Agriculture committee  The mobile abattoir actually is a provincial fund that I've applied to. I just sent it in, so I don't know what the process is going to be. It was $561,000 to set up a mobile abattoir here in Cowichan.

Agriculture committee  Sure, I'll take $561,000 from anybody. If the feds want to give me that, I'll gladly put your sign on it.

Agriculture committee  There isn't a fund that I'm aware of right now with the federal government that would cover that cost. That was too high a cost to go through the local infrastructure fund, because that maxed out at $250,000.

Agriculture committee  Innovation definitely is a big piece of this new kitchen proposal that we have put together. We do want to look at where there are gaps and what the demands are. Maybe it's not innovative, but trying to get into institutional purchasing has been a nightmare. With a new hospital a

Agriculture committee  Our van is on the road all day. First of all, it drives around in the mornings and goes to the local grocery stores, as I mentioned. Other food producers will call us, or farmers will call us if they have a glut. Especially during the summertime, we would drive by several farms a

Agriculture committee  Yes, and it's a lot of food. I tried getting this program running in 2011, so I'm dismayed that it took us that long because of regulations, but now we're all set to go. The Good Samaritan Act and other acts have been put in place so people can donate the food without having repe

Agriculture committee  All of those models are plausible. I would suggest that if it's going to cost small-scale farmers money to join something, they're not going to really have the funds to invest in that. That's why I've written probably five grants to set up this commercial kitchen. There is money

Agriculture committee  You should know not to ask me that question.

Agriculture committee  Give a big tick to the $220,000 application that's sitting on a desk right now. But definitely it's an amazing fund. It was available pre-COVID for $25,000. We decided to wait for the next larger amount that's available. If funds are being exhausted, I would suggest there are ei

Agriculture committee  We applied for that funding back in June. In August, we were connected with a staff member and we have been working with them. I just had an email a couple of days ago with additional clarifications. It does seem to be a bit of a challenging application, which is fair enough. We

Agriculture committee  Definitely abattoirs, as I brought up, present a hurdle for anyone trying to do livestock care. We used to have a very vibrant dairy industry. We had a lot of quota for chickens and cows. Those have left the island for a variety of reasons. A major one was changes in regulations

Agriculture committee  In B.C. we have the Young Agrarians project. It's a land-matching program where the young farmers or emerging farmers are matched with perhaps a retired or wanting to retire farmer and they can lease their land. That's been a very successful project funded by the Ministry of Agri

Agriculture committee  Thank you. Two years ago, we started a food rescue project, where we pick up from five local grocery stores—Thrifty's, Country Grocer, Save-On-Foods—and that food is collected and redistributed to our community partners, food banks, etc. Since we started, we've done about 300,

Agriculture committee  I have a resiliency project. I don't think I talked about it, but it's about invasive species.

Agriculture committee  Thank you for inviting me to present today. First of all, I want to acknowledge that I am located here on the unceded territory of the Cowichan people. My name is Judy Stafford and I am the executive director of Cowichan Green Community, a non-profit organization focused on imp