Grant: CCI Applied Research and Development Grants

Camosun Innovates (CI) and TOPSOIL are combining their efforts in order to develop a prototype Mobile Urban Farm to dramatically reduce the necessary time and energy needed to operate small-scale urban farms in a greener, sustainable, and socially responsible fashion. The applied research and development hub at Camosun College, CI has a proven track record of developing modular solutions for local businesses. Housed within CI is the Camosun Technology Access Centre (CTAC), one of sixty such centres across Canada and the first in BC, with more than a ten-year focus on advanced manufacturing. TOPSOIL is the first and only Urban agriculture business in Victoria utilizing non-arable land to produce food for restaurants and the surrounding community, bringing together people from varied professions - including architecture, engineering, farming, local government, property development, and the restaurant industry - in order to transform vacant urban land by implementing productive farms. Over the past seven years, TOPSOIL has successfully streamlined production and distribution systems which allow them to grow tens of thousands of pounds of high quality fresh local produce for over thirty restaurants and thousands of individuals across the Greater Victoria area. The TOPSOIL Farm unit is the "Swiss Army Knife" of sustainable farming - a multi-purpose toolkit adaptable to a wide range of possibilities. Approximately 60% of the total hours spent on a farm are in post-harvest processes, such as washing, packaging, storing and tracking produce. By automating and streamlining this process, the fully integrated TOPSOIL Mobile Urban Farm will give any individual, institution, organization or community the ability to implement a successful farm. This project will become a living example of innovation, encouraging more local people to participate in food production and preparation, demonstrating that urban food production can be a meaningful and viable career choice and will create farms that nurture peoples' health and well-being in significant and lasting ways. The farm unit will allow people to learn how to grow large amounts of fresh local produce in a sustainably and financially viable way, and has the potential to be adopted and adapted across Canada and North America. TOPSOIL intends to reach out to fellow farm innovators to help other urban farms develop, providing communities with the opportunity to adopt fully integrated modular farming systems.