The Origins of Hydroponic Farming

The Origins of Hydroponic Farming

In this hydroponic system in Spain, lettuces are grown in plastic troughs without any soil, substrate or other material around their roots. The nutrient solution is recirculated to eliminate drainage loss and seepage of nutrients into the soil, and to reduce the cost of fertiliser. Photo: Prof Gert Venter

AGRICULTURAL NEWS - Hydroponics is not a new concept. It preceded the earliest tillage practices on farms, and plants have been grown in lakes and oceans from time immemorial.

The origins of today’s hydroponics can be dated back to the 15th century, when Leonardo da Vinci, born in 1452, deduced the following:

“To develop, plants need mineral elements that they absorb from the soil by means of water. Without water, the plants do not survive, even if the soil has the mineral elements they need.

Water is as if it were the soul of plants, as minerals are as if they were the soul of soil. If we could transmit to the soul of plants [the water], the strength of the soul of soil [the minerals], perhaps we would not need it [the soil] to make plants survive and multiply.

I believe that, in a future that does not belong to me, that [this] will be possible. So, it is advisable to add fertiliser and irrigate periodically the lands for us to get a healthy and productive plantation.”

The Early Years

Hydroponics, as we know it, developed slowly since the Middle Ages until water culture became a favourite research technique during the 17th century, after the posthumous publication of a book on the subject by the scientist and philosopher, Francis Bacon.

In 1699, researchers found that plants grew better in water that was less pure than in distilled water.

By 1842, a list of nine elements believed to be essential for plant growth had been compiled, and this resulted in the development of soilless cultivation techniques. Solution culture then quickly became a standard research and teaching technology and is still widely used today.

In the 19th century, scientists showed renewed interest in the nutrient requirements of plants. Complete nutrient solutions were developed over time, but it was only in the 1920s that Prof WF Gericke of the University of California in the US began to focus on commercial plant production using dissolved nutrient solutions instead of soil.

He coined the name ‘hydroponics’ by combining two Greek words, hydros (water) and ponos (work).

At the time, greenhouse growers replaced their greenhouse soil at frequent intervals, or maintained it by adding large quantities of commercial fertilisers.

To solve this difficulty, researchers replaced natural soil systems with either aerated nutrient solutions or artificial soil, called substrates, consisting of chemically inert aggregates, moistened with nutrient solutions.

The Later Years

Between 1925 and 1935, extensive development took place in modifying plant physiologists’ methods for large-scale crop production, but hydroponics was not widely accepted due to the high cost of constructing concrete growing beds.

During the Second World War, the US army started using hydroponics to produce food for troops stationed on islands in the South Atlantic and the Pacific, due to the prohibitive cost of transportation.

After the war, interest in hydroponics boomed when gravel culture hydroponics was used to grow tomatoes, cucumbers and other vegetables. However, these systems had shortcomings and many were eventually abandoned.

Made in London: GrowUp Urban Farm's Tilapia Fish and Microgreens In Beckton

Made in London: GrowUp Urban Farm's Tilapia Fish and Microgreens In Beckton

Victoria Stewart goes behind the scenes at an aquaponic urban farm in Beckton

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Kate Hofman and Tom Webster

• VICTORIA STEWART 
•  
• When I think of city farms in London I think of tiny replicas of country farms - a few animal pens here and there, a few veg boxes, a farm cafe perhaps. What I don’t picture is what I find at GrowUp Urban Farm in Beckton, E6, which is essentially a warehouse divided into two main rooms, one with huge blue circular tanks filled with tilapia fish swimming around inside, and the other with silver shelves stacked on top of each other and brimming with bright green micro coriander, sunflower shoots and baby kale. On a trip there last week it felt as if I’d been jolted into the future.

GrowUp, currently the largest aquaponic farm set up for commercial use, is the brainchild of co-founders Kate Hofman, a former management consultant who now runs the business, and Tom Webster, a former trained biologist who runs the tech side of things. As well as them, there are 11 employees and some university students working alongside.

For the unfamiliar, aquaponics combines aquaculture - farming fish - and hydroponics - cultivating plants in water - where the greens are fed using waste water from the fish, and this example iin Beckton s what Hofman describes as a “fully ethical and sustainable model.”

Setting it up took months of research, “personal sweat” and equity, and outside investment from Centrica’s social impact fund, angel investors, and WRAP, the waste resources and action programme.

Here Hofman talks about why left management consultancy to set up the business, and why it’s important to be flexible when it comes to using technology to run a business like this one.

How many products do you harvest, and what are they?

As well as our tilapia, which are fresh water fish, we grow pea shoots, baby kale, baby watercress, sunflower shoots, custom mixed salads and frilly baby leaf salad. We also do microgreens: micro radish, micro coriander, micro fennel, micro basil, micro rocket and micro mustard.

Who buys your produce?

We sell our greens directly to restaurants in London, indirectly through a distributor called First Choice, to retailers including Whole Foods and online at FarmDrop, and to a couple of catering customers. The majority of the tilapia goes to a Thai restaurant chain called Rosa’s Thai Cafes.

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Why did you start the business? Did you always want to work in the food industry?

Tom trained as a biologist and went onto work as an engineering and sustainability consultant. After he got really interested in food production, we were introduced by a friend and I managed to convince him that it was a good idea to set up a business. I have always been really passionate about food and about sustainability, but I used to work as a management consultant for IBM. I really liked my job but I didn’t feel like I was doing much with a purpose so I decided to take a sabbatical to do a masters in environmental technology and business at Imperial College, where I came across urban farming and aquaponics. It was like a big lightbulb moment - I loved the way that the system took the waste from one side and used it to grow something in the other.

Is this a new technique?

It had been around for quite a while but this was in 2011 and there were very few examples of commercial farms. For so long in Asia, people have been flooding rice paddies, putting fish in them and letting the fish fertilise the plants and eat the bugs and then draining the fields. So from a business perspective I was interested in how you take this technology and this concept of growing that’s been around for hundreds of years to solve some of the sustainability challenges that are going to happen in our food system.

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Is growing like this the future?

This is part of the future, I think. I do not think that all food is going to be grown like this going forward, nor do I think the future of what we do is huge Skyscrapers growing food on every level. In a book called Hungry City, Carolyn Steel calculated that if you wanted to feed London using vertical skyscraper farms, you’d have to build 200 Shards to produce enough food. So then of course that throws up all sorts of questions like why? How would you find the space? How could you make enough money from producing food to compete with residential or commercial properties? So I don’t think that’s the future of food, but I do think it’s about finding the available resources and space to grow the right food for people and to do that more locally.

When did you first sell your products?

I was first interested in it in 2011, we set the business up in 2013, and we began selling produce about a year ago.

How many products have you sold since you started?

Here we can produce around 20,000kgs a year of all of our greens. To put that in perspective, one wholesaler might sell around 20,000kgs of baby kale every 3 months. So we think that if we can build 9 farms, and each of those farms is 10 times the size of this, we’ll be able to do about 2% of the demand for baby leaf produce. We can produce 4 tons - 4000kg - a year of tilapia here, and in perspective, most commercial farmers would start of upwards of 100 tons. So there are really exciting opportunities for us to expand. This system is also designed just for tilapia, but technically it’s possible to grow other types of fresh water fish too.

What’s the reaction been like?

It’s definitely taken my grandma about 4 years to work out how to describe to people what I do! But anyway I think we get a very positive reception when we tell and show people what we do because it’s really interesting and it’s a little bit zeitgeisty, too - it’s cool how fascinated people are about seeing that you can produce food in this way (as a lot of people have a very idealised idea of how their food is being produced). People have all sorts of questions, including some about the ethical side of farming the fish which we’re always happy to talk about - we have guidelines on how we do that. I think farmed fish offers a really good opportunity to provide a sustainable source of protein, and I think globally we’ve got a growing middle class population who want to eat more protein, and we need to find more sustainable ways of producing it.

How important to you was it to produce something in London?

I’m from London and I’ve lived here all my life, so I’ve always felt that it would be where I wanted to start a business. London has a well deserved reputation as a city that loves food, and whose consumers care about where their food comes from. Starting the business in London has given us access to a fantastic range of customers that we can work with, and allowed us to showcase our business to the world.

What’s it like setting up a business in London?

We’ve had a great level of support from the local borough and GLA (Greater London Authority), but finding the right space for a business like ours is more challenging in London because space is at a premium - there’s no question it’s more expensive! And some of the costs we’re pleased to bear - for example, we’re a London Living Wage Employer - but we see those costs, representing the true price of equitable food production, as part of the challenge of building a resilient food system. If we can make it work in London, we can make it work anywhere!

Which other London producers you admire?

I’m fortunate enough to live near to Spa Terminus and Maltby Street Market in Bermondsey, and every week there are some amazing producers there. I’m a particular fan of Kappacasein - how brilliant to have a local cheesemaker! If I’m out and about I almost always have a bag of Snact Fruit Jerky with me. They make fruit snacks from fruit that would otherwise go to waste and I really admire their ethics - they even have compostable packaging!

How does a typical day pan out for a London urban farmer?

Once I’ve dropped my baby at nursery and walked the dog, I’m into the office on the farm in E6 to catch up with colleagues about farm operations, sales and any other developments that we’re working on. We’re always keen to show new restaurant and retail customers what we do, and give them a chance to taste our fantastic produce, so I might be giving a farm tour or going out to visit a customer. If I’m at the farm at lunchtime then we quite often grab whatever has just been freshly harvested and use that to make up a big mixed salad with whatever everyone has brought from home. Then in the afternoon I might try and grab some time at my desk to catch up on emails or work on a proposal - but I’m equally as likely to be working with my business partner on strategy or talking to a member of the farm team about a process that needs improving.

For more information on GrowUp Urban Farm visit growup.org.uk; Follow them on Twitter and Instagram

Follow Victoria on Twitter @vicstewart and Instagram @victoriastewartpics

Agtech, The New Farming Tool To Boost Food Security

An indoor hydroponic growing system in Singapore. Urban farming is one sub-sector that has seen some ‘new wine’ in the form of indoor farms using fully integrated technology for growing vegetables in controlled environments. Photo: Reuters

Agtech, The New Farming Tool To Boost Food Security

By  PAUL TENG  |  Published  3:00 PM, JULY 05, 2017  |  Updated 3:00 PM, July 05, 2017 

Modern farming depends on technology such as seed, fertiliser, pesticides, water, and machinery. These have formed the basis of the world’s food production systems for staples.

However, it has become increasingly clear to scientists, policymakers and development agencies that physical inputs alone did not guarantee that farmers can make best use of these inputs. Knowledge is required to make farms productive, farming practices efficient, and farm productivity more targeted.

At the same time, information-communication technology (ICT) has also increasingly affected the farming community. ICT is increasingly recognised as the means to capture and share knowledge and in the process, improve the efficiency of using production inputs.

For farming, a major challenge has been how to empower all farmers with the knowledge to use inputs effectively.

Agricultural technology (agtech), together with new digital knowledge capture techniques and new financial technology (fintech) groups, is fast changing farming by creating a new knowledge intensive agriculture. And this has implications for Singapore, which wants to boost the efficiency of farm use and improve its food security.

Smallholder farmers remain the foundation for Asia’s food security. These small farmers were responsible for using the first set of “disruptive innovations” in the 1960s, such as high- yielding crop seeds, fertiliser and pesticides to significantly increase food supplies.

However, the large, disparate smallholder population in Asia is geographically spread out and farmers work in diverse farming situations.

Each farmer in effect practises farming in his own way based on knowledge either newly learnt or inherited. So to get all farmers to equally manage well the use of the technical inputs available to them has been one of the biggest challenges in Asia — until the advent of ICT tools.

