The AVF are delighted as well as excited to announce that Christine and Joel stood again for election this year and they are not going anywhere. Christine has been re-elected with a resounding windfall as Chairwomen and Joel as Vice-Chair.

Ramin, who has been such a great asset, has stepped down from his Vice -Chair position. He has contributed so much, given invaluable insights, and brought to the AVF his experience and time. Ramin thank you for rolling up your sleeves and jumping in. But this is not goodbye, you are an important part of our collective and the AVF journey as we move forward.

Please join us in welcoming Marc Juárez Nicolau of Soul Semiconductors as the AVF’s second Co-Chair. Marc is a well known and loved member of the AVF community. He has been involved in AVF initiatives for some time already. Notably he was part of the R&D team that has been busy in the AVF lab growing saffron in the middle of winter in Europe.

Marc brings so much to the AVF. He is an Electrical Engineer (so important to our industry) and is the Technical and Marketing Director at Seoul Semiconductor, Europe. His core competencies include engineering, lighting, R&D, luminaires and regulations. He joins the AVF board with first hand industry insights and experience that will no doubt spur the AVF forward in the evolution of our industry.

Image modified from Martin Sanchez/Unsplash

Article originally published by the Association for Vertical Farming

The speed with which the coronavirus outbreaks in Asia, Europe and North America metastasized into a full-blown global pandemic — catching many world governments by surprise and with little preparation — underscores just how our world today is highly interconnected and how, in order to contain and stem the surging pandemic, temporary disconnection from the physically-networked world by cities, regions and even entire nations has become an urgent imperative.

With confirmed coronavirus cases globally now exceeding 370,000 and the number of deaths surpassing 16,000, many world cities have become throbbing epicenters of the surging pandemic. Accordingly, various countries, states and cities have enforced lockdown or stay-at-home orders with drastic measures including banning public gatherings, restricting restaurants to take-out and delivery only, and closing schools, bars, theaters, casinos and indoor shopping malls, among others.

Such orders, or their looming possibility, has consequently intensified the panic-buying urges of consumers for food and household essentials particularly in North America and Western Europe, giving occasions for daily photos of empty grocery-store shelves splashed ubiquitously from across news networks to social media platforms. The availability of food in North America and Western Europe during the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, however, remains generally secure, at least in the near term of the pandemic.

Food Sourcing

New York City, for instance, normally has food supply amounting to approximately 8.6 million tonnnes (19 billion pounds) annually as purveyed by a network of regional and national food distributors, which then is sold at about 42,000 outlets across the city’s five boroughs, according to a 2016 study sponsored by the city.

Over half of the outlets are made up of approximately 24,000 restaurants, bars and cafes through which consumers access almost 40 percent of the city’s food by volume annually. The rest of the outlets are chain supermarkets, bodegas and online grocery stores. The study reported that the city’s annual food supply feeds over 8.6 million city residents, over 60 million tourists plus daily commuters in the hundreds of thousands from the tri-state area of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut.

With millions of tourists and commuters now staying away from the city, however, and with the city’s hotels at just 49 percent occupancy for the week ending March 14, an excess of food supply is readily available for diversion into the city’s grocery stores and other retailers to meet the surge in demand by local residents. In the case of Germany, the country imports food that accounts for nearly 8 percent of its US$1.3 Trillion imported goods in 2018. Germany procures from abroad about 3 million tonnes of fresh vegetables annually — with cucumbers and tomatoes accounting for 40 percent of the import volume — at a value of around 3.5 billion Euros, mainly from the Netherlands and Spain. Indeed, approximately 30 percent of the 2.6 million tonnes of exported Dutch-grown fresh vegetables goes to Germany.

Meanwhile, approximately 80 percent of the United Kingdom’s food and food ingredients are imported. The U.K. imports approximately 2.4 million tonnes of fresh vegetables each year from Spain (33 percent), the Netherlands (28 percent), France (10 percent) and from various parts the world (29 percent).

Access to Food

Although the sources and sourcing of food in North America and Western Europe are currently generally secure, what might soon become a prodigious concern is that their workers in the production, distribution and retail segments of the food supply chain may eventually succumb to coronavirus infection. In such events, coupled with the potential for lockdown bureaucracies to slow down the flow of cargo between countries and between cities, severe delays in delivery — or real delivery shortages — could well become an actual possibility.

Local Vertical Farms

The coronavirus pandemic lockdowns have laid bare, if fortuitously, the crucial importance of partial local food production in or around world cities in the context of urban resilience. The following salient features of vertical farms have become especially significant toward buttressing a city’s resilience in the event of a pandemic lockdown:

(1) Local — production of safe and fresh produce can take place within the lockdown zone, obviating the hurdles and perils of going in and out of the red zone;

(2) Automation-Amenability — impact of severe labor shortage which can be expected as the pandemic surges as well as direct physical contact between workers and fresh produce can be significantly minimized or eliminated;

(3) Controlled-Environment — infection risks to both workers and crops are significantly reduced through clean and controlled operations;

(4) Modular Option — crops may be grown in modular production units, such as shipping containers, which may be conveniently transported to neighborhoods located either farther away or in areas of stricter isolation; and,

(5) Reliability — Dependability and consistency of high-yield and high-quality harvests throughout the year is virtually guaranteed independently of season and external climate conditions.

