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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

vertical farming

Amazon’s Alexa Fund Invests in At-Home Vertical Farming Company Rise Gardens

Rise Gardens announced today it has received an investment from the Amazon Alexa Fund that builds upon a $2.6M seed round Rise closed in May. The amount invested by the Amazon Alexa Fund was not disclosed.

According to a press release sent to The Spoon, the deal is both a collaboration and a cash investment that will “fuel new products, accessories and further R+D” for Rise Gardens.

The Chicago-based Rise is best known for its standalone console (roughly the size of a standard bookcase) that contains a hydroponic grow system for consumers at home. The system does most of the hard work—calculating nutrition and pH levels, knowing when and how much to water the plants—for the user, whom it notifies via a corresponding app.

Rise’s system is also modular, so it can be added to or subtracted from over time depending on how many greens your household consumes each week. Users can also grow beets and tomatoes in addition to leafy greens and herbs.

Rise raised $2.6 million in seed funding earlier this year; Amazon’s new investment is an extension of this seed funding, according to today’s press release.

Amazon’s investment in Rise sounds promising, not just for the company but for the entire vertical farming sector. To start, Rise CEO and founder Hank Adams hinted today at Alexa functionality for the Rise system: “Collaborating with the Alexa Fund will better enable us to integrate our smart, connected garden with Alexa, making indoor gardening even easier. We are also excited about the opportunity to work with Amazon to evolve and expand how we reach consumers with our device and consumables business concept,” he said. The details of that Alexa integration are scant as of now, but one imagines being able to ask Alexa about your plant’s pH levels or tell the speaker to adjust the light mixture. On the flip, Rise could notify users via Alexa when it’s time to water the plants.

There’s no question that consumer-grade vertical farms are still a pretty niche product right now, since many of them cost more than the average person can easily afford. (Rise’s single unit console starts at $549.) But the pandemic and accompanying disruptions to the food supply chain have undoubtedly increased folks’ desire to control more of what they eat, which has led to an influx of new devices. From Gardyn’s stylish take on at-home farming to consumer electronics companies like LG building them into the kitchen, vertical farming is definitely making its way into the home. 

Amazon, of course, wants to control your entire home, including your kitchen, so it’s not surprising the Seattle tech giant would partner making at-home vertical farming products. As well, the company has made forays into the gardening space before, like this patent from 2017. Amazon knowing what types of plants you are growing can fuel its selling machine to recommend recipes and other groceries.

Like it or not, Amazon’s moves in food tech tend to influence others, which means the collaborations and products that come out of the Rise partnership will influence the future of at-home vertical farming for everyone. 

Plenty and Driscoll’s Partner to Grow Strawberries Indoors

San Francisco Bay Area-based vertical farming startup Plenty and well-known berry brand Driscoll’s announced a partnership today to grow strawberries year-round via controlled-environment indoor farms. The partnership will use Plenty’s indoor farming technology and incorporate Driscoll’s proprietary genetics for strawberries, according to a press release sent to The Spoon. 

Plenty hinted at strawberries (and tomatoes) more than a year ago, when it unveiled its high-tech vertical farm Tigris. Currently, the company is best known for its mixtures of leafy greens, which it grows indoors via the hydronponic method. Plenty’s facilities also utilize sensors, LED light mixtures, and temperature and air control to create the optimal growing environment for plants.

Leafy greens are still one of the most common crops grown in these controlled-environment farms, and for a few of good reasons. For one thing, they’re one of the most popular produce types among U.S. consumers today. They are also far more delicate than, say, a mango, making it harder to transport them without spoilage. Leafy greens also yield more crop in a smaller space compared to something like a row of sweetcorn, and they can be harvested faster. Something like a strawberry takes more time to grow, and one profile of Plenty last year noted that it can take up to nine months to understand how a strawberry plant performs inside a controlled environment operation.

Lately, though, more ag tech companies have announced plans to grow more than arugula and herbs. Most notably, a Singapore-based company called SinGrow has employed its proprietary vertical farming tech to grow strawberries on a rack designed specifically for that fruit. SinGrow also creates its own strawberry breeds. Unfold, which just raised $30 million, has added cucumbers and tomatoes to its roster. Plenty itself said at the time of the Tigris launch that it wants to grow “exotic” fruits and vegetables, though as yet the company hasn’t named specific crops.

Strawberries aren’t exactly exotic, but for vertical farming, they are a logical next crop after leafy greens. Plenty’s home state of California produces over 91 percent of the country’s entire strawberry supply, and that fruit is also high on U.S. consumers’ lists.

To start, Driscoll’s will grow strawberries at Plenty’s Laramie, Wyoming facility. Driscoll’s Chairman and CEO J. Miles Reiter said in today’s press release that this partnership “will create a competitive market edge.” While that remains to be seen, one thing we can expect with a fair amount of certainty is that more companies will be growing strawberries via controlled environments in the months to come. 

Kalera Picks Denver for Its Next Commercial-Scale Vertical Farming Facility

Kalera continues its westward expansion. This week, the Orlando, Fla.-based indoor vertical farming company announced it will open its newest commercial-scale facility in Denver, Colo. in 2021. 

This will be Kalera’s fifth facility for commercial-scale vertical farms growing leafy greens. The company already operates two facilities in Orlando and is in the midst of constructing farms in Atlanta and Houston, both slated to open in early 2021. 

When we caught up with Kalera in 2019, the company had just broken ground on its second Orlando facility and was best known for serving hydroponically grown greens to the hospitality industry, including the Orlando World Center Marriott resort. One pandemic and countless restaurant shutdowns later, and Kalera had to pivot to keep business going. Earlier in 2020, the company struck a deal with Publix to sell its greens in the grocery mega-retailer’s supermarkets. The company now provides greens to both the food retail and hospitality sectors, a strategy it will take to Denver once its facility opens there.

Kalera’s farms use IoT, process automation, and cleanroom technology to grow leafy greens in a completely controlled environment without the use of pesticides. For now, the company is focused on leafy greens, which require less space to grow than other types of produce, making them ideal for the vertical farming format.

Kalera said in today’s press release it plans to open additional facilities around the U.S. as well as expand internationally.

Its rapid expansion comes at a time when indoor farming, whether vertical or another method, is attracting significant investment dollars. InFarm, which puts its small-scale farms inside the grocery store, raised $170 million in September, and Finnish startup iFarm raised $4 million in August. Also in August, a new company, called Unfold, raised $30 million to build out operations in the U.S.

Kalera’s Denver facility will open later in 2021 and, according to the company, create 60 new jobs in the area.

Gardyn Aims to Make At-Home Vertical Farming Small, Simple, and Stylish

Thanks to disruptions in the food supply chain, panic-buying sprees, and the general uncertainty of the times, growing food at home seems like a pretty good idea of late. Trouble is, many consumers don’t have the know-how to cultivate their own leafy greens and other produce in the backyard. Even those who do often lack adequate space.

A company called Gardyn is addressing both of those issues with an at-home vertical farming system that requires minimal input from the user and can easily fit inside a small apartment if need be. The idea, as Gardyn founder and CEO FX Rouxel explained to me over the phone last week, is to make growing food in one’s own home as simple and straightforward as possible. To do that, the company has built a farm that relies on AI to do much of the heavy lifting in terms of monitoring and maintaining an edible crop of food. Or as Rouxel said, “The system is managing everything for you.”

Gardyn’s system is made up of two parts: a compact vertical tower, which can grow as many as 30 plants, and an accompanying app powered by an AI assistant named “Kelby.” Users only have to order seeds and “plug” the seed pods into the vertical towers. The system automatically circulates water and nutrients to the plants, while Kelby monitors plant growth and sends reminders when it’s time to add water to the garden or harvest the plants. 

Right now, available crops from Gardyn’s site include mostly leafy greens and herbs, some flowers, cherry tomatoes, and jalapeños. Customers can also use their own seeds if preferred.

The system uses what Rouxel calls “a hybrid of different hydroponic technologies,” including the deep water method and aeroponics. (The company brands its approach as “hybriponics.”) By themselves, these different methods have certain limitations in the at-home setting. Deep water, where plant roots are fully submerged in nutrient-enriched water, requires a lot of space. Aeroponics is a great setup for outdoors, but once indoors it requires lighting, which gets expensive very quickly. Gardyn pulled elements from both to create a system that takes up only two square feet of space and doesn’t require any extra hardware. “Within just two square feet, you can produce a lot of food,” says Rouxel, adding that Gardyn’s units have produced “over 25,000 pounds of produce” during the last few months.

