indoor farming

High-tech, indoor, urban agriculture is growing in places like New York, but so is controversy around them, according to FERN's latest story, produced in partnership with Edible Brooklyn magazine. The story, by Rene Ebersole, points to one indoor company that produces high-end specialty greens for restaurants called Farm.One. "In a town of eight million, Farm.One is part of a rising movement to cultivate produce where large numbers of people live by using high-tech systems and smart greenhouses placed at grocery stores, in basements and even inside cargo vessels."

The tech-investment firm SoftBank Vision Fund says it will spend $200 million to help the indoor farming startup Plenty expand around the globe. Currently the company has two farms, one in San Francisco and another in Laramie, Wyoming, but it wants to scale up, tapping into population centers around the world.

Two small startups "with a starkly different vision of how to grow produce year-around, under uniquely Alaskan conditions," hope to reap profits, along with vegetables, in a state where the food chain is long and prices are high, says the New York Times.