Mayoral Candidates Grilled on Food Policy Views

©Photo by Margarida Correia. See caption at bottom of this post.

New York City local food advocates on Wednesday got a taste of how the city’s mayoral candidates think about food. In one-on-one interviews with blogger, author and New York University professor Marion Nestle, mayoral contenders addressed issues that ranged from hunger and school lunches to living wages for food workers, urban agriculture and the Hunts Point market.

The event drew some 1,000 food policy enthusiasts and mayoral candidates Sal Albanese, Bill De Blasio, John Catsimatidis, John Liu, Christine Quinn and Anthony Weiner. Bill Thompson was the only mayoral candidate who did not attend.

The fact that nearly all of the mayoral contenders participated was a coup for the city’s food policy thinkers and activists, Nestle remarked as the crowd awaited the arrival of Quinn and Liu. It’s the first real example of the political clout that food policy experts are beginning to gain, she said, after years struggling to correct flaws in the nation’s food system.

Each of the candidates answered three questions from a list of about 10 questions that Nestle had on hand. They also answered a question from the audience.

Here are snippets of some of the more interesting things the candidates said regarding their views on local food and urban agriculture.

Urban Agriculture

Both Albanese and Liu said they would make information about vacant land more transparent. As Albanese put it, he would make sure the city’s 5,000 acres of empty land “is on the computer.” Even more important, he said he would not accept contributions from developers, saying that community gardens “add food, awesome quality of life and environmental soundness to neighborhoods.” He also said that that he would work to both grow and preserve gardens.

Local Food

Bill De Blasio and John Catsimatidis both seemed to be on board with increasing the amount of local food available in New York City. Both want to bring in more local food through the Hunts Point market in the Bronx. “I want to reorient over time to more local produce from our broader tri-state area as part of our overall effort to wean us off the culture of produce from 3,000 miles away,” De Blasio said of his vision for Hunts Point. Catsimatidis also said that he wanted to expand and get better road access for the market.

Liu noted that he would “grow the food economy,” saying that he supports rooftop gardens, upstate farmers and the expansion of farmers markets.

Quinn, long a champion of local food and overall food policy issues, noted her work on a comprehensive report released in 2010 that analyzed the city’s food system from farm to table and beyond. During the forum, she emphasized the need to capitalize on the city’s purchasing power to reorient buying toward regional and local produce. It’s the second biggest institutional food purchaser, second only to the U.S. military, she said.

De Blasio had similar views with regard to the city’s purchasing clout.  “I think we can focus our city power on the produce from our region and work with other cities to do the same,” he said.

Caption for photo above: Columbia University’s Marion Nestle (left) speaks with mayoral candidate John Liu.

2011 NYC Urban Ag: A Nine-Month Review

The urban agriculture movement in New York City has made enormous progress this year.  New legislation favoring urban farming was introduced.  New farms opened.  There’s even a new farm school.  It all happened within the last nine months, all of it summarized here. 

BrightFarms to Build Nation’s Largest Rooftop Greenhouse in Long Island City

BrightFarms, a Manhattan-based company that designs, builds and operates hydroponic rooftop greenhouses for others, is planning to build one for itself.  The company will build a 25,000-square-foot greenhouse on top of a building near LaGuardia Community College in Long Island City, according to an article in the New York Daily News. The facility — slated for completion by March of next year — is expected to produce 200,000 pounds of fresh produce annually for the local markets.  If built as planned, the hydroponic greenhouse will be the largest in the country.

In an interview with New York Bounty in July, BrightFarms discussed its plans for marketing rooftop greenhouses to supermarkets.  The company was in talks with a dozen national supermarket chains, eight of which had signed up for the facilities.

BrightFarms will move its headquarters to the Long Island City rooftop location.  It will build a 7,000-square-foot office space on the 32,000-square-foot roof it plans to lease.

NYC Start-up Brings Hydroponics to the People

© Photo by Margarida Correia. See caption at bottom of article.

In the vast expanse of barren rooftops that mark this north Brooklyn neighborhood, one stood out far above the rest:  the one atop Bushwick Starr Theatre.  It was the only roof with plants — all happily soil-free, or “hydroponic.”

Rather than soil-filled terracotta pots, the plants grew in trays and tubs attached to tubes that piped in liquid nutrients. Most grew vertically, like the tomatoes and cucumbers climbing the roof fence and onto a trellis.  Others — the bok choy and collard greens, for instance — grew sideways from the side of a wall built from milk crates.

The plants – green and laden with vegetables – seemed at home in the Willie Wonkaesque environment.  Miniature melon-shaped “Mexican sour” cucumbers dangled from plant stems like earrings.  Peppers lounged under the shade of floppy leaves, while the herbs — basil, thyme, sage, parsley — basked in the sun.

