The Potential of Urban Agriculture Innovations in the City, from Hydroponics to Aquaponics

The Potential of Urban Agriculture Innovations in the City, from Hydroponics to Aquaponics

October 18, 2016/in aquaponics, Local Food, Sustainable Agriculture Conference, Urban Agriculture /by Robert Puro

How large a role will local food demand play with respect to the growth of indoor and controlled environment urban farming ventures? What are the costs involved in starting a small scale commercial hydroponic/aquaponics farm? What are the opportunities (community and economic) for high-tech controlled environment growing in urban environments such as Orange County? What tools or assets would give an entrepreneur the best chance for success in launching a vertical farming venture in the city?

To learn the answer to these questions, and more, you won’t want to miss the ‘The Potential of Controlled Environment Agriculture in the City’ panel at the upcoming Grow Local OC: Future of Local Food Systems slated for Nov. 10 at California State University, Fullerton. The following expert speakers will address the challenges and opportunities present in employing innovative agricultural growing systems in cities:

Erik Cutter is Managing Director of Alegría Fresh, an urban farming company engaged in promoting and deploying zero waste regenerative food and energy solutions using hybrid soils and integrated technologies. In 2009, Mr. Cutter founded EnviroIngenuity with a group of forward-thinking professionals to take advantage of the growing demand for more efficient, cost effective sustainable energy solutions, employing solar PV, hi-efficiency LED lighting, green building and zero waste food production systems. More than 35 years of travel throughout the US, Mexico, South America, Africa, French Polynesia, the Peruvian Amazon, Australia and New Zealand gave Mr. Cutter expert insight into the unique investment opportunities that exist in each region, focusing on sustainable living models and the increasing availability of super foods as a major new market opportunity.

Chris Higgins is General Manager of Hort Americas, LLC (HortAmericas.com) a wholesale supply company focused on all aspects of the horticultural industries. He is also owner ofUrbanAgNews.com (eMagazine) and a founding partner of the Foundation for the Development of Controlled Environment Agriculture. With over 15 years of experience, Chris is dedicated to the commercial horticulture industry and is inspired by the current opportunities for continued innovation in the field of controlled environment agriculture. Chris is a leader in providing technical assistance to businesses, including commercial greenhouse operations, state-of-the-art hydroponic vegetable facilities, vertical farms, and tissue culture laboratories. In his role as General Manager at Hort Americas he works with seed companies, manufacturers, growers and universities regarding the development of projects, new products and ultimately the creation of brands. Chris’ role includes everything from sales and marketing to technical support and general management/owner responsibilities.

Ed Horton is the President and CEO of Urban Produce. Ed brings over 25 years of experience from the technology industry to Urban Produce. His vision of automation is what drives Urban Produce to become more efficient. With God and his family by his side he is excited to move Urban Produce forward to provide urban cities nationwide with fresh locally grown produce 365 days a year. Ed enjoys golfing and walking the harbor with his wife on the weekends.

Chef Adam Navidi – In a county named for its former abundance of orange groves, chef and farmer Adam Navidi is on the forefront of redefining local food and agriculture through his restaurant, farm, and catering business. Navidi is executive chef of Oceans & Earth restaurant in Yorba Linda, runs Chef Adam Navidi Catering and operates Future Foods Farms in Brea, an organic aquaponic farm that comprises 25 acres and several greenhouses. Navidi’s journey toward aquaponics began when he was at the pinnacle of his catering business, serving multi-course meals to discerning diners in Orange County. Their high standards for food matched his own. “My clients wanted the best produce they could get,” he says. “They didn’t want lettuce that came in a box.” So after experimenting with growing lettuce in his backyard, he ventured into hydroponics. Later, he learned of aquaponics. Now, aquaponics is one of the primary ways Navidi grows food. As part of this system he raises Tilapia, which is served at his restaurant and by his catering enterprise.

Nate Storey is the CEO at Bright Agrotech, a company that seeks to create access to real food for all people through small farmer empowerment. By focusing on equipping and educating local growers with vertical farming technology and high quality online education, Nate and the Bright Agrotech team are helping to build a distributed, transparent food economy. He completed his PhD at the University of Wyoming in Agronomy, and lives in Laramie with his wife and children.

Register here: http://growlocaloc.eventbrite.com

From A Closet To Five Acres: How Motorleaf Aims To Boost Indoor Growing

A year ago, Alastair Monk and Ramen Dutta had a seedling of an idea: If you can automate a home, why not a greenhouse?

The two entrepreneurs and residents of Sutton, in Quebec’s Eastern Townships, were not professional farmers by any stretch of the imagination — but they were hobby growers in the middle of Quebec’s breadbasket.

Dutta, an agricultural engineer, programmer and tinkerer, put together his first prototype of the connected greenhouse’s central nervous system last November. He called it the HUB, short for “huge, ugly box.”

Fast forward to today, and Monk and Dutta’s company, Motorleaf — a name inspired by British rock ‘n’ roll band Motörhead — is filling orders, meeting with major company bigwigs and is closing in on a $1 million seed investment round.

“A year ago, our objective was to see if what we had built should and could be made available to other indoor growers,” says Monk. “Since then our ambition has grown significantly, mostly in part because of our participation in the FounderFuel accelerator program.”

Motorleaf’s founders participated in last spring’s cohort of the FounderFuel accelerator, a boot camp of sorts to help technology startups speed up the process of forming profitable companies.

In Motorleaf’s case, it happened at a breakneck pace.

Dutta’s original HUB was meant to be one piece of hardware to rule the greenhouse. But during the accelerator program, the design was revised and separated into four parts to create a modular, scalable approach.

Monk likes to boast that Motorleaf’s network can now be scaled for growing spaces as tiny as a closet, up to five acres. The pitch has clearly worked: Monk says he’s got thousands of dollars of sales lined up already.

The HUB is now called “the heart” — a piece of hardware that communicates with other elements of Motorleaf’s product suite, forming a wireless mesh network. The network, in turn, can monitor and control a couple dozen growing factors, including pH level, nutrients, humidity, temperature, lighting and reservoir water level.

Growers can then use a desktop or mobile app to remotely monitor and control growing conditions. Meanwhile, artificial intelligence and machine learning components baked into the process can learn from the plants, self-correcting to eventually optimize a perfect nutrient and atmospheric cocktail for each crop.

“The idea is not to replace people, but to take the guessing out of growing and prevent mistakes from happening,” Monk says.

Motorleaf’s solution may be ripe for the marijuana biz; certainly, growing weed is often an indoor activity across surface areas that would be well-served by what Motorleaf makes.

Monk shrugs that idea off. He says there are plenty of legitimate businesses, particularly in the technology sector and urban-farming movement, that are seeking his company’s services.

“Our goal is to be the default operating system for indoor growers around the world,” he says.

Over the summer, Motorleaf installed its system in a tomato-growing display case inside an upstate New York Price Chopper grocery store. Now it’s working with the same company, Vermont Hydroponic Produce, on a series of installations in Sutton and in New England that will allow students to grow food inside their schools.

“The Motorleaf system is a great tool for the kids to get involved in the actual processes of the growing method,” says Jeff Jones of Vermont Hydroponic, a subsidiary of Upper Valley Produce Group.

Jones backs up Motorleaf’s claims that it offers a unique product to relatively small-scale growers.

“When we were looking for automation, we went through three different small companies that provided aspects of what Motorleaf provides, and we were disappointed with all of them,” he says.

Although Motorleaf is still a small operation — currently with four employees, it’s looking to add another dozen staff with its seed money — it’s been making some big moves.

