Officially founded in Toronto by Christopher Klich and Justin Cheng, the startup joined the University of Waterloo’s Velocity incubator in mid-2023 to scale its AI-driven gourmet mushroom farms in shipping containers. 

The first time I visited KC Sullivan, founder of Two River Gourmet Mushrooms, his entire operation fit inside a retrofitted shipping container tucked behind White Chapel Project in Long Branch.

Every prospective container farmer runs into the same wall: the sticker price. A new turnkey hydroponic container farm is a six-figure purchase before you have harvested a single head of lettuce.

AmplifiedAg CEO David Flynn doesn’t see institutional and commercial agriculture as competing priorities — he sees them as two inputs into the same platform. The institutional side alone ranges from USDA research labs to compliant farm programs inside correctional facilities, part of the company’s Growing Justice initiative.

It all started with an affordable housing concept that never got off the ground. Jason Brown, a founding member of the FarmBox Foods team, was working on a project to build housing inside shipping containers. The plan included outdoor gardens in the form of vertically integrated, food-safe tubes (foreshadowing is a narrative device, etc.).

As growers face challenges from limited land, unstable climate conditions, labor pressure, and the need for a stable food supply, container farms are becoming a practical option for modern agriculture. Aurlant has developed a series of container farm solutions designed to help growers produce crops in controlled environments with more flexible space use and year-round operation.

65% of New Zealand's total freight volume is handled by the Bay of Plenty, Auckland, and Hamilton 'Golden Triangle'.

Multiple major players (Royal Wolf, TITAN Containers, ContainerCo) are investing heavily in the Bay of Plenty logistics hub.

Shipping containers are being repurposed for diverse uses, including temporary site offices, secure storage, and even hydroponic farms.

In Langley, B.C., Easy Harvest Box is redefining farming by cultivating gourmet mushrooms in AI-powered, climate-controlled containers.

Using 95% less water and zero pesticides, this startup’s “farm-in-a-box” model could make sustainable, year-round agriculture possible anywhere—from city lots to northern communities.

For his next step in scaling up the operation, Sullivan got creative. He transformed a shipping container into a mushroom farm. He and a very small team spent four months adding insulation, drainage, lighting, humidification, environmental controls and HVAC.

The 40-foot container held a fruiting room, a packaging room and a mechanical room. The urban, vertical farm received USDA Organic certification and ramped up to produce about 500 pounds of hardwood mushrooms weekly. 

Students at a New Haven magnet school are learning more than just standard classroom lessons - they're getting hands-on business, science and agricultural experience through the Green Thumbs program at High School in the Community. 

Currently, students in the program are using their skills to grow a mushroom and lettuce farm in a 40-foot storage container. 

A company specializing in vertical farming was awarded the “2025 Coolest Thing Made in Colorado” by the Colorado Chamber of Commerce on Thursday.

The statewide business lobbying group celebrated the top inventions of the state for the past four years with this recognition aiming to highlight different locally-made products.

In a repurposed 40-ft. shipping container, High School in Community students, known as Harvest Scholars Company, created a mushroom farm.

Harvest Scholars Company represents a new vision for science education—one that is hands-on, community-focused, and forward-thinking. (NHPS)

Community members are encouraged to share their recipes and cultural food traditions, helping students learn how science, food, and culture intersect.

The Colorado Chamber of Commerce today announced that the Vertical Hydroponic Farm by FarmBox Foods has been named the Coolest Thing Made in Colorado for 2025. The award was presented that the Coolest Thing Made Awards ceremony presented by FirstBank.

The Vertical Hydroponic Farm, manufactured in Aurora, uses patented vertical farming technology inside upcycled shipping containers to maximize growing space while minimizing water and energy use.

A Pagosa Springs-based small business that uses a controlled-climate container farm to grow culinary and functional mushrooms is now certified organic.

Behind the Tooth & Gill Mushroom Co. brand is husband-and-wife team Aaron Carter and Lauren Hawksworth, both of whom left the corporate world to pursue their passion for improving community access to healthy food in the form of gourmet mushrooms.

These particular mushrooms are grown entirely in the confines of an insulated, tech-assisted shipping container farm built by Colorado-based FarmBox Foods.

We all like to think that the fancy gourmet mushrooms advertised on the menu of our favorite restaurant were foraged in the wild by a grey bearded man with a wooden cane, knee-high forester boots, and a feathered fedora. 

In reality, those mushrooms were likely grown on a farm. But when we say mushroom farm it’s sometimes a climate-controlled shipping container sitting in a gravel parking lot somewhere on the outskirts of town. While this doesn’t sound as glamorous as gallivanting around the woods, the mushrooms are just as good.

Container mushroom farming is a method of cultivating mushrooms inside a retrofitted 40-foot shipping container. The entire growing process—from preparing the substrate to harvesting—is conducted within a controlled environment. These farms typically include:

• A mixing station for combining substrates (e.g., soybean hulls and hardwood pellets)

• Steam cabinets for pasteurization

• A clean lab with a HEPA flow hood for inoculation with grain spawn

• Colonization chambers for mycelium development

• Fruiting rooms equipped with misting systems and shelving for vertical space optimization

The recent Indoor Ag-Conversations  panel brought together four seasoned voices from the container farming world. The session was moderated by Grant Anderson of Better Fresh Farms, a container farm operator, and featured three manufacturers as panelists: Matt Daniels (AmplifiedAg®), Glenn Behrman (CEA Advisors LLC), and Tripp Williamson (Vertical Crop Consultants).

Their goal? To offer a clear-eyed look at what’s working, what’s not, and where the industry goes from here.

What followed was one of the most honest, detailed discussions the container farming sector has seen in some time.

Research by the University of Pretoria (UP) is helping South African producers find new ways to grow white button mushrooms sustainably – including a project aimed at growing white button mushrooms in repurposed shipping containers.

“Many people think of mushrooms as a luxury item, without realising that they are a superfood packed with nutrients and represent a good alternative to meat products,” says Prof Lise Korsten, who leads mushroom studies in the Plant Pathology Research Group of the Faculty of Natural and Agricultural Sciences (NAS) and is co-director of the Department of Science, Technology and Innovation / National Research Foundation Centre of Excellence in Food Security.