Action Initiative
Family Fish Farms Network (FFFN)

Revisiting the question of how much production will be possible from a given space

Burgess COMMENTARY

Peter Burgess

From: Alex Persful Subject: production data Date: November 3, 2013 at 12:10:08 AM EDT To: 'Jerome J. Peloquin'

I highlighted the data in yellow. Your projections were about 80# more per square foot than anyone on the planet. On paper everyone thinks we can get around 12# per sf I have not been able to come close to this number and I know of no one who can do it consistently in any system.

For an example if was able to get 12# annually per foot and sell all the product at our current prices BCF would be making 1,000,000 a year on a half acre and at the numbers originally on your pro forma you had 95.8# pounds per sf. I am not rubbing your nose in this just that your production guy is full of beans.

Alexfixed.xls 2759K Grahame Dunling Sun, Nov 3, 2013 at 6:03 AM To: Jerry Peloquin , Burgess Peter , 'apersful@gmail.com' Cc: 'lyahr@microventuresupport.org'

Alex

Gmail Peter Burgess Fwd: production data 8 messages Jerome Peloquin Sun, Nov 3, 2013 at 1:00 AM To: Burgess Peter , Grahame Dunling Cc: Linda Yahr

Friends ….

I am sitting here surrounded by wolves, naked as the day I was born! My friend and President of Big City Farms in Baltimore just reviewed our financials, specially regarding yield per sq. ft. Alex is both an AG engineer and an experienced grower. Quite frankly, I am scared shitless here. The Lawyers are sending out the Exed. Summary and soon I will have to be sending out the full Business Plan including the numbers based upon these assumptions!

Grahame, it is our assumption that we formulated this upon basic growing data supplied by you. If Alex is wrong in his evaluation please set him and us straight. As you know we plan to use the Dunling sstem and methods, so we must be able to justify our projections based upon your data.

We have had three people work on these. Grahame provided base data, Linda converted it to standard units and entered it into a spreadsheet, then Peter Burgest constructed and integrated the overall financial model. Somewhere mistakes were made …I MUST FIND THE ERRORS AND FIXT THEM … before the investors find them and we look like totoal assholes.

It may be a simple transposition error on someone’s part … whatever: PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE Grahame save our ass here. Tell us where we went wrong, what we screwed up and we’ll fix it. Peter, Ales, and Grahame kindly talk to each other.

It simply … HAS TO BE FIXED … or, we will NEVER get off the ground and all of our time and effort will have gone for naught! HELP, HELP, HELP !!!

Jerome Peloquin

President The Family Fish Farms Network, Inc 717 Lawrence Street, NE Washington, DC 20017 Web: www.thefamilyfishfarmsnetwork.com jeromepeloquin@fastmail.fm (410) 227-0498

'Local Food, When and Where You Want it.'

In reply to your e-mail to FFFN, I appreciate your comments as I have been called a lot worse than 'Full of Beans'

Feel free to e-mail me directly on my Business e-mail grahame@localsalads.com

First of all You know Ian Angus so I shall start there, I have known Ian for 20 +years and worked with him at Valcent and we worked together after Valcent. The Cucumber ,Pepper data is verified with Ian based on what he produced when he owned the UK's Largest Cucumber glasshouse company. At the same time I used to produce 5,000 punnets of cherry tomatoes a day (22 tomatoes in a punnet 22 x 5,000 = 110,000 tomatoes per day ) This was from 2 acres of Glass ? Fact !! These where graded for size and colour at the rate of 30 tomatoes a second. Of course these have to be grown in a Modern Glasshouse using Co2 , supplement lighting and also GROWING the Crop and not just planting it.

By this I mean you start the day by increasing the temperature by 2c every hour as you do this you increase the Co2 level by a % ppm every hour , you also increase the strength and frequency of the feed as the daylight gets brighter. You also control the the temp of the feed water. At the end of the day you do the same in reverse to put the crop to sleep.

This is how you grow a commercial crop , If you plant the tomatoes and feed the during the day and do not have any of these controls in place or a commercial grower who knows how to grow this way then NO you will not achieve these yields. If you grow in Hoop houses as BCF do then you absolutely will not achieve these yields. Paul Selena of Village Farms achieved the Largest Yield of tomatoes per m2 without lighting .

Village Farms in Marfa, Texas, has reported a record-high tomato yield of 94 kg/m2 in their first year of production. This has never before been achieved in a semi-closed greenhouse without supplementary lighting. So I suggest that you e-mail Paul and tell him he is full of Beans ( FYI there are 4,046 m2 per acre so that is a yield of 380,324 Kg per acre http://www.hortimax.co.uk/5/2/13/17/en/kenniscentrum/artikelen/sensoren/94-kgm2-tomaten-bij-village-farms-texas-usa.html

Of course this will never be achieved by your self in a hoop house, THIS WAS EXPLAINED TO JERRY AND STATED THAT THESE HAD TO GROWN IN A COMMERCIAL GLASSHOUSE BUILT FOR THE CROP AND NOT GROWN AQUAPONICALLY AND NOT GROWN WITH ANOTHER CROP IE A Glasshouse built for tomatoes growing tomatoes, A Glasshouse built for Cucumbers growing Cucumbers etc . If you grow tomatoes and cucumbers in the same glasshouse then these yields are NOT Achievable.

A Video of the UK's Largest tomato grower is here http://www.verticalgrowing.co.uk/Pages/default.aspx

Regarding Micro greens then this is how I would grow them and did so at FDM Herbs.

The punnets are automatically filled with either media or compost then go to the watering tunnel and get watered then go through the automatic sowline sowing upto 27,000 punnets per hour ( the sow line is made by a US Company,) Redesigned by me to suit my purpose. Videos can be sown to you of this.

Then these are watered again and moved into a germination room where they are kept at 20c ( 70 f) this room has Vertical lighting and misting nozzles which keep the temp and humidity. these stay in here for 3 days.

These then come out of the Germination room onto the grow benches and under LED lighting for another 3 days when they are ready for harvest (This is the Cress type of micro herbs ) Pea sprouts, Mustards etc take 10 days.

There are 6 punnets per sq ft and in my case I would grow these indoors Vertically ( so a 1,000 sq ft multiplies up by how ever many levels you have.

The benches are automatically moved to the person so everything comes to the Loading or Packing area and the people do not go to the plants.

As one bench is removed from the system another one is placed onto it SO THERE IS NO DOWN TIME AT ALL.

Even in a 30 day crop this is done by a germination room, Nursery area and then onto the grow system so it is only on the grow system or area for 14 days.

So a whole head of lettuce in a GROW AREA ( note grow area only , you have a nursery area separate) takes 14 days so you can have a through put of 365 days divided by 14 = 26 crops a year ?

Jerry has been given these numbers and also told that these numbers will not be achieved if Grown aquapoincally and if grown in a non commercial fashion.

I was to be part of FFFN and to this I redesigned an aquaponic system that would use the waster water more effectively and also grow a better crop.

I also told Jerry he needs to do a Market study of what product is needed and in what quantity as to grow the crop is one thing to SELL that crop once grown is another.

If I was growing in hoop houses then a six day crop of the cress type product would take me six days in summer but once the temperature was not optimum it could take upto 20 days to grow the same crop. From your web site you are growing in hoop house with no real temperature control ie you will have more than 1c difference in temp from the floor to the roof and also from the end to the middle? In a one acre glasshouse there would be NO difference in this at all, therefore giving a better control of the crop.

Personally I would grow the crops ( Herbs, Micro Greens, Baby Leaf etc) inside a building using Lighting and to the set out growing techniques of a commercial grower, That is why I redesigned a commercial growing system to suit this process.

My CV Is on my web site, and feel free to e-mail Ian and ask him about me Grahame Dunling

ps did you ever buy a soil blocking machine ? as Ian asked me where you could buy one from.

SO I MAY BE FULL OF BEANS BUT THESE ARE PROVEN FACTS AND COMMERCIAL YIELDS. USING DATA FROM EXPERIENCE 30+ YEARS COMMERCIAL GROWING. DATA FROM IAN ANGUS AND VILLAGE FARMS. You will agree that you at BCF can not achieve the yields Ian did and also that Ian as a commercial grower would NEVER grow in a hoop house. This is not a go at you or BCF just a fact that is how you grow and fine you get your yields if however you grow indoors using redundant buildings using commercial growing systems then you can get higher yields BUT at a higher capital cost.

I also however agree that these yields will not be achieved by FFFN unless a commercial system and commercial Growing techniques are in place.

Regards Grahame +447801300884 www.localsalads.com 'Local Food, When and Where You Want it.'

Alex Persful

Sun, Nov 3, 2013 at 9:59 AM To: Grahame Dunling Cc: Jerry Peloquin , Burgess Peter , 'lyahr@microventuresupport.org'

Grahame et al,

Just to be clear this is not a cock fight for me or is it belittle anyones practices, it may be just my ignorance. But if it is possible to do $10,000,000 gross on less than 40,000 sf of growing area I can get us capital to grow everywhere in the U.S. and Panama.

I do not question your tomato facts but there are no tomatoes in the FFF pro forma. I do however question the lettuce projections of 96 heads per sf. The most I have seen is 2.83 heads per square foot per turn and these are semi gem heads if you can do 26 turns that still is 73.5 heads per square foot. In order to get in the market with $2 heads they need to be .3 to .6 pounds. I also don't see the germination and nursery area and costs in the pro forma obviously these take up space and energy somewhere in the foot print. There is loss or locus minoris in the projections nobody is perfect!

I do not understand what 215 units of herbsv(a certain herb can produce those numbers) and have never done micro greens on any scale thank you for the explanation.

All of the above was for helping Jerry and trying to understand the numbers for FFF and to see I am interested in getting involved. As for me and my little company we try to produce the most with the least capital costs because putting a glass house in the hood would be disastrous. I believe our top end will be around $350,000 per acre and at the moment we top out at $300,000 per acre and do about 90% of that with a salad mix.

We did not get a soil block machine we did get a 14,000 sf Glass house and a fully automated plug line to produce our transplants at the moment we are producing 20,000 plugs weekly and with this facility can support our future operations in Baltimore.

Kind regards,

Alex