Photos courtesy Jody Peakman, Everything Gp Staff (Top left: Local Garden Grower Shelley)

By Erika Rolling

Sustainability

Grande Prairie’s New Horizon Co-op wins national award for modular farm

Sep 1, 2022 | 1:51 PM

A Canadian Grocer’s 2022 Impact Award for Sustainability has been awarded to Grande Prairie’s New Horizon Co-op in Trader Ridge.

After only a short amount of time being in the community, the modular farm outside of the store is making a statement on a national scale.

The modular farm was brought to New Horizon Co-op in October 2021 by partnering with Growcer, a company that specializes in hydroponic produce container farms made in Canada.

The idea came stemmed from the Director of Operations at New Horizon, Karen Fladager, after coming across a video of Growcer’s modular greenhouse container and decided to bring one to Grande Prairie for fresh, local produce to be grown year-round.

Dill, cilantro, basil, and mint are the herbs currently grown hydroponically as well as two types of kale: red russian and winterborn, romaine, butterhead lettuce, spinach, and spring mix of wildfire lettuce and rosie pak choi.

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Co-op food stores in Hythe, Beaverlodge, Rycroft, La Glace, Valleyview, Falher, and Grande Cache all receive produce from the modular on a weekly basis.

Jody Peakman, Marketing Manager with New Horizon says it is a big deal to win the award.

“Basically with hydroponics, the nutrients are delivered to the root system directly and it allows the plant to devote more energy to growing new leaves quickly and efficiently, that’s why we can harvest weekly right now.”

“Because we are growing the greens in a controlled environment, it eliminates our need to use herbicides and pesticides, so all of our local garden produce is free of that,” Peakman says it is organic as well.

She says with winning the award for sustainability, they have tried to make sure there is little to no food waste and have cut down on unnecessary packing.

“The packaging is recycled, less plastic. We had stickers on the product that said local garden to distinguish it, be we’ve now moved to stamps, so we are just trying to be more sustainable with the whole project.”

“When they harvest, if there’s still some produce sitting on the shelf, we are taking it and making it into our own spinach dips or using the lettuce for sandwiches and salads at the deli.”

She says there are only a few designated people that are allowed to enter the greenhouse, as it is climate controlled and sensitive to changes in the environment.

Peakman says this is only the start of more sustainable practices with New Horizon Co-op and has started growing chives in the greenhouse, which will be seen on their shelves in the near future.