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Can Digital Farming Be A Success?
Can Digital Farming Be A Success?
Susan Martinez, 20th July 2017
Farmers in the United States are constantly struggling to make ends meet. Part of the problem is the logistics involved in getting products from farm to table, but one company is looking to circumvent the process by creating a fully automated farming distribution center right outside many cities. A private firm Bowery Founds is attempting to automate the farming process and reduce the costs of distribution by using technology to grow products.
The Demand for Organic Products
Demand for organic products continue to grow. Protein demand has skyrocketed during the past year. According to the US Department of Agriculture, the number of organic chickens slaughtered have increased nearly 3-fold in the past 12-months. Organic produce demand has grown significantly, as consumer look for non-genetically modified foods.
Organic Prices are High
The problem that consumers face is the high cost of organic products. For example, the retail price for organic corn is nearly 4-times the cost of conventional corn. This is for several reasons including the cost to farming corn, the time it takes to receive certification which takes 3-years to growth grains, and the loss of crop due to pests.
Additionally, fraudulent organic products have been flooding into the United States which has help satiate demand, and cap prices. The recent detection of fraudulent organic grains, which include corn, soybeans and wheat from Turkey in the U.S. drove the Organic Trade Association to form a task force to detect fraudulent activity. Certifiers of organic products are now asking traders to show that there is certification back from the original farms that produced the products.
A Weaker Dollar Makes Imports Expensive
In addition, a weaker dollar in the forex markets make imports more expensive to purchase in the United States. If the dollar continues to move lower if the Federal Reserve keeps interest rates on hold for the balance of 2017, consumers will turn to domestic products to feed strong demand.
Technology at the Farm
One of the ways Bowery believes they can circumvent some of these issues is to grow most of the crops indoors using LED lights. While the USDA has not ruled yet on whether hydroponic growth can be considered organic, there is demand for this product. In the last decade, the costs of LED lights have dropped nearly 85%, while the efficiency of these lights has surged. LED lights can be used to grow plants, making these farms very efficient.
Additionally, there are now software programs that can analyze a plant and specifically determine what is needed to create a better product. In real-time, algorithms can evaluate the soil and water as well as analyze a plants DNA. The algorithms are constantly changing givIng produce the best chance to flourish.
Most of the farms will be right outside major cities, at most 20-miles from a major metropolitan urban center. This will provide for lower distribution costs, and reduce spoilage that is due to transportation. Farm to table will become much more efficient and given the robust demand, this technology driven approach could be successful.
Vertical Farming Tour Visits Delval Programs
Vertical Farming Tour Visits Delval Programs
Chris Filling, hydroponics greenhouse manager, leads a tour of DelVal's greenhouses during an educational tour conducted by the state Department of Agriculture. Delaware Valley University photo
DOYLESTOWN, Pa. — As interest in vertical farming continues to grow, the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture has been conducting an educational tour for its urban agriculture partners featuring hydroponics and aquaponics programs in Pennsylvania.
Delaware Valley University was the first stop on the tour, which kicked off Tuesday in the Philadelphia area.
Guests toured the University’s hydroponics and aquaponics greenhouses to see how DelVal is preparing students for these industries.
In hydroponics, growers use soilless systems for more precise control of inputs. In aquaponics, fish provide nutrients for plants in a soilless system.
These systems allow growers to produce food in unconventional places, using less space and resources.
“The hydroponics and aquaponics industries have tremendous potential to help solve pressing challenges, such as how to feed a growing population with limited resources,” said Chris Tipping, DelVal’s interim dean of agriculture and environmental sciences.
“At DelVal, we’re educating our students about these industries, and we’re also reaching out into the larger community to partner with other educational programs,” Tipping said. “There’s a real sense of excitement about hydroponics and aquaponics in Pennsylvania.”
Scott Sheely, special assistant for workforce development for the state Department of Agriculture, was part of organizing the tour.
“As schools, government officials and businesses look at ways to apply the technology to grow food in cities, there has been a demand for education on urban agriculture,” Sheely said.
“The Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture invited its urban agriculture partners to join it in visiting sites across Pennsylvania to learn more about this technology and how it is being used in the region,” he said.
“DelVal was chosen as a stop because the university is investing in research and education in hydroponics and aquaponics,” Sheely said.
DelVal President Maria Gallo and Tipping addressed the group.
DelVal is currently building a new specialization in hydroponics and aquaponics within its established Department of Plant Science, thanks to the support of DelVal trustee Kate Littlefield.
“This support was used to renovate two greenhouses as well as to provide the opportunity to create the first endowed professorship in DelVal history,” Tipping said. “This professor will lead the program.”
The tour also visited sites in Lancaster on Wednesday and Harrisburg on Thursday. Other stops included W.B. Saul High School, Metropolis Farm, Aero Development, Garden Spot Village, Steelton-Highspire High School, Ladder & Vine and Messiah College.
For Additional Information, please click on the link below:
3 Urban Farming Companies On The Fast Track To Success
3 Urban Farming Companies On The Fast Track To Success
One of the beauties of urban farming is that it can be implemented on both a small scale by individual urban dwellers as well as large commercial scale, supplying surrounding communities with locally sourced urban farmed goods.
These 3 companies, running urban farming operations at the commercial scale in some of the worlds largest cities, are urban agriculture enterprises to watch out for, if you have not seen their products on the shelf of your local grocery store, you may see them soon!
1. Metropolitan Farms (Chicago)
Despite opening less than a year ago (Fall 2015), Metropolitan farms has been years in the making. CEO Benjamin Kent had been developing the concept for quite some time before launching the 10,000+ sq ft facility that is Metropolitan farms today.
Metropolitan farms' specialty? Aquaponic farming - and lots of it. The rapidly growing company is on pace to produce approximately 100,000 heads of lettuce annually.
The best part? With close proximity to clients, metro farms can get their products to clientele as quickly and as freshly as possible, a common benefit to the urban farming approach.
But lettuce isn't the only output of Metropolitan farms, they also produce the urban farming staple herb basil along with over a tonne of fish annually produced by the hydroponic cycle.
2. Bright Farms (Washington D.C. , Chicago, and others)
Bright Farms also focuses on greenhouse style urban farming, but thus far has built larger urban agriculture facilities on the outskirts of urban centers. Currently, the company has over a quarter million square feet in cumulative growing space, and has raised over $25MM cumulatively to expand their urban farming operations.
The production output potential of some of Bright Farms' new facilities is also staggering to say the least. The Chicago facility, according to CEO Paul Lightfoot, will have the capability to produce upwards of one million pounds of urban farmed produce annually to customers at large retail grocers such as Mariano's.
Bright Farms' isn't slowing down either - according to CEO Lightfoot, the company, which originally started as a non-profit but has now switched to for-profit, has plans to expand by opening over 15 new urban farming locations in the near future.
3. Gotham Greens (New York, Chicago)
With over 150,000 sq ft cumulatively in facilities spanning across New York City and Chicago predominantly, Gotham Greens is stiff competition for companies like the aforementioned Bright Farms in what has now become a crowded space in commercial urban large-scale farming.
The secret sauce of Gotham Greens may lie in its highly technical approach to their growing systems, which utilize advanced computer algorithms to manage growing conditions with more efficiency than human farmers possibly could.
Investors are starting to buy in also, with Gotham Greens having raised over $30 MM in venture funding to date, they are without question a trending agricultural technology startup and the proof is in the pudding in terms of traction - Gotham has picked up high profile clients such as Whole Foods.
With the urban agricultural landscape expanding so rapidly (and it is expanding quite rapidly, urban agriculture is now practiced by over 800 million peopleworldwide, or over 10% of the world population, according to the FAO), these three companies will be in the center of the a rapidly swelling market.
Both commercial enterprises such as these as well as individuals practicing urban farming could lead to unprecedented prevalence and reliance on urban farming in the not so distant future.
A Behind-the-Scenes Look at Europe’s Huge New Vertical Farm
GrowWise is a vertical farming research facility, and in conjunction with Dutch fresh food distributor Staay Food Group, it’s laying the groundwork for the first commercial vertical farm in Europe, slated to open north-east of Amsterdam in a town called Dronten later this year.
A Behind-the-Scenes Look at Europe’s Huge New Vertical Farm
July 20, 2017
The Eindhoven High Tech Campus, a 90-minute train ride south of Amsterdam, consists of two rows of nondescript mid-rise office buildings on either side of a wide, tree-lined road. In typical Dutch fashion, there’s more parking for bikes than cars, and the campus is flanked by stretches of neatly-maintained green fields and canals.
The place doesn’t have an especially high-tech feel to it. But on the third floor of a building near the end of the road, a division of Philips Lighting called GrowWise is using technology to tackle a crucial question: what are we going to eat once there are over nine billion people on Earth?
GrowWise is a vertical farming research facility, and in conjunction with Dutch fresh food distributor Staay Food Group, it’s laying the groundwork for the first commercial vertical farm in Europe, slated to open north-east of Amsterdam in a town called Dronten later this year.
During a tour of GrowWise, I spoke with Gus van der Feltz, Global Director of City Farming, about the ins and outs of vertical farms and the opportunities and challenges the field will face in coming years.
No Sun + No Soil = Organic Plants?
Since the beginning of growing food, sunlight, water, and soil have been essential ingredients. If you take away two of these most basic of inputs, how do plants grow?
“You can think of a vertical farm as a black box,” van der Feltz said. “We look at it as an integrated system, trying to create vegetables in a closed environment.”
Before going into said ‘black box’—otherwise known as the growth rooms—we slip light blue covers over the soles of our shoes and sanitize our hands. These are minor protective measures, and they don’t prevent pathogens from entering the chamber. “If we were going into the actual growth facility we’d need to put on full protective gear,” van der Feltz said.
