Hydroponic container farms provide a unique environment where students can engage in activities that promote SEL:

Unstructured Conversations: Tasks like seeding and harvesting create opportunities for meaningful dialogues between students and educators, fostering relationship skills and social awareness.

Collaborative Learning: Working together in the farm setting encourages teamwork, communication, and appreciation of diverse perspectives.

Problem-Solving: Managing farm operations requires critical thinking and responsible decision-making, skills that are transferable to various life situations.

Welcome back to your favorite source of pre-owned hydroponic equipment information!

This month, we’re bringing you:

1. Two exciting listings for the opportunists amongst us

2. A unique case study

3. A tip to sell more efficiently

Pesticides have been a cornerstone of traditional agriculture, used to protect crops from pests and diseases. But their impact on health and the environment is increasingly under scrutiny. From chemical residues in food to harmful runoff polluting waterways, the "bad" of pesticides is clear. Yet, with Freight Farms' hydroponic solutions like the Greenery™, there’s a better way to grow—without pesticides.

Plants are growing in the cold thanks to innovative technology after one local organization created a new way of year-round sustainable farming.

How can food grow inside a shipping container?

“Food is a right for people. Nobody should be hungry. With that, while cultivating food we should be consistent of the impact that we are leaving on the environment,” said Jillian Bluestein, an intern at a new organization called Village Hydroponics.

Village Hydroponics is spearheading the effort to educate Vermont communities about how to harvest food as the climate changes while feeding Vermont families throughout the winter.

Looking back on their first full year of production, entrepreneurs Max and Nikki Poritzky have counted one ton of produce grown and distributed to restaurants and schools from their hydroponic farming facility, Foothills Farm, in Greenfield Center.

The farm is a 40-by-eight-foot container housing an efficient, vertical growing system that produces high quality lettuces and herbs using a fraction of the space of traditional farming.

The couple have backgrounds and careers in the field of nutrition and come from health conscious families, they said. 

She studied nutritional biochemistry at UC Davis and was a commercial executive marketing dietary supplements, an industry in which Max also had an executive career spanning 25 years. He said his mother founded Wild Oats, the first health food store in Saratoga Springs. 

“‘Let food be thy medicine’ might sound clichéd, but this is how our families live,” Max said. 

Unlike most farmers who walk outside the door to view their crops, Tony Rahe (pronounced Ray) of Rahe of Sunshine Farms in Wykoff walks inside a door to tend to his beds of lettuce.

Instead of horizontal rows of crops planted in black soil as far as the eye can see, Rahe’s crops are planted vertically in a clean, compact space fed by constant drips of water.

Rather than being at the mercy of nature with its unpredictable weather, Rahe’s operation runs on Wi-Fi as the growing conditions are monitored by his iPad around the clock so that he has uniform light, moisture and nutrients that vary little from day to day. 

As you drive down the hill into Burlington’s Intervale, you may notice something new: a 40-foot-long shipping container in the parking lot. It’s crimson red, with a quilt-like mural of vegetables on its side.

This is Village Hydroponics. The operation grows veggies to share, for free, with New American communities in the area.

Reporter Elodie Reed recently stopped by for a conversation with Executive Director Nour El-Naboulsi as the shipping container farm’s first season got underway.

El-Naboulsi has been a vegetable farmer for many years — though he says he’s new to hydroponics.

A typical shipping-container unit filled with ZipGrow’s technology sells for about $200,000, he says. For those wanting the output of more than two containers, he recommends setting up inside a larger building as more viable. Return on investment is achievable in five years on the $200,000 system, but the operator must grow the correct products — and definitely not unprofitable lettuce.

Lettuce offers the lowest return and costs the same to grow as higher margin herbs, he points out. “I tell everyone right off the bat, don’t ever grow lettuce. It’s just a waste of time.”

It’s only in the last couple of years that ZipGrow has made attempts to market directly to farmers, starting with a display at the 2022 International Plowing Match in Kemptville.

Hydroponics allow plants to grow without soil. It’s a technique being used to overcome limitations of traditional agriculture like inadequate water, poor soils, short growing seasons, excessive cold and limited sunlight. Hydroponic produce can be grown any time of year at any latitude, regardless of the weather.

“With the way we’re growing, we truly get 52 weeks,” Jones told The Narwhal of the growing season. Something edible is constantly in some stage of cultivation in the farm operation’s three sea-cans and one packing trailer. 

Just over a year in, the project now has three full-time employees growing crops you can’t find in local grocery stores. 

“The plants grow without any pesticides, herbicides, period. We don't have to do that,” said Trevor Spear, the owner of Nanue’s Farm. “When you pull the lettuce off the panel, it is fresh to eat right now. No cleaning has to happen.”

Spear took up hydroponic farming as a hobby in retirement, and soon found an unexpected passion. When he started Nanue’s Farm in 2019, downtown Raleigh was one of the first to embrace hydroponic farming.

