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How India's Hydroponic Farmers Are Building Businesses
In the middle of an industrial building in the Andheri East neighbourhood of Mumbai is a farm. It is spread across 1,000 sq ft and grows 2,500 plants. It is no ordinary farm. The hum of an air conditioner greets visitors into the room, tube lights replace sunlight, and there’s no soil on the patch
Urban hydroponic farmers are making it possible to eat fresh, pesticide-free produce, with no soil use
BY JOANNA LOBO
PUBLISHED: Jul 13, 2019
Herbivore Farms, in Mumbai's Andheri, is spread across 1,000 sq ft and grows about 2,500 plants
In the middle of an industrial building in the Andheri East neighbourhood of Mumbai is a farm. It is spread across 1,000 sq ft and grows 2,500 plants. It is no ordinary farm. The hum of an air conditioner greets visitors into the room, tube lights replace sunlight, and there’s no soil on the patch.
Herbivore Farms is an example of a newly popular and successful type of urban farming—hydroponics. Simply put, it is growing plants in water. Soil is replaced by a water solution that is rich in macronutrients like nitrogen, potassium, phosphorous, calcium nitrate and micronutrients like manganese, zinc etc. A ‘grow system’ controls the balance of nutrition, humidity and temperature, uses less water than soil-based farming and increases yield without chemicals or pesticides.
“There are many advantages to urban farming. The land requirement is quite low, water consumption is 80 percent less, the water is recycled and saved, it is pesticide-free and in cases of high-tech farms there is no real dependency on the weather,” says hydroponic farmer Ajay Naik of Letcetra Agritech in the Sattari district of Goa.
Hydroponic farming is setting up roots all across India. Sakina Rajkotwala and Joshua Lewis, of Herbivore Farms, have come into focus in the last year. In Manori, Linesh Pillai started Terra Farms as a pilot project before taking the idea countrywide. Delhi has Triton Foodworks; Noida has Nature’s Miracle; Chennai has Sriram Gopal’s Future Farms and Rahul Dhoka’s Acqua Farms; and Gurugram-based company, Barton Breeze, has six farms across Haryana, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, and Uttarakhand.
Sakina Rajkotwalla quit her job at Magic Bus to start Herbivore Farms;
Image: Ronit Sarkar
“Hydroponics and other soil-less farming techniques can help us take our agriculture and farming industry to the next level,” adds Naik.
The new farmer
The path to hydroponic farming is paved with good intentions: Sustainable farming and the desire to eat fresh, organic, zero-carbon food.
Rajkotwala and Lewis’ journey began after they quit their jobs at Magic Bus and Directi, respectively, and decided to seek out their purpose in life. The question of ‘who we are’ led them to examine what they eat and how to grow it, and a stint at an Auroville farm, and eating fresh produce, turned out to be the change they sought. “It was a revelatory experience, as it opened our minds to the importance of food,” says Lewis. “We wanted to replicate that farm model—pluck vegetables and eat them fresh—in the urban space.” Hydroponics made the most sense, and they started with a small farm on Rajkotwala’s terrace in Juhu in 2017 and moved to Andheri in 2018.
Herbivore Farms’ set-up is a good example of how a hydroponic farm functions. It consists of a covered germination chamber that uses biodegradable sponge to sprout plants, a nursery where net cups (small planters) are filled with clay pebbles for support and structure, and the grow systems where the plants become fully grown. It involves metal stands, PVC pipes attached to a covered nutrient tank that pumps water to the plants, and tube lights. Once the plant grows roots, it is transferred to a system with higher nutrients in the water, where it is fully grown and harvested.
Everything, from the humidity and temperature levels to the amount of light, nutrients and water, is controlled. Although most hydroponic systems function in a similar manner, every farmer has his/her own customised grow systems, lights, seeds, and growing methods. The farms can be indoors or outdoors (a greenhouse). The vertical system ensures produce is plentiful (vertically stacked plants means there are more of them in the same area) and growth is quick, sometimes within seven days, as they get light round the clock.
At Herbivore, the produce—it comprises sorrel, basil, microgreens, edible flowers, lettuce varieties, Swiss Chard and peppermint—is packed into boxes and sent to customers via a subscription model. Most other farmers sell their produce at markets, gourmet stores, restaurants, cafes and salad bars, and to businesses.
Pillai of UGF Farms (earlier Terra Farms) in Manori, doesn’t just sell his produce at markets in Mumbai, he also sets up grow areas in restaurants, hotels and community spaces and has done so in over 30 locations in five cities, including Moscow. He does this to reduce the journey of the food from farm to consumer. Pillai started his own farming journey in 2014, converting 500 sq ft into a prototype, which he now replicates. The farms he sets up produces microgreens, microherbs and leafy greens. “It is food that grows in a space where it is consumed and never goes through logistics. Today, food takes much longer to get to our plates and in the interim, most valued nutrients are lost. By this method, food is consumed right after harvesting… it cannot get fresher,” he says.
Terra Farms, which is started by Linesh Pillai in Mumbai’s Manori last year
In Chennai, Rahul Dhoka has an 80 sq ft terrace farm producing kale, bok choy, Italian basil, thyme and mint, all for his family of six. The industrial biotech graduate started out in the organic business before turning to hydroponic farming last year. He now has three farms run by friends and family but his focus is on his hydroponic farming consultancy, Acqua Farms.
Experiments with food
Some soil-free farmers aren’t content with just growing their own vegetables and selling them. They want to spread the good word through workshops, sales of kits and systems, and advice.
Dhoka believes in encouraging more people to become farmers. “After we started in 2016, we got many requests for helping people build systems that could work in confined spaces such as balconies and terraces,” he says. Acqua Farms sells affordable ready-to-grow kits priced between `750 and `7,500, which include pipes, cups, growing media, four varieties of seeds, nutrients for three months, and an instruction manual. “We offer consultations for two harvests. Customers send us updates every week and we give instructions and modify things,” he says.
What Dhoka and other consultants are also selling is the idea that ‘anyone can do this’. There could a downside to that notion. “Today, people seem more hell bent on selling equipment and setting up farms but not helping you grow them. There’s a common misconception that it’s modern and easy to do and once you set up a system, everything takes care of itself,” says Rajkotwala. When Herbivore Farms began, the duo had no external help or experience, and persevered through trial-and-error, online tutorials, videos and articles. Hydroponics, she believes, is a continuous learning process. It isn’t a one-size-fits-all concept.
It’s why Vijay Yelmalle started the Center for Research in Alternative Farming Technologies (Craft) in 2016 in Navi Mumbai, training over 2,000 aspiring urban farmers in hydroponics and aquaponics, the latter being a system in which water from a fish tank is pumped to the roots of plants growing above it. Yelmalle has a 15-acre plot in Raigad where he is prototyping systems for aquaponics and hydroponics. His company is incubated by Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR).
Training takes place on the weekends and includes talks about the basics of agriculture, organic farming, the produce market and suppliers, hydro- and acqua-ponics, and how to build simple systems. Trainees are then added to WhatsApp groups that include field experts. “Urbanites who come here have read about hydroponics; they have vacant land or homes, and want to start their own business. They think agriculture is very easy. My intention is to make them aware of all aspects, good and bad, and let them decide. If they go ahead—about 40 per cent do—I provide support,” he says. “This is not a part-time job and you cannot pass it on to someone else.”
For the serious farmer, there are no fixed templates to learn from, and most prefer doing their own research and experiments. Legal issues and permissions are an unexplored area. There isn’t enough material on how to grow Indian vegetables using this method, which is why most farmers end up growing ‘exotic vegetables’ with imported seeds. Many of the components required to build these grow systems have to be imported too, increasing the carbon footprint of what is a low-carbon cultivation method. The initial investment into the farm can be quite high; the cost of setting up one acre of land can start from ₹30-35 lakh.
“The only disadvantage of this method is that it is capital-intensive,” says Dhruv Khanna of Delhi-based Triton Foodworks. “But, from a business point of view, at conservative figures you can break even in three years or less.” He and his friends started out by growing strawberries on a 750 sq m set-up at Sainik Farms, near Delhi, in 2014.
It’s been a rollercoaster ride since: An investor came in but left soon, one of the four original founders dropped out, and their first greenhouse was pulled down by the municipal authorities, who believed they were building a house.
Triton then picked up turnkey projects to supplement the income from selling farm produce. In 2018, they set up an outdoor hydroponic farm in Gurugram, selling vegetables under the label Chop Chop by Tritons. They cut costs by using local material, customising their lights, stands and systems; they import only the cooling systems for the greenhouse. “We have saved over 2.5 billion litres of water using our technique in four years,” says Khanna. “Our vertical systems grow food in just one-eighth of the area required for traditional farming.”
Terra Farms, which is started by Linesh Pillai in Mumbai’s Manori last year
The bigger picture
Hydroponics is beneficial, not just to the consumer who gets to eat pesticide-free, fresh produce, but also to the farmers who are not dependent on erratic weather, natural water levels, and soil contamination. “Climate change poses a major challenge to food production,” says Naik. “Hydroponics can be conducted in controlled environments and within the safety of greenhouses. The cherry on the cake is better quality food.”
Rajkotwala and Lewis believe this sustainable form of farming can make a difference to the country’s agricultural sector. Herbivore Farms is working on figuring out how to grow local Indian produce through hydroponics and how to make their current produce relevant to people or “teach people how to use Swiss chard to make palak paneer”.
Meanwhile, Pillai puts the onus on the city, community, and individual to make the change. “One can produce as much as 100 kg a month in as little as 1,000 sq ft of space all year round. A typical window in a home can produce up to 1 kg every week. Just imagine what we could achieve if every household could grow that much.”
Equity Crowdfunding Is Underway To Roll Out A Fully Self-Sustaining Ecosystem To Bring Food From Farm To Table.
Americans today get their food from a supply system that is nearly 100 years old and woefully out of date. That's because much of the food we eat travels hundreds or perhaps thousands of miles from where it was grown to where it is wanted
Investors Are Invited to Explore Lettuce Networks;
Leading the Local Food Revolution in Delivering Very Special Meal Kits
Neighborhood by Neighborhood
Equity Crowdfunding is Underway to Roll Out a Fully Self-Sustaining Ecosystem to bring food from farm to table.
Austin, TX -- (ReleaseWire) -- 07/17/2019 --Americans today get their food from a supply system that is nearly 100 years old and woefully out of date. That's because much of the food we eat travels hundreds or perhaps thousands of miles from where it was grown to where it is wanted. This waste tremendous amounts of energy, compromises its freshness and nutritional quality and creates packaging waste that's filling up our landfills and contaminating our oceans.
Lettuce is a company with a solution that solves these problems simultaneously.
It is creating sustainable, hyper-local, technology-enabled food ecosystems in urban areas that turn unused urban land and resources into productive farms, package the produce into healthy, delicious and convenient products, and deliver them to homes in zero-waste containers, all while increasing awareness and engagement around nutritious, local food. Their evolving social, local, commerce technology platform is connecting and empowering local food participants including growers, artisans, and consumers to do what they do best at every point along the food chain.
Lettuce has reinvented the popular meal kit. Before Lettuce, meal kit services were more expensive, took more time to deliver and were more wasteful resulting in high customer churn among those services. Lettuce meal kits fix all these challenges - local ingredients, near zero-waste packaging and affordable pricing because of more efficient cost structures, resulting in a dramatic drop in the customer churn rate.
Staying true to the nature of equity crowdfunding, the minimum investment is very reasonable and in easy reach of the masses. All funds raised are devoted to rolling out Lettuce on a large scale.
Everyone is invited to carefully consider this investment opportunity - http://bit.ly/2J7xJnF
About Lettuce
Lettuce got its start in Austin, Texas in 2016. Co-founder & CEO Yogesh Sharma, an entrepreneur and avid amateur backyard farmer was on a run, gawking at the ample irrigated space in his new city – almost all of it growing grass. He had always been curious about why local food wasn't a bigger part of the modern food ecosystem. And right there, all around him was part of the solution – plenty of good dirt, sun and water to grow food that could feed cities.
Hal Roberts, who grew up on an urban farm in San Antonio had already been setting up urban farms in Austin. And Ved Prakash was writing software that streamlined hyper-local logistics, enabling digital visibility and commerce across people, products, locations, and millions of other potential nodes.
The three of them got together, and collectively said, "Enough is enough, let's do something about this!" and started Lettuce. Now Lettuce meal kits serve hundreds of thousands of locally sourced meals every year, with a rapidly growing network of farmers, artisans, distributors and consumers.
