Farm In A Box: A Boston Startup Transforms Shipping Containers Into 'Leafy Green Machines'
CONTRIBUTOR
I write about food and farm ventures, from high-tech to homespun.
Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.
Freight Farms cofounders Brad McNamara (left) and Jon Friedman Photo by Freight Farms.
Freight Farms, a Boston-based startup, can turn almost anyone into a farmer – assuming you’ve got the capital, some business smarts and a few days to get trained. You don’t need a tractor or any soil, for that matter.
The company’s “Leafy Green Machine” is a high-tech hydroponic farm built inside a repurposed shipping container that’s connected to the Cloud. Cofounders Jon Friedman and Brad McNamara wanted to facilitate urban farming in the Boston area with a standardized approach that could be replicated anywhere in the country, or the world.
“We start with an insulated container shell to allow for an optimal environment,” Friedman explains. ”The whole system is controlled and monitored by sensors that feed back to the digital brain that responds to what is happening on the farm and adjusts accordingly.”
Freight Farms repurposes old shipping containers to build hydroponic farms connected to the cloud. Photo by Freight Farms.
Farmers use their smart phones to keep tabs on soil temperatures, lighting, moisture content, CO2 levels and other environmental variables to grow lettuce, herbs and other greens in nutrient-laced water. Freight Farms offers a two-day training course for all its customers to teach them how to operate the hydroponic system, which uses efficient LED lighting, and handle food safely.
The company also sells its freight farmers all the seeds and other equipment they need, creating another revenue stream.
Freight Farms says its vertical hydroponic growing towers use 90% less water than a conventional soil-based farm and that one shipping container can yield the equivalent of what’s produced on an acre of land.
Perhaps most appealing, freight farmers can grow all year long in any climate. No pesticides are used on the herbs and veggies, but if pests do show up, they’re easier to combat in the controlled environment.
Photo by Freight Farms.
Another huge advantage in an era of climate change and droughts is the fact that these hydroponic farms require very little water, just about 10 gallons a day, as most of it is recirculated. “Energy efficiency is a huge focus of ours,” says McNamara. The basic model costs $76,000 but on average, customers are spending about $80,000, because most buyers are choosing to upgrade their purchase with optional features like a sound system that allows them to listen to music while they work, the cofounders say.
To date, the company has set up about 50 shipping-container farms, about half run by small business owners, primarily in urban areas. They includeShawn and Connie Cooney, a Boston couple, who are growing cilantro, kale, mustard and other greens in four shipping containers in the city, and LaGrasso Bros., a fourth-generation produce distribution business in Detroit.
Tom LaGrasso III tells me in an email that his company set up a Leafy Green Machine in their company parking lot, as the “first step into vertically integrating our supply chains as farmers. We want to work with our customer chefs to help provide a more hands on farm-to-fork experience.”
Plants grow hydroponically in vertical towers. Photo by Freight Farms.
The rest of the units been purchased primarily by universities and other institutions that want to grow their own food. Stonybrook University in Long Island recently bought a Leafy Green Machine, with students running the whole operation.
Friedman and McNamara began working on their business concept in 2010; they raised almost $31,000 on Kickstarter in 2011 and later procured seed funding About a year ago, the company closed a $3.7 million Series A round led by the Boston-based venture firm Spark Capital.
“We’re looking at around $3 million in revenue this year and growing pretty fast,” Friedman says. “We doubled in the last four months and will double again in the next four.”
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As with most good ideas, the cofounders aren’t alone: My Web search turns up various companies offering similar farm-in-a-box concepts that use shipping containers, usually with green lettering. For instance, wannabe farmers can rent a CropBox, from a greenhouse manufacturer in North Carolina.
Entrepreneur Jerry Martin purchased his first Leafy Green Machine in August to start his Vet Veggies brand, supplying produce to customers in the Springdale, Arkansas area. Photo supplied by Freight Farms.
Jerry Martin, a Vietnam War veteran who runs several businesses in Springdale, Arkansas, first read about Freight Farms in July and got intrigued by the idea of running a hydroponic farm in a shipping container. He asked his son-in-law, Darryl Hill, who works at Walmart headquarters in nearby Bentonville, to partner with him on the venture.
After doing their homework and checking out the competition, the two decided to buy a Leafy Green Growing Machine in August. ”They delivered it in early September, and we had our first harvest about four weeks later,” says Martin.
“It’s almost an engineering marvel,” he adds. “Brad and Jon spent several years perfecting it.”
Swiss chard. Photo by Freight Farms
Martin and Hill, who call their brand Vet Veggies, set up their farm on Martin’s 7-acre property, just inside the Springdale city limits. Martin’s daughter and wife help run the operation. The partners plan to add another two to three more containers next year.
Martin figures, all told, the partners spent about $84,000 to get started.
“It’s a fairly significant investment, but we’re anticipating a good return once we find our local market,” he says. “The simplicity is the beauty of it.”
Martin, who studied business in college, concedes that getting customers has probably been more of a challenge than running the farm itself — once they got the hang of it. Now they can take care of the actual farming tasks — planting, harvesting and the like – on Sundays.
Down the road, Martin is dreaming of helping other veterans get into freight farming using his Vet Veggies brand. “Before I actively spend money and market the brand, I want to make sure that when the veteran in Peoria calls me, I can tell him what the venture is about, which crops he should look at and how to determine what the market is.”
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