Outside the growth room is a winding, humming network of pipes, screens, and dials. Van der Feltz pulls back a large sandwich panel door, and when we step inside, the air is noticeably warmer and more humid. It smells like a farm, except without the manure, and it feels a little like being on a spaceship—trays of plants are stacked four levels high, hundreds of blue and red pinpoints of light beaming down on them from above. The light on the bottom two levels is white, while the top two give off a purplish glow.
We have to raise our voices to talk over the hum of the regulators. Solar light, van der Feltz explains, is spread across a spectrum ranging from UV to infrared. In photosynthesis, red and blue wavelengths of light interact with chlorophyll to help form glucose and cellulose, the structural material in cell walls.
LEDs can reproduce this effect, and can do it faster than the sun; time from seed to harvest at GrowWise is 30-40 days, as compared to 60-65 days in a typical greenhouse, according to van der Feltz.
“What we’ve done with LEDs is optimize the conditions for growth. There are elements of sunlight that plants don’t use as efficiently, and those can be reduced or taken out,” van der Feltz said. One of those elements is heat—when I wave a hand under the lights, they feel no warmer than the rest of the room.
The crops need different intensities of light as they pass through stages of growth, and they’re constantly monitored by sensors and software that tweak their conditions as necessary. Van der Feltz explains that triggering the right combination of processes in photosynthesis, in combination with other growth factors, can also create desired effects. “With the right lighting conditions we can make lettuce turn purple or red. We can make strawberries sweeter,” he said.
Each plant sits in a thimble-sized container of sterilized coconut bark, which serves as a substrate for germination and root development. From there the roots extend into shallow troughs of nutrient-rich water—the plants are constantly in water rather than being periodically sprayed or on a timed drip, making this hydroponic farming.
Food And The Future
The Dronten facility will be 900 square meters (9,680 square feet), with a total cultivation area of 3,000 square meters (32,290 square feet).
Though this pales in comparison to the biggest vertical farm in the world—AeroFarms’ 70,000-square-foot facility in Newark, New Jersey—it will be the largest in Europe. Outside Europe and the US, vertical farms also exist in Japan, Korea, Singapore, and Canada, and a facility much larger than Aerofarms is planned in Shanghai.
It’s no coincidence most of these farms are near big, densely-populated cities. The UN’s 2014 World Urbanization Prospects report predicts population growth and urbanization will add 2.5 billion people to the world’s big cities by 2050. That’s a whole lot of people who’ll be buying all their food rather than producing any of it.
Agricultural yields, then, will have to increase significantly, and since much of the world’s farmable land is already being farmed, we’ll need to get a bit more resourceful with our food supply.
Right now, vertical farming is still expensive—a bag of GrowWise lettuce costs more than a bag of organic lettuce, which costs more than a bag of regular lettuce—and it requires a lot of energy; those LED bulbs aren’t lighting themselves.
But continued research and investment will gradually drive prices down, and as ironic as it sounds, vertical farms will eventually get all their energy from solar panels.
This will leave us with an organic growing method that requires no fertilizer or pesticides, produces no agricultural runoff or other pollution, uses a fraction of the water traditional farms use (same goes for land), and yields consistent harvests year-round, even in extreme or unusual weather.
“You can create optimal growing conditions for the crop and you don’t need to wash it,” van der Feltz said. “The washing process damages the leaves and causes them to decay faster. Having the growth facility nearby decreases travel time and means the food will be fresher.”
The Consumer’s Still King
As rosy as this all sounds, it doesn’t mean people will embrace vertically-farmed food with open arms. Food is a sensitive topic many consumers take very seriously; if we are, in fact, what we eat, people may not love the idea of eating food that, for all its merits, is grown under decidedly artificial conditions.
As we stood peering at the neatly glowing rows of plants, van der Feltz reached out, plucked one from its roots, and handed it to me. “Try it,” he said. So I did. I tasted the green-leaf lettuce and the basil. Both seemed to have a stronger flavor and aftertaste than the store-bought greens I’m used to, though it was nothing I’d have noticed had I not been aware of what I was eating.
Van der Feltz recognizes widespread adoption of vertically-farmed food may be a challenge. “We understand some people may feel uneasy about food grown with no sunlight,” he said. Consumer education will play a key role in getting people comfortable with purchasing and eating LED-grown greens.
At the same time, though, food preferences are shifting, and for the better as far as vertical farming is concerned. “In the Western world there’s a growing demand for convenience products that have already been washed and are ready to use,” van der Feltz explained.
His confidence in GrowWise’s products, for one, is unwavering. “We test our produce regularly for pathogens and nutritional quality, and each time the results are excellent,” he said. “They serve this lettuce here in our cafeteria. I take it home to my family. My kids love it.”
Image Credit: Vanessa Bates Ramirez
Plenty Attracts Largest-Ever Agriculture Technology Investment Led by the SoftBank Vision Fund to Solve Global Fresh Produce Shortages
Plenty Attracts Largest-Ever Agriculture Technology Investment Led by the SoftBank Vision Fund to Solve Global Fresh Produce Shortages
Investment will drive deployment of global, large-scale indoor farm network to deliver radically fresher, affordable food to local communities everywhere
July 19, 2017 10:00 AM Eastern Daylight Time
SOUTH SAN FRANCISCO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Plenty, the leading field-scale indoor farming company remaking the global food system, announced today a $200 million Series B funding round led by the SoftBank Vision Fund, making it the largest agriculture technology investment in history. In connection with the investment in Plenty, the SoftBank Vision Fund’s Managing Director, Jeffrey Housenbold, will join the Plenty Board of Directors.
“Fruits and vegetables grown conventionally spend days, weeks, and thousands of miles on freeways and in storage, keeping us all from what we crave and deserve — food as irresistible and nutritious as what we used to eat out of our grandparents’ gardens”
Plenty is using proven plant science and patented technologies to build a new kind of indoor farm that uses cutting-edge LED lighting, micro-sensor technology, and big data processing to deliver higher-quality produce for pricing as good or better than what consumers pay today. The world has run out of economically viable, arable land for many fresh fruit and vegetable crops. This investment will support building out Plenty’s global, hyper-yield farm network and support its mission of solving the increasingly critical need to make fresh produce available and affordable for people everywhere.
“Fruits and vegetables grown conventionally spend days, weeks, and thousands of miles on freeways and in storage, keeping us all from what we crave and deserve — food as irresistible and nutritious as what we used to eat out of our grandparents’ gardens," said Matt Barnard, CEO and co-founder of Plenty. “The world is out of land in the places it’s most economical to grow these crops. After a decade of development driven by one of our founders, our technology is uniquely capable of growing hyper-organic food with no pesticides nor GMOs while cutting water consumption by 99 percent, making locally-grown produce possible anywhere. We’re now ready to build out our farm network and serve communities around the globe.”
"By combining technology with optimal agriculture methods, Plenty is working to make ultra-fresh, nutrient-rich food accessible to everyone in an always-local way that minimizes wastage from transport," said Masayoshi Son, Chairman & CEO of SoftBank Group Corp. "We believe that Plenty's team will remake the current food system to improve people's quality of life."
Plenty’s farms, which the Company plans to build near the world’s major population centers, will deliver industry-leading yields of the freshest, best-tasting local produce that’s completely GMO- and pesticide-free, all while transitioning agriculture to a predictable and perpetual model. Plenty farms maintain a perfect growing environment, use one percent of the water and a tiny fraction of the land of conventional agriculture, while delivering produce to local grocery shelves within hours of harvest.
The Series B funding round was led by the SoftBank Vision Fund, with participation from affiliates of Louis M. Bacon, the founder of Moore Capital Management, LP, and existing investors including Eric Schmidt’s Innovation Endeavors, Bezos Expeditions, DCM, Data Collective and Finistere.
About Plenty
Plenty is a new kind of farm for a new kind of world. We’re on a mission to bring local produce to people and communities everywhere by growing the freshest, best-tasting fruits and vegetables, while using one percent of the water, less than one percent of the land, and none of the pesticides, synthetic fertilizers, or GMOs of conventional agriculture. Our field-scale indoor farms combine the best in American agriculture and crop science with machine learning, IoT, big data, climate creation technology and the extraordinary flavor and nutritional profiles of heirloom seed stock, enabling us to grow the food nature intended — while minimizing our water and energy footprint. Based in San Francisco, Plenty is currently building out and scaling its operations to serve people around the world.
Indoor Farming Plus Made In USA LED Grow Lights: Profile 1.18
Indoor Farming Plus Made In USA LED Grow Lights: Profile 1.18
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GREENandSAVE Staff | Posted on Thursday 20th July 2017
This is one of the profiles in an ongoing series covering next generation agriculture. We are seeing an increased trend for indoor farming across the United States and around the world. This is a positive trend given that local farming reduces adverse CO2 emissions from moving food long distances. If you would like us to review and profile your company, just let us know! Contact Us.
Company Profile: Metropolis Farms
Here is a great example of a large scale vertical indoor farm growing vegetables and herbs.
Here is some of the “About Us” content: We are urban-vertical farmers with over 15 years of indoor growing experience. We grow great tasting, wholesome herbs and vegetables, inside city buildings year-round. We grow the highest-quality food without pesticides, herbicides, or many of the other health risks that impact the food that reaches your table. We harvest and deliver our fresh produce the same day to local stores and restaurants. We can also make our fresh herbs and vegetables available by next-day air to restaurants and home gourmets nationwide. Our South Philadelphia Location is the first vertical farm in Philadelphia in addition to being the first vertical farm ever built on a second floor.
