Regina Food Bank, Farm Credit Canada partner in indoor agriculture to fight hunger

In an effort to improve capacity to secure and distribute food, the Regina Food Bank (RFB) announced an initiative to address food insecurity in the community.

With a funding contribution from Farm Credit Canada (FCC), the initiative can adopt containerized agriculture to fight hunger.

1:05 RFB, FCC partner to produce fresh produce with growing container

“When you run a food bank, you need food,” said David Froh, RFB Vice-President Community. “When you go from feeding 6000 people to 16,000 people a month, you need a lot of food. When you go from spending $90,000 a year buying food to $1 million, you’re buying food. You have to be very strategic in how you partner, how you procure, and how we source.”

The CEO and president of the RFB John Bailey said the need has gone up in the local community exponentially and the time has come for the RFB to start doing things a little bit differently.

“One of the ways we can do that is by starting to grow our own produce internally,” said Bailey. “It’s in procurement and it should be landing in the next month or two with our anticipated first harvest being in early fall of this year which means … fresh grown produce grown right here … to serve our community.”

The FCC President and CEO said since this initiative is an innovative approach, there are many things that can happen.

“I think seeing how the project will eventually scale not only locally in Regina, but what it can mean for the rest of the food banks across Canada,” said Justine Hendricks. “We know that modular growing is a somewhat new concept but if the food bank (are) able to prove out the test case, it can really start to change in terms of how you support your local communities in terms of accessing foods.”

The RFB is excited about the work it can do in terms of providing an economic catalyst by creating more positions.