. Using five different hydroponic techniques, The Villages Grown produces a wide variety of crops including tomatoes, cucumbers, leafy greens, microgreens, herbs, and other specialty products. This, according to executive director Jennifer Waxman, is one of the things that sets the company apart from other operations.

“Most CEA operations are category killers and are producing large volumes of one or 2 types of crops. They may produce only lettuce or only tomatoes, for example. At The Villages Grown, we’ve managed to crack the code on diversification and now produce tomatoes, cucumbers, microgreens, lettuces, fine herbs and specialty products, 365 days a year,” says Jennifer.

The Villages Grown has always been committed to producing nutrient-dense fruits and vegetables, which it achieves through precise nutrient control and irrigation control, a combination of natural and supplement lighting, and biological control methods including Integrated Pest Management (‘IPM’).  The company also conducts nutritional analyses both in-house and through third-party laboratories to ensure that its products are indeed nutritionally superior. As Jennifer explains, “if you give a plant everything it needs, it will give you everything you need.”

While The Villages Grown was initially developed to supply the retirement community with fresh produce, it has since modified its business model to become somewhat of a food hub. In addition to the 7 million lbs of produce grown annually, the company has partnered with 17 local farms and 26 artisans to aggregate local products and develop a “By Florida, for Florida” food system. The onboarding of new farms and artisans will continue to expand.

Stores & Pick-Up
The Villages Grown offers its products through its stores, with orders then delivered to pick-up locations within 2-48 hours by the company’s own delivery fleet. The company is also partnered with other key produce distributors as well as other large retail grocers to cover the state of Florida, all of which will operate on a no-inventory model to ensure that products always reach the consumer at peak freshness.

Recently, The Villages Grown announced that it has entered more hospitals, restaurant holding groups, school districts, and assisted living facilities to provide nutritionally dense products to these organizations. Moving forward, the company aims to begin producing year-round berries and other key produce items in new types of warehouse growing facilities.

For more information:
The Villages Grown
www.thevillagesgrown.com/# 

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Publication date: Wed 17 Mar 2021
Author: Rose Seguin
© FreshPlaza.com

The Rise of Vertical Farming: A Solution to Key Agricultural Challenges

By Essex Mag

March 13, 2021

As such a critical industry, it is always interesting to read about the latest developments in farming and agriculture. Right now, vertical farming is transforming the industry and could be the future of food production with the world’s population expected to grow to a staggering 9.7 billion by 2050. So, what exactly is vertical farming and how could it change farming as we know it?

What is Vertical Farming?

The topic of vertical farming was recently explored by Marsh Commercial, providers of farming insurance, who outlined vertical farming as an indoor farming process with plants growing on vertically stacked surfaces under controlled conditions. This would allow farmers complete control over light, climate, irrigation etc which would enable them to grow seasonal crops throughout the year. This means that as opposed to farming on a single level, such as on a field, food could be produced in stacked layers integrated into structures such as a skyscraper.

Vertical Farming Benefits

Vertical farming is taking off in the UK and provides many solutions to a few of the biggest challenges facing agriculture today, including climate change and the growing and aging population. Essentially, this is because vertical farming allows food products to maximize space and optimize the environment for food production allowing for greater yield per square mater, low water consumption, and a lack of soil or pesticide.

Vertical Farming in the UK

Additionally, vertical farming is well-suited to island economies and those that import a lot of produce. Security of supply is incredibly important when it comes to the food chain in these places and vertical farming can strengthen this greatly, which in the UK is a huge plus when you consider the pandemic and Brexit. As explained by The Grocer, food supply chains are under more scrutiny than ever right now and vertical farming could be the solution.

Projects

FWI revealed that there are a number of big vertical farming projects announced in the UK lately, including Ocado sinking in £17 million in the sector in 2019 and an Edinburgh-based company with ambitions to develop 40 vertical farming sites (which 5 already in place).

Just Food also recently revealed that popular UK sausage and vegan food manufacturer Heck has also partnered with a vertical farming specialist Vertical Future to install a vertical farm in its headquarters. The farm will focus on micro-crops, which they believe could allow them to create new “unique and interesting flavors” too.

It is fantastic to see innovative and sustainable developments like vertical farming growing in the UK, especially in troubling times like this where there is so much uncertainty particularly when it comes to food supply and there being many challenges in the agricultural industry. Vertical farming is certainly the future and it is quickly becoming the norm in the UK with many big names realizing the potential for this innovative form of food production.

BERMUDA: Government Issues Vertical Farming Call

Owain Johnston-Barnes

March 31, 2021

The Government has urged companies interested in bringing vertical farming to Bermuda to step forward through a new request for information.

The RFI calls for expressions of interest for parties who want to launch a commercial vertical farming operation “founded on principles of sustainability and environmentally friendly technology”.

Produce would be expected to be herbicide, fungicide, and pesticide-free, along with non-genetically modified.

The submission deadline for the RFI is 5 pm on Wednesday, March 31.

Submissions must include financial projections including sales volumes and corresponding revenue and relevant costs.

Wayne Furbert, the Minister for the Cabinet Office, said in November the Government had been working with US firm AeroFarms to “design and implement a vertical farming facility in Bermuda”.

Asked what the RFI meant for the relationship between the Government and AeroFarms, a spokeswoman for the Cabinet Office said the RFI was put out as part of the office’s due diligence efforts.

She said: “Through an RFI, the Government is seeking to determine if other interested parties were either contemplating or were in the process of producing commercial vertical farming in Bermuda.

“Interested entities who wish to engage further about this exciting, innovative, and environmentally sustainable project should visit www.gov.bm/procurement-notices.”

Vertical farming involves the production of crops in a controlled environment, usually indoors, using techniques such as hydroponics instead of soil and the crops grow in stacked layers.

The Government said last November that it was close to finalizing plans to bring a vertical farm to the island to help meet Bermuda’s demand for fresh produce.

Mr. Furbert said at the time the plan could reduce the cost of food production in Bermuda and generate 30 jobs.

He added that the proposal would be put to the Cabinet Committee for Economic Development later that month – but no further announcements have been made.

Vertical Farms vs Greenhouses: Energy and LED Costs And Differences [Part 2 of 5]

Part 2 of 5] This is the second post in a 5-part series on the differences between vertical farms and greenhouses, and the considerations that will help farming entrepreneurs decide which is right for their situation.

Last week, in the first article of this series, we discussed the basic differences between vertical farms and greenhouses, including why location is such an important factor in the decision. In short: The location of a farm governs how much space will be available for it, and the source of the energy it will use.

That last part is what you might call “the elephant in the room” when it comes to indoor farming: Energy demand, and the main reason we care about it – carbon emissions. So let’s talk about that today.

Carbon Footprint Factors: Electricity (But Not Only)

One of the leading critiques of vertical farming is that replacing natural sunlight and open-air with LED bulbs and climate control requires electricity – lots of it.

“If the source of the energy is not renewable,” points out Henry Gordon-Smith, the CEO of Agritecture, an independent consultancy that helps clients decide between vertical farms and greenhouses, “Then vertical farms have enormously more carbon footprint than greenhouses.”

But the opposite is also true – where renewables are available, vertical farming can greatly reduce the carbon footprint of foods that are normally trucked long distances, or flown in from overseas.

For example, “Norway could be huge for vertical farming, because they just have so much cheap, renewable energy,” Gordon-Smith suggested.

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When you tally the emissions reductions from shorter transport distances, the reduction in fertilizer use (fertilizer production is highly carbon-intense, and Controlled Environment Agriculture uses it much more efficiently than outdoor farms), plus the reduction in food waste, it’s clear that artificial light and conditioned air inside vertical farms are not the only carbon footprint factors to consider.

Bringing the Sun Indoors: Changing Electricity Costs for Farms

Lighting is one of the biggest expenses for a vertical farm, for obvious reasons – each layer in the farm needs its own LED “suns.” Agritecture Designer, a consulting software created by Gordon-Smith’s company, estimates the need at roughly 10 LEDs per square meter.

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That’s a useful figure to get started, but given the variability between types of LEDs, a more precise estimate would be about 100 watts of LED power per square meter, according to Gus van der Feltz, another CEA industry expert. Van der Feltz is a co-founder and Board Member of Farmtech Society in Belgium, and project leader for Fieldlab Vertical Farming in the Netherlands.

With these lamps operating 12 to 18 hours a day in most vertical farms, the power usage from LEDs accounts for 50 to 65% of the electricity bill.

The exact amount depends on several factors: The relative efficiency of the LEDs used, compared with the efficiency of other systems in the farm (such as climate control), as well as the light requirements of each individual crop. (For example, the total electricity required for growing light-loving strawberries in an iFarm, for example, is about 117 kWh per month for each square meter of growing space, while arugula needs only about 52 kWh.)

But whether you opt for a greenhouse or a vertical farm, you’ll be growing local produce, which means your farm may be eligible for subsidies or another form of reduced electricity rate. Be sure to check with your local government and electricity providers.

It’s also important to note that greenhouses increasingly rely on LEDs as well, especially during winter in northern climates.

