5 In Home Growing Questions With Bjorn Dawson of Grobo

5 In Home Growing Questions With Bjorn Dawson of Grobo

Bjorn Dawson is the CEO and co-founder of Grobo. They’ve developed an easy-­to-­use home growing system that takes the guesswork out of successfully growing small crops of high quality food and legal cannabis. Ahead of his presentation at Indoor Ag-Con in May, we asked him five questions about in home growing.

1. What’s your inspiration for Grobo? How long has it taken you to get to a viable product?
A few years ago I began growing fruits and vegetables outside and quickly fell in love with how delicious home grown food tastes. Tomatoes bursting with flavour, juicy watermelon, and crunchy carrots had me hooked on the idea of growing my own food, but our long Canadian winters make that nearly impossible. After not finding any good systems for automated growing that would fit within my home, Grobo was founded to allow everyone to easily grow plants indoors, all year long.

2. How is your Grobo One grow box different from the myriad other in home systems on the market?
In short, we focus on the plant and on the user. The first product we developed, but never launched, was called Grobo Pods and was designed to help the everyday user grow their own greens in a system that costs less than $200. To hit this price point required technical sacrifices that resulted in smaller yields and longer grow times. Throughout our development, this low-end market quickly became flooded with inefficient systems… so we went the other way: high-end and high-tech. Grobo One grow box is the best home growing system because it is extremely simple for anyone to use and always provides your plants with exactly the light, water, and nutrients they need. For example, we are the only company using far red LEDs to simulate the sunset which helps plants grow almost 10% faster.

3. In home systems get a lot of flack for being more jewelry than farm. How do you think about ensuring that your customer gets value from Grobo One?
It’s important to remember that this technology is still new and there is lots of work ahead of us to create in-home farms. Grobo One uses technology such as our 8 colour LED spectrum and precise nutrient dosing to ensure that plants grow as quickly as possible. By automating the growing cycles, we can actually save users hours each week because they no longer have to adjust the pH of their water, add nutrients, or even design their growing system to begin with. Although the economics change depending on what you grow, we truly believe that the quality of the end product will have people hooked on growing their own food.

4. You were a part of a hardware accelerator – HAX – in China. How was that experience?
From January to May 2016 our entire team was at HAX living in Shenzhen, China and it was a phenomenal experience. Shenzhen produces a mind boggling number of consumer products each year, and being at the heart of manufacturing taught us how to build a product at scale and on budget. More importantly, the Chinese mindset is to move quickly, and that is something we have taken back to our office in Canada. We now have the equipment to prototype most parts of a Grobo One in-house in under 24 hours, which allows us to constantly innovate and improve upon our products.

5. What crop would you love to see grown in a Grobo system that isn’t yet viable? When will that happen?
Personally I can’t wait to grow strawberries in my Grobo One because the squirrels have been the lucky ones to enjoy them over the past few years. We have already had success with cannabis, kale, tomatoes, peppers and many other plants, but I still can’t wait to see the wide variety of plants that our customers will grow. As shipping begins this summer, we have customers wanting to grow everything from cucumber to cauliflower to cacti and I’m excited to see it all!

 SEE BJORN SPEAK AT THE 5TH ANNUAL INDOOR AG-CON ON MAY 3-4, 2017 

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Indoor Growing Is ‘Bringing Back Failed Varieties’

Indoor Growing Is ‘Bringing Back Failed Varieties’

Urban farms are allowing Rijk Zwaan to grow varieties that fell short in past crop trials due to weak disease resistance

Indoor growing with LEDs is allowing salad breeders to bring back high-performing varieties that didn't have strong enough disease resistance in crop trials, a city farming expert has revealed.

Indoor growing at facilities such as GrowUp Urban Farms in London has allowed plant breeder Rijk Zwaan to reinstate certain salad varieties and boost product quality and consistency, said Philips’ programme manager for city farming, Roel Jansson.

“Growing in indoor climate cells means there are no pests, no weather changes, no bugs,” he said. “Everything that was developed by Rijk Zwaan in previous years but maybe didn’t have enough disease resistance can be used indoors because here we don’t have disease. We can get better taste, better colouration, faster growth.”

Philips has a programme with fellow Dutch company Rijk Zwaan to screen different varieties to find out which are best for indoor growing and which LED light spectrum they respond best to.

While he accepts that indoor growing will never fully replace traditional salad outdoors or in polytunnels, he sees big potential for vertical growing in fresh-cut pre-packed salads.

“Indoor growing is the future for growing processed produce like fresh-cut pre-packed salads because you can grow bug-free and with stable nitrates,” he said. “You can predict shelf life, texture, quality because you always get the same product.”

In wholehead lettuce, Janssen believes opportunities are more limited since consumers are already used to washing the product before eating it.

“In Europe we could produce a full head of lettuce that you don’t need to wash anymore,” he said, “but people are used to washing it anyway so the added value would probably be limited.”

He added: “There is already a market [for wholehead lettuce you don’t have to wash] in North America and Asia Pacific but in countries with really high horticultural standards like the UK, Netherlands and Scandinavia I don’t think we would easily replace a greenhouse.”

Produce from indoor farms is typically twice the price, costing around the same as organic produce, however this could reduce in future as LEDs become cheaper and more efficient and higher-yielding varieties are developed.

Urban Farm In Victoria Expands, Hopes To Grow 10,000 lbs Of Produce

Urban Farm In Victoria Expands, Hopes To Grow 10,000 lbs Of Produce

Topsoil’s new space includes 15,000 square feet to grow fresh produce and offers more sun exposure. Apr. 7, 2017 (CTV Vancouver Island)

CTV Vancouver Island
Published Friday, April 7, 2017 6:33PM PDT
Last Updated Friday, April 7, 2017 6:49PM PDT

A Victoria food producer is expanding its operation at Dockside Green after growing more than 7,000 pounds of produce last year.

Topsoil’s new space includes 15,000 square feet to grow fresh produce and offers more sun exposure.

The urban farm hopes to grow more than 10,000 pounds of produce in 2017.

The local food producer works with chefs in Victoria at the beginning of the season and customizes what it grows based on what the chefs need.

The founder of the business says the open site allows them to operate in full transparency.

“We’re being watched 24/7 and it gives us accountability and responsibility to produce the best, highest quality, safest, most nutritious produce possible for the city,” said Chris Hildreth.

Topsoil is working with four restaurants this year, including Caffe Fantastico, Fiamo Pizza & Wine Bar, Canoe Brewpub and Lure Restaurant & Bar.

The restaurants are so close the local food producer guarantees delivery in under 10 minutes.

The executive chef at Lure Restaurant & Bar says it’s important to support local farms.

“We think here on Vancouver Island there’s a huge market for it, there’s obviously a lot of production happening here as well,” said Dan Bain. “We don’t see a lot of reason to bring in vegetables from areas further away.

How Vertical Farming Reinvents Agriculture

How Vertical Farming Reinvents Agriculture

Instead of growing crops in sunny fields or greenhouses, some companies stack them and grow them in old, dark warehouses with UV lights — saving water and harvesting produce faster.

• By Chris Baraniuk

6 April 2017

In an old carpet factory on the outskirts of the Belgian city of Kortrijk, an agricultural upheaval is being plotted: growing crops indoors, not out on a farm, stacked layer after layer under candy-coloured lights in an area the size of a studio flat.

It’s called vertical farming, and several companies have sprung up over the last 10 years or so, filling old warehouses and disused factories with structures that grow vegetables and herbs in cramped, artificially lit quarters out of the warm glow of the sun.

A firm called Urban Crops is one of them. In its case, a large frame is designed to hold conveyor belt-shunted trays of young plants under gently glowing blue and red LEDs in this former carpet factory.

But their system, largely automated, is still a work in progress. When I visit, a software update, scheduled at short notice, means that none of the machinery is working. Chief executive Maarten Vandecruys apologises and explains that, usually, the hardware allows the plants to be fed light and nutrients throughout their growing cycle. Then they can be harvested when the time is right.

“You don’t have the risk of contamination,” says Vandecruys as he points out that the area is sealed off. And each species of crop has a growing plan tailored to its needs, determining its nutrient uptake and light, for instance. Plus, in here, plants grow faster than they do on an outdoor farm.

Some companies are turning to vertical farming, which they say uses less water and grows crops faster than outdoor farms or greenhouses (Credit: Urban Crops)

Urban Crops says that vertical farming yields more crops per square metre than traditional farming or greenhouses do. Vertical farming also uses less water, grows plants faster, and can be used year-round – not just in certain seasons. The facilities also can, in theory, be built anywhere.

At Urban Crops, eight layers of plants can be stacked in an area of just 30sq m (322 sq ft). It’s not a commercial-sized operation, but rather a proving ground intended to show that the concept is viable.

“Basically, inside the system, every day is a summer day without a cloud in the sky,” says Vandecruys.

Stacks and stacks of vegetables and herbs are grown under UV lights, with individual stacks fitting in spaces just 30 sq m (Credit: Urban Crops)

But can you really grow anything in a building, with the right technology at your fingertips?

Vandecruys says it’s possible to grow practically anything inside – but that’s not always a good idea. He explains that it’s more cost-effective to stick to quicker-growing crops that yield a high market value. Herbs, baby greens for salad and edible flowers, for instance, fetch a lot more per kilogram than certain root vegetables, which are more likely to be grown outdoors the old-fashioned way for some time yet.

Basically, inside the system, every day is a summer day without a cloud in the sky - Maarten Vandecruys

By growing plants indoors, you get a lot of fine-grained control you get over the resources your crops need. It allows for rapid growing and predictable nutrient content. The LEDs, for example, can be turned up or down at will and, because they do not give out lots of heat like old filament bulbs, they can be kept close to the plants for optimal light absorption.

Of course, it’s possible to produce the same amount of veg that you might get from an outdoor farm – but with far less land at your disposal.

So, how does it actually work? There are a few main models for indoor agriculture that vertical farmers tend to choose from: hydroponics – in which plants are grown in a nutrient-rich basin of water – and aeroponics, where crops’ roots are periodically sprayed with a mist containing water and nutrients. The latter uses less water overall, but comes with some greater technical challenges. There's also aquaponics, which is slightly different, in that it involves breeding fish to help cultivate bacteria that's used for plant nutrients.

Urban Crops has opted for hydroponics. Vandecruys points out that they recycle the water several times after it is evaporated from the plant and recaptured from the humid air. It’s also treated with UV light to curb the spread of disease.

Perhaps the key benefit of vertical farming is that it uses far less water. “We made an estimation with oak leaf lettuce and there we are actually at, say 5% [water consumption], compared to traditional growing in fields,” explains Vandecruys.

But Urban Crops doesn’t plan to make its money from the sale of crops. It plans to make money on the sale of its vertical farms.

Vertical farm companies hope to one day sell consumers indoor kits of their own for the ultimate 'farm to table' experience (Credit: Urban Crops)

It has designed contained growing systems as a product in and of themselves – people will be able to buy them in order to grow food in relatively confined spaces – potentially bringing farming to urban areas or complexes like the campus of a university. The apparatus can also be installed alongside existing plant production lines at greenhouse farms.

One of the biggest names in vertical farming, however, has a different business model. AeroFarms in New Jersey, USA, has opened what they say is the world’s largest indoor vertical farm – with a total of 7,000 sq m (70,000 sq ft) floor space – and they’re hoping to produce tasty greens in massive quantities.

Ed Harwood is the inventor and agricultural expert who came up with the technology that has made this possible. He got the idea years ago while working for Cornell University, where aeroponic systems were being used to grow plants in a lab setting. Why, he wondered, was this approach not being used on a bigger scale?

“I kept asking, ‘how come’ – people said, ‘Oh, it would never make money, the sun is free, it’s expensive to add lights and everything else, it won’t happen’,” recalls Harwood.

But he wasn’t satisfied with that. After years of experimentation he came up with a system and nozzle design for spraying the aeroponic mist onto his plants’ roots. At AeroFarms, the roots grow through a fine cloth rather than soil. But the details of how he solved the key problem – keeping the nozzles clean over time – remain a trade secret.

“Every nozzle I purchased off the shelf had significant issues,” says Harwood. “I had to do something about it – it was just a cool moment of, I guess, serendipity.” But he’s not telling anyone how he did it.

Like Urban Crops, AeroFarms is prioritising the cultivation of fast-growing salad veg and greens. Harwood believes there is a demand for such produce grown locally in big facilities like theirs that could one day be a feature of city suburbs. And he also promises the guaranteed crunchiness and freshness that consumers want.

Despite futuristic appearances, some vertical farming facilities are built inside old factories or abandoned warehouses (Credit: Chris Baraniuk)

Harwood is firm in his belief that the business he and his colleagues have put together can be profitable. But there are still those who remain sceptical.

Michael Hamm, a professor of sustainable agriculture at Michigan State University, is one of them. He points out that vertical farms depend on constant supplies of electricity, much of which will come from fossil fuel sources.

“Why waste that energy to produce a whole lettuce, when you can get light from the sun?” he says.

And he points out that it just doesn’t make economic sense to grow some crops this way: “At 10 cents a kilowatt hour, the amount of energy it would take to produce wheat would [translate to] something like $11 for a loaf of bread.”

There’s been a spike in home beer brewing – might we see a spike in farming at home, too?

He does acknowledge a few of the benefits, though. If the indoor systems are well-maintained, then the technology should in theory allow for reproducible results with every harvest – you’ll likely get the same quality of crops every time. Plus, while it costs a lot of money to set up a vertical farm in the first instance, it’s potentially a more attractive option to people getting into the agriculture business for the first time – they won’t need to spend years learning how to contend with the vagaries of the sun and seasons. For that, there’s no substitute yet for experience.

With the development of vertical farming technologies, and the likely fall in cost associated with them in coming years, some are betting that all kinds of people will want to start growing their own greens – even at home. There’s been a spike in home beer brewing – might we see a spike in farming at home, too?

Neofarms is one start-up based in Germany and Italy that is anticipating this. Its founders, Henrik Jobczyk and Maximillian Richter, have developed a prototype vertical farm about the size of a household fridge-freezer.

“We designed it in standard kitchen closet sizes,” explains Jobczyk, who adds that their plan is to make the device available as an integrated or standalone design, depending on the customer’s preferences.

People who choose to grow their salad veg at home will pay about two euros (£1.71/2.13) per week in energy costs with this system for the privilege, the pair calculate. And they would also have to keep the Neofarms device clean and constantly topped up with water. But in exchange they will have the freshest produce possible.

“With the plants growing in the system, you know about the conditions they were raised in – that gives you control and knowledge,” says Jobczyk. “But also it’s the freshness, one of the biggest problems with fresh veg – especially the greens – is the field to fork time, the time between harvest and consumption.”

Future supermarkets, though, might be filled with miniature vertical farms of their own

If you pick the plants yourself and eat them straightaway, you might enjoy a richer wealth of vitamins and other nutrients – which can be lost during packaging and transportation. Many consumers already grow their herbs on a window box, but that is a low-cost and low-maintenance activity. It remains to be seen whether the same people would be interested in making the conceptual leap that comes with bringing a mini vertical farm into their own kitchen.

Jobczyk and Richter will have to wait to find out – they’re planning more testing of their device later this year, with a public launch potentially following sometime after that.

Ed Harwood, for one, thinks vertical farming technologies might help to bring agriculture closer to the consumer. But he also sticks by his belief that farming on giant scales is here to stay.

“Irrespective of the number of recalls, I think we’ve improved food safety over all, we’re feeding more people with fewer resources,” he says.

One of the downsides of this is that children have to be introduced to the idea that their food is grown somewhere – it doesn’t come from the supermarket, but a field or factory. Future supermarkets, though, might be filled with miniature vertical farms of their own.

“For the child who says their food comes from the grocery store,” says Harwood, “they might one day be right."

The Art of Urban Farming

The Art of Urban Farming

My Green Chapter brings gardening tools from around the world to help UAE residents join the growing network of urban farmers who want to live more sustainable lives

Published: 16:13 April 5, 2017

By Jyoti KalsiSpecial to Weekend Review

  As our cities continue to expand, human beings are losing touch with nature. But the urban farming movement seeks to change this by encouraging people to grow vegetables and fruits in their yards, in empty lots in their neighbourhood and in public spaces such as schools, universities and hospitals. As this hobby becomes more popular, new and innovative products are being developed to help city dwellers grow herbs, salads and vegetables not only in gardens and yards but also on their balconies and inside their apartments.

My Green Chapter has brought this concept to the UAE with the launch of its online store, mygreenchapter.com. The store has sourced gardening and urban farming products from around the world to help UAE residents join the growing network of urban farmers, who want to live in harmony with nature, eat fresh, organic produce and live greener, more sustainable lives.

Besides gardening tools, equipment and materials for adults and children, the company offers innovative ‘smart garden’ technologies that make indoor farming as easy as clicking a button. The company also sells chicken coops, feed and accessories to enable urban farmers to raise chicken in their backyards.

The project is the brainchild of Frenchman Jean-Charles Hameau, who is an animal lover and gardening enthusiast. Hameau graduated in Agriculture Engineering and has a Master’s in Economics. He came to Dubai in 1999 as a commercial attaché in charge of agriculture and food at the French Consulate, and later co-founded the Saint Vincent Group which is the leader in the pet food and accessories industry in the GCC region.

Hameau spoke to the Weekend Review about urban farming and the new products that mygreenchapter.com is bringing to the UAE. Excerpts:

How did you get interested in urban farming?

A few years ago, I saw a documentary on TV about how the urban farming movement started in Detroit, USA, during the economic crisis in 2008, when people began using public spaces and abandoned industrial land to grow vegetables and fruits. Around the same time, I met a chicken coop supplier in Europe, and was surprised to hear that most of his company’s exports were to the GCC region. I did some research and realised that this is a part of the culture of this region and many families in the UAE are growing their own vegetables and keeping chickens in their backyard. Six months ago, I decided to keep some chickens in my garden, and seeing the smiles on the faces of my children when they pick up fresh eggs every morning is one of the factors that convinced me to start My Green Chapter.

What is your vision for the store?

Urban farming not only adds greenery to cities but also helps to reduce pollution and improve our health. Growing vegetables and fruits in our own gardens helps us to reconnect with the Earth and have a greater appreciation for where our food comes from. It reduces the food miles associated with long distance transportation while also ensuring that we eat the freshest produce and foods that are in season. We believe this is not just a passing trend but an unstoppable movement towards sustainable living, so our vision is to bring unique and innovative products to encourage the growth of urban farming in the UAE.

What kind of products are you focusing on?

For UAE residents who have gardens, we wanted to get the best quality gardening tools, seeds, potting soil, organic fertilisers, micro-irrigation kits, gloves and boots, and wooden chicken coops that are suited to the climate. It is particularly important to introduce children and young adults to green and sustainable living, hence we are offering a range of colourful gardening kits for children. Since the weather here makes it difficult to grow anything in summer and most people in the UAE live in apartments, we have sourced many innovative products that allow stress-free indoor gardening throughout the year. We also have a range of pots and planters, including self-watering pots and space saving designs for vertical gardening on indoor walls. We are working with experts in the field to source products that are suitable for the UAE and technologies that make gardening convenient. Our aim is to be a one stop shop for everybody’s gardening needs.

What are the new products you have introduced to this market?

We have many new products that take the effort and unpredictability out of gardening, making it easy for anyone to grow herbs, salads, vegetables and flowers all year round, even in indoor areas with limited space and sunlight. An example is the Click & Grow Smart Garden. All you have to do is to insert the plant capsules, fill the water tank, plug it in and the specially developed smart soil, and built-in sensors will make sure that the plants get optimal water, oxygen and nutrients. It comes with a Grow Light that immaculately calculates the spectrum of light required by the plants and the number of hours the light should be on and off. It makes the plants grow faster without any pesticides, hormones or other harmful chemicals and after you harvest the first crop, you can get new plant refills and re-use the Smart herb garden as many times as you wish.

Similarly, the Plantui Smart Garden is a hydroponic system whereby you can grow tasty greens without soil. The fully automated, patented growth process with special light spectrums, is packed into a beautifully designed ceramic device with overhead LED lights that provide optimal spectrums and intensity for photosynthesis. The watering and lighting are automatically adjusted during all growth phases, so all you do is to place the plant capsules containing the seeds in the device, switch it on and harvest the produce in about eight weeks. It comes in various sizes, to suit different kitchen spaces, allowing you grow three or more types of salads in the same unit.

Likewise, the Mini Garden is an innovative modular wall system for creating vertical gardens in a balcony of any size, or on a wall in a home or office. It comes with a patented irrigation system that automatically waters the plants. We will continue adding new products to our extensive range.

Can raising chicken in one’s yard also be so easy?

Farmers have been raising backyard fowl for over 3,000 years but only in the last five years has it become accessible for even the beginner farmer to raise their own livestock. We are the first suppliers of chicken coops in the UAE, and I can tell you that building a basic chicken coop for a small flock of birds is an easy do-it-yourself project that you can take on if you have a backyard at home. Keep in mind of course the rules regarding this in your neighbourhood and avoid keeping a rooster. It is worthwhile because you can raise them organically, free of hormones and antibiotics, and let them run around your yard rather than being cooped up in a cage. You can get around 300 eggs per hen per year, and the fowl are excellent mosquito repellants.

Is the UAE ready for the urban farming movement?

Absolutely. The country is becoming greener and has launched many sustainable living initiatives such as the urban farming competition recently organised by Dubai Municipality. I have read of urban farming programmes in local schools, and look forward to collaborating in such efforts because it is important for children to get away from their gadgets, step outdoors, connect with the Earth, learn where the food on their table comes from and experience the sheer joy of growing their own vegetables.

Jyoti Kalsi is a writer based in Dubai.

For more information go to www.mygreenchapter.com

2017: President Barack H. Obama Guest of Honor at The Global Food Innovation Summit

Seeds&Chips

2017: President Barack H. Obama Guest of Honor at The Global Food Innovation Summit

4/3/2017

The 44th US President Barack H. Obama will be the guest of honor at 2017 Seeds&Chips - The Global Food Innovation Summit, taking place in Milano (Italy) from Monday 8 to Thursday 11, May 2017 at Fiera Milano-Rho. The President will be at Seeds&Chips on Tuesday May 9, where he will hold a keynote speech as well as a conversation together with Sam Kass, Senior Food Policy Advisor to President Obama and promoter of White House’s health-conscious revolution.

Created and organized by Marco Gualtieri, Seeds&Chips this year celebrates its third edition and aims to establish Milano as an international capital of food innovation, by carrying the torch of Expo’s legacy to face one of the greatest global challenges: climate change and the issues linked to food supply in an increasingly populated world with progressively scarce resources. Seeds&Chips will address all aspects of these challenges, from new food production techniques and nutrition to food security and the right to healthy, sustainable and accessible food for all.

