What role can a food project play in my community? How does hydroponic farming allow me to work with the constraints of my food environment? Now that I’m growing, what’s next?

These questions only begin to scratch the surface of the conversation that took place among three different west coast communities during the B.C. Economic Summit in March 2021. Watch the full recording or continue reading to learn more about:

Gitmaxmak’ay Nisga’a Society’s plans to think big and turn their garden centre and Growcer farm into a regional food hub in northwest B.C.
Old Massett Village Council’s early stages of planning a Growcer project and how they see a hydroponic container farm making a difference
How École KLO Middle School integrates their Growcer farm throughout the school, from enhancing the classroom experience to destigmatizing food assistance programs

Becoming a regional food hub in northwest B.C.

The Gitmaxmak’ay Nisga’a Society (GNS) is a non-profit First Nations organization delivering programs and services to Nisga’a citizens in the Prince Rupert and Port Edward area on behalf of Nisga’a Lisims Government. Blair Mirau, the chief executive officer of Gitmaxmak’ay Nisga’a Society, shares the domino effect that led to investing in a Growcer farm.

In 2013, the non-profit purchased a worn down garden centre with three greenhouses but it wasn’t sure what a food project could look like.

“We’re the rainiest and cloudiest city in Canada, and it’s incredibly difficult to do traditional agriculture,” Mirau explains, adding that there’s no agriculturally zoned land within 150km.

The 40-foot container farm would allow GNS to grow 500 heads of fresh greens per week and could easily be placed in the parking lot of the garden centre, unfazed by Prince Rupert’s rainiest weather.

Ultimately what moved “food” to the top of the priority list was a quality of life survey among Nisga’a citizens that showed 1 in 3 households were not regularly eating three meals a day.

Gitmaxmak’ay Nisga’a Society partnered with a local non-profit, Ecotrust Canada, to recruit the help of masters students to test out possible solutions to address food insecurity. The pilot programs concluded there wasn’t enough space at the garden centre site to grow enough food to meet the high community demand, and that any community garden would require significant and ongoing subsidization. It wasn’t until Mirau saw Growcer on an episode of Dragons’ Den that he realized that they could accomplish their goal in a different way.

“Everything clicked for me. I just thought, ‘wow this is incredibly space efficient, energy efficient, it can grow all year round regardless of weather conditions, and it can create jobs and supply food for the community,’” Mirau says.

The 40-foot container farm would allow GNS to grow 500 heads of fresh greens per week and could easily be placed in the parking lot of the garden centre, unfazed by Prince Rupert’s rainiest weather.

“Everything clicked for me. This is incredibly space efficient, energy efficient, it can grow all year round and it can create jobs and supply food for the community. ”

— Blair Mirau, CEO of Gitmaxmak'ay Nisga'a Society

Launching the project

From then on everything moved quickly and Mirau worked with the Growcer team to figure out the details of the project. Mirau specifies that working through an economic projection spreadsheet with Growcer’s head project consultant Branavan allowed the team to go into extreme detail with the project, from the price of produce to labour costs to how many shelves they would need in the unit.

“Every bit of service that the Growcer was able to provide for us, we needed, otherwise we would not be where we are today,” Mirau says, adding that building the strong business case helped them receive funding.

Gitmaxmak’ay Nisga’a Society received funding from the Northern Development Initiative Trust for 70% of the cost of the unit and supplementary support from Ecotrust Canada and wage subsidy programs to establish the growing project. “Partnerships are absolutely key to make a project like this happen,” Mirau says.

Community response

Since launching Gitmaxmak’ay Nisga’a Society’s Growcer farm in late 2020, the community response has been “overwhelmingly positive.” Based on community surveys, they grow buttercrunch and romaine lettuce, spinach, microgreens, and the herbs, basil and cilantro. The non-profit plans to create a distribution model where community members can pay to receive a subscription box of weekly produce and the profits from the subscription will be used to subsidize or provide free produce boxes to members in need.

“We didn’t think we’d get more than 10-15 people in our Zoom consultations, but within 1 hour and a half of the presentation we had 110 on our interest list wanting a subscription box, willing to put a deposit down,” Mirau shares. “There’s a demand for local food in Prince Rupert that really has never been met.”

What’s next?

Even though the project is still in its first year, it has built momentum for the future of food in the region.

“Our biggest challenge today is - and it’s a good problem to have - is this overwhelming insatiable demand that we cannot service out of one Growcer unit,” Mirau explains.

“We have a Board of Directors who have become so inspired, and forward looking and progressive, that they’re saying why do we have to stop in Prince Rupert, why can’t we become the major regional food player in the entire northwest B.C.?” Mirau says. “So that’s our biggest challenge: how do we scale what we’ve already started and unleash that on the rest of the region?”

The non-profit has a portfolio of social enterprises that they’re able to integrate to justify investments like a full-time bookkeeper or online Point-of-Sales system in the future.

“We see the Growcer unit as being the foundation upon which we can build that infrastructure.”

“We can reasonably see a future where we can start to supplement the fresh greens subscription box, we can start to add on some of nature’s bounty from around our area, like salmon, halibut, and other types of seafood,” Mirau says. The plan is to scale the subscription box to get local food into as many local hands as possible. “We see the Growcer unit as being the foundation upon which we can build that infrastructure.”

