The Future of The Future Farmers of America

With more than 650,000 members, FFA is teaching a new generation dedicated to feeding the world’s growing population.

The Future of The Future Farmers of America

With more than 650,000 members, FFA is teaching a new generation dedicated to feeding the world’s growing population.

Nov 28, 2016

Sarah Baird is a writer and editor based in New Orleans.

• Bio

As long as I can remember, I’ve coveted a jacket.

Nothing that you’d find on any runway in Milan, though, or draped over the shoulders of a peacocking Kardashian. Instead, from the time I was a preteen, the piece of outerwear that has made my Kentucky-raised heart skip a beat is the signature jacket of the Future Farmers of America.

Equal parts structured and supple, rugged and genteel, the midnight blue showpiece always seemed to encapsulate what I cherished about growing up in a farming community—though I was never particularly adept at fixing tractors or birthing calves.

For years I pined after one, even tinkering with the idea of taking enough floriculture classes to maybe, just maybe, pass off getting my name looped in perfect cursive onto a jacket of my own.

But that level of scheming just never felt right. See, FFA jackets aren’t just handed out willy-nilly: They have to be earned. An FFA jacket carries with it a level of agricultural know-how and more important, pride in the work accomplished by American farmers day in and day out. The jacket, and what it means to wear one, cannot be bought.

Or so I thought.

Last year, while wandering around an antiques store in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, I poked my head around a corner to find a couple of French tourists cooing over a style of coat that was, well, quite familiar. As the girl slid her arm into one of my beloved blue-corduroy sleeves, my eyes bulged. There was no way she’d ever been within shouting distance of a shovel.

Evidently an FFA jacket can be bought—to the tune of $500.

“Oh God, she can’t wear that!” I screamed inside my head, resisting the urge to flip over a table covered with art deco ashtrays, Incredible Hulk style. Despite my own indignant nostalgia, I was struck by a difficult question: Is farming alive and well in America?

Farmland is rapidly losing out to urban sprawl, and the debate over genetically modified crops (and the sprawl of big ag) has grown more contentious than ever. Our nation’s farmers are graying, with few protégés following in their wake. This is even before we get to the financial hurdles upstart farmers face, hurdles that mount each year, with little sign of slowing.

So what do the Future Farmers of America look like today? Who are the teenagers in Indiana or Arkansas wearing the jackets I love so dearly, and what are they worried about? What kind of future do they see for themselves?

George Strait soundtrack prepped, I hit the road to find out.

•••

Nine billion.

That’s the number you’ll encounter over and over, repeated like a mantra, when talking with FFA members. It is the molten core of what drives FFA today, the organizational touchstone that motivates and centers the masses.

It’s estimated that the earth’s population will hit 9 billion by 2050. In most conversations, this fact is followed without fail by the quasi-rhetorical question: How are we going to feed all of those humans?

The statistic is so deeply engrained in the FFA psyche that it’s almost alarming not to hear a member rattle it off during conversation. Some people utter it with race-against-the-clock anxiety. For others—mostly students—the number “9 billion” is spelled out in a word bubble above their heads, the zeros floating away like an airplane contrail. It’s a quantity almost too big to fathom.

The solution to the problem, too, seems to always appear just out of reach.

“I believe in the future of agriculture, with a faith born not of words but of deeds…in the promise of better days through better ways,” the FFA creed begins. What that future looks like now, though, is perhaps more complex than ever.

Since its founding in 1928, FFA has seen tens of millions of students flow through its ranks, and over the decades, has become a primary example of both a youth organization with influence (it does a good deal of lobbying) and phenomenal staying power.

Larry Case, who served as national FFA advisor between 1984 and 2010, believes that two turning points significantly altered the makeup and spurred the growth of the organization.

The first was when membership was opened up to women. “They opened up membership to girls in 1969, and thank goodness they did that,” he said. Today about half of all FFA members are female, including all but one member of the 2015–16 national leadership team. What’s more, at almost every FFA school I visited, women were some of the most vocal supporters of agricultural education.

The second critical juncture came in the late 1980s, when Case and his team began pushing teachers to expand and diversify the FFA curriculum—adding a focus on agri-science and biotechnology—to attract students who weren’t from traditional farming backgrounds.

“This broadened curriculum is the main thing that I believe attracts a larger base of students,” Case said.

The approach worked better than anyone could’ve imagined. Over the past 10 years, FFA numbers have ballooned to almost 650,000 members ages 12 to 21 nationwide. There are now 7,859 chapters in all 50 states, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands, and FFA students earn $4 billion annually through their hands-on work experience.

The shift led to another stat that, like “9 billion,” regularly works its way into conversation with FFA members: 210, which is the number of career pathways FFA supports. Many would-be future farmers see the old standby ag careers—rancher, commodity crop grower, family-farm inheritor—as less desirable, or realistic, choices.

“A huge misconception is that if you're in FFA, you're going to graduate and go be a farmer,” said 2015–16 National FFA Secretary Nick Baker. “While that is certainly an extraordinarily admirable profession, there’s also agricultural mechanics, agricultural technology, genetic engineering, and the veterinary field. I mean, the list of job options really goes on and on.”

FFA has also gobbled up the remnants of what used to be called vocational education; welding, carpentry, electrical work, and mechanics all fall under the FFA banner, more or less, not to mention futuristic-sounding gigs like flavor technologist and biosecurity monitor.

From an organizational perspective, this hand-over-fist growth means ensuring fund-raising efforts are kept at an equal clip.

FFA is a nonprofit and looks not only to alumni and individual givers as a means of monetary support but to corporations such as John Deere and Monsanto. (Although FFA received a federal charter in 1950, it receives no federal funding.) A cursory glance at the money trail shows that it’s pretty much impossible to divorce FFA from big ag and big pharma. For starters, Monsanto and Zoetis (the billion-dollar animal pharmaceutical company) both donate upwards—way upwards—of a million dollars a year in both general giving and individual scholarships.

And the ties go beyond financial support. In 2014, Brett Begemann, the president of Monsanto, was the keynote speaker at the National FFA Convention. When FFA decided to move and expand its national office in 1998, the land for the new building was given to them by Dow Chemical. The headquarters are smack-dab behind a shopping center built on what is assuredly former farmland.

Overall, corporate giving makes up 94 percent of FFA’s annual budget.

•••

David Tucker is what most people would believe to be the dictionary definition of an FFA student, the kind of kid for whom wearing the blue-and-gold jacket is nothing short of a birthright.

A towheaded, good-natured 16-year-old with a small stature and a lopsided smile, Tucker is a sixth-generation cattle farmer and president of the FFA chapter at Locust Trace AgriScience Center in Lexington, Kentucky. He has always known cattle farming would be his future.

“I learned to count using calves that was just born,” Tucker said, laughing and toying with his faded ball cap bearing the logo of a local stockyard. “’Two cows plus two cows equals four cows.’ That’s how I counted. It took them forever to teach me I didn’t need to say cows after the number.”

Located next to a penitentiary on the outskirts of town, Locust Trace is a five-year-old, 82-acre public vocational high school, complete with two barns, state-of-the-art greenhouses, a food science kitchen, a veterinary lab, and six-and-a-half acres devoted solely to gardening. At the school of 315 kids—most of whom split their days between here and their regular schools—it’s not hard to notice how Locust Trace weaves sustainability into all facets of its campus. The school prides itself on net-zero energy consumption, using industrial-size fans as a main source of cooling throughout its building as well as photovoltaic solar panels. It collects rainwater for irrigation and even has fashioned an underground cistern to hold the collected rainwater in case of drought.

When I arrived, principal Ann Stewart DeMott, a fifth-generation farmer, was shooing away a couple of barn cats that live in her office. (Bella and Spirit serve as “therapy felines” for kids with anxiety.) The school is full of students from all different backgrounds, she told me, most of whom have little—if any—farming experience. No matter: They get the hang of things quickly. In an era when kids are helicopter-parented ad nauseam, these ag students are retooling antique tractors by hand and mucking out stalls for school credit by the time their first semester is up.

“My dad works for Toyota, and my mom is a teacher. I hadn’t been closer than 40 feet to a horse before I came here,” said Dion Compton, 17, as we walked past the campus stables. Dion, one of several African American students at Locust Trace, has a twang that makes it seem like he’s been around farms forever. “I mean, I’d been to SeaWorld and knew I liked animals, but didn’t think that’s something I could do.” Now, when he graduates, he’ll be attending an equine technical school to make horses his career.

There’s a lot of pride to go around at Locust Trace, especially when it comes to hands-on experience. A visit to the veterinary lab found students in scrubs, learning all about how to properly measure an animal’s weight, height, and body temperature. A couple years ago, students took the bones from a recently deceased horse and reconstructed them for use as a learning tool. They nicknamed the skeletal horse Persephone. No one is squeamish.

In the equine barn, Amanda Berry—a student with a frizzy shock of dishwater blond hair—talked to me about how expensive it is to take care of farm animals, all while a horse named Taco rattled his feed bucket behind her. Will Bischoff hoisted a baby goat on his chest as he explained how a new Harry Potter–themed game he has created for the school has helped him to learn leadership skills. When we made it to the livestock barn, Tucker trotted out an orphaned calf named Sassy, showing her off like a pro.

The challenges that farmers will face in the future are never far from the minds of students at Locust Trace, especially when it comes to loss of local farmland. “The towns are growing into the farmland around here, and that’s a big issue,” Tucker said. “Also, a lot of these kids have no clue where their food comes from. They think it just magically appears at Kroger. We will have to teach them that it comes straight from the field, where we’ve had to take care of it and raise it. It’s had a life”—he paused reverently—“so it can help keep us healthy and keep us fed.”

•••

A pinprick of a destination nestled in the heart of Kentucky’s former tobacco country, Robertson County feels about as anticorporate as a place can be.

Meet the farmers working to solve the problems of tomorrow, today.

We’re fortunate here. We have a really supportive community and a supportive administration for our ag program,” said Frank Gifford, the FFA advisor. In the next room over, his first-year students were in the middle of a canning lab, chopping up and cooking down tomatoes to make salsa from scratch.

Despite its size, Robertson County is perhaps the most quietly entrepreneurial chapter I visited. Among a range of projects—from selling bobwhite quail to making vinyl signage—the FFA chapter started beekeeping two years ago and during the last harvest, bottled and sold 200 pounds of honey from 10 hives. (I happily accepted a jar of my very own.)

“We try to generate at least enough money to put it back into the projects and make them stronger. If we make a profit above and beyond, we use that money to start something else. From the greenhouse sales to livestock sales to honey sales to ag mechanics projects, our ag program is financially self-sufficient,” Gifford said.

One of the Robertson County students’ biggest concerns echoes an issue Kentucky FFA Executive Secretary Matt Chaliff has identified: How do farmers in remote areas get their products to a larger market, and more important, how do they compete—in terms of price, quantity, and more—once they get there?

“If you think about a student [farmer] in far eastern Kentucky, like Perry County, if they’re growing some kind of vegetable, they need to have that [produce] ready at just the right time,” Chaliff said. “Then, they’re two hours away from a large city market. And if you think about a fresh product, like sweet corn, making sure that they have an actual market before they grow it is a critical component.”

That’s before they’re even in front of a consumer.

•••

While rural schools like Robertson County are still FFA’s bread and butter, urban and suburban chapters seem to be gaining the most steam, and attention, on a national level.

City- and suburb-based programs comprise 27 percent of the FFA membership today, but with the momentum that’s building, it’s clear the number is only going to tick upward. There are already FFA chapters in 19 of the 20 largest U.S. cities.

At Seneca High School in Louisville, Kentucky, the agriculture curriculum all but fizzled out before Kristan Wright took over the program a little more than six years ago. Now, two classrooms are bursting at the seams with students, creatures, and colorful craft projects: skeletal models made out of dried pasta, FFA seals constructed from paper plates, illustrations of animal digestive systems.

The students at Seneca talked about agriculture like they had something to prove. Many expressed that because they live in an urban environment, they have become makeshift evangelists proclaiming the importance of farming to their city-dwelling peers.

“There’s such a huge divide between rural and urban life,” said Lexie Hughes, her hands moving emphatically. The daughter of a hairdresser and a truck driver, she is perhaps the most vocal of her peers. “Urbanizing everything in agriculture is the future. Rural agriculture is going away. It’s gone.”

Aaliyah Moss—who cites Food, Inc. (a Participant Media film) as her favorite movie and wants to be a biotechnologist—felt similarly. “Agricultural literacy is so important. Something we do really well at Seneca is take the urban aspect and the rural aspect, and we put them together for people to understand,” Moss said.

“And if I could add something?” Hughes interrupted. “It’s the youth that are redirecting the future of agriculture. I feel like we’re such an outspoken generation. We want to know everything about everything. We’re such curious people, and we’re going to educate ourselves about all the different kinds of agriculture rather than just seeing it as cows, sows, and plows.”

In Beech Grove, Indiana—a bedroom community outside of Indianapolis that feels like a Midwestern Mayberry—FFA advisor Chris Kaufman agrees.

“When we started the program here at Beech Grove five years ago, the idea was to get urban students who have no experience with agriculture more in the pipeline to get jobs at [places like] Eli Lily,” Kaufman said. Indianapolis is a hotbed for big drug companies, and their influence on the surrounding communities is difficult to miss. “One of the issues is that we’re three or four generations away from the farm, so even common farm practices, kids just have no idea. Being so far removed, you forget that you need to be a part of it.”

A former traveling agricultural education specialist for the state of Indiana, Kaufman also feels students in urban settings are often fed what he calls misinformation about organic versus conventional farming.

“Since we’re so far removed from the farm, people start hearing these buzzwords like ‘organic’ and ‘GMO-free’ and get excited about it. In reality, those are more marketing schemes than anything. If you go out in the country and ask a kid if he cares about GMOs, he’s going to say no. But in the city, if you tell a kid that something’s GMO-free, they’re going to be like, ‘I’ll pay more for it!’ We’re just tricking people into thinking these things are better for them, when they’ve not been proven to be better or more beneficial.”

And so the debate begins.

•••

How to talk to students about organic farming is a controversial topic within FFA.

“We present all the information we can and let the students make an informed decision,” said Sheila Fowler, vice principal at the Chicago High School for Agricultural Sciences. An hour later, I saw an example of this in the plant science classroom, where students were comparing and contrasting the merits of guerrilla gardening versus conventional farming versus GMOs. It felt refreshing.

But this kind of democratic approach seems to be more the exception than the rule. When I asked Nick Baker how frequently he encountered teachers offering up information about organic farming, it was clear that it was still fairly unusual.

“Organic farming isn't quite as prominent as your conventional agricultural practices, but I will say this: I have been very impressed with the open-mindedness of agriculture teachers this year to teaching about organic farming,” Baker said in a measured tone. “A lot of times in the ag community, you're conventional or you're organic, but you're not both. Really, when it comes to this industry, in my opinion, it needs to be a ‘both and’ kind of situation.”

When it comes to GMOs and the rise of large-scale, newfangled farming technologies, such as drones and no-till farming, opinions get even more complicated. “GMOs are good for you, and they’ve been made to feed the entire world,” said Ayden Paulson, a junior from Seneca who likes to score points in FFA debate events by riling the other team about PETA. “When you hear ‘genetically modified,’ you automatically think that it’s bad. But GMOs make sure our food is safe, and we’re trying to make it better for everyone.”

Not everyone in his chapter agrees. “A problem is everything is becoming more industrialized. Bringing different technologies to farms, it means less work for the people, and the less we work, the less we learn. Technology is making things easier but causing things to be worse at the same time,” chapter mate Moss said with a shudder.

“Plus, that’s where the pink slime comes from.”

“Sustainability” is a complicated term and one with a strangely malleable meaning within FFA circles. There’s environmental sustainability, sure, and there’s protecting public health and animal welfare, but most FFA members are far more concerned about the sustainability of the human population. (There’s that 9 billion stressor again.) In most cases, this means embracing any and all new technologies, chemicals, and agri-science solutions that allow for more food to be grown on smaller plots of land—whether or not it tinkers with plant DNA or pushes small farmers out of business.

If you need confirmation that large-scale agriculture is attempting to co-opt the word “sustainable,” simply visit the Monsanto website, where the conglomerate bills itself as “a sustainable agriculture company.” If nothing else, the company recognizes the importance of reshaping words for its own benefit.

Of the hundreds of scholarship competitions FFA offers at the national level (with sponsors such as Monsanto, DuPont, and CSX), only one focuses on or rewards innovative student ideas for organic production.

