Welcome to Out of the Kitchen, our ongoing exploration of the relationships that build and sustain the food industry. This year, we’re traveling the country to look at how sustainability has become a rapidly growing movement within the food world. Chefs at the forefront of this trend are introducing their patrons to local farms, fresh ingredients, and innovative dishes while farmers are educating chefs and consumers about where their food comes from and what it takes to grow the food served. Their practices and personal customer approaches provide a bigger impact to the community at large, hoping to create a better and more sustainable future for all.
There's a green oasis in the wintery cityscape of Montreal, and it's three stories up in the air.
Lufa Farms is the world's first commercial rooftop greenhouse and ensures that 6,000 Montreal customers get some of the freshest sustainable produce, meats, and products possible.
"Being in the climate we're in and the region we're in, it's not a food desert, but winter means sad produce at the grocery store," co-founder and greenhouse director Lauren Rathmell says. "We wanted to do something that provided an alternative to the grocery store."
Lufa Farms sits in a commercial district of Montreal and is close enough to the airport that departing planes are still climbing at a steep angle as they pass by. The building itself could be any big, redbrick office building. But the entire roof is covered in a glass-and-metal frame that bubbles up like a rollicking layer of bubbles on fermenting red ale. The farm covers the entire rooftop–31,000 square feet in compartmentalized environments, geared toward the specific humidity and temperature needs of the plants within. On a cloudy day in January, rows of Boston bibb lettuce seem to dwindle into the distance in one corner. In another, cherry-red Thai peppers peek out from dense green foliage in terraces as thick as a jungle. In another section, micro greens flourish under magenta grow lights in bunk-bed-like trays.
Near the cucumber plants, dotted with bright yellow starburst blossoms, Rathmell interrupts her tour to point out a busy ladybug crawling along a table–the farm's crawling with the benign little insects, which serve as Lufa's natural alternative to chemical pesticides. In fact, there isn't a bag or bottle of mass-agricultural chemicals to be seen anywhere in Lufa Farms–there's a large composter in the basement parking lot, not far from the two electric delivery cars. And that spray can perched over the computer is filled not with clothianidin, but with H20, used for spot-misting plants with good old-fashioned water–and nothing more.
The farm was founded in 2009 by Rathmell, a horticulture student, and her now-husband, Mohamed Hage, an engineer. Hage, who came to Canada from Lebanon, was he was 12, wanted to find a way to use hydroponics to improve the agriculture in his homeland. But then the couple realized that there was a city with a serious agricultural deficit all around them–though Montreal is renowned for its restaurants, the city doesn't have the natural access to fresh, sustainable, and transparent agriculture that you might find in, say, California. "We found that you couldn't go to a store and see where it's from, or who made it," Rathmell says. "The food normally comes from really far away, from food mills, is picked before it's ripe, and sits on a store shelf for a good long while. So customers get food that doesn't taste well or is necessarily good for them."
The main rooftop farm was constructed in 2011. Lufa Farms opened an even larger, 43,000-square-foot rooftop farm in Laval in 2013, and a third, 60,000-square-foot farm is in the works above a factory to the east. "For us, the choice of a rooftop was twofold: There was the sustainability aspect of not using new land, and there was the energy aspect of not using a new building," Rathmell says. "We've ruled out ground-level farms, and it's core to our model. Instead of being on a 4-degree ground surface, we're on a 20-degree rooftop from all the energy coming up from below–we use roughly half the energy of a ground-level commercial greenhouse."
With Montreal's existing farmer-market and CSA community, the farm was greeted enthusiastically when it first burst onto the scene. The tricky part came in finding a way to keep customers coming back year after year. Initially, the farms followed the formula of CSA baskets–Lufa filled the baskets according to what was available from the farmers, and when customers opened their weekly deliveries, they had to work with whatever they got. But it's hard to undo decades of people used to being able to stroll into any supermarket and buying nearly anything they want, regardless of the season. "We learned people don't want to get cabbage and eggplant every week till the end of time," Rathmell says.
At the beginning of 2013, the farm rolled out full customization for its customers, while adhering as closely as possible to its belief that what's on sale, should reflect the seasonality of Quebec. The farm supplies what it grows itself, but also connects with local farms and greenhouses to make sure customers can get sustainable and organic meat, dairy, fruit, and even health and beauty products. "Still, you whatever you do, you can't get coconuts in Quebec," Rathmell says. "That's the one place where we branched outside."
Starting last year, the company also began sourcing organic citrus fruit, avocados, and bananas from Florida in winter. "We made a big deal of telling people we know this isn't local, but that the deal is we find organic and sustainable producers and that work directly with the farmers," she says. The company also minimizes carbon production by only using freight trucks that run full loads both ways. "At the end of the day, we are still providing an alternative to the unsustainable fruit you get from the grocery, and we're working with small producers, and it's coming from closer than most produce is in wintertime."
It's proven wildly successful–new customers have signed on in droves, and old customers have remained blissfully loyal. That last category includes Rathmell herself. "I'm an avid subscriber myself, and a locavore," she says. "I can't buy produce at the grocery store anymore. Here, everything is grown to order, down to the cherry tomatoes that go in the baskets. We'll go pick them every day, driven by customer feedback. You get your grocery basket full of sustainable produce and know the full story behind it, with the farmer's name on it. You get all the things in you'd need from shops all around Montreal here in one place."