Farming - The Evening Leader

Farming
Friday, September 11, 2015
C
Photos provided
Wet weather early in the season is still causing concerns for area farmers.
Farmers grapple with wet weather
By ANDREW WILSON
Staff Writer
ST. MARYS — In
addition to the sunny,
crisp days that residents
of west central Ohio enjoy in September and
October, both months
can bring a lot of rain to
the area.
Unlike most years
where that rain would
be welcomed, farmers
around Auglaize County worry that more rain
could add exacerbate a
problem created by excessive rains in April,
May, June and early
July.
“First of all, we had
areas that were ponded,”
Ohio State University
Auglaize County Extension Educator in Ag-
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riculture and Natural
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said. “The ponded waters killed plants, there
are areas in fields where
corn and soybeans were
completely killed. There
were some large areas in
certain places along the
rivers, the rivers got out
of their banks, and so
there were some areas
that were drowned out
in those areas. So that
was the most obvious
damage that you could
see quickly.”
The excessive rain in
spring and early summer
saturated soils, inhibited root growth for the
corn and soybeans and
prevented plants from
taking up nitrogen from
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Page C2
Friday, September 11, 2015
Farm
From Page C1
the soil to stay green and
effectively grow.
“We know that happened and we can still
see the remnants of that
in the field,” Stachler
said. “What the true impact is going to be is not
100 percent known until we go out and harvest
the fields, but there will
be fields that will be less
than 100 bushel corn
per acre, which is very
low yield.”
Along with corn and
soybeans, the excessive
rainfall had a significant
impact on hay fields, as
farmers had an extremely tough time harvesting the hay in a timely
manner. Additionally, a
significant number of alfalfa stands were lost to
root disease that came
in and harmed the alfalfa crops.
That negatively effected dairy farmers because
they had poor quality
forages that caused their
milk production to decline, thus resting in lost
profits. Farmers who lost
their alfalfa stand had to
re-seed, and alfalfa seeds
can be very expensive to
plant. Additionally, if local farmers were unable
to find a way to make
supplemental forages,
they will head into next
season with little forage
available to feed their
dairy cows.
To compensate for
the loss of forage, farmers would likely have to
harvest more corn silage,
but reduced plant sizes
may lead to reduced
corn silage yield.
The most heavily impacted corn and soybean fields, fields that
are north of Ohio 29
and Ohio 33, are estimated to make somewhere between 50 and
100 bushels of corn
per acre, a yield that is
less than the average of
140 bushels of corn per
acre.
This fall, farmers will
discover the extent of
the damage caused by
this year’s rains when
they harvest the crops.
As they do so, any additional rains could
further deteriorate the
condition of the crops.
“Quality of soybeans
and corn could deteriorate if we get too much
rain in that October
time frame because
we’re pushing it back,”
Stachler said. “More
importantly, it will just
cause more damage to
the soils because we’ll
be out there harvesting
in wet soil conditions
and making ruts, and
that wouldn’t be fun.
That has potential to
harm next year’s crops
because of the compaction that’ll be created.”
While mother nature
cannot be controlled,
farmers do have one option to reduce the risk of
being harmed by excessive rainfall: tiles.
Tiles are installed by
digging a trench into
the field and installing a
plastic tube 3 feet deep.
As the water moves
down the profile, it will
take some of it out, but
more importantly, as the
water table moves up to
the tile line, it can feed
through the bottom and
go out.
In many cornfields,
the tile line was clearly
visible because there was
enough drainage that
the corn was green on
top of the tile lines and
in between was quite
yellow.
Although tiles do not
come cheap — the average cost is $650 per acre
of land — they could
help farmers salvage
some of their crops following a rainy spring
and summer like in
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The most significant
impact from the excessive rains in the spring/
summer of 2015 is the financial impact they will
have one farmers. With
milk production up,
prices have come down,
which means dairy farmers will have to pay more
for forage to feed their
animals and low prices
for milk.
