In case you missed it, Indoor Ag-Con kicked off its monthly webinar series, Indoor Ag-ConVersations Wednesday with a discussion of trends and opportunities in indoor agriculture, featuring Victor Verlage, senior director of agriculture strategy at Walmart, BrightFarms Founder and President Paul Lightfoot and Alex DiNovo, president and COO of distributor DNO Produce Group.

Moderated by Tom Stenzel, president and CEO of United Fresh Produce Association (the session was originally supposed to be hosted by United Fresh at Indoor Ag-Con’s in-person Las Vegas event), the discussion ranged from COVID-19’s impact on the industry, efforts to make indoor produce more efficient, affordable and accessible, and even how operations can help get more young people involved in indoor agriculture.

I don’t have enough space to cover the whole hour webinar, which you can view FOR FREE HERE with registration, but I can recap some of the more interesting highlights here.

• Walmart has been working on a pilot program with CEA farms across the country like BrightFarms in testing their technologies to identify solutions that work to increase efficiency for scaling up and bringing costs down, thereby allowing more people access to healthier food. Victor said, though, they recognize production systems for densely populated areas might not be the best solution for remote communities. “Initial results show there’s more work to be done to drive efficiency and increase productivity in these production systems to bring costs down,” Victor said, adding they continue to learn from the pilot program the best ways to scale up, and the initial work has been encouraging. “It (will) help us make sure food is affordable, and it’s fun and exciting to eat while at the same time being healthy for you… in short, what we want is to democratize hyper fresh, local, flavorful and nutrient-dense food for everybody.” Paul noted, too, that finding ways to be more efficient and productive can only help growers who are supplying their local customers. He cited labor challenges that pre-date COVID-19, but that have been exacerbated by the pandemic and likely will only continue to get worse.

• Alex said as the pandemic hit, his Columbus, Ohio-based distribution company had to be flexible and think about how to pivot away from food service toward individually packaged items and retail. “When this thing first came out in mid-March … and they said we are shutting down the restaurants in this country, we’re shutting down the schools in this country, it sent pretty severe shockwaves I think through everybody on the food service and the retail side alike,” he said, noting they had to furlough employees in those early days. “After a couple of weeks the impact wasn’t nearly as severe for us as we were thinking.” They were able to continue supplying schools that had implemented lunch distribution programs with prepackaged foods, as well as focusing on fresh-cut produce.

• Strawberries seemed to be the general consensus when asked what new commodity would most likely take hold in greenhouse production. “Berries in general is a crop that will be developed in the midterm and near future. We’re very excited about it because of proximity, the shelf life, and what we’re interested in Walmart today is beyond shelf life, we want home life in the products that our customers want,” Victor said. “We don’t want people to have to waste our produce because it goes bad quickly.”

• A viewer question asked about how to get students into the industry, to which Paul talked about the BrightFarms apprentice grower program where new growers cycle through all jobs for a year or two at a couple of operations before heading up their own facility. Alex added it would be beneficial for ag departments at universities to set up visits to local farms, as well as internships to allow them to work in production before graduation.

• On a final note, in Paul’s closing remarks he mentioned based on conversations he’s had with industry consultants the timeframe for industry consolidation would likely shrink from sometime in the next five years to more like over the next 12 to 18 months.

Another webinar will take place June 24 about Mega-Trends in Indoor Growing. CLICK HERE to register.

Like so many other industry shows, the Canadian Greenhouse Conference made the difficult decision to cancel its in-person event and instead host a series of virtual speaker sessions this fall.

“The cancellation of the physical conference is disappointing, but it had become apparent that the CGC would not be able to provide the robust conference experience that growers, exhibitors and speakers had come to expect over the show’s 40-year history, nor could we assure a healthy and safe environment,” says Steve Droog, CGC board chair, in a statement released Thursday.

The trade show and conference was originally planned for October 7-8 at the Scotiabank Convention Centre in Niagara Falls, Ontario. Instead, the speaker series will take place during those dates to provide support for growers and the industry with timely information. More information will be released at a later date, so watch this space for updates.

A Canadian company called SunTracker Technologies has developed a free, web-based online calculator to predict monthly Daily Light Interval values for anywhere in the world, based on climate-based Typical Meteorological Year (TMY) weather records from more than 2,100 weather stations worldwide.

According to the company, monthly DLI values had only been calculated and published for the United States, but with SunTracker’s calculator, the monthly DLI can be found for any location in the world.

The company notes, thought that photosynthetically active radiation (PAR) values “inside greenhouses can be considerably less than the field, and further depend critically on the greenhouse orientation, roof design, glazing properties, and shade covers,” company officials say in a news release. “SunTracker Technologies is developing Cerise365 + Greenhouse Designer, a web-based greenhouse lighting design software to address these critical issues.”

CLICK HERE to find the online DLI calculator.

I wanted to include a quick reminder about the free webinars we have coming up next week and the week after. CLICK HERE to register for either or both, and if you missed last week's, you can view an archived version at this link, too.

Fiber Pots: Can You Really Grow and Sell in Them?

Tuesday, June 9 at 1 p.m. Eastern/Noon Central

Customers often ask for alternatives to plastic, and The HC Companies has come up with the EcoGrow Organic Growing Container, a fiber pot made from recycled, sustainable materials.

HC’s Bryce Anderson, who has spent more than a decade working on fiber pots, will detail what makes these containers special and back it up with details of trials done by growers in the real world. He’ll highlight growing environments, irrigation needs, performance and degradation, as well as retail sales, so webinar attendees can decide if fiber pots are right for their operation. And (alert: bonus ahead), attendees will have the opportunity to request a free sample kit of EcoGrow products as the end of the webinar.

Best IPM Practices for Piercing & Sucking Insects

Tuesday, June 16 at 1 p.m. Eastern/Noon Central

This webinar features Jen Browning and Peggy Clanton of BASF and Jorge Bernal of Costa Farms talking about the best way to integrate biologicals and conventional tools to make both work when battling piercing and sucking insects. The discussion includes management of aphids, whiteflies, mealybugs and scale insects on ornamentals, being in close contact with your target pests, seasonality and timing and best approaches to IPM.

My inbox has been overloaded over the past two months, and in going back through it I realized I had a couple of items worth mentioning—including a couple of options to help sanitize the greenhouse. The first is from FloraLife, a division of Smithers-Oasis Company. It has FloraLife DCD and FloraLife MicroBLOC, both disinfectants that met EPA criteria for use against novel coronavirus.

The antimicrobial cleaners can be used for general use across industries and applications, and can be purchased in North America at FloraLifeCleaners.com.

“No matter what the industry—food processing, transportation, industrial, schools, retail, travel or healthcare—our EPA-registered cleaning products, along with proper cleaning protocols, can be safely used to stop the spread of the novel coronavirus,” says Jim Daly, vice president of FloraLife/Grower Global Operations and Corporate Research at FloraLife. “When compared to bleach, our FloraLife Cleaner products have the added advantage of providing residual protection in cases where the cleaner can remain on the surface without rinsing.”

In areas where there is no contact with food, the cleaners can be sprayed or wiped onto the surface that needs to be disinfected and air dried. For areas in contact with food, though, surfaces should be rinsed after application. Users can follow label instructions to determine which types of surfaces need to be rinsed off.

Another sanitation item I came across is from Dilution Solutions LLC, which has a complete line of products for diluting and applying disinfectants and sanitizers. This line includes items like the Dosatron D14MZ Series, which can dilute concentrated chemicals before dispensing the solution to fill spray bottles, buckets, sanitation sink stations, footbaths, hand-held foggers and backpack sprayers.

“Adding the Dosatron, with a gas style nozzle and hose, to a panel provides a pre-plumbed station that is simple to install, limiting exposure time to set up,” says Jason Maddox, sales manager. Just mount on a wall and hook up to the water source.

“We are continuing to develop products, both mobile and stationary, to help fight COVID-19 through sanitation and disinfection.”

Biobest has two announcements that can help growers using biocontrols. The company has unveiled a new app, called Crop-Scanner, to allow fast and accurate scouting for growers and improve overall IPM performance.

The app enables growers and their Biobest advisors to follow pest outbreaks in crops online, which helps tailor advice. “Our new app is a welcome addition to Biobest’s services particularly in these COVID-19 times, when social distancing measures are temporarily restricting working practices in some crops as well as technical visits,” says Linda Bucena, product manager at Biobest.

The Crop-Scanner app assists with pest detection, reporting and exchange of advice for timely interventions. It works on smartphones and tablets, and connects to an online web portal. CLICK HERE to learn more and to download the app.

The second announcement is from Biobest Canada that ASPERELLO T34 Biocontrol is now approved for greenhouse edibles and indoor cannabis crops in Canada. Previously it was only registered for use in greenhouse ornamentals there.

ASPERELLO T34 Biocontrol contains the fungus Trichoderma asperellum strain T34, and can be applied preventatively by growers to colonize the roots of the crop, limiting space and nutrients for detrimental soilborne pathogens. The company says the product triggers the plant’s natural defense mechanisms, parasitizes and actively kills pathogens and supports healthy root growth.

Canadian growers can now use it on cannabis, cucumbers, tomatoes, peppers, strawberries, leafy greens and other selected edible crops against fusarium, pythium and phytophthora. Approved applications are dips, soil incorporation, chemigation and drenches. In cucurbits it can also be applied through foliar application against didymella.

Anyone who is looking to explore aquaponics production can now do so online with Nelson and Pade’s Aquaponics Master Class Online. The company has been holding classes and training for more than 20 years onsite, and includes topics that are covered in the 3-day in-person master class.

These classes are intended for anyone seriously considering aquaponic food production, or those who are already doing it who want to learn more about the technology. “We cover the topics most important to being successful in aquaponics, including aquaponics methods and applications, crop choices and recommendations, water quality, daily operation and growing techniques, greenhouses, indoor agriculture and environmental control, fish biology and feeds, plant care and health system start up, economics and business considerations,” the company stated in an announcement about the classes.

 
Rebecca Nelson and John Pade, co-founders of Nelson and Pade, Inc.

CLICK HERE to learn more and to register.