Indoor farming gets a reality check after boom cycle By Caitlin Fillmore
Controlled environment agriculture has been hailed as a revolutionary approach to farming. Backers of the CEA
approach pitched the benefits of indoor cul-
tivation of herbs, vegetables and other crops grown year-round. They promot- ed the use of hydroponics and vertical gardening in pesticide-free production, promising to deliver fresh, local produce from decentralized operations with smaller footprints than traditional out- door farms. “We were selling a silver bullet for the woes of the industry,” acknowledged Philip Karp, co-founder and president of Soli Organic, a Virginia-based indoor organic farming company. Karp told the Organic Produce Summit in Monterey last month that controlled en- vironment agriculture now must be more “grounded in reality” after being hyped with considerable fanfare. That’s because several of the largest vertical farming corporations in the U.S. have shut down or declared bankrupt- cy this year. They include New Jersey’s AeroFarms, Florida-based Kalera and Fifth Season in Pennsylvania. Operations in Europe have faced a sim- ilar fate, with Agricool in France, InFarm
Organic herbs are grown at an indoor facility of Virgina-based Soli Organic. The company’s co-founder and president, Philip Karp, says the indoor growing sector may need to narrow product offerings after some operations failed to meet investor expectations.
in Germany and the Israeli-Dutch Future Crops Cooperative going bankrupt or lay- ing off employees. After a cycle of boom and bust during the past decade, CEA suppliers and retailers who turned out for an Organic Produce Summit session called “CEA: Where do We Grow From Here?” predicted a stabilized
market going forward. Speakers blamed the lure of low interest rates, lofty proposals from growers and ag- gressive investments from venture capital firms for contributing to market hype that the indoor farming sector was unable to match in performance. In 2017, private investment in innovative
farming systems such as CEA hit $625 million. By 2021, the figure swelled to $2.3 billion. However, the profit hopes of venture capitalists collided with a challenging re- ality of CEA farming: Indoor agriculture
See INDOOR, Page 16
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