Professor Guthman
The Problem with Solutions
10 December 2024

There’s a business concept that I thought was so apt when considering the idea of vertical skyscrapers of strawberries after our quarter-long seminar on The Problem with Solutions with Professor and author Julie Guthman. According to tech blog and analytical product developer VerifiedMetrics, vertical growth is business jargon for sticking with the same customer base, and downplaying other growth strategies such as exploring new industries or gaining more customers. According to these finbros, “Vertical growth makes the most strategic sense when your core business is strong, there are significant opportunities in your existing market, and horizontal expansion is limited. Doubling down on your competitive advantage allows you to maximize the potential in your current market space before attempting to expand into new market segments or geographies” (“The Power of Vertical Growth: How to Scale Your Business by Going Deep”).

The strawberry industry has these characteristics—becoming the best strawberry has been the game since Driscoll’s started, and there are agricultural challenges due to overreliance on pesticides and technological opportunities due to the proximity and overlap of California’s titan twin industries. Plenty is “‘on a mission to sustainably grow fresh food for everyone, everywhere,’ (their) CEO Arama Kukutai said about the company's Virginia investment (in) September (2022).” (Green, 2023, p. 1). According to their website’s About page, their rank and file consists of “scientists, farmers, business people, creatives, and even a few friendly robots” who are helping them apply technology principles, as co-founder and Chief Science Officer Nate Storey puts it, “feed a lot of people, extend lives, fight environmental destabilization, and give land back to the natural landscape” (“About Plenty”).

The website says their company started 10+ years ago at the University of Wyoming. What’s less clear is that it now has its headquarters at the epicenter of the techno-fix world, San Francisco (Green, 2003, p. 1), despite the explainer website boasting about their “farms” in Laramie, Wyoming (“the original”), Compton, California (their “flagship” farm, which they also refer to as a “farming hub”), and now in Richmond, Virginia (their “berry” farm, also proudly called a “campus” due to their grandiose plans for expansive grow buildings that are around three stories high), which is the subject of my analytical investigation to follow.
Their choice of jargon veers from agricultural to industrial because they don’t farm with soil… they farm vertically, indoors, using a method often referred to as Vertical Farming Systems (VFS). The controlled attempt to eschew the natural elements we typically associate with growing food—namely believing that the problem with “traditional outdoor farming” lies in the fact that “the weather, soil, and other factors are less controllable” (Burgos, 2024).

In a news article published by New Atlas, reporter Bronwyn Thompson through intensive studies produced in partnership with “an international team of scientists that see this new phase of agriculture as a way to ease global food demands,” and the group has even had their results published in the journal Frontiers in Science^[1] (Thompson, 2024). In the same article, Driscoll’s CEO Soren Bjorn is quoted: “‘By combining our 100 years of farming expertise and proprietary varieties along with Plenty’s cutting-edge technology, we can deliver the same consistent flavor and quality our customers love – now grown locally… This new innovative farm is a powerful step forward in continuing to drive category growth in new ways for our customers and consumers.’” (Thompson, 2024).

The company is stoking the flames of industrial growth with regular media coverage that includes consistent, buzz-word talking points. An article in the Richmond Times-Dispatch from 2023 refers to the new farm site as “expanding cross country from San Francisco to Chesterfield, bringing 300 jobs along with it” (Green, 2023, p. 1). According to another article in the same paper from the year prior, the project is in partnership with strawberry super-producer Driscoll’s, and received a combined $2.9 million in grants and funding from Virginia, advanced with support from the state’s Governor Glenn Youngkin (Ress, 2022, p. 2).

