{"id":386,"date":"2026-02-27T18:18:54","date_gmt":"2026-02-27T18:18:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stories.j-proj.com\/foodbeets\/?p=386"},"modified":"2026-02-27T18:40:15","modified_gmt":"2026-02-27T18:40:15","slug":"elementor-386","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stories.j-proj.com\/foodbeets\/2026\/02\/27\/elementor-386\/","title":{"rendered":"Growcer provides fresh, healthy produce to Ottawa Mission"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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Growcer provides fresh, healthy produce to Ottawa mission<\/h1>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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Kevin Clasper-Inglis<\/h3>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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Jessica Karpowich, main grower for the Ottawa Mission's modular farms<\/h6>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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Tucked away behind office space on the NCC Greenbelt Research Farm are two structures that, from the outside, look like shipping containers.<\/p>

In reality, these shipping containers are modular farms. Employees grow leafy greens and fresh herbs on the inside using hydroponics.<\/p>

It\u2019s a system developed by Growcer, a modular farming company that came up with the concept as a way to help provide food security to remote and isolated parts of Canada such as Nunavut where the soil isn\u2019t good enough to farm and shipping food in from the south makes for cost prohibitive grocery items.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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The modular farm as seen from outside<\/h6>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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Now, they sell modular farms to clients all over the country.<\/p>

They are bought by grocery stores, food banks, municipalities, restaurants, anyone who might have an interest in having access to hyper-local, grown on-site food.<\/p>

But without the detrimental impacts of conventionally farmed products such as herbicides, pesticides and the significant land and water resources that conventional farming requires.<\/p>

According to Jessica Karpowich, the grower responsible for these two boxes, the company\u2019s hydroponics system allows the food to be grown without soil, instead using nutrient rich water, whose mineral levels are adjusted precisely to the plants\u2019 needs, while UV lights allow for photosynthesis.<\/p>

\u201cEssentially, you’re getting exactly what you want when you want it to make the optimal growth,\u201d said Karpowich.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Young basil plants<\/h6>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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The product is also protected from external threats like pests and weather.<\/p>

\u201cYou’re in a climate-controlled environment. You’ve got every factor that can be controlled essentially being controlled, which is why the turnover rate is so high,\u201d she said.<\/p>

The inside of the container feels more like a laboratory than a place of food production.<\/p>

\u201cWe’re growing vertically, as you can see with these racks,\u201d said Karpowich motioning to the UV lit shelves lining the walls showcasing healthy kale, lettuce, spinach and herbs.\u00a0<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Some of the herbs growing in the modular farm<\/h6>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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\u201cWhereas if you were to put this out in a farm field, you\u2019re spacing between plants needs to be a lot bigger and you can’t stack multiple rows of food in a farm field either.\u201d<\/p>

\u201cSo even for here you’re able to grow so much more in a condensed space.\u201d<\/p>

The nature of this kind of farming makes the concept exceptionally ideal for use in urban settings where food that\u2019s accessible at the grocery store often isn\u2019t grown locally and has been shipped from a long distance.<\/p>

The two containers at the research farm are leased by the Ottawa Mission to grow leafy greens and herbs for use in their meals.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Jessica Karpowich checks the water quality of the hyroponics system<\/h6>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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According to Miles Dingwall, senior communications officer at the Ottawa Mission, the modular farms have been a major boost to the meals that they serve.<\/p>

Dingwall says that because of the two containers at the NCC Research Farm, the Mission receives 20,000 lbs of fresh greens every year which then wind up in soups, salads, and dishes served by The Mission.<\/p>

\u201cThese farms supply local greens across all our shelter\u2019s meal programs for shelter guests, community members needing meals, and our food truck program, which has grown from one truck, five stops and 500 meals a week, to now two trucks, 41 stops and over 10,000 meals a week,\u201d said Dingwall.<\/p>

\u201cThe growth of our food truck program illustrates the depth of hunger and food insecurity found all across Ottawa: this isn’t just a downtown issue.\u201d<\/p>

As food inflation and other forms of scarcity rise in Ottawa, innovative players like Growcers are increasingly stepping up to help fill in the gaps.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Growcer provides fresh, healthy produce to Ottawa mission Kevin Clasper-Inglis Jessica Karpowich, main grower for the Ottawa Mission’s modular farms Tucked away behind office space on the NCC Greenbelt Research Farm are two structures that, from the outside, look like shipping containers. In reality, these shipping containers are modular farms. Employees grow leafy greens and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":388,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-386","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-localproducers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stories.j-proj.com\/foodbeets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/386","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stories.j-proj.com\/foodbeets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stories.j-proj.com\/foodbeets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stories.j-proj.com\/foodbeets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stories.j-proj.com\/foodbeets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=386"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/stories.j-proj.com\/foodbeets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/386\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":407,"href":"https:\/\/stories.j-proj.com\/foodbeets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/386\/revisions\/407"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stories.j-proj.com\/foodbeets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/388"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stories.j-proj.com\/foodbeets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=386"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stories.j-proj.com\/foodbeets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=386"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stories.j-proj.com\/foodbeets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=386"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}