REPORT: An urban farm grows in Brooklyn

Erik Groszyk, 30, used to spend the workday at his desk as an investment banker. Now, he harvests leafy greens in his own urban farm out of a 40-foot shipping container in a Brooklyn parking lot.

“I just found myself not satisfied and kind of yearning for more,” Groszyk said of his past life as a banker.

The Harvard grad is one of 10 “entrepreneurial farmers,” selected from a batch of 500 applicants, working with Square Roots, an indoor urban farming company launched in November that grows local food year round in the heart of New York City.

 

 Now six months into the program, Groszyk said his training in farming, artificial lighting, water chemistry and nutrient balance allows him to harvest roughly 15 to 20 pounds of produce each week. He said growing in an urban setting helped him establish trust with his customers.

“I kind of call myself their personal farmer the way someone has like a personal shopper or something else like that. And, you know, they know me, they know how I'm growing, they can come see my farm at any time, and they kind of get that insight into how their food is being grown. And that they can trust where it comes from,” he said.

Nabeela Lakhani, 23, also an entrepreneurial farmer with Square Roots, is the resident urban chef at Chalk Point Kitchen, a market-to-tablerestaurant in lower Manhattan, three nights per week.

The Edison, New Jersey-native drives one hour each way to get to and from work so she can sell them her Tuscan kale and rainbow chard.

“I've always been interested in food ever since I was in high school,” Lakhani, who studied nutrition and public health at New York University, said as she neatly packaged her produce for delivery.

“I read Fast Food Nation and I was like, 'This is insane. I have to do something about it.”

“I want to figure out the problem before, you know, before the food ruins our society.”

The startup, co-founded by Tobias Peggs and Kimbal Musk, younger brother of Tesla Inc founder and Chief Executive Elon Musk, aims to spread out to as many American cities as they possibly can in the next five to 10 years.

“America is the world's great, greatest exporter. Right? We exported rock'n'roll, we exported Levis jeans, we also exported obesity. And the feeling is is that if we can solve that in America through initiatives like Square Roots - bringing real food to everyone, getting more people a healthy local sustainable food system - that will also be able to export that solution as well,” Peggs told Reuters.

On a recent Friday, Groszyk got to his farm by 7:30 a.m., started harvesting kale and mustard greens, and was ready to make deliveries to Kickstarter and Tesla, two of his regular customers, just in time for lunch.

Groszyk popped into the offices, handing workers a bag of fresh produce at their desks.

One of his customers, Tieg Zaharia, started eating right out of the bag as he and Groszyk talked.