Going Green: An Interview with Growing Underground
Silvia, our HR & Culture Manager, helped Social Pantry to lay the ground for a zero waste, fully sustainable production kitchen.With the help and experience from Growing Underground, Silvia has been educating the team about becoming more sustainable.
Growing Underground sustainably grow fresh micro greens and salad leaves 33 metres below the busy streets of Clapham. In 2012, Richard and Steven recognised the importance of local farming, but wanted to avoid changing their existing environment in London. After a lot of research, they managed to find a WW2 tunnel with the perfect structure for their vision.
Laura, Sales Business Development Manager, kindly answered all Silvia`s questions and gave us some phenomenal tips which we would like to share with you.
Silvia: How did you start this incredible company?
Laura: Our co-founders always had a passion for food security and sustainability. Richard, in particular, enjoyed reading the works of Jeremy Rifkin and Dickson Despommier. Together, they came up with this idea to produce food for the city, within the city. In 2012, they found the perfect location for a farm within a WWII air-raid shelter; local to customers, less expensive than space above ground and protected from the elements. Our co-founders began by trialling different crops in a small scale research and development area. Once successful, they went on to build the full-scale hydroponic system, which we see today.
Our current system is 4 stacks high, powered by 100% renewable energy. Our farm features LED lighting, which automatically turns on and off to replicate days and nights, as well as an ebb and flow irrigation system, which uses 70% less water than traditional farms. As well as this, with thanks to our location and controlled environment, we embrace a zero usage of pesticides or herbicides.
Silvia: Thanks for all the information, it really gives us the opportunity to explore and learn more. Do you have some tips you could share?
Laura: Smaller and faster growings crops, such as microgreens or baby leaf, work particularly well within controlled environment farms. Microgreens offer an intense flavour and are highly nutritious. We are also fortunate that we grow close to our distributors at the New Covent Garden Market. Some of our crops can be grown within 10 days, and are delivered to the consumer very shortly after. This ensures ultimate freshness, reduced food miles, and a longer shelf life – which reduces food waste! As the technology improves, controlled environment agriculture will be able to grow more variety more efficiently. We have a dedicated R&D area where we continually trial new crops.
Silvia: Could you please explain what were the initial steps you have adopted, in order to build the farm?
Laura: It is important to have a plan; you must research the type of benches that are needed and consider the irrigation system method. We use a hydroponic system, which is a technique of growing crops, without soil. It is estimated by the UN that we may have as few as 40 annual harvests left worldwide due to intensive farming practices. We wanted to work with and supplement traditional agriculture, to help reduce the pressures on the soil.
In order to reduce our carbon emissions as much as possible, we tried to source all of our equipment and materials from within the UK. More recently, we have been working with Carbon Footprint Ltd, a carbon offsetting company, who have calculated and assessed our carbon emissions, in order to offset them and become certified carbon neutral.
Silvia: How long does it take to build up a sustainable farm?
Laura:
There are many elements to consider when building a controlled environment farm, and we have experienced many learnings from our farm in Clapham.
Growing underground started in 2012 and it took a while to perfect. In 2015, we started supplying small restaurants, and in 2017 we expanded the sales to retailers. This required a number of food safety standards and accreditations (e.g. BRC, Red Tractor etc) and years of gathering data and trialling crops to ensure we could always offer high quality and consistency. By 2019, Growing Underground became a 7 day a week operation, due to demand from bigger restaurants and organisations, and we are now ready to increase our available capacity.
We are now working on building our second site, which has been in the works for a few years. Some of the key things to consider are finding the perfect location and the all-important growing equipment. We will take all of our learnings from Clapham and build them into the designs of this new site.
Silvia: Thanks Laura, your help and suggestion is much appreciated.
Laura: My pleasure Silvia, happy to help another company to become sustainable.
To find out more about Growing Underground, please visit their Instagram page (@growing_underground) or website.
If you want to read more about putting the social in Social Pantry, click here.
Interview by Silvia, HR & Culture Manager
