Could Ohio Be the CEA ‘Hub’ of the U.S.?
May 2, 2025 
Baby spinach under high tunnel in North Florida
Since 2020, the Center for Food Innovation has aimed to increase jobs, entrepreneurship, and business ownership in Northeast Ohio through food production, including programs to expand CEA adoption. CEO Bara Watts recently shared how she plans to accomplish these goals, what she has planned for the year, and how her organization can make the Buckeye state the largest year-round agricultural community in the country.
CEAg World: Can you tell our audience more about your organization?
Bara Watts: The Center for Food Innovation was founded through partnerships with the Lorain County Community Chamber, the Small Business Development Corporation, Lorain County Community College Urban League, and a few others to bring more jobs to Northeast Ohio by increasing overall food production.
In looking at where job opportunities are, we wanted to understand the DNA of our community. We were aware of what was going on in the Netherlands—in 2005, they formed a nonprofit that started to connect their farmers with technology and funding and higher education. By 2020, they had become the second largest agricultural exporter in the world next to the U.S.
We aim to educate, equip, and distribute produce in Northeast Ohio. We are working with the Ohio State University, Lorain County Community College, and other parties in the industry to put together an educational program that will train people in specific crops. We’re working with different public and private entities to secure land and to develop greenhouse facilities that will enable those farmers to go into [CEA] farming, and we are working with distributors to pick a price point and distribution channels that will help farmers sell their products.
Can you go into more detail about how you plan to increase food production in the area?
The produce industry is under attack through global change. We’re seeing a lot of U.S. produce, which is predominantly grown in the Southwest, struggling from drought, heat, and flooding. Our produce imports have increased to more than 50% from 2000 to 2024; these are jobs and money that are going out of the market.
We should also understand that in the U.S., the produce industry is valued at $220 billion. In Northeast Ohio alone, we generally consume somewhere around $1.5 billion of produce annually.
We grow only about 5% of the produce that is consumed in Northeast Ohio, and most of that comes at a very specific seasonal period. According to The Cleveland Foundation’s “The 25% Shift” report, if we could increase production to at least 25%, we would have the potential of increasing jobs by more than 27,000.
Right now, we wonder why our farmers are barely able to survive, and many of them have to do multiple jobs just to keep the farm that they’ve got. Our hope is that we can get farmers to become hybrid farmers.
We want to equip them with greenhouse facilities in an affordable way. We want to train them to run these farms and grow specific crops so that we can help them become full-time farmers, which I think most of them would prefer to be.
What makes Northeast Ohio particularly suitable for CEA?
Interestingly, the west side of Cleveland was one of the largest greenhouse growing areas in the world from the mid-1800s to the 1970s. And Northeast Ohio was one of the first areas to embrace community farming systems. We became one of the largest community farm areas in the country from 2010 through the early 2020s.
Additionally, you can’t talk about CEA without talking about energy, and Northeast Ohio has been making tremendous strides in supporting renewable energy development. Every project we’re working on will be coupled with an energy solution that will allow our farmers to be energy independent, and perhaps even energy income positive, because that is one of the biggest costs that go into vertical or greenhouse farming.
Is there anything else you think our audience should know about the Center for Food Innovation?
A lot of folks participating in our organization are from the public and the private sectors. We’re a nonprofit, and we’re all about partnership, collective development, and growth. I welcome anybody who has interest on any level, from farming to funding, from community development to technologies, to reach out. It’s really important to bring together all the parties who are interested in our mission to bring it to life.