CA (QC): Year-round vegetables for Inukjuak community
The isolated Nunavik community will soon be able to grow its own produce year-round. There are obvious challenges to growing greens year-round in a subarctic climate. Here's one you may not have expected: Inuktitut only has a handful of words for vegetables.
So in addition to coming up with new and inventive ways to achieve some level of food sovereignty, the plan to provide remote communities with fresh produce year-round is a linguistic and anthropological exercise as well.
"We're hoping in the coming years new terminology will be created," said Karin Kettler, who heads the Pirursiivik Project, a four-year initiative that is jointly funded by the One Drop Foundation, the Makivik Corporation and the RBC Foundation.
A few weeks ago, the project unveiled its latest initiative: a hydroponic container farm in the community of Inukjuak, a town of 1,800 on the eastern shore of Hudson Bay. The plan is for it to provide a regular supply of fresh vegetables, a large portion of which will be given away to the community (the rest will be sold in local stores).
"We've done several gardening projects and our latest addition is a hydroponic container," Kettler told CBC's Breakaway. "And inside this container we're planning to grow lettuce, spinach, kale and a local plant called qungulit in Inuktitut. It's very similar to what you call mountain sorrell... it's kind of a leafy green, it has a nice lime, sort of lemony taste."
Read more at CBC (Sean Gordon)
Publication date: Mon 9 Nov 2020