The landscape of social media is a swiftly moving target — a target most businesses in our industry haven’t clearly set their sights on yet. Not all social media platforms are going to be right for your business, or worth your time. That said, skipping social altogether means you could be missing out on key brand exposure on platforms such as Instagram. Given that so much of what we do is visual, Instagram might just be the best fit for produce growers. Food is beautiful, right?

We do need to acknowledge meaningful engagement, on any social platform, is tough for most brands right now. Engagement numbers are down across all popular platforms and paying to play no longer seems effective. Even so, Instagram is still considered the darling of social media, free for the moment from the political and social discourse that has driven many from Facebook and Twitter.

Do your research.

If you haven’t yet jumped into the deep end of the pool with Instagram, where should you start?

First, figure out who is doing Instagram well. It’s easier to get a handle on using a new platform when you have good examples from users in your industry. While there aren’t a lot of produce growers taking advantage of Instagram, there are a few up-and-comers you should check out, such as Big Marble Farms (Editor’s note: Learn more about Big Marble Farms), Circle A Lettuce, Windset Farms and Metrogrow Hawaii. The point of this comparative research isn’t to copy other users, but to learn how they represent their brand visually, and what seems to be reaching users.

Don’t forget the hashtags, which are a useful search and discovery tool. What hashtags are other growers using regularly, and what hashtags are used regularly by food and cooking enthusiasts?

Be relevant.

What to post is totally up to you as a brand, but your content ultimately must have personal relevance to your target audience. Remember, this channel isn’t as much about you as it is your viewer and it’s a relationship-building exercise. Obviously, beautiful images of your produce are a great place to start. You should also include behind the scenes images of how your produce is grown, where it is grown, who grows it and how consumers can use it. Big Marble Farms has done an excellent job of posting a good rotation of exactly that type of content, as has Windset Farms.

One thing you’ll notice on both of their feeds is the consistency of photo quality and attention to composition. Photo quality is a must on Instagram, and most successful brands use filters on their posts to boost the aesthetic quality.

Video, stories and live stories posted in Instagram often get better traffic than static image posts — even though they only remain visible on your profile for 24 hours. If you aren’t in the habit of taking short videos, now’s the time to start.

Post often.

You can’t slouch on quantity or consistency when you commit to an Instagram feed. The best engagement and exposure seems to come from posting 1 to 2 times per day. Not per week, not per month... per day. Otherwise you’re out of sight and out of mind. This ideal frequency may change over time, so you’ll need to pay attention to Instagram trends.

Post strategically.

There’s no sense in posting when the bulk of your followers or target audience aren’t on the platform. You’ll need to research when your followers are most active. Instagram offers a very easy-to-use native insights section in your account that tells you exactly what days and times of day the biggest percentage of your followers are active. It also tells you which posts were seen by the most people and that have the highest engagement. Pay attention to this data.

For example, on my Instagram feed @lesliehalleck, Wednesdays and Thursdays are currently the highest-traffic days. I see spikes on Sundays and Mondays as well. 12 p.m. to 3 p.m., with the highest percentage of users online at 3 p.m., is generally the peak usage time for all seven days of the week. Your feed data may look very different, depending on your brand and content. Traffic trends are not static — they change over time, so you’ll need to monitor them continually.

You should plan to target most of your posts during the peak usage days and times, but don’t be afraid to randomly post at completely opposite times or days. Posting a random late night or very early morning post now and then can help serve your content to new users who may not yet be aware of you.

Be inspirational.

Telling the story of your produce and your business, in ways that matter to the end consumer, is how you get attention on Instagram. You don’t need to preach about how you’re the expert or constantly throw facts at your users. If you’ve done a good job with your branding and take great images, then it should already be apparent that you’re the expert without telling everyone every day. Your job on Instagram is to visually inspire your viewer and give them nuggets of information that make it easy for them to visualize incorporating your product into their lives.

If you can incorporate user-generated content (make sure you pay attention to users who tag you in their posts), that’s even better. If you currently work with a local chef, restaurant or recipe tester, then you’ll want to leverage their social media influence in your market. Never share other user’s images without permission and tagging their feed; it’s better to use an app such as Repost to do so. Always respond to users who comment or tag you.

