A Fresh Take on Food Production

Beanstalk Farms, Fairfax County

Agriculture is Virginia's oldest, largest private industry. The farming of cash crops in the Commonwealth dates back to the early 17th century, when tobacco farming helped John Rolfe and his fellow settlers establish a stable colony at Jamestown and ultimately make Virginia the largest and richest of the initial 13 colonies.

Four centuries later, Virginia is again at the forefront of agricultural innovation. The Commonwealth has become a hotbed for operations capitalizing on the latest in food production technology. Virginia is drawing investment from companies producing fresh, sustainable, locally grown foods utilizing the latest, most advanced agricultural technology available, such as hydroponic, aeroponic, vertical, and other indoor systems, collectively known as controlled environment agriculture (CEA).

In addition to their investments in Virginia’s communities, CEA companies are working to advance sustainable production techniques by curbing energy consumption and resource use while providing fresher produce for communities both within the Commonwealth and beyond.

The Land of Plenty

The latest major CEA operator to choose Virginia is California-based Plenty Unlimited Inc., currently in the process of building what will be the world’s largest indoor farming campus at Meadowville Technology Park in Chesterfield County, just outside Richmond. Plenty CEO Arama Kukutai said the facility will “raise the bar on what indoor vertical farming can deliver.”

The Virginia advantage for CEA companies starts with a favorable location within a two-day drive of three-quarters of the U.S. population — far closer than traditional American farming hotspots in the Midwest and California’s Central Valley. Along with that location, Virginia offers a business climate regularly ranked as one of the nation’s best, buoyed by strong economic incentives and a tech-savvy talent pool graduating from the Commonwealth’s top-notch colleges and universities each year. That combination was enough to lure Plenty to Virginia, along with AeroFarms, another industry leader that had previously built a record-setting vertical farm in the Commonwealth.

Last year, New Jersey-based AeroFarms was listed among Fortune’s “Change the World” list of companies that have had a positive social impact through their core business activities. After an extensive site search along the East Coast, AeroFarms selected Cane Creek Industrial Park, jointly owned by the city of Danville and Pittsylvania County, to locate its largest, most sophisticated farm to date. Last year, the company announced an expansion to the facility that received a second round of support from Virginia’s Agriculture & Forestry Initiatives Development Fund (AFID), a 10-year-old program aimed at spurring growth in the Commonwealth’s agriculture and forestry sectors.

Virginia’s business friendliness played a major role in landing the facility. As AeroFarms Chief Marketing Officer Marc Oshima said, “The state and Southern Virginia’s commitment to our sector is also a contributing factor as we’re able to attract the talent and resources needed to operate our facilities...One of the main challenges with a capital-intensive business like vertical farming is the associated taxes assessed on tangible personal property. The abatements offered by the local jurisdiction provided the assurance that we were not going to be taxed out of having a competitive project in Virginia.” 

Virginia’s talent and research infrastructure is also attractive to CEA companies. AeroFarms CEO David Rosenberg cited the nearby Institute for Advanced Learning and Research (IALR) as a potential collaborator in the company’s efforts to use technology to solve supply chain issues in agriculture. In 2020, shortly after the announcement of the AeroFarms facility, IALR announced a partnership with Virginia Tech’s School of Plant and Environmental Sciences and Virginia Seafood Agricultural Research and Extension Center to launch the Controlled Environment Agriculture Innovation Center on its campus. 

AeroFarms, Pittsylvania County

Homegrown Success Stories

Virginia’s higher education system also played a key role in establishing Beanstalk Farms in Fairfax County — Chief Technology Officer Jack Ross is a Northern Virginia native who graduated from the University of Virginia (UVA). The Commonwealth’s economic infrastructure and the university-based, tech-forward talent pool played a major role in the company’s founding.

The company has a connection to another high-tech Virginia industry. Its Fairfax farm is housed in a former data center building in the town of Herndon. And like Plenty and AeroFarms, Beanstalk received an AFID grant to defray facilities costs.

“I knew that we would be able to tap into the state’s talented workforce, world-class universities, and supportive business environment to build something truly special,” Ross said.

Beanstalk carved out its niche in vertical soil-based production technology, rather than the soil-less aeroponic systems AeroFarms is known for. Research coming from UVA and Virginia’s other top universities helped the company fine-tune its technology.

“Virginia has a unique set of resources,” Ross said. “The support from research universities like the University of Virginia and Virginia Tech has helped us improve our soil-based growing method and enabled us to have the highest-quality heirloom produce.”

Like Beanstalk, Babylon Micro-Farms was founded by UVA graduates, and the company fine-tuned its products and techniques at the i.Lab incubator housed in the university’s Darden School of Business. Now based in Richmond, Babylon uses hydroponic techniques to grow nutritious produce, managed through cloud technology. The company’s miniature vertical hydroponic farms have been installed in hospitals, hotels, and senior communities to provide fresh produce for residents and restaurants. It’s a twist on one of the main selling points for vertical farming — vertical facilities can help bring fresh produce to a wide array of locations without the large physical footprint of a traditional farm.