Mobile Urban Farm

Camosun Innovates(CI)和TopSoil正在联合努力，以开发移动城市农场原型，以更环保、可持续和对社会负责的方式显著减少运营小型城市农场所需的必要时间和精力。作为卡莫森学院的应用研发中心，CI在为当地企业开发模块化解决方案方面有着良好的记录。位于CI内部的是Camosun技术接入中心(CTAC)，这是加拿大全国60个此类中心之一，也是卑诗省首家此类中心，专注于先进制造业十多年。TOPSOIL是维多利亚州第一家也是唯一一家利用非耕地为餐馆和周围社区生产食物的都市农业企业，汇集了来自不同职业的人-包括建筑、工程、农业、地方政府、房地产开发和餐饮业-以便通过实施生产性农场来改造空置的城市土地。在过去的七年里，TopSoil成功地简化了生产和分销系统，使他们能够为大维多利亚地区的30多家餐厅和数千名个人种植数万磅高质量的新鲜当地农产品。表土农场单位是可持续农业的“瑞士军刀”--一种可适应多种可能性的多功能工具包。在农场花费的总时间中，大约60%是在收获后的过程中，如清洗、包装、储存和跟踪农产品。通过自动化和简化这一过程，完全集成的表土移动城市农场将使任何个人、机构、组织或社区都能够实施成功的农场。该项目将成为创新的活生生的例子，鼓励更多的当地人参与食品生产和准备，表明城市食品生产可以成为一种有意义和可行的职业选择，并将创建以重大和持久方式促进人民健康和福祉的农场。该农场将允许人们学习如何以可持续和经济可行的方式种植大量新鲜的当地农产品，并有可能在加拿大和北美被采用和适应。TopSoil打算与其他农场创新者合作，帮助其他城市农场发展，为社区提供采用完全集成的模块化耕作系统的机会。

Camosun Innovates (CI) and TOPSOIL are combining their efforts in order to develop a prototype Mobile Urban Farm to dramatically reduce the necessary time and energy needed to operate small-scale urban farms in a greener, sustainable, and socially responsible fashion. The applied research and development hub at Camosun College, CI has a proven track record of developing modular solutions for local businesses. Housed within CI is the Camosun Technology Access Centre (CTAC), one of sixty such centres across Canada and the first in BC, with more than a ten-year focus on advanced manufacturing. TOPSOIL is the first and only Urban agriculture business in Victoria utilizing non-arable land to produce food for restaurants and the surrounding community, bringing together people from varied professions - including architecture, engineering, farming, local government, property development, and the restaurant industry - in order to transform vacant urban land by implementing productive farms. Over the past seven years, TOPSOIL has successfully streamlined production and distribution systems which allow them to grow tens of thousands of pounds of high quality fresh local produce for over thirty restaurants and thousands of individuals across the Greater Victoria area. The TOPSOIL Farm unit is the "Swiss Army Knife" of sustainable farming - a multi-purpose toolkit adaptable to a wide range of possibilities. Approximately 60% of the total hours spent on a farm are in post-harvest processes, such as washing, packaging, storing and tracking produce. By automating and streamlining this process, the fully integrated TOPSOIL Mobile Urban Farm will give any individual, institution, organization or community the ability to implement a successful farm. This project will become a living example of innovation, encouraging more local people to participate in food production and preparation, demonstrating that urban food production can be a meaningful and viable career choice and will create farms that nurture peoples' health and well-being in significant and lasting ways. The farm unit will allow people to learn how to grow large amounts of fresh local produce in a sustainably and financially viable way, and has the potential to be adopted and adapted across Canada and North America. TOPSOIL intends to reach out to fellow farm innovators to help other urban farms develop, providing communities with the opportunity to adopt fully integrated modular farming systems.