With little funding and exposure to date, the startup has received inbound inquiries from potential customers in 20 countries since July, and has letters of intent to purchase from growers from the Canadian Arctic to South America.

At this point, the company is focused on responding to demand by stepping up production. Monk says manufacturing will soon move from an in-house environment to a Canadian manufacturing facility. New and prospective partnerships with established greenhouse-automation companies, tech giants and other startups, have propelled the company forward, as well.

“All of their prospective customers know that it’s more efficient to grow year-round in a controlled environment than to roll the dice with changing weather patterns and unpredictable factors that are out of their control,” Monk says.

Target Plans to Have In-Store Vertical Farms

“We sell extremely local produce at Target! No, really! We mean it.”

Target is boldly going where no major retailer has ever gone before by installing a giant farm in the middle of its store. Target’s Food + Future CoLab team announced recently at the White House that it would be installing vertical farms in select store locations, so that fresh fruits and vegetables could be grown in acclimatized conditions and sold directly in the store. Food from the in-store gardens will be on sale starting spring 2017.

The farm will make use of artificial lights and hydroponics to assure proper growing techniques.

 “Down the road, it’s something where potentially part of our food supply that we have on our shelves is stuff that we’ve grown ourselves,” Casey Carl, Target’s chief strategy and innovation officer, told Business Insider.

After installing the technology in a few test locations, Target will be able to gage “how involved customers actually want to be with their food,” Business Insider reported.

At first, Target’s farms will be filled with leafy greens, which are easiest to grow vertically. Potatoes, beetroot, and zucchini will be made available in the future. 

SEE MORE FARMING NEWS

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• The World’s Largest Indoor Vertical Farm Is Being Built in Newark, New Jersey
• Could Drones Be the Future of Farming?
• Biodynamics: Not Just a Way of Farming, But a Way of Life

Target To Test Vertical Farms In Stores

FRIDAY, 10/14/2016

Target To Test Vertical Farms In Stores

Oct 14, 2016

by Tom Ryan

Target is looking to shorten the distance from farm to plate with a planned test of vertical farms, an agricultural technique that involves growing plants and vegetables indoors in climatized conditions.

The initiative, to take place within select U.S. stores, is part of ongoing research and development being pursued by Target’s Food + Future CoLab, a collaboration with the MIT Media Lab and Ideo launched last November that has been exploring urban farming, food transparency and food innovation.

According to Business Insider, tests of the vertical farms could begin in spring 2017. If the trials succeed, Target’s stores will likely be filled with growing leafy greens, the most common stock for vertical farming at present. Potatoes, beetroot and zucchini could potentially be made available as well. MIT could give Target access to ancient seeds for rare tomatoes or peppers.

“Down the road, it’s something where potentially part of our food supply that we have on our shelves is stuff that we’ve grown ourselves,” Casey Carl, Target’s chief strategy and innovation officer, told Business Insider.

Making use of artificial lights, vertical farming is expected to see a growth spurt in part because food cultivated by farms is being challenged by rapidly increasing urban populations. Besides using less water, taking up less space and being closer to the consumer than traditional farming, vertical farming also addresses demands for healthy food without pesticides and avoids weather risks.

On Oct. 3, key members of Target’s Food + Future CoLab team showed off the project at the South by South Lawn (SXSL) festival at the White House. The technologies showcased included the team’s Open Agriculture lab inside the MIT Media Lab that’s exploring vertical farming and ways climate and other factors affect food production.

“Open Agriculture is about creating more farmers,” said Caleb Harper, principal scientist at the MIT Media Lab. “About two percent of us in the U.S. are farmers today, and the average age is 58, so what’s the next generation look like? They’re gonna be coders, hackers, makers.”

Why Cities Are the Future for Farming

Urban Explorer

Opinion: Why Cities Are the Future for Farming

Self-described nerd farmer Caleb Harper wants you to join his league of high-tech growers.

National Geographic Emerging Explorer Caleb Harper holds lettuce grown at the MIT Media Lab, where he operates a climate-controlled “digital farm” using aeroponics, a network of sensors, and LED lighting.

By Caleb Harper

PUBLISHED October 14, 2016

The landscape of our food future appears bleak, if not apocalyptic.

Humanity’s impact on the environment has become undeniable and will continue to manifest itself in ways already familiar to us, except on a grander scale. In a warmer world, heavier floods, more intense droughts, and unpredictable, violent, and increasingly frequent storms could become a new normal.

Little wonder that the theme for this year's World Food Day, which happens on Sunday, is “Climate is changing. Food and agriculture must too.” The need for an agricultural sea change was also tackled at the recent South by South Lawn, President Obama’s festival of art, ideas, and action (inspired by the innovative drive of Austin’s SXSW), where I was honored to present.

As our global agricultural system buckles under its own weight, we’re losing our farmers and we’re not creating more. In the U.S. alone, only 2 percent of the population is involved in farming, with 60 percent of our farmers above the age of 58. We’re also experiencing a dramatic move away from rural areas, our traditional growing centers. The UN estimates that by 2050, 6.5 billion people will be living in cities, nearly double what it is today.

Those of us at the helm of agricultural innovation simply must tack into these winds of change—and I see the tremendous potential of the city as a sustainable solution. After all, the domestication of plants gave rise to the first human settlements—our original cities were literally rooted in agriculture. Since then, city life has parted ways with it entirely, as urbanites have become almost completely disconnected from their food sources. But the reintegration of farming into the city is beginning to close the circle. Urban farming could not only feed future generations, but also create appealing clean-tech jobs for the waves of new “immigrants” that cities across the world will see in coming years.

Food Computers: Are These Devices the Future of Agriculture?

Harper takes us on a tour of his lab, which he envisions could be adapted for individual home use, shipping container-size for cafeterias and restaurants, and warehouses of “food data centers” capable of industrial-scale production.

Detractors of urban farming often scramble to point out that the production potential of urban farms is so minimal as to be insignificant. From where I’m standing, this is a dangerously shortsighted perspective. There are two major roles for urban agriculture: yes, the actual production of food intended to feed large numbers, but also the cumulative social benefit of cultivating what we eat. While I anticipate that eventually high-tech urban farming will account for at least 30 to 40 percent of an individual’s diet, the invaluable “product” of human-centered endeavors like farm stands and school and urban gardens lies in weaving communities together and building a foundation for food education.

Of course, we can’t expect a community garden to have the same production capacity as a conventional, massive monoculture farm or—wait for it—a multitiered, digitally integrated vertical farm. That doesn’t mean the community garden has no true value; the amount of calories it yields shouldn’t be the sole metric of its worth.

Instead, we need a renewed appreciation of the myriad benefits of growing food in the city. They range from the healing effect on veterans tending to patches in community gardens, witnessing the transformation of their plants, to the physical benefits of getting a student outside in a school garden while seeing the lessons of the classroom come to life in a burgeoning vegetable.

During World War II, victory gardens were planted both in private residences and public parks to boost morale as much as food supply. That tradition continues in the work of modern pioneers like Ron Finley, the “gangsta gardener” of Los Angeles, who similarly empowers communities by planting beautiful, defiant gardens in abandoned lots, traffic medians, and along curbs, and Will Allen, the founder of a Milwaukee non-profit center for urban agriculture training—teaching people to grow food in neighborhoods that are essentially food deserts dominated by drive-thrus.

Harper inspects a developing chocolate bell pepper. His team creates specific conditions—he calls them climate recipes—to produce plants with unique qualities of color, size, texture, taste, and nutrient density. A pepper grown in his Massachusetts lab could have the features of one grown in, say, Central America.

