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Farm training program finishes first year A regular five year review of how GN contracts are awarded wraps up with a call for some big changes
Lyndsay Herman
Northern News Services
Published Saturday, September 21, 2013
NORTHWEST TERRITORIES
The original goal for the Northern Farm Training Institute Program was to make it as accessible as possible to anyone who was interested in any aspect of Northern agriculture.
Jackie Milne leads one of the workshops which inspired the Northern Farmers Training Institute Program in 2011. - NNSL file photo
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Now that the first year of the program is wrapping up, the program seems to have met it's goal.
"We did it in a unique way," said Jackie Milne, the program's founder. "We really wanted to make it attainable for anybody who was interested ... so we targeted it over the weekend, counting Friday ... and we didn't make it an obligation to attend every class because, once again, that might not work. We've had extremely good attendance, practically 100 per cent, and we have a waiting list of over 40 people."
The graduation ceremony is this weekend in the program's host community of Hay River, and most of the workshops' 15 students will receive certificates stating they've completed all six of the season's work shops. However, if life got in the way of attending any of the classes, students are welcome to complete the course the following year by joining in on the workshop they were unable to attend.
Agriculture is currently a small industry in the NWT but it was identified as a sector with high potential by the NWT Economic Opportunities Strategy Advisory Panel report released in the spring.
The panel's report identified the sector's current strengths as NWT's abundance of land, a demand for fresh produce, the success of a variety of agricultural initiatives, and a wide variety of local, wild plants and animals.
The challenges for the the sector, however, include the convenience of southern food products, limited access to land, high cost of transportation between communities, a limit to government subsidization due to trade agreements, and the fact that NWT land is not identified or set aside for agricultural use.
Enthusiasm ran high with the students who participated in the program and many have returned home to start small business ventures or hold workshops of their own in their home communities, Milne said.
She added students hailed from all five NWT regions.
This situation was exactly what the program coordinators were hoping to achieve.
Seeds of agriculture
Approximately five years ago, Milne volunteers to run workshop days on gardening at the Aurora College campus in Hay River.
The workshops were so popular that the Department of Industry, Tourism, Investment gave a small grant to expand the workshops to include Enterprise, and Kakisa. The following year the program expanded to Fort Simpson, Fort Providence, and Fort Resolution.
The Department of Education, Culture and Employment, the NWT Literacy Council, Ecology North, and Aurora College have also contributed to this year's program.
"What I noted immediately was a vacancy, because I'm going into the community and I'm only there for a couple hours and no tangible teaching space to show them," said Milne. "The production of food is like any other skilled trade. It's hands-on. If you're a carpenters, you've got to cut wood. If you're a plumber, you work with pipes. It's the same with agriculture and food."
With that perspective, Milne suggested the money spent on travel, accommodation, and wages for herself and GNWT staff be used to fund the travel of interested students from their home community to a central teaching location.
"Then they could become mentors for other people in the community."
The program has yet to secure funding for 2014, but Milne is planning for another year of workshops and her vision for the program is still expanding.
An example of where she'd like to see the program go is a "school farm" where students could stay and complete intensive study of certain subjects, like greenhouse management and animal husbandry.
"What I really would love to see is little satellite centres in the other regions," she said. "Maybe people who are higher in the Arctic (could host one) ... because it would give more focus to what would be successful where they are."
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