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Monaco: The Glitzy European City Going Green
With 1,600 sq m of potagers (gardens) that have produced 5 tonnes of organic produce since 2016 and partnerships with chefs of Michelin-starred restaurants, Terre de Monaco is a local success story
Linked by Michael Levenston
Urban gardening has been reclaiming rooftops and concrete spaces throughout Monaco (Credit: vuk8691/Getty Images)
With 1,600 sq m of potagers (gardens) that have produced 5 tonnes of organic produce since 2016 and partnerships with chefs of Michelin-starred restaurants, Terre de Monaco is a local success story.
By Richelle Harrison Plesse
BBC
15 January 2020
Excerpt:
It’s an unlikely spot for an organic fruit and vegetable garden, tucked away between soulless high-rise buildings that dot the most densely populated country in the world. But this 450 sq m sliver of land is where market gardener Jessica Sbaraglia toils away. It’s a lush slice of tranquillity in Monaco’s concrete jungle, lying in the shadow of the 170m-high Odéon Tower, the principality’s tallest building, which is also home to the most expensive penthouse in the world – €300 million (about £255 million), should you have the cash to splash.
Sbaraglia, a 31-year-old Swiss native and former tennis pro and model, launched her urban agriculture business Terre de Monaco in 2016 and she now has five micro-farms on Monaco’s rooftops, balconies and hidden plots of land. At this one, my taste buds are treated to a multitude of flavours from the garden, which grows everything from aubergines and courgettes to strawberries and apricots. “I want people to reconnect with the taste of natural, organic produce, and remind them of its diversity and how it’s grown,” Sbaraglia explained.
Read the complete article here.
NYC's Roofs Are Getting A Sustainable Makeover
It's been two months since New York's Sustainable Roof Laws, part of the Climate Mobilization Act, took effect. Now architects and officials must decide: Are green roof systems or solar systems best?
It's been two months since New York's Sustainable Roof Laws,
part of the Climate Mobilization Act, took effect.
Now architects and officials must decide:
Are green roof systems or solar systems best?
AUTHOR: Cailley LaPara
Jan. 22, 2020
While the buzz around the passage of New York City’s Climate Mobilization Act in April 2019 has fizzled, the city’s public officials, property owners, architects, real estate moguls, and financiers are revving up to put new policies into practice.
As of Nov. 15, 2019, Local Laws 92 and 94 are in effect to target a vast, often overlooked and underutilized resource in New York: roofs.
The laws, known informally as the Sustainable Roof Laws, require most new buildings and buildings undergoing major roof reconstruction to include a sustainable roofing zone on 100% of the available roof space.
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Sustainable roofing zones are defined as "areas of a roof assembly where a solar photovoltaic electricity generating system, a green roof system, or a combination thereof, is installed." In other words, the roofs must have a solar panel array, green roof or both.
"When you fly into New York City, you see an amazing amount of unproductive roof space," Jonce Walker, senior associate at Thornton Tomasetti, told Smart Cities Dive. Walker and others in the sustainable design community hope Local Laws 92 and 94 are going to change that.
Facing change
The Sustainable Roofs Laws have mobilized several sectors in New York City, from the government to investment, each one grappling with how to manage new regulations designed to drive drastic changes in the city.
"The goal [of Local Laws 92 & 94] is to make sustainable roofs just one of the parts of how you put a good building together," Mark Chambers, director of the Mayor’s Office of Sustainability, told Smart Cities Dive.
Currently, sustainable roofs are far from the norm in New York. According to a mapping project from The Nature Conservancy, there were only about 730 green roofs out of over 1 million rooftops in New York City in 2016.
Solar is much more prevalent, with a total of about 22,000 completed solar projects throughout the city as of 2019, according to the team at Sustainable CUNY. They indicate the number of new solar projects implemented each year in the city has increased dramatically since 2016, due in part to the establishment of Professional Certification (Pro-Cert), which shortened the review period of new solar projects to just 24 hours.
Solar growth in New York City. | Credit: Sustainable CUNY
Not all property owners will be immediately faced with the required adjustments. Buildings dedicated to affordable housing have an alternative compliance timeline of five years during which the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) will conduct studies on the impact of the law on affordability.
But Jennifer Leone, sustainability officer at HPD, pointed out that the department has "already been leading the charge" when it comes to sustainable roof practices with programs like the Green Housing Preservation Program.
Lead Photo: Credit: Alex Potemkin vis Getty Images
Maryland Helps Grow Urban Rooftop Farms
Farm-to-table, the movement which looks to illuminate and shorten the distance between the two, is all well and good. But what if you're city-dweller living miles from the nearest farm?
John Tolley, January 10, 2020
Farm-to-table, the movement which looks to illuminate and shorten the distance between the two, is all well and good. But what if you're city-dweller living miles from the nearest farm?
Enter the University of Maryland, who is working to make urban rooftop farming as ubiquitous as the corner Starbucks. The concept is no more difficult to understand than the name. People in cities cultivate their own fruits, vegetables, herbs and flowers on these untapped open spaces.
"The interesting thing about cities is they're fragile," notes John Lea-Cox, a professor in the Departments of Plant Science and Landscape Architecture at Maryland. "By fragile I mean that urban people are really dependent upon transport to get food into cities. That's why this kind of urban food production, whether it be at grade or on a rooftop, is really important."
From the deceptively simple idea of urban rooftop farming sprouts a plethora of potential benefits for cities and surrounding communities alike.
FRESH FOOD
As alluded to before, due to transport costs and limitations of space, most cities find themselves plagued with food deserts. These are areas where unprocessed, fresh foods are difficult to obtain and grocery stores are difficult to access.
Partnering with Up Top Acres, Maryland is countering this trend, helping the group refine and improve their practices, one rooftop at a time. Kristof Grina, co-owner of Up Top Acres, says that the difference between local and shipped-in produce is night and day.
"It comes to the miles that are attached to the vegetables they are eating," says Grina. "We're not even measuring it in miles. We're measuring it in flights of stairs or floors in a building. That has an impact on the freshness of the food, which correlates to the nutrient density."
A HELPING HAND
The partnership between Maryland and Up Top Acres began when the urban farmers found themselves out of their element in terms of data collection. They launched a program to gauge the performance of Up Top Acres' systems, but quickly saw the potential for more.
Lea-Cox, alongside Andrew Ristvey, extension specialist at Maryland's Wye Research and Education Center, helped Up Top Acres develop soil media blends and a nutrient management program for the unique environment.
"For the last ten or fifteen years, I've been involved in sensor-driven irrigation and nutrient management," says Lea-Cox. "What that does is it actually provides the tools for Kristof to monitor his practices in real-time. What we are doing is we're providing sensors that will actually sense not only the soil, the soil moisture, but also the atmosphere. So, what we do is we connect the dots. Connect the dots, provide that information to Kristof, so that he can get on with his day, he can understand what's happening in the soil and make better decisions."
WEATHERING STORMS
Another especially salient benefit for the state of Maryland, which hugs the Chesapeake Bay, is the role urban rooftop farms can play in mitigating the detrimental effects of stormwater.
Modern cities, covered in a skin of concrete, asphalt and other impermeable materials, displace natural areas of soil and vegetation. Without these elements to capture the rain, it careens out of the area and into local waterways. As it does, that rain carries pollutants and nutrients, negatively impacting the entire ecosystem.
Ristvey explains that urban rooftop farms can help hold back the wash. "A green roof system, if it's working and functioning properly, is retaining stormwater and preventing that initial slug of stormwater from getting into the waterways."
BACK TO NATURE
On a more philosophical level, Lea-Cox says that urban rooftop farms of any scale afford city dwellers a connection to the natural world. Beyond the nutritional and environmental benefits of the farm plots, he surmises that people yearn to get their fingernails a little dirty.
"Of course, an urban area is a really exciting place to live," says Lea-Cox. "But I think what a lot of us miss is that connection to the earth. That's what's so great about working for a land-grant university, is that we are connecting people back to the earth."
JOHN TOLLEY
John Tolley is a BTN.com contributor covering stories of inspiration, impact and innovation - on and off the field - in the areas of science, philanthropy and the arts.
Lead Photo: BTN LiveBIG
Congress Funds Office of Urban & Innovative Agriculture
The Mission of the Office is to encourage and promote urban, indoor, and other emerging agricultural practices
By Brian Filipowich
The new Office of Urban Agriculture and Innovative Production created by the 2018 Farm Bill had been sitting in limbo for the past year. The USDA declined to establish it without dedicated funding from Congress.
On December 20, 2019, the President signed into law H.R. 1865, The Further Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2020. The Law includes $5 million for the Office.
The Mission of the Office is to encourage and promote urban, indoor, and other emerging agricultural practices, including:
community gardens and farms located in urban areas, suburbs, and urban clusters;
rooftop farms, outdoor vertical production, and green walls;
indoor farms, greenhouses, and high-tech vertical technology farms; and
hydroponic, aeroponic, and aquaponic farm facilities.
The Office will disburse $10 million in grants before 2023 intended to “facilitate urban agricultural production, harvesting, transportation, and marketing.”
Senator Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) was the main sponsor of the new Office and was responsible for adding it to the 2018 Farm Bill. This past Fall, Senator Stabenow introduced an amendment to appropriate the $5 million to fund it.
The next step is to establish the Advisory Committee that will guide the establishment of the Office. The Committee is to be composed of 12 individuals from various sectors of the urban and innovative ag field.
The Farm Bill directed the establishment of the advisory committee by Summer, 2019. The USDA missed the target date because of the lack of funding and the USDA’s major relocation project from Washington, DC to Kansas City, MO, which “has resulted in catastrophic attrition at USDA’s top research agencies.”
Hopefully, with the new funding, the USDA can establish the Office soon.
Singapore Hotel’s Aquaponic Rooftop Farm To Produce Vegetables And Fish
Aquaponics involves growing plants without soil, a process that saves resources including water, land, and manpower. By August, the rooftop farm will supply 30 percent of the vegetable and fish requirements for two neighboring hotels
Aquaponics involves growing plants without soil, a process that saves resources including water, land, and manpower
By August, the rooftop farm will supply 30 percent of the vegetable and fish requirements for two neighboring hotels
27 December 2019
This is not a new hotel, why are we featuring it now? True, a hotel has stood here since 1986, when it opened as the Westin Plaza, but now it has an aquaponics farm. Repeat, an aquaponics farm!
What on earth is an aquaponics farm, and why is it exciting news? Aquaponics is a combination of aquaculture and hydroponics; in simple terms, growing plants without soil. It employs a closed, circular system that channels the waste from living fish to fertilize plants, which in turn filter and clean the water for the fish. This process saves resources and reduces the need for water, land, and manpower.
A first for hotels in the city-state, the Fairmont Singapore’s aquaponics farm was launched in late October. The fact the farm is in Singapore – a concrete jungle that imports more than 90 percent of its food – while there’s a growing realization our fragile environment must be protected is inspirational for densely built cities.
