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Hosted by Rainer Bloess, Councillor for Innes Ward the Purpose of The Hosted by Rainer Bloess, Councillor for Innes Ward The purpose of the meeting was to provide the community with updates about the activities and proposed projects at the Just Food Farm – located on the former NCC Greenhouse Property at Tauvette/Pepin Court. This document seeks to provide more detailed responses to the questions that were raised. Moe Garahan, Executive Director of Just Food, provided an overview of the organization and the Just Food Farm. See www.justfood.ca for more info. Who is Just Food? We are a small, community-based, non-profit organization that works towards building a sustainable, just and vibrant food and farming system in the Ottawa region. We strive to enhance access to both healthy whole foods in general and to locally grown food in particular – to develop, link, promote and support local food and food-related initiatives in the Ottawa region. We act as a community food hub, actively engaging and promoting links across the food chain, between individuals, specific communities/businesses, broader community and decision-makers, to work together on identified food and farming issues, and to build knowledge, skills and opportunities related to food. We started as a $20,000/year project, sponsored by the Social Planning Council of Ottawa 10 years ago, and have grown to become an independent non-profit organization (incorporated in November 2011) with a budget of just under $500,000 per year. We receive core funding from the City of Ottawa and the rest of our operating budget is raised through project grants, membership and program fees, and donations. We work using community development principles, which include ensuring that every program/initiative has a broad stakeholder advisory group and/or steering committee. We manage the Community Gardening Network and administer the Community Garden Development Fund for the City of Ottawa. We work on community economic development initiatives, including managing the Savour Ottawa program. We publish the Ottawa Buy-local Food Guide, for eight years in print, and now online on our website. We led a three-year community-based food policy development process that has resulted in the Ottawa Food Action Plan and the Ottawa Food Policy Council, who are meeting for the first time this month (February 2013). We have provided a farmer-to-farmer training program for the past seven years and community-based workshops on gardening, seed saving, canning, making salsa and sauerkraut, etc. We collaborate with a number of groups working on food and farming issues in both Ottawa and across the province, including the Poverty and Hunger Working Group, the Eastern Ontario Local Food and 1 Farming Collaborative, and Sustain Ontario. We are also a member of Food Secure Canada. Who is on the Board of Directors? Our Board of Directors presently includes six members who are/have been farmers, food system and environment specialists and analysts, academics, and community partners. We also have advisors to the Board who have various technical expertise, including financial accountability expertise. We started formal paid membership in the organization in 2012 and have 120+ members (a number that grows every day). We release a monthly newsletter to 3000+ people/organizations across Ottawa and the region, and have specific project related newsletters (e.g., a farmers’ newsletter, a community gardening newsletter, etc.). We have three staff that work 5 days/week, 1 that works 4 days/week and two that work 2 days/week, as well as active internship and volunteer programs, which include student placements. In July of 2011, we moved our office to the site of the old NCC Tree Nursery and Greenhouses in the Ottawa Greenbelt on the west side of the Blackburn Hamlet neighbourhood, with the goal of establishing a community food and sustainable agriculture hub on the property, a place that would model and inspire new agricultural initiatives to help rebuild our local food economy, by providing training, shared infrastructure and equipment, and access to land, within a mutually supportive and ecologically sustainable environment. (Note: An interesting article appeared in The Citizen on the day of the Blackburn Community Meeting (Feb. 7) that reflects our vision for the Just Food Farm (our vision has more of a capacity building orientation). You can read it here.) What is your lease arrangement with the NCC? We currently rent the farmhouse and barn from the NCC, on a short-term renewable lease while negotiating a 25-year lease. We are on an access to land permit for use of the agricultural land during this negotiating period. NCC is working towards giving longer leases for its agricultural properties to encourage investment in them. There are concerns about NCC as a landlord – what if Just Food develops the site and then the NCC decides to sell to an entrepreneur (who could make the biodigester program larger)? NCC is