Elon Musk's brother ventures into vertical farming

Elon Musk is not the only one in his family to be concerned with the future of the planet. His brother, Kimbal Musk, co-founded The Kitchen a decade ago, "to play a role in the real food revolution". Now, he's introducing a new company under the Kitchen umbrella: Square Roots.

"Square Roots is an urban farming accelerator — empowering 1,000’s of millennials to join the real food revolution. Our goal is to enable a whole new generation of real food entrepreneurs, ready to build thriving, responsible businesses. The opportunities in front of them will be endless.

"Square Roots creates campuses of climate-controlled, indoor, hydroponic vertical farms, right in the hearts of our biggest cities. On these campuses, we train young entrepreneurs to grow non-GMO, fresh, tasty, real food all year round, and sell locally. And we coach them to create forward-thinking companies that — like The Kitchen — strengthen communities by bringing local, real food to everyone.

"Leveraging proven technologies like Freight Farms and ZipGrow, Square Roots’ vertical farms are literally built inside shipping containers. They essentially enable three-dimensional growing — giving farmers the annual yield equivalent of two acres of outdoor farmland inside a climate-controlled module with a footprint of barely 320 sq. ft. These systems also use 80% less water than outdoor farms. That’s the potential for a lot of real food grown in a very small space using very few resources."

Read the whole story in Kimbal's words at his blog.