Empowered Patient Podcast Healthcare Outcomes When Hospitals Embrace Vertical Farming with Rick Vanzura Freight Farms and Dr. Amber Orman Advent Health
Rick Vanzura, CEO of Freight Farms, and Dr. Amber Orman, Chief Wellness Officer at Advent Health, discuss their partnership in bringing hyperlocal, sustainable food to healthcare facilities. Freight Farms uses modified shipping containers to grow crops, allowing for year-round production with minimal land and water usage. Advent Health recognized the importance of nutrition in whole-person care and saw the opportunity to provide their team members, physicians, patients, and the public with fresh, nutritious food and donate to local food pantries. The partnership has demonstrated the power of food as medicine and the potential for sustainable farming practices in healthcare settings.
Rick explains, "We grow about two and a half to three acres worth of crops out of an 8 by 40-foot shipping container. It looks like any shipping container you would see on a dock or a boat, but it's highly modified to grow food using LED lights, airflow, nutrients delivered through the farm, and controlled through software. It's really designed so you can grow 365 days a year, very clean food, with temperatures from minus 40° to 120°, and do that consistently. And again, get all of the value of it being hyperlocal and fresh and using minimal land and water."
Amber elaborates," We have a doctors’ lounge where the doctors, nurse practitioners, and some leaders eat. We also have a public-facing cafeteria, so anybody who visits the hospital can eat in the cafeteria. It's served in there. It's served in our patient meals, so we have certain meals containing the produce, so all of our salads, sandwiches, and wraps. Then we're also supplying anything extra to a local food pantry, and then they also donate to Kingdom Kids Academy in Kissimmee. We are able to sustain all of these things and donate some extra when we have it, even out to the community. It certainly provides better nutrition within a given day to those patients and team members and the people who receive the donations. It's also a way to start educating people about the benefits of eating more plants. We all need to eat more plants for better health, and so that's one of our guiding missions here."
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