Moncton approves urban farm pilot project

A home in a residential area in Moncton will soon be home to four chickens as part of a pilot project to see how well a small-scale farm will work within city limits.

Moncton's first experiment with an urban farm will start within a few weeks when a chicken coop is built in the backyard of Anne-Marie Laroche, a member of Post Carbon Greater Moncton, an activist group aiming to reduce Monctonians' dependence on fossil fuels.

The plan has been approved by the Greater Moncton Regional Planning Commission and signed off by Laroche's neighbours.

"We approached the neighbours already, you know. They signed a petition so they already know we're planning to do this project," she said.

The Greater Moncton Regional Planning Commission approved the group's plan to have four hens within city limits last week.

Michel Desjardins, a spokesman for Post Carbon Greater Moncton, said these urban farms will be important in the future because of how modern food production and transportation are dependent on oil.

So with the price of oil rising, Desjardins said people need to spend less time in the supermarket and more time cultivating their own food.

"We want to experiment. We want to learn. We want to document, we want to learn from other communities who are doing this," he said.

"There are over 100 communities across North America that are already doing this so we want to understand best practices."

The group plans to deliver a full report about the farm's progress to the city by Dec. 31, 2010.

Desjardins said the group will organize tours of the farm to let people see how the project is going.