For the third year in a row, the University of Quebec in Montreal (UQAM) organized its Summer School on Urban Agriculture (link in French). The CRAPAUD[1] (link in French), a group of UQAM students and professors, and the university’s Science and Environment Institute started this school in 2009[2].
A Converging Point for all players in Urban Agriculture
The 5-day SSUA provides great overview of UA, mostly in Montreal, but also in Quebec city, Senegal, Mali, Jordan, Lebanon and Paris. Professors, students, activists, and scientists, as well as concerned citizens, primarily make up the attendees. Through the variety of presentations, workshops and urban garden walks, one topic kept popping up[3]: why and how should urban agriculture be used?
Food Security and Food Prices
It became clear to me after the first day of classes that UA is an incredibly powerful way to work within a community. As most agree, UA is holistic in nature; some see it as a means of education or rehabilitation, and others focus on food production. As Eric Duchemin, one of our teachers put it: “The UA initiatives in Montreal resulted in the development of [multi-dimensional tools]: a centre with a significant vegetable production and an environment for socialization and education that fosters individual and collective social development in districts with disadvantaged populations.”
Ultimately, in Montreal’s case, all saw UA as a way of solving food insecurity, because it allows people to eat for less. In a town where some neighborhoods do not have access to good quality fresh food within a 500m range, and most fresh produce is expensive, this is a hot topic.
Garden Types
Montreal has a wide variety of gardens. Community gardens are small plots of land rented out by the city to its constituents. Collective gardens are spaces either allocated by the city or rented out by organizations that run the garden collectively, every decision, including what to plant and how to redistribute the yield, being discussed among the organizers and volunteers. A number of organizations also have their own gardens, such as the Santropol Roulant, a soup kitchen on wheels producing food in pots in various locations: on their own rooftop, the McGill University grounds…
Because Montreal has a very short growing season, for some, greenhouse farming is considered an interesting alternative. Lufa Farms, a for-profit organization, has built a custom-made greenhouse on the top of a city building and grows a wide variety of vegetables all year round. But it is a hydroponic farm, and as vegetable gardens are almost exclusively organic, some are reticent to accept this as a sustainable model.
Montreal’s lack of self-confidence in the development of its UA is palpable. After a week at the SSUA, it became apparent that the players involved believe what’s being done is not enough. But any European city would be jealous of what Montreal is doing!
As most UA advocates struggle to find a sustainable source of funding to continue their programs, commercial UA is rapidly developing. The challenge for the future lies in finding ways to sustain UA as a way to fight against food insecurity and high prices and not only to provide better food locally for wealthy hipsters.