Feed prices may rise
as well, as farmers will
have to truck in more
corn from a wider area,
thus increasing transportation costs.
All of which are rea-
2015. Tile can be installed within a few days
to a week, depending on
the length of the field.
Those who do not have
tiles installed will likely
suffer more damage in
their fields.
Planting dates also
effected local farmers,
as farmers that planted
their crops in late April/
early May had a larger
root system than crops
to get past the excessive water better. Crops
that were planted later
did not have that root
system and oxygen was
squeezed out due to the
water taking up that air-
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sons why area farmers
will do their best to recover from the spring/
early summer of 2015, a
year that won’t soon be
forgotten.
“I’ve talked to a lot of
people and asked them
questions,
especially
some of the older ones,
have they ever seen a
year like this?” Stachler
said. “And everyone says
that they’ve never ever
seen a year like this, with
this excessive rainfall
for this long of a period
of time. So it’s really the
large amounts of rain as
often as we got this and
how long it lasted.”
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Page C3
Friday, September 11, 2015
Thriving crops mask farmers’ water concerns
SALINAS, Calif. (TNS) — In this farming valley,
often known as “America’s salad bowl,” the climate
is cool and consistent, the soil is fertile, and an abundance of water has allowed a diverse set of crops to
flourish.
Farmers here produce almost two-thirds of the nation’s lettuce and half of its broccoli and celery. One
town calls itself the artichoke capital of the world.
It is also a place that has seemed to be immune to
the state’s pervasive drought.
For Rick Antle, the shortage in his fields this summer is of workers, not water. Harvest machines roar to
life as 2,000 people cut, wrap and pack thousands of
boxes of lettuce each day for Tanimura & Antle, a major family-run farm. They could use 120 more workers.
At a time when lakes have hit bottom, wells have
run dry, and farmland 100 miles away in the Central
Valley has gathered dust, the Salinas Valley remains an
oasis — a green patchwork quilt of farmland unfurling
roughly 90 miles along U.S. 101 north of Paso Robles
to Monterey Bay, where the Salinas River meets the
ocean.
But the verdant landscape hides long-term troubles
with the region’s only water source.
Unlike the Central Valley, which depends on snowmelt transported from faraway reservoirs, the Salinas
Valley has prospered for decades relying solely on the
groundwater hundreds of feet below.
Isolated from state and federal aqueducts, the region
can’t afford to run out of local water. Changes need to
be made, but agreement on what to do and how to pay
for it has been elusive.
“The problems of other areas is they have no water,”
said Norm Groot, executive director of the Monterey
County Farm Bureau. “Our problem here is we still
have water. And to some degree, that presents a different set of challenges.”
Foremost among them is how to preserve the
massive, but overdrafted, aquifer — one of the most
stressed groundwater basins in the state, according to
the California Department of Water Resources.
No one knows exactly how deep it goes or how
much water is left. A county report estimates there are
about 5.3 trillion gallons of water stored underground.
About 3 percent to 4 percent of that amount is pumped
out each year.
“It’s a good aquifer, it’s really deep, but we’re essentially slowly mining it over time,” said Michael Cahn,
a University of California water resources advisor who
helps local farmers improve irrigation. “The reality is,
you can’t take too much out.”
The overdraft is not obvious. Unlike parts of the
Central Valley, where the clay soil sinks as water is
pumped out, the Salinas Valley’s more porous soil
tends to maintain its form, Cahn said.
But the soil presents a different problem: saltwater
intrusion. The more fresh water is drawn out, the more
room for seawater to flow in and contaminate the remaining supply.
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TNS photo
An employee of Bengard Ranch picks celery on some of the ranch’s property on July 27, 2015 south of
Salinas, Calif.
In the 1950s and ‘60s, Lake Nacimiento and Lake
San Antonio were built to help push back seawater
by replenishing the groundwater though the Salinas
River. Creating this water system enabled the valley to
produce all its varied crops despite its many microclimates, officials said.
