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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: 4, Informative) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday November 04 2016, @09:32PM
GOOD. We need more of this, everywhere, for the common people like you and me. Anything that lowers the barrier to entry for healthy food, especially in marginal areas, is something we should be pouring energy and time and money into.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Saturday November 05 2016, @02:40AM
If you want to practice, just play Rimworld.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek