Square Roots Expands Premium Herbs Range With Fresh And Aromatic Cilantro, Dill, And Parsley Grown In Climate Controlled Local Farms Across The Country

Indoor farming company takes the next step in bringing local, real food to cities using modular farm technology that empowers both farmers and consumers

May 17, 2021 (New York, NY) — Square Roots, the technology leader in urban indoor farming, is expanding its herb range by introducing three premium fresh offerings - Cilantro, Dill, and Parsley - to complement its widely successful signature Basil. Co-founded by Kimbal Musk, Square Roots’ herbs are grown across the company’s network of cloud-connected and climate-controlled indoor farms in New York and Michigan and are now available in more than 200 retail stores - including Whole Foods Market, Fresh Thyme Market, SpartanNash, and FreshDirect. 

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“COVID-19 has accelerated the adoption of locally grown indoor produce”, said Raji Margolin, EVP of Sales and Marketing at Square Roots. “The habits of at-home cooking and using fresh, local produce are here to stay. Now more than ever, people care about the food they eat, and where it's grown - and our goal is to make sure that fresh and local food is available to consumers year-round. These herbs are just the beginning of our product offerings and we can’t wait to expand into additional categories.”

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Square Roots has a strategic partnership with Gordon Food Service (GFS), one of the country’s leading food service providers, to deploy farms across the country together and provide fresh, high-quality, local food to consumers across cities, year-round.  Square Roots broke ground on its latest indoor farm in Grand Rapids, Michigan in December 2020 and began planting seeds just three months later, in March 2021. This rapid deployment capability is enabled by the company’s modular farm-tech platform. 

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“We’re using technology a little differently at Square Roots farms”, said Tobias https://www.igrow.news/igrownews/indoor-ag-science-cafe-may-18th, Co-Founder, and CEO at Square Roots. “Food, farmers, and consumers are all connected at the center of our system. We surround our farmers with data, tools, and insights to help them grow more, better-tasting food with fewer resources. At the same time, with features like our unique Transparency Timeline, we help our consumers understand exactly where their food comes from and who grew it.”

The expanded herb range is available in both the New York City area and the Great Lakes Region.

About Square Roots

Square Roots is the technology leader in urban indoor farming. Its mission is to bring local, fresh, real food to people in cities around the world - setting new standards for transparency and responsibility while empowering the next generation of leaders in agriculture. Founded by serial entrepreneurs, Kimbal Musk and Tobias Peggs, its range of fresh produce is available in more than 200 retail locations around the country including Whole Foods Market, Fresh Thyme Market, SpartanNash, and FreshDirect. Square Roots’ strategic partnership with Gordon Food Service reinforces a larger shared ambition to build commercial scale, climate-controlled indoor farms together across the continent - enabling local food at a global scale, year-round.

For more information, please visit www.squarerootsgrow.com.

USA - ILLINOIS - Tasty, Fresh And Sustainable

Glenview Man's Hydroponic Farm

Uses Technology To Grow Garden Variety Produce

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5/12/2021

By Dave Oberhelman
doberhelman@dailyherald.com

This is not your grandfather's farm.

It's not Aviad Sheinfeld's grandfather's farm, either -- but Wiseacre Farm is a bridge between childhood days spent on grandparents Yechezkel and Hadassah Gluzman's farm in an Israeli moshav and Sheinfeld's modern training.

That combination has resulted in some of the best greens his customers have ever tasted, grown indoors by futuristic, sustainable methods.

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Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.

"I don't know if it was a goal. I never thought about becoming a farmer. I was always good with computers, so working with computers was kind of the assumed path," said Sheinfeld, 49, of Glenview.

"I think my childhood experiences on the farm really gave me more of an ingrained appreciation for what it takes to grow food. The thing I remember most is the apple orchards and the peaches my grandparents grew, but they also grew roses and sheep, so also animals."

There are no animals, roses, or peaches at Wiseacre Farm, a rectangular, 320-square-foot container farm inside a warehouse Sheinfeld rents in an industrial area at 1975 N. Lake Terrace, Glenview.

Wiseacre's specialty, available by 10-week subscriptions through www.wiseacre.farm, is leafy greens. A recent delivery included six heads of lettuce of differing varieties. Another package will offer the lettuce plus herbs and other greens -- things like parsley, chives, Thai basil, red-veined sorrel, curly kale with chard.

Sheinfeld sometimes delivers his produce the day it's harvested. Reviews are strong.

"Most of our customers have remarked that they had no idea that lettuce, basil -- fill in the blank, whatever produce -- tastes that way," said Sheinfeld's daughter, Yael, who is finishing her last semester at Northeastern University in Boston, but also handling Wiseacre marketing and communications.

"I think it's hard to understand just how much the taste disappears with travel, with chemicals, herbicides, and pesticides, with just time, honestly, and sitting on a grocery store shelf," she said.

Growing crops indoors in Wiseacre Farm's controlled hydroponic environment eliminates the need for herbicides and pesticides. Serving customers within about a 10-mile radius also lends a neighborly appeal.

"It's not just buying your food from anonymous company X," Aviad said.

His father, Sam, also works on the farm. Yael -- and occasionally Aviad and Kari Sheinfeld's two teenage boys, Rahm and Lev -- are fourth-generation farmhands.

Finalizing financing and incorporation in 2018, in November 2019 Sheinfeld received his container farm from Freight Farms of Boston. He said there's a couple hundred of these repurposed shipping container farms worldwide. When he needs advice he reaches farmers in Alaska, Minnesota, Tennessee, even Tasmania.

The interior includes vertical panels about 10 feet tall in which the plants soak up rays of LED lights embedded into opposing panels. The plant panels can be removed and placed horizontally when the plants are ready for harvesting.

The media is not soil but water, to which nutrients are added automatically, manually controlled by computer. Hydroponic methods are 98% more water-efficient than traditional farming, Yael said. Through recycling irrigation water and capturing the water transpired by the plants, on average the farm uses less than 5 gallons of water a day. On very humid days, the farm will capture more water than it uses.

Nutrients, drip irrigation, temperature, humidity, lighting -- all are computer-controlled.

"As farming goes, it's kind of posh," Aviad Sheinfeld said.

"The thing about this farm is it's very technically advanced, so it kind of marries my initial interest in agriculture and my insatiable appetite for technological gadgets all into one big toy," he said.

He earned a bachelor's degree in mathematics at the University of Pennsylvania and added DePaul University master's degrees in network communications and information security and in computational finance.

First working as a software engineer with Motorola, he veered into stay-at-home dad mode after he and Kari, an attorney, started having children. The couple sent their kids to the Science & Arts Academy in Des Plaines, where Aviad served three years as board chairman. During that time, the academy explored hydroponics as part of the curriculum.

"That's kind of where I caught the bug, so to speak," he said.

No bugs at Wiseacre Farm. There is lots of energy consumption.

"We have lights that are powered by electricity and we use a lot of technology, so that is one resource that we use a lot of," Yael Sheinfeld said.

And still ...

"What's wonderful is, due to our partnership with Arcadia (Power, a renewable energy company out of Washington, D.C.) all of the electricity that we consume now is 100 percent offset with wind-generated, renewable energy. So it sort of allows us to keep that focus, knowing that's the main resource we still need to use, but doing that in a more sustainable way," she said.

For lettuce, from seed to harvest it takes only 8 weeks for the container farm to grow the equivalent of 2 acres of traditional farmland, Aviad said. He plans on about six annual growing cycles.

His first crop came through last March, right at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Initially targeting restaurants for his produce, he shifted to a farm-to-table model. Customers also can now pick up goods at the farm itself on Saturdays, though preordering is a must. All packages and purchasing options are available at www.wiseacre.farm.

In its short time, Wiseacre Farm has gained acclaim beyond consumer taste buds. It won Silver for innovation in the Glenview Natural Resources Department's 2020 Environmental Sustainability Awards, and on March 28 the farm was featured in a segment of the History channel's "Modern Marvels" series highlighting "The Future of Food."

After a year, Aviad Sheinfeld said the process has become "a little less magical," but he still gets a kick out of it. Imagine what Hadassah and Yechezkel Gluzman might think.

"You put seed in a plug, and even a few days later when it pops out, I'm amazed," Aviad said.

"I do understand it, but I still don't believe how amazing it is that a plant grows out of this little, tiny seed and a few weeks later you have a head of lettuce or arugula."

Lead Photo: Wiseacre Farm owner Aviad Sheinfeld looks over some of the plants grown at his hydroponic farm in Glenview. Brian Hill | Staff Photographer

Raleigh Shipping Container Farm Using Hy­dro­ponic Tech­nology

BY KYLEIGH PANETTA RALEIGH

MAY 10, 2021

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RALEIGH, N.C. — Summer is one of the busiest and most profitable times for farmers across the state but what if they could grow produce year-round?

Nanue’s Farm in Raleigh is using some advanced technology to do just that.

What You Need To Know

• Nanue's Farm is located in downtown Raleigh and uses hydroponic technology
  

• The "container farm" is about 320-square feet and can hold 5,000 heads of lettuce
  

• The technology is being used in dozens of countries and may help eliminate "food deserts"

Nanue’s Farm is on S. West Street, what some may say is a pretty strange place for a farm.

“This is in downtown Raleigh. You can see the great skyline we have here,” said Trevor Spear, the owner of Nanue’s Farm. “I walk to work when I can. I don’t have to drive.”

Spear admits that a seemingly empty parking lot with a shipping container is not what most people expect to see when they arrive at a farm.

“It’s funny because people don’t understand what it is. They think it’s just a shipping container and people are storing stuff inside it,” said Spear.

Nanue’s probably looks more like a science experiment than a farm.

“It’s 65 degrees, 60% humidity. Co2 runs at night, so we’re like 2,000 parts of Co2 in there. It’s optimal growing conditions for lettuce and that’s how we do it in seven weeks’ time,” said Spear.

Spear specializes in leafy, crunchy greens. Something else you can hear inside the farm, from time to time, is classical music.

“We play classical music at night and I think it makes a difference. They like it. Sometimes we play a little Van Halen but usually Bach or Beethoven,” said Spear who knows that a little TLC goes a long way and said every lettuce has a name.

It’s not your typical lettuce but Spear is also not your typical farmer. He named the farm after his grandmother, Lydie Cox.

"When I was a kid I would go have summers at Nanue’s house and she had a huge garden, an acre size garden. I would go up and down the rows with her as a kid. That’s where I probably got the bug because once it bites you, you live with the sting," said Spear.

Nanue’s Farm is getting a second container in June and hopefully a third by the end of the year. They currently offer home delivery to a few areas and are looking into creating a farm stand. The majority of the produce is sold to local restaurants in the area.

"When chefs come and tour the farm, they open the door and they’re like, 'Wow.' We can hold 5,000 heads of lettuce. We harvest 60 cases a week, so when they walk in and see that much lettuce growing and looking as good as it does, it’s a take-back," said Spear.

If you’re interested in trying some of their lettuce, you can also find a Nanue’s salad at Hummingbird, a restaurant in Raleigh.

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The technology that Nanue’s Farm uses was created by Boston-based company, Freight Farms. Each container has thousands of LED grow lights, temperature controls and uses between five and ten gallons of water each day.

