5 Steps for Starting a Community Food Project

You identified that now is the time to start a community food project, but where do you begin? Here are five steps to starting a community project with Growcer to support your mission and local food system.

1.GET TO KNOW YOUR COMMUNITY

Solutions that incorporate community feedback early on in the process guarantee more success down the road. Start conversations with community members, grocery stores, co-ops, farmers' markets, local restaurants, and other businesses, like caterers or schools, that source food. Understand what is needed and where the need is greatest. Ask:

At universities, produce is used by food service operations on campus and 10 percent is donated to on-campus groups and food banks.

• Where do you currently source your produce?
• What produce varieties are currently available? What are their respective prices?
• How much produce are you using/selling per week?
• What types of produce would you like to grow locally?

Before you begin these conversations, know what produce - from bok choy to basil - is possible to grow with a Growcer system by checking out the Everything Guide.

And consider that produce grown hyper-locally is not to be compared with produce that’s shipped in from far away. To find price compatible products for market research in your area, look for products that will match your future products, such as living lettuce, other hydroponic greens, and other hyper-local, organic produce. Growcer greens belong in the hyper-local, value-added produce category.

2.DETERMINE YOUR GOALS

Many of our partner communities undertake food projects for a variety of reasons from bolstering existing community programs to creating a year-round stream of revenue. Once you know the goal of your project, other details will start to fall into place.

For example, The Gitmaxmak’ay Nisaga’a Society (GNS) is a non-profit First Nations organization delivering programs to Nisga’a citizens in the Prince Rupert and Port Edward areas. GNS operates a garden centre with three seasonal greenhouses, but installed a Growcer farm to add a year-round source of produce and revenue. The 40-foot farm allows GNS to:

GNS operates a garden centre with three seasonal greenhouses, but installed a Growcer farm to add a year-round source of produce and revenue.

• Overcome a lack of space and land by the community to continue growing
• Sell and donate fresh produce year-round for 1,600 society members
• Reinvest the revenue into other community initiatives
• Supply produce to their new cafe

“This hydroponics unit means Prince Rupert will finally have a local source for fresh vegetables and herbs. Furthermore, the hydroponics greenhouse will integrate perfectly with our portfolio of small businesses, create good quality jobs, and feed families,” added Blair Mirau, CEO of GNS.

A Growcer farm is also a fit for other organizations. For example, Carley Basler shared how she operates the Growcer farm onsite at The Churchill Northern Studies Centre (CNSC) in a recent webinar.

“When I draw up my harvest plans and make my contacts with our customers and partners, I treat it as a business. I want to put out as many units [of produce] as I can,” Basler began. However, she explained that growing greens complement the goals of the CNSC, but growing is not the goal. “We’re running it as an opportunity to constantly be engaged with other communities and share our experiences.”

For Audrey Turgeon, growing produce using a modular farm was a way to diversify her dairy farm. By selling produce to local grocery stores and neighbours through a CSA (community supported agriculture) model, she added a new stream of revenue to the farm and a source of fresh produce in the Eastern Townships region of rural Quebec.

“The first contract we made for a large delivery to a grocery store was a moment we enjoyed a lot,” Turgeon recalls, adding that the first few weeks at the farm were exciting, “seeing the love from people for our produce.”

COMMUNITY-DRIVEN MODELS

Community-driven models operate a Growcer farm for the benefit of the community first. They can look like:

• Selling a portion of what is grown for a profit to cover the costs of operating the farm, and donating the rest of the produce to community programs and members.
• If you have a strong donor base for your organization, allowing donors to cover the operating costs and donating all the produce.

Watch the co-founder of The Growcer and operator of our first farm answer an audience question about the business model for container farms.

3.WORK WITH GROWCER TO BUILD A PLAN

Once you gather enough information from your community and set your sights on a goal, it’s time to turn your ideas into action. The Growcer team helps many partners in the early stages of their projects finetune their focus and craft successful implementation plans. Now that you have direction, let The Growcer team help you cross the finish line. We can help with: