The Last Word: Eden Green’s Eddy Badrina on the Need for Vertical Farming

An excerpt from Dallas Innovates. Read the full article here.

Leafy greens is a multibillion-dollar industry. But before lettuce can get into salads across the U.S., it has to navigate coast-to-coast supply chain and distribution issues, says Badrina, whose Cleburne-based ag-tech startup opened a new, two-acre vertical greenhouse in September as part of a planned $47 million vertical farm. 

“90% of the lettuce that’s consumed domestically comes from two spots: Yuma, Arizona, and Salinas Valley California,” Badrina says in a video on Eden Green’s website. “One is a literal desert and the other one might as well be a desert because of all the water restrictions.”

The 3,000-mile salad is “environmentally and financially unsustainable,” Badrina adds. “We’ve got to fix that problem. And that’s where Eden Green comes in.”