Building a more resilient food system

The impacts of climate change, rising fuel costs, geopolitical conflicts, and global supply chain snags make today's delocalized food system—and the 8 billion people who depend on it—increasingly vulnerable. 

Part of the solution to building a more sustainable and resilient agrifood system is to improve local, indoor food production. Researchers in McGill’s Biomass Production Laboratory are doing just that, increasing access to fresh produce year-round.

“Our goal as a sustainability effort is to try to return some food productivity back to the local areas,” says Mark Lefsrud, an associate professor of bioresource engineering in McGill’s Faculty of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences (AES) and an expert in controlled environment agriculture.

Researchers and students in the Biomass Production Laboratory are working on enhancing controlled environments to make this scale of indoor food production more efficient and to improve the nutritional quality of food produced.

Read about some of their major projects and promising results.