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U.K Aeroponic Start-Up LettUs Grow: 'Not Everyone Is Sold on Vertical Farming Initially'
Thankfully, the image of vertical farming is changing rapidly. Nowadays, aeroponic technology "is recognized more as a business plan rather than a pipe dream," said Langley. Indoor farming has also been getting loads more attention
December 05, 2019
Farmers across the globe are searching for sustainable, tech-savvy alternatives as climate change increasingly impacts agriculture's profitability.
LettUs Grow, a Bristol-based aeroponics tech company that provides technology to farms in the U.K., thinks it may have a solution.
The vertical farming tech provider gave us a glimpse into the future of aeroponics and an overview of its innovation.
Overcoming challenges in vertical farming
"There's a perception about vertical farms - not everyone is sold on it initially," LettUs Grow's India Langley told FreshFruitPortal.com.
The company's greatest challenge has been public perception. Oftentimes people imagine that their produce comes from local, small scale farms. However, the reality is that most farms are industrial entities - at least in the U.K. - explained Langley.
Thankfully, the image of vertical farming is changing rapidly. Nowadays, aeroponic technology "is recognized more as a business plan rather than a pipe dream," said Langley. Indoor farming has also been getting loads more attention.
So, the task aeroponics tech companies face is "educating people that the food is just as nutritious".
As vertical farming becomes more mainstream, companies like LettUs Grow have seen more demand for their products.
What, then, does the technology do and what will the future of vertical farming look like?
LettUs Grow walked us through its technology's evolution and the benefits it provides to today's agriculture industry.
The idea for LettUs Grow arose when three Masters students at the University of Bristol - Ben Crowther, Jack Farmer and Charlie Guy - developed a table-top aeroponics system. This in-home model worked so well that the group decided to scale it up.
"We started out solely making hardware, so the physical grow beds," Langley said. The company then began crafting software it calls Ostara - which reduces energy costs up to 15%.
Founders saw that traditional aeroponics - which use high pressure - were inefficient. Old methods, which involved firing liquid through a nozzle to create aerosols, lead to clogging and system failures. In order to reduce waste, LettUs Grow sought alternatives.
To do this, it got rid of nozzles entirely. It also developed a new way of making aerosols. These innovations allowed the platform to be scaled up.
"What the three founders thought was that if they were seeing this increase in growth rate in these home-kits and their main goal was to reduce waste, they would do much better taking this technology and applying it to farm-scale applications."
The result was an aeroponics system that reduces food miles, increases food freshness and "helps farmers keep farming".
According to Langley, there is big problem in the U.K. with farmers needing to diversify. Climate change has posed a risk to farmers' income and vertical farming provides a solution, she said.
She specified that "one of the things that indoor growing does is that it protects the crop" and ensures that farmers profit regardless of weather conditions.
Benefits of aeroponics and LettUs Grow's advice
When asked about the benefits of aeroponics versus other indoor farming methods, Langley said "aeroponics has been an improvement" on hydroponics. This is because it gives the plants better access to "free gas exchange".
In short, it provides the "ideal environment" to grow, claimed Langley. Aeroponics "holds plant roots out of water" and sprays plants with an aerosol. Plants in aeroponics grow 70% faster than in hydroponics, she stated.
She went on to explain the strategic benefits and challenges faced by farmers.
"The main thing that holds you back is whether or not there's a business case for it," said Langley.
"We always advise people who are working with us to think really carefully about what they grow."
LettUs Grow suggests farmers plant crops like microgreens, quick growing crops, and tender crops that struggle to be transported. While the company has tested "dozens" of different plants at its two farms, it encourages farmers to plant profitable crops like basil.
Looking forward, the future of the company
LettUs Grow continues growing as demand for its technology increases. While farms all around the world have requested the company's products, it says plans for expansion into Europe - and eventually, worldwide - are in the works for upcoming years.
Currently, it only provides technology to farms in the U.K.
It seems a lot of demand from countries that face resource issues. Places that contact LettUs Grow tend to be dry regions like the Middle East or regions with less sunlight. Additionally, it is gaining popularity in "places where there's not as much land" in more developed countries like the U.S.
Other urban farming schemes like startup Bowery, Gotham Green and Fifth Season have been gaining steam in U.S. cities.
To meet the needs of diverse farms that request its technology, Lettusgrow plans to continue expanding its product line.
In the past, its implementation of Ostara farm management software allowed it to offer a platform that collects data on plants, oversees irrigation and traces crop history.
Most recently, it has partnered with Octopus Energy to create "vertical power software". The new technology platform reduces energy costs for farmers, making operations more efficient.
It does this by changing the price of energy throughout the day and minimizing costs during peak hours. This both saves customers money and incentives farmers to have more sustainable operations, detailed Langley.
Headline photo: LettUs Grow, Jack Wiseall
Aquaponics Food Safety Statement November 2019
Aquaponics is a food production method integrating fish and plants in a closed, soil-less system. This symbiotic relationship mimics the biological cycles found in nature. Aquaponics has been used as a farming technique for thousands of years and is now seeing large-scale viability to feed a growing global population
Click here: Click here: Sign the Aquaponics Food Safety Statement
November 15, 2019
Aquaponics Food Safety Statement
Established Science Confirms That
Aquaponic Fish and Produce Are Food Safe
Aquaponics is a food production method integrating fish and plants in a closed, soil-less system. This symbiotic relationship mimics the biological cycles found in nature. Aquaponics has been used as a farming technique for thousands of years and is now seeing large-scale viability to feed a growing global population.
Benefits of aquaponics include dramatically less water use; no toxic chemical fertilizers or pesticides; no agriculture discharge to air, water or soil; and less food miles when systems are located near consumers where there is no arable soil.
Aquaponics has consistently proven to be a safe method to grow fresh, healthy fish, fruits, and vegetables in any environment. Governments and food safety certifiers must utilize the most current, accurate information to make food safety decisions about aquaponics at this time when our food systems adapt to a growing population and environmental concerns.
Food Safety Certification for Aquaponics
For years, commercial aquaponic farms have obtained food safety certification from certifying bodies such as Global GAP, USDA Harmonized GAP, Primus GFS, and the SQF Food Safety Program. Many aquaponic farms are also certified USDA Organic. These certifying bodies have found aquaponics to be a food-safe method for fish, fruits, and vegetables. As far back as 2003, researchers found aquaponic fish and produce to be consistently food-safe (Rakocy, 2003; Chalmers, 2004). Aquaponic fish and produce continue to be sold commercially across North America following all appropriate food safety guidelines.
Recent Certification Changes Based on Unfounded Concerns
Recently Canada GAP, a food safety certifier, announced that it will phase out certification of aquaponic operations in 2020, citing concerns about the potential for leafy greens to uptake contaminants found in aquaponic water.
Correspondence with Canada GAP leadership revealed that the decision to revoke aquaponics certification eligibility was based on research and literature surveys related to the uptake of pharmaceutical and pathogenic contaminants in hydroponic systems. However, these concerns are unfounded based on established evidence.
First, the Canada GAP decision assumes that aquaponic growers use pharmaceuticals to treat fish and that these pharmaceuticals would be taken up by plants causing a food safety risk.
In fact, pharmaceuticals are not compatible with aquaponics. Aquaponics represents an ecosystem heavily dependent on a healthy microorganism community (Rinehart, 2019; Aquaponics Association, 2018). The pharmaceuticals and antibiotics referenced by Canada GAP would damage the beneficial microorganisms required for aquaponics to function properly.
Second, the CanadaGAP decision misrepresents the risk of pathogenic contamination. Aquaponic produce – like all produce – is not immune to pathogenic contamination. However, aquaponics is, in fact, one of the safest agriculture methods against pathogenic risk. Most pathogenic contamination in our modern agriculture system stems from bird droppings, animal infestation, and agriculture ditch or contaminated water sources. In contrast, commercial aquaponic systems are “closed-loop” and usually operated in controlled environments like greenhouses. Almost all operations use filtered municipal or well water and monitor everything that enters and leaves the system.
Aquaponics and Food Safety
If practiced appropriately, aquaponics can be one of the safest methods of food production. The healthy microbes required for aquaponics serve as biological control agents against pathogenic bacteria. (Fox, 2012) The healthy biological activity of an aquaponic system competitively inhibits human pathogens, making their chances for survival minimal. This is, in effect, nature’s immune system working to keep our food safe, rather than synthetic chemicals.
The Government of Alberta, Canada, ran extensive food safety tests in aquaponics from 2002 to 2010 at the Crop Diversification Centre South (CDC South) and observed no human pathogens during this entire eight-year period (Savidov, 2019, Results available upon request). As a result of this study, the pilot-scale aquaponic operation at CDC South was certified as a food-safe operation in compliance with CanadaGAP standards in May 2011 (GFTC OFFS Certification, May 26, 2011). Similar studies conducted by the University of Hawaii in 2012 in a commercial aquaponic farm also revealed no human pathogens. (Tamaru, 2012)
Current aquaponic farms must be able to continuously prove their food safety. The U.S. Food Safety Modernization Act requires farms to be able to demonstrate appropriate mitigation of potential sources of pathogenic contamination as well as water testing that validates waters shared with plants that are free from contamination by zoonotic organisms. So, if there is a food safety concern in aquaponics, food safety certifiers will find and document it.
Conclusion
The recent certification decision from CanadaGAP has already set back commercial aquaponic operations in Canada and has the potential to influence other food safety certifiers or create unfounded consumer concerns. At a time when we need more sustainable methods to grow our food, it is essential to work on greater commercial-government collaboration and scientific validation to ensure fact-based food safety standards.
In order to expand the benefits of aquaponics, we need a vibrant commercial sector. And for commercial aquaponics to succeed, we need reliable food safety certification standards based on established science.
Consumers can feel secure knowing that when they purchase aquaponic fish and produce, they are getting fresh food grown in one of the safest, most sustainable methods possible.
Sincerely,
The Aquaponics Association
[ Click here: Sign the Aquaponics Food Safety Statement]
References
Chalmers, 2004. Aquaponics and Food Safety. Retrieved from http://www.backyardaquaponics.com/Travis/Aquaponics-andFood-Safety.pdf
Filipowich, Schramm, Pyle, Savage, Delanoy, Hager, Beuerlein. 2018. Aquaponic Systems Utilize the Soil Food Web to Grow Healthy Crops. Aquaponics Association. https://aaasociation.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/soil-food-web-aug-2018.pdf
Fox, Tamaru, Hollyer, Castro, Fonseca, Jay-Russell, Low. A Preliminary Study of Microbial Water Quality-Related to Food Safety in Recirculating Aquaponic Fish and Vegetable Production Systems. Publication of the College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources, the Department of Molecular Biosciences and Bioengineering, University of Hawaii, February 1, 2012.
Rakocy, J.E., Shultz, R.C., Bailey, D.S. and Thoman, E.S. (2003). Aquaponic production of tilapia and basil: comparing a batch and staggered cropping system. South Pacific Soilless Culture Conference. Palmerston North, New Zealand.
Rinehart, Lee. Aquaponics – Multitrophic Systems, 2019. ATTRA Sustainable Agriculture. National Center for Appropriate Technology.
Tamaru, Fox, Hollyer, Castro, Low, 2012. Testing for Water Borne Pathogens at an Aquaponic Farm. Publication of the College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources, the Department of Molecular Biosciences and Bioengineering, University of Hawaii, February 1, 2012.
A Tale of Two Crops
We applaud two current initiatives in agriculture that show how farming can be sustainable and can also build on unique local characteristics to gain a competitive edge
Business Day editorial
November 14, 2019 | Melanie Waithe
A variety of black, white and pink sorrel, which is grown by farmers Sharon Rosella Roopsingh and her husband, Renison. - ROGER JACOB
We applaud two current initiatives in agriculture that show how farming can be sustainable and can also build on unique local characteristics to gain a competitive edge.
What’s notable about the Cube Root farming model, which was featured in last week’s edition of Business Day, is how it repurposes an object that is traditionally not associated with agriculture and turns it into a means of farming without extensive acreage. Literally taking us out of the box, Cube Root proposes the use of containers as indoor farms. These containers can be carefully controlled to widen the range of products under cultivation, giving farmers a degree of flexibility they would not have if they took to the land. In light of the ongoing debate on land use, particularly with agricultural land being often diverted to meet other pressing needs such as housing, it’s an approach that is worth considering on a large scale.
A balance may be possible with container farming and similar initiatives which do not require expansive acres of often deforested land, with the run-on problems of chemical use, seepage into groundwater sources and the domino effect on local flora and fauna, especially in Nariva, the current food basket centre of the nation.
If there is anything Cube Root has achieved it is to remind us that creative thinking can help us get around some of the challenges we face when it comes to bolstering our food production, reducing our food import bill and securing our ability to sustain our population. Their product should be viewed as an important litmus test for the appetite for novel thinking within agriculture, the kind of thinking that will draw new, more diverse segments of society to this sector.
Meanwhile, there is an urgent need to generate income and foreign exchange, a matter which agricultural initiatives could assist in addressing. Being able to grow crops that might otherwise only grow in temperate climates not only helps us rely less on food from these zones but opens the door to newer export territories, spreading risk. It’s a process, however, that must be strategic of our exports are to have any chance of standing out in the crowded international market where other countries have long advanced their techniques of agricultural production.
Which is where Sharon Rosella Roopsingh and her husband Renison are in the pink. Their foray into sorrel production is inspiring, finding new tones and re-igniting interest in a seasonal favourite. As noted in last week’s edition as well, while sorrel is usually red, dark red or black – varieties all of which Roopsingh grows – she also grows a pink version which as attracted the attention of many people.
“We found it unusual and exotic and we went with it,” she says. It’s an example of turning something fortuitous to one’s advantage. Which is the perfect embodiment of what the sector as a whole needs to do if agriculture is to reap even bigger rewards.
From Bomb Shelter To farm: The Latest Food Revolution
When you think of growing anything ‘underground’, the first thing you may envisage is some kind of criminal activity. But, there’s a food innovation gaining traction around the world, specially in London, and while it might be coming from beneath the streets, it’s all above board
14 Nov 2019
Sponsored by KETTO
Food for thought
When you think of growing anything ‘underground’, the first thing you may envisage is some kind of criminal activity. But, there’s a food innovation gaining traction around the world, specially in London, and while it might be coming from beneath the streets, it’s all above board.
Here's what you need to know about the latest underground food revolution...
Growing Underground
The fully-working Growing Underground farm is located 33 metres beneath the busy streets of Clapham, in the abandoned tunnels of a former World War II air-raid shelter.
The urban farm covering 65,000 square feet lie 120 feet under Clapham High street and are home to 'Growing Underground', the UK’s first underground farm. The farms produce includes pea shoots, rocket, wasabi mustard, red basil and red amaranth, pink stem radish, garlic chives, fennel and coriander, and supply to restaurants across London.
Salad without soil?
Urban farmers, Richard Ballard and Steven Dring are using the latest hydroponic systems and LED technology to grow fresh microgreens and salad leaves, in a stable, sustainable and pesticide-free environment.
A spigot supplies nutrients and water to the roots of the plants and artificial light and warmth is provided by LED lighting. The site is powered with renewable energy.
Instead of using soil, seeds are planted into mats made out of old carpet offcuts. Once the seeds germinate, they are put under lights to mimic sunlight.
Science behind the sprouts
So what is hydroponics? According to the Royal Horticultural Society, it is “the science of growing plants without using soil, by feeding them on mineral nutrient salts dissolved in water.”
Hydroponics does not use soil, instead, the root system is supported using an inert medium such as perlite, Rockwool, clay pellets, peat moss, or vermiculite.
Location, location, location
Its central London location is convenient to distribute the vegetables to hotels, restaurants and shops, reducing the food miles for businesses and consumers. The farm also boasts using 77% less water than conventional agricultural methods.
The system is completely unaffected by the weather and seasonal changes, which means they can be grown 356 days a year.
All photos: Getty Images
Getting Off The Grid: Alternative Energies For Hydro Systems
With solar cells dropping in price and battery systems improving all the time, there are considerable benefits to looking at alternative energy sources for your growing needs
Chris Bond | October 29, 2019
Takeaway: With solar cells dropping in price and battery systems improving all the time, there are considerable benefits to looking at alternative energy sources for your growing needs. Chris Bond provides an overview of what is out there for those curious about unplugging from the grid and taking power into their own hands.
Nearly all the components of a hydroponic system can be partially or fully powered by alternative energies. Any system that runs on electricity or battery power ---such as lighting, pumps, filters, agitators, and timers--- can be altered to run on off-the-grid power sources.
Not all energy sources are practical for all systems, and many may be too cost-prohibitive to implement with complete efficiency.
But for the majority of alternative systems, there is usually a DIY version or an online hack out there that can help you to grow your greens without using petroleum or non-renewable energy sources.
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The systems outlined below are just an overview of the different types of alternative energies available and should not be considered a how-to. Most of the energy systems will generate direct current (DC). An inverter is required to convert the DC into alternating current (AC) to be useful for most of the appliances that a hydroponic system runs on. Another option is to consider converting your components to be compatible with DC.
Solar Energy
The effectiveness of any solar energy collection system for your growroom depends on how much sunlight you receive and how large of a collection system you can install. If you can put solar panels on the south-facing slope of your roof that aren't blocked by any large shade trees, then you will likely have enough power for more than just your hydroponic system.
Many homes, especially older ones, aren't suited for this type of installation. Solar panels can be placed on other buildings or as free-standing units in your yard. Their effectiveness then becomes reliant on factors such as the time of year or amount of cloud cover in your area.
The benefit of adding a solar collection system to your hydroponic set-up is that solar panels and other solar collection devices continue to improve as technology and demand increase. Simple systems can be installed to manually (or automatically) turn to follow the path of the sun.
Other solar collection devices are designed to warm the water by heating the pipes instead of converting sun energy into a current. This system can either expel heat or simply reduce the amount of energy required to heat your water.
Solar has come a long way in the last 20 years and there is an application for almost every scenario. It is also a type of alternative energy that can easily be added onto. You could, for instance, attempt to power just one aspect of your hydro system and keep building from there until the entire hydroponic system runs on stored energy derived from the conversion of solar power into usable current.
Wind Energy
Most people can imagine the way wind energy works as the concept is fairly simple. As the wind blows, a rotor or turbine spins. The energy derived from spinning is converted by a generator into usable power. The number of materials used to create a wind turbine also makes the prospect accessible to many and encourages creativity.
Wind turbines can be made from parts of 55-gallon drums, old satellite dishes, canvas sails, and almost anything that can cup the wind and spin freely. But the difficulty lies in the actual application of harnessing the wind power on a small scale and its practicality. Both of these depend on your location.
If you have an open piece of land that is an acre or more in size, wind power may be practical. If you live in an urban setting, in one of the tallest buildings, and have access to the roof, wind power may be practical. In a typical suburban setting, however, only very small scale energy applications are usually worth your time and investment. In these environments, it may make more sense to try to power only a portion of your hydro system with wind and then store whatever energy it creates into a battery.
Hydro Power
Yes, you can run your hydroponic system on hydropower; that is, if you have access to a source of running water on your property. In a nutshell, a portion of the flowing water gets diverted into a pipe (conveyance) where it is delivered to a pump or waterwheel. This then converts the flow of the water into rotational energy. An alternator or generator then converts the rotational energy into electrical current.
This system could be modified to run on stored water from a reservoir, but most hydro power systems take advantage of the natural flow of a body of water.
The initial investment will vary greatly depending on both the distance from the water source and how many kilowatts (kW) the system will generate. Many farm-based systems can produce up to 100kW, but even a modest 10kW is more than adequate to power a small growing operation.
Geothermal
Using geothermal energy in your hydroponic system is not as common as using solar, wind, or hydro energies, but it is still worth considering. If you are already paying for the energy it takes to heat your growroom, or are in the position of building a new hydroponics system, it pays to employ geothermal heating if you can.
Basically, geothermal heating takes advantage of underground soil or water temperatures. It draws this heat up from the ground into your structure and greatly reduces the amount of supplemental energy need to heat or cool the space around it.
There are many downsides to geothermal. Even though the temperature underground is fairly consistent throughout the country, accessibility is not reliable. Even if you do live in an area where the Earth’s underground warmth can be used, you will be unable to take advantage of this technology if you do not own the building or possess the right to dig beneath it.
However, if it is an option for you, you should consider tapping into this geothermal energy. It has a relatively quick payback period; you should immediately see the cost of heating or cooling your hydroponic space reduces.
Bioenergy
Making your own biofuels to either power some aspect of your operation or to heat the space you are growing in is probably the least likely of all the alternative energies listed here.
It is worth exploring, however, as most people create enough organic waste to power such a system. Grass clippings, food scraps, animal manures, and other organic wastes can be put into a digester to create biogas, which is a renewable alternative to natural gas.
While not practical for most people at the moment, bioenergy may represent a viable way to generate much of the energy needed to run your growing operation—maybe even your entire household—as the technology gets more widely utilized in coming years.
Rain Harvesting
Though not truly an alternative energy, collecting rainwater belongs in a discussion of using alternatives for a hydroponic system. Like the wind turbine, rain harvesting systems can be made from a wide variety of materials—five-gallon buckets, food-grade containers, or any collection tank that can hold water. Multiple small containers can be linked in series so that as one fills, the overflow goes into the next.
Most plants thrive better in rainwater than from city or well water. A hydroponic system can be supplemented, or filled entirely, with rainwater. As with any water source, careful scrutinizing of the pH and EC levels are called for. It is also important to maintain periodic agitation to prevent the development of algae or promote the breeding of insects.
Extra Considerations
No matter the type of alternative energy you consider to power your hydroponic system, there are a few things to keep in mind. Permissions range widely from municipality to municipality and you will need to know what your area’s zoning laws allow for, what requires a permit, and what is forbidden under any circumstances.
If you are considering installing a wind turbine, there are likely building codes to follow. The same goes for the installation of solar panels and collectors. However, many small-scale ventures into alternative energy can be done without affecting your neighbor’s view or without constructing large structures.
If you intend to harness the power of any stream, creek, river, or public body of water, you will need to obtain the appropriate permissions and may need to invest in equipment or components that measure your water usage and prevent backflow into the streams.
