A message from the City
Council has endorsed the vision in the Calgary Eats! Food strategy, which supports multiple forms of urban food production. Administration is therefore proposing amendments to the land use bylaw to enable Food Production in commercial land use districts as a discretionary land use. Currently, the City only allows the production of food inside a building in the Industrial districts.
The City expects increased demand for food production with the introduction of more sophistical technologies such as ‘Vertical Farming’, which is the production of food in a vertical manner in warehouses, high-rise buildings or even in shipping containers. The proposed changes will allow indoor food production activities to be extended into commercial districts as a business opportunity, where food such as leafy greens could be sold from the same location they are produced.
At the “Promoting Calgary’s Local Food System” open house in November there was a high level of support from the public and stakeholders, with almost 90 per cent of the 65 comments received indicating support to increase opportunities for food production. If you’d like to learn more about the proposed changes for urban food production, click here.