H-E-B-Owned Central Market Partners With CEA Advisors and Growtainer® For Store Grown Initiative

H-E-B-Owned Central Market Partners With CEA Advisors and Growtainer® For Store Grown Initiative

Friday, May. 19th, 2017

DALLAS, TX – After more than a year of planning between Central Market’s Produce Marketing team and CEA Advisors, the two companies have announced the completing of the first custom built onsite production Growtainer®. Central Market’s new Store Grown Produce program is in effect and turning out fresh leafy greens, herbs, and spices for Central Market customers in Dallas.

Glenn Behrman, Founder, Greentech Agro LLC and CEA Advisors LLC.

“We spent over a year discussing [Central Market’s] concerns and objectives, and when I was sure we were all on the same page, we began the design and manufacturing process” said Glenn Behrman, Founder of Greentech Agro LLC and CEA Advisors LLC.

The state-of-the-art 53-foot custom-built Growtainer provides 480-square-feet of climate-controlled vertical production space designed for maximum efficiency and food safety compliance. The miniature production facility features a dedicated proprietary technology for ebb and flow irrigation and a state-of-the-art water monitoring system, and its Growracks® are equipped with energy efficient LED production modules specifically designed for multilayer cultivation.

Growtainer

According to a press release, Central Market—the Texas-based upscale grocery banner owned by H-E-B—is currently using its Growtainer setup in an effort to “produce the freshest, unique, gourmet leafy greens and herbs for Central Market customers at the retail level.” The release noted that Central Market and CEA Advisors have worked closely with Chris Higgins and Tyler Baras of premier horticultural supplier Hort Americas to train the Central Market associates to operate a food safety compliant, climate controlled, LED-lit, multi-layer vertical indoor production environment.

Central Market storefront

“CEA Advisors is proud to be working with the Produce Team at Central Market, all committed to innovation and focused on food safety, unique products, and the customer experience” said Behrman.

This Texas Supermarket Is Growing Its Own Veggies In A Shipping Container Farm

This Texas Supermarket Is Growing Its Own Veggies In A Shipping Container Farm

 Agriculture, Carousel Showcase, News, Sustainable Food, Urban Farming

by Jasmin Malik Chua

VIEW SLIDESHOW

A Texas chain of supermarkets isn’t just in the business of selling vegetables; it’s growing them, too. Based in Dallas, the H-E-B-owned Central Market has joined forces with Controlled Environment Agriculture Advisors, a self-described “horticulture disrupting” firm, to raise some of its produce in a custom-built onsite shipping container—a first for an American food retailer.

The 53-foot-long “Growtainer” features 480 square feet of climate-controlled and food-compliant vertical space designed to achieve a higher yield in a shorter time than conventional methods, according to GreenTech Agro, the system’s manufacturer.

Related: Belgian supermarket unveils plan to sell food grown on their own rooftop garden

“We spent over a year discussing [Central Market’s] concerns and objectives, and when I was sure we were all on the same page, we began the design and manufacturing process,” said Glenn Behrman, founder of GreenTech Agro and CEA Advisors, in a statement.

The miniature farm comes with a modular, self-contained series of LED-lit aluminum “GrowRacks” that supports any number of cultivation levels.

Related: Pop-up shipping container farm puts a full acre of lettuce in your backyard

It also offers an intelligent water-monitoring system, as well a zoned irrigation system that meets the needs of different varieties of produce at different stages of growth.

The Growtainer is part of Central Market’s efforts to “produce the freshest, unique, gourmet leafy greens and herbs for Central Market customers at the retail level,” the supermarket said. The hyper-local vegetables are marketed under the label “Store-Grown Produce.”

Related: Freight Farms are super efficient hydroponic farms built inside shipping containers

“CEA Advisors is proud to be working with the Produce Team at Central Market, all committed to innovation and focused on food safety, unique products, and the customer experience,” Behrman added.

+ Central Market

+ Growtainer

Sustainable Indoor Farm Aims To Grow The Most Delicious Produce

Sustainable Indoor Farm Aims To Grow The Most Delicious Produce

A San Francisco startup is creating an indoor vertical farm that aspires to produce crops more efficiently and sustainably than traditional farms

LAURA YAN

• 25 MAY 2017

Indoor vertical farming startup Plenty wants to transform the way greens are produced. The company, headquartered in San Francisco, has created 20-foot towers of rare herbs and greens—including special kinds of basil, chives, mizuna, red leaf lettuce and Siberian kale—that are not frequently available at the average grocery store because of their high production costs.

“When you’re not outside and you’re no longer constrained by the sun, you can do things that make it easier for humans to do work and work faster, and for machines to work faster,” Plenty CEO and co-founder Matt Barnard told Fast Company. The company claims it can grow crops up to 350 times more effectively than conventional farms in a given area. Indoor vertical farms are more energy- and space-efficient, Barnard says, producing the same output as fairly large farms in a far smaller space. He believes that the indoor farming process, once perfected, may become more sustainable than traditional farms.

Plenty is attempting to put ever-improving technology toward its success and plans to build farms near large cities so it can fit into existing supply chains that deliver to city limits. Faster delivery means better food, preserving both flavor and nutrients. Indoor farming also has the potential to be more sustainable by using solar energy and cutting down on the costs and pollutants of traditional supply chains.

Plenty

Indoor Farming: On To Pastures New

Indoor Farming: On To Pastures New

24 May 2017 | By Mia Hunt

In the drive for sustainability, new operators are looking to indoor farming to bring food closer to consumers.

Indoor farming - a low-energy, low-water-use way of growing food - Source: Mandy Zammit

Asked to imagine a farm, most people will think of vast green fields filled with neat lines of crops, grazing animals and a tractor trundling along in the distance.

It’s an idyllic visualisation that would be shattered if you were told that the farm were, in fact, on an industrial estate on the edge of a major conurbation.

Say hello to indoor - or vertical - farming, an emerging sector that aims to produce food sustainably, without sunlight or soil and, crucially, close to the retailers that will sell it and the consumers who will eat it.

It is a concept still very much in its infancy, but if this new farming method takes hold, warehouse space will be high on the shopping lists of these new operators. So what is indoor farming? And what are operators’ requirements?

Indoor farming is sustainable and uses less transport. Those who are doing it now are the forward-thinking food producers - David Binks, Cushman & Wakefield

“This is very much a new, emerging sector,” says David Binks, a partner in the industrial team at Cushman & Wakefield.

“The thinking driving this trend is to move food production closer to the source of customers. It’s sustainable and uses less transport, which is a very positive thing. Those who are doing it now are the forward-thinking food producers.”

GrowUp Urban Farms is one such operator.

A year ago it opened Unit84, an indoor farm in an industrial warehouse in Beckton, east London, that had previously lain vacant for 18 months. It claims it is the UK’s first aquaponic, vertical farm.

The farm combines two well-established farming practices: aquaculture, a method of farming fish, and hydroponics, whereby plants are grown in a nutrient solution without soil. It is a low-energy, low-water-use way of growing food that is especially suited to high-density urban agriculture.

The farm’s 6,000 sq ft of growing space produces more than 20,000kg of salads and herbs - enough to fill 200,000 salad bags - and 4,000kg of fish each year. And according to chief executive and co-founder Kate Hofman, GrowUp’s next project will be “10 times bigger”.

“I set up GrowUp with COO and co-founder Tom Webster four years ago,” Hofman explains. “We have different career backgrounds - he was a sustainability consultant for an engineering firm and I was a strategy consultant - but we were both interested in making sustainable urban food production commercially viable.”

Food For Thought

The pair took over the warehouse at London Industrial Park in May 2015 and launched after a comprehensive six-month fit-out process.

“Our 600 sq m [6,500 sq ft] hydro room alone provides 8,000 sq m of growing space because we’re able to grow up as well as along,” says Hofman. “And because it isn’t dependent on environmental and climate factors, we can produce salads of consistent quality 365 days a year.”

Now that Unit84 is fully up and running, Hofman and Webster are looking ahead to their next project - a considerably larger farm for which the firm will soon work up a design that will enable it to make even more efficient use of space. This next farm will be the blueprint for a model that can be rolled out to many different locations on a franchise basis.

Indoor farming uses hydroponics, whereby plants are grown in a nutrient solution without soil - Source: Mandy Zammit

Hofman says a standard warehouse is the ideal place for vertical farming and lists requirements similar to those of light industry, including locations within easy reach of customers - GrowUp distributes all of its produce itself using electric vehicles - and with good access and packing space.

“From what I’ve seen, read and heard, these operators need decent utility access - predominantly renewable energy to power the artificial lights that are used in place of sunlight - although they require very little water, significantly less than a traditional farm,” says Binks. “They need to be heated and cooled efficiently. And because they use a degree of technology to support the growing methods, that may be a consideration in their requirements.”

Looking Up

Binks believes old multi-level industrial buildings are well suited to vertical farming. “Former textile factories and other such buildings built in the early 1900s on the outskirts of towns and therefore in close proximity to the customer base would probably work well,” he says. “If they are at a cost base that is affordable for these operators, they could potentially bring very old, dilapidated buildings that have been redundant for years back into use.”

However, he highlights that residential developers are often at the front of the queue for these types of buildings and, as such, indoor farming operators could struggle to secure buildings.

“It’s a challenge and it could be a barrier to entry,” he says. “But where they find the right building in the right location that hasn’t been earmarked for residential use, I don’t see why they couldn’t bring it forward. They might also occupy fairly new industrial buildings with mezzanines.”

Source: Mandy Zammit

New buildings are a consideration for GrowUp. Hofman explains that they could convert an old warehouse, depending on the age and quality of the building, but the retrofitting costs are huge, so it could look to partner with developers to create the right space for its specific needs from scratch. And it isn’t only industrial space that is on GrowUp’s shopping list. It could also operate from big-box units on retail parks.

“At a time when businesses are becoming increasingly streamlined operationally and focusing on last-mile delivery, huge out-of-town retail spaces could become vacant,” says Hofman. “Landlords are already looking for alternative uses - we could be it.”

We are utilising ways of growing food that make sense commercially and environmentally - Kate Hofman, GrowUp

When it comes to planning, the sustainability and community benefits of indoor farming are such that Binks believes local authorities would be in favour of vertical farming uses. However, there is a caveat.

“There is some debate as to how employment generative they are,” he says.

“If they use automatic feeding systems, there might only be a need for a handful of year-round on-site staff and a short-term need for extra staff during the picking season. Operators may have to persuade councils that it’s a good thing for their boroughs.”

Question Marks

Planning isn’t the only potential hurdle that may need to be overcome. While it can be done profitably, Binks says this new farming technique is so innovative that thus far it is only private investors who are investing in it.

Aquaculture is a method of farming fish -Source: Mandy Zammit

“There is a question mark over the covenant strength of these types of occupiers,” he explains. “For now, the sector is so new that landlords and developers aren’t considering this to be a new or potential major occupier category. But perhaps they ought to be - indoor farming is flying under the radar.” He adds that the landed estates might pursue these tenants in a bid to showcase a forward-thinking approach.

As for the future, a number of factors could accelerate the growth of these types of farm, as Hofman explains: “Brexit could have an impact on imported foods and imported labour. Couple that with climate changes affecting farming in countries that supply the UK with much of its produce, including floods in Spain and droughts in California, and a growing desire by retailers to sell and consumers to eat locally produced food, and I see this [indoor farming] as the answer. We are utilising ways of growing food that make sense environmentally and commercially - it is an attractive investment.”

There may be questions over the viability of indoor farming but, in a changing world, its future could well be bright. This new method of food production has not yet piqued the interest of industrial landlords or institutional investors - but perhaps now is the time to take notice of a trend that is likely to grow.

Techno Farm Keihanna, World’s First and Largest Automated Vertical Farm to Break Ground

Techno Farm Keihanna, World’s First and Largest Automated Vertical Farm to Break Ground

Kyoto, Japan - May 22, 2017 - SPREAD Co., Ltd. (www.spread.co.jp/en) announces the groundbreaking of its next-generation vertical farm, Techno Farm Keihanna in Kizugawa, Kyoto.

Expected to be completed by the end of 2017, Techno Farm Keihanna will employ an automated cultivation system, and achieve the largest output of any indoor vertical lettuce farm in the world at 30,000 heads (3 tons) daily.

SPREAD has operated its current indoor vertical farm, Kameoka Plant (Kameoka, Kyoto) since 2007, which produces 21,000 heads (2 tons) of lettuce every day. Its lettuce is sold under the brand VegetusTM at more than 2,200 supermarkets and retail stores all over Japan. By March of 2013, SPREAD achieved profitability, which is said to be very difficult for the indoor vertical farming business. In 2014, SPREAD started developing its next-generation vertical farming system, Techno FarmTM, based on its accumulated know-how with the aim of global expansion.

Innovation at Techno FarmTM centers around three themes: reduced cost, limited environmental impact, and global adaptability. To achieve each of these goals, SPREAD has cooperated with Japanese equipment manufacturers to develop innovative technologies for water recycling, environmental controls, automated cultivation, and LED lighting. Moreover, the farm will also include specialized research and development facilities.

Scheduled for completion at the end of 2017, Techno Farm Keihanna will be the first of its kind, with shipping expected to start in 2018. The farm’s daily output of 3 tons will be shipped to supermarkets all over Japan under the VegetusTM brand name.

SPREAD will continue to collaborate with innovative business partners from a variety of backgrounds as it works to produce ever greater technological innovation and make sustainable agriculture a reality.

Conceptual image of Techno Farm Keihanna

  Representing the next generation of vertical farming, Techno FarmTM builds on SPREAD’s original indoor vertical farming technology to provide a further improved model for stable production in any climate. With its innovation centered around the themes of reduced cost, limited environmental impact, and global adaptability, Techno FarmTM aims to realize sustainable farming by enabling cultivation in locations experiencing agricultural challenges. The system’s original name Vegetable FactoryTM has been changed to the more universally appealing Techno FarmTM as part of SPREAD’s overseas business expansion.

Reduced Environmental Impact And Operating Costs

1. Automated Cultivation

Reduces labor costs by 50%1 by automating the labor intensive cultivation process (from seedling to harvesting)

2. Water Recycling Technology

Improves the recycling rate of water used for cultivation to 98%1 through water filtration and recycling.

3. Environmental Control Technology

Restricts variance in temperature, humidity, wind velocity, and lighting intensity

4. Specialized LED Lighting

Reduces the energy consumption by 30%2 by using LED lighting developed inhouse and tailored to vegetables cultivated in indoor vertical farms.

5. IoT Technology

Enables centralized remote collection and analysis of big data related to cultivation and operations

1: Compared to SPREAD’s Kameoka Plant, 2: Compared to existing LED lighting

SPREAD will partner with companies and organizations both domestically and globally to bring Techno FarmTM to numerous locations around the world. Domestically,

SPREAD will aim for a 10% share of the Japanese lettuce market by utilizing a franchise/ownership model to establish 20 facilities and a daily production capacity of 500,000 lettuce heads (50 tons). Globally, SPREAD will cooperate with local companies in each country and provide technology and support for distribution and sales. SPREAD will develop and propose business schemes applicable to each area. 

Rice University Students Create Indoor Farming Device

Rice University Students Create Indoor Farming Device

By Rebecca Hazen, rebecca.hazen@chron.com

Photo: Lettuce Turnip The Beet

Published 4:11 pm, Tuesday, May 23, 2017

A group of mechanical engineering students at Rice University, called the Lettuce Turnip the Beet team, have come up with a way to cultivate vegetables indoors.

A group of mechanical engineering students at Rice University have come up with a way to cultivate vegetables without needing a large plot of land outdoors.

The Senior Capstone Design project, made up of students Jared Broadman, George Dawson, Sanjiv Gopalkrishnan and Dominique Schaefer Pipps, aptly named their group "Lettuce Turnip the Beet." (LTTB)

According to group member Gopalkrishnan, the mechanical engineering department pitched different projects to the senior students, including a vegetable cultivation machine, and the four choose to work on that particular project.

The main goal of team LTTB, through the vegetable cultivation machine, was to produce one salad per week, for a year.

"Other goals were to make the project sustainable, easy to build and operate, and able to be used in an apartment setting. We have achieved all of our goals - our most recent harvest yielded eleven salads after four weeks of growth," Gopalkrishnan said.

The team has been working on the project since August, and created two versions, both with vegetables growing hydroponically - without soil. The first prototype is in an enclosed area outside. It is based on a triangular frame, has three circular grow tubes, and two pumps with inputs into each of the tubes. It is about 6 feet tall. The second prototype is inside. It is eight feet tall, hosts six square grow tubes, and one pump with an input to the top of the tube arrangement.

"The wooden frame of the second prototype is modular, in that it is composed of four two foot tall sections of two-by-fours, held together by dowel rods. The frame was designed this way to facilitate customization and easy transport. The pipes are square because they are easier to fit into the framework, and have a larger bottom area for the roots to lay upon as the nutrient solution flows across them," Golpalkrishnan explained. "The one input was chosen for ease of operation, as the pipes are all connected in a gravity fed cascade. It is vertical for easy user access. The triangular shape of the first prototype made it hard to access plants at the top. We use a Platinum P900 LED to feed plants at the top of the device, with two smaller fluorescent lights to supplement the bottom plants. The entire device draws about the same amount of power as a microwave."

Golpalkrishnan continued, "We learned quite a bit from the first iteration that we implemented into the second, final prototype. We built the first prototype in November 2016 and the second prototype in February 2017."

It may seem complicated, but the reality is that growing plants is straightforward. They just need light, water, nutrients and a place to grow.

"If the system is set up properly (which is easy to do, and takes about an hour per week to maintain), the plants grow on their own. The biggest key to being able to grow indoors is a good grow light. Plants will grow without light, but one cannot harvest a salad per week without a good light. As far as anyone being able to do this - the answer is yes. Three of the four of our team had no gardening experience, and we have learned as we go," Golpalkrishnan said.

Tomatoes are currently being grown in the outdoor prototype, because there is easy access to pollinators. The LTTB team found that it was easy to grow leafy greens indoors because they do not require pollination. The indoor prototype is currently growing lettuce, kale, Swiss chard and spinach. There are also herbs like basil and parsley, and the team even managed to grow a carrot and radish.

"It is amazing to see the whole plant cycle, from seedling, to adolescent plant, to being able to harvest them. The device has made it easy for us to grow our own vegetables, and our hope is that the device can combat the negative practices utilized by industrial agriculture," Golpalkrishnan said.

Recently, the team showed off their work at the Engineering Design Showcase, which is an event for all Rice engineering teams. Lettuce Turnip the Beet won the Best Environment and Sustainability Design Award.

As the last part of the project, the team will travel to Gothenburg, Sweden, at the end of this month. There, the device will be implanted at the HSB Living Lab at Chalmers University.

"That trip will be the culmination of our efforts as a team, as we are going our separate ways after graduation. However, at least two of us will be building our own versions of the device for personal use," Gopalkrishnan said.

Indoor Farms of America Sales Exceed 2016 Total in First Four Months of 2017 as Growth Escalates

Indoor Farms of America Sales Exceed 2016 Total in First Four Months of 2017 as Growth Escalates

LAS VEGAS, May 23, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Indoor Farms of America is pleased to announce that sales through the first four months of 2017 have exceeded the entire year of 2016, when the company first sold its patented vertical aeroponic indoor farm equipment.

