Specialty Nutrition Group Acquires Florida Master Licensing Rights for Vertical Organic Urban Farming from Home Town Farms LLC

(3BL Media / theCSRfeed) SAN DIEGO, CA - April 12th, 2011 - Home Town Farms LLC, a company introducing commercial vertical organic urban farming to the United States, has entered into an agreement with Specialty Nutrition Group (SNG) for the master licensing rights to the State of Florida. 

Home Town Farms is a leader in the emerging field of vertical organic urban farming, providing an integrated food growing system to grow and sell fresh, nutritious food in urban areas. This is a refreshing alternative to our industrial food production and distribution system, providing large quantities of healthier more nutritious locally grown food at more affordable prices. The rising cost of food is a growing issue for millions. The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) said a record 40 million Americans, or 1 in 8, may not be able to eat without government assistance. By making healthy food available at lower prices, Home Town Farms hopes to fight the rising tide of obesity and diabetes in children and adults.   The Home Town Farms system is both efficient and environmentally friendly, using 85% less water, 80% less fertilizer, only 30% of the space and none of the pesticides or herbicides of conventional farms. Because it is right in town and customers buy directly from the farm, Home Town Farms provides local jobs, and improved food quality and security.  Reducing the use of increasingly costly resources like oil also reduces the cost of production and transportation, reducing the cost of organic vegetables and berries for consumers.    “We believe that vertical organic urban farming will provide more nutritious, better tasting food, local jobs and save natural resources while improving the environment,” said Dan Gibbs, CEO and co-founder of Home Town Farms. “We are very pleased that a leader in the nutrition industry like Greg Horn shares our vision and is committed to doing business with Home Town Farms, helping to make commercial vertical organic urban farming a reality in our country.”   “The supply chain for the food that sustains us is simply unsustainable,” said Greg Horn, CEO of SNG. “Our daily food often travels thousands of miles just to reach our plates, relying on complex logistics and expensive fossil fuels. This is not only bad for the environment – it exposes our food security to disruptions in the global logistics chain. Growing food closer to where it is consumed is the long-term solution.” Horn continued, “Food is a half-trillion-dollar segment of our economy ripe for innovation, and urban farming will play an important role in the future of food: Fresher, cleaner, greener, healthier and more sustainable food grown right in our home towns.  We look forward to working with Home Town Farms to bring this revolutionary food production system to the State of Florida.”   By integrating the technologies to make urban farming practical, and the customer-direct business model to make it affordable, Home Town Farms will continue working to bring vertical, organic, urban farming to cities across the United States.      ABOUT HOMETOWN FARMS LLC   Home Town Farms is a leader in the emerging field of vertical organic urban farming, providing an integrated food growing system to grow and sell fresh, nutritious food in urban areas. The company’s model combines proven and profitable high efficiency vertical growing systems that drastically reduces the amount of water, fuel, land, fertilizer, processing and transportation needed to grow and sell produce, and makes the produce available for sale at the same high-traffic urban location where it is grown. For Home Town Farms information, visit www.hometownfarms.com or call 858-248-9369.   ABOUT SPECIALTY NUTRITION GROUP & GREG HORN   Specialty Nutrition Group (SNG) is a leading nutrition technology commercialization firm.  SNG has invented and commercialized some of the best-selling functional foods, beverages and ingredients in the natural products industry.  Nutrition products commercialized by SNG principals sold approximately $1.1 billion last year.   Greg Horn is the co-founder and CEO of SNG. Greg has served as turnaround CEO of Garden of Life, an innovative organic food and nutrition supplements company, and General Nutrition Centers (GNC), the world’s largest health and nutrition retailer where he was instrumental in building the GNC brand and in expanding the company from $400 million to $1.5 billion in revenue over his 11 years in management. Following the acquisition of GNC by Royal Numico, he was Chairman of Royal Numico’s North American Executive Committee, which had oversight for all the company’s $2.5 billion specialty retail, mass market, and direct selling operations in North America. http://www.greghorn.com/  

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