Rooted in Water

Close your eyes and imagine stepping onto a farm where soft soil sinks beneath your feet, distant aromas of manure and fragrant flowers mix in your nose, and a breeze brushes the hairs on your arm. To your surprise, when you open your eyes, you are not on the farm of your imagination, but instead in one with robots and miles of tubing where refracted sunlight from panels of glass above dance shadows on endless rows of bright green lettuces. Welcome to the high-tech world of water-based farming at Go Green Agriculture, an organic hydroponic farm in San Marcos.

This sprawling two-acre greenhouse can grow 25 times more heads of lettuce compared to in-ground plantings on a plot of land the same size. Hydroponic farming is controlled-environment agriculture, which takes the core elements of plant growth—energy, nutrients, water, and CO2—and removes unnecessary inputs like pesticides and unpredictable environmental variables such as flooding or drought. Employees that work at Go Green Agriculture are part farmer and part scientist, formulating organic water-solvent nutrients to feed plants without the use of soil.

Ramiro Contreras spent the first decade of his career as a process improvement specialist trained in Lean Six Sigma, a method of managing and implementing total quality management systems. Now the plant manager at Go Green Agriculture, he oversees the facility’s production of millions of heads of lettuce each year. “I came from having a manufacturing point of view where most things can be planned, scheduled, or manufactured to a specific demand. Whereas when dealing with a living organism, there are so many other variables within the environment that can shift and affect the outcome of our plants. I had to learn and shift my perspective to better understand the greenhouse rules and environment,” Contreras shares.

Contreras helps manage the system that Pierre Sleiman, Go Green Agriculture’s founder, originally built as a college project with NASA at the University of California, Riverside, to develop ways to grow food in space. Sleiman decided to bring the model to life on Earth in 2009. “I love San Diego. It’s where I was born, and I wanted to do something positive for my community,” Sleiman says.

“Pierre has a passion for providing wholesome food for his community. He wants to provide something that is going to make someone’s life better,” Contreras says. Inspired by Sleiman’s mission, Contreras uses data to make the Go Green growing system as efficient as possible by maximizing the use of key ingredients for plant growth, most notably water.

About 70% of global water usage goes to agricultural production, largely due to unsustainable and inefficient irrigation practices. Much of the water used to irrigate plants on a farm field is absorbed into the soil rather than directly by the plant. With closed-loop irrigation technology, Go Green and similar hydroponic farms use 80% less water than traditional farming methods by feeding plants an organic, nutrient-rich formula. This formula is then dissolved into a stream of water that constantly circulates to feed the plants all the nutrients necessary for growth. Go Green’s hydroponic farming system uses Nutrient Film Technique (NFT) channels, tubing that carries reverse osmosis water to each plant in a closed loop, which allows the water to be infinitely filtered and recycled. The water is only changed in the rare instance that a deviation from the nutrient-rich solution is recognized.

This is where data collection and metric-based systems experience comes into play for Contreras. He regularly runs lab tests to identify potential issues: “If we observe an issue with a plant, such as rot or the lettuce heads falling off, we must look at every input to ensure we can make the best possible changes and prevent it in the future. I have to look at when it was seeded, what the temperature was when it was seeded, what the humidity was when it was seeded, and how much water it got,” he explains. He then documents all those inputs to hypothesize the cause and apply changes that will yield a positive result.

During peak production seasons in late spring and summer, weekly harvests yield up to 90,000 heads of lettuce per week. Comparatively, in late autumn and winter Go Green expects a weekly harvest of between 30,000 and 50,000 heads of lettuce. Sunlight changes the time needed for a plant to reach full maturity, which can range from 37 to 60 days. Some hydroponic farms have adopted LED lights to avoid this fluctuation, a method that Go Green has not chosen to implement. Although it offers many benefits like reduced land, water, and pesticide use, hydroponic farming is not suitable for all varieties of plants. Go Green has found that its system works best for lettuces with a strong root base and leafy greens like upland cress, butter lettuces, red oak leaf lettuce, green oak leaf romaine, and baby arugula.

Hydroponic-grown greens can be harvested on the day of distribution, which allows Go Green to offer the freshest possible ingredients with the longest shelf life, contributing to lower food waste in restaurants. This allows for ease when piloting new products from the greenhouse as well.

Go Green has forged relationships with big box-stores such as Costco, Whole Foods, and Safeway in Northern California, plus local chains like Jimbo’s, Frazier Farms, Seaside Market in Cardiff-by-the-Sea, and Cream of the Crop in Oceanside. Local restaurateurs Davin and Jessica Waite have added their greens to The Plot’s menus at all three Southern California locations.

Contreras is especially proud of the company’s efforts to bring local ingredients to schools in the community. Go Green recently partnered with San Marcos, Fallbrook, and San Juan Capistrano school districts to teach students about hydroponic farming by hosting field trips to the facility. “It really gives them a different perspective on healthy food,” Contreras says.

With environmental and economic pressures challenging traditional agriculture, farmers and consumers grapple with making responsible choices to ensure the longevity and health of our local food system. Hydroponic farming offers an adaptation to our evolving planet. Contreras envisions a hybrid model where in-field farms with ample land incorporate hydroponic facilities to allow for year-round harvests and controlled environments while planting root vegetables and hardy plants in the soil. Go Green Agriculture hopes to become a household name for its hydroponic-grown greens while inspiring and educating local farms to experiment with the methods that have made them successful.

» gogreenagriculture.com

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