US vertical farms collapsed. Landlords are stuck with the grow racks.
Fourteen indoor-farming and CEA (controlled-environment agriculture, the umbrella term for warehouse-grown crops) companies went bankrupt in the United States in 2025 alone — Plenty in March after raising about $1 billion, Bowery Farming in November 2024 after $700 million, Freight Farms in April, plus AppHarvest, Fifth Season and AeroFarms. The buildings they leased were converted tilt-up warehouses (cheap, fast concrete shells) around Pittsburgh, Cleburne TX, Locust Grove GA, Richmond VA and Compton CA, custom-fitted with steel grow racks, automated trays and grow lights. When the tenant fails, the landlord gets the keys back and the equipment too. None of it is worth anything where it sits, and no normal warehouse tenant will take the building until it is gone.
01The pain
When AeroFarms walked away from its 136,000-square-foot Danville, Virginia facility in December 2025, the landlord got the keys back and walked the building. Inside: eight tiers of steel grow racks bolted to the slab, an automated conveyor that shuttles trays between the levels, miles of fertigation pipe (the water-and-nutrient plumbing), bespoke heating-and-cooling ductwork, and a ceiling of LED canopies. None of it has resale value where it sits.5
Fourteen indoor-farming and CEA (controlled-environment agriculture, the umbrella term for warehouse-grown crops) companies went bankrupt in the United States in 2025 alone. Plenty filed Chapter 11 (a court-supervised reorganisation that often becomes a shutdown) in March 2025 after raising about $1 billion.2 Bowery Farming followed in November 2024 after roughly $700 million. Freight Farms went into Chapter 7 (a straight liquidation) in April 2025.3 The buildings they leased were tilt-up warehouses (cheap, fast concrete shells) around Pittsburgh, Locust Grove and Compton, custom-fitted to grow lettuce.1
No US contractor markets a turnkey teardown of one of these buildings. General demolition crews price the job as if every fixture is scrap. Liquidation auctioneers will sell the LED canopies and the racks but will not rip them out.4 Mechanical contractors handle one trade at a time. Landlords end up project-managing four or five subcontractors themselves while paying the mortgage on an empty 80,000-square-foot building for nine to eighteen months.
Further reading
- 1 FoodLore — long-form explainer on why the first wave of US vertical-farming companies went bankrupt: capex burn, unit-economics gap against field lettuce, fragility of the bespoke building fit-out: foodlore.blog
- 2 TechCrunch — reporting on Plenty's March 2025 Chapter 11 filing after raising close to $1 billion from SoftBank, Walmart and Jeff Bezos; status of the Compton CA facility and the Richmond VA strawberry pivot: techcrunch.com
- 3 VerticalFarmDaily — Freight Farms' April 2025 Chapter 7 liquidation, including what happens to the deployed container farms and the supplier base after a sudden wind-down: verticalfarmdaily.com
- 4 Greenhouse Product News — coverage of a vertical-farm equipment liquidation auction at a Georgia facility (Locust Grove area), showing what auction houses will and will not handle when a CEA company unwinds: gpnmag.com
- 5 CoStar — commercial real estate trade press on the AeroFarms bankruptcy filing, the Danville VA facility shutdown and the broader pattern of stranded tenant-improvement assets in industrial buildings leased to vertical-farming tenants: costar.com
02Who solves this today
We searched for a US company that runs the operating-business shape this gap calls for: a single crew — riggers, electricians, plumbers, heating-and-cooling techs, demolition equipment and an equipment-resale broker — that takes a returned vertical-farming facility from "keys back" to "bare warehouse, ready to lease" on one fixed-price contract. We searched the vendor product pages of national plant-decommissioning firms (BBJ Group, USA Decommissioning, D.H. Griffin, APTIM, USW Industrial, Schneider Industries, R. Baker & Son), the warehouse-decommissioning specialists (PeakLogix and the pallet-rack tear-down crews), the CEA design-build firms (ARCO/Murray, MORR, Agritecture) and the auction houses that show up at indoor-farm liquidations. None of them concretely markets a turnkey vertical-farm teardown product. The plant-decommissioning firms can do it as one of many industrial jobs but treat it as a custom RFP, not a productised service. The CEA design-build firms build these facilities; they do not unbuild them. The auction houses sell the LED canopies and the rolling racks but do not rip them out or restore the slab and the roof penetrations.
This is an open opportunity for founders. The demand is concentrated and visible — fourteen US indoor-farm bankruptcies in 2025, roughly $2 billion of failed venture capital stranded in identifiable buildings around Pittsburgh, Cleburne, Locust Grove, Richmond and Compton, and an industrial REIT and family-office landlord base that wants to lease the buildings out as plain warehouses again. What is missing is the operator: a single crew with the full trade stack, a price list per square foot, and an asset-resale partner who pays the landlord back for whatever the auction recovers. If you build, or know, a company that actually runs this shape in the US, email contact@aikraft.com and we will list them.
No companies listed yet — get on this page. This page is in no-solver-yet mode: we could not find a vendor whose product page concretely addresses US industrial-landlord vertical-farm decommissioning at scale. If you build or know a company that does, write to us and we will list them within 7 business days. If you are already listed elsewhere on bizpain.org and want a correction or removal, that runs through the same channel. Email contact@aikraft.com.
Operators discussing this
US industrial landlords, ex-CEA operators and equipment brokers discuss this pain on the r/verticalfarming subreddit. The threads below are real operators talking to real operators in their own words. They are the reason this page exists.
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«Most of these buildings are converted warehouse & distribution buildings (call them industrial tilt ups) that cannot be re-leased with all of the equipment that was required. These farm company BKs are creating significant challenges for building owners holding the bag on restoration of these buildings.»
"Most of these buildings are converted warehouse and distribution buildings — what the trade calls industrial tilt-ups — that cannot be re-leased with all of the required equipment still in them. These farm-company bankruptcies are creating significant challenges for building owners holding the bag on restoration."
r/verticalfarming — "Are there any building owners here who have had to deal with farms being returned to them?" — OP plus 8 comments from industrial landlords, ex-CEA operators and equipment brokers naming the same building-restoration pain (thread submitted 23 May 2025).
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«tldr: american vertical farming startup Plenty was launched in 2014 with great promise. they attracted investments from SoftBank, Walmart, and Jeff Bezos, raising nearly $1 billion. however, in March 2025, Plenty filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.»
"In short: the American vertical-farming startup Plenty launched in 2014 with great promise. It attracted investment from SoftBank, Walmart and Jeff Bezos, raising close to $1 billion. In March 2025, Plenty filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection."
r/verticalfarming — "what happened to Plenty?" — 17 comments from industry watchers tracing failure modes including the leftover Compton CA facility and the Richmond VA pivot, within the last 14 months.
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«News article from earlier today: https://igrownews.com/aerofarms-files-for-chapter-11-bankruptcy-protection-ceo-steps-down/»
"News article from earlier today: AeroFarms files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, CEO steps down."
r/verticalfarming — "Vertical Farming voluntary chapter 11 bankruptcy proceeding — CEO Steps down" — AeroFarms Chapter 11 discussion from 2023, establishing the multi-year recurrence arc (2023 AeroFarms → 2024 Bowery → 2025 Plenty / Freight Farms / Eden Green / AeroFarms-VA shutdown).
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