https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/21/business/vertical-farms-tried-to-compete-with-open-field-farming-it-isnt-going-well.html

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Business|Vertical Farms Tried to Compete With Open Field Farming. It
Isn't Going Well.
  
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/21/business/
vertical-farms-tried-to-compete-with-open-field-farming-it-isnt-going-well.html

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Vertical Farms Tried to Compete With Open Field Farming. It Isn't
Going Well.

The industry was a darling of the venture capital world 10 years ago.
With many farms out of business, the remaining companies have scaled
back.

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Greens being grown in a warehouse.
Vertical farms, like the one operated by 80 Acres Farms in Florence,
Ky., resemble sterile manufacturing facilities.Credit...Madeleine
Hordinski for The New York Times
Kevin Draper

By Kevin Draper

March 21, 2026

Vertical farming businesses blossomed a decade ago, promising an
abundant, cleaner source of fruits and vegetables. Today, most of
those start-ups have withered.

Constructed in opaque buildings, like warehouses, vertical farms
resemble sterile manufacturing facilities more than farms. Crops are
grown in trays stacked to the ceiling, fed with hydroponic or
aeroponic systems. Plants are bathed in white and purple LED lights
to maximize photosynthesis.

Owners of vertical farms once talked about their industry in almost
messianic terms, as a climate-friendly solution to the ills they said
plagued modern farming: pesticide use, water overconsumption,
long-distance trucking and labor exploitation. By the late 2010s,
Silicon Valley was on board, investing billions of dollars in
companies promising to remake agriculture.

Now, that venture capital funding has gone up in flames, most
prominently the $938 million raised by Bowery Farming and $792
million by AppHarvest, which are out of business.

Just three years ago, 23 companies signed on to a Vertical Farming
Manifesto and committed to goals like transforming "food systems for
the benefit of people and the planet." Today, fewer than 10 are in
business.

The farms and their investors were not fully prepared for what they
would encounter in the agriculture industry, where margins are
already thin. New, high-tech vertical farms had to elbow their way
into produce markets dominated by extremely efficient traditional
farms. Any perceived edge that vertical farms may have had eroded
when energy costs rose. Higher interest rates tightened the purse
strings of venture capital firms, and made it tougher for farms to
get access to cash.

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