Photo courtesy of Trevor Lowell

In Big Sky Country, as elsewhere, students at a liberal arts university are growing curious about what they consume, and dining services is offering resources to show them, and to get them engaged in food production.

Food production is a driving force behind the economy of the state of Montana. In 2013, agriculture and forestry accounted for 1.6 percent of the United States’ gross domestic product, but in Montana it accounted for 6.4 percent of the state’s GDP, according to the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis. The state also issues grants to growers — not just growers of commodity crops, but specialty crop growers, as well. On the higher education level, Montana’s stake in agriculture is showcased by the research and extension services of its land-grant university, Montana State University, which was founded in 1893 as the Agricultural College of the State of Montana.

Lesser known in the state’s agricultural realm is the liberal arts-focused University of Montana, which offers academic programs that are focused less on plant production methods and more on environmental issues, ecology and sustainability. In the 21st century, UM students have become increasingly interested in food system transparency, locally sourced food and sustainability, says Trevor Lowell, director of sustainability for University of Montana Dining. “I think it varies from student-to-student, but I think, overall, the trend is just a greater awareness of food system issues in the past decade or so, where students are coming in as freshmen and they know some of the problems associated with our food system,” he says. “An interest in local food and an interest in a transparent food system is something that we hear a lot and see a lot of support for.”

To accommodate students’ interests — as well as those of faculty, staff and community members — UM Dining manages two produce gardens, a greenhouse, an indoor microgreen operation and an aquaponics system, Lowell says. It also possesses design plans for a new greenhouse, and, in the basement of its main dining hall, has begun growing oyster mushrooms from inoculated spore bags.

In 2016, UM Dining sold 70 varieties of produce — including tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, microgreens, salad mixes and raspberries — on campus, while collaborating with student groups and professors, employing interns for credit and other students for pay, and hosting learning events such as tours and workshops for children.

Operations overview

The amount of produce grown in the two gardens and indoor areas is minor compared to the amount UM Dining purchases, Lowell says, but there is value in getting people engaged in the production process and learning how it works. The aquaponics operation, which is a collaboration with UM graduate Jeff Pernell and his company, Galactic Farms, is used primarily for educational purposes.

The microgreens operation produces around 350 pounds of crops such as broccoli, radish, pea shoots, amaranth and wheat grass each year, Lowell says. Growers seed the plants in coco coir in an indoor shelving unit, put them through a dark cycle for about three days, pull the lids off and place them under fluorescent lights. “That’s just a great way for us to keep something green and fresh in the middle of the winter all year round, to be putting in on the salad bars and in different applications,” he says.

Most of the produce comes from the gardens, Lowell says. “In the two of them, we grew about 7,000 pounds of produce last year,” he says. “Both of them are organically managed, so we haven’t gone through the certification process, but we don’t use any herbicides or pesticides, and we compost with local compost from a farm up the road and plug all that produce back into the different operations on campus.”

Gardens and greenhouses

Opened in 2003, Lommasson Garden features traditional row production, raised beds, a permaculture forest and a passive-solar greenhouse that members of the 2012 graduating class helped construct, Lowell says.

The ADA-accessible, 10-by-15-foot greenhouse is made from earthbags — which Lowell notes is a construction technique that has long been used for military applications — and timber-framed wood from a local arborist. With two soil, drip-irrigated raised beds and a thermal mass on its back wall, it is primarily used for starts and hot house production for tomatoes, peppers, basil and other traditional greenhouse crops. “It does give us probably an additional month on either end of the season,” Lowell says. “So, we can finish stuff in there, and we can switch to some faster-growing produce in the fall and harvest that. Then, using it as a place to start our production early in the spring has been really useful.”

In 2016, UM Dining unveiled South Avenue Garden, which is approximately three times larger than Lommassen Garden. At the time of this story’s publishing, construction is about to commence on a roughly 500-square-foot greenhouse near the South Avenue Garden. Scheduled to open by fall 2017, the greenhouse will utilize ground-to-air heat transfer, which Lowell says will presumably extend the growing season by four or five months. “One of the challenges, especially at schools, is that your harvest seasons don’t line up with the busiest times for your operations,” Lowell says. “So, we’re always looking for ways — ‘Can we value-add some of our garden produce? Can we pickle it or store it or can it?’ We worked with the State Department of Ag here in Montana on this grant project, and they gave us some grant money to build this greenhouse.”

