A gamble nearly 20 years ago by one local farmer has paid off in the form of one of the region’s premier hydroponic farms. Bryan Kaufman, 42, opened Kaufman’s Hydroponics on Road O near Ottawa in 2003 as an effort to do something different in local agriculture. The son of a local farm family, Kaufman is now the premier bibb lettuce provided in the Lima region, supplying schools and local eateries with fresh, organic lettuce year-round.
“We started with hydroponic tomatoes in 2003, then we switched to all bibb lettuce in 2005. Lettuce has been a steadier crop,” Kaufman said. “We started with one greenhouse, and we just kept adding.”
Working with his wife and children, Kaufman now manages four greenhouses — each 22 feet wide by 130 feet long — where the family grows bibb lettuce using hydroponics, a growing method more commonly associated with cannabis but used in vegetable operations around the world.
The lettuce grown by Kaufman and his family is primarily sold to 12 local restaurants, including the Kewpee restaurants in Lima, as well as local schools and Capital University in Columbus. Getting into the hydroponics farming business was a change of pace for Kaufman, who graduated high school in 1998 and was working at a local grain elevator before he decided to teach himself the ins and outs of hydroponic agriculture.
Read the complete article at www.limaohio.com.
