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Urban Farming in Singapore Has Moved Into A New, High-Tech Phase
In community gardens found in housing estates, schools and even offices, urban farms are taking root in Singapore. Such farms are not ornamental gardens. Instead, gardeners plant vegetables and fruit such as cabbage, basil and lime to eat.
Urban Farming in Singapore Has Moved Into A New, High-Tech Phase
As urban farming becomes more widespread, enthusiasts are coming up with new methods to grow edibles
JUN 3, 2017, 5:00 AM SGT
In community gardens found in housing estates, schools and even offices, urban farms are taking root in Singapore.
Such farms are not ornamental gardens. Instead, gardeners plant vegetables and fruit such as cabbage, basil and lime to eat.
Urban farms have always been popular with gardeners in Singapore, especially those who volunteer at neighbourhood community gardens.
The National Parks Board's popular Community In Bloom programme - a nationwide gardening initiative which started in 2005 - has more than 1,000 community gardening groups today. About 80 per cent of the groups in Housing Board estates grow edibles in their community gardens.
But urban farming has become more high-tech and, well, urban.
Urban farmers have started growing food in restaurants and taken over unused rooftop carpark spaces to set up garden plots.
Three urban farms stand out for their ingenuity.
The first is by a group of engineering students who have combined two aquaponics methods to get a larger harvest with more variety.
The second is by a businessman who used to sell raw materials for pesticides. He has invented a "growing tower" that does away with chemicals.
The last and most photogenic is by architecture practice Woha, which started an edible garden on the rooftop of its Hongkong Street shophouse office.
The gardening enthusiasts in the office have designed a photogenic farm, filled with lush greenery and decorated with stylish outdoor furniture.
Staff harvest vegetables and herbs such as kangkong and lemongrass to put in their salads or cook for office parties.
The Straits Times checks out these three urban farms.
PRETTY, FUNCTIONAL OFFICE ROOFTOP
Architecture practice Woha has a 2,100 sq ft organic urban farm on its rooftop, which is tended to by the firm’s gardening club, headed by Mr Jonathan Choe. ST PHOTO: LIM SIN THAI
When it comes to starting an urban farm, creating a good-looking set-up isn't usually top on the to-do list.
But for Woha, a home-grown award-winning architecture practice known for working greenery into its buildings, such as Parkroyal on Pickering hotel, urban farms can be useful and pretty.
The firm used the rooftop of its Hongkong Street office shophouse as a test bed for a 2,100 sq ft organic urban farm with more than 100 species of edible plants, including kangkong, basil, pandan, dill and bittergourd, which are shared among the staff.
Other than providing food, it is also a scenic place for staff to relax and destress, even if they are not interested in gardening.
The project, which cost $50,000, was completed last month.
Two rows of aquaponics planter beds, brimming with edible greens, are housed in sustainably treated pine wood boxes. The heights of these boxes have been designed so that gardeners need not bend over or squat when tending to the plants.
Behind these planters is a metal frame that is fitted with more planter boxes placed at different heights.
Flowering vines such as passionfruit and vanilla twine and creep up the metal frame. Some have even extended themselves across the wires overhead.
When more of these vines grow to maturity, they will create a canopy that will provide some shade in the open-air area.
Other highlights include an aquaponics system, which consists of a tilapia fish pond and a sloped planter bed. The system has water running through custom-made stainless steel water spouts. Across a short landing of wooden steps is a serene pond, centred by a tall kaffir lime tree.
Outdoor tables and chairs have been put in so that Woha's staff can pop up to the farm for a break.
Members of the firm's gardening club gather every Friday and spend about an hour tending to the plants.
A gardening workstation for potting and propagation and a large tank that collects rainwater to water the plants are kept out of sight at the back of this urban farm showpiece. The office also makes its own compost from food scraps.
Architectural designer Jonathan Choe, 28, who is the head of the gardening club, says they are looking to rear chickens there too.
He was part of the core team, including Woha founders Wong Mun Summ and Richard Hassell, that designed and built the farm.
He says: "We're not a commercial farm, where we grow vegetables just for food. It's also a beautiful sky garden, which the staff can enjoy."
USING WASTE TO GROW FOOD
Associate professor Lee Kim Seng (front) and the students behind the project (from left) – Mr Lim Zi Xiang, 35, Mr Kibria Shah, 31, and Ms Boo Jia Yan, 23. PHOTO: DIOS VINCOY JR FOR THE STRAITS TIMES
In a corner of Eng Kong Cheng Soon community garden in Lorong Kismis stands an industrial-looking set-up that contrasts sharply with the thriving greens in the soil.
A fish tank, filled with black African tilapia, is connected to long grey pipes which have cut-out holes in them. The seedlings of leafy vegetables are planted in net pots placed in these holes. Their roots dangle in the pipes and absorb the nutrient-rich water flowing through.
Above the fish tank is a container filled with clay pellets. Edible plants grow here, watered by the fish tank too.
The entire set-up is shaded by a plastic canopy that lets sunlight in, but keeps rain out.
This hybrid aquaponics system has yielded about 6kg of vegetables, such as butterhead lettuce, spring onion and Chinese cabbage, in the last two months.
The bountiful harvest is the result of a final-year project by three engineering students at the National University of Singapore (NUS).
The students built the system from scraps they found in their school's workshops. It took a few months to design and construct the 251 sq ft system, which is about the size of a room in an HDB flat.
Aquaponics combines aquaculture, the raising of edible fish, with hydroponics, growing vegetables without soil.
There are three ways to set up an aquaponics system, though common elements include having a fish tank and a soil-free plant bed. Both fish and plants are cultivated in one system. The fish waste provides organic fertiliser for the plants and the plants filter the water for the fish.
The students kept these basic features and combined two aquaponics methods - media-filled beds and Nutrient Film Technique - into one system, allowing them to grow a greater variety of plants.
The media-filled containers are good for growing plants such as tomato, brinjal and chilli. These have long stems that are kept sturdy by the clay pellets.
Leafy vegetables, which have shorter stems and long roots, are better suited for the Nutrient Film Technique - grown in net pots.
The fish can also be eaten once they are fully grown. The set-up is fully automated so they have to check in only once a week.
The students decided to work out of the community garden as they would be among seasoned gardeners. Ms Boo Jia Yan, 23, says: "There was a lot of experimentation and we had little knowledge of farming. Here, we were able to get advice about what could be improved."
They have plans to fit in high-tech features such as solar panels, which can generate electricity to power the system and install a device that allows for remote monitoring.
The set-up has attracted interest from two home owners.
Associate professor Lee Kim Seng of NUS' mechanical engineering department, who supervised the project, hopes more people will take on urban farming. "It's a very easy set-up. Why not utilise the waste to grow something good?"
VEGGIES FROM ON HIGH
Organic farming company Citiponics, run by Mr Teo Hwa Kok and Madam Jenny Toh (both above) operates 164 “growing towers” covered in leafy green vegetables, on a carpark rooftop. ST PHOTO: JAMIE KOH
At a multi-storey carpark rooftop in Kang Ching Road, 164 "growing towers" covered in leafy green vegetables rise to the sky.
Standing at 1.8m tall and lined up next to one another, these gardening systems are the result of years of research and development by Mr Teo Hwa Kok, 55, chairman of organic farming company Citiponics.
They have been used to produce about 25 types of vegetables and herbs, such as butterhead lettuce, spinach, dill, kailan, sweet basil and mizuna, a member of the mustard family.
At the base of each tower is a tank filled with water and nutrients. The mixture is pumped up to the top of each tower and flows down by gravity through a series of seven pipes arranged in a zig-zag manner.
The pipes have holes cut into them, creating pockets. Tiny clay pebbles, which have been cut to a specific size, fill these pockets. Seeds are placed among the pebbles, which is the growing medium for the plants.
As the water is constantly in motion, mosquitoes cannot breed. Also, no pesticides are used.
This is an improvement over some traditional hydroponics systems, which use water as a growing medium. This means that water can be stagnant in some parts.
Mr Teo says his version is lighter as it uses less water and can be built to any height.
The produce, which is harvested by volunteers from a nearby Residents' Committee centre, is given free to needy residents in Taman Jurong.
Mr Teo has been involved in the farming business for a long time, though he was not always a farmer. The Malaysian moved to Singapore in 1987 to work for a pesticide company. He quit in 1993 and set up his own venture selling raw materials used to make pesticides.
But as he read more reports about pesticides being misused and affecting food safety, he started to look into organic farming.
"It gave me an uncomfortable feeling so I decided to look into other ways to grow plants."
In 2001, he set up a 3ha organic farm in Malaysia, growing vegetables in soil. It did not take off and he gave it up about two years later.
He calls it a "very expensive experience" as consumers were not ready to pay high prices for pesticide-free vegetables then.
About seven years ago, he decided to try organic farming again and came up with the prototype for the growing towers.
He operates Citiponics with the help of Madam Jenny Toh, 55, who used to work in his pesticides business.
Citiponics has taken its growing towers to China and Malaysia.
On average, each growing tower costs about $4,800 and Mr Teo says it can last 20 years. A harvest from one tower can weigh between 5 and 10kg, depending on what vegetable is grown.
For his next green project, he wants to look into making pesticide-free feed for chicken and fish.
"Maybe one day, we can reduce the use of pesticides. Until then, we have to keep pushing ourselves to improve the safety of our food."
The Non-Profit Urban Roots Has Broken Ground For Its First Planting This Spring
There are big plans for that little bit of turned-over urban ground. For the people behind London’s first not-for-profit organic urban farm, it’s a big step back to the community’s agrarian roots and using empty spaces to produce food.
The Non-Profit Urban Roots Has Broken Ground For Its First Planting This Spring
By Jane Sims, The London Free Press
Tuesday, May 30, 2017 | 7:40:25 EDT AM
Cars and trucks speed down the hill along Highbury Avenue, past the transmission towers and a former horse pasture just north of the Thames River.
It would be simple enough to miss seeing the newly tilled patch of earth in the middle of an open green field that used to be horse pasture.
There are big plans for that little bit of turned-over urban ground. For the people behind London’s first not-for-profit organic urban farm, it’s a big step back to the community’s agrarian roots and using empty spaces to produce food.
Urban Roots, an organization slowly, steadily growing in momentum since its incorporation six months ago, has leased one hectare of land with the goal of a first planting and harvest this year.
This is a much different project than local community gardens. The goal is a sustainable, working farm that would supply produce to charities and neighbourhoods that have difficulty finding good quality fresh produce.
And because it is different, it has challenged municipal law-makers already working on an urban agricultural strategy.
“London, right now is focusing on its urban agricultural policy so they’re working to establish that, but it’s not in place yet,” said Heather Bracken, one of the group’s founding board members.
“So, we’ve had lots of conversations with the city. They’ve been great with taking our phone calls and with helping to guide us, but it’s still kind of an unknown.”
The city, she said, “has never encountered a project like this.” The policy is supposed to be ready by summer’s end.
One of the hurdles, for example, is the need for soil testing, not something that is necessary if you want to put a few tomato plants in your backyard.
“We’re the first of our kind. It’s a unique project for this area so it’s hard for all involved, the city and us, to really know the best way forward and to make sure we have to do it properly,” Bracken said.
But there are inspirations for their plan.
The group has made a couple of visits to the successful urban farms in the blighted areas of Detroit, part of the Michigan Urban Farming Initiative (MIUFI), some that strictly donate produce to the needy and other for-profit enterprises.
Graham Bracken, another founder of the London project and Heather’s husband, said they want to take the best of those models and “mash them all together.”
“There’s a lot of enthusiasm we’ve been picking up from people who have green thumbs and are involved in agriculture in one way or another, be it the food forests or the community gardens,” he said.
“A lot of people have been asking us, ‘Why did it take so long for it to happen?’ From that we get the sense that London is ready.”
Also needed was some added agricultural expertise. Of the four founding board members, only one, Richie Bloomfield, an accounting instructor at the Ivey School of Business, grew up on an organic farm. Social services veteran Jeremy Horrell, founder of the Forest City family project, “has an impressive backyard garden.”
Heather Bracken is a criminal defence lawyer. And Graham Bracken is an environmental philosophy writer.
But all of them agree there are food deserts in the city that could produce food.
The goal for this season is to get seeds in the ground, build a hoop-house — a portable greenhouse structure — and have a harvest to show “what we can do within the boundaries of the city,” Heather Bracken said.
Then, they want to expand the project to more locations to include training in how to grow and harvest your own food, plus cooking and canning sessions.
Urban Roots already has established relationships with Youth Opportunities Unlimited and Goodwill Industries.
The group has applied for a series of grants, but also has a GoFundMe campaign at www.gofundme.com/urban-roots-london, with the hopes of raising $7,000. So far about $1,700 has been raised.
jsims@postmedia.com
Urban Farming Insider: Jeff Mastin, R&D Specialist at Total Grow Horticultural Lighting
Urban Farming Insider: Jeff Mastin, R&D Specialist at Total Grow Horticultural Lighting
We sat down with Jeff Mastin, R&D Specialist at Total Grow Horticultural Lighting, to discuss the future of horticultural lighting, from small scale kitchen counter systems to mega-sized vertical farms.
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Introduction
UV: A lot of people who come across Total Grow probably aren't too familiar with it. Could you talk about the background of it and your involvement, and maybe your personal story and how you got involved in the biology side of it. I'm sure people are curious why a biologist might be working with horticultural lighting.
Jeff: That could be a half hour story right there, a lot of pieces. Trying to not get too spread out on it all. The company behind total grow is called Ventis Technologies.
We had been, and still do, specialize in integrating semiconductor technologies into applications. So that was really in the realm of touch-sensing technology before we got into lighting.
But LEDs are semiconductors you use for touch-sensing technologies, so there's a strong bridge there. The lighting path started because we were working with a group of optical physicists that had a concept that they wanted to commercialize and put to the test.
Because of our skill set we were able to take this optical technology they were developing, help them build it, help them commercialize it, test it, refine it.
And really what that was based around was improving LEDs in some of the main weaknesses of them in terms of glaring and shadowing and color separation.
Some of the limitations that were really plaguing the LED industry. The end result of it is basically we had this technology that gave us great control over the spectrum that the light made and the directional output of the light in a way that a typical LED by itself couldn't do.
Because of the uniqueness of the horticultural lighting world in terms of what you need to do with a light to do it well, where you need to send it and what the spectrum should be, it actually made a lot of sense to start there with that optic. As opposed to the really crowded white lighting world.
So it fit really well into the horticultural lighting world. I was already with the company because of work that we'd been doing with, among other things, environmental technology of different sorts. Bioenergy systems, tree plantation projects in Indonesia. We do a lot of community development things.
So, without going too far in depth on the rabbit hole, when we started exploring the horticultural world where we could apply the technology, that's where being a biologist was a natural fit to really take a lead on the science and the research and that side of th edevelopment process for the product. And that was, I think, about 6 years ago now. So, we've come a long way since then.
UV: If you were going to distill that technical focus into trends that you're generally seeing, broad brush in the horticultural lighting space, what are you seeing?
Jeff: Yeah, so the horticultural lighting industry is really becoming revolutionized because of LEDs. Even though ten years ago and arguably five years ago, LEDs in the horticultural world were a research tool or a novelty.
They were not efficient enough yet and they were definitely not affordable enough yet to really consider them an economical general commercial sense.
But that is very quickly changing. The efficiencies are going up and prices down and they are really right now hitting the tipping point wherefore at least a lot of application, definitely not all applications, the LED world is taking over horticulture.
So, and there's a little bit of what I'd say is a positive feedback route loop, in the sense that as the prices go down and efficiencies go up and more people are buying them, there's, it's easier for the market to continue that process.
Plus LED's already were a research tool, but now the interest and the funding to do better research and the tools to do better research are also exploding. So the knowledge base is very rapidly improving.
There are still a lot of unknown questions and a lot of things to learn but at least the basics and the starting points, in terms of how do you grow a plant from a lighting perspective.
The improvement in how well we understand that has gone up quite a lot in the last, really, five years there's been a lot learned.
UV: How do you view the translation of those trends into actionable points? For people who are looking for action and looking to improve their current system or looking into systems to buy and their saying, "well if I'm going to spend a couple hundred bucks on a LED lighting system, how do I make sure that what I'm buying isn't going to be obsolete in a year or two?"
Jeff: Yeah, and that's certainly a very real question. I would say that with the boom with the LEDs, there's only so far the technology can improve.
There's physical limitations. You can't make 100% efficient product that turns every bit o felectricity into photons of light. At this point the efficiency level of the LEDs are good one's are up over 50%.
So can we ever get up to 70 or 80%? Probably not with an end-product, not one that's going to be affordable.
