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The Transforming Power of Vertical Farming
The Transforming Power of Vertical Farming
by Association for Vertical Farming e.V.
Fri, September 7, 2018, 8:30 AM – 6:00 PM HKT
Event Information & Tickets
We will connect with producers and consumers throughout the exhibition and clearly show the potential of Vertical Farming to others in the food production business, logistics, and technology.
During this event, we will define and identify how politics, industry cooperation, technology, science, society, and finance can contribute to the future development of Vertical Farming.
Here is what you should expect as an attendee of the Summit:
Connect with players in the Asia region (Japan, China SEA)
Innovative ideas and solutions
Build a roadmap for VF/PF development of the next 5 years
Understand trends of the fresh produce market for VF
VF/PF visit tour to Japan and Taiwan
This summit will ask how each of the stakeholders can and need to contribute to the advancement of VF/PF.
Find the missing links with us and build a roadmap to overcome them!
Active participation: You will be actively engaged as a full participant throughout the entire event. Unlike typical events where most attendees are passive listeners, your active participation actually matters.
Join one of the 8 topic groups: All invitees to the Summit are like-minded individuals with similar goals, who believe that dynamic innovation is the key to generating jobs, income, and economic development sustainably around the world.
You will select a design thinking session (interactive workshop, 3.5 hours) to be conducted after the keynote presentations in the afternoon. You can join a topic group that will enable you to work on your roadmap for the entire workshop.
Develop a 5-year ROADMAP for the implementation of Vertical Farming/Plant Factories. Analyze the current situation, define the necessary steps, and find creative solutions to overcome the hurdles for a broad implementation of VF/PF.
Core Themes covered by the Design-Thinking topic groups:
Industry; Technology; Science; Education; Investment & Finance; Smart Food Future Cities; Policies & Legislation.
ORGANIZER ASSOCIATION FOR VERTICAL FARMING E.V.
Organizer of The Transforming Power of Vertical Farming
- Organizer Website Website
- Organizer Facebook Profile a vertical farm
- Organizer Twitter Profile AVerticalFarm
The Association for Vertical Farming is an internationally active nonprofit organization of individuals, companies, research institutions and universities focusing on advancing Vertical Farming technologies, designs, and businesses. The AVF sees its mission in fostering the sustainable growth and development of the Vertical Farming industry through policy advocacy, education, and standardization.
AVF leads a movement that shapes a new industry and advocates for more sustainable food production systems.
Keynote Speaker Saskia Sassen
Saskia Sassen
Saskia Sassen is the Robert S. Lynd Professor of Sociology at Columbia University and a Member of its Committee on Global Thought, which she chaired till 2015. She is a student of cities, immigration, and states in the world economy, with inequality, gendering, and digitization, three key variables running through her work. Born in the Netherlands, she grew up in Argentina and Italy, studied in France, was raised in five languages, and began her professional life in the United States. She is the author of eight books and the editor or co-editor of three books.
Together, her authored books are translated in over twenty languages. She has received many awards and honors, among them multiple doctor honoris causa, the 2013 Principe de Asturias Prize in the Social Sciences, election to the Royal Academy of the Sciences of the Netherlands, and made a Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et Lettres by the French government.
Company: Columbia University, United States of America
Website: www.saskiasassen.com
http://cgt.columbia.edu
Keynote Speaker Robert Chen
Robert Chen
Bob is the Founder of AEssense and also serves as Chairman, President andChief Executive Officer. AEssense is a global agriculture technology company established to solve three 21st century issues: the need for high agriculture yields for a growing population, food safety, and conservation of resources. To achieve these goals, the Company developed the AEtriumplatform, a family of precision automated indoor aeroponic plant growth systems which dramatically increase both the productivity and the sustainability of commercial cultivation.
Prior to AEssense, Bob had a long history of building successful businesses in Silicon Valley. He was the Co-founder, Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer of RAE Systems a global developer and manufacturer of rapidly deployable, multi-sensor chemical and radiation detection monitors and networks which was acquired by Honeywell in 2013. Before that, he was the Founder, Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer of AOT Corp., a manufacturer of computer-aided test systems which was acquired by Hewlett-Packard in 1991.
Bob’s industry experience also includes various engineering and management positions at General Motors, General Electric, Tektronix, Fairchild Semiconductor and Hewlett-Packard Company. Bob has a BSEE from National Taiwan Cheng-Kung University, a MSEE from the South Dakota School of Mines & Technology and Advanced Engineer Degree from Syracuse University. Bob also graduated from OPM Class 18 of the Harvard Graduate School of Business.
Bob enjoys mentoring young professionals, photography, and traveling. He recently published a book called “From Shanghai to Silicon Valley: How to Start a High-Tech Company from Scratch” to inspire and guide aspiring entrepreneurs.
AVF Summit- September 7, 2018 Hong Kong
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Giant Indoor Vertical Farm Backed by Chinese Firm Launching Just East of Las Vegas Strip
- One of the country's largest indoor vertical farms was built about 6 miles east of the Las Vegas Strip on the site of a former mail-order prescription drug facility.
- Oasis Biotech plans to start deliveries next week and said it can produce about 9,500 servings of mixed salad per day for local restaurants and casinos
- The vertical farm requires 90 percent less water than a traditional farm and uses about 50 percent less energy than most other indoor ag facilities.
17 July 2018 CNBC.com
An indoor vertical farm that uses 90 percent less water than conventional growers is about to launch in Las Vegas and will be able to supply nearly 9,500 servings of leafy green salads per day to casinos and local restaurant chains.
"Las Vegas is the location that has the highest density of high-end restaurants, which can afford this premium specialty product," said Brock Leach, chief operating officer and general manager of Oasis Biotech. "We're going to be able to get our product from harvest to the customer in around 24 hours."
Oasis Biotech, a Chinese-backed farm that uses hydroponic watering and microclimate controls for crop cultivation, is scheduled to make its first delivery in Las Vegas on July 24. The 215,000-square-foot facility is expected to be one of the largest in the nation when fully built and will initially focus on growing baby greens, micro greens, and specialty herbs but plans to eventually expand into baby carrots as well as soft fruits, including strawberries.
Controlled-environment agriculture
The chemical-free facility uses hydroponics technology, so it grows plants without soil. It also uses high-end clean rooms similar to those found in computer manufacturing as well as special filters and ultraviolet lights to control air and water — all designed to keep the food safe.
"We are producing food that is the safest and securest food that you can possibly produce," said Leach.
Oasis Biotech
One of the nation’s largest indoor vertical farms is about to launch in Las Vegas and eventually span more than 200,000 square feet.
The recent scare over salads at McDonald's due to an intestinal parasite outbreak highlights how difficult it is to monitor fresh produce grown on traditional farms. The FDA is still investigating what the source of the outbreak is for the cyclospora illnesses.
"The fact that the McDonald's outbreak made news is a warning of sorts, because we've always had foodborne outbreaks from various infectious diseases," said Dickson Despommier, professor emeritus for environmental health sciences at Columbia University and leading expert on vertical farming. "This [indoor controlled farming] technology allows you to avoid that."
Despommier said indoor vertical farming in cities will continue to grow in the future due to demand from restaurants and stores that are looking for "growers that can promise healthy, fresh produce year-round right next door to where the store is. The model has been developed, and I think it's a viable one."
Most of the leafy greens and other fresh produce supplied to the Las Vegas market are grown in California and Arizona, so there are added shipping costs and product can sometimes take several days to reach southern Nevada customers. Las Vegas hosted more than 42 million visitors last year and southern Nevada is home to more than 2.1 million residents or about three out of every four residents in the Silver State.
Talking to casinos
"We will be meeting with a lot of the major casinos here in the next few weeks," said Leach. "But they won't be part of our initial distribution. We're focusing more on independent restaurants and small chains."
The major casinos declined to comment for this story.
Leach said the vertical farm plans to sell its leafy greens and other products through a large local produce distributor. "They touch over 80 percent of our target customer base," he said. "Many of the large casinos already buy from this distributor."
The vertical farm's parent company is Sananbio, which is owned by Chinese LED chip-making giant Sanan Group. Sananbio already operates one of the world's largest vertical farms in China's coastal city of Quanzhou. Oasis Biotech represents its first major foray into controlled agriculture in the United States and an opportunity to showcase its technology and sell equipment and lights to other indoor agriculture businesses.
'One of the largest players'
"We're going to be one of the largest players in the industry," said Leach. "I don't see anyone in this space as competition but a potential collaborator."
The LED lighting installed at Oasis Biotech uses 50 percent less energy compared with traditional indoor growing, according to the company.
The Chinese company spent about $30 million on the vertical farm, including the 215,000-square-foot industrial property located about 6 miles east of the Las Vegas Strip. The vertical farm is located on the site of a former mail-order prescription drug facility.
The first phase of the indoor farm consists of about 60,000 square feet of production or the equivalent of a 34-acre farm. A second phase, planned for early next year, is expected to add 50 percent more space.
According to Leach, Oasis Biotech expects to be profitable from an operating standpoint in 2019.
"We're the only large indoor controlled-environment ag operation right now that is corporate-backed" and not funded by venture capital, Leach said. "That means we can focus on scale without having to spend a huge amount of resources on capital raising."