Is it one of those “show and tell” herb gardens that resorts create as a talking point but supply only a tiny proportion of the property’s needs? Granted, at just 450 square metres, wedged between the rooftops of the Fairmont Singapore and sister property Swissôtel The Stamford, the “farm” is not large. But through clever configuration, once it’s fully operational in August 2020, it will yield an estimated 2,200kg of vegetables and 350kg of fish monthly for both hotels, or about 30 percent of their needs.
The hotel’s Aquaponics Salad.
More than 40 varieties of vegetables and herbs, including spinach, kang kong, lettuce, and mint, are being grown in compact beds and towers, and about 16,000 tilapia fish are being raised in huge containers at the back of the farm. The first fish will be ready for the dining table in March.
The plan is to plant and harvest in batches so a constant supply is available. To trick the plants into giving healthy yields in unfavourable conditions, they are sheltered from sunlight, kept at 24 to 25 degrees Celsius and exposed to LED lighting.
The proof of the pudding is in the eating. How does the produce taste? My salad at modern grill Skai contained oak leaf, red chard, mizuna, rocket leaves, baby kale and Japanese Pentas flowers, all fresh from the farm, the leaves still luscious and crisp – proof that the less distance your food travels, the better it tastes.
Currently, the farm supplies five of the hotels’ 13 food outlets. The jewel in the crown, Michelin-starred JAAN by British chef Kirk Westaway, will soon incorporate some of the farm’s output in its menu of reinvented British classics.
What is Fairmont doing about food waste? Through the Treatsure app, leftovers from buffets are sold to the public at S$10 (US$7) per box – biodegradable, of course – just before closing. Treatsure users are updated on which member hotels have leftovers up for grabs and can take as much food as they can pack into the provided box. This has reduced Fairmont’s buffet wastage by 40 to 60 percent.
Whatever cannot be sold is fed into the Eco-Wizz digester, together with leftovers from other outlets, to be turned into water and compost. Local charity Food from the Heart collects leftover bread baskets from the breakfast service for distribution to impoverished families.
A Deluxe Harbour View Room.
What else is the hotel doing to make travel less destructive to the environment? Although you’ll still find single-use plastics in your room – laundry bags and slipper wrappers, for instance – the move towards eliminating their use is ongoing, the hotel assures us. Each revamped room and suite in Fairmont’s new South Tower has a nifty Swisspro tap, which dispenses filtered hot and cold water, so no more plastic bottles.
My conscience feels lighter, now what about location? The building was designed more than 30 years ago by the late I.M. Pei, of Hong Kong’s Bank of China Tower fame. The hotel has taken on various guises under different owners, but remains in demand for its location, in the city’s cultural and historical heart. It is within walking distance of the Singapore Art Museum and the National Gallery Singapore.
And the view! Centrally located beds give guests panoramas of the city’s spectacular skyline, an effect heightened by the building’s circular design.
What’s the bottom line? Rates start at S$399 (excluding service charge and tax). A two-course set lunch at Italian restaurant Prego costs about S$30, excluding taxes and service charge. The cost savings from the aquaponics products have yet to be factored into menu prices.
ITALY: Competition Open To Create A Sky Farm In Turin
Myplant & Garden and Fondazione Minoprio, in cooperation with the real estate investment firm SATAC SIINQ S.p.A., which operates under AEDES SIIQ S.p.A., have announced a creative design competition to create a sky farm on a portion on the rooftop of the new destination centre Caselle Open Mall (COM) in Turin
Amy Fitz-Hugh December 23, 2019
Myplant & Garden and Fondazione Minoprio, in cooperation with the real estate investment firm SATAC SIINQ S.p.A., which operates under AEDES SIIQ S.p.A., have announced a creative design competition to create a sky farm on a portion of the rooftop of the new destination centre Caselle Open Mall (COM) in Turin.
The large rooftop garden ( 3,900 sqm) will be dedicated to the learning and spreading of new techniques and technologies for the cultivation of flowering plants and vegetables, both outdoors and in the greenhouse.
The green area will have to include educational and sensory paths. As well as to devise the presence of traditional and automated vegetable gardens, as well as transparent structures for hydroponics, aeroponics, and aquaponics.
The green area, accessible through a panoramic elevator, will welcome visitors of the new mall as well as charities, associations, and schools for didactic, environmental education and sense-rehabilitation projects. With this in mind, also an indoor 100-sqm area dedicated to educational projects such as workshops, didactic activities and labs will have to be developed.
The candidate projects will have to take into consideration the following requirements:
– zero impact on the environment
– low maintenance
– ample use of low-emission equipment
– ample use of plants.
The deadline is 9 February 202 and on 26 February 2020, on the opening day of Myplant & Garden, the first three winning candidates will be announced. The winner of the first place in the competition will receive a € 10,000 prize, and the second and third will receive a prize of € 2,500.
If SATAC SIINQ will decide to build the winning project, that could start approximately in 2022, the designer will be called to coordinate the project with the role of artistic director.
Brownstein: Montreal's Lufa Farms Reaches New Heights
Airplanes are buzzing above. Gridlock has set in below. One couldn’t possibly imagine a more unlikely agricultural setting, yet on top of a non-descript office building in St-Laurent, within a tomato’s throw of the Place Vertu mall, construction is underway on the world’s largest urban rooftop farm
The fourth Lufa rooftop installation — this one the size of three football fields — is to open in March in St-Laurent.
BILL BROWNSTEIN, MONTREAL GAZETTE
November 21, 2019
Airplanes are buzzing above. Gridlock has set in below. One couldn’t possibly imagine a more unlikely agricultural setting, yet on top of a non-descript office building in St-Laurent, within a tomato’s throw of the Place Vertu mall, construction is underway on the world’s largest urban rooftop farm.
This will be the fourth Lufa Farm around Montreal, and when it opens in March, it will measure nearly 164,000 square feet, or roughly three football fields. That’s a whole lot of tomatoes and eggplants.
The Lufa mantra is: “We grow food where people live, and grow it more sustainably.” And that it does.
The plan is that this gi-normous greenhouse will double Lufa’s growing capacity and the four farms combined will allow it to feed two per cent of Montreal with fresh veggies. The St-Laurent farm is intended to meet the ultimate standard in energy-saving greenhouse technology. And like the other farms, it, too, will operate without use of synthetic pesticides.
In addition to the produce, St-Laurent borough mayor Alan DeSousa is also pumped about the rooftop farm’s ecological benefits: “It will make it possible to fight against heat islands in our district, where more than 70 per cent of the surface area is devoted to industrial and commercial activities.“
The bottom floor of the St-Laurent office building serves as a distribution centre, wherein individual boxes of vegetables, fruits, breads and cheeses, among other goodies, are prepared for Lufavores, Lufa’s member individuals and restaurants. About 17,000 boxes are shipped every week to Lufavores at hundreds of pickup points around the city. Lufa also provides home delivery by, natch, electric-powered autos.
“We like to think of the distribution centre as a giant online farmers market,” Lufa co-founder and greenhouse director Lauren Rathmell says.
Rathmell and her husband, Lufa co-founder and CEO Mohamed Hage, started germinating their business 10 years ago. Their first farm sprouted in Ahuntsic. Then came rooftop farms in Laval and Anjou. The company now has 327 employees — and counting.
While allowing that the Ahuntsic farm cost $2.2 million, Rathmell is tight-lipped about the budget for the St-Laurent greenhouse, which is five times the size of the former. She does, however, note that Lufa Farms has been profitable since 2016 and is not ruling out more expansion, in Montreal and elsewhere.
“Our goal is to be ecologically and economically sustainable,” says Rathmell, a Vermonter who moved here to study biochemistry at McGill and stayed on after meeting Hage.
“Our first site was the world’s first commercial rooftop greenhouse. There are ground-level greenhouses and farms, but this concept had never been done — taking an industrial space and repurposing it for food production. There’s still not many doing what we’re doing. We wanted to create a local food engine, and to do so by following tenets of responsible agriculture with hydroponic farms and reducing our footprint in the process.”
The trick was in finding rooftops around Montreal that would have enough room and that would be structurally able to support a greenhouse.
“We literally surveyed the entire island of Montreal on Google maps to find the rooftops.”
Lufa, incidentally, is a squash/cucumber-like vegetable indigenous to Lebanon, where Hage was born. While the Lufa farms grow almost every kind of veggie, they don’t yet produce a lufa. “We probably should soon.” Rathmell concedes. “It’s very practical. You can eat it. It’s hollow inside, and when you dry it, it turns into a sponge that grows on walls and rooftops.”
The hustle-bustle of St-Laurent’s distribution centre is in marked contrast to the laid-back vibe of Lufa’s Laval rooftop farm.
Of course, like Lufa’s other facilities, one might be hard-pressed to spot the Laval farm, situated atop another nondescript office building, off a fairly gridlocked highway.
But once inside the sprawling, 43,000-square-foot Laval greenhouse, one is transported from the grey and the cold and the snow to a near-tropical setting. There is a glow hanging over the place and with temperatures in the low 20s, cheery-faced farmers, mostly attired in T-shirts and one even in shorts, are planting and harvesting tomatoes and eggplants. A couple of them appear to be actually whistling while they work. It is almost surreal.
It’s more than just talk about reducing footprints. In touring the Laval greenhouse, Rathmell points out how all the water employed is re-circulated and reused. Rainwater is also collected off the roof. And considerable energy is saved simply by being on a rooftop.
“Being on a rooftop also means we’re not using new land, and also keeping us as close as possible to urban centres,” Rathmell says.
On the other hand, trying to convince prospective landlords on setting up rooftop farms was initially difficult.
“It’s become much easier with proof of concept,” Rathmell says. “When we approached the owners of that first building in Ahuntsic, in their minds it was cows and soil and tractors and whatever. We were able to convince them that wasn’t the case. Plus that the greenhouse would be fully contained and help insulate their building. And that we’d take care of the construction and electricity.”
And, oh yeah, the landlords would also be able to feast on the freshest produce around.
Tomatoes in lieu of cash for rent?
Quips Rathmell: “That’s the next deal.”
For more information about Lufa Farms or becoming a Lufavore, go to montreal.lufa.com.
RELATED
Vertical Farming: On The Up
The cost of energy – financially and environmentally – remains the greatest challenge to scaling up vertical farming. Even using off-peak energy, and with ever more efficient LEDs coming on the market, the energy requirements are high
Ramona Andrews Author
24th April 2019
Standing 12 metres high and with 17 stacked levels of indoor growing space, lit with LEDs in a mixture of red, white and blues – is this really the future of farming?
Lincolnshire-based Jones Food Company’s (JFC) vertical farming system is capable of producing over 400 tonnes of baby leaf salad a year in about 5,000 square metres of indoor space. While there has been development in growing berries, tomatoes and other fruiting plants through these systems, the technology is not yet there to make these crops scalable and JFC is concentrating efforts on baby leaf and herbs. As co-founder Paul Challinor explains, the intention is to make the business commercial from the beginning “rather than having a trial shipping container to look at how it could develop”.
