Are Hydroponic Vegetables as Nutritious as Those Grown in Soil?

Are vegetables grown hydroponically as nutritious as those grown in soil?

The bottom line is it depends on the nutrient solution the vegetables are grown in, but hydroponically grown vegetables can be just as nutritious as those grown in soil.

“Much as I think that soil is just great for growing plants, hydroponics has come a long way,” said Marion Nestle, a professor of nutrition, food studies and public health at New York University. “I’ve seen hydroponic producers who have tested their leafy greens for key nutrients, and the amounts fall well within normal limits for their crop and are sometimes even higher.”

Traditionally, plants obtain nutrients from soil. With hydroponics, the plants get nutrients from a solution instead. (Aeroponics, in which the plants’ roots are suspended in the air, is similar except fertilizer is misted onto the roots.) Usually inhabiting large warehouses or greenhouses, hydroponic plants are arranged indoors, often in tall shelves, and they rely on artificial light rather than sunlight.

Plants make their own vitamins, so vitamin levels tend to be similar whether a vegetable is grown hydroponically or in soil. It’s the mineral content that can vary in hydroponic crops, depending on the fertilizer used.

“You can enhance” a plant’s nutrient levels “simply by adding nutrients to the solution" they’re grown in, said Allen V. Barker, a professor at the Stockbridge School of Agriculture at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. “You could add whatever you wanted: calcium or magnesium, or minor elements like zinc or iron.” The result is that vegetables grown hydroponically could even be “nutritionally superior” to traditionally grown ones, he said.

Keep in mind that nutrient content varies for produce in general, regardless of the growing method. The differences relate to the type of fruit or vegetable, the time of year it is harvested, how long after harvesting the crop gets eaten, and how it is handled and stored from farm to fork.

Remember, too, that these differences in nutrient levels are unlikely to have a significant impact on overall health. The key message from most nutrition experts is simply the more vegetables you eat, the better.

Sophie Egan is the author of "Devoured." Follow her on Twitter @SophieEganM

Green Wolf Vertical Farm: Bringing Freshness To The Texas Panhandle

Green Wolf Vertical Farm: Bringing Freshness to the Texas Panhandle

Posted by Amy Storey on December 23, 2016Find me on:

Hundreds of years ago, the Texas panhandle was home to thousands of buffalo. After a few centuries of buffalo stomping on the ground, the soil was compacted and dense, leaving a challenge to future farmers.

Now, the land cattle country and home to thousands of acres of corn, wheat, milo, cotton, and other commodity crops grown by large farmers who have to amend the soil to make a living.

Although commodity growers (think wheat, soybeans, etc.) have established themselves and adapted their practices to grow in the hard Texas soil, small farmers have not.

The dramatic amendments that would have to be made to grow sensitive crops in the area are cost prohibitive, and other factors make growing too challenging to be profitable.

But to some, the lack of fresh produce is an opportunity, not an obstacle.

Marre Seleska currently runs Green Wolf Vertical Farm in Amarillo, Texas. She's a great example of someone who saw the challenges, and raised them a vertical farm.

According to Marre:

"The Texas Panhandle has long been known for its capricious weather. Soaking rains with the occasional crazy hail storms in the spring, hot dry winds in the summer, hot then cold fall and the occasional blizzard and then heat wave in the winter and of course drought. All of this weather craziness makes it our greenhouse and microgreen production so valuable in this area."

Marre is one of the only growers in her area, and certainly the only that can offer fresh leafy greens. Others that grow mostly grow okra, squash, tomato, beans, and peas. Fresh chard and kale, lettuce, and other greens are nearly impossible to find.

Marre, like many small farmers, didn't start out with plans for a large farm. In fact, she first started growing in a 15 by 20 foot sunroom to test the idea. She knew she would have to do three things with the space:

- Control the environment to balance the harsh Texas weather. 
- Use unique growing methods to get the most out of the 300 square foot space.

Marre began growing in a ZipGrow hydroponic system with a relatively small goal. 

"After much research into different ways of growing produce that DIDN’T involve traditional farming due to the poor soil, the unavailability of small plots of land and crazy weather, we found that the ZipGrow Towers combined all of the best parts of hydroponic systems in a much smaller space . . . It really just started out as an experiment for providing for family. I come from a line of women who did that for their families."

But as she began to test the growing techniques, the potential of the operation dawned on her.

"I began to see that this could turn into a commercial venture quite easily. Because it was nothing like those around [me]."

Marre saw the potential to scale and start selling produce. So she did it. She polished a crop list, added microgreens to the system, and started selling at farmer's markets. Market-goers loved them.

"We had repeat customers at the farmers market who came specifically for that. They're learning that they can bump up their nutrition without having to eat bushel baskets of lettuce and kale and broccoli. . . they can get microgreens and add it to their salad and bump up their nutritional intake by anywhere from 4-40%."

In comparison to the trucked-in greens, Marre's have higher quality and a much longer shelf life because they are younger when the customers get them. 

"With the microgreens, nobody sells them live here. They're all cut. And they don't last very long. Where with mine, they last seven to ten days. Its fresher, it tastes better. I had one [customer] tell me that 'I never knew lettuce had a flavor until I bought yours.' "

This shared experience is part of what powers Marre and Green Wolf. "Being able to tell someone, 'here taste this' and watch their eyes light up... oh, that just gets me."

Green Wolf's produce certainly makes an impression. Consumers and chefs began to take notice and soon farmers market sales grew into restaurant sales. 

Marre's farm - named Green Wolf Vertical Farm - represented a whole new palette of flavor and color for chefs, who Marre sees as food artists.

Where grocery stores might have alfalfa sprouts and sunflower shoots, Marre tests15-16 different varieties of microgreens alone. 

Marre also has an advantage because as a small, personal farm she is able to customize orders and try out crops for customers.

If chefs are the artists, Green Wolf Vertical Farm is the ultimate art depot.

"They can talk to us and ask 'can you grow this' and 'I want to try something different'. I do a lot of consulting with chefs with their menu. I've had catering chefs what would go with a greek dinner. I do a lot of research on that also."

As Green Wolf Vertical Farm becomes a more valuable resource for chefs in the area, Marre is thinking about how to expand that resource to others in the community. 

"I see it expanding to a lot more than just local chefs. Because we started out at a farmer's market, we had a lot of people who were able to try them out who had never heard of them before, who had no idea that they could even buy them."

Now, Marre is finishing up a greenhouse where she can expand the crop selection to her community to include crops like eggplant, gourmet bell peppers, salad tomatoes, and peas.  

"We have a medium sized high hoop greenhouse that we will have half in the ZipGrow Towers and half in grow bags (for fruiting crops).  In that space, not only can we grow year round, we can grow more than if we were using a traditional farming model with less loss." 

Future of Food: 'Urban AG Field Trip’ To Explore Urban Farming Operations in L.A. County

Future of Food: 'Urban AG Field Trip’ To Explore Urban Farming Operations in L.A. County

Press release from our friends at Seedstock. We had a wonderful time at their Grow Local OC event and are planning to attend this field trip as well:

Slated for Friday, January 27, 2017, the Seedstock 'Future of Food - Urban Ag Field Trip’ will look at the impact of urban farming in Los Angeles County, the most populous county in the United States.

The trip will offer an excursion into the diversity of urban farming and state-of-the-art hydroponic, aquaponic and aeroponic agriculture operations in Southern California. Tour participants will be treated to lectures and sessions from pioneering farmers who are embracing innovative business models and growing systems to both increase food security and take advantage of the escalating demand for local food.

“Urban agriculture ventures ranging from commercial hydroponic enterprises and rooftop aeroponic farms to community gardens planted atop formerly vacant lots are not only disrupting the food system, but also generating community and economic capital,” said Robert Puro, co-founder and CEO of sustainable agricutlure social venture Seedstock. “The tour will give attendees an up close and personal look at the impact and future of agriculture in cities.”

Scheduled Field Trips Stops include:

The University of Southern California (USC) Teaching Garden - The USC Teaching Garden utilizes aeroponics to challenge the food systems status quo on campus. It was established to supply fresh produce to the university’s on-campus restaurants, dining halls, catering services, and hotel, while also teaching students and staff about flavor and sustainability. The garden utilizes aeroponic towers to produce chemical-free fruit, vegetables, herbs, and edible flowers without traditional soil growing media.

Local Roots Farms is an indoor vertical farming company based in Los Angeles that designs, builds, deploys, and operates controlled environment farms. Situated in shipping containers, the farms (called TerraFarms) grow with up to 99% less water, 365 days a year, pesticide and herbicide free, and with absolute consistency in production. Their plug and play form provides an innovative solution to the retail and foodservice sectors by greatly reducing supply-chain risks such as price volatility and food safety exposure.

The Growing Experience (TGE) is a seven-acre urban farm in North Long Beach that is located on a previously vacant lot. TGE is unique in that it is owned and operated by the Housing Authority of the County of Los Angeles (HACoLA), which manages 3,229 units of public and other affordable housing for the county’s Public Housing program. The urban farm utilizes traditional as well as aquaponics growing systems to help meet the needs of the community by increasing access to healthy foods.

A farm-to-fork lunch hosted by Local Roots Farms featuring lettuce grown on site in the company’s TerraFarms will be provided by lunch sponsor Tender Greens.

To register and learn more, follow this link:

http://seedstockurbanag.eventbrite.com/

About Seedstock

Seedstock is a social venture that fosters the development of robust and sustainable local food systems through consulting services and the use of a variety of tools, including the news and information blog Seedstock (http://www.Seedstock.com) and live events. Seedstock works with government agencies, municipalities and all private sector stakeholders to create a sustainable food ecosystem of innovation, entrepreneurship and investment.

•  

USDA Officials Tour New York City’s “Urban Ag” Successes

USDA Officials Tour New York City’s “Urban Ag” Successes

The U.S. Department of Agriculture Farm Service Agency Administrator Val Dolcini and New York State Executive Director, James Barber, traveled to Brooklyn Monday to tour urban agriculture operations that were funded by USDA microloans. As more urban farms start in New York City, consumers can find a wider variety of fresh, locally grown vegetables, year round.

“The USDA microloan has expanded funding and opportunities for beginning, niche and small farmers to start or expand their agriculture operations,” said Dolcini. “As urban agriculture continues to grow, FSA loan programs have evolved to keep up with the needs of these unique, creative and trend-setting urban farmers.”

Nine urban entrepreneurs worked with Square Roots and USDA to start their urban farming operation. Square Roots is an organization that promotes urban farming and coaches people with a passion for local food to grow and sell produce locally while building a sustainable business. The urban entrepreneurs each used the USDA microloan program to secure a low-interest loan to lease a vertical farm from Square Roots and pay for operating expenses such as seed, water and electricity costs.

Vertical farms are repurposed shipping containers tailored for hydroponically growing vegetables and include a water system, heating and cooling units and light-emitting diodes (LEDs) designed to mirror sunlight. Each vertical farm is capable of producing the equivalent of what is grown on two acres of farmland.

Square Roots aims to connect local consumers to the urban farmers who grow a variety of greens and herbs that will be sold at local farmers markets and to local restaurants. The producers expect to harvest their first crop this month.

USDA microloans are low interest loans developed to better serve the unique financial needs of new, niche and small to mid-sized family farm operations. Microloans offer more flexible access to credit and serve as an attractive loan alternative for smaller farming operations, like specialty crop producers. Borrowers can use the microloan for operating expenses or to purchase, expand or improve a farm. The maximum loan amount is $50,000.

To learn more about the USDA microloan program, visit www.fsa.usda.gov/microloans or contact your local FSA office. To find your local FSA office, visit http://offices.usda.gov/.

Vertical Farming Market Worth US$ 6 Billion by 2022

12-21-2016 01:07 PM CET - Business, Economy, Finances, Banking & Insurance

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Vertical Farming Market Worth US$ 6 Billion by 2022

Press release from: (MRE) Market Research Engine 

Florida, December 20: Market Research Engine has published a new report titled “Vertical Farming Market by Growth Mechanism, Functional Mechanism and by Geography - Global Forecast to 2022”.

Vertical Farming is the future of modern day agriculture which is completely done in indoor agriculture labs. The vertical Farming market is expected to cross USD 6 Billion by 2022.

Browse full report here - www.marketresearchengine.com/reportdetails/vertical-farmi...

Vertical farming is an urban farming method where plant cultivation is carried out in multi storied building greenhouses using hydroponics or acquaponics growth mechanism. The vertical farming market will include those companies which are engaged in providing food by using vertical farming method and also the companies which provide various infrastructural services and equipment required for vertical farming. One of the main points is providing quality food with minimum use of pesticides is that these food products can be consumed by critically ill patients and by people having dermatological problems.

The report segments the global vertical farming market on the basis of functional device, growth mechanism and geography. The report also gives the detail vertical farming market by crop types with more emphasis on key vegetables and fruits produced in vertical farms.

How Vertical Farming is basically done?

Here plants are grown hydroponically, or without soil, nourished instead by the recycling of a nutrient-rich water solution. Some such farms rely on aeroponics, where the water solution is misted onto the plants' roots. The farms are typically several stories tall, allowing for crops to be stacked in an enclosed space. Photosynthesis is brought about by artificial light, and sometimes augmented by natural light, like in a greenhouse.

The primary reason of adoption of vertical farming technology as it will help to increase the crop production without increasing additional land area. This method will not use traditional farming methods rather new cultivation methods are used like hydroponics or acquaponics. 

Hydroponics is most widely used for vertical farming.

The main driving factors for vertical farming are high quality of food with no use of pesticides and also no crop failures due to changing weather conditions.

The main players in the vertical farming are Green Sense Farms, Sky Greens, Indore Harvest Corporation, MoFlo Aeroponics and Everlight Electronics.

Download Free Sample Report: www.marketresearchengine.com/requestsample/vertical-farmi...

Who Should Buy this Report?

• Technology Providers
• Technology Investors
• Technology Standards Organizations
• Modern Agricultural Forums, Alliances, and Associations
• Government Agencies
• Venture Capitalists/Investors
• Private Firms
• Analysts and strategic business planners, and others.

Segmentation of this Report:

By Growth Mechanism

• Aeroponics
• Hydroponics
• Others

By Functional Mechanism

• Photosynthesis Process/Lighting
• Hydroponic Components
• Climate Control
• Sensors

By Geography

• North America
• Europe
• Asia-Pacific
• Rest of the World (ROW)

About MarketResearchEngine.com

Market Research Engine is a global market research and consulting organization. We provide market intelligence in emerging healthcare technologies, niche technologies and markets. Our market analysis powered by rigorous methodology and quality metrics provide information and forecasts across emerging markets, emerging technologies and emerging business models. Our deep focus on industry verticals and country reports help our clients to identify opportunities and develop business strategies.

Media Contact

Company Name: Market Research Engine
Contact Person: John Bay
Email: john@marketresearchengine.com
Phone: +1-855-984-1862, +91-860-565-7204
Country: United States
Website: www.marketresearchengine.com/

Address: 3422 SW 15 Street, Suite #8942, Deerfield Beach, FL 33442, United States

Five Urban Farming Projects In Chicago To Watch In 2017

Five Urban Farming Projects In Chicago To Watch In 2017

Greg TrotterContact ReporterChicago Tribune

Come spring, a new urban farm is expected to take root in Lawndale with a groundbreaking for a $3.5 million year-round facility.

The Farm on Ogden, as it will be called, is a partnership between Lawndale Christian Health Center and Windy City Harvest, Chicago Botanic Garden's urban farming program that grows more than 100,000 pounds of produce a year in addition to training low-income people of color how to farm.

Like a tomato plant bursting from a pothole, Chicago's urban farming scene is a tiny hope-filled industry in a tough city, steadily growing as a source of jobs, economic development and food in some of the poorest neighborhoods on the South and West sides. That growth will continue with an assortment of new projects and expansions in 2017.

The Lawndale neighborhood farm, at 3555 W. Ogden Ave., will provide a needed boost to Windy City Harvest, allowing it to double its training capacity and increase overall production, said Angela Mason, associate vice president of the urban farming program.

"This will be a really warm and welcoming space when we're through," Mason said, standing in the cavernous vacant building that will be transformed into an indoor farm and community center.

There's still another $395,000 left to raise, but the plan is to continue fundraising while building the project, Mason said.

The roughly 30,000-square-foot facility will house a 50,000-gallon aquaponic system, a greenhouse, cold storage area and — facing West Ogden — a "healthy corner store," Mason said. It also will feature a commercial kitchen for making "value-added" products like salsa and for hosting cooking classes.

The health center will own the facility; Windy City will be the tenant. Rent will be paid in the form of produce for the fledgling VeggieRx program, in which health care providers "prescribe" boxes of produce for people with chronic health conditions, Mason said.

Produce grown at Windy City's 13 other sites also will be aggregated at and distributed from The Farm on Ogden. Currently, about half of the program's produce is sold to restaurants through a produce wholesaler — an important source of revenue that helps support services that generate less money. The rest of the produce is sold at a lower price in low-income communities.

Part of the goal, Mason said, is to make the program more self-sufficient by eventually increasing the earned revenue into a 50-50 split with raised revenue. Once the Lawndale facility is operational, Windy City will be able to grow more produce make more money, and rely less on grants.

But equally important to Windy City, the indoor farm will broaden the program's impact. Currently, the initiative trains about 200 people per year — a mix of community college students, at-risk youth and nonviolent criminal offenders in separate programs. After the Lawndale farm is built, that number will more than double.

Rosario Maldonado manages and coordinates sales for Windy City in addition to farming her own quarter-acre plot of land as part of Windy City's incubator program. The Farm on Ogden will help provide more income for her and other farmers in the winter because they'll be able to make products like salsas, jellies and teas in the commercial kitchen, she said.

"We need to become more self-sustainable as a city, so we need to find ways to do more year-round production all around," Maldonado said.

Windy City Harvest isn't the only farm in town. Here are other urban ag projects happening in 2017.

City of Chicago

The city is jumping into the urban farming game, aided by a $1 million federal grant, one of 45 projects awarded a total of $26.6 million this year through the U.S. Department of Agriculture's annual Conservation Innovation Grants.

Through its "Growing for Chicago" initiative, the city plans to promote and coordinate urban farming efforts, provide microgrants and training through partnerships with existing nonprofits, and prepare vacant land in the Englewood neighborhood for farming, said Chris Wheat, chief sustainability officer for Chicago.

The first order of business will hiring the city's first full-time urban agriculture coordinator, who will serve as a liaison of sorts between city departments and the various nonprofits and businesses doing the farming, Wheat said. One of the goals is to streamline the bureaucratic process for those wishing to farm to obtain the necessary permits, he said.

The city is also in the process of acquiring and remediating land near the long-awaited Englewood Line rail trail, and will eventually coordinate with public trusts and nonprofits to place farmers on the land, Wheat said.

"Urban farming in Chicago in 10 years looks to be an important element of economic development and important in terms of how communities come together," Wheat said.

Growing Home

Growing Home, an Englewood-based urban farm and job training nonprofit, has its own expansion plans. Currently, Growing Home grows about 30,000 pounds of produce on about 1 acre.

Within the next five years, the plan is to expand the farming operations onto two nearby parcels of donated land, more than doubling the operation, said Executive Director Harry Rhodes.

Accomplishing that will take more money. Growing Home is conducting a feasibility study, which could lead to a fundraising campaign in the next couple of years, Rhodes said.

Job training is the top priority of Growing Home. This year, 52 people enrolled in Growing Home's 14-week work training program and most of them later secured full-time jobs, Rhodes said. After the planned expansion, Growing Home's goal would be to triple that impact by training between 150 and 200 people a year.

"You hear about the shootings," Rhodes said. "You don't hear enough about the good things happening in Englewood."

Chicago awarded $1M USDA urban farming grant

Urban Canopy

Alex Poltorak is building his own urban farming dream in Englewood.

This year, Urban Canopy grew about 10,000 pounds of produce on about 1.25 acres of farmland established on top of a parking lot in Englewood, as well as microgreens inside a former meatpacking plant in the Back of the Yards neighborhood.

