World's largest vertical-farm operation coming to Chester and bringing 300 jobs with it
CHESTER — The world's largest indoor vertical farming facility is coming to the Meadowville Industrial Park, and it's bringing strawberries with it.
California-based Plenty Unlimited Inc. announced Wednesday it plans to put a $300 million farming campus in the southern end of the park at North Enon Church Road in southern Chesterfield. The Richmod Farm Campus, as it is being called, will be completed in phases over the next six years and will eventually create around 300 jobs.
Plenty, which was founded in 2014, said its first crop for the Meadowville facility will be strawberries. As time goes on, the company plans to introduce other crops to the 110-acre campus, such as leafy-green vegetables and tomatoes.
As much as 20 million pounds of produce is expected to be grown annually when the facility is up and running. Plenty says that is about 350 times the amount of produce grown on a traditional per-acre farm.
Unlike normal farming, vertical farming is not reliant on weather conditions. The crops are grown in 30-foot climate-controlled towers. Instead of soil, the crops are grown in coconut core, which company officials say eliminates the need to use pesticides on them and reduces the chance of soil-related pathogens getting into them.
Leaders from Chesterfield County, the state, Plenty and Plenty's partner Driscoll Farms gathered under a canopy Wednesday at the corner of North Enon Church Road and Meadowville Technology Parkway to celebrate the announcement. Gov. Glenn Youngkin, who attended the ceremony, said what Plenty plans to do is "what the future of agriculture is all about."
"Clean, flavorful produce year round in what will be 30-foot grow towers, mammoth towers that represents the future of agriculture," Youngkin told the crowd. "They're rewriting the rules of agriculture, which is what's so exciting where you can, in fact, see the yields, and yet use fewer and fewer of our precious natural resources. How about that for a combination, more output and less inputs?"
Plenty CEO Arama Kukutai said the Meadowville site was chosen in part because of its proximity to major highways such as Interstate 95, which is four miles away, and Interstate 295, which borders the park on its western edge. He said the people the facility will employ will have to develop skill sets that cover a variety of areas beyond just growing the crops.
"Twenty-first century farming indoors is as much a technical enterprise as it is labor, and we want the robots to do the heavy lifting for the people" Kukutai said after the ceremony. "So when we look at the skill sets, we need to run the farm like this. It actually covers a lot of different areas, everything from obvious things like biology and growing plants. but it also covers data science, covers safety and quality, covers automation and mechanical engineering."
Plans call for the farm to be in operation by late 2023 or early 2024. Kukutai said Plenty will likely start recruiting potential employees starting next summer, and the company will offer training in all facets of the operation.
Virginia competed with five other states for the Plenty facility. A coalition of the Virginia Economic Development Partnership and the state Agriculture Department, Chesterfield County, Richmond and Dominion Energy shepherded the project through to completion.
Plenty got a $2.4 million grant from the Commonwealth Opportunity Fund ad a $500,000 grant from the Governor's Agriculture and Forestry Industries Development Fund. It also is eligible for benefits from the Port of Virginia's Economic and Infrastructure Development Zone Grant Program and tax credits for new full-time jobs created.
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Bill Atkinson (he/him/his) is an award-winning journalist who covers breaking news, government and politics. Reach him at batkinson@progress-index.com or on Twitter at @BAtkinson_PI.
This article originally appeared on The Progress-Index: World's largest vertical-farm operation planed for Chesterfield County
