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10 Ways Square Roots’ Farm-Tech Platform Empowers The Next Generation of Farmers
Square Roots’ scalable “farmer-first” platform brings fresh, healthy food to urban areas all year-round, while simultaneously training future generations of farmers to maintain sustainability in the future.
Square Roots is building a distributed network of indoor, modular farms, farmed by a new generation of farmers, to grow local food for people in cities all over the world. Here’s why it’s working.
Square Roots Super Farms are scalable, resilient and smart, and can be built fast. (Image: Via Chicago Architects + Diseñadores)
Square Roots’ scalable “farmer-first” platform brings fresh, healthy food to urban areas year-round, while simultaneously training future generations of farmers. With production farms in Brooklyn, New York, and Grand Rapids, Michigan (with more to come in 2020!), Square Roots has a mission to bring local, real food to people in cities across the world while empowering the next generation of leaders in urban farming.
Whether we’re in the farms tweaking CO2 levels, or in a board meeting plotting a pathway for what the company looks like in 2050, every decision we make is guided to help us achieve our mission faster, smarter, and with as much impact as possible.
Choices we’ve made around our technology platform are a good illustration of that. Our platform needs to bring fresh, healthy food to urban areas year-round, consistently, sustainability, and on any continent in the world. At the same time, it must also be a welcoming environment, conducive to training future generations of farmers to be productive, fast.
Central to our platform is the decision we made very early in the company’s life to build a distributed network of modular Climate Containers, as opposed to following the plant factory template.
Inside a Square Roots Climate Container, data-empowered farmers work with optimum growing conditions, all year round.
There are a lot of smart people in this industry, many with different visions for the optimum architecture and model for indoor farming (e.g. plant factories). But all working hard to bring better food to market — which, given our wider vision to bring real food to everyone, is wonderful to see. The more of us working on the real food revolution the better — and we want all of these systems to flourish. But here are 10 reasons why we think container farming rocks:
1. Speed to Market
Today we can enter a new market and open a Square Roots “Super Farm” — with 25 Climate Containers, cold storage, biosecurity infrastructure, and everything else you need to run a food-safe farm at scale — in less than three months, like we did in partnership with Gordon Food Service last Fall. That time period is only coming down. In comparison, building a plant factory can cost tens of millions of dollars, as well as take years to construct. We want to get real food to more people, and fast!
2. Easy to Scale
To meet increasing market demand, we simply add Climate Containers to any existing deployment. This means just-in-time capital deployment, and also just-in-time technology deployment. This is really important in an industry where the technology is improving fast. You don’t want to spend years and millions to open a big farm full of old tech that immediately needs a refresh.
3. Climate Control
I was an early investor in Chicago’s Farmed Here, one of the first and largest plant factories in the US. There, I saw first-hand how much the team struggled to control the climate in a building that size. Plants don’t like it when you get it wrong. And neither do landlords — the humidity can wreak havoc with the underlying infrastructure. In our programmable Climate Containers, each one built inside a 320 square foot shipping container, optimum conditions for a variety of crops can easily be maintained. The perfect climate for each variety can be seamlessly replicated — in any market — to ensure consistent quality every time, at every harvest.
Alyssa Patton, Square Roots Next-Gen Farmer, harvesting fresh, local basil inside a Climate Container in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
4. Diversity of Products
Multiple containers on our Super Farms allow for multiple climates, which lets us grow multiple crops at the same time to satisfy local market demands. For example, basil requires a completely different climate than chives to grow well, so it’s practically impossible to grow these two products together in a way that tastes good if you have a giant farm with one mono climate. The ability to grow multiple quality SKUs is particularly important in the retail market, where product variety is key to getting shelf real estate. Having multiple climates also means we can tackle many niches in any local market (e.g. using one container on a Super Farm to grow something exotic like Shiso or Mustard Greens), giving us a lot of business flexibility while keeping things interesting for our teams of farmers.
5. Sustainable Systems
As with most hydroponic growers, Square Roots uses zero pesticides, and 90% less water than outdoor farms. We can also be clever about energy usage. For example, we make it “daytime” in the farm by turning on our grow lights overnight when there is excess energy in the grid, and the cost per kilowatt-hour is lower. However, if for some reason we need to be in the farms during “daytime,” we can put a Climate Container into “harvest mode” — which dims the lights, and configures the climate to be optimum conditions for people at work — before seamlessly switching back to plant growing mode once we’re done.
6. Location
Our modular architecture means we can be very creative in repurposing existing city infrastructure when we look for locations to build a farm. We can pop up on an empty parking lot like we did in Brooklyn, New York, or build a campus on the headquarters of a major distribution company like we did with Gordon Food Service, or even build into a new development. This flexibility means we can build our Super Farms literally in the same zip code as the end consumer. This means fresher and tastier products for the customer, fewer food miles (most industrial food is shipped in from the other side of the world!), and less food waste. It also helps to get consumers more connected to their food and the people who grow it — they can simply jump on a subway or in their car, and come visit one of our farms!
7. Food Safety and System Resilience
All indoor farms need to be prepared for bad things to happen. While there is way less risk in a controlled environment versus an outdoor farm, it’s inevitable that you will get some sort of pest outbreak, powdery mildew, or some other issue at some point while you’re managing a complex ecosystem full of living, breathing plants. If that ever should happen in one of our Climate Containers, we can quickly shut it down and reboot that single node while the rest of the network keeps going strong. I’ve seen this happen in a plant factory, with one big mono climate, and you lose all your crops.
8. Faster Learning
Our farms are cloud-connected, and we collect millions of data points that we analyze to determine how changes in certain environmental parameters can impact factors like yield, taste, and texture of the final product. More climates in more containers means more feedback loops, which means faster learning. To systematize this learning, we’ve built The Square Roots Farmer Toolbelt — a software which is now the OS for the whole company as we all learn faster together.
9. The Network Gets Smarter as it Scales
Square Roots’ cloud-connected farms and data-empowered farmers learn from each other, enabling us to replicate success from one location to another, seamlessly. Working with Gordon Food Service to build farms across their network of distribution centers and retail stores brings us closer to the vision of a distributed network of indoor farms, bringing local, real food to people in cities across the world—while empowering thousands of next-gen leaders in urban farming through our unique training program.
10. Sense of Responsibility
Perhaps this is unique to Square Roots and our Next-Gen Farmer Training Program, but because we grow in modular Climate Containers, we’re able to give all our young farmers a personalized understanding of their individual impact on the overall business. The Square Roots Farmer Toolbelt provides day-to-day instructions on a per-farmer and per-crop basis, as well as a means for data capture, and real time analysis of both plant health and business metrics. All this information is accessible from the tablets that everyone on our farm team carries everyday. This system also ensures that we track every aspect of production — who does what, when, and how, from seed to sales. This is a goldmine of data, that not only helps us improve operations, but also implicitly provides traceability. In December 2018, we started exposing this data to consumers in the form of our Transparency Timeline. On every package of Square Roots produce, you can simply scan a QR code and get a complete story of where your food comes from — seed to shelf.
Simply scan the QR code on every Square Roots package to see where your food comes from.
Our Super Farm platform is exciting in terms of scalability, resilience, and efficiency, and it’s a really wonderful environment for our farmers to farm in. For urban consumers it means local farmers growing your food with love — which is why it tastes absolutely delicious. And technology enables us to grow a ton of food in a very small area, in ways that make a lot of business sense too. It’s a classic example of “doing well by doing good”.
It has been an exciting journey to our Super Farm platform. When we launched Square Roots back in 2016, we were very focused on figuring out the Farmer Training Program model — as we knew that farmers bring love to the food, the program would create enormous impact over time, and it would also be a long term engine of growth. So we partnered with a number of 3rd parties who could provide parts of the growing system for us, while we got the training program right. (In many ways, that was like Tesla sourcing our chassis from Lotus for the first Roadster). After that initial phase, and finding out what the urban farming world needs — i.e. higher quality yields with much lower costs to drive scalable unit economics, and ultra-high standards of biosecurity to support operations that are first class in food safety—we have developed our own technology specifically tailored to our model. This enables us to grow local food at incredible scale in ways that make sense for people, planet, and profits.
Our partnership with Gordon Food Service was announced at the end of March 2019, and our first co-located farm opened just six months later in Grand Rapids, Michigan — marking our next step of bringing local food to people in cities all across North America while training thousands of future farmers. Which, in a neat and circular way, brings us right back to the mission statement we started this post with.
