AWARD YEAR
2017
CATEGORY
Home
GOALS
Responsible Consumption & Production
KEYWORDS
sustainability, food, vertical farming
COUNTRY
United States of America
DESIGNED BY
Kimbal Musk & Tobias Peggs - Square Roots
WEBSITE
http://squarerootsgrow.com
SQUARE ROOTS
Vertical farming accelerator - A real food revolution!
Kimbal Musk (brother of Elon) is trying to change the way we eat by creating what he calls a "real food revolution."
Square Roots aims to help young urban farmers launch the next wave of innovative food startups. In early November, Musk and fellow entrepreneur Tobias Peggs launched Square Roots, an urban farming incubator program in Brooklyn, New York. The setup consists of 10 steel shipping container farms where young entrepreneurs work to develop vertical farming startups.
They are vertical farms — everything grows inside 320-square-foot steel shipping containers. Each container can produce about 50,000 mini-heads of lettuce per year.
Unlike traditional outdoor farms, vertical farms grow soil-free crops indoors and under LED lights. About the size of the standard one-car garage, each shipping container can produce the same amount of crops as two acres of outdoor farmland furthermore vertical farms expend 80% less water than outdoor farms and require much less space.