A Visit to the Brooklyn Grange
Urban Times has featured many articles expatiating on the value and methodology of urban farming across cities such as Shanghai, Stockholm, Philadelphia, Abu Dhabi and New York. We were particularly struck by this beautiful min-doc by Petrina TV, “New York Farm City“, which was how we heard about the Brooklyn Grange Farm for the first time. For those of you who haven’t heard, Brooklyn Grange Farm in New York is the world’s largest rooftop farm and has been enthusiastically covered by the likes of Inhabitat, Treehugger, New York Times, ABC and the Wall Street Journal. The brain-child of entrepreneur and Head Farmer Ben Flanner (watch the video of him presenting at the Garrison Institute below), the Grange has been the foremost pioneer in the world of urban commercial farming since its inception in 2009. You can learn more about them by perusing the site’s fact sheet. Here are some of salient facts from the team themselves:
Brooklyn grange is a commercial farm, meaning we grow food and sell it. We want farming to become a thriving and viable industry in the urban setting, and we aim to promote city farmers by providing them with a living wage and reliable livelihood. [At] one acre (40,000 square foot), [the] farm in Queens is made up of roughly 1.2 million lbs of soil and over 20,000 linear feet of green roofing material.There are hundreds of thousands of plants on the roof. Tomatoes are one of our biggest crops: we have 40 varietals planted. We are also growing salad greens, herbs, carrots, fennel, beets, radishes, beans, and many other exciting crops! [Brooklyn Grange]
So when I was invited to visit the Brooklyn Grange over the Summer during a trip to New York I jumped at the opportunity. On arriving in Queens – on a sweltering hot day – in an area comprised mostly of massive corporate warehouses and headquarters, it took me a little bit of searching before I found the entrance and lift to take me up to the roof, where the farm resides. Once I was there I was blown away by this mini-world amidst the concrete and just as struck by how lovely, welcoming and motivated the team is. I was shown around by Co-Founder Anastasia Plakias and helped out as they prepared a rooftop meal using some of the season’s crop for a corporate client who was throwing a dinner party – one of the many ways the farm seems to be diversifying to produce an income. The Brooklyn Grange epitomizes the values of ‘profit-with purpose‘; the merging of profit motive with a social responsibility and environmental agenda. For this reason we look forward to featuring them in series 1 of the “Start Up Laboratory”; a coming series and soon-to-be web venture in it’s own right that spotlights socially responsible start-up companies who are attempting to make their businesses viable and raise investment.
For now, check out the images I took on that day.
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