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Westfield Unveils High Tech Future With AI Walkways And Sensory Gardens
Walkways fused with artificial intelligence, an on-site farm for picking vegetables, and smart lavatories that offer a health diagnosis.
Westfield Unveils High Tech Future With AI Walkways And Sensory Gardens
Farms and artificial intelligence could be installed in shopping centres ten years from now, according to Westfield CREDIT: UNIFORM - WWW.UNIFORM.NET
Ben Woods, senior business correspondent
3 JUNE 2018
Walkways fused with artificial intelligence, an on-site farm for picking vegetables, and smart lavatories that offer a health diagnosis.
It may not sound like an average trip to the shops.
However, Westfield claims these innovations are only 10 years away from becoming part and parcel of a shopping centre visit.
The retail giant has created a vision of how people will shop in 2028, which it claims will match the latest technology with the demand for extraordinary experiences.
Shopping centres of the future will be “hyper connected micro cities”, according to Westfield. “New technologies are fused with back-to-basics, including gardens and ‘classroom retail’, where people watch and learn from their favourite retailers,” it said.
“Further innovations will include smart loos that can detect hydration levels and nutritional needs, alerting visitors to top up their vitamin C or re-hydrate.”
Hanging sensory gardens, mindfulness workshops, and farms where shoppers can pick produce will also become a key feature.
Meanwhile, eye-scanners will tell customers what they last bought, and smart changing rooms will show shoppers a virtual reflection of themselves when choosing clothes.
The vision underscores how retailers are searching for ways to stay relevant to customers following the rise of online shopping. Game Digital is trying to revive its fortunes by pushing into the eSports market, creating in-store gaming zones where customers play each other for a fee.
Gardens, eye scanners and mindfulness sessions will also be part of the shopping centre mix by 2028 CREDIT: UNIFORM - WWW.UNIFORM.NET
Elsewhere, supermarket giant Waitrose has teamed up with supper club start-up WeFiFo in a bid to lure in more customers.
The grocer has been hosting dinners led by top home cooks and chefs, with plans to roll out the concept into more stores.
David Bassuk, managing director of Alix Partners, said retailers need to reassess how they measure the success of their bricks-and-mortar stores.
He said: “People come into a store, look around, get acquainted, then buy online. Or, they buy online and use the physical store as a place to pick up a purchase or make returns. The store plays a valuable role in both cases. Yet for many retailers, these activities are not being considered in determining store performance.”
Mr Bassuk believes retailers need to focus on total sales rather than the profitability of their stores, as more customers shift their shopping online.
“Retail is not dead, and neither are physical locations,” he added.
“But unless you’re measuring them properly, you’ll never fully understand the value they bring.”
Rob Baan Looking For Help: Urban Greenhouse Should Become Health Centre
Rob Baan Looking For Help: Urban Greenhouse Should Become Health Centre
Two years after its founding, the urban greenhouse in The Hague went bankrupt last week. Rob Baan thinks it’s no surprise, he never understood the project. “Why would you commercially grow vegetables on a surface of not even 1,000 square metres, while just in the Westland and Bleiswijk vegetables are grown better and more cheaply on 35 million square metres? Tomatoes for 18 euro per kilo when the Westland’s right around the corner, and growing tilapia this close to Scheveningen. It was just a miscalculation and that annoys me.”
In December Rob was asked to help think of new ideas for the project for the first time. Rob: “I didn’t want to at first, but I became intrigued after a while. It gave me quite a start to see how badly the production was doing. In the Netherlands, we have very good production methods, but these weren’t used. Dutch consultants haven’t been heard either. How stubborn can you be?”
Educational centre
Because the greenhouse is there now, Rob would like to do something with it. “The greenhouse is in one of the poorest neighbourhoods in the Netherlands. Seven of the 20 underprivileged Dutch neighbourhoods are in The Hague, so it’s important to involve the neighbourhood in the project, so the people there can eat healthy. The project overshot its goal by selling expensive tomatoes. My plan is to turn it into an educational centre that involves greenhouse horticulture to show how easy it is to eat healthy.”
The urban greenhouse therefore fits into Rob’s dream to turn the Netherlands into one of the healthiest countries in the world. “The daily recommended amount of vegetables of 250 grammes can’t be reached just by eating dinner. Lunch should also contain many vegetables. The Netherlands is the only country in Europe that doesn’t have school lunches. But imagine an urban greenhouse in a neighbourhood where people cook, where schools receive school lunches and where they learn about the production of vegetables. That’s my plan.”
Help
Rob is emphatically looking for help from other parties for this plan. His appeal on Twitter received many responses. He’s now trying to bring these into line. “I can’t do this alone. I’m appealing to greenhouse horticulture, but also to politics and insurers. Which insurer is brave enough and joins me? In poor neighbourhoods in The Hague you can see many people with type 2 diabetes, mostly due to bad eating habits. I want to change that.”
More clarity in coming weeks
Curator Martijn Vermeeren confirms Rob’s interest in the project. “After the bankruptcy, we wrote to various parties on the market, and this plan was then announced to us. We’ve been talking to them ever since.” Whether this will be the final plan is unclear a few days after filing for bankruptcy. Other parties have also declared themselves to the curator, although those plans are less concrete.
In the meantime, production is continuing in the rooftop greenhouse, and the fish are also still swimming around. “The operation is continuing for now, but it’s important to quickly gain clarity. We’re working very hard on this: keeping in contact with stakeholders and parties who could mean something to the project.” He expects to be able to give more clarity about this in the coming weeks. The cause of the bankruptcy should also become clear.
A letter from an Alderman from The Hague has now also made clear that profitability of the greenhouse was under pressure from the first production year, 2016. UF de Schilde, which has now been declared bankrupt, rented the upper floor and the greenhouse. The building itself, The New Farm, is owned by Starterspanden Den Haag BV. They concluded in September 2016 that Urban Farmers were having difficulty meeting their payment obligations, and they arranged a provision for the annual account in 2017.
Publication date: 7/10/2018
US (MO): Aquaponics Facility To Alleviate Food Desert
US (MO): Aquaponics Facility To Alleviate Food Desert
Nonprofit Nile Valley Aquaponics is raising fish in a Kansas City food desert—and they’re creating jobs, providing healthy food and promoting sustainable urban farming in the process. To help the nonprofit lead the community to greener and healthier living, American architecture and engineering firm HOK designed the Nile Valley Aquaponics Facility, which could double the annual harvest to 50,000 pounds of fish and 70,000 pounds of vegetables.
The building would be constructed using sustainable building methods and feature resource-saving systems such as rainwater cisterns and a wind turbine.
Designed to cover a 0.7-acre lot, the Nile Valley Aquaponics Facility aims to expand the nonprofit’s food production capacity and introduce additional eco-friendly farming features. The urban farming effort not only gives the community greater access to fresh produce and fish but also provides low-income youth with economic and educational opportunities through jobs, lessons, field trips and mentoring.
The new facility would include two new greenhouses that could increase the output of fish from 25,000 to 50,000 pounds and the production of vegetables from 35,000 to 75,000 pounds. A third greenhouse would be used for education.
Read more at Inhabitat (Lucy Wang)
Publication date: 6/22/2018
Dubai Government Agrees On Deal To Start Up 12 Vertical Farms In The City
Dubai Government Agrees On Deal To Start Up 12 Vertical Farms In The City
The Ministry of Climate Change and Environment will allocate 7,600 square metres of land to the growing industry
The National
July 8, 2018
A new wave of vertical farms, using similar techniques to this one in New Jersey, America, will soon be springing up in Dubai. REUTERS.
The Ministry of Climate Change and Environment (MoCCAE) has agreed to a deal to establish 12 vertical farms in the city.
The ministry will allocate 7,600 square meters of its land in the city to encouraging the growth of the thriving industry after reaching an agreement with Shalimar Biotech Industries.
The company will develop infrastructure facilities, such as a water desalination plant, climate-control air conditioning, LED lighting, and automatic irrigation systems for the dozen farms.
Vertical farming is viewed as the new frontier of agriculture, with proponents saying it makes the best use of land and water for high-value crop production.
The UAE is fast becoming a hot spot for the phenomenon. Only last month it was revealed that the catering arm of Emirates Airline has partnered with a Californian company, Crop One, to develop what has been described as the world's largest vertical farm.
Vertical farming is based on the use of hydroponics, in which plants are grown using nutrient media instead of soil, a technique first used in the UAE almost half a century ago and now well established locally through a number of commercial farms.
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The absence of soil – with hydroponics, plants grow in media such as rock wool, a fibrous substance produced from molten rock – eliminates soil-borne diseases.
Temperature can be controlled by air conditioning, allowing year-round production even in the UAE, or evaporative cooling.
Sultan Alwan, Assistant Under-Secretary for the Regions Sector at MoCCAE, and CP Ramachandran, Founder, and CEO of Shalimar Biotech Industries, signed the agreement at MoCCAE headquarters.
Speaking about the partnership, Alwan said, "The agreement leverages synergies between MOCCAE and the private sector to encourage innovation in agriculture, with the aim of enhancing the UAE’s food security and diversity.