But the drought has drained the reservoirs — San
Antonio is down to 4 percent of capacity — stressing
the aquifer even more. Wells are starting to go dry in
some areas, and seawater continues to push into farmland near the coast.
“The problem is, where is that breaking point?” said
Bardin Bengard, whose family has farmed here since
the 1850s, when the valley was mostly cattle and grain.
“Our main water supply is underground. It’s not like
you’ve got a reservoir where you can just look at it and
go, ‘It’s empty.’”
Bengard’s family has seen how water transformed
the region. After cattle, it was sugar beets, white beans
and potatoes. Today, it’s mass production of leafy
greens and strawberries. Agriculture contributes
about $8.1 billion a year to the economy, according to
a recent county report.
“We’re so lucky in Salinas,” said his daughter Bridget, who manages the family’s celery fields. “You can’t
farm any of this stuff here, for as long as the season,
anywhere else in the world.”
The Bengards worry about water quality. And how
much longer this way of life can last.
In 2013, they lost a well because it got salty. Then
two other wells needed to be replaced — at $500,000
each. But such problems don’t compare to what they
faced at their San Joaquin Valley operation, where they
had to fallow 1,000 acres of cotton after even their
backup drought plan failed.
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Friday, September 11, 2015
Americans diversifying their protein sources
(TNS) — Gillian Spence plunges
her hand into a shallow tray of 10,000
writhing mealworms. She comes up
with a handful of the inch-long, beigecolored grubs, which squirm over and
between her fingers.
Most are destined to become bait for
fish or food for reptilian pets. But not
all of them.
“A lot of orders now are going to restaurants,” she says.
Spence’s Compton company, Rainbow Mealworms, supplies the mealworms and their larger, feistier cousins, called superworms, to a number
of edible-insect businesses across the
country. One, called Hotlix, puts them
inside lollipops.
Mealworms and superworms aren’t
actually worms at all — they’re the
larval forms of two species of darkling
beetles. They’re also two of the roughly
1,900 insect species that are good for
people to eat, according to the United
Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization.
Mealworms and superworms are
rich in protein, amino acids and vitamins and minerals like potassium and
iron. Plus, they have less fat and cholesterol than beef.
These and other insects are also considered an environmentally friendly
source of protein because they can be
raised on a fraction of the land and water required for traditional livestock,
like cattle.
That’s clear at Rainbow Mealworms.
At its complex of small houses, millions
of beetles — in all life stages from larvae to adults — live in trays stacked on
8-foot-tall racks that look like they belong in a bakery. Each tray teems with
thousands of insects nestled in a bed of
whole wheat bran, which they eat, and
fresh baby carrots, which they nibble
on for water.
Their flavor, when toasted, is often
described as being nutty and crispy,
akin to roasted pecans or fried pork
rinds. And despite the obvious “yuck”
factor, the demand to eat them is grow-
TNS photo
Shipping supervisor Raul Nieves scoops up a container of live “Superworm” brand giant mealworms that are shipped
throughout North America to customers who consume them as food on Sept. 1.
ing.
“I probably get an email a day asking
about it,” Spence said.
Although 2 billion people around
the world consider insects a dietary
staple, they’ve been in the American
food supply for just a few years.
It started in earnest with Chapul,
an energy bar company that makes its
product with cricket powder. In 2011,
Pat Crowley, one of the company’s
founders, had finished his training in
hydrology and was working on longterm water planning for the Western
saving efforts and a number of infrastructure projFrom Page C3 ects already in place.
“One dry year is not
that devastating, because
The Bengards know we’ve been prepared for
there are few backups to decades,” said Groot, the
count on in the Salinas farm bureau executive.
