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from the hydroponics-not-just-for-growing-ganja dept.
The landscape is virtually treeless around a coastal hub town above Alaska's Arctic Circle, where even summer temperatures are too cold for northern-growing forests to take root.
Amid these unforgiving conditions, a creative kind of farming is sprouting up in the largely Inupiat community of Kotzebue.
A subsidiary of a local Native corporation is using hydroponics technology to grow produce inside an insulated, 40-foot shipping container equipped with glowing magenta LED lights. Arctic Greens is harvesting kale, various lettuces, basil and other greens weekly from the soil-free system and selling them at the supermarket in the community of nearly 3,300.
"We're learning," Will Anderson, president of the Native Kikiktagruk Inupiat Corp., said of the business launched last spring. "We're not a farming culture."
The venture is first of its kind north of the Arctic Circle, according to the manufacturer of Kotzebue's pesticide-free system. The goal is to set up similar systems in partnerships with other rural communities far from Alaska's minimal road system—where steeply priced vegetables can be more than a week in transit and past their prime by the time they arrive at local stores.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by takyon on Friday November 04 2016, @10:00PM
What waste of resources? These systems have the potential to be very efficient. They can be combined with fish farming. They use less land and could be stacked. They need less energy to ship produce to the local residents.
In the future, energy costs can be brought down with some mix of natural gas, solar, wind, and eventually down to 0.1 cents per kilowatt hour with fusion, making it affordable to put these systems anywhere short of the Moon and Mars.
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