If any of these strategies sound appealing, but you lack the requisite building or engineering skills, there are more and more professional companies springing up that specialize in alternative energy installations for almost any application. Some of these strategies may even offer tax incentives. Check with your tax professional before claiming any alternative energy credit first, however, as many such programs are specific around how to qualify.
Written by Chris Bond
Chris Bond’s research interests are with sustainable agriculture, biological pest control, and alternative growing methods. He is a certified permaculture designer and certified nursery technician in Ohio and a certified nursery professional in New York, where he got his start in growing.
VIDEO: Growing Up: How Vertical Farming Works | The B1M
Shedding the restrictions of seasonal weather patterns, overcoming transportation challenges and enhancing yields - the growing trend of “vertical farming” could herald the future of food production
March 6, 2019
Shedding the restrictions of seasonal weather patterns, overcoming transportation challenges and enhancing yields - the growing trend of “vertical farming” could herald the future of food production. For more by The B1M subscribe now: http://ow.ly/GxW7y
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7 of The Best Crops For Vertical Farming
Along with a number of other key factors — including a good location and an appropriate pricing strategy — smart crop choices play an essential role in helping vertical farms keep costs down and ensuring that farmers are able to sell the majority of what they grow
One of the biggest decisions that can make or break a vertical farm is the question of which crops to grow. Along with a number of other key factors — including a good location and an appropriate pricing strategy — smart crop choices play an essential role in helping vertical farms keep costs down and ensuring that farmers are able to sell the majority of what they grow.
According to a recent blog post from ZipGrow, a leading provider of vertical farming equipment and services, the following are two of the most important points to consider when choosing crops for a vertical farm:
Economic viability — ZipGrow and many other experts in the vertical farming industry are quick to remind aspiring farmers that just because something can be grown, this doesn’t necessarily mean it should be grown. With the right resources, it’s technically possible to grow just about anything in a vertical farming facility, but not all crops are economically viable. Some crops just aren’t able to make money when they are vertically farmed because their production costs are too high (for example, the crop requires hotter temperatures or more light relative to other crops), or simply because there is a lack of market demand for the crop. To make smart crop choices, vertical farmers need to be realistic about balancing likely costs with projected profits.
Timing and liability — The time period that elapses between a seedling entering the farm’s system and a mature plant being harvested and sent to market is known as a “turn.” In general, successful vertical farmers find that focusing on crops with fast turns, like salad greens and some herbs, helps to minimize their liability. This is because fast-turn crops mature so quickly that farmers are rarely more than about six weeks away from production, which limits the amount of resources that will be lost in the event that the crop fails. However, this doesn’t mean that there is no place in a vertical farm for slow-turn crops: some of these, like fruiting crops, can offer higher margins than fast-turn crops, potentially making them a good proposition depending on local market conditions (of course, while the profits may be higher, so is the risk).
What are some of the best crops for vertical farms?
While ZipGrow recommends that the process of choosing crops should be part of a comprehensive feasibility study undertaken by aspiring vertical farmers before launching their operations, the company does offer a basic guide to some of the most successful and popular crops currently being cultivated in vertical farms. These include the following:
Lettuce — Lettuce and other leafy greens are by far the biggest crop grown by indoor farmers (according to the Agrilyst 2017 State of Indoor Farming Report, 57% of indoor farms, including vertical farms, produce leafy greens). It’s not difficult to understand the popularity of the humble lettuce: it’s quick and easy to grow, inconsistent demand all year round, and available in dozens of different varieties so that farmers can switch up their product from time to time without having to change to a whole new crop.
Kale — Despite the predictions of some naysayers, the booming popularity of kale is showing no signs of decreasing. Not only is kale a nutrient powerhouse — ounce for ounce, cooked kale is richer in iron than beef — it’s also delicious, incredibly versatile and, like lettuce, available in many different varieties. A great choice for vertical farmers serving health-conscious markets, kale is fairly easy to grow, although farmers must take some care when harvesting in order to get the highest yield.
Chard and collard greens — These dark, leafy green vegetables are not quite as popular as kale, but they come close. Like kale, they can grow quite large in the proper conditions, and they can be partially harvested multiple times, each time growing back with a larger yield.
Basil — In many ways, basil is an ideal crop for vertical farming. Basil is sensitive to cold temperatures — when grown conventionally in soil, basil is only available for a few months each year — so it responds very well to the climate-controlled conditions of a vertical farming facility. In addition, some studies indicate that hydroponically-grown basil is richer in flavor than field-grown basil because it contains 20–40% more oils. Finally, compared to most other crops, basil can command a very high dollar amount per pound, and because it is an important ingredient in a great deal of restaurant cooking, it can often be sold in larger amounts to local restaurants or other institutions rather than by the ounce to individual customers.
Chives and mint — These two herbs are some of the best crops for new vertical farmers to start with. Chives and mint alike are easy to care for, have very quick turns, and are easy to harvest due to their dense, grass-like growing structure. Their distinctive flavors also make them very popular with customers.
WRITTEN BY Mark Crumpacker
Mark Crumpacker is a passionate marketing specialist with years of creative storytelling experience.
Vertical Farming Bootcamp
Want to learn more about Vertical Farming, Aquaponics and the technology behind it? Do you have a business model in mind and need to learn the components to execute it? Were you unable to attend last time? Now is your chance! Sign up for our Vertical Farming Bootcamp
Our VERTICAL FARMING BOOTCAMP is BACK!
We Are Excited To Announce Our Second Vertical Farming Bootcamp In Partnership With Seneca College!
Want to learn more about Vertical Farming, Aquaponics and the technology behind it?
Do you have a business model in mind and need to learn the components to execute it?
Were you unable to attend last time? Now is your chance!
Sign up for our Vertical Farming Bootcamp!
Date: Saturday, November 23, 2019
Time: 8:30 am to 5:30 pm
Location: Seneca College - Newnham Campus
Click the link to sign up:
https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/vertical-farming-bootcamp-tickets-73285576131
Fish Poop Keeps Family Farming Together
As he tossed freeze-dried crickets into a pool of eager bluegill, Andrew Mueth explained this was how he and his five brothers could farm together and preserve the 160-year-old Illinois family farm legacy. The family raises a wide variety of lettuce using an aquaponic system that was erected in a decades-old straw storage shed
September 20, 2019
Andrew Mueth and his five brothers use aquaponics to produce lettuce that is sold at farmers markets in the St. Louis, Mo. area.( Sonja Begemann )
As he tossed freeze-dried crickets into a pool of eager bluegill, Andrew Mueth explained this was how he and his five brothers could farm together and preserve the 160-year-old Illinois family farm legacy. The family raises a wide variety of lettuce using an aquaponic system that was erected in decades-old straw storage shed.
“It’s a way we could work together on a family farm and it’s a lot cheaper than getting into row crops,” Mueth says. His family still owns 300 row-crop acres, but they’re rented to other farmers.
From fish poop to food
Because each of the six brothers has a full-time job, they endured late nights and long weekends to convert their shed into a working aquaponics system. One half of the shed serves as a home for the fish, currently, bluegill caught on their farm pond, and the other half a greenhouse.
Each fish "tank" holds 3,500 gallons of water. C: Sonja Begemann
Aquaponics is a combination of fish and plant production using aquaculture and hydroponic systems, according to USDA. The Mueths run fish waste through a multi-part filtration system to save water, extract as much nutrient-filled waste as possible, and convert it into a form that is safe to apply to plants. Too much ammonia, for example, will damage and even kill the plant.
This filtration system processes about 1,000 gallons of fish waste per hour. C: Sonja Begemann
In about three hours the biofiltration system can completely filter the 3,500-gallon fish tank, extracting valuable nutrients along the way. After filtering the waste in its ammonia-rich form, it’s converted to nitrites and then nitrates. Once filtered, the nutrients are added to water that is piped into vertical towers at a rate of 30 gallons per hour.
The brothers harvest two towers each week, or about 900 heads of lettuce. C: Sonja Begemann
After about eight weeks the lettuce is ready to harvest, Mueth says. The family harvests around 900 heads weekly that are sold to local restaurants or at farmer’s markets. The lettuce is sold in pre-mixed bags with multiple varieties to enhance taste and texture.
The concept is simple, but the carryout is tedious. The family put in about 5,000 hours of labor to convert the shed and set up the fish tanks, Mueth says. Altogether it cost less than $100,000, but he admits that the number would be higher if they paid themselves for the labor.
After just one year, so in a few months, the family will be back in the green from their startup costs. “But, we don’t pay ourselves for our work,” he says.
Statista: Global value of Aquaponics
C: Statista
Because they were fished out of a family pond, the only costs associated with the fish is their food. However, they plan to switch fish with the seasons and will soon pay for their newest breed, tilapia.
As for the bluegill?
“I think we’ll have a fish fry,” Mueth says.
How To Avoid Calcium Deficiency In Controlled Environment Food Crops
Tipburn and blossom end rot are symptoms of calcium (Ca) deficiency. Sometimes the first thought when a nutrient deficiency occurs is to add the nutrient that appears to be required to solve the issue
Tipburn and blossom end rot are symptoms of calcium (Ca) deficiency. Sometimes the first thought when a nutrient deficiency occurs is to add the nutrient that appears to be required to solve the issue. This isn’t always the best way to resolve the issue.
Calcium has a very important role in plant cell wall formation. If calcium cannot reach new cells in adequate time, cell wall formation cannot be completed. This can result in necrotic (dead) tissue in the leaves (tipburn) and fruit (blossom end rot) as consequence of cell death. This is why calcium uptake from roots to leaves is a very important process.
Calcium movement in plants
The main force moving calcium through plants is water. When plants transpire calcium moves. Calcium will only be present in plants when water is moving. Most cases of calcium deficiency in greenhouse crops is due to environmental conditions, not a nutrient deficiency directly related to the nutrient solution being applied.
Calcium deficiency triggers
There are several environmental conditions that can trigger calcium deficiency. The most common factors include:
Low relative humidity. When plants are exposed to low relative humidity levels, small pores in leaves called stomata close. Stomata are responsible for transpiration. Calcium movement depends entirely on stomata behavior. It is important to know optimum relative humidity levels for each crop and to keep the humidity levels as uniform and consistent as possible. The humidity in a greenhouse can be increased by running water through the evaporative cooling pads and/or by installing a fog system if necessary.
Lack of airflow over the crop. There needs to be air movement around the leaves to ensure continuous gas exchange. The airflow velocity around the plant leaves can be reduced as a result of the friction between the leaf surface and the moving air. This creates a boundary layer which is a layer of heavy air that can decrease gas exchange in plants. This reduction in gas exchange can impact calcium uptake by the plants.
This reduction in calcium uptake is common in greenhouse lettuce. Lettuce has a very tight leaf canopy. New leaves are usually exposed to a very dense boundary layer. Good airflow over the crop canopy is required to avoid tipburn. Installation of vertical fans is usually recommended to improve airflow in lettuce greenhouses. It is also important to maintain proper airflow in vertical farms. A 1 meter per second air velocity rate in each vertical layer is recommended for leafy greens.
High light intensity in vertical farms. With indoor farm production, there are many variables that need to be controlled to ensure good crop performance. Two variables that together can trigger tipburn are light intensity and the boundary layer. When plants are located close to the grow lights, the light intensity tends to increase and space for airflow decreases.
