Laying the foundation

AMANDA: This is the Forefront -- a Toronto Metropolitan University podcast about big problems and smart solutions. I’m Amanda Cupido. So here’s the problem… 

In large cities across Canada, buildings are constantly going up and taking up precious greenspace. Back in the early 1990s Toronto Metropolitan University was looking at the benefits of green roofs… these were prevalent in Europe at the time and was basically a meadow that didn’t need maintenance but created an ecosystem and controlled water going into the storm grater system. It was well received in Europe but there were no North American cities incorporating it in a formal way. 

So in the early 2000s Toronto Metropolitan University did a major study, looking into what is the nature of our roof tops? And how widespread can green roofs be implemented? And what are the limits to what can be done? These were things that hadn’t been established before. 

HITESH: And so based on that, I work, the city decided to move with the green of bylaw. 

AMANDA: That’s Hitesh Doshi. He’s a professor in architectural science at Toronto Metropolitan University. He’s also the guy who played a major role in the green roof study, which led to the city of Toronto taking a strong stance on the matter in 2009. 

HITESH: What the city of Toronto, Greengold bylaw says is that for any new building that would be constructed in the city of Toronto, where a building permit has to be issued, the developer will have to cover a certain percentage of the rooftop with what was known, what is known as extensive green roof. 

AMANDA: An “extensive green roof” is just referring to that no-maintenance meadow type of environment. Hitesh says the City of Toronto latched onto the findings of the study including the potential that 8% of the total land area in Toronto could be utilized for this... 

HITESH: So in some respects, our work was technical in nature, our work was about, you know, what is the nature of the rooftop, how much rooftop is out there, etc. And the second piece that we helped the city with, is develop the technical standards of what a green roof would look like to meet the requirements. And when the city council passed the bylaw, so they accepted the bylaw of what it is for the bylaw, I think everybody was very, very happy that Toronto was progressive because it took a lot of courage for Toronto to do that. 

AMANDA: Now, this was a big deal! Toronto was the first city in North America to pass that kind of a law and Hitesh was consulted on policies around the world since then. Fast forward to today... 

HITESH: We have seen that with the bail out, people have adopted it and, you know, I just need to walk down or drive down Gardiner Expressway, which is elevated in downtown area, and look either way to see the greenery on the rooftops.

AMANDA: He says there have been several studies since then, that have built upon the one he was a part of… 

HITESH: We saw we sowed the seeds for other people, not just from Toronto Metropolitan University, but from other places to get involved, other researchers to build stuff, ya. 

AMANDA: So problem solved? Ahhh not quite. 

HITESH: Key thing to realize is that, you know, everybody tends to think in terms of research or something people do as ending up developing a product or system or something like that. I would characterize the work that we did as developing a way of thinking. And that thinking was about, hey, wait a second, you know, we can do a lot more on rooftops. That's the thinking. And the point I'm really trying to make is that if you look at the the basis on which our study informed the city to develop the bylaw, the trajectory kind of changed in terms of, you know, it wasn't that suddenly or every building had a green roof on it. But suddenly, you know, it took its own trajectory. So people started thinking about rooftops as a space where something can be done. 

AMANDA: I’m walking on the top of Toronto Metropolitan University’s George Vari Engineering and Computing Centre. The entire roof is covered with soil, greenery, walking paths, and compost piles. There are also five student volunteers who are digging up fresh beets and turnips. 

ARLENE: Welcome to the Toronto Metropolitan University Urban Farm. 

AMANDA: Thank you. I'm so excited. 

ARLENE: So are we rolling? 

AMANDA: We are rolling. Always rolling. 

ARLENE: Yeah, because I think... 

AMANDA: I’m with Arlene Throness, who is the urban farm manager. She’s decked out in her farming gear which includes red rubber boots and a brown baseball cap. Arlene studied Food Security and Urban Agriculture at the Toronto Metropolitan University Change School for Continued Education. Back in 2013 she converted the meadow-style green roof that was on top of the engineering building into the farm that it is today… 

ARLENE: So is this to approximately describe that to me and why? So, yeah, the original green roof that was built in 2004 was built with six inches of soil. There was, you know, weeds had been growing for 10 years. So what we did is we allowed them to grow to maturity and we cut them down and covered them with a tarp, which is called sheet mulching, which is a technique often used in ecological gardening and farming. So once we did the sheet mulching, we were able to dig the paths which brought the soil depth up from six inches up to close to a foot. So now we have these raised beds that we can walk between. And we made the path like a human scale width, ySo so the human scale is you make an 18 inch path and that way you can crouch and kneel you can pull a harvest grade or a wheelbarrow through there 

AMANDA: So there are 35 soil beds, each of them 60 feet in length, with walking paths in between. This is over the entire space -- which is 10,000 square feet. 

ARLENE: We grow bio intensively, so we space plants. The maximum density so that they're actually suppressing leads and retaining water in the soil by preventing evaporation, so that also allows us to have a higher yield than you would see on a rural farm where they have more space available. We have, we just have a quarter acre here. So we really maximize that by doing succession plantings and bio intensive spacing. 