Maybe in a lab you can. So the room for improvement is still there but it's not in the category where you're going to say, well this is obsolete, I can get something three times better now.
Ten years from now the cost will be cheaper. But that again doesn't make it obsolete. So in terms of that fear, I don't think people have to worry about (current LED light technologies) being obsolete.
The biggest challenge with LEDs really comes down to the cost. Because it's not the cheapest option and so that's where the economics and the business model and really running the numbers of the economics of it all has to be done.
Because there are cases where LEDs are not the best solution.
If you're not using your lights enough the power saving doesn't add up quickly. If the quality of lighting isn't top-notch, some of the quality benefits you can achieve might not be worth the investment.
UV: So that leads me into the next topic that I think would have an interesting perspective on, when you start talking about giving into the heavy-hitting area of maybe investing six figures into a commercial enterprise lighting system, what are the questions that need to be answered (before buying)?
Is the cost driver for those heavy-duty lighting systems strictly a efficiency rating? Will a 48% efficiency lighting system be cheaper always than a 49% efficiency lighting LED system for horticultural commercial operations? How do you look at that macro, for-profit analysis?
Jeff: Yeah. So first and foremost there's got to be questions on what is trying to be accomplished. So, of course, I think in the six figure lighting installation, we're probably talking more the full source vertical lighting indoor environment.
So in those places, first of all it's got to make sense to do it. So you've got to have a market that wants (produce) that customers can buy at a high enough price that you can afford to do at all.
For one, what crop are you growing? One of the one's that can be tougher for people to answer is, is it better to airing on the side of economic and low upfront cost? Or airing on the side maximizing the growth o fthe yield per square foot.
Because you can have two people with essentially the exact same setup and crop but for different reasons it's going to make sense for one to use twice as much light intensity as the other.
It's going to be a different business model: the person using twice as much light is going to have a higher yield, for sure. But obviously they invested more and they have a higher operating expense because there's more lights to run.
So where that all shakes out is, that's one of the things that I think the industry is still figuring out.
And individuals have to figure out is where makes sense for them. And there's people doing it successfully on both sides of that.
Do you want your lights to be as tight on the plants as possible to stack yourshelves, as many shelves as you can, in a small vertical space?
Or do you want your lights to be two feet above the plants so you have plenty of room for your workers to be working right in there without having to move the plants around?
Are you going to provide reflectivity around the grow areas? Or is that going to be restricting air flow and access too much?
Because reflectivity will help improve uniformity and cut down at least a little on the amount of lights you need.
So some of those general things. How do you envision your system? How do you, on a day-by-day basis, want to be working? And then the business model side of things that really determine airing on the side of extra light or less light.
UV: How much can setting up a reflectivity system...Have you done any work onlooking at how much you can recover, as far as efficiency from using your addition like that?
Jeff: That's going to vary pretty widely depending on what your setup looks like. The two big factors are: how big is the grow area? So if you've got a two by four table or you've got a five foot by thirty foot shelf, the bigger the shelf, the less proportionately, the less lights are on the edge, which means, proportionately, light lost overall.
The other big factor is the height. If you are doing something where you've got your lights really tight onto the plant, there's not a lot of opportunity for light to escape out the sides.
If you're trying to do one of those setups where you've got lights two feet above the plant, then there's a lot of space for light to be lost outside of the grow area. So when all is said and done the number there could range anywhere from, probably, on the smaller side, you're probably talking 5% recovery that you could possibly achieve.
Maybe a little less. In a typical situation, you're probably more inthe 10-15% range. And in the cases where you have a smaller setup with higherlighting, it could be 20-50%, depending on more extreme cases.
UV: Is that just added on to the base lighting system efficiency?
Jeff: Yeah, that'd be the gist of it. Because if you've got 50% efficient and you've lost 20% of your light and now you're 40% efficient. And really, so when you're picking out how many lights you're going to need and this an industry person working with customers, there's a big range of who you're working with too.
In terms of whether someone can walk up and say, I want a 17 mole per meter squared per day DLI and I'm running it 18 hours, what do you recommend?
Or whether somebody's just saying, I'm growing lettuce on a shelf what should I do?
In terms of the technical savviness of laying out the light target or really having no idea. Light is a complicated topic. It's a lot more complex than it sounds. When you might talk from the point of, my plant is lit, should it be growing?
Obviously a lot more complex than that. Ultimately from a lighting standpoint, you're trying to make a light plan to hit lighting targets of a certain intensity. A technically savvy grower that's going to know what intensity they need to aiming for.
Someone who's less familiar with it is not going to know that and it's going to be up to the lighting provider to provide a good recommendation. That's where the efficiencies and everything really calculate out.
UV: Where you would suggest going to find the suggested intensity, would you go to the (lighting) provider? It seems like they might have an incentive to tell you that you need more so that you buy more. Is that accurate? Essentially where do you think is the most reliable source of figuring out your intensity? For somebody who is less geared toward that information.
Jeff: The safest thing is to ask a few different places for sure. You definitely want to ask the lighting provider, because they're going to have familiarity with their own light.
So for example, obviously there's bias and all that in terms of what I'll say here but, with the testing we've done and our spectrum. That's a big part of our claim to fame is part of spectrum control is, we've experienced that it had efficiency advantages over other light spectra.
So the same amount of photons is going to accomplish more. So when I give somebody a recommendation I might, depending on who I'm talking to and what's behind their light intensity recommendation, whether they understand these things or not, I might adjust what my target is a little higher or a littler lower based on what they have in their mind.
If they're thinking of a fluorescent or legacy light spectrum ability to grow at a certain light level, we're going to be able to accomplish that at a lower light level.
So there's nuances to it all. Other great people to talk to, if you can find somebody already doing what you're trying to do, that's a great resource. There are an increasing amount of university extension programs, places like that where you might be able to talk to somebody with a good understanding from an academia point of view.
Which sometimes that can be even more idealistic than the industry person, but it's still good input. Then the risky but potentially really good one is searching around online. You can find some good resources out there in terms of light targets.
Find a handful of them an average them out. Because there is going to be some people that are coming from different points of views and are too high or too low for different reasons compared to what you want to do.
UV: So we touched on this a little bit, but when you talk about the levels of price, can you provide an escalator of different stages of price? Would you say there's kind of a personal enthusiast cutoff? Then maybe you have your small, selling stuff to restaurants size growing system.
You may have the system where maybe you're dealing with it on an everyday basis where it's a premium system. How do you organize that out and what's the 30,000 foot view there?
Jeff: So to give just a order of magnitude sort of number, you probably going to be someplace in the fifty dollar per square foot sort of number. It can be half that it can be double that.
But that's sort of a general ballpark of what your up against. So the major factors that are going to drive that up or down: for one,and this is talking LEDs, if you're using something like a cheaper fluorescent light you're going to be able to get yourself setup for less.
You're going to pay more as you run those lights - pay maintenance and then electricity costs. then the results, depending on what you're doing, you may or may not still be happy with them with other styles of lights and same goes with LEDs.
There's good LEDs and there's bad LEDs. Just because you're using an LED light doesn't guarantee you're going to love your results.
So, some of the major factors: volume obviously matters. If you're somebody doing ten thousand square foot facility you're going to be getting thousands of lights and getting a great price on it compared to somebody setting up fifty square feet.
What I was describing before in terms of the light intensity targets, people could be growing with double the intensity for one style of lighting compared to half for another.
That's just talking within the realm of common plants of green, the lettuce, the micro greens, herbs, berries can be in the same sort of target.
If you start talking about tomatoes or medicinal plants, then the ability to use higher light levels and have the plants make good use of it kind of skyrockets. You can go four times higher with some of those other plants, and for good reason.
UV: You said an example of those may be tomatoes or maybe, what are some other examples, cucumbers or stuff like that?
Jeff: Yes. For the most part at this point, the larger fruiting plants in general, like tomatoes or cucumbers, there's not a significant amount of people doing that totally indoors.
That's still really a greenhouse plant and for the foreseeable future that's probably going to remain true outside of really special situations. But one of the big opportunities in the indoor world is finding high value crops. And that can be more specialty herbs that are difficult to grow.
That can be medicinal crops. When you start getting into those realms of higher value product, you can better justify on airing on the side of maximizing your yield as opposed to minimizing your investment.