UM Dining will work with the Missoula County Extension and Weed District and its horticultural expert Seth Swanson to track greenhouse performance metrics such as temperature, humidity and carbon dioxide, Lowell says. In the fall, UM Dining will focus its efforts on leafy greens and root crops that require less light than fruiting crops such as tomatoes and peppers. In the greenhouse’s second year, the growers might try their hand at sweet potatoes, too.

Consumer impact

In 2003, UM Dining began a farm-to-college program, through which it buys Montana-grown and raised products, Lowell says. When UM Dining started the program, those food products only represented a small fraction of its total budget. Now, they represent almost a third of it.

Students can walk into the university’s main dining hall and see a blackboard that changes every harvest day based on what is fresh from the garden, Lowell says. At multiple campus retail outlets, signs that read, “This week’s garden produce,” notify consumers of the kale, tomatoes and other produce that is available at the salad bar. UM Dining also sells its produce through catering services, concessions, a food truck and its weekly farmers market.

When retailers can tell consumers where their food comes from, it tends to excite the consumers, Lowell says. “Nobody thinks that we’re going to get to a point where we can grow all the produce that we would need to feed the thousands of people that we feed every day,” he says. “Just engaging in that [on a smaller scale] and having those conversations is a really powerful thing and a really exciting thing. For the customer to come in and say, ‘Oh, wow, I can buy this product from you, and you guys grew this out back,’ or, ‘I can get this in my salad,’ I think that has a huge impact.”

Frustrated by the mystery surrounding supermarket produce, Canadian Mohamed Hage and his wife Lauren Rathmell reimagined food production. They realized farmland was disappearing rapidly, at the same time as the population grew exponentially — leaving lots of unanswered questions about the sustainability of the food supply.

“One of our big frustrations was going to the grocery store and having so many questions,” Rathmell says. “We know this tomato is coming from far away, but where’s it coming from? Who grew it? How was it produced? It’s just something on a shelf, so far removed from where it came from and so little we know about it.”

Hage presented a TEDx Talk on the topic, explaining that food travels 1,500 miles on average before landing on a plate — losing flavor and nutrients as it’s repacked, refrigerated and resold. “The process of industrial farming is far from optimal,” Hage says, describing commercial farms as massive consumers of land, energy and water.

He wondered: “What if you could grow food in a more responsible way … and go straight to the consumer?” With that vision to “grow food where people live and grow it more sustainably,” Hage and Rathmell, along with Yahya Badran and Kurt Lynn, founded Lufa Farms in 2009.

To Hage, more sustainable agriculture means:

1. Using no new land, instead growing on rooftops
2. Using less water, more efficiently
3. Not using any synthetic pesticides
4. Selling produce the day it’s harvested

Committed to these principles, Lufa Farms built the world’s first commercial rooftop greenhouse in Montreal in 2011. Since then, the company has built two more in Laval and Anjou, each one larger and more innovative than the last, as they’ve developed growing systems and technologies to make rooftop greenhouse production more sustainable — both ecologically and economically.

Finding sustainability

No new land. To produce food as close to as many consumers as possible, without using any more land, Lufa Farms looked to unused urban rooftops.

“One of the biggest challenges — starting up, and still now — is finding suitable buildings,” Rathmell says. “We found our first site by doing a Google Maps survey of Montreal, and going quadrant by quadrant to see, from the top down, which buildings looked big enough for a rooftop greenhouse. Out of that needle-in-a-haystack search, we found a couple buildings that had the structure to support a greenhouse, and one owner was willing to take the risk with us.”

After four years of developing growing technologies, it took less than three weeks to erect the first commercial rooftop greenhouse, a 32,000-square-foot steel-and-aluminum structure.

“It’s not built like a farm, so you have to follow building codes, which makes it harder, heavier and more expensive,” says Rathmell, Lufa Farms’ greenhouse director. “It had never been done before, so engineering a greenhouse that’s typically built on the ground in rural areas, for urban rooftop construction, was quite challenging. We’re getting better at it with each greenhouse.”

The second greenhouse opened in 2013 after a developer contacted Lufa Farms with the opportunity to incorporate a rooftop structure as a new building was being constructed. Lufa worked closely with KUBO, a Dutch greenhouse design and construction firm, to engineer the space.

“Building from the ground up was hugely beneficial,” Rathmell says of the 43,000-square-foot greenhouse in Laval, Montreal’s largest suburb. “It’s much more efficiently designed; it’s wall-to-wall.”

Earlier this year, Lufa Farms opened its third rooftop greenhouse, a 63,000-square-foot operation in the Anjou borough of Montreal — the most technologically advanced yet.

