John Dyke grew up raising tobacco and heirloom tomatoes, then poured his life savings into a natural grocery in a building that predated the modern supermarket. Twenty-five years later, The Turnip Truck is four stores, one juice bar, and a running argument for shopping like your neighbors are farmers - because his are.
Hippo Harvest is a California controlled-environment agriculture company that grows USDA-certified organic leafy greens inside greenhouses run by warehouse-style robots and machine learning. Founded by two veterans of the ROS robotics world, it repurposes Amazon-fulfillment-style autonomous mobile robots as 'tractors' that deliver water and nutrients plant-by-plant, claiming greens grown with roughly 92% less water, 55% less fertilizer and 94% less land than field agriculture - at prices meant to match outdoor-grown produce.