One year in the borough of Ahuntsic-Cartierville. About seven years for Le Plateau-Mont-Royal. The wait can be outrageously long for a Montrealer wanting to obtain space in a community garden. However, the metropolis is making efforts to promote market gardening on its territory.
In 2021, the City of Montreal unveils its strategic plan for the development of urban agriculture and anchors its position in favor of the development of this activity in order to contribute to the greening of the city and its ecological transition.
The development of urban agriculture is a good idea in itself, but is the metropolis really able to offer the necessary space on demand to adopt its new urban agriculture strategy plan? According to a survey carried out in 2021 by the City, the main obstacle to the practice of urban agriculture is the lack of space. At the same time, Montreal published its pollinator protection plan in 2022, which aims to conserve, create and connect habitats favorable to pollinators.
Urban agriculture and pollinator protection are two interrelated concepts that should include specific strategies in both plans. However, the Montreal urban agriculture plan says very little about the use of pesticides, pollinator-friendly practices, development strategies for community gardens, as well as workshops to raise awareness about gardening and the protection of pollinators. In addition, the City of Montreal’s pollinator conservation plan mentions on several occasions that these insects provide important services and that citizen participation in the creation of habitats and developments that take their needs into account is essential.
But if you want to contribute to green practices that promote pollinators and biodiversity through a community garden, you could wait a few years.
The issue of pollination
A shock study carried out in 2017 caused a reaction by showing that the number of insects has been in free fall in recent years. Pollinating insects play the crucial role of fertilizing the plants we grow. Without them, we have neither fruits and vegetables nor feed resources for livestock. Moreover, we can hardly imagine replacing pollinators with our hands, because this service would cost society between 235 and 557 billion dollars per year.
However, this catastrophic scenario can be put into perspective. Recent studies say the opposite: not all insect populations are destined to disappear. Today, some are in decline, but others, conversely, are on the rise.
According to a study carried out in urban areas, it has also been shown that pollination can be more active in cities than in rural areas. A scientific article entitled “The city as a refuge for pollinating insects” thus explains that the cities where one finds a variety of melliferous flowers and a diversity of habitats (the walls, the hedges, the stumps of wood, the gutters, etc.) can attract a wide range of pollinating insects.
Proof that pollination is not lacking: it is not one of the issues raised by the City of Montreal’s urban agriculture strategy.
The problem is elsewhere
If we want to talk about a major challenge for urban vegetable gardens, let’s talk about space. If we count the area of community gardens, private gardens, backyards, educational gardens and municipal land under cultivation, we arrive at a total of 120 cultivated hectares, or less than 1% of Montreal’s territory.
By dividing this area between all the inhabitants of the city, each one would have approximately 0.5 m2 — barely enough to grow a tomato plant. The urban agriculture strategy foresees an increase in the cultivated area of 40 hectares, an addition of 0.2 m2 per person… Enough to add a dozen carrots!
We understand that the City of Montreal does not aim for food self-sufficiency in its urban agriculture plan. Moreover, a study carried out in 2020 by the Urban Agriculture Laboratory shows that current production could only meet the fresh vegetable needs of 5% of the population, and only during the summer.
However, the pandemic has revealed new interests and needs of citizens for local production and food sufficiency that go beyond the development goals targeted by the plan. Of course, there are several major challenges to enlarge the cultivated area in the city. In its plan, the City of Montreal mentions as problems the scarcity of available land, its cost and its possible contamination. Good reasons to maximize its use.
One garden, many fights
While we can only applaud the city’s desire to protect biodiversity, the choice of pollinators based on the services they provide is surprising. If the City of Montreal seeks to protect biodiversity for its intrinsic value, it would be advantageous to choose a group that is more affected by urban environments.
If it rather seeks to allow greater urban agricultural production, efforts should instead be devoted to the reorganization of space. Pollinators would not lose out, since more well-designed gardens will be available to them.
But what is a well-designed garden for pollinators? According to a study carried out in New York, it would be necessary first to plant plant species that attract them and to plan cultivated areas of at least 600 m2 in order to provide a refuge that can accommodate a diversity of species and provide them with the necessary resources. The data collected by this study also testify to the fact that gardening activities contribute to attracting and keeping a sufficiently large number of bee species.
Since the pandemic, citizens no longer look at their food in the same way, and we feel a collective desire to (re)discover the pleasure of watching vegetables grow and observing insects foraging on flowers. This may bring about a wind of ecological change and social pressure to give more space in the city to the plants and insects that feed us.