A Reflection on CEA After a Month of Indoor Ag-Con Pre-Planning Conversations
Over the past month, I had the privilege of spending a concentrated amount of time in pre-planning conversations for Indoor Ag-Con in Las Vegas on February 11–12. These were not surface-level calls. They were working sessions meant to shape discussions that go beyond the usual talking points and actually serve operators and suppliers.
In every group, I asked for the same thing: be honest, address the elephants in the room, and focus on what people can actually act on when they go back home. By the end of the month, my head was spinning. Not from volume, but from how consistently the same themes kept coming up across different crops, roles, and geographies.
Each of these conversations generated meeting notes and transcripts. To step back and avoid over-weighting any single perspective, I used AI as a tool to analyze and organize those notes, looking for repeated patterns and shared concerns. The insights below are not AI conclusions. They are a synthesis of real conversations, filtered through experience and judgment. Names and companies are intentionally left out. This is about clarity, not attribution.
A few things became very clear.
The Industry Feels More Serious
There is noticeably less appetite for hype and far more focus on trade-offs, sequencing, and consequences. People are asking better questions. They are more willing to talk openly about what did not work and why. That shift showed up across nearly every conversation and is reflected directly in how Indoor Ag-Con sessions are being framed this year, with more emphasis on execution, scaling discipline, and post-build reality. CEA feels less like it is trying to prove itself and more like it is trying to operate well.
Scaling Has Been Reframed
Across greenhouse and vertical systems, the message was consistent: scaling before operations are stable creates problems that are hard to undo. Facility size, location, labor availability, and market access are now being discussed as interconnected decisions rather than isolated ones. Bigger is no longer assumed to be better. Proven, repeatable, and financeable are carrying more weight. This mindset shows up clearly in sessions focused on facility design, expansion timing, and responsible growth.
Technology Is Finding Its Proper Place
The conversations shaping sessions on integration, automation, AI, and data were far more grounded than in past years. Operators are not looking for more dashboards. They want fewer tools that actually help them make decisions, reduce labor strain, or manage risk. AI came up often, but almost always with its limits clearly acknowledged. Useful when paired with good data and sound agronomy. Risky when positioned as a shortcut around experience. That realism is guiding how AI-related discussions are being handled at the show. Technology is still important. It is just no longer the headline.
Labor and Culture Are Now Central
Labor was raised in almost every conversation, often before yield or technology. Staffing challenges are no longer being treated as temporary. They are structural. Facilities are being designed and redesigned around workforce realities, training capacity, and management bandwidth. There was also strong alignment around culture. Systems introduced without grower buy-in tend to fail. Tools designed without operator input tend to be ignored. These realities are shaping sessions that focus on operations, leadership, and the human side of CEA.
Crops Continue to Act as Reality Checks
Leafy greens continue to expose pricing pressure and overproduction risk. Cannabis conversations have become notably more pragmatic, with open acknowledgment of complexity, climate mistakes, and labor misalignment. Strawberries and berries keep pushing back against automation narratives, reinforcing the need for deep plant knowledge and airflow mastery. Specialty crops, including mushrooms, consistently highlight that market development often matters more than production capability. These crop-specific realities directly informed how tracks at Indoor Ag-Con were built this year, with less emphasis on novelty and more on fundamentals.
Market Reality Is Driving Discipline
Pricing, commoditization, and distribution came up as often as production. Yield alone is no longer being mistaken for success. Operators are talking more openly about differentiation, channel strategy, and demand alignment. Several sessions at the show are designed specifically to confront these issues directly rather than dance around them. Market awareness is no longer optional. It is foundational.
Why I’m Optimistic
Despite all of this, the dominant feeling coming out of these conversations was not pessimism. It was clarity. There is more honesty now. More shared learning. More willingness to say what does not work and move forward anyway. That is exactly the tone these Indoor Ag-Con discussions are meant to set. This past month did not feel like an ending for CEA. It felt like a reset that needed to happen. And based on what surfaced in these conversations, the industry is stepping into the next year with clearer eyes and stronger fundamentals.