At the same time, technological leaps in urban agriculture are attracting bright, science-minded youth in droves and paving the path for high-volume production in cities. We’re seeing vertical farms—controlled environment agriculture—get smarter and larger. These aren’t necessarily new methods, but we are reaching a point at which they are becoming more energy efficient and cost effective. At the most cutting edge are “agri-culturing” companies like Modern Meadow and Perfect Day, culturing meat from mammalian cells and fermenting milk from yeast, moving meat and dairy production into cities.

At the MIT Media Lab, where I run the Open Agriculture Initiative, we’re developing digital farming through what we call “the food computer.” Along with aeroponic technology, we use a network of sensors to monitor a plant’s water, nutrient, and carbon needs and deliver optimal light wavelengths—not just for photosynthesis but to change flavor. This allows us to recreate climates that yield, for example, the sweetest strawberries.

Our entire endeavor is open source. We’re now piloting it outside the lab in Boston schools, and we see a near future where farmers can build their own food computers, using instructional videos and schematics already available online, and larger-scale units for restaurants, cafeterias, and industrial production—all in the city. By bringing agriculture home, we’ll have access to fresher, more nutritious food and potentially reduce spoilage and waste.

Our ultimate #nerdfarmer goal is to develop a database of climate “recipes”— for example, the ingredients for mimicking the Mexican climate that produces those sweet strawberries. We hope to pair that database with assembly kits for “personal” food computers that will be increasingly accessible, with the goal of creating and networking a billion farmers by providing access to the tools and the data required to both grow their own food and generate even more data to share—a sort of global “climate democracy” to see us through a world in flux.

Yet even at our post at the high-tech end of the spectrum, we share a common goal with even the smallest, most traditional city garden—to serve our community by creating a new lexicon of food values for the future.

The Future of Vertical Farming In 5 Inspiring Examples

October 12, 2016

Recent studies show that the human population will reach 11 billion by 2100, putting strain on: farming, health, living conditions and sustainability.

On 11 July 1987 there were five billion people on earth inspiring the UN Development Program to launch a special day in 1989 to highlight overpopulation.

Cities are now expanding, decreasing the countryside and farmland. This has led to innovative approaches such as vertical farming to deal with land shortage.

#1 Urban Crops: Belgian Company Specialising in Indoor Growing Systems

Photo Credit: Urban Crops

Inspired by the US and Asia’s growing investment in robotized plant factories with artificial lighting (PEAL), Belgian-based Urban Crops began creating a huge automated plant factory inside a climate chamber.

With 30 towers, a production of 126,000 crops per day is maintained. The crops use RFID technology in the crates where robots can pick the crates from a conveyor belt and understand in what state the crops are in, handling them accordingly.

They have three concepts: the large Plan Factory, Farm Flex and Farm Pro. The two latter examples are smaller in scale and focus on efficient food production, particularly in urban areas.

#2 Plantagon Agritechture and Sweco Architects

Plantagon Agritechture and Sweco Architects have a project called ‘World Food Building’ in Linköping, Sweden, which is a16 stories tall “plantscraper.”

Specialising in Urban Agriculture and Industrial Vertical Farming, Plantagon has developed a vertical space-efficient greenhouse for cities, delivering locally grown organic food directly to the consumer.

The company hopes to make headway in the Asian market:

”Asia is the main market for our solutions. In a dense city environment access to land is extremely low and the price is extremely high. This is something that is especially true in Singapore, but also in other mega-cites around Asia.”

#3 Elon Musk Building Vertical Farms in Brooklyn, New York

Elon Musk and Tobia Peggs launched Square Roots, a vertical urban farm using shipping containers to invest in young farmers and sustainability.

The farms will include greens and herbs for young entrepreneurs to “get hands-on experience running a vertical farming business,” said Peggs.

Using technology from vertical farming startups Freight Farms and ZipGrow, Square Roots plans to use LED lights and water growth rather than soil.

#4 Aerofarms: World’s Largest Vertical Farm in Newark, New Jersey

Photo Credit: AeroFarms

Photo Credit: AeroFarms

The largest vertical farm is Aerofarms, a 14,164 square meter facility in Newark, New Jersey, run by Aerofarms. The farm has the potential to produce 2 million pounds of lettuce every year, without soil or natural sunlight.

By using LED lights, this ensures consistent growth in the 69,000 square foot warehouse.

In November Aerofarms will partner with Farmigo, the organic wholesaler to sell greens in grocery stores within New York.

#5 Sky Greens, Singapore

Photo Credit: Sky Greens

Sky Greens is a vertical farm three stories high in a greenhouse that produces five to 10 times more per unit area compared to normal farms. The greenhouse and low-carbon hydraulic system grows lettuces and cabbages year-round.

Their mission is to provide improved agricultural solutions with minimal impact on land, water and energy resources, help cities with food supply security and to promote low carbon footprint agriculture into urban living.

Do you think vertical farming is a long-term solution to land shortage, or is the rate of over-population putting strain on all types of farming?

Underground Farms and Lab Grown Meat: Can Science Feed Us If the Climate Fails?

By Sami Grover
Published: October 11, 2016

From cutting usable coffee farming land in half by 2050 to crippling droughts becoming ever more commonplace, no discussion of global climate change is complete without warnings of impending doom, the collapse of civilization and an inevitable rise in the price of coffee. 

Given that the world is almost certainly on course to blow through 1.5 degree global warming target agreed to at the Paris climate talks, we have good reason to worry. As rainfall patterns change, as droughts and extreme storms increase, and as growing regions shift, both small-scale and industrial farmers will find that the crops and growing methods they’ve relied on for years may no longer be effective under different growing conditions. 

So what’s the world to do? 

Already, many farmers are doing interesting and innovative work to adapt to the changing climate. Whether it’s breeding new, drought tolerant crops or using satellite technology to enhance precision irrigation, there’s a lot of potential for innovation within our existing food and farming infrastructure. Some innovations — like the use of cover crops and compost to add organic matter to the soil — may even help slow the march of climate change in the first place, sequestering significant amounts of carbon underground while improving soil fertility and water retention. 

But innovating within the existing paradigm can only take us so far. Other farmers, scientists and entrepreneurs are looking at reinventing the farm entirely, using cutting edge technology to partially or even completely separate farming and food production from a reliance on an increasingly unstable climate. 

Greens growing on floating beds in an experimental aquaponics farm in a project called The Plant in Chicagoon June 21, 2012. Urban farming is being taken to new heights in this abandoned Chicago pork processing plant where environmentalists hope to get off the grid using the waste from one crop to feed and power another.

Indoor farming, for example, was once thought of as the sole preserve of illegal grow rooms out West. Increasingly, however, urban growers are raising edible crops under artificial light, often using soilless hydroponic or aeroponic techniques. 

Growing Underground, for example, is an underground farm located 33 meters below the streets of Clapham, London in an old, disused bomb shelter.  Using LED lighting and hydroponics in a pesticide free environment, the start up offers salad greens and herbs to local restaurants and retailers. As the marketing copy on their website suggests, there are multiple climate benefits, including reduced vulnerability to unpredictable weather and the potential for cutting greenhouse gas emissions too: 

“Thanks to a controlled environment, each tiny leaf tastes as amazing as the last. Our greens are unaffected by the weather and seasonal changes, and thanks to our prime location, we reduce the need to import crops and drastically reduce the food miles for retailers and consumers.” 

