"We don't grow tomatoes," said Josh Norbury, BrightFarms director of operations. Most of the new greenhouses grow tomatoes and peppers, but BrightFarms found its niche in salad greens, which the company finds more profitable than other produce. "They provide year-round local produce, and the demand for that is only going to increase." "This is really taking advantage of the local-food movement," Sparks said. The sprouting of mega greenhouses growing produce is happening across the U.S., said Brian Sparks, senior editor of Greenhouse Grower, a trade publication that covers the industry. Those hulking operations, like the $22.5 million, 20-acre spread built by Golden Fresh Farms in Wapakoneta last year, specialize in tomatoes. In the past three years, a handful of enormous greenhouses have risen in Wapakoneta, Delta, Huron and other small towns in Ohio. "At this farm, we will grow the freshest and most sustainable greens in the state."īrightFarms might have the newest greenhouse in Ohio, but it is far from the first. 1 demand driver in produce," said Abby Prior, BrightFarms vice president of marketing.
The greenhouse in Wilmington celebrated its first harvest Aug. BrightFarms can harvest 2,000 pounds of salad greens a day, and have them in stores across Ohio in 24 hours. There also are herbs, such as basil and cilantro. It takes about two weeks for greens to go from seed to salad mix. Inside the building, kale, spinach and a variety of lettuces - romaine, scarlet, cristabel and others -grow on Styrofoam boards floating in ponds that are 50 feet wide and 325 feet long. "This is not the agriculture I grew up with."
Wilmington Mayor John Stanforth, a Clinton County native, pondered the BrightFarms greenhouse.
The $10 million project is the fourth greenhouse built by BrightFarms, a New York company that also operates greenhouses near Chicago, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. Rolling green fields of soybeans and corn stretch to the horizon.Ī 170,000-square-foot greenhouse, wrapped in green metal siding and topped with hundreds of glass panels, squats beside a cornfield across from the Wilmington Air Park. WILMINGTON - Along the gravel lanes of rural Clinton County, you can see the past and present of Ohio agriculture.
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