Benjamin Feagin

Benjamin Feagin

Agritech North

Fresh food grown for – and by – remote communities Fresh produce is difficult to come by and very expensive in Canada’s remote northern communities. Benjamin Feagin Jr. is working to change that with AgriTech North – a community-driven vertical farm business based in Dryden, Ontario. AgriTech North produces 70 varieties of leafy greens, herbs, and small fruiting crops. They’re grown indoors year-round, and shipped to over 50 remote and fly-in communities. Feagin, the company’s chief executive
officer, hopes to expand access to fresh, lower-cost produce to 600 different communities. “We currently serve Kenora, Dryden, Sioux Lookout, and everywhere in between. Our operational area is very spread apart and works in places with very little infrastructure. If we want to move our product, we have to come up with the distribution network,” says Feagin. They are working with Grand Council Treaty #3 and have initiatives in a number of the communities to advance Treaty #3’s food sovereignty mandate. “We provide a solution for year-round food access that has real potential to expand into all 28 Treaty #3 communities, reducing fresh food costs by 25 per cent,” Feagin says. “It’s spearheading regional food system change and the establishment of infrastructure to serve all of our communities.” Aside from delivering produce, Feagin and his colleagues are also enabling individual communities to operate their own vertical farms, and generate their own parts using 3D printing. “We expect 3D printers to eventually be commonplace. The intention is to enable remote communities to print replacement parts and not rely on long supply chains, or poor-quality parts, in order to operate.”