Fortunately for New York City, even as it sources most of its fresh vegetables from California and Arizona, the New York greater area now serves as host to the highest concentration in the United States of commercial urban vertical farms — including Aerofarms, Bowery Farming, Bright Farms, Farm.One, Square Roots and Gotham Greens, among others — that operate as controlled-environment farms year-round and independently of the variable effects of climate and geography. While conventional outdoor farming can produce three vegetable harvests per year, some of these vertical farms can achieve up to 30 harvests annually.

New York City and other world cities could certainly use more vertical farms.

Indeed, the urban planning and design of every world city should incorporate vertical farms, in and/or around it, not only for promoting food security — but for fostering disaster resilience as well. During a pandemic when a temporary period of social distancing between cities and nations becomes critically necessary, vertical farms can serve as helping outposts of resilience for cities and regions on lockdown as they brave the onslaught of the pandemic until it runs its course and duly dissipates — at which time the enfeebled ties of cooperation between cities, states and nations across the globe can once again be mended and made even stronger than before. Thus, not only locally, but in fact also globally, vertical farms can serve as helping vanguards of protection for all of our communities.

Dr. Joel L. Cuellois Vice Chair of the Association for Vertical Farming (AVF) and Professor of Biosystems Engineering at The University of Arizona. In addition to conducting research and designs on vertical farming and cell-based bioreactors, he also teaches “Integrated Engineered Solutions in the Food-Water-Energy Nexus” and “Globalization, Sustainability & Innovation.” Email cuelloj@email.arizona.edu.

Press Release – The AVF was invited to visit its member Fraunhofer IME in Aachen, Germany, one of 72 institutes of the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft, the leading organization for applied science in Europe with over 26,000 employees and various international branches around the world.

The Fraunhofer Institute for Molecular Biology and Applied Ecology IME has six different sites in Germany and conducts research in the field of applied life sciences from the molecular level to entire ecosystems. Its division “Molecular Biotechnology” is located in Aachen, Germany and conducts R&D in the field of biotechnology with a strong focus on plant-based applications.

Over the last 10 years, the IME has developed and established two different vertical farming systems at the Aachen site in cooperation with the Fraunhofer IPT and IIS (→ VertiPharm) as well as the Fraunhofer IML (→ OrbiPlant):

VertiPharm, a fully automated vertical farm with a strong focus on different research applications (e.g. plant cultivation, plant phenotyping, biopharmaceutical production) and OrbiPlant, a novel and cost- efficient approach to vertical farming of food crops. These two vertical farming systems are complemented by LEDitGrow, an innovative multi-chamber system for the rapid development of plant growth protocols and the optimization of specific plant target values.

The design of the two IME vertical farming systems, their degree of automation, data management, efficiency and productivity, as well as their application and research possibilities go beyond the current state of the art of indoor farming technology. The systems provide an unprecedented basis to promote vertical farming, not only in Germany but worldwide. The different technology platforms are available for cooperation projects. Potential cooperation partners are encouraged to get in contact with IME (see below).

During a facility tour AVF had the opportunity to visit the different systems that are outlined below.

LEDitGROW – Multi-parameter single plant cultivation system

A LEDitGROW unit comprises 24 single plant cultivation chambers, each equipped with various different LED-based light spectra including UVA. The unit has been designed to fit into a phytotron to run experiments at defined temperature, humidity and CO2 concentration. Each plant chamber can hold a single plant or several tissue culture petri dishes and can be individually supplied with nutrient solution.

The parallelization of cultivation conditions together with a statistical multi-parameter design of experiment (DoE) approach allows the rapid establishment of species-specific growth recipes as well as the optimization of specific target values such as biomass, secondary plant metabolites or morphology.

VertiPharm – Automated multifunctional research platform for vertical farming

The highlight of the IME in Aachen is the fully automated, pilot-scale vertical farming research platform featuring core functionalities such as multi-tier-based vertical farming, single plant handling, sensor-based in- process control, 2D/3D plant scanning, vacuum plant infiltration, downstream processing and central data management.

The impressive construction of the vertical farm unit consists of eight cultivation levels and provides ~550m2 of net cultivation area for the continuous or batch-wise cultivation of plants under highest reproducibility. Different parameters such as temperature, humidity, CO2- concentration, LED-based lighting and composition of the plant nutrient solution can be defined and monitored in the central control system. Each plant receives a unique ID during seeding and is tracked individually throughout the entire cultivation time until harvest. Movement, sensor and measurement data are continuously recorded and can be used for in-process control or retrospective analysis of cultivation parameters and specific plant characteristics.

