What are the benefits of container farming?
What are the benefits of container farming?
Container farms are becoming increasingly popular within the controlled environment agriculture industry. These farms are usually vertical farming systems installed inside a shipping container. So why are so many manufacturers and businesses using this model? And what makes LettUs Grow’s DROP & GROW container farm special?
Benefits to people
Container farms allow people to connect their community to produce that is healthy and fresh - where food travels for minutes, not miles. Since containers are transportable and often don’t need planning permission, you can easily slot a vertical farm into urban areas or farmlands where they can best serve the surrounding area. This could be in a supermarket car park, or the yard of a local community centre.
Container farms allow people to meet the rising demand for local, sustainable food. DROP & GROW container farms are user-friendly and powered by Ostara, our software platform - so there’s no need to have any growing experience. With Ostara, growers can easily control, automate and manage their farm via a tablet device. Lighting cycles, nutrient levels and temperatures can all be automated, adjusted, and monitored remotely. Ostara also allows you to easily export important growing data.
Benefits to the planet
Growing in a container farm allows you to grow closer to the consumer, which reduces food miles and also food waste. This is due to reducing the amount of time a crop travels to reach a plate, but also because serving smaller communities allows the growers to more accurately grow based on demand. Growing within a contained, controlled environment also means there is no need to use pesticides.
Growing in a vertical farming system allows you to grow more food in a much smaller area. For example, vertical farms can yield twenty times more lettuce than agricultural fields. This lessens the environmental impact of food and also takes pressure from our soils - one-third of the world’s arable soils are degraded and it can take a thousand years for just one centimetre of topsoil to form.
The DROP & GROW container farm uses LettUs Grow’s aeroponic technology, which uses less water in both outdoor and hydroponic growing. Precise control means growers can also use the exact amount of fertiliser and nutrients needed for specific crops, preventing over-application.
Benefits to profit
DROP & GROW container farms have been designed to make sustainable farming a sustainable business. In a container farm, the harvesting season never ends, so growers will receive consistent income and projections. We work with customers to ensure they have secured their market and conduct economic modelling on their behalf.
There are also benefits in the installation and delivery of a container farm, since they are less expensive to design and build than a bespoke installation. Using a shipping container with standard dimensions eliminates construction work, such as installing floor drains, moving structural walls or rewiring electrics inside an existing building. This also means there is minimal work needed to be done on the customer site. Transport is also a huge benefit, as a container is a universal size that can be transported globally, with infrastructure in place to do this.
Benefits to plants
The aeroponic technology inside DROP & GROW allows you to grow up to twice as fast as hydroponics. Aeroponics uses mist to irrigate crops and mimics the natural air pockets found in natural soil systems, so boosts access to oxygen. This results in healthier plant roots and faster growth rates. Growers can access precision control, tailored to each grow bed, allowing the conditions to be optimised for specific crops. Growers can also access crop recipes, which have been developed by our team of expert growers. This means that factors such lighting and irrigation cycles have been pre-defined to ensure the best conditions for the plants.
Want to talk to our business development team about how a container farm could benefit you? Get in touch here.