For decades, greenhouse horticulture quietly scaled all the very best device thru global offer chains. In further fresh years, a new generation of vertical farms, new greenhouse units, and excessive-tech systems captured headlines and venture capital with promises of disruption. The new CEA relate surged, then busted and entered the trough of disillusionment — and now the quiz is: what comes subsequent?
To draw this moment, I requested leaders from all the very best device thru the global CEA spectrum — including growers, researchers, technologists, and protection consultants — for his or her boldest predictions for 2026. Their insights hide not factual the save the sector is headed, however the very best device it’s evolving into one thing extra integrated, resilient, and grounded.
🛒 Vertical Farming Joins the Retail Supply Chain
Endre Thesen Harnes, Chief Commercial Officer, Avisomo (Norway)
“2026 will explore the principle sizable-scale integration of vertical farming into retailer offer chains.”
“We’re already seeing signs of this with partnerships devour Avisomo and Coop Norway, or Schwarz Community’s joint venture vertical farms. These aren’t aspect tasks; they are strategic shifts. Great devour how most foremost retailers brought coffee roasting in-rental in the ’80s and ’90s, I imagine food retailers will increasingly extra operate their have vertical farms. This permits retailers to seize supplier margins while aligning with their have-price ambitions and ESG duties. It’s a transformative model, not factual for vertical farming, however for all the food price chain.”
👷 Knowledgeable Labor as Severe Infrastructure
Dedovic Tanja, Senior Regional Specialist on Labor Mobility, IOM MENA (Egypt)
“Across the Heart East and North Africa, quiz for educated labor in Controlled Atmosphere Agriculture is rising sharply. As climate pressures intensify, extra governments and non-public actors are turning to CEA as share of their long-timeframe food security methods.”
“But technology alone won’t drive success. Traders increasingly extra behold educated labor as principal infrastructure — foremost for lowering threat, asserting operational stability, and retaining returns. There might perchance be an accelerating educated labor gap for CEA in the MENA situation and essentially the most resilient tasks will be these that treat workforce building with the an identical urgency as capital funding.” Be taught extra about this here.
🍇 Stable Fruit Flowers Carry Root in Brazil
Ítalo Moraes Rocha Guedes, DSc, CEA Specialist, Embrapa (Brazil)
“My behold is per traits here in Brazil. Greenhouse horticulture and soilless systems will continue expanding all the very best device thru all regions, and never factual for vegetables or ornamentals.”
“We’re already seeing fruit flowers devour figs, passionfruit, desk grapes, and berries gradually migrate into greenhouses throughout sizzling, rainy months, particularly in southern and central regions. Rude climate occasions are turning into too disruptive, and here’s pushing growers to undertake get cultivation. On the artificial hand, excessive vitality fees will additionally drive quiz for substitute vitality sources and climate-trim tech. Brazil’s transition won’t be pushed by novelty; it could maybe maybe maybe be pushed by climate necessity.”
🌾 CEA Expands in Rising Markets with Genetic Precision
Christine R Gould, Founder & CEO, GIGA Futures (Switzerland/World)
“In 2026, CEA will prolong fast all the very best device thru rising markets as countries double down on food sovereignty and security.”
“The most impactful tasks will wander far past leafy greens. We’ll explore controlled environments musty to develop desert-tailored flowers, purposeful and medicinal vegetation, and excessive-price seedlings that give a lift to open air production. That isn’t very factual about yield; it’s about diet, climate resilience, and regional food approach.” “On the an identical time, gene enhancing and subsequent-gen breeding tools will turn out to be foremost enablers, tailoring flowers for compact relate, sooner cycles, and bigger nutrient density indoors. And the smartest tasks will mix into bigger water and vitality ecosystems, using circular helpful resource methods and in the community tailored applied sciences to multiply their price.”
🏙️ Japan’s Plant Factories Develop into Civic Platforms
Dr. Eri Hayashi, Vice President, Japan Plant Factory Affiliation (JPFA) (Japan)
“In 2026, Japan’s plant factories will cross past excessive productiveness and into precision phenotype management, powered by AI, closed-loop systems, and precise-time files.” “These farms are evolving into hybrid platforms, not factual for food production, however for healthcare, education, biotech, and metropolis resilience. They’ll mix with cities as helpful resource-self sustaining nodes, using digital twins to simulate carve building and construct new economic price. In many methods, the line between agriculture, biotech, and public infrastructure is beginning to blur.”