Instagram might seem intimidating to new users, but with a little effort, you can grow a useful platform for inspiration and meaningful consumer conversations.

Leslie (CPH) owns Halleck Horticultural, LLC, through which she provides horticultural consulting, business and marketing strategy, product development and branding, and content creation for green industry companies. lesliehalleck.com

When Wheatfield Gardens CEO Paal Elfstrum and an investor team purchased their Wheatfield, New York, property in March 2015, the 1.6-acre greenhouse that now houses hydroponic lettuce production looked very different than it does today. Purpose-built in the early 1990s for vine crops and strategically located to take advantage of a nearby power plant’s steam, the greenhouse had literally run out of steam as changes swept the energy industry. Regulations that required power companies to dispose of the steam they created went by the wayside — and so did the facility’s inexpensive heat source. From 2012 to 2015, the greenhouse stood vacant.

Fast forward to 2019 and every day, Wheatfield Gardens is harvesting 4,000 to 5,000 heads of pesticide-free hydroponic lettuce destined for Buffalo-area food markets, and that’s just one segment of 12.6 acres under glass. The story behind the lettuce and other hydroponic projects involves emerging technology that’s helping Wheatfield provide fresh, local, sustainably grown greens in the midst of New York’s winter. “I like to describe Wheatfield Gardens as an industrial-sized CEA [controlled environment agriculture] R&D center,” Elfstrum says.

Growing and transforming with technology

Like Wheatfield’s greenhouse, Elfstrum’s path into hydroponic lettuce production took uncommon turns. For more than a decade, he worked in pharmaceutical sales, marketing and manufacturing. In the late 1990s, while employed at biopharmaceutical company Pfizer, Elfstrum was intrigued by the presence of greenhouses on Pfizer property. A conversation with a coworker opened his eyes to Pfizer greenhouse experiments involving tobacco plants and vaccines. While that research piqued his interest in plant-based medicines, it also enlightened him to the shortcomings of passive, vents-and-fans greenhouses and the need for more controlled greenhouse environments.

The eventual advent of LED grow lighting rekindled his interest in greenhouse technology and the possibilities of sustainable, cost-effective controlled environments for the production of plant-based medicines and food. “I really have a passion for finding efficiencies and improving existing technologies,” Elfstrum says. “I saw an opportunity to take a more active approach to greenhouse environmental control.” That led to a partnership in Tropos Technologies, an environmental control technology firm, and his position as Wheatfield Gardens CEO.

Wheatfield’s first two years onsite involved rehabilitating three existing walkway-connected greenhouse enclosures. After years of decline, that translated to a lot of glass and pipe replacements, along with other upgrades. But the real action has revolved around the energy center and profitable, sustainable growing through increased efficiencies — thanks to additions such as a boiler and CO₂ recovery system, ag-optimized cogeneration, LED lighting and air handlers that recover water from transpiration and more. “Having more sustainable growing impacts the bottom line,” Elfstrum explains.

More efficiencies are ahead. Wheatfield Gardens was recently named a pilot site for CEA research by the Greenhouse Lighting & Systems Engineering (GLASE) consortium, a partnership between Cornell University and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. With the alliance’s focus on developing next-generation CEA technology for a more sustainable, more profitable industry, Elfstrum hopes onsite research helps advance CEA technology for years to come.

Enhancing productivity and profitability

Wheatfield’s earliest plans relied on the property’s original tomato-and-cucumber focus. But 2016’s 8.3-acre beefsteak tomato crop proved difficult to produce and price competitively. Elfstrum and his team began exploring other routes with extension support from Cornell and its CEA program.

Beginning in October 2017, the site’s smallest greenhouse was converted to a 1.5-acre deep-water culture system for hydroponic lettuce production. September 2018 marked the first full run. As 2019 begins, Wheatfield’s production focuses primarily on butterhead lettuce along with some oakleaf, romaine and incised varieties, plus several limited production varieties grown on speculation or for samples. Elfstrum says a new, limited production Wheatfield Gardens tri-variety salad mix, grown as a single head, is getting positive feedback from Wheatfield’s wholesale customers.

