AeroFarms Finalist For Multiple Honors In Environmental, Business Leadership

AeroFarms Finalist For Multiple Honors In Environmental, Business Leadership

Newark, New Jersey

December 1, 2016

After a year of unprecedented growth, AeroFarms, the world leader in indoor vertical farming, is a finalist for both the New Jersey Governor’s Environmental Excellence Awards and NJBiz.com’s Business of the Year Award.

The Governor’s Environmental Excellence Awards recognizes documented environmental benefit made by New Jersey businesses as well as leadership, innovation, education and outreach.

AeroFarms unique, patented growing system uses 95 percent less water than traditional field farming and a fraction of the fertilizers. AeroFarms fully-controlled growing environment requires no pesticides, eliminating the harmful runoff from traditional agriculture, with no harm to our already depleted soil. Plus, these innovative vertical farms bring healthy food to New Jersey neighborhoods that need it most while transforming underutilized warehouse space into productive farms.

“Because our stakeholders share our mission of transformative environmental impact, the sustained health of our environment is at the heart of everything we do,” said AeroFarms CEO David Rosenberg. David is an active member of the World Economic Forum (WEF) and its annual meeting in Davos. David is also a member of the B20 SME Taskforce, which advises the G20. AeroFarms is an Ellen MacArthur Foundation Circular Economy 100 company.

AeroFarms is also a finalist for NJBiz’s business of the year for the category of (51-100) employees. And AeroFarms is continuing to grow with additional roles at both the corporate level and in operations.

The Business of the Year awards recognizes New Jersey’s most dynamic businesses and business leaders who share a commitment to professional excellence, business growth and the community.

After a year of fast-paced growth, AeroFarms is honored to be recognized for its leadership in New Jersey and most importantly to have the support of the local community in Newark.

About AeroFarms

Founded in 2004, AeroFarms® is on a mission to fundamentally change the way the world thinks about agriculture by building, owning, and operating indoor, vertical farms that grow flavorful, safe, healthy food in a sustainable and socially responsible way. AeroFarms patented growing systems make year-round harvests with peak flavor possible while disrupting the traditional distribution channels that lead to massive carbon emissions and food waste. AeroFarms is able to bring the farm to the consumer while mitigating the food safety and environmental risk of commercial field farming.

Tags: Governor, new jersey, NJBiz, Press Release, Sustainability, vertical farm

Tundra to Table: Vertical Farming In The Arctic

Tundra to Table: Vertical Farming In The Arctic

 December 1, 2016  lsuter

The vast Arctic territory is rich in resources including minerals, hydrocarbons, and wildlife. However, high latitudinal regions receive little sunlight for several months each year, which severely limits the region’s ability to grow fresh produce. Many Arctic urban centers rely on long, complex supply chains to receive shipments of fresh fruits and vegetables from their southerly neighbors.

Alaska imports about 95% of its fresh produce, moving about $2 billion per year of grocery spending out-of-state. Produce destined for the Arctic has to be picked early and ripened in-transit to minimize rot during the long journey from farm to table. Such practices affect the quality of produce polar consumers can buy and drive up prices. Arctic residents often pay exorbitant prices for items as simple as a head of lettuce.

These problems have spurred interest in alternative farming methods in the Arctic, such as indoor farming using hydroponics and artificial lighting systems, sometimes called vertical farming 

In recent years, the use of vertical farming has grown in many urban areas, where land is scarce and people have become more aware of the environmental impact of long-supply chains. Urban indoor farms, or ‘plant factories with artificial light’ (PFAL) are expected to play a large role in agriculture during the coming decades, garnering interest from countries around the world. Recently a team of Japanese and American researchers published a comprehensive 400-page volume on the benefits and limitations of indoor farms in different climatic and economic environments.

The ability of PFALs to produce quality produce has been proven in a low cost and resource effective manner. For example, low-heat light emitting diode (LED) fixtures have been around since the 1980s, but recent studies have shown that advances in this technology have enhanced their brightness and energy-efficiency to the point where they are viable in commercial crop agriculture. As these global investments in urban farming continue, the resulting technological innovations could have a revolutionary effect on how Arctic communities source their fresh produce.

The unique environmental and economic conditions of the Arctic make it an attractive region to develop PFALs. Prices for imported fresh produce are high, while environmental conditions for local farming are poor. Moreover, communities in the Arctic are usually isolated, and their inhabitants tend to welcome innovations that increase self-subsistence and decrease reliance on imports.

Several start-ups have begun to fill this niche in the North American Arctic, among them Vertical Harvest Hydroponics. This company, founded in 2011 and based in Anchorage, Alaska, has designed and developed a “Containerized Growing System” in repurposed shipping containers using cutting edge technology. These containerized systems cost about $110,000 each to build and deploy. They are designed to withstand the harsh Arctic conditions, and are mobile—giving Arctic communities the ability to grow produce anywhere with potable water and power. Each unit can produce about 23,000 to 39,000 heads of lettuce per year.

Another Alaskan company, Alaska Natural Organics,has retrofitted an old dairy in Anchorage to house an indoor farm, which can produce up to 20,000 plants per month. The potential for expansion seems strong, as these companies are still young and operate on a relatively small scale compared to the mega-PFALs running in Japan, which can produce up to 10,000 plants a day 

Vertical farming in the Arctic has gained recent media attention due to its success. In 2016 several mainstream media outlets, including the New York Times, local CBS news stations, and farming magazines featured articles on indoor farming in the Arctic. Unfortunately, there is a lack of academic literature analyzing the practicality of PFAL systems and vertical farming in an Arctic-specific context, a subject which should be explored given the massive potential applicability of this technology in the region.

Interest in biological preservation and the development of agriculture in the Arctic is nothing new. In Svalbard, the Global Seed Vault is safeguarding a repository of all global plant seeds in an attempt to secure the genetic diversity of flora on this planet in case of a devastating disaster. The Norwegian government, which runs and administers the storehouse, has also taken steps toward increasing the study of sustainable agriculture in the region through the year 2021 with the BIONAER program. In Kirovsk, Russia, the Polar-Alpine Botanical Garden has been active since 1931, as a nursery, biological research institute, and tourist attraction. Interest in these new techniques is growing, with representatives of the city of Murmansk, Russia citing a planned project to convert abandoned industrial buildings into hydroponic farms during an interview. The Russian Arctic has many relatively isolated industrial and post-industrial urban centers, where the development of efficient PFAL systems could usher in a new era of sustainable agriculture. In all of these Arctic regions, the interest in using PFALs to increase the local quality of life is high, however there has been a lack of project feasibility studies and academic literature which could validate increased policy support for PFAL and urban indoor farming methods.

Given the interest in indoor-farming across the circumpolar region, PFAL systems could play an important role in the future life of Arctic communities. The success of the Alaskan start-ups shows the potential for the organic growth of the industry. These systems have the potential to benefit Arctic communities by cutting out expensive and unreliable supply-chains and increasing self-reliance. Indoor farming greatly improves the quality of life for Arctic residents by giving them a realistic path towards regular access to fresh high quality produce. Additionally, localized food production and research in PFAL technology has the added benefit of creating jobs and opportunities for innovation in the region. Nevertheless, the PFAL industry faces significant challenges, including high initial investment costs, which could hamper growth in the coming decades. Hopefully, this hurdle will not be insurmountable.

These Aeroponic Gardens Are Transforming Schools and Homeless Shelters In Los Angeles

These Aeroponic Gardens Are Transforming Schools and Homeless Shelters In Los Angeles

• Clarissa Wei

November 30, 201

“Growing your food is a lot better than buying it from a market because they spray it with pesticides or something that could harm us or harm the plant and not make it grow as well,” Sierra Madre Middle School student Elizabeth Nazaros says.

The rest of the class, filled with kids who are barely teenagers, nod in agreement.

“I think it’s more sustainable this way,” student Sarah Vance chimes in.

These kids are part of the gardening club at Sierra Madre Middle School, an elective that manages an outdoor soil garden and two aeroponics systems. Today is the day right before school lets off for Thanksgiving break, and while the rest of the school is out in the courtyard screaming for pie, these kids are waiting patiently so they can harvest their greens and eat their hard-earned salads.

It’s amazing to see how excited they get when they see the plants grow,” Gina Davis, the teacher, says. “Especially over a weekend or long weekend and they see the difference. They get so excited to see something that they’ve produced grow.”

The salad is grown in an indoor aeroponics growing system called a Tower Garden. It’s a four foot structure that automatically waters the plants every 15 minutes. A water reservoir is at the base of the garden, which only needs to be refilled every two months. According to Sue Clark, owner of a Tower Garden franchise in Los Angeles, this system uses 90% less water than conventional gardening methods and produces 30% more food. A single harvest can be ready in three weeks. A basic system costs $500.

Note that aeroponic farming is different than hydroponic farming. In hydroponics, the plants still need to be grown in a material, usually a soil substitute. Aeroponics requires no growing medium and the plants are fed through the air with a steady supply of carbon dioxide, water, and nutrients. It’s a more efficient system and as these students have proven, completely kid-friendly.

Clark helped the local school district apply for $6,000 worth of grants for the gardens and today, there are seven of them scattered across the school district.

“[Pasadena Unifed] school district is committed to using ten percent of what’s growing in the garden and putting it into the cafeteria,” Clark says. The Tower Garden makes it especially easy; kids can eat straight off the system without having to wash the leaves.

It’s an astonishingly simple structure that’s making its rounds in Los Angeles. In 2013, Step up on Vine, a 34-room permanent housing facility for the homeless in Hollywood, installed a rooftop worth of gardens so that residents could have year-round access to produce. Franchises like Tender Greens have Tower Gardens scattered throughout their restaurants. While these systems are no doubt a growing trend, the impact they have in schools is immeasurable.

“You can grow any organic, non-GMO seed and the kids grow the plants straight from seed,” Clark says. 

At Sierra Madre Middle School, the children are learning about the food system as a whole and what it means to plant seasonally. In their soil garden, natural pesticides and crop rotation is a regular part of their curriculum. The best part of the Tower Gardens, they say, is that they can harvest all year round. They each go around listing their favorite vegetable. Arugula, it seems, is the class favorite. 

When I am done interviewing them, the excitement is palatable. They gather around the structures and pick off their favorite vegetables for salad. It’s like watching kids in a candy store – except everything is green.

“Knowing exactly what goes into our food is a good thing,” student Isabel Eisenberg says. “It’s more work, but it’s worth it.”

Indoor Harvest Corp Appoints New CEO As Company Growth Accelerates

Indoor Harvest Corp Appoints New CEO As Company Growth Accelerates

By GlobeNewswire,  November 30, 2016, 02:50:00 PM EDT

HOUSTON, Nov. 30, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Indoor Harvest Corp (OTCQB:INQD), through its brand name Indoor Harvest®, is a solutions provider to the vertical farming and indoor agriculture industry. The Company is pleased to announce that its Board of Directors has appointed John Choo as Chief Executive Officer/President effective January 1, 2017. Chad Sykes Founder and current CEO will assume the role of Chief Innovation Officer and will continue to serve as Chairman of Indoor Harvest's Board of Directors. 

"There is no better time for John, our co-founder, to become Indoor Harvest's next Chief Executive Officer. Since joining the team he has been instrumental in developing our partnerships and building our sales pipeline. He quickly learned and identified many of the operational challenges our industry faces and drove our rebranding efforts to address those challenges. John taking on the role of CEO will free me to focus on the technology side of our industry, where my true strengths lie. In my new role as CINO, I will be charged with driving research and development through change management, innovating new platforms in-house while simultaneously working with current and new partners at deploying effective, transparent, and efficient innovation process," stated Chad Sykes
founder and CEO of Indoor Harvest Corp.

"Indoor agriculture has moved at an exponential pace of change over the last five years, it reminds me of the early days of the mobile software industry," stated John Choo
, President and co-founder of Indoor Harvest Corp. "Over the last twelve months we have accelerated what was working well and disrupted portions of our business that needed to improve. The results have kept us deeply vested across North America and Europe in supporting strategies for commercial scale cultivators including our pharmaceutical and academic relationships," stated John Choo, Co-founder and President of Indoor Harvest Corp.

"As the company moves into execution on some of our planning, we have begun working with a multinational accounting firm on tax strategies to ensure our activities in Canada, The United States and Europe are standing on a strong foundation. We are expanding our executive and operations team as well, the excitement around the industry growth across the globe is infectious, we're seeing pools of investment and executive talents moving in quickly," further stated Mr. Choo.

