#avfsummit

Typically the Farm Bill is renewed every 5 years; the last farm bill that expired at the end of 2012 was not renewed until the end of 2014. The next round is scheduled to be on the table in 2018. The hope is that this will be a true bi-partisan bill.

Directly related to the Farm Bill is the Urban Agriculture Act, being introduced by Senator Stabenow of Michigan. This contains ideas and provisions intended to be incorporated into the 2018 Farm Bill. Known as Marker Legislation, because it provides an opportunity to highlight priories and ideas that get written into a future bill, the Urban Agriculture Act is particularly important to follow because of its ability to impact the upcoming Farm Bill. For the first time ever, this Farm Bill could address the unique needs of urban farmers by investing new resources and increasing flexibility through existing programs administered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). Here is a summary of the potential areas of impact:

Creating New Economic Opportunities

• Agriculture Cooperatives: Expands USDA authority to support farm cooperatives in urban areas, helping urban farmers who want to form and operate an agriculture cooperative get products to market. Reduces individual financial risk and burdensome paperwork by allowing USDA loans to be managed by agriculture cooperatives.

• Rooftops, Vertical Farms & Indoor Production: Makes it easier for urban farms to apply for USDA farm programs and assists producers with information on operating rooftop and vertical farms. Supports access to land and production sites in urban communities through innovative conservation grants.

• Cutting-Edge Research: Invests $10 million for cutting-edge research to explore market opportunities for urban agriculture and develop new technologies for lowering energy and water needs. Includes national data collection and a new urban agriculture section in the Local and Regional Foods market report.

Providing New Financial Tools & Support

• Loans: Expands existing USDA farm loan programs so urban farmers can cover new farm related activities that improve their business. Now urban farmers can use farm loans to finance food production, marketing, and value-added processing.

• Risk Management Tools: Provides a new affordable risk management tool for urban farmers to protect against crop losses, taking into account the risks, food prices and contracts unique to urban farms.

• New Urban Ag Office: Creates a new urban agriculture office at USDA to coordinate urban agriculture policies across the Department and provide urban farmers with technical assistance.

• Mentorship and Education: Connects urban farmers with rural farmers to provide education and mentorship support.

Increasing Access to Healthy Foods

• Healthy Food: Creates a new pilot program that provides incentives to urban farmers who use sustainable growing practices and commit to supplying healthy food to their neighbors, connecting urban farms with families who need greater access to healthy, local foods.

Creating a Healthier Environment

• Urban Composting: Creates a pilot program to provide urban farmers access to compost while reducing food waste that would otherwise go into landfills.

A new AVF partner is the lobby firm VH Strategies. VH Strategies is a bipartisan government affairs and consulting firm based in Washington, D.C. with offices in The Hague and Amsterdam in the Netherlands. VH Strategies has initiated the Urban Agriculture Coalition, an alliance of individuals, institutions, and companies working to promote change in food and farm policy at the federal, state, and local level.

VH Strategies will be one of many amazing speakers at the upcoming AVF Summit along with agricultural scientist and director of the USDA’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture, Dr. Sonny Ramaswamy. Speakers will be addressing important topics at this pivotal moment in time.

We hope you will join us in DC for a great event!

The AVF is a growing international non-profit organization on a mission to foster the sustainable growth and development of the vertical farming movement. The association boasts a platform for active dialogue and advocacy, and a framework for education outreach and standardization. But how to put these valuable ideas into practice and gain visibility in policy-making?

The AVF is excited to present a day-long summit with focused lectures, panels, and breakout sessions on the future of vertical farming and the policies needed to sustainably scale the industry. This Fall, we invite you to learn how to leverage your position to affect policy on the local, federal, and international level. As an attendee, you will hear from industry leaders and discuss their strategies to streamline business opportunities. We would like you to network with vertical farming professionals to learn about new and exciting prospects in this growing field. Finally, we would like you to share your ideas and propose strategies for vertical farming policy.

Promocodes:

Please email [email protected] for promocodes if you: (1) are member of the AVF (2) have a a ticket to AgTech Week and (3) are a student.

* Please note: your AVF membership will need to be active. Renew yours here and save! Not a member? Join today and save 25%.

* Students must email from a university address to be eligible for the discount.

* Please include your NYC AgTech Week ticket to be eligible for the promocode.

* Please note: only one promocode can be used.

PURCHASE TICKETS TO THE AVF SUMMIT HERE ON EVENTBRITE

Hotel Recommendations near UDC:

Days Inn, 4400 Connecticut Ave NW, Washington, DC 20008

The Kalorama Guest House, 2700 Cathedral Ave NW, Washington, DC 20008

Marriott Warman Park, 2660 Woodley Rd NW, Washington, DC 20008

About the Association for Vertical Farming e.V.

