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Narrator: Modern food production promised to feed the world on the cheap. But are the costs proving to be more than we can bear? Fruits and vegetables are trucked around the country and around the world, and most people have no idea who grew them or how they got here. Isn't there a better way? From the rooftops of New York City to the vacant lots of Detroit, there's a growing movement to change the way we eat. Join us as Food Forward explores the explosion of urban agriculture across America. And meet the food rebels who are growing food right where we live.
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Dr. Dickson Despommier, Author, “The Vertical Farm”, Columbia University, NY: Here we are in New York City. Five boroughs, 8 million people, most densely populated area in the world. There are 28,000 restaurants in New York City. If New York City were to decide tomorrow to stop importing food, we'd have a big problem right now. Most of us live in cities now and over 50% and maybe 80% in 20 years from now. We love each other. We like to be with each other. We like to sit down to a good meal together. And we all want to know what's in our food, so why not grow it where we live?
John Mooney, Chef, Bell Book & Candle, New York City, NY: My name is John Mooney. I've basically been in the restaurant business my whole life. I've never made money doing anything other than being part of a restaurant crew from start to finish. Since about 12,13 years old. I have done some conventional farming projects to supply restaurants that I've done in the past. It's very difficult to manage, very difficult to maintain. So, I looked into alternative forms of farming. In an urban setting, I felt with the dead space of the rooftop, the technology was smart. It just makes sense. We're in the West Village of Manhattan. We're standing here in the middle of my hydroponic rooftop farm. In the beginning, there was a lot of curiosity as to what was going on up here, because it looks kind of space aged from a distance. And I'd explained it by phone or in person. And now I'm at the point where I tell everyone, you have to see it. The seed sits inside this net where the roots grow inside the tower. This big cylinder has a pump that trickles water down the sides and that feeds the roots and that recycles the nutrients through the bottom is a big base filled with around four gallons of the nutrients, which is fed naturally by gravity.
What I do is I pull the cup out of the tower. So, you see how nice and lightly colored the roots are. And look how long they get, right? I mean, that's strong. Let's look at this arugula right here, okay. We just pulled that a few hours ago. I broke it down. Roots attached. You see what I'm doing. And I believe it totally makes a difference. The flavor is absolutely amazing. When you enter the garden from the stairwell and you open that door. It's kind of like a sanctuary of sorts.
Andrew Coté, Urband Beekeeper, New York City, NY: It's down here. But I have… am I going to get lucky? It's going to be a hydrant. One of the biggest problems with urban beekeeping is parking a truck. It really is. Some honey for you ladies? Okay. You're doing the right thing. You're welcome. Some honey for you, soldier? Miel batido. Whipped honey. No, you're sweet enough? Honey for you, miss. That's the plain whipped. We also have whipped with cinnamon.
Shopper: The local honey is really good for allergies.
Andrew Coté: Local honey is very good for allergies. Where do you live?
Shopper: In East Village.
Andrew Coté: In the East Village. This honey is from 14th and Second.
Shopper: Okay.
Andrew Coté: So, it's very close to where you live. I think this is from Brooklyn. The Manhattan honey has higher rent and the Brooklyn honey has more attitude.
Inside the hive, there's the queen bee, the worker bees who are females, and the drones who are males. Once the queen has been mated, she makes babies. She lays up to 2000 eggs a day. One beehive will produce something around 80 to 120 pounds of honey per year. And I know they help pollinate the community gardens, the window sills, the rooftop farms that saturate the city. This is my office, the rooftops of what is to me the greatest city in the world.
Karen Washington, Urban Farmer, Garden of Happiness: It's showtime! Hello. Good morning. How are you? Ola. como estas? It's all in a presentation. We're in the Tremont section of the Bronx. It's an area that has, as you can look around, a lot of fast food restaurants, not a lot of access to fresh food. And so, as urban growers and community gardeners, since we grow it, we know it. We decided to bring fresh produce to this neighborhood. My garden is Garden of Happiness. It started 23 years ago. It was a vacant lot. Most of the boroughs in New York City in the late seventy’s and eighty’s had so many vacant lots. So, with two things to do, either to let the dirt and garbage accumulate, or take that vacant lot back and start growing food. The biggest joy I have is when a customer comes and they'll say, where are those collard greens? And I say, I got them for you. No matter what, I will grow collard greens. Hopefully we can instill that into young people to really know where their food comes from. Not that everyone could be a farmer, even though I would love that. I would love that. But at least everyone can be an educated consumer.
