Canada: Quebec leads indoor urban agriculture trend
LEDs plus cheap electricity opens new opportunities
By Angela Lovell
Country Guide
Feb 3, 2022
Excerpt:
Many of the challenges that traditional rural farms face are common to urban indoor farms, with a big one being labour, although, conversely, the urbanization trend that has robbed rural farms and communities of their traditional sources of labour is proving to be more of a benefit to urban farms looking for workers.
“Having these things placed into urban centres has provided a workforce that typically would have been employed locally to help out on the farms,” Lefsrud says. “When people migrated into cities, they seem to be migrating back into these urban-type projects that give them employment and food.”
Even though many people make a living from their urban farm operations, they aren’t likely to get rich.
“You’re still a farmer, you’re dependent on the production of the crops and some of the technology isn’t quite there yet,” Lefsrud says. “It’s economically beneficial but you’re never going to get wealthy doing this. There’s still a lot of improvements that have to be made and it’s one reason why I feel comfortable in my position is because I know that the growers always have questions.”
A future challenge for all agriculture, but especially in controlled, indoor environments, is likely going to be water, Lefsrud says.
