Every September, New York City becomes the climate capital of the world. It’s like Davos for people who want to see a change in climate change. Climate Week NYC (September 22 to 28, 2025) brings together thousands of leaders, innovators, and citizens to talk about decarbonization, finance, and future technologies. On paper, it can sound like a policy nerd’s dream — or a regular person’s, yawn, snoozefest.

But here’s the truth: Climate Week doesn’t have to be boring. The official program is packed with hundreds of events — everything from the MIT Climate Innovation Showcase to sustainable food tastings and startup expos. And if the talks feel too heavy, you can make your own Climate Week fun by joining community events, exploring the city differently, or even organizing something yourself.

Here are five confirmed happenings and DIY ideas to help you enjoy Climate Week without obsessing about greenhouse gas numbers — while still making changes in your lifestyle and business.

Check Out a Startup Showcase (Confirmed)

Dozens of startups are opening their doors during Climate Week. The MIT Climate Innovation Showcase is one highlight, bringing together researchers and entrepreneurs with bold new ideas. From AI-powered recycling tools to solar paints, you’ll see where the future is heading — and maybe even find a business partner.

Taste the Future of Food (Confirmed + DIY)

Climate-friendly cuisine is big this year. Expect pop-ups and panels on regenerative agriculture, plant-based proteins, and sustainable supply chains. If you don’t make it to a scheduled tasting, create your own: cook a kelp-based recipe, try mushroom jerky, or host a potluck where everyone brings a low-carbon dish. Food is culture — and change can be delicious.

If you don’t find what you are looking for –– why not create your own pop-ups of “climate-friendly cuisine”?

Make It a Bike Week (DIY)

While Climate Week’s official calendar doesn’t list big group rides, you can turn the week into your own climate-positive bike festival. Ride to events instead of taking cabs, invite colleagues for a “climate commute,” or join existing NYC cycling groups. It’s fun, healthy, and reminds you that personal choices add up. Visit the NY Cycle Club for events and ideas.

Join a Community Event 

Beyond the corporate panels, dozens of community-led meetups are scheduled — from art shows to urban gardening talks. Check the Climate Week NYC events calendar for free or low-cost events across the boroughs. And if you don’t find one that excites you, create your own “block party” — invite neighbors, spin music, and share sustainable hacks and crafts on your street.

Reconnect With Nature (DIY)

Central Park walks, rooftop gardens, and urban farming tours pop up around Climate Week — though not always officially listed. Even if you can’t find an organized outing, make one yourself: bird-watch in Central Park, visit a community garden, or take a kayak out on the Hudson.

Sometimes the best climate inspiration comes from remembering what we’re fighting for.

Climate Week isn’t just for CEOs and policymakers. It’s a chance for anyone to plug in, whether you’re attending an official showcase or just biking to work with a few friends. Fun and climate action aren’t opposites — they feed each other. And when you connect with community, food, music, or nature, you realize: this is what the future can look like.

::Climate Week

The post Why New York Climate Week Isn’t Boring — and 5 Fun Things You Can Do to Make It Yours appeared first on Green Prophet.

RedSea, a climate controlled hydroponics greenhouse business that started in Saudi Arabia, has announced that its business is expanding. They have hired Bruno De Oliveira as VP East Africa and Egypt to help grow the business. He’s worked in Kenya, Egypt, Portugal, and the UAE.

RedSea uses science to design sustainable agriculture technologies for very hot climates. Hydroponics is a form of greenhouse agriculture that uses water and a nutrient medium to grow vegetables such as leafy greens in a controlled way. Israeli and Dutch companies tend to lead the space. See Infarm in Germany founded by an Israeli team. There is plenty of space and capital globally for new systems to be developed.

RedSea has proven it can do low-water needs agriculture in its 6-hectare facility near Riyadh, Saudi Arabia at its research and development facility in KAUST, the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology.

