Inside the World's Most Advanced Strawberry Farm
What does it look like when technology completely reimagines how food is grown? Plenty® has built a vertical farming platform so precise, so data-driven, and so carefully engineered that it's rewriting what's possible in agriculture — and Wilco Imaging is proud to play a small role in it.
The Problem Plenty Set Out to Solve
The global food system is under pressure. The world's population is growing while the amount of available farmable land is shrinking — and a changing climate is making both trends harder to manage. Outdoor agriculture is also inherently unpredictable: weather events, drought, pests, and contamination can all compromise yield and food safety in ways that are difficult or impossible to control.
Plenty was founded with a straightforward premise: what if you could take the farm entirely indoors, control every variable, and grow more food on a fraction of the land? Over more than a decade of research and development — starting at the University of Wyoming and scaling to full commercial production in Virginia — that's exactly what they've done.
"I felt that technology could help feed a lot of people, extend lives, fight environmental destabilization, and give land back to the natural landscape."
— Nate Storey, Co-Founder, Plenty®
How Plenty's Indoor Farm Actually Works
At the heart of Plenty's system is precise environmental control. Every element of the growing environment — light spectrum and intensity, humidity, temperature, water delivery, and nutrient levels — is continuously monitored and adjusted to give plants exactly what they need to thrive. There are no seasons inside a Plenty farm. There is no weather. There is no contamination drifting in from outside.
Plants grow on vertical towers, stacked high within a climate-controlled facility. This vertical architecture is what allows Plenty to produce dramatically more food per square foot than conventional horizontal farming — and to do it in places where traditional farming would simply be impossible: the middle of a city, a desert, or anywhere fresh produce is needed year-round.
Plenty's grow platform is built on thousands of carefully tested data points. Their research and development center in Laramie, Wyoming — the original Plenty farm — is where every new crop is first tested and perfected. Thousands of trials determine the right combinations of light wavelengths, hydration schedules, and nutrient profiles before any crop goes into full-scale commercial production.
Data-Driven Agriculture at Scale
What sets Plenty apart is the intelligence behind the environment. The farm uses arrays of sensors, computer vision, and machine learning algorithms to continuously monitor crop conditions and make real-time adjustments. The result is a farm that doesn't just grow food — it gets better at growing food every single day.
- Fully controlled indoor environment eliminates weather, seasonal, and contamination variables
- Computer vision and sensor arrays continuously monitor every aspect of plant health and growth
- Machine learning algorithms enable the farm to optimize growing conditions in real time
- Modular, scalable platform adaptable to a wide range of fruits, vegetables, and crops
- Farms can be located anywhere — near cities, in arid regions, or in traditionally non-agricultural areas
- Non-GMO produce; SQF- and GMP-certified for food safety and quality
A New Standard for Food Security
Plenty's Richmond, Virginia facility — the world's first commercial-scale indoor vertical strawberry farm — opened in 2024 and is designed to produce over four million pounds of strawberries per year. Year-round. Without pesticides. With just a fraction of the water and land that conventional strawberry farming requires.
The environmental implications are significant. Plenty's farming model has the potential to save millions of gallons of water annually compared to conventional agriculture. Because farms can be built anywhere, they can also dramatically reduce transportation distances — bringing fresh produce closer to the populations that need it. And because the growing environment is fully enclosed, the runoff and contamination risks associated with outdoor agriculture are eliminated.
Plenty currently grows strawberries for market, but their platform has successfully cultivated more than 50 crops across their research facilities. The same technology that perfects a strawberry can be applied to leafy greens, other berries, and beyond — making this not just a strawberry story, but a blueprint for rethinking how we feed a growing planet.
Where Wilco Imaging Fits In
Precision indoor farming at Plenty's scale requires precision imaging. Wilco Imaging contributed custom imaging components to support Plenty's operations — helping to enable the level of real-time visual monitoring and quality control that an advanced, sensor-dense growing environment demands. While the full scope of our work together reflects Plenty's proprietary systems, we're honored to support a customer whose technology is making a genuine difference in how the world grows food. If your project requires custom imaging components, engineered solutions, or expertise in beyond-visible-spectrum imaging, we'd love to talk.
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