Organizer of AVF Summit 2017

The AVF is a fast growing international non-profit organisation that focuses on advancing vertical farming technology, design and business. Its mission is to foster the sustainable growth and development of the vertical farming movement and to lead the movement in order to facilitate healthy food production, green jobs, environmental protection and climate change resilience.

Speaker after speaker at the Summit asked one fundamental question: What if? What if we could reuse food and human waste? What if we could turn that waste into fertilizer, heat and energy? What if we could reconnect nutrient systems and rebuild natural capital?* What if we can inspire the next generation to do all this in our cities?

The Inspired Youth & the AVF Award: Young people all over the world worked to unite the what if with the how by participating in the 2016 AVF Award. The AVF Award received 300 submissions from around the globe. The student led teams then had to progress through five milestones, which narrowed the field to 28 teams from 24 countries. Team Inter-Farm from Malaysia, received the highest score from the judges, earning them $5,000 and a travel fare to the AVF Summit to present their concept.

The 2016 AVF Award was made possible thanks to sponsors Illumitex (1st Prize), Thought for Food (2nd Prize), and the Globumbus (3rd prize.) The AVF is looking to improve and reach even more students with the 2017 AVF Award.

AVF-Town Workshop: This workshop session gave all attendees the same case study, which in essence challenged the professionals to think about a model circular economy urban community. To focus the 280+ Summit attendees, three groups were formed at registration:

Entrepreneurship

Design

Policy

Design & How to Close the Loops: Attendees drew inspiration from Summit speakers that brought forth case studies on: aquaponics fish farms, insect colonies and mushroom cultivation. With the circular vertical farm panel fresh in their minds, the system design workshop quickly became a cauldron of ideas how to combine produce and protein.  

Entrepreneurship & Business Rationale of Sustainable Systems: If circular economic vertical farming entrepreneurship had an easy answer, someone would have done it already. This workshop raised more questions such as company structure, branding and IP / data management policies.

Policy & Prudent Regulations: How do we create political tools to promote the application of circular economies in vertical farming? Summit participants from vastly different sectors contributed their ideas and experiences, which informed the group on approaches to current regulatory questions. The form of policies from the local to the national level were considered, as well as improvements in interdisciplinary education and communication.

A Circular Economy Business Pitch was made by ReGen Villages, a company that has gone viral. With over 12 million internet hits last month, there is a lot of hype around the ReGen Villages mission. In a nutshell, their goal is to build sustainable food producing communities similar to AVF-Town workshop case-study, but in rural and peri-urban areas.

LED Lighting Panel shed light on one of the most important decisions a vertical farm operator can make. It is a major capital expenditure that totally impacts any project. Summit sponsors Fluence Bioengineering and Valoya were both on the panel alongside AVF members Philips City Farming and HAS University. The panelists fielded questions, informing attendees on how to make this critical decision for their vertical farm.

AVF’s Industry White Paper is a highly anticipated document that will delineate the global vertical farming market. One of the main focuses of the white paper is painting a profile of the global market size; and for the first white paper we focused on: Greater China, India, North America and EU. The conclusion points to a converge between top-down (government) and bottom-up (private market) drivers working to develop the industry. There are a lot of moving parts right now in those regions and it looks optimistic, but to be realistic there still is a very limited amount of commercial growing operations worldwide. The AVF sheds light on why this is going to change. It will be released on July 6th.

The Future of the AVF is as bright as the most powerful LED’s on the market. With roughly 80 business members, the AVF has hit critical mass. It now seems inevitable that as the movement grows, so will the AVF. However, vertical farms for the sake of vertical farms is not the goal of the AVF – the goal is true sustainability in city farming.

The AVF Sustainability Certification Scheme will be an initial process for benchmarking and standardization that will lead to an industry-wide certification. This certification mechanism will track all related metrics and encourage true sustainability in the vertical farming space. AVF UK Regional Manager, Mark Horler, is responsible for leading the certification project and spoke about the next steps during the Summit.

Impressed? Inspired? Join the AVF! Now that you’ve heard about our Summit, we encourage you to please learn more about the AVF’s vision and mission. Together we can initiate:

Healthy Food

Green Jobs

Environmental Protection

Climate Change Resilience

Business Collaborations

Technology Partnerships

Data Transparency

Food Supply Chain Transparency

Research Activities

Educational Platforms

And More!

And a special thank you to the 2016 AVF Summit sponsors for making this wonderful event possible. Thank you: Fluence Bioengineering, Valoya, Blue Planet Consulting, and GreenTech.

*Some of this wording was taken directly from circular economy champion Ellen MacArthur’s TED Talk, which this blogger highly encourages you to watch!