RedSea has seen an infusion of capital – almost $20MM USD this year at least. They are striving for hot climate markets where hydroponics technologies may have the greatest impact in saving water and energy as well as improving profitability for growers. It’s harder to prove the concept in cold climates with less sun as heating greenhouses requires a significant amount of resources. Hydroponics may be ideal for growing food in deserts. Saltwater and solar greenhouses have been a dream for Middle East and African nations. RedSa is working on perfecting the concept that has been in development for decades.

In 2008 Green Prophet reported on early pilot saltwater greenhouses in Qatar and the UAE. RedSea is advancing the concept.

In recent months, RedSea worked with iyris SecondSky roofs have been installed on 30HA of a major government owned site in Egypt and an MOA has been signed with Magrabi Agriculture to supply genetically-favorable seeds and root stocks to the Egyptian market.

De Oliveira, the new hire, will be cased in Cairo. He has worked more than 30 years in commercial farming and business development.

Ryan Lefers, CEO of RedSea, said: ​​“Our rapid growth in Egypt warrants positioning a key member of the RedSea team to focus exclusively on the East Africa and Egypt region. The ability to leverage such an experienced executive as Bruno, with a large professional network across that region, close to the market, will accelerate the growth of RedSea in territories that have suffered badly from an increasingly hot climate, and where our hot climate AgriClimate technology systems will bring higher profitability to farmers in a truly sustainable way.”

RedSea was founded in 2018 by Mark Tester and Ryan Lefers. It uses salt water and solar energy to grow local produce more sustainably to reduce carbon emission and food and water scarcity. First funding was led by a group of Saudi and UAE investors including the Aramco entrepreneurship arm Wa’ed (Aramco is the oil company owned by the Saudi family), the non-profit foundation Future Investment Initiative Institute, KAUST and Global Ventures, a UAE venture capital group. The funding is one of the first agritech investments for many of the participants.

Aramco, the Saudi oil giant, last year posted a net profit higher than the profits of Apple, Exxon, and Microsoft combined.

De Oliveira, says “I am excited to be able to give greater focus to a region in which I have been working for man years. In a way, it’s a coming back home for me. I know from years of hands-on experience of farming in this region the challenges that the growers face day to day. I joined RedSea because I recognized the unique competitive advantage of the technologies we bring to growers operating in this region. The potential and market opportunity to work with them to mitigate the impact of climate change is huge and I look forward to this new challenge.”

RedSea has developed and commercialized pioneering sustainable agriculture climate technologies for hot climates. Under the brands iyris, Kairos, and Volcano Plant Genetics.

Egyptian cotton farmer. Photo Credit: Magued Makram/UNIDO Egypt. Location: Kafr ElSheikh, Egypt 2019Some environmental advocates believe offering better conditions for small-hold farmers in Egypt that focus on regenerative farming and healing the soil, may give our planet a better chance for survival than energy-intensive greenhouses. Woody Harrelson thinks so too. An article in The Ecologist explains why hydroponics, divorced from the soil with unnatural mineral and oil industry nutrient inputs could never be organic:

“Given its apparent eco-credentials, there have been strong calls for hydroponics to be accepted under organic standards. But the Soil Association thinks this would take organic in the wrong direction, and is calling for the international organic movement to prohibit hydroponics in organic agriculture.

“Organic production is about the interconnectivity of vital living ecosystems – it is a regenerative form of agriculture that both takes from and gives back to the soil. In fact, starting with the soil is at the heart of organic.” This resource points out the need of micronutrients found in the soil that need to be supplemented in hydroponics.”

The solutions are probably somewhere in the middle.

The post RedSea farms grows from Saudi Arabia to Egypt appeared first on Green Prophet.

What is a food desert?

A food desert is where there is limited to no access to affordable, fresh, and nutritious food. In these regions, the availability of grocery stores, supermarkets, and other sources of healthy food options is scarce. Instead, residents often rely on convenience stores or fast-food outlets that offer mainly processed and unhealthy food choices.