the landowner – this parcel is part of their agricultural lease docket and is subject to the rules and regulations that govern that, including the new Greenbelt Master Plan, once approved. While this is something that needs to be spoken to by NCC, it is clear that the current direction in NCC, as profiled in the newly released Greenbelt Master Plan, is to protect and enhance greenspace and sustainable agriculture in the Greenbelt. This property is also subject to the zoning bylaws of the City of Ottawa, as well as agricultural regulations of the Province of Ontario. Our intention is to secure a long-term lease so that we can make investments in the property (e.g., improve the soil, rehabilitate the barn, install energy-efficient infrastructure, and build a new facility for both education and agricultural value-add opportunities) in support of the community farm, and in 2 keeping with the current zoning, the different levels of jurisdictional requirements, including best management practices for agriculture. We aim to model and build capacity in small-scale practices, so we have no interest in “scaling-up.” The property is limited by a protected ecological buffer zone along Green’s Creek, a residential area along Tauvette, and Innes Road, so if our land-based farm program was to expand, it would have to go elsewhere in the Greenbelt. The anaerobic digester, and any other project, will be scaled appropriately to the space and project to demonstrate something that is replicable by other small farm enterprises. The Just Food Farm – Field Update: Field-based programs along the Innes/Pepin side of the property will be starting this spring 2013. Among them, the Just Food Start-up Farm Training program will begin (with new farmers being given a test crop of 0.25 acres each in their first year, to increase to 1 full acre each in their 3rd year). It is expected that 7 acres will be cultivated this year, with other acreage on the property being ploughed and planted with cover crop. This will include some of the fields along Tauvette, prioritizing fields that do not have trees, incorporating “edible landscape” principles, and maintaining treelines for windbreaks. Please see this map of the cultivation plan. A challenge on the property is that black plastic agricultural mulch was left in many fields. We plan to engage the community – especially high school students requiring volunteer hours to graduate – in the early spring to pull that plastic up. Stay tuned for details! Are there other partners involved in this project? This year, we are working with Operation Come Home (youth enterprise program), Ottawa Food Bank (Community Harvest Program), Karen Community Farm (refugee integration program), Permaculture Ottawa (community food forest), Ecology Ottawa and Hidden Harvest (edible tree nursery). In the next three years, we are also planning a community orchard, native and heritage food plant and tree programs, and demonstration gardens including a children’s garden and an accessible garden. The programs will evolve as ideas and partnerships develop. What about farm animals? How will you manage their excrement? We are planning for small farm projects that involve animals, poultry and bees. We are welcoming projects with beehives on the property this year. In future years, we plan for a small flock chicken project (maximum 200) and/or very small numbers of sheep, goats or pigs. These will be subject to the minimum distance separation regulations of the province, the regulations of NCC, and the best practices within pastured, organic management. Animals play an important role in a sustainable farming system in that they enrich the soil with their manure. Animals on the property would be pastured at a scale that the soil can absorb/breakdown the manure (and odour) as the animals rotate within moveable fencing. 3 What about Dogs? Moe Garahan read out the NCC’s response to this question as displayed on an overhead slide: This land is expected to be leased by Just Food. As a lessee, we have to follow the NCC animal regulation act. Articles 15 and 19 would apply: http://www.canadascapital.gc.ca/about-ncc/regulations http://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/regulations/SOR-2002-164/ Any questions related to dog walking should be directed to the NCC contact centre: 613-239-5000. Dogs (and cats), being carnivores, have feces that have harmful pathogens, which is why it is essential that they do not contaminate food-growing areas. NCC governs the rules for dog walkers on the premises, and currently have strict rules about dogs being on leash at all times. We recognize that this has not been enforced. Depending on what NCC allows us to do once we are accepted as a long-term tenant on the full property, Just Food is open to allowing responsible dog owners to enjoy the property if people walk on the internal roads only (not on the fields) with dogs on leash and cleaning up all feces and removing it from the premises.
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