Agtech innovator's new technology adds 70% more growing space, drives yield, efficiency, automation.
Freight Farms Announces Next-Generation Container Farm, Advancing Production Limits of Hydroponic Vertical Farming
Contributed by | Freight Farms
Freight Farms is proud to announce the Greenery™, successor to the Leafy Green Machine™ (LGM), and the first generational product leap since Freight Farms pioneered the containerized agriculture industry in 2010. Within the same standard 320 sq. ft. footprint, the Greenery offers farmers 70% more growing space, with unprecedented versatility, efficiency, and automation control – advancing the limits of production, and making farming more accessible than ever before.
Performance-Driven Container Farming
After years of data collection and development based on the experience of hundreds of farmers in its global network, Freight Farms has again raised the industry bar with a fundamental container farm redesign. Instead of reorganizing existing technology into a refreshed layout, the company saw the potential to blueprint entirely new farm components previously unavailable to the industry. In doing so, Freight Farms keeps the ergonomics of both farmers and plants as the central priority to improve yield, efficiency, and workflow. Today Freight Farms reveals three pillars of the Greenery's design.
Greater Yield, Productivity, and Usability: A fully-reimagined farm interior combines customizable grow rows with innovative plant panel and LED technology to boost yields and create streamlined operations for the farmer.
- Mobile rack system: Farmers can now shift grow rows and LED panels to create custom layouts to support the growth of a new variety of crops (larger, vined, rooted, etc.) while drastically improving workflow.
- Increased production: Capturing previously unproductive space, a unique 5-channel plant panel design replaces traditional crop columns to unlock 70% more growing space within the same small footprint. The Greenery also hosts 30% more nursery plant sites.
- Industry-leading LEDs: Unique, rigid LED panel arrays replace previous rope lighting, tripling the crops' access to light energy to result in fuller, heavier plants within a faster growth period.
Superior Resource Efficiency: Newly designed systems throughout the Greenery, including lighting and climate control, use and reclaim resources with unrivaled efficiency.
- Best brightness-to-power ratio: Because the LED arrays are focused directionally, light energy waste is prevented, and despite triple the intensity, there is no 3x corresponding electricity draw.
- Intelligent moisture reclamation: The farm's powerful new climate control system condenses and recycles ambient moisture so efficiently that in certain humid regions it is capable of capturing upwards of 1.5 gallons of water per hour, rendering some Greenery operations water-positive.
- Time savings: The mobile rack system gives farmers direct access to all plants for more convenient harvesting, pruning, cleaning and maintenance. This reduces farm work time by 25–50%.
Climate Automation and Connectivity: The Greenery pairs exceptional design with complete connectivity. Each farm component is built from the ground up with farmhand® IoT integration, bringing unparalleled control and transparency to farming.
- Smart farm: Using IoT-connected sensors, the Greenery continuously relays all climate, component, and camera data directly to farmhand®. With this information at their fingertips – via smartphone, tablet, or desktop – farmers can confidently operate and monitor their farm remotely.
- Tailored climate control: With Freight Farms' catalogue of real-world growing data, farmers can replicate ideal environmental conditions, or "recipes," for consistent crop quality. They can even make non-native produce varieties available in their local market by creating environments otherwise impossible in their region.
Combined, the Greenery's features signal a major shift in containerized agriculture. "The Greenery's forward leap in data and sensor technology represent a fundamental improvement to farmers' workflow and production versatility," said Brad McNamara, Freight Farms Co-Founder and CEO. "It also allows for total, real-time transparency for consumers. A single romaine head can be traced back through every growing stage back to the seed it came from, even down to the hour. That standard was previously considered impossible, and one we hope the entire industry will now adopt."
Versatile Design For the Future
With size and resource conservation central to its design, the Greenery is deployable by a single individual, yet powerful enough to meet the needs of regional distributors. This turnkey system can grow a higher capacity of hyper-local food directly onsite for communities, without resorting to time-consuming and capital-intensive indoor farming installations that are often located remotely.
"The Greenery is the most powerful standalone hydroponic farm available, with a fully-connected technology platform you can't achieve from any combination of products elsewhere in the industry," added Jon Friedman, Co-Founder and COO. "By revolutionizing a farm that can be operated by anyone, in any climate, and can successfully support a diverse range of business goals, our team is helping support a higher standard for society's food system than previously possible."
Establishing Containerized Farming
In 2012, Freight Farms debuted the first vertical hydroponic farm built inside an intermodal shipping container—the Leafy Green Machine—with the mission of democratizing and decentralizing the production of fresh, healthy food. With its technology system and integral IoT data platform, farmhand®, Freight Farms now has the largest network of connected farms in the world.
In 15 countries and most U.S states, farmers use Freight Farms technology to grow food in environments ranging from urban neighborhoods to extreme climates. These farms are the cornerstones of hundreds of independent small businesses and non-profit initiatives that localize and improve food access geographically and socio-economically. Leafy Green Machines have also been added to numerous educational infrastructures, as well as corporate and wellness programs by customers like Google, Ford Motor Company, Everlane, and Kimbal Musk's Square Roots.
The content & opinions in this article are the author’s and do not necessarily represent the views of AgriTechTomorrow
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