Water conservation. Lufa Farms’ founders implemented hydroponic methods to minimize environmental impact. They developed proprietary systems to capture rainwater, snowmelt and condensation, using closed-loop drip irrigation to water plants growing in coconut fiber.

“The main difference with how we had to engineer things for the rooftop was making everything as light as possible,” Rathmell says. “We have no tanks, no heavy equipment up in the greenhouse. At our first site, (the water collection tanks) are in the basement of the two-story building below — which keeps it cooler, but it also means we have to pump it up to the top, which is not always easy.”

Still, Rathmell says she’d rather face the challenge of irrigation circulation than place additional demand on the city water supply. Because irrigation is recirculated, it uses up to 90 percent less water and nutrients than standard hydroponic methods.

Biological pest controls. Lufa Farms’ founders are determined to keep their produce free from synthetic pesticides, herbicides and fungicides.

“We thought being in a city on a roof might help avoid a lot of the pest problems you see in the fields, but that’s not true,” Rathmell says. “We’re kind of an oasis in the city for all the aphids that want to invade. We have every [pest] you can imagine, so we had to learn how to manage those.” 

Lufa Farms uses biological pest controls, releasing beneficial predatory insects — like ladybugs and wasps — to combat harmful pests like aphids. For mildew and leaf diseases, they also use biologically derived sprays, such as a beneficial fungus that fights bacteria.

“One of the bigger sustainable growing challenges is pest management,” Rathmell says. “We realized pretty quickly that the best way to control it is to scout and catch problems as early as possible.”

Most growers scout, but most don’t measure to the degree Lufa does. They even developed their own mobile app to track their scouting data. Every week, growers walk each row in the greenhouses and log metrics like pest population density.

“That data populates a hotspot map so we can visualize trends over time,” Rathmell says. “We’ve had two bad whitefly seasons, and it usually gets worse in tomatoes in the winter because the controls are less effective when it’s cooler and darker. We had a good whitefly control season this year, and we wouldn’t be able to do that without seeing the map of what’s going on.”

The biocontrol report is first and foremost on a long list of reports that Rathmell reviews in weekly one-on-one meetings with growers at each location. “I went a little data crazy,” she admits, but says the analytics make the greenhouses more effective.

“We’re unique in how much we measure,” she says. “Most people wouldn’t spend quite as much time as we do, but because of our unique situation — we’re never empty, we grow lots of different varieties, and we don’t use pesticides — that combination forces us to dedicate the time because we save time and costs later.”

Picked-to-order. Lufa Farms’ first greenhouse worked like any community-supported agriculture (CSA) program. Subscribers — called “Lufavores” — got whatever produce was available each week from pick-up points around the city.

“It had the novelty aspect, like there’s a cooking challenge every week to use what’s in your basket,” Rathmell says, “but we knew that model was limited. People would say, ‘I love what you’re doing, but I don’t want cabbage every week until the end of time.’”

Based on that feedback, Lufa Farms launched an online marketplace in 2013, allowing Lufavores to customize their baskets (with a minimum order of $15) up until midnight before delivery day. Lufa has since partnered with other local farmers and food artisans that share its commitment to fresh, local, responsible food. Now, in addition to nearly 50 varieties of greens, herbs and vegetables from Lufa’s rooftop greenhouses, customers can also choose from a wide selection of other fruits and vegetables, meat, seafood, dairy, pasta, baked goods and pantry staples like peanut butter and jelly.

“You can get almost everything you need for groceries through the marketplace,” Rathmell says.

Harvesters arrive in the wee hours of the morning to pick veggies for that day’s deliveries. Local bakers and food makers fill orders by mid-morning, so baskets are assembled before noon. Lufa Farms fills 10,000 customized baskets every week, which are delivered by a fleet of five electric cars to 350 pick-up points across Montreal and Quebec City. Home delivery is also available in select cities.

Because food is picked to order and delivered same-day, it eliminates waste and drastically reduces the energy that’s usually spent packaging, shipping and refrigerating produce.

Growth potential

“The food model we’re trying to create is a local food engine, direct-to-consumer, providing access to fresh produce and other goods year-round. This model works in any city, especially where local food is hard to come by in the wintertime, so we’re hoping to expand,” says Rathmell, who’s “actively planning a new location in New England.”

Now with 150 employees, Lufa Farms has maintained more than 50 percent growth year-over-year since 2013. Until last year, that growth was largely word-of-mouth — fueled by greenhouse tours every few months. Then, in 2016, Rathmell developed the company’s marketing and communications department, adding marketing director to her title.

