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Farmers of The Future at Urban Organics
Farmers of The Future at Urban Organics
December 26, 2017 by Morgan Mercer0 Comments
The interior fish incubation room of Urban Organics // Photo by Tj Turner
An inconspicuous white tube travels along the length of the ceiling, connecting two very different rooms. The first room is a cool 60 degrees and smells slightly fishy. Gray concrete floors and colorless walls make the space appear colder than it is. The neighboring room couldn’t be more different. The air smells sweet and vaguely earthy. When you open the door, it feels like stepping into the glow of a warm spring day.
This is a farm of the future.
In the middle of St. Paul, tucked inside a brewery that sat empty for years, life is thriving in the dead of winter. No soil. No natural light. Just a white pipe that carries the lifeblood of the entire operation from room to room: water. Kale, red romaine, and other leafy greens grow on racks stacked five planters high. In an adjacent room, tens of thousands of Arctic char swim in 26,000-gallon tanks. Thanks to the fish, the plants at Urban Organics grow all year long.
With a new 87,000-square-foot space at the Schmidt Brewery complex, Urban Organics is one of the largest commercial aquaponics facilities in the world. The company converts waste produced by fish to fertilize thousands of pounds of produce a month. The farm, which is certified organic by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, is 10 times larger than Urban Organics’ first facility at the historic Hamm’s Brewery complex in St. Paul.
An Arctic Char pool, racks of leafy greens and an Arctic Char // Photos by Tj Turner
“When we would tell people our plan, we still joke about the number of people who thought we were nuts. They would say, ‘Don’t quit your day job,’” says Dave Haider, who did just that when he closed down his construction business to launch the original Hamm’s site with three other partners in 2012.
Since then, the team has built a worldwide reputation as a pioneer in year-round urban organic farming. In 2014, the Guardian dubbed Urban Organics one of the 10 most innovative farms in the world. The company sets itself apart with a state-of-the-art design, courtesy of an ongoing partnership with Pentair, a global leader in water technology. At a time when the agriculture industry faces increasing environmental challenges like climate change and water shortages, Urban Organics is out to prove there is a more sustainable way to produce fresh food—one that uses less water, and stays close to home.
“People want to know where their food is coming from and that it is being farmed in this safe, sustainable manner,” says Dave, who has seen aquaponics transition from a largely unknown concept to more of a mainstream idea in recent years. “We’re still trying to prove to people that we’re not nuts, but it’s not as many as it was.”
A game-changing partnership
Fred Haberman examines rows of Romaine Lettuce // Photo by Tj Turner
Limp. Tasteless. Old. Too many stores in the Twin Cities stocked bad lettuce, and Fred Haberman was fed up. The problem was shipping. By the time his salad greens arrived from California and hit local shelves, they were already days old. That’s when Fred remembered Will Allen, a former professional basketball player who started an urban farm in Milwaukee. That’s what the Twin Cities needs, Haberman thought—food grown where it’s consumed. Coincidentally, Dave had the same idea, too.
With two other partners, they formed Urban Organics. At the time, there were only a handful of companies testing hydroponic growing methods in urban areas, and even fewer trying aquaponics. A partnership with Pentair helped the company break into the fledgling industry.
“When they reached out to us it seemed too good to be true,” says Dave of the water tech company. “They saw it as a way to address some of these food concerns we’re facing now. This was their way of not only supporting a local company like ours, but catalyzing an industry as well.”
Pentair supplied all of the pumps, filters, and aerators needed to get the state-of-the-art aquaponics facility up and running. The system converts wastewater from the fish tanks into plant food. First, solid waste is filtered out. Then, bacteria convert the remaining ammonia into nitrates. This nitrate-rich water is what nourishes the 12 varieties of leafy greens Urban Organics grows.
Not only is the company’s organic produce free of pesticides and chemicals, but it also uses significantly less water than traditional soil-based farming practices. Nitrate-rich water is pumped underneath plant beds to minimize evaporation and deliver nutrients straight to the plant’s roots. All the water—except what evaporates on the plant side—is continually recycled and reused through the facility’s closed-loop system, too.
Last April, Co-op Partners Warehouse started selling the St. Paul-grown greens to stores and restaurants across the Midwest, including Wedge Commuity Co-op, Mississippi Market, and Seward Co-op. For a company that often buys and transports large volumes of California-grown salad mixes throughout the Midwest, Co-op Partners Warehouse was happy to finally have a local option.
“Urban Organics is using a sustainable system for production. Our customers want to support this type of innovation in the food industry,” says Lori Zuidema, the sales manager at Co-op Partners. “It reduces the need to transport food across the country [and] our year-round reliance on California produce.”
Packaged greens at Urban Organics ready to be shipped to stores // Photo by Tj Turner
By the time California lettuce makes it to stores, Lori says it’s already often six days away from expiring. Thanks to Urban Organics’ proximity, its products last seven to 10 days longer on the shelf. Plus, the St. Paul company offers unique salad mixes—like the rosé blend, a mix of red lettuces—that she can’t find anywhere else.
Right now Urban Organics harvests up to 15,000 pounds of produce a month. That’s enough to fill 45,000 pre-packed salad containers for stores like Lunds & Byerlys. Annually, the St. Paul farm will also harvest 275,000 pounds of fish—either Atlantic salmon or Arctic char—for restaurants like Birchwood Cafe that want a local and sustainable protein option. Beyond food, Urban Organics is an investment in a neighborhood. By rehabbing spaces at two defunct breweries, the St. Paul business leveraged urban farming to create jobs and spur economic development.
“We don’t want to replace traditional farming. It should be complementary,” says Dave, who sees smaller, local farms like Urban Organics as an opportunity to conserve water, save on distribution costs, and expand traditional growing areas. “I think we can do a lot better.”
High-tech food, designed by data
An Urban Organics seed planting machine // Photo Tj Turner
Aside from leafy greens and fish, Urban Organics is a data farm. Hidden throughout Urban Organics’ facility are more than 100 probes and sensors programmed to measure the slightest shifts in water temperature, pH levels, and dissolved oxygen. From seed to shelf, Urban Organics can track a single plant throughout its 35-day life cycle. Harvest logs allow the team to monitor growing trends and see how the fish influence the plants and vice versa. Every day, each probe in the facility shoots off a report to the company’s central computer. Those small slices of information help Dave and his team understand how to improve the farm’s design to raise fish and grow produce in the most sustainable and efficient way possible.
“We’re still in some ways pioneering an industry. There is no playbook for this. We learn something on a daily basis,” says Dave. “Everything we’re doing here is being recorded, which is going to help us design the next better facility.”
That’s in part what made the first site at Hamm’s Brewery so valuable. After farming that location for more than two years, Urban Organics knew how to upgrade the blueprint of the Schmidt Brewery site. First, Urban Organics scaled up in size—from 8,000 square feet to 87,000 square feet. Then, it switched out its grow lights from compact fluorescents to LEDs. That change alone helped the company cut down on its biggest cost, electricity, by 40 percent. Last, Urban Organics got smarter about its water. At the Hamm’s site, water flowed from the fish tanks, to the sump, to the plants, and then back to the fish again. But Dave found that wasn’t ideal. If the pH in the water from the fish tanks spiked, it could cause the plants’ leaves to yellow. So Urban Organics devised a solution that allowed him to separate the system into two continuously looping water cycles. Dave can pump nutrient-rich water from the fish to the plants as they need it, giving him greater control to create the best water conditions for both sides.
“This is a world that requires a lot of iteration because it’s new,” says Fred, who credits the engineering strength and aquaponics experts at Pentair for putting Urban Organics in a league of its own. “Even though this idea of leveraging the symbiotic relationship between fish and plants has been around for millennia, the idea of using technology to do it is new.”
Urban Organic’s seedlings // Photo by Tj Turner
By early 2018, Dave plans to have the Urban Organics farm in St. Paul running at its full potential. His team hopes to harvest the first of the Arctic char this spring, and more than triple the amount of greens it cranks out each month. But that’s just the beginning. Dave and Fred are already plotting the next city they want to expand to and brainstorming the next iteration of Urban Organics: a facility powered entirely by solar energy.
“I don’t think we can stay the course with traditional farming as our population grows in hopes that we’re going to have healthy food 50 years from now,” says Dave. “I’m not saying we’ve cracked the code and others haven’t. We’re just doing our part to come up with a perfect solution.”
Filed Under: Arts and Culture, Homepage Featured, MakersTagged With: Aquaponics, craft culture, Dave Haider, Fred Haberman, Schmidt Brewery, Urban Organics
Second Generation Growlink Environment Controllers Introduce New Remote Sensor Module with Additional Light and VPD Readings
Growlink, architect of Smart Farm technology, today announced the second generation Growlink Environment Controllers. In addition to the new remote sensor module, they introduced three new controllers to support any size grow operation.
Second Generation Growlink Environment Controllers Introduce New Remote Sensor Module with Additional Light and VPD Readings
Growlink Second Generation Controllers provide a complete hardware and software solution for monitoring and equipment automation.
DENVER (PRWEB) December 08, 2017
Environment Sensor Module
Our mission is to help growers reduce costs, maximize yields and eliminate crop loss while helping them save energy.
Growlink, architect of Smart Farm technology, today announced the second generation Growlink Environment Controllers. In addition to the new remote sensor module, they introduced three new controllers to support any size grow operation. New features include VPD and light readings, improved rules engine, rule groups, direct controller access, local data storage, expanded I/O options, improved Wi-Fi compatibility and proprietary mesh RF network.
“In the past year, we’ve accomplished many notable milestones, from having Growlink Controllers connected – and improving operations and yields – in licensed grows in every U.S. state and across Canada where cannabis production is legal, to supporting some of the largest food production vertical farms, to adding over 100 dealers and installers” said Ted Tanner, Growlink founder and chief executive officer.
“Our mission is to help growers reduce costs, maximize yields and eliminate crop loss while helping them save energy, and with the next-generation Growlink Environment Controllers, we’re able to spread that saving and predictability to even more farms of any size – and to help all the equipment in a farm perform the way they were meant to.”
All three models include the new Wireless ESM1 Environment Sensor Module, a shielded device designed to hang in the canopy that measures temperature, humidity, VPD, light and CO2.
The Growlink EC-1 Environment Controller is designed for small room operation. It includes a compact base controller, the Wireless Environment Sensor Module and two Remote Power Links that allow users to control any equipment. The system can be expanded by adding additional Remote Power Links.
The Growlink EC-3 Environment Controller is designed for commercial grow rooms and container farms. The base controller includes eight solid state relays with manual override switches for controlling external devices. Users can switch any low-voltage equipment or use UL listed contactors for line voltage interfacing equipment. It includes the ESM1 Wireless Sensor Module and supports the addition of a second ESM1 to monitor a second room. All components are matched to the controlled loads and panels arrive fully pre-wired and tested.
The Growlink EC-6 Environment Controller is designed to deliver the ultimate smart farm experience, featuring the highest-quality components and processing power to coordinate hundreds of smart devices throughout the entire farm. The EC-6 can automate sophisticated indoor farms and complex greenhouses with controls for climate, irrigation and nutrient systems. Each controller is custom programmed to manage the customer’s specific applications. They can also be easily networked together for seamless control of any sized facility. The base controller includes sixteen solid state relays with manual override switches for controlling external devices. Users can switch any low-voltage equipment or use UL listed contactors for line voltage interfacing equipment. It includes the ESM1 Wireless Sensor Module and supports the addition of a second ESM1 to monitor a second room. All components are matched to the controlled loads and panels arrive fully pre-wired and tested.
Growlink’s connected Environment, Nutrient and Irrigation Controllers allow users to see, monitor, and control a farm from anywhere using their smartphone or tablet. These Internet of Things devices are designed for indoor and greenhouse grow operations, and their modular design allows them to scale from single rooms to large greenhouses and everything in between. They are part of Growlink’s complete cloud-based platform and are capable of predictive analytics.
The Growlink App, available in the Apple App Store and Google Play, connects to the Growlink Controllers directly when onsite or through the cloud when away and allows users to monitor sensor data in real time, view real-time video, and control any connected devices. Users can set up rules including sensor triggers, timers, and schedules to automate the grow process.
