Inside The Computerized Lettuce Factory Of The Future

Inside The Computerized Lettuce Factory Of The Future

High-tech farms in urban warehouses can grow 100 times more food using 95% less water than old-fashioned operations depending on soil and sunshine.

Farming, even in its modern, hyper-industrialized form, still relies on some very old-school technology: the sun, dirt, seasons, tractors. It’s all a bit messy and inefficient, at least by the standards of modern technologists, who are more accustomed to server farms that churn through data 24/7.

It’s not that surprising, then, that the self-declared farms of the future look more like an Amazon data center than an organic apple orchard. A wave of companies are rushing to figure out how to grow commercial volumes of food in giant urban warehouses, using LED lights instead of sun, and stacked shelves of nutrient solution instead of soil.

This particularly tech-centric model of urban farming us run by computer systems that monitor thousands of points of data and constantly adjust growing conditions. Marc Oshima, co-founder of AeroFarms, one of the world’s largest vertical farms, says the company uses “in-depth growing algorithms where we factor in all aspects from type and intensity of light to nutrients to environmental factors like temperature, humidity, CO2 levels, and we create the perfect recipe for each variety.”

While conventional agriculture companies engineer their crops to design plants suited to their environment — improving mildew resistance, for example — these companies are engineering the environment to match the plant.

None of this is cheap to set up. New Jersey’s AeroFarms has raised more than $50 million and says it can grow 2 million pounds of food each year in the “growing towers” in its 70,000 square foot facility in Newark. Gotham Green invested $8 million to build a rooftop farm in Chicago’s Pullman neighborhood. In February, New Jersey startup Bowery Farming, which attracted $7.5 million in a seed round, began selling locally grown leaf vegetables at Whole Foods and a few area restaurants, including Tom Colicchio’s Craft in Manhattan.

These high-tech farms — often led by entrepreneurs with backgrounds in finance and other non-farm businesses — are “definitely more expensive, but the expense is balanced out by more productivity,” said Irving Fain, CEO of Bowery and former Citigroup investment banker. Bowery estimates his facility is 100 times more productive per square foot than a typical farm.

Fain said Bowery’s operating system automatically monitors “hundreds of thousands of points of data on plant health, quality, growth, yield, taste and flavor.” Bowery is also designed to “take processes that are manually intensive and automate them” so that “the farm runs itself,” more or less. And because the environment is tightly controlled and there are no seasons, there are more harvest cycles — AeroFarms has up to 30 harvests each year.

So far, these capital-intensive indoor farms have focused on growing trendy greens that can be sold to the area’s salad-eating yuppies — baby kale, butterhead lettuce, arugula, and basil. A box of AeroFarms greens goes for $3.99, and Bowery Farming’s salad greens retail for $3.49, which is a lot more than a head of iceberg lettuce. And that’s the main challenge these startups face: there’s no shortage of cheap produce in supermarkets today.

It’s a pricey, niche product for now, but the companies have bigger plans. “As we scale, we plan to continue to drive down our costs and deliver the highest quality produce at a price that makes it even more accessible to all,” said Fain.

Oshima said AeroFarms is looking at other crops: berries, peppers, and cucumbers. “Our lens is on how we can transform agriculture around the world,” he said.

Realistically, these vertical farms “will never grow enough to feed cities,” said Danielle Nierenberg, cofounder of the nonprofit Food Tank. Grains like wheat, for instance, simply require more space than a warehouse can ever provide. But at the very least, she said, they bring some fresh food to urban communities, and may one day even create a new type of urban green space.

Bowery grows its greens hydroponically in a commercial warehouse in Kearny, New Jersey. The company says its farm requires 95% less water than a traditional farm and uses no pesticides or chemicals — and its location means its greens need to travel less than an hour to make it onto Manhattan restaurant plates.

These products can’t be called organic — that label generally refers to food grown in soil —so Bowery describes the model as “post organic.”

“This is the next evolution in produce,” said Fain. “The USDA’s organic standards were written at a time when the technology that’s available today simply didn’t exist.

The high startup costs associated with these ventures — the lights, the software, the urban real estate — mean the risks are also high. “Unless you’re in a place with geothermal power, this can be very energy inefficient,” said Food Tank’s Nierenberg. “In the same way we romanticize rural agriculture, we can romanticize growing food in urban places.”

In January, the hydroponic farm FarmedHere closed its 90,000 square foot facility in Chicago and pulled the plug on plans to invest $23 million in a new farm in Louisville, Kentucky. The company’s high labor and energy costs meant it needed to sell huge volumes of produce to break even, CEO Nate Laurell told the Chicago Tribune. “The more I learned about the reality of farming, it led to a change of strategy”

Atlanta vertical farm PodPonics closed last year. Its co-CEO Matt Liotta recently spoke of the tough realities of the business at an industry conference. PodPonics achieved a cost per pound of $1.36 — less than the cost of shipping organic lettuce from California. The company had an offer from Kroger to order $25 million woth annually, if it could build the farm to support it.

“This was our wildest dream, we were ready to go, this was everything we wanted. And then we realized how much capital this was going to require, how many people we were going to have to hire,” said Liotta. “We were simply incapable of building everything they wanted.”

“This is really a manufacturing game,” Liotta said. “It is not an art. If you want to do art, get a garden.”

Urban Farming Insider With Professor Aaron Fox: Urban Farming Expert and Educator

Urban Farming Insider With Professor Aaron Fox: Urban Farming Expert and Educator

Dr. Aaron Fox is an urban farmer and professor who was recently hired to start an Urban and Community Agriculture program at Cal Poly Pomona in the Los Angeles area.

He and his colleague, Eileen Cullen, are developing classes on production, business, policy and community development all related to urban farming. 

They will be offering a “Minor in Urban and Community Agriculture” starting Fall 2018. We caught up with Aaron to discuss his insights on urban farming, discussing:

- Is urban farming just a fab? 
- How do you plan for a commercial urban farm correctly?
- What are trending crops he is hearing urban farmers are growing
- What conventional urban farming wisdom is wrong
- Questions he most commonly answers from his students interested in urban farming, and his answers

and much more! Interview below: 

Introduction

UV: Can you tell us a little more about the urban farming minor program you're developing at Cal Poly Pomona, a little bit about yourself, and your students? 

Aaron: We're getting lots of students that want to learn how to produce food, but they want to do it in the places where they're coming from, like East LA and
more densely populated areas.

So that requires some particular skills and a little bit different than traditional ag programs. 

So they hired two of us. They hired me. I was most recently at Michigan State University. And they also hired another professor, Dr. Eileen Cullen, who was a professor at University of Wisconsin, Madison.

UV:  What's your background?

Aaron: My background is, I did my PhD at North Dakota State University in organic agriculture. I was particularly looking at pest management in organic systems but honestly it was in larger scale, more traditional agriculture. 

My real experience with urban food systems was actually prior to graduate school when I was working actually in the area you're in right now. I was up in Monterey (California).

I was working in Salinas a lot on school gardens, nutrition, education. I was helping out a local farmer there on her CSA. 

So I got a lot of experience actually prior to my academic career in urban agriculture.

I think one of the other reasons that I was hired for this position is I'm really passionate about teaching, and Cal Poly Pomona is a school that focuses on teaching and in particular it focuses on a learn-by- doing approach, so they really want students to get hands-on experience, and that's how most of my classes are run.

Last week we had a drip irrigation class and so we just installed a drip irrigation system up in a garden on campus. And we have composting labs where we're building composting systems, etc. 

So it's actually a pretty exciting time to be here right now because we're really building this program from the ground up and we're getting a lot of good feedback, not only from the students but from numerous community organizations in the area that want to partner with us.

UV: And are those organizations commercial or what is their nature?

Aaron:  It's a wide variety. We're getting commercial operations, especially indoor
vertical farm operations that are interested in our students, potential hires, or interns. 

Then we're also working with non-profit organizations that are working on food access and food justice and trying to bring urban agriculture into the greater Los Angeles area, specifically to address a lot of the food insecurity issues that are happening here.

Is urban farming over-hyped?

UV: So the next question I have is, I was talking to someone the other day and he's been involved in urban farming for many years, before it became what is it today. He was kind of griping about the overdatafication and he was describing the urban farming movement, or at least parts of it as almost like a fetish.

So what is your opinion on the gaudiness of urban ag versus its actual utility? Some people might say, you can't really do urban ag at scale, but at the same time it does have these proven community benefits for urban communities. 

How do you separate the wheat from the chaff there as far as the concept of urban ag and its utility?

Aaron: There's lots of research on how urban agriculture can benefit communities, on how it can improve access to nutritious food, how it can enhance incomes, how
it can have social benefits for bringing people together, etc.

Personally for me, especially when I have these young students that are coming in and wanting to do this, one thing that's really exciting is that in agriculture for a very long time now, we've been trying very hard to figure out how to get the next generation of folks interested in agriculture.

We haven't really done a very good job. I mean, the average age of a farmer in the United States is 58 of course. But it's been around that same age for like 30 or 40 years now.

So I think one thing that we're realizing is that through urban agriculture, we can get folks excited about food and farming again. That's really important because we've gotten so disconnected from food and from farming that we don't value it anymore. We don't value our farmers. 

We don't value our food. There's consequences to that.

So there are lots of tangible benefits, but I think there's also some broader implications too, to not just urban agriculture but to agriculture as a whole.

Most common beginner urban farming questions?

UV: Right. So next question. You mentioned your students and their enthusiasm. I think that's really interesting because I think a lot of people who come to our
site, they may not be students formerly but they come to the site to engage in student-like activity of learning about urban farming and getting their feet wet at the very least. 

So I think it would be helpful if you talked about a couple questions or concepts about urban farming that you repeatedly deal with with students, maybe stuff that seems to be difficult or important to understand and you think that anybody, whether they're a student or not who are trying to learn urban farming, what are a couple of those tough questions and what are the answers?

Aaron: Okay. That's a big question. Honestly, the thing that ends up tripping people up the most with this is not actually growing the plants.  We're trying to make sure we impart that with our students. 

(Also), we want to make sure that they're not just prepared to grow something in a vacant lot or grow something hydroponically indoors, but that they also understand that to be a successful in this you have to understand policy and rules. You have to understand business.

You have to understand marketing. You have to understand social issues and community issues.

One of the biggest things that I start off with in one of my classes is, I ask them, "What you really need to figure out is your purpose and why you're doing this."

Because that should really dictate everything else. If you're doing this for profit and you're trying to make a business model out of this, you're going to go down a very different path and you're going to be looking for very different things than if you're doing this for an education purpose or for a community purpose.

