SHERWOOD PARK, Alta. — What started out as a quicker way to grow echinacea and rhodiola has spun into an indoor vertical farm able to grow food year round.
A company called Nutraponics believes it has created a system to grow food anywhere in the world using LED lights to replace the sun and tilapia fish to replace nutrients from the soil.
“This is urban farming. You can put this in the bottom of a high rise and produce food for local people,” said chief executive officer Rick Purdy.
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“It’s a controlled growing environment 365 days a year. We don’t rely on the sun, but LED lights.”
It took five years for the rhodiola and echinacea to grow to maturity on a Sherwood Park acreage, but the herbal plants matured in five months when they were moved indoors and grown hydroponically.
It was Purdy’s research into hydroponics, which is the growth of food in water, and aquaponics, which is the growth of food using the by-products of fish, that led him to develop a new growing system.
“We designed a vertical farm because we think that is the future,” said Purdy during the opening of the company’s pilot scale farm.
Water from tilapia, which are raised in giant containers, is filtered and used as the nutrients to grow leafy green vegetables. A series of air and water filters allows the plants to be grown without fertilizer, chemicals and pesticides.
The vertical farm is not a fish farm. The fish are the source of plant fertilizer.
The leafy green vegetables are ready for harvest within a month.
Purdy believes the ideal location for vertical farms would be work camps in the far north, First Nations reserves where fresh food is expensive and cities where consumers want fresh, local food.
“It will be a supplier in the food industry,” he said.
“Camps may buy a system up north instead of shipping food two or three weeks from California. There is a market for urban organic food. People want local, and they realize the quality food they want is not what they have been sold.”
The pilot facility has 1,000 metres of growing area, but Nutraponics believes a 3,000 metre facility is the minimum economic size, about the equivalent of one acre. The technology and support for a 3,000 metre facility costs $1.5 million and is expected to pay for itself in five years.
The company expects a 10,000 metre facility to be built in New Brunswick by November 2016.
“Our business is a technology company, so we license the technology, sell the hardware and install it,” he said. “We teach and train. When people buy our system, they will come here and learn how to run the facility.”
Tanner Stewart, director and chief operating officer, said vertical farms could offer food security around the world.
“We are not going to be the solution, but we will be one of the solutions to help protect our future when it comes to food security,” said Stewart.