Characteristics of a food desert include:

• Limited Access to healthy food
• Low-Income Population
• Lack of Fresh Produce
• Health Impacts
• Food Security Concerns
• Socioeconomic Factors

Two in five people cannot afford healthy food. Over 3.1 billion people, 42% of the global population, could not afford a nutritious diet in 2021, nearly half of the world’s population. The cost of a healthy diet has risen by almost 7% compared to pre-pandemic levels. 

Low-income households are facing a difficult situation because they would need to spend more than twice their current food budget to afford a healthy diet, as reported. 

Food insecurity is a growing challenge for the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). Before the Covid-19 pandemic, UN agencies found that more than 55 million people out of a total population of 456.7 million were experiencing undernourishment. In 2020, MENA accounted for 20% of the world’s acutely food-insecure population, disproportionately high compared to its 6% share of the global population. 

The region faces significant structural challenges in feeding its growing population. The first major challenge is climate change, with extreme weather and rising temperatures affecting local agriculture. Half of the MENA population already lives under water stress and with a projected population increase to nearly 700 million by 2050, per capita. Additionally, the region experienced a severe desert locust outbreak in 2020, impacting livelihoods and food security for millions.

The second challenge is the rapid population growth, which is the highest worldwide, coupled with the expansion of urban areas. Agricultural productivity is struggling to keep up with the population increase, except in Egypt, where productivity gains are above the global average.

The third challenge relates to diet and nutrition. The region heavily relies on food imports, mainly wheat and staple grains. MENA imports around half of its food, rising to 90% in Gulf Cooperation Countries. Many people’s caloric intake comes from wheat products subsidized by governments. Additionally, between a quarter and one-third of the adult population in the region is obese.

The current food system needs to nourish people’s health adequately. While it provides calories, it lacks sufficient nutrition. As a result, many individuals face the dual challenges of malnutrition, experiencing both stunting and obesity.

In Yemen, almost half of the children are underweight for their age. In Djibouti, one-third suffer from the same condition, causing long-term effects on their cognitive development and can impact the economic progress of their nations.

How to address food deserts?

• Reducing the heavy reliance on food imports to combat fluctuating food prices.
• Support local food markets, small businesses and healthy existing traditional food culture
• Invest in agricultural practices and technologies that adapt to climate change, such as hydroponics, conservation agriculture, and safe water usage. 
• Digital technology and innovative financial models can attract private investment in agriculture and hydroponics.
• Development interventions that support farmers in adopting more productive and sustainable systems resilient to climate-related risks like droughts and floods.
• Improving agricultural job quality and making the agri-food sector more attractive
• Implementing initiatives like entrepreneurship training and climate-smart practices
• Implementing social protection measures such as safety nets and targeted food aid programs 
• Improve the efficiency of food imports and storage.
• Show the world that grandma’s cooking is smart and healthy

The post What’s a food desert and how can we solve them? appeared first on Green Prophet.

My house has loads of space, so finding a place to grow my indoor hydroponic garden would be no big deal. But when I saw an image of the Garden Igloo, a geodesic dome plastic tent, my heart jumped. This is it: the perfect modern conservatory for my roof.

I’ve been working on building a technology called Eddy. It’s a grow robot that uses artificial intelligence to make hydroponics accessible to anyone. Hydroponics is growing plants without soil, on a treated medium based on water. It’s something super easy to do once you have some of the chemistry and science down pat. That’s what Eddy is going to help you with.

Since I live in the Middle East, I have the luxury of being able to grow year-round outdoors, as long as I had a greenhouse. Greenhouses that I found online were clunky and expensive. They looked like garbage and they would not pass my husband’s aesthetics test. Any of the decent ones would cost me a fortune to buy or ship to Israel.

An admirer of Buckminster Fuller and all the proponents of round rooms –- Hassan Fathy and Nader Khalili who pioneered Super Adobe, I knew that I wanted my space to feel organic and comfortable. I investigated building my own Buckminster geodesic dome using bamboo poles and netting. After much investigation, people on the street told me that I would basically need a hippy to help set it up, “because only hippies understand the geometry and how to do it,” according to one sound guy who was helping us renovate our music hall.

