Summer Street Farm grows fresh vegetables year-round to help provide local food security, and employees with diverse abilities say they feel good about contributing. The CBC's Yuan Wang took a tour of the farm.

Here's the thing about Summer Street Farm in New Glasgow, Nova Scotia: it started with people who just wanted to do something impactful around food.

Gruninger’s farm is hydroponic. Instead of soil, he grows his plants exclusively with water-nutrient solutions, alongside various substrates or cultures. The cargo crate-farm is a bustling workspace, clean yet alive.

Inside it’s always temperate, with a consistently moderate temperature and neutral white lighting flowing from the edges of the ceiling.

The vertical smart farm has been established in the form of a container-type vertical farm on farmland in Beopgot-dong, Ilsanseo-gu.

It is operated as a facility equipped with a smart environmental control system for cultivating functional leafy vegetables.

Growcer is bringing back Rootcamp, an immersive, in-person training program for hydroponic modular farming.

Having already trained over 100 growers and produced 10 million+ servings of vegetables, Growcer’s bootcamp combines hands-on farm operations with essential business training.

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.

The freight container is not just a teaching tool but also provides fresh produce for students around the district.

Known as a Freight Farm, the container is filled with walls outfitted with equipment to water and nourish hundreds of plants, and lights to help them grow.

Back in June, the school received a new freight farm, which is a converted shipping container made to grow plants.

It was made possible through the Massachusetts FRESH Grant from Mass. Farm to School, and since then, the garden has been thriving.

The Latvian company Carbon Less Future has developed a fully automated vertical growing container for cultivating tree seedlings.

While vertical growing systems are not a new idea in horticulture, until now they have typically been used for strawberries, lettuce, and vegetable seedlings.

Our smart, modular farms are mobile, configurable indoor growing systems that support multiple crop types and growth cycles. Offering flexible, scalable precision growing solutions, Fischer Modular Farms streamline workflows, and ensure hygiene and consistency across every stage. From single container to super farms, Fischer Modular Farms are smart, scalable and seamless...the next generation of CEA in the UAE.

The 320-square-foot space inside a repurposed shipping container that sits in the parking lot of the Office of Sustainability is small and is a far cry from the 200-acre tree and shrub nursery in northern Illinois where Dr. Dave Kopsell, professor of horticulture in the Department of Agriculture, grew up.

Kopsell has been interested in horticulture for as long as he can remember, and today, that interest is taking the shape of the 40-by-8-foot container that houses Illinois State University’s Vertical Farm.

NASA has been a pioneer in the field of indoor farming for decades and collaborates often with outside institutions.

For more than 40 years, Purdue University in Indiana has received funding from and collaborated with NASA’s Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley, California, as part of the agency’s Specialized Center of Research and Training program to explore methods of growing plants under electric light.

Michigan State University researchers are developing more financial resources to help controlled environment growers succeed.

Horticulture economics doctoral student Megan Burritt tells Brownfield, “Everybody is considering, as you’re trying to grow your agricultural commodity entity, should I buy a new tractor or should I invest in a new greenhouse?”

In a shipping container parked next to Macnica’s headquarters in Yokohama, an innovative revolution in Japanese agriculture is taking root.

Inside the 40-foot steel box, 1,800 premium wasabi plants thrive under LED lights, nourished by circulating purified water and monitored by AI-powered sensors.

This isn’t a futuristic concept. It’s a solution to a very real crisis threatening one of Japan’s most iconic flavors.

Businesses are transforming rooftops, courtyards, parking lots, and unused land into working farms, growing their own food to reduce reliance on suppliers and serve fresher meals.

At the JW Marriott Grande Lakes in Orlando, guests are often eating produce grown just steps from where they’re staying.

Farmer-in-residence Leslie Wilber oversees the hotel’s on-site farm, where a wide variety of crops are grown throughout the year.

We present the comprehensive design, construction, and implementation of a 12-m shipping container adapted into a plant growth chamber optimized for industrial hemp (Cannabis sativa L.) cultivation.

The system integrates appliances such as air conditioners, dehumidifiers, light-emitting diode growth lights, and advanced environmental controllers.

People working in remote locations like the open sea, deep-sea areas and polar regions have long struggled with limited access to fresh vegetables, but are now able to grow and enjoy their own produce.

Notably, a smart farm designed for ship applications made its debut at Marintec China 2025 held in Shanghai in east China this week.

Penn State Extension will offer a five-week webinar series titled Basics of Hydroponic Production every Wednesday from February 18 through March 18, 2026, from 12:30 to 1:30 p.m. EST. This lunchtime series is designed to introduce participants to the core principles of growing vegetables without soil. Key topics include hydroponic systems, lighting, climate control, nutrient and water quality management, insect and disease management, microgreens, and food safety.

A recycled shipping container now serves as a mini-ecosystem, teaching kids about aquaponics — a system of aquaculture which involves raising both plants and fish together. The fish provide nutrients to the plants, and the plants provide clean water for the fish.

Kaben Smallwood, CEO of Symbiotic Aquatics and the designer of the exhibit, says the process allows farmers to take their minds off their tools and keep them on their products.