Freight Farms uses shipping containers to grow crops anywhere in the world

Meet Jon Friedman, the founder of Freight Farms, a company making farming possible anywhere in the world.

When it comes to farming, only certain crops can develop in certain climates. With modern advances in refrigeration and transportation, many places have been able to get around this. Much of the food we get in our supermarket is only accessible to us because it was carefully refrigerated and transported from where it was created.

However, communities across the world can’t always access certain crops. Freight Farms makes it possible by using shipping containers to create vertical farms that can hold up anywhere.

“We use a shipping container to create a turnkey growing facility that can ship anywhere in the world and grow exactly the same in any climate,” Friedman told In The Know.

The company also provides training, tools and resources to those seeking to operate one of its farms. Freight Farms’ flagship product is the Greenery S.

“It is a 40-foot shipping container completely customized to growing precision levels of hydroponic vegetables,” Friedman said. “So, you can put one of these in any environment in the world, and it will grow 365 days a year, over a thousand heads of lettuce a week. It actually does over 500 different crops.”

The Greenery S can produce pumpkins, watermelons, peppers, flowers, tomatoes and much more. What makes the Greenery S so innovative is that you don’t need access to a large landmass or even water.

“We’re wicking water from the air and bringing that and filtering it back into the tank. Really, Greenery S is a way to democratize access to farming,” he said.

The shipping container creates an instant, controlled environment at a far more affordable cost than a greenhouse or warehouse. Its simplicity allows just about anyone who wants to farm to use the Greenery S because science and engineering skills aren’t necessary to operate it.

This can go a long way in addressing things like food scarcity caused by damage to the environment.

“The need for alternative farming solutions is really driven by terrible land depletion, water resource scarcity, the risk in our supply chain — centralized production and distribution doesn’t really support all the people in the world and all the places that need access to it,” Friedman said.

“With the Greenery S, we tied that into renewable power distribution, so this is really the most sustainable way you can grow. And we need to make that change as a global population.”