The Cityscape Farms Story
From Mike Yohay, CEO:
"Growing up in Brooklyn, NY, I didn’t have a clue where my food came from. Like most city dwellers I felt disconnected from the environment and my impact on it. Years later I had two pivotal experiences that shaped my viewpoint on agriculture. The first was attending college in Iowa, where I witnessed topsoil depletion and environmental pollution from large-scale corn, soy, and livestock agribusiness. The second was living in La Amistad rainforest in Costa Rica, where for a year I managed an eco-lodge and participated in low impact organic farming that supported our local community. Looking critically at these two extremes, I became determined to find a happy medium: a modern way to feed people on a large scale without spoiling the land, air and water.
My solution is Cityscape Farms.
By growing fresh food within just a few miles of where it will be eaten, we will have healthier, better tasting produce and make our cities cleaner and more self-sufficient."
"Growing up in Brooklyn, NY, I didn’t have a clue where my food came from. Like most city dwellers I felt disconnected from the environment and my impact on it. Years later I had two pivotal experiences that shaped my viewpoint on agriculture. The first was attending college in Iowa, where I witnessed topsoil depletion and environmental pollution from large-scale corn, soy, and livestock agribusiness. The second was living in La Amistad rainforest in Costa Rica, where for a year I managed an eco-lodge and participated in low impact organic farming that supported our local community. Looking critically at these two extremes, I became determined to find a happy medium: a modern way to feed people on a large scale without spoiling the land, air and water.
My solution is Cityscape Farms.
By growing fresh food within just a few miles of where it will be eaten, we will have healthier, better tasting produce and make our cities cleaner and more self-sufficient."
Above is a picture of Mike’s maternal grandparents from Ovindoli, a small mountain town in the Abruzzo region of Italy. After WWII they immigrated across the Atlantic and eventually landed in Buffalo, NY.
They left their native Italy behind for the promise of a better life for themselves and their family. Everything in the New World was different, but they never gave up their love of homegrown food. Check out those tomato plants!
Mike was inspired by his grandparents’ resourcefulness and how they adapted to become urban farmers.
It is with this spirit of connecting his family farming tradition with the modern, urbanized world that Mike created Cityscape Farms.
They left their native Italy behind for the promise of a better life for themselves and their family. Everything in the New World was different, but they never gave up their love of homegrown food. Check out those tomato plants!
Mike was inspired by his grandparents’ resourcefulness and how they adapted to become urban farmers.
It is with this spirit of connecting his family farming tradition with the modern, urbanized world that Mike created Cityscape Farms.