"We are deeply honored that President Barack H. Obama will be visiting Milano for the first time to attend Seeds&Chips. This undoubtedly shines the spotlight on Milano, on Italy and on the journey that began with Expo 2015. Thanks to President Obama’s participation at Seeds&Chips, the city of Milano once again plays the leading role in the creation of food policies at an international level. With Expo 2015, Milano was the center of these important issues. Today we have the responsibility of carrying this important legacy forward,” stated Marco Gualtieri, founder of Seeds&Chips. “It is essential to find solutions to tackle the major challenges linked to global population growth, food security, sustainability and to climate change. I believe that Milano and Italy can become an international reference point for innovation and research in this field," Gualtieri concluded.

The Global Food Innovation Summit brings together hundreds of startups, companies, universities, institutions, investors, accelerators and incubators, opinion leaders and policy makers in the food and food-tech industry and will feature exhibition pavilions and a conference area. In the exhibition areas, major companies, institutions and startups will present their innovations and solutions. The full schedule of conference features influential industry experts who will exchange points of view on the most significant scenarios concerning food production and supply. Among the main events, the special conference "Feeding the Cities - Urban and Vertical farming" dedicated to sustainable farming in big cities, with the participation of the mayors of major world capitals. Keynote speaker Giuseppe Sala, Mayor of Milan, will open the event. The conference “Food Security for developing countries "will address instead the issue of food supply in developing countries.

"I'm really proud that, after welcoming Michelle, Milano will host Barack H. Obama, a man I greatly admire”, stated Mayor of Milan Giuseppe Sala. “Seeds&Chips offers a unique opportunity to focus everyone's attention on an extremely important issue that has close links with our city. With the Milan Urban Food Policy Pact, we have shown we have the ability and strength to guide and speak up for a change that is more necessary than ever. The document that was able to translate the food policies at the heart of Expo 2015 into actions is based not only on concrete projects aimed at reducing waste and ensuring access to healthy food. Another one of the document’s pillars is promoting cooperation between all the great cities of the world. These are two key ingredients that will enable all of us to achieve this goal, and the presence of President Barack H. Obama can only lend more strength to our message," Sala concluded.

Additional distinguished international and Italian guests include Kerry Kennedy, President of the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights, committed activist and fervent supporter of human rights and of safe and affordable food; Sam Kass, Senior Food Policy Advisor to President Obama and promoter of the White House’s health-conscious revolution; Italian Minister of Economic Development Carlo Calenda, Italian Minister of Agriculture, Food and Forestry Maurizio Martina, Livia Pomodoro, President of the Milan Center for Food Law and Policy, Fabio Gallia, CEO of Cassa Depositi e Prestiti; Luigi Bonini, Senior Vice President, Global Product Innovation of Starbucks; Andrea Illy, President of Illycaffè; Giuseppe Caprotti former CEO of Esselunga; Edward Mukiibi, Vice President of Slow Food International and Danielle Nierenberg, founder and President of Food Tank. Several members of the European Commission and the European Parliament will also be attending Seeds&Chips - The Global Food Innovation Summit.

In-depth sessions will range from hi-tech hot topics, such as big data, applications of 3D printing in food or technological solutions for the restaurants and supermarkets of the future, to marketing and trading scenarios, such as the growth of sharing economy, novel and superfood and the impact of millennials on innovation with the conference “How millennials are changing the food industry”

Seeds&Chips is organized in collaboration with TUTTOFOOD 2017, a synergistic action that generates positive effects in many sectors of the entire Italian National system.

App-Controlled, Vertical Farming For Limited Indoor Space

App-Controlled, Vertical Farming For Limited Indoor Space

New smart farming system CityCrop is a vertical hydroponics set-up that allows growers to make best use of limited space and monitor their plants via app.

3 Apr 2017

For city dwellers worldwide, finding space to grow their own herbs, vegetables and flowers is a near-constant search. Athens-based CityCrop has created a smart solution. Using vertical hydroponics (a growing system based on water, not soil), growers can farm a variety of crops indoors and with minimal square footage. The vertical farm is completely climate controlled, uses LED lights to promote rapid growth and connects to the app with wifi, making it easy for farmers to manage their crops remotely.

The app provides full control over the care of the plants, allowing for adjustments to water cycles, humidity, temperature and lighting. Should a problem crop up, the community of users can provide advice and tips, and a plant doctor is on hand to diagnose via photograph. Each farm contains two trays that hold 12 plants each, and CityCrop provides certified organic seeds with each order. The first farms are expected to ship in September 2017.

Community gardens are another method urban growers are using to get closer to their food. In Sweden a green pavilion not only grows food for locals, it provides a shady place to rest and relax, and a bigger project in the US can feed up to 150 people and includes all necessary equipment for off-grid, smart food management. What are the common ingredients needed for up-scaling production amongst all such successful community farm projects?

Website: www.citycrop.io
Contact: hello@citycrop.io

Sasaki Unveils Design for Sunqiao, a 100-Hectare Urban Farming District in Shanghai

Sasaki Unveils Design for Sunqiao, a 100-Hectare Urban Farming District in Shanghai

With nearly 24 million inhabitants to feed and a decline in the availability and quality of agricultural land, the Chinese megacity of Shanghai is set to realize the Sunqiao Urban Agricultural District, a 100-hectare masterplan designed by US-based firm Sasaki Associates. Situated between Shanghai’s main international airport and the city center, Sunqiao will introduce large-scale vertical farming to the city of soaring skyscrapers. While primarily responding to the growing agricultural demand in the region, Sasaki’s vision goes further, using urban farming as a dynamic living laboratory for innovation, interaction, and education.

Shanghai is an ideal city for vertical farming. High land prices make building upwards more economically viable than building outwards, while the demand for leafy greens in the typical Shanghainese diet can be met with efficient urban hydroponic and aquaponics systems. Sasaki’s masterplan therefore deploys a range of urban-friendly farming techniques, such as algae farms, floating greenhouses, green walls, and vertical seed libraries.

Sunqiao represents more than a factory for food production, however. Sasaki’s masterplan creates a robust public realm, celebrating agriculture as a key component of urban growth. An interactive greenhouse, science museum, aquaponics showcase, and festival market signal an attempt to educate generations of children about where their food comes from. Meanwhile, sky plazas, office towers, and civic greens represent a desire to create a mixed-use, dynamic, active environment far removed from traditional, sprawling, rural farmlands.

Sunqiao will not be an alien concept to Shanghai. Whereas western countries depend on large-scale, rural, corporate farming, small-scale agriculture has traditionally dominated Shanghai’s urban landscape. However, the scale of Sasaki’s approved scheme does indicate the increased value placed on China’s agriculture sector. China is the world’s biggest consumer and exporter of agricultural products, with the industry providing 22% of the country’s employment, and 13% of its Gross Domestic Product. The Chinese government is therefore keen to preserve, modernize, and showcase an industry which has helped to significantly reduce poverty rates, and has influenced the growth of the biotech and textile industries.

"This approach actively supports a more sustainable food network while increasing the quality of life in the city through a community program of restaurants, markets, a culinary academy, and pick-your-own experience” explained Sasaki in a press release. “As cities continue to expand, we must continue to challenge the dichotomy between what is urban and what is rural. Sunqiao seeks to prove that you can have your kale and eat it too.”

News via: Sasaki Associates

Lindsey Shute, National Young Farmers Coalition: "We need empathy"

Lindsey Shute, National Young Farmers Coalition: "We need empathy"

Lindsey Lusher Shute, Executive Director and Co-Founder of the National Young Farmers Coalition (NYFC), is speaking at the inaugural Boston Food Tank Summit, “Investing in Discovery,” which will be held in collaboration with Tufts University and Oxfam America on April 1, 2017.

With a background in organizing and state policy, Lindsey co-founded NYFC as a platform for young, progressive farmers to have a meaningful influence on the structural obstacles in the way of their success. Lindsey is a respected speaker and an expert on the structural issues facing family farms. In 2014, she was named a “Champion of Change” by the White House. In addition to her work with NYFC, Lindsey is co-owner of Hearty Roots Community Farm in Tivoli, New York.

Food Tank had a chance to speak with Lindsey about her background and inspiration, as well as the opportunity for talented and ambitious young farmers to inspire food system change.

Lindsey Lusher Shute is speaking at the inaugural Boston Food Tank Summit.

Food Tank (FT): What originally inspired you to get involved in your work?

Lindsey Shute (LS): I started organizing with young farmers because of the challenges that my husband Ben and I faced in growing our own farm. As we met more and more farmers who were facing similar struggles across the nation, I realized that we lacked a political voice. There were too many young people with the ambition and will to farm, but without a way to get there. 

FT: What makes you continue to want to be involved in this kind of work?

LS: I have a constant source of inspiration and motivation in the people that I work to represent: young farmers. These farmers are out to change the country by growing great food, taking care of the soils and water that they depend on, and daring to compete as small farmers in a highly consolidated food system. The risk that these farmers take on behalf of their communities keeps me going. I want them to succeed, and I know what they’re up against. 

I’m also encouraged by our bi-partisan traction and success at cutting through partisan divides. Just a few weeks ago, Rep. Glen Thompson (R-PA) and Rep. Joe Courtney (D-CT) reintroduced the Young Farmer Success Act (H.R. 1060) to add farmers to the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program. These co-sponsors were joined by two additional Republicans and two additional Democrats. These actions demonstrate how farming can be unifying—and a way to overcome national divisions in favor of help for ordinary people.

FT: Who inspired you as a kid?

LS: My two grandfathers were rural ministers and World War II chaplains. As a child, they served as beacons of service, faith, and devotion to community that I can only hope to achieve. When I would attend my family’s church in southeast Ohio as a child, the day would be filled with stories from church members about how my grandfather made a difference in their lives. One particular story that stuck with me is about a neighbor boy who repeatedly robbed my grandfather’s farmhouse. Over the course of months, electronics went missing and eventually my grandfather’s gun. After the kid went to jail on other counts, my grandfather repeatedly visited him and expressed his forgiveness and hope for the kid’s future. 

FT: What do you see as the biggest opportunity to fix the food system?

LS: The biggest opportunity lies in the talent and ambition of young farmers. If they’re given a real chance of success—land to own, sufficient capital, healthcare, and appropriate technical support—they will thrive and change the food system through their entrepreneurship. The candidate for Secretary of Agriculture, Sonny Purdue, can leverage this new talent by directing the USDA to stand by young people in agriculture.

FT: Can you share a story about a food hero who inspired you?

LS: Leah Penniman is one of my food heroes. Last spring I gave a short, public talk about why we have lost so many farmers in the United States and I failed to speak to the effects of racism. Leah, in the audience at the time, rightly let our team know that my narrative was incomplete. Her willingness to speak up in that moment and to continue dialogue with our team led to the development of a racial equity program at NYFC—as well as more farmers of color identifying with and joining the coalition. Leah helped me in that moment and I am deeply grateful for her strong voice and leadership.

FT: What’s the most pressing issue in food and agriculture that you’d like to see solved?

LS: With the massive cuts proposed at USDA, healthcare access for farmers on the brink of collapse, and immigration enforcement threatening the farm workforce, it’s hard to ignore the myriad of rural issues created by the Trump Administration. But outside of these immediate policy crises, the nation must address the issue of affordable land access for farmers. In the next 20 years, two-thirds of the farmland in the United States will change hands as our aging farm population retires. How that land transitions will set the stage for the future of our food system. If we provide access for working class, small farmers, we will promote economic vitality, national security, and sustainability. 

FT: What is one small change every person can make in their daily lives to make a big difference?

