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Tinyfield Farm: A Bold Soul Meets an Open Mind
Tinyfield Rooftop Farm’s hops
Tinyfield atop the former Pfizer factory is an innovative and bold venture, the only rooftop farm currently specializing in hops
On the northern border of Bedford Stuyvesant, food start-ups are giving new life to the formerly shuttered Pfizer pharmaceutical factory. Micro greens, crops and other edible goods seem to be sprouting all around – also thanks to Tinyfield Roofhop Farm.
Acumen Capital Partners, a small firm that acquired the old Pfizer building in 2011 and took charge of its redevelopment, has a history of welcoming agricultural ventures. The urban farm Brooklyn Grange is the case in point. After being turned down and considered “crazy” by several building owners in the city, the folks behind the farm approached Jeff Rosenblum, one of Acumen’s two principals. The two parties clicked instantly. Soon after, Brooklyn Grange opened up its first commercial-scale farm on the one-acre rooftop of Acumen’s earlier development in Queens. Given the company’s history and the number of food-related businesses in the Pfizer building, one may wonder: Have food enterprises and urban farms always been part of Acumen’s plans for the redevelopment of the space?
“I’m lying to you if I say we have,” answered Ashish Dua, the other principal at Acumen. “During the process of meeting with about seventy groups from the community to discuss the possible effects of the redevelopment, four or five food manufactures came to us. So we took them in [as tenants]. Then word-of-mouth among young entrepreneurs created a snowball effect. We have just always kept an open mind.”
Keely Gerhold, the bold soul and founder of Tinyfield
Since then, Acumen has welcomed Tinyfield Roofhop Farm, another bold agricultural effort, into the fold. Keely Gerhold, who grew up on a farm and once worked at Brooklyn Grange as an apprentice, started the venture in 2015 with a micro loan and funds raised via Indiegogo. What makes the farm a bold endeavor? It is the first and only rooftop farm that grows hops, an experiment born out of curiosity. Thanks to Acumen’s working relationship with Brooklyn Grange, “they are more understanding and supportive of our vision,” said Gerhold.
It is enough of a challenge to be the first and only one in any area; Tinyfield’s choice of crop ups the odds. Hop is a perennial crop that can be harvested only once a year – which means the yield is low.
“A hop-growing operation on such a small a scale is not profitable,” said Gerhold. “At least not at this moment.”
Last year, she harvested two pounds of the crop and sent them to Strong Rope, a craft brewery in Greenpoint. They turned the first batch of Tinyfield’s hops into five gallons of beer. This year’s yield was half as much as last year’s. Due to the small quantity, it will be used for the fermentation process of beer. Fortunately, the hop plant is versatile and can be used in many ways; some restaurants bought hop shoots for baking from Tinyfield.
Tinyfield’s green house, home to the farm’s micro greens
To sustain the hop farm, Gerhold set up a C.S.A., a community-supported agriculture operation, for additional revenue. She built a small greenhouse which grows micro greens for the C.S.A.’s six members, three of which are Pfizer tenants. Members pay Tinyfield to grow certain micro greens and have them delivered upon harvest.
Gerhold works to create a self-sustained ecosystem on the roof of the former factory – and is willing to branch out. This year, she imported a beehive, for pollination and to produce honey. Another challenge.
“We failed this year. But we will try again next year,” Gerhold said calmly.
Despite some of the set-backs Gerhold has encountered, she strives to grow the business steadily – and, according to Dua, the Pfizer building will remain a suitable home for her ambitions as Acumen plans to continue to grow with its tenants.
Lego For Social Entrepreneurs: An Ode To The Shipping Container
Lego For Social Entrepreneurs: An Ode To The Shipping Container
Craig Kielburger, Contributor | Co-Founder of WE, social entrepreneur, author and speaker
o-authored by Marc Kielburger
10/03/2017
As Hurricane Harvey loomed on the horizon, Andrew Abendshein filled the water tanks and “battened down the hatches” on his small farm in Houston, Texas. All he could do was hope.
In Harvey’s aftermath, it was three days before Abendshein could get back to his farm.
Despite the storm’s massive disruption of local agriculture, he found his crops intact: the lettuce was hearty and the kale was hale, not a leaf out of place. The greens were safe in their sturdy, hydroponically-enabled shipping containers. Thanks to the repurposed metal crates, Abendshein’s Acre in a Box business was soon making deliveries to local restaurants, providing the only fresh veggies on the menu following the storm.
Abendshein is an oil industry worker turned urban farmer, thanks to Freight Farms. This Boston-based business takes old shipping containers, retrofits them with hydroponic equipment, and turns them into portable gardens. Using 90 per cent less water than traditional farming, shipping crate farmers like Abendshein can produce as much food as a football stadium-sized field in an area smaller than the end zone.
Freight Farms offers a creative new lease on life for these ubiquitous giants that would otherwise have gone to waste.
There are more than 17 million shipping containers around the world, bringing us bananas from the Dominican Republic and smartphones from China. Unfortunately, these prodigal crates rarely return home. It’s cheaper for manufacturers to build new containers for their goods than to send back old ones. Megatons of metal wind up rusting in dockyards. But savvy entrepreneurs are using shipping containers like huge Lego blocks—they can become anything.
Retired from the sea, these crates have found new life as libraries and computer labs in developing communities, and classrooms in refugee camps.
Container homes have been a fad for years now, and not just for eccentric hipsters. American Family Housing, a California non-profit, has made shipping containers into housing for homeless veterans.
Clinic in a Can, in Wichita, Kansas, turns old containers into mobile doctors’ offices, medical labs, and even fully-equipped surgical units. The pods can be quickly deployed to natural disaster zones. Stick a bunch together and you have an instant hospital.
In Toronto, a community center has built a pop-up marketout of 15 shipping containers. Local entrepreneurs can rent vending space for far less than a brick-and-mortar store, creating economic opportunity and a thriving neighborhood hub.
Now, aspiring container entrepreneurs beware: it’s not as easy buying one and moving in.
Many containers have been treated with lead paint or harmful chemicals and must be cleaned. You’ll need doors, windows, insulation, and special equipment for uses like hydroponic farming. Up-cycling a crate to use for housing or a storefront can cost upwards of $20,000. A hydroponic-enabled container from Freight Farms costs around $80,000.
But it’s worth the investment.
Abendshein estimates his two farm containers will pay for themselves within four years. And he’s producing environmentally sustainable fresh veggies in a city notorious for its extensive “food deserts.”
Mountains of old, rusted shipping containers are a monument to our insatiable desire for consumer goods and foods from abroad. Reincarnation means these metal boxes don’t go to waste.
Craig and Marc Kielburger are the co-founders of the WE movement, which includes WE Charity, ME to WE Social Enterprise and WE Day. For more dispatches from WE, check out WE Stories.
It’ll take More Than An Apple to Fix Newark’s Food Economy
Pictured above: Newark resident Jacob Kim is a farmer at Jersey Cider Works and helps tend to the orchards of dwarf apples on the company’s farm in Hunterdon County.
It’ll take More Than An Apple to Fix Newark’s Food Economy
Karine Vann
But it may be a good place to start.
October 5th , 2017
by Karine Vann
At first glance, Charles Rosen, founder of Jersey Cider Works, appears to be a walking contradiction. A self-proclaimed “socialist, Canadian Jew,” he also preaches a self-styled economic philosophy he calls “libertarian pragmatism.” He’s by turns captivating and abrasive. One moment, he’s touting the virtues of regenerative agriculture, citing poetic imagery about the benevolence of trees; the next, he’s cursing “douchebag Brooklyn hipsters” for buying their microgreens from AeroFarms (the new, much-ballyhooed vertical farm in town). He’s a former lawyer and ad executive living in the tony suburb of Montclair, New Jersey. But his sights are set on the struggling metropolis to the east: Newark.
Newark, of course, is full of contradictions of its own. A historically diverse city with a rich cultural legacy, it boasts one of the country’s busiest airports, an indispensable shipping port, and a prime location: only six miles from New York City. But despite these advantages, nearly a third of the population lives below the poverty line. Home to several major corporate offices and a number of universities, local residents hold only 18 percent of the city’s jobs. In spite of everything, economic inequality has persisted.
Rosen says he hopes to help transform Newark through hard cider—not the product, specifically, but the agricultural, economic, and labor model he’s built around producing it. It’s an ongoing effort that’s both made breakthroughs and hit snags. But to tell the story of Jersey Cider Works, it’s important to point out that Newark was formerly a center of local food production. That’s thanks in part to an unlikely hero, a speckled, golden apple that was once abundant, then nearly extinct, and now—like Newark—may finally be on the mend.
Karine Vann
Rosen has contracted with local farmers to provide the apples for his cider as he waits for the Harrison trees to mature
Newark has had a reputation for many things, but it’s been a while since cider making was one of them. And yet, long ago, the kind produced here—made from a prized local specialty, the Harrison apple— was considered the nation’s finest. At the turn of the 19th century, a robust industry sprang up around the Harrison and the celebrated “champagne of Newark” that it yielded, supposedly winning the highly coveted affection of George Washington himself.
But then, the champagne of Newark stopped flowing. Orchards gave way to housing as the city grew, and, according to Edible Jersey’s Fran McManus, as development pushed farms farther east and prohibition-era stigmas remained, cider never recovered. City-brewed beer became the local drink of choice. By the 1970s, the Harrison apple was thought to be extinct—though reports of its death turned out to be slightly exaggerated. In 1976, and again in 1989, orchardists discovered two surviving Harrison trees—one just a week before it was cut down to make room for a vegetable garden and another, still living, on an estate near Paramus. In both cases, spring twigs—known as “scion wood”—were grafted onto healthy trees elsewhere, creating new orchards in Vermont and Virginia from the cuttings.
It was a close call for the Harrison, a brush with oblivion. But for Rosen, the apple’s resurgence has become a guiding metaphor, a call to arms, and a symbol of the city itself.
Karine Vann
James Williams, an employee of New Ark Farms and member of Rosen’s workforce development curriculum, pressing pears on the Ironbound farm
“I live in a town that has literal billionaires in it,” Rosen says of Montclair, where his neighborhood roster sounds a lot like a red carpet after-party guest list. “I live next to Bobbi Brown, the makeup tycoon; Don Katz, who built Audible; and Stephen Colbert. You have tremendous wealth in communities like mine, that are basically suburbs of Newark.”
Though Rosen says being a member of the ring of wealth surrounding Newark’s “impoverished inner core” bothered him, he wasn’t quite sure what to do about it. Early on, he toyed with the idea of running for public office, but he gave up after learning that most of his time would be spent fundraising, or, as he puts it, “sitting in a call center, dialing for dollars.” But as Rosen searched for a way to meaningfully invest in Newark’s local economy, he stumbled on the folksy and poignant story of the Harrison apple’s near-extinction. And it came at the perfect time.
It was 2012, and Rosen had just founded New Ark Farms as a venture in workforce development and urban renewal, later hiring Aldo Civico, director of the Center for Conflict Resolution at Columbia University, to help develop a prison re-entry curriculum for former inmates.
Rosen was growing more and more interested in using sustainable agriculture as a way to rejuvenate the city. At the same time, cider was becoming a rapidly expanding sector of the alcohol industry. Here was a crop anchored in the city’s heritage. The idea to bring Newark cider back checked all the boxes.
By 2014, Rosen was purchasing American heirloom cider trees from nurseries all over the United States, including a few Harrisons from Virginian orchardist Tom Burford—who had helped graft twigs from the last remaining trees—with the intent of repopulating the region. He launched Jersey Cider Works, the cider production branch of his New Ark Farms (the social enterprise focused on workforce development and regenerative agriculture), and secured small-scale growers to source apples from until his lot was mature enough. The only piece missing was a location in Newark in which to house his production. He entered into negotiations with the city about buying the site of the now-demolished Pabst Blue Ribbon factory.
Karine Vann
New Ark Farms employee Derek Blackwell from Jersey City, who also takes part in Rosen’s workforce development curriculum, stands amidst the orchards of dwarf cider trees
But his plans were interrupted. Despite a history of cider production in the region, the state did not offer cider licenses, which forced all cideries to operate as wineries. And to be considered a winery in New Jersey, Rosen had to have at least three acres of vineyard space attached to his production facility.
The chances of finding three usable acres of land in a city made of more than 70 percent concrete, with meticulous zoning regulations, incredibly high property values, and environmentally hazardous industrial remains, were understandably slim. Rosen was forced to take his project out of the city.
In the spring of 2014, Rosen, desperate for a venue, finally found an abandoned farm in the small town of Asbury, in Hunterdon County, about 55 miles away from Newark.
Over the last two and a half years, operating out of the remote, rural environment has had its perks. Today, the 108-acre property produces 60,000 gallons of cider per year under the brand name Ironbound (after the historic working-class neighborhood in Newark), with plans to expand into perry (pear cider) production. The farm grows fruits and vegetables, which it sells to local businesses and feeds to its staff, and it also provides a serenity that would have been impossible in the city.
Karine Vann
The Ironbound Farm, where Ironbound Hard Cider is made.
James Williams commutes two hours every day to get to and from the farm in Asbury. Born and raised by his grandmother in Newark, Williams was a child of the streets—though he says he never missed an 8 o’clock curfew because “that’s how street I was.” At 37 years old, the job at New Ark Farms is Williams’ first ‘on the books’, let alone, on a farm. He says the remoteness has been a godsend. “There’s no nature in Newark, just police and violence. That’s why I like the drive at the end of the day. Quiet, peaceful. And I’m away from problems, stress-free when I’m up here.” He’s been with the company for two and a half years.
Stories like Williams’ are encouraging, but they’re far from the norm. There are many heartbreaks in this line of work. Farm life is a dramatic shift for a city-dwelling workforce, especially a formerly incarcerated one, and it’s not for everybody. Rosen recalls one former inmate, whose financial circumstances forced him back to the streets and, eventually, back in prison, despite his progress in the curriculum.