Automating harvesting
The microgreens and baby greens are currently harvested by hand, but the company plans to go to a fully automated harvesting in the second phase. The harvest automation equipment is based on the technology that has been used for several months at Sananbio's China operations.
"It will be automated from seed to harvest," said Leach.
Oasis Biotech employs about 130 people. The growing supervisor for the vertical farm is a former potato farmer from Idaho.
"We've got over 70 farmhands with maybe three people who have done controlled-environment ag before. We're teaching them how to be hydroponic technicians. There's going to be a whole new generation of farmers that are going to grow up around controlled-environment ag."
Water efficiency
Water supplies are limited in southern Nevada, a region facing drought conditions and where most of its water comes from the Colorado River or groundwater. The Las Vegas indoor farm uses 90 percent less water than a traditional farm, or roughly 300 to 500 gallons per day — about as much as a family of four uses flushing their toilets and running their showers.
While the mercury soared into the triple digits in Las Vegas this week, Oasis Biotech relied on micro-climate controls to keep the temperature and humidity just right for growing plants in hydroponic systems.
"If you can pull this off in the middle of a desert and this extreme heat, you should be able to do it in other places," said Leach, who previously was CEO of Urban Till, an indoor farming company in Chicago. Prior to that, he worked for a logistics company that handled food distribution for McDonald's.
Many of the early indoor vertical farms built in the U.S. have been in abandoned factories or industrial locations. The indoor farms also offer a solution to countries that need to import most of their fresh produce due to limited arable land or where water scarcity is a constant challenge.
Indeed, a new low-water indoor vertical farm is going up in Dubai this fall and expected to produce upwards of 6,000 pounds of leafy greens daily. The $40 million high-tech farm's backers include Emirates Flight Catering, which supplies more than 200,000 meals daily.
Lettuce traditionally grows in 80 to 90 days outdoors, and producers tend to get up to three harvests out of the field during the season. The indoor vertical farm in Las Vegas can output lettuce in 18 to 24 days and farm 365 days a year, according to Leach.
"The days are longer because we leave the lights on for about 16- to 18-hour cycles," said Leach, and "there's never a cloudy day."
-Story updated to reflect changes in fact sheet provided by Oasis Biotech.
The Bay Area Company Building World's Largest Vertical Farm In Dubai
A small San Mateo company is building what is billed as the world’s largest vertical farm next year in Dubai, right on the runway that serves Emiratesairline.
Tara Duggan July 20, 2018
Crop One of San Mateo grows leafy greens without soil or sunlight in hydroponic facilities using LED lights.
Photo: Crop One
A small San Mateo company is building what is billed as the world’s largest vertical farm next year in Dubai, right on the runway that serves Emirates airline. The 50-foot-high sealed warehouse will produce 3 tons of leafy greens a day, without using a drop of what Sonia Lo calls “free energy” — otherwise known as sunlight — or soil, essentially recreating an optimized version of Central California in the Middle East.
“I love the fact that you’re redistributing the means of feeding back to where people actually are,” said Lo, CEO of Crop One Holdings in San Mateo, which since 2015 has provided fresh-cut lettuce and basil through Boston’s snowy winters from the company’s first vertical farm in Massachusetts. “The implications for what agriculture can do in terms of feeding more people are also incredibly exciting.”
Large-scale vertical farming, sometimes called indoor farming, uses LED lights and small doses of water and nutrients to grow leafy greens and herbs — and soon strawberries — year-round in otherwise unsuitable climates. Since the farming method can protect plants from the ravages of climate change and may have the potential to recreate terroir for wine grapes or coffee, it’s attracting big investors. In the Bay Area, Crop One’s just-announced partnership with Emirates Flight Catering amounted to $40 million just to build the Dubai farm, and Plenty in South San Francisco, which will open a farm in the Seattle area this year, raised $200 million in funding last July.
Both companies are exporting two things the region is known for: technology and fresh-cut greens. Yet they both plan to also open facilities in Northern California as the Salinas Valley, known as America’s Salad Bowl, copes with labor shortages, drought and high land prices.
Matt Barnard, CEO of Plenty, which will sell the greens to Bay Area customers in a few months from its South San Francisco farm, points out that the majority of the world’s fruits and vegetables grow best in Mediterranean climates, of which there are just a handful around the world, including Salinas Valley.
“We’ve tapped out Salinas. There’s not a way to add capacity,” he said.
Barnard prefers to use the term indoor farming, not to be confused with growing in greenhouses, which use natural sunlight and dirt. In vertical farms, vegetables grow hydroponically — in a “soil-less medium” of water and nutrients. They sit on actual vertical walls, in the case of Plenty, or on stacked shelves with LED lighting overhead. The temperature- and humidity-controlled environment can be as simple as a shipping container within a larger warehouse.
Vertical doesn’t necessarily mean towering high, though; it does mean the plants are stacked closely and efficiently. The Dubai farm will be only about four or five stories tall, but at 130,000 square feet, it is large enough to produce greens for the 225,000 meals Emirates caterers produce daily for in-flight meals. Lo said she can produce the same amount on a single acre indoors that would normally require 400 acres of land, and that her company landed the deal because it has shown it can make vertical farming profitable.
Sonia Lo, founder of Crop One in San Mateo says, “The implications for what agriculture can do in terms of feeding more people are also incredibly exciting.”
Photo: Crop One
But using LED lighting instead of “free energy” comes with high costs and a carbon footprint that can be comparable to shipping greens across the country. Running a 30,000-square-foot indoor farm in the New York City area would cost about $340,000 per year for power, lighting, heating and cooling, according to a recent report by Civil Eats. Because water can be filtered and reused in vertical farms, water use is only an estimated 1 percent of conventional farming.
Lo estimates that vertical farms cost one and a half times as much as traditional farms to operate, but that the cost to Emirates will be the same as what it currently pays for the vegetables shipped or flown from Spain, Italy or California. Plus, the greens will be available within 24 hours of harvest, she said, instead of the usual six weeks.
When it comes to the carbon footprint, a farm producing 1 ton of vegetables a day uses 3 megawatts of energy a year, Lo said, or enough to power roughly 2,200 homes. Greens produced by the Boston area farm, which sells under the FreshBox label, are carbon neutral when compared with greens transported from California, Lo said; they haven’t done a carbon analysis for Dubai yet. The company is planning to open three new farms in Connecticut and Texas soon and is eyeing sites in Northern and Southern California as well as the Midwest, Georgia, and Oklahoma.
One big advantage of vertical farming is that the sealed environment means no pesticides or herbicides are required, and the bacteria levels on the vegetables are much lower, which makes them safer as well as longer-lasting, reducing spoilage.
Then again, the same factors pushing vertical farming forward are also improving technology for traditional agriculture, such as remote sensors, software, and drones that help farmers make irrigation more precise and improve soil health.
In November, the U.S. Department of Agriculture reaffirmed that hydroponic farms may use the USDA organic label, even though traditional organic farms and greenhouse growers fumed over that decision, arguing that soil is inherent to organic farming.
Future of Farming Is Rooting Itself In Central Oregon
A sustainable, shipping container 'vertical farm'
By: Lauren Melink
July 26, 2018
Around the Bend Farms
BEND, Ore. - There’s a new farm in Central Oregon, and it’s a bit different from your standard homestead.
It’s called Around the Bend Farms. And for now, you’ll find it in a laboratory at OSU-Cascades.
Around the Bend Farms CEO, Ben Marsh describes it like this: "It's definitely not your archetypal farmer who is in a field, sweating in 95-degree weather with a big combine. Our combine is a computer or a micro-controller."
Around the Bend, Farms is a non-profit organization that’s partnered with OSU-Cascades to create a personal food computer.
"What that means is that the computer can tell this thing, 'OK, I need you to turn on a light.' And this thing goes 'All right,' and turns on a light," Marsh said.
The farm is a sustainable "vertical farm" that after being programmed with the correct grow recipe, runs on its own.
"We’re controlling the heating, the cooling, the air movement, the lighting, temperature," Marsh said
The goal is to eventually build computer-run, sustainable, vertical farms inside shipping containers.
Lance Porter is an energy systems engineering graduate involved in the project. He thinks the computer farm will attract a different type of farmer.
"The newer generations really want to be more involved in where their food comes from and especially involved in how it’s made and how it’s produced," Porter said
Executive research associate Makena Whitaker said this unique kind of farming will hopefully keep people coming back.
"It’s more fun if you make farming fun and interesting. People will stick around," Whitaker said.
Around the Bend Farms also hopes to create a sense of community around growing food.
"Food was always a family endeavor and a community-based endeavor, and we want to kind of get back to that," Marsh said.
Around the Bend, Farms is in its early stages of development, but already they’ve tripled the size of their crop and hope to have a shipping container farm in Bend within two years.
For more information on the farm, you can visit the website at this link: https://www.aroundthebendfarms.org/
Maintaining Optimum Growth Conditions in Vertical Farms
Maintaining Optimum Growth Conditions in Vertical Farms
Sponsored by Edinburgh Sensors Jun 15 2018
Shutterstock | CC7
The global population is growing rapidly, and new technologies are required to meet the rising food demands. Vertical farming provides a secure supply of food all through the year while using lesser amounts of water, space, and energy. Creating the ideal environment, and particularly the perfect CO2 atmosphere, in vertical farms is vital for enhancing crop yields and farm economics. Edinburgh Sensors’ GasBoxNG is a ready-to-use gas sensor that allows conditions of ideal plant growth to be ensured.
