USA: WASHINGTON - Lacey Is Home To The Largest Vertical Farm On The West Coast
The Future of Farming Is Happening
Right Now In This 25,000 Square Foot Warehouse.
Author: Saint Bryan
May 6, 2021
LACEY, Wash. — Though it looks like the set of some far-out science fiction fantasy, with bright walls of light and characters dressed in medical gowns, this is actually a farm growing six different kinds of lettuce inside a 25-thousand square foot warehouse located in a Lacey Business Park.
“In the beginning, it was always our goal to find a better way to grow healthier and more nutritious food for families,” says Bryce Clemmer who owns NW Farms with his wife Andrea. It’s the largest vertical farm in the Northwest.
Here they can grow 6 million heads of lettuce a year, using just 2 percent of the water an outdoor farm would need.
“This is a unique combination of robotics, software but also hardware that ultimately makes growing food at large scale possible,” says Clemmer, who is an engineer. He’s invented a few proprietary systems that make this vertical farm unlike any other.
“We've created a perfect environment for plants to grow,” he says.
Everything is monitored here: the temperature, the humidity, the light, the nutrients that go into the water. The result is produce that grows three times faster indoors than outside. The lettuce needs just 20 days from planting to be ready for your table.
“We have experimented with growing everything from strawberries and blueberries to edamame and any type of herbs that you can imagine,” says Clemmer. The only produce he can't imagine growing here are pineapples and pumpkins.
A NW Farms employee prepares to plant lettuce. Credit: KING TV
There are no overalls or John Deere caps here. All farmhands are gowned up, with hairnets and food handling gloves.
“So food safety, the handling, and the overall environment is the cleanest in which it can be,” says Clemmer.
“It's all-natural and healthy,” adds Andrea Clemmer.
She says other farms may rely on pesticides. And with farms so far away from our supermarkets, half of all produce gets thrown out. That doesn’t happen here.
“When our product is pulled off the towers it goes right into the bag, and it's in the store the same day so it's fresh same day and it is still living,” she says.
As the world’s population grows and more pressure is put on natural resources vertical farmers say they may have the key that prevents hunger and famine in the future.
“We have to figure out how to grow reliably and sustainably fresh food that's nutritious for everybody,” says Bryce Clemmer.
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