Rosen says he’s invested millions of dollars of his own money into funding New Ark Farms and jokes that he “can’t even get the state to fund a deer fence.”
“These people come out of a state of brokenness for years,” he says. “We bring them out of that environment, they have all these restrictions on the jobs they can get, all of their child support kicks back in, all of their court fees and fines and we’re like, ‘Good luck!’ Many of them are simply forced back into dealing.”
What started as a project to create jobs and strengthen local food production for the city of Newark currently employs only two Newark residents, Williams being one of them. For a number of reasons, importing a steady workforce into Hunterdon County’s serene countryside has been a constant battle.
Bridging the divide between where food is grown (agrarian communities) and where it is consumed (urban centers) is an extremely complicated issue for American cities. And Newark is no exception. Under former mayor—now Senator—Cory Booker’s administration, a push toward healthy food access gained some momentum. In 2008, the city held what it called a “Green Future Summit,” a citywide brainstorming session during which issues tied to sustainability were discussed in depth. Soon after, an Office of Sustainability was formed and in 2013, it released an Action Plan that devoted an entire chapter to food.
Some goals didn’t materialize, like the long-awaited formation of a Food Policy Council. But others were successful—setting up a raft of new farmers’ markets in the city, for instance, and promoting the massively underutilized Adopt-A-Lot program, where residents can lease a vacant lot owned by the municipality for just a dollar.
Today, there are between 60 and 70 functioning urban gardens in the city.
Karine Vann
‘The Garden of Hope’ is a community garden in Newark’s central ward made possible by the Adopt-A-Lot program
But while community gardening has done a lot to educate and beautify the city, many gardens cannot operate in a commercial capacity or create jobs the way larger for-profit enterprises like Rosen’s can. Gardens are usually maintained or funded by nonprofit entities, which themselves are strapped and often under existential threat as they continually strive to raise enough funds for their own viability.
Stephanie Greenwood, who ran the Office of Sustainability under the Booker administration, says there’s still change needed at the state level in order for Newark to strengthen its food economy. Making local growers eligible to accept food stamps is just one example. “A lot of the people in Newark shopping for produce are eligible for SNAP and WIC. It’s a big market, actually, and if you have the ability to accept these two programs as money, you could make a decent amount of money selling produce in Newark. But the local growers [urban gardeners] here can’t access it because of a state policy that says you have to be a five-acre farm or more in order to accept it.”
“It’s kind of ridiculous, these antiquated rules,” says Nathaly Agosto Filion, the Sustainability Office’s current director. She recalls a recent conversation with someone who had hoped to start a vermicomposting company in the city but encountered difficulty because of laws saying worms should be treated like livestock. “People don’t realize they’re there until you have this interesting idea… and you’re faced with a wall of bureaucracy.”
But while some urban food ventures are obstructed in Newark, others thrive.
Karine Vann
Architectural rendering for Aerofarm’s state-of-the-art facility approved by the city on 212 Rome Street in Newark
Around the same time Rosen was toiling to open Jersey Cider Works in Newark, the aforementioned AeroFarms, currently the world’s largest vertical farm, opened its headquarters downtown. It has been welcomed into the city with open arms. In January, the New Yorker’s Ian Frazier penned a lengthy feature on AeroFarms’ high-tech, hydroponic model—now a nearly $100 million venture, at least some portion of which is funded by public grants and tax credits.
Rosen says he’s invested millions of dollars of his own money into funding New Ark Farms and jokes that he “can’t even get the state to fund a deer fence.”
Fortunately, the regulation tide for cider makers in Newark appears to be turning. Last May, Governor Chris Christie signed a bill on behalf of two New Jersey cideries, one of which was Jersey Cider Works, enabling future cideries to produce up to 1.5 million gallons within city bounds.
Thanks to that new legislation, Rosen has a two-year plan for expansion, which includes migrating cider production and agricultural activity back into the city. But despite this news, a tension lingers that is far from reconciled. For all of Newark’s modern success stories—community gardens, AeroFarms, and Jersey Cider Works—how many other other entrepreneurs have tried and failed to implement their vision of a more sustainable food economy? And how do we fix the system that prevented them from doing so?
“I went to Newark to prove a model—that a for-profit business could treat people with dignity, help repair the damage of the earth, and stillmake money whilst doing so,” Rosen said early on in one conversation. To the question, “Why Newark?” he responded warily, “I kind of feel like if we can’t crack Newark… well, we’re in big trouble as a country.”
Karine Vann is a freelance writer and musician living between New York and Boston. In 2017, she returned from three years in Yerevan, Armenia, where she wrote on topics related to post-industrialism, sustainability, and urban and rural development for a number of organizations. Her work has also been featured on Smithsonian.com.
Urban Farming is Booming, But What Does it Really Yield?
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations reports that 800 million people worldwide grow vegetables or fruits or raise animals in cities, producing what the Worldwatch Institute reports to be an astonishing 15 to 20 percent of the world’s food.
Urban Farming is Booming, But What Does it Really Yield?
The benefits of city-based agriculture go far beyond nutrition.
Photo by Marcin Szczepanski
WRITER | Elizabeth Royte
@ElizabethRoyte | Science and environment writer and author
April 27, 2015 — Editor’s note: This story was produced in collaboration with the Food & Environment Reporting Network, a non-profit investigative news organization.
Midway through spring, the nearly bare planting beds of Carolyn Leadley’s Rising Pheasant Farms, in the Poletown neighborhood of Detroit, barely foreshadow the cornucopian abundance to come. It will be many months before Leadley is selling produce from this one-fifth-acre (one-tenth-hectare) plot. But the affable young farmer has hardly been idle, even during the snowiest days of winter. Twice daily, she has been trekking from her house to a small greenhouse in her side yard, where she waves her watering wand over roughly 100 trays of sprouts, shoots and microgreens. She sells this miniature bounty, year round, at the city’s eastern market and to restaurateurs delighted to place some hyperlocal greens on their guests’ plates.
Leadley is a key player in Detroit’s vibrant communal and commercial farming community, which in 2014 produced nearly 400,000 pounds (181,000 kilograms) of produce — enough to feed more than 600 people — in its more than 1,300 community, market, family and school gardens. Other farms in postindustrial cities are also prolific: In 2008, Philadelphia’s 226 community and squatter gardens grew roughly 2 million pounds of mid-summer vegetables and herbs, worth US$4.9 million. Running at full bore, Brooklyn’s Added-Value Farm, which occupies 2.75 acres, funnels 40,000 pounds of fruit and vegetables into the low-income neighborhood of Red Hook. And in Camden, New Jersey — an extremely poor city of 80,000 with only one full-service supermarket — community gardeners at 44 sites harvested almost 31,000 pounds (14,000 kilograms) of vegetables during an unusually wet and cold summer. That’s enough food during the growing season to feed 508 people three servings a day.
In addition to raising vegetables, urban gardens can help families raise kids who enjoy the outdoors. Photo of Rising Pheasant Farms’ Carolyn Leadley and family by Marcin Szczepanski.
That researchers are even bothering to quantify the amount of food produced on tiny city farms — whether community gardens, like those of Camden and Philly, or for-profit operations, like Leadley’s — is testament to the nation’s burgeoning local-foods movement and its data-hungry supporters. Young farmers are, in increasing numbers, planting market gardens in cities, and “local” produce (a term with no formal definition) now fills grocery shelves across the U.S., from Walmart to Whole Foods, and is promoted in more than 150 nations around the world.
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations reports that 800 million people worldwide grow vegetables or fruits or raise animals in cities, producing what the Worldwatch Institute reports to be an astonishing 15 to 20 percent of the world’s food. In developing nations, city dwellers farm for subsistence, but in the U.S., urban ag is more often driven by capitalism or ideology. The U.S. Department of Agriculture doesn’t track numbers of city farmers, but based on demand for its programs that fund education and infrastructure in support of urban-ag projects, and on surveys of urban ag in select cities, it affirms that business is booming. How far — and in what direction — can this trend go? What portion of a city’s food can local farmers grow, at what price, and who will be privileged to eat it? And can such projects make a meaningful contribution to food security in an increasingly crowded world?
Urban Advantages
Like anyone who farms in a city, Leadley waxes eloquent on the freshness of her product. Pea shoots that have traveled 3 miles (4.8 kilometers) to grace a salad are bound to taste better and be more nutritious, she says, than those that have traveled half a continent or farther. “One local restaurant that I sell to used to buy its sprouts from Norway,” Leadley says. Fresher food also lasts longer on shelves and in refrigerators, reducing waste.
New York City–based Gotham Greens produces more than 300 tons per year of herbs and greens in two hydroponic facilities. Photo by TIA (Flickr/Creative Commons)
Food that’s grown and consumed in cities has other advantages: During times of abundance, it may cost less than supermarket fare that’s come long distances, and during times of emergency — when transportation and distribution channels break down — it can fill a vegetable void. Following large storms such as Hurricane Sandy and the blizzards of this past winter, says Viraj Puri, cofounder of New York City–based Gotham Greens (which produces more than 300 tons (270 metric tons) of herbs and microgreens per year in two rooftop hydroponic operations and has another farm planned for Chicago), “our produce was the only produce on the shelf at many supermarkets across the city.”
Despite their relatively small size, urban farms grow a surprising amount of food, with yields that often surpass those of their rural cousins. This is possible for a couple reasons. First, city farms don’t experience heavy insect pressure, and they don’t have to deal with hungry deer or groundhogs. Second, city farmers can walk their plots in minutes, rather than hours, addressing problems as they arise and harvesting produce at its peak. They can also plant more densely because they hand cultivate, nourish their soil more frequently and micromanage applications of water and fertilizer.
As social enterprises, community gardens operate in an alternate financial universe: they don’t sustain themselves with sales, nor do they have to pay employees.
Though they don’t get as much press as for-profit farms and heavily capitalized rooftop operations, community gardens — which are collectively tended by people using individual or shared plots of public or private land, and have been a feature in U.S. cities for well over a century — are the most common form of urban agriculture in the nation, producing far more food and feeding more people, in aggregate, than their commercial counterparts. As social enterprises, community gardens operate in an alternate financial universe: they don’t sustain themselves with sales, nor do they have to pay employees. Instead, they rely on volunteer or cheap youth labor, they pay little or nothing in rent, and they solicit outside aid from government programs and foundations that support their social and environmental missions. These may include job training, health and nutrition education, and increasing the community’s resilience to climate change by absorbing stormwater, counteracting the urban heat island effect and converting food waste into compost.
Funders don’t necessarily expect community gardens to become self-sustaining. These farms may increase their revenue streams by selling at farmers markets or to restaurants, or they may collect fees from restaurants or other food-waste generators for accepting scraps that will be converted into compost, says Ruth Goldman, a program officer at the Merck Family Fund, which funds urban agriculture projects. “But margins on vegetable farming are very slim, and because these farms are doing community education and training teen leaders, they’re not likely to operate in the black.”
It’s the microgreens that keep Leadley from joining the ranks of the vast majority of U.S. farmers and taking a second job.
Several years ago, Elizabeth Bee Ayer, who until recently ran a training program for city farmers, took a hard look at the beets growing in her Youth Farm, in the Lefferts Gardens neighborhood of Brooklyn. She counted the hand movements involved in harvesting the roots and the minutes it took to wash and prepare them for sale. “Tiny things can make or break a farm,” Ayer notes. “Our beets cost US$2.50 for a bunch of four, and people in the neighborhood loved them. But we were losing 12 cents on every beet.” Ultimately, Ayer decided not to raise the price: “No one would have bought them,” she says. Instead, she doubled down on callaloo, a Caribbean herb that cost less to produce but sold enough to subsidize the beets. “People love it, it grows like a weed, it’s low maintenance and requires very little labor.” In the end, she says, “We are a nonprofit, and we didn’t want to make a profit.”
Sustainable and Resilient
Few would begrudge Ayer her loss leader, but such practices can undercut for-profit city farmers who are already struggling to compete with regional farmers at crowded urban markets and with cheap supermarket produce shipped from California and Mexico. Leadley, of Rising Pheasant Farms, realized long ago that she wouldn’t survive selling only the vegetables from her outdoor garden, which is why she invested in a plastic-draped greenhouse and heating system. Her tiny shoots, sprouts, amaranth and kohlrabi leaves grow year-round; they grow quickly — in the summer, Leadley can make a crop in seven days — and they sell for well over a dollar an ounce.
Nodding toward her backyard plot, Leadley says, “I grow those vegetables because they look good on the farm stand. They attract more customers to our table, and I really love growing outdoors.” But it’s the microgreens that keep Leadley from joining the ranks of the vast majority of U.S. farmers and taking a second job.
Mchezaji Axum, an agronomist with the University of the District of Columbia, the first exclusively urban land-grant university in the nation, helps urban farmers increase their yields whether they are selling into wealthy markets, like Leadley, or poorer markets, like Ayer. He promotes the use of plant varieties adapted to city conditions (short corn that produces four instead of two ears, for example). He also recommends biointensive methods, such as planting densely, intercropping, applying compost, rotating crops and employing season-extension methods (growing cold-tolerant vegetables like kale, spinach or carrots in winter hoop houses, for example, or starting plants in cold frames — boxes with transparent tops that let in sunlight but protect plants from extreme cold and rain).
“You learn to improve your soil health, and you learn how to space your plants to get more sunshine,” Axum says. Surveying D.C.’s scores of communal gardens, Axum has been surprised by how little food they actually grow. “People aren’t using their space well. More than 90 percent aren’t producing intensively. Some people just want to grow and be left alone.