Indoor Harvest has evolved as a commercial cultivation hardware designer to a single trusted source providing engineering, facilities construction centrally designed to support indoor agriculture including development financing for clients. The company has an extensive R&D and partnership network with some of the world's most recognized names in Academia and technology leaders in the space.

Management will host a conference call tomorrow, Thursday, December 1, 2016, at 2:00 PM EST, to discuss third quarter results, provide guidance and conduct a Q&A session for investors and analysts. Individuals interested in participating may dial in using the information below:

Dial In: (855) 551-1031

Conference ID: 23475012

A recording will be made available to investors who cannot attend shortly after the call and will be posted to the Company Facebook and Twitter pages.

Consistent with the SEC's April 2013 guidance on using social media outlets like Facebook and Twitter to make corporate disclosures and announce key information in compliance with Regulation FD, Indoor Harvest is alerting investors and other members of the general public that Indoor Harvest will provide weekly updates on operations and progress through its social media on Facebook and Twitter. Investors, potential investors and individuals interested in our company are encouraged to keep informed by following us on Twitter or Facebook. 

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/indoorharvest

Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/indoorharvest

ABOUT INDOOR HARVEST CORP

Indoor Harvest Corp, through its brand name Indoor Harvest®, is a full service, state of the art design-build engineering firm for the indoor farming industry. Providing production platforms and complete custom designed build outs for both greenhouse and building integrated agriculture (BIA) grows, tailored to the specific needs of virtually any cultivar. Our patent pending aeroponic fixtures are based upon a modular concept in which primary components are interchangeable. Visit our website at http://www.indoorharvest.com for more information about our Company.

FORWARD LOOKING STATEMENTS

This release contains certain "forward-looking statements" relating to the business of Indoor Harvest and its subsidiary companies, which can be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as "estimates," "believes," "anticipates," "intends," "expects" and similar expressions. Such forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to be materially different from those described herein as anticipated, believed, estimated or expected. Certain of these risks and uncertainties are or will be described in greater detail in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. These forward-looking statements are based on Indoor Harvest's current expectations and beliefs concerning future developments and their potential effects on Indoor Harvest. There can be no assurance that future developments affecting Indoor Harvest will be those anticipated by Indoor Harvest. These forward-looking statements involve a number of risks, uncertainties (some of which are beyond the control of the Company) or other assumptions that may cause actual results or performance to be materially different from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Indoor Harvest undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as may be required under applicable securities laws.

Contacts:
Indoor Harvest Corp
CEO, Mr. Chad Sykes

713-410-7903
ccsykes@indoorharvest.com

 

Elected Officials Tour Indoor Farming in Poughkeepsie

Elected Officials Tour Indoor Farming in Poughkeepsie

POUGHKEEPSIE – State Assemblywoman Nicole Malliotakis (R, East Shore) was in Dutchess County on Tuesday getting a firsthand look at agriculture in the county.

She spent time on a fact-finding mission at Fishkill Farms in Hopewell Junction and Indoor Organic Gardens in Poughkeepsie.

“I don’t have any farms in my district; I represent Staten Island and Brooklyn, but yet I am still voting on legislation that affects the agricultural industry – farmers – and I think it is important for those legislators that are not from areas that have farms to go and learn about what they are doing and we can do as a state to encourage them because we vote on legislation that affects everybody,” Malliotakis said.

Area Assemblyman Frank Skartados joined with County Executive Marcus Molinaro in Poughkeepsie to tour the organic gardening facility.

A non-descript building on Main Street that used to house an insurance agency now houses the Organic Gardens of Poughkeepsie.  This startup business, owned by Brud Hodgkins, has attracted the interest of Malliotakis as she attempts to learn more about farming and organic growing taking place throughout the state.

Using organic sterilized compost and very little water, Hodgkins is currently growing approximately 120 pounds of microgreens per week.  The distribution of his product is blossoming and is now serving customers as far away as Miami and Key West, Florida through the assistance of an overnight carrier.

Malliotakis, who serves on the Assembly's Ways and Means Committee, has been researching incentives that could possibly aid businesses such as indoor organic gardens and has visited several farms and grow facilities, including a medical marijuana facility in New Jersey.  The assemblywoman credits Molinaro with bringing her to Dutchess to show off a variety of organic farms and facilities.

Indoor Farms of America Announces Financing Options

Indoor Farms of America Announces Financing Options

Wisconsin State Farmer

9:50 a.m. CST November 29, 2016

Las Vegas

— Indoor Farms of America is pleased to announce the immediate availability of multiple sources of financing for the robust product line of Container Farms and fully scalable vertical aeroponic growing equipment.

"These financing options for our products opens doors to many folks who want the best equipment available for indoor farming on the market, but may lack sufficient cash or capital structure to pursue the purchase of one of our farms," according to David Martin, CEO of Indoor Farms of America.

"We are very pleased to have funded our equipment already with our new lending source, Direct Capital.  This institution understands the needs of small business people, as well as tailoring the right financing for each customer," states Martin. "They took a very close look at the potential our equipment has for creating a financial success story for the owner of the farm, and we have established a lending relationship with them to continue to grow sales at a rapid pace of our equipment."

"When compared to other indoor crop growing equipment, the vertical aeroponic equipment produced by Indoor Farms of America is clearly the market leader in terms of what that equipment can produce in plant growing capacity and yields in any given space, and I have been involved with indoor growing, in aquaponics and hydroponics, and made use of every other style of equipment for over 15 years," says Ron Evans, company President.

According to Martin, "A recent visitor from Japan, considering a distributorship for that region, simply could not stop talking about how amazed he was at the amount of produce we are growing in such a small space.  He went on to tell us he believes our container farm, with the substantially higher yield per square foot than anything else, can transform the market in Japan, and that is pretty nice to hear."

Back from a recent visit to Northern California where one of the company's sold Container Farms, a Model 6825, has recently been installed, Evans recalled, "I was fortunate enough to ride along with our farmer to a presentation of his first crop harvest to a local high end Italian restaurant in the Sierra foothills. The owner of the restaurant told us it was the best tasting Basil he had ever tasted, and the leaves were the most beautiful he had ever seen.  That says a bit about how well our equipment works, and keeps me humble."

Indoor Farms of America spent nearly 2 years in R&D developing what now has multiple U.S. patents awarded - truly affordable, economically viable high yield vertical aeroponic crop growing equipment.

Martin adds: "We really nailed about 30 different leafy green products early on in test growing, so we know you can operate a container farm that can service a special niche market, or the local grocery, and have financial success with it.  But indoor growing needs to be about much more, so what we have focused on for the past number of months is proving out viable growing of other crops such as cherry tomatoes, strawberries, many smaller pepper varieties, and beans. Our farm equipment grows all of these amazingly well."

The company has also tested growing larger plants, such as heirloom tomatoes, squash, and cucumbers.  This line of aeroponic equipment is nearing readiness for release as well.

"Ron and I are greatly appreciative of the response to our equipment," states Martin, "and we are focused on enhancements to our system to bring it to an even broader range of growers, including large scale greenhouse operators, which stand to benefit dramatically by the increase in growing capacity in the same space, over older methods.  We are finalizing automation of the equipment to track the sun movement for use in such applications, and will announce that when it is ready."

Local Roots Discloses Its Global Sustainable Indoor Farming Initiative

Local Roots Farms, the LA–based indoor farming company, will now build indoor farming projects across the country to serve its commercial customers.

Not only did we spend years trialing our technology and perfecting our growing practices but we built an actual produce business. This cross section of experience makes developing farming projects a natural advancement.”

LOS ANGELES, CA (PRWEB) NOVEMBER 29, 2016

Local Roots Farms, the LA–based indoor farming company respected for its high-quality leafy greens and innovative approach to farming, announced completion of a TerraFarm network, ready for commercial deployment in Q1 2017. After a dramatic increase in demand for their scalable indoor farming solutions, Local Roots will now build indoor farming projects across the country to serve its commercial customers.

Despite an increased desire nationwide for locally-sourced produce programs, no indoor farm has yet been able to offer the consistency, quality, and affordable price points demanded by the nation’s largest buyers. Local Roots is primed to solve these exact challenges.

“We realized that we were in a unique position,” says CEO Eric Ellestad, “Not only did we spend years trialing our technology and perfecting our growing practices but we built an actual produce business. This cross section of experience makes developing farming projects a natural advancement.”    

Local Roots designs, builds, deploys, and operates controlled environment farms that yield the highest quality, locally-grown produce using breakthrough technologies. Those farms, called TerraFarms, grow with up to 99% less water, 365 days a year, pesticide and herbicide free, and with absolute consistency in production. Their plug and play form provides a novel solution to the retail and foodservice sectors by greatly reducing supply-chain risks such as price volatility and food safety exposure.

Featuring a uniquely elegant design engineered to increase environmental control and process efficiencies, each TerraFarm is capable of growing 5-10x more produce than other leading shipping container farms available on the market.

“Rather than depend on anecdotal stories of success and failure from fellow farmers,” says Ellestad, “Our growing practices and standardized operating procedures are rooted in sophisticated data analytics.”

The Local Roots Research and Development team, comprised of plant science, botany, agronomy, design and engineering specialists, capitalizes on this growing body of data to grow more nutrient rich, better tasting produce with guaranteed harvests and yields. Moreover, TerraFarms are PrimusGFS certified and operated according to strict food safety procedures. Taken together these approaches makes Local Roots produce the first of its kind.

Follow Local Roots Farms and its commitment to feeding the global population in the most sustainable way possible. For more information, please visit http://www.localrootsfarms.com or contact Allison Towle at a.towle(at)localrootsfarms(dot)com.

Vertical Farming – The Latest Trend For Producing Food !

Vertical Farming – The Latest Trend For Producing Food !

ASHWIN KUMAR

NOVEMBER 29, 2016

Nowadays, agriculture and food production are under great risk. The major factors for this are as follows

• The land under food cultivation is dwindling so as to give way for real estate activities owing to increase in urban population and their standards of living.

• Climate change is making our food systems vulnerable. Weather has become unpredictable and as a result farmers, especially small and marginal ones suffer from huge crop losses. At some places there are droughts due to delayed or scanty monsoon. At others there are more cyclones and untimely rains flooding the farms.

• The traditional agricultural techniques and practices are getting lost. Aspiring for more profits, farmers are doing mono-cropping and using chemicals in the form of fertilizers and pesticides extensively. This has taken a toll on our soils and has rendered it infertile. Moreover the crop thus raised is harmful for consumption.

Health conscious urban dwellers are switching to organic crops. Few others have gone to the next level of growing their own veggies in their rooftop or kitchen gardens. Demand for healthy and organic food is growing. To cope up with the limitation of land resources and the unpredictability of the weather conditions, scientists and entrepreneurs are developing modern agricultural techniques and technologies. One such innovation is Vertical Farming which is a type of precision farming. The goal of precision farming is to optimize returns on inputs while preserving resources. Vertical farms can produce more crops in less space with minimal environmental damage.

Related Read: The Tense In AgriTech: Past, Present And Future In India !

The characteristics of vertical farming are

• It involves producing crops in vertical stacks of plant beds one above another. This reduces the need for more land and eliminates the need for tilling.

• It is done indoors and environmental conditions are controlled, thus effectively isolating it from the outdoor weather conditions.

• This soil less farming is achieved either by hydroponics or aeroponics. Hydroponics uses water as medium for conveying nutrients to the roots. Mineral nutrients are dissolved in water, pumped and fed directly to a plant’s root system without any involvement of soil. In aeroponics, the roots are exposed to nutrient rich mist. The benefits associated with these technologies are quicker growth, faster harvest, higher yield and low nutrient and water wastage.

• Here, sunlight is replaced by light from LEDs. When plants photosynthesize they convert light of certain wavelength into chemical energy which is not necessary to come from sun. LEDs which are having high acceptance in replacing traditional lights, have been evolved to provide optimum electromagnetic spectrum for photosynthesis, consume less energy and have minimal heat signatures which keeps the energy requirement for temperature maintenance at a minimum.

Crops generally grown in this method are green leafy vegetables. The vertical farming market is estimated to reach USD 3.88 billion by 2020, at a CAGR of 30.7% between 2015 and 2020.

In some developed countries, vertical farms are on the verge of starting the next green revolution. The first ever commercial vertical farm was setup in Singapore in 2012. The world’s largest vertical farm is coming up in Newark, New Jersey by a company called Aerofarms which aims to produce about two million pounds of leafy greens a year using aeroponics techniques.

In Japan vertical farm technology gained traction after the Fukushima nuclear meltdown exposed the susceptibility of arable land getting contaminated. Closer home, start-ups such as Futurefarms based in Chennai has setup such farms and has begun promoting it.

Vertical farms can be setup in abandoned factories or warehouses. It promises to create more jobs and attracts public-private investment. The vegetables can be locally grown and thus the cost and emissions due to their transportation can be significantly cut down. These farms also give us the option of year-round harvest. And of course, huge swathes of land can be returned to their natural state by reforestation.

Nevertheless, some scientists are sceptical about this technology. They consider it to be a factory rather than a farm almost like a broiler producing plant. Further, the whole system is vulnerable due to human error and technological malfunction. Considering that these systems use huge number of LED lights, motors and sensors the demand for power increases substantially which can make it unsustainable. Detailed research work has to be done before it gets commercialised in India.

Rising Need For Nursery, Indoor And Vertical Farming

Rising Need For Nursery, Indoor And Vertical Farming

by Frank Tobe

November 28, 2016

To meet rising food demands from a growing global population, over 250 million acres of arable land will be needed – about 20% more land than all of Brazil. Alternatively, agricultural production will need to be more productive and more sustainable using our present acreage. Meeting future needs requires investment in alternative practices such as urban and vertical farming as well as existing indoor and covered methods.

Ray Kurzweil, futurist, inventor and Google’s Director of Engineering, said in an interview in The Times in 2013:

There will be a new vertical agriculture revolution, because right now we use up a third of the usable land of the world to produce food, which is very inefficient. Instead we will grow food in a computerized vertical factory building (which is a more efficient use of real estate) controlled by artificial intelligence, which recycles all of the nutrients so there’s no environmental impact at all.

Fully automated regional vertical farms for leafy greens and other commodity crops has long been a vision of the future. Capital costs and other vagaries have prevented such development to date, but lower costs for technology and automation plus higher costs for labor, land and other resources, are making Kurzweil’s predictions come true. There are dozens of vertical farms around the world today with more being built.

Spread, a Japanese factory farmer with a large facility near Kyoto that serves the two metropolitan areas of Kyoto and Osaka, is nearing completion of a fully automated 52,000 sq ft facility where 98% of water will be recycled and seeding, watering, applying fertilizer and harvesting will all be automated. No earth; just shelves on top of shelves from floor to ceiling. They predict 30,000 heads of lettuce can be harvested and delivered daily throughout the year.

Propelling this indoor and vertical farming movement are three influential trends. The Boston Consulting Group, in 2015, produced a study entitled “Crop Farming 2030, the Reinvention of the Sector,” and cited (1) the steady global movement toward precision farming, (2) the availability of economical automation and robotics, and (3) the growing labor shortage as the drivers of the movement.

Vertical farming:

Food grown year round in buildings near urban centers provides many advantages: being close to the point of consumption reduces both distribution costs and spoilage. Outdoor farming is vulnerable to pests and disease, which in turn means intensive use of pesticides and herbicides causing problems with runoff as well as food safety. Vertical farms protect crops from weather and pests and reduce or eliminate the use of pesticides and herbicides. Hydroponic and aeroponic water methods save massive amounts of water compared to outdoor farming. Consequently, as these farms become more prevalent, they could provide a major new role for the ag industry to produce a wide range of commercial crops with major savings in space and water use. In the case of Spread, cited above, they are able to grow lettuce indoors using less than 1% of the water that California Central Valley growers use to grow the same product!

Agriculture accounts for around 70% of water used in the world today according to the OECD (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development). As population and climate change progress, food needs will grow, and more efficient use of water in ag must happen as well. Vertical farms reduce water usage through recirculating hydroponics, evaporative cooling, control of in- and out-airflow, and other methods. Urban Crops, a Belgian factory farmer and technology provider uses this chart to show the benefits of vertical factory farms versus other methods:

Greenhouse and wholesale nurseries

Greenhouse technology is ideal to protect plants from adverse climatic conditions, insects and disease and to nurse, propagate and grow plants to usable and/or harvestable size. Greenhouses can be framed or inflated structures covered with glass or transparent or translucent material. Greenhouse yields are often 10-15% greater that outdoor yields, consistency and quality tend to be greater, and the growing season is longer.

Similar to vertical farms, greenhouses have high upfront costs and operating expenses, and crop selection must not require pollination. Whether plants are grown in the field or indoors, nurseries transplant, graft, or germinate plants to create seedlings for resale. Their processes are quite complex on two levels: (1) the technical aspects of growing plants which require management of the environment, plant nutrition, propagation, transplanting, irrigation, and pest and disease control, and (2) the business aspects of managing production, labor, customers, distribution and other activities associated with a business. Many nurseries use automation and some level of robotics. Harvest Automation and their mobile robots rearranging potted plants and Urbinati and Visser and their robotic transplanting devices are all examples of the levels of automation utilized in nursery operations.

Commercial and emerging providers:

• AeroFarms – A NJ indoor farmer that is marketing their technology to other prospective vertical farmers. AeroFarms grows a wide variety of leafy greens without sun or soil in a fully-controlled indoor environment using a system of aeroponic misting of the roots for faster harvest cycles, predictable results, food safety and less environmental impact.
• Aris – is a Dutch engineering and systems provider. Many of their projects are integrated with vision and robotics that identify, grade, sort and analyze everything from orchids to chickens, from potted plants to seedlings. Using their systems, nursery clients can then grade and robotically cut branches which can then be potted.
• ALCI Visionics & Robotics – A French integrator of vision and robotics technologies for meat and fish slicing and packaging and for nurseries and growers for potting plants and seed germination, analysis and classification for corn, rice and wheat.
• Conic Systems – a Spanish provider of greenhouse equipment including robotic and software-controlled grafting, seeding and planting systems.
• Demtec – A long established Belgium-based maker of a wide range of horticultural machinery including potting machines, seeders, planters and transplanters. Many of these processes have integrated industrial and mobile robots into their systems. Demtec robotics also play a big part in flat and shelf handling, packaging, palletization, and shipping.
• Egatec A/S – a Danish integrator of end-of-line packaging, boxing and palletizing systems for the ag and food processing industries.
• Harvest Automation – a Boston-area mobile robotics provider with nursery applications for spacing, a task that involves bending over, picking up one or two containers often weighing up to 22 pounds each, walking a few steps and then bending over again to place them in a predefined pattern.  The company recently divested a warehousing variation on their mobile robot to better focus on ag industry applications.
• Helper Robotech – a Korean manufacturer of robotic grafting, smart seeding and other smart devices. They also make a wide range of nursery products to nurture seedlings to maturity.
• HETO Agrotechnics – a Dutch manufacturer of horticulture machines including robotic potting systems and pick and place systems for potted plants.
• Hortiplan – a Belgian integrator, reseller and provider of nursery equipment, supplies and mobile gully systems – which move in an automated way from the planting side to the harvesting station. Hortiplan also designs and sells lighting, irrigation and handling systems.
• Irmato Jentjens – An established Dutch builder of systems for automating food handling and packaging. Irmato also makes the Rombomatic, a robotic cutting system for nurseries that examines, assesses, cuts, powders and inserts cuttings into pots and other mediums. Jentjens is a funding partner in a variety of sensing and manipulation projects under the EU’s Clever Robots for Crops program. These include a sweet-pepper harvesting robot, an apple harvesting robot, precision and canopy-optimized spraying robots and other AI-based ag systems.
• Iron Ox – A Silicon Valley startup presently in stealth mode but hiring with a plan to provide a fully robotic, fully controlled environment for ag in a greenhouse growing leafy greens (lettuce, basil and bok choy) using natural light but mobile bots to move plants through each stage of development to harvesting, packaging and palletizing.
• ISO Group – a Netherlands-based supplier of automation solutions for nurseries. They adapt industrial robot technology for horticulture uses such as grafting, planting, vision inspection and replanting.
• Logiqs BV – a Dutch manufacturer of internal transport and logistics systems for greenhouses for growers of cut flowers, tree nurseries, flower bulbs, potted plants and vegetables. Their new modular GreenCube vertical cultivation system uses trays sensors and vertical transporters, also with sensors, for movement between layers and movement to and from the various stages of nursery growing operations.
• CMW Horticulture – a UK integrator and reseller of a whole range of greenhouse and nursery automation products including Logiqs mobility and handling systems
• Mirai Group – A Japanese farmer that, in 2009, became a member and leader of the Japanese government public-private consortium to develop low-cost plant factories. Today Mirai provides R&D and design-build services to grow leafy plants for farmers interested in vertical farming similar to what Spread is doing. Mirai is also producing and wholesaling leafy vegetables from a large plant factory located near Chiba, Japan.
• Photon Systems Instruments – An established Czech Republic provider of ag instruments including high throughput conveyor and robotic nursery phenotyping systems.
• Priva Group – a Dutch engineering, design and systems integrator for greenhouse nurseries. Recent projects include developing a leaf-removing robot for tomato plants. The lowest leaves of tomato plants are regularly removed to promote ripening (this process is called de-leafing).
• QUBIT Phenomics – a Canadian provider of conventional and robotic plant screening systems for nurseries and growers. The company’s PlantScreen™ Field Phenotyping System allows growers an automated non-invasive measurement of photosynthesis, leaf biochemical status, water status and canopy temperature. Greenhouses are the primary marketplace but the company hopes to break into field operations as well.  Many major biotech companies and universities have partnered with Qubit in the study of plant responses to various stresses.
• Spread – A Japanese lettuce grower, is constructing the world’s largest plant factory near Osaka and Kyoto. The new factory, scheduled for mid-2017, will be as robotically automated as possible. Spread’s existing facility, from which they are learning what tasks can be automated, produces 21,000 heads of lettuce per day using LED lighting, controlled air conditioning and recirculating water. Spread is planning to construct and operate 20 new factories in the next 5 yearsin addition to selling the technology for others to build their own plant factories.
• Urban Crops – A Belgium startup pioneering the distribution of robotized vertical farming and plant factories.  The company offers two types of products, one fits into a 40’ container and can be fully automated or not, and another is custom built for larger spaces. Currently the company has made a small number of sales and has partnered with companies such as Belgocatering, a Belguim based catering company, and a UAE group of investors.
• Urbinati – an Italian manufacturer of nursery technology including automated, and in some cases robotic, seeding, pot filling, transplanting, handling and irrigation devices. They also sell backroom processing robots such as palletizers.
• Transplant Systems – a NZ integrator and reseller of nursery machinery and robots from Urbinati and others.
• Visser – a Dutch provider of horticulture automation systems and complete production lines for large and small nurseries and greenhouses including a robot seeder, transplanter and packing and palletizing robots.

Agricultural Robotics: 160+ profiles

Working together with Tractica, a Colorado research firm, my team and I compiled a list of over 200 global businesses and agencies involved in developing robotic solutions for the ag industry. From that list, I was able to interview and profile over 160 companies and 16 research labs as follows:

• Academic and research labs (16)
• Backroom and post processing (5)
• Dairy and milking (10)
• Drones, analytics and data service providers (26)
• Farm equipment manufacturers (23)
• Harvesting, weeding and thinning robots (21)
• Hobby farming (2)
• Indoor and vertical farming (23)
• Integrator, distributor and reseller (20)
• Self-driving vehicles (15)
• UAS/UAV vendors (15)

This research report will be published in the next few weeks and will contain the whole list, the profiles, and the conclusions drawn from the research, interviews and analyses. The report will be $4,200 for a Basic License (1-5 users) or $6,300 for an Enterprise License.

Note: the link to the report is to the previous report with the same title and will be updated with new information just as soon as the new report is published.

Frank Tobe is the owner and publisher of The Robot Report, and is also a panel member for Robohub's Robotics by Invitation series...read more 
 

agriculture roboticsrobohub focus on agricultural roboticsTractica

Glorious Green Office In Tokyo A Showpiece For Urban Agriculture

• Glorious Green Office In Tokyo A Showpiece For Urban Agriculture

The Pasona Group’s blooming headquarters doubles as a promotional tool for farming

BY PATRICK SISSON  NOV 28, 2016, 11:23AM EST

Tokyo’s streetscape typically leans towards the modern and mechanized, crowded with bright signs, busy neon lights, and new office towers. But a few blocks from the city’s main train station, the nine-story office of a progressive human resources firm presents a more pastoral addition.

The headquarters of the Pasona Group, one of the country’s largest staffing and talent agencies, literally blooms, a garden in the sky that provides Tokyo with a striking display of foliage. More than 100 types of roses grow on the building’s “green curtain” exterior during the late springtime, and in autumn months, vines growing on the trellised facade display fall colors. And that’s just the outside. The ground floor entrance, lined by citrus plants such as limes and kumquats, leads to a lobby with a functioning rice paddy and urban farm.

“We’re trying to broadcast what you can do in a metropolitan environment,” says Yukie Yoneyama, who works for the company’s urban farm division, which began seeding and planting the midcentury office building in 2010.

Pasona’s investment in a greener office isn’t just about creating a better environment for the company’s more than 1,500 Tokyo employees, though the plant-filled tower does create a less-stressful workplace and cut the building’s annual carbon emissions by 7-8 tons. The living office is part of a larger strategy by the self-described “social solutions company” to help catalyze rural economies and live up to its mission to provide jobs where they’re needed. It’s a physical manifestation of Pasona’s philosophy.

Company founder Yasuyuki Nambu started the staffing agency in 1976 to help provide jobs to mothers looking to re-enter the workplace. As the company grew over the last few decades, Nambu’s social justice focus has expanded to embrace numerous issues in Japan via an array of subsidiaries (Pasona Heartful, for instance, provides jobs for the disabled).

Over the last few decades, the combination of an aging population, a long-term recession, and unemployment has hit the Japanese farming sector hard. Nambu’s proposed solution to the crisis is to “make farming cool again,” investing in ornate projects like the urban farm, which seeks to re-connect city dwellers with agriculture, and funding community-focused businesses in rural areas.

The Pasona HQ certainly offers a sleek, camera-ready model of urban agriculture. With 43,000 square feet of space dedicated to growing more than 200 kinds of crops, nearly every corner of the Kono Designs-created office features some spin on urban agriculture. One of the conference rooms features overhead trellises holding ripe, red tomatoes, while apples and blueberries grow on the grass-covered rooftop. The indoor rice paddy, built from scrap wood and harvested multiple times a years, anchors an employee lobby, which hosts regular concerts during lunch hour. A floor of open meeting spaces includes hydroponic growing systems for herbs—small containers for sprouting seeds are hidden inside benches—offering aromatherapy between appointments. Rows of lettuce plants, raised in a “vegetable factory” along with other produce, help provide more than 10,000 meals a year in the employee cafeteria.

“One of the biggest benefits growing indoors is that we don’t need to worry about seasons,” says Yoneyama, while pointing out the special lighting and watering systems that run throughout the building. “Under normal conditions, lettuce takes 60 days from seed to harvest. We can grow it here in about 45 days.”

In a country where produce prices can by sky-high, Yoneyama says the aim of the company’s agriculture program isn’t to cut costs—rather difficult, when factoring in the cost of indoor lighting—but to spur development. Regional development has been a high priority for many companies, and Nambu believes spurring entreprenurial opportunities is the solution.

“The agricultural industry was hit by all these forces at the same time, so the question is, how do you help the agriculture and tourism industries they depend on?” she says.

In effect, Pasona’s green office is a commercial for regional development, turning normally staid downtown commercial space as a promotional tool. The rice strains planted in the lobby all come from areas hit hard by the 2011 tsunami. The company also supports a farm on Awaji Island, in south-central Hyogo Prefecture, that helps train future farmers and promote local agriculture (products such as dressings and sauces are sold in the company’s lobby).

Long-term, the company plans to continue supporting and promoting small-scale, regional farms and companies, and offer its expertise on urban farming to interested companies or architects. With a renewed focus on corporate social responsibility and healthier workspaces, Pasona fields inquiries from around the world.

“This is something that can really take off and provide a lot of benefits,” says Yoneyama. “We want to look outward.”

Container Farms Add Local Flavor To Fresh Fruit Production

Container Farms Add Local Flavor To Fresh Fruit Production

Stu Robarts

November 24th, 2016

Agricool focuses on growing fruit in its shipping container farms, rather than leafy greens(Credit: Tony Trichanh)

French startup Agricool believes the fruit flown around the world and stacked onto supermarkets shelves ain't what it used to be, so it has hatched a plan to recapture the authentic flavors of yesterday's fresh produce. The company has just raised €4 million (US$4.2 million) in funding to develop specialized shipping containers that can be used to grow full-flavored fruit a little closer to home.

The firm's fresh fruit approach sets it apart from similar shipping container farm outfits like Cropbox and Freight Farms, which typically focus on leafy greens. The first fruit that Agricool is focusing on is the strawberry, a produce it says is the poster-boy for tasteless supermarket fruit.

Agricool kits out its shipping containers as hydroponic growing units, designed to optimize growing conditions like nutrient levels, irrigation, LED lighting and CO2. The air drawn in from outside is filtered in an effort to minimize the possibility of pollution entering the containers. 

"We have 30 engineers in house, working all day to improve the technology," company co-founder Guillaume Fourdinier explains to New Atlas. "If you don't do that, you are only able to grow leafy greens. Our mission is to bring back taste in our fruits and vegetables, and we don't feel that it has been lost for leafy greens."

Vertical grow-walls, rather than stacked trays, are used as this is said to make it possible to grow more per square meter, with each container able to house more than 4,000 strawberry plants. Agricool says each container can produce 120 times more than would be the case on the same area of a field. The crops produced are also claimed to be more vitamin-rich, free of harmful chemicals and pesticides and conveniently, don't need washing before they're eaten.

The closed loop system employed for water and nutrients uses 90 percent less water than would be required for conventional cultivation and only electricity from renewable sources is used. What's more, the basic tending of the containers can be done by people with no experience in farming, while Agricool actually monitors the health of the crop and controls water and nutrient feeds remotely.

Only 30 sq m (323 sq ft), or the area of two car parking spaces, is required for each container. It is hoped that this distributed mode of growing can ultimately serve whole urban areas, while also helping to cut transportation time, costs and emissions.

Agricool was founded last year by Fourdinier and his colleague Gonzague Gru, both children of farming parents, because they couldn't find high-quality fruit and vegetables in cities. This, they say, is because crops are harvested too soon so that they don't spoil during transport and because they're chosen for their ability to travel, rather than for taste.

The firm's first prototype was installed in Bercy, in the 12th arrondissement of Paris, France, late last year and there are now three prototypes in operation. It has spent this year conducting research and development, and the new funding will be used to speed up Agricool's growth, with the goal for next year to roll-out 75 containers, distribute 91 tons of strawberries and begin work on two new types of crop.

Source: Agricool

Why Vertical Farming Is More Than Just Growing Indoors

CitiesNews

Why Vertical Farming Is More Than Just Growing Indoors

Nicolette Maio · November 22, 2016

As part of Circulate’s collaboration with the Disruptive Innovation Festival, we’re featuring insight from some of this year’s Open Mic contributors in advance of their performance at the DIF. Find out more at thinkdif.co, and don’t forget to catch up on this session with a panel of vertical farming experts. 

Feeding urban populations is especially challenging in a linear system. We need to grow food as close as we can to the people who need it. Instead of transporting foods from every corner of the earth, we need to grow food directly in the cities and create more local economies based on necessity. Where we do that can vary: from a vacant lot, a rooftop, in a greenhouse, or even inside of a building.

Farming indoors has its fans and its critics, but it becomes a practicality as the populations of cities increases. Many people are thinking into the future for what food production hubs should look like for sustainable cities of the future.

Could we be on the verge of creating hybrid forms of food production? Can the indoor farmer and the bio-nutrient farmer find common ground? Will Allen is a key figure in knowing how to farm for the future. His revolutionary ways as an urban grower demonstrate the brilliance of a closed-loop system. His organisation, Growing Power, based out of Milwaukee, WI, has implemented greenhouses with stacked functions. The bottom level is an aquaponics system, which feeds the fish poop to the plants’ roots, then circulates back to the fish tank as clean water. It is not just about growing indoors, it is about creating a closed loop that reuses and eliminates waste.

Let’s think bigger. It’s also about incorporating alternative energy instead of fossil fuels wherever possible into the indoor growing system. In Suwan, South Korea there is a three-story 450 metre squared building that the Rural Development Agency is utilising for vertical farming. They have sourced nearly 50% of their heating, cooling and artificial lighting requirements to renewable resources, such as geothermal and solar power. More experimental models like this one are urgently needed.

Permaculture enthusiasts would say, “the problem is the solution.” Where does the potential for growing indoors lie? Could empty warehouses and abandoned buildings be repurposed as mushroom farms? Can sustainable energy be a bigger part of the closed loop? As crazy as it may sound, can harvesting insects provide a new source of protein and reduce the demand for factory-farmed meat? How we grow, what we grow, and where we grow will be shaped by the innovators of today.

Visit thinkdif.co to find out more about the Disruptive Innovation Festival. Don’t forget to create My DIF account to build your own schedule, get session recommendations based on your interests, and 30 days of bonus catch up time after the DIF has ended.

Agricool Harvests $4.3 Million To Grow Fruits And Vegetables In Containers

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Agricool Harvests $4.3 Million To Grow Fruits And Vegetables In Containers

Posted Nov 22, 2016 by Romain Dillet (@romaindillet)

French startup Agricool has raised $4.3 million (€4 million) from newly launched VC firm Daphni as well as Parrot founder Henri Seydoux and Captain Train (acquired by Trainline) co-founder Jean-Daniel Guyot. Agricool’s product is quite unusual as the company wants to grow strawberries and later other fruits and vegetables inside shipping containers.

With many people moving to mega-cities, it has become increasingly difficult to provide good food to people living in these cities. In just a few decades, there will be many, many cities with tens of millions of people living there. It’s a logistical and environmental challenge.

That’s probably one of the reasons why processed foods have taken off. It’s so much easier to ship across great distances instead of relying on perishable goods.

And yet, many cooks are trying to reverse this trend, looking for fresh and local ingredients for their recipes. It’s a good trend, but it also means that you’re limiting your options, especially in places with a hostile weather.

Why do we keep seeing the same bright red tomatoes that never go bad and don’t taste like anything? Intensive farming has been great to fight hunger issues, but it’s time to look further — in this case, it means going back to what makes food tastes great in the first place.

Agricool is trying to do something about this and started with strawberries. Instead of relying on trucks filled with strawberries coming from Turkey, Germany, Spain or Italy, the startup tried to produce strawberries right where they were, in Paris.

If you can control the light, the water, the substrate and other factors, the startup noticed that you can grow strawberries anywhere — including in a shipping container.

Then, it’s a matter of optimizing all these factors so you can produce more strawberries from a single container, or cooltainer as the company calls them. The company doesn’t want to use any pesticide and my guess is that it’s going to take a while to make these strawberries as cheap as existing strawberries.

The company is now renting a big warehouse to fill with containers. There’s probably a fair share of A/B testing going on, but with fruits and not website designs. With today’s funding round, Agricool wants to create 75 containers in 2017 and install them around Paris — the goal is to produce 91 tons of strawberries.

The startup also wants to test other crops soon. Maybe some vegetables and fruits will be harder than others when it comes to growing them in a container. It’s going to be a long, capital-intensive venture to iterate on those containers. But it’s an interesting take on the food industry.

Vertical Farming: The Future of Agriculture?

Can This Modern Cultivation Practice Of Growing Plants In A Closed Environment Meet Our Food Demands In A More Sustainable Way?

For those of you unaware of the quiet revolution going on in agriculture, vertical farming is shaping the future of food.

World population is expected to reach a colossal 11 billion by 2100 (though it varies depending on whose model you use). As a result, many have begun to askhow are we going to feed even more hungry mouths? The answer, at least in part, comes in the form of vertical farming, a new, revolutionary, and sustainable way to grow our food that can also help to reduce the carbon footprint of food production.

Vertical farming involves growing plants in stacks of hydroponic towers, lit with LED lamps, in a strictly controlled environment. The towers of crops are fed with water laced with nutrients, the strict control of the environment allows for optimum yield from the crops every time. Global Vertical Farming market was worth 600 million USD in 2014.

Vertical farming has numerous advantages over the practices of regular farming. As well as producing a consistent and high yield crop 365 days a year, the crop can be grown in a compact and protected environment — one that is not affected by weather patterns or climate change. All with the added bonus of zero waste (through water recycling) and zero net energy use. All the water used in the hydroponic stacks is recycled and reused — urban waste water can even be recycled for use in vertical farms.

Green Sense Farms in Portage, Indiana, is in the process of building a network of indoor vertical farms across the globe. Their goal is to not only reduce the carbon footprint and environmental consequences associated with traditional farming, but to provideconsumers with locally produced, fresh, leafy greens, to try to foster healthier and more environmentally friend communities. Green Sense Farms is using LEDs built by Dutch tech giants Philips to cut power costs through cheaper LED light, as well as tweaking light wavelengths to try to grow the perfect crop. The Economist praised their farms for the innovative work that they are doing to provide new ways to better feed the planet:

“The crops grow faster, too. Philips reckons that using LED lights in this sort of controlled, indoor environment could cut growing cycles by up to half compared with traditional farming. That could help meet demand for what was once impossible: fresh, locally grown produce, all year round.”

The versatility of location is the greatest strength of vertical farming, especially in the fight against climate change. The farms can be located at, or nearby to, distribution centres, supermarkets, or anywhere that sells or serves large volumes of food, and thus reduce the carbon footprint associated with transporting food from farms to tables – it is the antithesis of globalization.

One of the most globally renowned vertical farming start-ups is Urban Crops, whose headquarters are located in Waregem, Belgium, (though they have recently launched a US division in Miami that will be responsible for the entire American continent, North and South). They don’t see vertical farming as a radical departure from traditional farming, rather they see it as a more refined and efficient evolution of farming. Urban Crops grow their produce under a purple light delivered by red and blue LED lamps that create the perfect conditions for growth; the plants are fed via a hydroponic system of water infused with special minerals and nutrients. Their set-up can turn 50 square meters into 500 square meters of usable farm space and their 30 square meter space produces 220 lettuce plants every day with only five percent of the water that would be needed in traditional farming.

Despite all of these perceived benefits, there have been some who have rejected the idea of vertical farming as a realistic way forward for humanity. TreeHugger has had trouble digesting the concept of vertical farming for a number of years, supporting the belief held by Stan Cox of Alternet that:

“Although the concept [of vertical farming] has provided opportunities for architecture students and others to create innovative, sometimes beautiful building designs, it holds little practical potential for providing food.”

Cox’s main gripe with vertical farming is with the logic (or lack of it) at the heart of the technology; that using renewable energy to power indoor lighting to grow plants with is nothing but a waste of energy a resources. The transfer of energy from sunlight, to solar arrays, to power lamps that feed plants with light energy, is, in his eyes, nothing but a waste of energy (due to transmission losses) and infrastructure. He argues that it is much better to:

“Let crop plants do what they do best: capture cost-free, emissions-free sunlight for themselves, directly.”

Although much of the loss in terms of infrastructure cost could be accounted for if the farms were powered by solar panels on-site – for example by Elon Musk’s solar roof.

Cox also forwards the idea that traditional farming is still viable, that they are simply ploughing the wrong land as it’s become more economically viable to ship produce long distance. The solution is to grow more crops locally, rather than relying on huge sprawling farms and cattle ranches that are not sustainable. Since world hunger is ultimately a result of poor distribution, not a lack of resources, the sensible option seems to be to localize food production as much as possible — whether through vertical farming or more traditional farming techniques.

In contrast to these two polarized opinions Paul Mahon, from Ontario Farmer Publications, doesn’t believe that vertical farming in its more extreme form is how farming is going to develop (at least not in the immediate future).

“Horizontal Farming [a self-coined term] is moving towards that sort of idea, farmers are using hydroponics to ensure a constant supply of water to the roots and crops. GPS and modern technology is allowing farmers to be much more precise in their measurements and their use of land. They are moving to smaller and smaller plots of land for the same yield, and are now able to match nutrients with soil types and capability.”

So the future of farming could marry traditional techniques with some of the small space advancements made with vertical farming to produce higher yields from smaller plots of land. This marriage of techniques has been adopted by Green Living Technologies in their Mobile Edible Wall Unit, which allows users to grow produce outside on an A-Frame mounted flowerbeds to allow for more economic use of space. This could be viewed as a validation of Stan Cox’s opinion that traditional farming isn’t as flawed as many are suggesting.

However, these solutions do not deal with the massive carbon footprint associated with traditional farming, or have the advantages of being immune to climate change and weather conditions in the way that vertical farming is. Although Polyculture farming has offered a way to reduce the carbon footprint of horizontal farming, in a way that is easy for everyone to adopt, it still requires large areas to grow substantial quantities of food. This is where vertical farming truly outstrips more traditional techniques  —in urban and more highly populated areas where space is a valuable resource.

With plans in Sweden to build a 16 story “plantscraper” in the works, and MIT working with Target to produce their own greens in-store using vertical farming techniques, there doesn’t seem to be any dispute that vertical farming is going to play a role in the future of agriculture. We will just have to wait to see the extent to which it will dominate agriculture in the future. In the meantime, there are numerous ways that we as individuals can reduce the carbon footprint of agriculture. For example, instead of planting lawns you could grow your own produce, or try to incorporate polyculture farming into your garden. We all need to be responsible for the future of our food, rather than consider it to be someone else’s job.

Josh Hamilton is an aspiring journalist from Belfast, Northern Ireland, living in London, Ontario. Lover of music, politics, tech, and life.

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Nowhere To Go But Up: Green Wolf Vertical Farm Supplies Local Restaurant

Nowhere to go but up: Green Wolf Vertical Farm supplies local restaurants

Posted: November 19, 2016 - 7:18pm.

By Ben Egel

ben.egel@amarillo.com

Marre Seleska’s house looks unimposing. Well-kept, sure, with a spacious kitchen and a room for her father Gene to smoke cigars in, but off the main road in the sleepy Carson County town of Panhandle.

In a repurposed sunroom near the back of the house, imposing burlap pillars filled with lettuce, kale and bok choy stretch from floor to ceiling, roots plunging downward into a growing medium made from recycled plastic bottles. This is where Green Wolf Vertical Farm holds court, and the luscious towers truly support the “vertical” aspect of Seleska’s brainchild.

The real prize, though, is the farm’s microgreens — shallow, long flats of dill and chervil, garden cress and amaranth growing in compressed plugs of peet, vermiculite and coco coir. In one to five weeks, they’ll dot plates at Imperial Taproom and Yellow City Street Food.

Most commercial microgreens are delivered to restaurants pre-cut, meaning they go bad within a few days. Seleska delivers her plants to Yellow City Street Food and Imperial Taproom every week for $25 per flat.

Long shelf lives aren’t the only thing that makes Green Wolf’s microgreens stand out. Yellow City Street Food co-owner Scott Buchanan orders two flats per week because of a substantial taste difference between Seleska and her competitors.

“You can get some from Ben E. Keith or whatever that are already clipped and they’re already kind of devoid of a lot of flavor, but we get fresh racks from her that are growing,” Buchanan said. “The flavor’s insane — it’s not novelty at all.”

Buchanan and his wife Rin met Seleska at the Canyon Farmer’s Market earlier this year, and started using her greens a couple weeks later. Yellow City Street Food tops its dishes with a citrus blend, spicy blend or wasabi arugula.

“They’re pretty, but they also pack a lot of flavor. Hers do especially,” Scott Buchanan said.

“Chefs are artists. They’re food artists, and they like color and flavor,” Seleska said.

Seleska, 59, tried growing leafy greens in a field after moving up from the metroplex three years ago, but found the packed clay left from the Panhandle’s dried-up playa lakes too tough to give life. Vertical growth requires less property and lets Seleska use materials besides the natural soil.

Greens aren’t the only “micro” aspect of Seleska’s production. That converted sunroom is packed full of produce, and leaves little wiggle room for large-scale projects.

Eager to expand past her current space limitations, Seleska began building a 20’x40’ greenhouse in September. Now completed, the first crops will be harvested around Christmas.

Seleska has grown about 15 different crops in her current towers, she said. That number figures to multiply once 70 greenhouse towers are filled, with eggplants, heirloom tomatoes, and purple bell peppers all already planned once winter passes.

Towers are flushed with nutrified water pumped from a 300-gallon reservoir in the back of the greenhouse. A return channel collects any water not soaked up by thirsty plants, and moves the liquid back to a sump tank and back into the nutrient reservoir through PVC piping.

The hydroponic system uses about 90 percent less water than a dirt farm, Seleska said.

Her sister, Robyn Clark, drives from Claude to help out at Green Wolf once per week, “or whenever my big sister bullies me into it.”

The sisters’ maternal grandmother, Winnie Slaton, instilled in them a love of cooking and gardening when they were young, a love which seems to have only grown stronger over the years. On the day Robyn spoke to the Globe-News, Marre had called her at 5:00 a.m., eager to ask her sister’s opinion on a potential hybrid microgreen.

“I call her my mad scientist. She’ll take all these different seeds and see what they taste like together,” Clark said.

Developments In Fresh Produce

 Developments In Fresh Produce

The first in-store Farming unit in the Netherlands has opened it's doors three weeks ago at the renovated AH XL store in Purmerend. The XL store is completely refurbished and implemented some new innovative concepts. The very first "self service herb garden" where the customer can harvest their herb of choice by using the pair of scissors provided at every herb garden module and a bag to put their freshly cut herbs in. There are 13 herbs to choose from. Customers will only take as much as they need so this will eliminate unnecessary food wastage. All herbs have one price so customers can mix the herbs to their liking. 

The herb garden is divided into two sections "one more week" and "ready to cut". The herbs arrive as semi finished products and grow their last week with the help of Led grow lights. This way the customer can see the growth with their own eyes. The low maintenance watering system makes sure all the herbs receive the right dosage of water at all times.

We keep getting positive feedback from our customers and so far our concept of the "self service herb garden" has been shared more than 600 times world wide! Freshness adds to any food experience and you can't get any fresher than this!

Farm Fresh: A St. Pete City Farm Uses Technology To Grow Its Local Bounty

Farm Fresh: A St. Pete City Farm Uses Technology To Grow Its Local Bounty 

High-tech agriculture has blossomed in the city at Grand Central District's Brick Street Farms.

Meaghan Habuda

Nov 18, 2016 1 PM

Ever seen a farm with high-tech software or LED lighting? If not, pay a visit to Brick Street Farms.

The indoor hydroponic farm, owned by wife-and-husband duo Shannon O'Malley and Bradley Doyle, doesn't look like much from the outside. But spread out over green upcycled freight containers, planted inside a wooden fence that surrounds the former site of an abandoned junkyard at 2001 Second Ave. S., Brick Street has spent close to a year quietly blossoming in St. Petersburg.

What makes up this city farm's local, vertically grown bounty? Herbs and leafy greens.

"We started harvesting about two or three weeks ago," says O'Malley, who works for a St. Pete-based IT company, as does her husband. "We're almost at full scale right now, so it's been kind of a slow burn getting everything ready."

It's taken a significant amount of work to turn their less-than-half-acre Grand Central District property — which was "very dilapidated" and hadn't had utilities in 20 to 30 years — into an urban farm. They've cleaned up old car parts that were left behind, added electric and water, and even had environmental testing done on the site to ensure it's safe.

For the couple, who’ve put their enthusiasm for at-home hydroponics, which began as a hobby, into producing organic fields of green at Brick Street, that part's been exciting.

"That's one of the coolest things about the project, on top of the farms and obviously indoor hydroponics, being able to [clean up] a piece of property that's been kind of an eyesore in St. Pete for quite a long time," Doyle says.

A Pennsylvania native and a homegrown Floridian respectively, O'Malley and Doyle met five years ago, but didn't get together until after a happenstance encounter: On Christmas Day, as she headed out for a jog on Bayshore Boulevard, he was ending his own. Doyle remembered who she was and stopped her, asking, "What are you doing here?"

"I'm back in town," said O'Malley, who had moved away for a bit.

He asked her out, they met up for a drink later that night and that was that. The couple’s lived in St. Pete for three years now.

The farm has been quietly blossoming in the Grand Central District for nearly a year.