Of course, we still have lots of work to do and we have a lot of exciting announcements coming this year as we grow! And, we’re always looking to talk with great people — from hardware and software engineers to farmers and plant scientists. So feel free to check our website and get in touch.
This article was originally published on the Indoor Ag-Con blog by Kimbal Musk on March 4, 2020.
Published by Dani Kliegerman for iGrow News
Meet The Green Man of Ludhiana Who Has Created Vertical Gardens Across City From Waste Plastic Bottles
A man has started turning plastic waste into vertical farms in order to recycle in a new way.
Aimed at reducing waste of plastic and also as an attempt to reduce air pollution, Mehra said under his instructions, the vertical gardens have come up in many places including schools, colleges, gurudwaras, churches, police stations, government offices and railway stations.
Using waste plastic, an IRS officer Rohit Mehra (in grey sweater) set up Vertical Gardens to tackle air pollution in Ludhiana. (Credit: ANI/Twitter)
In today's time when there is a huge need to recycle waste and reduce the use of plastic, Rohit Mehra, Additional Commissioner in the Income Tax Department, has shown an inspiring path to follow when he used 70 tonnes of discarded plastic bottles to act as planting pots for vertical gardens in Ludhiana.
Aimed at reducing waste of plastic and also as an attempt to reduce air pollution, Mehra said under his instructions, the vertical gardens have come up in many places including schools, colleges, gurudwaras, churches, police stations, government offices and railway stations.
Speaking to news agency ANI on Sunday, Mehra said, “Using at least 70 tonnes of waste plastic bottles as pots, we have set up more than 500 vertical gardens at public places.”
Speaking about what made him turn to this unique idea of using plastic, Mehra said he started thinking of the copious amount of plastic waste and pollution that plagues the cities when his child some 4 years ago, one fine day informed him that their school had declared holidays due to high air pollution. Mehra said he pondered how the situation has turned so bad that they cannot even breathe in fresh air and provide the same to their children. This made him take note of the worsening situation and he decided to do something about it.
Mehra, who is know as the Green Man of Ludhiana due to his conservation work at the trees, has also created 25 mini forests ranging between 500 sq feet to 4 acres in 2 years, along with the vertical gardens. To broaden his understanding of quick growing of trees, he studied ancient Indian texts like the Vrikshayurveda that talks about the science of growing plants and forest. He also stumbled across the Japanese technique of Miyawaki.
He added, “It is a cost-effective and space-efficient solution for urban greenery. The vertical gardens also save the environment as you reuse plastic wastes as pots. Thanks to drip irrigation, these gardens save 92 per cent water."
Mehra said that after the establishment of the vertical gardens, they had checked the air quality index (AQI) of the city by a scientist associated with the Punjab Agricultural University and found a 75 per cent reduction in air pollution, thus making their venture a success.
After The Chaos of 2020, Will Indoor Farming Be In Our Future?
“Rather than growing out in an outdoor field, we’re growing up,” says Forward Greens CEO and Founder, Ken Kaneko. “We’re able to control the temperature, the humidity, the airflow, as well as the lighting,” he says
VANCOUVER, Wash. — The year 2020 has forced a number of disruptions to our daily lives, so what if we have more years like it in the future? How will we make sure our communities can survive by getting vital resources, like food?
The answer may be growing inside an old Hewlett Packard plant at the Vancouver Tech Campus in Washington.
Forward Greens is probably not what you picture when you think “farm”: vertical floor to ceiling stacks of planters filled with microgreens and baby greens, growing under LED lights
Forward Greens, Vancouver, Wash.
“Rather than growing out in an outdoor field, we’re growing up,” says Forward Greens CEO and Founder, Ken Kaneko. “We’re able to control the temperature, the humidity, the airflow, as well as the lighting,” he says.
From arugula to kale to broccoli, everything growing inside this urban, indoor farm wouldn’t be growing outside on a chilly November day in the Pacific Northwest.
From start to finish, the whole process of farming is essentially done in one room. In just a week or two, the greens are on their way to grocery stores in Portland, Vancouver, and Seattle.
Kaneko, who had worked for Intel and more recently, Apple, founded Forward Greens in 2017 after a trip to Japan. There, he stumbled upon his first vertical farm.
“I thought, ‘man, it would be great if I can bring this back to the Pacific Northwest and essentially do it better, cheaper, and more efficiently,'” said Kaneko.
Kaneko says Forward Greens never uses any pesticides, fungicides or herbicides and it uses 95% less water and 99% less land than traditional outdoor farming. But, he says, it uses a lot of energy to power the lights.
“Any engineering problem has a balance of cost, time, environmental impact, but the whole mission of this business is to balance those in a positive way towards the environment,” Kaneko said.
So could this be the farming of the future?
OSU Professor of Horticulture, Gail Langellotto, is pretty certain that it’s not. “In the near future, I can’t imagine a future where only agriculture is indoor agriculture,” she says, pointing to the high start-up costs, the higher cost of labor, and the expensive and taxing energy use.
She says traditional, outdoor farming will be difficult to replace because of the efficiency, precision and scale the industry has mastered and is constantly improving.
But Langellotto adds that if we have more years like 2020, with the pandemic and destructive wildfires on top of climate change, indoor farming will be an asset. She says urban farming is robust to disruptions in the local food system.
“If there are some supply and transport issues that delay or limit the amount of food that can be brought into urban areas from more rural, further out regions, then you already have an urban food production system in the proximity of where the majority of people live,” Langellotto said.
After the chaos of 2020, will indoor farming be in our future? (KATU video){ }
Kaneko is encouraged by the fact that urban farms can be a huge asset, saying, “we don’t know what’s going to happen with respect to the wildfires, the pandemic, the climate, so we’re able to provide local and sustainable food regardless of all those parameters.”
And that may be why Kaneko says demand for indoor farms is increasing. In fact, he’s expanding and doubling production at the Vancouver location in the next couple months. But he’s looking even further ahead to an even brighter future.
He hopes to put a Forward Greens in every metropolitan area, so we don’t fall to the fate of those HP printers that used to be built where his plants now grow.
KATU2 ABC Forward Greens
by Wesleigh Ogle, Thursday, December 3rd 2020
Published by Dani Kliegerman, iGrow News
VIDEO: Wallenius Marine Develops World's Largest Wind-Powered Vessel To Slash Shipping Emissions
Developed in collaboration with Sweden's KTH Royal Institute of Technology and naval research institute SSPA, the Oceanbird project hopes to mitigate the environmental impact of maritime freight transport, which accounts for all but 10 percent of trade in the whole world
Swedish shipping company Wallenius Marine is developing a ship called Oceanbird, which could transport 7,000 cars and trucks across the Atlantic propelled only by the wind.
The concept, which is essentially an outsized sailboat, would be twice as high as the largest comparable vessel due to the five 80-meter-tall sails that protrude from its hull.
These purportedly would make it the world's largest wind-powered vessel, capable of traveling across the ocean to the US at a speed of 10 knots and with a total journey time of 12 days.
Wallenius Marine claims that Oceanbird will be the world's largest wind-powered vessel
According to Wallenius Marine, this is only four days longer than a carrier powered by fossil fuel while emitting 90 percent less CO2 in the process.
Developed in collaboration with Sweden's KTH Royal Institute of Technology and naval research institute SSPA, the Oceanbird project hopes to mitigate the environmental impact of maritime freight transport, which accounts for all but 10 percent of trade in the whole world.
In 2018 alone, the shipping industry emitted 937 million tonnes of CO2, which is more than all of Germany. If it were a country, the sector would be the sixth-largest emitter in the world, just behind Japan.
Related story
Rolls-Royce touts remote-controlled cargo ship as "future of the maritime industry"
"We only have one planet and it's important that we take responsibility and ensure that this planet will be a good place to live for future generations," said Wallenius Marine's COO Per Tunell.
"Shipping plays a very important role in today's society but it's also a large contributor to harmful emissions and that cannot continue, so we need to act."
In order to try and rival the speed of an engine-powered ship, the Oceanbird would make use of wingsails rather than traditional fabric sails. These resemble solid fins made of steel and various composites, much like the wings of an airplane.
