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Pioneers of Organic Farming Are Threatening to Leave The Program
Pioneers of Organic Farming Are Threatening to Leave The Program
BY CAITLIN DEWEY | THE WASHINGTON POST | Nov. 3, 2017
Early leaders argued hydroponics should be banned from the label
Certified organic produce is on sale at a Kroger grocery store in Louisville, Kentucky. (Luke Sharrett/Bloomberg) 6843059
The pioneers of the sustainable farming movement are mourning what they call the downfall of the organic program, following a Wednesday night vote by a group of government farming advisers that could determine the future of the $50 billion organic industry.
At issue was whether a booming generation of hydroponic, aquaponic and aeroponic farms — which grow plants in nutrients without using soil, frequently indoors — could continue to sell their produce under the “organic” label.
In a series of narrow votes, an advisory board to the U.S. Department of Agriculture voted to allow the majority of these operators to remain a part of the organic program, dealing a blow to the movement’s early leaders.
Organic pioneers have argued that including hydroponic produce under the label has undermined the integrity of the program they fought decades to establish, and at a time when it is under intense scrutiny. Some have said they will consider leaving the USDA-regulated program entirely.
“This was the Hail Mary pass to save the National Organic Program, and they didn’t catch it,” said Dave Chapman, a longtime organic tomato farmer who lobbied to have hydroponics banned from the organics label. “They did incalculable damage to the seal tonight. It’s just going to take them a while to realize it.”
The recommendation, issued by the National Organic Standards Board, came in four parts.
The board voted to keep out aeroponic farming, which grows plants — typically herbs and leafy greens — suspended in the air with their roots exposed. But it voted to allow hydroponics, which grow plants in water-based nutrient solutions, and aquaponics, which combine hydroponic systems with farmed fish operations.
The board declined to tighten its restrictions on container growing, a variation on hydroponics that involves raising plants in containers filled with a mixture of organic matter, water and nutrients. That system has been adopted by a number of major organic berry growers, such as Driscoll’s and Wholesum Harvest.
Since 2000, the National Organic Program has strictly regulated which foods can be called organic, and how organic foods are grown and raised. Those standards are typically based on the recommendations of the NOSB, an advisory body comprised of farmers, environmentalists and representatives from the organic industry.
In a 2010 vote, the board recommended a ban on virtually all types of soilless growing. But in an unusual departure, the USDA continued to certify hydroponic and aquaponic farms, claiming that NOSB had not adequately considered the breadth of the industry.
Now that the board and the department are in agreement, the future of hydroponics in the organic program is much more certain, said Marianne Cufone, the executive director of the Recirculating Farms Coalition, which represents hydroponic and aquaponic growers.
“I think this sends a powerful message that they’re embracing change in agriculture,” Cufone said. “That the (organic program) wants to be inclusive, not exclusive.”
This approach has pained old-school organic farmers, who have spent the past seven years arguing that soilless systems undermine the main principles of that program. When that movement emerged in the first half of the twentieth century, they argue, it promised a version of agriculture that not only reduced the use of certain fertilizers and pesticides — but that contributed to the health of the soil and the rest of the environment.
During testimony on Tuesday, several organic farmers protested the certification of hydroponic farms, wearing T-shirts that said “Save the Organic Label.” At rallies this month in Hanover, New Hampshire, and Burlington, Vermont, protesters held signs with slogans such as “keep the soil in organic.”
“This notion that organic farmers are stuck in the past, or that they’re a bunch of Luddites hanging on to the way things used to be — that’s a misnomer,” said Cameron Harsh, the senior manager for organic and animal policy at the Center for Food Safety. “Soilless systems are just incompatible with the organic program and its regulations.”
“Don’t get me wrong — I love going to the farmers market,” said Matt Barnard, the chief executive of the indoor farming start-up Plenty, which grows organically certified greens and herbs.
“It’s just that the farmers’ market supplies something like half of 1 percent of the fresh fruits and vegetables in the U.S.”
“What we are doing,” Barnard added, “is just as organic as anyone else.”
Is Organic Labeling Something The Hydroponic Industry Needs?
Is Organic Labeling Something The Hydroponic Industry Needs?
Conscientious shoppers are seeking out organically labeled food in their grocery stores and even at farmers markets.
November 28, 2017
CropKing
In an extremely close vote Nov. 1, the USDA’s National Organic Standards Board made a decision on a controversial issue: can hydroponically grown crops be certified organic? The answer, by an 8-7 margin, was yes. With the vote out of the way, the NOSB will now have to make recommendations on how the hydroponic industry can be governed under the organic label. However, as both organic and hydroponic agriculture adjust to the board’s decision, a simple question looms in the air, “Is organic the best path forward for hydroponically grown crops?”
Here’s the thing, there’s no arguing that organic is a hot niche. In April 2016, the Huffington Post wrote an article detailing Costco’s fast-selling organic produce section, entitled, “Costco Is Selling So Much Organic Produce, Farmers Can’t Keep Up”. In fact, while the USDA doesn’t keep hard numbers on total organic sales, the agency does have this chart showing the growth of sales. Even to the untrained eye, it’s clear organic sales have been steadily growing since 2005. That’s more than a decade of increasing sales.
Organic is having a sustained moment in the sun. Conscientious shoppers are seeking out organically labelled food in their grocery stores and even at farmers markets.
There are downsides to organic though. The market is already saturated with growers competing in the space. The Organic Authority says there are already 100 hydroponic growers certified to sell organic. And that’s just the hydroponic growers that got in before Nov. 1. Given the national attention on the NOSB decision, more applications for organic certification could be coming into USDA shortly.
There’s also growing confusion over organic versus competing labels, particularly the “local” identifier. Some consumers don’t know the two aren’t synonymous.
“What is a consumer looking for when they buy organic? Most buyers who purchase organic do so because organic, to them, equals safety, pesticide free, healthy food for my family,” said CropKing President Paul Brentlinger.
Plus, shoppers are increasingly heading to farmers markets to buy local crops, perhaps signaling a shift in priorities for heady produce buyers. In 2013, the USDA said there were 8,144 farmers markets, that’s up from 1,755 in 1994. That’s why more produce is carrying a “local” label.
It seems consumers are increasingly interested in where crops come from and how they’re grown. That’s why some industry vets have been wondering about a hydroponic-specific label, something that indicates growers are utilizing the best, most sustainable practices available in the CEA, hydroponic environment. Something the fast-growing industry can tout as its own and put marketing might behind. Something that can be added to the already impressive list of labels.
“Regardless of the debate surrounding salt based fertilizer or organic fertilizer I think the CEA industry can check those boxes for the consumer. Many CropKing growers market their product as "locally grown", "pesticide free" and are able to develop that relationship with the communities they support,” said Brentlinger.
After all, the organic labelled products totaled $47 billion in sales last year, according to Business Insider. Could a hydroponic-specific label push your sales to new heights?
Tell us what you think, would a hydroponic label benefit you? Let us know in the comments.
Photo: iStock
How To Grow 40,000 Heads of Lettuce In A Shipping Container
How To Grow 40,000 Heads of Lettuce In A Shipping Container
Nov 19, 2017
Lettuce grows inside a converted shipping container at Tiger Corners Farms in Summerville. Tony Bertauski/Provided | Tony Bertauski
The weather is always perfect at Tiger Corner Farms.
Using the cozy interiors of shipping containers, the facility in Summerville farms indoors. By retrofitting 320 square feet of storage, they convert open space into a highly productive aeroponic farm. Seed to harvest, they can produce nearly 4,000 heads of lettuce in five weeks. That’s almost 13 heads of lettuce per square foot and a little more than 40,000 per year. How do they do it?
The answer is in the air.
Farming traditionally requires land. In urban areas, farming is nearly impossible where space is limited and expensive. Food often is shipped in from rural farms. What about all the space above the ground?
Tiger Corner Farms grows more than 40,000 heads of lettuce a year inside shipping containers in Summerville. Tony Bertauski/Provided | Tony Bertauski
Tiger Corner Farms has taken an innovative approach to vertical farming. Recycling empty shipping containers, they’ve created mobile farms that can be functional in any environment.
The process starts on a simple flood rack. Seeds are planted in coconut fiber plugs. Trays are flooded with a nutrient solution 10 minutes each day. Two weeks after seeding, seedling are plugged into hollow panels where they will grow for another three weeks. Matured lettuce is then harvested, roots and all, with no soil to wash off.
They use an alternative method of growing called aeroponics. Hydroponics grows crops in a soiless environment where roots bathe in a flowing nutrient solution. In aeroponics, roots dangle in a humid, nutrient-rich atmosphere rather than liquid. At Tiger Corner Farms, two hollow panels hang from the ceiling of a storage container. Plants are grown on both sides. The newest design has a capacity of 3,160 plants with an increased quality of product due to an improved design of locally sourced panels.
Every 10 minutes, nutrient solution is misted over the roots inside the panels. The excess solution drains to a reservoir to be recycled. An average of 10 gallons of water is used daily. Hydroponics and aeroponics require vigilant monitoring of nutrient solution. While this can be time consuming, Tiger Corner Farms has fully automated this process by adapting warehouse management software to adjust nutrient levels, pH and other environmental parameters. This system not only reduces manual labor, it tracks every crop from seed to harvest.
The shipping container is a closed system that relies completely on LED lights mounted on all sides of the panels. The light spectrum is optimized for plant growth. LEDs generate very little heat, which reduces the need to cool the container.