Our proprietary Revolution Vertical Farming Technology ™ is ultra-efficient, environmentally-responsible and commercially scalable. Our farms are highly-adaptive and virtually eliminate many of the health business and environmental risks that make conventional and greenhouse farming so expensive. Our farms can operate profitably for both smaller-artisan farms (Flash Farms) as well as large-scale operations (Super Farms). Our farming systems use 95 to 98 percent less water and 82 percent less energy than traditional farms. Our cost-effective technology allows us to grow more than an acre of produce in a 36 square feet of space, over 1,200 times the herbs and vegetables of an outdoor farm per square foot. We bring great food, good jobs and opportunities to local communities.
Instead of focusing on creating the world’s largest vertical farm. Our focus is on creating the world’s most efficient, cost effective and consequently productive local farms. It seems like every few months the media announces yet another proposed “World’s Largest Vertical Farm”. To date exactly none of these projects have ever fulfilled their promises. Our technology produces the most food, at the lowest cost, of both capital and operational expense, while maintaining the highest taste and nutritional values. Our goal is to grow both farms and farmers nationwide.
Here is the link to learn more: http://www.metropolisfarmsusa.com.
To date, the cost of man made lighting has been a barrier for indoor agriculture. A new generation of LED lighting provides cost effective opportunities for farmers to deliver local produce. Warehouses and greenhouses are both viable structures for next generation agriculture. Here is one example of next generation made in USA LED grow light technology to help farmers: Commercial LED Grow Lights.
Indoor Farming Operation Being Built At Ivy Tech South Bend
Indoor Farming Operation Being Built At Ivy Tech South Bend
By Mark Peterson | Posted: Wed 6:22 PM, Jul 19, 2017
SOUTH BEND, Ind. (WNDU) - A farm is being built on Ivy Tech’s South Bend campus at a cost of up to $4 million.
The farm will span just 20,000 square feet because all the growing will take place indoors, hydroponically, under L.E.D. lights. It was somewhat ironic that the soil ceremoniously overturned during groundbreaking ceremonies today won’t be used to grow a thing.
“We are at the tip of the spear of a brand new industry, we're leaders in an emerging market,” said Green Sense Farm’s Founding Farmer Robert Colangelo. “We’re like Steve Jobs making computers in your garage. This field is just at the beginning of the beginning.”
The Green Sense search to find an academic partner for the project was not an easy one. “We went to a number of four year institutions looking to transform farming at agricultural schools but hit walls of bureaucracy and Chancellor Coley took a risk, he saw that there was a real need to train students with two year degrees to work in the produce food service and agricultural sectors.”
Chancellor Coley refers to the leader at Ivy Tech South Bend, Dr. Thomas Coley: “They set up a real live production and then our students get to train in a live production that's a very unique arrangement, it’s probably one, if not few in the country that would have this kind of partnership.”
And the partnering doesn’t end there. The facility’s produce production capacity has already been purchased by a half dozen entities including Martin’s Super Markets.
“When you harvest produce it starts dying and losing its nutritional value as soon as it’s cut,” said Colangelo. “So if it travels from the west coast to the Midwest it could take three days, so it’s less nutritious. If it’s harvested and it’s at your table in hours, because it’s locally grown it’s much more nutritious and you can see that in the taste and in the color of the produce as well as the shelf life, it’ll last much longer.”
On July 19, 2017, Green Sense Farms and Ivy Tech Community College broke ground on a 20,000 square-foot indoor vertical farm which will be an innovative workforce training center for the next generation of farmers as it grows produce for local customers in a year-round, sustainable farm. On hand to celebrate were representatives from Green Sense Farms, Ivy Tech, the City of South Bend, as well as the customers who will use produce from the farm. Pictured are (left to right): Robert Colangelo, Founding Farmer/CEO for Green Sense Farms; Donte Shaw, Executive Chef for Café Navarre; Kenneth Acosta, General Manager for Sodexo; Patrick Dahms, Executive Chef for Morris Inn at University of Notre Dame; Pipe Halpin, Customer Relations for Green Sense Farms; Dr. Thomas G. Coley, Chancellor for Ivy Tech South Bend; Dr. Sue Ellspermann, President of Ivy Tech Community College; Craig Lewkowitz, Vice President of Culinary Operations for Four Winds Casinos.
The list of sponsors also includes the wing of Sodexo and serves the St. Mary’s Campus: “No, I don’t think dirt farms are doomed, so this is just something else that’s different. You’ve got limited growing products that are in there you know, more on the lettuces the micro greens, the enhanced flavors of herbs, stuff like that, but you aren’t going to able to take corn and wheat and all that other stuff out of the system,” said Sodexo General Manager Kenneth Acosta.
FREIGHT FARMER Q&A: KARMA FARM
Jon Shaw has his roots in organic, soil-based farming. He has been an avid organic vegetable grower since he was a student in high school, and in 2009, after 45 years of gardening experience, Jon transformed his hobby into a career and launched Karma Farm
JUNE 8, 2017
6 Questions With Jon and Nathaniel Shaw of Karma Farm
One of the best parts of being part of the Freight Farms team is talking to our freight farmers and hearing about their successes, their businesses, their customers, and their challenges. They are a wealth of information, so now we are sharing some of their stories with you!
Jon Shaw has his roots in organic, soil-based farming. He has been an avid organic vegetable grower since he was a student in high school, and in 2009, after 45 years of gardening experience, Jon transformed his hobby into a career and launched Karma Farm. Located in Maryland, this family run farm decided to extend their growing season through the use of a hoop house, and now a Leafy Green Machine (LGM), which is run by Jon's son, Nathaniel. In addition to running a farm stand CSA, the Shaws provide area farm-to-table restaurants with leafy greens grown in the LGM year-round. With over 40 years of gardening and farming experience, Jon is a wonderful addition to our Freight Farmer community. We recently spoke with Jon and Nathaniel about the transition from traditional farming to hydroponics.
Freight Farms (FF): What, if any was your experience with farming before becoming a Freight Farmer?
Jon Shaw (JS): I started organic gardening in high school (circa 1972) and I have been growing vegetables ever since. Eight years ago, I decided to take a portion of my horse farm and turn it into commercial vegetable production.
FF: How did you find customers to buy your produce?
JS: We found many of our current customers our first summer when we grew too many tomatoes in our family garden and I decided I would go into town (Baltimore) to a few restaurants to give away samples or possibly sell them. Providing samples of our produce and explaining the breadth of our product line to chefs is still the main method we use to bring in new restaurants. Our customer base has also grown significantly from word of mouth as chefs tend to change jobs frequently.
FF: What is one small change everyone can make in their daily lives to make a big difference in our food system?
JS: Eat less meat and more vegetables.
“I was motivated to become a Freight Farmer because of my desire to turn our family farm into a sustainable business.”
FF: What’s the best part of being a Freight Farmer?
Nathaniel Shaw (NS): I’ve only been a Freight Farmer for a few months, but so far, the best things about it are bringing local chefs into the LGM to touch and taste the greens we are growing inside and seeing their surprise and excitement about the bold tastes and textures it can produce. Working with local chefs to find new greens and develop products that best utilize the advantages of the LGM has been an amazing process and one that I’m most excited to continue.
FF: What motivated you to become a farmer?
NS: I was motivated to become a Freight Farmer because of my desire to turn our family farm into a sustainable business. In recent years, we have worked to supply our restaurant customers with produce more consistently using row covers and hoop-houses, but our off-season production has remained slim. Our LGM gives us the ability to sustain a broader product line throughout the year and sustain our revenue and employee base over the winter.
FF: Which individuals, groups, and communities do you strive to reach and why have you chosen to get involved with these groups?
NS: We primarily target chefs at Farm-to-Table restaurants. The reason for this is that we love to grow beautiful and unusual produce and sell to chefs at mid to higher end restaurants that specialize in utilizing local ingredients. The restaurant community in nearby Baltimore is thriving and has grown with the farm as well.
Make sure to follow Karma Farm on Facebook and Instagram to check out pictures of Little Shaw (top dog in change) as well as beautiful shots from the farm!
If you'd like to learn more about how Freight Farms is helping farmers grow food in regions across the United States, Canada, Europe, and the Caribbean reach out to us here.
Affinor Growers Highlights Accomplishments in Fiscal Year End and Outlines Future Plans
Affinor Growers Highlights Accomplishments in Fiscal Year End and Outlines Future Plans
Vancouver (Canada), July 17 2017 - Affinor Growers (CSE:AFI, OTC:RSSFF, Frankfurt:1AF) (“Affinor” or the “Corporation”) is pleased to provide our shareholders with a summary of the Company's accomplishments in the past year and Affinor's plans for the current year.
Affinor's fiscal year end was May 31, 2017. Our ultimate goal continues to focus on becoming the leading technology developer and supplier of vertical farming equipment dramatically increasing the economics of farming, improving food security and increasing agriculture production for high value crops. With the help of our strategic partners and our technical team, Affinor's immediate plans include continuing the development and commercialization of our patented technology and equipment, validation through third party partners, proving revenue models, and crop diversification.
Over the last year, Affinor has focused on strawberry development as fresh strawberries account for 80% of the total strawberry production in North America valued at $2.6 billion annually with several industry challenges making traditional strawberry growing an ongoing concern for long term viability. Affinor will continue to grow and harvest strawberries with our beta prototypes installed at the University of Fraser Valley throughout the summer, fall and winter of 2018. The focus will continue on standardizing crop models and determining best practices for commercialization. Other notable achievements over the last fiscal year included testing cannabis on a small 4 level vertical growing tower to determine if the high value crop can be utilized with the technology, increasing yields and production per square foot, with initial success.
