AppHarvest, Inc. opened its Berea, Ky., 15-acre high-tech indoor salad greens farm featuring a touchless growing system with autonomous harvesting. Consistent with its strategy to secure attractive long-term financing for its assets, AppHarvest also intends to pursue sale-leaseback financing for its Berea farm. At 15-acres – or nearly 654,000 square feet – the AppHarvest Berea farm is expected to be the world's largest high-tech indoor farm for autonomously harvested salad greens with a cutting-edge touchless growing system.

The hands-off system is automated from pre-seeding to packaging including onsite washing to help improve both food safety and efficiency for the “Queen of Greens®” washed-and-ready-to-eat salad packs. The farm is designed to grow about 35 million lettuce plants at a time, which go from seed to maturity in about three to four weeks depending on variety. The AppHarvest Berea controlled environment agriculture (CEA) facility was proclaimed officially open as Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear, U.S. Representative Andy Barr and AppHarvest Founder & CEO Jonathan Webb used handheld harvesters to cut down a strip of crispy and juicy greens grown in the farm's touchless system.

The farm is opening on a phased approach, beginning with five acres then bringing on additional productive acreage over time. AppHarvest began first commercial shipments of salad greens earlier this month. The AppHarvest Berea growing environment leverages sunshine and rainwater and is automated for lighting, humidity and temperature.

The farm uses a closed-loop irrigation system, which enables expected water savings of up to 90% compared to open-field farming and allows for precision dosing of nutrients, resulting in far less use of fertilizer compared to open-field farming while avoiding pollution from agricultural runoff. The closed-loop system also aids in integrated pest management —using good bugs to take care of bad bugs and early detection and prevention—to avoid the use of harsh chemical pesticides. The adaptive spacing design of the troughs in the touchless growing system further minimizes any potential pest exposure.