According to Gov. Youngkin, “state officials customized a package of incentives that ties public support to the actual investment and hiring the company does,” and explains how Plenty CEO Kukutai “said the Richmond area has the skilled workforce and nearby colleges that the company will need to find the technicians and plant scientists who will keep robotic planting gear as well as lighting, ventilation, and nutrient feeds operating. They will also make sure produce is picked when it is ripe and ready to be shipped” (Ress, 2022, p. 2). The company openly touts the new campus farm’s proximity to the East Coast and their ravenous appetite for year-round strawberries. This market doubled between 1994 and 2014, primarily due to marketing efforts by the California Strawberry Commission, and was put at risk due to the soil pathogens and toxicity of fumigants required to maintain the strawberry cultivars (“Grow: Pathogens…”, 2019).

Problem: Good Work is Never Complex

According to Plenty co-founder Nate Storey, “Producing food is a good, honest pursuit, but the food system is complex and abstract.” (“About Plenty”). Plenty’s job creation and hiring advertisements have been a strong push in the overall media campaign, which makes sense considering their state funding incentives are tied not only to their capital investment to build the factory but also in part to actually getting people hired on (Ress, 2022, p. 2). According to Plenty’s CEO, Arama Kukutai, they are counting on encountering a skilled workforce in the Chesterfield-Richmond area and multiple local trade and technical colleges. The majority of labor requirements will be to maintain robotic equipment, lighting, nutrient chemistry (and pumped micro-plumbing feeding systems), and ventilation, but who will also be responsible for harvesting the produce at peak ripeness to send to market (Ress, 2022, p. 2).^[2]

In a 2023 article, Kukutai made sure to mention employee benefits for the senior management team they were actively recruiting, stating: “‘The scale and sophistication of what we're building here in Virginia will make it possible to economically grow a variety of produce with superior quality and flavor.’” (Green, 2023, p. 1) The article went on to list Plenty’s touted leadership development programs, financial planning workshops, community volunteer programs, DEI, commuter benefits, and “some free meals” as employee benefits when recruiting for their senior management positions… “as well as cost-free mental health services for employees and their families through Spring Health^[3].” (Green, 2023, p. 2)

SOLUTION - VFS Gives the Environmental Control over to Tech

Plenty is benefitting from their scientific team of researchers who obsessively chart the conditions necessary to grow the highest-quality luxe produce possible, and the strawberry is the kingmaker of all luxe produce to the average American consumer. They claim to be utilizing AI technology to maintain full control over the growing environment—temperature, light that “mimics sunlight,” moisture levels, and the nutrient quality of the water, and data-dumped into analytical computations to tell the “cultivators” if the plants need more or less light…. but that is also capable of changing the growing conditions with the help of its AI and robotic features (Burgos, 2024). I find it hilarious that the lede of the designbloom article that touted it is “revolutionary” tech-intensive solution was that Plenty’s proprietary AI VFS “doesn’t rely on traditional outdoor farming because, in that setting, the weather, soil, and other factors are less controllable” (Burgos, 2024).

The research to perfect these obsessive techniques seems like a huge distraction and waste of resources compared to the impressive results that come from becoming loyal customers of thoughtful growers who actively work with natural systems and cycles to cultivate a variety of nutrient-rich, deliciously ripened, and culturally enriching local food varieties. Creating a smaller, well-networked relationship with the food we consume is possibly the most anti-capitalist strategy for removing the middleman from our financial relationship with our basic needs–unless you consider the recently adopted methods of American anti-hero The Adjuster (Haught, 2024).

Analysis

The methods described by Plenty’s PR team depend heavily on deep learning (Benjamin, 2019, p. 51) to replicate the natural evolution of living systems. They are “removing the unpredictability of Mother Nature and making it possible to grow produce with peak-season flavor, year-round, almost anywhere in the world” (“Plenty opens…^[4]”, 2024). Additionally, moving plants into an artificial environment not only smacks of substitutionalism (Guthman, 2024, Ch. 3, “Objects of Disruption”) but also, while we are at it, discredits Mother Nature's good name! Their scientists even wrote in their article that “it removes uncertainty over ‘Genotype × Environment’ interactions that can slow down crop selection in plant breeding” (Kaiser et al., 2024, p. 2). Oh, I’m sorry. Do you mean NATURAL SELECTION?? Bruh.

