Plant factories are failing, with multiple companies closing or going bankrupt in recent months. This includes the largest vertical farm on the planet, in Compton, Los Angeles.
Author
- Gail Taylor
Dean of Life Sciences, UCL
Owned by San Francisco-based startup Plenty , the farm opened in 2023 to grow salads in partnership with Walmart. It was mothballed at the end of 2024 , with the company citing the rising cost of energy in California as a major problem.
Despite raising over US$1 billion (£802 million) from investors, the company's value has reportedly plummeted from US$1.9 billion to below US$15 million. It now aims to focus solely on strawberry production in Virginia.
New York-based Bowery Farming also halted all operations in late 2024, having previously being valued at US$2.3 billion. Fellow American vertical farmers AeroFarms , Kalera and AppHarvest have similarly filed for bankruptcy in the past two years, as has the UK's Growing Underground , among various others .
Clearly these are major setbacks. Year-round illuminated greenhouses and stacked, controlled-environment warehouses for producing food have been hailed as a sustainable alternative to traditional farming , promising fresh food close to populations.
This reduces the need for transportation, which together with other issues in traditional farming such as soil degradation and forest clearing see it contributing around 20% of the greenhouse gases that lead to planetary warming and climate change.
Multiple new indoor-farming companies sprang into life in the past decade, driven by significant venture capital. They harnessed the latest in LED lighting and hydroponic and aeroponic growing systems , using land and water ten to 100 times more efficiently than in a field and with far fewer pesticides.
Initially developed to grow leafy greens and microgreens, these farms have more recently turned to higher value produce including herbs, strawberries, tomatoes and grapes.
Among the reasons for the business failures are rising energy costs; the fact that traditional farming is cheaper, making it hard to compete on price; and the fact that rising interest rates have made financing more expensive.
Together with other challenges such as high energy consumption and finding enough skilled labour, many opponents are writing this sector off as a fad that is unlikely to ever make a big impact on food security.
This ignores success stories, such as JFC and Grow-up Farms , which are regular suppliers to the UK supermarkets. But more broadly, there are various reasons why the critics are likely to be wrong:
1. We're still early
Vertical farming has been proving itself by "learning by doing" for the past decade. Kicked off by Nasa space scientists seeking to grow food in hostile environments with zero gravity and heavy radiation, this field is still highly experimental.
New technologies like this one often conform to the Gartner hype cycle , where big initial expectations are rarely met, leading to a trough of disillusionment. Following this, the benefits start to crystallise as new players enter the market and mainstream adoption begins.
Vertical farming is only a very small proportion of total farming, but it looks very likely to flourish given the need to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, and the threats to food security from climate change and population growth. In addition, the costs are likely to be reduced by the arrival of much more renewable energy at cheaper prices in years to come.
2. Heavy plant demand is coming
Society stands on the edge of an unprecedented transformation as it shifts away from fossil fuels. We're going to move to a circular bioeconomy, in which green plants will be central as feedstocks for everything from aviation fuels to alternative proteins to vaccine production to plant-based plastics.
All this means greater pressure on land resources for food production, and an enhanced need for vertically stacked agriculture that recycles water and nutrients and requires fewer chemicals.
3. Science is on its side
Unexpected scientific discoveries continue to drive vertical farming. For example, tunable wavelength LEDs have shown that certain spectral bands can affect crops profoundly.
Far-red light , which is just beyond visible red light, promotes growth and flowering, raising lettuce yields by 30% , for example. Blue light can improve shelf-life and nutritional quality, even enhancing certain plant chemicals known to help prevent cancers .
The significance of these discoveries has yet to be fully realised, but by the complete control of the farming environment that indoor farming makes possible, we will be able to more easily tailor food quality for the betterment of people and the planet.
4. It's horses for courses
Growing leafy greens indoors in California, as Plenty did, was always going to be challenging. This is the state where they invented the iceberg lettuce, where wall-to-wall sunshine and even temperatures enable farmers to grow enough salad greens to supply the whole of the US.
Contrast Singapore, where only 6% of fresh produce is locally grown. This has prompted the government to develop the "30 x 30" goal to supply 30% of nutritional needs by 2030 , with vertical farming a key part of the strategy.
Similarly the United Arab Emirates imports over 90% of its food , and is looking towards a future that includes vertical farming. The UK and much of northern Europe, where the outdoor growing season is short and land is limited, can also benefit from these technologies (and indeed, do already).
5. Baby and bathwater
Unlike the cutting-edge LED-illuminated, stacked warehouses, intensive hydroponic greenhouses have been operating commercially for decades. The Netherlands leads the way in supplying year-round fresh produce from these structures, and is now the second biggest food exporter in the world .
Even in the UK, its common for such greenhouses to supply potted herbs , tomatoes and strawberries all year round.
These are a half-way house to vertical farming, and are also likely to be in greater demand in the coming decades. They could well extend their reach to supply fresh nutritious food to places where food security may be particularly challenged, such as Africa, south Asia and the Middle East.
Gail Taylor has received funding for research on vertical farming from the John B. Orr Endowment from the University of California, Davis and gift funding from the company, Plenty. Between 2021 and 2024 she was a member of the Scientific Advisory Board for the company Plantible Foods.