Pesticide-free hydroponic production is a Wheatfield priority. A robust IPM strategy using aphid midges, parasitic wasps and banker plants manages aphids, the only pest seen in lettuce production to date. “Beneficial insects are the only intervention we need to do on the pest control side,” he says. “Everything is in this controlled state right now.”

Wheatfield customers order 30 to 40 days in advance. “Then we do just-in-time growing,” Elfstrum explains. With the help of CO₂ enrichment from on-site carbon dioxide recovery, seed-to-sale production for butterhead varieties runs between 30 and 33 days. “We’re able to react to the market with predictable production, so our customers can plan their sales cycles accordingly,” he says.

Harvested lettuce goes into Wheatfield’s “Buffalo’s Best” sleeve in an on-site pack house, earmarked mostly for Buffalo-area Wegmans Food Markets. Wrapped-root “living lettuce” for contract customers goes into clamshells. “We harvest our food and within 48 to 72 hours, it’s in the produce section,” Elfstrum says.

Optimizing sustainability through technology

Elfstrum’s aspirations for sustainability and productivity hinge in large part on Tropos Technologies’ environmental control system, designed to optimize onsite power generation for precision control of heating, cooling, humidity and CO₂.

An agriculture-optimized natural gas cogeneration system produces heat and energy that powers everything from high-efficiency LEDs to a thermal-fueled absorption chiller. In the combustion process, cogeneration and a backup boiler produce recoverable H₂O and CO₂. Elfstrum shares that the 2016 installation of the boiler and CO₂ recovery system had a one-year payback: “Before that, we were paying $3,000 a truckload for liquid CO₂ that we’d vaporize on site.”

Patented Tropos air handlers, added in fall 2018, are key components of the system. Known as “mixing boxes,” the air handlers were engineered specifically to handle conditions created by transpiration in high-density farming. Through a process of complete air changes, the boxes work to eliminate unwelcome condensation on greenhouse crops.

In brief, the mixing box blends an incoming air stream from the growing space with a stream of CO₂ flue gas recovered from the cogeneration unit or boiler, which is then filtered and disinfected with UV light. The streams pass across a cold coil, which condenses water vapor from greenhouse transpiration and the flue gas. A hot coil reheats air to a grower-desired set point and conditioned air exits the mixing box, headed back to the growing space.

“In our lettuce facility, we’re able to do six to seven air changes in an hour,” Elfstrum says. “With the ability to recover transpired water vapor, we have not needed to use any municipal water in weeks for our crop production.” Similarly, onsite CO₂ recovery provides more than enough CO₂ to meet Wheatfield’s desired levels of CO₂ enrichment.

Cultivating community connections

An added benefit of efficiencies such as profitability and sustainability is stable, year-round employment of his staff. Many Wheatfield employees came to the company through Journey’s End Refugee Services, a Buffalo-based 501(c)(3) not-for-profit corporation that helps resettle refugees.

“We have people from around the world that worked in agriculture in countries like Burma, Thailand and Puerto Rico that came to the United States as political refugees,” Elfstrum explains. “Their experience … has led them to seek jobs in agriculture, so they are loving working here. It’s been just fantastic for us.”

Connecting with schools and students also ranks high. New York’s Farm to School program incentivizes schools to source local foods. As part of governor Andrew Cuomo’s No Student Goes Hungry initiative for fiscal 2019, schools that spend at least 30 percent of their school lunch budget on food from New York state farms will be reimbursed 25 cents per meal instead of the previous 5.9-cent reimbursement. Elfstrum hopes to help regional schools meet that goal.

“From the start, this has been a passionate endeavor for sustainable agriculture. Our mantra has been ‘Food, Energy and Jobs.’ There’s not enough arable land to meet future food needs ... High-density farming is here to stay,” Elfstrum says. “Optimizing production using the fewest natural resources is the way we want to do it. Not only does it help the environment, it helps the bottom line of the farmer by being as efficient as possible.”

Jolene is a freelance writer and frequent contributor to GIE Media publications.

In December 2018, New Jersey-based vertical farm company Bowery raised $90 million in new funding as it looked to expand and open its farms in to-be-determined cities. Earlier in 2018, Bowery opened its second farm in New Jersey and started producing six new products: romaine, bok choy, cilantro, parsley, a sweet & spicy mix, and a sauté mix.