A recent report on The Future of Food and Agriculture by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) highlighted the urgent task of assuring that the world can meet the 50 per cent increase in demand for food by 2050. So it is all the more important not only to ensure smallholders have access to farming inputs, but also that they know how to use the inputs effectively.

Promoting Use of AGTech in Singapore

A new impetus for knowledge-intensive agriculture is the increase in myriad tools to practise “data-enabled agriculture” — environment sensors, mobile computing, satellites and imaging, drones, wireless communication and even genetics.

The growth of knowledge in digital form, and the increasing capacity of small farmers to access digital information, provide opportunities not possible before to share timely information on farming environments and the required management knowledge.

This democratises the sharing of knowledge. It also has the added attraction of luring millennials and other new entrants into agriculture at a time when almost all countries are faced with the twin problems of an ageing and declining farming population.

This matter is equally important in small city-states like Singapore as in other large agricultural countries.

Two new words, “agtech” and “fintech” have crept into the discourse on modern farming. But are these “old wine in new bottles” or are they truly “new wine in new bottles”?

The growth in knowledge-intensive agriculture offers opportunities for new technologies, new physical inputs and new financial mechanisms to ensure these become socialised into the farming sector.

Agtech collectively means the individual technologies or a combination of technologies related to farm equipment, weather, seed optimisation, fertiliser and crop inputs, irrigation, remote sensing (including drones), farm management, and agricultural big data.

Agtech has gained widespread attention and considerable investment, with one pioneering company, AgFunder, estimating that in 2014 and 2015 alone, investments totalled US$7 billion (S$9.7 billion).

Urban farming is one sub-sector that has seen some “new wine” in the form of indoor farms using fully integrated technology for growing vegetables in controlled environments of artificial light, temperature, carbon dioxide, water and fertiliser.

Korea and Japan together have over 100 indoor high-tech farms. South Korea even has a government agency to provide oversight and promote agtech.

In Singapore, Panasonic’s indoor controlled environment vegetable farm grows about 40 different types of vegetables and has delivered such high-tech vegetables to supermarkets.

Another start-up, Archisen, is prototyping a different kind of indoor controlled environment farm using an Internet of Things approach and eventually aims to connect multiple such farms with cloud technology.

There are other commericial urban vegetable farms, each showing its unique use of engineering technology.

To incentivise investors in modern agtech farms, enablers would include longer or lower-cost space leases, one-stop approvals to farm in urban space, government start-up funds, and more platforms for sourcing private financing.

Singapore can promote more use of modern agtech by showcasing or piloting available agtech in partnership with local or overseas groups such as “AgFunder”.

But ultimately, adoption will depend on the enabling environment as farming enterprises need to show an adequate return on investment over an assured period.

Connecting The Dots

Fintech companies now use new technology to provide financial services for innovations in farming, either bypassing or complementing traditional financial and technology players such as development banks and multinational companies as the main suppliers of physical technologies and knowledge to small farmers.

But it is the synergy of agtech and fintech that is causing great excitement for knowledge-intensive agriculture.

Countries with active financial centres coupled with proper governance such as intellectual property protection for new technology, will find that the changed landscape provides many opportunities to create new avenues of economic growth.

An example is Singapore, which has a “first mover” advantage in urban farming technology, and has already attracted attention from investors from other parts of Asia.

Singapore, with many centres of expertise in ICT, and being home to many financial institutions, has potential to develop into a major agtech-fintech player to generate new technology-based farming applications for small-farmer knowledge-intensive agriculture in both urban and rural situations.

Historically, farming has seen many disruptive innovations, such as hybrid corn in the 1920s, biotech crops in 1996, and now digital agricultural technologies and genome-edited crops and animals in the 2010s.

As experts at an Asian Development Bank workshop last month noted, knowledge-intensive agriculture has the potential to become the latest and most impactful game changer because it “connects the dots” to link technology, knowledge, the farmer and the financier.

The FAO report on the future of food and agriculture also proposed that new investments and new technologies are needed to meet the 50 per cent increase in food demand by 2050, and doing so will require US$ 265 million in investment a year.

It is unlikely that all this investment will be met by governments, pointing further to an important complementary role of fintech companies.

New platforms for connecting technology developers with investors are already starting to make their presence felt in Singapore.

Government support could help in establishing Singapore as a key player in the agtech-fintech space for agriculture.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Paul Teng is Adjunct Senior Fellow at the Centre for Non-Traditional Security (NTS) Studies, S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University. He formerly held leadership positions at The WorldFish Centre, The International Rice Research Institute and Monsanto Company. This is adapted from another piece in RSIS Commentary and part of a series on the upcoming World Agricultural Forum (WAF) on July 6-7 organised jointly by RSIS.

Urban Farming Won't Save Us From Climate Change

Urban Farming Won't Save Us From Climate Change

Community gardens serve many purposes. Slowing climate change isn't one of them.

By Deena Shanker | June 21, 2017

In places such as New York and Boston, the appeal of the self-sustaining rooftop farm is irresistible. If only enough unused space were converted to fertile fields, the thinking goes, local kale and spinach for the masses could be a reality, even in the most crowded neighborhoods.

Proponents claim that city vegetable gardens are a solution to nearly every urban woe, providing access to healthy foods in neighborhoods that lack it, as well as economic stimulation, community engagement, and significant reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. But a new study published in the journal Environmental Science & Technology says that in colder climates such as the Northeast's, the emissions reductions are minimal.  

"Urban farming advocates tend to focus on the distance from farm to fork, equating local food with environmentally sustainable food, oversimplifying the complexity of food sustainability to a single aspect," the researchers write. In reality, the carbon reductions made possible by urban farming are much smaller than many had assumed. In the best case scenario, urban farming would only reduce a Northeastern's city's food-related carbon footprint by 2.9 percent, the study found. 

The study's authors used Boston to prove their point. 

They first established the city's food-related environmental impact baseline by combining publicly available dietary information with data on the burden required to supply that food. Next, they determined the space available for urban farming, including both ground lots and usable rooftop space. Finally, they used data from several farms in Boston and New York to understand the resources used, including fossil fuel-based power, the vegetables they yield, and their overall environmental impact. Ultimately, the researchers found the environmental gains from urban farming to be "marginal."

The reason is that while city-grown vegetables can have a slightly lower environmental impact than those grown thousands of miles away, horticulture has never been the real problem. It's not apples and tomatoes that are responsible for most of the diet's greenhouse gas emissions; it's animals. Meat and dairy products contribute 54 percent of the American diet's potential impact on climate change. If city residents really want to lower their carbon footprints, they should become vegan. For bonus points, they can turn their roofs into solar gardens instead of vegetable ones.

There are many reasons to embrace urban agriculture. Greater access to produce could help improve the diet of city residents, and replacing pavement with soil could help abate water runoff, for example. But slowing climate change isn't one of them. The potential economic benefits of urban farming are also less promising than proponents had hoped, the study found. Even if Boston-grown vegetables were sold within the larger metropolitan area, the value would still be less than .5 percent of regional gross domestic product. And while some of that growth would go to low-income neighborhoods, the majority would flow to areas with poverty rates below 25 percent.

"I am positive about urban agriculture," says Benjamin Goldstein, of the Technical University of Denmark and the lead author of the study. "I just want to make sure it's done for the right reasons."

TruLeaf Hits Commercial Shelves

ENTREVESTOR: TruLeaf Hits Commercial Shelves

PETER MOREIRA
Published August 1, 2017 - 7:06pm
Last Updated August 1, 2017 - 7:07pm

Bible Hill company strikes deal with Atlantic Superstores

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TruLeaf Sustainable Agriculture, the ag-tech company planning a chain of indoor farms across the country, announced Monday its locally grown microgreen products are now available in select Atlantic Superstores across the Maritimes.

Appearing under the company’s GoodLeaf Farms brand, these products grown in the company’s farm in Bible Hill are now available in a dozen Superstores spanning the three Maritime provinces.

According to the TruLeaf website, the products include broccoli shoots, kale shoots, daikon radish shoots and pea shoots, baby arugula and baby kale.

TruLeaf is seeking to become a leader in sustainable agriculture through the use of vertical farming, which combines proven hydroponic technology with advancements in LED lighting and reclaimed rainwater to allow year-round production of plants indoors.

Vertical farming is nearly 10 times more efficient than traditional agriculture, uses as much as 90 per cent less water, and takes up less land.

TruLeaf, which closed an $8.5-million financing round last December, has been working with Loblaw, the parent company of Atlantic Superstores, on the development of its farms.

“We know our customers are looking for exceptional produce, grown locally wherever possible, which is why we are such huge supporters of local and regional suppliers,” said Loblaw director of corporate affairs Mark Boudreau said in a statement.

“Having fresh local vegetables year round in the Maritimes would have been impossible a decade ago. We’re excited about today’s launch and proud of our role working with TruLeaf over the past few years to bring this innovative farming technology to our Atlantic Superstore customers.”

The announcement comes as TruLeaf begins construction on its 50,000-square-foot facility in Guelph, Ont. which will produce vegetables for the Toronto market. It will be five times the size of the Bible Hill facility.

The company said last year that its $8.5-million funding round would be used to build a plant and access the massive Toronto market.

The round was led by Mike Durland, the former CEO of Scotiabank’s global banking and markets division, and included funding from Neil Murdoch, former CEO of Connor, Clark & Lunn Capital Markets.

The Chronicle-Herald reported in December that the new facility will include a network of sensors and artificial intelligence to automate the climate controls and feeding systems for the plants.

TruLeaf said GoodLeaf Farms has been embraced by local wholesalers and restaurants, and now the brand is available across the Maritimes in select stores.

“We are thrilled to be bringing a new era of freshness to Atlantic Canadian consumers,” said TruLeaf CEO Gregg Curwin.

“We grow our produce in tightly controlled environments to the very highest standards in the industry. It’s a difference you can truly taste — our products are bursting with flavour and nutrition. And by dramatically reducing the time and energy needed to grow produce, it really is a new way to eat responsibly.”

The GoodLeaf products are available at:

• Barrington Street Superstore, Halifax

• Charlottetown Superstore

• Fredericton Superstore, Smyth Street

• Joseph Howe Superstore, Halifax

• Trinity Superstore, Moncton

• Bayers Lake Superstore, Halifax

•Kennebecasis Valley Market, Rothesay

• Moncton Superstore, Main Street

• Quinpool Superstore, Halifax

•Dartmouth Superstore, Portland Street

•Truro Superstore

• Sydney River Superstore.

Vertical Farming: Can Urban Agriculture Feed a Hungry World?

Vertical Farming: Can Urban Agriculture Feed a Hungry World?

Agricultural researchers believe that building indoor farms in the middle of cities could help solve the world's hunger problem. Experts say that vertical farming could feed up to 10 billion people and make agriculture independent of the weather and the need for land. There's only one snag: The urban farms need huge amounts of energy.

Romses Architects

By Fabian Kretschmer and Malte E. Kollenberg

July 22, 201110:58 AM

One day, Choi Kyu Hong might find himself in a vegetable garden on the 65th floor of a skyscraper. But, so far, his dream of picking fresh vegetables some 200 meters (655 feet) up has only been realized in hundreds of architectural designs.

In real life, the agricultural scientist remains far below such dizzying heights, conducting his work in a nondescript three-story building in the South Korean city of Suwon. The only thing that makes the squat structure stand out is the solar panels on its roof, which provide power for the prototype of a farm Choi is working on. If he and his colleagues succeed, their efforts may change the future of urban farming -- and how the world gets its food.

From the outside, the so-called vertical farm has nothing in common with the luxury high-rises surrounding it. Inside the building, heads of lettuce covering 450 square meters (4,800 square feet) are being painstakingly cultivated. Light and temperature levels are precisely regulated. Meanwhile, in the surrounding city, some 20 million people are hustling among the high-rises and apartment complexes, going about their daily lives.

