How a French Startup Is Using Shipping Containers to Grow Food

We’ve already seen the many ways that 40 foot shipping containers can be repurposed or recycled for uses beyond the shipping industry. Container pop up shops are sweeping the country, as are mobile office containers, and even tiny homes made out of used storage containers. But a new startup in Paris, France, has a fresh idea for old containers: growing farm-fresh produce, without the farm.

The company, Agricool, was founded last year by Gonzague Gru and Guillaume Fourdinier, two sons of farmers who grew up in the French countryside. When they moved to Paris as adults, they both found it difficult to find the kind of straight-from-the-soil produce they’d grown up with as farm kids. So they started thinking about alternative solutions for farming in urban centers.

“To get good fruits and vegetables in town, we need to farm in town,” they say. “That’s the only solution. The problem is that we lack space. Our roofs and balconies aren’t sufficient to feed millions of city dwellers with fresh and local produce.”

So they came up with the idea to grow hydroponic plants in climate-controlled containers, or what they call “cooltainers.” Each of the 40 foot shipping containers are said to be capable of producing the same amount of food as could be grown on an acre of farmland, but with 90% less water, no need for pesticides, and in a fraction of the space.

Container farming could be eco-friendly in another way, too. Every shipping container recycled is equivalent to 3,500 kg of steel being saved from scrap. It also saves on the cost and usage of more traditional building materials such as bricks, mortar, or wood that might otherwise be required to create such structures.

Agricool has so far raised $4.3 million in funding and is currently working on the first test crop: strawberries. The company hopes to produce 91 tons of fruit in 2017 using 75 shipping containers for growing. Imagine being able to grow, pick, and eat your own food — all without leaving the city. This one cool idea for shipping containers might just change the future of food and farming as we know it.

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