Netherlands: City of Utrecht Turns 316 Bus Stops Into ‘Bee Stops’
The Dutch city of Utrecht has had a great idea to help bees thrive: turning bus stops into little bee havens. These ‘bee stops’ are basically just standard bus stops with grass and wildflowers on top to encourage pollination
Attempting To Help Bees Thrive
The Dutch city of Utrecht has had a great idea to help bees thrive: turning bus stops into little bee havens. These ‘bee stops’ are basically just standard bus stops with grass and wildflowers on top to encourage pollination.
If our natural pollinators would be exterminated, it would cost £1.8bn a year to employ people to do the work of pollinators like bees in a country like the UK. This makes investing in them make sense.
The 316 bus stops also help to capture fine dust and store rainwater. As well as the green roofs, they are all fitted with energy-efficient LED lights and bamboo benches.
The ‘bee stops’ are cared for by a team of workers who drive around in electric vehicles. And if you want to build your own bee stop, the city also runs a scheme for residents to apply for funding to transform their own roofs. The bee stops aren’t the only great place for city bees to hang out.
Source: metro.co.uk
Publication date: 7/17/2019
Hydroponic Farming: Why Soil-Free Agriculture Might Be The Way Forward
Research has but the market value of hydroponics at $8.08 bn in 2019, prompting entrepreneurs to believe that soil-free agriculture might be the way forward. We talk to some of them
By: Isha Arora | Published: July 14, 2019
Research has put the market value of hydroponics at $8.08 bn in 2019, prompting entrepreneurs to believe that soil-free agriculture might be the way forward. We talk to some of them
Farms can be set up in a space as small as a cubicle-sized room fitted with a tech support system that creates an artificial environment conducive for growth.
Think farming and cultivation and even your mind pictures flat expanses of open land pulsating with life — fresh harvest of rice, wheat, paddy or vegetables.
Thick canopy of branches with birds fluttering from one bough to the other on a sun-kissed morning, away from cities’ bustle and haze of smoke, completes the idea of idyllic surroundings. But talk urban farming, and the picture is quite different.
Farms can be set up in a space as small as a cubicle-sized room fitted with a tech support system that creates an artificial environment conducive for growth. These hi-tech, sustainable farms, operate on the science and principles of hydroponic farming — a soil-free farming technique.
In hydroponic farming, plants grow naturally, drawing nutrients out of reservoirs filled with nutrient-rich and water-based solutions, under optimal positioning of lights and regulated temperature conditions. While the technique became an instant hit in the West, where people initially used hydroponics and its farming variants to grow marijuana, it did not take too long to catch the fancy of scientists, entrepreneurs and practitioners of agriculture across the globe. In India, hydroponic farms are omnipresent — found in the arid tracts of Jaipur, landlocked Delhi-NCR, in humid weather conditions of Goa and various places in the southern parts of the country.
“It is a process of fast multiplication of high-quality planting material producing about 35-60 mini-tubers per tissue culture plantlet. Mini-tubers are progeny tubers produced on plantlets and developed artificially. Through this technology, it is possible to produce seven-10 times more mini-tubers from in-vitro plantlets (produced in a test tube or culture dish), as compared to cultivation under net house conditions with multiple mini-tubers of desired size. The technology can also be exploited for other important crops like tomato, strawberry, brinjal, chilli, spinach,” says Tanuja Buckseth, scientist (vegetable science) at Indian Council of Agricultural Research-Central Potato Research Institute (ICAR-CPRI), Shimla.
Somveer Singh Anand, co-founder and CEO of Pindfresh
Under hydroponics, terrestrial plants can be grown in multiple ways. The most common ways involve exposing roots to nutritious liquid, or in some cases, the roots can be physically supported by an inert medium such as perlite or gravel. Hydroponic DIY kits are available aplenty online. These devices enable people to set up equipment within the confines of houses and grow vegetation. The two most commonly deployed systems in hydroponics are Nutrient Film Technique (NFT) and Deep Water Culture (DWC). In NFT, a shallow stream of water containing dissolved nutrients is re-circulated through bare roots in a watertight thick tube, which forms a mat-like layer from which the roots absorb nutrients. An abundant supply of oxygen is provided to the roots through the process.
Under DWC, roots are left suspended in nutrient-rich, oxygenated water. The solution is saturated with oxygen infused by an air pump in the presence of porous stones. The method is touted to be more suitable for plants’ faster growth, given the high level of oxygen that roots receive.
The great traction that the advanced farming technique has received over the years has Dublin-based market research company Research And Markets put the global market value of hydroponic systems at a whopping $8.08 billion in 2019. Going ahead, the market is projected to grow at a compounded annual growth rate of 12.1% to reach $16.03 billion by 2025. The value of crops produced globally through hydroponics is expected to touch $32.13 billion this year at an anticipated growth rate of 5.1% from 2019 to 2025.
Influx of players
There has been a conspicuous rise in the number of “urban farmers”. These are basically entrepreneurs, who didn’t take long to recognise immense growth opportunities lying untapped in the hydroponic farming space. A majority of them did not enter the space with the intention of making profit as hydroponic farming is cost-intensive.
These individuals’ wish to venture into the space stemmed from their eagerness to explore and identify alternative means of agriculture, given unavailability of fertile and mineral-rich soil. “We were inspired by the large number of people around us vying for greenery in their houses and surroundings. But they didn’t know how to go about it, given that the weather conditions aren’t always favourable,” says Somveer Singh Anand, co-founder and chief executive officer of Pindfresh, a Chandigarh-based start-up that makes, uses and sells semi-commercial hydroponic equipment in the form of DIY kits.
“Another issue that struck a chord with us was that in a place like Mumbai, where nearly 30% of the population doesn’t have access to toilets, the muck goes into the soil. Now, if we’re growing fruits and vegetables in the same soil, it is obviously going to be contaminated with toxic substances,” he adds. Started in April 2017 by Anand and his team, Pindfresh has grown in leaps and bounds since inception, even as the hydroponic equipment the firm sells cost anywhere between Rs 50,000 and Rs 3.5 lakh. There are cheaper alternatives available in the form of grow bags and pipes with compartments containing nutrient-rich solution, which boost growth, that cost anywhere between Rs 1,200 and Rs 2,500. The start-up also conducts workshops free of cost to impart knowledge and training on hydroponic farming. “We turned profitable within months of inception and are growing at a consistently lucrative growth rate, generating about Rs 5-6 lakh in revenue per month,” Anand adds.
Delhi-based Triton Foodworks, which started as an experiment in urban farming by four friends — Deepak Kukreja, Dhruv Khanna, Ullas Samrat, and Devanshu Shivnani — in September 2014 deploys NFT, DWC, and media-based hydroponic systems to grow fruits and vegetables. Media-based systems involve the use of mediums like rockwool, coco coir, expanded clay, perlite, gravel and vermiculite for growth of plants. The company has grown seven varieties of lettuce, basils, pok choy, swiss chard, spinach, cherry tomatoes, snack cucumbers, bell peppers, sweet peppers and mint as of now. They plan to add radishes and turnips to their basket very soon.
Goa-based Letcetra Agritech is another market player that grows organic vegetables using hydroponics and sells them across hotel chains, supermarkets and farmers’ markets. Set up in 2016, the firm helps set up commercial hydroponic farms for large-scale growers as well.
“We supply to most restaurants that serve salad greens in north Goa. We also have tie-ups with a few super markets and retail consumers. We started by growing only lettuce and today we grow around 15 different varieties of vegetables. Most of the start-ups in this domain are focusing on consultation and sale of hydroponics units. Our focus is on growing good quality, nutrient-rich, pesticide-free vegetables and making these accessible and affordable to everyone,” says CEO Ajay Naik. Letcetra Agritech plans to replace at least 30% of the traditional farms in India to urban farms in the next five years.
Gurgram-based Barton Breeze is focused on setting up hydroponic farms with a major chunk of investment from the clients. “We grow 28 varieties of crops and manufacture components for hydroponics setups. However, about 65-70% contribution to our topline figure comes from development of new farms that we undertake for our clients,” says Shivendra Singh, who co-founded the start-up in 2016 with the aim of restoring the nutritional value of our produce. The company’s topline grew at a compounded annual growth rate of 300% in FY19 from FY18, signalling the high demand for hydroponic setups in our country.
Comparisons with traditional agriculture
While the modern farming practice is a boon at a time when rampant soil contamination and massive influx of harmful pesticides and insecticides into agricultural fields is increasingly becoming a cause of great health concerns, hydroponic farming suffers from two major setbacks. One, it involves a complex setup and the running and maintenance costs are huge. The technique requires some amount of expertise to be practised from scratch. For instance, the ICAR-CPRI in Shimla has been following aeroponic seed production system since 2011. This is hydroponics in a lot of ways, except that the process doesn’t need a medium like sand, gravel or water. It produces disease-free, quality plantation material to boost yield of potato varieties in the country.
Buckseth says the initial cost to set up an installation for producing one million mini-tubers (area:1500 sqm) was Rs 100 lakh. The expense can certainly not be borne by a traditional farmer, and the technique can hence be only utilised by entrepreneurs and government agencies with ample investment. “Aeroponic technology, standardised by the institute, is being commercialised under an MoU signed between the parties after royalty payments. The technology is essentially for progressive farmers/ firms/ FPO etc. But since the initial cost of setting up the whole process is very high, a number of surveys have to be conducted and prior market knowledge is a must,” Buckseth says. Besides, all the start-ups and agencies involved in hydroponics currently have the backing of an agriculture scientist or expert in the field. This kind of expertise is certainly not commonplace, making the technique cumbersome.
On the flip side, there are multiple pros that hydroponic farming has in comparison to traditional agriculture. For one, it reduces the water requirements of plants by a marked extent, since the medium in which they grow is solvent-based. Secondly, monoculture is not an issue with hydroponic farming and the practice is readily possible in areas where climatic or geographical conditions pose a barrier. “Hydroponics has four big advantages over traditional methods, which made the technology so popular. It uses 80-90% less water, 80-95% less land, harmful pesticides can be avoided and vegetables can be grown all year round,” says Naik.
The yield of hydroponic farming is also substantially higher than that of traditional agriculture. “Yields are almost 2.5 times more than it is through the traditional means. People can claim more, but it is almost 2.5 times in real. That’s primarily because one can grow more number of plants compared to ground agriculture, and the plants grow at a faster pace,” Singh says.
Road ahead
While hydroponics farming does hold the promise of changing the face of urban farming, entrepreneurs fear that lack of knowledge and expertise can play spoilsport in its growth rate. “Every hydroponic expert would say that the minimum investment in a hydroponic farm would be `30 lakh, while the maximum would go up to as high as Rs 4 crore. Who has that kind of money? I sell hydroponic setups for Rs 50,000, and I manage to sell just three in a month. That’s the only negative. People usually don’t have any expertise, and are just wanting to sell,” says Anand. He cautions not without reason. Hydroponic set-ups do entail massive investment and if not treated with care and knowledge, the money can certainly go waste.
In such a scenario, Anand suggests getting the basics right. Go back to the textbooks, get ample knowledge on the subject and then invest in relatively cheaper hydroponic set-ups to produce first for home, and then for the rest. Singh had adopted a similar strategy before he set up Barton Breeze. “We started as a small pilot project in Dubai, where we learned first, did all the R&D, testings and trials at our own cost and then presented the idea to our investors,” he recalls. “Even in India, when we started out, we set up the first farm at our own cost, since we were still experimenting. We didn’t want our clients to incur any expense for us,” he adds.
Buckseth suggests getting trained officials on board before venturing any further into the new technology. “The initial cost in this practice is high, which once invested can only be recovered by the quality produce, which otherwise will be more than the traditional system. Therefore, trained officials may be hired for proper functioning,” she says.
Rest assured, looks like greener pastures and clean produce are finally home.
SOUTH SAN FRANCISCO, California - Plenty Debuts Flavor-First Vertical Farm to Change the Way People Eat
Plenty is on a mission to change the way we eat by growing produce with craveable flavor while increasing availability to a world that long ago ran out of additional fruit and vegetable farmland, said Matt Barnard, CEO and co-founder of Plenty
July 15, 2019
SOUTH SAN FRANCISCO, Calif: Plenty, the vertical farming company that puts flavor first, today debuted its new farm, Tigris, designed for the best possible flavor while producing with extreme efficiency and cleanliness.
Tigris exerts absolute control over variables like climate and light, while using less than one percent of the land and less than five percent of the water compared to an outdoor farm.
Plenty is on a mission to change the way we eat by growing produce with craveable flavor while increasing availability to a world that long ago ran out of additional fruit and vegetable farmland, said Matt Barnard, CEO and co-founder of Plenty. The globe can grow only one-third of the fruits and vegetables required to provide people with a healthy diet,1 and those fruits and vegetables are largely available only to the affluent or people who live near a Mediterranean climate. A farm like Tigris has the potential to improve human and planetary health, and that's exactly why Plenty is here.