So there's that plus just the size of the plant. If you're talking micro greens or lettuce and something that's probably not getting bigger than nine inches tall, there's the plant itself doesn't need to have a huge biomass to support - lettuce is more of a winter crop then a summer crop in terms of the light levels. Whereas a tomato plant you can keep throwing more light at it and it'll keep producing higher yields for a very long time.
Lettuce you're going to start having tip burn and some negative effects like that if you over do it.
UV: One thing I always like to ask is what your favorite fruit or vegetable is.
Jeff: Favorite fruit or vegetable. In general my favorite fruit is something I haven't tried yet. So, I'll go with that in general. Otherwise favorite fruit would be different berries and favorite vegetable is anything sauteed with salt and butter.
UV: If you had to distill down to one single sentence, lighting advice for a beginner, what would it be just one sentence?
Jeff: In general, like I've reiterated, know what you're trying to accomplish, who that market is and what the opportunity really is, what's going to let you be successful.
Can't answer what you're perfect lighting solution is until you know what you're trying to accomplish.
UV: What's the best advice you heard as you were learning about lighting and kind of flip the last question on it's head?
Jeff: I would say, and I don't know if this is something somebody told me or not, but I think just getting information from a lot of different sources. There's a lot of different angles that people can have or a lot of biases and a lot of misinformation out there. So, fishing around and finding reliable sources that you can trust, that's a big deal.
Thanks Jeff!
Total Grow Horticultural Lighting
Meet The Company Building Farms in Parking Structures
Meet The Company Building Farms in Parking Structures
LIZZY SCHULTZ JUNE 2, 2017 LEAVE A COMMENT
Stuart Oda previously worked as an investment banker before serving as a co-founder of Alesca Life, a Beijing-based agriculture technology company that builds weather-proof, cloud-connected farms in order to enable local food production by anyone, anywhere.
“We’ve developed technology for indoor farming, so it allows farmers to work in an environment that is far safer, cleaner, and closer to the consumers,” said Oda in an interview with Jamie Johansen during ONE: The Alltech Ideas Conference, which he attended as part of the Pearse Lyons Accelerator Program, “We’ve built farms out of second-hand shipping containers, out of underground parking structures, and even restaurant corners.”
Urban farming is not a new concept, but Oda believes his company’s mission differentiates it from their competition: “We actually use the concept of a hub-and-spoke, almost a central kitchen concept, that uses the urban farm as both a nursery and a food production facility to deliver higher quality produce at more affordable prices directly at the point of consumption,” he said.
Oda became interested in agribusiness upon learning that the agricultural supply chain is worth over 20 trillion dollars end-to-end and after he began hearing more about the environmental and economic challenges facing the industry as it works to feed 9 billion people by 2050.
It’s very exciting to think about how the future of farming can impact the consumer, the industry, and the environment,” he said.
Downtown Victoria Condo Project Offers ‘New Ethos’ In Urban Living
The Wade features an urban rooftop garden space and what is believed to be the largest centre courtyard for condos in Victoria. Courtesy ten-fold projects
Downtown Victoria Condo Project Offers ‘New Ethos’ In Urban Living
The Wade is being constructed on site of former medical building at Cook and Johnson streets
- Thu Jun 1st, 2017 11:30am
- BUSINESSLOCAL BUSINESS
Tim Collins/News staff
The Wade is a low-rise, four-storey development in the works for the corner of Cook and Johnson streets, and according to the developers, it’s more than just another condo development.
According to developer Max Tomaszewski, it’s the expression of an ethos based upon environmental sustainability and a higher quality of life for its residents.
“If you’re going to spend 14 hours a day in a place, it should be a place that does more than provide shelter. You want a home that improves your health and quality of life,” he said.
Tomaszewski and his partner, David Price of ten-fold projects, have been building to Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) standards for 15 years, but The Wade’s design and features are particularly rewarding.
The 102-unit, two-building development reflects the partners’ belief that real estate construction is moving toward a wellness orientation by incorporating a series of features not ordinarily found in a project of this kind, Tomaszewski said.
For example, each unit is assigned not only the standard parking spot and storage locker, but a four-by-eight-foot rooftop garden plot as part of an urban farm concept, complete with an apiary to aid in pollination.
The municipal water supply will receive additional filtration and the centre courtyard, billed as the largest of any condo in Victoria, will be home to an orchard.
The building is designed to minimize the background noise of the city. Another significant aspect of The Wade is the price point at which they’ve entered Victoria’s condo market. Units are priced between $260,000 and $300,000, a cost made possible, said Tomaszeweski, by savings realized through utilizing the existing “bones” of the medical arts building, upon whose footprint The Wade will be built.
The development is expected to be ready for occupancy by Christmas 2018.
More information is available at thewade.ca.
editor@vicnews.com
Rijk Zwaan Opens Doors of Demo House In Canada
Rijk Zwaan Opens Doors of Demo House In Canada
On Thursday June 8, Rijk Zwaan opens the doors of their Demonstration house in Leamington, Ontario for their annual guided tour. Growers, retailers and traders from Canada and the USA are invited to view, taste and assess the broad range of tomato varieties the Dutch breeding company has to offer.
Rijk Zwaan grows a large number of tomato varieties in their high-tech Tomato Demo Greenhouse in Leamington. Interested stakeholders from throughout the chain can visit the open day to get a good overview of the assortment and new opportunities.
“We are looking forward to discussing our existing and new varieties with our visitors”, Advisor Greenhouse Crops Marleen van der Torre says. “We test our varieties under local conditions and closely monitor each variety’s progress. Also this year, we have several new varieties that perform very well.”
Visit the open day
Growers, retailers and traders can join the open day of the Demonstration house on Thursday June 8, from 10.00-17.00. Appointments can be booked in advance via m.van.der.torre@rijkzwaan.com or by calling +1 519 324 0632.
For more information, please contact:
Marielle Alsemgeest
Rijk Zwaan
Tel: +31 174 79 42 19
m.alsemgeest@rijkzwaan.nl
www.rijkzwaanusa.com
Publication date: 6/2/2017
Indoor Farms of America Sales Growth Escalates
Indoor Farms of America Sales Growth Escalates
By News Release May 24, 2017 | 8:24 am EDT
Indoor Farms of America is pleased to announce that sales through the first four months of 2017 have exceeded the entire year of 2016, when the company first sold its patented vertical aeroponic indoor farm equipment.
According to company CEO David Martin, "During 2016, our first year selling our equipment, we enjoyed what we consider a very solid year for launching our unique vertical farming equipment, and 2017 has already eclipsed that in dollar volume and diversity of farms being sold, built and delivered."
Indoor Farms of America two story display at 2017 Indoor AgCon Las Vegas
GrowTruck Container Farm Display at 2017 Indoor AgCon Las Vegas
The company sold numerous smaller farm packages and container farms during 2016, many of which were considered "pilot farms," to allow potentially large warehouse farm operators to get a feel for this amazing vertical equipment, prior to making larger commitments.
"We knew when we introduced the equipment throughout the previous year, it would somewhat be a year of "tire kickers," and we were overwhelmed at the positive response to our total farm solutions. Those tire kickers are now converting into sold larger farms, as we continue to see positive crop growing results by folks across the U.S. and in key international markets."
Indoor Farms of America spent several years designing and developing its patented ultra high yield vertical aeroponic equipment. The firm manufactures a robust line of aeroponic products, including the world's most productive containerized farms, for deployment in any area of the world that has real need for such a unique small farm platform that produces commercial quantities of fresh produce in an manner superior to any other container farm manufacturer.
Other "turn-key" complete farm packages were specifically developed for fully scalable indoor farm applications to drive down initial capital costs as well as the ongoing operational costs. This focus combines to provide the operator with the single most cost-effective indoor agriculture equipment available in the world.
Ron Evans, company President, stated it this way: "We received numerous affirmations throughout 2016 from third party growers using our farm technology that it delivers on what we promise in overall farm performance. We are committed to the concept that if you are going to own and operate an indoor farm, it should provide you a very sound financial return."
"So many farm platforms that Ron and I analyzed in the early R&D phase back in 2013 and 2014, we believed were doomed to financial failure due to poor design with off the shelf 30 year old growing technology that was not innovative. We recognized that if those marginally profitable operators made errors in execution, they would not survive. It was our mandate internally to develop a complete farming solution that would transcend anything on the market, and we achieved that", stated Martin.
New sales by the company for 2017 to date include numerous locations around the U.S., as well as other countries, as the company continues on a path of rolling out the products in key markets that will benefit dramatically from truly locally grown fresh produce.