LS: Practice empathy. In so many of the political discussions that I’ve been hearing recently, there has been so much antipathy for people facing struggle. We critique immigrants who, like most of us, came here for good work and opportunity. We call out folks who couldn’t afford healthcare before the Affordable Healthcare Act, and we undermine government programs that stoke innovation in areas of the country where mobility and economic agency have grown dim. I believe we need smart government programs that leverage best practices in technology and management, but I also want a government that stands by the principles of empathy and compassion for our neighbors. To get there, we need empathy. And to practice empathy, we probably need to drop our phones and make time for conversation with people outside our immediate circles. 

FT: What advice can you give to President Trump and the U.S. Congress on food and agriculture? 

LS: Agriculture is the wealth of the nation, and a large part of our national security. Although so few Americans are now farming, these farmers have an outsized impact on the nation’s health and prosperity. We need to invest in their futures and ensure that we are supporting smaller farms that minimize risk, make our economy more resilient, and keep dollars in rural communities.

Lindsey Lusher Shute is speaking at the inaugural Boston Food Tank Summit.

Consider Urban Agriculture In National Policy Development

Consider Urban Agriculture In National Policy Development

By Joyce Danso, GNA

Accra, March 29, GNA – The Peasant Farmers Association of Ghana on Wednesday implored government to include Urban Agriculture (gardening) in its policy of “Planting for Food and Jobs” to curb unemployment among the youth.

Mrs Victoria Adongo, Programmes Coordinator of the Association also appealed to government to encourage backyard gardening which boosted food production when the “Operation feed yourself” was introduced some year ago. 

Mrs Adongo who was speaking at a National Forum on Local Seeds, Nutrition and Urban gardening held in Accra noted that 200 million people were involved in urban agriculture worldwide and that had contributed to the feeding of 800 million urban dwellers.

According to her, Urban Agriculture had been branded as compliment in the urban food supply with 40 per cent of the population in Africa engaged in the practice.

The programme jointly held by Centre for Indigenous Knowledge and Organisational Development (CIKOD) and the Peasant Farmers Association of Ghana is aimed at drawing public attention to seed diversity for nutrition, health and wealth.

The forum also sought to create awareness on the impact of agro-chemicals on the environment and food quality and educate the public on nutritive potentials of our local seeds, food and the importance of biological agriculture in urban gardening. 

Mrs Adongo noted that urban agriculture maintained biodiversity, ecosystem and provided climate resilience and temperature control in urban and peri-urban areas.

According to the Programmes Coordinator, the concept was however plagued with challenges such as increasing population and urbanisation and the threat of Commercial food production.

She noted that access to land or space by estate developers, competition for water, lack of storage facilities, and conflict on lands were some of the militating factors against urban agriculture.

She called for the institutionalisation and integration of urban agriculture into the country’s economic development agenda.

“Estate Developers should also be entreated to allocate portions of lands for community gardening to boost food production and promote social cohesion.”

Mr Bernard Guri, Executive Director, CIKOD, noted that over the years the focus had been on provision of seeds and chemical fertilizers for increased yield without much concern for dietary diversity for nutrition and health.

Mr Guri noted that those policies had rather resulted in pollution on the environment and water bodies which affected the health of many people.

He said it was therefore important to promote seed diversity and food nutrition.

Mrs Grace Dzifa Wornyoh, Clinical Dietician said no single food could give one all the nutritional needs and called for the consumption of balanced diets to ensure growth.

Mrs Wornyoh contended that the power of nutrition should not also be underestimated noting that under nutrition and over nutrition were the causes of some ailment in the country health problems.

The Clinical Dietician listed urbanisation, income, education and the media as factors affecting dietary diversity.

She suggested the creation of backyard farming as well as promoting improved technology for the preservation of food.

Mrs Wornyoh was of the opinion that nutrition should be a course in educational institutions in order to promote good eating habits.

GNA

The Regeneration Hub: Mapping the Regeneration Movement

The Regeneration Hub: Mapping the Regeneration Movement

Alexandra Groome is on the coordination team of Regeneration International (RI), a project of the Organic Consumers Association. Alexandra Groome launched The Regeneration Hub with Scott Funkhouser during the 2016 Climate Summit in Marrakech, Morocco. Katherine Paul is associate director of the Organic Consumers Association.

We, the inhabitants of Planet Earth, face multiple and accelerating global crises, including poverty, hunger, deteriorating public health, social, and political unrest. These crises are in large part a consequence of global warming, driven in part by over-consumption and irresponsible stewardship of Earth’s resources, especially its soils.

It’s fair to say that if we allow the degradation of our soils and land to accelerate, or even to continue at their current pace, these crises will only intensify.

How do we reverse course? By reducing runaway consumption and adopting agricultural and land-use practices that regenerate the world’s soils, and in so doing, regenerate local food and farming systems, local economies, human health and even our democracies.

Individuals and groups around the world are researching, launching, testing, and promoting agricultural and land-use projects that hold great promise for addressing our impending global warming crisis. (For more on how regenerative agriculture is key to cooling the planet and feeding the world, check out these resources).

To connect these local “regenerators” so they can exchange research and share expertise with others working in faraway places, and thereby propel the acceleration of regeneration, on a global scale, Regeneration International (RI), Open Team, and a coalition of 17 other organizations leading the regenerative food and farming movement have launched the beta version of The Regeneration Hub(RHub). RHub is an open platform that aims to accelerate the regeneration movement by encouraging collaboration among various groups and individuals focused on regenerative projects involving reforestation, seed saving, holistic land management, permaculture gardens, and agroecology networks.

Creating a digital platform to spread the message of regeneration

The idea for RHub came about during the 2015 COP21 Paris Climate Summit, as representatives of RI, Open Team, and others brainstormed ways to better connect those working within the regeneration movement. Eleven months later, RHub was launched (still in beta version) during the 2016 United Nations Climate Summit in Marrakech.

Though still in the early stages, RHub has signed on more than 90 regenerative projects. In an effort to kick-start the program, RI will award five US$1,000 grants to fund innovative regeneration projects around the globe. To apply for the call-for-projects, “Five Innovations for Regeneration,” applicants must register a project on Rhub.com and complete an online profile by March 31, 2017.

“There are regenerative solutions all around us,” said Ronnie Cummins, co-founder and international director of the Organic Consumers Association and RI steering committee member. “But people are working in silos. We need to map out and connect the global regeneration movement in order to speed up the exchange of best practices and the sharing of knowledge and resources on a global scale,” he said.

Meet the projects signed on to RHub

Here is just a sampling of projects that are already using RHub to connect with fellow regenerators:

Terra Genesis International (TGI), based in the U.S., is a RHub project dedicated to reversing climate change by transforming US$100 billion in purchasing power and 500 million hectares of land into regenerative agriculture. The folks at TGI are experts when it comes to designing regenerative farm landscapes that increase nutrient-dense food production and improve livelihoods.

Worldview Impact, based in India, is a global social enterprise that provides made-to-order services for cooperatives of small-scale organic farmers in developing countries. Worldview Impact’s goal is to integrate and expand farming systems that integrate agroforestry, bring local products to market, and create market linkages with the emerging sectors of regenerative supply chains and agro-ecotourism. Worldview Impact is in search of donations to help fund its agro-ecotourism initiative.

Sustainable Harvest International (SHI) based in Panama, aims to preserve the environment by partnering with families to improve their wellbeing through regenerative farming. SHI has two decades of experience training farmers how to transition into regenerative agriculture. The project is currently seeking sponsorship and donations to hire more staff to connect with farmers waiting to join the regenerative agriculture transition program. The goal is to expand these practices so they have a global effect.

Get involved and qualify for a micro-grant

Registering at RHub.com will allow you to join a growing global community and connect with others focused on regeneration. The platform allows you to interact with ongoing projects, even if you don’t yet have one of your own.

Registering a project with a complete profile on RHub.com will also allow you to apply for one of the five US$1,000 grants, which will be funded by RI. Grantees will be connected with experts to help support their projects, as well as will be featured on RegenerationInternational.org. The group’s steering committee will evaluate the projects and announce the winners in April 2017. Click here for more info.

Become an RHub partner or pollinator

Becoming an RHub partner offers a great opportunity to support and be part of an international network of regenerative solutions. Whether you have a network that’s seeking to expand and connect with projects worldwide or are interested in helping spread the message, RHub partnership has many benefits. We even display your logo on the official partner’s page. Send us your high-resolution logo to info@regenerationhub.com.

Interested in taking more of a leadership role in spreading regenerative solutions in your locale?  We’re seeking global regenerators to help build our platform. To learn more about becoming a community pollinator, email us at info@regenerationhub.com.

Affinor Growers Signs an "On-Farm Test Agreement" with California Berry Company

Affinor Growers Signs an "On-Farm Test Agreement" with California Berry Company

Vancouver (Canada), March 28, 2017 - Affinor Growers Inc. (CSE:AFI, OTC:RSSFF, Frankfurt:1AF) (“Affinor” or the “Corporation), is pleased to announce the signing of a research and development Test Agreement with a large strawberry production company headquartered in California, USA.

The Test Agreement is a collaboration of Affinor’s vertical farming tower technology, proprietary strawberry seedlings from California, and the new greenhouse facility in Abbotsford, B.C. currently under construction by Vertical Designs Ltd. Under the terms of the agreement, specific strains of strawberry seedlings will be supplied for testing to optimize production within the unique environment created by Affinor's greenhouse tower technology. In return, Affinor will share the testing and production results, and collect a portion of revenue from berry sales to the local market.

Strawberries will be produced within a technically advanced light-diffused polycarbonate greenhouse. Vertical Designs Ltd. will operate the facility to grow and test the various strawberry strains in partnership with Affinor. It is anticipated the facility will be operational and planting will begin in late 2017. Affinor is working directly with the Californian strawberry producer over the next several months sharing information and collaborating on growing protocols to ensure the best varieties for vertical applications are identified.

Jarrett Malnarick, President and CEO said that“This is a great opportunity for Affinor to work with a company that has a long history in strawberry development and can offer strain specific seedlings to optimize production for our vertical farming equipment. It is one more step in bringing our technology to market with solid production testing data."

For More Information, please contact:

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

About Affinor Growers Inc.

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

On Behalf of the Board of Directors

AFFINOR GROWERS INC.

"Jarrett Malnarick"

President & CEO

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

FORWARD LOOKING INFORMATION

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

A Conversation With Food Tank’s Danielle Nierenberg

A Conversation With Food Tank’s Danielle Nierenberg

By Brian Barth on March 28, 2017

anielle Nierenberg’s experience with agriculture goes all the way back to her roots in the rural Midwest. Though she admits that back then, “I didn’t want to have anything to do with farming.” To say that she has now changed her tune would be an understatement.

The feisty founder of Food Tank—as the name implies, it’s a think tank for the food system—always seems to be in three places at once, whether holding court in a farmer’s field, penning op-eds for major newspapers, or onstage, microphone in hand, smiling at a group of esteemed panelists assembled to discuss some obscure but important topic like the agroforestry systems of Afghanistan, while grilling them about their assumptions and the scientific validity of their work. (Full disclosure: Nierenberg is on the Modern Farmer Advisory Board, too.)

Food Tank is most widely know for its “food summits,” which occur sporadically throughout the year in different cities around the globe (the next one is April 1-2 in Boston). You could describe the summits as sort of a food-centric version of Ted Talks, but Nierenberg makes it clear that these aren’t just feel good preaching-to-the-crowd conventions. They’re about bringing food system players together who might not normally talk to each other—who might hate each other guts—and drawing them into a meaningful public debate on the most pressing issues of the day. No Power Points slideshows here, she says: “We don’t want to allow people to just give their usual spiel that they would give at any sort of industry event or sustainable agriculture conference. Sometimes it’s important to have an uncomfortable conversation, and allow for unusual collaborations to develop.”