The fully automated facility can be used to produce food and non-food plants of different varieties and sizes. In addition to the vertical farming of plants a separate vacuum-infiltration unit connected to a fermentation suite allows the rapid production of recombinant biopharmaceuticals (e.g. vaccines, antibodies or enzymes) in plants by Agrobacterium-mediated gene transfer. Thanks to this multifunctionality the plant production research platform at Fraunhofer IME enables a broad spectrum of applications in different plant-based fields but also in the field of engineering, for instance:

• Cultivation of food plants
• Cultivation of medicinal/ specialty plants
• Cultivation of ornamental plants
• Production of recombinant biopharmaceuticals
• Plant breeding and plant phenotyping
• Software-based applications (e.g. digitization of production, artificial intelligence, augmented reality-assisted maintenance)

OrbiPlant – groundbreaking vertical farming system for the cost-efficient production of food crops

OrbiPlant represents an innovative approach to vertical farming of food crops that can truly make a difference to the spread and market penetration of vertical farming. The major difference to classical tier-based approaches is a continuous conveyor belt system that is flexibly arranged in vertical loops allowing the easy placement of seeds or seedlings on one end of the conveyor system and the easy harvest on the other end.

In between plants grow self-sufficiently under specific LED lighting conditions that can be adapted to the respective growth stage. The conveyor belt movement can be specifically adjusted to a plant’s growth cycle and takes advantage of a growth stimulating orbitropal effect on the plant, which is stemming from the changing gravitational orientation of the plant on the conveyor belt. The water-nutrient supply is ensured by aeroponic nozzles inside the belt loops. The innovative OrbiPlant system has several key improvements over current vertical farming systems:

• High plant biomass yields and short growth cycles
• Low production costs (e.g. <0.40 € per lettuce head)
• Optimal cost-efficiency due to minimal hardware and personnel costs
• Modular conveyor belt concept easily adaptable to different plants and growth cycles as well as to different building geometries
• Improved vertical heat convection
• Low LED lighting requirement
• Flexible degree of automation depending on customer need

OrbiPlant is not only providing a cost-effective, optimized production platform for food crops with minimal space and resource requirements, but its unique design and flexibility has the potential to take vertical farming to a new level. It overcomes the shortcomings of today’s most commonly used horizontal rack systems, saves energy, utilizes intelligent automation, and enables easy handling and operation.

The AVF in cooperation with the Fraunhofer IME welcomes company and stakeholder inquiries on the presented systems.

While New York City as a whole by no means is a food desert, wherein access to fresh produce by its residents is severely constrained, such access nonetheless appears to require significant enhancement.

The 2019 American Fitness Index for America’s 100 largest cities, for instance, shows that only 17% of New York City’s residents get their recommended daily portion of vegetables, compared with the top-ranked city in the category, Washington, D.C., wherein 30% of its residents do.

Intriguingly, the same survey shows that New York City only has 18 farmers’ markets per one million residents compared with Washington’s 82.

It does not help that the state of New York’s production of vegetables, representing a measly 7% of its total agricultural output, does not come close to meeting the city’s demand.

Not surprisingly, a significant portion of New York City’s fresh vegetables are sourced from California and Arizona, a distance of at least 2,500 miles. This leads to considerably diminished food freshness, food waste through spoilage, significant long-distance transport energy expenditure and substantial greenhouse gas emissions, among others problems.

In the last few years a novel form of urban farming — vertical farming — has been slowly but surely emerging in the greater New York area, holding promise as a potent antidote to the city’s notably burgeoning food miles by growing and offering fresh produce locally.

Vertical farms are indoor crop production systems — using a warehouse, greenhouse or a modular structure like a shipping container — wherein crops are grown without soil and using liquid nutrient solution that is either flowing (hydroponic) or sprayed (aeroponic). Crop lighting in vertical farms is typically provided using red and blue LEDs, and ambient air temperatue and relative humidity are also regulated. The concentration of carbon dioxide in its air is also typically enriched to hasten the crop’s photosynthetic growth.

Consequently, the growth, yield and quality of crops in vertical farms are consistently much higher than in open-field cultivation, and the reliability of harvest throughout the year independent of the season and external climate conditions is virtually guaranteed.

And in addition to consuming less than 20% freshwater compared with open-field production, produce from vertical farms are patently fresh, pesticide-free and hyper local — with all of the latter’s attendant benefits including local jobs creation.

The greater New York area is now home to a number of highly innovative and enterprising vertical farms, including Square Roots, Gotham Greens, Farm.One, Aerofarms and Bowery Farming, among others, most of which regularly deliver their produce to the city’s local grocers and even to Whole Foods Market and to numerous high-end restaurants.