If plants are exposed to the same photoperiod during the entire production cycle, the total daily light integral (DLI) tends to increase with time. Recent research demonstrated that in indoor vertical farms when plants are exposed to a DLI that exceeds 17 moles of light per square meter per day (mol·m-2·d-1) for more than three days tipburn is triggered.
Excess humidity. Some crops including tomato show tipburn under high relative humidity environments. Transpiration from roots to leaves increases under high relative humidity levels. When the relative humidity is too high for tomato calcium uptake goes directly from the roots to the leaves bypassing the fruit. This is why sometimes blossom end rot (calcium deficiency in fruit) occurs in tomato fruit but no deficiency symptoms appear on the leaves.
Avoiding calcium deficiency
When calcium deficiency is seen in plants make sure to check that the fertigation system is operating properly. If the fertilizer stock solution is maintained in multiple tanks, check all reservoirs to ensure the same solution levels so that all nutrients are being delivered uniformly to all crops.
But remember to always monitor environmental conditions before adding calcium to any crop. Excess calcium can cause other nutrient deficiencies. If the decision is made to apply foliar calcium, then this treatment is required during the whole production cycle to avoid calcium deficiency. Foliar calcium applications to prevent calcium deficiency might be avoided if the production environment is properly controlled.
The Foody Benefits of Farming Vertically
The answer, foodies say, is to go back to a better, gentler age, when farmers worked with nature and did not try to dominate it
More Variety, New And Old Tastes
August 31, 2019
Many foodies pin the blame for farming’s ills on “unnatural” industrial agriculture. Agribusinesses create monocultures that destroy habitat and eliminate historic varieties. Farmers douse their crops with fertiliser and insecticide, which poison streams and rivers—and possibly human beings. Intensive farms soak up scarce water and fly their produce around the world in aeroplanes that spew out carbon dioxide. The answer, foodies say, is to go back to a better, gentler age, when farmers worked with nature and did not try to dominate it.
However, for those who fancy some purple-ruffles basil and mizuna with their lamb’s leaf lettuce, there is an alternative to nostalgia. And it involves more intensive agriculture, not less.
A vast selection of fresh salads, vegetables and fruit is on the way, courtesy of a technology called vertical farming. Instead of growing crops in a field or a greenhouse, a vertical farm creates an artificial indoor environment in which crops are cultivated on trays stacked on top of each other (see article). From inside shipping containers in Brooklyn, New York, to a disused air-raid shelter under London’s streets and an innocuous warehouse on a Dubai industrial estate, vertical farms are sprouting up in all sorts of places, nourished by investment in the business from the likes of Japan’s SoftBank and Amazon’s founder, Jeff Bezos.
This should cheer anyone who wants organic produce that has been grown without pesticides and other chemicals, and which has not been driven hundreds of miles in refrigerated lorries or flown thousands of miles in the belly of a plane. Such farms can greatly reduce the space needed for cultivation, which is useful in urban areas where land is in short supply and expensive. Inside, climatic conditions are carefully controlled with hydroponic systems supplying all the nutrients a plant needs to grow and recycling all but 5% of their water—which is incorporated in the crop itself. Specially tuned led lighting generates only the wavelengths that the plants require to prosper, saving energy. Bugs are kept out, so pesticides are not needed. Foliage and fruit can be turned out in immaculate condition. And the harvests last all year round.
There is more. As they will remain safe and snug inside a vertical farm, long-forgotten varieties of fruit and vegetables can stage a comeback. Most of these old-timers have been passed over by varieties bred to withstand the rigours of intensive farming systems. A cornucopia of unfamiliar shapes, colours and flavours could arrive on the dinner table.
This glimpse of Eden is still some way off. The electricity bill remains high, principally because of the cost of powering the huge number of leds required to simulate sunlight. That means vertical farming can, for the time being, be profitable only for high-value, perishable produce, such as salad leaves and fancy herbs. But research is set to bring the bill down and the costs of renewable energy are falling, too. In a hot climate such as Dubai’s extensive solar power could make vertical farms a valuable food resource, particularly where water is scarce. In a cold climate thermal, wind or hydroelectric power could play a similar role.
Some field crops, including staples such as rice and wheat, are unlikely ever to be suitable for growing in vast stacks. But as its costs fall thanks to further research, vertical farming will compete more keenly with old-fashioned greenhouses and conventional, horizontal farms where crops grow in the earth. As an extra form of food production, vertical farming deserves to be welcomed, especially by the people whose impulse is to turn their back on the future. ■
This article appeared in the Leaders section of the print edition under the headline "Plant power"
New Ways To Make Vertical Farming Stack Up
From the outside it looks like a tall, metal-clad barn. But step in, through a large airlock designed to keep out the bugs, and a kaleidoscopic scene emerges
Cultivating Fresh Produce In An Artificial Environment
Is Getting Cheaper
August 31, 2019 | INVERGOWRIE
From the outside it looks like a tall, metal-clad barn. But step in, through a large airlock designed to keep out the bugs, and a kaleidoscopic scene emerges. A central aisle is flanked by two pairs of towers. Each tower is stacked with a dozen or so trays on which are growing strawberries, kale, red lettuce and coriander. And each tray is bathed in vibrant light of different colours, mostly hues of blue and magenta. Douglas Elder, who is in charge of this artificial Eden, taps some instructions into an app on his mobile phone and, with a short whirr of machinery, a tray of lush, green basil slides out for his inspection.
Mr Elder is product manager for Intelligent Growth Solutions (igs), a “vertical farming” company based at Invergowrie, near Dundee, in Scotland. Each of the nine-metre-high towers in the demonstration unit that he runs occupies barely 40 square metres. But by stacking the trays one on top of another an individual tower provides up to 350 square metres of growing area. Using his phone again, Mr Elder changes the colours and brightness of the 1,000 light-emitting diodes (leds) strung out above each tray. The app can also control the temperature, humidity and ventilation, and the hydroponic system that supplies the plants, growing on various non-soil substrates, with water and nutrients. Armed with his trusty phone, Mr Elder says he can run the farm almost single-handedly.
Plant power
Vertical farming of this sort is not, of itself, a new idea. The term goes back to 1915, though it took a century for the first commercial vertical farms to be built. But the business is now taking off. SoftBank, a Japanese firm, Google’s former boss Eric Schmidt and Amazon’s founder Jeff Bezos have between them ploughed more than $200m into Plenty, a vertical-farming company based in San Francisco. And in June Ocado, a British online grocery, splashed out £17m ($21.3m) on vertical-farming businesses to grow fresh produce within its automated distribution depots.
The interest of investors is growing just as technology promises to turn vertical-farming operations into efficient “plant factories”. The high-tech leds in igs’s demonstration unit are optimised so that nary a photon is wasted. The hydroponics, and the recycling that supports them, mean the only water lost from the system is that which ends up as part of one of the plants themselves. And towers mean the system is modular, and so can be scaled up. Most of the systems which igs hopes to start delivering to customers early next year will consist of ten or more towers.
Some people, however, remain sceptical about how much vertical farms have to offer that good-old-fashioned greenhouses do not. Vertical farms are certainly more compact—a bonus in places like cities where land is expensive. Since sales of fresh produce to the urban masses are often touted as one of vertical farming’s biggest opportunities, that is important. But a greenhouse gets its light, and much of its heat, free, courtesy of the sun. And modern greenhouses can also use solar-powered supplementary led lighting to extend their growing seasons and hydroponic systems to save water, says Viraji Puri, co-founder of Gotham Greens, an urban-farming company that operates greenhouses on the roofs of buildings in New York and Chicago. As for food miles, they could not get any shorter for Gotham Greens’s rooftop greenhouse in Brooklyn, which supplies the Whole Foods Market located downstairs.
The biggest drawback of vertical farming is the high cost of the electricity required to run the large number of leds. This has meant that production has been commercially viable for high-value, perishable produce only, such as salad leaves and herbs. That, nevertheless, is a market not to be sniffed at. But for a broader range of produce, it can prove too expensive. In 2014 Louis Albright, an emeritus professor of biological and environmental engineering at Cornell University in America, calculated that a loaf of bread made from wheat grown in a vertical farm would be priced at about $23.
Blue is the colour
One way of saving electricity is to use leds that generate only the colours that plants require, instead of the full spectrum of plain white light. Plants are green because their leaves contain chlorophyll, a pigment that reflects the green light in the middle of the spectrum while absorbing and using for photosynthesis the blue and red wavelengths at either end of it.
The vertical farm at Invergowrie takes this idea further. It uses leds that are highly tuneable. Although the lights produce mostly blue and red wavelengths, researchers now know that other colours play an important role at various stages of a plant’s development, says David Farquhar, igs’s chief executive. A dose of green at an appropriate moment produces a higher yield. A timely spot of infrared can improve the quality of foliage. The lights can also produce various blue/red mixes.
To operate these leds efficiently, the company has developed a low-voltage power-distribution system. This, says Mr Farquhar, can cut energy costs to about half of those incurred by existing vertical farms. As a result, all four towers can produce 15-25 tonnes a year of herbs, salad leaves, fruit and vegetables. This, the company claims, is between two and three times more than a conventional greenhouse with an equivalent but horizontal growing area, and equipped with supplementary lighting and heating, could manage. And the system can grow all this produce at a similar cost-per-kilogram.
One of the jobs of the Invergowrie unit is to develop lighting regimes tailored to individual crops. Another is to develop algorithms to control, in an equally bespoke way, the climatic conditions preferred by different crops. The idea is to design crop-specific weather “recipes” in order to boost the yield and quality of whatever varieties are grown in the vertical farm. All the processes involved are engineered to be efficient. Irrigation, for instance, relies on captured rainwater. This is cleaned and recycled, but only 5% gets used up by each harvest—and most of that as the water-content in the plants themselves. Ventilation is also a closed loop, harvesting surplus heat from the leds while managing humidity and oxygen levels.
By reducing running costs, the system should make it profitable to grow a wider variety of produce vertically. The firm has already succeeded with some root vegetables, such as radishes and baby turnips. Bulk field crops, such as wheat and rice, may never make sense for a vertical farm, and larger, heavier vegetables would be tricky to raise. This means full-grown potatoes are probably off the menu, at least with existing technology.
Seed potatoes, though, are a good candidate, says Colin Campbell, head of the James Hutton Institute, a plant-science research centre backed by the Scottish government. It is based next door to igs and works with the company. Many fields around the world, Dr Campbell observes, are suffering a growing burden of pests and disease, such as potato-cyst nematode. In the controlled environment of a vertical farm, from which both pests and diseases can be excluded, seed potatoes could be propagated more efficiently than in the big, bad outdoor world. This would give them a head start when they were planted out in fields.
The institute’s researchers are also looking at plant varieties that might do particularly well indoors, including old varieties passed over in the search for crops which can withstand the rigours of intensive farming systems. By dipping into the institute’s gene banks, Dr Campbell thinks it may find some long-forgotten fruits and vegetables that would thrive in the security of a vertical farm.
All this could go down well with foodies, and unlock new and forgotten flavours. Shoppers might even find some exotic varieties growing in supermarket aisles. In Berlin a company called Infarm provides remotely controlled shelved growing cabinets for shops, warehouses and restaurants. Herbs and salad leaves, including exotics such as Genovese basil and Peruvian mint, are resupplied with seedlings from the company’s nursery as the mature plants are picked.
