Shipping Container Farm In Citra Feeds University of Florida Campus Community
By Julie Gargotta Marion County
September 06, 2024
MARION COUNTY, Fla. — Few things are more pressing for college students than exam-time stress and shopping on a tight budget.
And as University of Florida sophomore Amelia Ernst works on the art of the latter, she’s grateful she can shop for free at the campus food pantry.
What You Need To Know
A research project centers around understanding energy consumption of indoor farming
Each week, a shipping container farm in Citra sends lettuce to the University of Florida in Gainesville
This produce helps stock the on-campus food pantry, which is open to the entire UF community, from students to teachers
Pantry coordinator Lori Benson says, “It’s healthy. Produce is probably what students want the most”
“You don’t have to be missing food or struggling to come here. This is an opportunity for everyone, and it shows stuff like this is important for a community,” she said.
In 2015, the Hitchcock Field and Fork Pantry opened its doors to the campus community. Not funded by the university itself, the pantry relies upon weekly donations from a local food bank, a once-per-month stocking by grocery chain Publix, and soon some produce, like broccoli, grown on a farm on campus as well.
Ying Zhang, an assistant professor of agricultural and biological engineering at the University of Florida's Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences, inspects lettuce grown at a shipping container farm in Citra. (Spectrum News/Julie Gargotta)
In the meantime, Operations Coordinator Lori Benson said that the pantry has been receiving weekly shipments of hundreds of heads of lettuce from a surprising place — a research study-launched shipping container farm in Citra. It’s been an exciting addition, even if students were unsure how to incorporate lettuce into their meals.
“It’s healthy. Produce is probably what students want the most because they’re looking for nutritious items,” Benson said. “We went out to get it, so it’s awesome to see how it’s grown and see them where they replant the little seedlings … We were afraid students might not be too excited about lettuce, so we printed out recipes like what you can do with lettuce, like make a BLT (bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich).”
About 30 minutes from the Gainesville campus, a stark white shipping container gets plopped on the far side of a University of Florida Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences research center footprint.
It’s where professor and researcher Ying Zhang spends countless hours calibrating the water system and laboring over lettuce.
The UF/IFAS assistant professor of agricultural and biological engineering said that the project, sponsored by Seminole Electric Cooperative, principally seeks to understand the demands of indoor farming on the electrical grid. In addition, researchers hope to further their understanding of water efficiency and potential effects of a shipping container farm upon a local community — from environmental concerns to economic opportunities.
“Definitely, they could be the future,” she said of the project. “It helps our people to be able to grow produce locally. I think that’s the main purpose of the indoor farming technologies.”
But its ancillary purpose, in the meantime, is also feeding a community.
Zhang explained that she and her team seeded the plants in the nursery area of the shipping container, which runs along the wall to the left of the main door. Weeks later, the team transplanted the lettuce to the vertical growing panels.
In July, the team’s first harvest yielded 521 heads of lettuce. Then, each subsequent week, the yield vacillated between about 200 and 400.
But sticking with the concept of sustainability, the byproduct of the labor-intensive research — the lettuce itself — was not discarded. It was delivered weekly to the UF food pantry to stock the refrigerator shelves.
For Ernst, who studies agriculture herself, it means healthier meals that work with her budget. She’s even utilized some of the recipes Benson, a former executive director for a Habitat for Humanity location, has drummed up as Ernst cooks with her boyfriend.
“I’m not usually here in time for all the good stuff. I’m overwhelmed," she said. "But all the meat and the veggies are the most important things I come here looking for, and there’s a lot to pick from right now. To have fresh vegetables, that’s amazing.”