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Indoor Farm Grows Produce In Outer Space
Indoor Farm Grows Produce In Outer Space
The plant cultivation technology will help provide food for crew members on board the International Space Station.
6 Nov 2017
Most people take the ability of walking to the supermarket to buy food for granted, but that simply isn’t a possibility for many who are based – quite literally – in the middle of outer space. Engineers at the German Aerospace Center (GAC) saw this gap in the market and created the EDEN ISS project, which aims to advance controlled environment agriculture technologies beyond the state-of-the-art. EDEN ISS is a 4-year project under the European Union‘s Research and Innovation Action program Horizon 2020. The goal of the project is to develop safe food production for on-board the International Space Station (ISS) and for future human space exploration vehicles and planetary outposts.
The project will develop an advanced nutrient delivery system, a high performance LED lighting system, a bio-detection and decontamination system, and food quality and safety procedures and technologies. A mobile container-sized greenhouse test facility will be built to demonstrate and validate different key technologies and procedures necessary for safe food production within a semi-closed system. The plant cultivation technologies will initially be tested in a laboratory setting. The next phase will see the high-tech greenhouse container shipped to the German Neumayer Station III in Antarctica, which will begin crop cultivation experiment in December.
Technology has placed itself in the middle of those who are in need of a service and the creation of the required service, with nothing seeming impossible. The mobility of the less able in poverty-stricken countries, for example, has been tackled by one company, who created an all-terrain wheelchair, while the Finnish government has teamed up with a startup tohelp refugees with their finances. How has technological advances in the past 12 months boosted your business’ operations?
Website: www.eden-iss.net
Contact: www.eden-iss.net/index.php/contact
Nexloop
Nexloop is a hyper-local, biomimetic strategy to visibly network rainwater into closed-loop urban food production. Our mission is to increase hyper-local urban food production, decouple localized irrigation from the city grid, and increase visibility of food system processes.
Project Overview
Nexloop is a hyper-local, biomimetic strategy to visibly network rainwater into closed-loop urban food production. Our mission is to increase hyper-local urban food production, decouple localized irrigation from the city grid, and increase visibility of food system processes.
Nexloop retrofits multistory residential building facades to promote small-scale, personalized food production. The design functions at the scale of the window to harness rainwater and provide in situ irrigation for sustainable hydroponic food production in individual urban homes. We aim to shift the paradigm of how urban populations relate to food consumption and access by bringing visibility and human-centered design to the food system. Nexloop addresses scale and the underlying system function with a bottom-up approach. The process of using rainwater to grow food inside requires the integration of multiple functions and a symbiotic relationship between system components. Looking at a variety of biomimetic strategies allows us to design a system that efficiently captures, stores, and distributes water for indoor growing.
The principal system components are a horizontal module and vertical membrane that utilize superhydrophobic and superhydrophilic surfaces and capillary action to channel water to indoor spaces. A unique, rhizomatic system within the module passively delivers water to the organic roots of edible plants. The vertical membrane provides additional surface area for water collection and integrates water storage for additional uptake to prevent the system from flooding. Our vision is a food-water nexus capable of sustainable, closed-loop urban living.
We intend to scale-up to facilitate building-wide adoption and citywide integration of the system to offset the needs of imported water from local water districts and regional sources, reduce the amount of water entering sewage systems, and decrease street runoff into the rivers and NY Harbor. A modular, scalable, systems approach is the foundation for a sustainable urban food system.
Jacob Russo, Stephanie Newcomb, Alexa Nicolas, Anamarija Frankic, Dale Clifford,
Project Overview
Nexloop is a hyper-local, biomimetic strategy to visibly network rainwater into closed-loop urban food production. Our mission is to increase hyper-local urban food production, decouple localized irrigation from the city grid, and increase visibility of food system processes.
Nexloop retrofits multistory residential building facades to promote small-scale, personalized food production. The design functions at the scale of the window to harness rainwater and provide in situ irrigation for sustainable hydroponic food production in individual urban homes. We aim to shift the paradigm of how urban populations relate to food consumption and access by bringing visibility and human-centered design to the food system. Nexloop addresses scale and the underlying system function with a bottom-up approach. The process of using rainwater to grow food inside requires the integration of multiple functions and a symbiotic relationship between system components. Looking at a variety of biomimetic strategies allows us to design a system that efficiently captures, stores, and distributes water for indoor growing.
The principal system components are a horizontal module and vertical membrane that utilize superhydrophobic and superhydrophilic surfaces and capillary action to channel water to indoor spaces. A unique, rhizomatic system within the module passively delivers water to the organic roots of edible plants. The vertical membrane provides additional surface area for water collection and integrates water storage for additional uptake to prevent the system from flooding. Our vision is a food-water nexus capable of sustainable, closed-loop urban living.
We intend to scale-up to facilitate building-wide adoption and citywide integration of the system to offset the needs of imported water from local water districts and regional sources, reduce the amount of water entering sewage systems, and decrease street runoff into the rivers and NY Harbor. A modular, scalable, systems approach is the foundation for a sustainable urban food system.
iUNU’s Computer-Vision Greenhouse Management Solution LUNA
iUNU’s Computer-Vision Greenhouse Management Solution LUNA
Adds Rail Network and Autonomous Camera System
Greenberg: “Our technology helps growers optimize greenhouse farming through images and data, improving performance and demand-driven agriculture. Simply put: Luna has got your back.”
Seattle, WA — Following the launch of iUNU’s [www.lunapowered.com] flagship LUNA greenhouse management platform, the company unveiled its latest innovation, the Luna rail network and autonomous camera system today. This revolutionary tool leverages how machines and computers emulate the human brain and eyes to create images and understanding about the growing process and operation.
Luna works by using a rail-mounted, autonomous mobile camera that captures close-up, high-definition plant images, and high-definition emplaced cameras that watch and keep track of the total growing process. This, combined with visual information data points gathered from in-canopy sensors, tells you what is actually happening. At the same time, Luna is building models of real-time growth curves and proactively notifying the team if subsequent crops deviate from established standards. By coupling these alerts with workflow management dashboards, managers can easily assign tasks and track all the care required for a specific crop. Luna is easily accessed through any Internet-connected device through a native mobile application or a desktop browser.
“Our technology helps growers optimize greenhouse farming through images and data, improving performance and demand-driven agriculture. Simply put: Luna has got your back,” said iUNU CEO Adam Greenberg. “The Luna rail network and camera are the latest grower focused, plant-centric solutions from iUNU, and we are just getting started,” Greenberg continued. “Over the coming months you will continue to see updates and enhancements added to the software management suite as well as extending functionality and reach with hardware developments. The team driving this company is the best in the emerging ag-tech sector,
combining decades of experience from companies like Amazon, Boeing, Honeywell, Intel, IBM, HP, Adobe, Mozilla and some of the largest greenhouse operations in the country. We are applying the same approach that revolutionized manufacturing to the commercial greenhouse market – turning recipes into measured, repeatable, industrial processes.”
The arrival of the rail network and camera augments the Luna software platform’s computer-vision and machine learning technologies to continuously build detailed models of individual plants throughout the day while addressing greenhouse-wide operations issues. Using high-resolution imagery, as well as bioinformatics, this system provides an innovative approach to monitoring tiny changes in plant behavior, allowing for more proactive management. The reality is greenhouse growers must deal with pests, diseases and other environmental threats to plants – now Luna offers a solution that enables them to operate as modern, demand-based, information-driven, manufacturing facilities.
The Luna system begins to learn, and remember, the moment cameras and sensors are turned on, giving growers historical records of every detail of every plant in the system, as well as live information – everything they need to make the best possible business decisions.
LUNA is AVAILABLE NOW. Check us out at www.lunapowered.com.
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Founded in 2013, iUNU (“you knew”) is an industrial computer vision company headquartered in Seattle, with offices in San Francisco and San Diego. Connecting plants, facilities, and people through a single interface, LUNA turns commercial greenhouses into precise, predictable, demand-based manufacturers. An AI born in the heart of Seattle; trained in Silicon Valley and the greenhouses of Skagit Valley; and now accessible from everywhere. The team at IUNU looks forward to introducing you to her.
DP World Supports Saudi Vision for New Mega-City
DP World Supports Saudi Vision for New Mega-City
By MarEx 2017-10-26 21:57:15
Under the leadership of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi Arabia is beginning a new push to diversify its economy. The nation’s government has long pursued the expansion of economic activity into new arenas beyond oil and gas, notably through the creation of greenfield industrial sites and cities, with separate, business-friendly regulatory environments. The most prominent of these projects to date, the industry- and logistics-focused King Abdullah Economic City, is about 70 nm north of the Red Sea port of Jeddah. It has its own seaport, King Abdullah Port, with a current volume of 1.4 million TEU and aspirations to exceed the 10 million TEU mark.
On Tuesday, Prince bin Salman announced a $500 billion plan to create another new city – a sprawling metropolis in a mountainous area of the nation's northwest corner, "an entire new land, purpose-built for a new way of living" with its "own laws, taxes and regulations." The high-tech plan calls for vertical farms, a bridge to Egypt, a strong logistics sector and 100 percent renewable electrical power. bin Salman also called for a return to a cultural environment grounded in "a moderate Islam open to the world and all religions."
NEOM’s Red Sea coastline, pre-development (NEOM)
On Thursday, UAE-based port operator DP World, which runs the South Container Terminal (SCT) at Jeddah Islamic Port, announced plans to invest at its existing facility to support the prince's vision. At present, Jeddah handles about 60 percent of Saudi Arabia's imports.
"Our plans involve increasing efficiencies using innovative tech solutions and making it a semi-automated facility to create skilled jobs for Saudi nationals," said DP World group chairman and CEO Sultan Ahmed Bin Sulayem. He suggested that investment in Jeddah could make Saudi "ports and logistics services a necessity and not a choice for global trade markets, particularly the Red Sea, which is the blood line of global trade." Bin Sulayem also highlighted the "strong historic relations" between the UAE and Saudi Arabia, which are underpinned by “the clear vision of its great leaders who have planned a bright future for their people based on solid economic foundations.”
Development on multiple fronts
NEOM will proceed in parallel with other Saudi projects, like King Abdullah Financial District north of Riyadh, which is under construction; a new 13,000 square mile luxury tourism region on the Red Sea, located 80 nm south of NEOM; and a new 125 square mile "entertainment city" south of Riyadh. But the original set of "economic cities" founded by King Abdullah have not proceeded as rapidly as expected, analysts caution. "The overall progress with the economic cities has been very slow, even before the collapse of the oil price,” said Monica Malik, chief economist at Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank PJSC, speaking to Gulf News.
WINNERS ANNOUNCED: Hackathon to Grow Crops on Mars Sees ‘Duckweed’ Take Prize for Best Solution
WINNERS ANNOUNCED: Hackathon to Grow Crops on Mars Sees ‘Duckweed’ Take Prize for Best Solution
7 November 2017, San Francisco, USA
Hackathon team ‘Just Food’ and their innovative solution for utilizing the aquatic plant duckweed, took the win Sunday night at the inaugural 2017 Autogrow #CropsOnMars Hackathon.
Global ag-tech company Autogrow acknowledged the solution was incredibly well thought out, achievable and original.
“The team did an impressive job researching how they could not only grow duckweed in a challenging environment but how it could realistically sustain life on Mars,” said Autogrow CEO Darryn Keiller.
“The judges all agreed that, while duckweed wasn’t the most appetizing food source, they couldn’t argue with the nutrient value or the innovative prototype of super thin LED lit grow beds they had created.”
‘Just Food’ and nine other teams hacked for two days on software, data or design solutions involving plant biology, controlled environment agriculture and the Mars environment. The judges looked for originality, sustainability, scalability and the potential for reproducibility on Earth.
Teams had the support of mentors and event organizers Autogrow and Silicon Valley Forum over the two days.
“I was privileged to be a mentor covering all aspects of plant biology and lighting. It was also great hackers had access to other mentors from NASA, IBM, Microsoft, Plenty, Orange Silicon Valley and Western Growers to name a few. And of course, the support of event partner Silicon Valley Forum who found a wonderful venue to hack. Like plants, people thrive in the right environment and we had a great growing environment,” said Autogrow Director of Crop Science and Agronomy Tharindu Weeraratne.
The race for the win was so tight that two teams took the runner-up slot with one advocating collapsible growth chambers and the other a rapid deployable enclosure to be set up prior to astronaut arrival using robotic technology.
Mr. Keiller noted that although teams were competing against each other there was an impressive amount of support for one another.
“The Hackers (predominantly millennials) gave us great hope for the future due to their creativity, their outlook to the future and to put things right for our planet’s ecosystem while meeting the needs of our growing population.”
“As organizers of the event, the most unexpected and visceral emotion of the collective teams was the spirit of unity around the daunting challenge we put in front of them. Here were people from perhaps 20 nations; students, startup founders, academics and business owners, all coming together to do something that was substantially beyond any one of them. The strength of their ideas was in their diversity as people and their willingness to collaborate.”
With the success of the inaugural event under their belt, Autogrow will announce new dates early in the year for the next #CropsOnMars hackathon, likely to be scheduled for late 2018 and held in Silicon Valley.
WINNING TEAM ‘JUST FOOD’
Wyatt Smith
Michelle Jia
Deger Turan
Santiago Perez
Zandra Vinegar
JUDGING PANEL
Dr. Nate Storey, Chief Science Officer – Plenty
Jeffrey Law, Chief Technology Officer – Autogrow
Dr Ioana Cozmuta, Industry Engagement, Commercial Space Partnerships – NASA
Andrew Scheurmann, CEO – Arch Systems
Greg Chiocco, Director of Product Management - Climate Corporation
Dr Rosie Bosworth, Strategic Communications – Sustain Ltd
MENTORS
Bilind Hajer, Data Engenieer - Product School
Tobi Ogunaikee, Software Engineer
Isabel Chamberlain, Compliance Specialist and Grower - Plenty
Akihiro Ishimura, Senior Consultant/ AgTech Expert - Fujitsu
Miika Mantyvaara, Global Marketing, Business Development and Innovation - The Vault
Robert (Bruce) Pittman, Chief System Engineer - NASA
Bilind Hajer, Data Engineer - Product School
Anna Propas, Software Engineer Lead Instructor - Coding Dojo
Juanita Dion, Software Engineer - IBM
Dennis Donohue, President at Royal Rose Radicchio - Western Growers Association
Ulrika Lidstorm, Research Scientist & Program Coordinator - Dupont Pioneer
Davies Odu, Software Engineer - Microsoft
Itiya Aneece, PhD Researcher - USGS
Hugo Wagner, Partner - Orange Silicon Valley
Erica Riel Carden, AgTech & FoodTech Advisor - Global Capital Markets
Davies Odu, Software Engineer - Microsoft
Kimball Musk: “Food Production is Facing Unprecedented Innovation”
“Food is a wonderful gift we give each other three times a day, he says. — But it’s hard to imagine a more horrible system than the one we have today”. He says that food space — the so called food industry in Silicon valley — inspires him now exactly like the Internet in 1995. “We’ve never seen around food innovation today’s scale,” he says.
Kimball Musk: “Food Production is Facing Unprecedented Innovation”
By: paradox | 18.10.2017
Speaking of Kimble Musk, it will be difficult to avoid comparisons with his older brother because Kimball wants to do agriculture the same as Elan did with space exploration and electric vehicles. Kimball plans to feed the world in the style of Silicon valley.
