Does Vertical Farming Work?

The short answer is Yes, it can work but the key to CEA or Controlled Environment Agriculture is not in the equipment or technology but necessitates a deep understanding of various scientific, environmental and horticultural factors. Jim Schroeder of Alta CEA explains too many CEA companies sell their equipment and leave it up to the owners to figure out how to make it work. You need to educate people to think like a horticulturalist to not only get all the conditions set up properly but how to monitor, maintain and adjust for continual successful harvests. This Podcast will explain what you need to know and do to be successful with CEA and Indoor Vertical Farming.

Contact Jim Schroeder of Alta CEA  by Email: jim@alta-cea.com

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Transcript

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Cea, or Controlled Environment Agriculture, involves creating indoor environments for agricultural purposes, such as greenhouses or vertical farming systems, to optimize growing conditions. But as our guest, Jim Schroeder, the Principal Owner of Alta CEA explains, successful CEA implementation requires more than equipment and technology. Learn more about the details on this episode of the Manufacturing Experts. I am joined by Jim Schroeder, the Principal Owner of Alta CEA, a manufacturer of Controlled Environment Agriculture Systems. Jim, welcome to the podcast. Thank you very much for inviting me, but I really do appreciate the opportunity. Jim, let's start by explaining what CEA is and what vertical farming is. So the nomenclature called CEA is relatively new. What's been around for many, many years is this terminology called vertical farming. And that's what started an awful lot of the interest in controlled environment agriculture. And that's what CEA is, which is really a philosophy of taking Mother Nature and putting her on the inside versus the outside. So when you take Mother Nature and you put her on the inside, you have to really think about what Mother Nature has been and what she still continues to do on a daily basis on the outside. So that's what CEA is, Controlled Environment Agriculture. Tell us about some of the new technologies and innovations in CEA. So originally, CEA was just strictly greenhouse, all within the same context of controlled environment agriculture. You take a greenhouse and you're basically doing the same thing. You're putting everything on the inside, a glass structure or plastic structure on the outside, you're controlling the air, you're controlling the light by supplementing the light in there. Now, what you want to think about is, how are you going to control that whole atmosphere? So you can do what they call horizontal plane growing, which is greenhouses, or you really want to reduce your footprint, now you can look at it vertically. So you take that same concept concept of a greenhouse that's all done on a large footprint on a horizontal, and you put it into a more confined area vertically. Now you've got the ability to take the inside concept and you can put it into a singular structure that are built to suit, or you can take some of the older buildings in that and refurbish them, remodel them, and repurpose them into vertical farming. And there's been a lot of conversations as to how to do it and what's best and how to control that environment. Now, you throw some other technology in, and it's called aquaplonix. Aquaplonix is taking the fish part of agriculture, and you use the nutrients of the fish, and you tie that in together with controlled environment agriculture as a nutrient source. So that's just another avenue of the growing systems net in there. What was the market like when you started? Originally, when I got involved in it, which is about 15 years ago, it was all based on trying to repurpose buildings or build new structure. And there's been greenhouses around for years and years and years. Actually, there's been a lot of vertical farming that has been around for many years, too. The difference being with the different types of of technology that are utilized to grow the product. And some of these, we just use some basic terminology, deep water culture, which is growing the plants in water with the floating rafts. And then there's an ebb and flow, which means that you're just flooding the roots, and then that nutrient just leaves. And then there's other things like aeroponics, where all you're doing is using a mist system, and most of that is done on walls and that. So there's lots of different types of technology that's available. One of the problems that came up is, how do you now take and just service the small systems, the small communities, the person that wants to put their own system in that, their growing system in that in close proximity to their workplace, or somebody that wants to be an entrepreneur and have a small a small growing system in their backyard for commercialization. And this is what really spawned the idea of container farming. So there was an awful lot of businesses that have revolved around containers and you can... All kinds of them. There have been breweries and microbreweries, and they're building houses out of these things. So somebody with some very, very good entrepreneurial engineering said, why don't we look at trying to put some grow systems in there and reduce the footprint down to something that you can modulize into a grow system in that that you can put in close proximity to a market. And that's really what container growing is all about, is being able to utilize a smaller footprint, still utilize the vertical farming system within it, control the and the light, the humidity, temperature, and all of that in a smaller area. And that's what container farming is all about. You can still grow lettuces and tomatoes and vine crops and that all within a confined area. And yes, it's a very confined workspace, but there is economics to it. And the ROIs are totally based on what does that end user want to be able to grow and market. And in some cases, they just want to be able to consume it themselves. What should people understand about CEA and vertical farming before they get started? What people really do have to understand is that anything to do with CEA, and I don't care if it's container farming or if it's aeroponics or aquaponics. This is a science. This is not just mama going out or daddy going out and throwing some seeds into the ground in a garden and hoping that it's going to grow. The specifics that you need to look at when you're doing container farming, and container farming has got a small footprint, but it's also got a small area to work in. So everything that's in that container is part of this controlled environment. So light, temperature, air flow, the type of substrate that you're using, if you're using substrate, even the type of seed. And there are an awful lot of people that don't understand that the seed that you throw in your garden doesn't necessarily grow very well in the container or any of the CEA environment. And when you're buying seed, you're got to be very, very careful that this product is actually designed to grow in a hydroponic atmosphere. So you're better to do a lot of research on your seed availability and what you're looking at. The other thing that you have to be, again, very, very cognizant is the maturity level that you want to grow to. So if you take this thing called vertical farming, and you've got 12 inches of bed space from your substrate to your light, if that's even got 16 inches, what are you going to grow in it? If you're going to choose your plant that's going to have a two foot, three foot canopy, you're going to be very, very, very upset with how it grows. The other thing is on your cycle times. So your environment