Other city hydroponic growers, such as New York’s Sky Vegetables, a rooftop farm in The Bronx and Growing Underground, a hydroponic farm located 33 metres below the streets of Clapham in London, see their role as an incredibly short supply chain for produce directly into the city.
But not everyone has the same end goal – Grow Bristol has built a vertical farm inside a shipping container on disused land, offering an opportunity for public engagement and connecting urban communities to food, rather than to provide high quantities of salad to the city.
The Jones Food Company grows over 400 tonnes of salad a year. Image Holly Challinor
The sky isn’t the limit
The cost of energy – financially and environmentally – remains the greatest challenge to scaling up vertical farming. Even using off-peak energy, and with ever more efficient LEDs coming on the market, the energy requirements are high.
Jaz Singh of Innovation Agri-Tech Group, behind an indoor farm in Bracknell, Berkshire, says: “It doesn’t really matter what time of day your energy is getting produced. It’s about how you cycle it. You can turn the evening into effectively daytime if you’re doing it in a fully closed environment.”
For Grow Bristol’s Oscar Davidson, the future of vertical farming must be in renewables, such as biogas or through anaerobic digestion, and ideally on-site generation. This is echoed by another hydroponics expert Kate Hofman, of GrowUp Urban Farms, who says: “From my point of view, the only purpose of doing this kind of farming is to be able to grow food more sustainably…you’ve got to use renewable energy and at the moment it’s too expensive to buy off the grid, so we’ve got to be co-located.”
GrowUp tested a pilot aquaponics urban farm (aquaponics combines raising fish with hydroponics, feeding the plants fish waste), but the system has not proved financially sustainable in its original East London location due to high land rental costs. For Hofman, in theory, the more production moved indoors, the more land can be freed up for other uses, less intensively farmed and even used for carbon sequestering.
Moving beyond salad
Described by Davidson as a “gateway crop to the technology”, salad greens are easy and quick growing (baby leaf salad takes four to five weeks to mature, microgreens just over two weeks), require minimal nutrients and provide multiple crops per season.
Oscar Davidson and Dermot O’Regan of Grow Bristol
But will we be seeing more than just baby leaf and herbs anytime soon? There has been researching into crops including sweet potatoes and broccoli, and Singh says he has had some success trialing strawberries. But this poses a greater financial risk with the longer growing time required, and the extra light hours needed.
It all comes back to considering the whole cycle of growing and supply, including energy use. Vertical farming is becoming ever more environmentally and economically sustainable, and if these startups continue to develop at the current rate, a lot more of the food in our fridge could be grown in the tower block down the road.
Is vertical farming organic?
Vertical farming often uses hydroponic growing systems that do not use soil
The Soil Association does not currently class hydroponic growing as organic – in the UK, plants classified as organic need to be grown in soil, whereas in the US, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) does not make this requirement.
That said, there are no pesticides involved in the growing at JFC and other hydroponic farms, and the no pesticide factor is often a major motivator for people choosing organic. Hofman says: “I would wonder that the organic movement’s reliance on soil was good for the time it was created, but there’s actually the opportunity to think a bit more broadly about how both systems might be able to coexist or work together.”
Davidson adds: “There are other things to consider, where has that been grown, what was the conditions of the workers who have grown that crop? So yes, we use a lot of energy to grow our crops with our lighting, but we don’t use big agricultural machinery that uses diesel, we don’t use petrol fertilizers, and we don’t use endless amounts of groundwater.”
The Vertical Farming Industry Is Growing Deeper Roots
The urban indoor vertical farm industry is at an important juncture. Automation is taking root, long-term contracts with creditworthy retail and foodservice distributors are in the works and vertical farms are preparing to scale up. Also, the industry is about to get its first trade group, the American Association for Urban and Vertical Farming
November 11, 2019
Plenty plans to build a global network of vertical farms, starting with the west coast of the United States.
The urban indoor vertical farm industry is at an important juncture. Automation is taking root, long-term contracts with creditworthy retail and foodservice distributors are in the works and vertical farms are preparing to scale up. Also, the industry is about to get its first trade group, the American Association for Urban and Vertical Farming.
"The vertical farming industry in the U.S. is at a point where — if provided facilitation in terms of industry coordination, information exchange, innovation, education, training, funding, etc. — ... it can be enabled to reach critical mass," said Joel Cuello, a University of Arizona professor of biosystems engineering and vice chair of the Munich-based Association for Vertical Farming (AVF).
Just as important: a trade association can advocate for the industry and help it secure more funding.
In the 2018 U.S. Farm Bill, an annual allotment of $10 million was established to develop an office of urban agriculture and supporting projects, said Neil Mattson, controlled environment agriculture director and associate professor/greenhouse extension specialist at Cornell University. That’s a relatively small amount that includes everything from vertical farms to urban community gardens.
Whether industry-wide collaboration is needed or wanted at this stage is unclear. Sharing information could accelerate the industry’s development, but it also could dilute the value of a firm’s propriety research and development efforts.
Technology is important to reduce cost and to improve yields and quality, and therefore to provide a better return on investment.
The existence of New York City’s Agriculture Collective — which counts AeroFarms, Bowery Farming, Smallhold and Square Roots as members — illustrates that there are ways for the urban farming industry to share knowledge.
Having a city or regional dimension to collaborative efforts is key, especially when it comes to working in cities, said Henry Gordon-Smith, founder and managing director of Agritecture Consulting. For example, there is often a need for new zoning for indoor farming because it is not a permissible use of a building in an urban area, he added.
The new vertical farm trade association will be affiliated with the AVF, but the exact affiliation has not been negotiated yet.
A compelling story
Vertical farming does a very good job of tapping into customers’ interest in tasty, fresh and locally grown food. "Customers love it," said Chris Manca, Whole Foods Market’s local program coordinator for the Northeast region. "It connects with people who are passionate about local food and the environment."
Since 2014, Whole Foods has cultivated a high-tech Gotham Greens greenhouse farm on the rooftop of its Gowanus, Brooklyn, store. Leafy greens, microgreens and herbs grown in this rooftop greenhouse are sold in its store downstairs, in other nearby Whole Foods locations and at local restaurants. In addition, for the last year and a half, the Whole Foods location in Bridgewater, New Jersey, also has been selling mushrooms grown in an in-store vertical farm unit developed by the Brooklyn-based organic mushroom farming company, Smallhold. More recently, a second Smallhold in-store mushroom growing unit was added in a Whole Foods store in Brooklyn.
Gotham Greens
Gotham Greens operates a network of greenhouses across the Northeast, Mid-Atlantic, Midwest, New England, Mountain West and beyond.
The chief selling points of indoor vertical farm-grown fruits and vegetables are that they are pesticide- and herbicide-free, require only a little water and land to produce, offer flexible supply dynamics, have short grow cycles, offer year-round production and have easy product traceability, according to those interviewed for this article. Grocers or producer purveyors also might be able to claim greater price certainty and a longer shelf life.
"We look at [vertical farms] as a growing trend and a unique opportunity to partner with up and coming brands," Whole Foods’ Manca said.
But some farms need to get their prices in line with traditional produce, and it is becoming clear that vertical farms must start offering a wider variety of produce. Many are experimenting with growing berries and vine crops, such as tomatoes and cucumbers. To date, leafy greens, microgreens and herbs have been vertical farms’ cash crops because they offer more competitive pricing due to high yields and the fact that they require less energy to grow.
The growing appetite for indoor growing
Five Mediterranean climates — including California’s — supply all of the world’s fresh fruit and vegetables, and these climates are dealing with changing weather patterns. That is forcing more scrutiny of the vertical and indoor farming sectors.
"Today, the world can only grow enough fresh fruits and vegetables to feed two-thirds of the global population what is required for a healthy diet. That's with 7.5 billion people on Earth," said Christina Ra, senior director of integrated marketing at Plenty, the San Francisco-based indoor vertical farming company that in 2017 raised $200 million in Series B funding from Softbank, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and Eric Schmidt, the former chairman of Alphabet.
Already, there is not enough, and the global population is expected to reach almost 10 billion in 2050, Ra pointed out.
Vertical farms alone cannot fill the gap, but new technologies and innovations, including more efficient LED lighting, robotics, machine vision and artificial intelligence, are making vertical farms more efficient and productive.
"Technology is important to reduce cost and to improve yields and quality, and therefore to provide a better return on investment," said Charlie Wang, president and CEO of Oasis Biotech, an Albuquerque-based company that owns vertical farms in Las Vegas, China and Albuquerque. It also develops and sells LED lights and hydroponic grow systems under SANANBIO brand.
During the last three years, LED lighting costs have dropped considerably amid a 20 percent improvement in energy efficiency. Looking ahead, over the next three years, similar advances in energy efficiency are expected, and developments in precision farming and automation are also expected to help the vertical farm industry eke out additional efficiency gains.
"We can do precision agriculture within a precise environment," said Grant Vandenbussche, senior business development strategist at Fifth Season, a fully automated indoor vertical farm company based in Pennsylvania. "This allows us to isolate variables to optimize for specific desired outcomes rapidly. We know how each factor is impacting things like plant growth, coloring, and flavor. … It's a true 'smart manufacturing' system."
Operating a fully-automated vertical farm can put a vertical farm's labor cost on par with field-grown produce, Cornell’s Mattson said.
We have been very forward [about how] energy requirements are a potential limiting factor for the industry.
According to Vandenbussche, automation helped Fifth Season reduce its labor from 40-60 percent of costs to 20 percent of costs. Fifth Season also said that the energy required from its automation processes is negligible within its system.
Indoor vertical farms’ energy needs for lighting and HVAC are considerable, however. For example, leafy greens grown in vertical farms in the Northeast currently have a carbon footprint that is two times higher than the carbon footprint for the same product grown in a field in California and then shipped 3,000 miles across the country, Mattson said.
There is also research and data that points to vertical farming being more energy-intensive than greenhouse-grown produce.
"We have been very forward [about how] energy requirements are a potential limiting factor for the industry," Vandenbussche said. "We're paying very close attention to our energy requirements as we launch our new farm, and we are implementing as many energy savings solutions as possible."
Sourcing all of a vertical farm’s energy needs from renewable sources through local utility providers can be challenging. Microgrids are an obvious alternative, but for some vertical farms, the initial capital cost is prohibitive.
For its farm, Fifth Season partnered with Scale Microgrid Solutions, a firm that provides turnkey microgrids, on a solar-microgrid solution. "[They have] a shared savings solution that allows you to capture the benefits of a microgrid without the upfront capital cost," Vandenbussche said.
Another workaround could involve geothermal energy, which can help control the air temperature. But for indoor vertical farms, the largest energy cost is electricity for lighting, which geothermal cannot address.
Plenty of paths
The indoor vertical farm industry has seen a lot of investment, but the business models are still sorting themselves out.
"There has been a big push on technology, but technology might not be the differentiating factor. The business models matter" said Ian Copeland, managing director at Ultra Capital, a San Francisco- and Philadelphia-based firm that focuses on small to midsize sustainable infrastructure projects in the agriculture, energy, waste and water sectors.
Investors want data-rich businesses that are responding to climate change, Gordon-Smith of Agritecture Consulting said. Consumers and retailers, meanwhile, want produce that they can trust will be clean and local, he added.
According to Whole Foods Market’s Manca, one big driver of the vertical farming trend is people wanting to know where their food comes from. "Especially for people in urban areas, I think that it’s really appealing to know that fresh produce is now being grown nearby and available at local stores at the peak of freshness," he said.
When it comes to vertical farming, venture capital is important, but project financing is critical, Oasis Biotech’s Wang said.
Project finance investors want to see long-term contracts with creditworthy counterparts; cost-competitive products and revenue predictability are also important.
Most vertical farms, including Plenty, initially have focused on leafy greens such as kale. Plenty
"Thanks to our modular platform — where we build farms inside refurbish shipping containers — we can quickly pop up in a new city with relatively little capital vs competitors,” said Tobias Peggs, co-founder, and CEO of Square Roots.
Earlier this month, Square Roots and Gordon Food Service (GFS), North America’s largest privately-owned foodservice distributor, forged a strategic partnership and opened its first co-located farm at GFS’ headquarters in Michigan.
"First, we want to refine and evaluate the proof of concept [at the co-located headquarters farm]. Assuming that we meet or exceed the projections going in, we hope to begin adding more locations next year," said Sean Walsh, GFS’s director of North America category management.
GFS trucks food to more than 100,000 restaurants, schools, hospitals/healthcare facilities, cruise ships and summer camp customers in the eastern half of the United States and Canada. GFS also runs a regional network of stores that service small businesses, caterers and walk-in consumers.
Other indoor farming companies are also in an expansionary mode. For example, Gotham Greens, which operates five high-tech greenhouse farms in New York City and Chicago, is opening new locations in Providence, Rhode Island; Chicago and Baltimore in the coming months. It says its retail presence will have grown to about 2,000 retail doors by the end of this year.
And in late October, Plenty, which concentrates on the West Coast, announced plans for a farm in the heart of Los Angeles. The new facility will create about 50 local jobs, ranging from growers to operations manager.
Space Crunch In Cities? How Rooftop Farming Is Becoming More Than Just A Trend
Founded in 2015, Rooftop Republic has set up more than 50 urban farms so far. Research by ecological and agricultural experts shows rooftop farms not only produce food but also create green spaces and boost biodiversity
Since 2008 more than 60 rooftop farms have sprouted up around Hong Kong, covering 15,000 square metres.
Photo: rooftoprepublic.com
05 Nov 2019, Marianne Bray, Reuters
Founded in 2015, Rooftop Republic has set up more than 50 urban farms so far
Research by ecological and agricultural experts shows rooftop farms not only produce food, but also create green spaces and boost biodiversity
At the top of a three-storey building in Hong Kong, with car horns blasting on the streets below, Jim Fung teaches a dozen students how to thin out choi sum vegetables.
"Always use the resources you have," the instructor said as he placed shredded office paper into soil-filled plastic crates and wound string around bamboo sticks to make support frames.
Fung was coaching the first cohort of students in an academy run by social enterprise Rooftop Republic to teach a new generation of urban farmers as demand for their skills soars.
The organisation is spearheading a movement to turn Hong Kong's idle rooftops and urban spaces into farms to help residents reconnect with nature and make the finance hub more liveable.
Once a cluster of fishing and farming villages, Hong Kong is now one of the most densely packed cities on Earth, with 7.4 million people living on a quarter of its 1,100 square km (425 square miles) of land.
The rest is mainly country parks and rural areas, but living in skyscrapers and working long hours has caused Hong Kongers to lose touch with the nature around them, say students at the academy.
"We've become detached from the history of the sea and land that Hong Kong had," said Jessica Cheng, a Rooftop Republic student who works for a philanthropic organisation.
Andrew Tsui, one of Rooftop Republic's three co-founders, said he wants the academy to be "Le Cordon Bleu" (a famous cookery school) of urban farming.
To him, that means a place where graduates become masters of the practice and at the same time become "stewards of our planet, our wellbeing, and our communities", he said.
Founded in 2015, Rooftop Republic has set up more than 50 urban farms so far.
It launched its academy in March, starting with events and workshops. The organisation's first urban farming course, which began last month, teaches students botany, organic farming and how to manage soil, pests, weeds and water resources.
Their classroom sits atop the headquarters of Hong Kong's Business Environment Council, a non-profit promoting sustainability in the world's second most-expensive city for property after Monaco, according to global realtor Knight Frank.
Since 2008 more than 60 rooftop farms have sprouted up around Hong Kong, covering 15,000 square metres (161,460 square feet), said Mathew Pryor, who heads the University of Hong Kong's landscape architecture division.
He estimates another six square km (2.3 square miles) of rooftop space could be available - about half the size of Hong Kong's airport and just less than the seven square km (2.7 square miles) of agricultural land in the city.
Hoping to expand that potential, Tsui told the Thomson Reuters Foundation that Rooftop Republic has been working with developers to include rooftop farms in their design blueprints.
One day, he predicted, rooftop farmers will be as necessary as facility managers who look after clubhouses and pools.
His organisation will train about 150 urban farmers over the next year, he added.
"We have the power to shape the future city we live in ... through demonstrating how adopting an urban farm lifestyle helps the end consumer become aware of ecology, biodiversity, nature, wellbeing and a circular food system," Tsui said.
SOCIAL VALUE
In the 1,200-square-metre (13,000-square-foot) Sky Garden in Metroplaza Mall - the largest urban farm atop a retail mall in Hong Kong - residents can cultivate edible flowers and fruit trees as they attend lifestyle classes like mindful gardening.
Research by ecological and agricultural experts shows rooftop farms not only produce food, but also create green spaces and boost biodiversity.
They also help mitigate the so-called "heat island" effect in cities, when heat is trapped by dark-coloured roads and buildings.
Just as importantly, Tsui said, the farms build communities among the people who care for the crops.
"There is huge potential for rooftop farming in a high-density city," said Pryor, the landscape architecture expert.
"Particularly if it can be aligned with social issues, like aging-in-place," he added, referring to when people have the chance to grow old in their own homes.
Access to a nearby rooftop farm can help the elderly engage with their community and keep them in good mental and physical health, he explained.
In a study of 108 people using rooftop farms, Pryor found more than three-quarters of respondents said they saw social value as the most important benefit of working on the farms, with socialising topping the list.
They added it was good for their health and for learning about nature.
Such learning is key, said academy student Alyson Hamilton, a teacher who runs her school's micro-garden.
"(My) students have no knowledge about food, where it comes from, how much plastic it comes in," she lamented.
NATURE AND COMMUNITY
Alongside the high cost and scarcity of space in Hong Kong, the main challenge for budding urban farmers is having the right conditions, Tsui said.
The basics that plants need - natural sunlight, fresh water and fresh air - are often in short supply in the city, he added.
"Our big question is, if many of our city spaces are not suitable for plants to survive, then how are they conducive for human beings?" he asked.
With more than half the world's population living in cities, Tsui said he's using what he has learnt from rooftop farming to engage urban planners and shape a human-centric city.
He questions whether the move toward so-called "smart cities" around the world actually allows city-goers to live smarter.
"Are we smarter in getting closer to nature for our wellbeing? Are we smarter in the way we design our neighbourhoods, allowing access to fresh air, direct sunlight and nature?" he asked.
Working with architects, planners and developers allows Rooftop Republic to incorporate some of those factors into the blueprints for new developments.
But rooftop farms - which are legal in Hong Kong - currently exist in a grey area between formal city planning and informal community action, said Pryor, the landscape architecture professor.
Both the city's New Agricultural Policy paper, published in 2014, and the Hong Kong 2030 strategic plan acknowledged rooftop farms as playing a significant part in urban agriculture. Government officials did not respond to interview requests.
Pryor would like to see the city's government include such farms into mainstream building and land policy, in recognition of how important they are for creating sustainable cities.
Tsui agreed, saying urban planners need to create ecosystems to nurture people's connection to nature.
"We want to put nature and community back into where we play, where we work, where we live," he said.
The story is by Thomson Reuters Foundation
Urban Rooftop Farming Is Becoming More Than Just A Trend In Singapore
Whether you’re wandering through a residential area or exploring the recently re-opened Funan mall, you may have noticed new urban farms sprouting up—flourishing with fruit, herbs and vegetables, occasionally tilapia inconspicuously swimming in an aquaponics system
October 29, 2019
Call It A Social Movement or Singapore’s Solution To Sustainable
Self-Sufficiency, But Urban Farming In Our Garden City Is Growing To
New Heights
Whether you’re wandering through a residential area or exploring the recently re-opened Funan mall, you may have noticed new urban farms sprouting up—flourishing with fruit, herbs, and vegetables, occasionally tilapia inconspicuously swimming in an aquaponics system.
Urban farming has become quite a bit more than a fad or innovation showcase for our garden city. “The practice of urban farming has picked up in scale and sophistication globally in recent years,” said an Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) spokesperson.
“In Singapore, we encourage innovative urban farming approaches such as rooftop farming, which optimizes land, introduces more greenery into the built environment, and potentially enhances our food supply resilience.”
Several companies have taken on the gargantuan task of cultivating the urban farming scene here. Rooftop farming pioneer, Comcrop (short for Community Crop), has been hard at work with its latest commercial farm, an 11-month-old greenhouse in Woodlands Loop. Edible Garden City (EGC) has more than 200 farms across the island and works closely with restaurants to ensure sustainable supply and demand.
(CNA Luxury: How Singapore’s restaurateurs are rising to the challenges of sustainability)
Indoor micro-greens being grown at Noka. (Image: Noka)
Citiponics has made a name for itself building water-efficient aqua organic “growing towers” that can be used to build anything from butterhead lettuce to sweet basil. In April this year, they opened the first commercial farm on the rooftop of a multi-story car park. The farm produces vegetables sold at the Ang Mo Kio Hub outlet of NTUC FairPrice under the brand, LeafWell.
Sky Greens is arguably the most impressive urban farming venture. It is the world’s first low carbon, hydraulic driven vertical farm, and has been recognized globally for its sustainability innovation.
There are several benefits to having our farms so close to home. Through community gardens or access to commercial-scale farm produce, the public has an opportunity to understand how food is grown.
As urban farmers take great care to ensure produce is pesticide-free, while incorporating sustainable zero-waste and energy-saving practices, there is also comfort in knowing where the food comes from and its impact on the environment.
(CNA Luxury: Why this Michelin star chef spends so much time on Singapore farms)
Mushrooms fruiting in a chamber at Noka. (Image: Noka)
“Having food production within the city or heartland [also] brings food closer to the consumers as it cuts transport costs and carbon emissions, and may improve environmental sustainability,” said a spokesperson from the Singapore Food Agency (SFA), the new statutory board created in April this year to develop the food supply and industry.
However, there are also broader concerns of the impact of climate change and food security in Singapore. It is why much is being done by the likes of the SFA to achieve “30 by 30”—“which is to develop the capability and capacity of our agri-food industry to produce 30 percent of Singapore’s nutritional needs by 2030,” said the SFA. “Local production will help mitigate our reliance on imports and serve as a buffer during supply disruptions to import sources.”
Singapore still has a long way to go as the urban farming scene is still a very young one. But there are opportunities for growth given the continued development here. In the URA’s latest phase of the Landscaping for Urban Spaces and High-Rises (LUSH) 3.0 scheme, “developers of commercial and hotel buildings located in high footfall areas can propose rooftop farms to meet landscape replacement requirements.”
Naturally, developers are taking advantage of this. One of the newest kids on the block is the urban rooftop farm run by EGC for new Japanese restaurant, Noka by Open Farm Community at Funan. Noka is putting its money on offering Japanese cuisine that infuses local ingredients, from the butterfly blue pea to the ulam raja flower—ingredients grown and tended to, by the farmers at EGC’s 5,000 sqft urban garden just outside Noka’s windows.
(CNA Luxury: Is green the new glam? How tiny, rich Monaco is tackling sustainable tourism)
Woha Architects’ edible sky garden, at the firm's office in 29 Hongkong Street, is a test bed for urban farming techniques. (Image: Woha Architects)
“The urban farming space is still in the emerging stages of development,” said Bjorn Low, co-founder of EGC. “We are literally scratching the surface of what’s possible. The areas of growth are in the application of urban food production in urban design and city planning, the use of urban farms for deeper community engagement and the role urban farms plays in creating a social and environmental impact in the city.”
While many farmers have found ways to convert existing rooftop spaces into farms or gardens, Jonathan Choe, associate at Woha Architects, says that one of the greatest opportunities to advance urban farming in Singapore is to build an entirely integrated system that not only incorporates growing spaces but also how these farms can interact with the entire building infrastructure—from building cooling measures to water recycling and energy management. The firm, which has their own testbed rooftop garden, is currently working on the upcoming Punggol Digital District development.
Dwarf bok choy being grown at Woha Architects’ edible sky garden. (Image: Woha Architects)
But the greatest challenge for urban farmers is truly economies of scale. “Agriculture on its own is already a challenging industry due to industrialization of farming and our food system,” said Low. “Scale is a limiting factor in the city, and urban farming business models need to be able to adapt to both the challenges of a globalized food system and the availability of cheap food, whilst operating in areas of high cost and overheads.”
It begins with cultivating an awareness of and demand for local produce amongst both consumers and businesses alike. For Cynthia Chua, co-founder of Spa Esprit Group—the people behind Noka—taking an interest in agriculture is more than necessary, as it will have long-term benefits in preparing for the future generation of Singaporeans.
A harvest of white radishes from Woha Architects' edible sky garden. (Image: Woha Architects)
Restaurants like Noka, which choose to highlight local produce are an easy way in for consumers to learn about the benefits of supporting local farming businesses. As a business owner, Chua has also noticed that “travelling chefs from different countries are gaining interest in playing with our tropical produce.” In Chua’s opinion, it is the “right timing” to push innovation and continue to turn this “scene” into a fully sustainable industry.
“As a city-state, the general population is disconnected from farming and the way food is being farmed,” said Low. “Urban farms should become touchpoints for us to learn about sustainable agriculture techniques, and encourage consumers in Singapore to eat more responsibly, locally and ethically.”
Access is a collaboration between Singapore Tatler and CNA Luxury.
TAGS DIGEST ACCESS SUSTAINABILITY URBAN FARMING FARM TO TABLE
Bringing Fresh Produce To The Philippines One Rooftop And Patio At A Time
Ralph, the founder of Urban Greens, is combining technology with sustainability to sell local, pesticide-free, vertical-farm-produced produce to restaurants
Food and diet in the Philippines get a bad rap for good reasons. Like a lot of island nations, there is a growing trend towards obesity-related health problems. Most food there is imported. The Philippines has one of the highest numbers of fast-food restaurants per-capita in the world. But food tech entrepreneurs, like Ralph Becker, are working to change some of this.
Ralph Becker inspecting produce in one of his vertical farms
Ralph, the founder of Urban Greens, is combining technology with sustainability to sell local, pesticide-free, vertical-farm-produced produce to restaurants. Inspired by a stint in Japan where he saw plant factories producing food in the middle of big cities, he built a vertical farm prototype as a side project for fun. He didn't expect a business to blossom from it.
However, he noticed how interested friends and family were in his little "window farm". Concurrently, he saw an abundance of unused outdoor and indoor spaces around him in Manila.
A business opportunity came to mind--he could grow healthy food on underutilized rooftops and basements to help offset the typical imported and processed staples so prevalent in the Philippines. Just the presence of vertical farms on a neighbor's balcony could be an opportunity to help educate people about food.
Publication date: Tue, 22 Oct 2019
Australia - Coming Soon: Acre Farm & Eatery Is A 2500-Square-Metre Urban Rooftop Farm And Cafe In Burwood East
The cafe will be located inside an enormous glasshouse with 450 square metres of vertical gardens in which about 15,000 seedlings have been planted (mainly high-yield greens and soft herbs)
There’s a vertical strawberry wall, a glasshouse cafe
with 15,000 seedlings and even a chicken coop.
28 October 2019
by NICK BUCKLEYSHARE
One of Broadsheet’s top ten stories of all time was the February 2018 news that the “world’s most sustainable shopping centre” was being planned for Burwood Brickworks in Melbourne’s east.
The development enlisted eco-pioneer, florist and designer Joost Bakker as a creative consultant to help turn the project’s rooftop into an urban farm, cafe, and restaurant space, which will open in December as Acre Farm & Eatery.
The cafe will be located inside an enormous glasshouse with 450 square metres of vertical gardens in which about 15,000 seedlings have been planted (mainly high-yield greens and soft herbs). Inside, the kitchen is behind glass walls too, giving diners a view of the chefs cooking the ingredients harvested from the rooftop. Adjacent to the cafe is a farmhouse-style restaurant with large windows looking out over the Dandenong Ranges.
Surrounding both dining rooms will be 2500 square metres of urban agricultural land, including a vertical strawberry garden, a chicken coop, established trees and ankle-height gardens that you’ll walk through to reach the glasshouse. Currently being planted are at least 12 varieties of tomato, as well as kale, silverbeet, baby carrots and heirloom baby vegetables, plus established olive and citrus trees. Even the flowers used to decorate the restaurant will be grown on the roof.
“You’ll kind of lose your sense of place going from a shopping centre to what feels like a rural area,” says executive chef Brad Simpson, who spent seven years in the kitchen at Prahran pub The Smith (first as head chef, then as executive chef) before it was sold in July last year. “We want people to feel relaxed, as if they’re in the country, and it’s going to have a warm, homely feel.”
The rooftop gardens and glasshouse will provide some of the produce used in Acre’s kitchens, but they won’t fully sustain them. The gardens are also partly designed to be an educational tool, to get diners to consider the provenance of what they’re eating.
“The reality of the situation is that for us to just use what came off the roof for the restaurant we’d run out pretty quick … you need hectares and hectares of space to do that,” says Simpson. “We’re going to grow as much as we can on the roof while keeping it looking lush so that it can educate people and be a bit of a showpiece for what happens inside.”
Produce brought in from outside will come from local Victorian growers following the same ethos as Acre.
“I’m looking at dealing with farms that operate the same soil-health programs that we will operate on the rooftop. No sort of harsh sprays or anything like that. We want the comparison for what we source outside of the farm to match as closely as possible to what we’re doing on it,” says Simpson, who points to a simple dish of eggplant relish, toasted seeds, and baby vegetables as being indicative of his menu.
“It’s probably the most remedial dish on the menu in some ways … it’s kind of a jazzed-up crudité plate. It’s utilising stuff that’s just been pulled out of the ground,” he says.
Setting up the kitchen has been a learning process for Simpson, who’s trying to minimise food waste and single-use plastics. For example, he’s done away with a Cryovac – a machine used to vacuum-seal food in plastic bags – something he says he never would have imagined doing without five years ago. And the new skills he’s learning are being integrated into his life outside the Acre kitchen too.
“I’m learning things at home just through this process. I’m saving apple skins and apple cores that my son doesn’t eat and turning it into apple cider vinegar,” says Simpson. “Things that I’d just normally throw out I’ve started thinking about differently. I’m making crackers from old sourdough that I don’t get through and stuff like that.”
In that spirit, expect to see secondary cuts of meat on the homely, approachable menu. One dish in the works is a whole, slow-roasted pork knuckle (using hind-quarter hocks from free-range Victorian pigs) with lovage and fennel from the garden, and apple.
“I’m really into the family-style of eating and making sure our menu’s not too structured, that it’s approachable, colourful, social food,” says Simpson. “I don’t want to be cutting edge … I want it to be social, family food that everyone’s going to be able to sit down and enjoy and most importantly not be intimidated by.”
Acre Farm & Eatery is set to open in early December at Burwood Brickworks, 78 Middlesborough Road, Burwood East.
Photography: Courtesy of Acre Farm & Eatery
US: Colorado - A New Building Rising Behind Stanley Marketplace In Aurora Will Be An Commercial Greenhouse
In a budding industry, Aurora has been handpicked as a landing spot for a green giant. Gotham Greens, the Brooklyn-born company at the forefront of the urban farming industry, is coming to town
New York-based Gotham Greens coming to Colorado, will open 30,000-square-foot facility in 2020 that will serve retailers throughout state and region
Michael Ciaglo, Special to the Denver Post
Gotham Greens co-founder and CEO Viraj Puri gives a tour of their new 30,000 square foot greenhouse next to the Stanley Marketplace Thursday, Oct. 17, 2019, in Aurora. The greenhouse is less than an acre but will produce the equivalent of over 25 acres of conventional farming.
October 23, 2019
In a budding industry, Aurora has been handpicked as a landing spot for a green giant. Gotham Greens, the Brooklyn-born company at the forefront of the urban farming industry, is coming to town.
By the spring of 2020, Gotham Greens will be growing arugula, basil, bok choy and a variety of other herbs and leafy greens out of a 30,000-square-foot greenhouse nestled behind Stanley Marketplace, 2501 Dallas St. As recently as last week, the site wasn’t much more than a slab of concrete spiked with steel beams, but when it opens it will be a state-of-the-art facility set up to produce fresh food 365 days per year.
“Where we’re standing will be filled with plant growing beds,” company co-founder and CEO Viraj Puri said while walking the construction site last week. “Our proprietary growing method uses 95% less water and 97% less land than traditional farming.”
