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NEW YORK (FOX 5 NEWS) - JetBlue is now going green with its new T5 Farm at its JFK Terminal. This new space will promote New York agriculture and aims to enhance the traveler experience by tapping into the organic community.
"Everyone likes fresh food, everyone likes green space, so why wouldn't you put those things at an airport?" said Sophia Mendelsohn, head of sustainability for JetBlue. "JFK is basically a small city. There are tens of thousands of people working here, millions of travelers and customers coming through. If this is what we love at home, let's put it here as well." [SEE PHOTO GALLERY]
There were 3,000 crates of potato plants, herbs, and produce such as spinach, basil, and even lavender. This is a full working farm being handled by farm manager Katrina Ceguera.
"Everything from planting, transplanting, pruning, harvesting, watering, pest management," Eguera said. "The whole gamut of what farming is."
The T5 Farm completes a full cycle of food production through composting. Every day JetBlue takes 300 pounds of leftover food from the terminal restaurants to an organic farm in the Hudson Valley. Organic soil from the farm is then brought back to the T5 Farm to grow potatoes and produce.
The herbs and produce will be used in some of the terminal's restaurants. The thousands of blue potatoes grown at the T5 Farm will eventually find their way on board flights.
"Every bag of Terra chips that's served on Jet Blue has a few potatoes in it. Most of them are grown in family farms around the country," said Jared Simon, senior executive of marketing for Hain Celestial. "But what we did here is bring some of those blue potatoes into this urban farm, and over time we're hoping to incorporate some of those potatoes into the bags on flight."
Items from the T5 Farm will also be donated to local food pantries and schools. And by spring, GrowNYC plans to have educational programming at the farm.