Urban agriculture cooperative growing food, creating jobs, and building alternatives to corporate food systems at Concordia.
STATUS: ACTIVE
SOCIAL: @coopcultivaction
WEBSITE: www.cultivaction.ca
ADDRESS:
Loyola Farm: 7079 Rue de Terrebonne, Montreal, Quebec H4B 1E1
Senneville Farm: 1525 Provost, Lachine, QC
ABOUT THE PROGRAM:
CultivAction is a non-profit solidarity cooperative made up of urban farmers, educators and researchers who work in collaboration with community organizations in Lachine and Concordia University to ensure the transition to a more sovereign local food system. They have been a working group of the Concordia Food Coalition since 2022.
The Senneville Patchwork Farm
The Senneville plots at Morgan Farms include a smaller plot in the Patchwork community, where they grow tomatoes, beans, and peas. In 2024, they expanded to a larger neighboring plot, featuring fresh vegetables, a solar oven, a food forest with fruit trees and bushes, and homes for quails and chickens. Visitors are welcome to explore this unique farming experience on one of the last farmlands on the island!
Funky Fungi
Funky Fungi is co-op member Nico Schutte’s mushroom grow operation based out of CultivAction’s Loyola farm space. Outdoors, they cultivate red wine caps, oyster, lion’s mane, and shiitake mushrooms in outdoor garden beds. Funky Fungi also specialises in log-inoculation with various other mushroom varieties, most notable: chicken of the woods, reishi, shiitake, and lion’s mane. For indoor production, Nico focuses on mushroom genetics in the form of liquid culture, petri dishes, and grain spawn.
SERVICES
- Vegetable production for campus meal programs and campus market
- Volunteer sessions
- Internships
- Workshops
To Volunteer
Weekly drop-in sessions, June – October
No sign up or registration needed.
TIMELINE
2011:
- The City Farm School launches as a project under the Concordia Greenhouse to teach urban agriculture.
2019:
- A new cooperative, Coop Cultivaction, begins the process of taking over the Loyola campus gardens.
2020:
- CultivAction officially incorporates as a Solidarity Cooperative.
2021:
- CultivAction takes over full management of the Loyola Campus market gardens independently.
News Articles
Campus Resource Guide: Introducing CultivAction’s volunteering programs
Montreal’s urban gardens are sowing the seeds of community
Concordians, NDG residents weigh in on future of Loyola Campus
KEY CHALLENGES:
- The financial gap during the long winter when the farm production stops, and tough times finding large indoor spaces for indoor cultivation.
KEY SUCCESSES:
- Save seeds and contribute to local seed banks with less common heirloom varieties
- Use permaculture practices to grow in harmony with the natural environment
- Use regenerative growing practices to sequester carbon and reduce the need for external inputs
VIDEOS: