Finding new, energy efficient ways to grow food in the North

Published: 10 hours ago

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Luke Dinan is passionate about improving food security in northern Ontario and his vision for how to grow more food locally has won the Cochrane, Ont., vegetable grower first prize in the Northern Food Security Challenge.

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Why it matters: The natural growing season in the north is short and the climate is cool, which limits the types and quantities of food that can be produced locally.

“The food we have access to is low quality and high priced because we’re trucking it in from all over the world and it’s losing shelf life and nutritional value as it’s being shipped,” says Dinan, owner of Grey Wolf Gardens. “The solution is to grow more food across the spectrum in the North.”

Although he believes in the need to produce more animal proteins, particularly through regenerative grazing and agro-forestry systems, he’s turned his focus to growing produce.

What helped him win the challenge was the innovative carbon neutral system he is adapting to extend the northern growing season for vegetables while also giving new life to waste from the local forestry industry.

“There are two fixed characteristics of northern latitudes that limit plant growth: temperature and light.

Cochrane is on the 49th parallel, approximately at the same latitude as Paris, France, and they historically grew all of their produce within city limits with the same amount of light that we have,” he explains. “That means we only have one fundamental fixed characteristic barrier to remove and that’s temperature.”

Key to Dinan’s approach is replacing the fuels now used for indoor growing – propane and natural gas – with a resource that’s plentiful in his region: wood fibre from the local forestry industry formerly destined for the pulp industry that is now in need of a new market.

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He’s working to adapt an efficient wood boiler system manufactured by Austrian wood and biomass heating system specialist Froeling to provide the majority of heat for his greenhouse, which now runs on propane. Inside, table top radiant heat lines and plastic hoops overtop growing tables make the most of the heat being produced.

“We have shrunk the amount of air space that needs to be heated, and are directing the warm air at the plants,” he says. “What’s coming out of the stack is almost 100 per cent steam, so we’re turning fibre into heat in a way that isn’t polluting. And the system meets the threshold for carbon neutral.”

The goal is to find the outer limits of an extended growing and harvesting season so he can complement the availability of locally produced stored root vegetables in the winter with fresh greens grown in a table top system.

Dinan is preparing for his first winter season with the new system, and although the $10,000 first prize from the Northern Food Security Challenge will help, he’s looking for additional funding.

“We are presenting a robust solution that has positive consequences that ripple out into the rural economy. We are solving food security and creating a market for an unusable product in our economy,” he says.

The challenge’s other winners were also focused on improving availability of fresh produce in the North.

Emily Nanne, regional manager for Northern Ontario with Bioenterprise Canada, which administered the competition, says that’s good news for the region.

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“Horticulture crops are generally underfunded in the North; other programs that run in the North are focused on commodity crops and products rather than smaller scale horticulture projects that would service specific regions,” says Nanne.

Challenge runners up were Fèrme Agricole of Opasatika, a for-profit community food security project using hybrid-hydroponics to grow early-season crops like strawberries and asparagus, and Lacroix Aquaponics of Thunder Bay, a producer of organic baby greens and fresh rainbow trout.

Northern Sustainable Farms from Killarney, an aquaponics facility that grows sustainable fish and vegetables for local communities year-round, won the People’s Choice Award.

The challenge was funded by the Federal Economic Development Agency for Northern Ontario.

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