Viraj Puri stands among his crop of lettuce and basil, the pungent smell of the herb punctuating his conversation. It is harvest time and Puri is giving a tour of his farm. A worker nearby is methodically cutting lettuce for packaging. The temperature outside, 38 degrees, is not optimum for growing lettuce. But the cold doesn’t bother the lettuce, or Puri. His produce will grow through the harshest winter, extreme heat of the summer—even Superstorm Sandy. Puri’s farmland is a warehouse rooftop in Brooklyn.
Today, if Eddie Albert wanted to give up Manhattan for the peaceful life of a farmer, as he did in the 1960s sitcom Green Acres, dragging along his glamorous wife Eva Gabor for comic relief, he could have simply hopped on the subway and commuted the four miles to Brooklyn or any of New York City’s outer boroughs.
Puri is part of a growing movement—the urban farmer. The 31-year-old co-founder and chief executive of Gotham Greens walks down the paths between his vegetables, which are neatly tucked into soil-less containers, as he describes the current varietals growing. His “farmland,” 15,000 square feet of rooftop greenhouse, yields roughly the same as a traditional 6-acre farm. Gotham grows 5 to 10 types of lettuce including red and green leaf, and baby butterhead lettuce, which it supplies to restaurants and high-end grocery stores in the New York metro area. “Since we have perfect weather year-round, we can always produce a consistent product,” he says. Oliver never had it that easy on Green Acres.
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