Unlike both Windy City Harvest and Growing Home, Urban Canopy is a for-profit company but measures success in terms of jobs provided and environmental impact — not just its bottom line, said Poltorak, its founder, who declined to discuss specific revenue and profit figures.

In the spring, Urban Canopy received a $12,000 grant from the Frontera Farmer Foundation and used the money to expand the farm, Poltorak said.

The plan for the year ahead is to build the farm out more, hire more people and continue to prove the business model, Poltorak said.

Advocates for Urban Agriculture

Not all farming involves digging in the dirt. Billy Burdett, executive director of Advocates for Urban Agriculture, is trying to cultivate a garden of data that will help Chicago's urban farming movement coalesce.

In a partnership with NeighborSpace and DePaul University, Burdett's organization is building an interactive online map of all the urban farms in the city, the Chicago Urban Agriculture Mapping Project.

Currently, the map shows 66 urban farms in Chicago — a definition that includes nonprofits and commercial enterprises alike — up from 50 when the mapping project launched in March of last year.

But Burdett acknowledged the map needs some updating. At least one farm on the map is no longer in business.

In a few months, Burdett's group will hire some college students to update the data, he said.

In time, the mapping project also will include data such as the number of people employed and the amount of produce grown at each farm, he said. The point is to become a more organized and formalized industry in Chicago, which will help with advocacy efforts.

"We want to make sure this is as up-to-date as possible and we're really excited to expand the information that it covers," he said.

gtrotter@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @GregTrotterTrib

Here's What Happened at Freight Farms in 2016

Here's What Happened at Freight Farms in 2016

December 20, 2016

It's been another momentous year at Freight Farms, and we want to take a moment to celebrate just how far we've all come. If you’ll recall, at the end of last year we pledged to empower even more farmers across the globe, expand our own capabilities as a team and bring to light the power of farmhand. We've tallied up some numbers to see where we stand at the end of 2016...

We're thrilled to have over 100 Leafy Green Machines operating all across the world, by farmers with incredibly diverse backgrounds and motivations. As this network of freight farmers takes shape across the globe, we are excited to witness just how influential they are on the food movement as a whole.

With so many farmers joining the movement, we needed to scale up our own capabilities to ensure we were able to support them all! This year we added 11 new faces to the Freight Farms team, almost doubling our size! What departments grew the most? The Customer Success Team, the Farm Team and the Software Development Team.

The reasons for the growth of the Customer Success and Farm Team are pretty obvious, but why Software Development? One reason: to expand the capabilities of farmhand. Farmhand is what connects us and our farmers to the LGM, and it is an incredibly powerful tool. In 2016 we launched and improved numerous features to gather over 2.6 billion data points from all the LGMs.

That’s just a glimpse into what happened this year...take a look below at the rest of the highlights from 2016.

The View From Inside Square Roots’ Urban Shipping Container Farms

The View From Inside Square Roots’ Urban Shipping Container Farms

By April Joyner / CONTRIBUTOR

Square Roots, the urban farming accelerator launched by Kimbal Musk and Tobias Peggs, began its yearlong program in the Pfizer Building on the border of Williamsburg and Bed-Stuy. Due in part to the boldface name behind it, and also to the growing popularity of urban farming, the program got lots of buzz right off the bat. So how’s Square Roots’ bid to kick off a “real food” revolution going?

Last Wednesday, Peggs opened up Square Roots’ doors to the public for a tour of its shipping-container farms and a first taste of its 10 participants’ greens.

The program, as he pointed out, emphasizes the “urban” in urban farming: the container farms are just across the street from the Marcy Houses, and they connect to the city’s water supply through a fire hydrant. And there’s a good reason the farms have a pink-purplish glow. Red and blue are the colors most actively involved in photosynthesis, Peggs said, so to maximize resources the farms use those colors for lighting. Electricity is the farms’ greatest expense.

As for the tasting, Technical.ly was able to sample some mustard greens, at $5 a bag, grown by participant Sylvia Channing. Upon the urging of another participant, this reporter ate them raw, straight out the bag (which she would’ve never done otherwise — not Southern tradition), and they were surprisingly enjoyable: crisp and tangy.

But the real challenge ahead isn’t how the greens taste; it’s whether the participants can make viable businesses out of them. The program has hit the five-week mark, and the participants’ crops are set to reach their first harvest, which means they will finally have tangible goods to sell. Next Wednesday, Dec. 21, Square Roots will host its first farmers market.

Sign up to visit

The farmer-entrepreneurs have been given free rein to develop farming and business strategies of their own choosing. The challenge, both Peggs and the program’s participants stressed, is figuring out how to make the economics work. The modular farms, which use technology from Boston-based Freight Farms and Laramie, Wyo.–based Bright Agrotech, cost about $3,000 a month to run, according to participant Jonathan Bernard. But they also produce a relatively high yield, given the space: one farm, for instance, could yield 55,000 mini-heads of lettuce per year, Peggs said. The farming system Square Roots uses allows the participants to yield a weekly harvest once their first crop matures.

In addition to learning how to operate their farms, the participants are also getting advice on sales and marketing, including the basics of pricing: enough to meet their expenses, but not so much that customers will balk. For instance, Bernard plans to charge no more than $3 each for his mini-heads of lettuce in order to keep his prices competitive.

While Square Roots paid for the cost of the farm and the initial expenses to run them, the participants will be responsible for meeting expenses thereafter. The farming system itself is quite reliable, Bernard said, but without a real product just yet, none of the farmers has a customer base. Whether enough people will come to shop is an open question.

“I’m fine with that risk,” Bernard said. “Maybe I was chosen because I’m one of the people who’s crazy enough to consider it.”

Jonathan Bernard, one of Square Roots’ participants, in the accelerator’s office. (Photo by April Joyner)

As it turns out, even their choice of crops involves marketing strategy. For now, all of them are focusing on herbs and leafy greens, because they offer the most bang for the buck — the majority of the plant is eaten, as opposed to, say, a strawberry plant, from which only the fruit would be sold. In the beginning, Bernard said, they were given starter crops by lottery — each person drew a particular choice of plant — and then traded amongst each other for their preferred crop. Since then, they’ve had the opportunity to pick crops that appeal to their desired market.

And yes, as this reporter learned, there is a specific market segment for certain vegetables. Some of the participants have chosen specialty crops, such as Japanese shiso, to sell to high-end restaurants, while others are focusing on selling more common greens such as lettuce at farmers markets.

Another participant we spoke with, Electra Jarvis, chose kale and cilantro in order to appeal to vegetarians and vegans. Kale, of course, has been a trendy green (almost to the point of punchline) for some time, in part because it is known for being rich in nutrients. Jarvis chose cilantro, she said, because it’s versatile as a seasoning and as a garnish for many types of dishes.

She’s applied to several farmers markets, including New York City’s greenmarket program. Jarvis said she hopes to sell at the farmers market in Greenpoint’s McCarren Park, both for its relative proximity to her farm and its enthusiastic customer base. In addition, Jarvis, who is vegetarian and in the process of transitioning to a vegan diet, plans to attend meetups that cater to vegetarians and vegans in order to familiarize herself to her target customers.

“I want them to feel supported by somebody’s who looking out for that cause, to be a farmer that they can relate to,” she said.

On the farming side, the participants are beginning to experiment as well. At the launch of the program, they received general guidelines for the appropriate temperature, light and humidity settings for their farms, as well as a standard nutrient mix — potassium, nitrogen and phosphorus — for their plants. But as Peggs explained, the containers enable farmers to create custom environments, or “recipes,” for their crops — even to mimic particular climes in hopes of, say, reproducing the best kale out of Tuscany. Many of those “recipes,” which are usually tailored to specific plants, are proprietary, Jarvis told Technical.ly, so it’s been up to the farmers to figure out what works best for their specific crops.

So what drew Square Roots’ participants to the program in the first place?

As Peggs noted in our previous interview with him, they are indeed passionate about changing how people think about the food they consume. Bernard, for instance, is an avid cook interested in having high-quality ingredients available to the average person. He lives in Huntington, on Long Island, where he’s currently testing out his lettuce with members of a local CrossFit gym. His eventual dream, he told Technical.ly, is to see Square Roots’ urban farming system shrunk down into a module that could fit into a home kitchen.

“Once people start doing this at home, then they’re changing habits,” he said. “They’re not just paying more at the restaurant or at the grocery store, but they’re actually taking part in it. I think the consumer is the end goal.”

Jarvis also came to the program with a keen interest in the food industry. She is a student in Pratt’s masters program in sustainable environment systems, from which she’s on track to graduate this spring. Jarvis told Technical.ly that’s she particularly interested in helping to promote a plant-based diet as well as exploring whether vertical farms such as those used in Square Roots’ systems could be a path toward food justice — in other words, making fresh vegetables more accessible to everyone.

“I don’t know if this is the answer, but that’s what I’m here to find out,” she said.

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April Joyner is a journalist who covers business, tech and finance. As a freelance writer, she has contributed to OZY, NewYorker.com and FastCompany.com. Joyner's writing has also appeared on Business Insider and USAToday.com.

Profile   /   @aprjoy   /   Send an email

Farm Tour and the First Farmer's Market 🌱🎅

Farm Tour and the First Farmer's Market 🌱🎅

• Wednesday, December 21, 2016

  5:00 PM to 8:00 PM

• Square Roots Urban Farming Campus

  630 Flushing Avenue, Brooklyn, 11206, New York, NY (map)

• Tour the Square Roots farms, meet the farmers, and buy a bundle of fresh, tasty, locally-grown greens - just in time for cooking up a holiday feast! 

  Our indoor, modular, vertical farms squeeze the equivalent of 2 acres of outdoor farmland into a climate-controlled shipping container. So our farmers can grow non-GMO, fresh, tasty greens all year round. Like, now! 

  This should be a fun event - so bring a friend :)

  Square Roots’ mission is to empower the next generation to become leaders in the "real food" revolution. This means coaching young, passionate people to grow real food, sell locally and build sustainable businesses. 

  The first cohort of farmer-entrepreneurs are just about to harvest their first crop. They will be growing a wide variety of leafy greens and herbs - from lettuce and basil to chard and kale to specialty items like shiso.  