Vertical farming then will not feed the world, but it will help provide more fresh produce to more people. It may even be that, as vertical-farming systems improve further, miniature versions will be designed for people to put in their kitchens—thus proving that there is nothing new under either the sun or the led. Such things used once to be called window boxes.■
This article appeared in the Science and technology section of the print edition under the headline"Growing brighter"
Testing The Waters - Is Public Drinking Water Safe For Hydroponic Production?
The quality of the irrigation water with respect to chemical, microbial and physical properties affects crop quality and health. No matter what, test the chemical parameters of your irrigation water!
Fig. 1. Sensitivity of Petunia x hybrida to free chlorine in irrigation water. Plants were irrigated with 0, 2 and 4 ppm free chlorine with every irrigation. Chlorosis was observed at 4 ppm or greater.Photos courtesy of Rosa E. Raudales, Cora McGehee and Juan Cabrera
The quality of the irrigation water with respect to chemical, microbial and physical properties affects crop quality and health. Growers producing edibles are also concerned about the risk of spreading waterborne human pathogens during production and postharvest. Many growers resolve to use water from public water systems to lower the risk of foodborne illnesses and avoid the hassle of testing and treating water. However, growers must always monitor the chemical parameters of irrigation water to grow high-quality crops. This article explains why growers should test “clean” water.
Public drinking water must meet the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) drinking water standards established in the Safe Drinking Water Act. EPA sets regulatory limits for microbial contaminants, among others. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) indicates that “water that meets the microbial standards for drinking water is considered safe and sanitary” and is recommended in the Good Agricultural Practices (GAP) and Good Handling Practices (GHP) certification guidelines. The Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) waives microbial testing of water if the source comes from a public water system and has a certification of treatment and sampling. Hence, many growers adopt public drinking water for irrigation and postharvest. However, public water facilities inject chlorine, also an EPA-regulated contaminant, to control microbes in drinking water. Chlorine in irrigation water can be toxic to crops.
Chlorine chemistry
Chlorine is an effective germicidal agent for removing pathogens from water. Chlorine is added to water as a gas, liquid (e.g. sodium hypochlorite, AKA bleach) or solid (e.g. calcium hypochlorite), or generated via membrane electrolysis. All chlorine sources react with water and form hypochlorous acid (HOCl). Further dissociation of HOCl will result in hypochlorite (OCl-) and hydrogen (H+) ions. The sum of HOCl and OCl- is known as free chlorine; both are sanitizing agents. Hypochlorous acid is the strongest form of chlorine sanitizer.
Hypochlorous acid reacts with nitrogen-containing compounds, both organic and inorganic, to form chloramines. Chloramines are a combined chlorine form. Chloramines have a lower disinfection efficacy and longer residual effect than free chlorine.
The sum of free and combined chlorine is total chlorine. Growers can measure all forms of chlorine with colorimetric kits.
Fig. 2. Sensitivity of lettuce to free chlorine in irrigation water. Plants were irrigated with 0, 0.5 and 1 ppm free chlorine with every irrigation.Photo courtesy of Rosa E. Raudales, Cora McGehee and Juan Cabrera
Phytotoxicity
In separate experiments, our team from the University of Connecticut and researchers at the University of Guelph and the University of Florida, have established that most container-grown crops can be irrigated with up to 2 ppm (or mg/L) free chlorine without causing phytotoxicity (Fig. 1). Target doses to control plant pathogens and phytotoxicity thresholds vary by crop-pathogen combination.
Chlorine demand is the difference between the initial (applied) and residual (measured after a given contact time) concentration. The organic matter in the substrate reacts with chlorine and exerts chlorine demand. Hence the recommendations for container-soilless media cannot be directly applied to hydroponically grown crops.
We tested the sensitivity of lettuce to chlorine in hydroponic production. We observed reduction in plant weight when the concentration was as low as 0.5 ppm free chlorine (Fig. 2).
The phytotoxicity symptoms caused by chlorine on hydroponically grown young lettuce plants can be confused with root rot or nutrient deficiencies (Fig. 3). In contrast, the symptoms in mature plants are not very distinctive (Fig. 2). For this reason, sending symptomatic (and healthy) plants to a diagnostic clinic and monitoring the chemistry of nutrient solutions is an important part of the diagnosis.
Fig. 3. Lettuce seedling with phytotoxicity caused by chlorinePhoto courtesy of Rosa E. Raudales, Cora McGehee and Juan Cabrera
Testing and treating the waters
The maximum chlorine level allowed in drinking water is 4 ppm. Public water treatment facilities can change chlorine residual levels, reaching up to 4 ppm combined or free chlorine, without notifying the end-user. Therefore, growers using public drinking water must include chlorine in their standard water-testing practice.
Hanna Instruments, Hach and similar companies have developed kits that can be used to measure chlorine in-house.
For more information
Good Agricultural Practices and Good Handling Practices
We do not know yet the phytotoxicity thresholds of free or combined chlorine for most hydroponically grown crops. For this reason, we recommend that growers measure total chlorine.
Growers using public water should have a water treatment option to remove chlorine from the water. The options include activated carbon filters, sodium thiosulfate and aeration.
Take-home message: No matter what, test the chemical parameters of your irrigation water!
Rosa (rosa.raudales@uconn.edu) is an assistant professor at the University of Connecticut and Cora and Juan are Ph.D. students at the University of Connecticut.
Disclaimer: Trade names are included in this publication as a convenience to readers and to illustrate examples of technologies. The use of brand names and any mention or listing of commercial products or services does not imply endorsement by the University of Connecticut, nor discrimination against similar products or services not mentioned.
Sensing The Rise of Vertical Farming
Vertical farming is the process of food being produced in vertically stacked layers, instead of on a single level such as in a field or greenhouse. The layers are commonly integrated into urban structures like skyscrapers, shipping containers and repurposed warehouses
August 28, 2019
By Darcy Simonis, Industry Network Leader, ABB Food and Beverage
With over 7,800 high-rise buildings, the city of Hong Kong soars above all others. More than 300 of its buildings surpass 490 feet, with more people living over 15 floors above ground level than anywhere else in the world. Having a skyline in the clouds helps the densely populated metropolis to prosper where space is restricted. Agriculture has taken note of this construction technique, as vertical farming creates impressive yields.
Vertical farming is the process of food being produced in vertically stacked layers, instead of on a single level such as in a field or greenhouse. The layers are commonly integrated into urban structures like skyscrapers, shipping containers and repurposed warehouses.
Using Controlled Environment Agriculture (CEA) technology, the artificial control of temperature, light, humidity and gases makes it possible to produce a vast array of crops on an industrial scale — without any outdoor exposure.
The Sky’s the Limit
By 2050, around 80 per cent of the world’s population will live in urban areas. With agricultural space in these areas scarce or completely non-existent, how do we deliver produce?
It is estimated that one acre of vertical farming offers the equivalent production of at least four to six acres using conventional outdoor methods. As the plant’s growth is not dependent on sunlight or affected by meteorological conditions, production can continue at the same rate all year round. In terms of resources, the plants require as much as 70 per cent less water than traditional farms.
Organic crops are a huge market, with demand often outstripping supply. As vertically farmed crops are produced in a well-controlled area, there is far less need for chemical pesticides. It is also believed that vertical farming could bring fresh produce closer to urban populations, reducing the risk of nutrients diminishing during transport.
No More Soil
Hydroponics is a predominant growing method in vertical farming. The process involves growing plants in nutrient solutions that are essentially free of soil, as roots are submerged into the solution and the plants are regularly monitored to maintain the correct levels of chemical composition.
If we’re ever to fulfill futuristic plans of colonizing Mars, we’re going to need to grow our own food. So, where on Earth has the conditions to test out this method?
It may not share the same qualities as the Red Planet, but Antarctica’s nonstop winters make it impossible to grow produce outdoors, and fruits and vegetables are shipped long distances from overseas just a few times a year.
In a step closer to extraterrestrial farming, a semi-automated hydroponic facility grows plants without soil, using mineral nutrient solutions in a water solvent. Scientists on Germany’s Neumayer Station III grow produce in a 20-foot-long shipping container, cultivating greens in an area where such produce is usually limited. This is just one example of how vertical farming techniques can be used in areas affected by harsh weather conditions.
Sensing Growth
To hit high levels of production, growth conditions in vertical farms must be continuously optimized. Sensors and data must be used to effectively track variables such as climate, nutrient composition and light levels.
Climate is characterized by a combination of air temperature, humidity and carbon dioxide (CO2) levels. The effects of these factors are tremendous. The difference between plant and air temperature, for example, can tell us whether the leaves’ stomata are open. If they’re closed, the plant cannot absorb CO2 and convert it into biomass. We can also measure the light level and spectrum as perceived by the plants and the pH of irrigation water for optimal growth.
Using smart sensors that can monitor these variables will ensure that vertical farms produce yields that greatly exceed those of conventional farms, which are impacted by uncontrollable conditions.
With a skyline full of modern, gleaming constructions, Hong Kong makes the most of its space to deliver prosperity. While vertical farming still has a long way to go before it is commercially viable, it is certain that food producers can learn from the techniques it applies to help deliver produce our rising populations.
Worker-Owned Greenhouse Grows Its Business In First Year
The largest urban commercial greenhouse in Massachusetts is marking its first year of production
he Wellspring Harvest greenhouse built on a "brownfields" site in Springfield, Massachusetts using hydroponic farming technology. At peak production it can put out 10,000 heads of lettuce a month.
CREDIT WAMC
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The largest urban commercial greenhouse in Massachusetts is marking its first year of production.
Wellspring Harvest, a hydroponic greenhouse built on the once-badly contaminated former Chapman Valve property in Springfield’s Indian Orchard neighborhood, made its first delivery of lettuce to four Big Y supermarkets just about one year ago.
Like many new businesses, the first year has been a learning experience, according to Fred Rose, co-director of Wellspring Cooperative Corporation.
"We have learned an enormous amount about growing, about selling to different markets, about building our work team," said Rose.
The greenhouse now sells to over 25 stores including Whole Foods and seven institutional customers that include area colleges and two hospitals.
"That has been the real success, to get in the door in lots of important places," said Rose.
Wellspring, a non-profit that develops worker-owned cooperative businesses in low-income neighborhoods, initially spent over $1.2 million to purchase the 1- acre site and construct the greenhouse. An additional $250,000 had to be raised to subsidize operations as production ramped up during the first year.
" I think this fall we will get to full production and sales and break even by early spring. That is the idea," said Rose.
One of the greenhouse’s biggest customers is River Valley Co-op market in Northampton. General Manager Rochelle Prunty said there is a growing brand recognition for the lettuce with the Wellspring Harvest label.
" Produce is one of our biggest categories and we specialize in local produce. This lettuce to have it year-round is really special," said Prunty.
Mercy Medical Center in Springfield was an early investor in the greenhouse project. Now, Doreen Fadus, regional executive director of Trinity Health New England, said she’s trying to convince more of the organization’s hospitals to buy the lettuce.
" It is great lettuce," said Fadus. " No one is doing anybody a favor by buying it. It is a great product."
Eight people work at the greenhouse. Alicia Brown, who lives right across the street, was one of the first people hired. Now, after a year of learning the business she has become a worker-owner.