This may be only supplemental light, and it will vary with the location, seasonality, and how much light each crop requires – but greenhouses are still not as energy-intensive as vertical farms.

“It takes a lot of energy to produce food (with vertical farms),” says Ramin Ebrahimnejad, vice-chair of the Association for Vertical Farming, and an expert on multiple types of urban farming.

“But,” he adds, “most vertical farms in the developed world already use renewable energy. In the long term, that’s not going to be a challenge for the industry”.

As our electricity sources become more renewable (and as LED technology improves, as we’ll discuss below) energy-intense vertical farming will become both more sustainable – less carbon-intense – and more affordable.

And we can see this evolution happening in real-time: In 2020, Europe produced more electricity from renewables than from fossil fuels for the first time.

The Cost of LEDs for Vertical Farms vs Greenhouses

LEDs themselves are another major OpEx factor in vertical farming. And even though the cost per bulb varies widely, along with the efficiency, the LEDs in a vertical farm generally have to be replaced every five to 10 years, according to the Agritecture Designer software.

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However, just as the cost and carbon footprint of electricity are becoming less of a hurdle for indoor farms, the LED situation is also evolving quickly.

An idea that’s become a modern certainty is that technology gets cheaper over time. As the environmental economist William Nordhaus studied in the 1990s, the declining cost of light over the centuries – from candles, to oil lamps, to ever-more-efficient light bulbs – has been changing the world and fueling innovation for millennia.

Something similar is happening with LEDs – up to a point. Moore’s Law famously predicted computing power doubling every year, and Haitz’s Law now forecasts that the cost per lumen for LED light will fall by a factor of 10 each decade, while the light produced increases 20-fold.

However, as Van der Feltz points out, this cannot continue forever and is more limited by the laws of physics than Moore’s Law. Currently, a well-designed horticultural LED system can be up to about 55% efficient – meaning 55% of the energy put in becomes photons, which plants use to grow, and 45% becomes heat. Fifty-five percent efficiency is already impressive when compared with incandescent light bulbs, for example, where energy input produces 5% light and 95% heat.

But still, for the purpose of CEA and especially in vertical farms, the remaining 45% of the energy that becomes heat is often – though not always – useless.

“In greenhouses,” Van der Feltz explains, “the additional heat is typically not all bad. Especially since auxiliary greenhouse lighting is mostly used in the darker and cooler winter months, and there are usually plenty of options for ventilation in case it gets too warm.”

But vertical farms heat up quickly, and as closed systems where opening a window is not an option, any extra heat from LEDs must be balanced with air conditioning or creatively repurposed. Van der Feltz says some indoor farms have been designed to divert excess heat to warm an adjacent building, for example.

So LED performance can still improve marginally, but not exponentially. Van der Feltz says experts estimate that another 25% efficiency improvement is possible, but LEDs will never be able to produce light energy out of thin air.

Whatever the limits of Haitz’s Law, it’s still true that while electricity and LED light bulbs are the most expensive part of a vertical farm today, they’re also the area where improvement is most imminent. (Innovation, and the laws of supply and demand, are constantly bringing down the costs of both, regardless of how much efficiency improvement is still technologically possible.) So operating a vertical farm should still become increasingly affordable over time.

Improved technology and reduced costs for LEDs are especially good news for the potential to grow even more crops in vertical farms, as different plants use different parts of the light spectrum.

iFarm is already a leader in the industry when it comes to research and development for expanding the crop selection available to vertical farmers. As LED technology improves, we’ll be able to take those efforts even further.

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Other Energy Costs: Climate Control Needs in Vertical Farms vs. Greenhouses

The high energy costs of lighting a vertical farm are obvious, but the demands of climate control are often not as clear.

Since vertical farms are closed systems, with little to no air exchanged with the outside, they must be constantly cooled and dehumidified. About 20% of the electricity used on a vertical farm is for air conditioning, while dehumidifiers account for 10%.

The need for both of these increases with each layer added to a vertical farm, in order to counter the effects of plants transpiring and increasing the heat and humidity of the system.

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In temperate regions, greenhouses can save energy by using natural ventilation, as the Agritecture Designer program explains: Sidewalls can roll up to allow cool air in, while hot air escapes through vents at the top of the greenhouse. Greenhouses can also opt for an evaporative cooling system, which is still more energy efficient than a fully climate-controlled system but does add humidity – another element to be controlled.

But it’s also important to remember that greenhouses are more sensitive to outside temperatures, and therefore, the operational expenses of climate control and/or the time needed for crops to mature will vary more than they will with vertical farms – especially in cold, Northern climates.

Next, in Part 3, we’ll discuss additional cost considerations for vertical farms and greenhouses, beyond electricity.

To learn more about starting a profitable vertical farming business, reach out to our friendly team at iFarm today!

Learn more

09.03.2021

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A Greenhouse In A Box For Small Farmers

Lush growth inside a low-cost Kheyti greenhouse in Telangana.

With one-tenth of the water and pesticides required and a manifold increase in yield, greenhouses can be transformative. The catch is that their upfront investment cost puts them beyond the reach of those who need them the most—small farmers dependent on rain or borewells. But what if a minimalistic greenhouse is designed from the outset, keeping in mind the needs and limitations of small farmers?

Hyderabad-based Kheyti has partnered with manufacturing and design companies to introduce such a concept. Its modular greenhouse kit, including a drip irrigation system, occupies just a tenth of an acre and costs less than ₹1 lakh. That’s much smaller and cheaper than normal greenhouses which only large farmers can afford. Around 500 farmers in Telangana are the early adopters of this “greenhouse in a box", which comes along with inputs like the appropriate seeds and fertilizers.

It began on a 1.8-acre farm in Narayanpur village, 60km north of Hyderabad, in 2017, recalls Kaushik K., co-founder, and CEO of Kheyti. “Venkatesh and his wife Lakshmi were growing rice along with some vegetables on the side. They worked hard, but their annual income of ₹30,000 barely sufficed for a family of five. The biggest challenge for them was that they could not fully utilize even their 1.8 acres of land because their borewells would run dry in the summer months," says Kaushik.

Model farm

Kheyti had set up an R&D farm on the outskirts of Hyderabad to demonstrate its greenhouse to small farmers. Venkatesh was among the first to visit the farm. “We showed him he could grow high-quality vegetables with so much more yields. But he had only one question: How much water would it need? When we explained that for the greenhouse he would run his borewell pump for only five minutes compared to an hour’s running time for his open field, he was ready to sign up," says Kaushik.

There was a hitch. The ₹5 lakh cost of the greenhouse was relatively low but still too much to raise for the likes of Venkatesh. So, why not make it even smaller and more affordable? It’s from such interactions that Kheyti’s greenhouse designs evolved.

“Venkatesh was the first one and after getting his greenhouse, he continued to give us feedback on what we should do for the next version," recounts Kaushik.

Today, Kheyti offers a 400 sq. m greenhouse for ₹80,000, with insect netting, shade netting, and polyethylene sheets to protect crops from pests, heat and excessive rain. That compares favourably with the ₹25 lakh that a one-acre (4,047 sq. m) greenhouse of this type would cost.

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A New FEZ "Karakalpak-Agro" Established In Uzbekistan

Tashkent, Uzbekistan (UzDaily.com) - The Cabinet of Ministers adopted a resolution”On measures to organize the activities of the free economic zone “Karakalpak-Agro”.

In accordance with the decree of the President “On measures for the comprehensive socio-economic development of the Republic of Karakalpakstan in 2020–2023” on an area of 875.4 hectares in Amu Darya, Buzatausky, Kegeili, Konlikul, Kushgirot, Muynak, Nukus , Takhiatash, Turtkul, Khodjeyli, Shumanai and Ellikala districts, the SEZ "Karakalpak-agro" was created.

The functions of managing the activities of the FEZ "Karakalpak-Agro" are assigned to the State Unitary Enterprise "Directorate of the free economic zone" Nukus ".

The main tasks and directions of the SEZ "Karakalpak-Agro":

- attracting direct foreign and domestic investments for organizing modern greenhouses on a cluster basis, including hydroponic ones, as well as organizing the production of structures, equipment and other components for the construction of modern energy-efficient greenhouses;

- increasing the production of agricultural products, expanding its deep processing and increasing exports, effectively using the production potential of the region;

- encouraging the organization of the complete process of agricultural production from seeds to delivery to the market;

- introduction of effective mechanisms for providing greenhouses with seeds and seedlings of high-yielding crops demanded by the market, by creating conditions for organizing nurseries, as well as seed production;

- formation of a modern infrastructure for the provision of logistics services, assistance to agricultural producers in organizing the export of their products;

- widespread introduction of modern resource-saving technologies, the use of alternative sources of thermal energy in the organization of greenhouses;

- creation of research and production centers to assess the compliance of products with international standards.

The Council of Ministers of Karakalpakstan, together with the Ministry of Investments and Foreign Trade, the Chamber of Commerce and Industry and commercial banks, was instructed to develop a targeted program of facilities for the production of structures for greenhouses on the territory of Karakalpak-Agro within two months, with the allocation of vacant non-agricultural land.