AMANDA: Even though it’s getting cold out, the farming continues. Today, she tells me they’re planting rye… 

ARLENE: It will grow nice and green. It's very cold, hardy, and it will hold all the nitrogen and carbon in its biomass through the winter, so it'll prevent any nutrients from leaching and it will protect the soil and all the life in the soil over the winter. It will regrow in spring and we’ll actually let it grow to maturity and knock it down to create a mulch and then we'll plant winter squash into there. So that's one one of our rotations. And then we've also got our garlic we just planted last week and we covered with straw. And we also have some clover that we planted a few weeks ago, that is a great cover crop because it fixes nitrogen, that way we can when we turn it into the soil in spring, that nitrogen becomes available for the other crops. 

AMANDA: Over the course of the year, the farm -- which is also known as the Andrew and Valerie Pringle Environmental Green Roof -- produces more than 40 different types of crops 

ARLENE: And we distribute food throughout the campus, so we have a pop up farm stand where we sell food. We have people who sign up for a bag of food that they preorder through a harvest share. And we also sell to the chefs on campus. And then we donate about 20 percent of our food to the Good Food Room on campus where students can access food that way as well. And because right now the campus is largely closed, we're donating all of our produce to emergency food relief operations. So we're donating to Building Roots and Moss Park. And we also distributed food during Pow Wow week on campus. And to our volunteers. Volunteers take food home each week. 

AMANDA: Now having a farm on the top of a roof does have its perks… 

ARLENE: There's no squirrels, raccoons, rats like it is such a dream, because anywhere on the ground, whether you're in the city or out of the city, you have to deal with deer or rabbits. Right?

So we're very lucky we do not have to worry about that. We're completely spray free. We do not use any synthetic fertilizers. So we're beyond organic, we’re ecological. 

AMANDA: But also there are a lot of special considerations. For instance I noticed there were a bunch of these heavy green sacks everywhere… 

ARLENE: So because we are on a roof and we use a lot of the same techniques the ground level growers would use, but we have to be careful that nothing blows away. If you're on a ground level farm and something goes, it’ll just blow over to another corner of the farm, whereas here we do not want anything to blow off the roof. So we have these row bags that we filled with rocks. And if we ever use row cover to protect crops from pests or, you know, cold sensitive crops in the fall, in spring, we will cover it with a row bag to make sure it doesn't blow. We also use tarps, which is a common way to suppress weeds in between crops for ecological growers. And we have to weigh those down with those down with row bags. So that's pretty important on a rooftop farm. Don't want anything to blow away. 

AMANDA: Arlene explains that there are a lot of different ways to do urban farming, but this one is using green roof technology, which has all the benefits of the green roofs that Hitesh talked about, with the bonus of produce. 

ARLENE: One of the advantages to using green of technology to grow food is that we're also, in addition to growing food, we're also catching stormwater, we're reducing the heat island, we're creating space for biodiversity in the city and where people can connect to nature and to food production because like all I see are buildings. You know, there's not even that many parks in this neighborhood. So the students and the staff and the community members who come and participate on the farm, they're just happy to be able to touch soil and to, you know, hang out with birds and butterflies and insects. So it's a really neat space in the middle of a concrete jungle, basically. But I think there's a lot of potential for rooftop farming in the city of Toronto and beyond. And I'm really excited to be able to be a part of that and to share what we're doing here and hopefully see more rooftop farms. 

AMANDA: Hitesh is also excited about the fact that cities are building upon the idea of green roofs. 

HITESH: So more recently, I've been involved with this notion of blue roofs where we are trying to use the rooftop to control the water flowing into the storm drainage system, and it's kind of a combination between green roof and some other measures. So recently, most recently, I'm doing work with the Region of Peel and actually more and more specifically, the Credit Valley Conservation Authority. 

AMANDA: Wrapping up -- it’s clear that when it comes to green roofs and urban farming, there is still a lot of room for growth (see what I did there)? The Toronto green roof bylaw is one step in the right direction -- but I’m glad that it hasn’t stopped there. With research continuing and

food being grown in spaces like the Toronto Metropolitan University Urban farm, I’m excited to see what’s to come. A final word from Arlene about Toronto Metropolitan University’s role in all of this… 

ARLENE: Toronto Metropolitan University has really emerged as a leader in the green industry because professors have been studying green roof technology for almost two decades here. And so we are really seen as a leader in the green roof industry. And now I think we have the potential to become a leader in the rooftop farming industry because I think rooftop farming is the next step. 

AMANDA: This podcast was created for alumni and friends by University Advancement at Toronto Metropolitan University. Special thanks to our guests on today’s episode: Hitesh Doshi and Arlene Throness. Also to Toronto Metropolitan University alumna Valerie Pringle, and her husband, Andrew — whose donation to the school made having the Urban Farm possible. I’m your host, and proud Toronto Metropolitan University grad, Amanda Cupido. For more information about the Toronto Metropolitan University Urban Farm, and more episodes of this podcast and others, visit torontomu.ca/alumni/podcasts.