vertical farming for the workplace
The ‘Green & Healthy Places’ podcast series takes a deep-dive into the role of sustainability, wellbeing and community in real estate, offices, hotels and educational facilities.
This episode is with Square Mile Farms - providing biophilia in the shape of vertical farming for the workplace.
Biophilia with vertical farming
In this episode we talk to Johnathan Ransom, Co-Founder and CEO of Square Mile Farms, a business bringing vertical farming to the home and workplace with the aim of promoting healthier, more sustainable lifestyles. I first came across them a couple of years ago and have kept an eye on their steady progress.
These mini vertical gardens are about more than just quirky wall decor, they represent a tangible connection with nature in urban environments, have a practical function in terms of producing a respectable quantity of edible leaves each month and go one better than a largely passive garden wall in a corporate office reception.
An indoor office garden, or vertical farm, like these help promote engagement amongst staff, adding intrigue and even a little fun into the office experience, right when it needs it most post-Covid.
GUEST: JOHNATHAN RANSOM, SQUARE MILE FARMS
FULL Transcript follows courtesy of Otter.ai
Matt Morley 0:14
Welcome to Episode 12 of the Green and Healthy Places podcast, in which we take a deep dive into the world of sustainability, wellness and community in the real estate and hospitality sectors. I'm your host, Matt Morley, founder of BioBlu yacht sustainability, Biofilico wellness interiors, and Biofit nature gyms. If you see value in this type of content, please hit LIKE, SHARE, or consider subscribing.
In this episode, we talk to Jonathan Ransom, Co-founder and CEO of Square Mile Farms in London, UK, a business that's bringing vertical farming to the home and workplace with the aim of promoting healthier, more sustainable lifestyles.
Healthy Buildings and ESG
I first came across Jonathan and square mile farms a couple of years ago, and I've kept an eye on their steady progress since then, as I look after the ESG and placemaking for a commercial real estate development fund in London, I'm aware that their product aligns neatly with both LEED, BREEAM green building certifications on one side, and WELL + FITWEL healthy building certifications on the other, which in turn has the knock on effect of helping with the property funds annual ESG assessment score means you get two or even three hits for the price of one.
Beyond the box ticking though these mini vertical gardens are genuinely about more than just quirky wall decorations. They represent a tangible connection with nature in urban environments, they have a practical function in terms of producing a respectable quantity of edible leaves and hubs each month, and frankly, just go one better than what is often a largely passive, vertical plant wall in a corporate office reception. A garden like this helps promote engagement among staff. It adds intrigue, and even why not a little fun into the office experience. Right when offices need it most in the post COVID era….
Jonathan, thanks for joining us. Great to have you here on the green and Healthy Places podcast. Perhaps you could give a quick introduction to who you are and what you do as co founder and CEO of square mile farms in London.
Jonathan Ransom 2:40
Yeah, okay. So my professional backgrounds in in property. I'm a chartered surveyor by training. I spent a lot of my career working in financial services, though, but with a with a property slant to it most recently was the CIO or the FinTech business in the UK called lend invest. And I think, what what what got me into doing what I'm doing today, and we'll come on to perhaps a bit more description of what that is, but is that I got a little bit disenfranchised by the world of finance, and I guess, you know, you you, there's an obvious career route in in financial services. But ultimately, it can be a little bit unsatisfying, and I was looking for a career in in a sector that is more personally rewarding and fulfilling. And my now business partner, Patrick, and I got talking about this prospect of growing fresh, healthy vegetables in the built environment, which played nicely to my professional experience with the built environment. And I guess the backdrop to all of that is a both of us having a pretty, you know, they say be being a little bit conscious or even worried about the state of our agri food sector and the impact that that has on our on the environment, but also on our personal health.
Matt Morley 4:13
And so the name square mile farms for anyone who's not familiar with it, square mile is London's financial district of CBD. And so essentially you're you're proposing or you're proposing you deliver urban vertical farms specifically to London but what's your geographic focus now?
Jonathan Ransom 4:36
Yeah, at the moment with we're focused on London and the the genesis of that that name was really that the original business model was to look at putting controlled environment farms within a square mile of the end consumer which naturally then cuts down on food miles but also re engages the, the consumer with the with the food system and the food they eat also has benefits on the nutritional content of Food as well, because food tends to lose some of its nutritional qualities, the further it travels. So that was really the genesis of square mile farms, obviously also because we're based in London and it was going to be a very urban model. So you know, that's that's why that name came about
Matt Morley 5:20
and the business model then focusing specifically on homes and offices, you're not in the game as yet of, of sort of agriculture itself a growing food for for sale and distribution. It's more about a provision of the this piece of, of hardware effectively, that produces greenery in a home or in an office environment.
