The London and District Construction Association announced Thursday it’s donating a 12-meter container farm and the labor and materials for the London food bank.
“The best way to get off the food inflation treadmill is to start to grow your own crops,” Mike Carter, executive director of the association, said as the London food bank launched its annual Thanksgiving food drive.
“Our members are uniquely capable of building a container farm. We’re very good at building the structures that farmers need.” Construction association members have donated about $750,000 worth of food during the past seven years and will continue to donate, Carter said.
But it’s clear money and donations alone aren’t making residents of the city and region more food secure, he said. Food security is defined as physical and economic access to safe, nutritious food. “We’re like a duck; we’re treading water really fast just to try to keep up because food inflation just eats into everything at an astonishing rate,” Carter said. The container should be ready by spring, he said.
The donation comes as the construction association marks its 125th anniversary. Association members include contractors, manufacturers, and suppliers of construction materials and equipment and other sector-related companies. “We decided to do a legacy Initiative so that when we hit 150, folks then can look back and say, we did something that had a lasting impact on the community. We like to think we actually build communities,” Carter said.
Read the entire article at The London Free Press