So I think the growing aspect, it's not that it's easy but that it's relatively straightforward and that there will be trouble-shooting along the way, but the difficult part is actually figuring out why you're doing this and what your goals are. 

Honestly, all the (urban) farmers I've ever worked with, it almost always ends being the same thing. I hear them say, "I grow the best tomatoes," or, "I grow the most beautiful greens and nobody's buying it."

That's not where you should be. You should actually reverse that and you should figure out who you're going to be selling to, what they want and then you grow it. Right? 

Rather than growing something and then figuring out what to do with it. I think that's tough for a lot of folks to ... That's not how a lot of us get into urban farming, right?

(We typically start) not from the business and marketing aspect. To be successful, you're going to have to take that into account. That applies to if you're doing it for a
community garden too.

I've got lots of folks who say, "We got permission rom the city to use this land and we've got it all set up. And we've got irrigation and ools. And nobody's coming out."

I'm like, "Well, you probably should have figured out who was going to use this before you set it all up."

You gotta figure out what the purpose is and who this is going to affect before you take your first step.

UV: So to rephrase with that kind of anecdote, one thing you find is that people neglect certain parts of the planning process.

Aaron: Yes.

UV: Okay. Right. So a follow-on question to what you just said, you highlighted how
there's differences between a profit urban farming system and, let's take for example, a community benefit system. 

So you could you go through a couple bullet points of what each one has maybe in common, maybe what the differences are. People might ask, "Is the crop that you're going to grow be targeted for size or what are the characteristics for isolating those two specific use-cases?

Aaron: Yeah, I think the easiest thing to concentrate on that subject is if the crops are going to be growing for profit system, you're going to need to figure out the crop that's going to bring you the highest return.

We built an indoor growing facility here on campus just out of a shipping container, and I made the same mistake. I let my student just go down the path before we actually figured out exactly what the purpose of this thing was. 

Once he built it all out, we realized there was really nothing that he was going to be able to grow in there that was going to pay for all the cost of maintaining it.

Except for maybe micro-greens, and so that's what he was left with.

Especially if you're in Southern California where we have like essentially 365 days of sunshine. We've had farmers tell us, "Why are you growing something indoors. You can just do it in a greenhouse here."

So you have to think about, especially from a small-scale urban standpoint is, what can you produce that is not only in demand but that you can have a competitive edge on? 

It's basically figuring out what is it that the market wants that they can't get now that you can provide?

Whereas so it's going to be really specialty niche things, and you're probably going to focus on just a handful of products.

UV: What kind of stuff would that be?

Aaron: There's lots of opportunities now for things like micro-greens, for specialty mushrooms.There's some big things right now that we've been asked about. 

There is some opportunity for tropical specialty fruit, but you have to be careful because that's kind of a longterm investment and you have to make sure you have the resources to put in a longterm investment for something like fruit trees.

There's some other opportunities as well, there's some folks that are doing quail eggs and things like that in an urban environment and they're finding some good markets for that. It's really kind of finding the specialty market that you can connect with and communicate with and find what they need. 

There's lots of opportunities for different culturally significant produce items that are harder to find in traditional venues. Things like that.

UV: Okay. That's the for-profit use-case. What about the community benefit side of
it?

Aaron: I think maybe I'll talk about specifically things for educational purposes. Again, if you're supposed to be using it as a teaching garden, you need to figure out what are you going to be teaching.

A lot of folks, they set up a school garden, they just are like, "Well, I'm going to do a pizza garden." And that's perfectly fine, but you have to actually think about what curriculum you're going to be teaching in that class.

Specifically, how are you going to get buy-in from the stakeholders? How is the principal and the teachers and the parents going to maintain interest in your garden. 

It's going to come down to your garden meeting the needs of those stakeholders.

We have a couple students that I've been working with and they said, "You know, I was given permission to take this plot of land over at this school and I've put a lot of effort into it, but I'm not really getting any interest from the administrators or from the parents or from the teachers." 

They said what they're really interested in right now is focusing on cultural heritage and they feel like the garden is secondary. And I told her, "This is a golden opportunity. You just need to shape the garden so that it's growing things that are culturally appropriate. 

You can teach those lessons about cultural heritage in the garden."

Then from a non-profit standpoint, basically it's making sure that the community you're serving is served by the things you're growing. It's interesting.

This is kind of like a longterm process. But in an urban environment where you're trying to get more stakeholders involved ... I have this non-profit that I was working in Long Beach, and they were growing all these funky heirloom tomatoes that were I'm sure delicious, but nobody wanted them.

Because in the community they we're in, they wanted the boring spherical red tasteless tomato because that's what they were used to.

So you have to take baby steps with some of these things and meet folks halfway, try and provide some opportunities for them to listen to you, you to listen to them and figure out how you can meet everybody's needs.

UV: Great. So one question for you and then I'll have to finish with a couple of rapid-fire questions. The last formal question I have is, you mentioned your background is in pest management with the commercial scale. In your opinion, do you think beginners in urban farming need to worry about pests? And if they do, what are some issues they may encounter and how does the commercial pest management downsize to the urban farming pest management, if it does?

Aaron: Yeah. That's a great question. Because I've actually had some urban farmers tell me that they're working on such a small scale that they don't really need to worry about pests because they're so intensive and they're so on top of things that they'll just be able to deal with it when it comes up. And I think, honestly, that's just a huge gamble.

I think they're just lucky that they haven't encountered anything yet. The main thing that you can gather from the larger scale commercial growers is just all the cultural methods of managing pests. 

There's reasons why the larger guys are rotating their crops. There's reasons why they're doing cover crops. All these things.

The feedback I get from the smaller scale urban guys, it's like, "I just don't have the time and space for that." If that is the case, I understand that there's some legitimate space issues, you're going to have to prepare for that and realize that you're inviting in some potential pest issues.

So I think pests have definitely been a problem. We've got some invasive pests down here that are just preventing folks from growing any brassicas in the summertime. And that's huge. That's a huge swath of crops there.

UV: What are some examples of those pests?

Aaron: Bagrada bug is the one I hear about the most. It just tears up (brassicas). There's a lot of opportunity to grow kale because there's a lot of restaurants and smoothie shops and juice shops and stuff that really want kale, but you try and grow it i the summertime down here and it just gets torn apart by bagrada bugs.

UV: Okay. Bagrada. Bagrada bugs. And is like a kind of aphid or what is that?

Aaron: It's in the same broad category of sucking insects. Yeah. It's a true bug.

What's interesting about that is it's originally from somewhere I think in Africa. How did it get here? Where was it first seen? Did it come in through Mexico or something like that? 

The fist place they saw it was at the Port of Los Angeles. That's how things get in around here.

So that's a big one. I think it's really those types of big invasive ones that we have real problems with. With aphids and things, folks feel pretty comfortable with ways of controlling them. 

Again, whether they're using just physical control methods, like spraying them off their crop, or actually introducing some biological control or using some kind of natural pesticide, etc.

But it's every once in a while that these big pests come in and there's no solutions to it. It sometimes comes down to cultural methods. There's folks in the UC system that just kind of said like, "Just stop growing brassicas for a while." Which again is a tough call.

But I'm actually doing some research right now, looking at whether we can figure out some ways to control some of these big insect pests, like bagrada bugs. 

There's some opportunities actually in smaller-scale agriculture because of course the big guys are dealing with this. But one thing that I'm looking into, and this sounds crazy, is actually using a reverse leaf-blower to suck the things up.

Aaron F. Fox: Again, you can't do that in larger scale. It's just the logistics and feasibility are absurd. But if you're dealing with an acre or less, that's not too hard a proposition.

Rapid Fire Questions

UV:  Cool. Well, I don't want to be irresponsible of your time. But the other quick questions we usually do, first one being what is your favorite fruit or vegetable? Or both if you can't decide?

Aaron: Okay. Vegetable, I've got a huge list of it, but I think I'll say that I reallyappreciate cool season crops.

I know that they don't get a lot of respect. But Ilove beets and I love broccoli and I love Brussels sprouts. I feel like they've gotso much flavor and there's so many interesting things you can do with them. 

I feel like I'm having to contain myself here.

Fruits are interesting because I've always loved blueberries, but my wife and Ihave both spent some time living abroad in tropical countries.

So we love a lot of these tropical fruits. Typically the places we've lived before Southern California, we didn't have access to them, but on campus here we're starting togrow a few tropical things, like we've got some mangoes growing, we've gotsome rambutan growing. 

So we'll see if those turn out. We're actually growing coffee here, so it's cool to see what we're going to be able to accomplish.

UV: Next question is, what's your favorite urban-thought- related bookthat you think people should check out? Since that's kind of a narrow topic, if you can't think of one, what's your favorite book in general that you think people should check out?

Aaron: That's a good question. One thing that I find is that folks will read one book orone method and they'll feel like that's the only way to do it. 

So what I would really suggest folks do is get your hands on books that tell you to do things just in as completely different ways as possible.

I try and teach my students about spin farming and I try and teach them about permaculture and we talk about just how radically these two things can be. 

(We also talk about of course, how similar they are as well.) 

I think it's good to really expose yourself to abroad swath of material out there and get an idea of all the different ways of doing this and really start figuring out your own way.

UV: Okay. With that being said, do you have a specific title in mind?

Aaron: I think I will refrain from giving a specific title. I think there might actually even be legal issues with me sponsoring something.

UV: What about a non category-specific book, any book?

Aaron: Any book? Oh my goodness. Typically when folks ask me what my favorite book is, one of the books that comes to mind is a book called "Mountains beyond Mountains." 

It's about Paul Farmer who's this public house expert that setup a clinic in Haiti. It's really inspiring, but honestly one of the most inspiringparts is just the concept that the title says. 

Basically, it's this Haitian proverb ofsaying that beyond mountains there are mountains, right? 

There will always be challenges and there will always be things to overcome. And that's not supposed to be a pessimistic way of looking at it. 

It's just a way of saying beprepared and be savvy and be ready to take on this adventure and to be excitedabout it and to be passionate about it, but also be realistic about it.

UV: The last one is what's one belief about urban farming that you believe in and that's contrary to conventional belief or conventional wisdom?

Aaron: That's interesting because I kind of am the "conventional wisdom guy" here, so...You're talking to a scientist.

 Let me see if I can come up with something. 

Well, one thing I would like to say is this idea that (urban farming) is a fad, right? 

I have a lot of old-timers tell me this whole thing of growing in a city and having local food and farmers markets and stuff, we did that in the 1970s, and it went away. So they said, "What's the point ofyou doing it again? What can you actually accomplish here?" 

I do not think that this is a fad. I think that this is a really legitimate way of bringing people together, creating communities through food and creating really awesome entrepreneurial opportunities for people in the city.