That quest to grow a lot of leafy greens in a small amount of space is an area with plenty of competition these days. Farmshelf recently unveiled its first-ever farm for the home, and companies like Rise Gardens and Agrilution (the latter recently bought by Miele) also offer promising solutions for the consumer space.

And while historically, investment in vertical farming has mainly gone towards the industrial-scale indoor farms (think AeroFarms), at-home farms are fast becoming a lucrative area. Investors, Rouxel explained to me, see traditional agriculture as a risky business that’s less insurable because its success is in part dependent on the weather outside. With climate change triggering more extreme weather, investors will look more and more to alternative solutions in controlled-environment agriculture.

“I am absolutely convinced we are going to see in the coming two years a total disruption in the way we grow things,” he says. Chiefly, that will be growing the food in much closer proximity to consumers, whether through at-home systems like Gardyn’s, in-store farms at grocery retailers, rooftop gardens, and high-tech greenhouses. “In future we’re going to have a spectrum of solutions,” Rouxel noted.

Getting these vertical farms closer to consumers and in their own homes will require bringing the price of the machines down. At the moment, Gardyn’s system is roughly on par pricewise with other systems out there that can realistically feed a family of four: $799 for the base model all the way up to $1485 for the “Plus” model.

Rouxel is aware that the cost is still too high for many consumers. “We don’t want this to be only for well-off people,” he told me. “It’s important that we find ways that anyone can afford this.”

Many companies, including Gardyn, offer financing options on their farms now. And more investment dollars going into the space in the future could mean companies have the time and space to innovate on ways to make their system cheaper for the average consumer.

While pricing remains a question, one thing that’s certain is that at-home vertical farming is on the path to becoming a regular part of the kitchen, rather than just a trend. “What we want is to develop solutions that will quickly change the way people access food,” said Rouxel. “We won’t solve everything, that’s for sure, but we want to be part of the solution for how we shape food.”

InFarm Raises $170M to Expand Its Vertical Farming Network

Berlin, Germany-based vertical farming company InFarm announced today it has raised $170 million in the first close of its Series C round, bringing its total funding so far to $304.5 million.

The investment round, a mix of equity and debt financing, was led by LGT Lightstone with participation from Hanaco, Bonnier, Haniel, and Latitude, as well as existing investors Atomico, TriplePoint Capital, Mons Capital and Astanor Ventures. InFarm said in today’s press release that it expects the Series C round to eventually reach $200 million.

InFarm has built its reputation, not to mention its coffers, on the idea of getting fresh, local greens to more cities around the world via its network of high-tech vertical farms. The farms are smallish, pod-like devices that can live in grocery stores, restaurants, and food distribution centers. The farms use hydroponics and cloud-based software to grow leafy greens in completely controlled environments. A big benefit with InFarms’ approach is that, since farms are placed inside grocery stores, greens can be harvested onsite and sold without having to travel. 

Sourcing greens close to the store is becoming more commonplace as companies develop smaller vertical farms. While InFarm might be the most high-profile player in this area of vertical farming, it isn’t the only company bringing greens literally to market. Farm.One just installed its own mini-vertical farm at a Whole Foods in Manhattan and has plans to expand to other stores soon. Vertical Field launched a geoponic vertical farm at New York’s famed Evergreen market in August. Brooklyn-based Square Roots puts a slightly different twist on the concept by placing its shipping container farms next to food distribution centers. The company currently has a partnership with North American distributor Gordon Food Service.

All of which is to say, InFarm may be leading the farm-in-a-grocery-store movement, but it won’t be the only company grabbing major investment dollars for long.

InFarm raised $100 million in June of 2019. Since then, it has struck deals with major grocery retailers around the world, including  Aldi Süd in Germany, Kroger in the U.S., Empire in Canada, and Kinokuniya in Japan, among other places. The company said today it expects its farming network to total more than 5 million square feet by 2025, making it the largest distributed farming network in the world. 

