Controlled Environment Agriculture is the Secret to Growing Food Year-round

Since humans started planting crops for food around 10,000 BC, seasonality and unpredictable weather has been the one consistent roadblock to growing food year-round. It was only recently that we developed the technology needed to bring plant production indoors, which gave humans significantly more control over the plant’s growth and success. This process of growing plants indoors to give the grower greater control over the plant’s environment became known as Controlled Environment Agriculture (CEA).

The guiding principle to CEA is that, with the right combination of light, carbon dioxide, temperature, humidity, water, pH levels, and nutrients, it is possible to grow healthy crops any time of the year. Most of the time, controlled environment agriculture systems use hydroponics or aeroponics to recreate healthy soil conditions, while sunlight is replaced by strong LED lights.

The Benefits of Controlled Environment Agriculture

At its core, it all comes down to one thing: control. By taking out the uncertainty and unpredictability of growing plants, you can do some amazing things! Here are the top three reasons to grow food in a controlled setting:

Season-agnostic production

In most of the world, the year is split into good growing weather and bad growing weather. Cold winter weather, limited sunshine, extreme heat, drought, flooding, or other natural weather patterns are all common reasons that farmers are not able to grow food year-round. By bringing plant production into a controlled environment, you’re no longer limited by the seasons.

Recreating historical conditions

For hundreds of years, farmers, researchers, and scientists have been tracking growing conditions for crops around the world, seeing which year produced the best quality plant. With traditional agriculture, all this data is great for posterity and analysis. For controlled environment agriculture, it is a gold mine! By controlling the major factors of plant success–water, light, nutrients, CO2, temperature, humidity, etc.–growers are able to look at historical data and see what conditions yielded the best crop and program their own farm to recreate the same environment.

Laboratory-like setting

Controlled environment agriculture is also the perfect way to generate new data. A proper scientific experiment requires the researcher to isolate one single variable condition while ensuring all the other conditions remain constant. Outdoors, it is highly unlikely that conditions will stay consistent long enough to get good test results. In a controlled environment setting, researchers can tweak one variable and keep the others completely the same, giving them confidence that any results they gleam are reliable. This can help researchers and farmers determine ideal growing conditions, bring out improved plant characteristics, and even develop modified species that are more resistant to drought, pests, and other stressful situations.

How the Greenery S helps you to farm year-round.

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Insulation

The Greenery S has a Department of Energy Insulation rating of R-28, which is just a fancy way for saying that the insulation is as close to infallible as possible. The Greenery S is modeled on resilient refrigerated shipping containers that spend a lifetime on the high seas, transporting fresh goods around the world. Freight Farms takes the same design elements and builds them new, increasing the insulation for maximum climate preservation, and giving operators structurally-sound farms.

All this means the Greenery S can maintain an average internal temperature of 70ºF in extreme climates ranging from -40ºF - 120ºF and a variety of inclement weather conditions. Furthermore, plants can thrive inside the container regardless of the external environment–harsh climates, tight urban centers, and extreme weather conditions that have no effect on the plants growing inside. 

Temperature control

Air conditioning 

The 36,000 BTU Northern Air HVAC unit automatically cools the Greenery S based on farmhand® programming. The system works around set-points: what are the ideal temperature, humidity, and CO2 levels for the plants to thrive? From there, the Greenery S self-monitors to ensure levels stay at the set point. If anything changes, the necessary system kicks in to adjust. For example, if indoor temperatures get too high, the HVAC cooling system is triggered: cold air flows through air ducts under the floor and is released through a vent at the front of the container. Overhead and on-panel fans push the cold air through the length of the farm, causing the hot air to rise where it is cycled back into the HVAC unit.

Lights

The Greenery S LED lights double as a source of light and heat. Usually, they provide enough heat during normal cycles to keep farm interior warm in every climate. However, if temperatures fall too low for any reason, lights will turn on to act as a heat source.

Humidity

The Northern Air unit also comes with an integrated dehumidifier that can collect 1.875 gallons/hour. The water is recycled back into the main tank and fed back to the plants, creating a closed-loop system. In some climates, the dehumidifier makes the Greenery water positive. Preserving the right atmospheric humidity is important for plant health, preventing mold and mildew which can harm the plants, yields, and productivity.

CO2

Plants need CO2 for photosynthesis, but too much in an enclosed space can be dangerous for the farm operator. For this reason, the Greenery carefully monitors CO2 levels, releasing more from a storage tank to bolster plant growth, or activating the farm’s exhaust fan to release CO2 if the concentration gets too high.  

Airflow

The Greenery S has two airflow systems which work together to stabilize internal conditions.

On-panel ducts create airflow in the rows themselves, which prevents microclimates, stagnant air, and provides the plant’s leaves with wind-like air movements that strengthen the stems. Simultaneously, an overhead fan and exhaust fan keep the entire container well-ventilated, pushing cold air from the A/C to the front of the farm and circulating hot, CO2 enriched air towards the back where it is released from an exhaust fan to cool the unit as needed. This system can fully exchange the air in the farm every two minutes to regulate the perfect internal climate.

How smart farming enables CEA

You might be wondering, what do we mean when we say “the Greenery S does this” or “the Greenery S controls that”...how are a bunch of inanimate farm components sensing and adjusting on their own?! 

The Greenery S (and its operator) have help. Farmhand® is Freight Farms’ IoT software, which uses smart in-farm sensors to aggregate data and adjust accordingly. Mostly, farmhand operates independently. While setting the Greenery S up to grow, the operator sets specific ranges for all sorts of environmental conditions, like temperature, humidity, CO2, pH, and EC. If the levels for any of these conditions deviate from the norm, farmhand® deploys the right fix (for example, turning the A/C on if the Greenery gets too hot, or dosing the water with more nutrients if EC gets too low). Farmhand also comes with a feature called Recipes. Recipes allow farmers to achieve consistent harvests with the touch of a button: Operators simply choose the crop they wish to grow and farmhand automatically adjusts in-farm settings for that crop production. In-farm cameras and sensors gather information and continuously improve the precision of the recipes over time, aggregating data from the entire farmer network to determine patterns that lead to exceptionally successful harvests. Farmhand also notifies you if any conditions are out of line. In doing so, farmhand® also gives you access to all of your historical data so that you can track which conditions yield the best results, or work with the Freight Farms support team to troubleshoot any problems.

Interested in learning more about the Greenery S? Download our comprehensive product booklet and explore all of the innovative features in the Greenery S.

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