By Theresa Knapp 

While shopping in the salad section of your local supermarket you are likely to see a plastic container that says, “locally grown without pesticides in Millis, Massachusetts.” 

Those leafy greens were grown in a vertical farm named “Crop One Holdings” located behind the former Ann & Hope and packaged under the label “FreshBox Farms.” Their greens are grown year-round and without pesticides, herbicides or fungicides. They wholesale to stores in Millis, Bellingham, Natick, and Boston. 

Crop One was founded in 2012 in standard shipping containers containing grow rooms, then moved to the Millis facility in 2015. 

“We’re a small local company but we have big plans for expansion,” says Jackie Hynes, Director of Marketing and Communications at Crop One. “We started in Millis, this is our headquarters, but it’s really the beginning of something much bigger.” 

Hynes says the company hopes to share its technique to grow “good quality food made with care” across the United States so even more people can have “fresh local and safe food that was grown around the corner with no pesticides they can get all year round, regardless of climate and other things related to conventional farming.” 

Hynes, who has been with the company for four years, explains that vertical farming utilizes nutrient-rich water and LED lights to grow plants in a completely sealed “envelope” which is bug-free and weather resistant. 

According to its website, the company uses “95 percent less than what’s required in outdoor farms” and their “on-site multi-step water purification system removes unwanted contaminants, chemicals, and heavy metals.” 

The four-step process is also explained: non-GMO seeds are germinated; plants are transplanted into modular growth units; plants are grown with the right recipe of light, nutrients, environmental controls to optimal stage for harvest; and greens are packaged on-site and shipped to local retailers. 

By using their farm manager software, “we can trace the greens on your plate back to the original seed.” 

For more information, visit www.freshboxfarms.com.