Hi! This is Ryan Morningstar, Miles Crettien, Peter Spartos and Jacob Hill. Together, we founded VertiCulture Farms, an urban aquaponics farming startup based in Brooklyn, NY. We are agriculture professionals with expertise in ecological design, fish and plant biology, economics and business.

In January 2012, we met for the first time at Jimmy’s 43 in Manhattan to discuss the feasibility of building an aquaponic farm in NYC. We bonded over our desire to produce an agricultural system that was both socially and environmentally sustainable, replicable in urban environments and Jimmy’s great beer selection! After that meeting, VertiCulture was born.

In May, 2012, we built our first farm on the rooftop of a building in Downtown Brooklyn (raising over 100 tilapia and donating all our produce to a local non-profit MARP). We then set our sites on building a state-of-the-art, year-round aquaponic research farm on the roof of the old Pfizer building in Bedstuy, Brooklyn. This farm will allow us to test and monitor various parameters which we will use to scale our operation. We will sell all fish and produce grown in this facility in the NYC market and within the Pfizer building directly; creating both a closed loop agricultural and economic model within a highly innovative food incubator space.

Our dream is to build NYC’s first commercial-scale aquaponic farm. This 10,000 sqft aquaponic greenhouse will produce nearly 60,000 pounds of fresh herbs and greens and raise over 14,000 pounds of fresh fish annually using our patented vertical growing technologies and advanced recirculating aquaculture system. Our fish and vegetables will reach hundreds to thousands of NYC community members through sale to restaurants and other retail outlets around the city, as well as through markets that serve diverse populations allowing us to impact a wide range of clientele and build a more resilient food system in NYC locally.