Square Roots

Brooklyn, New York | EST. 2016

Learn all about Square Roots' contribution to changing the food system in the United States with the use of 10 Freight Farms’ Leafy Green Machines. By making fresh and local produce available in the urban jungle of New York, they're helping to exact a lasting change on how we grow and source food.

The Square roots Mission

Square Roots was founded in response to the rise of an industrial food system that focuses on producing and selling high-calorie, low-nutrition food options. With the expansion of industrial food production, consumers have seen greater food-related health problems (obesity, diabetes, etc.) while also experiencing a profound disconnect with the their foods' production. 

This disconnect motivated Kimbal Musk–co-founder of The Kitchen and Elon Musk's younger brother–and Tobias Peggs to team up to create Square Roots. Square Roots is an urban farming accelerator that was started with 10 of Freight Farms’ Leafy Green Machines with the purpose of empowering more young farmers to be leaders and reformers of the farm-to-table movement.

Square Roots’ Work with Freight Farms

The idea for Square Roots was born when Brad and Kimbal met in Chicago at The Kitchen in early 2016. Kimbal told Brad about his idea to create a program that would train and support young people to operate their own urban farming businesses.

Kimbal had the idea, but needed the platform. Freight Farms was an obvious choice for a partnership: With dozens of farming entrepreneurs already operating container farms successfully across the country, Freight Farms had the perfect product to meet Kimbal's initial needs. The biggest perk? The container farms arrived fully assembled, meaning that the Square Roots, with no previous hydroponic farming knowledge, simply had to connect the containers to water and electricity to start operating the farms. By November 2016, Square Roots was up and running with 10 container farms from Freight Farms.

The lost generation of farmers

The "lost" generation of farmers isn't lost: It just look different from the farmers of the last century. We explore modern day farmers from Square Roots, Amazon, Freight Farms, NASA, and others who are going to feed the world in new and unexpected ways. 

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Q&A with Square Roots Entrepreneur

We sat down with Nabeela Lakhani to learn about how she became a Square Roots entrepreneur, what her plans are post-"graduation", and how she feels that everyone can make a small change to bring bigger reform to the food system. 

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Square Roots Launch Announcement

The original announcement of Square Roots as our new partner from Nov. 2016! Square Roots launched with the goal to facilitate the creation of forward-thinking companies that strengthen communities by bringing local, real food to everyone. Almost two years later, they're well on their way to achieving their goal.

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In the Press: Square Roots