Kimball prospered, working together with his brother. Now he’s 45 years old and he is buying up land across America. He believes in environmentally friendly “real food”, which in direct and figurative sense of the word and to feed consumers, and farmers, and the United States, and the planet as a whole. In his business, as in business brother, comes to the fore strategy, idea and marketing. He doesn’t just want to spread innovative vertical farms across the country. Kimball plans to establish a whole infrastructure: training centres, promotion of new food philosophy, venture capital programs, special accelerators. His system is, he believes, needs to completely change today’s American agriculture, and in General, American eating habits.
“Food is a wonderful gift we give each other three times a day, he says. — But it’s hard to imagine a more horrible system than the one we have today”. He says that food space — the so called food industry in Silicon valley — inspires him now exactly like the Internet in 1995. “We’ve never seen around food innovation today’s scale,” he says.
Musk-younger, like a politician or a missionary who travels the States with his idea about the food industry of the future. This year he visited the 50 major conference related to food and business. However, he spends millions on their portfolio companies and support other projects. His non-profit organization has installed 425 of educational vegetable gardens in kindergartens and schools, so that children from a young age understand how there is a “real food”. Musk says that for any business the important scale. The previous company who tried to promote the idea of proper food, did not receive sufficient result, because they could not scale their model, and it is certain that you can.
His model, there are critics. They say they work with farmers, 100% different from working with dotcom, which you didn’t have to get your hands dirty on the ground. Michelle Nischan, founder and chief Executive officer of the company Wolesome Wave, trying to make fruits and vegetables more accessible for people with low incomes, says that the Mask is the right ideas. But to understand the breakthrough technology and scale, is not equal to the ability to negotiate with the target farmers and to get their hands dirty. According to her, the Mask does not have enough practical experience on the farm.
In October was the first release of the accelerator Kimball Musk's Square Roots, which develops urban farming. During the year, 10 businessmen learned how to work with container farms and to market products. Each participant in the accelerator receive from the company a cargo container with a vertical system for growing plants, irrigation systems and a set of blue and red LEDs, and learned to extract from this yield. According to Kimball Musk, such containers will fill the city and are an important source of food.
© 2017, micetimes.asia. All rights reserved
Transparent Solar Technology Represent's "Wave of the Future"
Environment + Science & Technology
Published: Oct. 23, 2017
TRANSPARENT SOLAR TECHNOLOGY REPRESENTS 'WAVE OF THE FUTURE'
Contact(s): Richard Lunt, Andy Henion
See-through solar materials that can be applied to windows represent a massive source of untapped energy and could harvest as much power as bigger, bulkier rooftop solar units, scientists report today in Nature Energy.
Led by engineering researchers at Michigan State University, the authors argue that widespread use of such highly transparent solar applications, together with the rooftop units, could nearly meet U.S. electricity demand and drastically reduce the use of fossil fuels.
“Highly transparent solar cells represent the wave of the future for new solar applications,” said Richard Lunt, the Johansen Crosby Endowed Associate Professor of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science at MSU. “We analyzed their potential and show that by harvesting only invisible light, these devices can provide a similar electricity-generation potential as rooftop solar while providing additional functionality to enhance the efficiency of buildings, automobiles and mobile electronics.”
Lunt and colleagues at MSU pioneered the development of a transparent luminescent solar concentrator that when placed on a window creates solar energy without disrupting the view. The thin, plastic-like material can be used on buildings, car windows, cell phones or other devices with a clear surface.
The solar-harvesting system uses organic molecules developed by Lunt and his team to absorb invisible wavelengths of sunlight. The researchers can “tune” these materials to pick up just the ultraviolet and the near-infrared wavelengths that then convert this energy into electricity (watch a demonstration of the process here).
Moving global energy consumption away from fossil fuels will require such innovative and cost-effective renewable energy technologies. Only about 1.5 percent of electricity demand in the United States and globally is produced by solar power.
But in terms of overall electricity potential, the authors note that there is an estimated 5 billion to 7 billion square meters of glass surface in the United States. And with that much glass to cover, transparent solar technologies have the potential of supplying some 40 percent of energy demand in the U.S. – about the same potential as rooftop solar units. “The complimentary deployment of both technologies,” Lunt said, “could get us close to 100 percent of our demand if we also improve energy storage.”
Lunt said highly transparent solar applications are recording efficiencies above 5 percent, while traditional solar panels typically are about 15 percent to 18 percent efficient. Although transparent solar technologies will never be more efficient at converting solar energy to electricity than their opaque counterparts, they can get close and offer the potential to be applied to a lot more additional surface area, he said.
Right now, transparent solar technologies are only at about a third of their realistic overall potential, Lunt added.
“That is what we are working towards,” he said. “Traditional solar applications have been actively researched for over five decades, yet we have only been working on these highly transparent solar cells for about five years. Ultimately, this technology offers a promising route to inexpensive, widespread solar adoption on small and large surfaces that were previously inaccessible.”
The work is funded by the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Education.
Lunt’s coauthors are Christopher Traverse, a doctoral student in engineering at MSU, and Richa Pandey and Miles Barr with Ubiquitous Energy Inc., a company Lunt cofounded with Barr to commercialize transparent solar technologies.
The Solar Panels Of The Future Are Invisible And They Could Power Your Home
The startup Build Solar is producing solar power units encased in glass blocks, which can be used like windows and seamlessly integrate into a building's facade,
Source MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY
The Solar Panels Of The Future Are Invisible And They Could Power Your Home
BY TESSA LOVE
October 26, 2017
It's no secret that solar energy has the potential to completely disrupt our reliance on fossil fuels and lead to a cleaner, more sustainable planet. But the design of the solar panels you see out in the world today come with a few problems: They're big, they're expensive, they're not aesthetically pleasing and because for the most part they have to be stationary, they can only power homes and buildings.
Luckily there is a lot of innovation in this area. The startup Build Solar is producing solar power units encased in glass blocks, which can be used like windows and seamlessly integrate into a building's facade; Audi is working on solar panels that integrate into the roof of a car; and Tesla is creating panels that look just like the shingles on a roof. Now, in the latest innovation, researchers at Michigan State University have had a breakthrough in solar technology that has led to a completely transparent solar material, which could turn your windows—or even your smartphone—into energy-producing, emissions-cutting devices.
The glass-like solar material is made with proprietary molecules developed by the MSU researchers. The molecules absorb invisible wavelengths of light but still allow visible light to pass through. This generates power via near-infrared and ultraviolet wavelengths while providing an unsuspecting window or screen.
“Highly transparent solar cells represent the wave of the future for new solar applications,” lead researcher and associate professor at MSU Richard Lunt said in a press release. “We analyzed their potential and show that by harvesting only invisible light, these devices can provide a similar electricity-generation potential as rooftop solar while providing additional functionality to enhance the efficiency of buildings, automobiles and mobile electronics.”
Source MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY
Indeed, the potential for these see-through panels to disrupt the solar space is massive. Electric cars will be able to implement them on their windows and sun roofs; mobile gadgets will be able to generate their own power via their own screens; urban buildings that are too tall to use normal solar panels can integrate them into their facades; even airplanes could potentially utilize this technology to generate power passively without even being noticed.
The highly transparent solar material will never be quite as efficient as their opaque counterparts. While they are recording efficiencies above 5 percent, traditional solar panels typically are about 15 percent to 18 percent efficient. Still, the transparent ones offer the potential to be applied to a lot more additional surface area, which could end up being even more disruptive than the opaque ones will ever be.
The researchers estimate there is as much as 7 billion square meters of glass surface in the United States alone. If they can take over even a fraction of that surface area, our fossil fuel consumption could take a massive hit.
“That is what we are working towards,” Lunt said. “Traditional solar applications have been actively researched for over five decades, yet we have only been working on these highly transparent solar cells for about five years. Ultimately, this technology offers a promising route to inexpensive, widespread solar adoption on small and large surfaces that were previously inaccessible.”
NatureFresh™ Farms & Eminent Seeds NL Introduce “The World’s Smallest Tomato”
NatureFresh™ Farms and Eminent Seeds NL reached a proprietary agreement within North America. NatureFresh™ Farms will exclusively grow and market Tomberry® tomatoes in Canada, United States and Mexico.