When I saw the Garden Igloo online, I knew I had to have one: The Garden Igloo fits the bill and is a perfect greenhouse, creating a true greenhouse effect. Two small windows zip open to let you control temperature and humidity. A nice touch is that it doesn’t cost thousands and is in the price range for most Americans who own a home or who rent an apartment in an urban area like New York City.

Great for global nomads. Grows with you, wherever you roam. Nails not needed

If you live in an area that doesn’t get colder than -4F ( or -20C), you can use it year long. When summers get hot, consider the mosquito net option as shade to shield your plants from intense sun. Amazingly sturdy sandbags secure my Garden Igloo to my rooftop where winds from the Mediterranean Sea can be intense in winter. Perfect because I can’t nail a thing to my roof.

Once you have plants in your Garden Igloo (I have two hydroponic systems in mine), add some touches to make it feel like home. I added some LED lights for growing, as well as a desk, some stools and a chair, small wicker couch I found on the side of the road, some cushions, my favorite books and a reading lamp. I am going to bring up a kettle and my favorite coffee so it can be homier even still.

When people enter the Garden Igloo something feels good and right to them, like when you visit a straw-bale home for the first time. The round interior embraces you, and protects you while letting your outside environment in. You can be in a noisy city like I am, and still feel protected.

The effects become more pronounced at night. With some basic lighting (not necessarily needed for growing, but for your comfort), you can create an awesome looking space that will impress your friends and dinner dates!

Since I wanted to use mine primarily for growing plants (I am growing bok choy, lettuce, all kinds of herbs for tea and spice) I needed lots of space on the ground for my hydroponic systems. With the help of my father I flashed back to Grade 7 Geometry class and figured out the circumference of my dome on the ground and built and then hoisted a demi-platform up to the roof. The wooden platform, made from chipboard, was assembled in pieces inside the doe and gives an even and protected raised floor from the rain.

When set up, the Garden Igloo looks like a high-tech biodome from Mars. In fact, I am using it as such as we build out experiments for highly controlled food production suited to space travel, space stations and Mars (join me at Mars Farm), but in reality the structure itself is made from plastic poles and a strong PVC-like shower curtain material. No doubt there has been years of thought and engineering into the product, as the pieces fit together perfectly despite being of different lengths. The instructions are color-coded and harmonize to any language.

Note to all the girls and women and men out there who shy away from big box assembly: while it does take some wheels turning in your mind, the Garden Igloo is easily assembled by hand. I used no tools except a rubber hammer to help me secure some hard-to-push joints. I used a chair to reach higher spots later on as the tent expanded. The Garden Igloo was 100% assembled by me alone in about 6 hours, a project I enjoyed every single step of the way.

I created the floor using a jigsaw. Pieces were assembled inside the tent, using old wooden 2×4 chunks for support. No nails or screws used, which for me would be a massive problem since assembly was done on a water-tight, white tarred roof.

Designed in Turkey

And the story has a Middle East twist… the Garden Igloo story  began in a small studio in Istanbul. For two years, Cagla Isin Alemdar (pictured below) worked meticulously and experimented with different materials, colours and designs for the Garden Igloo. Her plan was to create a convertible greenhouse which could be used all year round and which also looked good. The geodesic dome for optimal temperature distribution is one result of this period of experimentation.

The other result is the extraordinary resilience of the materials and frame.

In the late summer of 2013, the Garden Igloo was unveiled at the garden trade fair Spoga-Gafa in Cologne in Germany. To the delight of the designer, it was immediately included in the ranges of several major distribu-
tors. Online shops in many European countries and the US are selling it. It has also been available since March 2013 via the company’s own website www.gardenigloo.com and it has its own sales company in Germany.

The initial studio in Istanbul is now too small, but Cagla Alemdar has made a conscious decision not to relocate production to a cheaper country. She has moved into a new building with larger rooms and now employs about 50 people in her factory. In her opinion, being involved with production is really important to continue to guarantee good quality.

And it shows.

For the retail price of about $900 (the product ships to your home in the US or Europe and beyond) everyone in suburbia and cities should be growing their food – and where laws permit in the US – cannabis this way. The dome is really perfect for hydroponics. And it is exactly what the industry has been missing with all the over-priced and extremely inefficient one-plant grow box appliances coming on the market for $3000 a pop. The Garden Igloo is an antidote to this way of thinking, helping us expand our food and medicine possibilities, and ultimately ourselves.

I love that it was first conceived in the region and that it was made for growing. It’s not hard to love the Garden Igloo.

The post Garden Igloo: Grow tasty food and cannabis in this modern biodome greenhouse appeared first on Green Prophet.

Students at Slovenia’s second largest university adapted a computer numerical control (CNC) machine to act as a 3D printer, substituting the usual printing materials (such as plastics, nylon, epoxy resins, and wax) with “green” ink made of soil, water and grass seed. Their project, named Print Green, produces 3D printed models with the ability to grow.

Designed as part of an intermedia arts course at University of Maribor, Project Green unites art, technology and nature. As with most school projects, this has limited commercial application, but the students already have a marketing slogan. They flipped the ubiquitous email tagline “Think before you print” into “Print because it’s green”.

The “ink” creates functional shapes (bowls, planters) that – when watered – will sprout greenery. Student design team (Maja Petek, Tina Zidanšek, Urška Skaza, Danica Rženičnik and Simon Tržan) have also experimented with “living letters” (see lead image).

The forms sit atop a Styrodur base, a rigid polystyrene foam typically used for building insulation. It’s a rot-proof product, ideal for supporting items that need frequent watering. Each base is then covered with black felt, to better showcase the printed objects.

Technically this is 3D printing, although the hardware is a re-jiggered carpentry tool. But falling prices for commercial 3D printers are opening up opportunities for regular users to run at-home research and development labs too.

We’ve reported on quirky applications, such as 3D-printed cosmetics or “pocket parks” for greenery in unusual places. People have printed prosthetics that enable lame dogs to run, and artifacts that allow the blind to “see”.  For every dubious app like 3D gun-printing, there’s a positive one like 3D printed food or housing. Find cheap 3D printer now in most cities near you.

The cutesy newness of this tech is fast becoming ‘yesterday’.  The genie is out of the bottle and game-changing applications are coming on fast.  Today we pose the question – what will this new turn in manufacturing do to the environment? Tomorrow we’ll be back to kick around some answers.  Get your thoughts together on where you stand on 3D printing – we want you in the chat.

The post Organic ink grows 3D printed gardens (and then what?) appeared first on Green Prophet.

In the middle of Harlem on a derelict plot of land where old men used to play cards, with no kids allowed, is growing one of the most exciting social projects I’ve seen this year. Harlem kids that were eating Twix bars for lunch are now eating fresh greens –– food that they and their mothers are growing through a non-profit project called Harlem Grown.

Latonya Assanah from Harlem, New York (pictured above) has an 8-year-old daughter who just “wouldn’t eat green things.”

That is –- until her daughter started growing food on water: A couple of years ago Nevaeh Seeley started tending to the hydroponic garden across the street from her school in Harlem. It used to be lunchtime and that meant “junk food from the candy store, now she and her friends are waiting for the greens,” Assanah her mom tells Green Prophet.

Just look around: from the exotic mustard greens to dwarf kale and koji: “These are things you can’t find in the  grocery store. I bring this food home to my mother, originally from Ghana – it’s us three girls, and she is so excited. My mom told me she used to grow greens like this in Ghana where she comes from, and knows exactly what to do with them.”

So it started out with curiosity, but today Assanah is the greenhouse manager, working days at the high-tech farm, which feeds 150 local Harlem families. It is part of the Harlem Grown non-profit farm. The farm stands on what was 4 brownstone houses in the middle of the city.

