In an industrial building on the South Side, a Virginia-based agricultural company is growing food using a different concept for a key element of farming — the farm.

Instead of bucolic fields stretching out to the horizon, Soli Organic Inc.’s operation reaches up toward the ceiling inside a mostly windowless 140,000-square-foot building. Rather than rows of crops, there are stacks of soaring metal shelves crammed with containers of spinach, basil and lettuce.