It was 2013 when Jason Green, Matt La Rosa and Ben Silverman built Edenworks by hand, an aquaponic greenhouse designed to grow herbs on your rooftop.

"We're seeing distributed power happening through solar and wind, and the next thing that really needs to become distributed is food production," Jason Green, Edenworks co-founder and CEO said in a report from Tech Crunch.

Edenworks applies the idea of vertical farming in which vegetables are grown in an urban setting, specifically on vertical surfaces.

The five-tier rows of herbs don't plant with soil and are sustained by fish manure. Behind it is a 250-gallon tank that contains fish and prawns. The wastewater from the fish is converted as plant food for the herbs.

The crops filter the fertilizer before the water is returned to fish tanks. So the process for producing crops were all-natural.

The team uses sensors to monitor the temperature of the environment and water chemistry. Data is sent to the Edenworks Farm Management System in real-time, which could be accessed through a PC or smartphone.

In turn, farmers could identify necessary adjustments as the app could project and suggest the right task for growing plants like how many seedlings to transplant in one day in a specific row, how much fertilizer to put in and the harvest date.

The aquaponics consumes 90% less water and energy than conventional farming. A 75,000 square-foot rooftop could supply 5000 people.

Green is a bioengineer. He designed a virtual reality rehabilitation system for people with damaged brain before working on with the food supply startup. His passion for food and scientific research leads him to build Edenworks, as read on the official website.

At present, Green's wife and Edenworks Head of Nutrition wrote they provide free tours on the Farmlab every Thursday, cited in her blog.

The startup supplies two New York restaurants to pay for the costs. The system had recorded 200 crops. Green says their produce has a higher quality since they are more flavorful and healthier than those that came from the farmlands.