Of course, growing salad greens indoors is one thing, but what about animal protein? Absent of the world turning vegan, there is likely to still be demand for meat and dairy for some time to come. And given that many modern-day “ethical” consumers are not keen on indoor factory farming conditions, one could envision a conflict between animal rights and climate resilience. 

Futurists and animal rights activists have long heralded the dawn of lab grown or synthetic meat. In 2013, a team of Dutch scientists even unveiled a lab grown burger and invited a lucky few to taste it. There was only one problem: It cost $330,000 to produce. Prices are likely to come down, however, and the Washington Post recently reported that synthetic meat may be hitting the supermarket shelves within the next few years. 

Lab-grown meat and underground farms are by no means the only ways we may feed ourselves in a changing climate. From aquaponics (a virtuous circle of fish farming and hydroponics) to climate resilient GMOs, we can expect to see new and innovative models emerging as our weather patterns shift.

As we usher in these new ways of growing, of course, we’ll need to keep an eye out for potential negative consequences too. Are GMOs safe? (It depends on who you ask.) Will lab grown meat be palatable to consumers? (Well, a lot of people eat at McDonalds now…) Won’t indoor farms be incredibly inefficient? (Innovation in LED lighting has greatly reduced the energy footprint of indoor growing. Thanks Colorado!) And perhaps most importantly, if rich countries can feed themselves with fancy new technology, how do we make sure that cash poor regions — whose populations have done least to contribute to climate change — are not left behind to starve. 

None of these innovations reduce the need to fight global climate change in the first place. Still, given all the doom and gloom headlines about our impending societal collapse, it’s encouraging to see that new solutions are emerging. The farm of the future may look very different from the past. But at least we’ll still be able to eat. 

Sami Grover is a writer, and creative director at The Change Creation, a brand creation agency that works with entities who make the world better, fairer or truer. Clients include Larry’s Beans, Burt's Bees, Canaan Fair Trade and Jada Pinkett Smith/Overbrook Entertainment.

The Age of Vertical Farming Is Officially Upon Us

FARMING EVOLUTION

The world population is currently ballooning, and the problem is only expected to get worse as the decades go by. With the world population expected to be 11 billion by 2100, how are we going to feed more of these hungry mouths?

Part of the answer will definitely be changing the way we grow our food. And a new trend is expected to assist on that front—vertical farming.

Vertical farming doesn’t promise to radically change the way we farm, only make it more efficient, productive, and take up less space. An example is Urban Crops, a new startup that grows plants using a mixture of indoor farming techniques and hydroponics. Their facility is in Waregem, in eastern Belgium. Here, plants grow under a purple light delivered by LED lamps. The light is a mixture of blue and red lamps that seems to create the optimal conditions for growth.

Those plants are fed with a hydroponic system that delivers water laced with special minerals and nutrients.

The whole system can turn a 50 square meter space (540 square feet) into 500 square meters of usable farm space. Their 30 square meter (323 square feet) facility is able to produce 220 lettuce plants every day, using only 5% of the water needed in traditional farming.

GROWING TREND

But Urban Crops is not alone in this farming revolution. More and more companies are investing in facilities that try to do the same thing.

The biggest facility right now is a 14,164 square meter (3.5 acre) facility in Newark, New Jersey, run by Aerofarms. This facility can produce up to 2 million pounds of fresh, leafy greens a year, and is equivalent to 139,931 square meters (13,000 acres) of actual farmland.

A Swedish project wants to top even that. Plantagon Agritechture and Sweco Architects have revealed a project called the Plantagon World Food Building in Linköping, Sweden. That is a “plantscraper” 16 stories tall.

Meanwhile, Target has revealed a partnership with MIT to bring vertical farming techniques to stores. The partnership wants in-store vertical farms, that will make supermarket-bought produce fresher and, possibly, healthier.

Vertical Farmers Take Over In Belgium

 Vertical farmers take over in Belgium

posted October 10, 2016 at 10:45 pm by  AFP

By Marine Laouchez

WAREGEM, Belgium―As cities expand, eating up swathes of countryside in the process, agricultural pioneers are finding new ways to grow the fresh produce we need, in containers, empty buildings and any other spare space they can find to create new vertical farms.

“We are just trying to imitate nature. It’s not as futuristic as it might sound,” insists a smiling Maarten Vandecruys, the youthful founder of Urban Crops, a new Belgian company specializing in indoor growing systems with the help of LED (light emitting diodes) lamps.

Behind him, in a spooky, futuristic purple halo of light, stand rows of shelves dedicated to horticulture. It is a closed environment with no natural light.

The purple glow is the result of red and blue lamps and is believed to provide the optimal growing conditions.

Vandecruys prides himself on the completely automated agro-system he has set up in Waregem, in eastern Belgium. 

At the Urban Crops lab, a conveyor belt circulates containers of germinated plants which are placed in a special substrate, using no earth to reduce the risks of disease linked to animal-life and other external factors.

The containers are introduced to a closed room, the walls of which are lined with shelves.

Under the artificial light the plants develop in a controlled environment, fed through a hydroponic system―water laced with the ideal mix of mineral salts and essential nutrients.

No pesticides are required in this much more sterile environment and, as the LED lamps don’t heat up, they can be placed close to the plants, allowing for tight layers of plants. 

Evolution not revolution

According to Vandecruys the future of vertical farming is to expand to an industrial scale.

“It’s just an evolution,” not an agro-industrial revolution, he says, a natural progression from fields to greenhouses, then from greenhouses to vertical farms.

With his system, a 50 square-meter space (540 square feet) can be transformed into 500 square meters of usable “land.” And the plants grow two to three times faster than outdoors, further increasing yields.

In the Urban Crops laboratory, up to 220 mature lettuce plants are produced each day in a 30-square-meter room using just five percent of the water required in traditional agriculture.

However for Samuel Colasse, a teacher and researcher at the Carah agronomic research center in Hainaut, eastern Belgium, the concept of urban farming is “currently not very convincing” in countries like France and Belgium where the distances between the fields and the towns “aren’t enormous.”

But in a highly urban environment like New York “there are projects which work pretty well,” he says.

And in hostile climatic conditions, or in some military or refugee camp situations such “somewhat futuristic” ideas could be envisioned, Colasse adds.

His own laboratory has produced everything from bananas to rhododendrons.

Endless uses

For Urban Crops the uses of its vertical farming technology are virtually boundless. 

The company can foresee its products being used in pharmaceutical labs to produce plants with medicinal qualities, in supermarkets which could sell their own hyper-fresh produce―and at the same time cut out the transport costs―or in isolated communities in Scandinavia and elsewhere.

For now its clients have more modest ambitions.

A top restaurant, for example, wants to experiment with the flavor, texture, size and color of its ingredients through subtle changes to the light, temperature and nutrients during the growing process.

Urban Foods claims to have produced a type of salad rocket the taste of which “explodes” at the back of the throat.

And for the domestic oddesses, or gods, there are individual shelving and lighting set ups to grow-your-own herbs or cherry tomatoes.

As Arable Land Disappears, Here Come The Vertical Farmers

As arable land disappears, here come the vertical farmers

Waregem (Belgium) (AFP) - As cities expand, eating up swathes of countryside in the process, agricultural pioneers are finding new ways to grow the fresh produce we need, in containers, empty buildings and any other spare space they can find to create new vertical farms.

"We are just trying to imitate nature. It's not as futuristic as it might sound," insists a smiling Maarten Vandecruys, the youthful founder of Urban Crops, a new Belgian company specialising in indoor growing systems with the help of LED (light emitting diodes) lamps.

