United States

February 23, 2019

Fat Beet Farm is a food service commissary that grows microgreens hydroponically and uses raised beds. They serve the five Curci Family Noble Crust restaurants in Tampa.
Located in Oldsmar near the bridge to Dunedin and the Race Track, not far from the University of South Florida, Fat Beet Farm serves as a sustainable practice model for the Food Energy Water Nexus Zero Waste Initiative where Patel College Interns work for credit to put sustainable development theory into practice.

The Solar CITIES 10m3 biodigester at the site, built with student and volunteer labor by Dr. Thomas H. Culhane and the Curci family for well under $10K, demonstrates the least cost yet greatest efficiency solution for treating food production organic residuals and restaurant wastes on site. A direct result of the biodigester is the elimination of garbage pickup costs and grease trap clean out fees while offsetting significant amounts of fossil fuel energy from the food production and preparation processes.

The above ground 9’x9′ digester is heated by a 60 vacuum tube solar hot water split system for year round operation. It produces both fuel and fertilizer from food waste for growing and preparing healthy food without the need for chemical soil amendments or hydroponics solutions and without the need for cooking gas or electricity derived from petroleum.

The food grinder, pumps, and lighting for the site are provided by solar electric power making the Fat Beet Farm site an inflation-resistant and service disruption resilient off-grid alternative that radically reduces costs and improves living and working conditions for small family businesses that we hope to replicate throughout South Florida.

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February 28, 2018

Ashlee Painter lead students from the Patel Collge of Global Sustainability at USF Tampa on an adventure into the unknown with saltwater digesters. Their goal was to research how biodigesters can help to combat coastal pollution and climate change.

The best way to describe the experience is through the words of our Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation Student Kaitlin Davis who wrote in her class relational summary:

“I had the opportunity to be apart of a project that aims to mitigate and adapt to climate change when I came to help Ashlee build her biodigesters in Apollo Beach. Ironically, the Suncoast Youth Conservation Center, where we built the biodigesters is located on TECO land and right next to one of their major power plants. I have never seen a power plant this large and up close before so driving up to this location gave me a very bad feeling in my stomach. Ashlee comforted that feeling a little when she told me she needed to get approval from TECO to build the biodigesters and the executive there was actually the most excited about it. She also pointed out the solar farm that TECO owes close by. This was reassuring in the sense that our major energy provider is at least aware of sustainable energy alternatives and has also already invested in one.

I went home to do some further research on TECO and found their parent company, Emera Inc, is seeking regulatory approval to convert that plant, which happens to be the oldest and last major coal-fired facility in its fleet, into natural gas. I like the comparison made by Joel B. Stronberg in the “Natural Gas: Bridge or Barrier to a Clean Energy Future?” article where he compares the common argument that natural gas is “cleaner” than coal to be like saying smoking Marlboro Lights won’t kill you as fast as Marlboro Reds. I, among many other environmentalists like Stronberg, argue that just because natural gas reduces carbon emissions in the short term, doesn’t mean the harmful impacts from extraction such as surface and groundwater pollution, excessive water usage and diminishing farmland should not be ignored.

That is why building Ashlee’s biodigesters right beside the power plant painted a symbolic picture of what the future of sustainable energy could hold. Unlike natural gas, converting biomass to energy in the form of biogas offers a closed looped system that is truly self-sustaining for future generations. The process encompasses the mitigation and adaptation properties that are necessary to combat climate change. Bringing this sustainable energy and waste solution to the forefront of the climate change conversation is one of the greatest defenses we have. I am so grateful to have been exposed to biodigesters and biogas as I now know what to fight for when it comes to the argument of renewable energy and waste solutions. It is, in fact, the ONLY truly renewable source of energy and the missing piece of the sustainability puzzle as T.H. would say.”

I foolishly did not take any photos while building the biodigesters. Probably because I was just too into it but here is a group photo of us at the end.

I love her quote, “building Ashlee’s biodigesters right beside the power plant painted a symbolic picture of what the future of sustainable energy could hold.”

With affidavits like that, shouldn’t we all be building biodigesters as the prime symbol of our needed evolution off of fossil fuels?

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