Dragon fruit used to feel like a traveler’s fruit, something you’d find in a far east market that sells Pad Thai and bags of pickled grasshoppers, eaten with a stick.  Now it’s turning up everywhere. I see it stacked neatly in Canadian and American supermarkets, tucked into smoothies in California cafés, and increasingly in Eastern Mediterranean markets where it once felt exotic and rare. It has been turning up in our weekly CSA box and my daughter asks for them now as much as my son wants apples.

It looks beautiful, with tiny kiwi-like seeds on the inside, its taste somewhat bland in comparison. You’ll find the insides in a shocking hot pink, white or yellow. So yeah –– part of its appeal is visual. Dragon fruit looks like it was designed by a poet with a sense of humor. But it’s the inside that matters, and that’s where this fruit earns its place as a superfruit.

Dragon fruit is also known by several other names depending on where you encounter it. In much of the US and Latin America it’s commonly called pitaya or pitahaya, terms you’ll often see used interchangeably with dragon fruit on market labels. Botanically, the fruit comes from a cactus sometimes referred to as night-blooming cereus, a nod to the plant’s dramatic flowers that open after dark. Older or poetic names like strawberry pear, belle of the night, or queen of the night still appear occasionally, though today dragon fruit and pitaya are the names most shoppers recognize.

Dragon fruit is rich in antioxidants, fiber, vitamins, and minerals, while staying low in calories. It’s one of those foods that manages to feel indulgent while doing something genuinely useful for the body. Like cucumbers.

The deep red and pink varieties contain healthful betalains and flavonoids, compounds that help neutralize free radicals and reduce inflammation. These antioxidants are linked to lower risks of chronic diseases, including heart disease and certain cancers. Vitamin C adds another layer of immune support, especially welcome in winter months when fresh fruit choices can feel limited.

Fiber is where dragon fruit really shines. It contains both soluble and insoluble fiber, which means it helps digestion in more than one way. Insoluble fiber keeps things moving, while soluble fiber feeds beneficial gut bacteria, strengthening digestion and immunity from the inside out. People watching blood sugar levels often appreciate dragon fruit for the same reason; fiber slows sugar absorption and may help reduce insulin resistance over time.

There’s also a quiet mineral richness here. Magnesium supports muscle function and sleep. Calcium and phosphorus contribute to bone health. Iron, especially when paired with vitamin C, supports oxygen flow in the body. None of this is flashy, but together it makes dragon fruit feel like a thoughtful food, one that supports the body without demanding attention.

I like dragon fruit most when it’s not overworked. Fresh slices in half with a squeeze of lime and a spoon to dig it out are enough. But one recipe surprised me, and it’s now become a favorite way to serve it to guests who think they already know this fruit.

Can you cook dragon fruit?

Take ripe red dragon fruit and cut it into thick cubes. Toss gently with a drizzle of olive oil, a pinch of flaky salt, and a squeeze of lemon. Roast it briefly in a hot oven, just until the edges caramelize slightly. Let it cool, then scatter over labneh or thick Greek yogurt. Finish with cracked black pepper, fresh mint, and a few toasted pumpkin seeds. The heat deepens the fruit’s sweetness, the salt pulls it into savory territory, and suddenly dragon fruit feels less like a smoothie ingredient and more like a grown-up dish.

Perhaps that’s why it’s showing up more often now. As markets globalize and palates mature, we’re learning to see familiar foods in new ways. Dragon fruit no longer feels like a novelty.

The post Dragon fruit health benefits appeared first on Green Prophet.

In the Middle East’s November, the landscape changes from dry, brown summer to soft green. After a week of good rain, you’ll see clovers and fuzzy hints of wild grasses sprouting everywhere -between the cracks in the sidewalk, along road medians, and in gardens. This bodes well for the produce of late fall.

Fruit of November:

Olives are still on some trees, left to ripen and turn black for late harvest. If you don’t mind stooping, you can pick quite a lot from those that fell to the ground. Good olive pickings are found in national parks. 

Here’s the Green Prophet way to preserve olives. Black, wrinkled ones don’t require much time, and sometimes all they need is to be packed in salt.

Persimmons are fat and orange, but most aren’t quite ripe. Buy, but put them aside a day or two until they soften.

Avocados are fat and green, and their price has gone down. In the shuk (market), there’s usually a stand of avocados ripe for eating, which the vendor is desperate to sell before they go too soft. Select some, but beware signs of bruising on the flesh. One way to tell if an avocado is good is to scratch the little nub of stem off the top. If the patch of flesh under it is a healthy green, buy the avocado. If it’s a sad brown, reject it.

Apples and pears are in full season. Here, the best pears are the unassuming-looking, little green ones. They feel wooden in the hand until they ripen, and then they’re far more flavorful than any imported pear.

Make your own applesauce with our easy recipe. 

Citrus fruit is best after the first rain, so pick up all that vitamin C in fruit shape. Oranges, clementines, lemons, yellow and red grapefruit and pomelos are sweet and juicy now. Lemons are especially suited to freezing. Just rinse and pat them dry, and stash them in the freezer, whole. They’ll be mushy when thawed out, but easy to juice.

Dragon fruit and bananas are in season. There are still plenty of pomegranates.

Pineapples of a reasonable size are available too, where once they were tiny and sort of sad-looking. 