The journal article went on to explain that the difference between day and night temperatures (DIF) was found to have a huge impact on healthy plant growth, only to conclude that “It is probably more cost-effective to maintain a lower average daily temperature in winter and a higher average daily temperature in summer.” (Kaiser et al., 2024, p. 10), which I would hazard to point out Nature, even more so with climate change, will do just fine all on her own. As Julie Guthman pointed out in her Edible Education discussion, “biodiverse operations have a great number of lively organisms there that control one another, whereas “hydroponics is quite the opposite… like a sterile environment, where you take away all of the possible things that could hurt the plant you are trying to grow and… one little bug gets in, and then you do not have all of the biodiversity to fight that” (“Grow: Pathogens, Chemicals, and the Fragile Future of the Strawberry Industry,” 2019). She points out that significant political, economic, ecological, and scientific challenges must be considered when adapting to a post-fumigant strawberry industry, NOT JUST TECHNICAL (“Grow: Pathogens,” 2019, 56:45), under the misnomer that researching and gaining god-like control over the factors at play in the natural environment upon which agriculture is based can in any way be considered sustainable.

The hubris involved in thinking we can just side-step our way into a laboratory and avoid caretaking the natural environment in responsible ways! Ways ensure our ability to use the land as a sustained resource instead of an extracted one, assuming that such a technological fix could adequately speak in solidarity with the natural environment (Johnston, 2018, p. 53). Their rendering technical (Li, 2007, p. 7) of the environmental degradation we are faced with, technologically “recovered” from intensive agriculture practices into a Dexter’s Laboratory of ultra-fragile cultivars and, as Julie Guthman points out in her 2019 guest lecture for UC Berkeley’s Edible Education course, the potential for novel pathogenic fungi growth—diseases that have already been shown to worsen, ironically enough, when plants push more of their energy into a heavy fruit load, which are exactly the traits that growers have been selecting for (“Grow: Pathogens” 2019, 00:48:30)

Guthman goes on to later discuss how hydroponics, much to the chagrin of organic growers who prize the soil and soil quality to grow in, attempts to redefine what pesticide free means, but “its not really true” … maybe you can grow a strawberry without soil, “but the cost and infrastructure required for hydroponics is tremendous” (“Grow: Pathogens”, 2019, 1:10:55), which shows not only hubris but reeks of trusteeship—aiming to enhance and direct the workforce’s trajectory, and to control it, in addition to the environmental factors at play (Li, 2007, p. 5). By engaging the scientific community and seeking out government funding to invest heavily in their industrial development, Driscoll’s and Plenty are doubling down on the strawberry cultivars first pilfered from government-funded origins into the private sector by Driscoll’s (“Grow: Pathogens”, 2019, 00:22:05), and then again benefitting from the innovation-boosting benefits of working outside of government or regulatory controls (Guthman, 2024, Ch. 1, “A Different Kind of Government Support”).

The fact that this business expansion model is so capitalism-enriched—with it’s exclusive contract for Driscoll’s genetics and marketing rights, and their funding incentives to maintain certain numbers (but unknown quality) of workers—lends me to agree with Guthman’s forecast of VFS in her 2019 Edible Education talk, where she explained that, “hydroponics is, at the very least, highly capitalized, so that’s just gonna squeeze certain growers out” (“Grow: Pathogens”, 2019, 1:12:00). Because the technology systems we develop only amplify our own ignorance to the complex, microscopically diverse, and vastly unknown natural world in which we’ve known to grow food (Guthman, 2024, Ch. 3), I fear they will also enhance the rising levels of bacterial contamination of E. coli and other well-understood and typically well-mitigated harmful microbes, as well as drive further inequities in their operational hierarchies by employing distinct classes of senior engineering professionals and an extracted workforce of “robot and freshness maintenance technicians”.