Behind him, in a spooky, futuristic purple halo of light, stand rows of shelves dedicated to horticulture. It is a closed environment with no natural light.

The purple glow is the result of red and blue lamps and is believed to provide the optimal growing conditions.

Vandecruys prides himself on the completely automated agro-system he has set up in Waregem, in eastern Belgium.

At the Urban Crops lab, a conveyor belt circulates containers of germinated plants which are placed in a special substrate, using no earth to reduce the risks of disease linked to animal-life and other external factors.

The containers are introduced to a closed room, the walls of which are lined with shelves.

Under the artificial light the plants develop in a controlled environment, fed through a hydroponic system -- water laced with the ideal mix of mineral salts and essential nutrients.

No pesticides are required in this much more sterile environment and, as the LED lamps don't heat up, they can be placed close to the plants, allowing for tight layers of vegetables.

- Evolution not revolution -

According to Vandecruys the future of vertical farming is to expand to an industrial scale.

"It's just an evolution," not an agro-industrial revolution, he says, a natural progression from fields to greenhouses, then from greenhouses to vertical farms.

With his system, a 50 square-metre space (540 square feet) can be transformed into 500 square metres of usable "land". And the plants grow two to three times faster than outdoors, further increasing yields.

In the Urban Crops laboratory, up to 220 mature lettuce plants are produced each day in a 30-square-metre room using just five percent of the water required in traditional agriculture.

However for Samuel Colasse, a teacher and researcher at the Carah agronomic research centre in Hainaut, eastern Belgium, the concept of urban farming is "currently not very convincing" in countries like France and Belgium where the distances between the fields and the towns "aren't enormous".

But in a highly urban environment like New York "there are projects which work pretty well," he says.

And in hostile climatic conditions, or in some military or refugee camp situations such "somewhat futuristic" ideas could be envisioned, Colasse adds.

His own laboratory has produced everything from bananas to rhododendrons.

For Urban Crops the uses of its vertical farming technology are virtually boundless.

The company can foresee its products being used in pharmaceutical labs to produce plants with medicinal qualities, in supermarkets which could sell their own hyper-fresh produce -- and at the same time cut out the transport costs -- or in isolated communities in Scandinavia and elsewhere.

For now its clients have more modest ambitions.

A top restaurant, for example, wants to experiment with the flavour, texture, size and colour of its ingredients through subtle changes to the light, temperature and nutrients during the growing process.

Urban Foods claims to have produced a type of salad rocket the taste of which "explodes" at the back of the throat.

And for the domestic goddesses, or gods, there are individual shelving and lighting set ups to grow-your-own herbs or cherry tomatoes.

Swedish furniture giant IKEA has already jumped vertically onto the home-farming bandwagon, launching its own range of assemble-yourself vegetable kits.

Target Experiments With In-Store Vertical Farms

Target Experiments With In-Store Vertical Farms

Author: Daphne Howland @daphnehowland

Published: Oct. 7, 2016

Dive Brief:

• As part of its food innovation efforts, Target is researching vertical farming, an agricultural technique to grow plants and vegetables indoors in climatized conditions, and says food from the in-store gardens could go on sale as early as next spring, Business Insider reports.

• The effort is a key part of growing the retailer's $20 billion food business, Target's Chief Strategy and Innovation Officer Casey Carl told Business Insider. “We need to be able to see more effectively around corners in terms of where is the overall food and agriculture industries going domestically and globally,” he said.

• Last year Target announced a collaboration with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and design firm IDEO to explore urban farming and other food-related research. 

Dive Insight:

Target's investments in grocery innovation could be a huge differentiator in a fiercely competitive grocery environment, which includes Wal-Mart (which gets more than half its revenue from grocery) and a host of full-line grocery stores. 

That would be especially so if Target and its research and innovation partners can grow tomatoes and other foods from rare seeds saved in various “seed banks” around the world. Those plants have the potential to yield varieties not seen or tasted in quite a long time, which could set Target's produce apart from that grown by agribusiness.

Grocery has been an especially tough area for Target, showing slim margins and presenting tricky loss prevention challenges. Earlier this year the retailer took steps to head off problems with perishable losses higher than the industry average: Target has found it particularly difficult to stave off spoilage because customers aren't coming in often enough for perishable foods. 

In response, Target announced it is assembling dedicated grocery teams, ranging from 10 to 60 employees, to work exclusively in grocery sections and receive special training on packaged and fresh food. There are also plans to increase grocery promotions and marketing efforts.

Target has already rolled out the revamped grocery effort in about 450 stores, with another 150 to follow by October. Target's consistent emphasis on fresh and organic foods may help its smaller TargetExpress stores, which contain a large amount of grocery offerings with the hope that nearby customers will use them as a grab-and-go destination for a quick snack or dinner.  

Recommended Reading:

• Business Insider

  Target plans to test vertical farm 'in-store growing environments' in 2017

Follow Daphne Howland on Twitter

Jill Theriault and Laura Saueracker Want to Use New Technology to Grow Greens All-Year-Round

Imagine buying a bunch of kale or a basket of fresh, locally grown strawberries — in the dead of February. 

It sounds far-fetched, but it’s possible, thanks to new technology that allows farmers to grow plants in small, enclosed spaces with LED lights.

Jill Theriault and Laura Saueracker — two Edmonton-area grandmothers with a passion for farming — want to bring more of this new technology to Alberta and start their own company: Range Road Garden Farms.

“You go into the grocery store and see stickers from Mexico and Chile and you wonder... why aren’t we growing fresh vegetables here?” Saueracker said.

“We can fix this.”

The pair plan to buy an indoor farming system from ZipGrow Canada, the Canadian distributor for the Wyoming-based company, Bright Agrotech.

The “zip farm” would allow them to grow spinach, kale, lettuce and herbs on tall towers facing LED lights instead of the sun. 

Plants are hung on the towers, where they receive nutrient-rich water via a wicking strip. 

ZipFarms are unquestionably expensive. A beginner system costs $27,850, as well as an additional $6,200 for a plumbing package.

But compared to traditional farming, planting vertically has multiple benefits.

By eliminating soil, you get rid of bacteria and insects, which means you don’t need to spray your plants with pesticides. 

The system uses less water than a traditional field would.

Growing locally means smaller shipping costs and reduced fossil-fuel consumption, which is better for the planet.

Perhaps the biggest advantage is larger yields, thanks to the ability to grow vertically. 

“You can grow so much more in a smaller space,” Theriault said.

All in the family

Both women have farming in their family histories.

Saueracker grew up on a farm in Middle Musquodobit, N.S.,  where she helped her mother tend to a small greenhouse. 

Theriault, who grew up mostly in Cold Lake, spent her summers on her mother’s farm in southern Alberta, which still exists today.

The women met through their husbands, who worked together for the Canadian Forces.

Since the ZipFarm units aren’t yet available in Alberta, they plan to start growing in a greenhouse located about five kilometres south of Miquelon Lake. Assuming they raise the $10,000 by Oct. 21 (as of Monday, they were about 25 per cent there), they’ll purchase the growing systems in November.

Farming for the future

If projects like these pan out, they could be used to help combat food insecurity, particularly in northern Canadian communities.

A new report from the non-profit alliance, Food Secure Canada, suggests that people in some remote, northern communities have to spend more than half of their incomes on healthy groceries. (FSC arrived at this statistic by asking residents in three northern Ontario communities to report their food costs.)

Eventually, Theriault and Saueracker hope they could take units north and teach people how to use them. Or work with big growers to work with niche markets.

For now, though, they’re focused on selling their greens to local restaurants and to the public at farmers’ markets. 

