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Innovative farm in Virginia can grow 4 million pounds of strawberries on less than one acre

This method uses 97 percent less land and up to 90 percent less water than conventional farming.

A new way to grow strawberries with less land, less water, and more berries.

Strawberry farm harvests aren't something most of us calculate on a regular basis (or ever at all), but the numbers from a strawberry farm in Richmond, Virginia, are staggering enough to make it worth an old-school word problem. If the average American eats 8 pounds of strawberries a year, and an average strawberry farm yields approximately 20,000 pounds of berries per acre, how many people could a 200-acre strawberry field feed?

I won't make you do the math. The answer is 500,000 people. But what if a crop that size, providing enough strawberries for half a million people, could be grown on just one acre instead of 200? It's possible. You just have to go—or rather grow—up, up, up.

Indoor vertical farm company Plenty Unlimited knows a lot about growing up. In fact, it's their entire business model. Instead of the sprawling fields that traditional farming methods require, vertical farms have a much smaller land footprint, utilizing proprietary towers for growing. Plenty has used vertical farming methods to grow greens such as lettuce, kale, spinach and more for years, but now it boasts a vertical berry farm that can yield a whopping 4 million pounds of strawberries on a little less than an acre.

Growing indoors means not being at the mercy of weather or climate inpredictability (barring a storm taking out your building), which is wise in the era of climate change. Unlike a traditional greenhouse which still uses the sun for light, Plenty's indoor vertical farms make use of the latest technology and research on light, pinpointing the wavelengths plants need from the sun to thrive and recreating them with LED lights. Plenty farms also don't use soil, as what plants really need is water and nutrients, which can be provided without soil (and with a lot less water than soil requires). Being able to carefully control water and nutrients means you can more easily control the size, taste and uniformity of the berries you’re growing.

If that sounds like a lot of control, it is. And that idea might freak people out. But when a highly controlled environment means not having to use pesticides and using up to 90% less water than traditional farming, it starts to sound like a solid, sustainable farming innovation.

Plenty even uses AI in its strawberry farm, according to its website:

“Every element of the Plenty Richmond Farm–including temperature, light and humidity–is precisely controlled through proprietary software to create the perfect environment for the strawberry plants to thrive. The farm uses AI to analyze more than 10 million data points each day across its 12 grow rooms, adapting each grow room’s environment to the evolving needs of the plants – creating the perfect environment for Driscoll’s proprietary plants to thrive and optimizing the strawberries’ flavor, texture and size.”

Plenty even has its own patent-pending method of pollinating the strawberry flowers that doesn’t require bees. Even just the fact that this enormous crop of strawberries will be coming from Virginia is notable, since the vast majority of strawberries in the U.S. are grown in California.

strawberry fieldTraditional strawberry farming takes up a lot of land.Photo credit: Canva

Plenty's Richmond farm is currently growing strawberries exclusively for Driscoll’s.

“Partnering with Plenty for the launch of the Richmond Farm allows us to bring our premium strawberries closer to consumers in the Northeast, the largest berry consumption region in the U.S.,” Driscoll’s CEO Soren Bjorn said in a press release. “By combining our 100 years of farming expertise and proprietary varieties along with Plenty’s cutting-edge technology, we can deliver the same consistent flavor and quality our customers love — now grown locally. This new innovative farm is a powerful step forward in continuing to drive category growth in new ways for our customers and consumers.”

Is Plenty’s model the farm of the future? Perhaps it’s one option, at least. The more we grapple with the impact of climate change and outdated, unsustainable farming practices, the more innovative ideas we’ll need to feed the masses. If they can get 4 million pounds of strawberries out of an acre of land, what else is possible?

This article originally appeared in February

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Whole Foods Market

This article originally appeared on 12.17.14


Here's something you may not have known: In 2008, we grew enough food for 11 billion people.


(Reminder: There are just over 7 billion humans here on Earth.)

But half of that food went to feeding animals (you know, so we could eat them). And a great deal also went to fueling cars.

Clearly, we're not hurting when it comes to our ability to grow food. But how we grow that food matters. In the industrial system that feeds much of the globe, it takes 10 calories of fuel to produce one calorie of food.

Which, let's be honest, is not the most efficient process. That's why so many people are keen on growing food organically — by which Wikipedia tells me means:

In other words, organic farming involves growing food more naturally with fewer resources. But here's a good question: Can organic food feed the world?

Allow me to quote noted food expert Michael Pollan:

"In industrial areas, organic [farming] achieves 92% of the yield of industrial [farming]. But you go to the developing world, and it produces 182% of current yield."

Not too shabby, eh? Maybe there's some hope for our food system after all.

For the full talk (don't worry, it's short), check out the clip below.

Prior studies have shown that cows use different moos to express different feelings. And it turns out, they go through a lot of different feelings when they're going through puberty.


A new study published in the journal Royal Society Open Science sought to improve cattle farming practices by uncovering more information on the personalities of dairy cows at different points in their lives. "Our study identified a period of inconsistency in personality traits over puberty," Nina Von Keyserlingk, a professor of animal welfare at the University of British Columbia in Canada, told the Guardian. Cows experience mood swings from changing hormones, just like human teenagers.

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Researchers corralled cows at the ages of one month, three months, one year, and two-and-a-half years, and observed their behaviors in a test area. Researchers looked at how cows changed their behavior when introduced to new people and things. They found that cows have pretty stable personalities in childhood and adulthood, which is consistent with prior studies. The teenage years are a different story.

At around 12 months, the cows became teenagers and behaved like it. Some days, hormonal cows feel shy and just want to be left alone. On other days, they'll nuzzle up to humans as if they weren't just a hormonal monster. Some cows became attention-seeking, and others grew solitary. Researchers believe that the changes in personality were caused by puberty hormones.

Once the cows started lactating, they chilled out and grew out of whatever phase they were going through.

Prior studies have found how the feelings of cows affect milk production. Stressed cows tend to eat less, grow slower, and produce less milk. They also have weaker immune systems. By learning how the personalities of cows shift in puberty, scientists hope they will have more insight into how to improve animal health and farming practices.

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"Our overall goal is to improve the lives of animals on farms," Heather Neave, who worked on the study, told the Guardian. "Ideally, in the future, management practices would be tailored to the individual rather than the herd, so that all calves and cows have an opportunity to thrive on the farm and reach their full productive potential."

So if you visit a farm and see one cow standing in the corner, writing in its journal and blasting angsty music, just know that it's going through a phase.