Gro-op

Come buy our produce and support local food vendors at this awesome event on January 30th! You can chat with our Worker Owners and learn more about what we do while getting the freshest produce in Buffalo. It will be a COVID compliant event so bring a mask. We hope to see you there!

We’re proud to be a member of this great group of farmers, educators, and community organizations. Check out this amazing video to learn about some of the local urban farmers in Buffalo!

Closed Loop Sustainability is our Goal. We are experimenting with different ways to grow food for our fish that uses their waste water. We are growing Daphnia In the glass tank and Duckweed in the plastic bins. We’re studying the best ways to grow each of them using our fish waste. Our goal is to substitute 50-60% of their diet with these organisms and plants. #sustainability #aquaponicsfarm #closedloop #ecosystem #biology #buffalovefoodie #scienceisfun #716buffalo #verticalfarm #ubanfarming

Want some Rainbow Chard? We’re selling the last 15-20 bunches we have so we can switch out the crop for Spearamint. If you’d like to buy some they are $2 a bunch and we can deliver. You can comment below, message us, or email at [email protected].

Today we found a Tilapia baby in the reservoir that our basil towers drain into. That means the baby tilapia traveled through our filtration, through our water pumps, through our basil roots and ended up in this reservoir months ago. It’s amazing to see that it survived with just whatever food it found from our plant water. Life finds a way! #aquaponicsfarm #fishery #ecology #naturelovers

Our new White Nile Tilapia are ALWAYS hungry and grow 2x as fast as the others. These guys are making our plants look better than ever!! #aquaponicsfarm #verticalfarm #buffalovefoodie #716buffalo #urbanfarm #aquaculture #buffalocal #localfood

Urban Agriculture is growing in Buffalo! On Monday, CCE-Erie joined in on a tour of urban farms hosted by the Greater Buffalo Urban Growers (GBUG), a collective... of urban farmers and agriculture service professionals that are working under the Food Policy Council of Buffalo and Erie County. Stops included: Gro-op, Common Roots Urban Farm, Groundwork Market Garden, Brewster Street Farm - Journey's End Refugee Agricultural Program, Grassroots Gardens, and Urban Fruits & Veggies! Throughout the tour we learned more about urban food production, barriers to urban farming, how growers have pivoted to different markets in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, and most importantly, how CCE-Erie can continue to help these farmers grow their businesses and support their neighbors. To learn more about how CCE-Erie has helped grow Buffalo’s urban agriculture community, visit: http://erie.cce.cornell.edu/resou/cce-and-urban-agriculture Other folks that joined in on the tour were representatives from the Buffalo Common Council, New York Farm Bureau, Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), Farm Credit East, ACA, the Erie County Department of Environment and Planning , Harvest New York, CCE Cornell Vegetable Program, and Gail Wells from Buffalo Freedom Gardens. Photos by John Whitney.

It was great to have our Buffalo Fillmore District Council Member Mitch Nowakowski at our tour that was hosted by Greater Buffalo Urban Growers today! We’re grateful to have had everyone come and see our business and support all of the amazing Urban Farms on the tour.

Jay has been one of our customers from the very beginning. He’s a great guy and we’re glad he thinks our basil is good enough for the perfection that are his pizza’s. We’re glad to see him get the recognition he deserves. Order some of his deliciousness today!

We have an amazing group of students this year!

We’re super excited to have the Sr. Green Team from GROUNDWORK Buffalo back again! We have a few students back for another year and all together a great group of hard working youth. Its more important now than ever before to teach the next generation how to sustainably farm and create a co-operative economy in Buffalo. It’s going to be a great summer! #aquaponics #buffalovefoodie #workercoop #716buffalo #buffalo716 #localfarmslocalfood #farmtotable #buffalostrong #ubanfarmer @ Niagara Frontier Food Terminal

Even though we grow indoors inevitably around this time of year some uninvited guest makes their way into our farm. This year we’re releasing Assassin Bugs to thin out our thrip and fungus gnat visitors. This little friend is a generalist like lady bugs that will snack on most uninvited guests. Stay tuned to see other beneficial predators we will be releasing in our space. #aquaponicsfarm #buffalovefoodie #716buffalo #pestsbegone @ Niagara Frontier Food Terminal

Please support our partner!

We’re harvesting some SPICY Arugula to sell at our Cooperative Partner Farm @5loavesfarm tomorrow morning. Let us know what you think...

When the pandemic closed the restaurants we were nervous about how we’d sell our basil. Thanks to @freshfixwny @producepeddlers @lexingtoncoop & @eaco_op we sold 400 bags of basil this week!! Thanks Buffalo for keeping our business going during COVID19!