The Growlink EC-1 Environment Controller retails for $1299. It is available now direct from Growlink at http://www.growlink.com and hydroponic stores everywhere starting January 2018. The EC-3 and EC-6 are available by custom quote only.
About Growlink
Growlink’s mission is to create smart farms that reduce costs, maximize yields and eliminate crop loss by leveraging the power of big data, the cloud and IoT devices. The company focuses on simple, beautiful hardware, software and services. The Growlink Platform controls and automates lighting, climate, fertigation and irrigation systems.
Visit http://www.growlink.com for more information and follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
For media inquiries:
Please contact press@growlink.com
Feeding The Future of Agriculture With Vertical Farming
Hunger and malnutrition issues persist, especially in developing countries. Food scarcity problems have also been linked to political unrest and violence. According to the United Nations World Food Programme, record-high food prices in 2008 prompted riots in 48 countries, including fragile states like Somalia and Yemen.
Feeding The Future of Agriculture With Vertical Farming
The technology-driven model of agriculture may offer a means to address farm output and food security in the years to come.
By Mark Esposito, Terence Tse, Khaled Soufani, & Lisa Xiong
Dec. 27, 2017
Average global food prices have gone up by 2.6 percent annually in the past two decades. If that trend continues, not only does it threaten a baseline quality of life as more disposable income goes toward food, it also threatens our overall food security.
Hunger and malnutrition issues persist, especially in developing countries. Food scarcity problems have also been linked to political unrest and violence. According to the United Nations World Food Programme, record-high food prices in 2008 prompted riots in 48 countries, including fragile states like Somalia and Yemen.
Rising food costs reflect underlying trends leading to failures with traditional agriculture. Vertical farming, a technology-driven model of agriculture, may offer a means to address farm output and food security in the years to come, even if it may not impact food prices in the many months ahead.
Why is conventional farming frustrating us?
Field farming requires labor, amenable weather conditions, adequate sunshine for photosynthesis, irrigation, and often pesticides to protect crops. That hasn’t changed, but we can detect reasons why conventional farming is no longer working as well as it used to by using a framework we developed. While it may appear that the world’s economies are significantly affected by unforeseeable events, the DRIVE framework is based on the notion that certain interrelated large-scale processes, which drive the behavior of businesses, governments, and societies, also influence the future. By analyzing demographic and social changes, resource scarcity, inequalities, and volatility, scale, and complexity, we can forecast how the future may unfold. Analyzed together, these megatrends can reveal the root causes behind the shifts in conventional agriculture.
- Demographic and social changes
The global food supply cannot keep up with the growing global population. According to theFood and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, food production must increase by 70 percent before the year 2050 in order to meet global food needs. This growth must happen against a headwind—urbanization is taking over arable land while simultaneously pushing people away from farming as a profession.
- Resource scarcity
Agriculture sucks up 70 percent of our global water consumption, adding to its total cost. Given the estimate that half of the world’s population will experience water scarcity by 2030, agriculture’s production methods are unsustainable. Supply chain inefficiencies compound the scarcity effect. Perishable crops blemish and spoil during harvesting, packaging, processing, and distribution. According to a Natural Resources Defense Council report on food from field to fork to landfill, up to 40 percent of all crops are ultimately wasted.
- Inequality
In addition to longstanding problems with malnutrition and widespread poverty in developing countries, inequalities related to food prices have also arisen in industrialized countries. In places like the United States, the cost of fresh foods have led vulnerable populations to opt for fat- and sugar-laden processed foods with little nutritional value. The consequence of these food “choices” is a nationwide obesity epidemic as well as an increase in diet-related diseases like diabetes. At the other end of the spectrum, higher-income households are driving demand for more health-conscious “superfoods” like antioxidant-rich kale and protein-packed quinoa. As global food requirements and the costs of agriculture continue to rise, the prospects of improving health and nutrition conditions are dire for low-income families in industrialized and developing countries alike.
- Volatility
Agriculture remains one of the most vulnerable industries when it comes to natural disasters. Climate change has caused more frequent extreme weather events, which can damage an entire season’s worth of harvest. Higher temperatures are also leading to rampant spreading of crop pests. In addition, government policy can also affect food production and prices. For instance, in the United States ethanol mandates diverted corn fields used for food production to fuel production, and resulted in price hikes from $2 or $3 to $7 a bushel. Such forces, which determine the direction of price volatility, are here to stay.
Through the lens of the DRIVE framework, we can see how conventional agriculture alone will be unsustainable as a reliable and affordable source of food production.
Vertical farming born out of challenges
One answer to these food supply problems is emerging from high-tech structures to our dining tables. Vertical farming, a term coined by Dickson Despommier, is the practice of producing food in vertically-stacked layers. These “farms” make use of enclosed structures like warehouses and shipping containers to provide a controlled environment to grow crops in a hydroponic or aeroponic system. Electronic sensors ensure that crops receive the right amount of LED light, nutrients, and heat. The benefits include independence from arable land, year-round growing capacities, less water consumption, and improved crop predictability.
(iStock)
For example, AeroFarms, a 70,000-square-foot vertical farm in a renovated steel plant in New Jersey, claims 95 percent less water use and 390 times more productivity than a commercial field farm with the same square footage. The company Growtainer sells easy-to-operate 20- or 40-foot shipping containers set up as insulated hydroponic farms. The goal is to help communities grow leafy vegetables in the same places where they will be consumed, such as schools, food banks, restaurants, and military bases.
Vertical farms can help meet our growing population’s needs by offering an additional way to produce food that does not share the same volatility and risk as conventional agriculture. While vertical farms require less water and arable land than conventional farms, they are not carbon neutral. Their climate footprint depends heavily on the source from which they draw their electricity to power lighting and control the indoor environment. As renewable energy sources become adopted more widely, the carbon cost of vertical farming will continue decreasing. From a market perspective, it may not bring down prices, but on a societal level, the hope is that vertical farming can help address gaps in overall food demand where conventional agriculture fails.
Tasty prospects but not one-size-fits-all
The social, ecological, and economic promise of vertical farming has been embraced but not yet scaled. Due to various factors related to geographic location, cultural difference, political support, investor dynamics, and local agricultural market conditions, what works for the companies described above might not work for others entering vertical farming. Moreover, there are limitations to what plant species can be grown in an indoor environment. For instance, fruits and vegetables that have a lot of inedible weight, such as leaves, stems, and roots, would not make good use of vertical farming space or resources. For commercial farmers interested in expanding into vertical farming and social entrepreneurs who see potential for using vertical farming to address local food and hunger issues, there are ways to minimize the expensive learning curve and improve their chances of success:
Change the perception of the farming profession
Traditional farming has been characterized as labor-intensive and remote to a modern and urbanized lifestyle. In some places, farm work is associated with poverty and isolation, but in the vertical farm, farmers must be data analysts, bio-scientists, and system supervisors in addition to working with crops. Should urban farms continue to scale, this could result in displacement of existing low-skilled labor. Such a shift is typical of any major industry transformation—economists call this the rebound effect. Understanding this transformation in farming provides professionals who are either entering or already in the vertical farming industry with leverage when communicating the need to embrace vertical farming with different stakeholders.
Educate consumers
Vertical farming is not Frankenstein food, but might as well be without any efforts to educate the public. Companies can use promotional campaigns to clarify the value of non-field farming crops and educate consumers on the nutritional and environmental benefits of vertical farming. Food-tasting events can also provide consumers the opportunity to sample hydroponic and aeroponic produce and judge the taste for themselves.
Support local food economies
Governments and industry groups can be valuable allies who view local food production as economic development. In Canada, for example, the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food, and Rural Affairs (OMAFRA) actively supports a regional food strategy, with project support ranging from promotional campaigns to the creation of farmers markets and funding for agricultural companies to buy new equipment. With OMAFRA’s support, the sector added $1.3 billion in GDP and created more than 34,000 jobs between 2013 and 2015. Such government support is a sign that local food movements are a credible source of economic development with no signs of abating.
Encourage continued investment
Investors are essential to helping vertical farming scale. While some major investments in vertical farming are already happening—Silicon Valley startup Plenty recently received $200 million to support its global expansion—others may have to strategize a bit more, particularly since some vertical farm startups have failed in that same timeframe. AeroFarms, for instance, secured equity funding of $95.8 million by positioning itself not as a nontraditional farm but rather as “an urban agriculture and cleantech company.” Other trends that are attracting investment include using vertical farming technology to grow nutrient-specific crops likeFujitsu’s low-potassium lettuce.
Revamping the future of agriculture
Though vertical farms can never be expected to replace traditional farms, it is likely that they will have to complement each other if we are to meet the food demands of tomorrow. It is economically sensible, environmentally friendly, tech-savvy, and most importantly, health-sensitive. Vertical farming is not a fairytale; it is happening now.
Mark Esposito (@Exp_Mark) is a professor of business and economics at Hult International Business School and Grenoble Ecole de Management. He is a member of the teaching faculty at Harvard University’s Division of Continuing Education and a fellow in the Circular Economy Center at the Judge Business School at the University of Cambridge.
Terence Tse (@terencecmtse) is an associate professor at ESCP Europe and a research fellow at the Judge Business School. He is head of competitiveness studies at i7 Institute for Innovation and Competitiveness and a fellow in the Circular Economy Center at the Judge Business School at the University of Cambridge.
Khaled Soufani is a professor of management practice and director of the executive MBA program at the Judge Business School. He also directs the school’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies and the Circular Economy Center. His current research interests relate to fast-expanding markets and the economics of innovation.
Lisa Xiong is a doctoral candidate in business administration at Ecole des Ponts Business School. She is a teaching associate for business schools in Europe, the United Arab Emirates, and China. Her research interests cover inequalities, Chinese economic development, entrepreneurship, and open innovation. She researched vertical farming during a doctoral residency at the Judge Business School at the University of Cambridge.
UW Architectural Engineering Graduate Embarks on Exciting Career Path
UW Architectural Engineering Graduate Embarks on Exciting Career Path
December 20, 2017
Yara Thomas, a May 2017 UW graduate, is now working as an energy systems engineer for Plenty, a leading field-scale vertical farming company based in San Francisco. (Yara Thomas Photo)
Yara Thomas has always had a connection with the University of Wyoming, and it led to a life-changing opportunity this summer.
Originally from Jackson, Thomas took summer trips to the Laramie area to be near her grandmother, and her family spent time at a homestead near Arlington. She attended Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Ore., as a freshman. After a year, however, she had a change of heart and headed back to her home state.
“I chose to transfer to UW because of the incredible value for your education,” Thomas says. “I wanted to switch from physics, my original major, to engineering, which was not offered at Lewis & Clark. Additionally, I was an art major and was lucky enough to start at UW the year the new facility was open.”
The College of Engineering and Applied Science made an immediate impression on Thomas, who graduated with a degree in architectural engineering earlier this year.
“In my opinion, the best thing about engineering at UW is the incredible support that I received from the professors,” she says. “Because UW is still relatively small compared to other institutions, individuals with ambition and work ethic have almost unlimited opportunity to shine. Hard work is recognized and appreciated.”
Her hard work led to a chance to work for an up-and-coming company in California shortly after she graduated in May. Thomas now is an energy systems engineer in San Francisco with Plenty, after she was recruited by the company’s co-founder and Chief Science Officer Nate Storey, a UW graduate. Plenty is a leading field-scale vertical farming company.
“I was acquainted with the company this summer when Nate Storey reached out to me after hearing about my thesis research on sustainable greenhouse design,” Thomas says. “At Plenty, I work on the mechanical engineering team. I have been designing our unique air distribution system and aiding contracted engineers on heating, ventilation and air conditioning equipment.
“Additionally, I build and coordinate models to represent energy flows through our system. These models will help to identify areas in which we can reduce our energy consumption and help to optimize our system.”
In summer 2017, Plenty acquired Laramie-based Bright Agrotech, a leader in vertical farming production system technology. Per a company press release, “Bright’s technology and industry leadership combined with Plenty’s own technology will help Plenty realize its plans to build field-scale indoor farms around the world, bringing the highest quality produce and healthy diets to everyone’s budget.”
Founded by Storey, Bright has partnered with small farmers for more than seven years to start and grow indoor farms, providing high-tech growing systems and controls, workflow design, education and software.
“We’re excited to join Plenty on their mission to bring the same exceptional quality local produce to families and communities around the world,” Storey says. “The need for local produce and healthy food that fits in everyone’s budget is not one that small farmers alone can satisfy, and I’m glad that, with Plenty, we can all work toward bringing people everywhere the freshest, pesticide-free food.”
Thomas didn’t necessarily envision working in her current industry while she was studying at UW. But, she definitely is embracing the chance to make a real difference for people and use her engineering degree to its full extent.
“I have found engineering to be one of the most reliable paths toward a job and rewarding career,” she says. “Architectural engineering particularly offers flexibility into civil, structural, architectural and MEP (mechanical, electrical and plumbing) professions.”
How 3D Printing is Transforming Urban Farming
How 3D Printing is Transforming Urban Farming
BEAU JACKSON DECEMBER 21, 2017
With limited green spaces and temperate environments, cities are a challenging habitat for growing herbs and vegetables. The perfect addition to any dish, high quality fresh produce often comes with a designer price tag too. With the help of 3D printing though, a number of projects are here to prove that it can be done – without costing the earth.
Farmshelf is a company based in Brooklyn, New York, that makes a living by setting up compact shelving units for plants. Installed in restaurants, homes and residential communities, each Farmshelf is realized by custom parts made on a desktop FDM 3D printer.
And, in a side project from Jake Clark, co-founder of North Dakota 3D printing hub Fargo 3D Printing, FDM technology is used to make an Indoor Garden that helps manage the water content of your carrots.
A touch of blue sky thinking
At Farmshelf, 3D printing has enabled the company to bring its products to market much faster than anticipated. The customizable, modular layout out of each shelving unit can be designed, tested and refined on site in a fraction of the time and cost that it would if relying on traditional manufacturing.
The company uses an Ultimaker 2+ 3D printer for product development, and Andrew Shearer, CEO and Co-Founder of Farmshelf, believes that the tech has been key to the company’s success. “As we approached prototyping all of these parts,” says Shearer, “Ultimaker proved to be a great solution,”
“For all the different needs we’ve had, from prototyping to small batch, short-run production parts, this technology enabled us to push forward our timelines, and keep this company on the fast track.”
Andrew Shearer, CEO and Co-Founder of Farmshelf tends to seedlings on 3D printed pods. Photo via Ultimaker
Shelving brackets and small plant pods capable of holding enough soil to root a seedling are made on the Ultimaker 2+.
In turn, FDM technology has enabled Shearer to rethink Farmshelf’s business model, and devote more time to blue-sky ideas. Shearer adds, “As a company, you can now look at 3D printing as a way to involve more people in the building process, and involve more in the prototyping and dreaming process, thanks to how easy it is.”
A 3D printed Farmshelf prototype plant pod. Photo via Ultimaker
Home farming
With simple single-part planter designs and a grow-your-own project, Fargo’s Jake Clark puts carrot farming in the hands of anyone with access to a 3D printer.
Noticing a trend for handy household projects on sites like Thingiverse and MyMiniFactory, Clark explains, “It started out as something to see if I can grow plants while using 3D printing.”
Design of Jake Clark’s Indoor Garden Carrot Pods. Image via Fargo 3D Printing
In the first iteration, it is possible to grow a batch of 49 carrots, each enclosed inside its own protective pod. Taking great care in the design of his Indoor Garden modules, Clark added a well at the bottom of each planter that allows for runoff if a carrot is over watered.
“I’m hoping to add additional things later next year once I get past the first growing cycle (~80days) such as automated watering,” he adds. In a step by step summary, he also details how home users can add a 132w LED to give sunlight to the plants, and manage day – night duration. The modules were designed with Fusion 360, and test printed on a MakerBot Replicator Z18.
The .stl files of Clark’s Indoor Garden can be found online here.
A complete 3D printed Indoor Garden. Photo by Jake Clark/Fargo 3D Printing
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Featured image shows an Ultimaker 2+ 3D printer used by Farmshelf. Photo via Ultimaker
Before ‘Plantscrapers’ Can Grow Food in The City, They’ll Need to Grow Money
Before ‘Plantscrapers’ Can Grow Food in The City, They’ll Need to Grow Money
By Dyllan Furness — December 24, 2017
When Hans Hassle imagines the future, he sees urban farms and office spaces growing side-by-side. He sees half-green high rises providing Stockholm with lettuce, spinach, and swiss chard. Herbs grow underground. During winter, heat from grow lamps is recovered to help heat the buildings. Employees might not smell the crops growing across the hall, but they breathe their filtered air and they’ll probably eat them for lunch.
“If we will farm the same way we do today, we will have to grow food in cities.”
Hassle envisions a similar scene in every big city. There might be more bok choy grown in Singapore or napa cabbage in Seoul. Crops may differ depending on a city’s tastes preferences and population density. But no city is exempt for being too tropical or too temperate. Hassle hopes his company, Plantagon, can provide solutions for any climate.
With the right infrastructure, major cities around the world may someday grow a fraction of their produce in towering “plantscrapers,” hybrid buildings that combine vertical farms with residential or business spaces. In fact, Hassle thinks they’ll have to.
GROWING CROPS FOR A GROWING WORLD
Agriculture accounts for over 37 percent of all land area use on Earth, according to the World Bank, and that figure is set to increase as the global population continues to rise, particularly within cities, where 80 percent of the population is projected to live by 2050.
“If we will farm the same way we do today, then the lack of land issue will be one reason to try to grow food inside cities,” Hassle tells Digital Trends. “That would put food as close to consumers as possible.”
Urban agriculture is practically as old as civilization itself, but locally-grown food movements have increased interest, as communities search for more sustainable ways to feed themselves.
Bringing crops closer to consumers means eliminating much of the financial and environmental strain caused by transportation, sometimes including thousands of miles between farm and table. But, since few cities have the real estate available to convert buildings into conventional farms, a handful of innovators are looking for solutions upwards and underground.
One such innovation is multilayered greenhouses called vertical farms, which can be erected in urban areas like skyscrapers.
“There’s little land [in cities] because most is already used,” Hassle says. “And you don’t want to use, for example, recreational areas. So if you start to discuss how to grow food with little land inside a dense city, then you end up talking rooftops, basements, and vertically.”
Unfortunately, real estate comes at premium in cities, even when a building’s footprint is relatively small. And that makes finding a profitable solution difficult.
Thomas Zöllner
“Making a commercial viability out of growing food in an urban setting is primarily challenged by the expense of the land that your building on,” Thomas Zöllner, Vice Chair of the non-profit association of Vertical Farming, says. “When you’re doing that calculation and you talk to real estate developers, they’ll quickly tell you that you have to generate quite a good return on investment with whatever you do in order to pay for this square footage.”
Plantagon plans to address that problem with by leveraging the proven side of real estate to support the economically risky urban agriculture side. Rather than developing buildings that are strictly dedicated to vertical farms, Plantagon is pushing for hybrid structures that could integrate with our living spaces, satisfying a number of needs and functioning as a symbiotic system. In other words, the main tenants might be office spaces or residences, while a portion of the building would be reserved for crops. The company uses the term “agritechture” to describe the process of weaving urban agricultural interests into contemporary architecture in an effort to meet local food demands.
THE PLANTAGON APPROACH
There are a lot of startups focusing on urban vertical farming in cities around the world. Besides its agritechture idea, Plantagon brings to the table a series of techniques to make the process more efficient. For example, the company has introduced a vertical production line that rotates crops from floor to ceiling as they grow. Working something like a merry-go-round, the system brings crops back to floor-level once they’ve grown for ease of harvesting. Its other innovations relate to energy and climate control.
“If you can’t reuse the energy that the LED lamps use, it’s difficult to compete with normal prices,” Hassle says. “But if we can reuse the energy if the supply chain is short enough, then we can compete with wholesale prices.”
“Vertical farming has still not been proven to be commercially viable.”
Vertical farms won’t replace conventional farms anytime soon. They’ll be limited by the kinds and quantity of crops they can grow while still turning a profit. For now, Plantagon has focused its efforts on leafy green and herds, but Hassle says, “We don’t want to develop all this technology to only grow herbs for people. That won’t solve the upcoming food crisis.”
Plantagon boasts that its technology has “infinite scalability,” which is to say it’s constrained only by the size of the buildings themselves. Still, implementing such systems is expensive and developers proably won’t be very keen to allocate half of their shiny new building to food production without proof of profitability.
“Vertical farming has still not proven that you can make a living growing food on multiple layers,” Zöllner says. “It’s proven that you can do it on a single layer with the help of LEDs or other lights sources, but it hasn’t been proven that you can do this from a grower’s perspective on a multilayer.”
Other experts agree that vertical farming shows promise but lacks evidence as a sustainable, large-scale approach for the future of food. To Hassle’s own calculations, vertical farms may only supply ten to fifteen percent of our future produce needs. While that helps, it certainly won’t feed the planet.
GROWING PAINS
At least two more challenges face Plantagon and the vertical farming industry at large, according to Zöllner — the needs for labor and food safety standards.
“Today, the real challenge for a vertical farm trying to scale is finding people to run, direct, and operate it,” he says. “And to find enough people willing to stick to the job, doing simple things like harvesting.” Still, in the not so distant future, automated machines may well take on the workload.
As for food safety, Zöllner thinks that a vertical farm’s apparent cleanliness could lull operators into a false sense of security.
“The vertical farm space is a very clean space, it will be less chemically intensive than a lot of the conventional agriculture, but it also creates and environment where you have a lot of issues with bacteria growth,” he says. “The moment a company sells something that gets a consumer sick, that will be a real blow to the industry. They’ll have to start planning now with conventional food safety on hand to try to prevent a disastrous outcome like that.”
Zöllner has followed Plantagon for a few years and says he’s been impressed with the company’s unique approach, but is careful not to get too enthusiastic.
“It’s interesting,” he says, “the dimension of a vision combined with resources and translating them into something feasible. The sad part is they haven’t yet built their building.”
Despite the buzz it’s created, Plantagon has struggled to erect its plantscrapers in the real world. The company broke ground on its “World Food Building” in 2012, but the project remains in slow progress. Located a couple hours south of Stockholm, in the city of Linköping, the World Food Building is designed as a massive greenhouse and office space that Plantagon says will produce 500 metric tons of food annually once fully functional. Earlier this month, the company also launched a crowdfunding campaign called CityFarms, a series of underground farming operations in Stockholm.
The world might not yet need Plantagon and its technology, but Hassle plans to be there once it does. “The challenge for us being so early in development, is to implement the technology with the market now before it really needs these big scale vertical farms,” he says. By then, Hassle hopes to see his vision come to fruition.
Why Engineer Ajay Naik Sold His Successful Startup To Become A Hi-Tech Farmer
Letcetra Agritech is a hydroponics farm that occupies just 150 square metres of space but grows three tonnes of lettuce a month.
Why Engineer Ajay Naik Sold His Successful Startup To Become A Hi-Tech Farmer
Rakhi Chakraborty December 23, 2017
Letcetra Agritech is a hydroponics farm that occupies just 150 square metres of space but grows three tonnes of lettuce a month.
“I am an early adopter. Early adopters of any new technology are few and far between, but in business, there is no reward without risk. The ones who can see the vision when no one else can, and work on it like there is no tomorrow, will succeed. The rest will follow,” says Ajay Naik, the Founder of Letcetra Agritech Pvt. Ltd.
Founded in 2016 and built at the intersection of agriculture and technology, Letcetra Agritech grows organic vegetables using hydroponics and sells them across hotel chains, supermarkets and farmers markets. “We also help set up commercial hydroponic farms for large-scale growers,” says Ajay.
Second Innings
Ajay had a successful mobile apps company which he sold to a German firm. For his second innings in the startup game, he chose a field radically opposite to his background of software engineering – agriculture. Although since he is an engineer, it was a given that his farming enterprise would be a technological one as well.
“I was looking for agricultural technologies that help grow organic food and I came across hydroponics, in which one can grow healthy food without using soil in a controlled environment with very less land, water, and labour. After doing research for two months, I decided to start a hi-tech vertical hydroponics indoor farm to grow top-quality pesticide-free exotic vegetables,” says Ajay.
Hydroponics
Apart from enabling the growth of produce that is 20-30 percent higher on quality than traditional agriculture allows, hydroponics also helps save water and resources during farming. Using hydroponics, one can grow crops in any environment- be it sterile unproductive lands or bustling urban centres. “It helps cutting down on expensive intermediaries and shipping costs and reducing our carbon footprint. It is user-friendly so that any grower with a will can apply it successfully,” he had stated in a previous interview.
Experts estimate that earth has only sixty years of topsoil left. If the current trend of destructive agricultural practices continues, we will not be able to grow food in six decades’ time. Our population is booming while our ability to feed that population is fast deteriorating. Hydroponics can be a viable alternative to this looming crisis. For now, Ajay is one of the few pioneers of this system in India.
ALSO READ: How these guerrilla gardeners are reclaiming urban spaces to grow food
Letcetra Agritech
Ajay says, “After seeing the lack of technology in farming, I wanted to understand the economics of the business. After assessing that I plunged headlong. In all this, we have always wanted to be farmers who use technology to grow pesticide-free, high quality, and affordable vegetables. Our success will always be measured by how much we grow versus how much we earn.”
Ajay’s indoor farm occupies an area of 150 square metres in which he grows three tonnes of lettuce a month. His company’s name Letcetra is a cheeky derivative of lettuce. “Lettuce etc.,” he says. In the future, he plans on adding more variety of crops, but for now, lettuce and salad greens are a good return on his investment. “Goa is a conducive place to start a farm, as the state sees visitors from all over the world and they all have a need to be served fresh and high-quality vegetables,” he says.
Business Model, Revenue, and Growth
Though a hydroponics farm assures financial returns in the long run, setting one up is an expensive affair. For thosesetting up a hydroponic farm in a poly house, the initial investment is approximately Rs 560 per square foot. The majority of this goes towards setting up pumping systems and electrical equipment.
For those setting up their farm indoors, the expense is considerably higher at approximately Rs 3500 per square foot. This is because you’ll be swapping sunlight for LED lights and air conditioners and heaters for temperature control. Ajay found growing exotic vegetables a quick way to recoup his investments. Given the perennial demand for fresh and organic salad greens, he is confident his lettuces will continue to pave the path to profitability.
“As of now, I have two investors, whose angel investment was key to our development. On the operational cost front, we are profitable even though we are just a year old. As for the rest we expect to break-even in a year from now. We are expanding to a bigger farm now and also in the process of expanding to Bengaluru. We want to become the largest producers of pesticide-free vegetables in India. We are expanding, and targeting a production of five tons of pesticide-free exotic vegetables per day by the first quarter of 2019,” says Ajay.
Personal Journey
There are two key challenges Ajay has faced while becoming a successful hydroponics farmer. One has been fighting the status quo. He says, “The hardest part of becoming an entrepreneur is keeping yourself motivated to keep fighting. When you are trying something, which no one has dared to try before, everyone around you will tell you that you are taking a foolish risk. Keeping yourself going is very important.”
The second has been finding people who connect with his vision. “Even with all the difficulties, I am happy with what I am doing as I am being able to live my dreams while making a positive difference in our society,” he adds.
Having overcome many rigorous obstacles since starting Letcetra Agritech, Ajay is gearing up to face an equally demanding but bright future. He says, “The executive chef of one of the most reputed seven-star hotel chains in India told us after tasting our lettuce that we have cracked the formula to grow the best lettuce in India. We have a very bright future. We are a country whose population is rapidly growing and we are here to feed this behemoth. We are working very hard on research and trying to make sure we can get the formula right at scale, which will be a great investment.”
India is an agrarian country but the exploitative agriculture industry is seen as the least lucrative of livelihoods. With millennials like Ajay marrying technology with the traditional, one hopes that such ventures appeal to the young upstarts looking to make a positive difference in the world through their work. Ajay’s advice for them: “I believe in what LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman said – ‘Entrepreneurs are those who jump off the cliff and build a plane on their way down.’ If you are seeking to make a switch, just jump.”
How This Startup Produces 700 Tonnes of Fruits and Vegetables Without Soil
Triton Foodworks started as an experiment in urban farming in September of 2014 by four friends — Deepak Kukreja, Dhruv Khanna, Ullas Samrat, and Devanshu Shivnani.
How This Startup Produces 700 Tonnes of Fruits and Vegetables Without Soil
Foraying into urban farming, a group of friends has set up a green enterprise that is based on hydroponics.
There is growing concern in urban and semi-urban areas about the dangers of the pesticide-ridden food that is sold in the market.
Following the Green Revolution in the mid-1960s, the use of pesticides in India has increased. Although the period saw the boom in agriculture like never before, the flip side of this revolution has left the country consuming poisonous food. Food production in large quantities at the cost of their health has made people wary and look for alternatives.
In the confines of an urban setting, four youngsters from Delhi are venturing into hydroponics to provide an organic and healthier option for the urban populace.
Hydroponics is the method of growing plants in a water-based, nutrient-rich medium, without the use of soil. This method essentially cuts down the amount of water being used compared to the method in which plants are grown in soil. In some cases, up to 90 percent less water is used in the hydroponics method compared to the traditional soil-based agriculture — a boon for water-starved urban areas. One can plant four times the number of crops in the same space as soil farming.
An Experiment In Urban Farming
Triton Foodworks started as an experiment in urban farming in the September of 2014 by four friends — Deepak Kukreja, Dhruv Khanna, Ullas Samrat, and Devanshu Shivnani.
In early 2014, Ullas was exploring ways to develop his agricultural land in Mohali for his mother, who suffers from ILD, a degenerative disorder of the lungs. When the doctors told him that life on a farmhouse would in fact be counterintuitive for his mother due to dust and other issues related to farming, he became obsessed with finding a way to farm in a clean and hygienic manner.
Dhruv, who was in Singapore at the moment working on his tech startup, wanted to come back to India and start something here. On a catch-up call, the two got discussing how much fun it would be to start a business together; especially something that made sense economically and ecologically. Following a lot of research, they zeroed in on hydroponic farming, something that connected with both of them. Dhruv visited a few hydroponic farms in Singapore to see firsthand how it works. Ullas met Deepak online while researching on hydroponics. The team quickly realized that to make this thing big, they needed a formal structure and a financial disciple — which is when Devanshu was roped in.
“We were just a bunch of friends who wanted to do something in the space of food and agriculture. We were very excited by the opportunities of rooftop farming and farming within the limits of the city. We did a pilot to grow strawberries in Sainik Farm of Delhi. We used an open system with vertical towers to grow eight tonnes of strawberries out of 500 sqm of land. Eventually, we decided against setting rooftop farms due to feasibility issues. Instead, we set up full scale, commercial farms in the outskirts of cities,” says 38-year-old Deepak, technical Co-founder, who takes care of the farming aspect of the business.
Like any bootstrapped startup, Triton Foodworks also faced a huge number of issues at every step. Their farm at the Sainik Farm was demolished by the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) because the team refused to pay a bribe.
“We went to the Delhi government to ask for some sort of help in setting up farms in Delhi; we were called ‘food terrorists’ to our face. Quite a few vendors still owe us money for our early projects, something which is a huge issue in this industry. We had no previous data to map our progress against, no previous players who could be used as a yardstick in the field,” says 27-year-old Devanshu, who takes care of the finances and the financial modelling for the business.
Taking Hydroponics Ahead
“Toxic food is the biggest issue we are trying to resolve. People don't realise how toxic their food really is. We don't use chemical pesticides for our plants. The second issue is the fact that we are running out of land and water to grow food. Lastly, we are addressing the problem of traceability, consistency and, by extension, accountability in farming. You buy a bag of chips and you can trace it back to the field in which the potatoes were grown, but if you pick up a tomato from your vegetable vendor, there is no way to know where it came from, who harvested it, when was it harvested, and what all did he put in it to grow. We are teaching people to ask these questions by offering them answers even before they realise this information is important,” says 27-year-old Dhruv, who looks after operations and marketing.
The team relies on Ayurvedic recipes and bio control to fight off pests and other infections, as an alternative to pesticides and insecticides. The team grows the same amount of food grown under conventional farming with just about one-eighth of the area and using 80 percent less water.
The team has successfully set up more than 5 acres of hydroponic farms across three locations in India. The strawberry farm in Mahabaleshwar grows 20 tonnes of strawberries a year and a 1.25 acres facility in Wada district of Maharashtra that produces about 400 tonnes of tomatoes, 150 tonnes of cucumbers, 400 heads of spinach, and over 700 bunches of mint.
Triton also operates an acre facility in Shirval, Pune that grows tomatoes and cucumbers, which are used to feed farmers' markets in Pune. The team also advises companies in Hyderabad, Manesar and Bengaluru that are interested in incorporating hydroponics.
Triton currently has over 200,000 sqft of area under hydroponic cultivation in various locations in the country. Using hydroponics, it produces more than 700 tonnes of residue-free fruits and vegetables every year.
“Our systems enable us to save around 22 crore litres of water per year as compared to traditional agriculture. In terms of volume, our vertical systems grow food comparable to 10,00,000 sqft of land when using traditional agriculture methods, which translates into a saving of more than 800,000 sqft of land to grow the same amount of food. Since our farms are located within a 100-km radius from cities, our produce carries lesser food miles,” says 27-year-old Ullas.
The team is currently in the process of setting up stalls in farmers' markets in Pune and Mumbai.
Tokyo Rail Operator Explores 'Train To Table' Urban Farming
As urban farming becomes increasingly popular across the globe, Tokyo's most-used rapid transit system, Tokyo Metro, is dabbling in hydroponic farming in an unused warehouse space below the system’s elevated transit lines.
Tokyo Rail Operator Explores 'Train To Table' Urban Farming
BY TESSA LOVE
December 20, 2017
As urban farming becomes increasingly popular across the globe, Tokyo's most-used rapid transit system, Tokyo Metro, is dabbling in hydroponic farming in an unused warehouse space below the system’s elevated transit lines.
The project, called Tokyo Salad, takes the idea of urban farming to the next level. Celebrated as a way to save resources by bringing food closer to the people who consume it, urban farming often takes place on rooftops or the walls of hip restaurants. Tokyo Salad, however, is both using an under-utilized space and growing food where millions of people pass through every day.
The Tokyo Salad facility houses 400 plants of 11 varieties of greens, including basil, kale and lettuces. The greens are grown without the use of soil or fertilizers under LED lights that shine on the plants 16 hours a day. The plants are watered with a mist that contains necessary minerals such as zinc, phosphorous and potassium.
Hydroponic farming has many benefits. It reduces energy and water use, creates a perennial food system, and can be done anywhere. But Tokyo Salad says it's system is even more sophisticated: It can turn seeds to greens in just five weeks with a method that it's calling a "trade secret," and though the plants are growing beneath a railway system, its operation is "uber-hygienic."
Like in most parts of the world, urban and hydroponic farming is just getting off the ground in Japan and won't change the food system on a mass scale quite yet. For now, most of Tokyo Salad’s customers are high-end restaurants in Tokyo, not the food halls and mom-and-pops that make up most of the country's food system. But nonetheless, this style of farming could help solve some of the problems that are unique to Japan.
Japan's population is decreasing and is expected to continue decreasing in the coming years. The country's farming population is aging out of the business, but a new generation of farmers isn't stepping to take their place. Farm lands are being abandoned as more young people move to the urban centers, creating a shortage of home-grown food in the country.
Innovations like Tokyo Salad offer solutions to these problems on several fronts. By taking place in a city, urban farming can attract a new generation of workers that don't want to live in rural areas while also regenerating the supply of locally grown food. On top of that, the fact that Tokyo Metro is taking this on shows an innovation for a business that is based on high populations—with the popultion dropping, metro ridership will drop, forcing railway operators to consider supplemental businesses to stay up-and-running.
"Technology could help Japan scale up its local food production, especially if unused spaces long assumed hostile to raising food, like old warehouses, can increasingly do so cost effectively and at a profit," according to Triple Pundit. "And if that technology transfer can move across borders and become affordable, urban farming could feed the world and create a new wave of jobs."
Growing lettuce in unused parts of a train station just might be the answer.
High-Tech Shipping Crates, Precision Technology Poised To Revolutionize Urban Ag
December 19, 2017
Image credit: Freight Farms
Between a growing global population — which is estimated to reach 9.5 billion by 2050 — rapid urbanization and climate change, shifting agricultural to a more sustainable model is essential for safeguarding the future of our food system. Startups in the United States and Singapore are ready to rise to the challenge, championing food sustainability through new technologies and infrastructure solutions designed with urban environments in mind.
Reconnecting consumers with their food is a critical component of future-fitting the food system, but heading straight to the source — farms themselves — isn’t always an option. To close the gap, Boston-based startup Freight Farms developed the Leafy Green Machine (LGM), a refrigerated shipping container repurposed as an indoor hydroponic food growing unit.
The 40-foot containers can be installed just about anywhere — schools, corporate campuses, restaurants, hospitals, retail stores, etc. — and are capable of growing between two to four tons of produce a year (as much as a 1.7-acre farm). The controlled environment eliminates the need for herbicides and pesticides, and the system uses 90 percent less water than traditional farming methods — approximately one gallon per week.
What’s more, Leafy Green Machines use only about 120 kWh of electricity a week — the same as a family of four — to run its heating, cooling, lighting and irrigation systems. A smartphone app is used to monitor and control the growing process. In total, it only takes around 20 hours a week to care for the 9,000 plants housed within the LGM.
High schools in Rhode Island have begun exploring the idea of adding Leafy Green Machines to their campuses in an effort to incorporate fresh, organic produce into their school lunch offerings and teach students about sustainable food production. Cumberland High School has already installed one of the systems. According to Clean Technica, students will be involved in the maintenance of the farm and Sodexo will serve the farm-fresh food in the school cafeteria. Similar projects have also been rolled out at the Boston Latin School, Georgia State University, Stonybrook University and UMASS Dartmouth.
Leafy Green Machines are also being deployed by small businesses and soil farmers: The system is at the heart of Houston-based startup Acre in Box, which supplies kale and lettuces to local restaurants, and helped Karma Farm in Monkton, MD diversify its crops and expand its operations. The farm now supplies local farm-to-table restaurants in the Baltimore area with fresh and local produce.
Meanwhile, a new food sustainability accelerator in Singapore is helping startups bring their sustainable food solutions to scale.
A joint initiative of social impact startup incubator UNFRAMED and the Croeni Foundation, an environmental NGO, Makanpreneur is a four-month holistic training program that offers startups tackling food sustainability challenges comprehensive support from seasoned entrepreneurs and industry experts, training, funding and networking opportunities to develop sustainable food alternatives.
Two of the four startups selected for the program are focusing their efforts on enhancing food-system resiliency in Singapore via local production and precision technology.FarmX is harnessing the power of blockchain and IoT to create a precision farming technology that allows farmers to communicate with their plants. Sensors collect real-time data on temperature, humidity, soil moisture and nutrients, which farmers can access on their smartphones. The data can then be used to help urban growers increase productivity, reduce costs and reduce the likelihood of crop failure. Ecolution is also using precision agriculture technologies to take polyculture farms to the next level by boosting productivity and competitive advantage.
The Makanpreneur accelerator program will run until 28 March 2018, when participating startups will present their ideas to an audience of key players in the food industry and impact investment space. Winners will receive up to $10,000 in funding from the Croeni Foundation to scale their solutions.
Launched in 2006, Sustainable Brands has become a global learning, collaboration, and commerce community of forward-thinking business and brand strategy, marketing, innovation and sustainability professionals who are leading the way to a better future. We recognize that brands today have… [Read more about Sustainable Brands]
Regina Food Bank Greenhouse Fills Shelves With Garden-Fresh Goods
Regina Food Bank Greenhouse Fills Shelves With Garden-Fresh Goods
Greenhouse project connects people with fresh food and the art of growing
CBC News Posted: Dec 09, 2017
The greenhouse features multiple towers that are similar to barrels, each with 72 pockets from which food can be grown. (Submitted by B. Paul)
The tastes and smells of garden fresh food is bringing light to the winter, as the Regina food bank plows onwards with its year-round greenhouse project.
From the light crunch of lettuce to the earthy flavours of sweet basil, the food bank's greenhouse is not only producing fresh food, but also putting people back in touch with where their food comes from, community greenhouse co-ordinator Kimberley Wenger told CBC's Saskatchewan Weekend.
- "Growing our own food as a food bank is a really good way to look at what we do on a bigger scale and provide not only fresh food but also education to the clients and community about where food comes from, what it looks like, what it smells like, what it tastes like," she said.
Ultra-efficient technology
The greenhouse launched its Four Seasons Urban Agriculture Project earlier this year, using garden towers. The technology is ultra-efficient, featuring multiple towers that are similar to barrels, each with 72 pockets from which food can be grown.The centre of each tower is filled with compost which is produced by red wriggler worms, who live in bins at the greenhouse. These worms are fed waste the food bank won't be using, with the worms converting 31 kilograms of inputs each week into fertilizer. This fertilizer, in turn, is fed back into the garden towers as nutrients for the plants.
Kimberley Wenger is the community greenhouse co-ordinator with the Regina Food Bank. (Submitted by B. Paul)
"It's vertical gardening and indoor growing. Controlled environments are definitely a popular thing right now," said Wenger.
Wanting to share community asset
Outreach is also a major part of the greenhouse project, she explained. In the launch of this outreach program, students from five schools learned all about the garden tower, with the food bank delivering students with their own garden towers and all the materials they would need to grow food in their own classrooms through the year.
"We have a lot of interest from people that want to extend their season. There's so many opportunities with this place. It's really an asset to our community and we want to be able to share that."
For herself, Wenger said she's learned a lot about gardening since getting involved in the greenhouse project.
"It's been a very transformative process for me," she said. "I never really grew up around gardening and so a lot of this information was new but it was just about being optimistic and tackling a challenge. And that's something I've always enjoyed doing."
With files from CBC Radio's Saskatchewan Weekend
Seasons' Greetings!
Seasons' Greetings!
Have you been on FreshBoxFarms.com? Visit us for product descriptions, indoor agriculture info, FAQs & SO much more!
Our team at FreshBox Farms is delighted to have shared another amazing year with our community of leafy green eaters, retailers, distributors, and all those who have supported us on our journey to improve local produce.
We sincerely wish each and every one of you a peaceful and relaxing Holiday season. Please enjoy this little poem that we wrote last year for our friends, and cherish your celebrations!
How Farmwall Plans to Revolutionise Dining By Helping Eateries Grow Their Own Food
THE mission? Reduce “food miles”, waste and packaging while bringing food production closer to where the food is eaten. The solution? Small-scale “farms” inside the very produce.cafes and eateries that will use their
How Farmwall Plans to Revolutionise Dining By Helping Eateries Grow Their Own Food
Claire Heaney, Herald Sun
December 6, 2017
In the Herald Sun’s ongoing series on Victorian entrepreneurs with great ideas, we meet the team bringing farm freshness to Melbourne eateries — without the need for a paddock.
THE mission? Reduce “food miles”, waste and packaging while bringing food production closer to where the food is eaten.
The solution? Small-scale “farms” inside the very cafes and eateries that will use their produce.
It’s a revolution that an enterprising Victorian start-up business, Farmwall, wants to usher in.
Founded by Geert Hendrix, Farmwall provides small, vertical gardens that are similar in dimension to bookcases.
Geert Hendrix wants eateries across Melbourne to grow their own food. Picture: Tony Gough
The gardens, planted with microgreens — young, edible greens — will initially be installed at cafes and in kitchens.
Based at Alphington, in Melbourne’s inner north east, the social enterprise uses aquaponic principles, which combine aquaculture and hydroponics so fish and plants are grown in an integrated system.
Farmwall undertook a successful crowd-funding campaign, raising more than $30,000 to get the business started.
Each Farmwall prototype cost $10,000, but Mr Hendrix says he expects that as the system is finetuned, the cost will be substantially reduced.
The Farmwall prototypes cost about $10,000, but the cost is expected to fall.
They will be made available on a subscription basis, where businesses pay for use of the vertical farm and for weekly upkeep.
Mr Hendrix says the business came about after he quit his long-time job as a sales manager in March last year and became an Uber driver while he worked out the next step.
“I was really keen to get back to basics,” he says.
He read widely and was looking for something that would give him a sense of purpose and an income.
Mr Hendrix, right, assembled a team to fuel the venture, including Serena Lee, who has branding and marketing experience.
The challenge was building on activities he enjoyed, including spending time outside, to create a business that would combine passion and talent, and earn an income.
“I also drew on the idea of Japanese Ikigai, which means having a reason to get up in the morning.” he says.
“I was doing the morning runs to the airport and was meeting some interesting people. It was always a good opportunity to have a conversation about things that could change the world.”
He assembled a core team including Serena Lee, with branding and marketing experience, and Wilson Lennard, an aquaponics expert.
He also has an advisory group of other experts who provide know-how and have equity in the business.
He says the idea of the Farmwall urban farms was to replicate what a large farm could do, but in an city environment.
Mr Hendrix says the business was fortunate to have the operator of cafes Top Paddock in Richmond and Higher Ground in the city take an interest.
In coming weeks, the Farmwall will be installed at the restaurants, ensuring fresh crops of microgreens are on hand for chefs.
Melbourne’s vibrant cafe scene is ripe for an in-house garden revolution, Farmwall believes.
In the meantime, a Farmwall established at a business incubation hub is supplying five local businesses with microgreens. Mr Hendrix says the enterprise is seeking feedback and suggestions from those businesses.
He expects that in the future, businesses may pay for Farmwall gardens through financing deals offered by companies that specialise in leasing out equipment. The benefits of Farmwall are many, he says, including cutting water and energy costs and providing fresh produce.
Cafes and restaurants go through a lot of microgreens and they are expensive and often do not keep well packaged in plastic, he says.
The Farmwall is one metre long, 40cm deep and two metres high.
The cafe industry is always evolving, Mr Hendrix says, and is looking to differentiate itself and embrace new ways of doing things.
The business is at an early stage, he says, but he can see a time when Farmwalls could be installed at aged-care facilities, in schools and at residential apartment buildings.
While grateful for the help of crowd-funding, Mr Hendrix says the process can be exhausting. But, he says, entrepreneurs have to get out of their comfort zones to make crowd-funding work.
Many people espouse the virtues of crowd-funding, he says, but those people often need to be prompted and reminded that they are “the crowd”.
What our experts say ...
John Downes
Business coach, Acorro.com.au
WELL done Geert, Serena and Wilson. Microgreens grown at the place of consumption, reducing food miles while maximising freshness and adding visible eco-sustainability features to the restaurant — I’d love that at home.
Business coach and social media guru John Downes is the director of the Acorro business advisory group.
Two issues: What is your implementation and deployment plan to get the first three Farmwalls installed with customers?
Conceptualising and prototyping a product for a production run of one is gruelling. Delivering on scale in the field takes a whole new realm of skills, relationships, communication, planning, management, compliance, quality systems, redesign, and even more capital than you expect.
How are you managing these, and do you have a plan capturing the learnings?
Secondly, consider your tribe. Since the crowd sourcing, the social feed has pretty much fallen away.
This is understandable as there is so much going on to deploy the systems. But it is vital to have regular communication updates sharing your progress.
At least once a fortnight, share where you are at, what has been done in the past two weeks, what is planned for the next two weeks, the challenges and what you have learned. This keeps the tribe informed, includes them in your process, can be a source of inspiration and problem solving and keeps them actively promoting your project.
Vivian Vo
Mentor, Melbourne Innovation Centre
CONGRATULATIONS Geert and team on running a successful crowd-funding campaign. Your pitch is passionately presented with a value proposition that impacts the community from a social and environmental perspective.
Vivian Vo is a mentor for the Pitch a regular feature in the Herald Sun. Picture: Sarah Matray
Preparation has definitely paid off: not only has Farmwall raised its crowd-funding target, the campaign’s wide audience validated the concept.
As a start-up, you are constantly testing, measuring and learning from your customers. Be mindful of the difference between being customer friendly and customer-centric.
Start-ups that are customer-centric spend enormous amounts of energy on providing a solution-based product instead of a product they only think customers want.
Now that you are ready to test your product in the market, the biggest challenge will be determining whether the product is leading to real progress. Measure progress by using metrics such as customer engagement, customer lifetime value, and cost of acquisition.
These metrics will offer valuable insight into customers and their reactions to your product, and can demonstrate growth and be desirable when pitching to investors.
Learning is the essential unit of progress for start-ups, and validated learning is demonstrated by positive improvements in metrics.
Bruce Hall
Mentor, Small Business Mentoring Service
OCCASIONALLY you come across a product or idea that has the potential to make a real difference.
Bruce Hall is a mentor at the Small Business Mentoring Service.
Not only does the Farmwall significantly contribute to sustainability but also gives restaurants and cafes a real point of difference — something that will delight consumers and give them a story to share.
From a marketing perspective, the framework of a great story is there, but flesh needs to be put on the bones. The website looks great but a lot more copy is needed to increase its reach.
The stories can be around sustainability and the ”journey” of the concept, its evolution, the problems and challenges overcome.
You could include information about how the product can help restaurants and cafes provide a better experience, attract customers and enhance their offerings.
To be found, pages and posts on the site also need to be optimised for search. Page titles such as Produce, Market, Impact and so on should be changed to terms potential customers will be using when searching for information on micro herb suppliers, sustainability and similar subjects.
The chosen phrase then needs to be incorporated into meta headings and copy to give the page “search relevance”.
Finally, I suggest the site header be made “sticky”, and adding a contact number.
This Underground Farm Helps Power The Building That Houses It
Plantagon is a company that develops vertical farm technology, and they have some pretty big dreams for how food will be produced in the future. Their current projects suggest that the future is actually not very far off. The Plantagon CityFarm will be opening in Stockholm in 2018, Fast Company reports.
This Underground Farm Helps Power The Building That Houses It
BY AIMEE LUTKIN
12-07-17
Plantagon is a company that develops vertical farm technology, and they have some pretty big dreams for how food will be produced in the future. Their current projects suggest that the future is actually not very far off. The Plantagon CityFarm will be opening in Stockholm in 2018, Fast Company reports.
Once it is built, the indoor farm will not only be equipped to grow plants, but the excess heat used in their production will be channeled to other parts of the building, saving the 26-floor office building 700,000 kilowatt-hours of energy a year. As of now, Plantagon has a lease from the building for three years. They don't pay rent. How? Because the money saving abilities of their system is projected to be three times what the previous tenant paid.
Plantagon cofounder Hans Hassle told Fast Company that figuring out a way to make growing indoors cost effective is as important as trying to figure out how to make things grow at all.
“[The building owner] agreed to give us a free lease for three years, so we don’t pay one single Swedish kroner for the room,” said Hassle. “This is the challenge, very often, for urban farmers: If you really want to grow things in the city, you have to find new business models that actually make the food not too expensive in the end.”
Plantagon is so sure of their models, they're crowdfunding to build an entire structure for urban farming, an ambitious project that could change not only urban farming, but agricultural systems everywhere.
The 16-story “plantscraper” will be used to grow food, but will also have rentable office space, and an underground farm much like the one in Stockholm, used to produce heat for the building. They're hoping to open in the city of Linköping, about two hours away, by 2021.
The indoor farm system saves energy, but it is also appealing to the area's demographic. Buying food from where it is grown in your office is about as local as you can get, if you don't have your own backyard. And that's important to a lot of people.
“In Sweden, we have a higher demand for locally grown food than we do for organic food,” Hassle explained. “People tend to want to know where the production comes from.”
Hassle argues that buying local creates a much smaller carbon footprint than buying organic foods that have traveled long distances to get into your basket.
The Plantagon system isn't just local, it's designed to use far less water than traditional farming, and filters carbon dioxide out of offices to be fed to the plants. They're hoping to open ten more similar underground locations in offices around Stockholm, as its success is proved. Despite the rapid growth, the business is run in part by a non-profit company, in an attempt to keep them honest, and crowdfunding from interested people in the community.
“To us, food production is not like running any business–food is like water, it’s a human right,” said Hassle. “So it’s not only business as usual. This has lots to do with social responsibility and of course with environmental responsibility. That’s why we’re inviting people to be part of owning these facilities because they should have input.”
Sounds like a good thing to buy into.
Salad Made in Panasonic's High-Tech Indoor Farm Hits The Market
Salad Made in Panasonic's High-Tech Indoor Farm Hits The Market
From left: Panasonic Factory Solutions Asia Pacific managing director Tatsuyoshi Ishii, Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority of Singapore CEO Lim Kok Thai, Panasonic Singapore managing director Paul Wong, Tong Chiang Group’s CEO Lisa Zou and group executive chef Gary Wu.ST PHOTO: MARK CHEONG
December 1, 2017
The SingaSalad mixes locally grown vegetables with dressings inspired by two Singaporean dishes
Catering company Tong Chiang Group has come up with a new salad using locally grown vegetables supplied by Panasonic, and salad dressings inspired by two popular local dishes - chilli crab and Hainanese chicken rice.
For a start, the SingaSalad is now available only on the menus of eight of Tong Chiang Group's subsidiary catering companies. Consumers will be able to buy retail packs at selected supermarket outlets sometime next year.
The company's chief executive Lisa Zou, who prefers to eat healthily, says it has always been her goal to give customers healthier food choices.
She says: "Now that we have a supply of fresh and pesticide-free vegetables from Panasonic, we created the SingaSalad to encourage consumers to eat healthier and support home-grown produce."
Panasonic's vegetables are grown at the company's high-tech indoor farm located at the Panasonic Factory Solutions Asia-Pacific's premises in Jalan Ahmad Ibrahim. The Japanese electronics giant ventured into vertical farming here in 2013. Its 1,154 sqm indoor farm, about the size of 11/2football fields, now produces 81 tonnes of vegetables annually, which are sold to restaurants and supermarkets.
Vegetables supplied to Tong Chiang Group's central kitchen are harvested and delivered the same day, directly from Panasonic's indoor farm.
Mr Paul Wong, managing director of Panasonic Singapore, says: "We are happy to have a collaboration with Tong Chiang Group which shares our vision of promoting locally farmed produce which contributes to Singapore's food security."
The SingaSalad vegetable selection includes green leafy lettuce, red leafy lettuce, mizuna, mini red radish, mustard wasabi and a range of microgreens.
The salad dressing recipes are developed by Tong Chiang Group's group executive chef Gary Wu. He says: "By providing our Chilli Crab and Hainanese Chicken Rice dressings, we want to encourage consumers to eat healthier without missing out on the flavours of our local classics."
Vertical Farming Concept to Help Food-Insecure Community
Vertical Farming Concept to Help Food-Insecure Community
Company looking to build its SQF vertical farm in Ontario
A Toronto, Ontario-based company has brought his proof of concept vertical farming system to be part of an initiative to grow food for the non-profit community in Windsor.
Zale Tabakman with prototype unit.
Local Grown Salads, in a partnership with Science City, set up the indoor farm in an under utilized high school building built in 1922. Zale Tabakman, president of Local Grown Salads, says the initiative hopes to create a systemic change in the community. “Windsor-Essex is a very agricultural integrated, manufacturing environment. The ag component of what I’m doing is very interesting to everybody here,” says Tabakman, founder and owner of Local Grown Salads.
Windsor doesn’t have the same property value in other parts on Ontario, such as Toronto and surrounding area. “Rent and property is incredibly inexpensive. It’s a very good use of space but we’ve designed our systems to be cost competitive even in Toronto,” says Tabakman.
Local Grown Salads’ vertical farm grows greens, peas, cucumbers, cherry/heritage tomatoes and strawberries. “Future consumers of this (food from the project) in the community will be able to benefit from nutritious high calorie food,” he says.
The community members involved are currently fundraising for the farm and hoping to have it up and running in early January 2018. They already have the space and people to manage the project; Tabakman says the only thing remaining is a matter of getting funds together. “The execution will be very quick.” Once established the community itself would be producing the vegetables, the community will be responsible for harvesting, cleaning, prepping the food. The 2,000 sq. foot facility would be able to create about 500,000 salad meals a year “possibly more depending on operations. They can decide how to maximize the space to grow the appropriate type of foods possible for their clients.”
English thyme grown on the vertical farm
One of Tabakman’s favorite things to grow is sorrel, a Russian green. “It’s like having a little drop of lemon. You can imagine how you can create a very tasty high calorie meal just using vegetables. From a nutrient dense point of view kale and arugula are almost as dense as meat.”
The ultimate goal for Science City is to create community not-for-profit hub, which will include the Local Grown Salads vertical farm. Food would be consumed by community members who are food insecure and also sold to traditional retailers and food service companies to support the operation of the building.
According to Tabakman, 1.2 billion pounds of leaf lettuce was grown in the US last year and 2.5 billion pounds of romaine. “If I were to set up my farms doing salads and vegetables I could produce I would need 1,600 farms just to support the city of Toronto – that’s the benefit of indoor vertical farming.” Moving forward into the for-profit sector, Local Grown Salads is focused on a SQF standard ready-to eat-salad. (HCAP). The food-safe ready grow unit system is designed to fit into a standard 14-foot ceiling warehouse.
Tabakman is currently doing presentations to investors and groups across the country and overseas to generate interest to raise money to set up his first SQF vertical farm, which will be located in Ontario between Windsor and Toronto.
For more information:
Zale Tabakman
Local Grown Salads
Publication date: 11/28/2017
Author: Rebecca D Dumais
Copyright: www.freshplaza.com
Italy: PiantaNatura Promotes Microgreens
Italy: PiantaNatura Promotes Microgreens
With its urban agriculture project, PiantaNatura is a start-up that managed to bring micro-vegetables to Italian tables and to commercialise them as well.
"We grow over 25 varieties of edible plants including mustard, watercress, radish and rocket. We called these shoots Micro Ortaggi, which is the closest term to the English Microgreens," explains Marta Crippa, owner of the company together with William Thake.
William Thake and Marta Crippa, creators of the PiantaNatura start-up.
PiantaNatura was founded in 2015 in Mezzago in the Monza Brianza province north-east of Milan. It has a well-equipped production workshop covering 200 square metres with one hectare of experimental crops (which will soon become 5).
The philosophy behind this company is a sustainable approach towards food production with the objective of growing products with a high nutritional value and a low environmental impact.
PiantaNatura microgreens are grown from high-quality organic seeds.
The range includes cabbage, radish, beetroot, peas, coriander, basil, borage, red and white mustard, rocket, watercress and much more
"We want to supply interesting high-quality products without giving up our social and ecological commitment, which aims at food education and awareness."
"If we want a different future, a better one, we need to find a new way to do agriculture and establish a new fair relationship with nature.
"In our case, consumers can eat something that is still alive, that is still planted and so remains fresh for days. We noticed how very few products meet this criteria."
"Another interesting element is the micronutrient content, which is much higher than that of vegetables usually found in supermarkets. In addition, our products are organic and the packaging is entirely biodegradable made using energy deriving from renewable sources."
William adds that "currently, 100% of our products are destined to Italy but we are working to establish supply agreements abroad. In 2018, we would also like to implement short chain distribution, this is why we have set up a Business Network with the Mezzago asparagus grower cooperative."
"We do not fear competition as our main competitors work on an industrial level."
"We believe our bio-plastic packaging and organic certification can make a difference. The strength of this project lies in the challenge we share with the clients who choose us day after day. We would like to set up a quick production process with little waste."
"The time is ripe for such small plants with such great potential to become part of the eating habits of aware consumers."
Contacts:
Soc. Agr. PiantaNatura di Marta Crippa e William Thake
Via G. Puccini, 33
20872 Cornate d'Adda (MB) - Italy
Cell.: (+39) 331 4772185
Email: info.piantanatura@gmail.com
Web: www.microortaggi.it
Web: www.piantanatura.it
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Plenty Vertical Farm CEO Matt Barnard: “We Have a Lot of Work to Do” [Podcast]
In this week’s podcast, I’m excited to be speaking to Matt Barnard, the CEO of Plenty, a vertical farming group on the West Coast of the US. If you’re in the agrifood tech space, you will have had to have been living under a rock not to have heard of the record-breaking $200 million investment that Japan’s SoftBank made into Plenty over the summer along with other investors.