By 2050, it is projected that the population worldwide will increase to nine billion, resulting in a 59-98% increase in food demand. Regardless of constant improvements in farming practices, present crop yields are growing very slowly to meet the anticipated increase in food demand. Furthermore, in the coming decades, the agricultural industries must start to adapt to changing conditions brought on by climate change. Researchers around the world are examining new and improved technologies that can transform food production and help keep up with the food demand.
Out of the nine billion people that will live on the earth by 2050, it is projected that 80% will dwell in cities. Vertical farms erected in small urban spaces such as sky-scrappers, warehouses, or even shipping containers, can provide a steady supply of local food in cities without the need for large areas of farming land.
Precision farming and environmental control technologies have allowed the progress of vertical farms that have been stated to use 95% less water, no pesticides, no soil, and 50% less fertilizer compared to traditional farms while creating 75% more crops per square foot.
Countries Around the World Are Investing in Vertical Farms
A number of projects have shown the benefits of vertical farms in prototypes, pilot projects, and at commercial production levels. A vertical farm was erected in Japan after the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster resulted in a food shortage.
Commercial vertical farms have also cropped up in empty industrial spaces in countries including the Netherlands, Singapore, and the USA. The vertical farming market is predicted to increase to $13 billion by 2024, with indoor growing in urban structures predicted to signify 70% of the market.
Environmental Control for Successful Vertical Farming
Engineering the ideal environment for crop growth has been the subject of a surplus of research over the last 10 years. It is vital to understand the impacts of environmental factors on plant growth to realize the best crop yields and resource efficiency in vertical farms.
Related Stories
- Simulating the Effect of Climate Change on Agriculture
- Studying the Effect of Global Warming on Tropical Crops
- Monitoring Stored Food and Grain using Carbon Dioxide Measurement
Temperature, water supply, humidity, nutrient content, light, and atmosphere must all be cautiously controlled to guarantee optimal crop yields and least resource use.
The effects of CO2 concentration on crop growth have been researched intensely in the last few years. Small variations in atmospheric CO2concentrations can greatly affect plant growth and photosynthesis rates, so CO2 levels in vertical farms must be carefully tracked and controlled.
The CO2 levels in vertical farms can be customized to the crop being grown, and the particular growth stage of the crops. A number of studies have revealed that increased CO2 levels can provide increased water efficiency and better plant growth rates. The specific effect of CO2 levels on plant growth is reliant on the crop species and the plant’s growth stage. For instance, yields of tomato plants cultivated in CO2-enriched conditions grew by 17%, while yields of lettuce cultivated in CO2-enriched conditions grew by 68%.
In order to preserve ideal growth conditions, CO2 levels must be checked and managed using gas sensing systems.
CO2 Sensors Are Essential for Vertical Farms
CO2 sensors are important equipment for tracking and controlling conditions in vertical farms. Sensors may be added to automated control systems to continually monitor and maintain CO2 levels, offering ideal plant growth conditions without the need for human involvement.
The most common solutions for monitoring indoor CO2 levels are non-dispersive infrared (NDIR) CO2 sensors. In an NDIR CO2 sensor, infrared light is conveyed through a tube of air to an infrared detector. The detector takes into account the light that was not absorbed by the CO2 present in the tube, and the concentration of atmospheric CO2 is measured. The NDIR CO2 sensors are mainly popular as they deliver accurate CO2measurements, are comparatively inexpensive, easy to operate, and easy for non-experts to set up.
The new GasBoxNG from Edinburgh Sensors is a ready-to-use NDIR CO2 sensor that is perfect for vertical farming applications. It employs a pseudo dual beam NDIR measurement system to provide better stability and reduced long-term drift, with least optical complexity. Therefore, the GasBoxNG provides fast and reliable CO2measurements. The useful CO2 data provided by the GasBoxNG can be transferred to atmospheric control systems using an optional RS232 communication interface.
To know more about this new NDIR CO2 sensor that is very successful in vertical farming, customers can visit the stall set up by Edinburgh Sensors to showcase the GasBoxNG at the SENSOR+TEST Measurement Fair in Nürnburg, Germany between 26th and 28th June. Customers can meet experts to discuss their specific application requirements.
References and Further Reading
- ‘Growing a better future: Summary’ –https://www.oxfam.org/sites/www.oxfam.org/files/file_attachments/cr-growing-better-future-170611-summ-en_0.pdf
- ‘Can vertical farming feed the world and change the agriculture industry?’ –https://inhabitat.com/can-vertical-farming-feed-the-world-and-change-the-agriculture-industry/
- ‘Future food-production systems: vertical farming and controlled-environment agriculture’– Benke K, Tomkins B, Sustainability: Science, Practice and Policy, 2017.
- ‘Vertical Farming: Key to Mitigating World’s Hunger’ – Pandey S, Science Reporter, 2017.
- ‘Vertical Farming Market to exceed $13bn by 2024: Global Market Insights, Inc.’ –https://globenewswire.com/news-release/2017/05/17/986832/0/en/Vertical-Farming-Market-to-exceed-13bn-by-2024-Global-Market-Insights-Inc.html
- ‘Plant Factory: An Indoor Vertical Farming System for Efficient Quality Food Production’ – Kozai T, Niu G, Takagai M, Elsevier, 2015.
- ‘A Novel Approach for Automating & Analysing Hydroponic farms Using Internet of Things’ –Paulchamy B, Balaji N, Pravatha SD, Kumar PH, Frederick TJ, International Journal of Scientific Research in Computer Science, Engineering and Information Technology, 2018.
- ‘GasBoxNG’ – https://edinburghsensors.com/products/oem/gasbox-ng/
- ‘Edinburgh Sensors to attend Sensor and Test 2018’ – https://edinburghsensors.com/news-and-events/sensor-and-test-2018/
This information has been sourced, reviewed and adapted from materials provided by Edinburgh Sensors.
For more information on this source, please visit Edinburgh Sensors.
Indoor Urban Agriculture Is Growing Up Thanks to These Cities
At this point, the benefits of indoor urban farming are common knowledge: fresher food, fewer transportation emissions, and less spoilage thanks to shorter transit distances.
NYC’s Gotham Greens highlighted those and other benefits this week with the announcement that it had closed a $29 million Series C equity funding round led by Silverman Group and Creadiv. This latest round brings the company’s total funding to $45 million and will help them “finance the expansion trajectory,” which covers 500,000 square feet currently under development in five different states.
Gotham is one of several major success stories for NYC-based urban indoor farming companies, many of which we’ve covered extensively at The Spoon. But the Big Apple’s not the only city making indoor urban farming widely available and, in the process, changing the way we think about farming.
In fact, today marks the opening of the Farm on Ogden in Chicago, a massive facility and project aimed at providing fresh, local food to an undernourished (literally and figuratively) part of the Windy City.
With those two pieces of news in mind, here’s a brief look at a few other cities and companies where the indoor farming movement is thriving:
The Farm on Ogden
Chicago
Though the enormous vertical farming operation FarmedHere shuttered in 2017, Chicago is still seeing plenty of developments from other urban agriculture players. Gotham Greens operates a facility in the Pullman area. And generating quite a bit of buzz of late is the aforementioned Farm on Ogden, a partnership between the Lawndale Christian Health Center and Chicago Botanic Garden. The $3.5 million year-round project will provide both jobs and local, sustainably produced food to the struggling North Lawndale area, where unemployment soars, over 14 percent of the population has diabetes, and one in four adults suffers from PTSD. The multi-use facility will offer year-round food production, teaching kitchens, and job training for everyone from teenagers to those with criminal backgrounds. The project is also in the midst of building a 50,000-gallon aquaponic system that will raise lettuce and tilapia.
Grove
Boston
Like Chicago, Boston’s urban landscape and often-grim weather make it a prime candidate for the indoor urban farming movement.
Dorm-room project turned full-fledged business Grove takes a slightly different approach, trading enormous warehouses for compact pieces of furniture in which to place its “farms.” As my colleague Catherine noted recently, Grove has teamed up with furniture and appliance companies to create custom hardware, while it supplies seed pods and ag software to cultivate the crops.
If, on the other hand, you’re after a more utilitarian means of growing your produce, Freight Farms can provide you with one of its vertical farms housed in 40-square-foot shipping containers. Each Leafy Green Machine container is a fully climate controlled environment with vertical crop columns, LEDs, and a closed-loop hydroponic irrigations system. The accompanying farmhand platform, meanwhile, lets users automate many of the growing tasks, and generates real-time data for crop analysis. Freight Farms counts multiple universities, as well as big names like Google, among its customers.
Detroit
Of course, if any city stands poised to benefit from the urban agriculture revolution, it’s Detroit; it's 78,000 empty/abandoned spaces are prime real estate for potential farming endeavors.
Artesian Farms is a great example: the company’s current warehouse facility sat abandoned from the late ’90s to when the company moved in around 2014. Now, thanks to a collaboration with Green Spirit Farms, Artesian has turned the warehouse’s 7,500 square feet of traditional space into one gigantic vertical farm. The company is also a community builder: 100 percent of current employees are from the surrounding Brightmoor neighborhood, which also benefits from access to the food produced.
