Farms take up a lot of space. What if you could take a field of crops, lift it out of the ground, and turn it on its side?
That far-fetched approach is actually being executed, by an innovative food growing/ag-tech company called Plenty. They've pioneered a radical method of growing crops on vertical beams, indoors. This greatly reduces the footprint of land required.
Plenty's farm in Compton, California "can grow an entire soccer field worth of produce in the size of a goal," the company says. Within the Compton farm's single-city-block footprint, "we can grow more than 250 acres worth of leafy greens."
This year the company opened a farm in Richmond, Virginia. There they plan to grow over 4 million pounds of strawberries, "even through the dead of winter."
Farming indoors, vertically, brings numerous advantages:
- No pesticides are required
- Millions of gallons of water are saved; there is no run-off, and crops don't have to be washed after harvesting
- By siting the farms close to markets, transportation costs and emissions are greatly reduced
- Crops can be grown year-round
- The smaller footprint required saves on land usage
If you're wondering how they harvest these tall towers of crops, a large robot arm grabs each beam and sets it horizontally.
You can get a look at their process, which is pretty cool, in the video below.