The ship is propelled forwards by five wingsails
"Airplane wings are asymmetrical in profile because they should only produce a lift upwards," explained the ship's naval architect Carl-Johan Söder.
"But our wings are symmetrical because we should be able to produce lift regardless of if you have wind coming in from the port tack [left side] or the starboard tack [right side of the ship]. The wings can rotate 360 degrees so you can optimize the angle depending on the wind direction relative to the ship."
They are also telescopic, meaning they could be retracted to 60 meters in order to pass under bridges and mitigate turbulence caused by strong winds.
It could transport 7,000 vehicles
When the sails are at their tallest and propped up on the ship's hull, they would reach up to 105 meters above the waterline. In comparison, a regular sailboat reaches only up to 30 to 35 meters into the air.
"No part of our sail is lower than 30 metres so we are using a piece of the atmospheric boundary layer above the ocean, where basically people have not been before," said Jakob Kuttenkeuler, a professor in naval architecture at KTH.
"Airplanes are above and boats are below. So we've put quite a lot of effort into measuring the atmospheric boundary layer."
Wallenius Marine hopes to build a fully functioning Oceanbird by 2024
Wallenius Marine attached sensors to its existing vessels in order to measure how the wind direction and velocity changes at such heights, in order to optimize both the wingsails as well as the fins at the bottom of the hull.
These can be moved against the direction of the wind, in order to prevent the boat from drifting off course.
For emergencies and maneuvering in and out of ports, the ship would also be equipped with an auxiliary motor, which Wallenius Marine claim runs on clean energy.
Unlike the wings of an airplane, the wingsails are symmetrical
At the moment, the ship is still in the prototyping stage, with a seven-meter tall model set to be trialed in Stockholm's harbor to gather data and optimize its performance and aerodynamics.
But the company says it could be taking orders from 2021 with the aim to deliver the first, complete vessel by the end of 2024.
The sails reach up to 80 meters high
Ireland's B9 Shipping and French start-up Neoline have developed similar designs for cargo ships, which make use of tall fabric sails to harness wind power.
Neoline is already planning to establish a new shipping route between Saint-Nazaire in western France and the East Coast of the US by 2022 and has signed a development deal with Renault to look at using its ships to transport the manufacturer's cars.
Another Swedish company, X Shore, has recently released an electric boat for private passenger travel in the hopes of bringing emission-free maritime travel to a broader market.
Read more:
Design Sustainable design Transport New Boats Technology Ships
Shorten Supply Chains With Urban Farming
While urban indoor agriculture may have seemed a far-fetched dream in the past, developments in city planning and technological innovation are making it into a reality
There are many reasons why a government or international organization may advocate the introduction of urban indoor farming. The association for vertical farming looks at some of the main motivations for bringing agriculture closer to the consumer. While urban indoor agriculture may have seemed a far-fetched dream in the past, developments in city planning and technological innovation are making it into a reality. These developments are helping to alleviate pressure on food supply chains and cultivate food security in a period of mass population expansion.
Urban indoor agriculture is seen as a viable solution to dramatic increases in population. Already fifty-five percent of the world’s population lives in urban areas and this figure is set to increase. Moreover, eighty percent of all food produced globally is destined for consumption in urban spaces to meet this increased demand. By bringing farming closer to the city, agricultural networks have a better chance of meeting this demand sustainably and efficiently by cutting out unnecessary segments of the supply chain. Farmers are also better able to attract young people into the workforce as they can offer new and innovative routes into agriculture which appeal to the urbanized workforce.
Agriculture in urbanized areas also presents an opportunity to establish a more circular economy. Farming can be integrated more holistically into the overall working of urban life by combining its production with other essential services like waste management. Rather than establishing a food network that operates on a ‘cradle-to-grave’ methodology, urbanized farming presents new opportunities to recycle and reuse resources in an integrated bio-economy. The decrease in transportation costs which comes from closer proximity between consumers and producers also helps to reduce emissions. The benefits of urban indoor farming can be seen to not only enhance economic efficiency but also maximize sustainability by cutting down the city’s overall carbon footprint.
Finally, urban indoor agriculture offers an exciting opportunity for communities to reconnect with the process of farming. Shorter supply chains not only increase accessibility to food but can also improve overall public engagement with the food production process. Supply chains can be seen not only as a means to an end but also as an opportunity for social engagement by integrating small producers, farms, and vulnerable groups along the supply chain. Educational opportunities for schools and society as a whole can be brought closer to the urban population which allows a reconnection with the cultivation of fresh produce.
While it is possible that cities never become solely reliant on urban agriculture, it is clear that the integration of agriculture into the urban zone offers several social, economic, and environmental benefits. Food supply chains should therefore actively cultivate urbanized agriculture to help reach increased standards of efficiency and sustainability at this time of rapid population expansion.
For more information:
Association for Vertical Farming
Marschnerstrasse,
81245 Munich,
Germany
info@vertical-farming.net
vertical-farming.net
Publication date: Mon 28 Sep 2020
Nature Fresh Farms Pledges To Plant 25,000 Trees In Sustainability Campaign
After two years of research and development, Nature Fresh Farms has officially launched their 100 percent home compostable Cucumber wrap, a first for the North American marketplace
Leamington, ON | October 1, 2020
Nature Fresh Farms has launched its sustainability campaign following the release of their new home compostable Cucumber wrap.
After two years of research and development, Nature Fresh Farms has officially launched their 100 percent home compostable Cucumber wrap, a first for the North American marketplace. Made from a starch-based PLA that is derived from plant-based resources, the film is home compostable breaking down naturally into CO2 and water within 90 days.
To celebrate its release and promote to consumers and customers alike, Nature Fresh Farms has launched a unique marketing campaign and want their followers to join in their initiative to make a difference. Their campaign has kicked-off with high-impact social media posts going live on their Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn accounts. Every time someone shares these posts during the month of October, they will plant a tree. With one share equalling one tree, the company is pledging to plant up to 25,000 trees to help our forests thrive.
“We really wanted to grab the attention of our consumers and followers with this home compostable film,” said Luci Faas, Product Development Specialist. “Through this initiative, we hope to raise awareness of this packaging design that will make a lasting change on the environment but also go even further by planting trees to help our North American forests flourish.”
This campaign seeks to spotlight the progression of their sustainable packaging design while encouraging their followers to spread the word by sharing social media posts and help plant a tree. The initiative supports Nature Fresh Farms commitment to bettering the environment and their continued investment in searching for more sustainable packaging designs.
“Our customers are looking for more environmentally friendly packaging and we want to give them that,” shared Director of Sales, Matt Quiring. “With our continued goal of finding more viable packaging solutions we want to provide more options and make it easier for most people to make positive environmental choices.”
At Nature Fresh Farms they are driven to accelerate innovation through evidence-informed sustainable packaging solutions providing a better experience for their customers, while also helping to preserve the vitality of our planet.
About Nature Fresh Farms
Continuously expanding, Nature Fresh Farms has become one of the largest independent, vertically integrated greenhouse vegetable farms in North America. As a year-round grower with farms in Leamington, ON, Delta, OH, and Mexico, Nature Fresh Farms prides itself on consistently delivering exceptional flavor and quality to key retailers throughout North America, while continuing to innovate and introduce more viable and sustainable growing and packaging solutions.
SOURCE: Nature Fresh Farms | info@naturefresh.ca T: 519 326 1111 | www.naturefresh.ca
VIDEO: IKEA Korea Launches Leap Year of Sustainability In FY21
IKEA Korea will introduce ‘IKEA FARMARE’—the first urban farm in IKEA restaurant worldwide at IKEA Gwangmyeong
Home furnishing retailer IKEA Korea announced the launch of FY21 brand campaign, ‘Good for me, Good for my home’. The new campaign will focus on driving a sustainable home furnishing movement in Korea, inspiring and enabling the many people to start living a better, more sustainable life at home while contributing to climate action and an inclusive world.
With the announcement of the new campaign, IKEA Korea revealed its plans to integrate sustainability into a happier home, healthier planet, and an equal, diverse, and inclusive society. First is making sustainable life at home easier and more accessible for more of the many, with affordable home furnishing products and solutions that use sustainable materials or help to save money and energy. IKEA Korea will introduce ‘IKEA FARMARE’—the first urban farm in IKEA restaurant worldwide at IKEA Gwangmyeong.
