Indoor farms are remaking the produce market — at a cost to the planet

Amid drought and record heat, high-tech greenhouses and vertical farms boast of being a more climate friendly way to grow. But they come with an environmental toll.Leafy vegetables grow indoors at Eden Green Technology in Cleburne, Tex., on March 12. No one would argue that the climate in North Texas is ideal for growing lettuce, a crop that thrives when there’s a chill in the air.

“It’s a lot of the same technologies you’d see in a building for human comfort, but being put to use for plants,” said Jennifer Amann, senior fellow in the buildings program at the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy, a nonprofit focused on reducing energy waste. “There’s extraordinary water efficiency in these facilities, but energy is really the Achilles’ heel.”

These companies advertise their produce as safer, more nutritious and fresher than field-grown produce, since their operations typically skip pesticides and are located within a few hours’ drive of major cities. They boast of using one-tenth of the water, a claim backed up by independent research. But they don’t often talk about their energy use; most states don’t require them to report it, and researchers said many are reluctant to share this data.

Pennsylvania Secretary of Agriculture Russell Redding said the state has created a “concierge service” to ease the permitting process and help indoor farm operators with site selection. His agency is focusing on locations in the Lehigh Valley and the South Central region, where there’s proximity to major energy infrastructure and desirable markets in New York, New Jersey and Washington, D.C.

Little Leaf Farms, the dominant controlled-environment producer of packaged greens in New England, uses natural gas to heat its greenhouses. To get around this problem, the company’s CEO Paul Sellew said it buys, each of which corresponds to a set amount of energy generated by cleaner sources like wind or solar. Little Leaf is also planning to build a large solar array on its 180-acre site in McAdoo, Pa.

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