Elon Musk's Bro Launches Crop Tracker From His Bed-Stuy Farm

BEDFORD-STUYVESANT, BROOKLYN -- The same day Elon Musk unveiled a neon-green, ride-like tunnel meant to battle traffic the bowels of L.A., his brother Kimbal announced his Bed-Stuy-based farm would battle another green beast: romaine.

Square Roots, an urban farming company run by the Musk, is now selling its greens with a matrix barcode that allows shoppers to look up where the herbs were grown, when they were harvested, and who the farmer was.

"Consumers across the country are demanding greater transparency into where and how their food is grown," Musk wrote on Medium. "Here’s how Square Roots is going to get Americans to trust their food again."

Musk's #KnowYourFarmer scan was inspired by the recent e. coli scare that sent Americans across the country dumping their romaine into the garbage, he said.

The farming entrepreneur cast blame on the lack of transparency in an industrialized food industry that prioritizes transportation over nutrition, he said.

"Products are often shipped in from thousands of miles away, taking weeks or even months to get to the store," he said.

"And as we have seen recently with the Romaine Lettuce recall, the total lack of transparency makes Industrial Food impossible to trust."

Musk's company connects farmers with local retailers and restaurants, provides them a hydroponic, indoor growing space on Flushing and Tompkins Avenue, and develops technology to assist urban farmers and collect data on their progress.

And while the company puts its focus on high-tech solutions to improve urban farming, it did not take a complicated data set or futuristic robots to realize what most Americans want is food without e. coli in it.

"What people want to know, simply, is where and how was my food grown and who grew it," Musk said. "With that information, they can make their own informed choices about whether to trust the food and whether to buy it."

Photo courtesy of Square Roots