Des Moines Register
Forget Iowa's rich and abundant soil. If the future is growing lettuce vertically indoors, then the future is now.
Tucked in a spacious room at the Iowa State University Research Park are walls upon walls of lettuce hugging shelves upon shelves of microgreens and tomato plants.
The indoor farm, called Nebullam, offers a startup subscription service for free delivery of fresh-grown produce to residents' doorsteps throughout the Ames and Des Moines metros.
Co-founder Clayton Mooney knows that feeding hundreds of people with walls of lettuce grown indoors seems improbable in a state famous for its endless fields of corn and soybeans. But it's a system he said he and fellow founder Danen Pool believe is the shape of things to come.