"It's small," Noël Schaff said when asked about her vertical farming operation. It certainly is. The entire farm – situated in the bucolic hills northwest of Petaluma – fits inside a 40-foot-long shipping container.
Schaff owns and runs Cardona Farms, an automated hydroponic container farm that has no dirt, no pesticides, and uses only 85 gallons of water per month. Yet it packs a punch, producing the equivalent of 2.5 acres of planting space, she said.
In vertical farms like this one, plants grow out of a wall-like array of moving panels while water and nutrients drip down via a fully automated system. Schaff, a winemaking professional for the last 13 years, said she discovered the system while investigating new ways to grow food.
"I kind of stumbled upon this concept of hydroponic farming just in my search for how to make progress toward more sustainable agriculture," she said. She said she hopes to soon supply local restaurants with her produce – mustard greens, purple romaine lettuce, edible flowers, purple onions and confetti cilantro, among other foods.
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