Besides the need for artificial light, another side effect of the closed system is carbon dioxide. Photosynthesis requires sunlight, water and carbon dioxide to manufacture glucose, or sugar. Inside the container, carbon dioxide levels drop to approximately a quarter of atmospheric levels. A propane burner is used to boost carbon dioxide and increase photosynthesis and growth.
A nutrient solution is misted over the roots of lettuce plants every 10 minutes inside shipping containers in Summerville. Tony Bertauski/Provided | Tony Bertauski
Once the crop is harvested, the growing panels are powerwashed and sterilized before the next planting. Crops often are rotated so that only a quarter of the container’s capacity is harvested. This reduces the demand on maintenance and delivery.
Of course, this self-contained system relies on power. Any failure in the system, whether power or a component, will alert the manager via phone or other means. In the meantime, generators keep the system running.
While Tiger Corner Farms builds the containers, Vertical Roots is the local company using them to grow and distribute the products. Currently, they provide for the Dorchester District 2 school cafeterias as well as more than 50 restaurants sourced by Grow Food Carolina.
Ashley Ridge High School in Summerville has a container on site where horticulture students assist in growing the crop. The Citadel also operates a container to provide food for the cafeteria.
Tiger Corner Farms sees its product as a way of filling a need for local produce in an urban environment. This self-contained farm can be operational in most areas and grow a variety of leafy greens and herbs.
Tony Bertauski is a horticulture instructor at Trident Technical College. To give feedback, e-mail him at tony. bertauski@tridenttech.edu.
Startup Iron Ox Mixes Robotics and Hydroponics to Futurize Farming
Silicon Valley-based startup Iron Ox is utilizing autonomous robotics to fundamentally change the nature of greenhouse-based agriculture. While the exterior of the Iron Ox greenhouse in San Carlos, California is far from remarkable, the cost-cutting integration of hydroponics, solar energy, robotics, and space-conscious farming is more than noteworthy.
Startup Iron Ox Mixes Robotics and Hydroponics to Futurize Farming
Photo Credit: Jirakan Jiherb/123RF
Silicon Valley-based startup Iron Ox is utilizing autonomous robotics to fundamentally change the nature of greenhouse-based agriculture. While the exterior of the Iron Ox greenhouse in San Carlos, California is far from remarkable, the cost-cutting integration of hydroponics, solar energy, robotics, and space-conscious farming is more than noteworthy.
Iron Ox
By using autonomous robots to plant, seed, water, and even harvest their hydroponically grown crops, Iron Ox’s system provides uniformity and rapidity which conventional, human-centric farming methods can’t match. Iron Ox greenhouses’ daily harvesting and proximity to urban centers, grocery stores and produce suppliers diminishes the nutrient loss and often bland taste which results from produce being shipped hundreds or thousands of miles from farm to store.
Founders Brandon Alexander, a former Google X engineer and John Binney, who holds a PhD in robotics, check all the boxes when it comes to consumer demand for non-GMO, pesticide-free produce. Alexander, Iron Ox’s CEO, is uniquely qualified as the leader of this farming revolution. His work on Google’s Project Wing included exploring and implementing ways for autonomous robots to work in combination. With the proper technology in place, Alexander estimates that set-up of one of Iron Ox’s urban greenhouses takes only three to four months, on average.
Luiz Ribeiro Ribeiro/123RF
The master plan is to expand Iron Ox greenhouses manned by autonomous robot-farmers to as many American cities as possible, providing a fresher, potentially cheaper source of produce that traditional farms located far from these cities would be hard-pressed to compete with. Consider that, according to Alexander, a single square-acre Iron Ox greenhouse can match the annual yield of 30 acres of traditional farmland. It also stands to reason that the products created in these robotic greenhouses are less vulnerable to insects and parasites, eliminating the need to use harmful chemicals used to protect outdoor-grown crops.
Like so many industries that have long been a staple of the American and world economies, the application of robotic technology in agriculture will likely mean a drastic shift away from dependence on human labor. The proliferation of companies like Iron Ox carries clear benefits, but it will almost certainly mean structural unemployment for those who depend on traditional means of agriculture as a livelihood. That said, it’s not a matter of if, but a matter of when we see this shift toward autonomous greenhouse farming on a mass scale.
For Hydroponic Educator, Innovation Is A Way of Life
For Hydroponic Educator, Innovation Is A Way of Life
NOVEMBER 24, 2017 URBANAG NEWS
Originally published in Issue 15
By Sidsel Robards
Not many teachers can come back to school telling students that their summer vacation included a visit to The White House to pick up a Presidential Award. But Shakira Provasoli, resident science teacher at The Sun Works Center at PS333 in New York City, did exactly that after an August ceremony where she received a presidential honor from the EPA for her outstanding work as an environmental educator.
“It is an honor to be recognized by the EPA and the White House for my commitment to environmental education. I want to thank NY Sun Works for giving me the opportunity to create curriculum in such an inspiring science laboratory!”
—Shakira Provasoli
Established in 2011, the Presidential Innovation Award for Environmental Educators recognizes teachers who employ innovative approaches to environmental education and use the environment as a context for learning for their students. The award comes with a cash prize toward further professional development and is matched with a grant for the teacher’s school to further fund environmental educational activities and programs.
Rooftop greenhouse classroom
Shakira has been an educator for 16 years, and was part of the first cohort of the NASA Endeavor program. In the past five years she has been a science cluster teacher at The Sun Works Center at PS333. Her classroom is a 1,450-square-foot rooftop hydroponic greenhouse built by NY Sun Works. During the week she works with about 660 kindergarten to 5th grade students, who learn about everything from systems and cycles, environmental interaction, sustainable solutions, and sustainable cities – all through the lens of urban agriculture.
When Shakira was a classroom teacher, she strived to know the whole person in her students. But she says teaching all K to 5th grades as the greenhouse teacher gives her the opportunity to know them on a much deeper level. She learns not only if a child can read on grade level; she knows who shares highly coveted aquaponics tools, who gently transplants seedlings, who has enough stamina to power all four light bulbs on the energy bike and who can always spot the hidden frogs.
Shakira Provasoli
Hands-on, project-based science
Outside the classroom, Shakira’s contribution to the NY Sun Works program goes much deeper. She was one of the first teachers to join the team led by NY Sun Works’ Executive Director Manuela Zamora, to develop the extensive K through 12th grade curriculum Discovering Sustainability Science. The curriculum goes hand-in-hand with the organization’s hydroponic science labs and offers a new way of teaching hands-on, project-based science while covering state-mandated standards. The in-depth curriculum is being used in NY Sun Works’ partner schools throughout New York City and the state and is featured in an eponymous annual youth conference.
“I feel incredibly lucky to have students who eagerly race into my hydroponic classroom, determined to be the first ones to spot the ladybug eggs, power the energy bike, spray the seedlings, harvest kale, test the pH, monitor water quality, construct their own hydroponic system or correctly identify a pest.”
—Shakira Provasoli
In 2012, NY Sun Works launched a teacher training program. There was no question that Shakira would be the ideal candidate to lead the 36-hour course, “Water, Waste and Energy: integrating themes of sustainability into the classroom.” Since the course was implemented, it has been offered through the N.Y. Department of Education 16 times and has trained more than 150 teachers from both public and private schools in New York.
With her Presidential Innovation Award, Shakira hopes to show other educators how critical environmental education is to students and to our planet. School age children today need to have the tools to spark creative ideas for solutions that will lessen the effects of climate change in the future.
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Sidsel Robards, Director, Development and Events, NY SunWorks
NY Sun Works is a non-profit organization that builds innovative science labs in urban schools. Through their Greenhouse Project Initiative they use hydroponic farming technology to educate students and teachers about the science of sustainability. www.nysunworks.org
Indoor Farming Feeding Hundreds Each Day in Connecticut
November 1, 2017,
MERIDEN, Conn. (WTNH) — Indoor farming is underway in the state of Connecticut thanks to a group of young entrepreneurs.
Trifecta Ecosystems Incorporated has just fully filled out its new downtown Meriden aquaponics facility with thousands of plants growing in about 12 inches of water vertically and on a flat surface.
This historic facility is a massive former ball-bearing plant that they fully transformed.
CEO Spencer Curry says never in his wildest imagination did he expect to be in this kind of start-up business because he had been a Latin and philosophy major, but here he is and his company is thriving.
“We can feed about 300 people per week…An 11-ounce container which is like that large container at Whole Foods,” Curry stated.
“This is lettuce in a vertical grow tower,” Curry explained. “You’re actually seeing them hang vertically like that and that allows us to get more plants per square feet.”
Curry showed us other growing methods as well.
“This is actually another style of growing called deep water culture and this is the style we choose for our actual commercial farm in Meriden,” he said. “We use a high-efficiency LED grow lights from Fluence which is a company that we are working with for our commercial farm here.”
Curry said his business is mostly growing kale, lettuce, salad greens, cooking greens and herbs.
“Our model is about building our own network of farms and integrating that with both the existing farms that are out there and new farms that our clients are starting,” Curry said. “We honestly see Connecticut as primed to be a nationwide leader in indoor and controlled environment agriculture, but we also see our company as a much larger company than just the state. We want to develop our model here in Connecticut and make Connecticut really the de facto state in the nation to look toward controlled environment agriculture or CEA. We want to build the city that feeds itself and we want that to start here in Connecticut.”
Curry’s company works a lot with schools, so if you want to grow some greens vertically in your classroom, get in touch with them.
It grows right out of a fish tank, you farm fish and plants together.
You can suscribe to the greens right out of their farm in Meriden. It’s located at 290 Pratt Street.
To find out more, go to www.trifectaecosystems.com.
NOSB Votes Not To Ban Hydroponics From Organic Certification
A longtime organic tomato farmer believes this could effectively be the beginning of “divorce proceedings” between the organic movement and the USDA’s National Organic Program.
The U.S. National Organic Standards Board (NOSB) has controversially voted against banning hydroponic and aquaponic crops being eligible for organic certification, in a move that has provoked strong opinions from the sector’s stakeholders.
The vote took place last week as part of the advisory board’s fall meeting in Jacksonville, Florida, which was open to the public and involved a range of testimonies given to the 15-member board.
The board voted to prohibit aeroponic agriculture – which grows plants suspended in the air with their roots exposed – but did not pass motions to ban hydroponics, a method that cultivates plants in water-based nutrient solutions, or aquaponics which combines hydroponic systems with farmed fish operations.
A U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) spokesperson told Fresh Fruit Portal the NOSB had heard two days of testimony that were mostly focused on the three production systems.
“The Board did not come to an agreement on any recommendations about the certification of hydroponic or aquaponic production systems. Both systems remain eligible for Organic Certification,” she said.
“The Board passed a proposal to recommend prohibition of aeroponics systems in organic production. Certification of aeroponic operations also remains allowed while USDA considers the Board’s work on this topic.”
Organic pioneers have typically argued that including hydroponic crops in the National Organic Program (NOP) undermines the integrity of the label and that nurturing the fertility of the soil is a fundamental aspect of the farming method.
Meanwhile, those on the other side of the debate have held that there should be no issue including hydroponics as long as farming inputs are organic.
Maintaining the status quo
Organic Trade Association (OTA) farm policy director Nate Lewis said that this vote essentially maintained the status quo for the vast majority of the industry.
“All these systems have been allowed in organic since 2002, so I think the outcome – with the exception of aeroponics – shouldn’t really change the reality for many producers,” he said, explaining that organic aeroponics represented a tiny proportion of the sector.
He said the OTA would have supported the motion to ban hydroponics – as it did in 2010 when the NOSB recommended prohibiting the production method – if the definition of the production system had remained unchanged.
However, he said that as the Crops Subcommittee had revised the definition and coupled it with proposed standards for organic container production – which involves raising plants in containers filled with a mixture of organic matter, water and nutrients – the association, therefore, did not support it this time around.
It should be noted that despite the NOSB previously voting to recommend hydroponics be banned from organic certification – albeit at a time when the hydroponic industry was far less developed than today – the advice was not upheld by regulator the NOP.
Lewis also commented that among the OTA’s members were those who strongly supported organic certifications for hydroponics and those who strongly opposed them, but said there was a “significant segment” of membership in the middle who thought entirely water-based systems shouldn’t be allowed but container production should be, with appropriate guidelines and standards.
Banning would have been “irresponsible”
United Natural Foods vice president of policy and industry relations Melody Meyer said it was positive to see so many members of the organic community come out to participate in last week’s event, but believed the decision left the sector “deeply divided”.
“I was present in Jacksonville to witness one of the most divided NOSB meetings to date.I believe they made the right decision not to prohibit these out-of-soil production methods,” she said.
“It would have put hundreds of growers out of business, taken valuable supply away from organic consumers and squelched innovation in our movement.”
Meanwhile, the head of the Recirculating Farms Commission, which represents hydroponic and aquaponic growers, also believed the NOSB had made the right decision in not prohibiting the two production methods.
The entity’s executive director Marianne Cufone said that as many products from these farms already carried a USDA Organic label, it would have been “irresponsible and confusing” for consumers and farmers to withdraw it now.
“By siding with current science and recognizing that existing law purposely leaves the door open for various farming methods, the NOSB is sending a critical message that sustainability and innovation are valuable in U.S. agriculture,” she said in a statement.
“These goals are at the center of the nationwide local food movement and spur growth of urban and rural farms alike, by a wide range of people. Inclusiveness is important in our food system.
“The Board did vote to prohibit use of aeroponics in USDA Organic production and indicated they would discuss what type of label hydroponic and aquaponic USDA Organic certified products would display.”
The financial factor?
In support of the motions to ban the three production methods, Mark Kastel of farm policy watchdog group the Cornucopia Institute said the industry had effectively created “two organic labels”.
“One label is all about integrity and production and that impacts the nutritional flavor and quality of the food (found at farmers’ markets, CSAs, co-ops and other local retailers). The other is all about profit,” he said.
“What has made the organic industry financially attractive is the fact that consumers are willing to pay a premium for food produced to a different environmental and animal husbandry model.”
He also believed that part of the “organic story” had been about economic justice for family farmers, and that industrial-scale hydroponic production is a stark disconnect from that.
“The industry, in throwing their weight around the regulatory arena at the USDA, in appealing to Congress when that doesn’t work, is poised to kill the golden goose. A loss of consumer goodwill will impact all players, large and small – growers, distributors and retailers.”
The Cornucopia Institute is now engaging with its outside legal counsel to investigate filing a federal lawsuit, he said.
Dave Chapman, a longtime organic tomato grower with a farm in Vermont, said he was “dismayed” by the result of the vote and that it was a “great disappointment”.
“The fact that it was a close vote is a sign of how much the whole process of the National Organic Program has been compromised. It should have been consensus that hydroponics should not be certified as organic,” he said.
“That was the last vote of the same body seven years earlier when there was just one descending vote. What happened in seven years that suddenly reversed the definition of organic? I would say what happened was a lot of money.
“There was no new scientific evidence. I think the market was invaded by some large companies that were making hundreds of millions of dollars and that is what changed the conversation.”
Chapman also emphasized that the organic movement and the NOP were two different things, and believed last week’s vote may result in some profound changes in the future.
“I think that this vote was basically the beginning of divorce proceedings. The NOP is of course going to continue, and the organic movement is going to continue, but I think they’re not going to continue together.
“If consumers become aware that most of the tomatoes – and soon I suspect most of the berries, cucumbers, pepper, lettuce and basil – they’re buying in the store that’s certified organic is in fact hydroponic, they’re going to become further disheartened and stop using organic certification for the basis of how they find good food to buy.
“I think that most likely we will see the creation of one or many alternative labels to the USDA, because the USDA is failing. Of course, this is going to be a lot of work and very confusing, but I really don’t know what other choice there is.”
Cornell Group Explores Future of Indoor Farming
Known as controlled environment agriculture (CEA), the systems combine greenhouse environmental controls such as heating and lighting with hydroponic and soilless production, enabling year-round production of fresh vegetables.
R.J. Anderson/Cornell Cooperative Extension
Doctoral student Jonathan Allred, center, leads a tour of Cornell greenhouses in November.
Cornell Group Explores Future of Indoor Farming
By Jill Monti | November 21, 2017
R.J. Anderson/Cornell Cooperative Extension
Hydroponic tomatoes growing in a Cornell greenhouse.
Indoor farming entrepreneurs and experts came to Cornell in early November with a goal: leverage the innovation at the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences to create viable businesses for local vegetables and produce grown indoors.
Known as controlled environment agriculture (CEA), the systems combine greenhouse environmental controls such as heating and lighting with hydroponic and soilless production, enabling year-round production of fresh vegetables. The process extends the growing season through a range of low-tech solutions – such as row covers and plastic-covered tunnels – to such high-tech solutions as fully automated glass greenhouses with computer controls and LED lights.
Led by Neil Mattson, director of Cornell CEA and associate professor in theSchool of Integrative Plant Science, Cornell has become a world leader in CEA research. In early November, the Cornell CEA Advisory Council, which was formed in 2015 to expand the retail and food service markets for products grown using CEA, hosted on campus more than 80 entrepreneurs and stakeholders from across the Northeast to discuss the state of the indoor farming industry, urban agriculture, supermarket trends and new technology.
At the conference the group announced the formation of the Controlled Environment Agriculture Global Association, an organization to foster growth, understanding and sharing ideas related to controlled environment agriculture and associated industries.
Erico Mattos, executive director of the newly formed Greenhouse Lighting and Systems Engineering (GLASE) consortium, presented his vision to advance CEA by bringing together expertise from industry and academia to create solutions.
“The CEA Advisory Council meeting provided a great opportunity to connect with key players from the different segments of the CEA supply chain in New York. I was impressed with the quality and quantity of the ongoing initiatives in this area supported by Cornell University professors and staff members and the level of engagement from the industry members,” Mattos said.
Mattos said private companies and public research from Cornell offer collaborative opportunities that can advance the CEA industry.
Cornell graduates from the CEA program have been in high demand from companies who wish to leverage their skills and knowledge. Little Leaf Farms, a leader in indoor lettuce production founded by Paul Sellew ’79 and based in Devens, Massachusetts, has hired numerous graduates.
“These talented individuals have provided immediate contributions to our business,” said Tim Cunniff, Little Leaf Farms executive vice president of sales and marketing. “It is exciting to see how Cornell is expanding its commitment in controlled environment agriculture to include the business of running a CEA operation. Cornell is in an excellent position to advance a scalable local food movement, and all of us at Little Leaf Farms are excited to be part of the process.”
Paul Brentlinger, who served on the grower panel and is the second-generation owner of CropKing, said his business and Cornell “have similar outlooks on the future generations of farmers, and we support Cornell as much as we can with their goal of educating the next generation of CEA operators.”
Laura Biasillo, agricultural economic development specialist at Cornell Cooperative Extension (CCE) of Broome County, said: “CCE is the ‘boots on the ground,’ providing everything from technical assistance to the business planning, cost analysis and financing needed by startups and business that are expanding.”
The conference attracted participants from traditional agricultural businesses interested in adding CEA to existing operations, to individuals with significant business experience, to those not yet in agriculture.
“The diverse perspectives made the conversations highly engaging, and building a network for this emerging New York ag sector was one of the key benefits of the conference,” said Aileen Randolph, outreach and communications manager of the New York Farm Viability Institute. “Now it’s up to the participants to do the hard work of utilizing this information for their specific business planning process.”
Jill Monti is technical lead at the Cornell Institute for Food Systems Industry Partnership Program.
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Philips Lighting To Install its First LED Grow Light Project in New Zealand at Gourmet Mokai
Philips Lighting To Install its First LED Grow Light Project in New Zealand at Gourmet Mokai
November 21, 2017
Eindhoven, The Netherlands - Philips Lighting (Euronext: LIGHT), the world leader in lighting, today announced it has signed its first LED grow light project in New Zealand with Gourmet Mokai Ltd to improve the quality and cost efficiency of growing its popular Campari cocktail tomatoes.
Gourmet Mokai Ltd is part of the New Zealand Gourmet group of companies and sells premium fruits and vegetables to local markets and in Australia, Japan and Southeast Asia. The new LED grow lighting will be installed in January 2018 in a 4,500 square meter greenhouse at the facility in Mokai on the North Island, known for its sophisticated eco-friendly growing practices.
"Over the years, our LED technologies have helped tomato growers across the globe produce better quality fruit and higher yields, with more control over their growing climate," said Udo van Slooten, Business Leader Horticulture at Philips Lighting. "We feel privileged to be participating with New Zealand Gourmet, a leader in its field, and look forward to showing other growers in the region what we are doing at this location."
Gourmet Mokai Ltd is a joint venture of New Zealand Gourmet and two New Zealand Maori trusts, and it uses naturally occurring underground geothermal steam for heating. The Campari tomatoes are grown under glass using a hydroponic type method. The LED system chosen combines Philips GreenPower LED toplighting with GreenPower LED interlighting.
"We expect several benefits from the LED grow lights. We are using an optimal spectrum for plant growth and crop management, based on the LED light recipe specified by Philips Lighting's horticultural team. We also hope to improve the taste, vitamin C content and shelf life of our product with the LED grow lights," said Roelf Schreuder, Production Director Protected Crops at New Zealand Gourmet. "At the same time, we expect to reduce our operating costs and gain more control over the growing climate as the LEDs produce hardly any heat."
According to Schreuder, Gourmet Mokai must first learn how to grow tomatoes under LED lights and evaluate how it affects their heating set-up, CO2 supply, irrigation management and pollination. "We release bumblebees to pollinate our crops. However, when there's no daylight and the lighting system is on, the beehives have to be closed and the bees can no longer pollinate the crops. The lights will be connected with the existing Hoogendoorn climate computer system which will also control the opening and closing of the bumblebee boxes and CO2 supply."
Several parties are collaborating to make this project a success, including Philips Lighting, RTF Climate, Agrolux, Zonda Beneficials and Hoogendoorn Automation with the iSii Next Generation System equipped with a special LED light module software package.
For further information, please contact:
Philips Lighting - Horticulture LED Solutions
Daniela Damoiseaux, Global Marcom Manager Horticulture
Tel: +31 6 31 65 29 69
E-mail: daniela.damoiseaux@philips.com
www.philips.com/horti
About Philips Lighting
Philips Lighting (Euronext: LIGHT), the world leader in lighting products, systems and services, delivers innovations that unlock business value, providing rich user experiences that help improve lives. Serving professional and consumer markets, we lead the industry in leveraging the Internet of Things to transform homes, buildings and urban spaces. With 2016 sales of EUR 7.1 billion, we have approximately 34,000 employees in over 70 countries. News from Philips Lighting is located at the Newsroom, Twitter and LinkedIn. Information for investors can be found on the Investor Relations page.
Pioneers of Organic Farming Are Threatening to Leave The Program They Helped Create
Pioneers of Organic Farming Are Threatening to Leave The Program They Helped Create
By Caitlin Dewey November 2 at 11:48 AM
(iStockPhoto)
The pioneers of the sustainable farming movement are mourning what they call the downfall of the organic program, following a Wednesday night vote by a group of government farming advisers that could determine the future of the $50 billion organic industry.
At issue was whether a booming generation of hydroponic, aquaponic and aeroponic farms — which grow plants in nutrients without using soil, frequently indoors — could continue to sell their produce under the “organic” label.
In a series of narrow votes, an advisory board to the U.S. Department of Agriculture voted to allow the majority of these operators to remain a part of the organic program, dealing a blow to the movement's early leaders.
[‘Uncertainty and dysfunction’ have overtaken USDA program for organic foods, key lawmaker says]
Organic pioneers have argued that including hydroponic produce under the label has undermined the integrity of the program they fought decades to establish, and at a time when it is already under intense scrutiny. Some have said they will consider leaving the USDA-regulated program entirely.
“This was the Hail Mary pass to save the National Organic Program, and they didn't catch it,” said Dave Chapman, a longtime organic tomato farmer who lobbied to have hydroponics banned from the organics label. “They did incalculable damage to the seal tonight. It's just going to take them a while to realize it.”
Wednesday's recommendation, issued by the National Organic Standards Board, came in four parts.
The board voted to keep out aeroponic farming, which grows plants — typically herbs and leafy greens — suspended in the air with their roots exposed. But it voted to allow hydroponics, which grow plants in water-based nutrient solutions, and aquaponics, which combine hydroponic systems with farmed fish operations.
The board also declined to tighten its restrictions on container growing, a variation on hydroponics that involves raising plants in containers filled with a mixture of organic matter, water and nutrients. That system has been adopted by a number of major organic berry growers, such as Driscoll’s and Wholesum Harvest.
Since 2000, the National Organic Program has strictly regulated which foods can be called organic, and how organic foods are grown and raised. Those standards are typically based on the recommendations of the NOSB, an advisory body composed of farmers, environmentalists and representatives from the organic industry.
In a 2010 vote, NOSB recommended a ban on virtually all types of soilless growing. But in an unusual departure, the USDA continued to certify hydroponic and aquaponic farms, claiming that NOSB had not adequately considered the breadth of the industry.
Now that the board and the department are in agreement, the future of hydroponics in the organic program is much more certain, said Marianne Cufone, the executive director of the Recirculating Farms Coalition, which represents hydroponic and aquaponic growers.
“I think this sends a powerful message that they're embracing change in agriculture,” Cufone said. “That the [organic program] wants to be inclusive, not exclusive.”
This approach has pained old-school organic farmers, who have spent the past seven years arguing that soilless systems undermine the main principles of that program. When that movement emerged in the first half of the 20th century, they argue, it promised a version of agriculture that not only reduced the use of certain fertilizers and pesticides, but that contributed to the health of the soil and the rest of the environment.
During NOSB testimony Tuesday, several organic farmers protested the certification of hydroponic farms, wearing T-shirts that said “Save the Organic Label.” At recent rallies in Hanover, N.H., and Burlington, Vt., protesters held signs with slogans such as “keep the soil in organic.”
“This notion that organic farmers are stuck in the past, or that they’re a bunch of Luddites hanging on to the way things used to be — that’s a misnomer,” said Cameron Harsh, the senior manager for organic and animal policy at the Center for Food Safety. “Soilless systems are just incompatible with the organic program and its regulations.”
But in a series of close 8-7 votes Wednesday, the NOSB appeared to disagree. Instead, it sided with hydroponic growers, many of whom have spent several years and several thousand dollars acquiring their organic certification.
Their advocates have argued that soilless farming is consistent with the goals of the organic program: It utilizes organic fertilizers and cuts down on pesticide and water use — often to levels much lower than those on land-based organic operations. Because hydroponic farms are frequently built indoors, they are said to provide opportunity to urban growers who could not otherwise access agricultural land.
“Don’t get me wrong — I love going to the farmers market,” said Matt Barnard, the chief executive of the indoor farming start-up. Plenty, which grows organically certified greens and herbs. “It’s just that the farmers market supplies something like half of one percent of the fresh fruits and vegetables in the U.S.”
“What we are doing,” Barnard added, “is just as organic as anyone else.”
The early leaders of the organic movement say they aren't sure what “organic” means anymore, however.
The hydroponics debate comes at a moment when the organics program has been rocked by high-profile scandals, from fraudulent imports to suspect dairy feedlots, and after a period of sustained growth.
Organic sales topped $47 billion in 2016, according to the Organic Trade Association, representing 5 percent of all U.S. food sales. That growth has not been driven by idyllic family farms, either. Increasingly, the organic market is dominated by industrial brands that look little different from their conventional counterparts.