From a social justice perspective, this is highly concerning, and reeks of the earliest examples of robots, where people are the application of people as tools to operate the computational machines would lead to the return of slavery (Benjamin, 2019, pp. 55-56) and away from the ideas that they purport to engage with, to collectively empower a future with limitless berries delivered fresh every day, and the energy to produce and transport them.

Works Cited

“About Plenty.” Plenty, https://www.plenty.ag/about/. Accessed 7 Dec. 2024.
Benjamin, Ruha. Imagination: A Manifesto. W. W. Norton & Company, 2024.
Burgos, Matthew. “Plenty Opens World’s First Vertical Farm That Uses AI to Grow Strawberries Indoors in Virginia.” Designboom, 26 Sept. 2024, https://www.designboom.com/technology/plenty-worlds-first-vertical-farm-ai-strawberries-indoors-virginia-richmond-09-26-2024/.

DMHC Fines Spring Health Plan $1 Million for Operating Without a State License While Offering Employee Assistance Programs. California Department of Managed Health Care, 8 Nov. 2024, https://www.dmhc.ca.gov/Resources/Newsroom/PressReleases/November8,2024.aspx.

Green, Thad. “Indoor Vertical Farm Being Built in Chesterfield; Plenty Unlimited Bringing Driscoll’s Strawberries, 300 Jobs to Chesterfield with Vertical Farm.” Richmond Times-Dispatch, 01 ed., 3 Sept. 2023, p. 4D.

Grow: Pathogens, Chemicals, and the Fragile Future of the Strawberry Industry. Directed by The Edible Schoolyard Project, 2019. YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWC69FoZwcA.

Guthman, Julie. The Problem with Solutions: Why Silicon Valley Can’t Hack the Future of Food. University of California Press, 2024.
Haught, J. Staas. “TikTok Users Call Luigi Mangione the Adjuster; What Does It Mean?” NorthJersey.Com, 9 Dec. 2024, https://www.northjersey.com/story/news/2024/12/09/tiktok-users-call-luigi-mangione-the-adjuster-what-does-it-mean-brian-thompson-unitedhealthcare/76873455007/.

Johnston, Sean F. “The Technological Fix as Social Cure-All: Origins and Implications.” IEEE Technology and Society Magazine, vol. 37, no. 1, Mar. 2018, pp. 47–54. DOI.org (Crossref), https://doi.org/10.1109/MTS.2018.2795118.

Kaiser, Elias, et al. “Vertical Farming Goes Dynamic: Optimizing Resource Use Efficiency, Product Quality, and Energy Costs.” Frontiers in Science, vol. 2, Sept. 2024, p. 1411259. DOI.org (Crossref), https://doi.org/10.3389/fsci.2024.1411259.

Li, Tania Murray. The Will to Improve: Governmentality, Development, and the Practice of Politics. Duke University Press, 2007. K10plus ISBN, https://doi.org/10.1515/9780822389781.

“Plenty Opens World’s First Farm to Grow Indoor, Vertically Farmed Berries at Scale.” Plenty, 24 Sept. 2024, https://www.plenty.ag/plenty-opens-worlds-first-farm-to-grow-indoor-vertically-farmed-berries-at-scale/.

Ress, Dave. “Vertical Farm Operation to Open in Chesterfield; California Firm Says It Will Build World’s Largest Vertical Farm in Chesterfield.” Richmond Times-Dispatch, 2nd ed., 15 Sept. 2022, p. 1A.
“The Power of Vertical Growth: How to Scale Your Business by Going Deep.” VerifiedMetrics, https://www.verifiedmetrics.com/blog/vertical-growth. Accessed 7 Dec. 2024.

Thompson, Bronwyn. “‘World-First’ Indoor Vertical Farm to Produce 4M Pounds of Berries a Year.” New Atlas, 25 Sept. 2024, https://newatlas.com/manufacturing/world-first-vertical-strawberry-farm-plenty/.

Notes