The rooftop Eden functions as a lab for Lee Mandell, founder of Boswyck Farms, a start-up business that designs and builds hydroponic growing systems for residents, nonprofits and other small organizations in New York City.  Mandell tests and tinkers with the systems on the roof — as well as those in his loft apartment nearby — to see which ones work best for which plants.

LOCAL FOOD News Roundup

Farmers Markets Grow Despite Bad Economy

If only the economy would grow as rapidly as the nation’s farmers markets.   The number of farmers markets operating throughout the country grew 17%, from 6,132 in 2010 to 7,175 this year.  The results were released in the USDA’s 2011 National Farmers Market Directory.

New York reported 520 markets, ranking second among the nation’s top 10 states with the most farmers markets.  California, with 729 markets, ranked first.

The market listings were submitted to the USDA by market managers on a voluntary, self-reported basis between April 18 and June 24, 2011, as part of the USDA’s annual outreach effort.

Alaska experienced the most growth.  It reported 35 farmers markets, up 46%.  Texas, Colorado, and New Mexico, with 166, 130, and 80 markets, respectively, jumped 38%.

Mayor Bloomberg Signs Local Food Legislation

For the past two years the New York City Council has pushed to make more local food available to New Yorkers.  On Wednesday its efforts paid off:  Mayor Michael Bloomberg signed comprehensive legislation aimed at increasing the production and procurement of local and regional food.

Brooklyn Navy Yard Wins Grant to Build Commercial Rooftop Farm

The New York City Department of Environmental Protection earlier this month named the winners of $3.8 million in grants for infrastructure projects to reduce storm water runoff in the city.

The biggest winner?  The Brooklyn Navy Yard.  It received a $592,730 grant to build a 40,000-square-foot commercial rooftop farm at Building No. 3, one of more than 40 buildings in the 300-acre industrial park.

The farm will be built in partnership with the Brooklyn Grange, the one-acre rooftop farm operation in Long Island City, Queens.

Reflections on Dirt and High-Tech Urban Farming

Urban farming has grown so much in New York City it’s produced an offshoot — one that needs buildings, rather than soil, to grow food. But is high-tech, high-rise farming in keeping with the values of traditional urban farmers who like dirt? Is it sustainable, and can it produce food that people can afford?

NYC Among Nation’s Top 10 Green Roof Leaders

New York City was one of the top 10 cities leading the nation in the installation of green roofs in 2010.  According to industry trade group Green Roofs for Healthy Cities, it added more than 200,000 square feet of green roofs last year, ranking third behind Chicago and Washington, D.C.  Chicago, the nation’s green roof leader, installed more than 500,000 square feet of green roofs.

GRHC found that the green roof industry in North America grew by 28.5% in 2010, up from 16% in 2009.  It has surveyed the North American green roof industry every year since 2004.

For details of the 2010 survey, click here.

Proposal for Stepped-Up Urban Farming in the South Bronx

There’s no doubt that the rooftop greenhouse that Gotham Greens recently opened in Brooklyn breaks new ground on New York City’s urban farm frontier.  But a proposal for a greenhouse operation more than three times the size of Gotham Greens may make it seem like old news.

The proposal — submitted by two developers to the New York City Economic Development Corp. to revitalize a 2.4-acre industrial site in the Bathgate section of the South Bronx — calls for the construction of three large-scale rooftop hydroponic greenhouses that will occupy 50,000 square feet of the approximate 200,000-square-foot proposed build-out plan.  The greenhouses will sit on top of industrial loft-type buildings, which will grow and process vegetables using aeroponics, a technology where food grows in  a mist.  The aeroponically-grown vegetables will be under LED lights, 24/7.  

NYC Farming Kicks into High Gear

Farming in New York City has kicked into high gear.  After clearing a maze of building and regulatory hurdles, startup Gotham Greens opened a hydroponic greenhouse that is expected to produce 100 tons of vegetables and herbs annually for sale to local retailers and restaurants.

The 15,000-square-foot facility on a rooftop in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, will produce crops year-round.  Arugula, bok choy, basil, Swiss chard, and three varieties of lettuce — green leaf, red leaf and butterhead — will be available for sale starting June.

“Controlled environment agriculture is practiced on a commercial scale in many parts of the world.” said Gotham Greens co-founder Viraj Puri on CNN.  “What we’re trying to do is bring that into an urban environment.”

As more and more people move to cities, and world population explodes, many experts see urban hydroponic greenhouses as the future of agricultural production.  In this vision of the future, crops will increasingly be grown in indoor greenhouses or “farms,” where they do not need soil to grow.  All they’ll need is right mix of minerals and nutrients.