Produce Grower: Of the new products, are there any most excited about?

Irving Fain: Our bok choy is something I’m actually pretty excited about, because you don’t typically see bok choy in a clamshell, the way we’re delivering it. We’ve seen consumers get really excited about it, just in terms of how we’re delivering it. But the other thing is, the bok choy itself is incredibly tasty. Bok choy is typically a crop that you see sautéed and cooked. You don’t see it raw. The quality and the taste in the bok choy itself — we got a lot of consumers reaching out to us and saying, “Hey, I just make a salad with your bok choy. I don’t need to cook it or do anything to it, and it’s fantastic.” And you’ve got other people who will sauté it and cook with it as well, and the product is great then.

PG: Why is prioritizing technological advancements a key part of Bowery’s business model?

IF: So I think the mission of Bowery is really democratized access to high-quality, fresh food. And one of the ways we can do that is to continue to drive innovation, which allows us to continue to expand our ability to produce new varieties, continue to expand our economics. And a lot of what allows that to happen, is innovation from a technical standpoint, whether it’s software innovation, hardware innovation or innovation on the automation side. The more efficient we as a business can get, the more opportunity we have to tie back to that mission I mentioned, where we can democratize access to high-quality, fresh foods. I’m in this business because I’m a believer fundamentally in innovation and its ability to solve hard and important problems.

PG: How much does Bowery emphasize food safety and prioritize it in a controlled environment?

IF: [It’s] absolutely critical. One of the important things of Bowery is our brand itself. We sell under our brand name as Bowery. By doing that, you need to be able to instill an amount of trust from the consumer themselves. We are actually Safe Quality Food [SQF]-certified and have been since our very first farm, and we take food safety extremely seriously and always will moving forward. I think it’s a real advantage that we have, because we’re not susceptible to some of the issues that the traditional food supply chain is and that have been plaguing them over the last six or so months.

In this first article of a four-part series, researchers from Michigan State University share science-based information about indoor production of leafy greens and herbs.

Before light-emitting diodes (LEDs) became common in the horticulture industry, indoor farmers used fluorescent tubes that emitted a cool- or warm-white light. Nowadays, some indoor farmers are using pink or purple lights, which are comprised of blue (B; 400–500 nm) and red (R; 600–700 nm) LEDs. Other growers are using full-spectrum (or broad-spectrum) lights, which are white LEDs with or without supplemental B, R, and/or far-red (FR; 700–800 nm) LEDs. White LEDs are B LEDs with a phosphor coating, which converts some energetic B photons to longer wavelengths, such as green (G; 500–600 nm) and R. Therefore, full-spectrum LEDs emit more G (and usually FR) light than B+R LEDs.

Plants grow just fine under B+R LEDs, so what does G or FR light bring to the table? Although chlorophylls absorb mainly B+R light, leaves also absorb 70-80% G light. While the upper surface of a leaf absorbs most of the B+R light, G light penetrates deeper into the leaf and gets scattered more to drive photosynthesis. Moreover, G and FR light reach deeper into a canopy than B+R light and can elicit shade-avoidance responses such as increased leaf expansion and upward leaf orientation. As a result, larger leaves intercept more light energy to increase photosynthesis and thus, growth. Green and FR light also contribute to photosynthesis directly.

Although these phenomena indicate positive roles of G light in plant growth, effects of G light have been inconsistent in recent studies. In addition, if G and/or FR light are to supplement B+R light, how G light compares with FR light is unclear. We performed an indoor experiment to determine how partly or completely substituting B light with G and/or FR light affected lettuce and kale growth.