I don’t like to romanticize farming; but we’re hoping to make sure that young farmers know that they are not alone,

This month, the Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture released Letters to a Young Farmer, a collection of essays by 36 leading thinkers in the food world which addresses a certain white elephant: the average age of American farmers is 58.3. Thus there are now more farmers over the age of 75 than between the ages of 35 and 44, which says something about the appeal of the profession in contemporary society. Nierenberg, who contributed an essay to the anthology (along with the likes of Barbara Kingsolver and Michael Pollan), recently sat down with Modern Farmer to share her thoughts on this, and other, essential subjects facing the future of our food system.

Modern Farmer: What was on your mind when you sat down to write your essay for Letters to a Young Farmer?

Danielle Nierenberg: My letter talks about being someone who grew up in a rural Midwest environment and didn’t want to have anything to do with farmers. I thought what they were doing was stupid and I didn’t get it. But in my own personal evolution I’ve learned so much from farmers, as a Peace Corps volunteer when I was younger and later in my career with Food Tank and other organizations. I’ve been able to spend time on farms both in the United States and around the world and get a sense of the important work that farmers are doing every day.

I don’t like to romanticize farming; but what the book is hoping to do is make sure that young farmers know that they are not alone, that there is a growing movement that wants to support them. I thought about what would I want to hear if I was a 22-year-old fresh out of college and embarking on a life as a new farmer. We’re seeing so many people giving up lucrative jobs and turning to farming because they think it’s important.

We’ve forgotten that farming is super knowledge-intensive, or at least it should be.

MF: Do you think the agriculture world is making progress in attracting new farmers?

DN: We are certainly seeing a surge in organic operations, but you don’t see a lot of the folks that I grew up with in the nineties in the Midwest who stayed on the farm. Most didn’t want to. So I think we have a long way to go, especially now with the Trump administration. We made some headway over the last eight years with USDA programs to encourage young farmers, including mentoring programs that link younger farmers with older experienced ones. I fear that a lot of that will disappear and young farmers won’t get the resources and support that they need.

MF: Riding a tractor all day by yourself through a field of corn and soybeans isn’t an appealing job description for a lot of people. Is part of the problem that farming is not sexy enough as an occupation to draw the millennial crowd?

DN: I don’t want to demonize the folks who are operating those large commodity farms, because they have a lot of valuable knowledge and skills. Despite the stereotypes a lot of those folks are actually using very advanced technology to grow crops more efficiently and I don’t want to undermine that in any way. I encourage the integration of high tech with traditional techniques—combining GPS and drones and crop data on your cell phone and all this other cool stuff that’s happening in modern agriculture with cover crops and green manure and native species. I think there is a real opportunity for farmers of all sizes to make farming intellectually stimulating and exciting. We’ve forgotten that farming is super knowledge-intensive, or at least it should be.

MF: Sounds like agriculture has a branding problem.

DN: For folks out there who are looking for something that surprises them every day and invigorates them in a way that working on Wall Street or at a tech company doesn’t, I think they can find that in farming. We have this illusion that farmers are farmers because they are dumb, that they ended up on the farm because they didn’t go to college and don’t have any other opportunities. I think that perception is really changing, but it’s a slow road.

It’s an especially slow road in developing countries where often the government is telling you to get out of farming and move to the city, that they’re not going to support farmers. There is a lot of work to be done to change those perceptions and encourage investment in agriculture so that it’s attractive for young farmers all over the world. But I’m encouraged by what we have seen over just the last five years with Silicon Valley being more interested in investing in sustainable food systems—that will be hard for the new administration to ignore.

If you’re interested in what makes good business sense, what makes money, you can’t deny that having more organic, planet friendly, and plant-based products is a good idea. Those things have been successful because the demand is there. I don’t think it’s going to work to ignore that now and focus on what is essentially a 1980s philosophy for the food system. But unfortunately I don’t think this administration realizes that.

MF: Now that you’ve brought it up, what else worries you about Trump in regards to food and farming?

DN: I’m very apprehensive about what’s going to happen with the next farm bill. I think we are going to have to fight hard to maintain what we gained over the last eight years rather than trying for a lot of new things. The connection between immigration and farm labor is another thing where I think the new administration is totally behind the times. They don’t understand that without those folks, whether they are documented or undocumented, our food system would come to a grinding halt. The people who are growing, harvesting, preparing, and serving our food need to be better recognized for what they do. (Editor’s note: For more on immigration and farming, see “The High Cost of Cheap Labor” from our Spring 2017 issue.)

MF: Food Tank summits have been a fantastic forum for bringing all the stakeholders in the food system to the table, including farmworkers. Why is that important to you?

DN: Our mission is to highlight stories of hope and success in food and agriculture, both domestically and globally, and provide that inspiration to others who need it. I started Food Tank to give a different side to the story of food that was based on the work that I’d done interviewing hundreds and hundreds of farmers and other food system stakeholders around the world. I worked for an environmental organization for many years and it was very doom and gloom, always focusing on the problem. At Food Tank we also highlight where we think the system is broken, but what we really want to do, through the articles that we post every day online, through our newsletter and webinars and podcasts and research reports, is to give people examples of what is working.

Sometimes the things that are working are not getting a lot of government support or funding, so imagine what the world would look like if all those things got the support they needed to be really successful? We want to get those stories out there to a wider audience and show people what needs to be scaled up.

Without immigrants, whether they are documented or undocumented, our food system would come to a grinding halt. The people who are growing, harvesting, preparing, and serving our food need to be better recognized for what they do.

MF: You’re a bit notorious, if I may say so, for bringing people together who have strongly opposing views.

DN: We want to bring people together for the sake of good conversation, but sometimes it’s important to have an uncomfortable conversation, and allow for unusual collaborations to develop. We don’t want to allow people to just give their usual spiel that they would give at any sort of industry event or sustainable agriculture conference. We’ve brought together food labor and justice leaders on the same stage as scientists from Monsanto and Bayer and essentially forced them to talk to one another. It’s healthy to have to answer hard questions and sit next to people on stage or at lunch or in the audience who you never wanted to talk to.

I’ve been doing this for a while now and I’ve seen that preaching to the choir hasn’t gotten us anywhere. If we’re only talking to people whose viewpoints are similar to our own, we are never going to change things. That doesn’t mean I agree with Monsanto, and it doesn’t mean I agree every sustainable food advocate out there, but I do think we need to find where we can agree on things, acknowledge where we can’t, and then find ways to move forward.

We have a president who is not listening to anyone else and that’s not getting us anywhere, it’s just creating a lot of bitterness and anxiety. It’s the same in the food movement—if we want anything to change, we need to start listening to one another.

When we are talking about climate change, every story should include agriculture.

MF: In many ways Food Tank acts as a media organization, blanketing the airwaves with all these new ideas about food. What you think of mainstream media organizations and how they portray the food system?

DN: I feel they are still so behind the times. That’s not to say that The New York Times hasn’t done some amazing reporting over the years on different aspects of the food system—you can’t ignore a publication where both Michael Pollan and Mark Bittman have contributed so much amazing writing. But when we are talking about climate change, for example, every story should include agriculture. Every story about urban conflict should include agriculture. I still think there’s a tendency to not understand that the food system is not only involved in many of these issues, but it can also contain solutions, whether it’s to help alleviate a conflict, find ways to quell migration, or to better engage youth at school.

So I tend to be very disappointed with mainstream media. Anything about agriculture is usually buried below the fold of the front page or inside the newspaper because it’s something that not everyone is interested in—but they should be. Why the famine in sub-Saharan Africa is not on the front page every day, or the role of agriculture in climate change, not to mention its ability to help mitigate and reverse the effects of climate change, I do not know.

MF: You seem to keep at least one foot, and sometimes two, in the international realm of agriculture. What’s the message that you want US consumers to hear about agriculture in the developing world?

DN: Great question. It’s not just what I want consumers to know, it’s what I want other farmers to know. I feel like there has been a tendency for farmers in wealthier countries to think they have so much to teach farmers in other parts of the world, and that the transfer of knowledge and technology would naturally always come from the United States. In some cases that’s true; I think farmers here have a lot to share and that north-south collaboration is important. But what I am really invigorated by, and what I’ve actually seen a lot of, is that we have a lot to learn from farmers in the Global South. So I would love to see more of that south to north sharing of information.

We shouldn’t be ignoring farmers in the rest of the world just because they might be “less developed than we are.”

MF: What might that look like?

DN: Many farmers in developing nations have been dealing with certain things for a long time that are kind of new to American farmers, especially in terms of climate change. Like the wildfires that devastated livestock farmers in the Midwest over the last few weeks and the drought in California. Things like that are an everyday thing for many farmers in poor countries. Those farmers have learned to pivot and change their production practices quickly, though I grant that these farms are often a lot smaller than those in the United States.

There is also a lot to share around things like agroforestry, growing more indigenous and locally-adapted crops, and working with traditional livestock breeds. These are all things that could serve as important lessons for farmers in the United States and in other rich countries. We shouldn’t be ignoring farmers in the rest of the world just because they might be, quote-unquote, less developed than we are.

MF: In a similar vein, what do you think a conventional commodity crop farmer from the Midwest might have to teach a young aspiring organic farmer?

DN: I think many of these older farmers really understand the business of farming in a way that many upstart farmers do not. It’s easy to forget that farmers are businessmen, and businesses need business plans. Idealistic young people in every profession go in not knowing exactly what they’re doing financially. When I started Food Tank I didn’t have a clue about fundraising. Fortunately I had great help from my board to help me figure that out. Those are skills that we all need to learn, and hopefully we find great mentors along the way. But we also need a government that supports farmers in learning those essential skills.

Danielle Nierenberg speaking on a panel/photo by Stephan Röhl on Flickr

Agricultural Futures: From Home Aeroponic Gardens to Vertical Urban Farms

Agricultural Futures: From Home Aeroponic Gardens to Vertical Urban Farms

03.27.17

Kurt Kohlstedt

Located in an abandoned 70,000-square-foot factory in Newark, New Jersey, the world’s largest vertical farm aims to produce 2,000,000 pounds of food per year. This AeroFarms operation is also set up to use 95% less water than open fields, with yields 75 times higher per square foot. Their stacked, high-efficiency aeroponics system needs no sunlight, soil or pesticides. The farm’s proximity to New York City means lower transportation costs and fresher goods to a local market. It also means new jobs for a former industrial district.

Around the world, urban farms are sprouting up at the intersection of new growing technologies and localvore movements. They vary in scale and focus, but their goals are generally similar: produce fruits and vegetables in more efficient, cheaper and greener ways. Growing in controlled environments also reduces environmental variables, like pests, weather and even seasons (allowing for more predictable year-round yields). Factory farm tenants can also take over and adaptively reuse structures in depressed areas with disused industrial building stock, creating employment opportunities in the process.

In a way, these endeavors are a natural extension of long-standing trends in farming. Small farms gave way to large farms, but the latter still involved open fields and variable environments. Urban farms take things to the next level, making the farm-to-table distance shorter, controlling conditions and further optimizing around available space.

Factory farm approaches are not without the limitations, however. Currently, the cost of material and technological inputs remain high. Also, many of these bigger indoor farms are designed to yield a limited subset of crops (like leafy greens) rather than a complex array of produce. Production weights and yield statistics would be somewhat less impressive were these farms focusing on a broader spectrum of fruits and vegetables, including ones that require more space to grow.

Still, the more these technologies are explored and refined the more efficient they will become — it is worth pushing them forward. At the same time, moving food production indoors and/or to urban settings is not limited to large factory operations. The global trend is unfolding at multiple scales and in different ways.

Expressions of commercial indoor farming can vary from one city to the next, responding to specific opportunities and needs in different built environments. In London, England, old subterranean WWII bomb shelters have been converted into herb farms serving local restaurants. In Berlin, Germany, a supermarket chain has introduced vertical micro-farms to grow greens for their shoppers right inside their stores. In New York City, a prototype barge farm docks at various stops, bringing produce to food deserts. In rural Japan, a high-tech vegetable factory run entirely by robots is set to produce 30,000 heads of lettuce a day.

Small-Scale & Individual Indoor Farming

While some initiatives focus on larger-scale or city-specific production, a trend is developing at the smaller end of the spectrum, enabling urban homeowners and small businesses to become part of a distributed network of production (much like 3D printing). IKEA, for example, now offers an aeroponics kit for indoor home gardening that needs no soil and uses sensors to monitor water levels.

IKEA also recently developed a prototype farming system aimed at letting restaurants grow their own ingredients in-house. As with larger-scale urban farms, these offer a critical advantage over outdoor equivalents: they require no rooftops or backyards to operate.

Integrated & Shared Indoor Farming

Hybrid approaches are also growing in popularity, combining aspects of collaboration and individualization. Shared farming space can take advantage of scale and consolidation but also build communities around shared tasks (and rewards).

A project called ReGen aims to combine the best of all worlds, blending urban, suburban and rural living in a series of off-grid communities. Each ReGen village hosts an integrated array of homes, greenhouses and other institutions, mixing farming and community. They are building the first prototype village outside Amsterdam and then aim to begin deploying the same model around the world.

A Tokyo office building, meanwhile, has already mixed productive greenery into its office spaces, aiming to provide workers with a more natural environment while growing edible fruits and veggies for their cafeteria. Food production is built right into the structure and aesthetic of the building, plugging nature directly into the architecture.

The Future of Indoor Urban Farming

At the heart of the ten projects featured here is an effort to rethink the way we produce food now and will in the future. Existing paradigms of small personal gardens and large outdoor farms can be thought of as bookends to a growing library of indoor farming possibilities.

Of course, some of these projects go viral without regard to feasibility, which could sour the public’s appetite for innovation when visionary designs fizzle in the face of reality. A Farmbot, for instance, sounds great in theory, but the device costs thousands of dollars and is arguably more of a novelty item than a practical technology.

It is hard to say whether large-scale urban farms, city-specific solutions, distributed-tech approaches or hybrid ideas will dominate the next generation of urban agriculture, but it is well worth pursuing projects spanning these extremes (as well as alternatives in between).

Exterior rendering of AeroFarms factory conversion in New Jersey

Aeroponics system diagram

Bomb shelter farm, supermarket micro-farm, floating barge farm and robot-run factory farm

Michael Abelman: Urban Agriculture

Michael Abelman: Urban Agriculture

By PeakProsperity on March 27, 2017 3:43 pm in Politics, Videos

Food security is a foundational cornerstone of resilience, which is why here at Peak Prosperity we recommend sourcing a substantial percentage of your food calories locally. Buy from nearby sustainable farms and, if at all possible, grow some of your own food yourself.

Broin / Pixabay

Urban Agriculture

While many of our readers are now doing exactly this, we commonly hear how difficult it can be to follow these steps for those living in the suburbs or large cities.

Today, we welcome Michael Abelman to the program to share a successful urban agriculture model he’s helped to pioneer. Michael is the founder of the non-profit Center For Urban Agriculture, and has recently authored the book Street Farm: Growing Food, Jobs, and Hope on the Urban Frontier — which focuses on his efforts to transform acres of vacant and contaminated land in one of North America’s worst urban slums and grow artisan-quality fruits and vegetables.

In today’s discussion, Michael Abelman walks us through how farming in our cities is indeed possible. In fact, it not only results in healthier foods, but in healthier communities, too:

Our Sole Food Street Farm started when I received a phone call, eight or nine years ago, asking me to attend a meeting in Vancouver on the downtown eastside. The downtown eastside is a distressed neighborhood where the term “Skid Row” was coined. The invitation was to meet with several social service agencies in the neighborhood to discuss some interesting strategies for helping people in that community — the entire neighborhood is almost entirely inhabited by folks who are dealing with some form of long-term addiction, mental illness, and certainly, high levels of material poverty.

The group of people meeting had access to a half acre parking lot next to one of the dive hotels, and we decided there was a desire to do something agricultural. We decided that the most important thing that we could achieve was to try to create a model that developed meaningful work employment; a reason for people to get out of bed each day. And so, we developed that first half acre as a model — we created a technical system that allowed us to safely grow on either pavement or contaminated land using innovative boxes we designed that isolate the growing medium.

And we eventually expanded to over almost five acres of land on four different sites — including a production orchard, 16,000 square feet of high tunnel unheated greenhouses, and large open parking lots — to the point where we’re now producing 25 tons of food annually and employing close to 30 people.

And we now have people employed with us who before had never held a job for longer five or six months, but they’ve been with us now for almost eight years in supervisor positions, having in many ways cleaned up their act, learned new skills, and found some sense of purpose.

Click the play button below to listen to Adam’ interview with Michael Abelman (58m:23s).

Canada’s Prime Minister Trudeau Visits Rooftop Lufa Farm

Canada’s Prime Minister Trudeau Visits Rooftop Lufa Farm

Mar 24, 2017, 17:31 ET

With the completion of its 3rd high-tech greenhouse, and its symbiosis with local farmers, Lufa Farms has grown into a compelling role model for sustainable urban agriculture.

MONTREAL, March 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ - Urban agriculture pioneer Lufa Farms has just finished a third highly automated greenhouse in the Montreal borough of Anjou. The Right Honourable Justin Trudeau was there to see it in full production.

The new 63,000 square foot rooftop greenhouse is a milestone in polyculture efficiency and produces over 40 varieties of urban-grown greens and vegetables, all year round. Lufa Farms' six years of rapid growth and its successes in rooftop greenhouse design, cooperation with local sustainability-focused farmers, and appeal to thousands of Montreal consumers, make it one of the most successful large-scale urban agriculture models in the world, demonstrating how to sustainably feed entire cities.

The Prime Minister was given a full tour of the new production facility by Lufa Farms founders Mohamed Hage and Lauren Rathmell. He witnessed first-hand the innovative complexity of the rooftop greenhouse, and even took time to harvest a basket of fresh greens for himself and his family.

The new rooftop greenhouse is a marvel in automation. It was designed by Dutch greenhouse innovators at KUBO, outfitted by Belgian greenhouse automation experts, Hortiplan, and includes advanced horticultural lighting systems from GE.

The construction of the new greenhouse was supported by Quebec financial partners Fonds de solidarité FTQ and La Financière agricole du Québec.

From one rooftop greenhouse to a new paradigm in urban agriculture

Lufa Farms began operating the world's first commercial-scale rooftop greenhouse in 2011. It was built with the goal of using sustainable irrigation, energy and growing systems for cultivation of pesticide-free produce. The first greenhouse, with 8 employees, produced more than 25 varieties of vegetables and delivered them, weekly, to a few hundred Montreal consumers.

The second Lufa Farms' rooftop greenhouse began operation in 2013. With it, the company introduced an online marketplace so that consumers could select and buy fresh Lufa Farms produce together with responsible produce, meat, dairy, bread, and more provided by hundreds of local farmers and foodmakers. The result is that consumers receive the freshest sustainably-grown goods, local farmers get a viable outlet for their products, and the city benefits from optimized land, water, and energy use.

A disruptive rethink of food production and distribution

The most recent greenhouse caps six years of steady growth and innovation. The Lufa Farms team now consists of more than 140 employees, grows over 70 different vegetable varieties, and delivers more than 10,000 food baskets every week of the year.

"We began this venture because of our passion for rooftop farming. We didn't start out as farmers and I'd never even grown a tomato before," says Lauren Rathmell, Co-Founder and Greenhouse Director of Lufa Farms. "But we did what made sense to us as technologists and problem solvers. Today, we understand that successful urban agriculture requires not only advanced greenhouse technology, but also direct-to-client distribution, and working together with local, sustainable farmers and food artisans. The sum of all the parts, working together, is greater than the whole."

The future of Lufa Farms

Founded in 2009 by Mohamed Hage, Lauren Rathmell, Kurt Lynn, and Yahya Badran, Lufa Farms now has acombined urban growing space of 138,000 square feet. The company plans to continue the expansion of its urban farm projects in Quebec urban centres, and also in select New England locations in the U.S.

For more information about Lufa Farms click here. For images of Lufa Farms and the Prime Minister's visit, see the Flickr album.

SOURCE LUFA FARMS

Related Links

www.lufa.com

Three Ways To Urban Agricultures: Digging Into Three Very Different Offerings From Three New Books

Three Ways To Urban Agricultures: Digging Into Three Very Different Offerings From Three New Books

By Wayne Roberts

When Socrates, Plato and the gang had their dialogues about the inner essence of beauty, truth and justice, while hanging out at the farmers market in downtown ancient Athens, they had no idea of the problems they would create for urban agriculture 2500 years later.

Unfortunately, urban agriculture is still all Greek to many city planners.

That might seem like a stretch, but give me a chance to make my point. The ancient Greeks established the pattern of looking for absolute and universal Truth in the singular. The simplest way to see the legacy of this tradition in today’s thinking about food is to look at all the single-minded words. Think of such commonly used expressions as food policy, food strategy, food culture, local food, sustainable food, alternative food, and urban agriculture. Not much pluralism, plurals or variation here!!

We betray the Greek origin of western styles of thinking every time we use the singular to discuss potential options with regard to the abundance of foods and food choices that urban lives and modern technologies provide (please note my use of the plural).

So, for example, we have city discussions about the need for a city policy on urban agriculture, instead of city discussions about the need for city policies to support various forms of urban agricultures.

The ancient Greek philosophers, despite many wonderful ideas they developed, were hung up with locating the one and only essence of things — an abstraction that was independent of the ups and downs of momentary appearance.

They didn’t like messy realities because they were too messy, and left that world to slaves and women. That tradition is still alive and unwell, as the low wages and standing of agricultural and food preparation work shows. The jobs that pay well are jobs removed from messy realities.

Likewise, to this day, a narrow and absolutist mindset straitjackets our thinking about food policy in cities.

Alfonso Morales edits new book on many forms of city farms

To wit, the way cities agonize over a policy (note the singular) for urban agriculture (note the singular), rather than a suite of policies (note the plural) to help as many who are interested, for whatever reasons (note the plural), be they love or money, to eat foods (note the plural) they have grown or raised or foraged in varieties (note the plural) of spaces (note the plural) — from front yards, to back yards, to green roofs, to green walls, to balconies, to windowsills, to allotment gardens, to community gardens, to beehives, to butterfly gardens, to teaching and therapeutic gardens, to edible landscaping, to soil-based, hydroponic and aquaponic greenhouses, to vacant lots, to public orchards, to community composting centers, to grey water recycling for lawns and gardens, to formally-sited farms and meadows.

LET ME COUNT THE WAYS

There are so many opportunities, so many points on the urban agricultures spectrum, that we can’t even say “urban agriculture is what it is.”

That fact is that “urban agricultures are what they are,” and city governments in different areas should embrace many of them.

Of course, public authorities need to practice their usual due diligence in terms of personal and public safety, but the emphasis of policy should not be on toleration or permission, but management and stewardship of the health, environmental, community and economic yields of urban ag.