I think if we can stick to some of those core values, this is just going to continueto take off. I think that there's a lot of government support now. There's a lot ofcommunity support. 

There's a lot of industry support for this. And I think, yeah, not every urban farm is going to thrive and survive and not every farmersmarket is going to last indefinitely, but I think this is a really exciting time because I think we're making some really lasting change here and really buildinga really lasting movement.

UV: Great. If people read this article and they want to enroll in your program or atleast find out more information or apply, where should they go?

Aaron: We're still building our website right now, but they can connect with me on Twitter and they're welcome to send me emails. 

Twitter, my handle is my fullname. So that's @aaronfreemanfox. 

I update, especially on the classes I'm teaching and the activities we're doing and the field trips we're going on, the people we're meeting with. 

And then that's connected to Facebook as well. Then for enrollment purposes, we'd love to have folks come out and enroll and be part ofour program.

There's a couple things that are going on. One, in 2018, we're rolling out anurban agriculture minor. 

So you would come here at CalPoly Pomona and you can major in whatever you want to major in and you would have a minor in urban agriculture. 

Then we're also talking abouthaving a public program, a certification program in urban agriculture that you wouldn't have to be a Col Poly Pomona traditional student for.

Thanks Professor Fox!

Aaron Fox, Ph.D.is an professor of urban and community agriculture at California State Polytechnic University in Pomona. Follow him on Twitter at @AaronFreemanFox or Facebook at AaronFox. To find out more about the urban agriculture minor program launching at Cal Poly Pomona, check out https://www.cpp.edu/~agri/plant-science/

Modular Farms Newsletter #7

Modular Farms Newsletter #7

February was a very historic month for Modular Farms. We harvested our first batch of fruiting crops, trained our first class of Modular Farmers, put FarmWalls up in schools and food banks, and began wrapping up production of our first set of Modular Farms! 

We are extremely proud and thankful for all the tireless work and dedication that has been put forth by our team, our neophyte farmers, and our community partners. Together, our continued efforts are bringing Canada that much closer to having a truly sustainable and secure means of local food production from coast to coast. 

Our foray into cultivating fruiting crops on our office ZipGrow towers has been a great success so far. As you can see from the above photos, our daily Tomato harvests are in full swing and the yields have been more bountiful than we initially imagined. Our first big batch of Strawberries are also beginning to ripen and soon Cucumber and Hot Pepper sprouts will find a home alongside them.

We also decided to give our ZipRack a big upgrade this month by swapping out its standard T5 white lights for Intravision Spectra Blades. The Blades are the same lights we chose to utilize inside our Modular Farms, and for good reason - they make a world of a difference. The spectrum variable LEDs add a new depth of flavor and vibrancy to anything being grown beneath them, while simultaneously increasing their photogenicity by 1000%. 

We are proud to announce that February 2017 marked the first official month of Modular Farmer training. Over the past few weeks, our first crop of farmers-to-be have made their pilgrimage to Cornwall, where they received some rigorous, hands-on, tutelage from the Smart Greens gurus. All that's left now is for them to receive their farms and begin the rewarding process of reshaping Canada's access to locally grown, sustainable produce one area at a time.

The first few areas to reap the benefits will be Calgary, via the Vertically Fresh Farms team, and Sudbury, via our first Western Ontario-based Smart Greens brand farm, courtesy of Stephane Lanteigne. 

The west coast extension of our team - Ethan and Cole - have been doing some incredible philanthropic work within their community. Their company, Living Garden Foods, has recently partnered with the US-based Modern Steader in order to bring their industry leading hydroponic-based classroom curriculum north of the border. They have also help to set up some student-run FarmWalls at the Zion Lutheran Church in Cloverdale, BC, which operates a food bank that is now proud to offer those in need regular servings of fresh salad vegetables.

If you're Canadian, and have found yourself on the fence when it comes to purchasing a FarmWall, now might be the time to pull the trigger. For a limited time, all of our FarmWalls are currently being shipped free of charge to all customers residing in Canada. However, we must warn you that owning and operating a FarmWall will turn you into a snob. You will start questioning the taste and freshness of any other produce you eat that was not directly seeded, grown, and picked by you.

Once again we managed to scrape together some time-lapse footage to get you all quickly brought up to speed on this months transpirings at our office. As you can see, emails were answered, seeds were sown, fruits were ripened, wood was cut, and farms were built; another month in paradise. 

Stay tuned for the next installment of our newsletter!

Hungry for more?

Here's some recent updates and tips from our friends at Bright Agrotech -

Learn by Doing: How to Use a Pilot System to Learn Vertical Farming
by: Amy Storey

Modern Hydroponic Production: Why All the Right People Are Wrong
by: Nate Storey

The 6 Main Challenges of Classroom Gardens (And How to Overcome Them)

Inaugural Boston Food Tank Summit to Focus on Investing in Discovery

Inaugural Boston Food Tank Summit to Focus on Investing in Discovery

On April 1, 2017, Food Tank presents its first Boston Summit, “Investing in Discovery,” in collaboration with Tufts University and Oxfam America. The event will gather dozens of expert speakers and panelists who represent farmers, policymakers, businesses, chefs, nonprofit groups, elected officials, and more at the Tufts University Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy. See the speaker lineup HERE, and please share this article with people who might be interested in attending the Summit.

Panel topics include Long-Term Solutions for a Healthy Planet, The True Value of Food, Creating Better Food Access, and Farm and Food Innovations.  Moderators for these panels include agricultural professionals and journalists from The Washington Post, National Public Radio, and more.  The Summit can be viewed remotely via a free Livestream at foodtank.com and on Facebook Live.

Confirmed speakers include (in alphabetical order—more to be announced soon):

Lauren Abda, Branchfood; Jody Adams, Trade Restaurant; Julian Agyeman, Tufts University; Patricia Baker, Massachusetts Law Reform Institute; Ian Brady, AVA; Sara Burnett, Panera Bread; Kiera Butler, Mother Jones Magazine; Matthew Dillon, Clif Bar; Jess Fanzo, Johns Hopkins University; Keri Glassman (MS, RD, CDN), Nutritious Life; Oliver Gottfried, Oxfam America; Timothy Griffin, Tufts University; Tamar Haspel, The Washington Post; Lindsay Kalter, Boston Herald; Alex Kingsbury, The Boston Globe; Wendy Kubota, Nature’s Path Foods; Corby Kummer, The Atlantic; William Masters, Tufts University; Congressman Jim McGovern, U.S. Congress (D-MA); Brad McNamara, Freight Farms; Monique Mikhail, Greenpeace; Dariush Mozaffarian, Tufts University; Danielle Nierenberg, Food Tank; Michel Nischan, Wholesome Wave; Councilor Ayanna Pressley, Boston City Council; Doug Rauch, Daily Table; Ruth Richardson, Global Alliance for the Future of Food; Lindsey Shute, National Young Farmers Coalition; Matt Tortora, Crave Food Services, Inc; Paul Willis, Niman Ranch Pork Company; Norbert Wilson, Tufts University; Tim Wise, Small Planet Institute and Tufts University.

More than 60,000 people from around the world streamed the last Food Tank Summit in Washington, D.C., at The George Washington University. During the February 2017 event, there were also one million organic views on Facebook Live. One of Food Tank’s goals is to create networks of people, organizations, and content that push for food system change, achieved in part through the conversation and connections cultivated at these Summits. Future 2017 Summits will take place in new locations for the first time: New York, Los Angeles, and Sao Paulo, Brazil.

Buy tickets for the Boston Summit on April 1, 2017, and become a Food Tank member. If you or your organization is interested in sponsoring an upcoming Food Tank Summit, please email Bernard Pollack at bernard@foodtank.com for more details.

Fish And Fresh Greens At The Farmory in Green Bay

Fish And Fresh Greens At The Farmory in Green Bay

By: Kris Schuller 

Posted: Mar 02, 2017 07:04 PM CST

Updated: Mar 02, 2017 10:18 PM CST

GREEN BAY, Wis. (WFRV) - An old armory turned into the Farmory continues to move forward in Green Bay. We head inside this indoor farm that one day may provide the perch for your favorite fish fry. 

Inside an old armory now called the Farmory - fish swim and greens grow. A collaboration of many aimed at creating this indoor farming system, to eventually help people learn how to help themselves.

“We want to transform the local food economy and show there is an opportunity for Wisconsin residents to grown year-round either in their homes or businesses for themselves.” said Alex Smith, director of the Farmory.

In operation for a year, part of NeighborWorks Green Bay, this non-profit indoor aquaponics farm grows yellow perch in tanks and leafy greens in potted soil. 

“It's a symbiotic relationship between the two,” said Jimmy Pandl, a member of the board Farmory. “The fish waste feeds the plants; the plants need the water and it's recirculated to help the fish grow.”

Farmory Director Smith says the goal is to have 50 aquaponic systems in operation by the fall and to grow 173,000 pounds of mixed salad greens each year. In fact, it is a crop that is already bringing in cash.

“February 1st, we actually sold our first batch of mixed greens to The Cannery and they’ve been using them ever since,” said Smith.

As for the perch Pandl expects they'll bring 50,000 fish per year to market.

“We want to do perch because of the history in the community here and because of the demand really - we know we can sell it,” said Pandl.

“People love yellow perch, it's the Wisconsin fish for any fish fry,” said Smith.

But to operate at capacity as an indoor agriculture center the Farmory needs to raise $3.4 million.  Smith says those efforts are underway and the goal will be met. She believes the community sees the Farmory's value and the area's need.

“The Farmory is really here for a long-term solution to the food insecurity in this community,” Smith said.

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Indoor Farming Company Launches in Kearny

Indoor Farming Company Launches in Kearny

Caitlin Mota | The Jersey Journal

By Caitlin Mota | The Jersey Journal
on March 02, 2017 at 2:34 PM, updated March 02, 2017 at 4:16 PM

KEARNY - A new farming company is growing its produce at a quicker and more cost-effective rate than traditional farms.

The secret to the success? The produce is grown indoors.

Bowery, based in the southern section of Kearny, was founded two years ago by Irving Fain and officially launched last week. The company dubs itself as the first to grow "post organic produce."

"We have completely pure and clean crops," Fain said.  

By growing produce - like kale and arugula - indoors, Fain said the company eliminates dealing with harsh weather conditions and is able to bring its products to local retailers quicker then other distributors. 

Fain previously worked in software and described himself as an entrepenuer. He wanted to take what he learned in the tech industry and find a way to address agricultural issues.  

"I saw the power of technology and the power of innovation technology," he said.

More than 70 percent of the country's water supply is used for agriculture, Fain said, though only a fraction of that is necessary for crops to grow. 

