Inside The Change: How Hamilton’s 80 Acres Works On The Front Lines of Farming

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By Mike Rutledge, Staff Writer

03-14-20

HAMILTON — He’s not knocking lifelong farmers, but Mike Zelkind, CEO, and co-founder of 80 Acres Farms says the 20-something growers working for him in some ways have the experience of 5o-year-old traditional farmers.

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That’s because they grow crops every month of the year, and may grow 17 crop cycles in a year, instead of one or two, because in the completely enclosed indoor growing environments, there are no off seasons to slow the crops down.

Using video monitors and other devices, they can see how plants grow differently when the humidity drops by 3 percent, or temperatures are 1 degree higher.

And with crops growing in such rapid succession, “They’ll see all these little things that if you’re growing a crop now and you’re growing it again in a year, you’re not going to remember all that,” he said.80 Acres, co-founded by Zelkind and Tisha Livingston, is at a technological frontier of completely enclosed indoor farming, where pesticides are not needed or used, where adjustable LED light replaces the sun, and things like temperatures are completely controlled. Universities all over are studying various aspects of what 80 Acres and other companies are doing.

Meanwhile, 80 Acres is raising “fireworks tomatoes” and other crops that are very flavorful — the kind you buy at a roadside farm stand on a good day. And does so even through Ohio winters.“We’re learning every day with this. That’s the fun part of the job. That’s what attracts the Timmys, the Megans, the Haleys,” he said, naming three Hamilton employees, “because this is how they think. They grew up with video games, playing with joy sticks.”He and his workers don’t compete against Ohio farmers: They don’t grow things that nearby farms are producing in-season. In fact, Zelkind says the company employees some farmers during their off-seasons, and works with farmers to help them better market their products and better get their fruits and vegetables into stores more profitably.

READ MORE: Ohio agriculture leader visits future of farming in Hamilton

With the fruits and other crops, 80 Acres grows in Hamilton and elsewhere, water use is way less than is needed outdoors. Where lettuce or leafy greens might use 650,000 gallons for certain production outdoors, they can use less than 20,000, he said.

About 90 percent of the water plants drink in through their roots they respire into the environment. The containers surrounding each 80 Acres “growing zone” recapture that evaporated water and condense it. It is run through ultraviolet filters and other systems, the nutrients in the water are measured and supplemented with nutrients that the plants consumed.“We can show you on tomatoes where our yields are 2-3 times what any greenhouse will get you,” said Zelkind, who has decades in the food-growing industry, as does his co-founder, Tisha Livingston, company co-founder and CEO of sister company Infinite Acres, based in the Netherlands.

80 Acres, which last year decided to locate its headquarters on the 7th floor of Hamilton’s city building, has about 130 employees nationwide and more than 40 in Hamilton.

The company’s growers mix the art of experimentation with the science of indoor agriculture. In one artistic twist, its growers strategically stress their plants to stir different flavors.

When growing things like tomatoes or grapes outdoors, “there’s all these random stresses,” Zelkind said. “That’s why sometimes you have the most incredible, phenomenal crops.”When it’s too wet, too dry, too sunny or too cold, plants naturally create phytochemicals and secondary metabolites as defense mechanism, which make them more healthy for people to eat, and also add flavors.“We can get a grape to fruit in eight months, instead of three years,” he said. “We do that in Arkansas.”Indoor growers also could replicate the grape-growing conditions of France, down to the fabled Mistral winds that many believe improve grapes.“If I know what you want the wind to be, and if I know what nutrients you want, then we can duplicate it completely,” he said. “Absolutely.”

The company now operates six indoor “farms: in Alabama, Arkansas, North Carolina, Cincinnati and two in Hamilton (on South Second Street and in a 10,000-square-foot research-and-development farm in the city’s Enterprise Park industrial park).

Next to that building, the company is building a $10-million-plus, 70,000-square-foot building that will take the best of the company’s other procedures to create a larger commercial-scale indoor farm.

Within five years, Zelkind hopes to have more than 20 indoor farms.

The company’s current “grow zones” have sometimes been in shipping containers that are used for cargo on ships and trains, because those canisters were sturdy, inexpensive, and could be retrofitted easily. Grow zones at the new Hamilton building, to open this year, will be larger. The increased production volume should allow the company to lower prices from organic levels to closer to prices for conventional crops.

Dennis Chrisman, vice president of Dayton-area Dorothy Lane Market gourmet stores, said 80 Acres has “some great combos that offer some great flavors, especially when they mix in some microgreens in their salad mixes. I think they’ve got powerful flavor.”Customers especially “love the Queen City mix. For those that are regulars with them, I think that’s one of their best options,” he said.

Rather than choosing seeds, like far-away farmers must, that create plants that are durable during transportation, Zelkind asks his seed providers for those producing their best-tasting fruits, but that were too temperamental for the outdoors.

Chieri Kubota, a professor of controlled environment agriculture at Ohio State University, said a big advantage of 80 Acres’ approach on raising food for local markets is it reduces the supply chain between it and markets, eliminating fuel waste, transportation time and distribution costs.

Rather than California lettuce spending two weeks being shipped here, the kind grown in Hamilton can be in stores within hours.

Rebecca Haders, the company’s vice president for marketing and creative, said it is worth it for customers to pay more for such products, because, “some of our salads can last 21, 28 days if they’re in the right conditions. You’re giving the shelf life to the customer, versus the truck.”80 Acres has been featured in such publications as Techweek, and in 2018 won the North Carolina Manufacturing Extension Partnership’s leadership award for Manufacturing Excellence.

Although its completely-enclosed-agricultural systems can be expensive to create, limiting their ability to be used for many crops, such farming also has potential to reduce droughts and famines by putting farms inside cities and using far less water than traditional cultivation. There’s also no fertilizer runoff into rivers.

Tim Brodbeck, a 22-year-old grower from Norwood who has been with the company three years, said: “It’s coming to work with a purpose. I love coming to my job every day, and every day is just another step toward feeding the world and feeding the people who don’t have the access to this food.”

INDIA: These Urban Farming Startups Are Going The Extra Mile To Bring Organic Food To Your Table

With new technologies like hydroponics and vertical farming, these startups are helping people grow produce in small urban spaces.

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By Suman Singh

11th Mar 2020

The Green Revolution in the 50s and 60s may have allowed our farmers to better their yields, but it also brought with it the evils of using pesticides and chemical fertilizers.

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Urban farming

Over the years, they have been incorporated into conventional farming methods, bringing with them a host of problems. They are not only found to be toxic to humans by increasing the risk of getting cancers, but they also cause pollution, degradation of soil and water, and poison domestic animals.

Now, many farmers and urban-dwellers have switched to organic farming or urban farming. According to the International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements (IFOAM),

“Organic agriculture is a production system that sustains the health of soils, ecosystems, and people. It relies on ecological processes, biodiversity, and cycles adapted to local conditions, rather than the use of inputs with adverse effects.”

Just a few years back, farming in cities would have been thought to be impossible. But new technologies like hydroponics and vertical farming have made growing produce in small urban spaces possible.

Here are six urban farming startups which are going the extra mile to bring sustainable farming practices in India:

UGF Farms

Started by Linesh Narayan Pillai in 2017, Urban Green Fate (UGF) Farms converts unused spaces into live food gardens. Live food gardens are built in a way that they do no structural damage to buildings. The Mumbai-based startup sends residents microgreens (vegetable greens after they’ve produced first leaves) in pots, to grow them in organic coco peat as opposed to heavy soil. All a user needs to do is cut the greens from the live plant as and when they need them.

Further, UGF also helps to address issues of starvation, malnutrition, food contamination, and food insecurity by collaborating with schools as well as corporates that work for underprivileged communities as part of their CSR initiatives.

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UGF Farms

Since its inception, the startup has planted over 10,000 kg of microgreens. It has also educated 4,000 people over 150 workshops across multiple locations in Delhi and Mumbai about the importance of growing food in their homes and going organic.

Back2basics

Back2basics is the brainchild of S Madhusudhan. Started in 2015, it is an organic farm spread across close to 200 acres around Bengaluru, producing high-quality organic fruits and vegetables.

Run by a father-daughter duo, Back2basics supplies produce to grocery chains, retailers, organic stores, and gated communities in Bengaluru. Its produce is also exported to organic food supply chains and retailers in other parts of the world.

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Back2basics

The startup deals in more than 90 varieties of seasonal produce in four categories – fruits, vegetables, greens, and exotics. It has reserved almost three to four acres for customers who wish to visit the farm and try their hand out in agriculture.

It produces products that are 100 percent organic. The producer has full control over the colour and texture of the greens, making them healthier and tastier.

Pindfresh

After returning from New York where he worked as a banker, Somveer Singh Anand, much like UGF Farms' Linesh, found it impossible to source organic food in India.

To address this concern, Somveer developed indoor hydroponic technology suitable for Indian climatic conditions and started Pindfresh in 2016 in Chandigarh. The startup sets up indoor and outdoor hydroponic plants for people who want to farm using the technology across India.

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Pindfresh

The lighting, humidity, and temperature are controlled all the time for these microgreens to grow. And to that effect, Pindfresh manufactures quality controlled pipes, lights, and all the necessary equipment required to set up a hydroponic plant.

Growing Greens

Former Infosys employees Hamsa V and Nithin Sagi partnered to start a hydroponic farm, Growing Greens. The Bengaluru-based B2B startup grows and sells microgreens, salad leaves, sprouts, edible flowers, and herbs to high-end restaurants in the city.

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Growing Greens

These microgreens, which are about one to three inches tall, are mostly used to decorate and garnish food. They have concentrated nutrient levels that can be almost 40 times higher than the normal-sized produce.

The duo did thorough research by talking to various chefs to understand their requirements before venturing into the business.

Started in 2012 on a small terrace, the startup is currently farming on four acres of land, which it plans to expand to 10 acres.

Herbivore Farms

Not many 24-year-olds would choose to ditch well-paying jobs and take up farming. But after paying a visit to Auroville in Puducherry in 2017, Mumbai-based Joshua Lewis and Sakina Rajkotwala were inspired by musician and organic farmer Krishna Mckenzie who started Solitude Farm with the aim of “honouring Mother Nature through local food.”

