A new partnership between the Carcross-Tagish First Nation (CTFN) and North Star Agriculture wants to be supplying the Yukon with fresh produce – all year long.

North Star CEO Sonny Gray told lunch guests gathered Tuesday for the partnership announcement they intend to be supplying such leafy greens as lettuce and kale to the market in 18 months or so.

“Together, we will be tackling food security in the Yukon by building an aquaponics facility large enough to provide the Yukon with fresh vegetables, year-round,” Gray told his guests.

“We recognized in the Carcross-Tagish First Nation a lot of our own ethics and values. They believe in their community and their vision regarding the future of agriculture in the territory aligns with ours.”

Among the guests was Ranj Pillai, the territorial minister responsible for agriculture, and Eloise Clark, president of the Yukon Agricultural Association.

“Congratulations once again,” Clark told Gray in casual conversation after his presentation. “We are here to support you 100 per cent.”

North Star Agriculture Inc. and the CTFN will be forming a corporation to own and operate the business, with the First Nation owning 51 per cent of the corporation.

The intention is to break ground this fall, following completion of architectural and detailed design work currently underway, Gray explained in an interview afterwards.

He has been clear since announcing his business proposal over a year ago that it wasn’t his intention to compete with the territory’s existing agricultural community and the market gardeners who sell their goods locally.

His intention is to compete with the 18-wheelers hauling vegetables up the highway from places like California and Mexico.

And it’s pretty clear sailing from here on, Gray insisted.

They’ve been assured that because of the design of the facility they plan to build in the Carcross area, and its anticipated water use, the proposal will not require a screening by the Yukon Environmental and Socio-economic Assessment Board. Nor will it require approval from the Yukon Water Board, he said.

Gray said Environment Yukon is preparing authorization to allow for the importation of the non-indigenous tilapia fish they’ll be using in their aquaponics project.

The four-storey, 39,000-square-foot growing facility will be a closed system.

The only water leaving the site will be in the vegetables and berries they plan to sell around the territory, along with a little evaporation.

Water coming in will be from a well, although daily volumes were unavailable at this point.

Essentially, the water will be looped through the fish tanks and the beds of produce stacked vertically. Waste from the fish will provide the nutrients for the plants.

It’s based on the same design developed by Nutraponics Canada Corp. for its facility in Edmonton, which has been in commercial production for three years.

“It is with great excitement and joy that I speak with you all here today,” Nutraponics CEO Tanner Stewart told Tuesday’s guests.

“Nutraponics Canada Corp. started back in 2010, when our founders were trying to understand how to grow Rhodolia faster in a greenhouse setting.

“By 2014, we had morphed into an indoor vertical farming company dedicated to the practice of aquaponics whereby an ecosystem of fish and plants are farmed and raised together, utilizing 95 per cent less fresh water than traditionally farmed crops, with no herbicides, pesticides, or GMO seeds.”

While Nutraponics will not be an owner in the new corporation as yet unnamed, it did provide the licensing approval for Gray and the First Nation to use their system, Gray said.

He said Nutraponics remains as a partner in business, providing updates in technology and advancements in the business as they arise.

It will be Nutraponics that will oversee the construction of the facility and installation of the equipment because of its expertise.

Gray pointed out Nutraponics has also ensured the corporation it will have the exclusive rights to the Nutraponics system right across the North – the Northwest Territories, Nunavut and Alaska.

They’ve already been in formal contact with the N.W.T., Gray said.

He declined to discuss the money needed to the bring the business into production, though the Whitehorse-area farmer and businessman said raising the financing was never a concern of his.

He did thank the federal government Tuesday for its $75,000 contribution through the Canadian Northern Economic Development Agency to help fund the feasibility study and business plan.

The new partnership is currently finalizing a location for the facility in the Carcross area, he said.

Gray said it’s expected the business will need between 20 and 30 full-time employees.

Carcross, he told Tuesday’s audience, is in a much better position than Whitehorse is to respond to additional housing needs.

Annual production is estimated at 200,000 kilograms of produce and 200 tonnes of fish.

Stewart explained while almost two-thirds of space on the ground floor will be dedicated to the fish tanks, the growing beds will be stacked vertically, reaching skyward from the floor to the ceiling.

It’s expected the facility will yield 10 to 12 harvests of produce through the year, while it generally takes about 10 months for a fingerling tilapia to reach a commercial size, he explained.

Stewart said it’s simply a matter of replacing the harvestable tilapia with fingerlings – one adult out, one fingerling in.

It’s just like the leafy vegetables, berries and spice.

One bed of Romaine lettuce out, one bed of seedlings in.

“This is at the top of the food chain as far as water conservation goes in farming,” Stewart said. “You don’t get much better than this.”

CTFN Chief Andy Carvill said the First Nation is excited about the project, its economic development opportunities, year-round production of quality produce and stronger food security.

“It is partnerships like this that are making a change in the North,” Carvill said. “It is partnerships like this that are making changes in the community.”

Pillai said the project fosters everything the new Liberal government stands for: economic development, First Nation involvement, food security....

“The Yukon government will watch where this goes to see how we can help,” the minister told the audience.

Gray said while the project will initially depend on electricity from the grid, they plan to explore renewable options such as solar and wind.

There will also be backup generation installed as part of the project, and perhaps backup generation for the backup generation, given the sensitivity of the plants and fish to any changes in their environment, he said.

Gray told the audience it was through his initial research into building a small aquaponics facility in his garage to provide for his wife and their five sons that led to where they are today.

As a farmer, he said, he always has meat in the freezer, and enough root vegetables like potatoes, beets and carrots to get them through the winter.

It was the fresh, leafy greens they were missing.

While he was thinking about how he could scale an aquaponics facility to the size his family would need, Gray said, “the stars aligned.

“Nutraponics visited Whitehorse to speak at the Circumpolar Conference. It wasn’t long before I was on a flight to Edmonton, headed out to see Tanner’s facility.

“We hammered out a strong partnership, and have worked hard side-by-side ever since.”