Montreal Gazette / Monique Beaudin / 15 June 2011
In front of the N.D.G. Food Depot’s west-end headquarters, herbs, tomatoes, potatoes and turnips are growing in newly built wooden planters.
Inside the grey industrial building on Oxford Ave., mushrooms are growing in plastic buckets and bean sprouts fill glass jars. Volunteer cooks will use the fresh produce to prepare meals for some of the thousands of people who go to the food depot for help every year.
This small-scale agriculture project is part of a bigger plan by the food bank to branch out into practising permaculture, a system of ecological design that includes organic gardening, reducing waste and building strong communities.
Inspired by the systems and relationships found in nature, permaculture techniques are most often applied to agriculture and growing food, although it can also be used to deal with environmental problems such as climate change or oil spills.
Since it was founded 25 years ago as a temporary solution to food insecurity in the neighbourhood, the food depot has moved from simply providing emergency food to trying to make longterm changes in the community, said director Fiona Keats.
“We are really moving toward a vision of an integrated, holistic, community food centre,” she said.
