Commercial Greenhouses May Be The Future of Urban Farming In Chicago
Garfield Produce Company uses hydroponic farming, the process of growing produce with a nutrient and water solution without the use of soil, in spaces like the one seen above. Photo by Michael Wu
Urban farming has long been touted by agriculture advocates and enthusiasts as the future of the food and produce industry. However, as Chicago’s urban agriculture ecosystem has evolved and expanded, so have the complications associated with their operation.
Farmers around the city mention issues that have long plagued soil-based urban agriculture. These include unpredictable weather patterns, unreliable sunlight and soil contaminated from years of development. While these hazards are typically unavoidable in urban environments, access to water and land — two common barriers to the success of urban farms — are more strictly regulated by the city.
Laura Calvert, executive director of Advocates for Urban Agriculture (AUA), a coalition of urban farmers and growers throughout the city, says that her organization is dedicated to putting forward legislation, including increasing access to fire hydrant use and vacant land, that would expand the ease and accessibility of operating urban farms. While she says the city’s government has shown support in the past, the complexities of bureaucracy slows development.
“There still has to be a lot of work to be done to correct the department level issues and systems,” says Calvert. “Historically, what we’ve seen is urban agriculture spans across the departments: water management, streets and sanitation, planning and development, business licensing. But they’re not talking to each other about this. It’s just a lot of spinning wheels to get change to happen.”
However, the startup challenges and bureaucratic obstacles faced by small-scale urban farms, operated both under for-profit and not-for-profit models, appears to stand at odds with the experience of larger commercial scale farming operations cropping up in the city.
In November, Gotham Greens, an urban agriculture company based out of New York, opened its second Chicago location in Pullman. The company states the new 100,000 square foot greenhouse — its second in Pullman and sixth overall — will increase its overall output of herbs and lettuce, which will jump to 11 million heads harvested yearly in the city, and round out its total number of Chicago employees to 100.
Since opening its first greenhouse in 2011, Gotham Greens has presented a relatively rare story in the blooming commercial urban agriculture industry: one of profitability. In fact, the company claims to be so successful that it has been profitable since its first operating year, according to the Chicago Tribune. To contrast, a 2016 study from the British Food Journal suggests that two thirds of American urban farmers fail to make a living wage.
Mark Thomas, the co-founder of Garfield Produce Company, a for-profit hydroponic farm in East Garfield Park opened in 2014, explains how Gotham Greens’ relatively smooth path to profitability is rare among urban farming operations.
“Basic expenses within the city are very high,” says Thomas. “[Gotham Greens] was able to get some significant breaks and grants from the city to do that. And that is probably one of the things that helps reduce those costs. The other thing is they have a record of being able to grow, to produce crops and they have a history now producing, so they're able to get financing.”
Thomas, a former Certified Public Accountant, says among the heftiest expenses levied on urban agriculture are rent, electricity and employee wages, costs that can be crippling to many farmers. He expects Garfield Produce Company to be profitable within the next six to eight months, a feat Thomas partially credits to his own background in accounting and his wife and co-founder Judy Thomas’s experience as a corporate lawyer.
However, he also acknowledges that capital can be elusive for most urban farmers, especially those operating with social objectives beyond making a profit.
“Most urban farms have no idea because they don't have the financial background and they don't track things like a CPA would. There's always a focus just on trying to survive and get through the day,” he says. “Laws are not really set up perfectly, both legally and from a tax standpoint, to handle social enterprise.”
While established commercial-scale greenhouse facilities like Gotham Greens have a clear economic pull with promises of profitability, job creation and agricultural innovation, it brings into question how these types of operations fit into the city’s larger urban farming community.
Danielle Perry, the executive director of Growing Home, a USDA certified organic nonprofit farm in Englewood with a focus on employment training, explains how Gotham Greens presence has weaved its way into Growing Home’s operations.
“Obviously, we can’t produce enough greens to compete with them,” Perry says. “But rather than seeing them as a competitor, we’re working in concert with them.”
According to Perry, seven graduates of Growing Home’s job training program, which prepares those with employment barriers for jobs within the food and produce industry, have gone on to work for Gotham Greens. She notes that the graduates are paid well above minimum wage with some taking management positions in the greenhouses.
May Tsupros, co-founder of the nonprofit Gardeneers, which works with schools in the South and West Sides to involve and educate students in the building and maintenance of school gardens, says she hopes Gotham Greens will help facilitate a larger conversation about the economic legitimacy of urban farming.
“If we can create real revenue and real economy around those spaces, then communities will see farming and urban farming as a viable job,” Tsupros says “We will create more farmers and we will begin to revere that job as something really important. I truly believe local and hyperlocal food systems are the answer to a lot of our problems.”
Among its promises of locally and sustainably grown and distributed produce alongside year-round harvests, companies like Gotham Greens also have the draw of being a potential economic force for neighborhoods in the throes of major revitalization efforts, such as Pullman.
Gotham Greens entered Pullman after being sold land in the neighborhood by nonprofit Chicago Neighborhood initiatives, which holds a mission to “revitalize neighborhoods and create jobs by developing high impact projects, providing financial resources to entrepreneurs and sustaining long-term community partnerships.”
Perry says she hopes Growing Home can foster a greater working relationship with Gotham Greens and continue creating opportunities for the people who come out of their employment programs. However, she also notes how invaluable the type of support surrounding the openings of Gotham Greens Pullman locations would be for Growing Home.
“To see what’s happening in Pullman, imagine if something like that happened on this side of town in Englewood,” Perry says. “We have a big block of city… that we own. We just don’t have the investors for it yet or the money to build on it, but we would love to produce a building where we can have a larger classroom size and to have more people in our program to be able to sell produce right out of the front of it”
As a for-profit organization within the relatively young controlled environment agriculture industry, companies like Gotham Greens often turn to selling produce at a premium to offset high operating costs, with products then being sold in grocery stores. This business model, Tsupros says, limits the fresh produce access in underserved neighborhoods, where grocery stores are typically hard to find.
“Grocery stores have low margins anyways, or very small margins of profit, so they come to North Lawndale and they think there’s so much crime, nobody’s going to want to shop here anyways, it‘s too pricey, people will steal and then what small margins we already have will become nothing,” she says. “So, it’s built on structural racism and thoughts and fears of specific communities”
Microgreens at Garfield Produce Company are maintained by eight employees, half of whom have felonies or are formerly incarcerated. Its produce has an average growing time of 10 days.
Growing Home currently sells its produce at markets in Logan Square and Lincoln Park, with bunches of collard greens and kale priced at $3. But in Englewood, Perry says these prices are reduced to $1.50, or $0.75 with an Illinois Link Card, in an effort to make fresh produce more accessible to residents.
“I vehemently reject the idea that there’s not a demand. People feel that this community doesn’t want healthy produce or doesn't eat healthy or will not buy it if they had access to it and that’s absolutely not true. I think it’s our responsibility to bring it to them,” she says.
Calvert says the scale of Gotham Greens makes the company stand out from most of AUA’s members. However, she says any organization that focuses on sustainably producing fresh leafy greens aligns itself with the overall mission of urban agriculture in Chicago.
“We’re supportive of Gotham Greens,” she says. “We recognize that they play an important role in providing jobs and providing a local food source year round. But we know … that there’s more need for us to support the smaller growers and try and figure out capital on a smaller level. But I think it’s all needed.”