Robots Take Vertical Farming to New Heights
Braddock, Pa., is where Andrew Carnegie first mass-produced steel. The city, now one-tenth its former size, is home to a new kind of industry: robotic farms that grow greens inside buildings.
June 28, 2021 •
Greens leave the grow room at robot farm Fifth Season, ready for harvest.
(Fifth Season)A decades-long decline of industry in Braddock has left the western Pennsylvania town in ruins. Ten miles upriver from Pittsburgh in the Mon (Monongahela) Valley, most of the city’s factories, businesses and homes were abandoned long ago and leveled. Among the ruins, a sprawling steel mill, built by Andrew Carnegie in 1874, is still producing slabs of steel, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. It’s stained blue walls and maze of giant, rust-colored pipes and vents stand in contrast to the brand-new, block-long, gleaming white structure directly across the street. The mill’s neighbor is Fifth Season, a vertical farm growing greens indoo
As Fetterman embarks on a well-funded campaign for Pennsylvania’s 2022 U.S. Senate race, his record in Braddock is both his bedrock and a thorn in his side. Because when you talk to the people who live in Braddock and know the former mayor’s work well, complicated feelings emerge.