Affinor's goal over the next year is to shift from a development to an operational company focusing on generating revenue from vertical tower sales, license agreements and introducing new agriculture technologies. Our revenue models will include selling systems to growers resulting in a margin on the equipment, license fees, and collecting royalties on the revenues from production; as well as potentially using the equipment ourselves to grow and sell crops.
Project updates:
Commercial Farm in Abbotsford
Affinor expects to commission 32 towers in a commercial farm in Abbotsford British Columbia in late 2017 capable of growing over 21,000 plants. The facility will be one of our first license holders to commercially produce products using Affinor technology. We have partnered with a large strawberry producer in California that will supply the strawberry plants and help oversee the initial growing with an "On-Farm Test Agreement" executed March 27, 2017 (see news release "Affinor Growers Signs an "On-Farm Test Agreement" with California Berry Company")
Beta Prototype Testing Update
Two 4 level beta prototype towers were installed installed in April, 2016, and December, 2016, at the University of the Fraser Valley (“UFV”) Surrey BC location in the agriculture research greenhouse (see news release Dec 6 2016, "Affinor Installs Second Tower at the Agriculture Research Demonstration Greenhouse BioPod Initiative"). One tower holds 128 strawberry plants within 100 square feet and the other 256 within 100 square feet. All crop model information, data, procedures and harvest quality is being documented to help prove operational and financial assumptions, revenue models, and best practices to standardize commercialization. The protocols and developed methods will help catalyze the commercial farm in Abbotsford when ready.
Affinor's next objective is to produce strawberries throughout the winter with customized LED supplemental lighting for fruiting crops and diversify the crop trials with kale during the fall 2017.
Affinor and Cannabis Production
As cannabis becomes more established in North America, cost effective commercial production and greenhouse systems will be needed to improve production. Affinor sees this as an opportunity to diversity our technology into other markets with high value crops and be the first vertical system actively growing cannabis in Canada. Our first trial growing cannabis was completed in February 2017, with a grower in Mission BC (see news release Feb 27 2017 "Affnor Growers Installs Vertical Farming System for Medical Cannabis in Mission BC") with encouraging results within four months (see news release May 29 2017 "Affinor Growers Completes Initial Medical Cannabis Growth Trial with 200% Production Increase.") Affinor will continue to test cannabis, furthering yields and output by developing new crop models for short, high producing cannabis plants specific to the needs of the technology, at licensed sites. We are negotiating with cannabis growers throughout North America to help facilitate a larger pilot plant cannabis growth trial.
BC Tree Seedlings Development.
Affinor executed a research and development license agreement to develop vertical growing systems to mass produce high quality, high stress resistance seedlings for the BC forestry market (see news release May 22 2017 "Affinor Growers Signs and "On-Site Test Agreement" to Develop Vertical Farming with Coniferous Tree Seedling"). 259 million trees were planted in 2016 with 266 million planned for 2017. Reforestation and silviculture are a large and growing market throughout North America requiring new technological solutions to keep up with demand.
License Agreements and Sales
Affinor has signed several license agreements throughout the fiscal year with various companies to use our technology based on our beta prototype concepts and preliminary production results. Each license agreement has the potential to generate significant equipment sales, long term royalties, ownership options and joint venture partnerships. For a complete list, please visit our website. We are also under license agreement negotiations with several international companies looking to build commercial facilities throughout the Caribbean, Europe, and Middle East.
For More Information, please contact:
Jarrett Malnarick, President and CEO
contact@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, 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.
SoftBank Invests in Largest Ever Agtech Deal, a $200m Series B For Indoor Ag Startup Plenty
Indoor vertical farming company agtech investment to date. Just one month after the grower acquired indoor agPlenty has raised $200 million in a Series B round of funding, the largest
SoftBank Invests in Largest Ever Agtech Deal, a $200m Series B For Indoor Ag Startup Plenty
**UPDATE: Added comments from S2G Ventures managing director Sanjeev Krishnan, AeroFarms CEO David Rosenberg***
**UPDATE: Added comments from Plenty CEO Matt Barnard, and AgFunder CEO Rob Leclerc**
Indoor vertical farming company Plenty has raised $200 million in a Series B round of funding, the largest agtech investment to date.
Just one month after the grower acquired indoor agriculture hardware company Bright Agrotech, this round was led by Japan’s SoftBank Vision Fund, a $93 billion, multi-stage tech fund.
Affiliates of Louis M. Bacon, the founder of Moore Capital Management, also joined the round alongside existing investors including Innovation Endeavors, Bezos Expeditions, Chinese VC DCM, Data Collective, and Finistere Ventures.
Plenty uses a vertical growing plane to grow leafy greens in a 52,000 square foot South San Francisco facility. The Series B — which takes total funding for the startup to $226 million — will fuel further expansion and more farms.
One agtech venture capitalist said that Plenty had a pre-money valuation of $500 million, but Plenty CEO Matt Barnard would not confirm this figure. The same venture capitalist said that if that figure was true, the valuation would be “crazy” for a company that appears to be pre-revenue.
But Plenty’s Barnard is confident about Plenty’s “aggressive” expansion plans to improve food quality globally. This expansion will include building farms in Japan, China, and the Middle East, as well as the US.
“This is an enormous investment, which is a testament to the strength of the founders and the strong conviction from Vision Fund in making bets that are true to its mandate,” said Rob Leclerc, CEO of AgFunder. “Plenty is a young company, so there’s going to be a lot of work for their economics to catch up to the valuation, but if they succeed, this will have looked cheap.”
Barnard offered no specific timeline or number of farms in the near-term, saying that the company prefers to announce new locations when all relevant partners are in place. Further, he did not confirm any retail partners for his South San Francisco farm. But he did say that Japan is a priority. “It is one of our top priorities not only because SoftBank is a partner, but there are some specific needs that we plan to fill,” said Barnard.
The CEO said that Plenty used its $1.5 million seed and $24.5 million Series A rounds of financing to prove to investors that the company had the capability to deliver “vegetables and fruits” as good or better than what is currently on the market.
Barnard, who was introduced to SoftBank by an existing investor, confirmed that in addition to leafy greens, Plenty has successfully grown strawberries, but would not confirm any other crops. He told Bloomberg that cucumbers are on the way as well.
What Plenty has yet to demonstrate is the ability to operate at scale.
Said Barnard, “Operating any farm, anywhere is extremely difficult and requires a lot of diligence, processes, people, and systems. The thing that is hard about investing is that at some point someone has to invest in scale before the scale is there and SoftBank is both visionary and courageous.”
Sanjeev Krishnan of S2G Ventures said that despite the large sums raised, vertical farming is unlikely to be dominated by one name.
“This investment shows the potential of the sector. Indoor agriculture is a real toolkit for the produce industry. There is no winner takes all potential here. I could even see some traditional, outdoor growers do indoor ag as a way to manage some of the fundamental issues of the produce industry: agronomy, logistics costs, shrinkage, freshness, seasonality and manage inventory cycles better. There are many different models that could work and we are excited about the platforms being built in the market.”
In addition to Plenty’s global expansion, this round will go toward hiring in computer science, machine learning, mechanical engineering, crop science, biology among others.
“By combining technology with optimal agriculture methods, Plenty is working to make ultra-fresh, nutrient-rich food accessible to everyone in an always-local way that minimizes wastage from transport,” said Masayoshi Son, Chairman & CEO of SoftBank Group Corp. “We believe that Plenty’s team will remake the current food system to improve people’s quality of life.”
Plenty claims to use 1 percent of the water and land of a conventional farm with no pesticides or synthetic fertilizers. Like other large soilless, hi-tech farms growing today, Plenty says it uses custom sensors feeding data-enabled systems resulting in finely-tuned environmental controls to produce greens with superior flavor.
The SoftBank Vision fund invests no less than $100 million checks in deals across internet-of-things, AI, robotics, infrastructure, telecoms, biotech, fintech, mobile apps and more.
Existing fund investments and recent deals include Indian fintech unicorn Paytm, virtual reality Improbable Worlds, China’s Uber killer Didi Chuxing, and global connectivity company OneWeb.
SoftBank Vision Fund’s managing director, Jeffrey Housenbold, will join the Plenty Board of Directors.
Plenty’s Series B pushes microbial crop input products company Indigo off the top position for the largest agtech deal on record;Indigo raised a $100 million Series C round last year, just months after raising a $56 million Series B.
Today’s deal is also far larger than any other in the indoor ag space; SunDrop Farms, the Australian greenhouse operator, raised $100 million from global private equity group in 2014. The closest in the vertical farming space is AeroFarms, which recently announced $34 million of a $40 million Series D round bring it’s fundraising total to more than $100 million.
Said AeroFarms CEO David Rosenberg, “This is a monster raise, and ultimately competition can be good for the industry to drive further advancement.”
Plenty raised $1.5 million in seed funding and a $24.5 million Series A round, both in 2016. The startup’s other investors are Innovation Endeavors , Bezos Expeditions , Finistere Ventures, Data Collective, Kirenaga Partners, DCM Ventures, and Western Technology Investment.
*Additional reporting by Louisa Burwood-Taylor*
Vertical Farming May Be About To Take Off
Vertical Farming May Be About To Take Off
20 Jul, 2017 5:00am
Vertical farming at Cofco's Intelligent Farm in Beijing.
NZ Herald
As nations endeavour to produce higher-value crops and land availability becomes ever more scarce, looking forward is beginning to mean looking up for the most plugged in farmers.