Indoor farming isn’t a new idea in the Denver area. Nonprofit fresh produce provider The GrowHaus will celebrate its 10th anniversary next month. It operates a trio of indoor farms in the Elyria-Swansea neighborhood. Altius Farms has been harvesting and distributing its own brand of aeroponically grown leafy greens and herbs since late 2018. It’s roughly 7,000-acre greenhouse sits on the roof of a restaurant in the S*Park development in Denver’s River North Art District. That project is owned by Westfield Co., the same developer behind Stanley Marketplace that has now brought in Gotham Greens.
What will set Gotham Green’s Denver operation apart is its scale. Its greenhouse is designed to serve the entire state and even some parts of bordering states, Puri said. Whole Foods has already signed on to carry Gotham Greens lettuce mixes, herbal dressings and other goods in all of its Colorado stores, according to the CEO. By growing its products close to consumers, the company also limits the carbon footprint of its business.
“What’s remarkable about this system, is it’s a climate-controlled greenhouse that employs a lot of technology — hydroponic, automation, computer control systems, advanced drip irrigation techniques,” he said. “It will produce a yield equivalent to a 25-acre farm.”
RELATED: Denver urban farming trend grows from a Sloan’s Lake condo tower to a Larimer Square parking garage
Stanley Marketplace is the western front of an ambitious expansion effort. Founded in 2009, Gotham Greens opened its first greenhouse in Brooklyn until 2011. It expanded to Chicago in 2014 and has grown its presence in New York over the last few years but 2019 has been its busiest year to date.
With new greenhouses in Providence, R.I., and Baltimore expected to open by the end of the year, the company will soon crack the New England and Mid-Atlantic markets. When those facilities are up and running, Puri will oversee a company with more than 500,000 square feet of greenhouse space and 350 employees. That’s before the Aurora facility opens and brings on 30 full-time workers, he said.
Colorado — and the Denver metro area specifically — were a good fit for Gotham Greens because many consumers in the state value sustainably grown, eco-friendly food products, Gotham Greens co-founder and chief financial officer Eric Haley said. Haley should know. He grew up in the south metro area and graduated from Cherry Creek High School in 1999.
New York City - Essex Crossing Organic Farm Launches In Lower East Side
Located on the sixth floor of The Essex at 125 Essex Street, the quarter-acre farm will be run by Project EATS—a nonprofit that operates farms across the city—and will grow organic carrots, radishes, beets, turnips, and baby greens, such as kale, mustards, and arugula
The farm will hawk fresh produce including carrots, radishes, and arugula
August 1, 2019
Delancey Street Associates
A new farm, now among the largest in the borough, launched Wednesday at the Essex Crossing megaproject in the Lower East Side.
Located on the sixth floor of The Essex at 125 Essex Street, the quarter-acre farm will be run by Project EATS—a nonprofit that operates farms across the city—and will grow organic carrots, radishes, beets, turnips, and baby greens, such as kale, mustards, and arugula.
“We’re looking forward to welcoming the LES community to the farm and providing fresh produce for the neighborhood in the Market Line,” said Debbie Kenyon, vice chair and senior partner at L+M Development Partners, in a statement.
Produce from the urban grange will be sold at the Farmacy, a stand at the mega development’s upcoming Market Line, which will run below Essex Street Market. Until then, the Farmacy will temporarily sell the fresh veggies at a recently opened public park that was similarly developed by Essex Crossing’s development team, Delancey Street Associates (a collaboration between L+M Development Partners, BFC Partners, Taconic, Prusik Group, and the Goldman Sachs Urban Investment Group).
That stand will be open for business on Wednesdays and Saturdays from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m until the Market Line stall is up and running.
The farm will also feature programming for public schools on the importance of nutritious food and will offer free Saturday breakfast for seniors living in the neighborhood. Healthy lifestyle workshops, neighborhood forums, and community dinners are also in the works.
Opportunities for workforce development are another component of the project, as Project Eats will train and employ students from Seward Park High School to work at the farm and the Farmacy.
Just over a month ago, Essex Crossing debuted its 15,000-square-foot park, and earlier that month, the new version of Essex Street Market opened its doors to much fanfare.
The Green Revolution Spreading Across Our Rooftops
As concerns about climate change and dwindling natural resources grow, green roofs have become increasingly popular. The Toronto-based organization Green Roofs for Healthy Cities estimates an increase of about 15 percent in the number of green roofs in North America since 2013
The space on top of the 525W52 building in New York features plants, lounge chairs and a view of the Hudson. Credit 525 West 52nd Street
By Kelly DiNardo
October 9, 2019
When David Michaels moved to Chicago this year, he chose the Emme apartment building in part because of the third-floor green roof, which has a lawn, an area for grilling, fire pits and a 3,000-square-foot vegetable garden.
“The green space was a huge factor in choosing this apartment,” Mr. Michaels said. “My wife and I are out there every other night, grilling or relaxing. And we like that they host classes out there.”
The Emme actually has two rooftop gardens — the one visible to residents on a deck on the third floor and a 5,000-square-foot garden on the roof of the 14-story building. Both are run by the Roof Crop, an urban farm that grows food for restaurants on a handful of roofs in Chicago. Residents at the Emme can also subscribe to regular bundles of rooftop-grown fruits and vegetables.
As concerns about climate change and dwindling natural resources grow, green roofs have become increasingly popular. The Toronto-based organization Green Roofs for Healthy Cities estimates an increase of about 15 percent in the number of green roofs in North America since 2013.
Replacing black asphalt and shingles with plants can lower the surrounding air temperature, filter dirty stormwater and reduce a building’s energy use.
While it is difficult to calculate the savings, as utility costs vary from city to city, the National Research Council of Canada estimates a green roof can reduce air-conditioning use in a building by as much as 75 percent.
Beyond the energy savings, by lowering air-conditioning demand, green roofs also help to reduce air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions, according to the United States Environmental Protection Agency.
As understanding of the benefits grows, more cities around the world are passing green roof legislation. In 2010 Copenhagen began requiring green roofs on all new commercial buildings with a roof slope of less than 30 degrees. In 2016, the city of Córdoba in Argentina issued a bylaw that directed all rooftops — new or existing — of more than 1,300 square feet to be turned into green roofs. The same year, San Francisco began requiring that 15 to 30 percent of roof space on new buildings incorporate solar panels, green roofs or both. More recently, the New York City Council passed a suite of measures to reduce greenhouse gases, including a requirement for green roofs, solar panels or a combination of both on newly constructed buildings. Other cities support green roofs through non-legislative measures; Washington, D.C.’s stormwater regulations and Philadelphia’s tax credit both encourage green roofs.
Toronto was the first city in North America to pass a green roof law, in 2009, requiring new buildings or additions that are greater than 21,000 square feet to cover between 20 and 60 percent of their buildings with vegetation. Developers can opt-out for a fee, but fewer than 10 percent choose to do so, according to Jane Welsh, the project manager for environmental planning at Toronto’s City Hall. Many that do seek exemptions are simply looking to install smaller green roofs than are required by the Green Roof Bylaw.
The green terrace at the Summit New York building in Midtown East has living trees, barbecues, and an herb garden. Credit Quallsbenson
Since the law was enacted, roughly 640 green roofs, covering more than five million square feet collectively, have been constructed, effectively changing Toronto’s architectural DNA and making the city a leader in the green roof movement.
Simply put, a green roof is one that allows for the growth of vegetation, but the process is more involved than plopping down a few potted plants. Typically, a green or living roof is constructed of several layers including a waterproof membrane, a root barrier, a drainage layer, a growing medium — soil is too heavy — and plants.
As green roofs have become amenities for residents and employees, they often also include picnic tables, benches, fire pits, and other extras.
Before Toronto’s green roof bylaw took effect, the Hugh Garner Housing Co-operative in the city decided to build one when its roof membrane needed replacement. Residents were presented with three designs — one that evoked a circus, one modeled after an English garden and one that brought to mind a city park. Residents voted for the park in the early 2000s, and today, the 22,000-square-foot roof features flower beds, trees, an herb garden, gazebos and specially-made picnic tables that are wheelchair-accessible.
“In the summer, every picnic table will have folks eating dinner out there,” said Beata Domanska, a resident and former board member who advocated the green roof. “People are up there playing cards, reading, sun tanning. We have member events there. We’ve even had weddings up there. It’s become part of the culture here.”
Of course, green roofs are not entirely new.
“We’ve been using soil and plants as a roofing material for thousands of years,” said Steven Peck, the founder and president of Green Roofs for Healthy Cities. “The Vikings would flip their boats over and cover them in sod because it’s a great insulator. What’s new is the research the Germans have done. They essentially invented the lightweight extensive system.”
In the 1970s, German horticulturists, construction companies and others began developing waterproofing technologies and researching blends of growing mediums that would be lighter than soil. In the 1980s, Germany passed a mix of local and federal laws encouraging green roof development and today the country features approximately 925,000,000 square feet of living roof. The movement began to take root in the United States and Canada in the early 2000s, with developers, architects, and designers looking to imitate Germany’s achievement.
Today, the University of Toronto’s Green Roof Innovation Testing Laboratory has grown into a leader in green roof research. The state-of-the-art facility uses 33 testbeds, a weather station and more than 250 sensors gathering data on soil moisture, flow rates, temperature, rainfall, humidity and amounts of sun and wind to help researchers assess and improve green roof performance.
Research like this helped overcome some early hurdles when ambitious designs, plant choice, lack of irrigation or a combination of factors left plants dying and green roofs turning brown.
“The focus has shifted from pretty to performance,” explained Vanessa Keitges, the chief executive of Columbia Green Technologies, the firm behind more than 1,500 green roofs in North America, including Amazon’s headquarters in Seattle and the Zella Apartments there, which feature a deck with an herb garden, outdoor kitchen, dog run and plenty of seating. “We’re getting better at fine-tuning the plant palette so you don’t end up with a brown roof. We’ve moved to drip irrigation instead of spray. We’re designing systems that are much easier to maintain. We want them to be goof proof.”
A bird’s-eye view of the roof of the Zella Apartments in Seattle, where green areas available for residents’ use include a dog terrace, with waste bags provided, and an outdoor kitchen. CreditGreen Technologies/Weisman Design Group
City planners are looking to green roofs to mitigate the urban “heat island” effect, which describes a metropolitan area that’s significantly warmer than surrounding rural areas because of human activity. Air temperatures in cities, particularly after sunset, can be as much as 22 degrees Fahrenheit (around 12 degrees Celsius) warmer than less developed regions. The elevated temperatures raise energy consumption, increase air pollutants and compromise human health, with extreme heat now causing more deaths in the United States than all other weather events combined, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The vegetation on a living roof cools the surrounding air through evapotranspiration, the process in which moisture in plant leaves evaporates into the air, essentially working like an outdoor air-conditioning system. In addition, the increased insulation and decreased need for air-conditioning means less overheated air is put back into the surrounding environment.
