Freight Farms Reuses Shipping Containers to Grow Fresh Produce
BOSTON, MA - Shipping containers, believe it or not, are a growing trend in the past few years. You can buy a shipping container house, shipping container art, and there’s even a hip pizza restaurant down the street from our office that resides in a shipping container. Now the latest—a shipping container farm.
Freight Farms, an indoor agriculture company that has been taking on the trend since 2010, is bringing in the use of hydroponics and other indoor farming methods to grow plants without soil and incorporating new types of technology to reduce workload and waste.
"The food system needs to be designed around technology and equipment that's available today," Brad McNamara, Freight Farms' CEO and Co-Founder told the Associated Press. "It was designed 100 years ago without the right technology to reach the level that it needs to. The whole system needs to be modernized."
The "Leafy Green Machine," the name of these shipping container farms, will help farmers produce a consistent crop, the company says, claiming it can produce roughly the typical yield of an acre of farmland while using 90 percent less water, no pesticides, and just 320 square feet of space.
Leafy Green Machine also features climate control options, automated lighting, irrigation systems, and even mobile apps to help monitor and maintain crops remotely.
"Starting a farm is a lot to ask of one person," company President and other Co-Founder, Jon Friedman, told the news source. "So we've put together a system that gives even a novice the tools to produce thousands of plants and get them to market."
Pricing for the Leafy Green Machine includes an $82,000 base price for the 2016 model, as well as an estimated $8,000 to $16,500 a year in electricity, water, and growing supply costs, according to AP, but this hasn’t deterred buyers so far.
Freight Farms has sold 54 Leafy Green Machines to clients like Google's campus in Mountain View, CA, Stony Brook University in Long Island, NY, and Four Burgers, a restaurant in Cambridge, MA.
McNamara and Friedman suggest their product particularly for leafy green crops like lettuce, kale, cabbage, Swiss chard, and herbs like mint, basil and oregano. They also note that direct selling to local restaurants and community markets is one of the main uses for the Leafy Green Machine so far.
With the Leafy Green Machine pulling all eyes to this trend, will we be seeing even more indoor agriculture innovations in 2016? Be assured that AndNowUKnow will update you with the latest.
