JACKSON HOLE, Wyo.- The winners of Fast Company’s 2021 World Changing Ideas Awards were announced, honoring the businesses, policies, projects, and concepts that are actively engaged and deeply committed to pursuing innovation when it comes to solving health and climate crises, social injustice, or economic inequality. On newsstands May 10, Fast Company’s Summer 2021 issue, the 5th annual awards honor those that are pursuing innovation for the good of society and the planet.
Vertical Harvest Farms – creator of the first vertical greenhouse in the U.S. – received three Honorable Mention awards for Best World Changing Idea North America, Food and Social Justice categories.
Nona Yehia, CEO of Vertical Harvest Farms said, “We are incredibly proud to be recognized by Fast Company, and amongst so many other inspiring visionaries in this year’s awards.” Yehia continued, “Vertical Harvest embodies a profitable business that enables the progress we want to see in our world. We are a purpose-built company that is motivated and driven by how much impact we can make in a community. We have a mission to build smarter, greener and more equitable urban farms that strengthen our local food systems and the jobs they create to make them more nourishing, resilient, sustainable, and profitable. We are paving the way to tell the story of why vertical farming is important to us all.”
Vertical farming is the fastest growing industry in agriculture, presenting an opportunity to grow large quantities of affordable, nutritious food on small, urban footprints. Vertical Harvest Farms is leading with the operational knowledge developed in their flagship farm in Jackson Hole, WY to be a successful model for uplifting local economies by providing fresh nutritious produce to schools, hospitals, restaurants, and consumers, and embodies a commitment to civic participation, health and the environment. Vertical Harvest has a plan to expand to new cities throughout the U.S. pairing the innovative growing technologies of vertical farming with jobs for underemployed populations and co-locating the new farms with affordable housing as a blueprint for a national model of change.
“There is no question our society and planet are facing deeply troubling times. So, it’s important to recognize organizations that are using their ingenuity, impact, design, scalability, and passion to solve these problems,” says Stephanie Mehta, editor-in-chief of Fast Company. “Our journalists, under the leadership of senior editor Morgan Clendaniel, have discovered some of the most groundbreaking projects that have launched since the start of 2020.”
Now in its fifth year, the World Changing Ideas Awards showcase 33 winners, more than 400 finalists, and more than 800 honorable mentions—with Health and Wellness, AI & Data among the most popular categories. A panel of eminent Fast Company editors and reporters selected winners and finalists from a pool of more than 4,000 entries across transportation, education, food, politics, technology, and more. Plus, several new categories were added, including Pandemic Response, Urban Design, and Architecture. The 2021 awards feature entries from across the globe, from Brazil to Denmark to Vietnam.
About Vertical Harvest
Vertical Harvest is profitable model for a vertical farm that provides consistent, meaningful employment for people with intellectual and physical disabilities by cultivating nutritious food for the community. The Vertical Harvest company impact is much larger, joining private investment, public resources and philanthropy as a model to create positive economic and social impact for communities. Vertical Harvest’s focus is to create partnerships to build cost effective, profitable hydroponic farms that will not only act as innovative urban models for growing fresh food, but will have a substantial social impact. The first of these is a state-of-the-art, three-story hydroponic farm in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. The second location will be in Westbrook, Maine. In 2020, a documentary on Vertical Harvest was released on PBS called Hearts of Glass: https://www.heartsofglassfilm.com/. Follow Vertical Harvest on Instagram @verticalharvestfarms.
About the World Changing Ideas Awards
World Changing Ideas is one of Fast Company’s major annual awards programs and is focused on social good, seeking to elevate finished products and brave concepts that make the world better. A panel of judges from across sectors choose winners, finalists, and honorable mentions based on feasibility and the potential for impact. With the goals of awarding ingenuity and fostering innovation, Fast Company draws attention to ideas with great potential and helps them expand their reach to inspire more people to start working on solving the problems that affect us all.