A report earlier this year from Global Market Insights suggested the market size for vertical farming would exceed US$13 billion (NZ17.7b) by 2024.
The technology involves stacked layers of produce in an indoor, controlled environment - often skyscrapers, but also warehouses and even disused bomb shelters in one case. This means farms can be found in urban areas and food may be produced in some of the least traditionally agrarian economies.
For example, Singapore has been a leader in the development of vertical farming as it attempts to reduce its dependency on overseas food sources despite the challenge of being just 720 square kilometres in size.
New Zealand does not face such challenges in terms of land mass. However, Jason Wargent, Associate Professor at Massey University and Chief Science Officer of BioLumic (a start-up that develops yield-stimulating light treatments for agricultural crops, and which has vertical farming on its radar) says New Zealand could still profit from the technology.
"One of the clearest opportunities for New Zealand is in the development of technology, which may support indoor farming system development, and have world-wide value," says Wargent. "New Zealand has a great ag-innovation landscape and developing cross-sector ag-innovation, that may be applicable or originally aimed at indoor, is a win-win for New Zealand."
Jaskirat Matharu last year wrote a research paper on the topic from an architectural perspective, and suggests New Zealand farmers should be exploring the technology too.
"I believe that vertical farming in New Zealand is not needed at this stage," says Matharu.
"Having said that, we should not wait to become a dense country for vertical farming to be used."
"It's more about being future-proof and laying the groundwork for the future. Like with most new things, society needs to educated for it to be taken seriously and it needs to happen sooner rather than later."
SoftBank Vision Fund Leads $200 Million Bet on Indoor Farms
SoftBank Vision Fund Leads $200 Million Bet on Indoor Farms
By Selina Wang
July 19, 2017, 8:00 AM CDT July 19, 2017, 9:02 AM CDT
Masayoshi Son is betting on San Francisco startup Plenty
The investment will help Plenty expand around the world
Masayoshi Son has discovered a green thumb.
The SoftBank Group Corp. chief’s Vision Fund is leading a $200 million investment in Silicon Valley startup Plenty, which says it has cracked the code on growing crops indoors super efficiently. Other participants in the round include Moore Capital Management founder Louis Bacon as well as existing backers such as DCM Ventures and funds that invest on behalf of Alphabet’s Eric Schmidt and Amazon’s Jeff Bezos.
Plenty vertical farming | Source: Plenty
This is Son’s first big bet on agricultural disruption and something of a departure from his recent investments in giant startups like office-space startup WeWork Cos. and Chinese ride-hailing provider Didi Chuxing, but he was attracted by Plenty’s potential to help boost food production near big cities.
“We believe Plenty’s team will remake the current food system to improve people’s quality of life,” Son said in an emailed statement.
Matt Barnard, Plenty’s co-founder, is scheduled to appear Thursday in Tokyo at SoftBank World, the company’s annual two-day event aimed for customers and suppliers. In previous years, Son has shared the stage with Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. co-founder Jack Ma and the company’s Pepper robot.
Son’s backing could give a big boost to vertical farming, a much-hyped concept that so far has failed to revolutionize crop production. In recent years several companies including Atlanta-based Podponics, Vancouver’s LocalGarden and Chicago-area FarmedHere have shut down indoor farms because they weren’t economically viable.
’Plant Factories’ Churn Out Clean Food in China’s Dirty Cities
Barnard, who grew up on a commercial farm in Wisconsin, founded Plenty in 2014 with Nate Storey, a crop scientist who previously started another indoor farm. Plenty does things differently from its rivals. Where most grow plants on shelves like a tall dresser, Plenty uses 20-foot-tall columns from which the plants jut horizontally; picture poles lined up in rows, carpeted in plants from top to bottom. Nutrients and water drip down the columns. Plenty scientists also figured out how to more cheaply remove excess heat emitted by the LED grow lights–a problem Barnard says tripped up other operations.
The company says it can cultivate many more crops per square foot than competitors and uses less energy because the plant food is mostly gravity-fed rather than pumped. “Because we work with physics, not against it, we save a lot of money,” Barnard says. An internet-connected system delivers specific types of light, air composition, humidity and nutrition, depending on which crop is being grown. Plenty says it can yield up to 350 times more produce in a given area than conventional farms -- with 1 percent of the water.
During a recent visit to the company’s facility in San Francisco, the columns are covered in heirloom varietals of purple Siberian kale, red leaf lettuce, sorrel and special species of basil and chives. Barnard says these are more nutritious and flavorful varieties than the mass-produced seeds that were bred to survive the vagaries of commercial production. The company selects which plants to grow based on taste tests with consumers and professional chefs. (A sampling during the tour confirms that the produce is tastier than store-bought.)
“We select stuff that people love because we have the freedom to do that because our supply chain is so short and simple,” Barnard says. “The field doesn’t have that option. It has to grow things that can survive 3,000 miles in a truck. That’s why the field grows iceberg lettuce.”
Skeptics of vertical farms note that they are best suited to growing leafy produce. “Rooting and fruiting” vegetables like carrots, beets, tomatoes, peppers, eggplants and cucumbers are harder to grow under such circumstances and hence more costly. Barnard says Plenty is working on growing cucumbers. So far, most of the startup’s plants are donated to food banks or used for consumer tests, including at a Google campus kitchen. Plenty will start distribution in the San Francisco Bay Area this year. International expansion is the next step and that’s where Son comes in.
A few months ago DCM Ventures co-founder David Chao introduced Barnard to the SoftBank chairman and CEO in California. The meeting was supposed to take 15 minutes but ended up lasting 45 because Son was excited about Plenty’s vision. Two weeks later, Barnard and Chao flew to Tokyo for another meeting with Son, who was skeptical at first, Chao says, but ended up sold on Plenty’s prospects.
“Ever since the Egyptian period, farming has been done one way: flat on the ground, outdoors,” Chao says. “But with indoor farming Masa realizes it’s revolutionary.”
Masayoshi Son | Photographer: Akio Kon/Bloomberg
Son is particularly interested in how Plenty can help nations grow sufficient food to support the population. His Vision Fund backers include sovereign wealth funds from the Middle East, where drought, population growth and a lack of arable land are fueling concerns about food shortages and political instability. Japan, Son’s home country, imports much of its own food and lost farmland after the nuclear power accident six years ago. Sonny Ramaswamy, director of the National Institute of Food and Agriculture at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, says indoor farming will play a significant role in easing shortages of green vegetables.
Chao says the $200 million Vision Fund investment will be used mostly to help Plenty expand domestically and internationally. Eventually, the company hopes to erect pre-fabricated farms outside major cities around the world. SoftBank has extensive connections around the world, Chao says, and wants “to help Plenty expand very quickly, particularly in China, Japan and the Middle East.”
Dickson Despommier, a Columbia professor who wrote “The Vertical Farm: Feeding the World in the 21st Century,” says indoor farming will never completely replace conventional outdoor agriculture but will supplement a growing portion of certain kinds of produce.
“In places where there is no ready access to what they’re growing, then they can corner the market,” he says. “If they do it where the price is right and the demand is right, there’s no reason why they couldn’t go wander into the sunset laughing as they go.”
3 Lessons Learned About Vertical Farming At Cultivate'17
3 Lessons Learned About Vertical Farming At Cultivate'17
Henry Gordon-Smith's presentation offered insight into an emerging industry.
July 16, 2017
On Sunday July 16, the first full day of Cultivate'17, leading vertical farming expert and consultant Henry Gordon-Smith presented for one hour about vertical farming, trends in the industry and what makes businesses fail or succeed in the space. Here are three things we learned from his presentation.
1. Younger citizens are heavily involved in vertical farming's growth.
According to Gordon-Smith, the average age of the U.S. farmer is 58. It is becoming increasingly common, he says, for younger people to not take over their parents' farms and seek out less demanding jobs in more urban areas. As a result — in addition to a nationwide push for local food — young people are making the push for sustainable, vertical farming in metropolises across the United States.
2. Vertical farming is still in its infancy.
At the beginning of his presentation, Gordon-Smith said that seven years ago when he started seeking out information on vertical farming, there were no vertical farms in North America. And, he says, despite a significant amount of funding being put into the industry, it still has a long ways to go before becoming widely used and a part of every urban city in the U.S., if not globally.
Gordon-Smith also noted that Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), a federal agency whose goal is to use technology to improve national security, built a commercial-sized vertical farm to grow tobacco and make vaccines for the military.
3. Cities are prioritizing urban agriculture.
Part of Gordon-Smith's current work to help cities like Los Angeles, New York and Baltimore — as well as companies like Amazon — to add vertical farming to their environment. He says cities are starting to view the sustainable, space-saving production methods of vertical farming to create "green class" jobs and increase food supply in dense urban areas. One success story: Atlanta, which has member's of the mayor's team focused solely on implementing urban agriculture and hosts an event each year called Aglanta that discusses urban food production and its role in shaping the city's future.
Kimbal Musk — Elon's Brother — Is Running A Shipping-Container Farm Compound In New York City
Kimbal Musk — Elon's Brother — Is Running A Shipping-Container Farm Compound In New York City
Cofounder Tobias Peggs outside the Square Roots shipping container farms in Brooklyn, New York. Sarah Jacobs
Kimbal Musk, the brother of Tesla CEO Elon Musk, is trying to change the way we eat by creating what he calls a "real-food revolution."
For over a decade, Kimbal Musk has run two restaurant chains, The Kitchen and Next Door, which serve dishes strictly made with locally sourced meat and veggies. Since 2011, his nonprofit program has installed so-called Learning Gardens in over 300 schools to teach kids about agriculture.
Musk's latest food venture delves into the world of local urban farming.