Valley, so like other farm- “This saltwater intrusion
ers in the region, they’re issue really scared the
thinking ahead. Instead community into reactof traditional flooding ing and doing something
methods, 80 percent of and paying for some fairly
their crops are on drip big projects that were way
tape, which feeds water ahead of their time.”
A $75 million project
directly to the roots.
Agriculture would be in 1998 began treating
harder hit right now if it sewage to irrigate 12,000
weren’t for these water- acres of farmland near
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the coast. Taking many of
these farmers off groundwater was a monumental
step in slowing the seawater intrusion, officials
said.
In 2010, two inflatable rubber dams were
installed to capture more
rain during wet months.
Officials could then release this extra water
and move it through the
Salinas River to where it
needs to be.
Releasing about 1,200
acre-feet per day keeps
the seawater from creeping farther inland, said
Robert Johnson, deputy
general manager of the
Monterey County Water
Resources Agency.
This worked for two
years, he said, but officials could release only
60 acre-feet per day last
year and about 130 this
year. Many farmers have
argued that more water needs to be released,
while officials cite the
need to store some water
in the event of another
dry winter.
It’s not easy coming to
a consensus on what still
needs to be done, in part
because of geography.
Farmers closest to the
coast worry more about
seawater contamination,
while those farther south,
where the climate is hot-
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U.S. The forecast didn’t look good to
him.
With so much of the region’s water
going to agriculture, it was clear to
Crowley: “We need some large-scale
changes to our food supply if we want
to have enough water in the future.”
When he heard a TED talk about the
benefits of edible insects, he latched
onto it as a possible solution. The health
and environmental benefits were clear.
But Crowley didn’t think mainstream Americans were ready to eat
cricket legs or wings. So he toasted the
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critters and ground them up, mixing
the resulting powder with fruit, nuts
and chocolate into a familiar energy
bar. After a successful Kickstarter campaign, the first batch of Chapul bars hit
the market in 2012.
“No one was doing anything like
it,” he said. “It was definitely blowing
people’s minds.”
He received a measure of validation the following year, when the U.N.
–––––––––––––––
See DIET, Page C5
ter and the soil different,
are concerned about access to enough water. Fish
and other environmental
issues are also at play, and
even though the valley is
largely agricultural, there
is an urban population
that needs to be considered.
There’s talk of increasing storage by building a
tunnel between the two
reservoirs. Using more recycled wastewater is also
a possibility, although this
gets tricky when droughtconscious residents are
flushing their toilets less.
And looming over everything is Gov. Jerry
Brown’s mandate to form
a groundwater sustainability agency by 2017
to regulate pumping. In
the Salinas Valley, where
agriculture uses about
90 percent of the water,
the question boils down
to: Who will control the
groundwater basin?
Groot, who represents
about 400 farms, acknowledged there will be
changes to the rules and
the cost of water in the
years ahead. But, he added: “We want to have a
sustainability agency that
recognizes we’ve done a
lot already.”
Experts say there
needs to be stronger
regulation of wells and a
clearer understanding of
how much water the region actually has. County
officials are working on a
more detailed groundwater estimate, which will
be completed in the next
few years.
Until then, hope in El
Nino is the more popular
answer. Farmers remind
one another that in past
storms Lake Nacimiento
filled up in a matter of
days.
“Everything cycles,”
said Antle, whose family
has farmed in the valley
for generations. “It’s going to rain this year.”
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Page C5
Friday, September 11, 2015
Local students have eye toward future careers
more.
“The population is increasing so
quickly, and we need to learn how to
ST. MARYS — With the world produce more food to feed everyone,”
evolving and populations growing Schloemer said. “It’s mainly through
at an ever-increasing rate, nearly ev- GMOs, learning how to make more
ery major industry has been forced to per plant.”
adapt accordingly.
Though she essentially joined the
The agricultural field is one of the school’s FFA program on a whim,
most crucial components of this adap- Schloemer has now considered pursutation, as greater crop yields are now re- ing a career in agriculture. In addition
quired from the same amount of land. to crop studies, she is also interested in
Memorial High School junior Claire livestock.
Schloemer is fascinated by this facet of
“I don’t really know what I want to
farming, citing genetically modified do yet, but (agriculture) is definitely an
crops as the area that has intrigued option,” she said. “I would want to go
her most since joining FFA as a sopho- into the animal sciences, (learn) how
By ERIC ADAMS
Staff Writer
they raise different types of animals
and what can make it better, that’s pretty intriguing.”
Sophomore Kaylee Katterhenry
knows a great deal about raising animals, and the labor such an undertaking can entail. She has shown steer
since she was young, growing up as a
member of 4-H, and during the summer spends approximately five hours
every day tending to her animals.
Washing the steer three to four times
daily in the summer, regularly feeding
them and keeping them in an air conditioned area to prevent shedding are
just a few components comprising the
time she devotes.
“It’s a big commitment,” she said.
“When your friends call and ask you to
stay over, you have to stay in the barn
until everything gets done. But, as
much work as it is, it truly is rewarding
at the end of the day.”
Katterhenry said she would like to
pursue a career in agricultural marketing, with a focus specifically geared toward cattle.
Tommy Risner, also a sophomore,
doesn’t have any intentions of following an agricultural career path but
said FFA has been helpful nonetheless.
–––––––––––––––
See FFA, Page C6
USDA studies insurance to cover losses from bird flu
WA S H I NGTON
(TNS) — The arrival of
cooler weather in the upper Midwest has poultry
farmers worrying about
the return of bird flu,
which last spring wiped
out more than 48 million
chickens and turkeys
nationwide. The U.S.
Department of Agriculture spent $191 million
to contain the outbreak
— though the total cost
is closer to $700 million
once cleanup, disinfection, and vaccine research are included, Agriculture Secretary Tom
Vilsack said in July.
That doesn’t cover
farmers’ lost sales. It took
John Burkel more than
three months to repopu-
Diet
late his turkey barns near
Badger, Minn., after the
flu claimed 14,000 of his
birds in a single week.
He’ll have just two-thirds
of his usual supply to sell
this Thanksgiving — if
flu doesn’t strike again.
“I don’t know if a guy
could do this two times
in a row, to be honest,”
he said.
Sen. Amy Klobuchar,
D-Minn., thinks Burkel
shouldn’t have to. Almost
half of all bird flu detections were in her state,
the nation’s top turkey
producer. In 2014, before
the flu hit, she got language put into the federal farm bill authorizing a
USDA study into how to
create insurance for poul-
From Page C4
Food and Agriculture Organization released a hefty
report that concluded: “The consumption of insects
... contributes positively to the environment and to
health and livelihoods.”
Compared with cattle, cultivated insects emit far
fewer greenhouse gases, require less water, can be
grown in a smaller space, can eat foods like vegetable
scraps that would otherwise be considered waste,
and can grow more protein from less feed, according
to the report. For instance, growing mealworms for
food requires about one-tenth as much space as raising an equivalent amount of beef protein, the report
says.
After the publication, a handful of other businesses sprung up to sell ground crickets in familiar foods
like chips and cookies.
Even U.S. government agencies got interested.
Since 2013, the Department of Agriculture has invested $550,000 in research projects that aim to
develop a shelf-stable insect protein powder. The resulting cricket powder, made from a pasteurized, dehydrated slurry of frozen insects, is now widely used
in edible bug snacks.
But as the industry grows, questions arise.
How environmentally friendly are edible insects,
really?
A study published in 2015 in the scientific journal PLOS One found that crickets raised on poultry
feed required nearly as much food as conventionally
raised chickens per unit of protein produced. If crickets aren’t able to convert feed into protein more efficiently than chickens, they really aren’t that much
more sustainable, the researchers concluded.
