Adapted from Robert Whitcomb's "Digital Diary,'' in GoLocal24.com

Congratulations to RI Mushroom Co., featured in an Aug. 6 Providence Journal story headlined “They’ve spawned success with rooms of ‘shrooms.’’ It’s a lovely entrepreneurial tale, in which partners MichaelHallock and Robert DiPietro have expanded their mushroom-growing, packaging and sales operation from a “1,500-square-foot facility with one 16-by-50-foot grow room to a 10,000-square-foot facility with three grow rooms, a large packaging room and 1,000 square feet of office space.’’ They told The Journal that they eventually want to grow $100 million a year of mushrooms.

Mushrooms are increasingly popular and it’s unlikely that Amazon will take away the duo’s business. The article reminded me of the broader potential of such indoor agriculture in southern New England. Well-insulated greenhouses could  be used to grow a lot of the fresh vegetables that New Englanders now must get from far away (at considerable environmental cost) outside the region’s main vegetable-growing season of May to October.  Near-Arctic Iceland, of all places, grows a lot of its own vegetables in greenhouses, albeit with the help of that nation’s geo-thermal riches.

Put up greenhouses on the  vacant parking lots around the proliferating number of closed suburban malls and big-box stores, where they could share space with wind turbines and solar-panel arrays.