Jonathan Ransom 5:42
Yeah, well, maybe I'll just take a quick moment to take you back over some of the history of the business. So we've been around for a couple of years now. And the original model was a grow to sell model. And we set up our first self built control environment farm in in Bermondsey back in towards the beginning, beginning of 2019. And we tested that market, you know, growing within the built environment to sell to local restaurants, and local chefs and local consumers ultimately, as well. And so we build what we call a flat pack farm, which and the idea was that it's something that can easily be easily assembled or disassembled within tight urban spaces. And it became quite apparent quite quickly that that model of growing to sell is very hard to make work economically, particularly if you're not doing it at large scale. And most of the controller work environment farms that you see are doing it on massive scale, but even even they I think, would be struggling to kind of turn a profit based on their operational overheads as of today. But what that meant was the we we quickly turned to what we knew a bit more and that what we knew was more about corporate big corporates and, and the built environment and go talking to big property company called British land over here in the UK, and they invited us to build one of our flatpak Farms on the roof of their a building in Paddington Central, and actually just so happens that Microsoft occupy the building that that we have that farm and the roof off. But whilst we were there, we were then able to, you know, talk to a lot of the big local occupiers such as Vodafone, these, you know, Microsoft Richland, and it became quite apparent that what they really wanted was something that helped them engage with their employees to create an experience for their employees, but also help to address some of their kind of sustainability and, and, say, community responsibilities. And so we came up with this idea of office farming. And the idea with Office farming is that we put a hydroponic farm up inside the office and run, basically an engagement model around it. So we get the employees involved in the running of the farms, they get to take home the fresh produce, but we also educate them on sustainability and, and personal health, both physical and mental health with a focus on the food you eat, where it's coming from, how it's been produced, how you consume it, what it does to body, those sorts of things. So it's going beyond the kind of this the sustainability of the building that we're located on has some benefits for that also, but also helps a company say educate their workforce and how they can live healthier, low impact lifestyles.
Matt Morley 8:58
So I was going to ask you for a clarification on the or distinction between what's commonly referred to as say, like a vertical garden wall, or a green, a green wall, which obviously in one sense plays to biophilia, a place to reconnect with nature in an urban environment, possibly it can play into productivity and potentially an air purifying benefit. But clearly, once you open the door to this being in a consumable natural leaves you open a whole discussion around the food system and relationship to food and urban farming, which is clearly where you sort of make a big right turn away from just being a decorative object right?
Jonathan Ransom 9:45
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I mean, there's there's a lot of benefits of having plants in buildings as he touched on and and there's this this phrase or word by failures is bandied around quite a lot of them. But ultimately, what it boils down to two things, one is, how does it improve the environment in which you are. So whether that's within the Office or at home, and that environment is both about, you know, air quality. Air Quality can be around acoustics, it can be around, you know, just having greenery in the office as an on may benefit to the office. But it but on the on the flip side, this is biophilia benefit, which is that that kind of goodness that humanity gets from being with nature and interacting with nature, and that's a very, can be can be a psychological thing, but it's also a physiological thing. So it's, you feel better for reason for, for reasons of, you know, 1000s of years of evolution alongside nature, the benefit of having edible plants in the office is that that interaction becomes enhanced. So if you've just got a green wall, that looks great, you know, there's a novelty there, it does look great. And it does have some benefits in terms of the quality of the air etc, in the office, but you're not interacting with it, you don't, you don't have that same interaction that naturally we might have with with nature. Whereas if it's an edible farm wall, you do interact with it, you're you're harvesting it, you're eating the produce from it, you're you're helping to plant it up. So every time you walk past it, you see the fruits of your labour, and you get some satisfaction from that. So it goes further than just sort of urban greening that say it brings in that element of engagement and an experience and, you know, it's a physical activity as well. So it does, it has some fiscal benefits as well.
Matt Morley 11:49
So when you think about the problem that you're solving, or the the unmet need that you were trying to address when you when you got started on this, what what if you like would be your competitors in that sense, or what else is in is typically in an office or a corporate office environment, such as a Microsoft or wherever it may be that is doing something similar? Because, you know, obviously, the walls have more of a passive element, whereas you're talking much more about an experiential piece, right?