With Tigris and future farms, Plenty can not only create an environment that nurtures the perfect flavor in a crop, it can choose crops that have never been grown for grocery stores, due to the whims of climate or seasonality or the many food miles that fruits and vegetables travel today.
There are 70,000 edible fruit and vegetable varieties in the world, and because of the challenges of growing outdoors and putting food on trucks, we've been relegated to eat the few dozen that we find at the grocery store, said Nate Storey, chief science officer and co-founder of Plenty. Plenty has unlocked a future where people across the globe, regardless of income or geography, can experience the joy of incredible, nourishing fruits and vegetables.
Tigris is currently being commissioned and will then undergo a facility-level food safety certification pursuant to internationally-recognized third party standards, guaranteeing that it meets and exceeds the highest levels of cleanliness and safety for its produce. Plenty is available in the Bay Area today online through Good Eggs and in-person at numerous neighborhood markets, and the greens from Tigris will be widely available later this year.
City Council Clears Path For Vertical Farm In Wilmington
Wilmington City Council on July 11 unanimously passed an amendment to the City Code that will allow Second Chances farm, LLC to open a vertical farm in Northeast Wilmington.
July 15, 2019
Wilmington City Council on July 11 unanimously passed an amendment to the City Code that will allow Second Chances farm, LLC to open a vertical farm in Northeast Wilmington.
The indoor farm will employ former state and federal inmates from Delaware and produce healthy vegetables for purchase within the community.
Mayor Mike Purzycki’s Office has scheduled a signing ceremony for the ordinance on Wednesday, July 17th at 10 a.m. in his office.
How Hydroponics Work
The amended code permits indoor commercial operations as a matter of right within M-1, C-5, W-1, W-2 and W-3 zoning districts.
In June, Second Chances entered into a Letter of Intent to purchase a 50,000-square-foot warehouse at 3030 Bowers Street. Founder Ajit George is aiming to open the facility this fall.
Tech Businesses Seek To Shatter Stereotypes About Women In Farming
When Oluwayimika Angel Adelaja-Kuye started Nigeria’s first vertical farming company she already had years of experience advising governments under her belt - yet as a woman, she still struggled to be taken seriously
Reuters . Rome | July 06,2019
When Oluwayimika Angel Adelaja-Kuye started Nigeria’s first vertical farming company she already had years of experience advising governments under her belt - yet as a woman, she still struggled to be taken seriously. ‘In the beginning, even my staff, when they first come on board, are more likely to listen to my husband before me,’ said the founder of Fresh Direct Nigeria, which grows vegetables hydroponically - farming in water instead of soil. ‘These challenges make you hungrier,’ she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. Women make up nearly half the global workforce in farming, but many say their contribution has long gone unrecognised, particularly in developing countries.
Adelaja-Kuye is among a small but growing group of women entrepreneurs who are helping to change that, many using new technologies to produce food in more sustainable ways. The 35-year-old, who started farming in the heart of the Nigerian capital Abuja in 2015 and uses shipping containers, said she wanted to support those who did not conform to the stereotype of the poor, uneducated subsistence farmer. Four of the six staff at her farm are young women who previously worked as household help.
‘I want young people to see agriculture as a solution for them, one that makes good money,’ she said. ‘If I’m changing the narrative of who a farmer is, I’m happy with that.’
She has that in common with Awa Caba, a computer scientist who co-founded a platform for Senegalese women farmers to sell their produce online. Caba’s company Sooretul - meaning ‘it’s not far’ - sells more than 400 products from about 2,800 rural women online. ‘My background is not agriculture,’ she said. ‘But it’s more sensitive for me to use my knowledge as a woman to target underprivileged groups, and give them more access and income. ‘My vision is to have a pan-African e-commerce platform where you can find different agricultural products produced by women in Africa.’
Sarah Nolet, who works as a consultant to the agricultural technology industry, said more and more women were getting involved in the growing sector. ‘When you take agriculture, it’s male dominated, and tech is often male dominated,’ said Nolet, the Sydney-based chief executive of AgThentic, which consults on innovation in food and farming. ‘So you would think AgTech would be worse. But we actually see, especially in Australia, a lot of female founders starting AgTech companies.’ Globally, women make up 43 per cent of the agricultural workforce, but they tend to have less access to land, credit, technical advice and quality seeds, according to the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD).
If women farmers had the same access to resources as men, they could increase yields by 20 per cent to 30 percent, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has said. But much depends on having the right role models. ‘We have to change mindsets and show women in lucrative, high-value markets, with access to technology, and innovation,’ said Tacko Ndiaye, the FAO’s senior gender officer.
In 2018, companies working on food and agricultural technology globally raised a record $16.9 billion, according to AgFunder, a San Francisco-based online investment platform for these businesses.
Yet estimates based on available gender information show only 4 per cent of that went to start-ups with one or more female founders, said Louisa Burwood-Taylor, head of media & research at AgFunder.
‘However you slice the data, there’s clearly a very big gap in the level of female entrepreneurship in food and agriculture technology,’ she said. ‘The reasons for this gap are broad including educational and investment biases, so we are investigating how they can be overcome.’
Benjamina Bollag, who co-founded Britain-based Higher Steaks with stem cell scientist Stephanie Wallis, is among those who did receive funding - at least $200,000 since setting up 18 months ago.
Higher Steaks hopes to bring laboratory-grown pork to consumers within the next three years.
Several companies are seeking to produce cell-based meat, promising less waste and dramatically fewer greenhouse gas emissions than livestock, but most are focusing on beef or poultry.
Bollag said being a woman in a male-dominated industry had its difficulties, but added, ‘there are times when it was helpful too, where people were like, ‘actually, we want to diversify so we will pick you’.’
Ensuring women’s voices are heard in farming was a key motivation for Rose Funja, whose company uses aerial surveillance to help farmers in Tanzania avoid crop losses to insects, disease and other pests.
Funja, one of the country’s only female drone pilots, said she made a point of going to farms in person because that was the best way to meet the women who worked on cultivating the crop while the men tended to focus on sales.
‘They let me know what their actual needs are and how these technologies can help them. So we have been able to have very good conversations with them as compared to men,’ she said.
‘They (the women) say they feel safe to talk to another woman about their needs.’
Take In A Farm Above The Borough With A Tour of Brooklyn Grange
If you’ve ever wanted to get a rooftop view of the borough while roaming amidst a bumper crop of herbs, vegetables and other growing goodies, you can get a behind-the-scenes look at Brooklyn Grange this summer
Jul 9, 2019 • by Susan De Vries
If you’ve ever wanted to get a rooftop view of the borough while roaming amidst a bumper crop of herbs, vegetables and other growing goodies, you can get a behind-the-scenes look at Brooklyn Grange this summer.
The rooftop farm company operates three urban farms in New York City. The Long Island City farm opened first in 2010, Brooklyn Navy Yard was added in 2012 and the Sunset Park farm opened this year. About 80,000 pounds of produce are harvested between the three farms every year. The locally grown food is available via a CSA program, weekly markets and is also sold to local restaurants and retailers.
Market harvest looking green green green#bgseason10 #bggrows #sofreshandsogreen
To get a glimpse at all that fabulous produce and the techniques employed to make it flourish, Brooklyn Grange is offering tours of two of their farms this summer. Tours of the Navy Yard farm are held every Wednesday at 10 and 11:30 am. Get a look at the Long Island City location on Saturdays at 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. The tours are held rain or shine and last about 45 minutes.
Tickets are $18 per person. For more information on exact location and tour details and to purchase tickets visit the Brooklyn Grange event calendar here.
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Email tips@brownstoner.com with further comments, questions or tips. Follow Brownstoner on Twitter and Instagram, and like us on Facebook.
How One Urban Farm Is Breaking Down Barriers To Healthy Food
Today, Project Eats creates and maintains networks of urban farms in low-income neighborhoods around New York City without much access to fresh food. The guiding principle on these farms: small plots; high yield
“If We Can Grow Food In New York City, We Can Grow It Everywhere.”
July 5, 2019
Irene Archos
For over a decade during the Great Recession, Linda Goode Bryant gathered research and edited segments for an independent documentary about the global food crisis, which had pushed prices so high that people with limited income faced serious barriers to access to healthy food.
After reviewing hours of film shot across the world depicting the nutrition challenges facing the urban poor, she put the camera down and turned the computer off. “What kind of world do we live in that people have to eat mud pies in order to survive?” she asked herself. That’s when the idea for Project Eats was born.
Today, Project Eats creates and maintains networks of urban farms in low-income neighborhoods around New York City without much access to fresh food. The guiding principle on these farms: small plots; high yield.
“We should be able to grow our own food,” Bryant explains. “Food is ultimately tied to social justice. The belief behind Project Eats is that we should live healthy lives regardless of income.”
Each farm is both invested in and reflective of its surrounding community, from employees (young people and students from nearby schools), to pricing (sliding-scale), to programming (Saturday “storytelling” breakfasts and farm training).
The first site, Amboy Community Farm, launched in Brownsville in 2009. It’s now used as a production and training site, supplying produce for farm stands throughout the city. After 10 years, Project Eats has expanded its reach to include 10 urban farms across nearly five acres of land.
In a good year, the group distributes nearly 40,000 pounds of fresh, organically grown greens and vegetables to communities that would otherwise face little access and high prices.
The organization’s largest urban farm sits on a former parking lot under the shadow of the Marcus Garvey Apartments in Brownsville. Since 2014, under the care of two full-time urban farmers, the farm sprouts leafy greens in neat rows: Spinach and mustard greens, arugula and radishes, bok choy and broccolini and more provide a welcome green contrast to the red brick and gray concrete of surrounding buildings.
Located in areas often referred to as a “food deserts,” the farms become a vehicle for introducing city kids to an agrarian way of living. An after-school program employs teens and children for the summer to introduce them to sustainable food production, and, on a more basic level, invite them to interact with nature in a way that’s rare in the concrete-laden environments in which they have grown up.
The Project Eats ‘farmacy’ program, born from a 2017 partnership with Brownsville Action Health Center and Gotham Health in East New York, sought to expand urban farming from grocery shopping to health care. Doctors participating in the program prescribe fresh produce to patients — either in addition to or in place of their synthetic drugs — and the urban farm fills the prescription.
The vision Bryant conceived of back in 2008 has grown to include three farms in Brownsville and one in East New York, plus three more locations in Manhattan and Queens. The first Bronx farm is in development, as is a 10th on Manhattan’s Lower East Side.
Bryant, both a Guggenheim Fellow and a Peabody Award recipient, notes that just making farm-fresh greens available is not the same as increasing demand for them. The choice to use and cook fresh food is more complex than just having it readily available.
“No matter what income class you are,” she explains, “ordering Dominos is easier than preparing fresh food at home. We’ve succumbed to the incessant marketing of such convenient, readily available foods.”
But she remains optimistic about the movement. “If we can grow food in New York City, we can grow it everywhere.”
Irene Archos is an educator and a freelance writer. You can follow her work on her website.
Volunteers at one of Project Eats' gardens. Eagle photo by Irene Archos
US, Massachusetts: Urban Agriculture: Keeping Worcester Fresh
What comes to mind when you think of agriculture? Do you envision sprawling tracts of land in a rural area farmed by generations of farmers? Or do you envision neighbors in a city tending a small parcel of land to produce fresh fruits and vegetables for friends and families? Why not both?
BY MARK A. BORENSTEIN • JUNE 24, 2019
What comes to mind when you think of agriculture? Do you envision sprawling tracts of land in a rural area farmed by generations of farmers? Or do you envision neighbors in a city tending a small parcel of land to produce fresh fruits and vegetables for friends and families? Why not both?
On January 30, 2019, the City of Worcester joined many other large U.S. cities when the City Council adopted urban agriculture zoning regulations aimed at promoting urban-scale farming and agricultural uses. With the input of passionate community members, the City’s Planning staff developed regulations to provide a comprehensive framework encompassing all stages of urban agriculture, from the siting of farms or gardens to the sale of products.
The zoning regulations’ greatest attribute is their flexibility. The regulations provide for both large and small operations and uses that are primary or accessory in nature.
The zoning regulations provide for three primary uses:
Community Gardens – Small-scale gardens (less than 5,000 s.f.) for the use of individuals, neighborhoods and non-profit organizations to grow produce for personal consumption.
Urban Farms – Larger agricultural operations (between 5,000 s.f. and 2 acres) intended for commercial purposes.
Farmers’ Markets – Temporary markets for local producers to sell their products.
In addition to the primary uses, the zoning regulations permit farm stands, yard gardens and on-site composting as accessory uses. Yard gardens (less than 2,500 s.f.) are required to be accessory to a residential use and primarily for personal consumption. Farm stands are permitted as accessory to urban farm and yard garden uses.
Despite the relatively permissive nature of the zoning regulations, the City included safeguards to protect neighbors and the community from being adversely impacted by these operations. For example, community gardens are permitted as of right in all zoning districts, while urban farms are generally permitted in all zoning districts except certain residential districts where the use requires a special permit from the Planning Board. The special permit requirement for urban farms provides an opportunity for the Planning Board and the City to examine the proposed urban farm use to ensure that the use remains in harmony with the surrounding neighborhood. Moreover, urban farms, community gardens and farmers’ markets are required to be operated in accordance with all food, health, soil safety, water and other applicable regulations.
While the enactment of these zoning regulations is a big step toward promoting urban agriculture in Worcester, it important to note that urban agriculture is not new to the City. Many of Worcester’s non-profit organizations, such as the Regional Environmental Council and Worcester Common Ground, have been operating community gardens for years and have experienced tremendous success within the community. By clarifying the standards for agricultural activities and farmers’ markets, the City has made it easier for urban farmers to begin operations and sell products, which will make fresh, healthy and sustainable food more accessible to residents of Worcester and the surrounding towns.
CATEGORIZED: Environmental, Policies, Zoning
TAGGED IN: community gardens, farmers markets, farming, urban agriculture, urban farms, zoning
About the Authors
How To Do Farm To Table In A Desert
Getting the freshest ingredients for restaurants in large cities can often be a challenge for chefs. This becomes doubly hard when your restaurant happens to be in the middle of a desert
JULY 08, 2019
Vegas has reimagined itself into a big, bold restaurant town. The stakes are high for local farms looking for a piece of the action.
Getting the freshest ingredients for restaurants in large cities can often be a challenge for chefs. This becomes doubly hard when your restaurant happens to be in the middle of a desert. Yet, Las Vegas has been making huge inroads into becoming a premier restaurant destination, where diners can expect exceptional meals made from the freshest ingredients available.
It takes a great deal of time, effort and relationship building to make it happen, says Roy Ellamar, executive chef of Harvest, an award-winning market-inspired restaurant at the Bellagio. It helps that there are actually farms near Las Vegas (who knew?) — from small, traditional family farms to cutting-edge indoor urban growers — with even more moving to the area.
“I’m a big advocate of using local agriculture and having strong relationships with our farmers and producers,” says Ellamar. “We’re in the desert, so a lot of things are flown or trucked in and the quality of ingredients isn’t as great as it could be. It’s not what I want to work with.”
Ellamar works with a variety of farmers around Nevada, including Herbs by Diane in Boulder City, 30 miles outside of Las Vegas, where he is able to get “boutique ingredients.” Herbs by Diane, an organic farm owned and operated by Diane Greene, has been around for over a decade. She hand-harvests her produce on two acres, using homemade compost and lots of mulch to combat the sandy soil and arid desert climate, she says. Greene has been working with Ellamar since she started the farm and has a close working relationship with him. “He frequently texts me when he needs something special, and I let him know when I have something different,” she says. “He has been here several times and brought some of his family here.” Besides Harvest, Greene provides everything from microgreens to edible flowers to a dozen other Las Vegas restaurants.
Small farms can only produce so much food, and with close to 40 million visitors to Las Vegas each year, there are large-scale, cutting-edge indoor farms moving to the area to take advantage of the opportunities afforded by the city. James Beard Award–winning chef Shawn McClain, the chef behind Libertine Social at Mandalay Bay and Sage and Five50 Pizza Bar at Aria, believes that Las Vegas is the perfect test market for indoor vertical farms because the city has “demanding world-class chefs” who want good produce that’s grown as locally as possible.
Last year, Oasis Biotech, one of the largest indoor hydroponic vertical-farming facilities in the United States, began operations. Among the factors that drew the Chinese-backed start-up to Las Vegas was the city’s reputation as a “food mecca and tourist destination,” says Michelle Howell, the company’s sales and marketing manager. Another factor was (strangely) the climate. “If we can make this concept work in the middle of a desert that reaches 100-plus-degree temperatures most of the year, we can make it work anywhere,” says Howell.
The 215,000-square-foot facility can produce 1,500 pounds of pesticide- and herbicide-free microgreens and lettuce a day using 90 percent less water than a traditional farm. Its LED lighting also uses 50 percent less energy than high-pressure sodium lights. Oasis Biotech is selling its produce under the brand name Evercress, with delivery times that range from 24 to 48 hours from harvest to plate, according to the company. It’s working with Get Fresh, a Las Vegas food distribution company that services many of the local restaurants and casinos.
Las Vegas chefs are discerning and demand “as close to perfect as you can get in the produce world,” says Andy Hamilton, vice-president of sales for Get Fresh. “If the folks at Oasis Biotech can figure it out here, they should be able to apply it anywhere,” he says. “The company is starting with one of the most challenging and discerning markets, and we’re optimistic that it will be successful.”
Get Fresh is also working with another indoor vertical-farming company, Green Sense Farms, that’s breaking ground in Henderson, a Las Vegas suburb, and plans to be up and running by next June. The facility will be approximately 20,000 square feet, with an estimated yearly output of one million heads of lettuce and one million herb plants, says Robert Colangelo, the company’s founding farmer and CEO. The company plans to grow a variety of lettuces, herbs and baby greens, such as arugula, kale and cress.
Green Sense Farms, based in Indiana, was approached by a large casino on the strip to dedicate the entire farm production to its operations, says Colangelo. The company’s facility will also include a retail outlet and an education and outreach center where visitors can take a self-guided walking tour to learn how the company grows food, he says.
The arrival of large urban farms to Las Vegas doesn’t mean that smaller, traditional farms will necessarily lose out, says Geno Bernardo, executive chef at The Summit Club, a private luxury golf community in Las Vegas. “There’s enough room for both urban farms and beautiful, rural mom-and-pop farms,” he says.
The Rise of Urban Food Forests
Cities like Atlanta and Philadelphia are recognizing a park can be more than just a green space when visitors are allowed to pick fruits, vegetables and nuts
Cities like Atlanta and Philadelphia are recognizing a park can be more than just a green space when visitors are allowed to pick fruits, vegetables and nuts.
AUTHOR: Katie Pyzyk@_PyintheSky
July 2, 2019
A walk through an Atlanta park will soon include the option of picking berries, plucking apples from trees or gathering herbs from surrounding plants — all for free.
The Food Forest at Browns Mill, which has been years in the making, surged ahead in May when the Atlanta City Council unanimously approved an ordinance to use grant money secured from the U.S. Forest Service to purchase a 7.1-acre plot of land from The Conservation Fund for a food forest.
The land was a working farm for decades but sold for redevelopment in 2006; the development plan was abandoned when the recession hit and the land sat vacant until The Conservation Fund purchased it in 2016.
The park will serve as a community green space complete with trails and a large-scale edible garden. Atlanta's Department of Parks and Recreation will oversee the property while nonprofit Trees Atlanta maintains it. Volunteers already have pitched in for site restoration and construction — including creek and pecan orchard restoration — in addition to planting hundreds of food-bearing trees and plants.
The city conducted extensive community outreach and assessments to identify available land for this project. Some of the suggested properties no longer were suitable for other developments due to issues like drainage, but they could work as a food forest. Targeting these properties carries the ancillary benefit of eliminating blight and improving quality of life for citizens within the neighborhood.
"When you transform that [property] into a lighthouse of nutrition, you have now created the greatest asset in the community out of the greatest liability," said Mario Cambardella, urban agriculture director for the city of Atlanta, in an interview with Smart Cities Dive.
A key component of Atlanta’s Food Forest at Browns Mill is its placement in an area the USDA considers a food desert. The project supports a city goal of strengthening the local food economy to ensure 85% of citizens live within a half mile of access to fresh, healthy food by 2022.
"When you transform that [property] into a lighthouse of nutrition, you have now created the greatest asset in the community out of the greatest liability."
Mario Cambardella
Urban agriculture director, City of Atlanta
In 2010, 53% of Atlanta was considered a food desert and that dropped to 36% by the end of 2017, representing approximately a quarter of the city’s population. Simply relying on grocery stores to fill the void won’t solve the food desert problem, Cambardella said.
"It’s going to take many strategies… We have to stimulate, strengthen and support that local food system that’s going to bring affordable, equitable and resilient local food systems to these communities," he said. "If we’re providing access to free, fresh food, that creates considerable income to be spent on other things that are just as important."
Beyond acting as a food source for visitors, food forests can serve as a source for local food banks; a habitat for bees, birds and other wildlife; an agricultural education and enrichment tool; and a workforce and leadership skills development space.
"The notion of social resiliency is important," Rich Dolesh, National Recreation and Park Association (NRPA) vice president for strategic initiatives, told Smart Cities Dive. "The kinds of partnerships food forests foster are exactly that, resilient partnerships for long-term commitments to a community."
Cambardella said there are also lesser-known benefits. For instance, urban agriculture at Browns Mill provides resources for a local nonprofit that forages medicinal herbs to make into remedies for homeless residents’ hand, foot and extremity ailments. "It’s important to show how this one little food forest is playing a role in supporting our most vulnerable residents," he said.
Although nonprofits and community groups often drive public agriculture projects, public agencies are becoming more involved.
"Park agencies are looking for opportunities to make innovative connections to their communities. This is an emerging, innovative way to look at multi-benefit landscapes," Dolesh said.
Taking root across the US
Food forests are not a new concept, but up until recently, they were not widely applied in urban parts of the United States.
"The whole movement really is taking off," Dolesh said. "A ‘food forest’ is a new name for what were traditionally called 'community orchards.'"
Food forests are a form of permaculture, or a system of regenerating agriculture. Traditional farms, community gardens and orchards tend to grow food completely or mostly at the same plane, but food forests involve an ecological design that mimics how plants naturally grow on multiple layers within a forest.
A complete food forest has seven layers: tall fruit and nut trees serving as a canopy; shorter fruit and nut trees; shrubs or bushes that bear fruit; an herbaceous layer that includes herbs and non-woody plants such as vegetables; ground-hugging plants, such as strawberries; vines; and roots.
While that’s the textbook answer, "the community has to answer that question of ‘what is a food forest,” and each answers it a little differently," Cambardella said.
One project heralded as a leader is Beacon Food Forest in Seattle, which began forming a decade ago. At seven acres, it’s nearly as large as Atlanta’s food forest, which is considered one of the largest in the United States. Many communities setting up their own permaculture projects seek advice from Beacon’s organizers.
Michael Muehlbauer worked with the Beacon group and now aims to establish the Fair-Amount Food Forest in Philadelphia. His organization hopes to formalize an agreement soon with Parks and Recreation to use publicly owned parkland for the project. Like Beacon, the intention is for the Fair-Amount Food Forest to be a primarily volunteer-run project, with the hope of hiring program staff down the line.
The Fair-Amount Food Forest found collaboration in the Strawberry Mansion neighborhood and aims to increase food equity and access in an area area that could be considered a food desert. Organizers have engaged community members to determine what neighborhood residents would like planted. The current plan involves more than 240 species of plants.
"Our partners have been working in food access, nutrition and gardening in the neighborhood for quite a while, and this is a way for us to increase access and education [to fresh food] and food system education in the area," Muehlbauer told Smart Cities Dive.
The Philadelphia Orchard Project is another prominent urban agriculture-focused organization. It partners with other community groups to help with oversight of the more than 50 local orchard sites on city-owned land.
The organization has several principles for choosing viable partners, one of which is increasing citizens’ food security by ensuring at least some of what is grown in the orchards becomes available to those with limited access to fresh foods.
Although not all sites are open for public harvesting, "the food does have to get into the community in one way or another," such as through food distribution or after school programs, said Phil Forsyth, Philadelphia Orchard Project executive director, to Smart Cities Dive. The group requires that "the majority of what's harvested gets out into the neighborhood for free."
Not always a walk in the park
Creating and maintaining a food forest bears plenty of complexities and challenges. Forging the right partnerships is key to successfully overcoming difficulties, sources say.
Many public agriculture projects in the United States are partnerships between the public sector and nonprofit groups. Often the gardens, orchards and food forests are located on publicly owned land, but nonprofit groups manage the site. Non-governmental groups tend to have more flexibility to experiment with agricultural programs and implement them quickly without encountering barriers from layers of bureaucracy.
An obvious issue is figuring out how much funding is necessary and securing a source. Federal grants exist for park permaculture, as do grants through organizations like NRPA.
The budgeting for a food forest takes some research because it isn’t necessarily the same as other public green spaces. For example, a typical park project might budget 90% of its funds toward capital improvements, 5% for community engagement and 5% for maintenance, Cambardella said. But the Food Forest at Browns Mill is splitting its budget in thirds: 33% toward capital and infrastructure improvements, 33% toward community engagement and 33% toward the required management for a food-producing landscape.