The plants on green roofs also work like a giant sponge, soaking up water and therefore reducing the amount of rainwater that reaches street level, lowering the risk of flooding, minimizing sewer system overflow and filtering dirty runoff.
“Cities are built to be impervious,” Mr. Peck said. “The water runs off buildings and streets, and when it hits streams and estuaries, it can cause erosion. It’s also incredibly contaminated. If you want to have drinkable, fishable, swimmable water in and around our cities, we need to capture stormwater and use it as a resource, instead of just getting it away from the buildings as soon as possible.”
Beyond the long list of financial, health and environmental benefits, green roofs have become valued amenities in residential buildings.
“We were really keen on finding a place with outdoor space,” said Carolyn Kushner, who chose the apartment building 525W52 in New York in part because of the roof, which features lounge chairs overlooking the Hudson River, a large lawn, grilling stations, bocce ball and Ping-Pong and shuffleboard tables, all surrounded by shrubs and greenery. Dr. Kushner and her partner — who proposed on the roof — go up there several times a week. “We have a glass of wine and watch the sunset. The city can be really overwhelming if you don’t get that kind of greenery. It’s nice to have someplace to escape to.”
One early cause of hesitation in adopting living roofs was the upfront cost. Green roofs cost two to three times as much as a traditional roof.
“With so many environmental initiatives, it often boils down to money,” Ms. Domanska said. “One of the ways we’re able to sell this is that a green roof significantly extends the life span of a roof. Over time it saves money. That was very attractive to the people who live here. Now people see all the benefits, but initially, it was about the savings.”
Studies bear this out. A 2006 study from the University of Michigan compared the expected costs of conventional roofs with the cost of a 21,000-square-foot green roof and found that over its lifetime, the green roof would save about $200,000. Almost two-thirds of that would be in reduced energy needs for the building below.
“We’ve established best practices for creating green roofs,” Mr. Peck said. “We have political leaders looking for ways to improve the health and well-being of the people in their cities and also address climate change. We have research that shows the benefits of green roofs. It seems clear that the cities that invest in green infrastructure will be the cities that thrive.”
A version of this article appears in print on Oct. 12, 2019, in The New York Times International Edition.
How Urban Farming With Hydroponics Can Help Feed The World While Saving Water
A New York City rooftop is an unlikely place for a farm. But stretching across much of a 20,000-square-foot rooftop in Gowanus, Brooklyn is a bounty of bright green butterhead lettuce, aromatic basil, various tomatoes, and other produce
By Michael Stahl
October 8, 2019
weather.com
A New York City rooftop is an unlikely place for a farm. But stretching across much of a 20,000-square-foot rooftop in Gowanus, Brooklyn is a bounty of bright green butterhead lettuce, aromatic basil, various tomatoes, and other produce.
Inside a Gotham Greens greenhouse | (Julie McMahon/Gotham Greens)
Unlike a traditional farm, the sprouting plants here grow without soil. They flourish atop vast racks with water trenches running through them that are slightly angled so that gravity helps the irrigation water shuttle around the closed system, instead of using energy-sucking pumps to move water around. Nutrients that the plants need are dissolved into the water, which comes from the local municipality’s supply. Any water runoff is purified, nutrient re-enriched, and released back into the channels.
The crops here grow year-round and under relatively little stress, because conditions in the greenhouse, including the amount of sunlight and the temperature, are monitored closely by sensors. Water evaporation is also minimal.
This futuristic food production space is one of five greenhouses in New York and Chicago operated by Gotham Greens. Founded in Brooklyn, Gotham Greens grows fruits and vegetables in urban greenhouses that are outfitted with hydroponics technology and other cutting-edge features, such as a closed irrigation system that minimizes water requirements.
“[This system] allows us to use about 95% less water than conventional field farming,” says Gotham Greens co-founder and CEO Viraj Puri. “We use less than a gallon of water for every head of lettuce we produce.”
On a traditional farm, it takes more than 15 times that amount of water to grow a head of lettuce. With Americans consuming about 930 million pounds of lettuce each year, according to the Produce Market Guide, if such hydroponics systems were adopted just across the lettuce industry, they could save billions of gallons of water each year in the United States alone.
Agricultural innovations like these, along with industry expansion, could also help ease the concerns that, due to population growth, the human race will become unable to adequately feed itself. By the year 2050, the planet’s population is expected to reach nearly 10 billion people, boosting food demands by approximately 60%. A 2018 study found that, if effectively deployed in cities around the world, urban agriculture could produce as much as 180 million metric tons of food a year, including up to 10% of the planet’s legumes, roots and tubers, and vegetable crops. The study showed such widespread urban agriculture integration would have a range of benefits, including reduced energy use and drastic cuts to water consumption.
A hydroponic red oak leaf lettuce | (Getty Images/sutiporn somnam)
In order for the world’s food producers to keep up with a growing population’s food demands, they’ll have to increase agricultural development one way or another. If the status quo is maintained, the required boost in agriculture production could generate a 15% uptick in freshwater use. But the earth’s supply of fresh water — about 70% of which is already utilized by global agriculture — is under threat, due in part to global warming. Higher temperatures create a host of problems for the world’s water system, including faster evaporation, the disappearance of inland glaciers that feed freshwater supplies, and more extreme weather events that contribute to greater freshwater runoff.
Advancements in hydroponic technology, however, have led to the development of recirculating hydroponic systems, which minimize water use by recycling unused irrigation water. Gotham Greens has such a system in its greenhouses.
“As water just continues to become a more scarce resource around the world,” Puri says, “we believe this form of agriculture is going to play a greater role in modern agricultural systems.”
Viraj Puri, CEO of Gotham Greens | (Julie McMahon/Gotham Greens)
Gotham Greens did not invent its closed irrigation system, but its approach is particularly efficient, Puri says. To help educate the public about innovative farming techniques, Puri’s company offers tours of its greenhouses and has invested in urban agriculture education initiatives. Puri has also participated in panel discussions to educate the public about the positive impact that urban farming can have on the world, despite the increased competition his disclosures could bring to his business.
He says he’d welcome “a more system-wide, cohesive effort to support this form of farming.” Puri has been encouraged by the U.S. government’s examination of new, sustainable farming practices as well, which could lead to greater implementation of them.
Seedlings at a hydroponics farm | (Getty Images/Eternity in an Instant)
Urban agriculture also allows for consumers in cities to get fresher products because they don’t have to travel thousands of miles. Currently, almost all lettuce eaten in the U.S. is grown in two water-starved states: California and Arizona. Urban agricultural companies provide lettuce to communities without the environmental impact that comes with shipping lettuce thousands of miles via fossil fuel-burning, refrigerated trucks. Plus, more farming with hydroponics translates to less land that will be needed for agriculture, which could, in turn, mean the reestablishment of previously lost natural habitats.
Urban agriculture does have its drawbacks. Growing food in cities, which are comparatively more highly polluted environments than rural areas, leads to leads to food contamination concerns.. And while urban farms increase property values, they raise economic concerns about the displacement of people who lived in such areas before the high-tech food producers came along. Critics also say that the products from such farms are more expensive, raising questions of access to those with limited financial resources.
And while energy use varies widely from site to site, the artificial lights and other climate control measures often used by urban farms may at times consume far more energy than traditional farms. Another limitation of urban agriculture is embedded into its very essence: the fact that the farms are built in cities, which have a dearth of available space to begin with. One study found that if every vacant lot in New York City were suddenly dedicated to farming, those farms would yield enough produce for just 160,000 people — and there are over 8 million people living in New York City.
People in Time Square | (Getty Images/Alexander Spatari)
“Urban agriculture is really exciting for a lot of reasons, but when you look at a city like New York, we’re never going to be able to grow all of our food needs within the city limits,” says Ricky Stephens, director of digital strategy at Agritecture, a consulting firm focused on urban agriculture project development.
Still, Stephens says urban agriculture should be part of a more localized food system, as its benefits go beyond environmental conservation to an awareness about the value of food and community.
“I think the beauty of urban agriculture is that it really brings that understanding of a local food economy directly to the consumer,” he says. “You’re actually seeing it and you’re maybe interacting with the farmers, maybe you know the farmers.”
(Getty Images/julief514)
The ability of Gotham Greens to use up to 95% less water than traditional farms do in producing some of its food ranks the company on the highest end of the spectrum of water conservation across the urban agriculture industry, Stephens says. Gotham Greens, he says, is “one of the most successful urban farming models that exist[s].”
One hope of developers like Stephens is that urban agriculture will catch on in cities around the world, and Gotham Greens is an impressive example of how to do it.
That expansion is already underway.
By the end of 2019, after opening new farms in five states, Gotham Greens itself will manage over 500,000 square feet of greenhouses. And food production businesses that have adopted hydroponics and other new technologies like that of Gotham Greens have been popping up around the world. Some new companies are even growing farms in shipping containers, demonstrating that fresh food production can truly happen just about anywhere these days.
Colorado: Urban Farm, Restaurant And Market Coming To Englewood
Behind that glass window will reside a hydroponic system where plants will grow on indoor towers. Hydroponics is a method of growing plants year-round in sand, gravel or liquid with added nutrients without using soil. Farms that use the hydroponic method use up to 10 times less water than traditional farms, according to the National Park Service
Grow + Gather Will Occupy The Old Bill's Auto Service Building
Monday, September 16, 2019
Joseph Rios
jrios@coloradocommunitymedia.com
George Gastis sold his tech business four years ago — a year after he packed his bags and moved to Englewood from Platt Park. Contemplating what his next move would be, he knew he always had a green thumb and a love for food.
At first, he had planned to find a property to purchase or rent where he would grow food that would be sold to grocery stores and restaurants. In the process of planning his next steps, Gastis purchased the old Bill's Auto Service building, located at 900 E. Hampden Ave.
“The idea quickly became more than just a place to grow food. There seemed to be a great opportunity to create a place where not only can we grow food, but reconnect the neighborhood and surrounding communities,” said Gastis, referring to places like Littleton, south Denver, Greenwood Village and other areas near Englewood. “Our geographic location is sort of strangely unique in the sense that we sit on the edge of some of those communities.”
After planning and talking to people from his past, Gastis realized there was an opportunity to create a hub around food at the old Bill's Auto Service building. Gastis seized the opportunity, and depending on construction, Grow + Gather will open its doors in October. The development will be a casual restaurant and a market that'll sell coffee and freshly harvested produce and foods - all grown at Grow + Gather.
“When we moved to this neighborhood, I saw the potential in this area. There wasn't a ton to do,” said Gastis. “Combined with trying to figure out what I wanted to do and recognizing the opportunity here — Englewood seemed to be in the process of reviving itself with a lot of new businesses moving in, a lot of development, certainly (Swedish Medical Center) and their role they played in the community — it seemed really interesting.”
