Plenty Unlimited Inc. announced Tuesday that it has opened the world's first farm to grow indoor, vertically farmed berries at scale.
The Plenty Richmond Farm in Richmond, Virginia, is designed to produce more than 4 million pounds of strawberries annually in less than 40,000 square feet by growing vertically on 30-foot-tall towers. The farm will exclusively grow Driscoll's strawberries, combining Plenty's advanced technology with global premium berry leader Driscoll's advanced genetics. The first strawberries from the farm will be available in early 2025.
Plenty says its farms are the most technologically advanced in the world – making it possible to grow produce with peak-season flavor, year-round, almost anywhere in the world.
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While most vertical farms are limited to lettuces, Plenty spent the past decade designing a patent-pending, modular growing system flexible enough to support a wide variety of crops – including strawberries. Growing on vertical towers enables uniform delivery of nutrients, superior airflow and more intense lighting, delivering increased yield with consistent quality.
Every element of the Plenty Richmond Farm – including temperature, light and humidity – is precisely controlled through proprietary software to create the perfect environment for the strawberry plants to thrive. The farm uses AI to analyze more than 10 million data points each day across its 12 grow rooms, adapting each grow room's environment to the evolving needs of the plants – creating the perfect environment for Driscoll's proprietary plants to thrive and optimizing the strawberries' flavor, texture and size. Even pollination has been engineered by Plenty, using a patent-pending method that evenly distributes controlled airflow across the strawberry flowers for more efficient and effective pollination than using bees, supporting more uniform strawberry size and shape.
The Plenty Richmond Farm brings year-round production of fresh produce within a one-day drive of more than 100 million consumers. Growing locally reduces food miles and food waste, and the farm itself uses 97 percent less land and up to 90 percent less water than conventional farming.
The Plenty Richmond Farm is slated to bring more than 60 jobs to Virginia and is the first farm to open on Plenty's 120-acre farm campus. The Plenty Richmond Farm Campus is the largest indoor vertical farm campus in the world and a projected $300 million investment that is planned to bring more than 300 total jobs to Virginia.
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