Have you ever walked into a supermarket, and wondered how many fields and plants must go into keeping those grocery stands fully stocked? Imagine how many pounds of green and red peppers it must take to keep those bins full. Now imagine supermarkets all across the country. To feed a city the size of Toronto, 6,000 tonnes of food must be imported every day. In response, U of T students have come up with a more sustainable method — urban agriculture.
Two years ago, U of T’s Campus Agriculture Project — a group formed to promote farming as a more efficient and sustainable means of growing food both on campus and in the city — implemented several pilot garden projects across campus. One of these projects was the Sky Garden, created by three civil engineering graduate students, Heather Wray, Kyla Smith, and Sarah Wilson.
Today, with the help of the Live Green Toronto grant, the Sky Garden has tripled in size. Located on top of the Galbraith building, the rows upon rows of unique semi-hydroponic containers, made by Canadian company BioTop, feature a variety of plants. These include tomatoes, cucumber, eggplant, zucchini, jalepeno peppers, basil, parsley, rosemary, lettuce, and even sugarbaby watermelons.
A tour of the garden reveals a space covering an area of only 50 m². So far this year, this small corner of rooftop space has yielded 160 kg of fresh organic vegetables, with a projected yield of 200 kg by the end of the growing season.
BioTop has outfitted the garden with its own drip irrigation system, which also distributes fertilizer. This limits the amount of physical labour necessary to maintain the plants, requiring only a few volunteers for harvesting and weeding. Seeds and seedlings are organic and come from local sources.
Harvested vegetables are donated weekly to the U of T Food bank, as well as to the student-run vegan café Hot Yam!, or enjoyed by the Sky Garden volunteers themselves.
“Our goal is to show how rooftop spaces can be used for urban agriculture, and to reconnect people to where their food comes from,” said garden co-founder Heather Wray. An additional benefit is that switching to local sources reduces the city’s carbon dioxide footprint. Many environmentalists also believe that locally grown food tastes better, reduces environmental strain and creates economic and social benefits for the community.
Recent studies by U of T sociologists have indicated health benefits tied to community gardening efforts. The benefits include improved access to food, resulting in improved nutrition, increased physical activity, an improved relationship and understanding of food and the food system, as well as better mental and social health through increased community cohesion.
Although this is a great solution to our sustainability problems, there are still many issues to be dealt with before urban agriculture can become a viable and widespread solution. One of the biggest problems for urban agriculture is space and financial support. “Most of the hard work was getting access and securing funding,” says Wray.
In terms of sustainability, “The garden takes chunks of inanimate concrete and turns it into something that’s growing things,” says Matt Stata, a supervisor of the project. “It’s also an example of what could be done if more of this started showing up around the city, because there’s so many unused roof spaces that could be producing food.”
It also provides more opportunities for multidisciplinary research in sociology, engineering, and environmental studies. The garden is a resource for researchers studying urban agriculture. Research on the impact of urban pollution on urban agriculture is currently underway.
“Education was always one of the goals we had in mind,” says Stata. “We wanted to provide people with more information to help those involved in similar projects, or simply to encourage individuals with their own home gardens.”
Whether it’s for reasons of sustainability, health promotion, or just for fun, the popularity of urban gardening is on the rise.
“And they’re delicious!” chime both Stata and Wray, referring to the vegetables. And they were.
