On September 24, the agriculture startup Plenty Unlimited opened the world’s first scalable, vertical strawberry farm in the U.S.
The indoor farm — which is based in Richmond, Virginia — marks a new chapter for vertical farming, which was first proposed by Columbia professor Dr. Dickson Despommier in 1999 and has been on the rise ever since.
The technique, which grows crops in vertical stacks rather than horizontal rows, is meant to maximize space, yield better crops, and allow production all year round.
“The Plenty Richmond Farm is designed to produce more than 4 million pounds of strawberries annually in less than 40,000 square feet by growing vertically on 30-foot-tall towers,” noted an official Plenty press release.
Arama Kukutai, Plenty CEO, explained how Plenty’s vertical, scalable strawberry farm uses advanced software to control temperature, light, and humidity to create the ideal environment for strawberry plants.
With the help of AI, Plenty researchers analyze over 10 million data points daily to optimize growth. They also developed a unique pollination method that relies on controlled airflow, not bees, to improve the strawberries size and uniformity.
“The Plenty Richmond Farm is the culmination of 200 research trials over the past six years to perfect growing strawberries with consistent peak-season flavor indoors year-round,” Kukutai stated.
According to the latest statistics from the Virginia Farm Bureau, strawberries are one of the state’s leading fruit exports, behind cherries, grapes, peaches, and apples.
In the press release, Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin celebrated Plenty’s vertical strawberry farm debut, stating that “Plenty’s success will be Virginia’s success.”
“Plenty choosing Virginia for the world’s first farm to grow indoor, vertically farmed berries at scale reinforces Virginia’s leading role in the controlled environment agriculture industry,” said Governor Glenn Youngkin.
He added: “Plenty’s farm will boost local agriculture production and drive economic development, all while diversifying against risks and protecting the environment.”
Yougnkin was right to point out farming’s role in the climate crisis. The agriculture sector is a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions, all while guzzling up two quadrillion gallons of water annually.
The climate crisis, in turn, has heavily impacted food systems all over the world. In the past few decades, extreme weather changes have led to uneven rainfall patterns, devastating winter storms, and extensive drought.
The driving force for recent innovations in farming — like “climate blend” resilient grain and gel-infused “smart soil” that helps plants water themselves — is directly correlated to the mass crop death and heavy financial losses spurred by climate-related disasters.
For many agricultural companies around the globe, vertical farming is not always a choice, but a necessity.
As scientists and agricultural experts work together to envision a new future for farming, there is hope for a solution that protects food systems from climate change issues while also protecting the environment from the harmful impacts of mass agriculture.
“We need agriculture, but the future of humanity also requires that we reduce agriculture’s environmental harms,” biology professor David Tilman told University of Minnesota in early September.
“Fifty years ago the impacts of agriculture were trivial, but today they are not.”
Header images courtesy of Plenty
