Watch Interviews With experts. View All The Materials From The Seventh International Forum on Food and Nutrition

Watch Interviews With experts. View All The Materials From The Seventh International Forum on Food and Nutrition

Following the 7th International Forum on Food and Nutrition, the BCFN Foundation has published interviews with the event’s experts. Watch online to learn about their reflections and analyses on the work completed and the challenges ahead to create new spaces for discussion and detailed study.

BCFN would also like to take this opportunity to wish you the best in the New Year and invite you to discover the Foundation’s projects for a 2017 full of initiatives aimed at promoting sustainability for food and the environment.

View all the materials from the seventh International Forum on Food and Nutrition: videos of presentations, in-depth explorations and documentation.

Five Urban Farming Projects In Chicago To Watch In 2017

Five Urban Farming Projects In Chicago To Watch In 2017

Greg TrotterContact ReporterChicago Tribune

Come spring, a new urban farm is expected to take root in Lawndale with a groundbreaking for a $3.5 million year-round facility.

The Farm on Ogden, as it will be called, is a partnership between Lawndale Christian Health Center and Windy City Harvest, Chicago Botanic Garden's urban farming program that grows more than 100,000 pounds of produce a year in addition to training low-income people of color how to farm.

Like a tomato plant bursting from a pothole, Chicago's urban farming scene is a tiny hope-filled industry in a tough city, steadily growing as a source of jobs, economic development and food in some of the poorest neighborhoods on the South and West sides. That growth will continue with an assortment of new projects and expansions in 2017.

The Lawndale neighborhood farm, at 3555 W. Ogden Ave., will provide a needed boost to Windy City Harvest, allowing it to double its training capacity and increase overall production, said Angela Mason, associate vice president of the urban farming program.

"This will be a really warm and welcoming space when we're through," Mason said, standing in the cavernous vacant building that will be transformed into an indoor farm and community center.

There's still another $395,000 left to raise, but the plan is to continue fundraising while building the project, Mason said.

The roughly 30,000-square-foot facility will house a 50,000-gallon aquaponic system, a greenhouse, cold storage area and — facing West Ogden — a "healthy corner store," Mason said. It also will feature a commercial kitchen for making "value-added" products like salsa and for hosting cooking classes.

The health center will own the facility; Windy City will be the tenant. Rent will be paid in the form of produce for the fledgling VeggieRx program, in which health care providers "prescribe" boxes of produce for people with chronic health conditions, Mason said.

Produce grown at Windy City's 13 other sites also will be aggregated at and distributed from The Farm on Ogden. Currently, about half of the program's produce is sold to restaurants through a produce wholesaler — an important source of revenue that helps support services that generate less money. The rest of the produce is sold at a lower price in low-income communities.

Part of the goal, Mason said, is to make the program more self-sufficient by eventually increasing the earned revenue into a 50-50 split with raised revenue. Once the Lawndale facility is operational, Windy City will be able to grow more produce make more money, and rely less on grants.

But equally important to Windy City, the indoor farm will broaden the program's impact. Currently, the initiative trains about 200 people per year — a mix of community college students, at-risk youth and nonviolent criminal offenders in separate programs. After the Lawndale farm is built, that number will more than double.

Rosario Maldonado manages and coordinates sales for Windy City in addition to farming her own quarter-acre plot of land as part of Windy City's incubator program. The Farm on Ogden will help provide more income for her and other farmers in the winter because they'll be able to make products like salsas, jellies and teas in the commercial kitchen, she said.

"We need to become more self-sustainable as a city, so we need to find ways to do more year-round production all around," Maldonado said.

Windy City Harvest isn't the only farm in town. Here are other urban ag projects happening in 2017.

City of Chicago

The city is jumping into the urban farming game, aided by a $1 million federal grant, one of 45 projects awarded a total of $26.6 million this year through the U.S. Department of Agriculture's annual Conservation Innovation Grants.

Through its "Growing for Chicago" initiative, the city plans to promote and coordinate urban farming efforts, provide microgrants and training through partnerships with existing nonprofits, and prepare vacant land in the Englewood neighborhood for farming, said Chris Wheat, chief sustainability officer for Chicago.

The first order of business will hiring the city's first full-time urban agriculture coordinator, who will serve as a liaison of sorts between city departments and the various nonprofits and businesses doing the farming, Wheat said. One of the goals is to streamline the bureaucratic process for those wishing to farm to obtain the necessary permits, he said.

The city is also in the process of acquiring and remediating land near the long-awaited Englewood Line rail trail, and will eventually coordinate with public trusts and nonprofits to place farmers on the land, Wheat said.

"Urban farming in Chicago in 10 years looks to be an important element of economic development and important in terms of how communities come together," Wheat said.

Growing Home

Growing Home, an Englewood-based urban farm and job training nonprofit, has its own expansion plans. Currently, Growing Home grows about 30,000 pounds of produce on about 1 acre.

Within the next five years, the plan is to expand the farming operations onto two nearby parcels of donated land, more than doubling the operation, said Executive Director Harry Rhodes.

Accomplishing that will take more money. Growing Home is conducting a feasibility study, which could lead to a fundraising campaign in the next couple of years, Rhodes said.

Job training is the top priority of Growing Home. This year, 52 people enrolled in Growing Home's 14-week work training program and most of them later secured full-time jobs, Rhodes said. After the planned expansion, Growing Home's goal would be to triple that impact by training between 150 and 200 people a year.

"You hear about the shootings," Rhodes said. "You don't hear enough about the good things happening in Englewood."

Chicago awarded $1M USDA urban farming grant

Urban Canopy

Alex Poltorak is building his own urban farming dream in Englewood.

This year, Urban Canopy grew about 10,000 pounds of produce on about 1.25 acres of farmland established on top of a parking lot in Englewood, as well as microgreens inside a former meatpacking plant in the Back of the Yards neighborhood.

Unlike both Windy City Harvest and Growing Home, Urban Canopy is a for-profit company but measures success in terms of jobs provided and environmental impact — not just its bottom line, said Poltorak, its founder, who declined to discuss specific revenue and profit figures.

In the spring, Urban Canopy received a $12,000 grant from the Frontera Farmer Foundation and used the money to expand the farm, Poltorak said.

The plan for the year ahead is to build the farm out more, hire more people and continue to prove the business model, Poltorak said.

Advocates for Urban Agriculture

Not all farming involves digging in the dirt. Billy Burdett, executive director of Advocates for Urban Agriculture, is trying to cultivate a garden of data that will help Chicago's urban farming movement coalesce.

In a partnership with NeighborSpace and DePaul University, Burdett's organization is building an interactive online map of all the urban farms in the city, the Chicago Urban Agriculture Mapping Project.

Currently, the map shows 66 urban farms in Chicago — a definition that includes nonprofits and commercial enterprises alike — up from 50 when the mapping project launched in March of last year.

But Burdett acknowledged the map needs some updating. At least one farm on the map is no longer in business.

In a few months, Burdett's group will hire some college students to update the data, he said.

In time, the mapping project also will include data such as the number of people employed and the amount of produce grown at each farm, he said. The point is to become a more organized and formalized industry in Chicago, which will help with advocacy efforts.

"We want to make sure this is as up-to-date as possible and we're really excited to expand the information that it covers," he said.

gtrotter@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @GregTrotterTrib

Minneapolis Kids Rap About Urban Agriculture — And We’re Into It

Minneapolis Kids Rap About Urban Agriculture — And We’re Into It

By Dan Nosowitz on December 7, 2016

via Appetite for Change

Remember that "Hot Cheetos & Takis" video featuring those cute Minneapolis kids from back in 2012, which got more than 14 million views on YouTube? From that same studio comes something a bit more grown up.

Appetite For Change, a Minneapolis-based nonprofit dedicated to using food as a means for economic and social growth, recently released a new video with a slightly different message—but some familiar faces.

The nonprofit teamed up with Beats & Rhymes, a program also based in Minneapolis that allows kids to write and produce music in a professional setting, to create a the song and video for “Grow Food.” Using the same familiar touchstones—808 beats, Atlanta-style spooky bass lines, an array Grantland described as “a banger”—Beats & Rhymes has come up with a song that’s somehow both a plea to fight against food deserts and also pretty…good. Here’s the video.

“Grow Food” rails against the proliferation of processed food, unhealthy school lunches, and bad eating habits while promoting gardening, urban farming, and eating your veggies. A sample line: “I get the C from the oranges, I get the B from the broccoli, I get the A from the milk, I get my vitamins properly. My food be packed with them minerals, I hope you taking this literal!”

You can learn more about Appetite For Change over at their website.

Arizona Urban Farming Startup Embraces Aquaponics to Increase Access to Healthy Food

Arizona Urban Farming Startup Embraces Aquaponics to Increase Access to Healthy Food

December 6, 2016 | Vanessa Caceres

Farmers need to be good at a little bit of everything—from growing and marketing to strategic planning. Chaz Shelton of Merchant’s Garden in Tucson, Arizona, approaches farming from a slightly different angle. He earned his MBA at Indiana University-Bloomington and is using that broad business knowledge to manage his hydroponic and aquaponics operation with co-founder Bill Shriver.

Shelton’s interest in farming began more out of an interest in public health. While working with the Philadelphia Department of Public Health in Pennsylvania several years ago, he often saw how poor eating led to adverse health outcomes. He solidified his idea that instead of shipping food from faraway farms into urban environments, he could bring farming into the city.

That led two years ago to the formation of Merchant’s Garden, an urban farming enterprise whose mission, according to the company website, is to “make fresh food accessible and affordable to everyone using the science of aquaponics and hydroponics.” The farm was started with the help of investors and the business accelerator organization Startup Tucson. It launched just as Shelton was finishing up his MBA. Shelton and his co-founders initially had trouble finding land for their urban farm, but they were eventually approached by the local school district, which had space available in a closed down school about 1½ miles from town.

Merchant’s Garden now operates a 10,000-square-foot greenhouse; Shelton thinks of the founders as “agropreneurs,” who are creating technology today to feed people tomorrow.

Utilizing an aquaponics system, Merchant’s Garden grows lettuce, various other leafy greens, basils, and a Mexican mint marigold (it’s an edible flower with pedals that are mint). The farm supplies products to about 20 area restaurants, an area food bank, and to the Tucson school district. Produce is selected and delivered within the same day, to ensure freshness.

Starting Merchant’s Garden in Tucson versus another urban area had several advantages. “We have a robust knowledge capital with the University of Arizona, which is only a mile away from us,” Shelton says. “They are a leading university for controlled environment agriculture and hydroponics and aquaponics.” With the state’s desert climate, the ability to grow produce year-round, as Merchant’s Garden is doing, appeals to many.

The city of Tuscon was also named in 2015 a World City of Gastronomy by United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. “There’s been a lot of attention and buzz around food here,” he says.

To increase margins and plot a path toward profitability Merchant’s Garden has remained a lean start up. The operation grows, harvests, and delivers produce on its own, with only three full-time employees and one part-timer. “We didn’t want to work with distributors because we want open channels of communication, so someone could tell us ‘This lettuce tastes weird’ or ‘This item is hot right now,’” Shelton says. “The person making the delivery is the farmer.”

The lean, direct approach puts Merchant’s Garden on the right track to profitability, notes Shelton. “We should be cash positive within a year,” he says. “That’s pretty fast for the investment made.”

Eventually, the founders of Merchant’s Garden hope to expand their business concept of urban farming to cities around the nation, including through rooftop farming; they are in early talks to start another location in Phoenix. “We want better access to this kind of food than to McDonalds,” Shelton says.

Shelton also would like to have the farm serve as a place where the public and customers can come and see how their food is grown and engage in the harvesting process.

Shelton advises other sustainable farmers to get market data about their area, test new ideas, and learn from successes and failures. And while farming is not usually a cash cow, pun intended, he does recommend one green (as in money) tip: “Don’t be afraid of capital,” he says.

Feed The World? The Farm Without Any Soil

Feed The World? The Farm Without Any Soil

THE CHRONICLE HERALD 
Published December 5, 2016 - 8:59pm
Last Updated December 5, 2016 - 9:09pm

Loblaws backing retail test run for TruLeaf, Truro’s innovative indoor farmer

Bible Hill-based TruLeaf Sustainable Agriculture has started retailing its innovative, indoor-grown greens — partnering with Loblaws-owned grocer Dominion to distribute via that chain’s 11 Newfoundland stores.

Gregg Curwin, TruLeaf’s founder, president and chief executive officer, told The Chronicle Herald that Dominion began selling five TruLeaf products in October under TruLeaf’s GoodLeaf Farms brand.

Curwin said a five-ounce “clamshell” container of baby greens was selling for $4.99, about the same price as the regular Californian-grown premium-priced organic produce that currently comprises 90 per cent of all of Canada’s supply.

Curwin said the deal — to his knowledge the first time Loblaws had sold products made using hydroponics — was a pilot for launching across other markets including, initially, Atlantic Canada and the Greater Toronto Area.

He said Loblaws provided valuable advice relating to TruLeaf’s development.

Leading up to the big deal

The Dominion deal followed an April agreement with Gordon Food Service to sell into Nova Scotian restaurants and food service businesses for the first time, he said.

In October, the Truro and Colchester Chamber of Commerce recognized the 27-employee TruLeaf with an innovation award, while the previous month saw the Delta Management Group present a national Clean50 award to TruLeaf for developing and scaling its “smart plant” system.

Curwin said TruLeaf was on track to tap Greater Toronto Area consumers by opening there in late 2017. That facility would be about three times larger and more productive than the company’s existing 4,000-square-foot operation that produces 150,000-200,000 lbs. of greens annually. (See Chronicle Herald, Oct. 17.)

Going inside, getting vertical

To date, five-year-old TruLeaf has landed $2.5 million in financing, most of it from the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency and Crown capital agency Innovacorp, Curwin confirmed. The company’s private investors included vintner and former grocer Pete Luckett, as well as former Ocean Nutrition CEO Martin Jamieson, he said.

Curwin said TruLeaf’s products can’t be labelled as organic in Canada because they’re grown hydroponically. But he said pesticide-free and sustainably-based TruLeaf is going after the same consumers who bought organic produce.

He said TruLeaf plans to license the technology globally in “a few” years, following “significant” interest during the past two years.

Curwin said growing vertically indoors, rather than horizontally in fields, makes sense in a world marked by food insecurity, overpopulation, overcrowding, and environment-related risks such as climate change. TruLeaf’s model also allows food to be brought closer to consumers, he said.

TruLeaf’s Facebook page says it wants to “enable every community to grow the world’s healthiest food locally and sustainably.”

New Brunswick-raised Curwin studied at Saint Mary’s University before working for two decades in health care. He became intrigued with indoor farming after seeing a picture of a Japanese multi-level farm.

He said TruLeaf has been supported and advised by Dalhousie University’s Truro-based Faculty of Agriculture as well as provincially funded agricultural incubator Perennia and the National Research Council.

The science bit: TruLeaf’s tech

Using its trademarked but unpatented Smart Plant System, TruLeaf quadruples the amount of space available for farming by growing its plants on 10 levels. A fine-tuned LED array provides “sunlight.”

Excess water and humidity in the air is reclaimed to boost efficiencies, allowing the system to grow easily-transportable leafy greens with 90 per cent less water and less effluent and other waste — while yielding approximately 30 times as much food per square foot as a traditional farm, the company says.

Size Isn’t Everything. Here’s a Farm That Fits in Your Kitchen

It's like a microwave that grows food!

Image courtesy of Replantable

You’ve got a microwave, a toaster oven, and a myriad of other kitchen appliances, none of which actually grow food. That could change thanks to a Georgia-based startup Replantable. They've created Nanofarm, an almost completely automated system that grows vegetables and herbs in a unit small enough to fit on your kitchen counter.

The key to Nanofarm, which is  smaller than a mini-fridge, are its patent-pending plant pads, which are made out of multiple layers of fabric and paper. The pads contain the seeds and the same kinds of plant nutrients used in traditional hydroponics—elements like nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium—that are culled from sustainable sources like compost tea and aquaculture waste. The pads sit on top of a water-filled reservoir.

The Nanofarm only has two knobs: a dial to control the grow cycle and a start button. Theoretically making it more straight-forward to grow your own vegetables than defrost leftovers in a microwave.

To start a grow cycle, just turn the dial labeled “weeks” to the number indicated on the plant pad and then push start. The “harvest” light turns on when your plants are grown. You then have about two weeks to pick your veggies or herbs. The used pads are biodegradable and can be composted. The company offers a variety of vegetables, like romaine lettuce, radishes and kale; and herbs like basil, thyme, and cilantro.

One Nanofarm can produce around 12 ounces of romaine lettuce or four ounces of basil (about five and a half packs of what you would find at the grocery store). The growing space is comparable to a good-sized windowsill planter, but the produce only takes between two to four weeks to grow thanks to the daylight spectrum LED lights that provide as much light as a California summer day, but consume less than a dollar of electricity per month, according to the company. The smoked glass front of the Nanofarm keeps the light from being annoyingly bright on the outside of the device.

The estimated retail price of the Nanofarm is $400, but you can pre-order one on the company’s website for $350. The plant pads are $8 each or $5 if you buy five or more at a time.

But it may be a while before you can get one for your own kitchen. While the company has created beta versions of the Nanofarm, the product won’t be available to consumers until late next year. Ruwan Subasinghe, the company’s co-founder, tells Modern Farmer they are currently getting samples of the parts that go into the Nanofarm and once approved, they can move into prototyping units for mass production, then onto actual production.

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The company just finished a Kickstarter campaign that raised about $61,000, $11,000 more than their goal. Subasinghe says they were “quite surprised” by the support they received—and not just financially. He says they got a ton of messages from people who enthusiastically believe in what they were doing. The Kickstarter contributors get the first mass-produced models that are tentatively set to be shipped next October. It will be a few more months after that when the general public will be able to get one.

Subasinghe and his business partner, Alex Weiss, met when they were attending Georgia Tech, in Atlanta, where they were working on projects involving hydroponics and issues of food waste. They realized that the produce you get at grocery stores tends to have travelled  thousands of miles to reach the store’s shelves, which leaves only a small window of time before the produce goes bad, leading to food waste. They joined forces with the idea of combatting food waste and last year started Replantables following their involvement in a startup accelerator through the school. “We saw the potential for hydroponics to allow people to grow their own food at home,” says Subasinghe.

The initial prototype was just a souped up hydroponics system made out of PVC pipes with running water, filters and pumps that needed to be cleaned by the user, according to Subasinghe. They quickly realized that consumers wanted something simpler and easier to use. By the time they were done with the beta version, it was almost completely automatic and no longer resembled a typical hydroponic system since they’d ditched the pump, liquid nutrients, and inert growing medium.

“We hope that by providing technology that allows people to easily grow their own food while using fewer resources, we’re allowing the future of food to be more earth-conscious.” says Subasinghe.

This Farm Uses Only Sun and Seawater To Grow Food

In the arid desert of coastal South Australia, a new indoor farm is using the two most available resources, that also happen to be free—sun and seawater—to grow tomatoes. Lots and lots of tomatoes.

Sundrop Farms, located near Port Augusta in South Australia, is the first commercial agricultural system of its kind: It doesn’t use groundwater, soil, pesticides, or fossil fuels to grow crops. The project has been a six-year odyssey that began with a pilot greenhouse in 2010, followed by the construction of  a nearly 50-acre facility in 2014 that, as of earlier this month, is now fully up and running with a projected capacity of 18,000 tons of tomatoes —the crop the company is focused on at this facility—a year, according to Sundrop.

Here’s how the company explains it: Seawater is pumped from Spencer Gulf, located about a mile and a half away from the facility, where it’s desalinated through a solar powered thermal unit. “Sustainably sourced” fertilizers and micronutrients are added to the water (they won’t give details regarding their nutrient mix), which is then used to hydrate the tomato plants, which are grown in coconut husks instead of soil (a renewable resource), which also aids in root growth due to their natural hormones. According to Philipp Saumweber, Sundrop Farms CEO, the they don’t have to use pesticides the they pump seawater through the facility’s air filters, which kills insect pests due to the high salt content in the water-saturated air.

The farm’s solar power is generated by 23,000 mirrors that reflect sunlight to a more than 375-foot high receiver tower. On a sunny day, it can produce up to 39 megawatts of electricity, which is more than enough to power the desalination system and the rest of the facility’s power needs. Excess thermal heat and water are kept in storage facilities on the farm to use when needed, according to Saumweber. That said, the facility remains on the electrical grid as a back up for 10 to 15 percent of its power needs when weather makes it difficult to rely solely on solar power.

The company spent about $200 million on the project, with $100 million coming from the global investment firm KKR, a larger outlay than a typical hydroponic greenhouse system, which can run about $1 million an acre. But, according to Saumweber, who spoke to New Scientist, the seawater system will pay off in the long run since conventional greenhouses are more expensive to run on an annual basis since the rely on the power grid, which is powered by fossil fuels.

The price tag isn’t stopping the company from building another farm in Australia, one in Portugal, which was recently completed, and one in Tennessee, which broke ground this year. While not all of them may use seawater or a solar tower, they will all have some “sustainable resource angle,” according to an Australian Broadcasting Corporation interview with Reinier Wolterbeek, the chief technology officer for Sundrop Farms. When Modern Farmer asked Saumweber whether he could be more specific, he answered that he couldn’t “at this stage,” and added “that we will always use sustainable inputs to dramatically reduce our reliance on finite natural resources.”

The company partnered with a large Australian grocery retailer, Coles, with whom they have a ten-year contract. Tomatoes from their pilot program, which started before the larger facility came online, are already on grocery store shelves.

Not everyone feels the system makes economic or environmental sense, at least in regard to the project in Australia. Paul Kristiansen, a professor at the University of New England, Australia, told New Scientist, that since there wasn’t a problem growing tomatoes in other parts of Australia, the need to grow tomatoes in a desert was a “bit like crushing a garlic clove with a sledgehammer.”

Environmentalists have taken issue with desalination due to the amount of energy it takes to produce potable water, and the problem of the disposal of the highly concentrated salt brine that’s dumped back into the ocean, which can be too salty for marine life to inhabit. 

Sundrop Farms’ technology answers the energy question with its use of solar power. As to concerns about impacts on marine life, Saumweber says their system doesn’t result in water with high levels of salinity. According to Saumweber, cooled seawater from the greenhouse cooling system is mixed with warm elevated salinity seawater in a large lined storage tank for discharge back to the ocean.

“The large size and surface area of the storage and the mixing of warm and cool streams results in a seawater that is only slightly more concentrated and at a similar temperature to the ocean,” he tells Modern Farmer in an email. “The minor increases in salinity at the discharge location as approved by the Environmental Protection Authority.”

In the face of the high loss of groundwater worldwide and other problems associated with climate change, Sundrop Farms’ technology may prove to be helpful in combating these issues as we try to figure out how to provide enough food to feed the world’s growing population, estimated to be 9.6 billion people by the year 2050.

 https://vimeo.com/183859356

Ex-Banker Jack Griffin Wants To Turn Philadelphia Into The Vertical Farming Capital of The World

BY QUINN O'CALLAGHAN

OCT. 26, 2016

If you’re a wide-eyed urbanist, you may have seen the online mockups of towering Jetson-esque pod-farms drafted up as a template for vertical farming, possessing as much space as skyscrapers, with mighty oaks exploding toward the sun 500 feet from the ground. A darling notion, but that ain’t what’s happening, at least not yet: Metropolis Farms, Philly’s only vertical farming outfit, sits in a low, unassuming building in South Philly, not far from Tony Luke’s or IKEA.

But it could be the seed of something huge.

“We’re looking to completely change the system,” says Jack Griffin. Griffin is the president of Metropolis Farms. As it stands, Metropolis is one of only a handful of vertical farms in the U.S., and the first certified-vegan vertical farming outfit in the country.

Griffin, a former merchant banker originally from Philadelphia, says that he has been obsessed with the concept of vertical farming for years, ever since turning down a vertical farming outfit for a loan several years ago. He opened Metropolis Farms after two years of planning, research and development last February. Although his outfit currently employs fewer than 10 people, he plans to grow his staff to around 100 by the end of 2017 with coming business expansions. Griffin says that he’s already turning a profit in his vertical farming business, but that’s nearly beside the point: The man has big plans for the future of the exploding industry.

Griffin sees Philadelphia not only as the home base for Metropolis Farms, but as its international hub: R&D will be conducted in Philadelphia; people will come from around the world to train as vertical farmers here; nearly the entirety of the manufacturing will be done in Philadelphia.

Farmers around the world are utilizing new techniques to grow larger crops in more challenging environments than in the past. Israeli farmers have pioneered growing crops from the desert; California farmers are looking to the ancients for ways to solve their water woes; community farming in U.S. cities has exploded in recent years. With good reason: Our population is growing at a massive clip, with an estimated 10 billion people due to be on the planet by 2050. Keeping all of us fed is going to be one of our biggest challenges—especially when arable land is being gobbled up by drought and desertification, and climate change is having an increasingly brutal effect on U.S. crops. And cities, which people are gravitating toward at a nearly unprecedented rate, lack virtually any agricultural infrastructure.

In response, Metropolis is attempting to pioneer modular vertical farming apparati, to be manufactured in Philadelphia. Griffin says that one of his modular vertical farming towers would cost somewhere between $16,000 and $17,000, and that a full array of 30 would cost around $500,000. Compare that to, say, the Aerofarms indoor farming project in Newark, N.J., the premier vertical farming installation on the east coast, which cost $30 million to build.

Griffin says that he’s “sitting on at least $10 million” in potential contracts for his vertical farming system, and that he’s drawn interest from investors as far away as Moscow.

That’s because vertical farming, if done right, is a no-brainer of a civic investment. The process requires considerably less energy than traditional farming. There is no heavy equipment involved; no backhoe or tractor fleet is needed. The most dramatic up-front cost is the lighting and rigging.

Vertical farms are indoors, which means farmers can create perfect growing conditions, letting them grow crops all year, and harvest at a faster rate than traditional farms. A properly sterile environment is also immune to bugs and diseases that plague traditional crops, so there’s no need for pesticides and germicides.

What’s more: Locally sourcing your food means significantly lower transportation costs. Transportation costs are a main driver behind the high price of produce, and the length of the transportation process can severely diminish a product’s shelf life. If the number of high-volume vertical farms increased dramatically in cities, it would obviate the need to cart produce in from far and wide; hypothetically, you could U-Haul the crop from South Philly to the Trader Joe’s in Center City (or Whole Foods, which Metropolis Farms currently supplies).

“Instead of being a customer, we have to become our own supplier,” says Griffin of Philadelphia. “That way, we can keep our money moving within our own city.”

Investors are clamoring to get in on all that vertical action, with the market for vertical farming expected to expand to roughly $3.9 billion by 2020. That’s a lot of green for a lot of green.

So vertical farming may yet save the world and make a bonzer profit. But what can it do for Philly, the poorest big city in the country? The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates that 11 percent of households in Philadelphia are food insecure; according to the Hunger Coalition, one in four people in Philadelphia is at risk for hunger. “The problem is food access,” says Griffin.

