A Musk, but not Elon, brings farms to cities
Urban agriculture effort looking to expand past its Brooklyn home base
NEW YORK – In sunny California, Elon Musk is upending America’s auto and space industries. And here, in a cold, gritty section of Brooklyn, his brother Kimbal has embarked on a project that’s just as significant in its own way: trying to reboot the food system.
The younger Musk is the co- founder of Square Roots, an urban farming incubator with the goal of teaching young people how to farm in cities while preaching the importance of locally sourced, non- processed food.
Having shown its potential during the past two years in the parking lot of a shuttered factory near public housing, Square Roots is ready to branch out. It is looking to set up plots— each the equivalent of 2 acres of farmland — in cities across the U. S. They’re hydroponic, which means the crops grow in a nutrient- laced water solution, not soil.
The sites in contention, all of which had to pledge support from local governments and businesses, are in Chicago, Denver, Memphis, Indianapolis, Pittsburgh, Boston, Detroit, Los Angeles, Tampa, Atlanta, Dallas, Cincinnati, St. Louis, Washington, D. C., and a second site in New York. Musk and Square Roots CEO Tobias Peggs will narrow the list to 10 later this year.
In Brooklyn, budding agricultural entrepreneurs set up year- round farms in 10 retired metal ocean shipping containers and grow crops like microgreens, herbs and strawberries.
“I want them to get to know entrepreneurship through food,” Musk said.
In 2004, Musk co- founded The Kitchen Restaurant Group, which opened eateries in Colorado, Tennessee, Illinois and Indiana. Musk, who sits on the board of directors of his brother’s electric car and solar power provider Tesla, also co- founded Big Green, an organization that installs gardens in underserved schools and teaches children about the importance of eating natural food.
With so much on his plate, Musk leaves the day- to- day running of Square Roots to Peggs. The two met while working at OneRiot, a social media target- advertising company in Colorado, which Walmart acquired in 2011. Peggs has a doctorate from CardiffUniversity inWales in artificial intelligence but cans easily switch to extolling fresh- picked peppery arugula.
“By 2050, there’ll be 9.6 billion people on the planet and 70% of them in urban areas. That’s driving a lot of investment and interest in urban farming,” he said.
To get set up in Brooklyn in 2016, Square Roots raised $ 5 million in — no pun intended— seed money, Peggs said. For each of the 10 new sites, slightly over $ 1 million is needed.
Peggs said the farmers find buyers for their produce, like stores, restaurants and individuals, though they also inherit clients from previous SquareRoots participants. Thirty percent of what they earn goes to Square Roots, and expenses are another $ 30,000. That leaves an annual profit of $ 30,000 to $ 40,000.
A single 40- foot container provides 320 square feet of growing space. It is outfittedwith long, narrow towers studded with crops hung on tracks from the ceiling in rows, like vertical blinds. The plants get water and nutrients from irrigation pipes running along the tops of the towers and sunlight from dangling strips of LED lights. Besides arugula, crops include kale, radicchio and pak choi.
“What we’ve proven in the first phase is we can take young people with no experience in farming and get them very, very quickly to grow really high- quality food that people want to buy,” Peggs said.