By Mathew Scammell
Most of us in Manitoba know that the climate is changing and that humans are responsible[1]. The scientific evidence supporting the claim that the burning of fossil fuels is to blame has only increased in recent decades. We now find ourselves in June of 2024, following the hottest month of May ever recorded by humans[2], which caps a full 12 straight months of record-breaking heat. Many of us are also noticing that historical climate norms are becoming less relevant and less predictable.
What most Manitobans might not know about climate change is that it is considered what can be called a positive feedback system, where more heating causes more heating. A quick example can be the melting of snow or ice in polar regions reducing reflectivity and absorbing more heat from sunlight. This aspect of climate change especially demands attention due to the accelerating nature of the problem – we need to act before the amount of heating becomes catastrophic and out of our control.
So, what does any of this have to do with gardening? In my experience, it is possible to cultivate climate action locally. I’ve been involved with Sustainable South Osborne Community Cooperative (SSOCC) ever since 2016, in large part due to the tangible actions SSOCC has been able to take towards acting on climate change. Incorporated as a community service cooperative, SSOCC is engaged in urban agriculture, focusing on the establishment of perennials but also producing a significant amount of annual vegetables. We are run by a board of directors, have stewards for each of our physical sites, and are always accepting generous offers by volunteers to help out. Operating community gardens at each of the local community centres in South Osborne and a community orchard along Churchill Drive, the organization has really grown its impact over the past 15 years.
There are generally two ways to respond to climate change – mitigation and adaptation. Both are important and need to be done simultaneously. There will already be a certain amount of warming guaranteed for our world due to past actions, and so we must adapt, but we also need to stop making the problem worse in order to better protect future generations, and so we must mitigate. SSOCC has been structured in a way to address both types of responses.
Mitigation
SSOCC engages with mitigation by reducing fossil fuel consumption, recycling organic matter, and by sequestering carbon. We avoid fossil fuels typically associated with the application of fertilizers and from transportation in general (including moving the food from farm to plate). Agricultural emissions are often high when using conventional practices, and these amount to about one-third of Manitoba’s total emissions[3], so by utilizing organic fertilizers (compost) we directly avoid these fossil fuels.
Practicing urban agriculture naturally decreases the distance between producer and consumer, sometimes drastically reducing the emissions required for transport. In addition to the fertilizing benefits of compost, by recycling this organic matter we also avoid methane (a powerful greenhouse gas) emissions produced when organics find themselves in an anaerobic environment such as a landfill. We compost plant matter from our sites, kitchen scraps from neighbours, woodchips from local tree felling companies, leaves from the neighbourhood, and coffee grounds from local cafes. We sequester carbon at our sites by growing perennials such as berry bushes and fruit trees, and by minimizing tillage[4] which promotes the accumulation of carbon in the soil.
Adaptation
With regards to adaptation, SSOCC has always been actively pursuing education and advocacy opportunities. Developing a knowledge base around what it means to grow, cook, and preserve your own food is especially important for our mostly urban society. It provides an intergenerational opportunity for knowledge transfer between the youngest and oldest members of our communities. Though growing food isn’t as common in Manitoba households these days, there are still many people who remember having a garden out of necessity. Skyrocketing food prices at the supermarket are making the shift back to local food production even more of an obvious choice.
Fostering local productive capacity has long been an adaptation measure for SSOCC. If our society were to experience a catastrophic disruption in supply chains or a devastating natural disaster in a highly productive agricultural region, how would we respond and feed people? I asked that question to the Federal Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault back in January, and he admitted that the federal government does not currently have an emergency response plan in place for this kind of situation. This kind of answer emboldened us in SSOCC to continue cultivating climate action locally to ensure we have capacity to respond appropriately when necessary and to have adaptation measures in place before it is too late.
SSOCC has been active in advocating for better government policies by engaging the local politicians, but some things are easier said than done. Large systems are incredibly hard to control or influence, and so we put our money where our mouths are when it comes to things we can control. Last year we divested our funds from RBC to protest their ongoing support and financing for fossil fuel projects[5] and moved our money into a credit union, and this year we opted to purchase only peat-free seed starting soil from Pollock’s Hardware Co-op[6] to reduce our dependence on environmentally destructive practices like peat mining[7] and support another local cooperative. The small things we accomplish such as growing food and composting mean much more when complemented by larger actions conducted in collaboration with other organizations.
Though we at SSOCC may sometimes feel and seem small, we do continuously see opportunities for increasing our reach and influence, and even have some future goals for the organization as well. Establishing a neighbourhood-level compost drop-off system would allow us to dramatically increase the amount of fertilizer we are able to produce and use on our sites, introduce more local people to our operations, and reduce the amount of unnecessary waste going into our already very large landfills. We can probably build this system quicker than the City of Winnipeg, which remains the last major city in Canada to not have implemented city-wide curbside compost pick-up. Another goal is to produce enough food to feed all the people immediately surrounding our sites – our gardening is for the community, after all! And the last goal I’ll share is to have the SSOCC model replicated all over the city. We’ve learned a lot over the past 15 years, especially from mistakes, but the benefits continue to grow as we bear the fruits of our labour and the justification for our endeavour only strengthens. Community-based solutions to society-level problems can be achieved – as long as they can be scaled up.
You can get involved with SSOCC by coming out to volunteer, signing up for our newsletter (first access to workshops), attending our Harvest Dinner fundraiser in September, and following us on social media. Visit our website at www.sustainablesouthosborne.ca.
Originally published by the Manitoba Master Gardeners Association
Mathew Scammell is the steward of the People Garden for SSOCC.
[1] https://thenarwhal.ca/manitoba-climate-poll/
[2] https://www.axios.com/2024/06/05/may-record-global-heat-12th-straight-month
[3] https://climateactionmb.ca/road2resilience/#pathway-chapters
[4] https://www.botanicgardens.org/blog/home-gardeners-guide-carbon-sequestration
[5] https://rbcrevealed.com/
[6] https://pollocksonlineshop.square.site/product/peat-free-potting-mix-6l/525
[7] https://www.wildernesscommittee.org/peat