The containers also have cameras and connect to Wi-Fi so it can be monitored from an app or website. Freight Farms said the goal is to replicate an ideal farming environment so that more people have access to fresh produce.

“In the U.S., food moves 500 to 1,000 miles, predominantly from California. If you can move the farm then you can put a farm in a food desert and then you can grow the food and the hyperlocal food and the high nutritional values of that food. Either food deserts or even urban areas,” said James Woolard, the chief marketing officer for Freight Farms. “You might not think it’s a food desert but it is from a socio-economic point of view and an access point of view.”

It Is Time To Grow!

Sara Segergren

2ndProject portfolio Leader på IKEA, Ingka, Group Sustainability

The majority of IKEA visitors enjoy the IKEA food offer and today we enable millions of people to eat healthier and more sustainably by choosing our plant-based options. We are continuously exploring how we can contribute to a better, greener, and tastier future making healthier and more sustainable food accessible and affordable for many people.

In an Urban farming pilot project, we grow leafy greens in a nutritious fluid, in a container powered with 100% renewable energy outside the IKEA Malmö store in Sweden. This will not only result in delicious, fresh, locally grown greens that IKEA visitors can enjoy but what is more important this contributes to our ambition to become people and planet positive by 2030 by using fewer natural resources compared to conventional growing methods:

90% less water
No pesticides
No farmland
Less food waste

Together with Urban Crop Solutions we have installed a controlled-environment vertical farm where plants are grown in a closed system. Water and nutrients are used instead of soil and LED-light is used instead of sunlight.

We believe that every action that enables and inspires people to live more sustainably matters and perhaps we can change the world together, one plant at the time.

Urban Crop Solutions

New Hydroponic Farm, Vittone Farms, Is Welcomed To The Smith Mountain Lake Regional Chamber of Commerce With Ribbon Cutting

May 12, 2021

Vittone Farms, Inc., a true-agricultural start-up that uses hydroponic farming to grow thousands of plants a month and host of the Smith Mountain Lake (SML) Farmers Market, celebrated the ribbon cutting with the Smith Mountain Lake Regional Chamber of Commerce on Wednesday, May 5, 2021. As an official member of the region’s growing business community, Vittone Farms looks forward to supporting the local and seasonal community.

10 local businesses attended the ribbon cutting and each attendee was provided with a hydroponic salad lunch created by a local Smith Mountain Lake restaurant, The Landing Restaurant, with salad ingredients provided by Vittone Farms.

The 40-foot farming container uses advanced vertical farming techniques using every inch of space for effective, indoor, all-season, all-weather growing and sits on land once known in the community for the Mayberry Diner & Drive-In. In 2007 the Diner burned down and for the past several years the prominent land remained vacant and unusable. Vittone Farms plans to make this land useful once again through the use of the farm and farmers market, making Vittone Farms a viable member of the Smith Mountain Lake Regional Chamber of Commerce. The SML Farmers Market features local growers and producers from within a 100-mile radius of its location in Moneta, VA and for the 2021 season, all members of 4-H, FFA, or any young farmer or producer under the age of 18 is eligible to receive free booth space at the up-and-coming farmers market.

The Vittone Farms team consists of Jeff Vittone, the founder of Vittone Farms and SML Famers Market and a U.S. Air Force Veteran, Jordan Gudely, a lifelong farmer who attained his Argibusiness Management Degree from North Carolina State University gained unique experience with organic fruit and vegetable production from the NC State sweet potato breeding program also has 1.5 years’ experience in different forms of farming works alongside part-time worker Kevin Painchaud, a local high school student, and future Horticultural Science Major at Virginia Tech. The Vittone Farms team is preparing for the farmer’s market season by growing a variety of plants and herbs inside the container farm and will continue to learn how to optimize the unique sustainable farming technique.

Vittone Farms offers a variety of produce derived from organic seeds and pesticide-free nutrients from its initial harvest including: Butter Lettuce, Romaine, Bibb Lettuce, Red and Green Salanova Sweet Crisp, Basil, Cilantro, Dill, Parsley, and Radish. Soon, Vittone Farms plans to include Microgreens and eggs from free-range, cage-free, organically fed chickens.

“What is great about hydroponic growing is that we can serve the local community with safe, nutritional food 365 days a year, additionally local farming removes the extended transportation of produce from the equation. When food is shipped over extended distances it loses its quality and nutritional value. We are grateful to be part of this beautiful community and welcomed by the local chamber of commerce. We are honored to make use of a once treasured land by not only growing on the land but inviting others to join us each weekend by selling their local meats, produce, or designs,” adds Jeff Vittone.

Housing Nonprofit Cultivating Farmers Adults With Disabilities To Help Run Hydroponic Effort

ROSA SALTER RODRIGUEZ

The Journal Gazette

For a few moments early Friday morning, an 80-foot-by-40-foot shipping container the size of a semi hung high in the air, suspended by a huge crane.

Then, the green-trimmed white container was placed on specially constructed supports – to a short round of applause from about a dozen onlookers.

The construction site off Constance Avenue just north of Turnstone's adaptive sports complex is a bit different from most – the shipping container isn't for storage, a contractor's office or even housing.

It's going to become part of a farm.

CASS Housing, a Fort Wayne nonprofit that has been busily building homes with customized living arrangements for adults with developmental disabilities including autism and Down syndrome, is sprouting a new program.

The organization plans to use the containers to grow produce hydroponically – with water and nutrients but no soil.

David Buuck, CASS founder and executive director, said the idea is to provide not only food but “meaningful days” for the 15 residents of what will soon be five homes.

And the organization has even bigger aspirations – it recently applied to the Fort Wayne Plan Commission to locate another 15 trailers on a lot on Homewood Drive in Washington Township to scale up the growing.

Buuck hopes to grow enough produce to sell to members of the Fort Wayne community through a subscription service, to other nonprofit organizations and, potentially, at wholesale and retail.

Money from sales would be plowed back not only into the farm but also into building more homes for a growing list of potential residents. Buuck said that list now stands at about 200.

The organization's initials stand for Customizable, Affordable, Sustainable and Safe.

Idea planted

The farm plans started, Buuck said, with the knowledge that one of the hardest aspects of life for developmentally challenged young people is finding employment.

“Only 34% of people are employed in the traditional economy,” he said. And, when times get hard, that employment may not last.

“We saw it play out with the pandemic,” Buuck said. Only one out of six employed CASS residents kept a job throughout COVID, he said.

The pandemic got him thinking seriously about an idea from the father of a potential resident.

John Hornbostel of Fort Wayne had been reading about farming in containers as a prospective career for his 21-year-old daughter with disabilities, Rachel.

She has autism and needs someone to be with her while on the job, but she loves salads and growing things, said Hornbostel, vice president of sustainability and milling for Egg Innovations in Warsaw.

He remembers broaching the subject with Buuck, and telling him that 2 acres' worth of leafy produce could be grown in one shipping container.

Hornbostel recalls Buuck's eyes widening. “Really?” Buuck said.

Yes, really.

And not only that, one shipping container could grow 4,400 heads of buttercrunch lettuce a month or 90 pounds of herbs – using only 5 gallons of water a day, 95% less than traditional agriculture.

And the containers' food could be non-GMO and pesticide free.

Teaming up

Soon enough, Buuck got in touch with Freight Farms, a Boston-based company pioneering the idea.

Rick Vanzura, Freight Farms' chief executive officer, said the company has been developing shipping container farms for about a decade. Farms now operate in 49 states and 33 countries.

“Our business is really a global business,” he said, adding that demand comes from small farmers, especially in places with bad soils or difficult climates.

But container farms also have been sold to college and university food suppliers, agricultural education programs, nonprofit organizations feeding underserved populations, and even a grocery store chain in Sweden.

But this is the first time he's heard of an organization using container farms in an integrated program for people with disabilities, Vanzura said.

And, he said, he's thrilled.

“I'm totally on board,” Vanzura said. “I don't know any other way to say it, but it's heartwarming. That's the only way I can put it.”

Growing produce hydroponically isn't new, Vanzura said; many grocery stores sell food grown that way – typically greens including lettuces, spinach, arugula and kale.

But Freight Farms' container systems have several features that set them apart, he explained.

For one thing, they grow produce vertically, not horizontally, in what growers call troughs or benches. Growing vertically maximizes growing space. Second, the trailers use programmable LED light, saving energy costs, and some can use renewable wind or solar energy for power.

Third, the system is fully programmable on a cellphone app called FarmHand.The app provides recipes for regulating the proper amount of water, light and temperature for growing, as well as planting and maturity dates for the precise crop desired. That takes a lot of the trial and error out of growing, Vanzura said.

He said the recipes have been developed over several years in conjunction with participating farmers. The company now can grow more than 500 crops, including some varieties of flowers. Experiments with strawberries are also going on, Vanzura said.

But the best applications are greens, herbs and small root crops such as radishes, he said.

“The tremendous thing is you don't need any specialized knowledge to start. But you do need discipline and a willingness to follow through,” Vanzura said.

Getting started

Buuck said CASS has hired someone to help manage the farm, Robert Johnson, and the resident employees, three to four for each container, will be paid as they would be for any job.

The first two containers, placed Friday, were funded at a cost of $300,000 through a private donation and The James Foundation in Angola, which donates to youth programs.

CASS residents Anna Kramer, 24, and Matthew Hammitch, 26, can't wait to start.

“It's just a really cool idea,” said Kramer, who briefly held a job in retail but got frustrated dealing with a lot of people every day.

Kramer said she gardened with her family before coming to live at CASS. She said she thinks working with plants would be natural.

“I never knew this existed, but if it existed, I never thought it would come to Fort Wayne,” she said.

Hammitch's previous job was as a family dog-sitter. But the FarmHand App technology intrigues him.

“I would really like to get into FarmHand and be able to go into the app and control the temperature and things right through our phones,” he said.

“I was really excited about this. I thought I could do this and have fun,” the young man said.

And make some money?

“That part too,” he said.

Lead photo: For a few moments early Friday morning, an 80-foot-by-40-foot shipping container the size of a semi hung high in the air, suspended by a huge crane.

rsalter@jg.net

Also

CASS seeks rezoning for farm project

CASS Housing will go before the Fort Wayne Plan Commission next month to ask for approval of a rezoning and modified primary development plan for a 1.63-acre tract off Homewood Drive in Washington Township.

CASS in August had the site rezoned to planned residential to construct eight attached residential homes for its living programs. It now wants to have the southern part of that site rezoned to general industrial.

The rezoning would allow the nonprofit to place 15 specially outfitted shipping containers for the hydroponic growing of produce.

The site would extend the program now being started on CASS's Constance Avenue property in Fort Wayne.

The organization also is asking to place a building for office space, produce processing and storage as an accessory use. The placement of solar panels and a parking lot also is being considered.

CASS still plans to construct homes on the site, said David Buuck, founder and executive director. The farm is estimated to cost $2.5 million and create 45 part-time jobs for people with disabilities, he said.

The organization is beginning a fund drive to finance some of the construction, he said.

Produce from the 15 containers will be equivalent to the yield of a 40-acre farm, Buuck said.

In its application, the organization said there would be no retail sales at the site and a minimal increase in traffic, as most employees will walk from nearby homes to their jobs.