In early November, he and fellow entrepreneur Tobias Peggs launched Square Roots, an urban-farming incubator program in Brooklyn, New York. The setup consists of 10 steel shipping-container farms where young entrepreneurs work to develop vertical-farming startups. Unlike traditional outdoor farms, vertical farms grow soil-free crops indoors and under LED lights.
On Tuesday, Square Roots opened applications for its second season, which will start in October and last 13 months.
"Graduates are uniquely positioned to embark on a lifetime of real food entrepreneurship — with the know-how to build a thriving, responsible business," Musk wrote on Medium. "The opportunities in front of them will be endless."
Six weeks into the first season, just after the entrepreneurs completed their first harvests, Business Insider got a tour of the farms. Take a look:
The Square Roots farms in Brooklyn sit between an old Pfizer factory and the apartment building where Jay-Z grew up. Sarah Jacobs
Everything grows inside 320-square-foot steel shipping containers. Each container can produce about 50,000 mini-heads of lettuce a year. Sarah Jacobs
The US Department of Agriculture gave the Square Roots entrepreneurs small loans to cover preliminary operating expenses. Other investors include Powerplant Ventures, GroundUp, Lightbank, and FoodTech Angels.
On four parallel walls, leafy greens and herbs sprout from soil-free growing beds filled with nutrient-rich water. Instead of sunlight, they rely on hanging blue and pink LED rope lights. Sarah Jacobs
About the size of the standard one-car garage, each shipping container can produce the same amount in crops as two acres of outdoor farmland.
Musk and Peggs chose Square Roots’ first class of 10 entrepreneurs from over 500 applications. Peggs said they represented the next generation of farmers — though not all had previous farming experience.
Sarah Jacobs
In early 2016, while Aliber was recovering from a concussion, he learned about urban farming from a podcast. He started researching it from his bed and found out about the Square Roots program.
Sarah Jacobs
Before Josh Aliber, 24, moved from Boston to Brooklyn to join Square Roots, he had never farmed. Now he's starting up a specialty herb business and running a vertical farm. Sarah Jacobs
His shipping container farm runs on 10 gallons of recycled water a day, which is less than an average shower's worth.
Sarah Jacobs
Aliber can monitor everything from the oxygen level to the humidity — which affects the plants' taste and texture — using the "computer panel" near the door and sensors in the growing beds. If he wants a tropical or northeastern climate, he can control that, too.
Sarah Jacobs
All of the Square Roots' farmers sold their first harvests at a local farmers market.
Aliber is selling his specialty herbs and basil primarily to upscale Italian and pizza restaurants in NYC.
Sarah Jacobs
All of the Square Roots' farmers sold their first harvests at a local farmers market.
Through the program, Aliber has had the opportunity to work with numerous mentors — Square Roots has 120 so far.
Sarah Jacobs
"Yes, I have the ability to make money," Aliber said, "But yes, I also have the ability to change the world."
Sarah Jacobs
Electra Jarvis, another 27-year-old farmer, usually comes to Square Roots three days a week. On Wednesdays, she spends four hours meticulously placing 800 seeds inside small troughs.
Mary Wetherill
Two weeks later, she transplants them to the walls. "We should be growing closer to us in cities," she said.
Mary Wetherill
Aliber, Jarvis, and the other eight entrepreneurs are not just learning how to grow plants, but also how to grow their businesses. A large part of the program is learning about branding and "how to tell our stories," Jarvis said.
In the late '90s, after the tech boom, the Musk brothers moved from South Africa to Silicon Valley. They invested in X.com, which later merged with PayPal and was acquired by eBay.
Sarah Jacobs
Kimbal Musk has known Peggs, who had worked for a decade on tech startups that eventually sold to Walmart and Adobe. Before Square Roots, they worked together at The Kitchen, where Peggs served as the "president of impact" and helped expand the chain to new cities.
When asked how his experience in tech translated to running a vertical-farming accelerator, Peggs said the two fields shared the same motivation. "You learn how to execute impossible dreams," he said. "This was all just a PowerPoint presentation six months ago."
Sarah Jacobs
Square Roots hopes to expand to 20 cities by 2020. "Today's consumer wants to know they are supporting companies that are doing something good for the world," Peggs said. "This not just a Brooklyn foodie trend."
Sarah Jacobs
The world's largest vertical farm, AeroFarms, launched last year in Newark, New Jersey. In late 2015, the urban-farming company Gotham Greens opened the world's largest rooftop farm in Chicago.
Vertical farms can grow crops all year, using significantly less water and space than outdoor farms.
Sarah Jacobs
Critics of vertical farms say that the LED lights drain a lot of electricity. Peggs said Square Roots was exploring how the farmers could switch to solar power in the future, since electricity is the program's biggest cost.
Sarah Jacobs
Square Roots' lights are on only in the evening and night, although other vertical farms run theirs 24/7.
Square Roots recently built offices inside the Pfizer factory. In its past life, the building produced ammonia, a chemical sprayed on plants that became vital to the industrial food system after World War I.
The building is populated by sustainable-food startups. "It's an act of poetic justice," Peggs said.
Sarah Jacobs
Deptford Has Its First Vertical Farm And It Could Hold The Key To Our Urban Future
Published by Bdaily Editor Billy Woodon 07 JUL 2017
Deptford Has Its First Vertical Farm And It Could Hold The Key To Our Urban Future
#London #Funding #Agriculture #Innovation #Technology
A new vertical farm has opened its doors in Deptford housed within a previously disused warehouse.
Tech startup Vertical Future has launched the new farm, which is both the company and Deptford’s first vertical farm, just months after the company was established and sealed a six-figure funding package from HSBC.
In what is the first of a number of planned farms operating under the MiniCrops brand, the farm has been developed as part of The Artworks’ new Creekside development and will provide the local community and businesses with sustainably grown fresh produce.
Vertical farms have really begun to take off in the last ten years, with installations popping up in urban areas across the world with many touting the technique as holding the key to our future food supply while at the same time delivering a number of environmental and health benefits.
Its proponents argue that the technology can deliver more produce than traditional farming or greenhouses, and use less water to boot.
Locating the farms in urban locations can also help to cut down on delivery miles thus reducing emissions and helping to combat poor air quality, while crops can be grown year round regardless of season or weather.
Founders of Vertical Future, Jamie and Marie-Alexandrine Burrows said in a statement that their planned network of London sites will do more than just provide crops and produce, but also provide community outreach and engagement projects to help tackle some of our most pressing urban problems.
They said: “We want to make cities a better place for our children, and our urban initiatives are long-term responses to the ongoing issues of urbanisation.
“All signs following our launch have been positive and launching MiniCrops is our first real milestone as a new business.
“We want to promote fast but sustainable growth that will make a real impact on our local communities around each site.”
Crops at Vertical Future’s first MiniCrops site in Deptford. / Image: Vertical Futures
As part of its outreach work, the startup recently launched its mobile health app which links users with health and social opportunities in London, and the business is also developing its own air pollution device.
The vision for its Deptford site also stretches to local events with plans to host regular educational talks about sustainable food for local schools and at risk groups from Lewisham and its surrounding boroughs.
Lucy Wynn, HSBC’s Area Director for South London, said: “We are delighted to be able to support Vertical Future with these exciting first steps into making our cities a healthier place to live.
“We are passionate about projects that benefit the local community and with our funding Jamie and Marie have been able to turn their ideas into a reality.”
Vertical Farming Is Officially Coming to Grocery Stores
Vertical Farming Is Officially Coming to Grocery Stores
IN BRIEF:
German startup Infarm is putting modular, vertical farms directly into grocery stores, giving customers the ability to pick fresh crops and drop them straight into their grocery baskets.
IN-STORE FARMING
Fresh produce is the best produce, and nothing could be fresher than crops you’ve just harvested. To that end, Berlin-based startup Infarm wants to give consumers direct access to freshly grown produce by putting vertical farms in grocery stores.
While vertical farming isn’t exactly a new idea, Infarm’s approach is undoubtedly fresh. Rather than your typical indoor vertical farming, the company utilizes a modular approach for their go-to-market strategy. This allows them to do vertical farming on a smaller but easily expandable scale.
Infarm’s produce won’t be found stored in large warehouses. It will be in places that are frequented by customers, such as grocery stores, shopping malls, and even in restaurants. You’d see the crop, pick out the produce that’s ripe for harvest, and place it in your grocery basket.
“When we presented our idea three or four years ago, people looked at us as though we [had] lost our mind,” Infarm co-founder Erez Galonska told TechCrunch. “We are the first company in the world that has put vertical farming in a supermarket.”
GOOD FOR YOUR HEALTH AND THE ENVIRONMENT
Infarm’s modular vertical farms help promote a healthier lifestyle. Urban-dwellers won’t have a hard time getting their fresh supply of greens, and Infarm makes sure that their crops are, indeed, fresh. Each module is monitored by sensors, connected to an internet-controlled irrigation and nutrition system.
“The system is smart. It can guide you where to harvest and can notify you when the produce needs to be harvested, and this is your part in the game,” Galonska explained. “Machine learning can help us understand and predict future problems.”
Aside from this, vertical farming also helps eliminate waste and promotes self-sufficient food production directly in cities. It reduces the negative environmental impacts associated with more traditional farming methods — i.e., the use of pesticides — while providing people with the freshest crops. It’s a futuristic agricultural solution.
References: TechCrunch, Infarm
WRITTEN BY - AUTHOR Dom Galeon - EDITOR Kristin Houser
Freight Farms Builds Farms In Shipping Containers, And NASA Wants To Launch Them To Space
This Boston-based sustainable agriculture company grabbed NASA's attention along with Elon Musk's brother, Kimbal.