To help ensure both the economic and environmental sustainability of New York City’s growing vertical farms, however, the city needs to see and recognize them also as crucial nodes in the design of the city’s emerging circular economy. We need many more vertical farms.

In a circular economy, the methods of production and consumption are looped into a continuous cycle of resource recycle and reuse, thus minimizing or eliminating waste, with a view to achieving optimized resource utilization and value preservation.

Vertical farms serve as crucial nodes in a circular economy because they consume energy and require material inputs in the form of water, nutrients and carbon dioxide, among others — which may be derived or up-cycled from the effluent streams of other existing nodes in the economy.

For instance, while Gotham Greens is already harnessing solar photovoltaic electricity to power their indoor farming operations, the use of renewable natural gas produced from digested organic wastes is also an already available option for others — and for which vertical farms can possibly deliver their own organics in the form of inedible plant biomass waste.

The needed freshwater, nutrients and carbon dioxide for vertical farms may similarly be bio-cycled from other existing nodes in the economy.

In New York City and other big cities around the world, the future of food is decidely vertical and circular. Let’s seize it.

Cuello is vice chair of the Association for Vertical Farming and professor of biosystems engineering at The University of Arizona.

Originally published by the Association for Vertical Farming

U.S. fast-food customers’ growing expectations for healthier, ethical and more environmentally sustainable options directly correspond with the values and produce that the Vertical Farming industry provides

As the vertical farming industry in the United States grows, its market segments correspondingly diversify and widen.

Aerofarms, Gotham Greens and Square Roots, for instance, all deliver their produce to local grocers as well as to Whole Foods Market.

Plenty sells its leafy greens through the online retailer Good Eggs, San Francisco’s Faletti Foods as well as to fine-dining restaurants, including Atelier Crenn and the Michelin-starred Protege in Palo Alto, among others.

New-Jersey-based Greens Do Good, whose entire profits go to helping people with autism through an innovative and socially-responsible business model, delivers the bulk of its produce to a partner golf country club.

Meanwhile, Crop One Holdings has recently and emphatically helped push the market frontiers for vertical farming by forming a joint venture with Dubai’s Emirates Flight Catering to supply 105 airlines and 25 airport lounges at Dubai International Airport with a full array of greens for catering services.

A Great Convergence

In a parallel industry universe, the U.S. fast food sector is in the midst of experiencing arguably its biggest disruption in decades caused by the tectonic shifts in customers’ preferences and expectations. With customers’ growing demand for healthier, ethical and more environmentally sustainable options, the industry’s major players from McDonald’s to Burger King to Carl’s Jr., among others, have taken notice and are promptly strategizing and responding.

McDonald’s, the largest fast food chain in the United States, now exclusively offers antibiotics-free chicken, cage-free eggs, cow milk unadulterated with artificial growth hormones, and buns devoid of high fructose corn syrup, among others.

And in direct response to mounting customer discomfort with the health, environmental and ethical costs of meat, Burger King has introduced its vegetarian burger Impossible Whopper using the plant-protein-based meat supplied by Impossible Foods.

Plant-based alternative meats are gaining increased traction with customers owing to their smaller environmental footprint compared with traditional meat production. It is well known, for instance, that livestock production for meat and dairy accounts for close to 15 percent of the global greenhouse gas emissions annually. That animal ranching also consumes exorbitant amounts of water, feed, land and energy further exacerbates the sustainability deficits of traditional meat production.

Burger King currently sells its Impossible Whopper to 59 restaurants in the St. Louis area, and plans to swiftly make it available in all of its 7,200 locations nationwide.

Carl’s Jr. now also offers a vegetarian burger by the alternative-meat maker Beyond Meat at over a thousand of Carls’ Jr. restaurants, while White Castle has been selling a Slider version of the Impossible burger since last year in its over 380 stores.

Earlier this month, Dunkin’ began serving its meatless Beyond Sausage Breakfast Sandwich in some of its restaurants in New York City with plans to sell it eventually nationwide.

Even KFC is currently exploring adding plant-based fried chicken as part of its standard offerings.

And McDonald’s, while still currently weighing whether to add a meatless burger on its menu in the United States, has now added a vegan burger — called the Big Vegan TS — as part of its permanent offerings in Germany. Nestle sources the meatless burger to McDonald’s restaurants in the country, one of the company’s top five international markets.

For true meat lovers who prefer their burger to be actually animal-derived and non-vegan — but ethical and environmentally sustainable just the same — Memphis Meats is currently at work in perfecting its lab-grown meat constituted from actual beef cells. This innovation is still very much in development, however, that the meat product is not expected to be made available in the market any time soon.

