Over 2020-2021, The Persimmon Project worked in collaboration with community members, local community organizations and experts to actualize growing as a food security strategy. Together, we have developed a spectrum of growing activities. Growing activities we are currently exploring include: home microgreen growing, yard sharing, market gardening and urban agriculture. Each activity varies in scale to reflect community needs, aspirations, strengths, and capacity.
We have learned through extensive community engagement that growing is an increasing area of interest as a strategy to impact household food security. In 2023-2024 we look forward to working with key community partners and stakeholders such as Explore Edmonton Urban Farm, Prairie Urban Farm and Lady Flower Gardens to explore
- Urban agriculture
- Income generating opportunities (i.e. market gardening, food procurement, training & capacity building etc.) and
- Community education and capacity building workshops (i.e. Collective kitchens, workshops on canning & food preservation, Market Gardening 101 etc.)