How an indoor farm will help the Ottawa Mission

A new initiative using indoor ‘vertical farms’ will help provide fresh food for the Ottawa Mission all year-round. CTV’s Peter Szperling reports.

The Ottawa Mission is using technology combined with farming to feed thousands.

The new initiative uses indoor “vertical farms” to grown healthy, fresh locally produced greens for use in the Mission’s meal programs to serve vulnerable community.

Growcer, RBC and the Ottawa Mission launched the initiative at Bayview Yards Thursday morning.

“I think it’s going to provide us very close to what we need in terms of the meals,” Peter Tilley, Ottawa Mission CEO, said.

“We’re doing over a million meals a year. This will provide us with close to the lettuce, green, leafy product that we need for those meals. Of course, we’ll still have to buy other items or produce at the usual market prices.”

The initiative will enable The Ottawa Mission to grow their own food in two modular containers located at Area X.O., in the area of Hunt Club Road and Woodroffe Avenue.

“Otherwise, these items, especially lettuce, the leafy greens, would have been imported through our wholesale supplier in Ottawa, but probably out of the United States,” Tilley said.

“Now we’ll be doing things locally here, talk about a 100-mile diet. We’ll be doing a ten-mile diet.”

“It’s built in a 10 by 40 metal shell, and it grows food year-round using hydroponic technology. So that’s just water and light to grow plants. We use no soil, and we grow in any climate, whether it’s -40 or plus 40,” says Corey Ellis, the CEO of Growcer.

Growcer enables communities to become more food resilient through its hydroponic modular farms and food storage solutions,

“We felt a need and a desire to give back to our community where we grew up. So, the intent was to do something good in our own backyard,” says Ellis. “We’ve got projects across the country, but to date we’ve only done one in Ottawa. And in the last three years, with food insecurity (and) the crisis deepening, we felt a real need and a pull to give back to our home community.”

Ellis says the units can grow a “wide variety” of things, but “spinach and other leafy greens, lettuces and herbs” are the staples that will be grown for the Ottawa Mission.

“That stuff we won’t have to buy it. Currently, we’re spending almost $100,000 a year on produce, so this will be certainly a big change,” says Chef Ric Watson with the Ottawa Mission.

According to Ellis, it takes about 6 weeks from seed to harvest.

“But we do a weekly harvest, so we just stagger and do a crop rotation such that the farm is producing the same amount of food year-round,” Ellis said.

“This is about solving a community challenge, the issue of food insecurity in our city that’s been growing. This has the potential to have a huge impact in our community and to support vulnerable areas and disadvantaged people. And so, I’m really, really proud of the work that they’re doing,” says Ottawa Mayor Mark Sutcliffe.

The project is made possible by a $1.5 million donation from RBC to the Ottawa Community Foundation for the Food Resilience Foundation Fund. A portion of this funding supports this initiative to enable the Ottawa Mission to grow their own food.

Ellis estimates the first harvest will happen in about three months.

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