"For me, food is tradition, community, family – something that brings people together," said Adam Abadi, operations manager at Harvest London. "It can be something that's lost nowadays where everyone's at desks on their phones or screens, not looking at or engaging with others. We can lose that connection with our food and each other. What we're doing here in Canada Water is an opportunity to change that."
Stood in the company's facility at Corner Corner at Surrey Quays Shopping Centre, the very placement of the farm is part of that mission. The south-east London venue recently celebrated its first birthday and every single visitor to the venue over the past 12 months will have seen its plants basking under their LEDs through the facility's glass walls.
"I've been working in vertical farming for the past six years across London, having got into agriculture in Australia where I was looking at how plants actually grow and the different ways of doing that closer to the consumer," said Adam.
Harvest London was founded by Chris Davies and Matt Chlebek in 2017 and launched its Corner Corner facility in 2025. But what does it actually produce?
"The farm operates all year round, 24-hours a day," said Adam. "We're about 190sq m of space and within that we're able to make use of about 400sq m of growing space because of our vertical design. One of the key questions is how much you can grow in the smallest space possible. One name for what we're doing is 'environment controlled agriculture'.
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