Every person who steps foot in the Suwon vertical farm must first pass through an "air shower" to keep outside germs and bacteria from influencing the scientific experiment. Other than this oddity, though, the indoor agricultural center closely resembles a traditional rural farm. There are a few more technological bells and whistles (not to mention bright pink lighting) which remind visitors this is no normal farm. But the damp air, with its scent of fresh flowers, recalls that of a greenhouse.

Heads of lettuce are lined up in stacked layers. At the very bottom, small seedlings are thriving while, further up, there are riper plants almost ready to be picked. Unlike in conventional greenhouses, the one in Suwon uses no pesticides between the sowing and harvest periods, and all water is recycled. This makes the facility completely organic. It is also far more productive than a conventional greenhouse.

Choi meticulously checks the room temperature. He carefully checks the wavelengths of the red, white and blue LED lights aimed at the tender plants. Nothing is left to chance when it comes to the laboratory conditions of this young agricultural experiment. The goal is to develop optimal cultivation methods -- and ones that can compete on the open market. Indeed, Korea wants to bring vertical farming to the free market.

Nine Billion People by 2050

Vertical farming is an old idea. Indigenous people in South America have long used vertically layered growing techniques, and the rice terraces of East Asia follow a similar principle. But, now, a rapidly growing global population and increasingly limited resources are making the technique more attractive than ever.

The Green Revolution of the late 1950s boosted agricultural productivity at an astounding rate, allowing for the explosive population growth still seen today. Indeed, since 1950, the Earth's population has nearly tripled, from 2.4 billion to 7 billion, and global demand for food has grown accordingly.

Until now, the agricultural industry could keep up well enough -- otherwise swelling population figures would have leveled off long ago. But scientists warn that agricultural productivity has its limits. What's more, much of the land on which the world's food is grown has become exhausted or no longer usable. Likewise, there is not an endless supply of areas that can be converted to agricultural use.

By 2050, the UN predicts that the global population will surpass 9 billion people. Given current agricultural productivity rates, the Vertical Farm Project estimates that an agricultural area equal in size to roughly half of South America will be needed to feed this larger population.

Vertical farming has the potential to solve this problem. The term "vertical farming" was coined in 1915 by American geologist Gilbert Ellis Bailey. Architects and scientists have repeatedly looked into the idea since then, especially toward the end of the 20th century. In 1999, Dickson Despommier, a professor emeritus of environmental health sciences and microbiology at New York's Columbia University seized upon the idea together with his students. After having grown tired of his depressing lectures on the state of the world, his students finally protested and asked Despommier to work with them on a more positive project.

From the initial idea of "rooftop farming," the cultivation of plants on flat roofs, the class developed a high-rise concept. The students calculated that rooftop-based rice growing would be able to feed, at most, 2 percent of Manhattan's population. "If it can't be done using rooftops, why don't we just grow the crops inside the buildings?" Despommier asked himself. "We already know how to cultivate and water plants indoors."

With its many empty high-rise buildings, Manhattan was the perfect location to develop the idea. Despommier's students calculated that a single 30-story vertical farm could feed some 50,000 people. And, theoretically, 160 of these structures could provide all of New York with food year-round, without being at the mercy of cold snaps and dry spells.

The Power Problem

Despite these promising calculations, such high-rise farms still only exist as small-scale models. Critics don't expect this to change anytime soon. Agricultural researcher Stan Cox of the Kansas-based Land Institute sees vertical farming as more of a project for dreamy young architecture students than a practical solution to potential shortages in the global food supply.

The main problem is light -- in particular, the fact that sunlight has to be replaced by LEDs. According to Cox's calculations, if you wanted to replace all of the wheat cultivation in the US for an entire year using vertical farming, you would need eight times the amount of electricity generated by all the power plants in the US over a single year -- and that's just for powering the lighting.

It gets even more difficult if you intend to rely exclusively on renewable energies to supply this power, as Despommier hopes to do. At the moment, renewable energy sources only generate about 2 percent of all power in the US. Accordingly, the sector would have to be expanded 400-fold to create enough energy to illuminate indoor wheat crops for an entire year. Despommier seems to have fallen in love with an idea, Cox says, without considering the difficulties of its actual implementation.

Getting Closer to Reality

Even so, Despommier still believes in his vision of urban agriculture. And recent developments, like the ones in South Korea, might mean his dream is not as remote as critics say. Ten years ago, vertical farming was only an idea. Today, it has developed into a concrete model. About two years ago, the first prototypes were created.

In fact, the concept seems to be working already, at least on a small scale. In the Netherlands, the first foods from a vertical farm are already stocking supermarket shelves. The PlantLab, a 10-year-old company based three floors underground in the southern city of Den Bosch, has cultivated everything from ornamental shrubs and roses to nearly every crop imaginable, including strawberries, beans, cucumbers and corn. "We manage completely without sunlight," says PlantLab's Gertjan Meeuws. "But we still manage to achieve a yield three times the size of an average greenhouse's." What's more, PlantLab uses almost 90 percent less water than a conventional farm.

As a country which has limited land resources but which possesses much of the necessary technology, the Netherlands seems to be an ideal place to develop vertical farming. This is especially true now that its residents are increasingly demanding organic, pesticide-free foods -- and are prepared to pay more for it.

'The Next Agricultural Revolution'

Despommier believes that entire countries will soon be able to use vertical farming to feed their populations. The South Korean government, at least, is interested in exploring the possibility. At the moment, the country is forced to import a large share of its food. Indeed, according to a 2005 OECD report, South Korea places fifth-to-last in a global ranking on food security. Increasing food prices, climate change and the possibility of natural disasters can compound the problem.

These facts are not lost on the researchers in the vertical farming laboratory in Suwon. "We must be prepared to avert a catastrophe," Choi says.

Still, it will be some time before vertical farming is implemented on a commercial scale in South Korea. Choi's colleague Lee Hye Jin thinks that five more years of research are needed. "Only then will our vertical farm be ready for the free market," he says.

Grow Up Here: These Cool Vertical Greenhouses Are Local And Fit Right In Your Home

Grow Up Here: These Cool Vertical Greenhouses Are Local And Fit Right In Your Home

The future of growing technology in Northern Ontario is here

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Greenhouses Canada designs, builds, sells and grows produce with game changing vertical aeroponic equipment. If you have as little as 20 square feet (sq ft) to spare, Greenhouses Canada can help you create a vertical growing space that will grow crops even in the middle of winter. (Facebook/Greenhouses Canada)

By Candice Morel

The desire to purchase locally grown produce is something many residents of Northern Ontario share. Unfortunately, local produce is scarce during the northern winter and many are forced to purchase imported fruits and vegetables.

As a community, we deserve to know where our food comes from and how far it has traveled. The less your food travels from farm to table, the more nutrient content it maintains, making local growing the obvious solution for nutrient-dense fresh produce. 

Greenhouses Canada aims to address this issue by making local crops available year-round in Northern Ontario, even in your own home. 

This local company combines energy-efficient building technology with a passion for food security to revolutionize how communities access fresh food year-round in Northern Ontario. 

They design, build, sell and grow produce with game changing vertical aeroponic equipment. If you have as little as 20 square feet (sq ft) to spare, Greenhouses Canada can help you create a vertical growing space that will grow crops even in the middle of winter.

Aeroponic vertical growing techniques include the most innovative indoor agriculture equipment on the market. Plants are placed in a vertical panel surface while their roots hang in the air. They are then misted with nutrient rich water directly on the root area of the plant allowing crops to grow significantly faster than traditional growing methods while using less water.

Greenhouses Canada’s aeroponic growing equipment can grow anything from leafy green vegetables to strawberries and flowers. With more produce being tested daily, the possibilities of this technology are endless. The system will also produce high crop yield with little to no farming experience. 

After years of research and development, Greenhouses Canada has created the proper recipe for year-round produce growing in all climates. The company will provide training on the growing equipment to those choosing to get started with vertical farming. No matter the size of your project or amount of experience, Greenhouses Canada create an indoor farm that will allow the public to directly contribute to food sustainability and security in Northern Ontario. 

For those who prefer not to grow their own crops, but wish to support locally and ecologically grown produce, there is The Innovation Center. The Innovation Center is a commercial-sized greenhouse that will produce approximately 20,000 plants a week available for sale locally. 

The centre is currently under construction in Espanola and is expected to be completed by late fall. At any given time, there will be approximately 120,000 plants growing at various stages in all seasons. 

The crops produced by The Innovation Center will be available for sale in various food markets in Northern Ontario, including both big and small grocery stores. When you see the Greenhouses Canada logo, you can trust the produce was grown ethically, locally, and transported responsibly and directly after harvest. 

You can also keep your eyes out for The Greenhouses Canada Grow Truck, which will be arriving shortly in Sudbury. This truck will include 15 fully functioning aeroponic panels that are growing food fresh daily for consumption. The truck is 26 feet long, wheelchair accessible and will produce 4,875 plants per month.

If you want a taste of Greenhouses Canada, head out to Frubar’s new location and try a wheatgrass shot, or keep an eye out for the Greenhouses Canada logo at Eat Local, or in The Wellness Boxes.
 
For more information on Greenhouses Canada visit the website and follow us on Facebook for more updates.

Morel is a public relations professional passionate about sustainable solutions and food security in the North. She is currently the marketing and communications director at Greenhouses Canada. 

Organization Turning Vacant Toronto Properties Into Mobile Urban Farms

Organization Turning Vacant Toronto Properties Into Mobile Urban Farms

By Susan Hay Anchor/Producer  Global News

WATCH ABOVE: The Bowery Project is taking vacant lots in downtown Toronto and transforming the properties into mobile urban farms. It’s the brainchild of longtime friends Rachel Kimel and Deena DelZotto. Susan Hay has the story.

Longtime friends Rachel Kimel and Deena DelZotto have a passion for growing food and giving back to the community. Their joint love for food prompted them to start the Bowery Project, an organization that takes vacant lots in downtown Toronto and transforms the properties into mobile urban farms.

“The developer here, Oben Flats, wanted to do something that gave back to the community and that transformed his site,” said co-founder Rachel Kimel.

“People come and they learn new things and they walk away with something fresh, organically grown and sustainable.”

READ MORE: Urban farming: not just growing food but communities

Currently there are three sites in Toronto growing produce in re-purposed milk crates that sit above the land. This allows for an easy change of location when the land is sold or developed.

“It’s like a pop-up mobile farm,” said Kimel. “There’s something called square-foot gardening and so whatever you can occupy in a crate, we do. Herbs, veggies, edible flowers, lots of greens, mixed greens.”

Several community organizations like the Native Women’s Resource Centre benefit from what’s grown on the sites and from the weekly programming and educational workshops.

“Every year from a site this big (at Sherbourne Street and Gerrard Street East), we grow at least 400 pounds of produce and that gets given away to people who are hungry in the city,” said Kimel.

© 2017 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.

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Biomimetic Architecture

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Daniel Christian Wahl  Glocal educator, activist and consultant, generalized in whole systems design and transformative innovation for regenenerative cultures  |  Jul 23, 2017

Biomimetic Architecture

Through its infinite complexity, nature is an instructive and inspirational influence that can expand the aesthetic horizons of the building arts and confirm the inalienable right of humanity to try to salvage a place on this planet before it’s too late. The mission now in architecture, as in all human endeavour, is to recover those fragile threads of connectedness with nature that have been lost for most of this century. The key to a truly sustainable art of architecture for the new millennium will depend on the creation of bridges that unite conservation technology with an earth-centric philosophy and the capacity of designers to transform these integrated forces into a new visual language.

— James Wines (2000: 237)

There are countless examples of architects taking inspiration from biology. The Uluru- Kata Tjuta Cultural Centre in Australia, designed by Gregory Burgess Architects, mimics the interwoven bodies of two battling snakes. Foster & Partner’s Swiss Re Headquarters in London, known as the ‘Gherkin’, is a 40-storey tower inspired by marine organisms called ‘glass sponges’. These suck in water at the bottom and expel it at the top to filter nutrients; the building’s ventilation system mimics this flow.