Ben Flanner, Head Farmer, Brooklyn Grange: It made sense to try to do something in the city for a number of different reasons. Growing food as close as possible to the consumers that eat it. Utilizing all this open space that we have, all these roofs that just kind of have the sun beating down on them all day. The soil is about 25% lighter than a typical topsoil would be if you just stuck a shovel in the ground. So, that makes it more suitable to roofs,
obviously, just because it is lighter. The stones kind of rise to the top and they're all porous. They all have holes in them. And if you feel it, you can just tell it's light.
I'm going to pick that kakutza too. Look at that. It's awesome, isn't it? People like the fact that it's locally grown, and they almost expect it sometimes. For a market like this, it should be the case. This market's been great for the neighborhood. People are pretty excited about it and thanking us for being here.
Gwen Schentz, Farm Manager, Roberta’s: This is Roberta's. It's a restaurant located in Bushwick, Brooklyn. It's almost three years old now, and we make pizza. Right now, we're making a pizza with tomatoes from Brooklyn Grange. They're really nice heirloom tomatoes pizza kitchen will slice up, and sometimes they'll actually make a sauce out of them. It's really nice for me because I work both at the Grange and here at Roberta's. So, I'll be coming back from the farm, and I'll load up my truck with tomatoes and bring them here. And these guys will make pizza and everything kind of comes together. I always thought that to be a farmer, I'd probably have to leave New York and move outside the city. But it turns out that I can get the best of both worlds right here.
Dr. Dickson Despommier: Where does our food come from? If we could produce it inside the study, you could save on transportation and spoilage and packaging and unpackaging, and you could market it right at the bottom of the building. So, you could have a farm with lots of layers in it, maybe 10 or 15 stories tall, fully integrated with hydroponics and aeroponics. You could even have aquaponics in the basements raising tilapia or striped bass or mollusks. And we know how to do all that already. Frustrating part of it is, why don't we do it?
Will Allen, CEO & Farmer, Growing Power: I bought the last remaining registered farm in the city of Milwaukee in 1993, and I made a pledge to the city that I would hire young people from the community to work at the farm. It struck a chord with a lot of folks in Milwaukee, and I started getting calls and requests for me to work with the different nonprofits and schools. We started adding, like, the aquaponics, the worm system, started putting up hoop houses, the animals, all these different pieces. We have a very innovative renewable energy system that heats the water so we can grow tilapia. And also, that heated water helps keep our greenhouses warm during the winter. Food is the most powerful thing in our lives. It's the most powerful thing in community development. People are just realizing that if they want to be healthy, they're going to have to take control of their food in their communities. We need to really scale this thing up.
Hendry Hebert, Facility Manager, Sweet Water Organics:Aquaponics is the conjoined systems from fish production and plant production, bringing them together in a symbiotic relationship. These three systems here, E, F and G are designed for lettuce right now. We started with an upscale model of Will Allen's. Changed a few things on it, tried to make it a little more efficient and a little faster. We have a place for the fish to live, a place for the plants to live, a place for the bacteria to live, and a pump to push the water all through it. The pump provides all the propulsion, just like in the river or the stream. And we've just captured that into a little bitty box. And there's a variety of sizes in here.
Theresa Kopak, Chief Executive Director, Sweet Water Organics: What I love the most about my job is knowing every day when I go in there, I'm working on something that will directly impact the well-being of others. No matter how tired any of us are, we get up in the morning and we want to make this happen and be available to people worldwide. That this is something that can be replicated in any city, in any abandoned factory building warehouse.
Theresa Kopak: Hello. Hi, Peter. I have fish for you.
Peter Sandroni, Owner & chef, La Merenda: Excellent. Cool. That's great. I love the fact you guys are just down the street. I think that a lot of people have a misconception of what tilapia is like. We take Swiss chard, fingerling potatoes and shallots, all grown locally, sauté it all together. And we sauté the tilapia that we have seasoned and dusted in flour. We brown some butter in another sauté pan, and we just bring it all together at the end, put the fish on top of the vegetables, and then top the fish with the brown butter and minus the salt, pepper and flour. Everything is local. We call it the All-Wisconsin Dish, and it's a really, really simple dish, and everyone seems to like it a lot. We figure with 34 systems in this building, at that 7500 fish every five to seven day mark, it will employ like, 40 people. Here we'll provide food for the three to five mile radius around us. It can be done anywhere.
