uOttawa took greens beyond the cafeteria into the community during COVID-19

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The Growcer’s hydroponic growing system located the University of Ottawa.

The University of Ottawa pivoted its growing operations to service the community during COVID-19.

In a normal school year, the University of Ottawa (uOttawa) uses The Growcer’s hydroponic growing system to grow greens for its dining hall and catering services. The unit helps to serve the 8,000 students that pass through its dining hall every day.

The Growcer unit on campus was born out of a partnership with the school’s food service provider Chartwells Canada. The unit was installed in August 2018.

But in 2020, it wasn’t a normal school year.

In mid-March, the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic sent students home and closed many operations on campus.

Maryann Moffitt, dietitian and food liaison officer at the University of Ottawa, said the University continued to use their Growcer unit to support the dining hall for the few students that were still on campus. However, the demand was nothing like it was before.

Donating the dining hall surplus

With so much extra greens, Moffitt decided to donate the surplus to Shepherds of Good Hope, a homeless service in Ottawa. Shepherds of Good Hope runs a shelter and a community kitchen serving lunch and dinner every day.

Moffitt, who continued to visit the Growcer unit to tend to the crops, would pick the greens in the morning and deliver them in the afternoon.

“The shelter is just so thrilled,” Moffitt said. “Normally their salads are like a coleslaw, and this was a real treat for them to be able to offer a green salad and to offer something fresh.”

Moffitt donated 100 to 250 heads of Monte Carlo romaine lettuce per week.

Maryann Moffitt, dietitian and food liaison officer at the University of Ottawa

“It means a lot to them to be able to offer a really high quality product to their clientele because they don’t always have that option.”

Mutually beneficial

When the dining hall stopped for the summer, she continued to donate even more throughout the summer.

“We kept it going, we thought that donating that product to Shepherds of Good Hope was doing some good at a time when volunteers and other resources are drying up,” Moffitt said.

“There’s a lot of choices and decisions, and there’s a lot of influences that have gone into building the food system that we have now,” Moffitt says. “There’s a lot of people losing out in the current food system, so I made a personal commitment to myself to use whatever power afforded to me by the happenstance of my scenario to do good.”

Moffitt also explained that keeping the unit running was also advantageous from a plant health perspective. Moffitt said that stopping and starting again could cause troubles and it was better to keep the unit running so it’s ready to go for the start of the school year.

Looking forward

Normally, their Growcer unit provides enough greens for their salad bar and catering for a day. For the current school year, Moffitt thinks the harvest will go further because of the COVID-19 pandemic. The Growcer unit will be a more significant contributor to the food services’ overall greens purchases for the dining hall.

“We need more diversity in the food system so we’re protected from shocks, so we don’t have all our eggs in one basket,” Moffitt said. “I see The Growcer as part of the transformation of the current food system into something that’s going to be better, healthier, and more sustainable.”