If you like guavas, now is the season. Some people can’t abide them, but I like them, and buy a couple every year just to set out on a plate and enjoy the pungent fragrance.

Vegetables in season in November

Rain brings on glorious vegetables. Leafy greens in season now are kale, Swiss chard, fat lettuces, leeks, and artichokes. 

Jerusalem artichokes, kohlrabi and fennel are worth buying right now. Cucumbers, hothouse tomatoes, pumpkins, and squashes are abundant and (relatively) cheap.

Beets, potato varieties, celeriac, carrots of different colors and red and purple sweet potatoes are good, although root vegetables will be even better in October and December.

Cauliflower and broccoli are recovering from summer’s heat. They were available at the beginning of the month, but not advisable; now they’re worth buying. Just turn the package around to inspect them closely, and if you can handle the vegetable itself, check for insect infestation.

Have you tried our garlicky vegan cauliflower recipe? It’s divine. 

Onions, which looked withered in summer, are now plump and firm. Eggplants, which shriveled with exhaustion just a month ago, have perked up with cooler weather. You can buy large baladi (heritage) eggplants with their attractive ridges and big flavor, and for a short while, baby eggplants for pickling.

See (and cook) our recipe for eggplants stuffed with cheese and tomatoes.

Bell peppers of all colors are looking firm and good. But chili-heads beware: if you’re looking for hot peppers, hurry up and buy some now, because in winter, hot peppers aren’t very hot. 

Mushrooms are grown in specialty farms, but somehow are more beautiful in cooler weather. Mushroom prices are reasonable, and shops offer several different varieties.

Herbs in Season in November

The herbs you love are for sale in big bunches tied with rubber bands.There’s watercress, basil, rocket, dill, tarragon, chives, thyme (good for hanging up and drying), scallions, mint, coriander leaf, parsley,  and sour grass. 

Woody herbs like rosemary, za’atar, sage, and bitter wormwood (sheeba) for tea are in full leaf too.  Are you wondering how to use za’atar, pictured above? Here’s focaccia with an olive and za’atar topping.

Forager’s notes for November:

Writing in mid-November, I haven’t seen any great abundance of wild herbs. Nettles and chickweed are just sprouting and not noticeable unless you’re keeping an eye out for them. Look for mallows and wild beets in December.

The post November’s Seasonal Produce appeared first on Green Prophet.

Infarm, a company that grows fresh produce inside supermarkets, has recently announced a $170 million USD funding round to help the company expand across Europe. Their environment-controlled and automated growing chambers grow food such as leafy greens inside the supermarket, so it’s fresh, without your food accumulating food miles.  

The company was founded by three Israelis in Berlin in 2013, and they announced this astounding investment achievement despite the Covid plague destroying global markets. Food, we understood, is something that must stay constant. The need for food which is grown local, and available fresh now resonates at a time of uncertainty and the basic need for survival.

The company is raising $200 million USD total in their Series C round funding which was by LGT Lightstone, Hanaco, Bonnier, Haniel, and Latitude, Atomico, TriplePoint Capital, Mons Capital and Astanor Ventures.

With a mix of equity and debt financing, the fresh capital brings Infarm’s total funding to date to more than $300 million, underscoring consumer and retailer appetite for Infarm’s approach to fresh, sustainable and local food production in the wake of this year’s pandemic.

By 2025, Infarm’s farming fridge network is expected to reach more than 5,000,000 square feet to become the largest distributed hydroponic network in the world as it builds towards helping cities become self-sufficient in their food production. Competition includes Freight Farms in the US, and BrightFarms, also American. 

“The coronavirus pandemic has put a global spotlight on the urgent agricultural and ecological challenges of our time,” says Erez Galonska, Co-founder and CEO of Infarm. His brother Guy Galonska is also a founder: “At Infarm, we believe there’s a better, healthier way to feed our cities: increasing access to fresh, pure, sustainable produce, grown as close as possible to people,” adds Erez.

The investment will be used to deepen the regional and local penetration of Infarm’s global farming network and complete development of Infarm’s new generation of vertical cloud-connected farms, capable of generating the crop-equivalent of acres of farmland and amplifying the diversity of produce currently available through vertical farming. Vertical farming is also known as hydroponic farming or controlled environment agriculture.

The technology has become developed and well-known over the years thanks to cannabis growers who used this energy-intensive and “stealth” mode of farming to grow cannabis with high concentrations of the active ingredient THC. When it was illegal to grow in Canada, young entrepreneurs were inspired by early blueprints from NASA and farming in space, and found ways to set up a soil-less system in basements and closets. To their surprise they could grow better quality cannabis, faster as inputs such as lighting, humidity and nutrients could be tightly controlled. 

And growing food became the next natural step for people who wanted to grow fresh food year round even though it’s usually not cost effective to grow tomatoes or lettuce this way, unless you do it at scale. 

Hydroponics and variations of it, using just water, a semi-solid coir medium or Styrofoam and/or with fish added, has become the promise for growing food in far-flung locations like Antarctica and food deserts where chocolate bars are available at bodegas, but fresh greens are not. This is according to mothers I have met in Harlem, New York. The hydroponic method is not that complicated at all in theory but in practice it is hard to achieve good results without know-how in chemistry, engineering and biology. 

An integration of advanced engineering, software and farming technology, the Infarm farms will save labour, land, water, energy, and food-miles, while contributing to a more sustainable food system, the company proposes.

Partnering with Aldi, Marks & Spencer, Sobeys

While companies like Farmigo founded in New York (also by an Israeli) wanted to put supermarkets out of business, in the past year Infarm has been working to keep them relevant and formed new partnerships with the world’s largest retailers, including Albert Heijn (Netherlands), Aldi Süd (Germany), COOP/Irma (Denmark), Empire Company Ltd (Sobeys, Safeway, Thrifty Foods – Canada), Kinokuniya (Japan), Kroger (United States), Marks & Spencer (United Kingdom) and Selfridges (United Kingdom).

With operations across 10 countries and 30 cities worldwide, Infarm harvests 500,000+ plants monthly, while using 99.5% less space than soil-based agriculture, some 95% less water, 90% less transport and zero chemical pesticides. Today, 90% of the electricity use throughout the Infarm network is from renewable energy and the company has set a target to reach zero emissions from their production next year.

With the cost of lighting typically very high in hydroponics systems I’d be curious to know how they will do that without buying carbon credits. Consider this Stanford research paper that mentioned the cost of hydroponic lettuce to be about 8KG of carbon compared to 150g if grown conventionally. The research is a few years old and certainly there can be ways to improve energy efficiencies. 

What organic farmers think?

Proponents of organic farming, regenerative agriculture, and permaculture don’t love hydroponics farming because it relies on petroleum-based fertilisers and nutrients as additives, and while there may be no or few bugs in the grow chambers, there is a risk of fungus and bacteria; in nature there is always free natural sun (unless you are in Finland in the winter) and natural interactions between plant, soil; and even among small biota like mycorrhizal fungi which play a role in the uptake of micronutrients to the roots and the overall essence of what we call a plant. There is one school of thought that says the “organic” label can only be applied to soil-based farming. Lawyers are debating the issue now. 

The answer will be somewhere in the middle. Like most things in life the middle way will help us. The dream is many one-acre regenerative farms to feed us healthily and to feed the planet too but meanwhile there is a gap. How do we feed everyone else who can’t afford to buy at Whole Foods?

We need to improve our local supply chain for food. When you live in a country like Israel, Egypt or Jordan with ample sun, growing food inside a supermarket fridge makes no sense, although hydroponics does. See this project in Jordan, funded by the USAID. Or the one that has changed lives in Harlem. 

I had a hydroponics robotics venture (see this article on Bloomberg) and I took it to New York a few years ago and found myself running in circles trying to explain why eating local is good for the planet, it’s good for a circular economy that might one day be about survival. Venture Capitalists laughed at me. They said my technology and vision was a vitamin and not a bandaid –– “a nice to have” but not “a necessary to have”, especially in cities like New York. Then Covid thinking happened.

Here is what investors in Infarm say now (and kudos to the team who worked hard building physical farms and maintaining the pilots):

“We are excited to partner with the Infarm team to accelerate their urban vertical farm vision, ultimately creating a more sustainable food system for a growing population,” says Dharmash Mistry, Partner of LGT Lightstone: “With over $1bn of customer demand, partnerships with 17 of the top 50 global grocers, Infarm is set to revolutionise the market behind a unique ‘demand led’ modular business model.”

Let’s hope. Another Israeli called Benzi Ronen came from Silicon Valley and started a farm-to-table venture in New York and was on top of the world. He had just raised $26 million to grow Farmigo into the Amazon for fresh food and I spoke with him at one point when he warned me to stay in Israel and work there locally for a couple of years before moving stateside. That’s me in the biodome below, growing bok choy for future Martians on my roof in Tel Aviv. I didn’t listen.

I had a venture in robotics to help cannabis farmers (even Mars farmers grow cannabis in space – see this article in Fast Company) and city hydroponic farmers. Farmigo was trying to eliminate supermarkets, by connecting farmers to consumers at drop off points throughout the city. The model was valorous –– who doesn’t want the freshest farm picked veggies every morning? The modern CSA? And it supported local farming, just like what Michael Pollan wants us to do. And to compete with Amazon? Yes. Yes. Yes.

Farmigo raised millions and then the company’s vision to be the Amazon of fresh food could not compete with Amazon. Farmigo changed its business model and now sells software. 

I saw the challenges of the business in supplying fresh food. The mechanics of the machines, the lack of willing labor, software needed, the logistics, the importance of food safety. The fungus, the bacteria. The good bacteria. The bad. The responsibility. The chemicals needed to feed the plants, to keep the systems “clean” and safe. So much is hard to control when you are talking about living things. 

I always said that if hydroponics or farmers that come from Microsoft want to make city farming work the model will look like the cellphone industry: different players supplying various parts like Qualcomm, Verizon, 3M, Broadcom, and Texas Instruments does. Even to make iPhones work. 

Can and will Infarm do it all? 

“We see a massive demand in the market for sustainable, environment-friendly, and healthy food – and Infarm has just the right team in place to make this happen,” says Pasha Romanovski, Co-founding Partner of Hanaco Ventures.