The application will have a public hearing at 5:30 p.m. June 7 in Room 30 of Citizens Square.

USA: INDIANA - 5 Acres of Food In 80 Feet: Urban Farmer Grows A Garden In The Heart of Indianapolis

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London Gibson

May 6, 2021

An unassuming plot of land sits on the eastside of Indianapolis on 30th Street. From the outside, it looks like an empty lot with a couple of shipping containers on it. But inside those containers is an entire garden. 

And among the plants, you can find DeMario Vitalis.

Vitalis is the first in Indiana to own a hydroponic farm inside of a shipping container. The unique method involves planting seedlings of plants such as herbs and lettuces on vertical panels and feeding them controlled levels of water, nutrients, and light — no soil required.

It’s a mode of farming uniquely suited for urban environments. Vitalis is able to produce almost 5 acres of food a year from two 40-foot shipping containers. It also uses 99% less water than traditional farming, according to the company that makes the containers.

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Vitalis sells his fresh herbs, lettuces, and more to people in the community through online platforms such as Market Wagon.

The climate control is a huge advantage for Vitalis, who set up his farm, called New Age Provisions, in the latter half of last year. Regardless of the outside weather, he can grow anything he wants.

“It can be 30 degrees outside and raining,” he said, “but inside it’s 65 degrees. In here I’m watching Netflix and planting seeds.”

Even though he now spends much of his time dedicated to plants, Vitalis wasn’t a farmer when he started all of this. He was just an entrepreneur looking for his next project, and farming — which connected to his history as a descendent of enslaved people and Southern sharecroppers — felt like the right choice. 

“It was just a way to become an entrepreneur,” he said, “and also get back into the type of occupation my ancestors once had.”

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‘It’s in his blood’

Vitalis was looking for something that would put a piece of property he owned to use, and he had a hunch shipping containers were key. 

At first, he thought he would set up some modular tiny homes built out of containers. But then he came across Freight Farms, a Boston-based company that could cram 2.5 acres of production into one shipping container, and the decision was made. 

Although born in San Francisco, Vitalis’ family is originally from the South, and he moved around quite a bit before settling in Indiana. 

“Three of my four grandparents started off from the South,” Vitalis said, “So we were part of that Black migration when we moved eventually from the South to San Francisco on the West Coast.”

After living in Germany, Kansas, and other places as his stepfather moved around with the military, Vitalis’ mother decided to move him to Indianapolis, where he stayed and attended Arlington High School and Purdue University.

Vitalis’ mother Barbara Johnson is a cook, so food has always been important to the family. And the herbs and vegetables grown by her son, she said, are “absolutely wonderful.”

“I just believe that you can always inspire a person with a good meal,” she said.

Even so, farming or food production was never anything they did at home, she said. But she knows it’s something he feels close to because of the family’s history.

“I guess it was just in his blood,” she said.

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Vitalis was one of the first Black owners of a Freight Farms shipping container in the country, said Caroline Katsiroubas, marketing, and communications director for the company. 

“He, in particular, wanted to be a catalyst for more Black farmers to join the Freight Farming community,” she said, “and I’ve definitely seen the impact.”

Overcoming learning, funding hurdles

It wasn’t easy learning how to grow food. 

Despite two degrees from Purdue University, Vitalis doesn’t have a background in farming and had to put himself through some education before diving into his urban farm. He took online classes and even visited Freight Farms in Boston to learn about the equipment and process. 

“It does take a learning curve,” he said. “It’s not easy to learn how to farm; you have to learn how to react to the plants.”

Sometimes his daughter will help him with the planting. Johnson, too, will help out and trim plants, clean or help with planting, and occasionally brings her grandson along. Understanding how the farm works was a learning curve for her, too.

“I didn’t know anything about hydroponic farming,” she said. “When I saw that wall of plants, I didn’t think it was possible.”

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Funding was another obstacle. The farms cost $100,000 each. 

After some research, Vitalis found that the U.S. Department of Agriculture will supply loans for these types of businesses, so he requested $50,000 to help him pay for one container and was promptly denied. 

The people evaluating the profitability of these containers simply didn’t understand how it worked or how much it could produce, he said. But instead of giving up, he pushed back. Black farmers have historically been discriminated against when trying to obtain USDA loans, and he was motivated to make sure his business plan was being fairly evaluated.

“There’s a history behind that,” he said. “I was just one of many.” 

Vitalis appealed the decision and won. Then, he turned around and asked for $200,000 instead — and got it.

Finally one day, a semi-trailer pulled up outside his property with the containers, picked them up with an enormous crane, and plopped them right down behind the nearby building.

“It was pretty interesting to see a big old 40-foot container fly over a building,” Vitalis said. “It was not easy, but you know, God was on my side and I was able to get through the hurdles that were put in my way.”

How hydroponics works

In a hydroponic farm, everything is vertical — and everything is controlled. 

At first, the plants start as seedlings or seeds and are placed on shelves under LED lights, and water flushed with nutrients is dispensed to them with attached machines. 

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After a few weeks, the plants are large enough to transfer to a series of vertical panels that roll along tracks. These panels are also connected to machines for dosing water and nutrients and placed in between LED lights. The water circulating through the plants is saved and re-cycled through the system, conserving water and nutrients.

Although space may seem tight, one container can output the equivalent of 1,000 heads of lettuce each week, Katsiroubas said.

And throughout the whole process, Vitalis controls the light, temperature, nutrients, and water. The plants live in a perfectly contained ecosystem that’s never under threat from drought, flooding or pests. 

“It has its own brain,” Vitalis said. 

It’s a big advantage, he said, because he can grow food year-round and he doesn’t have to worry about pesticides or herbicides. It’s also “hyper-local,” he said. When he gets an order, the food comes from the planter into the customer’s hands within a matter of hours.

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David Bosley, Vitalis’ former boss at Cummins, Inc., used Vitalis’ greens for his Thanksgiving meal and said he was impressed by the packaging and freshness. At first, he said, the idea of a hydroponics farm was surprising.

“I thought it was rather novel,” he said, “but I also thought, well that’s just like DeMario.”

Nobody was surprised that Vitalis made New Age Provisions happen. 

He’s always been one to tackle a project without giving up, Bosley said. And he’s always been a trailblazer and hard worker, his mother said. She thinks it’s something he may have picked up from her, since she worked multiple jobs and attended school while caring for him and his siblings.

“I’m even more amazed with my son,” Johnson said. “He‘s satisfying a need in the community and following a dream. It was his vision and he brought it to fruition.”

Contact IndyStar reporter London Gibson at 317-419-1912 or lbgibson@gannett.com. Follow her on Twitter @londongibson. 

Connect with IndyStar’s environmental reporters: Join The Scrub on Facebook.

IndyStar's environmental reporting project is made possible through the generous support of the nonprofit Nina Mason Pulliam Charitable Trust.

Freight Farms Releases Next Generation of Container Farming

 4 May 2021

Freight Farms released the 10th generation of their container farming system – Greenery S, which has several key improvements on its predecessors.

Since its founding in 2013, Freight Farms has been dedicated to making modular vertical farming technology accessible to more communities around the globe in a sustainable fashion. Their systems use a hybrid of hardware, software and services to make food production possible for anyone of any background, anywhere in the world.

“Greenery S represents the apex,” Jon Friedman, COO and co-founder tell Future Farming, “leveraging the excellent design and intuitive automation to streamline workflow while driving up yields.”

LED technology

Greenery S has several key improvements on its predecessors. This includes the new Dynamic Lighting Control, which uses LED technology that allows farmers to customize the lighting spectrum, intensity and duration for optimal plant yields. It also features a brand new user-centric Workstation design making for a sleek, self-contained and multi-functional farm command center.

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LED technology allows farmers to customise the lighting spectrum, intensity and duration for optimal plant yields. - Photo: Freight Farms

More consistent harvests

This new generation also brings with it an update to Freight Farms’ farmhand software that includes a new feature called “Recipes.” This update allows farmers to obtain more consistent harvests.

“Operators simply choose the crop they wish to grow and farmhand automatically adjusts in-farm settings for that crop production,” explains Friedman. “In-farm cameras and sensors gather information and continuously improve the precision of the recipes over time, aggregating data from the entire farmer network to determine patterns that lead to exceptionally successful harvests.”

Of all their systems, Greenery S combines Freight Farms’ most optimized combination yet to allow farmers the highest possible yields at the highest quality with the fastest rates.

Lower startup costs

With lower startup costs, Freight Farms reports that their Greenery S farm system can grow an equivalent of 2.5 acres of traditional farmland with 12 harvests per year. According to Friedman, it typically takes their farmers two to three years to see returns on their initial investments.

Greenery S is now available for purchase worldwide.

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Jaclyn Krymowski

Correspondent for North America

Read more about: Vertical Farming Indoor Farming Container Farming

What Is A Container Farm?

30-04-2021 LettUs

Container farming, vertical farming, indoor farming… What do they all mean? Are they all the same thing? In this blog, we’re going to explain exactly what a container farm is and what the benefits of growing crops in this way are.

The controlled environment agriculture club

Controlled environment agriculture (CEA) is a term for using different technologies to grow food indoors. In CEA, these technologies ensure the best growing conditions and protection for specific crops. This is slightly different to just indoor farming - by nature, indoor farms simply protect crops from external forces such as weather and pests. A container farm would be an example of CEA, as would other indoor farms such as vertical farms and high-tech commercial greenhouses.

A container farm is usually a vertical farming system built inside a shipping container. The benefits of placing a farm within a container, rather than a building, are that it is transportable and can be squeezed into existing spaces, such as in car parks or on farmland. 

Since it is classified as a temporary structure, you typically don’t need planning permission for a shipping container. This can be particularly useful for those who rent their farmland. However, there are always exceptions and the necessary checks should always be made before making arrangements. As long as there is level ground, access to electricity, water & wifi, a shipping container can fit into a range of different settings.

Serving communities, big or small 

Since they’re easy to transport, container farms can be easily deployed as and when they are needed. This means they could be used for research or social-impact projects, without needing to build a permanent facility. Shipping containers are also modular, which means multiple containers can be used to build a larger facility and businesses can scale their operations appropriately. They also have the potential to be bedded into existing container parks - these are dotted around the UK and are usually shipping containers made up of independent shops, cafes, and restaurants. One container farm could supply fresh produce to all of these.

In this way, container farms have the potential to be a positive disruptor within our food supply networks and strengthen our local food security by reducing our dependence on imported produce. Food waste and carbon caused by food transportation would also be reduced by strategically placing containers in key locations within communities.

The DROP & GROW container farm

LettUs Grow’s container farms are powered by aeroponic technology. This is a soil-less system that uses a nutrient-dense mist to irrigate crops - boosting oxygen levels and encouraging healthy root stock. Whilst hydroponic container farms are more common, DROP & GROW uses aeroponics to optimise crop health and increase growth rates.

Our container farms have also been designed with the grower in mind. DROP & GROW:24 includes a separate preparation area, providing ample space for the grower to do their job. Our farms have also been designed to be easy to maneuver within and check on your crops.

Celebrating vertical farming technology

DROP & GROW wasn’t designed to be inconspicuous. Quite the opposite! We think urban farming, new technologies and feeding local communities is something to shout about, so a DROP & GROW on your site is an opportunity to start a conversation and encourage your customers to learn more about the benefits of vertical farming.

If you want to take a positive step towards a more sustainable and resilient food supply chain in the UK, then talk to LettUs business development team about why a container farm might be in the right choice for you. Find out more...

Source and Photo Courtesy of LettUs Grow

USA: NEW YORK - When A Shipping Container Becomes A Farm

Compact, Enclosed Vertical Farms Are Making Their

Way To Hudson Valley's Urban Areas

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Cloey Callahan

May 3, 2021

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John Lekic is the chef and owner of Farmers & Chefs in Poughkeepsie and vertically grows his own produce for his restaurant in a shipping container on site. He came across the concept of shipping container farming at an exhibition at the Culinary Institute of America in 2019. Aaron Lacan

The Hudson Valley is quite familiar with what it means to be farm-to-table, but what if the farm is also practically right next to the table, even in the more urban and metro areas?

Vertical farming via high-tech shipping containers is emerging as a new solution for businesses seeking to grow their own produce in a way that shrinks the necessary agricultural footprint while maximizing yield and reducing produce travel time. Here in the Hudson Valley, a 20 by 20-foot shipping container is being used to grow up to 400 pounds of fresh produce a month at Farmers & Chefs restaurant in Poughkeepsie.

Last year, the restaurant partnered with an Israel-based agro-tech company Vertical Field to grow herbs and vegetables for its dishes in a new and innovative way. The startup, established in 2006, uses technology to create innovative growing methods to improve food supplies in urban areas around the world, working mostly in the Middle East and Europe but also recently in the United States — including right here in Dutchess County.

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Poughkeepsie's Farmers & Chefs is one of the first businesses in the Hudson Valley to try shipping container farming. The restaurant's 20 by 20-foot climate-controlled container (pictured above) produces about 400 pounds of fresh produce a month. Aaron Lacan

John Lekic, chef and owner of Farmers & Chefs, grows everything from buttercrunch lettuce, kale and baby arugula to herbs like rosemary, sage and basil in his enclosed vertical farm. The container is divided into four growing fields and is set on the restaurant’s property for customers to see, which has drawn even more interest to Farmers & Chefs as of late.

So why vertical farming? 

Vertical Field is just one manufacturer specializing in reimagining steel shipping containers into enclosed, climate-controlled farms that are powered by LED lights instead of the sun, essentially supercharging a growing environment. Freight Farms and Grow Pod Solutions, other manufacturers, also tout this farming approach for its lower burden on farm labor and land, and for the higher output per square foot.

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Shipping container farming is climate-controlled, powered by LED lights instead of the sun, and can produce high yield in a small space. But humidity and start-up infrastructure costs can be challenges. Aaron Lacan

“It’s a dream come true for chefs to be involved from the seed to the plate,” said Lekic. “It’s a great experience when you grow your own ingredients.”

Lekic pursued vertical farming after coming across Vertical Field during an exhibition showcasing a number of Israeli-based companies involved in food and agriculture at the Culinary Institute of America in late 2019.

Before the shipping container arrived at the Poughkeepsie restaurant, Lekic sourced vegetables from nearby farms and grew herbs in small outdoor gardening beds on site. However, Lekic found that it wasn’t enough yield, especially in the summer, and he often collaborated with additional farms to fill the gap. With a shipping container for growing, the restaurant is able to produce enough of what they need and on site – a key benefit for Lekic.

“There is a huge importance of having urban farms where the demand is,” said Lekic. “The problem with today’s agriculture is that everything has to travel. Most people are not aware of it, but depletion of the nutrients in our food is a huge issue.”

If you harvest spinach, it would be full of vitamin C that same day, Lekic said. But that changes dramatically just 48 hours later, when that nutrient is mostly gone. (A 2013 study by the University of California showed that spinach could lose as much as 90 percent of vitamin C in a single day.)

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Farmers & Chefs restaurant grows everything from buttercrunch lettuce, kale, and baby arugula to rosemary and sage in its on-site shipping container. Aaron Lacan

By growing the restaurant’s produce steps away from the kitchen, “it’s as fresh as it gets,” said Lekic.

Farmers & Chefs received its shipping container farm right around the same time that COVID-19 hit last year, which Lekic said actually worked out well, as it gave him a chance to learn the ins and outs of vertical farming during a period that was quiet for his restaurant. By April, he was harvesting the first crops.

“Overall, the goal of vertical farming is to reduce the cost of healthy and fresh food to the retailer and to the end buyer as well,” said Vertical Field marketing director Noa Winston. “Since vertical farming reduces transportation costs, food losses, inventory inconsistencies, and price fluctuations due to climate, natural disasters, and other crises that create shortages, the retailer with vertical farming can benefit from consistency, security, and ownership over the entire supply chain.”

In another regional example, Evergreen Market, a grocery store in Monsey in Rockland County, partnered with Vertical Field to grow vegetables that ultimately stocked the store’s produce aisles, while also inviting customers to view its micro-farm when they visit the store.

Cost and maintenance concerns

This farming approach isn’t for everyone and there are drawbacks. “While it does offer some solutions to things like land access — which is, frankly, a huge barrier to the farming we advocate for here in the Hudson Valley — there is a lot of infrastructure needed,” said Kathleen Finlay, president of Glynwood, a center for regional food and farming based in Cold Spring.

“That brings a whole other set of challenges — how to create enterprises with a high capital upfront cost, how to get sustainable systems. It’s a different suite of challenges than more land-based production.”

Indeed, the start-up costs for an on-site shipping container farms aren’t cheap, although businesses say savings can be realized downstream by the reduced costs of paying produce purveyors for food that a restaurant or business is now growing itself.

Freight Farms' 2021 Greenery S model costs $149,000, which doesn’t include the shipping fee. Additional start-up costs can vary depending on where its being shipped, training packages selected, and any extras. Vertical Field would not disclose the fees associated with its model.

Plus, there is a bit of a learning curve when farming in a shipment container. Lekic played around with different variables, like what was best to grow at the same time, to see what would produce the highest yield.

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"It's as fresh as it gets," said John Lekic of Farmers & Chefs, pictured above, about the new way of farming. Aaron Lacan

“For my purposes, I learned to stick with only two to four items – mostly greens,” said Lekic about his growing. “It makes the most sense based on my demand.”

Maintenance is an ongoing effort with an enclosed growing system that requires constant electricity and temperature controls to assure optimal growing conditions. “It’s always work,” said Lekic.

Over the past year, Lekic had to work out some kinks and issues, like making sure the air conditioning and heat levels were favorable to growing produce year-round. Just like traditional farming, some seasons might require more work — a vertical farm in the summer, for example, would have increased humidity that could negatively affect plants if not properly controlled.

While some growers may need back-up plans for electricity outages, Lekic doesn't foresee issues there because he is connected to the main restaurant building, which runs on a hospital-grid electricity system. Just in case, he has two generators that he could connect to if needed.

These drawbacks are outweighed by the ability to grow such consistent produce yield himself on site, he said, and the built-in technology features like being able to water plants by pushing a button on his phone. Lekic said overall it’s pretty easy to operate and monitor, so much so that the restaurant is looking into upgrading its original container to the newer version of the same size, and purchasing a second container.

“I’m interested in doing a mushroom container,” said Lekic. “There is the possibility of that. It’s a completely different kind of experience, but we would be super excited.”

DIY shipping container farming

While the hefty price tag of some farming shipping containers might be too prohibitive for some, others are riffing off of elements of tech-first farming for their own DIY growing methods.

KC Sullivan, a New Jersey-based mushroom farmer, created his own vertical farming environment out of an abandoned 40-foot-length shipping container that was used for storage at the Whitechapel Projects in Long Branch. Sullivan, who often collaborates with Tivoli Mushrooms here in the Hudson Valley, decided to create his own container farm by spray foaming it, sealing the floors, putting in an HVAC system, adding lighting and installing a misting mechanism.

He estimated the costs to be between $15,000 and $20,000 — not insignificant but far cheaper than a new shipping container already turbo-charged for farming.

“It was challenging,” said Sullivan. “There is no real guidebook or instruction manual on how to create a container mushroom farm. It was all about brainstorming how we wanted it to be.”

While it’s only been a year since mushrooms have been grown out of this urban shipping container, Sullivan is happy with the high-yield results: he's growing around 400 to 500 pounds of mushrooms a week. Mushroom container farming is slightly different from growing vegetables or herbs; for example, Sullivan doesn’t grow compost mushrooms, so there is no dirt necessary.

“We grow hardwood varieties, so it’s exclusively on red oak saw dust that is supplemented with agricultural byproducts,” said Sullivan. “You mix the two together with water, pasteurize it to kill off any pathogens, inoculate it with the strain of mushroom you’re looking to grow. It goes through an incubation period in a separate room [outside of the container], and then it goes to the fruiting room, which is the container and where it will be harvested.”

Just like Lekic, Sullivan also has run into some maintenance hiccups. The waterlines froze during the winter, which was a “big challenge and setback,” leading to a starved off humidification system, costing him around 100 to 150 pounds of crop.

Despite that hurdle, Sullivan also says the container can stand up against storms because it’s “built like a tank,” while regular farmland could be vulnerable to severe thunderstorms and potential flooding.

“One tool in the toolbox”

While an exciting option for some, vertical farming is “one tool in the toolbox” and it’s important to not forget about the benefits of traditional farming, said Finlay of Glynwood.

Finlay applauds any effort to produce food “that aligns with environmental sustainability,” but doesn’t think vertical farming will ever replace traditional farming or even fix the lack of land available for production.

Still, any effort to grow fresh food for more people is a win overall.

“We need more healthy food, accessible and affordable to more people,” said Finlay. “As much as vertical farming can play a role to that, I think that’s wonderful.”

Written By

Cloey Callahan

Cloey Callahan is a lifelong Hudson Valley resident who was born and raised in Brewster, lived in New Paltz for four years while she attended college, and now resides in Newburgh on Liberty Street. On a sunny day, she strolls through Newburgh enjoying the 19th-century architecture on her way to the Hudson River waterfront. You can reach her at cloey.callahan@hearst.com to say hi or with pitches.

How COVID-19 Fed The Dream of Growing Food At Home

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04-28-21

BY ELIZABETH SEGRAN

Sales of hydroponic gardens boomed during the pandemic, but do high-tech solutions like those only further fuel inequality?

This story is part of Home Bound, a series that examines Americans’ fraught relationship to their homes—and the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to hit the reset button. Read more here.

When COVID-19 struck the United States, people rushed to grocery stores to stock up on food, only to find that many shelf-stable items like beans, rice, and flour were sold out. It was the first time many of us were forced to consider where our food comes from—and how vulnerable the global food system really is.

These food shortages spurred many Americans to consider growing their own food for the first time. Some planted vegetables in their backyards and windowsills, while others went for high-tech hydroponic gardens.

In the years before the pandemic, startups developed these compact self-watering, self-fertilizing, gardening machines that were aesthetically pleasing, to boot. During the lockdowns, sales of these products—which start around $800—spiked, prompting venture capitalists to pour millions into the industry.

But as the COVID era comes to an end, it remains to be seen whether these high-tech gardens have staying power or whether they were just a short-lived novelty. And more broadly, it’s worth asking whether these devices can be a tool for making agriculture more sustainable and equitable, or whether they’re just another toy for the Whole Foods class.