It’s One Small Step for Wendy’s

The rising convergence of AgTech innovations in the U.S. fast food industry — a direct result of the aforementioned customers’ evolving and more enlightened expectations and preferences — certainly received a recent big boost when Wendy’s finally decided to source all of its tomatoes from indoor hydroponic greenhouses located in the U.S. and Canada for all of its 6,000 restaurants in the United States.

In keeping with Wendy’s motto of Always Fresh, the decision ensures superior quality as well as enhanced food safety, predictability, reliability and product traceability for the American international fast food’s fresh tomato supply.

Wendy’s, the second largest burger fast food chain in the U.S., also has plans over time to source its other fresh vegetable ingredients from similar indoor crop production systems.

One Giant Leap for U.S. Vertical Farms?

Could Wendy’s one small step translate into one giant leap for both the U.S. fast food industry and vertical farming industry?

The likelihood is real in part given their now shared product values and since the economy of scale involved helps provide impetus and cushion to both industries

For U.S. fast food, partnerships with vertical farms would help meet the former’s customer expectations on the health, ethical and sustainability fronts, while also ensuring produce quality, nutrient value, consistency and supply reliability even as they help reinforce local jobs creation.

For U.S. vertical farms, partnerships with U.S. fast food would help effectively reduce their price of produce through the expanded economy of scale even as they also help strengthen local jobs creation.

The size, of course, of the U.S. fast food industry is gargantuan, with approximately 50 million Americans eating at fast food restaurants every day, generating annual sales of about $200 billion at 200,000 fast food locations across the country. Indeed, just the top 10 U.S. burger and chicken fast food chains — namely, McDonald’s, Wendy’s, Burger King, Chick-fil-A, Sonic, KFC, Carl’s Jr./Hardee’s, Jack in the Box, Popeyes Louisiana Chicken, and Whataburger — post a combined annual sales of over $84 billion (2016).

The entry of U.S. vertical farms into the U.S. fast food industry would certainly provide the former a momentous and immense market opportunity that it seeks.

One hopes that the continuing convergence of AgTech innovations in the U.S. fast food industry would help launch both the U.S. fast food and vertical farming industries into a jointly reinvigorated sustainability trajectory for people, planet and proft.

Dr. Joel L. Cuello is Vice Chair of the Association for Vertical Farming (AVF) and Professor of Biosystems Engineering at The University of Arizona. In addition to conducting design and research on vertical farming and cell-based bioreactors, he teaches “Globalization, Sustainability & Innovation” and “Integrated Engineered Solutions in the Food-Water-Energy Nexus”. Email cuelloj@email.arizona.edu.

Click here to read original article

Originally published by the Association for Vertical Farming

The vertical farming industry will likely in turn ultimately enable NASA and other space programs to realize their future food production systems on the Moon, Mars and even beyond.

As the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11’s first Lunar landing and moonwalk on 20 July 1969 is observed this year, it is fitting to recall the myriad innovation spinoffs that NASA’s space program had gifted mankind, ranging from the integrated circuit to computer microchips to satellite television to cordless tools to electric vehicles to freeze-dried food to memory foam, etc. — and yes, still unbeknown to many, vertical farming.

While the Apollo program itself did not initiate or develop space farming, its unprecedented success directly led NASA to establish around 1978 the Controlled Ecological Life Support System (CELSS) division within its Advanced Life Support program with the aim in part of developing the technologies and strategies necessary to grow food and regenerate resources on the Lunar surface or on Mars for future long-duration manned missions and habitation.

Nearly two decades before NASA, however, the then Soviet Space program commenced activities beginning in 1961 toward developing its own bioregenerative space life support system. In 1968, the Soviets first realized growing crops in their completely sealed controlled-environment system Bios-2, located in the Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk, wherein they sucessfully cultivated wheat, carrots, cucumber, dill and other vegetable crops. (Bios-2 should not be confused with Biosphere 2 in Arizona which was constructed much later between 1987 and 1991.) An improved underground test facility, Bios-3, was subsequently built by the Soviets in 1972.

Fast forward to the 1980’s and 1990’s, NASA’s CELSS program made significant advances in the cultivaton of a whole range of crops in closed controlled-environment systems under optimized environmetal conditions of lighting, temperature, relative humidity, air flow, nutrient compositions, etc.

The foregoing advances by both NASA and the Soviet Space program paved the way for the emergence of the first commercial vertical farms (or plant factories) in the United States and Japan. General Electric’s Geniponics based in New York and Alaska as well as General Mills’ Phytofarms of America in Illinois were established in the 1970’s and operated through the 1980’s, though eventually closing down owing to economic challenges.

It was in Japan in the 1980’s, however, when the then fledgling vertical farming industry truly took root and flourished in part through their proactive adoption and incorporation of emerging technology innovations. For instance, TS Farm (Q.P. Corporation) was first in employing aeroponic systems, while Cosmo Plant Co. Ltd. in 2000 became the world’s first commercial LED-based vertical farm and began producing up to 7,000 heads of lettuce per day, significantly exceeding the industry norm of 3,000 to 5,000 heads of lettuce per day in the 1990’s.

Vertical farming today, of course, has gone global and, in parallel with advances in lighting technologies, climate control, data analytics, automation and other innovations, has correspondingly been setting new achievements in both yield and resource sustainability.

And just as the space program spun off the Vertical Farming industry, there is poetic symmetry in the very real prospects that it will be the vertical farming industry that will ultimately enable NASA, as well as other space programs, to develop and fully realize its bioregenerative space life support systems for future Lunar and Martian human habitats.

Just as Elon Musk’s Space X, Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin and Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic have partnered with NASA to innovate on and advance space transportation, it is highly likely that partnerships with NASA for the design and operation of its future Lunar and Martian space farms will be brokered with the likes of AeroFarms, Plenty, Bowery Farming, CropOne Holdings, Gotham Greens, Infarm, AEssense and/or other vertical farming companies, some of which have yet to be formed.

In the future the vertical farming industry may indeed extend its prospects from the mere terrestrial to the extraterrestrial. 

_________________________

Prof. Joel Cuello is Vice Chair of the Association for Vertical Farming (AVF) and Professor of Biosystems Engineering at The Univeristy of Arizona. He conducted his U.S. National Research Council postdoctoral research fellowship at NASA John F. Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida in 1994. Email cuelloj@email.arizona.edu

After successful annual conferences in Beijing, Amsterdam and Washington, D.C., the AVF is excited to host the 2019 edition at Oslo’s Urban Future Global Conference on May 22-23. The AVF and Urban Future look forward to welcoming entrepreneurs, companies, technologists, growers, city planners, research institutions, governmental bodies and enthusiasts from all over the globe to Oslo, the 2019 European Green Capital.

Adding to Urban Future’s already extensive audience, the AVF will host a gathering of over 200 experts to discuss developments and propose solutions for the future of indoor and vertical farming. The AVF will facilitate keynote speeches, roundtable discussions and workshops over two half-day time slots. This conference-within-a-conference will touch on all of Urban Future’s main thematic areas but will be the only forum to specifically focus on food production.

Entitled “Unlocking the Potential of Indoor Farming in Cities of the Future,” this conference will give citizens and stakeholders alike unparalleled access to the most pressing topics in the indoor farming industry.

Keynote speakers include:

• Dr. Joel Cuello, Professor of Biosystems Engineering and Director of the Global Initiative for Strategic Agriculture in Dry Lands (GISAD) at The University of Arizona.
• Dr. Leo Marcelis, PhD., Head of Chair Group Horticulture and Product Physiology, Wageningen University
• Josef Schmidhuber, Deputy Director, Trade and Markets Division, FAO
• Gertjan Meeuws, Co-Founder, Seven Steps to Heaven
• Dr. Ali Ahmadian, CEO, Heliospectra
• Bernhard Hecker, Co-Founder, value.digital

More speakers will be announced in the coming weeks.

Workshop Sessions

Establishing High-Tech Urban Food Systems in Cities of the Future
How can cities keep pace with the rapidly-evolving value chain

The next decade will bring rapid change in the technologies and techniques used to grow food in cities. How can businesses and entrepreneurs keep pace with this level of innovation? Join us in guided workshops to learn how to manage this influx of new technologies and apply them successfully to drive down costs, integrate renewable energy, and improve citizens’ access to healthy, sustainably-produced food.

Topics:

• Can Blockchain technology advance the vertical farming industry? Moderator: Bernhard Hecker

• Potential of renewable energy sources in the industry and energy efficiency in indoor farms. Moderator: Ramin Ebrahimnejad

• Indoor/Vertical Farming Designs and Strategies. Moderator: Joel Cuello

Roundtable Discussion

The Science of Food Production in the City
Food and future cities — growing food where the people live: what, why and how

Moderated panel discussion with public Q&A session.

Food production meets all of the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals; accordingly, it also touches on all of Urban Future’s thematic areas. Why then is food production so often left out of city planning? This roundtable discussion will cover the importance of placing food at the centre of city planning, and the best ways to go about doing so. Hear unique industry perspectives on what is working and what needs to change, and then take the opportunity to ask questions in a 20-minute public Q&A session.

Event info and tickets are available here: https://pretix.eu/associationverticalfarming/urban-future-2019/

Student tickets are available at a reduced price of €220. Please contact kb@vertical-farming.net for a voucher code.

Please send any questions or special requests to info@vertical-farming.net

The decision to step down has not been taken lightly and is based on irreconcilable differences within the AVF Board regarding financial management, accountability and managing conflicts of interest. After a long and intense period of internal discussion and concerted attempts to resolve the differences in a constructive manner, no meaningful progress has been achieved. As a consequence, Zoellner and McBride cannot fulfil their duties and responsibilities as members of the Board of Directors anymore.

