East Setauket 'vertical' farm owner ready to expand but exploring sites outside Brookhaven Town

An East Setauket "vertical" farm where crops are grown inside shipping containers has become so successful that its owner says he is ready to expand and move elsewhere.

Ryan McGann told Newsday his HydrOrganic Farms — which has upset some neighbors, leading to a change in a Brookhaven Town zoning code — has outgrown the backyard of his 1-acre residential plot on Main Street, and he is exploring larger sites outside of Brookhaven.

"This is just the first step in many future expansions," McGann said last week. "The demand is enormous, which is why we’re expanding at a more rapid rate."

McGann, 37, said he started the farm with three steel containers in late 2020 after leaving a career as a tech entrepreneur. He runs the operation with his wife, Aneta.

They grow mostly lettuce and basil in a process that McGann said is pesticide-free and uses very little water. Irrigation is collected from natural condensation and drips from air-conditioning units, and then recycled, he said.

"In the summer, we actually harvest more water than we need from the ambient environment," McGann said.

He said he sells his produce to local restaurants and recently struck a deal with a major distributor to market his food to supermarket chains.

"This is not going to replace traditional farming," McGann said, adding vertical farming is a year-round industry. "It’s 65 and sunny in the farm all year."

But some East Setauket residents and civic leaders raised concerns about the operation shortly after it started. Some said McGann had exploited Brookhaven’s farmland bill of rights, intended to encourage farming, by installing metal boxes in a mostly residential neighborhood where special zoning preserves the community’s historic character.

"They’re unsightly," Three Village Civic Association president George Hoffman, speaking at an Oct. 21 Brookhaven Town Board public hearing, said of the containers. "It looks like an industrial site and it really has impacted the quality of life in the neighborhood."

The board voted 7-0 that night to alter the farmland bill of rights by imposing stricter restrictions on greenhouses, including the containers.

McGann told Newsday he didn’t break any laws. "I always do everything by the book," he said, adding the flap was one of several reasons he planned to leave Brookhaven.

Town Councilman Jonathan Kornreich last week called the farm "the right activity but in the wrong place."

"I think that the practice itself is really interesting and exciting," Kornreich told Newsday. "[But] you can’t put a shipping container in your backyard and use it as a shed."

Bill Zalakar, president of the Long Island Farm Bureau, said vertical farms are a small but growing part of Long Island agriculture and that local zoning codes don’t yet address the practice.

"The bottom line is it is happening on a major scale, not just here in Brookhaven and Suffolk County, but it is happening on a major scale in the United States," Zalakar said. "It’s so new that there are very little codes or regulations on it, and that’s where some of the problems arise."

By Carl MacGowan

carl.macgowan@newsday.comCarlMacGowan

Carl MacGowan is a Long Island native who covers Brookhaven Town after having previously covered Smithtown, Suffolk County courts and numerous spot news and feature stories over his 20-plus year career at Newsday.