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Herbivore Farms

The duo got down to business with Herbivore Farms, Mumbai’s first hyperlocal, hydroponic farm. Today, the farm is spread across 1,000 sq ft and grows 2,500 plants. It sells fresh, organic vegetables to customers across Mumbai from its temperature-controlled indoor setting.

The vegetables are grown in a clean, sterile environment, with zero pesticides. As compared to conventional farming methods, the setup consumes up to 80 percent less water to grow the produce due to “recirculating irrigation system.”

Harvested vegetables are delivered to the customers’ homes within hours, maintaining their freshness, nutrition, and flavour.

(Edited by Kanishk Singh)

The Value of Third-Party Verification For Horticultural Lighting

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By urbanagnews

February 24, 2020

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By Leora Radetsky

The US vertical farming market is projected to reach $3 billion by 2024, exhibiting a compound annual growth rate of over 24 percent, according to a February 2019 report. Another report, by the US Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, put the annual electricity consumption of US horticultural lighting installations at 5.9 terawatt hours – equal to the annual usage of about 550,000 US households, and projected that to increase 15 to 25 percent annually. 

Horticultural lighting comprises the largest percentage of power demand in controlled environment agriculture (CEA) facilities for fruit and vegetable production. A 2019 study by Toronto’s Independent Electricity System Operator (IESO) found, for example, that “a lit vegetable greenhouse consumes 10 times as much electricity as an unlit vegetable greenhouse, with essentially all the additional electricity used for lighting”.  

Clearly, getting a handle on facility efficiency, including horticultural lighting, is a must-have if individual states and the US as a whole hope to rein in carbon emissions and meet energy reduction goals. This increase in electricity usage comes as states, provinces, and cities across North America are confronting the impacts of climate change and working to reduce – not grow – greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from the electrical generation sector. In the US, 23 states and the District of Columbia have adopted specific GHG reduction targets. Massachusetts law, for example, requires the state to reduce GHG emissions by 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050, and California is under a statutory mandate to cut emissions by 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2030.  

The good news is there are reliable, third-party lighting and safety standards to help indoor farmers make the leap from old-school lighting to state-of-the-art light-emitting diodes (LEDs) that use a fraction of the electricity and are increasingly effective for growing a variety of crops. Perhaps even better for farmers is the availability of a new industry-wide benchmark for horticultural lighting and a growing list of qualified products that are third-party certified to meet it.  

More about the benchmark later – first, it’s useful to walk through the various lighting and safety standards specific to horticultural lighting.    

Most lighting fixtures in the North American market go through rigorous inspection by certified labs. The first part of the check is for safety.  An official UL safety standard tailored for the unique challenges of the greenhouse environment was recently released (UL 8800, the Standard for Horticultural Lighting Equipment and Systems). This standard and similar safety certifications at other major labs address wiring, environmental conditions, ingress protection, and worker safety related to prolonged photobiological exposure to the eyes and skin. Growers should always ask a lighting fixture manufacturer about safety certification specifically for horticultural environments.

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Next on the standards checklist for horticultural lighting fixtures is performance testing. This often happens at the same labs that do safety testing but is designed to verify efficacy, output, spectrum, and other important performance variables. Commercial labs are certified for specific standards so that a test on a fixture is repeatable at any other lab certified to the same standard. This performance testing results in a report summarizing items such as photosynthetic photon flux (PPF), input power (watts), photosynthetic flux efficacy (PPE, measured in μmol/J or micromoles of photosynthetic photons per joule of electrical input power), and spectral content (flux per nanometer (nm) between 400 and 700 nm).

Then, there are flux maintenance standards for LEDs (such as IES LM-80 and IES TM-21) that help make sure the photosynthetic light output of LED products degrades at an acceptable rate to make a grower’s investment worthwhile. The testing and calculation methods that go into these standards were painstakingly developed through a consensus of knowledgeable lighting stakeholders. A key difference between general lighting and plant lighting, however, is how flux maintenance is measured and benchmarked – the bar is significantly higher for plants compared to people since their metabolism and growth are dependent on the light spectrum and amount.  

Against this backdrop of standards and testing, lighting and related technologies are quickly evolving. For indoor growers, questions abound – from how long a fixture will last and whether a manufacturer’s claims about efficacy are accurate to the effectiveness of various wavelengths for growing particular crops. The tests described above produce a lot of important information, but it takes an informed reader to analyze and use it to select appropriate horticultural lighting. This is where our organization, the DesignLights Consortium (DLC), comes in. Through our Horticultural Lighting Program,  the DLC strives to make the process of vetting lighting products easier, freeing up growers to focus on their core business. 

Horticultural lighting specification is a relatively recent addition to the DLC’s work. The organization was founded in the early days of LED lighting to help electric utilities compare different lighting factors and reports to inform their energy efficiency rebate/incentive programs for commercial and industrial electric customers. The DLC began serving as a central clearinghouse for setting energy efficiency and other product performance minimum standards, and for evaluating products against those standards. Then and now, lighting products that pass review qualify for an online qualified products list (QPL) that utilities use to quickly and accurately incentivize high-performing products.

Back to the benchmark mentioned earlier, the goal of the DLC’s new minimum performance standards for horticultural light fixtures is to accelerate the adoption of new energy-saving LED fixtures in controlled agriculture environments. To be on the new DLC Horticultural QPL, an LED fixture must have a PPE of 1.9 micro mol/J, which means it will be at least 10 percent more efficacious than the best non-LED alternative – a 1,000-watt double-ended high-pressure sodium (HPS) fixture. It also must have a Q90 of 36,000 hours (the number of hours before the photon flux output depreciates to 90 percent), and its driver and fan (if included) must have a rated life of at least 50,000 hours. 

Importantly, every product is listed online in a searchable, filterable database to help growers and controlled environment agriculture facility designers quickly narrow their options. For example, in a retrofit, a grower might know what PPF is needed from each fixture but might also need to stay within a power budget to avoid rewiring circuits. The DLC’s Horticultural QPL can be filtered to quickly find and compare conforming products.

For utilities and horticultural lighting users alike, trusted, third-party verification holds the same value as it does in other industries. It plays a critical role in ensuring the integrity of a growing array of products – providing assurance that an independent party has done the legwork and is vouching that a fixture can do the job and save electricity.  

As the IESO study referenced above noted, horticultural lighting standards developed by the DLC, as well as the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers, “should help to build trust between growers and lighting manufacturers and suppliers regarding performance information as LED technology continues to mature”. 

Just over a year since it was unveiled, the DLC’s Horticultural QPL contains 58 products from 18 manufacturers, and additional products are reviewed and added regularly. We’re confident this growing roster of third-party certified products is expanding the options for farmers and providing a greater level of assurance about product performance, leading to quicker and wider adoption of advanced, energy-efficient horticultural lighting technology.  

Leora Radetsky (lradetsky@designlights.org) is a Senior Lighting Scientist at the DesignLights Consortium.

• TAGS Business LED Grow Lights Vertical Farming

US: New York City - COVID-19 Update - All Schools Closed

Clearly, we are in exceptional times with COVID-19. As a business, we need to think differently.

Our priority is to ensure our team’s safety as well as the safety of the wider community. The single best way to do that is to enforce social distancing. The simplest way to do that is for everyone to work from home. 

However, we are also a company that produces food. We have farms and farmers, and we can grow food to feed people. No one knows exactly where this situation is heading, but we’re already seeing supermarket shelves emptying in New York. Sooner rather than later, food supply will surely become an issue. So it feels like we have a moral obligation to use the resources we have—skilled farmers and our farm-tech platform—to keep growing food, and to find ways to get that food to as many people as possible.

We have analyzed the situation carefully and determined that there is a way to balance both objectives—i.e. to keep growing food, in a safe way for our team and others. But it requires changes in our operations and the day-to-day workflow on our farms. For example, we have decided to stop the time-intensive and people-intensive task in our current process of packing harvested food into small clam shells, ready for retail distribution. Instead, we are going to pack quickly in bulk bags (as always, with gloves and love). 

Any farmers or other staff not absolutely required to manage our temporary, slimmed-down operation at our Brooklyn campus, have been asked to stay at home on full pay.

This week, you will not find Square Roots packaged products on the shelves of retail grocery stores in New York City. Instead, to get the food we grow to people who need it most, we have decided to extend our existing partnership with ReThink Food NYC - who are safely creating meals for those in need from their kitchens in the Navy Yards. On Monday, we are going to donate *all* the food we harvest in Brooklyn to them. 

Follow along on our social media for additional updates regarding our New York and Michigan campuses. Stay safe, everyone. 

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Empire Partners With Infarm To Bring Innovative And Sustainable In-Store Farms To Select Sobeys, Safeway And Thrifty Foods Stores

CNW Group March 9, 2020

National partnership to deliver fresh farmed and harvested in-store produce

STELLARTON, NS, March 9, 2020,/CNW/ - Empire's family of brands is partnering with Infarm, one of the world's most advanced and fastest-growing in-store farming platforms, to grow and harvest a range of fresh produce in select Sobeys, Safeway and Thrifty Foods stores across Canada. Each vertical farming unit is a stand-alone ecosystem, enabled by machine learning and AI technology, that creates the optimum environment required for plants to flourish.

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"Our goal at Empire is to be the fastest-growing and most innovative retailer in Canada. As we strive to achieve that goal, we continuously seek out first-to-market opportunities," said Niluka Kottegoda, Vice President Customer Experience, Sobeys Inc. "Our partnership with Infarm is unique in Canada and offers our customers a world-leading urban farming solution. The products we will offer in-store are unique to customers in urban communities. We're excited to test and learn with our customers along the way."

Launching this Spring, the first fresh produce harvests will include a range of herbs at two Safeway stores in Vancouver, 8475 Granville Street and 2733 West Broadway. Empire will place farms in stores across seven cities in Canada, ( Calgary, Edmonton, Halifax, Toronto, Vancouver, Victoria, Winnipeg ) growing millions of hyper-local plants for our customers.

"Our partnership with Empire builds upon our vision to grow a resilient ecosystem that can help feed people living in cities around the world by 2050 while improving the environmental footprint of our food," said Erez Galonska, co-founder and CEO of Infarm. "For example, through vertical farming, we can introduce plants to markets that were previously unavailable because they were too delicate to be transported. We're proud to partner with Empire to share the Infarm revolution with Canadians."

