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Canada: St. Catharines microgreens farm thrives on sustainability

Changing the face of agriculture isn't easy, but Michael Pfundt said someone has to do it. Pfundt started his St. Catharines-based Seriously Green Farms with his partner, Samantha Sherman, about six months ago. It operates as an indoor microgreen farm, serving restaurants across Niagara.

Pfundt said he became interested in starting his own company after working at other farms and seeing what worked and what didn't. "There's a lot of benefits to indoor farming, and I just wanted to be able to really make a name for aquaponics," he said. "Aquaponics is a very small niche field in agriculture, and I wanted to have full control over growing healthy produce."

"We use that nutrient-rich water, pump it over into all of our microgreens grains," he said. "So it helps us to grow a little bit better, but also helps the whole sustainable aspect because some people use little bits of fertilizer that are mined all over the world. We can kind of grow our own fertilizer as well as produce fish occasionally when they are full size."

Both Pfundt and Sherman have backgrounds in marine biology, and Michael said they would love to be able to raise fish as a nutritious meat source someday as well. "That's actually one of our goals, is to produce the most sustainable fish that we could possibly grow in our area," he said. "Having full control over our feed and our inputs, as our name implies. We're serious about sustainability in that sense, but we also take pride in limiting our waste, limiting our carbon footprint. We use compostable clamshells, and we compost all of our waste."

Read the complete article at www.niagarathisweek.com.

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