According to O'Malley, the urban agriculture movement, or agritechture, is huge in densely populated northern and western U.S. cities, along with European and Asian countries. She points to locales like Brooklyn, Boston and Los Angeles as having great examples of urban farming. But for some reason, it hasn't really taken off in the South. The then-aspiring entrepreneurs asked themselves, “Why can’t we do that in St. Pete?”

The owners say Brick Street is the only commercial agriculture farm with indoor hydroponics in Tampa Bay, and that they're the state's lone pair of vertical hydroponic farmers growing indoors. Yes, there are hydroponic farmers who do their thing outside or in greenhouses, but those operations present environmental challenges that they don't have to deal with.

For starters, they aren't confined by farming seasons. Brick Street is able to produce cold-loving greens, including heirloom lettuces, kales, collard greens and herbs, that are typically difficult to grow in Florida's almost-year-round summer.

"You know our summer is about nine months long," Doyle says with a laugh.

Operating an indoor hydroponic farm also allows them to offer more stable, consistent pricing on their food. No one's worrying about a freeze, or a random heat spike during the middle of "winter." Unlike the world of traditional farming, O'Malley says they know what their costs are and what kind of volume they're able to deliver.

An additional benefit of having this kind of controlled, specialized environment is accelerated growth; the farm's able to shorten the growing cycle by a few weeks and go from seed to harvest in six to eight weeks. The climates of Farm 1 (where the lettuces are), Farm 2 (empty at the moment, but it'll have an extensive selection of microgreens and edible flowers, depending on the reception they get from St. Pete), and Farm 3 (home to kales, collards and basil) are kept at temperatures ideal for what's growing inside. They also don't need fuel or big machines; the carbon-neutral Brick Street ups its sustainable efforts by being electric and using a small propane tank.

But zero runoff is one of the biggest advantages.

"We talk about, especially in Florida and Florida farming, the fertilizer that's used and the runoff when it rains. It runs right into our water systems, the waters that we count on for tourism and those types of things, and we have none of that here," Doyle says. "All of our water is a closed-loop system. All of the water is completely recycled and reused through filtration systems inside. When we feed our plants with the water and with our nutrients, nothing leaves the farm. Everything stays inside, so you don't have any of that runoff."

The life cycle here begins with an organic, non-G.M.O. seed, pelleted or non-pelleted.Todd Bates

Though the U.S. Department of Agriculture is still determining whether or not hydroponic farms can be certified organic, Brick Street puts organic, non-G.M.O. seeds and materials to use while foregoing herbicides and pesticides, which O'Malley says helps create a sterile environment.

At 40 feet long, the farm's three insulated transatlantic freight containers have traveled across the globe and arrived in St. Pete on a flatbed before being lowered to the ground with a crane. They house different sets of greens, yet each can grow at least an acre's worth of food, which equals 4,000 to 5,000 or so plants.

"They are easily portable if we wanted to move them around, which is a great option. We can also stack them. So barring city code, we could actually go three high," O'Malley says.

Expansion is definitely in the plan. But first, let's go inside a farm.

Everything starts as a pelleted or non-pelleted seed. The seedlings, nestled in plugs made of peat moss, begin in a lower tray under the workstation (the only area of the container that uses white light), where they germinate for around a week. Once they develop what are called "true leaves," they graduate to seedling trays.

The farm uses high-efficiency LED growing lights — red and blue only. As Doyle explains, plants don't use the sun's white light. Brick Street's greens have an unexciting brown color until they're pulled away from the LEDs. That's when they really stand out, in shades that range from eggplant to chartreuse. (Oh, and another thing: that loud hum heard in every container comes from high-powered vortex fans that create outdoor-like "wind.")

Seedlings are fed different levels of nutrients and pH, through an all-natural nutrient delivery system (or harvest system), than their adult counterparts hanging in vertical grow towers. As recycled city water, which undergoes reverse osmosis and "pH down" processes to bring its pH levels to neutral (this prevents a bitter taste), pumps through the system, sensors detect the level of nutrients and pH that the plants need, auto-dosing each to keep them at certain settings.

When you hear the pumps turn on, it's feeding time.

Another part of the plants' life cycle is spending six hours per day in the dark, giving them time to rest, regenerate and absorb nutrients. Greens gotta sleep, too, ya know.

"Because we can make night day and day night, we're running their daytime during the night because electricity is cheaper, and it's more energy efficient," Doyle says. "That's [another] reason we can go from seed to harvest in about six or seven weeks instead of about eight or nine. In Florida, or anywhere in the States for that matter, you only get about, maximum, 12 hours of sunlight a day. We get 18."

They're ready to be transplanted into a tower when their roots have "a nice curlicue at the bottom" and two sets of true leaves. If a crop's head is small, like that of Breen mini romaine, the farm can fit 16 plants on a tower; with fuller heads, a tower can comfortably grow six.

In Farm 1, which has a sweet scent and can be as cold as 60 degrees, there's Red Cross Butterhead, Rex lettuce (an ideal hydroponic similar to butterhead), heirloom Vulcan lettuce (for all you Star Trek fans) and arugula, to name a few. Greens that like it about 3 to 6 degrees warmer — think green and purple kales and basils, or long-and-spiny Toscano Italian kale (meant to be treated like spinach in the kitchen) — are born in the acidic-smelling Farm 3, just two containers down. These plants take in around 50 percent more nutrients than the lettuces.

Alongside some of the lesser-known varieties, the farm also creates its own spring mixes, alternatives to a standard bag of Costco or Publix spring mix. Doyle and O'Malley don't shy away from experimentation, either. They're playing with a multicolor ice lettuce appropriately dubbed "ice plant" because it always looks wet, and like it's donning little crystals.

The lineup of what’s growing will always spotlight basics, romaines and collards among them, with some unconventional finds rotated through to switch it up. Harvest can take place three to four times a week.

“We harvest on demand. It’s one of the benefits of being so local,” O’Malley says. “But most produce, especially greens that we have in Florida, are brought in from the west coast and southern California, so by the time it reaches us, it’s already seven to 10 days old. We’re harvesting within hours of delivery or pickup.”

Restaurants and chefs are their main distribution channels. Love Food Central is now working with Brick Street, and the owners hope to keep ‘em coming. They’ve reached out to locals such as Ciccio Restaurant Group, the cafe at Rollin’ Oats and Urban Restaurants Group. O’Malley says the Urbans have started expanding into bowls and salads, and that they’re interested in the collards, which have been in high demand. The Ciccio crew dug the kales and lettuces, too, though nothing has been finalized.

On its website, the farm’s gearing up to spotlight bags of choose-your-own greens — plus small (six heads) and large (between 12 and 15 heads) bags filled with what will essentially be a farmer’s choice mix — for those who want to place online orders. Open farm hours are coming to accommodate pick-up orders and educational tours for small groups three days a week. And the couple also want to have a presence at more local markets; Brick Street will make its debut to St. Pete Beach’s Corey Avenue Sunday Market on Nov. 20.

Although the technology allows them to monitor the farm remotely via an app that controls the lights, temperature, humidity and nutrients (just like the touch-screen Agrotech interface, or the “brain of the system,” does inside the containers), their goal is to be on-site full time.

And about those expansion plans: O’Malley and Doyle aim to dedicate half the property to their containers, which they’ll happily stack if necessary. The idea is to eventually go from vertical to horizontal growing, adding produce such as tomatoes, cucumbers and peppers to the product line. Ultimately looking to grow into their new home, they’re also working with an architect to develop a neighborhood event space, for gatherings with area chefs and city farm dinners featuring their food, on the other half.

Brick Street wants to bring the local food movement — a la Brooklyn and the rest — firmly to St. Pete. With a booming restaurant scene, tourist season picking up and a community that’s no stranger to supporting local, O’Malley says she thinks the city’s ready for it.

“I’ve noticed all generations are interested in it. It’s not just the millennials. It’s not just the 30-somethings. Folks really are looking to get away from the traditional model,” she says. “And it’s funny, knowing where your food comes from is not this radical idea. It’s just we’ve gotten so far away from it. People aren’t used to being able to see it and touch it.”

Now they can.

“For all these restaurants up and down Central Avenue and into downtown,” Doyle says, “it’s not any more local than literally less than a mile away.”

Having your own urban farm ain’t easy. Here are a couple things the Brick Street Farms founders learned along the way.

More seeds the better? Eh, not exactly

Filling a peat moss pod, where each seed starts, with multiple seeds sounds like a lucrative idea, but it’s not worth it.

“People think because you have these little plants you can put a whole bunch in and you can get a higher production and get more money. Well, that’s not true,” O’Malley says. “We even found [that] out with the seedlings, so it really is only one seed per plug. If you put in more than one, what happens is they compete for the nutrients, they compete for the light, and they actually end up dwarfing. They won’t grow at all, or maybe one will, but it’ll be tall and spiny.”

Go get yourself a wicking strip

Wicking strips go hand in hand with the vertical grow towers used at Brick Street. Found inside each tower, the strips help water find the path of least resistance, and they’re also what each plant’s root system follows (see picture above). Though the strips are a simple — and cheap — component of the operation, they’re important.

“All it does is control the water flow and take the water directly to the seedling roots. Otherwise, water runs wherever it wants to go,” Doyle says. “When we were growing in our backyard before we started growing commercial, we started growing in the towers. We forgot to put the wicking strips in, and we couldn’t figure out why everything kept dying. Because [the plants weren’t] getting any water, the water went wherever it wanted to go

The Vinegar Factory To Close Its Doors To Retail

Real Estate NEWS › REAL ESTATE

November 18, 2016 1:30 p.m. Updated 11/18/2016

The Vinegar Factory To Close Its Doors To Retail

Eli Zabar will convert brunch spot to food production and groceries-on-demand

After a renovation, the Vinegar Factory will reopen as a commissary kitchen to stock Zabar's other ventures.

The easternmost outpost of Eli Zabar’s uptown foodie empire will shut down as a retailer on Nov. 23. Behind the change is a need to accommodate increased demand for home grocery delivery as well as prepared foods.

After a renovation, the Vinegar Factory, which has served Yorkville as a grocer, a brunch spot and an event space since 1993, will reopen as a commissary kitchen to stock Zabar’s other ventures. (Thanksgiving catering won’t be affected, and the site will still have an event space.) Vinegar Factory employees will find jobs at the other branches.

Zabar was looking at necessary repairs at the former mustard and vinegar factory, which was built in the 1890s.He considered how the space could best serve an operation that now includes a flagship market, four Eli’s Essentials prepared-foods stores—one of which morphs into a wine bar at night—a wine store, the café and shop E.A.T., the restaurant Eli’s Table, grocery delivery, catering, gift baskets, a kosher bakery, a wholesale bread business and more than 700 employees.

“All these things take space,” he said. “We’d have to move out to the boroughs and we’re not going to do that.”

Zabar’s longevity in the neighborhood—he opened his first venture, E.A.T., more than 40 years ago—made it possible for him to buy a collection of properties, including the former vinegar factory, that he is now able to modify to suit the needs of a changing business.
“By owning the site, I can do what I want there,” he said, adding area rents are “beyond what food operations can pay.”

The increased production space will allow him to bolster the offerings and staff at the flagship Eli’s Market at East 80th Street and Third Avenue, and to satisfy the growing demand for grocery delivery. He sees both retail and delivery as quintessential businesses at a time when people are too busy to shop during the week.

Zabar also believes that in both of those ventures his markets have an advantage over the larger grocery chains. “We’re not anonymous,” he explained. “There’s a sense of trust.” To use the home shopping service, “you call on the phone and speak to Milton,” he said. Home shopping has been growing 10% to 20% each year, and a large portion of the Vinegar Factory’s customers already use home shopping exclusively, he said.

By revenue, retail is the largest part of Zabar’s business. Increasing production space will allow him to open more locations, he said.

“Now when sites are brought to my attention, I don’t have to say, ‘I wish I could consider that, but I can’t,’ ” he said. He thinks the area below East 76th Street is still underserved, but he draws the line at expanding his business to the foodie haven of Brooklyn. “It’s too far from my production facility to make it fresh and deliver it that day,” he said.