New services will be launched to contribute to circularity and climate action, which include the ‘Buy back & Resell’ service giving unused IKEA furniture a second life, and electric vehicle (EV) home delivery for furniture. As an activist for equality, diversity and inclusion, IKEA Korea will also launch activities to build an inclusive world where everyone feels welcome and valued.
With aims to become even more accessible and convenient, IKEA Korea will also expand and strengthen its existing service offer with the ‘Neighbourhood delivery’ service (KRW 29,000)—a more affordable delivery option to customers in nearby areas of IKEA Gwangmyeong, Goyang, Giheung and DongBusan. The new ‘Click & Collect’ service (KRW 10,000) allowing customers pick up their online orders at an offline store, and the ‘Remote Planning and Ordering’ service through the IKEA Customer Support Centre, will also cater to the growing needs for untact consumption.
“Thanks to the great interest shown towards the opening of new stores IKEA Giheung, DongBusan and city touchpoints in FY20, annual turnover has increased by 33% at IKEA Korea marking KRW 663.4 billion, with a total of 12.3 million visits to our stores. Also, with the impact of COVID-19 leading to an increased interest in home furnishing, we welcomed over 44.7 million visits to our e-commerce—a 14% increase since last year,” said IKEA Korea Country Retail Manager Fredrik Johansson. “In FY21 Leap year of Sustainability, we at IKEA Korea look forward to enabling the many Koreans to take part in the sustainability movement that we will create towards a happier home, healthier planet and an inclusive society.”
In addition, IKEA Korea is officially launching on August 25 the IKEA Catalogue 2021 in digital and print version using eco-friendly FSC™ certified paper, available at all IKEA stores and the IKEA Korea website. The new catalogue also features a total of 129 popular products that will be offered at ‘New Lower Price’. For more details and access to the digital catalogue, please visit the IKEA Korea website.
For more information:
www.ikea.com/kr/ko
Publication date: Wed 2 Sep 2020
Indoor Farming: How Can You Ensure Success?
Any business can fail for any number of reasons, but indoor farming is an incredibly delicate organism that depends on many disparate factors being perfectly aligned and in balance
Any business can fail for any number of reasons, but indoor farming is an incredibly delicate organism that depends on many disparate factors being perfectly aligned and in balance. This increases the risk of failure for those unaware of the number of plates that need to be kept spinning in perfect time. This list is not definitive but gives you a good idea of the most common mistakes to avoid.
1. Avoid a Trial and Error Approach to Design
There are multitudes of factors that are naturally managed and balanced with indoor farming. The sun cannot be changed, irrigation to every plant is different as weather patterns can change from moment to moment and even the nutrition in the soil can vary across the area of the field. Planning your farm therefore gives you the ultimate control but also dramatically increases the variables that you can and must consider.
These variables start with the facility’s very layout, such as the size of growing space, plant distribution, airflow and more. Additionally, without having the right models in place to determine the exact light recipe and combination of CO₂, nutrients and water required to grow a successful crop, growers can find themselves wasting time and money on testing phases to try to maximize yield and revenue. Once you have developed a model for your vertical farm, you should then put it through a testing phase on a smaller scale to ensure it is viable.
2. Pick the Right Crop
It’s far easier to develop a profitable and scalable facility if you know the needs of your crop inside and out. That ideally means specializing in one type of crop that you can design your facility around, electing the right growth spectrum and studying that particular plant’s biology to better understand how to optimize irrigation, nutrition, air flow, CO₂ concentration and propagation in order to maximize elements such as taste, nutritional content, visual appeal, potency or shelf life.
Too many growers have tried to hedge against perceived risk by trying to grow multiple crops. By default, it is extremely difficult to have one installation that is optimized for a wide variety of plants, and therefore the returns from each crop are lower than they could have been. The facility then may have to suffer through downtime as the technology is tweaked and optimized for the next crop — eating into profitability and adding unnecessary costs.
3. Location, Location, Location
The old adage that location is half the battle has never been more relevant than in vertical farming today. Vertical farms have a key advantage in their ability to be located close to their customer, whether they are selling to food processors, supermarkets or local shops. Removing the vast transport logistics associated with today’s food supply chain slashes costs and helps appeal to an increasingly conscientious customer. The lack of transport costs also helps counter the higher production costs resulting from higher energy and labor inputs.
At city planning level, there are also many advantages of co-locating a vertical farm with other facilities such as office buildings, shops or residences — which could draw the vertical farm’s excess heat to reduce demands on other sources of energy.
4. Simplify Your Business Model
Proximity to customers and the ability to produce crops year-round at a sustainable rate is a strong advantage in the market, whether you’re growing for the food or pharmaceutical sectors. Therefore, consider the opportunities available through establishing exclusive contracts with customers at a fixed rate that will offer more financial security as you build your business.
5. Be Realistic About Operational Cost
Setup and fit-out costs represent a high initial outlay for any indoor farming entrepreneur, but the ongoing operational costs (energy, labor, inputs, maintenance, etc.) are also significant. Businesses not only need to find creative ways to mitigate these risks (e.g. growing through the night when energy tariffs are lower and the outdoor climate is cooler to assist HVAC systems’ efficiency), but also consider the cost-benefits of different configurations and process flow.
6. Set Prices Based on What Consumers Will Pay
At the 2017 inaugural AgLanta Conference11, PodPonics’ CEO admitted that the company missed out on higher potential margins as it priced its crops to compete with conventional growers, ignoring the price premium that food traceability, pesticide-free growing and local production can increasingly attract from consumers in some markets.
7. The Skills Gap
In many cases, those who have embraced the promise of indoor farming have not been traditional growers but rather tech entrepreneurs, engineers or hobbyists. Vertical farming requires a unique mix of skills to be successful: big data scientists, systems integrators, project managers, engineers, growers and plant scientists all have a role to play in addition to the core functions that any business needs to be successful (financial strategists, marketing and business development, etc.). From the leadership perspective, experience at replicating and scaling a business is critical. Ignoring any one of these functions leaves a serious gap in business capability that could undermine the overall success of the operation.
8. Remember What You’re Selling
In a bid to capitalize on the new technology and growth models offered by vertical farming, some growers have forgotten that their primary focus should be on growing and selling the highest quality food. Instead, they have tried to recoup their investment by trying to commercialize their vertical farm’s technology, process and methodology. Unfortunately, as we have seen, every vertical farm is different with potentially very different needs. The trick is to not to try and do many different things at once, but instead keep a clear focus on doing one thing as well as possible.
Source: www.currentbyge.com/ideas
ABU DHABI: US Educator Outlines Urban Farming Vision in ADIBF Virtual Session
American educator, urban farmer, and innovator Stephen Ritz revealed how his tower garden-growing technology is flourishing in the UAE during the latest Abu Dhabi International Book Fair, ADIBF, Virtual Session
ABU DHABI, 2nd June 2020 (WAM)
American educator, urban farmer, and innovator Stephen Ritz revealed how his tower garden-growing technology is flourishing in the UAE during the latest Abu Dhabi International Book Fair, ADIBF, Virtual Session.
The talk, titled ‘Changing the World with the Power of a Plant’, on Thursday covered Ritz’s rise to fame through his innovative teaching methods in some of the USA’s poorest communities, his ongoing projects in the UAE, and the numerous books he has published.
As the 30th edition of ADIBF has been postponed until next year, the Department of Culture and Tourism – Abu Dhabi, has instead organized the virtual sessions for scheduled guests to present their talks online, so viewers can watch safely in their homes.
Ritz, who has become known as ‘America’s Favourite Teacher’, has spawned a green movement through the changes he brought to the school where he taught in the South Bronx, New York. Utilizing hydroponics and aquaponics, he began to grow plants in the classroom, which in turn encouraged his students to follow sustainable and healthy lifestyles.
He first came to the UAE in 2015 as one of the ten finalists in the Global Teacher Prize. While he didn’t win, he used his runner-up prize money to create the Green Bronx Machine, a curriculum for a green classroom, which is now being taught around the world.
His work caught the attention of Dr. Abdulla Al Karam, Chairman of the Board of Directors and Director-General of the Knowledge and Human Development Authority, KHDA, in Dubai, who invited Ritz back to the UAE. Soon Ritz was visiting schools, universities, and businesses here to explain his methods. He also began working alongside Sheikh Dr. Abdul Aziz bin Ali Al Nuaimi, the Environmental Advisor to the Government of Ajman, who is also known as the ‘Green Sheikh’ for his environmental work. The pair are currently authoring a book called Bringing the Farm to the Desert to be released in 2021.