Chapman likens his struggle now to that of a parent confronting a rowdy teenager. He spent years growing the movement, he said, and loves it despite its flaws. On Wednesday night, he left the NOSB meeting with a group of other old-school organic farmers, determined to discuss how, and if, they could still support their problem child.
“The question is, do we abandon the National Organic Program and find a new way to identify ourselves?” Chapman asked. “It’s a genuine question. I don’t know. We feel powerless.”
Read more:
How millions of cartons of 'organic' milk contain an oil brewed in industrial vats of algae
The labels said ‘organic.’ But these massive imports of corn and soybeans weren’t.
NOSB Votes to Keep Organic Certification For hydroponic And Aquaponic Product
NOSB Votes to Keep Organic Certification For hydroponic And Aquaponic Product
NOVEMBER 02, 2017
The National Organic Standards Board rejected a series of proposals that would have revoked the organic certifications of growers who incorporate container, hydroponic and aquaponic production tools in their farms and production locations.
Lee Frankel, executive director of the Coalition of Sustainable Organics, applauded the ruling, saying, “The ultimate impact of the proposals would have removed significant supplies of currently certified organic fresh vegetables and fruits from the market. We need more product that meets the high standards of the USDA Organic Program, not less. The most viable option to achieve this goal is to use all certified systems and scales of production, not to kick certain growing practices out of the industry. The organic industry should embrace and promote diversity rather than stifle it.”
The members of the NOSB voted Nov. 1 by a margin of 8 to 7 to reject the proposals to make hydroponic and aquaponic production methods prohibited practices under the USDA organic standards. In addition, the NOSB rejected the proposal by a vote of 8 to 7 to create prescriptive nitrogen ratios in other container production systems.
The proposed definition of hydroponics was any system in a container (roots of a plant not in the outer crust of the Earth) that does not have at least 50 percent of the nitrogen needs of the plant in the container before planting and that no more than 20 percent of nitrogen needs are delivered through the irrigation system, watering cans or in a liquid form.
The NOSB did vote to make aeroponics a prohibited practice by a vote of 14 in favor of the ban with one member abstaining from the vote. This recommendation will now go to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Given that the NOSB is technically a Federal Advisory Committee, the staff of the National Organic Program and other USDA officials will determine if the USDA will begin formal rulemaking to modify the existing USDA organic standards. The USDA typically will move forward with rule making or return the proposal for additional clarification. Only after a public comment period and regulatory review would the proposal convert into a regulation.
“I am happy that enough members of the NOSB saw the wisdom of ensuring that organic rules do not arbitrarily discriminate against production in urban, desert, or tropical areas, nor should they exclude other systems that use containers and greenhouses,” said Frankel. “We should trust growers to make their own determination to know when growing in the soil or in containers make the most sense for the protection of the consumer and the ecology we all share.”
Unique Indoor Farm In Manhattan Grows Over 150 Crop Varieties
‘Farm.One’ is a unique indoor farm in Manhattan using technology to bring flavor and rarity year round
Unique Indoor Farm In Manhattan Grows Over 150 Crop Varieties
Linked by ilovewushu | Excerpt:
Tour Manhattan’s only indoor hydroponic farm, growing more than 100 varieties of rare herbs, edible flowers and microgreens. Sip complementary sparking wine as you taste new and unique flavors from around the world. A unique, fun experience for any local foodie or tourist in New York.
Inside our new, secret, larger facility in Tribeca, our unique farm uses LED lighting and hydroponics to grow a huge variety of culinary plants, numbering over 200 to date. The indoor grow room uses no pesticides or herbicides, and uses around 95% less water than a traditional farm. The farm supplies Michelin-starred restaurants in the city, including Atera, Daniel, Jungsik, Chef’s Table and others.
In this one-hour tour, you will have the chance to taste dozens of rare plant varieties, most of which are never available fresh in New York City. With expert guidance from our team, you will uncover the science of how plants thrive in completely-controlled conditions, and experience new flavors and ways of thinking about culinary plants.
Organic Board Decides Hydroponic Can Be Certified Organic
Organic Board Decides Hydroponic Can Be Certified Organic
National Organic Standards Board votes on whether to change federal organic standards to allow for hydroponically produced products.
Jacqui Fatka 1 | Nov 03, 2017
At the semi-annual meeting of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Organic Standards Board (NOSB), front and center was the debate about whether to change the federal organic standards to allow organic produce grown hydroponically.
In a series of 8-7 votes, the NOSB voted that hydroponic and aquaponic growers can continue to market certified organic products.
The action is a recommendation from the NOSB to USDA. The National Organic Standards Board voted on four separate proposals related to soil-less production in organic:
A motion to prohibit aeroponics in organic passed 14 yes, 1 abstention.
· A motion to prohibit aquaponics in organic did not pass, with a majority voting against the motion.
· A motion to restrict how and when nitrogen can be introduced to organic container production did not pass, with a majority voting against the motion.
· A motion to prohibit hydroponics, which was defined as any container system that didn't meet the proposed requirements for organic container system did not pass, with a majority voting against the motion. However the vote was 7 in favor and 8 against.
The practice of growing fruits and vegetables in inert mediums that depend on liquid fertilizers, rather than in rich organically managed soil, has been intensely controversial. The Organic Trade Assn. actually opposes aeroponics in organic, and supports the board recommendation to prohibit this in organic.
OTA does not support a system that is entirely water-based and believes it should be prohibited in organic, but OTA did not support the recommendation as written because the Crops Subcommittee had revised the definition for hydroponics by coupling it with proposed production standards for organic container production. OTA would have supported a motion to prohibit hydroponics had NOSB retained the previously accepted definition for hydroponics.
OTA said it supports container production in organic with clear, meaningful standards, but OTA did not support the recommendation as written before the board, because it did not meet the bar for a clear consensus-based recommendation for the Agriculture Secretary.
NewFoodEconomy said when the federal government first began to explore codifying organic standards into law, soil was an important focus of their efforts.
NewFoodEconomy reported that Fred Kirschenmann, a longtime leader in sustainable agriculture, distinguished fellow at Iowa State University’s Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture, and president of Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture in Pocantico Hills, New York, said, “Several of us on the board felt that soil health should be part of the requirement for certification. We had a lot of debates about that, but finally the board became convinced that this was an important part of the future of organic certification, and we made that recommendation to the National Organic Standards Board.”
The news source said attorneys at USDA pushed back, according to Kirschenmann.
“They threw it out,” they reported Kirschenmann saying . “In the report they gave back to us, they said that regulations have to be answered with a yes or a no, and requiring soil health is too complex an issue.”
As such USDA insisted on an input-oriented system certification and requires that a farmer use only fertilizers on the approved list, and avoid completely any chemical on the banned list.
It’s The End of “Organic” As We Know It
It’s The End of “Organic” As We Know It
After a bitterly divisive battle, the USDA has ruled that hydroponic growers can continue to be certified organic. Some say it marks the end of a still-young movement. For others, it's a new beginning.
November 2nd, 2017
by Joe Fassler Kate Cox
In Jacksonville, Florida on Wednesday, a two-decade long controversy that has the potential to change organic food production hinged on a single vote: whether or not to keep the “soil” in certified “organic.” In a series of 8-7 votes, the National Organic Standards Board (NOSB) voted that hydroponic and aquaponic growers can continue to market certified organic products.
Most Americans probably don’t think about hydroponic farms (which grow plants inside soilless greenhouses in trays of nutrient solution), and aquaponic farms (which marry hydroponics and aquaculture—or farmed fish and other aquatic organisms—to produce plants and fish crops) when they envision an organic farm. That’s because we often associate the word “organic” with a more traditional, pastoral vision of crops grown under the open air, perhaps accompanied by a red farmhouse and some cows grazing in the background.
The vote was a clear signal that the “organic” label—one with a strong public reputation and powerful market clout—is going to continue to get more inclusive.
And while that vision is far from what organic—now a more than $50 billion industry in the United States alone—has become, many organic farmers, especially the older, more traditional sort, who pioneered and advocated for the certification in the first place, want to make sure that certification extends only to this more traditional interaction with a plot of land. They feel their business—and the very value of the word “organic” itself—depends on it.
For them, Wednesday’s decision was a deeply emotional blow.
“The vibe was not mellow,” says Phil LaRocca, an organic winemaker from Forest Ranch, California, who attended the proceedings in Jacksonville.
Meanwhile, outside, a coalition of traditional, soil-based organic farmers—including Eliot Coleman, founder of Four Season Farm, who many consider to be one of the fathers of the modern organic movement—protested, brandishing “Keep the Soil in Organic” signs. LaRocca says the atmosphere at times grew “hostile” as various organic stakeholders pressed their cases. And some of those stakeholders admitted that they themselves were deeply conflicted.
“It was actually—as a long-term, 45-year organic farmer—it was a little disturbing to see a bit of hostility in the room,” LaRocca says. “And I’m not putting a judgment on that. I understand the issue and I have friends with both sides of the argument and understood both sides of the argument. So it made it very difficult for me personally to have to go through it all.”
It’s not that this decision signals any kind of immediate change. Aquaponic and hydroponic growers were already selling certified organic products, and have been doing so for years. The vote was an attempt to stop them from doing just that. But it was also a clear signal that the “organic” label—one with a strong public reputation and powerful market clout—is going to continue to get more inclusive. For some, that’s a big step in the right direction. For others, it’s a betrayal of the very values that launched a movement.
