Gaining a hold on more green

Jeff Jones, managing partner of Vermont Hydroponic Produce, currently operates greenhouses in Florence, Vt., and Quebec, where he grows Big Dana, Clarence and Castella tomato varieties hydroponically. Photo Courtesy Of Vermont Hydroponic Produce LLC

To compete with greenhouses in warmer climates, northern growers have to get creative. Jeff Jones, managing partner of Vermont Hydroponic Produce LLC (http://vermonthydroponic.com), currently operates greenhouses in Florence, Vt., and Quebec, where he grows Big Dana, Clarence and Castella tomato varieties hydroponically. He’s signed onto a renewable energy project that would integrate two new five-acre greenhouses with a 29.5-megawatt biomass-fired power plant and wood pellet manufacturer.

The Fair Haven Biomass Energy Center project, which is estimated to cost $200 million, still needs two permits to proceed. Construction is estimated to take two years once the project gets the green light.

Low-grade steam, waste heat and waste water will be piped directly to the greenhouses from the biomass power plant and the pellet facility, which would enable Vermont Hydroponic to grow tomatoes and other vegetables year-round. The cost of growing all year in Vermont is much higher than in Florida, Arizona or Mexico, and Jones is looking for something to erase that competitive disadvantage.

Tom Emero, managing director of development and operations for Beaver Wood Energy, the company behind the proposed energy center, says it will be one of the most technologically advanced and environmentally friendly biomass plants in the U.S. He says the project will add 300 new jobs — 25 jobs at the biomass power plant, 25 jobs at the pellet manufacturing facility, 100 jobs at the greenhouses and Grower’s Hub and another 150 jobs in the forest industry.

The biomass plant will produce electricity fueled by locally harvested wood. The wood fuel supply will be tree tops, branches, bark and excess wood that is often unused when wood is harvested for paper, lumber, or pellets. Most of the wood will come from within 50 miles of the plant. According to Beaver Wood Energy’s website, experienced foresters will work to protect forest health.

From the ground up
This isn’t the first time Jones has attempted to harness his energy costs. He’s looked at alternative ways to heat greenhouses, including being part of a project called Carbon Harvest Energy that involved taking methane from a landfill and burning it to create electricity. That one hasn’t developed fully yet, but it did put Vermont Hydroponic Produce on Emero’s radar.

“We had been looking actively to find a cost-effective heat solution, and they contacted us based on something they read based on our connection with Carbon Harvest Energy Project,” Jones says. “Knowing where we were in our quest for heat, we said, ‘Absolutely, we’d love to partner with you.’”

Jones is well-acquainted with biomass as a source of energy, as his Quebec greenhouse is heated by its own biomass generator. Partnering with a power plant to take advantage of its waste heat had occurred to him before, but he could never find a way to make the process cost-efficient. He needed to be part of the process from the ground up, when blueprints were still being drafted.

“The problem with a project like this is there are a lot of power plants out there that give off waste heat, but getting it into a greenhouse is a huge mess. We’ve looked into re-engineering other heat-producing plants, but piping the heat that is needed into the greenhouse after the power plant has been built is not feasible.”

From its inception, the Fair Haven project was looking for an agriculture component in the form of a greenhouse.

Jones says the way the heat site is formatted is actually perfect for a two-stage, five-acre greenhouse to get the maximum benefit of the waste heat from the power plant.
 

“For us, it’s all about the heat,” Jones says. “We need heat to compete. Having our greenhouses built into the design of this power plant is really the only way we could do it.”

The expansion plan
Jones is also thinking creatively to solve another common grower problem: how to get local produce from small growers into major supermarkets. To that end, the final part of the energy center project is the creation of a centralized produce distribution hub for regional growers that participate in Growers’ Hub (www.growershub.com), a web-based ordering site that facilitates large chain stores to order produce from small regional growers.

“Heat is a huge cost, but logistics and transportation are another huge cost for any regional grower,” Jones says. “I feel that we’ve got the heat thing licked by positioning our greenhouses next to an energy plant, but putting that Growers’ Hub system live and inviting other growers to drop their product off at that site and take the benefit of getting their product into more stores is a win-win for everyone.”

Jones developed Growers’ Hub because buyers for Price Chopper, a Schenectady, N.Y.-based regional supermarket chain, wanted more locally grown tomatoes in their stores, but it was too expensive for Vermont Hydroponic to expand to meet the demand.

“We were driving our tomatoes to their stores in vans and trucks and for us to expand, we’d have to buy more trucks and hire more drivers — plus with fuel costs through the roof, it was a loss for us,” Jones says.

The distribution hub at the proposed energy center would be a centralized location for the growers in Vermont and northern New York to drop off their produce for the supermarket chains to pick up and get it out to all their stores. Jones says this would eliminate hundreds of growers driving to different stores with different pricing and help those growers become bigger, creating more jobs. He sees this becoming a model for small growers to provide supermarkets with fresh, regional food without going broke.

“It’s a food sovereignty thing that makes sense,” Jones says. “Their trucks are on the road already. They are going back to the stores empty. You’re better off getting your produce on those trucks than any other way. If we can fill those empty trucks with regional food to get back to the stores, it’s a win-win for the environment, grower, retailer and the customer.”