"It feels good to say I'm a part-owner," said Brown.
Wellspring has two other worker-owned cooperatives in Springfield: a furniture repair and re-upholstery business and a window restoration shop.
TAGS: WELLSPRING HARVEST WELLSPRING COOPERATIVE CORPORATION HYDROPONICS
New Ways To Make Vertical Farming Stack Up
From the outside it looks like a tall, metal-clad barn. But step in, through a large airlock designed to keep out the bugs, and a kaleidoscopic scene emerges
Cultivating Fresh Produce In An Artificial Environment
Is Getting Cheaper
August 31, 2019 | INVERGOWRIE
From the outside it looks like a tall, metal-clad barn. But step in, through a large airlock designed to keep out the bugs, and a kaleidoscopic scene emerges. A central aisle is flanked by two pairs of towers. Each tower is stacked with a dozen or so trays on which are growing strawberries, kale, red lettuce and coriander. And each tray is bathed in vibrant light of different colours, mostly hues of blue and magenta. Douglas Elder, who is in charge of this artificial Eden, taps some instructions into an app on his mobile phone and, with a short whirr of machinery, a tray of lush, green basil slides out for his inspection.
Mr Elder is product manager for Intelligent Growth Solutions (igs), a “vertical farming” company based at Invergowrie, near Dundee, in Scotland. Each of the nine-metre-high towers in the demonstration unit that he runs occupies barely 40 square metres. But by stacking the trays one on top of another an individual tower provides up to 350 square metres of growing area. Using his phone again, Mr Elder changes the colours and brightness of the 1,000 light-emitting diodes (leds) strung out above each tray. The app can also control the temperature, humidity and ventilation, and the hydroponic system that supplies the plants, growing on various non-soil substrates, with water and nutrients. Armed with his trusty phone, Mr Elder says he can run the farm almost single-handedly.
Plant power
Vertical farming of this sort is not, of itself, a new idea. The term goes back to 1915, though it took a century for the first commercial vertical farms to be built. But the business is now taking off. SoftBank, a Japanese firm, Google’s former boss Eric Schmidt and Amazon’s founder Jeff Bezos have between them ploughed more than $200m into Plenty, a vertical-farming company based in San Francisco. And in June Ocado, a British online grocery, splashed out £17m ($21.3m) on vertical-farming businesses to grow fresh produce within its automated distribution depots.
The interest of investors is growing just as technology promises to turn vertical-farming operations into efficient “plant factories”. The high-tech leds in igs’s demonstration unit are optimised so that nary a photon is wasted. The hydroponics, and the recycling that supports them, mean the only water lost from the system is that which ends up as part of one of the plants themselves. And towers mean the system is modular, and so can be scaled up. Most of the systems which igs hopes to start delivering to customers early next year will consist of ten or more towers.
Some people, however, remain sceptical about how much vertical farms have to offer that good-old-fashioned greenhouses do not. Vertical farms are certainly more compact—a bonus in places like cities where land is expensive. Since sales of fresh produce to the urban masses are often touted as one of vertical farming’s biggest opportunities, that is important. But a greenhouse gets its light, and much of its heat, free, courtesy of the sun. And modern greenhouses can also use solar-powered supplementary led lighting to extend their growing seasons and hydroponic systems to save water, says Viraji Puri, co-founder of Gotham Greens, an urban-farming company that operates greenhouses on the roofs of buildings in New York and Chicago. As for food miles, they could not get any shorter for Gotham Greens’s rooftop greenhouse in Brooklyn, which supplies the Whole Foods Market located downstairs.
The biggest drawback of vertical farming is the high cost of the electricity required to run the large number of leds. This has meant that production has been commercially viable for high-value, perishable produce only, such as salad leaves and herbs. That, nevertheless, is a market not to be sniffed at. But for a broader range of produce, it can prove too expensive. In 2014 Louis Albright, an emeritus professor of biological and environmental engineering at Cornell University in America, calculated that a loaf of bread made from wheat grown in a vertical farm would be priced at about $23.
Blue is the colour
One way of saving electricity is to use leds that generate only the colours that plants require, instead of the full spectrum of plain white light. Plants are green because their leaves contain chlorophyll, a pigment that reflects the green light in the middle of the spectrum while absorbing and using for photosynthesis the blue and red wavelengths at either end of it.
The vertical farm at Invergowrie takes this idea further. It uses leds that are highly tuneable. Although the lights produce mostly blue and red wavelengths, researchers now know that other colours play an important role at various stages of a plant’s development, says David Farquhar, igs’s chief executive. A dose of green at an appropriate moment produces a higher yield. A timely spot of infrared can improve the quality of foliage. The lights can also produce various blue/red mixes.
To operate these leds efficiently, the company has developed a low-voltage power-distribution system. This, says Mr Farquhar, can cut energy costs to about half of those incurred by existing vertical farms. As a result, all four towers can produce 15-25 tonnes a year of herbs, salad leaves, fruit and vegetables. This, the company claims, is between two and three times more than a conventional greenhouse with an equivalent but horizontal growing area, and equipped with supplementary lighting and heating, could manage. And the system can grow all this produce at a similar cost-per-kilogram.
One of the jobs of the Invergowrie unit is to develop lighting regimes tailored to individual crops. Another is to develop algorithms to control, in an equally bespoke way, the climatic conditions preferred by different crops. The idea is to design crop-specific weather “recipes” in order to boost the yield and quality of whatever varieties are grown in the vertical farm. All the processes involved are engineered to be efficient. Irrigation, for instance, relies on captured rainwater. This is cleaned and recycled, but only 5% gets used up by each harvest—and most of that as the water-content in the plants themselves. Ventilation is also a closed loop, harvesting surplus heat from the leds while managing humidity and oxygen levels.
By reducing running costs, the system should make it profitable to grow a wider variety of produce vertically. The firm has already succeeded with some root vegetables, such as radishes and baby turnips. Bulk field crops, such as wheat and rice, may never make sense for a vertical farm, and larger, heavier vegetables would be tricky to raise. This means full-grown potatoes are probably off the menu, at least with existing technology.
Seed potatoes, though, are a good candidate, says Colin Campbell, head of the James Hutton Institute, a plant-science research centre backed by the Scottish government. It is based next door to igs and works with the company. Many fields around the world, Dr Campbell observes, are suffering a growing burden of pests and disease, such as potato-cyst nematode. In the controlled environment of a vertical farm, from which both pests and diseases can be excluded, seed potatoes could be propagated more efficiently than in the big, bad outdoor world. This would give them a head start when they were planted out in fields.
The institute’s researchers are also looking at plant varieties that might do particularly well indoors, including old varieties passed over in the search for crops which can withstand the rigours of intensive farming systems. By dipping into the institute’s gene banks, Dr Campbell thinks it may find some long-forgotten fruits and vegetables that would thrive in the security of a vertical farm.
All this could go down well with foodies, and unlock new and forgotten flavours. Shoppers might even find some exotic varieties growing in supermarket aisles. In Berlin a company called Infarm provides remotely controlled shelved growing cabinets for shops, warehouses and restaurants. Herbs and salad leaves, including exotics such as Genovese basil and Peruvian mint, are resupplied with seedlings from the company’s nursery as the mature plants are picked.
Vertical farming then will not feed the world, but it will help provide more fresh produce to more people. It may even be that, as vertical-farming systems improve further, miniature versions will be designed for people to put in their kitchens—thus proving that there is nothing new under either the sun or the led. Such things used once to be called window boxes.■
This article appeared in the Science and technology section of the print edition under the headline"Growing brighter"
Crop One Grows Food Hydroponically With Unique Formulas For Each Plant
Crop One is a vertical farming holding company for two subsidiaries – FreshBox Farms, Millis, Mass., and a joint venture with Emirates Flight Catering, Dubai South, United Emirates
Crop One is hardware agnostic but develops its own proprietary software and data analytics platform that governs its growing process as well as it farms.
Hydroponic Technology and Data Analytics in Vertical Farming
Dave Vosberg, CFO & SVP Strategy | Crop One
07/30/19 Indoor & Vertical Farming
Tell us about Crop One and your role with the company.
Crop One is a vertical farming holding company for two subsidiaries – FreshBox Farms, Millis, Mass., and a joint venture with Emirates Flight Catering, Dubai South, United Emirates. Crop One has been in commercial production longer than any other major vertical farmer in the U.S. It produces the highest crop yield per square foot, at 25% of the capital cost, of any vertical farm, due to its unique combination of proprietary technology platform and best-in-class plant science. For more information about Crop One and vertical farming follow the link to CropOneHoldings.com. Crop One’s mission is to solve the world’s food problems one crop at a time. The first crop we are successful with is leafy greens, but soon we will be growing fruits, proteins, some cereals and many specialty crops. My role with the company is as CFO and SVP Strategy, helping to provide the vision for corporate financial success.
Please tell us what advantages and benefits Crop One provides?
Crop One Holdings is transforming the ag tech industry, using advanced hydroponic technology and proprietary data analytics to provide pure, safe and consistent produce year round. Crop One’s differentiated technology stack and growing process make it the most advanced company in the vertical farming space. The company delivers industry-leading environmental benefits with technology that is centered around lowering costs and increasing yields. Additionally, the company is also actively experimenting with growing new crop types and cultivars, and has partnered with leading seed and research companies to develop seeds specifically bred for the controlled indoor environment.
Since sustainably feeding a growing population is a paramount interest globally, what type of international interest do you have for your farms?
Crop One Holdings, the world’s leading vertical farm operator through its FreshBox Farms brand and Emirates Flight Catering (EKFC), announced a $40 million joint venture the build the world’s largest vertical farm in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. The 130,000 square foot controlled environment facility will produce three US tons (6,000 pounds) of high quality, herbicide and pesticide-free leafy greens, harvested daily, using 99 percent less water than outdoor fields. Its location will enable quick delivery of fresh products within hours of harvest, maintaining the food’s nutritional value and reducing carbon emissions associated with transportation.
How big of an issue is distribution?
Distribution is the key issue. Crops are now grown far from the point of consumption often times traveling weeks before reaching supermarkets and are vulnerable to disruptions related to climate, pathogens, and chemical intervention. Addressing these challenges will require a combination of plant science, AI, agtech, software analytics, environmental sustainability and operations management to address. Crop One’s differentiated technology stack and grow process makes it the most scalable company in the vertical farming space, delivering industry-leading environmental and economic benefits.
What role have Sensors and LEDs played?
Vertical farming that can control the environment in which it grows can be liberated from climate and geography enabled by the advent of cheap LED lighting and cheap sensors. Both have allowed us to improve economics of leafy greens and will continue to allow us to permanently change the infrastructure of agriculture, one crop at a time.
What are the innovative aspects or the technological advances that make Crop One unique?
Crop One grows food hydroponically with unique formulas for each plant. Crop One is hardware agnostic but develops its own proprietary software and data analytics platform that governs its growing process as well as it farms. Crop One is technology enabled and plant science forward - it has a strong plant science team led by Dr. Deane Falcone, enabling the company to manage its cost and increase yields. The company’s plants are supported by more than 250M+ data points for maximum growth and give the exact, correct amount of water, light, and nutrients, all grown without the use of soil. The final products (leafy greens) are fresher, safer and cleaner.
What are the biggest hurdles currently facing Vertical Farming and its expansion?
To date, the biggest hurdle facing Vertical Farming has been operators who can demonstrate consistent operational and financial success in order to attract debt financing. This is an asset-heavy industry, and without debt or third-party project capital, the business is un-scalable. Crop One has consistently proven its operations and financial performance being the only vertical farm that has consistently delivered product every week for the past four years, and at positive gross margins the past two and a half years. As such, Crop One is now on a growth trajectory to significantly expand production.
Where do you see Vertical Farming and Crop One 5 years down the road?
5-10 years from now, Vertical Farming will supply roughly 50% of the value of the leafy greens market. It will also have made inroads into fruits, proteins, cereals and specialty crops. Similar to data centers, we are at the beginning of this industry and vertical farms will soon become as plentiful. Crop One will be a leader in this space, but this is a multi-winner market. Crop One will be distinguished by its leadership in plant science, technology and business model innovation.
About David Vosburg, CFO & SVP Strategy
Dave has spent his life's work founding, growing and scaling technology businesses. Crop One Holdings, trading as FreshBox Farms, is his fifth successful startup he has lead at the CXO level. As CFO and SVP Strategy for Crop One, Dave leads the finance and strategy of the company.
Dave is passionate about businesses which use technology to disrupt markets while creating significant social value. Previously, Dave was CFO of Southern Africa's largest money transfer company, outside of South Africa, CEO of Zambia's leading HR consulting and outsourcing company and CCO of an Ed-Tech startup which translated the entire Zambian primary curriculum into 5,000 flash-animated lessons.
Mr. Vosburg also served as the past President of the American Chamber of Commerce in Zambia and holds a BA from the University of Notre Dame and an MBA from Yale University."
The content & opinions in this article are the author’s and do not necessarily represent the views of AgriTechTomorrow
Purdue Field Day Provides Info On Small-Farm Crops
According to attendees and organizers alike, this year’s Purdue Small Farm Education Field Day, which consisted of lectures and on-farm demonstrations, provided excellent guidance for small-scale growers
August 19, 2019
Petrus Langenhoven is explaining to attendees how to grow sweet peppers in a high tunnel and reflects on results from a high tunnel bell pepper variety trial that was conducted in 2018 at the Purdue Student Farm. (Courtesy photo)Download image
WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. – According to attendees and organizers alike, this year’s Purdue Small Farm Education Field Day, which consisted of lectures and on-farm demonstrations, provided excellent guidance for small-scale growers.
Hosted by Purdue’s Department of Horticulture and Landscape Architecture, the field day featured lectures on planting and sustainability, soil care, high tunnels, cover crops, small-scale equipment, food safety and more. The day started in a classroom and ended with participants watching and listening to demonstrations put on by Purdue staff at the Student Farm.
“The event was a resounding success,” said Petrus Langenhoven, Purdue’s horticulture and hydroponics crop specialist in the Department of Horticulture and Landscape Architecture. “Attendees love the fact that they can learn some theory in the classroom in the morning and then go for a hands-on session at the farm. It’s like you can feel the energy and passion of growers when they attend our field day.”
Langenhoven said the event attracted three times as many participants than the first, which was held last summer.
“We were surprised that interest has grown so much in one year, but it clearly shows that horticulture farmers in Indiana are in need of information to increase the profitability of their farming businesses,” he said. “Attendees were very engaged and showed lots of interest during the on-farm tours. Some of them have told me it was the best field day they have attended and that they will be back next year.”
Chris Adair, the Purdue Student Farm manager, demonstrates to attendees the different applications of a power harrow and rototiller when used in conjunction with a walk-behind tractor. (Courtesy photo) Download image
Lori Jolly-Brown, Extension events and communications coordinator, said, “We had more new attendees this year who complimented us on the program. Return attendees said they appreciate keeping up on new educational information to put to good use on their farms.”
Participants of the program were a diverse group — from beginners and experienced growers, to hobbyists and small business practitioners. Rocio Rodea, a teacher from Gary, came looking for advice she could apply to a community garden she helped establish and eventually will use as a tool for her students. She was particularly interested in the morning food safety session. Langenhoven said attendees in general were very attentive and asked a lot of good questions in the morning sessions.
“I was super interested in the food safety portion because Gary has started to put on several farmers markets throughout the week, so every urban farm or garden will have its turn to host,” Rodea said.
Sierra Yeary, a participant hoping to grow some vegetables for a brewery restaurant she is opening next year, learned about cool and warm season vegetables for the first time.
“I didn’t even realize that we should be planting cover crops,” she said. “We only do tomatoes now, and they were saying in the session that we should be planting cool season veggies too, to keep the soil going. I had no idea.”
Along with a networking lunch, the afternoon consisted of six informational stations where attendees learned about high tunnel tomato and bell pepper production, the practical applications of leaf mold composting, field production of onions and tomatoes, the use of solar dryers for postharvest processing and vegetable wash station design.
“The student farm was a hive of activity with over a hundred people enjoying the perfect weather and exchanging all manner of tricks of the trade,” said Steve Hallett, a professor of horticulture who presented one of the afternoon stations.
Johnny Washington, a grower with a small vegetable market in Gary, said he learned new techniques to implement on his operation during the afternoon stations.
“I don’t have a hoop house, so sometimes when it rains hard the dirt splashes up onto the leaves, and I learned that can cause diseases,” he said. “A light bulb sort of went on in my head — so I’ll be looking more closely into putting plastic around the base of the plants.”
Shelly Janowski and her husband attended the field day to learn new techniques and planning for their already-established small fruit and vegetable farm.
“We’re looking at some of their techniques of planting, weed suppression and harvesting,” she said. “This has been very valuable. If you can learn something to make things easier, to have it take less time or increase your production, that could be a game-changer.”
Demonstrations on how to use a rototiller, power harrow and tractor-mounted seeder were also part of the afternoon stations.
“We can’t afford to spend $40,000 on a piece of equipment,” said Janowski’s husband, Mark. “But if there’s something small or used we can get, or something to use in a way other than what was intended, that’s very helpful.”
Langenhoven, who initiated the Small Farm Education Program, has plans to expand its reach to other Indiana cities, especially those with large numbers of urban and peri-urban farms such as Gary, Fort Wayne and Indianapolis. He and his collaborators would like to find more funding and the right partners to move that plan forward. For now, the next Field Day is scheduled July 30, 2020, at the Purdue Student Farm, and will showcase additional technologies and information useful to horticulture growers.
Sources: Lori Jolly-Brown, ljollybr@purdue.edu
Petrus Langenhoven, plangenh@purdue.edu
Steven Hallett, halletts@purdue.edu
Agricultural Communications: 765-494-8415;
Maureen Manier, Department Head, mmanier@purdue.edu
Urban or Rural: Where To Build A Greenhouse
Drawing from experience, Lefsrud points out that governments across the world, not just in Quebec, have largely been slow to consider using urban greenhouses as a legitimate food generator
‘You need political will, and it takes time’ – urban greenhouses could benefit from more direct support from governments, experts say.
August 20, 2019
Written by Doug Johnson
Montreal’s Lufa Farms now has three locations and around 17,000 customers.IMAGES: Lufa Farms
The first two floors of 1400 Rue Antonio Barbeau in Montreal look like they belong on any other low-density commercial building – blocky, covered in mottled brown brick and windows gazing into a beige interior. Just over the lip of its roof, though, peeks long walls made of glass and metal, and inside them, rows of vegetables.
Around a decade ago, the building was a full floor shorter. That was before Lufa Farms – a Montreal-based urban farm and food delivery service – began. It touts itself as the world’s first commercial greenhouse located on a rooftop.
Now, Lufa Farms has three locations spread across Montreal – others are in the Laval and Anjou neighbourhoods – and around 17,000 customers that the company has dubbed ‘Lufavores.’
But back when it first started, urban agriculture, in- or outside of a greenhouse, was something new and untested. Even Lufa Farms – which is now often pointed to as a model of what urban agriculture could be – had a rough time finding a home and traversing the untested waters of starting a farm of its size in a city.
“The biggest thing [was], there was no proof of concept ... Everything from finding a suitable building – because it was something that hadn’t been done – to an open building owner to city and zoning. It was very out-of-the-box,” says Lauren Rathmell, Lufa Farms’ co-founder and greenhouse director.
Quebec’s agriculture department, Ministre de l’Agriculture, des Pêcheries et de l’Alimentation (MAPAQ), recently released a report on the state of greenhouse-grown produce in the province. The report noted that only 31 per cent of greenhouse vegetables consumed in Quebec were grown in the province – Rathmell, and other urban agriculture dignitaries, say there’s potential here. The report also notes that the increased demand for organic foods presents Quebec with another area due for growth, and that Ontario has not actively pursued it.
While many of Montreal’s neighbourhoods now vie for a Lufa Farms location, its growing pains are familiar to many sizeable urban agriculture efforts.
Mark Lefsrud has studied different ways of growing food for more than 20 years. He is an associate professor at McGill University’s Macdonald Campus where he is a leader of the Biomass Production Laboratory and worked on the design of the Advanced Plant Habitat on the International Space Station.
Drawing from experience, Lefsrud points out that governments across the world, not just in Quebec, have largely been slow to consider using urban greenhouses as a legitimate food generator.
“It was an unknown – that’s the best way to describe it. They’re used to external, outside-of-the-city food production systems and field conditions. The idea of [using] full, controlled environments wasn’t in their comfort [zone],” he says.
However, the idea of turning unused space in urban centres into something that could aid food security is not an old one. It’s been around for maybe a decade, and agricultural ministries around the world are increasingly eyeing it as a path to feed and employ people – particularly in food deserts.
Lufa Farms’ earlier struggles were largely logistical ones, and the Gouvernement du Québec hasn’t particularly helped or hindered the business’ growth, Rathmell says. While the situation has improved in recent years, there are still challenges that face the industry as a whole.
Cost is a big issue – perhaps more so than other more traditional businesses. Besides the normal run of fees paid by every business, urban agricultural operations above a certain size need to pay to construct a specialized facility. However Rathmell notes that it has become cheaper as acceptance has grown.
Rooftop greenhouses are a bit of a different beast. There’s also the added difficulty of physically moving the building materials onto the roof. And, as much as they encourage people to give a useful purpose to a previously unused space, they come with a dossier of regulations. Functionally, they’re treated like an entirely new floor of a building.
The facility on this new floor needs a sprinkler system, and it needs to be sturdy enough to bear a lot of snow during the winter – [all] in all, it’s a hefty structure, Rathmell says.
Many places are not zoned for greenhouses or other agricultural activities like aquaponics, according to Rathmell. Historically, most urban planning in cities rarely took urban agriculture into consideration.
The land itself is also more expensive in urban areas than it is in rural ones. Lefsrud has a rough calculation for this. In rural operations, a plant usually costs between $0.05 and $0.10 to grow, compared to urban greenhouses, where the cost per plant can be as high as $0.45, depending on the season.
Vertical farming somewhat offsets this. Though there is a larger initial price tag to get started, after a while the density of plants – three dimensions as opposed to two – pays for the added costs. Traditionally, the companies that lend credit to agriculture ventures, like Farm Credit Canada and more recently Desjardins, have been wary of providing credit to urban agriculture efforts, but according to Lefsrud they are beginning to catch on.