Eliot Coleman, founder of Four Season Farm, who many consider to be one of the fathers of the modern organic movement
Nearly 80 years ago, a global movement coalesced in opposition to the rapid, post-war evolution of farming practices, from traditional methods used for millennia, to commercialized, industrial-scale manufacturing methods that required less manual and animal labor and more machinery, herbicides, and fertilizer.
That movement was termed “organic farming” and the basic concept was this: Nature does it better. The farmers like Coleman who helped launch organic farming into the mainstream drew on the writings of farmer-philosophers like Liberty Hyde Baily, Rudolph Steiner, John Muir, Sir Albert Howard, and Aldo Leopold, who felt that the small, diversified farm was a “closed loop”—a managed ecosystem, even a self-sustaining organism, that produced everything it needed to consume. Animals fertilized the plants with their manure, and the plants fed the animals, and the farmer reaped the excess. Nothing was brought in from outside. Nothing was wasted. The idea was that nature already provided farmers with everything they needed, if they were just willing to be resourceful and do a little extra work.
This ancient—but increasingly unfashionable—method was posited as an alternative to what organic-minded critics called “substitution agriculture”: namely, a system that brought in what it needed from outside the farm. Petroleum-based synthetic fertilizers nourished the plants. Chemical pesticides kept bugs away. Animals, if there were any, were fed with corn and soy grown elsewhere.
What happens when an organic grower uses all the right inputs, just without any soil?
For the organic-minded, soil quality—outside the quasi-religious belief in farming as a calling and the farm as a self-enclosed cosmos—was the chief argument against substitution agriculture. Rather than using chemicals to artificially nourish plants, and keep pests at bay, organic farmers focused first and foremost on building soil health. For them, the dirt was the beginning and the end: It was why they kept animals, why they cover-cropped, why they worked so hard to diversify crops that kept balanced nutrients in the soil.
Which is why, when the federal government first began to explore codifying organic standards into law, soil was an important focus of their efforts. Some would say it was the focus.
“Several of us on the board felt that soil health should be part of the requirement for certification,” says Fred Kirschenmann, a longtime leader in sustainable agriculture, distinguished fellow at Iowa State University’s Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture, and president of Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture in Pocantico Hills, New York. “We had a lot of debates about that, but finally the board became convinced that this was an important part of the future of organic certification, and we made that recommendation to the National Organic Standards Board.”
But the attorneys at the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) pushed back, according to Kirschenmann.
“They threw it out,” he says. “In the report they gave back to us, they said that regulations have to be answered with a yes or a no, and requiring soil health is too complex an issue.”
The soil-first ethos requires a leap of faith: to proponents, the benefits are tangible, but they’re in the eye of the beholder
Instead, USDA insisted on an input-oriented system: Regulation would be focused on what went into the soil or not, but not on the more nebulous idea of soil “health.” While the final organic standard does stipulate that “the producer must select and implement tillage and cultivation practices that maintain or improve the physical, chemical, and biological condition of soil,” certification requires that a farmer use only fertilizers on the approved list, and avoid completely any chemical on the banned list.
Which brings us to the confused system we have today, and the argument that finally came to a head this week: Organic is supposed to promote soil health, but the terms that the stipulation uses focus on the list of chemicals used (or not). What happens when an organic grower uses all the right inputs, just without any soil?
Karen Archipley thinks the suggestion that hydroponic farming is a newfangled interloper is just wrong. In an interview with New Food Economy on Thursday by phone, she cited some impressive—and ancient—precedents: the floating Aztec gardens and the hanging gardens of Babylon.
“Our methods are not new,” she says. “Our methods date back to 600 B.C.”
“It has outcompeted soil because it’s so cheap to do.”
Despite this distinguished ancestry, Archipley—who runs Archi’s Acreage, a small hydroponic farm in Escondido, California, with her husband Colin—says she’s long felt excluded from the organic movement’s soil-worshiping sector. In her view, the reason is simple: “This whole issue has been about market share,” she says.
It’s not hard to understand why the organic vanguard would feel threatened by hydroponics. According to organic winemaker Phil LaRocca, hydroponic operations are “quicker and easier” to set up than new soil-based operations; at the same time, they can skip the onerous three-year transition period required for soil-based conventional farmers who want to start selling organic.
Soil-based advocates don’t necessarily deny this. Organic tomato grower Dave Chapman of Long Wind Farm in Vermont notes that in Europe certain crops are virtually all grown hydroponically, a massive transformation that’s taken place over the last twenty years. “It has outcompeted soil because it’s so cheap to do,” he says. According to Chapman, the real eye-opening moment for many soil-based farmers was the fact that Driscoll’s, one of the country’s biggest producers of organic berries, had switched to hydroponic.
“That was a game-changer,” he says. “Before that we thought it was a relatively minor problem.”
But that “minor problem” is now a quickly growing industry—one that, according to critics, is antithetical to the very idea of organic.
According to California Certified Organic Farmers (CCOF), a trade group representing organic growers within the state, “hydroponic systems are not inherently better or worse than in-ground systems”
“Organic has always been about the apparently magical things that happen as a result of building and maintaining the fertility of the soil. It’s not magic—it’s mother nature at her finest. But that is the belief of the organic movement: that you get plant health and animal health and human health that is unobtainable any other way if you can work with those ecosystems,” says Chapman. “Of course, hydroponic production is the opposite of this philosophy. Which is that you give the plant what it needs, and you get great plant growth. But the downside is that nutrition is inferior and the health is inferior, the system is more vulnerable to insects and diseases so you need more pesticides and fungicides. You end up in a downward spiral. It’s like eating a bad diet for a human, so you need more medicine, but the medicine is damaging to you so you get sicker. On and on it goes.”
Coleman puts it even more bluntly:
“They are growing in the spirit of greed,” he says. “The only reason these guys want organic certification is because these guys have known for a long time that hydroponic doesn’t make people’s mouths water and no one is lining up outside their grocery stores protesting for hydroponic vegetables. These guys know the organic label is the label people want. They want to illegally become part of it.”
For all its cultural success, the organic industry is still in its economic infancy.
It’s easy to see the reverence with which traditional organic farmers speak about the soil, and their way of thinking is powerful and compelling. The problem is that not everyone agrees they’re right. The soil-first ethos requires a leap of faith: to proponents, the benefits are tangible, but they’re in the eye of the beholder. The difference they describe can be observed, even tasted, in spite of the fact that it’s not necessarily measurable by the scientific methods currently in use.
The trouble is that not everyone agrees that this advantage exists. According to California Certified Organic Farmers (CCOF), a trade group representing organic growers within the state, “hydroponic systems are not inherently better or worse than in-ground systems.” For CCOF, it’s the more, the merrier—each approach has its pros and cons, but they’re all essentially the same thing.
Coleman has a response to that: “The whole process of certifying organics is a scam to begin with,” he says, “because the certifiers only get paid if they certify something.” In other words, in his view, the certifiers themselves have an incentive to establish a big tent.
But hydroponic growers like Karen Archipley argue that attempts to keep the soil in “organic” are not an attempt to spread the wealth, but to hoard it. In her view, the old guard’s stance is inherently undemocratic, an attitude that confines organic—and the economic benefit it confers—to a group of people who have access to farmland (increasingly an expensive luxury) in the first place.
Hydroponics, according to Colin, make “it more financially feasible for small-scale growers to make a business…. [C]ommunities in the urban environment, who have been disenfranchised from the agriculture community, can now participate.”
For his part, Coleman says that’s a stretch.
For some, a multi-pronged, diversified approach to organic is the only feasible way forward
“How does a million dollar greenhouse allow people entry?” he says. “You can do what I do with a hoe, rake, seeds. All you need is a little piece of land. Talk about ‘allowing people entry’! Imagine all the peasant farmers being told ‘you’d have better access to food if only you built this million dollar greenhouse.’”
Part of what was surely painful about the vote in Jacksonville was the sense of how far the organic community—regardless of approach—still has to go to reach mainstream acceptance. Even as the word “organic” itself has proven to have demonstrable marketing power, the fact is thatonly 1 percent of U.S. farmland is certified organic. For all its cultural success, the organic industry is still in its economic infancy.
And for some, that means a multi-pronged, diversified approach to organic is the only feasible way forward. LaRocca says that one of CCOF’s slogans has been “Make Organics the Norm”—and he feels that the only way to do that is to proceed by any means necessary, as long as the essential spirit of the movement is kept intact.
For Karen Archipley, putting limits on organic amounts to a larger failure of imagination about what the label can do and be, a way of squelching upstarts who may actually have some pretty good ideas—if only the old guys would listen.
And there you have it, the two sides of this debate.
“Why wouldn’t we encourage innovation in farming, and especially as old as this innovation is?” says Karen. “Can you imagine if Timex tried to fight the Rolex coming out, or if Timex and Rolex could try to fight the iPhone or any smartphone from having time? That’s the difference. [They’re] really trying to stop the current and I don’t understand why anyone would do that. Why wouldn’t we try to encourage this next generation of growers and say, ‘let us show you good practices?’”
Last year, at the New York Times’ “Food for Tomorrow” conference, two unlikely antagonists sat beside each other on the stage. On one side was Dan Barber, the Blue Hill chef who, perhaps more than other modern culinary master, has promoted a vision for agriculture that mimics and mirrors nature. His book The Third Plate celebrates farmers who don’t merely grow food but “grow nature”—harnessing the power of dynamic, diversified ecosystems in the pursuit of maximum health, sustainability, and taste.