•••

If Locust Trace teased out the notion that ag-specific schools might be the key to the future of farming, then the Chicago High School for Agriculture Sciences strongly seconded the motion.

The last working farm in the city of Chicago, located on the South Side, CHSAS is the national gold standard for agricultural high schools—rural and urban alike—and the envy of many an FFA advisor. From Indiana to Louisiana, its reputation precedes it.

Founded in 1985, the school prides itself on being a part of the national effort to “broaden the scope of teaching in and about agriculture, beginning at the kindergarten level and extending through adulthood.” It’s an ambitious goal but one that has been embraced with vigor. Boasting more than 70 acres of cooking labs, tractor barns, and mechanic garages, the school is a role model in every possible way.

“Don’t forget to take her to the barn!” Fowler reminded my student tour guides, one of whom was wearing a sweatshirt with a photo of her dog printed on it. They assured her that everything was under control, then went back to explaining all about the new agriculture “pathway” (essentially, a career prep trajectory) in biotechnology. It will fall in line with six other categories—including horticulture and food science—that CHSAS students use as a vocational and curriculum guide throughout high school.

Along the way to the barn (which was pretty special in its own right), we passed some phenomenal scenes, the likes of which were completely foreign to my notion of a classroom. We strolled through a garage where students were power drilling high up on a platform while below, others sorted pumpkins they’d grown, then harvested from the field with a tractor. We visited the CHSAS farm stand, an after-school shop on school grounds that’s open to the community and sells products, like zucchini bread, grown and hand-crafted by the students. I heard about the fully functional tiny house students constructed two years ago for the Chicago Flower and Garden Show, and how each pathway contributed something unique to the process. (It’s still for sale, if you’re interested.)

CHSAS farm stand on campus in Chicago sells various seasonal vegetables picked by the students. (Photo: Scott Thompson)

Even though you can see strip malls off in the distance, CHSAS feels like its own world. There are cornfields, cabbage plots, and a freshly planted apple orchard. Somewhere beyond a baseball field, cattle graze. The students laugh as they tell me about how the cows sometimes escape, roaming into the middle of a busy road and the lot of a nearby Ford dealership.

“I can’t imagine someone driving down the middle of 115th Street, then being like, ‘What is this cow doing here?’ ” Nicole Stallard, one of my tour guides, said, doubling over with the giggles.

•••

“Family” is a popular word in FFA circles.

Ask anyone—and I mean anyone—in an FFA chapter if he or she feels kinship with fellow members, and the student will likely explode with praise for his or her ag-loving brothers and sisters. Heck, even without asking, I came to expect that chapter members would tell me within seconds of meeting just how much affection there is to go around. There’s a sort of tenderness about FFA students that comes perhaps from working closer with the earth—tending to sick animals, nurturing fledgling plants. Unlike the majority of their teenage peers, they seem to have a larger purpose, understanding, and respect for their place in the world.

What’s more, the FFA chapters I visited were not only more racially and socioeconomically diverse than I expected but also incredibly welcoming of students with learning or developmental disabilities. Inclusion, it seems, is a point of pride among many FFA chapters.

Nathan French from Seneca says the impact FFA has had on his life is extraordinary.

“Everyone in FFA is like family to me. Freshman year I was mostly sick, so I didn’t do anything, but sophomore year I finally found a talent for impromptu speeches, thanks to two fantastic teachers,” French said, grinning. Not only did he win first place at the Kentucky FFA regional competition last year for speaking about beef, but he took home the top prize in the talent competition for a dance he choreographed to a Black Eyed Peas song.

As one might imagine, building a familial culture starts with supportive teachers, and FFA advisors are nothing if not beloved. The recent swell in agriculture programs across the country means that ag teachers are also in high demand, especially in places that traditionally haven’t been hotbeds of FFA action.

“I’ve been at the school...forever?” JaMonica Marion, FFA advisor at CHSAS, said, laughing. A 2001 graduate, she officially returned to teach in 2006. “The majority of the teachers in our ag department are now alumni, so we get to provide the students with firsthand knowledge. We can actually relate to them because we were in their seats.”

At times, the intimacy found at the chapter level feels in stark juxtaposition to the highly formal national structure of the organization, embodied most readily by the national FFA officers. A group of six peer-elected students, the officers serve as the face and fearless leaders of the organization, even taking a year off from schooling to devote themselves to 365 days of FFA-related lobbying, fund-raising, and general hype.

Grooming for national FFA office begins early, with state FFA officers whisked away each year on a (corporate-sponsored) international trip to learn about agricultural production in such countries as Japan and South Africa. They’re also sent to several forms of leadership boot camp, the biggest of all being the one for national officers at Tyson Farms.

Tyson CEO Donny Smith is a proud FFA alum and a huge role model for Nick Baker, who hopes to be an agricultural lobbyist after serving in the Marines.

“[Smith] usually spends about two or three hours every year with the national officer team talking about leadership. He compares [leadership] to a peach tree,” Baker said. “We [as national officers] are the roots; we are supplying the FFA members with what they need in order to be successful. Then they can go be the peaches that people see and admire about this tree that is our organization.” He paused.

“It's always interesting to get to visit with Mr. Smith.”

Whatever leadership training they’re doing, it’s working. The interpersonal and public speaking skills the national officers possess are impressive, and their fervor can border on proselytizing at times. For the most part, they stay on message better than most elected officials I’ve met and are both personable and persuasive in their arguments. It’s not difficult to see why hundreds of thousands of young people have faith in them.

Today, FFA has grown to such staggering heights nationally that it seems to more closely resemble a political party than any sort of school club. The sheer number of members alone is a little baffling, and the power that could be wielded by 650,000 young people rallying around a single cause is a sensational, or terrifying, thing to think about. It has revolutionary potential.

If anyone knows this, it’s the students (and, uh, maybe some corporations).

•••

For all the momentum behind the youth agriculture movement, one thing still strikes me as kind of odd: Since 1988, FFA isn’t even the Future Farmers of America anymore—at least, not technically. Just like Kentucky Fried Chicken is now just an acronym, KFC, FFA’s official name is simply the National FFA Organization.

We’re so much more than farming and ranching these days. It’s a good thing! National advisors and officers will argue. To some degree, that’s true. But I can’t help feeling a twinge of sadness that farming has been lost, in name, from its very own organization.

So what will the exalted FFA heroes of tomorrow look like, if not traditional farmers?

In 2014, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History ran a campaign in search of five exemplary FFA members “whose lives and careers have been shaped by agricultural education.” The honor was, undoubtedly, pretty grand. After ascending to national glory, the personal FFA jackets of these handpicked ag titans were to become part of an exhibit at the museum celebrating agricultural innovation and heritage.

President Jimmy Carter's FFA Jacket, which is displayed in the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History in Washington DC. (Photo: Courtesy the Smithsonian)

After a months-long search, the selected winners were announced, and they clearly represented the diversity of FFA’s membership. Among others, there was Corey Flournoy, the first African American national president, and Karlene Lindow Krueger, a pioneering Wisconsin hog farmer. Former President Jimmy Carter was the cherry on top, “Plains, Georgia” emblazoned on the back of his blue-and-gold jacket.

So when they do an all call 50 years from now for the next round of distinguished alumni, will the chosen few be organic rabbit breeders or scientists who grow meat in labs? Compost revolutionaries or mechanics who work on no-till farming? Ag-drone scientists? Or all of the above?

While the paths of our future agricultural leaders remains to be seen, it’s safe to say that today, FFA students hold a respect for the land and an optimism about building a better world that is unmatched. The kids I spoke to are not only hopeful but purposeful and ready to take up their larger mission on the planet to do what they believe is best.

“Knowing that the first job on this earth was a farmer and the last job will be a farmer,” Taylor McNeel, 2015–16 national FFA president, explained, taking a long, deep pause. “It’s pretty cool to be a part of that.”

Vertical Farming: The Future of Agriculture?

Can This Modern Cultivation Practice Of Growing Plants In A Closed Environment Meet Our Food Demands In A More Sustainable Way?

For those of you unaware of the quiet revolution going on in agriculture, vertical farming is shaping the future of food.

World population is expected to reach a colossal 11 billion by 2100 (though it varies depending on whose model you use). As a result, many have begun to askhow are we going to feed even more hungry mouths? The answer, at least in part, comes in the form of vertical farming, a new, revolutionary, and sustainable way to grow our food that can also help to reduce the carbon footprint of food production.

Vertical farming involves growing plants in stacks of hydroponic towers, lit with LED lamps, in a strictly controlled environment. The towers of crops are fed with water laced with nutrients, the strict control of the environment allows for optimum yield from the crops every time. Global Vertical Farming market was worth 600 million USD in 2014.

Vertical farming has numerous advantages over the practices of regular farming. As well as producing a consistent and high yield crop 365 days a year, the crop can be grown in a compact and protected environment — one that is not affected by weather patterns or climate change. All with the added bonus of zero waste (through water recycling) and zero net energy use. All the water used in the hydroponic stacks is recycled and reused — urban waste water can even be recycled for use in vertical farms.

Green Sense Farms in Portage, Indiana, is in the process of building a network of indoor vertical farms across the globe. Their goal is to not only reduce the carbon footprint and environmental consequences associated with traditional farming, but to provideconsumers with locally produced, fresh, leafy greens, to try to foster healthier and more environmentally friend communities. Green Sense Farms is using LEDs built by Dutch tech giants Philips to cut power costs through cheaper LED light, as well as tweaking light wavelengths to try to grow the perfect crop. The Economist praised their farms for the innovative work that they are doing to provide new ways to better feed the planet:

“The crops grow faster, too. Philips reckons that using LED lights in this sort of controlled, indoor environment could cut growing cycles by up to half compared with traditional farming. That could help meet demand for what was once impossible: fresh, locally grown produce, all year round.”

The versatility of location is the greatest strength of vertical farming, especially in the fight against climate change. The farms can be located at, or nearby to, distribution centres, supermarkets, or anywhere that sells or serves large volumes of food, and thus reduce the carbon footprint associated with transporting food from farms to tables – it is the antithesis of globalization.

One of the most globally renowned vertical farming start-ups is Urban Crops, whose headquarters are located in Waregem, Belgium, (though they have recently launched a US division in Miami that will be responsible for the entire American continent, North and South). They don’t see vertical farming as a radical departure from traditional farming, rather they see it as a more refined and efficient evolution of farming. Urban Crops grow their produce under a purple light delivered by red and blue LED lamps that create the perfect conditions for growth; the plants are fed via a hydroponic system of water infused with special minerals and nutrients. Their set-up can turn 50 square meters into 500 square meters of usable farm space and their 30 square meter space produces 220 lettuce plants every day with only five percent of the water that would be needed in traditional farming.

Despite all of these perceived benefits, there have been some who have rejected the idea of vertical farming as a realistic way forward for humanity. TreeHugger has had trouble digesting the concept of vertical farming for a number of years, supporting the belief held by Stan Cox of Alternet that:

“Although the concept [of vertical farming] has provided opportunities for architecture students and others to create innovative, sometimes beautiful building designs, it holds little practical potential for providing food.”

Cox’s main gripe with vertical farming is with the logic (or lack of it) at the heart of the technology; that using renewable energy to power indoor lighting to grow plants with is nothing but a waste of energy a resources. The transfer of energy from sunlight, to solar arrays, to power lamps that feed plants with light energy, is, in his eyes, nothing but a waste of energy (due to transmission losses) and infrastructure. He argues that it is much better to:

“Let crop plants do what they do best: capture cost-free, emissions-free sunlight for themselves, directly.”

Although much of the loss in terms of infrastructure cost could be accounted for if the farms were powered by solar panels on-site – for example by Elon Musk’s solar roof.

Cox also forwards the idea that traditional farming is still viable, that they are simply ploughing the wrong land as it’s become more economically viable to ship produce long distance. The solution is to grow more crops locally, rather than relying on huge sprawling farms and cattle ranches that are not sustainable. Since world hunger is ultimately a result of poor distribution, not a lack of resources, the sensible option seems to be to localize food production as much as possible — whether through vertical farming or more traditional farming techniques.

In contrast to these two polarized opinions Paul Mahon, from Ontario Farmer Publications, doesn’t believe that vertical farming in its more extreme form is how farming is going to develop (at least not in the immediate future).

“Horizontal Farming [a self-coined term] is moving towards that sort of idea, farmers are using hydroponics to ensure a constant supply of water to the roots and crops. GPS and modern technology is allowing farmers to be much more precise in their measurements and their use of land. They are moving to smaller and smaller plots of land for the same yield, and are now able to match nutrients with soil types and capability.”

So the future of farming could marry traditional techniques with some of the small space advancements made with vertical farming to produce higher yields from smaller plots of land. This marriage of techniques has been adopted by Green Living Technologies in their Mobile Edible Wall Unit, which allows users to grow produce outside on an A-Frame mounted flowerbeds to allow for more economic use of space. This could be viewed as a validation of Stan Cox’s opinion that traditional farming isn’t as flawed as many are suggesting.

However, these solutions do not deal with the massive carbon footprint associated with traditional farming, or have the advantages of being immune to climate change and weather conditions in the way that vertical farming is. Although Polyculture farming has offered a way to reduce the carbon footprint of horizontal farming, in a way that is easy for everyone to adopt, it still requires large areas to grow substantial quantities of food. This is where vertical farming truly outstrips more traditional techniques  —in urban and more highly populated areas where space is a valuable resource.

With plans in Sweden to build a 16 story “plantscraper” in the works, and MIT working with Target to produce their own greens in-store using vertical farming techniques, there doesn’t seem to be any dispute that vertical farming is going to play a role in the future of agriculture. We will just have to wait to see the extent to which it will dominate agriculture in the future. In the meantime, there are numerous ways that we as individuals can reduce the carbon footprint of agriculture. For example, instead of planting lawns you could grow your own produce, or try to incorporate polyculture farming into your garden. We all need to be responsible for the future of our food, rather than consider it to be someone else’s job.

Josh Hamilton is an aspiring journalist from Belfast, Northern Ireland, living in London, Ontario. Lover of music, politics, tech, and life.

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Nowhere To Go But Up: Green Wolf Vertical Farm Supplies Local Restaurant

Nowhere to go but up: Green Wolf Vertical Farm supplies local restaurants

Posted: November 19, 2016 - 7:18pm.

By Ben Egel

ben.egel@amarillo.com

Marre Seleska’s house looks unimposing. Well-kept, sure, with a spacious kitchen and a room for her father Gene to smoke cigars in, but off the main road in the sleepy Carson County town of Panhandle.

In a repurposed sunroom near the back of the house, imposing burlap pillars filled with lettuce, kale and bok choy stretch from floor to ceiling, roots plunging downward into a growing medium made from recycled plastic bottles. This is where Green Wolf Vertical Farm holds court, and the luscious towers truly support the “vertical” aspect of Seleska’s brainchild.

The real prize, though, is the farm’s microgreens — shallow, long flats of dill and chervil, garden cress and amaranth growing in compressed plugs of peet, vermiculite and coco coir. In one to five weeks, they’ll dot plates at Imperial Taproom and Yellow City Street Food.

Most commercial microgreens are delivered to restaurants pre-cut, meaning they go bad within a few days. Seleska delivers her plants to Yellow City Street Food and Imperial Taproom every week for $25 per flat.

Long shelf lives aren’t the only thing that makes Green Wolf’s microgreens stand out. Yellow City Street Food co-owner Scott Buchanan orders two flats per week because of a substantial taste difference between Seleska and her competitors.

“You can get some from Ben E. Keith or whatever that are already clipped and they’re already kind of devoid of a lot of flavor, but we get fresh racks from her that are growing,” Buchanan said. “The flavor’s insane — it’s not novelty at all.”

Buchanan and his wife Rin met Seleska at the Canyon Farmer’s Market earlier this year, and started using her greens a couple weeks later. Yellow City Street Food tops its dishes with a citrus blend, spicy blend or wasabi arugula.

“They’re pretty, but they also pack a lot of flavor. Hers do especially,” Scott Buchanan said.

“Chefs are artists. They’re food artists, and they like color and flavor,” Seleska said.

Seleska, 59, tried growing leafy greens in a field after moving up from the metroplex three years ago, but found the packed clay left from the Panhandle’s dried-up playa lakes too tough to give life. Vertical growth requires less property and lets Seleska use materials besides the natural soil.

Greens aren’t the only “micro” aspect of Seleska’s production. That converted sunroom is packed full of produce, and leaves little wiggle room for large-scale projects.

Eager to expand past her current space limitations, Seleska began building a 20’x40’ greenhouse in September. Now completed, the first crops will be harvested around Christmas.

Seleska has grown about 15 different crops in her current towers, she said. That number figures to multiply once 70 greenhouse towers are filled, with eggplants, heirloom tomatoes, and purple bell peppers all already planned once winter passes.

Towers are flushed with nutrified water pumped from a 300-gallon reservoir in the back of the greenhouse. A return channel collects any water not soaked up by thirsty plants, and moves the liquid back to a sump tank and back into the nutrient reservoir through PVC piping.

The hydroponic system uses about 90 percent less water than a dirt farm, Seleska said.

Her sister, Robyn Clark, drives from Claude to help out at Green Wolf once per week, “or whenever my big sister bullies me into it.”

The sisters’ maternal grandmother, Winnie Slaton, instilled in them a love of cooking and gardening when they were young, a love which seems to have only grown stronger over the years. On the day Robyn spoke to the Globe-News, Marre had called her at 5:00 a.m., eager to ask her sister’s opinion on a potential hybrid microgreen.

“I call her my mad scientist. She’ll take all these different seeds and see what they taste like together,” Clark said.

These 3 Women Are Changing the Future of Food Sustainability

These 3 Women Are Changing the Future of Food Sustainability

These women presented at the Change Food Fest conference last weekend in New York City

Nov 18, 2016 | 12:00 pm

By

Pauline Lacsamana - Editor

These three women are paving the way for sustainability in food technology.

Last weekend, the Change Food Fest in New York City gathered food advocates from large and small businesses to explore the changing landscape of sustainability in the food industry.

Change Food is a non-profit organization that emphasizes the importance of the food we eat and its relationship with our environment. One of the goals of Change Food is to educate people about sustainable food and farming, according to the organization’s website.

In an opening statement for Change Food Fest, Diane Hatz, Change Food’s founder, addressed the issue of communication between the technology movement and the food movement, also noting the lack of funding for successful food tech businesses because of them being potentially “risky” investments.

“Technology is not the answer; technology is the means to get us to the answer,” Hatz said. “People are the answer. We are the foundation of ours and each other’s success and we really need to take note of that.”

Another woman with a sustainable food vision is Erica Orange, CEO and executive vice president of The Future Hunters, who presented the Green-to-Blue model as a spectrum of activity for food sustainability for businesses to strive toward. The model consists of three phases: Doing Green; Being Green; and Being Blue.

Doing Green is the outdated model in which companies need to be competitive in the sustainable food market. Grocers selling organic food and reusable tote bags are examples of this model. Being Green is the desired model in which sustainability is used as an “intrinsic guiding principle” in the company structure, influencing how products are produced, what materials the products are made with, and what labor went into it. Being Blue, the future model, means businesses would be putting more back into the eco-system than what was taken from it in the first place. An example of this would be using urban farming to optimize space to grow more food.

Last is Kim Huskey, the food service director at Google, who shared her mission of encouraging a more plant-based diet at the Google offices, not only for employees and visitors nationally, but also globally. The food division of Google aims “to inspire and enable the world to make food choices and use food experiences to develop more sustainable lifestyles and communities.”

To make this goal a reality, Google partnered with the Culinary Institute of America and Harvard School of Public Health for Menus of Change. This food initiative involves “globally inspired plant-centric dishes, minimally processed foods, and appropriate portions,” which make vegetables and legumes more desirable using culinary techniques on vegetables that have traditionally been reserved for meats.

Farm Fresh: A St. Pete City Farm Uses Technology To Grow Its Local Bounty

Farm Fresh: A St. Pete City Farm Uses Technology To Grow Its Local Bounty 

High-tech agriculture has blossomed in the city at Grand Central District's Brick Street Farms.

Meaghan Habuda

Nov 18, 2016 1 PM

Ever seen a farm with high-tech software or LED lighting? If not, pay a visit to Brick Street Farms.

The indoor hydroponic farm, owned by wife-and-husband duo Shannon O'Malley and Bradley Doyle, doesn't look like much from the outside. But spread out over green upcycled freight containers, planted inside a wooden fence that surrounds the former site of an abandoned junkyard at 2001 Second Ave. S., Brick Street has spent close to a year quietly blossoming in St. Petersburg.

What makes up this city farm's local, vertically grown bounty? Herbs and leafy greens.

"We started harvesting about two or three weeks ago," says O'Malley, who works for a St. Pete-based IT company, as does her husband. "We're almost at full scale right now, so it's been kind of a slow burn getting everything ready."

It's taken a significant amount of work to turn their less-than-half-acre Grand Central District property — which was "very dilapidated" and hadn't had utilities in 20 to 30 years — into an urban farm. They've cleaned up old car parts that were left behind, added electric and water, and even had environmental testing done on the site to ensure it's safe.

For the couple, who’ve put their enthusiasm for at-home hydroponics, which began as a hobby, into producing organic fields of green at Brick Street, that part's been exciting.

"That's one of the coolest things about the project, on top of the farms and obviously indoor hydroponics, being able to [clean up] a piece of property that's been kind of an eyesore in St. Pete for quite a long time," Doyle says.

A Pennsylvania native and a homegrown Floridian respectively, O'Malley and Doyle met five years ago, but didn't get together until after a happenstance encounter: On Christmas Day, as she headed out for a jog on Bayshore Boulevard, he was ending his own. Doyle remembered who she was and stopped her, asking, "What are you doing here?"

"I'm back in town," said O'Malley, who had moved away for a bit.

He asked her out, they met up for a drink later that night and that was that. The couple’s lived in St. Pete for three years now.

The farm has been quietly blossoming in the Grand Central District for nearly a year.

According to O'Malley, the urban agriculture movement, or agritechture, is huge in densely populated northern and western U.S. cities, along with European and Asian countries. She points to locales like Brooklyn, Boston and Los Angeles as having great examples of urban farming. But for some reason, it hasn't really taken off in the South. The then-aspiring entrepreneurs asked themselves, “Why can’t we do that in St. Pete?”

The owners say Brick Street is the only commercial agriculture farm with indoor hydroponics in Tampa Bay, and that they're the state's lone pair of vertical hydroponic farmers growing indoors. Yes, there are hydroponic farmers who do their thing outside or in greenhouses, but those operations present environmental challenges that they don't have to deal with.

For starters, they aren't confined by farming seasons. Brick Street is able to produce cold-loving greens, including heirloom lettuces, kales, collard greens and herbs, that are typically difficult to grow in Florida's almost-year-round summer.

"You know our summer is about nine months long," Doyle says with a laugh.

Operating an indoor hydroponic farm also allows them to offer more stable, consistent pricing on their food. No one's worrying about a freeze, or a random heat spike during the middle of "winter." Unlike the world of traditional farming, O'Malley says they know what their costs are and what kind of volume they're able to deliver.

An additional benefit of having this kind of controlled, specialized environment is accelerated growth; the farm's able to shorten the growing cycle by a few weeks and go from seed to harvest in six to eight weeks. The climates of Farm 1 (where the lettuces are), Farm 2 (empty at the moment, but it'll have an extensive selection of microgreens and edible flowers, depending on the reception they get from St. Pete), and Farm 3 (home to kales, collards and basil) are kept at temperatures ideal for what's growing inside. They also don't need fuel or big machines; the carbon-neutral Brick Street ups its sustainable efforts by being electric and using a small propane tank.

But zero runoff is one of the biggest advantages.

"We talk about, especially in Florida and Florida farming, the fertilizer that's used and the runoff when it rains. It runs right into our water systems, the waters that we count on for tourism and those types of things, and we have none of that here," Doyle says. "All of our water is a closed-loop system. All of the water is completely recycled and reused through filtration systems inside. When we feed our plants with the water and with our nutrients, nothing leaves the farm. Everything stays inside, so you don't have any of that runoff."

The life cycle here begins with an organic, non-G.M.O. seed, pelleted or non-pelleted.Todd Bates

Though the U.S. Department of Agriculture is still determining whether or not hydroponic farms can be certified organic, Brick Street puts organic, non-G.M.O. seeds and materials to use while foregoing herbicides and pesticides, which O'Malley says helps create a sterile environment.

At 40 feet long, the farm's three insulated transatlantic freight containers have traveled across the globe and arrived in St. Pete on a flatbed before being lowered to the ground with a crane. They house different sets of greens, yet each can grow at least an acre's worth of food, which equals 4,000 to 5,000 or so plants.

"They are easily portable if we wanted to move them around, which is a great option. We can also stack them. So barring city code, we could actually go three high," O'Malley says.

Expansion is definitely in the plan. But first, let's go inside a farm.

Everything starts as a pelleted or non-pelleted seed. The seedlings, nestled in plugs made of peat moss, begin in a lower tray under the workstation (the only area of the container that uses white light), where they germinate for around a week. Once they develop what are called "true leaves," they graduate to seedling trays.

The farm uses high-efficiency LED growing lights — red and blue only. As Doyle explains, plants don't use the sun's white light. Brick Street's greens have an unexciting brown color until they're pulled away from the LEDs. That's when they really stand out, in shades that range from eggplant to chartreuse. (Oh, and another thing: that loud hum heard in every container comes from high-powered vortex fans that create outdoor-like "wind.")

Seedlings are fed different levels of nutrients and pH, through an all-natural nutrient delivery system (or harvest system), than their adult counterparts hanging in vertical grow towers. As recycled city water, which undergoes reverse osmosis and "pH down" processes to bring its pH levels to neutral (this prevents a bitter taste), pumps through the system, sensors detect the level of nutrients and pH that the plants need, auto-dosing each to keep them at certain settings.

When you hear the pumps turn on, it's feeding time.

Another part of the plants' life cycle is spending six hours per day in the dark, giving them time to rest, regenerate and absorb nutrients. Greens gotta sleep, too, ya know.

"Because we can make night day and day night, we're running their daytime during the night because electricity is cheaper, and it's more energy efficient," Doyle says. "That's [another] reason we can go from seed to harvest in about six or seven weeks instead of about eight or nine. In Florida, or anywhere in the States for that matter, you only get about, maximum, 12 hours of sunlight a day. We get 18."

They're ready to be transplanted into a tower when their roots have "a nice curlicue at the bottom" and two sets of true leaves. If a crop's head is small, like that of Breen mini romaine, the farm can fit 16 plants on a tower; with fuller heads, a tower can comfortably grow six.

In Farm 1, which has a sweet scent and can be as cold as 60 degrees, there's Red Cross Butterhead, Rex lettuce (an ideal hydroponic similar to butterhead), heirloom Vulcan lettuce (for all you Star Trek fans) and arugula, to name a few. Greens that like it about 3 to 6 degrees warmer — think green and purple kales and basils, or long-and-spiny Toscano Italian kale (meant to be treated like spinach in the kitchen) — are born in the acidic-smelling Farm 3, just two containers down. These plants take in around 50 percent more nutrients than the lettuces.

Alongside some of the lesser-known varieties, the farm also creates its own spring mixes, alternatives to a standard bag of Costco or Publix spring mix. Doyle and O'Malley don't shy away from experimentation, either. They're playing with a multicolor ice lettuce appropriately dubbed "ice plant" because it always looks wet, and like it's donning little crystals.

The lineup of what’s growing will always spotlight basics, romaines and collards among them, with some unconventional finds rotated through to switch it up. Harvest can take place three to four times a week.

“We harvest on demand. It’s one of the benefits of being so local,” O’Malley says. “But most produce, especially greens that we have in Florida, are brought in from the west coast and southern California, so by the time it reaches us, it’s already seven to 10 days old. We’re harvesting within hours of delivery or pickup.”

Restaurants and chefs are their main distribution channels. Love Food Central is now working with Brick Street, and the owners hope to keep ‘em coming. They’ve reached out to locals such as Ciccio Restaurant Group, the cafe at Rollin’ Oats and Urban Restaurants Group. O’Malley says the Urbans have started expanding into bowls and salads, and that they’re interested in the collards, which have been in high demand. The Ciccio crew dug the kales and lettuces, too, though nothing has been finalized.

On its website, the farm’s gearing up to spotlight bags of choose-your-own greens — plus small (six heads) and large (between 12 and 15 heads) bags filled with what will essentially be a farmer’s choice mix — for those who want to place online orders. Open farm hours are coming to accommodate pick-up orders and educational tours for small groups three days a week. And the couple also want to have a presence at more local markets; Brick Street will make its debut to St. Pete Beach’s Corey Avenue Sunday Market on Nov. 20.

Although the technology allows them to monitor the farm remotely via an app that controls the lights, temperature, humidity and nutrients (just like the touch-screen Agrotech interface, or the “brain of the system,” does inside the containers), their goal is to be on-site full time.

And about those expansion plans: O’Malley and Doyle aim to dedicate half the property to their containers, which they’ll happily stack if necessary. The idea is to eventually go from vertical to horizontal growing, adding produce such as tomatoes, cucumbers and peppers to the product line. Ultimately looking to grow into their new home, they’re also working with an architect to develop a neighborhood event space, for gatherings with area chefs and city farm dinners featuring their food, on the other half.

Brick Street wants to bring the local food movement — a la Brooklyn and the rest — firmly to St. Pete. With a booming restaurant scene, tourist season picking up and a community that’s no stranger to supporting local, O’Malley says she thinks the city’s ready for it.

“I’ve noticed all generations are interested in it. It’s not just the millennials. It’s not just the 30-somethings. Folks really are looking to get away from the traditional model,” she says. “And it’s funny, knowing where your food comes from is not this radical idea. It’s just we’ve gotten so far away from it. People aren’t used to being able to see it and touch it.”

Now they can.

“For all these restaurants up and down Central Avenue and into downtown,” Doyle says, “it’s not any more local than literally less than a mile away.”

Having your own urban farm ain’t easy. Here are a couple things the Brick Street Farms founders learned along the way.

More seeds the better? Eh, not exactly

Filling a peat moss pod, where each seed starts, with multiple seeds sounds like a lucrative idea, but it’s not worth it.

“People think because you have these little plants you can put a whole bunch in and you can get a higher production and get more money. Well, that’s not true,” O’Malley says. “We even found [that] out with the seedlings, so it really is only one seed per plug. If you put in more than one, what happens is they compete for the nutrients, they compete for the light, and they actually end up dwarfing. They won’t grow at all, or maybe one will, but it’ll be tall and spiny.”

Go get yourself a wicking strip

Wicking strips go hand in hand with the vertical grow towers used at Brick Street. Found inside each tower, the strips help water find the path of least resistance, and they’re also what each plant’s root system follows (see picture above). Though the strips are a simple — and cheap — component of the operation, they’re important.

“All it does is control the water flow and take the water directly to the seedling roots. Otherwise, water runs wherever it wants to go,” Doyle says. “When we were growing in our backyard before we started growing commercial, we started growing in the towers. We forgot to put the wicking strips in, and we couldn’t figure out why everything kept dying. Because [the plants weren’t] getting any water, the water went wherever it wanted to go

The Vinegar Factory To Close Its Doors To Retail

Real Estate NEWS › REAL ESTATE

November 18, 2016 1:30 p.m. Updated 11/18/2016

The Vinegar Factory To Close Its Doors To Retail

Eli Zabar will convert brunch spot to food production and groceries-on-demand

After a renovation, the Vinegar Factory will reopen as a commissary kitchen to stock Zabar's other ventures.

The easternmost outpost of Eli Zabar’s uptown foodie empire will shut down as a retailer on Nov. 23. Behind the change is a need to accommodate increased demand for home grocery delivery as well as prepared foods.

After a renovation, the Vinegar Factory, which has served Yorkville as a grocer, a brunch spot and an event space since 1993, will reopen as a commissary kitchen to stock Zabar’s other ventures. (Thanksgiving catering won’t be affected, and the site will still have an event space.) Vinegar Factory employees will find jobs at the other branches.

Zabar was looking at necessary repairs at the former mustard and vinegar factory, which was built in the 1890s.He considered how the space could best serve an operation that now includes a flagship market, four Eli’s Essentials prepared-foods stores—one of which morphs into a wine bar at night—a wine store, the café and shop E.A.T., the restaurant Eli’s Table, grocery delivery, catering, gift baskets, a kosher bakery, a wholesale bread business and more than 700 employees.

“All these things take space,” he said. “We’d have to move out to the boroughs and we’re not going to do that.”

Zabar’s longevity in the neighborhood—he opened his first venture, E.A.T., more than 40 years ago—made it possible for him to buy a collection of properties, including the former vinegar factory, that he is now able to modify to suit the needs of a changing business.
“By owning the site, I can do what I want there,” he said, adding area rents are “beyond what food operations can pay.”

The increased production space will allow him to bolster the offerings and staff at the flagship Eli’s Market at East 80th Street and Third Avenue, and to satisfy the growing demand for grocery delivery. He sees both retail and delivery as quintessential businesses at a time when people are too busy to shop during the week.

Zabar also believes that in both of those ventures his markets have an advantage over the larger grocery chains. “We’re not anonymous,” he explained. “There’s a sense of trust.” To use the home shopping service, “you call on the phone and speak to Milton,” he said. Home shopping has been growing 10% to 20% each year, and a large portion of the Vinegar Factory’s customers already use home shopping exclusively, he said.

By revenue, retail is the largest part of Zabar’s business. Increasing production space will allow him to open more locations, he said.

“Now when sites are brought to my attention, I don’t have to say, ‘I wish I could consider that, but I can’t,’ ” he said. He thinks the area below East 76th Street is still underserved, but he draws the line at expanding his business to the foodie haven of Brooklyn. “It’s too far from my production facility to make it fresh and deliver it that day,” he said.

The Vinegar Factory is one of four sites Zabar owns on the block of East 91st Street between First and York Avenues. That’s where bakers turn out baguettes and croissants, decorated cookies, rugelach, and babka. Up on the second floor of what’s now the Vinegar Factory, big pots simmer stock and soup and a designated fryer makes potato chips sold at Eli’s Essentials and Eli’s Table. On top of two of the buildings are 22,000 square feet of greenhouse space, where Zabar has been experimenting with hydroponic tomatoes, vertically grown strawberries and greens since 1995.

Zabar has enlisted an architect to renovate the Vinegar Factory, but the exact plans are still in flux. He intends to keep the factory charm intact but acknowledges “there will be disappointed customers.”

Correction: Soups are made on the second floor of the Vinegar Factory building. One Eli's Essentials location becomes a wine bar after hours. These facts were misstated in an earlier version of this story, published online Nov. 18, 2016.

Tucson Business Aims To Harvest Produce, Deliver The Same Day

Tucson Business Aims To Harvest Produce, Deliver The Same Day

Chaz Shelton admits that what he’s doing looks suspiciously like lettuce-farming.

What makes his business, Merchant’s Farm, unique is the concept, Shelton said.

He wants to bring the farm to the city — to vacant lots and rooftops. He wants to provide restaurants, stores and single consumers with fresh, nutritious produce that is delivered the same day it is harvested, by commercializing the latest advances in aquaponics.

Shelton grows edible plants and fish in a soil-less, symbiotic system that uses a tenth of the water of standard agriculture.

Ultimately, he envisions an “Uber-like” model of quick supply upon demand for fresh produce in urban settings.

He’s starting on the fallowed fields of Howenstine High Magnet School on South Tucson Boulevard, which Tucson Unified School District closed in 2013.

The vacant field north of the school now holds a 10,000-square-foot greenhouse. It’s capable of growing nearly a half-million pounds of produce per year, Shelton said.

Inside the climate-controlled greenhouse, the roots of plants floating in water tanks are fed a nitrogen-rich stream of water fertilized by thousands of tilapia.

“It’s a very effective way to grow food,” said Kevin Fitzsimmons, a University of Arizona professor in the Department of Soil, Water and Environmental Science.

Fitzsimmons is an international expert on aquaculture (fish farming), hydroponics (growing plants without soil) and aquaponics, which combines the two concepts.

He has helped set up agricultural systems from Myanmar to Marana.

Nelson apprenticed with Fitzsimmons for a time at the University of Arizona’s Controlled Environment Agriculture Center, which is developing new growing systems and customizing them for locations as extreme as Antarctica and Mars.

The concept is simple, said Fitzsimmons.

“The fish supply the fertilizer and nutrients. The plants remove the nutrients and clear the water,” he said.

Naturally occurring bacteria, meanwhile, convert the fish waste into plant nutrients.

The process is not necessarily simple in execution.

“It’s a complex microbial community that you need to keep healthy,” said Fitzsimmons. “If the fish get sick, the plants get sick, and if the microbes get sick, you’ve got real problems.”

For now, Shelton, his partner/father Bill Shriver and one part-time employee perform all the labor at Merchant’s Garden — planting seeds in a “rock wool” medium to germinate, transferring seedlings to the floating beds, harvesting plants and delivering them to customers.

Customers include a number of area restaurants where freshness and quality are valued, he said.

Chef Janos Wilder has been using the farm’s romaine lettuce to prepare Caesar salads at his Downtown Kitchen & Cocktails and has been pleased with its crispness and freshness. “I really like the product we’ve been getting from him so far,” Wilder said.

Wilder said he’s working on a long-term contract for romaine and watercress from Merchant’s Farm.

“It means a lot to me to have local options. I’ve been working on (local food sources) for 30 years and now there are so many farmers and producers around. It just reinforces the ethos we have,” he said.

Shelton said he can tailor his inventory to a restaurant’s needs — watercress for Wilder; Thai basil for an Asian restaurant and big-leafed lettuce for a gourmet burger joint.

He doesn’t see himself competing with local farmers, so much as filling a need for a consistent supply that isn’t interrupted by growing seasons. He can grow summer vegetables in winter, and lettuce during Tucson’s summer heat.

Shelton’s idea began in college where he studied, at first, in the public health field. While attending the University of Pennsylvania, he worked at a a clinic in Philadelphia, encountering cases of “extreme obesity and extraordinary malnutrition.”

Those contradictory pathologies resulted from a variety of causes, but diet was definitely one of them, he said. “I’m not sure there is a single answer, but access to healthy foods is a big one.”

“I started wondering ‘How do we bring healthy food into the city?’ and thought ‘How about we just bring the farm into the city?’”

In furtherance of that goal, Shelton switched majors and schools to study finance and entrepreneurship at Indiana University.

His parents, Bill and Cindy Shriver, had moved to Tucson and connected him to Fitzsimmons and the Controlled Environment Agriculture Center at the University of Arizona, where he apprenticed for a while.

He competed for and won a spot in Thryve, a business accelerator program run by Startup Tucson, during his summer break from classes.

“They made phenomenal connections for me. Tucson just seemed like the place,” he said.

When he went back to Indiana to complete his MBA, he put together a business plan that won IU Bloomington’s 2015 BEST competition, which came with a prize of $100,000 in investment in his future company.

More than that, he said, it connected him with investors who have since tripled that total.

A couple of other things came together for him at the same time, Shelton said.

Tucson city government was working on urban agriculture amendments to its zoning code that made it possible to open a growing operation in a neighborhood not formerly zoned for it.

“We were the first applicant,” he said.

He worked simultaneously with the school district and its board to lease land at the Howenstine site. “We took a vacant piece of land and turned it into a food machine,” he said. The plan includes educational trips to the farm by TUSD schools.

Shelton is planning a second investment round to expand into the Phoenix area and he has his eye on a rooftop in downtown Tucson.

He said he also plans to continue working with the UA to commercialize the many innovations of the Controlled Environment Agriculture Center.

“We need to commercialize and advance some of the innovations out there right now,” he said.

“I’m not going to be a great farmer or researcher or whatever, but I’ve worked in venture capital. I’ve already commercialized other technologies.

“I can take existing technology from UA and bring it to market,” he said.

Contact reporter Tom Beal at tbeal@tucson.com or 520-573-4158. Follow on Facebook or @bealagram on Twitter.

Live Recap from the Chicago Summit

Live Recap from the Chicago Summit

Follow along at our Chicago Summit with a live recap of highlights from each panel discussion.

We are live today from the Gleacher Center at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, with the Chicago Council on Global Affairs for the 1st annual Chicago Food Tank Summit. This is the third in a series of three Summits in 2016 which are bringing together some of the world’s most impactful food system leaders. Click Here to watch the Live Stream, brought to you by Organic Valley.

9:00 am:

An exciting day has begun. Stacey Kole started our morning with an enthusiastic introduction to the Food Tank Summit. The University of Chicago Booth School of Business is excited to co-host and partner with so many leading experts and institutions during this summit.  Kole is excited about all the great speakers and panelists, such David MacLennan, Chairman and CEO of Cargill, who work hard to find innovations to feed the world. As Kole said, it is a great time to convene a group like this so we can “shake our communities and help disseminate knowledge”. 

9:05 am: 

Alesha Black, Director of the Global Food and Agriculture Program at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs shared some of the goals and work of the CCGA. By 2050 we will have at least 9 billion people, with 2 billion living in cities. We need to transform our food system to address these challenges. As Black wrapped up her introduction by encouraging us to remember how great it is that we have “likeminded people with lots of great ideas coming together today”. These conversations will helps us find the best ways to transform our food system. 

9:10 am: 

Danielle Nierenberg, President of Food Tank has heartily welcomed both the live and online audience. She is excited to see the summit take place in Chicago, the city where the Food Tank was born.  “This is one of the greatest food cities in the world” she said, a city that is "cultivating the next generation of entrepreneurs that are making food more affordable and accessible". She also warmly welcomed all students who will inherit our “problems but also enormous opportunity”. She eagerly reminded the audience of how important it is to convene all many “different ingredients’ or as she put it, “different tastes and opinions will help create dialogue and conversation…let’s stop preaching to the choir”. Five topics will be covered during the conversations at the Food Tank Summit today, from future farming, to unusual (sometimes uncomfortable) alliances and collaborations, transparency to the future of food. We do not have time to waste. We need to start now. 

9:20 am: 

Kevin Cleary, CEO of Clif Bar & Company, gave a sincere introduction to what marked the beginning of a food journey and interest in a sustainable food system. There is now so much interest and concern and food and a great demand for improved food systems. As a parent, some of these issues are really concerning, such as the amount of pesticides in our food system. It is not an inconsequential amount. Pesticides are not only concerning to consumers but also for the farmers who are constantly exposed to these harmful chemicals and suffer the consequences of such exposure. As CEO of a food company, he feels like he can make a difference, but there is a long way to go. For example, organic farming is still a small percentage of the total, just 1% in the US! Shouldn’t we be able to find organic macadamia nuts? Our supply chain should increase organic options. 

Cleary had three recommendations for improving our food system:

1. Provide farmers transitioning to organic farming longer contracts
2.  Invest in organic research and extension services
3. Create policies that provide financial incentives for sustainable agricultural practices

We need to have a dialogue about these now. “We can do better than less than 1%” – Kevin Cleary

9:30 am:

The first panel of the day, moderated by Roger Thurow, Author, Journalist, and Senior Fellow, Chicago Council on Global Affairs, was a lively discussion about farming the future. The discussion started out by talking about local, Chicago-based transformations and changes in the food system. Harry Rhodes, Executive Director of Growing Home, the first certified organic farm in Chicago discussed farm production and training programs. Growing Home successfully produces30,000 pounds of food on an acre of land. They have trained over 400 people topics ranging from indoor farming to distribution centers, to understanding the food chain. “Food is at the center of building a healthy community” – Harry Rhodes.  Billy Burdett followed-up by talking about the importance of urban agriculture. More and more people have been interested in “hyperlocal food production”.  For example, Mayor Rahm Emanuel has been instrumental in the local food movement, making room for urban farms and community gardens. There has been both growth in number of urban agricultural projects and in the types of projects, such as aquaponics and vertical farming operations, and commercializing of innovative projects. As Burdett put it, “different approaches to sustainable foods are what will help us obtain a more resilient food system”.  Emily Zack, Farm Operations Manager at the Loyola University Retreat and Ecology Campus (LUREC) chimed in toshare some of their experiences with organic farming. Hands-on learning experiences, particularly with women and their children, have been especially rewarding. Simply things, such as teaching women and children to grow pomegranates, have a lasting impact on the food system and on nutrition. 

Thurow then posed a question about the state of family farms and cooperatives. Ben Burkett, President of the National Family Farm Coalition and a fourth generation farmer with a great Mississippi accent, talked about both the many innovations and long-lasting practices that are being used in farming. As Burkett summed it up, “the future looks bright”. 

The conversation then shifted to how we can we breach the gap between producers and consumers. Randy Krotz, CEO of US Farmers and Ranchers Alliance (USFRA), a Cardinals and Blues fan from St. Louis (and a Cubs fan too!), mentioned a few ways their organization tries to breach gaps between farmers and consumers. He optimistically reminded us the food system is not broken, we are on a path of continuous growth and improvement. Innovation in the food industry is largely around food sourcing (organic, GMO, carbon footprints). To build credibility with consumers, farmers need to make sure consumers hear from the producers themselves. Greg Kearns, vice-president of Institutional Partnerships at Heifer International chimed in to then talk about the importance of social capital development and living incomes, two core values of Heifer International. Although some of their efforts are not direct nutrition interventions, there is a lot of potential for improving nutrition outcomes through their agricultural programs. There is also a lot of potential in scaling up programs without breaking budgets. This can be done through improved value chains in which relationships are strengthened, jobs are created, knowledge skills and assets are shared. Similar models are being used in the US too.

Before the Q&A, panelists discussed who should be responsible for nutritious foods. Should the farmers be leaders in creating a more nutritious food system? Is it consumer behaviors and practices that need to change? Krotz began the conversation by reminding us how consumers influence demand. Burkett agreed and reminded us of how “two years ago everybody was on kale”. Burdett talked about this from a city living perspective. He mentioned how a lot is consumer driven demand but at the same time also generations of folks who don’t have a connection to food and where it comes from. As a result, there is less cooking, more pre-packaged foods. He believes we need to pay closer attention to our education efforts.  We need to inform consumers of the importance of fresh, local produce for a healthy life. This will help drive the consumer demand. Rhodes wrapped it up by reminding us to try to predict what is the next thing people will be looking to buy and to educate the consumers about products they have never tried before. 

Q&A

What are farmers thinking about in terms of soil health?

Zack – “soil is alive”, we need to be thinking about this. Amending soil after growth is needed and it isimportant to do it in a sustainable way (e.g. compost)

Krotz- “soil is a farmers life”, no matter how big or small, preserving the soil is key. 

Burkett – you learn early on that you must take care of the soil. 

Rhodes – local sourcing of compost would be ideal

How can restaurateurs build relationships with farmers?

Zack – growing specialty items for restaurants, farmers often seek out restaurants and see what they want to serve and the farmers can grow quality product for them

Burdett – “Green restaurants and caterers” can build interest in the community and help farmers build relationships with restaurants and even innovative relationships such as co-branding with distilleries. Or listen to the comment about processed foods not necessarily being the enemy. 

Krotz - Not all food is local, there are markets that can’t sell all their product locally, should not lose sight of the importance of that larger scale production too.

Sometimes restaurants drive consumer behaviors by showing them something new, demanding new things from local farmers.

Suggestion – do not shun processed foods – food science can be part of the solution!
Recent study on pesticides going up and GMOS not necessarily increasing yield. How do we reduce pesticide use?
Can we incentivize polyculture more (e.g. trees/hedges)?

Krotz - rain is needed for trees. Many parts of the country don’t have enough rain to sustain that. NYT times article was highly discredited – there were increased yields, decreased insecticides. GMO do help address a lot of our main issues. 

Rhodes – transparency is needed, consumers should know if it is GMO, regardless of the literature. 

10:00 am:

The second panel of the day started out with some fun connections between the 2016 elections and the Cubs World Series win. According to word on the street and Ambassador Quinn, there are two things that can bring unlikely alliances together – A Cubs win and the World Food Prize. We all care about the food system, regardless of our sports or political inclinations. Efforts to improve our food system resonate with many sides of the equation. The conversation was focus on how many opportunities, rather than challenges, there are when building alliances. For example, although we face many economic restraints, return on investment is high when it comes to food waste. Also, as Pereira put it, we have the opportunity to look into more ways to keep materials and nutrients flowing within our system. This can be done in large part via improved collaboration between business, non-profits and government. O’Neill followed-up with a great example of how you can find thing in common with others, rather than focusing on differences. As a hunger organization they see a lot of diet related issues among those who suffer from hunger. To address this, they created a model helps collect the type of food these people need, similar to a wedding registry. 

