Saltwater greenhouses can save the Middle East and humanity from drought and climate change. Three cheers to Sundrop Farms in Australia for pioneering saltwater greenhouses in Australia: they are now harvesting tomatoes for a leading grocery store called Coles. And Sundrop is producing what they say is a “better product, better for the people, better for the planet –– all year round.”

Sundrop Farms is using hydroponics, a method of growing plants on a treated water medium, without soil. It’s an extremely efficient way for growing plants, and it’s now becoming a leading choice for growing food in difficult climates, in urban centers or in areas where water is poor and lacking. In China for instance where the soil is contaminated with cadmium and lead, people are very eager to buy organic food grown hydroponically.

Sundrop says it’s the first farming system of its kind to have reached commercial scale. The 65-hectare facility was made possible with an investment of 200 million Australian dollars ($148 million) which paid for a desalination plant, greenhouses and other installations needed to grow the tomatoes.

It’s a bet worth betting as we see the rise in agricultural crops in Australia and the world.

The Sundrop greenhouses are powered by sunlight, using 23,000 mirrors that reflect rays toward the top of a 127-meter high receiver tower that turns the sun into electricity.

This power is used to pump seawater from 5km away. Beyond producing tomatoes, the facility also produces 1 million liters of fresh water every single day.

Sundrop Farms CEO Philipp Saumweber, a former investment banker, says the agriculture model as “innovative” in that it harnesses only seawater and sunlight.

A number of companies are leading technology in this area, including BrightFarms (US), Phillips (Holland), Aerofarms (US) and my startup flux, which has created artificial intelligence and a product named Eddy to understand the language of plants. Watch this market of vertical farming grow into trillion dollar opportunities.

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Israel! You are so good at so many things beyond technology. And food, as locals and tourists know is becoming Israel’s rising star. With hyper-local fresh food production capabilities, Israelis from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem enjoy traditional Mediterranean food, hybridized with any international trend.

It makes complete sense in a country that’s into food, and in the know for startups and technology, that the two intersect in a new industry. It’s called Food Tech. Potentially one of the last frontiers in tech and all of us have to eat. Kimbal Musk, the brother of Elon Musk, calls Food, “The New Internet.”

Thanks to a french import Yossi Dan, and his company Challengy, Israel is about to put some serious spice into the international Food tech scene. Dan is looking for 100 Food Tech companies to duke it out Battleground style, at the Google Campus in Tel Aviv later this month.

Dan is calling all innovators to collect and compete at The Foodtech Startup Contest, part of Global FoodTech TLV. This coincides with the DLD, one of the largest and craziest conferences and tech/art expos Israel does every year. The contest is calling for 100 startup entrants, so if you are just coming to scan for new opportunities, bring a bag of healthy snacks and a cold pressed juice as you watch companies inside the ring pitch their startups.

Ten semi-finalists go onto an even bigger stage to compete for chances to be seen by even more investors, and to get the chance to be swept under Dan’s wing as his firm Challengy leads business development efforts in Food Tech in various global cities.

Do you have what it takes to take a bite out of the Food Tech industry?

Do you:

1. Build vertical farming technologies (like hydroponics), create new opportunities for farming in business development, or have a way to make food tastier, healthier or more sustainable. If yes, Click Here.

2. Build technologies that serve the digital landscape making it easier to order online, cut food waste from restaurants, or build platforms to manage inventory at point of sale? Click Here.

3. Build technologies in new
frontiers to understand food quality of industrial chains, from farm to fork, can you monitor water, detect toxins, certify that food is safe? If you are one of these guys or gals, Click Here.

Details about the pitch:

Where? Google Campus TLV
When? September 27, afternoon
Who? Food Tech startups from anywhere. Internationals are encouraged to apply
Cost? Free. You just need to register here and be selected among the 100.

If selected, you’ll come and pitch in front of a panel of International experts.

The event is framed around the annual DLD event which is part serious, part crazy. Mostly fun.

Your entrance to the Food Tech scene in Israel, Dan suggests, will be a part of some bigger acceleration program he is putting into place with international partners.

Get some ideas from innovators from Israel featured at Dan’s event last year. 

Le Chaim and good luck.

The post Food Tech, it’s a battleground. Come pitch your startup at Google appeared first on Green Prophet.

Eddy is like the “easy button” for hydroponics

The United Nations is screaming it –– and California is feeling it: drought caused by climate change is killing the way we grow food. And it will only get worse. Thought leaders want a shake up of conventional agriculture, because large mono-crop farms are not producing enough to feed the world. They are also damaging ecosystems, some irreparably.

flux has developed Eddy, a tool that makes it easy for anyone to grow food anywhere. The technology and software company built on Israeli R&D and based in Dallas, solves global food production from the ground up. Eddy makes it easy for anyone to grow food at home or as a small or medium size vertical farm business.

