Ending Food Insecurity in Virginia - A scalable model with global potential
Changing the paradigm of traditional agricultural practices using vertical hydroponic farming.

Lead Applicant Organization Name
Babylon Micro-Farms, Inc.Lead Applicant Organization Type
- Small company (under 50 employees)
Website of Legally Registered Entity
www.babylonmicrofarms.comHow long have you / your team been working on this Vision?
- 1-3 years
Lead Applicant: In what city or town are you located?
CharlottesvilleLead Applicant: In what country are you located?
United States of AmericaYour Selected Place: what’s the name of the Place you’re developing a Vision for?
VirginiaWhat country is your selected Place located in?
United States of AmericaDescribe your relationship to the place you’ve selected.
Virginia is where Babylon Micro-Farms grew out of a vision developed by co-founders Alexander Olesen and Graham Smith while studying at the University of Virginia (UVa). The initial iteration for our current model of urban agricultural farming was incubated and developed at ILab at UVa. The company was founded and is based in Charlottesville, the geographic center of Virginia. Generally considered to be a diverse community because of the University presence, Charlottesville reflects Babylon’s core values of inclusion and diversity and focuses on a broad cross-section of talent to solve the ongoing problem of the presence of food deserts in even the most seemingly economically secure communities. The University provides a myriad of resources for connecting our work to other organizations, creating a collaborative base for furthering research and development because it is a state university and our target area is the entire state, which we plan to use as a proving ground for a food system that is intended to be a global solution for food insecurity. As the birthplace of Babylon and our home we care deeply about Virginia’s future and how we can help effect change in an increasingly economically challenging environment that threatens people’s access to healthy food sources. Charlottesville is an excellent option to initially test both our farms and our mission as we develop a state-wide system to support expansion and make fresh produce available to people that would not otherwise be able to afford it. Virginia’s economy has historically been agrarian-based and the shift from traditional agricultural practices to a 21st-century approach is a natural progression. An ongoing movement away from conventional farming to a model which encompasses changing technological capabilities and allows for the next generations to embrace a food system structure that is not weather and season dependent will remove a large portion of the vulnerability of food production.Describe the People and Place: Provide information that would be helpful for an outsider who has never been there and may have no context about this Place to better understand the area.

What is the estimated population (current 2020) in your Place?
8517685Challenges: Describe the current (2020) and the future (2050) challenges that your food system faces.
Across the state, consistent access to fresh food remains a challenge for many residents. The negative environmental impact of the current model of importing foods from thousands of miles away is significant. The average out of season blueberry has a huge carbon footprint when imported from Colombia. Given that the growing season is five months long there is a definite need for a more environmentally sensitive and practical approach to farming. Arable land is a finite resource and is being consistently used up by the expanding housing needs and commercial development required for Virginia’s rapidly growing population. Farmland is being developed daily, exacerbating the inability to source food locally for most population centers. The existence of schoolyard garden programs resulted from children not having any idea where and how their food came from. Modern transportation and a global economy have resulted in the movement away from eating what was seasonally available and preserving and canning local foods. Modern packaging in and chemical preservation technologies developed over the last eight decades have resulted in a widespread and fundamental change in dietary habits. The trend that has prevailed has been the consumption of processed foods that are both unhealthy and has contributed to the current obesity crisis, leading to a wide variety of other health problems. Seventy-five years ago a Virginia child reaching for a snack in the winter would have had limited choices, peanuts, dried or canned fruit or the equivalent, now the grocery stores offer unlimited options, very few of them either local or healthy. In a culture that places convenience over nutritional value, the impact on public health has been enormous. Engineering food is not going to solve all the problems we face, the cost of food waste alone is in the billions annually. Hydroponics allows you to plan yield based on usage and eliminates a large percentage of food waste. By 2050 the challenge of a drastically increased population will mean more demand and pressure on food systems which are already inadequate as evidenced by the existing food deserts. Importing food, with all the aforementioned consequences, will become even more costly, both environmentally and financially. Urban centers already experience high traffic volume and larger population density will multiply access issues and given an already overburdened transportation infrastructure the problems surrounding food access will multiply. None of this bodes well for having sufficient food supplies based on current agricultural practices and transportation models. If Virginia keeps pace with the global population increase a conservative population estimate will be 21 million people. The amount of land lost is incalculable and given the reality of the past thirty years, we will still be behind a very large curve in terms of being able to supply food for that entire population unless a new model is implemented.Address the Challenges: Describe how your Vision will address the challenges described in the previous question.
Ultimately Babylon’s goal is to create a disruptive indoor farming platform that changes the supply chain for fresh produce. Having a technology-based platform that through a patent-pending doser system that controls the scalable farming systems through an IoT app incorporating AI and machine-based learning allows anyone to effectively farm and removes the technical expertise required for standard hydroponic farming units. Vertical farming can be done in almost any indoor space and removes the requirement of vast acres of land and back-breaking labor and overhead expenses required by conventional farming methods. It has the added benefit of providing immediate access to the food being grown, in Babylon’s farm environments the produce grown is harvested and eaten on the same day. To realize the full potential of our vision, a network of partnerships will be developed and vertical farming will become a standard system for making fresh foods available to not only people living in food-insecure areas but also the average consumer that shops in grocery stores, eats at work, belongs to a CSA or purchases farms to have in their homes. The ability to farm anywhere from local grocery stores to corporate campuses to retirement communities enables people to eat year-round in a way that has not been available to them in Virginia’s history. Our Proposed Partners Cooperative (detailed below) covers a broad range from local and state school systems, state and federal agencies, locally founded organizations directly involved in promoting farm to fork agricultural enterprises and non-profits connected to the underserved populations we seek to serve and employ. 1) Virginia Department of Agricultural and Consumer Services 2) USDA 3) Central District and Henrico Offices, Virginia Cooperative Extension 4) Virginia Tech 5) University of Virginia 6) Hatch Kitchen, Richmond 7) The Local Food Hub, Charlottesville 8) Blue Ridge Food Bank 9) The Haven, Charlottesville 10) Bellair CSA 11) Albemarle County Public Schools 12) Henrico Public Schools 13) Virginia Beach Public Schools 14) Chefs Brigaid Vertical hydroponic farming on a large scale can meet the demands of future population numbers by taking up less space per pound of yield, offering healthier alternatives and enabling a major reduction in the environmental impact of food production and transportation. As Babylon’s technology and designs advance, the opportunity to grow a broader selection of crops including berries and root vegetables will provide higher caloric values and the contributions to a fully realized dietary menu will be a meaningful addition to the current crop availability. Incorporating foods grown hydroponically into daily diets for the average citizen will have far-reaching consequences across the board in terms of individual impact and public health. The drop in consumption of fresh, non-processed foods has been a trend since modern packaging and preservation began.High Level Vision: With these challenges addressed, now provide a high level description of how the Place and the lives of its People will be different than they are now.
Babylon’s vision is to create an environmentally responsible, easily accessible food system in Virginia to change the paradigm of produce production as it exists today. Creating a series of urban food hubs around the state that farm hydroponically is the first step. Featuring year-round locally grown fresh fruits and produce will serve the burgeoning population and reduce waste and address the current reality of industrially sourced foods and enable people to eat healthier diets. Additionally, having end-users that are high volume daily consumers such as school systems, corporate campuses, retirement communities, hospitals, prisons, and military bases will have an exponential impact on how food is sourced and consumed. As available farmland shrinks and the number of people farming falls we must design sustainable systems that adequately address the exponential population growth we face. Virginia is an excellent canvas to begin drawing a map for our collective future. It has the potential to be the first state to adopt a food system that embraces and plans for the future, rather than subsidizing an archaic model that no longer has the ability to feed people in a healthy way. The prevailing cultural norm in Virginia is a high fat, high starch, high sodium diet, predominantly highly processed and imported, that has a serious impact on public health and creates huge, unnecessary healthcare costs. Traditional agricultural methods are not sufficient to feed our future population estimates. In vertical hydroponic farming, the average yield is 200% higher per square foot and uses 90% less water, an increasingly precious, finite resource. Urban residents, a population predicted to increase globally by 64% by 2050, will need alternatives to the current unsustainable practice of agriculture and we need to put those systems in place now before food scarcity compounds our already widespread problems of food insecurity.Full Vision: How do you describe your Vision for a regenerative and nourishing food future for your Place and People for 2050?


How did you hear about the Food System Vision Prize?
- University of Virginia sent us an email detailing the prize and thought it aligned with our mission.
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