The Challenge and Opportunity of Container Farming
In the wake of Freight Farms’ April 2025 collapse, several container farm industry experts talked about where the industry grows from here.
June 10, 2025
The inside of one of Freight Farms container farming systems. (Courtesy of Freight Farms)
The most recent monthly Indoor Ag Conversations webinar hosted by Indoor Ag-Con, held June 3, focused on “The State and Future of Container Farming.”
Container farming is a form of small-scale controlled environment agriculture — i.e. indoor or vertical farming — that is often built inside shipping containers. The units are self-contained, able to be moved to the necessary location and allow for small-scale out-of-season growth of fresh produce.
They are not without their challenges, however. The talk included four panelists from the container farming industry discussing the impacts of Freight Farms and its recent collapse, the challenges of the industry, and where it goes from here.
“There are some challenging times, but there is opportunity that exists out here, but you better know what you’re getting into,” said Brian Sullivan, CEO of Indoor Ag-Con and webinar moderator, on the topic.
The wake of Freight Farms
While the container farming industry faces many challenges, every panelist talked about the negative impact of Freight Farms.
“All the gilded representations that people were going to make a profit in two years and all the nonsense that Freight Farms threw out set a lot of people in this industry up for failure and a lot of disappointment,” said Glenn Behrman, president of CEA Advisors. “There was a lot of over promising and a lot of under delivering,” said Behrman in summary of the company’s impact.
Freight Farm’s 2024 product literature claimed it pioneered the world’s first container farming system. The company began building self-contained hydroponic growing systems in retrofitted 40-foot shipping containers in 2012. What still exists of the company’s site claims the recent systems could produce 2 tons to 6 tons of annual harvest across hundreds of different crops. The systems were operated using Freight Farms’ automation programming.
The company attracted considerable attention and capital. Google and Ford both put in Freight Farms systems, for instance. In 2020, Freight Farms raised $15 million in Series B funding, and again in 2022 it raised $17.5 million in Series B3 Funding. However, the company shuttered at the end of April 2025.
Many of the Freight Farms customers who have units cannot operate them because the company’s operating system went down, according to the webinar’s panelists. Even before that, the ability to get parts or service was very difficult. While several of the panelists’ companies are currently working on conversion kits to help get existing Freight Farms systems functional again, they are not yet ready for release.
“I think the Freight Farms, Silicon Valley-, VC-funded business model hurt other container farm manufacturers insofar as people came to expect too much and they didn’t realize that farming is not an easy business, and certainly container farming is not an easy business,” Behrman said.
Contained challenges of big specialty tools
All of the panelists stressed the fact that the container system is simply another tool for farming and not keeping that in mind is a challenge to anyone in or considering container farming. The practical challenges of container farming include many of the same ones for traditional farming — finding customers, marketing, food safety considerations, labor, etc. — but also the challenges of large farming tools.
Matt Daniels, chief product architect at AmplifiedAg, a producer of hydroponic container farms, compared the container to a tractor. Just like a tractor needs gas, insurance, maintenance and parts, the container itself has specific needs that must be considered that often aren’t. Power must be a central consideration of container farming, for instance.
“We have a basil producer in the Boston area and they pay 33 cents a kWh for power,” Daniels offered as an example. He also called undersized HVAC and oversized lights — a common pain point in container farming — a recipe for disaster.
Tip-burn in lettuce is one such disaster that occupied Daniels’ and the rest of AmplifiedAg’s engineering team’s attention for a while, he said. It took them a while to answer the question “How do we push the plants as fast as we possibly can while still maintaining control of the environment and not getting the plants tip burned?” The answer turned on Liebig’s law of the minimum.
“Your crop is only going to be as good as your lowest possible input,” Daniels summarized the law. “In the case of tip burn, sure, add calcium to your system. But calcium is a non-mobile nutrient, so you have to have the adequate transpiration in order to move that calcium to the growing tips in order to keep tip burn from happening. You don’t just add calmag and then it just works. That is not how that works.”
Advice to anyone interested in container farming
How it does — or can — work depends entirely on the person and how much effort they put into their plan. Those plans should be hyper-local and focus on what is needed in the area, Behrman said.
“The first thing I would do is go try to find a customer, and then I would go and talk to every single local farmer in the area and just pick their brain,” Behrman said. “Tell them who you are and what you’re planning to do and see what’s needed.”
He also recommended finding a client to sell to before even setting up the container farm. By finding out what is needed in the area, prospective container farmers might find natural clients.
“You might even grow that container and grow seedlings and supply other farms,” he noted. Other potential clients he offered as possibly overlooked options included rural schools or county jails, retirement communities or caterers.
All panelists stressed the value of diversifying the crop offering — citing mushrooms and noting that a container farmer can’t just grow lettuce — but within reason.
“Don’t spread yourself too thin,” advised Grant Anderson, founder and operations manager at Better Fresh Farms, a Georgia container farm that opened in 2016. “Don’t try to grow a number of things really well. Figure out one or two things and nail those down and have a premiere option for that product then expand as you are comfortable.”
Anderson explained that having too many crops in a container farm can cause an overload of potential variables. This is a problem, especially at the outset when the container farmer is refining their process for their unique situation.
“Having a number of different cultivars in play complicates that even further,” he said.
Tripp Williamson, president of Vertical Crop Consultants, advised those considering getting into container farming to go slow.
“That cannot be stated strongly enough,” he said. “Don’t rush through this, and make sure you have a solid plan. Be ready for it, be passionate for it.”
The passion for container farming and an entrepreneurial spirit are essential for success, Williamson said.
“You’ve got to have that ability and that skill set — being able to learn and be open to new challenges and work your butt off,” he said. “Farming is tough, no matter how you do it, but there are some awesome things about it. It can be very rewarding.”