S4E4: Growing Food Where Community Happens
What if the modern version of a UK allotment isn’t a patch of land—but a classroom?
In this episode of Sustainability Forward, we speak with Alex Tyink, co-founder and CEO of Fork Farms, whose unlikely journey from opera singer to urban farmer began on a rooftop in Brooklyn—and turned into a mission focused on food access with dignity.
We explore why food is one of the most practical entry points into sustainability: it’s daily, personal, and deeply connected to health, community, and resilience. Alex explains why Fork Farms focuses on enabling others to grow (rather than operating farms themselves), why highly perishable foods like leafy greens matter most, and what changes when students grow food that ends up on the school lunch line.
We also get into the real-world side of scaling: what breaks in deployments, how you design for people who have never grown anything, and where AI can genuinely help day-to-day operators without becoming hype.
In this conversation:
Alex’s Brooklyn rooftop turning point—and how growing food reshaped purpose and wellbeing
Food access beyond price and calories: dignity, trust, and control
Why schools are the best place to start—and what happens when kids eat what they grow
Scaling distributed indoor growing without the “giant vertical farm” trap
Where automation and AI can improve consistency and operational confidence
If you’re looking for sustainability that feels human, practical, and achievable, this episode is for you.
Founder & CEO, Fork Farms
Alex is the co-founder of Fork Farms and the inventor of its farming technology and methods. He is a former opera singer with 10 years of leadership experience in the social service sector, who works to inspire vast food system change across communities.
He began his urban agriculture career in Brooklyn, New York where he first worked on rooftop gardens and then started building indoor growing systems of his own for educational and food security purposes. This eventually led to the development of Fork Farms intellectual property, and the rest is history.
After relocating back to Wisconsin, Alex continued his work as program director at Goodwill Industries of North Central Wisconsin and as director of innovation and programs for Feeding America Eastern Wisconsin. In 2018, he was a Fox Cities Future 15 winner and featured as Fox Cities Magazine’s ‘Big Idea’.
Alex currently lives in Appleton, Wisconsin with his wife, son and their dog Maya.