[Photo: courtesy of Freight Farms]

THE HYDROPONICS REVOLUTION

Hydroponics, which simply means growing plants in a solution of water and nutrients instead of soil, have been around since at least 600 BCE. But in the late 1920s, William Gericke of the University of California modernized these techniques, creating farms that require less space and up to 95% less water than soil-based farms but yield much bigger harvests by optimizing light, water, and nutrients. During World War II, the U.S. military built hydroponic gardens to grow vegetables for troops in locations that weren’t suited to traditional agriculture, such as Ascension Island, a refueling station in the Atlantic Ocean, where soldiers grew thousands of pounds of cucumbers, tomatoes, lettuce, and radishes each month, staving off malnutrition.

COVID-19 prompted some countries to use hydroponics to deal with disruptions in the global supply chain. The Netherlands and Singapore, which have limited agricultural land and rely largely on imports, invested billions during the pandemic to build industrial hydroponics farms on rooftops and parking lots. In the United States, hydroponics are still a small business, with about 3,000 businesses generating around $800 million in revenue, a small sliver of the $451 billion from traditional farming. But analysts are banking that the industry is poised to grow.

Over the last five years, a bevy of startups—including Rise Gardens, Gardyn, Lettuce Grow, Aerogarden, and Click-and-Grow—have launched to create hydroponic systems that can fit inside a home. That’s a departure from the focus over the past century on large-scale hydroponics farms.

The devices are expensive, and before the pandemic, it was a tough sell convincing consumers to spend nearly $1,000 on a machine that might take years to pay off. But COVID-19 changed the game, as people around the world worried about food shortages. “The pandemic made people pay attention to where their food comes from and accelerated their interest in producing their own food,” says Nina Ichikawa, executive director of the Berkeley Food Institute, which promotes food equity. “This new awareness is a good thing.”

Many of these startups doubled or tripled their sales over the past year, and some investors are capitalizing on this interest. True Ventures, which funds Peloton and Blue Bottle, invested $2.6 million in Rise Gardens; Gardyn raised $10 million from JAB Holding Company, the largest shareholder in Keurig. And right before the pandemic, Estonia-based Click & Grow received $11 million in funding from Y Combinator and Ingka Group, which operates 367 Ikea stores in Europe.

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[Photo: courtesy of Lettuce Grow]

A PERSONAL HYDROPONIC GARDEN

Despite my lifelong black thumb, I decided to test Lettuce Grow, a six-foot tall hydroponic garden that looks like a white sculpture with plants artfully growing on it. I’m shocked by how much food I’ve grown: My family of three now eats freshly plucked lettuces with each meal and yet our harvest is so plentiful, we’ve had to share our veggies with neighbors.

The beauty of hydroponic systems is that they’re designed to run on their own, with minimal intervention from the owner. My machine automatically waters and fertilizes the plants by pumping a nutrient-rich solution through the system for 15 minutes every hour. The high-efficiency LED light rings control how much light the plants receive, adding only a few dollars to our monthly electricity bill. All I have to do is top up the water in the base and add a few spoonfuls of plant food every week.

When it comes to seeds, all of these hydroponic startups are also, effectively, subscription programs. You need to buy seeds or seedlings from the company for about $2 apiece to replace the plants you’ve fully harvested. This takes anywhere from three weeks to several months depending on their growth cycle. “You get to enjoy the beauty of watching living things grow, without needing any expertise in farming,” says Jacob Pechenik, who co-founded Lettuce Grow in 2019 with the actress Zooey Deschanel.

And these startups aren’t just focused on making the machines smaller, they’ve also made them beautiful. Lettuce Grow, for instance, worked with the designer Pip Tomkins—who previously designed the Nokia M Series—to create a stand with vegetables and herbs cascading from the sides, much like you’d see on a plant wall. Rise Gardens partnered with TBD Innovations, a firm made up of former IDEO designers, to create a system that looks like a white cabinet with rows of plants above it. “We knew that our garden needed to look attractive for people to consider bringing them into their homes,” says Hank Adams, founder and CEO of Rise Gardens. “We wanted it to be beautiful and minimalist, so you’d be happy to have it whether you live in your studio apartment or large home.”

Rise Gardens, Gardyn, and Lettuce Grow all created modular systems, so customers can start with just a few levels of plants and expand over time. Pechenik says his goal was for Lettuce Grow to replace up to a fifth of a household’s produce. (I can attest that our 24-plant unit easily achieves this for a family of three.) For those who can afford it, these machines generate fruits and vegetables that are far tastier and more nutritious than what you’d normally buy at a store. Studies show that most produce loses 30% of its nutrients three days after harvest, and much of what we find in the grocery is much older than that.

Hydroponics provides an alternative to industrial agriculture, which has dominated our food system since the 1960s. Factory-like farms are bad for the planet because they deplete the soil, consume a lot of water, spew toxic pesticides into the environment, and contribute to deforestation. Transporting food around the country also generates carbon emissions and creates a lot of waste, since produce goes bad along the way. Half of all U.S. produce is thrown out. For me, one of the best parts about having a hydroponic garden at home is that we’ve virtually eliminated waste and have to make fewer trips to the grocery store.

FOOD INEQUITY

For now, most of these devices have gone to people interested in small-scale gardening. But the founders believe their products have the ability to disrupt our broken food system, if they’re able to scale. “We are not in the gardening business,” says FX Rouxel, Gardyn’s founder and CEO. “We’re trying to reinvent how people can grow their own food at scale. If we have solutions that are compelling enough, we believe we can change people’s food habits and reduce their dependence on the grocery store.” Gardyn launched in early 2020, and in its first year, Rouxel says its hundreds of customers grew 70,000 pounds of produce.

But Berkeley Food Institute’s Ichikawa argues that we should be skeptical about whether these high-end hydroponic systems can actually change the food system. Most people don’t have the money to invest hundreds of dollars in this hardware, and those are exactly the people who could most benefit. A tenth of households experience food insecurity and more than 23.5 million Americans live in neighborhoods without easy access to a supermarket. “Rich people are willing to spend their money on many new-fangled technologies that don’t necessarily impact the rest of the industry for better or for worse,” she says. “It’s just a new business opportunity for these startups.”

She points out that hydroponics don’t have to be so expensive or complicated. In fact, a lot of innovation around cost-effective small-scale hydroponics came from cannabis growers, many of whom were people of color operating underground. Entrepreneurs and scientists have been developing affordable DIY hydroponics in Africa, particularly Kenya. Startups like Hydroponics Africa have built systems that don’t require electricity and use inexpensive, locally available materials, including fungi-resistant aluminum trays. “These [U.S.] startups are creating a flashier, fancier version of systems that have actually been around for a long time,” Ichikawa says. “There are a lot of low-cost solutions that have emerged from the ground up, from the communities that depend on these technologies to survive.”

For now, Pechenik tries to make his technology available to more people by donating one Lettuce Grow machine for every 10 sold to schools, nonprofits, and community organizations. He says they’ve distributed several hundred already, along with $1 million in donations. Rise Garden, meanwhile, has launched a smaller machine that starts at $279. “I compare this to the early days of personal computing when a laptop was very expensive, and yet now, laptops are widely available,” Adams says. “As hydroponic gardens scale, the cost of manufacturing will go down.”

One answer might come from systems that are large enough to feed a community, rather than a single family, and thus are more cost-effective. Take, for instance, Freight Farms, which debuted the first hydroponic farm inside a shipping container in 2012. The company sells $130,000 containers that can generate the same amount of food as three and a half acres of farmland, enough to feed hundreds of people. Long-term, these systems are more economical given their scale and could help solve food insecurity problems. The city of Boston, for instance, bought five Freight Farm systems in Mattapan, where 20% of the population lives below the poverty line, to create a high-tech farming co-op. “Our farms are being used as part of community redevelopment,” says Rick Vanzura, Freight Farms’ CEO.

[Photos: courtesy of Freight Farms]

During the pandemic, Freight Farms’ sales tripled, and the company expects business to triple again in 2021. Last year, it landed $15 million in Series B funding, bringing its total to $28 million. Vanzura believes that for hydroponics to have an impact on agriculture, there will need to be farms of different sizes, ranging from individual gardens to industrial farms. In fact, Freight Farms advised Lettuce Grow about growing techniques, drawing from its decade-worth of data. “We need to cooperate as an industry to take the best of what we each do and help each other get better,” he says.

As hydroponics grow in popularity, Ichikawa says that it’s important to remember that it is not the only, or best, solution to cultivating food for a community. The poor tend to be most impacted by problems in the food system and suffer from health issues due to lack of access to nutritious food. This is why organizations like hers advocate for food sovereignty, which means empowering communities to take charge of their own food supply through things like local ownership of grocery stores and backyard or community gardening.

While midsize hydroponic systems could be a tool for tackling food insecurity, she worries that it could create a new barrier to entry, making access to fresh food seem even more out of reach. “Food sovereignty can absolutely protect us from the instabilities from pandemics or climate change, so any way that folks can feel autonomy over their food supply is a good thing,” Ichikawa says. “But you don’t need a fancy hydroponic system to do this. You could do it just as easily with a bucket of soil by a window.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Elizabeth Segran, Ph.D., is a senior staff writer at Fast Company. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts

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[Source Images: courtesy of Lettuce Grow]

When We Started Freight Farms In 2010, There Was No Such Thing As An “Ag Tech” industry

We weren’t even sure how to explain what we were trying to do to our own friends and family! But we knew that there was a need for urban agriculture to emerge as a competitive industry in the food landscape. That’s why Freight Farms was born—to build the infrastructure and technology that would allow local food to thrive around the globe.

Less than a decade later, we are proud to be on the forefront of the fast-growing Agriculture Technology industry. Freight Farms has grown into a platform that anyone can use to supply their communities with fresh produce year-round, regardless of background or geographic location. We’ve had the pleasure of launching our container farming system in over 44 states in the US and 24 countries around the globe, creating the largest network of connected farmers.

Freight Farms has a passionate customer base of small businesses, entrepreneurs, traditional farmers, hotels, restaurants, corporate campuses, universities, and non-profits. We’d love to welcome you into our community of Freight Farmers, and our team is ready to help you get started. 

Jon Friedman and Brad McNamara

Freight Farms Co-Founders

VIDEO: One Sure Way To Save Our Soil – Don’t Use Any

In the push for regenerative agriculture and soil rehabilitation, container farming has an important role to play.

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The idea behind regenerative agriculture isn’t new, but this year it is front and center as one of the key initiatives of the official Earth Day 2021 campaign: Restore Our Earth™.

According to the Earth Day organization, overfarming has caused soil capacity in the U.S. to decline dramatically, losing soil 10 times faster than it can be replenished. The result is that in many places, the land has as few as 60 harvests left before it is completely depleted. Unfortunately, with ownership of farms increasingly concentrated in the hands of industrial or foreign producers, the promise of short-term profits wins out over long-term solutions that would prioritize soil health.

What is regenerative agriculture?

