Traditional agriculture strains natural limits to feed swelling populations. Startup Bowery offers an alternative – growing produce indoors year-round using vertical farms and intelligent tech.
In cavernous facilities, its algorithmic “brains” control LED lighting, nutrients, humidity and more to optimize plant growth. Onsite harvesting then supplies nearby grocers, chopping wasted transport and water up to 95%.
The promise has investors and partners like Kroger lining up. Last year Bowery doubled output again while expanding into strawberries and salad kits. New farms stretching from NYC to the Midwest fuel further geographic reach too.
Yet questions loom whether finicky indoor cultivation can economize, especially if small players fade. But by escaping weather and land constraints, Bowery and peers reveal what becomes possible when trailblazers wholly reengineer age-old food production.
Laugh if you must at farming moving indoor and vertical. But environmentally strained, supply-chained status quos only hold back innovation for so long. Bowery thinks bigger – its hyper-local, climate-controlled crop facilities offer neither luxury nor novelty, but a template for feeding tomorrow sustainably here and now. Expect many more of tomorrow’s fruits and veggies grown in carefully calibrated indoor environments.