Small farmers are the heroes of the supply chain crisis.

Amidst the breakdown, container farmers nurture their vertical farms — and their communities.

LocalSprout grows very local greens in their container farm in San Antonio, Texas (Image credit: LocalSprout)

Backups, blockages, delays — the supply chain has been struggling, and no one, nowhere in the world, has been immune.

2021 was a long year; let’s review. For six days in March, the Suez Canal was blocked when a 200,000-ton ship carrying 18,300 shipping containers ran aground, wedged across the entire canal, causing a 450-ship backup that took an additional six days to clear. As the year closed out, ports were experiencing an extreme overload, with containers stuck on ships or in depots for days on end. No one is really sure whether to place the blame on a shortage of trucks, a shortage of truck drivers, a shortage of depot workers, or just a massive influx of goods whizzing around the globe.

As a business, Freight Farms has not been unaffected.

We’ve been held up by delays in acquiring the materials we use to build our farms and experienced delays in shipping the completed containers to our new Freight Farmers. It’s been a slog, but we’re proud that we delivered 105 new container farms worldwide in 2021, which joined the ranks of 520 Freight Farmers around the world.

A Freight Farm on its way to Eeden Farms in Nassau, the Bahamas (Image credit: Hileum Creative)

This story is not solely one of woes.

There’s good news, too.

It’s the heroism of our farmers. Because while food has been impacted by shipping delays, small farmers on the ground have not — especially those growing in container farms. Even in snowy Alaska and arid Egypt, our Freight Farmers have been able to step in and provide their community with fresh produce when nothing is available commercially except a wilty head of romaine or, worse, shelves at the supermarket are completely bare.

So when containers of Californian produce are stuck waiting for a truck on the West Coast, Chicagoans can happily crunch on ultra-fresh, hyper-local lettuce (crunchy root veggies and flavorful herbs, too).

That’s business for small farmers, increased food security for cities, and tastier, better-quality food for communities. Win win!

Visit Freight Farms to learn more about the power of vertical container farms.

Freight Farmer Alex Armstrong at her farmers market booth (Image credit: Fare House Farms)