When the pandemic exposed major issues with our lengthy food supply chain, in the form of shipment delays and inadequate demand forecasting, local vertical farms and indoor growing operations (aka controlled environment greenhouses in urban or rural locations) were called upon to fill in the gaps in a way that was unprecedented.
Here are what eight leaders in vertical farming and controlled environment agriculture are planning in the year ahead. The list is presented alphabetically and represents a slice of the marketplace activity cropping up in late 2020.
The following farms have big plans for 2021:
AeroFarms: taking on the issue of food waste more explicitly.
AppHarvest: harvest its first crop of tomatoes, a move meant to help reduce reliance and emissions from imported tomatoes.
Bowery Farming: to invest its 600 percent increase in sales last year into a new vertical farm in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, in 2021.
BrightFarms: to roll out its proprietary AI System, Bright OS to make operations from seed to shelf more efficient.
Gotham Greens: to expand in the rest of the country.
Infarm: hopping on a hot industry trend, bringing the vertical farm to the grocery store.
Kalera: rapid expansion pushing into Atlanta, Denver and Houston
Plenty: begin construction on the ‘world’s largest output vertical farm’ in Compton, California.
Read more about it at Greenbiz