NatureFresh™ Farms & Eminent Seeds NL Introduce “The World’s Smallest Tomato”
NFF-Tomberries-30 Oct 2017 NatureFreshFarms
Leamington, ON (October 30th, 2017) This past PMA Fresh Summit in New Orleans, NatureFresh™ Farms and Eminent Seeds NL reached a proprietary agreement within North America. NatureFresh™ Farms will exclusively grow and market Tomberry® tomatoes in Canada, United States and Mexico. Jan van Heijningen, Director at Eminent Group, and John Ketler, Farm Manager at NatureFresh™ Farms, finalized the agreement during the tradeshow.
In the spring of 2018 NatureFresh™ Farms will begin growing and commercially marketing this exciting new variety of tomato from its Leamington Ontario Greenhouse. Plans are to expand the production of the Tomberry® tomato over the next few years, as the category grows to meet consumer demands for snacking tomatoes.
This past year NatureFresh™ Farms trial and development team has worked with Eminent NL Seeds to explore new tomato varieties that would fit the growing trend in the snacking category. Not only does the Tomberry® deliver in flavor, it brings a new look and ingredient to the culinary world of food service. These attractive berries are very versatile in the use of salads, hot dishes, and visually appealing. “The World’s Smallest Tomato”, The Tomberry® tomato is about 0.5 to 1 cm in diameter with an average fruit weight of 1 to 2 grams, perfect for snacking.
“The Tomberry® is unique in size and has caught the interest of our retail partners” explained Matt Quiring, Executive Retail Sales Manager. “The snacking trend in North America has exploded and we continue to search for new items that will help grow our snacking category. This pearl sized fruit’s unique size is something hard to miss and even more difficult to pass by without picking up. Once a consumer tries them, we are confident that they will be coming back for more. Visually, it is candy to the eyes. From a sensory standpoint, we can back that up.”
“We are pleased to partner with Eminent NL” said Peter Quiring, President and Owner of NatureFresh™ Farms. “This is a perfect fit to complement our TOMZ® snacking category and our brand strategy. We want to grow and market the best tasting tomatoes, peppers, and cucumbers and we are excited to offer this for the first time from our Leamington Ontario greenhouse starting next spring. Our research team works hard at identifying these new varieties that taste exceptional, and we look forward to the new opportunities they provide for future consumers.”
Over the next few months, NatureFresh™ Farms will be developing packaging and branding for a launch scheduled in spring 2018. For more information about this exciting new tomato contact NatureFresh™ Farms Sales. 519-326-1111
Eminent Seeds NL ABC Westland 118 2685 DB Poeldijk the Netherlands
NatureFresh™ Farms 634 Mersea Rd. 7 Leamington, Ontario Canada, N8H 3V8 www.naturefresh.ca
About NatureFresh™ Farms -
NatureFresh™ Farms has grown to become one of the largest independent, vertically integrated greenhouse vegetable growers in North America. Growing in Leamington, ON and Delta, OH, NatureFresh™ Farms prides itself on exceptional flavor & quality. Family owned NatureFresh™ Farms ships Non-GMO greenhouse grown produce year-round to key retailers throughout North America.
SOURCE: Ray Wowryk | rayw@naturefresh.ca
Director of Business Development | NatureFresh™ Farms T: 519 326 1111 | www.naturefresh.c
UGA Professor: Today’s Students Will Live to See Food Shortages
Posted October 24, 2017 03:02 pm
By Lee Shearer | lee.shearer@onlineathens.com
UGA Professor: Today’s Students Will Live to See Food Shortages
University of Georgia students will see food shortages in their lifetimes, UGA professor David Berle predicts.
It’s impossible to tell how a future of food scarcity might play out, or how deep that scarcity could be, Berle said in a recent talk in the auditorium of UGA’s Odum School of Ecology.
A 2011 report by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization estimated world food production would have to increase by as much as 70 percent to feed the expected world population of about 9 billion in 2050, Berle said.
Scientific and demographic studies have also predicted water shortages.
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A revision of the report suggests agricultural production may not have to increase that much, but it’s clear change is coming, Berle explained.
Various solutions have been proposed, but none of them is a magic bullet, and some may not even be good ideas, according to Berle, a professor of horticulture who helped begin and now oversees the student-run organic UGArden on university land near the State Botanical Garden of Georgia.
Indoor farming is energy-intensive, for example, and vertical agriculture — or wall growing — still requires the delivery of water and nutrients to plants.
Some companies and people tout the use of genetically-modified crops, but it’s unclear how much if any more yield genetically-altered plants can provide.
Cutting back on food waste is another proposed solution, but one with uneven applications. Some have estimated we throw away up to 50 percent of food in the United States. But in less wealthy parts of the world, waste is much less.
Growing food locally is a good idea, but that also can only go so far, Berle said. Many of the foods we eat aren’t suitable for growing in the local climate.
Climate change is also altering growing conditions in many places.
The still-growing organic agriculture movement is a bright spot.
A few years ago, when the idea of growing crops with minimal use of pesticides or chemical fertilizers and pesticides began taking hold, studies showed that organic farming was less productive.
But more recent studies show, said Berle, that organic farming can come close to high-output farming in yield.
Follow Lee Shearer at www.facebook.com/LeeShearerABH orhttps://twitter.com/LeeShearer.
Saudi Arabia Is Building a Futuristic Mega-City That Will Cost $500 Billion
Saudi Arabia Is Building a Futuristic Mega-city That Will Cost $500 Billion
It'll be 33 times the size of New York City.
TALIA AVAKIAN
OCTOBER 25, 2017
Saudi Arabia is building a mega-city that will span three different countries.
The country’s Crown Prince, Mohammed bin Salman, announced the $500-billion plan, which will create a futuristic city in the northwestern region of the country.
Dubbed NEOM, the mega city will cover 26,500 square kilometers in total, spanning territory within Egypt and Jordan as well.
The city is set to be the world’s first independent economic zone, operating with its own laws, taxes, and regulations.
NEOM will be powered completely by renewable energy from solar and wind panels, with its transport system also running on 100 percent green energy.
Vertical urban farms, seawater farming, and solar-powered greenhouses will help provide residents with fresh food supplies, and the zone will also be a space to test out new technological advances like passenger drones and self-learning traffic systems.
Located next to the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aqaba, the massive city will also provide a serene landscape composed of more than 290 miles of coastline and vast desert terrain.
The city's coastline includes a variety of untouched beaches and coastal reefs and its valleys are cradled by mountains, creating a more moderate climate than that of nearby areas.
Plans also include the creation of sports and visual arts venues, a variety of marinas and waterside restaurants, record-breaking theme parks, natural parklands, a water park with a wave pool where Olympians will practice, and what officials say will be the world’s largest garden.
The move comes as the world’s largest oil exporter looks to boost its economy after falling oil prices.
Construction is already set to begin, with the first phase planned for completion by 2025. You can follow the progress of NEOM’s development through an interactive map on the project’s website.
Trending: Spiders, Butterfly Wings Inspire New Solutions for Urban Agriculture, Renewables
Trending: Spiders, Butterfly Wings Inspire New Solutions for Urban Agriculture, Renewables
October 23, 2017
Image Credit: Boris Smokrovic
Innovators continue to look to nature to create new solutions to tackle everything fromwater scarcity and depletion to climate change.
An international team based in New York City has developed a prototype product that mimics the way living systems capture, store and distribute water, which could be deployed to help meet growing demand for sustainable, local food production. Designed by NexLoop, the prototype has been awarded the 2017 $100,000 Ray C. Anderson Foundation Ray of Hope Prize in the Biomimicry Global Design Challenge. The challenge is an international design competition and accelerator program that crowdsources nature-inspired climate change solutions for issues such as food systems, water management and alternative energy.