“We’re still in the start-up phase,”  Saueracker said.

Target Plans To Test Vertical Farm 'In-Store Growing Environments' In 2017

Target plans to test vertical farm 'in-store growing environments' in 2017

DANA VARINSKY0OCT 5, 2016, 09.30 PM

Vertical farming, an agricultural technique that involves growing plants indoors in precisely programmed conditions, is spreading rapidly. Kimbal Musk (Elon's brother) is open in Brooklyn, the world's largest vertical farm is set to open this fall, and personal indoor growing boxes are being developed for home use.

Soon, an unlikely company will also start using the technology: Target.

"Down the road, it's something where potentially part of our food supply that we have on our shelves is stuff that we've grown ourselves," Casey Carl, Target's chief strategy and innovation officer, tells Business Insider.

In January, Target launched the Food + Future CoLab, a collaboration with design firm Ideo and the MIT Media Lab. One area of the team's research focuses on vertical farming, and Greg Shewmaker, one of Target's entrepreneurs-in-residence at the CoLab, says they are planning to test the technology in a few Target stores to see how involved customers actually want to be with their food.

"The idea is that by next spring, we'll have in-store growing environments," he says.

During the in-store trials, people could potentially harvest their own produce from the vertical farms, or just watch as staff members pick greens and veggies to stock on the shelves.

Most vertical farms grow leafy greens, but the CoLab researchers are trying to figure out how to cultivate other crops as well.

"Because it's MIT, they have access to some of these seed banks around the world," Shewmaker says, "so we're playing with ancient varietals of different things, like tomatoes that haven't been grown in over a century, different kinds of peppers, things like that, just to see if it's possible."

Because the CoLab is a research partnership, the projects don't only focus on technologies that could one day be used in Target's stores or supply chain.

For example, the team is currently developing a small vertical farm would allow farmers or researchers to conduct agricultural experiments and trials. A medium sized version, which is being tested in an off-campus MIT facility, would measure a few hundred square feet and could be used to grow produce for a restaurant or store.

The largest vertical farm the team has developed, at just under 8,000 square feet, could grow crops for an entire neighborhood or community. That big farm is currently being tested in India, where the team is attempting to grow non-food crops, like cotton, that often use up soil, water, and resources that could otherwise be used to grow food.

The CoLab team has also used the same research to create a self-contained growing box that can educate kids about how food is grown. On September 30, that product, called Poly, is being given to 35 public school classrooms in Boston and Minneapolis. Shewmaker says the team hopes to eventually make a market-ready version that could be sold to textbook or curriculum companies.

Carl says anticipating and shaping the future of food - at Target and beyond - is essential to the company's growth.

"Food is a big part of our current portfolio today at Target - it does $20 billion of business for us," he says. "We need to be able to see more effectively around corners in terms of where is the overall food and agriculture industries going domestically and globally."

Vertical Farming Takes Shape

Vertical farming takes shape

Vertical farms evolve to end hunger. 

Syed Mansur Hashim

We can certainly do more to reduce food wastage in our supply chains. It is not just Bangladesh where a lot of the produce goes to waste due to inefficient marketing and distribution channels; it is estimated that about half of all perishables in countries like Indonesia, Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand go to waste before they reach retail markets. According to the World Bank, as much as 25 percent to 33 percent of all food produced in the world is wasted, which is equivalent to 1 billion metric tons. So, while all the focus and hype around food security seems to revolve around greater productivity, why aren't policymakers concentrating more on preserving the food already produced, which is then allowed to go to waste? This issue has been on the cards for many years and unfortunately, we have not seen much in terms of concrete policy interventions to bring about qualitative change in policy that would help farmers get their produce to markets faster.

While the world debates on and on about food security, technology is lending a hand to turn things around. Urban, concrete structures are being transformed into farms. For instance, in Newark (New Jersey, USA), a 69,000ft former steel factory has been converted into the world's largest urban farm. Once completed, it will grow anywhere up to 2 million pounds of kale, arugula and romaine lettuce annually. Technology is driving this new nascent sector but the implications are obvious. Climate-induced changes threatening to alter the topography of Asian farmlands in the decades to come and weather becoming more and more erratic with more droughts, floods, typhoons, etc. it is time to think outside the box. If we are to end 'global hunger' (one of the UN's 17 Sustainable Development Goals) over the next 15 years, urban farming will have to take centre-stage along with food wastage to meet the hungry mouths of the future. 

Japan, a tech-driven nation, has introduced the world's first indoor farm. The setting is a 25,000ft  abandoned semiconductor factory in Miyagi province. The technology comes from an American company that uses tall towers of LED-light trays, which it is claimed, consumes 95 percent less water to grow green produce than it would ordinarily take (i.e. if they were grown traditionally in fields) because the company claims to use mist instead of water to grow plants. If the technology is as good as claimed, it can yield 75 times more crops without the use of pesticides. Media reports have stated that the indoor farm produces 10,000 heads of lettuce daily which makes this farm 100 times more efficient than a comparable traditional farm. 

The question of vertical and/or indoor farming is no longer confined to the realm of science fiction but science fact. The benefits of vertical farming are already being reaped by Bangladesh farmers in certain areas. According to a report published by the Voice of America in February, 2015, “In Chandpur village in southwest Bangladesh, lush vines sprouting pumpkins and gourds cover the tin roofs of small homes. This bounty sprouts from an unlikely source: large plastic sacks on the ground and other containers. In the southwest of the country, most of the coastal belt suffers from salinity that renders the land useless. And it is in this setting that vertical gardening is taking root among hundreds of villagers with the use of plastic sacks, giant containers made of plastic sheets and bamboo, etc.” WorldFish Centre, a non-government organisation working with villagers believes that vertical gardens work in Bangladesh because we suffer from heavy monsoon that dilutes salt in soil. And from July to October, the soil is inundated with 1.5 metres of rain due to the heavy rains. The flushed soil is collected by villagers in the post-rainy season which is then put into containers to grow vegetables. While the above scenario illustrates what is possible in rural areas, can we ignore the urbanisation trends globally? In 2008, we were confronted with the news that more than half the world population was living in urban areas. Indeed, projections point to the fact that two out of every three people will be living in an urban setting by 2050, and 40 percent of the projected urban growth between now and then will take place in countries like China, India and Nigeria. Bangladesh too is experiencing rapid urbanisation with roughly a tenth of the population living in the capital city Dhaka.

Vertical farming, as we are seeing in more advanced economies, is making inroads into agriculture. The higher start-up costs because infrastructure has to be bought or leased and costs associated with training up of personnel and maintenance of infrastructure begs the question whether this can be successfully replicated in economies such as ours. But one should remember that as the technology matures, costs should come down. At the end of the day, it is all about boosting food production and with more and more people moving to the cities, every initiative to enhance urban food security becomes imperative to policymakers. New technology initiatives being undertaken elsewhere should be looked into by our policymakers and city planners to make the best use of available urban space for productive uses.

The writer is Assistant Editor, The Daily Star. 

Ag Company Grown in Portage Has Global Aspirations

Ag Company Grown in Portage Has Global Aspiration

By Dan McGowan, Writer/Reporter

PORTAGE -

The founder of a Portage-based commercial farming operation believes his indoor farming methods can be a sustainable solution throughout the world. Chief Executive Officer Robert Colangelo says Green Sense Farms LLC's vertical farming model allows consumers to buy produce right where its grown, which can be in a building "virtually anywhere." The company's goal is to first build networks throughout the U.S., Canada, Scandinavia and China and then continue to spread globally. Plants, which are grown on racks that reach as high as 24 feet, are kept in constant growing conditions through lighting, watering and feeding processes Green Sense Farms says uses only a fraction of the resources of traditional farming techniques.

