Urban farm moves processing from shipping container to storage packhouse facilities with ‘room to grow’

An urban farm that donates organically grown produce to the community can help more people than ever after using pandemic-recovery funding to build two industrial sheds on its southeast London property.

Urban Roots’ new cold storage and wash/packhouse sheds have replaced a cramped, converted shipping container that the nonprofit had been using to process and store produce on its one-acre farm.

With two larger structures, the organization can now keep its harvested fruits and vegetables fresh and safe from weather, insects and animals. And staff and volunteers finally have plenty of room to work together, processing that produce for distribution.

“This project is helping us tackle food insecurity in this region,” said Urban Roots Executive Director, Anna Badillo. “We’re more efficient than ever before. And that’s important because we know people in our community are in need of fresh and affordable food.”

Completed in September, the sheds are among 26 projects United Way Elgin Middlesex allocated to receive funding from the Government of Canada’s Community Services Recovery Fund to address needs that have emerged or increased since the start of COVID-19.

Pandemic led to increased demand, decreased capacity

Urban Roots turns underused urban property into farmland, then operates on a model of thirds. It sells a third of its produce at below market rate from its three London locations; donates a third to partner community organizations who provide it to people they serve; and sells a third to local restaurants and food outlets. The nonprofit also brings in hundreds of volunteers each year and runs educational workshops.

Since the pandemic — in a region where the health unit says one in five households are “food insecure” — Urban Roots has been trying to keep up with increasing demand.

Growing and cultivating the food has not been the problem. In the six years since the nonprofit started planting, it has increased its annual harvest from 1,000 pounds in 2017 to more than 20,000 last year.

Until now, the problem had been keeping that food fresh with limited storage. Often produce would have to be left outside, and despite best efforts to keep it protected, some would rot or be eaten by insects and animals before it could be distributed.

“We had a huge bottleneck,” said Badillo. “The shipping container was too small to accommodate the increase in orders.”

‘Food shouldn’t be a privilege — it’s a right’

“At Urban Roots, we believe food shouldn’t be a privilege — it’s a right,” said Jenn Daniel, who was hired to oversee the packhouse construction as part of the pandemic recovery project.

“You shouldn’t have to worry about whether you can pay for rent this month or have fresh greens. You should be able to do both.”

It’s why she started selling rhubarb for $1 per pound, after seeing the same amount at a grocery store for $8 – “people shouldn’t have to choose between rhubarb and eggs,” she said.

And it’s why she feels so excited about the new sheds.

“We are seeing a lot more folks coming out to our farmgate market, and in general more need for affordable food,” she said. “Now we can do so much more because we have so much more space.”

Now we can be consistent and reliable

During one week this September, Urban Roots distributed over 1,000 pounds of fresh produce to six community markets in addition to running its twice-weekly farmgate market at its Norland Avenue farm.

A year ago, that would have been an “extremely stressful” week, Badillo said.

“We’d be sending lots of last-minute emails saying we can’t make this delivery at this time, or we don’t have space to process the orders,” she said.

But this year, everything went beautifully. The fresh fruits and vegetables were ready for distribution as promised.

“Now we can be consistent and reliable for our community market partners and we can keep our produce fresher for longer,” said Badillo.

“Now we have so much potential to grow.”