Wyoming Students are Growing Salad in a Former Shipping Container
A group of Central Wyoming College (CWC) students have repurposed an 8-by-40-foot shipping container to successfully grow delicious vegetables and herbs without soil, sunshine and acres of space in a sustainable way, reports Cowboy State Daily. These students are enrolled on a Regenerative Small-Scale Farming AAS degree. According to CWC, it is the first of its kind in Wyoming.
“We’ve been fortunate to be able to bring this kind of technology to the area,” shares local food and agriculture instructor, Ethan Page. “I think this is one of two freight farms in the state, and the only one that’s kind of served, or has like an educational purpose,” he adds.
Importantly, this project is about empowering next-gen growers and problem-solvers to integrate real-world challenges like climate resilience and food equity into their studies. For CWC student, Lexi Torres, speaking to shipping company Container Lift, “It’s not just farming —it’s precision agriculture meets STEM education…. We’re learning how to feed people with fewer resources and more intention. That’s the future.”
Sustainability is Front and Center
From the get go, the containers are recycled, now given a new lease of life as food-growing stations. Shipping containers also offer a slew of advantages, as the Captain Bobcat blog details. Designed to move goods across harsh oceanic conditions, these structures stand out for their durability and ability to withstand varying environmental challenges when converted into greenhouses.
Inside the repurposed container, four sliding walls with 88 growing panels housing five growth channels each, are growing hundreds of plants vertically. Lighting, irrigation, nutrients and climate are the capable hands of an automated computer system that looks out for the needs of the plants in its care. So this technology decides when it’s time to turn on the bright LED sunshine, deliver the right amount of water and nutrients, and is responsible for maintaining the humidity at optimal levels.
Here, the former shipping container wakes up as the rest of Wyoming sleeps. It is at night that crops such as Bibb lettuce, kale, and aromatic basil plants bathe in the glow of “bright LED sunshine.”
Why does this greenhouse “sleep” during the day? The answer is that off-peak electricity rates make energy costs cheaper at night. It’s also cooler at night, another advantage, as the greenhouse’s LED lights give off significant heat, meaning that even in summer, the container still needs to be cooled.
Reversing day and night also better fits the classroom schedule, ensuring that nothing is moving arounds while students are working in the greenhouse.
From Classroom to Community
For agricultural instructor Page, the most meaningful advantage of such a vertical growing system is that it brings local food options to Wyoming, which has painfully short growing seasons. “The idea is that you can bring one of these anywhere, hook it up to power and water, and start producing food,” an enthusiastic Page tells Container Lift.
Growing local food tackles the problem of “food desserts” head on. These are neighborhoods with limited food access to affordable and healthy foods, especially fresh produce, as The Annie E. Casey Foundation details.
According to the Cowboy State Daily, Wyoming has 80 food deserts in 21 counties as the Wyoming Community Foundation assesses, defining a food desert as either a rural area where a person needs to travel 10 or more miles to reach a grocery store, or a mile or more in urban areas.
Produce grown by the CWC students is already used by the college’s culinary students catering for local conferences, is sold in local food markets, and community initiatives focused on local, fresh and affordable food for low-income consumers.
The Rise and Rise of Vertical Farming
A 2018 feasibility study into shipping container farms from a Texas University postgraduate student, waxes lyrical about the appeal of such farms. It highlights that they take in higher yields in a shorter time, provide local production almost anywhere, promote year-round sustainable agriculture, and offer the educational system an “updated” school garden to feed and educate students.
Indeed, vertical growing using controlled environment agriculture, such as that used by the Wyoming College Students, is suited to most climates, as the Cowboy State Daily emphasizes. It has morphed into a multibillion-dollar industry, explains Page, as there are multiple opportunities for students as well as small business entrepreneurs.
Private company, Rent a Container celebrates that a properly insulated and equipped shipping container greenhouse can grow fresh produce in the most extreme conditions. The appeal of these vertical growing systems includes the reduced water and chemical usage, and year-round production in most climates, so relevant in Mountain West states like Wyoming, where the growing season is limited.
Page likes that shipping container greenhouses can overcome the restrictions of difficult land access. He stresses their efficiency, with each able to produce between two to four acres worth of produce from their tiny space. This can be easily multiplied, as they are stackable.
