Shipping Container Dreams

[Earthan Group]

Seeing lots of these types of "farms" poping up in conceptual ideas chasing funding.


http://www.freightfarms.com - now 118% funded nothing to see as yet.

http://www.podponics.com - video of it http://www.theatlantic.com/technolog...247391/#slide6 - interesting use of space.

http://news.discovery.com/tech/growi...#view-comments - found the story but the web site has no info.

http://www.blueoasispureshrimp.com/ - lots of hype around growing 50,000 pounds of shrimp in a shipping container. Can't find the shipping container.

Mitsubishi apparently built one in 2010 but can not find any results of that.

There was a new crew having a go late last year, chap visited AU. But can not remember their name and have not heard anything more.

In my search I found this ....
http://www.omegagarden.com/ - add that to a deep water culture system.

Has anyone see any of these shipping container farms built and producing in an urban environment or anywhere? Surely, with all the predictions this is the next "farming revolution", someone, somewhere will have seen one?

[GaryD]

Hi Paul,

Has anyone see any of these shipping container farms built and producing in an urban environment or anywhere? Surely, with all the predictions this is the next "farming revolution", someone, somewhere will have seen one?

Like you, I've seen plenty of concept designs but nothing that I can recall in the way of fully functional systems.

I find this interesting because there would be no difficulty housing a very comprehensive food production system in a shipping container. It's a shed after all.

I'm fascinated by shipping containers and I've come up with several designs where the top is the growing space and the inside houses all of the fish and micro-livestock. The growing space would extend down the sun-facing side of the container.

Don't get me started.....

Gary

[Pseudoreality]

I haven't seen farms in shipping containers, but I've designed access vaults for a high arctic community's raw water supply system using re-purposed shipping containers. The durability of those things is amazing.

The Omega Garden Volksgarden looks interesting. I've thought of doing some kind of paddle wheel thing with my pond/AP set-up. It just needs to be efficient and purposeful.

[Earthan Group]

There is an exellent shipping container restaurant in sydney. They actually grow stuff on the walls. It call all be packed into the container and shipped to the next location.

This is it here
http://inhabitat.com/greenhouse-by-j...se-by-joost-5/

I think that is fantastic and there are quite a few of these around the world.

There are also people converting them into low cost housing, which is where I think they fit the brief.

As an independant growing system I am struggling with their capacity. The CERES aquaponic set (Lenard) has the fish tanks in the shipping container from memory but the plant grow space is outside.

I have seen a fresh water crayfish hatchery built in one, but they had massive issues with heat and ventalation (co2 build up and all that).

We were approached to design a fish farm in a box type senario several years ago that could be dropped into remote locations, turned on and stocked. I am certain we could make a bucket load of money selling that concept, but the reality is you simply can not fit enough into a container to make it viable for food production. While labor can be inexpensive in these remote locations, we can fit far more fish and plant gear into a shipping container to ship out, because we can build the tanks our of sheets of PE we can flat pack it, unpack and build onsite and use the container to house things like pumps and equipement.

Here are some of the tanks we build out of flat sheet. The white ones are 15KL and the blue ones are 5KL.

We are about to build the largest integrated system (Commercial Aquaponics) in Australia with 35,000 litre tanks made the same way.



I am not convinced you can fit enough production into one to make it worth not just building a shed.

[GaryD]

Hi Paul,

I agree that it would be a stretch to attempt a commercial AP set in a shipping container. What I had in mind was a Microponics system (fish, plants and micro-livestock) designed for backyard food production.

Of course, with enough shipping containers, you can build almost anything.

Gary

[Ravnis]

I am always amazed at the stuff you post. EG. How are the tanks made from sheets? Does it require a special bonding process or equipment? Do they hold up well?

[Earthan Group]

I am always amazed at the stuff you post. EG. How are the tanks made from sheets? Does it require a special bonding process or equipment? Do they hold up well?

Yeah just welded. Takes hours and not the most fun of jobs, but it means we can build any size tank in any place with any size opening into the building.

Here is those 5000 litres when we moved them with a forklift and they hold up well enough.



Here is me and the 15,000 litre ones before we moved them. We had to cut these ones down in height to suit the new farm but they moved with some extra welding and away they go. No drama fish farmer. We did not fork them off the truck, just pushed them down a ramp.



I am looking forward to the 35,000 liter tanks in this new aquaponic system we are building this year. Should be fun.

[Kaduda]

Perhaps a separate thread regarding these tanks? I'm interested in the thickness of the sheets...Ease of cutting the PE...And any other tips in building these...

[Earthan Group]

Good idea. I got a little side tracked.

Perhaps a request to one of the moderators to move the posts.

[jobney]

I made a copy of the tank post here. Earthan Group's Tanks I left the original post in place though. Was not sure what to name it. It can be renamed if needed.

Jeff