Brooklyn will soon be home to the world’s largest rooftop farm. BrightFarms, a local company in the business of designing, financing, and building hydroponic greenhouse farms for supermarkets recently announced their newest project–sited for a former Navy Warehouse in Sunset Park, Brooklyn along with a partnership with A&P. The hydroponic rooftop farm will be 100,000 square feet and will grow one million pounds of produce a year, including tomatoes, lettuce, and herbs. The farm will grow enough food to meet the fresh vegetable consumption of 5,000 New Yorkers, create jobs, and prevent up to 1.8 million gallons of storm water from going into local waterways.

Hydroponic agriculture is different from the rooftop gardens most of us think of. In hydroponic greenhouses, crops are grown in water rather than soil and in many cases this is better for roofs than traditional methods. Advancing technology is allowing for higher yields while these greenhouses put less weight on buildings than soil farms and use less water.Construction on this project is set to begin in the fall of 2012 and the first crops should be ready for consumption in the spring of 2013.

Photo: New York Times