Dubbed AquaWeb, the product aims to help urban food producers collect, filter, store and distribute atmospheric moisture with a modular, all-in-one water sourcing and management system. Instead of drawing on groundwater, AquaWeb harnesses rain and fog and uses passive strategies to distribute water so that urban farms, including greenhouses, indoor vertical farms and container farms can save energy and become more resilient to disturbances.
Natural systems inspired each design element of NexLoop’s solution: It borrows heavily from the examples of cribellate orb weaver spider webs that collect fog from the air, drought-tolerant plants such as the crystalline ice plant that stores water and mycorrhizal fungi such as the Jersey cow mushroom which distributes water. The team also looked to the dwarf honey bee’s hexagonal nest structure for AquaWeb’s efficient and modular design.
“NexLoop is an impressive team across the board,” said John A. Lanier, Executive Director of the Ray C. Anderson Foundation. “They have a deep understanding of how biomimicry aids in the design process and their plans for hyperlocal water capture and storage in urban settings could play a crucial role in scaling local, sustainable agriculture. We are proud to award them this year’s Ray of Hope Prize.”
The trustees of the Ray C. Anderson Foundation also awarded a $20,000 prize to second place team Windchill from the University of Calgary, Canada, which created an electricity-free refrigeration system inspired by how animals regulate body temperature. The $15,000 third place prize went to Evolution’s Solutions from theUniversity of California, San Diego, which created a food waste nutrient recycling and supply system inspired by bacteria that helps hydroponic farmers grow food more efficiently and sustainably.
A total of six international teams spent the past year in the world’s only Biomimicry Accelerator program, developing working prototypes with the help of biomimicry experts and business mentors in order to create viable, market-ready solutions. The Biomimicry Accelerator is a commercialization platform for biomimicry entrepreneurs to bring needed sustainability solutions to market faster.
“Our vision moving forward is to help seed biomimicry and biomimetic thinking as the default position for design, industry, economy and culture,” said Kenny Ausubel, Co-Founder and CEO of Bioneers. “The Biomimicry Global Design Challenge doubles down on innovation, providing a business incubation process as potential investment capital for the finalists to accelerate market-ready, scalable biomimetic solutions to our greatest challenges. As such, we are honored to be continuing and deepening our partnership with them.”
Meanwhile, researchers at the California Institute of Technology and Karlsruhe Institute of Technology have developed thin film solar cells that mimic the delicate black wings of the rose butterfly to better absorb light. According to reports, the solar cell is capable of gathering light two times more efficiently than traditional solar cells.
The key to the discovery, the results of which are published in the journal Science Advances, are the disordered nanoholes in the wings’ scales, which not only allow the wings to be lighter, but allow the butterfly to better absorb heat. The random ordering, in particular, is what makes the technology tick. After studying the butterfly’s wings under a microscope, researchers discovered the position and order are important for absorbing light. They then used the model to recreate the structure with thin sheets of hydrogenated amorphous silicon sheets with similar holes that scatter light onto a silicon base. In addition to collecting twice as much light as conventional solar cells, they can also be created quickly — in the range of five to 10 minutes, to be exact.
Another advantage of the team’s discovery is that the sheets have the capacity to expand the capabilities of existing solar systems. Solar panels are typically installed on an angle and therefore capture sunlight only during a specific time window. Solar panels equipped with this new technology could generate for longer periods of time, and ultimately take solar technology to the next level.
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Kimbal Musk Has a Silicon Valley-Style Plan to Feed America
Kimbal Musk Has a Silicon Valley-Style Plan to Feed America
Kimbal Musk, Elon Musk's brother, is aiming to foment an agricultural revolution in America. With scalable projects that include healthy low-cost fast food and urban farms in parks and shipping containers, he's made an impressive start.
“REAL FOOD” PHILOSOPHY
Kimbal Musk is Elon’s younger brother, who made his first money working in tech and went on to invest in his brother’s other businesses. He serves on the board of both Tesla and SpaceX today. However, Kimbal Musk’s first love is food, cooking, and how we eat. He opened his first restaurant, The Kitchen, in Colorado in 2004. But after a skiing accident into 2010 left him temporarily paralyzed, he had an epiphany: he would devote his life’s work to changing the way we eat in America.
Musk recently opened a satellite to his upscale Kitchen restaurant inside Shelby Farms, a 4,500-acre park in the urban center of Memphis, Tennessee. He is currently testing a small takeout spot there, offering well-prepared, locally-grown meals for around $5—an antidote to fast food. He also made 300 nearby acres, formerly used to grow cotton, part of that deal, and is now transforming that land into an organic farm.
Kimbal Musk’s food philosophy —that “real food” should sustain not just the human body, but also the planet and the food producer—is actually very similar to the community garden or farmers’ market philosophy. Musk’s difference, promoted by him under The Kitchen brand, is that he wants to bring Silicon Valley scalability and innovation to the food system.
“My way of working is very practical,” Musk said to the New York Times. “There are many wonderful solutions to real food, but I focus on what we can scale. The Slow Food guys were right, but what they didn’t know was how to scale. If you can’t scale, it doesn’t matter.”
For example: Musk is interested in school gardens, but criticizes the traditional school garden model—because it doesn’t scale. Although he purports to care most about cooking and eating food, and says he does not place scalability above those concerns. In several areas, this isn’t clear.
The nonprofit arm of the company, The Kitchen Community, has installed learning gardens along with materials and staff in 100 Memphis schools. They also exist in Chicago, Los Angeles, and Pittsburgh, and Musk aims to have them in at least 1,000 schools by 2020.
CRITICS AND CHALLENGES
Not everyone working in food is a fan of Kimbal Musk’s food philosophy, or the way he acts on it. His remarks have often been called tone-deaf, or lacking in broader knowledge about food systems.
After Musk suggested in an interview that food hadn’t yet seen the benefits afforded by technology, Ontario farmer Lawrence McLachlan tweeted in response: “You might want to visit a Farm Progress show. Or even a farm. I think you might have missed 70 years of Ag history. It’s Hi-Tech stuff bud.”
"Food is one of the final frontiers that technology hasn't tackled yet. If we do it well, it will mean good food for all." @kimbal#foodtank pic.twitter.com/6cyv0VsW8Q
Lawrence McLachlan @LMcLachlan60
You might want to visit a Farm Progress show. Or even a farm. I think you might have missed 70 years of Ag history. It's Hi-Tech stuff bud
Musk has, mostly by happenstance, become symbolic of a divide between people working in the modern American food justice movement, where largely “old school” values such as growing food in soil take precedence, and those with “new school” values that emphasize business and tech-focused practices.
“It’s the divide between the technophile cornucopians and the techno-skeptic redistributors,” Krishnendu Ray, New York University nutrition and food studies department chairman, said to the New York Times. For some, like Bay Area chef and and school garden activist Alice Waters, Musk is a Johnny-come-lately who simply doesn’t have enough information.
“I don’t want to hear another word about scaling,” Waters told the Times. “He doesn’t know what he doesn’t know. He’s very earnest about what he’s doing, but he doesn’t know enough about farming and about the soil. He wants to do the right thing, but he just hasn’t done his homework. Not everything has to be scalable.”
That won’t stop Musk, however. His Square Roots project, which trains young farmers to grow greens for sale with nothing but LEDs and enhanced water in Brooklyn shipping containers, yields about as much produce per box as two acres of soil. Musk wants to start a similar program in every major American city.
While the program has its critics, it is part of a larger vertical farming trend. Other programs like Musk’s, which grow faster than soil in less space, are flourishing, even in warehouses. Big cities like Shanghai are creating vertical farming districts, and even Antarctica is getting in on the action.
Philosophy aside, in a time of need and changing climate, even food staples we depend on may grow short; growing more food in less space might be the winning strategy.
References: NYTimes - Tech, TedxTalks, Square Roots
Local Entrepreneurs Bring Farming Indoors
Beanstalk Farms is a Charlottesville-based agricultural technology company that produces scalable, automated and sustainable vertical farms. Its innovative model grows greens such as spinach, kale, and arugula in a fog of oxygenated water and nutrients.
