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From the outside, the gray and white warehouse near the corner of Oris Street and Mona Boulevard seems like a thousand other mundane Southern California buildings. But the interior, once completed, will resemble a sketch from a futurist's daydreams. If all goes well, the 95,000-square-foot Compton facility will house rows of hydroponic towers organized into emerald walls of non-GMO, pesticide-free leafy greens. These plants won't rely on sunlight in order to grow. Gleaming LED lamps will provide all the light the crops could ever want. Robots will transport seedlings while other machines move the towers as part of an orchestrated...

Farmshelf, an indoor farm that lets you grow lettuce and herbs, is sprouting up at restaurants, corporate kitchens and food halls around the country Farm-to-table is taking root in corporate offices. Farmshelf, a Brooklyn-based startup, has begun selling indoor farm kits that grow food like lettuce and herbs using hydroponics — a method of growing plants in a water-based, nutrient-rich solution instead of soil. And the product is so popular that corporate cafeterias, restaurants and food halls around the U.S. are dropping $7,000 apiece to buy in. “We’re building the Lego blocks to grow food anywhere,” founder and CEO Andrew...

The world’s largest vertical farm is coming to Dubai. The indoor farm is a $40 million joint venture between Crop One Holdings and Emirates Flight Catering, who say it’s a way of producing pesticide-free crops while using a fraction of the water that traditional farming does. The produce will feed passengers of Emirates and other airlines at Dubai’s Al Maktoum International Airport. The farm will be built near the airport, eliminating trucking costs and emissions. But is vertical farming really as green as it seems? HOW DOES IT WORK? To feed a growing global population, which could reach 9.1 billion...

Link only due to copyright issues: https://www.wired.com/story/the-hydroponic-robotic-future-of-farming-in-greenhouses-at-iron-ox/

By now, the images of shelves full of perfect greens in hulking warehouses, stacked floor to ceiling in sterile environs and illuminated by high-powered LED lights, have become familiar. Food futurists and industry leaders say these high-tech vertical farming operations are the future of agriculture — able to operate anywhere, virtually invincible against pests, pathogens, and poor weather, and producing local, fresh, high-quality, lower-carbon food year-round. That future seemed one step closer to reality last year when San Francisco-based indoor farming startup Plenty, which grows a variety of salad and leafy greens hydroponically (without soil) and uses artificial lighting in...

A new way to farm indoors using different wavelengths of light could boost the taste of fruits, salads and herbs, while also increasing food supply and nutritional value. Growing food inside brings many benefits to farmers by reducing the amount of land, fertilisers, energy and water needed to cultivate the plants. But it can come with a major drawback – produce grown indoors sometimes lacks the depth of flavour it would have if it was allowed to flourish and ripen outside. And it is the controlled environment of indoor farming itself that seems to be at least partly responsible. "A...

The Weekly Gardening Thread is a weekly gathering of folks that love soil, seeds and plants of all kinds. From complete newbies that are looking to start that first potted plant, to gardeners with some acreage, to Master Gardener level and beyond, we would love to hear from you. This thread is non-political, although you will find that most here are conservative folks. No matter what, you won’t be flamed and the only dumb question is the one that isn’t asked. It is impossible to hijack the Weekly Gardening Thread. Planting, Harvest to Table(recipes)preserving, good living - there is no...

A British company says it can greatly extend the range of crops grown in indoor growing formats beyond the established leafy greens and herbs. Discussions on the potential of urban and indoor farming invariably mention the need to feed a growing global population, forecast to reach 10 billion by the middle of the century, against a backdrop of climate change and depleted land and other resources. But so far, for technical and economic reasons, the movement has largely targeted leafy greens and herbs — relatively high-value but low-mass, low-calorie crops. Indeed, one successful London grower specialises in "micro-salads" sought by...

In an old warehouse in Newark, New Jersey, that once housed the state's biggest indoor paint ball arena, leafy green plants such as kale, arugula and watercress sprout from tall metal towers under bright lights. A local company named AeroFarms has built what it says is the world's largest indoor vertical farm, without the use of soil or sunlight. Its ambitious goal is to grow high-yielding crops via economical methods to provide locally sourced food to the community, protect the environment and ultimately even combat hunger worldwide. "We use about 95 percent less water to grow the plants, about 50...