“Using biointensive methods may not be part of your cultural tradition,” Laura J. Lawson, a professor of landscape architecture at Rutgers State University and the author of City Bountiful: A Century of Community Gardening in America, says. “It depends who you learned gardening from.” Lawson recalls the story of a well-meaning visitor to a Philadelphia garden who suggested that the farmers had planted their corn in a spot that wasn’t photosynthetically ideal. The women told their visitor, “We always plant it there; that way we can pee behind it.”
Noah Link checks on his bees at Food Field, a commercial farm in Detroit. Photo by Marcin Szczepanski.
Axum is all about scaling up and aggregating hyperlocal foods to meet the demands of large buyers like city schools, hospitals or grocery stores. Selling to nearby institutions, say food policy councils — established by grassroots organizations and local governments to strengthen and support local food systems— is key to making urban food systems more sustainable and resilient, to say nothing of providing a living to local growers. But scaling up often requires more land, and therefore more expensive labor to cultivate it, in addition to changes in local land use and other policies, marketing expertise and efficient distribution networks.
“Lots of local institutions want to source their food here,” says Detroit farmer Noah Link, whose Food Field, a commercial operation, encompasses a nascent orchard, vast areas of raised beds, two tightly wrapped 150-foot (46-meter)-long hoop houses (one of which shelters a long, narrow raceway crammed with catfish), chickens, beehives and enough solar panels to power the whole shebang. “But local farms aren’t producing enough food yet. We’d need an aggregator to pull it together for bulk sales.”
Link doesn’t grow microgreens — the secret sauce for so many commercial operations — because he can break even on volume: His farm occupies an entire city block. Annie Novak, who co-founded New York City’s first for-profit rooftop farm in 2009, doesn’t have the luxury of space. She realized early on that she couldn’t grow a wide enough diversity of food to satisfy her community-supported agriculture customers in just 5,800 square feet (540 square meters) of shallow raised beds. “So I partnered with a farm upstate to supplement and diversify the boxes,” she says. Now, Novak focuses on niche and value-added products. “I make a hot sauce from my peppers and market the bejesus out of it,” she says. She also grows microgreens for restaurants, plus honey, herbs, flowers and “crops that are narratively interesting, like purple carrots, or heirloom tomatoes, which give us an opportunity to educate people about the value of food, green spaces and our connection to nature,” she says.
Brooklyn Grange in New York grows more than 50,000 pounds of produce each year in its rooftop gardens. Photo © Brooklyn Grange Rooftop Farm / Anastasia Cole Plakias.
Sometimes being strategic with crop selection isn’t enough. Brooklyn Grange, a for-profit farm atop two roofs in New York City, grows more than 50,000 pounds (23,000 kilograms) of tomatoes, kale, lettuce, carrots, radishes and beans, among other crops, each year. It sells them through its CSA, at farm stands and to local restaurants. But to further boost its income, Brooklyn Grange also offers a summerlong training program for beekeepers (US$850 tuition), yoga classes and tours, and it rents its Edenic garden spaces, which have million-dollar views of the Manhattan skyline, for photo shoots, weddings, private dinners and other events.
“Urban farms are like small farms in rural areas,” says Carolyn Dimitri, an applied economist who studies food systems and food policy at New York University. “They have the same set of problems: people don’t want to pay a lot for their food, and labor is expensive. So they have to sell high-value products and do some agritourism.”
Under Control
On a miserable March morning, with a sparkling layer of ice glazing a foot of filthy snow, a coterie of Chicago’s urban farmers toils in shirtsleeves and sneakers, their fingernails conspicuously clean. In their gardens, no metal or wood scrap accumulates in corners, no chickens scratch in hoop-house soil. In fact, these farmers use no soil at all. Their densely planted basil and arugula leaves sprout from growing medium in barcoded trays. The trays sit on shelves stacked 12 feet (3.7 meters) high and illuminated, like tanning beds, by purple and white lights. Fans hum, water gurgles, computer screens flicker.
With 25 high-density crops per year, as opposed to a conventional farmer’s five or so, CEA yields are 10 to 20 times higher than the same crop grown outdoors
.FarmedHere, the nation’s largest player in controlled environment agriculture — CEA —pumps out roughly a million pounds (500,000 kilograms) per year of baby salad greens, basil and mint in its 90,000-square-foot (8,000-square-meter) warehouse on the industrial outskirts of Chicago. Like many hydroponic or aquaponic operations (in which water from fish tanks nourishes plants, which filter the water before it’s returned to the fish), the farm has a futuristic feel — all glowing lights and stainless steel. Employees wear hairnets and nitrile gloves. But without interference from weather, insects or even too many people, the farm quickly and reliably fulfills year-round contracts with local supermarkets, including nearly 50 Whole Foods Markets.
“We can’t keep up with demand,” Nick Greens, a deejay turned master grower, says.
Unlike outdoor farms, CEA has no call for pesticides and contributes no nitrogen to waterways. Its closed-loop irrigation systems consume 10 times less water than conventional systems. And with 25 high-density crops per year, as opposed to a conventional farmer’s five or so, CEA yields are 10 to 20 times higher than the same crop grown outdoors — in theory sparing forests and grasslands from the plow.
Is CEA the future of urban farming? It produces a lot of food in a small space, to be sure. But until economies of scale kick in, these operations — which are capital intensive to build and maintain — must concentrate exclusively on high-value crops like microgreens, winter tomatoes and herbs.
Reducing food miles reduces transit-related costs, as well as the carbon emissions associated with transport, packaging and cooling. But growing indoors under lights, with heating and cooling provided by fossil fuels, may negate those savings. When Louis Albright, an emeritus professor of biological and environmental engineering at Cornell University, dug into the numbers, he discovered that closed-system farming is expensive, energy intensive and, at some latitudes, unlikely to survive on solar or wind power. Growing a pound of hydroponic lettuce in Ithaca, New York, Albright reports, generates 8 pounds (4 kilograms) of carbon dioxide at the local power plant: a pound of tomatoes would generate twice that much. Grow that lettuce without artificial lights in a greenhouse and emissions drop by two thirds.
Food Security
In the world’s poorest nations, city dwellers have always farmed for subsistence. But more of them are farming now than ever before. In Africa, for example, it’s estimated that 40 percent of the urban population is engaged in agriculture. Long-time residents and recent transplants alike farm because they’re hungry, they know how to grow food, land values in marginal areas (under power lines and along highways) are low, and inputs like organic wastes — fertilizer — are cheap. Another driver is the price of food: People in developing nations pay a far higher percentage of their total income for food than Americans do, and poor transportation and refrigeration infrastructure make perishable goods, like fruits and vegetables, especially dear. Focusing on these high-value crops, urban farmers both feed themselves and supplement their incomes.
Urban farming is common in Ghana and other sub-Saharan countries. Photo by Nana Kofi Acquah/IMWI
In the U.S., urban farming is likely to have its biggest impact on food security in places that, in some ways, resemble the global south — that is, in cities or neighborhoods where land is cheap, median incomes are low and the need for fresh food is high. Detroit, by this metric, is particularly fertile ground. Michael Hamm, a professor of sustainable agriculture at Michigan State University, calculated that the city, which has just under 700,000 residents and more than 100,000 vacant lots (many of which can be purchased, thanks to the city’s recent bankruptcy, for less than the price of a refrigerator), could grow three quarters of its current vegetable consumption and nearly half its fruit consumption on available parcels of land using biointensive methods.
No one expects city farms in the U.S. to replace peri-urban or rural vegetable farms: cities don’t have the acreage or the trained farmers, and most can’t produce food anything close to year-round. But can city farms take a bite from long-distance supply chains? NYU’s Dimitri doesn’t think so. Considering the size and global nature of the nation’s food supply, she says, urban ag in our cities “isn’t going to make a dent. And it’s completely inefficient, economically. Urban farmers can’t charge what they should, and they’re too small to take advantage of economies of scale and use their resources more efficiently.”
That doesn’t mean that community gardeners, who don’t even try to be profitable, aren’t making a big difference in their immediate communities. Camden’s 31,000 pounds (14,000 kilograms) of produce might not seem like a lot, but it’s a very big deal for those lucky enough to get their hands on it. “In poor communities where households earn very little income,” says Domenic Vitiello, an associate professor of city and regional planning at the University of Pennsylvania, “a few thousand dollars’ worth of vegetables and fruit grown in the garden makes a much bigger difference than for more affluent households.”
History tells us that community gardening — supported by individuals, government agencies and philanthropies — is here to stay. And whether these gardens ultimately produce more food or more knowledge about food — where it comes from, what it takes to produce it, how to prepare and eat it — they still have enormous value as gathering places and classrooms and as conduits between people and nature. Whether or not cultivating fruits and vegetables in tiny urban spaces makes economic or food-security sense, people who want to grow food in cities will find a way to do so. As Laura Lawson says, “City gardens are part of our ideal sense of what a community should be. And so their value is priceless.”
UPDATED 05.06.15: A source was added for the percent of global food grown in cities.
There’s An Indoor Farm Growing From 2,000 Solar Panels On A South Philly Roof
The farm is the product of Metropolis Farms, a technology company that specializes in creating both indoor and outdoor vertical farming systems. The idea is to give farmers the chance to grow produce year-round, regardless of weather, while also making the technology affordable for any community.
USER @CLIMATEGROUP/TWITTER
Solar energy prices have dropped significantly as the technology figures to assume a key role in the global energy mix of the future.
OCTOBER 04, 2017
There’s An Indoor Farm Growing From 2,000 Solar Panels On A South Philly Roof
It's the only solar-powered indoor farm the world has ever known
SOLAR URBAN FARMING PHILADELPHIA EQUITY TECHNOLOGY FARMING SOUTH PHILADELPHIAURBAN GARDENING
BY MARIELLE MONDON
PhillyVoice Staff
Not far from the South Philly Target, more than 2,000 solar panels cover about 100,000 square feet of roof – creating the only solar-powered indoor farm the world has ever known.
The farm is the product of Metropolis Farms, a technology company that specializes in creating both indoor and outdoor vertical farming systems. The idea is to give farmers the chance to grow produce year-round, regardless of weather, while also making the technology affordable for any community.
According to a post on the company’s blog, the roof’s solar panels will capture enough sunlight to supply more than half a megawatt of energy, allowing the indoor vertical farm just below on the fourth floor to grow what’s equivalent to 660 acres’ worth of crops.
“Before starting this project, the fourth floor of this building was only growing pigeons,” the company’s blog post reads.
“But now, using our innovative technology that can uniquely grow everything, this solar-powered indoor farm will be growing fresh tomatoes, strawberries, lettuce, herbs, broccoli, and other crops for local Philadelphians.”
Metropolis Farms says there are currently about eight acres of urban farmland in Philadelphia, and that's not unique to many other large cities. If more cities have the opportunity to farm locally, the company posits, it will improve the quality of food across all communities, offer fresher meals and help boost local economies.
Metropolis Farms President Jack Griffin is an ex-banker originally from Philly who launched the company early last year, seeing the project as a method of civic engagement for the city.
“Instead of being a customer, we have to become our own supplier,” Griffin told the Philadelphia Citizen in 2016. “That way, we can keep our money moving within our own city.”
In less than two weeks, Philly will host its first-ever Indoor Ag-Con on Oct. 16, a daylong event scheduled to be held at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts that will feature presentations from various indoor agricultural professionals, including Griffin.
Solar energy prices have dropped significantly as the technology figures to assume a key role in the global energy mix of the future.
Groundbreaking For Staten Island Office Building With Rooftop Garden, Bocce Courts, and Vineyard
Up above, a 40,000-square-foot rooftop garden will provide herbs and produce for the in-house restaurant, and grab-and-go greens from the rooftop will be for sale, too. Limited public transit options make ample surface parking a necessity, thought the structure is aiming for LEED Silver certification. CetraRuddy is collaborating with a local firm, Being Here Landscape Architecture & Environmental Design, on the rooftop and ground floor landscaping.
Groundbreaking For Staten Island Office Building With Rooftop Garden, Bocce Courts, and Vineyard
By AUDREY WACHS (@GRIDWACHS) • October 3, 2017
(Courtesy CetraRuddy)
Tomorrow elected officials are breaking ground on a Staten Island office building with a bocce court, giant rooftop farm, a nearby vineyard, and a social enterprise restaurant that will serve Italian food and donate all of its proceeds to charity.
Developed by The Nicotra Group and designed by CetraRuddy, the eight-story structure is part of Staten Island’s Teleport Campus in Bloomfield, not far from the Arthur Kill on the Island’s west shore.
Compared to the rest of New York City, “designing for Staten Island means there’s more space to work with,” said Eugene Flotteron, a partner at CetraRuddy and a borough native. Right now, there are two low-slung 1970s office buildings on the nine-acre campus, directly adjacent to the new structure, which will contain mostly office and medial facilities. Structually, there was room for the south side to slope sharply towards the ground, minimizing solar heat gain, and a north side that’s angled more gradually up to draw in the rays. On the ground floor, a white overhang will shade the main walkway and line the building on four sides.
Up above, a 40,000-square-foot rooftop garden will provide herbs and produce for the in-house restaurant, and grab-and-go greens from the rooftop will be for sale, too. Limited public transit options make ample surface parking a necessity, thought the structure is aiming for LEED Silver certification. CetraRuddy is collaborating with a local firm, Being Here Landscape Architecture & Environmental Design, on the rooftop and ground floor landscaping.
(Courtesy CetraRuddy)
The 336,000-square-foot office building’s program reflects the developer’s heritage as well as the heritage of more than a third of Staten Island residents with Italian ancestry. The restaurant, Pienza, Pizza, Pasta and Porchetta, is named for Pienza, a Tuscan town that The Nicotra Group founder Richard Nicotra and his wife visit every year. Among other amenities, visitors will have access to bocce courts outside and a vineyard that Nicotra is building with specialists from California’s Napa Valley. While the design doesn’t have a direct antecedent in Italian or Roman architecture, Flotteron said finishes and materials like the Italian marble in the double-height lobby, as well as a potential collaboration with an Italian curtain wall company, will reflect the country’s influence.