Local Entrepreneurs Bring Farming Indoors
Beanstalk Co-Founders Jack and Michael Ross | Credit: Jack Ross
Julie Zink | Thursday, October 19, 2017
Two local entrepreneurs are seeking to revolutionize farming, reduce energy expenditures and increase productivity by bringing their crop-growing indoors.
Beanstalk Farms is a Charlottesville-based agricultural technology company that produces scalable, automated and sustainable vertical farms. Its innovative model grows greens such as spinach, kale and arugula in a fog of oxygenated water and nutrients.
LEARN MORE:
With shipping container, Fidelis Greens fuses technology, farming
“If we can stack [our farms] and put them indoors, we can put them anywhere in the world,” said Jack Ross, co-founder of Beanstalk.
The goal, Ross said, is to re-create and control the natural environment in an indoor setting, eliminating the need for transportation and increasing efficiency of resources.
Ross, a graduate of the University of Virginia School of Engineering and Applied Science, co-founded Beanstalk with his brother Michael Ross, a graduate of Georgia Tech’s School of Aerospace Engineering. They wanted to apply their interest in energy and their skills as engineers to address problems they saw in the agriculture industry.
The idea was sparked in the spring of 2016 during a trip the brothers took down the Pacific Coast Highway. Driving past miles of California farmland, they began to debate how much energy was being used to grow the produce they were seeing.
After research and calculations, they saw room to innovate for more efficient use of agricultural resources.
The solution they came up with involves an indoor farming model that revolves around aeroponics.
Jack Ross
Plants grown through aeroponics “actually sit in air,” Jack Ross said. Throughout most of the growing process, the plants’ roots are suspended in highly oxygenated air, allowing them to grow more quickly, he said.
Water and nutrients are then delivered to the roots through fog. In traditional aeroponics, fog is delivered through nozzles. Beanstalk’s distinctive model generates nutrient- and oxygen-rich fog without the use of nozzles, which can become clogged.
Ross cites the unique fog mechanism as the company’s “competitive advantage.”
They create fog in a central location and then disperse it throughout their indoor facility through a series of ducts.
Their model also ensures that each part of the growing process, “all the way from planting the seed through the harvest,” is automated, eliminating a need for manual labor and ensuring consistency across crops.
By bringing their produce indoors, Beanstalk can “mitigate a lot of the risks that plague [the] current farming industry. We always know that we’re going to have the appropriate amount of water, we’re going to have the appropriate amount of sunlight,” Ross said.
Controlling an indoor farming environment allows Beanstalk to increase production and reduce costs. According to Ross, their indoor farming model uses 98 percent less water than traditional farming and allows plants to grow faster in ideal, year-round conditions.
While a head of lettuce can take between 70 and 80 days to grow in the ground, “in [a Beanstalk indoor farm], it will take about 30 days,” Ross said.
Growing mostly greens, Beanstalk hopes to get as many as 12 harvests a year, compared with only two or three harvests that would be possible from the ground.
“We are much more efficient per square foot while also conserving a lot of resources,” Ross said.
Beanstalk created its first vertical farm prototype earlier this year and is now on its fourth and largest prototype to date.
Their farm, located at the i.Lab at UVa, produces between 150 and 200 pounds of lettuce each month. It is about 7 feet tall and takes up 8 square feet of floor space.
Jason Brewster, director of the i.Lab, said the Rosses “spent a lot of time initially planning and thinking about their novel approach to scaled, indoor farming.”
“They’ve done a lot of prototype development. There’s a lot of electronics involved,” Brewster said. “It’s very exciting to see it coming together.”
The company’s biggest challenge right now is to perfect its mechanization and ensure that its technology can be easily manufactured.
Moving forward, Ross said they hope to begin development of Beanstalk’s first full-scale farm in January. They are in the process of looking for warehouse space in Charlottesville to house the farm.
“We’re hoping to be within the city limits,” Ross said.
Ross said mentors from the i.Lab and the Charlottesville community have provided valuable guidance and support in the company’s continued development.
Alexandre Novi of Exploitation NOVI About Water-Grown Lettuce
Alexandre Novi of Exploitation NOVI About Water-Grown Lettuce
“We are looking into this exciting technique”
Exploitation NOVI exports 95% of their winter lettuce. This family-run business specialises in varieties of lettuce. “We have, in addition to our open fields, almost 11 hectares of greenhouses on two farms”, says Alexandre Novi, sales manager at the company, which is based in Provence, France.
“We export mainly to Germany and Switzerland”, he says. “We also sell to the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and, sometimes Belgium. We would like to increase our presence in the Netherlands and Belgium.” Their clients include importers and supermarkets.
They start their season with a new concept: “mix box”. “This is a small box with four heads of four different varieties of lettuce”, explains Alexandre. Exploitation NOVI grows lollo rossa, lollo bionda, green and red oak leaf, green and red batavia, red lettuce and salanova, a very leafy lettuce variety. They also pack in poly bags and flowpacks.
The company starts with the French salads at the beginning of November. After the lettuce seeds are planted, it takes six to eight weeks before they can be harvested. “We cut the lettuce in the morning, then prepare the pallets”, says Alexandre. “We use a cooling system that incorporates total immersion. The lettuce is sent to our clients on that same day.”
Alexandre says they have had no rain since May. “The weather in the Provence is an advantage for our growing process. The dry environment and sunshine allows a nice and good development of roots and of the salads.” He added that like some other growers, Exploitation NOVI is also looking to develop stronger crops and stronger textures for their lettuce “This helps reduce pathogens as well as insect infestation. Insects don't like the stronger textures, so they go elsewhere.”
‘We are looking into the exciting technique of water-grown lettuce”, says Alexandre. “We have no experience in it yet, but we have seen other businesses in the sector build these kinds of greenhouses. It is very interesting because you can increase efficiency, while at the same time, reducing the number of phytosanitary products you need. It would be really nice to use this cultivation technique, here in Provence.” “Our priority is to provide fresh lettuce on a regular basis,” says the Sales Manager. “We are committed to customer trust and satisfaction. The best quality at the best price.”
For more information:
Alexandre NOVI
Exploitation Novi SAS
Mob: +33 6 12 93 25 02
Publication date: 10/20/2017
Author: Sander Bruins Slot
Copyright: www.freshplaza.com
Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research Crops in Controlled Environments Convening Event
Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research Crops in Controlled Environments Convening Event
MONDAY | November 13, 2017 | 8:30 AM
To advance crop development in controlled systems that will support economic viability, FFAR will host a convening event to help us determine the state of science and, most importantly, the areas where FFAR can catalyze research efforts to advance crop development for controlled environments. At this convening event, we will explore areas of research where joint efforts in research between the public and private sectors will advance the field, such as:
– Advances in the molecular understanding of traits required for controlled environments
– Breeding crops for controlled environments and increasing nutritional content
– Alternative methods for crop adaptation
– Environmental stressors to enhance qualities and nutritional content
FFAR believes that through increased investments from both the private and public sector, we can help put controlled environment agriculture at the forefront of providing food security and economic opportunities in urban centers.
Event Details
Date: November 13, 2017
Time: 8:30 a.m. – 5:00 p.m.
Location: IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, New York
Keynote Speaker
Caleb Harper
MIT Media Lab
Contact Details John Reich | FFAR | jreich@foundationfar.org
First Indoor Vertical Farm in Slovenia
First Indoor Vertical Farm in Slovenia
Slovenia has amazing nature with mountains, lakes, woods, rivers, good fertile land and clean fresh water. Sounds like a fairy-tale, but it is true.
It is also true that we have lots of farms growing different crops and farmers raising livestock and all this you can see when you drive just a few miles from the city. You guessed it. Our country is small. So perhaps we have good soil, good weather conditions, clean fresh water, but the quantity of the fertile land is getting smaller. (And of course, we can't forget that people wants to eat quality and clean food all year.)
