Built 20 years ago within a converted hockey arena, this 16,000 square-foot greenhouse offers a welcome source of fresh produce in a region where food security suffers in part due to climate change and also sheer remoteness. For example, five pounds of potatoes can cost $25 due to high shipping costs. “If you can grow 100 pounds of potatoes in your greenhouse, you are alleviating some of that financial stress,” says its director, Ray Solotki. The greenhouse, however, only operates in the summer and produces just a fraction of the food this town of about 3,300 people consumes each year. Solotki is working to change that.
She’s raising funds to develop a year-round growing operation that would take advantage of new technological developments to provide more fresh food for Inuvik and surrounding towns. Customizable LED lighting, remotely operated nutrient-monitoring systems as well as more efficient and insulated building designs have all made indoor growing more productive, efficient and less costly to operate. Greenhouses that could benefit from this technology are springing up throughout the Arctic: The Japanese company JGC Evergreen produces 1,000 tons of cucumbers and tomatoes in Siberia, a group called Growing North provides geodesic dome greenhouses to communities in Nunavut, Canada, and an operation called Polar Permaculture Solutions supplies the only locally grown produce in the world’s northernmost city of Longyearbyen in Svalbard, Norway. Such efforts “are providing food and jobs and all of these things that we desperately need in our communities,” Solotki says.