Regenerative farming takes an opposite position. As a school of thought, it is a method of farming that actively fights soil degradation by restoring carbon to the soil, which has a double benefit of renewing the viability of the land while simultaneously removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. There are many different types of regenerative agriculture, here’s a helpful video to explain the main three:

But between destroying the soil and saving the soil, there’s a third option: not using any soil at all. This is the premise behind container farming.

Container farming to save soil.

Container farming is a subset of the indoor farming industry, which includes everything from greenhouses and warehouses to at-home tabletop setups. The advantage of container farming is the ability to create commercial-scale production within a small space the size of your standard 40-foot shipping container through vertical farming techniques. Inside the container, plants are protected from the external elements and nurtured using nutrient-enriched water, powerful red and blue light, and optimal temperatures.

Notice anything missing? Oh yeah–soil!

Container farming with hydroponics completely eliminates the need for soil to grow food, which is great news for the whole regenerative agriculture movement. Since regenerative farming is based on the idea of protecting soil, container farming is able to take the whole idea to the logical extreme by not using any soil–period.

Not only does container farming prevent the further degradation of soil, but it actually frees up land to be actively regenerated. At Freight Farms, our containers (each capable of growing an average of 2 acres of food) have already saved 700 acres of land… which’s equal to about 530 football fields!

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Additional sustainability benefits

Beyond regenerative agriculture, which is primarily focused on soil, container farming brings many additional sustainable benefits. The Greenery S is able to save:

• Water: 99% less water than is used in conventional agriculture.

• Food miles: we move the farms, not the food. Instead of trucking/shipping food from a centralized location, we put the farm as close to the final consumer as possible.

• Carbon emissions: in addition to reducing food miles, we’ve partnered with Arcadia to make it easy and effective for our farmers to get onto the renewable energy grid and make their carbon footprint just one-quarter of what it would be if they were farming using industrial farming methods.

Regenerating communities

While regenerative agriculture may start with soil, the implications on climate change, food access, and food security are clear. In the same way, container farming is also more than just improving the sustainability of our agriculture system. In addition to saving soil, land, water and reducing food miles and carbon emissions, container farming unlocks many important social gains:

• Independence: when we are not reliant on soil, land, and climate, we can make any place a farm. This makes it possible for us to create the distributed system we need to combat the harmful effects of industrial farming and centralized food systems.

• Equality: independence from soil and land also creates more food equality, since individuals and communities need fewer resources (money & land) to create commercial-scale farms.

• More farmers: Soil is complicated and nuanced, it takes huge amounts of experience and education to know how to do regenerative agriculture properly. With container farming, everyone can be a low-impact farmer.

• More varieties: Conventional agriculture is beholden to monocropping, which improves the unit economics of growing food but also increases the risk of crop failure, blight, and soil degradation. Container farming makes it possible to grow hundreds of plant varieties, introducing people to new types of plants and growing public perception of the diversity you can have with fresh greens. This can have an overall positive effect on market demands and help move the whole system away from relying on mono-cropping.

Learn more about the Earth Day Restore Our Earth™ campaign and check out how Freight Farms is helping support the regenerative farming movement with container farming!

Freight Farms

Empowering anyone to grow food anywhere. Freight Farms makes local food accessible in any climate with the Greenery™ container farm.

Freight Farms

April 23, 2014

Follow Earth Day Earth Day 2021 Sustainability Regenerative Agriculture Agriculture

US: NEBRASKA - The Bay, Beyond School Bells Launch Youth-Focused 'Freight Farm'

Apr 25, 2021

Luna Stephens

A 40-foot-long shipping container in the parking lot of The Bay will soon be filled with a whole lot of green.

In partnership with Beyond School Bells, The Bay is launching The Greenery, a self-contained hydroponic farm housed in a repurposed shipping container. Members of Beyond School Bells and The Bay gathered with local leaders Saturday to officially launch the program.

Much like The Bay’s other youth-focused programs, The Greenery is designed to allow students access to engaging, hands-on activities — in this case growing food.

“We are thrilled about the opportunity to be able to turn kids on to sustainable agriculture,” said Andrew Norman, executive director and co-founder of The Bay’s parent organization Rabble Mill. “A lot of the kids in our neighborhood have never seen anything like this; none of us have.”

The Greenery setup is designed by the Boston-based company Freight Farms. Beyond School Bells was able to purchase the unit through a partnership with the Ben Hormel Harris Foundation, said state Sen. Anna Wishart, the director of partnerships for Beyond School Bells. Several local companies and individuals donated their time to help get it up and running.

Through vertical planting that doesn’t require soil, the shipping container is able to house 13,000 plants at a time, or about as much food as a 2.5-acre farm. Throughout the container are thousands of red and blue LED lights that can be precisely controlled through the trailer’s high-tech programming to provide the perfect amount and color of light for each plant, said Doak Field, director of operations at Freight Farms.

The setup is also water-efficient, as the water that flows throughout the trailer is repumped through the cycle.

“Everything is just way more efficient than growing outside,” Field said. “You can get the exact science down to whatever you need to grow.”

 Field said the team hopes to start planting the container within the next two weeks and is planning to start with greens such as lettuces and kale, as well as herbs.

The program leaders plan to sell the food grown at the Greenery at local farmers’ markets or through weekly community-supported agriculture projects. They'll also source produce to local restaurants.

While many of the similar freight farm projects that have popped up across the country have been for-profit and run by adults, Lincoln’s will be one of only a few that are not-for-profit and youth-focused, Wishart said.

Beyond School Bells works statewide to provide after-school opportunities for students like The Greenery, she said.

“Our goal is to ensure that every kid, no matter where they grow up in Nebraska, has access to quality out-of-school programming and this freight farm is absolutely an example of that,” she said.

The project will offer an opportunity for students to learn a variety of skills, Wishart said, and University of Nebraska-Lincoln honor students will also play a role in mentoring younger students working on the project.

“This also creates an incredible platform for youth to learn entrepreneurship and about sustainable, high-tech agriculture and future careers in that space,” Wishart said.

The Greenery project is part of a series of environmental-focused projects across the state that Beyond School Bells is working on, the organization's network lead Jeff Cole said.

“This will be the crown jewel,” he said. “But we're already starting to do investments in rural Nebraska around outdoor classrooms, environmental education, and a series of other things across the state.”

Lincoln Mayor Leirion Gaylor Baird said she sees the project as an example of innovative, environmentally friendly solutions that can help move the city forward.

“This is such a wonderful demonstration of how we can take better care of the Earth, create greater value for everyone in our community and hand something on to the next generation, something that they can have a leadership role in,” Gaylor Baird said.

Lead Photo: Jeff Cole of Beyond School Bells talks to visitors about the Greenery, a 40-foot-long shipping container that will operate as a high-tech hydroponic farm at The Bay. The container has space to vertically grow over 13,000 plants — the equivalent of a 2.5-acre farm. FRANCIS GARDLER, Journal Star

USA: BALTIMORE - Hydroponic Operation Supplies High-End Restaurants

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Art Petrosemolo, Southeastern Pennsylvania Correspondent

Apr 23, 2021

Growing vegetables in a shipping container have opened new marketing opportunities for a Baltimore County farm.

The hydroponic growing system has allowed Karma Farm to sell fresh produce regardless of the season to high-end restaurants in Baltimore and Washington.

“Today we are delivering leafy greens and herbs year-round to a growing customer base,” said Jon Shaw, founder of the family operation.

The farm, which makes multiple weekly deliveries to 27 customers, has picked up clients through word of mouth and sampling visits arranged with chefs who find the farm on social media.

“Well-known chefs talk and move from restaurant to restaurant ... and they have brought us with them,” Shaw said.

The farm got its start just over a decade ago when Shaw was growing produce on 5 acres, both outside and in hoop houses, for retail sale as well as a nearly 100-member CSA.

Karma Farm purchased a freight container vertical hydroponics Leafy Green Machine from Freight Farms in Boston in 2017. Photo by Art Petrosemolo

Jon’s 28-year old son, Nat, learned the business from his dad as a teenager, and in the past few years he has helped Karma Farm pivot to the new customer base, embracing the new ag technologies.

Nat, now the farm’s hydroponic production manager, researched vertical growing in insulated shipping containers while he was studying entrepreneurship at the University of Baltimore and thought the year-round production method would be a good fit.

“Hydroponic container farming is still relatively new and is being introduced to farmers in parts of the country where short growing seasons, weather, and soil conditions make profitable, small family farming difficult,” he said.

With a feasibility study completed and a new focus for the business, the Shaws purchased a Leafy Green Machine container in 2017 from Freight Farms in Boston. The container is 40 feet long by 8 feet wide.

“These are the insulated type of refrigerated containers used to ship fresh produce across the country,” Nat said.

With delivery and setup, the container cost about $100,000.

Lead photo: Nat Shaw, left, and his dad, Karma Farm owner Jon Shaw, stand in their freight container.

This Is What The Future of Farming Looks Like

Why Grow Plants Horizontally When You Can Grow Them Vertically?

What do most people think of when imagining a farm? Typically: Acres upon acres of crops, fed by an extensive irrigation system, with tons of pesticides and heavy machinery— in other words, an image of modern farming that’s simply dated. Today’s most technically advanced farms don’t require nearly as much water or chemicals and take up just a fraction of the footprint. How? The answer is simple: Vertical farming. Specifically, the brand new Greenery S hydroponic system by Freight Farms.

Vertical farming is nothing less than exactly what it sounds like. As opposed to spreading crops out along the ground, beds are effectively turned on their side, and grown on vertical panels. This isn’t exactly new; some of the earliest indigenous farmers would plant crops on layered terraces to achieve similar results. But the modern form of vertical farming is barely two decades old. While it’s proven hyper-efficient, the technological cost of entry has also traditionally proven to be high, requiring expensive lights, temperature and irrigation control systems, and enormous amounts of electricity — to say nothing of capital. Until now.

Enter Freight Farms, a fully-functional farm in a 40-foot container. Launched in 2011, Freight Farms’ mission is to build accessible, modular vertical farming technology that empowers anyone to grow fresh, healthy food in their local communities — wherever that may be. While industrial farms tend to rely on GMO seeds, extensive pesticides, and centralized distribution systems, Freight Farms has worked tirelessly to cram 2.5 acres worth of farmable land into a 320-square-foot shipping container that can be placed almost anywhere and scaled up (or down) to meet your individual needs. Whether you’re a small restaurant looking to grow your own vegetables, an entrepreneur looking to bring fresh food to a food desert, or even just a homestead hobbyist, the Greenery S by Freight Farms is here to make your vertical farm aspirations a reality.

Freight Farms brings a decade of experience to the Greenery S. The Greenery S uses 99% less water than traditional industrial farm systems, mainly because you don’t need to worry about losing so much water to evaporation over acres and acres of land. Furthermore, the Greenery S has built-in temperature controls that make farming viable year-round, with a minimum temperature of -40 degrees Fahrenheit and a maximum of 120 degrees Fahrenheit. And with over five hundred supported crop varieties, you can throw out your hardiness zone map and grow pretty much whatever you want, wherever you want.

Besides being far more cost-effective than purchasing, tilling, planting, irrigating, and harvesting multiple acres of land, Freight Farms also uses data to help you get the most out of your yield. The proprietary farmhand® software integration gives operators complete automation and control over their grow operations. The software connects hundreds of farmers and is constantly compiling data from them to help you better manage your own crops based on learnings from the entire Freight Farms network.

