Meet Lauren
Entrepreneur, Fermes Lufa, Montreal, Quebec – Discover how Lauren farms responsibly, in the city.
[Upbeat music begins.]
[A montage begins with a close up view of the logo of Lufa Farms, plus an aerial view of the greenhouses on the rooftop, and a worker picking produce from the plants and collecting them in a crate.]
[Images move quickly, the screen divides into nine with images inside the greenhouse, tomatoes, an eggplant, workers picking produce off the plants in the greenhouse, ending with a full screen of the rows of plants.]
Text on screen: Meet the people behind your food
[A fork and shovel on either side of the title.]
[Lauren talks to the camera.]
Lauren: Yeah. It’s a lot of moving parts. [Laughs]
[Lauren touches a red pepper hanging off a vine.]
Text on screen: Lauren Rathmell – Entrepreneur, Montreal, Quebec
[Lauren with her arms crossed, stands in between two rows of plants.]
So, there's a quote from Darwin: “It's not the strongest of the species that survive, it's the one that is the most adaptable to change.”
[Cut to a view of the middle of a row of plants.]
Text on screen: Can you describe your operation?
[Cucumbers hang from leafy vines.]
At Lufa Farms, our mission is to build a better food system.
[Two employees stand behind rows of seedlings the greenhouse, an aerial view of the rooftop greenhouses among large neighbouring buildings, busy streets and parking lots.]
We have four rooftop farms here in Montreal.
[Two employees spray water over boxes of produce, transfer soil from a bucket to planting trays.]
We're a team of about 700 employees and we work with 350 partners, farmers and food makers from throughout the region.
These are organic farmers.
[Cut to large containers filled with soil and seedlings, a person wraps individual boxes of microgreens in bags and places them in a crate and an aerial view of the greenhouses on a rooftop of a building.]
These are bakers. And we deliver weekly orders to about 30,000 Lufavores all throughout Quebec.
Text on screen: Why grow food on a rooftop?
[An exterior view of the greenhouse and an overhead view of the rows of tomato plants in the greenhouse.]
I think the number one thing we set out to do was to grow food closer to where people live and grow more sustainably.
[A person walks down a row, inspects the plants, touches the produce with gloved hand, pulls out produce to inspect the root, among long rows of vines with ripe tomatoes.]
We also benefit, obviously, from the heat rising from the building below. And then we rent the rooftop. So, it's kind of an added value for the building owners as well.
Text on screen: What were some of your challenges?
[Rows of tomato vines, a person walking through the rows and with gloved hands picks tomatoes and places them in baskets sitting in crates.]
One of the biggest challenges to date that we’ve had is how do we build a rooftop greenhouse. Not so straightforward. Had not been done before. Not at this scale.
[A person stands in between two rows of plants, using clippers he harvests peppers, collects them in a crate, then carries and stacks the crate filled with yellow peppers. Lauren speaks to the camera.]
So figuring out how to first farm, farm responsibly: we don't use any synthetic pesticides, we recirculate our water, we watch our footprint really closely. And solving one problem at a well, relatively one problem at a time, I would say.
Text on screen: What are you most proud of?
[Lauren walks with two people through the greenhouse with the rows of plants to their left.]
I’m most proud of what we’ve built, and that's proven the concept of constructing a greenhouse on a rooftop and feeding people from it, at scale.
[A woman carrying a reusable bag with the logo ‘Les Fermes Lufa’ enters a store and picks produce out of a container and places it in a reusable bag.]
We went from a few hundred customer baskets that we used to do our first summer, to now tens of thousands of orders a week.
[The woman exits the store.]
We've proven a concept, it's time to replicate it in a in a new city.
[Lauren and two others sit talking at a picnic table with a laptop computer in the greenhouse.]
Text on screen: Canadian farmers and agricultural businesses work to feed you and future generations.
Text on screen: Discover how they are growing a better future. Canada.ca/Taste-the-Commitment
Text on screen: Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada Agriculture et Agroalimentaire Canada
[Government of Canada wordmark.]
[End]