Henry Gordon-Smith

Founder & CEO Agritecture

Last Reviewed: September 18, 2026

Executive Summary

Henry Gordon-Smith is the founder and chief executive of Agritecture, a global advisory and technology firm for urban and controlled-environment agriculture. He coined the word agritecture — the integration of agriculture into the built environment — and has spent fifteen years turning it from a blog into a consulting practice that has completed more than 350 projects across over 45 countries, advising governments, real-estate developers, startups and NGOs. The firm’s distinctive position is that it is technology-agnostic: it does not sell growing systems, which means its feasibility work can conclude that a proposed vertical farm should not be built. That matters in a sector where a great many well-funded ventures have failed, a subject Gordon-Smith discusses publicly and unsentimentally. He co-founded the Association for Vertical Farming in 2013 and served on its board until 2017, lectures on climate-smart agriculture at Columbia University, and has been recognised by the Hunter College Food Policy Center, Produce Grower Magazine, RaboBank and the University of Guelph.

Career Highlights

• Coined the term agritecture and started the blog of that name in 2011.
• Co-founded the Association for Vertical Farming in 2013 and served on its board until 2017.
• Founded Agritecture as a consulting firm in 2014 and has led it since as CEO.
• Grew the firm to more than 350 completed projects across over 45 countries, supported by a network of 30-plus consulting partners in agtech, financing and implementation.
• Named to the 40 Under 40 in NYC Food Policy list by the Hunter College Food Policy Center in 2017.
• Named to Produce Grower Magazine’s Top 10 People in Produce in 2018, and to RaboBank’s Top 20 Global Food and Agriculture Influencers in 2019.
• Named a Food Policy Fellow by the University of Guelph in 2019.
• Delivered a TEDx talk at TEDxThoughtForFood, and speaks regularly at United Nations and World Bank forums.
• Lectures on Climate-Smart Agriculture at Columbia University.

Professional Journey

Gordon-Smith came to agriculture through policy rather than horticulture. He took a BA in Political Science at the University of British Columbia, then studied food security and urban agriculture at Ryerson University in Toronto, and finally took a master’s at Columbia University focused on the intersection of food systems, urban resilience and controlled-environment agriculture. In 2011, while still working through that material, he started a blog called Agritecture — a word he coined for the practice of designing agriculture into buildings and cities.

The blog arrived at the right moment. Vertical farming was moving from speculative architecture renderings towards real capital, and there was almost no independent writing about whether any of it worked. Gordon-Smith became a connective figure in the emerging sector, and in 2013 co-founded the Association for Vertical Farming, an industry body, serving on its board until 2017.

In 2014 he turned the blog into a business, founding Agritecture Consulting. The model was deliberately technology-agnostic: the firm advises clients on whether and how to build urban or controlled-environment farms, but does not sell equipment, which removes the conflict of interest that shapes most advice in the sector. That independence is the firm’s core asset. Its work spans feasibility studies, financial modelling, site and system selection, operational design and go-to-market strategy, for a client base that includes governments and municipalities, real-estate developers looking at agriculture as an amenity or a land-use, agtech startups, and NGOs. The firm has since added software to the consulting practice, and reports more than 350 projects across over 45 countries with a partner network of more than thirty specialist firms.

Gordon-Smith’s public role has grown alongside the business. He lectures on climate-smart agriculture at Columbia University, teaching food-system resilience to sustainability students; he speaks at United Nations and World Bank forums and at industry conferences; and he delivered a TEDx talk at TEDxThoughtForFood arguing that historical precedents — the ways cities and countries have previously mobilised food production in response to crisis — are a better guide to resilient urban agriculture than technological novelty. Recognition has followed, from the Hunter College Food Policy Center’s 40 Under 40 in NYC Food Policy in 2017, Produce Grower Magazine’s Top 10 People in Produce in 2018, RaboBank’s Top 20 Global Food and Agriculture Influencers in 2019, and a University of Guelph Food Policy Fellowship the same year.

A notable feature of his recent commentary is its candour about the sector’s failures. A large number of heavily capitalised vertical farming companies collapsed in the 2020s, and Gordon-Smith has been willing to analyse why in public — unit economics, energy costs, crop selection and the gap between architectural ambition and operating discipline — rather than defend the category wholesale. He has also served as a board member of Teens for Food Justice, which builds hydroponic farms in schools in underserved communities, and as an adviser to a number of agtech startups.

Education

Columbia University

Master of Science, Sustainability Management

Agritecture’s own biography page names this programme, while the firm’s about page instead describes it as a Master’s in Climate and Society. Both descriptions are first-party and the discrepancy is unresolved.

University of British Columbia

Bachelor of Arts, Political Science

Ryerson University (now Toronto Metropolitan University)

Coursework in Food Security and Urban Agriculture; no degree recorded