New York’s Gotham Greens Plans Solano County Indoor Produce Farm

GARY QUACKENBUSH

FOR THE NORTH BAY BUSINESS JOURNAL

Example of the greenhouse operated by Gotham Greens which announced plans to open in Solano County (Photo courtesy of Gotham Greens)

Gotham Greens Holdings LLC, a firm with indoor agriculture operations across the U.S., Tuesday, announced plans to build a facility next to the University of California, Davis.

The first phase of this 10-acre Solano County facility is expected to open later this year. It will be located on 33.6 acres of agricultural land purchased from the university adjacent to Interstate 80.

The company stated its plans will provide it with the ability to deliver fresh leafy greens, herbs, plant-based dressings, dips and cooking sauces to more retailers, foodservice operators and consumers on the West Coast.

“… We are partnering with one of the highest-ranked agricultural research centers in the world to advance the entire agriculture system,” said Viraj Puri, co-founder and CEO of Gotham Greens. “California is responsible for growing one-third of the country’s vegetables and two-thirds of the nation’s fruit, yet in recent years, issues surrounding drought, food safety and worker welfare have demonstrated the need for continued innovation.”

The greenhouse will generate 60 full-time jobs and provide UC students with the opportunity to learn first-hand how to sustainably grow produce year-round in a safe, clean, climate-controlled environment. The company stated its facilities use 95% less water and 97% less land than conventional farming. Nationwide, Gotham Greens has 500,000 square feet of greenhouse space at five locations staffed by 400 employees.

The UC Division of Agriculture and National Resources and the UC Davis College of Agriculture and Environmental Sciences has entered into a partnership with Gotham Greens to advance research and innovation in the areas of indoor agriculture, greenhouse technology, and urban agriculture to help advance the science, workforce technology, and profitability of indoor agriculture globally.

“We are building a Controlled Environment Agriculture Consortium to support and advance the indoor farming industry, grow more fresh produce on less land and create new jobs for Californians,” said Gabriel Youtsey, the division’s chief innovation officer. “Gotham Greens is an anchoring partner of this research and industry collaboration that we hope will spur innovation, create a new indoor farming workforce and support industry growth.”

Helene Dillard, dean of the college, said, “This partnership will offer our students the chance to learn best practices from leading experts in indoor farming.”

Gotham Greens recently raised $87 million in new equity and debt capital bringing the company’s total financing to $130 million to fuel the next phase of growth.

Founded in 2009 in Brooklyn, New York, Gotham Greens (gothamgreens.com) owns and operates greenhouses in New York, Illinois, Rhode Island, Maryland and Colorado. Its produce is available in more than 40 states and 2,000 retail stores, including Albertsons Companies (Safeway, Jewel-Osco, and Shaw’s), Whole Foods Market, Target, King Soopers, Harris Teeter, and Sprouts.

The company’s products can also be purchased through e-commerce sites including AmazonFresh, FreshDirect and Peapod.
Lead Photo: Gotham Greens

Vertical Farms vs Greenhouses – The First Consideration: Location

In just the past decade or so, sustainable farming has seen a high-tech makeover in the form of Controlled Environment Agriculture, or CEA, which consists of two main technologies: Vertical farms and greenhouses.

When it comes to feeding the world, it’s not a choice between vertical farms or greenhouses. We’ll need both to feed our growing global population with healthy, sustainable food, and we need to understand the ideal situation for each.

But as a business decision, it often is a choice between the two – and that’s what we hope to explain in this five-part series of articles: When and where to use a vertical farm versus a greenhouse, and what factors – both economic and environmental – make the difference.

In this first post, we’ll cover the basic differences between vertical farms and greenhouses, and why location matters so much when deciding between the two. Then stay tuned because, in the next articles, we’ll dive deeper into energy and lighting costs, automation and other expenses, environmental and crop considerations, and finally, the future of farming.

Vertical Farms vs Greenhouses: The Basics

The two technologies are often confused, but there are significant differences between them in resource use, cost, output, and, perhaps most importantly, the ideal locations for each.

Greenhouses are the more traditional technology that you’re probably familiar with: A single layer of crops, planted inside an enclosed space with walls and a ceiling made of glass or plastic to allow natural light in. They’re semi-controlled environments.

Vertical farms, on the other hand, are a much more recent invention using trays of usually hydroponic plants, stacked in floor-to-ceiling towers, with LED lights illuminating each layer, and climate control constantly adjusting the temperature, humidity and more.

In the upcoming articles in this series, we’ll dive into each part of these differences in more detail. But for now, let’s start with the first question entrepreneurs always need answering: The price tag.

Henry Gordon-Smith is the CEO of Agritecture, an independent consultancy and software creator that helps clients decide between the two technologies. As he puts it, “Vertical farming represents the most expensive, most controlled form of agriculture.”

At first blush, vertical farms are, in fact, shockingly more expensive than greenhouses – six to 10 times as costly. Gordon-Smith says vertical farming costs 2,200 to 2,600 Euro per square meter of cultivation bed space, while high-tech greenhouses cost 250 to 350 Euro per square meter of cultivation space.

Both offer a year-round source of fresh, pesticide-free, locally-grown produce, which provides better nutrition than the same foods that arrive from far away.

But what else do farmers, entrepreneurs, and investors get for all the added expense of vertical farming?

The answer is pretty simple: A more compact farm with more production per square meter, less water use, and more control over both quantity and quality. (With iFarm, this predictability is part of the package, in the form of a guaranteed yield within a precise time frame.)

For some entrepreneurs or municipalities, the cachet of implementing a high-tech farming technique that’s only been in use for less than a decade is also a factor in favour of vertical farming. But most often, the choice comes down to location.

The Ideal Location for a Vertical Farm versus a Greenhouse

The first step in determining the feasibility of building a vertical farm or greenhouse is to look at the drivers and constraints – many of which are simply location-based.

Places with limited space, such as dense urban areas, and limited access to fresh water are ideal for vertical farms. Doubly so if they have access to low-cost, renewable energy, and if they’re near a market with high demand for the crops vertical farms excel at producing: Leafy-greens, micro-greens, herbs and berries grown locally, without pesticides.

But in areas with unlimited space, lots of natural sunlight, and high-cost and/or high-carbon electricity, greenhouses may be the better option and the extra expenses of vertical farming might not make sense.

How these considerations apply in broad regions of the world is illustrated below:

Hydroponics Greenhouse Provides Hands-On Learning At Hudson High School

Yeji Kim

Special to the Hudson Hub-Times

A Jan. 15 tour led by HHS AP Environmental Science teacher Matthew Kearns offered members of The Kiwanis Club of Hudson insight into the hydroponic greenhouse. The club donated a $20,000 grant to help fund the project. Submitted Photo

Project-based learning is a learning model where students work together to engage in real-world questions and problems, and the Hudson High School hydroponics greenhouse centres around this approach to education.

The hydroponics greenhouse started roughly two years ago, and Phillip Herman, Superintendent of the Hudson City School District, and Christina Wooley, HCSD Curriculum Coordinator, are credited with most of the original idea.

Herman first learned about hydroponics gardening and greenhouses from a community member and thought there may be a way to better utilize the HHS greenhouse space to create learning opportunities for students. He began by discussing the idea with teachers, visiting an operating hydroponics greenhouse and exploring areas of the curriculum that could be enhanced.

The first year consisted largely of planning, strategizing and raising money, and this past year was when equipment started to come in and crops began to grow.

A hydroponics greenhouse differs from a traditional greenhouse in that no soil is required. Instead, the plants draw up nutrient-rich water. Less water is used since the water is recycled, and because of the absence of soil, hydroponics greenhouses take up less space — the plants can be stacked vertically. The HHS hydroponics greenhouse also includes a monitoring computer system that measures what is currently in the water and what will be needed.

A $20,000 grant was given by The Kiwanis Club of Hudson to support the project, and this money was used to purchase greenhouse equipment.

CropKing, an Ohio-based hydroponics equipment company, was the supplier for the equipment, seeds and fertilizer, and the firm also aided in setting up the equipment and trained those involved with the greenhouse.

Two other grants, an ADAR grant and a grant from the Hudson Parent-Teacher Organization supplemented the Kiwanis grant money. The greenhouse itself is located off of HHS biology classes and has been there before the hydroponics greenhouse was started.

Students are faced with real-world questions, such as how to sustain crops in regions without sufficient access to water, ways to use the land effectively and properly, impacts on the environment and how to grow sustainably and locally.

Science teacher Matthew Kearns said students have been seeing the benefit of this project, which includes those in the AP Environmental Science class he teaches, special education students who work with Intervention Specialist Kristin Stonestreet and biology classes taught by Ron Wright. Students visit at least once a week to monitor the crops.

Currently, the greenhouse is growing its first round of crops, which includes lettuce, tomatoes and cucumbers.

Stonestreet and Kearns are considering adding cilantro, basil and peppers as well. The diversification would enhance the project-based learning aspect, as students will need to work together to figure out how much additional lighting and heat every crop needs.

The long term goal is to get involved with the community; through connecting with the business department and forming a club, students plan to sell produce from the greenhouse at the Hudson Farmers Market in the summertime and sell to HCSD faculty and staff when school is in session, engaging aspects of science, business and team-work. Several potential products for sale in the future include a salsa kit, tomato sauce and fresh herbs.

