Controlled environment agriculture startup Hippo Harvest says has launched its USDA-certified organic packaged salads.
The new offerings include baby spinach, spring mix, arugula, 50:50 mix, power greens, baby kale, baby romaine, crispy leaf, and tender greens, according to a news release. The product line is available at San Francisco Bay-area retailers, including Amazon Fresh and Gus’s Market, and Hippo Harvest said it plans to expand outside of the Bay Area in the coming year.
The company said the new leafy green product line is from its controlled environment agriculture greenhouse, as well as a hybrid blend of greenhouse and field-grown leafy greens.
Hippo Harvest says its growing system decreases food safety risks including water-borne pathogens, mold and mildew ads its leafy greens grow in a patented closed-loop, non-recirculating direct-to-root fertilizer and watering system. Its modular growing system also allows for tray sanitation between each harvest cycle, according to the release.
Hippo Harvest said it utilizes machine learning and robotic tools to monitor, tend to and harvest plants, and it can customize water, nutrition and monitoring of its modular grow trays to optimize production every 10 square feet of plant growth. The growing system uses 92% less water, 55% less fertilizer and 94% less land compared to conventional in-field production, the company said.
The company said its greenhouse-grown leafy greens have a 30% higher shelf life than traditionally field-grown greens.
Hippo Harvest was founded in 2019 and operates out of its Pescadero, Calif., greenhouse facility.
“Traditional field-grown and greenhouse-grown produce have each had limitations,” Hippo Harvest CEO Eitan Marder-Eppstein said in the release. “Our USDA organic-certified packaged salads provide the best of both worlds as it relates to cost, quality, surety of supply and scalability for both consumers and grocers.”