RecoveryPark Farms, meanwhile, is another effort to transform urban blight via indoor and urban farming practices. The project grows produce, root vegetables, and herbs in hydroponic greenhouses that’s then shipped out to restaurants within a 300-mile radius.
Like many other companies listed here, RecoverPark provides as much community outreach and employment as it does homegrown food. Which, at the end of the day, is really what “eating local” should be all about.
Something Has Sprung Up Out of The Ground In Food Tech!
Something Has Sprung Up Out of The Ground Inf Food Tech!
Key Factors For Optimal Crop Production In Greenhouses And Vertical Farms By Professor Leo Marcelis of Wageningen University
Key Factors For Optimal Crop Production In Greenhouses And Vertical Farms By Professor Leo Marcelis of Wageningen University
By urbanagnews
April 16, 2018
Greenhouses and vertical farms around the world are faced with many of the same questions and obstacles when learning to manage crop production in controlled environment agriculture systems. Listen to Professor Leo Marcelis discuss trends, opportunities and other key factors in creating optimal crop production systems for greenhouses and vertical farms.
Bengaluru Man Uses Hydroponics To Grow Vertical Gardens & Fodder Machines!
Recurring droughts across various states in India have brought the farmers to their knees. With no water to nourish their farms, farmers are left with little to no source of income. What do you do when such tragedy strikes, and there is no way you can water your land?
Bengaluru Man Uses Hydroponics To Grow Vertical Gardens & Fodder Machines!
by Tanvi Patel May 10, 2018
Recurring droughts across various states in India have brought the farmers to their knees. With no water to nourish their farms, farmers are left with little to no source of income. What do you do when such tragedy strikes, and there is no way you can water your land?
While completing research on alternate methods of farming to help drought-stricken farmers, Sunil Jose, an alumnus of IIM-Bangalore, stumbled upon a solution that might seem ironic at first but is actually quite effective.
The method Sunil hit upon is hydroponics—the practice of growing plants without soil and depends solely on the use of water.
Before your skepticism creeps in, Sunil clarifies how it can be utilized in areas hit with drought.
Sunil shares his knowledge on hydroponics. Source.
“Water is used very carefully, and is recycled back into the system,” he told the Times of India, adding that, “The plants get only the desired amount of water with nutrients as and when it is required.”
Since the method does not make use of soil, the water needs are also miniscule—just 5-10%—as compared to land crops. It also gives a higher yield than the traditional methods while using minimum power and space.
Sunil started an initiative which would help farmers adopt this method in their farms, and according to it, they have to plant herbs and vegetables in a vertical fashion instead of the usual horizontal way.
Plants grow in the hydroponic fashion. Source.
This lets them grow a large number of plants in a relatively smaller space
Sunil soon discovered that hydroponics could also be used to grow fodder. This will be helpful to the farmers who own cattle.
Sunil has also been involved in making vertical hydroponic gardens in Bengaluru a reality. He designed and implemented the vertical gardens on the MG Road metro pillars in the IT-Hub. “This can purify the air and nullify the effects of vehicular pollution,” Sunil said.
He has also been actively advocating the use of hydroponics in farming in urban as well as rural areas.
Examples of vertical farming. Source.
His experiment in Telangana became successful when the villagers realised that mustard flourishes in the hydroponic machine that Sunil had made available.
You may also like: Greening ‘Up’: Pune to Grow Vertical Gardens on Its Metro Pillars!
“Twenty-one percent of tomatoes grown in Australia are with hydroponics. It is also becoming popular in Canada, the US and Holland. Of late, the Gulf countries are also showing a lot of interest,” he said.
He is optimistic that as information about this method spreads, more and more farmers who don’t have the space to grow plants or those who live in the arid areas of India, will eventually opt for the “soil-less farming” technique.
(Edited by Gayatri Mishra)
Featured image source: Facebook.
Copy of Growtainers Expands With Central Market, Looks to New Crops
For just about a year now, Central Market in Dallas has tested out offering produce that was grown on-site in a Growtainer. Evidently, that partnership has gone so well that Central Market is making the relationship more permanent and expanding it with the addition of another Growtainer.
Growtainers Expands With Central Market, Looks to New Crops
By Chris Albrecht | The Spoon
February 17, 2018
For just about a year now, Central Market in Dallas has tested out offering produce that was grown on-site in a Growtainer. Evidently, that partnership has gone so well that Central Market is making the relationship more permanent and expanding it with the addition of another Growtainer.
Growtainers are modified shipping containers that provide a food-safe indoor growing environment. Each one contains a vertical rack system for holding crops, crop-specific LED lighting fixtures, and a proprietary irrigation system. Growtainers come in 40, 45 and 53-foot sizes and are customized for each customer, costing anywhere from $75,000 – $125,000 a piece. The amount a Growtainer can produce depends on the crop.
The Growtainer at Central Market offers leafy greens and herbs grown on-site in a 53-foot container. While he couldn’t provide specific numbers, Growtainer Founder and President Glenn Behrman told me by phone that “demand outpaces supply” for the market’s store-grown produce. “We’ve proven the concept,” he said.
Central Market expanding its relationship with Growtainer helps push the idea of produce grown on-site more into the mainstream. Other players in this sector include Inafarm, which has been installing indoor vertical farming systems at food wholesalers in Berlin. And here at home, indoor farming startup Plenty raised $200 million last year from investors including Jeff Bezos (who happens to run Amazon, which owns Whole Foods).
As on-site farming technology improves and gets cheaper and easier to use, it’s not hard to imagine more stores opting to grow their own fresh produce in-house instead of having it transported across the country.
Behrman says that there are Growtainers all over the world for a variety of agricultural and pharmaceutical customers. He built two Growtainers for the Community Foodbank of Eastern Oklahoma so they could grow their own produce, and he’s talked with both the military and the United Nations about installing Growatiners for them in more remote (and volatile) areas.
One group Behrman hasn’t chatted with is venture capitalists. He laughed when I asked him about funding. “We have no investors, and we’re profitable,” said Behrman. But in the next breath, he said he realizes that his current go-it-alone approach won’t scale. “I think once this Central Market project expands and becomes more mainstream, I will have to look for some funding.”
Until that time, Behrman wants to have Growtainers produce more high value crops. “Lettuce and leafy greens are not that challenging,” he said. Behrman, who’s been in horticulture since 1971, believes Growtainers could be excellent for growing exotic mushrooms that have short shelf lives, or fungi that historically could only grow in particular seasons.
Perhaps after another year or so you’ll see truffles and porcinis grown on-site and offered at Central Market (and elsewhere).
Q&A: UVA i.Lab-Supported Indoor Farming Startup Beanstalk Still Growing After Y Combinator
Q&A: UVA i.Lab-Supported Indoor Farming Startup Beanstalk Still Growing After Y Combinator
3-May-2018
Source Newsroom: University of Virginia Darden School of Business
Beanstalk Farms founders Jack and Michael Ross are building their first production facility in Northern Virginia.
By Dave Hendrick
Newswise — Indoor farming startup Beanstalk Farms has come a long way in a short period of time. Jack Ross, a 2017 graduate of the University of Virginia’s School of Engineering and Applied Science, and brother Michael Ross started their venture in the incubator program at the Darden School-hosted W.L. Lyons Brown III i.Lab in 2017, building a prototype and learning as much as they could about the complicated world of fresh produce.
After the i.Lab, the Ross brothers — both of whom trained as engineers — successfully applied for a spot at Y Combinator, the Silicon Valley-based accelerator that has helped launch companies like Dropbox, Airbnb and Instacart, among hundreds of others.
Now back on the East Coast, Jack Ross recently spoke about his experience launching Beanstalk; the UVA network on both coasts; and his quest for faster, cheaper and better-tasting lettuce and spinach.
An edited transcript of that conversation follows:
Give us the pitch for Beanstalk.
Beanstalk Farms grows heirloom produce in automated indoor farms. What that means is we bring the field inside and that allows us to control absolutely everything around the growth of the plant. We like to say it’s always 65 and sunny in our facility.
So we can grow the highest-quality food, all-year-round, and we can actually grow it faster than you can outside because it’s a perfect environment. And we can grow it anywhere, so it can be produced very close to the end consumer.
What’s the innovation you are bringing to the table? What’s different?
Beanstalk’s greatest innovation is our automation of the indoor farming process. We are not the first to grow inside. That’s been done for quite some time. It has, up to now, been very expensive. Food grown indoors has not been able to compete with the price of produce grown in the field, and the biggest reason for that is labor goes up when you grow inside. Indoor farms lose all of the technology that a company like John Deere brought to the field.
My brother and I are engineers, and we took a very different approach to farming. We created a manufacturing line that grows a plant. So the labor is very, very low.
It’s a highly automated process and, on top of that, because we don’t have to design for human labor to tend to the crops, it’s much, much denser. So, in a very small amount of space, we can grow food to feed cities.
We can put that farm right in the city, and we can grow the highest quality food, using heirloom seeds that have been cultivated for thousands of years to be incredibly tasty and very nutritious. Also, unlike field-grown food, even some organic food, we do not use pesticides. This means our food is always clean and ready to eat.