Jonathan Ransom 12:17
Yeah. So I guess, what might be worth just just dwelling quickly on who the buyers of the service that services are so so one of the buyers would be someone that's responsible for fitting out the office space and making it look good and making it work well, for the employees, the other buyer is, and sort of competitors and might fall into that space might be your typical kind of office, or interior, landscaping companies. On the on the other side, the buyers are the, you know, the HR team is responsible for employee wellbeing and engagement and even recruitment and retention. And they're more interested in the kind of engagement and the experience element of it. So on that side, the people that that I guess we might come across in terms of competition for budgets that say spoil it down to that would be your people like, you know, Nuffield health, for instance, the thing about the the, and they're providing a well being service around this focused on, let's say, fitness and exercise. The thing about someone like Nuffield health is, of course, they're taking you out of the office. to to to get that experience, what we're doing is keeping you in the office, which really plays to the kind of the future of the future vision of the people have or the office post COVID. We're keeping you in the office and creating an experience for you in the office, which can get you away from your desk, create some physical activity, create some mental activity takes you away from the kind of day to day thinking about, you know, what's on your computer screen. But then alongside that we do also provide other services, such as workshops might be, you know, nutritional consultations, and we do supper clubs and things like that, which is, again, some of those things you'd expect enough field health type business to offer alongside the gym membership. So there is some similarities that say, but but we feel that our model combined so many different of the different, let's say needs of a of a big corporate.
Matt Morley 14:28
I think the activation pieces is really strong component to what you're doing to the sort of overall service offer. You mentioned. COVID and how have things been? I'm guessing budgets are being reduced, offices are being closed, therefore it's had a direct impact on perhaps new orders, or perhaps, yeah, your your pipeline of potential clients, but how are you seeing the next 12 to 24 months in a in a post COVID world and how do you think you're Duck will, will emerge from the ashes of this current crisis that the workplace is going through.
Jonathan Ransom 15:08
So, I think that the world is looking for the type of services that we offer, fortunately, admittedly, the last say nine months have been challenging, mainly because the types of the people that hold the budgets for this, this type of service are really need to have some visibility on when people come back to the office. But they're also going through, you know, a pretty involved process of trying to think about what they want that office to be for in the future. And I think even before COVID, there was a shift towards, you know, more experiential office, places that are less about places where people come and sit behind the computer screen, like a battery and, and churn out work, because you can do that at home. Frankly, it's more about engaging and say, growing your workforce, and about experiences and about interactions. And so consequently, you know, the office, the Office of tomorrow will be full of things that help foster those type of activities. They won't they won't be crammed full of desks where people perch with their laptop cell belt, they'll be more loungy in, in, in appearance. And so, you know, one thing we've been working on with Vodafone in Paddington is this idea of a Zen Garden, which is, you know, their, their idea where they create create a kind of area for people to relax and chill out. And what better kind of place to put a allotment wall, then in a, in a Zen Garden, within when the off within the Office. So it's, you know, it's very, it's very topical. And a lot of a lot of companies that we talk to now have task forces put together that are tasked with making the office suitable for the post COVID world. And so so it seems that there's there's quite a lot of activity going on in terms of reconfiguring refitting spaces to make to make it appropriate for that post COVID world, and that's where we fit in, because they want something normal, you know, lots of offices of the past might have ping pong tables, or table football or computer consoles, or whatever. But you know, an office farming model brings both the experience but also the educational side. And, and, and it takes a lot of boxes from a kind of office sustainability perspective as well. Yep,
Matt Morley 17:59
I get it. I mean, it's fun, it's engaging, it's a talking point, it's, it's a water cooler moment, in a way. So just to dig into to that process, then the idea of, you might have HR on one side, perhaps sort of brand director or marketing guys on the other, perhaps the facilities manager, or management team, around the table, who else is is involved in that process, when you go from identifying a suitable location, and perhaps you might be able to comment on what would would make up a suitable location within an office environment. And and describe that process of going from initial introduction through to actually opening one of your, your vertical farms, presumably, a few months later.