The in-store farms produce fresh, nutritious and flavourful produce all year round without the use of chemical pesticides. The vertical farms use 95 percent less water, 90 percent less transportation and 75 percent less fertilizer than industrial agriculture.

How it works:

• Infarm has developed the world's most advanced, sustainable, easily scalable and rapidly deployable modular farms.

• Each in-store farm has a controlled energy-friendly environment designed to bring out the natural flavour and properties of each plant.

• The plants are all grown in-store, dramatically reducing carbon emissions that result from transportation.

• The individual farms are connected and remotely controlled from a central farming platform that gathers up-to-the-minute information about the growth of each plant and learns, adjusts and improves the growing conditions.

About Empire

Empire Company Limited (EMP-A.TO) is a Canadian company headquartered in Stellarton, Nova Scotia . Empire's key businesses are food retailing, through wholly-owned subsidiary Sobeys Inc., and related real estate. With approximately $25.6 billion in annualized sales and $13.8 billion in assets, Empire and its subsidiaries, franchisees, and affiliates employ approximately 123,000 people.

About InFarm

Founded in 2013 by Osnat Michaeli and the brothers Erez and Guy Galonska, Infarm combines highly efficient vertical farms with IoT technologies and Machine Learning, to offer an alternative food system that is resilient, transparent, and affordable. The company distributes its smart modular farms throughout the urban environment to grow fresh produce for the city's inhabitants. With cutting edge R&D, patented technologies, and a leading multi-disciplinary team, Infarm was founded on a visionary mission: helping cities become self-sufficient in their food production while significantly improving the safety, quality, and environmental footprint of our food. Infarm currently operates across Denmark, France, Germany, Luxembourg, the United Kingdom, the United States and Switzerland where it has deployed more than 500 farms in stores and distribution centres.

Infarm (CNW Group/Empire Company Limited)

SOURCE Empire Company Limited

Freight Farms Announces New Horticultural Funding From Ospraie Ag Science

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Maury Wright

Mar 2nd, 2020

A Series B venture round of $15 million will allow Freight Farms to invest in plant science, add features to its software control platforms, and expand the customer base for its vertical farms housed in shipping containers.

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Vertical-farm supplier Freight Farms has received $15M in Series B funding from investment first Ospraie Ag Science for its all-in-one, shipping-container-based agriculture model. (Photo credit: Image courtesy of Freight Farms.)

Shipping-container-based, vertical-farm manufacturer Freight Farms has announced that it received $15 million in Series B venture funding from investment firm Ospraie Ag Science. Freight Farms will use the investment to further optimize its Farmhand software platform, invest in plant science, and expand the customer base for its LED-lit Greenery container farms.

Freight Farms originally branded its container farms The Leafy Green Machine but has since simplified the product name to The Greenery. A Greenery farm includes everything a grower needs to launch a hydroponic farm all integrated into a shipping container. The outfitted Greenery container includes LED lighting, plumbing for nutrient supply, climate, and environmental control, and the Farmhand software to automate the operation of the farm.

The idea of a shipping container for a vertical farm is not a new one. For example, we covered a Dallas grocery store that uses a shipping-container farm to grow some produce right outside the store’s back door. And we covered a Los Angeles area farm using shipping containers right in the downtown metropolitan area back in 2016.

Freight Farms, however, brings unique aspects to its business both in the science behind Greenery and in the company’s business model. Taking the business model first, Freight Farms is specifically in the business of selling turnkey farms. Some other players have vacillated between selling technology and operating as growers.

The configuration of the Freight Farms product is also unique. When we first covered vertical farming back in 2016, the term was primarily utilized to describe growing operations where horizontal trays of plants were stacked in layers vertically to more fully utilize a space, especially for crops such as leafy greens and herbs where there is not much space needed between layers and where LEDs that don’t radiate heat can be placed in close proximity to the plant canopy.

We have since seen other concepts. Plenty, for example, is based in California’s Silicon Valley Area, has received more than 200 million in funding from well-known investors such as Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, and utilizes a system where plants are placed horizontally into the growing structure but run continuously in a vertical row from floor to ceiling.

Freight Farms partitions its systems in the close confines of the shipping container. There is a dedicated area where horizontal racks are used in the initial stages of sprouting. But later plants are transplanted into a vertical row structure where nutrients can drip from the top of each vertical row of plants and unused nutrient is recaptured at the bottom of each row.

Freight Farms said its 328-ft2 container can produce equivalent vegetables to a two-acre outdoor plot. And the container farm uses less than five gallons of water per day. For Freight Farms, the mission is solving the looming issue of feeding a growing global population. “With the Greenery and Farmhand, we’ve created an infrastructure that lowers the barrier of entry into food production, an industry that’s historically been difficult to get into,” said Jon Friedman, Freight Farms COO. “With this platform, we’re also able to harness and build upon a wider set of technologies including cloud IoT, automation, and machine learning, while enabling new developments in plant science for future generations.”

And make no mistake that controlled environment agriculture farming is becoming big business. We recently ran an article that discussed the investment capital coming into the market. Clearly, Ospraie sees an opportunity in the container concept. Freight Farms says it has sold farms into 44 states and 25 countries.

“Freight Farms has redefined vertical farming and made decentralizing the food system something that’s possible and meaningful right now, not in the future of food,” said Jason Mraz, president of Ospraie Ag Science. “Full traceability, high nutrition without herbicides and pesticides, year-round sourcing – these are elements that should be inherent to food sourcing. Freight Farms’ Greenery makes it possible to meet this burgeoning demand globally for campuses, hospitals, municipal institutions, and corporate businesses, while also enabling small business farmers to meet these demands themselves for their customers.”

2020 GLASE Summit - CANCELLED

2020 GLASE Summit

Leamington, Ont. Canada
Best Western Plus Conference Center

March 26 - 27, 2020

GLASE will host its annual Summit in Leamington, Ont. Canada. Participants will discuss the latest GLASE research innovations, the CEA market trends and connect with Canadian greenhouse growers.

Over 60% of Ontario's greenhouses can be found in Leamington/Kingsville area. With the largest concentration of greenhouses in North America (nearly 2,000 acres under cover) Leamington host some of the largest CEA facilities in Canada and US.

To learn more about it please contact GLASE director Erico Mattos at em796@cornell.edu

Democracy, Trust And The Virus

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Azeem Azhar

March 15, 2020

This Is A Moment To Be Sanguine.

Read This Letter With That in Mind.

For readers outside of the UK, please note the parochial focus of this particular missive touches on many issues that might be relevant in your country. 

[T]he allocation criteria need to guarantee that those patients with the highest chance of therapeutic success will retain access to intensive care.

These are the new guidelines for the Italian College of Anesthesia, Analgesia, Resuscitation and Intensive Care, written an eon ago on Monday when Italy had 40% fewer cases of coronavirus than as I type these words. (There has been an update reported by the Daily Telegraph, “This is how it is in a war.”)

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As COVID19 continues its exponential growth in most countries, the strategies which country select will have a massive impact on the severity outcome of this pandemic. Ignoring science at the top of government is unacceptable. However, science must not equally be a shield under which leaders absolve themselves of their political responsibility.

Writes my friend Nicolas Granatino, in a recent issue of his newsletter, Coronadaily reflecting on the British government’s approach to tackling the epidemic.

Boris Johnson and two senior science advisors delivered an impressive presentation. but their strategy for tackling the spread of the virus is controversial. As is becoming clear, the British government’s approach to handling the pandemic has been understood, in a nutshell, rightly or wrongly, as “let it roll through the population, avoiding tough containment measures because Brits will get bored, and protect the old until enough of us have herd immunity.”

It turns out it is more complicated than that. 

Adam Kucharski, the epidemic modeler, author of The Rules of Contagion, and a member of one of the expert groups that comprise SAGE which advises the government, makes it very clear here.

A lot of modellers around the world are working flat out to find best way to minimise impact on population and healthcare. A side effect may end up being herd immunity, but this is merely a consequence of a very tough option - albeit one that may help prevent another outbreak.

Ian Donald, a psychology professor with expertise in anti-microbial resistance points out:

The govt strategy on #Coronavirus is more refined than those used in other countries and potentially very effective. But it is also riskier and based on a number of assumptions. They need to be correct, and the measures they introduce need to work when they are supposed to…

This is probably the best strategy, but they should explain it more clearly. It relies on a lot of assumptions, so it would be good to know what they are - especially behavioural.  (emphasis mine.)

Models, even scientific ones, tell different stories, depending on the assumptions you put in. The assumptions are often uncertain and represent judgments & choices. The outputs of models have variances, based on the assumptions you make.

And an epidemiological model is a complex one with many inputs, variables, feedback loops and delays. (See this video here.)

These outputs become scenarios, which are based on your assumptions and judgments. Scenarios which you can navigate and use to explore future possibilities.

How you validate those assumptions is critical. How you select them is critical. How you make those judgments is also critical. It is also a human process that lends itself to argument and debate.

It is not sufficient to say “We are using the best science” and leave it at that. And certainly not in the era of open science, open data, and common tools to foster a healthy critical debate.

In the UK, the government gave us one choice, one approach, “from the science” as a fait-accompli. 

But no model works like that. Science doesn't work like that.

Behavioral scientists have challenged one tenet of the British government’s plan: that of behavioral fatigue. Here a stampede of behavior scientists write: (I don’t know what the collective noun for behavioral scientists is. Stampede seemed a reasonable choice)

we are not convinced that enough is known about “behavioural fatigue” or to what extent these insights apply to the current exceptional circumstances. Such evidence is necessary if we are to base a high-risk public health strategy on it.

An abelian of mathematicians has also written to challenge the UK government’s approach.  

Science doesn’t work the way Boris Johnson suggested it did. 

Especially not in the context of health decisions. Readers will remember part of my tooth fell out a couple of weeks ago. Even my dentist offered me the choice of yet another filling or a crown. Science drove my dentist’s assessment, and I was still offered two choices.

There are discussions, arguments, challenges, disagreements, external trade-offs that went into the final recommendations. But with millions of lives at stake and an entire economy built with and enabling those lives, there needs to be a deeper debate, deeper scrutiny.

