Farming inside a mall: Guelph, Ont. duo pairs agriculture with urban surroundings

A Guelph, Ont. duo has brought agriculture to the city’s downtown core by starting a farm inside the Old Quebec Street mall.

Co-owners Nykole Crevits and Karl Fellbaum have science backgrounds but didn’t expect to find themselves in this unique field.

“I never pictured myself growing up to be a mushroom farmer, let alone a mushroom farmer in a mall,” Crevits said.

The store specializes in mushrooms and microgreens.

“We have about 8 different varieties of greens and about 11 different mushrooms on our current roster,” said Crevits.

For greens they have speckled pea, broccoli and red cabbage to name a few. As for the mushrooms, they have oyster, lion’s mane, wild enoki, chestnut and more.

Nykole Crevits shows off a mushroom grown at Noki Farms in Guelph, Ont. (Spencer Turcotte/CTV Kitchener)

The pair says their practices are better for the environment, especially because they’re producing food closer to where people are.

“Not only are farming practices contributing to a lot of the carbon dioxide release, but also the amount of transportation and packaging with the amount of food, it is part of the problem as well,” Fellbaum explained.

Everything grown at their farm uses hydroponics and aquaponics in a controlled environment, so no soil is needed.

Microgreens growing at Noki Farms in Guelph, Ont. (Spencer Turcotte/CTV Kitchener)

They also discovered many advantages to growing indoors.

“Same consistent quality, same consistent pricing all-year round. It doesn’t matter whether there’s a drought or a flood anywhere else, we can still continue to grow food,” Crevits said.

The unique business model is something people haven’t seen before so it does come with some questions.

“‘Well, don’t they grow in poo?’” Crevits said, recalling a common question. “No, surprisingly not.”

The Noki Farms store in Guelph, Ont. (Spencer Turcotte/CTV Kitchener)

Mall farming can be tricky too.

“One of the issues that we run into is all the mushrooms and all the microgreens have to be friends. So they all have to grow in the same place and same environment,” said Fellbaum.

Although, they seem to be growing their mushrooms and microgreens just fine.

Noki Farms grows about 200 kg of food every month and they hope to get that up to 400 kg.

It’s not only a fungus farm of the future, but an efficient one too.