Sneak peek: Newark's Whole Foods opening Wednesday

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Using hydroponic techniques and software that controls the atmosphere inside the farm, produce crews significantly quicker without using any pesticides. 

Bowery currently sells six products in locals stores, including the new Whole Foods that opened in Newark on Wednesday. Celebrity Chef Tom Colicchio uses the produce at his New York restaurant and has made investments in the company, Fain said. 

The company currently employees 13 people with more hires expected as the it expands. A second farm is already in the works, though Fain said the exact location in the tri-state area hasn't been decided. 

Caitlin Mota may be reached at cmota@jjournal.com. Follow her on Twitter @caitlin_mota. Find The Jersey Journal on Facebook.

America’s First Urban ‘Agrihood’ Feeds Detroit’s Poor For Free

America’s First Urban ‘Agrihood’ Feeds Detroit’s Poor For Free

After hitting rock bottom, Detroit is looking up.

Asof 2008, more people live in cities than in rural areas. The United Nations predicts that by 2050, 66% of the world’s population will reside in urban centers. This urbanization comes with its own unique set of challenges — especially when it comes to food.

Detroit has been a food desert since 2005. The US Dept. of Agriculture defines a food desert as an area where residents are unable to access fresh, nutritious, affordable provisions. In 2010, 23.5 million Americans lived in conditions like these. Food deserts make it difficult for residents to eat well, contributing to obesity and increasing risks for illnesses like diabetes and heart disease.

America’s First Urban Agrihood

The Michigan Urban Farming Initiative, a non-profit, was founded in 2012 to empower urban communities. The group uses agriculture as a platform to promote education, community and sustainability. In November, the Initiative debuted the first urban agrihood — a community designed to provide city dwellers with easy access to locally grown food.

Detroit’s agrihood sits in the North End neighborhood, which once housed middle and upper class families. Now mostly vacant, the North End is in decline. Only one grocery store remains.

Tyson Gersh is the president, co-founder and farm manager of the Initiative. He tells Paste Magazine to think of the agrihood as “a residential development strategy with a working farm at the center.”

The Initiative’s agrihood consists of a three-acre development, including a two-acre garden, a sensory garden for children and an orchard with more than 200 fruit trees. The urban garden provides over 50,000 pounds of fresh, local produce every year to the 2,000 families who live within a two mile radius of the farm. And they do it all for free.

Similar communities exist in areas in Illinois, Arizona, Vermont, Idaho and California. Others are under development in Washington, North Carolina, Florida and Ohio. Detroit’s agrihood is notable mainly because of its location. In Detroit, where the median household income is barely over $25,000 a year, building an agrihood is much different than building one in Davis, California, where the annual median income is almost $75,000.

A Brief History of Community Gardening

The name agrihood seems fresh and modern, but community gardening is far from being a new idea. During World War II, private plots in urban centers produced 40% of the nation’s fresh vegetables. Most of these victory gardens closed down after the war ended.

Agrihoods also share similarities with Israel’s kibbutzim. First established in 1909 in what was then the Ottoman Empire, these small communities let early Zionists farm the land and live according to principles of equality, communal ownership and social justice. Kibbutzim are credited with contributing to the agricultural and political development of the state of Israel.

Today, community gardening is coming back in a big way: In a 2014 study, the National Gardening Association said that from 2008 - 2013, there was a 17% increase in home and community gardening. Surprisingly, the fastest growing demographic of food gardeners are Millennials.

New Plans Take Root

The Initiative’s agrihood isn’t done yet: Next, it plans to build a 3,200 square foot community resource center. There are plans for a center for education, a water cistern and a health food cafe. Most impressively, the Initiative will collaborate with a local General Motors assembly plant to build a collection of tiny homes inside a shipping container.

Each home will contain 320 square feet of living space, including two bedrooms, a bathroom and a kitchen. Employee volunteers will build the units using 85% scrap metal materials donated by GM. Once completed, university student caretakers will live in the units, run the farm and use the land to conduct agricultural research.

In 2015, Detroit News declared that the city was no longer a food desert. Agrihoods can’t take all the credit for this new development, but they’re certainly helping.

The Future Of Urban Farming Might Actually Be Suburban Farming

The Future Of Urban Farming Might Actually Be Suburban Farming

After dealing with the high costs and logistical nightmares of developing in urban areas, one farming startup realized that they could streamline their process by moving just a bit outside the city limits.

• ADELE PETERS 03.02.17 10:30 AM

When the urban farming startup BrightFarms first launched, it envisioned building its hydroponic greenhouses directly on grocery store roofs and on vacant city lots. Now, it says that the smartest place to grow food for cities may be just outside of them.

The company’s newest site will be in the town of Wilmington, Ohio. With a population of only 12,459, it's not the target market. But it's near Dayton, Columbus, and Cincinnati, which together have a population over a million people.

BrightFarms also has greenhouses in Bucks County, Pennsylvania; Culpeper County, Virginia; and Rochelle, Illinois—all also near, but not in, large cities. The new strategy lets the company avoid the costs and challenges of working on urban sites, while still providing a local version of foods like salad greens that would normally travel thousands of miles.

"Like most good strategies, it was driven by some painful experiences," Paul Lightfoot, CEO of BrightFarms, tells Co.Exist. "Basically, we had a couple of failures. We tried to develop a giant rooftop of a building in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, and we also tried to develop an environmentally soiled parcel of land in the city of Washington D.C., owned by the city."

In both cases, the landowners were eager for BrightFarms to build, and they had strong support from the communities and city leaders. But both sites had challenges. In Brooklyn, the roof needed complex engineering work that couldn't be completed on the startup's timeline; in D.C., the city had to do environmental remediation that also took longer that was commercially viable.

Both cities also had complex regulations that weren't created with urban agriculture in mind. "We found ourselves dealing with a regulatory framework that didn't understand us, and didn't have the ability to adapt to us," Lightfoot says. The projects were classified as "industrial" rather than agricultural, which triggered regulations that didn't fit.

In smaller communities, the experience was radically different. In Virginia, because it was considered an agricultural project, it was exempt from the typical permitting process. "I think we got the permit in a week," Lightfoot says. "In D.C., we spent a year getting it."

The company realized that even if it built outside city limits, it could still stay close enough that transportation would be negligible. BrightFarms sells its produce in 150 stores in the D.C. market, and even if its greenhouses were inside city limits, it would still require driving fairly long distances to make deliveries to all of the stores.

"Being in the city center is not logistically a benefit," Lightfoot says. "Being 30 miles out of the city is just as good as being in the city. The extra cost of building in a city has absolutely no benefit except for maybe shallow, fake marketing, but it has a real significance in terms of capital costs, and in some cases, operation costs as well, including utilities and transportation."

BrightFarms' greenhouses often make use of underutilized spaces: In Rochelle, Illinois, they've set up on an empty lot between a distribution center and a factory that was once farmland, then an industrial park.

Even though BrightFarms sometimes establishes its greenhouses near traditional farms, the startup isn't directly competing with the other operations because it's focused on tomatoes and greens that typically come from California or Arizona. The greenhouses grow the food with a tiny fraction of the water, and provide it fresher to customers. Less perishable crops, such as root vegetables and corn, are left to traditional farms.

BrightFarms plans to use the same model, building outside cities, as it moves forward. After closing a $30 million equity round in September 2016, it plans to open 14 more greenhouses over the next four years.

Property Tax Breaks Aim To Help Urban Farms Crop Up

Property Tax Breaks Aim To Help Urban Farms Crop Up

By Tara Duggan

Updated 4:47 pm, Wednesday, March 1, 2017

Kevin Bayuk (left) and Dorsey Kilbourn of the Urban Permaculture Institute of San Francisco work at the 18th and Rhode Island Permaculture Garden in S.F. in 2014. The garden is owned by a private landowner who later received a property tax break for allowing the land to be used for agriculture under the state’s Urban Agricultural Incentive Zones act. less

Up and down the state, property owners can receive tax breaks for allowing their unused, and often blighted, urban lots to transform into commercial or noncommercial farms under a law that went into effect in 2014. It hasn’t yet resulted in a rash of urban farming, as just four property owners in the state have enrolled so far, including one in San Francisco. But state Assembly member Phil Ting D-San Francisco, wants to extend the law so more cities, and landowners, can take part.

“Urban farming needs more time to take root and help more Californians access nutritious food in their own neighborhoods,” Ting said in a press release. “An urban farm can be an oasis. There is great interest to tame the concrete jungle with green spaces that transform blight into bounty.”

Since the law was enacted, San Francisco, Sacramento, San Jose and San Diego have all passed local ordinances providing financial incentives to turn unused lots into urban agricultural zones for a range of uses, including vegetable farming, beekeeping and nonprofit teaching gardens. The law expires in 2019, and with AB465, Ting proposes extending it to 2029 to allow more cities and counties — which must have a minimum of 250,000 residents — to follow suit.

One of those is Los Angeles, which is working toward passing an ordinance. Unincorporated parts of Los Angeles County, as well as Santa Clara County, already offer the tax breaks.

To apply, property owners must allow farms to stay at least five years to receive the tax break and have property of 0.1 acre to 3 acres in size, with no dwellings on-site. The law assesses the plots’ property value at about $11,000 per acre, the same as irrigated farmland, which can greatly reduce the owner’s property taxes.

In San Jose, a property owner with two adjacent parcels has just turned the land over to Valley Verde, a nonprofit that gives low-income families tools and training to grow their own vegetables in planter boxes.

“It’s a win-win for the owners,” said Art Henriques of San Jose’s planning department. “And the nonprofit gets at least a five-year opportunity to do something productive for some people in the community.”

Tara Duggan is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: tduggan@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @taraduggan

The Indoor Farming Compound Founded by Kimbal Musk — Elon's Brother — Now Delivering Greens

The Indoor Farming Compound Founded by Kimbal Musk — Elon's Brother — Now Delivering Greens

Leanna Garfield

Business InsiderMarch 1, 2017

Farmers from Square Roots — a Brooklyn-based urban farming accelerator program co-founded by Kimbal Musk (brother of Elon) — are now delivering their produce to local offices. 

The farmers are growing greens inside 10 steel shipping container farms. Unlike traditional outdoor farms, these vertical farms grow soil-free crops indoors and under LED lights.

While Square Roots mainly sells greens at farmer's markets in New York City, in late February, the accelerator started delivering directly as part of a weekly subscription service for companies in the area, including Vice Media, Kickstarter, and WeWork. According to Metro,  subscribers can order bags of Square Roots greens online, and the farmers will drop them off. One bag costs $7 per week, and a seven-pack costs $35.