More about Infarm

Founded in Berlin in 2013 by Osnat Michaeli and the brothers Erez and Guy Galonska, Infarm is dedicated to creating a future where local super fresh produce is available for everyone. The farms are placed in various locations in the city, like supermarkets, restaurants and distribution centers, so that vegetables grow and are harvested close to the moment of purchase or consumption. People like Elon Musk’s brother Kimbal Musk has been doing this in New York with a project called Square Roots. They train young entrepreneurs to dream up all sorts of business models inside the shipping container farms built by Freight Farms. 

Some in the VC world I have talked with question the viability of the business model of these containers. While it’s a nice idea it’s hard to get the return on the upfront investment. 

But when it comes to specialty products and “farms” you can find the Infarm service model in all sorts of permutations in the United States. I got to spend some ample time in meetups with a pile of entrepreneurs building an urban farming project in New York. There I met Andrew Carter, now growing mushrooms in a warehouse in Williamsburg. There is also Farm.One which grows papalo, minutina and all the boutique and hipster greens any chef could dream up in the center of New York City. They deliver. 

Lastly and most easily is to try out growing fresh greens at home without the supermarket, or less of the supermarket. I met the founder of Hamama when she was in Israel via MIT helping kids in Israel grow their own food using hydroponics at The Greenhouse. (After I wrote this story in 2008 <— kids from the US were writing me about how to donate their Bar Mitzva money to Noam Geva).

Over at The Greenhouse Camille had her head inside an aeroponics system she’d rigged up last time I saw her. She brought a few of her MIT geek friends over to my house in Jaffa and we talked about hydroponics changing the world. And now she helps people in the easiest way grow microgreens at home. That’s a hyper simplified way to do hydroponics. She was one of the most inspiring people I met in hydroponics and urban farming. 

In fact many in the business are. They are people who want to change the world. Like… Have you met Henry?

Go out and meet someone, start a farm. Grow something. That’s how we change the world.

Now over to Infarm: good luck! 

The post Infarm raises $170 million to add “farm” to cities appeared first on Green Prophet.

What’s that saying? You have to travel halfway around the world to find what you are looking for and then you find it in your backyard? I was at my parent’s house in Ontario this past Spring, and on my quest to find the coolest aquaponics set ups in the city (which I managed to find at Fresh City Farms!), my trail led me “UpStream” to Newmarket.

Steven Looi from Richmond Hill has set up UpStream, an urban water farm inside a large garage of offices on Main Street North. In this garage startup, you’ll find a special surprise: pools of fish nurturing fresh greens.

The aim of Looi, with his experiment, is to show a viable model for food stamps of the future. To show that food staples which are healthy and fresh can be grown right at home or in the middle of the city. No dirt. Worms need not apply. We are talking about food grown on water, with fish for protein – fish that you eat.

Growing fish and plants together is an ancient way called aquaponics. It was actually discovered in ancient China (where Looi’s family is from) that if you add some fish into the rice paddies the rice will grow better.

The excrement of the fish gives organic nutrients to the plants, completing a cycle of life the way nature intended. Looi, 33, who comes from the world of high-tech “fell ass-backwards” into technology he tells Green Prophet. Always interested in sustainable business, he started a video game company, a company with “no physical footprint.”

Two years ago, he started learning about aquaponics, or AP, and with some smuggled tilapia fish that he bought over the US border “as pets” Looi started farming at his home in Richmond Hill. Along with the fish he’s grown tomatoes, lettuce, kale using the fish waste as nutrients, using water, some pumps and grow lights.

But he wanted to do more than grow fresh kale at home: “I wanted to have an impact. So I thought about the local foodbank.”

Looi went to the York Region Food Network and wrote up a grant proposal which they accepted. The fruits of his labor are now apparent in the Newmarket garage he operates out of.

Construction started on April 2013, and he’s attracted interest from local people like carpenters and schools that “just want to be a part of it,” says Looi.

Late last August was his first harvest and later in October he brought the fish. Due to the trouble sourcing the fingerlings, he probably won’t harvest the fish this year but will “keep them as fertilizer.”

Otherwise “I’d have to substitute petroleum-based fertilizers,” Looi tells Green Prophet.

The York Region Food Network remains his partner.

While he is not sure how much extra food the unit can make to make a real dent in the food insecurity issue in Canada he would like to have an impact on providing people jobs, supplementing the food bank, and offering locally grown food which is in essence organic, but reasonably priced.

I throw in a hand of food and the fish jump to the top of the pool, about the size of a large kiddie pool but a couple meters deep.

It’s astounding to think that such underground activities are happening in Newmarket, where Big Box shops have taken a hold of the consumer mentality. Can my hometown be saved by swimming UpStream? Will the people support it?

UpStream is attempting to teach those willing how to do AP at home. He estimates that a single person needs two acres of soil to support their own food bill for the year. While AP can be done at home, and augment about 25 percent of a person’s food bill.

It’s especially attractive in Middle East locations like Israel where this year, the shmita year, Jews are forbidden from gardening or tilling or reaping harvest from the land.

Hydroponics and aquaponics which uses water is exempt from this religious proscription. In the large facility in Newmarket, he sees as a pilot, Looi is hoping to scale up to 20,000 to 40,000 square feet. He is also hoping to get into the medical cannabis business in Canada. Growing pot on water –– with organic fish nutrients? Sounds like a great opportunity for using less fertilizer and potentially less pesticides.