In an interview with Inside INdiana Business, Colangelo said "we are the modern, new farmer."

Colangelo is a third-generation Chicagoan but says he's happy to be a transplant in the Indiana agribusiness community, which has been very supportive of what he's trying to accomplish. He adds that northwest Indiana is an "iconic" location to have a business. "We're at the bottom of Lake Michigan on the Crossroads of America, Interstate-94 and 65, they tell me that we can reach 80 percent of the U.S. population in a day's drive from where we're located."

Colangelo tells Inside INdiana Business all future farms will be located "where large volumes of meals are sold," which includes grocery chain hubs, military bases, corporate campuses, schools or hospitals. "We put our farm here (in Porter County) originally, because we were close to the Midwest distribution center for Whole Foods in Munster," he said. "What we've learned is that close isn't good enough. You really want to be inside the distribution center." The Portage farm, Colangelo says, is the largest commercial, indoor vertical farm in the country.

The company's first farm in China opened in August and through a partnership with Ivy Tech Community College, Colangelo says ground will be broken soon on a new farm in South Bend, which will supply area universities, hospitals and grocery stores. He says 10 other spots are currently in the development pipeline.

Green Sense Farms says some characteristics of the markets it continues to scout include:

• large population centers
• high numbers of educated consumers who pay a premium for produce that is GMO-, pesticide- and herbicide-free
• produce travels a great distance
• growing seasons are short
• resources like land, clean water and clean air are limited

Colangelo says recently-loosened crowd-funding regulations have opened up his company to more potential investors. Indeed, Green Sense Farms has launched an online fundraising campaign, which has led to commitments totaling more than $200,000 in two weeks. You can connect to more about the crowdfunding efforts by clicking here.

Urban Produce To Hire Indoor Growers

By Mike Hornick October 03, 2016 | 1:44 pm EDT

Urban Produce, Irvine, Calif., plans to hire Controlled Environmental Agriculture indoor organic vertical growers to support its licensees as part of phase two of the company’s expansion program.

Prospective growers will attend Urban Produce University in Irvine to prepare to work for prospective licensees in China, Canada, Mexico and Japan in 2017, according to a news release.

Urban Produce, which launched in January 2015, holds patents in seven countries including the U.S. and Canada.

“As we move into the next phase of our business we look forward to building vertical growing units all over the world,” Ed Horton, President and CEO, said in the release.

With world population projected to increase 70% by 2050, Urban Produce’s plans for expansion aim to help combat global hunger and eradicate food deserts.

“Our goal of sustainability incorporates our atmospheric water generation and the use of solar-generated power in order to build anywhere,” 

Kimbal Musk and Dan Barber Clash About The Future of Food

Deena Shanker

Josh Petri

September 28, 2016 — 8:36 AM CDT

Kimbal Musk, co-founder of farm-to-table restaurant group the Kitchen, board member at Chipotle, Tesla, and SpaceX, and younger brother to Elon, thinks hydroponic vertical farming—that is, soil-less, indoor, LED-lit agriculture—is the future of food.

Dan Barber, renowned chef, restaurant owner, author of bestseller The Third Plate, and crop rotation evangelist, strongly disagrees.

In August, Musk announced a new venture called Square Roots. He hopes it will get millennial city dwellers to become farmers—who grow their goods in shipping containers. In his Medium post, he described “campuses of climate-controlled, indoor, hydroponic vertical farms, right in the hearts of our big cities.”

Chef Dan Barber (left), Kimbal Musk (center), and Elly Truesdell speak onstage at The Next Kale and Quinoa panel at the New York Times Food For Tomorrow Conference 2016 on Sept. 27, in Pocantico, N.Y. Photographer: Neilson Barnard/Getty Images for The New York Times

Musk's vision calls for containers with hydroponic vertical farming technologies, controlled temperatures, artificial lighting, and soil-less nutrition. At the New York Times Food Conference on Tuesday at Barber’s Blue Hill at Stone Barns in Pocantico, N.Y., Musk explained how lights inside the containers can be dialed to yield particular flavors and, most of all, how it can bring young people into farming industry. The influx of young blood is badly needed. The average age of farmers climbed from 50.5 years old in 1982 to 58.3 years old in 2012.

Musk is hardly the first to champion vertical farming. Frequent travelers may have noticed the aeroponic model at Chicago’s O’Hare airport, where such herbs as purple basil and chives grow alongside vegetables, including green beans, Swiss chard, and Bibb lettuce, year-round. Companies like Vertical Harvest in Jackson Hole, Wyo., FarmedHere in Bedford Park, Ill., and Alegria Fresh in Irvine, Calif., are also betting on versions of the new technology. A 2015 report by New Bean Capital, Local Roots, and Proteus Environmental Technologies hailed indoor agriculture as "the next major enhancement to the American food supply chain."

Proponents boast about the water saved, the pesticides avoided, and the faster growing times in an environment in which seasons don’t matter.

Not everyone, though, is on board with dirt-less farming.

“It’s not making me hungry,” Chef Dan Barber told the audience at a panel on new food trends. Barber is a preacher of the power of soil. He often explains how crop rotations—growing not just wheat, but also legumes, rye, and lesser known plants—not only provide tables with more diverse foods but improve the flavor of the primary crops, such as the wheat itself.

“I’d rather invest intellectual capital into the soil that exists outside,” said Barber, though he added that he doesn't know much about vertical farming. Still, he wants to see more excitement about what goes on underground, instead of growing food above it. “When Kimbal says you can dial in the flavor and colors you want, I don’t know that I want that kind of power,” Barber said. “I’d rather have a region or environment express color and flavor.”

Elly Truesdell, the Northeast regional forager—a fancy term for buyer—for Whole Foods Market, agreed with him. “I’ve never had a piece of produce from a hydroponic grower that tastes as delicious to me [as the soil grown version],” she said on the panel.

Both Musk and Barber agree that the current corn- and soy-centric agricultural system that grows more feed for animals than food for humans is broken; they just see vastly different solutions to the problem.

Even Musk isn’t pretending that shipping containers are already producing the big league results he's promising. “We buy 99.99 percent of our products from soil-grown foods,” he admitted of his restaurants.

Why ShopRite and Compass Group Have A Taste For Urban Farming

Why ShopRite and Compass Group have a taste for urban farming

Heather Clancy

Wednesday, September 28, 2016 - 2:18a

Vertifical farms startup Aerofarms can control pests and tweak produce flavors by changing the spectrum on the LED lights it uses within urban warehouses.

Will the U.S. urban agricultural movement become mainstream? It’s certainly about to garner far more visibility, thanks to legislation proposed this week by Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.), a ranking member on the Senate’s committee for Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry.

Her bill, dubbed the Urban Agriculture Act of 2016, would expand the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s support for farm cooperatives in metropolitan areas, make it simpler for farmers running rooftop gardens or vertical farms to apply for USDA programs and fund research into new water and energy technologies that might accelerate adoption. Stabenow introduced her ideas in Detroit, a fertile example of what’s possible with the right public and private sector focus.

"A steady increase in the number of urban farms in the Capital City is beginning to impact health and nutrition awareness, good food access and food security, even as it is transforming fragile neighborhoods," noted Joan Nelson, executive director of the Allen Neighborhood Center, which runs a wholesale market for local produce and foods in Lansing, Michigan.