On the other side, you had Kimbal Musk, the cowboy-hatted, denim-clad brother of Elon, a venture capitalist with a sustainable food fetish—and a major investor in Square Roots, a vertical farm startup launching miniature vertical farms inside low-cost, portable shipping containers. After he finished enumerating the economic and sustainability benefits, Barber answered with a simple rejoinder:
Stories related to the National Organic Standards Board:
As no-soil systems take root, “organic” reckons with its earthbound past
Can soil-free farms ever be organic?
Organic industry watchdog calls for independent investigation of USDA organic program
Carrageenan: The missing ingredient
“It’s not making me hungry,” he said.
And there you have it, the two sides of this debate. One approach is rooted in place, and tradition, and terroir—in the belief that old-school farming, based in soil, not only tastes better but satisfies deeper human appetites, a form of stewardship that transcends the pursuit of profit. On the other hand are those who have tired of the old approaches to that, who feel that existing approaches to sustainable agriculture, for their virtues, have failed to become the norm. They’re united in a desire to bring better farming to as many people as possible, and make some money at it—even if it means fundamentally reorganizing our relationship with the land, and cloistering much of agricultural production behind closed doors.
This drama is going to continue to play out. But it’s a reminder that this argument—the fact that people care, and care so deeply—is a sign of organic’s ascent, one indication that the revolution started by what Coleman calls “a bunch of old hippies” has made a lasting impression on the culture. Maybe the current tangle, involving the pioneers who built the organic movement now threatening to abandon it, is a very natural—if also very painful—by-product of that. It’s the growing pains that inevitably come alongside success. The revolution after the revolution, perhaps.
On and on it goes, indeed.
FARMHYDROPONICSNATIONAL ORGANIC STANDARDS BOARDORGANICORGANIPONICUSDA
Joe Fassler is New Food Economy's senior editor. His food safety and public health reporting has been a finalist for the James Beard Foundation Award in Journalism. Follow him @joefassler.
Kate Cox is editor of the New Food Economy. In her former life, she was a freelance health policy reporter for radio and text. Follow her @thekatecox
FreshBox Farms’ CEO Welcomes Organic Ruling, but...
FreshBox Farms’ CEO Welcomes Organic Ruling, but...
Vertical farm innovator says that more consumers are looking “beyond organic” and choosing crops grown without soil
This week, the National Organic Standards Board finally made a decision on one of the most divisive issues in the organic world: should crops grown in water, containers, or otherwise not in the ground be allowed to call themselves organic?
The decision: hydroponic and container gardens will remain eligible for organic certification.
Sonia Lo, CEO of FreshBox Farms, the nation’s largest modular vertical farm, welcomes the new ruling, but notes that consumers already are moving “beyond organic.”
FreshBox Farms uses sustainable growing enclosures that use no soil, very little water, a rigorously-tested nutrient mix and LED lighting to produce the freshest, cleanest, tastiest produce possible. FreshBox Farms’ non-GMO certified products go from harvest to the grocer’s produce section in hours, rather than days.
Lo notes that FreshBox Farms yields are better without organic nutrient use, so the Millis-based farm is not impacted by the ruling. “As organic nutrients for hydroponics become more developed, we will, of course, consider using them.”
She points out, however, that consumers are quickly learning a distinction between organic field-grown greens and non-organic indoor-grown greens, what the industry calls Beyond Organic. “And we see that consumers ARE making the Beyond Organic choice.”
“We predict three categories will move forward - field grown organic, Beyond Organic hydroponic, and organic hydroponic."
Sonia can explain why consumers are choosing greens grown indoors, why this field is growing (*no pun intended) and how FreshBox Farms' template farm is among the nation's most efficient.
Organic Hydroponics At The Grocery Store. What Are Those, Anyway?
While proponents of vertical farming rejoice, organic farmers who pioneered the movement are crestfallen (just see this eulogy from Radiance Dairy founder Francis Thicke). People are split on whether or not the decision a good idea, but pretty much everyone who cares agrees it’s a big deal.
Organic Hydroponics At The Grocery Store. What Are Those, Anyway?
November 8th, 2017
by New Food Economy
Last week, we published what felt like a 2,700-word magnum opus on the contentious vote that capped decades of debate: the United States Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) decision to continue granting organic certification to hydroponic and aquaponic farms. It’s a story some have followed with intense interest, judging from the comments we received and the ongoing conversations we’ve seen on various ag-interested message boards.
While proponents of vertical farming rejoice, organic farmers who pioneered the movement are crestfallen (just see this eulogy from Radiance Dairy founder Francis Thicke). People are split on whether or note the decision a good idea, but pretty much everyone who cares agrees it’s a big deal.
If you didn’t read the piece, we get it. Not everyone’s down for a #longread on the finer points of ag policy, especially one with a decades-long backstory and lots of technical lingo. But make no mistake, the vote is going to shape the perception of that famous, green organic seal, and that has implications for consumer choice, the environment, and the prices we pay at the supermarket.
So, to shorthand what exactly went down at the National Organic Standards Board last week, and what it means for the future of organic certification, we’ve created this handy, pocket-sized primer.
FARM
Making The Case for Hydroponics and Aquaponics as USDA Organic Certified
Making The Case for Hydroponics and Aquaponics as USDA Organic Certified
A look back at how the Coalition for Sustainable Organics has worked to keep hydroponics and aquaponics as USDA organic-certified production methods.
Originally published in Issue 14, July 2016
Organic hydroponic and aquaponic growers are waiting for the results of a National Organic Program task force report which is scheduled for release this month. Members of the NOP Organic Hydroponic and Aquaponic Task Force were appointed last fall to examine hydroponic and aquaponic production practices and their alignment with USDA organic regulations. The task force includes members who are USDA organically-certified hydroponic growers.
Hydroponic and aquaponic growers are concerned that the report may contribute to the overturning of the long-standing USDA policy to certify their operations. The reason for this concern is that there is an effort by some field growers to stop the organic certification of hydroponic and aquaponic growers by USDA.
Photos courtesy of Coalition for Sustainable Organics
Lee Frankel, executive director of Coalition for Sustainable Organics, said the organization was formed in March 2016 to give growers a platform to preserve their ability to choose the most appropriate growing method, including those where the plant is not grown in the outer crust of the Earth, to meet their site-specific conditions when producing organically.
“The coalition members believe that sustainability and using natural inputs are the pillars of the organic philosophy and movement,” he said. “For instance, some of the initial members are from Arizona and southern California, where water availability is a major issue. Being able to grow hydroponically helps these growers use up to 10 times less water to be more sustainable.”
The coalition currently has 35 members and includes growers from the United States, Mexico and Canada. Some of these organic growers produce in the field as well as hydroponically.
Frankel said the supply of organic products is becoming more international.
“Nearly one-third of all USDA-certified operations are now outside the United States,” he said. “USDA sets the standards and determines what inputs can and cannot be used, regardless of country or method of production. USDA then accredits certifiers to inspect operations around the world.
“Opponents have cited the fact that there are a number of other countries that have a ban on hydroponic organic products. But if you examine the matter more closely, the issue is often a question of semantics. For example, growers in Canada and even in some of the Nordic countries in the European Union can grow organically in containers despite a ban on hydroponics in their regulations.”
Opposition to hydroponic, aquaponic production
Frankel said one of the main opposition groups pushing for the changes in USDA organic rules is Keep the Soil in Organic. The spokesperson for the group is David Chapman, who operates Long Wind Farmin Vermont. Chapman is a member of the NOP Organic Hydroponic and Aquaponic Task Force.
“Other groups that have spoken out against hydroponic organic production include many of the organic trade associations and organic certifiers in the northeastern part of the United States,” said Frankel. “Some of the certifiers have been working with field growers for a long time so they feel it is in their best interest to support their current customers.”
Using hydroponic production methods has allowed some organic growers to use up to 10 times less water and to be more sustainable.
While there is a philosophical debate as to what organic growing does or does not mean, Frankel said there is also an economic component.
“Retailers and consumers are voting with their pocketbooks,” he said. “They appreciate a variety of flavorful and available hydroponic and aquaponic organic products on a consistent basis that meet their expectations for produce grown without synthetic pesticides.
“Sustainability and economics go hand in hand. As inputs are reduced, seasons are extended and yields are increased, enabling growers to reduce their costs.”
Frankel said another benefit to growing in containers is that it is really scale neutral.
“It allows for people who are just getting started, who were not fortunate enough to inherit a family farm or are in urban areas with high land costs, to be able to grow organically,” he said.
Changes to current standards
Frankel said USDA selected members for the NOP task force from a cross-section of people in the organic industry. They represent a broad range of technical expertise, knowledge and philosophies to examine the current regulations.
“These people were tasked with helping clarify the regulatory issues and to describe the current technologies in use,” he said. “I expect that the task force will describe how container, hydroponic and aquaponic production systems operate, how they meet the current standards and identify different interpretations of the regulations.
“The task force is not technically supposed to make recommendations. The task force is analyzing whether the production technologies used today meet current USDA regulations, standards and laws. The task force will also determine whether any areas within those regulations may need to be updated, revised or defined based on their findings.”
The Coalition for Sustainable Organics includes growers from the United States, Mexico and Canada. Some of these organic growers produce in the field as well as hydroponically in greenhouses.