Many other internationally recognized architects often rely on zoomorphic inspiration for the designs, processes and concepts that shape their buildings. Other internationally recognized architects who frequently rely on zoomorphic inspiration for the designs, processes and concepts that shape their buildings are Santiago Calatrava, Michael Sorkin, Frank Gehry, Renzo Piano, and Nicholas Grimshaw (Martin, 2004; Aldersey-Williams, 2003).

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One of the domes of the Eden Project (designed by Michael Pawlyn) — Source

While many of them are inspired by natural and biological forms, Michael Pawlyn’s approach to biomimicry in architecture is to focus on what he can learn from biological processes to make buildings more efficient by modelling nature’s closed-loop, renewable energy, no-waste systems in the design of buildings (2011).

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Michael Pawlyn

In helping to design the indoor environments for the Rainforest and Mediterranean biome exhibitions at the famous Eden Project, Pawlyn learned a lot about how water and energy cycle through natural ecosystems and how processes and functions in ecosystems are integrated and interlocking to create synergies. His design for the ‘Sahara Forest Project’ (Figure 16) makes use of such biomimicry thinking.

The bold proposal aims not only to generate large amounts of renewable energy based on concentrated solar power and to desalinate large amounts of seawater. It integrates these functions through the use of seawater-cooled greenhouses for the horticultural cultivation of food and biomass, creating a long-term strategy to reverse desertification and regenerate productive ecosystems where the Sahara Desert borders the sea.

The project is on its way to implementation. A pilot test and demonstration centre has been built in Qatar in collaboration with two giant fertilizer companies, the Norwegian Yara ASA and its Qatari joint-venture partner Qafco. It would be good to keep in mind that in the long term the fertilizers used in such a facility will also have to be produced from renewable sources and with renewable energy. Nevertheless, this experiment at scale will give us many opportunities to learn. It will teach us how to ask the right questions in an attempt to re-green the world’s deserts.

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Figure 16: Reproduced with the permission of the Sahara Forest Project Foundation

Growing vegetables and biomass in the desert with external fertilizer inputs, but also using renewable energy and innovative desalination and horticulture approaches, can be considered a Horizon 2 stepping-stone technology, offering us important opportunities to innovate even more closed-loop systems that are based, as much as possible, on organic fertilizers and on-site nutrient cycling.

Conventionally, human-made systems tend to be fossil-fuel dependent, linear and wasteful, mono-functional and engineered towards maximising one goal. Here the aim is to pursue a different paradigm — that is demonstrated by mature ecosystems which run on current solar income, operate as zero waste systems, are complex and interdependent, and have evolved toward an optimised overall system. The Pilot Project will demonstrate concentrated solar power, seawater-cooled greenhouses, evaporator hedges creating conditions for restorative agriculture, halophyte cultivation and algae production in an interdependent cluster that achieves significant increases in productivity for all elements of the system.

— Michael Pawlyn (2014)

Human beings, as expressions of life-generating-conditions-conducive-to-life, are capable of creating designs that are both restorative and regenerative. We can go beyond simply not doing any harm and start to regenerate health, resilience and thriving communities everywhere. This is the promise of biologically and ecologically inspired design and architecture.

The Eastgate Centre is a multi-storey office building in the Zimbabwean capital Harare. It uses a passive cooling system inspired by the way termites (Macrotermes michaelseni) cool their mounds. Mick Pearce and engineers at Arup designed the building to use only a tenth of the energy normally needed to cool a building of this size in the hot African climate (Biomimicry 3.8, 2014b). The Swedish architect Anders Nyquist of EcoCycleDesign applied a similar termite ventilation to the Laggarberg School in Timrå, Sweden.

Andres Nyquist on Termite Ventilation applied to an eco-retrofit of an old school

The visionary architect and writer Jason McLennan, a Buckminster Fuller prize winner and Ashoka Fellow, created the Living Building Challenge in 2006 as a new kind of building certification system that goes beyond international or national standards like LEED or BREAM and sets a standard for regenerative architecture based on biologically inspired and ecologically informed design. There are currently 192 projects on four continents spanning a range of building types. The ‘Living Building Challenge 3.0’ challenges us to ask some fundamental questions about architecture and design:

What if every single act of design and construction made the world a better place?

What if every intervention resulted in greater biodiversity; increased soil health; additional outlets for beauty and personal expression; a deeper understanding of climate, culture and place; a realignment of our food and transportations systems; and a more profound sense of what it means to be a citizen of a planet where resources and opportunities are provided fairly and equitably?

— International Living Future Institute (2014: 7)

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Jason McLennan

McLennan’s vision is to take what has already been learned through previous versions of the Living Building Challenge and incorporate these insights and new questions within the framework of the Living Future Challenge. McLennan regards the Living Future Challenge as “an opportunity to rethink and redesign all our systems and provide a vision for a truly regenerative society” (Living Future Institute Australia, 2014). He is a driving force in the transition towards a regenerative culture who has inspired architects around the world to take up his challenge to create buildings conducive to life.

[This is an excerpt of a subchapter from Designing Regenerative Cultures, published by Triarchy Press, 2016.]

Secret Garden: Palais des Congres Shares Rooftop Harvest

Secret Garden: Palais des Congres Shares Rooftop Harvest

Angela MacKenzie, Reporter/Web Reporter  @AMacKenzieCTV

Published Saturday, July 22, 2017 3:18PM EDT  |  Last Updated Sunday, July 23, 2017 11:33AM EDT

The Palais des Congres is known for hosting major events within is walls but what happens up on its rooftop is a well-hidden secret.

The convention centre has had a rooftop garden since 2010 where fruits, vegetables and herbs are grown.

“There are also edible flowers,” said Palais des Congres spokesperson Amelie Asselin. “It’s really a great harvest.”

The Palais de Congres convention centre has had a rooftop garden since 2010 where fruits, vegetables and herbs are grown. (CTV Montreal)

Initially the idea grew as a way to help reduce so-called heat islands in the downtown area, but the resulting harvest has proven to be an added benefit.

Each year the garden produces around 650 kilos of food, and much of the produce is used by the congress centre’s official caterer to feed delegates at the Palais.

The garden also functions as a teaching tool, to show building owners and managers how to create green roof-tops.

What’s more, it houses an experimental lab for urban agriculture techniques.

“The space that we use to produce the same quantity of strawberry is less because we are vertical farming,” Asselin explained.

Vertical methods also allow the berries to grow quickly, in addition to taking up less space than traditional farming.

The roof is also home to bee hives, which provide tasty honey but also help with pollination. 

In fact, the rooftop honey was even given to former U.S. President Barack Obama as a souvenir gift last month when he was in Montreal to deliver a speech.

The garden is so fruitful that it actually produces more food than the Palais needs. So a portion of the harvest is donated to the Maison du Pere to help feed those less fortunate.

The shelter relies on donations to prepare the 1,000 meals it serves each day, and the fresh produce from the garden provides welcome and delicious ingredients.

Green Machine: Madar Farms’ Plug-and-Play Harvests

Green Machine: Madar Farms’ Plug-and-Play Harvests

Dubai start-up has ambitious plans to provide Gulf food security by combining technology and hydroponics

 Photos Credit: Clint Egbert/Gulf News

Andrew Staples, Chief Business Reporter  |  Gulf News  |  DUBAI  |  Published: 18:33 July 29, 2017

The Arab world struggles to feed its population. In the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) nations, arable lands accounts for just 1 per cent of the total land, yet agriculture and irrigation use more than 50 per cent of the water supply. And still the GCC imports 90 per cent of its food.

That’s the starting point for Dubai start-up Madar Farms’ ambitious plans to develop sustainable agriculture within the GCC by combining latest hydroponics techniques with high-tech control.

“I think we all know that we have a problem here in the region,” said Madar Farms co-founder and CEO Abdul Aziz Al Mulla. “But I think the scale and imminence of the problem is what really scared me. Over the last 20 years we’ve lost the majority of our water resources.

“We’re not talking about a problem that’s going to hit us now. We’re talking about in 10 years, 20 years. But at the same time intervention is so large scale and takes such a large period of time to actually convert that I felt a very strong need that something had to be done now. Something at a large scale.”

Ultimately, the start-up, which began operations in February, wants to build a fully automated robotic hydroponics farm. Right now, it’s operating three units built into re-used 20-foot shipping containers at its headquarters in Warsan 3, near Dubai Municipality’s nursery, and is on its fourth harvest.

Container hydroponics isn’t a new development, Al Mulla is quick to point out. It’s already been used successfully in other parts of the world.

“We always tell people there’s no magic in hydroponics,” said Al Mulla, a Kuwaiti entrepreneur who began getting interested in food security while working for consultancy McKinsey. “Everyone thinks it’s some kind of new technology. It’s not. It’s all the same, It’s just the delivery mechanism and it’s how accessible you make it that’s the differentiating factor.”

What’s new is combining container hydroponics with a mobile app that maximises efficiency by monitoring crop growth and advising workers in necessary tasks to ensure consistent growth and maximum yield. It will also help Madar monitor and manage hundreds of containers — among their retail models are options for customers to have Madar maintain containers for them, or to store and manage them. The app will be produced in English, Arabic, Hindi, Urdu and Tagalog.

Combining the two allows Madar to grow crops using less than 1 per cent of the water used in traditional methods, and do to so in a manner that makes the process easy and consistent. At the moment they’re concentrating on producing leafy greens such as lettuce, cabbage, herbs, and intend to add legumes and berries in the near future.

“You want people to convert from unsustainable farming habits to sustainable farming habits, but not only that, you want to produce a higher quality produce and all the spiel that comes with that. In order to encourage them to do so, you need to make it as accessible as possible to drive adoptability.”

Madar’s three operating units have served as a proving ground for the concept of a plug and play solution for its small team, who are quick to point out that their background is in business, not agriculture. “We don’t want someone to have an agricultural background. We want them to be able to do it if they know nothing about farming, and we want them to be able to do it consistently and in a standardised fashion. And we want them to be able to upscale as fast as possible.”

Come September, Madar will begin distributing units to customers; they already have orders to carry them through to year-end.

Each container will sell for between $85,000 and $95,000, depending on requirements (Madar is still refining the assembly process to bring costs down). Al Mulla estimates return on investment for each container at between four and seven years, depending on the cost of electricity.

They’re looking into building smaller units in re-used aircraft cargo containers, suitable for installation in restaurants.

The containers have considerable power requirements, which form a significant proportion of operating costs.

But Al Mulla is clear the containers are a stepping stone to a larger platform; they help increase awareness of the method and build the market, but will not solve the problem he is concerned with.

“When we talk about food security, which is our long-term aim, you have to produce a quantity of food, but the right mixture of food of high quality to feed and entire population. That’s our long-term goal and it’s what we’re going to get to. Growing leafy greens isn’t going to get us there.”

Madar’s next phase is a large-scale automated hydroponics factory. They intend to break ground in the third quarter of 2018.

“We take out the labour aspect completely. This automates using robots for transplanting, harvesting and packaging in a 40,000 square foot plant where we can grow 3,000 kilogrammes a day.”

That too is small scale compared to the target if food security for the region, but Al Mulla envisages a chain of plants, producing not only leafy greens but wheat, root crops and fruit. He’s looking also into automated fish farming.

Food Hygiene

Madar operates a strict sanitary process in its hydroponics containers. Al Mulla dons surgical gloves before handling equipment, and asks Gulf News’ reporter and photographer to don face masks and refrain from touching anything.

This is not only a matter of avoiding contamination of the plants, but of standardising the conditions, and the nutrient-laden water flowing through the stone-wool and cotton holders in which the plants grow.