So that’s why, we decided to start exploring the idea of indoor vertical farming. We decided to start from scratch. Firstly, with books, YouTube, online courses and then we made a small room for growing microgreens, around 120cm long, 40cm high and 30cm deep with fluorescent lights, thermometer from an aquarium, and seeded our first seeds.
We were so proud!
We quickly found out, the importance of airflow, so we installed a PC fan, which was a simple and amazingly effective solution. In a few days we had our first microgreens crop.
And they were so tasty
So after some more trials and fine adjustments of the parameters, we decided that it is time to start developing larger and more advanced Indoor Vertical Farms and its components.
So in the past two years, we developed and constructed a controlled growing room with multi layers, providing perfect conditions for growing vegetables locally, without using any non natural enhancements.
Our automated control system keeps more than 10 parameters at optimal level all the time, for perfect growing conditions.
Our ventilation system is one of a kind. It solves the problem of even heat distribution between layers, better introduces CO2 to the plants, removes humidity from the leaves and keeps them dry and also keeps roots warm and cools the air, on top of the plants. Basically, it imitates the movement of the air in nature.
We also made our own recipes for optimal growing different plants and we constantly upgrade our software and hardware with better solutions. In the future, we are planning to develop our own fully automated Indoor Vertical Farm.
We presently offer complete construction of vertical farms to the potential buyer, with all our solutions. We are also already selling vegetables, produced in our farm, to local chefs and other markets.
Farming in Space
As NASA plans for its first manned mission to Mars in the mid-2030s, the humans who will inhabit the planet may not be considered astronauts but farmers.
“The round trip to Mars generally takes about four and one-half years if you add in six months on the surface,” says Bruce Bugbee, a botanist at Utah State University. “Theoretically, it’s possible to bring four years’ worth of bag lunches, but that would be super expensive.”
It’s also risky to rely on a lightweight resupply rocket, because it can take up to 210 days to arrive. “To be efficient, inhabitants need to eat local, which means we need to find a way to produce food on Mars from recycled wastes,” he explains. “If we can’t, we are not going to be able to live on the Red Planet.”
DEALING WITH A DIFFERENT ECOSYSTEM
For over 30 years, Bugbee has been collaborating with NASA to develop closed systems for growing plants aboard space shuttles and on the International Space Station. Today, there are small, engineered space greenhouses that can grow nutritious plants by rigorously controlling the plant environment.
“Taking this to scale to support humans is going to be the real challenge,” says Robert Heinse, a soil scientist at the University of Idaho. “Some of these challenges are simply a question of where to get enough water and nutrients. Other challenges are unique to the space environment like cosmic radiation, lack of atmosphere, and low levels of light.”
To create the technology necessary to make longer space missions possible, NASA has tapped Utah State, along with three other universities, to be a part of CUBES (Center for Utilization of Biological Engineering in Space). The initiative, a $15 million, five-year project funded by NASA, will be led by Adam Arkin, a professor of bioengineering at the University of California at Berkeley. Utah State University, the University of California at Davis, Stanford University, Autodesk, and Physical Sciences Inc. will be partner organizations.
Utah State professors Bruce Bugbee (left) and Lance Seefeldt.
RED PLANET SOIL
Earth’s soil is a mixture of minerals, organic matter, gases, liquids, and countless organisms. The Red Planet is covered with crushed volcanic rock containing nothing living. Mars does, however, have carbon dioxide, some nitrogen in the atmosphere, and frozen water. As a first step, Bugbee’s colleague and biochemist Lance Seefeldt will study ways to convert atmospheric nitrogen to ammonia using bacteria and solar energy.
“We will also look at inoculating plants with rhizobia like we do legumes to help them fix nitrogen,” says Bugbee.
Rhizobia is one of the groups of soil bacteria that infect the roots of legumes to form root nodules. After infection, it produces nodules on the roots where they fix nitrogen gas from the atmosphere and produce a more readily useful form of nitrogen.
In order to achieve this, light is needed. Although it is more dispersed on Mars than on Earth, some light is available.
“Mars has only 60% of our light intensity at the surface, which means reduced photosynthesis,” explains Bugbee. “There is still enough light to grow crops.”
Bugbee and his colleagues also plan to use biology to figure out how to transform the dust that covers the Martian landscape into fertile cropland. “Biology is more efficient than mechanical approaches like filtering water,” he says.
Initially, the CUBES group may have to deal with toxic chemicals. “There are perchlorates in the soil, which are quite toxic to humans. We hope to develop plants that can take up toxins and clean up the soil,” Bugbee explains. “We also want to understand which toxins get into the food chain through the plant. Maybe we can grow plants that don’t absorb the perchlorates.”
Another obstacle will be figuring out how to grow food from recycled wastes in a small, closed system. “Exploring Mars means nearly perfect recycling of water, nutrients, gases, and plant parts that aren’t consumed,” he says. “We’ll start with a recycling, hydroponic system and gradually expand to include Martian soil.”
One crop that shows great promise is soybeans. “Soybeans are an important crop for Mars because of the diversity of products that can be made from them,” says Bugbee.
STRICTLY VEGAN
Because of the many limitations on Mars, would-be space travelers will have to rethink their diets. “To keep the area small, an efficient Mars diet will not include fruits or nuts from trees,” says Bugbee. “In addition, animal products are too expensive to sustain. What that means is life on Mars will be supported by a strictly vegan diet.”
Some experts suggest that those who venture to Mars should live on vitamin pills, dried food, and water. However, Bugbee says there is still much we don’t know about the long-term complications of such a limited diet. “Every day we eat products from hundreds of plants,” he says. “Most dieticians recommend a diet based on at least 100 diverse plants. NASA would like to grow only about five. The answer is somewhere in between.”
BENEFITS FOR EARTH
While the CUBES initiative is focused on deep space exploration, it also lends itself to practical Earth-based applications.
“When you conduct research, you discover a lot of things you weren’t specifically looking for,” says Bugbee. “It was originally NASA technology that made people think of developing indoor agriculture and growing plants without sunlight. It’s also the case with the sensing technology being used in drones to monitor plant health.”
Heinse adds that new observations in a totally different environment have really improved their understanding of root zone processes in a low-gravity environment.
“Root densities are much higher in space greenhouses compared with field-grown crops, and we are learning a lot about how to better manage root zones under high crop demand both for water and nutrients,” he says.
Some of these lessons are being applied to irrigated field crops to improve nitrogen efficiency and timing of pesticide application. “Nurseries and greenhouses with similar high-demand root zones are using soil-free media for root zones, which relies on a detailed understanding of physical and hydraulic properties and how these change with time,” adds Heinse.
“The spin-offs from studying an extreme case like Mars could have great value for food production on Earth,” says Bugbee. “What if we discover a new bacteria that could help Iowa corn fix nitrogen? That would be huge for Earth.”
Major Green Technology Breakthrough! Metropolis Farms Unveils A New Device That Reduces Electric Cost by 60% and Disrupts The Entire Industry
On 10/16, President of Metropolis Farms Jack Griffin unveiled and demonstrated this new ballast technology at Indoor Ag Con alongside Pennsylvania's Secretary of Agriculture, Russel C. Redding. We are working on plans to manufacture these ballasts in Philadelphia and estimate they will be available in 2018.
Major Green Technology Breakthrough! Metropolis Farms Unveils A New Device That Reduces Electric Cost by 60% and Disrupts The Entire Industry
October 17, 2017
Do you know what a lighting ballast is? Chances are, if you're not involved in a trade that deals with lighting, you probably don't.
You're probably reading this because you saw a headline about a massively disruptive technology that reduces electric costs by 60%. This might be puzzling to some, since most folks don't even know about ballasts in the first place.
Well, we're here to tell you that lighting ballasts are one of the most important technological devices that very few people know about. And we have developed a ballast that can make a significant impact on the amount of energy the world uses.
