Could One Shipping Container Feed A City?

Silicon Valley hasn’t always been synonymous with environment-friendly policy.

Whether it’s Apple’s reliance on mining valuable metals off the planet for iPhone parts, or Uber’s contribution to climate change and rising carbon emissions.

But with growing pressure to adopt sustainable business models is the need of the hour. We’ve witnessed the arrival of tree-planting search engines to solar roads. We’ve seen startups putting the planet before their profit statement – New York-based Square Roots Grow is no different!

THE NEXT GENERATION OF URBAN FARMERS

Entrepreneurs Kim Musk and Tobias Peggs are trying to fix America’s food production problem without harming the planet with Square Roots Grow.

Budding agricultural entrepreneurs Kim Musk and Tobias Peggs are trying to fix America’s food production problem without harming the planet with Square Roots Grow. The younger Musk’s urban farming incubator teaches young farmers how to farm in cities while preaching the benefits of locally sourced, non-processed food.

Until now, the startup has operated out of a shuttered factory near public housing projects of Brooklyn’s Bedford Stuyvesant. Square Roots has built indoor farming facilities in refurbished, shipping containers, which it uses to grow food and teach farmers in a year-long program. At Square Roots’ vertical farms, the entrepreneurs grow hydroponic crops like microgreens, herbs and strawberries. These hydroponic crops grow in a nutrient-laced water solution, not soil.

A single shipping container provides 320 square feet of growing space. It is fitted with long, narrow towers studded with crops that are hung like vertical blinds from the ceiling in rows. Unlike traditional outdoor farms, the plants receive water and nutrients from irrigation pipes running along the top of the towers and their sunlight from strips of LED lights.