Since there’s no spraying, and fertilisers are delivered through the roots, the sanitised conditions mean the plants can be eaten directly, without washing — something Al Mulla happily demonstrates back in his office as he offers around a pair of freshly harvested lettuces.

In fact, he says, washing the plants actually decreases their cleanliness; tap water is dirtier than they are (though still, of course, perfectly safe).

How to Start a Garden – The Ultimate Guide

How to Start a Garden – The Ultimate Guide

Jen Reviews |  Share

I have gardened for many, many years and have many, many books ranging from communing with nature spirits to controlling pests with their natural enemies.

What are the most important lessons I have learned over the years? How would I advise someone to begin for guaranteed success?

People garden with different objectives in mind.

Some are seeking a serene oasis, a time they can spend alone in nature, even if it is just a tiny plot on their urban lot. Many do not know of the serenity gardening brings until they have one.

Some simply want an ornamental garden, pretty landscaping to admire.

Some people just want tomatoes and basil for spaghetti sauce.

A widowed mother with three young children my primary goal was to grow fresh organic food we could eat during the growing season, enough to store for the winter, herbs to heal our illnesses and injuries and flowers to fill the house.

I didn’t have extra time on my hands to be weeding the garden every evening, which may be a peaceful mantra for some after a day at the office, but was a disastrous waste of time in my book.

Nor was I interested in scouring plant leaves for camouflaged sacs of insect eggs and pulling slimy caterpillars from tomato plants they were devouring at alarming speed.

So I read and experimented, experimented and read. And after many years I came to understand what it takes to start a garden that yields the crops I want with minimal effort.

Table of Contents

• Garden with Nature
• Follow the Sun
• Don’t Try to Keep Out what you Can’t Keep Out
• It’s All in the Soil
• Organizing the Garden
• Buying Seeds, Starters, Bulbs and Seedlings
• Companion Planting
• Supplies
• Glossary

Garden with Nature

The first rule is to garden with nature, not against it. What type of soil do you have? Is it sandy or is it clay or is it a mix? What is the acidic level? How long is your growing season? How hot does it get? How cold does it get? How much rain do you get?

You will want to select plants that thrive in your soil in your climate.

It’s not hard to do. There are thousands of plants out there. It is nothing to be bemoaned if for, example your soil is clay and you cannot easily grow potatoes, which prefer sand. Well, then grow corn, cabbage, squash, echinacea, and black-eyed susans.

Most leafy greens prefer a good rich soil and the clay stays cooler longer than sand so it extends the growing season for this cool-weather crop.

Too, there are many different purposes you can grow plants for apart from beauty and food. I have grown plants for natural dyes and fibers.

I have grown plants for making gifts like sunflower wreaths, table centerpieces or raspberry liqueur filled chocolates.

I have grown plants to make insect repellent, set broken bones, heal sprains and clear congestion.

So when you are considering the plants you can grow in your area, broaden your horizons.

A good place to find out what grows well in your region is your extension office. This is what they do and they are paid tax dollars to do it, so don’t hesitate to stop by or call them.

I had an extension agent spend an afternoon on my farm discussing the site I had in mind for my vineyard. It would have taken two years of college classes and many growing seasons to learn what I learned from her in one afternoon.

Be aware, however, that many of the university agricultural departments in part subsidizing extension offices are themselves subsidized by large agricultural corporations that profit from the sale of fertilizers, pesticides and insecticides.

Here, for example, is the 2017 Midwest Fruit Pest Management Guide which recommends extensive spraying of pesticides on the very fruit you will be eating.

It is worth opening just to the first page to give you an idea of how much the university agriculture departments contribute to the knowledge base of extension offices.

Their advice may be skewed toward priorities antithetical to a sustainable view of the planet. Take what you need and ignore the rest.

Check around. There are probably co-ops of sustainable and organic farmers in your area happy to help as well.

Pick up a farmer’s almanac too.

Back to your soil. We will talk about the beauty of compost fertilizing your soil and breaking up dense clay clumps that deprive roots of needed oxygen and drown them in mud.

Compost can also augment your sandy soil with some substance so that water doesn’t just rapidly drain through the soil leaving your plants thirsty only moments after it’s rained. Although there are many varieties of potatoes: red, gold, white and blue, perhaps you don’t want to be eating potatoes until your ears fall off.

You can add sandy soil to clay soil and clay soil to sandy soil, but the truth is unless you change the soil’s ecosystem, which happens over time when you shovel in compost, the soil will probably ignore your efforts and return to its natural state.

So unlike many guides out there, I am not going to advise you to believe that you can actually do much to permanently change the soil by adding amendments.

I have heavily compacted soil around my side door that seems to have served as a construction debris dump when my cabin was built. Attempts to change the clay by adding some of the sandy soil from other parts of the yard proved futile.

I didn’t want to use my compost, reserving it for the garden. At last I found gypsum, renowned for being nontoxic and for breaking up clay. Although touted as natural and nontoxic, I am a mistrustful soul.

Still, I did not intend to grow a food crop there, so I wasn’t terribly concerned about an unknown negative effect on the soil. I figured the soil would heal itself once I got some healthy growth activity going.

The immediate results looked promising and some plants were able to struggle through, but the results were, as with all of the other soil amendments I have tried short of compost, short-term.

Our focus on composting will be to add nutrients to the soil, which is always good as plants will deplete the soil of nutrients as they grow.

Consider a forest floor. Fragrant with the aroma of decaying leaves, it is replete with nutrients. Rain and wind have worked to bring down twigs, leaves, and nuts from the trees and pummel them all back into the earth along with animal scat. Fungi and bacteria feeding on the plant life further the decomposition.

The forest floor becomes even richer and will yield fiddleheads and morel mushrooms for a divine Spring breakfast. Where the tree canopy is not too dense, berry bushes will take over in the summer.

Nature regenerates itself and that is what we will emulate in the garden.

Follow the Sun

Where are you going to place your site? And how large should it be?

First, what are you hoping for?

If this is an ornamental garden, go with the contours of your land. An excellent book to assist you here is Ann Lovejoy’s Organic Garden Design School, published by Rodale in 2001.

My advice here is going to focus on the small home garden that includes herbs and vegetables for the kitchen. I say small because that is how you should start out.

You can easily expand it once you know how much effort it is going to take and have identified what else you might like to grow in a single season.

Go out to your proposed site and take a look at where the sun is in the morning, in the afternoon and in the evening. Bear in mind that if it is winter, the arc of the sun is going to be a bit different than in the summer.

What you are trying to determine is where any trees might be in relation to the sun that might block your garden for periods of the day. You can use this to your advantage.

I like to plant leafy greens where they only get morning and evening sun and the blazing midday sun is blocked by a copse of tall evergreens. Direct sun makes lettuces bolt, that is, the center core shoots up to reach the sun, to the detriment of the tasty leaves that would otherwise grow.

If you have the luxury of a lot of land, by all means take a shovel and dig up the soil at a few different sites to see what you’ve got. The best soil is a mix of clay and sand, a rich loamy silt that will hold water and nutrients, without forming into hard clumps of mud. The acid level should be a pH between 5.5 and 7.5. It probably is, but a simple soil test kit from the garden center will conform this.

Do not at any cost choose a site humans have contaminated with poisons of any sort. That includes Round-up, termite spray, and debris from a burn pile. If you wouldn’t eat it by the forkful, you don’t want to grow edible plants in it. Plants absorb nutrients from the soil and they will absorb toxins as well.

Consider too, who might be living near your garden. You won’t be able to keep them out, but if you have rabbits living nearby, at least make them have to cross a broad open field if you can. This is something they are reluctant to do as it makes them visible to hawks and other predators.

To save work, you will want the garden near your compost and your kitchen and reachable by a water hose.

Don’t Try to Keep Out what you Can’t Keep Out

You might mistakenly believe the woodland creatures or those in the shrubbery of your suburban neighborhood to be of lower intelligence but trust me, they were actually born highly psychic and are greedily contemplating the abundance from your garden even now as you are indoors innocently planning it.

There are gadgets and gizmos and wives tales of many a fix to deter animals, but save your money and just nod kindly at the neighbor telling his tall tales. The scarecrow with the banging pans, the sensor flood lights, the hose blasting shots of cold water, the fox urine, the Irish Spring soap, the locks of cut hair… these things may cause a deer or groundhog to hesitate once, but the second time they will simply ignore it.

You might try a kinetic sculpture like one of these. You could strategically place bells on it to further terrify the foraging beasts.

Then even if it doesn’t work to deter deer or groundhogs, birds or rabbits, you will still have a cool piece of artwork to console you.

A lot of the advice about deterring animals appears to have a solid premise, but don’t be seduced. I have an entire book on deer proofing my garden by planting only plants that deer don’t eat.

But I have seen them eat them.

The other premise is that deer don’t like to be near plants with a pungent smell because it will mask the smell of any predators they are on high alert for. But I have seen them linger near the mint as they demolish the corn.

And I have seen them leap over posts freshly smeared with fox urine.

With much effort, I erected a slant fence around my vineyard upon the advice of a USDA pamphlet, indicating that tensile wire a foot apart at seven levels spanning a 75 degree plane confused deer. They wouldn’t jump it.

One of my gun-slinging neighbors showed up drunk one evening itching to shoot into the horde hovering patiently on the hill across from my vineyard waiting for me to finish my chores and leave.

In a deep Southern slurring drawl he argued, “But deer don’t know nothin’ ‘bout no optical illusions.”

Turns out he was right. Or if they did know anything about optical illusions, it was how to ignore them.

I do plant dark orange and gold French marigolds around the perimeter of my garden in the belief that the fragrance discourages rabbits. I don’t know if it does or not. This is the first year I have had a lot of rabbits, but the ground hogs beat them to the feast.

French marigolds do deter whiteflies from tomato plants though, and after they are fully established, they control nematodes, so along with their burst of color, they are welcome in my garden.

Your best defense against warm-blooded pests is a good fence and a smart, frisky, hunting dog that keeps vigil around the garden.

Your best offense is a catch and release trap. Or, uh, so I am hoping.

Turns out that the ancient androgynous groundhog who has been content living alone under the smokehouse these past sixteen years up and gave birth to a litter of strapping lusty sons.

Did you know that young groundhogs become teenagers and move out before their first summer is over? And that they each strike out and build a summer home and a winter home and multiple exits and entries to each?

And that throwing hot peppers and rocks down these holes does not discourage them at all? They just toss them right back out.

I can personally corroborate the veracity of much of Michael Pollan’s results in his war on woodchucks described in his garden manifesto, Second Nature: A Gardener’s Education, Garden Press, 2003, available through Amazon.

My farmstead is now littered with piles of rocks surrounding holes leading to long tunnels under each outbuilding and my cabin. It was after I was startled by the scratching awfully close to my dining table that I bought the trap.

I was already a bit put off that the ground hogs did not spare any of the five varieties of squash I had planted.

I had been particularly inspired by the previous summer’s crops of acorn squash and winter squash. They were tasty and lasted well into the winter months. So I got carried away and ordered five varieties.

I don’t mind sharing ten percent of the garden with my woodland neighbors, but I lose my will to share beyond that. Maybe if they helped with some of the work on the farm, I’d feel differently.

But when I heard that unnerving scratching, I mean how does an animal bury beneath a cellar? That ‘s when I started seriously shopping for a catch-and-release trap to be delivered as soon as Amazon could get it to me.

I caught that fat sucker too.

First thing I read when I was reading about how to trap a woodchuck was how much they like watermelon and wouldn’t you know, for the first time ever, I had a watermelon growing? Indeed it was tiny, but it was perfectly formed and showed tremendous promise.

It was growing just outside his door, the entry to the long sandy tunnel running beneath my house. He would have to step over it until he felt like eating it.