For now Looi keeps everything under control at his facility measuring in steps how he will grow. He invites visitors and the curious to drop by his farm, quaintly situated beside a tiny stream, the Tannery Creek, I used to wade around in as a kid. I was hunting for old bottles and would cash them in at the local convenience store for treats. Recycling at its sweetest.

More on Upstream here on their Facebook page.

The post Swimming UpStream with Steven Looi’s water farm appeared first on Green Prophet.

On our mission to find sustainable ways to feed the Middle East, and our planet, and real people leading these movements, Green Prophet heads out to Downsview Park in Toronto, Canada, to meet Even Bell, the founder of WaterFarmers, Toronto’s largest aquaponics farm. The company has also built commercial-scale projects in Oman and Pakistan.

Bell (pictured above left) is a farmer, on water. But he’s not your average hydro guy. Bell, a web analyst by day, moonlights as a fish and vegetable farmer on his spare time.

Some say it’s a perfect system, ecologically balanced: When you couple the fish, and their waste (poo and pee), with a plant system that grows on this waste water, factor in bacteria that helps to break down the fish waste and you get a pretty complete nutrient cycle. Except for the food you need to feed the fish, and some added micronutrients like kelp, you can grow some of the healthiest organic food out there.

WaterFarmers is doing this and helping Toronto eat a little more local and sustainably. Because AP or water farming uses about 90 percent less water than traditional farming it’s also really suited to drought ridden climates like the Middle East and California.

Bell’s farm (he’s a co-founder) is strategically not out in the country, but in the middle of a city where most people have no clue where their food comes from. It is based in a greenhouse run by Fresh City Farms, a CSA. In the above picture you’ll see Fresh City Farms founder Phil Collins, right.

“100% of what we produce is harvested by them,” says Bell, 26, who keeps a personal aquaponics farm at home. “There would be more to show you over there but we just harvested 500 heads of lettuce,” he says pointing to the styrofoam trays floating on a bed of water.

The fish for now are not culled for food, but serve as a nutrient generator for the plants. We meet him as he’s giving a diverse but beautiful crowd of co-op gardeners an overview seminar on aquaponics farming. He’s explaining the minerals and chemicals that need to be added to keep the balance so the fish stay happy, the lettuce leafy and the tomatoes tasty. Later on we meet a summer intern who shows us how the chemicals keep balanced and what to do if they are not.

Below is Hannah Hunter, farm manager (right) and Ashley, intern (left).

There may be a lot of interest and people who want to “convert” to aquaponics, an old but “new” method of urban farming, Bell tells Green Prophet, but at the end of the day he asks people who want to set up operations: have you ever farmed before? Had a garden? It is basically just farming, but some extra complexities and responsibilities, he explains while we head to DQ for a much needed ice-cream. The greenhouse feels like it’s about 60 degrees C in there.

Aquaponics farming in Toronto, the way Bell does it at WaterFarmers, may not be for everyone or every climate: the farm needs energy for pumps to pump oxygen to the fish, and it needs heat in the winter.

But “AP is intuitively appealing,” says Bell who handles North American operations for the company. The Toronto farm is a hybrid system with media and deep water beds. It’s made to consume little power and be efficient. This takes lower capital. It’s also not automated. He or an assistant monitors pH, and nitrate and nitrate levels on a daily basis. They have a data collection app, perhaps for automation one day. But for now someone needs to be on hand every day of the week to make sure the fish and plants are doing well. Five hours without power may cause the fish to go belly up.

He shows us the grow beds budding basel that they will cull again, maybe only once more before the herbs become too tired.

The fresh herbs, lettuce, and future tomatoes that are growing, are added to the weekly CSA boxes sent out by Fresh City Farms. The CSA has 1,600 members and most of the food is produced onsite in Downsview Park where they lease land.

If there are gaps in making AP transition to a more common way of farming Bell sees them as technology, supply change, and knowledge exchange as key factors in making it more appealing and widespread. For now, many operations are simply not cost effective, he says.

Bell picked up on the idea of aquaponics while studying economics and statistics at Waterloo University in Kitchener where he joined the UWAQ aquaponics club. His farm just started operating in January but he expects by the end of the year they’ll have produced thousands of kilos of fresh organic food to feed people in Toronto. For now they are using the hearty tilapia fish as a nutrient provider but they might switch to a fish like trout which can tolerate winters better.

So far none of the fish have been eaten, but when they do grow they can be an excellent source of protein – especially for communities where fresh protein is in short supply. Certainly this is not the case in Toronto where a McDonalds can be found on every major street corner.

But in their own way WaterFarmers are planting the seeds of education so more people in this hard-scrabble neighbourhood of North York, fed subsidies and food stamps, may get exposed (even if only in passing)- to an alternate way of living off the land – on water.

::WaterFarmers website; Fresh City Farms

If you would like to learn more about technology solutions for AP farmers, visit flux and sign up to the company beta.

The post Water Farmers get fresh with aquaponics for food in Toronto appeared first on Green Prophet.

At least 10 people have died, and one thousand more expected to be ill from eating tainted organic cucumbers and other fresh produce consumed in Germany. Contaminated with a rare and deadly form of E.coli, a bacteria, the organic cucumbers are causing widespread panic in Europe, as the exact origin of the cucumbers is still not known.

So far all the deaths have been in Germany, and according to the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control, it was one of the largest poisonings of its kind in the world. The source is believed to be from farms in Spain but until now, no one is certain. People in the Mediterranean region of Turkey, Lebanon and Israel, where raw cucumbers are a staple, are reasonable to be on alert.

Local, organic farms in Germany are profiting from the outbreak that was first recorded about 3 weeks ago. Yet, there is still a warning for consumers about eating raw vegetables. The bacteria was found also in lettuce and raw tomatoes.

When ingested it can cause kidney failure and death and it’s particularly resistant to antibiotics. Israelis, who eat cucumbers like Americans eat apples, or Parisians baguettes, were alleviated and told not to worry yesterday by local media- that the cucumbers did not reach Israel, and in any case, all vegetables that are imported are tested for bacteria before they enter the market.

Still, with so many imports moving around the world, it can be hard to know where your food comes from unless you grow it in your backyard, or support local CSA that you trust. Besides raising chickens for eggs in my backyard (learn how to make your own chicken coop here), this scare is enough to have me thinking about starting a cucumber patch in my backyard.

image of Turks eating cucumber snacks via cristic

The post Killer Cucumbers Have Israelis Freaking Out appeared first on Green Prophet.

Farmigo aims to improve day-to-day operations for small organic farms.

More and more Israelis are joining the worldwide move to buying their fresh produce from small, organic farms (and CSAs – see our list). But because they’re farmers, and not necessarily businessmen, most of these family-run businesses aren’t being run on the most optimal level.

Consumers who get the fresh produce delivered to their homes often don’t have a say in what kind of fruit and vegetables they’ll receive – will it be 10 radishes and two apples, or top heavy with red peppers? And despite the clear health benefits, the discrepancy in prices between store-bought and organic produce is too much for many consumers.

That’s where startup Farmigo and its CEO Benzi Ronen comes in Farmigo, aiming to improve day-to-day operations for small organic farms, making them more effective and hopefully profitable as well.

Ronen and his team interviewed farmers at 124 CSA (Community-Supported Agriculture) farms and discovered that their heads were in the ground – literally. They were focusing so much on the food they were growing, that the business side was being neglected.

Farmers complained that they often spent up to 30 hours a week on emails and calls dealing with member payment and delivery questions – time they would prefer to spend tending their gardens.

Most farms don’t have their own online store and it’s rare that they’re set up to take credit card payments. But when Ronen asked them questions like: “Did everyone pay you?” or “Did any checks bounce?” they would scratch their heads.

A shorter lifespan for the coming generation

Ronen says that the potential for organic farms (see our WWOOF list) is fast approaching a tipping point, and none too soon. With diabetes and obesity on the rise, the “generation coming of age now will be the first to have a shorter lifespan than their parents,” Ronen warns.

How did we get into this situation? According to Ronen, after World War II, there was a push to reduce the cost of food (families were paying up to 16 percent of their income for groceries at the time) and increase accessibility.

Those economies of scale led to huge ‘mono-crop’ farms, each focusing on only one to two crops. Small farms growing a more diverse selection were nearly driven out of business entirely until recent years when they’ve started to make a comeback.

Selling their produce to the big conglomerates just doesn’t make economic sense for organic farms that would earn only 20 cents on every dollar in such an arrangement. Going directly to the consumer is the only way to compete.

A Fortune 500 approach to organic farming

Ronen and his partner Yossi Pik met at SAP where they worked on software applications for Fortune 500 companies. Their vision for Farmigo is to build the same type of customer-relationship management and e-commerce systems for the CSA industry.

The Farmigo founders talked to hundreds of farmers and their customers to determine what would satisfy everyone and make the CSAs sustainable. Their research led to a system that includes an ordering engine that tracks and verifies payment in a variety of formats, including credit card validation; a delivery and reporting tool that prints box labels, route maps and site pick-up locations; a harvest module that helps farmers select what goes into each weekly produce box; and an online store and collaboration tool so that separate farms can work together to offer a wider variety of produce to their customers.

Farmigo charges nothing up front and no set-up fees. Instead it takes two percent of sales and even offers an initial 60-day money back guarantee. The entire service is hosted “in the cloud” (meaning it’s all web-based with no software to install locally) and is built using Google’s application environment.

Racing to do business before harvest time

It all began in 2008 and the company is still small with four employees in two locations – marketing and sales are located in the San Francisco Bay Area, R&D is in Israel. Ronen won’t divulge how much he’s raised, but says it’s from angels rather than VCs and is enough to keep the company going through until 2011 “as long as we stay lean.”

He’s optimistic about the growth of the organic farm market. In addition to families and individuals, small farms are increasingly selling directly to restaurants and schools. It’s important that they continue to supply their fresh produce to children, for many schools have moved to providing only food that can be “held in your hand” with no cutlery needed, which Ronen points out is too often unhealthy ‘fast food.’

Moving beyond produce, Ronen says that Farmigo could be applied to meat as well, although that would require a much more complex model. “You don’t know the weight until it gets to the customer,” he says. “And you also have to sell more parts of the cow to make it economically worthwhile.” Brains in the delivery box, perhaps? Wine and spices can also benefit from the Farmigo system, according to Ronen.

