Could VF be the future of food production?

It’s a farm, but not as you know it. There is no soil. There are no tractors, silos or rolling fields. Instead, on a former brownfield site near Sandwich, Kent, there is a warehouse, signposted GrowUp. Step inside, and you’ll find 12 layers of carefully temperature-controlled crops bathed in bright pink LED light – the equivalent of 1,000 acres of farmland, stacked floor to ceiling.

And Kate Hofman, GrowUp’s co-founder, isn’t actually a farmer. She’s a former management consultant who left a “comfortable, corporate” job at IBM in 2013 to invest her time in a burgeoning industry: vertical farming.

The pressure to feed a growing population has never been greater. The invasion of Ukraine and cost of living crisis has put British food security under the spotlight. At this point in the year, about 90 per cent of the salad usually available in supermarkets is imported. And, as anyone who has done a food shop recently will know, there hasn’t been much in the way of leaves available at all.

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