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.

Agriculture technology leader, AmplifiedAg, continues to lead the way in vertical farming in the corrections industry. The company has made advancements in two significant partnerships with the South Carolina Department of Corrections and Central California Women’s Facility in Chowchilla, in collaboration with reentry program partner Impact Justice and its Growing Justice initiative, and CEA advisor Skout Strategy. 

Merging sustainable, local food access with job training and reentry programming, these projects set a new precedent for how correctional systems can cultivate healthier communities on both sides of the fence while positively impacting recidivism rates. 

An old double-decker bus has been converted into a mobile farm to help educate people where their food comes from.

The Pony Farm Bus, a joint project by The Pony restaurant in Chew Magna and food distributor Arthur David, will take the vehicle out to community groups and schools to run workshops on food and cooking.

The vehicle, donated by First Bus, includes a greenhouse, a hydroponics system, kitchen and dining areas and a demonstration space.

Owner of The Pony, Josh Eggleton, said: "We want to create learning opportunities - but the main thing is to incite a sense of fun and purpose."

"We've got loads of schools and grassroots organisations coming here, but it wasn't lost on me that not everybody can get here.

"We wanted to take the growing and cooking on tour into Bristol and Somerset.

• FarmBox Foods partners with healthcare systems to deploy container farms for onsite food production.

• Hospitals use fresh produce for patient meals, wellness programs, and community outreach.

• The systems are designed for non-farmers, with training and long-term operational support.

• Benefits include improved nutritional outcomes, predictable food budgets, and reduced reliance on external suppliers.

• FarmBox Foods is contributing to ESG goals and the growing “food as medicine” movement.

Fork Farms, a leader in innovative agriculture technologies, announces the introduction of the Flex Micro™ — the company’s most compact and powerful hydroponic growing system to date. Designed to grow both microgreens and seedlines, the Flex Micro produces thousands of plants efficiently, affordably and consistently.

With the global microgreens market expected to surpass $6 billion by 2030, demand for fresh, sustainability-grown, nutrient-dense microgreens is on the rise. The Flex Micro is designed to meet consumer demand, blending simplicity with flexibility to serve chefs, educators, and community growers.

Restaurants in Havana, Cuba are receiving boxes of sprouting vegetable from a small start-up growing business every few day.

Meanwhile, many of the founder’s neighbors struggle to feed their families in Cuba’s worst economic crisis in decades.

The project, called Enparalelo (Parallel Roads), was created by architect Oliesky Fabre. He proudly shows off a 2022 UN World Food Programme award, given to only 10 projects out of 200 in Latin America and the Caribbean for fighting hunger in innovative ways.