Steve Bourne is the CEO and co-founder of Ripple Farms, a company seeking to reconnect urban populations with the food they eat.
Steve Bourne ’10 is the CEO and co-founder of Ripple Farms, a company seeking to reconnect urban populations with the food they eat. Ripple Farms started as a pilot project in Toronto’s Evergreen Brick Works in November 2016, when Mr. Bourne and his business partner, Brandon Hebor, focused on using aquaponics to grow food – particularly microgreens – in urban areas. Aquaponics is a combination of aquaculture (or raising fish) and hydroponics, which uses water instead of soil to grow plants. In short, they raise fish in order to use their waste as fertilizer for hydroponic growing.
Today, Ripple Farms has three new farm sites, offers educational workshops to both adults and school groups, and has formed a few community partnerships.
Ripple Farms’ workshops engage any adult wanting to learn more about aquaponics and urban farming, while the school workshops dive deeper into the science and technology of urban agriculture, specifically aquaponics.
Their second farm is on Seneca College’s Newnham Campus, ideal for getting students involved. Ripple Farms challenges students to understand the concepts of biomimicry, biology, ecology, closed-loop systems, circular economies, and much more.
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