"As vertical farming has a significantly smaller carbon footprint than traditional farming, ventures such as this one align with the country’s drive to improve its agricultural self-sufficiency."
The five-year cooperation agreement seeks to promote new agricultural technologies; provide an educational center for local farmers, students and researchers; reduce agricultural waste, the risk of infection and the spread of agricultural pests; achieve year-round crop production, and mitigate thermal emissions from agricultural processes.
How The Answer To The World's Food Issues Is Driving Some Companies Up The Wall!
How The Answer To The World's Food Issues Is Driving Some Companies Up The Wall!
June 24, 2018
The number of people on earth is rapidly expanding. It’s been estimated that by 2050, the world’s population will rise to about 10 billion people, of which 80 percent will live in cities. According to industry experts, based on existing farming practices feeding all these people will require about 20 percent more land than the country of Brazil. The problem is, over 80 percent of land suitable for raising crops have already been used up.
Current farming practices do not optimize the use of land or water. Commercial farming also requires extensive use of pesticides. The deficiencies of traditional farming require us to re-examine how food can be better produced for the future. Vertical farming may be a solution.
VERTICAL FARMING
Vertical farming, as its name implies, involves producing food on vertical surfaces instead of one at a single level, such as a field or even a greenhouse. The purpose of growing plants vertically instead of horizontally is to produce more food per square metre.
About one acre of vertical farming is able to produce as many crops as four to six acres of conventional farming.
Since these plants are grown indoors, you cannot rely on natural sunlight for their photosynthesis. Instead, artificial lights are used. In many ways this is better as red and blue LED lights can create the ideal wavelengths for photosynthesis to happen.
There are different mediums used to grow plants in vertical farms but soil is not one of them. Most of the vertical farm concepts out there call for the use of hydroponics although other non-soil mediums like peat moss and coconut husks can be used too. Hydroponics allows for a higher yield as these plants do not need big or long roots to dig deep into the soil to find water and nutrients.
BENEFITS
About 0.4ha of vertical farming is able to produce as many crops as 1.6ha to 2.4ha of conventional farming. Being able to generate higher output from a relatively smaller area is the key advantage of vertical farming. However, there are many other peripheral plus points as well:
i) Organic Produce
Because the plants are grown indoors, within a closed environment, there’s shelter from pests and insects. As such, pesticides and herbicides are not necessary. Vertically-farmed produce are, by their very nature, organic produce.
ii) Less water
In conventional farming, much of the water used is lost in the soil. In vertical farming, much less water is used. It’s been estimated that you can save between 75 percent and 95 percent compared to conventional farms because much of the water can be recycled in the system.
Vertical farming provides solutions to land and climate issues that assail traditional methods of farming.
iii) Year-round crops
Some produce are seasonal but with vertical farming, which is done in a controlled environment, it’s possible to have year-round crop-production.
iv) Unaffected by weather
Not only does vertical farming negate the effects of seasons, it’s also unaffected by weather conditions outside, whether it’s flash floods or droughts.
LIMITATIONS
The main limitation of vertical farming is that it’s not suitable for every crop that’s grown traditionally. It’s best used for farming leafy green vegetables and herbs. Staple crops like rice, wheat, and potatoes are difficult to grow indoors as are tree-based fruits. Still, even with such limitations a lot of produce can be grown to feed the world.
AeroFarms, for example, grows more than 250 types of greens and herbs at its 6,503 sq metres facility in New Jersey. But AeroFarms is unique as it’s really the only major vertical farming facility in the US.
So why hasn’t vertical farming taken off? The main factor is cost. It’s expensive to set up a vertical farm. Constructing a building for vertical farming in an urban setting is costly. Extensive use of technology and sophisticated lighting systems will also use up a lot of electricity. The cost of building a 60-hectare vertical farm in a typical American city is estimated at between US$80 to US$100 million (RM320 to RM401 million). This figure would naturally increase if it’s in a big city.
Cost is probably why vertical farming has yet to take off in a big way. A new start-up called Plenty wants to change all that though. It has grand ambitions for vertical farming and is in the process of building a 9,290 square metres vertical farming facility in Washington.
Plenty grows its plants on 6m vertical towers instead of horizontal shelves. These towers are so close together that they look like a wall of plants. Water and nutrients flow down from the top relying on gravity rather than pumps and water is recycled.
Its facilities are very high tech. The plants do not rely on sunlight. Rather LED lamps provide the light they need for photosynthesis. Infrared cameras and sensors are everywhere, collecting data on everything from temperature to moisture to plant growth so that productivity can be optimized.
By having the farming and distribution units close together, just outside the city, Plenty will be able to get the produce out to consumers much faster.
Plenty plans to build vertical farming facilities and distribution centres near major cities (with more than one million residents) around the world. By having the farming and distribution units close together, just outside the city, they’ll be able to get the produce out to consumers much faster than with conventional farming.
Going by Plenty’s definition of major cities, it’s looking at around 500 of them globally. So far it has raised $200 million in funding, which isn’t enough, of course, for it to achieve its global ambitions. To do that, it needs to raise more funding and ensure that its crops are commercially viable. If Plenty manages to achieve its ambitious goals, it will go long way towards ensuring that the people of the world decades from now will not go hungry due to the lack of food available to them.
Oon Yeoh is a consultant with experiences in print, online and mobile media. Reach him atoonyeoh@gmail.com
Milano, A Melting Pot At The Heart Of Food Innovation
Milano, A Melting Pot At The Heart Of Food Innovation
#FOODINNOVATION #FOODTECH
Source: Marco Gualtieri - Founder and Chairman - Seeds&Chips
26-06-2018
During the 13th and 14th centuries, you’d know you were at a dinner party of some level of esteem if, at the conclusion of your meal, you were given a piece of fur to clean off your hands. If it were a very high-level event, you may even have had a live rabbit tied to your chair with ribbons to serve the same purpose. However in 1491, a certain Leonardo da Vinci thought there might be a better way both in terms of hygiene, presentation, aesthetics and for not the first time, he decided to innovate. Thus, the napkin was born.
While it may seem as natural to use now as the use of cutlery, plates, or even a table, napkins were not an instant success when da Vinci first unveiled them, so to speak. People were puzzled, unimpressed: some people even wore them on their hands because they weren’t quite sure what to do with them. Leonardo himself was dismayed, and feared that no one would adopt the napkin in common usage, and that we’d be doomed to carry around rabbit hides to all of our meals instead of his tovagliolo. Perhaps he need not have worried so much at all, as the napkin quickly took its place at the table.
When people think of Italy, one of the first images that come to mind is food, and the forms that food can take are seemingly endless. Some might say that food and the activities related to it is our national pastime, and one of the very pillars upon which the Italian identity is based. Indeed, this is probably true: it’s common to have entire conversations that revolve around food within the country, and Italians are known to sit down for lunch and immediately start discussing what they’ll eat for dinner. While regional dishes vary dramatically the attachment that Italians have to the cuisine of their area is profound. But it’s not just the food we eat that makes Italy such an important culinary pillar, it’s the innovations that food has inspired throughout our history.
Because food is never just about food, is it? Food is an archive, a story told through a taste, a reflection of both time and place. Da Vinci’s napkin is telling because it shows that even in those early days, food was both a landscape and a medium for progress and innovation. Techniques themselves would evolve along with the availability of certain ingredients that might have never before been seen, making our dishes a conduit for cultural exchange as well as a focal point for experimentation. And nowhere have these been more obvious than in Milano.
Lombardia is the largest agricultural region in Italy and as its capital, Milano has made significant contributions to the library of Italian cuisine. From risotto and cotoletta alla Milanese to osso buco to panettone, there is no shortage of dishes that originate in the area and many of those have become as recognizable as the pastas and pizzas that bear the mark of the Italian culinary heritage around the world. However, Milano has come to be characterized more by its industrial development and its entrepreneurial spirit, and it is this aspect of the identity of the city and larger region which has become its most recognizable attribute. Over the course of its history, Milano has been a meeting point for different cultures both from within Italy and the world at large, and its evolution into a global city reflects this rich history.
The development of the city has been unique among all others in the country, and it’s long been a crossroads between cultures both within Italy and from around the world. This melting pot makes Milano an ideal global hub for food innovation, where the legacy of EXPO Milano 2015 and the collective efforts towards achieving sustainable and resilient cities have embraced both the importance of tradition and the necessity of innovation. Milano is rapidly becoming home to emerging ecosystems of startups, companies, institutions, and investors, and each are contributing to a renaissance of the culture of entrepreneurship, invention, and food appreciation that makes the city so special.
A (Very) Brief History of Time
Coming from the Roman Mediolanum, Milano has signified a land in the middle of it all since the very beginning. While it’s impossible to condense the history of a city into such a short space, the history of Milano has had two important currents that have helped make it ripe as the city of the future, and the city of food innovation. First, after the Emperor Charlemagne declared himself the first King of Lombardy in 774, Milano became a key part of the Holy Roman Empire and its position between the Adriatic and Mediterranean seas, as well as at the Southern point of the Alps in the Po valley, made it an important point of trade and commerce. As a midpoint between Venice and Genova, Milano became a hub for goods, services, and people seeking work to support an emerging global economy. While the industrial development is known as ‘the Miracle, that would follow the end of World War Two, was fundamental to the modern day development of the city into a financial capital, it was built upon this long-standing tradition of trade, commerce, and entrepreneurship that dates back centuries.
