On 100 acres of land outside Temple, an agricultural revolution is underway. And it doesn't require a tractor, a plow, or even a shovel.
Last summer, Revol Greens, the largest lettuce greenhouse grower in North America, opened a sprawling 20-acre facility in the Central Texas town that can produce as much as 24,000 pounds of lettuce a day. To put that into perspective, that is almost the equivalent of how much lettuce can grow on 1 acre of traditional farmland in an entire year.
Greenhouse farming, known as controlled environment agriculture (or CEA), isn't new, but Revol has implemented cutting-edge technologies that reduce the risk of crop failure and food-borne illnesses in an industry that has been plagued with food safety issues. Over the past 20 years, scores of Americans have been hospitalized due to E. coli tied to lettuce production, including a 2019 outbreak that led to the hospitalization of 85 people in 27 states.
"It's crazy to think that we can grow lettuce 365 days a year, no matter if it's negative 30 degrees and there's a foot of snow on the ground, or if it's 105 degrees for a month straight," Vice President of Operations John Carkoski says.
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