According to company CEO David Martin, "During 2016, our first year selling our equipment, we enjoyed what we consider a very solid year for launching our unique vertical farming equipment, and 2017 has already eclipsed that in dollar volume and diversity of farms being sold, built and delivered."

Indoor Farms of America two story display at 2017 Indoor AgCon Las Vegas

GrowTruck Container Farm Display at 2017 Indoor AgCon Las Vegas

The company sold numerous smaller farm packages and container farms during 2016, many of which were considered "pilot farms," to allow potentially large warehouse farm operators to get a feel for this amazing vertical equipment, prior to making larger commitments.

"We knew when we introduced the equipment throughout the previous year, it would somewhat be a year of "tire kickers," and we were overwhelmed at the positive response to our total farm solutions. Those tire kickers are now converting into sold larger farms, as we continue to see positive crop growing results by folks across the U.S. and in key international markets."

Indoor Farms of America spent several years designing and developing its patented ultra high yield vertical aeroponic equipment. The firm manufactures a robust line of aeroponic products, including the world's most productive containerized farms, for deployment in any area of the world that has real need for such a unique small farm platform that produces commercial quantities of fresh produce in an manner superior to any other container farm manufacturer. 

Other "turn-key" complete farm packages were specifically developed for fully scalable indoor farm applications to drive down initial capital costs as well as the ongoing operational costs. This focus combines to provide the operator with the single most cost-effective indoor agriculture equipment available in the world.

Ron Evans, company President, stated it this way: "We received numerous affirmations throughout 2016 from third party growers using our farm technology that it delivers on what we promise in overall farm performance. We are committed to the concept that if you are going to own and operate an indoor farm, it should provide you a very sound financial return."

"So many farm platforms that Ron and I analyzed in the early R&D phase back in 2013 and 2014, we believed were doomed to financial failure due to poor design with off the shelf 30 year old growing technology that was not innovative. We recognized that if those marginally profitable operators made errors in execution, they would not survive. It was our mandate internally to develop a complete farming solution that would transcend anything on the market, and we achieved that", stated Martin.

New sales by the company for 2017 to date include numerous locations around the U.S., as well as other countries, as the company continues on a path of rolling out the products in key markets that will benefit dramatically from truly locally grown fresh produce.

"We have sold our first farm for Alaska, destined for Juneau in the next couple months. As well, we have sold our first farm for the GCC region, destined for Dubai. This farm will change the landscape for food production in the Middle East." stated Martin. "Further developments include complete farms sold for multiple regions of Canada, including Alberta, Manitoba and Ontario provinces, and that region is about to explode with growth in the use of our farm solution."

Martin added, "We have sold our first large scale farm for Africa, destined for the country of Botswana.  We have had a farm in operation in Johannesburg for many months, and our distributor there reports how amazed potential customers are with the robust growing they experience with our vertical aeroponics platform."

The company has spent thousands of hours developing new crops beyond leafy greens. Evans stated: "Leafy greens were the easy part, and ours does that better than anything else. We have proven out growing of certain varieties of cherry tomatoes, strawberries, peppers, peas and beans for proteins, and we are now working on specialty root crops like heirloom carrots and baby potatoes. We know a well-rounded garden approach is what many folks want to see, not just leafy greens, and we are rapidly developing those for commercial scale."

Indoor Farms of America has a showroom with demonstration farms operating in Las Vegas, Nevada and in multiple locations in Canada, and in South Africa, where their patented vertical aeroponic equipment is on display and receiving amazing reviews by industry leaders.

CONTACT:
David W. Martin, CEO   •   161290@email4pr.com   •   IndoorFarmsAmerica.com
4000 W. Ali Baba Lane, Ste. F Las Vegas, NV 89118
(702) 664-1236or (702) 606-2691

SOURCE Indoor Farms of America

Related Links

https://www.indoorfarmsamerica.com

Emil Radkov Brings Proven Track Record of Industry Innovation to VividGro

Emil Radkov Brings Proven Track Record of Industry Innovation to VividGro

May 23, 2017 09:00 AM Eastern Daylight Time

WEST WARWICK, R.I.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Lighting Science® today announced the appointment of noted horticultural and SSL technology expert Emil Radkov as Senior Agronomist and Director of VividGro, a division of Lighting Science Group focused on advanced agricultural and horticultural LED solutions. Lighting Science’s mission is to bring life-changing products in human health, agriculture, and infrastructure to market. Their extensive technology and intellectual property portfolio includes nearly 400 LED technology patents, from biological circadian LED technology solutions to VividGro’s expanding range of products for cannabis and indoor agriculture. Radkov himself has authored over 40 technology patents on the subject of LED technology and horticultural innovation, making his addition to the company’s leadership a clear reinforcement of VividGro’s commitment to continually pushing the industry forward.

VIVIDGRO® ANNOUNCES NEW DIRECTOR AND SENIOR AGRONOMIST

“It’s thrilling to join a company that prioritizes scientific innovation as part of their mission,” said Radkov. “It is my hope that my particular experience in driving LED grow-light technology will aid in the development of even greater products while accelerating consumer awareness of sustainable, future-conscious options in the agricultural and horticultural industries around the world.”

Radkov comes to VividGro following positions at Soraa, Dow Corning and Illumitex. An innovative expert with proven ability of creating new IP for LED technology, Radkov has set industry records for performance and light quality. His key areas of expertise include extensive knowledge of LED phosphors and encapsulants, spectral design for general and specialty lighting applications, reliability and SSL standards.

Lighting Science has long been investing in the research and development of urban agriculture, including working with NASA, Harvard University and the U.S. Scientific Research Station at the South Pole to establish indoor food production. Since launching VividGro in 2014, Lighting Science’s products have consistently been one of the most popular brands in cannabis and large-scale indoor farming production. LSG was one of the first LED companies to offer an energy efficient alternative to high pressure sodium (HPS) lighting. Their patented VividGro LED lamp is proven to increase yields by up to 20% while using 45% less energy. In addition, unlike many other LED grow solutions, VividGro differentiates itself by creating a “white light” working environment for grow house employees. These commercial LED solutions are highly adaptable to both urban and agricultural environments, including greenhouses of any scale.

The VividGro division will be led by recently-appointed President David Friedman and Radkov, and supported by a team of engineers, scientists and sales and marketing executives who all have extensive LED lighting and cannabis industry experience.

About VividGro

Tailored to the indoor agriculture and horticultural markets, the state-of-the-art VividGro product line delivers optimized photosynthetically active radiation (PAR) to maximize plant growth and PAR efficacy, while also providing light suitable for the human visual system and excellent color penetration. VividGro’s patented light spectrum has been proven to speed crop development and increase crop yield. In addition, unlike other LED grow lights, VividGro distinguishes itself from its industry peers by creating a “white light” working environment for grow house employees. These commercial LED solutions are highly adaptable to both urban and agricultural environments, including greenhouses of any scale. Lighting Science continues to experiment with the technology and spectrum to enhance the plant growth at different stages and has plans to launch its next generation VividGro 3 in 2017.

About Lighting Science

Lighting Science (OTCQB:LSCG) is a global leader in innovative LED lighting solutions that designs, manufactures and brings to market advanced, intelligent products for consumer and commercial applications. We are committed to using the science of light to improve the lives and health of people and our planet by inventing breakthrough, biologically-friendly LED lamps and lighting fixtures. Lighting Science is headquartered in West Warwick, RI, with research and development facilities in Cocoa Beach, Florida, and offices in Shenzhen, China. Find out more about us and our products at www.lsgc.com and join us on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and the Lighting Science Blog.

Contacts

Lighting Science
Dustin O’Neal or Alexandra Polier
917-693-2768
press@lsgc.com

How Millennials Will Forever Change America’s Farmlands

How Millennials Will Forever Change America’s Farmlands

[This article originally appeared in Fortune on March 21, 2017]

Square Roots co-founders Kimbal Musk and Tobias Peggs with the first cohort of urban farmer entrepreneurs on the Brooklyn- based Square Roots vertical farming campus.

As Americans increasingly reject cheap, processed food and embrace high-quality, responsibly-sourced nutrition, hyper-local farming is having a moment.

Tiny plots on rooftops and small backyards are popping up all across America, particularly in urban areas that have never been associated with food production. These micro-farms aren’t meant to earn a profit or feed vast numbers of people, but they reflect the Millennial generation’s desire to forge a direct connection with the food they consume.

These efforts are an admirable manifestation of the mantra to think globally and act locally, but they miss the opportunity that is going on right now: the economics of branded local farms have changed, and technology in agriculture has led to a renaissance of independent American farming. Whether this means farming the traditional acreage of the Heartland or adapting to cutting-edge indoor farming methods, the result is the same: demand for real food is far outstripping supply. Highly-educated, entrepreneurial, and socially conscious young people have a great opportunity to think seriously about agriculture as a career.

On the surface, this advice sounds dubious, given the well-documented, decades-long decline of independent farming in America. Between 2007 and 2012, the number of active farmers in America dropped by 100,000 and the number of new farmers fell by more than 20%. Ironically, however, the titanic, faceless factory farms are barely eking out a profit. That often means that an independent 100-acre farm growing high-demand crops can be far more profitable than a 10,000-acre commodity farm growing corn that may end up getting wasted as ethanol.

The key to reviving America’s agricultural economy is casting aside the sentimental images we associate with farming — starting with what a farmer looks like. In recent years, many of the same technologies that have revolutionized the consumer world have fundamentally altered and improved the way we farm. Drones, satellites, autonomous tractors and robotics are now all at home on farms. As a result, tomorrow’s farms won’t just be part of the agricultural sector, they’ll also be part of the tech sector — and tomorrow’s farmers will look a whole lot like the coders who populate Silicon Valley…except with better tans.

The next assumption about farming we need to cast aside is what a farm looks like and where it will be found. The vast planting fields of America’s heartland are going to change by adjusting to grow real food with 21st century technology, but tomorrow’s farms will also be vertical and in or near our urban centers. By 2050, 70 percent of the global population will live in cities. As both a social imperative and a practical matter, it makes sense to grow food near these cities, rather than to waste time and resources delivering products from hundreds or even thousands of miles away.

