Retailers, including Walmart, are backing new farming tech

Retailers, including Walmart, are beginning to invest more and more in vertical farming, with several leaning into one specific vendor, the San Francisco-based tech agriculture company Plenty.

The company’s pesticide-free greens are now available in stores, including:

Last month, Plenty announced the opening of a technologically advanced indoor vertical farm, the Plenty Compton Farm. The farm is designed to grow up to 4.5 million pounds of leafy greens annually, taking up one block of space in Compton, Calif. The company uses 3D vertical architecture to make 350 times the yield per acre of a conventional farm. 

According to Arama Kutai Plenty CEO, after 10 years of research, Plenty has figured out how to indoor farm on a scalable platform that can grow a year-round supply of fresh produce. 

Instead of growing plants in flat planes meant to imitate the field, Plenty’s plants are grown on vertical towers almost two stories high. The company says this allows for growing more produce in less space, making the planting and harvesting steps easier. 

The Plenty Farm originally started with baby arugula, baby kale, crispy lettuce, and curly baby spinach. This spinach is the only vertically grown and pesticide-free spinach available in the world, the company says, as the direct result of more than two years of development in the company’s advanced plant science research center.