Farming Vertically

Do not say, "Why are the old days better than these?"

For it is not wise to ask such questions.

Imagine a 700-acre farm rolled up and squeezed into a 95,000-square-foot warehouse in southern Los Angeles County. Better yet, imagine a farm twice that size here in Oregon, condensed and stacked into our local Safeway grocery store. Sound unlikely? Meet Plenty, an indoor vertical farming company founded in 2013.

With a vertical farm already producing in San Francisco and a research farm in Laramie, Wyoming, this innovative agriculture start-up announced yesterday that it plans to open a new indoor farm in Compton, using a controlled environment to grow food-bearing plants hydroponically (without soil) and in staggeringly tall towers. As founder Nate Storey acknowledges, 90 percent of crop losses in the United States are caused by extreme weather, and bacteria and pathogen outbreaks have stressed the system as well. Plenty seeks to meet those challenges head-on by building these unique farms in urban areas and using earth-friendly technologies to increase productivity: vertical plant towers, LED lighting, and robots to plant, feed, and harvest.

The company cultivates its crops in hyper-clean environments where staff don protective gear and robots do much of the work, Storey says. In fact, the environment is so controlled that the first time produce is touched by bare hands is when the customer opens the packaging at home. Because Plenty's farms are not impacted by weather, seasons, pest infestations, harmful bacteria, or natural disasters, the company can produce food all year round.

Shireen Santosham, head of strategic initiatives for Plenty, said the company needs only a fraction of the water used by traditional agriculture processes, and their Compton location is strategic: "Plenty looks at food justice as racial justice, so it's important to us that the nutritious products we're producing are available locally in Compton," she said. The new Compton farm will be completed by the end of this year.

Too often we assume that the best solutions are to the right rather than the left or up rather than down, when really God is calling us to a whole new view. Farming vertically rather than horizontally? Why not? What kind of out-of-the-box thinking can you engage with and inspire in others this spring? What can God inspire in you when you let go of the constraints and assumptions that tie us to how we've always imagined the world?

Peace,

Jennie