Frankel said once the report is released, the National Organics Standards Board will study the document and determine if it would like to recommend changes to the current regulations. NOSB has traditionally sought input and testimony from the organic industry prior to making recommendations on any proposed changes or modifications.
“If NOSB votes to forward recommendations to USDA, USDA would then translate those recommendations into formal proposed regulations and open them up to public comment,” he said. “USDA would then respond and would incorporate meaningful comments into the final rule.”
Time for growers to respond
Frankel said release of the task force report will be another opportunity for hydroponic growers to tell their story to prevent NOSB from starting the process to push the growers out of the organic market.
“Organic-certified hydroponic and aquaponic growers need to make a case about the validity of what they are doing,” he said. “In addition to their production methods being thousands of years old, USDA has long recognized the legitimacy of these systems. The systems have helped to grow demand for organics while reducing inputs and opening the market for new growers.
“Most critically from a philosophical perspective, these production systems use the same biological processes as those of organic field growers.”
Frankel said growers have a number of ways of bringing attention to their rightful place in the organic industry.
“Growers need to participate in the all-important public comment periods in the rulemaking process,” he said. “Growers can have their retail customers share their stories through company newsletters. Highlighting growing operations with CSAs (community supported agriculture) or reaching out to the local press can help spread a common message while building a grower’s own business. Hosting farm visits is often the easiest way to directly show how a grower’s operation is following the organic principles of cycling nutrients, eliminating synthetic pesticides and conserving resources such as land and water.”
Frankel said these farm visits for fellow growers, certifiers, elected officials, trade association staff, USDA officials and even NOSB members have proven to be an effective method to dispel any misconceptions spread by opponents of these organic production systems.
“From the coalition’s point of view, everyone deserves organics,” he said. “Containers are an integral part of a more resilient production system that allows for growers of all sizes and economic backgrounds to produce organic products that an increasing number of consumers are demanding.”
For more: Coalition for Sustainable Organics,
(619) 587 45341
info@coalitionforsustainableorganics.org; http://coalitionforsustainableorganics.org.
David Kuack is a freelance technical writer in Fort Worth, Texas; dkuack@gmail.com.
Groundbreaking Held for Upcoming Hydroponics Farm in Pee Dee
Groundbreaking Held for Upcoming Hydroponics Farm in Pee Dee
November 9th, 2017, By Nia Watson, Reporter
A groundbreaking ceremony for East Nile Farms was held Thursday in Dillon County. (Source: WMBF News)
DILLON COUNTY. SC (WMBF) - Dillon County held a groundbreaking ceremony for East Nile Farms’ new facility along Heritage Road in Lake View.
The company invested $15.5 million and will create 200 new jobs in Dillon County.
“We’re definitely excited. It’s been a long time coming for Lake View and Dillon County,” said Tonny McNeil, director of economic development for Dillon County. “This is a tremendous opportunity for us, but ultimately our goal is for every single person that wants a job to have one in Dillon County.”
East Nile Farms is an indoor farming facility that grows plants without soil, using only water. The method is called hydroponics.
The company plans to produce 622,000 plants per month at the new facility. East Nile chose Dillon County for its geographic location and its people.
“Lake View, Dillon County had the type of people that enjoyed farming, people that have the background, have the skills,” said Otis Neals, CEO of East Nile Farms. “So, with the technology of hydroponics, we can take technology and combine it with people that enjoy working on farms, but also enjoy working with technology.”
Neals said with indoor farming, there are so many different jobs available. McNeil believes the hundreds of new jobs will transform the community.
“It’s definitely going to bring us closer together. It’s going to lower the unemployment rate and folks are going to be able to provide for their families and that’s really what this is all about, said McNeil.
The project has been in the works since October. The facility is expected to be open in June 2018. The company is still accepting job applications. Anyone interested can visit Dillon County Economic Development.
NOSB Votes To Continue to Allow Hydroponics Under US National Organic Program
NOSB VOTES TO CONTINUE TO ALLOW HYDROPONICS UNDER US NATIONAL ORGANIC PROGRAM
November 4, 2017 JIM MANSON
The National Organic Standards Board, the industry body that advises the US Secretary of Agriculture on organic standards, has voted to allow some crops grown hydroponically to continue to be labeled organic under the National Organic Program (NOP).
The controversial decision follows two lengthy consultations on the subject and is set against a backdrop of nationwide protests against the inclusion of hydroponics and other non-soil growing techniques in organic standards.
Many organic farmers in America argue that managing soil biology and protecting soil health are founding principles of organic systems, and that hydroponics – which uses mineral nutrient solutions in place of soil – should be entirely excluded from organic systems.
But supporters of hydroponics say that soil-less systems allow for the production of ‘clean foods’ – they exclude the use of pesticides and herbicides – in environmentally sustainable ways. And they say that by embracing innovative technologies hydroponics makes organic food available to more people.
At this week’s highly anticipated NOSB meeting, the board voted to prohibit aeroponic farming – where plants are suspended in the air with their roots exposed – but allow hydroponic and aquaponic systems to continue to labeled organic under the NOP.
There were passionate submissions from both sides of the argument during the 13 hour session, and angry reactions from some farmers – the group Keep The Soil Organic, which recently held a series of nationwide rallies ahead of the meeting, had a strong presence in the room.
One stakeholder said: “We are tricking and deceiving consumers with organic hydroponics, and large corporations are just chasing and riding the coattails of the organic label. Hydroponic is a shortcut, and these methods have been wrongly certified. Container and hydroponics don’t have to wait three years to be certified.” Another noted dryly that “conventional farmers are beginning to talk about soil health and now organic is talking about growing without the soil.”
A report by US industry website newhope360.com recorded that a representative of IFOAM EU had “traveled 20 hours to submit evidence give a three-minute comment to rally against soilless organic production” and “suggested their inclusion could encourage IFOAM to urge renegotiation of the equivalency agreement between the EU and US.”
FEATURED, HYDROPONICS, NOSB, ORGANIC, US
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jim Manson
Writer & Editor
Jim Manson is editor-in-chief of Diversified Communications UK‘s natural and organic publishing portfolio. He’s written widely on environment and development issues for specialist magazines and national media, including the Financial Times, The Guardian, The Times, and World Bank Urban Age
No Changes to Organic Standards For Containers, Hydroponics and Aquaponics
No Changes to Organic Standards For Containers, Hydroponics and Aquaponics
NOVEMBER 2, 2017 URBAN AG NEWS
National Organic Standards Board Rejects Recommendation to Remove Container, Hydroponic and Aquaponic Production Methods from Eligibility for USDA Organic Certification.
The members of the NOSB voted on Wednesday by a margin of 8 to 7 to reject the proposals to make Hydroponic and Aquaponic production methods prohibited practices under the USDA organic standards. In addition, the NOSB rejected the proposal by a vote of 8 to 7 to create prescriptive nitrogen ratio requirements and to limit delivery of nutrients through irrigation systems in other container production systems. The proposed definition of hydroponics was any system in a container (roots of a plant not in the outer crust of the Earth) that does not have at least 50 percent of the nitrogen needs of the plant in the container before planting and that no more than 20 percent of nitrogen needs are delivered through the irrigation system, watering cans or in a liquid form.
The NOSB did vote to make aeroponics a prohibited practice by a vote of 14 in favor of the ban with 1 member abstaining from the vote. This recommendation will now go to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Given that the NOSB is technically a Federal Advisory Committee, the staff of the National Organic Program and other USDA officials will determine if the USDA will begin formal rulemaking to modify the existing USDA organic standards. The USDA typically will move forward with rule making or return the proposal for additional clarification. Only after a public comment period and regulatory review would the proposal convert into a regulation.
Greenhouse production practices to be discussed on Thursday by NOSB
The NOSB will begin discussions on the need to create modifications to the standards regarding the use of artificial light, the composting and disposal of green waste and substrate after a production cycle, requirements to recycle containers, and the use of plastic mulches and weed cloth in greenhouse and container operations. No votes are scheduled for these topics.
CSO thanks all growers who contributed their views through written or oral testimony
The CSO wishes to express its gratitude to the roughly 70 producers from all sides of the issue who delivered oral comments and the hundreds of individuals that submitted written comments. The Coalition especially appreciates the time of the many growers who volunteered their time to help educate members of the NOSB and the organic community. Ultimately, both the quantity and quality of the voices explaining the importance of preserving the rights of growers to determine the most appropriate growing method for their site-specific conditions led to this mostly positive outcome.
What happens next?
The vote did not resolve the long-standing issue of the lack of consistency in how accredited auditors review the farms and production facilities of growers that incorporate containers in their systems. The members of the NOSB and the USDA NOP staff will determine in the coming hours, days and weeks if there is value in continuing work on proposed regulations that would impact other aspects of greenhouse and container production systems. The CSO will be there to protect your interests.
Everyone deserves organics
The most viable option to achieve this goal is to use all certified systems and scales of production, not to kick certain growing practices out of the industry. The organic industry should embrace and promote diversity rather than stifle it. Organic production should not be limited to annual crops grown in temperate climates with high rainfall and killing freezes in the winter. The NOSB should be ensuring that organic rules do not arbitrarily discriminate against production in urban, desert, or tropical areas, nor should they exclude other systems that use containers and greenhouses. We should trust growers to make their own determination to know when growing in the soil or in containers make the most sense for the protection of the consumer and the ecology we all share.