The vertical farming market will exceed $1 billion by 2030.
Investors are responding enthusiastically, with the sector raising more than $1 billion in funding since 2015. High-profile investments include New Jersey–based startup AeroFarms raising $100 million in 2019 to expand its aeroponic growing facilities, and Californian start-up Plenty raising $200 million in 2017 in a funding round led by SoftBank Vision Fund, along with backers including Jeff Bezos and Alphabet chairman Eric Schmidt. Across the Pacific, the industry is already well established — in Japan there are more than 200 vertical farms currently operating, with industry leader Spread Co. Ltd. producing 30,000 heads of lettuce every day in its highly automated Techno Farm Keihanna plant.
An ongoing argument within the vertical-farming industry is a question of size — Is it better to focus on building a large, highly automated plant factory to minimize production costs, or is a small, more flexible