from the good earth

THREE BOYS FARM
Farming Re-imagined

BY ASHTON GOGGANS
PHOTOS BY CHAD SPENCER

I have seen the future. And the future is radical.

Robert began working on Three Boys a little over three years ago. To date, the venture has cost somewhere in the ballpark of four million bones. I start with this only to give some perspective, to offer context: this is no small project, and it ain’t your parent’s greenhouse. This is truly groundbreaking, game-changing, state-of-the-art technology. Three Boys is the only year-round hydroponic farm in the state of Florida. It’s one of the most dynamic farms in the country. In three years Robert has received all of his certifications, including the USDA organic, and passed his third-party food safety audit.

The farm occupies a little over eight acres in Ruskin, conveniently located within a 30-minute drive from each point of the foodie-heavy triangle formed by Tampa, St. Pete, and Sarasota. The operation consists of four separate greenhouses, all built of heavy-duty galvanized steel and covered with a special German-made diffused polycarbonate. The polycarbonate is expected to last 15 to 20 years; the rest of the construction should endure “several lifetimes,” says Robert. “The structures will take 135-mile-an-hour winds.” Where most people think of hydroponic greenhouses as quaint, fragile confections of PVC and thin plastic in which aging hippies spend their days, Three Boys Farms has created something more like the Green Revolution’s version of a bomb shelter.

Putting structural integrity aside, the process Robert has developed at Three Boys is what makes the farm truly special. See, the technology in hydroponic greenhouses has changed very little in the last few decades. Most hydroponic operations are “drain-to-waste” systems—“waste” being the operative word. With its airtight greenhouses, Three Boys is able to run as a sealed system, which means that nearly every drop of water is recirculated, reused, again and again. The only moisture not recaptured is the water plants are actually absorbing and transpiring during growth. “We recirculate and recapture every single drop,” Robert says, going on to explain that under a drain-to-waste system, “a greenhouse of our size would use between 12,500 and 14,000 gallons of water a day. We use somewhere around 350 to 400 gallons, and that includes biomass production and cooling.” The greenhouses are “hermetically sealed,” he says, which to date has prevented issues with disease, pathogens, or insects.

And it gets better: The farm has 150,000 gallons of rainwater storage on site. Three Boys is permitted by SWFWMD for use of 15 million gallons of water annually; they hoped to limit the amount to 10 million, through both the efficiency of the sealed system and the use of recaptured rainwater. As of September, the farm had already exceeded that goal.

The plants are grown using a Nutrient Film Technique, in Dutch boxes. The plants are fed a special brew that Robert has developed, made of organic sugarcane molasses and food-grade diatomaceous earth. The seeds used are purchased from Europe or from domestic organic growers. And don’t even mention GMOs around Robert. The farm, once fully realized, will utilize both wind and solar power, with the capacity to produce 40 kilowatts from solar and 10 kilowatts from wind. No fuel is allowed on site, and no machinery or equipment is used for harvesting; it’s all done by hand. We’re talking full-on sustainability, and year-round harvests of the absolute freshest, healthiest organic produce.

Now, this endeavor has not been without its naysayers. Large-scale corporate agriculture, particularly in Florida, has benefited from the limitations climate and budget have put on small organic farms. And no one has ever come close to doing what Robert has done. While state universities were struggling to grow tropical plants in the Florida heat, Robert was messing with fava beans and leafy greens. No one thought it was possible. But Robert—56 years old (he looks more like 40, honestly), ponytailed, excitable, prone to tangential discussion—isn’t a fringe farmer; he’s not an eccentric. He’s a genius. He’s on a first-name basis with Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack. Researchers and professors from the University of Florida look to him for answers. And his process—the explanation of which requires both a botany degree and the absolute most recent edition of an agronomist’s dictionary—has been called basically just that by the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, the Florida Fruit and Vegetable Association, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation, and other entities. He’s been asked to build similar farms in Grenada, Haiti—volcanic islands in the path of hurricanes, where produce struggles to grow—and elsewhere.

One of the truly unique features of Three Boys are the possibilities it offers for made-to-order organic veggies. Given the recent culinary craze for local, sustainable produce, chefs in Florida have been at a loss during the summer months, unable to get even the most basic lettuces and greens from anywhere within 1,000 miles. With Three Boys, cooks can virtually customize menus according to what they want, not what they hope they can get. Five-star restaurants all over the area have lined up for Robert’s produce. Locally, Chef Steve Phelps of celebrated upstart Indigenous has signed on for the long haul, and those lucky enough to get a table at Indigenous in the past month will tell you, it’s something to behold.

A farm like Three Boys is in all reality a tremendous political statement. One doesn’t sink such a formidable chunk of change into such a financially risky endeavor without an agenda. (He could make a lot more growing something else hydroponically, if profits were the goal.) And Robert Tornello certainly has an agenda: to change the direction of agriculture and agronomy as we know it. Anything short of that would be a failure. “This is the future of farming,” he says. “There are no shortcuts. I want to do this because at some point I will derive a great deal of satisfaction out of it. Someone has to go out and show that it can be done.”

RECIPE

ARUGULA SALAD WITH PANCETTA CRISPS, GOAT CHEESE,
CANDIED WALNUTS AND BALSAMIC VINAIGRETTE