Food Resources, Infrastructure and Education
in the North Shuswap
Mission: To collaborate with the community, to increase access to local, safe, healthy, sustainable food, by sharing our knowledge and resources in the North Shuswap.
Vision: To provide our community with education and resources to access an abundance of local, safe, healthy food through a caring association that demonstrates leadership in sustainable practices.
Goals: To take unused and underused farm land and put it into production of grains, vegetables and livestock. We will build a tool library of needed, but seldom used, tools for community use. We will create root cellars and storage facilities to store the results of our efforts. These products will be made available to the community through retail channels. 10% of products will be provided to various local non-profits for local school meals and at-risk families at no or low cost.
Executive Summary
This project of developing Food Autonomy for our community developed from two independent initiatives; one by a local farmer who has had experience organizing and developing farming communities of a cooperative nature, and second by a Regional Director of the Columbia Shuswap Regional District who was interested in developing an inventory of farmlands in his Electoral Area with the goal of organizing a more resilient and local food economy in the community. These two individuals met and FRIENS was formed.
As our Vision and Mission state, we are organizing to create a more stable, sustainable, local food economy in the North Shuswap. To do that we have started a non-profit organization, FRIENS, which enters into leases with local farmers who own unused or under-utilized farmland, working to bring that land into a higher level of quality and production, and seeding/harvesting/rearing plant and animal based farm products. These farm products will be sold locally through community CSA boxes, farmers markets, and eventually through a local retail store.
With a population of 3200 (2021 census) we project that approximately 300 acres will provide up to 80% of the local food requirements of our community on a year-round basis. Our plan is to provide 10% of the produce or revenue to local non-profits who work with school meal programs or local at-risk families. We also envision taking damaged or unsellable product and creating value added products, and opportunities for local people or businesses along with the education to get started in business for themselves. One other point of education will be with opportunities for our local population to learn to grow, store, prepare and preserve vegetables and fruits from community gardens.
A 10-year plan is in the works detailing major milestones of acres under lease, acres in various products, acres deer-fenced, required cubic feet of cold or root cellar storage, revenue expectations and staffing requirements. This includes specialized farm machinery and equipment that will be owned by FRIENS and used throughout the leased land. Typically, this equipment is low use but necessary, and FRIENS owning this equipment will allow it to be shared and utilized to a much greater extent than any individual small-scale farmer could.
We also have an innovative plan to bring new farmers to the area and mentor/educate them in the practice of farming with the goal of a reasonable return-on-effort through intensive yet sustainable, regenerative and eco-friendly farming.
We will document this process over the growth years, listing the wins and losses, mistakes and best practices, in the hopes that other communities can copy, and improve, what we’ve done.
These are ambitious goals but with the help of dedicated community minded people and the assistance of the local farming community, we will, step-by-step, provide our residents with a more stable and sustainable local farm-to-table resource.