Square Roots urban farming campus in Brooklyn, NY.

This will require innovative new technology that will create even more flexibility in the way we farm. With this in mind, I recently co-founded Square Roots, a social enterprise that aims to accelerate urban farming by empowering thousands of young Americans to become real food entrepreneurs. We create campuses of climate-controlled, indoor hydroponic farms in the heart of our biggest cities and train entrepreneurs how to grow and sell their food year-round. After their training, these young entrepreneurial farmers, in partnership with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, can qualify for larger loan programs as a next step to owning their own farm — either soil-based or indoor. Whether they move on to their own farm or another business, they are prepared to build forward-thinking companies that will become profitable and create good jobs.

Greens growing vertically with a Square Roots farmer entrepreneur in the background. Photo Courtesy Square Roots

We are investing in this initiative not only because it’s the right thing to do, but also because we are confident that agriculture is poised for explosive growth, and that technology and the power of locally branded farms will be the keystone to success. Just ask self-described “AgTech nerds” like Sarah Mock, who is a leader in the growing movement of Millennial entrepreneurs who see an opportunity in farming to achieve the double bottom line — value and values — that is key to solving our planet’s toughest challenges.

Private enterprise will lead this revolution, but the federal government must help fuel its growth. The 2018 farm bill is a critical opportunity. This massive legislation, renegotiated by Congress every five years, establishes the blueprint and funding priorities across America’s agricultural sector. Last year, Democratic U.S. Senator Debbie Stabenow of Michigan introduced forward-looking legislation called the Urban Agriculture Act that would offer protections and loan options that are currently available only to traditional rural farmers. Ideas like these are essential.

A future in which our food is safer, healthier and environmentally sustainable can exist alongside one in which our agricultural economy grows and creates good jobs for millions of American workers. The technologies and business practices of modern farming is spreading rapidly. The opportunity for a young farmer has never been better — and it’s a future we can all get behind.

( Link to original article on Fortune )

This Veggie Garden Is Basically An Organic Server Farm Of Kale

This Veggie Garden Is Basically An Organic Server Farm Of Kale

Commentary: Sustenir's vertical garden is literally a concrete food jungle, and it's one of the coolest things I've seen all year.

• by Aloysius Low May 22, 2017 5:00 AM PDT @longadin

Surrounded by concrete walls that were until recently home to industrial tooling machines, thousands of kale plants are stacked in a vertical hydroponic garden. It is literally an organic server farm of kale.

I plucked a leaf from the wall of green and popped it in my mouth.

Absolutely delicious. And I'm not what you'd call a salad guy.

This is Sustenir, a 668 square meter farm located in a concrete estate, in an industrial suburb of Singapore that wants to grow hydroponic (the method of growing plants without soil) food crops in the land-scarce country to feed more people and keep import costs down.

Trust me, this all-grey temple of manufacturing is the last place you'd expect to find a thriving farm, let alone anything living and green. That contrast is exactly how Sustenir's founders, construction manager Benjamin Swan and accountant Martin Lavoo, like it.

Sustenir's founders Martin Lavoo (left) and Benjamin Swan.

Aloysius Low/CNET

Before you can appreciate the scale of the project, you have to understand Singapore's relationship to farming.

An island nation about half the size of Los Angeles, Singapore imports 90 percent of its food from around the world.

In 2015, local farms produced about 13 percent of the vegetables consumed locally (PDF), using about 1 percent of the island to grow crops. Most of Singapore's produce comes from Malaysia and China, but some is flown in from as far as the US or Australia -- like Tuscan kale and curly kale, two varieties that Sustenir grows.

Singapore currently has 10 indoor vertical vegetable farms.

As Sustenir doesn't want to compete with the few local farmers, it works on non-native produce instead. By growing the crop here, Sustenir's imported, organic kale can stay fresh for two weeks longer compared to imported kale, which loses part of its freshness in the shipping process.

Given Singapore's smaller land size, the ingenious use of space and hydroponics could set an example for urban farmers everywhere to produce clean, pesticide-free vegetables faster and more abundantly than in the ground.

Starting fresh

Starting in a basement, Sustenir's initial setup cost $150, but the company went through 18 lighting vendors and numerous indoor configurations before deciding on the right recipe to grow kale efficiently in such land-strapped space.

"The way we wanted to look at technology was [from] a value-engineering standpoint," said Lavoo, the engineer. "We wanted to take all the ideas around vertical farming, and boil it down to the basics."

In this case "the basics" include a combination of red and blue LED grow lights (sprouting kale and growing kale use different spectrums), and hydroponics, a nutrient solution, instead of soil, as some indoor farms do.

Consumers tend to prefer soil-grown produce, said Fadhlina Suhaimi, a senior scientist at Singapore's Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority (AVA), and it's easier to grow a wider range of vegetables and herbs in soil.

But the old-fashioned way using soil requires more manpower and planting materials, and kale can take longer to grow, so yield is lower.

Grow Sustenir's kale did. It takes this concrete jungle kale garden two weeks to go from seed to harvest, compared to about a month for outdoor farms, according to Lavoo.

"We [don't] think we can grow a plant in our environment that would compete with the best of what nature is able to provide," said Lavoo. "But what the best nature is able to provide is becoming more a constricted reality for mankind."

Room to grow

A healthy harvest is one thing, but what really sets Sustenir apart from other hydroponic farmers is a patent-pending system that lets it store more growing racks in a smaller enclosed space, while still giving workers enough room to harvest and replant.

Harvested kale at Sustenir's farm.

Aloysius Low/CNET

Remember when I compared Sustenir's farming operations to an organic server farm? With racks and racks of kale stacked next to each other, that's a pretty close description.

Because Sustenir uses hydroponics and an air-conditioned indoor facility, the company says it doesn't need to use pesticides to keep the plants bug-free. There's no soil harboring little bugs and no stretches of open air for their migration.

However, this kale farm takes precautions anyway. I did have to endure an air shower and put on a sterile jumpsuit before heading inside the facility.

The company currently takes up about half of its rented space, with plans to expand to its other half in the coming months. Besides kale, the company is also looking into cherry tomatoes, having successfully cultivated a test crop so far, and strawberries.

Growth-wise, Sustenir is looking to spread its gospel to other land-scarce urban environments, such as Hong Kong or even Colombo, Sri Lanka, where its already-established model of locally growing high-end, high-value crops could also work.

In Singapore and elsewhere, Sustenir's LED lights and server farm-style plantings would help keep the cost of imported produce down.

With access to tasty, locally-grown produce like this, I might even learn to become a salad guy after all...

Confusion Over Hydroponics Grows at National Organic Standards Board Meeting

CHEW NEWS

Confusion Over Hydroponics Grows at National Organic Standards Board Meeting

APRIL 25, 2017 by JILL ETTINGER

Proponents of organic certification being exclusive to soil-based agriculture, as opposed to hydroponics and aquaponics, were left frustrated by the National Organic Standard Board (NOSB) meeting in Denver last week when the board decided not to vote on the eligibility of hydroponic farming for at least another six months.

“The NOSB decided this was something so fundamental to the organics industry, they want everyone participating in the policy developing process for how to handle container and hydroponic growing systems,” Lee Frankel, executive director for the Coalition for Sustainable Organics told the Packer.

Currently, hydroponic and aquaponic farming methods are eligible for the USDA organic certification despite using no soil—a point many members of the organic industry say is significant because soil plays a huge part of the process of becoming an organic producer. Not only is cleaning up soil and ensuring that it’s free from agricultural runoff, banned pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, and fertilizers, critical to the quality of the food, but it’s also vital to the environment and ecosystems connected to it.

“Soilless, hydroponic/container growing is not necessarily ‘bad,’ it simply isn’t organic, by law,” says The Cornucopia Institute, the organic industry’s leading watchdog group. “Allowing year-round imports from countries where hydroponic/container growing is illegal, then labeling and selling them as organic in this country, undercuts legitimate US organic farmers. It is dead wrong—and patently illegal under the Organic Foods Production Act and the current regulations.”

Much of the confusion lies in the National Organic Program’s definitions of organic, and more specifically, the definitions of both hydroponic and aquaponics farming methods that don’t involve soil. While some water-based growing methods rely on liquid fertilizers and rocks, soil is otherwise absent from the process. Hydroponics and aquaponics have been certified through the program since the USDA developed the standards in 2002. They make growing in soil-less environments possible, such as urban areas. The water-based growing methods also reduce the risk of pests and weeds, common issues with soil-based growing methods that increase the needs of pesticides and herbicides.

But there are so many types of aquaponic and hydroponic growing that the NOSB is requesting more information on the specific growing mechanisms of these systems in order to determine whether or not the methods can continue to qualify as organic.

“The NOP should adopt the European standard that requires that organic crops be grown in the soil in the ground, except for edible sprouts, aquatic plants growing outdoors in their native ecosystems, and transplants sold in their containers,” The Cornucopia Institute noted in its public comments to the NOSB.

“Soilless systems are not organic systems,” Cornucopia explains, “because they are removed from the regenerative organic practices that capture carbon and nitrogen from the atmosphere into the soil.”

“[O]rganics should be about more than soil,” Marianne Cufone, executive director of the Recirculating Farms Coalition and proponent of soil-less farming, told FoodNavigator-USA. “It should be about the whole picture. We should be looking to improve our planet and these types of farms at their very core are eco-efficient.”

Frankel says the organic industry shouldn’t expect a decision in October, either, citing significant turnover in the board earlier this year adding to the decision-making processes.

“NOSB has not yet achieved consensus among its members regarding definitions, and without definitions a vote on prohibition cannot occur,” he said.

Find Jill on Twitter and Instagram

iStock/LouisHiemstra

Affinor Growers Signs an "On-Site Test License Agreement" with BC Company to Develop Vertical Farming with Coniferous Tree Seedlings

Affinor Growers Signs an "On-Site Test License Agreement" with BC Company to Develop Vertical Farming with Coniferous Tree Seedlings

Vancouver (Canada), May 22, 2017 - Affinor Growers Inc. (CSE:AFI, OTC:RSSFF, Frankfurt:1AF) (“Affinor” or the “Corporation), is pleased to announce the signing of a research and development On-Site License Agreement with a BC company to use Affinor's vertical growing equipment to mass produce high quality coniferous seedlings.

The test agreement is a collaboration of Affinor’s vertical farming tower technology, proprietary owned BC registered Tree Seeds by D.K Helicropper Ltd. and Vertical Designs Ltd. Under the terms of the agreement, specific coniferous seeds potentially more resistant to the Pine Beetle (MPB), will be propagated and mass produced with Affinor's growing technology on the Vertical Designs Ltd. farm located in Abbotsford BC. In the agreement, Vertical Designs will be able to purchase four 10 level towers with no license fee or royalty. In return, Vertical Designs will share the testing and production results with Affinor.

Forestry is a major economic resource for BC resulting in a high demand for high quality MPB stress resistance seedlings. In 2016, 259 million trees were planted and for 2017, 266 million trees are planned to be planted.

Jarrett Malnarick, President and CEO said that "This is another great opportunity for Affinor to expand our growing technology into other markets. Reforestation through tree planting and Silviculture is a large market not just in BC, but the entire world. We are excited to develop new cultivation systems using vertical growing technology to produce next generation seedling."

For More Information, please contact:

Jarrett Malnarick, President and CEO
604.837.8688
jarrett@affinorgrowers.com

About Affinor Growers Inc.

Affinor Growers is a publicly traded company on the Canadian Securities Exchange under the symbol ("AFI"). Affinor is focused on growing high quality crops such as romaine lettuce, spinach and strawberries using its vertical farming techniques. Affinor is committed to becoming a pre-eminent supplier and grower, using exclusive vertical farming techniques.

On Behalf of the Board of Directors

AFFINOR GROWERS INC.

"Jarrett Malnarick"
President & CEO

The CSE has not reviewed and does not accept responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

FORWARD LOOKING INFORMATION

This News Release contains forward-looking statements. The use of any of the words "anticipate", "continue", "estimate", "expect", "may", "will", "project", "should", "believe" and similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements. Although the Company believes that the expectations and assumptions on which the forward-looking statements are based are reasonable, undue reliance should not be placed on the forward-looking statements because the Company can give no assurance that they will prove to be correct. Since forward-looking statements address future events and conditions, by their very nature they involve inherent risks and uncertainties. These statements speak only as of the date of this News Release. Actual results could differ materially from those currently anticipated due to a number of factors and risks including various risk factors discussed in the Company's disclosure documents which can be found under the Company's profile on www.sedar.com. This News Release contains "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended and such forward-looking statements are made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995.

Japan Plant Factories Are Providing A Safe, Reliable Food Source

Japan Plant Factories Are Providing A Safe, Reliable Food Source

 MAY 15, 2017 - DAVID KUACK

Japan’s plant factories are expanding to meet the increasing demand for safe, pesticide-free, locally-grown food.

Japan has more plant factories (PFs) than any other country. The largest number of plant factories are located in Okinawa Prefecture near Taiwan. The rapid commercialization and financial subsidization by the Japanese government of PFs, which began in 2010, are helping to drive interest in their development.

Another reason for the increase in PFs in Japan is that the country has been importing a large amount of fresh, sliced salad vegetables from China. The Japanese are concerned about the amount of pesticides being used for Chinese vegetable production and looking for alternative sources of fresh vegetables and herbs.

Hort Americas spoke with Dr. Toyoki Kozai, professor emeritus at Chiba University and chief director of Japan Plant Factory Association, about Japan’s expanding plant factory industry. Chiba University researchers are studying various aspects of indoor farming. A PF on the university campus, which is operated by a private company, is selling around 3,000 heads of lettuce daily to a variety of customers, including Japanese grocery store chain Tokyo Stores.

The number of Japanese plant factories producing more than 10,000 heads of lettuce daily is estimated to be around 10.
Photos courtesy of Dr. Toyoki Kozai.

How large is the average plant factory in Japan and can you describe what type of equipment is used in one of these operations?

As of March 2014 there were about 170 plant factories (PFs) in Japan. Of these, 70 are producing more than 1,000 lettuce heads (50-100 grams per head) or other leafy greens daily. The number of PFs producing more than 10,000 heads of lettuce daily is estimated to be around 10.

The average floor area of a PF with 10-15 tiers for producing 10,000 lettuce heads daily is 1,500 square meters. The main components of a PF are:

1. A thermally well-insulated and airtight warehouse-like structure with no windows.
2. Tiers/shelves with a light source and culture beds.
3. A carbon dioxide supply unit.
4. Nutrient supply units.
5. Air conditioners.
6. An environment control unit.
7. Other equipment includes nutrient solution sterilization units, air circulation units and seeders.

Are most of Japan’s plant factories located in renovated buildings (i.e. old warehouses, abandoned factories, etc.) or are the buildings housing these operations constructed specifically for use as plant factories?

Sixty percent of the PFs in Japan are located in new buildings.

Why has Japan been one of the leaders in the development of plant factories?

Citizens’ concerns for and interest in health, pesticide-free products, freshness and high-tech are high. There are many researchers who have been doing research on PFs for more than 10 years. e Japanese government started subsidizing R&D and doing extension related to PFs in 2010.

Are most of the Japan’s plant factories operated by private companies and/or corporations or are there some operated as family farms?

Thirty percent of PFs are operated by families with ve to 15 part-time workers. Half of these PFs are for vegetable production. Ten percent of the PFs are operated by agricultural unions or similar organizations. The rest are operated by private companies.

What are the most common crops grown in the plant factories?

Primarily green leaf lettuce, romaine lettuce, frill lettuce, spinach, basil and arugula.

Are there any limits (i.e. space restrictions, plant size, light requirements, etc.) to the types of crops that can be grown in plant factories?

Plant height is 30-40 centimeters or less, grow well at a photosynthetic photon ux (PPF) of 150-250 micro-mol per meter squared per second (umol/ m2/s) and at high planting density. Plants can be harvested within two months after seeding and respond well to controlled environments.

How are most of the crops grown in plant factories marketed to consumers?

The produce is sold to diverse markets. Forty percent to large- and medium-size supermarkets, 30 percent to restaurant chain stores, 20 percent to meal delivery service companies and the rest to department stores, convenience stores and Internet shopping.

Is there any type of marketing on television, radio, online, newspaper, etc., done for the crops grown in the plant factories?

Most marketing is done on PF websites for ordering via the Internet. The PFs also do many interviews for articles and TV news without spending money for advertisement. PF sales personnel visit supermarkets, restaurants and department stores frequently.

In regards to the production system set ups currently being used in plant factories, where could the greatest improvements be made?

Automation for transplanting, harvesting, packing and cost and production management systems.

What are the benefits/advantages of plant factories over greenhouse production and traditional field crop production?

Ten- to 100-fold annual productivity per unit land area regardless of weather, clean and no need to wash before cooking and a long lifetime. Consumers are now interested in its nutrition for humans, taste, functional and medicinal components in leaves, beauty color and mouth feeling

Japan’s plant factories are used for the production of leafy greens, herbaceous medicinal plants, herbs and miniature root crops such as micro carrots and turnips.

What are the benefits/advantages of greenhouse production and traditional field crop production over plant factories?

PFs produce vegetables with high quality (small, delicate looking and flavorful) which cannot be produced in greenhouses or in the fields. The PF vegetables are 1/3 to 1/100 the size of greenhouse- or field-grown vegetables. PFs enable consumers living alone to eat fresh vegetables daily.

Do you think that plant factories will be able to overcome their current limitations to compete with greenhouse and field production? If so, how many years do you think it will take for the production costs to be comparable?

PFs are useful only for the production of leafy greens, herbaceous medicinal plants, herbs, and miniature root crops such as micro carrots and turnips. These root crops must have edible tasty leaves.

PF vegetables are not replacements for greenhouse- and field- grown vegetables. They are new products and create a new market. It will take about 10 years in Japan, less than 10 years in China.

What aspects of plant factory production are being studied at Chiba University?

Research includes:

• The production of low potassium lettuce for persons who have kidney-related problems.
• Development of production and cost management systems.
• Lighting system using LEDs.
• Reduction in electricity costs.
• The physiological disorder of tip burn.

For more: Dr. Toyoki Kozai, Japan Plant Factory Association, Chiba University, Center for Environment, Health and Field Sciences, Kashiwa-no-ha, Kashiwa, Chiba, 277-0882, Japan; kozai@faculty. chiba-u.jp.

Additional articles on Japan’s plant factories are available at:

http://www.japan-acad.go.jp/en/publishing/pja_b/ contents/89/89_10.html; http://www.meti.go.jp/english/policy/ sme_chiiki/plantfactory/about.html

David Kuack is a freelance technical writer in Fort Worth, Texas; dkuack@gmail.com.

Shanghai Goes Green: District With Towering Vertical Farms May Become A Reality In The Near Future

Shanghai Goes Green: District With Towering Vertical Farms May Become A Reality In The Near Future

Saturday, May 20, 2017 by: Frances Bloomfield
Tags: agriculture, China, Shanghai, Sunqiao, Urban agriculture

(Natural News) From towering symbols of urbanization, the skyscrapers of Shanghai may soon become agrarian wellsprings. Such is the plan for Sunqiao Urban Agricultural District, a 250-acre district where people will live, work, and shop while surrounded by massive vertical farming systems. Sasaki, the US-based architectural firm behind this bold undertaking, has called Sunqiao “a new approach to urban agriculture” and a “playful, and socially-engaging experience that presents urban agriculture as a dynamic living laboratory for innovation and education.”

Set to be constructed between Shanghai Pudong International Airport and the center of the city, Sunqiao will include all the civic essentials like housing, restaurants, and stores. Amidst all these, however, will be floating greenhouses, seed libraries, and algae farms. These will serve as an expansion of a Shanghai government project that began in the mid-1990’s, wherein a 3.6-square-mile area of the city was designated for agricultural production. Prior to Sasaki’s involvement, only three single-story greenhouses had been built.

The design firm hopes to change that. One major intended use for these is to meet the food requirements of Shanghai’s 24 million-strong population. Leafy greens like kale, bok choi, watercress and spinach make up a large part of the vegetables consumed by the Shanghainese on a daily basis; these same leafy greens do well in simple agricultural setups and require little attention to thrive, making them “an excellent choice for hydroponic and aquaponic growing systems.” Furthermore, these leafy greens are light in weight and grow quickly, making them highly-efficient, economically-viable choices for cultivation as well as food production. Michael Grove, director of Sasaki’s Shanghai office, stated that the district may also have vertical aquaponic fish farms in the future. (Related: The Technologies Making Vertical Farming a Reality)

Sasaki has even called Shanghai “the ideal context for vertical farming”, with its soaring land prices that make building up rather than building out the more prudent option. This goes hand-in-hand with the fact that over 13 percent of China’s total Gross Domestic Product comes from the country’s agricultural sector — the same agricultural sector that feeds 20 percent of the world’s population. Compare this to the United States, of whose agriculture industry only contributes to 5.7 percent of the nation’s Gross Domestic Product.

With over 200,000 kilometers of the country’s arable land now suffering from soil pollution, and 123,000 kilometers of farmland since lost to urbanization, the vertical farms of Sunqiao will become more important than ever. The threats of water shortages, deforestation, and many other complications that continue to affect small farms may soon be things of the past as investments are poured into the modernization and mechanization of the agricultural sector.

According to Sasaki, construction will begin in late 2017 or early 2018. The measurements for Sunqiao are as follows: 753,00-square feet of vertical farms, 717,000-square feet of housing, 138,000-square feet of commercial space, and 856,000-square feet of public space. Development and maintenance will be done by Shanghai Sunqiao Modern Agriculture United Development Co. Ltd., a Chinese company that develops and produces fertilizer. The company will be working together with local planning officials, reported Futurism.com.

Of the project, Sasaki has emphasized the need to balance the agrarian with the metropolitan, stating: “As cities continue to expand, we must continue to challenge the dichotomy between what is urban and what is rural.”

Japan To Prune Taxes In Hopes of Growing Farm Business

May 22, 2017 12:50 pm JST

Japan To Prune Taxes In Hopes of Growing Farm Business

Government panel proposes cutting levies on high-tech indoor agriculture

An indoor farm grows lettuce in Kyoto Prefecture.

TOKYO -- The Japanese government is moving to cut taxes on operators of high-tech indoor farms to encourage more businesses to enter the sector and turn "smart agriculture" into a growth industry.

Under current law, when a company paves over farmland to build an indoor farm, the land is no longer treated as agricultural. That makes it subject to much higher property taxes. The government will seek to reduce the tax burden by proposing that such land continue to be treated as farmland.

The cabinet's council on regulatory reform plans to include the proposal in a report to be submitted to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Tuesday. The council hopes to start full-scale discussions on the issue within this fiscal year, which ends in March 2018. 

Under the proposal, the agriculture ministry will revise the agricultural land act and the definition of farmland so that operators of indoor farms do not face a high tax burden.

According to the internal affairs ministry, the property tax levied on land used for indoor farming averaged 12,000 yen ($107) per 10 ares for the year through March 2016. That is more than 10 times the 1,000 yen rate for farmland. Industry backers, including the Japan Chamber of Commerce and Industry and Osaka Prefecture, have been calling for deregulation.

New cultivation technologies make it possible to grow high-quality vegetables indoors. This allows indoor farmers to precisely control the environment -- including temperature and humidity, as well plant nutrition -- whatever the weather outside is doing. 

Difficulties in financing indoor farming projects, including high startup costs and taxes, have kept businesses from entering the sector. According to a 2016 survey by the Japan Greenhouse Horticulture Association, about 40% of indoor plant growers were operating in the red.

The Abe government has called expanding Japan's farming industry through deregulation a key growth strategy.

Has This Silicon Valley Startup Finally Nailed The Indoor Farming Model?

Has This Silicon Valley Startup Finally Nailed The Indoor Farming Model?

Indoor farming is a trendy startup space, but many of those ventures have recently failed. Plenty thinks its technology, model, and timing mean it’s the place that will finally turn greens into green.

“We’re working to ensure that all of our food gets to the store within hours, and not days or weeks.” [Photo: courtesy Plenty]

BY ADELE PETERS

“I like to call this the cathedral.” So says Matt Barnard, CEO and cofounder of the vertical farming startup Plenty. We’re standing in a room at the company’s headquarters in a former electronics distribution center in South San Francisco, staring up at glowing, 20-foot high towers filled with perfectly formed kale and herbs.

The company isn’t the first to build an indoor urban farm in a warehouse. Aerofarms, for example, grows greens in a 70,000-square foot former steel factory in Newark, New Jersey. Nearby, Bowery, another tech-filled indoor farm, grows what it calls “post-organic,” pesticide-free produce. But Plenty, which has received $26 million in funding to date from investors such as Bezos Expeditions and Innovation Endeavors, believes that it has the technology to grow food more efficiently–at the same cost or less than crops grown in the field–so it can more easily scale up to supply supermarkets around the world.

Inside another gleaming white room, wearing a food processing uniform and gloves, Barnard reaches up and picks rare varieties of basil, chives, a mustard green called mizuna, red leaf lettuce, sorrel, and Siberian kale, eating each and handing me samples as he talks. None of these are available in the average grocery store, because they wouldn’t survive the supply chain. Most produce available now has been bred or engineered to last through rough handling in distribution centers and long distances in trucks–not for taste. The heirloom seeds that Plenty uses, which were bred for taste, are more delicate.

“When you’re not outside and you’re no longer constrained by the sun, you can do things that make it easier for humans to do work and work faster, and for machines to work faster.” [Photo: courtesy Plenty]

“What the technology that we’ve developed enables us to do is essentially grow varietals that are just better than what’s in the store today,” he says. “What’s in the store today is the best that we can grow with a 3,000-mile supply chain. But the best that we can grow with a 50-mile supply chain is stunningly better. That’s why we’re working to ensure that all of our food gets to the store within hours, and not days or weeks.”

Unlike most other indoor farming companies, which typically grow food in rows on shelves, Plenty grows food vertically–each plant popping out of the side of a tall, skinny tower. Lights are also arranged vertically rather than pointing down from above. (BetterLife Growers, which plans to open in Atlanta this fall and provide jobs for underserved communities, is another example of a company that uses a vertical growing system; on a smaller scale, Tender Greens is using vertical systems to grow salad ingredients at some of its restaurants).

“When you’re not outside and you’re no longer constrained by the sun, you can do things that make it easier for humans to do work and work faster, and for machines to work faster,” says Barnard. “You can do things like use gravity to feed the water and the nutrients rather than having to use pumps, so you can be more energy efficient.” The farms are less expensive to build than other configurations. They also grow more food in less space than competitors like Aerofarms or Bowery. While Aerofarms claims to grow 130 times more produce than conventional farming in a given area, Plenty claims to grow 350 times more than conventional farming.

“Growing at a small scale, you can’t get to the labor efficiencies that you need. It requires, in essence, too many people.” [Photo: courtesy Plenty]

“Shifting to the vertical plane makes us usually four to six times more efficient spatially than a stacked system–[like] someone like Aerofarms or someone like Bowery,” says cofounder and chief science officer Nate Storey, who previously founded another vertical farming company called Bright Agrotech. “Ultimately, we’re able to have a much higher space-use efficiency than we could if we were trying to stack our equipment. So everything in the system serves that end, which is how can we pack more plant production into the space without sacrificing plant health.”

The design allows for what the company calls “field-scale architecture”–rooms that can produce the same output as a fairly large farm field in a tiny space. Some early companies in the urban farming industry were constrained by smaller production.

“Small-scale growing in 2017 is not a profitable enterprise, and there are a lot of systemic reasons for that that aren’t going to change,” says Barnard. “Growing at a small scale, you can’t get to the labor efficiencies that you need. It requires, in essence, too many people.”

Early indoor farming companies–like Chicago’s FarmedHere, which was once the largest indoor farm in the country and had hopes of national expansion but shut down in January 2017–also struggled with the cost of components like LED lights, which have dramatically fallen in the last several years. Podponics, an Atlanta indoor farming startup, raised $15 million from investors, but went bankrupt in 2016 after struggling with the economics of its system, particularly the cost of labor. Local Garden, a greenhouse in Vancouver, went bankrupt in 2014 after issues with productivity and access to capital. Others, like BrightFarms, had to rework their initial strategy because of the high cost and challenges of working on urban land. But as technology has improved, other indoor farming companies are growing. AeroFarms, with $61.5 million in investment, has projects in development on four continents, including a farm in Camden, New Jersey, near its first location, and is on track for its plans to build at least 25 more farms by 2020. Urban Produce, a vertical indoor farm in Irvine, California, hopes to expand to 25 locations in five years.

“There’s a timing aspect to this,” Barnard says. “Our technology is necessary to get to the right set of economics. But it’s also not fully sufficient. In other words, it enables us to capitalize on what’s happening in the commoditization in other areas. Utility computing, IoT, machine intelligence, wasn’t effective enough five years ago, much less affordable. Seven years ago . . . you would have spent 64 times more to buy the same amount of LED lights. So we’ve built into our design the ability to take advantage of advances in that field.”