But chickens have been bred for decades to grow
big on as little food as possible, said study leader
Mark Lundy, an agronomist at the University of
California’s Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources. A similar program to breed edible insects
try and pig producers
along the lines of public
programs covering growers of corn, soybeans,
and other commodities
prone to weather disasters. Klobuchar is pushing the agency to complete the study and move
quickly to come up with
a solution to ensure that
farmers like Burkel don’t
go under. “This is a way
of life for these producers,” she said.
One option is to expand the program that
already covers cleanup
costs after an outbreak.
“You could keep the
USDA’s current program
and add insurance to
losses not currently covered,” Klobuchar said.
“You could make insurance a part of indemnification. You could have
different programs for
different types of birds.”
Insurance against bird
flu is “top topic No. 1
through 5” among poultry producers, said said
John Anderson, an economist with the American
Farm Bureau Federation.
But setting up a bird flu
insurance program is
harder than doing so for
crops because outbreaks
are more difficult to predict.
Private insurers say
it’s almost impossible to
write policies covering
bird flu losses as long as
the risk of another outbreak remains high. Pal-
that thrive on food scraps and other waste products
could provide the biggest opportunities for sustainability gains, he said.
And compared with cows, crickets are way more
efficient eaters. Feedlot cattle require at least six
pounds of food to put on one pound of weight, and
only about half of that weight is actual meat, said Dan
Shike, an animal sciences researcher at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. In contrast,
crickets in the 2015 PLOS One study required about
2 pounds of food to put on 1 pound of weight collectively, and the whole insect is edible.
Insects also beat traditional livestock in other
measures of sustainability.
Another PLOS One study from 2012 found that
the greenhouse gas emissions that result from raising
mealworms were up to four times lower than those
created in the production of milk, pork or chicken,
and up to 12 times lower than the emissions from
raising beef.
In general, insect farming is a meticulously clean
practice. Edible insects are quite sensitive to chemicals, so they can’t be exposed to artificial food additives. Spence, at Rainbow Mealworms, says she can’t
even put flea collars on her cats because any trace of
pesticide could wipe out her stock.
But there aren’t any specific insect-farming rules
that U.S. producers must follow, said Sonny Ramaswamy, director of the USDA’s National Institute for
Food and Agriculture.
“There are some regulations that are needed,” he
said.
For now, edible insects fall under the jurisdiction
of the Food and Drug Administration, which says
insects destined for human consumption must be
grown and processed according to the same standards as other foods. FDA spokeswoman Lauren
Sucher says food manufacturers are responsible for
making that happen.
Spence got an FDA-approved nutritional label in
July, clearing the way for her to officially advertise her
mealworms as people food and sell them directly to
consumers. It also means her customers can feel as-
omar Insurance in Atlanta, which tailors risk
management
policies
to the needs of specific
industries, is studying
how to pool bird flu risks
with other hazards, but
it hasn’t generated much
interest from underwriters. “If we get through the
fall with minimal problems, then it becomes
more palatable,” said Des
Yawn, a Palomar senior
vice president. “If there’s
a risk that what happened
this year happens every
year, there isn’t going to
be much interest.”
National Crop Insurance Services, the Overland Park, Kan., group
that represents government-backed
farmer
insurance programs, referred questions about
bird flu insurance to the
USDA, which said it will
report to Congress on
the feasibility of a program this year.
Burkel isn’t waiting
around. He’s increasing
his flu prevention measures, putting double
screens on his roof vents
to keep out wild birds
and washing every truck
that enters or leaves his
farm. “At a certain level,
you will always be responsible for your own
barns,” he said. “I can tell
you this: I don’t want to
spend my time composting the turkeys in my
barn. That is something I
never want to do again.”
sured that the wriggly ingredients are grown according to federal food production standards.
The bugs arrive from Rainbow Mealworms in 20
cardboard boxes: 40,000 mealworms and 40,000
superworms, live and packaged in clean, unbleached
muslin cloth.