Essentially, our automated systems allow us to sell at prices competitive with traditionally farmed food, and our precise indoor environment ensures we can grow the highest quality food anywhere in the world.
What was your experience in the i.Lab like?
It was great. It’s a wonderful time when you don’t really have anything set in stone. The community was very close knit and attentive. We were just starting out as a company, and learning who we should talk to and who could help us learn more about the problem we are trying to solve. Jason [Brewster], David [Touve] and Sandra [McCutcheon] were incredible in brainstorming solutions, refining our pitch, and connecting us to people that could help us better understand the food system. The i.Lab helped us get on our feet.
During the program, we spent most of that time trying to grow plants quickly and consistently. We knew that if we could do that, the rest of it would fall in line, as the engineering is our sweet spot. The rest of time was talking to customers. We were out talking to people from all different parts of the food system.
The food system is a really complex beast. From food getting off the field, it may change hands over half a dozen times. So we wanted to talk to chefs, restaurant owners, and distributors to understand the system. We found a couple of huge problems for all people involved.
First, finding a consistent source of quality produce is a really big problem.
People are looking for local produce and it just doesn’t exist everywhere. So sourcing was a big problem. And then just the volatility of the market. From week-to-week, prices can go up 800 percent. So that kind of volatility for a restaurant owner is awful.
To us, it was pretty clear we just needed to find a way to create a consistent, high-quality product and remove the risk factors.
So the i.Lab really pushed us to get out and talk to people. Thankfully, our hypothesis was verified and we graduated from the i.Lab Incubator knowing clearly what the problem is and having a rough idea of how we wanted to solve it. So that set us up perfectly for Y Combinator.
What’s the process like for getting into Y Combinator?
It’s quick.
The application is not terribly long. It’s about half a dozen questions on the business. They wanted to know a lot about the founding team. We heard back about a month later and they basically said, “You have an interview spot; it’s in a week for 10 minutes.”
So you have to drop everything you’re doing and fly out to Mountain View for a 10-minute interview. We got organized, and the i.Lab actually helped us get out there and coordinate with people while we were out there.
I thought it was going to be more Shark Tank-style, with a lot of accusatory questions. Not at all. They asked a few hard questions, and then it turned very quickly into brainstorming. What do you guys think you can do in the program while you’re here? What’s next for you?
It was a much warmer conversation than I anticipated.
What’s the program like once you’re in it?
It’s pretty hands-off. The biggest thing they do is they want you to pick a metric, a single metric for your business. And that is kind of your guiding light for three months of the program.
We picked cost because cost is really what drives purchasing decisions. So we focused on getting the cost of production to that of the field. We said if we can reach price parity with food purchased off the field, we can put this anywhere and maintain a profit.
You meet twice a week with your partners at YC and a group of other companies and talk about what you’re doing to hit that metric and what kind of stuff is blocking you.
Was it intimidating to be in this incubator that has launched so many household names?
Intimidating is probably not far off at the beginning, because expectations are very high.
The really amazing thing is the first day they brought in Drew Houston, the founder of Dropbox, and he was gearing up for his IPO. You build up the impression of these people, and he came in and had a very pragmatic approach to how he started Dropbox and how he grew it. He was a regular guy, and he made himself very available. So that kind of demystified it a bit. The biggest thing they stress is to just keep at it. Don’t die, is what they stress. If you can just get through it, the odds are so much better that you’ll be successful.
From that first day on, it was less about meeting these ridiculous expectations and more about just figuring out what kind of support you need for your business to stay alive.
Were you tapping into a UVA or Darden network while you were out there?
Absolutely. We touched back with the i.Lab while we were out there. [BlueRun Ventures General Partner] Jonathan Ebinger (MBA ’93) was my mentor at the i.Lab, and we had connected a few times while we were in Charlottesville. But after moving out there, he helped us understand more of the pacing of these sorts of things. He’s been a venture capitalist for 20 years and has seen a lot of companies come and go, so we were able to go to him with questions. Just having someone with that experience and wisdom helped us a lot. Not to mention he helped us get a place to live while we were there for three months.
Y Combinator just wrapped up in March. Where are you all now?
We moved back just last week to set up what is going to be our first production farm. We’re setting that up in Northern Virginia and looking to go into production in pilot runs at the end of this year. Then we’ll start selling into wholesale next year. That will position us as the first vertical farm to go into wholesale markets.
To us, that’s really important. We view this as an impact or mission-focused business. So being able to sell at wholesale proves to us and to our investors and customers that this is profitable at a mass-market size. So we can sell food that everyone can afford — not just the Michelin-starred chefs.
You have a background starting technology companies. Do you consider this a tech company?
We like to say we are a technology-enabled business, as the core of our innovation is technology. However, at end of the day, we are selling produce. What we focus on day to day is how we build a better manufacturing line that grows better and more affordable food.
As you’ve been through this process, have you keyed on a particular area of weakness to address?
Certainly, continuing personal development is the most important thing. If successful, your business is going to grow exponentially. Humans do not have an intuition for exponential growth, so it’s very important to just be learning as much as you possibly can so that you can try to stay ahead of your business’ growth.
Do you end up eating a lot of your product?
We do. It’s very cool to have a company where you can eat what you work on. The past three months have been largely a salad-based diet. I was not a huge salad aficionado before, but after having tasted these heirlooms seeds and eating our food fresh off the farm, it does taste a world different.
What other lessons stand out for you from these early days?
I think the most important lesson I’ve been learning through these programs is that the time you’re there is valuable, but it’s really brief. The most important thing is the network of people you become a part of and whom you spend your time with. At UVA, I became very close with fellow i.Lab founders including Kevin Eisenfrats of Contraline, Kris Cody of Paka, and Brent Baumgartner of Helme. Even though we all run very different business, we face the same problems. It is the support from this group of fellow founders from the i.Lab, and from YC now, too, that have helped me get to where I am and keep moving forward.
About the University of Virginia Darden School of Business
The University of Virginia Darden School of Business delivers the world’s best business education experience to prepare entrepreneurial, global and responsible leaders through its MBA, Ph.D. and Executive Education programs. Darden’s top-ranked faculty is renowned for teaching excellence and advances practical business knowledge through research. Darden was established in 1955 at the University of Virginia, a top public university founded by Thomas Jefferson in 1819 in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Agriculture, Education, Entrepreneurship, Local - Virginia
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Vertical Farming On The Rise
As Despommier states on his website, "it’s estimated that by around 2050, roughly 80 percent of the world’s population will reside in urban city centers, with the population of the world ballooning by an additional 3 billion people over that time."
Vertical Farming On The Rise
April 24, 2018 | Jonathan Garcia
Vertical farming is on the rise and so are microgreens. As Despommier states on his website, "it’s estimated that by around 2050, roughly 80 percent of the world’s population will reside in urban city centers, with the population of the world ballooning by an additional 3 billion people over that time." That's a massive amount of people in an urban setting. This has paved the way for vertical farming to spring more over the past few years because of the buzz around it and the innovation that goes along with this growing technique.
Vertical farms eliminate many of the impracticalities and inefficiencies in traditional farming. They are more widely applicable as a technology, too, and have the potential to change the production of food around the world.
Vertical farms reduce the land and water used to produce crops by adding another dimension to the layout of the farm. Water cascades from top to bottom, essentially recycling itself. Furthermore, vertical farms decrease the waste of resources and space because crops are grown in controlled conditions, eliminating the threat of weather patterns (such as droughts) and reducing the distance that produce is transported by growing it within urban regions.
With the implementation of vertical farms, the endless fields of farmland that many of us in the Midwest are familiar with would return to nature. Ideally, the pasture land would be eliminated too with a shift toward veganism, since factory farms and the excessive breeding of animals contribute to global warming.
Vertical farms can accommodate crops that are normally specific to a certain region of the world and can grow crops yearly, even when those crops would be out of season. Insects are not an issue, either, because the crops in vertical farms are in a controlled setting.
Although this all sounds great in theory, there are obstacles in urban farming due to its infancy. A lot of vertical farming is often used for microgreens or sprouts but, if it were to grow grain-based vegetables or fruits it would use a lot of electricity and land. Especially if you were wanting to produce on a mass scale. Biologist Stan Cox says, "that to be truly effective, vertical farms would require an incredible amount of floor space." He also goes on to point out floorspace requirement for growing just vegetables — happens to clock in at roughly 1.6 percent of cultivated land in the U.S. This doesn't sound like much but it has the relative floorspace of around 105,000 Empire State Buildings.
Urban farming is definitely the way of the future but it will have to overcome it's difficulties if it to replace rural farming. I'd say it's a challenge that us growers are willing to take.
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Super Timber, Vertical Forests And Vertical Farming: Geneva Celebrations Show The Sky Is The Limit For Forests’ Contribution To Sustainable Cities
Super Timber, Vertical Forests And Vertical Farming: Geneva Celebrations Show The Sky Is The Limit For Forests’ Contribution To Sustainable Cities
Green spaces in cities, including parks, gardens/vertical gardens or urban farms are emerging as key solutions to tackle urban sustainability challenges. Trees in cities serve as natural air conditioners, cooling the air by between two and eight degrees Celsius, whilst urban forests filter harmful pollutants from the air and act as carbon sinks to help mitigate climate change. Urban farms contribute to urban food security by providing fresh local produce, reducing food miles and reconnecting people to the food they eat.