Choosing regionally appropriate plants must be part of the process. Apples and peaches are frequently requested items, "but those can be the two most challenging fruits to grow in a humid climate like ours," said Philadelphia Orchard Project’s Forsyth. "We do a lot of work educating partners on other choices… that are much easier to grow, and therefore are more likely to get consistent production from year to year."
In addition, certain plants and trees will bear fruit and nuts relatively quickly, whereas others won't produce a yield for many years after planting.
Ongoing landscape management is sometimes overlooked but should be considered because it is both funding and labor intensive, sources say. Although permaculture in many ways is self-sustaining, ongoing care is necessary, especially in urban settings.
“It’s a very challenging proposition to manage these,” Dolesh said. "Fruit-bearing trees are problematic for parks." If the land is not properly maintained, "food winds up on ground, it gets trampled, it starts rotting, it draws beasts," he said.
Another critical consideration is that food-bearing plants attract pests that can lessen yield, or even decimate crops. Although traditional farms might use pesticides and fungicides to mitigate that problem, public permaculture projects rely on organic land management principles to ensure the public feels comfortable and safe harvesting and ingesting the food.
“You have to look at a whole organic regime of integrated pest management. It's going to be a challenge to manage those and you need highly-trained staff and volunteers to do this right,” Dolesh said. Besides insects, public permaculture “is a buffet” for animals including deer, raccoons, skunks and rats.
"You have to manage the land extensively to control those and not let them completely take over a food forest intended for public benefit," Dolesh said, adding that it takes "a balance."
Balance also is necessary to ensure people do not overharvest at a food forest. Signage helps to remind harvesters to respect the space for the rest of the community.
Public education plays a significant role in preventing overharvesting. Citizens cannot be expected to automatically know which fruits, nuts and herbs are usable.
For example, the Atlanta community largely targeted raspberries for its food forest because that was what they knew, but few residents realized the area’s many mulberry trees bear edible fruits, Cambardella explained. Other food forest visitors don’t know how to harvest at all.
Educating people about the variety of productive crops and driving them toward lesser-known ones can prevent overharvesting while opening doors to underutilized food sources. The combination of better healthy food access and education can prompt people to make better nutritional decisions in their daily lives.
Educational elements are at the forefront of planning for the Fair-Amount Food Forest in Philadelphia as well.
"Just providing access to food isn't really the whole picture. The education on how to utilize and benefit from different plants, how they grow and the environment… needs to be part of the picture for actual change," Muehlbauer said.
Regardless of the challenges, investments in public permaculture projects continue to grow due to the abundant advantages.
“Food forests really help to make resilient communities. They add value not just for the infrastructure aspects but also resiliency outcomes. The partnerships formed are deep and lasting,” Dolesh said.
Follow Katie Pyzyk on Twitter
From ‘Micro-Factories’ To Urban Farming: These Innovative Firms Are Shaping The Future
The World Economic Forum today unveils its 2019 Technology Pioneers: tech firms from around the world, shaping their industry and their region in new and exciting way
July 4, 2019
By Newsroom
The World Economic Forum today unveils its 2019 Technology Pioneers: tech firms from around the world, shaping their industry and their region in new and exciting ways. The 2019 cohort was selected by a committee of 59 leading technology experts, investors and entrepreneurs.
“Our new tech pioneers are at the cutting edge of many industries, using their innovations to address serious issues around the world,” says Fulvia Montresor, Head of Technology Pioneers at the Forum. “This year’s pioneers know that technology is about more than innovation – it is also about application. This is why we believe they’ll shape the future.”
As part of their selection, all Technology Pioneers can participate in a two-year programme with the Forum, when they have the opportunity to collaborate with their emerging tech peers, engage with industry leaders and work with public and private experts around the world. The 2019 cohort is invited to participate at the Forum’s upcoming meeting, the 13th Annual Meeting of the New Champions, Dalian, People’s Republic of China, 1-3 July.
Of the 56 firms selected, 25% of them are female-led and they are drawn from a pool that stretches beyond the traditional tech hubs like Silicon Valley. This year’s group includes, among others: healthcare app DabaDoc from Morocco; Via Verde from Mexico facilitating vertical gardening; manufacturing-focused DataProphet from South Africa; and the first Technology Pioneer from Saudi Arabia, trucking and logistics innovator Homoola.
Countries represented are: China, Finland, Germany, Israel, Mexico, Morocco, the Netherlands, Republic of Korea, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Singapore, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States.
The Technology Pioneers are at the cutting edge of a wide range of industries that span agtech, smart cities, cleantech, supply chain, manufacturing, cybersecurity, autonomous vehicles, drones and others.
China’s Dorabot uses robots to create seamless delivery and logistics services. Also based in China, Alesca Life creates cloud-connected farms and farm digitization software to improve the efficiency of food production so that hotels, restaurants or even private homes can produce food in automated “cabinet farms” that use up to 25 times less water and land than traditional methods.
Another Technology Pioneer aiming to address food shortages, US-based Inari Agriculture,uses CRISPR gene-editing technology to produce healthier crops that require much less land and have a significantly lower impact on the environment. Using green technology in another way is Mexico’s Via Verde. This pioneer creates, installs and maintains vertical gardens to transform urban infrastructure into green spaces that generate oxygen, improve air quality, reduce urban heat islands and provide other social and psychological benefits to highly populated cities.
Leading the way in autonomous vehicles is the US company Perceptive Automata. They are combining behavioural science, neuroscience and computer vision for autonomous vehicles to understand how pedestrians, bikes and drivers communicate on the road beyond codified traffic laws. At the cutting edge of manufacturing, DataProphet in South Africauses AI to improve quality and yield.
Other Technology Pioneers are leveraging technology to address social issues. One example is Israeli TIPA,a clean-tech innovator addressing the global plastics crisis with compostable plastics packaging. US-established Marinus Analytics addresses human trafficking by leveraging machine learning and artificial intelligence to empower law enforcement and government agencies to protect vulnerable communities.
The 2019 cohort of Technology Pioneers:
Africa
DataProphet (South Africa) – artificial intelligence for manufacturing
Asia
Alesca Life (China) – data-driven, indoor vertical farming and crop management solutions
Coeo Labs (India) – meeting clinical needs in critical care
Dorabot (China) – artificial intelligence-powered robotic solutions for logistics and beyond
Eureka (Singapore) – an artificial intelligence platform for mobile operator and enterprise partnerships
Guangzhishu Technology (China) – providing blockchain-based privacy-preserving computation solutions
Holmusk (Singapore) – leveraging real-world data to address mental health issues globally
Sky Labs (Korea) – developing a cardio tracker to identify arrhythmia, which is difficult to diagnose
Tookitaki (Singapore) – artificial intelligence-powered regulatory compliance solutions for financial institutions
Europe
Bitfury (the Netherlands) – developing and delivering cutting-edge blockchain hardware and software solutions
Black Bear Carbon (the Netherlands) – bringing the circular economy to tires
Callsign (UK) – revolutionizing how people digitally identify themselves
Garrison (UK) – a unique technology providing secure internet access
ICEYE (Finland) – satellite imaging for every square metre on Earth, every hour
Luminance Technologies (UK) – an artificial intelligence platform for lawyers
Open Mineral (Switzerland) – disrupting how base metal commodities are traded
Photanol (the Netherlands) – making biodegradable plastic from CO2, which is only the beginning
Volocopter (Germany) – certified multicopter offering urban air mobility services
Latin America
Via Verde (Mexico) – creating resilient urban environments using vertical green gardens
MENA
DabaDoc (Morocco) – transforming the patient-doctor relationship through networked care
Homoola (Saudi Arabia) – bringing rideshare to the trucking industry
MeMed Diagnostics (Israel) – translating immune system signals into simple diagnostic insights
QED-it (Israel) – enterprise solutions for data privacy using zero-knowledge proofs
TIPA (Israel) – developing and producing compostable flexible packaging
North America
7 Cups (USA) – technology to scale compassion, solving mental health challenges
Airobotics (USA) – pioneers in autonomous robotics with aerial insights and analytics
Airtable (USA) – empowering human creativity by democratizing software creation
Arcadia Power (USA) – making clean energy an easy choice, for everyone
BigID (USA) – helping organizations know their customers by knowing their data
Bright Machines (USA) – bringing intelligence and automation to manufacturing
CyberCube (USA) – cyber-risk analytics to grow insurance in a connected world
Descartes Labs (USA) – building a cloud-based platform to digitize the physical world
Drishti (USA) – extending human potential in increasingly automated factories
Full Harvest (USA) – the first B2B marketplace for imperfect and surplus produce
GHGSat (Canada) – satellite monitoring of emissions from industrial facilities
goTenna (USA) – a leading mobile mesh networking platform
ImpactVision (USA) – real-time food quality and safety decisions
Inari Agriculture (USA) – from nature’s diversity to better seeds
LunaPBC (USA) – people-driven health discovery platform
Marinus Analytics (USA) – artificial intelligence-based tools to help the vulnerable in the digital world
Microvi (USA) – safe water, sustainable chemicals and a clean environment for all
One Concern (USA) – artificial intelligence for natural disaster resilience
Onshape (USA) – a cloud design platform that speeds up product development
Openwater (USA) – changing the way people read and write their bodies and brains
Perceptive Automata (USA) – human intuition for machines
Quantela (USA) – providing a digital platform for smarter urban infrastructure decisions
Relativity Space (USA) – 3D-printed rockets to build the future of humanity in space
Remitly (USA) – digital remittance services helping immigrants send money overseas
Rigetti Computing (USA) – on a mission to build the world’s most powerful computers
Shape Security (USA) – protecting the Global 2000 from bot attacks
Skuchain (USA) – empowering enterprises to grow their global trade with blockchain
Spring Health (USA) – a comprehensive mental health solution for employers
Starsky Robotics (USA) – bringing driverless trucks to the market
Trackonomy (USA) – powering end-to-end visibility and control across global supply chains
Truepic (USA) – restoring trust to digital photos and videos
Vineti (USA) – creating essential software for personalized therapies
BREAKING NEWS: AeroFarms Raises $100m As Investors Rush To Indoor Farms
Another multi-million dollar investment in vertical farming. The Financial Times reports that AeroFarms has raised $100m in their Series E fundraiser to further expand its warehouses of stacked growing trays and branch out into different produce
Another multi-million dollar investment in vertical farming. The Financial Times reports that AeroFarms has raised $100m in their Series E fundraiser to further expand its warehouses of stacked growing trays and branch out into different produce. This round again was led by the Ingka Group, known as the parent company of Ikea.
Other than Ingka, existing investors include UK-based Wheatsheaf and ADM Capital, as well as Mission Point Capital, China’s GSR Ventures and AllianceBernstein, which will also participate in the capital round.
Indoor growing through the roof
It's the most recent multi-million dollar investment in vertical farms. Since Plenty raised $200 million from investors, many others followed. Bowery Farming announced a $95 million investment last year, 80 Acres Farms completed their $40 million private equity firming early this year and also InFarm, based in Berlin, closed a $100 million investment round.
Now it's AeroFarms' turn again. Following earlier investments including $40 million in their series D round, they're looking to seriously scale up their business by doubling the money raised so far.
AeroFarms
The company was in the news earlier this year with the revelation of Singapore Airlines being supplied by the Newark farm. AeroFarms will provide a customised blend of fresh produce for SIA’s Newark to Singapore flights from September 2019.
Earlier this year AeroFarms announced its participation in a new high-tech consortium developing crops for indoor agriculture. Working together with Fluence, Priva, and BASF, they want to develop new crops specially intended for indoor agriculture.
Publication date: 7/9/2019
Read more at: Financial Times (Lindsay Fortado)
Controlled Environmental Farming Inc - Provides True Urban Farming In Tucson, AZ
The facility of approximately 40,000 square feet will house a closed loop aquaponic method of production that uses patented technology to provide for vertical cultivation
07/07/19
Controlled Environmental Farming Inc (CEF) has released the initial Site Plan for an urban farm to be located inside the city limits of Tucson, AZ.
The proposed location, 4431 E 22nd Street, has received preliminary approval from the City of Tucson Planning Department. This location in the heart of Tucson will provide locally grown fruits, vegetables, herbs, shrimp and fish at an affordable price.
The facility of approximately 40,000 square feet will house a closed loop aquaponic method of production that uses patented technology to provide for vertical cultivation. This vertical integration allows CEF to reduce land and capital construction costs and provides operation cost reduction through production density. “Our philosophy is to make every cubic inch count in product production,” states Bruce Carman, Director of Technology / Owner of CEF.
CEF intends to use direct distribution to the consumer to ensure product quality, freshness and food safety.
The all-inclusive, highly efficient facility will provide cultivation, processing, packaging and distribution to all clientele which are modeled to be private individuals and restaurants. This model helps to keep consumer costs down.