The doctors in Lombardy have had to become utilitarians, applying clear criteria of survivability on the decisions they make. I support them--on the front line they have few luxuries.

But the British government is making similar decisions with many more variables, without clearly explaining the choices they faced and the roads they took. 

There is no doubt about the capabilities of the Chief Scientific Officer or Chief Medical Officer or the work of epidemiologists in various expert groups.  Or the quality of their models. (Although no model is perfect, many are wrong and some may even have catastrophic mistakes in them. Think back to the models driving financial risk in the run-up to the global financial crisis. Remember David Viniar’s bullshit about “twenty-five standard deviation” events?)

It is that the modeling only throws light on a couple of aspects of the problem at hand. The model’s job is to also outline the possible paths of specific political choices. 

It was a curious approach by the British government. One which has lost the trust. Yet, as I argued two weeks ago, public health emergencies require public trust.

the current British government, fought its electoral campaign with explicit attacks on the mechanisms of the state that stand outside politics, such as the judiciary and the Civil Service. At a moment when trust is most needed, to manage this burgeoning public health crisis, the government has been involved in a vicious attack on the very institutions that engender that trust.

How do you regain trust?

You can brief journalists and you can get your more articulate ministers to write an article in friendly newspapers. This is an industrial-age approach that might have worked with the poorly-educated, information-starved, under-networked, populace of the 1930s.

In the exponential age, your population is vastly more educated, resource-rich and networked. It has access to pretty much the same international research you do. It has, in many cases, better capabilities than the government can rely on.

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And we can look on the Internet and read what is happening in South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Spain, Italy, Norway, Iceland, the Faroe Islands, China and you name it. We can see what they are doing. The temperature guns. The drive-through testing.

Italy looks like it can flatten the curve.

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South Korea (below) is squishing new cases even as it tests vigorously. We can see this because the information is available from reliable sources.

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We can hear Andy Slavitt, Obama’s healthcare majordomo, sound the alarm for the impending tsunami.

Nearly 30m of us have read Tomas Pueyo’s “Coronavirus: Why you must act now”. Some will have read the critique of whether “flattening the curve is a delusion.” You might have seen the Washington Post’s visualisations on how flattening the curve works.

Or perhaps you have been following the work of Yanner Bar-Yam and colleagues at the New England Complexity Science Institute whose models suggest “massive testing can stop the coronavirus outbreak” or their earlier work on Ebola contact tracing which has led them to suggest that even low compliance towards travel can stop outbreaks.

Many will wonder how quickly we could administer drugs to stop the cytokine storm that kills many who die of Covid-19. Or could we expand testing of and access to remdesivir, chloroquine or viagra, all of which seem to have some efficacy.

Some will ask whether acting aggressively now to slow the spread could buy time for health capacity to build up, even marginally. Or for Senegal to finish work on its 10-minute PCR test kit, or for us to validate Singapore’s serological tests.

In 2002, most Brits do not sit around doing the Daily Telegraph crossword, sipping tea, eating crumpets, waiting to lap-up the latest announcement from Downing Street on the wireless. So it’s truly bizarre to present a plan (perhaps it is the best??) that is such a massive outlier to the rest of the world and not expect pushback.

Openness, transparency about these types of decisions is a pillar of a democratic society. And it is foolish to think you can get away with a decision like this without someone asking difficult questions. Much more so when scientists are willing to state they disagree with you. And even more so in the era of the Internet. ( Paul Ginsparg demonstrated the value of open access when he launched Arxiv in 1991. Arguably Gutenberg did if even earlier.)

A better approach would be to open the model, to open the assumptions, for constructive discussion in the brief moments we have available, in a way that could catalyze improvements. You still have to lead, as Prime Minister, without question but you have to bring people with you. And we only at most a few weeks before the tsunami hits and our hospitals are, likely, overwhelmed.

Playing with one epidemic simulator, as it happens, helped me better understand Sir Patrick Vallance and Chris Witty, the UK government’s advisors rationale. Don’t get hung up on the model simulation I used. It is a toy simulator. Its conclusions are mostly useless. I don’t know what was under the hood. And it almost certainly ignores many of the more nuanced variables and relationships the real models used by SAGE have.

This toy simulator irrelevant except that:

• It is clarifying for a citizen to play with a model like this, fiddle with assumptions, run simulations. It helped you understand the trade-offs that we face in tackling this epidemic—and it starts to outline what our personal responsibility and capacities may be.

• The trade-offs are complex with non-linear effects of such a baffling nature I can only describe them as counter-intuitive. (Which more shows up the weaknesses in my expertise, more than anything else.)

I have no deep professional expertise on whether these epidemiological models. But I do understand the useful limits of models and can grok that the model is one input into an overall decision. That there are nuances. I do know there are assumptions on which decisions are made. The British government failed to give us their assumptions, the tools and democratic rigor to allow us to come to any kind of conclusion.

They still have a chance to do that. And early signs are that the British Government is demonstrating some pretty creative thinking (especially in enlisting the private sector and ramping up the NHS, our vehicle for universal, socialised medicine.)

But in being clearer and more inclusive in their communications, they might enlist creativity and talent and trust around the country in myriad other ways—not least in our willingness to step up and do the right thing.

What if we are more resilient and self-organizing and willing to clamp down on contact immediately? And will we do, as my community is, to support the vulnerable at a community level? What if we, the people, understand the horrific consequences of widespread promiscuous lunching at the local boozer?

Public health crises require public trust. A crisis like this, as we are learning from Italy, is more like a war. And it will be a long, grinding war, for which citizen trust, forbearance, and participation will be required.

As I went to bed on Saturday night, #boristhebutcher was, perhaps unfairly, trending on the socials. Such is the cost of forgetting about open, transparent, interactive communication that the internet enables.

This is the shape of democracy in the exponential age.

My friend from Shenzhen, six weeks into quarantine, sent me a WhatsApp. I know he won’t mind me sharing it with you: “Covid19 cases going up in Europe. Pls, take care.”

And let me add, keep your distance and WASH YOUR HANDS.

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 Azeem

P.S. On the point about the economy and its importance during a crisis… we’ll need a healthy economy of sorts to survive this marathon. The economy provides the goods and services that keep our population fed, nourished and healthy, and creates capacity in our health system. This isn’t so much an argument about GDP growth, but more than a healthy economy enables a healthy population and a functioning medical system.

Thanks to Nicolas Granatino, Vishal Gulati, Hampus Jakobsson, Paola Bonomo and many others for discussions that helped with this letter.

Thanks for subscribing to Exponential View.

This post is public, so feel free to share it. Share

Coalition for Sustainable Organics Disappointed in Latest Attempts Center for Food Safety to Restrict Supplies Organic Foods Through Lawsuit

SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA March 3, 2020 – The Coalition for Sustainable Organics (CSO) is saddened by the latest attempts by the Center for Food Safety and their allies to limit fair competition and organic supplies in the market through legal action.

Lee Frankel, the executive director of the CSO stated, “It is disappointing to see groups target pioneering organic farmers that use the most appropriate organic growing methods adapted to their site-specific conditions on their farms to meet the needs of consumers. The members of the CSO are strongly committed to the integrity of organic standards and the organic label. The groups behind the lawsuit failed to convince the members of the National Organic Standards Board (NOSB) to prohibit container and hydroponic production methods after significant industry debate and submission of public comments. Instead of unifying the industry after the decision made by representatives of the organic community at the NOSB, the CFS is seeking to eliminate public input to achieve their goals of restricting competition to drive up the price of organics for organic consumers to allow favored producers to increase their profit margins.”

Frankel continued, “Growers using containers adhere to the U.S. Department of Agriculture organic standards under the National Organic Program (NOP) and have been allowed to grow certified organic produce since the initiation of the NOP more than 25 years ago. After extensive study in 2010, the USDA through the NOP opted not to change these high standards for certifying organic produce – and affirmed that organic produce can be grown through containerized methods. After additional review in 2015-2017, the National Organic Standards Board voted to reject a proposed prohibition on container and hydroponic systems.”

Karen Archipley of Archi’s Acres of Escondido, California added “Our production systems are managed in accordance with the federal organic law. We chose to incorporate hydro-organic methods at our operations since it is the most appropriate way to promote ecological balance by drastically reducing our water use, conserve biological diversity by preserving valuable habitat while still incorporating the microbial processes described by organic pioneers to recycle nutrients to nourish our crops. Every choice we make and every input we use must be audited and approved by USDA-accredited certifying agents like any other Organic Farmer.”

Archipley continued “Changing the rules now would limit the amount of organic produce available to the public – just as the public is demanding more organic produce. This is not an issue that should be settled in the courts or politicized. If a grower meets USDA standards for organic certification, they should be able to market organic produce, whether they grow in soil or any other sustainable, certified organic growing media.”

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Stop Basil Downy Mildew With These Simple LED Strategies

"Every very basil grower’s worst nightmare is Basil Downy Mildew. You walk down the aisles, peer across the canopy, and then “Oh No!”. You see leaf yellowing and fuzzy purple growth. The once sweet smell of herbaceous goodness no longer smells so sweet knowing you have hours not days to react.

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Image source: Cornell University

This awful gut feeling can be felt by any plant grower, and most know it too well. In cucumbers, it’s all about powdery mildew. In cannabis, white powdery mildew.

Traditional techniques call for using fungicides and adjusting your environment. These are still important methods given the severity of the situation, but there’s now a new promise of prevention strategies using light.

First, what is Basil Downy Mildew?
Basil that’s become infected with downy mildew will begin to turn yellow and may be mistaken for a problem with nutrition. This yellowing may be followed by dark brown or purple fuzz as sporulation continues to develop. Peronospora belbahrii is the Latin name for basil downy mildew.

The promise of using light to stop downy mildew in basil
Light has many effects on plants and other organisms’ physiology. In the case of downy mildew, disrupting the dark period with red light while managing temperature and humidity has been shown to prevent the production of spores in sweet basil.

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Image source: Cohen Y, Vaknin M, Ben-Naim Y, Rubin AE (2013) Light Suppresses Sporulation and Epidemics of Peronospora belbahrii. PLoS ONE 8(11): e81282. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0081282

Researchers at Bar-IIan University in Israel found that low-intensity red light inhibited sporulation of Peronospora belbahrii on sweet basil when applied during the dark period while maintaining moderate temperatures and low humidity.