"We have sold our first farm for Alaska, destined for Juneau in the next couple months. As well, we have sold our first farm for the GCC region, destined for Dubai. This farm will change the landscape for food production in the Middle East." stated Martin. "Further developments include complete farms sold for multiple regions of Canada, including Alberta, Manitoba and Ontario provinces, and that region is about to explode with growth in the use of our farm solution."
Martin added, "We have sold our first large scale farm for Africa, destined for the country of Botswana. We have had a farm in operation in Johannesburg for many months, and our distributor there reports how amazed potential customers are with the robust growing they experience with our vertical aeroponics platform."
The company has spent thousands of hours developing new crops beyond leafy greens. Evans stated: "Leafy greens were the easy part, and ours does that better than anything else. We have proven out growing of certain varieties of cherry tomatoes, strawberries, peppers, peas and beans for proteins, and we are now working on specialty root crops like heirloom carrots and baby potatoes. We know a well-rounded garden approach is what many folks want to see, not just leafy greens, and we are rapidly developing those for commercial scale."
Indoor Farms of America has a showroom with demonstration farms operating in Las Vegas, Nevada and in multiple locations in Canada, and in South Africa, where their patented vertical aeroponic equipment is on display and receiving amazing reviews by industry leaders.
The Future of British Farming: Accentuate The Technology and Eliminate The Subsidy
The Future of British Farming: Accentuate The Technology and Eliminate the Subsidy
Editor’s Note: Richard Ferguson is founder of Ferguson Cardo, an agribusiness consultancy and research group in the UK. With several years experience in the industry working for groups such as PwC and Renaissance Capital, Ferguson recently wrote a new report on the future of UK agriculture in the wake of Brexit. Here he offers some key insights from that report.
Richard Ferguson
The future of British agriculture lies not in an annual £3 billion infusion of inefficient subsidies and misallocated capital via the Common Agricultural Policy, the European Union’s farm subsidy programme. Rather, the UK has the potential to re-pivot, refocus and redeploy its capital and energies towards the nation’s value-added agricultural technologies and cutting-edge science capabilities. This transformation will allocate capital efficiently and bring wide-ranging social and economic benefits across the UK economy. It may also redefine the country’s objectives in trade, aid and economic diplomacy.
To feed a world of some 10 billion people, according to the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), almost 77% of the additional output from farming will come from intensification and higher yields; only 20% will come from increased farming area. In other words, farming output growth in the future depends critically on the greater use of agricultural technologies, ranging from equipment to genetics.
The possibility of a Brexit-driven reconfiguration of the UK’s food and agricultural sector suggests that a period of significant transformation and structural adjustment lies ahead. Set against an industry already in the midst of rapid technological displacement, value-chain disruption and regulatory change, a transformative event such as Brexit appears to add to existing uncertainty.
However, while the potential institutional, financial and operating frameworks that will arise from Brexit suggest a wide range of possible outcomes, the process, if mapped successfully, can be a positive one. The UK’s current position is not unique. In the 1980s, the government of New Zealand instigated a reform programme to transform the country’s food and agriculture sector, the results of which were immediate and painful as well as long-term and beneficial.
At the core of the transformation that shook New Zealand’s agriculture sector in the 1980s and 1990s was a pressing need to access new markets in the face of external economic shocks and structural adjustments, such as the UK’s decision to join the then European Economic Community (EEC) in 1973. While there are obvious direct parallels between the New Zealand case study and Brexit, both situations remain distinct and unique. However, we would contend that an agenda focused on long-term goals can deliver significant economic and social benefits even if they come with considerable short-term costs. The battle about to commence is set to be as brutal, complex and ideological as that which determined the direction of the British economy in the late-1970s and early 1980s.
The UK must also consider to what extent environmental considerations should influence the policy-making agenda. What is the role of government in terms of regulation, environmental compliance, bio-security and food trust? Alternatively, can a free-market, liberalisation agenda deliver wider social, political and environmental objectives as well as economic goals? Can the UK use its fledgling – and flourishing – agtech knowhow to raise productivity, build exports and deliver added value to the British economy?
The British government, budget pressures notwithstanding, has to ask whether a pound spent subsidising a marginal farm in the Pennines is better spent on developing world-class facilities across the technology and biosciences sectors. How many UK startups and early-stage companies fail to thrive because they lacked capital at a vital stage of their evolution?
There are other strategic considerations for the UK if it wishes its food and agriculture sector to prosper. A global imperative is: how do we feed a world of 10 billion people within a generation when its current needs are delivered by an army of unsophisticated and undercapitalised smallholders? We contend that the Department for the Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (DEFRA) and the Department for International Development (DFID) need to shift their respective – and parallel – focuses on agriculture subsidies and development aid to collude with the Department for International Trade (DIT) and the Foreign & Commonwealth Office (FCO) to bring much of the UK’s technological, commercial, developmental and diplomatic ambitions in food and agriculture under a joint strategy.
This is relevant for the domestic landscape too. Britain has a large food deficit. The country needs to build its export capabilities and this is best done in commercial sectors where capital delivers the highest returns and creates the most economic value added. Subsidising agriculture may no longer make sense. The country needs to consider what are its best resources – whether technological, scientific or financial – and how best these can be combined. Such an assessment is hindered by many factors: the food and agriculture sector – excluding inputs, trading houses and the consumer end of the value chain – is notoriously fragmented. The most promising opportunities lie in the most awkward places to invest capital. An agricultural technology full of promise struggles to get funding, let alone access challenging new markets. In short, how do you get a world-beating piece of agtech into the likes of Africa or Asia ahead of your competitors?
The triggering of Article 50 by the British government on 29 March 2017 offers a strategic opportunity for the UK to eliminate agricultural subsidies after 2020 and refocus efforts on the promotion of value-added agricultural technologies. Make agricultural subsidies a thing of the past.
AeroFarms Raises $34m of $40m Series D from International Investors for Overseas Expansion
AeroFarms Raises $34m of $40m Series D from International Investors for Overseas Expansion
MAY 30, 2017 LOUISA BURWOOD-TAYLOR
US indoor agriculture group AeroFarms has raised over $34 million, according to a Securities & Exchange Commission Filing. The funding is the first close of a targeted $40 million Series D round.
AeroFarms grows leafy greens using aeroponics –- growing them in a misting environment without soil –- LED lights, and growth algorithms.
The round takes AeroFarms’ total fundraising efforts to over $130 million since 2014, according to AgFunder data, including a $40 million debt facility from Goldman Sachs and Prudential.
AeroFarms attracted new, international investors in this latest round, including Meraas, the investment vehicle of Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid, vice president of the United Arab Emirates and the ruler of Dubai.
The round marks the first investment for ADM Capital’s new growth stage agriculture-focused Cibus Fund, and global asset management firm Alliance Bernstein also invested. Existing investors Wheatsheaf Investments from the UK and GSR Ventures from China also joined the round.
The filing also revealed that AeroFarms had renamed its holding company to Dream Holdings, as part of its move from an LLC to a C-Corp, referencing its new retail brand Dream Greens. The Dream Greens brand hit the shelves of ShopRite, Whole Foods, FreshDirect, and Newark chain Seabras in February. Before that, the business was selling its greens into food service under the AeroFarms brand.
AeroFarms’ global list of investors is representative of its plans to expand globally, David Rosenberg, CEO, told AgFunderNews.
“We want to expand domestically and overseas, and we are excited about the potential for Meraas to help us expand into that region,” he said.
AeroFarms is not the only group to consider building indoor farms in the Middle East; Pegasus Agriculture Group, is a hydroponics-based indoor ag company that is based in Abu Dhabi, with facilities across the Middle East and North Africa. Egyptian Hydrofarms is another local example, and Indoor Farms of America recently made its first farm sale in the region.
AeroFarms also wants to add to its 120-strong team of plant biologists, pathologists, microbiologists, mechanical engineers, system engineers, data scientists and more. In particular, the company wants to add team members to its research & development department, with a view to improving the quality and operating costs of the business, according to Rosenberg. “This is where the data science and software platforms we’re using can really pull the business together.”
AeroFarms just completed construction of its ninth indoor farm, with four in New Jersey including its state-of-the-art 69,000 square foot flagship production facility in Newark. It also has plans to build in the Northeast of the US.
For more about AeroFarms, read our earlier interview with CEO David Rosenberg here.
