The Oko Farms Aquaponics Education Center located at 104 Moore Street, Brooklyn. It is the only outdoor aquaponics farm in New York City. The farm was established in 2013 and serves as a production, research and education farm. It’s an incredibly interesting and fun place to be, and they’re expanding to another site in Weeksville soon.
Their stated mission is twofold:
1.Practice and promote aquaponics as a sustainable farming method that mitigates the impact of climate change, and increases food security for New York City.
2. Spread the knowledge and skills required to practice aquaponics farming by educating children and adults of all racial and socio-economic backgrounds.
A little primer from The Aquaponic Source website in case you’re not sure what aquaponics is. I wasn’t until I visited Oko Farms!
Many definitions of aquaponics recognize the ‘ponics’ part of this word for hydroponics which is growing plants in water with a soil-less media. Literally speaking, Aquaponics is putting fish to work. It just so happens that the work those fish do (eating and producing waste), is the perfect fertilizer for growing plants. Aquaponics represents the relationship between water, aquatic life, bacteria, nutrient dynamics, and plants which grow together in waterways all over the world. Taking cues from nature, aquaponics harnesses the power of bio-integrating these individual components: Exchanging the waste by-product from the fish as a food for the bacteria, to be converted into a perfect fertilizer for the plants, to return the water in a clean and safe form to the fish.
The Aquaponic Source
I visited Oko farms at the end of 2016 interview the founder and director, Yemi Amu, for a podcast I made called ‘Maeve in America: Immigration IRL.’ This was a podcast about immigrants, in our own voices. Yemi featured in “The Yemi Episode: Coming To America” where we discussed her immigration from Lagos, Nigeria to New York City as a teenager, her eating disorder, and her path to becoming one of the city’s leading aquaponics experts and a committed educator. Thinking on it now, I wonder if disordered eating intersects with climate injustice in that colonialism and capitalism contribute massively to both. In striving for some impossible idea of constant growth and perfection, we harm what already serves us well and keeps us alive: our bodies in the former, and the latter, the planet.
Of the Climate Action Lab videos we watched, one of the participants really stood out to me. Saara Nafici from Value Added Farms in Red Hook, Brooklyn spoke about that two site urban farm project as a “space of joy” for the young people that work there, what the Lab summarizes as “providing a kind of collective psychic and spiritual sustenance in tandem with the healthy products grown and distributed by the farms themselves.”
Oko Farms echoes this message, that joy is an important part of their work, saying in a recent post about growing jute:
“It is a great opportunity to be able to grow food that sparks joy in people, connects them to home, and reflect our diverse food cultures.”
Oko Farms has had a vigorous response to the recent shifts in the Black Lives Matter movement, using their social media to support and expand on the BLM message. This includes educational posts about Juneteenth as well as fundraising and distributing funds to pertinent black organizations and individuals, like ‘Gardens Not Guns’ with the goal of getting money directly into the hands of BIPOC land stewards, healers, community gardens and mutual aid organizations.
This summer the farm is largely closed to visitors due to COVID-19, meaning no workshops or tours like they usually host, but they still harvest and sell food at local Brooklyn food markets.
The best place to follow them right now is Instagram.
Wow, what I great story! I just followed Oko Farm on Instagram. Last year, I visited the Teaching Garden at Governors Island, and they have a *tiny* aquaponics farm. They usually bring groups of young people in to tour and work the garden. Unfortunately, the garden seems to be closed now, but you can follow their work digitally: https://www.grownyc.org/gardens/manhattan/governors-island-teaching-garden
Oh great! Thank you. Sad that the gardens are largely closed, but cool to see they’ve amped up food production!
I didn’t know about aquaponics and now I want to know everything about it! Just watched “The Biggest Little Farm” and it is so true that the people who work on farms/ lands that are meaningful and respectful of how the ecosystem works in tandem to achieve harmony are full of joy and draw much happiness from the work. So inspiring!
Sites like this are so important and make such a difference at the local level. Thank you for sharing their work!
Love this! Thanks for sharing. I really believe wholeheartedly in these types of local and bio-integrated farming operations which is why I am a member of a CSA based on the East End of Long Island and do my best to buy the large majority of my food locally, non-GMO, humane, etc.
Watching Food Inc. was really upsetting to see the treatment of the animals in the American corporate agricultural industry, how out of touch with the sources and production of food our society has become, and the veil of diversity in our supermarkets promoting hyper-consumerism. Not to mention the insane amount of food waste as Carol had discussed in a previous post. I loved the Biggest Little Farm and really hope that awareness about the troubles of Big Ag (including GHG emissions!) and a shift towards sustainable farming operations continues to increase in this county.
This is an awesome post and very informative! Once the pandemic clears, I will definitely visit Oko farms! In reading your post, I couldn’t help but link the Aquaponics with the Gaia hypothesis, as Aquaponics harnesses the type of self-regulating, self-sustaining bond organisms have with their environment that the Gaia hypothesis professes.
I also find it wonderful that a farm will open a new location in Weeksville. Considering the rich history of the neighborhood (it was founded by free African Americans in the early 18th century) and the relatively low presence of gentrification (the heritage institution in Weeksville is Brooklyn’s first black city-funded cultural institution: https://www.bkreader.com/2019/06/16/weeksville-becomes-bklyns-first-black-city-funded-cultural-institution/), Weeksville is an amazing place to place another site of this farm!