When lettuce arrives at Tisha Livingston’s local grocery store in Cincinnati, it is well past its expiration date.
“It comes from California, and it’s old and tired by the time it gets here,” she says.
Livingston co-founded 80 Acres Farms with Mike Zelkind to provide fresh and healthy produce in a sustainable way. They’re doing this with a soil-free vertical farming system and locating the farms near local distribution centers to reduce travel time. “The fact that we are sustainable and we use so little water, enables us to farm almost anywhere in the world,” notes Zelkind.
According to 80 Acres, the farms use 97% less water, in part due to a closed loop system that captures excess water and puts it back into the growing process. And the company claims to have 300 times the yield of traditional farms.
Learn more about their vertical farming strategy in the video below.
