SpaceX buys produce from this high-tech farm in a shipping container — take a look inside

Leanna Garfield

By 2050, the world will need to feed 9.7 billion people — 2.4 billion more than today.

A growing movement of people believes that indoor farming could be a solution to the increasing demand for food. Instead of natural sunlight, crops grow under LED lights and in a nutrient-rich water-based solution that mimics soil.

Using this technique, farmers can grow produce year-round in urban areas, monitor progress with embedded sensors, and deliver produce within hours of harvest.

A startup called Local Roots makes indoor farms, called TerraFarms, from shipping containers. The team operates the farms near its customers, which include large corporate offices (SpaceX is one of them) as well as giant distribution centers for restaurants and grocery stores.

Local Roots will deploy more than 100 new TerraFarms in 2018. The company is also moving into a new, 165,000-square-foot manufacturing and headquarters in Vernon, California.

We toured a farm in New York City in early December. Take a look inside below.

Local Roots operates 320-square-foot indoor farms made from shipping containers, which take two weeks to build.

To date, Local Roots has raised $10.5 million.

The company's Series A financing is expected to close in early 2018.

Each container can produce about 4,000 heads of lettuce every 10 days, Local Roots cofounder Eric Ellestad told Business Insider. The farms can technically grow any fruit or vegetable, but greens are the most economically viable crop.

Existing customers include healthy fast-casual chain Tender Greens, farm-to-table restaurant chain Mendocino Farms, and SpaceX, the aerospace company run by Elon Musk.

Elon Musk's brother, Kimbal Musk, cofounded a shipping container farm compound called Square Roots in Brooklyn, New York in 2016.

On seven rows of growing trays on two opposite walls, leafy greens sprout from soil-free growing beds with nutrient-rich water.