Urban farm operates ‘green assembly line’ in the city

Hundred Acre founder, Chris Corkery, has created an endless summer in Milwaukee’s Century City neighborhood.

Founded in 2022, Corkey operates one of Wisconsin’s largest vertical hydroponic urban farms. Tucked inside of a 5,000 square-foot former factory, the company produces 40,000 pounds of non-GMO greens annually, all without pesticides or herbicides.

The farm sells its greens to grocery stores and restaurants all over town and creates a line of ready-made pesto available at Outpost Natural Foods. The revenue-generating company currently has five employees.

Wisconsin agriculture contributes $104.8 billion annually to the state economy. The state has 64,100 working farms.  

Corkery explained the difference between his urban farm and a traditional farm. “It takes 10 weeks outside (for a crop to mature) and it takes 4 weeks inside. We use 95% less water than traditional soil-based farming because the water disappears as runoff,” he said.

“We set up our system as an assembly line,” he continued. “We have 52 equal harvests a year, so we’re open 365 days a year harvesting weekly. We are approximately 35 times more efficient in growing per square foot.”

Corkery, a Brooklyn transplant, made a calculated decision to bring his AgTech company to Milwaukee.

“This market is highly accessible,” he said. “From a startup standpoint, there’s a lot of empty space that’s affordable, so it’s a great match for indoor growing. Navigating the city to do business is a little bit easier. It’s accessible for someone that’s relocating.”

“It doesn’t take a lot to get to know Milwaukee because it’s Small-waukee, right? That’s a benefit because when you’re launching a startup with plans to scale you want to make sure that you can quickly build,” he said. “This is a great market for that type of thing; there’s a manufacturing and agricultural heritage in this state. We see folks want to bring it back and this is what Hundred Acre does. We are indoor AgTech- or vertical hydroponics, whatever you want to call it, it is light manufacturing. We have a green assembly line.”

“When you open a farm like this, you have got to grow the food and sell it to pay the bills. But for us, Hundred Acre is a brand and in the future of that brand the greens are a means to an end. What we’re trying to do is reconstitute personal agency back into the food system…It’s breaking down this toxic food system on a global level and repurposing existing space in distressed areas to grow food and create jobs,” Corkery said.

“Our bold mission statement is to reinvent the food system and the way in which we do that is by creating a decentralized network of smaller inner-city production facilities that bring back that personal agency and local equity in food,” he said.

Corkery sees franchising as the pathway to achieve this mission.

“What better way to scale Hundred Acre than to provide a platform where locals buy in, and they run it with more passion than anyone else because it’s their neighborhood and we just provide the platform and the guidelines so that they can be successful,” he said.

The bootstrapped company announced in January that it plans to relocate to a 10,000-square foot space in Riverwest. The move will allow the farm to scale the operation and increase output.

To learn more about Hundred Acre, connect with the company here