  THIS EVENT WILL BE THEIR FIRST FARMERS MARKET THIS COMING WEDNESDAY (12/21) AND WE WOULD LOVE YOU TO COME. 

  We know, we know, it's a busy time of year. There are holiday parties and year end deadlines, and all sorts of legitimate excuses that could be made. But if you are buying food from the grocery store this week in time for holiday feasts, then why not buy fresh, locally-grown produce from Square Roots - and support a local farmer! 

  We are located at 630 Flushing Ave, Brooklyn. We have a community space is inside a crazy old Pfizer Pharmaceutical factory (that alone is worth seeing!), and our farm is in the parking lot (yes, really). It's right off the J, M and G trains - 10 mins max across the Williamsburg Bridge if you are coming from Manhattan.  

  The event kicks off at 5pm. We will do a farm tour at 5:30pm and again 6:30pm - where you will get to see the farms and talk about the tech. Meanwhile you can sample and buy freshly harvest, tasty greens - while hanging out with the farmers - in the comfort of our indoor space.     
   

  Thanks for reading this far down. See you there! 🌱 

The Square Roots Urban Farming Community, NYC

Farm Tour and the First Farmer's Market 🌱🎅Wednesday, December 21, 2016

• 5:00 PM to 8:00 PM

• Square Roots Urban Farming Campus

  630 Flushing Avenue, Brooklyn, 11206, New York, NY (map)

• Tour the Square Roots farms, meet the farmers, and buy a bundle of fresh, tasty, locally-grown greens - just in time for cooking up a holiday feast! 

  Our indoor, modular, vertical farms squeeze the equivalent of 2 acres of outdoor farmland into a climate-controlled shipping container. So our farmers can grow non-GMO, fresh, tasty greens all year round. Like, now! 

  This should be a fun event - so bring a friend :)

  Square Roots’ mission is to empower the next generation to become leaders in the "real food" revolution. This means coaching young, passionate people to grow real food, sell locally and build sustainable businesses. 

  The first cohort of farmer-entrepreneurs are just about to harvest their first crop. They will be growing a wide variety of leafy greens and herbs - from lettuce and basil to chard and kale to specialty items like shiso.  

  THIS EVENT WILL BE THEIR FIRST FARMERS MARKET THIS COMING WEDNESDAY (12/21) AND WE WOULD LOVE YOU TO COME. 

  We know, we know, it's a busy time of year. There are holiday parties and year end deadlines, and all sorts of legitimate excuses that could be made. But if you are buying food from the grocery store this week in time for holiday feasts, then why not buy fresh, locally-grown produce from Square Roots - and support a local farmer! 

  We are located at 630 Flushing Ave, Brooklyn. We have a community space is inside a crazy old Pfizer Pharmaceutical factory (that alone is worth seeing!), and our farm is in the parking lot (yes, really). It's right off the J, M and G trains - 10 mins max across the Williamsburg Bridge if you are coming from Manhattan.  
   

  The event kicks off at 5pm. We will do a farm tour at 5:30pm and again 6:30pm - where you will get to see the farms and talk about the tech. Meanwhile you can sample and buy freshly harvest, tasty greens - while hanging out with the farmers - in the comfort of our indoor space.     
   

  Thanks for reading this far down. See you there! 🌱 

How Antibiotic-Tainted Seafood From China Ends Up on Your Table

How Antibiotic-Tainted Seafood From China Ends Up on Your Table

You might want to pass on the shrimp cocktail.

by, Jason Gale, Lydia Mulvany, and Monte Reel

December 15, 2016, 10:00 AM GMT+1

From Subscribe Reprints

From the air, the Pearl River Delta in southern China’s Guangdong province resembles a mass of human cells under a microscope. Hundreds of thousands of tiny rectangular blocks, all of them shades of green, are clustered between cities and waterways. Livestock pens are scattered among the thousands of seafood farms that form the heart of the country’s aquaculture industry, the largest in the world.

Beside one of those fish farms near Zhaoqing, on a muggy day in June, a farmhand wearing a broad-brimmed straw hat hoses down the cement floor of a piggery where white and roan hogs sniff and snort. The dirty water from the pens flows into a metal pipe, which empties directly into a pond shared by dozens of geese. As the yellowish-brown water splashes from the pipe, tilapia flap and jump, hungry for an afternoon feeding.

Chinese agriculture has thrived for thousands of years on this kind of recycling—the nutrients that fatten the pigs and geese also feed the fish. But the introduction of antibiotics into animal feed has transformed ecological efficiency into a threat to global public health.

“We cannot trace if the shrimp is coming from ­Thailand or from China or from other countries. We cannot trace”

At another farm, in Jiangmen, a farmer scatters a scoop of grain to rouse her slumbering swine, penned on the edge of a pond with 20,000 Mandarin fish. The feed contains three kinds of antibiotics, including colistin, which in humans is considered an antibiotic of last resort. Colistin is banned for swine use in the U.S., but until November, when the Chinese government finally clamped down, it was used extensively in animal feed in China. Vials and containers for nine other antibiotics lie around the 20-sow piggery—on shelves, in shopping bags, and atop trash piles. Seven of those drugs have been deemed critically important for human medicine by the World Health Organization.

The overuse of antibiotics has transformed what had been a hypothetical menace into a clear and present one: superbugs, bacteria that are highly resistant to antibiotics. By British government estimates, about 700,000 people die each year from antibiotic-resistant infections worldwide. If trends continue, that number is expected to soar to 10 million a year globally by 2050—more people than currently die from cancer.

In November 2015 scientists reported the discovery of a colistin-resistant gene in China that can turn a dozen or more types of bacteria into superbugs. Since then the gene has been found in patients, food, and environmental samples in more than 20 countries, including at least four patients in the U.S. Food, it now appears, can be a crucial vector. “People eating their shrimp cocktails and paella may be getting more than they bargained for,” says Dr. Martin Blaser, a professor of microbiology and an infectious diseases physician at New York University Langone Medical Center who chairs President Barack Obama’s advisory panel for combating antibiotic-resistant bacteria. “The penetration of antibiotics through the food chain is a big problem.”

Included in the new issue of Bloomberg Businessweek, Dec. 19-Dec. 25, 2016. Subscribe now.

Photographer: Jamie Chung for Bloomberg Businessweek; Food stylist: Maggie Ruggiero; Typography: Simon Abranowicz

Research has found that as much as 90 percent of the antibiotics administered to pigs pass undegraded through their urine and feces. This has a direct impact on farmed seafood. The waste from the pigpens at the Jiangmen farm flowing into the ponds, for example, exposes the fish to almost the same doses of medicine the livestock get—and that’s in addition to the antibiotics added to the water to prevent and treat aquatic disease outbreaks. The fish pond drains into a canal connected to the West River, which eventually empties into the Pearl River estuary, on which sit Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Hong Kong, and Macau. The estuary receives 193 metric tons (213 tons) of antibiotics a year, Chinese scientists estimated in 2013.

The $90 billion aquaculture trade accounts for almost half of all seafood harvested or caught, according to the United Nations. China supplies almost 60 percent of the global total and is the biggest exporter. U.S. food regulators have known about the country’s antibiotic problem for more than a decade. The Food and Drug Administration intensified its monitoring of imported farm-raised seafood from China in the fall of 2006 and found a quarter of the samples tested contained residues of unapproved drugs and unsafe food additives. The following June an import alert was applied to all farm-raised shrimp and several other kinds of seafood from China, allowing the agency to detain the products at port until each shipment is proved, through laboratory analysis, to be untainted.

But antibiotic-contaminated seafood keeps turning up at U.S. ports, as well as in restaurants and grocery stores. That’s because the distribution networks that move the seafood around the world are often as murky as the waters in which the fish are raised. Federal agencies trying to protect public health face multiple adversaries: microbes rapidly evolving to defeat antibiotics and shadowy seafood companies that quickly adapt to health regulations to circumvent them, moving dirty seafood around the world in much the same way criminal organizations launder dirty money.

The Chinese government is well aware that the use of antibiotics has gotten out of hand. In 2011 it initiated a campaign to reduce antibiotic use in humans, and since then the sale of antibiotics in Shanghai has fallen 31 percent. As last month’s ban on colistin suggests, there’s a new seriousness about antibiotic use in agricultural production as well. Nevertheless, China’s rates of drug resistance remain among the highest in the world. Surveys across the country have found 42 percent to 83 percent of healthy people carry in their bowels bacteria that produce extended-spectrum beta-lactamases, or ESBLs, which create reservoirs of potential pathogens that can destroy penicillin and most of its variants. The aquaculture products sold in Shanghai teem with bacteria that can’t be killed by common antibiotics. In almost a third of random seafood samples collected in Shanghai from 2006 to 2011, researchers found salmonella, a major cause of gastroenteritis in people. A closer examination of the germs showed that 43 percent of the samples harbored multidrug-resistant strains of bacteria.

Over the past year, scientists have tracked the spread of colistin-resistant bacteria throughout Asia, Europe, and the Western Hemisphere. In May the first report of an American infected with a colistin-resistant superbug was announced. More U.S. cases were reported in June and July. By August researchers were announcing that American patients had been infected with a strain of bacteria that had developed resistance to colistin and carbapenems, another type of antibiotic often used to treat patients in hospitals with multidrug-resistant infections.

Medicine packaging at a pig farm in Guangdong.

Photographer: Forbes Conrad for Bloomberg Businessweek

Initially, the resistant bacteria from breeding grounds such as China were believed to spread mostly by international travel. Michael Mulvey, head of antimicrobial resistance at the National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg, Manitoba, was among the first to realize that seafood could also be a vector. In 2015, Mulvey’s lab secured funding for a study that enabled him and his colleagues to run a test for carbapenem-resistant bacteria on 1,328 samples of seafood collected from Canadian retail outlets from 2011 to 2015. Eight, or 0.6 percent, tested positive; all came from Southeast Asia. The findings meant that some of the planet’s most difficult-to-treat bacteria could be lingering in people’s refrigerators or on their kitchen countertops. “We are trying to make the case right now that it’s there, it’s in our seafood,” Mulvey says.