According to a report released by the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Economic Research Service (ERS), for every consumer dollar spent on food, the farm-share average is approximately $0.15 cents meaning that $0.85 cents is spent toward distribution, marketing and retail of the product. “Our direct-to-consumer model, will allow CEF to maintain and control costs for our customers while also allowing us to provide the freshest quality produce. Consumers increasingly want to know where their food is coming from, how it’s being grown, and who their farmer is. Local urban farming responds to those questions,” said Kristen Osgood, CEF’s CEO.
The facility will provide direct sales through an on-line ordering system that can also arrange delivery if desired. Customers will be able to shop on site at the “Farm Market” or use the drive through to pick-up their orders, including complete meal-kits, salads, whole shrimp, fish and raw veggies.
In each area CEF locates, it intends to create local partnerships with other farmers and producers who share in the same food ethos as CEF. It is through these partnerships CEF hopes to integrate and promote local food economies. This will allow CEF customers to have the very best the local foodshed has to offer.
Grand Rapids, Michigan, Square Roots Starts Farmer Training Program in September
Square Roots is looking for 10 passionate and dedicated future farmers to join the team as it launches in September the first season of its Next-Gen Farmer Training Program at the Grand Rapids, Mich., farm campus at Gordon Food Service headquarters.
Amy Sowder July 3, 2019
Square Roots is looking for 10 farmers-in-training. ( Courtesy of Square Roots )
Square Roots is looking for 10 passionate and dedicated future farmers to join the team as it launches in September the first season of its Next-Gen Farmer Training Program at the Grand Rapids, Mich., farm campus at Gordon Food Service headquarters.
No farming experience is necessary, just the dedication and excitement to jump in and start learning, according to a news release.
Square Roots is an urban farming company with a mission to bring local food to people in cities around the world with next-gen leaders in urban farming. The training program provides an accessible pathway to the forefront of urban agriculture for more young farmers.
In March, Square Roots announced a partnership with Gordon Food Service to bring its farms and training program to their distribution centers across the continent, according to the release.
During the year-long program, similar to traditional farmer apprenticeships, farmers learn skills through curriculum focused on plant science, controlled environment agriculture, business and leadership, as well as hands-on learning by doing the tasks.
After initial training in the modular, hydroponic growing systems, farmers are responsible for growing quality food on a consistent basis to meet customer demand, with the guidance of an expert farm management team. Farmers are also integral to customer-focused marketing and community events.
For more information, visit www.squarerootsgrow.com/program.
Related Topics: Greenhouse Michigan Training Produce
The Steep Climb Of Vertical Farms And Where Urban Ag Might Be Revolutionary
Will this technology revolutionize the way customers access fresh produce? Is this a big deal for sustainability?
By Marc Brazeau | June 13th 2019
Comes the news that the British online food retailer Ocado is making major investments in two vertical farming companies.
this week in a bid to become what it described as “a leader in the newly emerging vertical farming industry”. First, the company’s ventures arm has signed a three-way joint venture deal with 80 Acres Farms and Priva Holding. 80 Acres and Priva have been working together for over four years to design turnkey solutions to sell to vertical farming clients worldwide, with forecast revenues in 2019 of over $10m. The new venture will be called Infinite Acres. ... “We believe that our investments today in vertical farming will allow us to address fundamental consumer concerns on freshness and sustainability and build on new technologies that will revolutionise the way customers access fresh produce,” Ocado CEO Steiner explained.
Will this technology revolutionize the way customers access fresh produce? Is this a big deal for sustainability? A few years back in an essay titled: “Why I’m empowering 1,000’s of millennials to become #realfood entrepreneurs through Vertical Farming”, Elon Musk’s younger brother Kimball announced that he was going to invest in urban farm incubators in multiple cities. While there is certainly room for vertical farms in urban food systems to supply hydroponic greens and herbs to upscale grocers and restaurants, Musk’s ambitions go far beyond that.
The Kitchen’s mission is to strengthen communities by bringing local, real food to everyone. With our commitment to local food sourcing, our restaurants have become major catalysts for local food economies — across Colorado, Chicago, and now Memphis — serving real food to over 1 million guests a year. Meanwhile, our non-profit The Kitchen Community has built 300 Learning Gardens across the country — inspiring 150,000 kids each day as we get them outdoors and teach them about real food.
But the impact of those initiatives are a drop in the ocean compared to what’s needed. By 2050, 9 billion people will live on our planet, and 70% of them will live in cities. These people need food. And the data is clear: they will want local, real food.
The industrial food system will not solve this problem (more Deep Fried Twinkies, anyone?). Instead, finding the right solution presents an extraordinary opportunity for new entrepreneurs. As I’ve said before, “Food is the new internet.” I know the next generation is excited to join the #realfood revolution, and shape the future.
That’s why I’m thrilled to introduce a new company in The Kitchen’s family: Square Roots.
Introducing Square Roots
Square Roots is an urban farming accelerator — empowering 1,000’s of millennials to join the real food revolution. Our goal is to enable a whole new generation of real food entrepreneurs, ready to build thriving, responsible businesses. The opportunities in front of them will be endless.
Square Roots creates campuses of climate-controlled, indoor, hydroponic vertical farms, right in the hearts of our biggest cities. On these campuses, we train young entrepreneurs to grow non-GMO, fresh, tasty, real food all year round and sell locally. And we coach them to create forward-thinking companies that — like The Kitchen — strengthen communities by bringing local, real food to everyone.
The real and imagined impacts and potential of vertical farms had very much been on my mind. Just the week before, a friend on Facebook shared a story on the amazing ecological efficiencies of a new vertical farm and asked, “Is this stuff real or is it just hype?”
The article asked, “Considering it uses 95% less water than regular farms, could vertical farming be the future of agriculture?” and told the story of a vertical farm in Newark, NJ in an old laser tag facility.
At AeroFarms in Newark, New Jersey, crops are stacked more than 30 feet high in a 30,000 square foot space that was formerly a laser tag arena. They use aeroponic technology, which involves misting the roots of the plants, using an astonishing 95% less water than more conventional farming methods. David Rosenberg, CEO of AeroFarms told Seeker, “Typically, in indoor growing, the roots sit in water, and one tries to oxygenate the water. Our key inventor realized that if we mist nutrition to the root structure, then the roots have a better oxygenation.”
AeroFarms doesn’t use any pesticides or herbicides either. The plants are grown in a reusable cloth made from recycled plastic, so no soil is needed to grow them. They also use a system of specialized LED lighting instead of natural sunlight, reducing their energy footprint even further. “A lot of people say ‘Sunless? Wait. Plants need sun.’ In fact the plants don’t need yellow spectrum. So we’re able to reduce our energy footprint by doing things like reducing certain types of spectrum,” Rosenberg said.
IT’S ALWAYS SALAD GREENS
I would say that it’s mostly hype, certainly not revolutionary. These projects always center on salad greens and herbs, crops that sell at a premium and deliver very few calories, but a lot of water.
Crops require light, water, and a growing medium – three things in abundance at low prices on rural farms in the form of sun, rain, and soil. The economics of paying for light and rain, plus the economics of real estate are such that these projects cannot pencil out for any crops other than high end greens and vegetables. There is a reason why so much of the innovation in hydroponic growing systems came out of marijuana production. The ROI per square foot is far greater than for oats.
The future of urban farming is in crickets and other insects, mushrooms and other fungi, algae and yeasts, and in vitro meat. If you want to go beyond premium salad greens and herbs, you need to focus crops or herds that don’t require lots of space, water or sunlight. More importantly, if you really want to lower the impact of food production, urban farming needs be able to close nutrient cycles in dramatic ways.
[ For a more enthusiastic and rigorous take on the potential of vertical farms see this piece by Dan Blaustein-Rejto of the Breakthrough Institute.]
The exception might be in cities like Detroit, where a collapsing urban footprint changes the economics of the real estate. As a city economy grows, agglomeration increases the productivity per square foot, driving up rents which leads to the necessity of greater productivity per square foot. If urban farming catches on, it requires more square feet, driving up rents, requiring greater productivity per square foot, driving up the required productivity per square foot driving up the price required to be charged per square foot of product. TLDR: this model cannot work for barley, oats, canola, cowpeas, black beans, soybeans, pinto beans or any other serious sources of calories or protein in an urban setting. The revolution is not going to be powered by expensive salad greens.
Tamar Haspel helpfully chimed into that discussion to share an article she did for the Washington Post on the ledger of environmental challenges and benefit of vertical farming. In terms of growing lettuce greens she tallied the use of less land, less water, less fertilizer and less pesticides as four environmental benefits of vertical farming. On the down side, she pointed out that one of the biggest trade off was foregoing solar power for electricity.
However, unless the vertical farm is powered by nuclear or renewables or both there is one big sticking point: But before you shell out for the microgreens, there are a couple of disadvantages. The first is that you’ll have to shell out a lot, and the second gets at the heart of the inevitable trade-off between planet and people: the carbon footprint. If you farm the old-fashioned way, you take advantage of a reliable, eternal, gloriously free source of energy: the sun. Take your plants inside, and you have to provide that energy yourself. In the world of agriculture, there are opinions about every kind of system for growing every kind of crop, so it’s refreshing that the pivotal issue of vertical farming — energy use — boils down to something more reliable: math.
There’s no getting around the fact that plants need a certain minimum amount of light. In vertical farms, that light generally is provided efficiently, but, even so, replacing the sun is an energy-intensive business. Louis Albright, director of Cornell University’s Controlled Environment Agriculture program, has run the numbers: Each kilogram of indoor lettuce has a climate cost of four kilograms of carbon dioxide. And that’s just for the lighting. Indoor farms often need humidity control, ventilation, heating, cooling or all of the above.
… Let’s compare that with field-grown lettuce. Climate cost varies according to conditions, but the estimates I found indicate that indoor lettuce production has a carbon footprint some 7 to 20 times greater than that of outdoor lettuce production. Indoor lettuce is a carbon Sasquatch.
She goes on to explain that with more efficient lighting systems and access to nuclear and renewable energy sources, vertically grown lettuce can close a big part of that gap, but it’s still a steep climb.
Before moving on to the reasons why I’m enthusiastic about farming crickets and other insects, mushrooms and other fungi, algae and yeasts in urban settings, I want to circle back to the economics of real estate that serves as the stake through the heart of mass scale vertical farming of traditional crops.
A LITTLE PERSPECTIVE ON SCALE
First let’s put some things in perspective about scale. One of the larger well known urban rooftop farm in New York City is 42,000 square feet. 42,000 square feet sounds like a lot of square feet. But retail and office space are measured in square feet. Farms are measured in acres and 42,000 square feet is pretty much one acre. 0.964187 acres to be exact. New York state has 7 Million acres of farmland across 36,000 farms. That’s just the state of New York, which isn’t a particularly rural state. Urban real estate is denominated in square feet. Farms are denominated in acres.
Field corn (not grown for ethanol) accounts for over 50 million acres of farmland. Wheat, another 50 million acres. That’s 100 million acres just in two major grains. But let's put that aside. Nobody thinks were are going to grow corn and wheat in urban vertical farms, I just think it’s important to start with a baseline of the scale of the footprint of where most of our calories come from. And if you think we should be getting less of our calories from corn and wheat – and I’d agree with you – just keep in mind that no other crops come close on calories per acre, so any shift away from corn and wheat is going to drive that 100 million number upwards. Leaf lettuce is grown on just shy of 70,000 acres in the U.S. The acreage for herbs is so small it doesn't register in USDA reports and surveys outside of mint for mint oil (think spearmint chewing gum and peppermint ice cream). Total cropland in the U.S. is about 250 million acres. Nearly all domestic leaf lettuce is grown in either California or Arizona. Redistributing the production to regions with lower pressure on water supply and delivering fresher products to consumers can have some benefits, but it's hardly going to revolutionize vegetable production, much less the food system.
Let’s look at the crops that make up the core calories of a healthy diet. Barley accounts for 3.2 million acres. Lentils, dried beans and peas 2.7 million acres. Rice – 2.6 million acres. Vegetables – 4.1 million acres and half of that is potatoes, sweet corn and tomatoes. Orchards and berries – 5.4 million. 18 million acres total or 756 Billion square feet.
Let’s grant these vertical farms the wildly ambitious ability to increase yield by a third and say that shifting 10% of production into vertical farms would be a substantial impact. That would require 50 Billion square feet of urban real estate.
