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Setting the Stage for More Rooftop Farms
by Mohamed Hage
Environment Articles
Published on this site: November 25th, 2010 - See
more articles from this month
In 2010, Lufa Farms created the world's first commercial-scale
greenhouse on the roof of a commercial office building. The event
has been heralded as a milestone in urban agriculture and a
potential "game changer". But creating this new type of city
farm was a difficult task.
If everybody wants them, why don't more exist?
It is a significant social conundrum that so many people see the
necessity of growing food within urban spaces and yet there are
so few efforts to do so on a commercial scale actually
exist.
Four years ago, as the founder of Lufa Farms, I contemplated the
creation of the world's first commercial-scale rooftop farm -
the question of why more didn't already exist was something I
worried about - why weren't there more rooftop farms? To be
sure, there was a lot of talk of such farms - Sky Vegetables,
Gotham Greens and others had announced their intentions to create
such enterprises, but by the end of 2009, no actual facilities
had been built.
Why it's a good idea - start with the land:
The conventional arguments for rooftop farms are many. First and
foremost is the loss of arable land. The easiest commercial
development is on flat earth - farm land. As cities expand, the
flat spaces of earth are consumed by shopping centers and other
commercial develop. Farm land is lost. In the United States, for
example, urban sprawl takes over nearly 400,000 hectares of
farmland each year. The population is expanding, land on which to
grow food is diminishing - not sustainable, not good. Rooftop
farming is a way to take the land back from commercial
development.
Food safety and food trust:
Every year there are more and more problems reported concerning
food. Listeriosis, e-coli, salmonella, etc. are but a few that
regularly emerge in the public food supply. Too, the overuse of
pesticides, herbicides, GMO-doctored food and various soil
treatments also add risk to the food supply. As more food is
being produced outside of North America, the ability to monitor
risks is diminished and traceability becomes almost impossible.
The surest way to be able to trust the food you eat is to know
exactly where it comes from and who grows it.
Quality of food:
Today, the tomato you buy in the typical grocery store is not
much like the tomato you used to get at a grocery store 20 years
ago. Why? Because it's a variety selected to be tough, durable,
and decay slowly as a means of surviving the long trip from farm
to warehouse to distribution center to retail warehouse to retail
store. Moreover, food takes anywhere from 1 to 6 weeks to find
its way from the farm to you. During that time, typically, more
than half of its nutrient value has disappeared. Rooftop farming
means farm-to-tabletop times of hours or a few days. The result
is better food, and more nutritious food.
So with so many good reason, why rooftop farms are difficult?
I found out why. It's not because of the myriad of engineering
issues that must be confronted to build a structurally safe and
viable farm on a roof. No. It's because government, and the
agricultural industry, have an intrinsic bias favoring
traditional and conventional farms. We encountered such obstacles
in almost every phase of the project.
The first that was encountered were building code specifications.
Definitions existed for greenhouses on the ground, but not on
building. The second, obstacle was zoning. In order to put the
greenhouse on its office building the area had to be re-zoned as
agricultural. Finally, while a variety of local and federal farm
financing programs exist, few would recognize the concept of a
farm in the city. It was difficult to even find a farm financing
agency office within the city! At one point, my team and I had to
drive almost an hour out of Montreal to meet with one farm
financing agency at their office closest to the city.
What has to happen for the future of urban agriculture...
Based on ours Lufa Farms experience, if we want more urban farms
to emerge, some things will have to change at the municipal,
state/provincial, or federal levels. Among those things include:
- Reassessment of certain zoning and tax ordinances to
accommodate use of buildings as agricultural space. Incentives
would be better yet.
- Evaluation of city and national building codes to interpret
appropriate codes for hybridized buildings. This is not a simple
task but analyzing the codes in advance would go a long way to
facilitating urban agriculture.
- Developing policy on farm subsidies, crop insurance, and farm
financing programs to explicitly consider how they will address
rooftop or other urban farming activities.
- Rethinking certain aspects of real estate and leasehold law to
recognize that farms may be on leased property.
These represent but a few of the obstacles that must be overcome
for an urban farm venture within a typical city. They can be
solved but they won't get solved overnight, but municipalities
and other levels of government should start thinking about them
now - urban agriculture will only be increasing in the future!
Mohamed Hage is the founder of Lufa Farms in Montreal, Canada.
Lufa Farms is the world's first commercial-scale rooftop farm.
More perspectives on urban agriculture by Mohamed Hage can be
found at http://www.lufafarms.blogspot.com/.
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