Greener Roots Farm gives alternative to conventional farming
Lacey Klotz |
Ever wondered how long it takes your leafy greens to get from the farm to your plate?
This was a question that Jeffrey Orkin (11’), founder of Greener Roots Farm, pondered as he enrolled in Lipscomb’s Executive MBA program with a sustainability concentration.
One master’s degree and five years later, Greener Roots Farms is Nashville’s first hydroponic farm, and although other farms have since developed, Greener Roots Farm remains the largest.
Hydroponic farming is a method of growing produce in water, rather than in soil.
“With hydroponic farming, you actually use 90 percent less water than conventional farming and can generate 10 times as much produce using 90 percent less land,” said Orkin.
Orkin meets his goal to reduce the carbon footprint in urban areas by reducing the distance food travels where it is grown to where it is purchased – known as food miles – by selling his products at three local grocery markets: The Produce Place, The Turnip Truck Natural Market and Hendersonville Produce; as well as several local restaurants including Sinema, Sloco, The TreeHouse Restaurant, Merchant, Bella Pizzeria and the Frothy Monkey Bakery, to name a few.
“The grocery stores that sell our products are selling them for comparable prices to products that are harvested at conventional farms in California,” Orkin explained. “However, we are able to get our produce to them a lot quicker.”
A Mississippi-native, Orkin moved to Nashville in 2007 after graduating with a degree in landscape architecture and landscape contracting from Mississippi State University.
Orkin studied under the leadership of Dodd Galbreath, director of the Institute for Sustainable Practice, in Lipscomb’s MBA program, the Southeast’s first and only comprehensive academic sustainability program.
As a part of his studies, Orkin was given an opportunity to go to a food security summit in California. It was at this summit that he learned of issues surrounding food sovereignty, a people’s right to healthy and culturally appropriate food produced through ecologically sound and sustainable methods; as well as the concept of food miles.
To provide a farm that could offer sustainable products, with less food miles, truly excited Orkin.
“While enrolled at Lipscomb’s graduate program, I was also working my other business, Landscape Solutions, on the side,” said Orkin. “Landscape Solutions helped give me the business knowledge for how to one day run Greener Roots Farm, but the MBA program at Lipscomb gave me a better feel for how to analyze what I needed to analyze, and how to better understand the technique and process for sustainable agriculture.
“The idea for Greener Roots Farm initially sparked when I was living in downtown Nashville and interested in growing my own food,” Orkin continued. “I realized that in order to grow in a city, it would have to happen inside and that is why I decided to use the hydroponic technology.”
Greener Roots Farm first launched in December 2012 funded by a Kickstarter campaign under the name Urban Hydro Project. However, it wasn’t until April 2014 that Greener Roots Farm took its current name and planted its first feast later that July.
Today, Greener Roots Farm works to grow the sustainable food movement through innovation, education, advocacy and fresh local hydroponic food production.
Located just off Murfreesboro Road, Greener Roots Farm harvests a variety of produce that can be classified as leafy greens and herbs in a 6,000-square-foot warehouse.
Greener Roots Farm generates nearly six tons of produce a year, as well as harvests about 150-200 pounds of crops each week.
“The most unique aspect of our farm is that we are doing it all indoors,” Orkin explained. “We have a lot of room to expand in our current warehouse, and I would love to see us in the next few years build to capacity and be able to sell and distribute even more produce locally.”
Orkin explained that although hydroponic farming could never replace conventional farming altogether, it does meet a need for urban agriculture.
“Greener Roots Farm is the piece of the puzzle for Nashville as far agriculture and urban places goes.”