The independent newspaper of the University of Iowa community since 1868

The Daily Iowan

The independent newspaper of the University of Iowa community since 1868

The Daily Iowan

The independent newspaper of the University of Iowa community since 1868

The Daily Iowan

Lettuce takes the cake in UI project

UI+students+Jake+Krischel+and+Grant+Gregory+are+growing+lettuce+using+a+hydroponic+system%2C+which+is+an+alternative+to+traditionally+soil-grown+lettuce.+The+students+are+selling+the+lettuce+to+the+UI+to+be+used+in+the+dining+halls.+%28The+Daily+Iowan%2FKatelyn+Weisbrod%29
UI students Jake Krischel and Grant Gregory are growing lettuce using a hydroponic system, which is an alternative to traditionally soil-grown lettuce. The students are selling the lettuce to the UI to be used in the dining halls. (The Daily Iowan/Katelyn Weisbrod)

By Katelyn Weisbrod

[email protected]

A team overseeing the growth of soil-free lettuce now has $1,000 to reinvest in its project.

The first University of Iowa Frontier-Tippie Sustainability Impact Competition brought together locally grown lettuce, an educational video, and data on sales of sustainable foods.

The creators of these three projects presented their findings April 23 at the Pappajohn Business Building. A panel of three judges selected the group that grew local lettuce as the winner.

The five-member team grew 80 heads of lettuce without soil using a hydroponic system. The group, comprising students studying engineering, political science, and business, received a $1,000 prize, which group member Grant Gregory said would be reinvested into the system.

UI Housing & Dining purchased the 80 heads of lettuce at $1 each to serve in Burge Marketplace.

“We wanted to provide hyper-local food to the university, right now only 14 percent of the university’s food is locally sourced,” Gregory said.

Operations of the system will be handed off to UI gardeners, and the locally grown lettuce will either continue to be sold to UI Housing & Dining or will be donated to the UI Food Pantry or the Johnson County Crisis Center.

The system will continue to operate where it already is — the greenhouse in the Biology Building, until the space is needed for something else. In the meantime, group member Andrew Hirst said, the system would be moved outdoors to a rooftop where it can operate with little upkeep required.

In the presentation on April 23, group member Jake Krischel outlined the costs of the system. The group went $110 over its $500 budget. Part of the competition’s criteria involved creating an economically viable project.

Krischel said that on this scale, the system is not profitable when they considered things like energy costs. However, Hirst said, since they grew the lettuce in the UI greenhouse, they did not actually have to pay for the electricity they used.

Sarah Gardial, the dean of the Tippie College of Business, served as one of the judges for the competition. The judges had time to discuss the projects with the groups, and Gardial said calculating the true cost of a local hydroponic system against producing non-local is tough to do.

“There’s a lot of costs to consider, there’s energy and transport, there’s carbon emissions, there’s additional packaging when you’re taking things thousands of miles versus across the street,” she said. “It’s hard to really fully capture that true cost.”

This was the first annual sustainability competition in the business school, and Gardial said this year was a great start to a new tradition.

“We have a good foundation and now we’ve just to grow the awareness,” she said. “The more we can shine a light on this, the more we can get students from all across the campus engaged in this in the future.”

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