Grow Calgary | Initiative targets city’s transportation, utilities corridor
An expansion to 60 times the current size of a farm is no simple undertaking. Paul Hughes says it is a matter of A, B and C.
That doesn’t mean it’s simple, said the key figure behind Grow Calgary, an urban farm that grows vegetables for the city’s food bank.
If A is for access, B is for build and C is for cultivate, “the first one, the A, the access, that’s the toughest one because it’s urban land and its value is high,” said Hughes.
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He and Grow Calgary’s 25-person management team want to expand the 11 acre farm to 641 acres using various parcels in the city’s transportation and utilities corridor.
The property, which is some of the 11,000 acres along the ring road that once surrounded Calgary but has since been swallowed through expansion, falls under provincial jurisdiction.
Hughes said Grow Calgary has proposed that the corridor be renamed the transportation, utility and food corridor to help create Canada’s largest urban farm.
The request for expansion was made earlier this month, and the government has not yet responded, Hughes said. Expanding the farm will mean more produce for food bank users, almost all of it generated through volunteer labour.
The proposal would add an additional 60 acres of urban farm per year for 10 years, which will allow volunteer support and farming expertise to grow along with the acreage.
About 1,000 volunteers have worked with Grow Calgary in its first two years, most of them without previous experience in agriculture, said Hughes.
“A thousand volunteers equals one and a half farmers,” he said about relative expertise.
“We’re establishing this farm based on 100 percent volunteer labour, so you get what you get. I think farmers will appreciate that we’re learning. We’ve had farmers come out and provide advice.”
The bulk of Grow Calgary’s farm is a pocket near Canada Olympic Park. An expansion would see pockets of land along the corridor throughout the city, improving volunteer access and public profile.
However, Hughes said any expanded urban farm would have to be sustainable, so the management team has plans to establish an arrangement where urban farmers would be trained and put in charge of specific plots.
They would be paid using profits from sales of 25 percent of the produce through community shared agriculture projects, farmers market sales and restaurant supply.
Those funds would also support the other 75 percent of the operation that supplies free, fresh vegetables to the food bank.
“We’re just trying to get as much good food as we can into the hands of as many Calgarians that want to access it.”
The quality of soil on land along the corridor is generally good, said Hughes. Plots would mostly be thinner strips farther from the roadway and will be fertilized using compost.
Organic methods would be embraced, as they are on the present site.
The project illustrates burgeoning interest in urban agriculture and food production. Hughes said there is a wealth of municipal land across Canada that could be used for growing food.