Infected basil leaves were exposed to 5 or 10 micromoles of blue, green, red, or incandescent light. They were incubated at 20°C in moist conditions for 20 hours in a growth chamber.

Results showed that red light (at a peak of 625 nanometers) inhibited 99.7% sporulation regardless of the leaf surface exposed to light! Light strongly inhibited sporulation on leaves incubated at 15-27°C, but not on leaves incubated at 10°C.

What to do about powdery mildew in cucumbers
In the case of powdery mildew cucumber diseases, blue light has been shown to prevent the spread of disease by preventing the release of fungal spores.

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Researchers at the Department of Chemical Biological Sciences in the Women’s University of Tokyo found that blue light can prevent the release of powdery mildew spores from developed fungal bodies and prevent the spread of disease melons.

Melon plants, inoculated with Podosphaera xanthii were grown in growth chambers under purple, blue, green, orange, red and broad-spectrum light, as well as in complete darkness and in a greenhouse under solar light. Light treatments were used on the powdery mildew for 14 days under continuous illumination of 59.5 micromoles of light.

Results showed that, while conidium fungal spores were still produced under all light treatments, spores were not released from conidiospores (or reproductive fungal spores) under blue light in the growth chamber. This research proves promising for preventing the spread of mildew in cucumbers, melons, and other cucurbits.

What this means for the future of Basil Downy and Powdery Mildew
These researchers have shown that light quality has the potential to stop the spread of fungal pathogens. It’s possible that in many cases, light spectrum must be readily controlled to inhibit the spread of mildew and other disease types.

In the case of fungal pathogens, light has been shown to suppress disease by disrupting the pathogen’s reproductive cycle and by exploiting natural adaptations in its circadian rhythm.

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Depending on the fungi and plant species in question, this disruption can be a response to specific light wavelengths, the duration of the light period, duration of the dark period, total light intensity or a combination of these factors.

Light can also suppress disease by increasing the plant’s secondary metabolite production, which enhances the plant’s ability to defend against attack.

Using light to suppress disease in your operation
Research on light’s ability to suppress plant disease is in its early stages, but there are some important findings that can help guide growers when trialing light treatments for disease suppression.

1. Light treatments are plant and pathogen-specific, so it’s important to seek out information for light treatments specific to your particular crop and pathogen.

2. Depending on whether a disease is suppressed by enhancing the plant’s defense system or disrupting the pathogen’s physiological processes, light treatments may need to be applied throughout the plant’s entire growth cycle, limited to a short exposure or applied during a specific growth period in order to be effective.

3. Like all crop production processes, light treatment is only one part of the integrated strategy. Environmental factors like temperature and humidity, as well as production processes like irrigation and crop management, should be considered as part of an integrated pest management plan.

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For more information:
LumiGrow
800-514-0487
info@lumigrow.com
www.lumigrow.com

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Publication date: Mon 9 Mar 2020

Sobeys, Safeway, Thrifty Foods Adding In-Store Hydroponic Farms

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By Abby Kleckler - 03/09/2020

Empire's family of brands has partnered with in-store farming technology company Infarm to add vertical farming units to select Sobeys, Safeway and Thrifty Foods stores in Canada. The first stand-alone ecosystems will launch this spring at two Safeway stores in Vancouver, British Columbia, followed by additional stores in seven Canadian cities: Calgary, Edmonton, Halifax, Toronto, Vancouver, Victoria, and Winnipeg.

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Shoppers in the United States can already find Infarm systems like this one at some Kroger-owned QFC banners in Washington state

"Our goal at Empire is to be the fastest-growing and most innovative retailer in Canada. As we strive to achieve that goal, we continuously seek out first-to-market opportunities," said Niluka Kottegoda, VP customer experience at Stellarton, Niva Scotia-based Sobeys Inc. "Our partnership with Infarm is unique in Canada and offers our customers a world-leading urban farming solution. The products we will offer in store are unique to customers in urban communities. We're excited to test and learn with our customers along the way."

The in-store farms use machine learning and AI technology to produce fresh, nutritious and flavorful produce year-round without the use of chemical pesticides. The vertical farms use 95% less water, 90% less transportation and 75% less fertilizer than industrial agriculture does.

Infarm currently operates in the United States — through its partnership with Kroger at some QFC banner stores in Washington — Denmark, France, Germany, Luxembourg, the United Kingdom and Switzerland. 

"Our partnership with Empire builds upon our vision to grow a resilient ecosystem that can help feed people living in cities around the world by 2050, while improving the environmental footprint of our food," said Erez Galonska, co-founder and CEO of Berlin, Germany-based Infarm. "For example, through vertical farming, we can introduce plants to markets that were previously unavailable because they were too delicate to be transported. We're proud to partner with Empire to share the Infarm revolution with Canadians."

The Philadelphia Zoo Is Running A Farm Inside A Converted Shipping Container

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by Brianna Baker, For The Inquirer, March 4, 2020

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Kristen Waldren, director of strategic initiatives at The Philadelphia Zoo, walks through the zoo's new "Cropbox" — a vertical farm being used to grow plants that are harvested to feed animals. MARGO REED

If you’re a fan of homegrown arugula and mustard greens, you just may have the same taste as Tua, a 27-year-old Sumatran orangutan.

Tua lives at the Philadelphia Zoo, the first zoo in the country with its own on-site vertical garden used to grow leafy greens for its animals. And she loves the produce they’re feeding her.

The garden is located in a retrofitted shipping container in the Urban Green, the zoo’s open-air food marketplace. A mural, by Philly-based environmental artist and activist Eurhi Jones, transforms the front of the shipping container into a colorful collage of the animals who’ll chow down on the vegetation.

But the real beauty is inside, where stacked, tidy shelves hold rows of plants that are grown hydroponically, in nutrient-rich water instead of soil. LED lights, a substitute for sunlight, shine 18 hours a day. Farm operators use a mobile app to remotely control the container’s light, temperature, and humidity levels.

Kristen Lewis-Waldron, director of strategic initiatives at the zoo, said the vertical farm is far more sustainable than bringing in food from outside sources. It uses 70% to 90% less water than traditional farming, has no need for pesticides or herbicides, and cuts greenhouse gas emissions out of the equation since no motor-powered transportation is necessary to get the food to the zoo.

“It really kind of creates this farm-to-table [model] — in this case, shipping container-to-exhibit,” she said of the project, which is in a pilot phase.

Want to know what's going on in Philly? Find out about upcoming concerts, shows, and other events with our weekly newsletter.

Lewis-Waldron is short on farming experience but knows a thing or two about feeding animals. She landed her first role at the zoo 23 years ago as a nutrition intern. She went on to work for, and eventually lead, the zoo’s conservation department, before transitioning to her current position. Growing greens for the animals makes her feel like she’s come full circle, she said.

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A peacock at the Philadelphia Zoo walks past the "Cropbox," a converted shipping container being used to grow plants being used to help feed the animals. MARGO REED

To launch the project, she enlisted the services of CropBox (which is also what the zoo calls the vertical farm), a North Carolina company that provides all the equipment customers need, including the shipping container, and helps set up the system.

Lewis-Waldron also consulted with industry experts, including those who operate their own vertical farms, to learn best practices and how to troubleshoot technical challenges. All in all, the preparation process took about a year.

In its nine months of operation, the CropBox has fed 20 animal species with its microgreens. It produces 275 pounds of leafy greens a month, which is only 10 percent of the zoo’s monthly requirement. But that number, Lewis-Waldron said, will grow once the pilot year concludes and the project is expanded.

“You can take over a vacant warehouse or vacant building and convert it,” she said. “You could take six of these and make a dent in the requirements of our collection.”

The CropBox also benefits the zoo economically by replacing a collection of food it would otherwise purchase.

But perhaps most importantly, the greens grown in the vertical farm are rich in nutrients. The zoo takes animals’ diets very seriously and even employs a full-time nutritionist. By feeding leafy greens to the animals, the zoo is keeping their health in shape.

Still, that doesn’t mean the greens are every species’ favorite snack. Just like humans, animals have unique palates. And the current variety growing in the CropBox — a stir-fry mix that includes arugula and mustard greens — isn’t always a crowd-pleaser.

“It’s got a little kick to it, a little bit of spice. Our emus were a little hesitant,” Lewis-Waldron said. “But our monkeys, langurs, apes, gorillas, orangutans, tortoises absolutely love it. So it’s interesting, and we’ll continue to test out different types of greens.”

Brianna Baker, For The Inquirer

High Hopes For UK Vertical Farming Startup

By Andrew Wade  3rd March 2020

Vertical farming startup LettUs Grow is one of a number of UK firms developing technology that could help shore up the UK’s food security. Andrew Wade reports. 

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LettUs Grow co-founder Charlie Guy inspecting produce

Between the UK’s EU exit and the growing threat of climate change, food security has become a headline topic. The supply lines from farm to fork that many of us take for granted can be more fragile than we think, as illustrated by recent weather events in the UK.

“At the height of the heatwave that we had last summer, (the UK) was importing lettuce by plane from California, importing around 30,000 heads a week just to keep food on our shelves,” explained Charlie Guy, managing director and co-founder of agritech startup, LettUs Grow.

Set up in 2015 while Guy was still at Bristol University, LettUs Grow is one of several emerging UK businesses focused on vertical farming, where plants and crops are grown indoors in upright stacks, typically without soil, using LED lighting, climate control, and targeted nutrient delivery. Although still a relatively niche enterprise, it’s attracting plenty of attention, with grocery retailer Ocado recently announcing a £17m investment in the sector.

The rise of the vertical farm

Green machines: sowing the seeds of farming 4.0

For its part, LettUs Grow has just secured £2.35 million in seed funding, which Guy says the company will use to scale up and invest in new products. Currently, the business has two major components: its aeroponic nutrient delivery system and an integrated farm management software platform called Ostara. According to LettUs Grow, its aeroponics equipment can boost growth rate by 70 percent across a range of crops compared to other vertical farming methods such as hydroponics, as well as reduce water usage by 95 percent versus traditional agriculture.

“At LettUs Grow we’ve developed two key technologies,” Guy explained. “The first is a new aeroponic method where we irrigate the crop roots with a very fine mist using a patent-pending method that we’ve developed over the last few years. It has massive benefits in terms of how scalable the technology is and controllable and optimizable it is.

