The strawberry farm is taking shape. (Photos by Charlotte Matherly)
Correction: This story has been updated to correct the address of the parcel where Plenty’s strawberry growing facility is being built and to add information about the sale of that property earlier this year.
Ground broken in Chesterfield County is set to grow fresh produce – 30 feet in the air.
Plenty Unlimited Inc., a San Francisco-based company, has begun construction on a vertical indoor farming campus that, when completed, is expected to be the largest such operation in the world.
The campus, to be developed in phases totaling $300 million, will sit on 120 acres in the Meadowville Technology Park. Several structures will be built, with the first planned to be a 100,000-square-foot vertical farm that’ll be used to grow Driscoll’s strawberries.
That 22-acre site at 13500 N. Enon Church Road was bought in April for $1.6 million by California-based Realty Income Properties. The remaining surrounding acreage for the later phases of the project is still owned by Chesterfield’s Economic Development Authority.
Monday’s groundbreaking ceremony attended by Gov. Glenn Youngkin and state and local leaders marked the beginning of the tech park’s newest development, where construction had already started. Most recently, vertical steel has gone up in the past two weeks.
State and local leaders signing steel that’ll be used for the farm, from left to right: Virginia Secretary of Agriculture and Forestry Matt Lohr, Plenty CEO Arama Kukutai, Gov. Glenn Youngkin, Secretary of Commerce and Trade Caren Merrick, and Chesterfield Supervisor Kevin Carroll.
No sale has closed yet for the strawberry farm’s 75-acre parcel at 1600 Bermuda Hundred Road.
“One of the biggest successes of the last year was being able to welcome Plenty here in Virginia,” said Matt Lohr, Virginia’s secretary of agriculture and forestry. “Being able to be here today and see the work that’s being done on the $300 million campus … solidifies the commitment that the commonwealth is making to indoor farming.”
Operations will start in the coming months, with the farm’s produce expected in Northeast stores by late this year or early next year. Everything in the facility will be grown without pesticides.
Plenty’s will be a controlled-environment agriculture (CEA) facility, where it can manage temperature, humidity and other factors that aren’t possible in outdoor farming.
Matt Lohr addresses the crowd at Monday’s ceremony.
Plenty CEO Arama Kukutai said the farming campus will serve close to 100 million consumers on the East Coast from its location in the southeast corner of Chesterfield near the I-95 corridor.
“As consumers also demand the absolute peak freshness and quality, not shipped all the way from some other part of the country but grown here locally on the East Coast environment here in Virginia, it’s a huge opportunity for us to be able to effectively harvest today and have on the shelf tomorrow,” Kukutai said.
Plenty is currently hiring and will eventually employ an estimated 300 workers at its Chesterfield site.
“It’s really important to us. We’re not tourists,” Kukutai said of local hiring. “We’re here to be committed to a long-term future in the community.”
Plenty, founded in 2014, is based in San Francisco where it grows leafy greens. In May, the company opened an indoor vertical farm in Compton, California, to grow several varieties of lettuce.
Ahead of Plenty’s groundbreaking, Youngkin signed legislation in May expanding the agricultural sales tax exemption to include materials and equipment required to produce agricultural products in CEA facilities. Also announced earlier this summer, Virginia will host a “Great Indoors” symposium this fall on indoor farming and the use of technology and innovation to address global food insecurity.
Plenty will soon be joined by other new tenants in Meadowville Technology Park. Drug maker Civica is building a 60,000-square-foot lab and a Lego manufacturing facility broke ground last year.
The strawberry farm is taking shape. (Photos by Charlotte Matherly)
Correction: This story has been updated to correct the address of the parcel where Plenty’s strawberry growing facility is being built and to add information about the sale of that property earlier this year.
Ground broken in Chesterfield County is set to grow fresh produce – 30 feet in the air.
Plenty Unlimited Inc., a San Francisco-based company, has begun construction on a vertical indoor farming campus that, when completed, is expected to be the largest such operation in the world.
The campus, to be developed in phases totaling $300 million, will sit on 120 acres in the Meadowville Technology Park. Several structures will be built, with the first planned to be a 100,000-square-foot vertical farm that’ll be used to grow Driscoll’s strawberries.
That 22-acre site at 13500 N. Enon Church Road was bought in April for $1.6 million by California-based Realty Income Properties. The remaining surrounding acreage for the later phases of the project is still owned by Chesterfield’s Economic Development Authority.
Monday’s groundbreaking ceremony attended by Gov. Glenn Youngkin and state and local leaders marked the beginning of the tech park’s newest development, where construction had already started. Most recently, vertical steel has gone up in the past two weeks.
State and local leaders signing steel that’ll be used for the farm, from left to right: Virginia Secretary of Agriculture and Forestry Matt Lohr, Plenty CEO Arama Kukutai, Gov. Glenn Youngkin, Secretary of Commerce and Trade Caren Merrick, and Chesterfield Supervisor Kevin Carroll.
No sale has closed yet for the strawberry farm’s 75-acre parcel at 1600 Bermuda Hundred Road.