Ritz also works with Esol Education, the international network of private schools that operates many schools across the UAE, and has been appointed as its Director of Health, Wellness and Innovation. He is now based at Fairgreen International School in The Sustainable City, Dubai, hence he says he now thinks of the UAE as his "second home".
Ritz said he enjoys nothing more than meeting children, inspiring teachers, inspiring healthy living, and inspiring healthy learning for everyone across the UAE through his passion, purpose, and hope.
With the 30th edition of the ADIBF postponed until next year, the DCT Abu Dhabi has launched a series of live virtual broadcasts to showcase artists and authors and open up new creative conversations with readers.
The virtual sessions will run until Monday, 15th June 2020, and feature ten speakers from around the world, to discuss a wide variety of themes – from history and education to entertainment and science – designed to appeal a wide audience of different age groups and tastes.
Other ADIBF Virtual Sessions have featured the Swedish behavioral expert Thomas Erikson, military survival specialist John Hudson; Lemn Sissay, the award-winning British-Ethiopian poet; and Annabel Karmel, the children’s cookbook author.
WAM/Tariq alfaham/Nour Salman
VeggiTech Builds and Operates Digital Smart Farms For Customers
In conversation with Hemant Julka, Chief Operating Officer, VeggiTech
By GN Focus | May 28, 2020 | Gulf News
In conversation with Hemant Julka, Chief Operating Officer, VeggiTech
Could you tell us about VeggiTech and its operations in the UAE?
VeggiTech is an agro-tech organisation focused on disrupting the agriculture industry to create sustainable and eco-friendly farms. We focus on LED-assisted hydroponics for indoor vertical farms and protected hydroponics to farm sustainably even in the UAE’s challenging conditions, where soil, temperature and water are not conducive to traditional farming. Our farming landscape has grown to over 60 acres of protected hydroponic farms and more than 45,000 sq ft of indoor vertical farms, with a team of over 150 qualified agronomists, engineers and farmers.
How could you help traditional farms in the country incorporate hydroponic farming practices?
VeggiTech’s business model is to build and operate digital smart farms for our customers. We drive the transformation of farms with these innovative technologies in a cost-effective manner. The year 2019 saw more than 35 acres of traditional farms converted into protected hydroponics and the introduction of 45,000 sq ft of indoor vertical farms in Sharjah alone.
Given our expertise, we ensure the latest innovation in farming technology is delivered with optimal return on investment for our customers.
Could you talk about a couple of key projects that you have handled recently?
Some of our recent successes were the conversion of a traditional farms (640,000 sq ft) into modern protected hydroponic farms and the commissioning of the indoor vertical farm of 25,000 sq ft grow area. Our protected hydroponics technologies provide a harvest of 40-45kg per sq m per annum, while our indoor vertical farms provide a harvest of 85-90kg per sq m per annum using less than 5 percent of the water used in traditional farming.
What initiatives have you taken to create more awareness on hydroponics and other innovative farming technologies for a sustainable agricultural ecosystem in the UAE?
Education is key for long term sustainable impact. We work closely with the Ministry of Climate Change and Environment (MOCCAE). Our Chief Agronomy Officer, Bhaskar Rao, leads our Learning Hub platform that hosts the Urban Grower’s programme for students, parents and teachers. We have had more than 50 graduate participants from the programme.
VIDEO: Can Vertical Farms Fix The Future of Food?
VICE visits the sustainable start-up to understand the future of food
May 25, 2020
Singapore has only 1% of its land available for agriculture, so it imports 90% of its food requirements. The government is looking to curb this dependence on outside food sources under a program titled ‘30 by 30,’ which aims to allow Singapore to grow 30% of its produce by the year 2030. Local vertical farms like Sustenir are at the forefront of bringing about this change. VICE visits the sustainable start-up to understand the future of food.
UAE Farm Tech To The Fore
New technologies are helping the country make more of its own produce
New technologies are helping the country make more of its own produce
Over a span of just six months, Covid-19 has not only changed the way we work, celebrate occasions and stay healthy but also forced countries to take a hard look at how they feed their residents. “I believe the current pandemic has provided us the opportunity to completely reimagine the global food system,” says Tony Hunter, a global food futurist.
Going urban
One of the factors pushing the global agri-tech agenda is the growth and increasing density of cities. “By 2050, more than two thirds of the world’s population is forecasted to live in cities,” explains Smitha Paresh, Executive Director of Greenoponics, a UAE-based retailer of commercial and consumer hydroponics systems, adding that urban agriculture will be crucial for feeding burgeoning urban populations.
“On a macro level, we will see a rise in urban farming, mostly using high-tech farming methods such as hydroponics, aeroponics or aquaponics.” Paresh cites Singapore’s conversion of car parks into urban farm centres as an example. “In the UAE, as per the national food security strategy for 2017-2021, we have already witnessed a huge increase in climate-controlled greenhouses all over the country.”
Arable environments
For Hunter, who spoke about potential silver linings of Covid-19 at a recent Gulfood webinar, new technologies present the best means of achieving domestic self-sufficiency. “They can release countries from the tyrannies of arable land and water stress.” He singles out algal products that rely on low rainfall and can use seawater; cultivated meat and biomass products; cell-based products such as milk proteins; and synthetic biology that can manufacture a range of food products.
Over the long term, Ravindra Shirotriya, CEO, VeggiTech, believes there are three critical areas for sustainable farming in the UAE. The first is precision agriculture, which focuses on growing conditions for plants using hyperbaric chambers and nanotechnology-based organic nutrition. Photo bio-reactors, meanwhile, can cultivate food-grade algae such as spirulina. Finally, Shirotriya cites smart farms, which work with smart cities to create harvest plans based on real-time data on food demand and consumption within communities. “This will address our current broken food ecosystem, where we waste 35 percent of food while 15 percent of the world population goes to sleep hungry.”
VeggiTech’s primary focus is on setting up LED-assisted hydroponics for indoor vertical farms and protected hydroponics for sustainable farming in the UAE.
In terms of crop production, Avinash Vora, Co-founder of Aranya Farms, says new technologies aim to boost yields, reduce waste and grow produce entirely. “Technology is being applied at every stage, whether for plant seeding, monitoring growth, managing water, energy conservation, harvesting and packaging. “We are making huge strides adapting all of them here in the UAE; the interest and investments in agriculture prove that.”
For Philippe Peguilhan, Country Manager of Carrefour UAE at Majid Al Futtaim Retail, the UAE had already been seeking self-reliance in food production, but coronavirus amped up its importance. “The disruption that Covid-19 caused to the supply chain highlighted the importance of local produce and presented an excellent opportunity for local farmers to grab a greater share of the market.” Majid Al Futtaim recently made headlines for opening the UAE’s third, and Dubai’s first, in-store hydroponics farm.
Hydroponic hope
Hydroponics is one agri-tech that’s attracting keen investor interest. “As an indicator, Madar Farms’ 7,000-sq-m factory will produce 365 tons of tomatoes a year, and about 14,000 tons of cherry vine tomatoes were consumed in the UAE in 2019,” says Hunter. “There’s therefore the market opportunity for 38 Madar farms in the UAE for tomatoes alone. Add in other nutrient-dense crops such as cucumbers, peppers and leafy greens. Depending upon their size, we could be looking at several hundred businesses.”
On an individual level, more people are leaning towards home farming, especially towards soil-less cultivation since it is simple and easy, according to Paresh. “It guarantees a certain amount of yield. Home farming will be on the rise, considering the disruption we may face in trying times like this.”
As with most technologies, Hunter says the biggest challenge of hydroponics is profitability. “Fortunately, the costs of technology inputs required to optimise hydroponic production efficiencies are falling rapidly. This drop, together with simultaneous increases in performance, is driving down the costs of hydroponics, making acceptable ROIs much easier to achieve.” He adds that economies of scale can help achieve good ROIs. “Currently most farms are in the 1-2 ton per day range but farms of 50 tons per day are being projected by as early as 2025.”