Herman notes how this greenhouse works to enhance classroom activity and curriculum.

“Over recent years, we have continued to learn more about and explore opportunities for project-based learning. Project-based learning enables students to learn course content and develop other essential success skills by beginning with a challenging problem or question and conducting a sustained inquiry to explore solutions to the problem and answers to their questions. Together, Christina Wooley, Mr Kearns and Mrs Stonestreet dug in and worked collaboratively to do the hard work to bring an idea to implementation.”

Gotham Greens Goes West To Unlock Next Growth Chapter: ‘The Indoor Environment Is Relatively Unexplored But Offers Fantastic Opportunities’

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By Mary Ellen Shoup

02-Mar-2021

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Photo Credit: Gotham Greens

Using funding from its recent $87m Series D capital raise, indoor agriculture company Gotham Greens has expanded operations to Northern California – its first West Coast greenhouse location – opening a 10-acre facility, which will bring its total annual production to 40 million heads of lettuce and herbs.

Expanding to Solano, California, where the greenhouse will be co-located with the University of California-Davis (UC Davis), is a significant milestone for the company that has thus far built greenhouses in its home state of New York, Rhode Island, Maryland, Illinois, and Colorado.

“California is a significant contributor to the nation’s produce industry in several ways. Not only is California responsible for growing one-third of the country’s vegetables and two-thirds of the nation’s fruits, but also it is home to numerous research institutes, industry groups, and suppliers,”​ Gotham Greens​​ co-founder and CEO Viraj Puri told FoodNavigator-USA.

While working to produce hydroponic indoor lettuce on a mass scale for West Coast consumers is a major goal with the new greenhouse facility, Puri added that its partnership with UC Davis will help drive the next wave of innovation in controlled environment agriculture (CEA).

“The location of this new greenhouse uniquely enables opportunities for Gotham Greens to play a greater role in the produce industry as well as collaborate on research and innovation with the University of California system focused on advancing the science, workforce, technology, and profitability of indoor agriculture globally,”​ he said.

'Over time, we’ve increased the use of automated systems'

As the top producing state of lettuce, the California agriculture industry has battled with many issues such as heavy rains and flooding to months-long drought periods that have resulted in supply shortages and price increases.

Indoor agriculture such as the greenhouse hydroponic solution Gotham Greens has brought to market could provide a viable solution to all these issues, it claims.

Gotham Greens grows its greens uses natural sunlight and hydroponic systems which uses 95% less water and 97% less land than conventional farming.

“Over time, we’ve increased the use of automated systems to ensure that temperature, humidity and light levels, as well as air composition, are exactly the right balance,”​ said Puri.

The end product is packaged fresh greens which are beginning to reach cost parity with commoditized field-grown lettuce. A 4.5-ounce package of Gotham Greens Romaine lettuce for example costs $3.49 on average compared to a head of conventional Romain lettuce which retails for $2.28 (in Chicago), according to USDA market price data.

Consumers also have the extra security of knowing that the lettuce they purchased is fresh since the produce traveled a much shorter distance and passed through fewer hands than is typically required for field-grown lettuce, noted Gotham Greens.

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Gotham Greens Product Shot_Photo Credit Gotham Greens

Size of the prize

Puri noted that while just a small fraction of the overall lettuce category, the potential addressable market for indoor-grown, packaged leafy greens and herbs in the US and Canada is $15bn.

"While indoor farming currently represents a small portion of the salad and leafy greens market, Gotham Greens is growing +70% year over year and the indoor farming sector is growing more than +50% year over year*, far outpacing the overall category (+15% YoY) as well as the organic segment (+9% YoY),"​ he said.

*Nielsen Total US xAOC Lettuce and Pre Packaged Salads, Dollar Sales, Latest 52 weeks ending 1/23/21

Advantages of greenhouse farming​

Asked whether the company would ever explore a vertical farming model, which in theory could use less land to produce equal amounts of lettuce, Puri noted that its greenhouse method mixed with technology is a more flexible and economic solution.

“Vertical farming is an exciting extension of modern greenhouse farming with many shared principles, but it is still a relatively young industry with open questions around technology and financial sustainability. ​Fully indoor environments that rely on artificial light and HVAC systems can theoretically offer much higher yields and levels of climate control, pest management, and food safety. However, these benefits currently come with significantly higher capital and operating costs,” ​said Puri.

Plant varieties optimized for indoor growing​

The company has proved its system can work at a large scale (Gotham Greens products are available in 40 states and at 2,000 retail stores), but there are many new areas it can explore to further optimize its growing methods.

“One area of particular interest for UC Davis is the breeding of improved crop varieties for indoor agriculture. For several centuries, plant breeders have focused on selecting and breeding crops suited to outdoor conditions, where they have been successful. The indoor environment, in contrast, is relatively unexplored but offers fantastic opportunities to use lights and nutrients to modify plant development, nutritional quality, yield, and shelf-life,”​ said Professor Gail Taylor, chair of the UC Davis Department of Plant Sciences. ​

“Much remains to be explored over the coming years to ensure safer, cleaner, and more sustainable food.” ​

‘We are interested in the complementary nature of indoor and outdoor agriculture’​

Gabe Youtsey, chief innovation officer, UC Agriculture, and Natural Resources, believes the CEA industry a new and exciting frontier for agriculture.

“New genetics, data-driven intelligent farming, farm automation, energy optimization, and other technologies can all be brought together to create a range of new tasty, healthy, and sustainable food products. We are interested in the complementary nature of indoor and outdoor agriculture, and the opportunity to help expand a local footprint of food production that is less resource-intensive and create a new generation of diverse young farmers,”​ Youtsey told FoodNavigator-USA.

The greenhouse will generate 60 new full-time jobs and create a new type of opportunity for UC Davis students that want to pursue CEA as a career.

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RELATED TAGS: indoor farming, greenhouse farming, Gotham Greens

Climate Corps America: The Urban Farms Transforming How America’s Most Vulnerable Communities Eat

Louise Boyle

The microwave plays a significantly more important role to urban farming in Baltimore than you might first imagine.

“Our butternut squash comes from a seed which makes it little and easily microwaveable,” Gwen Kokes, food and farm programme director at Civic Works, told The Independent. “For our [customers] this is really important as it might be too expensive to turn on the gas to cook or the oven might not be working.”

The squash, along with a range of produce, is grown at Real Food Farm, one branch of Civic Works urban service corps program in Maryland’s largest city.

The farm started about a decade ago and spans eight acres in northeast Baltimore with four fields, more than 100 fruit trees, a greenhouse for seedlings, and eight “hoop houses” which, for the uninitiated, are a sort of passive greenhouse with crops planted directly in the soil but sheltered by heavy-duty plastic sheets stretched over frames.

The farm produces 5,000 pounds of fruit and vegetables each year to be sold for reduced cost at farmers’ markets in low-income neighbourhoods across Baltimore. A mobile market, operating out of a box truck, also visits all 12 senior centres in the city.

“In total, we distribute about 100,000 pounds of food every year,” says Ms Kokes. “We buy from other urban farms in a 50-mile radius, prioritising Black-owned farms. Sometimes we have donations from Hungry Harvest, a programme to reduce food waste from grocery stores, and we’ve been adding pantry and hygiene items so that it’s more of a one-stop shop.”

Civic Works is part of AmeriCorps, the federal agency for service and volunteering programmes in the US. To tackle the climate crisis, President Biden has called for “reinvigorating and repurposing” the agency into a so-called “Civilian Climate Corps” to provide jobs while ramping up clean energy and sustainability to “heal our public lands and make us less vulnerable to wildfires and floods”.

“Biden’s plan could be huge for us,” Ms Kokes said. “I think it can grow exponentially. There’s plenty of demand for these jobs.”

The non-profit also runs programmes to mentor students, fix up abandoned houses and makes homes safer for seniors by doing minor DIY like adding handrails and ramps.

AmeriCorps estimates that its existing network –  25,000 participants in about 130 programmes – could be scaled up to 500,000 young people and veterans over the next five years.

Around 19 million people in the US live in “food deserts”. The term is believed to have been coined in Scotland in the early 1990s by a public housing resident, referring to areas where healthy, fresh options are scarce and packaged and fast food has proliferated.

The term is now seen as having negative connotations, implying that “low healthy food access is a naturally occurring phenomenon, rather than the result of underlying structural inequities”, according to a 2018 study by John Hopkins. (Baltimore residents told researchers they preferred the term “Healthy Food Priority Areas”.)

Researchers also point to the systemic racism at the heart of Americans’ access to food. It’s difficult to improve diet and health, for example, if prices for nutritious food are far beyond your budget, and there’s no public transport to take you stores.

“The fact that predominantly black neighbourhoods, on average, have fewer stores and poorer quality [food] compared to their white counterparts means something,” Ashanté M. Reese, professor of sociology and anthropology at Spelman College who studies race and food inequity, told HuffPost .

Baltimore is one of America’s poorest cities. In 22 of the city’s 668 Census tracts, at least 40 per cent of residents live below the poverty line. Even before Covid, the unemployment rate in the poorest neighbourhoods hovered above 15 per cent, triple that of wealthier areas.

