The indoor farming startup Plenty recently raised $200 million in venture funding.
The round was led by Softbank's Vision fund and also included investments by tech billionaires Jeff Bezos and Eric Schmidt.
The advantages of indoor farming are clear. By taking plants out of their outdoor environments and moving them inside to a controlled environment you can eliminate the problems associated with drought, pests, weeds and extreme weather.
This means the farms can produce more food in a smaller footprint than traditional outside farms.
They also can more easily use sensors and data analytics to optimize growing conditions.
This, combined with being indoors, means no pesticides or herbicides and reduces water requirements. The food is also grown close to population centers, so it's delivered fresher and with lower supply chain costs.
The major downside of indoor farming has historically been higher prices.
But the various indoor food startups are all claiming they can deliver their indoor food for the same cost, or even cheaper, than outdoor grown organic food.
One reason is the use of LED lighting systems. This allows indoor farms to dramatically cut the cost of lighting while also improving crop growth and increasing yields.
Plenty has plenty of competition. Aerofarms, BrightFarms, Bowery Farming, Freight Farms, Green Sense Farms and many others are all developing indoor farming systems. Most of these have venture capital backing.
And as our recent post The Rise Of Smart Farms shows, the agtech sector in general is booming.
This is good news, because most news on traditional farming is not good. In particular, climate change and drought is taking a toll on many traditional farms around the world.
But things like indoor farming and the efficiency gains from agtech in general make us very optimistic about the future of farming.
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