About The Company

Local Food 365 revitalizes vacant spaces into urban greenhouses that nourish our local community year round with food, jobs, education, and reinvestment.

Local Food 365 is a product of Start-up Weekend Cleveland and formed around the idea of building hydroponics greenhouses to grow organic produce in urban Cleveland . With decreasing availability of farmland and a dwindling supply of cheap oil for transporting food, there is an emerging market for locally-produced food. But in Cleveland , Ohio the growing season on open farmland is only a few months out of the year. You could build a normal greenhouse, but with most of the usable farmland already purchased by farmers or developers, where would you put it?

Ideally, you would want to take advantage of the dozens of vacant or run-down urban lots throughout the city of Cleveland . But in many of those locations, soil contaminants and existing structures make traditional urban gardens implausible to setup. So, should we abandon the idea of growing food locally throughout the year in greenhouses? We didn’t think so. Our team found a solution:

Hydroponics (from the Greek words hydro water and ponos labor) is a method of growing plants using mineral nutrient solutions, in water, without soil.

What is Hydroponics? Hydroponics is the science of growing plants using water and a nutrient mixture rather than in soil. Generally, it is safe to say that plants grown hydroponically are far more efficient in the amount of water required, are more productive, healthier, can be planted in greater densities, and grow faster than plants grown in traditional soil environments.

With hydroponics, we can construct urban greenhouses that can be built on land unsuitable for traditional urban gardens or greenhouses. By removing the need for growing soil and instead using liquids to fertilize plants, we can bring fresh, organic produce to Cleveland year-round. Unlike some local produce that contains pesticides and some organic food that’s been transported hundreds of miles to get to your dinner table, our urban hydroponics greenhouses can provide the best of both worlds: organically and locally grown.

Our website, www.localfood365.com, will enable distributors and the community to support the local food movement that is sweeping Cleveland and the nation. Subsequent growth in neighborhood hydroponics greenhouse systems will build a strong local food network and enable expansion into new organic vegetable crops. Local Food 365 will continue to research Hydroponics Technologies that bring value to the local food community.

Here is a video of our initial presentation of Local Food 365 to everyone at Startup Weekend Cleveland: