Annie White, editor of Inside Grower visited Lufa Farms in Montreal recently and does a good job of describing it.
There are always items in her newsletter that are most informative and I look forward to reading them.
She regularly provides professional insight into current events about controlled environment agriculture (CEA) from a grower or producer perspective.
In my view it is also worthwhile for consumers to know about events and trends in the commercial growing industry. There is a correlation between professional growing techniques and modern consumer methods.
Traditional in-ground methods may be easier for hobby gardeners to understand but they are not likely to endure in the fast changing urbanized world of science and technology we now inhabit.
The availability of tillable, uncontaminated land will continue to be an issue for city based hobby gardeners and amateur urban "farmers". The use of modern hygienic methods, not dependent on tillable land, will continue to expand and eventually become the de facto way to produce fresh food in the city.
Last week was spring break for me and I spent some time soaking in the warm sun, listening to rock music and eating cocktail tomatoes fresh off the vine. Even I could hardly believe I wasn’t in Cabo San Lucas. In fact, I was in a greenhouse on the roof of an office building in Montreal, Canada.
A Visit to Montreal's Lufa Farms
At Lufa Farms, it all started with the love of food. Whenever Mohamed Hage and Kurt Lynn sat down for lunch, dinner or coffee, their discussions usually worked its way around to why it was so difficult to find fresh and high quality food in Montreal. They concluded that the fundamental problem getting fresh food was that food is often grown far away from where it's eaten. “This meant that our food—whether grown in Quebec or in South Africa—would be handled, packaged, shipped, stored, refrigerated and reshipped perhaps dozens of times before it could appear on our dinner plates,” Mohamed says. “And all along the way, it would become less fresh, less nutritious, less tasty, and be exposed to more potential hazards.” Read more...
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