The global vertical farming market was valued at $5.6 billion in 2022 and is forecasted to grow to more than $35 billion in eight years by 2032. Space efficiency, year-round growing, and harvest cycles have made indoor farming 170 times more productive than outdoor fields. It produces 50 to 100 times more yield per square foot than traditional farming.
Luis Pablo Calvo Rios, a Food and Agriculture Management advisor and the former Vice President of Manufacturing at NatureSweet in Mexico says vertical farming is an excellent example of the combination of market needs, opportunity and the use of technology.
“Among its benefits, as we know, vertical farming can be close to their target market, as it is a close loop it reduces the risk of pathogens, pests or diseases in the crops, can be adjusted for a wide range of crops and purposes like nursery of finish goods production,” said Rios. “Technology in those systems is key to gather, process and control the production systems so the growers can focus on providing the crops what they really need.”
Growing strawberries indoors
Twenty times more strawberries
More than nine million tons of strawberries are produced globally each year. China, the US, Egypt, Turkey, Mexico, and Germany are the largest consumers of strawberries, accounting for 73% of the global consumption. Americans eat an average of 4.85 pounds of fresh and frozen strawberries yearly.
Earlier this year, US-based Oishii, an indoor vertical farm company, opened a solar-powered vertical strawberry farm in Phillipsburg, New Jersey. In February 2024, the company raised a $134 million series B round bringing their total funding to $189 million since 2016.
The new 237,400-square-foot Amatalas Farm—Japanese Goddess of the Sunwas—was designed to increase strawberry yields by more than 20 times. The farm runs primarily on renewable energy and is powered by an adjacent 50-acre solar field. It also recycles the majority of the water with a proprietary water purification system.
The company says the new farm is their most technologically advanced and is expected to grow 20 times more strawberries for consumers on the East Coast.
Humans, bees and robotics under one roof
60 billion data points tell a story—robots can see what the bees do and adjust environmental variables
Amatelas Farm features individual farm units with 250 moving racks. Each rack is stacked with eight growing levels that move in a 24-hour cycle from the warmth of the day to the cool of night.
The bees live inside the climate-controlled farm with expert growers who tend to the bee’s health.
“Our advanced, climate-controlled farms recreate the perfect conditions for our plants and bees to thrive and also have “day” and “night” times,” said Hiroki Koga, CEO and Co-founder of Oishii. “Since there are never storms or extreme weather conditions, every day is actually a perfect day for our bees!”
Koga says that while most vertical farms grow their produce on static, immobile racks, Oishii’s moving architecture automates the growing process, allowing bees, robots, and humans to work in the same footprint.
A blended work environment brings automation, nature and human ingenuity together in the same footprint
“Our bees act as they would in the wild, flying to find the nectar, pollinating each and every strawberry flower, and then returning home,” he added.
The company’s proprietary robots capture more than 60 billion data points annually.
“We have about 50 state-of-the-art robots working inside our farms alongside our bees and farmers,” said Koga. “Our proprietary robots monitor our farms 24 hours a day with machine vision and learning, capturing up to 60 billion data points annually.”
“For example, the robots utilize visual data that is captured of the flowers to help them determine yield and plant health,” said Koga. “Combined with other environmental data, our AI will calculate how much bee activity is needed that day to help with the pollination.”
Better bee pollination
Kogi says that to resolve their challenge with bees, the company mapped out every environmental factor of indoor farms versus outdoor farms to create the perfect environment for their bees to pollinate the flowers indoors naturally.
Koga notes that with that technology, their bee pollination success rate is above 95% compared to traditional farming, where pollination success rates are around 60 to 70%.
“This is a significant improvement in efficiency compared to traditional farming, where bee pollination is very hard to optimize,” said Koga. “Based on what they are seeing, the robots can adjust the environmental variables of our farm in real-time to ensure we are growing the perfect berries and picking them at their peak ripeness.”
“We also implemented automation so our plants move around the farm to come out to robots and humans when they need attendance,” said Koga. “This way, we are able to store significantly more plants in the same square footage, making our production even more efficient.”
Sustainable farming
Koga says the new farm demonstrates the company’s continued commitment to sustainability.
“Not only is it a refurbished plastics warehouse, but our harvests are primarily grown with solar power sourced from the 50-acre field next door,” said Koga. “On top of that, our LED lights now use 14% less energy per plant, and we can recycle the majority of the water we use through our innovative, state-of-the-art water purification system.”
Koga credits artificial intelligence, which enables Oishii to be incrementally more efficient at metrics like pollination success rate and harvest predictability.
“Until recently, our unique berry varietals could only be grown under very specific Japanese growing climate conditions, bearing fruit seasonally in the winter months,” said Koga.
“Today, we are able to grow them anywhere in the world at any point of the year using our indoor vertical farming technology where we can control every element of the environment – air, rain, heat, light, etc. As a result, we can grow perfect and delicious fruit all year long,” he added.
The future of growing food
Data science and robots meet nature and opens farming potential
“We are worried about how the current farming system is no longer sustainable, the rate of production cost skyrocketing as resources become harder to source, and the global population exploding,” said Koga. “On the other hand, I’ve never been more confident about the future of vertical farming, which relies on significantly fewer resources.”
Koga says they see a clear demand for vertically farmed produce.
“This is why we’re selling out in Whole Foods, FreshDirect, and other retailers up and down the East Coast – and that will only help propel the industry forward in the next 5, 10 and 20 years,” he said.
“When data science and robots are coupled with nature – we are seeing that the possibilities are endless,” said Koga.
Rios notes that managing farming operations in this complex world becomes easier when you play side-by-side with technology.
“The digital era is bringing more and more opportunities for companies in the agricultural sector to improve their performance significantly,” said Rios. “The sector works under a complex environment: price challenges, strict (thank God!) regulations to ensure quality and food safety from the farm to the consumer, foreign trade laws, changes in the weather patterns, among others.”
“That is a lot to think and manage about when you have to produce all year round,” Rios added.
Rios believes that getting the right insights to make sound decisions when you have thousands or millions of data points is not easy. “Technology is a powerful tool to keep operations under control. It can predict yields and quality of production while enabling the talent and creativity of the growers to flourish,” he said.
Koga says they can control every aspect of the environment, from temperature to humidity to the light spectrums, at any time of the year. “Produce grown inside a vertical farm is not impacted by the outdoor seasonality.”
“We are very proud to demonstrate our capabilities by showcasing to the world that not only does our technology work but that we’ve been able to go from $50/package berries to now $10/package berries in just five years,” said Koga. “I hope this gives everyone more confidence about the exciting progress we will make in the next five years.”
“Vertical farming technology is critical to solving one of the world’s largest problems – our failing agriculture system,” said Koga. “Vertical farming does not require pesticides; we can recycle most of the water that we use, and we can use significantly less land.”
Oishii grows Omakase and Koyo strawberries in pesticide-free environments in its vertical farms. The brand has the Non-GMO Project Verified seal. The brand also added the Rubī Tomato to its crop line-up.
Koga says vertical farming technology can be used to grow more than just strawberries and tomatoes.
“It’s just a matter of time before vertical farm-grown products will be more affordable than conventionally grown products – which have continued to get more and more expensive,” he adds. “This inflection point has already come in some parts of the world (e.g., Middle East), which will quickly expand into other geographies.”
