"The first thing you notice is the smell," said Henry Sztul, Bowery Farming's chief science officer, excitedly. "It smells like that, right?"

When you enter Farm Zero, there is an instinctive sensory memory that will touch you. This is a Proust moment that transcends the senses after many years of living in a big city. It smells like a greenhouse and a planting room: fresh and vibrant, in stark contrast to the world outside the Carney Building in New Jersey.

Years of indoor agricultural breakthroughs have made the planting of green leafy vegetables larger and larger-and ultimately profitable.

As I walked through the three active vertical farms and research facilities at Bowery Farming, my mind was filled with questions about climate change and the potential for sustainable vertical agriculture. However, in the final analysis, it is the taste, and yes, the smell will drive the success of the company-and the industry as a whole.

We wear clean room overalls and hair nets. The watches and jewels are gone, and the soles of our shoes are still damp in the disinfectant. "Here, we have a completely enclosed environment," Sztul continued. "We control temperature, humidity, carbon dioxide, water flow, nutrients, light levels. When I say light level, I mean the color of the spectrum, the intensity of light, the light cycle, the day and night cycle."

Unlike traditional software products, inventing products is a completely different job. The disturbance of Bowery's vertical farm input may result in completely different flavor characteristics of the leafy green vegetables it distributes.

In the second part of this TC-1, I will introduce how the company conducted experiments on Farm Zero and how it named Farm X, how it developed new production lines as it expanded beyond leafy vegetables, and how it helped the city 21 Century, while expanding its newer Farm One production facility.

Smell is the first feeling, but what really attracts you is the sight. Right in front of me is the planting system of vertical agriculture. This is a scaffolding setup with a row of leafy vegetables nestled in a long tray and lit by bright LED lights. According to the company's estimates, PVC pipes meander up and down to transport water that circulates through the system—compared to traditional planting, each farm can save 15 to 20 million gallons of water per year.

Planting trays are bathed in sunlight at Bowery Farming. Image source: Brian Heater

Planting trays are bathed in sunlight at Bowery Farming. Image source: Brian Heater

The entire room is part of a closed irrigation system that circulates nutrient-rich liquid to all plants. Bowery says that even the water lost from plants' natural perspiration can be captured by its HVAC system and recirculated back into the loop.

The blazing lights formed a sharp contrast with the gloomy industrial park outside, but even indoors, the vision was somewhat difficult to reconcile. The small pods of bright green vegetation almost exist in the laboratory environment. The strange juxtaposition of nature and synthesis illustrates the core of what vertical agriculture is trying to do-effectively invading 10,000 years of agricultural knowledge.