With two locations — one in Moultrie, Georgia, and another in LaBelle, Florida — Mobley Plant Farm serves customers in the Southeast and Midwest with transplant crops for field production. In 80 hoophouses at the Moultrie location, and another 50 at the LaBelle location, Mobley produces tomato, pepper and other produce crop transplants for its customers. According to owner Patrick Mobley, the Moultrie location has been open since 1980, while he purchased the LaBelle location in 2006. He estimates that the business grows a half-billion plants each year between the two locations.

A key part of Mobley’s business is having the right trays. According to Mobley, 70 to 75 percent of his trays are hard plastic trays from Proptek; the rest are polystyrene trays. He says the hard plastic trays are clearly superior.

“They are easy to clean, easy to sterilize [and] last for a lot longer than the polystyrene trays,” Mobley says. “[I] also have really good pull rates. As they get older, roots [from the plants] will grow into the side wall with the polystyrene trays. You don’t have that with the hard plastic trays.” He estimates that, depending on the size of the tray being used, he can fit a minimum of 400,000 plants in his hoophouses.

In the growing stage, the seedlings are placed in soil on the trays and then the trays are stacked in the germination room. From there, trays are spread out across benches, where the transplants grow to saleable size.

“Most crops, on average, take about five to six weeks before the transplants are ready,” Mobley says.

From there, the transplants are shipped to the farmers on the trays. When a farmer receives the tray, and then plants directly from it, Mobley’s staff will pick its trays up, and bring them back to one of the locations to be cleaned and sterilized before being reused.

According to Mobley, the polystyrene trays only last five to six years on average due to chipping and general wear-and-year, whereas a hard plastic tray like the ones he gets from Proptek can last upwards of 15 years. And while he says it does cost more upfront, it’s a smart investment for his business.

“[Proptek] has a quality design for its trays,” Mobley says. “They keep the roots going straight down instead of curling. They’ve got all of the experience, they know the right formulations so the trays hold up good. Over the life of the trays, the economics more than work out.” — Chris Manning

Argus Controls provides flexibility for Houweling’s Tomatoes, a greenhouse operation that grows an array of tomato types, including heirloom, cherry, grape, tomatoes on the vine and Roma, at three sites. The business has 30 acres of growing space in Mona, Utah; 125 acres in Camarillo, California; and 50 acres in Delta, British Columbia.

Casey Houweling, owner of Houweling’s Tomatoes, says the business controls all its equipment using Argus Controls. “It’s not only a climate computer, but it also controls our cooler, our water sterilization system and our filtration systems,” he says. “You can go on and on about all the different things it does. We even control packing equipment.”

Houweling’s Tomatoes has unique needs at all three of its sites, Houweling says. For instance, its Mona operation, located on a power plant, controls its flue gas offtake through Argus Controls. The heat is low-grade, so standard programs do not work with it. “There are all kinds of safeties to take care of and ensure that nothing goes wrong at the power plant and nothing goes wrong on our end, besides the control of managing the hot water storage tank and everything else,” he says. And Argus Controls helps the grower follow these protocols.

At both its Mona and Camarillo locations, Houweling’s Tomatoes uses a force-pressurized greenhouse system called Ultra-Clima. “It’s a unique greenhouse with unique demands,” Houweling says. “There’s a screen system in it. It’s got all the bells and whistles. Plus, the greenhouse is pressurized through a fan tube system, and you’ve got humidity control and CO2 and all the other programs with it.”

Argus Controls’ systems use feed-forward control intelligence, which means they can adjust to environmental conditions in real-time. Working within Ultra-Clima greenhouses, it is beneficial that Argus Controls’ systems are quick-reacting and offer an assortment of possibilities, Houweling says.

In addition, growers can map out the data that Argus Controls records, Houweling says. “Any parameter you set in, you can graph, so it’s got huge graphing capabilities,” he says. “Basically, whatever you want to graph, you can graph.”

To use a sophisticated environmental control system to its full potential, growers need to have a certain skillset — or employees that do, Houweling says. “You need good qualified technical people onsite because the more flexible a program is and the more capabilities you have, you really need to know, ‘What do I want to do?’ ‘How am I going to do it?’” Houweling says. — Patrick Williams

This year’s Indoor Ag-Con took place from May 2 to 4 in Las Vegas. In addition to workshops and a trade show, attendees had the chance to hear from different industry leaders on topics such as how to hire staff for urban farms and whether or not aquaponics has gained traction in the produce industry. Some attendees also had the chance to tour a new, high-tech growing facility in Las Vegas.

Hiring for urban agriculture

Like many other parts of the green industry, many urban and/or vertical farms consider labor to be one of their primary concerns. Even in some densely populated areas — New York City, for example — some growers have had a hard time meeting staffing needs.

At Indoor Ag-Con, a panel addressed these two concerns. Two business owners — Tobias Peggs, cofounder and CEO of Brooklyn greens grower Square Roots, and Nona Yehia, the co-founder and CEO of Jackson Hole, Wyoming grower Vertical Harvest — offered their insights into how to combat labor concerns.

According to Peggs, Square Roots has developed an environment that people want to work in and that sets people up for future success. For new employees who may or may not have a traditional horticulture background, Square Roots has a 12-month program that teaches employees how to grow; it comes with a salary, freedom to innovate and the chance to learn from experienced growers. Peggs believes the program is designed to build up people who invest themselves into it, citing employees who have gone to work for start-ups like Plenty or as independent urban farms owners; many employees also stay at Square Roots after the initial 12-month program. As for Yehia, she says turnover is the biggest issue her business faces. However, they work to combat this issue, and find a stable workforce, by approaching it from two fronts. The first is promoting the idea that Vertical Harvest is working to positively impact the world, and the idea that people want to work somewhere that is offering the community a service. Secondly, she says Vertical Harvest engages with Jackson Hole’s community and offers people with disabilities a job that provides them an opportunity to develop real-world skills.

Aquaponic boom

One panel at Indoor Ag-Con asked when aquaponics would gain traction. According to the panel — which consisted of Jason Green from Brooklyn-based grower Edenworks, Tracy Nazzaro from Hilliard, Florida grower Traders Hill Farm and Rebecca Nelson from Aquaponics manufacturer Nelson & Pade Aquaponics — it already is.

Green, whose business is primary customer is Whole Foods locations in New York City, says Edenworks’ model is to rebuild the supply chain with on-demand fulfillment. He says Edenworks can deliver greens in a third of the time it would take a field operation to grow the same amount. Nazzaro says having a sustainable growing method and contributing to the local food economy are reasons why aquaponics work. She also cites Wisconsin grower Superior Fresh, who will soon open the largest aquaponics facility in the U.S., as proof that aquaponics can be a profitable business model.

The key for continued growth, Nelson says, is educating the public about aquaponics and making it accessible. Both she and Nazzaro says new crop development will also be key to aquaponics’ future growth.

The future in plain sight

New to Indoor Ag-Con this year was a tour to Oasis Biotech’s facility in Las Vegas. Owned by Oasis’ parent company, Sanan Bio, the facility uses clean-room grow rooms to produce leafy greens. To enter the grow rooms, workers must wear protective suits that aim to prevent any outside contaminants from affecting the crops. The facility also features research and development labs that will pull data points from different trial areas — starting with propagation and ending with the final harvest — to determine which varieties are performing the best.

Oasis Biotech is still in the trial phase and may not begin taking orders from Las Vegas-area restaurants until this summer at the earliest. But when it does, it will be able to dedicate different grow rooms to different restaurants in downtown Las Vegas that request a specific product. It also already has a retail brand — Evercress — that will launch when the company is ready to take its production out of the trial stage.

The 2018 AgLanta Conference took place on March 27 and 28 in Atlanta with a focus on city sustainability, technological developments in controlled environment agriculture and the future of the industry. Here are five things Produce Grower learned at the event.

1. Atlanta is a major part of Georgia’s agriculture future.

Gary Black, the commissioner of the Georgia Department of Agriculture, was one of the event’s keynote speakers. In his speech, he praised Atlanta’s engagement with agriculture, saying that the city is a good example of how cities can improve ag. He also sees urban agriculture in Atlanta as a key part of #GeorgiaGrown — a state initiative that markets Georgia-grown produce to people living in the state.

2. In the future, Black hopes Georgia becomes the No. 1 state for local food.

“We want to be the best,” he said. “I think we’re pretty good, but we need to be vigilant.” Atlanta will be part of that effort.

Additionally, 100 Resilient Cities CEO Otis Rolley praised Atlanta for incorporating agriculture into its plan to become more urban resilient, which he defined as “the capacity of individuals, communities, institutions, businesses and systems within a city to survive, adapt and grow, no matter what kinds of chronic stress and shocks they experience.”

100 Resilient Cities is an organization that helps cities develop resiliency plans. In Atlanta, developing urban agriculture was a key part of the plan. That also included appointing Atlanta urban agriculture director Mario Cambardella to his role, the first of its kind in the United States.

3. All data matters.

On the smart operations panel, AgLanta attendees heard different perspectives on data’s role in growing produce. First up was Farmers Cut CEO Mark Korzilius, whose operation grows plants in closed cells with no walkways and uses an automated robot to monitor plants. The robot — named Farmer Joe — collects data and allows Farmers Cut to manage every aspect of growing with precision.

Next up was Allison Kopf, the CEO of Agrilyst, an intelligence software platform for indoor growers. According to Kopf, there can be too much of an emphasis on broader data points. She suggests instead tracking “little data” — the information a grower might write down on a piece of paper instead of tracking in a spreadsheet — which she says is the key to maximizing efficiency.

On the smart resource managment panel, Autogrow CEO Darryn Keiller said that the North American industry needs to look at other parts of the world that have readily embraced technology and data when looking for inspiration. He cites Singapore, Norway, Sweden and Belgium as countries with thriving high-tech growing industries.

4. Blockchain has the potential to make the supply chain more transparent.

On a panel discussing smart distribution, Tyler Mulvihill, director of ConsenSys — a blockchain startup based in New York that works with different horticulture operations — said that blockchain technology could help people understand where their food actually comes from and, in theory, incentivize people to buy (and produce) more local food. He also says more farmers will adopt the technology if it ultimately makes them more money.

Laura Seach, co-founder of Foodshed — a company connecting local producers with wholesale markers using blockchain — added that while the consumer is asking for local, fresher food and it is being grown in new ways, the industry is still relying on legacy systems for distribution. If data provided by blockchain is embraced, she says, then consumers will be able to decide what matters most to them and have a better idea of what they could trust.

5. Food demand will become hyperlocal and it will be big business.

Stan Vangilder is the program manager at the Southern Company, an energy utility company that believes that have a role in ensuring agriculture can play in improving lives. According to  Vangilder, the demand for local produce is both a major problem for cities and a major business opportunity.

According to Vangilder, 25 percent of people living in metro Atlanta do not have a car and live more than half a mile from a grocery story; additionally, one in four Atlanta families with children are considered food-insecure. That need, according to Vangilder, means there is a massive market for local produce and an opportunity for entrepreneurs. The Southern Company estimates that there is a $780 million market for new growers and a $300 million market for existing growers.