You're in the world's first commercial rooftop greenhouse.
We built this farm in 2010 - 2011.
It's one of three farms we have in Montreal that's working to feed close to 2% of the population of the city.
My partner Lauren was a biochemist studying at McGill University and I had a software company
and we just wanted to get into agriculture. We love agriculture, we love technology and we love world changing ideas.
So you're be a phenomenal visit today by Simon, who manages our community for Lufa Farms. Enjoy!
So our lights are on because it's an overcast day. Generally speaking we try to keep them off as long as possible. If there is sun, that's what we'll use, that's what the plants love.
When it comes to keeping them on all night - a lot of people ask about that - we don't do that. We try to give the plants a natural life cycle.
It's healthier for the plant, it's healthier for the vegetable you get on the other end, and it saves on energy of course.
So it's hydroponics. All the plants you see here are grown in an inert substrate. We actually use coconut fiber because it's very light weight and great for oxygenation.
A good percentage of the water in this greenhouse comes from snow and rain that we collect on the roof of the farm.
The way it works is, we have these concentrations of vitamins - or "concentrated gatorade"
And we have our irrigation water - once a week we send our water to a lab.
The lab tells us exactly what the plants took out of the water...
and we're able to simply add back the nutrients that the plants took out.
So this allows us to recirculate our water indefinetly but it also allows us to ensure the plants have what they need at all times from a nutrients perspective.
So all the calcium, potasium, sulfates and nitrates are all added in the water...
and we monitor them on a weekly basis.
We also use about half the energy than a greenhouse on the ground and that's because we're on top a building that's heated.
So in a city like Montreal, it's a very cold city. You have all these buildings buring fossil fuels to heat, and a lot of the heat escapes through the roof.
What we do is recapture all that heat, and use it to heat the greenhouse. And that gives us a much more warmer platform to grow our foods...
and we also insulate the building, by covering almost the entire building and creating a much lower heat transfer from the tenants below and the outside.
You'll find insects in our farm, a little bit everywhere. We actually introduce beneficial insects that go out and attack the bad insects.
When it works really well, we have a low population of both and the plants are just left alone.
We also have a composter in the basement, so all the leaves we remove every single week...
are sent down, they're composted, we then sell the compost on the marketplace to our Lufavores.
It's just another way of closing the cycle.
What's really unique about this farm is we only harvest what's sold. So all the cucumber you see here - it still has a little flower on it...
get harvest every morning, and they're usually at our consumer's homes the same day, just hours later.
What that means is there is zero waste in the farm, we're only harvesting what was sold.
o the plants act as our fridge in the warehouse, the freshness and the quality is just unbeatable.
The new Anjou greenhouse has over 63,000 square feet of growing space.
Right now we have approximately 40 varieties of greens and vegetables growing in this greenhouse.
These are the verticle propogation tables here in Anjou, so every single plant...
that grows in the Anjou greenhouse starts it's life in one of these beds.
We call them verticle propogation tables for obvious reasons, they're stacked on top of each other.
That gives us the opportunity to save a lot of room when we're seeding.
You'll notice that the light is pink - that's actually an optical illusion.
There are blue lights and red lights, giving the illusion of pink.
The reason why the lights are pink and blue like that is, it gives the plants everything it needs without creating any heat.
If you're wondering, the little blocks in which the seeds are growing are made of coconut husk.
Instead of using soil and wasting a resource, we use the waste material from another industry...
to grow our vegetables. These don't really give the plants and nutrients as such, it just gives the roots a place to root, and allows for the plants to stay upright when it's growing.
The actual nutrients come from the diluted mineral salts in the water.
Now these beds you're looking at right now are watered from the bottom, so at precise moments throughout the day...
the water level will come out from underneath the table...
wet the roots then drop back down, until the next cycle comes up.
One of our goals at Lufa Farms was to create a polyculture environment, which is to grow many different vegetables under one roof.
Which isn't really the norm in greenhouses.
So once the seeds have spent enough time in the verticle propogration tables and they're big enough to actually be planted...
this is where they come. These are the actual hydroponic growing channels.
The little coconut cubes we were looking at earlier are set into the channels.
As you'll notice, right now the channels are tucked right against one another
because the plants are really small they don't need any room at this point.
When they harvest, they push a button - it moves the whole row down...
so they can harvest 1 - 3 rows, and these keep going that way. [points]
We can keep adding rows at this end, so the plants start their lives here, and as it moves down...
they get bigger, and as they get bigger, the channels seperate themselves.
Basically it allows us to grow a lot more stuff with less square footage.
When the harvesters finished harvesting at the other end, they take the channels, put them on here.
This thing travels all the way back, so they can reuse the empty channels to plant again on this side.
These drip systems were developped by one of our founders, Lauren Rathmell.
The water comes out through these tubings. The water will go right into the the growing channels, right through the roots, then drip into a channel like this one.
The system is 100% self contained, so we hardly lose any water, except through evaporation.
We don't lose our nutrients, don't waste anything and we never put anything back into the sewer.
As soon as the sensors sense that the greenhouse is too cold, too warm, too wet...
not ventilated enough, things kick in on their own.
On very sunny days when it gets warm in here, sometimes we hear the windows open on their own.
Ventilation systems go on and off, all on their own.
Drip systems, watering system for the channels - everything is calculated and controlled by software.
On a day like today, overcast, no sun, quite cold outside, we have no choice but to have the heaters on.
To keep this place cool in the summer when it gets incredibly hot in here, this wall of cardboard is kept wet.
There are vents behind it. These fans suck the air through the vents behind this cardboard...
and as the water goes through the cardboard there is a heat exchange that happens and this is what keeps the place cool in the summer.
We usually try to make things available that are not available in Montreal generally speaking.
We had Lufavores who were asking for shiso which is a Japanese herb which is quite hard to find around here. Even Asian markets don't often have them.
We tried it out, it grows incredibly well. It's really, really tasty.
Another vegetable we decided to try out and we weren't quite sure it would work is the kohlrabi.
It has a texture between a radish and a rutabaga.
You can eat the leaves, they're just like cabbage leaves.
As you can see, some of them are flowering, so that's part of our challenges with some of our varieties when they get to this end.
This is something we're working on solving right now.
A lot of the vegetables we find in grocery stores were grown principally because they're durable...
and they can survive the trip from wherever they come from.
What we do here because we harvest fresh daily and our vegetables don't have to travel...
what we can do is select varieties and cultivate for their taste instead of their durability.
In 2013 when we opened our second greenhouse in Laval we also launched the online marketplace.
Which is basically an online farmer's market where you can order over 1500 different products...
from over 200 different local producers and ourselves.
So basically, when you wrap up your orders before 12 o'clock at night, we send our orders to our partners...
our partners bake, cut your meat, we pick your vegetables fresh, and they all end up here in the distribution centre in the morning.
This is where all the baskets are customized before they're sent to the Lufavores (our clients).
When we started the company, we had no idea how to grow food. We have never grown a tomato nor sold a tomato in our lives.
In our first week, we had about 100 families that were receiving a Lufa basket, and just last week we broke the 10,000 shipped basket record [in a week].
We are quite excited, we feel more and more citizens are asking for local, fresh, responsible foods.
We feel that what we're doing today is potentially game changing and is a great way to feed people in cities all over the world.
Thanks for watching, if you want more information - Google us, Lufa Farms...
Visit our website montreal.lufa.com. We also have a facebook page, an instagram account, twitter feed and also a flicker page.
You can always email us, we always respond to anyone with any questions. So, thanks!
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