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Early Adopter of Shipping Container Farming Opts to Build His Own
Early Adopter of Shipping Container Farming Opts to Build His Own
June 5, 2017 | Pamela Ellgen
Eric Amyot, founder of Modular Farms. Photo courtesy of Modular Farms.
There’s something romantic about an upcycled shipping container being transformed into a sustainable indoor growing operation. It takes would-be garbage from rotting in a port and turns it into a farm system that has the potential to lengthen growing seasons, reduce local food insecurity, and stabilize a farmer’s annual income stream. And, for some it works.
But not always. Eric Amyot was an early adopter of container farming who purchased one of the best retrofitted shipping containers available in 2014 and started SmartGreens, a Canadian operation that grows and delivers fresh greens direct to consumer.
Amyot and his team quickly exhausted the capabilities of the shipping container farm. “The concept and the approach itself were adequate in the sense that it was a good foundation,” he says. “What was lacking was what was needed to grow food consistently and adequately. The turnkey wasn’t as turnkey as we required.”
Designed for freight, not farming
Shipping containers were never designed to be farms, Amyot says, even Grade A containers come with dents and rust that must be painted over and often have structural issues within months of purchase, such as rotting steel, problems with the corrugated floor and water leaks. Worse yet for the commercial grower, some won’t pass GAP certification.
The width and height of the shipping container presented a further limitation to the SmartGreens team because they didn’t allow for proper air flow and were not conducive to retrofitting.
“We intended to grow very quickly,” Amyot says. “We took it on our own to experiment. If it was able to be broken, we broke it. If it was able to be fixed, we fixed it. We were finding unique challenges and we very quickly outgrew the support available to us.”
That is when he began looking for a better option.
Thinking outside the box
“We recognized the need for something new, but we didn’t have the experience so we went knocking on doors,” Amyot recalls.
He reached out to Dr. Michael Dixon, Director of Controlled Environment Systems Research Facility at the University of Guelph and his colleague Dr. Michael Stasiak, Senior Research Associate in the School of Environmental Sciences. He also connected with leaders in LED technology, climate control, and plant health science from around the globe.
“The process was about reaching out to people who had much more experience than we had,” Amyot says. “The technology and approach needed to grow food in any container farm all require a very intense look and oversight of the processes that are applied. You can’t do it halfway.”
In 2015, he quietly launched Modular Farms, created the first farm, and put it to work. After ten months of testing, adjustments, and retesting, the company began selling to the public in November 2016.
Built from the ground up
Modular Farm’s Primary Module is crafted from composite, rust-resistant panels and is larger than traditional shipping containers at 40’ x 10’ x 10’. This allows for adequate spacing between plants and lights and greater airflow in the farm, two areas Amyot encountered challenges with while using the shipping container.
He had attempted to retrofit the container with better LED lights than the ones that came with the farm. While the new lights had excellent results in clinical trials, they damaged plants in the shipping container because it wasn’t wide enough to provide distance from the light to the plants.
The LED lights in a Modular Farm are placed at the optimal distance from the plants, are customizable, and offer a low heat signature to reduce heat waste that then needs to be disbursed. The lights are crafted by Intravision Group, which produces multi-band and spectrum variable LED lights, enabling biological control and optimization of plant responses to specific wavelengths between UVA and IR light.
Airflow was another challenge in the shipping container – it simply didn’t provide the space to install proper air transfer units to distribute and dehumidify the air. “We would go well for a certain period of time, have a decent crop one week, then two weeks later we’d have mold or insects. In a small space, it’s even more critical to apply environmental controls.”
According to Amyot, Modular Farms’ design addresses the air flow challenge not only with its increased size, but also by excluding active air exchange, meaning it is sealed from outside elements, and by offering a closed-loop air recycling system with commercial HVAC, dehumidification, and duct delivery.
The farm’s exterior construction panels are rated at R22 to R35, depending on location. This means that theoretically you could grow plants in any location on earth.
Return on investment
Modular Farms is one of the priciest container farms on the market with its Primary Module ringing in at $148,500 Canadian ($110,216 US) and estimated annual operating costs ranging from $25 – 40K Canadian ($18,555-29,688 US).
“You get what you pay for is our belief,” Amyot says.
Every unit comes with two intensive days of training followed by 24/7 support from a small team of indoor agriculture experts, including a plant health technician and master grower. “We don’t want someone to have to wait for an email response. We know as farmers, you can’t always wait for a problem to be fixed, it can be detrimental even catastrophic to your model.”
While Amyot is careful not to promise anything, the Modular Farms team has seen yields of 85 kilograms (187 pounds) of leafy greens weekly and up to 84 percent better yields than with competing products.
Whether or not this can deliver return on investment within a reasonable timeframe depends on the farmer’s ability – the technology is only as good as the person operating it – and the market itself.
