Inside a Shipping Container Vertical Hydroponic Farm

High-tech freight container farms like Bright Greens, near the city of Victoria, BC, can produce fresh fruit, vegetables, and herbs year-round, using hydroponics and high-efficiency LED grow lights. Plants inside the large metal shipping container grow in a series of vertical towers. During the growing cycle, environmental sensors inside the farm measure the nutrient levels, temperature, humidity, air flow, and carbon dioxide levels, and send information to a controller to automatically maintain optimum growing conditions. Shipping container farms are compact, easily transported by truck or rail, and have a small footprint. This means they can fit into rural or urban settings (provided zoning laws allow). This kind of indoor container farming has wide possible uses for cold, northern areas or hot, dry desert areas, where the costs of transport for food outweigh the minimal expense of electrical energy needed to power an enclosed operation. Urban farming in containers such as these can also offer year-round access to fresh produce to restaurants and other urban food businesses.