A look at urban agriculture in Montreal on CBC’s ‘The Nature of Things’ with David and Sarika Suzuki

Must see – Inside Luffa Farms. A great tour of the state-of-the-art rooftop farm in this show. See the future of rooftop farming. You can watch the whole show or begin at minute 3:32 to see Montreal’s urban agriculture here.

“These are smart young urban kids and they are rediscovering agriculture.”

By David and Sarika Suzuki
The Nature of Things
Feb 16, 2012

What an inspiring day. We spent it at Lufa Farms, the world’s first rooftop greenhouse. Mohamed Hage showed us around; he’s the president of Lufa. He came up with the idea several years ago and applied for numerous grants, both at the federal and provincial level, but kept getting rejected. So his family ended up funding the multi-million dollar project, and this is the first year that it’s up and running.

Lufa’s greenhouse roof amongst the empty roofs.

Mohamed took us to the rooftop and showed us the produce that was being grown- amazing. We wore white suits and booties and my slow brain originally thought it was to protect us from the environment, but clearly it was to protect the plants from us! (they didn’t want us to transmit anything to the crops). No pesticides here, and no soil either: for now they are using coconut husks and hydroponics into which they inject nutrients. We sampled some tomatoes, parsley, lettuce and cucumbers- my favourite was the salt and pepper cucumbers- YUM.

They visit:

A ‘Pocket’ Market
Santropol Roulant
Bike Deliveries
Back to Santropol Roulant
Visiting a Friend
Île Sainte-Hélène
Edible Campus
Bixi Bikes
Île Sainte-Hélène #2
Brasserie T!
Lufa Farms

You can watch the whole show or begin at minute 3:32 to see Montreal’s urban agriculture here.