Second, the historical influx and movement of people seeking work in the silk and textile industries that developed as part of this strategic position helped Milano to grow into a city of immigrants, both from within Italy and from other parts of the world. While the impact of these population shifts was felt across a range of social institutions, it was also an important aspect of the development of a distinct food culture in and around the city. Indeed, the iconic risotto allo zafferano relies not only on rice that would have been introduced to the peninsula in the 13th century via the Moors, but on the golden stems of the crocus that made its way to Italy via the mountains of Iran. Likewise for dishes like the cotoletta, which more than likely owes its presence in the canon to the Austrians that ruled the region in the 10th century.
Later on, in the 17th century, the Austro-Hungarians would return to Lombardy and with them bring the michetta, a bread that bears a striking resemblance to the ‘Kaisersemmel’, or emperor’s bread, and which the Milanese cleverly renamed to denote a ‘crumb’. But it was not only foods from far afield that contributed to the development of a distinctly Milanese culinary context: workers coming from the southern Puglia region brought with them the recipe for panzerotto, a stuffed and fried dough pocket, and it soon became one of the staples of the food culture in Milano. Indeed, Panificio Luini, which has been serving the adopted dish since the Luini family emigrated from Puglia in 1949, is one of the most popular Instagram hashtags for visitors to the city. Food in Milano is unique among other cities in Italy for both its modernity as well as its faithfulness to an ethos of unfailing quality. Indeed it’s most famous maestro, Gualtiero Marchesi, could have been speaking for the city when he said, “If I had to worry about all the comments that have been made about me, I wouldn’t have arrived anywhere.” It is unabashedly idiosyncratic, and all the better off for it.
Expo: The Emergence of the Resilient City
The decades after the so-called ‘Miracle’ were a struggle, as a decline in industrial development, and a sagging global economy left the city floundering. By the 1980’s, even the vibrant artistic atmosphere that this vacuum had given rise to in the decade preceding was petering out, with the superficial hedonism of the ‘paninari’ gradually receding and a dramatic shift in political forces that continued to build upon the city’s strategic and financial position but undermined its social development.
All of that changed in dramatic fashion in 2015, when EXPO Milano opened its gates in an unprecedented show of innovation and possibility that drew millions of visitors and a new wave of investment and opportunity back to the city. I have previously written about the fundamental importance of EXPO to the genesis of the food innovation and sustainability movement, and how the concatenation of EXPO, the development of the UN SDGs, and the signing of the Paris Agreement shaped the course of global business, but it is also important to note how crucial this experience was to the city itself. While EXPO was, according to some, “a sign that Italy was back on its feet”, it was a critical step on the path that Milano as a city had been on for nearly a decade before that. The skyline had already started to change, with skyscrapers taking their place and new developments like the City Life and Porta Nuova districts springing to life, and a twofold increase in green spaces and ecological initiatives. The arrival of EXPO also helped to boost an increasing tourism economy that helped bring even greater attention to Milano as a key city in Italy not only for business but for experiences. With more than 20 million visitors over five months in 2015 for EXPO, Milano showed the world that it was an engine of change, innovation, and possibilities.
With the theme of EXPO Milano, ‘Feeding the Planet, Energy for Life’, the city reclaimed its historic place as a global crossroads for food and built upon this legacy with an emphasis on developing new systems to sustainably grow, feed, and renew the planet. Highlighting the best qualities of the city, the pavilions at the newly built FieraMilano explored how to build a better food system through integration, cross pollination, and technological innovation. The introduction and signing of the Milan Urban Food Policy Pact in 2015 was an immediate indication that EXPO was no flash in the pan, and to date the Pact has been signed by 167 cities around the world, with over 450 million people now on the course to a sustainable urban food system. The importance of water, which was a fundamental part of the fourth edition of the Summit this year, is reflected in the forthcoming Centrale dell’Acqua, a museum and learning space dedicated to the importance of clean water to human survival and development. Sustainability has become the cornerstone of urban, social, and financial development in Milan, as well as the explosion of a vibrant food culture that reflects this renaissance.
A Changing City in a Changing World
For a city that has always survived and indeed prospered on the clever use of integrating the global into the local, Milano is poised to become one of the most advanced cities on the planet with an ethos that matches its prosperity. The extraordinary transformation is as apparent throughout the city as it is on the tables in restaurants, bars, and cafes, with a series of initiatives that are meant to “build social cohesion” by developing green infrastructure, housing, and transportation networks. Former industrial areas are also being reinvented with former warehouses and manufacturing plants being converted into cultural centers and unique housing opportunities for a growing population of artists, startups, and innovators coming from around Italy and the world to be a part of the next wave of Milano’s development. The city is taking its commitment to resilience seriously, with initiatives aimed at combating climate change and ensuring equitable access to public resources. Hints of this are popping up everywhere, with the orders for electric buses completed and expected on the roads in early 2019, and more initiatives aimed at reducing pollution and easing traffic on the way. The Bosco Verticale, a modern day Hanging Gardens that anchor an evolving city skyline, are the quintessential blend of culture, technology, and creativity that has become the trademark of Milano.
With the political landscape of Europe changing rapidly, Milano stands as one of the potential centers for global commerce, production, and finance in the next few years, particularly as the realignment in the wake of Brexit could remake the face of the continent. These changing winds could be a blessing to the city, as its newfound confidence makes it a real contender for the businesses and institutions that now find themselves looking at alternative solutions. Indeed, efforts to make Milan and Italy a more attractive place for investment could be a deciding factor in the development of the country as a whole. While this is certainly cause for optimism, our continuing efforts to develop Milano must not lose sight of its importance as a hub for innovation, and for the kind of fusion that has given it such a unique identity, particular in its food culture. These are assets that will assist us all in building a food system for the future, as we once again look to borrow the best of what has crossed our path with the brightest of what we have developed.
Milano has always been a melting pot of culture, and the opportunity to make it a melting pot for food innovation is a natural progression of that heritage. After all, Da Vinci didn’t stop at the napkin: along with his rules of table etiquette (including such gestures as not turning one’s back on a table companion, and not engaging in fisticuffs), his notebooks were filled with sketches and explanations of tools like the duck press, elaborate menus, and the rationale for a plant-based diet. His time in Milano, from 1482 until 1499 and at the very height of the melting pot, was among the most important in his life and perhaps one of the most important eras in food innovation itself. The legacy of the city is in part his legacy: perhaps his Last Supper was just the first of many more to come, each more ingenious than the last.
Marco Gualtieri - Founder and Chairman - Seeds&Chips
How To Grow Farm-To-Table Food And Where To Find It Ready-Made In Toronto
June 18, 2018
How To Grow Farm-To-Table Food And Where To Find It Ready-Made In Toronto
(All photos courtesy of Modular Farms Co.)
Let’s face it, none of us are Gwyneth Paltrow, the Goop guru and winner of everything organic and healthy. But with her inspiration and some easy life changes, we can come somewhat close. And in Toronto, this can be done thanks to Modular Farms Co. — a Canadian design and engineering company.
The company has made its mark by creating purpose-built container farms and delving into food research and development, using vertical farming solutions.
Its scalable and modular farming systems are capable of growing fresh foods virtually anywhere, in any climate.
Currently, Modular Farms is experimenting with vertically growing quinoa, blueberries, raspberries, lavender, and dandelion.
Dandelion processed with VSCO with fr4 preset.
Its CEO Eric Amyot is all about local eating.
He believes changing the global food system takes more than just funding from large corporations; it boils down to individuals.
Amyot says, “I want to not only expose people to the capabilities of what vertical farming can do but also teach others the tools that will enable them to grow local produce in their own backyards.”
Now that the weather is heating up, it’s time to get dirt stuck under your nails and bring hyper-local foods into your kitchen.
And so, we had Modular Farms, put together a grow guide so you can get started. Plus, we’ve rounded up some Toronto spots where you can eat a vertical farm-to-table meal.
Winterbor Kale
Whether you eat it in a salad, bake it in the oven, or add it to your morning smoothie, the kale craze is in full force.
Modular Farms grows a unique cool-season variety called winterbor kale, which features thick, curly, blue-green leaves, yielding 300-600 grams per eight-foot tower.
This hardy species of kale can be harvested in cooler months as a microgreen, baby greens (seedlings), mature leaves/leaflets or fully-grown plants, making it an excellent versatile plant to grow even at home.
It is an early-spring and late-fall species and is a popular choice amongst market growers. The variety is tastiest in a salad when the leaves are chopped finely and massaged or baked in culinary dishes.
Tip: Kale tastes sweeter with a touch of frost. Don’t be afraid to grow it through the winter months. Shield your kale during that time with row covers for extra protection.
Bull’s Blood Beet Microgreens
Bull’s blood beet microgreens stand out with colorful purple stems and bright green leaves. This plant is commonly used for garnishing and has a mild spinach-like flavor.