Vertical forests, vertical farming and vertical high-rise wood constructions: the denser our cities become, the greater the need to address the lack of space available for plants and trees, and to identify innovative ways of integrating natural systems into our urban spaces – where the sky is the only limit.
International Day of Forests is a global celebration of forests. This year’s theme highlights the key role played by forests in creating sustainable cities.
To celebrate this occasion, UNECE and FAO gathered eminent speakers at the Palais des Nations in Geneva to showcase new approaches to urban farming, the integration of trees in buildings, wood construction and architecture.
“Forests provide the solution to many of the sustainability problems that we will face in an urbanized world”, highlighted Ms. Olga Algayerova, Executive Secretary of UNECE.
The exchanges demonstrated that technology and ingenuity have no limits when creating sustainable and green cities.
H.E. Ambassador Foo Kok Jwee, Permanent Representative of Singapore to the UN in Geneva, emphasised the importance of vertical farming as it “optimises land use in land-scarce Singapore and can operate on minimal manpower”.
Arch. Maria Chiara Pastore of Stefano Boeri Architetti, famous for creating the vertical forests model for sustainable residential buildings embodied by Milan’s Bosco Verticale (Vertical Forest), emphasized how its vegetal system contributes to the construction of a microclimate, produces humidity, absorbs CO2 and dust particles and produces oxygen.
This is not only instrumental in curbing climate change but also utilises accessible building materials for large-scale construction projects. Compared to concrete, steel, cement and glass, wood requires less energy to produce and stores – rather than emits - carbon.
Dr. Michael Ramage, Director of the Centre for Natural Material Innovation at the University of Cambridge, instrumental in the design of the “The Toothpick” (a wooden skyscraper set to become the second tallest building in London), discussed “super-tall timber”. He explained how wood construction involves cross-laminated timber, a material made of many sheets of wood glued and compressed together, is stronger than steel and a viable candidate for building skyscrapers.
One large tree can also absorb 150kg of carbon dioxide a year and thereby act as a carbon sink to help mitigate climate change and lower cities’ carbon footprint. With 1.9 billion hectares, corresponding to more than 40 percent of the total global forest area, the UNECE region has more forests than any other region of the world. With growing urbanization, forests are instrumental; and when it comes to creating sustainable cities - technology and ingenuity have no limits.
For pictures of the event, please see: https://www.flickr.com/photos/121632478@N08/albums/72157691247014672
LAST DAY To Bid - Online Auction to Offer Surplus Growing Equipment
Last Day To Bid - Online Auction to Offer Surplus Growing Equipment
Green Sense Farms is transforming its Portage, Indiana farm into a state-of-the-art research and development center to advance its indoor vertical growing systems and test new cultivars.
It will test LED horticultural lighting, HVAC systems, automation controls and sensing devices, along with modern conveyance and packaging automation equipment, announced Robert Colangelo, CEO and Founding Farmer of Green Sense Farms.
“We continue to discover so many opportunities to pioneer new techniques in vertical farming. We’re committed to pushing the envelope to learn how best to efficiently grow nutritious food in an energy-efficient and sustainable manner,” he said.
Green Sense Farms will sell surplus growing equipment, including 3,300 Phillips LED horticultural grow lights, HVAC equipment, grow tubs and water purification equipment through an online auction which ends March 28th at 10; 00 am CST.
For details and to register for the auction, managed by Auction Consultants, Inc., Click Here
The Green Revolution In Controlled-Environment Agriculture
The Green Revolution In Controlled-Environment Agriculture
"Nectar Farms And Sundrop Farms are Blazing A Trail"
Vertical farms are popping up left, right, and center. Shipping containers full of purple lights and heads of lettuce dot the North American landscape, while in Asia, so-called 'plant factories' (indoor cultivation facilities) show no sign of letting up. Meanwhile, in Australia, they're taking controlled-environment agriculture in a slightly different direction. We spoke to John Mathews, Professor in Management at Macquarie University, about this.
In his book, Global Green Shift, John draws attention to the links between vertical farming, controlled environment agriculture, building-integrated agriculture and simple urban farming. The basic idea is that a new IT-enhanced platform is emerging based on food production in urban, controlled environments, which is quite different from conventional farming - while still using established varieties, so despite the high tech factor, there's no need to resort to genetic modification.
While most of the discussion on these emerging “plant factories” (to use the term employed in Japan, Taiwan and China) is focused on technology, the real issue is market access, John says. "Some of the VF initiatives in the US and Canada have gone bankrupt because their costs were too high (paying inner city rents for premium locations) while their market was not guaranteed." John points out two Australian examples where market access has been made fundamental to their design.
One of them, Sundrop Farms, has a 10-year offtake agreement with the national grocery supermarket chain Coles to take all the tomatoes produced. "This was crucial to gaining finance for the venture, and to ensuring its viability over its first decade of full commercial operation (since 2016)", John says. "Likewise Nectar Farms has an offtake agreement with the national food wholesaler Costa, which supplies supermarkets and other outlets, and also exports to the Asia-Pacific region.
"These offtake agreements guarantee a market for the produce of these green initiatives – the element that has been missing in many of the recent initiatives some of which have gone bankrupt."
Vertical farming... without the verticality
Vertical farming is a generic term used to capture aspects of the new wave of horticultural innovations. Both Sundrop Farms and Nectar Farms embody all these features – and yet both are single-story operations that cannot be described as “vertical farming”.
John sees these operations as examples of a new green revolution that imports to the ag sector the IT-enhanced innovations that we associate with platforms. "I call them instances of controlled environment food production platforms. The lead countries are Japan, Taiwan and China – although it must be conceded that in Taiwan the examples are still very small in scale. (In 2018 Taiwan has a reported 120 plant factories producing 2,500 tonnes of fresh veges each year. That has to be compared with the output from Sundrop Farms of 15,000 tonnes fresh tomatoes each year – six times the output of the entire Taiwan industry.)"
Green tigers
John believes Asia will lead in this new urban-based high-tech ag revolution, "because that is where the new population will be added – in the cities of China, India and elsewhere. The old agricultural model that was introduced 10,000-12,000 years ago and was industrialized by the 'green revolution' is now proving to be completely unsustainable, given the fact that it is completely dependent on fossil fuels both to run the mechanization and to provide feedstock for fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides."
China is tackling all aspects of green industrialization, because this is the only form of industrialization that will scale and give the country the energy security (through renewable, products of manufacturing) and resource security (through the circular economy) that it needs. The latest wave of this modernization and industrialization of China is fresh food production in cities.
So, should other vegetable-producing countries get nervous? Well, no. "I don’t see China becoming a major vegetable exporter", John says. "It will be focused on establishing huge numbers of CEA food production systems close to cities to supply fresh produce locally and at a scale that can meet the needs of a burgeoning urban population. Exports will be a minor consideration."
Schumpeterian Surge
This doesn't mean the traditional greenhouse vegetable-producing countries can rest on their laurels though. "The big greenhouses in Canada and the Netherlands and elsewhere are products of fossil fuels. They use fossil fuels for heating, for mechanization, for transport and logistics."
There's still time for them to join the green revolution though, as John analyzes: "They can be made sustainable by harnessing renewable energy as a power source and controlling water circulation (supplemented as in Sundrop Farms by desalination, again using renewable power). If new ventures emerge utilizing these technologies, such as PlantLab in the Netherlands, then the new wave will propagate via Schumpeterian competition."
This Schumpeterian Surge (named for Joseph Schumpeter, whose concept of creative destruction is all about sudden changes in economic dynamics following revolutionary innovations), as John calls it, involves propagation of a new IT-enhanced food production platform. He says it will provide the fresh veges needed by expanding urban populations throughout Asia and eventually Africa, Latin America and the rest of the world.
"The platforms will then diversify to the production of fruits, berries, nuts, funghi and other plants, and then perhaps aquaponics. The final frontier will be broad-acre crops like wheat, rice, soybeans etc – a huge issue that needs to be tackled by the combined resources of the Gates Foundation, the Clinton Foundation et al."
So in short, no less than a green revolution. A bold vision indeed, but as John says: "What is the alternative? More fossil-fuelled farming that is destroying the earth? Look closely at Nectar Farms and Sundrop Farms – they are blazing a trail for others to follow." Whether you agree with John's words or not, the idea of a green revolution is certainly interesting.
Publication date: 3/16/2018
Author: Jan Jacob Mekes
Copyright: www.hortidaily.com
Market For Distributed Farms That Grow Popular Fungi ‘Mushrooms’ In New York
Market For Distributed Farms That Grow Popular Fungi ‘Mushrooms’ In New York
ByPYMNTS
March 6, 2018
In the Big Apple, where space is at a premium, it’s not easy to grow farm fresh produce. As a result, most produce that ends up on a diner’s plate there comes in refrigerated trucks from a farm far away.
It’s an ecological nightmare with all the energy needed to fuel the trucks — and the produce doesn’t always arrive in grocery stores or city restaurants all that fresh, after all.
But one startup hopes to change that paradigm by bringing a more compact concept of a farm into New York City. Smallhold provides a vertical farming system that allows produce to be grown in dining rooms, basements – or even in the grocery store.
“You can put [it] literally anywhere,” Smallhold’s Co-Founder and COO Adam DeMartino told PYMNTS in an interview. “When you make it super easy to farm something, it becomes a whole new business opportunity for a community. There’s a million things you can do with it.”
The Business Model
To expedite the growing process, Smallhold also works sort of like a nursery. The company grows the produce — mushrooms, at the moment — three-quarters of the way. Then it delivers the almost-grown produce to their customers, who finish growing the fungi in their vertical growing units.
And the customers also can have the help of the company in creating the right growing conditions. The units come with wifi and allow Smallhold to monitor and control them remotely. As a result, customers simply have to pick and serve the produce.
Smallhold’s farms also reduce the environmental impact of growing produce. Their farming units reportedly create 40 times the output per square foot than the traditional farm — and use 96 percent less water, according to the company.
But Smallhold is not the only urban farming concept coming to a U.S. city. Boston-based agricultural tech company Freight Farms, for example, grows produce inside of shipping containers.
One freight farm can grow approximately two acres worth of produce, according to the company, and that can be sold either direct to consumers (D2C) or through partnerships with local distributors, restaurants and grocery stores.
And talk about local. Food production hubs — like those used by Freight Farms or Smallhold — were designed for urban settings where it can be difficult to access truly fresh food.
No farm? No problem. DeMartino said Smallhold develops mushrooms that are already fully grown, too, to help introduce new customers to its growing system.
The Mushroom Market
Smallhold chose to grow mushrooms because of strong demand. “The market for mushrooms is just so strong, especially local mushrooms,” DeMartino said, adding that beautiful exotic fungi have good margins.
The company grow all sorts of mushrooms — about 10 different species. And the mushrooms grow well in their high-tech environment: One Smallhold customer, for example, was able to grow a mushroom that weighed in at two pounds.
And the mushrooms also appeal to consumers who might want an alternative to meat, especially if they want a vegan or vegetarian option.
“A lot of people are looking to other protein sources,” DeMartino said. “Mushrooms make an actually great main if you’re at a restaurant.”
Overall, consumers are demanding healthier food when they are dining out — and are looking for vegan and other health-conscious options. According to an NPD study, health and wellness-related activity is leading to healthier restaurants that Smallhold could serve.
“It’s hard to miss all the vegan eateries, gluten-free bakeries and juice shops popping up across the map these days, hoping to grab a piece of the health pie (or rather, gluten-free, vegan rhubarb pie),” according to the study.
The New Produce Section
In the future, DeMartino wants to change the way consumers buy their produce — especially in the grocery store.
“The idea is — over the course of the next coming to years — to replace the produce aisle,” DeMartino said.
And, of course, he wants to grow more items than just mushrooms. Other produce is on the Smallhold roadmap as well.
“There’s many, many different crops that we can grow on site,” DeMartino said.
But he isn’t quite ready to expand to residential customers yet. An individual or family is just not going to purchase the same quantities that a restaurant would, after all.
“Our goal isn’t to have a novelty item that you keep in your kitchen to grow produce,” DeMartino said. “The goal is to make something that’s a utility.”
While DeMartino might not be looking to place Smallhold farms in consumer kitchens quite yet, he is looking to change consumer shopping behavior. By introducing the farms in grocery stores, he hopes that he can change consumer buying habits — and encourage people to buy farm-fresh produce.
In all, he’s trying to make people closer to the food — harkening back to the days of backyard gardens.
“[Smallhold is] also going to reconnect people to how produce is grown,” DeMartino said. “We’re reconnecting people back to their food in a busy society.”
NYC’s Farm One Delivers Rare, Ultra-Fresh Produce In Just 30 Minutes
In April 2016, Manhattan’s Institute of Culinary Education planted its very first on-site farm with over 150 crop varieties. The hydroponic gardens are lit by LEDs and feature high-tech systems that provide specific growing conditions for even the rarest of greens.
NYC’s Farm One Delivers Rare, Ultra-Fresh Produce In Just 30 Minutes
- February 26, 2018
- by Nicole Jewell
The farm-to-table movement has grown by leaps and bounds over the last few years – and now NYC chefs can pick up sustainable, 100% “nasty-free” produce grown within city limits. Farm One is a Manhattan-based hydroponic farm that grows hundreds of rare herbs, edible flowers, and microgreens, which can be delivered to 90% of NYC restaurants by bike in just 30 minute
In April 2016, Manhattan’s Institute of Culinary Education planted its very first on-site farm with over 150 crop varieties. The hydroponic gardens are lit by LEDs and feature high-tech systems that provide specific growing conditions for even the rarest of greens. The grow room is 100% free from pesticides and herbicides, and it uses around 95% less water than traditional gardens.
The garden organizers have spent years researching and growing rare seeds from all over the world. Farm One is currently one of the city’s largest providers of edible herbs and greens, and it’s a major resource for chefs looking to cook with fresh produce. The system is so efficient that local eateries can have their greens on-site just minutes after being harvested.
In addition to delivering fresh, sustainably-grown produce immediately after harvesting, Farm One offers classes and workshops on hydroponics and indoor farming for budding chefs or home cooks. The Tribeca location also hosts tours where guests can taste dozens of rare plant varieties – most of which cannot be found anywhere else in New York.
Via Uncrate
Images via Farm One
- under Agriculture, Gallery, Manhattan, Urban Farming, Vertical Garden
Packaging Solutions For The Vertical Farmer
Vertical farming is on the rise in big cities around the globe and new growers and distributors are hustling to get into the market. In fact, by 2023, the vertical farming market is expected to reach 6.4 billion U.S. dollars around the world.
Packaging Solutions For The Vertical Farmer
Vertical farming is on the rise in big cities across the globe and new growers and distributors are hustling to get into the market. In fact, by 2023, the vertical farming market is expected to reach 6.4 billion U.S. dollars around the world. One company is poised to back this trend’s growth.
“More produce means more packaging—and that’s where we come in,” says Michael Esposito, Vice President of Orange Packaging, a fully integrated manufacturing facility in Newburgh, New York. With 150,000 square feet of manufacturing space and 10 production lines, the team at Orange Packaging is ready to assist vertical farmers with their packaging needs at a moment’s notice.
I’m so encouraged by the growth of vertical farming across our area,” says Esposito. “The fact that it allows farmers to produce more food using less resources makes it a win in my book. It sounds like a viable, long-term solution and we’d like to help it succeed.”
Orange Packaging’s facility is filled with a diverse array of tools and equipment to meet any packaging need. Their Thermoforming tools have created packaging for every type of grower—from the top produce companies sold at big box retailers to the smaller, local farms you’d find at a local grocery store or farmer’s market.
Orange Packaging also offers a variety of Thermoformed packaging materials like small herb clamshells, bulk lettuce containers, tubs and bins in several different materials like food-grade APET and rPET as well as corn-based PLA.
“Partnering with hard-working business owners is what we do best—and that includes local farmers and growers,” says Esposito. “Let us help you get your product to market. Whether that’s the farmer’s market or the supermarket—we’re here for you!”
Packaging isn’t the company’s only forte. The company also specializes in designing and engineering POP displays and custom molds. The team can even handle fulfillment and has the ability to drop ship anywhere in the world. Their expansive facility allows them to run high-volume orders quickly. They keep stock items on hand that can be purchased immediately, while custom orders can be produced in as little as 3-4 weeks.
For more information or to set up a quote, contact michael@orangepkg.com.
SKYBERRIES Conference Celebrates Two Years of Vertical Farm Institute
International conference SKYBERRIES invites urban farmers, researchers, and pioneers to Vienna, Austria, to discuss the future of agriculture from February 28 to March 2, 2018.
SKYBERRIES Conference Celebrates Two Years of Vertical Farm Institute
International conference SKYBERRIES invites urban farmers, researchers, and pioneers to Vienna, Austria, to discuss the future of agriculture from February 28 to March 2, 2018.
Visitors will be able to network on location with the attendees of the URBAN FUTURE Global Conference, which will be held during the same dates. In total, about 3,000 people are expected to convene and discuss topics surrounding food security, urban agriculture, and vertical farming.
Both conferences take place at the Messe Wien Exhibition & Congress Center, the Vienna trade fair venue, and both conferences are accessible with the SYKBERRIES ticket.
SKYBERRIES presents Dickson Despommier, author of The Vertical Farm; Saskia Sassen, sociologist and author of The Global City; Franz Fischler, President of the European Forum Alpbach; representatives of farms such in Infarms, AeroFarms, Green Sense, or Vertical Harvest; and many more speakers. In addition, the conferences will hold industry speed dating activites, a poster exhibition, and field trips.
One of the highlights of the event is the presentation of Ruthner-Towers. These Tower-Greenhouses, built in Vienna as well as many more sites in the 1960s and 1970s, were the world’s first vertical farms. SKYBERRIES highlights this innovation, presenting learnings as well as an excursion to one of the few Ruthner-Towers left.
SKYBERRIES is offering a special discount to the Food Tank community. Click here to order your standard ticket, and enter the voucher-code FOODTHINKTANK to get your ticket for 25-percent off. All tickets include full access to the URBAN FUTURE global conference.
