Farm in a box

[Matt W]

http://aerofarms.com/why/technology/

This might be a sideline for the "camp-in-a-box": an aeroponic farm. Incidentally, the technology is intended to be modular and can be set up inside a typical ISO shipping container.

The advertised yield is 30 lb per square foot per year. If this is correct, each 20 foot container could yield 20 X 8 X 8 x 30 = 38 400 lb per year (about 17.4 tons). Therefore, it might be enough to feed 10 people for a year.

[robj3]

Matt,

Very interesting concept.

Your calculated yield might be on the high side. How much room is required around the racks vertically (lights, cabling, water supply, space for crop)?

38,400lb of vegetables = ~17,395kg.
At 200kcal/kg (lettuce!) that's 1,391 person-days at 2,500kcal/d*
At 400 (brussel sprouts, carrot, onion), 2,782.
At 1,000 (potato), 6,955

As an alternative upper limit, a 20' ISO container full of rice or corn (25,000kg for ease of calculation) could provide about 34,500 person-days food (at 2,500 kcal/d diet).

* 3,000+ kcal/d a better figure for someone doing lots of hard manual labour/labor. 2,500 is recommended value for men who are sedentary or doing light work.


Rob