Controlled-Environment Ag Reaches New Heights in Florida

By Frank Giles|April 15, 2020

Rolling through Wauchula on Highway 17 in Southwest Florida, it would be no surprise if a passerby didn’t notice the nondescript warehouse located roadside in the small town. But inside the building is a highly sophisticated farm — perhaps a model of the future of agriculture. Under the name Hardee Fresh, the operation planted its first crops in October 2019.

1 of 4

1 of 4

Tyler Jacoby, Co-Founder of Hardee Fresh (right) and Clint Hunnicutt, Hardee Fresh General Manager.
Photo by Frank Giles
2 of 4

In the vertical farm at Hardee Fresh in Wauchula, FL, crops are grown on towers, stacked seven to eight rows high.
Photo by Frank Giles
3 of 4

Plants are germinated in the seeding area and moved to growing towers after about 10 to 14 days of initial growth.
Photo by Frank Giles
4 of 4

There are 7,700 LED lights in the facility providing the photosynthesis fuel to grow a variety of leafy green crops.
Photo by Frank Giles

The team at Hardee Fresh had a vision of taking the concept of vertical farming to a higher, more refined level. Vertical farming, like the name implies, takes production up — stacking rows on top of another in a controlled-environment structure. Each row uses LED lights to replace sunlight, and nutrients are fed to plants on trays via hydroponic irrigation. While the building is about 1 acre in size, the growing area inside is about 10 times that. The towers in the facility comprise seven to eight vertical rows of growing space.

The environment inside the building is highly controlled to optimize the growth and quality of the crops being produced there. According to Dr. Tyler Jacoby, a Co-Founder of Hardee Fresh, there are few — if any — vertical farms in the country deploying all the types of technology being used in the Wauchula facility.

“Some of the technology we have here is among the latest of its kind, certainly in the ag space,” Jacoby says. “We can create the perfect microclimate on each level of the rows with perfect temperature, humidity, and carbon dioxide levels. We can control everything. There are 7,700 LED lights in the facility, and the 11 HVAC handlers are moving a tremendous amount of air (300,000 tons) through the building.”

The farm is utilizing a technology that powers LED lights inside the building via digital electricity. This allows the farm to generate exponentially less unwanted heat in the growing zones in comparison to compact fluorescents, metal halides, or even other traditional LED systems.