OCTOBER 2019 • COUNTRY LIFE IN BC


15 City Beet harvests profits from urban gardens


Venture has doubled in size since 2016


by PETER MITHAM VANCOUVER—It’s a sunny


afternoon in the Lower Mainland as Maddy Clerk and Elana Evans of City Beet Farm harvest tomatoes for the weekly produce boxes they’re assembling for delivery the following day. The two run a successful community- supported agriculture (CSA) program, and there’s enough produce for them to also participate in a biweekly market and supply local restaurants. Direct marketing is big business for many small-scale farms, but City Beet is smaller than most. With just a half- acre of production spread across 15 properties, it’s taking a novel approach to farming as one of the more than a dozen urban farms in Vancouver. Given the high cost of land in BC, the two partner with landowners in residential neighbourhoods for space, paying them with a share of production or a 50% discount on the CSA subscription (or $275). “A big aspect is the land- access issue,” says Clerk of the approach. “A really big part of it was being able to farm and work for ourselves at such a young age and get our feet wet in farming.” “This was a way to try our


own thing, and it felt accessible to us as people with little savings and not much capital behind us,” says Evans.


Maddy Clerk and Elana Evans operate a profitable CSA using produce they grow on small lots in Vancouver. PETER MITHAM PHOTO


Vancouver adopted an urban farming bylaw in 2016 that recognized it as a permitted activity within city limits. (Some operations had previously been forced to shut down by neighbours’ complaints.) Being within the city also gives City Beet access to a willing market as well as services such as tool rental businesses and garden supply shops geared to small-scale producers. “We don’t necessarily need


to own all our equipment,” says Clerk. “For us, that makes a lot of sense.”


The operation’s small scale also means there’s room to learn. While managing 15 separate properties brings challenges, those pale in comparison to having to manage a 60-acre property. “You can learn the skills of a small-scale farm in a place that feels comfortable, then take those skills and potentially move them elsewhere,” says Evans. Pest pressure is also low, something she attributes to being in a highly developed urban environment rather than in a rural setting where


the risk of alternative pest hosts might be higher. Wireworm exists on some properties, and aphids can be a problem, but there hasn’t been anything significant. “We don’t have anything I


would say is detrimental,” says Evans. “Part of it may be that we’re in such an urban context where there is so much diversity and there’s not a lot of agriculture.”


The lack of farming in the


city also means that when people see what they’re doing, they initially think they’re ambitious gardeners.


Conversations open doors to a fresh perception of what food production could be in an urban context. “One of the big


opportunities we have is to bridge the gap,” says Evans. “There’s by no means a world in which this type of agriculture is going to feed the city, but if this kind of agriculture can make the people that live in those condos think about where their food is coming from and what goes into growing food,


See URBAN on next page o


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1-866-820-7603 | BAUMALIGHT.COM Dale Howe | 403-462-1975 | dale@baumalight.com


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