Can Suppliers Retire the 2,000 Mile Strawberry Now?

The global food system has a problem; it's designed for a world that no longer exists. 

We grow food in rural areas increasingly battered by droughts and extreme weather, then truck it thousands of miles to cities where most people actually live. By the time a strawberry reaches your supermarket, it's travelled an average of 2,000 miles and has a decent chance of rotting before you buy it.

Plenty's Richmond, Virginia facility is proving there's a better way. The numbers tell the story: more than four million pounds of strawberries per year from less than 40,000 square feet. That's 86 times the yield per acre of a conventional farm, using just 1% of the land. The strawberries grow on 30-foot towers in climate-controlled rooms, analysed by software that processes 10 million data points daily.

Meeting logistics demands

Traditional farming sits at one end of a long, expensive, carbon-intensive supply chain. Vertical farms eliminate most of that chain by moving production into or near cities. Driscoll's Plenty Sweet strawberries reach Virginia consumers from within 150 miles of their homes – not 2,000 miles away from California's Central Valley. The 30% spoilage rate from long-haul transport disappears, as do the associated Scope 3 emissions.

This matters more now than it would have a decade ago. What Deloitte calls the "triple threat" – climate chaos, supply chain fragility, stricter carbon regulations – has made the old model increasingly unworkable. California's agricultural regions face what appear to be permanent water shortages, while weather patterns have become unpredictable. This fragility is now showing up in grocery prices and empty shelves.

Nate Storey, Plenty's Co-Founder, explains: "I felt that technology could help feed a lot of people, extend lives, fight environmental destabilisation and give land back to the natural landscape. 

“Producing food is a good, honest pursuit, but the food system is complex and abstract. I hope that Plenty can change that."

The responsible impact

Inside the Richmond facility, every environmental variable – including light intensity, humidity, temperature and nutrient delivery –  is measurable and adjustable. The facility doesn't even use bees for pollination. A patent-pending airflow system does the job instead, producing more uniform berries in the process.

By questioning inherited assumptions about how food production should work, Plenty is also able to cut water consumption by up to 95% compared to conventional agriculture. Its Richmond site saves millions of gallons annually through a closed-loop system that recirculates water rather than letting it evaporate or run off into soil. 

Deloitte's analysis suggests vertical farming could contribute to a 9.2% increase in global food output by 2070, noting that "the historical way we increased food production is no longer viable." Vertical farming offers a way to intensify production without consuming more natural resources – in fact, while using dramatically fewer.

The Plenty and Driscoll’s partnership in Richmond proves that a little out of the box engineering can transform vertical farming into a scalable, climate-resilient supply chain. By integrating these hyper-local ecosystems into urban centers, they are turning the vision of feeding cities while restoring natural landscapes into a practical reality.