Tired of GMOs, massive mergers of ag chem companies? Take your food into your own hands.

“Look to any sustainability expert in the United States and globally, and they will point out the flawed economics of large, conventional farms relying on government subsidies to exist,” says Karin Kloosterman, the founder of Eddy. She is pictured below in her hydroponic office:

“Growing and shipping food from Canada to China and back again is causing climate change. Pesticides and residues used by farmers have stark health effects for humans and the ecosystems that support us. We created flux out of fear for the future, but with hope that people – like us –- can turn the situation around,” says Kloosterman.

Plant and Play Remote Controls

Eddy continuously monitors and adjusts the plants’ growing conditions, an image-processing capability for plant condition analysis, and a crowd-wisdom system for grower support throughout the entire growing process.

Eddy comes in both home and semi-professional versions and is particularly appropriate for growing greens, vining plants, root crops, fruits, and herbs in dense urban locations – or even in thirsty drought regions like California, Africa, the Middle East, or India.

Space Station Technology Beside Your Barbecue

Water farming, vertical farming, or hydroponics, is catching on like wildfire in urban communities globally. Currently about 42 million American households grow food, a 17% increase since 2008. Americans also spend about $29 Billion on lawns and gardens. Cannabis cultivation, now legal in most US states creates another massive opportunity for companies in the urban farming business.

Hydroponics is a method of growing plants using water and a nutrient solution, with no soil at all. This method pioneered in America about 80 years ago, and favoured by space station scientists, uses up to 95 percent less water than soil farming.

Vertical farming is perfect for anywhere but can also use any unconventional space, such as rooftops or basements, and even in deserts, while producing up to 30x more crop per yard or meter of space year round.

Those who build hydroponics farms are inside the Indoor Agriculture market, one which is projected to jump to a $9 billion industry in the next several years, while gold rush opportunities in this space exist for cultivating high-value pharmaceutical crops in the United States and Canada.

Consider that around polluted Chinese and Japanese cities, hydroponics is an answer to food safety concerns where soils are so contaminated from heavy metals and radiation that consumers no longer want to eat food farmed from those regions.

Grown hyper-locally, hydroponics food can be fresher, more sustainable and even more nutritious. It is recognized by urban farming labs at leading US universities as an important solution for cities, desert agriculture, emerging economies –– and even for future moon colonization.

Eddy on the moon?  Or Mars? “Why not? Companies are starting to build biospheres that show how food can be cultivated in extreme environments, like Mars or Antarctica. For now though, we have our sights set on Planet Earth and helping people help themselves,” concludes Kloosterman, pictured above.

To reach out to Karin Kloosterman, VP Marketing and Sales, email karin@fluxiot.com

flux website

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This past weekend Yael Stav offered tours of her home and vertical garden as part of the “Houses From Within” Batim Mibifnim exhibition in Tel Aviv. Some of the garden was built using recycled materials and compost from her children’s eco-friendly diapers.

Jerusalem Bird Observatory Brown Roof – Local Flora no Irrigation by Rov-Noy, image via the World Green Infrastructure Network

Stav is currently completing her doctoral thesis on the environmental benefits of vertical greenery, which professor of public health at Columbia University Dickson Despommier proposed in 2009 as a perfect fit for the Middle East. (Stephen Colbert asks Dickson Despommier about vertical farming video).

Stav’s research shows that growing plants on a buildings roof and walls can save over 20 percent of the energy used to cool the building.

“The vertical greenery can enable the whole family in the city to grow a variety of plants, including assorted vegetables and herbs,” she says to Haaretz newspaper, pointing to tomatoes curling down from one of the holders hanging from the fence. “You can do this in any building and use a variety of materials.”

The annual ‘Houses From Within’ event also included tours of local community gardens and environmental academic centers in Tel Aviv. The city is at the heart of Israel’s environmental movement, and every year there are new citizen-lead developments to celebrate.

:: Houses from Within

Image via Haaretz

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Over a week ago, I had the opportunity to attend an event featuring Dickson Despommier, the grandfather of vertical farming. As Green Prophet editor Karin explains in an interview with a vertical farming expert, vertical farming is where crops are grown in buildings and on various levels to save not only space but water. Despommier explains that in today’s world, 80% of the earth’s available land is already farmed and so we need to come up with better ways to grow food for our increasingly urban and populated world.

Here at Green Prophet, we have already looked the potential of green roofs in the Middle East, growing food without soil as well as sprouting urban agriculture groups. Or companies like flux leading the sensor tech revolution. Now I take another look at one development in urban food growing – vertical farming – and the potential it has to solve food problems in the Middle East.

Uses 70% Less Water Than Traditional Farming

Some of the advantages of vertical farming, which incorporates growing techniques such as hydroponics (growing without soil), is that there is no crop loss from severe weather events and you can grow crops all year. However, the big advantage for places such as the Middle East, is that vertical farming uses around 70% less water than traditional farming. As the growing conditions are a lot more controlled, water isn’t lost due to inefficiencies such as leaks and evaporation.

This is a huge advantage for those considering adopting the technique in the water-scare Middle East as it means that it could potentially make growing a lot more commercially viable. Indeed, Despommier revealed that countries such Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Qatar have already show interest in the technique. According to Despommier, there was a meeting in 2009 with the Jordan mayor office to discuss the farming technique and there were also a pyramid-shaped vertical farm designed for Dubai.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1clRcxZS52s&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]

End The African Land Grab

Whilst in its tentative stages, vertical farming in the Middle East could be a great solution to the regions current water problems and its huge reliance on food imports. This novel way of farming could also end the African land grab by countries such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to secure food supplies.

Since the Arab Spring riots, which were in part sparked by food shortages and rising prices, food security has climbed up the agenda of many Middle Eastern governments. Let’s hope that they consider improving their own food self-sufficiency through green techniques such as vertical farming and not just buying up tracts of fertile land from drought-stricken and troubled nations in Africa such as Ethiopia, Sudan and Somalia.

:: Image via kris krug/flickr.

For more information on urban agriculture in the Middle East see:

What Urban Rooftop Gardening Could Do For The Middle East

Gaza’s Green Roofs of Herbs and Vegetables

Beirut Is Getting Its First Green-Roofed Tower

The post Dickson Despommier: we can end hunger in Middle East with vertical farming appeared first on Green Prophet.

American cities like Newark New Jersey are a long way from Abu Dhabi or Cairo; but vertical farming concepts now being planned for American cities, are also being considered for locations in the Middle East as well. In a recent published article in Treehugger, giant pyramid shaped structures, as well as specially designed skyscrapers will produce large amounts of vegetables and other agricultural produce by means of soil-less hydroponics. Hydroponics has been in use for years, especially in green or hot house agriculture. But the idea of conserving space by integrating this concept into tall, vertical structures to save space is still relatively new.

The innovative vertical farm plans stem from two visionary vertical farming innovators, Dr. Dickson Despommier and Weber Thompson; and the Weber Thompson Architectural Firm is designing these structures. The main idea of architectural building concepts by Weber Thompson is to enable the use of vertical farming in densely populated urban areas. The concepts allow the maximum use of solar energy:

“to grow food in a climate-controlled multistory building free of pollutants, pesticides and seasons while producing the highest-quality produce in an urban environment.”

The climate (and rainfall) of areas like Newark New Jersey is a bit different from the climate in the Persian Gulf region, and other desert locations in the Middle East;  but in regions like the UAE, where Dr. Despommier’s vertical farming concepts are being studied with great interest, it may not be long before futuristic looking vertical farms will be common place in Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Saudi Arabia, and elsewhere in the Middle East.

Abu Dhabi’s Masdar City, now being built, is already hailed as the world’s first completely non-carbon residential and commercial project. In this much heralded “carbon free” project, futuristic designed vertical farming towers are part of the project’s unique planning models.

The Hanging Gardens: Alexander The Great loved the place

The idea of vertical farming concepts is actually very ancient, and goes all the way back to the 5^th Century BCE, when Babylonia’s “Hanging Gardens of  Babylon” were hailed as one of the 7 Wonders of the Ancient World.

Constructed during the reign of  King Nebuchadnezzar II, who reigned for 43 years, beginning in 605 BCE, the gardens, some of which reached a height of as much as 320 feet high, were described by Greek Historian Diodorus as constructed with:

“A covering with sheets of lead, that the wet which drenched through the earth might not rot the foundation. Upon all these was laid earth of a convenient depth, sufficient for the growth of the greatest trees. When the soil was laid even and smooth, it was planted with all sorts of trees, which both for greatness and beauty might delight the spectators.”

While these beautiful gardens were not actually suspended, they were called the “hanging gardens” due to the greenery of the many plants and trees hanging over walls; thus giving the gardens its name.  Bringing water from the Euphrates River to the top of the gardens was an engineering feat still marveled to this day, and was described by the green geographer Strabo as done by “water engines (large buckets connected to chains and pulleys), by means of which persons, appointed expressly for the purpose, are continually employed in raising water from the Euphrates into the garden.”

The “Hanging Gardens of Babylon” have long since faded into history; but the vertical farming concept they created is now being sought after as a means of not only growing food crops, but for the creation of urban beauty as well, And no better place for such projects than the part of the world where the idea began, more than 2,500 years ago.

Read more on vertical farming:
Hanging Gardens of Babylon Prove Vertical Farming Concepts are not New
Vertical Farms May be Only Crop Solution in Middle East
Vertical Farms in Masdar City are Soil-less Crop Solution

Images: VerticalFarm.com, Wikipedia

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