🔧 U.S. Greenhouse Sector Focuses on Retrofits
Gretchen Schimelpfenig, PE, PE, Govt Director, GLASE, Cornell College (USA)
“The U.S. greenhouse commerce is heading trusty into a steep slowdown in new construction. We’re seeing federal protection changes round tariffs and grant funding that have chilled funding, particularly amongst smaller gamers.” “As a substitute, 2026 regularly is the year of retrofits. Growers will focal level on repairing growing old infrastructure, phasing in developed lighting controls, and using sensors and automation tool to lower fees and make stronger effectivity. The smarter operators are auditing their systems now to explain savings that don’t require huge capex.”
🧱 CEA Returns to Its Industrial Roots
Christopher Higgins, President, Hort Americas (USA)
“Controlled Atmosphere Agriculture is, in many methods, returning to the save it began. After I entered the commerce 30 years previously, it changed into as soon as dominated by sizable-scale greenhouses producing staple flowers devour tomatoes, cucumbers, and peppers. I mediate it could maybe maybe maybe wander encourage to that and defend that device for some time.” “After a wave of overextension in vertical farming, we’re seeing a return to this consolidated, capital-atmosphere friendly model—fewer gamers, however extra stability. Until there are most foremost shifts in protection, consumer behavior, or market incentives, this structure will persist.”
🌱 Vertical Farming Rises Again—With Simplicity and Level of interest
Leo Marcelis, Head of Horticulture and Product Physiology, Wageningen College & Research (Netherlands)
“Now that the hype has passed and a lot of vertical farms have long past bankrupt, the sector is slowly rising again—wiser and further focused.”
“Charges are silent rather excessive, so the correct alternatives lie in excessive-price flowers the save added price justifies the top class. It’s foremost to defend systems so simple as capacity and ensure a transparent market exists for what’s being produced. Complexity without quiz is a ineffective discontinue. The next section must prioritize economic realism and focused innovation.”
🏭 CEA + Data Facilities = The Novel Infrastructure Stack
Derek Smith, Govt Director, Useful resource Innovation Institute (USA)
“In 2026, we’ll explore the principle announcement of a sizable, excessive-tech greenhouse cluster in the U.S., colocated with a files heart.” “This isn’t factual about saving vitality. It’s about designing ecosystems the save agriculture and digital infrastructure fragment vitality flows, climate management, and water systems. Right here’s the manner forward for climate-trim planning, and it’s how CEA can scale responsibly and profitably.”
➡️ Register for our upcoming webinar on Data Facilities + CEA on January 14.
🧪 Smarter Grunt, Acknowledging the Previous
Dr. Paul Gauthier, CEA Academic and Researcher (Australia/World)
“After five years of turbulence—closures, overpromises, and pivots—I imagine 2026 will be a extra life like and enthusiastic year for CEA.” “Constructive, we’ll continue to explore restructuring amongst first-generation vertical farms, however we must acknowledge their legacy. They lead the manner for smarter bear, higher nutrient management, and circular systems. In Australia, most foremost assets management firm Centuria has taken a controlling save in the commercial greenhouse sector. In consequence, 2026 is poised to be the year of enlargement in Australia, paving the manner for added trim investments in the global commerce.”
“The next wave will be grounded in lessons realized and constructed for the long-timeframe.”
🏜️ Gulf CEA Ambitions Lose Momentum
Giovanni Angiolini, Regional AgTech Marketing consultant (UAE)
“No matter the massive announcements and long-timeframe food security narratives, 2026 will likely explore a downscaling of CEA funding in the Gulf situation.” “Several sizable tasks are coping with serious headwinds: excessive vitality consumption, unreliable offtake agreements, water management challenges, and an absence of coordinated stakeholder governance. Without stronger alignment between governments, retailers, investors, and tech services, capital will remain cautious—and rightly so.”
🇪🇸 Climate Tension and the Pause of the Seasonal Reset
Germán Fernández Hidalgo, Agronomist, E book, and Influencer (Almería, Spain)
“In Almería, we’re reaching the boundaries of dilapidated greenhouse systems. Thrips parvispinus has turn out to be essentially the most disruptive pest in pepper flowers and is now adapting to others devour cucumber. Farmers as soon as relied on winter to suppress pests — however parvispinus is now packed with life even shut to 0°C, hiding deep in plant crowns. The seasonal reset is long past.”