Sustainability challenges
“Challenges in building our own farm were access to sufficient and cost-effective electricity; renewable sources of water; and the availability of locally made raw materials, specifically growing media, nutrients and seeds. With seeds we are adapting — we have been growing our own seeds but having a library of seeds to choose from that are suitable for our climate and environment would be a huge boon to all farmers.”
— Avinash Vora, Co-founder of Aranya Farms
By Riaz Naqvi, Staff Writer | Gulf News | May 28, 2020
Western South Dakota Aquaponic Farm Floats Fresh Food
A Butte County couple is putting fish to work in a new aquaponic greenhouse, growing fresh, locally-grown lettuce that now lines Northern Hills grocery shelves
May 23, 2020
Photo: Lacey Peterson, AP | Chris Garro shows off the long root under some herbs growing at the aquaponic greenhouse at Garro Farms in Nisland, S.D. (Lacey Peterson/Black Hills Pioneer via AP
BELLE FOURCHE, S.D. (AP) — A Butte County couple is putting fish to work in a new aquaponic greenhouse, growing fresh, locally-grown lettuce that now lines Northern Hills grocery shelves.
He is a Black Hills and Wyoming native, she’s from northeast Iowa, and together, Chris and Alexa Garro, owners of Garro Farms, have mastered the art of mimicking a natural ecosystem that combines traditional aquaculture with hydroculture in the ultimate symbiotic system.
It just so happens that the work fish naturally do, eating and producing waste, is the perfect fertilizer for growing plants. And boy do those fish grow a lot of plants when they get to work.
The best of both worlds
Aquaponics uses the best of all the growing techniques, utilizing the waste of one element to benefit another, mimicking a natural ecosystem.
Alexa told the Black Hills Pioneer it represents the relationship between water, aquatic life, bacteria, nutrient dynamics, and plants that grow together in waterways all over the world. Taking cues from nature, aquaponics harnesses the power of bio-integrating those individual components — exchanging the waste byproduct from the fish as a food for the bacteria, to be converted into a perfect fertilizer for the plants, and return the water in a clean and safe form to the fish — just like mother nature does in every aquatic ecosystem.
“If we were to let this system just hang out and never touch it, it (the bacterial symbiotic process) would happen naturally,” Alexa said. “It’s kind of like nature wants to make it work, and then we just provide the facilities.”
The system has found shortcuts around common agricultural issues.
While gardens can be located in your backyard, industrial farms are often thousands of miles from where their food is consumed. This requires extensive transportation, refrigeration, and packaging to get the food from farm to table.
Hydroponics is a method of growing plants without soil, by instead using mineral nutrient solutions in a water solvent. While hydroponics solves many soil-based issues, it also offers its own problems.
Traditional hydroponic systems rely on the careful application of expensive, man-made nutrients made from mixing together a concoction of chemicals, salts, and trace elements. For the Garros, through aquaponics, they merely feed the fish and monitor the system carefully, and grow fresh, bountiful greenery that you could have on your table the day after harvest.
The Arpan setup
Garro Farms, located approximately 18 miles northeast of Belle Fourche on Arpan Road, is home to the 2,400 square-foot commercial-scale greenhouse. Chris, utilizing second-hand materials, built the greenhouse with the ultimate goal — to supply fresh produce to the Northern Hills and Wyoming areas all year long.
“It took some imagination to get it to this,” Chris said. “And I hope other people follow suit, too.”
Although there are numerous types of aquaponic systems, the Garros selected deep-water culture, or raft-based growing, that uses a foam raft which floats in a 12-inch deep channel filled with fish effluent water that has been filtered to remove solid wastes. Plants are placed in holes in the raft and the roots dangle freely in the water.
Photo, Chris and Alexa Garro have opened a commercial-scale aquaponic greenhouse to offer fresh, locally-grown lettuce and herbs to Northern Hills and Wyoming communities pose at the farm in Nisland, S.D. (Lacey Peterson/Black Hills Pioneer via AP)
In 2018, Chris implemented a smaller backyard experiment in aquaponics and found the plentiful rewards it could provide. He said the property had only a limited amount of available space, forcing him to get creative, making aquaponics the perfect solution to offer healthy, high-yielding fresh produce.
The system’s water starts out in a 500-gallon in-ground tank and is pumped into the tank where the fish thrive. From there, the nutrient-rich water flows through a solids filter and into a bacterial conversion tank before being piped into the “beds” where the plants roost while they grow.
“And then back again,” Alexa said. “So, it’s all a big cycle. The plants clean out that nitrate, and it comes back to the fish.”
The system circulates approximately 4,500 gallons of water each hour, Chris said.
And the system works well.
“Almost every single thing that comes out of this, there’s no waste byproduct,” she said, adding that other than adding iron to the water, Garro Farms doesn’t provide any additives to the process. “Otherwise, it’s completely self-sustaining. The older the system gets, the more efficient it works, and the more balanced it gets.”
“We figured out how to basically get as much production in this size (of) greenhouse as we would get out of something four times this size,” Alexa said. “So, by taking the square footage and doing a certain crop rotation that he did, that’s how we get (the amount of production).”
Currently, the farm grows six types of lettuce — green oakleaf, rouxai, adriana, salanova red incised, green incised and butter crunch. They also cultivate microgreens, grown under natural sunlight in the greenhouse, including pea shoots, purple-stemmed radish and sunflower. But that’s not all; the Garros are experimenting with herbs like cilantro and culinary sage.
“To be this new and have the right levels and everything producing was a stroke of genius on Chris’ part,” Alexa said.
Without the rotation the Garros utilize, Chris said it would be next to impossible to get the amount of growth production.
“We can do between 50,000-74,000 heads of lettuce out of here a year,” he said. “And if I had done it the conventional way and not moved anything, if we just put in the water and let it grow … they need quite a bit of room when they get bigger and we’d of cut that (production) in a quarter.”
From the time the seeds are planted, the plants are full grown and ready for market in about 35 days, Chris said.
“We’re not using any special seed or anything like that,” he said. “We’re trying to provide ideal conditions, and if you give something ideal conditions, … it just does better.”
What about the fish?
As one of the main components in an aquaponic system, the fish are an important focus for the Garros.
Chris said he stocked his 1,500-gallon fish tank, which is above ground and separate from the water tank, with 50 pounds of fathead minnows three or four months ago.
The type of fish is atypical for an aquaponic setup, Chris said.
“This is pretty experimental, too, because I haven’t read about anybody doing that with bait fish,” he said.
Due to the proximity to the Belle Fourche Reservoir and wanting to keep product procurement as local as possible, the farm gets the minnows from the Wheel In Bait Shop.
The local supply is handy but, Alexa said the fish species is particularly hardy when it comes to handling the area temperatures, whereas other fish species typically used in other aquaponic setups like tilapia, koi or goldfish would struggle in the South Dakota conditions.
So, what happens when the fish get too big and the balance is thrown off?
“The cool thing about it is we’ll trade these out for smaller ones with the bait shop,” Chris said.
A 50-pound batch of minnows will likely thrive in the greenhouse for around six months before needing to be traded out for smaller ones, he said.
“Most people factor in because they either do a huge, massive, million-dollar scale building, or they have a little backyard system,” Alexa said. “So, they either want to eat the fish or they’re factoring it into their revenue plan. For us … it’s so weird fitting that middle ground where we’re not a million-dollar facility but we’re not a 500-gallon backyard system. What worked for everybody else will not quite work here, especially in South Dakota in the wintertime.”
Pandemic curveball meets ingenuity
The current pandemic conditions put a slight kink into the Garros’ plans.
Chris said that the pandemic conditions related to COVID-19 have caused a supply shortage for some of the supplies needed for the greenhouse, requiring them to operate on a smaller level until more supplies arrive.
Photo, Alexa Garro examines the lettuce crop grown at Garro Farms' aquaponic greenhouse in Nisland, S.D. (Lacey Peterson/Black Hills Pioneer via AP)
“And we don’t even have this thing (the aquaponic bed) like a quarter of the way full, and this is (producing) about 860 heads (of lettuce) a week,” Alexa said.
In about a month, Chris anticipated the greenhouse would likely be at around three-quarters capacity.
Even through the rough conditions, Garro Farms is rising above and plowing through the roadblocks. The farm’s produce is already on the shelves of Lueders Food Centers in Spearfish and Belle Fourche, Lynn’s Dakotamart in Belle Fourche, Bee’s Knees Natural Foods in Spearfish, Grocery Mart in Sturgis and Bearlodge Bakery in Sundance, Wyoming.