Lack of access to healthy food in Baltimore is one layer of racial inequality that has plagued the city since the early 20th century, when deliberate policies were put in place to separate the city’s white and Black residents.

In the city’s Greenmount East neighbourhood the average life expectancy is around 66 years while four miles away in the wealthier Roland Park, the average life expectancy is 84 years, according to Kaiser Health News.

That’s where organisations like Real Food Farm step in. Those who are unemployed or on low-incomes and using government nutrition assistance programmes get double the value for their dollar if it’s spent at the farmers’ market, for example.

Urban farms not only promote healthy eating but have the ability to transform industrial cities.

“Motor City” Detroit, once the backbone of the car industry, has suffered a well-documented decline since its mid-20th century heyday. But its industrial wastelands have been transformed by urban farming with at least 1,400 farms and gardens in the city. In Pittsburgh, Hilltop Urban Farm is set to become the largest urban farm in the country. Baltimore has around 17 urban farms and upwards of 75 community gardens that grow food, according to Baltimore magazine.

Civic Works’ role on the frontline of food insecurity meant that its teams were well-positioned to adapt during the Covid pandemic, delivering boxes of fresh produce and basic necessities to the most vulnerable at no cost. They also worked with public bodies and local charities to deliver donations.

“During lockdown, Baltimore City public school system had to get rid of those little cartons of milk really fast. We have thousands of customers so we focused on getting those out to them,” Ms Kokes said.

From March through the end of July, the programme’s teams ran a free programme delivering boxes of produce, meals and hygiene kits to about 1,000 households a week. They went on to launch a discounted local produce programme, delivering boxes with about $15-$20 of food for $5 with free delivery, mostly to seniors.

Urban farms will play a role in mitigating how climate change impacts urban areas. Cities are often several degrees hotter than rural areas due to the “urban heat island effect” caused by dark-coloured roads and buildings. Increasing vegetation cover can help curb rising temperatures.

Urban farms can also lower the risk of flooding during heavy downpours and help retain water in dry areas, according to a paper in the journal Earth’s Future.

Research in 2018 from Arizona State University and Google found that urban agriculture could save the energy equivalent of 9 million home air conditioning units and produce up to 180m tonnes of food globally. Along with supplying almost the entire recommended consumption of vegetables for city dwellers, it would cut food waste and reduce emissions from transportation of produce, the study found.

Maryland is among the states most vulnerable to climate change, facing both rising sea levels and heightened storm intensity. Government data predicts that Maryland’s sizeable farming community could suffer costly losses during extreme droughts and heat waves.

Ms Kokes says that more extreme and unpredictable weather has impacted their operations in recent years.

“With day-to-day farming, we have to get ‘swamp ready’,” she said. “2018 was the worst for Maryland farmers as the rain was astronomical. We took a huge hit. It was very humbling because we had to reckon with our limitations, and partner with others to be a reliable source of food.

“Irregular weather patterns especially in the spring make it really difficult to know when to plant. We’ve [also] had early frost in October. Our farmer Stewart is a very smart, science-oriented guy and thankfully, there’s resources that we can lean on to translate this unpredictability into clear language.”

Around 3,000 students from kindergarten to high school have visited Real Food Farm over the years to learn about agriculture. Separately, programmes like Future Harvest are preparing the farmers of the future. But it’s important that Real Food Farm’s mission stays relevant to the communities they are in, Ms Kokes said.

“Environmentalism, from our perspective and our work, has to be people-focused,” she said. “We’re not talking about weather patterns when people are hungry and just want affordable produce in their neighbourhood.”

10 Ways To Grow The Indoor Farming Market

by Dr. Eric Stein

The number of indoor farming companies seems to grow almost daily, each claiming to be more innovative than the last. And yet, there is a lack of data pertaining to the profitability, yields, and sustainability of the indoor farming industry. The Center for Excellence for Indoor Agriculture (COE) was established for this very reason. The COE aims to accelerate the development of the indoor farming market by fostering collaboration and knowledge sharing, conducting third-party research, and recognizing excellence in the indoor farming industry.

The Center of Excellence for Indoor Agriculture has identified ten strategic areas for accelerating the global transition to indoor farming: recognition of excellence, development of metrics, realistic investment expectations, job creation vs. automation, greenhouse vs. vertical farm models, crop diversity, sustainability, training, research into the business aspects of vertical farms, and the development of innovative economic ecosystems.

With respect to recognition, the COE has developed its “Best in Class” awards for growers and manufacturers to recognize excellence, encourage knowledge sharing and hold companies accountable.  

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Eric W. Stein, Ph.D.

“We really think that recognition of excellence is important to the industry, especially if it comes from an independent body. A lot of people make claims about being the best at everything and are promising things they can’t deliver. We really think that it’s important to separate those people from those who are really doing a good job in the industry. We also hope that it will motivate companies to continue to improve,” says Dr. Eric Stein, founder and executive director of the COE.

Eric also highlighted the ambiguities related to automation and job creation in indoor agriculture, which ultimately comes down to the company’s goals. With labor accounting for roughly 25-30% of an indoor farm’s total operating costs, automation can greatly increase profitability by reducing labor costs. However, social enterprises and triple-bottom-line companies may sooner focus on local job creation and use different targets for profitability in the context of their mission.

The cornerstone of the COE and its ten strategic areas is knowledge sharing, which many experts have cited as necessary for the industry’s continued growth.

“I think that one of the biggest needs in the industry is knowledge sharing. Everybody is approaching this from a proprietary perspective, which is typical of emerging industries. But if this industry is going to mature, we need to make sure that we have benchmarks. At the COE, we look at it from an industry level of analysis as opposed to an individual firm level of analysis.” 

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BrightBox-Venlo

While research and development currently focus mostly on production, the COE considers the entire system from the supply chain to the point of sale. According to Eric, the focus on plant production has effectively over-shadowed equally important factors such as the logistics of the supply chain, packaging, distribution, channels, and marketing.

“There has been a lot of focus on the growing process, which is very important, but in the end, to get products from a seed supplier to the company growing it to a supermarket, lots of things need to take place. It’s not just about having the best growing system. How you get it to consumers is equally important, if not more so.”

With the pandemic limiting face-to-face interactions within the industry, the COE has focused on building its member website, expanding social media channels, and building relationships with growers, manufacturers, and partners such as Indoor Ag-Con. Most recently, the organization has forged a relationship with Sage Publications, a major publisher of academic books, journals, and other scientific resources to feature research related to indoor farming and sustainability.

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For more information:
Center of Excellence for Indoor Agriculture (COE)
Eric W. Stein, Ph.D., Executive Director
eric@indooragcenter.org 
www.indooragcenter.org 

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Publication date: Mon 15 Feb 2021
Author: Rebekka Boekhout
© VerticalFarmDaily.com

Is Controlled Environment Agriculture Addressing The Issues Facing The Agriculture Industry?

Exclusives From Urban Ag News

February 19, 2021

David Kuack, UrbanAgNews.Com

BrightFarms founder and president Paul Lightfoot, who is chairman of the USDA Fruit and Vegetable Industry Advisory Committee, said controlled environment agriculture could play a major role in helping to solve some of the significant issues facing the ag industry and U.S. Photos courtesy of BrightFarms

As chairman of the USDA Fruit and Vegetable Industry Advisory Committee, Paul Lightfoot at BrightFarms is looking for ways to make major improvements in food production, sustainability, and consumption.

When Paul Lightfoot founded BrightFarms in January 2011 he had no experience in commercial food production. Ten years later he is president of one of the fastest-growing controlled environment agriculture companies in the United States. Starting with one 54,000-square-foot greenhouse facility in Pennsylvania in 2013, BrightFarms has expanded with greenhouse operations in four states with a total production area of 700,000 square feet.

“I had a background in retail supply chain improvement,” Lightfoot said. “I was running a supply-side software company for about nine years and was thinking about whether I could create an opportunity that would combine my career with my personal interest in healthy sustainable food. I studied different opportunities and came across the leafy greens supply chain as one that was ripe for destruction.

“At the time, all salads in North America basically came from the West Coast, either Salinas, Calif., in the summer or Yuma, Ariz., in the winter. I identified a very centralized, very industrialized supply chain that wasn’t benefitting consumers.”

Paul Lightfoot said an increasing amount of growth in the leafy greens market is coming from controlled environment agriculture.

Lightfoot said the concentrated field production locations and long-distance shipping required to deliver leafy greens to East Coast markets was not good for the product.

“Most leafy greens are five to seven days old when they arrive at retailers’ distribution centers, and that shows in the quality, nutrition, and taste,” he said. “I also thought field food production had some Achilles heals’ in terms of food safety and sustainability, which I thought would become more important, providing BrightFarms with a terrific market opportunity.

“I knew that consumers would continue to focus on healthy eating and that the demand for salads was going to rise. I grew confident that BrightFarms could disrupt a supply chain that was fragile and vulnerable.”

After opening its first greenhouse facility in 2013, Lightfoot said by the end of 2014 the company had figured out its operating model.

