2024: Another Year of Reckoning and Resilience in Indoor Farming
December 27, 2024 As we close out 2024, the controlled environment agriculture (CEA) sector—spanning vertical farms, greenhouses, and hybrid systems—has faced another year of harsh realities and hard-earned progress. While the indoor farming industry’s bold vision for sustainable, tech-driven food production remains compelling, this year has underscored a growing divide between promise and performance.
On the one hand, venture-backed vertical farms and over-engineered “tech-first” solutions saw further reckoning, exposing the limits of unviable business models. Yet, there were bright spots: those who embraced pragmatism, diversified into overlooked crops, and integrated low-tech efficiencies with high-tech precision managed to break through.
Let’s look back at 2024—a year defined not by flashy technology or limitless funding, but by disciplined innovation and market-driven resilience.
The Reckoning: High-Profile Closures and Consolidations
2024 was a sobering year for indoor vertical farming, marked by significant closures and bankruptcies among prominent companies. Despite the continued hype around indoor farming’s potential to revolutionize food systems, several high-profile ventures faced the harsh realities of economics, energy costs, and scalability.
- Bowery Farming, once valued at $2.3 billion, ceased all operations in November 2024. Despite raising over $700 million in venture capital, Bowery struggled with weak demand for its premium-priced products and yield disruptions caused by plant disease outbreaks across multiple facilities. Its closure shocked the industry, given its role as a leading player in urban vertical farming.
- Smallhold, a U.S.-based vertical farming company specializing in specialty mushrooms, filed for bankruptcy in February 2024. The company cited significant financial strain and operational setbacks, leading to the closure of its farming operations in Texas and New York. Smallhold’s struggles highlight the risks even niche indoor agriculture ventures face when scaling operations under pressure.
These closures paint a stark picture of the indoor agriculture sector’s ongoing challenges and add to a much longer list of closures in 2023. The common threads? High operational costs, building too fast, and product market fit challenges. The failures of large-scale, venture-backed farms demonstrate that while technology can enhance farming systems, it cannot replace sound agricultural economics, efficient operations, and local demand.
The Resilience: Low-Tech Meets High-Tech in Greenhouses
While vertical farms grappled with economic headwinds, energy-efficient greenhouses emerged as 2024’s big winners. Pragmatic players demonstrated that combining controlled environments with smart, incremental technology yields scalable results. Here are some greenhouse and vertical farming successes that defined the year:
- Thanet Earth Expansion (UK): As the UK’s largest greenhouse complex, Thanet Earth expanded operations to enable year-round production of tomatoes, cucumbers, and peppers. By integrating combined heat and power systems with advanced LED lighting, the facility significantly boosted its output. This expansion plays a critical role in advancing the UK’s food self-sufficiency by reducing reliance on imports.
- The Summer Berry Company (UK): In a year marked by concerns over food miles and labor shortages, The Summer Berry Company invested £6 million into cutting-edge combined heat-and-power systems and LED lighting. This innovation allowed them to grow strawberries year-round, even during winter months, meeting growing consumer demand for local, fresh produce while cutting reliance on imported goods.
- BrightFarms Expands into New Markets (USA): U.S.-based BrightFarms continued its expansion, launching new hydroponic greenhouse farms in North Carolina and Massachusetts. By partnering with local retailers, BrightFarms delivers pesticide-free leafy greens with a significantly reduced carbon footprint. This strategic growth highlights the economic and environmental benefits of localized, sustainable food production.
- GrowUp Farms Secures $38 Million (UK): UK-based GrowUp Farms raised $38 million in funding from Generate Capital to scale operations and expand its vertical farming infrastructure. The funding will allow GrowUp to increase production capacity for climate-resilient, affordable greens while enhancing operational efficiencies. This investment signals investor confidence in vertical farming solutions that balance scalability and sustainability.
- Oishii’s Automated Pollination System (USA): Indoor strawberry grower Oishii set a new standard for berry cultivation by implementing an automated pollination system in its vertical farms. By replacing traditional bee pollination with robotic technologies, Oishii increased production efficiency, improved scalability, and demonstrated the potential for automation to address labor and biological challenges in CEA.