Social Entrepreneurs Grow A 'Computer Garden' At Zahn Innovation Center
Social Entrepreneurs Grow A 'Computer Garden' At Zahn Innovation Center
CONTRIBUTOR - I cover for-profit social enterprises and impact investing
A "computer garden" for urban farming that grows food without soil or harmful chemicals. That's the mission of SyStem, a fledgling New York City startup founded by two engineering students at The City College of New York.
"Our mission is to grow food for people in the future," says Alex Babich, a junior electrical engineering major, who founded the company with Adrian Logan.
Wild bloom Photography
SyStem's radishes (Photo credit: Wildbloom Photography)
It's also the winner of this year's Zahn Social Impact Prize, awarded earlier this month. That's a business pitch competition run by the Zahn Innovation Center, a semester-long incubator for City College students and graduates.
The co-founders created what Babich calls a "food computer"--a three-foot-wide by two-foot-deep box with a computer in it, along with an automated controlled environment for growing plants hydroponically. Various sensors monitor such factors as the temperature, humidity, the CO2 in the atmosphere, and the water's pH level. If, say, the latter is too low, the system will pump up the pH solution. "For whatever plant you want, you put in a recipe--software programmed to take the plant through the whole life cycle successfully," he says.
Ultimately, the startup aims to address a looming crisis--as world population increases, there will be less land available on which to grow food for more people. At the same time, the effects of climate change are likely to make it harder to produce enough sustenance. "We're developing ways to bring food closer to where people live and grow it in a more efficient way," says Babich.
But to develop technology capable of providing food on a large scale, according to Babich, time is of the essence. "That's why it's so important to be working on this type of technology now," he says. The plan is to build a modular system that has a central computer. Thus, you could create a large system with many modular sections or, with just a few, build a much smaller one in, say, someone's home.
Recently, Logan and Babich grew their first crop--radishes, which took about eight days to pop. "They came out really well," says Babich. Next step: Over the summer, they plan to develop their hardware platform. Plus, they're working with a fellow Zahn startup City LABscape to build the hardware for that company. City LABscape, which recently won the Standard Chartered Women + Tech4NYC Prize, has developed a curriculum and prototype for hands-on indoor agriculture STEM education for middle and high school students, using small hydroponic-growing systems.
SyStem's founders met each other in a CCNY engineering class and discovered they worked together well. One day, after he learned about the Zahn Center, Babich told his friend that he was interested in doing "something with an app." Logan wasn't crazy about the idea. Then Babich told him, "I really think it would be cool if there were a skyscraper growing plants automatically." So they tossed around ideas, like, for example, a computer that could grow plants, and were accepted into the Zahn program. A semester -long incubator, it takes 24 teams through a boot camp that trains them in how to move from an idea to building a prototype and forming the beginnings of a business.
Then they applied for Zahn's summer-long, a full-time accelerator program, which accepts 10 startups and is aimed at launching their business. Each of those teams gets $10,000, so they can spend the summer working on their startups, instead of at a summer job.
London Fights Urban Agriculture’s Peskiest Pest: Red Tape
London Fights Urban Agriculture’s Peskiest Pest: Red Tape
Urban farms offer cities a multitude of benefits, but municipal bylaws have long hindered them. London councillors are hoping to change that with a new strategy
Published on May 25, 2017
Urban farms like this one in Toronto can provide city-dwellers with fresh produce and can create new jobs. (Karen Stintz/Creative Commons)
by Mary Baxter
They wanted to grow food in the city and supply small local processors and soup kitchens with fresh vegetables — but when four would-be urban farmers in London found an ideal stretch of unoccupied land in the east end, the city told them they couldn’t lease it.
“We were literally not allowed to bid on that land because we were not going to develop it into houses,” says Richie Bloomfield, co-owner of Urban Roots London, the farming outfit in need of farmland. “That was kind of shocking to us.”
Urban agriculture is gaining popularity fast, but for farmers just getting started, often the biggest challenge isn’t learning how to till soil or keep pests at bay — rather, it’s the tangle of municipal rules and bylaws that either don’t take farming into account or actively discourage it.
But a new and nearly finalized urban agriculture strategy in London should make things easier, proponents say. According to Leif Maitland, the local planner spearheading the strategy, it’ll land on councillors’ desks by the end of the summer.
Supporters tout the benefits of urban farming: It makes fresh produce available to city-dwellers who might otherwise have trouble finding it, and it creates jobs, too. It can even help the environment, creating habitat for pollinators and reducing the distance food has to be trucked.
London’s strategy may not be the first in Ontario, but its inclusion of processing, distribution, food waste management, and education — all under the umbrella of urban agriculture — is unique.
Some of the proposed ideas, like building community gardens and growing fruit trees on public property, already exist in the city. Others, like a proposed backyard chicken pilot, have a long way to go before implementation. There’s also talk of establishing more farmers markets; creating hubs for sharing tools, supplies, and information; and building school gardens and community kitchens.
“We really wanted this strategy to inspire action, and that’s what the city wanted too,” says Lauren Baker, a consultant on the project and a former policy specialist with the Toronto Food Policy Council, a subcommittee of the city’s health board.
One of the biggest challenges will be putting the strategy to work — which will require participation from the municipal government and the broader community. In London, Maitland says, it’s not clear who will take the leading role.
“Maybe we’ll be enabling community groups, maybe we’ll be partnering with them,” he says. “Maybe we just need to change our bylaws to be as accommodating as possible, and then get out of the way and let people do what they want to do.”
Maitland says he’s familiar with the difficulties Urban Roots ran into searching for land. The city does rent to large-scale farmers who grow, for example, soybeans and corn, which can thrive even in poor soil. But the land is designated for other purposes, such as residential or commercial development, so it’s unsuitable for organic farming ventures that need to invest in long-term soil improvements.
Vertical Farms Grow Amid Skyscrapers In A Plan to Help Feed China’s Largest City
Vertical Farms Grow Amid Skyscrapers In A Plan to Help Feed China’s Largest City
Laura Brehaut | June 1, 2017 9:39 AM ET
More from Laura Brehaut | @newedist
Sasaki Associates
The hydroponic vertical farm will be dedicated to growing Shanghai staple greens such as kale, lettuce and spinach.
As Shanghai sprawls outward, architecture firm Sasaki Associates has announced plans for a farm that grows upward. The hydroponic vertical farm will be built amid the skyscrapers of China’s largest city. Like most vertical farms in use today, it will be dedicated to growing staple leafy greens such as kale, lettuce and spinach, according to Dezeen.
Space-saving is the aim of the project, Dezeen reports. Sasaki Associates intends the multi-storey farm to act as an alternative to the vast swaths of land — and associated costs — required for traditional agriculture. The project will also incorporate urban farming techniques such as algae farms, floating greenhouses and a seed library.
Vertical farms exist in cities worldwide, providing fresh produce, fish, crabs and other foods to residents in cities such as Anchorage, Berlin, Singapore and Tokyo. Advocates say that vertical farms have a reduced carbon footprint, use fewer pesticides and guzzle less water than traditional farming. Opponents argue that there are many unanswered questions about the practice, and question its economic viability.
Construction of the Shanghai project is expected to start in late 2017 as part of a new development — the Sunqiao Urban Agricultural District. The district will also feature markets, a culinary academy, interactive greenhouses and an education centre for members of the community.
Strawberry Imports May Become Unnecessary For Russia
Strawberry Imports May Become Unnecessary For Russia
It is now possible to grow strawberries all year round across Russia, from Kaliningrad to Yakutia, with a total of 6 harvests a year, as reported by agroinfo.com
The Russian company Fibonacci presented an innovative product for agriculture: the automated vertical farm BerryFarm800, which makes year-round strawberry cultivation possible.
BerryFarm800 is capable of producing 6 harvests of this delicious fruit per year, including during the winter months. The 800 sections of the agro-farm, with space for 76,800 bushes, yield 15 tonnes of strawberries a month.
Managing the farm does not require special knowledge or a lot of staff. BerryFarm800 only requires 5 people because all processes are automated.
Also, remote control of all farm parameters is possible thanks to a program developed specifically for BerryFarm800.
Another advantage of the system is that there is no need to build a greenhouse. The BerryFarm800 can operate in any ready-made commercial space: warehouses, production rooms, and so on. The farm is totally independent of climatic conditions.
Another advantage is the quick installation and the start of its operation, 2 months from the time of ordering.
The Russian company's product has no equal in the world, and according to expert assessments, it could have a significant impact on Russia's food policy. It could even make the import of strawberries completely unnecessary.