Getty Boston Globe
July 7, 2017
If we built farms in space, they'd look nothing like the vast wheat fields of Kansas. But they just might look something like urban farms being used today—modular closed-loop hydroponic farms, actually. These compact, efficient grow houses could be the life-giving answer to keeping astronauts fed, a solution The Martian's Mark Watney could only dream of. The idea is less science fiction than you might think, too.
Freight Farms, based in Boston, is trying to revolutionize the global food system with its Leafy Green Machines. These shipping containers filled with racks of planted crops, grow lights, and environmental control systems can be installed anywhere in the world and make fresh produce available in even the densest urban neighborhoods.
Although Freight Farms initial intentions were much more down to Earth, the company inadvertently built a prototype farm that NASA wants to study for future applications on other planets. And NASA isn't the only one. Google and modern farming entrepreneurs including Kimbal Musk, brother to Martian hopeful Elon Musk, have also shown interest in the project.
A single Leafy Green Machine (LGM) can house the equivalent of roughly two acres of produce. One LGM can produce an astonishing 1,000 heads of restaurant-ready lettuce a week, and restaurants like B.Good in Boston are taking advantage of fresher, less expensive produce grown in their own backyard LGMs.
"The demand now is farm to table. It's all about local," co-founder Jon Friedman told Popular Mechanics. "Which is great for summer for select geographies, but for the rest of the year, that isn't possible." Boston winters have as little as 3 hours of daylight, and the massive snow load would ruin the delicate frames of most modular indoor farm prototypes. Friedman calls the shipping containers "magnificent structures for their thermal properties" as well as for their robust structural integrity and easy-to-manage unit size.
With this compelling proof-of-concept on Earth, Freight Farms and Clemson University recently received a grant from NASA to develop the next generation of off-the-grid systems using as many renewables as possible with an ultimate goal of providing "life support for human exploration of deep space." Future LGMs could be even more self-regulating as Freight Farms looks to incorporate technologies like water capture from the ambient air and automatic compost systems. Eventually, Freight Farms would like to build LGMs that are entirely autonomous and run on 100 percent renewable energy.
A NASA concept image with an indoor Mars farm that looks something like the inside of a Leafy Green Machine. NASA
The NASA grant—under the agency's research initiative, "Closed-Loop Living System for Deep-Space ECLSS with Immediate Applications for a Sustainable Planet"—is designed to help Freight Farms advance their LGM technology to the point that the space agency could adapt the farms and launch them into space. In addition to providing food for astronauts, NASA wants to work with Freight Farms to study the production of proteins and medicines, develop lightweight containers with inflatable materials or 3D printing, and ultimately design a similar system to the LGM that could be incorporated into "space exploration vessels."
Freight Farms' largest customer on this planet, however, is Brooklyn-based Square Roots Grow, founded by Kimbal Musk and Tobias Peggs. Square Roots operates a whole parking lot full of LGM units for local growers and entrepreneurs. Because the containers are self-contained, they can program the simulated daytime hours inside the farms to run at night when energy costs are lower. It's a sustainable system that has legs.
"My hope is that we are in every metro area in America as fast as we can get there," Musk told Popular Mechanics in an email.
The inside of a Leafy Green Machine.Freight Farms
Beyond fresh greens, Freight Farm founders Jon Friedman and Brad McNamara say that it's also popular to grow radishes, edible flowers, peppers, tomatoes, and pumpkins. What's more, given the closed-loop system of a LGM, it can sustain the crops on just 10 gallons of water a day. The efficiencies of Leafy Green Machines are an astonishing 90 percent improvement over traditional farming, according to the USDA.
Maintaining a single LGM takes roughly 20 hours per week. That's only 10 hours per acre, per week. To sustain the plants, columns of hanging LED strips with blue and red diodes in the grow lights require an average of between 90 and 110 kWh per day—about the equivalent of 3 average U.S. households. Many LGMs are outfitted with solar panels as well to minimize the required energy input.
Freight Farms' LGMs are currently operating across America, Canada, Europe, and Japan. Atlantic island nations are among the first in the developing world do adopt the technology in an effort to become more food-independent. These areas are heavily reliant on imports, and even though they have tropical climates, food production is difficult. The result is high prices and low variety from imported produce. Pilot projects are currently sprouting up throughout the Middle East and Africa as well. And yes, the units can be shipped out on trucks, freighters, and railroads, traveling anywhere you can send an intermodal container—so basically anywhere in the world.
Freight Farms
And it's not just restaurants or remote islands that have opted for the Leafy Green Machine. Institutions around America are harnessing the power of these units not only for food but also for educational purposes. Corporate campuses like Google were eager early adopters. Schools including the University of Michigan and UMass Dartmouth are using the LGMs as part of their curriculum to teach students about sustainable agriculture.
The benefit of distributed small farms is that they're vastly more sustainable than larger options in terms of conserving land and minimizing transport. Between production and shipping, the global food system accounts for about one-third of all human-induced greenhouse gas emissions. It also helps that the local produce passes through fewer hands, which means more affordable food. "The most exciting thing about Square Roots and urban farming is getting back to knowing our farmer and trusting our food again," says Musk.
With Leafy Green Machines spreading across the world, it might not be too long until NASA builds the very first variant—the Leafy Red Machine, perhaps?—and launches it to Mars.
Ivy Tech, Green Sense Partner On Vertical Farm In South Bend
Ivy Tech, Green Sense Partner On Vertical Farm In South Bend
Ivy Tech to partner on vertical farm
Photos/BECKY MALEWITZ
SOUTH BEND — Ivy Tech Community College and Green Sense Farms have entered into a partnership to build a 20,000-square-foot “vertical farm” on land transferred by the college to the Portage-based grower on Sample Street in South Bend.
The announcement ends two years of speculation about the project, which also involves the city of South Bend. A ceremonial ground-breaking is set for Wednesday.
According to a press release, the state-of-the-art, $3 million to $4 million facility will be utilized for workforce training so that students better understand future opportunities in farming.
Courses will begin as non-credit or “through” courses complementing other programs while the school develops a curriculum for the program, and students will receive training in transferable skills for areas such as food service, retail and industrial maintenance.
Ivy Tech, for its part, will gain access to the vertical farming labs without the large-scale investment needed to acquire equipment, the release states.
“It's a working commercial farm, meaning we will be providing produce every day to the community, and it's a hands-on training center,” said Robert Colangelo, founder and CEO of Green Sense.
Items such as micro-greens, baby greens, lettuces and herbs will be grown at the facility to support local markets, restaurants and colleges, Colangelo said, including Martin's Super Market, the University of Notre Dame, the Morris Inn, Café Navarre, Four Winds Casino and Sodexo, the food service provider for Memorial Hospital and Saint Mary's College.
The facility will employ 10 students every six months in “earn to learn” roles, Colangelo said, plus five full-time employees who will earn $30,000 to $50,000 per year. The students will work 20 hours per week and gain hands-on experience in all aspects of the business.
Students who are interested in the retail or food service sides of the industry will train with the partner organizations as well, Colangelo said, with opportunities to work for those organizations afterward.
“The plan is that they graduate job-ready so that they've got real hands-on skills,” he said. “And more importantly, the much-needed soft skills that employers are looking for.”
Colangelo said he is working with Mike Keen, director of the Center for a Sustainable Future at Indiana University South Bend, to develop a curriculum for the course so students can earn credit for it and professional certification.
They're also working to develop some sort of criteria for the selection of the students, he said, likely to include an interview. “It's not just education,” he said. “Some of it will come down to personality, drive and interest.”
Founded in 2014, Green Sense Farms grows leafy greens in stacking, vertical towers, 365 days a year. The company uses automated computer controls to provide the precise amount of light, nutrients, water, temperature and humidity for the plants so they can be harvested year-round.
The process provides greater yield per unit of space than traditional farming because it allows for growing and harvesting year-round. A typical facility allows for 20 to 30 harvests per year depending on the crop, Colangelo said.
The company opened its first farm in Portage in 2014. It also designed and built a farm in Shenzhen, China, for its operating partner StarGlobal A. And it is preparing to break ground on a third facility in Las Vegas.
“We have about 10 farms in the pipeline being developed in the next six months,” Colangelo said. “And I think once news hits that we're doing this training center, we'll see a lot of colleges and universities want to emulate this.”
The facility here, financed, in part, with a $700,000, low-interest Industrial Revolving Loan from the city, will be at 250 E. Sample St., on the south side of the street, directly west of Ivy Tech's Sample Street location.
It will consist of space to germinate the seeds and grow, package, store and ship the plants, plus office space and an enclosed corridor for students and tour groups to observe the operation, Colangelo said.
Design-wise, the structure will be a steel-frame building with a front-facing brick facade made to match the adjacent Ivy Tech building in look and color, he said.
“It will be the nicest thing on the block,” he said.
Once up and running, the facility will provide fresh, organic produce to local stores, restaurants and food-service providers on a daily basis, Colangelo said. “Most of the stuff from the farm takes days to get from the farm to the table,” he said. “We're going to be able to do that in hours, so it's fresh.”
He said they're also hoping to deliver produce “live” with the roots still on the plant, “because as soon as you cut a plant and harvest it, it starts to decay and lose nutritional value.”
According to Ivy Tech South Bend Chancellor Thomas Coley, the school is approved to offer agricultural courses but never has, “and this seemed to be a very promising way to provide training for a market that seems to be growing fairly well.”
“And it could tie into other related programs in biotechnology or hospitality or even hospitality,” Coley said. “Or even, because it's technologically driven, industrial maintenance and other related areas.”
