Canada: 2020 Québec Urban Farms Survey / Portrait de l’agriculture urbaine commerciale au Québec en 2020
In 2020, despite COVID19 pandemy, 14 urban farming enterprises were started in Québec (Canada), while 4 urban farms changed their mission towards objectives other than production or have ceased the production of agricultural products.
Eric Duchemin
Directeur scientifique et formation
Apr 2021
Compared with the 2019 survey, we observe an increase of 14% in the number of urban farming enterprises.That brings the total number of urban agricultural farms in Québec to 103.
A few existing urban farms, including Lufa Farms, Urbainculteurs, Atelier Champignon Big Bloc, Alvéole and VERTige Urban Farm, used the year of 2020 to carry out their expansion (increase in the cultivation area, new operating sites, new markets, etc.). This growth has been observed for several years and is ongoing.
The cities of Quebec, particularly Montréal and Québec City, stand out internationally. While there are 45 and 16 urban farms, respectively in Montréal and Québec City, Vancouver hosted 9 farms in 2019 and Toronto had 18. Montreal is comparable with Paris, which has 47 urban farms. While in Montreal there was one urban farm for approximately 38,000 inhabitants in 2019, in Vancouver, there was one urban farm for 70,000 inhabitants. Toronto and Paris have a ratio 5 times lower (1 urban farms by 150 000 inhabitants) than that of Montréal. Similar to Montréal, Québec City stands out with a ratio fewer than 38,000 inhabitants per urban farm.
