Qaqortoq Community Greenhouse Project
The Inuvik Community Garden in Inuvik, Northwest Territories, 68N
The Qaqortoq Community Greenhouse Project is a pilot project in a planned Community Gardening Network to be built across Inuit Nunagat and beyond.
Greenhouse at the Upernaviarssuk Experimental Farm, near Qaqortoq
The project combines construction of greenhouse space with social organization and support facilities. Specifically, in addition to growing and teaching spaces, there will also be makerspace and tool library workshops. There will also be battery storage and renewable energy sources to serve as a hub for a community microgrid. Though this will be facilitated through the non-profit Polaris Arctic Greenhouses and lab efforts, local partners will eventually take over these facilities.
Greenhouses are already used at industrial scale in Iceland to grow crops such as cucumbers, which are exported to Greenland
The project has several high level goals:
Develop methods and practices for Arctic Community Agriculture using off the shelf and community constructable and maintainable systems.
Develop methods and practices for community driven skill development and retention.
Develop methods and practices for augmenting existing community efforts while providing a basis for further community projects and investment, particularly in the form of cooperative enterprise and community wealth funds.
Develop a framework for community driven economic development, ideally for deployment in the Pacific, the Global South, the Rust Belt, etc.
Qaqortoq, South Greenland was selected for several reasons.
Qaqortoq
Qaqortoq is the largest town in the Kujalleq region.
South Greenland at the center of geopolitical and mineral pressures, spotlighting the need for alternatives to extractive economic models.
South Greenland is home to a developing agricultural sector and this project aligns with local goals.
Sheep farms near Qassiarsuk
Strong local support.
The Arctic in general faces high food prices and food insecurity, with Inuit households particularly impacted. Climate change is disrupting logistics, exacerbating existing problems even as neoliberal fiscal policy is leading to reduction of freight subsidies. Food prices increase as one goes further north. Qaqortoq is a laboratory for devising methods that can be applied further north.
Greenland is an interesting case study in Island economies, particularly given the low population density and reliance on sealanes for supply. This provides an opportunity to devise means of increasing self-sufficiency on “islands” while strengthening links between “islands”
The project itself has a number of goals:
✅ Provide at least 600m2 of growing space in 5 years (600m2 would provide 300 2m2 plots, enough for 10% of the town to participate.)
✅ Provide fresh vegetables for school lunches within 3 years.
✅ Makerspace and tool library with outreach and workshops
✅ Test earth sheltered designs
✅ Test techniques for retrofitting off the shelf models
✅ Test off the shelf and community producible
✅ Facilitate local renewable energy cooperative
✅ At high latitudes, a diverse energy portfolio is essential, but extremely high wind speeds require specialized designs. Adequate storage is important and as this grows, pumped hydro will be increasingly important.
✅ Test techniques for water retention for thermal mass, power storage, aquaculture, and drought tolerance
✅Provide space and support for canning, pickling, and other similar processes
✅ Facilitate mutual aid structures such as a free store