Urban Farming Perspectives in Georgia
Georgia’s first experimental with a vertical hothouse project has been implemented successfully - growing vegetables without sunlight and soil in a so-called urban farm is now a reality.
The experimental hothouse plans to start product sales in January 2020, Tusia Gharibashvili, the urban farming development manager for Urban Greens and Space Farms companies told Business Partner.
The TV program’s participants stressed that the so-called urban farming concept has become more popular worldwide. Experimental farming has already been developed in Georgia. With the support of the Adjara Group, in 2018 starter business companies Urban Greens and Space Farms launched an experiment in growing vegetables in a room on shelf stands, without sunlight and soil. The experiment was completed successfully, and the hothouse plans to launch product sales in January 2020. So-called Space Farms (Cosmos Farms) already exist in Georgia. The first vertically, fully-controlled hothouse runs on 155 square meters at the Stamba Hotel, and it consists of six shelf stands over seven floors.
The farm is able to grow 500-700 kilograms of vegetables a month, including greens (tarragon, basil). Today, the company grows various sorts of flowers, Italian basil, Georgian basil, tarragon and salad leaves.
The hothouse, which has cutting-edge technology, grows greens directly from seeds, and allows them full control of the process. Despite the season, the experimental period has finished. Starting January 2020, the company will launch sales. The company will start retail sales in February 2020, Gharibashvili noted.
‘We have bought the required software, which collects a full database through sensors and other control mechanisms. With this software, we control temperature, humidity, CO2 emission level. We control how frequently the so-called LED illumination spectrum falls on the plant. This level of control enables us to grow healthy products full of vitamins”, Tusia Gharibashvili said.
Moreover, Georgia’s first vertical hothouse employs resource efficient technologies and reusable resources. Thanks to this technology, only 1 ton of water is required to grow 500-700 kilograms of vegetable a month.
As for future plans, the company plans to grow Georgian vine varieties in this high tech hothouse, and add a vocational education component to the project, because the students have expressed their readiness to put their talents into agro technologies. The farm is able to grow strawberries and all types of salad leaves, Gharibashvili said.
‘We have an 8,000-year history of viticulture, and we should forge a 9th millennium too, where vines will grow in different conditions. The Ninth Millennium, one of our projects, aims to cultivate vines in different conditions to grow them without sunlight and soil. The laboratory is the next phase. We plan to build a laboratory, where we will grow vines in the simulated environment of Mars.
Scientists will join in this process, and later, NASA is also expected to join the project. Negotiations are underway with foreign partners to assist us in developing this laboratory. Viticulture popularization is very important”, Gharibashvili said.
Through the introduction of agro technologies, the company has managed to popularize urban farming and technologies among young people, she said.
“Now, at this point, we have already been actively cooperating with students. We have already employed several university students”, Gharibashvili pointed out.