Will Allen:I believe we're creating a new industry that could create thousands of jobs. The thing that we do best is inspire people to want to go out and get something started, to do something. To really inspire them.
Abeni Ramsey, Farm Manager, Dig Deep Farms: My name is Aveni Ramsey, and I'm an urban farmer. Through my experience as a mother living in West Oakland, there was a time when I was having a hard time feeding my kids and we were eating Top Ramen. And because of my upbringing, I knew that that wasn't right. But that's what I could afford because I could buy it in a pack like this for like, $5, and they sold it at the corner store. So, I was riding my bicycle through West Oakland and I saw a sign posted by City Slicker Farms for fresh produce. And there was the farm stand. It was beautiful produce. And so, I started going there, and then I found out that they will build planter boxes in your backyard. So, I applied, and I had them come, and they built the planter boxes. I grew everything we needed in the backyard. I didn't have to buy any produce. Then I got a flock of chickens and we then had our protein source, eggs. My transition has been unbelievable. I am the farm manager of Dig Deep Farms and the owner of City Girl Farms. We are right now harvesting for our CSA, or Community Supported Agriculture Produce Box, which is delivered to our subscribers on a weekly basis.
You guys need clippers. The whole idea of urban agriculture. What gets me is that people act like it's some new and revolutionary idea, but people have been farming in the city since the time there were cities. We've partnered with Flora Restaurant and this great chef, Rico Rivera, who will be purchasing produce from us directly.
Rico Rivera, Chef, Flora Restaurant: Yeah, this guy's incredible. Today from Albany, we received some nettles. Wild nettles. I'm thinking off the top of my head, the nettles. We're going to throw them in one of our chickpea ragus. In the pan, we saute some onions, throw in the chickpeas, some roasted delicata squash, some roasted onions. Then we saute up with a little bit of brown sugar. The nettles complement that real nicely with their earthiness. Toss toss on the plate. Real juicy with a grilled flatbread on the top. It's amazing. You can't get closer to source than what we're doing here. I mean, again, they're probably 6 miles away. We order, she picks it's here in the morning.
Abeni Ramsey: Hi, it’s Dig Deep!
Dig Deep Customer: With my fresh vegetable! I appreciate this so much!
Abeni Ramsey: Of course. All right.
It's a modern idea that you get your food from a store and that's the only way that you get your food. Because you're completely dependent on the grocery store to provide for you what you need. You can live in a community where they don't put grocery stores, where there are no jobs, and where there is limited transportation. And it's like living in the Third World.
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Song Lyrics: In the city. Your dreams flying tigers and wings violence seem to be the only thing depicted on the screen, but it's more to the Motor City. Coming strolling with me got a sidestep to ignorance and stepping the black businesses.
Malik Yakini, D-Town Farms, Detroit, MI: Really, for the last 50 years, Detroit has experienced a decline in population. And so, with the decline in population came a decline in the city's tax base. So, that's impacted the ability of the city to maintain the same infrastructure that it maintained prior to 1950. In 1950, the population of the city was about 2 million, and now it's somewhere about 750,000 or so. There's many neighborhoods in the city of Detroit now where there's no place within walking distance to get fresh produce. And unfortunately, many Detroit residents are eating out of gas stations or out of convenience stores. That, of course, is causing a health cris.
Cornelius Williams, 4-H Farm Advisor, Detroit, MI: And people wonder why they're sick. Number so-and-so yellow, number so-and-so blue is not food. Check the children's cereal and read the label on what's in there, folks! It's killing you! But it does it slowly.
Travis Roberts, Chicken Farmer, Corktown, Detroit: There were a lot of homes in this neighborhood when I was younger, when I was coming up. But as I got older, I watched them decrease by the month. Homes were burned down, tore down. People moved away, and the homes became vacant. People stripped them and then people set them on fire.
Edith Floyd, Growing Joy, Detroit, MI: They stopped burning down all the garages, and people stopped moving out. I had a two-car garage with an apartment upstairs to burn that down too. It felt real bad at first, and then I said, okay, I might as well make it better by adopting a lot and putting a garden on it.
Malik Yakini:Many people have begun looking at urban agriculture as a way to supplement their food sources and to kind of fill the voids that's been created by the departure of supermarkets that were once in Detroit.
Greg Willerer, Brother Nature Produce, Corktown, Detroit: I guess my stomach led me to all this. A lot of us here in Detroit have a hard time finding good local food, healthy food, and somewhat inexpensive food. There's a really strong demand for local and chemical free produce.