ECONOMIES OF AGGLOMERATION
Now let’s back up to the point we made about real estate prices and productivity. As cities grow bigger and denser productivity rises. Similar firms cluster and generate a base of workers who circulate among them increasing knowledge and competence. Travel times are lower, so a delivery van can make more stops per hour in a city than in a suburb or rural community. With more customers in their base, firms can grow larger and take advantages of economies of scale. This is what is called agglomeration in economics. Agglomeration makes for productive, vibrant cities, but it also drives up rents. Which further puts pressure on firms to increase the productivity out of each square foot of real estate that they own or lease. To increase productivity per square foot firms can either produce more units or charge more per unit. This is why expensive herbs and greens are the only products that currently make sense in vertical farms.
Now imagine what it would mean to add demand for another 50 billion square feet of real estate to US cities. Scaling up the operations of vertical farms would COMPOUND the pressure to produce crops that they can sell at high prices. While proponents often claim that as more vertical farms come online, prices will come down, for most crops the economics of cities tell us that the opposite is true.
So the economics of urban real estate are stacked against vertical farms except in places like Detroit where the urban footprint in shrinking and there is massive slack in the real estate market. But the economics for vertical farms are even steeper when we take comparative advantage into account.
COMPARATIVE ADVANTAGE
Comparative advantage is an economic concept that most people have heard of but very few understand and a vanishingly small number of people “get” on an intuitive level. That’s because it is one of the most counter-intuitive concepts in economics and I balk at the headache of even attempting to put it across when I think I’ve probably already made my case as to why I don’t expect vertical farms to catch on beyond expensive herbs and greens (and maybe some heirloom tomatoes and peppers). But it’s an important concept to understand in general and for the case I’d like to make for why I think the future of urban agriculture is in mushroom and cricket farming, black soldier flies, algae and yeasts, and in vitro meat production.
The economist Paul Krugman once called comparative advantage “Ricardo’s Difficult Idea” in an essay in which he explains why a concept formalized in 1817 by the philospher and political economist David Ricardo remains so poorly understood, if not outright resisted, even by economic sophisticates.
The idea of comparative advantage — with its implication that trade between two nations normally raises the real incomes of both — is, like evolution via natural selection, a concept that seems simple and compelling to those who understand it. Yet anyone who becomes involved in discussions of international trade beyond the narrow circle of academic economists quickly realizes that it must be, in some sense, a very difficult concept indeed. I am not talking here about the problem of communicating the case for free trade to crudely anti-intellectual opponents, people who simply dislike the idea of ideas. The persistence of that sort of opposition, like the persistence of creationism, is a different sort of question, and requires a different sort of discussion. What I am concerned with here are the views of intellectuals, people who do value ideas, but somehow find this particular idea impossible to grasp.
My objective in this essay is to try to explain why intellectuals who are interested in economic issues so consistently balk at the concept of comparative advantage. Why do journalists who have a reputation as deep thinkers about world affairs begin squirming in their seats if you try to explain how trade can lead to mutually beneficial specialization? Why is it virtually impossible to get a discussion of comparative advantage, not only onto newspaper op-ed pages, but even into magazines that cheerfully publish long discussions of the work of Jacques Derrida? Why do policy wonks who will happily watch hundreds of hours of talking heads droning on about the global economy refuse to sit still for the ten minutes or so it takes to explain Ricardo? Against that backdrop let me apply my meager talents to see if I can pound this into your thick skulls with any greater efficacy. Here goes.
Ricardo provided a simple two country model to show the math at work here. Consider two countries, England and Portugal, producing two identical products but at different rates of productivity.
In the absence of trade, England requires 220 hours of work to both produce and consume one unit each of cloth and wine while Portugal requires 170 hours of work to produce and consume the same quantities. England is more efficient at producing cloth than wine, and Portugal is more efficient at producing wine than cloth. So, if each country specializes in the good for which it has a comparative advantage, then the global production of both goods increases, for England can spend 220 labor hours to produce 2.2 units of cloth while Portugal can spend 170 hours to produce 2.125 units of wine. Moreover, if both countries specialize in the above manner and England trades a unit of its cloth for 5/6ths to 9/8ths units of Portugal’s wine, then both countries can consume at least a unit each of cloth and wine, with 0 to 0.2 units of cloth and 0 to 0.125 units of wine remaining in each respective country to be consumed or exported. Consequently, both England and Portugal can consume more wine and cloth under free trade than in autarky.
WIKIPEDIA: In this illustration, England could commit 100 hours of labor to produce one unit of cloth, or produce 5/6ths units of wine. Meanwhile, in comparison, Portugal could commit 90 hours of labor to produce one unit of cloth, or produce 9/8ths units of wine. So, Portugal possesses an absolute advantage in producing cloth due to fewer labor hours, and England has a comparative advantage due to lower opportunity cost.
To share an embarrassing story from my past, at the last union I worked for I had a boss who was a supremely talented union organizer and I was going through a personal rough patch and not firing on all cylinders, though I was still OK at my job. But he was constantly frustrated with me and just wanted to push me aside and do my job for me because he could do my job better than I could. And he could – he was just much more talented at union organizing than I was, especially during that sad chapter of my life. But he didn’t, because not only was he much better at my job than I was, he was much, much better at HIS JOB than I was. So it made more sense of him to concentrate on doing his job – supervising me and another ten organizers than to split his time doing his job and my job (and assigning me the minor parts of his job that he wouldn’t have time to do).
In the neighborhood I grew up in, software engineers frequently paid thirteen-year-old kids to mow a lawn in an hour that they could mow in 45 minutes. But if they were going to put in one more hour of effort that week, it was better spent working as a highly paid software engineer, not out-competing thirteen-year-old’s who mowed grass to buy grass.
So think of a simple economy composed of the city of Los Angeles and California’s Central Valley where both produce movies and tomatoes. Even if Los Angeles could produce tomatoes somewhat more efficiently than the Central Valley, the theory of comparative advantage tells us that they should still stick with movies and let Central Valley deal with tomatoes – they will both be better off. Likewise, if we imagine an economy of New York City and Iowa, where they both produce business services and corn, even if NYC can do corn better than Iowa, they should stick with business services, where they are heavyweight champion.
These are simple models and there are all sorts of situations and examples where comparative advantage doesn’t work in a clean, frictionless, straightforward way. But any narrative which attempts to make the case that vertical farms are the next big thing in agriculture needs to deal with comparative advantage rather than sidestep, ignore or dismiss the issue.
To beat this horse a bit closer to death, here is Krugman on trying to make a charitable interpretation of those who seem to be in denial about the power of comparative advantage:
Surely, we have argued, the problem is one of different dialects or jargon, not sheer lack of comprehension. What these critics must be trying to do is draw attention to the ways in which comparative advantage may fail to work out in practice. After all, economists are familiar with a number of reasons why the gains from free trade may not work out quite as easily as in the simplest Ricardian model. External economies may mean underinvestment in import-competing sectors; imperfect competition may lead to a strategic competition over industry rents; because of distortions in domestic labor markets, imports may reduce wages or cause unemployment; and so on. And even if national income rises as a result of trade, the distribution of income within a country may shift in a way that hurts large groups. In short, there are a number of sophisticated extensions to and qualifications of the model introduced in the first few chapters of the undergraduate textbook – typically covered later in the book.
Which is to say that, standard economics is not ignorant of all the reasons you may come up with for trying to dismiss the implications of comparative advantages just because you can’t shake the idea that vertical farms are a neat idea and wouldn’t it be cool if cities were self-sufficient in food production.
We’ll look at some examples of where cities would have comparative advantage going forward in terms of local food production. I think these are areas where Kimball Musk’s 1000’s of millennials will ultimately find greater success. But first, we need to look at the one big advantage an urban setting brings to agricultural production.
THE NUTRIENT CYCLE
When you grow a crop, the plant takes nutrients, most notably the old NPK – nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium out of the soil to feed and construct itself. When the crop is harvested a lot of those nutrients go with them and they need to be replaced in the soil. This creates a problem that is solved by planting nitrogen-fixing legumes and adding fertilizers, either synthetic fertilizers or manures. But they have to come from somewhere – and that somewhere is generally somewhere not on the farm.
Meanwhile, the nutrients have been shipped in our simple model economies from the Central Valley to Los Angeles and from Iowa to New York City. The people eat the nutrients and then deposit the nutrients into the trash, compost bins or their toilet. This creates a waste management problem.
Nitrogen management is a huge issue in agriculture, but the nutrient cycle problem that most keeps the deep thinkers up at night is phosphorus. It’s pretty easy and getting easier to pull nitrogen out of the air to fertilize crops. We have an effectively infinite supply of potassium. However, we are running out of phosphorus that we can mine. Eventually, and the sooner the better, we need to figure out how to close the nutrient loop that mostly ends when food reaches our cities.
The modes of food production that close that loop will be the ones that make the greatest impact, both ecologically and economically. That’s why I think the future of urban agriculture will be in crickets and other insects, mushrooms and other fungi, algae and yeasts, and in vitro meat.
CRICKETS: Crickets grow to maturity in 3-4 weeks, so they do not take a lot of space to produce prodigious amounts of protein. Protein per acre is a threshold measure in food security. Protein is ecologically expensive – carbs need carbon which is easily pulled from the air and converted into structure by photosynthesis – the nitrogen in the air is bound by very tight chemical bonds which require a lot of energy to break and put it to use. Lots of protein per square foot means cricket can pay urban rents in cities where heating costs are low (crickets like the temperature to stay above 25C).
And the reason urban rents make sense is that cricket thrive on food waste. Current cricket production is geared to a higher end consumer product, which also makes paying the rent easier, but that requires a more uniform diet to achieve a more uniform tasting cricket. The big breakthrough from an environmental perspective and the ability to achieve impactful scale will be when cricket producers start selling affordable cricket feed to livestock and aquaculture producers. That will allow cricket farms to be less fussy about what they feed the crickets and will create an economical way of cycling nutrients back to rural communities from cities that can complement the current practice of composting food waste and shipping the humus to farms from cities.
BLACK SOLDIER FLIES: Even better at turning waste into usable protein is the black soldier fly larvae. The larvae can feed on human solid waste and drastically reduce the volume and weight, allowing it to be shipped as a fertile soil amendment while transforming the nutrients into protein which is ideal for livestock feed. Black soldier flies can also feeding food waste and reduce it to a soil amendment much faster than composting without producing the greenhouse gases that make composting environmentally problematic.
One startup is taking the fruit and vegetable pulp waste from a local juicery and the day-old bread from a bakery using the grubs to transform it into high-quality animal feed. Cities are full of these waste streams in dense supply chains. This kind of waste is currently mostly going to landfills where it creates greenhouse gases emissions.
MUSHROOMS: Mushrooms are a vegetable crop that has one massive advantage over lettuces and hydroponic tomatoes and peppers in an indoor growing environment. Mushrooms don’t use photosynthesis and thus don’t require light to grow. This removes a major energy input in comparison. Another thing mushrooms have going for them is that they thrive in coffee grounds and our cities are producing massive amounts of spent coffee grounds that would be relatively easy to cordon off into new supply chains. After mushrooms are harvested, the mix of spent coffee grounds and mushroom roots makes a great soil amendment that can be marketed to suburban gardeners and peri-urban farms.
algae AND YEASTS: algae and yeasts are currently being used to produce previously expensive compounds and ingredients. Sometimes developed by traditional breeding, sometimes via the techniques of synthetic biology, algae and yeast have been used to produce replacements for palm oil which is environmentally disastrous by and large and for compounds like vanillin which we generally get from vanilla farms in environmentally fragile ecosystems. algae and yeasts are also used to produce pharmaceutical compounds. Currently, sugars are used as the input for their growth and as the substrate they convert to more useful and valuable compounds, but current research and development is fairly quickly moving to make using a wider range of cellulosic biomass as a substrate more and more viable. Be one the look out for vegan milk, cheese and butter from this sector.
IN VITRO MEAT: “Test tube meat” or cultured meat is still a ways out in it developing an economically viable product, but it’s certainly coming. I expect it to be used in sausage production before we get to a satisfying vat grown ribeye, but cultured meat meat production fits our criteria for successful urban agriculture. You can produce a lot of valuable product in a relatively small space, without the need for light as an energy source and you can use urban waste streams as a valuable input.
Now, I’m not saying that there aren’t going to be vertical farms that are successful in producing and selling high-end lettuces, herbs, peppers, and tomatoes. There will be. It will be a limited, upscale market, but that niche will work. What I am saying is that those kinds of vertical farms will not ever achieve the kind of scale necessary to transform the food system in consequential ways. Nor do they do much to tackle the biggest challenges in the food system, which have to do with waste management and the nutrient cycle.
The kinds of urban ag that will transform the food system and significantly reduce the environmental impacts of food production will be those that are not fighting against the economics of cities but are leveraging the economics of cities. That means leveraging comparative advantage rather than trying to dismiss it. Most of all, it means leveraging the dense supply chains and waste streams of valuable inputs that already exist in cities, rather than trying to replace the rain, sun, space, and soil that already exist on rural farms.
