The futuristic growing operation of Portage, Ind.,-based Green Sense Farms is sprouting in China, making the indoor vertical farm company just months away from being one of the largest in the world.
Green Sense Farms started in March 2014 in Portage, helping bring the revolutionary way to provide fresh, local and organic produce to the mainstream. With rows of towers stacked high with leafy greens growing under the pinkish glow of LED lights — all inside a climate-controlled facility — Green Sense can produce year-round with a much smaller footprint than a normal farm.
It's a way of farming that will provide a great service in China, says Robert Colangelo, Green Sense "founding farmer" and CEO. And it will also provide a service in South Bend when it opens a vertical farm in partnership with Ivy Tech in the next year.
Indoor, vertical farming is something just now catching on in China. And even though Green Sense Farms is the largest in the U.S., you still don't see many operations like them domestically either.
China has had some vertical farms, Colangelo says, but they are small, show farms. Green Sense will be a large-scale commercial farm producing consistently, he says.
The first China farm will produce 750,000 to 1 million heads of lettuce and about 1.5 million leafy greens per year. It's a production level slightly less than the 20,000-square-foot Portage facility, but it's still the start of making a beneficial change in China's food production.
First there's the population the farm can potentially serve.
Green Sense is starting out in an area of China that has about 50 million people in a 50-mile radius. And after the first farm opens, there are plans for many more in the area.