Although it’s a long way from becoming law, debate on the Urban Farm Act could help bring new legitimacy to the farmers, gardeners and technologists cultivating this movement. While no one really believes urban farms will be capable of supporting all of the food needs of their home cities, they’ll definitely be part of the solution, according to experts speaking last week at VERGE 16 in Santa Clara, California.

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations estimated last year that about 15 percent of the world’s food supply was attributable to farms or greenhouses in urban locations.

There’s a romanticized notion of local food production, and there’s a complete underappreciation of the complexity involved to be successful.

"I really see the future of agriculture in the ag of the middle sector," said Helene York, global director, responsible business for giant foodservice company Compass Group, during a keynote interview at VERGE. "Not in really big ag, not in really small ag. Not in hyper-local and not in global. But really about where do we find the best locations to grow some of the best food."

York is affiliated with one of Compass’ highest profile accounts, Google. While she’s not at liberty to discuss the sources that the technology company is studying for its corporate cafeterias and catering operations, she’s researching ingredients such as sustainably farmed seaweed. Kelp fettuccine, anyone? It could become a menu item, if we’re willing to set aside preconceived notions of taste.

"I am optimistic in the role of technology working with private industry as well as governments," York said.

Advancing food 'literacy'

One of the more important roles that urban farming operations will play is in advancing food literacy, and teaching urban citizens to appreciate organic produce that isn’t readily available in some lower-income neighborhoods. In San Francisco, for example, thousands of schoolchildren visit Alemany Farm, a site of several acres bounded by freeways, near public housing, and created from a former junkyard. There they can taste food that isn’t necessarily bred for shipping, so that that have a better appreciation for the concept of fresh.

The power of urban agriculture, in this case, is really education.

"The power of urban agriculture, in this case, is really education," said Eli Zigas, food and agriculture director for the nonprofit organization SPUR, during a VERGE panel. "They come and volunteer, they get their hands in the dirt and they learn about food and where it comes from. I think that’s one of the most valuable things, if not the most valuable thing, that urban agriculture provides to a city, and why a city would want to have it.”

Urban farmers that try to compete head-to-head against rural, organic farming operations will find it difficult to compete profitably. Rather, municipal governments should consider policies that frame and support urban farming operations in the context of a broader regional network.

"We’re going to have a national and international food system for a very long time," Zigas said.

Growing economic opportunity

For vertical farms specialist Aerofarms, urban farming is as much about creating new jobs as it is about reshaping the food supply, according to company’s co-founder and CEO David Rosenberg.

This week, the company opened its ninth aeroponic facility, housed in a former, converted steel factory in Newark, New Jersey. Aerofarms uses special lights to grow plants on trays stacked vertically to maximize growing space. (The new Newark facility has 13,000 of them.) These lights can do everything from deterring insects (sans pesticides) to tweaking the flavor of a leafy green. Rosenberg said his company can produce up to 22 crop turns per year.

"Our productivity per square foot is about 75 times higher than for a field farmer," he told VERGE attendees, adding that the approach uses about 95 percent less water.

Aerofarms is forging relationships with nearby grocery chains, such as New Jersey-based Wakefern Food, which owns the ShopRite supermarket co-op chain. Its crops are delivered to local distribution centers, where they can be shipped to where demand is greatest. The produce commands about the same price as organic field farmers.

Aerofarms also sells to the corporate foodservice company Compass Group, with which it is working on new recipes that are pushing people to think outside of traditional eating habits. One example: The two organizations are addressing the food waste dilemma by experimenting with ways to use all of a vegetable, including the stems.

"There’s a romanticized notion of local food production, and there’s a complete underappreciation of the complexity involved to be successful," Rosenberg said. 

Freight Farm Lettuce Used in Campus Dining Halls on Friday

Thursday, October 13, 2016

Freight Farm Lettuce Used in Campus Dining Halls on Friday

Sep. 28, 2016

On Friday, Sept. 30, the first harvest of over 1,000 head of lettuce from the on-campus Freight Farm will be used in dining halls across campus.

The lettuce will be distributed to Fulbright, Pomfret, and Brough dining halls, as well as the Arkansas Union, and will show up everywhere from salad bars to burgers.

The lettuce has been growing since Aug. 11, in an insulated, "farm in a box" container.

The 40' x 8' x 9.5' container, produced by Freight Farms, is a fully functioning hydroponic farm built inside of an up-cycled shipping container.

Inside the container, LED light strips provide crops with spectrums of red and blue – the light spectrums required for photosynthesis. A hydroponic system delivers a nutrient rich water solution directly to roots, using only 10 gallons of water a day. Energy-efficient equipment automatically regulates temperature and humidity through a series of sensors and controls.

After the first harvest, the farm should consistently produce crops of up to 500 heads of lettuce.

Before bringing the Freight Farm to campus, Chartwells Dining Services, part of the Division of Student Affairs, was looking to find a sustainable solution. The project has the potential to shorten the food supply chain, cut transportation emissions, decrease transportation costs, and overall all, significantly reduce the campus carbon footprint.

Ashley Meek, Chartwells' licensed, registered dietitian and farm manager, said the freight farming project is one way of addressing campus sustainability while giving students a way to pursue their academic interest outside of the classroom. Meek has two student interns who help her manage the farm – Taylor Pruitt and Merissa Jennings – who are both interested in the future of agriculture and food sciences.

"We hope the Freight Farm supplies sustainable culinary operations to campus, and also gives those students working with the Freight Farm a place to get their hands dirty in the science behind hydroponic farming," Meek said.

Any overages from the crops are slated for donation to the Razorback Food Recovery, enabling the campus to use every bit of each harvest.

1 University of Arkansas 

Fayetteville, AR 72701 

479-575-2000

Proposed Legislation Would Support Urban Farming With USDA Resources

By Marti Benedetti

September 26, 2016 11:00 a.m. Updated 9/26/2016

U.S. Sen. Debbie Stabenow announced Monday that she is introducing legislation that addresses the needs of urban farmers by offering them U.S. Department of Agriculture resources and programs.

Stabenow, D-Mich., made the announcement with Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan and Michigan urban agriculture leaders at D-Town Farm, Detroit's largest urban farm, on the city's far west side.

The Urban Agriculture Act of 2016 would create new economic opportunities for urban farmers through agriculture cooperatives, rooftop and vertical farms, access to research that explores marketing opportunities for urban agriculture, and developing methods for lowering energy and water needs.

The legislation is to be formally introduced this week.

“The next step (if the legislation passes) is urban farmers will have the capacity to use all of the USDA services that rural farmers have,” Stabenow said.

The bill includes $10 million to support cutting-edge farming research and it would open a new USDA office in Washington, D.C., to help urban farmers get started or improve their existing business, the senator said. Another $5 million would go toward supporting community gardens and education for nutrition, sustainable growing practices, soil remediation and composting.

It would also benefit urban farmers in large and small cities.

Stabenow said the bill builds on the farm legislation she authored and was signed into law in 2014.  

“I’m going to brag a bit,” she said. “Malik (Yakini of the Detroit Black Community Food Security Network that runs D-Town) and other people involved for a long time in Detroit farming are the experts on urban farming. When I talk to folks around the country about urban farming, they say, ‘Why are you asking me? The urban farming expertise is in Detroit.’”

Yakini said at the news event that he is hesitant to comment on the legislation. “I’ve not seen the bill,” he said. “We hope it will be helpful.”

He added that legislation that would make access to capital easier for urban farms would be appreciated. “The challenges are access to capital and access to land, even though a third of the city is vacant land,” he said.