The company is first targeting the American market and Ronen admits that getting the interface to work in Hebrew is challenging. To date Farmigo has two new customers coming onboard every week and the race is on to June, which is peak harvest time. “Farmers won’t talk to us for three months after that,” Ronen says.

::Farmigo

The post Old McDonald Gets Farmigo Software to Manage His Organic Farm appeared first on Green Prophet.

“A land flowing with milk and honey” – that’s one of the most well-known passages from Exodus describing the Land of Israel and one of the first biblical expressions to make its way into the English language. Today, Israel is known for its abundant variety of high-quality food products made from these very ingredients.

While olive oil and dates from Israel are widely available in the United States at supermarkets and health food stores, a new American company called Negev Nectars – based in the Tri-State region – is making sure that the very “best of the sustainable best” from Israel will be delivered to American doorsteps, three times a year.

In a community-supported agriculture (CSA) style distribution network, Americans interested in enjoying Israeli-grown organic olive oil, herbal teas, honey, dates, chutneys and preserves, can satisfy their passion and eco-yearnings by subscribing to Negev Nectars’ CSA.

For $180 a year (the number translates to “life” multiplied by 10 in Jewish numerology), subscribers enjoy hand-selected foods that meet the rigorous standards and values of the most discriminating eco-aware individuals. Profits are channelled back to supporting the farms and people in Israel that practice sustainable farming. These practices benefit the Middle East region and ultimately the entire world.

A green gift from the Middle East

Initially, the boxes will be delivered before major Jewish holidays, but as the endeavour grows, Negev Nectars’ founders Marvin Israelow and Jeffrey Yoskowitz plan to expand deliveries to coincide with major seasons and holidays for people of other faiths as well.

It’s a healthy idea that sends the right message. When you support Negev Nectars, you’re putting your money where your mouth is, because the venture gives back to individuals and farms that are working in desert agriculture R&D and growing crops in harsh desert climates. These practices can and do reverberate across the entire Middle East.

“Most of the shelf-stable products I’m bringing over to the US are made from crops grown with brackish water, using the latest water saving technology to grow in the desert, and for the olive trees, using mainly a desert olive, the Barnea olive, which was discovered in the Sinai and yields more oil per fruit than most other varieties,” says Yoskowitz.

While some people believe it’s essential to reduce the size of your ecological footprint by supporting no-impact or low-impact food – meaning that the food that you eat should be grown and produced locally – Yoskowitz sees no contradiction between maintaining these values and buying into a Negev Nectars’ CSA box.

Thinking global, acting locally

In the Northeast United States where Negev Nectars is setting up, there is no locally produced olive oil. “You can’t get sustainable organic olive oil here,” says Yoskowitz. In fact, he adds “you can’t get [locally grown] olive oil at all.” Despite that, “everyone’s’ still buying olive oil,” he points out.

Olive oil, a staple food in Mediterranean climates, is known for its health properties. It can reduce ‘bad’ cholesterol, while providing the good cholesterol our bodies’ need to function.

Negev Nectars’ founder Israelow is an American philanthropist who supports desert farming research out of Ben Gurion University in Israel. Yoskowitz (pictured left) is an environmental activist, filmmaker, writer and blogger for Green Prophet. Both scoured Israel this summer to locate and select the best products for their CSA members.

“It’s one of the ways to get to know the land of Israel,” says Yoskowitz, who seems particularly pleased that Negev Nectars offers an olive oil produced from the biblical site Kadesh Barnea. It’s likely a spot where the Israelites camped along the Exodus route they took from Egypt to their Promised Land.

Update June, 2019: Negev Nectars is no longer in business. 

The post Order Negev Nectars’ Sustainable Milk and Honey CSA Box in America appeared first on Green Prophet.

Tomatoes are still, mercifully, quite readily available. Though we hate to think about it, this won’t always be the case. In just a few short weeks, tomatoes—at least the good, locally grown varieties—will be gone on winter hiatus. It always seems to come too soon, and it always somehow seems to take us by surprise. In order to combat those first painful weeks of tomato-less-ness, we thought we’d give you a recipe for extending the period of tomato goodness.

Basically, you slow-roast tomatoes with some oil and garlic and herbs, until they get fragrant and wrinkly and almost candied. It’s a great treatment for end-of-season tomatoes: the roasting sweetens and intensifies flavour which might otherwise seem a bit faded. Kept in the fridge these tomatoes will last a few weeks; put them in the freezer and you can enjoy them for three or four months.

Come a blustery day in February, you’ll be very glad to have planned so far ahead.

We made our confit with the very last of the decent cherry tomatoes we could find but you can use this method for any tomato you happen to have around. There are countless ways to use the confit once you’ve made it (besides snacking out of the jar, which we’ve found ourselves doing a bit more than we should): toss with pasta and goat cheese for a 10 minute dinner, spoon over steamed or pan-fried fish to make an instant sauce, toss with other roasted vegetables or cooked grains (rice, quinoa, wheatberries, etc.) for a hearty salad with rich, earthy undertones. The oil the tomatoes are packed in is grand, too: it’ll take on a hint of tomato sweetness, and is fantastic in salad dressing or for pita-dipping.

Roasted Tomato Confit Recipe
We’ve intentionally kept this recipe open-ended with respect to quantities: you can do this just as successfully with a half-kilo or a half-bushel. Keep in mind that the tomatoes will shrink an awful lot, so however many you think you want: double the amount, and you should be more or less on target.