In Modular Farms, these sprouts are grown in trays using hemp mats as the substrate instead of soil or peat moss. However, feel free to use soil at home.
Luckily for all farmers (even home growers), microgreens have a very quick turnover rate (with each harvest taking place each time the plant reaches a height of four to five centimeters.
Tip: When watering, keep the water off the plants — only focus on the medium. This will help it last longer in the fridge. But since this plant degrades quickly, we recommend eating it as soon as possible once harvested.
Rosemary
Who doesn’t love to liven up their dishes with some fresh herbs?
Rosemary is a top choice amongst home growers with its ability to grow indoors and outdoors.
You can dry, freeze, preserve and even use the herb to flavor oil or butter. The best part? Once you cut rosemary, simply repeat the process and let it grow back in again. With ZipGrow towers, Modular Farms is able to grow up to five varieties of herb at a time.
Tip: Hang stems upside down in bunches to dry. Then, strip the leaves and store in a container to use in the kitchen.
Do want to grow? Then go vertical farm-to-table!
Not so into growing or growing impatient waiting for your plants to thrive? You can still make a difference by eating a vertical farm-to-table dish.
The Food Dudes have you covered as they currently receive a weekly batch of Modular Kale from the parking lot Modular Farm at the HQ to use in their vertical farm-to-table dishes. Find it at a couple of their restaurants, including OMAW and Rasa.
OMAW features a Rutabaga dish and chopped salad that contains fresh, modular kale grown in their parking lot (and is legit to die for).
The Food Dudes creative director Brent McClenahan wanted to install a Modular Farm to supply their restaurants because they saw Modular Farms Co. as a “manifestation of forward-looking companies actively trying to tackle the challenges facing our society.”
McClenahan says, “I saw the partnership as a way to get hyper-local food sources for a true farm-to-table experience and as a way to build a community who shares the same vision as my business — to create a food culture based on innovation and efficiency.”
With the capabilities of a Modular Farm, McClenahan and his team can grow produce and take it farm-to-table in a matter of hours. With this, diners are not only able to eat the freshest foods, but also will understand where and how their foods were grown.
This is yet another reason why I’m such a big fan of The Food Dudes — from their grade-A catering to their talk-of-the-town restaurants, they continue to shapeshift the Toronto food scene and set trends that help us grow and flourish.
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Despite Growing Demand For Better Food, China Isn't Quite Ready For Indoor Farming
Despite Growing Demand For Better Food, China Isn't Quite Ready For Indoor Farming
- Jun 25, 2018
Every Monday and Thursday morning, a team of urban farmers go to a high-end restaurant in eastern Beijing. They deliver radish, wheatgrass, and bean sprouts seedlings and place them inside four glass cabinets. The cabinets are automated indoor farms with LED lighting, fresh water and nutrients. About 2 meters tall and have four tiers on which the vegetable seedlings grow, chefs at the hotel will harvest the vegetables from the cabinets throughout the week and the team will restock the cabinet twice a week. They will spot check if the cabinets are functioning properly.
The seedlings the team deliver are cultivated in a shipping container in central Beijing. The containers are indoor farms operated by Alesca Life, an agriculture start-up based in the same city. The company was co-founded in late 2013 by Stuart Oda with the ambition to make cities nutritionally self-sufficient.
The indoor farms provide everything the plants need to mature, but the seedlings need to be grown in shipping containers first. All the factors affecting the growth of the plants can be monitored and controlled by the company’s self-developed technologies, making the vegetables from unfavorable weather conditions, pollution, and pests.
Alesca’s indoor farms at Beijing Marriott Hotel Northeast (Image credit: Alesca Life)
While moderately successful in Beijing, Oda is also trying to realize his vision in a different city: Dubai. Their business in Beijing has expanded too, though in a different direction. Instead of aiming for mass production and competing on price and volume with local supermarkets, the company has cooperated with several high-end hotels, including Marriott, Westin, and Shangri-La, and has provided them with the indoor farms with fresh vegetables that are highly seasonal or imported in China. They have joined China’s consumption upgrade, targeting the rising middle class who are more and more willing to spend on quality food. One serving of the radish they grow is sold for RMB 70 to 80, nearly ten times of that sold at local diners on the streets.
Alesca Life’s container farm in central Beijing (Image credit: TechNode/Jiefei Liu)
“The cabinets are more for market promotion and making impressions,” Jannelle Liu told TechNode. She is China Food and Beverage Sales Lead at Alesca. Consumers will be able to see the process of how their food is grown and be reassured about the quality – no pesticides, no soil or water pollution, she explained. Plans for producing plants in larger volumes will mainly happen in Dubai.
Cheap vegetables, expensive electricity
Alesca isn’t the only agriculture start-up that adjusted its business strategy facing China’s current agriculture industry.
When Tristan Lim co-founded Hydra Biotech in Shanghai with two of other alumni from China Europe International Business School, he first wanted to take indoor farming to China but ended up doing the business with US companies, taking advantage of China’s cheap manufacturing costs.
“Food production is a big issue in China and urban residents are willing to pay more for clean and safe food,” Lim told TechNode. This gave him the idea to start the business in China.
Hydra Biotech sells farming containers that have independent climate controlled modules and that can be equipped with hydroponics and aquaponics towers. One complete set, climate controlled module and essential hardware included, is sold for $58,000.
Inside Hydra Biotech’s independent climate-controlled module (Image credit: Hydra Biotech)
Lim knew this was too expensive for individual farmers and so he tried to partner with corporates, but they are not interested. “The agriculture companies have income from the government and have different priorities,” Lim said. “They are more interested in how to get more government subsidies.”
Another reason why this is difficult is that compared with the five-digit equipment Lim provides, agriculture is cheap in China. “Fertilizers, labor, and rent are very inexpensive,” Lim said. Lower-end restaurants don’t care that much about the quality of the food as long as they can have them at the lowest costs.
One of the biggest costs of running indoor farms, Lim said, is electricity, which will add to the overall cost of the vegetables. Electricity makes up 60 to 70% of the overall production costs and it’s not cheap in China or other places around the world, Lim said.
“We trade energy for less pollution,” said Lim. Some of the most notorious issues in China’s agriculture are the overuse of fertilizer and pesticide. They ensure the crop yields, but excessive usage has caused serious environmental problems. The residual pesticide on vegetables not only harms human bodie, but also pollutes the air and water when evaporated or washed into the drains and rivers. High application rates of nitrogen-based fertilizers can bring an excessive richness of nutrients in lakes and oceans, suffocating life living in the waters.
Hydro Biotech is now opening an online store that sells indoor farm grown greens. Similar to Alesca, they are targeting at wealthier Chinese customers, though only in Shanghai for now.
Also, Lim said they took a different strategy: making Hydro Biotech recognizable in international markets and then reintroducing it to China. Plenty, a vertical farming startup backed by SoftBank Vision Fund, is one of the companies that Hydro Biotech sells equipment to.
The San Francisco-based startup Plenty announced early this year a plans to enter China and build at least 300 indoor farms. Although the company declined to comment on its recent progress in Chinese markets, Christina Ra, Head of Communications, told TechNode that “the only way to have true impact is to grow in ways that produce volumes comparable to conventional farm fields, and to do so at a scale where the price is comparable to – or better than – what exists in grocery stores today.” Despite the fact that this isn’t how things are today, Ra added Plenty will continue to work on providing the globe with affordable and clean food.
Importing expectations
“China is a net exporter of vegetables, so it’s not relying on imports,” Oda told TechNode. According to China’s Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, the country exported $ 15.5 billion worth of vegetables in 2017, 5.5 percent higher than the amount of the year earlier.
The growing middle-class demand products from other parts of the world, such as some specific basil from Japan or Italy, and Alesca will focus more on providing the variety of types of vegetables rather than the quantity, Oda explained.
For Alesca, which not only sells growing equipment but also a vegetable service, human labor is a significant expense. As for now, one person operates one container, but Oda expects one person to operate 5 to 8 in near future. Oda said he has been hiring people with higher education qualification to show them that there’s a career in urban agriculture.
Limited land supply was another issue that Alesca faces when it tries to expand in Beijing.
Alesca wants to build farms in the city center because it’s closer to their customers and will prevent vegetables from losing their nutrients during transport. However, there is very limited space in the city center. Although their farming containers can stack one on another, weight capacity of the building and fire safety regulations are difficult to comply with.
Bigger markets on the horizon
None of these start-ups have given up on China. They are waiting for the right time: serious environmental pollution, more urgent demand for fresh food, decreasing arable land and people’s increasing incomes.
Apart from being able to control factors that affect the growth of the plants, indoor farming systems, in general, consume much less water and can farm all year around when growing seasons in traditional agriculture are usually confined to half a year, depending on the latitudes. According to Ra, Plenty’s yields are up to 350 times more than the conventional field, depending on the crop, and use less than 1% of the water of traditional farming.
As to the electricity consumption that made up most of the costs for operation indoor farms, Dickson Despommier, emeritus professor at Columbia University who developed the concept of vertical farming a decade ago, told TechNode that to compare the energy consumption between indoor farming and traditional farming, one has to include the power consumed in the production of fertilizers, operation of tractors and so on. Thus, in general, indoor farming costs less energy.
