Brooklyn Grange is a 2.5 organic farm that is situated on a rooftop in New York City and was launched in 2010. It consists of two farms, spanning across two rooftops, and one called the Brooklyn Navy Yard, is the largest rooftop soil farm in the world. Combined there are more than 108,000 square feet of rooftop farming space. This new wave of agriculture is making a significant impact as shows you don’t need a lot of space to be able to able to grow your crops, you just need to know how to utilize best the space that you do have.
The key to this type of rooftop farming is to choose products that do not take up much space and don’t take too long to grow. Ben Flanner, co-founder, and head gardener at Brooklyn Grange and his team tested various produce to see what would work best and found that crops like peppers, tomatoes and salad mixes worked well for them, but crops like winter squash and pumpkins just took too much time and space. Now, the company produces over 50,000 pounds of produce each year in addition to producing eggs and maintaining an apiary.
Out of the produce they produce in one year, 75 percent of it goes to specialty grocery stores and local restaurants, and the remainder of it goes on to be sold at farmers’ markets. As well as providing the locals with good, locally grown, organic produce the Brooklyn Grange urban rooftop farm also provides insulation for the building on top of which it sits and also absorbs a lot of water that could potentially clog up the storm system.
We are seeing more and more of these rooftop farms appearing all over the world and much of that is down to the success and publicity of Brooklyn Grange. It’s a very innovative way of farming that looks to make the most out of what space you have and produce quality produce at the same time. What can be better than that?
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