Jonathan Ransom 18:45
Yeah, I mean, it varies depending on where the kind of entry point was to the conversation, but just take one, one example. So that say, the offices, the company is looking to refurbish their space, and in light of changes that are needed post COVID. They might they, the likelihood is, then we're talking to the person responsible for the fit out, so maybe a, you know, workplace strategy person or, you know, the, in the old world, we call them kind of corporate real estate managers or something along those lines. So they then obviously, we'll be engaging with their interior designers. And at some point, they, you know, once they've got an idea of the sorts of things that they can get from us, they then introduce us to the interior designers, and we have a chat about where it can go, whether whether we, we sort of integrate it into the building services such as the plumbing or whether we have it as a standalone unit that has its own water source. We find the location and we then talk to the contractor about, you know, what services, we do need and And, you know, often if it's a wall hung unit, then we might need a some reinforcing on the wall. And then just sort of bet into that project management as the fitout goes along. And normally where they're kind of lost people in and just mounted on the wall at the end. And off it goes planted up, and people can then start engaging with it.
Matt Morley 20:23
So irrigation, the load that goes on to the wall, if it is a wall loaded piece of preferably sort of a structural wall, and some component of light, I'm guessing, or does the vertical farm come with its own lighting system integrated into the hardware?
Jonathan Ransom 20:43
Yeah, so actually, the loading isn't isn't so much of an issue, we've just mounted one in sort of double thickness plaster board. So I it's a consideration, but isn't, often doesn't become a limitation. But what it needs is a either a water source that we can plummet into for the irrigation, or relatively near to a water source so that it's quite easy to get water to the to the wall itself. But it but it's recirculating, so it doesn't need to be continually topped up. And yes, it does need a light source. But because we're talking about edible plants, they require higher intensity light than then some of the kind of conventional office plants would need. Because it you know, the light intensity does affect the growth rate, and also the flavour of the plants as well. The system has a integrate integrated lighting, which needs a little bit of thought because it does come off the face of the wall. We also use what we call hydroponic towers, which are sort of standalone units, which is literally a tower with plants growing out the side of it which have lights integrated again in like a halo effect, which we can put anywhere in the office. It doesn't doesn't need to be mounted on the wall.
Matt Morley 22:15
What are the options that in terms of the actual type of foliage that the farm is producing? And the sort of nuts and bolts of all of this at the end of the day? Is it a bag of lettuce leaves the flowers woody would typically you do? Or would you recommend growing for sort of maximum productivity and limited amount of maintenance required and so on?
Jonathan Ransom 22:38
Yeah, so you touched on a couple of good points. I wanted one. Yep. productivity is important. plants that are the kind of give you the opportunity for engagement are important. But also from an operational perspective. We don't want to be going there too frequently to replant things that you know, in the case of a lettuce, for instance, you read the entire lettuce head, so you end up having to replant the entire plant. So we do focus on leafy greens and Herbes. You can grow fruiting crops, so tomatoes, strawberries, that sort of thing in in these types of systems, but they do require a higher intensity of light. So if for instance, we're putting we have some outside space, we might use outside space to to put up put up a farm wall, an exterior farm wall or one of our hydroponic towers outside and in the summer, you could then grow things like strawberries and tomatoes, but in the office, we're growing things like lettuce, but that also like kale, chard, both of which you cut the leaves and you can leave the plant and they they grow back so you can get multiple harvests of them. And they look great as well. So you know, Rainbow rainbow chard, lots of different colours on your wall so they look fantastic and they're relatively quick growing as well. We also then Basil's as a is a very popular one. And again, you can cut the leaves and come back and it smells fantastic. So particularly when you're harvesting it creates a lovely fragrance around the office, you know, rosemary, thyme, all the all the stuff that you might grow in a English garden, the difference being that you're growing in the office, and you can do it all year round, because the office environments a lot more stable than, you know, the seasonal environment outside in the UK. So yeah, in a in a kind of nutshell. It's leafy greens and Herbes.
Matt Morley 24:38
But then you do also have now a home farm alternative, which would be presumably on a smaller scale that's more manageable. That would be more of a residential product.