The Greenery S is available now, to everyone. Whether you’re a seasoned farmer looking to scale out your operation or you’re simply looking for an exciting new business opportunity, Freight Farms’ intelligent automation and exceptional design can transform any small space into a commercial-scale farm. Head here to learn more and reserve yours now.

Lead Image: Image by Freight Farms

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Futurism fans: This post was paid for by Freight Farms and was written by non-editorial staff. This content does not necessarily reflect the views or the endorsement of the Futurism.com editorial staff.

As a Futurism reader, we invite you to join the Singularity Global Community, our parent company’s forum to discuss futuristic science & technology with like-minded people from all over the world. It’s free to join, sign up now!

US: KENTUCKY - AppHarvest Continues To Expand Operations, Adds New Container Farm In Madison County

AppHarvest (WYMT)

By Brandon Robinson

Apr. 22, 2021

RICHMOND, Ky. (WYMT) - Some Central Kentucky high school students will soon be able to help grow food not only for themselves but the entire region.

On Thursday, officials with Morehead-based AppHarvest announced the expansion of their container farm program to Madison County High School in Richmond.

Watch Live Below:

Gov. Andy Beshear, who attended the event, appropriately held on Earth Day, said the move will not only provide food but help students prepare for possible careers in a field with growing demand.

“AppHarvest has been reimagining and reinventing sustainable food production at its state-of-the-art facility in Morehead. With the opening of the company’s container farm classroom at Madison Central High School, AppHarvest is showing its commitment to the Commonwealth runs both strong and deep,” said Gov. Andy Beshear. “This living, teaching lab will inspire and engage Kentucky students to learn about cutting-edge technology that will become the basis of the jobs of the future. Thank you to Founder & CEO Jonathan Webb and his team for making education and Kentucky students a priority in his plans for success.”

The container farm is 2,880 cubic feet, weighs 7.5 tons and includes space to grow up to 4,608 seedlings and 8,800 mature plants all at once using 440 vertical crop columns.

Each retrofitted shipping container serves as a hands-on agricultural classroom for students, allowing them to grow and provide fresh leafy greens to their classmates and those in need in their communities. The company has previously opened container farms in Eastern Kentucky at Breathitt High School in Jackson, Shelby Valley High School in Pikeville, and Rowan County Senior High School in Morehead, the site of the company’s flagship farm.

AppHarvest Founder & CEO Jonathan Webb said the latest expansion will not only help feed Kentuckians but will help Eastern Kentucky’s struggling economy.

“We knew long before opening our Morehead farm that we wanted to invest in the region to help grow our growers and build on the many outstanding community and education programs focused on creating a more resilient Appalachian economy,” Webb said. “The technology in each of these container farms is a good example of what AppHarvest’s modern farmers use daily on a larger scale.”

The Madison Central High School container program will be led by agriculture teacher and FFA adviser Derek Adams.

“Our students are looking forward to getting hands-on experience with state-of-the-art technology that will better prepare them for career opportunities in the agriculture industry,” Adams said. “They are especially eager to see the leafy greens come full circle from farm to table in their own school cafeteria.”

South Carolina Hydroponic Container Farm Makes A Large Impact With A Small Footprint

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Hannah Cumler

April 16, 2021

COLUMBIA, S.C. (WIS) - It’s been dubbed the gardening of the future, however, it seems the future is here, now that Vertical Roots has planted itself in the Midlands.

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© Provided by Columbia WIS TV Vertical Roots

The farm, which primarily grows leafy greens, uses a method of growing called hydroponic gardening.

Simply put, it’s soil-less gardening. And as the name suggests, it means the roots are left out of the ground and instead fed nutrients and water directly with the help of technology.

The controlled method of gardening has several benefits, most notably, its efficiency.

By feeding the plant directly, it means Vertical Roots saves on resources that otherwise would be lost to runoff, weather changes, or other environmental factors.

Andrew Hare, Vertical Roots’ general manager, explains that hydroponic gardening is actually 95% more efficient than traditional gardening.

“A head of lettuce for us might consume a couple of gallons of water during its entire maturation cycle versus outdoors, that’s hundreds of gallons of water,” explains Hare. “It’s not because the plant is consuming more outdoors, it’s because of the evaporation and runoff in the soil, so when you have all that contained, you’re using five percent of what you typically have to use.”

Another added benefit, a longer growing season. Operating in upcycled shipping containers, Vertical Roots is able to control its environment, allowing leafy greens to grow 365 days a year.

The Charleston-based business expanded to the Midlands in 2019 with its farm in Columbia, located at the South Carolina State Farmers Market campus.

Its Columbia location provides its largest farm site with 108 shipping containers growing leafy greens.

To put it into perspective, Hare says, “It’s about 2.5 million pounds a year or a little over 7 million plants per year that that facility grows and it’s on less than four acres of land.”

Vertical Roots products can be found at grocery stores like Publix, Whole Foods, Harris Teeter, Lowes Foods, and more

Inside Inuvik’s New Hydroponic Greenhouse

April 16, 2021

MEAGHAN BRACKENBURY

Inuvik’s first all-season growing facility will soon be operational, offering residents year-round access to locally produced greens.

Inuvik's hydroponic greenhouse is decorated with artwork by resident Adi Scott. Meaghan Brackenbury/Cabin Radio

The hydroponic greenhouse, in a trailer on land donated by Jesse and Keren Harder, is run by the Inuvik Community Greenhouse. Leafy veg like lettuce and herbs will grow using nutrient-rich water rather than soil.

“We have been working on this project for a long time, trying to get funding,” executive director Ray Solotki told Cabin Radio. “We want to be putting food in the community. We want to be hiring people in the community. We want to be doing things that are actually helpful to what our mandates are.

“This unit has been in the works with the hopes that we will produce enough food to see an actual tangible amount of difference in the communities, and also provide jobs here in Inuvik.”

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Ray Solotki inside Inuvik’s community greenhouse in the summer of 2019. Ollie Williams/Cabin Radio

The greenhouse received more than $400,000 for the hydroponic facility from economic development agency CanNor last November. ColdAcre, a company that runs hydroponic greenhouses in Yukon, was contracted to construct it.

Another $100,000 from the territorial government will pay for a small solar farm to power the facility, which Solotki says will mean cheaper energy and lower-cost produce.

Solotki hopes the facility can grow as much as ColdAcre’s Whitehorse facility – about 500 lb of produce a month.

“If you consider how much spinach weighs, it’s not very heavy,” Solotki added. “That’s quite a lot of food to be bringing into the community.

Inside Inuvik’s hydroponic greenhouse. Plants are grown on shelves using nutrient-rich water that runs through a closed circuit. Meaghan Brackenbury/Cabin Radio

Kale, bok choy, Swiss chard, mizuna, and basil will be included in the greenhouse’s veggie box program, where members pay $20 a week and receive their share of the harvest. Some will be available at local grocery stores.

“I want this to be a case of once a week you get something that’s so fresh it was picked this morning, even when it’s minus-56 outside,” Solotki said.

Finding firm financial footing

The hydroponic unit will require a year-round staff member to operate it – a position Solotki said has been filled by an Inuvik resident – and offer more training opportunities for students and summer staff.

“We want to train kids from the ground up, literally, and teach them that this is a potential job,” she said.

The organization has received funding from the University of Saskatchewan for programs like bringing residents from smaller Beaufort Delta communities to teach them about hydroponics.  

Shelving units inside the hydroponic greenhouse. Meaghan Brackenbury/Cabin Radio

“It doesn’t have to be in a shipping container,” Solotki explained. “You can take these out and put them in a school, you can put them in an office, you can do all sorts of things.

“But people need to understand how they work and see if it’s something they want to do.”

Meanwhile, produce sales from the hydroponic unit could help the greenhouse grow its commercial side.

Revenue that’s independently generated means less pressure to constantly fundraise, Solotki said, and could free up funding pots for other groups in the region.

“The amount of agricultural funding available per area is fixed, which means if I’m the one constantly tapping into it, other people can’t or might not have as many opportunities,” she said.

“If we could be utilizing it in better ways, and creating a better economy and creating more interesting things in the community, this is great for us.”

The greenhouse is currently seeking funding for an aeroponic facility – a system that suspends plants in the air and sprays them with nutrient-rich mist, which works well for heartier crops such as beans, potatoes, and peas.

Exploring what’s possible

Since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, agriculture and food security have become bigger discussions in the NWT.

Last June, a 50,000-pound donation of free potatoes to the NWT sparked debate about what northern food security should look like.

In February, three farmers in Hay River received funding for projects designed to help move the territory toward having an established agricultural sector. This month, the City of Yellowknife approved its latest food and agriculture plan after announcing a partnership with Wilfrid Laurier University to create a food hub in the city.  

In Inuvik, Solotki concedes that leafy greens “won’t solve the problems of caloric intake and what you actually require for food security” – but she argues the hydroponic facility will allow the community to re-evaluate what is possible in the realm of Arctic agriculture.

“This is an idea that starts to change people’s mindsets: that we don’t have to buy from out-of-territory,” she said. “We don’t have to ship it in, we could actually do it ourselves.

“While the hydroponics is not going to be the be-all and end-all, wouldn’t it be cool to see community greenhouse hydroponics, sitting next to community greenhouse aeroponics, sitting next to the greenhouse chicken coop, sitting next to the pig barn, sitting next to the cow barn… having an actual agricultural sector that is utilizing what we need to work in our climates?”

USA: This Colorado Company Is Building Farms In Shipping Containers To Help Feed People In Need

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Author: Jeremy Moore

April 19, 2021

FarmBox Foods Wants People To Be Able To Farm

Anywhere, Allowing Them To Access Fresh Food

They Otherwise Wouldn't Be Able To

SEDALIA, Colo. — A three-year-old Colorado company has an ambitious goal: to bring food security, safety, and sustainability to communities in need around the world.

FarmBox Foods aims to achieve that goal by connecting those communities to sustainably sourced food that's grown locally inside one of their container farms.

Their first product was a vertical hydroponic farm, or VHF, built inside a shipping container.

The company has since developed a second product: a gourmet mushroom farm, or GMF.

So far, customers in Colorado include Centura Health, Vitamin Cottage Natural Food Markets, and the C Lazy U Ranch in Granby.

FarmBox CEO Rusty Walker and COO Jake Savageau joined 9NEWS to talk about how they hope to change the way the world thinks about farming.

9NEWS also spoke with a prospective customer of FarmBox, Cori Hunt of the Denver restaurant group Edible Beats.

(Editor’s note: Responses have been edited for context and clarity.)

As a mission-driven company, what is the mission of FarmBox Foods?

Walker:  Our goal and our mission is to get our products out into the communities where we can help develop food security programs. We’re looking to get into food deserts, opportunities where folks in the world might not have access to good, clean nutritional food. And so we kind of strive as a company that’s driven to feed the world one container at a time. And we’re ready to go out and manufacture thousands of these if we can. 

We’re able to decentralize growing food by being mobile – being able to deploy these by just having a semi come in. We can then lift it up on a flatbed and take it to anywhere in the world. We’ve got two containers going to islands. We’ve got our first container that took off for the island of Jamaica. It’s going to Montego Bay where it’s going to be used behind mega marts on the island. And then we have another container which is our gourmet mushroom farm that’s going to be going to Tahiti where they’re going to be using that to feed the island population which does not have access to that type of food. 

