Bedford Collab is deeply committed to ensuring equitable access to nutritious food for everyone. As a vital part of our region’s food supply chain, we’re advancing a healthier future through collaboration and innovation.

Here, our management team and community partners are pictured harvesting fresh produce from our growing tents, produce that grows 365 days a year and directly supports local food initiatives.

SHERIDAN, Ark. — Two of Arkansas’s biggest problems, struggling farmers and food insecurity, could be addressed by a farming technique that was shown off in Sheridan on Tuesday.

This year, we have spoken with several farmers who said they could be forced to close their family farms, and Arkansas often ranks near the top of the list for food insecurity in America.

One in four Canadians — more than 10 million people — are struggling to put food on the table, according to a new RBC report published in June.

This is the highest level ever recorded in this country, driven by rising costs and limited access to affordable food.

In Ottawa, a new initiative at The Ottawa Mission shows how community collaborations can make a difference in combatting this important issue.

With two new modular vertical farms built in partnership with local ag-tech company Growcer, and with support from RBC Foundation through the Ottawa Community Foundation’s Food Resilience Foundation Fund, the shelter is now producing up to 20,000 pounds of fresh greens annually.

Community Link is addressing this through a new project called ‘Fresh Link Farms,’ a hydroponic freight farm that’s able to grow lettuce, leafy greens, herbs, root vegetables and edible flowers in a 320-square-foot space, which will be next to the Azle Farmers Market, a press release said.

“It looks just like a shipping container, but inside it’s a hydroponic vertical farm, and it will grow at max capacity about 1,000 heads of lettuce a week,” Harper said. Vanessa Thompson, food program manager, said that some customers have been coming to the pantry since it opened 20 years ago.

The pantry gives a variety of what is on hand each day: frozen food, meat, eggs, produce, bread, hygiene products, and pantry items like coffee and pet food.

Oxbow High School is in the process of setting up a hydroponic farm built inside a modular container that will serve as an educational tool for students year-round.

Stony Brook University in New York donated the structure, which was designed by Boston-based company Freight Farms, to Oxbow last fall. An average Leafy Green Machine unit costs about $76,000. 

Oxbow staff learned about Stony Brook’s plan to part ways with the Freight Farm through a facilities person at the college who is a relative of a staff member at Oxbow. The high school “seized the opportunity” to acquire the farm, Oxbow Principal Ken Cadow said via email.

Oxbow’s Freight Farm will be located behind the school’s library and STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) lab, which opened last fall.

Eastie Farm’s paid Climate Corps fellowship helps address the food security issue by offering hands-on work and leadership opportunities for teens and young adults. That’s how they connected with Jose Manuel, an 18-year-old who arrived from Colombia about a year and a half ago. After completing the fellowship, he now runs one of Eastie Farm’s newest projects: a hydroponic freight farm inside a shipping container capable of growing the equivalent of about 2.5 acres of food. 

I visited the Chelsea Terrace site — home to the freight farm and geothermal greenhouse, and about a mile from the Sumner Street location — on a freezing but sunny day in March.

In a quiet corner of rural Moldova, inside the concrete walls of a former Soviet barn, a new kind of food revolution is quietly taking root—literally. Thanks to an innovative partnership between Canadian ag-tech company Just Vertical and humanitarian organisation GlobalMedic, a fully functional indoor hydroponic farm is now providing hundreds of pounds of fresh produce each month to Ukrainian refugees and local Moldovan families facing ongoing food insecurity.

The farm, capable of growing more than 1,000 plants simultaneously, was completed in just eight months and is already making a meaningful difference in a region under strain. As war continues across the border in Ukraine.

Last November, the Ohio University Student Senate developed initiatives for two vertical gardens. The project, which aims to enhance student engagement and sustainability at Ohio U, was awarded $5,000. 

The Senate worked to create a project that met engagement and sustainability goals but was also financially viable. Former Environmental Affairs Commissioner Caden Hibbs, worked with the company Just Vertical out of Canada, an indoor hydroponic farming company, and pitched their indoor wall gardens to support Ohio U. 

As food bank usage increases in B.C. amid the cost-of-living crisis, a group is starting to grow lettuce in a Cranbrook city park to encourage healthy and sustainable eating.

The CBC's Corey Bullock went to the farm, which is looking to expand.