The Arizona Department of Agriculture is holding workshops across the state in hopes of addressing food access in remote communities.

At one workshop held last week, Elvin Fant explained his dream to put a high-tech indoor farm in a vacant school building in Globe, east of Phoenix.

“[I'm] very, very passionate," Fant said. "I wake up in the middle of the night, a lot of times, putting a lot of this together.”

Fant is not a farmer, and he used to work at the local mine.

But he put his mechanical skills to work by creating a hydroponic system to grow an indoor garden at home.

Now, he wants to build that idea out with the help of a University of Arizona agriculture business student to provide food for Globe and Miami schools and hospitals.

“I envision the 10 classrooms to be set up not only the labs, [but also] for teaching,” Fant said.

He hopes to start local, by growing crops with a hydroponic system.

“If we enter into an agreement with the school district, we’d want to supply, as part of their stakeholder position, supply their cafeteria with foods,” Fant said.

Fant’s idea is still just that — an idea — but he’s hoping to gather more support for the project in his Gila County city.