Since the early 1990s, the average amount of shrimp Americans eat annually has doubled, turning what was once a specialty dish into the country’s single most popular seafood. As recently as the 1980s, most of the shrimp consumed in the U.S. was raised domestically, primarily off the Gulf Coast. From 1990 to 2006, shrimp import volumes doubled. They’ve since leveled out at roughly 1.3 billion pounds annually, and today about 90 percent of the shrimp eaten in America comes from abroad. China’s share of imports touched an 11-year high in 2003 at 16 percent of the market. (It’s now 5.6 percent.) In 2004, the U.S. Department of Commerce announced a 112 percent tariff on Chinese shrimp, effective 2005—a response to complaints of domestic producers that insisted Chinese suppliers were selling seafood below market prices. In 2007 came the import alert.

Malaysia jumped in to pick up the slack. In 2004 imports of Malaysian shrimp rose tenfold, according to U.S. government figures. They remained elevated for a decade, peaking at about 5 percent of the market in 2008 and 2011.

There’s reason to doubt that all that Malaysian shrimp is Malaysian. Ronnie Tan, vice president of Blue Archipelago, Malaysia’s largest seafood producer, says that depending on the year either three or four shrimp producers—including his own company—operate in the country. Malaysia produced about 32,000 tons of shrimp in 2015, he says; about 18,000 tons were consumed domestically, and about 12,000 tons went to Singapore. That would leave little legitimate Malaysian shrimp to go to the rest of the world. Yet according to U.S. Department of Agriculture figures, imports from Malaysia during the past decade have exceeded 20,000 tons a year on average.

It’s a mystery that may be explained, at least partially, by examining the business practices of Jun Yang, a Chinese-born entrepreneur based in Texas. Homeland Security Investigations, a part of U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, first knew him as a honey broker. The agency arrested him in 2012 (then unarrested him so that he could cooperate with the investigation, then arrested him again) and charged him with making false claims about the honey he was selling. It was harvested in China but was passed through Malaysia, where it acquired Malaysian certificates of origin. This illegal transshipping, as the maneuver is called, allowed him to avoid paying almost $38 million in antidumping duties. The investigators untangled a network of shell companies that seemed designed solely to deceive U.S. regulators. In November 2013, Yang was convicted and sentenced to three years in federal prison.

A worker on the Datianlang farm sets out to feed the fish.

Photographer: Forbes Conrad for Bloomberg Businessweek

The investigators also determined that Yang’s main business wasn’t honey—it was seafood. His company brokered shrimp for a Houston company called American Fisheries. At the time of Yang’s first arrest, some of the shipments were still in cold-storage facilities. The feds required him, as part of his cooperation, to send samples to a laboratory for analysis. Five shipments tested positive for nitrofurans, a class of antibiotics banned in the U.S. Those tainted shrimp were eventually destroyed. All the tainted shipments had been labeled as products of Malaysia.

Despite Yang’s cooperation with the government in the shrimp investigation, his information wasn’t used to make a case. But American Fisheries itself may have provided a way to track the apparent transshipping scheme. In May 2013, American Fisheries sued Yang, saying it had received only $6.1 million of the $12.1 million Yang owed it for 74 shipments of shrimp, weighing as much as 28,000 kilograms (62,000 pounds) each, from June 2011 to January 2012. That case, still pending in Texas, as well as Yang’s countersuit against American Fisheries, has uncovered a trove of documents that detail how a Shanghai-based company hatched a plan to get its Chinese-farmed shrimp into America.

In 2005, about nine months after the U.S. antidumping tariffs on Chinese shrimp went into effect, a group of seafood executives gathered in a Shanghai conference room. Many knew one another from when they’d all worked for Shanghai Fisheries, a large company overseen by the government. The executives agreed to create a venture that would focus primarily on exporting shrimp to the U.S., despite the new tariff. They would finance and control the company from China, but it would be incorporated in Texas. That was the beginning of American Fisheries.

Some of the same executives also controlled a Shanghai Fisheries subsidiary called Guangzhou Lingshan, a seafood packing plant in the Pearl River Delta, and the plant was buying shrimp. By 2006 the company had purchased 3,000 tons of it from farmers around the town of Da’ao, according to local newspaper reports.

Guangzhou Lingshan built a lab inside the complex to test the quality of its shrimp, and the facility was considered one of the best in the region. Even so, former executives with the company say shrimp tainted with antibiotic traces made it into the company’s stock. “You know what China was like,” says Lv Wei, who worked for Guangzhou Lingshan in the trade department for nine years before leaving in 2013. Almost two-thirds of the shrimp that went through the packing facility ended up with American Fisheries, she says. “They all went through Malaysia.” Shanghai Fisheries declined to comment on Guangzhou Lingshan.

No paperwork connected to those 2011 and 2012 shipments of Malaysian-labeled shrimp indicated they might have originated in China. The certificates of origin were signed by officials at the Penang Malay Chamber of Commerce. On a day in August, a man named Mohd Noordin Ismail sits at a desk in the reception room of the chamber’s offices in the seaside district of George Town. Bespectacled and wearing chunky gold rings on his fingers, Mohd Noordin has a foot-high stack of documents teetering in front of him. He says he’s worked at the chamber of commerce for 40 years, and his duties include signing certificates of origin for products produced in Malaysia and then exported. The certification process, as he describes it, is built on trust. He’s presented with documents provided by exporters, and he rubber-stamps the certificates under the assumption that the documents are genuine and correct. He doesn’t verify their authenticity.

“We cannot trace if the shrimp is coming from Thailand or from China or from other countries,” Mohd Noordin says. “We cannot trace.”

The documents that bear his signature indicate the shrimp sent to American Fisheries was farmed at two Malaysian aquaculture facilities, Chai Kee Aquatic and Aiman Aquatic. But none of the addresses listed on those forms correspond to an aquaculture facility or to a place where shrimp could have been raised. On two separate import documents, the same address is listed as the harvesting site for both Chai Kee and Aiman Aquatic. That address corresponds to a long block of gated residential compounds. No ponds are visible on any of the properties. A woman who answers the door at one of the houses says her son was in the seafood business, but she says no aquaculture facilities could be found on her property or elsewhere in the neighborhood. Another address listed on the documents for Chai Kee doesn’t appear on Google Maps, and neither the local police nor officials at the post office can locate the street named on the forms.

Antibiotic medicines at a veterinary pharmacy in Jiangmen.

Photographer: Forbes Conrad for Bloomberg Businessweek

Mohd Noordin says it’s possible the certificates of origin and his signature could have been forgeries and that the forms never passed his desk. Malaysia’s shrimp industry is relatively small, but he says he’d never heard of either Chai Kee or Aiman. Since 2008, when the European Union temporarily banned imports from the country after several shipments tested positive for antibiotic residues and heavy metal content, only a few companies legitimately export shrimp to America, according to Mohd Noordin and others in the industry. Tan of Blue Archipelago says that while he has no direct evidence of transshipping activities, it’s commonly speculated by seafood producers in Malaysia that Chinese producers use Malaysian companies—both legitimate producers and shell companies that exist only on paper—to sneak their shrimp into the U.S.

The American Fisheries court documents suggest the company and its various distributors carefully monitored the status of the shrimp shipments it brought into the U.S. and communicated via e-mail and telephone. Once the shrimp was on a ship bound for America, ownership of the shipment was transferred to a U.S.-registered company called YZ Marine. On paper, the company doesn’t seem connected to American Fisheries and its executives in Shanghai. But the court documents show that Feng Shao, president of American Fisheries, had access to YZ Marine’s bank account and wrote a number of checks on it.

Lawyers for American Fisheries didn’t respond to interview requests for this story, but in court documents related to the Yang suit they’ve denied the company illegally transshipped goods via Malaysia. They’ve acknowledged, however, that the company was fully financed and staffed via China and that its employees worked in Texas on three-month rotations because they lacked long-term U.S. work visas. Court records also show that when one shipment of Malaysian-labeled shrimp arrived in the U.S. at a lighter weight than anticipated, a member of the American Fisheries staff checked with Guangzhou Lingshan—the facility in the Pearl River Delta—to ask if there had been a packing mistake.

The groups lobbying hardest for intensified scrutiny of imported shrimp and fish are, unsurprisingly, the American producers of seafood. The Southern Shrimp Alliance, a trade organization of U.S. shrimp producers, says the U.S. market is awash in fraudulently labeled and unsafe seafood. “What we have learned is that there are well-developed channels for getting massive amounts of food and other consumer goods into this market while evading U.S. laws,” says John Williams, the organization’s executive director.

Critics of increased inspection say it would cause gridlock at U.S. ports. “Think of all the trucks going by on an interstate, and you have a cop pulling people over for speeding,” says Peter Quinter, a customs and international trade lawyer in Miami. “You can’t pull everyone over. … Hiring more FDA officers is not the answer; it’s like shutting down the highway.”

Arguments of that nature didn’t stop the U.S. catfish industry from successfully pushing for more oversight on imports, a move that could provide a model for shrimp companies. For years the catfish industry argued that the FDA’s testing protocol, which analyzes only 1 percent to 2 percent of incoming seafood, didn’t adequately protect consumers. With the help of allies in Congress, catfish farmers got the USDA to take over import inspections from the FDA. The USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service, which will inspect all catfish imports by September 2017, began conducting preliminary, noncomprehensive inspections this spring, and proponents are thrilled by a slew of recent enforcement actions.

Aquaculture farms in Datianlang.

Photographer: Forbes Conrad for Bloomberg Businessweek

In April the FDA issued an import alert that said its district offices could detain and test all imports of shrimp and prawns from Peninsular Malaysia, a region that includes Penang. Malaysia’s Ministry of Health responded by announcing that it would tighten controls at processing plants and assume the authority to issue certificates of origin from chambers of commerce. The U.S. in the past year has started at least two investigations involving Chinese shrimp producers suspected of shipping their seafood through Malaysia, according to a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement official who is familiar with the investigations. Both probes are ongoing.

