Indoor Vegetable Growers Getting a Boost from COVID-19
BrightFarms produces leafy greens and other produce in its facilities in four states.
Amid the coronavirus pandemic, hydroponic and other indoor-farm businesses are growing in multiple ways in various parts of Ohio’s Miami Valley and across the country as consumers look for alternatives to vegetables trucked in from California and Arizona.
The area’s varied examples range from a BrightFarms greenhouse across from the Wilmington Air Park in Clinton County to 80 Acres Farm, reusing a building in downtown Hamilton in Butler County, to Davidson Family Growers, a century-old traditional family farm also growing with hydroponics in New Carlisle, Clark County.
“This is definitely a growing area,” says Felix Fernando, past co-chair of Montgomery County Food Equity Coalition and Assistant Professor of Sustainability and Coordinator of Graduate Certificate in Sustainability at the University of Dayton (UD).
Increasingly, consumers and investors are drawn to the principles of sustainability, prompting businesses and educational institutions to respond with programs and products.
For a variety of reasons, hydroponics fit perfectly in markets such as southern Ohio that are otherwise dependent on trucked-in products. In the process climate change is to be slowed.
“It reduces our dependency on areas further away,” Fernando said. “These areas are seeing or are expected to see impacts from climate change,” such as flooding, erosion, drought, and crop disease.
Continue reading at MSN.com.
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