This Indoor Vertical Farm Prefers the Label 'Urban'

This is Tim Hammerich of the Ag Information Network with your Farm of the Future Report.

Several well-funded indoor agriculture companies have folded in recent years, but that doesn’t mean the entire sector is doomed to fail. Clayton Mooney, although he farms indoors and vertically, prefers the term urban farmer to reflect his close community connection and a focus on customers.

Mooney… “It's really important to differentiate from vertical farming, to indoor farming, to urban farming. I think vertical farming comes with what I'll describe as, you know, lab coats and purple lights. Indoor farming could be translated as, you know, I'm growing something in my basement. Urban farming, though, I feel like that is better for community-driven engagement. And I think that's really, really important. So if people ask me, you know, I'm an urban farmer, or I'm chief farmer instead of CEO, if we keep fighting that good fight, and especially as we franchise, I think that that rhetoric will help just open it up more to people understanding what urban farming is. At the end of the day, being a farmer, I think we can all agree that, you know, the rhetoric that it carries is humble and hardworking, and I would not have been able to have this work ethic had I not been raised on a family farm myself.”

Clayton Mooney is a co-founder Clayton Farms Salads based in Ames, Iowa.