“It’s something people ask us every day. ‘What should I grow? How much should I sell it for?’” he says. “It’s really dependent on someone’s market. You can’t just grow anything; you have to arm yourself with what your market will support.”
He encourages farmers to avoid competing with traditional outdoor growing operations for items they are already producing cheaply and successfully. Instead, opt for smaller niche products, such as snacking cucumbers, ghost peppers, red robin cherry tomatoes, mache, or edible orchids.
UA To Serve Lettuce Harvested On Campus
The vertical rows of green leaf lettuce were closely packed on the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville campus, the inaugural crop in a new indoor hydroponic growing station.
UA To Serve Lettuce Harvested On Campus
Indoor hub controlled by computer
By Jaime Adame
September 30, 2016
PHOTO BY ANDY SHUPE
Taylor Pruitt, a sophomore from Bergman in Boone County, helps harvest leaf lettuce Thursday at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville. A shipping container on campus has been converted into a hydroponic growing station.
FAYETTEVILLE -- The vertical rows of green leaf lettuce were closely packed on the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville campus, the inaugural crop in a new indoor hydroponic growing station.
Approximately 1,100 heads of lettuce harvested Thursday will be served today in UA dining halls or donated to campus food recovery efforts. The effort from Chartwells Dining Services cuts emissions from food transport and has students helping to manage the indoor farming operation.
A computer-controlled growing station, fashioned out of a used shipping container, cost about $97,000, said Andrew Lipson, resident district manager for Chartwells.
"We figure somewhere between 4½ and five years, it will pay itself off in just the produce alone," Lipson said. "I think the value of what it's teaching and what we're doing is beyond that."
The 40-foot-long farm unit, purchased from Boston-based Freight Farms, sits behind an agriculture academic building. Michael Evans, a UA horticulture professor, served as an adviser to the project.
"They are out there on the cutting edge," E̶d̶w̶a̶r̶d̶s̶ Evans* said.
Planted about six weeks ago, the green leaf lettuce grew with a steady drip of water and nutrients in a climate-controlled environment.
"It's all run by this computer system," said Ashley Meek, a Chartwells dietitian and farm manager, before turning on bright LED light strips calibrated to the appropriate wavelength for growing crops. The thin strands glowed red and blue in front of the vertical towers.
Adjustments can be made via a smartphone app, with temperature, humidity and carbon dioxide levels continuously monitored. On Thursday morning, the temperature was 62 degrees, as it is pretty much around-the-clock, Meek said.
The harvested lettuce almost uniformly looked a deep shade of green, to the delight of Chartwells student interns Taylor Pruitt and Merrisa Jennings.
"I want to see people's reactions and them being so happy and being like, what is this, we've never had lettuce so good before," said Pruitt, a 19-year-old UA sophomore. She said she spent about eight to 10 hours each week helping manage the farm.
After harvesting the leafy greens, she and Jennings began working on the next round of crops.
They placed small grow buds in a row, some distance apart, between a folded-over section of plastic mesh. The mesh then slid inside rigid vertical towers, slotted to allow the buds to face the strips of dangling light.
"We're able to use a small amount of space to feed a lot of people, so I think that's pretty cool," said Jennings.
E̶d̶w̶a̶r̶d̶s̶ Evans*, an expert in hydroponics, said the method is being used more and more.
For now, lettuce remains the sole crop grown in the Chartwells farm unit. Lipson said basil or other herbs could be grown and talked about perhaps trying to grow strawberries if the operation expands next year.
UA provided the required foundation for the farm unit and utility hook-ups. The electrical, plumbing, trenching and carpentry work totaled about $22,000, Lynne Williams-Bell, an assistant vice chancellor, said in an email.
Lipson and Meek praised the university and E̶d̶w̶a̶r̶d̶s̶ Evans* for their support.
"I can't stress enough the collaboration with housing, business, and student affairs [at UA]," Lipson said.
A few other schools have also turned to hydroponics to supply dining hall produce. Hydroponics towers have been in place since earlier this year at a Missouri State University dining hall.
Stacy Tollefson, a professor at the University of Arizona, wrote in an email that her university used to sell some of the produce from its 5,000-square-foot teaching greenhouse to campus dining services but that it now has other buyers that pay more to maintain the educational program.
Lipson said two universities in Massachusetts have identical farm units to the one at UA. For now, the student interns are paid but receive no formal academic credit.
UA researchers already work on greenhouse hydroponic farming, but Lipson said he'd like to have the new farm unit become a part of the university curriculum.
"But we really need to walk before we run," Lipson said.
Metro on 09/30/2016
*CORRECTION: Michael Evans is a University of Arkansas horticulture professor. This story incorrectly identified him on subsequent references.