In the heart of South-Central Alberta, where harsh winters and unpredictable weather can test even the most seasoned growers, 
Sunterra Greenhouse is located in Acme, South-Central Alberta (Canada), where dry air and cold nights throughout the year provide us with very good growing conditions for our crops — strawberries and tomatoes – provided we can manage the indoor climate effectively. However, when the temperature outside is -30°C (adding wind chill it can go down to -45 °C), growing conditions become exceptionally challenging. In these extreme temperatures, we rely heavily on all our growing systems: boilers, 4 levels of heating pipes, hybrid lights and energy screens to achieve 24h temperatures and a consistent environment across the growing season.
Crop management has many aspects, but not all of them rely on technology (e.g. manual tasks like lowering plants/trusses, deleafing, harvesting, or pruning flowers are still dependent on people). For greenhouse climate control, energy and water management & labor registration, we use 
Plants are directly affected by their surrounding environment, and their phenotype and full genetic potential are influenced by environmental factors. Actively managing the greenhouse environment directly impacts the quality and taste of harvested product. A stable environment, supported by automation and environmental controls, provides optimal growing conditions, such as temperature and humidity control, light management, nutrient management , pest and disease control.
Sunterra Greenhouse is committed to building a sustainable food system in Alberta. Our water use is very efficient. We collect all precipitation (rainwater and snow) from outside the greenhouse, as well as condensation from the interior, and store it in a reservoir for use in our irrigation system. We also UV-treat and recycle all the drain water to save on fertilizer and reduce the use of water by precise fertigation. Also, our soil-less cultivation hydroponic system offers greater control over nutrient supply and root environment.
What excites me most (and surprisingly, not many are talking about it) is the potential of new cultivars in the coming years. Technological advancements in gene editing (e.g. CRISPR) will permit scientists to create plants with specific and desired traits. Imagine plants that have been altered at the DNA level – without adding any foreign DNA, no GMO – specifically modified for certain traits.
It sounds amazing, doesn’t it? Good examples of this technology are the GABA-enriched tomato in Japan, the non-browning banana in the Philippines and a vitamin-rich tomato in the UK. I believe not only Sunterra but the entire industry will need to adapt to coming CRISPR-edited crops. This technology will present challenges for the entire agricultural community, including governments and regulators, in the coming years.
One of Winter Farm’s goals is to help growers replace 10% of Canada’s strawberry imports. Can you speak to some of the environmental and economic benefits that could come from achieving this goal, and how Winter Farm is working to make it a reality?
What do you see as the biggest opportunities for the CEA industry as a whole in years to come, and how is Winter Farm working to seize them?
In September of 2022 Plenty announced plans to build the world’s largest indoor vertical farm campus near Richmond, VA. Can you share more details on this exciting project?
In your opinion, what are the key challenges that the CEA/Vertical Farm industry must overcome?
What’s next for Plenty?
From the recent opening of its largest, most technologically advanced sustainable commercial smart farm in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania to its expansion into fruiting and vine crops with the launch of new strawberry varieties , 
Investment in CEA comes down to two words: resiliency and sustainability. The past two years have made it painfully clear that climate change, global events, and supply chain disruption all have an enormous impact on our food systems. We need resiliency now more than ever before. By growing indoors, 365 days a year, with zero impact from drought, wildfires, or extreme temperatures, Bowery is growing a resilient supply of pesticide-free produce. And not only resilient, but predictable and reliable—we know, and therefore retailers know, exactly how much produce to expect, which cuts down on food waste.
Bethlehem represents the next chapter in climate-smart agriculture at Bowery. The Bethlehem Farm, once a non-arable industrial site, is now modern farmland. This transformation from brownfield to vertical farm means that fresh, healthy food is now being grown, year-round, where it was previously thought no food would ever grow again.
Over the course of my career, so many talented women leaders helped shape and inspire my path. I wouldn’t be where I am today without their encouragement and support. This background, where women fiercely support one another, led me to co-found aGirlculture at Bowery. The group brings together women of all levels to connect with peers and senior leaders. We’re creating a space for mentorship and other opportunities for personal and professional growth.
The Bethlehem Farm, our Smart Farm of the Future, is a model for what’s next at Bowery. We have two additional farms under construction in Locust Grove, Georgia and Arlington, Texas and we’re on track to double our number of farms by 2023, with the goal of helping to alleviate the strains insecurity puts on the U.S. food supply and economy.