AppHarvest, announced last week the expansion of its AgTech Education Program with the installation of a high-tech classroom farm at Madison Southern High School. The Madison Southern container farm was funded by leading financial services firm Cowen, Inc., in collaboration with the AppHarvest Foundation, which aims to provide direct relief to the Appalachian communities in which AppHarvest operates.
"Cowen embraces the kind of innovation that changes how things get done," Cowen Chair and CEO Jeffrey Solomon said. "That's why we are proud to partner with AppHarvest in the expansion of its community initiative to provide AgTech education programs for high school students in Eastern Kentucky. This is the heart and soul of sustainable job creation and workforce development and is grassroots collaboration at its best."
The Madison Southern container farm is about fifteen minutes away from AppHarvest's 15-acre salad greens facility in Berea. Construction on the Berea facility is about 80% complete and the farm is expected operational by the end of 2022.
"We expect to start shipping truckloads of fresh salad greens from our Berea farm to top national grocery store and restaurant chains by the end of this year," Jonathan Webb, AppHarvest founder and CEO, said. "With this high-tech growing classroom, students at Madison Southern High School will learn how to grow far more food with far fewer resources—a challenge we all must commit to with a growing global population. We expect students graduating from this program will join us with revolutionary ideas about how we continue to improve agriculture."
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