Howmon:
Nice one

AeroFarms has grown over 250 types of leafy greens and sells more than 20 varieties of greens such as arugula, kale and spinach but hopes to expand their offering in the future. The scheme imposes height constraints; as of now, everything grown at vertical farms is a type of short-stemmed leafy green. And while controlled growing allows year-round production and protects these new-age farmers from the vagaries of nature, they still contend with the possibility of crops dying from human error or technological malfunction.

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“I ate some of the arugula here,” said New Jersey governor Chris Christie after a recent visit to a smaller AeroFarms facility in the neighborhood. “It tastes fabulous. No dressing necessary.”

garriguy:
According to claim, this farm yields as much as 70 times of the traditional farm!

The question is if this crops won't have aide effects like improper breakdown of food components and nutrients.

Pls read:

An ambitious, almost fantastical, manifestation of agricultural technology is expected to come to fruition this fall. From the remains of an abandoned steel mill in Newark, New Jersey, the creators of AeroFarms are building what they say will be the largest vertical farm, producing two million pounds of leafy greens a year.

Whether it even qualifies as a “farm” is a matter of taste. The greens will be manufactured using a technology called aeroponics, a technique in which crops are grown in vertical stacks of plant beds, without soil, sunlight or water.

The farm, built in the economically depressed New Jersey city promises new jobs, millions of dollars in public-private investment, and an array of locally grown leafy greens for sale. The company has spent some $30m to bring to reality a new breed of “green agriculture” that seeks to produce more crops in less space while minimizing environmental damage, even if it means completely divorcing food production from the natural ecosystem.

AeroFarms and other companies developing similar controlled growing climates claim to be transforming agriculture. Proponents of vertical farming call it the “third green revolution”, analogizing the developments to Apple and Tesla. They tout the potential of such technology to address food shortages as the world population continues to grow.

AeroFarms touts their products as free of pesticides and fertilizer, an attribute that investors think will attract customers who buy organic produce. “We definitely see the need for healthy food in the local area and Newark in particular,” said Lata Reddy, vice-president for corporate social responsibility at Prudential Financial, one of the investors in the project.

But, food that is not grown in soil may not be palatable to many, even those who are opting for organic substitutes. “If you take the soil out of the system, is it a legitimate organic system?” questioned Carolyn Dimitri, director of the food studies program at New York University. The US Department of Agriculture does not consider the question of organic certification for growing methods that do not use soil, according to AeroFarms’ website.

garriguy:
“Urban farming is trendy,” Dimitri said. It remains an open question, she said, whether it will be economically viable. Prudential Financial has invested “patient capital” in the venture, which is used to finance social impact projects that are unlikely to yield benefits right away. There are no aeroponics projects of this scale but AeroFarms has piloted the technology at Philip’s Academy charter school in Newark, where students are served greens grown at the school.

Seventy times the yield of traditional farms

Marc Oshima, the chief marketing officer at AeroFarms, yanked open a tiny grey door in a back alley in downtown Newark that leads into an old nightclub with vividly painted walls. In 2014, AeroFarms converted the space into a research and development facility. “Out there, in nature, we don’t have control over sunlight, rainfall,” Oshima said, “here, we are giving plants what they need to thrive.”

The moist sanitized air that envelops the R& lab is missing one ingredient: the earthiness that permeates any agricultural operation.

garriguy:
At the repurposed sites, AeroFarms is pushing the limits of what David Rosenberg, the company’s CEO, calls “precision agriculture”. The scheme ditches the romanticized ideal of farming, acres and acres of open fields dotted with men and women toiling in the sun, getting their hands dirty, in favor of enclosed urban spaces where engineers, electricians and harvesters mill about, wearing protective clothing, masks, and gloves.

With its multicolored LED lights, computer screens lining the walls, and faithful preservation of club decor, AeroFarms’ research facility could easily pass off as a sci-fi themed club. It makes a befitting setting for a company that is promising to increase crop yields by as much as 70 times compared to traditional field farms, without using any pesticides or fertilizers.

The fine print is that the productivity is calculated using square footage occupied and not the vertical space utilized, making comparisons with ground floor-only traditional farms fraught. And critics point out that no traditional farm that size comes with a price tag of over $30m.


For New Jersey, where unemployment rates have been persistently above the national average, the promise of new jobs and fresh investment has ensured buy-in from the state. Christie, visiting the smaller aeroponics facility in March lavished praise on the “public-private” partnership.

The New Jersey Economic Development Authority provided nearly $9m in incentives, stretched over 10 years, which includes a $2.2m grant under the Economic Redevelopment and Growth program and $6.5m in tax credits.

AeroFarms currently employs close to 100 people, and is promising more jobs in the months to come as the company grows. Like other companies in this space, it is relying on productivity gains to offset high cost of expensive technology and emerge as a successful business.

Read more here...

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/aug/14/world-largest-vertical-farm-newark-green-revolution