Soon, that will likely expand. Alexa said they’re in talks with some restaurants all the way to Rapid City, hoping to provide locally grown, healthy options everywhere.
“We had such a good response from everybody. All the stores we’ve sold to … they’re selling out weekly,” Chris said.
The bigger picture
The couple, who, between the two of them, has ranched in Montana, worked in the Bakken oil fields, done professional construction work, and worked in radio and news outlets, decided they wanted a new direction in life.
“It’s good work, and I didn’t mind it,” Chris said. “But, doing something like this, to me, is a bigger thing. Growing food, to me, is more important.”
The farm expects to be able to keep a consistent level of inventory in terms of production, year-round.
“The way that we’re going to get away with that is the grow lights,” Chris said. “In the wintertime, I’ll probably put them over all the beds. You need 10-15 hours of sunlight (each day).”
The couple was uniquely drawn toward growing lettuce. Chris said that around 95% of the country’s lettuce comes from the California region.
“There’s no reason we can’t grow this locally like this,” he said.
“Lettuce is just one crop that you can’t really get it in mass in the winter in South Dakota,” Alexa said. “This is something that everybody that I talked to had the same problem, ‘I buy lettuce, it goes bad; I buy lettuce, it’s not really what I wanted.’ We just kind of went, ‘lets focus on this and get it going.’”
The pandemic conditions have highlighted to the couple the importance of having a local supply chain.
“If we can do this here, I think it’s possible pretty much anywhere,” Chris said.
Chris said he hopes to continue to grow the business, bring on staff, and someday, produce for most of western South Dakota and eastern Wyoming.
Although the farm sold its first batches of lettuce to local stores in mid-April, the couple is already expanding on the greenhouse, planning a 12-foot addition to the front to accommodate a packaging area.
Are Vertical Farms Even Remotely Efficient? Putting A Figure On Plant Factories
Researchers in the Netherlands are calculating the feasibility of vertical farming in urban areas
Researchers in the Netherlands are calculating the feasibility of vertical farming in urban areas.
“The main goal is to put a figure on vertical farming,” Wageningen Universit & Research’s Luuk Graamans tells FoodNavigator.
https://www.foodnavigator.com/Article/2019/05/15/Are-vertical-farms-even-remotely-efficient-Putting-a-figure-on-plant-factories?utm_source=copyright&utm_medium=OnSite&utm_campaign=copyright
By Flora Southey | Food Navigator | May 15, 2019
Indoor Soilless Agriculture Could Supplement US Food Supply While Decreasing Environmental Impact of Food Production
WWF Report Examines the Environmental and Economic Viability of Scaling Indoor Agriculture Systems
WWF Report Examines the Environmental and Economic Viability of Scaling Indoor Agriculture Systems
WASHINGTON, DC – WEBWIRE
May 18, 2020
The Markets Institute at World Wildlife Fund (WWF) released an Innovation Analysis examining the environmental impact of various systems of indoor soilless farming. These systems include hydroponics, aquaponics, and aeroponics in greenhouse and vertical settings. At scale, this method of farming could have positive effects on the environment by decreasing pressures on land, biodiversity, natural habitat, and climate. However, the industry also faces hurdles that prevent it from moving beyond its current specialization in high-end leafy greens.
“Indoor soilless farming could have a significant impact on how we grow food in the future, in certain categories. Right now we are looking at whether or not it can be viable—both economically and environmentally—to grow more fruits and vegetables in these systems at a large scale,” said Julia Kurnik, director of innovation start-ups at WWF’s Markets Institute. “If we can address the challenges and make this happen, it could be a real game-changer for communities that do not have access to fresh fruits and vegetables for much of the year, or places that are food insecure.”
While these systems make efficient use of land and water, the energy footprint from lighting and cooling can depending on the local energy source, increase the overall environmental footprint. Indoor soilless farming is also considerably more expensive than traditional agriculture. However, there are several innovations under development that could significantly change the cost and environmental footprint to drastically alter the mid-to-long-term viability of the industry. These include progress in lighting, fiber optics, AI and machine learning, gene editing, renewable energy, co-location and co-generation, and waste and recycling.
The report details the next phase of the project, which aims to help solve the challenges identified in phase I. WWF will explore using stranded assets—large infrastructure investments such as power plants and postal hubs that have depreciated in value but will continue to be used in a limited capacity for 10-50 years—and build a robust coalition of local partners, including The Yield Lab Institute, to launch a pilot farming system in St. Louis.
“The Yield Lab Institute, working with World Wildlife Fund and the McDonnell Foundation, is proud to be a part of a distinguished, local team of community volunteers who are working to bring local, indoor and sustainable food production to the St. Louis area,” said Thad Simons, Co-Founder and Managing Director of The Yield Lab Institute. “It will also spark innovation among our ag-tech entrepreneurs and is intended to provide access to nutritious food to the underserved areas of our community.”
Plant Growth Research and Technologies Featured in Upcoming NASA Webinar
NASA’s webinar will feature researcher, Jacob Torres, who will discuss the latest food production research and technologies developed at NASA
The Veggie Lab at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center is a Plant Processing Area - a web of ground research laboratories equipped with plant growth chambers of all sizes and the ability to simulate the International Space Station environment. That along with a team of researchers capable of applying the chemistry, biology, microbiology, and engineering needed to make plants grow in space, makes NASA a one of a kind hub for fulfilling space biology and growing crops in space.
NASA’s webinar will feature researcher, Jacob Torres, who will discuss the latest food production research and technologies developed at NASA. These include a Passive Porous Plant Nutrient System that requires no electricity or moving parts, and a variety of micro-gravity simulation testing systems for plant growth. Also included will some video clips of Jacob inside the lab exhibiting some of his technologies and ongoing research projects.
The webinar will explain how NASA’s technologies and capabilities are available to industry and other organizations through NASA’s Technology Transfer Program. Also it will introduce NASA’s Centennial Challenge, a competitive program for teams to compete for funding to develop and demonstrate novel technologies, systems or approaches for sustainable advanced plant and food production for long duration deep space exploration missions.
“Before astronauts took that first historic bite of lettuce in space, every piece of equipment involved in growing that lettuce was designed and meticulously tested in the Veggie Lab and other labs at NASA. NASA continues to research methods to improve plant growth and plant nutrition in space”, Jacob Torres comments.
Register here for this free live webinar
June 23rd 2020 at 2:00 PM (EST)
To learn more about NASA’s Technology Transfer Program, please visit their website. You can also browse their entire technology portfolio here.
Publication date: Thu 21 May 2020
Aldi Teams Up With Vertical Farming Company Infarm
Adli Süd is the latest retailer and the first discounter to partner with Infarm. Germany is Infarm’s largest market where it already partners with Edeka and Metro
Maxime Delacour
Senior Retail Analyst
@RetailAnalysis
Aldi Süd announced a new partnership with Infarm, a leading indoor vertical farming company, in Germany. The first vertical-farm units will be installed in-store by the end of May.
Fresh move from the discounter
Aldi Süd is the latest retailer and the first discounter to partner with Infarm. Germany is Infarm’s largest market where it already partners with Edeka and Metro. By the end of May five Aldi stores in the Frankfurt and Dusseldorf regions will be growing fresh herbs and salads thanks to Infarm vertical units. Seven further stores will add this solution by the end of the year.
The in-store farms are fully managed by Infarm employees from growing to harvest and packing. Aldi and Infarm agreed on large volumes of products, most will be produced directly at Infarm’s greenhouses in order to supply around 300 stores.
Targeting a larger audience
Over the last two years, Aldi has accelerated its investments in sustainable solutions improving its stores and assortment to target new shoppers. This one aims at creating an appealing offer to young health and environmentally conscious shoppers looking for a more sustainable lifestyle.
With this new development Aldi continues to upgrade its concept as part of its strategy to move away from its hard discount image. More broadly, the upgrade of food discounters is one of the five trends shaping the channel we highlighted for 2020.
Looking for more insight?
Check our Aldi hub and resilient and responsive hub for more related content.
Lead Photo: Source: Infarm
IGS Announces Referral Partnership With IREP in Middle East
The agreement will enhance the capacity for IGS to service the Middle East market and bring greater opportunity to secure and deploy vertical farming platforms across the region. IREP’s presence in this market is well established with many existing customers across agriculture, retail, and construction.