Monica Martinez unwraps the packages and carefully rinses the wriggling grubs, checking them over
to make sure they’re all healthy. Then she puts the insects in the fridge to cool off. Once they’re lethargic,
she pops them on a baking tray and slides them into
the oven to roast. No extra oil needed.
Martinez owns Don Bugito, a San Franciscobased eatery that aims to revive the ancient Mexican
culinary tradition of eating insects. She caramelizes
the mealworms in toffee, coats them in chocolate for
a sweet treat, and dips the superworms into a chilelime seasoning to make spicy snacks.
“They have more flavor than crickets,” Martinez
said.
Don Bugito’s snacks are a consistent best-seller at
a kiosk in San Francisco’s Ferry Building, a foodie
mecca. One of the main selling points is that they are
made with a sustainable protein source.
A lot of people say the first bite is the hardest.
“It’s a little tricky to convince people to taste them,”
Martinez said. “But people respond really amazingly
once they try it.”
Now Martinez is working on a new, more appetizing name for her main ingredient.
So is Eli Cadesky, founder of a new company called
C-fu Foods that isolates mealworm proteins to make
a tofu-like substance. He’s thinking of rebranding
mealworms as “baby beetles,” akin to other trendy
foods like “baby carrots” or “baby beets.”
“Worm,” he said, “is the word that turns
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Page C6
Friday, September 11, 2015
Start up uses LED lights to grow plants
DALLAS (TNS) —
After 40 years growing
plants — running nurseries in Thailand and
managing
landscape
projects in Vietnam —
Glenn Behrman was
ready to retire.
Then the New York native discovered sunless
vertical farming, which
means growing plants
indoors and nourishing
them with LED lights.
With no plan, no design and no business yet,
he moved back to the
U.S. and went to work
building a controlled environment inside a shipping container.
He named it the
Growtainer and created
a business, GreenTech
Agro. Four years later,
he’s based in Dallas and
has partnered with the
Texas A&M AgriLife
Research & Extension
Center.
The partnership is
an agreement under
which Behrman can use
the center’s facilities
to run his business. In
turn, the center can use
the Growtainers for research.
Mike Gould, the
center’s director, said
the agreement also allows them to share data
and undertake joint research.
On the outside, the
Growtainer, a 40-footlong metal box, looks
like a typical shipping
container. But on the inside, hundreds of LED
lights cast a pink glow,
FFA
From Page C5
A self-professed introvert, Risner cited competitions such as public
speaking and parliamentary procedure as being
beneficial to his interpersonal skills.
“Being in FFA has
taught me people skills,
because I’ve always been
kind of shy,” he said. “I’ve
done the public speaking
now, and it’s helped me.”
In addition to speaking comfortably in front
of groups, parliamentary
procedure has taught
Risner, an aspiring pharmacist, to interact effectively in a business set-
and Behrman can control the temperature and
humidity. The plants
grow on Growracks, another of his designs. A
timer controls the water.
Because it doesn’t rely
on the sun or seasons,
Behrman’s Growtainer
could enable farmers to
produce crops almost
anywhere any time of
the year.
Behrman, 65, initially
wanted the Growtainer
to have more bells and
whistles, like plumbing
and a $60,000 system to
operate the Growtainer
remotely. It took four
years and hundreds of
thousands of dollars
down the drain before
he was satisfied.
“I had to either figure it out or admit that
I couldn’t figure it out,”
he said. “And I’m not one
for admitting that I can’t
figure it out.”
Behrman said he not
only wants a successful
business but also to have
a positive effect on society. He hopes his technology will be a steppingstone to defeating
world hunger.
Growing plants without natural light is a
hot topic, but not many
people are pursuing it,
according to Chris Higgins, one of the owners of Hort Americas.
Higgins sells supplies
to farmers who work
with controlled environments, like greenhouses
and vertical farms.
He estimated that
fewer than 15 companies
like GreenTech Agro are
operating commercially
in the U.S.
