As the world population grows, food demand grows alongside it. According to a report from Global Market Insights, the controlled environment agriculture (CEA) market will reach $168.7 billion in value by 2032. These numbers indicate that growing indoors will gain more traction over the next decade.

Climate change is a key driver of this growth, as it makes traditional farming challenging and unreliable.

In the U.S., certain fruits and vegetables can only grow in specific states year-round due to their required growing conditions. Take strawberries, for example. Approximately 90% of strawberries grown in the U.S. come from California due to its warm, sunny climate and fertile soil.

A strawberry shipped thousands of miles arrives with barely a week of shelf life left. And since that strawberry was harvested a week prior, it loses most of its flavor and ripeness before it even reaches the grocery store shelf.

The Case for Indoor Growing

Growing produce in greenhouses and indoor farms makes shelf life less of a concern.

When fruits and vegetables are grown locally, they’re typically harvested the day before—sometimes sooner. This means the crop in question will taste better, fresher, and last much longer.

Purchasing produce that’s past its peak is one of the largest contributors to food waste. As soon as lettuce starts to brown and wilt, it typically gets thrown in the trash. The longer it takes for lettuce to reach that point, the less food will go to waste.

This ties directly back to food miles, or the total distance food travels from the farm to the final consumer.

While vertical farming has plenty of promise, it has earned a polarizing reputation in the CEA industry.

Addressing the Elephant in the Room

CEA is leading the charge on local food production, but despite its potential, the industry hasn’t gotten good press in the last decade.

Growing food indoors—especially in vertical farms—is not easy or inexpensive. Unlike greenhouses, which use both sunlight and supplemental lighting, everything in a vertical farm is completely controlled.

Growers generate CO2 and lighting while controlling temperature and automation to match their crops’ specific growing needs. To get a vertical farm off the ground, it needs high capital investment from outside vendors. On top of that, operating costs are higher than greenhouses, high tunnels, and traditional farming. Combined, both of these factors have been the primary cause of 14 indoor farm bankruptcies in 2025.

Regardless of the bad press vertical farms have received in recent years, many CEA professionals still believe that this sector of the industry has a bright future.

“What’s emerging now is not a failed industry, it’s a filtered one,” Nona Yehia, co-founder and CEO of Vertical Harvest Farms, wrote in a LinkedIn post. “The question is no longer whether vertical farming can exist. The question is who is willing to build it properly, because the need is not theoretical.”

The need for greenhouses and vertical farms is undeniable. But those that succeed match the right crop to their growing environment.

Choosing the Right Crops Is Essential

Not every crop is built for indoor growing—there are a select few that thrive in greenhouses and vertical farms.

Take a look at any CEA operation, and it probably grows one of the following crops: tomatoes, leafy greens, strawberries, microgreens, cucumbers, mushrooms, or peppers. But all of these fruits and vegetables are better suited for different growing environments and media.

Here’s a breakdown of each.

Indoor Growing Environments

• Tomatoes: Greenhouses—they need room to grow and consistent sunlight.
• Leafy greens: Greenhouses and vertical farms—their short roots and quick growing cycles make them a good fit for most growing systems.
• Strawberries: Greenhouses—vertical farms haven’t figured out pollination and fruiting at scale yet.
• Microgreens: Vertical farms—they’re harvested young and grown in dense trays, making them a good fit for stacked systems.
• Cucumbers: Greenhouses—they need room to grow vertically and natural sunlight.
• Mushrooms: Indoor farms—they need a humid environment, darkness, and high CO2 levels that neither vertical farms nor greenhouses can create.
• Peppers: Greenhouses—they need pollination and consistent sunlight.

Indoor Growing Media

• Tomatoes: Rockwool, perlite, and coco coir.
• Leafy greens: Peat-based mixes, coco coir, perlite.
• Strawberries: Peat-based mixes, coco coir, and perlite.
• Microgreens: Peat-based mixes, coconut coir, and fiber mats.
• Cucumbers: Coco coir, pine bark, and perlite.
• Mushrooms: Coco coir, vermiculite, and sawdust.
• Peppers: Peat-based potting mixes, coco coir, and perlite.

But matching the crop to the right growing media and environment is only a piece of the puzzle. Choosing the right crop also means understanding the market it’s going to.

Take microgreens, for instance. Since it’s a high-value crop, microgreens primarily appeal to chefs and health-conscious consumers. Not every grocery store has a customer base willing to pay that premium, which means distribution decisions are just as important as growing media and environment.

