Times Gets It

Bright, bright Melissa Feldman writes about Urban Ag. in the April 11 NY Times Mag.

Her piece Growth Spurt quotes BrightFarm's Benjamin Linsley,

“The rooftop business is not a passing trend but the beginning of a new approach to food production.”

60 kilowatt Green

Fast Company's May 2010 issue came in the mail and there is a nice sidebar showing a schematic of the Gotham Greens factory-roof farm complete with a 60 kilowatt solar array.

Highly-placed Brooklyn officials (actually a pal of my electrician) says this greenhouse farm and photovoltaic (PV) array will be on the roof of the Ice Cream Factory at 1205 Manhattan Ave Commercial Packaging Co. at 77 Commmercial St, Greenpoint, Brooklyn, NY.

60 kW peak power might take about 6,000 square feet (about two tennis courts or about 75' by 75') of PV cells on average.

Vapor-wares

Well here it is Spring 2010 and Gotham Greens seems to have yet to file a single permit for their planned Jamaica Queens rooftop hydroponic farm.

Note that neither Queens Boro President Helen Marshall, nor her staff contacted us with this stunning setback for GG. This may be because Ms. Marshall probably still refers to Queens as "Gateway to the 1939 World's Fair" which made such an impression on her at the tender age of 10. It can be hard to keep up with all the changes going on in this land of contrasts.

It was Mrs. McCully (or MacGuffy) in the NYC Department of Buildings who gruffly answered the phone and admitted that there were no applications, no permits, no inspections and no certificates for 148-02 Archer Avenue, Jamaica.

Metro Ag Innoversity confab

Were you at the Metropolitan Agriculture Innoversity international confabulation last week, Feb 10th ? Logically it was held in Beverly Hills. That's Beverly Hills, Michigan of course.


You know it was a winner with a mission statement like this:

To Explore Innovation And Integration in Food and Agricultural Systems That Can Contribute to Sustainable Development in Urban Settings

I was there and wow, what food for thought.

Greenpoint Gotham Greens

Our man in Havana ( actually a knowledgeable source at Greenpoint Manufacturing and Design Center ) tells us that Gotham Greens will be building a third of an acre hydroponic rooftop greenhouse with the design assistance of BrightFarm Systems, a NYC Building Integrated Agriculture (BIA) design firm.

The footprint is a nearly square 125' by 128' not counting the photovoltaic PV array and water supply pumping and storage cistern.

It is to be located on the roof of 1205 Manhattan Ave 77 Commercial Street in Greenpoint.

HD Tomatoes

Seems like everything these days is High Definition. Even urban farming. DRR (Dan Rather Reports) on HDnet ran a hard-edged hour-long show Up On The Farm -- a hard-edged pun on rooftop agriculture.

Officials of Gotham Greens adroitly fielded Dan Jr.'s hard-edged questions:

We have the technology. It's there. What's also great is it's economically viable as a form of farming-- which is really important, 'cause typically you think of well, is it? That's one of my core questions. Can it be made economically viable?

* photo cc-by gsfc flickr

Temple of Green

The Temple of the Restoration at 148-02 Archer Ave, Jamaica, Queens, NY must answer to a higher authority. The NYC Department of Buildings has clocked it for sundry building violations.

But a planned cover-up may help. The Queens Courier reported last month that Gotham Greens plans to build a 10,000 square foot (quarter acre) hydroponic roof-top greenhouse.

Mind you this is next to the diesel-spewing Long Island Railroad tracks. Mmm, I can almost taste those nano-carcinogen Buckyballs infused into my tomatoes.