Most
controlled
growing environments,
like greenhouses, use
natural sunlight. But the
main draw of not relying
on sunlight is the ability
to produce food locally
year-round, he said.
The costly equipment
has prevented the technology from taking off,
Higgins said.
Behrman shelled out
the high upfront costs for
GreenTech Agro, buying
the shipping containers,
lights and other equipment. But he said the
technology gets cheaper
every year.
The Growtainer takes
up much less space than
traditional farming, and
Behrman says crops can
grow nearly twice as
fast as they would in the
ground.
Take one of Behrman’s plants: Adenium
obesum, or the desert
rose. Desert roses are
ornamental plants. He
grew them in a nursery
in Thailand and says he
could sell nearly half a
million each year.
After 30 days in the
Growtainer, his desert
roses have much more
side-growth, a measure
of good health, than is
typically expected, he
said.
Because his sunless
farming is so new, there’s
room for Behrman to
experiment. Right now,
ting.
“In the competition,
you have an officer team,”
he said.
“We sit around a table,
we have two minutes to
plan ahead and then fifteen minutes to conduct
the meeting.”
“It’s a good skill to
have if you want to participate in a civic or business meeting correctly,”
Schloemer said.
St. Marys FFA instructor Lucy Bambauer
agrees that the lessons
students take away are
not limited to the realm
of agriculture.
“Agricultural education kind of hangs its hat
on the fact that we prepare kids for a future in
whatever field they want
to be in,” she said.
“We’re giving them
specific skills in agriculture like evaluating livestock or learning animal
terminology, but we’re
also giving them the
skills of learning how to
participate in a meeting,
how to be engaged in
their community, how to
plan and execute a project, then look back and
see if that project was effective.”
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he’s testing different
light combinations on
each rack.
The spectrum of light
controls the way the
plant grows, and the
intensity of the light
controls the photosynthesis, he said. On some
shelves, he’s using more
red light, and on others
more blue. Some of the
plants, he said, respond
significantly better with
certain combinations.
The Growracks can
also irrigate the plants
a few different ways.
On some, water fills the
racks and drains away
three times a day. On
others, a thin film of
water runs through the
racks constantly.
Light and irrigation
preferences aside, Behrman said the operation
is quite simple. “It’s all a
big Excel spreadsheet,”
he said. “You put in the
temperature, the humidity, the fertilizer and the
water. It’s easy to arrive
at the perfect environment.”
The Growtainers are
already for sale, and
the first of the finished
Growracks will be ready
to sell soon. Growtainers go for $75,000. The
racks will be $3,000.
Behrman said a number of growers have expressed interest in the
Growtainer. In particular, marijuana growers
have been calling and
emailing Behrman. But
he’s not interested in
participating in their
business, and none of
the inquiries has turned
into a sale.
Behrman
expects
experienced
farmers
to be interested in the
Growtainers. But for the
Growracks, he thinks
the market lies in grocery stores.
“If I’m right, I can
change the produce system,” he said. “If you put
the Growracks in grocery stores, you can’t get
any fresher than that.”
He expects that marketing his products will
be difficult. But he’s optimistic that GreenTech
Agro will be a profitable
company next year.
Behrman never studied horticulture. Working with plants was just
an idea he had in his
early 20s.
“One morning I woke
up and decided that
plants were going to be
‘in,’” he said. “So I talked
to people at flower shops
and garden centers, and
slowly began to have an
idea of what it was all
about.”
He started with Plant
Shed, a small retail store
in New Haven, Conn.
Over the next 20 years,
he expanded the business into a regional
chain. From there, he
branched out. He owned
nurseries in Florida, an
orchid nursery in Thailand and tree farms in
Vietnam.
In 1994, he moved to
Bangkok, Thailand, to
focus on his orchid nursery. While living in Asia,
he dabbled in startups
and served as an adviser
to the Cambodian ambassador to the United
Nations.
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