Griffin says that one of his modular vertical farming towers would cost somewhere between $16,000 and $17,000, and that a full array of 30 would cost around $500,000. Compare that to, say, the Aerofarms indoor farming project in Newark, N.J., the premier vertical farming installation on the east coast, which cost $30 million to build.

Metropolis Farms has a plan to battle malnutrition and hunger in a novel way, even before vertical farming becomes commonplace. Griffin has set up a nonprofit, called Grandma’s—a name that he got from a friend—and says he is in the process of negotiating with SEPTA to donate two busses. The buses are going to be converted into “mobile markets” for vegan meals, and deployed into low-income areas—including his old neighborhood in North Philly. “We’re going to develop low-cost, highly-nutritious—but they also have to be really tasty—meals. No one wants to survive on McDonald’s hamburgers, but when that’s all that’s around, that’s all you buy,” he says.

Grandma’s will accept SNAP benefits, and Griffin’s goal is for the meals to cost less than your average fast food meal. He says that he’s already talking with “top chefs” in Philly about the project. But that’s only the short-term play to share the profits of the vertical farming revolution with Philly.

Metropolis Farms wants to keep vertical farming development in Philly. Griffin sees Philadelphia not only as the home base for Metropolis Farms, but as its international hub: If Griffin gets his wish, R&D will be conducted in Philadelphia, assisted by the biggest brains from Penn, Villanova, and Drexel; people will come from around the world to train as vertical farmers in Philadelphia; nearly the entirety of the manufacturing of Metropolis Farms’ modular vertical farming product will be done in Philadelphia.

Ultimately, Griffin hopes, Philadelphia will be able to maintain a self-sustaining, local agricultural system and be able to supply low-income citizens with high-quality, low price fruits and vegetables as a result.

That’s still a ways off. For now, Griffin says the focus is on making vertical farming profitable and available to investors, as well as improving the product.

“We’re making it so that maybe, in the future, some kid will be able to develop those skyscrapers with oak trees shooting out of them,” he says.

Eco-Friendly Shopping: Target to Build Indoor Vertical Farms Inside Its Stores

The demand for locally grown produce is increasing, and Target is just about to give consumers what they want.

Target, one of the biggest retailers in the country, is planning to install vertical farms that would grow fresh vegetables inside its stores. The company will start a series of trials in the spring of 2017, and if successful, Target's stores will start using these vertical gardens.

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

Read: This New Home Appliance Could Grow Local Food in Your Own Kitchen

The plan is part of the Food + Future CoLab initiative, which is a collaboration with design company Ideo and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Media Lab launched in January of this year. One of CoLab's research focuses is vertical farming, and according to the company, the technology for the vertical farms will be tested in some Target stores to observe how customers will respond to it.

During the trials next year, customers could either harvest their own produce from the store's vertical farms or watch a staff member pick the vegetables to stock on the shelves.

Vertical farming is an agricultural technique that involves growing plants indoors under climatized conditions. This type of farming method is expected to grow because of the demand from urban populations, Forbes reports. Aside from using less amount of water, the vertical farms take up less space and are more accessible to consumers. The method also avoids the use of pesticides and is less affected by weather risks.

Read: This Greenhouse Could Grow Food in the Desert With Just Seawater, Sunlight

While vertical farming is commonly used to grow leafy greens, CoLab researchers are finding a way to use it to grow other crops as well. The stores' vertical farms will be filled with green leafy vegetables, but researchers are also working to stock potatoes, beetroot, and zucchini as well.

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

In-Store Vertical Farms Coming to One of Nation's Largest Retailers

From Philadelphia's skyscrapers to the Windy City, vertical farms are sprouting in some of the most unlikely spaces. Soon, you might be able to pluck fresh, vertically grown greens right from your local Target.

According to Business Insider, the big box store is kicking off its vertical farming pilot project in a handful of U.S. stores in spring 2017. If the trials are successful, Target stores across the U.S. will likely start selling vertically-grown leafy greens with the possibility of in-house grown potatoes, beetroot, zucchini, peppers and even rare tomatoes down the line.

The ambitious project is part Target's Food + Future CoLab, a collaboration with MIT's Media Lab and international design firm IDEO, to explore urban farming, food transparency, supply chain issues and health.

"People like to say things like, 'the best strawberries come from Mexico.' But really, the best strawberries come from the climate in Mexico that creates expressions like sweetness and color that we like," said Caleb Harper, director of the Open Agriculture initiative at MIT's Media Lab. "We think there is tremendous opportunity to democratize climate through control-environment agriculture and we look forward to kicking off this work with Target."

In the video below, Harper gives a tour of his "Food Computer" that creates the perfect climate to grow food.

EcoWatch has mentioned previously how vertical farms are an ideal food security solution, especially with Earth's rapidly changing climate and growing population. Produce is usually grown indoors with less water and without pesticides. In some of these indoor farms, produce is grown under LED lights that can mimic outdoor growing conditions and help accelerate plant growth. For swelling cities, vertical gardens help meet the demand for healthy food all year round, and usually with less food-miles to get from farm to plate.

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

As Forbes reported, many industry insiders are exited about Target's new vertical farming initiative.

“Vertical farming is genius," Jasmine Glasheen, publishing editor of Off-Price Retailing Magazine commented on a RetailWire BrainTrust article. “Vertical farms are more resistant to climate changes and storms. Plus, the holistic aesthetic of an organic vertical farm will allow Target to compete for natural foods customers."

“I like the idea," added Paula Rosenblum, managing partner at RSR Research. “Even better, if they structurally could support it, would be growing this stuff on the roofs of the stores."

However, others have commented that this project might be too difficult and expensive to pull off.

"This is not a new idea," said Mel Kleiman, president of Humetrics. "Fiesta Supermarket built a store in Houston more than 30 years ago with a vertical garden. It looked great, got a lot of attention and cost a lot of money. Five years after they opened that store, the garden was gone."

"Good for marketing and PR, but the scalability, execution and ultimately the ROI (return on investment) may prove to be a significant challenge," Peter Sobotta, founder and CEO of Return Logic, wrote. "That said, I like the concept and it is a step in a good direction."

Target to Add Vertical Farming to Some Locations

MINNEAPOLIS, MN – Target is about to shake up the retail realm with its latest plan to put a focus on fresh produce and tap on in consumer penchant for fruits and vegetables. Target will be installing vertical farms in some of its locations.

“Food is a big part of our current portfolio today at Target—it does $20 billion of business for us,” continued Casey Carl, Target’s Chief Strategy and Innovation Officer to Business Insider. “We need to be able to see more effectively around corners in terms of where is the overall food and agriculture industries going domestically and globally.” 

Target’s new focus on fresh will reportedly help the retailer gauge just how consumers want their produce, and how engaged they want to be with their food. Target’s Food + Future CoLab allows the company to do just that; shape the future of food, and deliver on the needs of consumers.