Also, progress in the energy innovation will eliminate the power costs, such as improving the LED lighting efficiency or advancement in the field of new energy will lower the electricity price in general.
China’s GDP per capita more than doubled in the recent decade, according to the World Bank, and the country’s middle class is growing at a rapid pace. For modern agriculture startup like Hydra Biotech and Alesca, China still represents a promising market. People have already started to care about food and hopefully, with more education, more of them will join the trend and begin to consider the influence the food they are eating is having on the environment, Lim said.
Although the future seems promising when thinking about how fast technologies such as riding hailing services and e-commerce platforms have changed how society functions, Lim said for now they want to stay “small and practical” and build the business step by step.
Tags: Alesca Life, Hydra Biotech
Jiefei Liu is a Beijing based tech reporter. She focuses on the union of tech and content creation and loves agriculture. You can write to her at Jiefei@technode.com
Urban Agriculture Starting To Grow In London, Ontario
Urban Agriculture Starting To Grow In London, Ontario
Urban agriculture, as defined by the city, is “the process of growing, processing, sharing and distributing food within the city.”
June 22, 2018
After about a year of discussing it, London is finally implementing its urban agriculture strategy which, by the looks of it, is flourishing.
Urban agriculture, as defined by the city, is “the process of growing, processing, sharing and distributing food within the city.”
The strategy is intended to guide people who are growing and harvesting food in the city for themselves, for social enterprises such as community kitchens or food banks, and for sale.
Urban Roots is a local volunteer-run not-for-profit urban farm that began its operations last summer on a hectare of land in the city that was a former horse pasture.
At the time, the fledgling enterprise was in farming limbo as it waited for an urban agriculture policy from the city to help guide them.
Urban Roots volunteer Mariam Waliji weeds the zucchini and squash rows at their garden plot located off of Hamilton Road near Highbury Avenue in London. (Mike Hensen/The London Free Press)
Now, one of the Urban Roots founders, Richie Bloomfield, said the city strategy has enabled his group to expand from planting one tenth of a hectare last season to more than 0.4 hectares this spring.
“Truthfully, it doesn’t feel like a lot has changed and that’s a good thing,” Bloomfield said.
City planner Leif Maitland said the city is making sure it is aware of urban agriculture needs and is trying to reduce barriers for those wanting to grow food. To do so, the city has established a steering committee to help implement the strategy, which was written in November.
“It’s about education and connection,” Maitland said.
Urban Roots already has connected with community partners and has made it part of the organization’s mandate to do so, said Bloomfield.
Bloomfield said they have adopted a three-tier model in which one third of what is grown at Urban Roots is sold to local restaurants in the city such as The Root Cellar or Locomotive Espresso. Money raised helps fund the farming operation.
Another third will be sold at cost at the farm gate to community members once a week as well as to social enterprises such as Edgar and Joe’s cafe at Goodwill Industries.
The final third will be donated to places such as the London Food Bank and the Crouch Neighbourhood Resource Centre on Hamilton Road.
“Last year we barely got in the ground and scrambled to do something,” Bloomfield said. “This year is more of a trial (of) … what can we do with this model and see if its sustainable.”
Bloomfield said when it comes to testing soil quality, the farm is still relying on guidelines for Toronto, because the city has not implemented guidelines yet for urban agriculture soil quality.
Maitland said while community gardens have soil quality guidelines, he thinks the way to make sure farms are being placed on the right plot of land is by looking at its environmental history.
“What we’ve looked at is helping people find spaces that don’t have an issue,” Maitland said.
Bloomfield said Urban Roots is “humbled” by the volunteer support they’ve received.
The organization has been able to plant a variety of crops including carrots, beets and lettuce and will be holding a summer solstice launch on Saturday to show off what it has done and what it plans to do with its community partners.
While Bloomfield said the founders of Urban Roots didn’t have green thumbs before, he said they’ve grown into it now.
“We have done a lot of learning ourselves, but that has truly been a community supportive effort,” Bloomfield said. “So many people have the knowledge we don’t and they’ve shared it with us.”
IF YOU GO
What: Urban Roots Summer Solstice Launch Party
Where: 21 Norlan Ave., London
When: 9 a.m. to noon
An Agricultural Revolution
An Agricultural Revolution
JUNE 16TH, 2018 CATHERINE MORRIS0
Ino-Gro Inc. uses high-density vertical farming techniques coupled with automation and remote monitoring software to create a climate-smart food production system.
How GreenTech is transforming the agricultural industry in Saint Lucia and beyond
In the past, successful farmers relied on the land, the weather, their instincts and a little bit of luck. Thanks to a boom in ‘green technology’ there are now a lot more tools at their disposal. The uptake of GreenTech among agricultural pioneers is helping to modernise the industry and streamline farming, as well as aiding the Caribbean in achieving its goal of food security.
CREATIVE TECH
More than US$800m was invested in agricultural technology (‘agtech’) globally between 2012 and 2016, according to research group CB Insights.
“Technology has been the main driver of change in most industries, and agriculture is no different,” says Warren Kellman, Managing Director of Ino-Gro Inc, a hydroponic farm in Barbados. “New technologies are being created every single day around the world and people are coming up with creative solutions [to environmental challenges].”
Ino-Gro Inc is one of those creative solutions. Launched in 2016 by Kellman and a friend, the farm is the first of its kind in Barbados and consists of a 40ft shipping container stacked with walls of leafy greens and operated through a fully automated, online system. Kellman and his team can monitor and control the environment – temperature, humidity, LED lighting – within the container through an app downloaded to their smartphones. Sensors, timers and alerts feed them information in real-time, with all data available via the cloud.
The vertical farming model allows Ino-Gro Inc to practise high-density farming in a relatively small area. Kellman says the container is equivalent to one acre of farmland and produces around 40kg of produce a week, including three different types of lettuce, mint, basil and edible flowers. Demand is high and the produce sells out every week, with hotels, restaurants, chefs and the general public eager to buy local.
Ino-Gro Inc’s success, however, was not guaranteed. There were challenges along the way but Kellman says he was not just motivated by turning a profit. “When we started, we wanted to find a way to make money but also do something good. We import too much. The population of the Caribbean is only going to grow, we need to find more sustainable ways to produce enough food.”
PRECISION FARMING
One of the biggest obstacles for Ino-Gro Inc was the initial expense. “These are high tech systems; the main challenge is the cost associated with them. It is one thing to buy them in the United States, but then you have to get them to the Caribbean,” says Kellman.
Ino-Gro Inc’s computerised container was developed by US firm Freight Farms but Kellman would like to see the Caribbean develop its own agtech industry. He is working as a consultant with Saint Lucia’s TeleCarib Labs, Inc to help develop a model, climate-controlled, indoor farm. “We are working on being the first to create, design and build this type of model farm. We want to find a more affordable solution so we can overcome the challenges of cost and, from there, we can approach other countries who are interested. Our aim is to manufacture in the Caribbean, reduce the cost of these systems and enable a lot more people to grow their own food.”
A prototype for the farm will be established before the end of the year at the TeleCarib Labs’ campus, and will be “data-centred”, according to Kellman who says sensors will collect information that can be analysed to maximise productivity. “It allows for more accurate farming. We can analyse the data and make calculated decisions.”
VIRTUAL HUB
When the TeleCarib Labs farm becomes operational, it aims to sell directly to consumers through a virtual platform created by Tri Farms Ltd, a Saint Lucia company founded by local entrepreneur Garvin Francis.
Tri Farms’ eCrop is the region’s first virtual agricultural hub where producers and buyers can connect online. Producers simply log on, create a profile for their farm and let potential buyers know what they are selling and when it will be available. This direct service allows farmers to pre-sell their goods and gives buyers certainty so they can plan their purchases and minimise supply chain risks.
The system, which went live in January 2017, is used by the Saint Lucia Hotel and Tourism Association to host its Virtual Agricultural Clearing House (VACH) which encourages hotels, restaurants and food and beverage distributors to buy local. Francis says that helping Saint Lucia limit its food import bill was the impetus for Tri Farms Ltd when he first began brainstorming the idea over a decade ago. “Agriculture has been lagging in Saint Lucia and tourism provides an opportunity for local producers,” he says. “It sounds simple on paper but it’s not that easy – the market is so fragmented. There was a disconnect in terms of information; you could have a glut of one item one week and the next you might not find it on the island.”
Francis, who has previously worked in both the tourism and agricultural sectors, teamed up with Melvin Felicien whose background is in IT. Together they developed Tri Farms’ forecasting tool which is primarily aimed at buyers in the tourism industry. “Availability and consistency are very important in the tourism sector. Those buyers needed a tool that could predict what was coming on the market,” says Francis. “There is no reason why the hotels should be importing any produce that can be grown locally.”
There are now around 80 farmers registered with Tri Farms’ eCrop service. The company is looking to acquire more capital so it can scale up operations to make the system more intuitive and offer users an app. Francis says: “As with any tech company, capital is our biggest restriction, but this product has so much potential. There is quite a bit of focus now on building these platforms to create linkages. That is the future of agriculture – the availability of information through the use of technology. I anticipate a huge buzz and some creativity coming out of the Caribbean.”
