A Look at the Benefits and Drawbacks of Container Farms

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Over the last few years, shipping container farms have become an increasingly popular fixture in the indoor farming industry. Thanks to startups like Freight Farms and Growtainer, it’s now possible to buy fully-assembled, self-contained hydroponic vertical farming systems built right inside shipping containers.

Not surprisingly, given the compact functionality these units offer, entities around the world — from individual entrepreneurs to supermarkets to community organizations — are snapping them up. However, although shipping container farming may be an attractive prospect for aspiring indoor farmers, that doesn’t mean it’s easy.

Facilitating Success and Managing Expectations

Container farming is enjoying a popularity boom at present. However, it’s also seeing one of the highest failure rates compared with other types of indoor farming facilities. Why are so many shipping container farms ultimately unsuccessful?

Part of the problem is the result of unrealistic expectations about what’s actually involved in running a container farm. To help address this, many industry insiders believe there needs to be more transparency about the benefits and drawbacks of shipping container farms. That way, farmers who choose this facility type can make sure they’re doing so with their eyes open.

To this end, a recent article from the co-founder of Bright Agrotech (an indoor agriculture hardware company acquired in 2017 by the California-based vertical farming company Plenty) offers a handy round-up of the pros and cons of shipping container farming. Here are a few:

Benefits

Ease of transport — It only makes sense that one of the advantages of a farm built inside a shipping container is how easily it can be transported. Container farms can be manufactured wherever economic conditions are favorable, then delivered to customers all over the world.

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Ready availability — There are millions of shipping containers already in existence. As a result, shipping companies are generally willing to sell containers that are no longer suitable for their original function at reasonable rates.

Value-based competition — More and more value-added companies are getting into the container farm niche. Ultimately, competition will help drive down container prices, which will make it feasible for more farmers to launch businesses. This, in turn, will boost the supply of locally-grown food.

Compact footprint — One of the biggest and most unique benefits of a container farm is that it’s not necessary to have a lot of land or a dedicated building to get started. The compact footprint and self-contained nature of a container farm mean it can be located just about anywhere, like behind a restaurant, or in a campus parking lot.

This makes it possible to bring fresh food to areas where it might otherwise be impossible to grow. Container farming can also greatly decrease the distance between where food is grown and where it is consumed. This particular benefit is one of the main reasons aspiring farmers find container farms appealing.

Drawbacks

Form not originally suited to function — Nearly all the drawbacks of container farming stem from one fundamental issue. This is that shipping containers were not originally designed to grow food. This central disconnect between form and function gives rise to a number of issues that can put growers at a disadvantage.

In order for any indoor farm to operate effectively, it’s necessary for proper environmental controls to be in place. Tools can regulate things like humidity, airflow, carbon dioxide, and temperature. However, because of the extreme constraints of a repurposed shipping container, these tools are not always present or optimized the way they would be in a purpose-built farming structure.

For example, container farms need high-intensity lighting for crops to grow. Unfortunately, they often don’t have adequate space for the HVAC units needed to deal with the excess heat produced by these lights.

Not always optimized for people — If shipping containers weren’t originally designed for plants, neither were they originally designed for people. This can make it difficult for container farmers to ensure that their facilities are ergonomically suitable for the people who are going to be working in them.

No farm worker will relish the idea of spending dozens of hours every week in a cramped and confined space. However, without a more thoughtful design, this ends up happening surprisingly often in newly-launched container farming operations.

Misbalanced operational expense — When it comes to container growing, farmers don’t always find the right balance between capital expenses and operational expenses. In general terms, the less you pay up front (capital expenses), the higher your costs will be in order to run the business (operational expenses).

This is particularly true when it comes to container farms. The constraints of the structure can drastically increase how much it costs to run a farming operation properly. However, many novice farmers get excited about the fact that container farms are relatively inexpensive to set up (compared with other types of indoor facilities). As a result, they may neglect to properly budget for higher operational expenses.