The FDA alert has virtually halted Malaysian shrimp imports. But that doesn’t mean tainted Chinese shrimp aren’t making it into the U.S. Industry and trade experts say many companies transship Chinese shrimp by following the American Fisheries model, each of them creating disposable import companies that can simply fold, or reincorporate under another name, at the first sign of regulatory scrutiny. Over the years, when Malaysian shrimp exporters were added to the FDA’s “red list”—meaning their shipments would have to be stopped at U.S. ports—the companies didn’t try to clear their names, as companies from other countries did, says Nathan Rickard, an attorney specializing in international trade whose clients include the Southern Shrimp Alliance. They just incorporated new entities with new names to do the same work.

It appears now that dirty shrimp is being routed through different countries. One that might be taking Malaysia’s place as an international transshipping hub is Ecuador, domestic shrimp producers say.

“The import alert was a huge step forward to prevent contaminated shrimp from getting to U.S. consumers, but we have also seen significant shifts in trade patterns indicating new routes and methods for getting bad shrimp into the U.S. market,” says Williams, of the Southern Shrimp Alliance. “As long as there are distributors, retailers, and restaurants that, provided that the price is low, do not know and do not care where their shrimp is coming from, we expect to see shrimp-trade fraud.”

A recent case illustrates the domestic producers’ concerns. Ocean Rancho, a company based in Rancho Cucamonga, Calif., has imported Malaysian shrimp. The company was formed by a man named Kai Hua Tan, an employee of a shrimp-farming company in mainland China called Zhanjiang Newpro Foods. Tan also has links to Tasty Goody Chinese Fast Food, a chain of 11 restaurants in California. In November 2014 the U.S. Department of Commerce said it had obtained documents showing that Zhanjiang Newpro had evaded tariffs using a transshipping scheme. When the company refused to answer questions about its operations during a review, the department imposed antidumping penalties. Ocean Rancho declared bankruptcy and dissolved, citing about $1.6 million in duties owed to U.S. Customs and Border Protection. (Tan didn’t respond to voicemails left at his listed phone number, or to phone calls and e-mails to Tasty Goody.)

Around the same time, a new company, Mita Group, formed. It has the same address and phone number Ocean Rancho used on shipping documents. No one answering the phone there would speak with a reporter. Last year, Mita Group imported at least 700,000 pounds of shrimp—from Ecuador. 
 
—With Wenxin Fan and Pooi Koon Chong

Idaho Company Farms Fresh Produce Using Modified Shipping Container

Idaho Company Farms Fresh Produce Using Modified Shipping Container

HAYDEN, Idaho – When it comes to local vegetables, some restaurants like to use the phrase “farm to table.” But what about when that farm is not in a field, but indoors – in a climate controlled shipping container?

To set this story up, let us remind you that the weather outside is cold – really cold, really gross.

Come inside Coeur Greens in Coeur d’Alene and you can see in here they have a standard shipping container. Inside is where things get really cool.

A miniature farm is inside the container. Drew McNabb, the farm manager, said they can grow enough produce in there to fill two acres of conventional farmland. It was 68 degrees inside the container when we checked.

It was a dream that was a long time coming for McNabb.

“I always wanted to be a farmer. Farming in this area, you’d only be busy two months out of the year, and I wanted to be busy 12 months out of the year,” he said.

That is where technology saves the day. The startup, Coeur Greens, purchased a decked out shipping container from a company in Boston.

“These are different nutrient tanks,” he said.

Seeds are planted in small containers and then grown using artificial light.

“Behind me there will be 4,500 mature plants that will receive water coming down from these orifices shooting down,” McNabb said.

They call it vertical farming – the roots of the plants intertwined in a mesh that hangs down. Coeur Greens is about to plant their first batch of lettuce. Other varieties of leafy greens will be on the way.

“Whether it’s arugula, kale, bok choy, Swiss chard,” McNabb said.

He said they will be able to crank out 1,100 heads of greens per week. That is year round too.

Once Coeur Greens is in full swing, they hope to package and sell their veggies to local retailers, restaurants, and school districts.

To learn more about their work, visit their website.

KREM

Agrilyst Founder Up For Vertical Farming Award

Agrilyst Founder Up For Vertical Farming Award

Allison Kopf at TechCrunch Disrupt NY.

Brooklyn’s own Allison Kopf is up for Changemaker of the Year for 2016 from the Association for Vertical Farming, a leading industry group.

It’s been quite a year for the young founder, who raised over $1 million in seed funding and headlined TechCrunch Disrupt New York 2016 after winning 2015’s San Francisco iteration. Her company, Agrilyst, makes data analytics software for farmers, with a focus on indoor farmers.

“Farms have a vast amount of production data, and, unfortunately, the information exists in fragmented, independent systems,” Kopf wrote this year. “As a result, growers are spending time and money creating optimization plans while still performing in a sub-optimal state. Farms are leaving revenue on the table. Our goal with the Agrilyst platform is to turn a burden for growers, data management, into their most useful tool.”

Funding To Boost Growth For TruLeaf Farms

BIBLE HILL, N.S. – An indoor, multi-level farming company in Bible Hill is poised for its next growth spurt after receiving a major funding injection and new business expertise.

TruLeaf Sustainble Agriculture Ltd., based in the Perennia Innovation Park, said in a news release it has closed an $8.5 million equity-finance round, which will enable it to “continue its mission” of becoming a global leader in vertical farming technology.

The company has also added Mike Durland, former CEO and group head of Scotiabank’s Global Banking and Markets Division, and Neil Murdoch, former CEO of Connor, Clark & Lunn Capital Markets, to its board of directors.

“This new round of financing and the additions to our board will help us to expand the breadth of our product offerings and increase the number of markets that we serve,” said Gregg Curwin, president and CEO of TruLeaf and GoodLeaf Farms.

“Mike and Neil bring a high level of business acumen and strategic expertise that will help us scale our business.”

TruLeaf, founded in 2011 in Bible Hill, has developed an indoor farming system that can grow fresh plants for food and medicines anywhere in the world, regardless of environment, 365 days of the year, the release said. The system integrates growing technologies in a controlled environment to grow high-quality, predictable yield and clean plants with innovative and efficient technologies.

Vertical farming combines proven hydroponic technology with advancements in LED lighting and environmental control to allow year-round production of plants indoors.

“Vertical farming is nearly 10 times more efficient than traditional agriculture and is more productive, takes up less land and uses dramatically less water,” the release said

The Seedstock 'Future of Food - Urban Ag Field Trip'

The Seedstock 'Future of Food - Urban Ag Field Trip'

DESCRIPTION

Urban agriculture ventures of all different stripes - from commercial hydroponic enterprises and rooftop aeroponic farms to community gardens planted atop formerly vacant lots - are not only disrupting the food system, but also generating community and economic capital. 

To give you an up close and personal look at a series of innovative urban farming operations that have emerged to tackle challenges to food access, meet marketplace demand for local food, and increase food security, Seedstock, a social venture that seeks to foster the development of sustainable local food systems, has put together the 'Future of Food - Urban Ag Field Trip'.

Slated for Friday, January 27, 2017, the field trip will look at the impact of urban farming in Los Angeles County, the most populous county in the United States, and include lectures on such topics as the past, present, and future of urban agriculture, vertical farming, and sourcing local food from urban farms.

Spots on the 'Future of Food - Urban Ag Field Trip' are limited, and it will sell out. So grab your tickets before it's too late!

Scheduled Field Trips Stops include:

• The USC Teaching Garden is utilizing aeroponics to challenge the food systems status quo on campus. The University of Southern California (USC) Teaching Garden was established this spring to supply fresh produce to the university’s on-campus restaurants, dining halls, catering services, and hotel, while also teaching students and staff about flavor and sustainability. The garden utilizes aeroponic towers to produce chemical-free fruit, vegetables, herbs, and edible flowers without traditional soil growing media.

• Local Roots Farms is an indoor vertical farming company based in Los Angeles that designs, builds, deploys, and operates controlled environment farms. Situated in shipping containers, the farms (called TerraFarms) grow with up to 99% less water, 365 days a year, pesticide and herbicide free, and with absolute consistency in production. Their plug and play form provides an innovative solution to the retail and foodservice sectors by greatly reducing supply-chain risks such as price volatility and food safety exposure.

• The Growing Experience is a seven-acre urban farm in North Long Beach that is located on a previously vacant lot. The Growing Experience urban farm is unique in that it is owned and operated by the Housing Authority of the County of Los Angeles (HACoLA), which manages 3,229 units of public and other affordable housing for the county’s Public Housing program. “The North Long Beach community has been historically under-served and classified as a food desert,” says Holly Carpenter, program manager with the Housing Authority of the County of Los Angeles. “The Growing Experience was designed to help meet the needs of the community by increas[ing] access to healthy foods.”

Confirmed Speakers include:

• Rachel Surls - Sustainable Food Systems Advisor for UC Cooperative Extension and co-author of the book 'From Cows to Concrete: The Rise and Fall of Farming in Los Angeles'. From the book jacket: "From the earliest pueblo cornfields to the struggles of farm workers to the rise of the environmental movement, From Cows to Concrete tells the epic tale of how agriculture forged Los Angeles into an urban metropolis, and how, ultimately, the Los Angeles farm empire spurred the very growth that paved it over, as sprawling suburbs swallowed up thousands of acres of prime farmland. More than 150 vintage images enhance and expand the fascinating, detailed history" An option to purchase the hardcover book at discount is available for purchase with your ticket for the field trip. 

• Erik Oberholtzer - Co-founder and CEO of Tender Greens

• Chef Eric Ernest - Executive Chef of USC Hospitality

A farm-to-fork lunch hosted by Local Roots Farms featuring lettuce grown on site in the company's TerraFarms will be provided by sponsor:

Ticket Refund Policy: Please note that we do not offer refunds on tickets, but you are welcome to transfer your ticket to a friend or colleague at any time up until 2 days before the event. To do so, please email us at admin@seedstock.com and include your name, order number and the name of the person to whom you would like to transfer your ticket.

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Lessons from Japan: What the Western Indoor Ag Industry Can Learn from the East

Lessons from Japan: What the Western Indoor Ag Industry Can Learn from the East

DECEMBER 13, 2016 PIETER DE SMEDT

Editor’s Note: Pieter De Smedt is the US country manager for Urban Crops, a global indoor farming group building fully robotized vertical plant factories. Urban Crops recently opened its regional headquarters in Miami, Florida, and is in the process of hiring new sales agents for the North American region. If you are interested in applying, email Pieter here.