Jonathan Ransom 24:50
Yeah, correct. Yeah. And, and it's worth saying that one of the main challenges with growing indoors is the lighting And, and so with with the home farms that there is much about, you know, making the most of limited outdoor space that you have as they are about indoor space. So in some homes where you have a lot of light, you can, you know, put put one indoors, and we have a lighting solution that supplements the light, which means that you're not relying on natural light. But if you're growing outdoors on a terrorist for instance, then, you know, the world's your oyster really, and it doesn't, you know, if you're growing outdoors, you might be just as inclined to grow flowers, flat flowering plants as you are edible plants. And if it's sort of overwinter, then you might put some evergreens in and our systems modular, which means that the plants each have an individual pot that you hang on to a frame that sits behind it, but it means that you can easily take that port out and replant it with different plants, or indeed create patterns on the wall of different colours. So whatever takes your fancy, really, and I think I think just touching on the this concept of a pollinator pod and a productive productive pod and those sort of things. What we're trying to do there is just in simple terms, demonstrate that, you know, each plant plants have different functions. And both in the environment, but also in terms of what you humans get out of them. Some of them are about, they look great, which are the flowering ones, and also they produce flowers. So they're great for insects as well. So the pollinator pods are great for attracting insects into your garden, which has the knock on effect of pollinating other plants that you have in the garden, so you can start creating, you know, fantastic biodiversity. And then the producer pods are, you know, edible plants. So stuff that that you can cut and eat in your kitchen and replant and off you go again. So that's that's the idea really there. We just thought that was quite a fun a fun idea of bringing bringing to life though different sort of plants that you can, you can grow.
Matt Morley 27:17
Yeah, it's exciting. It is really, yeah, sort of makes you want to grab one and get started. And there's no excuses. Once you've sorted the lightest you rent man, one can always complain about how hard it is to grow plants or wants to terrorist. But in a way, this is a different approach. You've also gone through a crowdfunding process recently. So you've raised some capital, what are your What are your plans in terms of rollout expansion or growing over the next few years?
Jonathan Ransom 27:42
So yeah, we did the crowdfunding last year, which was a fantastic success. And I think it was well timed in that a lot of the people that get involved in a lot of the investors or get involved in crowdfunding campaigns were, you know, spending a lot of time at home during lockdown, but also we're reflecting on the sorts of things that are important. And obviously, health and well being. are, you know, they're they're important, increasingly important to people. And I think our model resonated with with the crown. So we we raise half a million pounds through that process and can had nearly 900 in investors contribute, which was a fantastic, fantastic to see. So the idea is that now what we want to do is really focus on getting these farms into offices, but also into we've got a new push recently into getting farms into co living spaces. So working with the operators of the sort of apartment buildings, and putting farms here, sort of communal farms in apartment buildings and helping people then also get some production going within their apartments themselves. So we're the this year is all about kind of rolling that out, and really demonstrating how it can work and then sort of scaling off off the back of that. So I think we'll have you know, we're optimistic about getting about 15 Farms in over the next nine months or so. And you know, that that for us would be a good achievement start with,
Matt Morley 29:20
it does feel like the whole sort of biophilia movement biophilic design, made its name with with office environments, and now does seem to be being adopted, probably, I'd say both at the very, very high end of the residential market, but also with the sort of more millennial focused co living spaces. So I think I think you're onto something there. I think we really interesting to see how you, you get on with the with the CO living new business strategy. One final question, if I may, if you were to send one message out to the real estate hospitality sector in a post COVID world if you could see one change in this industry of ours over the next few years. What would you ask for?
Jonathan Ransom 30:04
I guess I'd encourage them to listen to their customers, particularly in in the sort of residential space because the the sort of types of accommodation that that people have been living in, up to now it can be pretty, you know that the urban world is a pretty cramped world, and in a world where we're spending a lot more time at home, we have to be a little more focused on people's, you know, what they need to live healthy lifestyles. And, you know, it doesn't mean you have to give them huge amounts of space, but it does mean you need to give them amenities. And and those amenities have to be beyond the kind of normal stuff of maybe having a gym in the basement, or, or what have you, it needs to be broader than that. And from from kind of combining those two, you know, the residential space and the office spaces, it shouldn't really be thinking about them independently. Because as we're seeing now, the concept of an office isn't so much about the the kind of physical manifestation of a building that you go and work it's about. It's about where you work and the the kind of immediate amenities that are provided to to be able to work in that environment. So is joining those, the kind of living environment and the working environment together and how we balance those, those two things. So I'd just encourage some kind of novel thinking around that space.
Matt Morley 31:32
Very cool. I think you are uniquely positioned to have to make your contribution to that whole process over the next few years. Good on you. So if people want to connect, what's the best way for them to reach out square mile farms?
Jonathan Ransom 31:46
The numbers on phone numbers on the website, there's an email address on there as well. We're also very active on social so if your thing is his Instagram, then follow us there you can see see what we're doing. We tend to put videos and pictures of what we're up to on there. And by all means, ping us a message. And we'll get back to you ASAP.