Food Files: Mike Yohay on Aquaponic Urban Farming

In founding the urban farming venture Cityscape Farms, Mike Yohay is banking on the fact that people are sick and tired of getting cardboard-tasting tomatoes trucked from Mexico in the middle of winter. And he’s betting that they’ll like enterprises that will provide jobs for neighborhood people growing “hyper-local,” organic food in greenhouses on rooftops and empty lots.

People are already taking notice of this fledgling sustainable-food businessman; though he’s only been in the business of designing aquaponic greenhouse farming systems for urban rooftops for about a year, Yohay was recently named one of the ten most inspiring people in sustainable food by Fast Company Magazine.

I recently got Yohay on the phone to learn the ins and outs of aquaponics, urban farming and his exciting new business venture.

Why did you decide to start Cityscape Farms?

I started it about a year ago, year and a half. There are so many reasons why I started it. One of the top ones was seeing a lot of inefficiencies in the industrial agricultural model vis-à-vis the transportation aspect and the high usage of petroleum inputs.

There were equally positive role models that clued me into this as a viable business opportunity. I was on a train in Italy and I was thinking about the structure of Italian city-states; how there’s a central nexus of city, a walled city, surrounded by a green zone, and that a lot of the productive farming is done in that green corridor around the city. I thought: this is brilliant urban planning that goes back centuries.

Merging what I thought to be an outdated and unsustainable model with the ancient wisdom that’s already out there, and trying to create a new model here in the States is what led me to create Cityscape Farms.

Can you tell me how the Cityscape Farms business works?

The model is that we’ll have a greenhouse farm that will be located either in a vacant lot or on a rooftop, and using aquaponics. We’re predicting to have the first location off the ground within six months. The projects will be in San Francisco or the East Bay.

Can you describe how aquaponics work?

It’s a closed-loop organic system that combines aquaculture — the cultivation of fish — with hydroponics, which is soil-less farming, whereby the filtered fish waste becomes the nutrient feed for the plants.

Do all the nutrients the plants need come from that?

The vast majority does. There are times when you need to do some amendment, but you can use an organic amendment.

What do you feed the fish?

We’re planning on farming tilapia. They are fed a combination of an organic feed that’s mostly soy-based and 10 percent wild-caught fish.

Are you also harvesting the fish you’re raising for this?

They will be about a quarter of the volume of the food that we will sell.

Who will consume the food that you produce or how will you distribute it?

We’ve already got some restaurants and supermarkets that are committed to local sourcing on board. There are a lot within the city that are excited about having this hyper-local food source, especially for things that they will not source out of season, like tomatoes or strawberries that we can produce locally and year-round.

And there are several cool models of farm-to-fork brokerage services that are specifically looking at local farms. It’s great; the Bay Area is very good about being able to connect the dots. It’s a foodie community, so in some ways it couldn’t be better as a place for us to launch.

What kinds of food do you plan to produce?

In the beginning we’ll do tomatoes, herbs, strawberries and the fish, tilapia.

Is there any limit to what you can produce aquaponically?

There is. Technically you can grow anything that way, but things like vine and leaf crops tend to do best. We’re not going to grow wheat. We’re not going to grow potatoes. We want to have crops that are nutritional and high-value, because we need to be able to make a profit and stay in business.

So you are approaching this as a profit-making enterprise?

I don’t like the idea of farms being seen as charity cases in this country. Traditionally, it’s very hard to make a living as a farmer, and I think that’s because of our model. That’s what we’re keenly committed to reforming or helping reform. To the extent possible we want to be a shining example of a profitable farming enterprise that is putting people to work creating low-impact food and sharing that model.

Do you have plans to expand elsewhere?

We do. I get emails and phone calls from people all over the world now who want us to bring a location there and help them set it up. So we’re also talking about working on a franchise model. That will be a couple years away but we’ll be able to export our farming technology and training and help empower other local communities.

Do you think things like this could feed a majority of people in a city? What’s the reach?

With our first operation we’re looking at feeding a few hundred families. When you start to think about how many of these could you put around a city, I don’t see any limit to the potential to that. I’m not saying this is something that can replace conventional farming. I don’t think that’s possible. But I think it’ll be a necessary and welcomed amendment and contribution to our local food economy. If that means that we don’t have to import strawberries from New Zealand or tomatoes from Mexico half the year, then I think everybody’s better off.

Is there a need for electricity in your greenhouses?

We’ll probably end up using supplemental lighting. There is an energy component. I can’t give you specific data because I’m not sure exactly what our final set-up will be. Suffice it to say that the energy consumption and the water consumption — all the inputs — are a fraction of conventional farming, and that’s before factoring in the transportation issue. Our larger goal is to have it be renewable energy powered.

What stage have we reached with urban farming?

Urban farming in this country is still very much in its infancy. There are some shining examples of projects that are community-based and that are addressing very localized food production.

Cities are catching up with regard to their building codes and zoning laws and how they can incentivize or promote or really even allow urban farming to take place. There’s a disadvantage to being a pioneer in this space, because we’re working to set a precedent. But there is a lot of support, especially in the Bay Area, and we’re grateful for that.

Is it difficult to get a permit to build on a rooftop?

It’s not permits. It’s that it’s considered a novel use of space, so you’re really kind of forging new paths. It takes time, it takes a lot of conversations. It takes a lot of analysis. The building code is the main obstacle for using rooftops.

Is the one that you’re building now a rooftop location?

There’s one that’s a rooftop and there’s one that’s a lot, a ground site. We plan to do both. There’s so much unused space in cities that we want to be flexible in our model because our overall goal is to make local, urban food production a viable alternative to conventional food. So we don’t want to limit ourselves.

Each time you want to build will you have to go through zoning and coding issues, or is this something that can be changed as a sweeping regulation on a city level?

Each project that comes online will get more support and easier access. I think that the initial one will be the hardest.  Each site is a kind of case-by-case scenario as far as what does the engineering look like, what do the water and electric hookups look like, what kind of environmental sensitivities are there in that area. Even though those are case-by-case scenarios, the kind of macro acceptance and support for urban agriculture will continue to increase.

It’s gaining in support in the public eye. People want to see farming closer to home; they’re concerned with things like food safety and food security. We’re in many ways a food-insecure nation that depends on a very elaborate and inefficient import and export system, not to mention that the average age of farmers in this country if 65. We need a new generation of farmers.

Do you think that having agriculture concentrated in cities or around cities will encourage younger farmers?

Absolutely, absolutely. One of the things I’m excited about is the number of resumes I get every week from people who want to work for Cityscape. They’re people from a real variety of backgrounds.

Could you envision these greenhouses eventually being a mainstay of each city’s food economy?

Yeah, that’s our goal: to be able to compete with Big Ag and connect the dots internally within our community. People will awake to this when they see that we’re around the corner and our farmers are people who are in their neighborhood.

Is part of your goal to be an economic boost for the neighborhoods where your farms are?

Yes, that’s really what we’re excited about. It’s a lot of work getting any business off the ground, but we’ve made some good progress, and we’re really at the precipice now.

If you could tell people one thing about our country’s food system, what would it be?

I would echo what Michael Pollan said, which is sobering for a lot of people: the biggest carbon footprint of food is not in transportation but in the use of petroleum-based fertilizer. So eating organic really does make a difference. Local does too, but if you can eat organic, eat organic.

Photo: Cityscape Farms