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I'm an urban farmer.

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So I grow food in the city of Montréal,

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on the roofs of buildings,
believe it or not.

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And it's something that I'm very,
very proud of.

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It's something that puts
a smile on my face every morning.

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And a while back,
I was talking to my aunt in Lebanon,

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where I'm originally from,
I grew up in Lebanon,

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in a small village
that's actually self-sustaining.

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It's a village that grows its own food,

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which is hard to find these days.

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So if a butcher didn't cut a cow that day,

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we ate vegetables.

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So there I was talking to my aunt,

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and I was so excited,
and I was telling her

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how awesome my work is
and how we're building green houses,

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and feeding people
right in the heart of the city.

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And she looks at me and says,

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"Sweetie, we've been doing this
all of our lives.

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There's nothing new here."

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And that got me thinking,
it's absolutely true.

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Nothing about urban agriculture
is really revolutionary.

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It's simply a recreation
of something that's very, very old.

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So then why am I here talking to you
today about urban agriculture?

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Why is it an important topic?

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Well, because we're not eating
what my aunt eats.

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We're not eating what I used to eat
when I grew up, back in Lebanon.

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What we eat today, because we live
in cities, comes from very far away.

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Our food has travelled an average
of 1,500 miles to make it to our plate.

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And food travels as good as
a 2-year old child on a plane.

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Food travels really, really bad.

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In fact food is packed, re-packed,

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refrigerated, sold,
and resold many times over.

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And by the time
it makes it to the consumer,

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it's lost its nutrients,
it's lost its taste, texture and smells.

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And actually,
the really interesting number is --

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we're talking
a lot about reducing waste --

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is that when a farmer
in an industrial farm

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is looking at a tomato plant,

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half of these tomatoes will never make it
to the consumer because of this.

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And the cultivars,
and the varieties that are chosen,

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in terms of industrial farming,
are cultivars and varieties

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that are chosen for their toughness,
and transportability and not their taste.

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There used to be a time
where you could choose

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from 500 different tomatoes
to grow in a green house,

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and now what we're eating
is a collection of only 12,

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roughly 12 cultivars of tomatoes,
that are all tough,

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that will yield very well,
that are hard as rocks,

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but don't necessarily have
the same taste.

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And when you look at industrial farming,

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the process of industrial farming
is far from optimal.

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Industrial farms today
are massive consumers of land,

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of water, of energy, of resources,

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and what's been really striking for me,

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during my research in hydroponics,

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is that they're very illusive.

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I spent a good amount of time
simply trying to find farms,

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I actually couldn't find farms,
and I ended up concluding,

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that farms are big black boxes.

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Not only can we not find them,

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it's actually very hard
to even go inside of a farm.

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The secret process
of growing food, it's illusive.

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Five years ago, I said to myself,

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What if you could change
the way we grow food?

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What if you can grow food
in a more responsible way?

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And what if you can create
a direct link with the consumer,

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go straight to the consumer?

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Bypass the entire network,
forget about the distribution network,

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forget about the wholesalers,
retailers and truckers,

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and go straight to the consumer?

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And it started off as a bit of a dream.

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I have a lot of dreams and

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very few of them actually become projects,

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but this dream stuck.

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And with a group of engineers,
and architects,

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I like to call them superheros,

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5 years ago we started working.

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And we started working on
a new form of agriculture,

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what we like to call "Agriculture 2.0".

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So we started off by asking ourselves,

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If we want to grow food,

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how can we grow it
in a more responsible way?

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We knew there were a lot of challenges
in the food production process,

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and we knew that we had
to change the way we grew food.

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So we defined responsible agricultures
in four different ways.

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First of all, using no new land.

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I think that the previous presenter
did a great job at explaining

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the challenges we have today
as we go from 7-billion

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to 9-billion and with less land.

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So the good news,
it turns out that rooftop spaces

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are absolutely fantastic for growing food.

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Someone might look at a roof and
think of it as the underwear of a building

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it's an ignored space,
it's a heat island,

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it needs maintenance,

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they have to be cleaned
every now and then

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but no one likes roofs,
they're the underwear.

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(Laughter)

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But it turns out that underwear
is an incredibly fertile space.

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In this specific building,
that you see behind me here,

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we receive over half a million dollars
in free energy every single year.

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Simply from the sun.

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Not to mention that we receive

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half of our heating energy
from the building below.

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What's great about being in the city,

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is the carbon dioxide levels are higher,

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something else that plants need.

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So responsible agriculture
is starting off by using no land,

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and using water, a scarce resource,
in a more responsible way.

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So harvesting rainwater,
and more importantly,

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recirculating nutrient rich water,

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and again, I think
the previous presenter explained

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the importance
and the link between blue algae

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and phosphorous rich water
leaching into lakes and rivers.

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So by having a closed loop system,

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not only are we growing
in a more responsible way,

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but we're actually saving a lot of money.

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Responsible agriculture means
using no synthetic pesticides,

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herbicides, and fungicides.

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And you can actually do this

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because we've been doing it for many years
prior to the green revolution.

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It works really well.

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And it's simply by using biocontrols,
insects.