Some costs can be offset in a city, though. It’s easier to find labour in high population centres, and the ambient warmth lowers the price of heating somewhat – either from the urban heat island effect or, more directly and in the case of rooftop greenhouses, the floors in the building below.
Regionally-based energy company Énergir – formerly Gaz Métro – offers grants for natural gas boilers, something which Lufa has taken advantage of to generate further warmth for its operations.
MAPAQ notes that Hydro Québec offers an incentive for growers with supplemental lighting. Designed for greenhouse operators who use all or part of their electricity supplied by Hydro Québec for photosynthetic lighting, this rate option is ideal for customers who can adjust their production to help manage their electricity consumption. According to the report, around 40 per cent of the greenhouse vegetable area in Quebec uses supplemental lighting, a tool that can help extend the growing season and, in turn, help growers take advantage of better market prices.
According to MAPAQ, the department has also established a network to aid urban agriculture across Quebec. As the province only obtains 31 per cent of its greenhouse produce from local sources, the remaining 69 per cent that is imported could potentially be met by local production.
However, according to Olivier Demers-Dubé, founder and CEO of Écosystèmes Alimentaires Urbains (ÉAU), around 80 per cent of greenhouses in Quebec grow for only three out of four seasons every year, limiting the sector’s potential.
“I think we’re producing a very low percentage of what we’re actually eating, even more so in [the] winter. These numbers ... that’s year-round,” he says of the information provided by MAPAQ.
Since it began five years ago, ÉAU has helped 10 communities in Quebec design aquaponic systems. This includes an Indigenous community in the north of the province, Whapmagoostui. ÉAU also works with private investors and pre-established food producers looking to attach a fish farm to their greenhouse or vice versa.
“We have this goal to bring back food production to where humans live, and humans live mainly in cities,” Demers-Dubé says.” We have this strong belief that food production need[s] to be close to where we live. We need to have contact, we need to interact with it. Eating is what we do most in our lives, minus breathing.”
According to Demers-Dubé, there are facets of starting an urban greenhouse that are becoming easier, but at a basic level, it’s still more difficult to set up a sizeable facility in the city than it is elsewhere. Further, he says, though many governments offer programs and funding that coincide with urban agriculture, there are still precious few initiatives that specifically seek to aid those operations.
“You need political will, and it takes time,” he says.
Going forward, one of the biggest challenges to urban agriculture comes in a fairly innocuous form. Now that Canada has legalized recreational cannabis, most of the thought and attention paid to greenhouses in general, by both businesses and governments, is dedicated to this relatively new industry.
“Right now, one of our biggest challenges is cannabis taking all the air out of the room,” Lefsrud says.
HAREDI HYDROPONICS: Technology And Sustainability Meet At The Diaspora Yeshiva
“Probably many of these guys have never had kale before,” comments Robin Katz, founder and CEO of Start-Up Roots, the nonprofit that runs hydroponic gardens here and at two haredi (ultra-Orthodox) schools in Jerusalem
JACOB SCHONZEIT checks the roots of greens growing in the hothouse. (Photos: Jordana Benami)
• JORDANA BENAMI
AUGUST 16, 2019
In the courtyard of a 2,000-year-old stone building on Mount Zion, a sign taped to a tiny black door announces the unlikely scene found within: The Diaspora Yeshiva Hydroponic Garden.
Inside, two agronomists in white shirts and black kippot tend tiers of vibrant kale, basil and romaine lettuce. The strings of their tzitzit gently sway as they climb up and down, adjusting nutrient and pH levels, preparing new seedlings and checking lights and filters.
The hyper-local and hyper-fresh greens, grown in a soil-less medium bathed in nutrient-enriched water, will be harvested and carried across the courtyard to the yeshiva’s kitchen to find their way into a variety of dishes.
“Probably many of these guys have never had kale before,” comments Robin Katz, founder and CEO of Start-Up Roots, the nonprofit that runs hydroponic gardens here and at two haredi (ultra-Orthodox) schools in Jerusalem. “I’ve had some kids look at let- tuce and say, ‘Are you sure this is kosher? I’ve never seen it in my house.’”
Katz, a Chicago émigré, is a lawyer and teacher by profession. Since 2015, her organization has been installing hydroponic systems in schools and providing a multidisciplinary curriculum that teaches how to care for the produce, how to incorporate it into nutri- tious meals and how to monetize the bounty. A photo-journalism element allows the students to create visual documentation of the growth process.
The Diaspora Yeshiva setup was donated by Irving Backman of Massachusetts, an international benefac tor of sustainability and advanced technology initiatives through his DATT (Developers of Advanced Technology Today) group. Backman’s grandson, Rabbi Yaakov Kent, is the son-in-law of the Rosh Yeshiva of the Diaspora Yeshiva and the study partner of Katz’s son, Rabbi Zechariah Kaplan, at the nearby Yeshivas Bircas HaTorah.
“Irving Backman & Associates sent over the equipment for a hydroponic garden at the Diaspora Yeshiva, and Mr. Backman’s assistant, Ameth Alzate, asked me to help shepherd it through customs,” says Katz, who had worked with him previously.
With Backman’s blessing, she took the project under the wing of Start-Up Roots, and the garden was inaugurated on her birthday, June 12.
The site is professionally managed by Ari Waldman, chief operating officer of Start-Up Roots, with daily assistance from Jacob Schonzeit, another study partner of Katz’s son at Bircas HaTorah. “Jacob had a background in permaculture, so we trained him in hydroponics,” says Katz.
Diaspora Yeshiva students, who range in age from 17 to 70-plus, may choose to spend an hour or two every day helping to tend the system.
Daniel Levin, 36, found out about the garden when he saw Katz carrying supplies in the courtyard and offered to help. Now he volunteers regularly.
“When Robin showed me what was happening here, I thought it was cool because in South Africa I lived on a farm where we tried growing different plants and trees. It also combines other experiences I’ve had working with electricity and water pumps and salts and nutrients. We’re looking at what works well and could be most viable to grow efficiently and that would most benefit the yeshiva menu,” says Levin.
SEEDLINGS ARE started in a growing medium called rock wool, and incubated before being planted in the trays.
RABBI YOSEF GOLDSTEIN: Spending time in the hydroponic garden ‘helps our students get close to God.’
KATZ SEES all the Start-Up Roots projects as a strategy toward ensuring a healthier future.
“Chemical pesticides are killing us,” she says. “Israel has the highest chemical pesticide usage in the OECD.
We also have a high poverty rate and a high malnutrition rate, and we’re right behind America with a rising obesity rate. I really believe that schools can be a great agent for change.”
Katz discovered hydroponics several years ago and realized it could solve multiple problems at once: The veggies provide vitamins, minerals and fiber often missing in impoverished families’ diets; the plants don’t leave carbon footprints since they are grown on premises and aren’t trucked in; and the students work- ing in the enterprise gain valuable skills they could use to earn a living.
Moreover, during the shmita (agricultural sabbatical) year, when most haredi Israelis buy only imported pro- duce, the greens raised in the school gardens can be cultivated, harvested and consumed without worry because they don’t grow in the ground. The absence of soil and the indoor environment adds another benefit year-round in keeping the plants largely insect-free.
START-UP ROOTS CEO Robin Katz with the greens growing in the hydroponic garden at the Diaspora Yeshiva.
“You don’t need chemical pesticides. The idea is to control the environment so that insects aren’t such a problem,” says Katz. Before entering the growing area, all visitors cover their shoes with paper booties so as not to track in bugs or other contaminants.
She also explains that in a water-stressed region, growing in water actually makes good ecological sense.
“Hydroponics saves 90% of the water of regular agriculture because the water goes directly to the roots and not into the ground,” explains Katz.
Speaking of roots, the word in the name of the organization has more than one layer of meaning. “Many children think that lettuce comes from the grocery store. They have no concept of the chain behind it. So we try to connect kids with the source of their food,” says Katz.
Beyond that are the roots of Torah teachings involving agriculture. Religious schoolchildren learn the laws of tithing, for example, but rarely or never have the opportunity to pick fresh produce and perform the ceremony. It’s all been done at a distant packing house.
And on a more spiritual level, Katz adds, “By watching how the tiny seeds develop, kids learn that the universe is more complicated and bigger and more awesome than they ordinarily take time to stop and think about. They learn that if they don’t put in the effort nothing will grow, but there are also aspects that are beyond their control.”
Rabbi Yosef Goldstein, spiritual adviser at the Diaspora Yeshiva and son of its founder, says spending time in the hydroponic garden “helps our students get close to God.
It’s a way to clean their minds and to be surrounded by nature. Even learning next to the plants for an hour in the morning helps them grow spiritually. I love to come in here and see what’s growing and breathe in all the oxygen. And afterward, we get to eat this healthy nutritious food.”
GOLDSTEIN, WHO is also a practitioner of Chinese medicine, hopes the garden will raise herbs in the future. In only a few months, the site has produced vegetables including cucumbers, radishes, green beans and chard.
“We have 200 students from all over the world from many different backgrounds, and I believe this project can also be a way to build a future source of parnassa [income] especially in the shmita year,” adds Goldstein. “It will be nice for religious people to go into agriculture.”
Levin says that volunteering in the garden “gives me a new dimension of looking at what I am learning in the Torah.”
The connection between faith and farming is entrenched in Judaic sources. The 13th century Tosafist Talmudic commentators expressed it like this: “The farmer who sows seeds places his faith in the life-giver of all the worlds, for he trusts that God will provide all that is needed for his crops to grow.”
The Torah also admonishes against waste, Levin points out. “When you know where food comes from and how much goes into growing something that takes five minutes to eat, you are motivated not to waste anything.”
Katz extracts additional lessons from the hydroponic growing experience.
“In an indoor controlled environment, we’re putting nutrients directly into the water exactly what the plant needs – and we measure it every day along with the pH of the water because that affects how the plants absorb the nutrients,” she says.
“We use that as a metaphor for absorbing information in the learning environment. We encourage kids to think how they can optimize their own ‘pH level.’ They see that if you take care of something it thrives, and they can apply the same principle to themselves.”
Aside from the project at the Diaspora Yeshiva, Start-Up Roots has established hydroponic gardens at two haredi girls’ schools in Jerusalem. The schools’ science teachers present the science part of the curriculum, while a Start-Up Roots dietitian presents hands- on sessions to enable students to discover the impact of the food choices they can make.
“The students enjoy the nutritious food that they are growing, which enables them to incorporate the greens into their own diets in tasty ways,” says Katz.
Shiran Iluz, vice chairman of the IDC Entrepreneurship Club, came to one of these schools to help the students develop a viable business plan around the veggies.
“One girl thought of selling a green drink. Initially, the others thought it sounded awful but when they tried making it with our nutritionist, they discovered that they loved it. Then they named it and learned how to pitch it and sell it to their classmates. They had to learn how to network with kids outside their social circles, and this project totally changed the social dynamics of the school.”
In the fall, Start-Up Roots will implement a hydroponic garden at a pluralistic school in the Sharon region.
“Food is a great unifier and our environment is a great unifier,” says Katz. “I’m very happy that every segment of Israeli society is embracing our initiative and our curriculum.”