By Cheryl Jahn

CNC looks at food security

Mar 15, 2024 | 3:27 PM

PRINCE GEORGE – The College of New Caledonia is looking into the possibility of sourcing food in this region, something that hasn’t happened in years.

“I just have a personal interest if being sustainable is possible and having your own resources at home. And so I do a big garden at home and I have chickens at home and hopefully be raising some pigs this year,” explains Shelby Roberts, who is heading up the work for the College of New Caledonia.

Prince George and the entire North have seen the challenges of food supply, the fires of 2017, when Highway 97 was closed for days due to wildfires and the shelves were bare. People started to realize the importance of local sourcing for food production. The question is: What can we grow in this part of the world, given the different elevations in this community from the Hart to Lower College Heights? And some would argue climate change has changed the landscape.

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“A lot of different places can grow a lot of different things in Prince George,” says Dr. Annie Booth with Environmental and Sustainability Studies at UNBC. “What we don’t know is what people are actually able to grow. And people who like growing vegetables grow a lot of different things.”

And it’s that quest for learning that prompted Roberts to look at the idea of perhaps teaching people how to grow their own food.

“I think that just the challenges that we faced between floods and supply chain issues and forest fires and having access to foods, we’ve come to rely so heavily on grocery stores. And when the grocery stores didn’t have food.”

And educating people on how to grow their own food is becoming more and more popular, and in some innovative ways.

“Practices down in Seattle, for example, where is if you have yard space, but for example, you’re you know, you got a bad knee and you can’t garden yourself,” says Dr. Booth. “You can co-op with people who will come in and share the produce. So there are lots of innovative ways of growing more food locally and ensuring that it gets around. We just really need to look at EAT and CNC are doing what a number of other groups are doing is really collectively contributing to the solution.”

Once the findings of the research are finished, the College will look at a feasibility study of future course work on food security and crop cultivation.