A local indoor vertical farm concept company has grown its reach to the other side of the globe.
Indoor Farms of America LLC, which will unveil its “vertical aeroponic” growing system at the end of 2015, recently signed a distributor agreement for the company’s first international client, located in South Africa. Financial terms weren’t disclosed.
“This agreement, with a major agricultural group in the region, paves the way for our products to be installed in an area of the world that has great need for it and allows folks in remote and developing areas, for the first time, access to ultrafresh, locally and naturally grown produce,” Indoor Farms of America CEO David Martin said.
The system can be set up greenhouses and warehouse farms or spaces including semi-trailers, box trucks or stand-alone containers.
Farmers can grow 40 plants per square foot in a space within an 8-foot clearance, using 95 percent less water than traditional growing practices and 5 percent to 10 percent less than hydroponic systems. Growable crops include leafy greens such as mesclun mix, baby red romaine, Genovese basil and fruit such as seascape strawberries.
Martin said his company is negotiating with additional international distributors and will announce more deals soon.
Partnership aims to improve nursing facilities’ quality of care
A federal initiative recently chose HealthInsight, a private, nonprofit, community-based organization that redesigns health care systems to improve quality of care, to apply its model at Nevada and Colorado nursing facilities.
HealthInsight’s Admissions and Transitions Optimization Program, designed to reduce hospital transfers for long-term-stay residents and reduce costs, was recently chosen for implementation into Phase 2 of the Centers for Medicare &Medicaid’s Initiative to Reduce Avoidable Hospitalizations among Nursing Facility Residents program.
Under this phase, nursing facilities that provide a higher level of care for certain conditions, all of which often result in a hospital stay, will be paid more.
The effort is part of a strategy to equalize pay between sites of care. Before this program, practitioners received more money for treating a patient in the hospital over a nursing facility.
HealthInsight’s care interventions and payment reforms will be installed at 24 long-term care facilities in Nevada for the four-year program. The payment reforms will be implemented only at 24 Colorado facilities to measure their effectiveness.
HealthInsight has offices in Nevada, Utah and New Mexico.
Winner of free seminar chosen
Las Vegan Jason Chan recently attended a three-day building seminar courtesy of one of our readers.
The opportunity, valued at $6,000, was printed in these pages last month. Andrew Vanis of Albuquerque, New Mexico, offered it.
Chan, who definitely found value in the information at the engagement.
“The three-day event can best be summed as making the impossible possible,” said Chan in an email thanking Vanis, who gave him the ticket and accompanied Chan at the event.
Vanis had planned to take his two teenage children and brother to Brad Sugars’ Entrepreneurs Master Class at the Westin in Lake Las Vegas in mid-March. When that didn’t seem as though it would work out, he turned to the publication to help find a deserving group of his choosing.
Vanis had hoped to draw two young adults and a parent. But mostly he was looking for someone in the community that could benefit from the opportunity and put the information to good use.
Chan, already successful in real estate and with other business ventures, plans to do just that.
“Having watched Brad and hearing of his successes, I now plan to add a zero to my plans,” Chan said. “When I thought 10 houses would’ve been a great goal as a property investor days ago, Brad has opened my eyes to the reality of owning 100 instead.”
Chan directs marketing in the Las Vegas region for a Fortune 500 company.
Vanis, who formerly worked for Morgan Stanley and has a master’s of business administration in finance and marketing and owns a business, said he also gained from attending the seminar.
“I, too, got a lot out of it and have been in action since more than paying off the cost of this seminar,” he said.