The company continually iterates on the design, tweaking the placement of lights or plumbing or how the towers are moved in and out of a room in order to improve cost or productivity or flavor. A custom designed “growth medium” made from recycled plastic bottles takes the place of soil, holding roots in place, delivering nutrients, and hosting microbes.

The system makes it economic to grow crops other than leafy greens, which have been the mainstay of most indoor farms to date. Strawberries may come next, and perhaps tomatoes and cucumbers, all grown in varieties that naturally have more flavor than standard offerings in stores, and preserve that flavor because of the short supply chain.

“The promise that we’re making to customers is that it’s literally days faster.” [Photo: courtesy Plenty]

The company plans to build its farms next to large cities, but not directly inside, to best fit in existing supply chains that have distribution centers on city limits. “If you want to be delivering a large amount of super-amazing tasting produce to a large grocery store in the middle of a city, you want to be in the distribution center that feeds that grocery store,” Barnard says. “Because otherwise, it’s going to go back out of the city to the distribution center and then back to the store. And now you’ve cost [yourself] hours and maybe even a day or two. The promise that we’re making to customers is that it’s literally days faster.”

The taste is noticeably different. Rick Bayless, the Frontera chef, tried the produce at Google, where the founders started testing their core technology in a demonstration farm in 2014 (that farm is still supplying greens to Google’s cafeteria, though Plenty is not running it). “When I visited Plenty’s pilot farm, I was skeptical,” he says. “I’d had produce before that was grown under lights. And it always disappointed: weak in flavor and texture, like a shadow of the original. But that day at Google, I tasted something different. True and vibrant flavors, textures like I’m used to in field-raised greens and fruits, unusual varieties I’d only expect from really savvy growers. I knew these guys were onto something.”

By delivering food to customers more quickly, the process preserves both flavor and nutrients (after a week in the supply chain, produce can lose as much as 55% of nutrients like vitamin C). Like other indoor farming, the technology also saves arable land; Plenty says it can grow up to 350 times more produce in the same amount of space as conventional farming, with 1% of the water. In a sealed environment, there are so few pests that the company can use ladybugs to deal with them rather than pesticides. The process also cuts the cost and pollution associated with a typical supply chain.

Barnard says that “30% to 45% of the value [of produce] at shelf is trucks and distribution centers.” He adds, “And that to us doesn’t make any sense when we can be getting people better food that tastes better, is more nutritious, with less pesticides. I like to call it food for people, not trucks.”

While early indoor farming was much more energy-intensive, the improving efficiency of LED lights means that the new system can actually have a smaller carbon footprint than farming in the field, at least for certain crops. (This calculation takes other impacts into account, including the carbon footprint of transportation and distribution in traditional farming and the impact of food waste in the supply chain.) The production facilities could potentially also run at least in part on on-site renewable energy like solar power.

“The fact that we can compete with the field on cost is great, but what is, of course, more exciting is that we’re not just competing on real costs, we’re competing on carbon cost,” says Storey. Eventually, he believes that many varieties of food will be more sustainable to grow indoors than out.

The company envisions building farms in every major metropolitan area around the world. After the launch in San Francisco in 2017, other major markets will follow in 2018. “People are going to see that the nutrient-rich food in their diet–fruit and vegetable–is going to start tasting better, and it’s going to be grown in farms like this,” says Barnard. “And it’s going to happen with stunning swiftness, because we’re now at the point where we can get this into everyone’s budget.”

Where the Mouths Are: A Farm Grows In The City

May 21, 2017

Where the Mouths Are: A Farm Grows In The City

Relatively inexpensive space in underutilized urban areas, close to where the majority of the population will live for the foreseeable future.

It makes too much sense not to seize the opportunity. JL

Betsy McKay reports in the Wall Street Journal: 

The world’s population is to reach 9.7 billion by 2050, 33% more than today. Two-thirds of them are expected to live in cities. Getting food to people who live far from farms is costly and strains natural resources. Startups and city authorities are finding ways to grow food closer to home. High-tech “vertical farms” are sprouting in rows, fed by water and LED lights, customized to control size, texture or other characteristic of a plant.
Billions of people around the world live far from where their food is grown.
It’s a big disconnect in modern life. And it may be about to change. 

The world’s population is expected to reach 9.7 billion by 2050, 33% more people than are on the planet today, according to projections from the United Nations. About two-thirds of them are expected to live in cities, continuing a migration that has been under way around the world for years.

That’s a lot of mouths to feed, particularly in urban areas. Getting food to people who live far from farms—sometimes hundreds or thousands of miles away—is costly and strains natural resources. And heavy rains, droughts and other extreme weather events can threaten supplies. 
Now more startups and city authorities are finding ways to grow food closer to home. High-tech “vertical farms” are sprouting inside warehouses and shipping containers, where lettuce and other greens grow without soil, stacked in horizontal or vertical rows and fed by water and LED lights, which can be customized to control the size, texture or other characteristic of a plant.

Companies are also engineering new ways to grow vegetables in smaller spaces, such as walls, rooftops, balconies, abandoned lots—and kitchens. They’re out to take advantage of a city’s resources, composting food waste and capturing rainwater as it runs off buildings or parking lots.

“We’re currently seeing the biggest movement of humans in the history of the planet, with rural people moving into cities across the world,” says Brendan Condon, co-founder and director of Biofilta Ltd., an Australian environmental-engineering company marketing a “closed-loop” gardening system that aims to use compost and rainwater runoff. “We’ve got rooftops, car parks, walls, balconies. If we can turn these city spaces into farms, then we’re reducing food miles down to food meters.”

Moving beyond experiments

Urban farming isn’t easy. It can require significant investment, and there are bureaucratic hurdles to overcome. Many companies have yet to turn a profit, experts say. A few companies have already failed, and urban-farming experts say many more will be weeded out in the coming years. 

But commercial vertical farms are well beyond experimental. Companies such as AeroFarms, owned by Dream Holdings Inc., and Urban Produce LLC have designed and operate commercial vertical farms that aim to deliver supplies of greens on a mass scale more cheaply and reliably to cities, by growing food locally indoors year round.
At its headquarters in Irvine, Calif., Urban Produce grows baby kale, wheatgrass and other organic greens in neat rows on shelves stacked 25 high that rotate constantly, as if on a conveyor belt, around the floor of a windowless warehouse. Computer programs determine how much water and LED light the plants receive. Sixteen acres of food grow on a floor measuring an eighth of an acre.

Its “high-density vertical growing system,” which Urban Produce patented, can lower fuel and shipping costs for produce, uses 80% less fertilizer than conventional growing methods, and generates its own filtered water for its produce from humidity in the air, says Edwin Horton Jr., the company’s president and chief executive officer.
“Our ultimate goal is to be completely off the grid,” Mr. Horton says.
The company sells the greens to grocers, juice makers and food-service companies, and is in talks to license the growing system to groups in cities around the world, he says. “We want to build these in cities, and we want to employ local people,” he says. 
AeroFarms has built a 70,000-square-foot vertical farm in a former steel plant in Newark, N.J., where it is growing leafy greens like arugula and kale aeroponically—a technique in which plant roots are suspended in the air and nourished by a nutrient mist and oxygen—in trays stacked 36 feet high.

The company, which supplies stores from Delaware to Connecticut, has more than $50 million in investment from Prudential, Goldman Sachs and other investors, and aims to install its systems in other cities globally, says David Rosenberg, its chief executive officer. “We envision a farm in cities all over the world,” he says.
AeroFarms says it is offering project management and other services to urban organizations as a partner in the 100 Resilient Cities network of cities that are working on preparing themselves better for 21st century challenges such as food and water shortages.

The bottom line

Still, these farms can’t supply a city’s entire food demand. So far, vertical farms grow mostly leafy greens, because the crops can be turned over quickly, generating cash flow easily in a business that requires extensive capital investment, says Henry Gordon-Smith, managing director of Blue Planet Consulting Services LLC, a Brooklyn, N.Y., company that specializes in the design, implementation and operation of urban agricultural projects globally.

The greens can also be marketed as locally grown to consumers who are seeking fresh produce. 

Other types of vegetables require more space. Growing fruits like avocados under LED light might not make sense economically, says Mr. Gordon-Smith.
“Light costs money, so growing an avocado under LED lights to only get the fruit to sell is a challenge,” he says.

And the farms aren’t likely to grow wheat, rice or other commodities that provide much of a daily diet, because there is less of a need for them to be fresh, Mr. Gordon-Smith says. They can be stored and shipped efficiently, he says.
The farms are also costly to start and run. AeroFarms has yet to turn a profit, though Mr. Rosenberg says he expects the company to become profitable in a few months, as its new farm helps it reach a new scale of production. Urban Produce became profitable earlier this year partly by focusing on specialty crops such as microgreens—the first shoots of greens that come up from the seeds—that enerally grow indoors in a very condensed space, says Mr. Horton, who started the company in 2014. 

One of the first commercial vertical-farming companies in the U.S., FarmedHere LLC, closed a 90,000 square-foot farm in a Chicago suburb and merged with another company late last year. “We’ve learned a lot of lessons,” says co-founder Paul Hardej. 
Among them: Operating in cities is expensive. The company should have built its first farm in a suburb rather than a Chicago neighborhood, Mr. Hardej says. Real estate would have been cheaper.

“We could have been 10 or 20 miles away and still be a local producer,” Mr. Hardej says.
The company also might have been able to work with a smaller local government to get permits and rework zoning and other regulations, because indoor farming was a new type of land use, Mr. Hardej says. While FarmedHere produced some crops profitably, it spent a lot on overhead for lawyers and accountants “to deal with the regulations,” he says.
Mr. Hardej is now co-founder and chief executive officer of Civic Farms LLC, a company that develops a “2.0” version of the vertical farm, he says—more efficient operations that take into account the lessons learned. Civic Farms is collaborating with the University of Arizona on a research and development center at Biosphere 2, the Earth science research facility in Oracle, Ariz., where it runs a vertical farm and develops new technologies.