The Vinegar Factory is one of four sites Zabar owns on the block of East 91st Street between First and York Avenues. That’s where bakers turn out baguettes and croissants, decorated cookies, rugelach, and babka. Up on the second floor of what’s now the Vinegar Factory, big pots simmer stock and soup and a designated fryer makes potato chips sold at Eli’s Essentials and Eli’s Table. On top of two of the buildings are 22,000 square feet of greenhouse space, where Zabar has been experimenting with hydroponic tomatoes, vertically grown strawberries and greens since 1995.

Zabar has enlisted an architect to renovate the Vinegar Factory, but the exact plans are still in flux. He intends to keep the factory charm intact but acknowledges “there will be disappointed customers.”

Correction: Soups are made on the second floor of the Vinegar Factory building. One Eli's Essentials location becomes a wine bar after hours. These facts were misstated in an earlier version of this story, published online Nov. 18, 2016.

Live Recap from the Chicago Summit

Live Recap from the Chicago Summit

Follow along at our Chicago Summit with a live recap of highlights from each panel discussion.

We are live today from the Gleacher Center at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, with the Chicago Council on Global Affairs for the 1st annual Chicago Food Tank Summit. This is the third in a series of three Summits in 2016 which are bringing together some of the world’s most impactful food system leaders. Click Here to watch the Live Stream, brought to you by Organic Valley.

9:00 am:

An exciting day has begun. Stacey Kole started our morning with an enthusiastic introduction to the Food Tank Summit. The University of Chicago Booth School of Business is excited to co-host and partner with so many leading experts and institutions during this summit.  Kole is excited about all the great speakers and panelists, such David MacLennan, Chairman and CEO of Cargill, who work hard to find innovations to feed the world. As Kole said, it is a great time to convene a group like this so we can “shake our communities and help disseminate knowledge”. 

9:05 am: 

Alesha Black, Director of the Global Food and Agriculture Program at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs shared some of the goals and work of the CCGA. By 2050 we will have at least 9 billion people, with 2 billion living in cities. We need to transform our food system to address these challenges. As Black wrapped up her introduction by encouraging us to remember how great it is that we have “likeminded people with lots of great ideas coming together today”. These conversations will helps us find the best ways to transform our food system. 

9:10 am: 

Danielle Nierenberg, President of Food Tank has heartily welcomed both the live and online audience. She is excited to see the summit take place in Chicago, the city where the Food Tank was born.  “This is one of the greatest food cities in the world” she said, a city that is "cultivating the next generation of entrepreneurs that are making food more affordable and accessible". She also warmly welcomed all students who will inherit our “problems but also enormous opportunity”. She eagerly reminded the audience of how important it is to convene all many “different ingredients’ or as she put it, “different tastes and opinions will help create dialogue and conversation…let’s stop preaching to the choir”. Five topics will be covered during the conversations at the Food Tank Summit today, from future farming, to unusual (sometimes uncomfortable) alliances and collaborations, transparency to the future of food. We do not have time to waste. We need to start now. 

9:20 am: 

Kevin Cleary, CEO of Clif Bar & Company, gave a sincere introduction to what marked the beginning of a food journey and interest in a sustainable food system. There is now so much interest and concern and food and a great demand for improved food systems. As a parent, some of these issues are really concerning, such as the amount of pesticides in our food system. It is not an inconsequential amount. Pesticides are not only concerning to consumers but also for the farmers who are constantly exposed to these harmful chemicals and suffer the consequences of such exposure. As CEO of a food company, he feels like he can make a difference, but there is a long way to go. For example, organic farming is still a small percentage of the total, just 1% in the US! Shouldn’t we be able to find organic macadamia nuts? Our supply chain should increase organic options. 

Cleary had three recommendations for improving our food system:

1. Provide farmers transitioning to organic farming longer contracts
2.  Invest in organic research and extension services
3. Create policies that provide financial incentives for sustainable agricultural practices

We need to have a dialogue about these now. “We can do better than less than 1%” – Kevin Cleary

9:30 am:

The first panel of the day, moderated by Roger Thurow, Author, Journalist, and Senior Fellow, Chicago Council on Global Affairs, was a lively discussion about farming the future. The discussion started out by talking about local, Chicago-based transformations and changes in the food system. Harry Rhodes, Executive Director of Growing Home, the first certified organic farm in Chicago discussed farm production and training programs. Growing Home successfully produces30,000 pounds of food on an acre of land. They have trained over 400 people topics ranging from indoor farming to distribution centers, to understanding the food chain. “Food is at the center of building a healthy community” – Harry Rhodes.  Billy Burdett followed-up by talking about the importance of urban agriculture. More and more people have been interested in “hyperlocal food production”.  For example, Mayor Rahm Emanuel has been instrumental in the local food movement, making room for urban farms and community gardens. There has been both growth in number of urban agricultural projects and in the types of projects, such as aquaponics and vertical farming operations, and commercializing of innovative projects. As Burdett put it, “different approaches to sustainable foods are what will help us obtain a more resilient food system”.  Emily Zack, Farm Operations Manager at the Loyola University Retreat and Ecology Campus (LUREC) chimed in toshare some of their experiences with organic farming. Hands-on learning experiences, particularly with women and their children, have been especially rewarding. Simply things, such as teaching women and children to grow pomegranates, have a lasting impact on the food system and on nutrition. 

Thurow then posed a question about the state of family farms and cooperatives. Ben Burkett, President of the National Family Farm Coalition and a fourth generation farmer with a great Mississippi accent, talked about both the many innovations and long-lasting practices that are being used in farming. As Burkett summed it up, “the future looks bright”. 

The conversation then shifted to how we can we breach the gap between producers and consumers. Randy Krotz, CEO of US Farmers and Ranchers Alliance (USFRA), a Cardinals and Blues fan from St. Louis (and a Cubs fan too!), mentioned a few ways their organization tries to breach gaps between farmers and consumers. He optimistically reminded us the food system is not broken, we are on a path of continuous growth and improvement. Innovation in the food industry is largely around food sourcing (organic, GMO, carbon footprints). To build credibility with consumers, farmers need to make sure consumers hear from the producers themselves. Greg Kearns, vice-president of Institutional Partnerships at Heifer International chimed in to then talk about the importance of social capital development and living incomes, two core values of Heifer International. Although some of their efforts are not direct nutrition interventions, there is a lot of potential for improving nutrition outcomes through their agricultural programs. There is also a lot of potential in scaling up programs without breaking budgets. This can be done through improved value chains in which relationships are strengthened, jobs are created, knowledge skills and assets are shared. Similar models are being used in the US too.

Before the Q&A, panelists discussed who should be responsible for nutritious foods. Should the farmers be leaders in creating a more nutritious food system? Is it consumer behaviors and practices that need to change? Krotz began the conversation by reminding us how consumers influence demand. Burkett agreed and reminded us of how “two years ago everybody was on kale”. Burdett talked about this from a city living perspective. He mentioned how a lot is consumer driven demand but at the same time also generations of folks who don’t have a connection to food and where it comes from. As a result, there is less cooking, more pre-packaged foods. He believes we need to pay closer attention to our education efforts.  We need to inform consumers of the importance of fresh, local produce for a healthy life. This will help drive the consumer demand. Rhodes wrapped it up by reminding us to try to predict what is the next thing people will be looking to buy and to educate the consumers about products they have never tried before. 

Q&A

What are farmers thinking about in terms of soil health?

Zack – “soil is alive”, we need to be thinking about this. Amending soil after growth is needed and it isimportant to do it in a sustainable way (e.g. compost)

Krotz- “soil is a farmers life”, no matter how big or small, preserving the soil is key. 

Burkett – you learn early on that you must take care of the soil. 

Rhodes – local sourcing of compost would be ideal

How can restaurateurs build relationships with farmers?

Zack – growing specialty items for restaurants, farmers often seek out restaurants and see what they want to serve and the farmers can grow quality product for them

Burdett – “Green restaurants and caterers” can build interest in the community and help farmers build relationships with restaurants and even innovative relationships such as co-branding with distilleries. Or listen to the comment about processed foods not necessarily being the enemy. 

Krotz - Not all food is local, there are markets that can’t sell all their product locally, should not lose sight of the importance of that larger scale production too.

Sometimes restaurants drive consumer behaviors by showing them something new, demanding new things from local farmers.

Suggestion – do not shun processed foods – food science can be part of the solution!
Recent study on pesticides going up and GMOS not necessarily increasing yield. How do we reduce pesticide use?
Can we incentivize polyculture more (e.g. trees/hedges)?

Krotz - rain is needed for trees. Many parts of the country don’t have enough rain to sustain that. NYT times article was highly discredited – there were increased yields, decreased insecticides. GMO do help address a lot of our main issues. 

Rhodes – transparency is needed, consumers should know if it is GMO, regardless of the literature. 

10:00 am:

The second panel of the day started out with some fun connections between the 2016 elections and the Cubs World Series win. According to word on the street and Ambassador Quinn, there are two things that can bring unlikely alliances together – A Cubs win and the World Food Prize. We all care about the food system, regardless of our sports or political inclinations. Efforts to improve our food system resonate with many sides of the equation. The conversation was focus on how many opportunities, rather than challenges, there are when building alliances. For example, although we face many economic restraints, return on investment is high when it comes to food waste. Also, as Pereira put it, we have the opportunity to look into more ways to keep materials and nutrients flowing within our system. This can be done in large part via improved collaboration between business, non-profits and government. O’Neill followed-up with a great example of how you can find thing in common with others, rather than focusing on differences. As a hunger organization they see a lot of diet related issues among those who suffer from hunger. To address this, they created a model helps collect the type of food these people need, similar to a wedding registry. 

MacLennan introduced some of the hardships when building unlikely alliances.  When building new relationships there are often also contentious conversations. For example, when investing more efforts in reducing global deforestation, there were questions about profit loss. “If focusing on sustainability is more complicated and expensive, that is fine”, said MacLellan, it is part of Cargill’s mission.  “We need a constructive rather that destructive contention to make a difference”. On a similar note, Black mentioned how ending hunger is a US interest. Food security leads to international security. Also, with increasing middle-income families and transitioning food demands globally, the market will grow. 

The conversation was then open up to the audience. Some asked how we reduce food waste by using end products for new products (e.g. coffee). What are some innovative food waste strategies? What can we do with “ugly produce” and unlikely alliances? Vared alluded to the fact that retailers and food service shine a lot of opportunity for decreasing food waste by using the “ugly products” and Pereira reminded us of the importance of technologies such as anaerobic digestion, fuel sources and composting. With opportunities often come challenges. For example, legal issues continue to be a big challenge.  

More from the Q&A:

What are food organizations doing about transparency in these unlikely alliances?

MacLennan – when it comes to transparency about GMOs for example, we have some consumer products, and the new national labeling law will support the importance of knowing where food comes from. 

Does educating women play a role in food security and international security?

“Countries that succeed will be those that use all their human resources” – Ambassador Quinn

How do we tackle food waste with innovative partnerships?

Vared - We need better supply and demand forecasting. This is a key opportunity to reduce food waste. And when there is waste at the farm level, we need to ask how can we capture that food and re-package and re-purpose it so it does not go to waste. 

Ambassador Quinn – Farm to markets roads are key. Gives farmers the certainty they will be able to transport their crop to market and sell. Distribution is so important. 

What aspects can be done on a policy level to create more alliances for fewer pesticides and more organics in our food system?

Black - Private sector has a huge opportunity to get involved- e.g. Aflasafe, made by the private sector, now manufactured locally in Kenya. 

Ambassador Quinn - More money to public research is needed. Funding has been reduced but it is critical to deal with the challenges during the next 30 years. 

Now we are at the table, how do we make sure people at the table can be “trusted” and heard?

Vared – try a data driven approach to bring everybody to the table. Some folks want to focus on prevention and some others on cost-effectiveness. Data centered conversations help stay focused and find a common ground. 

Ambassador Quinn – difficult process but measure successes in small increments. 

Black – speaking in regards to the international stage, civil society organizations provide a voice to those often not heard. 

Do we need legislation or can we depend on good Samaritans for food waste reductions?

Pereira – we need both. Also, making an economic case helps. Food waste is energy and monetary waste. All of us are advocates. 

What would you advice be to president elect to improve our food system?

After some giggles…

Ambassador Quinn – clarity of what agricultural and food system should be aimed at. Borlaug would say ensure 900 million food insecure people be elevated to be food secure. 

Pereira - Need someone “intellectually aware” to advise the president elect on these issues

MacLennan – intelligent policy for agricultural and food trade is necessary

Ambassador Quinn – “Make America healthy again!” 