SKYBERRIES SPEAKER UPDATE
SASKIA SASSEN
Saskia is the Robert S. Lynd Professor of Sociology and member of The Committee on Global Thought, Columbia University. Her latest book is Expulsions: Brutality and Complexity in the Global Economy (Harvard University Press 2014) now out in 18 languages. She is the recipient of diverse awards, including multiple doctor honoris causa, the Principe de Asturias 2013 Prize in the Social Sciences, and made a Foreign Member of the Royal Academy of the Sciences of the Netherlands
DICKSON DESPOMMIER
Dickson is a microbiologist, ecologist, and emeritus professor of Public and Environmental Health at the Columbia University. In 2010, he published his widely received book: “The Vertical Farm: feeding the world in the 21st Century”. Well known for his podcasts, TED Talks and lectures on vertical farming, Dickson also supports the vertical farm institute as Board Member.
INFOGRAPHICS
Have you already seen our infografics? At almost every speaker's profile you can find a graphic on one of the topics to be discussed at SKYBERRIES.
All grafics are creative commons and we invite you to use them, share them, work with them!
NONA YEHIA
Nona is uniquely positioned in the Vertical Farming sphere as she is at once a practicing Architect, the Co-Founder, Owner, Designer and CEO of a cutting edge greenhouse, Vertical Harvest of Jackson Hole. This combination has cultivated expertise in both the design, implementation and operation of innovative systems and programs that position Vertical Harvest to be an impact model for communities around the globe
DANIEL PODMIRSEG
Daniel is founder of the vertical farm institute and Vertical Farming expert, studied architecture. His dissertation “up!” deals with the potential of vertical farms with regard to the reduction of energy and land consumption. “up!” is considered a standard work and Dickson Despommier assesses the work as the most comprehensive research on Vertical Farming in the world so far.
VALENTIN THURN
Valentin is a director and producer of more than 50 television documentaries and reports on social, developmental, environmental and educational issues. His shooting and lecture tours have taken him to over 50 countries on all continents. For his films, he received a number of prizes and awards. “Taste the Waste” was a box office hit in 2011/12, and “10 Billion – What’s on your plate?” was the most successful German cinema documentary in 2015.
ISABEL MOLITOR
Isabel is co-founder and CMO at Farmers Cut, an indoor vertical farming company based in Hamburg with the mission to build a global farm network to deliver locally produced, pesticide-free greens from farm-to-fork. Prior to Farmers Cut Isabel lived in New York working in Marketing for a Swiss skincare company. Isabel holds a B.Sc. in Business Administration from the European Business School and a M.Sc. in International Development from from New York University’s Center for Global Affairs.
FRANZ FISCHLER
Franz Fischler became widely known and much respected both domestically and internationally when he was EU commissioner. Between 1995 and 2004, the future of European agriculture was in his hands. Franz Fischler implemented his vision of modern agriculture in far-reaching reforms of European farming policies, rural development and fisheries. Since December 2015 he is president of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Vienna, since 2012 president of the European Forum Alpbach.
BARBARA IMHOF
Barbara is an internationally active space architect, design researcher and educator. Barbara Imhof is the co-founder and CEO of LIQUIFER Systems Group, an interdisciplinary team comprising engineers, architects, designers and scientists. Her projects deal with spaceflight parameters such as living with limited resources, minimal and transformable spaces, resource-conserving systems; all aspects imperative to sustainability.
DAVID SCHMIDMAYR
David is an expert in LED-lighting with many years of experience in horticulture. Using his in-depth knowledge of photonics and semiconductor technology, he co-founded five years ago SANlight (as a company and research institute), with the purpose of developing and manufacturing LED illumination systems for commercial greenhouses, special applications and household use. SANlight won the “Born Global Champion” award in 2016.
... and many more! You will find all our inspiring speakers on ourWebsite.
We leave you with one last reminder of our SKYBERRIES conference discount: Save € 55,- by purchasing a combined ticket for SKYBERRIES and URBAN FUTURE global conference! Exclusively via our SKYBERRIES ticketshop.
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How To Put The Youth Back In Agriculture
How To Put The Youth Back In Agriculture
26 FEB 2018 | BY: CARI COETZEE
Misconceptions about working in agriculture have long bogged down the number of young people opting for a career in this industry. Africa's young population is often discouraged by the image of punishing work and poor, weather-beaten farmers, so attracting youth to agriculture is no small feat. However, new technologies, methods, and thinking have started to change the minds of many. Howard blight
We chat with Howard Blight, founder of Agricolleges International (ACI) which aims to prove to young people that agriculture can be fun and profitable and is aimed at inspiring youth from all walks of life to pursue agribusiness entrepreneurship.
©julief514 via 123RF
What are some of the major misconceptions entertained by the youth regarding the agriculture industry and how can this be addressed?
One of the major misconceptions we have come across is that the youth believe agriculture is still an old-fashioned industry. In reality, access to technology, information, and better communication, along with vastly improved equipment are enabling farmers and agri-experts around the world to change the way we think and improve how things are done.
Another misconception is that farming has high barriers to entry, particularly when it comes to the capital needed to set up and operate large tracts of farming land. The exciting thing is that, as technology evolves, it is also reducing these barriers. Vertical farming, for example, is enabling young agripreneurs to build sustainable businesses in warehouses in the middle of town. Technology has also brought us drones for crop assessments, smartphones to set irrigation systems and the computers in planters for precision row-crop soil preparation, planting and harvesting.
We need to address these misconceptions through education and building awareness among the youth, as well as through training and skills development in the areas where the industry currently has large gaps. It is important that agricultural schools and colleges, which provide the major pipeline of potential entrants into the agri-economy, to keep their curriculums up to date and are able to teach students about the incredible tools that are now available, the use of technology and the growing connectedness among farmers.
Why is it essential that we engage with and encourage our youth to consider careers in agriculture?
Food security in Africa and the rest of the world is a growing issue. Food demand in Africa is expected to rise by over 70% by 2050 due to population growth, and agricultural land and water are scarce commodities in many parts of the world. The result is that many farmers are growing their businesses vertically and using the latest technological practices. This, in turn, requires more skilled people who are capable of working in this environment.
At the same time, there is a huge need for small and emerging farmers to build sustainable businesses, but to do this they too need to improve the way they work and build their knowledge and skills. What this means for the youth is that at almost every level there is both opportunity to build skills and find exciting, relevant work in agriculture, while also making a difference to the food security concerns that are looming over the next two decades.
To compound on this, the commercial farming sector of our agri-economy must participate in the agri-transformation philosophy of the sharing of knowledge with the emerging farmers. This is Ubuntu. I am because we are. This is part and parcel of the Agricolleges way of thinking.
What are the main barriers for agripreneurs?
As mentioned above, one of the biggest barriers to entry is the capital and knowledge required, to set-up and operate large tracts of farming land. Another barrier has been the cost of the education needed to build agri-skills. E-learning makes education much more accessible and affordable to the youth, emerging farmers and existing farm workers, who want to build on their current knowledge. We are looking for investors to help develop a sustainable bursary system that can support highly motivated and ambitious students from disadvantaged backgrounds, to obtain reputable agricultural qualifications.
Our President, Cyril Ramaphosa, in his SONA, has made it clear that both agriculture and skills development are among the key areas that government will be focusing on in the coming months and years. Our hope is that this will help to support ACI’s drive to bring more people into the industry.
While the youth flee to the cities to escape rural or agriculture-related careers – a fact lamented by many – should we not place equal emphasis on encouraging and enabling urban agriculture startups?
Absolutely, yes! As this migration towards cities takes place, an increasing number of urban gardens and farms have taken root already. This growth in urban agriculture is helping poor people cope with food scarcity and hunger. It also offers many people a viable income as they are able to find markets for their produce as well as feed themselves. So much is being achieved through sheer necessity - imagine what could be achieved with additional support, knowledge and resources?
Roadside traders could be transformed into the farmers of the future as community vegetable gardens, roadsides and rivers converted into city farms, vertical window food gardens, and horizontal pipe or water gardens. Teaching young people to implement urban agriculture through a variety of modern methods and practices would not only improve their yields and income potential but also give them a sense of achievement and the self-confidence that they may be struggling to achieve through meaningful employment elsewhere.
ACI is able to educate people to implement urban agriculture with health and sustainability in mind, and this is a great step towards creating a more sustainable future in all countries throughout the African continent.
Technology and a new way of thinking has seen agriculture and agribusiness change a lot over the past decade, but how friendly is agriculture in SA and Africa to tech-savvy youth?
There can be no doubt that the technology explosion, and access to cellular phones, in particular, has reached even the most remote parts of Africa. Farmers are also steadily changing their methods, through the use of more technology and adding skills and efficiencies to their operations. This all bodes very well for a tech-savvy youth population that wants to be connected and to work in an exciting, modern environment.
It is also true, however, that we still have a long way to go in terms of catching up to the rest of the world in this regard. We need to build skills and knowledge that are appropriate to our situation and conditions, and we need to be able to modernize and change our courses and curriculums when and where necessary so that we stay relevant and up-to-date.
We are in the fascinating position, where we need to grow emerging, small-scale farmers and teach them how to use traditional methods more effectively and sustainably, while also developing a young and vibrant group of agripreneurs who are looking further into the future, where their more advanced skills and understanding of technology will provide them with a wealth of exciting and dynamic careers in this industry.