Near the entrance of a 40-foot container farm installed at New Mexico State University's Grants campus, dozens of 4-day-old kale plants lined a horizontal nursery bed, sprouting at various lengths in shades of electric green from miniature patches of densely packed soil.
Further inside, instructor Gabriel Garcia flipped a switch. Instantly, red and blue LED lights engulfed the space, illuminating the intricate vertical farming system in a shocking pink glow.
"The lights mimic the sun," Garcia explained on a July afternoon. "This is where we'll move the kale when their root structures develop, and they'll stay here until they reach maturity."
The container farm was one of the first projects shepherded by NMSU's Center of Excellence in Sustainable Food and Agricultural Systems, housed in the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences.
It came online in early 2021 through a partnership with Tri-State Generation and Transmission and the Electric Power Research Institute. Interest in indoor agriculture has grown in recent years as producers search for sustainable farming alternatives. Compared to conventional open-air growing, indoor systems like the container farm at NMSU Grants use less land and water resources and allow for year-round crop growing in temperature-controlled environments.
"Container farms have many advantages," College of ACES Dean Rolando A. Flores Galarza said. "They have the potential to address social, environmental and economic facets of sustainability and become a resource-efficient model for urban agriculture."
Since its unveiling three years ago at NMSU Grants, the container farm has become an important learning tool for researchers and students studying the viability of indoor agriculture in a semi-arid region like New Mexico.
Garcia, who teaches vocational courses, manages the container with a rotating group of students. He spent the first year or so learning and understanding the associated technology. The container features a system of vertical hanging plastic enclosures connected to a closed-loop plumbing system that recycles water. It also boasts efficient lighting, temperature controls and equipment that allows Garcia and others to monitor energy and water use and plant productivity via a computer.
By fall 2021, Garcia had grown the first crop of leafy greens inside the container. Today, Garcia is growing about 12,232 plants. Each plant begins as a seed hand-placed on a peat moss cone. For the first four days, Garcia keeps the seeded cones under a plastic dome on a tray, creating a climate that allow seeds to sprout shoots in five to six days. He then removes the domes and keeps the seedlings in the nursery for two weeks before transplanting them to the container's vertical cultivation racks.
The plants continue to grow for an additional three to four weeks. The kale is fully grown in six to eight weeks. Each week, Garcia harvests between 20 to 30 pounds of kale.
"It's been such an enriching experience for us all," Garcia said. "Our students have learned about agriculture, water use, pH levels, nutrients and temperatures for growing crops, and how to collect and record data using state-of-the-art technology. But that's not all: They've also been able to see and taste their successes along the way."
The success of the container farm in Grants has inspired a similar project in Las Cruces.
The College of ACES and CESFAS have teamed up with the College of Engineering and Doña Ana Community College to build a customized container farm for NMSU's Las Cruces campus.
Last fall, Flores Galarza and others from ACES approached the College of Engineering with the idea. They then enlisted a group of mechanical and electrical engineering students to design the container as part of a yearlong capstone course.
The project is currently in the construction phase, with Kevin Gall, an associate professor in the Building Construction Technology program at DACC, leading the interior fabrication of the container. Gall and his students spent part of the fall 2024 semester installing walls and insulation inside the 20-foot container.
Jay Lillywhite, director of NMSU's Agricultural Experiment Station and associate dean for the College of ACES, said the Las Cruces container farm will have adjustable horizontal shelves throughout its interior to accommodate larger crops, among other features that will differ from the Grants container farm. Once completed by next spring, the container will be available to students and faculty for research projects.
"One of the exciting components of this project is the people we've had involved," Lillywhite said. "We've had agricultural faculty and staff involved on the development side, as well as a variety of engineering faculty and students. And now, on the production side, we have agronomists, economists and people working in marketing. So, it really has been this laboratory with all these different disciplines coming together and asking, 'How do we make this work?'"
Source: New Mexico State University