How Hay River is using some of its $850K United Way funding

Hay River is making progress on a variety of agricultural projects, backed by funding it secured earlier this year.

The community received close to $1 million from United Way NWT in January to “re-establish Hay River as the agriculture hub of the North.”

Town manager Glenn Smith said that amount is being used to support cleanup work and agricultural land planning at the old Northern Farm Training Institute (NFTI). Additionally, the town plans to access GNWT funding to help update its agriculture plan.

Janet Dean, executive director of the Territorial Agrifood Association, said the town is considering dividing the NFTI area into farmland and making it available to the public.

One of TAA’s short-term projects involves transforming a fire break in Hay River into a food production area.

This year, Dean said the agrifood association intends to establish a few starter plots to grow plants and conduct soil testing, with the goal of identifying the kind of work that needs to take place for a larger-scale project.

“Each growing season subsequently, we will be expanding it based on what the community needs and wants,” she told Cabin Radio.

“We’re doing the experiments this year and then we’ll be reaching out to the community to ask them what plants they would like to see, what food production opportunities they’d like to be a part of moving forward.”

Dean said the work in Hay River is meant to serve as a model project, demonstrating to other communities that they, too, could pursue food production. According to her, one other NWT community is involved in a similar berry-planting project through Wilfrid Laurier University. 

By growing plants along the fire breaks, Dean said, they are transforming a safety feature into a dual-purpose tool – one that not only protects the community but also helps feed it. She said the project allows people to have power over the type of food they wish to consume.

“We have a terrible problem with food insecurity here in the North because we’re the end of a long supply chain. But I think even more so with food sovereignty, people don’t have the food that they want to have available to them,” she said.

“What we’re trying to do with the fire breaks is to show that we have the land and we have the resources to be able to produce food for ourselves and for our communities. We don’t have to look elsewhere for that to happen.”

Dean said the TAA is testing different crops to determine which ones grow best in the area. Ideally, the plants will retain ample moisture, be easy to grow, and require minimal maintenance. Rhubarb has been identified as one potential fit.

Despite the changes, she said the location will always remain a fire break and there is always the possibility crops will be lost if fire crews need to access the area.

TAA will also look at modelling a “food forest” this year, in which food production happens under trees – to match, the organization said, a natural and regenerative way of growing.