Find a roof for your urban agriculture business

Seglet – revenue from rooftops.

Owners – How can I profit from my roof?

For owners of property: Seglet is your opportunity to make money from your unused rooftop space. Your roof space is now valuable. Companies or individuals may rent, lease, or engage in a partnership with you for Solar Panels, Vegetable Gardens, Wind Energy, or Creative Uses.

Agriculture Flat Lease
With a flat lease, the commercial agriculturalist will rent the space from a property owner, then produce the food and sell to local grocery stores, farmers markets, Walmarts, and restaurants.

Agriculture Profit Share
With a profit share, the commercial agriculturalist will split the profits of the produce sold with the owner of the property. There are many arrangements within this, some that involve some upfront cost for the owner, and some that don’t involve an upfront cost.

It depends on the size of the project and the business model of the commercial agriculturalist. If it is a restaurant that is hosting the commercial agriculture on the roof, the restaurant may receive extremely well priced produce (picked fresh that day) and will be able to use the garden for marketing purposes to customers as the arrangement. Again, it really depends as the details are discussed with the real estate owner and commercial agriculturalist to find the best fit to benefit both.

Urban Agriculture
Urban Agriculture, also known as Urban Farming or Urban Gardening, is a relatively new and emerging industry for food production in the United States. Michelle Obama, first lady of the US, highlighted the importance of Urban Agriculture when she installed a farm on the white house lawn in March of 2009.

The basic concept is to produce agriculture within city or suburban areas in order to sell to the population nearby. The average food in the US travels 14 days before it arrives at the destination for a point of sale. Transportation both increases the carbon footprint of the food produced, and increases the cost of the produce. Distributed agriculture, much like distributed solar, is a method of looking at rooftops and open space to produce what a population needs in close proximity to the population.

The encouragement of urban agriculture development comes from both policies on curbing “grey zones” (areas in cities where residents have no or limited access to produce), as well as city incentives for green roofs (city gives tax break or pays for some of installation). Green roofs is a term for putting plants (food producing or non food producing plants) on a roof so that when it rains, the rain water absorbs instead of running off the building creating storm water pollution. Additionally, green roofs stop the city from trapping heat from the sun, helping cool down the city. And finally, green roofs also help the building underneath with cooling the building.

There are two main types of structures for segment use: Flat Lease or Profit Share.

See the Seglet website here.