Plenty Unveils State-of-the-art Indoor Farm in Compton

In May 2023, vertical farming company Plenty opened what it described as the world's most technologically advanced indoor vertical farm, located on a single city block in Compton, California. The facility was designed to produce up to 4.5 million pounds of leafy greens annually using vertical towers nearly two stories tall, with the entire process from seeding to harvest automated through robotic systems. Plenty claims the setup yields up to 350 times the produce per acre of conventional outdoor farming.

The farm uses no pesticides, requires significantly less water than field agriculture, and operates independent of weather and seasonal constraints for consistent year-round output. The opening attracted attention from food security advocates who noted that Compton, a historically underserved community with limited access to fresh produce, could benefit directly from a high-output local farm.

Compton's 4.5 million pounds of greens a year lasted 19 months: Plenty announced the farm's closure in December 2024, blaming California energy costs, and filed for Chapter 11 in Texas the following March, per Virginia Business. Its lone surviving farm, in Chesterfield, Virginia, grows strawberries exclusively for Driscoll's; the company emerged from bankruptcy on May 29, 2025 with SoftBank backing. The $300 million campus pitched to Chesterfield in 2022 has shrunk; in April 2026 Plenty walked away from its option on 66 acres, Richmond BizSense reports, after contractors filed liens over unpaid expansion work. Its option on the last 30 acres runs until April 2029, a test of whether vertical farming survives on fruit rather than lettuce.