Containerized crops?

I’ve written before about the use of surplus shipping containers for housing. It seems they can serve as small, self-contained hydroponic farms, too. Discovery News reports:

Shipping containers have been redesigned to become housing, offices and even health clinics, but now a startup in Tucson is transforming them into sun-free, soil-free greenhouses. Leaf lettuce from their test system shows they’ve got dark-green thumbs.

Verdant Earth Technologies has a plan to retrofit standard 20-foot shipping containers into mini farms. Each of their controlled environment agriculture systems — or CEAs — is fitted with five shelves, where the plants live. Instead of sitting in soil, however, the plants sit in a nutrient-rich solution that also works to irrigate them.

Cofounder and CEO Josh Hottenstein says they’re experimenting with different artificial lighting options, including one that uses solar concentrators and fiber optics to distribute light from LEDs. “Plants don’t need the full spectrum of light,” he says. Solar concentrators allow them to get the right wavelength and direct it.

. . .

“It’s resource-efficient,” Hottenstein says of the system. “It’s getting the most out of the limited resources you have.”

The idea came together about a year ago when Hottenstein and his grad school classmate at the University of Arizona Myles Lewis sought a way to combine advanced greenhouse mechanics and hydroponics in an enclosed structure.

Hottenstein has an IT background and Lewis specializes in horticulture. Their savvy business plan won a competition at the university’s McGuire Center for Entrepreneurship last year. Verdant Earth was just chosen as a regional semifinalist in the Cleantech Open, a national competition to identify promising clean- tech startups.

All that tech packed into a shipping container sounds expensive, but Hottenstein says that because the process maximizes resources, he expects the cost to be competitive with commercial greenhouse structures, around $20 to $30 per square foot.

The cost of the produce will be competitive with organics, Hottenstein adds. Currently the startup is between the proof-of-concept stage and prototyping, working on getting test systems to several customers. From there, they plan to begin manufacturing the systems.

. . .

One thing I never considered is that in an enclosed, controlled growing space that has no sunlight or soil, the need for pesticides dips to zero. If this kind of tech can be scaled up for vertical farming in urban environments, perhaps we’ll see a new kind of labeling that has more of a ring to it than “organic.”

There’s more at the link.

This is really interesting! If this can be made to work on a large scale, it might be a major step forward for many Third World families who are utterly dependent on farming to stay alive. In drought-stricken environments (such as much of Africa), the minimal water requirements of this system would be a Godsend; and it wouldn’t be affected by natural disasters such as dust storms, monsoon rains or hail. It would help deal with the limited availability of arable land, and there are certainly plenty of surplus shipping containers available (although getting them converted and moving them to where they’re needed might be costly at first).

The system might also be a very cost-effective solution for First World families who like home-grown produce, but don’t have the space or time to grow it in the conventional way. A half-size, 20′ shipping container can fit into most suburban back yards, if necessary, and could probably grow enough in the way of fruits and vegetables to feed at least one family, if not two or three. Also, it would use a lot less water and fertilizer than the average backyard garden, and would be secure against animals, birds and other pests that might steal or infect the produce.

Peter