Container Farms on School Campuses – Community Supported Agriculture

With a foundation in technology and science, there’s greater interest in container farming among students of all ages. Controlled-climate farming enables people to grow food almost anywhere in the world, helping to eliminate food deserts.

Container Farms on School Campuses – School districts and teachers are always looking for new and innovative tools to capture their students’ attention and promote enthusiasm for learning.

Teaching students how their education is interwoven into later professional success just might bring purpose to those who currently find none in a traditional classroom.  When you place students in a setting with engaging hands-on projects that give them practical experience, the potential for future success is limitless.

An operating container farm has a unique ability to touch multiple subjects and areas of interest for young students, especially those who want to find ways to better our world through science and tech.  A container farm shows the next generations how to do more with fewer resources by engineering concrete solutions that promote sustainability.  These applications have positive real-world implications, including improving our ability to feed people in food deserts and reducing the use of fossil fuels for shipping food over long distances.

Emerging technologies, including those that rely on sensors, have opened up new avenues and ideas and solutions for longstanding problems.  This is an exciting prospect for a generation that increasingly is looking to eschew the typical 9-to-5 office grind and, for lack of a better term, get their hands dirty.

From using cultivation methods that require less energy and water, to developing a solid business plan, to maintaining the mechanisms that enable containerized farms to thrive, to demonstrating and quantifying the sustainability of such operations, there are many skill sets needed to make the endeavor a success.  

Adding a container farm to a school campus offers high-level learning opportunities in perpetuity and equips students with expertise and experience that few other young professionals or college applicants can claim.  It’s a tech-driven differentiator for schools and districts that pride themselves on thinking outside the educational box, and it could produce a wave of future entrepreneurs.

Today, container farming is a glimpse into the future.  Soon, it will be the new normal, and it’s time that students of all ages get introduced to concepts that can help achieve progress that will benefit humankind.

What are the benefits to schools?

  1. Equipping future generations with the ability to use science and technology to grow food for underserved populations.
  2. Feeding students fresh, nutrient-dense foods. 
  3. Reducing costs associated with purchasing transported foods while enabling schools to cheaply grow their own.
  4. Providing foods for students in need to take home with them so they will have quality food they grew themselves.
  5. Create revenue streams for the school through school farmers markets all year long.
Container Farms on School Campuses
An operating container farm has applications to almost every school subject imaginable, from math to science to engineering.

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Suttons Vertical Gardens – No shipping required: Container farm provides fresh greens directly to community

Tracking the rise of community-supported agriculture, or CSAs.

From the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, fresh vegetables were hard to come by in rural areas outside of Halifax, Nova Scotia. The cost of the produce that was available began to increase, and the quality was decreasing.

It was then that Kris and Brenda Sutton circled back around to an idea that Kris had researched a few years earlier: vertical farming.

They learned that growing produce in the community where it’s consumed eliminates supply chain issues from the equation and can give customers peace of mind knowing where their food is coming from. It also means consumers get fresh, nutrient dense produce compared to those being shipped in, losing nutritional value as they are transported. Additionally they learned that the vertical farms — housed inside insulated, controlled-climate shipping containers — can operate year-round, regardless of the season, allowing for quality and consistency for the food. 

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The idea was tossed around for a short time between the husband and wife, but after Kris was briefly put off his work as an airplane mechanic following a back injury, he laid on the couch and daydreamed more and more about running his own vertical hydroponic farm. He saw this career as a less physically demanding and more rewarding one. His “happy place” during recovery was thinking about “getting back to gardening and planting seedlings in the Spring.”

Kris and Brenda decided to contact and visit a nearby vertical farm and quickly embraced the concept and all it could offer. 

“She was more excited than I was at that point,” Kris says, then adds, “well, close. On the same level.”

The owner of the container farm they visited, however, pointed out some of its inefficiencies, and recommended buying a farm from their competitor, FarmBox Foods, which offers a system that requires less labor, is more efficient and can produce larger yields.

Months later, the daydream became a reality when a FarmBox Foods container farm was placed in their backyard. Within weeks, the first crop was on its way and Sutton’s Vertical Gardens was officially in business.

Together Kris and Brenda developed a start up plan that includes selling a variety of lettuces to local grocers and restaurants between Halifax and Enfield, Nova Scotia. Sutton’s Vertical Gardens also has plans to further serve their community in the future by hopefully offering the container farm as a venue for school field trips, volunteer experience and educational purposes.

”Yes, we want to make money and have a livelihood but we also want to try and educate and inspire others to be farmers, innovators, and entrepreneurs. Who better to start sharing these ideas with but our future generations?!” Brenda said.

Kris, the business’ main farmer, who comes from a family of green thumbs and has an existing 14-by-24-foot greenhouse filled with bell peppers, cucumbers and tomatoes, gets up at 5:30 a.m. every morning and embarks on the shortest commute he’s ever had. He walks to the FarmBox Foods container farm in his backyard in Enfield, NS, a mere 30 feet away from the fenced-in play area for the Sutton’s adorable odd couple Boston Terrier and Great Dane, and walks into his new office.

The fresh scent and the sight of the ever growing and changing plants are a daily reminder that the Suttons are right where they should be, creating something they’re proud to soon be sharing with their local communities.

“They always say ‘try to find a job where you do what you love and it will never feel like work,’” Kris says. “I feel very lucky to be able to say I’m doing just that.”

Learn more by following Sutton’s Vertical Gardens on Instagram and Facebook.

Sutton’s Vertical Gardens grew lettuce for its first crop.

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Rise of Community Supported Agriculture During Pandemic a Signal from Consumers

Tracking the rise of community-supported agriculture, or CSAs.

From the outset of the pandemic, Community Supported Agriculture programs throughout the country saw a surge in demand as the worldwide food supply chain ground to a halt.  Health-conscious consumers wanted to make sure they had access to a reliable source of fruits and veggies, and farms large and small in communities across the country were suddenly booming.

CSAs also provided a convenience factor, as people no longer had to brave the madness of the grocery store during COVID-19 related restrictions.  And instead of selecting from display cases filled with questionable produce that has lost most of its shelf life and nutritional value in transit, consumers found growers right down the street — and many of them haven’t looked back.

hydroponic container farms - community supported agriculture

Community-supported agriculture is made much easier by the trend of container farming, a fast-growing market that has buy-in from a broad spectrum of producers and end users. Natural Grocers recognized the benefit of growing vegetables on site at its stores, and partnered with Colorado-based FarmBox Foods, a manufacturer of automated container farms that grow leafy greens, peppers, culinary herbs and even gourmet mushrooms.

CSAs offer membership to both individuals and suppliers.  Members pay an upfront fee in return for a share of what the farm grows and harvests during a specific season.  

According to Vera Fabian, an operator of a CSA in Cedar Grove, North Carolina, who was interviewed for an article for Eater.com, demand for CSA membership is even higher this year than it was in 2020.

Learn more about CSAs at www.localharvest.org/csa/.

Year-round community gardens can operate as CSAs

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