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So we have good insects
in the green house, like ladybugs,

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that actually attack bad insects,
such as aphids or white flies.

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And every now and then,
we see them having sex.

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(Laughter)

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They love the conditions
in the green house for some reason.

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(Laughter)

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And finally, responsible agriculture
means growing good food.

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Selecting cultivars
and varieties for their taste,

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for their nutrition,
for their smell and texture.

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Heirloom tomatoes, purple basil,

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white cucumbers, wild persian grasses.

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The possibilities are limitless.

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What we can grow in a green house,

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what we can feed you guys,
is unbelievable,

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but what we find in the grocery store

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is only the subset
that will transport very, very well.

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So after defining responsible agriculture,
in September 2010,

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we started working.

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I'm going to walk you through
a few slides

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that show you the process of construction.

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What you don't see in here
is the 4 years of technology development

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that went prior to construction.

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We had to develop our own patent pending,

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water circulation systems.

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Polycultures growing systems
that allow us to grow

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multicrops in the same green house,

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still achieving the same yields
as a monoculture grower.

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We developed water circulation techniques,

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and microclimate management software.

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So our entire green houses
are managed by a piece of software.

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But real quick, I'll walk you through
a typical construction.

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We take an existing roof,
we keep the existing membrane,

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we erect a structure,
made out of galvanized steel,

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aluminum, and glass,
and this process goes quite fast.

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Believe it or not, we got 
this structure up in less than 3 weeks,

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and you can see, we used some cranes
to bring the material up to the roof,

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and in this case
it was a 2-story building.

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And this is a picture --

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It shows a bit the inside
of the green house,

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just prior to planting,

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and you can actually see
our energy curtains,

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another feature that helps save energy.

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We deploy that during the nighttime,

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and it envelops the green house,
the plants.

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And the temperature above
our energy curtain

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could be -10ºC,
whereas below the energy curtain,

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is a 22º - 23º C climate.

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After the construction process,
and on February 28, 2011,

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we planted the first seeds,
of the first plants,

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in the world's first
commercial rooftop greenhouse.

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(Applause)

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And it's something
that we're very proud of,

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I remember the team
really celebrated that day,

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and we popped a lot of Champaign bottles,

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and they were not local.
(Laughter)

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They were the good kind.
(Laughter)

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And just 2 months
after that very first day,

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my niece, Maya, at 8-months old,

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had her first solid food,
and it was one of our tomatoes,

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a cherry tomato grown in Montréal,
and she loves our tomatoes

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and this is something
that brings me the most joy,

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seeing kids going through vegetables
like they're candy.

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And today, almost a year later,
we feed 2,000 people

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with vegetables that are harvested
on the exact same day,

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that have never seen
the inside of a fridge.

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Vegetables harvested
in the heart of the city, on a rooftop,

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using half the energy
to heat the building,

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and a fraction of the water and nutrients.

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And because of the direct link
with our consumers,

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we distribute our food to drop points,

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and drop points are universities,
coffee shops all over the island.

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But the process is so efficient,

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that we only need
15 dollars in fuel per day,

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to feed 2,000 people.

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(Applause)

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And what's been actually
a huge surprise to us,

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is seeing how this little farm in Montréal
was able to connect the community.

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Early on, when we started construction,
people would stop by,

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and would ask us if they could visit.

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We had requests from universities,
from schools,

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from synagogues, from churches
all wanting to visit a farm.

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And it was really great to see how --

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To date we've had
over 10,000 visitors to the greenhouse.

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10,000 people that now understand
where food comes from.

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10,000 people that have met a farmer.

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Kids that have seen
how a tomato plant grows,

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how a cucumber should taste like,

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and that's something
that's been a big surprise to us,

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but it's been a very --

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I'm ecstatic to see that.

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And another great moment for me
is walking into one of our drop points,

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between the hours of 3 and 6 pm,

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and seeing 30 - 40 customers
rushing to grab their vegetable baskets,

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but taking the time to exchange recipes,

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phone numbers,
veggies and to truly connect.

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So I'm going to leave you
with a few images.

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I think everybody likes images.

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Believe it or not, the first
is actually a picture of the land

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that used to exist where we have built
our greenhouse, 40-years ago.

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So 40-years ago, prior to the construction
of the industrial building,

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there used to be a farm, and a farmer
used to work here, feeding people.

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For 37 years, that spot
was replaced by an industrial building,

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that contributed to heat islands,
and displaced the farmer.

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The good news is, this spot is once again,

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a fertile plot of land.

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Employing many,
and feeding many, many more,

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and helping make our world a better place.

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So imagine cities

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that feed their own inhabitants.

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Imagine communities
that are connected by farms.

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Imagine knowing your farmer,
and knowing your food.

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When we celebrated
our first anniversary at Lufa,

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(Chuckling)

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what we choose to celebrate,

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was not the beginning of the construction,

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it wasn't the end of the construction,

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it was the day we had
the first seeds planted.

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Because I remember very well that day,

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our carbon dioxide levels
started dropping,

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and our humidity levels started rising,

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just as the plants made it
into the greenhouse.

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That was the first beat,
the first sign of life.

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Now imagine cities full of life.

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(French) Thank you.

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(Applause)