“One of the biggest successes of the last year was being able to welcome Plenty here in Virginia,” said Matt Lohr, Virginia’s secretary of agriculture and forestry. “Being able to be here today and see the work that’s being done on the $300 million campus … solidifies the commitment that the commonwealth is making to indoor farming.”
Operations will start in the coming months, with the farm’s produce expected in Northeast stores by late this year or early next year. Everything in the facility will be grown without pesticides.
Plenty’s will be a controlled-environment agriculture (CEA) facility, where it can manage temperature, humidity and other factors that aren’t possible in outdoor farming.
Matt Lohr addresses the crowd at Monday’s ceremony.
Plenty CEO Arama Kukutai said the farming campus will serve close to 100 million consumers on the East Coast from its location in the southeast corner of Chesterfield near the I-95 corridor.
“As consumers also demand the absolute peak freshness and quality, not shipped all the way from some other part of the country but grown here locally on the East Coast environment here in Virginia, it’s a huge opportunity for us to be able to effectively harvest today and have on the shelf tomorrow,” Kukutai said.
Plenty is currently hiring and will eventually employ an estimated 300 workers at its Chesterfield site.
“It’s really important to us. We’re not tourists,” Kukutai said of local hiring. “We’re here to be committed to a long-term future in the community.”
Plenty, founded in 2014, is based in San Francisco where it grows leafy greens. In May, the company opened an indoor vertical farm in Compton, California, to grow several varieties of lettuce.
Ahead of Plenty’s groundbreaking, Youngkin signed legislation in May expanding the agricultural sales tax exemption to include materials and equipment required to produce agricultural products in CEA facilities. Also announced earlier this summer, Virginia will host a “Great Indoors” symposium this fall on indoor farming and the use of technology and innovation to address global food insecurity.
Plenty will soon be joined by other new tenants in Meadowville Technology Park. Drug maker Civica is building a 60,000-square-foot lab and a Lego manufacturing facility broke ground last year.
Wow! This looks like a project that will bear fruit!
lol, I see what ya did there
Politicians in Virginia should take note. This is a California based company with a major expansion in Virginia, where the climate is more favorable for business expansion. We shouldn’t blindly follow what California does, as we have done with electric cars. We should lead in solving problems. Imagine how much less diesel fuel will be needed since the strawberries won’t have to be shipped across the country. That’s certainly a more efficient way to help the climate, and with far less cost to Virginian’s.
I’m glad to see this development move forward, and I don’t see what it has to do with EVs and whether or not we follow California’s lead on anything. Plenty chose VA since we are the furthest north state with lower costs and given our overall political climate skews blue (Plenty supports DEI fully, unlike any state south of here).
What you don’t seem to be considering is how much further the left wants to take things — they’d take us all the way to Cuba if they could.
I may have a different perspective growing up in NYS — I was solidly on the left until my mid twenties when I saw how much their policies were destroying the state and making it hard to live there.
I notice they said that no pesticides will be used. What that means is that the seeds and soil they use will be extremely genetically modified. Raspberries do not last 2 weeks in the refrigerator without being genetically modified.
The best part about this project is the vertical farming (less sprawl), and the price savings we may enjoy due to less transportation costs. Although Driscoll as a nation brand probably does not change their wholesale pricing due to local impacts? Good for Chesterfield!
28 minutes later and you have your first downvote!! How do you do it?? Farming and biotech, generally, are complicated, as is ecology. Some pesticides are harmless — so also are many GMO things, and all cross breeding of plants are harmless. It is important not to be ideological. I read a bit about this to my wife and she, being a soil health person, doesn’t like it because it is hydroponic (right?) Well, just like we don’t eat things like wild bananas, tomatoes, etc, many GMOs are not the problem — but often the pesticides are suspected to be… Read more »
Ha! It’s a gift I have……lol!
How could anyone downvote this??
Oh yeah, mental health problems among the young are at all time highs.
Hopefully they don’t go the way of AppHarvest, or Fifth Season, or Iron Ox, or….. the list of failures goes on.
I’m curious about what happened to these, and why it happened?
Love the “Secret Service” type guys in the photo!
yeah! what’s that one guy doing… just staring straight at Gov. Youngkin like a menace.
Reminds me of the SS guy in the Madeline book I used to read to my daughter.
VERY unsubtle.
Meanwhile, a friend of mine’s son works for the Federal SS and he looks about as UN-secret service as you could get — which I guess is why they are SECRET!!!
I am not privy to what he does, but he is likely the guy troublemakers would think is on their side.
Here’s an article describing the incredible progress going on in greenhouse ag in the Netherlands — important stuff! We can be much more efficient here, but haven’t needed to since we are awash in fertile soil, space, fresh water and sunlight.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/05/how-a-small-dutch-town-is-shaping-the-future-of-your-food-wageningen-netherlands
Reading the later parts of it, I see there is some left-wing claptrap in it blaming europe for famine — famine has ALWAYS existed and was common among aborignal tribes here, there and everywhere since pre-history.
It was european tech that led to vast expansion of population world-wide, not to starvation.
I don’t think this is what the leach John Kerry has in mind.Great job Chesterfield!