On one side the students grow food on raised beds –- raised to protect the food from heavy metals, asbestos and soil contaminants that penetrates soil after a demolition. The other is where Assanah runs the hydroponic farm.

Both sides of the farm feed people –– but just as importantly nourishes local brains and souls.

Case in point: Assanah sings to her plants when she comes into work in the morning. She demonstrates to me: “Good morning plants I am here!”

The job she got because she was hanging out in the hydroponic greenhouse helping the kids. Assanah plants seeds, transplants seedlings, feeds the plants nutrients into a large water reservoir and tests the water daily to make sure the pH is right.

RELATED: flux gadget for urban farming, connects people and planet

Above – Harlem Grown founder Tony Hillery with school girls.

Assanah and the kids learn much more than growing food. Hydroponics at schools is an excellent way to teach kids, especially girls, essentials about STEM –  Science, Technology, Engineering and Math. Hydroponic farming is as much about chemistry, ratios and the physics of water movement as it is about having a green thumb.

The approach called hydroponics uses less water, and can produce an acre’s worth of food in a small greenhouse because greens can grow densely when nutrient rich water is delivered right to the plants’ roots. It is also used by NASA to grow food in outer space.  So why not young girls and their moms in Harlem?

RELATED: Grow hydroponic food in the middle of Manhattan

The sunny summer day I visited the Harlem Grown there were four young women from 12 to 16 who were tending the garden outside. They were getting paid as summer interns to work on the farm.

Below is Lydia. She’s the farm manager and right hand woman to Tony Hillery, who founded Harlem Grown 4 years ago. She helps runs a summer camp at the farm, makes sure plants and people are being tended to at all times.

Some 1800 pounds of produce that they measured was grown on the farm last year, she reports. Part of it gets sold to keep the farm running, but the idea is really to feed people, and provide youth development, Nebel tells Green Prophet.

So that 1800 pounds – that’s just what they were able to weigh, as more than twice that amount was likely eaten – from the hands of babes right to their mouths, local, organic and green. This thought makes Lydia smile as she heads over to the farm’s second largest location which has sprouted up over on 126th Street in Harlem, just down the road.

Harlem Grown and Hillery’s vision is growing like weeds, to 6 locations with more planned for the next year.

For more on how Harlem Grown is changing lives through urban farming, see Harlem Grown website.

The post Harlem Grown grows greens and girls in New York City appeared first on Green Prophet.

Following an international trend pressuring large food chains to think local and source local food, Autogrill, the multinational company known for its motorway and airport restaurants in 30 countries, is partnering with the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (or the FAO) to do just that. The chain of restaurants will cut down food waste and losses and support the introduction of products of small-scale and smallholder farmers in developing countries, the UN agency announced today.

Under the three-year agreement, FAO will provide Autogrill with tools to track and reduce food losses and waste across its more than 4000 stores and design information materials and campaigns to raise awareness among Autogrill customers worldwide about waste reduction.

“We’re excited to collaborate with a major multinational restaurant chain like Autogrill on making its market chain more inclusive,” said Eugenia Serova, Director of the Rural Infrastructure and Agro-Industries Division at FAO.

“This is a new type of public-private partnership for FAO which could become a model for collaborations with other retailers in future” she said.

It is estimated that roughly one third of the food produced globally for human consumption – approximately 1.3 billion tonnes every year – is lost or wasted.

In recent years, restaurants and food and beverage stores worldwide have become increasingly aware of their role in making food chains more sustainable. Supporting local food producers and farmers makes economies resilient and in some cases encourages positive practices such as organic farming, permaculture farming and hydroponic farming.

“The public-private partnership belongs to the tradition of Autogrill. From today onward the leading global restaurants chain for the people on the move will continue that tradition jointly with FAO. Our social responsibility awareness will certainly be improved by the relationship we are beginning today,” said Luigi Troiani, European Public Affairs Manager of Autogrill Group.

