NMSU researchers look to support ‘container farms’
Near the entrance of a 40-foot container farm installed at New Mexico State University’s Grants campus, dozens of four-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.
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.
Compared to conventional open-air growing, indoor systems like the container farm at NMSU Grants use fewer land and water resources and allow for year-round crop growing in temperature-controlled environments.
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.
PHOTO: Gabriel Garcia points to kale plants growing inside a container farm on the NMSU Grants campus. The container arrived in 2021 through a partnership with Tri-State Generation and Transmission and the Electric Power Research Institute. (NMSU photo by Josh Bachman)
