"Our project got started with a very generous grant from the Barrett Family Foundation, with four goals in mind: to affect policy change, to increase education, to showcase innovation and, of course, to increase food security in our area," says Carey Yeoman, Partnership manager at the Barrett Centre of Innovation in Sustainable Urban Agriculture at Durham College. In August 2023, The Centre launched Osiris Access, which is a Growcer modular farm outfitted for accessibility. Their farm is a hub for fresh produce, education, and community engagement.
The main reason for the project was to enrich the Centre's food sovereignty goals, as well as to diversify the economy in Nipissing First Nation, and lastly, to create jobs for its members, explains Makenzie Jones, head grower and greenhouse manager for Mnogin Greenhouse owned by Nipissing First Nation. "The three-farm project, what we call a "Farmplex," launched in June 2023 and grows a variety of the highest quality fresh greens for the community, nearby restaurants, resellers and retailers."
The Urban Farm is a place of education and community engagement. "We thought, 'What a perfect place to showcase this technology and to have school children, high school children, come in and see what potential there is in the future of agriculture. To see that jobs in agriculture don't necessarily mean working in a row and in the hot sun in terrible conditions, but that you can apply technology to agriculture and have a bright future that way. Plus, using technology which also protects us from all the environmental impacts that we're seeing currently," she comments.
Accessibility
One of the key things was the accessibility of the unit, being AODA compliant is incredibly important to Durham College. "We just had a visit from the great people at CLOCA. One of their members uses a wheelchair and bowed out of the initial tour of the farm. He assumed that he would not be able to access all points of the farm because most of agriculture can be quite exclusionary," shares Carey.
Physically, he did come to the farm and was delighted that he got in all parts of the farm tour. the Centre has an AODA-compliant pathway around the farm to aid in that, but he's able to go into the farm unit to tour the rafts and turn around with ease and come down just like any other member of the tour. "I think that inclusivity is incredibly important."
1st anniversary
Celebrating their 1st anniversary, Makenzie shares that they had a lot of excitement in the first year, with a lot of ups and downs and milestones as well. A big one was the commissioning. "It was great to have the Growcer team come up and show us how to do everything in the first three, four days that they were there. Our first harvest was extremely exciting. It was really surprising to see how fast the plants grow over four weeks. It's literally unbelievable."
On top of that, the farm also won two food sovereignty and economic development awards for Northern Ontario, which is a great accomplishment.
"For myself as the grower and as the manager, I would say that the best part about it so far was finally getting all farms fully operational and selling out every single week. We did that in less than six months. We started the first week of June, and by the end of December to the first week of January, we were selling out all of our produce every single week," she adds.
Community involvement
All the greens produced are distributed to two key locations. The first is a street donation to Second Harvest, an organization that supports numerous food banks in the region. The second distribution channel is through Community Care Durham's Mobile Food Market. This initiative, led by Community Care Durham, sources produce at a subsidized rate from several vendors, including Durham College and the Urban Farm. The market is designed to be mobile, bringing the farm market experience directly to individuals with accessibility challenges who may face difficulties in reaching traditional markets due to transit limitations or physical barriers. The market operates at various specified locations, rotating throughout the week.
"We found this approach to be incredibly innovative," Carey remarked. "Supporting these two channels fully this year has been particularly exciting for us."
Increasing the number of students who can work at the farm through a work-integrated learning project has been another highlight of the project. The current student, who's now graduated and is a full-time employee of the Growcer farm, has been trialling a couple of different crops inside. He experimented with tomatoes and with micro peppers. Following his research, the excitement that it garners from other students, and the possibilities for what we could grow next or expand with Growcer, have been a few highlights of the project.
Read the entire article at Growcer.
For more information:
The Growcer
Email: [email protected]
www.thegrowcer.ca