Hi Tech Urban Commercial Vegetable Production Using Shipping Containers (Freight Farm)

The Tampa Bay Times has published an article about two IT professionals in St. Petersburg, Florida who have cleared a junk lot and installed shipping containers to create a high-tech computer monitored "freight farm." Brick Street Farms currently has three shipping containers growing kale, herbs, and lettuce which they sell to local restaurants, and to the public several days each week.

The vegetables are grown with vertical hydroponic towers under LED lighting. The containers are climate controlled. Water use is very low, but electricity use is relatively high, though daytime growing hours for the plants is at night since electricity costs are lower at night.

It's exciting to see people interested in growing local food and investing in the community. The downtown St. Petersburg area is currently under an aggressive "renaissance" (though some might use the term "gentrification") fueled by international tourism and wealthy retirees along with the businesses that serve them. This includes eating great food.

I look forward to seeing whether this will be a financially viable business model. It seems that these intensive high-tech operations have high overhead and must diligently manage costs.

Urban farmer Curtis Stone (a YouTube personality) revealed that selling to the restaurant industry can be perilous in his video about how to handle customers who don't pay.  (link is to Youtube video).

And, Stone has some thoughts on the hydroponic shipping container method (in general, not specifically on Brick Street Farms):



From the Tampa Times article:

 The nation's largest indoor farm, FarmedHere, which opened in 2013 in an abandoned warehouse in Bedford Park, Ill., closed its 90,000-square-foot facility in January. While CEO Nate Laurell didn't say precisely what had gone awry, it is clear that growing large enough to offset equipment, energy and labor costs proved tricky.

One of the founders of  St Petersburg's Brick Street Farms acknowledges that what they are doing isn't really new from a tech perspective:

Hydroponics aren't new, this technology isn't new and all the technology we used is 'off the shelf,' " said O'Malley, 35, who recently quit her job at Duke Energy to work the farm full-time. 

But Brick Street Farms must have a business model and cost-containment strategy they believe is financially viable.

I wish them the best success.

CNN published a story in June 2015 that featured a freight farm touting their $15,000  per month income from selling container-grown hydroponics, but admitted their costs are so high (like Curtis Stone explained in the "appropriate technology" video above) that they are only breaking even:

The operation brings in about $15,000 a month, and once he pays the loan, utilities, rent for the land, materials and salaries for himself and his wife, he's about breaking even. Profits should mount as he expands the wholesale business and opens a new retail store at Boston Public Market.

As a home gardener, I think it is important to consider the feasibility of adopting technology to make gardening chores easier, reduce water and chemicals, and increase yields. We can all learn something from studying the successes and failures of the commercial growers.