Agriculture tech startup closes in Nottingham, laying off 83 people

Celebrity Chef José Andrés looks at produces from Bowery Farming’s Nottingham farm after touring the facility with Gov. Wes Moore, company founder and CEO Irving Fain and other officials. Kenneth K. Lam/Staff

Agriculture tech startup Bowery Farming closed its facility in Nottingham earlier this month, laying off 83 employees, according to the Maryland Department of Labor.

The notification by the department stated that as of Nov. 1, the facility would no longer be in operation. The company’s facility in Pennsylvania closed that day as well — laying off 104 employees.

Bowery Farming specialized in using technology to grow leafy vegetables like lettuce indoors without pesticides.

The New York-based company was founded in 2015, and its facilities provided “100x more produce per square foot of land than traditional farms with the same footprint with 100% renewable energy and 90% less water,” according to its website.

Bowery Farms’ products hit the market in 2016, and the company raised over $700 million in venture capital from investors like First Round Capital, General Catalyst, Google Ventures, GGV Capital, Fidelity and Temasek. At its peak, the indoor farming company was valued at over $2 billion.

Products from Bowery Farms were sold to more than 2,600 grocery stores and e-commerce platforms, such as Giant, Walmart, Whole Foods and Amazon.

World Central Kitchen nonprofit founder and celebrity chef José Andrés called the company the “future of farming,” during his visit to the Maryland facility with Gov. Wes Moore in March.

The company purported that what made its farming different from other farm retailers — outside of its technological process — was the taste and quality. Founder Irving Fain has said the company’s kale avoids the “leathery, gritty taste” common to the crop and that the spinach “has a little sweetness to it” along with the strawberries that have a “jammy texture.”

However, Axios reported that the company struggled to survive due to consumers being unwilling to pay higher prices for more sustainable and more expensive produce.

With mounting financial struggles, the farm company reportedly took on a $150 million debt in 2022 — two years after opening its farm in Nottingham in 2020. Axios reported that the debt “weighed heavily” on the company and that last year, the company underwent multiple rounds of layoffs.

Baltimore Sun reporter Amanda Yeager contributed to this article.

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