One big area that we’re really focusing on is the urban areas throughout the U.S. where they don’t have a lot of land to grow. These farms can go right into the parking lots, behind a church for example. We’re working with a community church on the south side of Chicago that’s looking at placing two of these containers – a vertical hydroponic farm and a mushroom farm – right outside in the parking lot outside the church. 

And we think we could bring an educational spin to this where we can have the community grow their own food and supply the community themselves with highly nutritional food that ordinarily they just would not be able to get their hands on. So, we’re thinking that if this pilot program goes well this would be an application that would apply to every inner city throughout the U.S.

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Farmbox Foods grows vegetables in shipping containers. Credit: Jeremy Moore, KUSA

Savageau:  The mission’s always been to create products that are for the decentralized food insecurity industry. So, we want to create a product that can be deployed anywhere in the world, can run off-grid, and can feed communities. So, we have two different products – the VHF and the GMF. Every product that we develop gets us one step closer to being able to feed a community with everything they need, because you can’t feed communities forever just on leafy greens. 

So mushrooms, they’re more nutrient dense, that gets us one step closer. There’s other products that we’re going to develop to get us to that point. But, I think the mission for the company is to be able to deploy these farms into communities where they’re needed, whether that’s a rural area, a food desert in the U.S., an inner city, or somewhere in Africa like Ghana or the Sudan. 

We want to align with big ag and we want to help the industry get better. So we want to get food to where it’s needed. We’re looking at doing stuff with food insecurity and food inequality. That’s big with what we’re doing. So, that kind of aligns with our mission. If you look at our food system – just take for instance – you know if you look at a SNAP program or food subsidy program – you’re taking food and giving it to somebody or they’re purchasing it. 

But, a lot of that food that they’re purchasing is processed, sugar – I mean, it’s poison. And if you go on a military base anywhere in the U.S., there’s fast food on the base. It’s really what you see. So, there’s a lot of reasons why we’re doing this I think. We can help fix our food system. And we can help educate the youth on how they should eat. We’re doing some stuff with an Inuit community in Alaska. They don’t necessarily know how to fix this food or prepare it or use it. So, I think education is a big part of what we’re doing.

How do these container farms work?

Savageau:  When people think of farms, they don’t think of agriculture like this. Vertical hydroponics and indoor ag and controlled environments – it’s been around for a long time. I think that the way that this one works is pretty simple. The water gets fed into a tube system and the water trickles down and goes back into the tank. And where you’re standing – the seedling tray area – the water goes into a tank, into the seedling trays, gets flooded, and then back into the tank. 

There’s a software that we use called Agrotech that monitors the temperature, the humidity, the lights – basically, all automated. So, it’s fairly easy to run. You need about 15 to 20 hours a week to run one farm. The GMF farms takes about 25 hours a week. It’s a little bit more intensive. The VHF is the vertical hydroponic farm and that’s the farm that we’re standing in. The GMF is the gourmet mushroom farm, which is the one that you went through earlier. You want to just keep things as clean as possible. The cleaner that you keep it the better it’s going to run. 

So, we have a standard SOP, you know, that we implement with our training. Cleaning the floors. Cleaning the tubes. You don’t clean them every time. But, usually, every couple harvests you’ll take the tubes out, wash them out. You’re cleaning the tanks about every 60 days. 

But, on average it’s pretty easy to maintain if you’re doing the daily checklist. The seeds are going to be in the seedling tray for about two weeks. Then, they go into the wall. And then they get harvested about 60 days after they start in the seedling tray. So, on average you’re about 60 days from seedling to harvest depending on what you’re growing. 

And this farm is really setup for vertical hydroponics. So, it’s leafy greens. You can do hundreds of different types of lettuce. You can do cherry tomatoes, strawberries and peppers. There’s a lot of different things that you can grow in here. Most of our clients are only growing a couple things at one time. You don’t have to worry about weather. You don’t have to worry about if this is in a cold climate like the arctic. You know, they can’t grow food. If it’s in a desert, they can’t grow food. If it’s on an island, they can’t grow food. So, these can be deployed anywhere. And they grow 365, all day, every day. Also, the yield is very high for the square footage. So, you can put these on top of a building, inside of a building. It only takes up 320-square feet. You don’t have any pesticides. So, you don’t have to worry about pests, bugs, mildew, stuff like that’s going to effect the plant as it’s growing. It’s also decentralizing the food system.

 So, you’re not having to ship food hundreds of thousands of miles from point A to point B. So, the food is right there. And the nutrients that we use are organic plant-based nutrients. And there’s no pesticides. So, the nutrient density is extremely high compared to something that you would buy – even organic – in a store.

Walker:  We grow a variety of vegetables and lettuces. I believe that we’re somewhere in the area of 30 to 40 different types of vegetables and lettuces that we can grow in our farms. And, then of course we’ve got our gourmet mushroom farm which we’re currently growing anywhere from eight to nine different varieties of mushrooms. We’re in the startup phase of running that farm ourselves. So, we’re exploring the different types of mushrooms that we can grow. But, we’re very proud of the folks that are actually running these farms – our staff, very knowledgeable and they do a great job. We’re going upwards to 300 to 400 pounds a week now. We’re not competing with traditional farming. We’re actually a compliment.

Who are your customers? 

Walker:  One of our first customers is Centura Health. They purchased their first container – which is now sitting at St. Mary’s in Pueblo. They ordered two more containers after seeing how the first container behind their hospital worked. We actually started up a pilot program with Centura Health where we’re now running them as the FarmBox family. 

We’re working with Centura Health in identifying not only their hospitals and the patients who are going to be fed through our vertical farm – but then we’re also identifying where the food deserts are and Centura Health will then help us with what we’re going to be growing, and then the communities that we’re going to be serving from those, those particular crops. 

We do have a couple that’s looking at doing some farming right here in Sedalia. They’re going to use it to supplement their traditional farming, which will be an interesting pilot program for us to work with them on. We’re working with C Lazy U Ranch out of Granby, Colorado. They’ve ordered a hydroponic farm and we’re going to be manufacturing that. And they’re going to place that at the ranch. They don’t really have access to a lot of good food as far as having it grown right there on the property. So, this will be a nice compliment to the services and the customer experience that they provide their customers by having one of our farms right on site. 

Centura Health is one of FarmBox Foods' first customers. Credit: Jeremy Moore, KUSA

One big area that we’re really focusing on is the urban areas throughout the U.S. where they don’t have a lot of land to grow. These farms can go right into the parking lots, behind a church for example. We’re working with a community church in the south side of Chicago that’s looking at – we’re looking at placing two of these containers – a vertical hydroponic farm and a mushroom farm right outside in the parking lot outside the church. 

We can have the community grow their own food and supply the community themselves with highly nutritional food that ordinarily they just would not be able to get their hands on. So, we’re thinking that if this pilot program goes well this would be an application that would apply to every inner city throughout the United States.

Savageau:  We have a customer here in Lakewood that’s going to put one in their backyard. They run a small organic farm. We’re looking all the way up into federal government and military, and everything in between. 

So, Rusty was talking about FEMA, the UN, UNICEF, those are the big customers that take a long time to build a relationship with. And then we have customers that are all the way down to just an individual that wants one for their property or maybe a couple of people are going to run one for a restaurant or a developer wants one for a small development that he’s doing. 

We’re working with a group in New Mexico and they’re building a huge development of about 45,000 houses. So, we’re talking about 100 of these units that are going to be deployed in that area right outside Albuquerque to feed those communities within that area over the course of about two years. We work with a grocer that’s regional. And we work with some other customers that are kind of at a government, federal government level. 

I think we’ve done a lot in the last three years. I mean we haven’t gone out and raised any capitol. So, we’ve self-funded it. And I think from that point of view you know we’ve done a lot. We’re kind of at the point right now where we’re just starting to scale. So, we’ve just started our social media. You know SEO (search engine optimization), SEM (search engine marketing). We have a sales team. And orders are starting to come in. We’ve partnered with RK which is manufacturing our units. That’s giving us the ability to scale. Because before that we were building these one or two at a time in Sedalia and now we can build 100 of them. So, that’s really been a huge part of us being able to scale is the manufacturing side.

How much does it cost to purchase and operate the farms? 

Jake:  This VHF farm – vertical hydroponic farm – starts at $140,000. The GMF starts at $150,000. Then, you have training and deploy, getting it there. So, usually, you’re over $150,000 for a farm. So, your ROI (return on investment) in this product is going to be about 12 months to 24 months depending on what you’re growing and where it is in the world. 

The GMF is going to be closer to 12 months because mushrooms tend to be more expensive – again – depending on where it’s going. We have a unit that’s going to Tahiti for example. That ROI is going to be extremely fast because they ship everything in. If there’s a market for mushrooms there, which there is with a grocer, it’s going to be quick. So, the cost of running it with labor and everything you need to grow the plants, usually around $20,000 to $40,000 a year. We’re a mission-driven company. So, money isn’t the first thing that’s important. We want to build a certain amount of these and then every x amount that we build, we build one for free and we send it to a community that maybe our social media has engaged with or given us an idea that ‘hey, this would be a good community.’ And then, we send it there. We pay for it. We train people. And that’s something that we want to do. We can’t do it yet. But, I think that’s coming in the next year.

Why is Edible Beats interested in working with FarmBox?

Hunt:  We try to be as local and organic as possible and that’s what brought us here to FarmBox. We can put a box behind a restaurant and have lettuces cut and washed and put on the plate the next day. 

Just to have that connection with our food and know exactly where it’s coming from and how it was produced. It’s going to be better quality because it’s not traveling. It’s not ripening in a truck coming from Mexico. Economically, what we can do to not pay the mileage on the vehicles and the gas, the inputs, the emissions, the extra packaging, the plastics. 

That’s one of the best things about FarmBox – that what we can do is – if we produce food for our restaurant group – I’m not going to have to buy packaging that’s going to go into a landfill or even need to be recycled. It’ll go directly into the vessels that we’re going to store them in the cooler. We don’t have to worry about marketing and labeling and you know stickers and plastics and all this extra stuff – this hoopla that we don’t need – because FarmBox is a possibility now. 

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The Farmbox Foods containers allow leafy greens to grow vertically, maximizing space.

Credit: Jeremy Moore, KUSA

We are looking at lettuces and herbs, leafy greens. So yeah, like basils, sage, leaf lettuces, butter lettuces, arugula – these kinds of things that we use that could greatly help our impact. Essentially it’s a self-contained box that you can grow fruits and vegetables in – most likely leafy greens – and it’s a soilless or near soilless medium. 

So, essentially you plant your seed in a very small amount of coconut core or soil or peat moss – something to hold the root structure – and that, according to with FarmBox, they’re system is a vertical farming. 

So, they have vertical towers and then they put the lettuces in the towers in their small soil medium and then they drip water with enhanced nutrients mixed into the water specifically built for those vegetables. It doesn’t have a lot of soil waste. 

For the amount of the surface area you can get way more production out of it and the water that goes through is recycled. Per plant, it uses far less water than any other type of growing system.

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