Foundation work is set to begin in the next few months, and the project should be complete in fall 2018.
Meet 10 People Who Are Influencing Different Segments of The Produce Industry
In every industry, there are outstanding individuals who go above and beyond to improve the world around them. Produce is no different. From ag-tech to marketing to urban farming, these people are propelling the industry forward. In this month’s cover story, meet 10 of the leading People in Produce.
People In Produce
Meet 10 People Who Are Influencing Different Segments of The Produce Industry
October 3, 2017
In every industry, there are outstanding individuals who go above and beyond to improve the world around them. Produce is no different. From ag-tech to marketing to urban farming, these people are propelling the industry forward. In this month’s cover story, meet 10 of the leading People in Produce.
Do you know someone you think should be recognized in a future issue? Drop us a line at cmanning@gie.net. We’d love to know who you think is making a difference.
Specialty crops
Andrew Carter, CEO and co-founder, Smallhold
Photo courtesy of Andrew Carter
The authority on New York City mushroom production offers customers hyperlocal subscription-based farms.
graduate of the University of Vermont with a degree in ecological design and environmental sciences, Andrew Carter says that in college he learned a lot about mushroom production — a prime educational example of bioremediation. Following graduation, he worked in greenhouses, growing primarily hydroponic leafy greens and herbs, and consulted for vertical, container and warehouse farmers. A couple years ago, things came full-circle when he saw how he could launch the only operating mushroom farm in New York City.
Along with Adam DeMartino, Carter began Smallhold, which grows mushrooms in a container farm by Brooklyn’s East River and ships subscription-based “Minifarms” to restaurants and grocery stores throughout New York City. “I read a lot,” he says about the research he had to conduct before being able to corner the New York mushroom-growing market. “I went out to a few big farms and spoke with the operators there.”
Although Smallhold is still in its early stages, Carter hopes to expand its markets beyond the five boroughs and also potentially begin growing leafy greens and herbs. “In my opinion, as far as the ag market is concerned, you have to be competitive on freshness and price,” he says.
Smallhold’s roughly six-foot-tall Minifarms include rack row chambers that the company has developed in-house that are equipped with WiFi, LED lights, climate control and irrigation, Carter says. “It’s mostly automated, but when we want to update parameters or we want to change anything, we take care of that,” he says.
Carter calls Smallhold’s nine mushroom varieties gourmet and exotic, and they encompass everything from shiitakes to lion’s mane to oyster to pioppino — a delicacy in Italy. The company sells the mushrooms at a competitive price, and due to their proximity to the end consumer, they are very fresh.
“What we’re really figuring out is a way to bring the freshest produce humanly possible to our customers,” Carter says. “By growing it right there, there’s nothing better than that. We’re really working on ways of streamlining that process, making it affordable and making it easy for everyone to have their food growing right there.” — Patrick Williams
Vertical Farming
Photo courtesy of Henry Gordon-Smith
Henry Gordon-Smith,
Founder and managing director, Agritecture Consulting
Henry Gordon-Smith found his niche in agriculture by chasing new opportunities.
enry Gordon-Smith spent his childhood overseas. He was born in Hong Kong, and lived in Japan, Germany, the Czech Republic and Russia before attending university in Canada. While he was not directly engaged in agriculture while growing up, his international experiences primed him for his current career as the managing director of Agritecture Consulting, a company that helps to plan, design and implement urban agriculture projects around the world.
“I grew up in big cities, and big cities force you to think about how you’re using space,” Gordon-Smith says. “You have the chance to engage with so many different cultures and ways of thinking that it forces you to think in a more diverse approach, which I think is a big part of my philosophy.”
Gordon-Smith was first exposed to urban farming and its benefits while studying at a university in Vancouver, Canada. Involvement in local sustainable farming efforts and his own studies lead him to found a blog focused on vertical and urban farming issues called Agritecture (agritecture.com) while also volunteering at various urban ag operations to obtain hands-on- growing experience. Recently, Agritecture merged with Blue Planet Consulting — where Gordon-Smith served as managing director — to form Agritecture Consulting.
After graduation, he bought a one-way ticket to New York City to become an urban farmer. Despite not landing a job immediately, he stayed there, spent time studying at Columbia University under industry pioneer Dickson Despommier and ultimately found his current niche as a consultant. Now, five years after moving to New York, he wants to help people embark on their own journeys into urban agriculture as he continues his own.
“I want to be known as someone who's excited about this [industry], in it for the long-term and is ready to help people progress,” Gordon-Smith says. — Chris Manning
Technology
Dr. Nate Storey
Co-founder and chief science officer, Plenty
Photo courtesy of Plenty
Storey works to bring local, clean produce to communities around the world.
Dr. Nate Storey first made his mark on the produce industry by developing the ZipGrow Tower, a vertical farming system, at Bright AgroTech, a vertical farming equipment manufacturer he founded. Now, as a co-founder and the chief science officer at Plenty, a high-tech indoor farming company, he’s part of a team that’s trying to give everyone access to local food.
Storey started in agriculture by studying aquaculture-integrated hydroponics at the University of Wyoming, where he earned his bachelor’s degree, master’s degree and Ph.D. There, he was able to pursue research projects specific to his interests — projects that lead him to found Bright AgroTech and develop the ZipGrow Towers over a two-year period while he earned his Ph.D.
“[The university] supported my research,” Storey says. “This wasn’t research other universities were interested in or saw as valuable.”
Now, at Plenty, he’s continuing the work he did at Bright AgroTech — which was recently purchased by Plenty — and taking it further. Plenty’s goal is to bringclean, local food to communities across the world that’s grown in its vertical container farms. And, despite only being a young company, Plenty is already a success story.
According to Storey, Plenty is already competitive with field-grown pricing on different greens and herbs and should eventually be able to replace “a good portion” of what field growers currently produce. Publications such as The Wall Street Journal, Fast Company and Bloomberg say Plenty is a model business in a rapidly evolving industry.
This year, it also received a $200 million investment — the largest ever for an ag-tech company, according to TechCrunch — from a venture capital group that includes Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.
And while Storey understands that it’s not “free money,” he knows and appreciates that his work can make an impact beyond the checkbook.
“I love that I’m impacting the future of humanity,” he says. “I am not powerless to see my ideas come to life.” — Chris Manning
Association leadership
Lauren M. Scott
Photo courtesy of Lauren M. Scott
Chief marketing officer, Produce Marketing Association
A foodie from the beverage industry breaks into a leading produce and floral organization.
Self-proclaimed foodie and experienced marketer Lauren M. Scott appears to have found her dream job. A year ago, she was named chief marketing officer for the Produce Marketing Association (PMA). In her new role, she has the unique opportunity to help all businesses in the produce and floral industry prosper.
“I’ve always been a foodie and I’ve worked in the beverage business at Pepsi and Diageo most of my career,” says Scott. “When the PMA opportunity came my way, it gave me the chance to work with leaders in two of the most popular categories in culture today — produce and floral. I wanted to contribute my talent, energy and skills to help these industries grow and prosper worldwide.”
Scott says she’ll be working with her colleagues at PMA to help members by:
- Examining the landscape: consumer/industry research, including the role culture plays in this space.
- Offering actionable insights on strategic marketing: how it complements existing sales and marketing efforts and can be used as a discipline to grow a business.
- Providing resources companies can use to build their businesses, such as eat brighter! (pma.com/events/eat-brighter) and more.
“Our industry is operating in a highly competitive, dynamic food marketplace,” Scott says. “We have to understand that marketplace and then break through the clutter so that our member companies can perpetually thrive.”
In addition to helping established companies prosper, PMA is working to encourage young people to seek careers in the produce industry. It has set up a foundation called the Center for Growing Talent to “attract and retain the best talent for the industry.”
“PMA is committed to making the produce and floral industries the best place to work,” says Scott. “We have significant programs that target college students and we’ve had great success bringing them into member companies where they are contributing to growth.” — Neil Moran
Marketing
Chris Veillon
Photo courtesy of Chris Veillon
Chief marketing officer, Pure Flavor
In a new role with an expanding grower, this marketer conducts a top-down approach to branding.
Chris Veillon, who recently took the position as chief marketing officer for Pure Flavor, sees exciting times ahead for the company and offers some key insights into the future of the produce industry.
Founded in 2003 in Leamington, Ontario, Pure Flavor grows and markets a variety of greenhouse vegetables, including tomatoes, bell peppers, cucumbers, eggplant and living lettuce grown in the United States, Canada and Mexico. In his new role as CMO, Veillon hopes to take the brand to the next level, in part by taking on specific roles with promotions, advertising, content creation and digital marketing.
“The opportunity to grow with Pure Flavor, not only from a brand and product perspective, but professionally, was something I could not pass up,” Veillon says, citing an upcoming $105 million investment into a 75-acre greenhouse build in Georgia as just one growth opportunity for the brand.
Veillon got his start in marketing in the tourism industry. After 10 years in tourism, he was ready for a change. He says he was contacted “out of the blue” by a produce company that was looking to build a marketing department. Over the last 10 years, he was able to “create, strategize and build” a variety of brands that are developing into household names.
At Pure Flavor, Veillon says he gets to see the company from the 10,000-foot level. He sees opportunities to expand the company’s message, but hasn’t lost sight of the most important thing on consumers’ minds: great taste.
“Flavor drives repeat sales, hands down. Great packaging will attract, but what they bite into is what will determine their next move,” Veillon says. “In a space where there is an S-O-S, or ‘sea of sameness’ as I like to call it, there has to be a unique experience for you to retain that customer.”
As consumers become more savvy, they want to know where their fruits and vegetables come from, Veillon says. “Brands that resonate with consumers are the ones that have a unique value proposition,” he says. “It’s not about smoke and mirrors to get the sale, it is about authenticity to create a customer for life.” — Neil Moran
Sustainability
Photo courtesy of Nathan Kaufman
Nathan Kaufman
Director of living systems, The Perennial
This grower feeds flies to fish to fuel an environmentally friendly farm-to-table experience.
The husband-and-wife restaurateur duo of Karen Leibowitz and Anthony Myint started Mission Chinese Food and Commonwealth before founding The Perennial, a restaurant in San Francisco that sheds light on climate change and practices sustainability. Taking advantage of environmentally friendly food production and service methods such as carbon ranching and offering Kernza, a perennial grain, outdoor farmers and onsite employees do their part. But much of the work takes place across the San Francisco Bay with grower Nathan Kaufman.
As director of living systems, Kaufman runs The Perennial’s roughly 1,000-square-foot greenhouse and 2,000-square-foot outdoor production space in West Oakland. The greenhouse stands out for its highly nontraditional greenhouse crops — everything from turmeric to Australian finger lime to dwarf cardamom to papalo.
“In the year that we had for buildout, there was just so much give and take and discussion,” Kaufman says. “Initially, Anthony and Chris [Kiyuna], the executive chef, hit me with a wish list, and there would be stuff like jackfruit on there. I’m like, ‘Ok, guys. We’re not in Southeast Asia, and that’s going to take like 40 years for me to start getting fruit on it. That’s an 80-foot-tall tree, guys.’”
To boost sustainability efforts, Kaufman takes leftover food prep that the back of house staff has divided into two categories (the first being produce and the second being being meat, dairy and bread) and composts it. He uses worms to break down the produce and black soldier flies to break down the meat, dairy and bread. In turn, he feeds the fly larva to sturgeon and catfish that power aquaponic systems.
Kaufman is also executive director of The Perennial's nonprofit, the Perennial Farming Initiative, which educates others on sustainable efforts. But not every diner wants to hear about environmentalism while eating dinner. “Sometimes if you’re just getting a cocktail after work and you just want a great environment, hey, that’s totally fine by me,” he says. “For us, just by supporting us with your dollar, you’re voting with your buck. In that way, we can really engage with folks wherever they’re at.” — Patrick Williams
Leadership
Dr. Roberta Cook,
Photo courtesy of Dr. Roberta Cook
Director, Village Farms
A longtime academic economist now advises an industry-leading grower.
After 31 years working at University of California, Davis, Dr. Roberta Cook remains as passionate about the produce industry as when she was still a graduate student at Michigan State University.
“In my career at UC Davis, I was tasked with looking at all the key supply and demand trends affecting markets for fresh produce in California,” says Cook, who held the position of extension economist in the Department of Agriculture and Resource Economics. She is now on the board of directors at Village Farms and Ocean Mist Farms.
Her research and consultations have allowed her to gain key insights into the trends affecting the produce industry — information that should be valuable to both growers and retailers. Cook says consumers became very value-conscious during the recession and haven’t reverted to earlier buying practices, making competitive pricing even more important for retailers, which puts pressure on suppliers.
One of the biggest trends she sees affecting the industry, which will most likely continue for years to come is “channel blurring,” or the advent of more and more types of competing retail outlets for fresh produce, beyond the conventional supermarket of old.
“From Walmart Supercenters to club stores, dollar stores, convenience stores, drug stores, online sales and limited assortment stores, such as Aldi and Trader Joe’s, the proliferation of store formats is still expanding,” Cook says. — Neil Moran
Education
Stephen Ritz
Photo courtesy of Stephen Ritz
Founder, Green Bronx Machine
A teacher with a big heart incorporates indoor ag into the classroom.
A teacher with more than 30 years of experience, Stephen Ritz embraced project-based learning decades ago through environmental restoration and community gardening with over-age, under-credited students. Now, the founder of Green Bronx Machine, a native of New York City’s northernmost borough, grows produce in Tower Gardens with primary school age children in the National, Health, Wellness & Learning Center at Community School 55.
In his lessons, Ritz aligns food production with academic standards, and his students are excited to take part. “We took targeted students that had 40 percent attendance and moved them to 93 percent attendance and a 100 percent graduation rate,” Ritz says. “But beyond that — and realize that we are in the poorest congressional district in America, in the least healthy county in New York State, with the highest percentage of homeless and transitional children in New York City — we have record attendance at this school.”