The Agromodernist Moment is a project of Food and Farm Discussion Lab. If you'd like to support this column and the other work we do, consider a monthly donation via Patreon or a one-time donation via Paypal.
With Huge New Vertical Farm, Plenty’s Produce Could Hit More Shelves
Just outside the LED-lit depths of the Bay Area’s newest and most futuristic indoor farm, a robot arm grabs a row of seedlings and sticks them into a hydroponic planter. An even larger robot arm then flips the planter vertically and sends it onward to become one thin sliver of a 20-foot-tall wall of arugula, baby kale and beet leaves
June 20, 2019
Plants grow on vertical towers inside Tigris.Photo: Plenty
Just outside the LED-lit depths of the Bay Area’s newest and most futuristic indoor farm, a robot arm grabs a row of seedlings and sticks them into a hydroponic planter. An even larger robot arm then flips the planter vertically and sends it onward to become one thin sliver of a 20-foot-tall wall of arugula, baby kale and beet leaves.
South San Francisco vertical farm company Plenty has unveiled its biggest, most efficient and most automated farm yet in its hometown. Called Tigris, it grows produce hydroponically — without soil — with LED lights year-round. Unlike outdoor farmers, Plenty’s engineers don’t have to think about the seasons, pests or what plants will grow best locally. While Tigris is specifically designed for leafy greens, Plenty CEO Matt Barnard said the company has test-grown nearly 700 varieties of plants within the last year.
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There are more than 20 companies erecting indoor farms around the country — another Bay Area player is San Mateo’s Crop One, which is building a giant farm in Dubai. Industry leaders say vertical farms can be a solution at a time when labor shortages, drought and climate change threaten outdoor agriculture as well as bring fresh produce to regions that lack arable land. These farms are springing up all over the world, including Japan, the Netherlands and Antarctica.
According to Plenty, the new farm can grow 1 million plants at a time in a facility around the size of a basketball court and process 200 plants per minute, thanks to strides in automation. The new farm means Plenty will be able to greatly widen its distribution to grocery stores and restaurants.
Plenty’s newest vertical hydroponic farm Tigris in South San Francisco can grow 1 million plants at a time in a facility about the size of a basketball court.Photo: Plenty
Plenty, which operates one other farm in South San Francisco as well as farms in Wyoming and Washington, plans to open farms all over the world, and has received $226 million in funding, according to Crunchbase. Plenty’s engineers designed ways to control the environment of each individual plant at the new farm, from the temperature to the amount of light, which impacts flavor.
“On the farm I grew up on, we didn’t measure any of the things we measure here because at the end of the day, there was nothing we could do about it,” said Barnard, who was raised on a cherry and apple farm in Wisconsin.
Inside these vertical farms, everything is intentional and nothing happens by chance, according to engineers.
“We have only one sun outside, but here we can choose the exact light spectrum and intensity based on what we want the plant to taste like,” added Izabelle Back, an engineering manager at Plenty.
In 2018, the company started selling greens through online retailer Good Eggs, San Francisco market Faletti Foods and Roberts Market in Woodside. Barnard said Plenty could expand to as many as 100 grocery stores in the Bay Area by late 2019. He also said prices should continue to drop due to the farm’s efficiency — on Good Eggs right now, a 5-ounce box of salad greens goes for $4.99.
Barnard also hopes to work with more chefs. Plenty supplies San Francisco robot burger spot Creator and fine dining restaurant Atelier Crenn.
Anthony Secviar, chef-owner of Michelin-starred Palo Alto restaurant Protege, described Plenty’s greens as “delicious, vibrant, luscious” and “aesthetically immaculate.” He also remarked on their unusually lengthy shelf life and the lack of need to wash them as being a huge boon for busy chefs.
“We’re begging them to get in the restaurant industry because they’re going to change the game,” Secviar said.
The new farm holds rows and rows of tall green walls, which alternate with walls of bright, colorful LED displays you’d expect to see at Burning Man. Combined with the climate-controlled environment, it clearly racks up a higher energy bill than outdoor farms.
Barnard prefers to look at the entire environmental footprint, including carbon footprint. Since Plenty’s business model is based on distributing only in a farm’s immediate region, its produce travels far fewer miles than, say, avocados from Mexico.
Barnard said Plenty has taken steps to grow more efficient, with the new farm being five times as energy efficient as the company’s other farm one year ago. “We are now roughly on par with a field farm when you look at the total footprint.”
Plenty plans to implement solar and wind power at future farms. The company also claims Tigris uses less than 1% of the amount of land and less than 5% of water compared with conventional outdoor farms.
Because the vertical farming industry is so new, there isn’t much in the way of academic research into its viability. In 2017, Cornell researchers received a three-year, $2.4 million grant to comprehensively study indoor farms, including their environmental impacts compared with outdoor farms. The results are still to come.
Plenty is pushing forward regardless. The company has started experimenting with strawberries and tomatoes and expects to respond to consumers’ increasing interest in plant-based protein with legumes within the next few years.
Some crops, like wheat, are too expensive to grow indoors at scale to be realistic ventures, but the vertical nature of Plenty’s farms doesn’t represent a barrier, according to Plenty chief scientific officer Nate Storey. He said plants adapt to the verticality and support themselves — Plenty has even grown watermelon, which didn’t start dropping to the floor until they reached 20 pounds.
“There’s nothing that won’t work,” he said. “The question is, do the economics make sense today?”
Janelle Bitker is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: janelle.bitker@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @janellebitker
Follow Janelle on: https://www.facebook.com/SFChronicle/janellebitker
Janelle Bitker joined The San Francisco Chronicle in 2019. As the food enterprise reporter, she covers restaurant news as well as Bay Area culture at large through a food lens. Previously, she served as a reporter for Eater SF, managing editor at the East Bay Express, and arts & culture editor at the Sacramento News & Review. Her writing has been recognized by the California Newspaper Publishers Association and Association of Alternative Newsmedia.
Past Articles from this Author:
Feeding The Masses With Indoor Farming - Agriculture Finally Grows Up
Food insecurity happens when the people it affects do not have consistent access to nutritious foods. Then, the problems span from stunted growth in childhood to obesity because people cannot get enough nutrient-rich, healthy food to maintain an ideal body weight.
June 11, 2019
Food insecurity happens when the people it affects do not have consistent access to nutritious foods. Then, the problems span from stunted growth in childhood to obesity because people cannot get enough nutrient-rich, healthy food to maintain an ideal body weight.
Credit: MetsikGarden, Pixabay
Traditional farming can help alleviate some food insecurity, but the agricultural industry is heavily dependent on Mother Nature. Unusual weather patterns, poor soil conditions and invasive pests are some of the many things that can cause farmers to have disappointing growing seasons. There’s also the reality that some areas of the world do not have the climates necessary for producing some types of food, and that problem could get worse due to global warming.
So, what if it were possible to take all those outdoor variables out of the picture? That’s happening already thanks to an increasing interest in indoor farming.
Growing Things Vertically
Indoor farming is also called greenhouse farming. Discussions surrounding either of those terms often bring up the concept of vertical farming. It involves growing crops in vertically orientated stacks. This method allows for practically utilizing the available space. Moreover, parties in the vertical farming industry typically use sensors that detect the precise amounts of light, water and other essentials that the crops need to grow.
Taking this approach avoids the waste and uncertainty that can accompany traditional farming. AeroFarms, located in New Jersey, is one of the largest indoor farms. It substitutes LED lights for the sun and uses a specialized cloth instead of soil. Plus, the operation reportedly uses up to 95% less water than standard methods of farming because it delivers a mist of water and nutrients to the root structure.
Other vertical farms operate in similar ways, and their overall methods result in shortened growing times. It’s also worth noting that although the exact statistics vary, an acre of vertical farming could produce as much as a conventional farm that’s at least ten times larger.
Population Growth Is a Pressing Matter
Researchers understand that there’s no time to waste when figuring out how to feed the world’s population. Some estimates say that as the global population grows from 7.3 billion to 9.6 billion people by 2050, we’ll need to produce 70% more food to feed them all. LED lights are particularly advantageous in indoor farms because they allow offering dynamic light spectrums for individual plants. Sunlight is comparatively unpredictable.
But, customizable light is not the only aspect of indoor farming that could make it a feasible way to feed future generations. Some indoor farms use robots to manage many of the necessities. Research shows that labor costs represent as much as 80% of an indoor farm’s operating expenses, but many are using automation to keep costs down. Doing that could help tackle the problem of aging farmers contributing to a labor shortage.
Vertical Farms Help Solve Problems With a Lack of Land
When people bring up matters related to population growth, they often talk about how the increase of people on the planet makes it more difficult for those individuals to secure housing. In the agriculture sector, the opposite problem can arise, whereby an uptick of buildings for houses and offices leaves less land for agricultural development.
Indoor farms address that problem since they can exist inside of or on buildings — such as in one case where a former warehouse in Brooklyn now has a rooftop garden. Then, in the Sunqiao district of Shanghai, vertical greenhouses are integrated parts of the city, showing that farms can thrive without vast expanses of land.
Dealing With the Sustainability Challenge
Vertical farms offer higher yields than outdoor farms, and they’re compatible with urban environments. Many companies also sell compact indoor growing solutions for households, and those product manufacturers took inspiration from the large-scale indoor farms. All of those things are good news for fixing food insecurity.
But, critics point out that some indoor farms are not always sustainable options due to the energy required for things like climate control. That’s a valid argument, but people need to realize that no single solution will completely encompass the issue related to both food insecurity and sustainability.
As mentioned earlier, indoor farms use less water than traditional farms. Plus, they typically don’t require pesticides, which is another advantage for the planet. If enough indoor farms meet food availability needs, it’s also possible that produce would not need to travel as far to reach the people who eat it. That’s a sustainable outcome, too.
The possible downsides of indoor farms should merely be reminders of how solving the problem of feeding the future should take sustainability into account. Then, the results could mean that more people have access to the food they need, and the planet gets the necessary protection.
Square Roots Is Bringing NYC’s Freshest Herbs To Whole Foods
Three times a week, Square Roots delivers fresh herbs from our indoor farms in Bed-Stuy to grocers all over New York City. We’re now adding stops at Whole Foods Markets!
Square Roots | 06.28.19
Three times a week, Square Roots delivers fresh herbs from our indoor farms in Bed-Stuy to grocers all over New York City. We’re now adding stops at Whole Foods Markets!
Square Roots e-trike delivering hyper-local herbs to grocery stores across New York City and Brooklyn.
Herbs make cooking easy and delicious. Especially when they’re fresh and grown in the perfect climate—which Square Roots indoor farms guarantee, all year round. So we’re really excited to bring our herbs to Whole Foods shoppers!
Our expansion into Whole Foods has an impact way beyond the grocery aisle. National grocers who act locally have the opportunity to promote change in our food systems. For instance, when Whole Foods works with Square Roots, they’re not only bringing more local produce to New Yorkers, they’re also directly supporting a new generation of local farmers. The Square Roots Next-Gen Farmer Training Program is at the heart of our business. It creates opportunities for young people to become farmers and future leaders in sustainable, urban food communities—and trains them how to grow delicious food.
Initially, Square Roots will have chives and mint available at Whole Foods’ Gowanus and Williamsburg stores. We’ll be popping up at both locations to better get to know Whole Foods shoppers, talk to people about what they love to cook, and introduce people to herbs they may have never used before.
Come taste our herbs, and get to know a farmer, at one of our in-store pop-ups. And keep an eye out for our blue labels on your next Whole Foods trip!
Come by Whole Foods in Gowanus and Williamsburg to taste our herbs and get to know a farmer.
Whole Foods In-Store Events
Whole Foods Gowanus | Tues July 9 | 10 am - 2 pm
Whole Foods Williamsburg | Tues July 9 | 10 am - 2 pm
Whole Foods Gowanus | Tues July 9 | 3 pm - 7 pm
Whole Foods Gowanus | Thurs July 11 | 3 pm - 7 pm
Whole Foods Williamsburg | Tues July 15 | 10 am - 2 pm
Whole Foods Gowanus | Tues July 15 | 3 pm - 7 pm
Whole Foods Williamsburg | Fri July 19 | 10 am - 2 pm
Whole Foods Gowanus | Fri July 19 | 10 am - 2 pm
Whole Foods Williamsburg | Mon July 22 | 3 pm - 7 pm
Whole Foods Gowanus | Wed July 24 | 3 pm - 7 pm
Whole Foods Williamsburg | Sat July 27 | 3 pm - 7 pm
Whole Foods Williamsburg | Mon July 29 | 10 am - 2 pm
Whole Foods Gowanus | Mon July 29 | 3 pm - 7 pm
Find Square Roots herbs at a store near you via our store locator and subscribe to our newsletter for updates.