5 ms·

How AppHarvest’s indoor farming scheme imploded (2023)

35 points by andrewrn 1y ago

itsdrewmiller 1y ago
Needs (2023) - discussed previously here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34959649 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34959649
- grg0 1y ago
  Also, "Exposé". Grammar don't check otherwise.
- tomhow 1y ago
  Thanks! The vertical farming bubble is finally popping - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34959649 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34959649 - Feb 2023 (270 comments)
smcin 1y ago
JD Vance, Martha Stewart were on the board of this indoor vertical farming startup. It went public in 2020 via a Covid-era SPAC (Novus Capital Corp), in 2021 raised $700m then went public at a $1b valuation, was sued by shareholders for securities fraud in 2022 (Vance had left in 2021), then filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2023. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AppHarvest https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AppHarvest [1]: https://apnews.com/article/appharvest-indoor-farming-bankruptcy-martha-stewart-0a32f971f0901510b2de30353b1e0457 https://apnews.com/article/appharvest-indoor-farming-bankrup... [2]: Coverage of Plenty, Bowery, AppHarvest and AeroFarms https://techcrunch.com/2025/03/24/vertical-farming-company-plenty-files-for-bankruptcy-after-raising-nearly-1b/ https://techcrunch.com/2025/03/24/vertical-farming-company-p...
aaron695 1y ago
[dead]
99_00 1y ago
I don’t get it. How could a high tech green house ever be more profitable than free sunshine, dirt Your product gets, what? Max $2.50/# retail?
- poulsbohemian 1y ago
  Farmland is stupidly expensive. The equipment and inputs (fertilizer, fuel) are stupidly expensive. Growing outside, you are forever at the whims of the weather rather than being able to control each detail of production. Fields inevitably have parts that have variable soil and water conditions. When you look at what a country like the Netherlands has done with greenhouse growing, it's pretty compelling. Was AppHarvest the answer? Apparently not, but that doesn't negate that there are indoor models that work.
  - nradov 1y ago
    Which indoor models work? They might be viable for boutique produce that is highly perishable. But the notion that this could ever work for bulk staple crops is just stupid. Farmland isn't that expensive.
    - sanswork 1y ago
      Australia has a number of large veggie producers that use glasshouses for growing and have been around and successful for many years. Look up Flavorite and Perfection Fresh for two examples.
      - yorwba 1y ago
        Perfection seem to be using a lot of foil tunnels: https://www.perfection.com.au/our-farms/perfection-berries-riana https://www.perfection.com.au/our-farms/perfection-berries-r... Which makes sense, because they're cheap and easy to construct. But for some reason "indoor farming" startups don't seem very interested in taking the simplest solution that could possibly qualify as "indoors" and scaling it up.
    - 1y ago
ryanwhitney 1y ago
In comforting news, post-bankruptcy, the founder and CEO of AppHarvest has gone on to start…uhh…The Nuclear Company?[0] Hopefully when it's ready they'll invite McConnell back to flip the switch. 0: https://www.thenuclearcompany.com https://www.thenuclearcompany.com
joshstrange 1y ago
Wow, I completely missed this when it was published back in 2023. I watched every briefing by the KY Governor and I remember AppHarvest coming up multiple times (9 times according to the daily transcripts people made on Reddit [0]). I remembering thinking how cool of an idea it was and how I really thought this could help our more rural areas. It’s incredibly disappointing that this is how it turned out. Selling workers on the vision that they did and then completely going in the other direction is gross verging on evil. Especially the parts about top execs cashing out while employees and their friends/family invested in what they thought could be their future. [0] https://www.reddit.com/r/Coronavirus_KY/search/?q=Appharvest&cId=d199189c-2dd4-42ff-ab38-4fbed16519e0&iId=99e9dd9b-0e3f-43a9-9d87-4e65747e805e https://www.reddit.com/r/Coronavirus_KY/search/?q=Appharvest...
- andrewrn 1y ago
  Oh yeah the founder is a bonafide grifter. The worst part? He’s not building a fucking nuclear startup…