 

Blossoming tech

New technology will improve the economic viability of vertical farms, says Mr. Gordon-Smith. New cameras, sensors and smartphone apps help monitor plant growth. One company is even developing augmented-reality glasses that can show workers which plants to pick, Mr. Gordon-Smith says. 

“That is making the payback look a lot better,” he says. “The future is bright for vertical farming, but if you’re building a vertical farm today, be ready for a challenge.”
Some cities are trying to propagate more urban farms and ease the regulatory burden of setting them up. Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed created the post of urban agriculture director in December 2015, with a goal of putting local healthy food within a half-mile of 75% of the city’s residents by 2020. The job includes attracting urban-farming projects to Atlanta and helping projects obtain funding and permits, says Mario Cambardella, who holds the director title. “I want to be ahead of the curve; I don’t want to be behind,” he says.
Many groups are taking more low-tech or smaller-scale approaches. A program called BetterLife Growers Inc. in Atlanta plans to break ground this fall on a series of greenhouses in an underserved area of the city, where it will grow lettuce and herbs in 2,900 “tower gardens,” thick trunks that stand in large tubs. The plants will be propagated in rock wool, a growing medium consisting of cotton-candy-like fibers made of a melted combination of rock and sand, and then placed into pods in the columns, where they will be regularly watered with a nutrient solution pumped through the tower, says Ellen Macht, president of BetterLife Growers. 
The produce will be sold to local educational and medical institutions. “What we wanted to do was create jobs and come up with a product that institutions could use,” she says.
The $12.5 million project is funded in part by a loan from the city of Atlanta, with Mr. Cambardella helping by educating grant managers on the growing system and its importance.

Change at home

Another company aims to bring vertical farming to the kitchen. Agrilution GmbH, based in Munich, Germany, plans to start selling a “plantCube” later this year that looks like a mini-refrigerator and grows greens using LED lights and an automatic watering system that can be controlled from a smartphone. “The idea is to really make it a commodity kitchen device,” says Max Loessl, Agrilution’s co-founder and chief executive officer, of the appliance, which will cost 2,000 euros—about $2,200—initially.

The goal is to sell enough to bring the price down, so that in five years the appliance is affordable enough for most people in the developed world, Mr. Loessl says. 
Biofilta, the company Mr. Condon co-founded, is marketing the Foodwall, a modular system of connected containers, an approach that he calls “deliberately low tech” because it doesn’t require electricity or computers to operate. The tubs are filled with a soil-based mix and a “wicking garden-bed technology” that stores and sucks water up from the bottom of the tub to nourish the plants without the need for pumps. The plants need to be watered just once a week in summer, or every three to four weeks in the winter, says Chief Executive Marc Noyce. The tubs can be connected vertically or horizontally on rooftops, balconies or backyards. “We’ve made this gardening for dummies,” Mr. Noyce says.
The Foodwall can use composted food waste and harvested rainwater, helping to turn cities into “closed-loop food-production powerhouses,” Mr. Condon says.
He and Mr. Noyce were motivated to design the Foodwall by a projection from local experts that only 18% of the food consumed in their home city of Melbourne, Australia, will be grown locally by 2050, compared with 41% today, Mr. Noyce says. 
“We were shocked,” says Mr. Noyce. “We’re going to be beholden to other states and other countries dictating our pricing for our own food.”
“Then we started to look at this trend around the world and found it was exactly the same,” he says.

Traditional, rural farming is far from being replaced by all of these new technologies, experts say. The need for food is simply too great. But urban projects can provide a steady supply of fresh produce, helping to improve diets and make a city’s food supply more secure, they say. 
“While rural farmers will remain essential to feeding cities, cleverly designed urban farming can produce most of the vegetable requirements of a city,” Mr. Condon says.

The Future of Farming: Japan Goes Vertical And Moves Indoors

The Future of Farming: Japan Goes Vertical And Moves Indoors

Spread, Fujitsu and AeroFarms are growing vegetables hydroponically, with successful yields

BY MELINDA JOE

21 MAY 2017

Spread, Fujitsu and AeroFarms are growing vegetables hydroponically, with successful yields

Indoor agriculture is on the rise all over the world – particularly in Asia, where concerns over food safety and pesticide use in recent years have fuelled a boom in so-called plant factories. Spread, Japan’s largest vertical farm, produces more than 20,000 heads of lettuce a day in its 3000-square-metre facility outside of Kyoto.

Spread Co's vertical farms

The vegetables are cultivated hydroponically – without soil, in beds of constantly circulating nutrient solution – under LED lights in a sterile, climate-controlled environment. Later this year, the company plans to open a second facility that will use robot technology to automate tasks such as harvesting and boost total production to a whopping 50,000 heads per day.

Electronics giant Fujitsu is among a number of Japanese technology firms to embrace horticulture, converting factories that had formerly been used to manufacture semiconductors into tightly sealed indoor plantations manned by engineers in white cleanroom suits.

Fujitsu’s cloud-based software allows workers to easily monitor sensors that track the growth of the plants. Nutrient and light levels can be adjusted to develop varieties of lettuce with, for example, low potassium content for people with kidney disease.

AeroFarms

Last year, AeroFarms, located in New Jersey, made headlines for becoming the world’s biggest vertical farm, with the capacity to harvest roughly 1,000 tonnes of greens per year.

The company employs aeroponic technology, a more efficient form of hydroponics, where plants are grown in a mist environment. The company relies on big data to oversee the cultivation of 250 varieties of organically grown herbs and leafy vegetables.

Farming without soil: new Japanese tech makes growing fruit and vegetables possible in any environment

Packaged Produce Sold At Some Giant Stores Recalled Due to Possibility of Metal In Product

Packaged Produce Sold At Some Giant Stores Recalled Due to Possibility of Metal In Product

• MEAGEN FINNERTY | Website Producer
•  
• May 19, 2017

packaged produce company is recalling its products sold at some Giant stores and Martin's Food Markets.

BrightFarms, which sells spinach, spring mix, kale and other similar products issued the voluntary recall because of potential contamination of metal pieces in the produce.

The metal may have made its way into packaging during construction at the company's Elkwood, Virginia, greenhouse, according to the recall.

The salad products have best-by dates between May 22 and 26. They are:

• BrightFarms Baby Spinach (4 oz. package)
• BrightFarms Spring Mix (4 oz. and 8 oz. package)
• BrightFarms Spinach Blend (4 oz. package)
• BrightFarms Baby Kale (3 oz. package)
• BrightFarms Arugula (4 oz. and 8 oz. package)
• BrightFarms Mixed Greens (4 oz. package)
• BrightFarms Baby Romaine (4 oz. and 8 oz. package)

Affected basil products, best-by dates ranging from May 18 to 23, are:

• BrightFarms Basil (.75 oz. package)
• BrightFarms Thai Basil (.75 oz. package)
• BrightFarms Lemon Basil (.75 oz. package)

Products from other greenhouses aren't affected by the recall. Consumers are encouraged to throw away products or return their purchases for a refund.

Affected stores are: Giant Landover, Giant Carlisle, Peapod and Martin’s Food Markets in Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, Delaware, West Virginia and Washington, D.C., and possibly Capital Area Food Bank.

$3.5M Indoor Farming Facility Could Break Ground In June

$3.5M Indoor Farming Facility Could Break Ground In June

By Mark Peterson |  Posted: Tue 5:58 PM, May 16, 2017  |  Updated: Tue 6:41 PM, May 16, 2017

The construction of an indoor farming operation in inner-city South Bend could begin next month.

City officials expressed a willingness Tuesday to buy into the proposed $3.5 million dollar project—but not sight unseen.

“We’d like to at least get a visual on what those look like before we put our dollars and investment. We hope it will enhance the neighborhood. We don’t want it to be a detriment to the neighborhood,” said Jeff Rea, Chairman of the South Bend Industrial Revolving Loan Fund Board.

While there are plenty of pictures that show what the inside of a vertical farming operation in South Bend would look like, there’s not a single depiction of what it would look like on the outside.

“So, from what we’ve been told is that the building would be more like a tent structure, not, made out of fabric, not a solid,” said Tim Corcoran with South Bend’s Community Investment Department. “I don’t know of any other fabric buildings in our community.”

The proposed indoor growing facility would stand a story and a half tall and be window-less. “So it's a temporary facility if you will, it's a tent-like facility, so tent conjures up a different images for a lot of different people,” said Jeff Rea.

It was the impact on the overall image of the neighborhood off Sample Street, north of the Ivy Tech campus that had some worried. Every neighboring building near the vacant lot where the farm would be built is made of brick.
Members of South Bend’s Industrial Revolving Loan Fund Board today tentatively approved a $700,000 loan for the project. Final approval will come only if the ‘ayes’ still have it—after pictures of the proposed facility are provided and perused.

“Ultimately we're in support of the loans, we approved the loan today contingent on the visual, us approving the visual piece of that too, so we're going to ask the owner to give us some pictures and help us understand what this operation is going to look like,” said Jeff Rea.

After getting a peek at the pictures, members of the loan board plan to hook up by conference call to consider giving final approval. Officials say the developer, Green Sense Farms, wants to break ground on the South Bend project in June.

The vertical farming facility would be a place where green leafy vegetables would be grown year-round, under artificial light, and carefully controlled conditions. The facility would also be a place where Ivy Tech students could earn a degree.

“Food sustainability is an important issue that is just going to continue to become more important as arable farmland is reduced in Indiana and around the world for that matter. So from the use perspective, I find it a very interesting thing and I’m glad that they’re trying to trial this in South Bend,” said Corcoran.