The Lillooet Agriculture and Food Society has been working on plans for an Agricultural Storage Facility for the last two years. A Cold Storage Facility Pitch Package & Feasibility Study was published in January of 2020, and followed up by Agricultural Storage Business Planning work with Roots and Rivers in the summer of 2020.
From this, LAFS felt ready to apply for the next steps – and wrote a proposal to the Investment Readiness Program (IRP) to do just that. We were successful in our application, which will build on the work we did through 2019 and 2020.
The next steps involved hiring a consulting team to further research best practices and industry standards, looking specifically to similar models which include a food coop aspect and community-first approach. With this IRP project, LAFS will also work to determine the ownership and operational structure and build the membership and team that will manage it, secure the location for the facility through lease or partnership, and have concept drawings completed for the facility.
We are excited to announce that Greenchain Consulting has taken on the project this spring, in partnership with Motiv Architects and Sustainability Ventures. The consulting team visited Lillooet last week and talked to a number of food producers as well as visited some potential sites for the cold storage.
If you would like to talk to the consultants about food storage needs, please contact LAFS at lillooetagricultureandfood@gmail.com. We are working on compiling a list of food producers in the region for the consultants to connect with.
The project is set to wrap up by the end of June, so stay tuned for an update in our next newsletter!