that you're growing in, the temperature of your water, everything that has to do with growing in an indoor environment is got to be something that's based on a lot of science, a lot of research, and you've got to be able to do a lot of record keeping. Tell us about how nutrients are different with CEA compared to traditional farming methods. The other thing that you got to remember is that the nutrient that you have to give the plant, like Mother Nature, is not just a common nutrient. It's not like going to, again, your local hardware store and buying a garden-type nutrient that is very, very broadband. That doesn't necessarily work in a controlled environment. Because this thing called Participant, you develop your nutrient, and the last thing you want is nutrient dropout to end up within the bottom of your tank, your storage tanks and that over there. You have to have the product that is totally soluble. Each one of the types of the plants that you want to grow has its own requirements. So just because you've got your lettuce and tomatoes growing side by side in a garden doesn't necessarily mean... And a lot of people say, Gee, my lettuce grew really well, but I didn't get anything from tomatoes this year. Well, it's because they have a different So this is a science, and you just don't buy a container farm and then say, Okay, tomorrow I'm now going to be a horticulturist. It really does come down to knowing exactly what you have. So it sounds like there's a lot more than just buying the vertical farming equipment in order to be successful. I use the analogy quite often with people. It's like going down to your friendly neighborhood truck store. You're going to be an 18-wheeler and somebody He sells you a truck and throws you the key and says, now you is one. And that's exactly the way that it works. You really do have to know what you're getting into when you're talking about container farming. They are exceptional in what they're capabilities are. They can grow tremendous volumes of very, very high nutrient content product in there. But you have to understand this whole thing called controlled environment. How does Alta CEA help their customers make the right decisions when it comes to setting up a complete growing system? At Alta CEA, we've got horticultural PhDs. These people are scientists in every aspect of controlled environment agriculture. Right from how does a person select the seed, what substrate, then how you germinate plants and your cycling. So this is a science. And you have to have horticulturists in that that really do understand the science of germination, the science of transplanting, the science of growing to a mature at a security level. Now, one of the problems that people really do need to address is the client, the end user. What are you doing with that product? Whether you're growing microgreens or you're growing mature plant, that person that's going to buy your product You've got to be able to find out exactly what that market is just based on the maturity. This takes training. And if people understand that you can't learn this in one growth cycle. You're saying that training is very important. How is somebody going to get the training to be able to work with this, or is this something that Alta CEA offers? If it was just a matter of going in there and turning this switch on and everything is going to start to grow, that's not That's not reality. So we look at it from a totally different perspective. What we do offer the people, even in Africa, is come to our training facility right here in the bright lights of Annaway, Alberta, and we're going to train your people while we're building your container. And when it gets to-Oh, that's cool. When it gets to being dumped off in your location, we're just going to ship your people back by airplane, and they're going to ready to turn the switch on and get going. What we're also providing is actual training centers so that when we go into a continent like Africa, you have to have the ability to be able to take our people and put them with their people. So we can either do that here at our training center or we can go over there and do that. Very, very important that we have that ability to be able to do that and communicate after the fact. So we talked briefly about monitoring systems, being able to have our people readily available in that through either Zoom or one of the WiFi systems in that over there to be able to chat with our people and help solve problems. And this is all part of the training program. So as much as that I, and I think you understand that I am so fixated on on the training aspect of it, because I think it's an absolute necessity, and it doesn't make any difference what it is. We want people to interact with us using our website to give us the initial information, the feedback, just by filling in the documentation over there, that's the start point. Then what we need to understand is our own cycle time to build these things. It's It's not like a Ford or a Chevy pickup that is just sitting in there waiting to get done because the end user has to tell us exactly what they want because we have to be able to change it. Yes, the seat can is there, the doorways are there, but everything else on the inside has got to be... I don't like using the word customized, but it is close to that. So there's a lot of aspects to container farming, and I always maybe look too much to the negativity of what can happen versus the positive. But if people really do understand, there are some very, very, very positive aspects of using utilizing container farms and add in there for many different growth cycles in there. I'm going to give you the last two minutes. If you want to summarize anything or if we didn't cover, you get the last two minutes. If we can sit down and we can talk about the needs and the requirements of the end user. We have the solutions for that, and we can provide the different CEA technology, the different water purification system technology, Our technology, our... It's all part of what we do, and it's not just a one-off. The container by itself is a very, very good application. But if you don't have the other parts of that application over there, it's not part of a success story. So at Elta CEA, we have the ability to provide most of those solutions. And if there was anything that I really like to focus on right now, it's that small community. It's the small community within a community having the application of a container to be able to supply the small community. And we focus an awful lot on First Nations as and the tribes of North America to be able to supply some of that food application in there. So it's all within the application. It all starts with the discussion as to what is it that you want to do? And let's see if we can fit it into an actual plan that can come up with a solution that's based on food security, food sovereignty, and food safety. That's fantastic. Hey, Hey, before I forget, how can somebody get in touch with you? We've talked about the website. What's your website address? I don't even think you do it, but it's www. Elta-cea. Com. Excellent. I'll tell you what, we'll put a link in the show notes. I can't tell you this has been a really in-depth conversation and a really interesting one. I would like to have you come back at a later time just do some follow-up questions and just see new projects that you're working because I think this is very interesting, and I think you've shed a lot of light. I really appreciate having the opportunity, too. I like talking about... Thank you very much, and look forward to the interaction down the road. On the road. Sounds great. Thanks, Jim. Have a good afternoon. You too, sir. Thank you for listening to our podcast. 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