hydroponics
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80 Acres Farms grew the salad. Could it grow the business?
It put farming under LEDs, brought greens to national grocery shelves, and kept building. Then the money stopped. The rise and wind-down of 80 Acres Farms reveal the distance between growing a crop and sustaining a company.
Bowery Farming grew the salad. Could it grow the business?
Bowery put leafy greens under LEDs, taught software to tend them, and reached grocery shelves. Its 2024 closure exposed the expensive distance between a working farm and a working business.
The Robot Could Lift the Lettuce. Could the Business?
Iron Ox taught machines to ferry a thousand pounds of greens through sunlit greenhouses. Then the company discovered that farming has a harder engineering problem: making the numbers add up.
BOTALYS
BOTALYS is a Belgian botanical-ingredients company that grows rare medicinal plants, starting with Korean ginseng, inside one of Europe's largest indoor vertical farms. Using a proprietary Biomimetic Indoor Farming method, it recreates the harsh wild conditions that make plants build up active compounds, harvesting ginseng in months rather than years and producing roots with unusually high concentrations of ginsenosides. Its ultra-pure, standardized extracts - led by the HRG80 ginseng ingredient - supply nutraceutical, cosmetic and pharmaceutical companies looking for traceable, contaminant-free botanicals.
Gotham Greens
Gotham Greens is a Brooklyn-born indoor farming and fresh food company that grows pesticide-free leafy greens and herbs year-round in a national network of high-tech hydroponic greenhouses. Founded in 2009, it opened the first commercial rooftop greenhouse in the United States and has since scaled to more than a dozen facilities across nine states, producing roughly 100 million heads of lettuce a year using up to 90% less water and 97% less land than conventional field farming. Beyond greens, the company sells branded salad kits, dressings, dips and cooking sauces to more than 6,500 retail, restaurant and foodservice locations nationwide.
AEssenseGrows
AEssenseGrows is a Silicon Valley precision AgTech company that builds automated aeroponic 'SmartFarm' platforms for commercial indoor growers. Founded in 2014 by Robert Chen, the company pairs its AEtrium aeroponic hardware with Guardian Grow Manager software and Aerix LED lighting to deliver zero-pesticide, sensor-controlled cultivation - claiming up to 40% faster plant growth and repeatable, data-logged 'grow recipes' for cannabis and fresh-produce producers worldwide.
Oishii
Oishii is an American vertical farming company that grows premium, pesticide-free, Non-GMO strawberries indoors year-round. Founded in 2016 by Hiroki Koga and Brendan Somerville, it recreates the climate of Japan's strawberry-growing regions inside automated 'Smart Farms' to produce its flagship Omakase Berry, the Koyo Berry, the Nikko Berry, and the Rubi Tomato. Headquartered in Jersey City, New Jersey, Oishii operates what it calls the world's largest indoor vertical strawberry farm and sells through Whole Foods and direct delivery across the Northeast and beyond.
Fork Farms
Fork Farms is a mission-first agriculture technology company in Green Bay, Wisconsin that builds self-contained indoor vertical hydroponic systems - led by the Flex Farm - paired with a digital platform (Farmative) and K-12 curriculum. Its technology lets schools, hospitals, nonprofits, food pantries, businesses and homes grow hundreds of pounds of fresh produce per year on-site using a fraction of the water and land of conventional agriculture, turning food access into something anyone can do indoors.