New York, Apr 30 (AFP) The urban farm craze is finding fertile ground in New York, where 10 young entrepreneurs are learning to grow greens and herbs without soil, bathed in an indoor, psychedelic light.

In a “hothouse” of invention in a Brooklyn car park, each farms a container, growing plants and vying for local clients in the heady atmosphere of a start-up, fighting against industrially grown food, shipped over thousands of miles.

Meet the farmer-entrepreneurs at Square Roots, a young company with a sharp eye for the kind of marketing that helps make Brooklyn a center of innovation well-equipped to ride the wave of new trends.

“It is not just another Brooklyn hipster thing. There is no doubt the local real food movement is a mega-trend,” says Tobias Peggs, one of the co-founders, a 45-year-old from Britain who previously worked in software.

“If you are 20 today, food is bigger than the internet was 20 years ago when we got on it,” he adds. “Consumers want trust, they want to know their farmers.”

He set up Square Roots with Kimbal Musk, brother of Tesla Motors billionaire Elon, and they have been training 10 recruits since November.

Already well-established in parts of Europe — the Netherlands in particular — the technology is still being pioneered in the United States.

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