“Climate substitute is intensifying this rigidity with longer droughts, shorter winters, and further incorrect heat. Meanwhile, Europe’s tightening regulations are lowering available tools, at the same time as growers compete with countries running below looser principles.”
“In 2026, growers won’t undertake CEA as a result of it’s new — they’ll undertake it as a result of it’s principal. Stable climates, tighter biosecurity, and predictable production will be principal.
🦾 Automation is the Best Design Ahead
Dr. Jouke Campen, Global Project Manager, Wageningen College & Research (Netherlands)
“As extra countries stamp food security and climate-resilient production, CEA will prolong all the very best device thru extra carve kinds. But the bottleneck is labor.”
“Automation and mechanization will be principal. Labor remains to be the very best running price, and in many regions it’s increasingly extra scarce. Whether or not it’s robotic-assisted harvesting or AI-powered irrigation, 2026 will be a tipping level for mechanized alternatives going mainstream.”
Robotics and automation study at Wageningen College & Research
🫀 CEA Embraces Its Perform as Properly being Infrastructure
Nona Yehia, Co-Founder & CEO, Vertical Harvest Farms (USA)
“CEA will pause defending itself as factual an ag-tech vertical and step fully into its position as principal civic infrastructure.”
“We’re already seeing food systems linked to public health outcomes—‘Meals Is Medication’ programs, workforce inclusion, measurable diet. Farms won’t factual be judged on output; they’ll be measured by workforce resilience. AI will quietly join the dots between biology, vitality, labor, and health outcomes, making the system auditable and honest. The CEA operators that succeed in 2026 will be these that act devour stewards, not startups.”
🧗 Enlightenment, After the Disillusionment
Sam Bertram, CEO & Co-Founder, OnePointOne (USA)
“We’re finally climbing the Slope of Enlightenment. The vertical farming hype cycle brought huge effort, however it additionally brought readability.”
“2026 will be about demonstrating superior product quality, securing economics excellent for mission financing, and staying laser-fervent on geography and carve selection. The susceptible pores and skin has been shed. The CEA product is simply too solid—handsome, native, nutritious—to be denied its long-timeframe save in the food system.”
🧭 CEA Will Be Masterplanned from the Launch
Henry Gordon-Smith, CEO, Agritecture (Novel York Metropolis)
“In 2026, Controlled Atmosphere Agriculture will evolve past being handled as a retrofit. This could maybe maybe also also be designed from the delivery — a core characteristic of masterplanned developments in save of an afterthought.”
“Think files facilities with integrated farms. Dapper cities with modular greenhouse nodes. Regional food hubs colocated with ruin-to-vitality vegetation, and public institutions. But additionally: agritourism accommodations with on-draw production, free zones for ag-tech innovation, and complete new cities constructed with circular food systems embedded from the ground up.”
“At Agritecture, we’re already working with cities, developers, and institutional customers to compose this imaginative and prescient precise — embedding CEA into planning processes each physically and digitally, and redefining how food infrastructure is deliberate, financed, and scaled in the twenty first century.”
🙏 Thank You to Our Contributors
A mountainous thank you to the 18 global consultants who joined me to fragment their insights for this piece. Their predictions deem not most arresting regional realities, however a shared imaginative and prescient for how CEA can evolve — into one thing extra resilient, extra integrated, and further impactful in 2026.
🔍 What’s Trending Across the Predictions?
- 🔄 Convergence is here — Greenhouses and vertical farms are mixing, not competing.
- ⚠️ Necessity over novelty — CEA is now a response to climate, not factual a tech wager.
- 👷 Labor = infrastructure — Knowledgeable workforce are foremost for stability and returns.
- 💡 Smarter spending — Retrofits and integration are replacing moonshots.
- 🌍 Local first — Success depends on regional adaptation, not reproduction-paste units.
- 🏙️ Constructed into cities — CEA is coming into masterplans, not factual warehouses.
- 🧾 Coverage friction — Regulation is shaping winners and losers.
- 🫀 Meals as public excellent — Properly being, fairness, and sovereignty are rising KPIs.
💬 Which prediction resonated most with you?
🤝 Let’s Work Together
Even as you occur to might perchance maybe also very smartly be growing a CEA or climate-trim agriculture mission, book a time with me to explore how Agritecture can provide a lift to your targets: 👉 Time desk an Intro Name
发布者：BY Christopher Karlsson Maria Outze，转转请注明出处：https://robotalks.cn/2026-in-focus-global-experts-predict-the-future-of-cea/