This perpetual threat was eating at me and I threw the juiciest produce I could conjure into that trap and set it immediately outside his hole.

I caught him not long after I set out the trap. Nervous that somehow the door would open, I put him in the back of the car and drove him to the abandoned farmstead in the hollow a couple miles down the road.

I drove pretty fast. The sun was setting behind the mountain and my imagination was at its peak.

Next I caught a possum. That scared me a bit as well.

He kept his very sharp teeth bared as he looked at me. His fur was matted with goo and blood and he had a wild look about him that made me uncomfortable.

The trap I bought is supposed to be humane. I’m not sure what happened, but there was some bloody hair pasted to the bottom piece of metal.

I don’t mind possums around, but I drove him out to the abandoned farmstead too, for practice and to rule out possibilities of revenge.

The next day when I woke it seemed like maybe the skunk and one of the groundhogs had got in a standoff during the night. This got me to thinking: what if I caught a skunk? What if I caught a skunk?

I couldn’t leave him in there and I had no idea how I’d get him out. I still don’t.

But it’s winter now and I’ve been traveling, so I am just going to have to ponder this one and redouble my efforts in the Spring if I want to reap the bounty from my garden.

It’s All in the Soil

Healthy soil hosts a web of life from tiny one-celled bacteria, fungi and protozoa to the more complex nematodes and small arthropods to earthworms, insects, and small vertebrates.

These organisms interact beneficially with plants.

By-products from growing roots and plant debris feed soil organisms. Soil organisms help plants by decomposing organic matter, cycling nutrients to make them more available to the plant, enhancing soil structure and porosity and controlling the populations of soil organisms, including crop pests.

Healthy soil means healthy plants.

The way to healthy soil is to add compost and not till the ecosystems, the webs of life, to shreds.

Buddhists, who do not believe in killing sentient creatures, manually crumble soil, so that earthworms are not killed.

Farmers use tractors pulling tillers and most gardeners use rototillers to turn the soil. I use a shovel rather than till.

Compost is just earth that has been made from decayed organic matter. It is called black gold because it is a sure-fire medium for producing healthy plants.

Nothing is more valuable to a gardener and it’s free. It solves the problems of what to do with dinner scraps and yard debris and it helps everything grow abundantly.

I have a pretty big compost pile that should steam but it doesn’t. Because I travel, I do not have animals, whose feces would go along way to heating up the pile, but eventually, I suppose the enormity of the weight helps a good deal, it creates lovely compost.

The compost pile requires turning with a pitchfork, the romance of which appeals to me whereas the actual doing it, does not. I highly recommend a compost tumbler.

This is a good video on how to make compost. The tumbler makes it even simpler.

I try to till and compost in the Fall, so that the soil is open to receive the compost and the compost is open to the winter snow and sun which help integrate it into the soil.

You will have to turn over the soil in Spring. Turning the soil aerates it. You need only shovel down about six or eight inches or till across the garden two or three times to get it to the consistency where it will allow germinating seeds to poke through. You can turn the compost into the soil again in early Spring.

Organizing the Garden

I would recommend a garden no larger than 25 x 30 feet to begin.

Most gardeners plant in neat rows as it is easier to weed.

Habitual walking (and of course driving heavy machinery) across the soil compacts it and makes it pretty much useless for growing anything but plantain, called by Native Americans, “white man’s footsteps.”

On the subject of weeds, you should understand the following.

Soil organisms are not distributed evenly about the soil. Each species exists where it can find the right amount of space, nutrients and moisture. This is generally around organic matter.

Thus, my sandy soil is as sterile as the desert away from plants.

But around roots there is a region called the rhizosphere where bacteria feeds from old plant cells and proteins and sugars released by the roots. Protozoa and nematodes feed on the bacteria. They cycle nutrients and help retain beneficial ones, change the structure of the soil to help the plant better access water and nutrients and suppress disease by feeding on pathogens and excreting metabolites toxic to them.

Gardeners weed to remove the competition for nutrients. However, root systems can interact in a synergistic way, providing nutrients for each other.

Tall weeds can also provide welcome shade to plants sensitive to the relentless rays of a midday blazing sun. So unless the weeds are blocking needed sun or overtaking my plants, that is, the weeds are strong and healthy and my plants weak and stunted, I let them do their thing.

If you are not going to use a rototiller and you don’t care that much about weeds that will grow among the rocks, you are not bound by the rules of symmetry and can plant in circles if you wish. You can make a rock or brick path in your garden to walk on. You can build rock walls or mounds of rock that retain moisture so crickets and small toads can live. They are priceless predators of insects who would otherwise forage your plants.

Lately I have been allowing narrow grass aisles to grow between my plots, but you do have to keep the grass down or it will attract too many grasshoppers. They will quickly devour a number of plants.

If you are more comfortable with straight rows and weeding as much as you can, by all means go for it.

Some say that a man’s footsteps are all a garden needs for fertility. Along the same line, a friend told me of an old man she knew with an abundant garden who took only one cup of water to feed his garden each evening. The point is, follow your passion and it will yield good things.

I like to intersperse flowers, herbs and vegetables and to follow companion planting suggestions.

Planting too much of a single crop creates an ecosystem vulnerable to pests and diseases of that crop and eradicates the natural system of checks and balances of a diverse ecosystem.

Over time, growing a single plant will also deplete the soil of the nutrients that plants needs. Farmers alternate their crops, often planting a cover crop that will add back in the nutrients the former planting has taken.

Certain pests like certain plants.

In your garden too, you should not plant the same crop in the same area. Last year’s pests are waiting.

Buying Seeds, Starters, Bulbs and Seedlings

I can’t say definitively where to buy seeds. I feel like I’ve had good luck and bad luck with every place from which I’ve bought.

And that’s not to say it was a problem with the seeds not germinating. It could be that birds ate the seed. Or that I pulled up the seedlings thinking they were weeds.

It’s an odd thing, and just one of many spellbinding revelations you will discover watching the world up close and personal, but almost identical plants will grow next to the seedlings you’ve planted.

After awhile, you can get cocky and think you know which one is which and before you know it, you’ve got a bitter weed growing rampant where the arugula would be if you hadn’t yanked it.

By the way, don’t be yanking plants. When you are old you might end up with very painful elbows on cold, damp days. Move as a dancer, with thought and balance.

I did grow a notable crop of amaranth, an edible red grain the Hopi also used for body paint from seeds I bought from Seeds of Change.

I also grew some very pretty Peruvian chili peppers a couple years in a row that glimmered like jewels in my garden. They were very hot and kept well dried for many years.

I think they were Peruvian. Maybe they were Bolivian. But they don’t carry them any more so it doesn’t matter.

I have also got some very cool sunflower seeds from them and good broomcorn seeds.

I like Peaceful Valley Seeds because they carry organic seeds.

I have a soft spot in my heart for Johnny’s Selected Seeds, but I think it’s just because they carry a xylene-free weatherproof marker, which is something otherwise impossible to find.

It’s a good idea to have a diagram of your proposed plantings before you start, but sometimes I also mark off the seeds as I plant them by writing their names on a popsicle stick and placing them at the edges of their little plot.

I wouldn’t do that if I didn’t have a xylene-free marker. Xylene gives me a spinning headache that makes me believe it is probably not a substance I want the rain to wash into my garden soil.

I’m not obsessive-compulsive, just circumspect. You will find if you breathe deeply and are open to sensing the world around you while you are gardening, you will become sensitive to the rhythms of the earth. You will feel rain approaching.

The reason the farmer’s almanac advises against planting root crops while the moon is waxing is because the moon is pulling the earth’s water closer to the surface during that phase, and root crops like depth and dryness. Plant them when the mood is waning and them gravitational forces are weaker.

The moment of their planting, as in astrological signs, makes an imprint upon their lives and influences their growth.

Biodynamic farmers also believe that the earth is part of a single organism, a living universe. They, too work with the energy fields of the planet for abundance, mixing plants in their compost known to have synergistic properties and making a fertilizer of compost tea at a particular favorable time in the earth’s rotation.

Back to seeds. I like to look through the catalogs with the cheesy graphics that come in the mail starting around January when it is cold and stark outside.

I have no idea how many times I have ordered and tried to plant a “crimson carpet.” Maybe I never did. I don’t have any.

I hope to this year.

I love the idea of heirloom seeds and get lost for hours on the websites for heirloom seeds thinking I will plant this or that.

Looks like there is a whole cult of people dedicated to preserving species, which is a pretty cool idea and makes me want to accept the few they divvy up to me and responsibly grow them and harvest their seeds.

But I also want to be an astronomer and a physicist and an enologist and a traveler and, well… you get the picture. I’m afraid I would not follow through and disappoint them.

Although I am truly afraid to ask anything about their origin, I can generally trust that the seeds I get in bulk at my farmers’ co-op will grow.

They are very practical farmers. I also trust in whatever seeds they have decided to stock in regular-size packets.

Their prices tend to be less than online stores too.

Chances are good there is a farmers’ co-op near you. Don’t be intimidated. You don’t have to wear overalls to go in there. You can tap their knowledge about a lot of things too.

They will generally only carry sound seed potatoes and onion sets that are going to grow well in your area.

So shop around and buy a good variety of seeds. If seedlings don’t come up in the time it says they will on the back of the package and you haven’t had super crazy out-of-season weather, then just plant something else there.

Epictetus, a Greek Stoic philosopher born in A.D. 55, said, “Neither should a ship rely on one small anchor, nor should life rest on a single hope.”

True now as it was then. Have back-up seeds.

Some plants, like lilies and rhubarb, grow from bulbs. You can get these, as well as seedlings, at the farmers’ co-op or a nursery.

You will want to buy seedlings for crops that require a longer growing season than you have or for crops you want a head-start on. Seedlings can grow in a greenhouse before the ground outside warms up enough to allow anything to sprout.

When you buy your seedlings, you will need to “harden them off,” which means to help them acclimate to the cold world so they don’t just freeze to death.

Plants by their nature need to be planted in the ground and do not like a lot of change. They easily die of transplant shock, so it is important to try to keep as much of the old soil on them as you can and introduce a similar environment if possible, added by a bit of fish emulsion or liquid B-12.

Keep them watered and out of the wind at first. Hardening off involves setting them outside for progressively more hours each day until they have been able to weather a few of the coldest nights you are getting.

Once they have proven strong enough to endure that, you can plant them in the garden.

Ask around and check customer reviews to learn about your local nurseries for buying seedlings.

Once you have been gardening awhile, you will learn to recognize an unhealthy plant and to look for certain types of pests hiding on them, but until then, you’ll just have to go to a reputable place and ask the person near you.

It’s not exactly easy to find organically grown seedlings. You can of course grow your own seedlings indoors. But unless you are around 24/7 or have greenhouse conditions in your home, it is a ridiculous amount of work.

I buy what I can get and hope the soil and sun detoxifies whatever the plant’s previous owner has done.

While we are on the subject of buying plants, if you don’t know I should explain the difference between annuals and perennials now.

Annuals are plants that you have to plant or grow from seed every year. If you leave annuals in the ground and let them grow long enough to produce seeds and those seeds drop to the ground, take hold and sprout the next season, you can let them grow there of course and that’s great.

But don’t count on that happening.

You can also collect the seeds from your annuals and try to use them the next year, but again, until you learn to recognize when seeds are ready to harvest and ideal storage and nurturing conditions, don’t count on this as a money-saver.

Perennials are plants that will weather your winter and just keep on growing. They may go dormant, that is, fall into a deep sleep during the winter months and look quite dead, but they will perk up in the Spring and sprout buds. Don’t dig them up.

This is true of a lot of herbs, like rosemary and marjoram, some flowers like lavender and all of the bulbs that I can think of.

