Nestled next to the Community of Change Center on Centralia Street in the West End sits an unassuming white freight container.

Inside, the 320-square-foot metal structure houses a drip irrigation hydroponics system that grows 2,500 pounds of produce annually.

The Ag Dept. is offering just over $400,000 in total funding this year from the federal Farm Bill.

The USDA also outlined a priority for "urban agriculture" projects: things like rooftop farming, community composts, shipping container farms, and other emerging agricultural practices.

Freight farms are vertical farms built inside of repurposed shipping containers. They utilize hydroponic farming, in which plants are grown without soil and instead grow inside water-based solutions. The farms can be placed virtually anywhere and grow year-round because of their self-contained climate. The result is a high-yield farm that requires far less space than a traditional garden.

Access to fresh, healthy food is the cornerstone of strong, thriving communities. Yet in Denver’s Globeville, Elyria, and Swansea (GES) neighborhoods, within the 80216 ZIP code, many residents have long faced barriers to affordable, nutritious options and is considered a food desert. To create lasting change, we must think differently about how and where food is grown.

Two container farms on the grounds of Volunteers of America's Upstate New York campus have become a working part of how the organization addresses food insecurity among its clients. Running for two years, the programme supplies leafy greens, beans, root vegetables, and herbs to on-site shelters, a children's centre, and partner organizations in the surrounding community.

If you drove by the weed-strewn lot in West Aliquippa, you might not give a second thought to the two white shipping containers there. Or if you did, you might think: Storage facilities? Meth labs, maybe?

More than a decade ago, two students at the University of Ottawa, Alida Burke and Corey Ellis, were on a school trip to Nunavut when they got a firsthand look at food insecurity.

Two students looked around for a solution, but seeing none, decided to create one themselves. In 2016, they developed a modular, indoor farm in a shipping container. they called their new venture Growcer.

As southern Nevada works to strengthen food security amid an arid climate and limited arable land, University of Nevada, Reno Extension is offering an educational certificate series on indoor vertical farming, or hydroponics, to equip commercial growers, home gardeners, Master Gardener volunteers and educators with research-based expertise in soil-free vegetable farming.

For a decade, Growcer has been working alongside communities across Canada to prove that local, year-round food production is not only possible, it is transformative.

In Alert, Nunavut — the northernmost continuously inhabited place on Earth, just 817 km from the North Pole — winter brings 24-hour darkness and temperatures below -30°C. Fresh food is typically flown in, but flights are often delayed for weeks, leaving residents without produce.

To reduce this dependency, Molly Farquhar launched The C.A.N. (Continuous Alert Nourishment) — a hydroponic vertical farm built inside a renovated shipping container.

Fisher River Cree Nation (FRCN), in partnership with ADRA Canada and Growcer Corp., and with additional funding from the Latter-Day Saints, is launching a year-round hydroponic farm early this year to tackle food insecurity in northern Manitoba while promoting a sustainable and resilient local food system.

After North Casper Elementary School closed its doors, the Casper Housing Authority bought the building and made a promise to the school district: to turn it into something positive.

That's how Urban Thistle Farm was born, and its mission is to alleviate the food desert in North Casper.