The London Food Bank is kicking off its 37th annual Spring Food Drive.
The London District Construction Unit CEO Mike Carter demonstrated a project that is called “Farm in a Box. This 12-metre-long container will be used and specially designed to grow food. The construction association will also be donating 2 containers total that will be part of a 5 set piece, the first set will be used to structure the crops while others will be used to grow many different crops.
Carter mentions that based on the plant type, there will be different levels of productivity, but this operation means they will have more time to grow rather than standard farming.
Co-Executive Director Jane Roy told XFM News that “The food bank is serving 1,500 families a month and 16,000 individuals. So we’re asking people to make donations if they can of canned goods that’ll come to the food bank and we’ll be able to share it. The second thing were actually talking about is food insecurity obviously food insecurity in terms of people needing help and they come to us but food security is about the community growing their own food resources.”
Roy also looks ahead seeing the opportunities for an expansion on the enhancement of the “farm in a box” in the future. She says “Farming in a container doesn’t take a lot of farmland and a lot of crops are produced. So I think they were talking about, you know, 500,000 meals produced in
four to five containers and I think that is huge.” Roy adds that there are a lot of possibilities in regards to growing food and how individuals can help individuals more and more. She says “We need to grow our own food. And for those that have started gardens and are growing vegetables, should grow an extra row for the food bank grow an extra row for the people who need it as well.”
Middlesex London Health Unit Diation Kim Loupos mentions the Harvest Bucks Program partnership and how they measure it. Loupos says “One of the great things about the program is distributing the vouchers as we have almost 300,000 this year, and any of the what we paid to the businesses are redeemed”
Loupos also says that they track to see how many vouchers are redeemed in total and anything unredeemed is a social investment into the program for the following year. She also says that it’s part of their startup funding so the redemption rate is one of the pieces that they track.
The Spring Food Drive starts March 22nd and is on until April 1st.
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