“We began to raise serious capital,” he said. “We graduated from venture capital to private equity in 2016 as we hit the national stage. We opened much larger greenhouses, one in Virginia to serve the Washington, D.C., market and one in Illinois to serve the Chicago and Milwaukee markets. Those were in partnership with Ahold Delhaize and Kroger.

“Before then I don’t think the produce industry had taken controlled environment salad production seriously. After 2016 we established ourselves as a contender to continue winning market share.”

Lightfoot said just about every major retailer in the U.S. now has an indoor-grown salad program on its shelves.

“There are billions of dollars of market share to be captured with leafy greens,” he said. “It’s a big and growing segment and by far the lion’s share of the growth is coming from controlled environment local production like ours.”

Helping to solve ag industry, societal issues

In October 2020 Lightfoot was elected chair of the USDA’s Fruit & Vegetable Industry Advisory Committee (FVIAC). Formed in 2001, the purpose of the committee is to examine issues that impact the fruit and vegetable industry and to provide recommendations and ideas to the Secretary of Agriculture on how the USDA can tailor programs to better meet the needs of the produce industry. FVIAC currently has four working groups: food safety, production, labor and trade.

“During our committee meetings the members develop a series of recommendations on the matters that are within the preview of the USDA,” Lightfoot said. “These recommendations are relevant to fruit and vegetable companies in the U.S., including growers, shippers, distributors, retailers and other organizations that have a stake in this space.”

Controlled environment vegetable production could be instrumental in providing consumers with healthier, more nutritious, better-tasting produce that is locally grown.

Lightfoot said the U.S. agriculture industry has an opportunity to help tackle some of the most pressing issues facing the U.S., including climate change and nutrition. 

“We have a society where the majority of Americans are obese or nearly obese and an extremely high percentage is diabetic or pre-diabetic,” he said. “The leading cause of death in the U.S. is from chronic diseases that are a result of our diets.

“We don’t need fancy technology to see the solution. Only about one in 10 Americans eat the recommended servings of fruits and vegetables. Shifting our diets away from highly processed foods and toward more fruits and vegetables would reduce diet-related chronic diseases, reduce the costs of healthcare, and even improve our military readiness.”

Another area where Lightfoot said the agricultural industry could help resolve issues is related to climate change.

“It is well understood that the energy and transportation sectors are huge contributors to climate change,” he said. “In general, as a world, we are making progress on those fronts. I’m not alone in driving an electric car and powering my home with wind-powered electricity.

“Less well understood is that the U.S. agriculture industry emits 10 percent of our country’s greenhouse gases. It is also one of the most vulnerable sectors to more volatile weather that results from climate change.”

Lightfoot is particularly concerned about the impact the agriculture industry is having on the country’s top soil and water resources.

“We’re mining our soil,” he said. “If we continue to degrade our soils, we only have about 50 seasons of soil left in the Midwest. Farming practices in the Midwest and California have also had a major impact on waterways, reducing sources of potable water.

Paul Lightfoot said just about every major retailer in the U.S. now has an indoor-grown salad program on its shelves.

“More biodiversity needs to be introduced into the areas of the West Coast that currently grow our salads. It has become a monoculture, which has removed the life from the soil and disrupted the water cycles. One idea would be to provide incentives to those farmers to “re-wild” some of that land, adding biodiversity to restore the soils and water cycles. That lost production capacity could be offset with the growth in high intensity indoor farms.”

Taking the CEA industry seriously

Lightfoot said his participation with FVIAC is beneficial to BrightFarms and to the CEA industry.

“It is important to remember that I am representing the entire fruit and vegetable industry in my role with FVIAC,” he said. “I care about BrightFarms like I care about a child, but in this role I will be speaking for the entire industry.

“The U.S. should be doubling the per capita annual consumption of fruits and vegetables. Because Americans are not eating enough fruits and vegetables, our country is suffering.”

Lightfoot said his participation with FVIAC, along with being a board member of the United Fresh Produce Association, reflects the changes occurring in the CEA industry and how it is viewed overall by the agriculture industry.

“The CEA industry was considered fairly new and only recently has it become a bigger player,” he said. “These ag organizations recognize that and want our representation. We are glad to have it. We think we have an important voice and I’m glad to be able represent the CEA industry.”

For more: BrightFarms, Farm Support Center, Irvington, NY 10533; (866) 857-8745; info@brightfarms.com; BrightFarms

This article is property of Urban Ag News and was written by David Kuack, a freelance technical writer in Fort Worth, Texas.

TURKEY: Vegetables Will Be Grown In The Geothermal Greenhouse Established on 60 Decares In Sivasta

The first seedlings were planted for the products to be grown in the geothermal greenhouse established on 60 decares of land in Sivasta Hot Çermik region.

120 thousand tomato seedlings were planted in a 60-acre glass greenhouse, which was started to be built a year ago in the region and will be heated by geothermal water, which cost about 40 million lira. Sivas Governor Salih Ayhan, Mayor Hilmi Bilgin and former Sivas Mayor businessperson Sami Aydın Stating that Sivas has gained a great value, Ayhan said: “I congratulate our company, which has brought a very high technology and a seminal service to Sivas, for its courage,”.

I can say that it is one of the projects that excites me the most. Sivas is developing in every field, but there is a completely different development in agriculture. I can say that Sivas has gained a very good momentum in agriculture. We use Thermal not only for health tourism but also for visual and cultural purposes. This place almost added value to the region. Saying that the greenhouse will open a vision for Sivas, Bilgin thanked Sami Aydın for bringing a modern, world-class greenhouse to Sivas. The Çermik Region has been distributing healing for years. I hope Sivas will be a cluster with this greenhouse project.

Sami Aydın also said that they have accomplished a first in Sivas and implemented the thermal smart greenhouse project. Stating that he was happy to realise the first seedling planting of such a facility, Aydın said, This is the first greenhouse project in Sivas, a smart greenhouse. While hot Çermik water has been healing for health until today, it will also be healing for agriculture from now on.

In the seedling planting done in accordance with the social distance rules, the protocol members passed through the disinfectant cabin one by one and were taken to the greenhouse area.

Is AppHarvest the Future of Farming?

Special purpose acquisition companies, or SPACs, are red-hot right now, with investors clamoring to get into promising young companies.

In this video from Motley Fool Live, recorded on Jan. 28, Industry Focus host Nick Sciple and Motley Fool contributor Lou Whiteman discuss AppHarvest, one such SPAC that is looking to disrupt the agriculture industry. Here are the details on what AppHarvest wants to do, and a look at whether the company represents the future of farming.

Nick Sciple: One last company I wanted to talk about, Lou, and this is one I think it's -- you pay attention to, but not one I'm super excited to run in and buy. It was a company called AppHarvest. It's coming public via a [SPAC] this year. This vertical farming space. We talked about Gladstone Land buying traditional farmland. AppHarvest is taking a very different approach, trying to lean into some of the ESG-type movements.

Lou Whiteman: Yeah. Let's look at this. It probably wouldn't surprise you that the U.S. is the biggest global farm exporter as we said, but it might surprise you that the Netherlands, the tiny little country, is No. 2. The way they do that is tech: Greenhouse farm structure. AppHarvest has taken that model and brought it to the U.S. They have, I believe, three farms in Appalachia. The pitches can produce 30x the yields using 90% less water. Right now, it's mostly tomatoes and it is early-stage. I don't own this stock either. I love this idea. There's some reasons that I'm not buying in right now that we can get into. But this is fascinating to me. We talked about making the world a better place. This is the company that we need to be successful to make the world a better place. The warning on it is that it is a SPAC. So it's not public yet. Right now, I believe N-O-V-S. That deal should close soon. [Editor's note: The deal has since closed.] I'm not the only one excited about it. I tend not to like to buy IPOs and new companies anyway. I think the caution around buying into the excitement applies here. There is a Martha Stewart video on their website talking up the company, which I love Martha Stewart, but that's a hype level that makes me want to just watch and see what they produce. This is just three little farms in Appalachia right now and a great idea. This was all over my watchlist. I would imagine I would love to hold it at some point, but just be careful because this is, as we saw SPACs last year in other areas, people are very excited about this.

Sciple: Yeah. I think, like we've said, for a lot of these companies, the prospects are great. I think when you look at the reduced water usage, better, environmentally friendly, all those sorts of things. I like that they are in Appalachia. As someone who is from the South, I like it when more rural areas get some people actually investing money there. But again, there's a lot of execution between now and really getting to a place where this is the future of farming and they're going to reach scale and all those sorts of things. But this is a company I'm definitely going to have my radar on and pay attention to as they continue to report earnings. Because you can tell yourself a story about how this type of vertical farming, indoor farming disrupts this traditional model, can be more efficient, cleaner, etc. Something to continue paying attention to as we have more information, because this company, like you said, Lou, isn't all the way public yet. We still got to have this SPAC deal finalized and then we get all our fun SEC filings and quarterly calls and all those sorts of things. Once we have that, I will be very much looking forward to seeing what the company has to say.

