USA - Pennsylvania: A High-Fech Farm Blooms in a Former Industrial Town
Aliquippa-based GetBlok Farms opened a Veggie Vault in the Strip District this month
GetBlok Farms is housed in two trailers beside an abandoned school in West Aliquippa, Beaver County.
If you drove by the weed-strewn lot in West Aliquippa, you might not give a second thought to the two white shipping containers there. Or if you did, you might think: Storage facilities? Meth labs, maybe?
But you would be way off base. This Beaver County community, part of the city of Aliquippa — which only a little over a year ago exited financially distressed status after 36 years — is home to a technological marvel. Or rather, two.
Those twin containers are in fact new-wave hydroponic farms that together produce about the equivalent of 5 acres of produce. They sprang from the hyperactive brain of tech entrepreneur Vinnie Lima, and are cultivated by software and nourished with data.
Aliquippa is a city known mainly as the former site of a Jones and Laughlin Steel mill, which closed in 1984 and was demolished a few years later. Since then, many local businesses have shut down or left, though the city continues to produce professional football players, including three Hall of Famers.
Local strawberries in March? Technology makes it possible
Sono Motoyama has been a Post-Gazette food writer since September 2024.
She has written about food, health and technology for a variety of publications in the U.S. and Europe.