Janine de la Salle’s wake-up call

This is in marked contrast to the present mode of civic management over urban agriculture. City food planning advocate Janine de la Salle, who has the fortune to work in Vancouver, which is an exception to the rule, describes the norm as one where officials need a wake-up call because they’re managing urban agriculture in the same passive way they manage sleep, another essential of life. Like sleep, urban food production is treated as “necessary, but not meant to be regulated or managed in any meaningful way,” she writes in her chapter in the book Cities of Farmers.

That nice little dig (there are many ways to dig in support of urban agricultures) brings me to the business at hand in this newsletter, a review of three fairly new resources (two books, one assortment of essays) on urban agriculture — each of which sheds a distinctive light on the growing possibilities of urban food production.

VIEWS FROM MADISON

The best to begin with is the collection edited by Julie Dawson and Alfonso Morales, called Cities of Farmers: Urban Agricultural Practices and Processes. It sets the stage.

Horticulture expert Julie Dawson co-edited Cities of Farmers

The two editors come from the state university in Madison, Wisconsin, where the late city planning authority, Jerry Kaufman, spread his protective wings around a new generation of urbanists who now teach and practice city food planning around the world. Before Kaufman, the conventional wisdom of city planners was that food was produced in rural areas and consumed in cities; cities should stick with making things that provided the “highest use” of expensive city land. This anthology, which breaks totally from convention, is a worthy basket from the harvest Kaufman seeded. (To be transparent, I am as indebted to encouragement from Kaufman as any of his students.)

Jerry Kaufman, godfather of city food planning

To be more transparent, I got to see this book before it was published, so I could write a back cover blurb drawing attention to its “down to earth quality” that can help city planners, health promoters, community developers and “all who love what a garden does for a day outdoors, a yard or parkette, a great meal, and quality time with others.”

The breakthrough of the book, in my view, is that it doesn’t ask the ancient and unanswerable philosophical question about “what is urban agriculture.” Instead, it asks the more pointed and fruitful question: what do urban agriculture projects do.

The book’s answers (note the plural) form the most comprehensive overview yet of how the “multi-functionality” of both agriculture and food can generate the many benefits that urban agricultures bestow on cities.

Producing food may well be the least accomplishment of urban agriculture, though that extra food can really make a difference for people on low income. But the crop itself is only one contribution on a long list that includes enhanced public safety, community vitality and cohesion, neighborhood place-making, skill development, food literacy, garbage reduction (through composting) and green infrastructure.

down to earth look at urban ag

As Erin Silva and Anne Pfeiffer argue in their chapter on agroecology in cities, the sheer range of benefits bestowed by urban agricultures dwarfs the efficiency of any one particular contribution — be it food production or the development of community food literacy. This knocks the economic analysts for a loop because the premise of this book is that the whole is greater than the part, and the efficiency comes out of the whole, not any one part. “Though food production remains a central focus for many operations,” they write, “ it is often a means to achieve other social benefits rather than the singular goal.”

As I used to put it during my working days at the city of Toronto, the success of all forms of food activities, including urban agricultures, rest on the economies of scope, not the economies of scale.

Therein lies the key to measuring true productivity, and when we understand why that breakthrough method of measuring progress in food matters, we will come to see the potential of totally different methods of managing and incentivizing food activities.

HOW DO YOU GET TO GARDEN AT CARNEGIE HALL? PRACTICE!!

Though I like all the essays in the book, the one that knocks my socks off is by Nevin Cohen and Katinka Wijsman. It highlights the central role of food practices in a way that points to new ways of promoting food activities that go far beyond the boundaries of urban agricultures. (Are you becoming more comfortable with all the plurals?)

Nevin Cohen, co-author, practices looking like a gardener

This essay is fundamental to anybody who want to make the journey from food policy to implementation of new food practices.

I never had a policy of brushing or flossing my teeth after a meal. But sometime before I remember, I learned the practice of brushing my teeth — though I learned the wrong practice that was standard in my day, of scrubbing up and down and side to side, not gently brushing up or down from the gums to prevent gum damage. Unfortunately, I didn’t get the practice right in time to save my gums from painful and expensive dental work, which also instilled in me the practice of flossing. At this point, flossing is no longer a policy decision I make, but a practice I follow “automatically.” That norm of “practice”is one followed by people who practice anything from medicine to yoga, and we now need to normalize it in good food practices. As medicine, yoga, Cohen and Wijsman make clear, policy is the servant of practice, not the other way around.

Their essay reviews how New Yorkers went from policy advocacy to practices that implemented community gardens. They not only normalized community gardens on the most expensive real estate in the world, they incorporated forms of urban agricultures into the basic infrastructures of a city — from green roofs and walls to green paths and street greenings that manage stormwater.

The gardening version of pilgrims’ progress in New York City has been as much about advancing practices as policies, Cohen and Widjsman argue.

Indeed, practices need to become the a lens for all people who seek meaningful food system changes in food. Part of the thinking behind a city establishing a food policy council or urban agriculture sub-committee is to provide an institutional focus for the new civic practice of automatically saying “we can do our due diligence on food practices by referring this issue on (whatever) to the food policy council and urban ag committee, and asking if we overlooked any possible food enhancements.”

We have come full circle from Plato and the ancient Greeks, who saw theory as the exemplar of purity, not defiled by the shadows in the caves that people lived in. This is why we now need to refer to people who get the new paradigm of meaningful change as “communities of practice.”

Developing such communities is the way we build vehicles for food system transformation, just as people who practice yoga or medicine or meditation work their changes.

When you have finished this book, you will be mentally ready for the latest practices from one of the master practitioners of organic food production.

ABLEMAN’S ABILITY

Michael Ableman is one of the preeminent growers, photographers, speakers, writers and entrepreneurs produced by the global organic movement. He was able to bring all these mature skills and practices to the most delicate, fragile and responsible project of a lifetime — cultivating the skills and practices of 25 employees from Vancouver’s notoriously drug-ridden Downtown East End to the point where they tended five acres on four beautiful and productive food gardens. Urban agricultures don’t get much grittier than this. Ableman’s book, Street Farm: Growing Food, Jobs, and Hope on the Urban Frontier, tells the story.

Street Farm goes beyond-down-to-earth; it’s down to pavement

There was no utopian vision — it takes a practiced hand to know to steer clear of that — but Ableman and his crew “wanted the world to know that people from this neighborhood, those who were viewed as low-life losers, could create something beautiful and productive; that they could eat from it, feed others, and get a paycheck from its abundance; and that it could sustain itself for more than a few days or weeks or months or years.”

If urban agricultures can accomplish something akin to that, city gardens can produce something every bit as essential as food. This is what people-centered food policy is about.

Devoted organic grower and foodie that he is, Ableman digs the people-centeredness of this urban agriculture project. Employing and enabling the neighborhood farm workers is the mission of the street farm, he writes, citing the Japanese farm philosopher Masanobu Fukuoka who insisted the “ultimate goal of farming is not the growing of crops, but the cultivation of human beings.” He came to regard his fellow workers as “farmily.”That does put urban agricultures in context, and explains why land-use policy for urban agriculture deserves to be classified as among the “highest uses” of urban land.

Ableman also understands that urban agriculture is not just rural agriculture in a city. It sometimes has to be adapted in stark ways. He came to understand, for example, that a paved parking lot was an ideal foundation on which to build, and that the best way to grow was in some 5000 wood and plastic bins (almost 10,000 at the time of this writing), which can be moved when a lease or a welcome run out.

Does Abelam see urban ag as another way to bring art to the people?

He also understands the centrality of partnerships and of champions on city staff to his success; they are the city farmer’s environment, as important and immediate as nature is to the rural farmer. At one point, he even argues that the crisis of global industrial agriculture is, above all, “a crisis of participation” — which distances people from their food as much as the 5000 mile trip that Asian rice takes to a plate on the eastern seaboard of the Americas.

WHAT HUMANS HAVE IN COMMONS

Ableman’s understanding of the centrality of engaging the human side of food production (should we call it human-centered food policy?) is the segway to the third body of work considered in this newsletter on urban agricultures — the work of Chiara Tornaghi at Coventry University in England.

As I read her articles, Tornaghi is so bold as to put our psychic needs of our deeply-rooted human spirit on par with deeply human physical needs for food — and thereby to classify citizen access to urban food production as essential. Only such a deep understanding of the need to engage with and participate in food production could account for her proposal that access to food production opportunities be classified as part of a citizen’s inborn and inherent “right to the city.”

Gardening activist Chiara Tornaghi and her assistant

Tornaghi’s work is accessible in a variety of places — including one article on how to set up an urban ag project, and one pieceon the critical geography of urban ag, and one study on urban ag and the politics of empowerment, and one reporton gardening activism, as well as a publication on European urban agriculture.

She’s pretty much out there, with phrases such as “insurgent urbanism” and “politics of engagement, capability and empowerment,” along with references to the commons, metabolism and other clues that Tornaghi has spent as much time in obscure sections of libraries, as in gardens.

At the very least, she is refreshing. People concerned about the runaway rates of mental ill-health among young people cannot ignore what she has to say about addressing human needs to work directly in nature — and thereby counterbalance the highly built, urbanized, synthetic, abstracted, impersonal, mediated and corporate-controlled environment of dense cities.

In my view, this mental health and well-being perspective is the most urgent and compelling reason for city planners and managers to listen up on the subject of urban agricultures.

I don’t want to gild the lily of what she has to say. There are calls to action from earlier times that call for direct action, by which was meant “take power into your own hands, and come to a demonstration calling on someone else to do something.”

By contrast, Tornaghi’s is a direct action call to meet with your neighbors, find a place to stand, dig in, and get your hands in the dirt. It deals with justice not just as a distributive matter — how to divvy up the harvest so the one per cent don’t get almost all of it and the poor get little — but a capability matter: the right of people to develop their capacities and not have to settle for a consuming life that renders us spectators of our own lives.

WE ARE WHAT WE GROW

Steven Bourne of Toronto’s Ripple Farms finds himself and a job

You shouldn’t have to leave the city to get in touch with your deeper self.

Tornaghi’s is a shout-out to go beyond the civic benefits that urban agriculture provides a city to the human benefits food production bestows on that undomesticated “gardener” and “forager” part of our inner being, brain, mind and soul. If that is not well, then life in cities cannot be good.

Although there is huge wisdom in the clichéd phrase about “we are what we eat,” we now need to recognize that we are just as much what we forage and grow and make. We are also what we grow and produce. We evolved to eat in certain ways, and we also evolved to feed ourselves. The two are inseparable. The two were severed by industrial agriculture, which turned most eaters into consumers. Now we need to heal that breach.

Urban agriculture is the ultimate offering that food makes to people in cities — not what has long been considered the punishment of hard labor, meted out to humans as penalty for their sins, but what is really food’s greatest gift — the opportunity to engage and participate in the labor as well as the joys of meaningful work.

SALAD DAYS OF CITY FARMING

I’m look for a fourth book to round this picture out, a book that captures the energy of a new generation of city farmers who are growing salad greens in freight containers repurposed as greenhouses. They can fit into any number of small places and provide conditions for growing fish (aquaponics) and greens (hydroponics), together or separately.

Brandon Hebor

Like Steve Bourne and Brandon Hebor of Ripple Farms in Toronto, these ecopreneurs repurpose old freight containers, rescuing them from landfill, outfit them with grow lights and containers for fish and plants, and locate them in an out-of-the-way but accessible space (in this case, just by the parking lot of the popular Brickworks farmers market) where the 100 yard diet applies to producers and shoppers.

They can grow microgreens and fish, and they can grow micropreneur jobs by the tens of thousands — with a potential for each micro-green micro-business to supply one farmers market, or one food truck, or one school meal program, with fresh-grown greens and fish from the neighborhood.

Talk about a disruptive business model that will affect the way people can access ultra-local fresh greens and fish for 12 months of the year!!!!! They’re so close to their customers, they don’t even need to call Uber for deliveries!

Indoor ag is just one of the many ways that the many forms of urban agriculture can benefit cities. There are many more to put in the urban ag bucket list.

(Wayne Roberts also produces a free newsletter on food and cities. It links readers to all his publications, and provides other timely information from the field. To sign up, go to http://bit.ly/OpportunCity)

More Speakers Confirmed For GFIA Future Farming Theatre

24 Mar 2017 

More Speakers Confirmed For GFIA Future Farming Theatre

Already many experts have been confirmed to speak about smart farming at the Proagrica Future Farming theatre at the Global Forum for Innovations in Agriculture (GFIA).

The GFIA will be held from 9-10 May 2017 at the Jaarbeurs Expo Centre in Utrecht, the Netherlands. The event will focus on practical applications and knowledge on Future Farming in horticulture, crops and livestock. The event is organised by Turret Media in cooperation with Proagrica (publisher of All About Feed, Farmers Weekly, Boerderij amongst others)

Proagrica will have its Future Farming Proagrica Theatre, held over 2 days, at the exhibition ground. At this theatre, new ideas, future farming insights will be shared in the fields of dairy, pig and poultry farming, horticulture and arable farming, each having 3 focus topics. The editors of Proagrica brands will moderate the sessions. Each session will have an independent speaker and 2 sponsored speakers. We are proud to confirm some of the speakers to you.

Future Farming Poultry: Feeding, animal management, big data

Poultry breeding has become precision agriculture and a fine art. Sergio Guerra from Aviagen will talk about the use of big data in poultry breeding and how this can be used by the whole production chain and what are the latest insights? 
Ron Cramer from Xiant Technologies (XTI) will speak about innovative lighting in poultry barns. XTI has created a highly differentiated approach to agricultural lighting for both poultry and plants. XTI uses light as a primary controller of biological function by targeting specific photoreceptors in a variety of living species.

Future Farming Pigs: Genetics and breeding, gestation and lactation, grow/finishing

Jurgen van Geyte from the Belgium research institute ILVO has done research in the use of big data in pig production systems. ILVO is part of the project IOF2020, a large scale pilot focused on implementation of Internet of things. How does this apply to pigs? Van Geyte will delve more into that. 
Dirk Coucke from DLV Mas in Belgium will speak about an innovative pricing/market advisory service/tool for pig farmers who buy their own raw materials and complete feed. A smart way of doing business is smart purchasing of feed.

Future Farming Dairy: Robotic milking, hygiene, young stock

Calves are the basis for a successful dairy farm. More insights have been gained on smart feeding/housing for calves. Expert Siert-Jan Boersema from Jongvee Coach in the Netherlands will present the latest insights on smart ways to get the most out of young stock.

Future Farming Horti: Precision farming, track and trace, robotics

Marc Kreuger, global head of innovation at the company Here, There and Everywhere. This company designs and builds turnkey indoor farming projects, supplies long term technical and growing support and is actively involved in starting up new businesses and supply chain models that include indoor farming solutions. He will update the audience on the latest insights and developments in this field.

Future Farming Arable: More efficient harvesting, control of pests, use of big data

Sjaak Wolfert from Wageningen UR in the Netherlands will give a short overview of smart farming in agriculture / outdoor cropping systems and how big data is used to boost efficiency and production. 

Jérémie Wainstain, CEO of The Green Data will speak about how to extract value from your data. The Green Data Factory is a suite of services dedicated to agridata analysis to give you the power to optimise performance and adoption by your experts.

Want to pitch your idea/product/concept? Companies can still be part of this exciting and innovative theatre for one slot or as sponsor of the whole theatre (including slots for presentations)! Do you want to share your knowledge and practical insights in a 20 minute practical talk and share this directly with the farmers and international experts in the audience? For more information, please contact our dedicated team of account managers to tell you more about the possibilities.

Emmy Koeleman

Editor: All About Feed & Dairy Global

Impression of the Proagrica Future Farming Theatre at the GFIA. An exciting place where 5 seminars will be held about smart farming, with a practical ‘How To’ approach. Photo: Proagrica

McNamara: “The Future Is So Much More Complex Than We Could Have Imagined”

McNamara: “The Future Is So Much More Complex Than We Could Have Imagined”

Brad McNamara, CEO and co-founder of Freight Farms, is speaking at the inaugural Boston Food Tank Summit, “Investing in Discovery,” which will be held in collaboration with Tufts University and Oxfam America on April 1, 2017.

Freight Farms is an agriculture technology company that provides physical and digital solutions for creating local produce ecosystems on a global scale. Brad and his co-founder, Jon Friedman, developed the company’s flagship product, the Leafy Green Machine, to allow any business to grow a high-volume of fresh produce in any environment regardless of the climate. His hope is for Freight Farms to be scattered across the globe making a dramatic impact on how food is produced.

Food Tank had the chance to speak to Brad about his work developing Freight Farms and his vision for the future of our food system.

Brad McNamara, CEO and co-founder of Freight Farms, is speaking at the inaugural Boston Food Tank Summit, “Investing in Discovery.”

Food Tank (FT): What originally inspired you to get involved in your work?

Brad McNamara (BM): It was a coming together of many different factors. My co-founder, Jon, and I had worked together in the past, and we were both intrigued by the food system and how we could make a difference. Around 2009, Jon was focused on food systems and system design, and I was passionate about the purity of food and the increasing trend towards food awareness. When the two of us first reconnected over a cup of coffee (and then a beer), we got to talking about the complexity of the food system and what we could do to combine our interests. With backgrounds in design and environmental science, our goal was to research methods to allow urban agriculture to emerge as a competitive industry in food production. We mainly focused on rooftop development, then determined the criteria for success and scale to be outside the realm of possibility with agricultural installations that were already in existence. When costs and logistics soared, we turned to shipping containers (there’s Jon’s design background coming into play), and the idea for Freight Farms took off with the goal to build farms in areas that couldn’t support more traditional methods.

FT: What makes you continue to want to be involved in this kind of work?

BM: Our world and our climate are changing, and it is so apparent that there is more work to be done. According to the U.N., food production needs to increase 70 percent by 2050, to feed an ever-urbanizing population. Land and water scarcity take on even more pressing importance, as does urban agriculture. The future is so much bigger and more complex than we could have ever imagined. Over the past few years, we’ve gotten to witness the emergence of a new industry of agriculture technology, and it’s poised to make a dramatic impact on the food system. One of the most amazing things we’ve been able to watch is how many are interested in joining the movement towards a better future. Our network of freight farmers are making dramatic impacts on their local food systems every day, drastically improving food security in their community. They inspire all of us to continue this work.

FT: Can you share a story about a food hero who has inspired you?

BM: My food hero is a customer of ours. His name is Ted Katsiroubas, and he runs Katsiroubas Bros. Fruit and Produce, a wholesale produce distribution company located in the heart of the city of Boston. The business is over 100 years old and was handed down from generations before. I admire how Ted has innovated in the face of a dramatically changing food landscape. As the demand for local, fresh produce has risen, the company expanded to begin working with local farms in the region to meet demand. For those familiar with wholesale distribution, sourcing locally can be a difficult task especially when you are restricted by the growing seasons and volume constraints of small local farmers. That’s why traditionally wholesale distributors rely on shipping produce long distances from warmer climates. But Ted brings a fresh approach to an old school industry. He continues to push the envelope and propel the industry to stay on top of the latest technology through collaboration with other distributors. If anyone were to fall into the category of my food hero, it would be Ted because of his willingness to look to the future and go against the conventional wisdom of how the food industry tells him to conform.

FT: What do you see as the biggest opportunity for fix the food system?

BM: I think the biggest opportunity to fix the food system is to bring it back into the hands of the people. By transitioning to a more decentralized food system, and minimizing the gap between consumers and producers, we will take a critical step towards an environmentally and economically sustainable food system. I think all the various types of technology, the hardware, the software, and the social awareness, all point in the direction to empower the individual. So the real opportunity to fix the system is to utilize what we know to be true—when you give opportunity and power to regular people from all walks of life, that’s when you can change a whole system.

FT: What would you say is the most pressing issue in food and agriculture that you would like to see solved?

BM: There are so many people advocating for a better food system, and we all must be better at communicating and cooperating if we want to make an organized effort to challenge the way things operate currently. From small farmers and producers to organizations and companies. What has become incredibly apparent in the past couple decades is that there is no one size fits all solution. Whether it’s urban or indoor agriculture, hydroponics, aeroponics, aquaponics, or traditional soil-based farming, we all play an important role. We need to have a more holistic view of the food system and how each method can contribute to a better future. If we don’t all work together, it’s going to be difficult to disrupt BigAg. I think taking a broader view is key. There has been so much progress made in agriculture, but we still have a long way to go to create a food system that will serve future generations. It is important to continue working with and connecting with each other to empower and support the next generation of farmers.

FT: What is one small change everyone can make in their daily lives to make a difference?

BM: Maybe it is a bit cliché, but the notion of voting with your dollars. I’m sure others have said it, but it is so important. If every consumer changed 5 percent of their food shopping habits by buying more seasonal and local produce, the impact would be enormous in changing the landscape of the local grocery store.

FT: What advice can you give to President Trump and the U.S. Congress on food and agriculture?

BM: My advice is to be conscious of all the complexities present within the food and agriculture system. There are so many moving pieces that small shifts in the workforce, water use, and the climate have a massive impact throughout the entire system. It is essential to keep a holistic understanding of the relationships between all the components in our food and agricultural system and to consider the ripple effect policy decisions will have on the smaller players involved.

Click here to purchase tickets to Food Tank’s inaugural Boston Summit.

A New Type of Farm is Letting Us Grow 100 Times More Food

A New Type of Farm is Letting Us Grow 100 Times More Food

Farming has been a cornerstone of civilization for a long time — even before sewer systems. As humans have evolved, so has farming. Thanks to drones, CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing, and a host of other innovations, we have come farther than we would have ever thought possible — including reaching new heights with vertical farming.

The pinnacle of modern agriculture can be found in Kearney, New Jersey at Bowery farms. The farming company claims it has the capacity to grow 100 times more per square foot than average industrial farms. This might be because the vertical farm calibrates “synthetic” parameters for its produce. Thanks to indoor LEDs that mimic natural sunlight, and nutrient-rich waterbeds that are easy to stack from floor to ceiling, Bowery is able to grow over 80 different types of produce. Bowery will begin selling its organic produce, — including popular salad fixings such as kale and arugula — in NYC come March 6th, at around $3.99 per five-ounce package.

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THE FUTURE OF FARMING

What’s so remarkable about Bowery is that it underscores the next generation of agriculture. While traditional farming is unlikely to disappear anytime soon, vertical farming showcases increased automation, reduced emissions, and all-around reduced costs.

Automated machines efficiently move water around the plants using a proprietary software known as FarmOS. The unique operating system adapts to new data, adjusting environmental conditions to the warehouse. Trays are optimally stacked to the ceiling and crops are produced year round, increasing the overall efficiency of the process.

Traditional farming reduces soil productivity, wastes water, can foster the growth of pesticide-resistant insects, and increases levels of greenhouse gases. The practice itself is quickly becoming unsustainable, as there’s less land available for farming: since the 1970s, almost 30 million acres have been lost to urbanization.

While traditional agricultural methods may endure, it might be prudent to acknowledge the global and local benefits of vertical farming with so many new companies cropping up.