Leafy greens, on the other hand, appeal to almost every consumer segment. By moving through grocery store chains and food service distributors in large volumes, leafy greens are the ideal crop for most indoor growing operations.

Strawberries shipped from California with a week-long shelf life aren’t going away any time soon. But when a greenhouse or vertical farm gets it right, those strawberries have more competition.

The future of food probably isn’t a field in California. It might be a greenhouse or a warehouse less than two miles from your grocery store.

For greenhouse growers in floriculture and controlled environment agriculture (CEA), growing media is often treated as a cost to manage rather than an input to optimize. As a result, many operations opt to reduce the upfront cost through cheaper mixes or substitutions.

While a lower price is ideal for any grower, using cheap growing media can have expensive consequences.

Energy and labor are the most prominent pain points for greenhouse growers. But growing media directly influences both. By investing in the right one, growers gain stronger operational efficiency and long-term ROI.

Peat vs. The Competition

In the last decade, soilless substrates have grown increasingly popular due to sustainability concerns around peat. While many greenhouse growers have tried coconut coir and rockwool as an alternative, peat-based media continues to have the edge in the market.

Peat has an ideal balance of water-holding and aeration. Its smaller pore spaces hold water, while the larger ones hold air, making it easy to maintain that balance.

The ideal pH level for crops tends to range between 5.5 to 5.8. Peat has a starting pH between 3 and 4.5 due to its natural acidic chemical property. This makes it easier for growers to amend pH with lime to reach optimal levels.

Adding lime to peat enables the pH to resist change throughout the growing cycle and remain in an optimum range. This is a huge benefit for peat, especially compared to coconut coir.

Coconut coir starts at a pH level of 5.5, and that number tends to rise when other amendments are added to it. It’s much easier to raise pH levels than to lower them when it comes to reducing labor and the risk of crop stress.

Putting Sustainability in Context

There have been continuous peat shortages dating back to 2020, forcing many growers to look for sustainable growing media solutions. While peat accessibility is a strong concern in European countries, it’s less of an issue in North America.

Peat bog can be restored in 15 to 20 years in Canada, where it can take 100+ in Europe. This means European growers are using peat much faster than it can be restored—they don’t have the flexibility to gradually transition to other mixes like North American growers do.

Still, peat isn’t the only growing media with an environmental footprint.

Rockwool and coconut coir carry their own sustainability baggage, and at a higher price point. On top of being more expensive, rockwool—a manufactured substrate made from spun mineral fibers—goes directly to the landfill after one use. Coconut coir is composed of ground-up coconut husks from Sri Lanka and Thailand—using coconuts there isn’t beneficial for the local ecosystem either.

While growers in North America aren’t currently facing the same peat concerns, the status quo isn’t permanent. This underscores why they should start paying attention to biochar sooner rather than later.

The Case for Biochar

To combat the growing concerns around peat’s sustainability, Sun Gro released biochar mixes. Biochar eliminates the need for perlite—a mined, nonrenewable material—with a renewable resource derived from wood chips, plant residues, and agricultural waste. Sun Gro’s biochar aggregate comes from 100% soft wood waste streams.

Beyond sustainability, biochar brings agronomic benefits that growers can measure.

For instance, biochar offers the same structure, aeration, and drainage as perlite. It also improves nutrient holding, water holding, and reduces ammonium toxicity. The reduction in irrigation lowers labor and energy costs, two of the biggest overhead costs for greenhouse operations. Plus, when added at a high enough percentage to the mix as an aggregate (15%+), growers may experience better rooting and overall plant performance.

Biochar has the potential to be the future of growing media. However, many greenhouse growers are hesitant to use biochar since they’re accustomed to using perlite mixes. As perlite becomes more expensive, biochar may be their only option.

That’s not to say that biochar is inexpensive by any means. Currently, biochar mixes are about the same price as perlite ones, but that won’t always be the case—growers could see biochar become the more cost-effective option within a few years.

At the very least, Sun Gro aims to keep the price consistent so biochar mixes are in line with perlite mixes in the future.

Growers likely won’t move away from peat completely. But instead of using peat-perlite mixes, they will start using peat-biochar and peat-wood fiber mixes instead to help offset their need for perlite or to stretch their peat supply without compromising the quality of their mix.

Peat-based growing media isn’t going away, but the inputs surrounding it are changing rapidly. Growers who treat those changes as an opportunity—rather than waiting until perlite prices force their hand—will protect their margins when it matters most while maintaining or even improving their plant quality.