A 2015 Global Teacher Prize Top Ten finalist, Ritz — who is recognizable by his bowties, cheese hat and noticeably trimmer frame than when he carried 300 pounds in the early days of Green Bronx Machine — has visited the White House and worked in his classroom with former White House chef William Yosses. Ritz has also met Pope Francis, former President Bill Clinton, Virgin Group founder Richard Branson and journalist Fareed Zakaria, among other influential public figures and celebrities. Author Michael Pollan featured Ritz in his book “In Defense of Food.” In May 2017, Ritz released his own book, “The Power of a Plant,” which details the path he took to champion for students to become more engaged in learning, make healthier diet decisions and contribute to society in a meaningful way.
When it comes to production output, Ritz and his students don’t skimp. They grow enough food indoors to send 100 bags of groceries home with students weekly. In addition to indoor production, they grow about 5,000 plants outdoors. Their 37 crops include gourmet lettuces, a variety of tomatoes, eggplants, peppers, pickles, collard greens, squash, cucumbers, celery, oregano, basil, nasturtiums, corn, string beans and cilantro. And the food doesn’t go to waste. In partnership with Memorial Sloan Kettering Hospital, Ritz and his students are growing about 5,000 pounds of produce for food-insecure, recovering cancer patients in the Bronx.
As a full-time volunteer, Ritz doesn’t expect payment for his work. This, he says, is to “step apart from” the system in order to fix it. “We need to go from a world that once loved people and used things and now kind of loves things and uses people — we’ve got to get back to our roots, literally,” he says. “Imagine if we refreshed our soil and our farmers the way we took care of our precious laptop screens. The world would be a better place. To me, this is about dignity and respect, growing something greater. Yes, I grow food, but really what we grow is hope and opportunity. I like to say I grow vegetables, but my vegetables grow students, schools and resilient communities and give everybody a chance to sit at the table.” — Patrick Williams
Research
Dr. Kevin Folta,
Professor and chairman, University of Florida’s IFAS Extension
Photo Courtesy of Dr. Kevin Folta
This professor pushes the development of horticultural lighting forward by pursuing unique research projects.
Dr. Kevin Folta grew up knowing that science, in some way, would be part of his career. When he started college at Northern Illinois University, he studied DNA and genetics. But as he interned at different companies as an undergrad, he developed a passion for agriculture and decided to get his graduate degree in biology, and then a Ph.D. in molecular biology, to apply to agriculture research.
In 2002, Folta moved to the University of Florida, where he currently serves as a professor and chairman of the horticultural sciences department. It was at UF where began working on the type of research he’s best known for — LED lighting, and how it can be used to improve plant growth
“That’s where it all came together,” he says.
Folta’s research explores the relationship between lights and plants and specifically how growers can use LED lighting to “talk” to plants. According to his research, a grower can use a specific light color — red, for example — to communicate specific instructions to a plant. This level of precision, in theory, would allow growers to get specific results from each plant in the greenhouse. That could even mean using a specific light color to draw out a specific flavor profile from a crop in the greenhouse.
“You’ve got something people need, something people want and something that makes money for the people who grow it and supply it,” he says.
In addition to his research, Folta also co-hosts podcast called “Talking Biotech” (talkingbiotechpodcast.com) and does it for the same reason he does his research: He loves it. “My one hobby is recording a podcast,” Folta, who records on Saturdays as early as 4 a.m., says. “So that’s why I do it.” — Chris Manning
To hear more from the People in Produce, be sure to check out The Hort Report podcast. Past guests include Dr. Gary Stutte, Dr. Kevin Folta and Dr. Jill Calabro. There is also coverage of industry events attended by the Produce Grower staff such as United Fresh and Indoor Ag-Con. You can find all of the podcasts at bit.ly/2fA8Umr and/or on iTunes at bit.ly/hortreportpodcast
Community Outreach
Photo courtesy of Mario Cambardella
Mario Cambardella
Director of urban agriculture, Atlanta
A career adjustment lead Cambardella towards his current role in shaping urban agriculture in Atlanta.
After graduating college, Mario Cambardella did what most people do after college: look for a job, secure a job and then work towards advancements. For Cambardella, who studied landscape design at the University of Georgia, that meant working at a company called Valley Crest as a designer and project manager for landscape developments in the Atlanta area.
But four years into his career, UGA created a new master’s program called “Environmental Planning and Design,” and the program’s dean recruited him personally for the program. While there, he completed that program, met his future wife, decided to stick around while she finished law school and completed a second master’s in landscape design while starting his own business, Urban Agriculture, which combined his design skills and new interest in sustainable city planning. After graduation, he turned that business into a full-time career for four years.
That business lead him to be hired by the city of Atlanta in 2015, where he now works for the city as the director of urban agriculture. There, he plays a key role in developing “Aglanta,” a digital food hub for Atlanta residents. That also includes the Aglanta Conference, which had 272 attendees in 2017, its first year, and the Aglanta Forum, an annual event where residents can learn about sustainability and healthy eating. (Editor's note: To learn more about the Aglanta Conference, listen to “Previewing Aglanta” here)
“Developing urban agriculture spaces within our city is, I think, a dream job,” Cambardella says. — Chris Manning
Archtober Building of the Day: Brooklyn Grange Farm
Archtober Building of the Day: Brooklyn Grange Farm
By ALEXANDER LUCKMANN , ARCHTOBER • October 3, 2017
Archtober Building of the Day: Brooklyn Grange Farm (Anastasia Cole Plakias/brooklyngrangefarm.com/Image via AIA NY)
Today’s Archtober Building of the Day tour took us to Brooklyn Grange, located on top of Brooklyn Navy Yard’s Building 3. Once we had assembled on the 11th floor, with its sweeping views of the Manhattan and Brooklyn skylines, Gwen Schantz, co-founder and CEO, took us around the intimate yet extraordinarily productive farm. Schantz, who heads the farm’s landscaping division, revealed not only the specific agricultural details of the farm but also how they have managed to turn urban agriculture into a viable business model.
Brooklyn Grange’s roots date to 2009, when Ben Flanner, now president, quit his job in finance to open Eagle Street Rooftop Farm in Brooklyn. One year later, joined by Schantz and other partners, he opened the organization’s permanent foothold in Long Island City; they soon after added the location in the Brooklyn Navy Yard. The organization has since become a worldwide leader in urban agriculture efforts.
Central to Brooklyn Grange’s mission is to do more than just grow food. Schantz went so far as to describe it primarily as an educational center, facilitated by City Growers, an educational nonprofit that Brooklyn Grange (which is for-profit) founded but has since spun off. Schantz emphasized that it would be extremely difficult to turn a profit solely by selling produce, but that Brooklyn Grange stays financially feasible by designing gardens and landscapes and hosting events. Rather than seeing these aspects as a necessary evil, Schantz described them as equal to the agriculture department. Brooklyn Grange’s goal, she said, was to show that urban agriculture can be a viable enterprise—a goal which has been amply met.
As we walked around the farm, Schantz described the its physical makeup. The farm uses a soil mix of 50 percent is expanded shale, which is put in a kiln and broken up slightly to be porous, almost like coral. This allows small organisms to live in the soil, a central aspect of organic farming. The other 50 percent of the soil is a compost mix sourced from mushroom farms in Pennsylvania. Schantz said that Brooklyn Grange have found they can grow almost any crop in about a foot of soil—a surprisingly thin layer.
That is not to say that they do grow any crop. Brooklyn Grange focuses on more profitable crops, primarily lettuce. However, since selling directly to the community is an important part of Brooklyn Grange’s mission, and since crop rotation is a key aspect of organic farming, they do plant other crops as well, such as tomatoes, peppers, and broccoli. During the off-season, employees organize events and work on the other elements of the farm.
According to Schantz, the roof of Building 3 is perfect for a farm, as it was used to support extensive Navy training installations and is therefore extremely strong. To create the farm, a large hose connected to a mixer truck sprayed the roof with the first layer of soil. To augment that original soil, Brooklyn Grange regularly brings additional soil up in the freight elevator, another useful original feature. Along with the mushroom farm compost, other compost mixes come from Brooklyn Navy Yard tenants such as chocolate makers Mast.
Brooklyn Grange does far more than grow food. It keeps bees at hives around the city, too. It serves an essential function by absorbing rainfall, relieving the burden on the city’s overtaxed stormwater management system. It educates schoolchildren from around the city about food and farming. It designs other landscapes. It hosts events ranging from dinner parties to weddings. And, most importantly, it has shown that you can make a business out of urban agriculture.
Long Beach Program Would Give Tax Breaks for Urban Farms Plotted on Vacant Lots
Long Beach Program Would Give Tax Breaks for Urban Farms Plotted on Vacant Lots
By COURTNEY TOMPKINS | ctompkins@scng.com | Press Telegram
PUBLISHED: October 5, 2017 at 11:46 am
Urban farms may soon crop up on vacant lots following the adoption of a local program that would give tax breaks to property owners who agree to plot produce on their land for at least five years.
The City Council on Tuesday voted to enact the Urban Agriculture Incentive Zone program, which would allow for the small-scale cultivation of crops, the raising of certain types of livestock, bees, dairy producing animals or poultry, and would also allow the sale of produce through field retail stands or other farm stands.
The item, introduced over the summer by Vice Mayor Rex Richardson, aims to increase access to locally grown produce, create more robust local food systems along with opportunities for gardening education. It is also expected to create jobs and reduce blight associated with abandoned lots.
“We know we have vacant lots that have remained vacant for some 20 years; they are a strain on our code enforcement, a blight on our corridors and our neighborhoods,” Richardson said on Tuesday. “And we also know on the other hand urban agriculture is exciting … it really inspires people to really get involved in their neighborhoods.”
The council on Tuesday also took action on a separate but related item that authorized the creation of a vacant lot registry that will track how property owners care for their empty lots. The goal is to curb negative impacts associated with these often blighted lots by setting maintenance standards and requiring routine inspections. Officials estimate 618 lots would qualify for the registry.
A handful of large cities across the state have adopted similar programs in recent years, following the 2013 passage of Assembly Bill 551, the Urban Agriculture Incentive Zones Act. The state law, enacted in 2014, authorized cities and counties to encourage landowners to allow small-scale farming on vacant lots. Under the program, a landowner’s property tax would be assessed on the agricultural value of the land rather than the full market value.
Long Beach began working to form a local program in 2016, shortly after the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors adopted an ordinance for all unincorporated areas and authorized the county’s 88 cities to establish their own programs.
Long Beach Sustainability Coordinator Larry Rich, who helped establish the local program, said the city would not lose any property tax revenue in the process because the county law provides funding to offset the tax breaks.
If the council grants final approval next Tuesday, the ordinance would take effect mid-November, Rich said. If property owners are interested in taking advantage of the program in 2018, he said they would need to reach out as soon as possible to get the process started. Any applications would need to be approved by year end for the upcoming tax year.
“There are three different county agencies we need to check in with … so it’s worth a shot, but people will have to come talk to us on this right away,” Rich said.
Richardson said he hopes to make Long Beach the first city in Los Angeles County to implement the program and have someone take advantage of the incentives.
‘Corporate Industrial Food Sucks’: Highlights from NYC AgTech Week 2017
‘Corporate Industrial Food Sucks’: Highlights from NYC AgTech Week 2017
September 29, 2017
Food system's busted. A bunch of people came out last week to discuss solutions — from hydroponic microgreens to the Farm Bill.
By Nina Sparling / CONTRIBUTOR
One of the venues for NYC Agtech Week 2017 | (Photo by Nina Sparling)
How can we grow more food in cities?
That was the seemingly simple question tackled by innovators, developers, investors and thought-leaders in New York last week. And the proposed answers were anything but simple.
Over the course of NYC Agtech Week, attendees from across the globe had the opportunity to attend workshops, learn about investment strategy and share in local food and spirits. There were hands-on experiences with everything from hyper-controlled, in-home grow setups to the sun and soil of area community gardens.
“Six and a half years ago I was just a kid with a blog who was passionate,” said Henry Gordon Smith, founder and managing director of Agritecture Consulting and organizer of the event. “I’m thrilled about the rate of acceleration. Our first year we had seven events; this year we had 31 events and we sold out. We’re focusing on not just talking about urban agriculture, but doing it.”
Conversations during the third-annual agtech week focused on a handful of fundamental questions: What is urban agriculture? Why is interest growing rapidly right now? How can I get involved? The event was hosted by the New York City Agriculture Technology Collective.
NYC Agtech Week 2017. (Photo by Nina Sparling)
Defining urban agriculture and articulating why it matters flowed through many of the presentations and conversations over the course of the week.
In a workshop during Agtech Demo Day, the group offered a handful of impressions about why urban agriculture is hot right now: Density in urban areas, an increased demand for local fresh food, concerns about climate change and, as Diane Hatz, the founder and executive director of Change Food put it, “The food system is broken, and corporate industrial food sucks.”
Among the guests were several young entrepreneurs looking turn ideas into realities. Most of the businesses in the agtech space are venture capital funded, and one panel at the Agritecture Consulting offices featured Andrew Shearer, the founder and CEO of Farmshelf, and Tinia Pina, the founder and CEO of Re-nuble. They addressed strategies for finding investors and building a business from the ground up. “Have a hit list and ask people that know people,” said Shearer. “It’s all networking — a lot of it is pounding the pavement. Fundraising is like dating.”
The tone was straightforward: be transparent, be reliable, and practice your pitch.
NYC Agtech Week 2017. (Photo by Nina Sparling)
The events vibrated with energy and momentum towards building a better food system.