THE NEXT GENERATION
If the agricultural industry is to reach its potential, however, the next wave of entrepreneurs has to be engaged. “The awareness is there but it’s not where it needs to be, especially when it comes to the younger generation,” says Kellman who wants to see more technology in schools and regularly invites kids to Ino-Gro Inc to show them how the system operates and spark their interest. “They come to our farm so they can get introduced to this new technology and become familiar with the way farming will be in the future. That is part of our mission – to not only grow and supply food, but also to educate people and let them know the importance of food security.”
It’s also the goal of TeleCarib Labs, which aims to launch its Future Farmers Entrepreneurship Programme next year. This initiative will give students the opportunity for hands-on experience at the model indoor farm, as well as skill development workshops and online learning.
“TeleCarib Labs will transform farming by linking innovation with education,” says Kellman. “There is plenty of opportunity in the agricultural industry. I would encourage young entrepreneurs to never settle, never give up and keep up to date with the technology that’s out there, not just in their own country but all over the world.”
To learn more, visit:
Locally Grown Strawberries A First For Singapore's Farming Industry
Locally Grown Strawberries A First For Singapore's Farming Industry
It was once an unthinkable feat - growing non-native temperate produce on Singapore soil. But a local urban farm has managed to do just that - growing strawberries, with the help of technology in a controlled hydroponics environment. Wendy Wong reports.
20 Jun 2018
SINGAPORE: It was once an unthinkable feat - growing non-native temperate produce on Singapore soil. But a local urban farm has managed to do just that - growing strawberries, with the help of technology in a controlled hydroponics environment.
"We manipulate the environment to enhance the flavor profiles of our products, even down to the nutrients that run in the water," said Benjamin Swan, co-founder of Sustenir Agriculture.
"So even though it took two months to get the (strawberries) up, we spent the better part of six months understanding how we can best optimize the growth footprints we have to make the products the best we can be ... by controlling the environment."
Strawberries are the latest fruits of the vertical farm's labor, with other temperate produce in its basket including kale and arugula. The vertical farm also has plans to explore innovations in agriculture, by setting up a research and development lab in startup complex JTC LaunchPad @ one-north.
In a visit to the 1,000 sq ft facility on Wednesday (Jun 20), Senior Minister of State for Trade and Industry Koh Poh Koon said the Government would continue supporting urban farmers in co-developing solutions with industry players, in light of challenges faced by the urban farmers.
The strawberries are grown in a fully controlled environment, such as with LED lights with different wavelengths and tailored nutrient solutions. (Photo: Wendy Wong)
"The industry gave feedback that they have two challenges. One is that there is a lack of plug-and-play, cost-effective solutions for automation they can use quite quickly," said Dr. Koh. "The second challenge they face is that they may need to have more understanding of the science of certain niche crop types they can grow in an indoor environment."
"Urban farming as a movement is still fairly new globally. Therefore some of these solutions may not be readily available off the shelf," Dr. Koh said. "But we do see a lot of solution providers innovating solutions that can be adaptable."
"They being here in LaunchPad – where a lot of innovation and entrepreneurs are – this can be a place to catalyze cocreation of solutions. And I think that would not just meet needs, but create an entirely new pillar of exportable technology for our local companies as well," Dr. Koh said.
He cited the example of Sustenir Agriculture, which partnered with robotic solutions company PBA Hanhwa Robotics to devise a robotic arm for its seeding and transplanting process.
The farm is exploring the use of robotic arms to help in its seeding and transplanting process, with the robots able to take on the workload of eight personnel, according to Mr. Swan. (Photo: Wendy Wong)
Dr. Koh added that the Government would continue to encourage collaboration between farmers and institutes of higher learning. "The NUS Environmental Research Institute (NERI) is already working with some of our industry to better understand the science behind growing niche crop varieties, and to look at agrotech they can co-develop together to meet those challenges."
The vertical farm, which is expanding into Hong Kong in the third quarter of 2018, is also looking at growing "indoor grapes" – and eventually even harvesting "made in Singapore" wine among others.
"All strawberries need to be pollinated – typically that happens with bees outdoors," said Mr. Swan. "What we do right now is that we do it by hand with a forensic brush. It’s a little bit laborious and we don’t get 100 per cent success. But we are exploring bringing in bees to the room, which means we could have 100 percent clean honey as well."
Source: CNA/na
Tagged Topics
Read more at https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/singapore/locally-grown-strawberries-first-singapore-farming-industry-10452066
African Smallholder Farmers Embrace GPS-Based Digital Solution
Techno Brain
African Smallholder Farmers Embrace GPS-Based Digital Solution
Smallholder farmers are the most vulnerable to impacts of climate change, with rain-fed agriculture accounting for more than 90% of farmed land in sub-Saharan Africa. These farmers face many risks, including drought, disease and pest epidemics. But a new GPS-based digital technology may help many African smallholders improve their crop yields and income.
The new technology solution was initially deployed in India and is now being pushed across the African continent in countries like Malawi and Tanzania. This solution is the fruit of a partnership between Techno Brain (Microsoft) and the National Smallholder Farmers Association of Malawi (NASFAM) and ETG Farmers Foundation in Tanzania, respectively.
The technology solution will collate data, starting with the farm’s location using Global Positioning System (GPS) coordinates, expected rainfall and weather patterns, land type and soil nutrition. The collated data will be processed via intelligent cloud to create insights that help farmers in Africa make better farming decisions.
Farmers will receive tips on their mobile via SMS and voice platforms. These insights will include: best crops to plant, optimal sowing week, pest growth alerts, adverse weather notices, preferred harvesting time, market information and general farming tips. According to cp-africa.com, Microsoft says that the implementation of this solution will also enable development of new agribusiness models and make agriculture a viable livelihood for many farmers across the continent.
Publication date: 6/18/2018
A Farm Just Opened In Front of City Hall For The Summer
JUNE 15, 2018
A Farm Just Opened In Front of City Hall For The Summer
And It's Hosting A Bunch of Free Events
BY EMILY ROLEN
PhillyVoice Staff
PENNSYLVANIA HORTICULTURAL CENTER/FOR PHILLY VOICE
The PHS Farm for the City is an interactive farm at City Hall that will offer free workshops and informational panels all summer.
Philly's public parks got some serious additions this week.
Thursday marked the grand opening of the long-awaited Rail Park, and we've got you covered on background and what it looks like. It's open 24/7, so go check it out and tell me what you think.
And today, the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society launched "Farm for the City" right smack dab in front of City Hall.
This interactive exhibit an actual working farm is for the public to learn about community gardening through workshops, public forums, and activities that run into late September.
It looks like a major feature of the farm will be programming — free workshops, farmers available to chat, how-to's on gardening and opportunities to support local community gardeners. Some of the programs include information about soil, how to start a garden from the ground-up, how to live a zero-waste lifestyle and how food can be medicine.
Some of the crops in this garden include chard, onion, mustard greens, carrots, fennel, African eggplant and lots of herbs.
The project is supported by The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage in an effort to highlight the role community gardeners play in neighborhoods and the impact gardens can have on communities.
The park is open Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. and Saturday and Sunday 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. You can check out a list of workshops and events here.
EMILY ROLEN
PhillyVoice Staff
READ MORE PUBLIC PARKS FARMING PHILADELPHIA CITY HALL PUBLIC HEALTH
China: "Hydroponic Lettuce New Favorite of Restaurants"
"We grow lettuce throughout the year without interruption. The process from seedling until mature plant takes roughly four weeks. Our weekly production volume is 13-15 thousand heads of lettuce. Our annual production volume is estimated at 700 thousand heads of lettuce.
China: "Hydroponic Lettuce New Favorite of Restaurants"
"The Pole Star Agricultural Science and Technology Park of Beijing Chengjian Liu Construction Group Co., Ltd. is located on an industrial terrain in Miyun District of Beijing. The greenhouses cover 3.3 hectares and include 2.2 hectares of tomato plantations and 2000 m2 of lettuce plantation, as well as 2000 m2 of nursery garden. Hydroponic lettuce is popular with a wide audience because of its short growing season, large production volume, lack of pollution, and high product quality." This is according to Xu Dan, the CEO of Beijing Pole Star Agricultural Co., Ltd.
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CEO Xu Dan (first left) guides Beijing VIP's on a tour of the plantation. The company includes Cai Qi (second left), secretary of the Beijing Municipal Party Committee and simultaneous committee member of the central political bureau, and Chen Jining (fifth left), mayor of Beijing
Hydroponic plantation
Hydroponic plantation
"We grow lettuce throughout the year without interruption. The process from seedling until mature plant takes roughly four weeks. Our weekly production volume is 13-15 thousand heads of lettuce. Our annual production volume is estimated at 700 thousand heads of lettuce. We work together with an advanced Dutch seed company to research and develop product varieties. We currently grow 8 product varieties that belong to the high-end Salanova series of Dutch company Rijk Zwaan."