• tomatoes
• olive oil (lots)
• salt and pepper
• a few cloves of garlic
• a handful of fresh thyme

1. Preheat oven to 150°C/300°F.
2. While oven is coming up to temperature, rinse and halve your tomatoes. Toss the tomatoes with a bit of olive oil, salt and pepper, and lay them out flat, cut side up, on cookie sheets or in roasting pans. (You don’t want them piled on top of one another as this will inhibit caramelization: if you’ve got too many to fit easily roast the tomatoes into batches.) Throw in the garlic cloves (no need to peel them), and strew the thyme about as well.
3. Roast the tomatoes until they are soft and golden brown at the edges, stirring every ten minutes or so to avoid sticking. Depending on the size and quantity of tomatoes this may take anywhere from 45 minutes to two hours.
4. Remove tomatoes from the oven and let them cool. Slip the garlic cloves out of their skins, and pick out the thyme stems (the leaves will have likely fallen off into the tomatoes, which is exactly what you want. Pack the tomatoes, along with the garlic cloves and any accumulated oil and juice, quite tightly into glass jars. Top the jars up with additional oil so that the tomatoes are completely covered.
5. Tomatoes can be kept for a couple of weeks in the fridge or for several months in the freezer.

The post Making the Season Last: Tomato Confit Recipe appeared first on Green Prophet.

I was so anxious on Monday as I awaited word of delivery of my very first Israeli community supported agriculture (CSA) delivery to its drop spot in Tel Aviv. I was nervous, not because I thought the vegetables wouldn’t be good or because I was unsure if I was getting a good deal (the veggies are great and it’s very cost-effective), but because I was relying on this week’s box of straight-from-the-farm vegetables to convince my Israeli flatmates that CSAs are a worthwhile investment.

I picked up the box right near the corner of Dizengoff and Gordon in Tel Aviv. I walked home with vegetables in hand for ten minutes, smelling the basil and thinking about making pesto, which I probably won’t have time to make this week.

As I approached my apartment I saw that nobody was home. Damn. I wanted my flatmates to see me walk in with it and “ooh” and “ahh” at the produce. I left the box prominently displayed in the kitchen and gently rearranged the chard and arugula to look a bit more presentable. Within twenty minutes one flatmate returned home. She was visibly excited about our new abundance so we started unpacking the box together when we noticed that one of the tomatoes was squished.

She looked disappointed and I panicked. “We’ll use it for sauce,” I think I muttered in Hebrew, trying a bit too hard to stay positive. “Lo Nora,” she said, it’s not a big deal.

Although CSAs have been sprouting up in Israel they’re still a novel concept for many Israelis, used to the “glamour” of the outdoor markets and the reality of the prevalence of supermarket options. In so many ways I felt as if I was asking my flatmates to abandon an element of their national culture, to stop frequenting the shuk for vegetables where I myself have accrued priceless memories this year.

But I was committed to the prospect of an inexpensive, organic way to have an abundance of vegetables in my home that I shared with my flatmates.

An abundance of organic food to share
The truth is that I had been hesitant about starting a CSA in Israel. At first I was in denial that they actually existed here because it’s just much easier to say, Israel is so behind the US. I’ll just wait ‘til I’m back in the US to follow through with what I believe is right. (Turns out I said the same thing about composting and buying eco-friendly dish soap earlier this year. It seems that while temporarily living in another country it’s appealing to take a break from one’s values, hence my bamba addiction).

After learning about the emerging CSA culture here, in small part thanks to Michael’s post here at the Green Prophet, my excuse changed to the fact that I knew no farmers personally and I had no interested flatmates with whom to share a weekly supply of vegetables. And I also travel a lot in Israel and find myself on any given week in another city here, and would need a flexible CSA that I could cancel depending on whether or not I’d be around.

Then all at once I began getting fed up by the Carmel market in Tel Aviv, a new flatmate moved in who both wanted good quality vegetables and a lot of them, and I finally visited the organic farm, Or-gani, and met a nice group of farmers. I volunteered on the farm for a day, packed CSA boxes, and left with my own box whose contents I shared with friends over the course of a week. I learned that nothing says I care about you like a fresh, organic cabbage.

Surprise organic vegetables enhance meals
Two and a half days into it and CSA life in Israel is phenomenal. I received so many items I would never buy in the shuk, like chives and celery root just to name a few, that have been enhancing my meals. The veggies in the fridge are now beautifully displayed so that we can all see what we have, rather than our old system which involved keeping each person’s own veggies in the bags we bought them in, in one corner, where we’d often forget about them until we smelled them rotting.

I’m certain I’ll be eating more veggies this summer. And now when I cook I am more eager to share my creations with my flatmates because the veggies belong to all three of us. This new sharing mentality will hopefully improve our dynamic.

Now it’s just a waiting game to see if these veggies will be sufficient for the week and to find out if the flatmates want to continue. I may play dirty, though, and spend more time cooking this week so there’s always food available and they’ll equate CSAs with eating well, as I already do.

For information on the Or-gani CSA, go to its website, and for a Green Prophet list of CSAs in Israel, see Eating Organi Food at Reasonable Prices.

The post Getting My First Israeli CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) appeared first on Green Prophet.