The company on Sunday sought court protection in Texas listing more than $100 million in assets and liabilities on its Chapter 11 petition. The business comes to bankruptcy with a deal that will explore a sale of Plenty’s assets or an alternative restructuring that would raise additional cash.
Plenty joins other vertical farming companies that have gone bankrupt in recent years as well as a string of agriculture firms that have filed Chapter 11 so-far this year. TreeSap Farms LLC, a tree and plant supplier, sought protection last month followed by soybean seed developer Benson Hill Inc. which filed Chapter 11 last week.
https://www.andnowuknow.com/shop-talk/reports-plenty-unlimited-files-chapter-11-bankruptcy-protection-texas/ryann-howard/96813From their site:
And, while I am pulling for it, I have to admit that their propaganda reads a little like the description of Jurassic Park:
Every element of the Plenty Richmond Farm–including temperature, light and humidity–is precisely controlled through proprietary software to create the perfect environment for the strawberry plants to thrive. The farm uses AI to analyze more than 10 million data points each day across its 12 grow rooms, adapting each grow room’s environment to the evolving needs of the plants – creating the perfect environment for Driscoll’s proprietary plants to thrive and optimizing the strawberries’ flavor, texture and size. Even pollination has been engineered by Plenty, using a patent-pending method that evenly distributes controlled airflow across the strawberry flowers for more efficient and effective pollination than using bees, supporting more uniform strawberry size and shape.
https://www.plenty.ag/plenty-opens-worlds-first-farm-to-grow-indoor-vertically-farmed-berries-at-scale/This is also not exactly music to the ears of those who are already concerned about the influence of AI on both our planet and our culture.
I guess we will just have to see where the technology actually goes. I do wonder if they will label the ones grown in these factories so we will know where they came from? I would love to try them.
I also wonder who picks them now....
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