Travis Roberts:The idea of having chickens in the city came to me. I was talking to the head chef at Slow's Barbecue, and he was telling me that he would buy eggs from me every week. Then I asked, how many dozen does the restaurant go through? He's like, two cases a week. That's 60 dozen per week that we would buy from you. And so, I figured we would need about 124 chickens, give or take one or two, because some of them don't lay every day. Some chickens won't take to egg laying immediately.
Cornelius Williams: I want you to get a good shot of this okra right here. And you take and harvest it, and you can't beat real okra, and it is delicious. The city is the only place that farmland is increasing. Every time they tear down a house or tear down this, that's potential farmland.
Edith Floyd: I grow all types of greens, tomatoes, okra, corn, beans, eggplants, watermelon, cantaloupe, cucumbers, squash, onion, leech, and lot more stuff.
Malik Yakini: We have soaring rates of obesity, both for children and adults. We have soaring rates of hypertension, of high blood pressure, heart disease. But all of those things are to some extent controllable by diet.
Travis Roberts: I was always a heavyset guy until maybe about a year ago when I slimmed up and lost about 125 pounds.
Cornelius Williams: You get exercise, you get good, fresh food. I think living on the farm and eating a better grade of food makes a difference in life. I come out in the garden and work the garden, and as I'm working, I eat some of everything that I, you know, that's in the garden, this is what your body needs fresh. You don't need a salad that's been cut up and been in a bag and went halfway across the country.
Travis Roberts: Everybody's been pretty excited about it. People wanting to come by and see the chickens and people wanting to donate, and people asking, is there any list that I can get on to where I'll be first in line? Is there any line for deliveries? And stuff like that. So, local restaurants have supported even local catering companies have supported us, so we're getting nothing but love.
Edith Floyd: I put it for 14 lot, and they didn't let me have 14 lots. And that's only a quarter of the block.
Andrew Coté: I want the whole block. In spite of the fact that Detroit just has all the ODS stacked against it, Detroiters have this rare opportunity to actually rebuild their city, and we're doing it.
Edith Floyd: I'm willing to do my part. I would take one block at a time, and if nobody want it, I would take the next block. If it's vacant, I'll take it.
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Song Lyrics: From abandoned lots to garden flies the city on the rise from working in the plant back to controlling our lives nine to five only pay the rent dictating how the day is spent and dinner at the drive through just ain't making sense. Got me convinced the only way to make amends is to plant seeds. Where the weeds grow behind the fence. It's a movement in the streets, now. Ask Malik from Detown. We farming out at Rules Park. The whole city can eat now.
Travis Roberts: My vision for Detroit is seeing people working together. Whether we like it or not, living in Detroit, we are a family and we have to support each other.
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Dr. Dickson Despommier: Everywhere you go in the world now, people are trying to figure out how can they bring their food supply closer to where they live?
Will Allen: I'm not saying that industrial agriculture is going to go away, because it's not.
Malik Yakini: We're not suggesting that gardens can replace supermarkets, but we think that this can be an alternative.
Abeni Ramsey: Look at what the needs are right in your community. Look at what the needs are in your household. I think it's a revolutionary act to plant a tomato plant in your backyard.
John Mooney: Rooftop gardening, to me, is off the hook. It's evolutionary. This is the future. You're looking at it.
Travis Roberts: I'm hoping that people say, look at Trav. He grew up from the same neighborhood that I did. He went through the same stuff that I did, trouble and whatnot. Maybe I can do that's.
Hendry Hebert: If I could be any vegetable, I would probably like to be a tomato.
Ben Flanner: I would probably be an eggplant. I think they're a cool vegetable. They're like super unique.
Dr. Dickson Despommier: Garlic. Definitely garlic. I'm a garlic person. I'm a flavor molecule that wants to get into everybody's cuisine and spice it up.
John Mooney: Right now, I'd be Arugula because I'm Spicy. I'm all hot and bothered. I'm all mixed up with some other sexy ingredients.
Abeni Ramsey: I'd be a Brussels sprout. Brussels sprouts are surprising. They come up, and they look like they might be broccoli. And then it changes and you’re not sure. And they're not easy to grow. But then you get these little nuggets of deliciousness. So, I suppose that's me. I'm always changing. It took me a long time to grow up, but I think I'm now a nugget of deliciousness.