NY Times » Building Greenhouse Farms on Urban Roofs

Publicity is no guaranty of business success but it most definitely helps. For a small startup business, Lufa Farms has attracted a major amount of media attention, most of it in Montreal and other Canadian media.

Now the NYTimes has featured them in an article about rooftop urban greenhouses. Other startups such as Gotham Greens and Bright Farms are mentioned but Lufa Farms is clearly the lead feature of the article.

I have been most impressed with the positive publicity that Lufa Farms has enjoyed over the past months. The partners obviously know how to work the media. It will be interesting to see how this plays out over the next year or so. In my view hydroponics, rather than in-ground growing, is the future of urban agriculture.

An interesting sidebar to the article is that the NY Times changed the lead photo of the article since first publication. The new photo is of a small Bright Farms greenhouse on the roof of a NYC school.

It looks like some local pressure was applied on the NYTimes. That’s life in the real world but in my view, the new photo is clearly inappropriate to the main thrust of the article featuring Lufa Farms. Let the hydro-games begin! Good compeition is what we need.

via www.nytimes.com

Lufa Farms turned an unassuming office rooftop into a 31,000-square-foot greenhouse that grows produce year-round and is a working example of urban rooftop farming.

When Lufa Farms began selling produce to customers in Montreal in late April, it signaled what could be the beginning of a tantalizing new era in the gastronomic fortunes of that Canadian metropolis.

In all but the short summer season, the availability of fresh, locally grown fruit and vegetables has been little more than a pipe dream for Montreal residents.

But Lufa Farms, founded by Mohamed Hage and Kurt Lynn, turned an unassuming office rooftop into a 31,000-square-foot greenhouse that grows tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers and other produce year-round and is a working example of a developing trend known as urban rooftop farming. Read more...