MacLennan introduced some of the hardships when building unlikely alliances.  When building new relationships there are often also contentious conversations. For example, when investing more efforts in reducing global deforestation, there were questions about profit loss. “If focusing on sustainability is more complicated and expensive, that is fine”, said MacLellan, it is part of Cargill’s mission.  “We need a constructive rather that destructive contention to make a difference”. On a similar note, Black mentioned how ending hunger is a US interest. Food security leads to international security. Also, with increasing middle-income families and transitioning food demands globally, the market will grow. 

The conversation was then open up to the audience. Some asked how we reduce food waste by using end products for new products (e.g. coffee). What are some innovative food waste strategies? What can we do with “ugly produce” and unlikely alliances? Vared alluded to the fact that retailers and food service shine a lot of opportunity for decreasing food waste by using the “ugly products” and Pereira reminded us of the importance of technologies such as anaerobic digestion, fuel sources and composting. With opportunities often come challenges. For example, legal issues continue to be a big challenge.  

More from the Q&A:

What are food organizations doing about transparency in these unlikely alliances?

MacLennan – when it comes to transparency about GMOs for example, we have some consumer products, and the new national labeling law will support the importance of knowing where food comes from. 

Does educating women play a role in food security and international security?

“Countries that succeed will be those that use all their human resources” – Ambassador Quinn

How do we tackle food waste with innovative partnerships?

Vared - We need better supply and demand forecasting. This is a key opportunity to reduce food waste. And when there is waste at the farm level, we need to ask how can we capture that food and re-package and re-purpose it so it does not go to waste. 

Ambassador Quinn – Farm to markets roads are key. Gives farmers the certainty they will be able to transport their crop to market and sell. Distribution is so important. 

What aspects can be done on a policy level to create more alliances for fewer pesticides and more organics in our food system?

Black - Private sector has a huge opportunity to get involved- e.g. Aflasafe, made by the private sector, now manufactured locally in Kenya. 

Ambassador Quinn - More money to public research is needed. Funding has been reduced but it is critical to deal with the challenges during the next 30 years. 

Now we are at the table, how do we make sure people at the table can be “trusted” and heard?

Vared – try a data driven approach to bring everybody to the table. Some folks want to focus on prevention and some others on cost-effectiveness. Data centered conversations help stay focused and find a common ground. 

Ambassador Quinn – difficult process but measure successes in small increments. 

Black – speaking in regards to the international stage, civil society organizations provide a voice to those often not heard. 

Do we need legislation or can we depend on good Samaritans for food waste reductions?

Pereira – we need both. Also, making an economic case helps. Food waste is energy and monetary waste. All of us are advocates. 

What would you advice be to president elect to improve our food system?

After some giggles…

Ambassador Quinn – clarity of what agricultural and food system should be aimed at. Borlaug would say ensure 900 million food insecure people be elevated to be food secure. 

Pereira - Need someone “intellectually aware” to advise the president elect on these issues

MacLennan – intelligent policy for agricultural and food trade is necessary

Ambassador Quinn – “Make America healthy again!” 

And that comment wrapped up the conversation with general agreement and laughter!

1:15 pm: Afternoon Keynote: Rick Bayless, Chef and Owner, Frontera 

Bayless, a renowned chef started out the second half of the summit with a little history of he fell in love with Mexico and its culture. In Mexico, where there was great food, there was great local agriculture. He wanted to see that in the US too. While trying to source local strawberries there were some laughs. But they still sourced strawberries from Michigan and were able to make a great assortment of strawberry desserts. This is when local sourcing and sustainable agriculture became a reality for him. And now? He has the Frontera Foundation, a non-profit that gives grants and invests in small farmers around the region to enhance the quality of life of people in the area. He strives on being both sustainable but also transparent regarding food sources. 

1:25 pm: Panel: Transparency in the Food System

Keynote: Juliette Majot, Executive Director, Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP)

Although focusing on the positive and what we are doing right is often preferred, it is equally important to talk about what we are not doing right. As Majot bravely put it: Why aren’t we hearing more about the election results? Why did our presidential candidates avoid talking about agriculture and our food systems? We lack courage to speak about where we find ourselves now. For example, our potential head of EPA saying pesticides are not an issue? Many saying climate change a hoax? Agriculture about to surpass transportation as a major source of pollution, yet very few people talking about this?  To be more direct, “Caution breeds the status quo”, said Majot.  For example, “Sarah Palin should not be the Secretary of the Interior!”. Two weeks ago we would have openly said that. Now we aren’t. Where is our transparency? Where is the transparency in our food system (e.g. clear labels that are accessible to all (i.e. no smartphone needed!)). “Our self-censoring is getting in the way of transparency”. Loud applause and a true wake-up call to us all. This is the time to use our voices.  

2:00 pm:

The third panel of the day was a great example of how the summit is addressing the some real food systems concerns, such as transparency, while also delivering concrete proposals to address some our main food system issues. One major transparency challenge is the unfortunate disconnect between reality and what labels suggest. An example of how labels are misinterpreted is “free range”.  Consumers often think these animals permanently roaming around outside when it instead this may just mean the chickens roam freely for some part of the day. Lehman talked about food labels and how they help us get to know farmers a bit better. She also brought up labor issues, a contentious and complicated topic within the food system. Many farm laborers are what we call “invisible” in the US. Farm laborers work long hours, at low wages and are often directly exposed to dangerous compounds such as pesticides. She encouraged us to consider the other side, to really think across the board when it comes to food production. 

Singh posed a follow-up question to all – is there a lack of transparency in agricultural labor? 

According to Mason, yes, there is a lack of transparency.  We need to de-mystify food. Should we bring back Home Ec? We need to target children earlier in life. If children understand what it takes to grow food, living wages will be more likely to become a reality. Singh then brought in the social media aspect of transparency. In the age of social media is it easier or harder to be transparent? Some expects such as Mason thinks social media not a main source for food info, while others such as Friedrich think social media could, and to some extent does, play an important role in food production transparency. He used “clean meat” as an example.  You may be wondering, what is “clean meat”? It is meat grown in a petri dish, antibiotics resistance gone, microbial issues not a problem, energy and environment (1/3 of inputs, can reduce climate change). Should this be live streamed?! What an exciting world we live in!

The conversation then covered additional challenges and accomplishment in our food system transparency. A major accomplishment according to Biannuci: We are all together here having this conversation! All panelists and the audience agreed this is anotable accomplishment. Friedrich then continued the conversation by mentioning how the public wants to know how food is produced and what is in their food. Twenty years ago, social media did not play a big role but now a lot of the organizations in this space use social media to mobilize the public. Mason talked about how we have made great progress getting the USDA and others on board. We are talking more about disadvantaged farmers and de-mystifying the food system. Lehman mentioned how we have made so much progress with organic food. It shows that transparency takes a lot of work. Organics require farmers to work hard to get certified and the consumer to pay more. There was a demand and it is driving the food system. As Baur nicely put it, we are both creatures of habit (sometimes fear change) and social animals (do what those around us do). Therefore, there is more potential to grow organic! Existing infrastructures can be re-purposed at the grassroots level (e.g. rooftop gardens in the Hamptons). Bahador wrapped up the question by reminding us of the double food pyramid – food on one side, environmental effect on the other. This type of tools helps de-mystifying sustainability. So do food sustainability indices. We can use these tools to measure sustainability goals across multiple countries. Lastly, dissemination of information is also important. Let’s consider partnering with journalists who want to cover these important, yet underreported issues.

Q&A

Why don’t we talk about including “purpose” in the labels?

Friedrich - That would be great but there is also an issue of too much information. 

Baur – What is our relationship to other animals/plants? The more invasive we get, the more concerned we should get.  We tend to be an “arrogant species”. 

Transparency is increasing but environmental impact is not. How can we increase that without shaming?

Friedrich – must compete with the resource intensive foods. We all consider price, taste and convenience. People don’t buy based on sustainability. Would take a lot of education but probably more successful if we find ways to have sustainable products compete and appeal in terms of price, taste and convenience. 

Bianucci – some organizations and entities already focus on educating consumers on supporting farmers who implement sustainable practices. 

Should we focus on nutrition versus yield? Nutrition versus calories? Yield of the seed versus overall farm yield? Many questions to still consider. 

Water glass if half full – this is where the leadership is. What are the returns and where are the opportunities to collectively talk about transparency? Deterrents and opportunities to this 

Baur – changing out of our patterns of behavior is really difficult. But we are so social we can influence each other. For example, kids growing food together, making cooking a pleasurable experience. Once the patterns start shifting into healthier patterns we will see and uptake in the momentum.  Being social is both our obstacle and opportunity. 

Land grabs – lots of advocacy and commitment (e.g. zero deforestation, zero land grabs) also requires a lot of transparency but this is challenging for global supply chains. 

Biannucci – lots of organizations you can support (e.g. ICCR) that support this exact kind of transparency. 

Lehman – it takes a lot of money to monitor these types of changes. We need a way to finance these types of monitoring systems. 

4:15 pm:

No better way to end the day than to talk about the future of food. Where do we stand and what do we need to ensure our food system continues to be improved? Slama started out by mentioning some potential food policy changes we could expect from the incoming US administration.  Some of our food movements and environmental policies could be in jeopardy, therefore we must speak up! Harris agreed there may be policy implications with the new administration but that we have momentum and should not lose sight of that. Borschow agreed demand will not fluctuate much. Technologies, such as hydroponics, are changing the landscape and are often more sustainable (think lettuce!). Have to look into the best investments down the road. Harris spoke about the many advantages of shortening supply chains and strengthening regional supply chains. Supply chain changes can help consumers gain a better understanding of what is on their plate. Coleman mentioned how “even though organic is small in number it is big in thought”. There is a lot of potential in organic food production. Starmer mentioned one of the biggest challenges and opportunities we are already seeing in the food system:  there is a massive exodus of farmers, yet we also have a large interest in agriculture from a completely new group of people. Most importantly, she made us realize the word “rural” was left out of the conversation today. Although urban agriculture technologies are important, agriculture is still fundamentally a rural enterprise and we cannot forget that.  As she wonderfully put it, “We rise and fall with the success of rural America”.

Warshauer then transitioned the conversation to how we can approach, recognize and nurture innovation. Borschow and Slama chimed in to respond to this question . We have such a diverse group from uncommon backgrounds (e.g. doctors, engineers) joining agricultural efforts and bringing in a very different perspective. It is exciting to have fresh eyes and new perspectives on potential solutions to today’s problems.  

Q&A

Seeds are often an issue, particularly amongst farmers in Africa, what can we do help local farmers acquire high quality seed?

Moon – financing is crucial to getting a hold of the right types of inputs. There are some organizations that function as lenders and special financing (low interest) loans. She also encouraged involving third parties in the negations to help with transparency and equality. 

Borschow – coops often more attractive to lenders. 

Harris – aggregation points help but financial literacy needs to be part of it too. 

How can we help farmers in poor countries deal with effects of climate change?

Borschow – their barriers to change are often lower. They can leverage technology, e.g. cell phone use for better information (e.g. climate, temperature, rainfall). Real time information helps them make more informed decisions. 

Slama – incorporating crop diversity and using the right type of agricultural system can help the health of the people and the planet. 

Coleman – soil quality can be a challenge, and one way to regenerate grasslands is with livestock, management practices are also vital. 

How do we concurrently scale-up and support biodiversity?

Harris – we should consider creating a menu around what the farmer is growing.  Part of the future is bringing in imperfect products in larger volumes. 

Coleman – help land grant universities go back to the days when they focused on helping local agriculture. 

Slama – Embracing wholesale where there is opportunity is key (like farmers market). They often run CSAs too.

What are the opinions on approaches to agricultural development in Africa?

Borschow – transportation/distribution is one of the biggest barriers in Africa but that also means there is a lot of potential and room for improvement. We should also the other side of things, developing smallholder farmers, which have huge impacts in feeding small, local communities. Both large scale distribution and smallholder farming are important.  

Moon – on one side we want to leverage the land in Africa, maximize its use, but at the same time we want to be thoughtful and consider livelihoods and incomes, in addition to the land itself. We need to focus on infrastructure such as storage. High yields have shown to be possible but without proper storage farmers often sell immediately at lower prices. 

Harris – We need to get rid of the “companies versus farmers” mentality. There needs to be collaboration. 

How do we educate people from the next generation on agriculture and sustainability?

Harris – cooking demonstrations

Starmer – local sourcing, bringing farmers in to talk to students, also taking students out to farms

Coleman – more exposure to farms 

by Daniel Stein

Daniel Stein is the content manager for Food Tank. Daniel received his B.A in Political Science from Lehigh University, with a focus on non-profit management, community development and participatory democracy. After a decade long journey through the local food system, mostly in New England, and recently in Virginia, Daniel has found a niche in using digital and social media to advance a message of sustainable food.

Some Growers Say Organic Label Will Be Watered Down If It Extends To Hydroponic

Some Growers Say Organic Label Will Be Watered Down If It Extends To Hydroponic

November 16, 20163:31 PM ET

REBECCA SANANES

Baby basil are planted in PVC piping through which nutrient-infused water flows at regular intervals at a hydroponics farm in Nevada. This week, the National Organic Standards Board is set to vote on whether foods grown hydroponically can be sold as "certified organic."

The National Organic Standards Board this week plans to decide if hydroponically grown foods – a water-based model of cultivation – can be sold under the label "certified organic."

But some organic farmers and advocates are saying no – the organic label should be rooted in soil. The decision at stake for the $40 billion-a-year industry will have impacts that reach from small farms to global corporations.

Farmer Eliot Coleman is among those who oppose giving hydroponic produce the organic label. He recently joined other farmers in Thetford, Vermont, at a rally. They were holding signs saying "soil is the soul of organic."

"As far as we're concerned," Coleman says, "if it's not grown in soil with all the wonderful features that soil puts into the plants , there's no way you can call it organic."

Coleman's peers call him an "elder of the organic movement." The calluses on his hands are stained with soil. Coleman thinks that the central principle in growing organic produce is the farmer feeds the soil – not the plant.

Part of the legal qualification of organic farming – and, in Coleman's opinion, the label consumers have come to trust – is about the healthfulness and stewardship of the land.

But Mark Mordasky, who owns Whipple Hollow Hydroponic Farm, says a sustainable model is important to him, too.

"We're in a greenhouse," Mordasky says. "We're not doing anything with the land, good or bad. We're not irresponsibly using land. We're simply choosing not to use land at all. Does that make us not organic?"

His greenhouse looks like it could have been designed by the late Steve Jobs – sleek and clean – with rows upon rows of identical tomato plants stabilized in organic coconut fibers.

These plants are fed liquid fertilizers – which could be made from organic materials. But Vermont's organic certifiers bar Mordasky from labeling his produce as organic.

Mordasky thinks that, on a planet with fewer places to grow food and more mouths to feed, different growth methods should be accepted under the organic label.

"If we had all of our nutrients organic, all of our pesticides and herbicides — whatever we're doing to control disease was organic, and the medium itself that the roots are growing in is also organic, all the inputs are organic. The outcome, it seems to me, would be organic," he argues.

The National Organic Standards Board plans to vote this week. But both hydroponic producers and soil-growing advocates will be parsing lucrative labels into the future.

First Freight Farm Up And Running In Holland

Today's farmer only needs a smartphone:

First Freight Farm up and running in Holland

He did not go to horticultural college, doesn't have a green thumb and has no clue about produce marketing. Yet Dutchman Patrick Stoffer is about to harvest 1,000 heads of lettuce every week. He is the proud owner of the first Freight Farm in the Netherlands.

Stoffer is the first European that has bought the Leafy Green Machine from Dutch greenhouse supply company Horticoop. The container farm has been developed in the U.S. by Freight Farms and comprises of a shipping container (12.2 x 2.44 x 2.6m) that has 256 ZipGrow cultivation towers for the hydroponic cultivation of leafy greens and herbs. The vertical farms allows a total of 7,000m2 of production.

Stoffer is a proud owner of the idiot-proof farm. He is using an app that keeps him up-to-date on the conditions in the container and through the app he receives tips about what kind of actions to take during cultivation.

Freight Farms has about 150 of these containers installed in the U.S. and the popularity of the system is steadily growing. Kimbal Musk, brother of Paypal and Tesla founder Elon Musk, recently bought 20 to start his own vertical farm. In his blog,  he explains the importance of cultivating in urban locations and being in contact with the consumer.

Leafy Green Machine

Stoffers has no knowledge of the traditional fresh produce trade, and did not attend horticultural college. The youngster is studying Facility Management and uses his entrepreneurship with the Leafy Green Machine as part of his final thesis.

The container is installed near residential care centre Humanitas in the town of Deventer. “Part of the lettuce ends up in the salad bar at the home,” the young entrepreneur explains. “The idea is to also involve residents in the project, to show how the lettuce grows and what happens in the container. At a later time it will become a part of the community as a social project.”

Cost price
Stoffer finds other buyers in local restaurants. “Salad bars and food service companies are intersting parties.” says Stoffer. He needs such companies which see the added value of this, because the cost price of the Leafy Green Machine means he cannot compete with traditional greenhouse horticulture. “We can not compete with the lettuce you find in a Dutch supermarket. However, our product has a story to tell and comes fresher and healthier.”

Horticoop offers the Leafy Green Machinefor a few months now. Interest has already been expressed from countries such as Norway, Sweden and the UK. Freight Farms expects sales will increase in the US next year and also hopes to find a good market in Europe.  

Publication date: 11/16/2016
Author: Arlette Sijmonsma
Copyright: www.hortidaily.com

Grow Local OC Conference Delves into the Future of Urban Food Systems in Orange County and Beyond

Grow Local OC Conference Delves into the Future of Urban Food Systems in Orange County and Beyond

November 15, 2016 | Robert Puro

On Nov. 10-11 hundreds of attendees from across Southern California and beyond showed up for the inaugural Grow Local OC Conference: The Future of Urban Food Systems held Nov. 10-11 in Orange County, CA at California State University, Fullerton to learn more about the community and economic development potential of fostering local food systems in cities.

The conference attendees were treated to lectures from the foremost urban farming experts, entrepreneurs, and community advocates in the sustainable and local food system space. Topics explored by the speakers and panelists included the role that food plays in bridging the rural urban divide, the potential for urban farming to generate community and economic capital, the challenges faced by entrepreneurs seeking funds for their local food and farming ventures, the potential for controlled environment agriculture in cities, and the power of community development initiatives to increase access to healthy, local food.

The conference provided ample opportunity for the local food champions, entrepreneurs, and advocates in Orange County to continue to strengthen their base of support to increase food access, improve health outcomes, and meet the demands of a thriving local food marketplace.

Seedstock Founder, Jason Reed kicked off day one of the conference proceedings by noting the huge community and economic development opportunity inherent in fostering and strengthening urban food systems in cities and counties across the country. He also outlined a future in which people would see food not only as nourishment, but also as medicine to fuel a healthier society.

Christina Hall, Executive Director of the OC Food Access Coalition echoed his sentiments. She also noted that while Orange County is perceived from depictions on television as a center of wealth in Southern California, there is a hidden demographic that lives in poverty and suffers from food insecurity. Hall noted that 50% of K-12 children in the county receive free, or reduced price lunches.

The conference’s keynote was delivered by Karen Ross, Secretary of the California Department of Food and Agriculture. Secretary Ross delved into the importance of agriculture and local food systems in cities. She spoke about innovative agricultural systems and noted that modern farming and passionate local farmers are taking us from “calories to survive” to “nutrition to thrive.” She also spoke of the vital and necessary role that food plays in bridging the rural urban divide. “Food is a connector like no other,” she said. She also highlighted the state’s commitment to help small urban farmers succeed and become a viable component of the food system.

Secretary Ross’s keynote was followed by a panel focused on ‘Connecting Stakeholders to Foster a Robust Local Food System’ in Orange County. The panel was moderated by Dwight Detter of Slow Money SoCal and featured panelists Kimi McAdam of Kaiser Permanente’s Nutrition Services department, Christina Hall of OC Food Access, Mark Lowry, Executive Director of OC Food Bank, and Farmer Glenn Tanaka of Tanaka Farms. The panel explored the connective tissues that align local stakeholders and enable them to foster a local food system predicated on impactful food policy, and shared community and economic development goals. McAdam underscored the importance to Kaiser Permanente of sourcing sustainable local food. McAdam noted the hospital group is looking for solutions to source more local food, and said that “we’ve always worked with big distributors, but do we have to?” Mark Lowry of the OC Food Bank noted that to really have an impact local farmers need to produce volume. Farmer Tanaka discussed the importance of agri-tourism and educational programs in helping to bolster the economic viability of his farm.

‘Community Development and Access to Healthy, Local Food’ panel featuring (from left to right) Rickey Smith of Urban Green, Jeremy Samson of Slow Food Orange County, Megan Penn of Orange Home Grown, Sonora Ortiz of the Downtown Santa Ana Farmers’ Market, and Tim Alderson of Solutions for Urban Agriculture. Photo credit: Robert Puro, Seedstock.

A panel on ‘Community Development and Access to Healthy, Local Food’ followed. The panel, which was moderated by Rickey Smith of Urban Green focused on the value of food system-related community development tools, from farmers’ markets and community and school gardens to larger scale community food initiatives to feed and provide food security to those in need. Featured panelists included Megan Penn of Orange Home Grown, Sonora Ortiz of the Downtown Santa Ana Farmers’ Market, Jeremy Samson of Slow Food Orange County and Cultivate Together, and Tim Alderson of Solutions for Urban Agriculture. The panelists examined the importance of organizing the community to build a stronger food system. “If you are interested in ag, you need to be an activist,” said Slow Food Orange County’s Jeremy Samson. In stressing the community impact of farmers’ markets, Megan Penn of Orange Home Grown noted that “the farmers market feels like church to me. It creates community and a sense of place.” On the value of community farming efforts, Tim Alderson of Solutions for Urban Agriculture noted that “community gardens are valuable when the community values them.”

A farm-to-fork networking lunch featuring aquaponically grown greens served up by sponsor Oceans & Earth Restaurant followed. The afternoon sessions, which followed, featured panels on the practicalities of urban farming, the potential for controlled environment farming in the city, finding funding for local food and farming endeavors, and a keynote address on the urban agriculture opportunity in California from Dr. Rachel Surls, Sustainable Food Systems Advisor for UC Cooperative Extension – Los Angeles County.

The urban farming panel was moderated by Dr. Surls and featured panelists Rishi Kumar of The Growing Home, Dr. Aaron Fox of Cal Poly Pomona, Dr. Sara Johnson of California State University, Fullerton, and Anna Maria Desipris of The Ecology Center. The panelists delved into the practical details of urban farming from how one can start a farming project, and the importance of pollinators to obtaining community buy-in, success factors, and accessing land. Dr. Fox of Cal Poly Pomona instructed prospective entrepreneurs considering urban farming ventures to “figure out the why first,” and to know your market. On running a viable urban farm, Kumar exclaimed, “we bought a house on a 1/2 acre lot. The house rent pays for the farm. We have the land for free.”

A discussion of the economic potential of indoor agriculture in cities and how it is strengthening local food systems was moderated by Chris Higgins or Hort Americas and featured panelists Nate Storey of Bright Agrotech, Chef Adam Navidi of Future Foods Farms, Ed Horton of Urban Produce LLC, and Erik Cutter of Alegria Fresh. In acknowledgement of those that question the wisdom and need for indoor farming, Chris Higgins of Hort Americas asked, “why are we the only industry that turns its back on technology?” In response to a question about the food justice implications of indoor farming, Nate Storey of Bright Agrotech countered by that controlled environment agriculture is primarily a commercial opportunity. “It’s not set up to serve outliers,” he said.

The day concluded with a panel focused on finding funding for local food and farming endeavors, which was moderated by Robert Puro of Seedstock. The panel, which looked at funding opportunities available to new and existing farmers and food makers, as well as the obstacles that they face in obtaining this funding, featured panelists Colin and Karen Archipley of Archi’s Acres, Derek Lutz of American AgCredit, Leila Mozaffari of the Orange County Small Business Development Center, and Mary Abad of Slow Money SoCal. Karen Archipley of Archi’s Acres urged small farmers to check out USDA FSA micro loans to help them launch their ventures. Mary Abad of Slow Money SoCal implored entrepreneurs looking for funding to “treat money as one of your most important inputs, and to shop for the best quality.”

Attendees then ended the day over cocktails and flat breads at Oceans & Earth Restaurant in Yorba Linda.

The Grow Local OC – Future Farm Field Trip visited The Riverbed in Anaheim, an aquaponics community farm that uses minimal water to operate and produces over 2,000 pounds of food for underserved residents. Photo credit: Robert Puro, Seedstock.

Day two of the conference featured the “Future Farm Field Trip” on which a select group of attendees paid visits to urban and indoor agricultural operations to bear witness to the innovative local food endeavors that are stimulating community and economic development in Orange County. The field trip kicked off with a stop in Anaheim at The Riverbed, an aquaponics community farm that uses minimal water to operate and produces over 2,000 pounds of food for underserved residents. Then it was on to Alegria Fresh in Irvine where attendees ate lunch provided by sponsor Tender Greens, and learned from Erik Cutter about the importance and vitality of soil as well as how urban microfarms can supply communities with locally grown, fresh produce while reducing transportation and preserving natural resources. The tour then moved on to Irvine-based Urban Produce LLC, an indoor vertical farming operation that uses advanced hydroponic technologies in a controlled environment. The day, as well as the conference, concluded at Chef Adam Navidi’s Future Foods Farms, which produces all organically grown products in several 2,000-4,000 square-feet greenhouses, and is one of the largest aquaponic farms in the state.

Indoor Farming May Be The Future of Food Production

Indoor Farming May Be The Future of Food Production

• By Morgan Miller, morgan.miller@iowastatedaily.com
•  
• Updated Nov 14, 2016

Some people believe that as the world population increases, so does the need for a change in agriculture. 

Companies such as Indoor Farms of America and FodderWorks have been developing new technologies to allow people to be able to grow their own food and be able to provide feed for livestock throughout the year to better accommodate the increasing population. 

One of these concepts, indoor farming, is a new type of farming that can be self-contained and put into indoor spaces.

“We're not making anymore land but seem to be making more people, and that’s the problem,” said Justin Akers, co-owner and manager of FodderWorks, during a lecture at Iowa State on Monday. 

Indoor farming serves to benefit those living in urban environments who pay a lot of money for fresh produce. The use of indoor farming could be used in the basements of supermarkets in the future or even under the dining centers at Iowa State.

On each panel of the indoor farm Aeroponics Model 325, plants can be grown and easily transported to different locations. The FodderWorks model can be transported by trailer with stacks of wheat grass grown in a type of grow house installed in the trailers.

Both types of future farming also serve great economic benefits that can decrease the price that people actually pay for the food. Since both systems are easy to manage, fewer labor hours and resources can be used to produce the crops.

Most of the costs of the vegetables and fruits come from shipping costs, so decreasing the amount of transportation needed for the crops can also lower the pollution created by transporting and processing the crops.

“Depending on what indoor space you have, you can control the speed and growth of the crops,” Akers said.

The use of indoor farming and self-sustained fodder farming can be easily controlled to be able to grow during anytime of the year.

The main difference between a traditional farm and the indoor farm would be the seasonal changes. Because seasons won’t really matter for an indoor farm, they can grow crops that are not in season and supply grocery stores with a constant flow of fresh produce.  

Akers noted that this is just the beginning of a new generation of farming that we will be exposed to.

This could be a great addition to large institutions like Iowa State to decrease carbon footprints, reduce spending and supply students with the freshest produce, he said. 

OPCOM Farm Makes Indoor Gardening As Easy As Plant, Pick and Plate

Our gardening systems combine advanced lighting, water management, and horticulture know-how, making it easy and fun to grow produce that is even fresher than farm-to-table; we call it Farm-on-Table.

LOS ANGELES, CA (PRWEB) NOVEMBER 14, 2016

OPCOMLink USA announced today its OPCOM Farm indoor gardening systems, which enable anyone to easily grow their favorite vegetables, herbs, sprouts and fruits inside their homes, year-round.

The GrowBox and GrowWall models couple OPCOM’s soil-free, hydroponic growing technology with proprietary color LED lighting tuned for optimal plant growth. These next generation indoor gardens enable 25 percent faster growth cycles, and eliminate the challenges of weeding, pests and weather normally associated with outdoor gardening.

GrowBox, a tabletop system incorporating four multi-wavelength LED lamps, is able to grow up to 50 plants at a time. GrowWall offers a space-saving vertical design with advanced LED tubes that support up to 75 plants displayed on five different levels. Both models use approximately 90 percent less water than traditional outdoor gardening, offering an environmentally friendly way to grow.

“Our gardening systems combine advanced lighting, water management, and horticulture know-how, making it easy and fun to grow produce that is even fresher than farm-to-table; we call it Farm-on-Table,” said Rajeev Mishra, Vice President and General Manager of OPCOMLink USA. “Given the overall concerns around eating safe and healthy fruits and vegetables, OPCOM Farm offers customers convenient and affordable solutions to personally grow clean and fresh food the entire year.”

The GrowBox and GrowWall are priced at $499 and $599 respectively, and are available on http://www.OpcomFarm.com and Amazon, right in time for the holiday season.

“You don’t have to be a gardener to enjoy our products,” Mishra says. “We are finding a lot of interest among urban dwellers, conscious consumers looking for pesticide free and non-GMO produce, and parents wanting to nurture an interest in their kids for healthy eating. It’s also a great option for seniors and others who would like to garden without the physical toll.”

Given their impressive water conservation and zero carbon footprint, such systems are considered a highly sustainable way to grow.

“Hydroponics is the future of farming and food production,” Mishra maintains, “and OPCOM is committed to being at the forefront of this revolution.”

For more information and videos about OPCOM Farm indoor gardening products, visit http://www.OPCOMFarm.com.

About OPCOM

OPCOMLink USA Inc., based in Costa Mesa, Calif., is OPCOM’s regional sales and marketing headquarters for the Americas. The company was established in 2014 to introduce advanced imaging and lighting technologies in products that help people achieve smart, healthy, and simple lifestyles. OPCOM is a global technology pioneer of advanced imaging and lighting solutions, delivering breakthrough technologies and quality products to the world’s top brands for over 20 years.

Organic Farmers Fight USDA to Defend Their Turf

Organic Farmers Fight USDA to Defend Their Turf

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Antonio Perez/Chicago Tribune

A worker at FarmedHere, an organic hydroponic “vertical farm” near Chicago, carried arugula that is ready to be packaged.

By Janelle Nanos Globe StaffNovember 13, 2016

Dave Chapman is not afraid of getting a little dirty. For the past 36 years, he’s dug his hands into the soil to plant, then pick, organic tomatoes from his fields and greenhouses in rural Vermont. His love of organics is rooted in a simple motto: “Feed the soil, not the plant.”

So when he heard that hydroponic growers were starting to obtain USDA certification that declared their crops organic, Chapman was incensed. What is organic, he wondered, without the marvel of microbes inherent in dirt?

“They try to pretend that they’re me,” he said. “They aren’t. It’s a lie.”

Now Chapman is digging in his heels against what he calls the invasive growth of organic hydroponics, grown by farmers who use extensive watering systems and chemical nutrients. He’s pushing the USDA to, as he puts it, “keep the soil in organic” and prevent hydroponic farmers from gaining a designation that’s become both on-trend and remarkably lucrative.

Like many other organic farmers, Chapman believes that only things grown in the earth — with its melange of bacteria, earthworms, and animal scat — are connected to the ecosystem. Hydroponic growers, by contrast, are engineering their way to harvest, he said, planting seeds in soil-less trays, then pumping in nutrients via extensive watering systems.

To Chapman, it’s the equivalent of a patient who is fed intravenously while on life support.

The USDA has designated a task force to tackle the issue of whether hydroponics deserve organic certification, and the agency reports that only about 30 farms internationally have been certified, none of which operate in Massachusetts.

But hydroponic growers are closely watching the debate and doing a bit of their own mud-slinging, countering that their systems are pesticide-free and more sustainable for the planet than conventional farming, and allow for crop production to happen anywhere, from an urban warehouse to an African desert.

“When we grow indoors, we control the environment completely,” said Justin Gallant, president of Boston Greens, a hydroponic greenhouse in West Kingston, R.I. While his farm is not certified, he is quick to note that it doesn’t use some of the chemicals that even organic farmers are allowed to use to control crops.

“We’re better than organic,” he argued.

That kind of thinking is anathema to farmers like Eliot Coleman, an author and organic advocate who runs Four Season farm in Brooksville, Maine. To the 77-year-old grower, organic is much more than a label. And he worries that “large hydroponic operations can make billions by just putting this word on their products.”

