In May 2025, one of the most well-known names in the container farming industry filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy protection. The company listed over $7 million in liabilities and disclosed an alarming $600,000 in assets in its court filings. Does this surprising but not unexpected move mark a significant shift in the controlled environment agriculture space? Not really, but it certainly does for their farmers who have depended on Freight Farms technology, services, and infrastructure to operate their farms. 

The Chapter 7 bankruptcy process involves liquidating the company’s remaining assets to satisfy creditors, which basically means they left everyone completely high and dry. FYI: According to their bankruptcy filing, right before the filing, the last two CEOs got a $500,000 windfall and the CFO got $300,000 while all their customers lost their deposits. All the vendors are unsecured creditors, they’ll get nothing. And even their employees are owed wages for the final days before the surprise bankruptcy filing. In my opinion, that’s a shame. I’m sure that the executives knew well in advance that there were problems and they probably should have suspended all sales efforts and slowly began to wind down the company.  

In the past year many Vertical Farming companies like Freight Farms have ceased operations. In most cases the investors pulled the plug or the operators couldn’t access more funding. PlantLab, Fifth Season, Upward Farms, SMARTKAS, Kalera, Bowery Farms, AppHarvest and others are all gone. After many rounds of funding, Aerofarms and Plenty filed for bankruptcy as well, although they’ve been able to reorganize. (We’ll see how that turns out)  InFarm, one of Europe’s rising stars is now a small local leafy greens grower with one location.  

About 10 years I heard someone say, “Venture Capital is Venture Capital Punishment”. I’ve never forgotten those words of wisdom. Ag in any form will never be a potential VC investment. It’s a slow and steady game: providing high volume low margin commodity crops. No CEA operation will ever provide a 10X return and no farm will never be the next Facebook or Paypal. The days of inflated Silicon Valley valuations and easy money are gone. I’m not sorry to see them go. Hopefully the future of CEA will be bright and filled with operators that are in it with passion, honesty, integrity and for the right reasons.