Lots of indoor farms are shutting down as their businesses struggle. So why are more being built?
Across the country, more and more vertical farms - indoor operations meant to grow fresh food more locally - are going up even as more and more are coming down. (Sept. 17) (AP Video: Joshua A. Bickel and Kendria LaFleur, produced by Joshua A. Bickel)
An excerpt from the Associated Press article:
CLEBURNE, Texas (AP) — Inside a bright greenhouse about an hour outside Dallas, workers in hairnets and gloves place plugs of lettuce and other greens into small plastic containers — hundreds of thousands of them — that stack up to the ceiling. A few weeks later, once the vegetables grow to full size, they’ll be picked, packaged and shipped out to local shelves within 48 hours.
This is Eden Green Technology, one of the latest crop of indoor farming companies seeking their fortunes with green factories meant to pump out harvests of fresh produce all year long. The company operates two greenhouses and has broken ground on two more at its Cleburne campus, where the indoor facilities are meant to shelter their portion of the food supply from climate change while using less water and land.