The farmers have experimented with a number of business models since their first harvest in January. With the new delivery service, they are hoping to meet consumers where they are, Square Roots' cofounder, Tobias Peggs, tells Business Insider.

"What the farmers heard time and time again was that a lot of people in New York wanted local food, and wanted to play their part in the real food revolution — but they only ate at home once or twice per week," he says.

In fall 2016, Peggs and Musk launched Square Roots — one of Musk's many food ventures. For over a decade, he has run two restaurant chains, The Kitchen and Next Door, which serve dishes made strictly with locally-sourced meat and veggies. In 2011, he started a nonprofit program that has installed "Learning Gardens" in over 300 schools, with the intention of teaching kids about agriculture. 

Square Roots hopes to expand to 20 cities by 2020.

Grow Pod Solutions Develops New Vertical Farm Technology That Needs No Sun or Soil

Grow Pod Solutions Develops New Vertical Farm Technology That Needs No Sun or Soil

New system also uses significantly less water than conventional farms

Feb 28, 2017, 11:10 ET

CORONA, Calif., Feb. 28, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Grow Pod Solutions (www.growpodsolutions.com), the premier developer of technology-enriched automated indoor farms, announced the development of their new Hydrologic Technology (HLT), which grows crops with no sunlight or soil, and uses about 90% less water than a conventional outdoor farm.

"This is the world's most sophisticated indoor farm," said George Natzic, President of Grow Pod Solutions. "Our new technologies will not only improve the way food is grown and distributed, but will literally change the world."

The system uses an offshoot of hydroponics to grow plants without soil. The process differs from conventional soil methods, and uses water and a nutrient solution flowing through the growing medium, producing significantly better results.

Grow Pod Solutions' Hydrologic Technology (HLT), utilizes special hydroponics that delivers more oxygen to plant roots, stimulating growth and preventing disease. With Grow Pod's disease-free environment, plants grow at higher density compared to other forms of cultivation.

Inside the GrowPod HLT Container, all elements of the environment, including light, humidity, and temperature, are controlled. There is no need for artificial chemical additives or fertilizers because the system uses no soil. There are never any pesticides because there are no bugs inside the pod.

"This goes beyond organic," Natzic said. "We can produce the cleanest food in the world."

Grow Pod Solutions' portable farms are customized to grow specific varieties of fruits, vegetables, herbs and cash-crops, and can be placed virtually anywhere in the world. The entire environment is controlled remotely from any computer or smart phone utilizing the Grow Pod Solutions Management App. GrowPods can utilize alternative energy, thereby operating entirely "Off the Grid."

For more information, call: (951) 549-9490 or visit: www.growpodsolutions.com

About Grow Pod Solutions:

Grow Pod Solutions develops transportable growing environments, utilizing new technologies that produce superior quality crops and higher yields, in a completely secure, remotely managed and monitored environment.

Grow Pod Solutions provides non-profit organizations, restaurants, cash-crop entrepreneurs, and urban farmers, the ability to grow fresh, organic produce year-round. As a sealed system, water needs are minimal; and with on-board water and air filtration systems, plants, vegetables and crops are grown to their fullest potential.

Connect:

Call: (951) 549-9490

Email: info@growpodsolutions.com 

Visit: www.growpodsolutions.com 

Facebook: facebook.com/GrowPod-Solutions-1660511410944495

Twitter:@GrowPodSolution

Media Contact:
Innovation Agency
310-571-5592
www.inov8.us
info(at)inov8.us

SOURCE Grow Pod Solutions

Related Links

http://www.growpodsolutions.com

Jan 27, 2017, 12:42 ET

Preview: Grow Pod Solutions Acquires Mobile Farming Systems

Also from this source

JAN 27, 2017, 12:42 ETGrow Pod Solutions Acquires Mobile Farming Systems

JAN 23, 2017, 12:43 ETAgricultural Tech Investment Rises to Record $25 Billion

D.C.’s Urban Farms Wrestle With Gentrification and Displacement

D.C.’s Urban Farms Wrestle With Gentrification and Displacement

Urban farmers often hold high-minded ideals about food justice and access; they’re also often unwitting vehicles for driving out communities of color.

BY BRIAN MASSEY  |  Commentary, Food Justice, Urban Agriculture
02.27.17

If you’ve lived or worked in Washington D.C. over the last decade, the scale and pace of gentrification there has been impossible to miss. Over the last decade, the city has experienced a rapidly increasing demand for, and cost of, housing, similar to that in other knowledge hubs and “superstar cities” like New York, San Francisco, Seattle, and Boston.

In addition to all the good things that come with increased interest in density and urban living, those cities have been the hardest hit by displacement, a process that disproportionately affects poor folks of color. Everyone who lives or works in D.C. can palpably feel this slow-motion injustice, and we are all forced to grapple with it, whether we want to or not.

“Everybody—wherever you go, no matter the educational background—sees what’s going on,” Xavier Brown told me. Brown is the founder of Soilful City, an urban agriculture organization in D.C. with the justice-centered mission of healing “the sacred relationship between communities of African descent and Mother Earth.”

Last year, I managed an eight-year-old urban farm in the neighborhood of LeDroit Park. LeDroit is just down the hill from Howard University and next to the super-hip neighborhoods of Shaw and Bloomingdale. The farm itself is surrounded by public housing, Howard dorms, and renovated row houses selling for over $800,000.

Farming in the middle of all that created a sort of socio-economic whiplash. On good days, it felt like the best that a city can be, a glorious melting pot, with the farm as a gathering place for folks to celebrate commonality. But on bad days, when I had to clean up vandalism, or when I couldn’t for the life of me get my neighbors of color to visit the farm, it felt like an exclusive resource designed to make newcomers feel comfortable and long-term residents feel alienated. It felt like I, a bearded white dude, was actively contributing to an injustice. Or, just as bad, like I was pretending to be neutral, while standing by and watching it happen.

In my experience, most urban farmers are justice-minded folks who enter this profession with high-minded ideals. But in D.C. we are increasingly finding that our work is being associated with, and even coopted by, the forces that are driving extreme gentrification and displacement, forces viewed negatively by many working class communities of color.

As I slogged through the harvest season, I realized that I couldn’t be the only farmer wrestling with this conundrum. So I set out this winter to have some frank conversations with others in my community about how to address displacement, and how to position our industry in relation to the larger forces at work.

Urban Agriculture’s Role in a Gentrifying City

During the first decade of the 21st Century, D.C. became much more young, single, and white. The city’s white population jumped by 31 percent, while its Black population declined by 11 percent. A city that peaked at 71 percent Black in 1970 lost its Black-majority status in 2011.

All of this makes Brown think about displacement every day. “A lot of urban ag is based on working in stressed and distressed communities. These communities are getting pushed out, and once [they’re] pushed out, they’re gone, and it turns into something else,” he said. “Then your mission is gone.”

Dominic Pascal is the production manager at THEARC Farm, an urban farm in the city’s Ward 8 that provides food access and education for the low-income and working-class families that live nearby. He was initially inspired by the community-based feel of the urban agriculture scene in D.C., but he worries that quality could get lost as the city changes.

“Hopefully it never becomes something where kids look at a farm in a community where their parents and grandparents grew up and feel like it’s not for them,” he said. As a Black farmer, he understands that his presence and that of others like him “is an important symbol for the community to see.” He hopes to be able to say, “I look like you, I’m related to you, and this space is for you.”

“I’ve seen a lot of maps where it looks like we’re increasing food access [in D.C.], when we’re actually just pushing poor people out,” Josh Singer, executive director and founder of Wangari Gardens, told me. Wangari is an innovative community garden near several rapidly gentrifying neighborhoods, and was designed explicitly to promote responsible community development in the face of this displacement.

“Say you have a neighborhood that is a food desert,” Singer, who is white, said, starting a story about a hypothetical project in which someone crafts a narrative, gets a big grant, builds a big garden, and does most outreach and organizing through social media. “All of a sudden that garden is just full of people who recently moved to the neighborhood, who are all good people, but who aren’t really food insecure.”

Singer and I both know many projects like this in D.C., projects that raise a good deal of money and garner glowing profiles from the press at their launch, but don’t work with the community in the planning stages, and don’t end up serving the people they say they’re going to serve.

Lauren Shweder Biel, executive director of DC Greens, a food justice organization focused on food education, access, and policy, argued that urban agriculturalists need to address these “intersectional pressures on the communities that [they] serve.”

“We know that urban ag is a tool for neighborhood revitalization and beautification, and we know that those are catchwords for gentrification,” Schweder Biel, who is white, said. That’s why she believes urban ag groups should also work to “guarantee affordable housing in areas where we’re putting in urban farms, recognizing that these urban farms will be tools of displacement.”

According to many urban farmers, projects like this end up backfiring not only because they replicate the oppressive patterns of most urban development, but also because they cement the belief in the minds of many long-term residents of color that urban agriculture is not for them. When that happens, those projects are seen as part of the problem.

Creating Community Ownership

“The legwork is the work. The work isn’t growing food,” Chris Bradshaw said bluntly.

Bradshaw is the founder and executive director of Dreaming Out Loud, an organization that is preparing to open one of the most ambitious urban farms in the city, the Kelly Miller Farm. It’s ambitious not just because of its size—two acres of flat land behind a DCPS middle school—or its location—Lincoln Heights, a neighborhood untouched by the city’s farm-to-table restaurant and organic grocery store boom.

Rather, its most lofty ambitions lie in the process that has preceded it, how it is attempting to be deeply collaborative and interwoven with the community that surrounds it from day one.

“Our work has been about relationship building over the course of a year with folks that are from the neighborhood, in the community, [folks] that we’d previously known and went deeper with, and some that we discovered along the way,” Bradshaw, who is Black, told me. He recalls sitting outside the farm listening to one older resident for two hours, getting bitten by mosquitos while she told him every single thing that had gone wrong [with previous development projects].

“The projects that are helping … are the ones that don’t just assume that they know what’s best for the community and force it on them,” Josh Singer said. “They listen to these communities, they build relationships, and they allow these communities into every aspect of decision-making.”

Shweder Biel said that if you accept that urban agriculture should be community-centric and if you follow that concept to its logical conclusions, then there are implications for how projects and organization should ultimately be structured.

“If what [urban agriculture] does is create a richer sense of community,” she told me, “it requires that there be investment by the communities that are surrounding the farm… there need to be the indicators that this is for me, for us, for the community members.”

This alternative vision of urban agriculture—one that is more intentional about how it interacts with the race and class dynamics of the city in which it operates—has had a very tangible impact on how DC Greens handles its business.

