Brad McNamara, Co-Founder and President of Freight Farms, joins us on this week’s episode to discuss:

- Scaling local food production around the world

- Decentralized vs centralized farming

- Drive-in farmer’s markets

- Notable customer stories

- The future of food production

- Two big ideas rotting in his idea graveyard

Land Betterment's portfolio company, ekō Solutions, and anu™ were recently featured on Middle Tech's weekly podcast with Co-Host, Logan Jones. During this fascinating conversation about innovative agricultural technology, Kirk Taylor, Land Betterment Co-Founder and Scott Massey, anu™ Co-Founder discussed how their jointly developed commercial-scale Pure Produce® Container Farms are revolutionizing how and where fresh produce is grown.

James Sprunt Community College is raising the bar on “smart farming” by implementing a Smart Farm Hydroponics Growing Container equipped with cutting-edge technology marrying food production and education.  More than just growing plants, we are growing the ways we improve our students, our communities, and our local economy.

Recently, the North Carolina Tobacco Trust Fund Commission (NCTTFC) provided Four County Electric Membership Corporation (FCEMC) and JSCC with funding to purchase a hydroponic smart farm container. The Smart Farm is located at the JSCC WestPark Center in Warsaw.

The Hydroponics Smart Farm — dubbed “Box to Bowl” — is the result of a partnership that includes JSCC, Four County Electric Membership Corporation, North Carolina’s Electric Cooperatives, Duplin County, and the North Carolina Tobacco Trust Fund Commission.

Box to Bowl consists of a 40-foot-long shipping container that provides growing area equal to two acres of land, in which plants are grown in a controlled environment absent soil and pesticides.

Today, they're growing in a shipping container. Soon, hopefully, they'll take root in Colorado's forests.

It's a nontraditional start for hundreds of baby trees meant to reforest areas burned by wildfire, in a project between a Colorado-based power cooperative and a group of innovative farmers.

Back in 2016, my husband Dale and I founded ShipShape Urban Farms (SUF). Dale's expertise in environmental design, landscape architecture, and city planning, and mine in horticulture and hydroponics made for a perfect match and a clear mission to change the game in sustainable agriculture.

The 20-foot containers will feature a modified version of the anu™ smart garden appliance that utilizes rotary aeroponics technology to grow crops year-round without traditional farming challenges. Together, ekō Solutions and anu™ are revolutionizing sustainable agriculture through their commercial-scale Pure Produce® Containers.

Six initiatives received $10,000 grants and access to a shared pool of $100,000 to jumpstart projects, as well as space on the island to install the equipment needed to pilot the ideas.

They run the gamut from air quality monitoring efforts by community group South Bronx Unite, carbon dioxide removal from a company called Vycarb and a vertical hydroponic farm in a shipping container, managed by the nonprofit GrowNYC.

WHIDBEY ISLAND, Wash. - Hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of hydroponic farming equipment was destroyed on Whidbey Island Friday. The equipment was recently donated to Black Seed Farms and is worth $250,000.Black Seed Farms, according to its website, is a local nonprofit that operates under its parent organization, Modest Family Solutions (MFS).

Kentucky native David Neville is currently growing lettuce in an indoor vertical farming house. The owner of Capstone Farms says crops are used for school lunches.

“As a farmer, I’m always looking for opportunities and I’m looking for different ways to do things,” Neville said.

The container allows farmers to grow the produce in time for the first day of school, despite the hot summer weather.

Located in a 40-foot shipping container, the hydroponic farm embraces urban farming and sustainable agriculture techniques such as rainwater harvesting to grow up to three acres of produce. Block & Drum visitors will be able to visit the farm, smell the fresh botanicals (mint, basil, dandelion, honeysuckle), and even pick some to create a custom bottle of liquor (think honeysuckle vodka).

“We wanted to connect people to the raw natural product,” Staples explains.

CORE Electric Cooperative (CORE) and FarmBox Foods, a manufacturer of controlled-climate farms, on Wednesday will unveil the first tree seedlings for a first-of-its-kind program focused on reforestation of wildfire-affected areas of the Front Range.

Brittany Weerts and Ali Jewell traveled to Boston last week for a 2-day intensive training for the new Freight Farm container farms at the Purdue Student Farm. While there, they met with Nathan Liberty – Freight Farm’s growing manager and also a former HLA graduate.

Agricultural Applications: Innovative farmers and agricultural businesses are using shipping containers for:

Equipment and produce storage

Hydroponic farming

Mobile processing units

Storage-Tech’s customizable containers can be outfitted with shelving kits and climate control options, making them suitable for a range of agricultural needs. The ability to create controlled environments within these units has opened up new possibilities for year-round farming and efficient crop storage.

Back in January, 2024, the Museum of Science, Boston opened their newest exhibit in the form of a small, vertical smart farm through a partnership with Freight Farms and Green City Growers. Named ‘The Garden,’ the unit will have a window so museum-goers can watch as Green City Growers visits twice weekly to tend the farm.

George Richards Farms have applied to site 18 containers, with the continued use of two more, on land at Higher Trefullock Farm, Summercourt, in order to diversify into a self-storage business.

Each existing container, and each proposed container, will be 20ft long x 8ft wide x 8.6ft high with a dark green finish. The containers at the site will solely be for self-storage purposes. The site will be commercially operated, with containers rented out to customers on a rolling month-to-month basis.

Put simply, the Urban Farming Cabin is a high-tech, closed-environment unit designed to bring farming to urban locations.

Currently in its proof of concept stage, here’s how the cabin works:

A large shipping container is converted into a smart greenhouse. Inside this container, plants are grown without soil through a hydroponics system.

Students are a big part of our team and culture. They work on the hands-on building of our shipping container farms, on building prototype code for our machine learning algorithms and on validating sensor choices for our monitoring systems. We look for those scrappy, passionate students who want to make an impact on a product.

Growcer, a vertical, Canadian farming company established in 2015, enables anyone to grow fresh, hyper-local produce year-round using its hydroponic modular farms and proprietary technology.

The company aims to make Barbados a regional Agri-tech hub by establishing a manufacturing facility and multiple farms, with an initial investment of $1.5 million to develop five farms, eventually scaling up to a $30-million investment.

Small business farmers are constantly seeking innovative methods to maximize productivity, sustainability, and profitability. Freight Farms presents a compelling solution through its hydroponic container farms, promising year-round crop production in a controlled environment.