It is well known in indoor agriculture circles that Japan has more experience with indoor farming than the US and Europe, and its plant factories are more advanced.  Here De Smedt offers his key takeaways from an event bringing the industry from both sides of the world together.

The East Meets West: Joining Forces in Ag Tech & Controlled Environment Ag event took place in Salinas, California a couple of weeks ago. It offered a day of insightful presentations by a number of Japanese and US-based companies and organizations. The main goal was the exchange of information on the current state and future direction of the indoor agriculture industry in each geography. Equally insightful were the different networking opportunities in between sessions – it is not every day one gets the chance to exchange thoughts with people in your industry from the other side of the globe.

Here are my four key takeaways from the event:

1. Data trumps dreams

When looking back at the overall event and the presentations made by the Japanese companies and organizations, the most striking comparison between Japanese indoor agriculture operations and their US counterparts was their use of data. Japan’s indoor ag practitioners are much more data driven than the typically more visionary and – let us be honest – dreamy, story-telling tone of their US peers.

This focus on data applies at the level of the plant factories themselves, i.e. the technical, biological, and financial efficiency of any given plant factory is analyzed by looking at big data and crunching the relevant numbers. Progress is achieved through decisions made as a result of this analysis. The cloud-based program SabaiX by PlantX exemplifies this (http://www.plantx.co.jp/index-eng.html) with increased yields as a result. The same applies for Dr. Toyoki Kozai of Chiba University in Japan, known as the “Father of the Modern Plant Factory” who presented his new book “LED Lighting for Urban Agriculture” at the event.

There was a little less excitement about the data presented on the performance of Japanese plant factories: 42% of the indoor plant factories were in the red, 33% break-even, and only 25% were generating some level of profit. The reasons for these sobering performance figures range from excessive capital expenditure and operating expenditure, inefficient production processes, a poorly constructed business plan that fails to capture enough margin by selling to the wrong parties, and so on.

We can assume that similar figures and the underlying drivers would emerge in the US market as well. This is typical of any innovative industry that is drawing in some over excited capital. In the mid- to long-term, the suppliers and growers that will survive will be those who can set up the right infrastructure combined with a correct production process integrated in an efficient sales plan. This has also become apparent at Urban Crops, where we assist our clients in doing just that by looking at their requirements and delivering a design feasibility study that pairs the best and most cost-effective system while giving a clear overview of the required investment and operating costs.

2. Automation will have an increasing role to play

The Japanese data presented by Factory 808 (a Japanese vertical farm) demonstrated that labor accounted for one-third of their operating costs. The total cost is even higher when indirect employee-related costs are taken into account such as training, disinfecting chambers, food safety issues, real estate requirements, and so on. This confirmed Urban Crops’ thesis that for larger scale production facilities, investing in the robotization of your plant factory has a variety of benefits to offer.

3. The large outdoor farming businesses are rearing their heads

Although they have no doubt been following the developments close-up, this was one of the first times that I saw a proportionately large number of open field farming companies attend an event with an exclusively indoor ag focus. Rocket Farms, Del Cabo, Church Brothers, and others were present in the crowd. On the one hand, this can be explained by the location of the event in the heart of the salad bowl, Salinas, California. Nevertheless, it seemed to imply that these companies are looking to diversify their production methods and – perhaps even more importantly – locations. Could we start to see California-based farming groups setting up indoor grow facilities near some of their larger markets?

4. Looking beyond food production

A lot of the incumbents in the indoor ag market are currently focused on leafy greens production and other food. That’s because, to a large extent, the marketability of indoor ag and relatively high prices offered for local food is driving the industry.

Valuable as that may be – considering the early stage of the industry – Dr. Don Wilkerson reminded us that there are other high value, per pound crops that we ought to look at. His company iBio CMO produces a range of crops for the nutraceutical sector. Although somewhat less romantic than urban local food production, the impact on sustainability as well as the economics is equally, if not even more, impressive.

We have noticed this with our customers as well. Urban Crops has a selection of growth recipes for 160 plant varieties. We continue to expand this selection based on our own assessment of the market as well as requests from our customers to grow new kinds in their systems. Engineering and biological flexibility is, therefore, key.

The East Meets West: Joining Forces in Ag Tech & Controlled Environment Ag event demonstrated that we must continue to go beyond our own borders and stay in tune with developments in all parts of the world if we want to stay relevant.

A global industry requires a global understanding.

Furniture Maker Partners On Urban 'Agrihood' Project

Furniture Maker Partners On Urban 'Agrihood' Project

December 12, 2016

| By Charlsie Dewey |

TAGS GM / HERMAN MILLER

A furniture maker is teaming up on a building renovation project that will bring a community resource center focused on agriculture to a Detroit neighborhood.

Zeeland-based Herman Miller said last month it is joining forces with Sustainable Brands, BASF, General Motors and Green Standards to support The Michigan Urban Farming Initiative, or MUFI, a Detroit-based nonprofit with a mission to use urban agriculture as a platform to promote education, sustainability and community and to uplift and empower urban neighborhoods.

MUFI said it is “debuting America's first sustainable urban agrihood,” an alternative neighborhood growth model in Detroit's lower North End, which “positions agriculture as the centerpiece of a mixed-use urban development.”

Community Center Design

Herman Miller will lend its design expertise to the new MUFI Community Resource Center, or CRC, being renovated in the agrihood — to create “purposeful, multi-use spaces” that will “enhance collaboration and foster a sense of community.”

The project partners plan to restore a three story, long-vacant building across from MUFI's urban garden into the Community Resource Center and transform adjacent vacant land into a healthy food café.

The 3,200 square foot, box-shaped CRC will offer educational programs, event and meeting space and serve as MUFI’s new headquarters.

It will also house two commercial kitchens on the first floor that will service the café and allow for the future production and packaging of "valued goods."

The project is scheduled to be unveiled as part of the Sustainable Brands '17 Detroit conference, held at the Cobo Center from May 22-25.

Surplus Furniture

Herman Miller will also help outfit the CRC through its recently announced rePurpose partnership with GM.

GM is repurposing tens of thousands of surplus office assets resulting from the renovations occurring at its Warren Technical Center, Milford Proving Ground and global headquarters in Detroit.

Managed by the Toronto-based environmental firm Green Standards, rePurpose diverts 99 percent of no-longer-needed office furniture and supplies from landfills and "transforms them into valuable in-kind donations" to nonprofits.

Since Herman Miller launched the rePurpose program in 2009, it has diverted more than 27,000 tons of product from landfills and generated $18 million in charitable in-kind donations.

Agrihood

MUFI's urban agrihood features a two-acre urban garden with more than 300 vegetable varieties, a 200-tree fruit orchard, a children's sensory garden and more.

Annually, the urban garden provides fresh, free produce to about 2,000 households within two square miles of the farm.

Since its first growing season in 2012, MUFI has distributed more than 50,000 pounds of free produce.

"Over the last four years, we've grown from an urban garden that provides fresh produce for our residents to a diverse, agricultural campus that has helped sustain the neighborhood, attracted new residents and area investment," said Tyson Gersh, president and co-founder, MUFI.

He said this is part of a larger trend being seen across the country where “people are re-defining what life in the urban environment looks like.”

“We provide a unique offering and attraction to people who want to live in interesting spaces with a mix of residential, commercial, transit and agriculture,” Gersh sai

Residential Dining Centers Embrace Farm to Table

12 Dec, 2016

by Sylvia Cranmer

A fresh, contemporary concept in dining is hitting the residential dining centers on campus.  CSU’s Housing & Dining Services is embracing the farm-to-table concept, expanding fresh, local and sustainable food options for students.

CSU recently started serving freshly grown, hand-picked lettuce from on-campus greenhouses. Corbett/Parmelee and Durrell Dining Centers are serving the greens, which are grown in six different hydroponic tables located at CSU’s new Horticulture Center on Centre Avenue.

The initiative has been brewing since about 2010, when Residential Dining Services was looking for a location to grow herbs for the dining centers. At that time, undergraduate horticulture student Royce Lahman was working at Ram’s Horn Dining Center. In coordination with Horticulture professor Steven Newman, Lahman saw a perfect opportunity to connect the worlds of horticulture and dining while fulfilling a need on campus, and implementing the eco-friendly farm-to-table concept for food service.

“Dr. Newman and I have always had this awesome idea to provide farm-to-table food (on campus), Lahman says. “It was really a dream of both of us to connect those two worlds for collaboration.”

Lahman has since graduated and is now working full-time as the RDS Meal Access Coordinator, involved with the project he helped to establish.

Hands-on harvesting

With the construction of the new horticulture center in 2015, the opportunity to collaborate with an academic department to mix academics and dining became a reality. Student volunteers get hands-on experience harvesting the lettuce with the help of the Horticulture Center staff, and multiple varieties of lettuce find their way to dining center salad bars on a weekly basis. In one recent harvest, 193 pounds of lettuce were harvested and served. The recent cultivars have included Flandria butterhead lettuce, Cornucopia green salad bowl mix and a mixed cultivar variety.

Not only is this home-grown lettuce a healthy alternative, it also supports the university’s commitment to sustainability. Knowing where our food comes from and what went into both growing it and getting it to our plates is important on many levels, particularly when it comes to health and sustainability. It’s also a big picture, campus-wide educational opportunity.

“We want to be as sustainable as possible and drive our students to sustainable food choices,” says Lahman. “Locally grown, sustainable produce gives students and customers (of the dining centers) the opportunity to learn about programs at CSU, different growing methods, sustainable farming practices as well as the farm-to-table program benefits.”

Benefits to the university

One recent harvest yielded nearly 200 pounds of mixed lettuce varieties for fresh on-campus dining.

On a larger scale, there are also many benefits to the university. Aside from providing great-tasting lettuce, CSU-grown produce provides a local product to the campus population, with the added benefit of hands-on learning and collaboration among various departments that otherwise may not cross paths.

