Belgium: Brussels grows fruits and vegetables on top of a supermarket
The project aims to educate and involve local people in the whole process and hopes to improve underprivileged people’s life.
By Ádám Magyar
Euro News
28/10/2021
Over sixty species of plants are being cultivated on the rooftop garden of a Brussels supermarket as part of a project financed by the European Union.
The Lagum Project experiments with the idea of an urban garden and tries to determine whether they are sustainable or not.
Since March, more than 2 tonnes of fruits and vegetables have been harvested.
“We look into the agronomic part of the research, but also we look about the multifunctionality of these kinds of projects. So there is production, yes, but there is also training, and awareness, and cohesion of the social neighbourhood,” Francisco Davila, a researcher at the agroecology lab of Vrije Universiteit, told Euronews.
The project aims to educate and involve local people in the whole process and hopes to improve underprivileged people’s life.
“We started to use it also with a social purpose. ‘Refresh’ is a social restaurant, and they use the production (the plants) for the restaurant. But we started also to distribute that to the vulnerable people,” said Nevruz Unal, an alderwoman for city renovation.
The experimental phase will last from 2 up to 3 more years. If proven to be sustainable, this method could be exported to other rooftops in Europe.