Research what you want to figure out what to do. Bulbs multiply at their roots and can be pulled up and divided in the Spring. Replanted them with more space around them and, ta-da, you’ve got many more.

Companion Planting

When I am considering the year’s plantings, I usually look through an old thumbed-through book called Carrots Love Tomatoes written by Louise Riotte and published by Storey Communications in 1975. It is based upon observations of plants that grow better together, due to the nutrients their root systems exchange and because the pests they naturally attract are pests that control the population of pests of their companion.

Because they are healthy, they are less vulnerable to diseases too. Disease happens when a healthy plant is compromised, generally from insect attack or lack of nutrients.

Plants can be compromised from temperature and humidity or arid extremes. Disease comes looking then. A good companion plant can bolster strength in troubled times, so it’s a no-brainer to follow these principles and a lot of fun.

Anyway, that’s how I recommend beginning your plantings. After a few seasons, you will formulate your own conclusions about invisible interactions happening. You may find that chickweed likes lavender.

Or you may feel a little splash of color would be delightful between the meadows of basil you have planted and the garlic.

This video explores the beneficial effect of interspersing your food crops with flowers.

You will appreciate that you have cast dahlia seeds when you are mesmerized by the swan-like curvatures of the garlic, with their long needle-noses, astounded to find they are having dancing parties behind your back. They freeze in their new graceful positions when you turn to look.

You take photo after photo on the cell phone you should never garden with. And these photos you show your friends, though barely capturing the thin arc of the garlic are replete with colorful dahlias.

Many gardeners subscribe to companion planting principles.

When do you plant? Look in your farmer’s almanac. It will tell you what you can plant in your area when.

Cold weather crops that can be planted early include onions, potatoes, radishes and beets.

You can follow up with planting seeds for hardy greens and then the more delicate greens.

About then, the soil will have warmed up enough for the rest of the seeds to germinate and to accept your transplant of seedlings.

That’s not to say a late killing frost doesn’t come along and undo what you’ve done. Measures can be taken to save plants if you have warning. This might be something you want to research in advance.

Recommendations range from spraying a preparation with valerian to warm the plants to erecting a row cover.

Glossary

Annuals – Plants that die off at the end of a growing season. They must be planted anew every year
Companion Planting – The practice of planting sympathetic crops next to each other to improve crop yield.
Compost – Organic matter which has decayed and turned into rich soil
Perennials – Plants that live through the winter, though they often appear not to.
Seedlings – the first shoots of a plant’s growth. They are often grown in small cells until they are large enough and strong enough to plant in the garden.
Weeds – plants you are not intentionally growing.

Supplies

You need very little, apart from a composter and seeds or plants to garden. A good shovel, possibly a hoe, a trowel and good pruners are essential.

Take good care of your tools and make sure they are always clean. Be sensitive to what you are doing. If you cut off a diseased leaf, clean the shears with soap before you use them on another plant or you are likely to spread the disease. Keep them sharp so that your cuts are clean, not sloppy and tearing, thus weakening the plant.

It is important to be comfortable. I once only wore Japanese farmer pants, which were loose and made of light but durable cotton and had pockets in the knees where you could slide knee-pads, but I can’t find them for sale anymore.

If you find some, buy enough for the rest of your life.

Dirty as you are going to get it, I highly recommend the full coverage of a long-sleeve shirt. Not only does it protect you from the sun, but it will spare you the nasty sting of sweat bees if you dally in the garden a little too late in the morning.

So now that you look awesome and have a cool compost tumbler in your back yard, grab your shovel and trowel, maybe find a straw hat and head out to create a magical garden.

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Artemis Takes on The World

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We’re currently helping indoor farmers get to profitability and beyond in 8 markets around the world.

Artemis Takes on The World

It’s no secret — the indoor farming market is huge… and growing! As Allison detailed in this blog post, indoor farms in the US produce over $21B in revenue annually. And the US only represents 0.2% of the global greenhouse vegetable market. This is the the same industry that is aggressively growing to help increase food production by 70% to feed 9B people by 2050.

Global Expansion

Artemist has set out to provide the world’s best management software from its inception. In order to be the world’s best, you have to be a global company. Within just a few months of our launch, we were proud to support incredible customers in South America, Sri Lanka, Canada, and the United States.

We’re not stopping there — we’re excited to announce that in addition to continuing to add customers in our existing markets, this month we’ve entered new markets, adding customers in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia!

Supporting Customers

The biggest challenge any growing company faces in adding new customers is supporting them while keeping existing customers both excited and engaged. Over the past month we’ve introduced a new onboarding process to ensure customers see value from Day 1 as well as easier ways for our customers to use our software. We’ve also welcomed Regina Bellows to our team as our dedicated Customer Success Manager.

Managing customers across so many time zones can lead to sleepless nights. One of the things I love about Artemis is everyone here is customer-obsessed. We take turns monitoring support channels all hours of the day and night so a customer never feels like they’re left in the dark when they run into a question. I think it’s probably one of our customers’ favorite things about us.

Let’s Chat!

While we’re excited with our progress to-date, we’re not stopping here. We continue to be excited about how we can use data to evolve one of the world’s largest legacy industries. I’d love to understand more about your farm, your challenges, and how we can help you solve your problems with data. Please email me at jschmitz@agrilyst.com or call at +1 646–719–0304.

Take-aways

• The global greenhouse market is large and growing.

• Agrilyst is growing along with the market, now working with clients across four continents.

• We‘re keeping a close eye on support to ensure our customers are getting the most out of their software investment.

Artemis is the virtual agronomist powering the horticulture industry. We invite you to join the #DigitalHorticulture movement on social media and share your stories of farm innovation.

If you enjoyed this story, tune in for more here and be sure to check out our website: https://artemisag.com/

New Buildings ‘Should Have’ More Green Spaces

New Buildings ‘Should Have’ More Green Spaces

GREEN TECHNOLOGY

Greening a building can make a world of difference. Photo Credit: Max Pixel

The government mandates a minimum of 10% for green spaces in new commercial and housing developments around Malaysian cities. But that amount is precious little.

So says an architect, Alan Teh. “The design of many high-rise buildings tend to alienate people, meaning they don’t get to interact with others as how people in villages do,” he elucidated in an interview with FMT News.

We agree. Rather than just add a touch of greenery here and there, all new developments should embrace green spaces as integral parts of their designs. Because of its tropical climate, the architect explains, Malaysia is ideally suited to incorporate lush green spaces into building designs, if only as cascades of plants on walls or as part of roof gardens.

“We tend to take our country’s climate for granted. We have the perfect conditions for tropical plants to grow easily and we have access to a wide variety of trees and plants suited for our weather,” he told the newspaper. “In countries like Japan, they have to cover the trees during winter to protect them from the cold, and this shows how much they value greenery.”

Albeit plenty more needs to be done, Malaysia has made some progress in spreading the idea of green buildings. The country’s Green Building Index (GBI) provides guidelines for developers, construction companies and investors to design and build new constructions in the most environmentally sustainable ways possible. Green buildings are geared towards much more efficient uses of resources from energy to water. Through their construction and energy-saving operation, GBI-approved buildings are designed to reduce their impacts on the surrounding environment throughout their entire lifecycle.

Ideally, a true eco-building’s energy savings should be net zero, which means that a building should use only as much energy as it can itself save or produce on site by help of renewables. That can still be a tall order for most home owners, largely because of the extra expenses involved. Encouragingly, however, the idea of energy-efficient buildings is catching on in Malaysia.

Yet even if a building is not wholly eco-friendly, it can still be equipped with more green spaces. A mere 10% is indeed too paltry a ratio. For starters, rooftop gardens, walls covered in vegetation and other simple add-ons can make a big difference in turning a new building a whole lot greener, both literally and figuratively.

Malaysia: Farming In The City

Malaysia: Farming In The City

Urban agriculture is able to cater to food demand for the urban population, if it is practised in a proper way. FILE PIC

By DATUK DR MAD NASIR SHAMSUDIN - July 21, 2017 @ 9:52am

AS world population increases, with urbanisation moving in tandem, more people are expected to live in the cities. By 2025, it is estimated that 60 to 85 per cent of the world’s population will be considered as city dwellers.

In Malaysia, it is predicted that the urban population will increase to 75 per cent in three years.

Rapid urbanisation is pulling poverty and food insecurity into cities, given the fact that urban dwellers are actually net food buyers and depend largely on cash income to access food.

In fact, the urban poor are vulnerable to food price shocks and always suffer most from higher food prices, which eventually could lead to food insecurity since food composes a substantial part of urban household expenditure.

Food production has always been associated with rural environment.

In fact, to feed the urban population, it is assumed that relying on rural food production would be sufficient. However, this turned out to be rather inaccurate — urban agriculture itself is able to cater to food demand for urban population, given that it is practised in a proper way.

Urban agriculture is defined by the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) as any agricultural activity which grows, raises, processes and distributes agricultural produce, regardless of land size and number of human resources within the cities and towns.

Studies from both developed and developing economies claimed that urban agricultural activities can contribute to the availability of fresh and nutritious food items, reduction in food expenditure and having direct access to varieties of food products.

Studies in 15 countries show that urban agricultural activities are closely related to food security, dietary diversity and nutritionally adequate diet.

Furthermore, urban agriculture also plays an important role to the climate change problem. It can green the city and improve the urban climate, while encouraging the reuse of urban organic waste and reducing the urban energy footprint.

Having recognised the importance of urban agriculture, the Malaysian government gave its full support towards this activity. This can be seen from the formation of the urban agriculture division under the Department of Agriculture Malaysia in 2010 to promote, among others, agricultural activities in the city to reduce the cost of living of the urban community.

Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM) has designed and developed several affordable vertical farming methods, which can be adopted by the urban poor.

The technology is suitable for flat dwellers with limited and unsuitable growing space.

Vertical farming is the practice of producing food and medicine in vertically stacked layers, inclined surfaces or integrated in other structures, such as in a skyscraper, used warehouse or shipping container.

The modern idea of vertical farming use indoor farming techniques and controlled-environment agriculture (CEA) technology, where all environmental factors can be controlled.

These facilities utilise artificial control of light, environmental control (humidity, temperature, gases) and fertigation.

Some vertical farms use techniques similar to greenhouses, where natural sunlight can be augmented with artificial lighting and metal reflectors.

Since urban agriculture has the potential to gain momentum in Malaysia, it is therefore essential that appropriate strategies be put in place to ensure availability and affordability of safe and healthy foods.

There is also a need to promoting the production of such foods in urban areas, thus enhancing the livelihoods of actors, along the food value chain.

The contribution of urban agriculture to food availability and healthy nutrition for the urban population is an important asset, in addition to providing a source of income and livelihood for its participants.

Moving forward, policymakers should consider a number of approaches to make this activity socially and economically viable.

Among others, introducing technology and technology know-how to grow vegetables in flats and apartments, and identifying land for farming by urban dwellers.

This can be done by local government agencies, where they can identify vacant lots and make this information publicly available and authorising contracts with private landowners.

Datuk Dr Mad Nasir Shamsudin is professor of Agricultural and Resource Economics, Faculty of Environmental Studies, Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM).

Study: Agricultural Wastewater Reuse Puts 800 Million People At Risk

Study: Agricultural Wastewater Reuse Puts 800 Million People At Risk

By Sara Jerome
@sarmje

Farmers around the world are spreading raw sewage all over their farms, researchers say.

A new study published in Environmental Research Letters put a spotlight on farmers who use urban wastewater to irrigate their fields. The findings highlight the need for policymakers to balance the benefits of water reuse with “the need to invest in wastewater treatment to protect public health,” according to the journal article.

The study revealed that “crops covering almost 36 million hectares — an area roughly the size of Germany — are irrigated with water from rivers and lakes used by cities within 40 km (25 miles) upstream to discharge sewage,” Reuters reported.