The Food + Future CoLab team announced at the White House that food grown from its in-store garden would be on sale starting in the spring, according to Business Insider. The initial in-store trials could also potentially see consumers picking their own produce from the Target farms. 

“Down the road, it’s something where potentially part of our food supply that we have on our shelves is stuff that we’ve grown ourselves,” continued Carl. 

The Food + Future CoLab was launched by the retailer in January in collaboration with Idea and the MIT Media Lab. This new research partnership is also allowing Target to pursue even further innovations, like taking vertical farming to new metaphorical heights. 

“Because it's MIT, they have access to some of these seed banks around the world,” Greg Shewmaker, Entrepeneur-In-Residence, Food + Future CoLab, stated. “So we're playing with ancient varietals of different things, like tomatoes that haven’t been grown in over a century, different kinds of peppers, things like that, just to see if it's possible.”

The Target farms will use artificial lights and hydroponics to grow its produce. Daily Meal elaborated that while Target’s vertical farms will initially focus on leafy greens, the retailer is exploring growing potatos, beetroot, and zucchini for its next varieties.

As Target and its Food + Future CoLab move towards this new retail strategy, AndNowUKnow will continue to update you in the latest developments and its impact on the buy-side sector.

The Future of Vertical Farming In 5 Inspiring Examples

October 12, 2016

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

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

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

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

Photo Credit: Urban Crops

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

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

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

#2 Plantagon Agritechture and Sweco Architects

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

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

The company hopes to make headway in the Asian market:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Photo Credit: AeroFarms

Photo Credit: AeroFarms

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

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

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

#5 Sky Greens, Singapore

Photo Credit: Sky Greens

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

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

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

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

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

DANA VARINSKY0OCT 5, 2016, 09.30 PM

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ag Company Grown in Portage Has Global Aspirations

Ag Company Grown in Portage Has Global Aspiration

By Dan McGowan, Writer/Reporter

PORTAGE -

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

High Times: Vertical Farming Is On the Rise — But Can It Save the Planet?

Farming as we know it is failing. Mom-and-pop operations are struggling to survive and Big Ag cares far more about its bottom line than about your health, or the health of the planet. Ecologists, anti-GMO activists, even sticker-shocked soccer moms in the produce aisle agree: It’s time for a revolution. Now, some experts are saying, this revolution may come via vertical farming, in which produce is grown indoors, in stacked layers. After years of technological trial and error, the practice is primed for blastoff.

The basic idea is not new. For centuries, indigenous people in South America pioneered layered farming techniques, and the term “vertical farming” was coined by geologist Gilbert Ellis Bailey in 1915. But the need for its large-scale implementation has never been greater. Under our current system, U.S. retail food prices are rising faster than inflation rates, and the number of “food insecure” people in the country — those without reliable access to affordable, nutritious options — is greater than it was before the era of agricultural industrialization began in the 1960s. And we’re only looking at more mouths to feed; according to the UN, the world’s population will skyrocket to 9.7 billion by 2050, an increase of more than 2.5 billion people.

Additionally, climate change is threatening the sustainability of our current food production system. Rising temperatures will reduce crop yields, while creating ideal conditions for weeds, pests and fungi to thrive. More frequent floods and droughts are expected, and decreases in the water supply will result in estimated losses of $1,700 an acre in California alone. Because the agricultural industry is responsible for one-third of climate-changing carbon emissions, at least until Tesla reimagines the tractor, we’re trapped in a vicious cycle. 

So how do we break out?

“We have to extinct outdoor farming,” Dickson Despommier, PhD, emeritus professor of microbiology and public health at Columbia University and author of “The Vertical Farm: Feeding the World in the 21st Century,” told Salon. “We have to put the earth back to the way it was when trees were the most abundant crop. If we paid farmers to plant carbon-sucking trees instead of corn — what’s called carbon farming — the earth’s atmospheric makeup could be completely different in 20 years’ time. But this means looking elsewhere for a food source.”

In vertical farming, that food source starts with a building – any building – usually comprising more than one floor. On every level are flat racks of plants taking root not in soil, which is unnecessary for growth, but instead in a solid, sustainable, and pesticide-free substrate, like mashed-up coconut husk. In these hydroponic systems, plants are fed a nutrient solution from one of a variety of devices, including a misting nozzle, a slow-feed drip, and a wicking tool (like the volcanic glass called perlite) that carries nutrients from an in-house reservoir directly to the roots.

CA Farmers Use Advanced Drone Tech to Save Water http://videos.tout.com/dry/mp4/7ef39d7e62d9b298.mp4

The buildings are equipped with artificial lighting in place of sun, and they’re temperature and humidity controlled. Unlike in the great outdoors — where wind, precipitation, and season are out of a farmer’s hands — growing conditions are controlled and plants are able to reach maturity twice as fast. Often, the spaces are hermetically sealed to prevent common plant diseases, like wheat rust, from blowing through. And the final product? It tastes the same as crops grown outside, even better if those outside crops came from degraded soil. While leafy greens have traditionally been the most cost-effective crop to grow indoors, improved technology is also allowing for a broader range of options (think tomatoes, berries and ramps).

Vertical farming operations are sprouting in the U.S. and around the globe. Earlier this year, the $39 million AeroFarms, comprising 12 layers spread over 3.5 acres, opened in an old steel mill in Newark, New Jersey. Production yields the equivalent of 13,000 acres of farmland in the region. It also utilizes 95 percent less water than traditional vegetable farms since the H2O is recirculated.

In Philadelphia, Metropolis Farms, which already operates the world’s first vegan-certified vertical farm in North America, is planning a network of 10 vertical projects throughout the city, including the world’s first solar-powered vertical farm. Because the technology has advanced so much in recent months, according to president Jack Griffin, this network will cost 5 percent of what AeroFarms did, require 80 percent less real estate, and allow for a greater yield. Similar projects are seeing success in Japan and Berlin —and in Sweden, a plantagon, or plantscraper, 16 stories tall is in the works.

The goal, in addition to creating green-collar jobs, is to bring nutritious produce to urban areas where high-quality, fresh food is hard to come by. With 70 percent of the world’s population expected to reside in cities by 2050, utilizing agritecture to eliminate these food deserts is an increasingly attractive option. In the U.S., $32 million in venture capital was invested in indoor agriculture in 2014, and proponents say the industry has a revenue potential of $9 billion.

But not everyone is convinced the idea won’t go to seed. Early this year, in an article for Alternet, environmental writer Stan Cox argued against growing food in high-rises because of the method’s large energy requirement — specifically, the need for LED lighting in lieu of sunshine. Louis Albright, PhD, emeritus professor of biological and environmental engineering at Cornell University, called vertical farming “pie in the sky” for the same reason.

“The sun is equivalent to $400,000 worth of electricity per acre when growing outdoors,” Albright told Salon. “What vertical farming can save in transportation costs is quite small comparatively. It’s not viable.”