“We’ve been doing a series of anti-racism trainings internally, just to make sure that the real point of the work is very front and center for all of us,” Shweder Biel told me. As a result, the farm has hired more people of color and D.C. natives as core staff members and worked with them to design programming and outreach. They’ve also hired more people from the neighborhood to run their farmers’ markets, and they regularly invite neighborhood representatives to join them when meeting with power brokers around D.C.

Christian Melendez pointed out that “urban ag, with its ear to the ground, could be a form of preserving and building community.” Melendez, who is Latino, was the lead farmer for many years at ECO City Farms in Edmonston, MD, and recently left to start his own bicycle composting business. “You can automate greenhouses, which has some value, but what kind of culture do we want to build?”

“I’ve met so many people in the shadows of D.C. who were farmers back home in their country,” he told me. “What are the stories and the foods that we’re losing because people are being displaced? That [displacement] can be from Mexico to D.C., or it can be from D.C. pushed out to Prince George’s County.”

Soilful City’s Brown looks at urban agriculture in under-resourced urban environments as an organizing tool. “A lot of communities that I work in are powerful, but people feel like they’re fighting against a giant,” he explained. His goal is “to help people find power within themselves,” turning the energy required to organize around something tangible like a garden into energy for organizing around whatever other issues are affecting their lives. “It’s about food,” he says, “but we gotta be a little bit bigger than food.”

Joining the Larger Movement for Social Justice

In the wake of the recent election, progressive groups all over the country have been reflecting and rebuilding, redesigning strategies to reflect our new political reality, and the Food Movement’s been no exception.

In D.C., this political and media capital of the world, some in the urban agriculture community are seeking to weave their work into the larger struggle for justice.

“[We’re] making those broad based alliances where we’re connecting food to land to housing to everything else,” Brown told me.

“Coalitions are necessary, because then it’s not just one voice, it’s multiple voices,” Chris Bradshaw added. “And it’s not these disjointed calls in the wild. It’s a coordinated and multiplied voice around justice as a platform.”

Dreaming Out Loud explicitly aims “to have the broader conversations about housing, poverty, healthcare, justice, race, gender, class, all those things, through this vehicle” of urban agriculture,” Bradshaw told me. But, in the meantime, he thinks that we can do “some pretty cool things that do help the physical circumstances of food access, job creation, community wealth building.”

At the end of this process, after the last of these many profound conversations, I found myself returning to something I discovered at the beginning, the last line from the San Francisco Urban Agriculture Alliance’s position statement on gentrification:

“…While we’ve got our heads down, hands in the dirt, cultivating a new world into existence, we must think of everyone who we want to be in that new world, and what we can do to get there with them—lest we look up to find that those potential allies have long since disappeared.”

Urban farmers in D.C. are increasingly looking up. I know I am.

On the Heels of EcoFarm, Farm Lot 59 Issues Call to Action for Urban Agriculture

On the Heels of EcoFarm, Farm Lot 59 Issues Call to Action for Urban Agriculture

by SASHA KANNO 

 FEBRUARY 27 2017 14:42

Farm Lot 59 is the definition of a community farm. As a food hub that serves the greater Long Beach area and beyond, we create an outdoor community space where skills grow, healthy ideas take root and people become inspired.

I’ve met and worked with thousands of people in the eight years I have been in local agriculture. Our visitors often don't know the basics, so I teach the basics, like how to use a shovel or push a wheelbarrow. I often teach what real food looks like as well, with lessons like how to find a tomato amidst its green leaves.

We work hard, and the soil shows it. We just so happen to get amazing produce out of that soil, which then creates jobs and many other opportunities for our visitors and the farm.

I just returned home from the 37th annual EcoFarm Conference in Monterey County and am deeply inspired by the great work being done. Santa Cruz-based "Food What?!" is a program that empowers youth to be proud of themselves, embrace their voice and understand their food rights. Edible Schoolyard in Berkeley is phenomenal. They joined forces with a local high school and other community partners for training programs and to provide a safe place for people to be and learn. 

San Francisco's Bi-Rite market is a farm, creamery, and retail store. They offer training programs to the community and welcome back everyone who has gone through their programs. San Francisco Unified School District is totally on board, and supports real world garden classrooms, cooking schools and farming academies, and is dedicated to forming programs that directly benefit the youth. 

When I come across programs like these, I see people who choose work that provides love and dignity in a field of crucial relevance to community health and I appreciate the transformative mutual power of vital partnerships. When we train others, we are no longer reaching the few around us; we are empowering those around us to pass along a critical life skill—a knowledge of food—to thousands more people who we may never know.

Farm Lot 59 is our amazing place to come to. It's a peaceful oasis surrounded by nature and varieties of plants from around the globe. It’s a safe place where people of any race and gender can share and receive full respect. It's not about farming—well, it is—but it's more. It's about food policy, transparency, the restaurant industry, retail, chemistry, soil science, education, food culture... it's endless. Your local farm is a hub for all kinds of good things.

Community farms like Farm Lot 59 are not meant to grow massive food crops. Instead, we teach people where food comes from, how to grow it, how to cook it and how make a living doing so. Humans have been cultivating crops for about 12,000 years, but many people today have forgotten their connection to food. Local farms are keeping this knowledge alive, and bringing people together through good hard work.

We need to come together as a city and put an end to food insecurity and food ignorance, and Farm Lot 59 is here to help. Dial in and stay informed, participate and give back. Learn about building a cooperative market, supporting our local economy and eating at locally owned restaurants that support their local farm. Reach out to Farm Lot 59 to explore a new partnership. You live here, work here and raise your family here. Let's work together to be the change that Long Beach needs.

Sasha Kanno is the founder of Long Beach Local, an agriculture-based nonprofit. She is the farmer and vision behind Farm Lot 59. She teaches at Farm Lot 59 and Maple Village Waldorf School. She has been awarded numerous grants and awards for her work in the community as a leader, innovator and driving force in the local food movement. She lives in Wrigley with Nelson, Nalu, some fish and a few chickens.

For more information about Farm Lot 59, visit the Facebook page here. 

Farm Lot 59 is located at 2714 California Avenue

Bowery Farming Raises $7.5M For It's High-Tech Indoor Farms

Bowery Farming Raises $7.5M For It's High-Tech Indoor Farms

The startup establishes vertical farms indoors within urban areas. Consumers get access to fresh produce and not stuff that's been packaged and shipped over a week as a result.

 PRATEEK JOSE February 27, 2017 • 2 min read

Last year, we found out we’re in the post-truth era (a claim that I am not going to back with evidence). Apparently, we’re also in the post-organic era, or at least that’s what New York-based Bowery Farming would have us believe. The operation is based on the assertion that it isn’t just enough to grow organic produce but to revamp foundational practices in the growth and distribution of crops. The result is a farming methodology executed indoors, underpinned by high-tech systems. Investors seem to confident in betting the farm on the startup – to the tune of $7.5 million in venture funding recently.
 
Bowery Farming’s product deals with every stage of the agriculture lifecycle. It starts right from the seed stage, during which partner companies that have spent almost a decade in research and development provide the ideal seeds. These seeds are planted in indoor vertical farms. These artificial environments are lit using LED lights; they can be used to mimic the full spectrum of incident sunlight. Pesticides, of course, are a big no-no. The farms are constantly monitored using computer vision, and the analytics obtained from the process are used to fine-tune results like flavor or texture of the produce.

The novel farming methodology is not just a gimmick; it has a number of important benefits. The first is that the produce always reaches consumers while it is still fresh. That’s because these indoor farms can be set up within urban areas and don’t need to be tucked away on the outskirts of cities like most other farms. The short delivery distance ensures that the produce can be consumed on the same day it is harvested, while its flavor and nutritional value are still intact.
 
Bowery Farming has a few other numbers to quantify the benefits of its system. For starters, it makes 95 percent less use of water than traditional farming. The vertical arrangement of crops makes the process 100 times more efficient in terms of volume of produce per area. The easily modifiable indoor environment ensures that growth is not dependent on the seasons or weather.

The startup also handles the distribution of the produce it grows. Vegetables currently on the roster are baby kale, butterhead lettuce, arugula, and basil, with more expected to be added in the future. The product is sold to restaurants and grocery stores. Those in the New York metro area can find Bowery Farming’s produce at certain Whole Foods and Forager’s Market. It is also sourced by the restaurants Craft and Fowler and Wells in New York City.

Aquaculture And Vertical Farming At University of Arizona

Aquaculture And Vertical Farming At University of Arizona

There will be two speakers at the next CEAC Covering Environments Seminar, held Friday, February 24th from 4:15 PM to 5:15 PM in the CEAC Lecture Room. 

At 4:15 PM, Dr. Kevin Fitzsimmons (Professor ABE, SWES and CEAC Faculty) will give his presentation entitled “Technological Advances, Trends and Challenges in Aquaculture”.  

Twice President (World and US Aquaculture Societies), Fulbright Scholar, Editorial Board member (Fisheries Science), multi department Professor and Scientist, world traveler and teacher—just a few of Fitzsimmons' talents and achievements which have catapulted him to become a world leader in aquaculture systems and food production.

Fitzsimmons is fond of explaining that when you connect a fish tank with a lettuce raft, you get "Better Science, Better Fish, Better Life". These are the scientific and humanitarian principles on which Dr. Fitzsimmons' career is based. He came to that conclusion based on his extensive work which is based on the science of symbiosis between fish and plants whether in natural or constructed environments (e.g. aquaponics).

Fitzsimmons, who is an acclaimed international expert in this area of agriculture, likes to point out that aquaculture has a long history "From the Pharaohs to the Future", and that he is most active in the latter aspect of the science. Dr. Fitzsimmons has applied his knowledge and passion in the amazing spectrum of aquaculture ranging from shrimp production, to tilapia culture, seaweed production, water purification, algae control, and onto the biology of native fish. And, he has done so across the USA, in Thailand, the Philippines, China, Malaysia, Honduras, Mexico, Myanmar, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the list keeps growing. No wonder that Fitzsimmons also carries the title of Director of International Programs at CALS thus bolstering the recognition and outreach of the University of Arizona worldwide.

In his presentation, Kevin will discuss recent developments and future trends in how novel aquaculture technologies are taking a central role in food production especially in developing countries.

At 4:45 PM, Dr. Joel Cuello (Professor ABE, CEAC Faculty) will take the stage and deliver his presentation entitled “Minimally Structured, Modular, Prefabricated Vertical Farm Designs 2.0”.

He doesn't like walls, hunger or intolerance. He likes creativity, travel, communicating, learning, imagination, feeding the world, thinking about clean water! In short, Professor Cuello is a renaissance man. Joel Cuello has dedicated his career to finding ways to solve existential world problems before they become irreversible: food production and security, water purification, energy and environmental sustainability, eradication of thirst and hunger, and the fostering of cross cultural understanding.

