A juicy grass-fed burger. A pour of Cabernet Sauvignon. The perfect arugula salad. What do all of these have in common? The touch of a farmer. Welcome to The Work of a Farmer, an inside look at the people driving the farm-to-table movement, brought to you by Tom Gore Vineyards.
When you see it from the East River, Brooklyn Grange’s largest farm looks like the last place you’d see an heirloom tomato growing on a vine or sprightly wisps of arugula triumphantly sprouting from the soil. In fact, you’d see a white twelve-story building planted in the middle of the Brooklyn Navy Yard, a place that once manufactured warships. The farm, which holds 65,000 square feet of organically raised crops, is located on the roof of that building. Combine that space with Brooklyn Grange’s original Long Island City farm, perched on another rooftop, and the operation’s planted space is 108,000 square feet—which is a paltry amount of real estate for a farm.
“Space is our main constraint,” says Ben Flanner, president & director of agriculture. “We do not have a traditional farming situation. While farms always try to maximize yield, we have to focus on yield for the amount of space, and yield for the amount of time a crop takes to grow.” Flanner and his team have endlessly tested which crops work best (“less shelf-stable crops like specialty peppers, salad mixes, other greens, tomatoes”) and which do not (“winter squash and pumpkins take up a lot of both space and time.”). This obsessive testing and maximizing of crops makes sense when you learn Flanner’s background.
Before getting into the urban farming business, Flanner was working in New York City as a business consultant. He had the opportunity to work on a project at an Australian vineyard where he gained insight into agriculture and viticulture first hand—and fell in love with it. He worked in online marketing for three more years, quit his desk job, and pursued his dream of bringing a diverse farm into New York City’s limits. With no prior farming experience, he began obsessively learning best farming practices: studying books by small organic farmers and gardeners, going to workshops and seminars, visiting farms and talking to the farmers there to develop a strong social base in the business. And, of course, a lot of trial and error.
“In 2009, I managed a space called the Eagle Street rooftop,” Flanner explains. “It was small, but it was a proving ground where I built up all the numbers to put together the business plan, raise the money, and start the farm in 2010.” In May of that year, they laid down the green roof system in the Long Island City space, hauled up thousands of pounds of soil, and planted vegetable beds. They added the Navy Yard farm in 2012, and now they grow over 50,000 pounds of produce each year—as well as raising egg-laying hens and maintaining an apiary.
The majority of that yield—75 percent—goes to specialty grocery stores and local restaurants such as Roberta’s, Marlow and Sons, and Upland. 25 percent is sold through farmers’ markets throughout the city and the Brooklyn Grange CSA. But Flanner always makes sure people know where the majority of their food is coming from. “Reliance is still very much on rural area for food production,” he says. “Urban farming plays a key role in connecting our rural farms with the consumers that are in the city. We don’t have the technology to produce food in mass scale in urban areas, but we can help people think about what they’re putting in their bodies and how little decisions on how you spend your money can have huge ramifications in our food system.”
Fortunately, producing food isn’t the only benefit of an urban rooftop farm like Brooklyn Grange. “Whether it’s producing veggies or is planted with sedum [succulents], wildflowers, grasses, or native plants, a green roof provides insulation for the building by reducing the amount of penetrating sun energy.” These kind of plantings also cool down the cities as a whole. “Cities, with all their concrete, asphalt, and other absorptive materials, are hotter than surrounding areas,” explains Flanner. “Urban farms combat that heating and make cities more livable.” Lastly, they provide a major benefit in storm water management—something New York City needs more and more each year. “Green roofs absorb and delay the amount of water that goes into our storm systems, which flood when we get heavy rains. It’s valuable to have some permeable surfaces that mimic nature and act like a sponge.” Flanner mentioned that the Navy Yard property in particular will help one of New York’s lowest-lying neighborhoods—and one that got hit particularly hard in Hurricane Sandy—Red Hook. In short, you can enjoy your farm-to-table salad greens knowing that they’re also helping cities become more livable and sustainable.
Around the world, hundreds of square feet of green roof space is being added each year, and Flanner and his team play a role in consulting some of these projects. Brooklyn Grange helped kick off a worldwide movement that isn’t just a novel way of producing delicious organic produce for local communities. It’s part of our future urban landscape, and one that will make our quality of life much better—and definitely more delicious.