Meet The Startup That Wants To Make Vertical Farming Mainstream

A vacant steel factory in Newark is turning into the world's largest-producing vertical farm. After it begins running later this year, the farm's indoor system of modular, stacked trays will grow around 2 million pounds of baby greens annually. The $30 million building will be the headquarters of AeroFarms, a company that has been developing vertical farm tech for the last decade. But the company sees the project as just the beginning—and hopes to build 25 farms in the next five years. AeroFarms already has eight smaller farms and five in the pipeline. "This isn't about one farm, this is about changing the way we grow food as a society," says CEO David Rosenberg. "So this is a showcase, where it's not just about demonstrating the technology but how we grow and how we get to economies of scale to make the economics work." Rosenberg is convinced that vertical farming will become an important part of agriculture. "It's not going to supplant traditional farming," he says. "But it's going to be part of the picture. By 2050, we need to double our food-growing capabilities. Part of that solution is vertical farming." While the technology doesn't make sense for row crops like corn and wheat, it works well for something like leafy greens, which sell for more in the grocery store—making it feasible to grow them in or near a city. They also often tend to wilt when they travel thousands of miles from a farm in California to a far away place like New York...more