She launched new social media channels to engage with Lufavores by taking them behind the scenes at the farm — for example, posting Instagram stories sharing site tours and new varieties, and blog posts introducing partners.

“It helps people connect and understand what we’re about,” she says. “Yes, you are shopping for groceries online, but every product, every supplier, has a story behind it. We want to make sure all the info is out there and the story is complete.”

In our April issue, Metropolis Farms’ Jack Griffin walked us through his second-floor urban vertical farm, which was unique in part because it wasn’t on the ground floor. This month, we’re taking it a step further (or higher, shall we say) with our cover story.

Lufa Farms is a Montreal-based greenhouse produce grower for which the sky is the limit, as they’ve built their greenhouses on rooftops. Their efforts have been so well received that even Prime Minister Justin Trudeau visited the operation recently (check out photos from the visit on Lufa’s flickr page: bit.ly/2qkn12u), and Mohamed Hage, one of the founders, gave a TEDx Talk about Lufa and its views on sustainability and food production (watch it here: bit.ly/1dSypWi).

And as of 2013, Lufa has been cultivating a strong connection with the local population, creating a successful CSA program that incorporates both their greenhouse produce as well as other local businesses’ prepared foods. One of the points that I found interesting about their CSA is that the produce for the 10,000 customized baskets is both harvested and picked up within a few hours. “Lufavores,” as the CSA members are called, commit to picking up the basket on the same day as delivery “to ensure food safety and maximum freshness,” according to Lufa Farms’ website. Harvesters are picking that day’s orders very late at night or early in the morning — sometimes while wearing headlamps because the sun isn’t up yet! You can see a photo of it at bit.ly/2qTrkVk

Lufa Farm’s CSA program also stands out with its comprehensive online ordering system, what they call the Marketplace. It’s easy to see what’s available and order it with a simple click, up until midnight on the day before delivery. Lufa Farms is a great example of the potential of collaborating with other local businesses for maximum success, and making the most of what most people wouldn’t think of as an ideal growing space. Read the full story, including details on the challenges and benefits of rooftop growing, starting on page 6.

kvarga@gie.net | (216) 393-0290

Twitter: @Karen_GIE

Recently, I read a thought-provoking article called “The vegetable technology gap,” by Helena Bottemiller Evich. She makes the case that the American public consumes four times as much spinach now than 40 years ago because of technological advances in the form of a new and improved bag that allowed the product to be shipped, damage-free, across long distances. However, according to the author, most of the public and private funding for research like that which led to this new bag goes to commodity crops like corn and soy, instead of the fresh fruits and vegetables programs like MyPlate encourage people to eat.

On the USDA website, these healthy foods are grouped into the “specialty crops” category, which is defined as “fruits and vegetables, tree nuts, dried fruits, horticulture, and nursery crops (including floriculture).” According to a March 7 USDA press release, there is currently $60 million in grants available to the specialty crop industry. The USDA press release states that the grants are to be used to “support projects including research, agricultural extension activities, and programs to address the needs of America’s specialty crop industry.” There’s not much funding available when you consider just how many of these produce and ornamental growers and institutions would be interested in receiving these resources, and how long of a process it is to come up with technological advances like the spinach bag for highly perishable fruits and vegetables. Bottemiller Evich states in her article that in the past 30 years, only 15 percent of the federal research budget went to specialty crops. You can read the article at politi.co/2n5YVr2

But there’s no doubt that there’s a need to continue to invest in technological advances in the produce industry, including those that will enable more efficient growing methods that yield an increased number of higher-quality fruits and vegetables. For that reason, we’re focusing on technology in this month’s issue.

For our cover story, I spoke with Jack Griffin, the founder of Metropolis Farms and a former Wall Street executive, about how he’s using technology to feed the residents of Philadelphia. He’s a passionate advocate for vertical farming and for “democratizing technology” — creating affordable, highly efficient indoor growing systems that can be adapted to any crop. Griffin is a strong believer in supporting the local economy with locally grown food and technical innovations, rather than shipping produce across the country. “I love California, but jobs in California and 3,000-mile truck rides? It doesn’t make sense [now]. The economic term for it is comparative advantage,” he says. “They had better sun and a comparative advantage growing outdoors [in the past]. But comparative advantage can be eclipsed by technological enhancement or technological innovation, which is essentially what’s happened.” Turn to page 6 for more on how Metropolis Farms is changing the way we see vertical farming.

How has technology shaped the way that you grow? Drop me a line at kvarga@gie.net and fill me in.

kvarga@gie.net | (216) 393-0290

Twitter: @Karen_GIE