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The urban rooftop farm is more than a goofy utopian ideal. It is real, and it is happening in more and more cities. At the leading edge of this movement is Lufa Farms, which calls itself the world’s first commercial rooftop farm. It built a 31,000-square-foot greenhouse on a two-story office building that has been growing more than 25 different types of fruits, vegetables and herbs. And it’s in Montreal, where winter temperatures average in the low teens. Impressive, right?
What’s even more impressive is that Lufa Farms has been able to at least break even since opening in 2011. Large-scale rooftop farming, it seems, can work. And investors are interested. Lufa recently locked down about $4.5 million in financing to spread its operations to other North American rooftops. It plans to build two more facilities in Montreal, and also to expand to a handful of other cities, including Toronto, Boston, New York and Chicago. Whether its early success can be replicated remains to be seen, but so far Lufa Farms seems to have shown that the utopian’s rooftop garden can be more reality than dream.
Nate Berg is a writer and journalist covering cities, architecture and urban planning. Nate’s work has been published in a wide variety of publications, including the New York Times, NPR, Wired, Metropolis, Fast Company, Dwell, Architect, the Christian Science Monitor, LA Weekly and many others. He is a former staff writer at The Atlantic Cities and was previously an assistant editor at Planetizen.
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