“It’s all about the amount in the root zone that plants experience. Everyone knows that healthy soil has good pockets of oxygen and nutrients and is well aerated. So this is really what we’re maximizing. By having no soil and an air gap you’ve got bountiful oxygen and carbon dioxide for plants to perform at their biological optimum.”

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Vertical farming sees trays of produce stacked under LED lights

Somewhat misleadingly, LettUs Grow is primarily a technology provider rather than an actual food grower, supplying its equipment and software to farmers and entrepreneurs seeking out new opportunities. According to Guy, the return on investment of aeroponics takes just two to three years, while the more widely used hydroponics takes between four and five.

But nutrient delivery is just one part of the vertical farming picture. Advances in LED lighting, coupled with a reduction in cost, have played a key role in the sector’s boom. Rather than simply replicating sunlight, LEDs can be finely tuned to different wavelengths for various crops. Combined with carefully controlled climate conditions, LEDs and aeroponics can enhance every aspect of growth, maximizing crop yields.

“All of these are effectively ways that we can optimize or tune the performance of a plant so that it’s most photosynthetically efficient and working at its optimum,” said Guy.

The second pillar of LettUs Grow is Ostara, a bespoke software platform that can monitor and control indoor growing in greenhouses as well as vertical farms. Sensors throughout the growing environment feedback to the software, which collates the data and provides crop growth analysis. On top of this, Ostara also incorporates tracing of crop history, something that Guy believes has become more important for retailers and consumers given events of recent years.

“The real importance of this was seen in 2018 with the romaine lettuce scandal in the US, where contaminated produce was on shelves and nobody knew where it had come from,” he explained.

“One of the massive benefits of indoor and controlled-environment agriculture is that we can really know where our produce has gone and what it’s experienced after it was produced and grown.”

The elephant in the room remains cost. Swapping sunshine and soil for LEDs and aeroponics may deliver a host of benefits, but is also comes at a price. The energy inputs currently required for vertical farming make it difficult to turn a profit on anything but high-value herbs and leafy greens. Basil, parsley, and watercress grow quickly and sell at a premium, making them the perfect candidates for vertical farming in terms of competitiveness.

“To date, we’ve grown around 60 different crops in our facility,” said Guy. “We’re mainly focused on the high-value herbs or lettuce and leafy green crops, but we’ve also grown things like carrots, radishes strawberries and a whole host of things like tobacco and propagation for trees.”

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Energy inputs make up the bulk of the crops’ final cost

Seasonal demand sees peaks and troughs in the price of things like cress and lettuce, and carefully choreographed growing at scale could allow vertical farms to be profitable in these types of markets. Whereas traditional agriculture has been pushed to the limits of its productivity, this nascent farming method has plenty of headroom to make leaps in efficiency as it scales up and technology improves. Urban farms that supply on-demand to high-end city restaurants is one business model that Guy thinks could work, but knowing your market is key.

“There’s no point growing crops that are fashionable but you don’t know where you’re going to sell them,” he said.

“We’ve been working with a company that supplies 20 or so of the best restaurants in Bristol – Michelin Star quality. So quality is definitely one of the biggest selling points.”

Ultimately, the produce also has to be able to match conventional agriculture on price.

“Food grown in these systems has to be competitive with traditional methods…and we’re building tools and features into our software that will enable efficiencies in labor and energy as well,” said Guy.

One of those features is integration with renewable energy. LettUs Grow recently partnered with Octopus Energy to optimize power usage throughout the day, avoiding times of peak demand. In a controlled indoor environment, day and night can be variable concepts that reflect the vagaries of the energy market rather than the rising and setting of the sun.

“We’ve already shown around a 15 percent reduction in energy through this,” said Guy. “And with energy being one of the biggest contributors to most crops in an indoor facility, this is pretty significant.”

As well as herbs and leafy greens, the company has identified a more niche area with potential for profit. Research sectors, including the pharmaceutical industry, often require exotic plants or novel strains of crops. The closely controlled environment of vertical farming can not only guarantee provenance, it can provide tweaks and adjustments in growing conditions to produce an abundance of different outcomes on demand.

“We’ve been working with a company testing crops that could be used for vaccine production,” Guy explained, “so there’s all sorts of novel uses where you really want that tight level of control.”

Despite the produce being endorsed by high-end restaurants and big pharma, the nature of the growing method has also brought some unexpected hurdles.

“At the moment we aren’t able to certify as organic, even though our sustainability credentials are arguably better than organic,” said Guy. “This is a bit of a sticking point because we don’t have any soil, and without any soil, it’s hard to certify that soil as organic.”

As much a philosophical problem as a technical one, the absence of soil is nonetheless preventing vertical farming from achieving the same certifications as traditionally grown food. It’s symptomatic of an industry still coming to terms with a new method and its impact. As the sector expands, these growing pains will no doubt be overcome, allowing vertical farming to play an important role in agriculture’s 21st-century tech revolution.

AeroFarms Reveals To California North Coast Food Producers Its High-Tech Controlled Environment Agriculture

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NORTH BAY BUSINESS JOURNAL March 2, 2020

CHERYL SARFATY

Imagine a farming method so efficient that you could grow a variety of leafy greens in half the time it traditionally takes — without any pesticides, herbicides or fungicides — and where the sun has no role.

It’s all done indoors, and it’s a growing trend known as controlled environment agriculture (CEA). The biggest player in the space is AeroFarms, a Newark, New Jersey-based operation that was among the businesses that participated at the Feb. 25 North Coast Specialty Food & Beverage Conference.

“We track everything that happens to the plants, from its genetics all the way to harvest. And by measuring along the way, we can use that data to learn more about what makes plants grow,” said AeroFarms Chief Financial Officer Guy Blanchard. “The ability to do this is transformative, it’s brand new if you think of the difference with field farming, where you can’t control the temperature and you can’t control the weather. You’re really reacting and trying to respond to the things that Mother Nature is throwing at you.”

In addition to AeroFarms, which is privately held, there are a variety of CEA players in the marketplace, including Bright Farms, Little Leaf Farms, Bowery Farms, Revol Greens and Plenty, which is based in South San Francisco. The majority of these businesses are headquartered in the Midwest and further east, where bad weather makes it impossible to grow the greens outdoors.

There are a variety of growing methods within the CEA category, the two most common being hydroponics and aeroponics. With hydroponics, plants are grown with mineral nutrients in a water base rather than in soil. Aeroponics, which is AeroFarms’ method, also uses no soil, instead of planting seeds in fabric and misting them with mineral nutrients.

AeroFarms grows 800 varieties of edible greens, such as lettuce, arugula, and spinach. The plants require 95% less water than on farms and are completely grown in 12 to 14 days, rather than 30 to 45 days in the field. The company’s retail brand, Dream Greens, is sold in grocery stores in New Jersey and New York.

Blanchard declined to disclose the company’s financial metrics. According to ROI-NJ, a New Jersey business publication, AeroFarms raised $40 million in 2017.

The vertical farming market size was valued at $2.23 billion in 2018 and projected to hit $12.77 billion by 2026, according to Allied Marketing Research.

There’s going to be change, but I don’t want to lose our small farmers.

Pegi Ball, Santa Rosa Original Certified Farmers Market

Pegi Ball and Janet Ciel, who each run farmers markets in the North Bay, said at the conference they wonder how the CEA industry might someday impact the region’s farmers“.

There’s going to be change, but I don’t want to lose our small farmers,” said Ball, who manages the Santa Rosa Original Certified Farmers Market at the Luther Burbank Center for the Arts. “It’s more than just lettuce and that sort of thing. It’s the culture, it’s the tradition, it’s our community, so that’s what concerns me.”Ciel, who manages the Healdsburg Certified Farmers Market and also works with the Agricultural Institute of Marin’s Stonestown Farmers Market in San Francisco, came away impressed by Blanchard’s presentation, but also curious about how traditional farming and controlled environment agriculture could potentially coexist.

“I think the technology is brilliant,” Ciel said.

“I just think the small farmer is … dealing with the weather and pests and (various other factors), and they don’t have the funding or the education to pull something like this off. Is there something there that is for them?”

Blanchard views the growing CEA industry to be more comparable to — and therefore more competitive with — commercial food-processing operations than traditional farming because of the costs involved, from investing in capital equipment to staffing, of which AeroFarms employs about 160 people.

“If you’re going to have a farm manager, a safety manager, a shipping manager and a maintenance manager (among the staff), you may be up to like $600,000 a year in wages and benefits before you’ve even gotten to anything really related to the farm,” Blanchard said. “In many ways, even though the processes are different, this isn’t different than some other food-processing (businesses) necessarily, and you’ve got to manage it.”

I’m certain we’ll continue to see new and different commodities take advantage of innovative growing techniques of a controlled environment.

Mary Coppola, United Fresh Produce Association

Another reason CEA poses little to no threat to farmers, at least at this point in time, is because food grown in this vertical indoor environment is limited primarily to leafy greens. Greenhouses have more latitude.

“There are a number of companies who are growing greenhouse strawberries, peppers, cucumbers and tomatoes with much success,” said Mary Coppola, vice president for marketing and communications at United Fresh Produce Association. The Washington, D.C.-based organization was founded in 1904 and advocates for companies in the fresh produce supply chain. “I’m certain we’ll continue to see new and different commodities take advantage of innovative growing techniques of a controlled environment.”

And where agriculture industry experts laud controlled environment agriculture for its renewable and sustainable efforts, such as conserving land and water, there are other cost concerns.“

They rely a lot on artificial lighting, so obviously energy consumption is an issue,” said Humberto Izquierdo, agricultural commissioner, and sealer of weights and measures for Napa County. “I think the economics have to be there.”

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Guy Blanchard, chief financial officer of AeroFarms, explains how the New Jersey-based startup gets dozens of turns of fresh produce annually through its vertical indoor farm, speaking at North Bay Business Journal’s North Coast Specialty Food and Beverage Industry Conference on Tuesday, Feb. 25, 2020, at Doubletree Hotel by Hilton Sonoma Wine Country in Rohnert Park. (Jeff Quackenbush / North Bay Business Journal)

Blanchard said he doesn’t view energy consumption as a challenge for AeroFarms.“I think when people think about energy or environmental footprint, it’s tough to see how much is really embedded in traditional agriculture when you have all the energy going to root watering, soil and soil degradation, and the energy that goes into fertilizers and harvesting a field,” Blanchard said, as well as transporting, cooling and washing.

