toronto vertical farms

Name of Policy

Toronto Vertical Farms

Category

Cost of Living, with a secondary tie to Innovation

Problem Being Solved

1 in 10 Toronto residents supplement their food consumption with the support of Food Banks.  That’s roughly 300,000 people in a City that is in a First World Country.  That should raise each and every red flag.  I believe that solutions to cost of living should be woven together and work in concert, because rental affordability (ex., via our Toronto Rental Affordability Act) aren’t impactful enough if food scarcity is still a crisis level problem.

ROI for the Working Class

A resident of a converted city owned building receives fresh produce every two weeks.  It would be free of charge. This is not a discount or a coupon. It is food taken directly off a household's monthly budget, and paired with the rent relief already built into the Toronto Rental Affordability Act. 

How This Policy Solves the Problem

We convert unused rooftop space into working farmland.

Every city owned residential conversion under our broader Cost of Living Strategy includes a rooftop hydroponic tower farm. Hydroponic towers grow without soil and use roughly 95% less water than a conventional farm; they are built for the exact conditions our buildings offer: small footprints, dense population, no available ground level land.

Growing Year Round:

Each rooftop farm is enclosed as a greenhouse.  This insulates the crop through the cold months so growing never stops. Temperature regulation is powered by solar panels installed on site.  This keeps the ongoing cost of running the farm close to nothing once it is built.

We standardize what we grow.

Every building grows the same core list of staples: potatoes and sweet potatoes, spinach, carrots, beets, lettuce, onions, garlic, peppers, micro greens, etc. The specific mix rotates with the season, but the staple list holds steady city wide. This keeps training, logistics, and maintenance simple enough to scale without reinventing the process at every new site.

We deliver it as a feature, not a program someone has to apply for.

Every resident receives a bi-weekly care package of produce, automatically, as a standard amenity of the building they already live in.

Go To Market (GTM)

Day 1: Identify the first cohort of city owned buildings, already selected for residential conversion under the Toronto Rental Affordability Act, with rooftop space suitable for a hydroponic install.  

Day 3: Start growing in an Incubator Garden for seedlings.  We want to plan for a Day 60 harvest.  These seedlings could be transplanted or distributed into our pilot vertical farm.  

Day 5. Source hydroponic tower and solar equipment vendors and secure preliminary cost quotes for the pilot cohort.  Draft Project Proposal for City Council deliberation and a Public Consensus vote (ex., via digital votes; you would use your SIN number and address).

Day 15: Finalize the standardized staple crop list and seasonal rotation calendar with an agricultural advisor.

Day 20: Design the care package logistics: packing, the bi weekly distribution schedule, and a point of contact in each building.  Systems Automation and or Centralization will be key (ex., food packages are picked up through a locker system, rather than delivered to each door) 

Day 25: Finalize the structural and greenhouse enclosure specifications for each rooftop.

Day 30: By this point, the following are complete: the project scope is built, a virtual model has been used to test yield, water use, and solar load before any real world installation, city council and public support have been secured through city run consensus and a council vote, every relevant city agency and stakeholder has been coordinated with directly, the final project scope is locked, and the pilot has launched on its first rooftop.

Day 60: The first harvest cycle (ex., predominately micro greens) is complete, and the first bi weekly care packages have reached every resident in the pilot building.

Day 90: A full seasonal rotation has been tested at least once, with yield, cost per package, and water usage measured against our original projections.

Day 91 to 99: We review the data, refine the process, and decide whether to scale the pilot to Tier 2, covering 25 percent of eligible buildings, Tier 3, covering 50 percent, or full rollout across every city owned residential conversion.

Day 100: Review.  Revise.  Reimplement for next quarter.  This would be a completely transparent process and published on the toronto.ca website for the public to see in full. 

Financial Commitment

City Operational Budget: ~$19 Billion Dollars 

Policy Budget: 0.05% of Operational Budget or $9.5 Million Dollars

Key Performance Indicators

Day 30. A pilot rooftop farm is installed and operating on at least one building.

Day 60. Every resident of the pilot building has received a care package, and the first harvest yield is measured against projection.

Day 90. A full seasonal rotation is complete, and cost per care package and water usage are confirmed against the savings the hydroponic model promised.

FAQ

Question: Why should the city be in the business of farming?

Answer: The city already owns the buildings and the rooftop space. This puts empty space to work lowering a resident's grocery bill at no ongoing cost to the city beyond the initial install and most .

Question: Is hydroponic farming actually cheaper than buying produce at a store?

Answer: Yes.  Vertical Farming using Hydroponic Towers has considerably less overhead that a typical grocery story transfer to the consumer (ex., grocery store building rent, employee compensation, distribution from sourcing farms, and surveillance pricing).

Question: What happens to the farm once winter hits?

Answer: Every rooftop farm is enclosed as a greenhouse and solar powered for temperature regulation, so growing continues straight through the winter.

Question: Why does every building grow the exact same crops?

Answer: A standardized staple list with seasonal rotation keeps the program simple to manage, train staff on, and scale across many buildings without added complexity.

Question: What if a building's rooftop cannot structurally support a hydroponic install?

Answer: Every rooftop is assessed for structural and greenhouse readiness at Day 25 before the pilot ever launches. A building that does not qualify is simply excluded from that cohort rather than forced into the program.  Most buildings will have weight load capacity (ex., we would make the weight load capacity significantly less than structural threshold via lighter materials).