Your next package of lettuce could be coming straight outta Compton.
Last week, I toured a 100,000-square-foot indoor vertical farm operating in a gritty part of Compton, California. The urban farm run by the Bay Area agricultural-tech startup Plenty is designed to grow up to 4.5 million pounds of leafy greens annually.
Plenty launched the large-scale indoor farm in May, producing leafy greens that can go from harvest to store in 24 hours. The company's produce can be found at high-profile grocery stores in California, including Walmart, Whole Foods, and Bristol Farms. Walmart is also an investor in Plenty.
Over my two-decade career as a food journalist, I've visited farms and processing plants that supply leafy greens for top fast-food chains such as McDonald's.
Farming is one of the most labor-intensive parts of our food supply chain. It requires hundreds of acres of fields and countless workers to produce a variety of leafy greens found in grocery stores and restaurants. After harvest, the greens are shipped miles away to processing plants for washing and packaging.
Plenty, on the other hand, grows, harvests, and packages four types of leafy greens in a single facility. Because it is set in a controlled environment, it is never threatened by excessive rain or heat. Seasonality is immaterial, as Plenty can grow year-round.
What Plenty is doing is groundbreaking.
During my tour, I rarely saw any humans. Automated machinery and robots do most of the work, from planting seeds to harvesting. I only spotted workers during the packaging process. Occasionally, someone popped into a room to check on machinery.
The only thing Plenty had in common with my farm tours of the past is requiring me to wear a hairnet. Beyond that, the experience was vastly different.
Here's a glimpse of the future of farming in America.