There are two paths to travel to get the world to a more sustainable future:
1. Increase the percentage of power generated by renewable energy sources
and/or
2. Decrease the amount of energy consumed
We are attacking this problem on the consumption side of the equation. This new technology dramatically decreases the amount of energy that is needed to power most lights. (By the way, we are attacking this problem on the production side too, check out the world's first solar powered indoor farm we're building in South Philadelphia.)
But before we dive into this new breakthrough, since most folks don't know what a ballast is, let's start with the basics.
In the simplest of terms, a ballast's responsibility is to ensure lights work properly and don't burn out immediately.
In more defined terms, per the National Lighting Product Information Program, a "ballast regulates the current to lamps and provides sufficient voltage to start the lamps. Without a ballast to limit its current, a lamp connected directly to a high voltage power source would rapidly and uncontrollably increase its current draw. Within a second the lamp would overheat and burn out. During lamp starting, the ballast must briefly supply high voltage to establish an arc between the two lamp electrodes. Once the arc is established, the ballast quickly reduces the voltage and regulates the electric current to produce a steady light output."
Ballasts are connected to all fluorescent, compact fluorescent, HID, and many commercial LED lights. Regarding LEDs, ballasts are called drivers, but they are effectively the same thing. So whenever you're out and about, know that almost all of the lights you see in commercial or public spaces are connected to a ballast.
Lighting accounts for 53% of electric usage in U.S. retail buildings. And ballasts are the bridge that enables that power consumption.
In 2016, the U.S. Energy Information Administration estimates about 279 billion kilowatthours (kWh) of electricity were used for lighting by the residential sector and commercial sector in the United States. That's 279 million megawatts and does not account for public buildings or streetlamps.
So lighting is responsible for a massive amount of energy that is consumed.
Beyond the statistics that are directly related to powering the lights, more energy is used by HVAC systems to combat the excessive BTUs (heat) that lighting systems generate. This is a particularly sensitive issue when the temperature needs to be highly regulated, like in an indoor vertical farm.
Currently in our vertical farms, we are using 315W ceramic metal halide bulbs and we have 1 ballast for 1 bulb. For every bulb in our hydroponic farms, there's a ballast regulating the energy necessary for the light to work properly.
That's typical for most big lighting systems. For example, in another sector, each streetlamp you see illuminated at night is connected to a ballast.
All that said, you're now probably wondering: what's this development that will change the world?
Well, it's a new ballast. A more efficient ballast. One that brings unprecedented breakthroughs in ballast technology.
Here are two facts that will show why this is not hyperbole:
1) This new ballast will reduce total energy consumption in our indoor farms by 60%.
2) We will use 1 ballast to power 8 bulbs.
These results are being verified by a major university's lighting laboratory and certified by a CPA firm.
If you don't understand the game-changing ramifications of those statements, please keep reading!
The most common argument against indoor farming or vertical farming is that it requires too much energy to produce diverse crops. And in light of that argument (pun intended), we've already developed vertical farming systems that can grow diverse crops while still using less energy than other indoor farms that only grow leafy greens, and we have shown that these systems can produce profitable results for farmers.
Now with this new ballast, the energy argument can be totally put to bed. The equation has completely changed and by making these ballasts available to everyone, all indoor vertical farms will be able to reduce their energy consumption dramatically. All businesses and cities will be able to reduce their energy consumption dramatically.
We recently wrote a post on the topic of legal cannabis and how it's going to change the world. We said that due to the technologies being researched and developed to grow cannabis better, there will be emerging technologies that are backwards compatible and enable us to grow foodbetter.
But this technology takes it a step further. By focusing efforts on how to grow anything in a more energy efficient way, a technology was discovered that will enable every industry to operate using less energy.
With our old ballasts, the bulbs in our hydroponic systems required 3 amps and 315W to power them. With this new ballast, they only need 1 amp and 110W. That is far less energy used by the most efficient LED lights, and we still produce full spectrum light so our plants thrive.
This was me after being told how these ballasts work:
Below are a few other features of this new ballast breakthrough that changes the game:
There's a massive heat reduction at the bulb from 400 degrees to 150 degrees, which significantly reduces energy cooling loads.
Remember the Superbowl when the power went out and the lights couldn't be turned on for 34 minutes? That happened because the ballasts and bulbs needed time to cool down and recalibrate the energy flowing into the bulbs. With our new ballast, those lights could have been turned on right away.
Before, a ballast could only power a certain kind of light. For example, one type of ballast could power fluorescents, another could power HIDs, while another powers LEDs. This new ballast can power any kind of bulb, simultaneously.
As mentioned earlier, this one ballast can power multiple high usage lights.
And as nature goes, there are indirect consequences from a technological advancement. It just so happens that in this case, we are extremely excited about one consequence in particular.
Since 1 ballast will effectively replace 8, the economics work in such a way that we will be manufacturing these ballasts in the United States.
We are already working on plans to build a Philadelphia-based manufacturing facility that will provide a significant amount of living-wagejobs to local Philadelphians.
Beyond the manufacturing jobs, there will be a significant amount of work for electricians everywhere as we envision this new technology becoming the norm. Building owners will be able to retrofit their existing light systems with these new ballasts and immediately decrease the amount of energy they use.
To review, this technology can help decrease electric usage by 60%. Considering the 279 billion kWh used for just lighting in the residential and commercial sectors, and that the average residential price per kWh is 12.99 cents, saving over 167 billion kWh is the same as saving over $21.7 billion. Indoor farming for cannabis alone accounts for 1% of the entire country's energy usage, at $6 billion annually, and that number will continue to climb as more states legalize cannabis.
If these ballasts are installed everywhere, think of what $22+ billion could be spent on!
On 10/16, President of Metropolis Farms Jack Griffin unveiled and demonstrated this new ballast technology at Indoor Ag Con alongside Pennsylvania's Secretary of Agriculture, Russel C. Redding. We are working on plans to manufacture these ballasts in Philadelphia and estimate they will be available in 2018. From there, we believe this new ballast will become the new standard not only in indoor vertical farming, but in all commercial lighting. This will have an immense impact on the amount of energy that is used for lighting by decreasing the energy consumed immediately upon installation. This will help the world transition to a more sustainable future. And this will create living-wage jobs in the U.S.
We are incredibly excited about this new breakthrough and hope that you are on board as well. The times they are a changing and indoor agriculture is here to stay, here to create positive change, and here to revamp the broken food system. Join us for the journey.
Let's get lit.
For more information on Metropolis Farms and to see where we plant our roots, read about us here.
Food Loves Tech Conference Will Explore Food’s Not-Too-Distant Future
The two-day expo is designed to give “attendees a chance to see, smell, touch, hear, and taste food’s not-too-distant future,” according toEdible Manhattan and Edible Brooklyn Editor-In-Chief Brian Halweil and Publisher Stephen Munshin.
Food Loves Tech Conference Will Explore Food’s Not-Too-Distant Future
Food and drink innovators and enthusiasts will gather in Brooklyn, New York, on November 3 and 4, 2017, to explore the developing relationship between modern technology and food systems at this year’s Food Loves Tech conference. Produced by Edible Manhattan and Edible Brooklyn, the event is described as an “education-by-entertainment innovation expo” and will be hosted at Industry City.
The two-day expo is designed to give “attendees a chance to see, smell, touch, hear, and taste food’s not-too-distant future,” according to Edible Manhattan and Edible Brooklyn Editor-In-Chief Brian Halweil and Publisher Stephen Munshin. They write that the event will be careful to not only highlight those novel technologies that solve what they call “#firstworldproblems,” like faster ways to order food online, but also those technologies and startups that are “compelled by a mission to fix our broken food system.”
“Why are we so fascinated by this?,” they write. “At best, this data-flooded food culture will mean more traceability, less waste, increased crop diversity, less overeating. Hopefully.”
In addition to the experiential component of the conference, 10 scheduled panels will explore various questions: How can tech help save our oceans? How can technology help mitigate food waste? How will we buy groceries in 2050? Can vertical agriculture help us produce more food, more sustainably? Food Tank President Danielle Nierenberg will be both speaking on and moderating panels at the event.