If this sounds like a bunch of pitchfork-wielding hippies pitting themselves against i-Phone-toting, hydroponic “crop specialists,” that’s not totally off. But organics are now a $43 billion industry and the label can command a premium for any farmer willing to do the work to meet the standards, which the USDA defines as “protecting natural resources, conserving biodiversity, and using only approved substances.” Chapman’s Long Wind Farm now supplies Whole Foods, Shaw’s, and Wegmans with his organic produce, but he says he’s already being edged out on grocery store shelves by hydroponic growers encroaching on his turf.

The USDA’s task force has issued a preliminary advisory on the topic and will meet on Nov. 16 in St. Louis to review the issue further and hear public comments. Chapman sits on the task force, and late last month, he hosted the Rally in the Valley in Thetford, Vt., to rile up his base. The tractor parade and protest drew more than 300 supporters.

To these farmers, the very ethos of organics is at stake.

But there’s more to it than that. It’s the story of a movement that has far outgrown its own roots. In the ’70s and ’80s, before the USDA began to certify organics or customers were willing to pay more for them, New England farmers like Chapman and Coleman faced off against an industrial agricultural system that relied on fertilizers, pesticides, and other chemicals to produce food.

“The USDA saw the organic movement as undermining people’s trust in good old American agriculture,” Chapman said.

But the Organic Foods Production Act of 1990 began to shift public perspective, and today that small green and white certified organic badge has become a signifier of purity in the eyes of many consumers. As written, the legislation allows for some hydroponic production, but in recent years, soil farmers have pushed back as they’ve watched the organic label crop up in places they never imagined.

They were wary when large industrial farms began to phase out harmful pesticides in the pursuit of USDA’s organic standards. They looked on quizzically as consumers began to seek out organic beauty products (“Shampoo? Come on, that’s not what organics is about,” Chapman said). But when industrial farmers (like California-based berry producer Driscoll’s) began to increasingly seek, and receive, organic certification for their hydroponic crops, Chapman and his colleagues were incredulous.

“There is nothing sustainable about plastic troughs and soluble fertilizers made in a factory,” said Coleman, the organic activist. “The idea that some soluble solution could be a substitute for all of the known and millions of unknown processes going on in the soil? That’s just utterly ridiculous.”

Farmers and the USDA have been vying over hydroponics for years, said Tim Griffin, an agriculture professor at Tufts University. And while organic farmers suggest that the nutrient content in hydroponically grown crops is less than in those grown in soil, he said, the research doesn’t show it.

“I’m not sure that the evidence base for that is very strong,” he said.

Founder Paul Sellew checked on some lettuce at Little Leaf Farms in Devens.

Organic hydroponic growers say because they can grow local food year round and much faster than traditional farmers, they can offer customers greater access to healthy produce. And they worry that the future of modern farming is at risk if restrictions are put in place.

“This is being led by very few people that have not considered the impact of a new generation of urban, largely minority farmers who are really excited about entering this industry,” said Megan Klein, president of FarmedHere, an organic hydroponic facility housed in an old box factory on the outskirts of Chicago. Inside the vertical farm, trays of basil and pea shoots stack up toward the 22-foot ceiling, all bathed in the pink glow of LED grow lights.

FarmedHere has been certified since 2012, and Klein believes hydroponic operations won’t encroach on the production of the 31,000 organic soil farms around the world. But losing an organic designation “would be devastating to us,” she said.

Other hydroponic growers are looking beyond organic, and say the locally grown label now carries the same weight, if not more, for their customers.

“I think local trumps organic,” said Paul Sellew, founder of Little Leaf Farms in Devens. His lettuces aren’t certified (“It would be nice,” he admitted), but they can be picked and placed on grocery store shelves in Greater Boston within hours. Among his selling points: “You know your farmer, it’s in the region, and you’re supporting your own economy.”

And in an era of climate change and drought, hydroponic growers say their methods are more sustainable. “By growing hydroponically, we conserve a lot more energy and we can control the water system a lot better than an average organic farmer,” said Gallant, president of Boston Greens.

Miles McEvoy, who leads the organic program for the USDA and will ultimately be responsible for enacting changes to the certification, has been watching as the fight plays out. For now, he’s saying little.

“I can see both sides on this particular issue,” he said. “Soil is the foundation of organic production, but also, organic embraces innovation.”

For Chapman, there is no room for nuance. He fears that as more large industrial organic operations begin using hydroponic methods, the original vision of what organics should be will be compromised.

In his own comment to the USDA, Chapman offered a prediction. “Every day hydroponic continues to infiltrate organic. Every day the organic label becomes less meaningful,” he warned. “Soon the hydroponic growers in organic will be too big to fail.”

Janelle Nanos can be reached at janelle.nanos@globe.com. Follow her on Twitter @janellenanos.

Hydroponics For The Home Are Elegant, Efficient

Hydroponics For The Home Are Elegant, Efficient

Friday

Posted Nov 11, 2016 at 2:00 AM

The International Space Station and your 500-square-foot studio have more in common than you might think: Both environments are a great place to experiment with hydroponics.

By Shayla Love |The Washington Post

The International Space Station and your 500-square-foot studio have more in common than you might think: Both environments are a great place to experiment with hydroponics.

Hydroponic systems grow plants not in soil but in water that is enriched with nutrients. The process is water-efficient and can be done easily in tight quarters.

Gene Giacomelli, a professor of agricultural and biosystems engineering at the University of Arizona and director of the Controlled Environment Agriculture Center, said that for those interested in commercial agriculture, incorporating hydroponics into large-scale production seems the way of the future.

But is it possible to create a hydroponic system at home?

Absolutely, Giacomelli said.

"If you understand the fundamentals, what the plants need, and you have some practical use of tools, it can be just a kiddie pool filled with water and a floating piece of Styrofoam board with holes cut in it," he said.

There are six kinds of hydroponic systems, the most basic of which is called a deep-water culture. This is what Giacomelli is referring to. It's essentially a container of nutrient-filled water, with plants floating on top of it. You'll need an air pump to introduce oxygen into the water, but it can be simply made with Ikea storage bins, a foam cooler, a bucket or any other container, as long as it sits in a place that gets a lot of light.

There are benefits to using hydroponics in small spaces, just as on the International Space Station.

"You don't have to haul around the heavy soil or artificial soil mixes, which are dirty," Giacomelli said. "You don't want these things floating around your apartment."

You can grow your plants year-round, increasing productivity by eight to 20 times as much as if you were subject to seasonal changes. Most important, Giacomelli said, all the water is recycled, so you'll use a lot less than when watering traditionally.

"Every drop that you put into the system, if you're careful, all of it is used to grow the plant," Giacomelli said. "In our hydroponic indoor closed systems, we might use, easily, only 10 percent of the water you would use outdoors."

It sounds appealing, especially for those in urban areas where gardening is not an option. But who wants a bunch of buckets or foam coolers in their apartment? Michael Zick Doherty, a permaculture designer from California, said that once you've got the basics down, it's easy to transform a hydroponic system into something that adds to your home decor.

He designs hydroponic systems by taking into account the surrounding environment, whatever it may be: architecture, cabinet color, kitchen tiles. He's a fan of using innovative materials: On a research residency in Singapore, he experimented with systems made of clay.

"I think hydroponics has gotten a pretty negative image because they aren't aesthetically pleasing a lot of the time," he said. "I think it's easy to take that next step. Even pipes: Something as simple as making a wood enclosure around them would totally change the feel of them. Find ways to obscure the more mechanical parts."

While living in New York in 2013, Doherty was part of a small team that designed a hydroponic kitchen island. It's a sleek piece of furniture with drawers that pull out to reveal trays of microgreens. The water reservoir is hidden at the bottom.

They also built a window system that uses the nutrient film technique, where the water is pumped up and trickles down over the roots of a plant. These systems cost more to create, but if they look nice, they can become a seamless part of a well-designed home or office.

Beautiful doesn't have to be expensive. Britta Riley is the founder of a social enterprise called Windowfarms, and its first designs used water bottles to create a similar window system. She started an open-source website, on hiatus for this summer, so designers all over the world could share their designs.

If you're interested in hydroponics but not ready to build your own system, there are plenty of ready-made ones to buy, Doherty said. Some are aquaponic systems, which put fish in the water to create the nutrients the plants need. Windowfarms has created a product to purchase, though the designs are available (at bit.ly/2b9kVhF) for those who want to take a DIY approach.

Online, there are hundreds of instruction sets and designs, varying from low- to high-end. Doherty created a Pinterest board (pinterest.com/neufuture/designer-horticulture) where a hydroponics novice can browse and get inspired.

You don't have to grow food plants in your system, though many people in the hydroponics community are part of a growing urban agriculture scene.

"The past 15 years, I've seen this tremendous movement to locally grown food and an interest to know where the food comes from," Giacomelli said. "They say, 'Hey, I'll grow it myself, and I feel more comfortable eating it knowing exactly how it's grown.' "

Riley emphasized that using hydroponics in your apartment does not mean you will stop going to the grocery store. It won't save you loads of money on food, but it will provide you with a small supplement to your diet and insight into the life cycle of a plant.

Doherty said that if it's your first time, take it easy. Try an herb, such as basil or mint.

"Mint is a weed, and it loves hydroponics," he said. "Just see how it works, and then once you've grown that mint and you're happy and you understand a little bit about the system, then start branching out, grow some basil, but just don't grow tomatoes."

He laughed and said that tomatoes, often a first inclination for new indoor gardeners, are one of the hardest plants to grow.

"Don't even think about it – just grow mint," he said. "Everyone loves it. You can make so many mojitos from all the mint you grow."

World's Largest Vertical Farm Grows Without Soil, Sunlight or Water in Newark

World's Largest Vertical Farm Grows Without Soil, Sunlight or Water in Newark

AeroFarms has put $30m into a green revolution that seeks to produce more crops in less space, but whether it’s economically viable is an open question

Malavika Vyawahare in Newark, New Jersey

Sunday 14 August 2016 13.00 BST Last modified on Friday 11 November 2016 11.38 GMT

An ambitious, almost fantastical, manifestation of agricultural technology is expected to come to fruition this fall. From the remains of an abandoned steel mill in Newark, New Jersey, the creators of AeroFarms are building what they say will be the largest vertical farm, producing two million pounds of leafy greens a year.

Whether it even qualifies as a “farm” is a matter of taste. The greens will be manufactured using a technology called aeroponics, a technique in which crops are grown in vertical stacks of plant beds, without soil, sunlight or water.

“I ate some of the arugula here,” said New Jersey governor Chris Christie after a recent visit to a smaller AeroFarms facility in the neighborhood. “It tastes fabulous. No dressing necessary.”

The farm, built in the economically depressed New Jersey city promises new jobs, millions of dollars in public-private investment, and an array of locally grown leafy greens for sale. The company has spent some $30m to bring to reality a new breed of “green agriculture” that seeks to produce more crops in less space while minimizing environmental damage, even if it means completely divorcing food production from the natural ecosystem.

AeroFarms and other companies developing similar controlled growing climates claim to be transforming agriculture. Proponents of vertical farming call it the “third green revolution”, analogizing the developments to Apple and Tesla. They tout the potential of such technology to address food shortages as the world population continues to grow.

AeroFarms touts their products as free of pesticides and fertilizer, an attribute that investors think will attract customers who buy organic produce. “We definitely see the need for healthy food in the local area and Newark in particular,” said Lata Reddy, vice-president for corporate social responsibility at Prudential Financial, one of the investors in the project. 

But, food that is not grown in soil may not be palatable to many, even those who are opting for organic substitutes. “If you take the soil out of the system, is it a legitimate organic system?” questioned Carolyn Dimitri, director of the food studies program at New York University. The US Department of Agriculture does not consider the question of organic certification for growing methods that do not use soil, according to AeroFarms’ website.

“Urban farming is trendy,” Dimitri said. It remains an open question, she said, whether it will be economically viable. Prudential Financial has invested “patient capital” in the venture, which is used to finance social impact projects that are unlikely to yield benefits right away. There are no aeroponics projects of this scale but AeroFarms has piloted the technology at Philip’s Academy charter school in Newark, where students are served greens grown at the school.

Seventy times the yield of traditional farms

Marc Oshima, the chief marketing officer at AeroFarms, yanked open a tiny grey door in a back alley in downtown Newark that leads into an old nightclub with vividly painted walls. In 2014, AeroFarms converted the space into a research and development facility. “Out there, in nature, we don’t have control over sunlight, rainfall,” Oshima said, “here, we are giving plants what they need to thrive.”

The moist sanitized air that envelops the R&D lab is missing one ingredient: the earthiness that permeates any agricultural operation.

At the repurposed sites, AeroFarms is pushing the limits of what David Rosenberg, the company’s CEO, calls “precision agriculture”. The scheme ditches the romanticized ideal of farming, acres and acres of open fields dotted with men and women toiling in the sun, getting their hands dirty, in favor of enclosed urban spaces where engineers, electricians and harvesters mill about, wearing protective clothing, masks, and gloves.

With its multicolored LED lights, computer screens lining the walls, and faithful preservation of club decor, AeroFarms’ research facility could easily pass off as a sci-fi themed club. It makes a befitting setting for a company that is promising to increase crop yields by as much as 70 times compared to traditional field farms, without using any pesticides or fertilizers.

The fine print is that the productivity is calculated using square footage occupied and not the vertical space utilized, making comparisons with ground floor-only traditional farms fraught. And critics point out that no traditional farm that size comes with a price tag of over $30m.

Much of the funding is coming from impact investing arms of big-ticket investors like Goldman Sachs and Prudential Financial. AeroFarms has leveraged its social impact goals to attract investments, promising to create jobs in a languishing economy and supplying fresh local produce to the community in Newark.

For New Jersey, where unemployment rates have been persistently above the national average, the promise of new jobs and fresh investment has ensured buy-in from the state. Christie, visiting the smaller aeroponics facility in March lavished praise on the “public-private” partnership.

The New Jersey Economic Development Authority provided nearly $9m in incentives, stretched over 10 years, which includes a $2.2m grant under the Economic Redevelopment and Growth program and $6.5m in tax credits.

AeroFarms currently employs close to 100 people, and is promising more jobs in the months to come as the company grows. Like other companies in this space, it is relying on productivity gains to offset high cost of expensive technology and emerge as a successful business.

But even growing success isn’t a sure thing, let alone profit margins.

‘More like a factory than a farm’

AeroFarms has grown over 250 types of leafy greens and sells more than 20 varieties of greens such as arugula, kale and spinach but hopes to expand their offering in the future. The scheme imposes height constraints; as of now, everything grown at vertical farms is a type of short-stemmed leafy green. And while controlled growing allows year-round production and protects these new-age farmers from the vagaries of nature, they still contend with the possibility of crops dying from human error or technological malfunction.

Rising from the middle of what used to be a dance floor is a gargantuan growing machine about 20-feet tall. The rectangular apparatus is a stack of growing beds, each about 20-feet long. It resembles a gigantic fridge missing its outer casing, but instead of being used to store greens, they are growing inside. Inhabiting patches on the seven-tier machine, are leafy greens of all ages: seedlings, shoots and fully grown plants. Freshly minted leaves fluttering gently in an artificially conditioned breeze.

Above each bed are columns of LED lights, bathing the plants in a sharp white glow. When plants photosynthesize they convert light of certain wavelengths into chemical energy, and store it for future use. This light does not necessarily have to come from the sun, Oshima explained.

Under the bright lights the plants appear to be embedded in crumpled soggy blankets. The use of growing mediums other than soil is not unique to aeroponics; planting seeds in cotton has been a popular idea for many a school science project. In recent years a related technology called hydroponics, that uses water as a medium to grow plants, has caught on. But Oshima is quick to distinguish aeroponics from hydroponics emphasizing that their technology is superior. And the key to the technology, is what happens under the microfleece membrane. If peeled it would reveal bare roots enveloped by nutrient-rich mist.

Farming in artificially created conditions is itself not an entirely novel idea. Similar techniques are used in extreme environments where growing food the traditional way is not possible, including the United States South Pole Station, where researchers live in a isolated hostile conditions for months at a stretch, and the International Space Station has its own space garden deploying a growing system called Veggie.

The rationale for using similar methods in places where land has for centuries been tilled to grow food emerged at the turn of the century in response to urbanization and population growth. The world’s population will bloat to 9.7 billion by 2050 and 70% of people will reside in urban areas, according to the World Health Organisation. Using large swathes of land for growing food will not be an option, supporters of vertical farming argue.

Dickson D Despommier, a microbiology professor and a top proponent of vertical farming, sees the agricultural technology not just as a response to food crisis but also as a means of returning land that was previously used for agriculture to its natural state.

