AppHarvest is an applied technology company working to disrupt agriculture and set a new standard for sustainable, ethical agricultural practices. Our massive, state-of-the-art indoor farms – including our flagship 60-acre facility in Morehead, Kentucky – address the pressing issue of food security with technology that enables us to increase yield by up to 30 times compared to traditional, open-field agriculture, all while using 100% recycled rainwater.
We’re currently developing and implementing the world’s premier universal robotic harvester in our indoor farms. Our harvesting robot Virgo combines AI-based insights with dexterous systems that physically care for each tomato plant, enabling our farms to boost yields while decreasing the operational complexity and environmental impact of farming.
Nature also gives us two free resources: water and sunlight. Our farm’s design takes advantage of those natural resources every day to maximize efficiency and sustainability. With more than 75% of the world’s fresh water already devoted to agriculture, water scarcity is a significant limiting factor in growing more food. That’s why we have implemented a closed-loop irrigation system that captures rainwater on our flagship farm’s 60+ acres of roof surface area and routes it to our retention pond, which is about the size of 70 Olympic swimming pools. Collected water is continuously aerated with nanobubble technology and double-filtered with sand and UV light before reaching the plants through drip irrigation, with all remainders reused and re-filtered.