Controlled environment agriculture wants a bite of farm bill
In March, members of the Congressional Western Caucus including House Agriculture Committee Chairman Glenn Thompson, R-Pa., visited Eden Green in Texas. Pictured: Rep. Austin Scott, R- Ga., (right) and members of his staff.
An excerpt from the AgriPulse article.
CEAs often locate close to distribution centers, which can greatly cut down the distance the product needs to travel. Eddy Badrina, CEO of the Texas-based vertical farming technology company Eden Green, said they’ve shrunk the distance its leafy greens travel from 1,500 miles to 1,500 feet to a neighboring Walmart distribution center. “It goes from harvest to store shelf in 48 hours,” he said, slashing food waste from 30% to 3%.
Robert Bonnie, USDA's undersecretary for Farm Production and Conservation, told Agri-Pulse on the sidelines of the North American Agricultural Journalists meeting in April that the department would “welcome the conversation” to see how CEAs can fit into the conservation programs funded in the farm bill and whether regulatory changes are needed.
“There may be things that we could do with conservation dollars that could have an enormous impact on clean water and clean air. Sometimes our conservation practices aren’t tailored to be able to meet those producers' and landowners’ needs,” Bonnie of the CEA industry.