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Canada: Parking lot turned into Yellowknife’s largest urban farm

France Benoit shows off some of the vegetables grown at her farm. (Kate Kyle/CBC)

France Benoit turned a parking lot in Yellowknife into 5,000 square feet of farmland

By Kate Kyle
CBC News
Oct 06, 2020

Excerpt:

The more than 5,000 square-foot farm overlays a parking lot that’s wedged between outcrops of bedrock and black spruce trees in the heart of Yellowknife’s industrial area.

“For me, it’s food security. I’m not just growing carrots. I’m feeding people,” Benoit said, who sells her produce at the Yellowknife Farmers Market and from garden beds at her home.

That means imagining farming in new ways.

“What can we do with what we got?” she said.

Benoit didn’t grow up farming but her family’s business was food — a grocery store in rural Quebec.

“Our food came through the door that separated the grocery store to our house. And so to me, this is how food came to be,” Benoit said.

In the early 90s living outside of Yellowknife, Benoit’s roommate introduced her to backyard gardening.

“Farming or you know, backyard gardening with a heavy passion, became the way that I was going to solve all of those environmental crises. So I thought that is something that I can do. I can learn,” she said.

Read the complete article here.

See video.