To do that, the company will expand to new cities in future. The new investment capital will go towards that goal. InFarm will also use some of it to complete development on a next-gen version of its farm. 

Farm.One Installs Its Mini-Vertical Farm at Whole Foods in Manhattan

NYC-based vertical farming company Farm.One announced today it has launched a mini-farm inside the newly opened Whole Foods Market in Manhattan West. 

Farm.One custom designed the farm for this location. From a visual standpoint, that means the design matches the Whole Foods’ look, while the physical footprint — 36 square feet — does not intrude on shopping space. The farm can hold 150 plants, which it grows using artificial lighting and the hydroponic method. 

It being a mini-farm, there isn’t a ton of variety in the crops grown. In fact, for now, the mini-farm grows only basil, which will be used for in-store pizzas and cocktails. Which sounds about right for a Whole Foods in Manhattan. Today’s press release says the farm will grow about eight pounds of basil each month. Whole Foods’ staff will harvest the plants and, thanks to the accompanying software platform, require little supervision from Farm.One engineers.

Farm.One operates other custom locations at EATALY in Manhattan’s Flatiron neighborhood and at the Project Farmhouse event space. The company will also unveil a new farm in a yet-to-be-named plant-based restaurant in October. Thus far, the company has raised nearly $500,000 in funding.

While growing cocktail garnishes won’t exactly end world hunger, Farm.One’s continued growth across Manhattan shows how varied the uses for vertical farming are getting. Not so long ago, the concept was the territory of large-scale operations in warehouse-style buildings on the outskirts of cities. Now, vertical farms have made their way into schools, restaurants, grocery stores, grocery distribution centers, and, increasingly, consumers’ homes. The more use cases we can see in action, the better we can understand where vertical farming is most valuable as a component of our future food system.

Farm.One has plans to build other mini-farms as well as flagship locations in other major U.S. cities as well as expand internationally over the next couple of years.

iFarm Raises $4M for Its Automated Vertical Farming System

Finnish vertical farming company iFarm announced today it has raised $4 million for its automated indoor farming operation, according to a press release sent to The Spoon. The round was led by existing investor Gagarin Capital with participation from Matrix Capital, Impulse VC, IMI.VC, and several angel investors.

iFarm makes a turnkey vertical farming solution that can be deployed in a number of different-sized settings, from large warehouse farms to shelf-like grow modules in supermarkets. The company offers four different automated technologies: one for growing a variety of crops on a vertical farm; one for growing strawberries on a vertical farm; iFarm Cropper, a standalone module for growing greens; and iFarm Growtune, a SaaS platform for managing the vertical farms.

Using machine learning and computer vision, the iFarm Growtune tool, which powers the other technologies mentioned above, can detect a plant’s weight as well as any growth deviations or pathologies. It also prompts farm staff when it is time to adjust the “climate” settings inside the vertical farm.

According to today’s press release, iFarm has over 50 ongoing projects with clients in both Europe and the Middle East, including an industrial vertical farm in its homeland of Finland that’s due to launch sometime in 2020.

Vertical farming has seen a steady stream of developments over the last six months, from Farmshelf releasing its first consumer-facing grow system to SinGrow’s proprietary strawberries to Wilder Fields building an industrial vertical farm inside an abandoned Target shop. All of which is to say, vertical farming is no longer just a large-scale endeavor done by a few companies, but rather, a grow method appearing in many shapes and sizes, whether in the warehouse or the grocery store.

Because of the variety iFarm offers in terms of automated grow technologies, the company seems poised to serve multiple markets as it further develops its system. The company says it will use the new funds to further develop iFarm Growtune and quadruple the number of plants available to grow via the system. It will also further build out the automation aspect of its system and experiment with growing strawberries, cherry tomatoes, sweet peppers, radishes, and other crops.

Publix Has Ambitious Plans to Get More Hydroponically Grown Greens in Its Stores

Back in 2019, we predicted that hydroponically grown greens would soon become a mainstay of grocery stores in the U.S. We did not predict that a global health crisis would disrupt the supply chain and make consumers hyper-aware of where their food comes from and what goes into growing it, but that’s exactly what happened. The result? Hydroponic farming’s march into the grocery store has been accelerated.