Product designers and farm operators celebrated to how the industry has exploded of late, with Brooklyn leading the way in innovation. “Overall, it’s exciting to see how everything evolves: this event has exploded every year since the beginning,” said Marco Tidona from Heidelberg, Germany, who designed Aponix, a modular vertical farm that accommodates both soil-based and soil-less grow systems. “[Vertical farming] is further developed in New York City than in Europe,” Tidona said. “People are becoming aware — they would rather pay for a safe, clean product.”
I met Tidona at the Locavore Feast, organized by Our Name is Farm, a digital and experiential marketing company for the food system. The evening provided the opportunity for event-goers to network, but also to taste the food produced by New York’s high-tech farmers. A vibrant salad featured greens from Bowery Farms; Edenworks provided microgreens; Catskills Distillerybrought their spirits (including a white whiskey, which is code for moonshine); and the kombucha featured local basil.
Several people had come to the Locavore Feast to learn about the what urban and vertical farming means, looking to get involved in one way or another. “I would love to work in the industry,” said Bronwen Blaney, who won tickets to attend the Locavore Feast and jumped at the opportunity to network with industry leaders. “Be it urban farming or vertical farming, there are so many different ways to approach it. I’m just trying to figure out my way in. So far, it’s full of great people and good food.”
NYC Agtech Week 2017. (Photo by Nina Sparling)
Among the curious observers and invested developers were a handful of people focused on building vertical farming into political and legislative futures.
Mayoral candidate Mike Tolkin — whose campaign is designed around privatizing much of city government — made an appearance at Agtech Demo Day. “Vertical farming is a source of future economic growth that is important for sustainability,” he said in our conversation. “It’s a thrilling integration of private development with public support. We should elevate vertical farming to a new level; everyone eats, it’s crazy that we don’t talk more about this issue.”
And while New York may be a hotbed of sorts for vertical and indoor farming, its future may be much more widespread.
“Right now, vertical farming is a very local activity; to have it implemented on a broader scale we need a policy change,” said Christine Zimmermann, the chairwoman of the Association for Vertical Farming (AVF), who I met at the Locavore Feast. AVF hosted a conference in Washington, D.C., last week, where Zimmermann was looking forward to the opportunity to meet politicians and decision-makers.
“What the United States can do in the Farm Bill has a global significance; everyone will look at what’s going on here,” she said. “The U.S. can take the lead on this.”
World’s First Solar Powered Indoor Vertical Farm Comes To Philadelphia
World’s First Solar Powered Indoor Vertical Farm Comes To Philadelphia
October 3rd, 2017 by Steve Hanley
It’s always sunny in Philadelphia, according to the title of a popular television show. If so, it’s the perfect place for the world’s first solar powered indoor vertical farm.
Metropolis Farms has constructed a 500 kilowatt solar array made up of 2003 solar panels on the roof of a building in The City of Brotherly Love. On the fourth floor, it is constructing a vertical farm that will be powered entirely by electricity coming from the roof. It plans to grow the equivalent of 660 outdoor acres worth of crops in less than 100,000 sq feet. “The panels are already installed and turned on, now we’re building out the farm. The first crops will be planted in November,” the company says.
Before Metropolis Farms took over the space, the only things growing on the fourth floor were pigeons. But soon, crops of fresh tomatoes, strawberries, lettuce, herbs, and broccoli will flourish there for the benefit of the citizens of Philadelphia and environs. “We feel this inherently demonstrates the wonder of this new industry we’re helping create, the industry of indoor farming.”
The company goes on to say,
“To this point, the city of Philadelphia has only ~8 acres of urban farming, mainly because there’s no available land for growing crops traditionally. By bringing the growing process indoors, in line with our mission of social responsibility, we are revitalizing abandoned spaces and are using them for local food production. We are empowering a new generation of farmers to grow food for cities, in cities.
“This technology democratizes the ability to grow local food in any community, regardless of location or climate. We’re doing this because local food is just better. Local food is more nutritious than food that’s packed in a truck and travels for weeks, it tastes better, and growing food in the communities where it’s eaten helps stimulate the local economy.”
Detractors of indoor farming point out the high cost of powering all the lights and circulation pumps needed, but Metropolis Farms thinks its rooftop solar array will answer the critics.
“The truth is, like any technology, indoor farming is constantly improving upon itself. We have gained efficiencies through innovative lighting (not LEDs), BTU management systems, and other means to dramatically reduce the amount of energy our farms are using.
“And we are on the cusp of a breakthrough in a technology that will reduce our energy usage even further. We hope to demonstrate this new technological advancement at this year’s Indoor Ag-Con, hosted for the first time in Philadelphia. We are pushing the envelope by attempting to build a zero-carbon farm. Through water recapture techniques, renewable energy production, advanced energy systems, and most importantly by farming locally, we are on the right track.”
Another benefit of vertical gardening is a dramatic decrease in the amount of pesticidesneeded to grow fresh food. Not only will the crops not be covered in chemicals, neither will the environment surrounding the vertical garden. That’s a huge benefit that should not be discounted. “We hope others will follow our lead and start building farms of the future, so communities everywhere can benefit from having a quality local food source that grows crops responsibly,” say the leaders of Metropolis Farms.
When Balconies And Backyards Turn Green
When Balconies And Backyards Turn Green
DECCAN CHRONICLE. | BALAJEE C R
Published | Oct 1, 2017
The concept of urban farming is a hit with today’s generation.
Actor R. Madhavan engaging actively in urban farming at his house. (Photo: DC)
This millennial quit his high-paying job… to start a farm!’ Clickbait as they may be, there’s no denying that the phenomenon of urban farming has well and truly captured the fancy of the Gen Y today. Call it a hark back to the roots, or an innate sense of triggering one’s green thumb, the fact remains that several young professionals find small-scale agriculture an amateur interest or in many cases, even an alternate career option. From judiciously-researched plots of land to terraces and backyards, these social entrepreneurs are leaving no stone unturned (literally!) to ensure local agriculture becomes an intrinsic part of their lives.
Be it an individual, a group of friends or a small neighbourhood/ community with a sense of purpose, the activity is touted as a way to increase access to locally-grown food and bring to light again, the many benefits of food that have gotten lost over time. After years of having no say in how their food is grown or where it comes from, urban farming is helping the modern-day consumer be better informed — and healthier!
Growing awareness on healthy eating has certainly aided in people taking urban farming more seriously. Support from multiple organisations has also helped the general public overcome certain limitations — space, for instance is no more an issue (certain herbs can now be grown in a 10-inch pot) and some enterprises even exist to help people set up base in their homes.
Urban farms could be set up for various reasons — as a hobby, for education or training, or for profit. For many, it’s a method to preserve traditional food philosophy, while for yet others, it provides a sense of ‘food justice’ — which is exercising their right to grow, sell and improve access to culturally-appropriate food, which is grown locally and affordable.
Rise of urban farming in the country
Priyanka Amar Shah, the founder of Mumbai-based iKheti, a community enterprise that promotes sustainable urban farming, feels that the concept of farming in cities has been in practice for many years — but only in an informal manner.
Priyanka Amar Shah, founder of iKheti engaging actively in urban farming at her house. (Photo: DC)
“It’s very pleasing to see urban farming being considered more than just a hobby now. Because what we believe is that this activity can be something that can be a social enterprise — and even provide employment opportunities. When we’re talking about changes in the environment, we are not going to come up with solutions unless or otherwise it’s not taken into a bigger level and not just as pastime. People have never been so concerned about environmental issues earlier — it’s affecting all of us and the nature as well,” muses Priyanka.
Archana Stalin, founder of myHarvest, a Chennai-based initiative, which encourages people to grow what they eat, says that she has had continuous phone calls over the past few months. “All of them are queries about how to set up terrace or kitchen gardens in their apartments within the city! When we started off, the concept of urban farming was in its nascent stage. But now, the idea has got a lot of attention and people are really taking to these projects like a house on fire!” she says proudly.
The desire to eat healthy
Priya Thalur Balaji, wife of former international cricketer Lakshmipathy Balaji, says that she was inspired to take up urban farming so that her family could eat healthy.
(Photo: Mommy Shots by Amrita)
“When I thought of feeding solids to my son for the first time, I was very particular that I give him healthy vegetables, but I wasn’t sure how hygienic the ones we get in the markets are. I had a plan of what to feed him around the time he was ready to eat solids. So I started sowing seeds for those vegetables — like spinach, tomatoes and more. Right now I have brinjal, corn, ginger mint, coriander — and vegetables for daily use like tomatoes, snake guard, bottle guard, drumstick and I have just sowed basil.”
Archana, who has a similar point-of-view, states, “Unlike earlier, people have become extra-conscious about their health. It has become an utmost priority now and the result is a major upsurge in the organic food industry. More people have switched to buying organic food items and the demand has increased. Rather than relying on the ‘labeled’ organic vegetables from the market, the wiser lot has decided to grow their own produce. That’s how there is a boom in organic farming. What I have noticed is that parents want to grow veggies and feed their kids home-grown, pesticide-free food. Not just getting the yield, parents want their kids to get exposed to farming at a younger age. It’s a good sign that shows people’s attitude towards farming is changing.”
Priya Thalur Balaji’s terrace farm (Photo: DC)
Priya Thalur Balaji’s terrace farm (Photo: DC)
Ideal crops to cultivate
Though it isup to one’s own choices and preferences, there are certain factors to keep in mind while indulging in urban farming. Priyanka advises first-time gardeners to not directly jump to vegetables — “Because it takes a longer time to grow. So we always suggest people to start with herbs — like lemon grass, curry patta, ajwain and more because all these have health benefits and they are also used in houses every day. With people now interested in cuisines like Italian, continental etc., one can also grow Italian basil, oregano, celery; the best part about herbs is that they’re also available as saplings rather than just as seeds. Once you’re used to this, you can then move on to vegetables.”
She adds, “I don’t feel space is an issue anymore; right now, in Mumbai for instance, there a lot of grills in houses — grill planters, railing planters available at many places. The herbs that I’m talking about don’t even require that much space — you can easily grow them in a 10-inch pot.”
Eldho Pachilakkadan, a restaurateur from Kochi, believes only in raw diet and fruit diet. In order to meet his particular dieting needs, he set up a 40-acre farm in Idukki and grows about 200 varieties of fruit vegetables. What are the ideal fruit trees to grow in cities, we ask him?
Eldho Pachilakkadan (Photo: DC)
The 38-year-old says, “I understand there are many limitations, but I feel people can at least grow four trees in their homes. I feel banana and papaya are the ideal ones to grow in houses.”
Spinach is also considered to be one of the most ideal ones to cultivate. “My advice for people is that they should start with spinach — it’s easier to grow and it’s very nutritious. But I think tomatoes, ladies finger and brinjal are the three veggies that people love to plant,” Archana claims.
On the other hand, Priya says that one should be focusing on cultivating crops that are needed on a daily basis — “For people, who have a balcony or terrace space, it’s easy to grow basic essentials like spinach, coriander and ginger mint — these are something that we use on a everyday basis.”
Social media to the rescue
The active online community on social media as well, ensures that more and more beginners enter the field every year. For instance, Bengaluru-based techie, Srikant Kapungati, considers himself a mentor of sorts on the Facebook group ‘Organic Terrace Gardening’ where he routinely guides novices in the field on the dos and don’ts of the hobby/ alternate career. Srikant himself got into the habit less than four years ago, quite by accident.
Bengaluru-based techie Srikant Kapungati at his terrace garden. (Photo: DC)
“I have a weird reason for getting into organic farming; I wanted to do something with the terrace space in my house, and the idea of a garden somehow randomly came to mind! Maybe there was a hidden gene from my forefathers inside me, which propagated my green thumb; I took to it instantly. At the same time, how avidly you approach this depends a lot on the individual and the circumstances,” says Srikant.
A couple of years later, he really wanted to make sure other aspirants across India wouldn’t have to go through random websites or purchase gardening books when setting up their first OTG — “So I wrote a series of blog posts, explaining the basic equipment and facilities needed for a first project, from containers to seeds and composting at home, and so on. Also, it’s important that newbies experiment and eventually find their own niche; find what they are good at growing.”
Farming can be therapeutic too!
“As said earlier, I mainly started to engage in urban farming to feed my son, but I found the practice very interesting and it is also very therapeutic for me in one way — while handling the baby, I needed time for myself and gardening is now giving me the calm I wanted. I started a year and a half ago, but I’ve not even lost a bit of interest — everyday, every vegetable is teaching me something new!” shares Priya.
Time constraints are a many, but Srikant ensures he gets his fill of gardening every morning before he rushes off to work —- “It can be a real stress-buster, but there are people who take it very seriously and it adds to their pressure too! So it’s important to sort our priorities always. These days, I stick to growing greens rather than veggies, as the former has a lesser and easier cycle.”
Archana Stalin and her terrace garden (Photo: DC)
Not rocket science
Those who’ve been into urban farming, almost unanimously feel that there are not many challenges, but only certain limitations. Eldho says, “I started only a year back, but now I almost have so many varieties of fruit trees — including some exotic varieties like baraba. It’s just simple science — sow seeds or plant a sapling and they grow by themselves! All you need to do is take care of them every day.”
Even Priya opines, “There are not many challenges — I, for sure, didn’t have that many. I didn’t do everything initially on my own; I had a person, who helped me at the beginning. But after first quarter, I understood more — how to add nutrition to the soil, what kind of nutrition one should buy, when one should use organic pesticides and stuff like that. I wouldn’t say I’m all that well-versed now, but I’ve started experimenting with a few vegetables.”
But Priyanka has a slightly different point of view, “We realised that though many people were willing to take to urban farming, they didn’t have right kind of information — which crop to grow in a particular season and more. There is a lack of information and lack of access to raw materials. Even if you go to nurseries, all you’ll get is a show plant or a flowering plant.”
Support from all quarters and corners
For an aspiring urban farmer, there are options aplenty if he/ she needs guidance or support — apart from the horticulture society of India and the help from the government, there are also several initiatives like iKheti, myHarvest and more for people to seek help from in every city across India.”