Whiteman: Right. Just to finish up along too, the interesting thing here is that it is a proven concept because it has worked elsewhere. The downside of that is that it needed to work there. Netherlands just doesn't have -- and this is an expensive proposition to get started, to get going. There's potential there, but in a country blessed with almost seemingly unlimited farmland for now, for long term it makes sense. But in the short term, it could be a hard thing to really get up and running. I think you're right, just one to watch.

Signify Adds Automatic Intensity Adjustment Plus Year-Long Recipe Modulations To Horticultural Controls

Mark Halper

The Signify toplights at Belgium’s De Glastuin lettuce greenhouse automatically dim or brighten as daylight levels changes. (Photo credit: All images courtesy of Signify.)

Signify has enhanced the control system for its greenhouse LED lighting so that toplights can react immediately to changes in daylight conditions and adjust brightness accordingly. The company has also added year-long control settings intended to allow vertical farmers — but not greenhouses — to program seasonal variations in LED spectral content over a 365-day period.

Both upgrades are intended to reduce manual labor and improve overall cost efficiencies, Signify said.

Until now, greenhouse farmers could dim or brighten their Signify toplights by instructing the lights to do so via the control system, called GrowWise. Signify has now modified GrowWise software so that it can take readings from daylight sensors that are part of separate systems. GrowWise then instantly and automatically adjusts artificial light intensity emitted by the toplights, called Philips GreenPower LED.

“The lighting can be used much more efficiently since it gives us the flexibility to reduce light levels at any moment we need to,” said Wouter de Bruyn, the owner of Belgian lettuce grower De Glastuin, an early user of the new automatic feature.

Whereas Signify is known in office settings to build sensors into its smart luminaires, the GrowWise controls make use of sensors that are part of climate control systems and greenhouse management systems from companies such as Priva, Hoogendern Growth Management, and Ridder, all based in Holland.

Planet Farms’ Luca Travaglini backs up Signify’s point that prescribing a year of spectral content improves efficiency and helps keep down manual labor costs in controlled environment agriculture (CEA) operations such as vertical farms.

“The climate computer is equipped with a daylight sensor that sends actual light measurements to the GrowWise Control System so we can adapt our light levels automatically to ensure an even light level throughout the day and season,” de Bruyn said at De Glastuin, based in Kontich.

“Dynamic lighting in a greenhouse is the next step in improving the cost efficiency and quality for the cultivation process,” said Udo van Slooten, business leader, horticulture LED solutions at Signify. “It allows growers to effortlessly maintain a consistent level of light throughout the day to produce the best possible crops. The system compensates for cloudy weather and creates a more controlled growing environment for your crop.”

In another upgrade to GrowWise, vertical farmers who want to prescribe modulations in spectral content are no longer limited to 24 hours of looped recipe cycles. Rather, they can order up a year’s worth of shifts for controlled environment agriculture (CEA) operations.

The year-long programming feature is aimed at vertical farmers rather than at greenhouses because the lights that Signify provides for vertical farms support controllable spectral changes, whereas the greenhouse toplights do not. Signify refers to its GreenPower LED vertical farm lights as “production modules” rather than as “toplights.” Toplights and production modules can both be programmed for intensity over a year, but the intention of the year-long feature is oriented toward spectral content.

Compared to greenhouses, vertical farms tend to make much less, if any, use of natural light. In vertical farms, the lights are mounted much closer to the crop in stacked shelves.

One of the first users of the year-round feature is Italy’s greens and lettuce grower Planet Farms.

“Now we can easily create custom light recipes and set them to run year-round to provide the right light recipe with the right light intensity at the right time throughout the crop’s growth cycle,” said Planet Farms co-founder Luca Travaglini. “By automating our full light strategy during the growth cycle, for the whole year, we can run our operations very efficiently and keep our manual labor costs low. That makes it easier for us to maintain consistent quality as we scale up our production.”

The horticultural market is a key growth sector for Signify, especially as it maps out a strategy to maintain profits in the pandemic economy, in which last week it reported a yearly rise amid rigorous cost controls that now include a small number of layoffs. CEO Eric Rondolat is targeting a big chunk of what he has quantified as a $2 billion general horticultural lighting market by 2023.

MARK HALPER is a contributing editor for LEDs Magazine, and an energy, technology, and business journalist (markhalper@aol.com).

London Food Bank Is Going Greener With Greenhouse

Nick Paparella CTV News London Reporter

@NPaparellaCTV Contact

Inside the London Food Bank's greenhouse in London, Ont. on Friday, Jan. 29, 2021. (Nick Paparella / CTV News)

LONDON, ONT. -- The outdoors may be covered in a blanket of white in January, but at the London Food Bank these days everything seems to be coming up green.

After a year of planning and with donations from the community, the new greenhouse is bearing fruit - or in this case vegetables.

“This is what Londoners a few years ago wanted more than anything else, to donate funds towards fresh fruits, fresh produce and that's what they have done,” says Glen Pearson from the London Food Bank. “So we've just taken it to a different level so we can grow our own as well.”

The man with the green thumb here is horticulturalist Luis Reyes.

“A couple of weeks ago we received the heaters and since then you can see the growth in only a couple of weeks,” says Reyes.

Like many from the food bank, Reyes is passionate about helping those in need.

“I am a grower and that's what I like to do and now to do it directly to people makes me proud,” he says.

The greenhouse is expected to grow about 15,000 plants a year which amounts to about four tons of food.

“You're not going to get anything fresher than this in a supermarket,“ says Reyes. “So probably you're going to harvest today here and the people or clients are going to receive it tomorrow or the same day.”

In the winter months, they are growing cold-weather plants like lettuce, spinach and even kale, but once summer arrives they will switch to tomatoes, cucumbers and fruit-bearing plants.

Adds Pearson, “It just expands the nutrition we're able to give to other people.”

Pure Flavor® Receives International Taste Award For New Cloud 9® Tomato

Leamington, ON (February 1st, 2021) – While consumers continue to look for more healthy snacks in the fresh produce aisle, greenhouse vegetable grower Pure Flavor® is launching their new Cloud 9® Bite-Sized Fruity Tomatoes to help meet the growing demand for consistently flavorful options. After extensive product trials and consumer taste testing, many are heralding the new tomato variety as an everyday snack game changer.  

“We taste hundreds of tomatoes every year searching for something special - unique colors, shapes, sizes, but most importantly flavor. From the first taste of the Cloud 9® variety, we knew we had found it”, said Jamie Moracci, President. With fruit like flavor, the new Cloud 9® Tomatoes are going to redefine what snacking tomatoes should taste like as an everyday item, not just as color in a salad. “We have created the Cloud 9® Standard for quality and look forward to consumers enjoying this premium and hand-selected bite-sized tomato every day”, said Moracci. 

 Strategically grown in high-tech greenhouses in Canada, USA, and Mexico, Cloud 9® Bite-Sized Fruity Tomatoes are available year-round. With a distinct color, unique shape, and a fruit-like flavor profile, Pure Flavor® has conducted extensive product trials in key growing regions to create the appropriate growing formula to consistently produce an exceptional snacking tomato. 

“From the first bite, you know this will be memorable: it’s a fresh snacking experience that comes from an unwavering commitment to quality”, commented Matt Mastronardi, Executive Vice-President. Available in a variety of formats, Pure Flavor®’s award-winning Cloud 9® Tomato is available starting February 1st to be shipped throughout North America. “We hand-select a limited quantity of the most vibrant tomatoes so you can enjoy bold, balanced flavor that sweetens any snack or homecooked meal”, said Mastronardi. 

Pure Flavor® recently received the prestigious Superior Taste Award Certification from the International Taste Institute (Brussels, Belgium) for the Cloud 9® Tomato. The reviewing Jury, consisting of more than 200 renowned European Chefs & Sommeliers from over 20 countries, critically tested & analyzed the Cloud 9® Tomato and highlighted these characteristics to award the product the Superior Taste designation: 

• Very clear, ripe tomato flavor with a marked sweetness; the taste lingers for a long time on your palate

• These tomatoes have an original shape, and the size makes them ideal as a snack or for use in the kitchen

• An intense red color with a soft texture and sweet taste; nice and juicy – good balance between sweetness & acidity

• The product is very versatile; can be used in numerous different recipes and types of cuisines, suitable as a snack, in pasta, salads, stews, with various proteins (beef, poultry, fish), or even a Gazpacho

 “It’s a strict process where all products are blind tasted; this means that the samples are anonymized, we do not see the packaging and do not know the brand name nor the producers’ name - we don’t even know from which country the product comes from. This forces us to be completely objective as we do the sensory analysis. Only truly good products are certified”, stated Stijn Roelandt – Sous-Chef at Hof van Cleve, 3 Michelin stars and member of the Jury, International Taste Institute. 

The launch of a sweeter snacking tomato comes at a time when consumers are looking to enjoy a wider variety of healthy foods to eat at home. Cloud 9® offers consumers a healthy new snack option that will “make life’s sweetest moments even sweeter” – figuratively and of course, quite literally.  

Video #1: https://youtu.be/CrsCQTszdp0 

Video #2: https://youtu.be/hQIwq8M2Tfs  

“The award-winning Cloud 9® tomatoes burst with a fruity sweetness that enriches any dish or eating occasion, every recipe you create deserves to be a showstopper”, said Chris Veillon, Chief Marketing Officer.  