"Nowadays, in a context marked by sanctions and fierce import policies, this product is economically attractive to all consumer groups. The equipment can be delivered to any country, allowing customers to grow quality strawberries for private or commercial purposes," stated a Fibonacci representative.
Jakartans To See More Urban Farming
Jakartans To See More Urban Farming
Agnes Anya | The Jakarta Post
Jakarta | Tue, May 23, 2017 | 08:05 pm
A man waters plants in a vertical garden in Cikini, Central Jakarta. The city administration plans to build 75 more such gardens, in addition to the existing 150. (Courtesy of Jakarta Fisheries, Agriculture and Food Security Agency/-)
Jakartans will have a greener city soon as the city administration is promoting urban farming in the capital.
The Jakarta administration plans to introduce "green aisle" program in 75 areas to grow vegetables, medicinal plants and potted fruit plants this year, aiming at not only beautifying the city but also to ensure food security.
"We want residents to know that farming is easy. In the future, we hope that they can produce vegetables for their own families," Fisheries, Agriculture and Food Security Agency agriculture division head Diah Meidiantie said.
The administration has allocated Rp 5 billion (US$ 375,855) for the program.
Last year, the agency disbursed Rp 6 billion to establish 150 urban gardens in the capital's five municipalities and Thousand Islands regency.
"However, this year, Thousand Islands won’t join the program as the local residents are struggling to care for the existing ones," Diah said, explaining that the difficulty was caused by a lack of clean water in the regency.
Topics :
Future Food-Tech Is Returning to New York City
Future Food-Tech Is Returning to New York City
The Future Food-Tech Summit is returning to New York City on June 7 and 8, 2017. Investors, start-ups, technology companies, and food and ingredients manufacturers will convene to develop solutions to meet the global food challenge during the two-day event.
Among this year’s Future Food-Tech speakers are Andrew Ive of Food-X, David Lee of Impossible Foods, Nicholas Chia of Mayo Clinic, Zachary Ellis, Jr., of PepsiCo, and Susan Mayne of the Food and Drug Administration.
Panel discussions will address key questions: How can we create systems that enable access to sustainable, safe and nutritious food for all? How are retailers partnering to create the right digital experience for customers? What role can restaurants have in bringing new food experiences to customers? What is the role of governments in producing dietary guidelines and supporting research and investment in alternative proteins?
The event will include panel discussions, fireside chats, networking breaks, technology showcases, and other presentations encouraging discussion around solutions to meet the global food challenge.
Future Food-Tech is an annual event which is held in London, New York City, and San Francisco. The Summit is intended to create a forum for networking, debate, discussion, and learning while giving new food innovators the opportunity to pitch their early to mid-stage companies to an audience of global food businesses, technology integrators, and venture capital investors.
If you have a great story to tell, a game-changing solution to showcase, or would like to share your expertise on one of the panels, please call Rethink Events on +44 1273 789989 or email Stephan Groves for more information.
Click here to register for Future Food-Tech NYC.
Emphasizing Product Quality Over Narrative, an Urban Farming Enterprise Thrives
Emphasizing Product Quality Over Narrative, an Urban Farming Enterprise Thrives
Michael Ableman, Co-founder of Sole Food Street Farms, an urban farming social enterprise in Vancouver, Canada. Photo courtesy of Sole Food Street Farms.
May 30, 2017 | Trish Popovitch
Careful planning, adequate startup capital and experience working on a traditional rural farm are just three of the elements that veteran urban farmer, and co-founder of Vancouver’s Sole Food Street Farms, Michael Ableman feels are necessary to be successful in the new urban agriculture movement. Founded in 2008, Sole Food Street Farms would be considered by many growers as established and successful, but for Ableman there is still much work to be done both at Street Farms and in the development of the city farm movement.
“The skill level required to be a farmer is not something you get just by wearing the right clothes, having the right tools and having started last year. It takes five to ten years to develop that skill level,” says Ableman. “What we’re trying to do is demonstrate that it is in fact possible to have a credible model of agriculture in the city, so the scale and production levels, the volume we produce, the number of people we employ is significant.”
Employing 20 to 30 well trained local residents (most recovering from addiction or managing mental health issues) and producing 25 tons of food every year for sale though farmers’ markets, a CSA and to approximately 50 of Vancouver’s top restaurants and eateries, Street Farms offers a viable agricultural model for city farming based on scale and sustained success.
Street Farms may occupy approximately five acres of space in an urban slum, and it may employ one of North America’s most underserved populations but despite that, Ableman is adamant that his customers should buy his product because of its quality and not its narrative. “We’re not asking people to buy our food out of some sense of charity, or a belief system or our story, which is a good story, but we’re asking them to buy because it is high quality food. We don’t get a pass to be not good farmers,” says Ableman. The farm averages $350,000 in annual income from sales and programming.
For Ableman, who came into the project as a consultant and now acts as Managing Director, the city farm is a social catalyst and its sustainability lies in its larger social mission. “Our experience has proven giving people a reason to get out of bed each day, meaningful employment, a place for people to come to learn new skills, a community that depends on them […]. Really it’s been the people of that community that in many ways helped themselves,” says Ableman. “We provided the setting for it to happen.” A study by Queens University in 2013 calculated that for every dollar Street Farms pays a member of staff, it creates a $2.20 savings to local health, social and legal services.
Street Farms employees grow their fresh produce in custom built growing boxes. As the farm reduces to a skeleton crew in the winter months, Ableman sees the boxes as a way to keep folks employed and meeting their recovery goals. “The boxes address a number of problems. They address short-term leases, they address contaminated soil…if you have to move at short notice…. We get more requests for the boxes than the produce growing in them. We’re looking at trying to find a warehouse. Our idea would be to start manufacturing and distributing them within the next year,” says Ableman. This value added product must be cost effective and currently Ableman and his team are working on how to reduce the per unit cost to make them both affordable to buy and reasonable to make.
Much of what Ableman and fellow founder Seann Dory have learned in the last few years, as well as Ableman’s urban agriculture manifesto and some general advice on urban farming are surmised in Street Farm: Growing Food, Jobs, and Hope on the Urban Frontier, a book Ableman released last year which he feels will help would-be city farmers to realize the true scope of commercial growing. “I’m not trying to be discouraging,” says Abelman. “I’m trying to give people a better shot at being successful.”
With over 40 years of farming experience and deep roots in the sustainable city farming movement that stretch back to the 1980s, Ableman hopes that his project in Vancouver will encourage more social enterprise-focused urban farms and for growers to realize that in today’s social and economic climate, profit as priority is old hat.
“We have a responsibility to be self sustaining economically but I also think we have an obligation in any business to address the broader goals and needs of our community and our society,” says Ableman. “I don’t believe it is enough to be in business just to be in business. We all have an obligation to extend the work we do beyond just making money. No-one that lives on this planet, at this time, can solely live and survive without considering the impact of their actions.”
Test Fresh Produce’s Nitrate Content And Geiger Radiation At Home
Test Fresh Produce’s Nitrate Content And Geiger Radiation At Home
A new step in food safety. Chinese website Alibaba offers food counters that immediately measure the amount of nitrate in your fresh produce, and knows whether your food has been exposed to radioactive radiation. For approximately 100 dollar, you can own Greentest, the Portable High Quality Accuracy Food Detector.
Nitrate naturally occurs in vegetables. The nitrate content in vegetables is partly decided by the variety, but can also increase because large amounts of (artificial) fertiliser are used, or the product didn’t get enough sunlight during growing. The counter compares the amount of nitrate to the average amount in that type of fresh produce, and gives consumption recommendations: green is OK, yellow means you have to be careful and red is more than twice the amount allowed.
The more luxurious edition, Greentest Eco, has also been equipped with a Geiger counter, so that you can find out if your food is radioactive.
Food safety
In China, food safety is an important topic for the growing middle class. After various food scandals, demand for safely produced food is increasing. The ads therefore mostly say: “Protect your family against unsafe food!” The Geiger counter also focuses on Japan, where there’s much attention on radioactive food, after the disaster with the nuclear reactor.
The products can be ordered globally through Alibaba. When ordering 500, they cost about 60 dollar per piece. Individually, they cost about twice that.
Order your nitrate and Geiger counter here.