Plenty Vertical Farm CEO Matt Barnard: “We Have a Lot of Work to Do” [Podcast]
DECEMBER 20, 2017 LOUISA BURWOOD-TAYLOR
In this week’s podcast, I’m excited to be speaking to Matt Barnard, the CEO of Plenty, a vertical farming group on the West Coast of the US. If you’re in the agrifood tech space, you will have had to have been living under a rock not to have heard of the record-breaking $200 million investment that Japan’s SoftBank made into Plenty over the summer along with other investors. It was actually the first time that Plenty really came out of stealth to tell the world who they were and what they were up to.
I speak to Matt today to find out a little bit more about the last few years and how they’ve been building the company. I hope you enjoy our conversation – there’s an abridged transcription below too.
B-T: Matt, we first met a couple of years ago at the Indoor Ag-Con in New York back when you were called See Jane Farm, and I didn’t really know much about you other than having seen your name on a few investor presentations, but you were in stealth. We did talk about doing an interview at some point, but the timing sort of was never right. The next thing happens, and you’ve raised the largest ever farm tech funding round with SoftBank. That was quite the entrance into the public domain! Maybe you can start by telling us, why was it important for you to be in stealth until that point?
Matt Barnard: Well, I don’t know that it was important for us to be in stealth so much as it was to make sure that we didn’t take up air time when we weren’t yet ready with something to talk about. What we try to do is we try to be ahead of the story if you will, and try not to talk about ourselves too much because no one likes to sit in a room with someone who talks about themselves!
Louisa B-T: Right! I think there are quite a few companies in agtech and indoor ag that actually do speak very early about plans and things. You’re saying that your idea is you wanted to have something of substance to talk about before you told everyone who you were?
Matt Barnard: Right. We also, at that point in time, though we were growing amazing produce and getting it into the lives of a lot of people here in Silicon Valley, we weren’t really ready to capitalize on anything that would come from talking about ourselves. We didn’t want to give the impression to people that we were ready to execute on something that we weren’t really ready for. We just decided to wait.
Louisa B-T: What was with the name change from See Jane Farm to Plenty?
Matt Barnard: We are a company that has global ambitions. We see a lot of problems and a lot of demand to serve around the world. As we thought about having a name that was appropriate for a global, multicultural company, we wanted to make sure that we did that. When you step outside of the US borders, people haven’t seen those reading primaries that were popular in the ’50s, ’60s, ’70s, and a little bit in the ’80s here in the United States that involved Dick and Jane, Spot the Dog, and Puff the Cat. They didn’t know that we were referring to a simpler time with better food that was more nutritious. What we decided to move to the name “Plenty”, which was better able to communicate to cultures around the world and set us up more for success that way.
Louisa B-T: Fair enough. Now, before we talk about the business, I just want to talk a little bit about your background. LinkedIn tells me, and correct me if I’m wrong, that you’ve been a private equity and debt investor, and you’ve built at least one business. Is that right? How would you sum up your resume?
Matt Barnard: Yeah, I’ve built several. A big portion of my career was in the wireless telecommunications industry. I was in that industry for about a decade and helped to build and, ultimately, ran a company that engineered, designed, and deployed the networks for the world’s largest telecommunications companies; so Verizon, AT&T, Sirius XM, Comcast, Rogers in Canada. We designed their networks; we engineered them, we deployed them. They relied on us to make their networks better quality and to cover evermore things, if you will, add capacity, add quality, add coverage. I spent 10 years doing that and helping to build amazing teams of people that were the top in the industry.
After that, I was in the private equity industry for a bit, mainly looking for ways to invest in water technology because a driving passion of mine is to help to fix the water industry, the water system rather.
Louisa B-T: Where does that passion come from?
Matt Barnard: Well, there are a few things essential in life. I don’t know if there’s anything more essential than water. We need water, we need energy, we need food, we need caring human relationships. That’s about it. The water system is severely stressed, and it is one where due to some societal choices a century or two ago, we hide the cost of acquiring cleaning and delivering water to people. The cost isn’t associated with the price, or the price isn’t associated with the cost and, therefore, we’re kind of over consuming. I liken it to a batter that’s draining, where if you have a remote control car or any device powered by a battery, the battery is draining in the background, you don’t necessary know how fast it’s draining and how low it is because the car is still performing exactly as you would expect it to. Ultimately, at some point, it crosses a threshold, and it stops performing. Our water battery, the battery of our water system is severely drained, and we are in danger of crossing that threshold with the largest aquifer in North America slated to be dry in a couple of decades.
Louisa, it takes 1,000 years to replenish that aquifer. It’s under the Great Plains states, which are responsible for much of our cereal production; Texas, Oklahoma, Colorado, Nebraska, Kansas. It covers a massive area. There are now entire areas of Nebraska who can no longer access the Ogallala Aquifer to feed their wheat fields. We have some sirens going off, and I’m motivated to help them fight that.
Louisa B-T: Yeah, those are terrifying stats, but not statistics that everyone necessarily knows in the U.S or globally. Was there any particular reason that you kind of delved into looking at that. Did you have any personal experience with water shortages?
Matt Barnard: I started looking at what was happening in the water systems around the world, in part because of my interest because I grew up on a farm in Wisconsin. I was aware of what had happened on that farm going back a generation when people knew less about how their actions affected the quality and quantity of the water supply. I was already a bit aware of it. I started to look into it in my early 20’s. As I read more and more about it, first in publications like The Economist and then in grabbing books about it, whether the Cadillac Desert or there are now many books and documentaries on it understanding more and more of what’s happening around the world.
Louisa B-T: Yeah. I guess that sort of segues nicely into how and why, my next question is, why indoor ag? Bearing in mind your previous experience, but I presume that that passion for solving the water crisis played a role there?
Matt Barnard: Yes. After I spent that time looking for ways to help alleviate stress in the water systems, I then went back into large-scale technology systems around resources. I was brought in to help scale a company that did cellular smart grids, so these are large technology systems to help electrical, water, and gas utilities damp down and spread demand. After that is when I worked to found Plenty because it is a way for me to pursue my desire to help fix the water systems. Growing up on the farm in Wisconsin, I became keenly aware of the fact that I loved the food that we grew on our farm. I did not enjoy the food that we bought at the grocery store, particularly fresh produce. I loved fresh produce on the farm and not the stuff we bought at the store.
In fact, in Wisconsin, there are a lot of crops you can’t grow. The crops we couldn’t grow on the farm, I didn’t even understand why people liked them. I couldn’t figure it out. It wasn’t until I moved to California that I learned that a couple of thousand miles and a week in a truck has a way of destroying, what is otherwise, some amazing fresh produce. That, and then I’ve had a couple of health incidents in my life, and the life of my family that has caused me to really delve deep into how we eat affects how healthy we are and increases or decreases our risk for various terminal diseases. All of those things together; my experience with food on the farm, my desire to help fix the stresses of the water systems, and family experiences that caused me to dive into what we know about our diet and how it affects our health are all what led me here to Plenty.
Louisa B-T: Fast forwarding to today or to this year and the big $200 million round that you raised with SoftBank and others, can you maybe tell me a little about what drew SoftBank to you compared to other indoor ag groups? How do you think you differentiate yourselves? At this point, a lot of the focus is around growing leafy greens. I know that you guys are growing cucumbers and strawberries too. What’s the Plenty difference that has enabled you to attract these big investors with these global ambitions?
Matt Barnard: Well, there are a lot of large global investors around the world, many of whom are now invested in Plenty, that have been looking for ways to invest in this industry for a number of years. They had been looking at, “Hey, what are the economics of this business? What does it take to succeed? What does a team need to look like if we want to build a global brand?” They saw in us the foundation of a technology system that could grow amazing food that fits into the budgets of people around the world. They saw a great balanced team across a lot of areas of domain expertise and are very excited the vision of being able to solve for what they knew to be the secular trend that got them in the industry in the first place.
They were already aware that the agricultural capacity is declining both absolutely and on a per person basis around the world. They knew that four percent of the world’s population is consuming roughly 30 percent of the fruits and vegetables of the world, which means that 96 percent of the world’s population did not have access to fruits and vegetables in the way that they would like. They were aware of all those secular trends; persistently rising in labor and land costs. They were looking to find ways to solve for it. Those were some of the things that got us to this place.
Louisa B-T: It seems to me that the big challenge ahead for indoor agriculture is scaling and is your business model. As I mentioned, leafy greens seem to be the main area of focus, and that’s not going to provide the nutritional needs of the world. Can you talk a bit about how you’re going to get into other food products that can answer those urgent issues that you’ve mentioned? At this point, it still seems like it’s a lot of potential; when is the reality that you’re going to be getting this nutritional food into the hands of those people globally?
Matt Barnard: We have a lot of work to do. Building both a business and farms around the world does take a little bit of time. We are working on it quickly, but I think people at the end of the day, as they look back three, five, 10 years from now, they’re going to be stunned at the rate that which more and more people around the world have access to fresh fruits and vegetables and a nutrient-rich diet in a way that they do not in 2017. We are developing multiple farms, we have literally dozens of farms in different stages of development in different parts of the world right now. Several of those will open in 2018 and then the rest are slated for 2019 and beyond. We’re going to be working to get these farms out so that we can get food into the homes and hands and mouths of people as quickly as possible.
Louisa B-T: Just thinking about, you mentioned about the technology piece was something that was very appealing to investors and potentially a differentiator for you. You’re building some exciting stuff inside your vertical farms. I think I read somewhere that you have tiny seeding robots. Is that right? Is that technology that you’re actually developing in-house, or you’re working with other people on that?
Matt Barnard: We do seed in an automated way. That is technology that we have applied kind of wrapper that adapts it to what we do. The core of that is technology that was developed outside of Plenty. We are doing some very groundbreaking work in robotics to help get more food in the homes of more people. Not in seeding, it’s in other parts of the farming process.
Louisa B-T: How important is robotics and automation for indoor agriculture? Is it about a labor issue? I know it can be tough to find people to work in indoor farms that have the right expertise or is it about the precision aspect of it and avoiding any …
Matt Barnard: This isn’t actually an indoor agriculture problem, it’s a challenge for all of agriculture. As we look around the world, what we see is we see a global fruit and vegetable market of about 500 billion dollars. We think that if these crops were to be available to 7.3 billion people around the world, this would be a 2.5 trillion or three trillion dollar industry. We believe this to be an industry with a tremendous amount of suppressed demands. We view our job as getting more fresh fruits and vegetables into more people’s budgets, and automation is key to that because we actually have a better ability to do it inside than outside. It’s just much harder to make those processes automated when you’re outside.
Louisa B-T: That automation, I assume, is pretty essential for the business models to work? It sounds to me that there are some indoor farming groups that have really struggled with that cost component. That relates not just to labor, but also to electricity costs for lighting and so on. For making the business models work, that automation is pretty essential, is that right?
Matt Barnard: That’s right. Just like growing these crops outside, it’s essential to drive labor costs out and just as labor costs caused California strawberry industry out in the field to lose about 15% of its acreage last year because of labor costs, we deal with the same thing. We are working to find ways to get more of this into people’s homes.
Louisa B-T: Another challenge that we see, and I actually asked our CIO Michael Dean what he thought, he said that he had learned that fresh produce supply is very relationship driven with many relationships developed over decades and strong distribution networks in many markets between the producer and the retailer adds another level of complexity and a cost base for what is a low cost/high volume product for many of these crops. How do you plan to get over those challenges? If you have global plans to be in various different markets, it’s obviously going to be very different in each place that you go.
Matt Barnard: That’s right. It is. Growing a global business is very, very difficult. We’re very aware of that. It’s one of the reasons why we raised the financing we did so we could build the team necessary to do it. In order to feed the need of the people of Japan, and the people of China, and the people of Saudi Arabia, and the people of the UK and Ireland, and Canada, and all the people of the United States that we’re working to serve, you’re right, it absolutely requires a large team to be able to get this food out to as many people as possible. It’s one of the things that drove us to put that financing together.
Louisa B-T: Thinking about the venture capital investors from your earlier rounds, I’m wondering, if you’re raising $200 million at Series B, perhaps a Series C is going to be even bigger, how are those original VCs going to keep up with some of those larger, more mature investors? My question kind of feeds into how suitable is VC money for indoor agriculture, which is pretty infrastructural in its nature?
Matt Barnard: Sure. The answer to that question could stretch an hour, but I’m going to try to condense it into something that’s shorter because no one wants to listen to me talk for an hour. First of all, relative to our earlier stage investors and keeping up, they don’t necessarily expect to, they know that when a business that they invest in succeeds, that ultimately it’s going to move past them. Really, they want it to because what they know is that their capital is some of the most expensive investment funds on the Earth. For a company to keep using that means that really the company isn’t succeeding. The companies need to graduate out of that type of capital at some point in time. That’s one.
With respect to, “is venture capital appropriate”, it really just depends on the stage of the business. We expect in a few years to no longer be accessing that type of capital either. As you look at how infrastructure is built out around the world, once it is mature and proven over the course of years, people tend to use debt to finance the building of infrastructure in the financing of businesses. Just like field farmers raise a lot of financing from year to year from their banks in the form of debt, Plenty plans to finance the built out of its global finance network, or excuse me, global farm network. It all just depends on the size of the business, the stage of the business, and what’s the most appropriate of capital at each given point of the business. That answer changes over time, and if we’re successful, we absolutely won’t be accessing venture capital at some point in the future.
Louisa B-T: What is your ultimate route? What is the potential exit for your investors?
Matt Barnard: We’re focused not so much on that as we are in getting people the most amazing food that they have ever had, the best produce they’ve ever had, produce that’s better than ice cream, produce that’s better than chocolate, strawberries that are so amazing that people eat them before they get home from the grocery store and have to go back for a second trip. We’re focused on that, getting the people of the world more nutrient-rich food, fresh fruits and vegetables, and being able to live happier, healthier, longer lives. We’re working to build, to delight customers in that way as we work to build an amazing brand around lifestyle, health, food, and sustainability. Everything else will follow from that.
Louisa B-T: The focus is on building a stand-alone business at this point?
Matt Barnard: That’s right.
Louisa B-T: Looking ahead to next year, what can you tell us about what plans you have on the horizon? You mentioned that you have various different locations in development. The only ones we know about are obviously in California and in Seattle. Can you tell us, are they going to be based globally in Japan perhaps?
Matt Barnard: You will see us around the globe. We are not quite ready to talk about the specific market that we’re launching in. I’m going to be excited to talk to you about that very soon for a few of them, but we’re not releasing those yet. We do that in a very coordinated way. A farm launch [inaudible 00:22:43] is almost like a product launch, so we coordinate that with everyone involved there at launch. It ends up involving other companies and partners. We will be letting you know and there will be more farms in 2018. We will be an international company very soon.
Louisa B-T: Yeah, that’s great. Will you be opening up the farms to give us more of a sense of what technologies you’re building in-house or is that always going to be a little bit secretive?
Matt Barnard: You’ll find us not talking a lot about it in the next year or so, but as the years pass, we’re going to talk more and more about it. We’re actually at looking at building … We’re looking at some ways that we can bring the public in and show them how it is that we grow this food that’s so amazing that they can’t wait to have more of it.
What’s fun about working here at Plenty is that we have all of these different areas of domain expertise where we have people that are deep experts in computer science, and machine learning, and plant science, and farm operations, and mechanical engineering. It’s quite an exciting place to work just because of the richness of our team.
Louisa B-T: Yeah. It just seems to me that you’re going to have a lot of these indoor ag groups all building several systems from scratch when there’s probably a lot of knowledge out there that could be shared for the benefit of the industry overall. I’m just wondering when that kind of point will be that it will be more democratized some of this.
Matt Barnard: Yeah, we actually are already working on a plan to do this. I don’t expect it’s going to be in 2018, but I do expect it’s going to be sooner than people think.
Louisa B-T: Fabulous. What is your favorite fruit and vegetable? Just to finish off!
Matt Barnard: Out of a Plenty farm, I have to say our kale is stunning. One of my favorite quotes, and I’ve heard it in multiple ways because everybody has their own way of saying it, but people have our kale, and they say, “Gosh, you shouldn’t even call it kale because all I know is that I hate kale, but I love this.” It’s totally different, and there’s a little bit of sweetness to balance it out too, so it just has a much more balanced taste. It’s not tough and chewy; it’s velvety and soft. That’s a pretty exciting crop to me because we can make that super nutritious food. Instead of the food, you should eat, it’s the food that you can’t wait to eat.
We have kale. I love our strawberries. People are just going to be addicted to our strawberries. They’re going to have a hard time getting home from the grocery store without eating them all.
Louisa B-T: I can’t wait to try them. When will I be able to have my first taste?
Matt Barnard: You can come out to San Francisco and try them now, try the kale. We can probably arrange a tasting for you out of our Wyoming farm on the strawberries here in the next few months. In Seattle, you’ll be able to try some of these crops in Q2 of 2018. It’s happening soon.
Fluence Bioengineering Launches New Vertical Farming Lighting Solutions
Fluence Bioengineering Launches New Vertical Farming Lighting Solutions
Versatile, easy-to-deploy LED systems designed to increase plant density, yield, and quality while reducing installation and operating costs
Fluence RAZR4 LED Grow Light
The Fluence RAZR system not only creates an environment for improved growth and development of our microgreens, but allows us to run a commercial-scale vertical farm at a lower operating cost.
AUSTIN, TEXAS (PRWEB) NOVEMBER 30, 2017
Fluence Bioengineering, Inc. (“Fluence”) today launched three new horticulture lighting solutions designed for the world’s largest vertical farms. With a sleek form-factor, broad-spectrum, optimized light intensity, and world-class energy efficiency, the new Fluence RAZR Series is built for a wide range of vertical farming applications from full-cycle cultivation of leafy greens and microgreens, to young plant propagation of vegetable, ornamental and cannabis crops.
“The new Fluence RAZR solutions are purpose-built to address the unique challenges and opportunities associated with vertical farming,” said Randy Johnson, Co-Founder, and CTO at Fluence Bioengineering. “Every design consideration that went into the new RAZR Series, from the thin form-factor to modular daisy-chain configuration, is predicated on increasing our vertical farming customers’ outputs while reducing their inputs.”
Dense Vertical Farming
With a 1.5-inch thin form-factor, and a mounting height as close as five inches from the plant canopy, the Fluence RAZR Series delivers uniform photosynthetic photon flux density (PPFD) for maximum space-use efficiency and yield per square foot. With the ability to stack vertically in carts and shelving, or daisy-chain horizontally across racks and rolling tables, the new Fluence RAZR Series is built for quick and easy deployment to reduce installation time and material costs thanks to a one-to-many design which connects up to ten lighting modules to one power supply.
The RAZR4 Array is ideal for full-cycle leafy green, basil, strawberry and culinary herb production as well as early-stage vegetative growth for vegetables, ornamentals and cannabis cultivation with an average PPFD up to 375 µmol/m2/s over a 2-foot by 4-foot canopy with a 5-inch mounting height above the plant canopy. The RAZR4 Array includes five lighting modules, and covers 40 square-feet of the canopy.
The RAZR3 Array is ideal for full-cycle leafy green and microgreen production as well as
propagation of vegetable, ornamental and cannabis crops with an average PPFD up to 260 µmol/m2/s over a 2-foot by 4-foot area with an 8-inch mounting height above canopy. The RAZR3 Array includes seven lighting modules, and covers 56 square-feet of canopy.
The RAZR2 Array is ideal for tissue culture, seedlings and cutting/cloning propagation as well as ornamental plugs and starter pots with an average PPFD up to 160 µmol/m2/s over a 2-foot by 4-foot area with a 12-inch mounting height above canopy. The RAZR2 Array includes 10 lighting modules, and covers 80 square-feet of canopy.
Each RAZR lighting system is designed and built in Austin, Texas, USA with an anodized, extruded aluminum alloy chassis and integrated passive heatsink for natural convective thermal management (zero moving parts), and is ETL wet location rated to withstand the harshest of growing environments.
The new RAZR Series is available now. To learn more, visit http://fluence.science/razr
Proven Results in Vertical Farms
Edenworks is moving leafy green and microgreen production closer to consumption with their Brooklyn-based aquaponics vertical farm. Edenworks conducted a trial of several LED vendors, ultimately installing the latest Fluence RAZR3 system which enables Edenworks to add more layers of production per square foot while increasing plant quality and decreasing operating costs. To learn more, visit http://fluence.science/edenworks
“Vertical farming allows us to deliver the highest quality product possible at the lowest cost possible,” said Ben Silverman, Co-Founder and Chief Design Officer at Edenworks. “The Fluence RAZR system not only creates an environment for improved growth and development of our microgreens, but allows us to run a commercial-scale vertical farm at a lower operating cost.”
Farm.One grows hundreds of rare crop varieties for New York City’s finest restaurants out of their downtown Manhattan vertical farm. With a continual focus on improving plant flavor, texture and color, Farm.One tested numerous LED lights culminating in their decision to deploy Fluence RAZR solutions after seeing higher quality and yields. To learn more, visit http://fluence.science/farm-one
“We are constantly evaluating new forms of ag-tech to improve the production and bottom-line of our vertical farm,” said Robert Laing, CEO at Farm.One. “The Fluence RAZR system achieves both with a thin, easy-to-install form-factor which allows us to grow more product per square inch, and optimal light intensity, uniformity and spectrum to cultivate a high-quality crop that exceeds our customers’ expectations.”
About Fluence Bioengineering
Fluence Bioengineering is a photobiology design company exploring physiological plant development under various levels of photosynthetically active radiation and custom spectra. The company partners with leading research institutions to engineer the most powerful and efficient horticulture lighting solutions for both science and commercial applications. All Fluence systems are designed and built in Austin, TX. https://fluence.science/
Town Sees Big Future In Small, Hydroponic Box 'Farm'
November 29, 2017
The Leafy Green Machine after its arrival in Robbinsville. (Provided photo)
By Kevin Shea
For NJ.com
The town of Robbinsville says they're the first municipality in New Jersey to take delivery of a portable, hydroponic box farm from which they plan to grow leafy greens.
The farm - located in a 40-foot metal shipping container and can produce an assortment of lettuce, kale and herbs - arrived Tuesday from the Boston company Freight Farms. It's called a Leafy Green Machine.
It's the future, Robbinsville says: the "vertical" farm can pump out leafy greens all year round without the worry of weather or the need for soil or pesticides from a 320-square-foot space. Hydroponics is the science of growing plants in nutrient-rich water.
And it's also a nod to the township's rural, farming past, the town says.
Kevin Holt, the town's recreation activities coordinator, says the box farm - which cost $104,000 - will aid Robbinsville and residents in three ways.
A peek inside the box farm. (Provided photo)
First, the town plans to grow lettuce and other greens and supply township programs, like the senior center, where the box will reside, and Meals on Wheels.
In the near future, the town plans to partner with nonprofits or organizations that aid the needy or hungry with low-cost produce.
Then, Holt says, the town plans to start a community share garden and sell greens to residents, maybe with a set monthly fee or something similar. "And that will help offset the cost," he said.
Plans are still in the works, Holt said.
In addition to lettuce, the farm has the capability to make mustard greens, Asian greens, endive and herbs like basil, cilantro, dill, mint, oregano, thyme and parsley, the town said.
The grand plan, town spokesman John Nalbone said, is to pay off the box in five to seven years. "That's the goal," he said.
Plus, the town will offer the Leafy Green Machine as an educational tool to schools, and for community engagement and volunteer opportunities, Nalbone said.
"Growing our own food that is healthy and nutritious, with an eye on partnering with organizations such as Meals on Wheels, is a wonderful concept," Mayor Dave Fried said in a statement.
"We really want our seniors and children to take part in this ground-breaking program and learn about futuristic farming," Fried said. "Hydroponics is the way of the future, and we are proud to be on the cutting edge as the first municipality to purchase and operate a Freight Farms hydroponic system."
Kyle Clement, who graduated from Rutgers University recently, where he studied plant science graduate, will spearhead the program for the town, with the title, hydroponic farm coordinator.
"Food connects everyone," Clement said. "Today, people are becoming more and more invested in understanding where their food comes from, and we want to give everyone the chance to explore that."
Kevin Shea may be reached at kshea@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter@kevintshea. Find NJ.com on Facebook.