Aquality Farms: Providing A Quality Produce for A Quality People

Here is our 3rd place team’s story!

What is the Hult Prize and the Theme for This Year?

The Hult Prize at Rutgers is an entrepreneurial competition where students compete to create a viable solution fitting to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.

This year, the theme of the Hult Prize competition is “Food For Good” with the underlying goals of “creating jobs, reimagining supply chains, and improving outcomes for 10 million people by 2030”. Students were challenged to create a business that could positively impact the food system and the surrounding community. During the December of 2020, Rutgers University hosted its competition, and three winners were selected to proceed to the regionals competition in the spring. The three winners are Ribo, Tiffin Time, and Aquality Farms.

Who We Are

James Hong:

• Major/Minor: Finance and Accounting
• Year: Junior
• What I like best about the Hult Prize: The Hult Prize has led me to meet people of different academic backgrounds. Although our opinions may sometimes differ, I love how we collaborate as a team, putting aside our differences and working toward finding a solution to a common goal.

Jocelyn Shi:

• Major: Supply Chain Management
• Year: Sophomore
• What I like best about the Hult Prize: I enjoy the initiative that the Hult Prize competition allowed me to create with my teammates. I am proud of our idea which is directed at solving a larger problem that is plaguing the community. I have gained new knowledge and skills from this entrepreneurial and critical thinking process.

Maria Mikhail

• Major: Pharmacy
• Year: Freshman
• What I like most about the Hult Prize: What I like most about The Hult Prize competition is that it allows for creating modern solutions to prevalent real world problems. I admire how it allows students of different academic backgrounds to collaborate to produce a successful business.

Ella Walmsley

• Major: Plant Biology/ Agriculture and Food Systems
• Year: Freshman
• What I like most about the Hult prize: I love that the Hult Prize has allowed me to belong to such an interdisciplinary team. It’s given me a new perspective on agribusiness and how having people with different skill sets collaborate can make any idea flourish.

Our Solution “Aquality Farms”

Aquality Farms established a business model that will bring fresh produce, modern aquaculture, and a sustainable food source that would have otherwise been thrown out from the surrounding New Brunswick community. But why New Brunswick?

‘New Brunswick is a food desert,” explained Jocelyn Shi in Aquality Farm’s latest pitch presentation. “That means that there is a serious lack of affordable, nutritious food in the area.”

It’s true! There are only about three ‘fully-fledged” supermarkets in New Brunswick for a town of almost 56,000 people.

The Goals of Our Project

Aquality Farms wants to alleviate the food insecurity problem in New Brunswick using aquaponics, a form of modern farming that raises plants using water containing fish waste. The system works in a closed loop, with fish fertilizing the plants and the plants cleaning the water for the fish. This way, Aquality Farms can produce and sell things like lettuce, herbs, fish, and more!

“Aquaponics is really an up-and-coming technology” remarks Ella Walmsley, an Aquality Farms member “Not only can it grow crops year round since it’s operating in a greenhouse, but it also uses 90% less water than traditional agriculture and significantly less pesticides and herbicides!”

Adding to the sustainability of this modern agriculture system is the impact that it will have on the traditional agricultural supply chain. Aquality Farms enhance the production and distribution process of fresh produce to the consumers by cutting down on transportation times and the expensive maintenance process.

“Lettuce travels an average of 1,500 miles from farm to plate, approximately the duration of a four hour plane ride. That is approximately 1,600 lbs of CO2 released into the atmosphere”, explains Maria Mikhail. Global warming is gradually destroying our Earth and it is time to start eliminating it. Aquality Farms thus brings accessible nutrition to all while reducing our carbon footprint

How Feasible is This Project?

So how profitable is this so-called “aquaponics farm”? To be completely honest, “the costs are completely worth it”, as James Hong states. “The first few years show that we are still paying off our initial investment costs, but in the long run, the aquaponics farm is profitable, not only for what it can offer, but for what it will bring.” Aquaponic farms are non-traditional, but at Aquality Farms, we want to revolutionize the agricultural business. Our goal is to not only stay profitable for many years to come, but to give back to our community as well. We plan on implementing an initiative where we will be donating excess produce to food banks. Community is one of the values that is near and dear to Aquality Farms, and we want to use our platform to foster strong community relationships with the people of New Brunswick, NJ.

Aquality Farms will be pitching again to panelists in Syracuse, NY, sometime this spring. Good luck guys!