If a catastrophic event cut off the food for thought supply to New York , odds are you ’d have to do without you ternary vegan chia slaw and assorted style vegetables . But would you go thirsty ?
That was the question thatSmithsonianposed yesterday , after an awesome , seven - calendar month time lapse of a rooftop farm in Brooklyn appeared online . The farm , which is carry by Brooklyn Grange , was built , seed , and glean on the roof of a storage warehouse at the Brooklyn Navy Yard :
The farm take the title of the earth ’s orotund — it ’s deal 40,000 pounds of green groceries so far — but how does it compare to the need of NYC ? Smithsonian read a look at the numbers :
This sounds like a lot . According to a 2010 report to the Mayor ’s office , though , New York City runs through around 28.6 million tons of nutrient per class , have in mind that for all Brooklyn Grange is doing , it ’s still only producing 0.00007 % of New York ’s food .
In other language , we ’re go to postulate a hell of a muckle more of these for even make a dent in our overall phthisis .
correctly now , most of our intellectual nourishment arrives in the metropolis at one of a fistful of distribution point — such as Hunts Point market , the largest wholesale produce market on earth . Hunts Point is notoriously difficult to gather entree to — Gizmodo been turned down before , and other reportershave been arrested for attemptingto visit the market .
The empty blank space now filled by the Fulton Fish Market at Hunts Point . AP Photo / Julie Jacobson .
Why ? Because , fit in to official , it ’s dangerous to allow visitor to such an of import node in NYC ’s food supplying chain . To do so would be spread out it up to all kinds of surety threats , including act of terrorism .
But there may be other , more nuanced reasons too : According toOnEarth , only four percent of the food that arrive at Hunts Point is grow within the state . Only 12 percent comes from Jersey . As local Farmer press for access to the metropolis ’s solid food substructure , national companies may not want to make way .
A dry - aging room at Hunts Point cooperative market , shot byAdam Kuban .
It ’s the spate of recent storms — like Hurricane Sandy — that have gotten mass thinking more about how food arrives in New York . Sandy closed roads traversed by rescue trucks , shut off electricity in industrial fridges , and made it nearly impossible for farmers to get their produce past the boundaries of the metropolis . Itexposed the hard truth : That , thanks to the complex mechanisms of just - in - time statistical distribution systems and our insatiate demand for green goods grown in the far reaches of the country ( and globe ) , New York only ever has abouttwo to three days of food on handat any afford meter .
It ’s no enigma that most of the food we consume add up to us from a complex infrastructural paths — a meandering path over continents and oceans , aboard ship , trucks , and planes . But the multitude of vivid storm — both of the hurricane and snow potpourri — arriving in New York are beginning to expose a reality : That the systems we depend on to live in our urban center are as flimsy as we are . [ OnEarth;Smithsonian ]
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