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Canada: Plans for Garden City Lands in Richmond include urban agriculture, conservation bog

The mission of the farm, which is also a research facility, is to train up organic farmers.

By Susan Lazaruk
Vancouver Sun
June 23, 2020

Excerpt:

Curious onlookers will have noticed a futuristic geodesic dome and three greenhouses in one corner of Garden City, where peppers, zucchini, eggplants, cucumbers, greens and other vegetables are being grown. The structures are part of the sustainable agriculture program run by the nearby Kwantlen Polytechnic University (KPU), which trains students to grow produce with limited reliance on fossil fuels or electric tools.

“There is a lot of potential to grow food locally,” said department chairwoman Rebecca Harbut. “That’s what we really want to show. You can grow a lot of food on two-to-five acres. The whole point is to demonstrate to farmers how we can be productive and sustainable on a small plot of land.”
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The lands are designated agricultural land reserve, or ALR — a provincial land trust guarded against development — and Harbut said she hoped the urban farm could be a model.

“We have tons of ALR land that is really well-suited to growing food,” she said. “If we were able to grow food on all that land, we could create a significant dent (in the required local food supply).”

Second-year student Stephanie Bulman, who is working on the farm for the summer, grew up in the city and finds the hands-on experience to be “extremely important,” and she hopes to use her education to manage her own farm when she graduates

Read the complete article here.