Autogrill is the latest to sign on to the Save Food Global Initiative spearheaded by FAO to involve a wide range of actors along the food chain in common strategies to cut food loss and waste.

Locally grown hydroponic food in Thailand via Shutterstock

The post International airports source local farm food in 30 countries appeared first on Green Prophet.

It’s a natural thing for every human being to want: the ability to grow fresh, healthy food anywhere we call home, even if that’s in the concrete jungle of New York City. We may spend our days and nights plunking away at keyboards or talking into little plastic boxes but who doesn’t yearn to eat the freshest food in the world? Food that’s been grown by your own hands? This desire is multiplying. There is a shift in cities across America, and urban farming is something that’s taking root.

Young men and women are graduating college with ambitions of going on to be farmers. To make matters better Quartz reports that most Americans could be sustained on local foods alone, except for LA and New York.

If you are thinking even for a second about growing food on your patio, rooftop, basement, restaurant or little plot between buildings, Henry is here to help. Henry, or Henry Gordon-Smith is an urban agriculture consultant for Blue Planet. While his passion is hydroponics, or growing food on water, Henry can help you decide what, where, how and what technology you should use to maintain and enhance your urban yield.

“I like to look at the whole spectrum of urban agriculture with my clients from soil-based to hydroponics and high tech vertical farms,” Henry tells Green Prophet. “Then, based on if their goals are yield, education, or job-training, our team recommends design, technology, and operations strategies.”

Will it be cucumbers, strawberries and Swiss chard? Or potatoes, lettuce and carrots?  Henry is here to help. I ran into Henry at the AlleyNYC, a co-working space I am sharing with about 30 other startups. He graciously lent contacts, made introductions and shared best practices on what’s happening in the city.

We know that Whole Foods in Brooklyn now operates a large (20,000 sq/ft hydroponics farm on its roof). And New Jersey is about to get something real big. What’s next?

Formally as part of Blue Planet a company that makes nano-bubble aerators to increase hydroponic crop yield, Henry works to grow urban farms so they can be a mainstay in New York, even if you don’t use his company’s equipment. He’s currently consulting a number of big deal projects for Sky Vegetables, an 8000 sq/foot growing vertical farm in the city, for Coop Tech, a training rooftop greenhouse at 96 and 1st. And he’s helping develop a shipping container food art project, hopefully one that will be replicated around schools in the region. You can say that Henry’s putting hydroponics on the map.

As for what’s hot in hydroponics in New York City, Henry plugs three projects:

1. Harlem Grown @134 and Lennox: “With a thriving soil-based farm and a hydroponic greenhouse surrounded by buildings on three sides, this urban farm is a one-of-kind demonstration,” says Henry.

2. EdenWorks in Brooklyn, which is a data-based company working on making aquaponics feasible. Aquaponics is hydroponics with the addition of fish to provide nutrients in a closed-loop system.

3. New York Sunworks which is developing rooftop greenhouses for schools, and which plans to have 100 hydroponics food labs in the next 5 years around NYC. They’ve built 17.

If you are looking for inspiration, Henry also produces the Agritecture blog which helps people envision future hydroponics and vertical farms. He says: “It’s both Utopia and Real World placed side by side. My hope is that it will inspire others to be bold but also act feasibly.”

Get inside some of his inspiration by reading Dr. Dickson Despommier’s The Vertical Farm if you want to learn more about the practice and economics of hydroponics, and be in touch with Henry if you want to start an urban farm in your city.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1wQ2LXeF-k[/youtube]

I love how Henry is creating both a business and a business climate for hydroponics and mother earth.He’s a citizen of the world, who was born in Hong Kong, but who travels as a Canadian. A man of my own heart. He’s also super friendly.

Connect with Henry at henry@agritecture.com and join the Association for Vertical Farming to scale your vision and connect with like-minded companies in the industry.

The post Grow fresh food in the middle of Manhattan? Meet Henry appeared first on Green Prophet.