Perhaps no one is pursuing this shift more seriously than grocery retail chain Publix, whose Greenwise brand has partnered with Brick Street Farms to locate a shipping-container-turned vertical farm at one of Greenwise’s brick-and-mortar markets in Florida. 

The 40-foot shipping container (see image above) sits outside the Greenwise market in Lakeland, Florida. Like other vertical farming operations, it uses hydroponics to grow leafy greens without the use of soil or pesticides. Greens are packaged onsite and travel mere feet to reach the produce section of the store.

Speaking on the phone this week, Curt Epperson, Business Development Director of Produce and Floral for Publix, and Albert Gottuso, Category Manager for Produce at Publix, highlighted the advantage of this method over traditional means of getting produce in the store. Most of Publix’ conventional leafy greens are grown in California and have to travel thousand of miles before they reach store shelves. Besides the obvious lower carbon footprint, growing greens onsite also uses less water than traditional farming and means fresher greens on store shelves compared to those that are harvested shipped, and hydrated before they ever reach the produce section.

But hydroponic greens were on the Publix agenda long before the deal with Brick Street Farms. During our call, Gottuso said the company has maintained relationships for years with local hydroponic farmers to sell greens in its stores. For instance, Livingston, TN-based Tanimura & Antle sells its butter lettuce at Publix stores in that state.

“This hydroponic product out of nowhere became our best seller for leafy lettuce,” he said. That in turn led the chain to consider how it could supply hydroponically grown greens to more of its locations. 

Multiple efforts are currently underway. Earlier in 2020, Publix partnered with Vertical Roots on a mobile vertical farm customers could interact with. In March, the chain teamed up with large-scale vertical farming company Kalera.

All of these efforts fit into Publix overall hydroponic program, which Epperson says is still testing different techniques in terms of getting indoor greens to local stores. 

Gottuso added that the chain is expanding this hydroponic program so that every state has a grower with an indoor farm supporting local stores in its area. “Our goal is that every store that we service has a local hydroponic program that can offer an assortment of variety of blends,” he said. 

This push towards local, more sustainably grown greens is happening across the grocery sector. Kroger has a partnership with Berlin-based InFarm, which puts its vertical farming pods in the store’s produce section. And just this week, San Francisco-based Plenty announced a partnership with Albertsons to sell its greens (which are grown offsite in a warehouse) at that retailer’s store.  

Publix doesn’t plan to stop at leafy greens. Though they are by far the most popular product to grow hydroponically, Epperson suggests there is potential for cucumbers, tomatoes, and peppers, among other produce types. 

As to whether or not hydroponic farming could ever replace traditional farming, at least in terms of leafy greens, Epperson noted that the jury is still out. “It’s very difficult to get the yield you would get in conventional growing,” he said. Calling it “blue sky” thinking, he pointed to a day when Publix might have vertical farms located next to all of its distribution centers. And that idea isn’t exactly unattainable — Square Roots is already doing something similar with Gordon Food Service. 

The introduction of technology to the greenhouse could also play a big role in making hydroponics more widespread in the grocery sector. Gottuso says technology allows companies to build greenhouses in areas where they historically haven’t been (like the Southeast). These large greenhouses also provide the scale needed to supply the shelves of a major grocery retailer because they are “adept to growing larger amounts of produce.”

If Publix’ ambitions around hydroponics can do likewise and scale effectively, we can expect many more locally grown greens — and other produce types — to hit store shelves in near future.

Unfold Raises $30M to Innovate on Vegetable Varieties in Vertical Farming

Today, Leaps by Bayer, an investment arm of Bayer AG, and Singapore-based investment firm Temasek announced the creation of a new company that will develop new varieties of vegetables best suited to grow in vertical farms. The new company, dubbed Unfold, raised $30 million from Temasek and Bayer in its initial funding round and plans to use the money for building out R&D operations in the U.S. 

Unfold is taking a slightly different approach to the vertical farming concept. Whereas most vertical farming companies focus on developing new technologies to improve the grow process of plants (building more automation into the growing and harvesting processes or finding the perfect light “recipe” for a crop), Unfold will channel its resources into seed genetics to develop seed varieties specifically tailored to the vertical farming environment.

