• FarmBox Foods helps hospitals estimate financial and nutritional ROI before the implementation of their container farms.

• Key factors include operational costs, yield, reduced readmissions, and local sourcing benefits.

• Predictable production enables budget planning over the long term.

• Bonus depreciation incentives make CAPEX more attractive for institutions.

• ROI is also measured in patient outcomes, staff wellness, and community engagement.

Eudora, Ark. (KATV) — 180 Pipe, a leader in vertical farming systems, is hosting an open house and technology demonstration on Oct. 14, 2025, from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. at 800 Grant 83 in Sheridan, Ark.

The event, co-hosted by Founder Luigi Campos and Eudora Mayor Tomeka Butler, invites the public, media, and Arkansas agriculture leaders to explore how communities can grow fresh, nutrient-rich food regardless of climate or available land.

Science students at Germantown High School hosted a harvest event on Friday to showcase fresh greens they grew inside their classroom.

The students used an indoor hydroponic farming system to grow several varieties of lettuce, cherry tomatoes, mini cucumbers, snacking peppers and micro greens that they then served up at school lunch on Friday.

The district's food nutrition director, Jill Seefeld, said they built the lab this summer.

At AdventHealth, that idea is becoming reality. By integrating locally grown produce into patient care, they’re proving that access to fresh food can heal both people and communities.

Freight Farms is proud to help make it possible, with technology that brings food production on-site, ensuring healthcare systems can nourish patients sustainably, reliably, and year-round.

Because when hospitals grow food, they grow health. Join us for a free 30-minute webinar: Fueling the Food as Medicine Movement.

With a $3.5 million renovation and the launch of a hydroponic farming program, Fairview South School is ushering in a new era of hands-on learning for students with special needs.

The Elmbrook School District facility, home to the Waukesha County Special Education Consortium, unveiled its updated interior during a ribbon-cutting ceremony on Sept. 26, the first major upgrade since becoming a consortium school in 1984.

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.

Malnutrition afflicts 20–50% of hospital inpatients worldwide, which means 1 in 4 admitted patients battle longer hospital stays, higher readmission risk, and slower recovery. These alarming rates remain consistent across North America and globally, and the problem often intensifies during hospitalization. Too often, food services cannot deliver truly nutrient-rich produce—conventional supply chains and lengthy storage lead to nutrient loss before food even reaches the plate.

Students are growing what they eat in San Jose as part of a nutrition program at Evergreen School District where students learn to farm produce, harvest it, and serve it for lunch.

It’s part of a nutrition program called Fork Farms that encourages healthy eating in students and gets them more interested in STEM learning.

Students at Quimby Oak Middle School are benefitting from an extension of that program with a new hydroponic system.

Company growing hydroponic trees for burn scars

There are new baby blue spruce trees growing near Sedalia that are unlike any others.

On October 10, 2025, Corey Ellis, CEO and co-founder of Growcer and Dave Harris, head of Freight Farmer Success at Growcer, chatted about support options available for Freight Farmers and answered your questions.

• Vertical farming is being adopted by healthcare systems to provide fresh, nutrient-rich food directly onsite.

• FarmBox Foods offers shipping container farms designed for non-farmers, with training and operational support.

• Hospitals use these systems for patient meals, cafeteria offerings, and community outreach.

• Vertical farming contributes to ESG goals and therapeutic agriculture initiatives.

• Early adopters are using it for wellness programs, cost control, and food system resilience.

A small vertical farming facility has been approved for a Red Deer County business park.

The county’s municipal planning commission approved on Tuesday an application by Salad Oasis to set up a hydroponic farming operation in two sea cans in a pair of storage units in Energy Business Park just south of Red Deer.

The primary focus of the new facility will be the year-round cultivation of leafy greens, including lettuce, kale, arigula, spinach and Swiss chard, along with broccoli, radishes and mushrooms. Food grown will go to stores, restaurants and farmers markets and will not be sold at the site.

NEWARK, N.J. – Newark Public Schools Superintendent León and Principal Karisa Neis-Lopez welcomed David Rosenberg, co-founder of Inspired Growing, to Newark Vocational High School today to celebrate the first harvest of produce grown with Inspired Growing aeroponic farms.

The event featured students from Newark Vocational High School’s acclaimed Culinary Arts Academy harvesting greens grown onsite, preparing gourmet dishes under the guidance of professional chefs, and serving their creations to students, school officials, and district leaders.

Ottawa, ON — Freight Farms, a pioneer in containerized farming technology, has found a new home with Growcer, the Canadian agritech company that has been enabling year-round, hyper-local food production across North America for more than a decade.

The acquisition follows Freight Farms’ bankruptcy filing in April 2025, which left its global community of farmers facing uncertainty about the future of their operations. On July 28, Growcer acquired the company’s assets, committing to preserve Freight Farms’ legacy while charting a stronger future for its growers.

"We've been doing hydroponics and vertical farming for about five years," says Ahmed Fawzy, CEO of Taza Farms. "We originally grew for human food, supplying London's top restaurants and hotels. We wanted to do something with more impact, so we took our hydroponics experience into animal feed."

That decision led to Taza's first full-scale pilot at Hunsingo Dairy in Groningen, the Netherlands. "This pilot became our first paying customer," Fawzy says. "The feedback has been better than we hoped. The cows went for the fodder straight away, farmers noticed it's easier to digest, and our system delivered a fresh, consistent supply every single day."

"Clients use our farms to integrate a sustainable food supply chain directly into their business models," says Juan Gabriel Succar, Co-Founder of Mexican container farming company, Verde Compacto. The company's 40-foot container farm, the Huvster Pro, is being adopted by stadiums, resorts, universities, and municipalities, and is shipped fully equipped, with digital monitoring, remote support, and optional service extensions.

Succar says the system is designed to meet more than just production targets, offering a certifiable, financeable path to vertical farming for customers prioritizing year-round supply, sustainability indicators, and on-site visibility.

The Haverhill YMCA is hosting a harvest party to celebrate the second anniversary of its Freight Factory hydroponic farm at the city’s Gateway Academy.

The party is Wednesday, Oct. 2, from 4:30-5:30 p.m. at Gateway Academy, 415 Primrose St., Haverhill. Participants are invited to tour the garden and pick their own lettuce.

The indoor container garden is called a “freight farm” because it is set up inside a 40-by-8-foot shipping container painted on the sides in bright colors with the message “The Y Feeds Kids.” As WHAV reported when it opened in October 2023, it was heralded at the first farm of its kind operated by a YMCA in country.

Jort Maarseveen and Tijmen Blok started as two WUR students who believed that everyone should have access to fresh nutritious food anywhere in the world and ended up with Hippotainer.

Hippotainer’s mission is to design and implement smart vertical farms inside shipping containers to enable people anywhere in the world to access fresh vegetables. “We enable food production anywhere on the globe, regardless of the location, whether it's on the North Pole or in the Sahara Desert, we want to be able to make it possible to produce fresh vegetables”

The concept of Hippotainer began while cofounders Jort Maarseveen and Tijmen Blok were doing their Masters at WUR with backgrounds in biology, business, and biosciences.