Marc Oshima, AeroFarms co-founder, and chief marketing officer said the company and its competitors are focused on strengthening the overall agriculture industry, such as sharing their expertise about how to grow greens safely to avoid contamination. They also formed their own group, called the Controlled Environment Agriculture Food Safety Coalition.

“(It) was a critical step to establishing best practices and educating the FDA and customers on why indoor farming has so many more safeguards versus traditional field farming, and less exposure that often occurs with co-mingling at the major leafy greens processors, who are sourcing from multiple growing regions both domestically and internationally,” he said.

The coalition also has partnered with Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research on a $2 million, three-year program to identify stressors of leafy greens in order to optimize taste and nutrition, he said.

Staff Writer Cheryl Sarfaty covers tourism, hospitality, health care, and education. Reach her at cheryl.sarfaty@busjrnl.com or 707-521-4259.

Huge Wisconsin Operation Shows Promise of Aquaponics in Midwest

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By Kristen Leigh Painter Star Tribune MARCH 7, 2020

Superior Fresh's grand experiment raises an intriguing question that,

for now, can't be answered:

How many other Midwest farmers can follow its path? 

NORTHFIELD, Wis. – Stepping into the massive greenhouse of Superior Fresh — 6 acres under one roof — the gentle embrace of warm, humid air is quickly followed by the smell of lush, green plants.

Daylight streams through the roof and the sound of sloshing water tricks the senses into a kind of tropical reverie. Seen from nearby Interstate 94, the greenhouse at night glows purple as red and blue lights come on to help organic leafy greens grow during sun-deprived winter months.

But Superior Fresh is not just another player in the nature-defying business of growing produce all year in the Midwest. It runs the nation’s, and likely the world’s, largest aquaponics facility, raising vegetables and fish in a way that benefits both.

Next to its greenhouse is a fish house where 600,000 Atlantic salmon swim in giant tanks. Sharing a closed-loop water system, the fish fertilize the greens, and the greens filter water for the fish.

“We’re producing about 30 times more produce per square foot than traditional organic farming,” Brandon Gottsacker, president of Superior Fresh, says.

Built-in 2015, the farm first reached its full output in 2018 and last year produced 3 million pounds of greens and about 200,000 pounds of salmon. Both were sold to groceries and restaurants, and ultimately consumers, throughout the Midwest.

The farm’s owners, members of the family that owns Ashley Furniture in Arcadia, Wis., aim to double its size and production this year. Even then, Superior Fresh will produce just a tiny fraction of the nation’s demand for leafy vegetables and salmon.

But as it tests the prospect for fish farming in the landlocked Midwest, Superior Fresh’s grand experiment raises an intriguing question that, for now, can’t be answered: How many other Midwest farmers can follow its path?

“I’ve been working with some dairy farmers in Wisconsin, who have reached out and asked how much retraining would they need to convert from a dairy farm to a fish farm,” said Chris Hartleb, professor of fisheries biology and co-director of the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point Northern Aquaculture Demonstration Facility.

Aquaponics is heralded as a sustainable, local solution for a future where resources are under increased strain from a ballooning global population.

“There are very few places in the world where you can actually put salmon farms into the oceans, and those areas are kind of tapped out now,” said Christopher Good, director of research at the Conservation Fund’s Freshwater Institute. “But the demand keeps rising, so the solution has to be land-based and I think the major salmon companies are starting to realize that.”

Hartleb said he sees nothing but growth in aquaponics. “More and more we are realizing that we have very little food safety and control over our food. Most of that risk is eliminated in aquaponics,” he said.

But it’s an expensive business to start and a difficult one to sustain.

Pentair shuttered Urban Organics’ tilapia-and-greens plant in St. Paul last year without explanation. Some farmers and entrepreneurs have found that focusing solely on either plants — through a system called hydroponics — or the fish, called aquaculture, is easier to manage.

“You have to achieve a certain size to become commercially viable. Prior to that, it’s a hobby or side business,” Hartleb said. “But to start out at that large size you have to have private financial backing because banks aren’t willing to take the risk.”

There are a fair number of what Hartleb calls “medium-sized” aquaponic farms in operation that support two to three employees and largely serve local markets. These are financially viable because they keep their costs in check with their smaller output.

“Most people getting involved with commercial aquaponics lack the farming background and this can lead to failure,” Hartleb said. “Current farmers have that experience, so they would just need to learn about water-based aquaponics.”

The owners of Superior Fresh decided to go big. The company spent $30 million on the first phase alone. The current expansion is phase three.

They invested in expensive systems that ozonate (adding oxygen) and filter the water with ultraviolet light as it returns to the fish. The farm also constantly monitors and tests water for pathogens, temperature and other crucial factors. It has backup pumps for their backup pumps, and generators powerful enough to keep the whole operation running if the power went out.

The farm produced its first harvest of lettuce about a month after opening in 2017. That brought revenue as salmon grew to harvest weight, which took two years.

“It’s not an easy business. If you make one mistake, you can literally kill fish in minutes,” Gottsacker said. “So if you’re going to do it, do it right. This is definitely a farm, so you can’t just leave for the weekend.”

Gottsacker, who studied biology with a focus on fisheries and aquaculture, started the farm with backing from Todd Wanek, chief executive and co-owner of Ashley Furniture, and wife Karen Wanek.

Superior Fresh greens are certified organic. Its salmon is fed an organic, non-GMO diet of fishmeal and fish oil. They are never given antibiotics or pesticides. The farm earned a certification for humane kill methods. The facility also sits on nearly 800 acres that was changed from monoculture farmland to oak savanna and prairie.

“The hundreds of acres of land that you would need here to grow the same amount of production now can be converted back to its native state,” Gottsacker said.

On paper, raising salmon makes sense for livestock farmers. Salmon need 1.1 pounds of feed to grow 1 pound. Hogs need 3 pounds of feed to yield 1 pound of pork, and cattle need 10 pounds of feed for a pound of beef.

With vegetables in the mix, the numbers look even better. Every 1.1 pounds of feed produces 1 pound of salmon and 10 pounds of organic leafy greens, Gottsacker said.

Critics of aquaponics often point to the energy required to keep a controlled system stable. Superior Fresh also has to heat the greenhouse and fish house all winter.

But Gottsacker said, “Compared to shipping seafood thousands of miles or trucking produce across the country, the energy footprint to grow fish and greens locally is significantly less than the alternative.”

When it comes to animal and environmental welfare, salmon raised in the closed-loop water system — called a recirculating aquaculture system, or RAS, in the industry — receives the highest “best choice” ranking from Seafood Watch, which is run by the Monterey Bay Aquarium and informs consumers and chefs on sustainable seafood.

“Farmed salmon, generally speaking, tends to have a pretty bad reputation,” Ryan Bigelow, senior program manager for Seafood Watch. “There are a lot of old tapes still playing on how wild is better than farmed. And while there is a lot of truth to parts of that, RAS tends to be a much better way to raise salmon than in [ocean] net pens.”

The organization is critical of large net-pen farms where fish escape and concentration of feed are concerns. Sea lice, a naturally occurring ocean pest, is worsened in tight spaces. “They are also interacting with wild animals, which probably means higher use of antibiotics,” Bigelow said.

Open ponds are the most common form of aquaculture in the U.S., but they aren’t feasible in northern climates. Flow-through systems look like streams and are a common way to raise salmon and trout.

“The negative side is you are constantly flushing water through the property, which is high in nutrients,” Hartleb said. Flow-through systems are highly regulated in most states to prevent water pollution, so this style of farm is becoming less common, “because the permitting is nearly impossible,” he said.

RAS systems are the newest and therefore the least common.

The waste is being filtered out and, depending on the facility, either treated on-site or sent to feed plants. Because the entire system is contained, it’s unlikely to find parasites in the water, reducing the use of drugs. And the risk of a food-borne illness at an indoor aquaponics facility is also very low.

Some of the nation’s biggest leafy green recalls in recent years have been traced back to outdoor farms where the groundwater was contaminated with waste from nearby cattle farms. Salmon are a coldwater fish that aren’t known as E. coli carriers.

“As long as you keep your biosecurity up, and pathogen-free eggs, then you can raise really healthy fish,” Good said.

Because salmon get their pink hue from eating carotenoid-rich food like krill and shrimp, Superior Fresh had to find a natural way to achieve that same color. The company doesn’t add a synthetic dye to achieve the color, a technique at farmed facilities around the world. Instead, they feed the fish a product called Panaferd that’s derived from a microorganism found in the ocean. The product is approved for use in the organic aquaculture industry.

More than 90% of salmon in the U.S. is imported, with the majority coming from Chile, Norway and Canada. The vast majority of salmon sold to Americans is raised in ocean net pens.

Right now, land-based RAS aquaculture — and the even smaller aquaponics subset within it — is largely being pioneered by entrepreneurs and angel investors.

“But the major salmon companies are watching this. As soon as one of those companies decides that land-based is the way to go, this will really take off,” Good said.

When completed later this year, Superior Fresh’s greenhouse will expand from 6 acres to 13 acres and the fish house will double from 1 acre to 2 acres. Its salmon harvest could rise to 1.3 million pounds a year. Even though no other aquaponics facility in the U.S. is as large as Superior Fresh, many fish-only RAS farms are larger.

“We want to keep growing. We’ve got other sites that we like throughout the U.S. — one on the East Coast, one on the West Coast — where we would build farms, likely as large or larger than this one because the markets are bigger there,” Gottsacker said. “This is a long-term game and a long-term business plan with long-term solutions.”

Kristen Leigh Painter covers the food industry for the Star Tribune. She previously covered growth and development for the paper. Prior to that, Painter was a business reporter at the Denver Post, covering airlines and aerospace. She frequently writes about sustainable food production, consumer food trends, and airlines.

