A potato grows in Queens.
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The airline JetBlue may be famous for distributing Terra-brand blue chips to passengers, but its Kennedy International Airport terminal in New York City is now a decidedly different color: green. The airline has taken a once-empty expanse of concrete just outside a moving walkway and transformed it into the T5 Farm. (JetBlue is housed in Kennedy’s Terminal 5.)
The farm, consisting of 2,228 soil-filled crates, grows 26 varieties of plants, The New York Times reports, including kale, dill, mint, arugula and, yes, blue potatoes. Snack maker Terra, which has partnered with JetBlue on the project, is hoping the T5 Farm can produce up to 1,000 pounds of those starchy, blue ‘taters per harvest, to be transformed into the chips that JetBlue serves on its flights.
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“If it sounds crazy from the outside, it sounds mind-blowingly dumb inside an airport community,” Sophia Mendelsohn, JetBlue's manager of sustainability, told NPR blog The Salt last month. “A lot of people raised their eyebrows.”
Though passengers will not be invited to peruse or sample the farm’s goods as they wait for their flights, Mendelsohn tells The Salt that the 24,000-square-foot space will be open to JetBlue employees. Eventually, the airline hopes to coordinate with local schools so that students can treat the farm as a living classroom. For now, extra produce is donated to local food banks.
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(Via SocialEarth)
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