So far, vertical farms typically use seeds developed for other types of grow environments — greenhouses or open fields, for example. Unfold, which has entered into agreement for some rights to germplasm from Bayer’s vegetable portfolio, will breed seeds tailor-made for the vertical farming environment, which uses LEDs in place of sunlight and, typically, hydroponics or aeroponics.  

Speaking in today’s press release, Unfold CEO John Purcell said the company will combine seed genetics with ag tech methods to improve things like flavor and appearance of vertically grown greens. The company also aims to develop seeds that can mature faster and yield more edible product. To start, the company will work on lettuce, cucumbers, and tomatoes. 

Approaching the vertical farming process at the seed level, so to speak, is the exception rather than the rule at the moment, though Unfold isn’t quite the only company trying this. In Singapore, a company called SinGrow has developed its own breed of strawberries, which it grows on its own proprietary vertical farming racks.  

Unfold’s Purcell told CNA this week that vertical farming is “an important player in the food ecosystem.” But the model has yet to prove itself as a food-growing method that can feed millions and deliver a return on investment. Focusing on seed genetics can help farmers cultivate more varieties of vegetables that taste better and grow faster may provide more answers to the question of vertical farming’s overall scalability and its long-term role in the food system.

AppHarvest Raises $28M as it Builds Out a Massive Greenhouse in Appalachia

Ag tech company, AppHarvest, announced yesterday that it has raised a $28 million Series C round of funding. The round was led by J.D. Vance’s Narya Capital, with participation from Lupa Systems and Rise of the Rest among others. This brings the total amount raised by AppHarvest to $150 million.

AppHarvest is in the midst of building out the worlds largest greenhouse facility in Morehead, KY. When completed, it will be a 2.76 million-square foot indoor faming facility that will use hydroponics and vertical farming to grow 45 million pound of fresh produce a year. The greenhouse is scheduled to open this fall and will employ roughly 300 people.

AppHarvest’s facility is within a day’s drive of 70 percent of the U.S. population, so it will be able to provide fresh produce to grocery stores in Appalachia, as well as surrounding states.

In June of this year, AppHarvest partnered with the State of Kentucky as well as the Dutch government and several universities. These partnerships were designed to create a series of research programs and develop the greenhouse as a “center of excellence” for agtech innovation.

AppHarvest isn’t the only indoor farming startup partnering with a local government. AeroFarms and the World Economic Forum partnered with the City of Jersey City and as my colleague, Jenn Marston wrote last week:

This is the first partnership between a city municipality and a vertical farming company in the U.S. Through it, AeroFarms will build 10 vertical farms in senior centers, schools, public housing, and municipal buildings around Jersey City. Collectively, the farms are expected to produce 19,000 pounds of vegetables annually, according to AeroFarms. Greens will be free of charge to residents, and the initiative also includes healthy eating workshops and quarterly health screenings.

Hopefully projects like AppHarvest and AeroFarms can use their tech platforms to help create a more equitable food system for everyone.

Vertical Field to Launch a Geoponic Vertical Farm Inside New York’s Evergreen Market

More vertically grown greens are coming to the grocery store. The Evergreen Kosher Market, a well-known food retailer in Monsey, New York, announced this week it will soon debut a vertical farm from Israeli ag tech company Vertical Field. According to a press release sent to The Spoon, the farm will use technology and geoponics to provide shoppers with onsite greens at the grocery store.

Vertical Field’s farming indoor solution consists of “living walls” where plants grow vertically inside controlled environments and sensors regulate temperature and humidity levels to create ideal grow conditions for each type of plant. Since the environment is sealed off from the outside world, it is free of the usual pests that can infiltrate crops and therefore free of pesticides. And Evergreen being a Kosher market, a partnership with Vertical Field makes sense, as the company’s greens are all Star-K Kosher Certified.

The company’s use of geoponics is unusual in today’s world of vertical farming, where the majority of companies use hydroponics or aeroponics to grow plants. Vertical Field’s system is proprietary, and the company claims on its website that its use of geoponics means lower initial and operating costs, better quality plants, and more crop variety than one would get using hydroponics.