But proponents of vertical farming say such rebukes are based on outdated information — the efficiency of LED lighting has increased dramatically, by 50 percent between 2012 and 2014. Progress is expected to continue — the U.S. Department of Energy has recently adopted new LED efficiency standards, set to be finalized by January 2017. Meanwhile, vertical farms are hiring engineers and ergonomists to reduce the footprint even further.

“We designed our own LED lights to dial into wavelength spectrums,” Allison Towle, director of community engagement at the Los Angeles vertical farm Local Roots, told Salon. “We control them to emit only red or only blue or only white light, whichever helps a specific plant grow, which reduces energy output. Our R&D phase was two years long, because we developed these specific recipes, meaning for each plant we determined the right kind of lighting, the right nutrient makeup in the water, and the right amounts of each. This has brought outdoor growth times down by 40 percent.”

Robert Colangelo of the Indiana-based Green Sense Farms, which has 10 new projects in the deal pipeline, says improvements in LED efficiency are largely responsible for his current expansion, which involves building a network of vertical farms throughout the U.S., Canada, Scandinavia and China. The plan is to launch at points of consumption — grocery stores, hospitals, colleges and military bases — for direct-to-consumer sales. The food will be fresh, and the distribution-related carbon emissions, nonexistent.

“Comparing the energy requirement of growing outdoors versus growing inside is like comparing apples and oranges,” Colangelo told Salon. “We use LED lighting and they use sunlight. But they need tractors and other mechanical equipment, more water, fertilizer. It’s two different growing processes. Instead of comparing them, look at the crops and evaluate the most sustainable way to grow each one. Commodity crops, like soybeans, will likely always be grown outdoors. Leafy greens are better inside. What vertical farming has done is stratified the industry.”

In the future, some vertical farmers, like Colangelo, are looking to incorporate biopharmaceuticals into their growing rosters. And NASA, which counts itself as a vertical farming pioneer, may end up using the method for growing food on other planets, in a more sophisticated version of the techniques used in “The Martian.” But for now, the industry is still in its infancy.

“It’s like the beginning of the Internet, or even the Internet 10 years ago,” Despommier told Salon. “Look how far that’s come. There are people who looked at the airplane and thought: ‘That will never fly.’ But people are going to continue innovating. In 10 years’ time, we’ll all be getting our food this way.”

Garden going up: Work begins to turn old MFA mill into high-tech indoor farm

SPRINGFIELD, Mo. For decades, the landmark MFA logo towered over downtown. The colorful sign on the tall white grain elevator served as a nod to our farming heritage. Now, after 65 years, it is gone. In its place is a sign announcing something new to come. 

This week, workers rolled out a new banner highlighting the building's new tenant, Vertical Innovations, LLC.

"It was about a six hour project," stated David Geisler, Manager and General Counsel of Vertical Innovations. "That is a lot of work to fasten a banner 200 feet in the air," he laughed.

Vertical Innovations is turning the long-vacant Missouri Farmers Association grain silo complex into a massive indoor vegetable farm. The structure, which has been vacant for years, is owned by Missouri State University, and is being leased to Vertical Innovations for the project.

Geisler explained, "If it works, we are going to be able to supply a large amount of food for the people of Springfield that we know is safe, it is traceable. They are going to be able to say, this is hours old. It is going to be fresh."

There's obviously no sunlight in the tall tubes. So, artificial light and other technologies will help the garden grow. Several new employees will be brought on board to tend the crops and facility.

"Essentially, we are going to be a true vertical farm. We will be a farm using some new ideas we have that nobody else has done before," Geisler said. 

As you can imagine, there are not a lot of companies left that build grain elevators. So, for this project, the developer had to hire the modern incarnation of the company that built this place back in 1955. Borton Contractors & Engineers, based in South Hutchinson, KS, is now busy retrofitting the structure for its new purpose.

Geisler said, "I think that is part of the beauty of the project is it allows us to take these icons of our agricultural heritage and reuse them in the 21st century environment. It is refreshing." 

Developers and supporters have high hopes for the future of farming in urban environments. Though a grand opening is still months away, Geisler believes this project could be the first of many. 

"I think we will provide a model, a blueprint if you will, for how we can use abandoned grain elevators in other cities. But, Springfield will always be first."

As for the old MFA signs, Geisler says the one removed from the north side of the headhouse has been saved for preservation. The emblem facing south, which remains in place, will likely also be taken down and preserved.

By Michael Landis

Hydroponic Grower Creates Digital Greenhouse Tour

A Los Angeles-based builder of hydroponic vertical farms has unveiled a digital tour of one of its greenhouses.

Local Roots Farms converts 40-foot shipping containers into hydroponic farms. The company began commercial production of lettuce in September 2015.

Each container produces the equivalent of four acres of outdoor production, according to the company.

In the digital tour, available on Local Roots’ website, users can navigate through one of the containers in which lettuce is being grown.

Local Roots crops are sold 100 miles or less from they’re produced. They use 97% less water than conventionally grown crops, according to the company.

Local Roots lettuce is currently being sold at Mendocino Farms and Tender Greens restaurants in Southern California and at severalarea farmers markets.

In July, the company exhibited for the first time at the Produce Marketing Association’s Foodservice conference and expo in Monterey, Calif. 

Green Sense Farm Crowdfunding Offer Quickly Hits Goal on StartEngine

Green Sense Farm, raising capital under Reg CF on StartEngine, quickly hit its goal within the first 24 hours of listing.

Green Sense Farms is a “vertical farm”. The company has established a vision of building a network of indoor vertical farms, and locate them at perishable food distribution centers owned by large grocery stores. The company also intends on creating locations at institutional campuses or wherever large volumes of food are served. If you think about it, a vertical farm makes sense. Grow the food close to where it is going to be consumed and you save on transportation (no lettuce from 3000 miles away), minimize associated pollution and harvest only when ripe. Green Sense says it is the market leader in the emerging indoor vertical farming market. The company first launched in Portage, Indiana in a 20,000 square foot facility.  They now have ten development farms in their pipeline in the US, China, Canada and Scandinavia. They formed a Hong Kong company to help build out China operations.  The first farm opened in China last month.

The concept is easy the practice is hard.

Green Sense Farm says it can harvest year round using the fraction of resources necessary in a traditional farm. No pesticides, herbicides, GMO seeds necessary.

Watch the video below published last year about the company.

Have a crowdfunding offering you'd like to share? Submit an offering for consideration using our Submit a Tip form and we may share it on our site!

By JD Alois

Take A 3D Tour Of A Vertical Farm Packed Inside A Shipping Container

https://my.matterport.com/show/?m=shYx98RVXWS

In a huge warehouse just outside downtown Los Angeles, a startup turns recycled shipping containers into vertical farms. A new digital tour shows what the farms, which are each equivalent in size to a four-acre outdoor field, look like inside.