35 points by andrewrn 1y ago

Needs (2023) - discussed previously here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34959649 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34959649

grg0 1y ago
Also, "Exposé". Grammar don't check otherwise.
tomhow 1y ago
Thanks! The vertical farming bubble is finally popping - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34959649 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34959649 - Feb 2023 (270 comments)

smcin 1y ago

JD Vance, Martha Stewart were on the board of this indoor vertical farming startup. It went public in 2020 via a Covid-era SPAC (Novus Capital Corp), in 2021 raised $700m then went public at a $1b valuation, was sued by shareholders for securities fraud in 2022 (Vance had left in 2021), then filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2023. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AppHarvest https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AppHarvest [1]: https://apnews.com/article/appharvest-indoor-farming-bankruptcy-martha-stewart-0a32f971f0901510b2de30353b1e0457 https://apnews.com/article/appharvest-indoor-farming-bankrup... [2]: Coverage of Plenty, Bowery, AppHarvest and AeroFarms https://techcrunch.com/2025/03/24/vertical-farming-company-plenty-files-for-bankruptcy-after-raising-nearly-1b/ https://techcrunch.com/2025/03/24/vertical-farming-company-p...

aaron695 1y ago

[dead]

99_00 1y ago

I don’t get it. How could a high tech green house ever be more profitable than free sunshine, dirt Your product gets, what? Max $2.50/# retail?

poulsbohemian 1y ago
Farmland is stupidly expensive. The equipment and inputs (fertilizer, fuel) are stupidly expensive. Growing outside, you are forever at the whims of the weather rather than being able to control each detail of production. Fields inevitably have parts that have variable soil and water conditions. When you look at what a country like the Netherlands has done with greenhouse growing, it's pretty compelling. Was AppHarvest the answer? Apparently not, but that doesn't negate that there are indoor models that work.
- nradov 1y ago
  Which indoor models work? They might be viable for boutique produce that is highly perishable. But the notion that this could ever work for bulk staple crops is just stupid. Farmland isn't that expensive.
  - sanswork 1y ago
    Australia has a number of large veggie producers that use glasshouses for growing and have been around and successful for many years. Look up Flavorite and Perfection Fresh for two examples.
    - yorwba 1y ago
      Perfection seem to be using a lot of foil tunnels: https://www.perfection.com.au/our-farms/perfection-berries-riana https://www.perfection.com.au/our-farms/perfection-berries-r... Which makes sense, because they're cheap and easy to construct. But for some reason "indoor farming" startups don't seem very interested in taking the simplest solution that could possibly qualify as "indoors" and scaling it up.
  - 1y ago

ryanwhitney 1y ago

In comforting news, post-bankruptcy, the founder and CEO of AppHarvest has gone on to start…uhh…The Nuclear Company?[0] Hopefully when it's ready they'll invite McConnell back to flip the switch. 0: https://www.thenuclearcompany.com https://www.thenuclearcompany.com

joshstrange 1y ago

Wow, I completely missed this when it was published back in 2023. I watched every briefing by the KY Governor and I remember AppHarvest coming up multiple times (9 times according to the daily transcripts people made on Reddit [0]). I remembering thinking how cool of an idea it was and how I really thought this could help our more rural areas. It’s incredibly disappointing that this is how it turned out. Selling workers on the vision that they did and then completely going in the other direction is gross verging on evil. Especially the parts about top execs cashing out while employees and their friends/family invested in what they thought could be their future. [0] https://www.reddit.com/r/Coronavirus_KY/search/?q=Appharvest&cId=d199189c-2dd4-42ff-ab38-4fbed16519e0&iId=99e9dd9b-0e3f-43a9-9d87-4e65747e805e https://www.reddit.com/r/Coronavirus_KY/search/?q=Appharvest...

andrewrn 1y ago
Oh yeah the founder is a bonafide grifter. The worst part? He’s not building a fucking nuclear startup…