Future of sustainable farming is now growing in Macon

“Farming is really hard. It’s still really hard in (the greenhouse), but we make it a little bit easier through technology,” Cox Farms President Steven Bradley said to the crowd, including state and local officials, who gathered to mark the milestone.

Credit: HYOSUB SHIN / AJC

Credit: HYOSUB SHIN / AJC

Agriculture is Georgia’s top industry, and in recent years the Peach State has become an emerging hub for indoor agriculture. In Macon, BrightFarms grows lettuce that is packaged for sale along with salad kits.

The advanced greenhouses, Bradley said, enable the company to “grow more per acre, and so we’re more resource efficient, both in land and other natural resources. But we can also protect all these vulnerable crops from all these negative environmental events, whether it’s pest or drought or too much rain,” he said. “Because of that success, we’re really setting the global standard now in growing fresh fruits and vegetables, no matter the location or time of year, because we can grow in these greenhouses year-round.”

High-tech ag at work

The 480,000-square-foot glass-enclosed greenhouse is a seemingly endless horizon of emerald green, with varieties of lettuce — green leaf, romaine, butter and others — in various stages of maturity.

Depending on the variety, the plants spend an average of 21 days in this climate-controlled environment, where everything from carbon dioxide to air moisture to lighting is monitored and adjusted for optimal growing conditions. The result is pristine, pesticide-free greens that are never washed or touched by human hands.

Credit: HYOSUB SHIN / AJC

Credit: HYOSUB SHIN / AJC

The process begins in a germination room, where seeds are planted in 17-foot-long “gutters,” each one holding about 300 seeds. After passing through the seeding line, the gutters move down a conveyor belt and into the greenhouse, where they are positioned in lanes that hold up to 1,500 gutters. As the plants grow and mature, the gutters shift down the lane until they are ready to harvest.

Inside the harvesting room, workers look more like scientists than farm hands. To ensure the sanitary setting, each employee wears a lab coat, safety glasses, gloves, hairnet and shoe covers as they monitor the mechanical harvesting process that sees the mature greens pass through a cutter, shaker and sorter, then packed for transport, arriving at some stores within 24 hours of harvest.

The cycle of planting, growing and harvesting is continuous, noted BrightFarms Chief Commercial Officer Abby Prior. As one gutter is moved off the line for harvest, another is cleaned and readied for the next seeding. She also noted that because the produce is seeded, grown, harvested and packed in the same facility, it allows for enhanced food safety compared to produce that is co-mingled with that of other growers.

Credit: HYOSUB SHIN / AJC

Credit: HYOSUB SHIN / AJC

‘Lettuce’ welcome you

Cox, perhaps better known for its holdings in media, cable and the automotive sectors, began investing in control-environment agriculture in 2018 as a strategic partner of BrightFarms. In 2022, it fully acquired BrightFarms and became a strategic partner with Mucci Farms, another greenhouse grower. With a network of more than 700 acres under glass, Cox Farms is now the largest greenhouse farm operation in North America, with produce in more than 12,000 stores.

The search for a BrightFarms hub site in the Southeast region began in 2021. Ultimately, the company settled on vacant land in Macon, near the Middle Georgia Regional Airport.

Credit: HYOSUB SHIN / AJC

Credit: HYOSUB SHIN / AJC

“When we pitched them the idea of a high-tech agriculture facility, they really, really leaned in and wanted to bring us here,” Bradley said. “I think we were the right fit for them, and they were the right fit for us.”

“On behalf of Macon, ‘lettuce’ be the first to welcome you,” quipped Robby Fountain, chair of the Macon-Bibb County Industrial Authority, before reading a proclamation on behalf of Macon Mayor Lester Miller that highlighted the significant investment in the city’s economic future.

This facility currently employs 90 people, but Bradley said that as the market for sustainably grown leafy greens builds, those jobs are expected to increase to 250. The site has the capacity to increase to 32 acres of indoor farming, equating to 1.5 million square feet able to produce 350 million pounds of lettuce annually. That floor space is about the size of Lenox Square mall.

This is the third regional hub BrightFarms has opened within the past year, following on the heels of the Texas and Illinois farms.

“As we build out this more resilient, secure supply chain for the United States, we’re thinking about it regionally. We want to provide food for the regions that we’re in, but we also want to decentralize the food system,” Prior said. “We can use our networks of farms to really ensure a redundant supply chain, and we’re able to do it in a really clean way.”

Credit: HYOSUB SHIN / AJC

Credit: HYOSUB SHIN / AJC

For Alex Taylor, chairman and CEO of Cox Enterprises, the company’s investment in agriculture is a “full circle” moment rooted in the Ohio farm where his great-grandfather, Cox founder James M. Cox, was born in 1870.

“If my great-grandfather were alive today, he would be the happiest person in this room, because we’re back on a farm,” Taylor said. “We’re growing things. We are running the world in a more sustainable way, and we’re making a difference in the world around us.”