Grower News

From the street, the old strip mall in Arlington, Virginia, gives few clues that something fresh is going on inside. But around back and tucked underneath, the city’s only urban farm has hydroponic agriculture going full swing. Fresh Impact Farms Founder and Owner Ryan Pierce and his team are serving up premium edible flowers, specialty herbs and select greens for the Washington, D.C., area’s most discerning customers — its leading chefs — with an eye toward bigger goals. From cloud computing to controlled environment farming Before he found his urban-ag calling in 2016, Pierce had a successful career with a firm that built complex private cloud computing systems for the government. A self-described “geek who loves science and technology, but happens to have a business degree,” he bridged the gap between engineers’ designs and business practicality. But the time came when cloud computing wasn’t enough. “I know it’s a little cliché,” he says, “but at some point, you have to step back and say what am I doing this for? Ultimately, I wanted to do something bigger that made an impact on more than my bank account.” Without much direction, Pierce started searching. Issues with the food system, including its geopolitical and environmental impacts, kept drawing him in. “I saw how antiquated it was and how we hadn’t had seeds of change in our food system for a long, long time,” he says. Eventually, an article on vertical farming surfaced. Though he’d always been interested in growing — and had a little countertop hydro herb garden — he’d never heard of vertical farms. “I was fascinated, and I saw the potential of what it could possibly do if we invested enough time and energy and, frankly, money into it,” he says. In controlled environment vertical farming, Pierce saw a tech-filled industry ripe for people who understand how technology works — and for those passionate about impacting society and sustainability. He’d found the industry he wanted to be in, but that was the easy part. With no commercial growing experience and no connections to the agricultural world, figuring out how […]

Source: www.producegrower.com