“It is unfortunate, in an organization like the AVF that could be the choice for the growing indoor farming industry, that conflicts of interests and inadequate transparency risks important partnership with the business community and public funding agencies”, Zoellner says. In 2017, the newly elected Board of Directors was tasked to professionalize the organization. Among other steps, Zoellner and McBride attempted to implement an improved financial reporting and control system, to obtain basic insight into the association’s financials and to resolve concerns over allocation of membership fees. Despite their efforts and being in the majority, no agreement could be reached by the Board. Zoellner reports, “Regrettably, it has not been possible to implement simple yet important improvements required to professionalize the association. We would like to apologize to all AVF members for this, as this was the agenda that members had been defined for the Board to execute.”

Concerns about the way of working within the AVF have not gone unnoticed. The organization has suffered from a steady erosion of membership over the past years and many more AVF members have terminated their membership recently. McBride adds: “We have done everything we could think of, but could not achieve the progress that is needed within the current organizational structure. Sadly, making it impossible for us to do our jobs according to the statutes.”
Zoellner and McBride see that the indoor farming industry has moved on already and are now considering different venues to serve the industry going forward. They look forward to engage in the continuing value proposition with constructive and transparent ways of working.

Dear AVF Members,

The Association for Vertical Farming is evolving from an emerging movement into an industry organization ready for the next steps. To quote Alibaba founder and philanthropist Jack Ma, “The next generation of globalization should be inclusive and create opportunities for young people to get involved. The last 30 years of globalization was controlled by 60,000 big companies. In the next 30 years, we will have 6 or 16 or 60 million companies get involved in globalization.”

At the AVF, we have taken this quote to heart based on experience from the past and with members feedback, we are adjusting the overall AVF strategy by bringing changes to the board and staff to ensure that the Association is ready and able to pick up the priorities that we agreed on at the Annual General Meeting in Munich on the 1st of December 2017.

We will want to engage with our members at the core of our mission and interact more effectively with policy makers, the horticulture industry and our partners. Also important is the further development of our global network of members and acquisition of new members – to meet that goal we are planning an upcoming AVF summit in Hong Kong in September.

The AVF is now developing into a more professional organization. We are changing the way we work and in the course of that process we have also made some changes to AVF staff.  A few well-known names have now moved on in a different direction, such as Henry Gordon Smith, Zjef van Acker and Mark Horler. I would like to thank them for the contributions they have made to the Association in the past years and wish them all the best in their future in the vertical farming industry.

With this, the AVF team is looking forward to helping our members turn 2018 into a successful and prosperous year and encourage all of you to reach out to us with your ideas and suggestions @ members@vertical-farming.net.

New AVF Staff – Our team is eager to work with you and help you succeed.

Anne Flour, European Affairs Manager,

Anne is a highly motivated EU Project Manager with extensive  experience in agriculture and environment. As an independent, she supports organisations to thrive in the European Union context.

Gus van der Feltz, Head of Member Relations
Gus is a self-employed entrepreneur and Vertical Farming expert. Between 2014 and 2017 Gus was responsible for Vertical Farming at Philips and Philips Lightning

Yanni Garica Postigo  Operations Manager,

Yanni is the co-founder of PlantHive. Formerly business controller @ St. Gilles Municipality, International-minded and curious!

New Board of Directors

Christine Zimmermann-Loessl, Chairwoman
Christine has extensive NGO EU/US/Asia experience

Thomas Zöllner, Vice-Chairman
Tom is an entrepreneur and expert for innovation in agri-tech, with a solid base in the Vertical Farming Industry.

Penny McBride, Vice-Chairwoman
Penny is a start-up/strategic advisor in the urban agriculture industry in the US and internationally.

Key objectives for the Association for Vertical Farming in 2018 / 2019:

1. Standardization and Certification (S&C): With our members, AVF will lay out the groundwork for standards and reference data for agri-tech crop production. We will soon announce a proposal for committee composition and the roadmap for partnerships with our members and regional organizations.

2. Education (E): The AVF will facilitate education & training for the agri-tech industry while integrating a new e-learning platform. Additionally, we will strive to publish relevant industry white papers in multiple languages to help distribute knowledge into the global market.

3. Policy Advocacy (PA): Policy development, already started with the successful Summit in Washington DC, will continue to foster advocacy with policymakers, pursue grant opportunities, partnerships and lobby on behalf of the members in the EU and USA. We have established an office in Brussels and registered officially as a lobby organization at the EU.

Finally, a short reminder of membership payment – please remit, membership is due 01. January of each Year. If you have not received your invoice yet, please contact us at info@vertical-farming.net

By Penny McBride

Once again Congress is preparing to take on the US Farm Bill, which is a billion dollar web of agriculture subsidies, welfare payments and environmental support.