Agritech Business Gains A Greater Presence In Middle Eastern Markets
Indoor agritech specialist IGS has today announced a referral partnership agreement with International Real Estate Partners (IREP), the international facilities management firm. The agreement is specifically focused on indoor vertical farming for the UAE and Saudi Arabian markets.
The agreement will enhance the capacity for IGS to service the Middle East market and bring greater opportunity to secure and deploy vertical farming platforms across the region. IREP’s presence in this market is well established with many existing customers across agriculture, retail, and construction. The agreement establishes the opportunity for IREP to refer potential customers and support in the deployment, construction, and management of vertical farms.
The highly sophisticated plug-and-play vertical farming technology developed by IGS assures the efficient production of food in any location in the world. The modular indoor farms offer a highly controllable platform designed to maximize productivity whilst minimizing energy consumption and allowing the production of consistently high-quality produce at scale.
Ole Mygind, Managing Director of IGS Agri business commented: “The signing of this agreement is a very positive step forward for both IGS and IREP in the future deployment of vertical farming platforms in the Middle East. The imperative need for systems such as ours has been highlighted in the last few weeks as global reliance on complex food supply chains has been dramatically impacted.
“Many countries around the world have plans to secure an independent and sustainable food supply chain. Vertical farming can be a key part of that solution, we believe, particularly in areas where arable land is minimal and there is a high reliance on importing food. These systems offer a secure, controlled environment, independent of weather and location to provide a sustainable, secure food supply across a range of crops.”
Christina Porter from IREP commented: “We have been working with IGS since 2018 to enable its entry into the UAE and Saudi Arabian markets. We wholeheartedly believe that IGS’s vertical farming technology is best-in-class, and with an excellent management team behind it, that it can be the solution that many clients in the region are now looking for to address food security and sustainability. Through this agreement, IREP will work very closely with the IGS management team to ensure that its product penetrates the market here and is delivered in a very effective and efficient way.”
IGS has designed all its products to be highly pragmatic, flexible, modular, and scalable in line with market requirements.
The R&D team at IGS has developed, patented, and productized a breakthrough, IoT-enabled power and communications platform consisting of patented electrical, electronic and mechanical technologies as well as the world’s most sophisticated ventilation system for its Growth platform. All this is managed by a SaaS and data platform using AI to deliver economic and operational benefits to indoor environments across the globe.
Ends
About IGS:
Founded in 2013, IGS brought together decades of farming and engineering experience to create an agritech business with a vision to revolutionize the indoor growing market. Its commitment to innovation has continued apace and it has evolved the applications of its technology beyond agriculture to create solutions for a wide variety of indoor environments that enhance life for people, plants, and animals.
IGS launched its first vertical farming demonstration facility in August 2018.
For more information visit www.intelligentgrowthsolutions.com
About IREP
IREP is a multi-discipline management services firm operating in 25 countries, with its headquarters in Dubai.
We incorporate a high-level structure in all departments that include;
Facilities Management
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Is Indoor Farming Sustainable?
Voices all over the world are telling us that we urgently need to transform food production to make it more sustainable. But what is sustainability? What does it mean?
Voices all over the world are telling us that we urgently need to transform food production to make it more sustainable. But what is sustainability? What does it mean?
Natasha George | LettUs Grow
04/07/20
Voices all over the world are telling us that we urgently need to transform food production to make it more sustainable. But what is sustainability? What does it mean? The idea has been thrown around to such an extent this past year, that it sometimes seems more of a buzzword than an achievable goal.
Sustainability is defined as ‘the ability to be maintained at a certain rate or level’. In terms of food production, this means that we need to grow and produce food in a way that does not exhaust our resources, but also provides enough food for our growing population.
Our current food production system is, quite simply, not sustainable. We are growing food on deforested land, smothering our crops in toxic pesticides, killing wildlife, and then flying that produce halfway around the world. Government statistics tell us that last year, the UK produced only 53% of the food that it consumed - the rest coming from overseas.
So how do we produce food in a way that is sustainable? We need to achieve sustainability for ourselves and for the sake of our environment - for our land, wildlife, and soils. Importantly though, we must also protect the welfare and financial security of our farmers - ensuring that their industry is also able to thrive. Indoor farming can achieve both. Here are just some of the ways indoor farming can address sustainability concerns:
Saving resources
The fewer resources we use to grow food, the more likely it is we can sustain that production. We use aeroponic systems in our indoor farms. This means that we require no soil. Instead, we use a nutrient-dense mist to grow crops - using 95% less water than traditional farming. This is a huge breakthrough, as freshwater shortage on Earth is a huge problem - only 1% of the world’s water is accessible drinking water, and water scarcity is only going to worsen.
Another resource that is currently at risk is our land. Despite the fact that we only produce around half of the food we consume, agriculture accounts for 63.1% of land use in the UK. Growing indoors and vertically will allow us to grow more efficiently, and free up space which could be used for forestry or rewilding projects.
Shorter supply chains
Indoor growing systems can ensure that farmers are able to grow crops all year round, which means that we do not have to rely on buying in produce from overseas. Buying local means you are supporting the local economy, and food does not need to travel as far to reach our plates, which lowers its carbon footprint. It is estimated that 30% of food waste is produce lost in the supply chain, so less travel time means less waste.
Sadly, agricultural industries abroad often provide food to countries like the UK at the expense of their own market. This means their farms are not always feeding the people growing the food. Scholar and environmental activist, Dr. Vandana Shiva calls this a ‘stolen harvest.’ Being able to grow more of our own food in the UK means that our growing demand is not exploiting markets overseas. Importantly, this means that we can maintain fair trade relationships with other countries that are fruitful for all parties.
Pesticides and fertilizers
In order to meet the high demand for food and protect their livelihoods, many traditional farms use pesticides to protect their crops from pests, weeds or diseases. However, we now know that the decline of insects and wildlife is a serious threat to our environment and there is a push towards organic farming methods. Indoor farms create a controlled environment, removing the need for toxic pesticides.
Fertilizers are also used in traditional farming to ensure that plants get enough nutrients - our closed system ensures that these fertilizers do not leak into waterways and corrupt ecosystems.
Climate control
Controlled environment agriculture provides farmers protection from worsening weather patterns due to climate change. Providing this food security would mean that we could consistently maintain our food production rates in the UK through the winter months and provide job security for farmers. Whilst artificial lighting consumes more energy than using natural sunlight, we can also make use of renewable energies, which are only going to become more energy and cost-efficient in the future.
Lead photograph was taken by Jack Wiseall
The content & opinions in this article are the author’s and do not necessarily represent the views of AgriTechTomorrow
Indoor & Vertical Farming, Processing & Supply Chain | government policy, sustainable
Irma To Introduce Vertical Farming In 35 Stores In Denmark
Coop Denmark has announced plans to introduce vertical farming in some 35 Irma outlets, in collaboration with Germany's infarm
February 18, 2020
Coop Denmark has announced plans to introduce vertical farming in some 35 Irma outlets, in collaboration with Germany's infarm.
The retailer plans to roll out the technology in its stores over the next two months, after a successful pilot project in its Østerport store last year.
'An Innovative Concept'
Infarm has devised an innovative concept that allows retailers to grow herbs and certain leafy vegetables in stores, using vertical farming units.
The cultivation of the herbs and vegetables require very little water and no synthetic pesticides.
The process also minimizes the requirement of transportation from farms to store shelves.
Commenting on the initiative, Irma director Søren Steffensen described vertical farming as the "way of the future to grow vegetables. With this collaboration, we unite Irma's goal of promoting the most sustainable forms of production and the best possible quality of taste."
Read More: Financial Cost Of 'Vertical Farming' An Impediment To Sector's Expansion
Founded in Berlin in 2013, infarm is now present in France, Luxembourg, Switzerland.
In September 2019, it partnered with Marks & Spencer to introduce the technology in its Clapham Junction store in South West London.
Two months later, US retailer Kroger announced plans to launch the concept in its outlets across North America.
Fresh Produce tagged: Trending Posts / Sustainability / Denmark / Copenhagen / Irma / Vertical Farming / infarm
© 2020 European Supermarket Magazine – your source for the latest retail news. Article by Dayeeta Das. Click subscribe to sign up to ESM: European Supermarket Magazine.