The restaurant will be operated by chefs like Caleb Phillips, a Tennessee native who plans to bring a Southern twist to some of Grow + Gather's dishes. Phillips says the menu will be simple, but it'll center around ingredients that will come from Grow + Gather's farm. Some of its dishes will include biscuits, salads, pies, egg dishes, and grits. Beer will also be available at the restaurant, brewed from the second level of the building.
“It's just the neatest idea. I get to walk 20 yards to get fresh vegetables,” said Phillips. “The community has already been super kind and receptive. I think it's going to be a lot of fun.”
When customers walk through Grow + Gather's community room, an area designated for guests to have coffee and for classes on gardening and cooking, they'll be able to see their food being grown behind a glass window. Behind that glass window will reside a hydroponic system where plants will grow on indoor towers. Hydroponics is a method of growing plants year-round in sand, gravel or liquid with added nutrients without using soil. Farms that use the hydroponic method use up to 10 times less water than traditional farms, according to the National Park Service.
Gastis says the rooftop of the building will serve as rooftop greenhouse, where he'll grow crops like tomatoes.
“It is exciting to see a new business concept like Grow + Gather here in Englewood as well as the repurposing of the property once occupied by Bill's Auto Service. It is sure to bring new life to that area,” said David Carroll, executive director of the Greater Englewood Chamber of Commerce. The chamber works to promote its business members while engaging with new businesses in the city.
PHOTOS: COURTESY OF GEORGE GASTIS
5 Tips On Being More Sustainable, The Brooklyn Way
It’s easy to feel cynical in regards to the current state of our environmental resources. With the recent release of a United Nations report highlighting the dire future of our global food supply, fires scorching the Amazon rainforest and record-breaking temperatures hitting cities across the world, the news cycle continues to project little hope in solving our global climate crisis
September 6, 2019
Keyshae Robinson
Brooklyn Grange's Navy Yard location. Eagle file photo by Lore Croghan
It’s easy to feel cynical in regards to the current state of our environmental resources. With the recent release of a United Nations report highlighting the dire future of our global food supply, fires scorching the Amazon rainforest and record-breaking temperatures hitting cities across the world, the news cycle continues to project little hope in solving our global climate crisis.
But by implementing habitual sustainable practices into a daily routine, we can all be more active in preventing further damage to our fragile environmental ecosystem.
“I think it’s really about purchasing habits, consumption habits, waste habits,” said Anastasia Plakias, co-founder and COO of Brooklyn Grange Farms, the largest soil-based rooftop farming business in the world. “The key to sustainability is knowing you’re not going to be perfect and making peace with that.”
To make the transition of “going green” less intimidating, we spoke to three different eco-conscious organizations local to Brooklyn about how to be both more sustainable and more accountable. Here’s what they had to say:
Brooklyn Grange Farms:
The agricultural space opened their third farm, the largest to date, on Aug. 18th in Sunset Park. Aside from providing fresh produce to local farmer’s markets and restaurants, the space will absorb roughly 175,000 gallons of rainwater, helping to reduce the amount of CSO’s entering NYC’s water system. Learn more here.
1. Find practices that make you happy
“If you enjoy skincare or beauty routines, great! Save your coffee grinds and use them as a skin exfoliator. Or if it’s shopping, shop local by visiting the nearby co-op or butcher,” said Plakias. “Most New Yorkers are incredibly busy, so it has to be habits that spark joy in order for us to actually make a routine of it.”
Grow NYC
Founded in 1970, Grow NYC is the largest environmental nonprofit in the city. With several programs, including educational outreach, waste reduction, and community gardens, their efforts provide essential sustainable resources for more than 3 million New Yorkers. Learn more here.
2. Start small
“Cooking at home is a huge step in the direction of sustainability,” said Liz Carollo, assistant director of GrowNYC’s Green Market programming. “You can buy food directly from a farmer, save your food waste and take it directly to a market for composting, or drop off your old clothing so it doesn’t go into a landfill. All great efforts in reducing your carbon footprint.”
3. Don’t let false perceptions dissuade you
“We have markets in all five boroughs and we serve every single income level,” said Carollo. “It’s ridiculous that there is a belief that if you’re lower income, you aren’t concerned about the environment because those from vulnerable communities are the most impacted by climate change.”
Earth Angel
Headquartered in Brooklyn, Earth Angel is an organization holding the local entertainment industry accountable by mitigating the waste and disposal habits on production sets. The film industry has bypassed much of the environmental criticisms typically aimed at fashion, aviation or oil industries, despite contributing an estimated 500,000 tons of waste each year in production alone. Learn more here.
4. Cut back on meat
“It takes 660 gallons of water to produce one hamburger and people don’t often think about the environmental impact of agriculture,” said Emillie O’Brien, founder and CEO of Earth Angel. “When it comes to livestock, it’s even more exaggerated. Eating meat three times a week instead of five for example is a small shift that has a profound impact.”
5. Eliminate single-use plastic
“Plastics are a petroleum based product and a lot of them aren’t safe so I always advocate for using reusable straws, shopping bags, or avoiding ordering from delivery services,” O’Brien said.
Raising The Roof: Cultivating Singapore’s Urban Farming Scene
Whether you’re wandering through a residential area or exploring the recently re-opened Funan mall, you may have noticed new urban farms sprouting up – flourishing with fruit, herbs and vegetables, occasionally tilapia inconspicuously swimming in an aquaponics system
September 23, 2019
by STACEY RODRIGUES
NOKA by Open Farm Community at Funan Mall is one of the latest urban farms to take root in Singapore. (Photo: NOKA)
Call it a social movement or Singapore’s solution to sustainable self-sufficiency, but urban farming in our garden city is growing to new heights.
Whether you’re wandering through a residential area or exploring the recently re-opened Funan mall, you may have noticed new urban farms sprouting up – flourishing with fruit, herbs, and vegetables, occasionally tilapia inconspicuously swimming in an aquaponics system.
Urban farming has become quite a bit more than a fad or innovation showcase for our garden city. “The practice of urban farming has picked up in scale and sophistication globally in recent years,” said an Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) spokesperson.
“In Singapore, we encourage innovative urban farming approaches such as rooftop farming, which optimizes land, introduces more greenery into the built environment, and potentially enhances our food supply resilience.”
Several companies have taken on the gargantuan task of cultivating the urban farming scene here. Rooftop farming pioneer, Comcrop (short for Community Crop), has been hard at work with its latest commercial farm, an 11-month-old greenhouse in Woodlands Loop. Edible Garden City (EGC) has more than 200 farms across the island and works closely with restaurants to ensure sustainable supply and demand.
READ> WHY THIS MICHELIN STAR CHEF SPENDS SO MUCH TIME ON SINGAPORE FARMS
Indoor micro-greens being grown at NOKA. (Photo: NOKA)
Citiponics has made a name for itself building water-efficient aqua organic “growing towers” that can be used to build anything from butterhead lettuce to sweet basil. In April this year, they opened the first commercial farm on the rooftop of a multi-story car park. The farm produces vegetables sold at the Ang Mo Kio Hub outlet of NTUC FairPrice under the brand, LeafWell.
Sky Greens is arguably the most impressive urban farming venture. It is the world’s first low carbon, hydraulic driven vertical farm, and has been recognized globally for its sustainability innovation.
There are several benefits to having our farms so close to home. Through community gardens or access to commercial-scale farm produce, the public have an opportunity to understand how food is grown.
As urban farmers take great care to ensure produce is pesticide-free, while incorporating sustainable zero-waste and energy-saving practices, there is also comfort in knowing where the food comes from and its impact on the environment.
READ> THE ARCHITECTS OUT TO SAVE THE WORLD THROUGH SUSTAINABLE DESIGN
Mushrooms fruiting in a chamber at NOKA. (Photo: NOKA)
“Having food production within the city or heartland [also] brings food closer to the consumers as it cuts transport costs and carbon emissions, and may improve environmental sustainability,” said a spokesperson from the Singapore Food Agency (SFA), the new statutory board created in April this year to develop the food supply and industry.
However, there are also broader concerns of the impact of climate change and food security in Singapore. It is why much is being done by the likes of the SFA to achieve “30 by 30” – “which is to develop the capability and capacity of our agri-food industry to produce 30 per cent of Singapore’s nutritional needs by 2030,” said the SFA. “Local production will help mitigate our reliance on imports and serve as a buffer during supply disruptions to import sources.”
Singapore still has a long way to go as the urban farming scene is still a very young one. But there are opportunities for growth given the continued development here. In the URA’s latest phase of the Landscaping for Urban Spaces and High-Rises (LUSH) 3.0 scheme, “developers of commercial and hotel buildings located in high footfall areas can propose rooftop farms to meet landscape replacement requirements.”
Naturally, developers are taking advantage of this. One of the newest kids on the block is the urban rooftop farm run by EGC for new Japanese restaurant, Noka by Open Farm Community at Funan. Noka is putting its money on offering Japanese cuisine that infuses local ingredients, from the butterfly blue pea to the ulam raja flower – ingredients grown and tended to by the farmers at EGC’s 5,000 sq. ft. urban garden just outside Noka’s windows.
(Photo: WOHA)
“The urban farming space is still in the emerging stages of development,” said Bjorn Low, co-founder of EGC. “We are literally scratching the surface of what’s possible. The areas of growth are in the application of urban food production in urban design and city planning, the use of urban farms for deeper community engagement and the role urban farms plays in creating social and environmental impact in the city.”
While many farmers have found ways to convert existing rooftop spaces into farms or gardens, Jonathan Choe, associate at WOHA Architects, says that one of the greatest opportunities to advance urban farming in Singapore is to build an entirely integrated system that not only incorporates growing spaces, but also how these farms can interact with the entire building infrastructure – from building cooling measures to water recycling and energy management. The firm, which has their own testbed rooftop garden, is currently working on the upcoming Punggol Digital District development.
Dwarf bok choy. (Photo: WOHA)
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But the greatest challenge for urban farmers is truly economies of scale. “Agriculture on its own is already a challenging industry due to industrialization of farming and our food system,” said Low. “Scale is a limiting factor in the city, and urban farming business models need to be able to adapt to both the challenges of a globalized food system and the availability of cheap food, whilst operating in areas of high cost and overheads.”
It begins with cultivating an awareness of and demand for local produce amongst both consumers and businesses alike. For Cynthia Chua, co-founder of Spa Esprit Group – the people behind Noka – taking an interest in agriculture is more than necessary, as it will have long-term benefits in preparing for the future generation of Singaporeans.
White radishes. (Photo: WOHA)
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Restaurants like Noka, which choose to highlight local produce are an easy way in for consumers to learn about the benefits of supporting local farming businesses. As a business owner, Chua has also noticed that “traveling chefs from different countries are gaining interest in playing with our tropical produce.” In Chua’s opinion, it is the “right timing” to push innovation and continue to turn this “scene” into a fully sustainable industry.
“As a city-state, the general population is disconnected from farming and the way food is being farmed,” said Low. “Urban farms should become touchpoints for us to learn about sustainable agriculture techniques, and encourage consumers in Singapore to eat more responsibly, locally and ethically.”