First Ever Strawberry Vertical Farm To Use 90% Less Water And No Pesticides

A farm grown vertically indoors in the U.S. aims to use 90 percent less water, 97 percent less land and no pesticides while producing more than 4 million pounds of strawberries a year.
The Virginia farm in Richmond will grow the berries in 9-meter-tall towers, using less than 1 acre of land.
Most of the country’s strawberry farming happens in California, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and it was found that in 2017, the average yield from one acre of farmland in the state was 68,000 pounds, according to the Agricultural Marketing Resource Center.
In the U.S. last year, around 3 billion pounds (1.38 million tons) of strawberries were produced, which was a decrease from 2022, which saw 3.2 billion pounds (1.43 million tons), according to Statista, and the country is one of the world’s major farmers of the berry, according to fruitspursuits.com.
The strawberries from the Plenty Richmond Farm will be on grocery store shelves by early 2025, the company said, according to New Atlas.
Per the outlet, this is the first time a vertical farm will be growing berries, as previously this type of farm has been largely used for producing lettuce crops.
The farm has 12 rooms, each with controlled conditions of light, humidity, and temperature alongside a technologically advanced system of pollination that will result in less wasted berries and greater quality control, New Atlas reported.
The system has been reported by the outlet as being more efficient than the natural method of bee pollination.
Being an indoor farm, the production will also not face the same seasonal and weather changes traditional farms endure.
Per the outlet, Plenty’s CEO Arama Kukutai said that the farm was a “model for the positive impact climate-agnostic agriculture can have,” and was “proof that vertical farming can deliver the crop diversity, scaled and local production needed to future-proof the global food system.”
Kukutai also shared that the Plenty Richmond Farm had undergone 200 research trials over the past six years to perfect its production system in order to have an all-year-round supply of “incredibly high bar” quality berries.
The research was conducted by teams in various universities including the University of Queensland and Macquarie University in Australia, Wageningen University in the Netherlands, the University of Florida, University of the Basque Country in Spain, as well as the CAS Center for Excellence in Molecular Plant Sciences and Shanghai Institute of Plant Physiology and Ecology in China.
The Governor for Virginia Glenn Youngkin also commented on the update, as reported by New Atlas, that the farm will “boost local agriculture production and drive economic development, all while diversifying against risks and protecting the environment.”
Do you have a story we should be covering? Do you have any questions about this article? Contact  [email protected].