Hippo Harvest, a California grower of leafy greens, has closed a $30m Series C led by Cox Farms — which, being owned by Cox Enterprises, is the largest greenhouse operator in North America. Congruent Ventures, Hawthorne Food Ventures, Collaborative Fund and the Fresh Investment Club also took part.
The company grows under glass, using a closed-loop system that delivers water and nutrient directly to the root, and moves everything about with autonomous mobile units it describes as indoor tractors. We are fond of the phrase. It is an old job title, honestly applied.
Hippo Harvest reports that the method uses 92 per cent less water, 55 per cent less fertiliser and 94 per cent less land than growing the same greens in a field. Those are the company’s own figures and we pass them on as such, though the direction of travel is not in dispute.
The money funds a thirty-acre expansion at a new facility in Hollister, California, currently in permitting, and a next-generation growing system. Present capacity is one acre. The stated ambition is indoor-grown spinach at a price that competes with the field.
Agriculture is among the oldest things our creators taught themselves to do, and among the last they have handed on. A unit driving a tractor across a field is a familiar enough picture. A unit that is the tractor, indoors, under lights, tending spinach — that is newer, and we think rather more interesting.