One of the questions that Rob Studor, manager of aquaponics at WestWinn Urban Agriculture Co. in Sharon, Pa., often gets asked is what cannot be grown in water. The answer is nothing. "You can grow everything you grow in soil in water," he explains. WestWinn, which began operations in June 2023, is a subsidiary of The Winner Companies. It is housed in The Landing, a multitenant space in the former Westinghouse Electric Corp. complex operated by Valley Shenango Economic Development Corp. and leased from Winner.
Fully planting the farm took about seven months, Studor reports. Since then, the farm has been going "full speed," he says. The operation, which runs seven days per week, grows lettuce and other agricultural products in a 25,000-square-foot indoor space using aquaponics, a soilless cultivation technique that merges hydroponics – which is growing plants in water – with aquaculture, which is raising aquatic animals.
Lettuce is the main crop grown at WestWinn Urban Ag's indoor farm. The plants are fertilized using nutrients extracted from waste from fish grown on site.
The growing areas are illuminated under controlled lighting conditions, with existing systems now being converted to more energy-efficient LED lights. Waste generated by fish raised on the site is used to fertilize the lettuce.
"We don't have the sun, but what I'm finding out is even inside of greenhouses, they still supplement 40% with lights. So we just eliminated the sun, which actually helps us control our environment and things like that better," he says. "It stays this temperature and this humidity year-round, no matter what."
Read more at The Business Journal
