In an increasingly precarious food environment, salvation appears to be coming from an unexpected place. Milton's Country Heritage Park (CHP) began implementing a hydroponics and aquaponics operation about a year ago. Since then, several organizations across Halton have directly benefited from the food grown in this ultra-efficient method.
This may come as a surprise to some. On the surface, CHP appears to be a rustic getaway for booking weddings and catching rodeos. But CEO Jamie Reaume conceived of the idea to experiment with the technique to actively benefit the community.
"You actually get faster growth speeds and larger plants," farmhand Juan Jose Lloren told HaltonHillsToday. The level of efficiency has allowed the operation to support several projects and organizations both on the CHP property and elsewhere. Weekly harvested yields feed children relying on Food4Kids and bulk up the shelves of Food for Life Halton's Wednesday market, which has a regional hub at CHP.
They provide ingredients to the Dream Kitchen project, where individuals with special needs learn to cook. The Toronto Black Farmers and Growers Collective also benefits from the project. Despite the promise of cultivating plants in CHP's chosen method, several kinks still need to be ironed out. The aquaponics operation is not quite a closed-loop system yet. The fish in the tanks still need to be hand-fed -- an area of inefficiency that Lloren is working on a solution to.
"Which is why we're using meal worms to supplement that, meaning that instead of having to feed the fish [by hand], we only give them meal worms as scraps," Lorren explained in speaking about the last step to create a truly closed loop system.
Read the entire article at Halton Hills Today