Course: SAT 230 Managing Food Production Systems in the Urban Landscape

Reading and Multimedia Assignments

Multimedia Assignment 2
Multimedia Assignment 2

Mohamed Hage lives in Montreal and is the founder of Lufa, an organization that installs and manages rooftop farms in Canada.  In this video he describes the benefits of rooftop urban farming.  The benefits include all the things we’ve discussed in this and other courses on urban agriculture- reducing transportation costs, fresher food, a closer relationship between grower and consumer, a better understanding by the public of how food is produced, more efficient use of resources and more.

In this case the rooftop farms are built under greenhouses which makes sense for a cold climate as food can be produced year-round.  In addition much of the heat required for the greenhouse comes from the building below and would normally be lost while the greenhouse provides a layer of insulation for the building reducing the heating costs.

The system can be traditional- plants grown in soil or it could be established as a hydroponic system or even an aquaponic system though Mr. Hage doesn’t specificially mention it.

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