FarmAnywhere introduces a comprehensive suite of Indoor Agriculture Services to support individuals and businesses in setting up and optimizing indoor farming operations.

Services include feasibility studies, consulting, project management, product R&D, market studies, building design, and system audits.

The initiative aims to empower clients with tools and expertise for sustainable and efficient farming.

• The services cater to a wide range of needs, from conceptual planning to operational optimization.

• FarmAnywhere underscores its commitment to making farming solutions accessible to all, regardless of location or resources.

The nine organizations are Korea Southern Power Co., the Korea Technology Guarantee Fund, the Busan Urban Corporation, the Busan Port Authority, the Korea Securities Depository, the Korea Asset Management Corporation, the Korea Housing Finance Corporation, and the Korea Maritime Promotion Corporation.

Smart Farm is an urban agricultural facility that utilizes information and communication technology (ICT) in the entire process of agricultural production, processing, and distribution. Starting with support for the installation of the first store on the subway site in 2021, BEF reached the 9th store, the first overseas expansion case through continuous expansion of smart farm support.

As food bank usage increases in B.C. amid the cost-of-living crisis, a group is starting to grow lettuce in a Cranbrook city park to encourage healthy and sustainable eating.

The CBC's Corey Bullock went to the farm, which is looking to expand.

Are you looking to promote your Freight Farm and expand your customer base? Whether you're already operating a Freight Farm or planning to start, effective marketing strategies can help you connect with your audience, secure sales, and maximize your farm’s success. In this guide, we’ll cover expert techniques to market your Freight Farm, increase visibility, and grow your business.

While farm to table restaurants are nothing new, not many operators source their own salad greens from right next door. Neon Greens is a newly opened quick-service salad restaurant in St. Louis, Mo., that operates its own 400-square-foot vertical hydroponic farm attached to the restaurant storefront.

The farm yields yield roughly three acres each of 80 different lettuces, all of which Neon Greens uses in its salads, from mizuna lettuce to sweet crisp lettuce.

The two hydroponic farms are in an ancillary room attached to the restaurant, and an elevated conveyor belt delivers the lettuce next door once it is harvested.

Puerto Rico imports nearly 85% of its food, leaving its food system vulnerable to disruptions like hurricanes, supply chain issues, and economic instability. Farm in the City Nowis tackling this challenge with a novel approach to agriculture franchising, building a network of container farms powered by sustainable, accessible technology. By blending modern farming techniques with local empowerment, FITC’s model isn’t just about growing food—it’s about fostering resilient communities and creating new economic opportunities across the island.

Farm in the City Now reimagines food production as a franchise system, where small-scale container farms are owned and operated by farmers and local entrepreneurs, yet supported by a cohesive network of resources, training, and technology.

This model, rooted in principles of sustainability and resilience, is a transformative solution that makes agriculture both profitable and accessible for local communities.

Today, we salute Navy Veteran Brad Fourby. Brad had a dream and moved nearly 2000 miles away from Sacramento to Pittsburg, Kansas, to make the dream come true. 

That dream is “Leafy Green Farms.” Using his military training helped keep Brad methodical in his approach to his dream, saying, “I knew I didn’t need to win the war today; I just needed to survive the battle.”

He planted his first seed on July 4, 2021. What he created inside a shipping container was vertical rows of produce in a hydroponic growing environment that now serves area food deserts as well as 10 different farm classrooms and school districts to inspire future farmers.

Hydroponics for beginners can be a daunting endeavor for even the most prepared of aspiring growers. There’s so much to learn, understand and implement to successfully grow crops hydroponically.

For someone just getting started, it can be intimidating to know what to do without an explainer. This article will provide exactly that.

In this blog, we’ll explain what hydroponics is, how it differs from traditional soil-based agriculture, and provide you with our top 10 tips for finding success with hydroponics.

"Last month, we delivered our first container farm to the Maldives. We're currently in discussions with several resorts interested in the solution. Container farms make a great solution for import-dependent islands like these that comprises a never-ending list of luxury resorts.

With just 160 square feet, a container can supply a resort's entire demand for fresh leafy greens," says Aneeshan Tyagarajah, Director of Honest Greens, a Sri Lanka based container farm supplier.

Rochelle and her husband, Evan, are looking forward to further expanding their business, Heartland Craft Grains. They’re getting help from a Resilient Food Systems Infrastructure (RFSI) Program grant through the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection. On Oct. 31, the agency announced $3.1 million in funding for 41 projects aimed at strengthening local and regional food systems.

Heartland Craft Grains received just over $73,000 to invest in new equipment to expand capacity.

The Schnadts’ milling operation is currently housed in a renovated shipping container that sits next to an equipment shed on their family farm. Inside, the container is divided into two sections: one with storage and shelving holding samples of grains, including a spectrum of different colored corn, and sprigs of wheat poking out of jars. The other contains their milling equipment.