There’s a pair of shipping containers sitting in a Minneapolis parking lot, but the contents inside aren’t getting ready to travel the country; instead they’re filled with basil that will be grown and sold to local food vendors at a healthy profit margin.
Ryan Sweeney is the “farmer” utilizing the shipping container to grow basil, relying on LED lights instead of sunlight, forgoing soil and pesticides and monitoring everything on his smartphone.
Then there’s Shawn and Connie Cooney, who run four “farms” out of shipping containers from a Boston towing company’s parking lot, growing approximately 30,000 plants (including kale, cilantro, mustard greens, wild mint and lettuce) a month, mostly sold to local restaurants.
