80 Acres Farms co-founder speaks at FSB about growth, future
Former executive traded corporate career for startup operation that's changing the way food is farmed
Ten years ago, Tisha Livingston walked away from a high-powered corporate career to start something radically different: a vertical farming company. Today, as co-founder and CEO of 80 Acres Farms, Livingston is helping redefine what it means to grow food sustainably and locally.
“I left the food industry after 30 years because I believed agriculture needed a digital reset,” Livingston told students at her Supply Chain Executive Speaker Series talk at the Farmer School of Business. “We have climate volatility, labor shortages, nutrition challenges all over the globe, and wasteful supply chains. It was very worrisome to me. I felt like we needed to make a change, and the only way to make a change is to stand up and do something about it.”
A Vision for Local, Sustainable Food
Livingston said her vision is simple: everyone should have access to fresh, local, great-tasting food year-round. “Food should taste great,” she said. “If it doesn’t taste great, it doesn’t matter how sustainable or nutritious it is, people aren’t going to buy it.”
That belief drives 80 Acres Farms’ mission to grow wholesome, pesticide-free produce close to where people live, Livingston said. Traditional supply chains, she explained, are “inefficient and wasteful,” noting that by the time a salad grown in California reaches a store in Ohio, it’s already 11 days old – and has lost nearly half of its nutritional value.
“Our big idea was to completely abolish the supply chain,” Livingston said. “We built farms with processing, packaging, and distribution all in one place – next to the retailer. That way, we can get the product to the consumer in one or two days instead of 11.”
The idea behind vertical farming is growing crops in vertically and horizontally stacked layers, rather than in a traditional farm field. It tends to incorporate controlled environments that aim to optimize plant growth, as well as soilless farming techniques such as hydroponics, aquaponics, and aeroponics.
Technology Meets Biology
At the heart of 80 Acres’ success is innovation. Livingston said the company integrates engineering, biology, and technology to create “the perfect day every day” for plants. Its farms use LED lighting, sensors, AI, and machine learning to monitor and optimize growth conditions, she said.
“We’re trying to create autonomous growing,” Livingston said. “We built our own platform, called GrowLoop, to track every plant’s growth cycle. It uses AI to optimize light, fertilizer, and irrigation – helping plants photosynthesize faster and grow more efficiently.”
By collecting and analyzing massive amounts of data, she said, the company has achieved impressive results: 70% compounded annual yield growth since 2018 and 50 times more production since 2021, with only a sevenfold increase in labor.
“Our farmers might be under 30 years old,” Livingston explained, “but they get 2,500 growth cycles a year. That’s 2,500 chances to learn and improve. We monitor, analyze, and learn on every cycle.”
Collaboration Over Competition
While she said many startups in the vertical farming boom of 2021 raised hundreds of millions of dollars, Livingston noted that most have since disappeared. She credits 80 Acres’ longevity to frugality and focus. “We were very frugal with the capital we raised,” she said. “We treated the company like a manufacturing company with strict rules, not a tech company. We focused on KPIs, unit economics, and consistency.”
A major factor in the company’s stability has been its partnership with Kroger, the nation’s largest grocery retailer, Livingston said, explaining that using data from Kroger’s demand signals, 80 Acres tailors its seeding, harvesting, and delivery schedules to match consumer need, ensuring fresher produce and less waste.
“We give Kroger exactly what they need, when they need it,” Livingston said. “The product you get at Kroger is the freshest product available, because we're taking their demand, and we're translating that into a seeding plan and a pack plan and a harvest plan and a delivery plan to the store.”
From Lettuce to a Full Product Line
What began as two small farms has grown into a network spanning Ohio, Kentucky, Texas, Colorado, Georgia, and South Carolina, with research centers in Israel, the Netherlands, and Arkansas. The product line now includes not only leafy greens but also herbs, microgreens, tomatoes, and salad kits.
“In 10 years, we’ve gone from growing a couple of lettuces to having a full product line,” Livingston said. “We’ve gone from being a niche to being meaningful within the retail refrigerated space.”
Complementing Traditional Agriculture
Livingston was quick to point out that vertical farming isn’t replacing traditional agriculture – it’s complementing it. “We work side by side with open-field farmers,” she said. “We can grow crops close to populations and provide young plants that help outdoor farmers increase their yields and improve nutrition.”
That collaborative mindset extends to global challenges as well. Livingston said 80 Acres is exploring projects from growing edible flowers and flavor ingredients to supporting reforestation and carbon capture initiatives in the Middle East. “The technology is cross-purpose,” she said. “It gets me super excited about the future.”
Looking Ahead
Even after a decade of growth, Livingston says she’s only getting started. The company is now using its GrowLoop platform to expand its impact beyond its own facilities.
"I've been able to successfully put that system on top of other people's assets, on other companies' technology, and be able to drive profitability in those farms," she said. "Being able to drive other assets that aren't standard to ours to profitability has really been the name of the game, because in bad times, when there's all of this excess capacity out there, whether because people went out of business or they decided that they wanted to sell their company, we were able to pick up a lot of capacity for very little money."
For Livingston, it all comes back to purpose. “Together, we can change the way the world eats,” she said. “We really can make an impact. It’s been a journey, but I couldn’t imagine doing anything else.”