Hydroponic plantation
Hydroponic plantation
Hydroponic plantation
"Our hydroponic lettuce is sold under the brand 'Polaris' in high-end supermarkets, high-end hotels, and high-end restaurants in first and second tier cities throughout China. The dietary habits of people have changed and lettuce has become a regular ingredient of salads that accompany the meal. More and more consumers, in particular young consumers, enjoy hydroponic lettuce."
Xu Dan
Beijing Hortipolaris
Company telephone: +86 138 1022 2990
Company e-mail: dan.xu@hortipolaris.com
The Future Of Farming
The Future Of Farming
by Mahak Mannan | June 19, 2018
Delivering micro-greens to commercial kitchens they day they are harvested, Badia Farms, the GCC’s first indoor vertical farm using hydroponics technology, is set to revolutionize local farming in the region andMahak Mannan caught up with the founder and CEO, Omar Al Jundi on what the new facility has to offer.
When you step into the Badia Farms facility in Al Quoz, Dubai, it is hard to imagine that it houses an indoor vertical farm full of leafy greens which are sowed, grown and harvested in house on a regular basis.
The process of building the facility which could sustain an indoor vertical farm and provide the plants with the required elements took over a year with Badia Farms breaking into the market in 2018, offering fresh leafy greens to a commercial kitchen in the UAE.
“The region that we live in is agriculturally challenged, it is a huge problem for us and we always hear about how the government is trying to address the issue of food security and self-sufficiency. Imagine if everything is flown in and suddenly there is an issue, how are we going to feed the people?” Al Jundi asks.
“When I realized what a big problem it was, I researched and saw that the UAE import 80% of its ingredients and can’t farm all year round due to the weather conditions. Also, when I was in Europe, I was introduced to so many different varieties and flavourful ingredients that explode in your mouth and I wondered why we don’t have it here.” Al Jundi says.
With this thought, the concept of Badia Farms was born aiming to introduce new and fresh products to the market offering the quality and flavor that imported ingredients may not be able to match.
THE OPERATION
Running an indoor vertical farm is a 24/7 job, according to Al Jundi, as the farm requires regular monitoring to ensure the crops get the perfect amount of water, light, and humidity to grow.
“Our seeds are all imported and not genetically modified. We sow them and ensure they germinate in the farm and that is when we move them to the system. Once they are have germinated we need to ensure they are getting the perfect amount of humidity, temperature, and spectrum of light so they can grow,” he explains.
“Since everything is high-tech, the operation is not an issue as much as monitoring is to make sure the plants do not turn yellow. It is a lot more data collection and monitoring to ensure the correct flow is taking place. The staff walks in every 10-15 minutes to monitor the plants as things could change very quickly. Everything is set up correctly but like any other operation it could go wrong like the temperature going up to 28° when it is set at 22°,” Al Jundi says.
The entire function of the farm is operated through a machine which controls the likes of water and temperature with the touch of a button.
“Everything has to work together, we need to ensure that the water that comes in the summer is cooled down before using it, the humidity outdoor does not get indoor and the temperature control stays in place,” he adds.
THE PRODUCE
Badia farms grow all types of leafy greens like kale, radish, coriander, lettuce, basil, mint, mustard, and arugula to name a few.
The seeds used are bred by farmers in Europe over the span of 10-15 years in order to make a master hybrid, which is how the farm can grow exclusive flavors like lemon basil, cinnamon basil, red basil, and chocolate mint.
“They would bring a basil plant and a lemon plant, marry it in a sense and have this hybrid produce seeds that would have the perfect mix of flavour, this is why it is such a long process, as there are so many varieties of basil and lemon, they need to get the perfect combination to produce these seeds,” Al Jundi says.
The best-selling product at Badia Farms is the Jumeirah Mix, according to the founder, which includes radish, kale, arugula, rocket and red cabbage. The products flown in from Europe have their own name and we are proud to be from the region so we named this product to celebrate Dubai. It is a satisfactory feeling when I see hotels use the Jumeirah Mix,” he adds.
Recently, Classic Fine Foods came on board with Badia Farms as the distributor for their products.
Currently, the same products that are grown at Badia farms can take up to a week to be flown into the UAE, “Micro-greens are delicate plants, when they are flown in from Europe chefs say there is already a 2% loss of the product. In our case, there is zero waste. If it is ordered today, the produce can reach your kitchen in a few hours depending on the location,” Al Jundi says.
“When you are comparing apple to apple, our product to the flown in product, our yield is higher because we can grow more and sow more seeds, they also last longer.”
THE BENEFITS
One of the most important factors about Badia Farms is that the method of farming is sustainable, saving up to 90% water when compared to traditional farming.
“On the open field, if you use water once, it is gone but here you could re-use the same water up to 10 times,” Al Jundi says.
“This is exactly what the region needs, it is also pesticide free, we use renewable energy and everything is designed in-house. Badia Farms is a home-grown concept and I believe that the problems of the region will be solved by its own people. We can always go out and learn from experience about best practices but when it comes to finding a solution, it is down to us.”
The selling price of the products at Badia Farms is lower than the price of importing the same, according to the CEO.
“In terms of pricing, ours is lower and as we grow we will be able to reduce the prices further,” he says.
Since the indoor farm can provide optimal conditions to grow the crop through any season, it has a higher yield too.
“As an example, lettuce can have three cycles per year in an open field, however indoor we can have up to 11 or 12. It differs from product to product but we have seen about 1000 heads of lettuce harvested here in a day,” he adds.
The farm is currently operating in zone one with zone two due to open soon that will enable the facility to produce in larger quantities.
“This is the future of farming. We are able to farm with the weather conditions in the UAE, combating through the tough summers, saving 90% of water in the process, grow all year round and not use any pesticides,” Al Jundi says
“The problem of agriculture in the region will be solved through modern farming. We need commitment, focus, dedication and set examples for others to follow. There is so much more than needs to be done and can be done, we do not need an answer to come from abroad.”
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agriculture, badia farms, Dubai, farming, indoor farming, micro greens
Tiny In Size, Giant In Nutrients: Microgreens Make A Mark In State College
Happy Valley Greens owner Isabel Kumerz talks about the various kinds of microgreens she grows at her home in State College. Phoebe Sheehan
Tiny In Size, Giant In Nutrients: Microgreens Make A Mark In State College
BY HOLLY RIDDLE June 06, 2018
Isabel Kumerz grew up in Spain with dreams of one day growing her own food. When she moved to State College and the ample space allowed her to garden, she did so voraciously. However, when the barren winters of central Pennsylvania hit, she started looking for ways to continue her passion year-round, researching greenhouses and other options before finally discovering the world of microgreens.
Greens that are harvested after the sprout stage and before reaching the baby greens stage, microgreens are prized for their potent flavors, attractive appearance, and high nutrient density. In fact, microgreens are considered a superfood, with four to 40 times more nutrients than are in a fully developed plant. They’re also known for being relatively easy to grow, even in urban settings.
“Microgreens gave me the opportunity to grow vegetables all year-round, almost every week, indoors,” Kumerz said. “Microgreens, in my opinion, are an amazing crop ... they’re tiny, they have a lot of nutrients, they’re really beneficial for your health and delicious. They grow very fast, in 7-12 days. They’re very easy to grow (and) don’t need much ... only soil and water.”
Last year, Kumerz turned her newfound love of growing microgreens into a business. Happy Valley Greens opened for orders in September and microgreens are available for purchase online and at Nature’s Pantry, McLanahan’s Downtown Market and Friends & Farmers Online Market.
With a background in graphic design, Kumerz said she never expected to become a farmer, but as the business has taken up more and more of her time, she’s accepted the change wholeheartedly.
“Before, I had a graphic design company, but this business is completely different. It connects you to Mother Earth and also to your community in a really beautiful way," she said. "As an artist, I still teach and paint and do some exhibitions now and then, but the microgreens are taking almost all my time now. You have to plant every week and harvest every week.”
The vertical farming operation is located just a short walk from downtown State College and Kumerz uses all non-GMO seeds and organic soil to ensure quality.
Her next step is to begin providing local restaurants and chefs with microgreens, hoping the availability of her fresh greens even in the winter months will be a selling point for regional venues. Since once harvested, the greens are very susceptible to heat and sun (which is why you won’t find this farmer at a traditional farmers market), Kumerz plans to use hydroponic mats to deliver the microgreens to restaurants still alive and thriving, available to harvest on an as-needed basis. Currently, most of the microgreens are harvested the same day they’re delivered.
Happy Valley Greens offers six types of microgreens, including sunflower shoots, radish greens, bread and butter greens, wasabi mustard greens, pea shoots and a chef’s blend of several varieties. Kumerz is open to expanding her offerings along with consumer demand and expects when she begins pitching her products to restaurants, chefs may have different preferences than average consumers. Her favorite, and the best-seller is the sunflower shoots.
In her own kitchen, Kumerz's favorite ways to use the microgreens include adding them into frittatas, stir-fries and salads, or using them as garnish.
“Everything you cook, you put a little microgreens on top — it looks gorgeous!” she said. “It’s not only beautiful but it (adds) vitamins and nutrients.”
