{"id":30668,"date":"2016-06-13T08:00:47","date_gmt":"2016-06-13T15:00:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spijue.wpengine.com\/news\/farmers-use-hydroponics-to-feed-rural-arctic-villages\/"},"modified":"2016-06-13T08:00:47","modified_gmt":"2016-06-13T15:00:47","slug":"farmers-use-hydroponics-to-feed-rural-arctic-villages","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/farmers-use-hydroponics-to-feed-rural-arctic-villages\/","title":{"rendered":"Farmers use hydroponics to feed rural arctic villages"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>KOTZEBUE \u2014 <\/strong>Though farming outside in the tundra of the arctic isn\u2019t an option, an Alaska Native company is working to grow fresh produce for rural villages with hydroponic technology.<\/p>\n<p>Alaska Native Kikiktagruk Inupiat Corporation\u2019s new subsidiary Arctic Greens is growing new spinach, kale and types of lettuce inside shipping containers in Kotzebue with the hopes of providing produce year-round to the Northwest Arctic Borough city, KTUU-TV reported.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cA lot of people have their own little gardens to grow things for themselves in the summertime, but in wintertime the cost of produce is high, and not everyone can afford something green from the store,\u201d corporation President Will Anderson said.<\/p>\n<p>In Kotzebue, it can take four days to two weeks for vegetables to make it to the Alaska Commercial grocery store after being picked from the ground. Most of the produce comes from the Lower 48 and can be expensive and in poor condition by the time it hits Kotzebue\u2019s shelves.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBy the time it gets out to the Native stores and the villages, who knows what kind of condition it\u2019s going to be in, and the price could be who knows how high,\u201d Kotzebue resident Annabelle Alvite said.<\/p>\n<p>Alaska Commercial has agreed to buy hydroponic produce for its 28 rural grocery stores if Arctic Greens can produce enough. Anchorage-based AC director of sales and operations Jeff Cichosz said he is excited to see better quality produce available in villages.<\/p>\n<p>When fully operational, Anderson said he expects the hydroponic farm to deliver up to 550 pieces of produce each week, even when the weather drops to 60 degrees below zero. If the Kotzebue yield sustains through winter, he said the company will expand to other villages across rural Alaska and northern Canada. The business has working models in Anchorage, Dillingham and Kotzebue.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>KOTZEBUE \u2014 Though farming outside in the tundra of the arctic isn\u2019t an option, an Alaska Native company is working to grow fresh produce for rural villages with hydroponic technology. Alaska Native Kikiktagruk Inupiat Corporation\u2019s new subsidiary Arctic Greens is growing new spinach, kale and types of lettuce inside shipping containers in Kotzebue with the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[230],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-30668","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-state-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30668","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30668"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30668\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30668"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30668"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30668"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=30668"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}