These are lofty, complex, and at first glance such enormous problems that one would think them to be unsolvable. But, Cuello is a pragmatist—he is after all an engineer. And so, he is addressing these issues bit by bit, corner by corner, eventually producing a mosaic of solutions. Energy conservation? Algae; Hunger mitigation? Bioproduction systems. Sustainability? Recycling of water, nutrients, and the usage of novel lighting sources to sustain plant growth in controlled environments. Environmental degradation? Designing self-contained, portable environments for food production on earth and in Space. Needing creative minds to solve future engineering challenges? Teaching and fostering developing minds internationally.

These are some of the things that Joel Cuello has spent doing during his career, and he will share his focused vision and engineering solutions to vertical farm designs as a solution to the impending, global food shortages.

For more information:
ceac.arizona.edu/ceac-seminar-series

“Post-Organic” Produce Uses 95-Percent Less Water Than Traditional Farming

“Post-Organic” Produce Uses 95-Percent Less Water Than Traditional Farming

A newly launched modern farming company, Bowery, is growing what they call the world’s first “post-organic” produce. Their concept breaks from traditional agricultural practices by growing plants indoors in vertical rows without any pesticides. With the help of proprietary technology, Bowery can closely monitor the growth of their crops and meticulously manage the resources needed. More than 80 types of crops are currently being grown at the company’s farm in Kearny, New Jersey, and they are selling several types of greens and herbs in stores in the New York region.

The idea for the company spawned when co-founder and CEO Irving Fain discovered a promising trend in LED lighting cost and efficiency that could improve indoor farming. “The pricing of LED lights dropped dramatically a little over 5 years ago,” Fain says. “We’ve also seen the efficiency more than double. What makes this even more exciting is that research suggests that this trend will continue. This means that not only are LED’s a viable solution for indoor farming today, but this solution continues to scale out in the future.”

“While traditional farming methods waste resources and endanger our future food supply, advancements in indoor farming make it possible to address a wide range of agricultural issues,” Fain adds. He teamed up with co-founders David Golden and Brian Falther to start Bowery.

“Agriculture consumes 70 percent of available water globally, and we use over 700 million pounds of pesticides each year in the United States alone,” Fain says. “Bowery is working to change that.” As the population grows, Fain and his team believe their company can provide more efficient food to help meet increasing demands around the world. The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization reportsthat food production will need to increase by 70 percent to feed an additional 2.3 billion people by 2050.

Bowery’s model begins with non-GMO seeds that are planted in vertical rows in an indoor growing environment to optimize space and eliminate the need for soil. According to the company, Bowery’s system is more than 100 times more productive on the same footprint of land. FarmOS, a technology system built by the Bowery team, allows crops to grow year-round, at a faster rate, and using 95-percent less water than traditional agriculture. FarmOS creates ideal conditions using automation, LED lighting that mimics the sun, and a 24-hour monitoring to ensure a reliable yield without wasting resources.

Fain calls these “post-organic” crops the next evolution of produce. Unlike organic products that might utilize organic pest management products, Bowery crops are grown without using any pesticides at all.

Another part of Bowery’s process is growing the produce close to the point of consumption. Their farm in Kearny currently distributes to Foragers Market locations in New York City, with plans to expand into select Whole Foods in the tri-state area. Bowery products are also used at Tom Colicchio’s restaurants, Craft and Fowler & Wells in New York City. This proximity ensures that produce will reach stores and restaurants within one day of being picked, when it is at the height of freshness and flavor. The company has plans for future farms following the same model.

Bowery’s packaged greens start at US$3.49. “As we scale, we plan to drive down our costs and deliver the highest quality produce at a price that makes it even more accessible to all,” Fain says. The products available now include kale mix, baby kale, basil, arugula, butterhead lettuce, and mixed greens. Additional items will be offered soon.

Bowery has been in the works for more than two years now, but their official launch on February 23, 2017, marks their formal introduction to consumers. “We’re very proud of the work we’ve done and are excited for consumers to learn more about what Bowery is doing to address some of the complex issues in agriculture,” Fain says.

Here's Why Your Winter Produce Tastes Better

Here's Why Your Winter Produce Tastes Better

By PETER FROST 

 Nearly 7 million pounds of hydroponic tomatoes will be harvested this year from two 7.5-acre greenhouses in Rochelle, about 80 miles west of Chicago. Another new greenhouse in that small town is delivering greens, herbs and tomatoes year-round to all Mariano's supermarkets in the Chicago area. And on the South Side, a greenhouse atop a soap factory is producing 25 crops of leafy greens a year, the equivalent yield of a 50-acre farm in just under 2 acres of space.

The amount of local, sustainably grown produce available throughout the year in Chicago has never been greater. But it's still not enough, as health-centric millennials assert their dominance over the U.S. food chain. While greenhouses have long been a mainstay of fresh produce in Europe, the industry is still nascent in North America, where open, irrigable land is more plentiful. Substantial capital requirements and slim margins—especially in the early days of a controlled farming operation—can stymie startups and, in fact, recently caused one high-profile vertical farm to shut down in suburban Chicago. Still, an influx of venture and private-equity money is funding the erection of more greenhouses and indoor farms, mostly around big population centers like Chicago.

North America is expected to be the fastest-growing commercial greenhouse market worldwide through 2020, according to a report from market research firm Research & Markets. Globally, the industry is projected to grow at a compounded annual rate of 8.8 percent, reaching nearly $30 billion by 2020, the report says.

"It reminds me a bit of solar 1.0, where capital intensity is unknown or varied, and the industry is immature and unproven," says Sanjeev Krishnan, managing director of Chicago-based S2G Ventures, which invests in food and agriculture companies focused on healthy, sustainable and local food. But like solar panels, whose costs have come down substantially over the last decade, Krishnan thinks what he calls "controlled agriculture" is well on the way to proving itself as a sustainable business model. "We believe in the trend of growing closer to your demand center. It makes sense for logistics costs, (spoilage) and a product quality perspective."

Nearly 7 million pounds of hydroponic tomatoes will be harvested this year from two 7.5-acre greenhouses in Rochelle, about 80 miles west of Chicago. Another new greenhouse in that small town is delivering greens, herbs and tomatoes year-round to all Mariano's supermarkets in the Chicago area. And on the South Side, a greenhouse atop a soap factory is producing 25 crops of leafy greens a year, the equivalent yield of a 50-acre farm in just under 2 acres of space.

The amount of local, sustainably grown produce available throughout the year in Chicago has never been greater. But it's still not enough, as health-centric millennials assert their dominance over the U.S. food chain. While greenhouses have long been a mainstay of fresh produce in Europe, the industry is still nascent in North America, where open, irrigable land is more plentiful. Substantial capital requirements and slim margins—especially in the early days of a controlled farming operation—can stymie startups and, in fact, recently caused one high-profile vertical farm to shut down in suburban Chicago. Still, an influx of venture and private-equity money is funding the erection of more greenhouses and indoor farms, mostly around big population centers like Chicago.

North America is expected to be the fastest-growing commercial greenhouse market worldwide through 2020, according to a report from market research firm Research & Markets. Globally, the industry is projected to grow at a compounded annual rate of 8.8 percent, reaching nearly $30 billion by 2020, the report says.

"It reminds me a bit of solar 1.0, where capital intensity is unknown or varied, and the industry is immature and unproven," says Sanjeev Krishnan, managing director of Chicago-based S2G Ventures, which invests in food and agriculture companies focused on healthy, sustainable and local food. But like solar panels, whose costs have come down substantially over the last decade, Krishnan thinks what he calls "controlled agriculture" is well on the way to proving itself as a sustainable business model. "We believe in the trend of growing closer to your demand center. It makes sense for logistics costs, (spoilage) and a product quality perspective."

SHAKEOUT

S2G in August put about $4 million behind a combination greenhouse/vertical herb farm in Harrisonburg, Va., called Shenandoah Growers, and it's studying minority investments in unconventional growers. But placing bets in the field remains risky, Krishnan says, noting that many of the early players in greenhouse and vertical farming either have gone out of business or changed their business models. He expects additional shakeout over the next three years.

One local casualty was Bedford Park-based FarmedHere, which shuttered last month, largely because it didn't have enough capital to expand production and spread out its costs, says Nate Laurell, its former CEO. Laurell relaunched the company as Here, which turns would-be discarded produce from other growers into juices, salad dressings and spreads that have longer shelf lives.

Despite the demise of his farming operation, Laurell remains bullish on indoor and greenhouse farming's place in the food chain. "I really think it's like energy. It's not solar or wind or natural gas, it's all of it," he says.

He and others say there's plenty of room for smart operators that are backed with sufficient capital, due in large part to intractable secular trends in the industry.

"Right now the demand in the marketplace exceeds our supply," says Viraj Puri, CEO of New York-based Gotham Greens, which operates four greenhouses, including the 2-acre greenhouse on the roof of the Method soap factory in Chicago's Pullman neighborhood. The company, which sells lettuces to restaurants like Gibsons and Honey Butter Fried Chicken as well as grocers Jewel and Whole Foods Market, has raised more than $30 million and is exploring an expansion in Chicago.

Then there's MightyVine, which built a 7.5-acre greenhouse in Rochelle in 2015 and almost immediately after opening began an expansion that would double its size. It has invested about $20 million in the project.

Its tomatoes have earned their way into some of the city's higher-end kitchens, such as Rick Bayless' and those of Italian restaurants Il Porcelino and Monteverde. They're also sold in Whole Foods and Jewel in Chicago and supermarket chains in Iowa and Wisconsin and just launched in 49 Fresh Thyme stores this month, says CEO Gary Lazarski. "If we waited on the expansion, we knew we'd be in a shortage situation rather quickly," he says.

Its neighbor in Rochelle, BrightFarms, invested $10 million into a 3.7-acre greenhouse that grows lettuces, tomatoes and herbs, all earmarked for Mariano's stores. The company, which has raised more than $70 million since 2011, also has greenhouses in Virginia and Pennsylvania and is finalizing plans to build in Ohio and near Kansas City, Mo., says CEO Paul Lightfoot. "We expect more competition and more investors," Lightfoot says. "In the hot part of any market, you'd be a fool not to assume more capital will come in and more competitors will arrive."

​​​​​​​​​​​​​Inside The Vertical Farm Growing What It Calls "The World's First Post-Organic" Produce

Inside The Vertical Farm Growing What It Calls "The World's First Post-Organic" Produce

Without using any pesticides or chemicals, Bowery—a new vertical farming startup outside of New York City—delivers fresh leafy greens within one day of harvesting, with some help from agricultural AI.

EILLIE ANZILOTTI 02.23.17 9:00 AM

Before leading people through the heavy metal doors and into the vertical farm Irving Fain has recently opened in a warehouse in Kearny, New Jersey, he asks visitors to take off their jewelry. He hands them a disposable jumpsuit and a hairnet to put on; bright blue sleeves must be slipped on over shoes. "It’s about protecting the integrity of the environment," Fain says. Jewelry could fall off and into the beds of leafy greens; shoes and clothes could track in unknown germs.

For Bowery—the farm that Fain, a former marketing entrepreneur, first conceived of two years ago—contamination is a particular concern. Bowery is growing what it calls "the world’s first post-organic produce," meaning that all of the leafy greens in the warehouse—which range from kale to Thai basil to wasabi arugula—are grown completely without pesticides, and completely under the control of a comprehensive, proprietary operating system that oversees the entire growing process. "We fully own our process from seed to store," Fain says—the "post-organic" designation derives from the fact that the founders view Bowery's farming and tech integration as the next frontier in agriculture. Though the startup doesn't release exact capacity or operating cost figures, Bowery estimates that it is 100 times more productive on the same plot of land than traditional farms.

Organic produce has grown into a $43.3 billion industry in the U.S., and its popularity is largely driven by two beliefs: that organic food is healthier, and that it’s grown without pesticides. The former is not necessarily true; the USDA organic certification refers to growing methods, not nutritional value. But the growing methods remain the source of some confusion. One survey found that 95% of consumers believe organic produce is grown completely without pesticides. That is definitely not true: Large-scale organic farms make liberal use of pesticides—the pesticides themselves just have to be organic, too. (The USDA maintains a list of synthetic substances like ethanol and chlorine dioxide allowed for the use in organic crop production, provided that "the use of such substances do not contribute to contamination of crops, soil, or water.")

Bowery, like many other vertical farms (like one that also recently opened in New Jersey) bypasses the use of chemicals entirely. Inside the warehouse, greens are grown in vertical columns stacked five high; LED lights deliver a full spectrum of light mimicking the sun, and because the water is delivered efficiently and recycled, Bowery requires 95% less water than traditional agriculture. Because the environment has to be carefully controlled to minimize threats of food-borne illnesses, Bowery complies with the highest standards of food safety protocols, including Hazard Analysis Critical Control Points, which ensures safety at every step of the growing and delivery process.

"It doesn’t take much to see that agriculture is at the epicenter of so many issues facing the world today," Fain tells Co.Exist. Around 70% of the world’s water supply goes to agriculture, and on top of the fact that nearly 11% of the world’s population struggles with access to food, we’ll likely need 50% to 70% more food to feed the 9.5 billion people estimated to be on the planet by 2050. Most of that population growth will happen in cities, and Fain says he was drawn to figuring out how to provide fresh food to urban environments in a way that’s efficient and sustainable. With his two cofounders David Golden and Brian Falther, who also have experience in the business and tech worlds, they "dove in and approached the issue from the standpoint of: What’s the best technology we can use to solve this problem?" Fain says.

Indoor and vertical farming are not new concepts—a robot-run indoor farm in Kyoto, Japan, that recently opened will produce around 10 million heads of lettuce per year, and a warehouse in Alaska houses a vertical farm that delivers leafy greens to a region that struggles with access to fresh produce. But Bowery, Fain says, is taking it a step further with its proprietary technology, developed specifically to support the venture. Called FarmOS, the fully integrated technology system uses machine learning and vision to understand and respond to all the variables that go into how the plants are grown. The sensors installed all around the farm track the optimal levels of light and nutrients for each variety of produce, which can be adjusted to effect things like taste and flavor (Fain says that the way the system is manipulated can ramp up or diminish the wasabi-like kick of a certain type of arugula grown in the farm).

FarmOS also detects when plants are ready to be harvested—something Fain says that traditional farmers tend to determined by eyeballing, which is "a hard method to scale." By tracking the growth of plants 24/7 and sending data back into the operating system, FarmOS learns the optimal point of harvest for each crop. The system flags when each plant has reached its peak, and stores what it has learned about optimal light and nutrients for the next round of growing. Once Bowery produce is harvested, it’s delivered out within one day and travels no more than 10 miles (for traditional produce, delivery can take weeks). Since the farm started producing last summer, it has delivered produce to a handful of New York City area restaurants, among them Tom Colicchio’s Craft and Fowler & Wells, and Foragers, a market specializing in high-quality, local produce. At the beginning of March, Bowery will start selling at local Whole Foods. A box of Bowery greens will retail for $3.49—comparable to a similarly sized box of organic greens but more expensive than a bag. (It's cheaper, though, than some of Whole Foods' pricier leafy green offerings, which push $6 per box.)

To date, Bowery has raised $7.5 million; First Round Capital provided the first round of seed funding, and a variety of food-industry professionals, from Blue Apron CEO Matt Salzberg to Plated chairman Sally Robling, are on board as angel investors. Though the Bowery venture is just getting off the ground, Fain sees a lot of potential for his model to do a great deal of good. The efficiency of Bowery’s technology enables the startup to sell produce at prices comparable to traditionally grown crops, and Fain hopes to be able to drive the prices down further as the company grows. He also says that he and his founders are looking into developing a charitable arm to the startup—in New York City, where more than 16% of residents are food insecure and lack access to good-quality produce, Bowery could fill a real need.

For now, Fain is already at work on another Bowery farm in the New York City area, but he says there’s no stopping how this model could expand to serve a wider range of communities. "That’s one of the beauties of this place," Fain says of the Kearny outpost. "This was just a completely empty warehouse, and now it’s a fully functioning farm. There’s no shortage of unused industrial space across the world that could be put to similar use."

Bowery Launches AI-Enabled Indoor Farming Business with $7.5m in Seed Funding

Bowery Launches AI-Enabled Indoor Farming Business with $7.5m in Seed Funding

FEBRUARY 23, 2017 LOUISA BURWOOD-TAYLOR

There’s a new indoor farming company in town.

Today, New Jersey-based Bowery comes out of stealth to announce that it has raised $7.5 million in angel and seed funding to launch its new vertical farming business.

Founded by tech entrepreneur Irving Fain in October 2014 with co-founders David Golden and Brian Falther, Bowery has built a vertical farming facility in New Jersey that uses automation, machine learning, and vision systems to monitor and tend to its crops.

The business will start by selling baby kale, basil, Bowery blend, Bowery kale mix, arugula, and butterhead lettuce, which it grows without any pesticides or agrichemicals.

Fain and his team of engineers and agriculture scientists built the farm from the ground up to create a proprietary growing system that Fain believes is a scalable way to provide fresh, local food more efficiently and sustainably.

Bowery’s vertical farms are driven by LED and hydroponic technology. The farm is stacked vertically in a completely controlled environment that’s monitored by Bowery’s farm operating system. The “brains of the farm”, as Fain calls it, draws in data from a network of sensors across the facility that are measuring a variety of data points that impact the growth of the plant.

These sensors include cameras and the FarmOS uses computer vision to detect changes in the plant. By correlating these images against other variables detected by the sensors such as humidity or temperature, the software can determine the drivers of changes in plant health, taste or quality, according to Fain.

“Through machine learning, the system can learn how the various variables within the farm can drive changes in the flavor and health of the plants, and the system can also be automated to make any necessary changes to the environment in which the plant is growing,” he told AgFunderNews.

This operating system is not necessarily new — motorleaf is building a similar sensing and automation tool for indoor farmers — but Bowery has built the technology as a vertically integrated farming business.

“We made the decision to be a vertically integrated company because we want to have control from seed to store to ensure a high-quality product that we can stand behind,” said Fain. “And we want to build a brand.”

Bowery is very focused on the flavor profile of its crops and has the endorsement of celebrity chef and restauranteur Tom Collichio. Collichio is an angel investor in Bowery and is also serving Bowery produce in two of his restaurants, Fowler & Wells, and Craft.

“We can make our arugula spicier or more peppery by tweaking certain variables including the intensity of light, the amount of light, the nutrients it receives and so on,” he said. “There are various stresses that can have an impact on the flavor profile of a crop.”

(Bowery treated me to a tasting and I had arugula that tasted of wasabi!)

Fain likened it to the production of wine where a certain amount of rain, a poorly-timed frost, and temperature variations will impact whether it’s a vintage year or not.

“Wine growers might know the certain drivers for a vintage year, and they might be able to predict if one year will be, but they can’t control it,” he said. “We can and it’s much more than lighting recipes.”

Bowery produce will soon hit the shelves of Whole Foods and Foragers in the New York tristate area and the company will continue to target retailers and restaurants as its core customer base.

The company raised $7.5 million in seed funding back in October 2015 with First Round Capital leading the round. Box Group, Lerer Hippeau Ventures, SV Angel, Homebrew, Flybridge, Red Swan, RRE, and Urban.us also participated. As well as a group of angel investors: Matt Salzberg (founder and CEO of Blue Apron), Sally Robling (chairman of Plated, 30 years of experience in the food industry), Tom Colicchio, and Adam Eskin (founder and CEO of DigInn).

Loan Approved For SB Indoor Farming Project

Loan Approved For SB Indoor Farming Project

By Mark Peterson | 

Posted: Thu 5:25 PM, Feb 23, 2017  | 

Updated: Thu 6:37 PM, Feb 23, 2017

This could be the year indoor farming comes to inner city South Bend.

Planning for a vertical farm began back in 2015.

Earlier this week, an $800,000 loan was conditionally approved for the project (from the City of South Bend’s Industrial Revolving Loan Fund) while a recent Crowdfunding campaign raised $640,000. That puts the for-profit company called Green Sense that much closer to breaking ground on a facility that would be located on the Ivy Tech Campus.

“They're going to have a partnerships with Ivy Tech where they can bring students who have an interest in agriculture into the building into their process train them have them be able to have an educational opportunity there to learn how this all works,” said Acting Director of South Bend’s Community Investment Department, Brian Pawlowski. “There's some private side financing that needs to happen that'll be on the order of an additional two or so million dollars for the entirety of the project to go up but once that's all in place I would anticipate maybe sometime around this summer or so, they could potentially start construction at that point.”

At the vertical farm, leafy greens would be grown indoors, 365 days a year, hydroponically, using artificial light. “You know rain, wind, snow, shine whatever it may be, they can get the job done and they can really cater their produce to what the market demand is,” said Pawlowski.

Green Sense is a for-profit company that would pay for the project—Ivy Tech would essentially be getting a lab for free.

The first vertical farm Green Sense built was in Portage, Indiana…the last was in China.