Brooklyn Farmer is a short documentary about a group of farmers known as Brooklyn Grange who operate the world’s largest rooftop farm which just happens to be, you guessed it, in our very own back yard here in Brooklyn. Well, truthfully, Brooklyn Grange runs two farms. The first is 43,000 square feet (about an acre) and is actually located in Northern Boulevard in Long Island City, Queens. The second, though, is located on the roof of Brooklyn Navy Yard Building no. 3. Covering 65,000 square feet, its installation in 2012 is the focus of this film. These two farms comprise 2.5 acres and produce over 50,000 pounds of organically grown vegetables each year – about 75 different crops, all consumed locally. Brooklyn Grange also operates the City’s largest apiary, consisting of over 30 honey bee hives.
Brooklyn Farmer features six members of the Brooklyn Grange: Head Farmer Ben Flanner, Farm Managers Matt Jefferson and Michael Meier, Founding Partner and Communications/Media Manager Anastasia Cole Plakias, Chief Operating Officer Gwen Schantz, and Apiary Director Chase Emmons. None sit down to be formally interviewed (they are too busy for that, working to get the Brooklyn Navy Yard farm up and running in time for the May harvest), but you hear from them during business meetings, while overseeing the construction project, planting tomato plants, or hosting a visit of Mayor Bloomberg and his entourage.
The crew wear many hats and share common concerns, core values, beliefs, and passions. These include growing nutritious, tasty, local and sustainable food. All view themselves as environmentalists improving air quality, landfills, and waterways through green roofs and composting. The recycling ethos concretely manifests itself in farm operations. The team scrounges plastic crates from City Winery to use as planters and transplants a wild bee colony from a city fire hydrant to a hive in their apiary. But their respective roles on the farm also slant their day to day preoccupations in different directions. Naturally, Head Farmer Ben frets more about the health of the plants while COO Gwen is thinking a lot about the farms’ Return on Investment and profitability.
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Two years post filming, Brooklyn Grange has proven to be a fiscally sustainable for-profit enterprise and an urban farming model. Brooklyn Grange - much like the Park Slope Food Coop’s efforts to replicate its own model of success - is now teaching others in New York City and elsewhere how to go about greening the 1,000s of empty acres hidden on rooftops. It’s grown from one paid employee (Ben) to six full time workers, several part time workers, and many volunteers. It sells wholesale to many local restaurants such as Vinegar Hill House, to retailers such as Brooklyn Kitchen, and to two caterers. It sells directly to consumers through a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) membership that currently has a waiting list, at McGolrick Park's Down to Earth Farmers Market in Greenpoint, and to those who shop at the LIC farm. School kids visit the farm for hands-on educational workshops. In hindsight, Gwen needn’t have worried.
Nor Ben, a trained Industrial Engineer who used to crunch numbers at E-Trade. He measures success slightly differently asking: are we supporting ourselves, can we keep it going? Is it working, viable? Are we teaching, learning, and having fun? Even back in 2012 he answered “yes.” Ben and his young colleagues – several like him, with business and technology backgrounds – are clearly where they belong, farming the Brooklyn Grange, obviously a labor of love.
