Nestled between massive nondescript warehouses housing a concrete factory and a roofing plant in Compton, Calif. sits a massive 100,000-square-foot farm with the potential to put out more than 2 million kilograms (4.5 million pounds) of greens every year. Unlike other farms you drive past, with miles and miles of open fields and workers picking, you wouldn’t know that this farm, operated by the startup Plenty, existed. It’s hidden in plain sight and home to cutting-edge technologies borrowed from other industries, including auto manufacturing, bioengineering, genetics, robotics, automation, agriculture and even energy.
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“We want to grow anything, anywhere, with massive yield and exceptional quality,” Andy Hotchkiss, the director of sales at Plenty, told a cohort of agriculture innovators who were there as part of the International Fresh Produce Association (IFPA) Fresh Field Catalyst Accelerator, a program designed to bring tech companies to the produce and floral industry and help make the supply chain more resilient and climate-resistant.
That last portion is particularly important, as the northern hemisphere enters the summer months with a bang. California and parts of the west, where more than one third of the nation’s fruits, nuts and vegetables are grown, experienced the first heat dome of summer, with temperatures reaching into the triple digits, a common sight in July but not in early June. That same heat dome has continued to push its way across the U.S., reaching the eastern U.S. in the coming weeks.
Heat and climate change have had such a wide-reaching impact on growing seasons and agricultural areas that the USDA recently updated its plant hardiness map in late 2023. While the map is mostly used by home gardeners, it is also used to set crop insurance standards, which inform everything from crop risk management to agricultural investment all over the country.
The updated map shows that across the U.S., the heat has risen by approximately 2.5 degrees Fahrenheit compared to the last map........