All Photos: ANTHONY SOUFFLE – STAR TRIBUNE

kristen.painter@startribune.com 612.673.4767 KristenPainter

Signify Expands Collaboration With Planet Farms

Signify is expanding its collaboration with Planet Farms, a European operator of vertical farms based in Italy. Thanks to the latest agreement, Europe’s largest vertical farm will boost the quality and yield of the crops using the Philips GreenPower LED production module managed by the Philips GrowWise Control System.

Signify has also reached an agreement to provide horticultural LED grow lights to an additional five vertical farms that Planet Farms is planning to build in different European countries in the coming years, including Switzerland and the UK.

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The Philips Greenpower LED production module, Signify’s latest horticultural LED innovation for vertical farming, helps growers optimize multilayer crop cultivation. By managing the lights with Philips GrowWise Control System, growers can easily create and run custom light recipes on dimmable and color-controllable modules to meet the needs of different crops and growth phases. This gives growers the ability and flexibility to create and control their own time-based light recipes and improve crop results and operational efficiency in closed, climate-controlled cultivation facilities.

“We started working with Signify five years ago because of the company’s knowledge and expertise of horticultural LEDs and light recipes,” said Luca Travaglini, co-founder and co-CEO of Planet Farms. “Thanks to the collaboration we’re able to grow high-quality crops all year round and that’s why we’re now expanding our collaboration. The GrowWise Contol System helps us easily adjust light recipes and continuously enhance the taste of our crops, which is crucial for us.”

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This year, Planet Farms will finish construction of Europe’s largest vertical farm in Cavenago, just north of Milan. The vertical farm will cover more than 9,000 m2, which is the equivalent size of 45 tennis courts. Planet Farms operates an innovative integrated growth process that starts with the seeds and ends with packaged products. The production process is entirely automated meaning that consumers are the first to touch the crops.

“We’re proud to provide Europe’s largest vertical farm with our innovative lighting products and knowledge and expertise of light recipes. This next step in our collaboration shows that we can really help vertical farmers around the globe to improve the quality, yield and taste of their produce,” said Udo van Slooten, Business Leader Horticulture lighting at Signify. “The plans to build another five farms across Europe shows that vertical farming is rapidly growing and evolving. It’s a thrilling time to be involved in vertical farming, and we’re excited to help shape its future.”

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Signify and Planet Farms formalized their collaboration in 2018 when Planet Farms announced the construction of Italy’s first vertical farm research lab in Milan. This lab opened in 2019. Signify supported Planet Farms with its lighting expertise for vertical farming and by providing its Philips GreenPower LED production module Dynamic grow lights.

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For more information:

Signify: www.philips.com/horti 

Grocery Micro-Farms Take Off

Kroger And Infarm Install Vertical Farms In Stores

By Phil Lempert on Feb. 24, 2020

In our annual trend report three years ago we correctly predicted that the time has come for supermarkets to install their own indoor farms, in which shoppers could pick their own produce right from the farm—the ultimate in freshness, taste and local. Kroger is leading the way by adding these mini-farms to two of its Quality Food Centers (QFC) stores in the state of Washington.

Kroger has teamed up with Infarm, a six-year-old startup based in Germany, to install modular vertical farms. In these mini-farms, which use a hydroponic farming method, nine varieties of lettuce and herbs are stacked in rows and grown in nutrient-rich water until they are mature enough to be sold to customers.

Infarm has more than 500 such installations in stores and distribution centers in other parts of the world, but this is its first installations in U.S. grocery stores. The growing process at the two pilot stores involves LEDs and an irrigation system with recycled water.

Infarm uses a cloud-based technology system to remotely control the temperature and lighting for each of its farms.“

Customers today want transparency; they want to know exactly where their product is from, the provenance where it was grown,” said Suzy Monford, Kroger’s group VP of fresh foods.

The program has already been deemed a success by Kroger. Monford said the stores have been selling everything from kale to cilantro as fast as the plants have been able to mature. Kroger has announced plans to expand vertical farming to 13 more QFCs in Washington and Oregon by April.

Infarm’s the ultimate goal is to make local food production mainstream. “For the bulk of the last century, food has been produced far from where it is consumed, generating a supply chain that is environmentally unsustainable,” said Osnat Michaeli, the company’s co-founder and chief brand officer. “Our modular farms offer the potential of turning the supply chain on its head by building the world’s first global farming network.”

FRESH FOOD  SUSTAINABILITY  THE LEMPERT REPORT 

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US: Florida - Aquaponics: Winter Gardening Reaches New Heights In Winter Garden

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By: Irene Sans and George Waldenberger

February 26, 2020

ORLANDO Fla. — A sustainable garden on a Winter Garden rooftop has everything from a fish farm to produce to a water filtration system.

This type of garden is becoming more popular because they are sustainable, they require less space, they can mitigate dangerous heat and they may serve many ecological causes.

Certified meteorologist George Waldenberger visited Green Sky Grows, a Winter Garden aquaponics facility run by Valencia College.

Fireside Chat With Square Roots CEO & Co-Founder Tobias Peggs: Scaling Indoor Farming At Speed

Square Roots Co-Founders Tobias Peggs and Kimbal Musk Empowering Next-Gen Farmers

Indoor Ag-Con is excited to announce that Square Roots Co-Founder & CEO Tobias Peggs has joined our conference line-up for the May 18-20, 2020 edition!  Tobias will join Nicola Kerslake, Indoor Ag-Con Founder and Co-Founder, Contain, for the afternoon Fireside Chat: Scaling Indoor Farming At Speed. If our industry is to bring high-quality, local produce to customers all year round, we must collectively understand how to scale farming at speed to reach as many people as possible. Using a unique and scalable ‘farmer-first’ technology platform, Square Roots is doing just that. Tobias will share how this tech-enabled urban farming company is training and empowering the next generation of leaders in urban agriculture to grow local food that is delicious, responsible, nutritious, and profitable. And, be sure to check out the story further down in this issue highlighting our special guest blog post from Square Roots Co-Founder Kimbal Musk, too! 

CHECK OUT FULL CONFERENCE SCHEDULE >>> 

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During Indoor Ag-Con, we’ll be featuring the panel presentation, What Is the Next Technical Frontier for LED Lighting” on Monday, May 18 from 10 – 10:45 am. Moderated by Dr. Morgan Pattison, SSLS, Inc., the panel will include Blake Lange, Signify, formerly Philips Lighting – City Farming; Brandon Newkirk, LumiGrow; and Xander Yang, Sananbio.

Ahead of the session, we reached out to our participants to find out, from an LED perspective, what is the next hot thing in lighting? 

WHAT'S THE NEXT HOT THING IN LED LIGHTING? >>> 

KIMBAL MUSK: 10 WAYS SQUARE ROOTS' FARM-TECH PLATFORM EMPOWERS THE NEXT GENERATION OF FARMERS 

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Ahead of Square Roots CEO & Co-Founder Tobias Peggs' Fireside Chat at Indoor Ag-Con, Co-Founder & Exec Chairman Kimbal Musk has shared a guest blog post with us.

"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)," says Musk. "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.....”

10 WAYS SQUARE ROOTS' FARM-TECH PLATFORM EMPOWERS NEXT-GEN FARMERS>>>

YOU COULD WIN 2 TICKETS TO BIOSPHERE 2!

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When you arrive at Indoor Ag-Con, be sure to enter for your chance to win two general admission tickets to Biosphere 2 and an overnight stay at B2 cabanas!

The winners will get to tour one of the world’s most unique facilities dedicated to the research and understanding of global scientific issues. The Biosphere 2 facility serves as a laboratory for controlled scientific studies, an arena for scientific discovery and discussion, and a far-reaching provider of public education.

What’s more, as part of the package, the University of Arizona Controlled Environment Agriculture Center (UA-CEAC) would like to also extend an invitation for the recipients to its vertical farm research and educational facility (UAgFarm) at UA-CEAC and other UA-CEAC projects/facilities as an additional welcome!

SEE WHO'S SPEAKING  |   SEE WHO'S EXHIBITING   

INSIDE INDOOR AG |  INDUSTRY NEWS HARVEST

PRODUCE GROWER:   Elevate Farms Closes on $1.8 Million In Round Of Funding
GREENHOUSE GROWER:   Gotham Greens Opens Another Massive Greenhouse
NEW YORK POST:  I Tasted A Bug Diet, the Sustainable Protein That Could Save The WorldIGROW NEWS --CubicFarm Systems Announces Largest Sale To Date

SPECIAL THANKS TO OUR GROWING ROSTER OF
SPONSORS, MEDIA ALLIES & INDUSTRY PARTNERS

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In addition, Indoor Ag-Con is proud to be a member of the Hemp Industries Association.

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Indoor Farming And Qualified Opportunity Funds

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2020

Qualified Opportunity Funds have been set up to fund Qualified Opportunity Zones and Qualified Opportunity Zone Businesses. One such QOF, the LGS Opportunity Zone fund, focuses on the development and maintenance of indoor vertical urban neighborhood farms, grown and distributed by Local Grown Salads. The “farms” are being developed in older buildings, situated in Baltimore, MD Opportunity Zones. According to the company’s website, four properties have been identified, to date, with the farms set up in 15,000-square-foot increments.

The product coming out of these businesses are packaged salads consisting of lettuce, cucumbers, chard, kale, and others, which are sold to local restaurants and the community.

In a recent interview with OpportunityDB’s Jimmy Atkinson, Local Grown Salads Founder Zale Tabakman explained that Opportunity Zones and indoor vertical farming are a good combination because these operations can be set up in “food deserts,” lower-income areas where people have to drive or take a bus long distances to get food to eat. Additionally, they are environmentally sound because the food grown isn’t using pesticides or fungicide, and little runoff. Tabakman also cited a carbon footprint reduction, pointing out that the locally grown food has less distance to travel than, say, produce from California to the East Coast.

Finally, these farms are set up to create local jobs. Tabakman indicated that each farm can create 25 jobs, with pay averaging around $15 per hour. Additionally, the company is working with the bank to ensure financial literacy for employees.

From Tabakman’s point of view, LSG’s vertical farms tick off the many boxes of Opportunity Zone investments, being located in the federally-designated areas, and providing a positive impact on the community. “Indoor vertical farming, because it’s food, is great . . . but any other product being produced locally really makes sense in an Opportunity Zone . . . especially when you need to be close to your customers,” he told Atkinson.

CONNECT WITH LOCAL GROWN SALADS