And that comment wrapped up the conversation with general agreement and laughter!

1:15 pm: Afternoon Keynote: Rick Bayless, Chef and Owner, Frontera 

Bayless, a renowned chef started out the second half of the summit with a little history of he fell in love with Mexico and its culture. In Mexico, where there was great food, there was great local agriculture. He wanted to see that in the US too. While trying to source local strawberries there were some laughs. But they still sourced strawberries from Michigan and were able to make a great assortment of strawberry desserts. This is when local sourcing and sustainable agriculture became a reality for him. And now? He has the Frontera Foundation, a non-profit that gives grants and invests in small farmers around the region to enhance the quality of life of people in the area. He strives on being both sustainable but also transparent regarding food sources. 

1:25 pm: Panel: Transparency in the Food System

Keynote: Juliette Majot, Executive Director, Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP)

Although focusing on the positive and what we are doing right is often preferred, it is equally important to talk about what we are not doing right. As Majot bravely put it: Why aren’t we hearing more about the election results? Why did our presidential candidates avoid talking about agriculture and our food systems? We lack courage to speak about where we find ourselves now. For example, our potential head of EPA saying pesticides are not an issue? Many saying climate change a hoax? Agriculture about to surpass transportation as a major source of pollution, yet very few people talking about this?  To be more direct, “Caution breeds the status quo”, said Majot.  For example, “Sarah Palin should not be the Secretary of the Interior!”. Two weeks ago we would have openly said that. Now we aren’t. Where is our transparency? Where is the transparency in our food system (e.g. clear labels that are accessible to all (i.e. no smartphone needed!)). “Our self-censoring is getting in the way of transparency”. Loud applause and a true wake-up call to us all. This is the time to use our voices.  

2:00 pm:

The third panel of the day was a great example of how the summit is addressing the some real food systems concerns, such as transparency, while also delivering concrete proposals to address some our main food system issues. One major transparency challenge is the unfortunate disconnect between reality and what labels suggest. An example of how labels are misinterpreted is “free range”.  Consumers often think these animals permanently roaming around outside when it instead this may just mean the chickens roam freely for some part of the day. Lehman talked about food labels and how they help us get to know farmers a bit better. She also brought up labor issues, a contentious and complicated topic within the food system. Many farm laborers are what we call “invisible” in the US. Farm laborers work long hours, at low wages and are often directly exposed to dangerous compounds such as pesticides. She encouraged us to consider the other side, to really think across the board when it comes to food production. 

Singh posed a follow-up question to all – is there a lack of transparency in agricultural labor? 

According to Mason, yes, there is a lack of transparency.  We need to de-mystify food. Should we bring back Home Ec? We need to target children earlier in life. If children understand what it takes to grow food, living wages will be more likely to become a reality. Singh then brought in the social media aspect of transparency. In the age of social media is it easier or harder to be transparent? Some expects such as Mason thinks social media not a main source for food info, while others such as Friedrich think social media could, and to some extent does, play an important role in food production transparency. He used “clean meat” as an example.  You may be wondering, what is “clean meat”? It is meat grown in a petri dish, antibiotics resistance gone, microbial issues not a problem, energy and environment (1/3 of inputs, can reduce climate change). Should this be live streamed?! What an exciting world we live in!

The conversation then covered additional challenges and accomplishment in our food system transparency. A major accomplishment according to Biannuci: We are all together here having this conversation! All panelists and the audience agreed this is anotable accomplishment. Friedrich then continued the conversation by mentioning how the public wants to know how food is produced and what is in their food. Twenty years ago, social media did not play a big role but now a lot of the organizations in this space use social media to mobilize the public. Mason talked about how we have made great progress getting the USDA and others on board. We are talking more about disadvantaged farmers and de-mystifying the food system. Lehman mentioned how we have made so much progress with organic food. It shows that transparency takes a lot of work. Organics require farmers to work hard to get certified and the consumer to pay more. There was a demand and it is driving the food system. As Baur nicely put it, we are both creatures of habit (sometimes fear change) and social animals (do what those around us do). Therefore, there is more potential to grow organic! Existing infrastructures can be re-purposed at the grassroots level (e.g. rooftop gardens in the Hamptons). Bahador wrapped up the question by reminding us of the double food pyramid – food on one side, environmental effect on the other. This type of tools helps de-mystifying sustainability. So do food sustainability indices. We can use these tools to measure sustainability goals across multiple countries. Lastly, dissemination of information is also important. Let’s consider partnering with journalists who want to cover these important, yet underreported issues.

Q&A

Why don’t we talk about including “purpose” in the labels?

Friedrich - That would be great but there is also an issue of too much information. 

Baur – What is our relationship to other animals/plants? The more invasive we get, the more concerned we should get.  We tend to be an “arrogant species”. 

Transparency is increasing but environmental impact is not. How can we increase that without shaming?

Friedrich – must compete with the resource intensive foods. We all consider price, taste and convenience. People don’t buy based on sustainability. Would take a lot of education but probably more successful if we find ways to have sustainable products compete and appeal in terms of price, taste and convenience. 

Bianucci – some organizations and entities already focus on educating consumers on supporting farmers who implement sustainable practices. 

Should we focus on nutrition versus yield? Nutrition versus calories? Yield of the seed versus overall farm yield? Many questions to still consider. 

Water glass if half full – this is where the leadership is. What are the returns and where are the opportunities to collectively talk about transparency? Deterrents and opportunities to this 

Baur – changing out of our patterns of behavior is really difficult. But we are so social we can influence each other. For example, kids growing food together, making cooking a pleasurable experience. Once the patterns start shifting into healthier patterns we will see and uptake in the momentum.  Being social is both our obstacle and opportunity. 

Land grabs – lots of advocacy and commitment (e.g. zero deforestation, zero land grabs) also requires a lot of transparency but this is challenging for global supply chains. 

Biannucci – lots of organizations you can support (e.g. ICCR) that support this exact kind of transparency. 

Lehman – it takes a lot of money to monitor these types of changes. We need a way to finance these types of monitoring systems. 

4:15 pm:

No better way to end the day than to talk about the future of food. Where do we stand and what do we need to ensure our food system continues to be improved? Slama started out by mentioning some potential food policy changes we could expect from the incoming US administration.  Some of our food movements and environmental policies could be in jeopardy, therefore we must speak up! Harris agreed there may be policy implications with the new administration but that we have momentum and should not lose sight of that. Borschow agreed demand will not fluctuate much. Technologies, such as hydroponics, are changing the landscape and are often more sustainable (think lettuce!). Have to look into the best investments down the road. Harris spoke about the many advantages of shortening supply chains and strengthening regional supply chains. Supply chain changes can help consumers gain a better understanding of what is on their plate. Coleman mentioned how “even though organic is small in number it is big in thought”. There is a lot of potential in organic food production. Starmer mentioned one of the biggest challenges and opportunities we are already seeing in the food system:  there is a massive exodus of farmers, yet we also have a large interest in agriculture from a completely new group of people. Most importantly, she made us realize the word “rural” was left out of the conversation today. Although urban agriculture technologies are important, agriculture is still fundamentally a rural enterprise and we cannot forget that.  As she wonderfully put it, “We rise and fall with the success of rural America”.

Warshauer then transitioned the conversation to how we can approach, recognize and nurture innovation. Borschow and Slama chimed in to respond to this question . We have such a diverse group from uncommon backgrounds (e.g. doctors, engineers) joining agricultural efforts and bringing in a very different perspective. It is exciting to have fresh eyes and new perspectives on potential solutions to today’s problems.  

Q&A

Seeds are often an issue, particularly amongst farmers in Africa, what can we do help local farmers acquire high quality seed?

Moon – financing is crucial to getting a hold of the right types of inputs. There are some organizations that function as lenders and special financing (low interest) loans. She also encouraged involving third parties in the negations to help with transparency and equality. 

Borschow – coops often more attractive to lenders. 

Harris – aggregation points help but financial literacy needs to be part of it too. 

How can we help farmers in poor countries deal with effects of climate change?

Borschow – their barriers to change are often lower. They can leverage technology, e.g. cell phone use for better information (e.g. climate, temperature, rainfall). Real time information helps them make more informed decisions. 

Slama – incorporating crop diversity and using the right type of agricultural system can help the health of the people and the planet. 

Coleman – soil quality can be a challenge, and one way to regenerate grasslands is with livestock, management practices are also vital. 

How do we concurrently scale-up and support biodiversity?

Harris – we should consider creating a menu around what the farmer is growing.  Part of the future is bringing in imperfect products in larger volumes. 

Coleman – help land grant universities go back to the days when they focused on helping local agriculture. 

Slama – Embracing wholesale where there is opportunity is key (like farmers market). They often run CSAs too.

What are the opinions on approaches to agricultural development in Africa?

Borschow – transportation/distribution is one of the biggest barriers in Africa but that also means there is a lot of potential and room for improvement. We should also the other side of things, developing smallholder farmers, which have huge impacts in feeding small, local communities. Both large scale distribution and smallholder farming are important.  

Moon – on one side we want to leverage the land in Africa, maximize its use, but at the same time we want to be thoughtful and consider livelihoods and incomes, in addition to the land itself. We need to focus on infrastructure such as storage. High yields have shown to be possible but without proper storage farmers often sell immediately at lower prices. 

Harris – We need to get rid of the “companies versus farmers” mentality. There needs to be collaboration. 

How do we educate people from the next generation on agriculture and sustainability?

Harris – cooking demonstrations

Starmer – local sourcing, bringing farmers in to talk to students, also taking students out to farms

Coleman – more exposure to farms 

by Daniel Stein

Daniel Stein is the content manager for Food Tank. Daniel received his B.A in Political Science from Lehigh University, with a focus on non-profit management, community development and participatory democracy. After a decade long journey through the local food system, mostly in New England, and recently in Virginia, Daniel has found a niche in using digital and social media to advance a message of sustainable food.

Some Growers Say Organic Label Will Be Watered Down If It Extends To Hydroponic

Some Growers Say Organic Label Will Be Watered Down If It Extends To Hydroponic

November 16, 20163:31 PM ET

REBECCA SANANES

Baby basil are planted in PVC piping through which nutrient-infused water flows at regular intervals at a hydroponics farm in Nevada. This week, the National Organic Standards Board is set to vote on whether foods grown hydroponically can be sold as "certified organic."

The National Organic Standards Board this week plans to decide if hydroponically grown foods – a water-based model of cultivation – can be sold under the label "certified organic."

But some organic farmers and advocates are saying no – the organic label should be rooted in soil. The decision at stake for the $40 billion-a-year industry will have impacts that reach from small farms to global corporations.

Farmer Eliot Coleman is among those who oppose giving hydroponic produce the organic label. He recently joined other farmers in Thetford, Vermont, at a rally. They were holding signs saying "soil is the soul of organic."

"As far as we're concerned," Coleman says, "if it's not grown in soil with all the wonderful features that soil puts into the plants , there's no way you can call it organic."

Coleman's peers call him an "elder of the organic movement." The calluses on his hands are stained with soil. Coleman thinks that the central principle in growing organic produce is the farmer feeds the soil – not the plant.

Part of the legal qualification of organic farming – and, in Coleman's opinion, the label consumers have come to trust – is about the healthfulness and stewardship of the land.

But Mark Mordasky, who owns Whipple Hollow Hydroponic Farm, says a sustainable model is important to him, too.

"We're in a greenhouse," Mordasky says. "We're not doing anything with the land, good or bad. We're not irresponsibly using land. We're simply choosing not to use land at all. Does that make us not organic?"

His greenhouse looks like it could have been designed by the late Steve Jobs – sleek and clean – with rows upon rows of identical tomato plants stabilized in organic coconut fibers.

These plants are fed liquid fertilizers – which could be made from organic materials. But Vermont's organic certifiers bar Mordasky from labeling his produce as organic.

Mordasky thinks that, on a planet with fewer places to grow food and more mouths to feed, different growth methods should be accepted under the organic label.

"If we had all of our nutrients organic, all of our pesticides and herbicides — whatever we're doing to control disease was organic, and the medium itself that the roots are growing in is also organic, all the inputs are organic. The outcome, it seems to me, would be organic," he argues.

The National Organic Standards Board plans to vote this week. But both hydroponic producers and soil-growing advocates will be parsing lucrative labels into the future.