AGRIBUSINESS
MONTRÉAL, HOME OF ROOFTOP FARMS AND VINEYARDS! BY PIERRE THÉROUX, JOURNALIST
The harvest was particularly good last summer: just over 2.5 tons of tomatoes, eggplant, sweet peppers, chili peppers, runner beans, zucchini, lettuce, bok choy, kholrabi cabbage, radishes, cucumbers, peas, carrots and fennel… all of it grown downtown on the roof of the Palais des congrès!
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he vegetables, grown in less than 660 m2 of soil (roughly 6,500 sq. ft.), are an indication that urban agriculture is clearly on the rise in Montréal. While the city has a long tradition of community gardens, urban agriculture is not a leisure activity but decidedly a commercial endeavour. It is also increasingly important, for as the pandemic and its containment have demonstrated, it is "a key element in bringing the places of production and consumption closer together, thus ensuring greater local food security," notes Jean-Philippe Vermette, co-founder and the director of intervention and public policy at the Urban Agriculture Laboratory that supervises the operations of the experimental farm at Palais des congrès. Most of the harvest is delivered to the Carrefour alimentaire Centre-Sud food bank, an organization that supports "the development of a local, ecological and solidarity-based food system" according to its website, and much of it is then sold at the Marché solidaire Frontenac. FRESH FOOD STRAIGHT FROM… THE ROOF Montréal is a city where urban agriculture is very popular, thanks in no small part to Lufa Farms, an urban agriculture company that over the past 10 years has shown that this is a viable form of agriculture, and actively encourages its expansion and development. In 2011 the 30-year-old Montréal entrepreneur Mohamed Hage founded Lufa and set up the
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world’s first commercial rooftop greenhouse farm. The 2880 m2 (31,000 sq. ft. ) greenhouse is located in the Ahuntsic-Cartierville borough. Since then, the firm has built three more even bigger greenhouses. The one in Ville St. Laurent was inaugurated in summer 2020 and measures some 15,236 m2 (164,000 sq. ft.), the equivalent of three football fields.
MONTRÉAL ECONOMIC POWERHOUSE : : SPRING 2021 EDITION
URBAN AGRICULTURE LABORATORY
JEAN-PHILIPPE VERMETTE Co-founder and director of intervention and public policy Urban Agriculture Laboratory