Publication date: 5/30/2017
Kiss the Ground Releases The Compost Story With a Celebrity Cast
Created in collaboration with Elevate Films, Kiss the Ground has released The Compost Story, a 6-minute video about why compost is a regenerative solution for depleted lands
Kiss the Ground Releases The Compost Story With a Celebrity Cast
Created in collaboration with Elevate Films, Kiss the Ground has released The Compost Story, a 6-minute video about why compost is a regenerative solution for depleted lands. Kiss the Ground wants to educate people how to turn biodegradable waste into healthy soils. This process also works to reduce the effects of climate change. Combining a celebrity cast of Rosario Dawson, Amy Smart, Adrian Grenier, Paul Blackthorne, and Kendrick Sampson, this video invites people everywhere to see compost in a completely new light.
Kiss the Ground believes that compost is a regenerating, probiotic solution for depleted land. Compost could also play a major role in rebalancing the world’s carbon cycle. Turning polluting waste streams into a valuable resource is a win-win proposition, says Kiss the Ground.
This message is a follow-up to The Soil Story, a 5-minute video on how soil can sequester carbon from the atmosphere to balance the climate.
The Urban Farmer: Interview With João Igor of CoolFarm
The Urban Farmer: Interview With João Igor of CoolFarm
In Future trends Posted on May 25, 2017
Created out of necessity, CoolFarm now offers smart farming solutions that allow you to plug, play, and produce fresh food all year round. Get the inside scoop on how co-founder João Igor has discovered a novel way to make agriculture an integral part of urban life.
If you haven’t heard about urban farming, you must have been living under a rock for the past few years! City-based agriculture offers the opportunity to have healthy food in abundance, at a fraction of the cost, by growing only what we need, close to home.
Urban ag startups have boomed in the last few years, offering everything from unorthodox growing setups to soil sensors, hydroponics and all manner of crop data analytics. We’ve recently spoke to João Igor of CoolFarm, a Portuguese startup operating in the smarter food and in the greenhouse sustainable agriculture area. Here’s their take on the potential for urban farming.
“I found myself suffering from health problems due to the fast food that we consume inside cities, I’ve also seen my friends and family suffering from the same issues. I wanted to do something to fight this, and I ended up in finding the right team of co-founders for this project.”
Together, we started building the CoolFarm technology in order to make farming easier and to bring fresh and nutritious food to cities, close to the people.
New Sustainable Model
CoolFarm offers indoor farming solutions for production of high quality food. Their solutions provide maximum efficiency and profitability. Their control system, called CoolFarm in/control is plant-centred. Using an intuitive dashboard, growers are able to monitor and contnrol all their farms at once, anywhere, anytime. Artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms ensure optimized crop production, as well as efficient management of resources.
“We also offer to the market the CoolFarm Eye, an innovative cloud based optical sensor made to capture plants’ area and plant greenness, monitoring crops through time,” explains João. “Using the Eye, growers can make wiser and straight forward decisions to achieve the best results.”
2017 marks the launch of CoolFarm in/store, a closed and vertical system with a clean and climatized environment inside, perfect to grow premium seedlings, microgreens, leafy greens, herbs and flowers. Reportedly, it uses 90% less water than common agriculture and it does not need pesticides or herbicides. It is modular, with each module covering nearly 100 square meters of the production area.
Intelligent and highly intuitive, the system is aimed at growers, food distributors, grocery and supermarket chains, research centers, medical centers, and communities.
The system is equipped with two columns of movable hydroponic growing beds, one vertical lift, a fertigation system, topnotch sensors to measure all the variables concerning the plants, LED grow lights, CoolFarm in/control system and an antechamber.
Cities Turning Green
Throughout the world, urban farming is becoming an integral part of the urban landscape. CoolFarm is part of the booming trend. However, in order to emerge into a viable industry solution, CoolFarm needs agents and distributors worldwide, as well as adequate support from governments.
“Stakeholders must jointly address food and sustainability issues, and promote novel technologies and solutions for better farming,” says João. Although there is an urgent need for producing health, tasty, environmentally sustainable food, redesigning the agricultural system would not be straightforward.
As a creative person and as a designer my job is to build new and intuitive solutions, as well as to communicate them in the best way; as a tech guy I need to bring top notch technology, like robotics, for fields in need.
Sprouting Imaginative Solutions
The European startup ecosystem has bred numerous success stories, and CoolFarm is one of them. “We’ve gained a lot of attention, especially from the media, which is essential for any startup business trying to create brand awareness.” They also learned a lot about marketing, business, and securing funding and capital.
However, the biggest lesson, by far, is avoiding money from people that don’t understand complex markets such as agriculture.
“In general, European incubators and accelerators are good. We have excellent people behind the scene, and Europe doesn’t lack experience or knowledge.”
Apparently, launching a startup in Europe was the right decision: the team now counts nearly 20 people creating indoor farming solutions, from horticulturists and biologists, software and hardware engineers, web, mobile and product designers, marketing and business experts.
If you want a sustainable business in agriculture, avoid money from people who don’t understand such a complex market.
Early product is strong, but their roadmap is much more exciting. “We want to install the in/store solution at universities, hospitals, supermarkets, cruises, buildings,” says João, adding that they want to grasp a significant portion of the market with their new product. “The next 18 months are going to be game changing for CoolFarm. Watch and see!”
Coffee Grounds Used To Feed A Hungry City
Coffee Grounds Used To Feed A Hungry City
In an Australian first, Port Melbourne based coffee company Red Star Roasters has partnered with urban food production company Biofilta, to transform a disused Melbourne carpark into a pop-up espresso bar and thriving vertical urban food garden. The garden is converting the by-product from Melbourne's unique coffee culture coffee grounds into thousands of dollars of fresh edible produce for charity kitchens.
The Red Star Urban Garden Espresso Bar, located at The Holy Trinity Anglican Church at 160 Bay Street, Port Melbourne, features an innovative vertical food garden that uses soil made from composted green waste and coffee grounds, to grow a full range of vegetables and herbs including basil, beans, eggplant, capsicum, kale, lettuce, oregano, rhubarb, spinach, strawberries, thyme, tomatoes, zucchinis, beetroot, broccoli, bok choy and many others. Coffee grounds are collected from the espresso bar, mixed with garden clippings, cardboard packaging, soil and worms to create a rich compost onsite. The compost is then returned to the vertical gardens, to grow food. The produce is then harvested and donated to the South Port Uniting Care?s Food Pantry and Relief Service in South Melbourne. Diane Embry, the Agency's Chief Executive Officer, says, the donations enables us to provide fresh produce to people in our community who are experiencing disadvantage, social isolation and homelessness.
The garden itself is unique - with vertically stacked growing beds that are self-watering and an innovative aeration loop to keep the plants and soil oxygenated and healthy. The garden is ultra water efficient and spatially compact, and by going vertical the garden produces a large amount of food on a very small footprint, effectively doubling food yield per square metre. The vertical garden is integrated into the espresso bar coffee grounds used to feed a hungry city and café patrons are surrounded with edible gardens, aromatic herbs and flowers as they read the paper and have a coffee. In the past 12 months, the garden has produced well over 100 kilograms of vegetables and herbs from 10 square metres of garden area. However, because of the vertical design, the garden is only using 5 square metres of space. This means the garden is producing 10 kg of food per 1 sqaure metre of garden every year and at an average cost of between $5 to $10 per kg for vegetables at the Supermarket, the garden is producing $50 to $100 of food per metre square each year.
It is great having a garden that saves you money while feeding you and the family at the same time. Australia imports over 40,000 tonnes of coffee beans per annum, resulting in a huge waste stream of used coffee grounds that go to landfill. Red Star and Biofilta have worked out a way to divert this useful by-product into food to feed a hungry city and are now looking to replicate the model with cafes and restaurants who are interested in saving on food bills and growing fresh produce onsite. 100% of coffee grounds from the Red Star Urban Garden Espresso Bar are either used in the garden, or given away for free to customers to use in their gardens at home.
Creating A Zero-Coffee-Waste Café!
CEO of Biofilta, Marc Noyce said - Thousands of tonnes of coffee grounds are produced each week in Australia's cafés and restaurants, and most ends up in landfill. Red Star and Biofilta have shown how this wonderful material can be composted to soil and help feed hungry cities at the same time. Both companies are looking for more opportunities to repeat the formula with any café or restaurant who are interested in ethically sourced coffee, and have a spare space, wall, rooftop or balcony to turn.
For more information call:
Diane Falzon, Falzon PR- 0430596699
Marc Noyce, CEO, Biofilta - 0417 133 243
Chris McKiernan, Director, Red Star Coffee - 0418 136 301