In anticipation of the new product launch, Pure Flavor® spent the last 16+ months developing the Cloud 9® brand to ensure that consumers could go beyond the package to enjoy all aspects of the tomato.  

“Our team has developed dozens of recipes, conducted in person tasting surveys before the pandemic and hundreds of digital preference surveys during the Love For Fresh campaign late last fall, to creating engaging web & social content in lifestyle situations – we needed to effectively communicate that Cloud 9® is not just another salad topper, it’s the sweetness you crave with the quality you deserve. We think it’s a tiny taste of heaven™”, said Veillon. 

To learn more about Cloud 9® Bite-Sized Fruity Tomatoes, please visit: https://www.pure-flavor.com/cloud9/  

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About Pure Flavor® - 

Pure Flavor® is a family of greenhouse vegetable growers who share a commitment to bringing A Life of Pure Flavor™ to communities everywhere. Our passion for sustainable greenhouse growing, strong support for our retail & foodservice customers, and focus on engaging consumers is built on a foundation drawn from generations of growing expertise.  

We are the next generation of vegetable growers, inspired to put quality, flavor, and customers first by providing greenhouse-grown vegetables from our farms that are strategically located throughout North America. 

About the International Taste Institute –  

The International Taste Institute, founded in 2005 and based in Brussels, Belgium, evaluates and certifies the taste of food and drink from all over the world. Its jury is composed of over 200 renowned Chefs and Sommeliers from 15 European culinary or sommeliers associations.  

The Taste Institutes performs objective sensory evaluation: its jury follows a rigorous blind tasting methodology in which product samples are anonymized to avoid any bias in the scoring. In addition to the scoring of the various sensory analysis criteria, the jury provides comments and eventually suggestions for further product improvement or food pairing suggestions. 

(Assistant) Professor Crop Modelling In Greenhouses And Vertical Farms (Tenure Track)

The chair group Horticulture and Product Physiology of Wageningen University & Research (WUR) is keen to hire an Assistant Professor (0.7-1.0 ft). As an Assistant Professor, you will take a leading role in developing research and education and the opportunity to establish your own research and education in crop modeling in greenhouses and vertical farms.

This position also involves experimental physiological work at the plant organ, whole plant or whole crop level, which is necessary to build, calibrate and validate models.

In this challenging career trajectory:

• You will perform research on modeling, combined with experimentation, of growth, development, and quality of horticultural crops and products (vegetables, fruits, cut flowers, and/or pot plants).

• You acquire, lead and implement together with the chair holder and other staff members innovative and creative (inter-)national research projects for our group. Once acquired you also implement and lead these projects.

• You supervise Ph.D., MSc, and BSc students, and you will develop and teach courses (lectures, practicals) on the modeling of key plant processes in greenhouses and vertical farms.

• Your work will focus on the development of models, which are a combination of multiscale Spatio-temporal data-driven, as well as knowledge-based models. Model applications may include predictions of yield, plant development and growth, quality, post-harvest behavior, resource use and running costs for crops grown in greenhouses and vertical farms

• You collaborate with colleagues and establish a personal research portfolio that is embedded in the Horticulture and Product Physiology group

• You undertake research on modeling and data analytics, combined with experimentation, that leads to high-quality research output.

• You will perform research on modeling, combined with experimentation, of growth, development, and quality of horticultural crops and products (vegetables, fruits, cut flowers, and/or pot plants).

Tenure Track is a career path for scientists who pursue to excel in education and research. We seek to attract scientific talent and to stimulate and support their development.

Requirements:

• You hold a Ph.D. degree in plant science, mathematical science, biological science, data science, or similar.

• You have experience in modeling and data analytics, as well as a keen interest in combining these activities with experimentation with plants.

• You have published research in high-quality journals and are willing to develop your skills in teaching and grant proposal acquisition.

• You are strong in stakeholder management because you need to communicate the importance and significance of your research.

• This position requires excellent English language proficiency (a minimum of CEFR C2 level). For more information about this proficiency level, please visit our special language page.

The chair group Horticulture & Product Physiology
The chair group Horticulture and Product Physiology conduct high impact research and educate students providing the scientific basis required to answer questions that are of utmost importance for sustainable crop production and product quality in horticulture.
The research focus is on how physiological processes in crops, plants, and plant organs interact with the abiotic environment and how this affects crop production and product quality. Questions arising from horticultural practice are translated into fundamental research topics, aiming to explain mechanisms. The research and education contribute to sustainably feeding the World with healthy high-quality products.
The chair group is an international team consisting of 15 permanent staff members, about 25 Ph.D. candidates and postdocs, and a number of guest researchers. Each year about 40 MSc students conduct their thesis study (6-month research) at our group. We organize and participate in a variety of courses for BSc and MSc students to transfer knowledge on horticulture (pre-and post-harvest), environmental physiology, and product quality.
More info about the chair group can be found at www.hpp.wur.nl or see the video below:

Salary Benefits:

Wageningen University & Research offers excellent terms of employment. A few highlights from our Collective Labour Agreement:

• sabbatical leave, study leave, and paid parental leave;

• working hours that can be discussed and arranged so that they allow for the best possible work-life balance;

• the option to accrue additional flexible hours by working more, up to 40 hours per week;

• there is a strong focus on vitality and you can make use of the sports facilities available on campus for a small fee;

• a fixed December bonus of 8.3%;

• excellent ABP pension regulations.

In addition to these first-rate employee benefits, you will be offered a fixed-term, 7-year contract which, upon positive evaluation based on criteria elaborated in the University's Tenure Track policy, can lead to a permanent employment contract as a professor. Depending on your experience, we offer a competitive salary of between € 3.746,- and € 5.127,- (assistant professor position) for a full-time working week of 38 hours in accordance with the Collective Labour Agreements for Dutch Universities (CAO-NU) (scale 11). The position can be part-time or full-time (0.7-1.0 ft).
Wageningen University & Research encourages internal advancement opportunities and mobility with an internal recruitment policy. There are plenty of options for personal initiative in a learning environment, and we provide excellent training opportunities. We are offering a unique position in an international environment with a pleasant and open working atmosphere.
You are going to work at the greenest and most innovative campus in Holland, and at a university that has been chosen as the "Best University" in the Netherlands for the 16th consecutive time.

Coming from abroad
Wageningen University & Research is the university and research center for life sciences. The themes we deal with are relevant to everyone around the world and Wageningen, therefore, has a large international community and a lot to offer to international employees. Applicants from abroad moving to the Netherlands may qualify for special tax relief, known as the 30% ruling. Our team of advisors on Dutch immigration procedures will help you with the visa application procedures for yourself and, if applicable, for your family.
Feeling welcome also has everything to do with being well informed. Wageningen University & Research's International Community page contains practical information about what we can do to support international employees and students coming to Wageningen. Furthermore, we can assist you with any additional advice and information about helping your partner to find a job, housing, schooling, and other issues.

Work Hours: 38 hours per week

Address: Droevendaalsesteeg

New Technology For Pesticide-Free Crops Launched

Terra Vera has launched solutions to replace conventional pesticides and increase product safety and consumer confidence within the agriculture industry. Using patented technologies compliant with EPA regulations, Terra Vera offers producers a safe, effective, and sustainable approach to rid crops of contaminants while preserving the quality and yield of their products. 

"Our mission is to improve the quality, consistency, and yield for any grower interested in more sustainable agricultural practices," said Terra Vera CEO and Co-Founder Carlos Perea, who previously founded MIOX Corporation, a technology company with a proven track record of treating drinking water in over 30 countries.

"Our systems typically pay for themselves in a matter of months by replacing expensive, and often toxic, chemical treatments and by increasing yields. Safe and sustainable practices like Terra Vera also help business leaders create consumer confidence and build brand value."

Unwanted pathogens such as viruses, bacteria, and fungi can cause significant crop loss. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FOA) estimates that each year 20 to 40 percent of global crop production is lost or wasted due to plant diseases, animal pests, and weeds. Today, approximately 5.6 billion pounds of pesticides are used worldwide each year to preserve and protect against crop loss. Most available solutions to control and eliminate pathogens on crops are toxic substances that pose a significant contamination risk to the surrounding soil, water, non-target plants, and animals.

Terra Vera’s proven platform technology, which is modeled after the U.S. military’s approach to treating drinking water to EPA standards, is a safe and compliant alternative that is non-toxic for people and the environment. The technology mimics humans’ natural biological process for fighting infections by converting organic, inert compounds into an antimicrobial solution that is safe on live tissue, yet effective at inactivating pathogens, including viruses, bacteria, and fungi.

Terra Vera introduced its offerings in 2020, working with select clients in California, Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico, and Florida, and has now expanded its capacities to serve the agricultural industry across the United States. Its systems are scalable for both large and small agricultural operations in a variety of grow methods: outdoor, indoor, and greenhouse. In addition, Terra Vera’s experienced team works closely with clients to ensure their agricultural solutions are compliant with federal and state-specific regulations.

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For more information:
Terra Vera
info@terravera.com  
terravera.com

22 Jan 2021