Category: Hydroponics

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Las Vegas – Home to One of the World’s Largest Indoor Farms

Touch the Soil News #1072 (Feature photo – Las Vegas – CCA 2.0 Generic) Chinese Firm Sananbio just opened one of the largest indoor farms in the world. Called the Oasis Biotech, the 215,000 square foot facility embraces vertical trays and high-tech lighting, water recycling and soil-less growing. Located in Las Vegas, the facility even has air conditioning to keep the growing environment optimal for the plants. The indoor farm is touted to be able to provide 9,500 servings of leafy green salads a day. According to the Company ( https://oasisbiotech.com/ ) they have 17 varieties / mixes of greens that they already grow. Plans are to expand into strawberries…

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Farm One – Where Rare Food Plants Grow

Touch the Soil News #888 (Feature photo courtesy of Farm One) Located in Manhattan, New York, this underground hydroponic farm focuses on scouring the globe for rare seeds. Over time, Farm One aims to build the widest selection of edible herbs and greens in the world. At only 1,200 square feet, the farm already grows over 200 varieties of plants and is serving a respectable number of upscale restaurants in Manhattan. For $50, a visitor to Farm One can take a tour, taste dozens of rare herbs and flowers and receive a box of herbs to take home. The farm boasts of zero food miles. Either folks and chefs stop…

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Plenty – Can it Be So?

Touch the Soil News #710 (photo courtesy of Plenty) The information is sketchy, but unusual. Vertical hydroponic farming has been around for a few years and attracted a considerable amount of Wall Street money. There are claims that vertical hydroponics can produce more than 125 times that of field crops in the same space and use only 5 percent of the water. Recently, a new upstart called “Plenty” has garnered the attention of the Wall Street Journal and Fast Company. You can visit Plenty’s website at http://www.plenty.ag/ and read the articles. Different from rows of hydroponic plants with LED lights above them, Plenty uses 20 foot vertical towers with LED…

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Sundrop Farms – Wow!

Touch the Soil News #702 (Photo – Aerial of Sundrop Farms – CC SA 4.0) Sundrop Farms in Australia is a testament to human ingenuity. The farm is a 90-acre facility that includes greenhouses and a concentrated solar power generator to desalinate water (from the ocean) and power the greenhouses. To start with, Sundrop produces tomatoes. Estimates are that the facility has a potential to produce 30 million pounds of tomatoes a year. Initial production is under a contract with supermarket chain – Coles. Coles has 776 supermarkets throughout Australia employing some 100,000 people. You’ve got to see the video below. Sundrop plans to employ about 200 people and all…

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Millions of Dollars for Shipping Container Farming

Touch the Soil News #562 Agricool – a French container farming startup – wants to change global food, one shipping container at a time. The company announced it has raised $4.3 million from French venture capital firms to build out shipping containers into high-tech hydroponic farms. Agricool intends to use the money to build 75 enclosed hydroponic containers designed to grow strawberries. The goal is to install these 75 hydroponic containers around Paris in 2017 and produce about 91 tons of strawberries. Hydroponic farm freight containers from Corner-Stalk Farms. The four containers were purchased from Freight Farms and are located in Boston, Massachusetts (photo courtesy of Freight Farms and Corner…

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Another Interesting Approach to Urban Agriculture

Touch the Soil News #400 Larry and Zhanna Hountz, of Baltimore, Maryland (a city of 600,000) turned one of the rooms in their city rowhouse into a hydroponic micro-green facility. Larry and Zhanna grow some 75 varieties of microgreens all of which are sold to about 10 local restaurants. Called City-Hydro, the growing technique is quite simple. Seeds germinate in food-safe containers on coconut hulks pads, elevated by bamboo sticks above water in the base of the tray. It only takes 10-12 days to grow a microgreen from a seed to the point where it is ready to sell. Using only LED lights and filtered water, the plants require not…

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Vertical Farming – Plant Factories – Controlled Environments

Touch the Soil News #287 While most folks wait for spring to start gardening, a small number of people – often with significant financial backing – are entering the arena of controlled environment farming. Farming inside is not simple. One must buy buildings, retrofit the interiors, use expensive high-tech lighting, labor, get the right environmental management and on and on. Let’s just say a million dollars does not go far if you want to commercialize and produce in volume. What the controlled environment farming entrepreneurs are betting on is increasing demand for: Food that is grown consistently Food that is grown locally Food that can be grown year-round Food that…

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