Tag: STEM

Babylon Microfarms STEM Garden at Indoor Ag-Con

Babylon Introduces The STEM Garden At Indoor Ag-Con 2024

Written by Indoor Ag-Con on March 20, 2024. Posted in Blog, Exhibitor News.

(Richmond, VA) Babylon Micro-Farms, Inc., North America’s leading manufacturer of on-site, modular vertical farms, officially launched its latest Micro-Farm, the STEM Garden, designed for the education market. The team showcased the new design at Indoor Ag-Con, March 11-12, 2024. The company is taking pre-orders and will begin shipping units in June 2024.

Their latest Micro-Farming system is designed to engage the senses and expand the mind by delivering an accessible and affordable interactive farming experience to the education market. After delivering Micro-Farms to hundreds of locations worldwide, Babylon has collected feedback from a wide range of educators to inform the design for the STEM Garden. Their engineering team has carefully designed the product to deliver the highest-quality farming experience available to educators at an accessible price point. STEM Garden is simple, reliable, and configurable, making it a workhorse for teaching various science, technology, nutrition, and mathematics topics.

Alexander Olesen (CEO & Co-Founder) said, “The STEM Garden represents the next step in our journey to make hydroponic agriculture accessible to all. We have set the standard for safe, reliable, remotely managed vertical farms manufactured here in the USA, enabling anyone to become an indoor farmer. The STEM Garden is an accessible device that significantly expands the market for on-site vertical farms in the classroom and, eventually, home.”

After researching the education space over the last few years, Babylon has created a versatile growing system to engage, educate, and inspire students by bringing farm-to-table into the classroom. Here are some of the key features:

Hands-on Learning – Removable trays in workstations promote hands-on learning for crop planting, nurturing, and harvesting.

Classroom-Compatible – Our design fits K-12 classrooms, maximizing space without compromising on the quality of education.

Student Led-Experiments – Designed for simplicity, our unit encourages students to work together, promoting teamwork and collaboration skills.

Exciting Seed Varieties – Students can explore the world of plant biology in depth, including different leafy greens, herbs, flowers, and microgreens.

Educational Integration – Get lesson plans and materials for hands-on gardening integrated into your curriculum.

Food Safe Cultivation – Our enclosed and locked gardening system ensures ideal plant growth with minimal effort and a more efficient and secure learning environment.

A dietician with Aramark at VCU, Julia Danisewicz RD, said, “We love our Babylon Micro-Farm; our students love the knowledge that their food was grown just a few feet away. As a dietician, seeing a university like VCU value sustainable, pesticide-free food choices for its students is exciting. I didn’t have a green thumb before working with the farm, but it is so easy to use that now I feel like a pro.”

The STEM Garden is available for pre-order today. Access the info sheet, spec sheet and please sign up for the waitlist here.

About Babylon
Founded in 2017, Babylon provides an indoor farming service to enable businesses and communities to have a year-round supply of ultra-fresh produce at the touch of a button. They manufacture all their products in the United States. The BabylonIQ software platform remotely manages the modular vertical farming systems network to make sustainable agriculture accessible to institutional food service clients like Compass, Aramark, and Sodexo. The service includes semi-automated vertical farms, software, and supplies wrapped into a flat monthly fee.

Link to TED Talk: Watch my TEDx Talk on “The Next Generation of Vertical Farming

Link to Times Magazine: Top Greentech Companies 2024

New farm babyZ Program Cultivates Growers As Young as 2 Years Old

Written by Indoor Ag-Con on July 29, 2022. Posted in Blog.

“farm babyZ is causing a groundswell by developing our next generation of sustainable urban growers,” says farm babyZ Founder Recie Robertson. “We want to make hydroponic indoor growing available for all.”

farm babyZ LLC, a STEM.org Reviewed ™ organization, has created and packaged an educational hydroponic growers curriculum and American-made merchandise/grow kit for early childhood development agencies and other educators working with children between the ages of two to five years old.

As outlined in its mission statement, “The farm babyZ LLC pre-STEM program is committed to developing an academic understanding of science and agricultural development. To achieve this goal, we support student learning by offering a concise and elementary program designed to help all preschoolers meet the Stem academic standards.”

“We created farm babyZ with food deserts in mind,” explains Robertson. “In these areas, we’re trying to help change unhealthy eating habits brought on by land restrictions for growing everything from fruits to vegetables. By building a community through educating our youths and connecting people around life-giving plants –from 2-5 years old – on up to the 92+age shut-in population – we hope to reap countless therapeutic benefits from family bonding, to mentor relationships and facilitate cross generational interaction.”

For more information on farm babyZ, contact Recie Robertson at 313.737.8115 or recie@ONE5Consulting.com

“Cultivating the Future” | 2020 Aquaponics Conference

Written by Indoor Ag-Con on September 24, 2020. Posted in Blog.

Indoor Ag-Con is pleased to share event and industry updates from our marketing |media industry allies like the Aquaponics Association. We wanted to share details of its upcoming 2020 Aquaponics Conference. Themed “Cultivating the Future” | the 2020 Aquaponics Conference is scheduled for October 16-18, 2020. This comprehensive online event is packed with sessions, virtual tours, networking opportunities and more. Wherever you are in your aquaponics journey, there is a community for you at this event. You’ll have the chance to engage with industry professionals and grow your aquaponics skills.

The Conference has 4 learning tracks with sessions from 50+ top-notch speakers:

Commercial Aquaponics — Experienced aquaponic growers can help you understand more about what it means to run a commercial facility in today’s climate

STEM Educators — Learn how to dynamically engage with your students using STEM principals by engaging with nature through aquaponics.

Research — Discover what is happening in the academic world with aquaponics and how it will affect the next generation of farming.

Community Aquaponics — Growing food for your family or learning how to do your first system? Connect with people who are all doing the same thing.

In addition to conference sessions, attendees will also have access to the Aquaponics Virtual Showroom. Here you’ll be able to explore featuring the best products and services in the aquaponics industry. You’ll also have access to great networking opportunities. Among them, direct messaging, chat rooms, live polls from presenters, and a virtual cocktail hour. What’s more, don’t miss your to chance to ask live questions to aquaponics experts from around the world and more!

To learn more about the 2020 Aquaponics Conference, including the full schedule and registration rates visit the 2020 Aquaponics Conference site

About The Aquaponics Association

The mission of the Aquaponics Association is to promote the benefits of aquaponics through education and outreach.

The primary goals and/or vision of this association are as follows:

Promote the benefits of aquaponic growing;
Educate the general consumer and food safety officials about the inherent safety of food grown through aquaponics.
Dispel myths and rumors about food grown through aquaponics.

The vision for this organization is that it will create educational materials. It will also facilitate an aquaponic speaker’s bureau and act as a resource or liaison to the press. Eventually it could also possibly offer legal and insurance assistance. It also hopes to offer standards and certification for our rapidly growing commercial aquaponic industry.