The market
Since 2010, half the world's population has lived in cities. An estimated 800 million people worldwide are involved in urban agriculture, producing at least 15% of global food. Urban agriculture, as practiced today, is not primarily a source of income, but rather a tool for ensuring food security. In only a few countries is more than a third of production sold on the market, hence the limited data on sales and revenue. In Madagascar and Nigeria, the share of income derived from urban agriculture exceeds 50% for those at the bottom of the income pyramid. Low-income urban dwellers spend between 40% and 60% of their daily income on food, increasing the need to ensure better nutrition at the local level. By 2015, at least 25 cities were expected to have 10 million inhabitants or more. This requires importing at least 6,000 tons of food per day into each city. Since the cost of transporting food from farms to city stores can account for up to 90% of the overall profit margin, food sold in cities is beyond the means of the poor, who must scavenge for food, leading to chronic poverty, malnutrition, and health risks. To meet the needs of the world's 250 million urban poor, food production in cities must at least double to meet basic needs. Havana is perhaps the city that has been most successful in using urban agriculture to ensure food security. There are 300,000 garden patios covering 2,500 hectares, and their number is expected to reach half a million by 2015. Over 40% of households are involved in urban agriculture, including the widespread use of hydroponics, which provides a healthy daily intake of 2,600 calories per capita. After the collapse of the Soviet Union and the famine that struck the nation, Cuba in general, and the capital Havana in particular, succeeded in eliminating malnutrition within a decade. While during that same decade, each adult Cuban lost an average of ten kilograms of body weight, 22% of all new jobs in the country were created in urban agriculture. Harare, the capital of Zimbabwe, is also fostering a thriving urban agriculture sector. Over a quarter of Harare's poor practice this type of farming, which accounts for up to 60% of their food consumption. Eighty percent of urban agriculture in Harare is practiced on public land, and today—a sign of people's ingenuity in overcoming malnutrition and poverty—25 percent of urban land is covered by small farms. Urban poverty is not limited to the developing world. In the United States, 50 million people suffer from food insecurity, and in Europe, an estimated 30 million citizens are undernourished. A city like Chicago has 600 community gardens with 300,000 square meters of green roofs. Detroit has 1,300 community gardens. The start-up cost for a 2,000-square-meter plot is estimated at $25,000, within reach of available, though not necessarily easily accessible, microfinance programs.
Innovation
Urban agriculture is often perceived as small-scale and unproductive. The main challenge lies in ensuring quality control and increasing productivity. The introduction of permaculture and hydroponics in urban environments was an initial breakthrough. Permaculture originated from the logic of combining the three kingdoms of nature (plants, animals, and minerals) and the wisdom of biologists up until the 1970s. It has since been superseded by the five kingdoms theory (bacteria/monera, algae/protista, fungi, plants, and animals). This has allowed for the expansion of efficient local agriculture to include fungi and algae, as demonstrated in cases 3 and 21. However, given the need to double urban agriculture production, which could reduce food costs for the urban poor by up to 90% by eliminating the need for transportation, storage, and refrigeration, more ambitious ideas and an entrepreneurial spirit are required. While urban agriculture has worked well in tropical climates, the question remains: how viable is it in cold and temperate environments? Mohamed Hage, born in Lebanon, is a natural entrepreneur. He started an ad-supported robotics and electronics website that quickly evolved into Cypra Media, one of the largest full-service email marketing providers in his adopted country of Canada. An outdoor enthusiast with a passion for great food and fresh produce, he recalled his early years in a Mediterranean climate and began to think about a new agricultural model that could be applied in large cities. Living in Montreal, Canada, where winters are harsh and cold, he envisioned how rooftop greenhouses could provide the city's food needs. Although he was a technology expert, his agricultural knowledge was limited. He forged an alliance with the academic community at McGill University and explored ways to leverage his entrepreneurial skills to develop a business model that fostered innovation beyond community gardens, which only operate half the year. He envisioned a year-round operation, even in the face of the winter cold.
The first cash flow
Mohamed raised two million dollars and created Lufa Farms, a name inspired by the Lebanese loofah plant (Luffa aegyptiaca), which he used in his home as a living sponge and initially for hydroponic cultivation. He assembled a diverse team and incorporated all available local expertise to build the first rooftop farm, designed to withstand the snow loads of a Canadian winter while adhering to urban building codes. Bringing this well-documented and well-funded project to fruition required considerable patience. It took a year to amend the city's zoning codes to allow agriculture in the downtown core. He overcame all the technical and legal hurdles in four years and now provides food to downtown residents, meeting their daily fruit and vegetable needs year-round. The facility is located in Montreal's Ahuntsic-Cartierville borough, near the Central Market, on a 3,000-square-meter rooftop. It provides 1,000 baskets of fresh produce per week for between $32 and $42 Canadian. While private donations and free scientific, technical, and engineering support made this initial operation possible, further facilities are needed to make the business profitable. Since the roof structure doesn't allow for growing potatoes or carrots, as the amount of soil couldn't be supported by the roof, it focuses on tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, chilies, eggplants, lettuce, bok choy, and herbs, offering a range of approximately 25 to 30 varieties of produce grown on the roof. To fill the gaps in a complete family basket, Mohamed has partnered with organic urban farms. A study has confirmed that this approach to urban agriculture produces pesticide-free and GMO-free food in a space ten times smaller than a conventional farm. All the necessary rainwater is collected, and the varying temperature requirements throughout the year are managed by "hot" and "cold" zones adapted to the ideal growing conditions for the product. A tenfold increase in productivity, an eightfold reduction in transportation energy, lower building energy costs, and water self-sufficiency—at a time when agriculture is responsible for 80% of the world's total drinking water consumption—make this project an interesting example of the Blue Economy. The success of this initial project earned Mohamed the "Next Generation Award" from the City of Montreal in 2011.
The opportunity
The systemic approach to converting available roof space, utilizing rainwater, managing indoor temperature control, providing downtown food at competitive costs without chemical control, significantly reducing transportation, creating a dozen full-time jobs, and combining peri-urban and urban agriculture into a single system that meets citizens' food needs offers a perspective on how to meet the challenge of doubling production in city centers, especially in temperate and cold climates where green roof construction was already revolutionary. The United States has 1.4 billion square meters of available flat roof space covering commercial and office buildings. Based on the Montreal experience of Lufa Farms, this would mean that 50 million families could receive a basket of fresh vegetables every weekday while creating 470,000 additional jobs. This implies that there is no reason to have 50 million urban poor, provided there are entrepreneurs like Mohamed who are willing to change the rules of the game to become competitive and sustainable. Furthermore, this would represent a major contribution to healthy eating in a country where a large portion of the population suffers from obesity. The successful implementation of such a large-scale strategy to provide healthy, locally sourced food requires a set of new partnerships modeled on those Mohamed has successfully forged. He works with construction engineers, greenhouse technicians, organic farmers, marketing and distribution experts, internet wizards, cooperative businesses, real estate investment funds, architects, local politicians, and nutritionists—all essential, along with real estate developers, to realize this innovative approach. The goal is not simply to produce food, but to create a competitive offering that fosters local development based on the local resources we propose within the Blue Economy, and to build assets beyond what investors have recently seen. What is clear, however, is that everyone must go beyond their core business to fully realize the potential of their assets and cash flow, which requires a new generation of entrepreneurs.