- Gotham Greens’ Strategic Expansion (USA): Gotham Greens expanded its hydroponic greenhouse network with new facilities in Texas and Georgia, significantly increasing production capacity. Leveraging renewable energy and AI-powered climate control systems, Gotham Greens reduced water consumption by up to 95% compared to conventional farming. This pragmatic approach exemplifies how technology adoption can drive economic and environmental efficiencies.
These greenhouse and vertical farming successes demonstrate that the future of Controlled Environment Agriculture (CEA) lies in a balanced approach—combining low-tech efficiencies with the targeted use of automation and AI. The ability to deliver economically viable, scalable solutions while addressing sustainability challenges provides a clear roadmap for resilience and growth—a lesson that vertical farming ventures must internalize as they navigate a rapidly evolving landscape.
Global Investments: Big Deals in the GCC
One of the most significant trends in 2024 was the ongoing rise of large-scale investments from oil-rich nations into indoor farming. While these projects aim to boost food security and accelerate technological adoption in resource-scarce regions, they also invite scrutiny regarding long-term sustainability metrics.
In the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) nations, 2024 set the stage for transformative projects that promise to scale indoor farming in some of the world’s harshest climates. Here are five standout initiatives poised to make waves in 2025 and beyond:
- GigaFarm: ReFarm Global and Intelligent Growth Solutions (IGS) are developing Dubai’s “GigaFarm”, the world’s largest vertical farm, producing 3 million kg of food annually while diverting 50,000 tonnes of food waste.
- Plenty® X Mawarid: A $680 million partnership to build indoor farms across the GCC, starting with a vertical strawberry farm in Abu Dhabi producing 2 million kg annually.
- CRYSP VERTICAL FARMS and Alesca Life‘s Vertical Farm Deployment (UAE): Crysp Farms partnered with Alesca Life to deploy 500 vertical farms across the UAE and the Middle East.
- Silal X Bayer: A collaboration focused on digital farming, traceability systems, and vegetable seed trials to boost UAE’s agricultural innovation.
These partnerships underscore the GCC’s ambition to lead in CEA. However, their success will depend on balancing technological advancements with energy efficiency and water sustainability. Also, there is a significant skills gap in the GCC that needs to be solved sooner rather than later. Agritecture has been very focused on this region over the last 5 years and is set to continue to do so in 2025.
Agritecture’s 2024 Impact: A Year of Actionable Insights and Global Partnerships
In 2024, Agritecture solidified its role as a global leader in providing data-driven insights, scenario planning, feasibility studies, and market research for the controlled environment agriculture (CEA) sector. This year’s projects spanned over 30 clients across 14 countries and cities, underscoring the increasing global demand for strategic, practical solutions in indoor farming. From iconic urban centers like Riyadh, Atlanta, Dubai, and London to emerging agricultural hubs in the UAE, The Maldives, Mexico, and Connecticut, Agritecture helped clients transform ambitious ideas into actionable, market-aligned outcomes.
Our work highlighted a major industry shift: the growing emphasis on aligning innovation with economic feasibility and regional realities. This year, Agritecture collaborated with:
- Global architecture firms to integrate CEA into landmark infrastructure projects, enhancing urban food security.
- Universities and public schools to scale educational access, providing students with tools like Agritecture Designer to model and plan future indoor farms.
- Technology providers and product developers, helping them refine market entry strategies and demonstrate value through sponsored content and data-backed insights.
- Institutional investors conducting due diligence on indoor farming opportunities, reflecting a cautious but continued interest in identifying viable and scalable solutions.
Projects included scenario modeling for forward-thinking urban farms in the Middle East, regional agricultural viability studies in the U.S., and circular farm feasibility analyses in arid regions. For technology companies, sponsored content and webinars helped amplify solutions for efficiency, resource management, and climate resilience, particularly in growing markets like North America and the GCC.
As we close the year, our partnerships with our clients stand as a testament to Agritecture’s mission of advancing resilient and sustainable agricultural practices through cutting-edge advisory services and technology. Together, we’re helping shape a more resilient, informed, and sustainable future for global food systems.