Experimental protocol

We grew green butterhead lettuce ‘Rex,’ red oakleaf lettuce ‘Rouxai,’ and kale ‘Siberian’ in the Controlled-Environment Lighting Laboratory (goo.gl/zM4bDh). Seeds were sown in a rockwool substrate, placed on plastic trays, irrigated with a nutrient solution, and germinated at 68° F under a 24-hour photoperiod from warm-white LEDs at 180 µmol·m^-2·s^-1 (400–800 nm). On days 9 to 11, seedlings were transplanted into a deep-flow hydroponic system with three vertically stacked layers per rack. Plants were grown at 68° F under a 20-hour photoperiod from each of eight LED lighting treatments at 180 µmol·m^-2·s^-1 (400–800 nm). The lighting treatments were delivered with the PHYTOFY RL LED fixtures (OSRAM) with seven programmable color channels and software control (Fig. 1). Red light was delivered at 120 µmol·m^-2·s^-1 in all treatments while the remaining 60 µmol·m^-2·s^-1 was comprised of B, G, and/or FR light. Blue light at 60 µmol·m^-2·s^-1 was substituted with G or FR light at 0, 20, 40, or 60 µmol·m^-2·s^-1. In addition, B, G, and FR light were delivered equally at 20 µmol·m^-2·s^-1 each (B20G20R20FR20, where numbers indicate photon flux densities in µmol·m^-2·s^-1). Plants were harvested approximately 30 days after seed sow.

Shoot mass

Substituting G or FR light for B light increased shoot fresh mass of all crops (Fig. 2). Compared with the B60R120 treatment, G60R120 increased fresh mass of lettuce ‘Rex’ by 72%, lettuce ‘Rouxai’ by 79%, and kale ‘Siberian’ by 50%. Compared with B60R120, R120FR60 increased fresh mass of lettuce ‘Rex’ by 37%, lettuce ‘Rouxai’ by 91%, and kale ‘Siberian’ by 43%. Trends for shoot dry mass were generally similar. Shoot mass of all crops under B20G20R120FR20 was comparable to that under B20R120FR40.

Leaf and petiole size

Leaf size increased as B light was substituted with G or FR light. For example, the fifth mature leaves of lettuce and kale were 23–39% longer and 27–34% wider under G60R120 than B60R120 (Fig. 3). In comparison, they were 31–94% longer and 22–50% wider under R120FR60 than B60R120. Leaves were generally longer under FR light than under the same photon flux density of G light for lettuce, but not kale. Substituting 60 µmol·m^-2·s^-1 of G light for B light increased plant diameter by 38% for lettuce ‘Rex’ and by 86% for lettuce ‘Rouxai.’ In comparison, substituting 60 µmol·m^-2·s^-1 of FR light for B light increased plant diameter by 32% for lettuce ‘Rex’ and by 63% for lettuce ‘Rouxai.’ Total leaf area and petiole length of kale were measured. Responses of total leaf area were similar to leaf length and width. Although increasing G or FR light (while decreasing B light) increased petiole length, this increase was more pronounced under FR light. Petioles of kale were 26%, 61%, and 68% longer under FR light than G light at 20, 40, and 60 µmol·m^-2·s^-1, respectively.

Foliage color

Increasing G or FR light (while decreasing B light) decreased an index for chlorophyll concentrations in all crops. At the same photon flux density, FR light decreased it more than G light did. As a result, leaves appeared yellower with increasing G or FR light (and decreasing B light). In addition, the spectrum influenced red foliage coloration of lettuce ‘Rouxai’ (Fig. 2). For example, its foliage became less red and brighter as B light was substituted with G light.

Summary

A partial or complete substitution of B light (as in B60R120) with G or FR light increased harvestable mass and leaf size of lettuce and kale. Increased yields can at least partly be attributed to increased leaf expansion and consequently, light capture for photosynthesis. However, substituting G light for B light decreased foliage redness of red oakleaf lettuce ‘Rouxai.’ Although this study showed apparent benefits of G light in crop growth, it was unclear whether these responses resulted from increasing G light, decreasing B light, or both, which will be addressed in part II of this series. The effects of the light spectrum on other quality characteristics also merit consideration.

Qingwu (William) (qwmeng93@gmail.com) was a Ph.D. graduate research assistant and Erik (runkleer@msu.edu) is a professor in the Department of Horticulture at Michigan State University (MSU). They thank David Hamby, Rodrigo Pereyra, Charles Brunault, Alan Sarkisian, and Dorian Spero from OSRAM Innovation for lighting support; Steve Brooks for technical assistance; Randy Beaudry, Dan Brainard, Roberto Lopez, and Emily Merewitz for instruments; Nathan Kelly, Yujin Park, and Nate DuRussel for experimental assistance; and Michigan State University AgBioResearch Project GREEEN for funding. A YouTube video of this project is available to watch here