Levo on Hydroponic Farming and Food Security, Economic Impact, and Unique Design
By Thea Burke
Hydroponic farming is the current frontier of food security. This technology grows food without soil, using a mixture of water and nutrients to grow crops for consumption. The word can be broken down to “hydro,” or “water,” and “ponos,” or “labor.” The earliest recorded use of hydroponics dates back to legends of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon and the Floating Gardens of China. This “water labor” is especially beneficial for growing food in tight areas such as urban spaces, or in places where the land is not arable. One such place is Haiti, where Levo International currently helps over 300 families grow food with a 100% retention rate. Over 300 families and six schools are being fed through eight Levo demonstration sites. All the families and the six schools have had success growing produce in their own backyards. At this stage, crops consist of spinach, tomatoes, and peppers.
How it can help food insecurity
With the first successful hydroponic system built in 2017, Levo was born out of a passion project that became a family endeavor. Levo now partners with the likes of Many Hands for Haiti, the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station, and Dr. Sandra Kops of Nutrition Security Solutions, Inc. Dr. Kops was taken with the direct impact she saw from Levo’s efforts from their first time collaborating. “I was at once engaged with Levo International's food insecurity initiative in Haiti when they contacted me for my input as a nutrition scientist in 2018. Their goal was to place their uniquely designed hydroponic units at school sites in northern Haiti as a source of Epinah (spinach) to supply a dietary source of iron to mitigate severe anemia among school children, known to reduce their potential to learn and grow.” According to the World Food Programme, malnutrition is a plague in Haiti. More than half of its population are experiencing food insecurity, while chronic malnutrition is experienced by 22 percent of its children. Often, citizens are left eating dirt cookies. As Dr. Kops mentions, conditions resulting from malnutrition, such as anemia, reduce ability to work or attend school and often further the cycle of intergenerational poverty. Especially among very young children, everything from sensorimotor to social-emotional development can be impeded by lack of nutrition in such developmentally sensitive periods of life.
Dr. Kops also reflected on a core value Levo holds, one of community engagement. “The beauty of the Haitian project was that it involved [local] Haitian peoples to work the units, and evolved into a spillover sub-goal to foster urban gardening projects in the United States by producing yield from their hydroponics for individual households and food pantries and food banks.” It’s important when approaching work outside of your own community to allow leaders within those spaces to advocate for their community. What is it they need, what is a day to day challenge? How can we assist, not impede progress? Levo strives to hold collaboration at its core, and values an assistive and transformative role.
Levo has found community partners in both Hartford and New London, Connecticut for food security projects. Currently they are piloting a CSA and are working closely with focus groups and local organizations to customize operations to fit need and interest. The CSA is not only a fundraising effort, but is a great example of another market for hydroponic farming, as it has health implications for urban areas in the United States as well. It allows those who live in urban areas, some of which do not have the means to travel outside of their city, access to a vertical farm, fresh produce, and green space, which holds its own health benefits in otherwise industrial areas. It is an excellent form of farming for urban spaces, as its stacking shelves allows for maximum produce to be grown in the smallest amount of space. This means farming can happen on rooftops or inside buildings. Fresh produce can be grown and sold within feet if used by grocery stores, or by families that have extra produce. Levo partners with local Connecticut organizations and local churches and food drives, such as FRESH New London, Trinity Health of New England, Community Solutions, Hispanic Health Solutions, and more. Dr. Kops, who helps facilitate work in southern Connecticut, is one partner that values Levo’s scientific, compassionate, and measured approach. “As Science Director of Nutrition Security Solutions, Inc. I foster Levo International's work in southern Connecticut communities within the use of resilient food resources by NSS, Inc. It is a pleasure to work with the social and scientific like-minded leadership at Levo.”
Why Levo is unique
While hydroponic systems are easy to use once in place, they can be finicky. Levo’s head scientist, Nate Heiden, is working towards a Ph.D in plant pathology at The Ohio State University. Heiden understands the importance of being able to scale this technology without the interruptions of microbial pathogens, environmental stress, and nutritive imbalances. All farming relies completely on plant health, and this plant health relies on the 17 nutrients a plant needs to grow, as well as a stable pH anywhere from 5.0 to 7.0 for nutrient uptake, according to Princeton. A common concern for hydroponic farming systems are fungal and water mold diseases normally found in soil that can also grow inside the tubes that circulate the water and nutrients to the plant in a hydroponic system. This build up of plant pathogens sometimes creates wilting, root rot, and can lead to eventual plant death. Of special concern are the water molds in the genus Pythium. Pythium strains Heiden’s team looks at are P. aphanidermatum, P.dissotocum, Pythium group F, and P. ultimum var. Ultimum. Some Pythium species actually feed on fungi and therefore can help protect plants, but unfortunately other species cause serious plant diseases. Understanding how to keep plant pathogens at bay will be a vital contribution to advancing hydroponic farming systems on the mass scale required to improve food insecurity and combat climate change. Heiden explains, “Levo’s research focus is on maximizing the accessibility of hydroponics while still producing crops in yields that meet industry standards.” Along with partnering with universities and industry experts, Levo is developing research initiatives that put them on track to tackle challenges like the challenging fungi, allowing them to continue scaling up. Levo’s developments hold potential to be one of the first wide scale, healthy hydroponic system distributions implemented.
Impacts on economic development
Haiti consistently ranks as one of the most food insecure countries in the world and in 2020, Haiti fell at 170 out of 189 on the United Nations’ Human Development Index. The index looks at a country holistically, rather than monitoring just economic status. This means that Haiti experiences chronic struggles with adequate food and nutrition, education, and economic progress that together impede the country’s development. The UN’s Sustainable Development Goals include a goal to achieve zero hunger by 2030, which would mean providing those who experience malnutrition and hunger a reliable food source throughout the year. Hydroponic farming systems would help to achieve this, as it grows food all year round in Haiti.
Levo has seen some anecdotal evidence that their systems will enable families to sell excess produce. This is still very much a long run expectation, but the reports from the few families that have are promising to the team. Levo’s model cuts down on the middleman, ensuring that the technology goes straight to those it is intended to help. Giving individual families the autonomy that comes with growing their own food cuts down on the communication challenges of implementing practices in large groups, and ensures that direct impact is being made. For recipients, it saves time going to market or searching for quality produce, walking for water partially used to grow crops, and in turn leaves time for selling extra produce, domestic and economic occupations, raising a family, and other pursuits.
Impacts on climate and impacts on our food system
Regenerative agriculture has been a widely discussed topic of late. Alternative farming is something that is gaining traction in both climate conscious communities and in the financial sector. Alternative farming tech is also booming this year, and we have started to see everything from carbon capture technology to laboratory grown meat and fish. As one of the oldest and simplest to use technologies, hydroponics is a seemingly untapped solution. Hydroponic systems are often inaccessible to food insecure populations because of high initial capital requirements. Because Levo has developed simplified systems, the entry cost is lower. Levo founder Christian Heiden talks about the multiple benefits of hydroponics, and of Levo’s system specifically. “Hydroponics has far-reaching implications on a more sustainable and secure food system. In particular, Levo's brand of simplified hydroponics makes the technology easy to use and affordable for growers all around the world. This means we could reduce the main problems facing our current agricultural processes, mainly water usage, soil degradation, and pollution. The increased production per acre becomes almost a bonus compared to the reduced harm to the local ecosystems that hydroponics provides.
Levo is starting a CSA membership of produce grown from their systems, to benefit operations in Haiti, the surrounding Connecticut area, and upcoming partnerships with Syrian refugees. Levo also hopes to expand into other countries such as the Dominican Republic. The CSA will be for members in the Hartford, West Hartford, and Simsbury areas from May to October, and they are also looking for growers. Continuing experiments in Haiti (currently in the Mirebalais area near Port au Prince) and with developments in plant health that could revolutionize large scale hydroponic farming, Levo is poised to be a food security and global health champion to watch.