As the farm-to-table concept gains traction, consumers are increasingly looking for these products, but it’s challenging when most of the U.S. produce is shipped to Colorado from warmer locations.  One of the goals of this collaboration is to make students aware of how to grow crops closer to their consumer.

According to student volunteer Naomi Mathew, “I think the concept is an amazing idea. I feel like it gives an opportunity for new ideas to develop and that’s great. The lettuce tastes richer and fresher than what was previously served. This might sound odd, but it tastes healthier and cleaner.”

While lettuce is the first product to be entirely grown and served on campus, this initiative may expand to other products in the future.

“We do see opportunity for growth in this program…with multiple options regarding expansion that include additional crops, additional serving locations and creation of a living laboratory/course,” adds Lahman.

One consideration for expansion is adding fresh herbs or a soft fruit crop, such as tomatoes. During the summer months, an outdoor student garden may be able to offer more products as the program grows.

Vertical Farming Platform TruLeaf Raises $8.5 Mln In Funding

Vertical Farming Platform TruLeaf Raises $8.5 Mln In Funding

• December 8, 2016
•  
• By Kirk Falconer

TruLeaf Sustainable Agriculture Ltd, a Bible Hill, Nova Scotia indoor farming company, has closed an $8.5 million equity financing. Mike Durland, a former Scotiabank executive, led the round and was joined by a group of Canadian investors. With the deal, Durand and Neil Murdoch, a former Connor, Clark and Lunn Financial Group executive, will join the company’s board. Founded in 2011, TruLeaf has developed a vertical farming technology system to grow nutrient-rich, pesticide-free produce. It will use the funds raised to expand its product offerings and enter new markets. TruLeaf is also backed by Innovacorp.

PRESS RELEASE

TruLeaf Closes $8.5-million Round of Financing

TORONTO, ON/BIBLE HILL, NS, December 7, 2016- TruLeaf Sustainable Agriculture Ltd. (TruLeaf), the indoor, multi-level farming company from Bible Hill, Nova Scotia has closed an $8.5-million equity-finance round. This funding will enable the company to continue its mission of becoming a global leader in vertical farming technology. TruLeaf develops sustainable farming systems that can be built anywhere that enable fresh, nutrient-dense, pesticide-free produce to be grown locally all year round.

Mike Durland, Former CEO and Group Head of Scotiabank’s Global Banking and Markets division led this funding round along with a small group of strategic investors from Toronto. In addition, Mr. Durland and Neil Murdoch, Former CEO Connor, Clark & Lunn Capital Markets, will become members of TruLeaf’s Board of Directors.

“This new round of financing and the additions to our board will help us to expand the breadth of our product offerings and increase the number of markets that we serve,” said Gregg Curwin, President & CEO, TruLeaf. “Mike and Neil bring a high level of business acumen and strategic expertise that will help us scale our business.”

TruLeaf is positioned to meet the growing appetite for local food in Canada that has arisen in the last 10 years, by scaling its GoodLeaf Farms consumer brand. A 2013 BMO Food Survey found that Canadians buy locally grown vegetables above all other products. Ninety-seven per cent of those surveyed said they bought local because the food is fresh and tastes better.

TruLeaf is seeking to become a leader in sustainable agriculture through the use of vertical farming. Vertical farming combines proven hydroponic technology with advancements in LED lighting and environmental control to allow year-round propagation and production of plants indoors, inside stackable levels. Vertical farming is nearly ten times more efficient than traditional agriculture and is more productive, takes up less land and uses dramatically less water.

“There are a number of important macro forces which position TruLeaf for success in the coming years,” said Mr. Durland. “Food scarcity, water challenges, the increasing demand for pesticide-free foods, and the environmental impact of large scale farming, all mean that new ways of growing and distributing foods will be key for feeding the world. We want TruLeaf to be a company that achieves a triple-bottom line by creating sustainable – and ultimately carbon neutral – food production, delivering nutrient-rich plants to communities that may not otherwise have access to them, and achieving a strong return for investors and stakeholders. We want to grow the best products for consumers in Canada.”

A native Nova Scotian and Saint Mary’s University graduate, Mr. Durland recently retired from his executive post at Scotiabank to focus his efforts on fostering growth and investment in innovative companies across the country. Recently, he provided important funding for Saint Mary’s University’s Masters of Technology, Entrepreneurship & Innovation program, which supports an innovation competition held in Halifax each year. Mr. Durland’s interest and passion for TruLeaf was spawned out of his desire to invest in the local Nova Scotia economy.

“This is a complex business that requires a strong and experienced team,” said Jeff Watson, Board Chair, and fellow Nova Scotian. “TruLeaf has developed innovations in technology that put it ahead of new entrants in the industry. With our knowledgeable management team and shareholder group, highly-skilled board of directors, and strong capital position, TruLeaf is now well-positioned to solve a massive global problem.”

About TruLeaf Sustainable Agriculture Ltd.

Founded in 2011, and located in Bible Hill, Nova Scotia, TruLeaf has developed an indoor farming system that grows fresh plants for food and medicines anywhere in the world, regardless of environment, 365 days a year. The system integrates growing technologies in a controlled environment to grow high quality, predictable yield, and clean plants with innovative and efficient technologies.

Media Contact:

Holly Thornton

Account Manager, PUBLIC Inc.

holly@publicinc.com

P: 647 642 6846

Green Collar Foods Bringing Affordable Indoor Farming To Bridgeport, CT With New Partner

Green Collar Foods Bringing Affordable Indoor Farming to Bridgeport, CT with New Partner

Green Collar Foods (GCF) and Pivot Community Development Corporation (CDC) have teamed up to empower inner-city farmers by constructing an indoor farm in Bridgeport, CT to grow kale, arugula and cilantro for sale into local institutions and retailers.

Bridgeport, CT (PRWEB) May 26, 2016

Green Collar Foods (GCF), a Controlled Environment Agriculture (CEA) business, has officially secured a partner in Bridgeport, Connecticut to construct an indoor farm.

GCF’s mission is to empower inner-city farmers with an affordable CEA business solution that is technologically intuitive and financially profitable. It is also committed to growing high quality, clean food in communities so often overlooked.

Pivot Community Development Corporation (CDC), the commercial arm of Pivot Ministries Inc., an organization assisting men challenged by alcohol and substance abuse, has invested in the construction of a small-scale grow facility in Connecticut by GCF, which is set for unveiling on June 15. Pivot CDC has also committed to raising further funding for a larger-scale grow facility in Bridgeport planned for 2017. The facilities will grow kale, arugula and cilantro for sale into local institutions and retailers keen to find local supply.

Pivot CDC learned about GCF’s strategic plans, their progress in Detroit Michigan, and overall approach in January 2016. Intrigued, they asked GCF for a proposal on the speed and type of CEA implementation possible in Bridgeport.

The founders of GCF, deciding to leverage years of commercial and engineering experience while building on the recent success of its indoor farm in Detroit, Michigan, agreed to establish a small scale, Stage I paid marketing hub so various Pivot CDC stakeholders and future private funders of the full scale GCF Bridgeport location could see their approach and process in real time.

The Bridgeport grow facility is located next to 1190 Pembroke Street, a location that Pivot CDC recently worked with Bank of America and private financial donors to renovate.

Pivot Ministries Inc. and Pivot CDC are committed to showcasing sustainable community impact. More importantly, they are using these projects to showcase what a broader vision can look like to serve the city of Bridgeport. Pivot also sees the GCF partnership and the future 6,000 sq. ft. CEA grow facility as a natural extension of their existing greenhouse in the back of their property at 485 Jane Street.

As noted by Thomas Orr, President, Pivot CDC: “Our engagement and partnership with the team at Green Collar Foods has been truly exceptional to date. Rarely is this type of business execution, professionalism, technology and agricultural skills made available within inner city environments. We are so proud to be a part of this exciting and impactful growth story, and look forward to realizing our collective vision of a full scale GCF Bridgeport grow facility in 2017”.

Unsurprisingly, GCF is keen to ensure that every new partnership represents another blue-print on how their business model can accommodate the various types of future growers who will ultimately carry the GCF brand.

With this success now complete, and with experience navigating elements of local Bridgeport community development, GCF takes one step closer to completing one of five “shovel-ready” inner-city ventures in their pipeline.

Pivots CDC, as well as industry insiders, recognize the unique approach of Green Collar Foods in helping to rejuvenate inner cities, by creating jobs, growing healthy local food and establishing sustainable business enterprises.

GCF was recently added to AgFunder.com, the premier marketplace for the most promising Ag and AgTech start-ups seeking to raise investment capital from accredited investors.

Michael Dean, LLM, Co-Founder and CIO of AgFunder noted: “Green Collar Foods continues to impress with not only their novel approach and insights into the CEA market, but their ability to secure partners and Universities in areas so often overlooked. Their early success in Bridgeport Connecticut is another example of why we are so happy to have them as part of the AgFunder platform and our growing alumni network”.

How To Contact:

GCF contact: Ron Reynolds - 1-800-569-6941
Pivot CDC contact: Thomas Orr - tomorr@optonline.net

About Green Collar Foods:

Green Collar Foods (GCF) is a simple, yet influential controlled environment agriculture (CEA) platform designed for society’s most promising, yet challenged, inner-city environments. GCF is focused on empowering its business owners with the agricultural, commercial & technological tools required to successfully produce specialty crops that yield financial returns. Green Collar Foods leverages its technology platform, which combines Microsoft Azure’s IoT suite with GCF’s centralized machine learning platform and proprietary farm management software to create the GCF AgCloud. This enables continuous learning for GCF, its clients and University partners to extract efficiencies, record plant recipes and improve yields. The GCF AgCloud was built in collaboration with technology partner and investor Shaping Cloud.

If you want to learn more Green Collar Foods, see our website greencollarfoods.com

About Pivot CDC:

Pivot Community Development Corporation seeks to equip those in need with the economic and life skills necessary to become more productive members of the community of Bridgeport, and throughout the State of Connecticut. Pivot CDC will accomplish this mandate by providing jobs training programs, and through offering transitional housing, and social services. All of the training and services offered through our programs will be conducted under the highest standards of moral excellence, with the goal of empowering residents to engage their communities as a positive and sustaining influence.