Posted on 06/22/2015 7:17:00 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
A vacant steel factory in Newark is turning into the world's largest-producing vertical farm. After it begins running later this year, the farm's indoor system of modular, stacked trays will grow around 2 million pounds of baby greens annually.
The $30 million building will be the headquarters of AeroFarms, a company that has been developing vertical farm tech for the last decade. But the company sees the project as just the beginning—and hopes to build 25 farms in the next five years. AeroFarms already has eight smaller farms and five in the pipeline.
"This isn't about one farm, this is about changing the way we grow food as a society," says CEO David Rosenberg. "So this is a showcase, where it's not just about demonstrating the technology but how we grow and how we get to economies of scale to make the economics work."
Rosenberg is convinced that vertical farming will become an important part of agriculture. "It's not going to supplant traditional farming," he says. "But it's going to be part of the picture. By 2050, we need to double our food-growing capabilities. Part of that solution is vertical farming."
While the technology doesn't make sense for row crops like corn and wheat, it works well for something like leafy greens, which sell for more in the grocery store—making it feasible to grow them in or near a city. They also often tend to wilt when they travel thousands of miles from a farm in California to a far away place like New York.
"There's a very short shelf life in the space, and we realized that with technology and a smarter approach to farming we could have a meaningful solution," says Rosenberg. The stacked growing system can product 70 times more spinach than a farm in the field, and deliver the crop directly to stores in a nearby city. In Newark, the farm will supply produce to a local food desert as well as New York City.
The aeroponic growing system the company uses also has some environmental advantages, like requiring 95% less water than growing crops in a field. At a time when most leafy greens in the U.S. are grown in drought-stricken California, it's easy to imagine demand for an alternative. The aeroponic system also doesn't use pesticides.
It does use a lot of energy—picture row after row of LED lights over every plant, along with pumps delivering nutrients and an HVAC system—but the company says it isn't clear yet how the carbon footprint compares to traditional farming of leafy greens. In California, a quarter of the state's energy is used to deliver water to places like farms, and around half of a crop like baby spinach ends up in the trash, partly because of how quickly the produce goes bad. And then there's the energy used in trucking.
"The embodied energy of what's actually consumed is huge," says Rosenberg. "A true analysis hasn't been done on our category of baby leafy greens, but I'd be very interested in participating in that."
Over the last 11 years, the company has worked to painstakingly optimize every step of their growing process. When they looked at LED lights, for example, they realized that the plants didn't need the yellow spectrum to grow—and yellow light happened to be the biggest energy hog, so they redesigned the lights to take out the yellow. They've also developed their own systems for everything from automated harvesting to packaging.
"What we're doing is complicated," Rosenberg says. "There's a reason we've been at it since 2004 and we're ready to build our biggest farm today. It takes a lot of data."
Ultimately, they hope to be first to take vertical farming to a large scale. "There's a romanticized notion of local food production," he says. "So you're seeing these small players pop up in different places, but I actually think most of them are going to go out of business. While their ambition is in the right place, they don't understand the complexity of things like logistics."
The biggest challenge for the industry is the expense of building a system like the one AeroFarms is creating in Newark. "It's a capital intensive industry," says Rosenberg. "If you look at the investment community in the cleantech space, they want capital-efficient, social networking kind of businesses. There hasn't been a sprint of capital to capital-intensive spaces."
Still, the company was able to raise $30 million from investors like Goldman Sachs and Prudential for the new farm. "Goldman Sachs looked at other urban farming companies and they couldn't get comfortable with the economics, but they got comfortable with AeroFarms' economics," he says. "That's where what we're doing is unique. We've solved some crucial pieces of the puzzle to make the economics work."
Surprisingly, the author quotes the concern for the conflict of carbon footprint vs economic feasability
If we get controlled fusion, that won’t matter. Wake me up then.
On what other points did the girbilist not do much research?
This reads like the company in question commissioned a press release.
Not that it's not interesting, just that it infers a claim to having done the intellectual heavy lifting that should rightfully be credited to the people who pioneered this stuff.
Time will tell.
This could be like solar power — a scam requiring endless infusions of fresh cash.
But it might also be a real game changer. I watch this stuff with interest.
It’s well developed in Japan as well with ceiling high rotating shelfs.
They're not making any more land.
Oh, wait...
They say that everyone on Earth would fit in Texas and each have about an acre of land.
They hope to create 25 farms in the next five years - but they haven’t yet determined their energy costs. Next stop: government subsidies. The latter is really the type of ‘farming’ they are engaging in - and that type is nothing new.
I don’t really see the point. This country has a LOT of farmland and in many cases its reverting to forest due to disuse.
Groups keep pimping the Farm Detroit BS but when you look closely its really about farming grants and subsidies while letting existing farmland go fallow.
It does use a lot of energy—picture row after row of LED lights over every plant, along with pumps delivering nutrients and an HVAC system—but the company says it isn’t clear yet how the carbon footprint compares to traditional farming of leafy greens.
...
In other words, it doesn’t compare well.
Yes, it must not compare well.
After all, don’t they know how many light fixtures they will need?
From there it’s simple math that even a 4th grade homeschooled kid could figure out. Or a public high school senior, with a little coaching.
I love this trend, farms inside the cities, farms using abandoned large buildings, fresh produce year round in Alaska and Minneapolis, and it will only continue to improve.
As the new energy systems and local energy self sufficiency develop over coming decades, America and civilization will become less and less fragile and susceptible to the whole system collapsing over nuclear attacks, or EMPs, or whatever major events can trigger a snowball effect in systems that seem to need almost national perfection to function.
Gee, they could pump their carbon footprint into the building. I bet the crops would love it.
The Japanese having been doing it for a while. Their yields for the space involved, are incredible.
They say this company has been doing it for the last decade, great article. Recently saw a documentary on this subject and the economy of water savings, ability to grow 24/7/365, and less food lost due to transportation was very interesting. Did not see where the people were claiming to have researched and done this all themselves.
As one that has been blindsided by this article, I appreciate your post ..... thanx
>> They say that everyone on Earth would fit in Texas
true.
... and each have about an acre of land.
Only after we kill off the “undesirables”. Texas comprises around 167 million acres of land — not enough to give even every Yankee in ‘murica an acre. :-)
This might become a cost effective way to get some veggies to local grocery stores, particularly in winter when they would otherwise have to be transported over very long distances. You might even be able to get tomatoes which are optimized for taste rather than how well they hold up in transport.
If located next to an office building, you could even have it draw CO2-rich office air in, and feed back oxygen-rich air from the plants.
They are not going to grow wheat, corn or other grain type crops this way. However, they have been growing mushrooms, and other vegetables like this for some time. By controlling the growing environment you can grow faster than outdoors. Plus you grow year round 24/7. Also, there is less freight to get the product to market. In this case there are 20 million people within 50 miles of this “farm”.
Many produce items like tomatoes are grown in green houses in Canada. Growing outdoors wastes a lot of water. You can also control insect problems better indoors.
I live in NH where much of the state was once farmland (805 in 1865) now it is 80% forested. However, the only thing that grows well here are White Pine trees and rocks.
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