Priyanka says that enterprises like theirs act as one-stop shop for all the farmers — “Right from the consultancy part, to providing raw materials and the most importance factor of maintenance, everything is taken care of by us.”
“Media has also played a huge role— nowadays a lot has been written, discussed and debated on organic farming. People are also exposed to various forms of farming. Even a lot of companies in cities are coming forward and setting up vegetable gardens in their space. The opportunities now are very good,” says Archana.
Priya also feels that it’s just up to people to go ahead with their passion and everything else will fall in place if one goes about pursuing urban farming properly — “The government and horticulture society help you in setting up the base by providing kits, grow bags and more. So, it is definitely not difficult to kickstart your green dream anymore!”
Maddy’s stint with urban farming
Of course, actors aren’t far away either when it comes to promoting the trend with several converting part of their balconies into gorgeous terrace gardens. In an earlier interview to DC, actor Madhavan, who grows his own vegetables at his house, said, “Saala Khadoos (Irudhi Suttru) was taking a long time to finish and I was bored (laughs), so I started my own kitchen garden to keep myself occupied. Now, I have enough vegetables to keep me fed for at least five days in a week. Since you are growing your own produce, you know what goes in there and what doesn’t.”
Actor R. Madhavan engaging actively in urban farming at his house. (Photo: DC)
He added, “Once you start doing that, you understand the life of those people who grow vegetables to make a living, especially the farmers. If one of my plants gets eaten by a rat, I become very angry! I can imagine what the farmers would be going through when their crops get ruined by pests or weather. One of the most resounding thoughts that keep me bothered is that we wish we can be more compassionate to the plight of farmers.”
Data Analysis, Tech And Fish Waste Make Urban Farms Viable
Data Analysis, Tech And Fish Waste Make Urban Farms Viable
Brexit boosts business in ex-bomb shelter that controls plants’ every growth variable
Nothing lost: Kate Hofman, chief executive of GrowUp, surrounded by produce nurtured by fish waste
09-25-17 | by Jennifer Thompson
The rows of plants under pinkish lights, tended inside a Dutch warehouse by white-coated workers, bring to mind more a sci-fi film set than a farm. Indeed, the start-up behind the scheme, PlantLab, prefers to describe itself as a “development company” rather than an agricultural business.
Urban farming itself is not new — people have always grown produce or raised livestock in towns and cities, from necessity, as a hobby or to reduce food miles. Now, however, city agriculturalists are harnessing technologies such as light-emitting diode (LED) bulbs, 3D printers and data analysis to speed up growth and create farms virtually anywhere.
In London, in a former bomb shelter underneath Clapham Common, for example, Growing Underground cultivates leafy greens, such as watercress, rocket and coriander.
Built to shelter up to 8,000 people during the second world war, its tunnels now house rows of plants. “It was all [done using] standard agricultural equipment, save for LEDs,” says Steve Dring, co-founder of Growing Underground. LEDs provide the right level of light and heat in an energy efficient manner.
Affordability has proved a big factor for spurring innovation. PlantLab grew out of an older traditional horticultural company, growing greens and soft fruits under glass and greenhouses but was officially launched in 2010 as LED lighting became more affordable. Growing Underground also works on a fast turnround, with a series of ‘mini harvests’.
Tanks of tilapia fish at GrowUp's aquaponics project provide nutrients for plants © Charlie Bibby/FT
Seeds spend three days in a dark, warm and humid environment to fool them into thinking they are surrounded by soil. They then grow for six to 12 days under the light before being harvested for the capital’s restaurants and more recently the London food stores of Marks and Spencer.
A few miles from Clapham, Kate Hofman and her team at GrowUp are also revamping existing equipment and concepts for an ambitious aquaponics project.
Having taken a sabbatical from her career as a management consultant to undertake a masters degree in environmental technology and business, Ms Hofman and co-founder Tom Webster wanted to create an economically viable and environmentally friendly food production system.
Tilapia fish at GrowUp's aquaponics project are reared with a smart monitoring system © Charlie Bibby/FT
The concept of aquaponics, which combines raising fish with growing plants for a mutually beneficial exchange of nutrients, has been around for thousands of years. Technology, however, is bringing a new precision to the process.
GrowUp, established in 2013, operates from a warehouse in east London housing 12 tanks each holding 3,000 litres of water and up to 400 tilapia fish. The waste of the fish nurtures plants growing above — including kale, watercress, and basil — while the plants filter the water, and a smart monitoring system gives complete control over elements such as humidity and temperature.
The impetus from the start was to create something that could succeed as a business.
“We’ve focused on how do you take that technology and make it commercial,” says Ms Hofman. “We were both interested in how hydroponics could be used to grow food commercially. The reality is most of our food production across the world happens on an industrial scale.” GrowUp is currently looking for a location for a second farm, expected to have around ten times the capacity of the original site. This would allow them to begin supplying supermarkets. Ms Hofman says the prospect of Brexit following the UK’s vote last year to leave the EU, has increased interest in the concept of localising food production and technology-driven farming projects have made some inroads into supply chains.
“It was quite obvious there were mathematical patterns in plant growth.” ARD REIJTENBAGH, CHIEF PARTNERSHIP OFFICER AT PLANTLAB
Advances in data analysis are also making these kinds of farms more productive. “It was quite obvious there were mathematical patterns in plant growth,” says Ard Reijtenbagh, chief partnership officer at PlantLab.
Increasing interest in data collection prompted PlantLab’s founders to consider the optimum circumstances in which to grow plants.
They designed and supply so-called ‘plant production units’, as well as software and growing recipes, where growing conditions are tightly controlled: more than 80 potential variables, across the light spectrum, and including humidity and even the movement of air can be altered. The control is so thorough that they can determine the level of iron or zinc in plants.
The combination of technology and farming can also have other benefits.
Nerve Centre, an arts centre in Northern Ireland, runs a ‘digital farm’ project to teach students with learning difficulties entrepreneurship and digital skills.
Students construct aquaponics systems using laser cutters and 3D printers and supply the produce to restaurants. They have just taken delivery of 100 juvenile carp, which may fetch between £60 and £70 each once they are fully grown in two years. John Peto, the centre’s director of education, says: “Some [students] have no interest in growing food but they’re really interested in using computers.” He also expects the cultivation of fish to have a therapeutic effect.
Underground Air-Raid Shelter Feeding London Restaurants
Underground Air-Raid Shelter Feeding London Restaurants
An old World War II shelter in Clapham, which could protect up to 8,000 people from Nazi German bombs, consists of two large tunnels that were intended to one day become an extension of the London Underground
LONDON, Sept 28, 2017 — Under an anonymous back street in south London lies a vast underground air-raid shelter that has been turned into a pioneering urban farm supplying supermarkets and restaurants in the capital.
The World War II shelter in Clapham, which could protect up to 8,000 people from Nazi German bombs, consists of two large tunnels that were intended to one day become an extension of the London Underground.
That never happened and the shelter lay abandoned for 70 years until two entrepreneurs, Steven Dring and Richard Ballard, decided to grow broccoli, coriander, fennel and a host of other vegetables as so-called micro leaves, also known as micro herbs, grown from seedlings but harvested early when the first leaves form.
“We need to create these new fertile spaces” to meet increased demand from a growing global population, Dring told AFP on a visit to the “Growing Underground” site — some 33 metres below the road.
Staff wear protective clothing and there is a strong smell of vegetables and humidity in the shelter.
The vegetables are grown with hydroponics, using nutrient solutions in a water solvent instead of soil.
The technique can also be used to grow a wide range of produce including tomatoes and baby peppers, Dring said.
Day and night
The only other ingredient required is light.
The tunnels have no natural light and are illuminated with pink LEDs, giving them a futuristic look.
The intensity of the light changes to imitate daylight, but with one major difference — the lights are dimmed during the day and shine brightest at night, as electricity is cheapest then.
“We predominantly grow micro herbs, which are standard herbs, from different seeds.
The site of an underground air-raid shelter which has been turned into the urban farm project, ‘Growing Underground’ is pictured in Clapham, south London. – PHOTOS: AFP
“But what we do is we grow them to a very small stage, before the first true leaves start to come out,” Dring said.
Under an anonymous back street in south London lies a vast underground air-raid shelter that has been turned into a pioneering urban farm supplying supermarkets and restaurants in the capital
The micro herb broccoli takes between three and five days to grow before being packaged up in the shelter and sent off.
Fans enthuse about the intensity of the flavours of the produce.
Vegetables in this underground farm in London are grown with hydroponics, using nutrient solutions in a water solvent instead of soil
Customers include Marks and Spencer which offers the produce in some of its supermarkets, several stalls at London’s Borough Market and many restaurants — helped by the patronage of celebrity chef Michel Roux Jr of Le Gavroche.
‘Quality, flavour’
Dring and Ballard latched onto the concept of vertical farming — producing food in vertically stacked layers — which was developed by US biologist Dickson Despommier in his 2010 book The Vertical Farm: Feeding the World in the 21st Century.
The operation takes up some 200 metres of the 1,000 metres available in the air-raid shelter tunnel, half for growing while the other half is used for packaging.
Their request to use the air-raid shelter in Clapham was eagerly taken up by the owners of the space, London’s public transport company.
This type of farming is “100 times cheaper” than setting up an urban farm on the surface, Dring said.
Their customers say they are happy with the result.
“I think the story is fantastic,” said Charlie Curtis, an agronomist at Marks and Spencer supermarket chain.
'Growing Underground' urban farm customers include Marks and Spencer, stalls at London's Borough Market and many restaurants—helped by the patronage of celebrity chef Michel Roux Jr. of Le Gavroche
“I think we all love to think that our food is grown locally to us but I think also the product sells itself. The quality is fantastic and the flavour is like something I’ve never had before,” she said.
No unpredictable weather
Experts say vertical and urban farming could be ways not only of facing up to population growth but also growing urbanisation worldwide as well as climate change.
Nottingham University’s Centre for Urban Agriculture said on its website that urban farms create jobs, reduce transport costs and pollution as well as offering an “opportunity to develop technologies”.
The “Growing Underground” project sends its data on humidity, temperature and plant growth to Cambridge University to try and improve efficiency.
“What these guys are doing is modelling for us which one is the optimum environment for each product,” Dring said.
Every day is the same in the underground farm and there are no seasons, or unpredictable British weather.
“We have a lot more control than usual growers... When in the winter days it’s cold under the glass, it will take you 25 days to grow red mustard. It will always take us 10 days to grow red mustard,” Dring said.
He added: “There’s nothing that stands as a major challenge, apart from building a farm underneath London.” — AFP
Vertical Farming: A Big Leap Towards Sustainable Farming
Modern day vertical farming includes controlled environment agriculture technology i.e. CEA technology. All other environmental factors can be controlled using this technique. Techniques such as augmentation of sunlight by artificial lightning and by metal reflectors are also used for producing a similar greenhouse-like effect.
Vertical Farming: A Big Leap Towards Sustainable Farming
26/9/2017
Vertical farming is the technique of producing food in stacked layers or on vertically inclined surfaces which comprises of new automated farms. It requires less natural dependency and helps in reducing the dependency and cost of skilled labourers, weather conditions, soil fertility or high water usage.
Modern day vertical farming includes controlled environment agriculture technology i.e. CEA technology. All other environmental factors can be controlled using this technique. Techniques such as augmentation of sunlight by artificial lightning and by metal reflectors are also used for producing a similar greenhouse-like effect.
Vertical farms is a pesticide-free technique which requires much less input than traditional farming methods and gives much more output.
Farms embedded with this technique uses artificial lighting systems that facilitate enhanced photosynthesis. LEDs are placed near plants to impart specific wavelengths of lights for more photosynthesis. This enhances productivity.
‘Aeroponic mist’ is another technique used which helps in supplying the proper amount of oxygen and other soil nutrients. This makes the nature of growth more robust. Some of the major advantages of this farming techniques are as follows
Reliable harvest: No existence of the term ‘seasonal crops’. Irrespective of sunlight, pests or extreme temperature, these farms can easily meet the demand of contractors anytime.
Minimum overheads – Nearly 30% profitability can be obtained through this growing technique.
Low energy usage – Use of computerized LEDs by giving proper wavelength reduces energy to a great extent. Low labour costs – Fully automated technique so no skilled labours are required.
Low water usage – Controlled transpiration technique are used. It requires only 10% of the water usage of traditional technique. Reduced washing and processing – No pests control required. Reduces the cost of damage washing.
Reduced transportation costs – Can be established in any location. This reduces the cost of transportation and usage.
Increased growing area – Enables cost effective farming and provides nearly 8 times more productivity. Maximum crop yield – Irrespective of other geographic factors this technique gives maximum yield.
A wide range of crops – Growth of crop are maintained by an intensive database which enables them to grow a wide range of crops such as Baby spinach, Baby rocket, Basil, Tatsoi, Leaf lettuce.
Fully integrated technology – All environmental factors are closely monitored and are maintained in an optimal range.
Optimum air quality
Optimum nutrient and mineral quality
Optimum water quality
Optimum light quality
All these technologies used leads to a dramatic shift in plant growth rates and their yields.
Did You See AeroFarms On ABC's The Chew?
Did You See AeroFarms On ABC's The Chew?
Click here to watch AeroFarms, the sustainable farming company behind Dream Greens, on The Chew!
The Dream Team is incredibly proud of the positive impact that our indoor farming company, AeroFarms, is having on our community.
Did you know that our local baby greens also grow in the student dining hall of Philip's Academy Charter School in Newark, NJ? Philip's Academy students have been growing, harvesting and enjoying fresh, hyper-local baby greens for the past seven years from their AeroFarms school farm.
Last week, we had the privilege of hosting the incredible Chef Mario Batali at Philip's Academy Charter School, who shared our story on ABC's The Chew! If you missed it, you can watch the full episode here.
Chef Mario also cooked up a healthy, wholesome arugula penne pasta dish with the Philip's Academy students, using our freshly-harvested peppery arugula. You can make it too - check out the full recipe here on our blog! And don't forget about our recipe section on DreamGreens.com for more flavorful, healthy dishes.
“I’ve got news for you, the future is delicious and it is now!” - Chef Mario Batali
Urban Farming Startup Raises $1.5m To Curb Singapore’s Reliance On Imported Food
Urban Farming Startup Raises $1.5m To Curb Singapore’s Reliance On Imported Food
- Terence Lee
Sep 26, 2017
L to R: Praise Phuan, head of sales and marketing at Packet Greens, Melvyn Yeo, director of Trirec. Image credit: Trirec.
Packet Greens, a Singapore-based startup which couples hydroponics technology with automation to make urban farming more efficient, has raised US$1.5 million in funding from government-related venture capital firm SPRING SEEDS Capital and cleantech-focused fund Trirec.
The company employs vertical farming – racks of crops stacked on top of one another – to improve land-use efficiency. It delivers precise dosages of nutrients and water to crops to minimize wastage. The plants are bathed in LED lights in a tightly controlled environment, eliminating the use of pesticides.
It currently grows 51 types of crops in a 167 square-meter farm – slightly larger than the roomiest three-bedroom apartments in Singapore. It claims to be able to grow five times the crops on the same amount of land compared to traditional farms, and in half the time.
It is aiming to further lower its costs. “Down the road, Packet Greens’ ambitions is to ultimately be able to sell its produce at a price that can be competitive to the wholesale price,” says Trirec co-founder Melvyn Yeo. “Packet Green’s pricing strategy is currently pegged at retail-minus.”
That means it charges wholesalers a certain percentage less than retail price.
“While our operations are not sized at scale for the cost to compete against the traditional imported produce – since Packet Green is still a start-up – our experience has shown us that we are able to achieve a viable costing down strategy.”
Packet Greens tells Tech in Asia that its revenue is forecasted to exceed US$74,000 this year, triple of 2016.
The startup sells its crops directly to consumers online. It also supplies them to restaurants, hotels, and online retailers. It plans to expand locally for three to five years before looking abroad.
Trirec is an investor in Sunseap, a major clean energy solutions provider in Singapore that is valued at US$221 million.
Singapore imports 90 percent of its food, according to a 2015/2016 annual report by the Agri-Food & Veterinary Authority of Singapore. It aims to reduce the country’s reliance on imports and has designed a number of schemes to achieve it.
Converted from Singapore dollors. US$1 = S$1.35.
Are Vegetable Flats The Future?
Are Vegetable Flats The Future?
The most densely populated island in the world is Macau. In the Chinese state, 600,000 people are packed together on 30 km2, making the population density practically 20,000/km2. That figure is much lower in the Netherlands. On average, 500 people live on a square kilometre here. In Dronten, in the centre of the Noordoostpolder, that number is even lower. Inhabitants there have to share their square with just 121 people. Yet the Staay Food Group chose to not build a 3,000 m2 greenhouse, but a much more expensive vertical farm of 900 m2. What inspired them to do that? And is vertical farming becoming more popular globally?
The world population is increasing, we’re all moving to cities, and we attach more and more value to high-quality food, grown safely. The trends cannot be ignored and all indicate the same: a growing demand for vegetables, grown at or near to the place of consumption. But how should that be realised? After all, space in cities is limited. Vertical cultivation systems are seen as the solution increasingly often. By working in a controlled environment and on multiple layers, an enormous amount of food can be produced on a small surface. A minimum amount of water and fertiliser is used. Moreover, the cultivation is clean, the chance of contamination is small, and little knowledge is necessary to run farms like these: computers calculate and adjust the cultivation. And, perhaps most importantly, there’s complete control over climate and light. The crops are grown without outside influences and contaminations, and the production area is sterile.
Japanese nurseries
A number of large, vertical farms have been set up in Japan in recent years. The company Mirai was one of the first. After the earthquake and tsunami of 2011, they saw an increase in demand for safe food, while supply was low. They decided to open a vertical farm in the stricken area. “We wanted to support the region, and to show we can grow food anywhere in the world,” the entrepreneurs said. Since 2013, they’ve grown lettuce on an area of 2,300 m2. Thanks to the 15 floors they work on and the time it takes the lettuce to grow (30 days, compared to 50-60 in the open air), 10,000 heads of lettuce leave the farm now every day. They are sent to restaurants, small retailers and smaller selling places. By now they also have a branch in Hong Kong and two smaller projects in Mongolia: in the south of the Gobi Desert and one in Ulanbataar.
Container cultivations for regional sales
Vertical farms have also been founded outside of Japan. In the United States, numerous projects, or rather small projects, have been started. Entrepreneurs, who don’t have their origin in the fresh produce or horticultural sector, but who did spot a hole in the market, are starting the local production of vegetables. They choose small greenhouses in which they grow lettuce in chutes, or they start growing in containers using LED lighting.
By now, an entire industry has come into existence here as well. Various parties supply ready-made cultivation containers. One of the best known buyers of these is Kimbal Musk, brother of Paypal and Tesla founder Elon Musk. Kimbal purchased as many as 20 cultivation containers, and blogs about the importance of growing near, and being in contact with, the final user. In 2016, his Leafy Green Machine was placed in a residential care home in Deventer. That way, growing leafy vegetables also has a social function.
The container cultivations are completely different projects than the vertical farms that have been producing vegetables on a larger scale for two years now. The 12 metres of growing surface of Leafy Green Machine is not in any way related to the project started in an old steel company in Newark last year. Nursery AeroFarms has a surface of 0.6 hectares, and is 9 metres high. Because of that, food can be grown on as many as 12 floors. The company grows more than 200 types of vegetables: kale, bok choi, watercress, aragula, and so on. The company harvests and sends their ‘Dream Greens’ brand products to important foodservice companies such as The Compass Group, ShopRite, WholeFoods and FreshDirect daily, and they employ about 120 people.
Expensive and energy-intensive?
Is this the future of cultivating? Will we all eat food grown in cultivation factories soon? “How can a vertical farm solve the problem of world hunger? Can we feed the world with just green leafy vegetables and culinary herbs?” These questions were asked in Venlo in June, during the Vertical Farming Congress. The participants don’t really see it that way, either. For vertical farming, sales are an important part of the company. “You must have your objective in mind when starting a vertical farm,” says Jan Westra from Priva. “Are you starting a farm in the city from a social standpoint, or is it the wish of the government to give a new boost to existing buildings? Or do you want to grow food in an inaccessible location such as the South Pole? You can grow practically anywhere with vertical farming, but there’s a great number of factors that decide whether you’ll make a profit or not: from utility costs to marketing.” Dutch horticultural suppliers agree with that. Due to all of the techniques necessary, vertical farming is quite an investment. But precisely that investment offers major opportunities, Marc Kreuger explains. He is in charge of innovations for Here, There & Everywhere, supplier of vertical farming. “Because you have control of everything, and the entire cultivation can be predicted in advance, you also know the exact price per kilo needed,” he says. According to his calculations, growing tomatoes, cucumbers and bell pepper is commercially interesting.
Addition to greenhouses
Dutch company Certhon also invested in growing vegetables in a cultivation system devoid of natural daylight. This summer, they harvested their first bell peppers from their growing cell Plantyfood. Certhon is originally a greenhouse builder. “We focus on the customer and on ensuring they get a profitable system,” Manager Hein van der Sande explains. “We look for the best cultivation method per region. Sometimes that’s a greenhouse and sometimes it’s a system without daylight. It depends on the circumstances.” Moreover, he has also noticed many similarities between the two. “Looking at technical set up of a greenhouse, with three screens and climate computers, the step to containers isn’t all that large. The difference is between glass versus sandwich panels. It’s true sunshine is free, but in certain conditions it can also be an enemy, in the Middle East, for example. You then have to make decisions and calculations and look at the customer’s wishes.”
The company is also the main contractor for the vertical farm Fresh-Care Convenience in Dronten. Lettuce is grown in the climate rooms on nine layers. “It is the largest in Europe, but it’s still just a test set-up,” Rien Panneman said during the royal visit in June. “But if it does as is expected, we’ll definitely expand on this method of growing food, both regionally and internationally. At first we’ll have a capacity of 6,000-7,000 kilos per week, but we already have a weekly demand of 120,000 kilos. Early 2018 we’ll decide whether to expand the cultivation or not. And other regional cultivation companies can join us in that.”
Staay Food Group used the vertical farm mostly to become independent of the Southern European cultivation. “We currently get our lettuce from Southern Europe during part of the year. Disadvantages of this are the changeable climate and the long transportation distances. When we get lettuce from our own vertical farms, it’ll be fresher, no pesticides will have been used, and quality will be stabler. Furthermore, the cultivation is sustainable, the use of water can be reduced ten times. And we can plan much better. When we plant on day 1, we can harvest on day 30. The first heads of lollo bionda, lollo rosso, rocket and frisée lettuce will therefore be marketed this year.”
Publication date: 9/26/2017
Grand Rapids Micro-Farm Turns Shipping Container Into Year-Round Crop Bonanza
Grand Rapids Micro-Farm Turns Shipping Container Into Year-Round Crop Bonanza
By STATESIDE STAFF • September 25, 2017
Crops grow in the Green Collar Farms, a converted shipping container.
BRIAN HARRIS / FACEBOOK
Since mankind first began growing crops, the farmer's enemies have been drought, wind, wild temperature swings: curve balls served up by Mother Nature.
Brian Harris is turning out an array of green produce, protected from the elements, in a converted freight container that sits near downtown Grand Rapids.
He calls this a “hydroponic vertical micro-farm,” officially named Green Collar Farms.
A friend tipped Harris off to a wave of urban farming in Florida. He started by assembling a variety of containers and spaces in order to grow crops.
Currently, Harris’s farm is located in a freight converter. “It’s literally an oceangoing, refrigerated shipping container,” said Harris. “This one was built in 2004 and retired I think last year. It’s an insulated 40-foot by eight-foot by nine-foot box that just happens to hold almost two acres of crop.”
The container is growing cold crops right now, including a number of leafy greens.
Hydroponics is promising for farmers. Its reliance on recycling allows the farmer to be conservative with water. “We use about ten percent of what a typical soil farm would use,” said Harris. Growth can occur year-round, since the farm is wholly contained in an insulated space. That means that crop cycles can continue without waiting for the warmer months.
Nutrition studies indicate little difference from field-grown crops and hydroponics, said Harris, and hydroponics may prove to be better for consumers. Since field crops often have to consume their own energies, like sugar, they end up being more bitter and chewy. In hydroponic farms, nutrients simply come to the plants, so the crops don’t have to build roots.
Harris sees a bright future for a hydroponics franchise: “You could place these containers throughout an urban area where they would serve the local restaurants,” said Harris. He’s looking to expand his farm into a warehouse. “A 10,000-square-foot facility would produce 65-70 acres of crops, every seven weeks.”
Ikea Is Bringing A Pop-Up Vertical Farm To London
According to Wikipedia: ‘Vertical farming is the practice of producing food and medicine in vertically stacked layers, vertically inclined surfaces and/or integrated in other structures (such as in a skyscraper, used warehouse, or shipping container).
Ikea Is Bringing A Pop-Up Vertical Farm To London
Lisa Bowman for Metro.co.uk | Wednesday 20 Sep 2017 5:01 pm
(Credit: SPACE10/Cover Images)
If you’re into the future of food, then everyone’s favourite Swedish furniture lords have a treat for you.
Ikea are bringing a pop-up vertical farm to Shoreditch, as part of the London Design Festival.
Researchers from the SPACE10 lab at the Lokal pop-up want to show the general public that delicious, fresh food can be grown right in your home, using a hydroponics farming system.
It’s basically soil-less farming – crops are grown indoors using artificial lights and computerised automation that grows food optimised for freshness, nutrients, and taste.
They say it makes food production smarter and more efficient as their system can grow vegetables three times faster than traditional methods, with 90% less water, less waste, and without the need for soil and sunlight in a much more space-efficient footprint.
The indoor system has computerised automation (Credit: SPACE10/Cover Images)
So how does it work?
Modified LED lights allow for year-round indoor growing and smart sensors allow for machine learning so that healthier food can be grown faster while the data is fed into Google Home.
Essentially, you can ask your plants how they’re doing, and they can let you know.
The creators hope it will help kids and adults learn more about sustainable food, and they also promise that the system will be run solely on renewable energy in the future.
The vertical farming system (Credit: SPACE10/Cover Images)
What is vertical farming?
According to Wikipedia: ‘Vertical farming is the practice of producing food and medicine in vertically stacked layers, vertically inclined surfaces and/or integrated in other structures (such as in a skyscraper, used warehouse, or shipping container).
‘The modern ideas of vertical farming use indoor farming techniques and controlled-environment agriculture (CEA) technology, where all environmental factors can be controlled.
‘These facilities utilise artificial control of light, environmental control (humidity, temperature, gases…) and fertigation.
‘Some vertical farms use techniques similar to greenhouses, where natural sunlight can be augmented with artificial lighting and metal reflectors.’
The pop-up features a futuristic salad bar that provides meals of hydroponic microgreens, topped with delicious locally sourced ingredients.
There will also be ‘Grow Your Greens’ workshops for kids to learn how to grow their own take-away plant hydroponically, until it turns into a delicious green.
‘Food Preservation’ workshops will teach visitors how to use fermentation to preserve food and minimise waste.
Growing food at the vertical farm (Credit: SPACE10/Cover Images)
The farm is located at 31 New Inn Yard, London EC2A 3EY.
It’s open between 10am – 9.30pm until September 23.
Find out more here.
Go eat some futuristic food, people!