Urban Ag Support Services
Motivation The world population is increasing but key resources such as water
and food are limited. Our food growing and distribution systems are part of the
problem and projections are that these are not sustainable.
On average, lettuce travels 1500+ miles before being consumed.
Fish consumption is increasing, but the oceans are already over fished.
Most of the world except for the U.S. is already using fish farms to grow fish.
The U.S. imports ~80% of the fish consumed in the country. Unfortunately, the fish is
imported from parts of the world with questionable food safety records with only ~2%
of the imported fish being inspected.
Opportunities New food growing techniques are emerging that use substantially fewer
resources, esp. water, and can produce healthier (no antibiotics, no hormones, no GMOs,
...) food on a smaller footprint farm. Even more exciting is that this food
growing can occur locally in all kinds of climates thereby providing local
jobs and economic development.
Services Offered
+ Siting Services:
We can help find a good site to locate your facility taking into consideration
such topics as zoning, taxes, workforce, cost of living, utilities,
and supply chain considerations.
HLP's founder, Jennifer, is an architect and former planning board member. Thus, she
has been on both sides of the table and can help create convincing arguments
for why a rezoning should occur to accommodate your project.
+ Example Project: Siting and Funding
For an aquaculture client, we are helping to find a site for their facility in a given state. We are working with local and state authorities to create an incentives package. We are meeting with banks to secure a loan for completing the capital stack for the project. Finally, we are evaluating each site to maximize the entire supply chain and workforce considerations.
+ Example Project: Multi-State Siting
An aquaculture client has asked us to find a site for them in any state adjacent to the state with their processing facility.
+ Urban Ag (esp. aquaponics):
We have been researching different urban ag technologies such as hydroponics
and aquaponics to find good options for local food growing.
Hydroponics (growing plants in water) has proven to be commercially successful
and can produce healthy food.
Aquaponics (growing plants and fish together) is an exciting possibility for
a more sustainable solution that produces both the plants and a protien source.
While backyard or personal sized systems are becoming more common place,
scaling up to a commercial size that can pay living wages for the employees and owner
has proven to be challenging. We are following a number of firms that are
introducing some game shifting technologies that may allow medium and large
scale aquaponics systems to be commerically successful.
Contact and hire us to help you identify good firms to work with on designing
and implementing food generating systems.
