What is the future of food?
Is it meat grown in labs, large-scale factory farming or eating insects? Is it vertical agriculture in our cities, 3D printed food or an increasing disparity between what the rich and the poor eat? Depending on whom you ask it’s all of these things. Most agree the current model is failing both our health and our planet. For the increase in population to match our current food production system while addressing inequalities between the haves and have nots will require unconventional approaches.
Enter Enactus, an international student group that focuses on social entrepreneurship with a high –tech solution that came from the need to address a home-grown problem. After seeing firsthand the lack of healthy and affordable fresh food while offering entrepreneurship training in Iqaluit they were inspired to develop the Growcer project. “Nunavut residents pay on average twice as much for the same food as the rest of Canada” says Corey Ellis, President of Enactus at the University of Ottawa and co-founder of the Growcer social enterprise. For those living in northern Canada the prohibitive cost of imported fresh food and the short growing season make eating healthy a challenge.