In April 2012, a Kansas SWAT team raided the home of Robert and Addie Harte, their 7-year-old daughter and their 13-year-old son. The couple, both former CIA analysts, awoke to pounding at the door. When Robert Harte answered, SWAT agents flooded the home. He was told to lie on the floor. When Addie Harte came out to see what was going on, she saw her husband on his stomach as SWAT cop stood over him with a gun.

In a rare turn of events, Israel received almost unanimous support at the United Nations last week for its proposal to further the dissemination of agricultural and farming technology to developing African nations. Despite of the humanitarian nature of the proposal, it was met with vehement opposition from representatives of Arab nations, including some that will be helped by the proposal. Regardless of the aid the proposal would provide to African countries who are suffering from drought and malnutrition, Arab nations, some of whom sit on the United Nations human rights council, did not vote in favor of the proposal...

Transcend Lighting, one of the more unconventional startups accepted into Y Combinator’s latest cohort, is launching out of beta today to bring its energy-saving LED lights to indoor farmers everywhere. Founder Brian Bennett, an optical engineer by training, invented the first Transcend prototype after his father challenged him to build some LED lights for the family farm in upstate New York. When the lights he designed were successful, Bennett entered a business plan competition at Columbia, won some money to continue developing the idea, and was accepted into Y Combinator’s Spring 2015 class. “Farms today, generally speaking, use high pressure...

From a distance, the reservoir appears topped by a flotilla of rubber duckies. On closer inspection, the water’s surface is packed with thousands of free-floating, 13-inch plastic balls, clustered to form an undulating cover. Developed by the Israeli startup Neotop (formerly known as Top-It-Up), the mass of balls serves as a floating cooling tower, reducing surface temperatures, algae and evaporation up to 95 percent. It’s one of many potential water-saving solutions to come out of Israel’s high-tech dream factory. This could make a difference in California. With the state’s reservoirs at historic lows — the two biggest, Shasta Lake and...

n a Mediterranean beach 10 miles south of Tel Aviv, Israel, a vast new industrial facility hums around the clock. It is the world’s largest modern seawater desalination plant, providing 20 percent of the water consumed by the country’s households. Built for the Israeli government by Israel Desalination Enterprises, or IDE Technologies, at a cost of around $500 million, it uses a conventional desalination technology called reverse osmosis (RO). Thanks to a series of engineering and materials advances, however, it produces clean water from the sea cheaply and at a scale never before achieved. Worldwide, some 700 million people don’t...

The statistics for this incredibly successful indoor farming endeavor in Japan are staggering: 25,000 square feet producing 10,000 heads of lettuce per day (100 times more per square foot than traditional methods) with 40% less power, 80% less food waste and 99% less water usage than outdoor fields. But the freshest news from the farm: a new facility using the same technologies has been announced and is now under construction in Hong Kong, with Mongolia, Russia and mainland China on the agenda for subsequent near-future builds. In the currently-completed setup, customized LED lighting developed with GE helps plants grow up...

Today I have an update for you on my hydroponics adventures. The system has been up and running all season (April 20 - November 1) so there is a lot of information to be shared. The system currently includes 12 beds - 4 outdoors and 8 in a greenhouse - for a total surface area of 56 sq.ft (~ 5.5 m2). An in-depth description of the system was published last year on Survivalblog. I made only 1 substantial change since then and that is in the way the polyethylene drain pipes are connected to the beds. The connections need to...

Due to the rising cost of feed, many small scale pork producers are exploring alternatives in order to increase their profit margins. At Donnelly Farms, Jack Donnelly is producing hydroponically-grown green forage for his hogs, and has been able to reduce feed outlay and increase their bottom line. Donnelly Farms is a small, family-owned farm located in McClure, Ohio. The Donnelly family has been raising pork and goat meat for private buyers since 1981. They raise 25-45 hogs per month. The majority of their hogs are sold to private individuals, and a small batch is sold to Tyson Meats. Donnelly...

I think I think too much ...

Forgotten man Steve Tucker served a 10-year prison sentence for selling light bulbs. Is America's drug war worth it? BY SCOTT HENRY A year has passed since Steve Tucker made his unheralded return to Atlanta. His one-bedroom flat, tucked into a sprawling Sandy Springs apartment complex, is furnished sparsely: a recliner, TV, computer and a small, picnic-style table that serves as both dining hutch and desk. The stark white static of the walls is interrupted only by three small, web-like dream catchers tacked to the Sheetrock. It's the sort of Spartan minimalism one might expect of someone who, until recently,...