Betting the Farm
With resources scarce and land scarcer , Rhode Island ’ s agricultural community is locked in a battle over indoor farming .
Tim Schartner eases his Dodge Ram over puddled ruts and parks it dead center of a grand plan : Tomatoes . Fresh tomatoes , with all the flavor and nutrition produced by well-amended soil , just the right amount of water and August heat — except grown hydroponically , harvested in February and eaten in a BLT a few days later . Sunk into the Exeter loam , powder-coated steel supports fan out in every direction like an illusion of infinity , but the glassencased greenhouse that will eventually be finished here only covers twenty-five acres — a third of his fields .
“ I think we are a generation away from losing our farms because of the encroaching commercial value of residential development ; it ’ s going to force their sale ,” says Schartner , the third generation to work these fields . “ I wanted to keep the family in agriculture , and to do that I had to bring us to what was relevant in agriculture .”
Schartner began planning this $ 60 million project two years ago , but the idea of large-scale greenhouse farming has been rattling around in his head since he took a boat ride through Epcot Center ’ s Living with the Land exhibit at age eight . He was awestruck by the coconut trees and corn plots thriving in a computercontrolled environment under a glass geodesic dome . “ I was blown away . I said ‘ Dad , this is what we ’ re going to do .’ ” Growing under glass to extend the season is hardly a new concept . Archaeologists can trace it back to 30 AD , when ancient Roman gardeners devised a structure to grow the daily supply of the fresh melon Emperor Tiberius required . Greenhouses are now a common facet of many commercial bedding plant and farm operations . Controlled Environment Agriculture ( CEA ) — an umbrella term for
ILLUSTRATION : DOREEN CHISNELL AND GETTY IMAGES . different forms of indoor farming — takes the idea to its high-tech extreme , where light , temperature , water , humidity , plant nutrients and pests are monitored by sensors and are computer-controlled under algorithms that are ideal for the plants , often grown without soil .
A mature industry in Europe , today ’ s commercial CEA is more than fifty years old . The Netherlands , the acknowledged global leader , has been advancing this technology since the 1990s . Today , this tiny country is the world ’ s second-largest agricultural exporter behind the United States , where CEA — particularly the fully enclosed , urban and sustainable variety — is a burgeoning sector . In 2019 , celebrity , institutional and other private investors raised $ 2.8 billion in venture capital for agtech startups worldwide , according to a 2020 report in The Progressive Farmer . CEA is so new here that there are no established federal growing standards , as there are for traditional agriculture . In October , the USDA Agricultural Research Service launched a CEA study to develop them .
“ CEA [ fully enclosed farming ] is going through a moment right now in the United States ,” says Viraj Puri , CEO of Gotham Greens , a pioneer in “ new guard ” CEA . This new interest , he says , is the result of a confluence of factors : interest in sustainability and locally grown food , and pressures on conventional agriculture in California , where water scarcity , migrant labor costs and conditions , shipping time and distance , and climate change drive up costs .
State agriculture officials see CEA as an important addition to the state ’ s farming portfolio . Rhode Island grows less than 5 percent of its land-based food ; regionally , New England produces less
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