To try Happy Valley Greens for yourself, beyond making a purchase at McLanahan’s, Nature’s Pantry or Friends & Farmers Online Market, you can place an order on the Happy Valley Greens website, happyvalleygreens.com. Then, pick up your microgreens order right at the source, with pickups scheduled on harvest days for optimum freshness.
Holly Riddle is a freelance food, travel and lifestyle writer. She can be reached at holly.ridd@gmail.com.
ROI-NJ Takes A Closer Look At AeroFarms
ROI-NJ Takes A Closer Look At AeroFarms
By Meg Fry
Newark | Jun 11, 2018
AeroFarms grows leafy greens in vertical beds. AeroFarms
Read ROI-NJ’s profile of AeroFarms
Competitive landscape
It only has been within the last five years, David Rosenberg, co-founder and CEO of AeroFarms in Newark, said, that he has seen the vertical farming space grow more competitive.
“I think a lot of people are drawn to the romantic notion of benefiting the world and society without truly appreciating the complexities of what it takes to succeed,” he said.
That would include business decisions such as investing ahead in growing technologies and learning how to scale effectively.
“I believe that nearly 90 percent of the current players creeping into the space may go out of business within the next few years,” Rosenberg said. “But just because a lot of people will fail does not mean that the industry will.”
Doing more with less
AeroFarms uses 40 percent less water than hydroponic systems, 95 percent less water than field-farmed food and 40 percent less plastic in its packaging.
By limiting sales to a 30-mile radius from farms, AeroFarms also reduces vehicle emissions while providing retailers and the foodservice industry with locally-grown, consistently priced product year-round.
And the company can yield 390 times more product per square foot annually than conventional farms by growing twice as fast and using less than one percent of the land typically required.
Food safety
The latest outbreak of E. coli started with romaine lettuce grown in Yuma, Arizona.
Given that 95 percent of the nation’s salad greens are grown in either that region or Salinas, California, it is no wonder that dozens of people in New Jersey grew sick.
“People underappreciate and are therefore not putting the thoughtfulness needed into the complexities around food safety,” David Rosenberg, co-founder, and CEO of AeroFarms in Newark, said. “That could then influence the entire supply chain from retailers to restaurants.”
As the world’s largest indoor vertical farming company, AeroFarms has set a new standard for traceability and transparency by managing its leafy greens from seed to packaging.
“We’ve been doing what we can to get on the microphone and tell people not to cut corners, to understand that the tradeoff you make when you don’t hire a food safety professional means designing food in unsafe ways,” Rosenberg said.
Growing employment
Unlike traditional farms, AeroFarms in Newark has attracted talent from top laboratories and even Wall Street to become part of a company that is making a difference by feeding and saving the world.
“In part because of the excitement for our mission, we’ve been a magnet for attracting the best and the brightest,” David Rosenberg, co-founder, and CEO, said. “We hire people who are problem-solvers, not specifically people to solve a problem.
“We understand the problems they are solving tomorrow are different than the ones they are solving today.”
The company now employs 120 and is still hiring everyone from production line workers and mechanical engineers to a general counsel and senior plant scientists.
Prospective employees also usually are willing to meet AeroFarms where they are.
“Young people, especially, realize now that we need to change and want to work for a positively impactful company,” Rosenberg said. “But we also have some great people in the later stages of their career who have realized that they now want to go out and make a difference in the world. Many are even willing to take meaningful salary decreases to become a part of our journey.”
What AeroFarms could use more of, Rosenberg added, is a more meaningful connection with the local workforce in Newark.
“We have hired a number of past offenders, as we strongly believe that if one pays their debt to society, society should help to bring people back into the workforce to keep people engaged in a positive way,” Rosenberg said. “We also believe that partnerships we have with local economic development groups, such as the Ironbound Community Corp., play an important part in this equation.
“These programs are where we think public and private partnerships will be able to make the biggest impacts.”
Meg Fry | mfry@roi-nj.com | megfry3
Hydroponics Farm In Downtown Shreveport Progressing
Hydroponics Farm In Downtown Shreveport Progressing
- Jun 15, 2018
Michael Billings
TownNews.com Content Exchange
A farm in downtown Shreveport. Not something you would expect to hear about or see.
Well, you probably never will see this particular farm. It's behind an old brick wall in downtown Shreveport.
"We're at 406 Cotton Street. This used to be the old, originally Alltel and then Verizon's networking building. We're in the process right now of removing the old wires and networking equipment and retrofitting it to be an indoor hydroponics farm," said Michael Billings of Cotton Street Farms.
Hydroponics farm (File photo).
For those of you not familiar with hydroponics, Billings explains: "Hydroponics separates/removes the plant from the dirt. We use a medium, with a mixture of water and nutrients. We have computers that monitor everything so we can provide the exact nutrient level for that plant."
"It's kind of a futuristic ... perhaps ... look at growing food. But it's also local food. So it's food grown locally in Shreveport, which is kind of a great thing," said Carl E. Motsenbocker, LSU AgCenter horticulture professor.
Cotton Street Farms plans on producing lettuce, kale, spinach, herbs, micro greens, mushrooms and some hops for local beer makers. Billings says he can produce about a million dollars worth of produce in this space per year.
Construction continues in the interior of Cotton Street Farms.
"We'll be setting up rows, vertical growing rows. It will look something similar to a library. Tall stacks about 8 feet tall with power and water going to all of them," said Billings.
He says the vegetables will cost about the same as what you would expect to pay at Whole Foods, but they will be freshly picked within hours and stay good much longer. Motsenbocker agrees with that assessment based on his experience.
"We have a small hydroponics system at LSU. We harvest with the roots on and it'll stay in your refrigerator for four to six weeks, I mean it lasts a long time," Motsenbocker said.
Ordering and delivery of these vegetables will be quite futuristic as well. Customers will use an app called Waitr. Many of you probably already use it to get Chinese food or pizza delivered. This Caddo Magnet graduate hopes to have his products on your doorstep this fall.
"We're not just growing plants, we're growing Shreveport and we're very excited about it," Billings said.
Equipment that will be used in the hydroponic process at Cotton Street Farms.
Cotton Street Farms made it to the top 5 of the Louisiana Startup Prize presented by EAP -- Entrepreneurial Accelerator Program -- last year. Billings says what he learned through that was invaluable, and he's competing again this year for the top prize.
RELATED STORY: EAP producing results with new startup companies
This article originally ran on ktbs.com.Tags
- Agriculture Cotton Street Farms Hydroponics Michael Billings Lsu Agcenter
- Carl E. Motsenbocker Shreveport Waitr Louisiana Startup Prize
- Entrepreneurial Accelerator Program Farm Economics Food Botany
- Vegetable Cotton
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Urban Agriculture — Europe’s Untapped Potential
Urban Agriculture—Europe’s Untapped Potential
Linked by Michael Levenston
Credit: European Cooperation in Science and Technology (COST)
This was the first comprehensive, interdisciplinary study of urban agriculture in Europe. Published in 2015, it still attracts interest from researchers and policymakers alike, and will be presented at the 2018 Green Week.
Frank Lohrberg / Lilli Lika / Lionella Scazzosi / Axel Timpe (eds.)
European Cooperation in Science and Technology (COST)
June 11, 2018
Excerpt:
Urban Agriculture Europe (UAE), a COST-funded network of over 120 researchers from 29 countries worldwide, investigated how urban agriculture provides solutions in Europe and contributes to innovative cities that are economically and environmentally viable.
Although the network ended in 2016, it is still making an impact. Its research has been cited extensively in a detailed briefing for the European Parliament.
The briefing is a valuable overview of trends, scope and impacts of urban agriculture in Europe. Lessons from UAE case studies from over 200 cities show where local policy can have the greatest impact – such as through specially adapted planning policy or an entrepreneurship-friendly culture – and areas where European-level policies might provide support.
UAE participant Dr.-Ing. Axel Timpe of RWTH Aachen University explains: “Our network’s key recommendation was that you integrate different actors and benefits when you develop policy. Urban agriculture is about more than food production. It has social, environmental and economic potential, too.”
Read the complete article here.
See study.
Giant Garden Comes To Food Desert – Growing Food, Jobs And More
Giant Garden Comes To Food Desert – Growing Food, Jobs And More
POSTED: June 22, 2018, BY ERIN IVORY
CHICAGO -- One of the Chicago's biggest food deserts now has one of the biggest gardens in town.
The project was a collaboration between Lawndale Christian Health Center and the Chicago Botanic Garden. It resulted in The Farm on Ogden, a 20,000-square foot facility built to grow produce to feed the community.
"The three pillars of this space is food, health, and jobs," said Botanic Garden Urban Agriculture Vice President Angela Mason.
The "Farm" is a massive indoor gardening space for Lawndale Christian Health Center patients, community residents, and urban farm trainees and entrepreneurs. It will also serve as the new home for Windy City Harvest's urban agriculture training programs for almost 300 youth and adults annually.
The Farm on Ogden will sell affordable produce year round and sponsor a Veggie Rx program that offers free produce and nutrition education for Lawndale Christian Health Center patients.
It has an opening celebration is Saturday, June 23rd from 10 a.m. - 4 p.m. at 3555 W. Ogden Avenue.