A New Way To Grow

A vertical farm in Avondale is growing produce to address lack of nutrition and develop pharmaceuticals — without using any soil.

In a cluster of industrial buildings, surrounded by companies including a 3D manufacturer and a packager, across the street from Universal Technical Institute, sits a farm.

Inside this farm is not soil and tractors. Rather, enclosed in a warehouse is a glass greenroom of sorts, beaming with a pink hue, highlighted by a robotic system moving vegetation across modular units. It’s a futuristic-looking habitat growing crops in a facility that would otherwise be barren.

It’s the vertical farm of OnePointOne and its subsidiary Willo Farm, whose 1,000 square-foot indoor facility grows the equivalent of about 80,000 square feet of traditionally farmed produce using 95% less water. The company uses technology to grow produce ranging from microgreens, herbs and mushrooms to strawberries and leafy greens.

With strict light, humidity, air flow, irrigation and temperature controls, with rigorous management of nutrient concentration, with soilless hydroponics … is this an agriculture company? Is it a tech business? A bit of both?

“OnePointOne is the tech company and Willo is the produce company,” said co-founder and co-owner Sam Bertram, who earned a robotics degree from Santa Clara University after moving to the United States from Australia to play tennis.

“Nutrients come from plants, and we need to get better plants to the people. We have to figure out a new way to grow. Because agriculture is extremely geographically constrained,” Bertram said. “If we grow indoors, we can grow anywhere. And if we can grow anywhere, we can get higher quality plants into people's mouths.”

Sam and his brother John sought to tackle the biggest problem the world was facing. They learned that at the start of the millennium, 1.1 billion people faced malnutrition. In many cases, micronutrients either weren’t accessible, degraded too quickly, or lost nutrients as the produce moved through the distribution network.

“We've got 40 or 60 productive years. Let's just go after the biggest problem possible,” Bertram said.

They went after A New Way To Grow.

What is vertical farming?

Around the world, about 673 million people experienced hunger and 2.3 billion people faced food insecurity in 2024. The good news: the hunger number is down 8.5% from the year prior. The bad news: Food insecurity has grown by over 300 million since 2019.

Bertram sees opportunity to use vertical farming to increase amounts of food, proximity to consumers, and the availability of micronutrients. By placing vertical farms closer to consumers, the number of days between harvest and consumption is reduced, helping the produce retain nutritional value.

“If we grow indoors, we can grow anywhere. And if we can grow anywhere, we can get higher quality plants into people's mouths.”

Vertical farming raises crops in stacked layers rather than spread over acres of fields. Irrigation systems, HVAC, and LED lights create a controlled environment, allowing for year-round growth. By controlling the variables that are typically subject to the effects of nature, OnePointOne can change the environment to alter how the plant can express itself. Whole Foods approached Willo to bring beet greens to provide all the nutrients to customers, without the starch-rich root. After six months of research, OnePointOne delivered.

This process also helps advance pharmaceutical manufacturing.

Many medicines are manufactured inside cells. With indoor farming, companies like OnePointOne produce complex molecules through the plants.

“Once they discover those molecules, we can tell our plants, ‘We need you to produce these molecules,’ squeeze those molecules out of the plants, and then you've got an inexpensive, accessible medicine at a very, very low cost,” Bertram said.

While vertical farming offers advantages, it is not intended to replace traditional outdoor farming.

“Some of the best use cases are to supplement the outdoor farm,” Bertram said.

Why did OnePointOne select Greater Phoenix?

OnePointOne originated in Silicon Valley before targeting a new base for operations.

The company narrowed in on Arizona and found Avondale, a city of just under 100,000 people that is expected to grow by over 20% over the next decade. Bertram cited availability and cost of real estate and electricity as big considerations for the location. Additionally, with its proximity to Southern California, OnePointOne has access to a market of 20 million people within six hours.

Beyond the price and proximity was the makeup of Greater Phoenix and its governmental base.

“If you're trying to build something, you have to interact with the real world — the world of atoms, not bits,” Bertram said. “Having a government that is actually friendly to the development of businesses and technologies is invaluable.”

“The ethos of this state and the ethos of this city is much more innovation-friendly than most places. It's something that I hear the local government talk about much more regularly than I did [in other locations],” Bertram said.

That’s especially important for a company using novel methods to blend tech and agriculture. OnePointOne doesn’t use pesticides, has installed a fleet of robots that image and move the plants around the facility as needed, and uses very particular measurements for the care of its products. In this convergence of software and hardware innovation, the business must work alongside the local government.

“If you're trying to build something, you have to interact with the real world — the world of atoms, not bits,” Bertram said. “Having a government that is actually friendly to the development of businesses and technologies is invaluable.”

The market has responded well. OnePointOne has raised about $81 million, and their product is sold through Arizona Whole Foods and distributed statewide through Shamrock Foods. By complementing traditional agriculture from Greater Phoenix and using less space and less water to grow nutritious food closer to consumers, the Bertrams are addressing one of the world’s biggest problems by finding a new way to grow.