Leveling up food sovereignty

Further off the west coast, Old Massett Village Council performs the function of a village government in their Old Masset, located in the north of Haida Gwaii, off the coast of British Columbia near the Alaskan border.

Kevin Brown is a climate action coordinator for Old Massett Village Council and shares how he’s watched the decline of the local economy in fisheries and forestry over the past 35 years. It’s had a ripple effect on their small population of 700, mostly impacting youth and their opportunity for employment. Food insecurity also operates in the background, because of transportation costs and their remote location.

“It’s really difficult to afford good food. Processed food and pop are cheap, but also a health risk, diabetes and that sort of thing. So we want to change the tide of the way we’ve been living and get back to a more healthier way of life,” Brown says. “We need to go back to the decentralized food, and grow local, shop local.”

Kevin Ainsworth is currently working as a business consultant to the Old Massett Village Council and he echoes Brown’s points. He explains how most of the items in the grocery store need to come in by barge or B.C. ferry and it makes the shipped items relatively expensive or not always available. However, he also shares that there’s tremendous demand for potatoes and vegetables currently grown seasonally.

On the island, there already exists a culture of food programs with strong community support. Brown explains how there’s gardens, smaller hydroponic setups, greenhouses, school food lunch programs, and processing for fish and venison. “There’s a huge culture that I’m just trying to take to the next level here and address the bigger problems of food insecurity,” Brown says.

With the skills and community demand in place, the next step is finding funding for their next project, adding a Growcer farm for year-round fresh greens.

The project’s priorities are weighted 60% social, 40% profit. Ainsworth explains how at the end of the day, it has to be a sustainable business financially.

“For me as a business analyst, the aha moment was going through the financial model with [Growcer’s] Branavan and seeing that the business model is quite robust,” Ainsworth explains. “Even with a relatively low selling price and pretty conservative costs for energy, the model will still stay in the black.”

“The Growcer team and Branavan have been really supportive, helping us with some grant opportunities,” Ainsworth adds.

Classroom ideas with a modular farm

For École KLO Middle School in Kelowna, B.C., starting a Growcer project was about education first.

“We have this culture of sustainability and we felt that having a modular farm on the property would be amazing,” says Karla Lockwood, a grade 9 teacher at KLO Middle School. “It’s also really conducive to education . . . so having something that we can teach agriculture and food security through the winter months was an amazing opportunity.”

Teacher Karla Lockwood (pictured here in the middle) being trained on how to use the Growcer farm.

The school applied and secured a partnership with President’s Choice Children’s Charity who will be supporting the project for three years. The charity’s mandate is “feeding minds and bodies” so with their support, the school is able to freely donate the produce to students, staff, and the local community. The parent advisory committee of the school also stepped in to help with site preparation.

Lockwood shares that when she first heard about the potential of this project for the school, she was so excited and made sure to be a part of it. Now, mainly due to Covid-19 restrictions, Lockwood is the main farm operator. She explains how she is paid by the school district and is given a block of time (1 hour and 15 minutes) to maintain the farm every day. However, she says that on harvest days the time is closer to a half day and this becomes an opportunity to get students involved.

“However I have started what we’re calling a seed-to-feed program where we get classes to sponsor the six-week growth of [a crop]. So those classes I can take a couple kids out with me to transplant and I can take a couple kids out on a harvest day, and they help me with those larger day tasks,” Lockwood explains.

The hands-on learning also goes beyond the farm and into the classroom.

“I’ve polled our staff and asked, where does this fit into your curriculum, your content?,” Lockwood starts. For her science curriculum, it was a natural fit. Lockwood uses the farm to talk about nutrient cycles in a closed system and the pros and cons involved. For other classrooms, the applications look a bit different.

The woodwork classes are in the process of building a shed as an extra workspace for the farm. The cooking classes use the produce grown in their dishes. The english classes use the farm to teach journalism where students write a story about the newsworthy farming project to submit to local newspapers. Finally, Lockwood shares how if she encounters a problem in the farm she brings the issues into the design thinking classes to come up with a solution. The students are then given a chance to design and test the solution out in the farm, creating an exciting hands-on learning opportunity.

“The impact is tremendous, the kids love working in the farm, it’s something new . . . [And] it’s touching everyone and everyone is just so excited by it,” Lockwood says.

““The impact is tremendous, the kids love working in the farm, it’s something new . . . [And] it’s touching everyone and everyone is just so excited by it.””

— Karla Lockwood, KLO Middle School

Lockwood also explains how it fits seamlessly into the school’s food initiatives. During a think tank about food initiatives, Lockwood learned that sometimes food programs for students-in-need can unintentionally stigmatize those students. “By having the modular farm and having this food accessible to everyone, it’s reducing that stigma in our school,” Lockwood says.

Recently, Lockwood sent food bins home and one parent reached out to suggest launching a subscription box. The school has been talking about a subscription box that’s a pay-what-you-can model so it’s accessible to everyone, or a sponsor-a-bin, buy-one-get-one model.

“And then long term, [the plan] is to generate revenue in order to put money back into food services at our school site, with the goal of having no member of our community having to pack a lunch, there will always be fresh nutritious food onsite and available to everyone, everyday,” Lockwood says.

In the future with a subscription box, the learning opportunities grow into supply chain management and business. “Now it’s not just the growing and the agriculture, but the business model itself,” Lockwood explains.

Hydroponic Farming: What you can do with a modular farm