Inside one 40-foot container, trays of butter lettuce glow brightly under LED lights. Another container grows baby greens. The startup, Local Roots Farms, began as a producer, selling produce to local restaurants like Tender Greens. But when others saw how the company's custom-designed systems outperformed other shipping container farms—growing as much as five times more produce—they started getting requests to build farms as well. The empty space in the warehouse serves as a staging ground to retrofit other containers before they are shipped around the country.

"Our years of plant research helped us figure out how to grow the most per square foot while still giving plants the room they need to thrive," says Allison Towle, director of community engagement at Local Roots Farms. "In terms of sheer numbers we simply are able to grow more plants per box."

The company designed LED lights that customize red, blue, and white wavelengths at different levels depending on the type of plant and its stage of growth. "For example, arugula prefers more red light, whereas butterhead lettuce prefers more blue," says Towle. "By dialing into those colors individually we give each crop exactly what it wants. As a result, they grow more quickly and more robustly."

The 3D tour shows the details of the tiny farms, from the irrigation system to lettuce at various stages of growth. Local Roots Farms worked with Matterport, an immersive media company that 3D scans spaces and creates virtual models, to create the tour.

Have something to say about this article? You can email us and let us know. If it's interesting and thoughtful, we may publish your response.

Farms Grow Up: Why Vertical Farming May Be Our Future

The towering structures that fill urban skylines across the world could soon be filled with people and farm equipment. This is the dream of vertical farming.

Vertical farms can take a wide range of forms. The connecting feature of these innovative agriculture centers is their ability to grow food without using a lot of land. They accomplish this generally by growing food in stackable trays or on various growing levels within a vertical structure. While these growing centers can be built almost anywhere, many enthusiasts imagine them sprouting up in urban centers as either self-contained structures or even integrated into office and residential buildings.

Advanced vertical farm designs combine greenhouse agriculture, renewable energy, and hydroponics to provide cities locally based agriculture centers.

Elements of this futuristic vision are already a reality in the United States, the Middle East, Asia and Europe.

The birth of modern vertical farms

Ecologist and Columbia University Professor Dickson Despommier is most often credited with creating the modern vertical farm movement. After working on the concept for years, Despommier’s ideas entered the mainstream when he published The Vertical Farm Feeding the World in the 21st Century in 2011. This book helped fuel interest and development in vertical farms, but, as he explains in the video below, practical vertical farms are going to look more like complex greenhouses than the fantastical designs put forward by young innovators.

The argument for vertical farming

“The human population is expected to rise to at least 8.6 billion, requiring an additional 109 hectares to feed them using current technologies, or roughly the size of Brazil, Despommier said in an essay on vertical farming. “That quantity of additional arable land is simply not available.”

Despommier believes building up is the only solution.

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Other advocates of vertical farming cite a broader set of benefits, ranging from year-round production, to reduced pesticide use, to less pollution from shorter distribution lines when growing centers are located within the populations they feed.

It’s important to note that there are skeptics who refute Despommier’s claims that the planet is running out of usable farmland as well as the sustainability of vertical farms. Despite these objections, a global industry has developed around vertical farming.

How it works

Vertical farming must get creative to duplicate traditional agriculture in non-traditional spaces.

Companies use a wide range of solutions from rotating crops to face the sun (like the Sky Greens approach mentioned below), to reflecting sunlight onto each level of the farm, to special LED lighting systems that replace sunlight.

Vertical farming can actually create more food than traditional farming by growing food hydroponically.  This method uses substantially less water and, because it’s enclosed, is less vulnerable to bugs and disease. And soil alternatives like pumicemake the growing environment much more flexible and efficient, as well as less ecologically damaging to set up.

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Does it work?

Vertical farms are already in use in a wide variety of places like the US, Oman, and Singapore. Current examples are more in the “advanced greenhouse” variety that Despommier referenced in his video, but there are a few companies putting more futuristic designs into practice.

Here’s a look at a few of the vertical farms already changing agriculture.

Podponics, (USA, Dubai, Oman)

The advanced greenhouse company, Podponics, started in Atlanta, Georgia, in the United States. Their system uses recycled shipping containers to create stackable, modular greenhouses. The company estimates each shipping container produces the same yield as an acre of traditional farmland. The company has raised millions in startup capital and runs projects in Atlanta, Dubai, and Oman.

Aerofarms (USA)

Image: Aerofarms

The world’s largest vertical farm is now located in Newark, NJ, in the United States. Startup Aerofarms converted a steel factory into a 69,000-square foot agriculture center that opened earlier this year.

The urban farm produces as much as 2-million pounds of leafy greens a year through a new growing system called “aeroponics,” which does not use direct sunlight or soil to deliver nutrients. It nourishes the plants with special LED lighting and delivers nutrients to plant roots through a liquid mist. The trays can be seen in the image below.

#AeroFarms broke ground on their first #verticalfarm facility in #Newark last week. The farm will become the largest in the world of its kind and will be capable of producing up to 2 million pounds of vegetables and herbs annually once it's in full operation. Merging agriculture and the latest in technology, the AeroFarms system relies on LED lights, aeroponics (where plants basically grow in nutrient-rich mist) and climate control. Plants grow in stacked racks without sun, soil or pesticides. via @ecowatch Image credit: AeroFarms

See this Instagram photo by @sustainpsu * 17 likes

Their lettuces are already available in stores across New Jersey.

Fresh #aerofarms produce

See this Instagram photo by @ckennylin * 1 like

Plantagon (Sweden)

Image: Plantagon Mockup

A Swedish company, Plantagon, is one of the leaders in bringing agriculture into urban settings. The company sells conversion kits for existing buildings interested in adding greenhouse growing pods to their interior or exterior spaces. Next, the company intends to create the world’s first true “mixed use” building with both offices and agriculture centers in the same structure.

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The company currently runs a geodesic dome known as the “Plantscraper” in Linkoping, Sweden (pictured above). The dome has allowed the company to experiment with different technologies as they design their full mixed-use building also intended to be in Linkoping. In the video below, Plantagon outlines the vision for this first-of-its-kind space.

Sky Greens (Singapore)

Built by Sky Urban Solutions, the Sky Greens vertical farm is the “world’s first low-carbon, hydraulic-driven vertical farm,” according to its website. The farm’s major innovation is a system that rotates hydroponic trays so each is regularly exposed to natural sunlight, reducing the need for costly lighting systems.

Sky Urban Solutions is planning a much larger urban agricultural initiative for the small island nation it calls home. The company wants to build the SG100 Agripolis, a farm and research center that could provide 30% of Singapore’s green leafy vegetable needs. The proposed project has the backing of Singapore’s government because it would promote national food security and resiliency. The video below provides an overview of the venture.

The future of farming

It’s not clear if vertical farming will save the planet, but the early international experiments do seem to show it will be part of the world’s agricultural systems.

By Brandon Blackburn-Dwyer