One of the goals of the Association for Vertical Farming (AVF) is to build political consensus around food and agriculture policy that has the potential to impact our members. This year’s 2017 Summit, taking place in Washington DC September 22 and 23, will address segments of the Farm Bill and help AVF Members negotiate these often confusing waters.

Typically the Farm Bill is renewed every 5 years; the last farm bill that expired at the end of 2012 was not renewed until the end of 2014. The next round is scheduled to be on the table in 2018. The hope is that this will be a true bi-partisan bill.

Directly related to the Farm Bill is the Urban Agriculture Act, being introduced by Senator Stabenow of Michigan. This contains ideas and provisions intended to be incorporated into the 2018 Farm Bill. Known as Marker Legislation, because it provides an opportunity to highlight priories and ideas that get written into a future bill, the Urban Agriculture Act is particularly important to follow because of its ability to impact the upcoming Farm Bill. For the first time ever, this Farm Bill could address the unique needs of urban farmers by investing new resources and increasing flexibility through existing programs administered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). Here is a summary of the potential areas of impact:

Creating New Economic Opportunities

• Agriculture Cooperatives: Expands USDA authority to support farm cooperatives in urban areas, helping urban farmers who want to form and operate an agriculture cooperative get products to market. Reduces individual financial risk and burdensome paperwork by allowing USDA loans to be managed by agriculture cooperatives.

• Rooftops, Vertical Farms & Indoor Production: Makes it easier for urban farms to apply for USDA farm programs and assists producers with information on operating rooftop and vertical farms. Supports access to land and production sites in urban communities through innovative conservation grants.

• Cutting-Edge Research: Invests $10 million for cutting-edge research to explore market opportunities for urban agriculture and develop new technologies for lowering energy and water needs. Includes national data collection and a new urban agriculture section in the Local and Regional Foods market report.

Providing New Financial Tools & Support

• Loans: Expands existing USDA farm loan programs so urban farmers can cover new farm related activities that improve their business. Now urban farmers can use farm loans to finance food production, marketing, and value-added processing.

• Risk Management Tools: Provides a new affordable risk management tool for urban farmers to protect against crop losses, taking into account the risks, food prices and contracts unique to urban farms.

• New Urban Ag Office: Creates a new urban agriculture office at USDA to coordinate urban agriculture policies across the Department and provide urban farmers with technical assistance.

• Mentorship and Education: Connects urban farmers with rural farmers to provide education and mentorship support.

Increasing Access to Healthy Foods

• Healthy Food: Creates a new pilot program that provides incentives to urban farmers who use sustainable growing practices and commit to supplying healthy food to their neighbors, connecting urban farms with families who need greater access to healthy, local foods.

Creating a Healthier Environment

• Urban Composting: Creates a pilot program to provide urban farmers access to compost while reducing food waste that would otherwise go into landfills.

A new AVF partner is the lobby firm VH Strategies. VH Strategies is a bipartisan government affairs and consulting firm based in Washington, D.C. with offices in The Hague and Amsterdam in the Netherlands. VH Strategies has initiated the Urban Agriculture Coalition, an alliance of individuals, institutions, and companies working to promote change in food and farm policy at the federal, state, and local level.

VH Strategies will be one of many amazing speakers at the upcoming AVF Summit along with agricultural scientist and director of the USDA’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture, Dr. Sonny Ramaswamy. Speakers will be addressing important topics at this pivotal moment in time.

We hope you will join us in DC for a great event!

By Penny McBride, agritecture.com

Since 2013 the AVF has spread throughout Europe, the USA and into Asia and India. The AVF has continued along its path of collaboration by enlisting volunteers throughout the world to grow its network and influence. What began as a small idea has grown into a recognized name. For many looking to be actively involved in vertical farming, the AVF has served as a consistent resource for achieving their goals.

The AVF is just getting started and they have many bold plans for the future. In 2016 they are launching the first e-learning platform for Vertical Farming, expanding their member-base, organizing more of their well-received collaborative workshops and multiple conferences around the world. Their capstone event in 2016 will be the AVF Summit, which is taking place in Amsterdam on June 13th, just after GreenTech. Moreover, they are initiating data benchmarking within the nascent vertical farming industry, having received expert guidance from Columbia University’s Sustainability Management Program on strategies for developing a sustainability certification framework for indoor agriculture. In 2016 the AVF will also release its first whitepaper presenting certain knowledge gained since inception. To achieve all this and more, they are starting up project groups consisting of their members.

Above all, the AVF is a network of professionals driving the dialogue and business of vertical farming. For more information and to join their network, visit www.vertical-farming.net. You can also subscribe to their monthly newsletter, join interesting discussions in their Forum or LinkedIn group and follow them on facebook (https://www.facebook.com/vfassociation), Twitter (@AVerticalFarm), and Instagram (@VerticalFarm).