Hydroponic City Farms: Close, Fresh and Expensive
by Glen Collings, NEW YORK TIMES, August 1, 2011
MICHAEL ANTHONY admires the butter lettuce he has been buying for the last month so much that he invented a salad for it. The $12 dish he serves at Gramercy Tavern in Manhattan is also made up of pickled eggplant, ricotta, pickled cherries and heirloom tomatoes, but the greens are the star, and for good reason.
Often picked only several hours before arriving at his kitchen, four miles from the farm, the lettuce could not be more fresh, or local. It has just about all a demanding chef could ask, except one thing: dirt clinging to its roots.
The butter lettuce is grown at Gotham Greens, a new hydroponic garden in industrial Greenpoint that turns romantic notions of farming on their head. In a $2 million greenhouse, baby plants emerge from seeds embedded in tiny sponges made of fibers spun from volcanic basalt.
Water? It’s recycled so only 700 gallons are used per day, a 10th of that used in conventional farming. Soil? That’s replaced by thin films of nutrient-rich water sluicing down hundreds of plastic channels cradling the roots of salad greens, lettuces and culinary herbs.
The sleek garden that has improbably touched down on the roof of a huge two-story former bowling alley and light-manufacturing space is one of the largest commercial-scale hydroponic greenhouses in urban America providing pristine, sustainable produce for restaurants and high-end retailers.
Until recently, there have been two associations with hydroponics: 1. Marijuana, 2. No flavor. But state-of-the-art operations have won converts among chefs who venerate local produce and celebrate terroir. “This volume, and this level of expertise: this is something we haven’t seen before,” Mr. Anthony said of Gotham Greens produce. “They’ve taken it to another level.”
So far, hydroponic produce “doesn’t replace field-grown vegetables” in Gramercy Tavern’s kitchen, he said. For now, “it may be working in a supporting role.” And though the supply of products is year-round, and theoretically could subvert chefs’ increasing seasonal obsession, “it doesn’t really challenge our notion of seasonality,” Mr. Anthony added.
Yet to André de Waal, the chef and an owner of the haute André’s Restaurant in Newton, N.J., “it’s all a tradeoff.” He has been buying hydroponic veggies for a year from a small rural greenhouse 15 minutes away, and says that vegetables from California are more than three days old by the time they reach him.
“Given the choice between days-old produce grown in soil, and super-fresh hydroponic vegetables, I’d rather have the hydroponic,” Mr. de Waal said. “There is nothing quite like working with produce that is several hours old.”
Advocates for urban greenhouse produce have long touted the benefits of proximity, freshness, quality and job creation. “For certain crops, hydroponics can be a boon,” said John Magazino, president of Primizie Fine Foods in the Bronx, an upscale produce supplier that has sold hydroponic crops from nonurban suppliers to restaurants including Eleven Madison Park and Blue Hill at Stone Barns. “Lettuces, chicories, endives and all the fresh herbs do extremely well. And if Gotham Greens can grow chervil, which isn’t easy to grow and doesn’t transport well, they will make a lot of New York chefs happy.”
Not everyone agrees. [Read rest of story]