Colangelo said he hopes to break ground on the project in the coming weeks or months, with a completion date of next June.
He said, “I feel like we're setting a model here for how government, academia and business can work together to train the new, modern workforce.”
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Staying Competitive With New Edible Crops
Staying Competitive With New Edible Crops
Greenhouse Management highlights ice plant and purslane, new opportunities in produce, with Dr. Richard Fu, president of of the Connecticut-based agriculture technology company Agrivolution.
June 28, 2017
Patrick Williams
Ice plant has a unique crunchy texture, and a briny, yet lemony flavor.
Photo courtesy of Dr. Richard Fu
By taking advantage of new lighting technologies and experimenting with unique produce offerings such as ice plant and purslane, ornamental growers can effectively move into the produce space, says Dr. Richard Fu, president of Agrivolution, a Connecticut-based agriculture technology company.
After hearing him speak at Indoor Ag-Con in Las Vegas this past May, Greenhouse Management recently spoke with Fu to learn more about these new opportunities in the produce market. If you would like to know more about growing produce in a controlled environment, subscribe to sister publication Produce Grower magazine at bit.ly/2sxThRU
Greenhouse Management: What does Agrivolution do?
Richard Fu: Agrivolution is a supplier of controlled environment agriculture [CEA] equipment, mostly in LED products at this moment.
We also engage in consultation works for our clients in setting up a vertical farm and greenhouse lighting. We have been doing this for a couple years now, and we hope to establish ourselves further here in North America.
GM: At Indoor Ag-Con, you discussed ice plant as a crop that is becoming more popular in Asia and that can offer opportunities for indoor growers in the United States. Can you explain what ice plant is, and why more growers in the United States should consider growing it?
RF: One of the challenges, I think, in any kind of farming, is a product differentiation. Even though there is certainly a large demand for lettuce and kale and basil and so on, there is only so much you can produce while somebody else is going to do that same thing. Eventually, you’re going to be competing on the price amongst the other growers. Even in a remote area, you’re still going to be competing against others, including much lower-priced imported field-grown produce from California.
Conventional crops are very seasonal also, to some extent. Price fluctuation is very unpredictable sometimes — it depends on the geographical location and climate, obviously. But in the majority of the markets in the U.S., you have to compete with the California and Mexico produce, and locally, you may be competing with other greenhouses or vertical farms. The demand may be there, but the margin may not be the greatest.
Dr. Richard Fu
Photo courtesy of Dr. Richard Fu
We believe by differentiating and offering unique products, you control the supply and pricing. The advantage of a controlled environment is that you can grow crops others cannot in certain locations. Ice plant is a succulent that is considered to be a unique crop and new to the market, so people are very curious but it is hard to grow steadily in a field. It has unique crunchy texture and briny, but lemony flavor. And it has some nutritional benefits compared to lettuce. Those are some of the unique attributes of ice plant and that makes it a good introductory crop, especially for vertical farming growers. In greenhouses, it might be a little bit harder to grow ice plant because of the temperature management, but if you are able to maintain the temperature within a certain range, then ice plant definitely can be a crop to consider as well.
In addition to that, as I mentioned about the nutritional side of it, ice plant contains a rich amount of inositol, which is a substance that helps to reduce insulin resistance, so that can help people with prediabetic conditions and PCOS, or polycystic ovary syndrome. Also, it’s rich in beta-Carotene and vitamin K. We were able to take this crop, and through a controlled environment agriculture technique, enhance the level of d-pinitol concentration and extract it to turn into a supplement. So there was a secondary value-added product that we were able to produce from ice plant. Those are some of the interesting things we can do through CEA that we were promoting at Indoor Ag-Con.
Purslane contains rich amounts of Super Omega-3 and alpha-linolenic fatty acids.
Photos courtesy of Dr. Richard Fu
GM: Purslane is another crop you mentioned. It has Omega-3 fatty acids and antioxidants, and it aids in cancer prevention and allergy control. Are you currently working with that crop?
RF: Yes. Well, I’m not directly working with this crop, but the company in Japan — the company that I partner with — is involved with it, and they have developed a technique to use this crop, which is known to contain rich amounts of Super Omega-3 and alpha-linolenic fatty acids, into a secondary supplement product, which helps to alleviate allergies.
GM: Is that something that greenhouses or controlled environment growers could grow in the United States?
RF: Yes, if there are growers in the U.S. that are interested, then ice plant and purslane certainly can be an introductory edible crops, in CEA, especially.
GM: What advice do you have for greenhouse ornamental growers entering the produce space?
RF: Whether to grow leafy greens such as lettuce and kale or flowering crops such as tomatoes and peppers is dependent on the geographical location, but the produce segment is definitely an option greenhouse growers should be considering because the local food movement is strong today. I think that’s a great opportunity, except as I mentioned before, no matter what industry you may be in, you want to have a certain competitive advantage, and having differentiating products like ice plants will definitely help to maintain your competitive edge over other growers. And you can still grow conventional crops like lettuce and kale and so on, but you want to mix a unique crop or two into your offering. Microgreens are becoming popular crops, so that’s a good option as well. But you need to find products that have high value and high margin to survive in the environment that’s becoming very crowded.
The other thing is, consumers are looking for produce year-round, so you want to be able to supply crops in demand. In order to maintain a competitive edge, your production needs to be year-round with CEA when the demand is year-round. From a CEA perspective, the challenge is to control your environmental parameters in order to grow crops at a steady production rate — especially in greenhouses where the advantage is that you take advantage of free natural light, but the disadvantage is that you’re dependent on the natural light. If you’re in a climate zone where you have shorter daylight in winter, that becomes very disadvantageous because your crop efficiency — production efficiency — can be cut in half in some cases compared to summer. So you definitely want to consider adding supplemental lighting. There are several lighting choices, but LED lighting is definitely one good option.
The other way to keep the edge is to consider adding a seedling incubator, which can promote the growth in the early stages of crop production so you have very healthy seedlings of, for example, tomatoes and peppers. Even in winter months, your crops will have an early start, and then transition into greenhouses as healthy and strong plants. Those are some of the things that you can definitely consider to maintain your competitiveness.
An Alaskan Wants To Put A Lettuce Tower In Every Elementary School In America
An Alaskan Wants To Put A Lettuce Tower In Every Elementary School In America
- Author: Erica Martinson
Lettuce flourishes in a hydroponic grow tower in Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s office recently in Washington, D.C. (Erica Martinson / Alaska Dispatch News)
WASHINGTON — Last month, Bernie Karl flew down to Washington, D.C., and installed a hydroponic grow tower in Sen. Lisa Murkowski's office. Next, he wants to hit every public school in Alaska.
Karl, who owns Chena Hot Springs northeast of Fairbanks, has a mission: He wants to teach kids how to feed their families using cheap, easily obtained materials.
Karl's daughter has a tower at her house — hers grows strawberries and cherry tomatoes, he said. In Murkowski's office, the tower grows only lettuce — enough to feed a family of six.
And for a few weeks now, the senator's staffers have been picking their own salad greens off the tower of orange Home Depot buckets in the corner of her office lobby in the Hart Senate Office Building.
Karl is well known to Murkowski as well as to other political bigwigs in Alaska. Murkowski, Sen. Dan Sullivan and Gov. Bill Walker routinely show up at his renewable-energy fair each August.
So it's not entirely surprising to see the tower appear in Murkowski's office, after he touted its earliest iteration at last summer's Chena Hot Springs energy fair.
"Our goal is to get one in every school in Alaska and every school in America by the end of next year — to teach third- and fourth-graders that everyone can be responsible for growing their own food," Karl said in an interview.
More than 98,000 public schools operated in the United States in the 2013-14 school year, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. More than 67,000 of them were elementary schools.
"The problem is that things are so expensive. But they don't need to be. So we decided that we would come up with something that you could go to any Home Depot and buy," Karl said.
The tower in Murkowski's office is the 3.0 version of Karl's efforts, along with others at his employee-owned Chena Hot Springs Resort, where they grow food for the staff and guests.
That tower is getting its own upgrades. On June 27, Murkowski's husband, Verne Martell, arrived in her office with a wax plumbing ring and set about tweaking a previous fix. Martell was working on quieting the sound of running water that plagued the two employees who sit at desks in the lobby, greeting visitors and answering phones.
Karl said Friday he had just sent an extra light to Martell, an upgrade for a side of the tower that wasn't growing as well as the rest.
Karl is a boisterous man — the kind of guy who has big ideas and even bigger plans. Currently, he's hoping to get a meeting with the top brass at Home Depot — he said Murkowski had kindly put in a call for him.
He's hoping to convince them to offer Saturday classes on building the tower at stores nationwide. And he wants the company to sponsor "one for every school in America."
Karl is in the process of patenting his invention — called "Lettuce Grow for Free" — but he doesn't plan to make money off it. He wants to give the plans away. And he encourages others to improve upon them.
"We're building a fourth prototype right now … that uses a little less material, gets it down a few more dollars."
Karl also hopes that school programs run by Future Farmers of America and 4-H will start programs in schools.
"I want them to help replant the world," he said of the youth agricultural organizations.
This fall, an elementary school in Fort Yukon will get Alaska's first school-based grow tower, Karl said. They were the first to ask for one, he said.
See the plans here: The Chena Grow Tower Project
About this Author
Erica Martinson is Alaska Dispatch News' Washington, DC reporter, and she covers the legislation, regulation and litigation that impact the Last Frontier. Erica came to ADN after years as a reporter covering energy at POLITICO. Before that, she covered environmental policy at a DC trade publication and worked at several New York dailies