All that said, Vertical Field is, like most others, still focused on leafy greens, which would likely be the only plant type to fit on the company’s wall-like garden structure (see image above). Still, leafy greens are delicate, and more likely to be damaged in shipping than, say, heartier fruit or root vegetable. Placing the farms inside grocery stores removes the distribution portion and therefore several steps from the process between harvesting greens and getting them to consumers. 

While the concept of in-store vertical farms is relatively new, Vertical Fields’ new installation at Evergreen isn’t alone. Berlin, Germany-based InFarm has its pod farms at grocery stores in Canada, Denmark, and at Kroger stores in the U.S. Orlando, Florida-based Kalera works with Publix in the Southeastern U.S. to place farms in stores.

For its part, Vertical Field serves a variety of organizations around the world, including the campuses of Big Tech companies like Apple, Intel, and Microsoft. 

Vertical Farming Could Help Us Build a More Equitable Food System

One of the recurring questions vertical farming companies face is how they are going to get their locally grown, supposedly healthier wares to more than just those with disposable income. So far, the answers have been few and far between, but that could be changing. Towards the end of last week, ABC7 reported that New Jersey-based AeroFarms and World Economic Forum have partnered with the City of Jersey City to distribute greens free of charge to communities in need.

While AeroFarms actually hinted at the news back in June, it’s worth reiterating here because it underscores the point that vertical farming can — and should — play a much bigger role than simply providing greens to high-end groceries and restaurants. 

This is the first partnership between a city municipality and a vertical farming company in the U.S. Through it, AeroFarms will build 10 vertical farms in senior centers, schools, public housing, and municipal buildings around Jersey City. Collectively, the farms are expected to produce 19,000 pounds of vegetables annually, according to AeroFarms. Greens will be free of charge to residents, and the initiative also includes healthy eating workshops and quarterly health screenings.

The idea, of course, is to get healthier foods and food habits to those in food-insecure communities.

Speaking to ABC7, Jersey City Director of Health and Human Service Stacey Flanagan said that while food security has always been an issue, “with COVID it’s just exacerbated that.”

Her point is an important one. We talk about the ways in which the pandemic has forced us to rethink our eating choices and habits. Thanks in no small part to the pandemic, plant-based foods are on the rise, consumers are vying for space on CSA waitlists, and vertical farming companies are now releasing models of their high-tech systems for individual homes. But it’s a small number of consumers that have the time or money to explore those options.

For many, a $10 pack of alt-meat or a $500 at-home farm remain out of reach in terms of accessibility and affordability. As JourneyFoods’ CEO Riana Lynn reminded us recently, our eating is not equal, and lack of access to food is less the issue as lack of access to nutritious food: “Even when we are braced with an overwhelming lot of food options, they almost always lack the nutrient-density need to curb away from negative outcomes.” 

As it is right now, vertical farming, because of its focus on leafy greens, can’t adequately feed a community in the sense of it providing a healthy balance of proteins, vitamins, and calories. But it can play a role in bringing more nutritious elements to that community, which is what AeroFarms’ new partnership seems to be about. And we’ve seen promising news in the recent past that shows these farms will grow more than arugula one day: strawberries and even wheat, for example. 

AeroFarms isn’t alone in trying to bring more food equity to the vertical farming sector. Boston-based Freight Farms works with Miami’s Lotus House, a facility and resource center for women and children experiencing homelessness. The farm works in tandem with Lotus House’s Culinary Center, supplying both food and education to residents.

Over in Chicago, Wilder Fields has taken an abandoned Target store located in a food desert and turned it into a massive vertical farming facility to supply 25 million heads of lettuce to local grocery stores. The facility will also house an educational and retail component, and sell greens for cheaper than you would find at, say Whole Foods.

North of the border, Elevate Farms and North Star Agriculture Corp. are building out farms in isolated parts of Northern Canada, where food insecurity is rampant. 

All of these efforts (and quite a few more) suggests vertical farming has a dual role to play in future. If it can prove itself scalable, which it seems to be doing so far, it can provide a healthier alternative to traditional farming. And it can help lead the charge for food and food tech companies when it comes to creating more equality in our food system.