The study assessed health risks linked to irrigation. Situating farms near cities enables farmers to access nutrient-rich wastewater to irrigate their crops, but it also has consequences.

“According to the study, some 65 percent of all irrigated land areas are within 40 km downstream of urban areas. A significant amount of that land is in countries with very limited wastewater treatment, exposing 885 million urban consumers, farmers and food vendors to health risks,” BBC News reported.

Pay Drechsel of the International Water Management Institute, an author of the study, noted that the research registered a 50 percent uptick in land irrigated with untreated wastewater compared to previous studies.

"The previous figure was not based on science, so this new approach combines geographic information, and is the first scientific approach to get hold of the area that is irrigated with raw or diluted wastewater," Dreschsel said, per BBC News.

Anne Thebo of the University of California, Berkeley, an author of the study, stressed the importance of investment in wastewater infrastructure.

"As long as investment in wastewater treatment lags far behind population growth, large numbers of consumers eating raw produce will face heightened threats to food safety," she said, per Reuters.

Image credit: "hewitt scene," william garrett © 2015, used under an Attribution 2.0 Generic license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

Garden Battle: Quebec City Woman Told She Can't Grow Veggies in Her Front Yard

Garden Battle: Quebec City Woman Told She Can't Grow Veggies in Her Front Yard

Véronique Chapier has until Aug. 1 to comply with city's bylaws or will face fines

CBC News Posted: Jul 27, 2017 10:08 AM ET Last Updated: Jul 27, 2017 10:10 AM ET

Véronique Chapier wants to grow vegetables on her front lawn, but her neighbours say her yard is a mess. (Cathy Senay/Radio-Canada)

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• Drummondville couple fights to keep vegetable garden

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, they say, and a Quebec City woman believes her front-lawn vegetable garden is a living work of art.

But Véronique Chapier's neighbours don't quite agree with that assessment. And neither does the city, which has informed her that her garden breaks a number of bylaws.

Chapier, who lives in the Quebec City borough of Charlesbourg, has been growing vegetables such as lettuce, tomatoes and asparagus on her front lawn for years.

Her backyard is shady so she can't grow certain plants she wants to back there, she explained.

Chapier said she likes to use her garden as a way to teach children and others about what it takes to grow food. She also considers it to be something of a community initiative.

"I went to get some lettuce that was ready and it wasn't here, and I was happy about that," she said.

Her neighbours, however, think her work of art is just a mess and complained to the city.

Chapier now has days to move her garden to the backyard or side of her house, or face fines. 

'Nothing aesthetic about it,' neighbour says

Two weeks ago, a city inspector informed Chapier that her garden breaks a number of rules, namely that:

• The vegetable garden can't be on her front lawn.
• Some plants are too tall and the landscaping is messy.
• Some are planted beyond her property line.
• There are wooden pallets and plastic containers on her lawn that constitute a nuisance.

Her neighbour Louisette Alain has reported the garden to the city once a year for the last three years. Alain says she has been trying to sell her house for two years and prospective buyers are put off by the garden.

She said she has no problem with it when it's maintained, but right now, "it's not a garden. There's nothing aesthetic about it."

Louisette Alain and Claude Aubut are Chapier's neighbours, and complained about her front-lawn vegetable garden to the city. (Radio-Canada)

Chapier's problem is reminiscent of a similar conflict from five years ago, when a Drummondville couple with a front-yard vegetable garden fought and succeeding in changing the city bylaw that prohibits the practice.

Such gardens are not allowed in Quebec City, Longueuil and Laval, but Montreal and Sherbrooke are OK with its residents growing food elsewhere than their backyards.

Chapier has already started moving her plants to the backyard and cleaning up. She has until Aug. 1 to finish the job, or her case could end up in court.

She said she is hoping the city will change the rules.

Marjorie Potvin, a spokesperson for the city, says though vegetable gardens at the front of residences are prohibited, they are tolerated as long as no one complains about them.

She said the city is looking into adopting a policy on urban agriculture, but there is no guarantee this issue will be part of it.

BCFN Releases Report Exploring Environmental, Food, and Migration Sustainability

BCFN Releases Report Exploring Environmental, Food, and Migration Sustainability

Jamaica Farm Drought

The Barilla Center for Food & Nutrition Foundation (BCFN) has released its second Food Sustainability Report titled “Environmental, Food and Migration Sustainability: Three Challenges To Overcome Together.” The report is a joint effort between BCFN and the Milan Center for Food Law and Policy, aimed at raising awareness about crucial issues surrounding food and sustainability.

The report emphasizes the connection between climate change and extreme poverty, with a section dedicated to the link between climate change and migration. “Environmental, food and migration sustainability are different facets of a single problem whose solution requires an integrated, informed approach ‘from governments, businesses, citizens and scientists,'” the authors conclude.

The report also highlights the Food Sustainability Index, a tool developed by BCFN in collaboration with the Economist Intelligence Unitthat ranks 25 of the world’s largest economies by the sustainability of their food systems. The index indicates “sustainable agriculture is an effective weapon for fighting climate change,” although the report acknowledged the difficulty in implementing fully sustainable food systems.

BCFN and the Milan Center released its first report in January 2017 titled, “Climate Change and Famine: Issues at the Heart of International Awareness,” which focused on climate change, food security, and food safety.

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Zoya Teirstein

Zoya Teirstein graduated from NYU with a degree in Environmental Reporting and worked at amNewYork, Haaretz, and The Verge before coming to Food Tank. She is currently investigating conservative methods of environmentalism in America. Tips welcome @zteirstein.

Print Your Own Aquaponics Garden With This Open Source Urban Farming System

Print Your Own Aquaponics Garden With This Open Source Urban Farming System

Derek Markham (@derekmarkham)  Lawn & Garden June 29, 2017

Aquapioneers has developed what it calls the world's first open source aquaponics kit in a bid to reconnect urban dwellers with the production of their food.

Combining open source, digital fabrication, DIY, and urban farming, this startup's project aims to put the tools for zero-mile food into the hands of everyone. Aquapioneers, based in Barcelona, Spain, is focused on getting more people to grow more of their own food right at home, while at the same time enabling a 90% reduction in garden water consumption and a doubling of plant growth rates.

The Aquapioneers system resembles the Open Source Beehives project and the AKER open source urban ag kit in its construction, as the aquaponics plans are designed to be downloaded and "printed" locally with a CNC router at a Maker Space or Fab Lab, which keeps shipping costs and emissions down, while also allowing for easy assembly and a low-maintenance growing experience.

"With this system in place, carbon-intensive worldwide shipping is no longer necessary, reducing dramatically our environmental footprint and contributing to mitigate climate change. In fact only the data will travel, not the material" - Guillaume Teyssié, co-founder of Aquapioneers.

With this aquaponics setup, the entire growing ecosystem waters and fertilizes itself, thanks to the (almost) closed loop created by the conjoined 50-liter fish tank and 70 x 30 x 30 cm (~27.5" x 11.8" x 11.8") grow bed, which feeds the food crops with the waste from the fish while the plants' roots clean the water for the fish. The fish do need to be fed, and the Aquapioneer system is designed to employ an LED grow light, which requires an electricity input, but it could be illuminated by the sun instead, enabling the carbon footprint of food grown in it to be kept as low as possible.

"Cities are growing bigger and they lack sufficient space. Aquaponics comes as a perfect solution for this, as it allows vertical farming and utilizing unused public and private space." - Loic Le Goueff, co-founder of Aquapioneers

ENGLISH link: https://www.ulule.com/aquapioneers/ We believe Aquapioneers will contribute to the growing urban farming movement in Barcelona. We envision a future where Barcelona's citizens source most of their food from local farmers, from their rooftops, and from inside their own homes. We are committed to change the future of food, and we're proud to start with the Aquapioneers Ecosystem.

"We aim to revolutionize urban agriculture and promote food self-sufficiency in cities." - Le Goueff

© Aquapioneers
Aquapioneers is currently in a crowdfunding phase in a bid to raise at least €15,000 to finalize and fully document the open source plans. Backers of the campaign at the $43 level will receive early access to both the design files for printing locally, as well as a manual for successfully operating an Aquapioneers ecosystem. The team will release the files into the public domain under a Creative Commons license several weeks after the end of the campaign. More information is available at Aquapioneers.

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With Urban Grit and Pink Lights, London Warehouse Farms Fish and Greens

With Urban Grit and Pink Lights, London Warehouse Farms Fish and Greens

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By Reuters

PUBLISHED: 20:00 EDT, 26 July 2017 | UPDATED: 20:00 EDT, 26 July 2017

By Lin Taylor

LONDON, July 27 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Inside a warehouse in industrial southeast London, farmed tilapia swim in blue tubs filled with pristine water, ready to be sold to trendy restaurants across the capital.

In an adjacent room, under pink LED lights and controlled temperatures, shoots of salad leaves and herbs grow on recycled carpet fibre fertilised with the fish waste. In this cavernous, windowless space more suited to a nightclub than a farm, the greens are stacked on metal shelves stretching to the ceiling.

It's a far cry from traditional British farms that sprawl across acres of land. But for Kate Hofman, who co-founded GrowUp Urban Farms in 2013, producing food in this 6,000 square feet building in Beckton was not only clever and cost-effective, it was also a sustainable way to feed people in the city.

"Sometimes people have an idealised idea of how their food is being produced. In their head, they think that farmer Joe tends to his field with his hoe and grows his heads of lettuce," the 32-year-old told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

"We're trying to show that you can have an industrialised food system ... but you can do it in a way that's sustainable," said Hofman, who launched Britain's first commercial aquaponic farm - a system that uses fish waste to fertilise crops, which in turn filtrate the water used to farm the fish.

Rich and poor countries alike are tasked with creating sustainable and inclusive cities by 2030 under global development goals agreed in 2015 - and sorting out how cities are fed is a crucial part of that challenge, experts say.

As two thirds of the global population are forecast to live in cities by 2050, compared with about half now, urban planners and policymakers are increasingly looking to agriculture in towns and cities as a solution to provide nutritious food.

CLOSER AND FRESHER

Land used for farming in cities and the areas around them equals the size of the European Union, a recent study said, while others estimate some 800 million urban farmers provide up to 20 percent of the world's food.

Unlike imported produce, food from city farms and gardens travels less, reducing production costs, waste and fuel use.

"Because (urban farms) are in proximity to an urban population, they can see for themselves where their food is coming from. This has a benefit in terms of education and reconnecting food with the consumer," said Makiko Taguchi, an urban agricultural expert at U.N. Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO).

Having your food come from sources close by is also crucial if supply is disrupted by civil unrest or extreme weather in the rural areas that still supply most of the world's food.

Hofman said Britain's huge appetite for salad leaves and herbs, and the fact that most of it is imported, were key reasons why she decided to grow such plants in her warehouse.

"It makes sense to grow crops like these close to people so you can get it to consumers more quickly - they're fresher, they last longer in the fridge, they're less likely to go to waste," said Hofman, who sells 200,000 bags of salad each year to local food retailers and restaurants.

Hofman also sells 4 tonnes (4000 kg) of fish each year and believes the ethical farming of fish provides a sustainable source of protein, especially at a time when nearly 800 million people worldwide do not have enough to eat, according to FAO.

Though Hofman doesn't think urban farming could ever replace existing food production systems, she hopes to pioneer ways to scale up the output of urban farms.

"It's terrifying. There's so much unknown in the model that we're trying to do. There are so many challenges that we're trying to overcome," Hofman said.

"But it offers a really exciting opportunity for people to engage with the idea of farming as something that can be sustainable and high-tech."

(Reporting by Lin Taylor @linnytayls, Editing by Lyndsay Griffiths. Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters that covers humanitarian issues, conflicts, global land and property rights, modern slavery and human trafficking, women's rights, climate change and resilience. Visit http://news.trust.org to see more stories)

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