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US vertical farming company Fifth Season is building its second robotic vertical farm in Columbus, Ohio, in order to fulfil the demand for fresh greens and ready-to-eat salads. The company hopes to create a fresh food ecosystem using its proprietary end-to-end autonomous farming platform. This expansion will enable the team to develop a more sustainable fresh food chain. "Thanks to our modular design, no software work is needed to integrate bots into the new facility, they just start working together in their new configuration," said Fifth Season CTO, Brac Webb. "At the Braddock farm, we have just over 100 instances of our bots in use, and at the future Columbus farm we plan to have around 250 instances." The Columbus farm will also integrate renewable solar energy and use an onsite microgrid. In addition, the firm has announced three key leadership hires. Brian Griffiths will join as CFO; Varun Khanna as VP of food products; and Glenn Wells as SVP of sales. "We've proven the viability of our model, and we're pushing forward into high-growth mode with leaders who will use our scalable platform to innovate and increase distribution now, not five years from now," Fifth Season's CEO, Austin Webb, commented.