“We are just academics, we just sit here and watch these ideas grow,” Despommier said on a podcast he hosts on urban farming, marveling at the scale of the new operation.

AeroFarms has built its sales pitch to investors around more pressing and concrete concerns like land and water shortages, meeting the demand for locally grown greens, and climate change. Growing and selling locally means emissions associated with transportation are reduced. What remains unclear is how the company accounts for emissions arising from the farm’s substantial energy needs.

Vertical farming cropping up around the world

In the last decade a few bold schemes have built on this seminal idea, with the first commercial vertical farm set up in Singapore in 2012. Japan boasts of its own semiconductor factory-turned-lettuce farm, an idea that gained some traction after the Fukushima reactor meltdown in 2011 exposed the susceptibility of arable land to long term contamination. In the UK Growing Underground has converted a second world war bomb shelter in London into a hydroponics farm.

In the US at least five new commercial vertical farming operations have emerged over the past five years that use a range of controlled growing technologies to allow year-round harvests of crops that typically have a short growing season in Michigan, and more efficient water use in California. At Ouroboros Farm in California, for example, hundreds of fish are fed organic feed, the waste produced by them is used to nourish seedlings and plants floating on raft beds above the fish tanks.

Some experts like Dimitri believe that such large urban farms are so far afield from traditional ones that “farm” may not be the word for them. “It is more like a factory than farm,” she said, “almost like broiler production, very controlled and regimented.”

Half of all US food produce is thrown away, new research suggests

“People want to be hopeful, they want a solution that works,” Dimitri said. “Some people think it is the way of the future. I think it is just another production technology, I don’t think it is going to turn agriculture on its head.”

New agricultural technologies like aeroponics are unlikely to make a dent in the global food crisis, for now. Countries which face the highest food insecurity don’t dabble in expensive new technology, and even if they do, the produce may not reach underserved populations. “It is a technology whose time has come for the rich,” Despommier argued, noting that “it is already popular in Japan, and countries in the Middle East that want to reduce dependence on food imports have also shown interest.”

Reddy was also measured in her assessment: “What we see here will not disrupt the entire farming industry but a particular niche.”

But proponents like Despommier see enterprises such as AeroFarms as a way forward. “There is no limit to what you can do,” he said, while acknowledging that one of the biggest challenges going forward will be growing other crops like rice and wheat, crops that could feed the world.

HATponics: How To Feed 20 Million People By 2020

HATponics: How to Feed 20 Million People by 2020

Posted by Amy Storey on Nov 4, 2016 9:06:10 AMFind me on:

At some point, you must stop talking and start doing.

HATponics is what happened when somebody took that realization to heart.

Ryan Cox, CEO and founder of HATponics (hydroponics, aquaponics, terraponics) realized the need for action in 2012.

He heard a lot of talking about solving global and domestic hunger problems, but not many people were taking action to solve the problem.

The people that were doing something were focusing on ineffective measures; movie stars and philanthropists spent millions on transporting food to the hungry, but troubles encountered en-route caused waste.

The food that did arrive at its destination was only a temporary solution. It’s used up, and then what? People are hungry again.  “Give a man a fish, he eats for a day. Teach him to fish, he eats for a lifetime.”

Ryan saw a problem with this mainstream solution. He decided to do something different. So he started a non-profit called Inner City Aquaponics to prototype a farm.

Then in 2013, he gathered a team of competent, like-minded people around him, and he started to execute on better ideas on a wider scale.

The goal of this organization, named HATponics, is to feed 20 million people with sustainable farm systems by the year 2020.

Driven by a strong vision, lots of hard work, and partnerships made with hundreds of schools on the east coast, HATponics started accomplishing their goal.

The company takes two approaches to feeding people. The first is by teaching students to grow food in their schools, and the second is partnering with schools to build sustainable farms internationally.

Their core tools to feeding people are:

• Aquaponic, hydroponic, and terraponic systems being used to feed and teach U.S. students
• The Global Challenges program.

How US Schools play a role in feeding people

A key trait of sustainability is creating solutions that function now and in the future. For HATponics, this means both building systems now and giving future farmers the tools to do the same.

To date, HATponics has partnered with over 1000 schools across the eastern coast of the US.

Schools with hydroponic or aquaponic systems give their students and parts of the community an opportunity to eat healthy produce and learn to grow it themselves.

Each school’s farm system is custom-made to fit the school's goals. Some schools focus on feeding students and the community, others on integrating the systems into lesson plans. Most schools use systems for both. 

Malcolm Bridge Elementary in Bogart, Georgia outfitted their first system this September. 

Less than two months ago, the HATponics crew built an aquaponics system for the 5th grade class taught by Merritt Arnold. The vertical aquaponic garden uses a zero-gravity fish tank and 16 ZipGrow Towers.

The system is still cycling (microbes are establishing over the course of a few months which will power nitrification), but he’s already using the system to work through the scientific process with his students.

Mr. Arnold hopes to eventually contribute fresh, nutritious produce to the school cafeteria and the community. 

The future is exciting for Malcom Bridge's farm. Dedication of teachers like Mr. Arnold combined with the support of HATponics allow schools to feed current and future students.

Many schools take this goal a step further by participating in the Global Challenges program.

Global Challenges: building beneficial partnerships

Through Global Challenges, schools have the opportunity to meet the specific needs of a community elsewhere in the world.

For instance, a village in Ethiopia may need an aquaponic system that they can use to grow food and fish, but they need it to be powered by solar panels.

HATponics would take this need, connect it with a school, and work with a class to design the system that the village needs. Then if possible they would take the class to Ethiopia to install the system.

Most recently, students designed a vertical axis wind turbine to power an aquaponics system in Swaziland, Africa.

In total, HATponics has guided three student challenges and fifteen global builds, and have reached many other countries with consulting, training, and design.

In just three  years, HATponics has accomplished a significant portion of their goal. They estimate that through their systems around the world 5 million people are being fed with fresh food.

Take action in your community.

One thing that everybody who has worked with HATponics stresses is that you don't have to know everything. Growing food is a learning curve, and the folks of HATponics are there to help people learn their systems. 

Ready to stop talking and start doing? Get connected with HATponics and make it happen!

Over One Million Grown!

Over One Million Grown!

Green Sense Farms has just announced that they have grown 1.4 million plants using their innovative vertical farming technology. 

Headquartered in Portage, IN, Green Sense Farms is the largest indoor vertical farm network.  These progressive farms grow leafy green vegetables (micro greens, baby greens, culinary herbs and lettuces) indoors in stacking hydroponic towers in a controlled environment year-round, without the use of pesticide, herbicides, and GMOs.

Using sustainable farming practices, Green Sense Farms can grow vegetables, using much less land, water and fertilizer than traditional field farms. They conserve resources, which is good for the environment and the bottom line. Green Sense Farms is working towards zero net energy use, and zero waste, recycling all water.

Green Sense Farms has launched an Equity Crowd Funding campaign.

To learn more about this investment opportunity, please visit StartEngine: https://www.startengine.com/startup/green-sense-farms-llc

Arctic Farming: Town Turns To Hydroponics For Fresh Greens

Arctic farming: Town Turns To Hydroponics For Fresh Greens

The landscape is virtually treeless around a coastal hub town above Alaska's Arctic Circle, where even summer temperatures are too cold for northern-growing forests to take root.

Amid these unforgiving conditions, a creative kind of farming is sprouting up in the largely Inupiat community of Kotzebue.

A subsidiary of a local Native corporation is using hydroponics technology to grow produce inside an insulated, 40-foot shipping container equipped with glowing magenta LED lights. Arctic Greens is harvesting kale, various lettuces, basil and other greens weekly from the soil-free system and selling them at the supermarket in the community of nearly 3,300.

"We're learning," Will Anderson, president of the Native Kikiktagruk Inupiat Corp., said of the business launched last spring. "We're not a farming culture."

The venture is first of its kind north of the Arctic Circle, according to the manufacturer of Kotzebue's pesticide-free system. The goal is to set up similar systems in partnerships with other rural communities far from Alaska's minimal road system—where steeply priced vegetables can be more than a week in transit and past their prime by the time they arrive at local stores.

There are other tools for extending the short growing season in a state with cold soil. One increasingly popular method involves high tunnels, tall hoop-shaped structures that cover crops.

But the season can last year-round with indoor hydroponics, which uses water and nutrients to grow vertically stacked plants rooted in a binding material such as rock wool.

Anchorage-based Vertical Harvest Hydroponics, which builds enclosed systems out of transformed shipping containers, partnered with Kikiktagruk. The 2-year-old company also sold the system to a farmer in the rural town of Dillingham.

"Our vision is that this can be a long-term solution to the food shortage problems in the north," said Ron Perpich, a company founder. "We're hoping that we can put systems anywhere that there's people."

But the operations have challenges, including steep price tags. Startup costs in Kotzebue were around $200,000, including the customized freight container and the price to fly it in a C-130 transport plane from Anchorage, 550 miles to the southeast.

The town also relies heavily on expensive diesel power, so operations could eat into profits.

In addition, moving tender produce from its moist, warm growing enclosure to a frigid environment can be challenging. And farming can be a largely foreign concept to Native communities with deeply imbedded traditions of hunting and gathering.

Still, the potential benefits outweigh the downsides, according to Johanna Herron, state market access and food safety manager.

Grown with the correct nutrient balance, hydroponics produce is considered just as safe as crops grown using other methods.

"It's not the only solution," Herron said. "Hydroponics is just a piece of it, but certainly an excellent thing for communities to look into."

Alaska Commercial Co., which has stores in nearly three dozen remote communities, is carrying Arctic Greens in the Kotzebue store. This week, the Dillingham AC store is beginning to sell produce grown in the local farm's hydroponics system. The chain will bring the Arctic Greens brand to more locations if expansion plans prove cost-effective, AC general manager Walter Pickett told The Associated Press.

"The produce is fantastic, at least what we've been seeing out of Kotzebue," he said. "The customers love it."

Lisa Adan is among the Kotzebue residents who regularly buy the produce. She said there are plans to start providing it at the local hospital's cafeteria, where she is an assistant manager.

Adan said the locally grown greens are superior to the produce that's transported north.

"It's so much better," she said. "It tastes like it just came out of your garden."

For now, the new business is operating as a prototype, especially as it enters the long, harsh winter season in Kotzebue, 26 miles north of the Arctic Circle.

The town, the regional hub for northwest Alaska villages, is built on a 3-mile-long spit, and many there live a subsistence lifestyle. The community has a chronically high unemployment rate, with the school district, state and local hospital among its major employers.

For now, the biggest selling point of the hydroponics produce is freshness. Prices are parallel with greens brought up from the Lower 48.

But operators are trying to work out kinks and find ways to lower energy costs, possibly through such alternatives as wind power, according to Anderson.

"We want to be a benefit to the community," he said. "Not only do we want fresher produce, but affordable produce."

Nearly 400 miles to the northeast, the village corporation in the Inupiat community of Nuiqsut is considering acquiring one of the systems. Joe Nukapigak, president of the Kuukpik Corp., said he plans to travel to Kotzebue after Thanksgiving to see hydroponics in action.

Unlike diesel-powered Kotzebue, Nuiqsut is just miles from the Prudhoe Bay oil field and taps into far less costly natural gas.

Nukapigak envisions the oil industry as a possible customer if hydroponics takes hold in his village. He also likes the thought of same-day freshness as opposed to produce that's sometimes ruined by the time it arrives.

"If we have a local operation like that, it would not get spoiled as much," he said. "It would be made locally, and that would help."

 Explore further: Farm in a box: Shipping containers reused for fresh produce

Trendy Indoor Farms Will Allow You To Have Personal Produce

Trendy Indoor Farms Will Allow You To Have Personal Produce

Eve Turow Paul,  I write about Millennials and food culture.  

Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.

Now, what if this simple houseplant could feed you too? Companies like Grove, SproutsIO, Aerogarden and Replantable are working to make your in-home edible garden a reality, with compact aquaponic, aeroponic and hydroponic systems that will seamlessly integrate into your living room, kitchen, or wherever your green-thumb strikes you.

With rising rates of “nature deficit disorder,” a raucous Millennial obsession with food, only 2% of Americans living on farms, and skyrocketing rates of stress, distraction, and anxiety, many entrepreneurs believe that in-home “farming” can alleviate many of modern society’s pain points . The goal is not necessarily to feed people exclusively from their countertops. The mission, instead, is far more philosophical. And a bit political.

“ I really believe that people need to have more of a connection to their food ,” states SproutsIO co-founder Jennifer Farah. Farah began her journey to in-home gardening via architecture, designing grow-walls and other mechanisms to bring nature into cities. Then, as a Masters candidate at MIT, Farah was able to observe the benefits of taking this concept down to a more personal level, as she watched young students interact with an early prototype of a SproutsIO growing system.

First and foremost, Farah believes that we, as a society, a better understanding of our food will ultimately lead to greater respect for produce and thus improve diets. But overall, Farah focuses more on the fun and creativity generated by putting seeds into the eater’s hands.

Grocery store produce sections are limited by the current supply chain: what produce can survive the travel time, the refrigeration, what’s worth the shipping and handling costs, what can be harvested in bulk, etcetera. Indoor growing systems allow consumers to explore thousands of varietals of tomatoes or lettuce or basil that simply aren’t available at the local supermarket.

And with Sprouts IO, users can even customize the environment of a plant to grow a product exactly as they want it. Think of it as personal produce. For example, if you like a more peppery arugula or a sweeter tomato, you can adjust the nutrient levels and misting of your SproutsIO system to cultivate ingredients with your desired characteristics. “These things are allowing us to get more nuanced flavors,” explains Farah. It’s for this reason that SproutsIO launched first with chefs. And it’s also part of what excites users: putting all the control and creativity into their own hands. It’s like building a recipe far before the measuring cups are taken out of the drawer. 

Both Grove and SproutsIO put the act of “farming” into a plug-and-play setting, utilizing the benefits of technology to connect people with something truly un-digital: plant growth and the act of harvest. Both Grove and SproutsIO are regulated by app, allowing users to monitor and assess their units even while away from home. It also relieves the user of many of the unknowns and uncontrollable elements of traditional farming.

“When the microwave came out people didn’t know why they needed it or what to do with it,” says Farah, “but soon people gravitated towards it.” Why, Farah ponders, shouldn’t growing produce become ubiquitous in our lives? “When we’re cooking for friends and family, why shouldn’t some of that produce be grown in your home? I do think it will become more a part of people’s everyday experiences.”

The transparency and interactive design of these in-home units also encourage education and conversation, notes Grove co-founder Jamie Byron. “It’s social. The entire family,” he says, or your group of friends or a classroom, “really come together around this experience. It’s a shared responsibility.”

As an undergraduate student at MIT, Byron was able to witness the communitarian, as well as health aspects, of in-home gardens. Back in 2013, Byron built an aquaponic system with a “Rube Goldberg Machine”-like contraption of PVC pipes, lights, and bins that balanced in the window of his fraternity house where he shared a bedroom with Grove co-founder Gabe Blanchet. The eye-sore experiment eventually flowered into a mass of peas, chard, tomatoes, kale and more.

Though Blanchet was at first skeptical of his roommate’s fish and greenery creation, the benefits of his little jungle were obvious. While the fraternity hallway smelled like beer and body odor, Byron and Blanchet’s room provided an oasis of oxygen-rich air and attractive foliage. The two found themselves grazing on their home garden daily, thus increasing their vegetable intake. Inspired by this makeshift garden, the roommates graduated and founded Grove to create a clean-cut product that has already found its way into some school and homes. Byron hopes that one day they can put their indoor gardens in prisons and hospitals to offer not just physical benefits, but the positive emotional experience as well.

“There’s this joy that people don’t talk about,” says Farah. “When you’re planning your vacation, there’s a joy in setting up that experience, and then the vacation is the culmination of that. Growing your own produce can provide a similar joy. When I can also incorporate produce I’ve grown to make a dinner, it’s even more special.” Both founders, independently, observed that the true benefit of their products is actually not what they had originally thought it would be, that growing produce at home has ramifications far beyond great tasting food. Ultimately, they hope these units will become touchstone items for creativity, connection to nature, and perhaps, an tool for taking a deep breath of fresh air and enjoying the roses…or wheatgrass…or whatever you have growing in your kitchen corner. 

 Usurping the common supply chain opens a whole new window of exploration for foodies and farm enthusiasts alike.