High-tech VF transforms how Houstonians get greens

Fenn stood atop a scissor lift floating over a dozen levels of vertically stacked white trays filled with lettuce. To his left, a worker in a dark lab coat harvested mature lettuce heads from the trays to be moved roughly two stories below for processing.

“When I’m interviewing new hires, I ask them if they are afraid of heights. You can’t be afraid of heights with this job,” Fenn quipped.

Scaling scissor lifts are a daily duty for a vertical farmer overseeing the growth of about 10 million heads of lettuce annually from Kalera’s 4.5-acre indoor farm located in the Parc-59 industrial park in North Houston. Kalera, an Orlando-based vertical farming company, opened the 85,000 square-foot vertical farm a year ago to supply Texas and Louisiana markets with freshly grown leafy greens – betting that consumer demand for fresher, sustainably grown produce will buoy its growth.

Its lettuces are available in Trader Joe’s and H-E-B grocery stores in Houston, with more locations expected as it expands its national retail footprint by more than 40 percent this year. After going public through a $375 million merger in June, Kalera is gobbling up industrial real estate across the country.

Continue reading.

Photo created by Petr Magera - Unsplash

Source: